[Ep. 381] The Canadian Guide to Getting Rich (Slowly) with Adrian Bar

Jessica 

So excited to have you on we’ve tried to record this intro several times. getting distracted and talking about other things we have a day. Yeah, we can be here all day. I know. We are talkers, beer talkers. While I’m so excited to have you on the show your second ever podcast. I feel very grateful and very exciting for anyone who’s listening. You were in my studio and by Studio I mean my basement with my toilet paper. But it’s a studio nonetheless. And yeah, this is exciting. I have not recorded in person interview. I’ve gotta say in like five years. Like there was there was a time right even for a few special people. I traveled to them. Wow. I mean, within Toronto, I’m not going outside of the city. But you have standards. Yeah, standards. But yeah, it’s crazy. I’m so excited that you’re here. We’re doing it live. And for anyone who doesn’t know you’ve got the really awesome YouTube channel called Canadian into t shirt. Let’s start there. What is what’s, what’s the name where that stemmed from? Sure.

Adrian 

Well, Jessica, thank you so much for having me. It’s my absolute pleasure being here. Again, this is my second ever Podcast. I’m totally new to this kind of world and kind of just doing things more live unscripted, kind of like no unfiltered. So this is fun. And I’m really excited to be here. So thank you so much. Um, yeah, so mine, I started my YouTube channel, Kenny in a T shirt over four years ago now. And the reason why I mean the reason why I named it that way well, there’s a few reasons one is when I first started on YouTube, there were only like maybe two or three other Canadian focused finance YouTubers out there but at least that I knew of most of them the vast majority the other finance YouTubers were us focus and they You know, a lot of them were great. They taught, you know, good kind of fundamental general topics. But a lot of them are more like us focus, like, you know, Roth, IRAs, 401, K’s all that kind of stuff, which Canadians, it’s like speaking Greek to them, right? So I want to emphasize that I am Canadian, and I wanted to only ever really just dial in on the Canadian audience, right? So Canadian and T shirt, I want to emphasize that I’m Canadian on day one. And then in a T shirt, because that’s who I am. Like, I’m, I’m not a fancy guy wearing a fancy suit sitting in a fancy office on the 50th floor. I’m just an average Canadian, an average guy, I wear a t shirt. I wear jeans. Like I’m not trying to impress people. I’m not trying to use big fancy terminology to make myself sound smart and like intimidate other people. I speak down to earth, I want to be as like relatable and approachable and accessible to people who are starting from square one. So that’s why I started Canadian in a T shirt. Also, I mean, funny story, it was another kind of side quest, I guess was, I wanted to be like, I love collecting like deaky T shirts with like, you know, like Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, all that kind of stuff on and a lot of my friends were actually designing T shirts, so wanting to like sell their T shirt designs. And it’s been four years later, and I haven’t set up merch yet. So even though that was like one of my first like, like revenue streams, I planned out four years down the line. I haven’t really, you know.

Jessica 

I should probably do that. I really should. There’s actually a way with not to plug Shopify, but you can set up a Shopify shop and connect it to your 100%.

Adrian 

I know that the barrier to entry is so low, and there’s no excuse for me not to have done it yet. But I keep getting caught up in other projects.

Jessica 

Canadian and a T shirt shows itself it’s really like it’s the work is already done.

Adrian 

So I have no excuse. It’s my probably one of my biggest sources of embarrassment, the fact that I haven’t done this yet, but it’s it’s coming hopefully by the FBI. It was maybe like Christmas. Yeah, there’s the Christmas season.

Jessica 

You ever feel like that’s a good idea.

Adrian 

I can’t make any promises.

Jessica 

People check in, you’re like, that’s amazing. That’s awesome. And honestly, like, only four years, and you’ve like I just checked your subscribers, you have like 140,000 You’re gonna be reaching 200k. So I don’t know. But that’s I mean, do you get any? Do you get a special plaque for every 100k?

Adrian 

So when I reached 100k, which was, I think, January or December, this past couple months ago, a year ago now. That was for me a huge milestone. So you get the you get the silver plaque from YouTube when you reach 100k. The next plaque is a million. Oh, gold plaque. And I mean, Canada has what 40 million people. So I doubt that I’m going to be able to reach a million Canadians. That’s a big, so I don’t think that’s going to happen. Right. But you know, you never know, I loved I’ve been doing this for four years now. And I still love it. So I plan on doing this until I told you not really Yeah. So maybe one day I’ll reach to the one mil plaque. But at this point, it’s kind of like the 100 subscribers. It’s kind of more like a vanity metric.

Jessica 

I did 100%

Adrian 

i my i think we agree on this. Like we don’t really care about, like how many subscribers we have how many followers we have, we we would rather have like a loyal and engaged following. But even if it’s a smaller fall, I’d rather have like, you know, 10,000 Ryder dies who watch every video and comment on every video and like, like, interact with me on a daily basis. Right? That’s way better than having 500,000 strangers and they only like watch sporadically once in a while. Right?

Jessica 

And also I find that the people that do have like those bigger channels. Ooh, they’re the trolls and the critics are the bots.

Adrian 

I’m me bots are endless. Oh, my goodness. Yeah.

Jessica 

Yeah. So yeah, I’m curious, just like out of like, just personal curiosity. Because hopefully one day in like 10 years, I’ll get my, my 100k Black. Just like Google, like reach out to you to be like, Hey, we saw that. And then they like, do you like to? Is that how it happened? Yeah.

Adrian 

So so they sent me an email when I went out, you know, it was like a week or two after you reach 100k. You want to make sure that you didn’t like by the followers? Oh, yeah, to get to know, there’s a few of my kind of friends or colleagues were like, really close to 100k. Yeah. And they’re like, they’re trying to do anything they can to kind of bump up. Just Just be patient you’re gonna get anyway, so after a couple of weeks after you reach 100k, you get an email from YouTube from Google. And they say here, enter your name, it will send you the plaque. Here’s the address, right. And then like a couple of months, maybe like four or five weeks later, yeah, it came in the mail, you know, big black box with Google on it. And then it was, it was a it’s shiny, like it’s a silver shiny plan. It was a heavy, not really, it’s very light. It’s very light. But I I’m always every time I put it in the back, like on my bookshelf behind my studio. I’m always worried it’s going to tip over. But so I need to like, set up something to like, stick into place.

Jessica 

But I wonder Do you know why some YouTubers have like over 100k Like I’ve seen some people that have like 200k and they don’t have the check mark. Is that like a different thing to check mark?

Adrian 

And that was also once you reached I think it was 100k threshold Avenue. I don’t know why. Interesting. I’m not sure about that.

Jessica 

Yeah, it’s a tangent that has nothing to do with anything.

Adrian 

I didn’t have to apply for that. I think that just happened yeah, Instagram checkmark I had to pay for that.

