Persuasion Secrets and Predatory Practices Businesses Use on YOU

Kailyn:
Hello everyone and welcome to the BiggerPockets Money Podcast. I’m Kailyn Bennett, and as a reminder, I am the senior producer at BiggerPockets. Today I am with my dear friend and CFP extraordinaire, Kyle Mast.

Kyle:
Hey, Kailyn, it’s good to be here. It’s fun to have the producer in the show, and we’re just filling in from Mindy and Scott today. They’re probably off having fun, doing something really cool and we’re stuck behind a computer screen.

Kailyn:
Yeah, I know. Probably living their best fire life of drinking Starbucks and eating avocado toast.

Kyle:
Definitely with everything bagel seasoning on it for sure.

Kailyn:
Exactly. Kyle and I are here to make financial independence, less scary, less just for somebody else to introduce you to every money story because we truly believe financial freedom is attainable for everyone, no matter when or where you are starting. So today we’re talking to this amazing woman named Tarzan Kay. She was a wildly successful copywriter who actually built a seven-figure business through writing emails and using sometimes predatory marketing tactics to have a wider audience.

Kyle:
Yeah. So from this conversation, she does a really good job of helping us understand how we can maybe detect some language that is being used to manipulate or pressure you into buying the products that are coming online these days and that you maybe can’t afford or just don’t need. So this is helpful for just about anyone who feels like they can’t always vet something really well and feel pressured to buy something. This would be a really good listen for you if you’re looking for an online course or some sort of coaching program. She does a really good job of giving kind of a behind-the-scenes look at that.

Kailyn:
Absolutely. So the things you’re going to hear today, you’re going to hear about Tarzan’s story about how she built this business, how she changed her business practices to be more ethically conscious, I should say, positively conscious of the consumer on the other end. And the red flags you need to look out for so you don’t get swindled out of some money that you don’t need to spend on a service you don’t need. The purpose of this show today is we’re here to equip you with the knowledge of what to look for red flags within this industry if you’re looking to purchase an education course or if you’re interested in one, or if you want to become an educator or a marketer, and how to do this positively without I guess selling out. Without further ado, let’s bring in Tarzan Kay. Tarzan Kay welcome to the BiggerPockets Money Podcast. We’re so excited to have you today.

Tarzan:
Thanks. Thanks for having me.

Kailyn:
We know that just a few years ago you had this really massively successful email marketing and copywriting business that made you well over seven figures, and I think a lot of our audience may be kind of confused on how copywriting works and what are the nuances of marketing, why it’s important. So can you just explain what copywriting is and what your business specifically focused on?

Tarzan:
Okay, so the main thing that I do right now is email and I teach people how to write better email copies. So all of the emails that you get from a company, that’s email copy and that’s my specialty. But copy is really any words that you use to talk about your business. So it could be your website, it could be… There is a bit of a distinction between content and copy, like content is more blogs, that’s social media. Copy’s really specific to the problem that you solve and the language that we use in our copy is really important. It’s language that we come back to again and again, and there’s certain words, just an obvious piece of copy is some things like just do it. That’s one of the probably greatest pieces of copy of all time. The words that you associate with a brand that’s really obvious copy the stuff on billboards, but it’s also everywhere and we’re writing it every day. Does that make sense?

Kailyn:
Yeah. Absolutely. And I think that that’s such a valuable skill for business owners. I think I’m the queen of my promotions tab, or if I get too many emails, I’m the queen of unsubscribe. Let me clear out this tab. So as a business owner and as someone that is looking at marketing, this is a tool that our audience really needs to think about and look at.

