Shakin' Hands

Ep. 75 | Turning Content Into a Finance Company - Juan Hun

• Jack Moran • Season 1 • Episode 75

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Jack Moran sits down with Panamanian entrepreneur and financial educator Juan Hun, co-founder of Fyros and founder of JHG Media, to unpack how he built a thriving business around simplifying money management. Juan shares how he transformed a pandemic-era YouTube hobby into a multi-stream brand, leveraging TikTok consistency, content repurposing, and financial education for Latin America. The conversation explores building a team, designing monetization funnels, and striking a balance between authenticity and smart selling. He explains why index investing beats complexity, why quantity often precedes quality, and how straightforward strategies often prevail. Listeners walk away understanding that patience, systems, and purpose, not overnight virality, create long-term freedom.

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Welcome to Shakin’ Hands, where we provide the platform for entrepreneurs and thought leaders to share their stories in order to hopefully influence others to get out of the rat race and chase their own dreams. If you have any recommendations for guests or questions that you want to be asked, please don't hesitate to reach out. Anyways, if you enjoy the podcast, please like, comment, subscribe and share in order to keep the podcast growing. Otherwise, I'm your host, Jack Moran and this is Shakin’ Hands. If you're looking for business mentorship, I have a place where you can get feedback on your unique personal development and business growth challenges. Over the last year, I've brought together a group of impact driven thought leaders where we meet every single day to discuss psychology, communication, mindset, and business case studies. We have people who have made millions of dollars, lost millions of dollars, Harvard MBAs and new entrepreneurs like you and I. Entrepreneurship can be lonely. So if you're looking for a support system, please follow the link in the description below for some more information. It's pretty difficult to raise money here, Very difficult. I haven't done it. I'm thinking about doing it. I'm bootstrapping right now. What I'm thinking about it in this new business I have, but I'm not sure because it's it's difficult. Yeah. Yeah. What's the business you got going now. So I have two businesses. Do you want to live it for live podcast or. We're on right now. Oh. We're on. Okay, perfect. So. Okay, I have two business. One is like my media company. They call it they HD media. That's all about content on my personal brand. And we have coaching. We have several courses on how to get better on your finances. Put them in order on how to start investing for the future. And the second business is sort of, you know, NerdWallet. NerdWallet. Yeah. No, it's, no, it's, a place where you can compare different financial products all in one place. Total transparency for the average Panamanian person so they can compare credit cards, personal loans, different, credit products. So you can have all that in one place, making it easier for the person to get it. Instead of going to every bank to get a loan or a credit card. You have it all in one place. How do you get a low? Is it difficult to get a loan in Panama as a US expat? As a US expat, I'm not sure about it. I think it it's not as hard as you might think. You have the capital. They feel alone. I'm curious how they collateralize the assets like, in the US. I'm not sure about it. I, I've had many clients. Will not many expats. How did you get into this business? I was passionate about finance when I was 18. I didn't watch on YouTube like thing for entertainment. I used to watch content on finance, like I used to watch videos comparing credit cards in the United States. I was like, I did that for fun. So I was like, I wish someone in Panama did that. Then Covid hit 2020. I was in prison at home. I only had classes at university for a couple hours, and the rest of the day I didn't have anything to do. So I was like, okay, I want to be a YouTuber. So if I do not do it right now that I am here, I will never do it. What what content could I do? Okay, I like finance. There is no one my age talking about finance for young people here in Panama, in Latin America. So I'll do it myself. So everything I liked about finance, comparing great guards, comparing financial products, talking about investing in the stock market. I started doing content on that in 2020. And since then it's been a a whole ride. Once I ride one like. Lots of ups and downs, like good moments. People that recognize me on the streets. It's very funny. When I go to Starbucks near here, the baristas, they recognize me. They take out their wallets and tell me, hey, I have this credit card because of, you know, yeah. So that's that's on the good side and the bad side, you know, it's it's difficult. Panama and Central America doesn't have a lot of financial education. So it's hard getting to the people for them to want to learn about these things. It's been kind of difficult. Lots of, barriers to doing that. And, you know, you have all the regulations, what you can say, what you cannot say. I know in the US it's ha it's a big deal on the side of regulation. You have to be very careful on what you say and what you don't. Who Panama is a little bit more flexible. And I know many of the regulators. So I