Jessica 

You know what, but hey, do you have less like spammy.

Adrian 

Punishing it’s worth the money and it’s it is.

Jessica 

I think it’s fine. Like it’s it’s I believe me if I could have paid for it. Yeah. When I had all my spam sure as heck.

Adrian 

When I remember that there was a time right. Take your something in a picture. And there was like those seven Jessica Morehouse ice cream cows it was which one is it? So I know it was getting a bit.

Jessica 

Yeah, crazy. Yeah, that’s wild. So you started your channel four years ago, which is amazing. What was the goal? Was it just a hobby? Because like, I know now this is what you do full time since your career but before you were working and what did you do for work and it didn’t have anything to do.

Adrian 

My youtube channel started purely as a passion project. So I was working. I mean, I’ve been a my career has been a roller coaster. I wanted to be a cardiac surgeon, one point of quantum physics professor at one point, but for the last three, three and a half years of my career, I was working as an AI Artificial Intelligence, like software engineer feel like that’s

Jessica 

A good career. Like I still is.

Adrian 

I love my job. Yeah, it’s all about AI right now. What is really like it’s like, in a lot of ways, I could be making way more money. But But again, I’m there’s no amount of money for me. That’s word Yeah, like working for someone else again. Yeah. What’s your last like? Freedom?

Jessica 

It’s literally the only motivation I have to work right?

Adrian 

Like, I know who I know who I am. I know my capabilities. I’m a workaholic, no matter what, right? If I’m gonna be a workaholic, I want all those blood, sweat and tears. Yeah, be worth it. I want to be the one reap those rewards, right? So yeah, so I, when I started, I was an AI engineer, nothing to do with finance, right. But what I did was I would, we would basically do like three to four month projects, where we would hire a new batch of college students. Every semester, every three to four months, we’d hire like, between six to 10, Co Op students. And I was I was kinda like the unofficial manager of all of them, right. And what I really liked to do was, every Thursday, I would do like a little like, kind of like unofficial Lunch and Learn sessions, where I would teach them like soft skills, like how to write a resume, interview skills, that kind of thing, right. But I also taught them like the fundamentals of finance, like how a credit card works, how taxes work, how investing works, and they the students eat that up, because no one tells, ever taught them that. And they loved it. And like after every couple, every semester, a new batch of cops came in, I realized I was kind of giving the same speech again and again. And I’m like, I mean, if I’m giving the same speech, why not just kind of like, you know, cement these lessons in video format. Yeah, so I did that. And I put them up on YouTube. I never expected anyone to watch it was purely a hobby, purely a passion project, if anything was more to kind of like, share with my friends and like, share with my students and stuff, right. And slowly as the months went by, I started gaining traction. I remember when I think I reached subscriber, the first like, 56 subscribers, friends and family. Yeah. And then my first subscriber number 57. His name was Jeremy Commando. And I’m like, I have no idea who this person is. But thank you so much for subscribing. Like that’s amazing, right, some random person found me and chose to follow me. And then as the months went by, you know, I kind of grew and grew. And then about like, a year and a half later, I reached 1000 subscribers and I got my I got accepted to partners program where you can put in you get to benefit from ads. And I got my very first paycheck from YouTube. It wasn’t a lot. It was like $67 And I was like,

Jessica 

Oh my god, I got it.

Adrian 

I got a letter in the mail from I got a check in the mail from Google.

Jessica 

I remember when they sent chat, it was so cool. You know, they’ve changed that though. My I have my like, YouTube channel for my podcast, and I finally reached 1000 views. It’s not good enough anymore. I can’t monitor like, I don’t make it. No, now you have to have a certain amount of view hours. Yeah, stuff like that. And I just don’t have so for me, it was but I thought it was like back to the time it was just like 1000 subscribers, and then you’re good to go.

Adrian 

For I guess I was in the middle of like, Wait, it was 1000 subscribers and 4000 watch hours. So I actually reached 1000 subscribers before I reached the 4000. Watch. So like, Wait, yeah, exactly. Right. So and then and then, you know, as the you know, I was still working full time for another year, two years after that. And I got to the point where I was I was stressed out and I was working 60 hours a week in my job. I also had other business side like side businesses. Oh, really. I was working another like 30 plus hours a week on YouTube. Businesses. I did tutoring. I still did some contract software development, contract web development gigs. At one point, I had a had a had a modeling gig for a while.

Jessica 

Oh, it modeling.

Adrian 

Like art like for arts art studios. Art modeling. Yeah. Like holding poses and stuff. Right. So that was kind of fun. And it was good. It was fun. It was a good workout. Fun, fun way to kind of meet people and make some make some good money with great, great job. I was a little student. It was I always had multiple things going on. Right. And I was at the point where I was stretched so thin and with YouTube, and the YouTube ad revenue and affiliate income and all that kind of stuff. Right? I was at the point where I was making enough not known nor near as much as my job, but enough that I could reasonably kind of cover my living expenses. And this was probably still in the middle of pandemic lockdowns. Yeah And a lot of my friends and close friends were actually like losing their jobs. Yeah. And here I am. I’m feeling like I’m at the point where I want to voluntarily quit my really good job. And you’re like, oh, and I felt guilty for that. But I knew it was a risk. Yeah, right. But I made the decision, and I’m so glad I did. And also, for me, it was a risk for sure. But the same time, like, you know, I had confidence that my employer would be happy to take me back anytime, right?

Jessica 

Yeah, of course. They’re like, we this is a growing industry they need over AI. Exactly.

Adrian 

Exactly. So So I felt comfortable taking that risk, but it definitely was scary. And I’m so glad I did like now, you know, I’m still working nonstop. A couple of years since Yeah. So that was I’ve been full time about two years now. So like, I still I don’t take weekends off. I’m working day. I remember that was plugged in. Right. I remember I have to start to like reel that will have a towel back down. I’ve been working that for years.

Jessica 

I’ve got a book actually, you need to read I have a guest on my show. And I don’t know when it’s going to be after this episode or before it but anyways, I have a guest who wrote the book, the good enough job, and it’s incredible and you need to read it. So you need to read Yeah, no, it’s yeah, that’s reminds me of me quitting my full time job and doing million things and not taking weekends and then you I don’t want you to burn out because I’ve been through burnout multiple times. Yeah, I don’t live already and you know how bad it is. I don’t want to I don’t want to do that again. It’s awful feeling in the world. And

Adrian 

Then I feel like I’m a bad friend. I’m not seeing my family. Like neglecting my health. I got everything right. And yeah, I appreciate that.