Tarzan:
Right. Yes. Another thing is I am very focused on consent-based email marketing, which is not the way that everybody does email marketing, and I have very clear consent practices in my email. Just as an example of that, when I’m in a promotional period for my program Email Stars, I’m sending quite a lot of emails. The first thing I will do before I send any email is say, “Do you want me to turn this off for you? Click this link and I won’t send it to you.” By default, I’ll send it to most people on my email list, but they always have the option to turn it off. Every time I send them a promotion at the very top, it’s highlighted in bright yellow like, hey, do you want to turn this off and make it go away? You can just click this link and this promo will stop immediately.
And even when people join my email list, there is in online business with course-based businesses and even a lot of service providers, we have this culture of offering a freebie in order to get on the email to get subscribers. So it could be like a masterclass, a free PDF, whatever it is. I have a tick box for every single one of my forms. It’s not perfect. I might’ve missed one on one page somewhere, but anytime you download something from me, you have the option to just get the thing and see you later. And I actually want people consenting and saying, “Yes, I want your emails.” That’s really important to me. I don’t think just giving a freebie is really enough to say that to qualify as consent.
I just want to make sure that consent is built in all the time. Something that I’m always thinking about because we have all been in that situation in our inboxes where we’re like, “What the hell? I didn’t want this. Who is this person again?” I think I signed up for something, but not this. So my mission, I’m out there saying, “Hey, you can do email in a way that feels good to you and feels good to your subscribers too. You don’t have to shut down that part of yourself that’s like ugh email. I don’t want to be that person.” Like, okay, that’s valid. Why do you feel that way? And what could you do to make sure that your subscribers aren’t getting that feeling when they get your emails?

Kyle:
All right. Let’s take a quick break. We’ve heard about the positive practices Tarzan is currently using in her business. After we get back, we’ll dig a little bit deeper into some of the more predatory practices that are used in this type of marketing.

Kailyn:
Welcome back to the show. Today we’re talking to Tarzan Kay about how to consciously market your online course and business.

Kyle:
Some of the things that you just said, I think there’s a journey behind them of how you got to where you’re treating your audience in the nice way that you are. Let’s step back a little bit and then we’ll come back to why you do that. Kind of give people a little bit of a context though. You’ve built a substantial business before making some adjustments. Can you give us just a little bit of some detail of what the business looked like that you built? You mentioned courses and it sounds like you built it really fast. Give us just a quick overview of how that business was built, what it looked like.

Tarzan:
Well, one thing that I know about capitalism, having thought a lot about it in the last eight years is exploitation and oppression happens when you’re trying to do things really, really fast. And when I look back on the growth of my business, it was so fast and there was just no time to think about anything other than getting to the next goal and getting the next promotion out. So I started my business eight years ago and I was fully a hundred percent bought into online courses for everyone. Everyone’s an expert, you should start an online course. This is the path to riches, to wealth, to a lifestyle business.
So I started buying courses really early on and I started writing copy for people who were launching courses. And I immediately saw that copywriting as a skill for people who sell courses is essential. If you can’t do that, you will never sell courses. You either have to learn how to do it or you have to hire someone who does. And I saw that it was a rare skill and I was like, okay, I could actually do this myself. Why am I writing for other people’s courses? I could make way more money selling my own. Never mind that I actually didn’t really have a lot of industry experience. I would say I created my first course probably a year and a half in, and I knew things that other people didn’t know. Was I in a place where I could call myself an expert? I don’t know.
But I was like, everybody’s an expert. That’s what everybody’s saying. You’re an expert. As long as you’re 10 steps ahead of someone else, build your thing. And I learned a system of marketing that I didn’t really question. I learned about persuasion and nobody told me… Okay, so let’s back up. So Robert Cialdini wrote this famous book and he wrote about these… It’s called Influence. He wrote about the principles of persuasion, which are reciprocity. That’s an example my ex-husband used to use. He worked in sales and he used to famously say… He would be working on a $7,000 sale, in the middle of it he would say to his customer, would you like a bottle of water? And immediately reciprocities engage. So it’s like you give something and people want to give back. A lot of coaches use reciprocity on sales calls. They will give, give, give a lot on the sales call, and then immediately the person feels like they have to buy something. That’s reciprocity.
And then we have obvious things like scarcity like three spots left. Authority, which for me was just like, look how beautiful I am on social media. Don’t I look trustworthy? Commitment and consistency. Consistency is basically that’s why a trip wire would work. If you’ve ever downloaded a free thing or let’s say you bought something and then there’s an upsell, that’s a little something extra. In the online course business, it’s often, I bought this person’s $2,000 course, so now I should probably continue on and buy their $10,000 program because I already invested in them, so I better keep working with them. We want to, it has to do with sunk cost fallacy. It’s like we want to make a decision that’s consistent with the previous decision, even if it’s not working because it affirms that maybe it will. So then there’s liking and then there’s social proof, which is testimonials, et cetera, things like that.
I learn about these six principles of persuasion. Great. I’m using all of them in my business everywhere in my sales funnels, I have fast action bonuses. I’m talking about how much money I make because that’s authority building. I have all the layers of persuasion, and people are buying my stuff and it’s going so fast. I don’t even know what to do with all the money that I’m making. I got to about, I think I was four years into my business and I started to notice that something felt a little bit off.
And one thing I noticed was I couldn’t understand why some people were getting results in their business and others weren’t. And I started to look at why some marketing feels predatory. And through all of my years of teaching, I had so many people came to me and they just weren’t willing to do it the way that I was doing it. They just felt weird about it. And I would tell those people what other people were telling those people, which was that they had a mindset problem like, “Oh, you’re scared to sell. You just have to work on your mindset so you can get out there and make your pitch.” But actually what I realized was like, no, those people were really tuned into something.

