How To Heal Your Relationship With Money To Create More Abundance

27:11But why do people sometimes go all in on the money they have, or 90 % of their money, on things that have a 1 % chance of actually getting more than a double return within a year? Well, there's two reasons. One is they don't believe there's only a 1 % chance. They believe, again, it's the most efficient way to get there. I didn't think that there was a high probability I was going to fail doing nothing down real estate. I did not. It never occurred to me, number one. And then number two, pride comes right before the fall. There's an arrogance. I understood that debt knocked over some people. I understood that sometimes people got in trouble.

27:51But I thought, oh, I can do this. I'm smart enough. 26 years of your wisdom, you could do this at 26. And after 24 and a half years and a college degree in real estate, by God, I can do this. And there was that in there, that arrogant little twerp. He was there. And so there's a combination of this pride. And that then leads you to, again, these principles that lead you to bad tactics or principles that lead you to good tactics. And the principle was a bad principle that I was functioning in. And, you know, just put a little icing on the cake of a little pride, a little arrogance that says, Oh, yeah, I know.

28:26I know that for that guy, but I'm really good at math. And I grew up in the real estate business and I know I know things. Just just ask me, you know, and that you see this. You can actually see that dripping off of some of the stuff that's posted on the Get Rich Quick stuff, stuff that criticizes you, stuff that criticizes me, stuff that criticizes our friend Craig Groeschel or whoever. I mean, you can see anybody that's playing a long game or, you know, Simon Sinek's infinite game. right anybody's playing a long game the short-term thinkers all have to pile on and there's always that dripping arrogance around it i couldn't recognize it because i was the same guy i did the same i would have been the guy trashing that guy i would have been the guy trashing me when i was 26 because i would have been going no that doesn't apply to me yeah i understand ramsey but that's for regular people i'm smarter than i'm not regular yeah you know so there's that in there so we got we got get get out of debt we've got live on less than you make we got to have a budget We got to save and the last one is you need to be outlandishly outrageously generous Mm-hmm and walk around with an open hand What does generous mean for people that?

29:32feel like they're struggling to live their own lifestyle of Going out with friends once a week or having a dinner every couple of weeks or just doing you know some basic activities To enjoy life beyond free activities How does generosity look like for those individuals see generous is not an action? generous is a character quality and like integrity it's a character quality that you choose you're not born with it it's not it's not installed you have to say i am a generous person as a friend as our friend james clear says he says our habits come from our identity so change your identity and your habits will follow right the whole essence of atomic habits his best-selling book and which is wonderful material yeah and so the uh uh but but i am a generous person okay now Now, what does that mean?

30:21Yeah, there's obviously a money thing. That might mean I give 10 % to my church, a tithe. That might mean I pick up the bill at dinner. It might mean I look across the room and someone's wearing military fatigues and I buy their lunch. It might, or a policeman or a fireman or a nurse. You know, I'm in scrubs. It might mean something that simple tactically, but it could mean I just opened the door for something. Yeah, a generous heart. It could mean, because here's the thing. We all know the difference in a taker and a giver. We know the difference in selfless versus selfish. When you hang out with selfish people, you feel like you need to take a shower when you're done, you know.

30:59And when you hang out with selfless people, so I can just decide to do that. I don't have to have a lot of money because generous people are highly attractive. Not because they give you stuff, but they're highly attractive because they're, and they're very seldom depressed. they almost always have a positive outlook they don't have a scarcity mentality they have an abundance mentality it and all of this is just a decision i i just i'm gonna instead of being but but what happens is we become overwhelmed with the financial stress and we turn it in and we became navel gazers worried about me me me me me me me me because i got to take care of me me me me, me, me.

31:40And if I don't take care of me, me, me, me, the lights get cut off. And it doesn't take much margin to push all of that back as a decision and just say, no, I'm going to leave a tip that's outlandish. You know, I watched a guy the other day park a Mercedes. He pulled up in a car. I know the car because I looked at it one time. It was a$140 ,000 car. And he hands the FLA five bucks. I'm like, dude, this is Ferris Bueller's Day Out. You just gave a guy five bucks to park 140 ,000. You are out of your mind. That's a lack of generosity that could really cost you. I want them taking care of Mr. Ramsey's car like it's their daughter.

32:24That's the tip I want to leave for selfish reasons. Hello. Protect your car. Exactly. I'm curious, what was the what was the most generous year you've ever been financially you don't have to say how much you gave or tithe that year but what was the most you ever gave back in one year can you remember that year yeah yeah it was year before last um because I had a goal I met this I've been hanging out with these generous guys these guys that have a lot of money and gals and trying to learn from them and one of the things I learned is the intentionality behind their generosity they're very careful.

