596 | Mistakes Were Made

28:54But I think we have to all know that it's like one of these quirks in the human operating system that we're real bad at that. It's really hard. And not for nothing, but that's another benefit of FI is, like we say, F you money. It's not to literally go out in a blaze of glory screaming and cursing at people. It's to be able to stand up when you see something. I've used this in theory so many times. And I've said this in theory so many times. But this is a perfect example of it is you actually had an unscrupulous boss. You had someone who probably asked things of you that you didn't want to do.

29:32And it's pretty darn hard to stand up and speak truth to power when they're paying your paycheck. You need to pay whatever it is, the rent, the car bill, the mortgage, whatever. And your life's going to fall apart. I think this is why we pursue FI is to have FU money in this exact instance. So, I mean, Alan, I don't know exactly how old you were, but I don't know that you would have necessarily had some other option or recourse. I don't know that you could beat yourself up, but it's like, hey, would the Alan of today do that and sit meekly by? No, you would stand up. Exactly. Yes, I would stand up.

30:07100%. I would stand up. I would communicate. I would say, I don't think this is acceptable. But then that's from a position, if they fire me, I don't care. That's almost like you have the power, isn't it, to what Brad was saying, speaking truth to power. I was like, well, I have power now, so you are more free. What's the consequences now? They fire me. Oh, well, never mind. I'll do something else. Whereas I think I was 26, something like that. Which you've got the power financially. You've got the power in terms of you and your confidence. Confidence makes the biggest difference you could imagine.

30:44the confidence that comes from age from experience from having worked things out the confidence is unbelievably powerful and the ironic thing is that actually when you speak up to people they probably respect you more you actually get more power by doing that because well you can do it in a nice way it depends who it is for sure but i think you said the most important thing in there katie which is you are more free. And maybe, maybe, just maybe that is exactly what we're doing on the path to five is like every day we get a little more freedom. We get some more options. We get more power and you're a little more free.

31:25And hopefully the takeaway or people aren't listening to this and saying, oh, they're just talking about mistakes they made in their twenties. Like, and you just learned. I think what's beautiful is this can help a whole bunch of people not make mistakes. And it's not just about your twenties. I think these are human mistakes. These are very human mistakes. And yeah, I think having that power helps. And I think also not getting yourself into financial situations where you're dependent on somebody else. I think that's one of the many benefits of FI is we have financial space. And if you cannot build up a life that just, it's a house of cards, like you don't want a fragile life.

32:01You want an anti-fragile life. You want a life where if one bad thing happened, there isn't a cascade. It's not fragile. You want to be able to persevere through, hey, just the normal ups and downs of life, which happen, right? Sometimes you lose a job. Sometimes you want to leave a job. Sometimes there's a shock. Sometimes you need to spend more money in a given month or a given year than you would have anticipated. Sometimes life just throws you a curveball and that's normal. I think we're all kidding ourselves if it's just going to be like unicorns and rainbows all the time. The world doesn't work that way.

32:35It really doesn't. And just to be clear for everyone listening, this podcast idea was my idea. So we'd love to know if it worked or not. Tell us, did you enjoy sharing all the mistakes we made? Did you get value out of this? Tell us, if it didn't work for you, then it's my fault, not Brad's. I don't care. Blame it on me. That's fine. This is a great episode as far as I'm concerned. Katie, you're up next. when I was making my list of mistakes in preparation for chatting to you there was one that made me think about the path not traveled or the choice not taken and when I was a kid I was very focused on my studies I was very academic I was very school and getting good grades is the only important thing I wonder where that came from that might have come from my family we're not quite sure yet.

33:28But I was also sporty. And I was also musical. So I played the piano and clarinet and later the saxophone. And I played just about every sport under the sun that you could ever imagine. Every lunchtime at school, I was in some different sports club and after school. And there is a sport played in the UK called netball that most American listeners probably will never have heard of. But shout out to the Kiwis and the Aussies and the South Africans and the other countries where netball is played. It's basically basketball, but you can't run with the ball. I mean, I'm going to offend a bunch of people here.