Kailyn:
Just very quickly, just to clarify for our audience, what were you exactly selling at this point in time? Was this mainly your course that people were purchasing and then not finding that same amount of success?

Tarzan:
Yeah. So I’ve sold my program Email Stars. It’s one of the first programs I ever made, and I still sell it today and I’ve sold it in all different ways. The first time I sold it it was $6,000 program. I tried several different price points. In its heyday… It still sells for about $1,500, but in its heyday, it sold for $1,500 and I would have several hundred students at once. And I do want to say it’s a great program. I’m totally proud of that program. It’s more about the way that I was selling and also the way that I was teaching people to sell in the program.
Okay, let’s see. Where are we in the story? Oh, learning about marketing. I took this program with Kelly Diels it was called Feminist Copywriting. Now it’s called Copywriting for Culture Makers. And Kelly had this program inside the program that was about Robert Cialdini’s principles of persuasion. And by the way, I never read the book. I just learned all the lessons and taught all the lessons. I actually never read Cialdini’s book, but I did after Kelly told me that actually, Robert Cialdini wasn’t trying to write the handbook of sales for people on the internet. He was actually writing that book for consumers so they would know when they were being preyed upon. And I couldn’t believe it. I was like, wow, I just never considered that. How did this happen that we as marketers have taken Cialdini’s principles of persuasion, which were principles of how to not get conned, and turned them into how to persuade people to buy anything?
Those principles, they freaking work. There were years where I was like, I could sell anyone anything. I just know exactly what to say. I know exactly what to show them in order that they will buy. And I had that power and I was absolutely not conscious of how that power could be abused because it is being abused all over the freaking internet. One thing that has really changed the coaching industry and a lot of online selling has sort of tapped into this issue that people don’t want to be predatory, that they feel preyed upon. And now we’re seeing a lot of new language that’s like coaches saying they’re trauma-informed or other coaches, business coaches saying that they teach ethical selling. There’s now become a whole new… All this new language that’s so (beep) confusing. You’re going to have to beep me there. It’s so confusing for people because really the sales, it’s not different.
It’s just a new package and here’s an example of this. So people will say in their marketing, this is not a get-rich-quick scheme. This is not for people who don’t want to work hard. This really is work and it takes time. And then immediately under that, there will be a testimonial from someone that says, “This program transformed my life and nothing has ever worked like it, and I made $45,000 in my last launch.” Or it could be weight loss-

Kailyn:
And I needed no money.

