From Drowning in Debt to Financial Freedom: A Blueprint for Success | Anthony O'Neal EP 910

0:00There are two big things happening at one time that I've never done before. I'm going on a book tour for my new book, Make Money Easy, and I'm doing a podcast tour at the same time. It is going to be big, and I'm going to seven cities in 10 days. Get your friends, get your family, bring everyone you know to these cities. I'm coming to Austin, Texas, New York, Boston. We're going to Nashville. Then we're going to Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco. Make sure to get your tickets right now. go to lewishouse.com slash tour again bring everyone you know if you're looking to create more financial freedom and abundance in your life and you want to see a massive guest live on the school of greatness show get your tickets i can't wait to see you there hi my name is lewis house and welcome to the daily motivation show

1:00if you were broke today and if you were in debt let's say let's say you made a bunch of challenging financial decisions you made all you know your mistake journal is filled up to the brim yep uh and you're broken in a lot of debt yep what is the exact process you would take then from going from broken in debt to creating a financially free life Oh, I get excited about this. All right. Very first thing is I'm stepping back. And before I even look at my debt, I'm talking, okay, where do I want to be within the next 12 months? After 12 months, next three years, five years. So you think a game plan first?

1:34I'm getting the vision for the next five years of my life, right? So if I say, hey, listen, I want to be in California living in my dream home, debt free, like whatever that vision is, I'm casting that vision. Below that vision, I'm writing down the why. You know, one of my good friends, Pastor Darius Daniels, mentioned something. He said, man, if your why doesn't make you cry, then the price of commitment for the next five years is going to make you cry. Let's go. And it's going to make you quit. And so for me, once I write down the vision, I'm going to write down a why. Why do I want to accomplish this vision?

2:06So if I'm drowning in debt and I know I want to be out of debt, I want to be in my home. Why do I want the home? I don't want the home just because it's nice sitting on the beach. I want the home probably because, you know what, man, growing up, me and my siblings had to share. room, right? You know what? We never, we're a homeowner. Maybe I'm the first homeowner in my family. So I'm, I'm getting a deep enough why that when it gets hard, when I feel like giving up, it's going to make me cry and make me push through. So that I'm doing that. So that's number two. Then number three, I'm looking at, I'm pulling credit card.

2:38I'm pulling the last three months of my bank statements and I'm getting on a very detailed budget. I'm writing out everything and I call this a zero base budget. But for me, I know a lot of people get turned off by the word of budgeting. So I call it, what's the vision now I have for my life? What's the vision for my money? So if I'm saying, okay, cool, I want to be debt free, well, I got to go look at my credit report. I got to pull Equifax, TransUnit, Experian. I got to pull the last three months of my bank statements. And this is something I do on a regular. Louis, I'll get five highlighters, different colors, and I'll go doing a highlight.

3:11Okay, food is one color. And I want to see how much money over the last three to six months have I spent on food. And if I'm saying, okay, dang, I was talking to my barber. He spent two grand on food in one month. Wow. Just eating out. I'm like, two grand? I'm like, bro, it's just you. What are you eating for$2 ,000? Wow. I'm like, I know it's expensive out here in the streets, but it's not that expensive. So I'm like, two grand in one month? Okay, we need to cut that off by like three-fourths. You need to be down to$500 including groceries and eating out, boom, when it's just you. So like I'm highlighting everything and I'm assessing, making sure that I know exactly where my money is going.

3:52Because here's the truth. You cannot manage your money if you're not measuring it. You can't really understand what you're doing and where you're going if you're not tracking what it's doing. And for the majority of the people who are watching this show, I won't say the majority. If you're with the School of Greatness, we're going to say a majority of y 'all should be winning. for those of you who are watching this show a lot of us are probably saying dang i just got paid last week but i don't know where the money went and it's because you're not you're not managing it well because you're not measuring where your money is going so that's number three i'm gonna list out everything and watch this before i put it on the budget i'm gonna write it out yo i owe this bank this i owe that bank this i'm gonna list out every ever all the debt out of all the debt i'm gonna list out all of my monthly expenses then i'm gonna take that information and i'm gonna put it on this budget and here's the truth we're going to be honest it is going to frustrate you yeah it is going to make you feel depressed a little bit you're going to feel discouraged a little bit because what's going to happen is you're going to see you have more debt than you have income that's going to be my number four once i see that i have all this debt i'm going to measure okay what is the income strategy that i need to come up with that's going to create margin and help and pay off my debt and i tell everyone that's going to be a job and instead of getting the second job listen man the content creation space i just think right now is a healthy place to get into because i think a lot of us have a lot up here that people were paid to have and so like for example i had a school teacher come to me and uh she was like man anthony i'm in 238 000 in debt.

5:32140 of them are, is her student loans because she has her doctorate student. Then two of them are cars, her and her husband. Then the others are just credit cards and stuff from here. I said, okay, all right, let's write it down. And so, as I was talking with her, I said, listen, she said, I'm going to get another job working at Walmart part time. I said, I think that's not a good use of your time. I said, why not? You're a school teacher. Why not go home? you're making good money over here why not go home and create maybe a course or an academy that helps get kids ready for the sat she's like what do you mean i say why not use the skills that you're giving to the the job to the school system and build a side business that now parents can buy to help them get ready for the sat she was like anthony never thought about that so she went home she started dreaming with her husband but when she came back to me not only did she come up with the business that is going to help kids with the sat but she also came up with the business that helps school school students in school to be a teacher to help them graduate in college a year later her side business is paying her more than what the school teacher is doing because she took her wisdom and her knowledge and turned it into a side business so not only is she creating more income now she's able to use the tax benefits that the wealthy are using and i said okay are you gonna quit your job she was like no because my side business is funding this thing i honestly love teaching students so what happened husband quit his job he runs the business wow he does all of the marketing he does all of the stuff and this is what i love it puts them back at the head of their table.

7:21Yes. Because now it's like, wait, we're now controlling our life. Now she went from having to be a school teacher to wanting to be a school teacher. She went from having to work to, you know what? I love what I do. Yes. And that's the freedom that you have when you're at the seat at the head of your table.

7:48Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of The Daily Motivation, and I hope you have an amazing rest of your day. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to click the link in the description. That will take you to the full episode of our main podcast on The School of Greatness. And if you are loving the daily motivation, please follow us over on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review over on Apple Podcasts right now. And if you want more exclusive content and ad-free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel on Apple Podcasts right now. And if you want to get even more inspiration from our world-class guests and learn how to improve your life and take it to the next level, then make sure to sign up for the Greatness newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com slash newsletter.

8:38Again, have an amazing day, and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.