Austin Bouley (03:07):
So I moved on from the investing world, and of course, like almost everyone who starts in the stock market, they all see those day trading ads and videos on YouTube. So I saw one of those and I was like, “Okay, this is all about patterns. It’s quick and awesome.” The reason why I was drawn to it was because in the finance and the long-term investing world, you don’t know if you pick the right stock for at least a few years. You can buy a stock, but you don’t know if it’s going to go up and make money for another year or so. And so, because of that, I like knowing if I made the right choice sooner than later, and so with day trading, I was able to know instantly whether I made the right choice or not. A lot of good comes from that and a lot of bad.

Austin Bouley (03:47):
And so I started day trading and it was more on the paper trading scale. What really happened with that was I was just using fake money, but I was following these guys on YouTube. I was researching every pattern, every strategy, everything that I could do. After a while, I figured out, “You know what, this isn’t the best strategy,” because I thought I knew what I was doing on paper trading, I had confidence. And then next thing you know, I took it with real money. And from the real money, I ended up losing a bunch of real money from that. And so I was like, “All right, day trading is not the thing.”

Austin Bouley (04:19):
And then I found my way onto swing trading, which is holding a stock from a week to three months. So I’m basically a shorter-term investor. I am looking for value that’s going to play out in the next week or month. And so that’s really what came down to it as I found swing trading because I could know if I was right sooner and I could also use both a technical and fundamental analysis when looking at stocks, and it just opened up a whole new world. Now what I do is I do very data-backed science. I make sure that all the odds, all these statistics are in my favor when I make an investment slash trade.

Austin Bouley (04:55):
And so that’s how I got into it, and it’s just kept my interest ever since. Because we learn, as you get into the finance world, you learn about things like compound interest, how if you stay invested, there’s literally no way you don’t become rich over time. And so concepts like that and just living a life where you can have peace and have freedom because you know that your money is under control and your money’s not controlling you. It’s just an amazing way to live life. Expect, especially being that I am still a college senior, but hearing stories from my friends about the debt that they’re taking on from college, just the overwhelm and the confusion. And when you add debt and money problems into just a confusing situation in general like what you want to do with the rest of your life, it makes it a lot harder to make that choice or figure out what you’re trying to do.

Austin Bouley (05:39):
When there are less money problems, you tend to figure out things a lot better. With that all in general, that’s how I started to in the finance world, I found Warren Buffet, I found day trading and I’ve settled on swing trading. And I really just love how I can use money to improve life, improve my future, and just overall have a more peaceful and more free life when you’re in control of your finances.

Robert Leonard (06:04):
Before we get into a discussion about investing, I want to touch on your social media business. How and why did you get started on social media?

Austin Bouley (06:12):
The story of how I got started in social media is actually a funny story to me. I am an introvert, you’re not going to see me on stage talking to people, leading a crowd, or anything like that. But what I was doing is, I was very good with numbers and patterns, like I said. I went from investing to day trading to swing trading, and swing trading is where I found my grounds. And because of that, just looking at the market and watching the market for like two years straight, every single day, you just start to pick up on patterns and ways that the stocks move and react to certain news. It’s just something that happens when you’re so used to stocks.

Austin Bouley (06:46):
And so when that happened, I started noticing some patterns in the stock market. And around this time, it was March, 2018, so I had been in the market for about two years then. And I noticed some things when the market started to crash, I was like, “Okay, it looks like it’s going to crash further and all this stuff.” I had friends who I was explaining that to, and the people who are actually interested in stocks were like, “Wow, that’s really cool. I would love to hear your thoughts on it, more on a daily basis.” I was like, “Oh yeah, I could do that.” And so that night, I went into the community college that I was at and I went into their back in the library and no one was there.

Austin Bouley (07:21):
And I sat down and I recorded a video. I just simply got on my laptop, I did a simple screen-share, and I said, “All right, guys, this is what I think the market is doing. This is what I think it will be doing, and why.” And then I made that video. It was probably a five to 10-minute video, and then I put it up on YouTube. And then from there, I just stepped back and did my thing. And then I came back to that video maybe about two months later and it had, I think it was like over 2,000 or 3,000 views, which for me at the time, or for anybody starting on YouTube at the time, was just insane, having nobody to all this.

Austin Bouley (07:56):
And in addition to that, there were a bunch of comments like, “Man, I would love to hear your thoughts more, tell us about this stock, tell us about this, whatever.” I didn’t really know what I was doing, but then my social media journey just became me documenting the process of me learning more about the market, because I continued to learn more every single day. And so, because I’m one step ahead of the beginner, one step is general, but because I’m ahead of the beginner, I’m able to share what I learned and how I learned it, and I’m able to simplify into that process.

Austin Bouley (08:25):
And that’s what I love doing because when I got started, as I was explaining, investing was really confusing and overwhelming and there’s a lot of things you need to consider. And especially when you talk to investment professionals, they make things sound so complex and they don’t know how to put it in simple words, because they got their MBA or their doctorate in this stuff and so if they know all these complex words, but me coming from someone who just learned it, I was able to turn around and to explain it to people in a very simple and easy way, and that’s what I love doing.

