Retire By 35

Bullish Studio

Retired by age 37, Steve Adcock is the definition of "Been there, done that!" – and has the secret to how you can have early retirement too!  On today’s pod episode, I welcome Steve Adcock, better known as @steveonspeed on Twitter. Steve’s not only verified on Twitter with over 120K followers, but he achieved financial independence at age of 35, lives off the grid, and uses his free time to educate the FinTwit community. He built a 14 year long career in Information Technology, specifically in the Defense sector. He was making loads of cash, but at the expense of the industry draining his soul. One morning about 7 years into his career, Steve came to a crossroads. He evaluated his life: He had a high-paying job, the perfect house in the suburbs, and nice cars and motorcycles. On paper, he was the happiest and most successful guy – but the reality was he wasn’t happy or excited about the future of his career. Steve said he had hit an “early career crisis.”   There he began developing his future goals, researching financial independence, revaluing his expenses, investing in index funds, saving more money, and actually starting to do things he enjoyed. In this episode, Steve walks me through his early retirement journey, how to develop his mindset and lifestyle to achieve financial freedom at an early age, what to do when you have high income - low satisfaction, and other crucial life investments that shape your future.  FOLLOW ME: Twitter: https://twitter.com/WOLF_Financial  TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@wolf_financial?lang=en  Insta: https://www.instagram.com/wolfinancial/  Weekly Howl Newsletter: https://marketmadness-newsletter.beehiiv.com/

Transcript

00:00 early retirement where you quit your job and you do almost nothing, that is not the answer

00:08 if you don't have hobbies.

00:17 Welcome back to another episode of the Wolf Podcast, of course, the world of learning

00:22 finance. I'm your host, Gav Blacksburg. As always, you can find me on Twitter @Wolf_Financial.

00:28 Today I have a guest that you may have seen on some of my Twitter spaces, but if you haven't,

00:32 you've probably seen them all over your timeline. We welcome Steve Adcock to the pod. Steve,

00:38 for a little bit of background on him, he achieved financial independence at 35, lives

00:41 in an off-the-grid house in the desert, and uses a lot of his daily time to really just

00:46 help give back and educate, I would say, a ton of people in the finance Twitter community,

00:50 among others. Steve, welcome to the pod. Pleasure to have you on.

00:53 Thanks for having me. I've been looking forward to this.

00:56 Me too. So let's dive right into it. People see your profile on Twitter, right? 120,000-ish

01:02 followers verified. There's a little bit of info in your bio, but I'm sure people are

01:06 always curious, what's the background? Who are you as a person? What's the professional

01:09 background? You speak about it at times in threads, right? You talk about it a little

01:14 bit as to some of the key decisions you made throughout your life, but it'd be super helpful

01:18 to hear from the mouth itself what that professional background looks like and how you got to this

01:22 point.

01:23 Yeah. I started just like anybody else would start. I majored in information technology

01:28 in school, and I got a job in 2004 as a defense contractor. I just started going through the

01:37 routine of building a career and just figuring out how all of this worked. That was going

01:44 okay for a while. I ended up working a 14-year career in information technology in the defense

01:50 sector, which means you get paid really, really well, but they also drain the life out of

01:56 you really, really well.

01:59 I came to a crossroads, and this was, I don't know, maybe 2012, 2013. Here I am. I have

02:09 a house in the suburbs. I have a Corvette convertible. I have a brand new Cadillac CTS.

02:16 I have a Yamaha R1 sport bike. I have all of these things, all of these toys that I

02:22 thought made me happy because I was a "professional."

02:27 But I had this crossroads that I was at. Just one Saturday morning, I reached up to open

02:32 up the garage door because I was going somewhere, but something, I don't know what it was at

02:36 that time, stopped me. I just stood there in the dark in my garage where the garage

02:42 door closed, looking at all the cars and the motorcycle. It's like, "I'm still not happy.

02:49 Something has to change here. What the heck am I doing wrong?"

02:51 I thought these things were just kind of what you do as a high-income professional because

02:57 you work hard, you make money, you buy things. It's very natural, but something was still

03:03 missing. I think that was, and I was like seven years, I guess, into my career at that

03:10 point. That was the first time where I really started to ask myself, "Maybe what it is that

03:18 I'm doing is not right."

03:20 I don't know what I was going to do. I didn't have any idea about financial independence

03:25 or early retirement at that time. All I knew was that I was not happy with what I was doing.

03:31 I could not foresee another 30, 40, 50 years working in this career, just making lots of

03:39 money, spending lots of money, but then just kind of wondering what the heck I'm doing

03:43 with all this. What are my goals? What's my future going to look like?

03:47 I don't want to say it was a midlife crisis because I was not midlife at the time, but

03:51 maybe it was like an early career crisis. High income, low satisfaction. I mean, what

03:58 do you do from there? There's lots of different paths that you can take. We'll get into some

04:02 of that, I'm sure, in this podcast.

