🎙️ Breaking the Paycheck to Paycheck Cycle — The Simple Road toward Financial Freedom with Steve Short and Mark Schlipman
Guests: Steve Short and Mark Schlipman
Host: Dwight Heck
Podcast: Give A Heck
🔥 Episode Overview
Are you watching your financial future slip away while feeling powerless to change course? In this compelling episode of Give A Heck, Dwight sits down with Steve Short and Mark Schlipman, co-authors of the #1 Amazon bestseller The Simple Road toward Financial Freedom with a foreword by Will Ferrell. Together, they share their mission to help the next generation escape the financial literacy crisis plaguing society.
Steve brings nearly 30 years of corporate leadership experience managing billion-dollar divisions, while Mark offers over two decades as a financial advisor helping clients build real wealth. Together, they’ve created a roadmap that transforms complex financial concepts into actionable, jargon-free strategies that anyone can implement.
💬 Key Takeaways
- How the 50‑20‑30 “save first” model can revolutionize your approach to money management
- Why most people buy high and sell low in the market, and how to avoid this costly mistake
- The shocking reality of how marketing manipulates your spending decisions
- Evidence that an entry-level worker can become a millionaire in 20 years with the right strategy
🔄 Breaking the Generational Cycle
Discover how learned financial behaviors get passed down through families and why most young adults enter the workforce completely unprepared for financial reality. We explore:
- The critical difference between needs and wants, and why your brain fights this distinction
- How to have age-appropriate money conversations that actually stick
- Why delayed gratification has become nearly impossible in our instant-access world
🌱 The Power of Perspective and Positive Thinking
Learn why your mindset determines your financial success more than your income level:
- How to reframe challenges as character-building moments rather than defining setbacks
- The importance of surrounding yourself with the right influences and associations
- Why believing in your ability to change is the foundation of all financial progress
🛠️ Practical Tools for Real Change
Get actionable strategies using their proven bucketing system:
- Emergency fund essentials that protect you from financial disasters
- Short-term savings for goals 2–5 years out
- Long-term investment principles that weather market volatility
- The truth about “good debt” versus destructive borrowing
📊 This conversation reveals why 62% of employees are financially stressed and spending work hours worrying about money instead of being productive. Whether you’re 25 or 55, the principles we discuss will help you shift from financial anxiety to financial confidence.
⏳ Don’t let another year pass living paycheck to paycheck while wondering if financial freedom is even possible. The strategies Steve and Mark share prove that with the right knowledge and consistent action, you can rewrite your financial story starting today.
📬 Connect with Steve Short & Mark Schlipman
🌐 Website: https://www.simpleroadbook.com/home-page
📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SimpleRoadBook/
📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/simpleroadbook/
💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/simple-road-book/posts/?feedView=all
📺 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@SimpleRoadBook
🎵 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@simple_road_book?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc
🔗 Connect with Dwight Heck
🌐 Website: https://giveaheck.com
📘 Facebook (Personal): https://www.facebook.com/dwight.heck
📺 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@giveaheck
📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/give.a.heck
🧵 Threads: https://www.threads.net/@give.a.heck
🐦 X / Twitter: https://twitter.com/give_a_heck
💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dwight-heck-65a90150
🎵 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@giveaheck
🎯 Final Message
Financial freedom is not a dream, it is a decision. Steve and Mark’s proven strategies in The Simple Road toward Financial Freedom show that with intentional living, consistent saving, and the right mindset, anyone can build wealth and confidence.
It is time to stop surviving and start thriving.
🕒 Chapter Summaries
00:00:02 Introduction to Financial Freedom Authors
Host Dwight Heck introduces Steve Short and Mark Schlippman, co-authors of “The Simple Road toward Financial Freedom,” discussing their mission to help the next generation avoid financial mistakes through simplified money management lessons.
00:02:04 The Challenge of Teaching Financial Literacy to Kids
The authors share their personal experiences trying to teach financial concepts to their own children, discussing how even financially savvy parents struggle to pass on money wisdom to the next generation.
