IAM2837 – Entrepreneur Helps People Build Passive Income Through Websites

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Transcription:

Stacy Caprio 00:00
Never tell people you're going to do something and then go try to do it. I would just recommend to do it. And then after it's already successful, you can kind of tell people if you want.

Gresham Harkless 00:41
Hello, hello, hello, this is Gresh from the I Am CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today as Stacy Caprio of her CEO. Stacy, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Stacy Caprio 00:50
Thanks, Gresham. It's great to be here.

Gresham Harkless 00:52
Super excited to have you on. And what I wanted to do was just read a little bit more about Stacy so you can hear about all the awesome things that she's doing. And Stacy invests in websites to build passive income and helps others learn how to do the same. You can follow her journey and get on her website investing waitlist by taking a look at her website, her CEO. Stacy, are you ready to speak to the I Am CEO community?

Stacy Caprio 01:12
Yes, I am.

Gresham Harkless 01:13
Awesome. Let's do it. So to kick everything off, I wanted to hear a little bit more about what I call your CEO story and what led you to start your business?

Stacy Caprio 01:19
Yeah, so I was working in a traditional 9 to 5 marketing role for a few years out of college and I just wasn't happy with the hours and I really wanted to kind of start my own thing. I'd actually always been pretty entrepreneurial. Even in college. I started my own swimming lesson business. And so I think it's just been kind of something that I've always wanted to do. So I decided to just give it a try even when I wasn't. I was only making a thousand dollars a month on the side and I just kind of went all in. And I was very lucky because I have this wonderful Grandma. Actually she's 93 years old and she let me live with her for a year while I was building my business here in Chicago. And that she really gave me the opportunity to even try to start a business without having to go into debt or to do take out loans and stuff. I think she really gave me the chance to even start my business. And my first kind of, I was focusing on selling T shirts at first using Amazon merch. They changed the algorithm and I kind of ended up getting away from that but into kind of investing in websites after reading a post on Spencer Ha's Niche Pursuits blog. And so that kind of just got me into everything and that's kind of what I'm still doing today.

Gresham Harkless 02:50
Nice. Well I definitely appreciate that and you know grandmas are awesome. So shout out to your grandma for allowing you to get that opportunity to be able to, to pursue these entrepreneurial ventures that you already have. So I know you touched on it a little bit, but I wanted to hear a little bit more on like how you work with clients. Can you tell us a little bit more about website investing, exactly what that looks like as well?

Stacy Caprio 03:09
Yeah. So I currently mostly I've been just buying my own websites, managing them and building them. As I've been doing this, I've kind of been building a small community on the side through her CEO and there's some people who just enjoy following my journey and they sign up via the email list and sometimes I'll send updates and I publish posts of other successful entrepreneurs on my blog as well to kind of inspire people. Right now I'm also kind of raising money for a bigger site purchase with some of the people who are on my website investing wait list. So that is more of a, for the people who invest, it's a bigger investment. It's a minimum a hundred K to buy a bigger site, a hundred k per person and that's like a hands off investment. So they don't have to manage the site, they don't have to log in, they just get like the passive income dividend checks each month. And so this is something that we're kind of going into right now. So I haven't, it's not something that is currently, it's more of in progress. It's not something that I've already been doing if that makes sense. But that's one way to work with the website investing if you don't want to be hands on with it. And then I also send out emails with site deals that I vetted. So like when I'm selling the website, if someone wants to get on the list, if they want to just buy a site and manage it on their own, that's the other kind of option if they want a more hands on experience of kind of owning a website. So those are the two kind of ways that I currently work with people interested in website investing.

Gresham Harkless 04:52
Nice. Well I definitely appreciate that. And for anybody that may not be familiar with it, it's very similar to I guess like if you do Real estate investing. Except you're investing in a website. I guess there's a website that's already been created and it's being sold for some reason. And you the opportunity for people to jump on the wait list and be on the wait list to find out about opportunities, whether it be with you or them managing itself. Is that correct?

Stacy Caprio 05:15
Exactly. It's. Yeah, it's exactly like real estate in that sense. And it's actually kind of cool because it's so much newer than real estate. You can make your money back much more quickly than a real estate investment. So I think that's one of the big advantages too. But it's. Yeah, it's pretty much just like buying an asset, such as buying a real estate building.

Gresham Harkless 05:37
Absolutely. Well, I definitely appreciate that. And now I wanted to ask you for what I call your secret sauce. And it could be for you personally or for your organization, but what do you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique?

Stacy Caprio 05:49
I would say just my experience buying the websites and then taking them from what they're making per month and being able to quickly double that is kind of something that I think is unique to what I do compared to what most people do when investing. Insights. I have a few things that I've just learned Both in my 9 to 5 digital marketing and also just my experience buying the sites. I'm able to like, buy the undervalued ones and quickly increase their value. So I think that's something that not many other people are able to do

Gresham Harkless 06:27
that makes perfect sense. Do you. Do you think that a lot of it has to do with kind of like that ability to see it from a digital marketing perspective? Like you maybe see some of the things that can be improved or how that asset can be, you know, I guess the value increase so that you can generate more revenue.

Stacy Caprio 06:43
Exactly. And someone who's not familiar with the space wouldn't be able to look at it and do the same things.

