How to Change Your Relationship with Money

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1:40Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I am your host Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so you never miss another episode. And if you're truly ready to change your life and actually create a different life, then you need to be at Freedom Live later this year. It's three days in person with me in Austin, Texas. Listen, you already know what you need to do to change your life. You are just not doing it. So at Freedom Live, we're going to map out the life that you want. We're going to find the fears that are holding you back and tear them out at the root.

2:08And this isn't some hypey event where you're just going to get motivated and that's going to fade by Monday. You will leave with a step-by-step plan that we will build together so that you can leave a different person. So go to freedomlive2026.com and grab your seat. Once again, freedomlive2026.com, and I'll see you in Austin. Today, I'm going to take you through a three-step process to developing more wealth in your life. Where I came from, I had a lot of fear and I had a lot of scarcity around money. And making money is a skill set to be learned. But really, before we dive into it, I want to take a step back and make you understand that money is just a thing.

2:46But we have so much emotion and so much story built up around money. I was on a coaching call yesterday and a lady was talking to me about how she was having trouble whenever she would make more money, she'd spend it. Whenever she'd make it, she would spend it. She never would actually have more in her bank account for a long extended period of time. And I started asking her questions and I started diving into it. And she's like, you know what? I think I might have this mindset of money is evil. And I was like, okay, where did that come from? We started talking about it. And I asked her a question and it's a question that I asked myself as I started trying to build more wealth and make more money.

3:22And it's very simple. I said, you know, what are your first memories around money? And she's like, I'm not really sure. And I was like, I will tell you with me some of the first memories that I have around money. And I asked myself this question as I started to change my own money mindset. One of the ones was that I remember, it's probably the first memory that I have around money. is I remember probably being four or five years old and I wanted GAC. And if you guys are old enough to remember GAC in the 90s, it was like Play-Doh, but kind of slimier. And I remember wanting GAC. And I remember my mom saying, we don't have money for that.

3:57We don't have enough money. And I did what a four-year-old does sometimes. I threw a fit and I started crying on the couch in our two-bedroom apartment. Like I remember specifically the moment being there and being under the covers with the blanket over my head and crying and throwing so much of a fit that my mom was just like, all right, fine, whatever. We'll go get it. and so we drove to target and I was excited to be able to get the GAC but I remember having this feeling of shame because I'm making my mom in my head my childhood mind I'm making my mom spend money that we don't have for something that we don't really need it's just a toy that I wanted and I remember feeling shame around that and so my first memory of money was shameful I also remember I remember a ton of different memories as I started journaling through it and really going on this journey over the past 10, 15 years or so of really starting to see what I associate money to.

4:45And so like, first off, if you have shame around something, is that good or is that bad? And for me, it was bad. Makes sense. If I have shame around it, it's bad. And so my first memory of money that I can actually remember and recall is a bad memory around money. Another memory I remember is my mom around tax season being really stressed out because she was a realtor and she had to do her taxes. I remember sitting at the table with, you know, papers all over the place and just being stressed. So then I took myself out of it and I made it as simple as possible. And I said, if something makes my mom stressed, is that thing good or is that thing bad?

5:21And once again, that thing would be bad. And then there was another memory that I have where, where I had, uh, I was part of this thing called civil air patrol in middle school. And I didn't even want to be part of civil air patrol, but my friend will was a part of it. And his mom asked if we would be a part of it. So I had to be a part of Civil Air Patrol and we had to go buy a uniform, right? And I remember we didn't have enough money to buy the uniform. So my grandfather, being the sweet man that he was, sent me a check for a hundred dollars. And I remember feeling once again, shame because my grandfather had sent me money to get something that I didn't even want.

5:54And my grandfather's retired and he was older. And so I, these are all my own internal stories realized. This has nothing to do with reality. This is my own internal stories. So if I feel shame around my grandfather giving me money. Is that good or is that bad? And so the memories that I can recall around childhood were bad, bad, bad. And so naturally I associated bad to money. And so then I started getting older and thinking about it. And so I struggled to make money. And then when I finally made money, I struggled to actually save it and hold onto it. Why? Because subconsciously, you don't want to make something that's bad.

