S2E50 – Logan Leckie – Selling a portfolio to bet on himself

Key Timecodes

• (00:59) – Background history
• (02:44) – When did he get started in the world of stocks?
• (04:07) – The specific stocks that he still holds today
• (05:13) – When did he decide to change his investing strategy?
• (07:06) – What he looks for when investing in ETFs
• (08:54) – His ETFs strategies
• (13:21) – The importance of creating passive income
• (15:36) – His businesses before the Topia app
• (13:29) – The Topia app and business model
• (27:07) – A  look into the Topia app and his business model
• (30:38) – How many users does the platform have now?
• (31:03) – His marketing strategies
• (32:13) – How big is the Topia team at the moment?
• (33:28) – Does the company have partners or investors?
• (36:53) – The worst business or investment advice he ever received
• (37:23) – The best business or investment advice he ever received
• (38:34) – How long did he validate his ideas before starting a project?
• (43:41) – Guest contacts

Transcription

[00:00:03.390] – Intro

Payback Time is a podcast about building businesses, wealth and financial freedom. We try to uncover the challenges our guests faced, the mistakes they made, and the steps they took to achieve their goals. The overall objective is to provide you with a roadmap that leads to your own success. Sean Tepper is your host. Are you ready? It’s payback time.  

[00:00:32.960] – Sean

Should you diversify or go all in on one investment? My next guest has a passion for fire financial independence, retire early and decided to create an app that shows others how they can also achieve financial independence. In this episode, we talk about his investment journey, the pros and cons of going all in on one thing, and how he plans to see a big.  

[00:00:54.940] – Sean

Return on his investment. Please welcome Logan Lucky.  

[00:00:59.580] – Sean

Logan, welcome to the show.  

[00:01:01.200] – Logan

Hi Sean. Super excited to be here. Thanks so much having me.  

[00:01:04.230] – Sean

Yes, thank you for joining me. So why don’t you go ahead and tell us a little bit about your background.  

[00:01:09.490] – Logan

My name is London and I guess the kind of soft side of my background is a very keen sportsman. So I play any sport with a racket. If I’m not working or playing sport, I’m probably either off a mountain or at the beach because I love my water sports as well. A big kind surfer and also a big skier. So that’s the soft side, the harder kind of stuff about me in terms of, I guess, what I’m doing in my life. So I went through a career in investment banking in my early twenty s and then found an entrepreneurial spot within me to start going down the more side hustle and eventual full entrepreneurial route right now. Currently based in London. In the UK. And what else about our background? I’m also quite niche, but quite focus on the UK and also Bag Pipers. I play Bagpipes as a musical instrument, which is quite niche and something I like to tell as many people as possible about.  

[00:02:09.180] – Sean

You have quite a background there. From the music, one jumped out at me. Wow, okay. So that’s quite a talent. But the hobbies, it reminds me of myself a little bit. I definitely have a lot of hobbies. Not as adventurous, I don’t kite surf. That’s probably a little more dangerous than what I’m used to, but that sounds awesome. We’ve got a lot of talked about today and you’ve got your own app, your own business. We’re going to get to that in a little bit, but I always like to learn about how individuals like yourself, you’re very entrepreneurial minded. We’ll talk about that. But this is a show on investing, so we’re going to dive into investments a little bit. So, first off, can you tell us when did you first start getting started in the world of stocks?  

[00:02:52.690] – Logan

It started when I was 18. From a young age I was always very aware of the stock market. Family members are investing people to speak about it. I was just generally had a big interest in kind of what was out there. And then what eventually happened is myself and one of my very close friends at university or college over in the US got together and realized that we both have this kind of real interest for the stock market and this idea of making our money work for us and not just having it held in cash. And then being 18 year old, we didn’t have a huge income. We didn’t have any income coming in. We were living a classic student life. But what we did decided to do is cobble together, I think it was at the time, 50 quid or $50 each month. And then we would kind of form a mini investment committee. And at that time we would kind of try and pick out a certain stock or we’d each come to that meeting with a couple of different stocks and then we would decide which one we wanted to put in, combined 100 into that stock.  

[00:04:00.780] – Logan

That’s when we started 18. And that’s where I was the first ever experience of getting stuck into the stock market.  

[00:04:07.320] – Sean

I love it. Any specific stocks that you still hold today?  