04:05 But that was like seven years into my career was really that turning point where I started

04:11 to ask myself some serious questions that I did not allow myself to acknowledge, I guess,

04:18 in the past. And that was a big problem too.

04:22 So you started asking yourself these questions. Walk me through the next three to six months

04:27 after you started asking yourself.

04:29 So really, I didn't put the pieces into place yet. I just knew what the problem was. I didn't

04:35 necessarily know what the solution was. But that realization that I was not happy and

04:42 I could not foresee a 50-year career doing this, that really allowed me to – it really

04:48 opened my eyes a little bit in regards to what else is out there and what else I could

04:53 be doing.

04:54 Quite frankly, I was seriously considering quitting my high-paying IT job to be a truck

05:01 driver. I don't know what it is about the truck driver scene. Maybe it's like you

05:05 don't take your work home with you. You make your deliveries and then you're done.

05:10 And I was really, really considering becoming a truck driver because I was that unhappy

05:15 with what I was doing.

05:18 But the rubber met the road when I started to research the idea of financial independence

05:26 online. And like a lot of people, I stumbled on somebody called Mr. Money Mustache. He

05:32 lives in Longmont, Colorado, very, very popular financial independence early retirement blog.

05:39 And he also – I don't know if he got a degree in IT, but he did the same kind of

05:43 work that I did.

05:44 So he and I really connected. I mean I didn't know the guy. He didn't know me. But just

05:48 reading his story, there was a lot of similarities from the type of life that he was leading,

05:54 the cost of living, what he was doing. He was married. He had a child. I did not and

05:59 I still don't.

06:00 But that was really like the first eye-opening experience. Like this guy can do it and this

06:06 is how he's doing it. Let me try to do the exact same thing.

06:11 And so I started a little bit to invest more, save more. But quite frankly, I didn't do

06:17 a lot of that until I met my future wife and that is when everything started to come together

06:26 really, really quickly.

06:28 So my wife is a rocket scientist, a literal rocket scientist. I married up, like completely

06:34 married up. But anyway, she came to this relationship with a pretty high salary. I came at this

06:39 relationship with a pretty high salary. So combined, we were pulling down like 200 Gs,

06:44 maybe 220 by the end of our careers combined.

06:48 And remember, this was back in 2012. So that's really good money. So we had a decision to

06:56 make. We could either live like rock stars. We could go out to expensive dinners, maybe

07:00 buy a vacation home, take expensive vacations, things like that. Or we can save the vast

07:07 majority of what we made because we did have high salaries and that adds up quick.

07:11 And then quit what we're doing and do what we actually want to do for the rest of our

07:16 lives. And at that point, it was traveling the country in an Airstream, which we did

07:19 for three years. We sold both of our houses and just lived in a 200 square foot Airstream

07:24 for three years. That's all we had. Now we have an off-grid house in the suburbs. But

07:31 really marrying my wife was the real starting point, I guess, in terms of what we're going

07:39 to do with our future and upping our savings and really putting all these pieces into place.

07:44 I love the Airstream idea. I'm just waiting for Elon to build a self-driving RV.

07:49 You know what's going to happen.

07:50 And then I'm on the same path as you.

07:51 Yeah. You know what's going to happen. If anybody would do it, it's going to be Elon.

07:55 Yeah. Once they do that, I'm going to move in that direction. Okay. You've already touched

07:58 on a couple of topics that I wanted to hit on. But it sounds like you were put into a

08:02 good spot where you at least had the income coming in. But that's not enough, right? You

08:06 actually have to do the right things with it. And you started reading this blog. Beyond

08:11 the major lifestyle change where you didn't decide to make these massive expenses, I know

08:16 you're also a big fan of index funds and taking that route towards wealth. Can you walk me

08:21 through how you invested your money over the last decade?

08:24 Yeah, I am not a day trader. I don't even invest in individual stocks. Quite frankly,

08:30 I don't want that pressure. I don't want to research. I'm not a big finance guy, quite

08:35 frankly. I know you are. You live and breathe this stuff. I don't. I'm like the complete

08:40 opposite. I want nothing to do with yields and price to earnings. I don't care. All I

08:47 want to do is get rich. All I want to do is make money, build wealth, and live the life

08:51 that I want to live. And stocks, quite frankly, were the answer for me in the form of index

08:57 funds and ETFs. They are by far the easiest way for most people to invest.

09:05 One of the most common questions I get from people is where do I start investing? I don't

09:09 know who to invest in or what to invest in. Quite frankly, I always recommend index funds

09:16 as at least a starting point because index funds follow an index like the S&P 500, for

09:21 example. So when that does well, you do well. That also means when that doesn't do well,

09:26 like now, your stock values might go down. But quite frankly, that's a very natural,

09:34 very healthy element of a stock market.

09:37 So instead of investing in individual companies and especially day trading, I read a statistic

09:44 recently that said like 95% of day traders lose money in the end. 95% of day traders.

