Chris Albert - Freelancer Finance

Chris is an award winning DP who has done everything from BBC news in Israel, to years of 60 minutes interviews. He recently launched freelancerfinance.net to provide a resource for fellow freelancers to better understand things like a solo 401k, and how they can start investing on a freelance income. 

Interested in coming on the show, or know someone who would be a good fit? Email us here - seth@sethlowephoto.com

Follow the show on Instagram - @thesolocreativepod

Transcript

Seth Lowe (00:01.326)
Hey, welcome to The Solo Creative, a podcast for freelance filmmakers and photographers who want to become more successful at the business of freelancing. I'm your host, Seth Weld.

Seth Lowe (00:15.118)
Hey, welcome to the solo creative. Today we're talking with Chris Albert, who is in Washington, DC. Chris is a director of photography and the founder of Freelancer Finance. How are you doing today, Chris? Very well. Thanks for having me. Yeah, I'm excited to chat. So I don't really know a ton about you. I just randomly stumbled upon you in a Facebook group and found what you were doing with Freelancer Finance and thought it was really interesting. So I shot you an email and a week later, and here we are. So.

Yeah, so all pretty new for me. I mean, the site's only been sort of live to the public for, I don't know, maybe a month. Yeah, that's cool. Have you had some good traction out of it so far? Yeah, I mean, it's getting, I mean, I'm not someone super experienced with creating websites and trying to get any kind of traffic. I've before it, I before it went live in terms of I put it on my Facebook and Instagram, I sent it to a bunch of other freelancers friends to look at.

and sort of tested it through them. And the whole point of the website is to get freelancers who don't know about the I 401k and the fact that they can have one and start their own investment sort of career and, and retire with a million dollars is to run them through the process and also see what they thought. So now I'm starting to get some comments and other, other freelancers maybe in DC that know me or like, are texting me. That's cool. But that's the point of the website is to try and.

I'm not an expert either. So this is, this is a little bit of the hard part. There's so many people that know so much more than me, but this is kind of aimed at hopefully people that are young and going to see it who don't realize that they need to start like saving for like later. Yeah. I think it's kind of a reflection of our industry though, that, you know, as DPs or photographers or whatever, there's so many people that know way more than us, but we just got to put ourselves out there and try it and you know,

willing to make some mistakes and offer something to value up. You know what I mean? Yeah, I mean, I kind of did it because there may be something out there that I missed, but I couldn't find a website aimed at freelancers that put the whole thing together and in a sort of friendly way. There's a lot of websites for finance geeks like me, like that are complicated and not very graphical and that, but there's nothing that I could find that's more aimed at.

Seth Lowe (02:40.302)
someone who doesn't know that much about finance or investing to sort of not scare them off. Because even me, I go into boogal heads or white coat investor and I'm like, I'm like, I don't know what they're talking about. I don't, that's for complicated. So this point of this side is it's supposed to be friendly, but tied all together. Like here's a 401k. This is what you put in it. Do it for 20 years. 11 million bucks. Move on. It's for people who aren't into finance. Yeah. So it's not like a wall street that's on Reddit.

type of thing. God, no. Have you ever been on that? Just briefly and I'm like, my God. It's kind of awesome. I mean, I don't know if you've ever messed with it at all. I've gone with a few other things. It's fun. It's gambling, though. I mean, I'm 51, but I did it when I was younger. I bought individual companies and bought and sold them. And then you realize no one can beat the market. It's kind of fun. And then the...

In the guide on the freelancer website, I said, look, you know, buy these three funds. They're the core. And if you want to buy some Apple, some Tesla, some whatever, just use two or 3 % of your portfolio. But, you know, you met, you know, just easy. Yeah. But, you know, buying three funds is kind of boring, but it's over long -term, it's going to make you a lot of money. Have you gone through any like formal,

financial training or like certifications or anything? Are you more just sharing knowledge that you've acquired and, you know, from your both experience and reading and just trying to condense it into a friendlier package aimed at our industry? Yeah, it's the latter. I mean, I've never had any formal training at all just by doing my own investing, building up a sizeable portfolio. And then, you know, along the way you learn that a lot of things that the industry will tell you,

are not true. Like where the industry will, the sort of finance Wall Street industry will kind of try and convince you, well, you can buy and sell shares with our data and make a lot of money. And then you get onto the Bogle head side of things, the guys that like are fans of Vanguard, where the real truth is you kind of need three funds and that's all you need in the market. And so it's condensing everything and making it super basic for people that it's not scary. Like the stock market goes up two thirds of the time.

Seth Lowe (05:04.142)
and down one third of the time. That's it. Like, there you go. There's the stock market. Okay. There are crashes and then they recover. That's it. That's all you need to know. Yeah. Do you think we're like in a crash? It's like, do you think we're headed for a crash right now? Well, that's the important question, right? Because the truth is nobody ever knows. Yeah. I follow a guy called Howard Marks from Oak Tree Capital.

he's a super smart guy, like a wise man of wall street. And he will constantly preach. Nobody knows what will happen. Right? Like look at last year, everybody thought, my God, inflation recession, disaster. The S and P 500 went up 26%. Yeah. If you had a hundred thousand dollars in your eye for a one K you finished the year with 126 ,000. Yeah. So nobody knows if anyone tells you they know they don't. Yeah. It, none of it makes sense. I mean,

Which proves that you can't beat it. I mean, if you look at, you know, people are freaking out about inflation and the cost of living right now and that the economy is in, you know, totally in the toilet, but also literally the stock market is basically at all time highs, you know, or with within a few points of that. And it's no one knows. Like it's, it's just crazy. It doesn't make sense. I mean, but the point of the, the point of the website is to try and capture people that aren't into the stock market and finance like.

It's the gaffer, the grip, the sound guy, the makeup artist. It's like, they haven't got time for this crap. It's like the basis of the website is start an eye for a 1k. You can put up to $76 ,000 in it a year at the extreme end. Buy these three funds. Just keep doing it once a quarter and don't even look at it and then get on with your life. And that's all you need to do. What are like the three funds? I mean, you hear this all the time, but like just give us kind of a

high level view of what they are and then what's in each one. I mean, and this is like the first thing I'll say is this is nothing that I came up with. I had to know there's not, there's not one original thing on my website. It's basically condensing, removing all the bullshit and simplifying it. The three funds are the U S all share market or us all share. So say VTI, which is Vanguard total U S stock. I think it maybe has around 4 ,000 companies in it. The top 4 ,000 U S companies.

Seth Lowe (07:25.358)
Then the second fund is international. It's a bunch of international companies like Heineken, Samsung, Toyota, whatever. It's maybe there's a couple of thousand companies in there. And then the third one is US bonds and that's corporate bonds like high end corporate bonds and US treasuries like government bonds. And they're the three things and they capture everything. That's the three fund portfolio. And that's what the guys on Bogle heads are sort of fans of. It's not my invention and it just

works and you can't buy the company, you can't buy one and have it go bust. You can't have Elon Musk have a meltdown and Tesla meltdown because you own potentially with those three things, you own like 6 ,000 companies. Yeah. Do you buy them all in like equal ratios? Like let's say you put in, is it totally automated? Like are you just, you know, you're dumping in like a couple thousand dollars a month and your Vanguard or whatever you use is just buying them all in equal chunks or do you even worry so much about slating that maybe I buy

50 % is the VU, you know, the US slated one and 25%. Do you do anything like that? Or do you just buy all while and buy all in equal portions? So conventional wisdom is kind of a very conventional polo portfolio is 60 4060 % stocks, 40 % bonds. And so the 60 % stocks you would mix between international and us, what I do is, is more aggressive than that. And if you're younger, you

this would be a good idea is I do about 70 % US 20 % foreign and I only do 10 % bonds. Okay. So that's the, the more sort of us stocks you have in it, the more performance you'll get, but it'll be a bit more volatile. And by volatile, I mean it goes up and down a lot. It doesn't mean that it's necessarily bad. It means that it's the price can move a lot more. So, but.

