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On today’s episode, Cody and Justin are joined by Monica from MonicaLouie.com. She tells us her inspiring story of tackling debt and putting family first.

Monica and her husband both came together after college with some debt and Monica wasn’t a saver naturally. Her husband brought those characteristics to the household and she took to them quickly and soon started leading their debt pay down efforts. While on her way to becoming a mother of two, she decided she wanted to be able to spend as much time as possible with her children and step away from the workforce.

Unfortunately, even though they had made great strides on their spending, one income just wasn’t enough. So Monica started a blog and experimenting with Facebook ads. She then started her own Facebook ad consulting business in 2016 with her as the single employee. Today she employs 13 and is on the fast track to being debt free.

But you don’t want just an overview, go take a listen to today’s episode and let us hear what you think.

Episode Summary

Grew up with a single mother where money was often a struggle and she knew she wanted a different life

She took the traditional college route but struggled some after graduating

Then she found herself in credit card debt

A couple of years later she had a good job, got out of debt and vowed to never get in debt again.

When she met her husband, he was frugal and she became conscious of saving for the first time

They were on a good steady path and then she had her first child and her priorities shifted

She decided she wanted to be a stay at home mom so they started saving really hard

Then she was pregnant with her second child and stepped away from her job

A couple of months into this, they noticed their savings starting to decrease a looked for something to help out

On top of this, they had over $300k in debt including their mortgage

Within two years they had paid down $120k in debt

Her husband had reservations about sharing finances because she was more of a spender and he was a saver so she made it a point to build that trust by being financially responsible

The idea of her blog came from people asking questions about how she burned down so much debt

With this first blog, she started discovering Facebook ads and noticed she had a knack for it

Then her fellow blogging friends started asking for help with Facebook ads

In 2016 she ended up selling her blog and becoming a full-time Facebook ads coach

Facebook ads are great for just broadening your reach as well as funneling people towards paid content or even a transition funnel to get a customer to free content which will then get them to paid content

Therefore often it’s best to save your Facebook ad promotions for posts with affiliate links

We also discuss the ever-changing landscape of Facebook ads with new features and algorithm tweaks

Her business has already grown from her being the single employee to a team of 13

They’re still paying down debt with the goal of being debt free by age 40

With her job being location independent, even if she’s working they can live a lifestyle very similar to one many expect when they are financially independent

The business hasn’t been making a ton of money right away because she’s been growing the company but is now transitioning to focus on the profit

We also discuss the example she gets to set for her kids as they see her make income from home doing something she really enjoys

Then we get into some more technical aspects of how to do Facebook ads

Some of the tips she recommends is testing against different groups and optimizing the ads by constantly testing and tweaking

Facebook can also help you find a look-a-like audience which is where you feed Facebook some information about the audience you already have and it finds more people like you

She recommends static images when you are looking for someone to click on a blog post

Then using videos for things like webinars

She is also starting to test expanding the business to Instagram and Pinterest

Her #1 tip for people starting a business or trying to reach FI focuses on building goals

Key Takeaways

Savers can be made: Many of us in gravitate towards this content because we have always been frugal but that’s not a requirement. You can learn to be a saver. It’s a skill set like any other. While some are naturally more gifted, anyone can become expert with enough training and practice. Taking a step back can open up options: Often people are terrified of quitting their day job due to concerns about their money not lasting. That’s a fair concern but realize when you stop spending 50 hours a week on a job you don’t love, you may discover a passion that given time will become profitable. Yes there are bad unknowns, but there are also positive ones You are worthy of an investment: People invest in businesses, their children, maybe even their employees, but we are so reluctant to invest in ourselves. The world moves at too fast of a pace to be complacent and frankly you deserve some investing too.

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Links from the show:

Book: Profit First

Free Facebook Ads Course: MonicaLouie.com/FIshow

Contact Monica:

Blog: MonicaLouie.com

Twitter: @MonicaRLouie

Facebook: Monica Louie

Learn More About Your Hosts:

Fly to FI (Cody’s Blog)

Saving-Sherpa (Justin’s blog)