Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Jeremy Schneider. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Jeremy, thanks for joining us today. Almost every entrepreneur we know has considered donating a portion of their sales to an organization or cause – how did you make the decision of whether to donate? We’d love to hear the backstory if you’re open to sharing the details.

When I was running my first company, RentLinx, I discovered an organization called 1% for the Planet. It’s basically a movement inspiring businesses to donate 1% of their sales to charity to help solve the problems of the world. I liked that so much I committed my company to donating 2%!

I sold RentLinx for a bit over $5M and retired two years later at the age of 36. When I started Personal Finance Club, I decided to double down on making it an engine for good. But instead of donating 2%, we donate 20% of our sales to charity! That’s been about $190,000 in our first 18 months of business.

Jeremy, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Hey I’m Jeremy! When I was graduating college I turned down a job offer from Microsoft and instead started an internet company (RentLinx). It was a rough start for a few years. I was living on credit cards and racked up $12,000 in debt, just to cover the most basic living expenses. But we finally started generating some revenue, I paid off my debt and continue to grow the company. We never took any outside funding. To accelerate the growth, I paid myself only $36,000/year and did the most expensive work (the software engineering). Everyone who worked for me made more. At the age of 34, I sold RentLinx for a bit over $5 million. My share after taxes was about $2M. I worked for the company who bought us for two years then retired at the age of 36!

For a year, I traveled and played video games. The traveling was fun. The video games were a complete waste of time. I found myself lacking direction and not really enjoying doing nothing. So I started a passion project: Personal Finance Club. It started as an instagram account where I helped education on financial literacy and investing. It was never designed to be a business, rather just a fun way to help people and grow a cool hobby. But then bored during the pandemic, I created a comprehensive “how to invest” online course. My initial instinct was to give it away for free like everything else I was doing. But I know consumers often don’t value free, and if I charged a nominal amount, I’d be able to cover my expenses and maybe even have some money to accelerate growth. So I put it on sale for $49 and made $110,000 in the first week! Now 18 months later, I have two full time employees and we’re still working to grow the business and be an engine for good!

We’d appreciate any insights you can share with us about selling a business.

I did! I sold RentLinx in 2015 for a bit over $5M. Our “Plan A” was always to make money the old fashioned way. Sell a product or service and spend less than we made. Over the course of about 10 years we had built a solid little company and caught the eye of a larger company who liked what we were doing. They were gracious enough to give us a lot of money for the company!

In general, businesses are bought, not sold. Focus on making something fantastic and good things will happen.

Any fun sales or marketing stories?

Right out of college I decided to start a company instead of get a job. I had no idea what I was doing. I didn’t even know how to get my first client. I studied computer science and I was a solid programmer for a recent grad. I decided to try to make people websites. I had no experience, no referrals, no customer base. I remember my old landlord had a terrible website, so I spent three straight days building them a new one from scratch without asking them. Then, I emailed it to them. I got no response.

I was (and still often am) cripplingly shy. But I was hungry. Both literally and figuratively. So I worked up the courage to pick up the phone and call my old landlord. He picked up. I asked if he got my email about his website. He said no. I asked if I could send it to him again. He said sure. We hung up and I sent the email over again.

The website was hosted on an old free computer I had sitting in my living room. I was monitoring it so I was able to watch him look at the website for about 30 seconds. Then he closed it. Then there was silence. I thought “well, at least I tried.” Then the phone rang. He said that it looked great and they would take it. Then he asked how much it costs. It’s a question I hadn’t even considered. I had no idea the sales process could go this quickly. I sputtered out “$3,000 and $300/month”. An outrageously high price for three days of work back then. He responded “That monthly cost is fine, but can you do $2,000 up front?”. I tried to play it cool and screamed “YES” immediately. That’s how I got my first sale!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.personalfinanceclub.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/personalfinanceclub/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/personalfinanceclub
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/perfinclub
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/personalfinanceclub
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@personalfinanceclub

Image Credits
Matt Shiffler (Just the first image of me smiling on stage)