6:30And when you make something that's bad. You don't want to keep something that's bad. And so I started uncovering this whole money mindset behind everything. The reason why I say this to you is because I think the first thing before we talk about building wealth is like, what is your actual, like you can want to consciously make money, but if you deeply subconsciously feel like money is bad and you don't know that consciously, but subconsciously you do, it's going to be really hard to make. It's going to be really hard to keep it. Right. And so that's the first thing I think is really important for you to take a step back after this episode and just dive in and say, what are my first memories around money?

7:04What are they? And are they good or are they bad? And you don't have to be poor for them to be bad. Like we were, I know people who have, who have been raised by extremely wealthy people and they never saw their father because he was out making money. And so they associate money with bad as well because they never got to see their father or he wasn't around for the important things. And so it's really about you just starting to go through and say, what is my money mindset and how can I start to shift it? When you start realizing this, you start to realize that making money is a skill set to be learned.

7:40It's not something that you're blessed with at birth. The same way that you can go, okay, I want to get better at dribbling a basketball. Well, then I wasn't born with the skill set to be able to dribble a basketball. It's a skill set to be learned. Money is the exact same thing. Making money is not something that you do. It's a skill that you learn over time. And the first thing that I'll say before we dive into money, because money is very emotional for very people, is money does not fix problems. It will not fix any of your problems, okay? The only problems that money fixes are money problems.

8:16Sure, it allows you to become more free. It allows you to do what you want, when you want, with who you want. It allows you to buy stuff. but every single other problem that exists in your life will still be there no matter how rich and wealthy you become. Your relationship issues will still be there. Your self-worth issues will still be there. The way that you talk to yourself, positive or negative or the negative self-talk will still be there. And we will be right back. When it comes to running a successful business, building better habits requires discipline and real focus. So anything that removes friction and helps you stay locked in on growth, that matters.

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11:16I mean, a lot of people think, well, when I make money, then this will be solved. And when I make money, this will be solved. Nothing ends up being solved. The only problems that money solves is money problems, okay? And the thing that you have to realize about money is that money is a game. Whether or not you want to learn the rules or not, you are in the game. Until the day you die, you are in the game of money. We have to make it. We have to buy it. We have to keep ourselves alive. We have to buy food. We have to buy water. We have to pay rent, mortgage, all of those things. You're in the game.

11:48If you want to stay ignorant of the game and not play it and not learn how to play it, that's completely your decision. But if you're going to be in the game, you might as well learn some of the rules, right? So instead of spending time on Netflix or scrolling on Instagram, why don't you actually start to learn more about money, right? Don't sit back and say, oh, I don't understand. I don't get, I don't, I don't, I don't understand how it works. Well, that's obvious. That's why you haven't done it yet. Right? So what do you need to learn is the better thing to ask yourself. What do I need to learn?

12:23And, and you need to, what you need to do is you need to start learning how to make more money first. Then you need to learn how to save it. And then you need to learn how to invest it. And after years, and I'm not saying this is like, most people are like, oh, I want to do it in three months. No, I'm talking years and years and years and years. You can eventually remove yourself from having to work to make money. You can continue to work if you want to, but now you can just do it for fun. So like for me, I've been working really hard. I dropped out of college so that I could work. I'm 38 now and I've been working really hard since I was 19.

12:59So for 19 years, I've been working really hard and building businesses and all of that. And my wealth manager and I, we had a conversation. I was like, listen, I want to be retired in five years. And when I say retired in five years, it doesn't mean that I do nothing. I don't ever see myself doing nothing. Like I love what I do. So if you love the podcast, don't worry. It's not going to be ending in five years. But I want to get to the point where I'd never have to work another day and I could keep my life exactly the way that currently is. And I honestly don't say this to brag at all, not even a little bit, because I was in the position years ago of being fucking broke and overdrafting over and over and over and over and over again back in 2010, just fully overdrafting my account over and over again.