And on the website, in the 3Fund portfolio, I specify like you can do these different mixes. But the other version of this is you can just buy what's called a life path fund. If you don't want to deal with that, you can buy a life path fund, which does the mix for you. And as you get older, it moves more bonds into the mix. So the bonds are less volatile and less risky, but they make less money. So it's sort of like a automated thing based on your age. You put in your age and it's sort of a mix.

Seth Lowe (09:53.326)
Life path does it for you, but it starts getting very conservative later, more bonds. There's also some interesting Vanguard funds that are fixed. One of them is say 80 % stocks and 20 % bonds, and it just stays like that. I can't remember what it's called. I'll look it up, but they're the sort of choices. So the three fund portfolio, you control the mix. The other types, they control the mix for you. So you have your own portfolio that you're managing here.

You're also, we'll backtrack a little here. You're also union. So are you all W2 income or you have 1099 income as well? A pretty good mix. I'm probably more 1099. So I work for 60 minutes a lot. And the union there is the IBW. But the only thing I get through that is CBS makes a 5 % of the base rate pay into that.

So that's through the, I think it's called the Media Flex Plan. That's a 401k, but I don't actually contribute to that. The CBS does and it's like got 20, 30 grand in it. Okay. So it's not, are you, are you're, do you have like a 401k from previous work or just throughout time? Like a, like a corporate one or have you always had your own? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I've got, I used to be, I was staffed with CBS for 13 years and I still have that 401k and they, they moved that to Fidelity and that has basically a three fund portfolio in it.

Then I have my eye for a one K for us freelancers. and that's got it's mix. And then I also have a, a, taxable portfolio, like a normal brokerage account with money in there as well. So three, so basically three pots, three pots, three, three funds in each or with your own, with your own thing, do you buy individual stocks a little more, maybe experience like options or anything fun or extremely rarely. I mean,

You know, I bought, I think the only individual stocks is I rarely do it, but I bought Disney and I bought Boeing when they were extremely low. And I bought them as a generational buy. Yeah. And even that, and that's a tiny part of my portfolio, but is Boeing going to go well? Well, they're not right now because things keep falling off. Yeah. Boeing. So get it together. We need safe planes. Stop messing around. Disney, I just,

Seth Lowe (12:19.886)
thought they have such an amazing like library and history. But I don't know if those companies are going to do well. That's the problem when you buy an individual company, you do not know. That's why I think it's like 90 % of active managed funds underperform the index, right? Everybody out there, 90 % of people, what is it? I can look up the stat. Around 90 % of funds managed by the smart asses on Wall Street.

do worse than the S &P 500 or the index they're tracking? Well, I can attest to that because I have a Robinhood account that's just like, you know, slush fun, basically gambling, like buying, you know, picking some options here and there, having fun. It's not, you know, a significant amount of money, a few thousand dollars. And I am basically dead even after a year of a year of trading in there. So, you know, buying something boring like a fund would have been better, but it's not what it's for. It's just for.

So on the freelance finance website, there's a blog post called, why can't I pick my own stocks and make the big bucks? And listen, I'm not saying to people out there, don't do it. Like you said, it's kind of fun. If you've got a hundred thousand dollar portfolio and you want to mess around with two grand, why the hell not? But the stat from S &P Global who make the S &P 500 fund, like they're the ones who, the S &P 500 fund for anyone out there, like their stock market index is just a list of the top 500 companies by S &P Global.

Yeah. After 15 years, 92 .19 % of actively managed funds underperform the S &P 500. And those people running those funds are charging you management fees. 92 % of them do worse than if you just invested in something like VTI. Yeah. And part of the problem is you've got an entire industry trying to make fees off us. And then you've got Chris Albert on freelancer finance saying, they're all wrong. Don't listen to them. Yeah.

But so I can understand it when a freelancer comes across the website, they look at this and go, what do you mean they're all wrong? So that's part of the problem you face. There's an industry out there that want to make money off us. Vanguard is not one of them. Vanguard has super low fees. They also shrub funds with super low fees, like 0 .03%. But watch out out there. There's a big section of Wall Street and the financial advisor community where they just want to charge you fees. I have read a little bit of

Seth Lowe (14:44.174)
Tony Robbins books, you know who that is? no. yeah, you should. I mean, you've probably like seen some of his quotes or something. I didn't realize it. He's like a huge, you know, sort of life coach, financial investor. Like, you know, he's I mean, incredibly successful, wealthy person. And he's written a lot of investing in finance books. And he has this theory that the reason people pay for actively managed funds with fees is because, you know, and it's

typically people that are a little more successful, you're making several hundred thousand dollars a year or more, because they're used to paying for other premium services in their life for a better experience, like they pay for maybe a premium healthcare experience, a premium retail experience, a premium grocery experience, and those things are often better for a little more money. They assume that paying for a premium finance experience will also be better, and it's just part of that mindset, and it's not a reality.

Which makes sense, you know? Yeah, I can see that as well. I mean, that makes sense. You're like, well, these are, you know, these are the smart guys and girls on, et cetera, on Wall Street, and they're going to make me a lot of money. And the truth is, according to S &P Global, 92 % of them don't. So is your freelance or finance, is it largely just kind of blog driven or are you trying to build a little community and consulting or what are you doing? I mean,

It's more, it's kind of almost like a short course in investing. It's written more as a, there's two sections. The main website is written as a guide to opening the I 401k and to explain to people who have no interest in finance and investing, which is totally fine. Just do this and you'll have $800 ,000, $1 .5 million in your I 401k when you want to start slowing down.

So it's kind of supposed to be simple and educational. And then there is the knowledge, which is the blog part, blog posts. I call it the knowledge because it's kind of like, you know, not a blog, but they're supposed to be very pointed articles that are short and hopefully get people's attention. And that's the part that will sort of continually be updating. Like I just did a blog post today on the

Seth Lowe (17:07.342)
something called a five five zero zero EZ form. And if you don't file that, once you get over 250 grand in your I 401k, the IRS can fine you $150 ,000. That's and guess who didn't know about it? Me. Me. So what do you do? Yes. So, so there's two sections. Basically, there's the main part, which is get an I 401k. Like it's real simple. Yeah. And by stick this in it.

The rest is there's articles on what a health savings account is, the difference between funds. There's a blog post in the Knowledge Home. Look, this is the stock market. It's not scary. It goes up two thirds of the time, down one third of the time. When it crashes, be cool. Yeah. So it's not, it's supposed to be friendly. My dream would be freelancers just start sending it to each other and everybody starts making money and

can retire happily. You're not trying to make money on a ride. It's just you're just sharing. No, it's I mean, would it be great in five or five years, 10 years if when I slow down, if Vanguard came to me and said, hey, Chris, we love this. Like we want to pay $10 ,000 to be on your website a year. I'd be like, hell yeah, Vanguard. Yeah. You know, but there's no I don't make any money off it. I think if you open an individual shrub account, they might there's a might be a referral fee. But anyone who goes on there and opens any of these I for one case, I don't get anything.