Austin Bouley (08:51):
So it started off on YouTube, I just started making videos about stocks and about the stock market and then it just started growing from there. And then people said, “Austin, I would love to follow you elsewhere.” And so they said other places. After YouTube, the next big thing that I started was Instagram. On Instagram, I started that as another way to reach people. So really, it’s just a way of sharing that information, sharing that knowledge, and helping people grow and become more knowledgeable on the stock market and reaching them where they are. I know I had an audience on YouTube, and an audience on Instagram, and then I was like, “Well, I might as well just do podcasts as well.” And so I started making a podcast.

Austin Bouley (09:28):
That’s how I got started and why I got started on social media. And so now that’s basically what I do full-time, is helping people with investing through those platforms. Yeah, I really enjoy it and they all have their pros and cons, but I think get into that here soon.

Robert Leonard (09:45):
How were you able to grow such a large following on Instagram?

Austin Bouley (09:49):
So how did I grow such a large following on Instagram? It’s a really good question. Basically, how it went was, I started it, I think it was in late 2019, is when I started it. That may be wrong. Somewhere in 2019, 2020 is when I started on Instagram. What I did was my main goal is, I went around and I followed a bunch of people on finance and stocks on Instagram, and I was looking through their content and it looked like a bunch of generic stuff that was all copy and paste from one another. And it was just really annoying for me to see because it really wasn’t anything educational or informational. So it was just, oh, this? oh, that? It was like a bunch of, I don’t know, it’s hard to explain, but it wasn’t something that people can actually use to learn about stocks and to grow their knowledge.

Austin Bouley (10:35):
And so, because of that, from day one, I do this on all my platforms, but it’s just to over-provide and to over-deliver, to make sure that people are actually learning how the stock market works in a simple and easy to understand way. And so, because that was my goal from YouTube, I brought that same thought process into Instagram. And so what I started doing, the same thing with YouTube, you don’t know which video will do super well, so you just have to make a bunch of videos and eventually one will do well, and then you can start to copy that and mimic that and then continue on.

Austin Bouley (11:06):
And so I took the same idea into Instagram. So I was like, “All right, I don’t know, was going to do well and what’s not, and especially in the beginning, when I have no followers, I need to be seen.” So I just started posting as much as I could. So I stuck to the same idea and I’m still holding to it today where I post three times every single day for posts, and stories, I try to do every two hours. And to most people, that may be a lot, but that’s what works for me. So in the beginning, that’s what I was doing, and I still try to do that now. And it’s just because if I can get my knowledge out there, my message out there, and people can see it more, then I should have more followers in return, and that’s what I did.

Austin Bouley (11:42):
So that’s was my idea on how I should use my content. But at the same time, the content that I was pushing was very easy to follow content like, “Hey guys, this is what a dividend is. This is what the stock market is. If you want to make money every single month through dividends, these are the stocks you can do to do that. Oh, okay. Are you curious about how you should be investing based on your age? Here’s a breakdown of how that gets done.” And so a lot of these posts that you’ll see around in Instagram is awesome to see because some of them were started by me, these most viral ones.

Austin Bouley (12:12):
And that’s really what I did, is just make truly educational content that anybody can understand and that people want to share to help others. And so my idea was all-around educational and viral content. And so that’s the type of content that I made, and I did that three times a day, and I shared my stories. And on the stories strategy part, it was more about being personal and educational and building a relationship with them. So what I was doing there was I was doing weekend Q&As every single weekend where you can ask me a question and I will give you an answer. I was doing things like stock news, what’s going on, here’s what I’m seeing, and why. And then I was throwing in some personal stuff like, “Hey, I’m at… I’m doing a pickleball tournament this week,” or whatever else.

Austin Bouley (12:54):
And because of that, I was able to build a relationship with my audience, as well as giving them some great knowledge and education. So that was my basis for that, so that’s where the bulk of my growth came from. I also did a bunch of shout-outs with other accounts, AKA, when accounts have a similar-sized following to me, we would share each other or do a cross-promotional post, for instance, like the top 10 highest paying dividend stocks in the S&P 500. And then on my post, it would have the first five, and on the other guys’, it would have six through 10. And so we would link back to one another, and those are great ways for growth as well.

Austin Bouley (13:29):
And just a lot of cool hacks like that we did. And yeah, that’s how I grew my social media following on Instagram.

Robert Leonard (13:36):
When it comes to content creation, how do you handle that logistically? Are you the one creating and posting every piece of content on your page or do you have help?

Austin Bouley (13:45):
Content creation can be a chore, especially the amount that I was posting. And so when I first started, yeah, it was a lot. I was doing it all myself, it was just me, I wasn’t making money, so I had to do it myself. And so with that, I would stay up late, there’d be hours into midnight or whatever on multiple days creating content. Because if I’m doing three a day, that’s, what? Like 21 a week or something. It’s crazy. And so with that, I tried to make sure I had as many original posts as possible, I wasn’t repeating. Yeah, that was a lot of work. The process, in the beginning, was just me coming up with what I wanted to teach with the questions that I was getting and then finding a way to make it useful and to display it on a post that people can understand in a quick manner.