32:59They do large gifts as if they're doing an investment. Really? They do due diligence. Can you explain what you mean? Well, they do due diligence on the organization. You know, if they're wasteful, they're not handling money well. They don't treat their people well behind the scenes. 89 % is going to overhead and 11 % is going to hungry children. Then, you know, this is a problem. That means somebody's got too nice a car in a pile, right? And so they investigate and go into it. That's one thing they do on large gifts. And two, If you've got an organization that's weak and their money is struggling and you give them too much, you can destroy them.

33:33Really? Much like a lottery winner. Right. They're not ready for it mentally or emotionally. They don't have the character to carry it. Interesting. They don't have the processes and the systems and the organization and the nonprofit of the ministry to carry it. And so you can actually, you know, you go into a church of 30 people and you tithe a million dollars, you can ruin the place. So what questions should you ask an organization, a church, or a foundation that you want to give a big sum of money to? What questions should you ask the leaders to know that they have a mindset capable of managing that much money?

34:10Because typically if you come from not having enough, and that's how you've always been, and then all of a sudden you get more, you may not be ready for it. Right. So what questions should we ask before we make those investments and give that generously to know that, okay, this person is actually at the right stage of their life to handle this big lump sum of money and all the donors that I'm going to bring them? My daughter, Denise, runs our family foundation, handles all the Ramsey philanthropy. and the thing that she and I have agreed on in that is I want her to approach the ministry like we are venture capitalists and we're going to buy them.

34:50Like looking at their books. I'm going to buy them. Yeah. I'm going to buy them. I want to know how they're running the place. I want to know their HR issues. I want to know their systems and processes for growth. I want to know how they manage things. How chaotic is it? How is their accounting systems in place? I want to know the delivery mechanism of the actual goal of the ministry. Again, feeding hungry kids, how are we feeding hungry kids? What's that look like? What's the cost per kid? How many kids do we feed? And what's our goals and what's our vision for that? And just like you're buying it.

35:25And then you can come alongside them and partner with them. And we're not trying to take them over. We're not trying to run them. Don't want to do that. God gave them that to do, not me, not Denise. But but we're going to approach it that way as due diligence. And then that gives us a different set of eyes. And here's what's weird. Because we teach leadership and because we run a large business, we actually can help them sometimes by advising them and say, you know what, if you would just change that a little bit, then we could change our giving like this. and we're not trying to tell you what to do.

35:56We're not trying to bribe you, but we're just trying to come alongside you and love you well, help you increase your capacity, increase your efficiency for the goals that God's given you to do here. And it's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun. And so it changes our mindset of just instead of like, we're going to throw some money over the fence, hope it all works out. If we come alongside them as if we're buying them or if we're a venture capitalist and we're going to partner with them or something like that, then we're going to bring our advice. So obviously then the Ramsey Family Foundation does not give to ministries that borrow money.

36:29Obviously. Right, right. That's a deal killer for us. That doesn't have to be for everybody, but we teach people not to borrow money. Why would we then give money to someone who's borrowing? That's kind of dumb. Right. So we wouldn't do that. So, but back to the other thing. My goal was I saw one guy, he gave away a million dollars in a year. I thought that would be very, very cool. Figure out a way that we, and many years ago we were able to do that the first time. Yeah, many years ago and and then I thought well, what can we do next? I want to give away a million dollars in a day Wow and we pulled that off come on We pulled that off that's so far it included the gifts to our team for Christmas It included supporting several ministries simultaneously at Christmas or a children's home in the area It included buying some stuff for this thing and that thing We did it all brought everybody under this roof here and did it all this huge celebration one day Not the point at us, but it was I gotta tell you is one of the most fun days I've ever had in my life Because generosity is fun.

37:25Feels good, too. It does. It's a blast. It's the most fun you'll ever have with money. Now, I think you said the year before last was the most that you gave. Yeah. That was that million-dollar day. That was it. Okay. So, essentially, like a year and a month ago or something, right? Is that what it was? I guess. A year and a half ago or something like that. I'm curious. this. Every individual that I've interviewed or talked to, you know, 10 plus years my senior, they all talk, who I really admire, they all talk about generosity and giving and making it something you do early on in your life in any way capacity that you can and giving more and more, the more you are able to give more.

38:09And they say, the thing that always happens is I always make more when I give even like a little bit uncomfortably when I give more than I think can I really do this the next year always becomes bigger I'm curious was the last year one of your biggest years no no no but it will be it will be over a decade yeah I mean because I mean we're being impacted by outside variables like everyone I mean we got supply chain is affecting the economics are affecting energy costs are affecting hiring cost of labor is affecting us everything so So, no, we're actually not up immediately following that. But I am 100 % convinced that over a decade we'll be way up.