But yeah, later would I make them, would it be fun to make a little bit of money on the side and continue to write? Yes. But that, my friends, some of my friends are being like, how do you make money off this? I'm like, I don't. And they're like, what are you doing? I'm like, I got sick of trying to like stand on set explaining it to like a gaffer, like, look, dude, buy these three funds, whatever, whatever. So now I created a website and I'm like, here, read this, just do that. And then in 20 years, you'll have a million bucks. Yeah. That's kind of what, I mean, that's.

this podcast is the same way. Like I didn't start it to make money. It currently makes no money. It actually costs me money and a lot of time. And you know, but it's okay. I'm, I'm just here trying to share what I've learned and I want people to be elevated and better through my experience in the shared, you know, sharing these experiences like yours. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's fun. I mean, it took a while to build the site and thanks to a girlfriend who's much smarter than me and was, like spell checked and like,

Seth Lowe (19:32.846)
fix my terrible writing because I have a journalism degree, but I haven't used it for actively writing since 1994 because I'm a television cameraman because I came up through News Magazine. I'm like, writing is a challenge. Writing about complex things and making them fun and simple for people who may not be overly interested in finance and investing is the hard bit. If you're writing for a bunch of finance geeks, that's easy. But if you're writing for a grip or a gaffer who's like, what the S &P what?

Like, yeah, it's got to be engaging. And I don't know if it is like I hope it is. Well, that's because you're Australian and you guys are the worst part of the English language. You're like all the you're like the the redneck language of the English language. I think. my God. We speak one. We speak one language and we speak it badly. So let's I mean, you're Australian. I mean, when we talked on the phone, you have a really pretty incredible like life story that where, you know, all the projects you've worked on and where where your work has taken you. So how did you get started?

I was 14 years old and saw I was watching TV and saw a news crew running down the street getting shot at. And I thought, that looks cool. So like 10 years later, I'm running down a street getting shot at. I'm thinking not as much fun as I thought. Yeah. So you started in Australia? Yeah, I started in Australia. I always wanted to be a news cameraman. You know, I got a journalism degree at Deakin University.

which really should say surfing and drinking and not journalism and international relations. But you know, then I put surfing and drinking on degrees in Australia, even though they should. Yeah. When it's local TV to have that, it'd be you guys. Terrible. I mean, I picked my university by its how close it was to the surf. So it was about 20 minutes from Bell's Beach. You know, I don't know if you guys know the scene at a point break. Yeah. That's well, that's supposed to be Bell's Beach. It's not actually Bell's Beach. I don't know where the hell they filmed that. Yeah. But.

I was Deakin University's 20 minutes from there. So that's cool. I'm like, let's go to that one. so I did three years in local TV, which is amazing. And I learned I've had amazing mentors and teachers, all the way through my career. And then three years in national TV, with the seven network, basically in our version of the white house press corps, which learned from the best there. Then I traveled for a year. Then I freelanced that I learned them for three years, working for people like the BBC.

Seth Lowe (21:58.606)
ran into some CBS people in Israel during 2003 when it was kind of kicking off there and the short story is ended up working for seven years for CBS and the television in the bureau there. So you were in Israel for say Israel for seven years? Yeah, 2003 to 10. So when you spend that much time working somewhere, are you just getting ongoing work visas or do you have to get like some sort of like green card equivalent or like what how does that even work? So Israel was a bit complicated.

But basically the Israelis would just let journalists come and go on three, on three month visas. And then I ended up getting sort of a permanent one. Gotcha. So you go to like, or a Australian consulate or something to renew or re -up, or do you have to leave and come back? Or what do you do? No, it was CBS getting a journalist visa for me. Okay. So journalists visas are generally a year and then they'll renew it. I don't know what it is now. Yeah, I have no idea.

But then after seven years in Israel, I sort of was hassling the head of the number two of 60 minutes at the time, Bill Owens for a job, because he had been in news. And every time I passed through New York, I'd go into Bill's office and say, because I was in the news division, I was a news cameraman. I mean, I was hired to film in the West Bank and Gaza because the two Israeli cameraman we had couldn't go in there. So who do you get to go to the West Bank and Gaza? You get a dumb 30 year old Aussie. Yeah. Right. So.

Eventually, Bill Owens, after I annoyed the crap out of him for years and years, said, OK, he kept saying to me, no, you're not good enough. Come back next year. No, you're not good enough. Come back next year. And finally, he gave me a job and I moved to DC. That's cool. That's really cool. How many times have you been shot at?

Seth Lowe (23:44.846)
One time where I think they were actually shooting at me, but generally, you know, generally journalists in the Arab -Israeli conflict, you can get shot by either side. Generally, they don't mean to do it. Yeah. So you're just, you're adjacent to it, right? You also can stand in the wrong place. If you want to stand with a group of Hamas fighters on the street corner, you're going to get shot. Yeah. You know, so.

Very rarely do they shoot at you. One time I stuck my head around a corner and pulled it back and an Israeli tank let a burst of machine gun fire go. I don't know. I don't think they were trying to hit me. The rounds came past so close I felt the pressure. wow. I think I would have peed a little. Yeah. Well, I just turned to the producer. I just popped my head around the corner and pulled it back really quick because that's a good way of not getting shot. You just pop your head around and bring it back. So if there's someone waiting to take a shot, they don't have time. Yeah.

And it's not like the movies bullets coming past actually make a snapping sound. They go snap, snap, snap, snap, snap. It's the sound barrier being broken. It's not like the movies, but they could have just been warning me like not to come around the corner. So the rest of the time you're just, you're adjacent to it and you might be in the wrong place. Have you ever, I never thought about this until just now. Have you ever dealt with any like PTSD from some of those experiences?

So when I would come back from places like Iraq, I would sometimes for, I don't think it was PTSD for five or 10 days, my subconscious would unwind and I would sometimes find myself lying on the floor in my bedroom. And I don't know if I'd been there for 10 seconds or half an hour, but I would have an experience like I'm lying on the ground and there's a sniper and

The rounds are cracking past and I'm not, I'm not, I'm not worried or stressed, but I'm just like, I'm thinking to myself, God damn it. I can't see where this guy is. And then I would wake up and realize I'm lying on the floor in the bedroom. And again, it wasn't traumatic and I don't think it was PTSD. That's PTSD is an amazingly serious problem. And I've shot stories on it for 60 minutes, but that's what my brain would do. And after five to 10 days, I would stop doing things like that and go back to normal. Wow.

Seth Lowe (26:07.118)
So, but I also don't want to being based in Israel for seven years. It's not like you do war all the time. The vast majority of stories were, were just stories of interest or politics or whatever. And occasionally it would kick off and then we would go into Gaza or the West bank. Or I also went to Iraq and Afghanistan and it would sort of kick off and you would find yourself in body armor on a street where it's not going so wrong. So it's not, I'm not a war cameraman at all. Okay. Like there are guys that, and

They're a star. People that love that, men and women that love going out, like mixing it up, getting shot at, I'm not one of those guys. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I still think that's, I've thought about that and have wondered, you know, I've looked at things like, you know, when the Syria thing went down a few years ago and then Ukraine, like it would be really interesting to be there and sort of capture those stories in a way that's always intrigued me. But I mean, having done it is a different, different experience. I have a friend that's,

been across, you know, spent some time in Ukraine last year. And I mean, some of his images were pretty scary. Some of the places he went.

