We discuss how to beat debt, real estate, investing, side hustles, and more...

I'm originally from Long Island, NY and currently living in Ewa Beach, HI. I enlisted in the Navy at the age of 17 and completed 9.5 years before commissioning as a Naval Officer. I have served in the Navy for almost 19 years. In conjunction with my Navy career, I am a licensed REALTOR-ASSOCIATE®, a Finance Coach, and host of the Average Joe Finances Podcast. With my military retirement quickly approaching, my focus shifted to financial independence and entrepreneurship.

I started Average Joe Finances as a blog to share my journey in getting out of debt while becoming financially independent. My focus is to provide information that will help others in their own financial independence journey.

I am on track to reach full financial independence by age 40. I don't consider it FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early) as I does not intend to fully retire. I will continue my passion of entrepreneurship while serving others.

This podcast is a platform to help people get out of debt and start building wealth. We bring on expert guests that discuss their personal path to success and share tips and tricks. From building your own side business to building a real estate empire, we discuss it all.

Our listeners range from young professionals looking to build their credit and start investing, to seasoned entrepreneurs that are looking for motivational content to keep building their business and their brand. What I love the most about my listeners is they do not hesitate to reach out with suggestions or topics they would like to hear relevant to the show. It's been super helpful to me and I get to make sure I am putting out content that really interests them.
 

I listen to a bunch of podcasts, especially the shows that are geared towards self-help, real estate, and business. They all motivate me to do better in my personal life and as an entrepreneur. Whenever you can listen to a podcast and it motivates you to do better, then it's a good one! I attribute much of my success to listening to great podcasts.

I wasn't even planning to start a podcast until after I retired from the Navy. As I stated earlier, I started Average Joe Finances off as a blog to document my own personal journey on how I beat credit card and loan debt to being able to buy a nice house in Hawaii. A friend of mine started a podcast back in 2019 to discuss his personal journey on the road to recovery after some trying times in his life. I started listening to it and would talk to him about his show often. He would tell me how much he enjoyed creating the podcast and it was even therapeutic to him. He told me I should start mine before retiring from the Navy and just give it a shot. So I did, and I'm glad I did it.

I started working on my podcast in May of 2020 and released the first five episodes in July 2020. It took me about two months of preparation and recording some solo episodes to introduce myself as well as interview my first few guests. I realized after releasing and dropping all of those episodes at once how important it is to record a bunch of content to have it ready to go.
 

Finding the time to do the podcast can be extremely difficult. Between my day job in the Navy, being a part-time real estate agent, searching for investment deals, there isn't much wiggle room. Oh by the way, I am married with two wonderful children and they need me and I need them. So they are my priority when there is "open space."

I currently release an episode once per week. When I was doing all of the editing myself, it would take quite a bit of time to produce an episode. I would spend almost 2 hours a day after work on editing both the audio and video content (for my YouTube channel). Remember the time thing I mentioned earlier? Well yeah... this was taking too much of my time, so I had to reevaluate things...

I had been interviewing different Virtual Assistants and Podcast Editors for a long time and none of them were able to provide what I was looking for... well at least, not at a price I could afford and justify it to myself. I finally found a great team! They have been so great for me that I even partnered up with them to bring them onboard the Average Joe Finances team. I now have my own team and offer podcast editing service to others. This has easily been the best decision I ever made for the podcast. Bringing on the editing team has saved me so much time and relieved so much stress. My family has certainly noticed the difference.

So the numbers... I currently spend about $500 a month at this point for editing as well as marketing that I fund myself. I will probably raise the amount I spend as I bring on more clients to our podcast editing services and it continues to grow.
 

Right now I am using podcasting to grow my brand. I just started making revenue from it and took on a few sponsors. I am almost at a point to where the podcast will be self sustainable without me having to put any money into it.