38:48Yeah. Because I've done it before. I've stretched and done it before, done the unusual thing, had the celebration with no thought of the return. Yes. If you do it with the thought of a return, then that's you telling God what to do. That doesn't work. He thinks he's God, so that won't work. Right. But this idea that, again, Again, generous people are just more fun to do stuff with. They're more attractive. They're more fun. They're more attractive, and you just end up having opportunities come. Let me think about it in a simplistic way. Let's say you were a leader in an organization, and you had two people working for you vying for a promotion.

39:25And obviously, what are we going to do here? One's the selfish, looks like he's weaned on a pickle. And the other lady is she's generous and she's kind. And she's always stepping outside of her own job description and helping someone else get the project done and not taking credit for it. Who gets the promotion? Of course. Of course. And it's not because you're somehow beholden to her for that. It's just that's who I want to work with every day. People with good attitude, good energy, good effort. That's who I want beside me. I don't want Mr. Weaned on a Pickle hanging out. I don't want to hang out with this guy.

39:56Right. You know, he's awful. It's awful, you know. What do you think happens to people that never give, that they just earn for themselves or they keep it in their business and they only put it back in their business, but they don't think about giving outside of the business? I think their growth is stunted. Really? To me, again, it falls in the same category as integrity. What happens to someone who cuts corners? You can win. You can prosper to a degree. But all the data tells us and all the life experience tells us that the people with fanatical levels of integrity are the ones that do the biggest stuff.

40:36The crooks really don't get ahead at the end of the day. The people that are selfish, they could get some stuff done, but the people that are selfless, they just have a tendency because people trust them. That trust factor comes in. Things move at the speed of trust, as they say. All those things come into play, and you just don't become all you were designed to be. The other thing that happens with generosity is your creativity increases. Yes. Because you're releasing chemicals that you don't release when you're selfish. Your productivity increases. The quality of your relationships increase.

41:14I was speaking at a little Baptist church in Kentucky one time, beautiful little church, and a guy many, many years ago. And the old pastor had been there for 40 years, and I did a tithing lesson, hardcore Baptist tithing lesson, which I love. and the guy came up afterwards and he goes, well, you left one thing out. Sure, Pastor. I mean, you've been doing this longer than me. What'd I leave out? He goes, you know, I've been doing this 40 years. I've never had a tithing couple in my church get a divorce. And I went, why? Because the tithe is magical? Because some people think that in Christianity, you know, because I don't think that.

41:47He said, no, because when you're unselfish with your money, you're unselfish with your wife. And you're unselfish with your husband. and you serve each other in the marriage if you're serving the community with your giving. It's the same muscle. And he goes, you're just easier to stay married to. When you're tithing, when you're giving. When you're giving. When you make giving a standard part of the rhythm of your life, you build that generosity muscle, and it affects every relationship you're in, particularly the key relationship in a marriage. It changes the way you parent. Because if you don't give in one area, if you say, I'm going to hold back my money and I'm going to keep it here, you're probably not going to give generously to your spouse or to your kids or to your friends or community, right?

42:33Because it's a character quality. Interesting. You know, it's like the guy that says, well, you know, I hate the IRS. I hate taxes, so I don't really put everything on my tax return. Okay, so you're a liar. You're a cheater. Where are you going to cheat me? In what deal? That's what I start thinking. I'm not impressed. I hate taxes, but I pay every stinking penny, not because I believe in taxes and not because I'm scared of the IRS, because neither one of those things are true, but it's because it says something about me. I got to look at me, and that's an integrity issue. It's every penny, every cash sale of a book on the back table goes into the accounting system, and we pay freaking taxes on it.

43:20I got audited not long ago. I paid precisely zero in the audit. We were so stinking clean. And it's not because I'm scared of those dupers, because I'm really not. They're a pain in the butt, but I'm not scared of them. It's a matter of integrity is integrity is integrity is integrity. Generosity is generosity is generosity is generosity. These things, these are character qualities of the successful people that I've met. Yeah, that's beautiful. Speaking of marriage, it seems like money affects marriages a lot. I'm curious what or it could empower marriages or it could hurt marriages if not handled properly.

43:58I'm curious if you were to give advice on some a couple dating for, you know, a few years looking to get married. What are a few questions they must have and align to about money that might be uncomfortable to have those questions, but will actually get you clear on, hey, are we the right match? In terms of our money mindset, in terms of what we're going to do with money for the next. And maybe you have this question in the first few months of dating. You don't wait two years. But what are those questions that people should be asking before they align with someone romantically long term? Well, there's a couple of things to keep in mind.

44:35I'm talking to a young couple about this and I do often in a marriage seminar or something like that is our pre-marriage counseling session or something like that. Um, the number one cause of divorce is money fights and money problems out there. The stress of money and the arguments over money. Okay. And so if you said the number one cause of death is getting killed by a bear on the way to the mailbox, right? Then you would analyze how not to get killed by a bear on the way to the mailbox. Yeah. Right. And so if you're going to get married, you should really look at the number one freaking thing.