Jessica 

But you know, with that, I’m curious you been doing this for two years. What have you learned because I know a lot of people listening you know, see I you see this on YouTube and social media all those people tend to quit their job and be a content creative people. I was talking to someone the other day, and they’re like young people in school, like in high school or middle school. They aspire to be a content creator and influencer now. And I’m like, That is like, in my view, I’m like, Oh, the world’s ending. No, no.

Adrian 

So you know, when I was kid, it was like, oh, I want to be an astronaut. I want to be a rock star. I want to be a soccer player. Yeah, like an actor. I want to be Mr. Beast.

Jessica 

Mr. Beast, I don’t know if I’d want to be Mr. Beast. He looks also to you know, he does a lot to me with too much.

Adrian 

Yeah, and it’s a lot of pressure. And, and like, I like to think for me, I don’t want to have like 50 million subscribers. Now I want to be like, like, very marginally famous in the sense that like, every once in a while, good records on the street. But I only get recognized by people who like me.

Jessica 

Oh, yeah. I don’t want to be recognized with someone who I don’t want to be.

Adrian 

Like Kanye West for half the people love me. I want to be able to go to a movie.

Jessica 

That’s ultimately what we’re doing something in her childhood made us not feel good enough. And now we’re just trying to find that love externally. So what has your experience been? As like a content creator starting from scratch? Like going from doing it as a hobby to full time? What was that experience? And what have you changed in order to, you know, improve your revenue, so you can you know, make maybe not as much as your last job or maybe that’s the goal is like, I want to meet that or

Adrian 

I have to write so well. For me, it’s interesting. Like, it’s kind of a bit of a dichotomy, because one area I was always treating it as a business in the sense that I was always keeping all receipts I was doing tax deductible business expenses. So you’re fighting I was tracking everything, all the analytics, right? So I was always had that kind of like, you know, mentality of, at any given moment, I know exactly what my net can miss for the month and all that kind of stuff, right? But at the same time, I also really don’t treat it like a business in the sense that this has always been a passion project. And I still, I it’s still something I’m passionate about, like I I don’t want to get to the point where I feel like I’m dreading filming a video now. It does happen once in a while where I’m not feeling it. I’m exhausted.

Jessica 

It is a job. It really sometimes feels like a job.

Adrian 

That’s why but you asked me like what has really changed and to be honest, nothing really like the thing.

Jessica 

I just like making more videos is that the biggest shift.

Adrian 

Honestly, the frequency of my videos hasn’t really fluctuate it hasn’t really been it’s normally our schedule is you I think you have like you have like a weekly upload schedule.

Jessica 

For the podcast, not for the okay, let me tell you it’s been pretty desolate.

Adrian 

This year for me, I tried to do every two weeks I’m making a public video and then kind of in between like, maybe once or twice a month on like a members only video but like, the thing is like even from day one my favorite aspect of the whole YouTube gig was the engagement with the audience and like responding to comments answering that like every day I to this day, I still spend at least two to three hours every single day responding to comments on YouTube. And I know that like people have told me this other viewers told me other youtubers told me like you’re crazy like no one else does.

Jessica 

But that’s part of it. Right? I’d say like that engagement is what brings people in fashion and again.

Adrian 

I don’t get paid from comments. I don’t get paid for them, but like well, one i Love it. Like I genuinely do love answering questions, but too. I build such a fiercely loyal audience because I’m not just making a video and then be like, Okay, guys, see you next week. See ya two weeks, right? Like, yeah. So like, if you scroll through all my videos, even like my videos from four years ago, and you scroll through almost every comment I’ve responded to, right, yeah. And like, and I’d love and like, the thing is, for me, it’s like, like, Yes, I know, I’m spending a lot of time every day doing this. And I could spend that time making more videos, and so making more money, but like, with, the reason why I started YouTube channel is because there’s so many people who are starting from square one, and they don’t know where to turn. So for me, if I can take away five minutes out of my day to write out a paragraph, like answering their direct question, they appreciate that so much, because, you know, there’s a lot of general questions that you can google like, Oh, what did he say limit for 23? Yeah, Google will give you the answer in 10 seconds. But there’s a more specific question like, Oh, should I transfer my stocks from my margin account to my keepsake count at the beginning of the year, when I get new to save room? That’s a question that Google probably won’t answer. It’s a more specific question where you can ask me and I’ll give you a specific answer. And the fact that I like, you know, like, when my viewers kind of received that one, a lot of times the third that amazed how you respond to them in the first place. And then I write us such a thorough answer, kind of going through the crossing all the I’s and dotting all the t sorry, dotting the i’s, crossing T’s, right? Like, we were talking earlier about, like we’re doing live things, we screw up little like idioms and sayings.

Jessica 

I mess up, like literally, I would have done. That’s why I don’t see a lot of idioms because on the podcast, especially because like, I’m gonna miss it.

Adrian 

I know. And there we go, right. Yeah, moving on. Yeah, so like, it’s like, um, you know, I love having that one on one engagement. And that’s something I never want to lose, even if I do reach a million subscribers one day.

Jessica 

I hope I can keep that, because that’s what sets you apart. Because, yeah, the problem, I think, with a lot of those big content creators influencers is they lose touch with their audience. And that’s how usually, then you’re like, Oh, why are they losing followers? Or why are they not as popular anymore? It’s because they lost touch with why they started. And if the whole point of you starting this was to help people educate people, because you saw how valuable that was in your life, and you started doing that with those interns, then that’s an amazing thing I do the exact same thing I do not have is I don’t spend that much time, but I have it in my little Asana like to do list every morning, look on my YouTube comments and answer as many as I can. And yeah, it does take me time. And yes, some of the questions are either really specific, and so like, and if they are, that’s why they’re asking the question, because they can’t google that I have to do a little research. But I actually don’t mind because I’m like, Oh, I’ve never gotten that question. My toes, and I learned a little something.

Adrian 

And that’s the thing, because now it’s kind of like since you and I we do this every day. Yeah, we’ve been exposed to all those really nitty gritty, kind of obscure, kind of wetland left field questions, right. So when we do like a live event, and we do like a live q&a, I’m like, face because I’ve already seen like the craziest question.

Jessica 

I know. Yeah, no, that’s I think the best thing and like I even do that for my investing course, we have a monthly q&a Zoom. And so I’ve had the course for almost three years now. And like at this point, because I’ve done so many of them, it’s been really great, keeping me on my toes. But also, I’m like, now you also can kind of see repetitions of what questions people have. And that’s also a great way to find other videos what I should make a video about, because people keep on asking that. So clearly, they can’t find the answer online. I should feel that right. Right.

Adrian 

No, more honestly, like, like, for me, I would say maybe like, like, 70% of the videos I make the topics are topics that I want to talk about. Yeah. And I feel like there’s an unmet need. Yeah. But like, 30% is just what you said, right? I get the same kind of questions again, and again. I mean, people don’t realize, like, so many Canadians don’t are either like, they’re they have like a fuzzy understanding of this, or a total misconception. That’s great video to make. Right?