34:07It's like a boring version of basketball where you are confined to certain areas of the court, depending on your position. You can't run with the ball. You can only be three feet away from your opponents when they have the ball. I think you told me it's take all the fun aspects of basketball away and you have netball that doesn't sound like something I'm saying so I'm back out of this now when I was a kid this is the sport I mean it's very like gender stereotype and I don't know if this has changed now but girls played netball boys played football now or soccer so I played football as well like outside of school and because I played in a really good football team I thought I was no good at football whereas in netball I felt like I was actually quite good because my method of knowing how good I am and my self-worth was comparing myself to everyone else in netball I came out on top in football I didn't for a good while netball actually preferred to football and I played at school and I played for like the grades above I knew that I was good and one time there was a guest coach at our school.

35:20She was amazing. She played netball for England and rugby for Wales. She was a powerhouse. She was amazing. And she said to me, Katie, promise me that you will continue to play netball. Like you really got some talent here. You could really go far. And I remember so clearly without missing a beat saying, no, I can't promise you that. I have to focus on my studies. I didn't even think, I didn't even go, oh, okay, that's an interesting idea, or how might that work that, you know, I think studies are important, but you know, there's an opportunity for both, like it's not binary, which is now one of my famous sayings, but at the time, I had not discovered that.

36:00It just got me thinking about different paths that you can take in your life. If I had thought, okay, let me pursue this netball idea. I mean, there's no money in netball, I wouldn't have made money, but I could have had, you know, an athletic career alongside working, you know, like that different path that I could have taken. So you look back and I was thinking, well, was that a mistake? Things have turned out pretty well. You know, I did focus on my studies, it did lead to me getting a well-paying job that meant that we could accelerate our path to fi I'm just really curious on both of your thoughts of you know it's obviously no you can't look back and have regrets but well you can well you can many it's very easy to look back and go I regret that help me make sense of this Brad and Alan yeah it's like the counterfactual thinking it's like what would have happened in that alternate scenario or I know we're all fans of movies like the sliding doors aspect of like, hey, what would have happened had I chosen that other path?

37:02And I think it's hard not to go down that. Because interestingly, you wound up actually being a professional footballer. I don't know, professional is the word, but you played for Chelsea, right? Yeah, it was before there was professional women's football. So I was never, I was a little bit too early. Okay, okay. But nevertheless, you played for Chelsea Football club which is not nothing yeah which if i jumped in there katie's being modest she played for chelsea she played at the top of the game she's an incredible footballer she's broken world records in football like she is phenomenal so she went on to have an incredible football career even though she didn't follow that route right i think the more interesting bit is the confidence and the comparison that to me because even if you had that career well there's no guarantee that that would have actually come to anything right like I could have been like okay great and then the main thing that has held me back in my sporting career has been my confidence and the comparison and you know I was a good player in my school if I'd have been thrown into netballers from other schools and the areas and then suddenly I'm like oh actually I'm not any good and would have crumbled confidence wise like it was quite an interesting thought experiment but that is another one of my mistakes that I jotted down was about my confidence and how I didn't have it as a as an athlete as a footballer as a I was about to say as a netballer but I did because I came out on top in my comparison in my head and how fragile that is because then I did that in my studies as well I was like oh I'm on top of my class I feel good about myself then I went to university suddenly I'm not top of the class because you know you go and it's a cliche but I went from being a big fish in a small pond to a small fish in a big sea I thought I could mix my metaphors there no that sounds about me and small fish in a big pond that has definitely been a recurring mistake that I'm still working on is comparison we have a famous phrase at rebel finance school don't compare your pineapples.

39:18I still do. And that's something I'm definitely working on. And it's a massive mistake, because there's no good that can come. There is always someone better than you. There is always someone worse than you. Yeah. And if your confidence comes from comparison, you're constantly looking outside yourself to see your value as a human. Whereas if your confidence comes from inside, well, then it can't be shaken and you just feel good about yourself. There's so much here. I just jotted down like five different things. So first, forgive me for the next four minutes of talking nonstop. You're my therapist, Brad.

39:53Okay. We humans are relative animals. We're not absolute animals. Everything is about comparison. So interestingly, Katie, right? Like you were great at netball amongst people who, and I know this from also conversations that we've had, not just from the last five minutes, but on a relative basis, you were head and shoulders above the people you played in netball. Whereas with football, so soccer, but we're going to call it football, you were playing with the best teams. So on a relative basis, you didn't feel like you were spectacular, even though on an absolute basis, you probably were one of the better or best players in England.