have personal contact with them. They tell me, okay, you can do this. You cannot do this. It's it's been playing well since then. What was the process of starting to garner that audience or that engagement? In the early days, and starting to build that credibility with an audience extremely suffering. It was painful doing it extremely, extremely slow. Like I started on YouTube. I wanted to be a YouTuber, as I told you. It's hard growing on YouTube. So I heard Gary Vee. He was telling at that moment, making lots of videos on how everyone should be making TikToks. Right. And Covid. So I was like, he said, people should be doing ten TikToks a day. And I took their advice and did it myself for the next ten months. I went hard on TikTok. I did ten videos a day for ten months. At first it was horrible. But then things started getting traction. Start to grow. Community started to grow. From TikTok to YouTube to Instagram. I made my first my first dollar online in, eight, ten months after starting from YouTube.$5.71. I mean, I took to the TI. It was a special labor. It was extremely slow. And I think that's what people need to understand, that when you are making content, it will be slow. You will not grow as fast as you think you will. And I did it in ten months. But like, nobody's going to do ten videos a day. Like I'm crazy. But if you put in the work and you're willing to be patient, like you'll get the reward of it. What was that reward? After ten months? My first dollar online. I told myself, okay, I, I won't quit for at least two years. After two years, I gave permission myself to quit. But no one can tell me I didn't try hard enough. Like so. If I had my goal in two years, I monetized in ten months. And then the business started to grow from there. What were the things that you learned through that journey? Like are the moments or the keys or the fundamentals to having a successful personal brand? You need to start with volume. Like there's always the debate between quality and quantity. My take is you need the quantity first. You need to go hard on quantity. And that's what gives you the quality on the content because you're getting the reps. Yeah you're getting the reps. It's in. Everything sells the same thing. Marketing the something personal brand exactly the same. So put your reps in quantity. You will then eventually, by inertia, get the quality and then stay in the game for as long as possible. Stay consistent. Like I have, my goal was to make one YouTube video a week. As long as I did that, I was fine with it. That was the goal. The result of that? Well, it came with time, but consistency. Quantity over quality at first, then a combination of both. And another moment was when I realized I couldn't do it all by myself. I needed a team. It's not many people have the infrastructure for making content here in Panama as I have. Like, I have a team of ten people helping me with creating content, my personal brand, growing the business. Usually content creators in Panama are all by themselves. I think that's the difference between just being a content creator and making content creation a business. Having a team of people helping you out doing the podcast, you could not do a podcast on yourself by yourself. No chance, no chance. So having all these people has allowed me to make the business as big as it is. Who were those, key team players and what are their profiles? What are their responsibilities that you're delegating? So, like the main ones, my producer slash editor, he's the one to have. I shared my most of the time. He's the one that helped me record all the content. He's the one editing all the videos. So I have a close relationship with him. Also, my content manager is the one in charge of every post, every publication, every caption. The brainstorming that the content calendar is all were, adjusted. And as well, I have a partner on the business side. He's been he's been great. He has allowed me to focus more on the content. So he focuses more on the business model, on how to get clients all that infrastructure. And I do what I do best. That is content and help people on their finances. So I think I have many more people, but those three are the main ones I list. Have you seen a shift in what people engage with now versus, what they did when you first started out or it's remained pretty consistent? I think, the most important change I have seen is people interested in investing. I know in the US investing it, everyone invests in the US. Everyone has a Robinhood account. They buy GameStop. They buy several stocks that they hear over there. But in Latin America, that is not a culture that we have on investing. People don't usually invest. If you find someone that invests, say, whoa, okay, you know some things. But most people don't have a clue what is investing. I think since I have started from 2020 to now, the level of conscience is bigger. On investing on how important it is, regarding inflation, like it's inflation in Latin America, not so much in Panama because we have the dollar, but Colombia, Argentina, Venezuela, like you now, see, the importance of investing if you want to be inflation, because the cost of living is going up, even if you don't invest you. So you might as well do it. Yeah. And you're just losing money on your dollar as it's there if you're not. Yeah. If you have dollars like in Panama, or you have pesos, even worse, even worse. What are you recommending? Or what is