Austin Bouley (14:30):
And so that’s what I was doing on Instagram with content creation at first. And then I did that for a good year. So for the first year of Instagram, it was literally only me creating content every single week. And that was a weekly thing that I would have to do to stay up to date. And so that’s what I did. And then now that I’m starting to get some more of a larger scale because after the first year, I think hit around, I want to say 120K, 130,000 followers on Instagram just from posting that much. And then I was like, “Okay, I need someone to free up my time because I can do better things with my time,” in the nicest way of saying that.

Austin Bouley (15:04):
And so with that, I found a virtual assistant that had some experience with Canva, which is the platform that I use to create content. With that, I would split up the content. So at first, it started with, “Hey, I want you to make these types of posts.” And they were just very viral, funny, Twitter-type posts. And so it was very easy for them to make. And then I would make the purely educational ones. And so it helped free up my time. And so from there, it was like a 50/50 split of, “Hey, I want to create this content and you can create the easier content that takes less knowledge.”

Austin Bouley (15:40):
And then as it progressed, I then got another virtual assistant who had knowledge of the stock market and also has a great experience with Canva and Photoshop, and they took the reins from there. So basically, what I do is I go, “Hey, I want content on this type of subject or we’re going to cover these types of questions.” I’d be like, “Okay, people are asking this a lot, let’s cover this.” And what happens is, she’s really good and she makes the posts and I review the post before she posts it. And then, yeah, it’s been good. And so with that, it was more about finding the right person because again, content creation is very hard, but the thing that made it easy to adapt is, one, the virtual assistant that I’m using now came from my Instagram followers, so they are very aware of my agenda, my content, the way that it’s usually set up. And because of that, it works really well.

Austin Bouley (16:31):
Also, having posts that I’ve done in the past allows them to go back and review, “Okay, how would Austin structure this type of content?” And so they can see my normal formatting, my normal setup. And because of that, I had a setup checklist item to show them how to make great content. And because of that, it was very easy to transition someone into taking over that role for me. Now, at the moment, and still today, I do review every single post made because I want to make sure that it fits our agenda and helps them understand and it doesn’t confuse them more and that it’s great content. And so I do still review that, but I’m no longer making content.

Austin Bouley (17:11):
That’s on the content creation side. When it comes down to scheduling and all that, I use a software called Later.com. Later.com allows us to schedule with captions and all that great stuff, and so that’s where we schedule posts. And then on Creator Studio by Facebook, I schedule the IGTVs, and the IGTVs are really just the YouTube videos packaged and to an IGTV. And that’s a great way to reuse content. And so I’m able to reuse it because not everyone who follows me on Instagram follows me or watches my YouTube. And so because of that, I’m able to get views on both sides, and so it’s really great to see that. And so, yeah, just repurposing content, whether that’s from podcasts to Instagram, to YouTube, whatever and just scheduling it out so that it becomes less of a hassle, so I don’t have to constantly post it myself, and it’s a great way to do it.

Austin Bouley (17:55):
And now, if someone is listening to this podcast and wants to get started for free, and they want to schedule out their own content later.com does cost money, but you can always go to Creator Studio, which is a thing created by Facebook, and you can schedule a post there for free. The only thing that I found is that they’re posting content quality like when it actually gets posted to Instagram is quite low. And so you just have to be careful of that, but later.com does a great job and it’s fairly cheap. So that’s how my content creation schedule goes.

Robert Leonard (18:23):
I noticed you’ve recently launched a stock investing software. I’m sure part of your Instagram plan is to leverage your following, to grow that software into a business, but what else is your long-term goal with The Impeccable Investor?

Austin Bouley (18:36):
Yes. I plan on using Instagram to help leverage the software because one, I created the software out of the questions and the need that was coming from my Instagram audience. So they were like, “Austin, we need this, we would love this.” I was getting the same questions over and over, and I realized I could solve that with the software. And so that’s why I pushed the software on Instagram because it’s really helping people solve their questions and the main questions that I’m getting, like, how do I find the right stocks? Where do I buy? Etcetera. And because of that, that’s why I use Instagram to promote it because this is the perfect thing. But for a long-term goal, the amazing part is I used to sell like a mentorship-type course program.

Austin Bouley (19:13):
And with that, because I am one of those guys in the stock market who hates the scammers, who hates all those people, and because of that, I try to be super honest. And that means that if I’m selling information and a course on a specific topic, I really did not want to, or did not like sharing any part of that course for free on YouTube, podcasts, wherever, because I wanted the people paying for it getting only that exclusive content. And so the amazing part is that I no longer sell that mentorship/course, and that’s been over for a while, but with that, now that I’m no longer selling for that content, I’m able to give everything that I know for free.