09:55 That's an incredible statistic. So I would definitely stay away from that. I was very

10:01 big into my companies, 401(k) and Roth IRA, index funds all the way. I didn't spend hours

10:10 researching companies. I did not spend hours researching all of my investment options.

10:15 I took what was available to me, invested as much as I can, and it definitely worked

10:20 out.

10:21 Outside of index funds, I think you talk about a lot of life investments, right? It's a big

10:26 part that kind of comes across your page is uncomfortable truths and life investments.

10:30 And I feel like those kind of meet in the middle. I know the biggest one you harp on

10:34 is marrying the right person the first time around. I'd love to hear maybe a couple minutes

10:38 on that. And then what other life investments do you think got you to this point?

10:42 Yeah. I mean, marrying the right person is – everybody thinks that they're marrying

10:48 the right person, otherwise they wouldn't get married. I mean, mistakes happen. It's

10:51 not like if you get divorced, you did everything in life wrong. That's certainly not what I'm

10:55 saying. But when you marry somebody who is actively engaged in exactly what you are,

11:02 so you really mesh well, you both want the same kinds of goals, that kind of thing, that's

11:09 really what I'm talking about.

11:10 Whereas if you marry someone who's completely opposite of you, maybe they want to spend

11:15 more money, maybe they want to take expensive vacations or whatever that looks like, there's

11:22 a point where you really have to ask yourself, "Is this relationship going to help us get

11:32 to the point where I think we want to be or is it not? Am I always going to be fighting

11:37 with my spouse? Is there always going to be that conflict?" So it really took a lot

11:41 of time, and I'm sure my wife did as well quite frankly, to really go through these

11:46 questions and ask, "Is this the person that's going to support me or is this the person

11:51 that's going to kind of just do their own thing and not really worry about my goals

11:56 and my plans?"

11:57 And of course, this is a two-way street. You have to worry about theirs just like they

12:01 think about yours. But for me, marrying my wife was by far the best decision that I have

12:11 ever made. Without her, I probably would not – in fact, I know I would not be in this

12:16 position right now. I'd probably still be working. So us together working towards the

12:20 same goal, that was so incredibly important.

12:25 Now how to get there? Let me talk about that for a minute. You don't necessarily know

12:31 right off the bat that this person is the one she's going to or he's going to support

12:36 my goals. But how you do that is by talking about your future all the time. Back when

12:44 we were working full-time jobs, before we got married and also shortly after we got

12:48 married, after dinner, every single night, we took our dogs out for a walk around the

12:54 neighborhood and we just talked about our future, talked about what we wanted it to

12:58 look like.

12:59 That really helped us not only put the pieces into place in terms of like money and how

13:04 much we needed to spend or save or how much money we're going to need before we can

13:10 call it quits. But it also kept that goal, that future goal in the forefront of our minds

13:17 every single day. So we were always thinking about it.

13:22 Getting onto that same page by talking and walking and talking about our future, that

13:28 was so unbelievably critical to making sure that this is the right person for me. I'm

13:37 the right person for her and this is going to work out. Really good feeling that this

13:41 is going to work out and it certainly did. So communication is absolutely key in all

13:46 of this.

13:47 Do you think there's value to being in business together with one's partner or some

13:52 way complementing each other's roles?

13:56 That's a touchy one. I mean, yes, it absolutely could work. But there's also like the separation

14:02 where the one person does one thing and the other does the other thing and you come together

14:07 at night and you talk about what happened. I mean, that kind of thing, I think there's

14:11 a lot of value there. I mean, fortunately for us, it worked out well. We don't have

14:16 this huge burgeoning business. We've already made our money and we're financially independent.

14:22 We don't really have to do that now.

14:24 But I think that if you can find similar ways to start making a little maybe extra money

14:30 on the side through a side hustle where you can both work together in your own time, nights

14:35 and weekends to build something together, if you could actually do that and make that

14:39 work, that's an amazing way to build wealth because you will both be equally motivated

14:44 and will support each other as you go through that process.

14:48 So yeah, when you can make it work, that is an unbelievable way to make money. But it's

14:53 not going to work for everybody.

14:55 Yeah. One example that came to mind, I was chatting with Clint the other day and he mentioned

14:59 how what he's working with his wife is she's transitioning out of, I guess, maybe finishing

15:04 her full-time job, what that's been for the past future or past. And now she's going to

15:09 actually assist in building up a TikTok and Instagram page around his brand that he's

15:16 created on Twitter by taking that content and repurposing it and basically really being,

15:21 I think, a huge part of that business and finding her strengths in other areas maybe

15:25 where he's not great with video content, right? Or whatever, maybe he is or not. But I think

15:29 that was an interesting piece where, especially with the world of content creation, maybe

15:32 more people could be on a partner system.

15:35 That works for a lot of people. And one of the benefits of financial independence, quite

15:39 frankly, is you can explore these other things, whether they make money or not, because you're

15:44 already there. You don't have to make money. But if you're interested in something, just

15:49 go do it. If you make money, great. If you don't, that's fine too.