Jessica 

Exactly. I’m curious. Yeah. How do you determine what you want to make? Like one thing I find with some Canadian content creators, and I even fell into this, you know, situation in Tibet is, you feel like, Oh, I could grow my channel more. If I didn’t just talk about Canadian stuff. Do you feel like we kind of talked about, like, there’s a limitation on how people are Canadian, there’s a ceiling. But for me, what I found is, I mean, there’s like a term like niche down to blow up. That’s kind of a great thing to do. Right? And for me, I’ve liked that because a lot of people come to me because I am Canadian. Do you ever kind of think, should I talk about things? Specific Canadian just so I can grow my audience or no, you know what, you know.

Adrian 

I’m almost always exclusively Canadian, especially when I make my taxes videos or my entrepreneurship videos, those are all like Canadian specific, specific tax laws, right? Then my investing investing basics like you know, what is the dividend? What’s a REIT? That’s more universally accepted. But there’s even those videos I still have like a Canadian focus, right? Yeah. So I’m the same boat. I felt that temptation like, Oh, I wish I kind of expense the 10 the 10 times larger US market, but at the same time, it’s like then I would be a tiny fish in a giant pond. That’s true. And like these people wouldn’t like, again, like I was saying before, like I don’t want someone to follow me. And then only watch 10% of my videos. Yeah, I want someone to like, be like a ride and die and watch every one of my videos. And that’s what I can only get to get in the Canadian market.

Jessica 

Now I know one thing that I think brings a lot of people to your channel even for me, that’s probably how we discovered you quite honestly is like googling stuff like, Oh, hey, who is this guy? Yeah. Is you talk a lot about investing? Obviously, that’s a very hot topic everyone wants to know, invest in and build your wealth, but you do it in a way that’s not cringe.

Adrian 

That’s my baseline. Right? Yeah. How cringy? Is this title? How could you create a thumbnail? If I as a viewer would be like shaking my head at this, then I’m not gonna do it.

Jessica 

So tell me a little bit about like, how do you make sure that you aren’t going to be like cringy? Or like all the people that are like, little bit like, Oh, you’ve snake oil salesmen like trying to sell me to buy this thing? And what is your like, personal investing philosophy? Like, how do you how do you invest in how do you like to educate? Invest?

Adrian 

So for me, my, the pillar of my, I guess, brand that you could say, is authenticity and transparency, right? I will never ever, ever preach like endorse a stock that I don’t personally invest in. I will never make a video about investing strategy that I don’t personally believe in. Right. Like, when and I’ve seen you know, over the past four years, I’ve seen the the hype train, I’ve seen the rise and fall of trending topics I’ve seen people were going crazy, but NF T’s and crypto stocks and IP and likes risky. IPOs. Right. And I avoided them like the plague, right? Even though Yeah, I would have gotten the views, I definitely would have gotten the views and the attention, right. I don’t believe in those things. And I think they’re dangerous, right? And that’s why like, you know, when you’re actually the very first YouTuber or content creator I’ve ever met, and and then now since this past year, I’ve met, like dozens of others. And all the youtubers that I’ve met, like yourself and others, I respect you guys, because you guys have the credibility. Yeah, you practice what you preach, right? I know that there’s a bunch of other content creators moreso on the US side, but on the Canadian side, there’s the flip flop, right? Yeah, they’ll make one video talking about how dividends are the way to go. And next week, the big Oh, dividends are dead next week later, oh, it’s only crypto, right? And they’re just chasing trends. Yeah, they’re chasing topics. And then at the end of that you as an audience, you’re like, what do you really believe in? Like, what is your true philosophy? Yeah, who are you? Are you Yeah, there’ll be there’ll be pumping a random IPO like a new penny stock that they just found. It’s like, really? You just found that Yeah, more like, now that you were Yeah, they may have gotten paid for that. Probably. And you and I, we get those emails, right. We get those spots shut down.

Jessica 

I feel like no one no. Junk folder, probably going to my job. Or if they’re anything, unless it’s like, delete.

Adrian 

Right. And it’s funny when you see those stories of like, you know, I’ve seen like, as example, like tattoo shop very good butchers. I got those emails couple years ago being like, oh, we’ll pay you X amount of money to like, interview our CEO and blah, blah, blah, right? Like, no, like, I’m not going to sell my credibility. I don’t believe in this company. I look at the financials, I look at the metrics. They’re spending, like six 500% of the revenue on marketing. Ooh, that’s insane. That’s a huge red flag. I’m not gonna do that. But then I saw the people do those videos, right. And I’m not gonna say I’m not gonna like force them to like, get the patient is there.

Jessica 

I was tempted to, it is hard. I think that’s one of the hardest things, as someone who got into this business, to be transparent and have that integrity, it’s hard to maintain that integrity when people have money. And you’re like, and because, you know, we’re, we want to make money. We want to build wealth, we want to have a good life. It’s hard to make sure that you are like, checking yourself and you’re like, No, no. Why did we start this? We did not get this in for the money. Because every time and I don’t know if there’s there in the early days of my blogging there were I definitely did some like sponsored blog posts. And I’m like, This is just This is just for the money. They do not exist anymore. They’re deleted. That was when I was really broke, to be fair, but it’s hard to sometimes say no to a big wad of cash. I agree.

Adrian 

I agree. Right. But yeah, I guess I think you and I are similar regard. We always work with investing with our with our brand with our businesses. It’s about long term mindset. Right. And you can’t buy back your integrity. Exactly what makes us special what makes us stand out? Right. It’s not that we’re brilliant and that we can like time the market and outsmart you know Warren Buffett. No, we have were relatable. Yeah, we resonate with our audience and we’re sincere and transparent. Yeah, right. Yeah. Once you lose that credibility, you can’t get it back. No. So even though like a really fat one time paycheck could be tempting. In the long run. I regret it’s gonna work.

Jessica 

Yeah. So tell me a little bit more about what do you do for investments? I know you talk about you’re talking about I don’t know actually you talk about like dividends a lot. You talked about you do. Do you do just individual stocks you do ETFs combination?