00:04:52 Personal Financial Awakening Stories
Dwight, Steve, and Mark share their individual journeys of financial enlightenment, from divorce-driven learning to early stock market exposure, highlighting how different life events can spark financial awareness and responsibility.
00:09:48 Breaking the Cycle of Financial Ignorance
Discussion of how learned behaviors around money get passed down through generations, and the importance of teaching practical concepts like buying used cars versus new ones to break destructive financial patterns.
00:11:45 The 50‑20‑30 Save‑First Model Explained
Steve and Mark detail their revolutionary approach to budgeting that prioritizes saving 20% first, then allocating 50% to needs and 30% to wants, providing a simple framework for financial success.
00:16:14 Steve’s Corporate Leadership and Financial Mentoring
Steve shares how his grandfather’s stock market lessons sparked his interest in investing, and how he used his corporate leadership roles to mentor younger employees about early saving and investment strategies.
00:23:19 The Emotional Side of Financial Planning
Mark discusses his transition from insurance-focused financial services to fiduciary advisory work, emphasizing the importance of connecting with clients emotionally and understanding their personal financial stories and motivations.
00:28:42 Teaching Financial Reality Through Practical Examples
The conversation turns to practical financial education methods, including using spreadsheets to show clients hidden expenses and helping them understand the true cost of financial decisions through detailed budgeting exercises.
00:33:16 Combating Consumer Marketing and Delayed Gratification
Discussion of how marketing manipulates spending decisions and the importance of teaching delayed gratification, especially to younger generations who face constant social media pressure and instant gratification culture.
00:40:47 Debunking the “Can’t Afford a House” Myth
Steve and Mark challenge the narrative that young people can’t afford homes, arguing it’s propaganda rather than reality, and sharing strategies for how proper financial planning can make homeownership achievable.
00:45:55 The Power of Early Investing and Compound Growth
Detailed explanation of how an entry-level worker saving 20% can become a millionaire in 20 years through compound growth, demonstrating the mathematical power of starting early with consistent investing habits.
00:53:17 Investment Psychology and Market Volatility
Discussion of investor behavior during market downturns, the dangers of emotional decision-making, and the importance of staying invested during market volatility rather than trying to time the market.
00:57:05 From Book Writing to Corporate Financial Wellness
The authors share how their book’s success led to unexpected opportunities speaking to businesses about employee financial stress, revealing that financially stressed workers are less productive and more likely to job hunt.
01:02:13 The Healing Power of Writing and Teaching
Dwight, Steve, and Mark discuss how writing their books became cathartic experiences, with the collaborative process providing accountability and the reward of seeing real impact on readers’ financial lives.
01:15:34 Never Quit: Perspectives on Resilience and Gratitude
The episode concludes with each guest sharing their philosophy on never giving up, emphasizing positive thinking, gratitude for simple things, and learning from cancer survivors who demonstrate incredible resilience and perspective.
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Full Unedited Transcript
[00:00:02 – 00:01:25]
Welcome back to the Give a Heck podcast where we encourage you to live a life on purpose, not by accident. I’m your host, Dwight Heck. Today’s guests are Steve Short and Mark Schlippman, co authors of the number one Amazon bestseller the Simple Road toward Financial Freedom with a Forward by Will Perel. Stuff. Steve is a retired business executive who spent nearly 30 years leading billion dollar divisions. And Mark as a financial advisor with over two decades of experience helping clients build wealth. Together, they made it their mission to help the next generation avoid the financial mistakes they’ve seen and made by simplifying money management into approachable jargon. Free lessons. Their passion project was born out of frustration that their own kids, like so many others, were entering adulthood with little financial literacy. Beyond the book they give back by supporting Cancer for College, a non profit providing scholarships to cancer survivors. Their message is clear. Financial freedom is possible and it starts with simple consistent steps. Thank you Steve and Mark for joining us today. I really appreciate you agreeing to come on and share with us some of your life journey.
[00:01:25 – 00:01:27]
Hey, thanks Dwight. Good to be here.
[00:01:27 – 00:01:28]
Yeah, thanks Dwight.