[00:04:11.820] – Logan

So at that time, it was when the cannabis industry just got legalized in Canada. So we actually did one of big mistakes. We just got on the right bandwagon and invested in I think it was canopy growth, which we still hold today, but is not doing too well considering I think we invested quite near the top of that nice juicy bubble.  

[00:04:33.910] – Sean

It was a bubble. This sounds like this was around 17, 2017, is that correct? Yeah, yeah, I know a lot of people. They lost their shirts investing in cannabis. I actually invested a little, and when Canada went legal, I didn’t see much of a pop. And to me that was the towel. That was the moment. Like, there’s not a lot of upside here. And unfortunately, I did sell at the top there before everything did bottom out. A fun little run, but that’s interesting. Okay, so thanks for telling us how to get started there, how much you got started with. It sounds like your strategy is very speculative at the time. Can you tell us how has it changed since? What do you look for in businesses now?  

[00:05:23.010] – Logan

Sure, at the beginning, I think what we drawn into is what we thought the stock market was all about, or maybe I should say one particular strategy, which was let’s look for single stocks and let’s put on my into them and let’s form some pretty primitive thesis on why do we think that single stock is going to do well? And that’s kind of giddy 18 year olds. I think we fell into quality traps there. And what I quickly realized is unless I wanted to start spending a considerable amount of time and energy trying to gain a certain insight or edge into the stock market. I didn’t want to carry on taking what I considered pretty risky bets on single stocks and I started thinking and realizing my skill isn’t in hands, I can stop. So instead of doing that, I’m going to move towards investing just in the market and try and diversify as much as possible. So I then started getting on the kind of ETF bandwagon and thinking I’m not going to try and take that risk. I just want globally diversified right out the market. I was really bought into the data which is the global stock market as a whole over the long run has more or less increased by 7% year in, year out over the long run.  

[00:06:43.330] – Logan

And I thought, right, 7%, I just want to buy into that. I don’t want to take the risk of investing in something like kind of pay which will go from 100 to zero in a very short space of time. So the next iteration of my investment journey was very much to diversify, invest and forget and put to bed that individual stock market hat which I was wearing when I was 18. Got you. Okay.  

[00:07:07.770] – Sean

So I would say the opposite side of the spectrum. We’re going really conservative now looking for ETF because there’s so many different ETFs you can choose from. What do you look for with an.  

[00:07:19.420] – Logan

ETF the cost was the big thing I look for is very aware of compounding which can work in your favor but can also work against you if you start incurring and fees which you don’t have to incur. I want it to be globally diversified but I also had a couple of assumptions on where I wanted to be more exposed within the globe as a whole. So I looked at the global diversity but also where balance it was weighted in specific regions and territories. So those are the two kind of core areas I assess. And I think one thing I did miss out or didn’t allude to is I think I went for the fact that 95% of my savings fashion investments every month will go into the safe ETF. And I did have a little 5% of, I call it experiment money but I would try and take some views on certain companies which I thought would do well and that for me was just making it a little bit more excitement. It was a little bit of I do have some opinion and do some viewpoints. I do want to be more involved in the stock market than just invest and forget the need to it was 5%.  

[00:08:35.660] – Logan

I didn’t mind if all of that 5% every month ended up tanking. I was aware of the positives of investing in single stock which is if it does very well like Tesla or any other single stock which has boomed over the last many years, then that’s great. So that was my kind of play money. Yeah.  

[00:08:53.280] – Sean

Got you back to the ETF. The strategy there is it is quite safe. You were looking at different like an ETF for example, that has businesses, has stocks from all over the globe now. Does it matter what industry they’re part of? Like if they’re maybe industrial or if they’re tech or doesn’t that really matter?  

[00:09:11.290] – Logan

For me it didn’t. For me it didn’t. I went for the most hands off approach and I ended up settling on the Vanguard where 95% of my savings every month would go into that.  

[00:09:23.080] – Sean

Got it. And is that the only ETF you invest in or do you have a few?  

[00:09:27.600] – Logan

It was the only ETF I invest in. Correct.  

[00:09:30.570] – Sean

Okay. One ETF. And do you invest in this ETF still and do you do it every month?  