40:34And it's interesting because I saw this with my daughters and their swimming, which was they both went to swam year round when they were younger for one of the best swim clubs in America. They were never one of the top, even five or so girls in their age group at this swim club Nova. So on a relative basis, they were always looking at somebody better. But on an absolute basis, they both were at one point top 50 or 100 in the country in certain events. So like, again, they looked over their shoulder at the next lane and saw this girl who was always beating them. But on an absolute basis, they were pretty darn good.

41:17So that is tough to get over. I think we need to, again, it's just arming ourselves with knowledge, right? Like we have to understand sometimes you need to take a step back. This is like keeping up with the Joneses also, right? Like it's easy to look next door. Like Alan was saying, you need to be sufficient inside. It's easier said than done. Right. But another thing, Katie, also it's like fixed mindset versus growth mindset. Right. Like you definitely were stuck in the fixed mindset of I am X. Like as soon as this amazing netballer who played for England and rugby for Wales, I think you said.

41:49So, I mean, it absolutely incredible athlete said this to you. I mean, she was saying something from point of view of real knowledge and you just immediately dismissed it. I'm into my studies. Like that is what I am. I'm not, even though you were sporty, as you would say, like you cared about your studies. And like, I think that to me is the big takeaway is like, you didn't even open your aperture to say like, Oh, maybe I just got let in on a little secret here. Maybe I should think about this. It was just, okay, I am X. And like, anytime we have any kind of aspect of I am X, like I am smart, I am whatever, like you get locked in on that and you can't see out of it.

42:31And I think a lot of us, I mean, Katie, I'm going to use you as an example. And me also is like, I know one of your mistakes I think is similar to this in university. I know you went to one of the best universities in the world, Oxford at first. And I think it's easy to build your mindset around, I am smart. I fell prey to this too. I got accepted into Duke and Cornell and two of the top 15 schools in America. And I wound up going to the University of Richmond, which was a fantastic school. It's still an amazing school. But I had this mindset of, I am intelligent. And man, life smacks you upside the head real quick when you realize how deep the intelligence pool is.

43:13And if you ever build your worldview around, I'm the smartest person, I promise you, you're not, you're not even close and that's okay. Like it's just okay. Like you don't have to be, you don't have to be like, to me, it's what's your unique value. And this is where I think the imposter syndrome is something that a lot of us fall prey to. And I've actually really come to peace with that imposter syndrome, which is like, who the heck am I to talk to literally millions of people on this podcast that's been around for nine years? Like, why do all these people look to me? And I'm not a world-class expert on personal finance or, you know, I have all these negative limits or I had all these limiting beliefs.

43:53And I think I've really come around to, I have a unique value add in terms of I can simplify and synthesize information better than just about anybody in the world of personal finance, literally in the world. And I don't say that lightly. I have a very hard time, as you both know, talking nicely about myself. So when I say that out loud, I just know this is like a long time coming. Like that is what I do. I simplify things. I make it easy and I embolden people to take action. And that is a unique value add. And you don't need to be the most knowledgeable person in the world. And I think that to me is one of the big takeaways.

44:30So again, Katie, like that's a whole lot of like random little lessons that I gleaned from just your one mistake. But this is what we're doing here, right? We're trying to like, just really talk through this and how do other people move forward from that. So that's my little, I don't know if we'll go therapy session, but any thoughts? One overriding thought I had as you were talking was like, Oh, I've completely hijacked this and got Brad to like help me with my demons. But there is definitely like the fixed and the growth mindset, something that I'm still working on because whilst talking to all the people listening about my mistakes I really hate making mistakes and part of the reason I hate it is because I beat myself up when I do it and this is small mistakes medium-sized mistakes I just get really embarrassed and then find it really hard to learn from it because I'll go into like cover-up mode and not wanting anyone to know that I made a mistake and perfectionism and all the fun stuff.

45:32So it's actually quite cathartic talking about this stuff. I think I learned many years ago that your success in life is directly related to how many mistakes you can make as quickly as possible and learn from them. It's not making the mistake and stopping, it's making the mistake and learning from them. And if you do that at speed through your 20s and 30s and 40s, make a ton of mistakes and learn, the speed and growth you will go through is phenomenal. Now, one better than that is if you don't make the mistakes yourself, you learn from other people's mistakes, which was the whole point of the episode, because then you save all that time, all that energy, all that money.