Adrian 

Yeah. So for me I’m I’m that I’ve two main philosophies. The two main pillars are long term investing. I do not care about short term volatility. I don’t care about short term performance. I don’t want to get rich overnight. I don’t care if a stock will go down. Two weeks from now, four weeks now. I care how will the stock perform 10 years from now? 20 years from now? So for me, it’s all about time in the market versus timing in the market. Right? So long term mindset, I only want to invest in quality, well established companies that have a long term track record, they have a history of being profitable and increasing their profits. You have to year, quarter after quarter, right? Will these companies 10x? In two years? No. But will they have reliable growth? Eight to 12% a year? Yeah, that’s perfect. I’m happy. I’m happy with that. Right. So long term mindset is number one. And number two is diversification. And that’s in all areas, right? So I do a combination of individual stocks and ETFs. Right, I do the ETFs to get kind of a broad index market exposure. And then within those ETFs, I kind of double down on some of the little gems or particular winners I see in there. Right. And it’s fine to do this, but I don’t have overlap between your stocks and your Yes, as long as you’re aware of that, right. You want to be too heavy, so Exactly. Right. And then I also did diversify in terms of like, you know, my my asset allocation, right, like I have, I invest in dividend stocks and growth stocks, I do reach and more capital appreciation, focused ETFs I invest in geographic diversification, you know, Western Canadian and US markets, and a little bit of international exposure to I cover, I try to cover all the sectors right? I love, for example, REITs like real estate investments, I am a real estate investor as well. That’s the kind of sector of my definitely well, right, like, so I’m a I’m a huge proponent of real estate, but I don’t want to be all in in that sector, right? Get to diversify across no telecoms, financials, insurance companies, consumer staples, staples, all that stuff, right. So for me, it’s not I’m never trying to outsmart everyone. I’m not trying to find those needles in the haystack that will 50x. Right. I just want quality companies, companies that I would be proud to own. And that I you know, and I know that I have a long term future. And again, even even that being said, even my favorite stock of all time, like something like you know, TD or Procter and Gamble Company that I love, I never want to have more than let’s say, six or 7% weighting in stocks. I want to diversify across all those great established companies. Because, you know, let’s say, God forbid, something cataclysmic happens, and TD stock goes to zero, right? Worst case scenario, that’s not gonna happen, but if it did, yeah, worst case scenario, I lose 6% of my money. Yeah, I’ll survive. Yeah, suck. Yeah, but I’ll survive. Right. Yeah. Meanwhile, a lot of the you know, younger kids or younger investors, they’ll have like, they’ll be like, 60% in Tesla. Yeah. 40% in Nvidia, yeah. And are these quality companies? Overall it Yes. Yeah. Are they? Are they overvalued?

Jessica 

Yeah, I mean, but also I don’t, I don’t trust Elon, so.

Adrian 

I’m not Yeah, I’m not sitting my money. Right. So like, like, even even if a company that you know, in love and you and let’s say you are an Elon standard, yeah, he’s gonna go to the moon, even if it is a great company that is, let’s say profitable. Even a profitable company can still be severely overvalued. Right? Is it worth, you know, a $1.5 trillion market cap? I don’t know. I don’t know.

Jessica 

So how do you keep track of everything because that’s the other thing that I mean obviously there’s there’s so many tools out there by like, you know, software companies or whatever but your spreadsheet person like myself.

Adrian 

I’m also you just built your own special Excel. Well, a combination of things. So I use Excel, but I kind of I have my own Excel dividend tracker spreadsheet. You’ve probably seen my YouTube videos are kind of short all the time and I give them I give like a free template for it. But that’s a template I personally use. I track all the stocks, I bought all the stocks, I buy all the stocks, I sell all the TVC and RSP contributions and withdrawals, I make all the you know how many the number of shares I own the dividends I received from them how many drips I get what my drip ratio is drip meaning like when I get like those automatic dividend reinvestment, right. So you kind of like built compound on autopilot. So that’s what I do. That’s my main source. But then I also went through my brokerages like quest trade will simple I use those for the more like the live values, right? So you can kind of see like my portfolio performance overall. And then I also use blossom social, which is the, the the app that I’m kind of partnered with now. And I’ll give a super, super quick version of a Boston socialist, it’s kind of like we think of it as the Canadian LinkedIn for Canadian investors. Right? So it’s kind of a social media platform for Canadian investors. That’s half of the app where it’s like, you know, you write posts, you can ask questions, people can comment on stuff, but the other half is kind of like a portfolio summary and a portfolio like analysis, right? So that way I can kind of like automatically, you know, track how my portfolio is doing on a day to day basis. I can see when my current dividend yield is if I went up or down today across all my brokerages across all my accounts. So that was a nice kind of automatic, really quick snapshot summary of my portfolio, but the real meat and bones and meat and potatoes of my of my portfolio tracking is Excel because I have total control and I can do whatever.

Jessica 

It will take you a long time to keep things organized and do it like because that’s the other thing too. That’s why I’m an index investor. I’m like, I want the simplest thing ever. That’s why I’m like not into like, I mean, I’ve got some individual stocks but in general it’s and that they’re just like Buy and hold kind of things. But in general, I feel like yeah, it’s most people are afraid to I don’t want to be a day trader, I don’t have time for that, you know that. So how long does it take for you to just to do all kind of active management in terms of like tracking things making your contributions or rebalancing? How long does it take?

Adrian 

For me? It’s, it’s, it’s such a habit at this point. And as long as you do it routinely, yeah, like, it’s, it’s kind of like, you know, if you’re, if you’re if you’re running a business, you’re like, you know, bookkeeping, your expenses, right? If you wait until the end of the year, yeah. And then you have the shoebox full of asbestos. Yeah, it’s gonna take you days. Yeah, right. But you make a habit of doing it once a week, once every two weeks. It’s really not bad. Like, it takes me 1010 minutes, right? Like, obviously, like a month, maybe 10 minutes a month, just kind of update my Excel sheet. After the new drips I receive. If dividends are increased, hopefully they increase, right? I just go through each of them and kind of update that. So it really doesn’t take me as long as you make a habit of it, and you make a routine out of it. It doesn’t take a whole lot. And then terms like researching the stocks. Yeah, that definitely takes time. Right. And you should take the time. Yeah. If you don’t have the time to research stocks, then don’t buy individual stocks. Yes, then yeah, if you want a more passive hands off approach kind of set and forget it to like a broad based index fund, maybe even like an all in one comprehensive index fund, right? That’s fine, right? Or even something like like Robo advising or whatever, you do pay fees for that. Yeah. But it is kind of a hands off approach. If you want to invest in the individual stocks, you do have to put in time, because remember, you’re not like a stock is not a magical thing. You’re not buying a stock not to the lottery ticket, yeah, you’re buying a piece of a company. So you have to understand how the company works, how the companies makes money with their current situation is what their future looks like, what kind of projects is going to work on how they’re handling their debt, those are all. And you kind of evaluate that in two ways. You go through the financial metrics, right, during the financial reports, which again, it can be very interesting for other people, but you also have to kind of read the, like the press releases and the news articles and understand like, you know, what’s going on with the company and what the future holds. Because it’s not just like, it’s like stocks aren’t just like a black box where you put in, like numerical metric metrics in and you’re, like, spits out an output? Yeah, you’re buying a company. And companies are unpredictable, yeah. But you can kind of make an educated guess of where the future of the company is gonna go. And there’s no shortcut to that you have to kind of read the read the articles and understand what the company does.