[00:09:37.090] – Logan

I don’t actually. I ended up pivoting my investment strategy quite majorly, which was I got to the point where I was in my early twenty s, I was investing consistently quite a high proportion of my income. So when I was working back in the day finance, I was actually investing anywhere between 40% to 50% of my monthly income into ETF. So I had a very savings rate. I was very into compounding my money. And then I ended up going through a bit of a kind of epiphany around my strategy and I started thinking, yes, it’s great to the CTF taking away, it’s great that I should in the long run have 7%. But while I’m young I actually prefer to use that money to try and put it into or create something where I can add even more values. It was more kind of moving away from investing in stocks and bonds and thinking about different side hustles I could potentially invest in. And for me there were two real drivers of that decision. One was bringing the control more into my core. So I knew that if I worked harder on creating this side hustle that I had more than what happened to.  

[00:10:52.540] – Logan

Whereas of course with the stock market in the long run, like I said a couple of times, it does go up. You are very much at the women for economy and the general macroeconomic trends and not having that control and just started playing my mind a bit. And then also again just in terms of young twenties long road map until I want to start accessing that well, I thought I might as well make a play here in terms of trying to set up a value somewhere to someone with the hope that every $1,000 you put into it you could be getting five to ten back out. In terms of that side hustle kind of kicking off.  

[00:11:34.760] – Sean

Gotcha. So this is very much in the category of investing in yourself. So I have to ask, do you still have your ETF or did you sell that to help fund your business?  

[00:11:47.440] – Logan

I ended up selling my ETF at the time to fund the site also, and then my app, which is my latest venture. So it was a big decision I had to make and I thought long and hard about it because I’m sure everyone felt the pain of having to hit withdrawal, that withdrawal button and stop that compounding engine, work its magic. But yeah, it was a big decision, but it was something I looked back on. I think it was the right one and it’s really kind of defined the direction I took my life in.  

[00:12:24.040] – Sean

So we’re going all on black, all chips on black. We’re all on Logan at this point. All in.  

[00:12:29.890] – Logan

All on logan. I prefer to all on Logan as opposed to all on red or black, but it’s exactly that. And it got to a point where the fact that I had put my money to work in some form of the stock market, that gave me the kind of pushing I needed to eventually withdraw it all, which gave me some breathing room, some time for me to put down my main job and just really kind of double down on investing, like you said, in myself. So that part of my journey in terms of starting with the stock market brought me a lot of lessons. It was really interesting for me to do, but most importantly, it gave me that buffer, which gave me the flexibility and kind of mini independence I needed to go out on a whim and start up the side hustles and businesses moving forward.  

[00:13:20.910] – Sean

Sure. Now, I do have to mention this. I’m a few years older and have run into numerous entrepreneurs and there have been the man or woman out there that I met. They have invested in themselves and they did that over one decade, two decades, three decades, and did not invest in the stock market and use compliant interest. And I’ve run into people that are unfortunately they’re in their sixty s and seventy s, and their business is far from thriving, hasn’t done very well. They can’t sell it because it’s a service business, for example. And yet they have no investments, no savings, because they went all in on themselves over those decades. So, just saying, if I were you, and you start generating some nice passive revenue from your business, we’ll get in your business’s revenue here in a moment. I would definitely show interest in the stock market just as a kind of like money working for you in parallel. I’m big on parallel processing. I like things working for me without my time, investments while I’m sleeping. And that gives me nice peace of mind. So just saying that we’re going to talk about your business in a second, but just I’ve seen some horror stories.  

[00:14:34.000] – Sean

Plenty of I know guys are in their 70s, they can’t sell their business, they got no savings, they have no choice but to work while their buddies are traveling to different countries and enjoying time off and seeing their family playing golf five times a week. They don’t get to do that because they still have to work. It’s not a good place to be.  

[00:14:52.050] – Logan

Yes, and I completely agree with that, with that mantra. And I think you said at the beginning for me, it was very much kind of an age thing. And we’ll get on to all this, I’m sure, in a few minutes. But, yeah, I always had a customer in my mind which was, if side off, the next business, X has been done A-B-C by this time, and then it would be a question of kind of rephivoting that strategy. And then also, again, I’m sure gone to this, but like you said, I’m doing exactly what you’re saying is as soon as you are producing excess income, so you’re covering your expenses plus excess. I do have a long term strategy to start investing that in a fully passive vehicle, which is the stock market.  

[00:15:35.830] – Sean

Good for you? Well, let’s talk about it. You’ve got a business here and I assume it’s Topia, right? The name of the app. Right. I’m just curious here. Was there another business you started before, or is this the business that you sold the ETF and you went all in on?  

