On the latest episode of The Get Ready Money Podcast, I spoke with Karl Swanepoel, Founder and CEO of Revolancer about changing the way we think about money and finding freedom as a freelancer.
In this episode we discussed:
Karl Swanepoel is the CEO & Founder of Revolancer, a platform that aims to help independent professionals and freelancers barter skills to build their service businesses. He was appointed as the youngest-ever brand ambassador for Europe’s largest business conference, The Business Show, where he was a keynote speaker.
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On the latest episode of The Get Ready Money Podcast, I spoke with Karl Swanepoel, Founder and CEO of Revolancer about changing the way we think about money and finding freedom as a freelancer.
In this episode we discussed:
Karl Swanepoel is the CEO & Founder of Revolancer, a platform that aims to help independent professionals and freelancers barter skills to build their service businesses. He was appointed as the youngest-ever brand ambassador for Europe’s largest business conference, The Business Show, where he was a keynote speaker.
Links:
Are you looking to get ready, be prepared and transform your financial future? Then you've come to the right place. This is the Get Ready Money Podcast with Tony Stewart, where Tony has insightful conversations with financial experts who are changing the way we think about money. Watch up on the latest financial trends and hear practical advice from Tony and his expert guests so you can build healthy habits that work. Be empowered with tips for implementing small changes that can have a big impact on your financial future. So sit back and get ready to hear from today's guest.
Tony Steuer:Welcome to the Get Ready Money Podcast changing the way we think about money. This is the guest to be joined today by Carl Swannapole. Carl is the founder and CEO of Revelancer. In this episode, we'll be discussing Carl's thoughts on how we change the way we think about money and how we get freedom back to freelancers. Carl, welcome to the Get Ready Money Podcast. Well, thanks for having me, Tony, it's my pleasure. Yeah, we'll look forward to learning more about you and the company. To get started, tell us a little bit about who you are. Can you share with us what is your origin story? Sure.
Karl Swanepoel:Well, I decided when I was quite young that I wanted to work for myself and create my own company, create my own journey, and I started that through freelancing, which then actually led to getting a good understanding of the freelancing space, seeing what's working well, more importantly, what could be going better, and that then eventually led me to start Revelancer to try and solve those issues that I experienced early on. But for a very long time, since I was 13, I have always been looking for various different ways to make money online. Some worked, most didn't, but everything has led to where I am today and I picked up some of what I consider to be interesting lessons along the way, and hopefully someone finds them useful.
Tony Steuer:Fantastic, so I know you've had a lot of success early on. Is there any advice you can give to younger people in the audience if they're thinking, hey, I'm too young to do this?
Karl Swanepoel:Well, I don't know if I'm the best person to say, because, you know, when I started my first business, I used PayPal and PayPal kept locking my accounts because I couldn't prove that I was older than 18. I was 15 at the time, so I don't know. But I suppose the best thing I can say is, kind of what I did is that you know, I'm not encouraging you to break PayPal or anyone else's rules, but you know, what I am encouraging you to do is to just try and just keep going. And you know, try what you can, get scrappy, and it all pays off in the end. You know, like the kind of things you learn, even if you had certain roadblocks, the learnings are absolutely invaluable and I certainly wouldn't be where I am today if it weren't for that kind of approach early on.
Tony Steuer:Fantastic, that's great advice and I think you know even if you're older that applies. You know to keep trying to not give up, and you know look for different solutions. Yeah, and to my audience out there, please don't try to break PayPal, or at least say you heard it here. You can't quote us on that. So you know, carl, let's talk a little bit about the company. You know how is Revloncer giving freedom back to freelancers?
Karl Swanepoel:Well, you know, a lot of the way that the industry towards freelancers is currently structured and has been for a very long time is actually, if you think about it, quite bizarre. So other kind of, you know, large freelancing platforms. Their approach, essentially, is to give clients the best possible deal, and the way that they do that is, you know, I think, arguably at the expense of freelancers. So large freelancing platforms they make money through commission fees, which they charge primarily to the freelancer in most cases. So it can be the case that they charge, you know, 20% of each transaction to the freelancer and then 5% of the clients on top as well, which results in, you know, just under 25% in a commission. And you know, and in order to enforce that because, well, you know, if you've been working with a client even for the first time, but especially if you've been working with a client a couple of times, how willing are you going to be for, you know, an extended period of time, to keep paying such a large chunk of your earnings to the platform? You know, which is very understandable. And because of that, they actually disrupt your workflow quite seriously by stopping you from emailing clients, stopping you from video calling or calling clients in any way, which then has a knock on effect right where clients are now not really able to communicate properly with these freelancers that they hire, which ultimately results in a you know, in less value for everyone involved and certainly not an ideal kind of solution, and you can't integrate these freelancers into your team.