13:47And I was like, I need to figure this out. I don't want to struggle the rest of my life. And so I don't say it to brag. I say it because it's something that anyone can learn. You know, I had a very fucked up money mindset for a long time, for most of my life. And now I'm just on this path trying to remove myself from the game if I would like to. And I probably won't because this is fun and I like doing this and I enjoy what I do, but I want to be able to and not feel like I have to work. And so I think everybody can get to that. You listening can get to that. It's just what do you need to learn and start making a plan to do it, okay?

14:22The next thing that I'll say around money that I feel a lot of people get really hung up around is it is possible to ethically make money. it is possible to ethically make money. So many people have been raised by, by parents that, that say to them or think that in order to make money, somebody else has to be screwed. Somebody else has to be screwed over in order to you become wealthy. And so a lot of people just go, well, I don't want to screw anybody other over, so I'm not going to do it. Right. A lot of people are raised by people whose parents talk trash about people who have money, who are a little bit more wealthy, who do well, because the parents might be jealous and they might just say that to make themselves feel better.

15:03I don't know what it might be, but so many people are raised by parents who have demonized the act of making money when the act of making money is just an act. And they say, like even on the coaching call yesterday, the lady said that she believed that money was evil. And I was like, money is not evil because money is just a piece of paper. You can't look, like if you went to your printer right now and you printed out a piece of paper and you took it, you can't be like, that white sheet of paper is evil. No. What some people do to make money can be evil, but that doesn't make money evil in itself.

15:35And so what I think is evil is not money. I think that greed is evil. And so those are two completely different conversations. So the thing about it too is that if you make more money, it gives you more ways to help other people. So it actually is not evil to make money because it allows you to be able to help other people. Some of the wealthiest people I know are also the most giving. I have a friend, I've talked about him on the podcast many times before, but his goal was to be, by the time he died, to be worth$100 million. And he hit that by the age of 40 through real estate. He hit it by 40 and then he decided, I need a new goal.

16:13And his new goal was, I'm going to donate$100 million in my lifetime before he dies. Right? So he's going to, by his hard work, he is able to donate$100 million. Was that evil? I don't think that's evil at all. And so really what it comes down to is testing the validity of our thoughts and our paradigms and our viewpoints and our beliefs around money. So that's the mindset side of it. Let's start to talk a little bit more about the strategy side of it. And I'm not going to tell you guys, I mean, there's a million ways to make a million dollars. But the first thing that you have to do is you have to learn to make money.

16:48And do not stop learning. Just learn to make money, whatever it is. and be learning all of the time in every market that you possibly can from every person you possibly can. Some of the wealthiest people that I know are just the most curious people, like they're the most curious learners. And so I was at an event a couple of years ago, and there was a guy who had recently sold his business for a billion dollars in cash. And him and his wife were the only owners of that business. So he exited the business for a billion dollars in cash. What was crazy about it, though, is that at this event, he was at, and I'm not even being, you know, facetious in a sort of way.

17:26I'm like, I'm being a hundred percent direct and telling you and in real and telling you he was at this event with a hundred successful people front and center with his notebook, taking the most notes and asking the most questions of anybody else in the room. Just a curious guy. Now he sold his company a few months before then for a billion dollars in cash. He could have just sat in the back and been like, I'm hot shit. I'm so cool. I'm good at this. But he was just so curious. He was such a learner. He wanted to learn more and get better. Right. And so it's about learning as much as you possibly can and finding something that you actually enjoy doing.

18:02Because when you enjoy doing something, working hard doesn't feel like hard work. It feels like play. And so you are paid in the marketplace of the world. You're paid what you're worth. And if you are not paid what you want to be paid, you just need to make yourself more valuable. And so what do you need to learn in order to make yourself more valuable? What is it that makes you more valuable? And here's what's important. I would recommend that you stop following money, that you stop going and trying to just follow money to have money. What I would recommend is that you follow your passion or you follow something that you're curious about.