[00:15:51.990] – Logan

There were side hustles before, but this was the business where I went all in on two side hustles I had leading up to that. So one was I looked at my skill sets I had when I was young, one of which was playing the bagpipes, and I thought, is there a demand for me to somehow monetize this skill, which I spent a lot of time building up? So sign off. The one which I started when I was 16 would create a little landing page. People could hire me for events, whether it’s weddings, corporate events. So it was more territory, wanted something more massive. Because what I realized with side hustle and being a musician was my input equal my output. For every hour I worked, I got a paycheck. And it was very one to one in terms of that ratio. And I started thinking, can I start creating something more passive where my time is not completely tied to the amount of money which I’m bringing in? So I then started up a drop shipping side hustle. So I bought wholesale from China, and then I was selling it through Amazon FBA network. And again, with that, I didn’t go all in, but I did make a small draw from the old ETF portfolio to fund that first order and then started that kind of ticking away in the background.  

[00:17:15.940] – Logan

And then, like you said, the big play I made was the Utopia, which I founded about two years ago. And that was a case of I validated it as much as I could while working. I got to that point, I was very, very confident in the opportunity at hand and then made the decision to withdraw my ETF portfolio at the time and push that all into the first development stage of that.  

[00:17:42.710] – Sean

Got you. Okay, real quick here, before we jump into Topia, do you still create passive income of some sort with Amazon FBA, or is that side hustle now shut down?  

[00:17:51.960] – Logan

I still create that. So that’s semi passive. I probably put it in maybe five to 10 hours every week. It brings in around £2000 every month.  

[00:18:02.860] – Sean

And it’s just taking a long oh, that’s excellent. We’ve had a few Amazon FBA sellers on the platform, and we know that it’s not 100% passive. There is still some time there’s kind of like real estate. You still have to if you’re a landlord or you’re even coordinating with property managers and you’re interviewing candidates or whatever, there’s still some time investment there. So good for you. It’s like a reliable two K per month you can depend on. So good for you. So let’s dive into Topia here. What does this app do for people? And then we’re going to talk about how it makes money.  

[00:18:38.530] – Logan

Sure. So the story behind Sophia is I came out of studying and I went into a finance job in the city here in the UK. And I wasn’t from being quite a passionate, enthusiastic kind of young person to very quickly go in like a spark dampen by just working very hard, not being passionate really at all about the job I was in and just started contemplating, is this going to be me for the next 40 years? And I look around at my managers and people more senior than me, and I’d see people well into their 50s, early 60s grinding away. I kept having this fear that I’d shut my eyes and wake up and I’d be kind of sat in the exact same office, just a couple of chairs over, much more gray hair, looking very weathered, and you could just see how time will just snap by and just never kind of escape from the clutches of corporate life.  

[00:19:35.590] – Sean

I got to stop you there. I was going to say that’s the moment you wake up out of your dream sweating like you just woke up from a nightmare, like, oh, I’m so glad this is not reality. Right, exactly.  

[00:19:49.210] – Logan

That yeah.  

[00:19:50.610] – Sean

I was going to say you’re an entrepreneur and that entrepreneur grind and that passion, and then to wake up and look out 30, 35, 40 years later and be like, you never took that lead to be an entrepreneur, that, to me is, I’ve had those nightmares. And I tell you what, I will not allow that to be a reality. I’m sure you’re very much the same.  

[00:20:12.010] – Logan

Exactly. It was a real fear, and I think people just I think they have that fear, but then very quickly kind of relinquish any willpower to go against the grain. And a lot of people in these kind of big corporations are not hugely happy but I just kind of content is what I describe it. I got to that point and I just started googling different things about escaping and not being happy in your work and other jobs. And I went down this rabbit hole and eventually stumbled across this movement called the Fire Movement which is an acronym for Financial Independence retire early. And I was left into the early retirement stage. This idea of being financially independent and be able to kind of choose how you spend your time and choose what you want, not being tied into a nine to five really resonated with me and for me the financial independence could mean setting up your own business and not being completely proper centered. It could be spending more time with your family. But just as aura choosing how I spent my time and not being constrained was really attractive and I went full in on this concept of financial independence and the premise of it.  