Austin Bouley (19:52):
And so with that, really my goal behind and my long-term goal for The Impeccable Investor is to just truly help people and to share as much content as I can. I want the information that I’m sharing to be useful for decades, to be useful for centuries if possible. And with that, I just want to help as many people as possible. I love the messages that I get. I know this is going to sound corny, but I love when people say, “Austin, you changed my life.” “Austin, I’m investing now because of you.” “Austin, my kids, we’re working on their retirement account.” Because all that stuff is just great to hear. And we live in a world, especially I know people bring this up a lot, but our public schools’ system doesn’t teach investing, and it doesn’t teach finances, and it doesn’t teach you how to manage your money.

Austin Bouley (20:32):
And because of that, if I can just help one person from that journey coming out of high school or in high school to manage their finances just a bit better, then I would say my job has been done. And so, because of that, really my long-term goal with The Impeccable Investor is to continue and do our best to give as much information for free and make it as simple and easy and understandable as possible so that as many people in the world can understand it. And so that’s really the goal with it. And I love that I’m able to do that full-time.

Robert Leonard (21:03):
I posted on Instagram a while back saying that the reason personal finance isn’t taught in school is because you’d realize you don’t need to pay them as much as you want. You posted something similar recently saying that there’s a reason why traditional education teaches you nothing about financial education. The system is designed to keep you in the same place. Expand on that quote a bit for us.

Austin Bouley (21:26):
Yeah. We live in a world where money talks. The person who has the money is going to set the rules, so corporations lobby. Politicians, they get certain laws done. People with money, just tend to make the rules and set things the way they go. And when you set the rules and you have money, I’m not saying this is like, again, every rich person is selfish, but typically, you’re going to set up rules, anybody would do this. If anybody is in this position, they’re going to set up rules and laws that keep them in power and that help them make more money. And so that’s just human nature, that’s the way that we are. And again, there are people who try to change that and try to be different. And that’s awesome, and we should support those people. But in general, we’re a very selfish type of people.

Austin Bouley (22:09):
And so if we have the right or we have the ability to make laws, we’re going to do it so that it works out in our favor. And so I believe that happens with the school system as well. The school system doesn’t teach finances. So they mention things like in math, you’ll do some credit card finance, you’ll do some stuff like that, but it’s not emphasized and it’s not pushed, or at least as much as it should be. When people get out of high school, they don’t know how to do their taxes, they don’t really know or how to take advantage of a credit card to build up credit so that they can buy a house sooner without being in debt. They don’t know how to use these things in this world to benefit themselves. They just know how to be a consumer because a consumer is the default mentality.

Austin Bouley (22:52):
If you’re not taught to be an investor, if you’re not taught to think about the upside, then you’ll just by default be a consumer and live in that world. And it’s not like we’re training you to be that, you’re just stuck in that because you don’t know the other way. And so that’s where I was going at, where the rich are controlling that. And so the reason why I brought up the rich before I mentioned that thing about the public school system is because the rich, our banks, our institutions are people with, I’m going to mention this, credit cards. And the reason why with credit cards is because credit cards make banks, makes institutions so much money. And you see this because they’re on colleges, they’re like, “Hey, we’ll give you this, we’ll give you a free lunch meal if you take a credit card, if you sign up for our credit card today.” Or, “Hey, we’ll do this.”

Austin Bouley (23:35):
And again, I’m not saying a credit card is bad, obviously, you can use it right, but we’re not teaching them how to use it right. And the financial institutions and the people who control that aren’t going to teach them how to use right because if people were using a credit card right, AKA using it to build up credit and paying off the amount that they owe every single month, then their credit card companies would not be making money. And so, because of that, it’s all set up to help build and make people who benefit from consumerism make more money. And so with that, the rich, as in the people, the banks, the institutions, the corporations, they’re not pushing or helping the public school system or any other system of financial education.

Austin Bouley (24:17):
And so that’s where I was going is the system is designed to keep you in the same place because when you’re in the same place, you’re a consumer and you’re going to help them make more money. So anything that they do or anything that an individual does to help educate them is going to be stopped, is going to be pushed out against, because that means that they can’t make as much money as they used to make. And so I hope I didn’t go on a tangent there, but that’s really, my belief is that the public school system and traditional education don’t teach you what you need to know about finances at this moment. And so we can somehow push it into the public school system, you need to learn yourself.

Austin Bouley (24:52):
And that’s why the number one goal of everybody should be to be a self-learner, whether that’s with finances or your job, you need to learn how to learn. And so that’s something that I’m really passionate about and why I support, or I should say, my business supports nonprofit and a high school that teaches financial education. And so I think that’s a big deal and something that we need to work on doing better at.

Robert Leonard (25:14):
A lot of people are currently worried about an impending recession and a stock market crash. Break down the history of stock market crashes over the past hundred years and explain why investors shouldn’t necessarily be worried.

Austin Bouley (25:25):
I wish I knew with certainty the history of all the crashes and exactly what happened, but I don’t, and I know that there was the 2000s, I should say, the 1999 to 2000 dot-com bubble, and back in 2008, and then the 2016, and then whatever else. But what I do remember is the ones that I’ve gone through, and I wouldn’t consider them crashes obviously, but the major downturns that I’ve seen so far that I’ve been in the market. So we’ve had March 2018 and then March 2020. And so with those, a lot of people get scared, and those weren’t even real crashes, but being and having the audience that I had then when those went through, those sharp crashes, or I think it was about maybe like 10% in two days or something like that.