I mean, to me, the big problem with Ukraine is, you know, when you're out in Iraq or Afghanistan,

You generally are with US forces and if you get hit, there's going to be a medevac and they've got a combat medic right there. I mean, I, you know, I haven't been to Ukraine. It's, it's, I don't sort of do that stuff much anymore, but God, you get hit in Ukraine and there's no one coming for you. I mean, they don't have a black Hawk with Anna and, and one of the world's, you know, leading trauma centers like to put you back together. Yeah. So for the, for the photo journalists and stuff,

Seth Lowe (27:52.238)
Ukraine hats off to them because they really taking a risk, you know, yeah Yeah, that's very true. I didn't even think about that that you're right. That's crazy yeah, you have a combat you're out with a unit it with the Americans and you have like some badass combat medic standing right behind you Yeah, yeah, I mean sit the best guy to make friends with make friends with the combat medic Yeah, that makes sense when you're out on those kinds of jobs like I mean Surely there's there's no schedule. There's no like

Union hours are bright, right? Like it's just like whatever happens happens or like how do you have any sense of normalcy? Like is there like a cycle? There's a lunch break, right? I don't know. I mean, there's there's not none of not at all. I mean, you know, when I drove into we drove into Iraq on the 10th of April, they took it on the ninth and you know, there is no schedule like you just you're trying to file stories, you're trying to capture images and you're trying not to get killed. I mean,

No one tracks their hours. Yeah. You know, it's like, and you're not paid by the hour too. I mean, when I was staff overseas, it was like, I was on like a salary. Okay. I'm CBS. I mean, it's not doable, you know, in a war zone to do nine to five. Yeah. I mean, they don't, they don't really follow those, those rules. You know, it's like, everybody punch in. No, and no one does, no one who does that kind of work for a living even would expect it. Yeah. I mean, I'd like to get paid more to do that. Yeah. I mean, I don't think anyone in our industry was sort of,

you know, expect ever expected it to be a nine to five schedule. But I think you even still at least get used to having like a lunch break or knowing the day ends at a certain time, hopefully or something, you know, but living in that would be super different. Yeah, I mean, my my time in Israel was a bit different because you'd be in the West Bank or Gaza. And as long as there wasn't sort of some kind of ground combat going on, you go to a restaurant for lunch. Yeah. You know. Yeah.

You know, if it was kicking off for some reason, if you say the Israelis had moved into Hebron and were conducting some kind of operation, obviously everything's shut. There's tanks on the streets. But most of the time when I was going into the West Bank and Gaza, they were just to do normal stories with normal people and you would, you know, go to the falafel shop. Okay. In the West Bank and Gaza, it's a nice normal place. I mean, that's one of the great things about covering that conflict back then is, you know, there was no threat to journalists.

Seth Lowe (30:15.598)
Like Hamas, Islamic Jihad, they didn't ever target us in any way. They just left us alone and that was it. That was one of the joys. Iraq and Afghanistan, not so much. They would put a bullet in you or capture you or ransom you or whatever. Yeah. When did you move to the US? 2010. And that's when I became staff with 60. That's when I swapped from CBS News.

to the 60 minutes program. Okay, gotcha. And then you're put your freelance now, right? Yeah, so in 2015, I went freelance and I went and talked to the boss of 60 then Jeff Fager and the travel is pretty brutal with 60 minutes. The stories are amazing, but you're on the road eight months of the year and I just wanted to sort of slow down a little bit and and I switched to being freelance the majority of people that film for 60 are freelancers.

And it's a very core group. But you have three 60 staff guys in the US and a couple overseas, but the rest and they're the core, obviously those guys. But then the rest of us are freelance. So I just I just sort of switched to being freelance. Yeah, gotcha. It makes sense. I mean, I only ask all that because I'm guessing, you know, it made it probably made it a lot easier for you to come into the US and get your green card and then citizenship being on staff there at first, at least versus fighting that battle on your own. Yeah.

So CBS sponsored me to come in on what's called an O visa and that's a skilled visa. And also the IBW, the union had to write a letter of support and agree to it. Okay. That it was sort of a transfer. Gotcha. So there are difficulties there, but the union was, they said, CBS basically said to the union, we're moving this guy, we're not creating a position and giving it to him. We're moving his position. So the union said, okay, fine. As long as you're not taking a job away from an American, which is fair. Yeah. So that's how I moved over. And then I went,

and applied at some point for a green card because the O visa is tied to CBS. So if that job for some reason ended, I'd have to leave the country within 30 days. So then I got my own green card and green card is just a colloquial term. It was an EB1. Then that's a skilled residency visa. Okay. Yeah. And is that like a lottery system or was it based on your? No, I had to apply. That one you had to get, I got a lawyer and had to come up with to...

Seth Lowe (32:40.238)
to satisfy the EB1 requirements, you had to have done all these things and prove that you were, you had a set of skills that were sought after and unusual. And again, you're not going to take a job for an American. Gotcha. Yeah. My wife is British and so we had to apply and prove that we were in an active relationship when she got her green card and we went back and I mean, printed off every airline ticket from, you know, the long distance part of our relationship and

text messages from like the previous couple of years, you know, all this, all this stuff and put together a whole proof of relationship packet is kind of crazy. Yeah. I mean, it's amazing how many types of green cards there are. And, you know, so you, your, your wife would have been on a different number to mine, but yeah, it's, I don't know what it is, but yeah, different. It was pretty, it was pretty exhaustive. I mean, it took nine months, but I mean, it sort of sailed through. Yeah. I mean, it's sailed through because.

And it's not before I'd say this, it's not because I'm some kind of amazing camera guy DP, but I work for 60 minutes and you get to do the sort of most interesting, amazing stories. So by that you end up winning a lot of awards. Yeah. So part of my green card was to show that I had to one awards and being part of 60 minutes means you've won a ton of them. That's cool. So that's part of it. Yeah. So.

shift shifting gears a little bit. Do you do you make more money as a freelancer now doing the same stuff or did you have to give anything up from the salary side or is it pretty equal?

It's pretty equal in terms of money, but I probably work less as a freelancer. So in that way I make more. But in the end, the money's about the same. That makes sense. But I also started the studio I run as a side hustle. So that brings in income as well. Why did you get started investing in your own? Was that something you were doing a long time ago, even on your salary? Or did that really come about when you started freelancing?

Seth Lowe (34:47.15)
It started a long time ago when I moved to London in 99, you get on the tube, the metro, and there's all these posters on the wall saying Aberdeen technology, you know, has gone up 725 % and they are basically mutual funds. And I'm like, huh, look at that. That's interesting. And I sort of got interested in it then on my own and sort of got interested in buying and selling shares in the UK and, you know, made a ton of horrible mistakes and like,

bought companies and lost money and, you know, finally get to the stage about 10 years ago where you really, you realize, okay, none of this works. You just buy market ETFs and make money that way. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Do you, do you see that happening very well among younger freelancers at all? Or is it like, are they just totally naive or there's some people out there you think are pretty good at it? I don't know. It's, it's a really tough thing because.

Seth Lowe (35:47.822)
It's hard to talk to people about money and investing. It's a weird subject. I mean, you know, I've done it once or twice, gone up to like a young gaffer or grip and said to her, do you have any retirement savings? And she's looked at me and went, what? Yeah. You know, so some of the crowd, my age, et cetera, will talk a little bit about it, but I don't know if you've noticed this. No one talks about it that much. No, it needs to be more of an open discussion for sure.

But also people can look at you like you got to be very careful. People can you look at you like you're a complete nutcase. If you're like, Hey man, you should open an eye for a one K and invest in these thrones. And they look at you and go, what? So I, it's a tough one. Like that's what the website's about. The point of the website is send it to all your friends. It will grab, it will hook some people, even if it gets 20 people a year to go down the track of starting to invest for later.

Yeah, then that would be great. But I'm I'm not sure how you get people that are not interested in investing interested. I mean, the difference between us as freelancers is you start a job with CBS or IBM or, you know, whatever, or the government. And they say to you, here's your here's your 401k. We'll match it. Put money in it. And as employees, we all go, OK, you join the government. They say, here's your TSP. Match it like we're going to give you this much money. And so people do it. But when you freelance, no one walks up to you on set.

your client says, why don't you open an I for one K buddy? Yeah, we're not going to match it. Yeah, but you still should do it. Yeah. I think the hardest part too is when you're freelancing, you know, some of the just getting started costs like acquiring gear and just staying alive and seeing a float and getting through a dry spell. You feel like you need to just have cash, you know, and you don't want to put it in a fund or something. And that's really hard. Like, you know, just breaking through that mental hurdle.