Karl Swanepoel:So this is something that's, you know, the way that things have been done for the past 20 years with these large freelancing platforms, and we're looking to change that, you know, permanently and for the better. And the way we do that is well, we don't charge commission fees, you know, and we allow freelancers and clients to work in a way that is compatible with, you know, the modern way of doing remote work, such as video calling, I think, is a pretty essential part now, and, and ultimately our brand is very pro-freelancer, because ultimately, our philosophy is that if we can be very pro-freelancer and attract the best talent, then ultimately that's actually providing the best platform and best experience to the clients as well. So that's where we feel we have to start and, you know, and that gives the optimal result.
Tony Steuer:Fantastic, it sounds exciting and I know I've worked with some of these platforms too and it can be very disruptive when you're in the middle of a project or the project scope expands. So you know. Of course, the question is how are you compensated as a company?
Karl Swanepoel:Well, through various other ways, such as, for example, subscription fees for access to certain, you know, more kind of desirable features. You know, and if you look at a company like Fiverr, for example, they charge 20% commission to the freelancer and 5% of the clients on top of the transactions. That works up to, I think, 23.8% or so on the entire transaction. If they just charged every one of their sort of active freelances $5 a month, they would generate the same revenue, and wouldn't that be better for everyone? You know, I certainly think so. So that's kind of more along the lines of what we are looking to build, rather than taking massive cuts of people's earnings and therefore then, you know, kind of being forced to ban them from video calling or communicating externally in any way.
Tony Steuer:Well, that's fantastic and I think you know. One of the things you know where it relates to the financial literacy conversation is in the passive income is because there's only two ways to increase your financial position is to either reduce your expenses and increase your income, and I think people sometimes overlook the expenses that go into freelance work is it sounds great. You know you're going to get paid X dollars per hour, x dollars project, and you know it's easy to overlook these details. And I love the simplicity of a subscription model because somebody knows what their expenses are going to be. So I think it's a great model. And I think it's interesting for people who are thinking about picking up additional work is to be mindful of those commissions, like if you drive an Uber or, as you say, if you take work through a fiver or whatever, that those fees will eat up the money that you earn. So that's fantastic, you know. One of the other things you know you talk about your company talks about is community. Why is it important to unlock creativity through community?
Karl Swanepoel:Well, because I think you know, ultimately, the reasons, you know the reason, probably the main reason, frankly, why humans have been able to accomplish what we have is through collaboration. You know, other sort of animals don't collaborate in the same way that we do and our sort of, you know, ability and willingness to collaborate with each other has meant that we, you know, are a created, a civilized kind of society and have accomplished things, you know, far and beyond what perhaps any other species on this planet has been able to. And I think the same thing extends here. Right, you know, freelancers are oftentimes, you know in most cases, very creative and very talented people. But if you have people working together, that is is compounded, you know, massively, massively compounded, and if you sort of just isolate people, then you don't get that same effect. So I think you know, for freelancers to really achieve their true potential and for the clients of freelancers to, you know, also absolutely get that, that potential out of them, you know there needs to be a sense of community and collaboration.
Tony Steuer:Okay, fantastic, and so is that one of the services your company provides is, you know, sort of an entree into freelancing for people who are new to freelancing.
Karl Swanepoel:Yes, absolutely it is. That's something that's very, you know, important to me personally, but but also to the company as a whole. You know, I mean, what's really quite surprising is, recently a kind of a survey came out that more than 70% of Gen Z want to go into freelancing, as opposed to a traditional nine to five job. And even, you know, today there are one and a half billion freelancers in the world, which is a third of global workforce. And McKinsey, you know, the very prevalent consulting firm, predicts that by 2027, more than half of the US workforce will be freelancers. So, you know, the world is very much moving in the direction of this way of work, but unfortunately, right now there aren't that many solutions to really help people, you know, adapt to that way of working. And that's something that's very important to us and something where you know I can. I'm very proud of the fact that we've helped many freelancers kind of get started, perhaps in a way that is easier than it would have otherwise been. You know, if, if rather so, it wasn't around.
