Entrepreneur: Graham Stephan

Tilt: Finance-related education

Scene: Website, YouTube (4.84M), The Real Estate Agency Academy, The Iced Coffee Hour Podcast (1M), Instagram (467K), merch, newsletter, LinkedIn (14K)

Snack Bites: 

  • Graham started selling real estate and turned his success in that business into a mega-successful YouTube channel. Then, as he was making six figures a month, he taught others how to build a successful YouTube business.
  • His diverse revenue streams center around money-making (and saving) themes, though they tackle different related topics.
  • Graham offers an affordable (less than $500) online course targeting real estate agents. It has a great landing page that spells out exactly what students can expect (something all entrepreneurs with online courses should do.) 

Why We Stan: Graham achieves success, then he takes what he learns to teach others how to do it, too. Then he does it all over again with a related content tilt.

The Story of Graham Stephan

Graham Stephan not only practices what he preaches, he built a brand around it.

The successful millennial real estate investor built businesses (yes, plural) around helping his generational peers and others build wealth.

Among the first steps to doing that, he says, is to stop buying coffee drinks. He tells CNBC, “I think the markup of coffee at Starbucks and Coffee Bean and a lot of those places out there is absolutely ridiculous, so I just make it at home for 20 cents.”

To make it even easier for his fans – and to add a revenue stream to his lineup – Graham launched Bankroll Coffee, which delivers the coffee to make at home. “For me, every dollar you save is one more dollar you can invest in your future, so spend where it counts,” he writes on the site.

However, he expanded on his coffee concept with The Iced Coffee Hour podcast. It isn’t about coffee but more like something to listen or watch during a coffee break. Every week, he and co-host Jack Selby interview a new entrepreneur, investor, or creator. They talk about their path to success and share their personal finance habits. 

The podcast began in 2020 and lives on YouTube (1M). It’s a great example of a podcast channel on YouTube. The Iced Coffee Hour podcast team categorizes the episodes by subject (personality, real estate, stock market, crypt, no guests) and curates each episode into a series of Shorts and longer-form videos designed for the YouTube audience.

In addition to the Graham Stephan and The Iced Coffee Hour channels, the entrepreneur also has related channels, including The Graham Stephan Show (1.25M), The Iced Coffee Hour Clips (178K), and Graham Stephan After Hours (62.4K).

While video plays a heavy role in his content product lineup, Graham also has a newsletter and an online course, The Real Estate Agent Academy ($497).

We got a chuckle from this last line in Graham’s teacher bio for the academy: “As of now, I own six rental properties that I manage in my spare time, as well as run a YouTube channel where I share my thoughts on real estate, motivation, building wealth, and anything else that seems interesting at the time.”

All that content seems like a lot to consider a side hustle, but more power to Graham and his team for executing it.

Updated September 2024

About the author

Ann regularly combines words and strategy for B2B, B2C, and nonprofits, continuing to live up to her high school nickname, Editor Ann. An IABC Communicator of the Year and founder of G Force Communication, Ann coaches and trains professionals in all things content. Connect with her on LinkedIn and Twitter.