You know, can sometimes take it, take time. And, you know, like I, I went truly full time freelance at the age of, like 25. And, you know, for the first three, four years, really everything I made just went back into like scaling my freelance, you know, marketing myself, acquiring gear, shooting personal work, you know, all that. And I didn't put a dollar into any sort of investing. And I, and I wish I had in hindsight, but also like.

Seth Lowe (38:13.774)
I was growing my business and that was working. So I was just, you know, putting the money back into what was working. How do you, what do you tell people that are maybe at that phase? Like, how do you find a balance there? It's a tough one because you know, you're exactly right. And everything you said, and also the human brain is not, and I'm just repeating something I've read. It's not like I made this up. The human brain is not good at thinking a long way down the track because we're designed to think about, am I going to get eaten by that tiger? And do I have enough to eat tomorrow? Yeah.

So it's very hard to visualize compounding interest and what a thousand dollars invested today will be when I'm 55. And also when you're 27, you think about 55 is like some old dude, like he cares, like whatever I got to buy. I want to buy an A7S3. I don't care about if I 401k. So the thing that you would try to say to people is look, just put 500 bucks in it for the first year. You know, just and

and do it that way. But also what's really interesting is showing someone a compounding interest table on a phone. If you just Google compound interest calculator, stick some numbers in it and watch what happens. It's sort of weird. Like you put, if you put like $5 ,000 a year in it, growing at 7 % for 25 years, you end up with like, whatever, you end up with like $800 ,000 and you're like, how does that even work? Compounding interest doesn't work in your brain very well. So,

You know, I have a friend of mine. Most of us in this industry skipped that portion of math, the compounding interest. I'm totally crap at math as well. Like, you know, like, you know, in the final year of high school, I was going to do physics and I really enjoyed physics and I completely got all the, all the sort of theory of it. And my physics teacher said to me at the end of year 11, he's like, you're really going to struggle. Your math is not good.

You should really think hard about this because in Australia, your final year of high school when I did it is your SAT. Okay. So I ended up not doing physics because the math side of it was going to trip me up, but compounding interest and stuff like that. It makes sense. And on the website, I have like a couple of tables showing what in reality, what it would be like, Hey, when you're 26, you put a thousand bucks in. And by the time you're 40, you're putting $20 ,000 in. And when you're my age, you're putting $40 ,000 in and that growing at 7 % every year ends up.

Seth Lowe (40:38.19)
if you look at the table on the website at about $1 .6 million that you have. But it's also hard to tell people, hey, you can easily have a million bucks in your i4 -1k if you just start chipping away at it. Yeah. You definitely hear that, but it just seems like, not a myth, but maybe just so far away when you're just starting out that it doesn't even apply to you. You're like, well,

Like you said, you know, when you're 26, 55 or 65, it just seems like a fictional number, you know. And that's the worst part. The worst part of it is the early money is the most important. I mean, my girlfriend, she works for USAID and she was lucky enough that when she joined at whatever age she was, 26, 27, one of her colleagues said, listen, kid, you will max your TSP out. Now, the TSP is the 401k for government people.

And so she did. She maxed it out. She's 42 and has, she's doing really well because she just maxed it out from that age. So that's also, like you said, the problem is if a 30 year old starts putting 20 grand in a year, they will have close to $2 million by the time they're 55 or 60. But what 30 year old is going to put 20 grand into an I 401k? It's hard.

It's hard. If you're a grip, if you're a grip earning $80 ,000 a year and Chris Alberts has put 20 into an iPhone, you're going to be like, yeah, no, but you know, you could put in eight and that's still be huge. You could put in three. Yeah. Yeah. Like just, just start like, that's what I would say to people. Just put in 500 bucks like, and then watch it grow. Yeah. We have a, excuse me. We have a, I can't remember what the 429 maybe plan for our daughter.

Five to nine. Five to nine. That what it is? Yeah. Five to nine. Yeah. Like the college savings. But you know, she can, I don't care if she goes to college, you know, I think they can use it for like a trade program or an internship or like, I mean, you can pretty much use it for anything. It just depends on how much tax you pay on it. Like I think if you use it for college, it's no tax, but if they use it to like start a business, they just pay like general, like a 10 % tax or something like that. Maybe they actually just change the rules where you can now roll it into a Roth IRA. that's cool.

Seth Lowe (42:54.862)
Well, yeah, super cool. Well, I mean, she can she can roll it into a Roth IRA and just you know, you'll basically you're basically either funding a college right now or starting her retirement fund. Yeah. So we put in I think, you know, we started it like when she was right around one and put in like 500 bucks and just set like an automated one hundred dollars a month draft on our account to fund it, you know, and which doesn't seem like very much money. She's seven. So six years later.

I looked at the statement the other day and there's like 10 grand in there. And I was like, you know, it's crazy just how quickly that accumulates, you know, and the engine, there might have been more than that. I was like, wow. Like you just kind of forget about it because you get used to it being a part of your budget. And, you know, at some point, you know, she's going to have a great little kickstart, which is so cool. My godson, when he was born, I am, when I lived in Israel, I was putting money in a savings account. When I moved to the U .S. I opened what's called a custodial brokerage account. So you can open a brokerage account.

for somebody else if they're underage. So I put in basically 600 bucks a year. He has $22 ,000 in that account and he's now 18. And now here's the funny part. It's kind of a three -fund portfolio in his account. It's actually VTI, U .S. All Stock. And then I think it's SCHB, no SCH...

A, which is Schwab small cap and then VNQ, which is Vanguard real estate. yeah. His performance in that portfolio, the performance annualized performance. So every year, like if you average it out every year, his portfolio has made 10 .1 % every year. That's incredible. Right. I mean, that's like a 40 % beat on the stock market as a whole. Well, the S &P 500 roughly goes up at 10 % a year. I thought it was like seven or something.

No, the S &P 500 is about 10. A three fund portfolio is seven to nine. Okay. Right. Now here's the funny part. This kid's portfolio, which he doesn't actually know it exists right now. we haven't told him yet. It's made 10 .1 % annualized. Right. And this is the performance tab on, on any of you out there who have a brokerage account. Look at the performance tab, the annualized performance of your portfolio. That's the important figure. Like you, right. He's done 10 .1%.

Seth Lowe (45:16.366)
My portfolios have done like 8 .9 and 9 .2%. Yeah. And all the messing around I did, his portfolios outperformed me because I didn't touch it. Didn't touch it, yeah. I believe it. I totally, and that's like with my one for my daughter. Like I don't even, I look at the statement like once a year, like usually I just throw it straight in the mail because I'm like, I'm not worried. I'm just saving. But every now and then I like pull it open and I'm like, okay. That's cool.

Yeah, I mean, that's some advice that you often read on in different articles by, you know, smart finance people, which is don't look at your portfolio. Yeah. Because you'll probably just look at it one day or something, you know, like look at it once a year. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's that's so true. Do you think there's a good rule for like cash on hand for freelancers? Like how much, you know, what have you always kept or what do you what advice do you give out to people?

I mean, that's a tough one. I mean, just going on the reading I've done, I don't know. It's hard as a freelancer. Yeah. Cause you think about breaking both your legs, right? Yeah. You know, maybe six months. Yeah, that's about what I have. I mean, we could go longer if we really cut down on stuff. We could probably get to a year, but six months without changing our style of living. Yeah. I mean, the difficulty is...