15:53 Just recently, my wife started to get interested in real estate. And she just got a real estate

15:58 license last week. And that's something that if she sells a few things here and there,

16:03 that's great. But if she doesn't, it doesn't matter. She still got her license. She still

16:07 went through the entire process. And she's doing it. She's trying it.

16:11 And to me, that is the magical aspect of achieving FI. You don't just go and work your nine-to-five

16:20 job, then come home and just do what you want in your free time. You get to spend the majority

16:25 of your time doing whatever it is you want. And you don't have to make money with it.

16:31 That is just such a freeing position to be in, I think.

16:35 I love to dive just a little bit further into that because I've seen you tweet about that.

16:38 You've tweeted, "Me being retired doesn't mean I don't work anymore. It just means I

16:43 don't do things I don't want to do." How do you find, I guess, what you want to do? Because

16:49 for me, it's like I hate idle time. I think I share this with a lot of people. I just

16:54 hate idle time. You've seen it. I'm on Spaces 10 hours a day. The other hours, I'm doing

16:58 podcasts or other stuff. I finished my work yesterday on a Saturday at 6.30 p.m. and I

17:03 felt like absolutely useless. I was like, "Where's the more work? I should have more

17:07 hours of work here." So how do you find that brain and mentality?

17:12 Yeah, you can take that too far. And I know exactly what you're talking about because

17:16 sometimes I'm that way too. If I'm just sitting there doing nothing, I feel like I'm unproductive.

17:20 I'm a lazy bum and what am I doing here? It doesn't happen often, but it does happen.

17:25 So I completely understand that. But I think early retirement where you quit your job and

17:34 you do almost nothing, that is not the answer if you don't have hobbies. That is not the

17:40 answer if you don't have things to do, things that you're looking forward to doing at the

17:46 end of your workday. That's why quite frankly, after you reach the point of early retirement

17:50 and you do decide to quit your job, what are you going to be doing? It's probably going

17:54 to be your hobbies. And if you don't know what those are, I would really advise you

18:01 not to even consider early retirement until you do. Financial independence, yes, because

18:08 that gives you options. But don't even think about quitting your job unless you have something

18:12 really tangible that you're going to do after. So I really encourage people to start getting

18:19 their feet wet before they quit, before they retire, because that's going to tell you what

18:26 things that you might be interested in doing and the things that you probably will continue

18:31 to do at the point where you don't have a full-time job. And that's just what you do.

18:36 Those hobbies turn into almost a new career for you.

18:40 So for me, it was a lot of writing. So I write for different publications online occasionally

18:46 like Forbes and CNBC, just occasionally, nothing regular. I do a lot of tweeting and those

18:54 are the things that I liked to do before. And I've just ramped that up now that I don't

19:00 have a full-time job. So that's a very, I think, critical element in this whole picture.

19:06 Really have a good idea. And I mean a really good idea of what you're going to do when

19:11 you have the entire day to fill by yourself.

19:15 Let's speak about Twitter there for a second since you mentioned that being a bigger part

19:18 of your day. I believe you started your Twitter as a journalist. Is that correct?

19:24 Yes and no. That's mainly what I was doing before. So that's ultimately how I got verified

19:31 on Twitter. For this account, Steve on Speed, I actually started that way back in 2009.

19:40 At that point, I wasn't doing writing. I was just working and spending. And I actually

19:45 revived that account in 2019 after I sold my blog, which was pretty big. Totally should

19:54 have changed the name from Steve on Speed because that confuses a lot of people. I'm

19:57 not on speed. I don't do drugs. That was a reference to me driving a Corvette and a Yamaha

20:02 or a OneSport bike.

20:04 So anyway, way too late to change the name, but that's kind of how that happened. But

20:09 yes.

20:10 Once you're verified, it's done, right?

20:12 I'm not touching it. It's just that it is the way it is.

20:16 Okay. So walk me through kind of reviving this account in 2019. What type of content

20:22 you were putting out and then how's that content changed over the last couple of years? Because

20:26 clearly your account's been escalated.

20:28 Yeah. I think the important part, the important element in growing on social media is having

20:36 a very confident, forceful voice. And I've done this a lot. Now, actually, I was just

20:45 thinking about this a couple of days ago. In 2019, after I revived my account, I started

20:49 to tweet more about personal finance because that's what my blog was about. And I told

20:55 myself, I'm not going to be like everybody else on money Twitter. I'm not going to tweet

20:59 these controversial tweets, these platitudes just for engagement. I'm better than that.

21:05 I'm not going to do that. I'm never going to do that.

21:07 So for a while, I really doubled down on what I call authority type tweets, where you go

21:14 into a lot of the nuance of personal finance and not being very controversial, trying to

21:21 be liked by everybody. And guess what? It didn't work. And when you do want to give

21:30 back, when you do want to actually provide a valuable, I guess, influence on social media,

21:37 guess what? Whether you like it or not, you're going to have to have a platform. You need

21:42 an audience of people listening to you because it's no fun to tweet into a void. It's just

21:48 not. There's no point in doing that.

