Bachelor Alum Ben Higgins on Money, Marriage and Everything in Between

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3:15The Bachelor franchise used to promise contestants the possibility of two things. True happily ever after love and a lucrative spotlight. Ben Higgins knows this all too well, probably better than anyone. For my homies who are not caught up on The Bachelorverse, Ben was a contestant on The Bachelorette and then went on to be The Bachelor. In this conversation, though, we go beyond the walls of The Bachelor franchise, although yes, we do go there too. But our conversation goes deeper. We talk about the double life Ben felt stuck in while trying to figure out what it meant to be The Bachelor with a capital B and just Ben.

3:47We talk about his business successes and failures, and we talk about the intersection of love and money. Ben talks about how he and his wife Jess tackle their finances, how they tackle the uncomfortable conversation of wills specifically. And yes, very exciting how these conversations evolve as they talk about growing their family. Ben Higgins, welcome to Money Rehab. I'm jacked to be here. I'm very excited. I've been preparing for this since we scheduled a few weeks ago. Tell me more. Well, I don't talk about finances very often. You know, it's weird for me too, because I'm from the Midwest, small little town in Indiana.

4:25It is a very wealthy town, but nobody would know about anybody else. Like everybody lives a very similar lifestyle. And it's not like there's a fancy restaurant in town that the wealthy are going to or the non-wealthy are going to. So it's just not a thing I grew up talking about. So basically, when you were growing up in the Midwest, people were just not into sharing about money or it was like a millionaire next door vibe. Millionaire next door vibe. A lot of our most wealthy were in some type of ag-related business. So a lot of farmland, a lot of landownerships. Where I grew up in Worsundiana is the orthopedic capital of the world.

5:03So all of your hips and knees and joints. But this is a town when I lived there of about 9 ,000 people. And so you got to think if you have five publicly traded companies, all Fortune 100, most of your employment is working within orthopedics. A lot of those people within orthopedics have really high paying jobs in a town that's very small and very isolated from a lot of the world. I mean, the closest airport to us was 45 minutes away. And that was a little regional. And so it just really wasn't a thing that people talked about because everybody kind of functioned in a similar way. It wasn't something that was that important.

5:40So talk to me about the juxtaposition then from going from that, where it's like the opposite of keeping up with the Joneses, Kardashians to like super, super flashy, the bachelor, bachelorette life. Yeah. The Bachelor and Bachelorette, there was a lot of shock to that for me because I was young. I was just coming off of living in this hometown. Never been to LA in my life. And then I obviously show up and there's limos and there's fancy lights and people. And there's obviously more attention than you've ever understood. For me, the Bachelor world never felt flashy. The trips did. The hotels did.

6:19But that was only during filming. Once I was off the show, I went right back to my full-time job, which was in the brokerage world. And I worked it for two more years. And I was in a cubicle. I went from being the bachelor on Monday nights to Tuesday morning showing up to my cubicle at work in the basement of the software company. I think that really helped keep me grounded. I never really felt like I got to experience the red carpet. I never got to experience the fanciness maybe that others do who don't go back to work right away. Was it weird? It was weird for me. I moved out to Denver, Colorado to have my first job.

6:55It was really my only job offer out of college. And it was at a software company that was providing software for the brokerage world. And we're doing all the boring stuff in the background that I won't get into. But to go one step even further in the boringness, I was writing the user manuals. That's so boring. So boring. So I become the bachelor. And what would happen is I talked to the company. and on Friday afternoons, I'd fly to LA or New York or wherever I needed to be for whatever appearance needed to happen. And then Sunday afternoon, I'd fly back to Denver. Monday morning, I'd show back up at the office.

7:28For the first couple of weeks, people were excited about watching me on the show. However, I had been around this company for four years going into the show and it was a small business. And so most people weren't that impressed. Nobody really found it that exciting. And Denver, Colorado is not a place for flashiness. It's similar to my little town in Indiana where a lot of it isn't about keeping up with somebody else. It's about getting outside. So there isn't that starstruck awe for people in Denver. But for me, it got weird because I would be, let's say, on Kelly and Michael on a Thursday afternoon and be back in my cubicle in a basement writing user manuals the next day.

