Mastermind.fm

In today's episode, Jean sits down with Chris Osborne from KintuLabs. Chris is one of the first digital nomads and has been living this lifestyle for 15 years already. He is also a serial entrepreneur with multiple online businesses built and sold. His latest project involves building 15 newsletters in different niches and then selling them. We talk about work and travel, homeschooling, building newsletter businesses, and Chris' favorite locations around the world for spending a few months a year in. This episode is a must-listen for anyone who is location-independent or has aspirations to become a digital nomad and wants to learn about how you can make it all work, even with family in tow. Links Chris on Twitter Chris' course on building successful newsletters

In this episode, we interview Hassan Daher from Qardus. Qardus is a sharia-compliant lender to small and medium-sized enterprises to help with their cashflow needs. They provide short-term halal business loans, or halal business investments. As an investor, you provide the capital to lend to the business, and get paid as the business pays that money back. The kinds of businesses Qardus go for are well-established, strong-revenue companies, typically in stable markets such as the medical or pharmaceutical industry. There is an emphasis on the people behind the businesses as well, so they focus on high net worth owners to minimise risk. For a company to be accepted on Qardus, it must have at least 3 years of good performance, being profitable in at least 2 of those 3 years. It is thus not an ideal platform for new and speculative projects. We enjoyed talking to Hassan about the nitty-gritty of Islamic finance and how Qardus can be a diversification piece in any investor's portfolio. Check out Jean's full

In this episode, Joe and Jean meet Frank Steffen, the CEO and co-founder of Lendary.net. We discuss the Lendary platform, which consists of a system to optimize the yield on lending to traders on the Bitfinex platform. We go into the nitty-gritty of how this type of high yield lending works, including the risks involved. I liken their system to that of a crypto trading bot, but applied to lending instead. You can choose from various strategies that have different risk/reward numbers. Results over the past year have been pretty spectacular, and this could be a very interesting way for people to get exposure to the crypto space without actually trading cryptos themselves. I think that people who are used to P2P lending, in particular, will find this platform interesting, as the returns are even higher than those found on P2P lending, while the risks are arguably less, since loans are typically over-collateralized. Links Lendary.net

In this episode, I speak to Johannes Larsson, a Swedish entrepreneur who I met for the first time in Malta around a decade ago. He began his entrepreneurial journey at quite a young age and moved from his native Sweden to Malta to be around other entrepreneurs and have a better lifestyle. Eventually, he moved to Cyprus, another Southern European country that is similar to Malta but also offers some interesting tax advantages, which we talk about it in the show. We talk about the divided between northern and southern European culture and why high taxation does not always equal better public services. On the other hand, southern Europe has a more laidback lifestyle that usually leads to more bureaucracy and delays, and we talk about how one can adapt to this different way of living and thinking. It was great to catch up with Johannes and I think he is a great inspiration for Millenials and younger kids who dream of having their own business and being location independent. Links Blog of Johannes Financer

In today's interview, we take a look at another real estate investment platform from the Baltics: Bulkestate. Joe and Jean chat with founder Igor Puntuss about the reasons for starting this platform and how investments work. We delve into the case for investing in Latvia as well as Bulkestate's unique group buying feature, where investors can buy apartments instead of just invest in crowdfunding campaigns. Links Jean's Bulkestate review Bulkestate website

Real estate is one of the most popular types of investment worldwide, and is deemed a secure long-term investment. In today's episode, we learn how Estonian platform Crowdestate is making this asset class accessible to the smaller investor, and the challenges they have faced over the years. We speak with CEO And founder Loit Linnupold, who I feel is one of the few honest characters in this "wild west" space of online investment platforms. He doesn't hold back on sharing his experience on how things started off and how much investment he needed to make in order to build this platform. He also shares what mistakes they made over the years, including that of diversifying into working capital loans, which are notoriously hard to manage and assess reliably. As an investor, I too have suffered from this misstep, as I have a few non-performing working capital loans, however, overall I am still making a profit, and on a long-term perspective things are looking good. If you're looking for a real estate platform where

In today's interview, we talk to Jan Nieuwenhuijs from Voima. Jan has been a very vocal researcher in the gold space for many years. We take different angles on the gold topic and discuss the main reasons for holding hold and the different ways you can do it. One of my biggest takeaways from this episode is that gold is not an investment per-se, but a protection against the loss in value of conventional assets like fiat currencies. To put a simple example, if you have saved €25,000 now and that's what a new car costs at the moment, you need to know that in 10 years' time that same money will not be able to buy you a new car, as it would cost €35,000 or more then. This means that your fiat currency has been devalued through the effects of inflation. On the other hand, if you convert that €25,000 to gold, you have a good chance that in 10 years' time if you take the gold and convert it back to currency, the car will have an equivalent cost in ounces of gold, which means that you have been able to store your