[00:21:28.600] – Logan

Which ties quite closely into what we’ve been speaking about. Is to save a quite high percentage of a salary each month. Leverage investing in the stock market to rapidly compound it worth a point where you can in theory start drawing down from that portfolio from a much younger age compared to traditional retirement and then the ability to do whatever you want really. So that was designed something I became very passionate about start doing myself. And my new vision of my life was to make the most of a good paying job. Was to save 40% to 60% of my income every month and to hopefully reach financial dependence in the next I think it was at the time seven to ten years which would have taken me to mid thirty s. I could have unlocked financial independence and at that point put down the career which I wasn’t hugely passionate about. But then what I started finding is that there are a lot of pain points in the journey of pursuing faction independence. You’ve got to do a lot of tracking, which involves big monster Excel spreadsheets where you input how much your net worth is you project it forwards, you do this all these tax wrappers acronyms it was just a whole host of confusing content and confusing steps to get started.  

[00:22:46.030] – Logan

And I was always pretty into my math, quite like my Excel, so I was fine with it. But what seemed to happen is I had all my friends on the weekend, I was like guys, there’s this thing, it exists, people are doing it, it’s called Fire. They are really escaping the rap race and living life on their own time. I’m doing it. Why don’t you join me? Why wouldn’t you want to be financially independent? And nine times out of ten I’d go back to those same friends a month later and be like guys, where are you? Have you done this, have you done that? And then all of you, Logan. I just got a bit pulled by this 4% with jewelry and then there was a big XL. I looked down, I just thought, I don’t want to spend my Sunday afternoon building out this Excel. So just through my own experience, I saw something I was really passionate about. So a lot of my friends and family already struggled to get started. I started just thinking I’ve got an app which makes a lot of other areas in my life easier. Why isn’t there an app helping people reach financial dependence which is this kind of life changing output which is tangible and realistic.  

[00:23:49.380] – Logan

So that was the long winded story of how tofu started in terms of what to do is now the kind of big problems we tackle is we try and make it as easy as possible for someone who’s never heard of financial independence to come onto our app and get started and get on the journey for action fence as quickly as possible. So we use open banking so you can connect in all your savings or investments. We then have algorithms, calculations which will start mapping out what your roadmap financial tenants would look like. So we ask you questions such as how much money you need to live on? Are you planning on any big expenditures? Family, buying a house? And we model that all in to create a roadmap. And then Toby of the app is there to help you at every step of the way to keep you accountable, to help you accelerate how quickly you can get there. And we’ve got cool, clever little things trying to spot inefficiencies in your journey again to try and help you get to that financial independence point sooner. And one of the most recent bits we’ve just bought into the app is this big side hustle focus.  

[00:25:00.280] – Logan

Because if you do want to be financially independent really as quickly as possible, then one of the fastest ways to do that is to set up a side hustle. And even in my case, just having 2000 taking away every month made me pretty close to being financially independent in terms of I think I could cover my expenditures. Now in my 20s, it wouldn’t sustain me if I wanted to start a family, but it definitely opened up a pocket. Whereas if I wanted to draw down £2000 on my portfolio, I’d be up with the 300,000 in there to draw down from 4%. So it just really put into perspective the kind of different ways of accumulating wealth and accessing free cash flow. So that’s something which is quite a big part of Tokyo as well. But that’s where we are right now with the app itself.  

[00:25:50.280] – Sean

Got you.  

[00:25:51.190] – Sean

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[00:26:57.120] – Sean

Visit Tykr.com. That’s t ykr.com again. Tykr.com.  

[00:27:08.060] – Sean

Now I’m on your site here, just topiaapp.com. I’ll have you promoted at the end as well. And it looks like it’s a free app available with iPhone and Android. And it looks like do you have the ability to put in like manual numbers and then it kind of projects as well?  

[00:27:28.690] – Logan

Yeah, correct. So you can put in manual or you can automate. So we have made, in a way where in theory, no one’s yet to prove me wrong. You can enter any sort of asset you want to, because I’m sure, as everyone here listening, there are so many different vehicles investing with fabric things. You can manually enter everything and you can also connect as many things as possible, assuming they do have APIs for open banking.  

[00:27:52.610] – Sean

Got you. So it’s not Monetized, is that correct?  

[00:27:56.890] – Logan

It’s not Monetized right now, but we will be Monetizing in 2023. What we are building out at the moment of premium feature set and the headline feature set, which we will launch in January, which will charge a couple of pounds a month for, is something called the Freedom Explorer, which is really interesting. And what it fundamentally is, is a way for you to explore how much freedom you have right now. So once you’ve connected in your network until it sees your financial picture, the Freedom Explorer allows you to build different scenarios of how much you could start drawing down from your net worth right now, how that would impact your future or your ultimate kind of financial roadmap. So you could turn off your full time income and you could start withdrawing 4% from one of your investments. You could increase the rent of one of your rental properties slightly and see how much cash from that gives you, what sort of impact that’s going to have on your journey. And it’s really interesting people just to get a sense of what sort of lifestyle they can look right now with what they built up already, so long.  