You know, what if you can't work for a year or two? I mean, what's the backup plan to pay your mortgage or whatever? I have disability insurance just you know, it's I kind of figured it's cheap enough to You know as a safeguard, I think I pay like I Don't know maybe Eight hundred dollars a year like premium for a plan that basically pays like 80 % of my salary for life. That's pretty cheap Yeah, it's it's not bad. It seemed it seemed like It's one of those things you're like, god another insurance bill

but it seemed like, you know, being the sole income provider with kids, self -employed, it seemed like a pretty reasonable thing. I think the biggest problem is that if you keep six months of living expenses and as you get a family, et cetera, that pot needs to get bigger. Yeah. So for the rest of your career, you've got six months worth of earning, like of funding. Let's say you need five grand a month, right? Yep.

Seth Lowe (47:38.062)
That's actually about what ours is. It's about five grand. Yeah. So here's the problem. So for the rest of your working career, you've got $30 ,000 and it's going to go up with inflation, right? The requirement. You've got $30 ,000 sitting in a cash account earning usually not much. Yeah. So, you know, there's a side of me where, and I've read this too, where maybe you open a taxable brokerage account and have some of that in a three -fund portfolio.

Right. So maybe you keep 60 % or 70 % in cash and 30 % of your emergency fund in that separate brokerage account in the market. Because what's the chance that you're going to burn through the other 70 % and the market's going to be crashing at the same time?

pretty low, I suppose. Yeah, you've got to burn through that 70 % of cash, then sell your brokerage portfolio and go for that as well. Yeah. Excuse me. There's a good chance that, you know, if the market, a three -file portfolio goes up on average 7 % a year on average, you know, after 10 years, you're probably going to end up with a bigger pot in there. So I do wonder out of your five or six months of reserves, maybe it makes sense to keep.

a third of it in a brokerage account in a three -fund portfolio. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. What we've done and it's not probably a normal thing or something that will last forever, but all of ours is in a high interest savings account at, or high yield savings account at Wealthfront. So we're getting like 5 % on that amount of money. Yeah. That's pretty good. And it doesn't seem worth the risk to try to earn another point or two.

in a brokerage account at this point in time. Now, if the Fed rate changes and that drops down to 2%, I might reassess that thought. But for now, it's pretty good. I agree. Right now, but that also, you've got to keep into account what's the inflation rate, right? So inflation right now is 3%. You're earning 5%. So your real earning is 2%. Yeah. Yeah. So anyone out there, when you're doing the math, you have to take inflation off the interest you're earning because that's the differential. Yeah.

Seth Lowe (49:53.39)
So you know, long term, it's like you said, it's like if rates drop, then you've got like all that money sitting there earning 2 % and inflation's 2%. You know, your money's going nowhere. Yeah. It's a tough one for all of us because you put it in the market, you take a risk. I mean, the market could dump and go sideways for 10 years. I mean, that's possible too. It happened in the late 60s, 70s. Yeah, 70s. Yeah, it was a big, what do they call it, a stagflation.

Yeah, it just went sideways. So I mean, that's the problem with being freelance. So while we're here, are you good on time for a little bit? I have a couple more topics I wanted to hit. Yeah. As long as you edit me for content, because I'm blathering. No, this is great. You know, right now I just had a, I recorded an episode yesterday and I've had a lot of conversations this week with people about.

You know, this sort of the trend of our career and are we in a bubble with, you know, how much video content is being made and rates and all this stuff and the whole industry just seems like it's changing a lot right now. And I posted something on Instagram and it just said, like, like an Instagram story. And it was like iPad guy in 2024 is five D Mark two guy in 2010. And, you know, which is kind of true. It's funny. And I don't mean.

There's zero shame in making fun of that person at all. It's just sort of true. And I got a lot of feedback. And then I thought about it. I was like, wow, that's like 15 years ago, the 5D Mark II, which changed the industry massively. And if you go back 15 years before that, you sort of have the transition from film to digital, kind of the late 90s, early 2000s. Another huge.

cycle and change. And it just kind of stuck out to me that like also a traditional generation is measured in 15 years, you know, like the millennial is like a 15 year thing, you know, boomer, you know, all these the way we measured generations throughout time are like roughly 15 year cycles. And I just kind of feel like we're at like the death of a cycle right now and the birth of a new one. You know, you've been in this industry for roughly 30 years, I guess, you know, do you?

Seth Lowe (52:17.934)
Do you think that's true? Like, you know, have you, do you feel like you've seen a couple cycles? Is there a third cycle ahead? You know, what do you think?

I think there's two things. I think the way people learn now is differently to when I learned. I think like I'm 51 and I came up in a master apprentice system. I came, I got a job in a local TV station as a little junior editor and the camera guys would all train me. because back then you couldn't go out and buy an amazing DSLR or an iPhone 15 pro and shooting progress. You just couldn't have the cameras. So my generation was trained by other people.

Today's generation is much more self -taught because you can shoot a movie with an iPhone 15 in pro res and watch YouTube videos. So there's that side of it. So that's changed and you can publish your content for the world to see. You don't need anybody. You can just put it on YouTube and become a director or a DP, you know, whether you're a good one. That's another, you know, that's another thing. The second thing is AI. And I have colleagues that have already been told by clients,

Hey, so sorry, we're not kind of shooting our instructional videos anymore. We're using AI. Yeah. So the paradigm shift now that everyone's talking about, and I'm sure you've talked about is suddenly certain parts of the industry, you actually don't need us anymore. Yep.

Yeah, so I guess are you are you freaking out or does this look different to you or you're like, no, this is just the next it's just the way it goes and it's an up and down cycle and it'll you know, it's just a cycle and so it works or are you like, is something feel different to you right now than it has in you know, previous transitions you've seen? I'm not freaking out personally, personally, because most of my work is is with real people and real things. Yeah, and you can't replace them. If you want to do a

Seth Lowe (54:13.134)
a documentary or film a 60 minute story, you can't use AI and you need real people. There's a sector of the industry, which is the, the entertainment side and also the corporate video side where I would be worried if I was heavily, I'm a little bit in that area, but not much. That's the people I wonder about, but me personally, you know, 60 minutes needs to film real people, you know, so that's basically what I do more. I feel real, real things in real.

people and you can't replace that. Yeah. Yeah, I agree with that for sure. Yeah, I don't know. I was just trying to think through like, you know, it's easy to get worried or nervous like in a cycle change or the, you know, the market's down. And I'd say we're sort of like in a market dip within our industry, but you know, Mark, generally things bounce back in a different way or pivot. You know, it's just learning to stay calm and you know, it's easier to be calm when you've been through things, you know, like even I'm 35.

I freak out a lot less about things that would have scared me to death 10 years ago. And I'm sure it's the same for you. So sorry. I think the sectors are changing. Another sector that when I think about it, it's changing is the broadcast arena. I mean,

You know, I worked a lot for CBS and, you know, and some other CBS shows besides 60 Minutes and, you know, everybody knows the money's going in a different direction. It's going to streaming, it's moving away from broadcasters, broadcasters' budgets are coming down and people that relied a lot on broadcasters for their work, you know, the budgets are going away, the crews are getting smaller and that is the shift you're talking about. Like that's...

That's changing. Like in that broadcast world, that little segment, that's really changing.