Tony Steuer:Well, that's fantastic. Yeah, and as I think through it is you know it is a part of you know it definitely relates to financial literacy is because freelancers are even more responsible for their personal finances, because they have to have their own insurance, they have to take care of their own retirement planners you may say retirement scheme. Is that correct? Yeah, for sure. So you know there are those things, and so I think it's important for people to be thinking about those, what resources they need, if they look at this different way of earning income, which is a great way to earn income and, as you know from your personal story, it gave you freedom to do things, and I think that's why so many people are interested in well, one of the reasons people are interested in freelancing. So that's fantastic. So you know, carl, let's get into the get ready money questions. So the first one is what basic money concept do you wish people knew?
Karl Swanepoel:Well, you know this is actually quite an interesting one. When I started Rev Along, so I was in my last year of university, so you know I was a student who didn't have a lot of money lying around, like like most students you know date and I entered a sort of a startup. Competition at my university was hosting where there was a price to start your company. That was probably about you know, 15,000 USD or so, right, and I remember kind of in my current position, viewing that as an enormous amount of money. And you know, and there's certainly not a small amount of money.
Karl Swanepoel:But one thing that I then learned kind of you know, going from that to then raising, kind of you know, much, much larger amounts of funding from investors is that you know the way people view money.
Karl Swanepoel:It's very relative to their position, right.
Karl Swanepoel:So you know, in the same way that an angel investor might think about investing $10,000, that might be the same as somebody else, you know, the same kind of weight of decision as somebody else deciding to go to a fancy restaurant for dinner and maybe spending $200 or $300 or something, and it might be the same as somebody you know it could go even lower, it could go even higher, right, and this is something that I kind of realized, because I used to think of money in a very kind of linear way, but in reality it's very much relative.
Karl Swanepoel:So you know, if you speak to somebody who earns a lot more, or certainly if you're sort of speaking to other companies in B2B sales, for example, you know the amounts are very much relative to what that entity has access to and, of course, also the value that they kind of can potentially get out of it. So that's something which you know, I think I learned by kind of doing what I do, and something which certainly, you know was some level of surprise to me, but something that I'm glad I learned.
Tony Steuer:Yeah, well, no, that's an awesome lesson for people, because I think you know, sometimes people think, well, I can't do that because I don't have enough money right now, or that's not me. But I think it's more about the principles, and that's what you're saying is, you know, if you're smaller, you're still making decisions about your investment portfolio. Maybe if you're a Goldman Sachs, you're making multi-billion dollar decisions, but you're still making some of the same basic decisions. No, not likening most of us to Goldman Sachs, but I think there are principles. You know you need to save more money than you spent, and those principles apply. You know, no matter what maybe physics, laws of financial literacy yeah, absolutely. Yeah, fantastic. So the next one is what is one simple thing you can do each year to set yourself up for financial success?
Karl Swanepoel:Well, you know, I think and you know I absolutely can't take credit from this, this is from. You know, I read the book Rich Dad Bird Ad by Robert Kewasaki, many, many years ago probably easily 10 years ago or so now and one thing from that book especially really stuck in my mind, which is sort of thinking about everything as either an asset or a liability, you know, and then being quite frugal about your liabilities and investing in your assets and sort of building that up, and you know, and an asset is anything that either holds or, ideally, you know, kind of makes you money, but not something that loses you money, like that's a liability, and you know. And an example there is, you know, like what about a car? Well, I think a car is in most cases a liability.
Karl Swanepoel:So perhaps then you might want to think about not buying, you know, a Ferrari or whatever fancy car you might, you know, want until, but you know, perhaps you can afford and it's just not that big of a decision anymore, but perhaps in the meantime, sort of going for something that does the same job of getting you to A and B, from A to B, it's going to depreciate and value quite a lot You're going to have to spend money on fuel maintenance, storage.
Karl Swanepoel:You know all kinds of stuff and kind of viewing that as a liability, you know, whereas, for example, an investment, you know, in a business or something like that can be an asset, or perhaps even buying property although you know property can, you can look at it either way, but perhaps buying a rental property or something like that can be an asset. So just really looking through that lens at everything you do, I think can be, can be very helpful and something that perhaps most people don't do, you know and it's not you know, I'm not saying that to that, you know, don't take the kind of nth degree, but just thinking in that way can certainly help you improve your financial situation.