Tarzan:
Yeah. Or it could be weight loss, it could be whatever it is, these transformational promises, social proof is really powerful and it’s one way that people will counterbalance their “ethical messaging” to not make the promise but actually sneak the promise in under there. So I feel like a bit of a pariah in the industry because I’m just shouting all over the place about all of this predatory stuff that’s happening on the internet. And I also want to say I’m in it too. I also am constantly asking myself in my promotions, is this okay? Is it okay to share this person’s story? If I look at this client testimonial that I’m using combined with this fast action bonus that I’m offering, is this okay?

Kailyn:
We’re going to take a quick break but stay with us. After this, we’re going to be discussing questions that you should ask yourself as a consumer before you purchase an online course or things that you should ask yourself as a business person putting out an online course. I think the things that you’re bringing up are really important. And there are things that Kyle and I actually see in the real estate and finance industry all the time. I think that we see buy this $10,000 course. It’s okay, you can use a credit card, but you don’t have to put any other money down or into it and you’re going to make a hundred thousand dollars this year. And I think that that’s a big thing our audience has had quite a reaction to negatively or positively because I think that mentorship is super valuable.
I think education is super important, but I think the big issue we’re honing in on is potential education or predatory practices at the cost of someone’s financial well-being. Or maybe in these other businesses, we’re talking about not getting enough value out of them, or not even taking into account that people may not even be ready for this content or they may not even need it due to… But we’re putting this pressure on the time and the scarcity mindset, which I think kind of gets people into this primitive behavior like I have to just buy this because everyone else is buying it and we got to move forward. And I think that that’s really the bigger, more ethical issue that we’re all putting our finger on, which is, how do I get education? How do I balance these things? How do I get education while not feeling scammed through it?

Kyle:
The real estate industry is one of the original guru industries. Before the internet happened, you would get a postcard in the mail of there is a meeting at the Best Western down the road and it’s free this, and at the back of the room if you race back there… Real estate is we are there. We are the original OG before email. And I would also say my background, I don’t know if you know this Tarzan, I’m a CFP, I had a financial planning firm and our industry is super heavy sales on the front end training of a lot of people and a lot of people will jump in that way and they are taught or they go through courses that teach them how to sell product to people. But what we run into in any industry is that you end up selling product to people that it doesn’t work for.
And it may work short term, but you’re not getting the good feedback, the good feelings for yourself also, but you’re not really adding value in the long-term. And it sounds like from your experience, you’ve gone through that. You have gone through the process of figuring out, okay, I was offering something that was working for some people, but I was so good at selling it to other people and it wasn’t working for them. And then you made some major moves in your business. So if you could touch on what did you do to correct course of where you were going, and along with that, try to help people that might be building a business, might be trying to market, might be trying to actually help people but also put food on the table. How do you build something from the get-go to not have to rebuild it later?

Tarzan:
When my business was at its most profitable and I had the largest team and infrastructure, the most students, all those things, I actually didn’t really like what I was doing. I felt like I was really boxed into my business. And also I was going through a divorce and I was like, oh my God, this is just way too much for me right now. And so it was about 18 months ago. I guess maybe 18 months ago. And so now my business is more scaled and now also the business we need to make $50,000 a month to keep the wheels turning. That’s just it. So we come off a promotion that didn’t do very well and it didn’t do as well as we wanted or needed it to, which happens all the time, no big deal. But still, there’s a lot of livelihoods at stake.
And I got on a call with my number one Sandra Booker. She’s now in the role of fractional COO. She’s still with me. So I get on a call with Sandra and we decide that we will launch the next month a mastermind and we’ll take 10 people, we’ll make a hundred grand, we’ll be okay for a while. And I got off of that call with Sandra and I was like, oh my God, I don’t actually think I can do this. I was in such a low moment in my life. I had just finished negotiating a mediation agreement with my ex-husband who was a stay-at-home parent.
I had been carrying two… I almost want to cry thinking about it. It was so hard. I had been carrying two households for almost a year, and this whole team, they’re all looking to me for direction. And I got off the phone and I was like, I can’t lead. A mastermind is a major undertaking. You need to give people time. You need to be present. You need to be their cheerleader when they think they’re going to fail. I’m flailing over here. I need someone to support me.