[00:01:28 – 00:02:02]
I’m excited for this conversation. Our pre conversation before hitting record was fantastic. And as I’m reading through this bio on YouTube, guys, and I’m thinking to myself, does it ever really change? My kids grew up with a dad going to workshops, watching me do workshops about how to increase cash flow, manage debt, how to man, you know, estate planning and do all this stuff. And they grew up with me teaching them little lessons. Do you think they all got it? Do you think all five of them are financial wizards? No.
[00:02:04 – 00:02:11]
That’S my question. No. So what would be your answer to that? Before we get into this, do you.
[00:02:11 – 00:02:15]
Well, I’ve only, I only have two kids, okay. So my odds are a lot better.
[00:02:15 – 00:02:17]
My three, we equal his five.
[00:02:18 – 00:03:13]
And so my kids all I think are on the right road. And I think that’s one of the things that led to Steve and I talking is that we were kind of comparing notes as dads. Two dads. Our boys were freshmen together in college and we just started talking and you know Dwight, look at Steve, he’s handsome, he’s a good looking guy. Definitely a person I would be prospecting as a financial, as a fiduciary advisor. Dwight. Right. And I’m like, this guy just sounds the part, like he’s done very well for himself and I had no idea. Then I come to find out that we started talking about finances and how he taught some principles to people in his family and what he taught his kids and I would just nudge him with some questions about the industry. And I said to him, I go, I know what you do in your former life and you’re very successful. But as a fiduciary advisor.
[00:03:15 – 00:04:09]
I’ve got to tell you, I would tell you to fire your advisor if you’re paying a fee because you really don’t need somebody to help you out. So I actually went into the conversation thinking that eventually I would lay in Steve as a client and come out saying, you should probably fire your advisor. And he was taken aback. Steve’s like, doesn’t, don’t most people know this stuff? And I was like, no, they do not. Because so many people, Dwight, you see, probably your industry are really good about finances, about their own subject matter, if they’re a good plumber, a good contractor, a lawyer, doctor. But working in their business and on their business at the same time is very difficult, let alone the education requirement that’s not there when kids are growing up. And so I said, really Steve, no seriously, you should consider it. And then we just got into a discussion about the lack of education from the get go in grade school, high school and college.
[00:04:09 – 00:04:48]
Oh, it’s terrible. The lack of education. And are my kids on track? Yes. But they didn’t come up. They didn’t all of a sudden hit, you know, the age of majority and hit 18 in Alberta and go, oh, we’re financial wizards now. They come to me at a conversation. One of my daughters actually is a travel nurse and she flew, she’s come in for a few days from Seattle. She’s actually travel nursing down in the US and you know, she’ll have those epiphany moments and she’ll say, dad, I remember when you did this, this and that. Oh yeah, I don’t go well, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Couldn’t you have got it sooner? Their light bulb had to turn on when their light bulb turned on.
[00:04:48 – 00:04:50]
Yeah. So.
[00:04:52 – 00:04:54]
Dwight, what did your light bulb turn on?
[00:04:56 – 00:06:17]
My light bulb turn on in regards to finances? Well, for me it would have been when I was got divorced and I was single dad trying to manage money. I was a six figure income earner, yet I was broke all the time. And my, my friend reached out and said, you know, you need to get out of your industry, your house, terrible. And I have something for you. But first off, let’s help you out first and then I’m going to help you get into this industry because you have great people skills, you’re a great communicator. And, and you’re very empathetic and compassionate and I want to teach you that first for yourself from me. And I had known this guy for 20 some years. He had actually been the one that got me into the computer industry too, right. As a computer consultant. He just a very caring guy. We’ve been friends for like 35 years now. And that’s how I got involved in it. And to be honest with you, I fired my trainer after the first six weeks because it was all about press hard three copies. There was no real knowledge. There was no goal setting, there was no budgeting, there was no, oh, let’s sell them some insurance, let’s sell them an investment, let’s sell them this, sell them that, and go like, where’s the. No, this is what happened to me all these years. Nobody’s cared. So that’s when I got into this industry. Was. And really had a light bulb effect. Was 20 going to be 25 years ago.