Jessica 

I’m curious, how did you learn about this stuff? Because it’s like, were you always interested in this? Did you learn about this in school? Or did you just educate yourself?

Adrian 

No, I educate myself. So when I first got started with investing when I was in university, so the story that I was, I mean, I think for most Canadians, I start with mutual funds. Yeah, right. Yeah. So and I started back then it was ING Direct. Now. It’s tangible. Yeah. And they were, they were pretty good. Like, for me, I mean, for me when they’re lower fee than most the big, significantly lower fees, right. And they were way better than like the GIC rates, or savings account rates I was getting. And at the end of the year, I got like, a nice dividend on top of a little bit of capital appreciation. So it was very exciting, right? And then I kind of, you know, I’m an engineer, so I’m all about maximizing efficiency in terms of my time, my money, my effort, all that kind of stuff. Right. And I kind of I one point, maybe a couple of months in into mutual fund investing. I sat down in question myself, like, Okay, what, like, it’s nice that I’m making money off this. But But what’s what’s in it for ING Direct? Well, tangerine. But what’s in it for them? Why are they providing me the service? And at that time, I had this misconception I think a lot of Canadians do is that like, oh, they get a 2% fee off of the profit. They make me Yeah. And so they are incentivized to make the money. But no, no, that’s not how it works. They don’t take 2% off of the profits. Yeah, they take 2% off the full amount of money. So whether they gain whether I gain money or lose money, tangerine doesn’t care. Yeah, they get their cut, they get the money every single year. So there really isn’t a financial incentive for them to make me money. Yeah, so I started realizing, like, if there is no incentive, what am I paying this fee for? Yeah, like, why am I paying a guaranteed 2% loss on no matter what, no matter what, right? And, and I started looking down, like kind of, you know, kind of looking into like the weeds of what exactly the portfolio looks like. And it was just a bunch of ETFs and stuff. So I thought to myself, well, why am I paying them 2% Every single year when I could just replicate that portfolio for myself and buy the exact same portfolio and keep that money to myself. So that’s when I started I was probably like in third year university thing. When I bought my very first ETFs and individual stocks. I still remember to this day, it was TD stock, BMO Dollarama Coca Cola, Procter and Gamble, and Rio, Cannes and Enbridge, yeah, and then I two other ETFs and I’ve never sold anything, those are all companies. I bought some day one, and I’ve never sold them I’ve kind of like every year I kind of increase my my holding on them. And for me that was kind of I wasn’t lucky because on day one, I kind of I didn’t chase the the riskier stocks I chose than the more established blue chip companies that I knew that they weren’t. I knew that Coca Cola wasn’t going to 10x overnight, but They’ve been around for almost 100 years. Yeah, they are like the deaf, they are so many things. You own so many brands. It’s even even if like everyone decides that, you know, Coco was on helping rock and drink Coke anymore. They own minimum orange juice. They own water they own, like half like, you know, 30% of the brands you see at the grocery store are owned by Coca Cola. Yeah, right. Yeah. And they and they are they have such an, um, touchable track record. Yep. Right. They’ve been paying dividends for like they’ve been receiving payment, like over 70 years, and they’ve increased their dividends every single year for I think it’s something like 67, maybe even 70 years. Right. So that’s amazing. So one thing you get, I mean, you get capital appreciation, you get a great passive income through dividends, you get increasing dividends year after year. And as the share price grows and your dividends grow, you’re increasing your yield on cost, right. And that’s, that’s what that’s what that’s why Warren Buffett, you know, he bought gold stock really cheap in the 80s. Right. And now even though I could call it now as a dividend yield, I think it’s around, I try to guess off top my head, like maybe like 3.6%, something like that, right? Warren Buffett’s yield on cost, the dividend yield, the income he’s earning off, the money he put in? is way more than 3%. He’s earning probably like 18 20%, on top of the great capital gains is good, right? So for me, that’s why I want to focus on I want to focus on a long term mindset. And I want to focus on companies that have a good track record of sustainable dividends and increasing dividends. I don’t chase the high yield. I don’t want a company that that can boast like a 9% dividend yield or 13%, dividend yield. That’s a trap. Like it’s tempting, I guess you might think, Oh, my God, I’m getting my money every year. There’s no such thing as a free lunch, right? You might be getting 4% of passive income, which is taxed if it’s not on the TV or whatever. Right. But that’s probably most likely, most likely the company’s spending more money on dividends than they’re bringing in and revenue. Yeah, that’s why they’re really bleeding themselves dry. Yeah. So yeah, you’re getting 12% dividend yield now, but the stock is going down in value, like 15% a year? Yeah. So in the end, you’re losing money. Yeah.

Jessica 

It’s hard to not Yeah, chase this kind of thing. You mentioned earlier that you’re also into real estate. Do you want to talk about like, Do you own a property?