Kailyn:
Not only content development, I want to just stress that to our audience as what I do for a living is I make content. And a month is the shortest timeframe ever for that vast amount of content that Tarzan would need to turn out. I mean, I think a mastermind, a boot camp that’s a several month if not a six-month-long process that you and your team should be putting into develop something that probably garners a $10,000 price tag.

Tarzan:
Yeah. Absolutely. The previous promotion, we had worked on it for four months, so this would’ve been really fast, but mostly I just knew that I couldn’t in integrity, I could not sell a $10,000 thing to save my business. No way. And I got on the phone with my best friend and I had not even said this out loud. I was like, “What if I just let my whole team go? I just need a break right now.” And as soon as I said it-

Kailyn:
How many people was that?

Tarzan:
It was, I had three… Only three full-time employees. Three full-time employees, plus me and Sandra. So Sandra never went anywhere nor did I. But that’s three people’s livelihoods. And as soon as I said it, I started crying. I got off the phone, I laid down on the floor, and cried some more, and I also was so clear. I was like, “I cannot hold this for everyone. I can’t be everything to everyone. I just need a break.” So the following Monday, I let my team go and it was probably the hardest day of my whole career. Not nearly as hard as it was for them probably, but it was really hard. And then I took a short sabbatical and then the next year I basically just started experimenting.
I was like, okay, I don’t have all this overhead anymore, so I don’t need a million students, and I’m actually still figuring it out, but my business is really different now. It’s just way paired back and I’m actually not even sure if I am finished making my business smaller. I might want it to be even smaller than it is. I’m really interested in people that have businesses they love that they operate themselves or maybe with one person. I don’t know. I have learned that there are a million ways of making money on the internet that do not involve passively selling online courses with evergreen funnels. I see a land of opportunity. I don’t know what’s out there for me. It’ll be email-related.

Kyle:
So I have a selfish question here. It’s going to redirect a little bit, but hopefully, other people will benefit from it. So I get an email from someone who’s not as cool as you, and they are using these tactics. In the first 30 seconds, as I’m reading the email, I’m a driven person. I’m into self-improvement. I want to build my business, build another business, sell a business. A lot of our audience are real estate investors and kind of serial entrepreneurs sometimes. So they’re always looking for self-improvement. When we are looking at something coming at us, what do we watch out for in order to not be manipulated?

Kailyn:
Give us all the red flags.

Kyle:
Yes, the big ones.

Tarzan:
Probably the biggest one to look out for is transformational promises and even the word transformation. I fricking hate that word. I never use that word. So anything that feels transformational, that’s definitely a red flag, something to look into. I also think anytime you have to make a decision fast, that’s more than a thousand dollars or that’s more… We all have our zone. A thousand dollars might not be that much for me. It might be a lot for someone else. So you do kind of need to know your zone. I always, always check in with Sandra before I buy anything. I mean, okay, I’m saying always, always like nine out of 10 times. And when I don’t check in with her, it’s always when I do something that’s really not smart or I’m trying to sneak something by her. So I would say have a conversation and talk about it with someone before you buy it.
Because oftentimes even just having someone ask you, “Well, what do you think this is going to do for your business? Where and when do you expect to get the return on investment?” When I’m thinking about buying something, I already know Sandra’s going to ask me those questions. So I’ll go to her and I’ll say, “Okay, right now I’m really into LinkedIn like, I want to learn LinkedIn. Hey Sandra, I’m looking at this program on LinkedIn. It’s 500 bucks. These are the things I’m going to learn. This is where I think I might… There’s a client that I’m after. I think this might give me a strategy and that could be a $20,000 project.” I’m formulating the argument ahead of time because I’ve had the conversation a million times, but that is really important because it’s so easy to… Marketing is so seductive. I’m still good at it.
And I would still recommend that people also have these… Whether it’s someone who’s a predatory person or not, that’s just an important thing to do. Talk about it with someone. Understand what you’re actually hoping to get out of it. Maybe this feels a little woo and just FYI. I am not a woo person, but when you are about to make a purchase, actually asking yourself, how do I feel in my body right now? Because what I have noticed the way people buy, especially online courses, is they are so agitated by the promotion that it’s like, I am just going to click this button because I’m so fricking uncomfortable right now. Let me just make this go away by buying this thing. So actually paying attention to how do you feel in your body right now before you click this button is really kind of an important one.