Gresham Harkless 06:50
Makes perfect sense. So I definitely appreciate that and I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. Hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

Stacy Caprio 07:04
Oh, so. Well, I've actually been reading a book recently, Tim Ferriss's Tools of Titans, and I. I really love him as an author because he has. He writes so clearly in ways that can really benefit the reader, both of his own experience and all the CEOs and other people he's interviewed on his podcast. And this, this book actually has like so many just little hacks in it that are so helpful when running a business. And they also. It also has a bunch of help hacks which I don't really pay attention to those sections as much. But even just little online tools like the auto text expander tool I read about in his book, it's just really helpful when you're typing something that, like a phrase that you type a lot or like an email signature, you can just type like a little phrase and it will just expand it. Um, it's like a Chrome extension. It's actually free. So that's just one little hack that I've been using recently that I got from that book. But there's a ton in there, so I definitely recommend that book to everybody listening.

Gresham Harkless 08:14
Yeah, it's definitely a great book. It's a huge book too, by the way. And, and I think that, correct me if I'm wrong, you can kind of just flip through it. You don't have to. I don't know how many pages is. But you don't have to go through every part of the book. You can kind flip through to whoever you want to read information about and then get those hacks and information.

Stacy Caprio 08:30
Exactly. And that's kind of what he recommends that you do in the intro. And when I've been reading it, I find it's helpful to only read like five pages at a time because it's so dense that, like, you don't want to just sit down and read it. So it's definitely something to just kind of. Yeah. Flip through whenever you're inspired to do so.

Gresham Harkless 08:49
Yeah. And I think a lot of times, just as you mentioned, with the Chrome extension, there's a lot of things that you can. You can do. And it's kind of like one of those. I don't know if I want to call it a workbook, but you kind of feel like you should. You want to implement some of those things. So a lot of times you do just want to use a little bit instead of trying to read the whole thing and try to implement all those hacks that they have in there.

Stacy Caprio 09:06
Yeah, exactly. And I always have my phone next to me when I'm reading it because I always Google everything. And because there's so much, it's almost just like a starting point for research. And then you just kind of go off and start Googling more. And I even. I've ordered so many books while I'm reading it because he recommends so many really good books. So it's. Well, all the people he interviews kind of recommend books and. Yeah, so you can kind of get yourself into a book buying hole there if you read too much.

Gresham Harkless 09:35
Exactly, exactly. Well, keep the, keep the library app open just in case maybe that help out a little bit more. So. But no, I appreciate Tim Ferriss. He's, he writes incredible stuff and, and he's always providing like different hacks and definitely, obviously related to business, but definitely technology and health as well too. So I appreciate that hack. And now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget and this is a word of wisdom or a piece of advice or if you can hop into a time machine, what would you tell your younger business self?

Stacy Caprio 10:04
One thing that I would say is never tell people you're going to do something and then go try to do it. I would just recommend to do it and then after it's already successful you can kind of tell people if you want. But I've just found that you're more likely to follow through and do it if you don't tell people about it because their reaction will either be very positive or very negative. So it could influence you in either way just to kind of not do it because you already feel like you've gotten either the positive reinforcement if it's positive or if it's negative, it might dissuade you from thinking it's even possible. So I think it's more important to actually do what you, the idea that you have and what you want to do than to kind of tell people about it until it's already done.

Gresham Harkless 10:53
Absolutely. That, that makes so much sense. You know, what do you say? Actions speak louder than words. And I think, and I don't know if you've read this or heard this, but I feel like I heard and granted, I definitely don't know, but I thought I heard it from somebody where a lot of times if we tell people we're going to do something, it creates kind of like a little bit of accomplishment, like we actually have done it. So sometimes it also makes it more unlikely that we're actually going to follow through with it. If we say we were going to do it, that's some of the excitement that kind of happens just by saying it. But we actually haven't actually done anything towards that, that mission or that goal.

Stacy Caprio 11:25
Yeah, I've heard similar things too online and yeah, it's definitely for me I found it to be true. So I would definitely recommend that to other people.

Gresham Harkless 11:35
I love it. Well, I definitely appreciate that. And now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping to have different, quote unquote CEOs on this show. So, Stacy, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Stacy Caprio 11:46
Being a CEO means to me having the freedom to set your own goals and schedule and being able to really just choose your daily life path.

Gresham Harkless 12:03
Absolutely. Yeah. A lot of times we have, you know, a lot of tools and hacks and things at our disposal, but a lot of it is just how you put it into action and things that you do and you kind of have the, the flexibility and the freedom to some degree to, to make those decisions and, and chart your path and, and make, you know, those goals that you want to create and want to hit and those that you don't. So I, I appreciate that definition of that perspective and I appreciate your time even more. And what I wanted to do is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you want to let listeners know and then of course, how best they can get a hold of you, subscribe, get on the wait list and do. And find out about all the awesome things you're working on.

Stacy Caprio 12:39
Yeah, of course. So I actually have a cool opportunity for anyone who's interested in writing a guest post for her CEO. They can reach out to me at stacycaprio mail.com S-T A C Y C A P R I O gmail.com and if they've had a successful side hustle or business or have their own website investing story, I'd love to have them write a post and they would be featured on the site and as well as get a link to the site of their choosing which would help with their SEO. So I've had a handful of people do this already and it's been great for the Herco site and audience. So I'd love to welcome anyone else who is interested. And if people are interested in getting on the website investing wait list, they can go to her CEO, the about page and sign up there as well as to just the regular email list as well. And we'd love to have you on the list.

Gresham Harkless 13:44
Awesome, awesome, awesome. Well, thank you so much again, Stacy, for your time and all the awesome things you're doing. We'll make sure to have those links and that information in the show notes as well too, so that everybody can follow up with you if they have guest posts or they of course want to join the wait list or just find out, you know all the awesome some things you guys are working on. So again I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day and take care.

Stacy Caprio 14:04
Thank you so much and we'll talk later.