I got my first "real" sponsorship recently when I hit 10,000 downloads. Right now my sponsors are affiliate based. As I build my listenership, I am looking forward to more of a CPM style sponsor. I am currently getting 800-1,200 downloads a month. It fluctuates quite a bit depending on how I advertise or market the podcast. I keep trying different ways to find the best way to do it. Organic growth is king, so I try to market myself as much as possible on my personal social media.

Being a podcast host has been amazing. I get to interview some really awesome people, to include some guests that would normally charge someone to talk to them for their personal coaching services. Not only do I get to talk to them for free (because they are getting free advertising on my show), but I get to ask the questions I want to ask them and pick their brain. That has been the best part about this entire process and I love it!
 

I built an application and information page that allows me to weed out potential guests that might not fit the show's needs. That has been helpful as the podcast has grown in popularity and I now have people reaching out to me and asking to come on the show. I never thought it would get to that point. If they are a good fit, I will send them my scheduling link and do the interview. I stack up content to I let them know it will take a few weeks before their episode airs.

When I was editing the podcast and videos myself, I would use Davinci Resolve. Now I just upload my content to my portal and tell my personal editing team how I want the episode structured. I have a specific order that I like my content structured in each episode. It's become a pretty seamless process now after working out the initial kinks. They even make the show notes for me based on the interview itself. One of my editors even gives me constructive criticism and compliments on the show (which also helps me get better each time).
I interview my guests over Zoom. I absolutely love it because it integrates so well with my scheduler, Calendly. When you are essentially a one man show, it can be difficult. I do plan to eventually hire a VA to do my scheduling for me as I scale the podcast to greater heights.
 

I market my show through social media, both personal and sometimes ads. I also have hired people to market it for me on different podcasts and platforms. I have an email distro, though it's not large, it has been super helpful in pushing my content to a core group of people.

Listeners can find my show on most of the major podcast platforms. Apple Podcasts and Spotify are where I get most of my podcast traffic (but it's really about 75% Apple).

I find social media marketing to be the best way to promote my podcast. Twitter and Instagram have been the two biggest lead generators for me. TikTok is catching up though since starting one recently. I actually found a fantastic guest with a very large following off TikTok on my first week on the platform.
 

For anyone who is just getting started, I would definitely tell them to make sure you prerecord enough content before you launch or you will find yourself scrambling. That is not a position you want to be in. There are some great resources out there including many social media pages you can use to learn from others.

Don't be afraid to ask questions to other podcasters. I pick top tier podcaster's brains all the time. I have learned so much from where I started and to where I am now. I never thought I would say or do this... but I think I am going to make a course for newbie podcasters. With the lessons I have learned, I think it will add great value to someone who is just starting out, or to someone who is established but struggling to increase their downloads and scale. Be on the lookout for it.
 

You can find all of my links on my Flow Page here: https://flow.page/avgjoefinances

I will also post some of my direct links for less clicking/copy & pasting purposes.

Average Joe Finances Podcast: https://averagejoefinances.com/podcast
- Listen Notes: https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/average-joe-finances-mike-cavaggioni-bUHAVk_K5t9/ 
- Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/average-joe-finances/id1525238870 
- Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3wFVrcHTfadfXLn0LVeRry 
Website: https://averagejoefinances.com 
Podcast editing services: https://averagejoefinances.com/podcast-editing 
Other services we provide: https://averagejoefinances.com/services 
Want to be a guest on my show? https://averagejoefinances.com/podcast-application 
Want to support the show? https://buymeacoffee.com/avgjoefinances 
Facebook Group: https://facebook.com/groups/averagejoefinances 
Facebook: https://facebook.com/AverageJoeFinances 
Twitter: @avgjoe_finances
Instagram/TikTok: @mikecavaggioni

Pinterest: https://pinterest.com/avgjoefinances 

Personal LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/michaelcavaggioni/ 
Average Joe Finances LinkedIn:https://linkedin.com/company/average-joe-finances/
YouTube: https://averagejoefinances.com/youtube 
My Wealthtender Podcast profile: https://wealthtender.com/podcast/average-joe-finances-podcast/