Austin Bouley (26:06):
It’s not real crashes, but still something scary, I heard a lot from people, “Austin, why should we be investing? I just lost money. I don’t know what I’m doing,” whatever. And when I hear those questions, I realize that people don’t understand the long-term vision, they don’t understand why they got into it in the first place. And so what I see is that a lot of people think about the short term and how much money they can make right now, but they don’t consider the long term and what happens. Regardless of how good the economy is performing, we will always see a recession or crash happen anytime in the market. It happens and it’s healthy for the market to crash.

Austin Bouley (26:42):
It reset values, and it gives us time to grow and come back from it. And so with that, the market needs to crash occasionally. And when it does, you need to have your mindset right. You need to understand that in the long run, you’re going to make money. And so I think the main problem with soccer market crashes is that people get scared because they don’t see the long-term vision or they’re taking more risks than they should. And so there are two ways to combat that problem. The first one is they don’t understand the long-term vision, is one, they need to stop looking at their phone and looking at their P&L or the profit and loss every single day.

Austin Bouley (27:16):
They shouldn’t be doing that. They should be looking at it on a year-to-year basis, on your performance if you’re investing long-term. And so when you look at your year-to-year return, then you can start to get a more unbiased opinion, because as investing and we’re looking for long-term profits and appreciation and price, then we’re looking for that long-term growth. And if we watch the daily movement, then we’re going to get pulled into the emotions of the everyday stock market. And when we get pulled into that, we’re going to have emotions of worry, of fear, of whatever, and instead, if we look at the yearly returns, we’ll have a better keeping of the long-term vision.

Austin Bouley (27:50):
And also to get the long-term vision, you need to understand compound interest. If you don’t understand that staying invested and holding stocks, quality company stocks through the long-term actually generate amazing wealth. And so you need to remember the long-term vision is where you’re going. You need to hold great stocks for a long time to make real wealth and make money. And in order for it to work, you need to keep investing. So whether the market is down, you need to stay invested and keep investing in the market. And so crashes tend to scare people away from continued investing. And so it all comes down to mindset.

Austin Bouley (28:23):
When you see a stock crash, you should be thinking, “Wow, all these stocks are on sale.” If they used to trade, like let’s say a quality stock, I’m going to say right now, let’s just say Apple, I’m going to throw out some random numbers. Let’s say Apple is trading at $300 and then a crash happens and it’s now trading at, and those would be a crazy crash, but let’s say it’s trading at $50. You’re telling me you don’t want to buy Apple for 50 when it’s previously traded at 300 and the company is still the exact same? That is a great company, trading 50, and it’s been at 300 before, and it’s just down because of the crash of the overall market. Then you should be buying that, that company, that stock is on sale.

Austin Bouley (28:59):
And when you can buy that company on sale, then you can lead the way for long-term exponential growth. Another factor that you need to consider is when crashes happen, you don’t need to be scared, you need to understand now is the time to invest. And the second problem is that they take more risks than they’re okay with. So you need to understand the risk that is involved in the stock market. If you’re invested for the long term that you need to be okay with losing 100% of your portfolio. Again, I’m not saying that’s going to happen and that hardly ever happens, but when you set the expectation that you’re going to lose all your money and you end up making money, then you’re going to be happy.

Austin Bouley (29:32):
I’m not saying you need to fear that all the money that you put into the stock market you’ll lose, but I am saying just understand there are risks in the stock market, and if you’re not okay with that risk, if you’re not okay with the stock going down and you losing money, then you need to understand that the stock market may not be for you. So a lot of investing and a lot of the stuff that I teach on my YouTube, on my Instagram, on my podcast is that you need to understand yourself before you get into investing, understand how much risk you’re okay with, how long you like holding, what sector you know best, and focusing on that sector. And with that comes the risk. You need to understand your risk.

Austin Bouley (30:07):
If you can’t handle losing money, if you can’t handle losing 40% of your portfolio for a short term, then maybe it’s not for you. Maybe you should put your money and a savings account, maybe you should work on handling risk better by working on small risk and then slowly increasing your size. Or maybe you should just buy tea bonds or treasury bills, and maybe you could make a safer return that way. Anyway, that’s when it comes down to crashes, is that crashes happen, they’re always going to happen, but you need to understand it, change your mindset around it. And that it’s okay to take risk, especially on quality companies.

Austin Bouley (30:41):
I’m not saying stocks that because of this crash are doing terrible and they’re never going to recover, I’m saying companies that were doing well, adjusted to the crash, and are still doing well, investing in stocks that drop on companies like that are what you should be focusing on. Anyways, that’s my thoughts on stock market crashes.

Robert Leonard (31:00):
You recently talked about this idea around hobbies that I really liked. You said that everyone needs four hobbies. What are those for hobbies and why are they so important?