8:12And then I'd go and I'd put on a suit and I'd have security guards and all these things hustling me through a ward show. And then I'd be back at my desk the next day. And for a while, I felt like that was healthy. After a while, it became very unhealthy because I felt like I was living two different lives. And I felt like I was having to almost put on a costume. And so at that point, I started to look for, okay, what opportunities are out there outside of me doing this job forever? Because I I just didn't feel like it could be forever. I was kind of done with it. Did you view The Bachelor as a stepping stone?

8:45I mean, so many do to developing a personal brand and book deals and paid appearances and influencer marketing campaigns. Do people still even go on the show for love? I think they do now because I think those things are becoming less and less likely to happen. I think there was a switch maybe four years ago where you go on the show hoping to build your own brand from it. And then all of a sudden, follower counts stopped and And people started to get sick of it. And so I think now this new generation of contestants will go back on the show, hoping to find some type of relationship. If not, maybe just wanting a cool experience.

9:21For me, it was a weird season in the world because Instagram was still in its beta phase. It wasn't even close to as popular as it is today. It was still Facebook. Nobody was really becoming celebrities on Facebook. It was more just keep up with friends and family. And so nobody on my season, especially the bachelorette season, nobody went on to it, I think, thinking that this was going to become a stepping stone into a new career path. I think the common denominator back then, outside of obviously finding love, was, hey, we're all kind of in a rut in life. We're trying to figure it out. Let's just do something to shake it up and have a cool story to tell our friends.

9:59And maybe our friends or maybe like some girls at a bar will think we're a little bit cooler because they watch us on TV. And you got paid some. Not for The Bachelorette. You didn't get paid at all? No. No, you do that for free. You're joking, right? No, I'm not kidding. Like you get$0? To be on The Bachelorette. To be a contestant, you get$0. To be the lead, yes, you do get paid. But to be a contestant, no, there's nobody there getting paid to be there. I had no idea. Yeah. Shocker. Is that even legal? You're on TV? Obviously, with the strikes in Hollywood, there has been an argument that's been presented, led by a few people in reality world to say, hey, reality contestants need to get paid.

10:40And they need to have some protection. Because I think up until recently, or really to this day, when you are a reality television contestant, you don't have any protection and you don't have any leverage and you don't really have any representation. And the contracts are pretty straightforward throughout. So you're not negotiating different terms. You're not negotiating, hey, I'm an introvert and I need to negotiate at least an hour or two hours a day of no cameras in my room alone. But it's also what made reality television so popular for production companies because it's a very inexpensive show to film.

11:14You have so much talent for free. Yeah. Spending their own money, really. You alluded to the strike. Bethany, as you know, has been really outspoken about how reality TV personalities should get residuals. How do you feel about that? With any scenario like this, there's obviously a ton of nuance. It's a complex conversation. However, I'm with Bethany where I think, yes, I feel like you could. Now, I am not an expert into Warner Brothers or Paramount. I don't know what their financials look like. I'm assuming there is margin and there is ability to pay something. If you're there to the end on The Bachelor, you're there for about three months of your life.

11:52That's a fairly large portion of that year that you're losing income on if you don't have your own business that's still operating while you're there. I feel like what's fair is maybe just replacing whatever income you were making. That'd be a great argument until you get into when you have a prince, which The Bachelor has had as your lead or a contestant on the show. And who knows how much they're making. I do think it is important for this conversation to start. I think we're at a point in time where you've seen people give up big portions of their life. However, And this is where I say there's nuance and complexity to it.

12:26For me personally, I was young. I was 25 years old when I went on the show. The show has allowed me to probably make more money in my life than I ever would without the show. Now, my situation is also unique. I was there for a long time on The Bachelorette, and then I became a lead. And that obviously increases your brand, increases your platform. And if you navigate it without a lot of controversy, you come out of it usually with people wanting to hire you for speaking engagements, maybe like board seats to help them navigate the world of entertainment or influencing or whatever that is. So for me, it's been helpful.

13:01And I think I've made up for lost time. However, I might be the anomaly in that. You guys are anomalies, right? Bethany is an anomaly in this big franchise. So it sounds like the contestants that are coming on now probably want the longevity that you've been able to have. So how do you think you've been able to have that longevity? Honestly, I made a decision very early on. Maybe because of a lack of confidence in myself was that I was going to build revenue streams into my life that did not require me to be the face or the brand associated with it. And so I've always worked hard on my own brand.