45:11Hello. This is the number one thing that either hurts or ends marriage is what I'm hearing you say. And the odd thing is it's actually circular. It's an infinity loop because it feeds back on itself, meaning that it also – the quality of your marriage is a high data point indicator as to whether or not you build wealth. Yeah. And so very few people drag a spouse kicking and screaming into millionaire status. You mean it doesn't happen by accident? You know, so I'm bringing the princess with me, right? Come on, baby. and put you on my back and we're going to haul you over there. It doesn't usually work, okay?

45:44Or I'm bringing the guy who's lazy and won't work and I'm going to outwork him and the lady says, and he's a little boy and I'm going to be his mommy and I'm going to drag him all the way into millionaire status. Not working, baby. So it goes both directions. So that's thing one. If it's the number one cause, then, yeah, it ought to be something really you discuss. So preventative maintenance, right? Yes. You know, it's preventative health. If the number one cause of death is obesity, we probably ought to think about obesity, you know? I'm curious, Sam, what's a question a woman should ask to her man, you know, within the first few months of dating about money, where she could get a sense, if he's fully honest and integrity with what he's saying and not just saying something to make her, you know, feel happy, what is a question she can ask to feel like, okay, this man I'm dating and courting and we're getting into this life with, I feel like I can trust him with money for the future.

46:39Yeah. Well, money is a reflection of our values, how we handle money. And that's another reason that it's very important, because if your values are not aligned, you're going to struggle in any relationship, but certainly in a marriage relationship. And so, you know, talk about the basics of money. Debt. I love debt. I'm going to use it all the time. You know, I want zero down everything. I'm going to buy a zero down truck. I'm going to buy a zero down stereo. I'm going to buy a zero down couch. I'm going to put nothing down on the house. and you hate debt, okay, we got a problem. We're going to have to work through this or we're going to have to, this is a deal killer.

47:16Okay, how about saving? I don't think you got to save money. You can always get you something. I always thought you could out-earn your stupidity. I tried that for years. It didn't work, you know. So my wife, however, is a natural saver, right? So when I joined her club is when we started winning. Yeah. You know, so bless her heart, she didn't know this going in, but I made a hard life for her the first seven years. So saving and debt, how about generosity? I don't believe you ought to give. If you give, you end up with less. It's mathematically factual, which it is actually. But that short-term thinking, that's a finite game instead of an infinite game, again using Simon's premise on his book.

47:55So generosity. The things we just talked about. How about living on a – are we going to live in chaos? Are we going to live with a plan? Yeah, want to live with peace or chaos? Are we going to live with future-minded or YOLO? You know? You only live once. Thank God it's Friday. Living for the weekend. Our marriage theme song is Huey Lewis and the News, right? I mean, come on. Is this us? And if it is, then, you know, because what's this tell you? Anyone that lives short-term thinking, we know they're emotionally immature. Yes. Spiritually immature. And so you're marrying someone or you're dating someone that's emotionally immature.

48:30And they're fun. They're always fun. but there but it's not fun in the long term because it brings about stress the fruit of this is nasty and so now do we have to be perfectly aligned on all those things no we just need to understand where the other person stands and are they so far over away from us that it's a deal killer yeah because my wife is more of a saver than i am by nature i had saving for me is an intellectual act a spiritual act of my will it is not a natural rhythm okay she naturally saves everything. The leftovers in our refrigerator are grotesque. I mean, it's just, I mean, you know, she saves everything.

49:09So, but, so to the extent that I can stay close to her on that, then we've got harmony. We have both obviously with what we've been through agreed, no doubt. Right. We are both have become planners over the 40 years of marriage. I've always been a detailed planner. I had to get her to join me more on that. So, you know, but it's better if you do it on the front in the way we did it's a lot harder the way we did about kill each other so you want to be in agreement on that and all the data tells us on marriage and divorce statistics and we've studied this for years is number one cause of divorce money the other three if you can be in agreement on them religion kids whether to have them and how to treat them and how to deal with crazy people in your extended family your mother-in-law and your crazy brother your lazy brother who does cocaine and whatever it is how you're going to deal with how to manage it all how to manage boundaries with extended family.

50:01And, you know, if one of you thinks that children should just be let run wild and the other one is an over disciplinarian, we're going to have a problem or I want no children and I want 17. That's going to be an issue. Or I don't believe there's a God. And I think anyone who believes there's a God's an idiot. Oh, by the way, I think there's a God. Oh, see, this is a problem because now I'm an idiot. So there you go. And so these are the things. But if you could, because all of these things are representative of your values and what your beliefs are. So when you can agree on your money, what you've ended up agreeing on is your dreams, your fears, your visions, you're in agreement, you're in alignment on those, not only what they are, but how we're going to go after them then.