Adrian 

I don’t own the house I live in. So I’m, I’m of the mindset. I guess. This is kind of one of those controversial debatable topics. So I know lots of people with the mindset where I don’t think of a principal residence as an investment not to say it’s a bad idea. Yeah. I mean, you own a principal residence, if you want us to build up the pride of ownership, all that control total, everyone that makes sense. But don’t fool yourself into thinking this is an investment. You’re not buying it as an investment. Right? You’re buying buy until you I mean, it could be investment, yeah, years down the line when you sell, but that’s not why you bought it. Right. And investments when you put money aside today, with the expectation that you’re gonna make more money in the future, until you decide to sell your primary residence. It’s just an expense. Yeah, right. Yeah. So for me, I rent where I live. But all the rental all the properties I own or rent the properties. So over four years ago, in 2019, I bought my very first rental property in Kitchener Waterloo. And then a couple years later, me and my brother, we partnered and we bought another rental property, then we bought a third rental property, based on the appreciation of the first house, which is one of the real powers of real estate investing is the power of leverage. Yeah. Right. Because not only do you get to benefit from the money you put in, you get to benefit from the bank’s money. Yeah. And if you make a 20% downpayment, like most of the four times, the money you put in is the bank’s money, and you get the benefit from 100% of the money, even though only 20% that came from you. Yeah, right. Yeah. And there’s no other asset class that offers that level of leverage, right? Yes, you can do you know, you can, yeah, you can do margin calls and whatnot, and then borrow money from foreign investment? I don’t recommend that. Yeah, investing is risky. Now, stock market investing is not do that. You should only invest in money. That’s your money. Yeah. Not the not alone. Yeah. And money that you’re comfortable to potentially lose money that you don’t need. Yeah, next, you know, 510 years, at least. Yeah, but with real estate, like, you’re able to benefit from a huge, huge amplifying power of leverage. And here’s a really cool example is that like, for example, my first rental property I bought four years ago, right. And then during the pandemic, obviously, house prices kind of shot Crazy, right? So my house I bought in 2019, essentially doubled in value. Yeah, in like, three, three years. So what how can I kind of benefit from that growth? I could either sell the house, right? I don’t want to do that. Because if you sell a house, you pay significant capital gains, tax liens, bet realtor fees, realtor fees, right. So that’s, that’s a huge chunk of money. It’s still very profitable, right? But I didn’t want to do that. I still want to benefit from the increased equity, the increased value of the house, but I want it but I have a great tenant. I don’t want to kick them out. Yeah, I want them to keep you know, living there for the next 20 years and collect a passive income. So what I do, I went to my bank, and I did a refinance, I did a HELOC. I basically went to the bank and told them hey, look, my house is worth double what I bought it for. I want to take on a second mortgage, I want to refinance and borrow against that you increase equity then you increase the value of the house. So they did I got a HELOC. I basically got like $100,000 loan, and I use that to buy my third rental property, right. So that the amazing thing with that with real estate is that you can gain such incredible momentum. Because the first house took me years to save up the downpayment, second house was a little easier, because I partner with my brother, we were 5050 partners. So instead of you know, so we put in, you know, sort of saving years for 100 grand downpayment, we only had to save 50 grand each, so that was a little easier to do, right? The third house, we bought, without using any of my own money, it was just money from the loan of the value of the first house, right, and I’m gonna keep this going, like a couple years down the line, my second rental property is going to increase in value, I’m going to take a second loan on that use that loan to buy a fourth house a couple years later, do the same thing. My third house will grow in value, take refinance, buy a fifth house, and keep on going. I mean, eventually, I’m gonna get tapped out and the banks are not good. I mean, I’m gonna have so many mortgages at that point. Yeah, it’ll lend it to me. But as long as you run the numbers, and you use those, those loans, for smart investment or business purposes, not only is that, you know, you can kind of like, expedite the acquisition of rental property by years, right. You can accelerate that by years, but also that interest you pay on those loans is 100%. tax deductible, as long as you use it for investment or business purposes. Right. So a lot of you know, especially now, I mean, everyone’s hurting with real estate, right? Yeah. Interest rates, right. I my interest rates from one of my properties start at 1.5%. Now I’m paying 6%. Yeah, right. Yeah, that hurts. But I have the I’m in the lucky position where even though yes, the interest rate is that was 6%. Because it’s a rental property. All the interest is tax deductible. Yeah. So in actuality, if I’m at a 40%, tax bracket, after taxes, my effective interest rate is not 6%. I’m only really paying maybe 3.2%. Yeah, and for me, 3.2% is still really good. Yeah, it’s almost free money. Yeah. Right. So that’s why I, you know, I definitely, I’m a huge fan of stock market investing. And that’s a huge part of my channel. But don’t neglect real estate, in terms of like pure dollar amounts. Real estate is my real estate portfolio is significantly bigger than my stock market portfolio. For me, real estate is the real fundamental backbone of my long term retirement plan, my long term wealth wealth plan.

Jessica 

But what’s your plan as a landlord, though, because I feel like a lot of people are resistant to real estate, because I mean, unless you hire a company that does that for you, but again, then that’s eating into your profit. You know, do you You’re your own landlord, have you gotten you’ve had a good experience? You’re lucky.

Adrian 

So also, the good thing is like, me and my brother, were partners on this, right? So we can kind of share the load between the two of us, if a toilet needs to be fixed, and we need to replace something, either I’ll drive over to the house, or my brother will drive over. Plus, I mean, it’s definitely gotten easier since I quit my job. Because now if I have to drive a rental property, I don’t have to ask my boss for permission. I don’t have to take a date. Yeah, use the publication date for that, right. I can just go and fix the issue myself. And me, my brother, we’re generally pretty handy. Most things, most easy things we can kind of handle on our own. So we haven’t needed to use a property manager. Obviously, if it takes up a plumbing issue or ecological issue, we hire someone for that. And it sucks paying $300 Just for a plumber just to show up. Right? But you gotta do it you responsibilities the landlord, right. So so so far, with the three rental properties between me and my brother, we’ve been able to manage it between two of us without a property manager. If we get the fourth one, we’ll see we might at that point, we will have to reevaluate and kind of determine maybe we need a property manager. But that’s, that’s one of the reasons why we only buy in Kitchener Waterloo because my brother lives there. And I lived there half the time. So it’s easy. If I were, you know, again, there’s there’s always opportunities other places. Yeah, you can get way better cash flow, if you buy like in Windsor, or Sarnia, or some further away, right. But I don’t want to drive two hours to fix toilets. Right? Or I have to hire a random property manager that I don’t know. And how am I going to trust them? Yeah, I don’t know. Right? So for me, you know, yes. Even though kitchen was a little bit more expensive. I have the peace of mind knowing that the one I know the area, I know the economy, I know that vacancy rates are low. So I’m going to find quality tenants. And to, I’m able to kind of, you know, fulfill my landlord duties without having to outsource it to a property manager. Yeah. But eventually, it’s going to get to the point where you know, you’re stretched too thin. And you have to do that at a point. But make sure that your cash flow as long as it’s still profitable. It’s definitely worth peace of mind.

Jessica 

Whenever I talk to people that own properties. I always think like, gosh, maybe I like I’ve been toying with the idea. And I just, I think part of the reason that me and my husband have not like done that, besides owning our principal residence is he is not interested in being a landlord. So it wouldn’t be me doing all of that. And I’m like, oh, no, no, I wanted to do that. But that’s still always it’s always intriguing before like I was seriously looking at like when we lived in our townhouse and right before the pandemic I bought, like, it was like real estate for dummies and like, let’s just like read all the things and just like, you know, get a feel for what’s going on and stuff like it was a real suit for dummies in Canada’s very niche or whatever, that’s good. Right? And then the pandemic happened and then their focus or priorities shifted a little bit and we decided to instead just buy a house for a lot of money.

Adrian 

And you regret now.

Jessica 

I love it. It’s fine. Like you said, it’s like this, like our townhouse doubled and that was awesome. That was a great buy. I’m really glad that we did that. It enabled us to buy this house right

Adrian 

And we have a house also doubled.

Jessica 

I mean, well, well yeah, I mean, the plan is to stay here for as long as we absolutely can like minimum 10 years we’ve been here almost two years so eight years to go. But yeah, like you said I don’t consider a principal residence. Like we didn’t buy this because this is going to be written out we want to live here right like we wanted to homestead we wanted that security and just to have the flexibility of being homeowners but exactly the only the only way you can make money is if you sell and believe me there’s so many boomers out there talk to you oh time they don’t want to sell their house because their home again even though it’s like a $2 million house now. Yeah, I try to tell someone who’s lived there for 50 years 40 years to sell it for the money and live in a condo that is not going to happen.