Seth Lowe (56:03.342)
Yeah, I think it always, but that makes sense. You know, there's also been a weird lull. There's the last three or four months it's picked up in sort of April, but in my sort of world and my circle in DC, but also some photographers I talked about, there's been the sort of weirdest lull the first quarter of this year where there hasn't been much going on. Yeah. You know, for me and for most people I know first quarter is always kind of slow. So, it's nothing too unusual, but you know, I had a few people,

you know, just in this online, you know, as I talk with people have said to me, like, it's slow, but even the covers, the early conversations that typically start this time of year to kind of get work started, haven't been there. Right. And so that's kind of freaking me out. I've had other people tell me they've had the busiest four months they've had in a couple of years. It's just, it's weird. You know, I don't know what to, what to think of all of it. I think also I work mainly in the DC market and that's sort of artificially different.

to a lot of other places because the way DC works, like everybody wants to come here and interview DC people. You know what I'm saying? DC is Hollywood for ugly people. I haven't heard that, but that's great. Yeah, think about it. Like everyone here is super smart, super educated lawyers, lobbyists, media, whatever. Unlike LA where, you know, it's all actors and beautiful people. You come to DC, if you're like some...

Hot shot you want to be some hot shot staffer on the hill or whatever? So that's gonna be the title of this episode DC is Hollywood That's what I was told when I moved here by 60 minutes producer moving from television like what's DC like and he said to me Well, it's Hollywood for ugly people. That's so funny. That's that's great You know another thing I thought of and I think about this a lot, but I think it's true probably for you in what you're trying to do You know the same You are the average of like the five people you spend the most time with?

I don't know if you've ever heard that but I think that's so important. It's interesting. Yeah, like you know the five people you spend the most the five people you surround yourself with you know you're gonna kind of be the some average of their greatest and worst moments you know if you're around you spend your time around a lot of unemployed people who don't have a lot of you know ambition you're probably going to become someone who doesn't have a lot of ambition if you spend a lot of time around smart people you're going to get smarter you know it's just inevitable if you spend around

Seth Lowe (58:30.318)
time around mean people, you're going to become mean or cynical, cynical, all these things. So I think it's so important. I've been really intentional. I really try to surround myself with people who are good at investing or good at running their business or good at certain elements of life. I want to be successful at, good at being a husband or good at being, whatever it is. I think that plays into, like you're saying with investing, as a freelancer, if you're,

you know, start to surround yourself and intentionally seek out conversations with people who you think, hey, this guy seems to have it together and is doing a good job. You're going to probably start to get it together and do a good job. I mean, that's exactly, that's right. I mean, a good friend of mine is a professional investor we met in Israel years ago. And because of his friendship and his knowledge, he's helped me a lot. Like, hey, listen, like, why don't you do ABCD?

you know, and has given me some amazing advice because that's what he does for a living. Like he's an investor in like real estate deals, et cetera, et cetera. And he's like, like one thing he said to me once about my house and he, he said to me, well, why don't you refi your house and take some capital out and invest it. And I said, but it's my house. And this friend of mine, Josh said to me, no, it's not. It's, he said to me, are you going to live there forever? I said, no. And I said, okay.

So it's an asset you're living in. And I was like, huh. Yeah. Interesting. You know, so it's interesting. Like, yeah, it's an, he's like, it's an asset. And you, he said, you have so much capital built up in that house that you're not using and you can take that money and reinvest it. Now I'm not telling people out there to do that. Let me be clear. I don't know if I want to do that. They're not refi. Yeah. You know, and by saying that I had like, I don't know.

50 % equity in my house. Yeah. Right. Like I'm not telling anyone to refi the house and invest it. And by investing it, I mean, I invested it in some real estate, very sensible, boring real estate deals with him and some other people. Like I'm not, do not, do not mortgage your house and put it in Bitcoin. Do not do that. But what I'm, the point I'm getting to is he gets me thinking about things from a business perspective, cause that's what he does.

Seth Lowe (01:00:56.174)
So I've really benefited from that. He's like, okay, let's look at it from an in another way. And you'll go, and I'll suddenly say, that's interesting. Yeah. And so like that's kind of proves my point. You know, like he's, he's one of those kind of five people in your close circle. You know, it's obviously some of that is averaging into the way you think about the world and make decisions. Yes. And it's also the stuff I read online. I happen to enjoy geeky finance stuff. and so reading like a financial samurai and

you know, boogal heads and like, you know, Howard Marks, who's a very well known, very sensible investor. You know, he has these occasional notes that he releases to the public after his clients have seen it and you start absorbing it. And my website is a very, very basic version of much smarter people. You know, like I said, there's not any...

super original thoughts on my website, but it's trying to boil down the basics. Have an eye for a 1K, get a HSA, go into just boring, like, but profitable investment funds. Here's the stock market. It's actually super basic. Don't listen to all the noise. Off you go. So if someone isn't doing these things, can they just go to your website and kind of get all they need to know and get started on their own? Or is there still like a step? Do they need to go somewhere and sign up for something or meet with someone?

Go to the website and on the homepage, just click on the link and there's a guide on how to open an i401K. And the guide takes you through it. It's like, what is an i401K? How much can I put in it? What do I invest in? How do I open it? Right? And that's the most important step for any freelancer is to get that going. Even if you look, if you're 26 years old and you're listening to this, start it. The forms might be a bit confusing. Just say, if you go with Shrob, call them.

and they will walk you through filling out the form. And then, you know, just put 500 bucks in it. But say that's the website. The website is get going. You can easily make a million bucks. Here's the guide, five pages. And then there's a bunch of posts in the knowledge section about other things that freelancers should know. Like also, like you're talking about savings. There's a post on using MaxMyInterest .com, which I first read about with the Wall Street Journal.

Seth Lowe (01:03:20.046)
as their investment columnist, Jason Zwieg. If you can afford the Wall Street Journal, the digital edition, it's sort of pretty awesome to read. MaxMyInterest will take your money and route it to the banks that are paying the highest interest rates. that's cool. Yes. Jason Zwieg mentioned that it's a good product and MaxMyInterest don't hold your money. They just have this dashboard that link all the banks to it. So you can instantly open a new bank account by clicking open and your money moves to it.

And I think the top rate, the top accounts right now are paying 5 .3%. Yeah. I'm actually, I'm actually getting 5 .5 on mine, but only that's pretty good. Yeah. It's because it's normally five, but they had this, there's like this thing, if you invite someone and they sign up for account, you get a 0 .5 % boost. And so I'm on it. It only lasts for like six months or something. So at some point I'll revert back to five, but Hey, you know, for six months, it's pretty solid. Yeah. And this is, this is like, there's, I have a blog, I am posting the knowledge section, which is a blog on.

your emergency fund and where to put it. And again, I'm coming off the knowledge of reading Jason's wigs, column, everything he writes on the Wall Street Journal. The guy calls Wall Street out all the time on their bullshit. And like reading people like him, like is where a lot of this website came from. And the point of the website is, I get it. You're not interested in this stuff and you don't need to be, but I'm just trying to condense it down into some.

like knowledge of like some bite -sized pieces that you that people can just get hold of and go great I for one K Max my interest open HSA You know done. I'm on the way That's cool. Sorry for the background noise. I don't know if you can hear that my I have a girl upstairs who is not at all I can't hear it. Okay, cool. I didn't know I can hear it and I was like I don't know if it's bleeding through or or just actually coming back through and it's also everybody's used to it now like yeah, you know, everyone's true on a work call with a kid sitting in your lap Yeah, that's a good point. That's a good point. I

We've kind of hit like all the topics I had but one thing I'm just curious about because I realized it through our conversation is your house is above the studio space that you rent so just from like a people doing real estate is that how does that affect like your taxes or are you zoned commercial or like what's just kind of what's your setup and how did you figure that out or was that intentional or you know go so I

Seth Lowe (01:05:45.806)
It's unusual. And I was very lucky when I bought this property in 2010. Nobody for a start, nobody wanted to buy it because it was anyone who doesn't, you know, it was a bit younger 2010. The whole country, the economy was in complete meltdown. It was the financial crisis. When I bought the property, the ground floor was zoned as a commercial property, which is unusual. So when I bought the property, the ground floor had a commercial license. The upstairs has a residential license.

