Hey there! Welcome to the Independent Money newsletter 👋 We’ll be exploring the fascinating lives of our favorite entrepreneurs. We’re taking a closer look at their backgrounds, careers, and financial journeys.

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We chatted with Nick Meyer (CFP), a personal finance creator and entrepreneur who shared insights into his distinctive journey and offered valuable perspectives into his own experiences.

Hey! I’m Nick, aka @nicktalksmoney to my ~1.7 million followers across social media. I make fun, yet still educational, short-form videos about personal finance. Prior to my social media career, I spent 4 years helping the rich get richer as a financial & tax advisor, during which time I earned the CFP® (Certified Financial Planner) & EA (Enrolled Agent) designations. My following makes me the most-followed CFP® certificant on social media.

I’m based in Denver & am always down to hike or ski with fellow money nerds and business owners.

Content Creation

What was the most effective channel for initial growth and what is the best channel now?

TikTok is the obvious answer here because they were the only platform that offered short-form videos back when I started off as a creator. As the platform has matured, however, it definitely seems harder to add serious numbers to your following, even if you’re making content that gets a ton of views.

YouTube, Instagram, and even Facebook have all been growing pretty well for me recently (I have close to 700k followers across them), but that’s the beautiful part about short-form video: I can post the exact same video across all 4 platforms. 

If you’re defining “growth channel” as a content format, I’d 100% say the best for obtaining maximum reach is short-form video. It’s not even close.

How do you monetize your content, and what strategies have been most successful for you?

Brand partnerships (where a company pays for a promotional video posted on my pages) represent 80% of my earnings. I’ve worked with some of the largest brands in the financial industry, including Fidelity, SoFi, and Ally. In what was my most fun-yet-unexpected brand partnership of all time, I even partnered with the Golden State Warriors NBA team on a deal that involved me flying out to SF for a game.

Other sources of revenue include a book publishing deal (The Personal Finance Cookbook is releasing at the end of this month!), affiliates, consulting (with brands), speaking engagements, and platform payments. 

I also started an agency last summer that helps financial services brands grow their business by creating in-house short-form video content that their ideal customers actually want to watch. It’s called N2 Content Marketing, and earnings from this business may eclipse my social media account earnings this year.

What made you get into creating content?

Prior to my life as a content creator, I spent 4 years as a financial & tax advisor helping the rich get richer. I learned a ton from this job, and thoroughly enjoyed working with our clients - but at the end of the day, all we were doing was helping decamillionaires add a couple more million dollars to their net worths before they retired. Our clients would be set financially for the rest of their lives whether or not they ever worked with us.

I grew up in a household where money was far and away the #1 cause of stress, mostly because none of the adults in our family were financially literate. During mid 2020, I realized that I’d accumulated a lot of financial knowledge that my family would have really benefited from, and this new social media platform called “TikTok” was starting to gain some serious traction.

I had a semi-successful gaming YouTube channel in high school that helped me pay for half of college, so I had some idea of what it took to be successful on social media, and I posted my first TikTok in August 2020. The potential reach & low-effort (compared to YouTube) of short-form video is what really attracted me to this format.

Did you go full time right away or was there a moment where you decided to take it full time

There was about a 1 year overlap between me starting on social media & me quitting my job. Even back just a couple years ago, there weren’t many people who had built a full-time career from social media (especially in the finance niche). This, coupled with the fact that “US TikTok Ban” was in the news seemingly every month, made me reluctant to make the jump even after I started consistently matching my day job’s income about 8 months into creating.

The pivotal moment came in the fall of 2021, about 1 year after I started: lockdowns were finally over and I traveled to ATX for a financial blogger’s conference called FinCon. Most of the other finance TikTokers were there, and I was blown away by the success many of them were experiencing. This shifted my perspective on what the income ceilings were for creators like me: sure, earning $6k/mo was great, but there were creators consistently pulling in 5-10x that. It was a complete frame-breaker.

This made me realize it was IRRESPONSIBLE of me to not be putting all of my efforts behind content creation, so I quit my job shortly after and my income soon multiplied to the level of the creators I spoke with at FinCon.

Money

What’s one money tip you live by?

Save like a pessimist & invest like an optimist. 

Are you an entrepreneur that wants to start investing — learn more about your options.

Has there been a particular financial lesson or mistake that shaped tour approach to money management?

If you have a business, you need to buy business insurance. Trust me on this one.

What financial goals do you have for the future and how are you working towards achieving them?

I joke that I’m working so hard today so I can become a financially free ski bum tomorrow, and that’s not far off from the truth. 

Growing up, I hardly saw my parents during the week (or most weekends, for that matter) because they were putting 12+ hour days in at the post office (don’t let its brand fool you, it’s NOT a fun place to work). They had to do this because they were reliant on each & every paycheck.

I’m building up my investment portfolio now, while I’m young, so I never need to be dependent on a paycheck ever again. This will give me the freedom to choose how I spend my time, which will let me hang out with my future kids much more than my parents were able to hang out with me, and yes spend more time on my favorite hobbies of hiking & skiing.

To learn more about Nick and stay connected, you can find him on TikTok, YouTube, or any social platform as @nicktalksmoney.

If you’re a financial services brand or a financial advisor that wants to grow your business by creating killer in-house short-form video content, check out N2 Content Marketing.

Read the first-ever personal finance book that actually has step-by-step action items to help you tackle your financial problems, The Personal Finance Cookbook

What’s Happening at Carry?

Here’s what you can expect in the coming weeks

See the full list of events here. ⏰

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If you want more resources on building wealth as an solopreneur/entrepreneur, check these out:

• The Solo 401k handbook 

• What is a Solo 401k?

• How to Open a Solo 401k

• Common Solo 401k FAQs

• Solo 401k Contribution Calculator