Jeff Anzalone is a full-time medical practitioner and a successful part-time finance blogger. In this episode, he gives major tips on how to live a debt-free life and how to increase blog traffic on your website.
Jeff created a finance blog majorly geared towards physicians, Dentists, and other white-collar professions. His blog is called debtfreedr.com which started about 2 years ago. It’s geared towards liberating individuals from making financial mistakes. This includes most individuals in the medical field and other fields that involve racking up a lot of debt arising from student loans and other loans.
He indicated that he had made a transition from solely teaching these professionals. He recently just included a more investment approach to avoid what he tagged as “Doctor’s burn out”. This involves attending to a lot of patients and still having a low income. He advised a smart and investment approach. Jeff says he transitioned into Real Estate through multifamily syndications. He stated that his new goals and plans instigated this transition and also the accomplishment of his previous set out goal, which was becoming debt-free.
Jeff continued by saying the really wealthy people he knew owned or were into real estate. However, he also observed that he did not have time to be an active real estate investor. This is the position most doctors and full-time professionals find themselves. He started learning about this crowdfunding online, doing this with a patch of lands online; equity deals in reality shares, but he noted that he lost money along the way with other investors.
All this sparked him to write down what he was learning and putting it on his blog. Especially, stating the do’s and don’ts and how to establish a stable passive income flow so he and readers reach a quick retirement.
Jeff mentioned that he finds deals majorly through people he knows personally, he is focused on getting to know the operators; Joe Fairless and Dan Hanford are good examples of people he knows personally, met and trust versus relying on a website that’s claiming they are getting the best deals.
He stressed that now he does the vetting himself, he also gave an example of not knowing any operative in Tulsa, and it was just him putting his trust in reality shares. Jeff pointed out that the people he invests with would never invest in a deal like Tulsa, because the deal at Tulsa caused him a loss at his early investing stages and that now he knows better to read through everything.
Jeff said that he started off doing only 1 article a month, but this changed after he went to FINCON, a financial conference for vloggers, bloggers and people doing stuff related and the majority of people told him that if he really wants to increase his blog traffic that he had to commit to at least 2 articles per week sometimes more.
He then stated that he made efforts and bought courses on different things to increase his blog traffic, but 99% of the materials did not work. However, he stumbled upon a course by Brandon Gailey titled the “The Blogging Millionaire,” and this has been a vital source of knowledge for him and that now he knows how to find the “needle in the haystack,” keywords to write on and that he can literally get on the first page of Google within a month or two.
Jeff then asked rhetorically, “what’s the point of writing an article if nobody reads it?”, he then admitted that he was just was wasting his time in the beginning.
He says he uses SEMrush, which provides an SEO template. In addition, he sources information from the top 10 articles in a particular topic, says “equity multiple,” for instance. Jeff also added in order to build content centered on a keyword; he throws in stories to those content to keep it interesting, personal, and relatable. He then said that he writes all his articles himself.
Jeff mentioned that he revamped his websites; he then created a ‘Doctors investment circle’ whereby doctors fill out a form to enable him to get information from there. Blogging is very powerful, and it stays on the internet. He stated that individuals doing podcasts ‘already have their blogs’ in the sense that they already have all the contents and information they need. He stressed that they only need a college student who understands or is willing to learn SEO to convert the podcast into blogposts because a podcast contains a ton of information.
Jeff said when he went to FINCON, that he had been blogging for four or five months, but the people he met told him that if he could ‘stick it out for a year,’ he will make it. He pointed out that it’s tough at the beginning and he wasn’t making any money. However, if you can stick it out for a year, you’ll start meeting and connecting with people.
He stated that ‘Consistency is key’ because now his google analytics has gone way up; this has increased his blog traffic, network and opened doors for him. According to Jeff, if you are not consistent, it’s not going to work out. He also added that what makes him stand out is that he is relatable, and he has been through the trials and tribulations which other doctors can easily relate too. He admitted that at first, his major contacts/investors were doctors but now different individuals from different lines of works contact him.
Jeff points out that he focuses more on the money-raising side. He says investing in multifamily syndication helps certainly because at the moment most individuals do not have a source of passive income. Jeff later added that he uses the income gained to reinvest and he teaches the individuals to do the same.
He admits not to solely basing his articles on multi trans syndication, and that his articles are based on different ways to reach financial independence. He says he makes an effort to break down different things to know before investing, such as equity multiple, cash on cash return, some of the different terminologies to know, and he tries to keep as simple as possible.
Jeff points out to drawing content from conferences and the books he reads and that he will be going for Joe’s conference in February, and he will probably do an article on that too. In order to keep things interesting, he writes on multiple different things.
Jeff says he will focus on growing his doctors’ investment circle. Above all, he wants to provide them with a lot of value as much as he can. He might do a webinar with them to work them through and that this is a win-win for both him and his members because they are learning from him and he is learning more about how to choose these investment deals and learning terminologies.
Jeff says he put his members on an email list; he added that he has two email lists; the blog article list and the doctor’s investment list. He uses Mailchimp for the email listing. He sends his mail pretty much when there is a new article, which is two or three times a week. Jeff says he allows guest posts from writers. However, they have to be unique and suit their audience in order to ensure quality control.
He advises individuals to educate themselves before engaging in any investment. And unless you can turn around and explain the investment idea to a kid, then you know it well enough. He stresses that you should not invest in anything you do not know it backward and forward. Even if you’re not going to manage the investment yourself or you plan to hire a financial investor, be prepared to ask questions. If they can’t answer what you are looking for, move on; there is plenty of people that can help you. He says you shouldn’t short change yourself.
Jeff says the best way to contact him is through his website Debtfreedr.com or email him directly at Jeff@debtfree.com
Clint Coons is one of the founders of Anderson Business Advisors, a firm that specializes in creating asset protection entities…
Justin is a real estate investor who has done almost 2000 deals across the nation and in this episode, he’ll…
David is a real estate investor and a real estate coach. He has been investing in properties for almost 20…
Andrew, a real estate investment developer, is the owner of IronGall Investments, an Austin, Texas-based real estate development company. They…
Chris is the President and CEO of Smart Growth Inc., a California-based real estate and development firm. They are focused…
Rafael is a real estate coach and an organizational psychologist based in Miracle Valley, Arizona. He owns several real estate…