50:38And now you've got real harmony and you've got a high probability of building wealth. That's the odd part of it. That's the infinity loop. It comes back in on itself. Do you think love is enough if you have religion, kids, family boundaries kind of all in alignment in in harmony but money is completely apart but you love each other you've been building this life together for a year or two and you're like should we get married or not but we are so far apart one's the fun and undisciplined person one is the extreme saver and you know detail-oriented plan person is is love enough to have a successful long-term healthy marriage if money is not there I think you've got to be close you don't have to be exactly aligned but you got to be generally think because the problem is this resentment is going to set in and resentment will kill love yeah the eye roll when you roll your eyes that's the beginning of the end right this is that called the four horsemen exactly the four horsemen of the apocalypse yeah let's parrot teaches about that and that's some standard john gotman background stuff but that's one of the four And that's the big one, by the way, of the four.

51:52And so, you know, if he won't work, he won't keep a job because he just doesn't think that that's that big a deal. That's not a problem. Eventually, you lose respect and the eye rolls. And that's the beginning of the end. That's one of the largest of the four horsemen by far. So if you can't keep... Now, again, my wife and I joke about our differences on saving. Right, right, right. But they're not that far apart. Sure. I mean, we freely admit hers is a natural rhythm. Mine's a built-in. I had to decide to do it because I see the benefits of it, so I intellectually will it. It's against my DNA.

52:34You don't like it. Yeah, I really don't. I mean, the only reason I save money is so I can give more and have more. Yeah. The only reason. I don't do it because I get joy out of saving money. Zero. Right. But I can give more and I can buy more. And those two things bring me joy, so there you go. But again, at least we, though, are in alignment that saving is important, even if it might be for two different reasons. If I absolutely believe it was ridiculous to keep any money saved and she's had to have some money saved to have peace because she's constantly in anxiety because there's no rainy day fund, then that's going to eventually tear up anything you do.

53:12Sure. What's the difference between saving and investing at your kind of scale? Or someone who's, you know, bringing in over a million dollars a year in their business and they've got some extra cash. What is the difference between saving and investing? Is there a difference at that level of like, okay, some money is just saved in an account and others are invested in different areas? Savings is short-term. Investing is long-term. Okay. Pretty simple. And you can define what that is. But I generally think three years and less. I'm just saving the money. I'm really not putting it in something that's going to be going up and down.

53:43Got it. Because I need the money there. Right. You know, and so I've got to have access to it. So it needs to be, it's not going to earn a lot, but it's stable. Gotcha. Investing, I can ride a wave because I'm playing a long game. What's the percentages of saving investing that people should be at? Well, you should have an emergency fund personally of three to six months of expenses, the standard rainy day fund. Past that, you need to save up and pay cash for whatever you're purchasing. So if you've got a car purchase in your future, Christmas this year is in December. If you didn't know, you got to get ready for that.

54:14And, you know, that kind of stuff. I thought it was November. They move it occasionally, but just in case, yeah. But just in case, a reminder. And so, you know, those are savings items. And then past that, everything else would go to investing. You know, because basically one saving is for protection, the emergency fund, and the others for purchases to avoid debt. Paying cash for my car, paying cash for my couch, paying cash for my trip. and those are short-term saving Christmas I'm saving short-term savings items and then long-term saving items obviously retirement kids college general wealth building beyond that to do other things and so then I get into at our level now that we make a lot of money we're a little bit mixed up in that we get so much over in the investing pile then a lot of it is not for 30 years from now a lot of it is for six years from now and so I'll throw money over into a mutual fund until I use it to buy a piece of real estate or something like that.

55:11But that's a little different.

55:16What do you think are three things that rich people do differently than the poor people or people that aren't thinking about building wealth in that way? Number one, and you'll be surprised to hear me say this, they don't take inordinate risk. You're going to find that the majority of very wealthy people are extremely conservative in how they invest. They don't need to beat the market, they've already done that. They just need to preserve their capital. So what you find them doing, and I don't know what that number is for you, wealth means different things to different people, but when you are fortunate and you become wealthy, what you'll find is most of those people do not take a lot of risk.

55:57And they invest in things that are very long term, they don't use a lot of debt in most cases. They don't use leverage when they're investing. They don't take very speculative positions on. You know, you hear that they might buy Bitcoin or they may, you know, buy a speculative stock. But if you look at it as a percentage of what they're worth, it's nothing. Right. And so they're willing, when they're making that investment, they're saying, I'm willing to lose it. It's entertainment almost for me. It's not something I think that I'm going to have to live off. And the other thing I found, because I advise a lot of wealthy people, because my companies that I invest in, you know, of which I have over 30, at any one time 10 % of them are being acquired by a private equity firm or being bought by a strategic.