[00:06:17 – 00:06:19]
Okay, nice.
[00:06:19 – 00:06:22]
And you, what made you.
[00:06:22 – 00:06:35]
I was, I was on my way to law school. I grew up, my father was a contractor and we didn’t really talk much about money. In fact, I remember going to basketball practice my freshman year and.
[00:06:37 – 00:07:04]
My friend and his dad were talking about stuff and they said, yeah, our CD matures pretty soon. I’m like, is that a compact disc? What? Is that a cd? And of course I didn’t say anything, but I quickly realized it wasn’t part of some music club. It was an investment, a cd. And so then I graduated from college and then decided not to go to law school and got into this industry a little bit.
[00:07:06 – 00:07:35]
And learned a lot. So a lot of it just being in the industry like you did as yourself, Dwight. And then one day when I was 22 or 20, I think it was about 23, my light bulb went on when I realized that my car payment should probably not be more than my house payment. And I was like, what am I going to do? And so I worked it out and decided to drive my car for 10 years. And I did and totally reversed course when I was 23, 24 years old.
[00:07:37 – 00:09:48]
Isn’t it amazing though, as we look at our lives and we look at the numbers of our lives and nobody structures us to save first. Learn to live and spend the difference. Right. They don’t teach us that mentality. And I used to think, oh, I have to have that new vehicle. And it’s back to what you were saying and realizing that you drive it off the lot, lose 20, 30%, then you still have the long term maintenance, you have interest. Even if they give you zero percent, it’s not zero percent. Then they sell it to you at msrp. Like there’s so much manipulation out there that if people actually understood that it’s a tool, it’s, it’s not about status to own a vehicle. It’s a tool to get you from point A to point B. I literally have no issue buying four or five year old cars, right. I don’t care. As long as it’s, you know, not rusty or even if it is, I guess it wouldn’t matter. But it’s so many little secrets like that that we can teach today’s society. So you focus on Gen Z, you vote. But I think I find that I’m spending more of my time now in the generations, Generation X, even the baby boomers, people that are all of a sudden reaching out to me, referring to me, they, they, they aren’t sure if they can retire and we start goal setting and budgeting and realizing they can’t. Right? Because of the fact I’m very selective now who I bring on. If you’re, if, if they’re a project, that’s not the willing. And what I mean by the willing, if you’re not willing to listen to me and do some simple things and show me a process. Because I don’t do a fee for base service. Mine’s completely commissioned in Canada by choice. Right. So I earn my business and if, if, if, if I don’t educate you and I don’t help you and I don’t take you through specific steps to make it so that you’re going to live confidently into my experience, 90 days, 180 days, they’re worse off anyway. So. Right. Teaching people that they don’t need to have new, that it’s okay to buy a smaller home than to keep up with their sister, brother, friends. Right. Or have a car. I had a client tell me recently every two years I have to have a new car. Why? Well, my family does it. Okay.
[00:09:48 – 00:09:49]
Why?
[00:09:50 – 00:09:52]
You know, explain.
[00:09:52 – 00:11:45]
We, one of the things going back to the start of the book, that was one of the things that we saw that the, the kids were graduating, my kids specifically, I’d sit down with them. They were graduating with no knowledge of personal finance. They had a bunch of friends or like dad, you need to talk to my friends or living paycheck to paycheck, they don’t have emergency funds and they’re, they’re great kids but they didn’t know any other way and so it starts this process and that’s what started the conversations with Mark. Then I saw it with my next child two years later. And that’s when he said, let’s write a book about it. And if you look out there, there’s not many books that are focused on that generation because there’s no revenue stream that go. You’re not looking for a 23 year old client, Mark’s not looking for a 23 year old client. So that really became a passion project for us, as you mentioned, just to be able to change the narrative because we keep hearing time and time again, this generation can never afford to buy a house, I’ll never be, afford to have kids and all that. And we think we can make a change with that. And so one of the things you’re probably familiar with, that we talk a lot about in the book is the 50, 30, 20 model that a lot of people are familiar with. 30% to needs. I’m sorry, 50% to needs, 30% to wants, 20% to savings. We sort of reversed it to a 50, 20, 30 save first model, as we call it, that you should do your savings before that you do your wants. But we’ve heard great feedback from the younger generation because it’s pretty easy, right? You can just look at what your salary is and you can figure out how much 20% is. And then it gives you those guardrails that a lot of us need in terms of like, how much can I be spending? And you shouldn’t have to live, you know, on ramen and not be able to have a coffee if you want it, you know, as long as you’re meeting your goals, then you can have the best of both worlds. But just give it a little framework.