46:11That's one better than that. But if you can just make the mistakes, apologize, say you were trying your best, learn and keep moving, your success is virtually guaranteed. Totally agreed. And I think that's in every aspect of life. I know I've seen it in the small businesses that I've created and failed over and over and over and over and over again for almost a decade. But just small failures. But I learned every single time. I don't look at those as failures. Those were the building blocks to help me create something successful. And I just very simply would not have been ready had I not made those mistakes.

46:48So, I mean, it's almost cliche. It's like the Thomas Edison. I tried a thousand times and I learned something every time. but like it's cliche for a reason because that's actually how life works if you think you're going to get it right the first time that's not it it really isn't i love that alan it's like make as many as you can as quickly as you can because and i think katie and i both might have been embarrassed about our mistakes and such but like i know i picked up and i moved on i kept going and i don't know where that internal fortitude came from frankly but like man am i happy that that brad that version of brad just kept moving forward kind of don't have an option either you just well you either pick yourself up and get on with it or you give up yeah that's the option it is but that's not a very good option obviously looking at your stare it's not exciting the allen stare doesn't come across on podcast it really doesn't work on podcast tell us one of your mistakes i think there's minor ones along the way like i remember there was someone who wanted to talk to me and i dodged what they were doing told them that i was out and couldn't talk.

47:55And then they turned up at my house to drop something off and saw me in the window. And it was the most embarrassing thing ever because I'd lied to them. And it was a white lie to protect my time. But the embarrassment and the pain, it damaged the friendship. And then the other person thinks, well, how can I trust that person when they lied to me with that stuff? And I obviously can still feel it to this day. If you're listening to this, Paul, I apologize. I was young and I didn't know how to say the honest stuff but now I think the biggest lesson I've had of that is if you don't want to go you have to say I don't want to go and you just have to own it you just have to be straightforward you have to do it and it's the best thing you can do is the honesty of saying I really don't fancy it tonight thank you for the offer I'm not coming and it's actually really as bad as you think right he'd have probably gone okay yeah he would have accepted it like what an idiot why did I make up a lie it's just that trying to avoid conflict that just comes back to bite you in lovely wonderful different ways and create more conflict it's tough though isn't it that's a hard lesson to learn to just be direct because it's scary like how are they going to react what they're going to say even yesterday I spent an hour composing a text message to someone of something that I wanted to talk to them about.

49:22And Alan's like, why are you not just ringing them? I was like, oh. And then I felt really embarrassed like I'd spent an hour wasting my time. I messaged like, are you around to chat? And he said yes. And then my heart was thumping. I was like, it was scary. And then I chatted to him and he was really nice about it. And we resolved what it was that I wanted to talk about. And I was like, oh, why did I torture myself for an hour beautifully crafting this message when the right call all along was just ring them talk them actually that was an opportunity to feel courageous and actually the thing that I got from it was I was scared I did mess around a little bit and avoid doing it but then I did do it and I was scared but I did it so there's always a chance to redeem yourself as I was saying that I was like that's not actually true but I took that one and another one along the lines of just being honest.

50:18I think when someone asks you to do something that sometimes the easy answer instead of no is maybe it's just about like people usually almost always. And I know I had a conversation with my daughters about this recently, because I think one of them, I don't think it was about me. I think they were saying about some other adults in their life was like, Oh, anytime you say maybe it really means no. And it's like, why can't you just be direct and say no? Because you don't want to hurt somebody's feelings because whatever, there's always that easy answer, but you have to become okay with that because oftentimes the answer just simply is no.

50:51And it's also about your own boundaries and honoring your time and your energy. And like, that's important too. You don't owe anything to anybody. I think that's another thing. A lot of us people pleasers fall prey to is, Oh, I owe it to them. You don't owe anybody anything. You owe the world basically like to show up the way that you want to show up. And I don't think you owe anything to any particular person. And if it means you need to not say yes to that plan 99 times out of a hundred, you got to do you. And actually it reminds me of a book, a member of our community, a really wonderful woman named Elizabeth Andrews wrote a book.