13:37I still get some type of income from social media or appearances, or I do like to do public speaking. But that is a very small sector of my life now. That was never something I focused on immediately. Initially, I focused on, okay, what opportunities are out there now that I am making more money than I ever thought I ever would that I can start to invest into? Or what kind of businesses could I build that would allow me to still keep my skills sharp as a businessman, but also not be focused on me? So if I'm no longer involved, they still function and they still grow and nobody's going, oh, Ben's out.

14:12So drop the business. And so those were things I focused on for the first three years. At that time, I was engaged, but we weren't sharing income. And I was still living in a 700 square foot house that I purchased in Denver because I couldn't afford to pay rent and pretty much living the single man's life, like eating ramen and those things. So I had a lot of money to invest. And I invested, I would bet 70 % of my income for the first two years, I put into startups and to restaurants and into businesses that now I still operate. How did those do? The restaurants are crushing it. Oh, that's hard to do.

14:49Yeah, very hard. Most of our restaurants are operating within the top 2 % of restaurants in the US right now. What are they? Yeah, in Denver, Colorado, it's in the Culinary Creative Group. So you can go to culinarycreative.com and find all of our restaurants. We have 18 restaurants in total now and about 9 concepts with more concepts coming soon. We have some in New Orleans also. We have a restaurant called Sophia's. It's an Italian restaurant. It was voted best Italian restaurant. Two of our restaurants in Denver got Michelin recognition. But I got very lucky. Do you want to hear the story of how I got involved?

15:23Yes, I do. Hold on to your wallets. Money Rehab will be right back.

15:33And now for some more Money Rehab. Okay. I moved to Denver for this job. I had no friends out here. No family, know friends, didn't know a single person. I worked at a company where everybody was over the age of 55. And so when I bought this house, there was a local bar that I would go to. And it was like cheers. You just go to the bar and have dinner, have a beer, watch a game. And I would go a lot. And I got to meet some people there, including the owner of this bar. And one day, the owner of the bar, before the show ever happened, came up to me and he goes, Hey, I want to start a second restaurant.

16:04But I want to start it with friends and family that I know and I trust. Do you have any money to invest? Are you interested at all? And I was like, I have$0, buddy. But my grandma had just passed away. And she had left me, I think, between$10 ,000 and$15 ,000. So I said, I have this much money that I have not touched. And I could give it all to you because I have no other friends and family out here. And I have nothing else going on with my life. And so I trust you with this amount of money. All of my money? Yeah. All of my money at the time was a huge deal for me to have that much money in a bank account.

16:34And he said, okay, let's go. And so we did it and it blew up. This restaurant did incredible. It's And we rolled that into the second and the third and fourth. And like I said, now we have 18. And we have everything from little cocktail bars to a sports bar to a steakhouse here in town. And it's an incredible group. And that really helped me. Also have been a part of a skincare line called Black Wolf. That's done really well. I was there since the beginning of that. You can see the commercials on TV now. It's a more men's focused skincare line. And I'd say I'm probably at 20 % of my investments doing well.

17:06The other 80 have fizzled away. But if you look at the investment world, if you're batting 20%, you're doing all right. Yeah. Well, for restaurants, that's doing great because most of them fail. Most of them fail. If you look back on that season, you'd probably say that was a really stupid decision for a 24 or 5-year-old to be making. But I do think there is some power in just taking a risk and failing a lot like I have. We would never have enough time for me to talk about the companies I've started or the companies I've invested into that have started and fizzled out. However, if you play the long game and you stick with it, hopefully, if you make some good decisions or you take some risks, some of those risks will pay off.

17:47And I'm just curious, how did you get paid out from the restaurants? Or is it ongoing distributions? You put 10K in and then what? Yeah, it's ongoing distributions. So I think every restaurant group probably has different models, right? Some restaurant groups now go and become publicly traded. And I'm assuming there's a pretty good payout when that happens. For us, it's just distributions as we go. And sometimes we hold those so we can start up a new restaurant, a new concept. But that's really been something that I've looked for in most of my investments now is any business that's willing to give distributions based on the profit because it allows me to free up some of my space and maybe push some things to the side that I've been focused on so that I can continue the revenue streams without having to spend a lot of time on them.