Austin Bouley (31:10):
Yeah. This goes back to what I was mentioning before, where I was saying people should not be watching the market 24/7, they should not be watching the daily movements as much as they are, and they think it’s so important, but it’s not. And the reason why is because they’re bored and they don’t have ways to spend their time. So they use their boredom and they use their free time to just stay stuck on the market. And when they do that, you’ll have a lot of bad effects come down, like you won’t sleep well, you won’t have time with family, you all be isolated and you’ll worry more because you’re constantly watching the market move.

Austin Bouley (31:41):
And so my idea is that you need four types of hobbies. One that makes you money, one that keeps you creative, one that keeps you in shape, and one that helps you build knowledge. And so in order to succeed in life, I think you need one of every one of these things. So there are people who focus all on work and then their body suffers, and then they can’t live a long life because they neglected their health. And then there are people who just do the same thing over and over and over, whether that’s for a job or for life or whatever, and that routine, although it’s great, does not keep them creative, does not keep their mind thinking, and thus, it brings them to a little low in their life, and they don’t have as much imagination or happiness because they haven’t stretched or used their brain that much.

Austin Bouley (32:26):
And then also, as we can say, is knowledge. As I mentioned before, is that you need to be a self-learner, you need to teach yourself to learn and to grow. And that’s going to be the way that you set yourself apart and teach yourself how to succeed in life, whether that’s with your job, money, relationships, whatever, when you’re a self-learner, you are a step ahead of the curve. So if I just go over my ones, my hobbies to make money are Instagram, and my podcasts, and YouTube. That’s what I started. It started off as a hobby and now turned into a job, which is really cool.

Austin Bouley (32:58):
And I’m starting more things, I’m going to pick up a real estate and whatever else, all these things are fun, things that I thought were cool and they’re going to help me make money. Again, I’ve done other stuff before where I enjoyed, like I said, when I was younger, I was good at math. And so I would tutor people. And that was my hobby. That was fun for me, but also made me money. There are things that you can charge for, or that you can do, or maybe things that you’ve been interested in learning that you could find a way to learn to do and make money with. And so there has to be a hobby where you can make some money, and that can also be your job if you enjoy it.

Austin Bouley (33:30):
The next one is you need a hobby to keep you creative. You need to stretch your brain, you need to think. And I once heard that the best way to keep your brain active and creative is to have an idea journal and to write down 20 new ideas that you’ve never heard before every single day. And at the end of a month, your brain will be stemming with ideas at everything you see. And why? It’s because our brain is a muscle, and if we don’t train it to think, if we don’t train it to get creative, like paint, draw, think of things that we haven’t seen before and try to imagine it, try to draw it and try to make it.

Austin Bouley (34:04):
If we don’t keep our brain that active, then that muscle is going to fatigue, and then we’re going to lose our creativity skills. Again, if you’re at a point where you think you’ve lost, it’s fine. It’s a muscle, you can get it back, it’s just going to take some work. And so I think everyone should have a hobby that keeps them creative. The next one is you should have one that keeps you in shape. And so for me, it’s a mix of, I go to the gym, but the one that I love, the hobby that I enjoy is tennis and pickleball. If you don’t know what pickleball is, it’s like a mixture of tennis and ping-pong. And so what it is that something that I enjoy, I love racket sports. And so I go and I hang out with people and I play racket sports, and it keeps me active.

Austin Bouley (34:41):
It gets me in the sun, I get my vitamin D, and this is really fun to do. And so I think everyone should have that hobby that keeps them active. And so for some people, they may be like, “Okay, the gym is cool, but I don’t enjoy it.” Well, a hobby is something you enjoy, so maybe you enjoy walking past a lake, and maybe you should walk that lake more, or maybe you enjoy scootering. I don’t know, whatever it is that you enjoy that gets you moving is something that you should make into a daily routine and your life or a weekly routine. The last one is you need a hobby to build knowledge. So you need a hobby to help you learn more.

Austin Bouley (35:12):
And so with that, maybe it could be, “Okay, every single Saturday for one hour, I’m going to learn about X topic. I am super excited to, let’s say, learn about cybersecurity,” or, “I’m super excited to learn how I can save more,” or if you’ve never done with credit cards, and we mentioned earlier in this podcast is, “I’m curious to learn how to use credit cards smartly, to help me instead of them crush me.” And so you give yourself two hours on a weekend, every single weekend to all learn that. And learn something that you enjoy, it doesn’t have to be money related, it doesn’t have to be finance-related, just find something you enjoy and start learning, because school does a terrible job at teaching you how to get excited to learn.

Austin Bouley (35:50):
They give you things that no one likes and they force you to read it. Well, you need to get that excitement for learning again. And so start with whatever makes you excited and start learning that. And then you’ll jump from that to something else, to something else, and then you’ll eventually keep learning and build up that hobby and that muscle of learning. So, yeah, I think it’s great to have those four hobbies and something that everyone should have.