21:50 So how do you grow your account with a strong voice? Well, you kind of have to be a little

21:57 bit controversial because that is what's going to get the eyeballs on your account. And that's

22:01 what's going to get them to share your content on Twitter, but also on other platforms as

22:06 well like Instagram. And that is where you really get people following you because of

22:13 the controversial tweet.

22:14 But then you can tweet in between all the controversies. That's where you really dive

22:20 into some of the meat and potatoes of personal finance. That's where you actually educate

22:26 your audience. So there's two different things at play here. It's grabbing new audiences.

22:34 And that happens with controversy, maybe stirring the pot a little bit. And then the other element

22:39 is after you have that audience, this is where you actually teach that audience with more

22:45 authority type tweets.

22:47 So I try to mix and match the two where I'm getting more people in, but I'm also educating

22:53 them with highly valuable, at least in my opinion, tweets.

22:56 How do you come up with the content, whether it be authoritative or controversial?

23:00 I spend a lot of time reading other profiles on Twitter. I have a medium subscription.

23:06 I get a lot of ideas there. I mean, the ideas are really almost limitless. If you do watch

23:12 the news, which I don't, you can get some ideas there depending on the type of account

23:17 you have. But what I like to do, and this is like a growth hack for me, I guess, is

23:21 I like to look back at some of my past tweets and see which ones did the best.

23:27 Some are just going to fall flat on their face and just ignore those. But the tweets

23:32 that really did the best, try to repurpose those. So you're not necessarily tweeting

23:37 them exactly, but tweet them with like a spin or something. So you're not retweeting a tweet

23:43 that already exists. You are designing a new tweet that's around something that worked,

23:49 a concept that worked in the past.

23:52 And for me, that really revolved around threads. If you can master threads, guess what? You're

24:00 going to grow by leaps and bounds. I've had some threads that have gotten me 8,000, 10,000

24:06 followers just by that one thread. You interviewed Clint a few weeks ago and he had a wildly

24:14 viral thread on Excel, I think, and that got him like 30,000 followers in, I think, two

24:22 days, which is incredible.

24:23 So writing threads is hard. It really is hard. It takes way more time to do. But if you can

24:30 master that element of thread writing, that is going to get you to grow by leaps and bounds.

24:36 Is it just like any other skill? It just takes practice?

24:38 Just takes practice. Yeah. Look at what other accounts are doing. Look at some of these

24:41 viral threads and really ask yourself what made them go viral. And a lot of the time,

24:48 it's that first tweet. It's the opener. That very first opening tweet, you could have the

24:53 best, you could have the best thread ever with so much value. But if your first tweet

24:59 sucks, no one's going to click on it. No one's going to read the rest of your tweet. No one's

25:03 going to like it. No one's going to retweet it. So really spend a lot of time.

25:07 I've spent as much time on the first tweet as I have on the entire body of the thread

25:14 before. I go back and write and then rewrite and then rewrite until I get that first thread

25:19 correct. And if you can do that consistently, I mean, the sky is the limit, but that absolutely,

25:26 like you said, that absolutely takes practice. Figuring out what the best opening tweet is

25:32 and really just kind of discovering what works for you because your followers are going to

25:37 be different than somebody else's followers. So even if you copy somebody else, which I

25:41 never recommend doing, but even if you do, that does not mean that your thread is going

25:46 to be as successful as theirs because there's so much nuance and so many differences between

25:51 your followers and their followers.

25:53 Are there pieces that you stay away from in that first opening one? Like when people say

25:57 like it's time for a thread with the thread emoji, I just don't see it working that often.

26:03 No emojis, no emojis, no emojis. I think I said that four times. No emojis. That's five.

26:10 And I used to, a couple of years ago, I used to write thread at the very end of the first

26:16 tweet. So I'd have my tweet headline, right? And then carriage return, carriage return,

26:22 thread. But I've even stopped doing that because I think it started to, people did that all

26:27 the time and people on the timeline would just naturally start to scroll past those

26:33 because oh, another thread. And I think it was just too saturated. So now I never write

26:41 thread in my first tweet. I just, I make it clear that this is a thread, like the following

26:48 five ways or 13 different habits or whatever. It's clear that it's a thread without actually

26:54 writing the word thread.

26:56 I also know that you write a newsletter. How often does that go out?

26:59 Tuesdays and Thursdays of every week.

27:02 And that's a little bit more, it's not necessarily the longest form writing, but it's a little

27:06 bit longer than your tweets. So there's a lot of writing going on. Is that also coming

27:10 from similar inspirations from Medium, from other pieces like that?

27:13 Sure. Yep. Absolutely. I take a lot of the tweets that did the best and I expand on them

27:18 in my email list. So a lot of people, if they have dreams of monetizing their Twitter account

27:24 or really any social media account, posting sales links like directly on the timeline

27:31 as tweets, those don't tend to do very well. So a lot of people, me included, use social

27:37 media as like a funnel to get people over to their newsletter, over to their email newsletter.