Tony Steuer:I think that's excellent advice because it you know it gets to efficiency. You know it gets to a little bit about what you were talking about earlier with the perspective, and also gets to what we were talking about earlier about Revancer and you know the expenses that you're paying is to be efficient with what you're doing and thinking about. You know what is its impact to your flow and so you know that's great advice. So you know what is one habit that people can change when it comes to their money.
Karl Swanepoel:Well, one thing that I have kind of done from the beginning I don't know why, but you know something that now I kind of understand more. I'm happy that I do things that way is kind of I will be very frugal with most things, but then things that I really care about I splurge on, you know. So I think, like most people will to some degree splurge on a lot of different things. So perhaps they buy, you know, fancy clothing, perhaps they, you know, they kind of maybe push it with with everything to the maximum of what they can afford, whereas I have always had this kind of perspective of, you know, while clothing, for example, I really, you know, I see that very much as utility, I'm not really interested in designer brands or anything like that. So, you know, I buy the cheapest possible stuff, you know.
Karl Swanepoel:And the same thing is true with a lot of other stuff, like, for example, food.
Karl Swanepoel:You know I try to eat relatively healthily but still, you know, I don't sort of go eating at an extremely fancy restaurants all the time and this kind of thing.
Karl Swanepoel:And that then means that I have more money to spend on things that I really care about and sort of bring me joy. And again, you know, I don't think that that's something to take to the end of the degree, but again I think that's something where you know, if you're thinking like, oh, I wish I could afford to go on holiday, or I wish I could afford this or that, then perhaps one way to make that happen is to, you know, cut your level of expense on things that frankly don't really matter to you so that you can put a high level of expense into things that do matter to you. Or you know, sort of save that additional money so that somewhere down on the line you know you're in a position to buy a property, or, you know, do whatever you want with it, but you know, not sort of just spending as much as you can on something, but instead maybe looking at saving money, you know, as much as possible.
Tony Steuer:Yeah, that's great and it's in line with you know. What we've been talking about is, you know, to be official with your money, to think about each purchase. You know, and maybe that's the lesson from Rich Dad Pork, that is, be mindful about where you're spending your money. So that's a great habit for people to. You know, just to be mindful of that and to avoid lifestyle creep, because it's easy, you know, you get more money and it's like maybe I'll buy that new car. You know, like you were talking about maybe getting the Ferrari, but is that the right move overall and how will that impact you? That's wonderful advice, so you know. The next question is what money myth are you trying to break?
Karl Swanepoel:Yeah, I mean that's a very good question. I think one thing is people have people typically believe in the just world hypothesis I believe it's called right. People think that those who work harder or have more are deserving of you know, while having more right. And that is just not how the world works. You know somebody who's washing, you know dishes in a restaurant, working you know 10, 12 hour shifts or something, is arguably working harder than a lot of people who are making many, many multiples of their salary, and I think that's something to really consider. Right, that you know the way the world works.
Karl Swanepoel:Those who have more don't necessarily deserve it. I mean, you know I have all kinds of issues with this concept of deserving or not deserving anyway, but I think the lesson there is that you know, if you want to get more, yes, you need to work hard, fine, but it's more important that you work smart. So choose what it is you do. You know who you work with, what kind of value of services you can provide, how indispensable can can you be, and then ultimately, that way you can, you know, achieve much more.
Tony Steuer:Let's make asking and it's good advice and I think that's something people struggle with too is finding the value for their pay. I know in the US, gender equity is an issue with pay women doing the same work with men but not getting paid the same is it's not always tied to the effort that you put in. So that's that's wonderful advice. So you know, let's, let's get into our time machine for a minute. Carl is, what advice would you give your younger self if you go back in time, knowing what you know now about money?
Karl Swanepoel:That's a great question. I think it would come come down to two things that I already mentioned, like, first of all, the fact that money is relative, because another thing is, when I was freelancing, and you know, and I was 1314 or so, you know, I would build websites for people and, and I would, you know, charge them like $500 or so and and I would, in my mind, you know, as a, as a teenager, think that you know that's so much money. How, how on earth could they, you know how, why, why would they spend so much money on this thing? Right, but then, at the same time, like, looking back at it, probably added an extra zero to the end and made almost as many sales and certainly sort of a lot more overall. And you know, and that comes back to kind of just thinking about money relatively.