56:45And I've known the entrepreneur and maybe it's their first liquidity event, I try and help them on that journey. And some of them, you know, get 100 million or$80 million, they've got plenty of situations like that and they're young. And what happens is you find out later that entrepreneurs are actually really bad investors. They're very good at running a business and they focus myopically on that their whole lives but when they actually get liquidity it's usually their husband or wife that was the person that was taking care of the family and mitigating the risk and they're the ones that are the better investor.

57:18And that's why I say in a family, you have to have a team approach. But I've learned this, that you really, you'll find that what's successful about families is they know what they're good at or wealthy people, and they know what they're not good at. And they don't try and do things they don't understand. And this is, it's important because you have to say, I have limits on my skills. I know what I'm good at but I've been very fortunate and I'm not going to go risk anything now doing something I don't know I see that characteristic a lot and the other thing that I would say is different and this may have a lot to do with the concept of karma.

58:03Another lesson I learned from my mother that if you're successful and you talk to wealthy people you'll always find that there's something that motivates them to be philanthropic, to give money to something that matters to them. And that's the whole idea of giving back. You've been successful and you have to find the cause that motivates you. You're willing to spend your time and money supporting. That is a big difference because if you believe in karma, and I do, when you do that it kind of protects you against the horrific downside of something bad happening to you because you're just so greedy.

58:42You can't, when you have success and you're a wealthy person, if you show me a greedy, wealthy person, just wait 10 years. Then you'll just show me a person. Somehow karma will separate their money from them. That's what I find. Or they'll get sick or something will happen where, yeah I I really believe this I really believe it and you've got to find those things that you can give back on that means something to you but if you if you abuse karma it's got a special gift coming for you mmm so finding ways to give back are you giving back in a lot of other ways Phil on top right now as well yeah you know I am I like to have a concentrated approach I call it five and five I prefer to pick five charities or in our case we support a dance company, we support some hospitals, some educational institutions, and you know give enough that it's a material gift and that I have a say in how it's spent very often.

59:46And above all I like to see expense ratios reported. I generally don't support charities that can't provide, just like an investment, some kind of a statement on where my money went. Right. And that is actually something I think Bill Gates is famous for early on saying, why can't I treat my charitable investments as I do my private ones and ask for some performance metrics? And I kind of believe that he's right. Yeah, I think it's smart. And what would you say is one other thing that rich people do differently that poor people don't do?

1:00:17this may have a lot to do with you know the access to but in the last five years I've realized how important food is and how if you're you know you say poor how you should be or even you should focus on what you put in your body because in our society we do two things very badly we eat too much sodium and we eat too much sugar white cane sugar and we have been trained to do that since the 40s by a whole industrial complex that wants to sell us that and i'm guilty of it and so is everybody else salt and sugar feel good they're comfort food snacks and all that it's the worst thing you put in your body and i have learned it's kind of weird but the older i get and the more i experience this because i'm i'm actually a classically trained chef and French fusion.

1:01:11I have a job on QVC as Chef Wonderful. I sell millions of dollars of food and wine each year there. It's because I grew up for a few years in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and that's at a place where it was a French colonized place. My dad was working in the United Nations, and the two women that were the housekeepers and the cook used to go to the market. It was on the Mekong River in Phnom Penh and take me with them at four in the morning and it's very hot there and so they were classically trained French chefs so in French cooking particularly if you're a sous chef which is really hard to get that designation and I'm pretty proud of what I can do in that area is you work with a lot of heavy butter and cream but you can't do that in a in a in an environment where it's 110 degrees 100 % humidity every day you can't eat like that.

1:02:03So what those chefs taught me was how to replace the butter and the cream with things like a mango puree or lime and lemon juice or guava crushed. I mean all kinds of different flavors. So they would take a classic dish like crepe flambée, which is one of my specialties, or escargot. And those are classic French dishes. They're very time consuming to make, particularly escargot if it's made properly, with real shells and real snails. But you don't have to put all that butter in it. You can have, you know, a different flavor set based on using a fusion of citrus. Anyways, the whole idea of eating better for me is part of my DNA and growing up.

1:02:50So now I look at what I eat every day. I used to, when I was young, I eat three steaks a week. I used to love that. I don't think I've had a piece of red meat in months. I eat fish, I eat fruit and vegetables and it really helps you feel better. So if you're asking me what's different, but I'm proud to see that many people are exploring plant-based and regardless of their financial income, meat is actually very expensive and very inefficient. And there's ways to get protein. Now you don't have to become a vegan. I'm just saying you have to choose to focus on the things that are better for you, regardless of your income.