In today's episode, Jean and Joe meet Cormac Leech from AxiaFunder to discuss how investors can make money from litigation cases. This is a really new asset class with the biggest advantage being that it has very little correlation with other asset classes. We discuss the legality and ethical background behind litigation funding (it is still illegal in some European nations) and the future for this asset class, as well as how investing works in practice. This includes what returns we can expect, duration of litigation cases as well as the biggest risks investors face. This was a thoroughly enjoyable chat for us and we learned a lot from Cormac. We came out of the interview very excited about delving deeper into litigation funding and with the intention to put some money to work in this asset class. Links AxiaFunder AxiaFunder review

In this episode, Jean and Joe speak to Jose Maria Pascual from Brickstarter, a vacation rental property platform based in Estonia. By registering as an investor on this platform, you are able to invest in vacation rental properties (currently only in Spain) and benefit when they are rented out. This was an interesting and eye-opening chat with Jose, who was very open and honest about how the platform operates, the challenges faced by this asset class during these months, and their plans for the near future. I base a lot of trust on the team when evaluating platforms, and Jose made an excellent impression on me. I encourage you to check out the full review of Brickstarter and consider this investment as part of a diversified portfolio with several asset classes. Links Brickstarter

Today's guests are Oleg Giberstein and Gabriele Musella, the co-founders of Coinrule.io, a platform that empowers crypto traders to compete with professional algorithmic traders and hedge funds with no coding skills required. I find the entire field of crypto assets incredibly fascinating as it really is one deep rabbit hole. One of the aspects that has captured the imagination of millions worldwide is crypto trading. We've all seen stories of young people who found incredible riches through trading cryptocurrencies, although there undoubtedly are many (less publicized) failures too. Trading can be a brutal job though, requiring long hours of looking at screens and usually inflicting a significant emotional toll. I was looking into how things can be simplified and structured when I came across Coinrule. In today’s world, more than half of cryptocurrency trading volume is driven by complex trading bots. Yet, 75% of all hobbyist traders cannot write a single line of code. Coinrule empowers regular traders to

In today's episode I sit down with fellow Maltese entrepreneur Philip Camilleri, who recently made his exit from Smartasset.com, a company he co-founded in 2010 and through which he achieved tremendous success in the United States over the past 10 years. He is now hard at work on his new project Founderslist.com. We discuss the differences in the fintech spaces of Europe and the United States, his journey with Smartasset.com, why he decided to create Founderslist and what are the problems that founders still face and that he is trying to help with. With Malta being such a small country, it's not common to come across such highly successful entrepreneurs as Philip, so his journey should serve as an inspiration to all those who come from small countries and regions that are far from the epicenter of startups and investors. Links Smartasset.com Founderslist.com Philip on Linkedin

Kris Gunnars is the founder and ex-CEO of the world's most trafficked nutrition site Authority Nutrition. He went on to sell that website to Healthline.com, which then became the world's biggest nutrition site. Kris now dedicates his time to investing the handsome returns from the acquisition and runs Stockanalysis.com where he shares the results of his research and learning. In this conversation, we talk about the personality traits and skillset needed to build a successful authority site. We also go through some of the challenges faced by website owners and how to know when to sell. Both Kris and Jean agree that there is a lifecycle that one goes through when owning an authority site, and it's important to know at what stage your business is at in order to have the right expectations and select the appropriate strategy, which might even be that of selling, as in Kris' case. Big transitions are never easy, and we discuss how Kris' life changed after the financially life-changing sale of his site to Healt

In today’s episode, I sit down for a chat with Chris Grech, one of my classmates from high school who has gone on to attain success as a CPA working with international clients and based out of Malta. We touch on various topics, including: Malta’s advantageous corporate tax system Whether Malta really is a “blockchain island” Investing in COVID-19 times and beyond Cryptocurrencies Real estate investing Diversification I enjoyed catching up with Chris and having some of my ideas challenged; this is an exercise that is extremely important to sharpen your thoughts as an investor. As in many other areas of life, there isn’t necessarily either a good or bad to do things, it all depends on your circumstances and future plans. While I might have an investing strategy that is diametrically opposed to someone else’s, we can both achieve our goals simply because the goals themselves are very different. And that is why I predicate caution in blindly copying what other investors are doing. My most importa

