It's time for the multi threaded income podcast. We're like insurance for a turbulent tech landscape. I'm your host, Kevin Griffin. Join me as I chat with people all around the industry who are using their skills to build multiple threads of income. Let us support you in your career by joining our discord at mti. to slash discord. Now let's get started.
Kevin GriffinHey, everyone. Welcome back to the multithreaded income podcast. Today's something a little bit difference. A couple of weeks ago, I did an interview with my friend. David yard on his show, technology and friends. And if you've never watched technology and friends, he's up to episode like 800 something, something. And you should really go take a look. It's a great overview of just the people in tech over the past several years. And I've been lucky enough to be on a show a number of times.
And this recent time I talked about multithreaded income, kind of where the idea came from. And some of the folks that we've had on the podcast and where I think it might be going in the future. So I want to invite you to listen to the episode here in your podcast, viewer. And when you're done. Do me a favor, go give David a subscribe or say thanks, David, for, for doing the show and hopefully. I'll be back again on his show in the future, or maybe I'll have him here on multithread income.
But I hope you enjoy this. I'll see you later.
My guest today is Kevin Griffin. Kevin, how are you my friend?
Kevin GriffinI am doing well. It's a Friday. So the weekend is coming and I've already had one cup of coffee, so I'm doing all right.
It's funny how your life seems to parallel my life. I've had one cup of coffee. It's Friday year. I'm looking forward to the weekend. And I remember that, uh, you and I became MVPs on the same day. We joined INETA on the same day. We became officers of INETA on the same day. Uh, we've been just, we've been great. Following each other around for over a decade.
Kevin GriffinSo if all things work out in my favor, I will be renewed from my 15th MVP award. Oh my goodness. Beginning of July. So you could have been in. 15 time MVP, David, if you potentially maybe up to the court.
Yeah. And I was stripped of my MVP when I joined Microsoft 10
Kevin Griffinyears ago.
So that means that you and I have known each other for over 15 years. That's, uh, that's amazing. It's been a while.
Kevin GriffinYeah.
Uh, and so I understand you have a new project or relatively new project, this podcast. Let's talk about it.
Kevin GriffinSure. Uh, so the name of the podcast is multi threaded income. And it's not your typical tech podcasts. Um, I have always had kind of a, uh, interest in personal finance and building a strong financial foundation for myself and for my family and just through casual conversations with other technologists find I'm not alone.
In these sort of thoughts and conversations, uh, long, long time ago, I used to have a, another podcast called two for real dudes, talk about personal finance, just for everyone who is interested. And that was fun. And we could always talk about that later if we want to, but we ended up killing that project. And I always wanted to keep that conversation going, but since I live and breathe tech and I'm surrounded by technologists and we, uh, I have seen the job market kind of deflating.
And in the past year or two, I always thought I really like to do a podcast where I talk to people about how to use their amazing skill sets to build multiple streams of income. And. When tossing around ideas for, for a title, it's like, you know, it's kind of like multi threaded programming. Like I I'm one person, but I'm doing multiple things and that's where multi threaded income came from was like, Oh, this is a very tech centric way of explaining what it is we're trying to achieve.
Okay. And, uh, just to set some context, you are an independent consultant. That's a trainer. That's, that's your job.
Kevin GriffinAbsolutely. Yeah. Val, uh, actually I just had my anniversary 13 years ago, 13 years ago. I went independent and haven't looked back.
Wow. Congratulations. When did you start this podcast?
Kevin GriffinI started the podcast in September of 2023. Okay. And you're
releasing what, uh, once a month, once a week, what's a day? We,
Kevin GriffinI try to do once a week, uh, but day job and stuff keeps me busy. So sometimes it's once every two weeks. Um, I try not to keep myself to a strict schedule just because that's just another thing to have to deal with. Uh, it also depends on interview availability and, uh, And all that good stuff. But you know, if everything was right, it would be once a week.