18:32And hopefully that pays off long term. Yeah, you've set up a web of passive income. Hopefully. We'll see. That also can become very scary. But yes, passive income seems like the common phrase and common strategy of this next generation and of the generation coming up through. And I do believe there are good ways to do it. I just also believe that having some things that are more steady, that you're more focused on, is also very helpful to not just completely rely on passive income forever. Yeah. And people might not know that you have generous coffee as one of your businesses. Can you tell us about the origin story?

19:12Yeah, definitely. So the short story is when I was 15, I went to Central America for the first time and I saw extreme poverty and corruption. And at the time, I didn't really know how to process it. And I was pretty angry. I've grown up in the church. I'm still a part of the church. faith is a big piece of my life. But I was really angry at how Christians especially, because that's the only case study I had, were investing into missions. And so you go on a missions trip and it felt very transactional. It felt very odd. It felt very distant. It felt very much like, hey, we're going to come down and know best and you should just follow what we're going to tell you to do.

19:49And then your life's going to be great. And if you don't, then hey, we're out. I didn't like it, but I didn't know the solution to it. Well, when I was 19, my buddies who went on this trip with me, they started a nonprofit. And this nonprofit has the model of asking people, what do you need? What do you want? What do you dream of? And how can we help? And that's how the work is done. So it's led by these communities. It's empowered by these communities. And we're just like a partner to help them get to where they need to go or to help fundraise for them because fundraising is a little easier in the United States maybe than it is in the countries that they live in.

20:23And then they lead these projects. Well, this nonprofit was doing really well, but we had maxed out our fundraising capabilities. We had called all the friends and family we had. And this was coming off of my time on The Bachelor. So my platform was new. I didn't know what to do with it yet. And after some groupthink, we came up with the idea of what if we started a business that's for profit? And then we decided that we could donate 100 % of the profits, which is about 10 % to 15 % of revenue, to the nonprofits that we believe in on a quarterly basis. So that's what Generous Coffee is. We supply and provide and roast specialty-grade coffee.

21:05We sell coffee mostly online, also in a few stores around the country. So I don't make a dime off of it. I never will. But the reason I'm able to even work for Generous as a full-time job for me is because of the passive income and also because I do host a podcast with iHeart. It takes about 8 hours a week. And so I can work 8 hours a week for iHeart. I have some other things going on behind the scenes. And then the rest of my time, I can spend working on Generous and trying to build this business so it can become a massive fundraising source for some really incredible nonprofits. So 100 % of profits goes to charities.

21:39Is that a difficult business model? Yes, it's very difficult. The benefit is our team is made up of a few employees that do take a salary and an income from it. But our leadership team is all built up of people who have either passive income or have accumulated a large amount of... A trust fund. Yeah. Trust fund kids. Is this a bunch of trust fund kids trying to do it? No. Well, people that have sold businesses early on in life and made a ton of money and said, Hey, I don't think I really want to go back into the corporate world or I don't want to start up something new. But I also don't want to be done building a legacy or trying to do something good for the world.

22:15And so those would be the people that we recruit in to say, great, here's a fun project. You're going to work like it's your full-time job, but you're not going to get paid for it. But what you are going to get out of it is you're going to get the stories from these organizations about how Generous has helped them. Or you're going to be able to go on a trip and see somebody who maybe wasn't able to get to school because they didn't have any means of transportation and we were able to give money to buy a bus. And you're going to see that kid's life become better because of the work that you do.

22:42And you have to be in a unique position in life to be able to do that. But I think for so many, they've been looking for purpose, even though they maybe made great wealth and they just haven't found it. And hopefully, Generous is allowing them to have some purpose and some passion in their life. This quarter, when we write our check, it will be upwards of$150 ,000 in donations to over 35 nonprofits. And we're really proud of that. You should be. It's an awesome feat. Now, because of your history on The Bachelor and because this is money rehab, I do want to ask you some questions about the intersection of love and money.

23:20Let's go. All right. So you've been married now almost two years. Is that right? In less than two months, I'll be two years. Mazel tov. Congratulations. Thank you. What are you guys doing for your anniversary? This year, we will be coming back from a trip to Hawaii, which we've never been to. Lovely. So it's hard, right, to talk about money when you're dating somebody. You mentioned earlier that when you were engaged, you didn't have a lot of money. I don't know if then you can tell me if you'd like. You talked about money goals or retirement or how much you make or debt or all those types of conversations.