Karl Swanepoel:So, like, who are you speaking to? How much is this actually worth to them? Because if I can build a business or website that doesn't currently have a website and it can increase their sales by 100, 200 thousand dollars a year, then yeah, they're probably willing to pay more than 500 dollars for that, you know. So that's definitely something that that that I would, you know, tell myself if I could go back, and then I think the the other thing is although I did, you know, learn this 10 years ago, when, when I was a teenager, but just thinking about things as assets and liabilities and really being mindful about that, yeah, I love this advice and you know I mean and there's a through line from everything that you've been talking about is to know what I mean also to know what something is worth is.
Tony Steuer:you know, when you're starting out, it's hard to know what it's worth. I paid a little more than 500 dollars for the redesign of my website that's coming soon. I wish I'd paid only 500 dollars, but I think that's important is that we oftentimes don't know the value of our assets and liabilities. So not only do you need to think about in terms of you know of whether it's an asset or liability, but how much is it actually worth? You know, and what's a net effective, as you were talking about earlier. So what is your number one tip on changing the way we think about money?
Karl Swanepoel:Yeah, I mean it's a. It's a very good question. I think I have lots of tips.
Tony Steuer:If I had to try to do more than one, but it's got to be your number one, All right my number one tip, I think, when it comes down to, is just being being very mindful.
Karl Swanepoel:Being very mindful of what money is you know, like sort of why some people have more, why some people have less.
Karl Swanepoel:You know, and, like you very, very rightly pointed out, there is unfortunately a lot of inequality there and there's a lot of injustice there about why some people have more money than others, and that's the bad thing.
Karl Swanepoel:But I think the good thing is that everyone you know, kind of no matter who you are has the ability to improve their situation, even if it's only a little bit to start with, but bit by bit, everyone has the potential to improve their situation when it comes to money. And then just really, kind of you know and this is perhaps a bit of a cop-out answer, but you know learning a lot of different things about it, really thinking about it, and then you know putting those learnings into practice, because it's all good and well, you know, sort of you know, knowing in theory, that things are really only assets or liabilities and you need to cut your liabilities and increase your assets, right, but it's actually really about putting that into practice. So you know the. I guess the number one tip is like number one educate yourself. But the number two actually take action as well and really put these things into practice.
Tony Steuer:Yeah, no, I agree, it starts with education, because if you don't know these things, how are you supposed to do anything? Any new skill always involves you know, some measure of education, otherwise you just can't succeed. You don't go and play cards without knowing the card game and the rules for the card game, and I think people don't think about that sometimes when they're money, it's like, well, I'm going fast, but then they don't know the rules of investing. And then they wonder why. It's like I lost a lot of money on investment. And you know, and actually it is like poker, because you're playing against a bunch of people who that is their life, their investment charts. They know what they're doing, they spent all day thinking about it, planning about it. They have, you know, more resources. That's wonderful.
Tony Steuer:Advice is to educate yourself and then figure out how to put it into action. And I think putting figuring that out can be challenging for people too is how exactly do you put that into action? And that's why you know I mean our discussion has been great today, because you've given people some really actionable things to think about. Where I'm trying to go with this podcast, too, is you know those bigger picture things, thinking about things like assets and liabilities, thinking about the value, because those are rules that you can apply across the board, you know, to any facet of the money game. They're not going to give you the final answer, of course, but you know this is great stuff and I appreciate your wisdom today. So you know, carl, where can people learn more about you? And Rebel answer find out what you're up to. Get connected.
Karl Swanepoel:Yeah, sure. Well, I'd say, you know, if you search my name on Google, you can find me on LinkedIn that's probably the best place to contact me or my personal site. And then if you Google Rebel on, so go to rebelonscom and you're interested in freelancing, then you'll be able to get started there Fantastic, and you know people who've been listening or watching this podcast for a while.
Tony Steuer:As always, I'll have links to Carl's websites and social media profiles so you can get in touch with them, follow them and see what he's up to. So, carl, thanks again for joining us today on the Get Ready Money podcast. That's my pleasure. Sonny, thanks for having me. Yeah, and thank you everyone, as always, for tuning in to this episode of the Get Ready Money podcast. Please remember to subscribe and change the way you think about money. Until next time, forget my Bazooka video.