You mentioned interview. Is that, I mean, you have guests on the show and you ask them questions like, like I'm doing here with you.
Kevin GriffinYeah, I try to, I have two different formats I'm playing with. One is the typical interview style where I talk to someone in the community, who's kind of doing what the podcast is focused on. They have one or more. Threads of income that they're running with. Uh, and then the second format is kind of a, just a topic conversation. So to give you a good example, uh, I have a friend, we'll call him Sean, cause that's why I call him on the podcast.
And Sean asks a series of questions about what, what it's like to go independent, to become a consultant. And I'll take one of his questions and I'll just talk about it for 15, 20 minutes. So, Like, how should you incorporate? Should you have insurance? What type of contract should you have? Um, and the, the goal is really just to provide as much information and value to the listener as possible.
Tell me about the relationship between this podcast and your, your last one, Two Frugal Dudes. Yeah.
Kevin GriffinSo Two Frugal Dudes started as A conversation with, um, my friend, Sean Marin and not really just not the same Sean, Sean's a very common name. Right. So, so Sean Marin and I would go out after user group meetings and we discovered that we both really had an interest in personal finance. So we would talk about. And investing, we would talk about debt payoff. We would talk about just techniques that we had learned.
And the ultimate goal of all this is just to have a solid financial foundation for, for my family. Um, and not be beholden to a day job for, My means, um, and one thing you learn when you're having these conversations, have you ever gone to a conference and you've had a hallway track so much gets lost to the table, like there's so much good conversation. It just gets lost to the table. And. We decided, Hey, let's, that's
a good phrase. I think you're saying that we walk away and we haven't captured that. We haven't internalized it. We haven't shared it with other people.
Kevin GriffinIt's good for me. It's good for Sean, but the value of that conversation can't be shared with anyone else. So the table is the only thing that I'm going to, I'm going to steal that phrase.
Thank you for that.
Kevin GriffinThat's fine. So we started recording a podcast and. We actually, you know, in a very small way exploded into, um, a somewhat popular personal finance podcast. And we were focusing on everyone, like anyone who had money was a target for. Our podcast. And we, we talked on a variety of subjects, but you hit this point with a podcast where it's like, all right, it's either a labor of love, or it needs to start putting some food in my kid's mouth. And,
we,
Kevin Griffinwell, it could be both. And it's like, all right, the podcast needs to start earning for itself to justify its existence. And we were looking at various ways to try to give more value in exchange for a little bit of money in there. And we're trying to do this in a non sleazy way. Cause there's a lot of sleazy ways to take money from people and not really give them the value in return. And that's just not how I was raised.
It, I was raised to, you know, it is fine to charge someone money for something, but you need to make sure they get something for their money. And when you have a name like two frugal dudes, it is really difficult. And I learned this, you know, just a hard lesson learned. It's really difficult to sell things to people who are basically a target market of frugality. So, uh, so eventually we. Well, we made probably a couple of hundred bucks. It was enough to pay the accountant basically.
And we ended up shutting down the entire podcast as Sean went off and he's doing amazing things right now. I've gone off, I'm doing all right for myself. I'm not complaining, but I still had this ambition to really want to talk about personal finance. And. As I mentioned earlier, like the job market kind of shrinking and there's ample opportunity for technologists to go off and start using their skillset to do other things and not be beholden to the day job.
And that's kind of where multi threaded income sprung up was, can we talk about these concepts, but really niche it down to technologists and software development.
Oh, tell me about some of the interesting things that you've, uh, you dove into during the last. Nine months or so.
Kevin GriffinUh, so we talked to a variety of different people on the podcast and there's several different buckets that we kind of fill in this, uh, this term multithreaded income. So the most obvious one is really independent consulting. It's the, the people who take one of two different courses where they're either a freelancer to begin with, they're working their day job and then they do some mood lighting or independent freelancing, uh, After hours or on weekends.