27:42 And that is where a lot of people sell either their products or the affiliate market for

27:49 other people's products.

27:51 I recently released a course called Fi Accelerator. I posted a link on Twitter about it with like

27:56 a 30% off link. And I think I got six people buying off the timeline and I have 120,000

28:03 followers. But in email, I got almost 100 over like two days. So I think if you really,

28:11 if your dream is to make money, understand that email is a much, much more lucrative

28:19 way to monetize your social media than posting those sales links, those sales tweets, those

28:24 sales posts directly on the social media platform itself.

28:28 Yeah, definitely. What I've been doing lately is I use Tweet Hunter. I assume you do too

28:33 probably. And whenever any of my posts hits 100 likes, it auto plugs my newsletter and

28:37 it literally just says, "If you like this tweet, you'll love my newsletter." And then

28:41 it just auto plugs it. And I only started doing that about two weeks ago and I got like

28:45 500 new subs just from having it plugged in.

28:50 It's so easy. I do the exact same thing. I think my threshold is like 175 or something.

28:55 But yeah, it's automatically done. I have almost 10,000 people on my email list now

29:00 and I started with, well, zero like six months ago or something like that. And that's another

29:06 thing with viral threads. You're not only going to get followers, but you're going to

29:10 get a lot of email signups. I've gotten two, three hundred email signups in a day just

29:15 because of a viral thread. So there's so many benefits to going viral on the Twitter platform.

29:22 But yeah, that's just with Tweet Hunter or with any other social media platform. I think

29:27 there's Hype Fury, I think, and maybe a few others. They have the ability to just auto

29:31 plug something and you just set the threshold and it happens automatically. You don't have

29:35 to lift a finger. It's great. It's just great.

29:37 What's your main goal with your Twitter account?

29:41 I've given that a lot of thought and a lot of people ask me that. And quite frankly,

29:44 I really do want to be a positive influence when it comes to money. That is the bottom

29:50 line. I want to be the name or one of the names in money Twitter that people look to

29:57 for sound, powerful financial advice. That's really what it is. A lot of people out there

30:02 are out there just to make money and that's great. I don't disparage them at all. But

30:07 I've already done that. I've already done that. I mean, yeah, more money is great. Like

30:10 beer money. That's great. I'll never turn that down. That's effectively why I designed

30:14 my course and I'm selling it just for a little more beer money. But frankly, it's more of

30:20 the positive money influence and just to get as big of a following as I can, maybe go on

30:26 more podcasts and radio shows and maybe TV shows. I don't know. I don't exactly know

30:31 what that looks like, but that's kind of the road that I'm on now and we'll just see where

30:37 it takes me.

30:38 Twitter is definitely an exciting place. There's a lot you can do with having a platform.

30:41 Yep. So many people that you can meet and Twitter is a social media platform. It's not

30:47 just a place for you to send out tweets and that's it. I mean, a lot of people do that,

30:52 but if you use the tool correctly, you can meet a lot of really interesting and really

30:57 powerful people, really rich people that you can learn from and elevate your life because

31:02 of the things that you learn on Twitter. You just have to know how to use it right.

31:06 How much commenting do you do per day on other people's posts or basically like attempting

31:10 to engage outside of your own hub?

31:15 I used to do more. Now, five or six comments a day maybe. I mean, I read when I send out

31:25 a tweet and people comment, I read every single comment. I won't necessarily like or comment

31:32 back because there's only so many hours in the day, but I absolutely read everything.

31:36 But there are a few accounts that I like to comment on. And what I do is I use actually

31:42 Tweet Hunters. They have a little feature where you can just put in a collection of

31:46 accounts that you want to comment on and you just go to that page. It'll pull up their

31:49 latest tweets with a little comment box. This is off the Twitter platform. This is directly

31:53 on Tweet Hunter and you can just go down the list and if you want to comment, you just

31:57 comment and just keep going. It's very easy. It's very simple. So every morning I pull

32:04 up that page and go down the list of these accounts and see what they tweet. And if I

32:08 could comment, then I will. I won't comment on everyone, but if there's something that

32:13 I can provide some kind of value to, that's an easy way to get into the habit of commenting

32:19 on other people's tweets without having to dive through your entire Twitter timeline

32:24 to find the accounts that you're looking for.

32:26 Now, Twitter does have a list feature where you could set that up, but since I'm using...

32:33 It includes all their retweets, all their comments, everything, and Tweet Hunter just

32:36 gives you their tweets, right?

32:38 Exactly. It's much more streamlined.

32:40 Yeah. The list feature on Twitter needs a little bit of help. No doubt. Okay. Interesting

32:45 question for you. You've been doing more of them with me. What are your thoughts on Twitter

32:49 Spaces and how they accentuate the platform?

32:52 Yeah, that's a really cool way to not only engage, but also to grow. Especially the bigger

32:59 you are, the higher up in the list of accounts you'll be in the group of listeners to a space.