Adrian 

That’s a really good point right like investments should never you should never be emotionally attached you’re gonna get emotionally attached to your bill built you raise your kids here you Yeah, my memory memories, right? Yeah, yeah, that’s why on that criteria alone investment because you’re emotionally involved. Yeah, I my stocks, like if someone and that’s one thing I see all the time and we were talking about finally the consecration world right about like, you know, crypto and stuff and, and people get emotionally they it becomes a part of their identity like Oh, my crypto bro. Yeah, and Bitcoin or Dogecoin.

Jessica 

That’s a good first thing. Yeah, right. You’re like you didn’t build this or make this.

Adrian 

I love TD stock. I love and Bridgestone. Yeah, I love real cat. If you insult real can Yeah. Okay, that’s fine. For you more, more more for me, then. Yeah, you’re sure? Yeah. So you know, you have to that’s a big part of the investing game with any kind of investment, real estate, stock market, whatever. You have to get your emotions out of the out of the equation. And you need that discipline to kind of stay the course especially. I mean, when times are good. Yeah, it’s so easy to get excited. And think that you’ve Oh, my God, I’ve got it all figured out. I was like, everyone else is a fool for not investing. But when times are now Yeah, times are tough. Yeah. And you’re seeing red losses across the board. That’s where the you need that discipline. Yeah. And it’s easy for, you know, a new beginner to kind of listen to us say on a video like, oh, yeah, you know, ignore the short term volatility focus on long term hearing is one thing when it’s your money on the line. And you’re seeing that for the first time. Yeah, it’s scary.

Jessica 

It’s hard to put it into practice. But what I will say, especially as someone who I think I started investing, now, gosh, maybe when I start investing, maybe 25. So it’s been like, 12 years, right? And I’ve seen a lot of ups and downs. It gets better with age and time, right? Because you get that experience. And you get to like, you know, when things are tough, and you stick it out, and you just don’t sell and you just like, you know, stay put, then things get better. It breaks, it builds your resilient Hunter, the next time it happens, you have that experience. And then you can remember, remember what we did last time and all the good advice, but we took Let’s keep doing that. But it’s hard when you’re right at the start.

Adrian 

The way I look at it, I think of if it’s a quality stock, a quality company and you and you believe in the long term future of it, you should not freak out when the stock price drops, you should look at as an opportunity to capitalize on that discount. I look at the same way as a house, right. Let’s say you bought a house and then I know like let’s say we were in us, right? And then 2008 housing market crashed, and house prices across the board plummeted by like 30 40%. Did your house lose 40% of the windows? Did the walls collapsed the roof on your head? No, the house was the same fundamental asset, it was still worth the same amount, just that on paper, that the current market value of the house dropped by 40%. But the house is still structurally sound. So don’t sell don’t freak out and sell live that live in the house. Hold on to it and wait for it to recover. Yeah, it’s the same thing with stocks, as long as it’s a quality company that will last Yeah, you don’t want to catch a falling knife. Like just because the stock is dropping by 30% discount. Yeah. Could mean like there’s some fundamental, yeah, there’s something fundamentally wrong with it might be something wrong, right. And the company might be in real trouble. Right. But if it’s a company that’s been around for 160 years, and they’re profitable year after year Corp, and they have won this, maybe they maybe they still got profitable quarter, but they didn’t meet earnings expectations.

Jessica 

That’s fine. Yeah, that’s fine. Like sometimes it’s like, just as simple thing of like, they, you know, change CEOs, right. And then there’s like, ooh, people are like, Ooh, there’s a new you know, person in town but then it’s like doesn’t change the quality like the CEO can be fired if they suck, you know? You know the company is gonna go down necessarily. Yeah, but yeah, so it’s just a good to keep that in mind. Well, I think I can keep you here forever but I think what people would really get value out of this checking out all of your amazing videos on your channel you have so many great topics that you cover you really cover all the basics and then some and lots of specific things as well. Where can people find more information about you follow you on the Instagram YouTube where they work, so

Adrian 

I am lucky I want to keep my brand name my handle cost across the board. It’s Canadian t shirt on Instagram on YouTube. Twitter, it’s actually Canadian shirt. Right?

Jessica 

Are you still doing Twitter?

Adrian 

I have honestly I bought I haven’t just reserved so no one else.

Jessica 

Yeah, same. I’m like I don’t know what I’m doing.

Adrian 

I don’t know I hate I never use Twitter for my personal life.

Jessica 

I didn’t I liked it before. mocked up now.

Adrian 

It was never weird. Never part of my life. Fair enough. So for me, it was more just so yeah, you don’t want someone to like Yeah. And so for me by for YouTube is my number one platform. That’s where I make my videos. That’s where I’m most responsive with. Like, if you have a question, you’re gonna answer write a comment on YouTube? And I’ll answer it within like a day or two. Right? Like, if you have a more sensitive question. Yeah.

Jessica 

Especially on a specific membership with your YouTube. What’s that as?

Adrian 

Oh yeah, so I do. So three years ago, I started a members only program where basically I charge $5 A month or $1 a week, where if you want to see my full portfolio, like I do a full like breakdown showing every single stock and ETF I own in my TV and my RSP account, I show all of it and then every single month I make a video or two showing exactly like a 15 minute video of what stocks I’m buying this month, why I’m buying it I do a portfolio summary how it fits into my new portfolio, how I’m readjusting things. So the way I kind of position that is I’ve done a few I’ve done a few like public and free portfolio reveals. But I don’t want to clutter my channel with like, oh, what stocks am I buying? And September 2020? Yeah, because a couple of weeks later, no one’s gonna care. Yeah, right. Yeah, I want to make my videos kind of I want to focus on like evergreen content. I want to make my videos like that. Are I want to make a standalone self contained lessons. Yeah, that are relevant and useful. Five years down? Yeah. Yeah. Like even like now, like on a on a weekly basis. Three out of the five most popular views on my channel, I don’t think even a week are like three or four years old. Yeah. Right. And that’s where we want to focus on I don’t want to have like trendy kind of really short shelf life videos, right. So that’s why those I really want to kind of separate that from my main public channel. If people are interested in what stocks I’m buying, and they want to see a deep dive on my portfolio, they can do that by members only video. I mean, for the average, everyday people who just want to learn how stock market works, how investing works, how taxes work, watch my my public and free videos.

Jessica 

And yeah, and there’s so much great stuff there. So highly recommend it. Well, Adrian, thank you so much for coming by to the studio to be on the show. It was so great having you on.

Adrian 

Absolutely. Round two. Let’s do let’s do it.