Kailyn:
I feel like a lot of the internet is so consumed with FOMO culture like, oh my God, if I don’t do it right now, I’m never ever going to get this chance again. But the principles of marketing is if something works, you’re probably going to do it again. So I think that to me, that’s a pretty big red flag. And another red flag is what I see a lot on the internet is you’re going to make X amount in X amount of time, so I’ll teach you to make six figures in six months, but you have to click it in the next 30 minutes or this fire sale of this course is going to be gone for forever. And I feel like people are very seduced by the idea of this time-bound astronomical results, but that’s really not where true returns come from.

Tarzan:
Agreed. So that is a perfect example of a transformational promise, and that’s a bit of an obvious one, but sometimes they really do sneak in, and even if you find yourself thinking like, wow, this could be the secret. There are no secrets, there just aren’t. We all have to try-

Kailyn:
[inaudible 00:29:44] University.

Tarzan:
Right. Yes. Talking to previous students can be helpful sometimes. If you’re going to spend an amount of money that is uncomfortable, talk to some people who have been on the inside of the program. You could even ask for a program tour. Can I see what it looks like? Because there are just so many people with very slick marketing, and behind the scenes is just an absolute mess, especially in coaching and even hitting reply on an email. What is the customer service like? Are you actually getting replies? Is someone over there paying attention? Who’s in the program? If it’s a cheap DIY program, okay, fine, but what does the support actually look like? Asking questions around that. Who’s in there? How many other people are in there? Because sometimes even if there is good support, if there’s a thousand students, forget it. You’re not going to get-

Kailyn:
Just basic questions. Am I going to get one-on-one time with this mentor? And if the answer is no, and it’s a $10,000 course, I mean, I think I can safely say the ROI isn’t there for me. $10,000 isn’t chump change. So you should be getting, I guess, hate to put it this way, but a concierge level of service for your education at that price point.

Tarzan:
Another thing I think is it should be… One thing that I’m… So this year I redid my website and it had been years and it’s my favorite thing that I did in… Well, it’s 2024. Last year I redid my website. My favorite thing that I did in 2023, and the thing that I am the most proud of is that it is so clear. It’s clear what I do. It’s clear what I don’t do. It’s clear who I’m for. If you are looking at something and you’re not really sure if you’re the ideal person and you’re like, it might be the thing. Those sorts of programs really thrive in that murky place of basically, everybody needs this and if it’s not working for you it’s because you just need to level up to the next tier. Or you just weren’t brave enough or whatever. Any language about being brave, I would even say about investing in yourself. I mean, not that it doesn’t require an enormous amount of courage to be an entrepreneur, but be brave by spending money on me. Huge red flag.

Kailyn:
I think I see a lot on these courses. Just have an abundance mindset. We’re really going to dig in on that. And it’s like, no, I actually want the practical skills. Please teach me those as well. I’m all for abundance mindsets and getting in the right head space, but I think a lot of those courses are based in that sort of thing and not in the practical action of doing.