1:03:24And you will get more energy, you'll feel better. That kind of thing. That's a difference as well. That's powerful. I love that. I'm curious, do you think the middle class is financially stuck? And if so, what can they do to start achieving more financial freedom? You can create a new opportunity for yourself online with virtually no barrier to entry. Many, many people did it as a side hustle and it's now producing more income than their first job. The whole idea of trying to solve for customer acquisition using creativity, using video, using music, using photography, using storytelling, animatics, graphics, to actually sell a service or product starting locally and then expanding.

1:04:10There's millions of new businesses that have been started during the pandemic. We see them every day on Shark Tank, but they are basically taking middle class people out of middle class. And I'd say, if you look at Shark Tank, we have plenty of people that have been working in the middle class for years and all of a sudden exploded to the upside with a great service or idea that they did online. And that's why I really think people should empower themselves. You can try things online. You can see what works. You don't have to get the first one right. But those tools are there for you. And most of this is done on Facebook in geolocked advertising.

1:04:4680 cents on the dollar of what my company spent is on Facebook. So I always find it very funny to see people bashing Facebook, saying how evil it is when really it's running small business in America because they have that unique geolocking advertising feature. So we shouldn't shut it down until we find something better. Yeah. And what would you say are a couple of qualities that you really look for when you're looking to invest in someone or when someone has an idea? And whether you invest them or not, you're like, this person's going to be successful, whether it's in this thing or something else.

1:05:20What are those two or three qualities that all of them seem to have in your mind, whether it be a leadership skill or clarity? What would that be? I prefer to invest in entrepreneurs that have failed once or twice before, that have felt the sting of failure and have gone down the road and not had success the first time because their motivations are completely different than a more arrogant first-timer that thinks everything they do is going to make$100 million. It just doesn't work that way. And so that's one thing. I love, there's three things you have to have the ability to do and know if you're going to be successful in business.

1:05:55Number one is you have to be able to articulate your idea in 90 seconds or less. It explains to me why anybody would want that product or service. And if you take more than a minute and a half, you're never going to be successful. You're just not. And number two is you have to be able to explain why you're the right person to execute on that idea. In other words, what is it about you that knows how to take this idea, which good ideas are a dime a dozen. Executional skills are really hard to find. So what is it about you that can execute on this business and make it work? I mean those two together start to be really interesting because then as an investor looks at it says well I'm gonna mitigate my risk I got a great executional you know expert here and I've got a great idea and then lastly the one that I think you have to have a good command of you have to know your numbers you have to be able to explain gross margins market share break-even analysis, how many competitors, how fast can you grow?

1:06:53And I think, you know, that's who I want to invest in, someone who has a command of all three of those. That's probably got more than a 50 % chance of being successful if they can do that right. Yeah.

1:07:08I love your take on things. I wanted to know for those that are in their late teens, early 20s, what conversations should they be having with friends or mentors around money i feel like a lot of people are afraid to talk about it or they don't they don't share how much they make or how much a home costs or whatever it's just like this hush hush mentality what should we be talking about in our late teens early 20s or even 30s but what types of conversations should we be having to shift the narrative around money so we can start attracting it in our favor as opposed to rejecting it? Well, first of all, we need to teach it in high school.

1:07:46Luckily, here in Florida, it's been put into the curriculum, and I'm very proud of that. You know, I used to be in the educational software business. There's 110 ,000 school buildings in America, the majority of them in New York, and Florida, Texas, and California, and abysmally, most of them don't teach even debt. They don't even teach how to use a credit card, which is ridiculous. We've got to change that, and luckily we are. We're starting to see it creep into the curriculums in all the major states, which is good. But I think parents have a responsibility to talk about money, which is always sitting at the table every day.

1:08:16It always is. And getting their kids to understand how a credit card works is very important. And again, I talked about not entitling. That's important, too. But within your friends, I mean, don't be embarrassed to talk about money. You're going to be talking about money for the rest of your life. It's always going to be part. You can't live without it. You have to deal with it. It can cause great joy and give you personal freedom or can be catastrophic in your life, destroy your happiness completely. Your choice is where does it fit? Do you want it to destroy your life or would you prefer that you understand how it works and respect it for what it is and deal with it?

1:08:53That's a personal choice people have to make. And I would say the best way to do that is learn more, talk more about it, and don't be afraid to discuss it. I don't care what age you're at, but certainly at the age of 16, you should be discussing that. And above all, taking 10 % of whatever anybody gives you, your grandmother, your birthday gift, whatever it is, and set it aside and start investing it. The earlier you start, the less pressure you have when you're in your 60s, because you've got to have at least a million and a half bucks in the bank. And you can, if you just save$100 a week, that's what Beanstalks is all about.