And we will talk to people there about just how do you find your gigs? How much do you figure out how to charge? What are some of the issues that run in you run into when you have a day job, that's your main priority. And then you have these secondary jobs that you're doing. Um, Then there's some people that do the full independent consulting route. They just, they either have lost their job and they decide this is the way to go. I'll just go independent.
Uh, or they quit their job and decided to go fully independent. That's a whole bunch of stress and things you're trying to get going right off the bat. Um, and it's a, it's a journey. It's a ebbs and flows just in terms of your funnel and who you're doing work for. Um, We have some people that have gone off to create their own products. So their own SAS software as a service or actual software products that you, you install.
And it's fun talking about the stories of how these different ideas come to be. Because usually it's. Uh, it starts as someone trying to scratch their own niche that they have a problem. They build a product to solve their problem, realize, Hey, I can take this product and sell it to other people. And, uh, there's guests with various levels of. Success with that. Some are just very early in that process. And some have crossed into the million dollar mark for the business just over, over time.
Um, we have done talks with people who, uh, run conferences, uh, as businesses and how some of the dynamics of that, uh, we've talked to book authors. We've talked to course creators and I keep saying we it's like, it's me, but it's. The community has you and your audience for the journey. Yeah. But we're really open to talking to anyone who's making money.
I just recently did an interview with a very nice young lady who was at the beginning of the, um, uh, weed dispensary business and actually building a product to that and seeing, all right, there's some hardships here. Let's build something for an industry that technically didn't exist. Yeah. At the beginning and then had the build and, uh, and grow. And it's fun.
It's a lot of fun talking to these, uh, these types of folks because they're solving problems and they're eventually building these into. Hopefully businesses that can go run by themselves and they're just collecting the passive income from it.
Yeah, I like, I like how you threw in that qualifier. Technically didn't exist. We businesses existed for a long time. It's just been legal in some states. There's no point of sales system
Kevin Griffinfor the guy on the corner.
The ultimate entrepreneur, I think. Uh, tell me, let's tell me where they're guests who I'm scrolling through and I recognize a few of these names. I know, uh, Jamie Wright and I know, um, Oh, Brian Gorman and, uh, Stephen Cleary, lots of good people here. But, uh,
Kevin Griffinuh, Jamie Wright was a very good, uh, episode. Jamie Wright in particular is just an amazing human. Uh, he's one of my favorite people in the world. Um, Jamie. What I love about his conversation was we went into it kind of with this nuance of. Well, let's talk about the business aspect of it and the, Hey, this needs to feed you.
And Jamie is very much about, look, I would gladly do any of this for free and just be, I'm getting paid just because I happen to be getting paid, but I would be perfectly happy doing all this work just for the fun and the, he called it the art of building software
for companies that building software, he would do that for free. Okay.
Kevin GriffinWell for his, uh, his own, his own products. Um, I see. So there's the, there's the means, and then he's, he likes doing all the other things and he's got it. I think finding himself in this position now where he's able to work on and get paid for the thing that he really loves and enjoys doing. That's right. Why not both? Yeah. So Jamie was definitely a great conversation.
That's awesome. I actually feel the same way when I became a technical evangelist. I got, I got this job where I was speaking at conferences and writing and connecting with the community. I'm like, wow, I did this for years for free and now I'm getting paid for it.
Kevin GriffinWhat a country. I still, uh, don't get paid for that part of it. I still do that. Well, neither do I
anymore. That was only about three or four years that I had my dream job. How many people ever have their dream job? So, uh, so now who else? So you've had, uh, We're some other interesting guests.
Kevin GriffinLet's see. Uh, if I go down, um, there was a conversation with, uh, Lucas Herman or Herman, he, um, he is, I actually found him on, someone sent me an article and it was about a, uh, stage timer, a timer product that was making, um, like five figures a month and, um, I was like, all right, this is type of guy I like to talk to. Got found a mutual friend of mine and Lucas's and, um, we got connected. We did the podcast and Lucas, uh, really interesting guy.