Kyle:
When I hear you talk through these things, these are really good practical tips, but I start to think this is timeless wisdom that we just have been taught by our grandparents. Don’t buy the thing that says you’re going to get rich quick. Don’t assume that it’s not going to take work. There are definitely things, and you even mentioned it, that’s new language that people might even use to manipulate you, but look deeper. Look at the character of people. Look at results like true results. Look at how things actually work and have worked in the past. Don’t assume that there’s something new that has never been done before in the history of the world. But thank you so much for just sharing the depth that you have and experience and being so transparent of how you came to the conclusions and the mistakes that you made along the way. I mean, a lot of people don’t share that often, and I really appreciate that.

Kailyn:
All right, Tarzan Kay, thank you so much for coming on the BiggerPockets Money Podcast. It has been an absolute privilege talking with you today. If people want to learn more about you website or an Instagram handle that we can direct people to?

Tarzan:
Yeah, I’m on Instagram, I’m on LinkedIn, Tarzan Kay. I’m the only Tarzan Kay, K-A-Y on those channels and I’ll give you the links. Really though, if you want to hear from me, get on my email list. All of my best work is on my emails. I read all my email replies and I reply to most of them. So you can also talk to me, but I would say email.

Kailyn:
Well, thank you so much, Tarzan. We hope to hear from you again at some point and we’re going to be watching all of your positive practices for email marketing, so thank you again for sharing.

Tarzan:
Thank you.

Kailyn:
All right, Kyle, that was Tarzan Kay, and wow, that was a lot of education. What did you think of that episode?

Kyle:
Yeah, I mean, she really has some experience in the email industry and not just in the email industry, but in marketing and selling, and I mean even using the word manipulation, but it can be done in a good and a bad way, but she just really hit on the different areas that you need to watch out for. But also if you’re building that type of business to help you think through what you need to build it like. What kind of business do you want to build? Who do you want to serve? I just always think about the real estate industry and then my own industry, the financial advising industry.
There’s so many people out there that are just trying to sell things to people that don’t need it, but there’s also people out there that really want to do a good job and take care of people and provide things that people do need. So this is a really good show to go through if someone is struggling with that right now in their own industry. You got to sell something to put food on the table, but who are you selling it to and how are you doing it? You need to think through those things and make sure that you’re morally okay with what you’re doing so that you can live with yourself.

Kailyn:
I agree. I think the power of persuasion is essential to sales. Being a good marketer, having a good business, you need to convince people that they need your services. But I really think the crux of this conversation is about being conscious of the consumer on the other end, and also being conscious as a consumer about what you actually need, especially in this day and age where FOMO culture is real and you always think you’re going to miss out on something. You have to buy it because everybody’s buying it. That’s not necessarily what needs to be happening in your own life.

Kyle:
Yeah, definitely. She did a great job covering all of that. There’s a lot you can take away. I wanted to go deeper into her business. We just didn’t have time to get into everything. She did a really cool thing of scaling back and going smaller, which is not on the internet. You’re always told to go bigger, farther, faster, and that’s not always-

Kailyn:
Hire more, do more.

Kyle:
Yeah. What’s best for your situation? So that was really cool too. But yeah, just all around a good show.

Kailyn:
Yeah, I think a lot of people in the fire community probably resonated with that fact. They’re always like, it’s time to scale back, time to hang out. All right, well Kyle, thank you so much for joining me today. Like what a treat. We got to do a show together. This was a good one.

Kyle:
Yeah. Thanks. Kailyn and Kyle.

Kailyn:
Kailyn and Kyle, the dream team that Mindy and Scott didn’t know existed. All right, everybody, this wraps up this episode of the BiggerPockets Money Podcast. He is Kyle Mast. I am Kailyn Bennett, and in the words of the great Mindy Jensen, take a break rattlesnake.

Speaker 4:
If you enjoyed today’s episode, please give us a five-star review on Spotify or Apple. And if you’re looking for even more money content, feel free to visit our YouTube channel at youtube.com/biggerpocketsmoney.

Speaker 5:
BiggerPockets Money was created by Mindy Jensen and Scott Trench, produced by Kailyn Bennett, editing by Exodus Media. Copywriting by Nate Weintraub. Lastly, a big thank you to the BiggerPockets team for making this show possible.