That is the only way you can ever run a business from a building. You need a commercially zoned premises. Otherwise, for example, in DC, the only business you can ever run is if you're sitting at a desk using a computer and that's in DC called a home office. So it was, that was how I managed to do it. But when I bought the property, there was no intention of opening a studio that just sort of came later as a thought. That's cool. Interesting.

Yeah, don't try and start a studio with clients coming in and out in a residence because your neighbors will call the city and they will shut you down. We did a shoot for Bic, you know, like the lighters a couple of years ago and we used my home as the location and I told my neighbors, I was like, you know, hey, there's going to be like 12 people here and two production tents in my backyard and it's going to be a chaos for two days. Don't worry about it. And they're like, okay, sounds good.

But yeah, it was a disaster here for like two days. Yeah, but I mean, that's fine. It's like you just, you just used your home as a location, but running a permanent business out of, you know, I know people that have done it and it doesn't end well. So it was just, I was lucky that this, the building has a COO certificate of occupancy as a, as a business. okay. That's cool. Yeah. I wondered my dream, like sort of, honestly, like I've always wanted like a building where I'm like, maybe I could have like a studio.

on the main level and like a cool loft space upstairs and you have it and like that's so cool. I would love that. Yeah. I mean, when I, when I bought it, I was a staff cameraman with 60 minutes and I had no intention of leaving. And that was kind of a dream job. I mean, you know, to, if you had told me when I was a 20 year old cameraman and local TV in Australia, that you're going to end up working for CBS 60 minutes, I would have looked at you and went, are you insane? So, you know, I ended up.

Seth Lowe (01:08:07.886)
I was doing that and I ended up renting down renovating downstairs and renting it to a photographer. And he used it as a studio for two or three years. And then just as I was going to go freelance, he said to me, I'm kind of too big for DC. I'm moving to LA. See ugly people, DC, pretty people. he's and, and he had been renting it to some photographers and he, he told me that. And I said to him, wait, you've been renting this to people that, right? And he said, yeah, but you said that was okay. I'm like, no, no, no, that's fine.

How does that work? And he went, I just do a B and C and I'm like, okay. Well, do you mind? We'll break the commercial lease. And if anyone out there doesn't know commercial leases, they will like, you will lose limbs if you try to get out of one, they're written in such a way that you cannot get out of a commercial lease. Right. So I said to him, we'll cancel the lease. And if you don't mind, I'll take those five clients and I will turn the space into my own business. And he said, yeah, I don't care. So.

We sort of did that trade. And then I went, how do I run a studio? I have no idea. And got on the internet and started looking at how other people run studios all around the country. Are you on a, is it like on peer space or something? Or is it just kind of word of mouth? So most of my, yeah, it's mostly word of mouth. Most of my bookings come direct. And the studio is called Studio Works DC, spelled with an E. Cause that's the German way of spelling it. And so it would sort of, it would also like be

a separate would separate itself online. Yeah. Cause if you spell works, there's too many like that. Gotcha. Yeah. but I, I did, I do, I am on peer space as well, but 90 % of my bookings come direct. And, and again, DC is a relatively small market. There's not that many studios in DC. Yeah, that makes sense. That's cool. Yeah. And my place is more rigged for, it's not a big white studio or anything. It's more rigged for interviews. So it's got bookshelves and chachkis and furniture and

and backgrounds. And if you want to go in there and do four documentary interviews, you can have four completely different looks in the one space. That's really cool. I'll have to check it out. Yeah. Yeah. So that's the, that's the side hustle. But, and in no way, I would say to people, the ultimate side hustle for all freelancers is investment is the I 401k or a SEP or whatever. But don't get yourself wrong when you're thinking, I need a side hustle. That's the side hustle. Cause it takes no time.

Seth Lowe (01:10:35.918)
My wife and I, she, she doesn't work. we have, you know, just with having kids, she used to be a hairstylist. and we like, maybe like three years ago, I don't know, two or three years ago, we're like, let's start a side hustle. And we w we had gone to this wedding down in Nashville and this girl had an old sixties Volkswagen bus with a photo booth. Like there was, there was just the back bench seat and you'd climb inside and had like a ring light and a camera and the little touch screen. It was like, you know, I could do photo booth inside the bus and.

That's super cool. Yeah, it was awesome. And so we were like, that is so cool. Maybe we could do that in Peoria, you know, because there's nothing there's nothing around here. And so we started doing a bunch of research, kind of put together a little business plan, found this, I mean, just epic 1971 Volkswagen bus online. There's this, there's this website called the Samba like, th, ESA MBA. And it's sort of like, I don't know if you've ever been on bring a trailer.

You know, like you can auction like cool vintage cars. It's like just a forum of like, you know, old dudes who are into Volkswagen's like, Hey, I've got this Volkswagen bus. It's for sale. Here's my bank account. You can wire me 40 grand and you'll hear it. You know, it's very like, you know, it's like the like an old classified ad. It's like, it almost like probably predates, what's the one site Craigslist. It's almost like a Craigslist thing that still exists for like this micro niche of people. And so we found this Volkswagen bus, you know,

The guy sent us some pictures. We literally wired him like $20 ,000. He put the bus gets shipped here and we started this business and it was working pretty well and it was fun and you know, having an old bus was cool. But after about a year, we were kind of like, God, this side hustle thing is not worth it. Like I'd rather just chill out on the weekends. I don't need to like have another thing. And we, so we just sold it and invested the money. It just wasn't, it wasn't worth it. That's the, that's the problem with side hustles. They need to.

You somehow need to make money and not suck up too much time. Yeah. The time investment wasn't worth it. I was like, I'd rather just not. Especially when like I'm seeing, I'm in a relationship, but I don't have kids. So, it's, you know, if you have kids, I mean, yeah. That does the thing. We had kids and it's like our family time is worth more than being at some stupid wedding on a Saturday after I've worked all week. Yeah. So, I mean, you know, there's other real estate, there's other ways to have side hustles and I guess that's investing. It's investing in.

Seth Lowe (01:13:04.782)
I mean, the problem is buying. Everyone thinks I'm going to buy property and rent it out. I mean, like, well, unless you get a managing agent who's going to take 11 % and probably do a shit job of it, like real estate's a lot of work too. Because tenants are always... Yeah, I mean, I have a rental property with four apartments in it and it's a 10 minutes from here. So I have a great contractor though I can call and say, hey, Tom, go and fix this. But renting property yourself is not...

as hands off as people think. It's not passive by any means. No. And if you do make it passive, you're not going to make so much money because someone's going to be like, you know, a letting agent will be like taking 11 % of your profit and then like hiring overpriced contractors and not really paying attention to what they're doing. That's my opinion of how that little system works. I think you're very correct. I'm sure I just pissed some people off, but... Hey, it's a hard truth.

I think you're very accurate. Yeah. Well, Chris, this conversation was great. I had a lot of fun chatting with you and just getting to know you. And I really appreciate you sharing everything. So thanks for your time. Yeah, it was a pleasure. And hopefully a couple of freelancers out there in 30 years ago, it was that Aussie cameraman. And now I have a million bucks in my 401k. I hope so. I'll throw a link to your site in the show notes and make sure to send people your way. Yeah. I mean, hopefully it helps a couple of people. Yeah.

Me too. All right. Have a good one. Hey, thanks so much for tuning in to this week's episode of The Solo Creative. If you enjoyed it, I hope you share it and you can connect with us on Instagram at the Solo Creative pod. Hit us up with any questions or suggestions for show guests. Thanks and have a great week.