your framework as a fundamental investment plan for someone who is just getting started in a Latin American country? Index funds in the investing is the easiest way you have are using US indexes. Yeah, you have indexes mainly. You can go to the stock market or emerging markets, but you show us is the easiest one. Like if you have Warren Buffett, the best investor of all time, saying that most people should invest only in indexes and they'll be just fine and they'll probably beat most of stock picking investors. Why wouldn't you do it? He's the best investor of all time telling you exactly what to do. Why would you do anything different? Yeah, unless you have, background of finance on investing. You work in Wall Street. Okay? You have some advantage. So. Okay, fine. Go stock picking. But if you are just a regular guy in Latin America, you're just starting to learn what is investing. Go index fund index fund investing. And it's the easiest way to go with it. For a lot of people, it's just boring. They'd rather put it all on read at the casino. Yeah, that's the other thing you need to understand. It is boring. It is like, I do this for a living and I know it is boring, but boring is what gets you the results you need. You want what kind of indexes like or just like S&P funds or S&P? The easiest way is the one everyone talks about. And then certainly with there's a reason to it because people do it. So go with it and that's it. So obviously here in Panama being on the US dollar, it's easier to have access to us like indexes. Is that a problem in other countries in Latin America? Investing on those. More or less. There are to this point, there are several platforms that let you invest in in other currencies, but I think it's growing. There are more platforms. For example, you have platforms from the US, meaning most of Latin America, except maybe Venezuela and Cuba, but the rest of the countries, you have a US platform as brokers that you can use in Latin American countries, even though you don't have dollars as the currency of the country. So it's it's getting easier as we go and the commissions every time get lowered. What has been your most successful piece of content to the. The most successful. Okay. On YouTube I have, a video they I make exactly the same video with the same script every year on November. And that's the my best performing video of the whole year. It carries my YouTube channel. It's how to invest in the stock market as a beginner. I do it every year on November, and the only change I do is changing the the year in the title. How to invest in the stock market for beginners 2025. And this November I'll do the same with 2026. No, it performs great. What would you say is like kind of the fundamentals that you're seeing to getting a video to, you know, maybe go viral or, getting that, fostering that engagement. What are the keys? You always take great importance in the hook of the main part, the attention of the people. You need to grab it as soon as you want, as soon as you can. And if you are controversial, I think it's. It helps a lot. Like saying something people wouldn't agree on it. Like it catches your attention more than anything. Or if you have a negative hook in message saying this is how you invest, you tell people you'll lose that a lot of money if you don't invest like this. It I think it helps a lot and making people watch the whole video like learn how to how much watch time you should have on videos per platform, like on YouTube. Usually you go, you go for 6 to 12 minutes on podcasts like if you see the best podcasts are two, three, four hours long. It's crazy to have a podcast for four hours. Well, for Joe Rogan does it. So should work. On TikTok they should be less time, like five to 10s, maybe 20. So learn that and that helps a lot. What do you think? That the hook being controversial, a negative hook and knowing how much watch time you should aim for in each platform? What is the key? Converting that engagement into monetization? First of all, having the right business model. I think it's important, listening to to what people tell you, to what they ask of you. If you have lots of comments on all, a course on how to invest, it would be nice. Hey, that's a great way to validate your idea. Go on, make an MVP and validate it with the market that. Oh, you want that? Of course. Here it is. You can reserve your spot for 100 bucks tonight. So I think having that business model being correct for the type of content you do, knowing your audience, I think it's important, not being afraid to sell. I think many people, when they create content, they are afraid to sell, that they lose the trust of their followers if they sell them something. Well, that's how you make money you need. At some point, you need to go for the ask. Like, not at first. Don't go to your first video telling, okay, bye bye. This no, you need to get the trust of the of the followers of the community. I did it for ten months. I didn't sell anything for ten months. And after that, when I had the community, I had the trust. Okay. Then I tried to find out what is the best business model. How do I sell something? How do I make money from all these work that I have been doing? Well, try as long as you can to not sell something and eventually, when the time is right, go hard on selling. What's your biggest stream of income? Is it courses right now? Yeah, it is courses, but I have several streams of income that are well