51:28It's a really short book, but it's a really impactful. It's called 50 ways to say no, go to phrases to honor your boundaries and why they work. And you could probably read this book in under an hour, but it's fantastic. It's like 50 of these phrases and situational things of just how to kindly, but forcefully say no. And I know I needed it. I flipped through it. I love the book. It's almost like having an investor policy statement for when things go terrible. It's like in good times when you're not faced right there with that moment of Katie, the heart pounding and whatever, like, Oh my God, what am I going to do?

52:05Like you have to have a couple of phrases that work for you set in your mind, it just makes it easier. I would highly recommend that book. The classic version of that is always try. When you say, oh, let's go out to friends and they say, oh, I'll try and make it. You know they're not coming. Try is just a polite way of saying no. And we have to actually get used to saying no. But also on the other side, if you see someone say, I'll try, that actually is a code word or a point for you to say, sounds like it doesn't work. Would it be better to do it another time? And you can actually hear that and do something about it yourself.

52:47So I don't think the responsibility is 100 % on the person saying it. I think we can live with that and say, oh, maybe. You said maybe. Sounds like maybe it doesn't work. Is there something I can do to help you? Would it work better at a different time? You can hear those trigger words and do something about it. And then you can actually uncover what the reason is rather than just guessing like, oh, they don't want to hang out with me and making it about yourself or making up a bunch of stories about what the reason is. Yeah, you can even make it easy for them. Like, I know things are busy or I know this is happening.

53:22Like, just tell me and I'm happy with it because I've got plenty to do or I can do this. So you can make it easy for them to say no. And I think sometimes it is a benefit to make it easy for the other person to say no. I like it. All right, let's keep going down. So I've got another speculation one. This is mortifying. And I've never said this out loud before to literally anybody. I invested in that horrible Cathie Wood arc investing mutual fund. It wasn't a lot of money, but it was not insignificant. I forget exactly what it was, 10 or$20 ,000, maybe even a little more, but it was everything I counsel against.

53:58And this was in the truths of our years. So let's be clear, Like anybody can fall prey to this stuff. And not like I'm some infallible person by any means, but it's easy to get wrapped up in things, to get wrapped up in narratives and stories and genius and blah, blah, blah. And I know better and I still got wrapped up in it. So luckily this was not a catastrophic mistake. But yeah, hopefully that's a lesson of like, okay, look, we can get caught up in speculation. We just can. And we just have to know better. It's happened to me now multiple times. I've said it just in the last hour with the investing in North Carolina and this, it's just, it really is easy.

54:33So there's no secret. There's virtually no genius. I mean, there's maybe Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger and maybe a few other people over the last hundred years, but you're not going to just happen upon them. And frankly, if you've already found out that the person is wildly successful, like quote unquote, you're probably a little bit too late. So don't get caught up in wild speculative behavior is my takeaway. It's definitely that thing of as soon as everyone's talking about it, it's too late. So if you hear it from everyone, recently until the drop, it was gold. Everywhere, everyone was talking about gold.

55:07And I just knew as soon as that happened, it's like you hear it from the people that you're just next door. You hear it from people all over the place and they're like, oh, you should invest in gold. It's doing really well. As soon as you hear that, just do the opposite. Just walk away. Sell all your gold. to do it. You shouldn't have any gold anyway, but that's a whole different discussion. But it's the excitement and the fervor of the general population should be a sign that you shouldn't get involved, not that you should do it. Yeah, agreed. All right, Alan, what's up next on your list? Bear your soul.

55:44Bear my soul. Thinking about which ones are most valuable for you who are listening. I think I created a fairly successful business. One of the mistakes I made was never building an email list. And I did years of work. I never captured people's email addresses. I never had a way to go back to the marketing. I'd never started a newsletter. I never did any of that stuff. And I regret not building a mailing list from the very start of my business. and I'd love everyone to avoid that if you're launching a business if you're building a business build a list it's the most valuable thing you can build I think actually even more so nowadays when people have their followers on YouTube or their whatever the other thing is Instagram TikTok I mean even something as old school as our Facebook group but keep going Katie I want to I want to talk about that in a minute.

56:43Well, yeah, just that you're so fragile, aren't you? You talked about fragility earlier, Brad. You're so fragile to that platform saying, no. And then you've got no way of contacting all those people that want to hear from you. So especially nowadays, if your whole thing is on social media to get the email addresses outside of that. Yeah, I would agree. I think to me, the lesson is control your business and don't outsource it to some other platform because you never know what that platform is going to be. I mean, frankly, a lot of people who built their livelihood around Twitter and then it got bought by Elon Musk, you know, who ran it into a cesspool.