33:07 So you do a lot of spaces and sometimes I'll join them and I'll be almost right up at the

33:12 top because of my follower account. I may not be at the very top because a lot of people

33:16 have more followers than I do.

33:17 And verified automatically comes at the top.

33:19 Okay. See, I didn't even know that. So that's great. That's all the more reason if you are

33:25 verified to at least join, even if you're not actively participating, like you just

33:30 listen in here and there, I think there's still a lot of value in joining spaces. And

33:34 if somebody asks you to be on a space, like I know you do a lot, whenever you can, always,

33:41 always, always say yes, because that's a great way for you to get out in front of an audience

33:47 that you just didn't have before.

33:50 And if you come across well, you come across knowledgeable, guess what? You're going to

33:53 get a lot of followers just by doing spaces. So I think that's a great, great way to grow.

33:58 And you're at almost 100,000, I think now. So I mean, you host a lot. So hosting spaces,

34:04 that's a whole nother topic. But that is also a great way to grow because you're establishing

34:08 yourself as an authority around a topic.

34:11 Yeah, definitely. A lot of really cool things have come with doing spaces, which I did not

34:16 see coming. And there's also a great economy there as well, that most people don't even

34:21 notice. There's so much buying and selling that goes on through spaces, especially with

34:25 the world of crypto and NFTs and everything that goes on there. I mean, there's been probably

34:29 like a billion dollars of product sold through Twitter spaces.

34:32 That's incredible.

34:33 Yeah, yeah. And Twitter gets 0% cut.

34:37 Woo!

34:38 Perfect.

34:39 Yeah, I actually had a feedback session with them where I basically told them I was like,

34:45 so much sales, so many sales happen on your platform and you make none of it. Why aren't

34:51 you giving people tools and taking a cut in exchange? And it's just not on the radar right

34:56 now.

34:57 Wow. I think there's super followers or something and they might take a cut of that.

35:01 There are super followers. They do take a cut of that. That is one area where they do.

35:07 Yeah. And I haven't seen anybody get more than a few hundred super followers. So we'll

35:11 have to see, even the most beloved people.

35:13 Yeah. I haven't tried that. I don't have any interest in it, but I don't know. I mean,

35:17 if they improve it in the future, maybe.

35:20 My super follow is something that I offer. I don't really offer anything extra with it.

35:24 It's just here's $4.99 a month to me and in exchange, I'm nice to the person. I answer

35:31 DMs, I answer their thoughts, questions. It's a good way to get on someone's good side,

35:36 is the way I'd put it.

35:39 Because essentially they're paying for your attention. And for some people that's absolutely

35:44 valuable.

35:45 For sure. And I only have 19 super followers. So anyone that's out there listening, if you

35:48 sub, you will have my attention. We're doing strong. Outside of TweetHunter, are there

35:53 any other tools that you use on a regular basis to help with growth?

35:56 Nope. Well, I wrote my own tool. It's called BumFuzzle. B-U-M-F-U-Z-Z-L-E.app. And that's

36:07 a tool that you can use to track your followers over time. So every single day, actually three

36:13 times a day, the system automatically goes out, tracks your follower account, records

36:19 it. And over time you get a nice little graph with exactly how your growth is going.

36:25 And you can look back, like certain times you'll grow more, certain times you won't.

36:30 And I think the beauty of using a tool like this is you can really determine what tweets

36:37 you sent to generate all of those new followers. So if you grew a lot last week and you didn't

36:44 even realize it, like maybe last week Tuesday, you saw this big spike. Okay, great. So you

36:49 might go back in your profile, take a look at what tweets you sent out on that Tuesday

36:54 and say, "Oh, this one really worked. So what if I take that same tweet, maybe tweak it

37:01 a little bit and send it out again? Am I going to get another influx of followers?"

37:06 Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't. But just having the tools, having the knowledge

37:10 around you that's freely available to you, I mean, that is a great way to determine what

37:16 you're doing right and what you're doing wrong and what you can do again. So other than BumFuzzle

37:21 and TweetHunter, I don't really use any other Twitter tool.

37:25 Got it. And is BumFuzzle something people can publicly use?

37:28 Yep. Yep. It's completely free, completely public. All you got to do is go to the website,

37:32 type in your account. And if I am tracking you, I'm going to bring you straight to your

37:38 account. If I'm not, then I'm going to take that first snapshot and then redirect you

37:43 to your profile page. You'll only have one day's followers because I haven't been tracking

37:48 you. So your tracking begins at that point. But I think I am tracking you, Wolf. And I

37:56 have almost 200, I think, people there now. So it's growing slowly but surely.

38:01 Okay. My last question, something to leave people with here. I want to kind of have a

38:05 list of five items that people can use to help them build wealth and audience and all

38:11 those other good things. I would say if I had to take three takeaways from you so far,

38:15 the first would be marry correct, buy index funds, kind of keep it stupid simple, build

38:20 an audience. What would number four and five be?