[00:29:07.020] – Logan

Story short, we will be monetizing through premium features in the new year.  

[00:29:13.020] – Sean

Good for you. And that sounds like a couple of bucks is going to be like a SaaS platform.  

[00:29:17.920] – Logan

It’s going to be a SaaS platform with two tiers. One is features, which is a couple of bucks. And then the second tier is actually an online coaching community, which would be around $50 a month, where you get access to your own side hustle coach they have their own side hustle courses, which you can find. We pair people up with the right side hustle for them. So based on how much capital they have to invest in a side hustle, how much time they have, what their skill sets are, we’ll then match you with the best side hustle and the best side hustle coach and then the idea is we put people into these cohorts, which would be as an FDA shipping you guys, always the best side hustle for you to pursue. You have your coach, you’ve got an online course, you meet every week, and this expert is helping you get that side hustle set up. And we’ll start charging people a monthly subscription for that service.  

[00:30:18.580] – Sean

Nice. And this is completely bootstrapped. You didn’t raise capital?  

[00:30:21.910] – Logan

We did raise capital. We raised our bootstrapped it for six months and then we raised a C round of capital to further just get more hands on deck ready to build it and also to expand to the US. Which we did about four months ago.  

[00:30:39.090] – Sean

Nice.  

[00:30:39.670] – Logan

Okay.  

[00:30:40.200] – Sean

How many users do you have on the platform now?  

[00:30:42.300] – Logan

We’ve got just under 10,000. I was hoping we might hit the 10,000 before the podcast and say 1000, but we’re still just shy of it. Still.  

[00:30:51.270] – Sean

That’s pretty good. And you said two years, right? You’ve been live?  

[00:30:56.310] – Logan

Not live. We’ve been live a year ago. It took about a year to get all the doctor lined and build up.  

[00:31:03.820] – Sean

Got you in your marketing strategy, how do you bring in the most users?  

[00:31:07.890] – Logan

So we haven’t actually spent a dime on marketing. It’s all being fully organic. So the Fire community is very prevalent and lots of online reddit communities, Facebook groups. So we’ve just been quite active within those communities, talking about what we’re building, telling people what we’re up to. There’s been a lot of word of mouth because people are quite keen to hand in their spreadsheets and switch up to a more modern automated tool. So that’s been our main margin push at the moment. I think the next big challenge we have is how do we move beyond the Fire community and how do we grab someone in the mid 20s off the street of the city who never even thought of the concept of financial dependence. It’s just at the start of their career. How do we bring them into our ecosystem? How do we educate them on financial dependence and finances? That’s an extra challenge which will require a bit more a bit more of a marketing strategy to execute.  

[00:32:14.210] – Sean

That’s where I see and when you unlock the payment tiers that allow you to really bring in some nice channel partners. And I want to talk offline because I do see some really good synergies between you guys and Tykr serve the same audience but very different products. So it’s a great fit. Yeah, really cool what you’re building. I like your strategy, the organic process of being in different locations all over the internet. I’m looking on your site, you’ve got some featured on like Stacking, Benjamin’s Earning, Invest, Business Insider that’s very popular. That’s awesome. Good for you. I’m curious, how big is your team now?  

[00:32:56.670] – Logan

At the moment there are seven of us working on Tokyo and we took the Brugal Mindset, which is quite synonymous around the Bar community in terms of we didn’t just want to bring on hands and feet for the sake of it, keep it really lead, bring on the right people who are really kind of invested into our mission, what we want to achieve. We’ve been cracking away for about the last year with that team. Really agile, really effective and functional. Got you.  

[00:33:29.140] – Sean

And are you the sole partner in the business or do you have partners?  

[00:33:32.740] – Logan

Yeah, we’ve got a partner and a co founder called Francer who’s quite cool. He probably didn’t call himself this, but I like to call him one of the founding fathers of the financial dependence movement. So he wrote one of the selling books on financial independence. He’s got a very popular financial freedom, so he was one of the big players in that space. And when I told him I mission of helping people, more people get onto the journey and then using automated digital tool to help them, he was immediately like, hell yeah, that sounds exactly what I’ve been trying to do with my books and everything else. So he joined his co founder as we launched.  