57:25I mean, I know people who had hundreds of thousands of followers there. They spent years and years and years, and now they're part of a cesspool. You never know. Sadly, we're seeing a lot of these social media platforms just become run by malevolent actors. And Facebook is where we built all of our local groups. We have a choose a Facebook group with 120 ,000 plus people. And we have no control over that. And that was just a strategic mistake. If I put a post in quote unquote, my Facebook group, I'm lucky if 1 % of people see it because it's an algorithm. That's not a partner. That's an antagonistic relationship, right?

58:03Like that's, that's crazy. So like, why would I ever want to enrich Mark Zuckerberg of all people? Again, I want to stay away from malevolent actors. I don't want to enrich them. You have to build your own platform. Sadly, even today, 2026 email is the one reliable way to get in touch with people. So Alan, I totally agree. Even in this age, you have to have a way to directly contact your customers. There are plenty of people who sell on Amazon. It's the same thing. It's like, you're just looking for all these malevolent actors. Like they do everything they can, Amazon, to raise fees constantly, to make it impossible for you to contact your customers, quote unquote, because they're not your customers, they're Amazon's customers, right?

58:43Like, let's be clear, you've built a business on the most fragile of fragile sands. It's ridiculous, but yet this is what people do. So power, right? And it goes back to that. It's like, try to get as much on your side of the court as you possibly can. Yes. And to highlight, I didn't even build on one of these platforms. I just didn't even build a list. So that's how bad my mistake was. I didn't even make that mistake. So I wanted to share that one because I think it will help people. And if I could build a second one on that, I was so scared of sales, cold calling, putting myself out there, rejection that I did not put myself out there to scale.

59:23I did not go all out when I started my business. I let fear, embarrassment, and being a scaredy cat stop me from putting myself out there. And coming back to the conversation you had with Katie about comparison and different things, if I could give everyone a sentence, the sentence I would give you is spend as much time building your confidence as you do your net worth because it is so powerful in everything you do going forwards. So just spend time building your confidence and your happiness and it will create magic in your life. And yeah, I think with confidence, I actually had one which is not negotiating my salary.

1:00:09And I think a lot of us, a lot of us do this. We just think we should accept whatever it is. Because again, it's like we're getting some gift of this job. And even if you're in a position of power, if you don't know it, then you're not. And if you're not confident in yourself, then you're not. So I know when I left the big public accounting firm and went to work for one of my clients, I did wind up getting a raise from my public accounting salary. But I knew that really in my particular case, when you work for a big public accounting firm, if you stay and become a senior manager or certainly a partner, the carrot of doing that is a massive salary.

1:00:52Now at my client, I was moving for essentially a lifestyle play and I knew the top salary was capped. And the only time I would get a big bump was when I moved because then otherwise I would just be getting the normal two, three, 4 % raises. And I did get a bump, but I knew in my heart of hearts, I should have asked for more. And I didn't, I was just too scared and I didn't have the words for it. And I think that's another thing I've picked up just from doing this podcast for nine years. We had two incredible women on the show. Tori Dunlap was on episode 147 and financial mechanic who was on a couple of times, most recently in episode 454.

1:01:34And they gave like very specific scripts for salary negotiation and making it a win-win. And had I listened to both of them before that, I would have done better. I didn't know better and I was scared. And I think practicing, having these skills, having this knowledge and knowing that I should be doing this, I think I would have made a better decision. So yeah, that's a lot of lessons all wrapped up in a one, but that was a pretty good one. It is a fantastic one. I think what we're all saying is work on your confidence because it will have a force multiplier effect in every area of your life, whether that is playing the sport you play, asking for a raise, turning up at work happier.

1:02:21one of the interesting things I learned a long time ago was they did an incredible study about why people choose suppliers. And you would think people choose suppliers because of the quality of the product, because of the price of the product, all of those different things. Is it quality? Is it price? Is it the thing? Is it timing? What do you think the number one reason was people chose a specific supplier of a product. I don't know, probably they liked the person they were dealing with or something? Yeah, the person they were dealing with was more fun. The word that came up specifically was fun.