18:42Follow your passion, follow your curiosity. Like I, even if I didn't have a podcast, even if I didn't do any of this stuff, I would still be learning about myself and learning about other people just because I'm so interested in people. Like I'm so interested in meeting somebody and when they sit down, just thinking in my head, not saying it out loud to them, but thinking in my head, how did you become how you are? Like, I want to know what the relationship with their mom is like, what the relationship with their dad is like, what it was like growing up. because if I can start to piece those together, I can go, yeah, it makes sense why you are the person that you are, right?

19:15So I think what's really important is to follow your passion or your curiosity. Yours might not be the same as mine, but what is yours? Because life is a marathon, right? This whole game that we're in of life, but also just the game of money is a marathon. And it's a lot easier to work harder when you're doing something that you enjoy and something that is intriguing for you. So ask yourself this question and journal on it. What would be fun for you but feel like work for others? What would be fun for you but feel like work for others? For me, coaching people, like I said, nothing is more interesting in the world to me.

19:52And I was at a restaurant with my wife this weekend and the server was like, so you guys come in here all the time? Like, what do you guys do? And we started telling him and talking to him about it. He's like, man, I could never do that. It seems exhausting, right? He's like, talking with people and coaching people and hearing all their shit, that sounds exhausting. And to me, it's fun. And everyone is different. So what would be fun to you, but feel like work for other people? And then you find it and you work at becoming better at that thing. Over time, if you just continue to keep learning, continue to keep learning, continue to keep working, you will distance yourself from other people.

20:31And years later, you will become one of the best in the world if you just keep going down that road. because most people, this is the key to it, most people stop, most people give up. So if you just keep on going down the road, you're just gonna be better than everybody else. So then as you start to find something that you're interested in, as you put years and invest yourself into learning and becoming a little bit more curious on it, try to become one of the best in the world at what you do. Don't be a jack of all trades with all the knowledge spread out all over the place. You know, you can be a mile wide in an inch deep in all of your knowledge, or you can be an inch wide and a mile deep.

21:08The inch wide and a mile deep, those are the highest paid people in the world. And so it's about the depth of your knowledge, the depth and how deep you can go, not the distance of all of the things that you know. What's important about this is to do what feels right to you. No one can compete with you on being you. And that's why it's insane when people's parents try to tell them what they should do. Because your parents have no idea what feels right to you. This is your job. This is your thing that you're going to be doing. And so you've got to get really curious. And that's the best way of making money is to find something that you love to do.

21:40You want to invest your time in. You want to develop yourself and you become worth more money in the marketplace. And so really what it's about is first off is discovering that for you. So that's more on the side of how to make money. That's step number one, learn how to make money. Then step number two is once you start making money, you have to learn how to save money. This is the biggest mistake that I see people when they start making money. they change their standard of living almost immediately. They get a big check, they go buy a Rolex. They get a big check, they go to the Gucci store, right?

22:13As you start making more money, do not change your standard of living. Make a budget, figure out what money goes in every single month, what money goes out every single month, how much are your bills and how much are your living expenses, and then whatever surplus you might have after that. You know, you can give yourself whatever it is that you want to go have fun, to eat out, to buy some cool stuff, but then have a certain amount like, hey, we stop at this amount. Everything over that is saved. Saving is also a skillset. Do you need it or do you want it? There's not a wrong answer. If you want something, you can still buy it if you want.

22:51Just you have to decide like what's your threshold of this is how much with bills and how much with fun is how much I'm gonna spend every single month. and everything over that, no matter what, I won't break my rules. Everything over that is going to go into a bank account and I'm going to save it. And I'm going to do, I'm not going to be able to spend it. Right. And it requires work. It requires knowledge. It requires you getting better at it because it is a game and it is something that you need to learn. But really what it is, is how can you learn and how can you get better at? And so that's the second thing is learning how to save it.

23:23And then the third thing, so you learn how to make it, you learn how to save it. And then the third thing, and these are all just different skill sets that you build over time, is you learn how to invest your money. And you have your money make you money. This takes knowledge. It's something that must be learned. And this is how you start to remove yourself from being required to work. True wealth is built from assets that make you money while you sleep. And so you can invest your money into markets like the stock market and different markets if you want to. And that makes you money over time.