Logan Allec: Ditching A Corporate Job for $10,000+ Blogging Per Month

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 Logan Allec from Money Done Right

It was my pleasure interviewing Logan, founder of Money Done Right, the blog that teaches people how to make more money, how to save money on everything from gas to groceries to insurance, and how to invest their money wisely. Logan is a CPA with a Masters in Taxation as well as a financial expert regularly seen in publications such as NBC News, MarketWatch, BankRate, HuffPost, USA Today, and U.S. News & World.

Check out what Logan 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?

Throughout my 20’s, I had always looked for ways to “escape the rat race” as a CPA.

I tried different things, from real estate (would take too long to scale) to having a go at my own accounting firm (felt like just another job).

Then in late 2016 and early 2017, I became intrigued by the prospect of making money online.

So I launched a blog in February 2017 called Millennial Money Club to give my take on what young people should do with their financial lives.

I’ve always enjoyed personal finance, so it seemed like something I would enjoy working on.

I didn’t get my hopes up about its income potential, and frankly, a lot of my motivation was so that I could just have a site that I could point people to when they would ask me personal finance questions (since I had become in my circle of friends something of a personal finance guru).

And due to various factors, I had to rebrand Millennial Money Club to Money Done Right in July 2017, which I think was a good move overall.

So I guess my passion is twofold — to avoid having to work a corporate job and to teach others about money — and yes, these passions still drive my business’ growth today.

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

Early on, I started promoting a lot of student loan refinance stuff, along with other affiliate offers and was making a few hundred bucks a month with it.

Then, those few hundred dollars a month became a few thousand dollars a month.

In January 2018, the blog netted over $10,000 a month, which was over 2/3 what I was making at my corporate job at the time.

So, I had a dilemma…

Should I keep this thing as a sorta passive side hustle, or should I ditch corporate and see where I could take this?

As I was in my 20s, I figured that now was the time to do something crazy like leaving what many would call a “good job” with benefits.

I put in my one-month notice and went all-in with Money Done Right.

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

You know, it wasn’t until I just recently became a father that I realized that I’m living the life I wanted to.

For me, “going to work” means going upstairs, and I can pretty much spend as much time as I want to with my new son Hunter.

It’s funny because most working parents, I think, feel guilty about not spending enough time with their children.

But for me, it’s flipped — I spend so much time with my child that I feel guilty about not spending enough time with my business.

And that’s the beauty of an online business.

It’s relatively passive since the Internet does most of the heavy lifting for you, meaning that even if I don’t “go to work” today, the blog will still generate a substantial amount of income — the same, in fact, since my role in the business at this point is in the realm of long-term growth.

I could never have this kind of freedom in the corporate world or even with my own service business juggling clients and deadlines.

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?

You know, this has always been a challenge since my entire business revolves around content production.

And at first, I was super scared to outsource this because let’s face it — no one cares about the quality of the content on my site more than I do.

No one cares about whether not the affiliate links will convert in this article more than I do.

No one cares about whether or not this article ranks in Google more than I do.

So naturally, I was frightened about handing that piece over to someone else.

And in a sense, my fears were realized, especially when I hired an agency to run Money Done Right’s content.

Frankly, I found that you get what you pay for, and even now something on my to-do list is to go back through several of the unpublished pieces they created to make them better or just delete them altogether.

And then, of course, I’ve hired dozens of freelance writers over the past 16 months or so to help out with Money Done Right, but it’s so challenging working with freelancers because if they’re good, they’re often juggling multiple clients and deadlines.

So somewhere along the way, I decided that I need to hire full-timers who really grasp my vision and business model, not here-today-gone-tomorrow freelancers, and so that’s where I’m at right now.

We recently made some hires and are looking to hire more in the near future.

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?

I think this whole “selling your soul” thing is only true if you don’t believe in what you’re doing or selling.

But, if you do believe in your message and the things you are promoting, you won’t have a problem with this.

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 too many people treat their business like a job: if I put in X hours, I should make Y money.

Jobs work like that, but businesses don’t.

With business, you might put in a ton of effort today and you might not reap the benefits for months or even years.

I would advise people to understand the difference between a business and a job.

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

You know, I kind of made the mistake of “niching up” a few months into going full-time with my blog, and I think that set me back a bit.

I thought, look, I’ll hand Money Done Right off to an agency for a few months while I get this Blogging Done Right thing going, and then when Blogging Done Right is humming along nicely, I’ll refocus on Money Done Right.

So now instead of my niche in my business just being “personal finance” it was now also “how to start a blog.”

In hindsight, this was a mistake.

Growth on Money Done Right stagnated during this time, particularly from an organic search perspective, and I feel like I’m still playing catch-up as we speak.

Beyond that, I had this moment of what I really love doing more.

Teaching people about money or teaching people about blogging?

It’s honestly the former, and so that’s what I’m going “full steam ahead” on at this point.

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?

I know it’s a bit rare and kind of a pipe dream for someone to go from never having blogged before to having a blog that nets over $10,000 a month, part-time, within the span of a year, and then quitting one’s job, and then multiplying those profits within the span of another year.

How did I do it?

Honestly? I know that this might sound inauthentic and is directly opposed to what some blogging gurus out there say you should do, but at first, I think you really need to do what everybody else is doing, or at least what other successful bloggers are doing.

So at first, I was looking at successful 7-figure bloggers, like Michelle Schroeder-Gardner, and I looked at her income reports, and for instance, I thought, “Wow, she’s making a lot of money from paid surveys.”

Maybe I should promote paid surveys.

And then taking it to the next level, I looked at what the 8-figure The Penny Hoarder was doing, and then, of course, the big, 9-figure Daddy in the personal finance space, NerdWallet, and tried to figure out their revenue models.

But of course reverse engineering will only take you so far, and I think that right now I’m at a pivot point in my business where I need to start thinking about how to differentiate Money Done Right from other personal finance sites.

So no, I think what has gotten me to this point will not be as effective in getting me to my next monetization goals, because my next monetization goals hinge on making my site a recognized brand, which by definition isn’t something you can accomplish via imitation.

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 think it comes down to a lot of documentation and guidelines.

I have a lot of Google Docs that are basically various guidelines and step-by-step instructions for team members to refer to, and they’re constantly being updated.

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

Don’t be so scared of hiring employees.

About Logan

Logan Allec is a CPA and founder of the personal finance site Money Done Right. After spending nearly 10 years in the corporate world helping big businesses save money, he now uses his platform on Money Done Right to teach people how to make more money, how to save money on everything from gas to groceries to insurance, and how to invest their money wisely.

Conclusion

Thanks for participating in my series, Logan!

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 Logan?

Now, it’s your turn!

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• 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.

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Cheers to future success!