38:23 I would say number four would be don't be afraid to put yourself out there. It really

38:30 does come down to that. And I was very afraid in the past too, but like, am I going to get

38:35 hate? What's going to happen here? Are people going to think I'm stupid? Quite frankly,

38:40 I'm not worried about that anymore. It takes some practice. Taking that first step is,

38:44 is tough. But if you want to grow, you really do have to put yourself out there. You have

38:50 to give your opinion in a strong and confident way. Otherwise nobody is going to follow you

38:56 because they're not going to value your opinion because it doesn't seem like you value your

39:00 own opinion. So if you're confident enough to put yourself out there, that's often the

39:04 very first step to actually building that huge audience.

39:08 And I would say number five is, and this might, this might be number one, quite frankly, have

39:15 a goal, have a purpose in life where you want to be in 10 years, in 20 years. Once you understand

39:23 that, it's way easier to put the pieces into place in terms of how to get there. But if

39:29 you don't have a goal, if you don't have anywhere to go, if you don't have a purpose, then quite

39:33 frankly, you're just good. You're just going to be going through life robotically. And

39:37 that's what I was doing for the first half of my career. I was just earning money, then

39:40 spending money and then earning money and spending money. I had no purpose, no goals,

39:44 no nothing. But once I did come up with that goal of financial independence and early retirement,

39:49 everything got easier because I understood why I was saving. I understood why I was doing

39:56 all of these things because there was a light at the end of the tunnel and that was what

40:00 I was striving for.

40:02 So number five, which might actually be number one, is you have to understand what your goals

40:09 are and keep them to maybe one or two. You don't want 10 goals. That's stupid. Really

40:18 focus in on where you want to be, high level, but also important enough where you're not

40:27 distracted by all the other goals. You're focused on one, maybe two, and that's going

40:33 to get you where you want to be way, way quicker.

40:35 Super interesting points. I actually recently heard quotes that I think relate really well

40:39 to both to the fourth point that you said there of not really paying attention too much

40:45 to what other people think. There's a great Steve Harvey quote. You may have seen it. He

40:49 says, "What other people think about you is none of your business."

40:52 I love that quote.

40:57 Really good Steve Harvey one. And then actually to that fifth point that you made about having

41:01 a goal and purpose, I was actually having dinner about two, three weeks ago with my

41:05 mom and some of my siblings. And my little brother was talking about this guy that he

41:09 had met. And I think he had met this guy as an inspirational speaker. And the guy was

41:15 telling him basically all the things that had happened to him. This guy had been through

41:19 a lot. He had, I think, lost kids. He had had a number of things happen to him. And

41:23 then at the end of the story that my brother was saying, he kind of surprised us and he

41:27 said, "And this guy is just like the happiest dude that I've ever met." And we're like,

41:32 "That's not where we thought you were going with this. We thought there was going to be

41:35 something else." And he goes, "No, like he's so happy. He's always in the community. He's

41:39 always giving back to others. He's always doing all these different pieces." And my

41:43 mom just very nonchalantly was like, "That's the secret to life. Live life with purpose."

41:49 And she was like, "It does not matter what's happened to you. If you know still what you

41:53 want to do and accomplish and have goals and purpose, you are going to be happy."

41:59 That's right. That's right. And very, very few people I found, very few people, and this

42:04 is sad, actually have real goals. Like your goal isn't, "I want his BMW 7 Series." I mean,

42:10 that's not a real goal. A real goal is, "I want to retire and travel," or, "I want to

42:15 live in this country," or, "I want to make $5 million building this company." Those are

42:22 the kinds of goals that I'm talking about. Not the things that you want to buy, but the

42:26 places that you want to be and the things that you want to do in the future. Those are

42:32 the important goals for sure.

42:33 Love it, Steve. Last thing I just want to ask is, do you have any call to actions? If

42:37 people listen to this, where would you like them to go?

42:40 Well, I spend the vast majority of my time on Twitter. So, Steve on Speed is where I

42:47 am there. I am trying to build my Instagram. It's @MillionaireHabits without the I and

42:55 without the A in habits. So, I just took out those two vowels. And I have a website at

42:59 steveadcock.us, which I post an occasional blog post there, but I'm most active on Twitter.

43:05 Perfect. Well, anybody else, if you're going to Twitter and making your way there, go ahead

43:09 and drop me a DM as well. If you listen to the end of this episode, let me know anything

43:13 you liked, any questions you have. I will accept the DM. I'll respond to you. You'll

43:16 have a direct line of communication to me. It'll all be good. So, if you made it to the

43:20 end, go ahead and do that. And then also just shoot Steve a message. Anything you learned,

43:24 I marked down some really good points from this. There were some great takeaways that

43:27 I had, and I'm excited to be able to cut those up, share them with the world. Coming soon,

43:32 our pod with Steve Adcock. Steve, thank you so much for coming on today. Looking forward

43:35 to our next chat.

43:36 [Music]

43:37 [End]

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