Robert Leonard (36:11):
Warren Buffet, who is one of my favorite investors has a quote that says, “Most people get interested in stocks when everyone else is, the time to get interested is when no one else is. You can’t buy what is popular and do well.” When he said that quote, alternative assets like cryptocurrencies didn’t exist, so I’d add that to his quote today. But how do you see that quote relating to the conditions of today’s stock and crypto markets?

Austin Bouley (36:40):
I know you’re more of a value investor, and so Warren Buffet being a value investor, that quote is very true and what he’s saying. Like if you want to invest in value, if you want to invest in a company that is going to do well in the long run, then you need to find a stock or company before the mass market has jumped on it, hyped up the price and driven the PE ratio. And so with that, that is very great for a value investing type of approach, and something that I totally agree with from that standard. Now, I myself, I’m a swing trader, so I’m trying to profit within a week to three months of holding a stock. And with that, I don’t really care where the stock is, I don’t care where it’s going to be in three years, I don’t care where it’s going to be in a year, I care where it’s going to be in the next month or two.

Austin Bouley (37:23):
And so with that, it doesn’t matter if the stock is a new stock or a stock that no one knows about or a very popular stock, I’m looking for a company that’s going to do well in the next month. And so with that, I’m okay with buying something that people are watching, I’m okay with buying a stock that no people are watching, as long as the fundamentals and the technicals are set up to support that move. That’s a great question is, where do I see the market? The market right now I believe is very overextended. I do think that we see a lot of companies that are way too overpriced right now and that cryptos are very overpriced.

Austin Bouley (37:58):
It’s very similar if you do your research on dot-com type bubble, where if you just put.com as the name of your company, then the stock price is going to rise overnight. And that’s what we’re seeing with crypto, with the companies that start offering crypto as a payment option or let’s say Elon Musk tweets Dogecoin or something like that, and then we see the rise of that. And so I think that there are a lot of companies and a lot of cryptos that are being valued at their fundamental level, AKA, where they actually can support a price. So where that company or that coin is making enough money or value to support this price at its at, I think it’s way over that level. So it’s definitely not healthy.

Austin Bouley (38:39):
But what I tell the people that follow me a lot, because we’re mainly swing traders and trend followers, is that just because you have an opinion doesn’t mean it’s right. The market will tell you if you’re right or wrong. So I believe in following the trends. So right now, the trend is up, and since the trend is up, we’re going to be making monies on along and we’re going to be going along. And I’ve thought the market after, or when it crashed on March 2020, I expected a way larger crash. And I was waiting it, but even though my opinions and my thoughts said that a bigger crash was coming, I would have missed out on this huge long run.

Austin Bouley (39:11):
And that’s why you don’t want to stick to your emotions, but follow what the market is saying. And I would say that the market is saying we are in an uptrend and we have been an uptrend since March 2020, and that’s why I’ve stayed invested, and that’s why I’m making money. And so I believe that you need to make your own opinions about the market, especially reading about Warren Buffet, doing your research on stocks, and all that great stuff that you should be doing, but you also need to judge, where is the market at right now? And what’s going to be happening? So if you’re more of an investor, you should be looking at companies where the stock price is lower than the value of the company.

Austin Bouley (39:45):
And if you’re a swing trader and trend follower like me, then you need to be focusing on the trend, what is the trend saying? And right now the trend of the market is up, and so that’s what I’m focusing on.

Robert Leonard (39:54):
You also talked recently about how everyone is a trader, inherently, I knew these things, but I haven’t really thought of it in the way that you laid it out. Please explain what you mean when you say that everyone is a trader.

Austin Bouley (40:07):
Yeah. Back then people would trade all the time. I know I use the word trader a lot for the stock market, but that’s not how it was originally used. It wasn’t used for the stock market, it was used to exchange goods, and trading is just exchanging things, as we’re stock traders, we’re hoping to exchange a stock at a higher price than where we exchanged it for at the beginning. So we’re just exchanging things, and that’s what a trader is. And so if you think about it from the very beginning, let’s say one farmer had a lot of corn and another farmer had cows that produce milk. And let’s say, the guy on one side wanted milk and the other guy wanted another thing, and so they would trade. And that’s how they got things and they swapped goods and barter and that whole system.

Austin Bouley (40:48):
And so that’s what we still do today if you think about it. Everyone is a trader. And I’m going to pull this, I believe, some examples that I gave in that Instagram post, was that some people trade their time for a paycheck. You’re trading the amount of time you spend working every week, so you can get paid. And so you’re trading your time for money. And that’s how it works. Some people trade tuition for a degree. Some people say, “Hey, I’m going to pay money to go to college to get this degree. And so I’m going to end up putting in time and money, so I’m going to be trading my time and money in exchange for a degree.” And so we’re all traders.

Austin Bouley (41:25):
And when we start to realize that, you can start to think about, “Wait, am I trading wisely? What am I exchanging? And am I okay with exchanging that?” Let’s use the example of college. I’m going to use an example and a story of a friend that I know. So this friend who was really good at tennis, I played tennis with him in high school, and he got a full-ride scholarship for tennis to a two-year college. And so that was his first option. And his second option was to go with all his friends to a popular college where he would get no money for, and he would have to pay, I think, roughly like 20,000 a year for. And so again, should he take the two year one, or should he go to the popular college with all his friends?