[00:11:45 – 00:13:23]
But goals are key there, right? What are your goals? What are you trying to achieve? And a lot of people will say, well, nobody’s ever asked me my whole life, right, what I really want. And they’ll have some investments or they’ll, they’ll have done different things, but they’re very ineffective. They’ve got more, they’ve got stuff over here, they’ve got stuff over here. Nobody’s communicating, working together where they really do need somebody that’s financially savvy because not everybody in finance is savvy. I don’t care what country you’re in, right? There’s, there’s people that are just about the money. I live by core values. So my clients filter through my same core values, my faith, family and work, right? So if I live those core Values, Why would no one, anybody else to focus on those same core values, Right? And it doesn’t mean faith, religion, it can be faith and just that things will get better, that there’s something around the corner that, you know, there’s always better. You just got to be willing to develop those habits, those saving habits. Like when I budget with people and I’ll say them, you know what, it’ll take you maybe 90 days. We’ll be putting, depending what their number is. Obviously we’d always want it to be 20, but if people have debt and all these other things, you got to factor in getting rid of that stress and that and that bad interest and teaching about good interest. So I always say to them, you know, if we do 10%, just wait 90 days from now, it’ll come out of your account. You won’t even think about it. All you’re going to think about is this number here. This is what I can live on. Now let’s go through all your stuff. What would you say or wants in here? What are your, you know what I mean? It’s, it’s, it’s very therapeutic for me too because it’s always a constant reminder.
[00:13:23 – 00:13:24]
Yeah.
[00:13:24 – 00:13:30]
So, Dwight, how do you define good interest? I mentioned, I heard you say good interest. What do you mean by good interest?
[00:13:31 – 00:15:34]
Well, I have no issues and been doing it for 24 years for people to borrow against their home, right. To use what we call in Canada home equity line of credit and invest that money because depending on how you invest it, you get to write off the interest, right? So all of a sudden now you have your money sitting inside your house. I can’t go up to my wall and punch a hole and grab money out of. Right. It’s not doing anything. It’s dead investment, right? Do we want a home? Absolutely. We want a home. So if the person has the financial stability to be able to invest from their home, sometimes it’s them investing in a business. Maybe they’re an entrepreneur. And I’ve sat down and helped them figure out, right, no, you should stay at your job. Oh, no, you can start a business. Okay, now where are we going to get, where are you going to get operating capital? How are we going to get an operating line of credit? What can we do? Right? So depending on what it is, I believe there’s good interest charges that we can be charged. Right. Depending on where you live in Canada, I can write off specific interest costs on the borrowing of the money. Right. And why wouldn’t I want to do that? But Again, you got to be financially savvy. A person’s got to understand we have requirements up the. But if you want to leverage to invest, right, you have to fill out these forms like the regulatory bodies. Because back before the housing crash, there was so much of it being done in North America that it was part of the problem, right? People over leveraged, people not doing their fiduciary duty to ensure that these people were able to pay their bills. Were they running out of days? Like my thing, I say to people all the time, more month than money. What do you mean by that? More days in the month than you have money. And had anybody ever taught you about some of this stuff, you wouldn’t do it, right? So I’m not saying it’s that every interest can be good, but there is certain circumstances where people can invest and it be a benefit to be charged interest rate. Especially when you have government that’s more forthcoming to it and wants people to invest smartly, right?