1:02:57It's like, I like working with this human. They are fun to be around. And I just couldn't believe it when I heard that, but I've experienced it. People like to have calls with us because we're uplifting, because we're inspiring. They enjoy being around us. and if you could just have more fun if you were just happier in life people would gravitate towards you more and it is amazing how you almost can't imagine this like the universe said if you're happier and have more fun you'll be wealthier and more successful it's like where's the downside yeah really do i really have to do this like no you can stay grumpy if you want to you're welcome to be grumpy all you want to but you're not going to attract all the fun and happiness around you.

1:03:42And when I saw that study, it just shocked me. Why am I competing on price? Why am I competing on quality? Yes, I have to have a good price. Yes, I have to have good quality. But if those things are equal, they're going to choose the person that's more fun to be around. I was just imagining a universe where everyone in a particular industry had read that report, and then they're all trying to out-fun each other. Out-competing on fun. Showing up in a clown suit and like a, I don't know, trying to fit as many people as they can in a mini. It's not happened in accounting yet. Probably not going to.

1:04:24I had this theory that one of the most valuable gifts we could give to you was by sharing our mistakes so that you don't have to make the same mistakes that we've made over the years. That was my theory. but I want to know I genuinely want to know did you enjoy the episode did you get value out of it what did you think do you have mistakes that you're like I want to tell the whole world about my mistakes now so I can save everyone else pain yeah tell us yeah I love that and this is super fun it's great when we uh just randomly brainstorm an idea and bring it to fruition right what's fun now is in our community platform, we now have the ability to comment on these podcasts.

1:05:08You can always get there by just going to chooseify.com slash and then the episode number. Actually, when we're recording this, I'm getting ready to go to Japan for a couple of weeks. So I'm not 100 % sure which episode number this is, but it'll be something like 594, 595, et cetera. Chooseify.com slash 594, for instance. And it'll take you right there. If you're not a member of the platform, sign up. It takes 30 seconds. You can actually join your local group. So you'll get email notifications of all the local group events, which is again, going back to the getting away from Facebook and malevolent actors.

1:05:41You're not subject to their ridiculous algorithm. You now just get the email and it just shows up and it's really simple and you don't have to do anything else. Even if you just want to sign up 30 seconds for your local group, do it, but otherwise go to that and then leave a comment. Also leave your biggest mistake or a couple of them. And we can do a follow-up episode to this. I know we all have a bunch more, I suspect, and we could probably brainstorm for hours again. That's the fun part of making this the ultimate crowdsource personal finance show. This is a living document. Now we have the ability to really discuss it.

1:06:14I know the two of you will be in there. I'll be in there. We'll be commenting on everyone's comments. That'll be a lot of fun. It'll be a lot of fun. And I'm really excited that we can share this with everyone because it is the most valuable gift you can give helping someone to learn from your mistakes wholeheartedly agree all right friends where can people find you i know there's multiple places but where would you like to send people uh if you want to read about our content and what we do then it's rebel donegan's.com and you can see all about rebel finance school the blog and all the different things we're doing on the blog that's kind of where we share most of what we do.

1:06:50We do have a mailing list as well because I learned my lesson and you have to build a list because you actually want to be able to communicate with people. Here's what we're doing and here's what the plans are. And we're gearing up to run Rebel Finance School 2026. So get yourself on the mailing list and you'll be first to know when we launch sign up for that. And if you're good with your finances, then tell your kids about it. Because if we can save them whilst they're young, we will create an incredible impact. Totally agreed. And also you can get on the email list for our extraordinary events, which is great.

1:07:22We are probably 99 % going to have one February of 2027. Again, here in Richmond. Yeah, if you get on that email list, you'll be the first to know when tickets go and sale. Yeah, we will be back to Richmond. We absolutely loved hanging out with you. It was fantastic. Indeed, indeed. All right, everybody. Well, hope you had fun hanging out with the three of us today and really lean into this. We really can all learn from others' mistakes. We can learn from our own mistakes and it's never catastrophic. I mean, take it from me. I've obviously passed along some catastrophic ones and I'm doing great.

1:07:56So that's the fun part about life. That's the fun part about the Paptify is we can pick ourselves up, we can learn from our mistakes and we can move on and we can live wonderful lives. Thanks for being part of the community and thanks for listening to the podcast.

1:08:11Thank you.