Joseph Hogue: How to Grow Multiple Blogs Without Feeling Overwhelmed

Welcome to the Scaling Success Stories series!

If you’re new to this series, I ask online entrepreneurs questions regarding growing and scaling their business.

This is the series description:

You can get your fill of online business tips by reading the other interviews on the Scaling Success Stories page.

Interview with Joseph Hogue, CFA from Peer Finance 101, My Stock Market Basics, My Work From Home Money, and Peer Loans Online

It was my pleasure interviewing Joseph Hogue, founder of Peer Finance 101, My Stock Market Basics, My Work From Home Money, and Peer Loans Online, several niche blogs in the personal finance sector. A Marine Corps veteran and former private wealth management employee, Joseph now runs his four websites full-time. He cites YouTube as the catalyst for his growth and has been featured in many major media publications.

Check out what Joseph had to say to my questions!

1. Why did you start an online business and how does your passion still drive your business’ growth today?

I started working online because I wanted more control over my income and my financial future.

I was tired of ‘working for a paycheck’ and wanted to create my own assets that would work for me. I truly believe this is the only way to achieve financial independence—owning your own assets whether they be a traditional business or something online.

Business growth is my passion.

I love the challenge of growing my blogs and YouTube channel, reaching more people, and thinking of new ways to grow the business.

I was fortunate that I had that motivation.

I know other entrepreneurs that were driven just by the money. That’s fine at first but there comes a point where the money stops motivating you to grow your business and put in the long hours.

Being successful means finding something that will motivate you beyond your initial goals.

2. At what point did you realize that your business was “taking off” and that you could really make money from it?

I was still freelancing well into 2015 because the blogs weren’t making enough yet.

By June 2016, I was making close to $3,000 a month from the online assets and ready to focus full-time.

It felt liberating to stop working for someone else and know that I had complete control over my income.

I knew I would still need to hustle, sometimes even more since I wouldn’t have the stability of freelancing income, but I was excited about growing the online business even faster.

3.  At what point did you realize you were living the life you wanted to?

I realized that money was no longer a motivation early in 2017.

The blogs had grown to a point where my income was well over what we needed for expenses and savings.

It was this point that I realized that freedom from ‘working for a living’ and didn’t have to worry about just paying the bills.

Of course, it’s also at this point that your business needs to be part of the ‘life you want to live’ and has to be motivation in itself.

If you never find something to motivate you other than the money, your business will stagnate at that subsistence level and you’ll burn out.

4. One of the biggest fears of outsourcing is trusting the people you hire to run your business the way you would. How did you overcome this and where did you find the right freelancers and employees to help you grow your business?

People hire for skills when they should be hiring for passion.

One of the first things I learned when I started outsourcing was that someone with the best skills for the job wasn’t necessarily the best hire.

They might be able to do the job but if they didn’t treat the business as their own and if they didn’t have that same passion to see it grow, then I couldn’t completely trust them to do the job.

Whenever I outsource a new task, usually through Upwork or referrals, I focus more on the person and their personality than on their skills.

I ask open-ended questions and write out a ridiculously-long job description. I ask questions within the job description.

Looking at someone’s application, I know instantly if they took the time to read the job description and really care about getting the job.

5. A common myth is that as you grow and scale your business, you have to sell your soul to make money, especially when you venture into paid advertising. How do you debunk this myth in your business?

If you’re worried about selling-out to advertisers then you need to develop your own products.

Focus instead on things like self-publishing, courses, and printables rather than making money through sponsorships or ads. Personally, I don’t think you have to sell your soul to make money through ads either.

There are enough advertisers and sponsors out there that anyone can find more than a few they can recommend with a clean conscience.

6. Why do you think most people fail to grow their businesses and what advice would you offer them to keep pushing, despite all the setbacks?

I think people rush into an online business without taking the time to understand it as a business.

For example, they think blogging is just about writing posts and putting some Google ads on the site.

They fail to understand how much more goes into it like marketing, management, IT, and all the other roles you’d find in a traditional business.

When the money doesn’t come pouring in because they’ve neglected to treat it like a real business, they get discouraged and quit.

Learn how the business model works. What’s the entire process for making money in that business? What are all the different roles the entrepreneur needs to play to run the business and be successful?

7. How important has niching down been (no matter how hard it hurts) to your business’ growth and profitability?

I started my first blog in 2014 but it wasn’t until I broke them into niche blogs that I really started getting the traffic that was making money.

Trying to talk to everyone about everything means you’re ultimately not reaching anyone on a personal level. Don’t think you’re limiting your audience by niching down.

For every niche, there are still millions of people ready to hear your message. Talking to them on a more personal level will help separate you from the millions of other businesses out there.

8. What do you attribute your success to and how do you explain it? Do you think the same strategies will help you reach your next monetization goals? Why or why not?

A lot went into the success of the blogs and the YouTube channel.

First, it was understanding them from a business perspective, how to promote them and get sponsors.

I also took the time to learn SEO which is something many online entrepreneurs neglect or avoid altogether.

I started monetizing early through self-publishing. That helped to motivate me and show that blogging really could be a legitimate business.

I’ve started to move into higher-margin products like courses to reach higher monetization goals. The first income streams most online entrepreneurs start with might be the easiest and fastest but are not always the best.

Continuing to be successful means diversifying into other income sources.

9. To scale, you really need to have a systemized business. What steps have you taken to build those systems and how do you optimize them?

I use Asana to manage my team and keep a pretty tight schedule for running things. I have set working hours and keep myself from getting distracted.

I’m close to hiring a business manager that will be tasked with helping to keep everything organized and running on schedule as well.

10.  If you could speak face-to-face with yourself when you first started your business, what pearls of wisdom would you impart?

Start on YouTube sooner.

My blogs and other online assets did very well but it wasn’t until I expanded my reach into YouTube that the business really took off.

About Joseph Hogue, CFA

Joseph Hogue worked in private wealth management for more than a decade before creating his online business. He now runs four websites and a YouTube channel with over 75,000 subscribers. Joseph has appeared on Bloomberg TV, CNBC and Forbes. A veteran of the Marine Corps, he has a Masters in Business and holds the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation. Learn how to grow your own YouTube channel in this free webinar.

Conclusion

Thanks for participating in my series, Joseph!

As you can tell, it’s NOT EASY growing and scaling an online business, but there are some things you can do to aid you in the process.

Inspired by Joseph?

Now, it’s your turn!

I assembled the Scaling Blueprint to show you how to…

• Outsource Effectively
• Systemize Your Business
• Shatter Your Revenue Goals

After working with six-figure and seven-figure clients, I know the difference between how they function.

Let me help you start scaling successfully.

Get My FREE Blueprint!

Cheers to future success!