1:09:24That's why I got involved in Beanstalks. That's the whole idea. And do you think someone in their late 40s and 50s, do you think it's too late for them to start learning about financial literacy if they've struggled in their 20s and 30s and 40s? Do you think it's too late to start investing and saving? What should people do in their 40s and early 50s? No, they should at any age. I mean, the truth is changing your spending behavior in your 40s is difficult, but you can do it. And at that age, you should start saving 20 to 25 percent of what you're taking in, which sounds hard to do, but it isn't.

1:09:59You just stop buying those$5 coffees, and you stop buying stuff you don't use. Anybody can go look in their closet and see all the crap they bought that they never used and basically you killed that money when you did that. You bought something that you could have had invested and it could have grown 6 % to 8 % a year for you but instead you bought some piece of junk that you're throwing out now. Everybody's guilty of that. I actually think my mother was right. She's always said that people can save 20 % they just don't have the backbone to do it and she did and she died a very wealthy woman. She had a secret account she She kept them both of her husbands.

1:10:34And I was the older brother. I was the executor for the state. And I remember the lawyers calling me up saying, you've got to come down here. Your mother had a lot of money. And I always wondered how she did it. She basically bought dividend-paying stocks in her 20s and a whole bunch of telco bonds, 50-50 portfolio. She loved telco bonds. They used to yield 6 % in those days. And she loved dividend-paying stocks, S &P stocks. And over the 50 years that she had this account, it just provided massive appreciation. Wow. Should people die wealthy or should they die broke because they spent their wealth on charity or giving back or whatever, living their life and going on trips and adventures?

1:11:15What's your philosophy there? You know, the trouble these days is you don't know when you're going to die. You make certain assumptions and then you live an extra 10 years or 20 years. And you live at a time in your life when you really needed that money for your comfort. You know, it's probably better to not make an assumption, oh, I think I'm going to die when I'm 88, because you don't know what technology is going to provide or what your genes really have in store for you. I would prefer to die with a good chunk of dough in the bank and then gift it to a cat. A cat? Yeah. You know, cats only last 14 years.

1:11:51It would be a great 14 years for them. I'm just kidding. I'd probably give it to a combination of, you know, in my case, I feel safe because I can roll it into a trust that doesn't provide for you after, you know, you finish college. So I don't feel I'm entitling anybody or cursing anybody's future. So I'll just probably roll it into one of my family trusts and say I don't need it anymore. The only thing I'm taking with me to the afterlife is my watch collection. All of them. I'm going to Eternity. I got a lot. I don't even say anymore how many I've got. But I haven't, you know, really, I'm very proud of my watch collection.

1:12:26And it's incredibly, it's got some amazing pieces. And it's taken me years to build this collection. And I'm going to need it to tell time and eternity. So I'm taking it all with me. What do you think is the best investment you've ever made in yourself? Well, the best investment I ever made in myself was myself. You know, you often doubt yourself. but I went through some very tough times, right from when my mother cut me off through several business ventures I failed in, and then you just don't know, serendipity knocks on the door. The thing is, as an entrepreneur, you just got to keep getting up every day.

1:13:04You have to stay in the game. You have to stay in the race. It's very, very hard. It's like that story of the guy with his fiance. You just have to focus, and you have to find somebody that's willing to focus with you but I'm glad I did what I did I wouldn't change a thing I've made plenty of mistakes but I it is who I am today and I'm very you know proud to be able to offer the things I do to my family and and to support different initiatives and charities and support the arts and collect watches and guitars and cook and all these things are made available because you know I've been able to focus on being successful in business.

1:13:44And that is the great American dream. It's going to remain that way forever. It's the essence of why Shark Tank works. I'm very proud to be part of the platform. I can guarantee you 13 years ago when we started this thing, we had no idea what was going to happen. I mean, it's just who knew. But now nine-year-old girls to 99-year-old men come up to me saying, look, let's talk about that deal last week on Shark Tank. And I'm happy to do it. I mean, I think it's great and we're proud to do it. And I don't know, that's the whole idea that I encourage people. Don't pursue entrepreneurship out of greed of money.

1:14:19You will fail for sure. Because every time I talk to anybody that's had a big liquidity event, I say, you know, did you see it coming? And how did it happen? They said, we never saw it coming. We were just working one day and then boom, I was poor, now I'm rich. That's always the way it is. It's not that you're saying you're counting your dollars. You don't have any until one day, boom, something happens. And then the funny thing is you find yourself right back to work.

1:14:48I have a brand new book called Make Money Easy. And if you're looking to create more financial freedom in your life, you want abundance in your life and you want to stop making money hard in your life, but you want to make it easier. You want to make it flow. you want to feel abundant, then make sure to go to makemoneyeasybook.com right now and get yourself a copy. I really think this is going to help you transform your relationship with money this moment moving forward. We have some big guests and content coming up. Make sure you're following and stay tuned to the next episode on the School of Greatness.

1:15:29I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad-free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward.

1:16:07And I want to remind you if no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.