[00:34:16.990] – Sean

That’s great. I love that partnership because he’s somebody who’s got a book out there, already has an audience, but then you bolt on the software application to really take this to the next level. Smart strategies there. I think that’s a great partner. I’m on your side. I see Grants photo, I have seen his photo around, haven’t spoken with him, but I’d do know of him. So awesome. Before we jump to the Rapid Fire round, is there anything else you’d like to share with us about your company?  

[00:34:48.710] – Logan

There’s nothing to say. I think right now where we are it’s completely free. So if you have a financial dependence, like the sound of it, it’s definitely worth just having a play around, seeing what it’s all about. Even if you don’t want to jump onto the app itself. Even just reading up on financial independence and early retirement completely changing my life. I think I spend my days speaking to people who have achieved financial independence, and it really is life changing, which is what gets me up every day. So I would say check out financial independence. There’s a huge amount of content on it. If it tickles your taste buds, then Tokyo is the only app theori built for financial independence. Everything we do is to help people get started, get set up, and accelerate their time. So that’s the last I’ll say on it. And, yeah, I’m very excited for the quick fire.  

[00:35:43.830] – Sean

Yeah. Well, let’s dive in. If you can. Try to answer each question in 15 seconds or less. You’re ready?  

[00:35:50.530] – Logan

I’m ready.  

[00:35:51.420] – Sean

All right. What is your favorite podcast?  

[00:35:54.110] – Logan

My favorite podcast is the Two Fi Podcast and also the Five Shows. A lot of nuggets about reaching financial independence.  

[00:36:06.840] – Sean

Right on. Right on. Yes. Very familiar with choosing fi. What is the recent book you read and would recommend?  

[00:36:13.910] – Logan

Buy with Zero was a great book, which puts a whole new lens on the kind of longevity of your money and what you want to achieve out of it.  

[00:36:22.050] – Sean

Got you. You broke up slightly there.  

[00:36:23.700] – Logan

What’s the name of the book? Die with zero.  

[00:36:25.900] – Sean

Die with zero.  

[00:36:27.180] – Logan

Yes.  

[00:36:27.930] – Sean

Got you. I’ve never heard of this book. Interesting. All right, next question. What is your favorite movie?  

[00:36:35.510] – Logan

My favorite movie? I’m a big sucker for Tom Hanks, so my favorite movie is Catch Me If you can also have Leonard’s Capri in it. But a great film with a man who’s got a great fossil mentality. That’s my favorite film.  

[00:36:51.450] – Sean

Yeah. Great film indeed. All right, we have some business related questions. First one is, what is the worst business or investment advice you ever received?  

[00:37:01.760] – Logan

People telling me not to do it around starting up a business or a side hustle. The amount of people who said that was a bad idea, that’s very risky. Stick to the safety of your corporate net was countless. So definitely out of the net with worst advice I got.  

[00:37:18.510] – Sean

I love it. You’ve got this army of people pushing up against you, and your answer is no. I love it, and you do it my way. All right, let’s put the equation here. What is the best business or investment advice you have received?  

[00:37:32.510] – Logan

Don’t rush and spend time validating. I think it’s so easy to you think you have a great idea to fall into all sorts of biases with yourself and just go GungHo with time into that idea without spending a problem out of time validating it. I’ve almost fell into myself. I’ve seen so many other people fall into it. Luckily got the great advice. So spend more time than you think and then double it again to validate an idea. Speak to other people about it. Don’t speak to people who are friends with your family, because the chances are they’re going to give you biased opinions and biased advice. So really spend time validating before you spend any sort of significant capital or time on it.  

[00:38:19.990] – Sean

Right. I want to dive into that just real briefly here. Even though it is a rapid fire round, you’re right. You want to validate. But there are also people who get into analysis paralysis phase, and they just are validating for months and sometimes years. So this happy medium, I’m curious, how long did you validate your idea?  

[00:38:43.690] – Logan

That a good question. It’s a great question. So I probably validated it for maybe three months. Quite time for validation. And I think the metric for me was less about time and more about number of people I was speaking to. And I’ve got to a point where I have a client of people where it’s basically like hellyer, and I would use it and held it. There’s a huge amount of value add here. And once I got to that point that I felt confident, I’d run it by people who wasn’t mentally at the time. And that, for me, was a big kind of green light, too. You can do this. But I was living on the opposite of the spectrum, where I was really ready to just let loose, start creating it, building it, and doing that. That’s kind of been coming back. I think the people on the other side of the spectrum where she’s taking that plunge, going for it, is a huge challenge. Then I think you really do need to listen to this. Hell, yeah. Really do have belief in yourself and in the mindset of it. If you don’t do it now, you probably never do it.  

