I put “transparent millionaire” right in my bio, so I thought I’d share how much money this business is making! I started Personal Finance Club in 2019 as a passion project without any plan to ever turn it into a business. That’s evidenced by the zero revenue for almost two years after starting. But in 2020, bored during the pandemic, I was getting the same questions over and over (about stocks, bonds, mutual funds, index funds, IRAs, 401ks, etc, etc) so I decided to lay it all out in a comprehensive video course. My instinct was to give it away for free (like everything else we do), but then thought that people don’t value free things, so if I charged something people would be more likely to finish it, and I could use any revenue to help cover my expenses and maybe even hire someone.
Well in that first week I ran the sale I made over $100,000 and I realized I started a business by mistake! Since then I’ve been able to hire two full time employees. All three of us make the same salary (~$76K/year) and Vivi and Shane get paid a profit sharing bonus based on 25% of the previous 12 months profits. We’ve also donated over $270,000 to charity!
Looking at this chart, the spikes you see are when we run big sales, but the overall revenue isn’t trending super well. There are a few reasons for that. Primarily, PFC was never designed to be a business and thus we don’t have a big line of products or services. The only thing we sell is two courses that are cheap and include unlimited lifetime access. That means we have no recurring revenue, and can essentially never sell anything to our existing customers. 2021 was also a rough year in the market, which seemed to drop interest in investing (even though the OPPOSITE should be true!). And even though we have more TOTAL followers, since we can’t sell existing customers twice our business is basically reliant on bringing in NEW people to PFC. So while growth has been good, it’s been fairly consistent, which means consistent sales.
As always, reminding you to build wealth by following the two PFC rules: 1.) Live below your means and 2.) Invest early and often.
-Jeremy