He was a developer and was doing something around, um, as like conferences and stuff, and people were having problems with stage timers just to keep track of. Of time and different notes. And there was no industry standard for that, that type of product. Uh, so Lucas built a proof of concept and, uh, someone's like, yes, totally, I will pay you for this. And it's just kind of grew up from there. So at its. Core. It's just a timer. It's keeping track of time.
And then there's all these bells and whistles on top of it. And Lucas makes a pretty good living with him as the sole developer. Uh, his wife is involved as well with the, uh, with the project, but like they're doing pretty well for just what you would call a timer. And it was one of those overnight successes that took. A long time. Like we, we were seeing the end of it, but we talked a lot about the process of getting to that point.
And now he's out, he's going out and he's starting a second product right now. Um, and it's fun to kind of watch people in the middle of their journey and seeing they they're getting success now, and they're just going to get more success. Uh, if they keep down this road.
Well, interesting. And I imagine that, uh, on that particular podcast, I haven't listened to that episode, but you're talking less about the technology and how he built it and more about how he's monetizing it.
Kevin GriffinYeah. We're really interested in the business of software. Um, there's, there's plenty of crap out there talking about the tech and the tech to me, Is interesting, but also really boring. Like the implement, no one ever pays because they care that something's written in TypeScript or C sharp or, or are they using next GS? Or are they using, uh, um, Laravel? Like no one really cares about that. They care about care about the problem
itself.
Kevin GriffinExactly. And that's what people pay for. So I'm so much more interested in the, Hey, I built this, uh, little product and it's. Useful than me. It's useful to other people. How do you price it accordingly? How do you get feedback from your initial customers? How do you find your initial customers? That's just so many little issues that like developers, we don't like that stuff. Most developers don't want to go out and try to market to other people and try to get them to sell their thing.
They much rather. To an extent, just put something up open source and say, you know what? I don't think this is very good, but here it is for everyone.
That's that imposter syndrome thing.
Kevin GriffinYeah.
You mentioned earlier on that, uh, you wanted to monetize this podcast. How's that happening?
Kevin GriffinUh, at the moment it's not, uh, but it's, it's a long, it's a. When hearts and minds first, and then I think a multithreaded income is more positioned to be good for some sort of coaching program, um, which. We're trying to build up a community first of just people who are interested in the subject and helping them through their journeys. And then eventually everyone hits this point where they just need more help. They need more, more hands on, deeper advice.
And that's a great opportunity for coaching and coaching is kind of the first. Like level up, there's group coaching where you just get people into quote unquote masterminds Where they can talk amongst themselves And you're the spiritual guide for for their journey Um people i've gotten a lot of value out of stuff like that people Just in general, give value out of that. There's also built in accountability.
So if you say I'm going to have X, Y, and Z done by the end of next week, if we come to the end of next week and you're not done, I'm going to, I'm going to fuss at you and say, well, what's the problem? Why, why didn't you get that done? You're holding yourself back by not accomplishing these tasks. Uh, there's a level up from that. And it's just in a solo coaching where it's one on one with a, with a different person. Uh, there's ample opportunity for things like courses.
Uh, I have two or three course ideas. I like to do focused around multi thread income and just starting one of these side threads, um, whatever it might be. And like consulting is a good one for me. I've been an innovative consultant for 13 years. I can talk very fluidly about anything dealing with that. Um, I have. A plethora of friends who have done the same thing, kind of bounce ideas off of, and I think I could build a very good structured course in how to get started down that path.
Um, the, but the big reason I haven't gone down that path is I don't have, I need the audience to sell to. So the podcast is about just selling the dream and finding people that are living the dream and showing that the dream isn't out. It's a dream, but it's not outside the scope of your capabilities as. As a normal person. Um, so let's sell that dream. Let's get the community engaged and, and built up and then start offering better products to that community to help them on their journey.