[00:39:51.000] – Logan

And I know for me, if I never did take that time, it would halt me, probably for the rest of my life.  

[00:39:56.070] – Sean

Yeah, I love that you did kind of like what I did with Tykr is talk to your audience and talk to as many people in the shortest amount of time as possible. Don’t wait weeks between conversations. I’m talking hours. Like one of those deals. You probably did the same thing. How many phone calls or how many zoom calls or how many in person meetings can I line up per day over the next four weeks and just stack them? I also like to call out, too, is I did not share the idea with any friends or family. I didn’t even share the idea. I just went right past them to find potential customers that I don’t even know and get their feedback. I’m assuming you did the same thing.  

[00:40:42.260] – Logan

Exactly that. And there’s another great book called The Mum Test, and the premise of the book is examples where people speak 20 people about their idea, and the feedback is amazing. You should do it. And then the idea kind of crumbles and falls through when they ask a mom or grandmother, auntie or uncle, any close family member, so completely. That it’s. Get out there. Speak to people who don’t know who you are if you have to stop them on the street, which I was a couple of times, and the founders do. But you definitely don’t want to be speaking to friends or friends or family.  

[00:41:20.740] – Sean

Members, and they can know about it. Right, but you’re right, there’s going to be a bias there. Maybe they don’t want to hurt your feelings. Or maybe it’s the whole, like you said, are you sure you want to start this business? Starting a business is risky no matter what your idea is. It could be the best idea in the world to be like, you know, you should probably keep your job. It’s just safer stay there the next 50 years. That will allow me to sleep better at night. Knowing you’re in a nice, safe career, it’s like, okay, we’re done here.  

[00:41:51.110] – Logan

The older generation, I mean, I completely agree with you, but at the same time, I think if I was more generation, I would probably give them the same advice when they grew up. It was unheard of to be an entrepreneur. It was something which wasn’t a thing, and it was just so normal and just a dumb thing to strap into a corporation and just sit there plotting your way up, really. We do live in this incredible time. It’s never been easier to set up your own personal business. The Paris entry is so low, as well as no code term. You’ve got a laptop in front of you. There’s so many ways to get started and start the ball rolling, which is completely different to the past generations.  

[00:42:37.030] – Sean

Spot on. Completely agree. All right, last question. Here is a time machine question. If you could go back in time to give your younger self advice, what age would you visit and what would you say?  

[00:42:47.260] – Logan

I’d visit a 16 year old Logan who would probably tell me to get lost, but I would put a suit and tell him, I’m not going to get lost until I give you this piece of advice, which would be to spend time as much as time as possible, upskilling myself, just reading into the up and coming trends. And I think doing that combined with yourself just opens up so many doors. Maybe 16, slightly young. But when you are younger, especially in your kind of studying stage, you do just have so much free time which can be wasted. And if you just spend that looking at upcoming training, if you can upskill yourself, learn how to build websites, learn how to code, you can then monetize those skills later down the line. And I think if you start laying that skill set from a young age, you can really pay dividends in your day to life.  

[00:43:39.180] – Sean

Sure. Great advice. All right, so turn it over to you. Where can the audience reach you?  

[00:43:45.060] – Logan

So our website is poker at.com or you can reach out to me directly. And I do get back to every email sent to me, which is lugin@tokyo.com. So feel free to ping a message if you have any specific questions. Otherwise, we have contact forms and email addresses on our website. Tofu is also on Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. And I’m also on Linkedinlawky.  

[00:44:13.510] – Sean

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time, Logan. This was awesome.  

[00:44:16.830] – Logan

Thanks so much for having me.  

[00:44:18.360] – Sean

All right, we’ll see ya.  

[00:44:25.160] – Speaker 5

Hey, I just want to say thanks for checking out this podcast. I know your time is valuable and there’s a lot of other podcasts out there you could be listening to. So thanks for taking the time to listen to my guest story. If you did enjoy this podcast episode, could you head over to itunes and leave a five star review? That would be much appreciated. Thank you. And last but not least on this podcast, some episodes we do talk about stocks. And please keep in mind, this podcast is for entertainment purposes only. So if you did hear any buy or sell recommendations, please don’t make those decisions based solely on what you hear. Alright, big slot.  

[00:45:01.300] – Logan

See you.