balanced. I would say okay. So I want to dig into those a little bit. But let's start with courses. Is there a template that you follow to have a successful course. Like is it, you know, what is the structure? Is it five episodes? Five episodes? What do people want to see? Like what is that kind of like like, I think there's not a single framework. I think people want to learn on different ways. There will be someone that wants to learn by themselves with a prerecorded video with several modules, there will be someone that wants to learn life with you on a zoom call every week. There will be someone that prefers learning from a guide, a playbook that they can download as a PDF. So I think it's having several people. Obviously you have a core product like that's important. Focus on your core product. But then beyond that, learn that people want to learn different methods, so have a different methods, different vehicle for them to learn. It could be the same thing but packaging differently. Interesting. Yeah. So your funnel does it go directly from your like top of funnel like social media platforms and you're making offers within those platforms and it goes directly to that product? Or is there an intermediate step in between and usually there's any intermediate step. Well there is forums, we will forums or taking them over to what's up like conversion rate in WhatsApp is usually bigger that if you do it directly on on Instagram or other social media platforms. So I usually try to take them to conversation, whether it's in the DMs or in WhatsApp, or if it is, a high ticket product, taking it over to a zoom call on a cell scope and closing on the cell school. But those are usually the main methods. I don't I try to don't sell directly in the in the content and we do webinars as well. So how are you bringing them into, into those channels like WhatsApp or the DMs or a zoom call or is it going from your top of funnel? You have a video and you're saying, like, check out my new course, like the link in bio. And then that goes to or DM me at this with this code usually then the me this or comment this and I'll see how can I help you. And once I get them to comment something, I have the ultimate solution. So we start a conversation from there. Usually the conversation starts with auto monetization, but then we have people, responding to messages like more personalized. And from that, from that conversation, we usually see, okay, this person doesn't have the budget for our high ticket product, so we'll offer him a prerecorded course or, a free guide that we have. So capital in Panama is not as big as in the US. So there's many people with, low incomes and we try to help them as well. We have lots of many, many recourse resources, totally free for them to have to learn to better manage their finances. So we give them that to those people, the ones that we see that have some capital to start on their own. We sell them the courses. And the ones that we do see that have more, more capital. We usually try to get them on a zoom call to sell them. I take it. What are you seeing as like kind of the sweet spots for, prices within the Latin market for each of these different products, like for a course versus a PDF, for instance? For a low ticket product, it's usually between$9 and 47 I think is a sweet spot. I would say 2729 is a sweet spot for medium ticket products. I would say 297 to 97. Yeah. For like the rule of whole numbers, you're just. Yeah, surely it is better than 300. Yeah. And for, high tickets, I would say 987 between 1000 and 2000. Okay. So what does that high ticket look like? How many hours of content are they getting or what are they getting from that? Usually on hours of content. It would be 5 to 6, prerecorded courses. And then you have the the coaching course on groups. And usually I give one once between them so you can have a more personalized attention and other bonuses as well. Several masterclasses already recorded some guides as well, workbooks and all of that. So what is the cadence typically look like as they progress through that course on that high ticket item? Is it, one one hour video and then one call per week or how does that look? It's usually one, one one meeting at the beginning. Then we have the coaching group calls once a week. You watch the course, all through that time and the other, one and one meeting at the end of it. Interesting. Yeah, well, that's really cool. We're constantly changing that to make it better. If we include more one ones or make the coaching calls twice a week. So we validate that those changes constantly to see what converge better, what people one more, dissatisfaction form that we have at the end of it. It gives us a lot of insights on what people wanted, what they didn't receive, what we could do better. So we're constantly changing it. You said that you've got a couple other income streams, too, that provide a good balance for the company. Were those already mentioned or the, you want to discuss those? Yeah, sure. So YouTube, YouTube is, from AdSense. Every X amount of views you get X amount of money, brand deals. I work with several brands as an influencer marketing. So that's good money as well. A fee and marketing. I have a contract with several companies that pay me as an affiliate. What else? What's the difference between a brand deal and an affiliate deal with the question? So brand deals is usually you make a TikTok, YouTube video and stories