Okay. So building the audience first and then you'll start marketing to that audience once they're hooked. I'm looking at this, um, multithreadedincome. com, which is the domain that you have. It's a horrible website,
Kevin Griffinby the way.
It's not horrible. It's very simple. I love simplicity. And there's a link here for your podcast, of course, but there's also a link for a YouTube channel and a Discord channel and articles. Uh, what is this? Is this the same content, uh, that you're just
Kevin GriffinYouTube? Yeah. YouTube is the same content as on the podcast. We just cross posts to different places. Everyone consumes content differently. Uh, some like to listen to it. Some like to watch it. So we try to make sure we, we cover all those different bases. Um, the discord is where the community is at. Anyone's welcome to come hang out in our discord. Asked your questions about starting anything. Actually some good podcast episodes have come from the discord.
So I, I would love it if people would jumped in and talked about, um, what they're running into. And we can have a discussion there. The there's a section for articles. Like I had this ambition that I was going to write articles after all the different, um, episodes just to keep the SEO juice going. But you know, SEO is dead, right? Cause AI. And. I didn't really start doing that and I should have taken the link off the website, but I, I haven't done that yet.
Okay. Um, the, uh, and then I clicked on the podcast and I see there's a list of episodes. Um, you've got 40 of them out so far. Congratulations on that. And, uh, and then also there's a link for people, which I think is really interesting. I thought, I think I might steal this idea as well, where you have a list of every guest.
That you've ever had on the show and, um, a little blurb about who they are, some links to their social media accounts and websites and everybody so far, because you're, you're, you're only, you're less than a year into this. Everybody has appeared in one episode, except for Chad Carter, who's appeared in eight episodes. Who is Chad?
Kevin GriffinSo Chad, uh, a good friend of mine, he was there at the very beginning and we S uh, we started having an, an interview episode, and then we would have like a commentary episode Okay. Where we would talk a little bit deeper about whatever the guest kind of touched on. And Chad was there for some of those initial conversations, as was Sean Marin. He, he was there at the beginning of the journey as well. Um, but you know, like.
We learned kind of early on the commentary episodes were taking away a lot from the, the content. And so we did away with the commentary and it just ended up being me moving forward.
Oh, okay. Um, now, uh, I've mentioned this earlier, but multithreaded income. com is the main website, podcasts. multithreadedincome. com is the way to get directly with a podcast. And I see you have a subscribe button right at the top here.
Kevin GriffinYes, we do. Uh, anywhere you get your podcast from
Apple podcast, Spotify, Overcast, Amazon, um, or you can just listen to it right here in the web browser. I think,
Kevin Griffinyep, that works as well. I would love for everyone to subscribe. Like that just helps everything. Um, I will.
And so will all of my tens of viewers.
Kevin GriffinI appreciate each and every one of you.
Very cool. Is there anything we haven't talked about that you really want to tell people about this?
Kevin GriffinUh, probably not. It's a. It's a labor of love for me. I love talking about the business of software and putting it into terms that, um, normal people can, can talk about. Um, I did a conversation at Codemash this past year, specifically on multithreaded income. And we talked about the various ways you can make income and, uh, I got a, an amazing reception to, to that talk.
Um, I wish more conferences would pick it up because I think it's a very beneficial set of skills that people can develop over time. Um, but yeah, it's really led the way to doing more and more of these episodes. Every time I push an episode out. If I hear something good about the episode, I know I'm doing something right. And it's just a great way for me to give back to the community. That's helped me so much over the past. 15 plus years.
Kevin, thank you so much. It's always good to talk to you.
Kevin GriffinYou too, David. Thank you.
You've been listening to the multi threaded income podcast. I really hope that this podcast has been useful for you. If it has, please take a moment to leave a review wherever you get your podcast from. And don't forget the conversation doesn't stop here. Join us on our discord at mti. to slash discord. I've been your host Kevin Griffin and we'll see you next week. Cha ching!