Austin Bouley (42:08):
And so most people don’t think of themselves as a trader, but making that decision is a trade. You are a trader when you’re making that decision, you’re deciding, “All right, I’m going to trade my friends and my popularity to go to this two-year college to play tennis. I may not enjoy this college, it may not be my first pick, but I’m going to go for free, and so I’m going to exchange,” you could say, “I’m going to exchange friends and status for money and a two-year degree, and then I can move on from there.” Or, “I can not go to that and I can exchange my time and money to pay for this other college to get the status and to stay with friends.”

Austin Bouley (42:46):
And I’m not saying one choice is right over the other, but I am saying, you need to understand that you are a trader and that everyone is a trader. You are trading something for something else, you are exchanging it. And you need to start thinking about every conversation you have, every decision you make as an exchange, and you need to understand, will this exchange benefit me? And I’m not saying be selfish where you hurt others, but I am saying, think about how the decisions are affecting you because you are a trader.

Robert Leonard (43:14):
People who have been listening to the show for a while, likely know that I am often critical of Dave Ramsey. I like some of what he teaches, but most of what he teaches, I do not really like. How is Dave Ramsey keeping people poor?

Austin Bouley (43:28):
First off, I don’t want to discount Dave Ramsey because one, he’s doing the same thing that I’m doing. He’s reaching the very beginner and he’s helping them get started. And that’s awesome. We need beginners to get started. And that’s what he empowers them to do with a simple step-by-step or what he calls the baby steps. And so, again, that is awesome for those getting started and everyone should be doing that. But when it comes down to people who start to know more, as in when you know better, you do better, and so I think there are some better things that could be taught by Dave Ramsey. And one is he pushes for mutual funds. And so mutual funds is a collection of stocks and companies held to make money. So it’s basically an ETF.

Austin Bouley (44:10):
An ETF is just a composition of stocks to track and whatever else. And so with that, I think that you should be pushing for ETFs over mutual funds. Why? Because mutual funds tend to be more actively managed, which means that they have lower performance over time, and they also have a higher expense ratio, which means that you are paying more money to have your money in a mutual fund, versus an ETF, which is purely a passive investment of them just following certain stocks, especially if you invest in like SPY or VOO, or something like that, which is an ETF of the overall market, then you’ll be automatically diversified and you’ll have a lower expense ratio. And so with that means that you’re paying less money to stay invested.

Austin Bouley (44:58):
And for those who don’t know, if you invest in a single stock, you’re doing your own investing, so you’re not going to pay an expense to do that, but an ETF or a mutual fund, something that’s managed by someone else or another corporation or institution is going to charge you money for them to do that. And so if you want to do that, I would say you should go for an ETF over a mutual fund, just because one, it’s more passive. So it’s going to make the same, if not better returns than mutual funds. And it has a lower expense ratio. Also, there are a lot of things about Dave Ramsey, especially that’s coming out recently, like in some news about some potential lawsuits and what he does and his firing and hiring process that I don’t agree with.

Austin Bouley (45:39):
But in general, like I’ve said, Dave Ramsey does a great job at helping beginners, but when you know more or when you know better, you should do better. And I think that there’s a lot that Dave Ramsey is leaving on the table.

Robert Leonard (45:51):
Austin, thanks for joining me on the show today. For those listening that want to connect with you after the show, where’s the best place for them to go?

Austin Bouley (45:58):
Of course, thank you so much for having me on this podcast. I really enjoyed it. If people want to find me, they just have to search up The Impeccable Investor. That’s what you can find me on Instagram, on YouTube and podcasts. So my Instagram is @theimpeccableinvestor. And so that’s really where I’m at. So if you want to follow me, you can do so. And I basically share stock market education, stock picks, free resources, free courses, all that great stuff, all on my Instagram and YouTube, etc. So definitely recommend you check that out.

Austin Bouley (46:26):
Also, if you’re more of a swing trader or investor who likes to see all the stats behind a stock, like the accuracy rating, the risk to reward, the trend, and all that stuff with just a click of a button, then I’d recommend you check out the software that I have. It’s really awesome, it’s called The Impeccable Stock Software. So if you want to learn more about that, I’m sure the link will be below, but it’s www.theimpeccablestocksoftware.com/free trial for a completely free 40-day free trial. Anyways, thanks for having me on here, Robert. I really enjoyed it.

Robert Leonard (46:56):
All right, guys. That’s all I had for this week’s episode of Millennial Investing. I’ll see you again next week.

Outro (47:02):
Thank you for listening to TIP. Make sure to subscribe to We Study Billionaires by The Investor’s Podcast Network. Every Wednesday, we teach you about Bitcoin, and every Saturday, we study billionaires and the financial markets. To access our show notes, transcripts, or courses, go to theinvestorspodcast.com. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any decision, consult a professional. This show is copyrighted by The Investor’s Podcast Network. Written permission must be granted before syndication or rebroadcasting.