and Instagram. I'll pay you this amount of money I direct. The affiliate marketing is usually like performance based, performance based, based on how many people convert, how many people buy their product, how many people open an account on an investing platform? How many clicks, how many leads do you get the company? So it makes a little bit more the brand deals are more, more direct. How do you keep that customer loyalty? If somebody comes through one of these affiliate deals? They come through your channel, but now they're now introduced to the brand. How do you keep that revenue going? As they continue buying from the company? Is it just through, like a discount that they're getting? Only through you? Yeah, they're getting a discount through me. They have the upside on getting the lead. The component affiliate company that I work for with, but I also get them as a lead. Like, if I held them getting there, getting them to the appropriate platform to invest. Now they trust me so they can buy my course on the on it. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. What do you think is the single biggest thing that you have learned through this journey, that you're doing now that you weren't doing in the beginning? That's a good question. I think the the importance of having a good team, like when I started it, I was doing it all by myself. I was doing well. I made good money. Then I hit up a little. I told me, okay, I think now I have to to get people to help me. I was very bad at it. And recruiting and hiring, a lot of bad hire that I made. So I think, I gradient. I would say the importance of hire slow, fire fast. I think it's one of the, the big lessons I've learned from the past that has helped me a lot. When you see someone in your team that is not performing well and they've been doing it consistently, you need to fire them as fast as you can. And when you hire someone, do it slow. Take your time. Don't hire anyone. Constrain someone to in your business. Takes time. Yeah, so you might as well take your time to hire the right person that you think will be a good fit in your company. That's great advice to backpedal a little bit. And I had a, question that I forgot before, but, when you're getting these brand deals in affiliate deals, are you typically the one approaching the brands and the and setting up those deals? Are they approaching you? Since that is not my main focus in the business, usually they are the ones who come to me. On rare occasions I've been the one reaching out. I only do it if there's a company. Like, I really want them to sponsor me. For example, now I'm doing, cycling and running. I would like so much for Under Armor to sponsor me. Like, I'm not the fittest person right now, but I will. So having them sponsor me on this journey would be amazing. So that's a company I would like to work with, but usually is a. Since I'm the biggest financial content creator in Panama, the brands are the ones reaching out to me. Well, yeah, it's because I find it to be a super interesting model. When people talk about like getting into the game of entrepreneurship, I think are really easy. Low capital model is to just have a know how business like, you know, building expertise and sharing knowledge. It's you're participating in something that you're interested in. Like for you, it was finance or whatever, but whatever that unique set of interests are that you have, communicating those interests to an audience to start garnering those that audience, then you have influence over that audience and then recommending, you know, products that align with that audience that you're vetting is just a super easy way to, you know, generate a business. Yeah. And what most people don't know is they think, oh, I don't know enough about finance or about, making food or about gardening to teach someone else about it and charge for it, when in reality, the only thing that you need to do, you need to be in step three to sell to people in step two and one, you do not need to be in step ten. You do not need to be the most greatest expert in the country or in the region to make a business out of the things you already know. So if you have some degree of knowledge on a topic, you can start a business like this with low capital, like you can do it with zero money on. So final question, what is your definition of success? The hardest question, I would say. Having my conscience clean, a combination of having my conscience clean, having people I love around me. Having a good relationship with God. And doing things I'm passionate about. Like, I think if I do, well for I do. But, as long as I'm doing something that I'm passionate about, I think everything will be okay. The combination of that, I think it's, recipe for successful. Yeah. If people are interested in your services or they want to reach out to you and connect. Where can I find you? At, Juan. Juan official with two FS. That's a funny story. I have the Juan Horne official. Since we for making content, you know. Yeah. People used to laugh, of that of with me, but. Yeah, at Fun Hoon. Official Instagram, TikTok, preferably. Instagram is the easiest way. So if anyone's interested, happy to help you. Sweet. And we'll link everything here as well. All right brother, it was. Appreciate it. It was, great having you on. And, we appreciate everything and all the insights that you gave. So thank you for having me.

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