On this week's show, Jean is joined by Gabriella Galea, his sister, and Yoran Brondsema, a European index investor and entrepreneur. Gabriella is new to the investing world and is trying to figure it all out, while Yoran has been researching the best way to invest and allocate assets in a sensible portfolio for several years. He developed a tool for Europeans to backtest different portfolios and thus help decided which portfolio they want to adopt. In this episode, we focus on index investing, with a specific focus on European investors. We discuss how to track an index, what asset mix you should have in your investment portfolio, how and when to rebalance, how to choose an ETF and stock broker, and how taxes play an important role in your investment returns. It was a pleasure for me to interview Yoran and you'll find that this episode is packed with information. I also recommend the book "Investing Demystified" that Yoran recommends. I had bought and read it a while back, but I am going to go back to it a

In this week's episode we interview the CEO of Reinvest24, Mr Tanel Orro. This platform is one of my favorites as they are growing organically and doing things the right way. I like their updates on the properties they are working on as they record videos of the progress, and it seems that they are very responsible towards their investors, which is always good to see. We discuss many aspects of investing in real estate, including the hottest trends in real estate investment in Europe, why invest in buy-to-rent properties vs developmetn loans, and where most of the investors come from and why. It was a really enjoyable episode for us to do, and I hope you enjoy it as much as we did. Links Reinvest24

This week we have Gustas from Evo Estate with us. This platform is different from the majority of online real estate investment platforms in that it is a curated aggregator of deals from various platforms. It is a platform that is dedicated to serving the investors' needs, as Gustas emphasizes. In this episode, Jean is joined by his dad Joseph, an experienced finance expert and together they discuss Evo Estate and online real estate deals in general with Gustas. We thoroughly enjoyed our discussion with the young but very knowledgeable Gustas and we think you'll enjoy this too. Links Evo Estate How to Invest in Real Estate online

In today's episode, Jean is joined by Sterling from P2P-Millionaire.com. Sterling is one of the biggest investors in peer-to-peer lending and has an active portfolio of over a million euros invested across several P2P platforms. We discuss how he built the initial capital that he now invests, thoughts about living in China, and how he goes about choosing P2P platforms. We touch upon setting up an auto invest strategy on these P2P lending platforms, and what would happen in an economic downturn. Other topics we go into are the calculation of XIRR, the three fund portfolio, ETFs vs funds and real estate investing. Sterling together with his friend Scrappy are very involved in the European FIRE community as well as several forums dealing specifically with P2P lending, so I really encourage you to listen to this episode and visit their site for their latest monthly reports. Links P2P Millionaire on Twitter P2P Independent forum discussion about what would happen in a crisis How liquid is the Mintos seco

In today's episode, Jean is joined by Jørgen Wolf who is documenting his journey towards financial freedom on his blog. He promises to bare all: his income, his expenses and his investments. In our chat, we talk about the FIRE movement and differences between the European movement and the US movement, how he evaluates P2P platforms, living in Denmark, how to raise a financially intelligent kid, real estate investments and much more. Definitely an episode that will be useful for all those who want to make their money work for them and provide some very good returns. Jørgen is averaging more than 10% returns per year on his investments, with his favorite platform being Mintos, so it's well worth listening to his approach. Links Financially Free blog 1000 True Fans EuroFinanceBlogs.com Financial Independence Europe podcast

In this episode, Jean interviews Matthew Melbourne from Republic.co, a platform where investors from all around the world can invest in US startups. Deal flow has been hard to come by for small investors in the US or investors outside the US with no contacts or physical presence in hotbeds for startups like San Francisco. Republic's mission is to change all that and make investing easy and open to everyone, whichever net worth they have. This means that you don't need to be an accredited investor to invest in startups on this platform. Matthew walks us through the process of investing (as an investor) and raising funds (as a startup). We also talk about success stories (including a company that was acquired by Marcus Lemonis from The Profit) and plans for future expansion. We also talk about crypto investments and the Crowd SAFE instrument for crowdfunding in startups. Links Republic Republic's Note token

The episode is sponsored by Plesk and Freemius. In this episode Mark is joined by Stephan Venter from WooCrew to discuss WooCrew, a WooCommerce maintenance and technical support service. The conversation delves a bit deeper into the most common struggles WooCommerce users face, what kinds of users are opting for WooCommerce today, and what tests and tools are being used to keep WooCommerce stores up and running (and growing!). Links WooCommerce Website: WooCrew.net Twitter: @stephanvent WordCamp Conferences