[00:15:36 – 00:16:13]
So one of the things, Steve, we heard a little bit about, about Mark’s origin, what is you’re even a successful executive. What got you into that money mindset of knowing all this knowledge and stuff that you’ve talked about and you realize when your kids were at a school that you really didn’t know, where did you get that from? Was it you growing up in a specific circumstance? Did college or university change that? What was your defining moment from any point in time in your life that got you to where you were very articulate and very able to communicate about finance?
[00:16:14 – 00:16:16]
I’m not sure how articulate I was.
[00:16:16 – 00:16:16]
But.
[00:16:18 – 00:16:20]
I really had an interest in.
[00:16:22 – 00:16:29]
My parents, really knew nothing about this and never talked about it. My grandfather.
[00:16:31 – 00:17:34]
Was somebody that invested in the stock market. And when I would go over to his house, he had a periodical that was there that I would flip through as a young grandchild just like, what’s this? What’s this? And so he kind of explained to me what it was and how you can invest in companies like McDonald’s and Coca Cola. And that really piqued my interest. I have no idea how old I was. I mean, I was clearly very young. And so then once I started getting a job in high school, I started. It was about the time that you could start buying shares for like, you didn’t have to have like a financial advisor. You could start doing it on your own. You could buy it for. I forget what it was at the time, 1999 or something like that. You could do a trade. And so I just Started doing that. And then even when I was in school and I was still working, I was at university, I was still accruing, you know, saving and all that. And so I just had a real interest in it. And then as I had a team in my corporate career, just kind of moving up through the system, I always had a team that was reporting to me that was younger. And I just spent a lot of time. I really got a lot of.
[00:17:36 – 00:17:36]
Return.
[00:17:38 – 00:18:13]
In terms of teaching the younger kids, and I call them younger. Some were a couple years younger, and then as I got older, they were 10 years younger. But just talking about how you can start now, and I had started to see some of the returns of when you start early, how that can make such an impact on it. And so I’ve always just really, really enjoyed it. And so I sat down with my kids afterwards and just sort of said, this is probably going to be painful for you, but we’re going to go through everything and just sort of outside of your salary, the most important thing you can do is start early, start saving. And so let’s get a plan together.
[00:18:14 – 00:18:42]
No, that’s. That’s great. Like, I can remember. I don’t know if you have that in the States. I know in Canada here they have. They go to work with dad or go to work with mom. Right. So I did that with think. Three of the five kids said, hey, dad, would you be that person? And one of my other daughters went with somebody out, which is fine. I didn’t take offense to it. I remember my one daughter who’s now the travel nurse, the one that’s. That’s in town for a couple days before she goes back to Seattle.
[00:18:42 – 00:18:43]
She.
[00:18:43 – 00:19:10]
She says to me, dad, this is so boring. Like, she was in junior. She was in junior high, grade eight, grade nine. Right. Oh, okay. But you know what? You’re gonna thank me someday, right? You’re gonna really thank me someday, and you’re gonna have a light bulb moment. And she goes, I said, you’re gonna have an epiphany and you’re gonna realize, oh, my goodness, maybe I should have listened to Dad. I said, I don’t know when that’s going to be.
[00:19:10 – 00:19:15]
Did she think you’re. Did she think your occupation was boring or the subject matter was boring?
[00:19:16 – 00:19:17]
Both. Both.
[00:19:17 – 00:19:17]
Okay.
[00:19:18 – 00:19:19]
Both. She was very.
[00:19:19 – 00:19:21]
Our industry can be boring at times. That’s true.
[00:19:21 – 00:19:24]
Oh. Oh, my goodness. Yes. It’s certainly my design.
[00:19:25 – 00:19:25]
Yeah.
[00:19:25 – 00:20:17]
But you know what, though? It. It’s back to that adage, you know, that’s as Boring. As you know, that’s as exciting as watching paint peel off the wall. Well, you know what? So I work really hard. That’s part of reason why I started my life skill side of my business. Because I’ve been doing that for my clients, my finance clients, the whole time, Digging into their money monsters, digging into their life monsters, and using my own examples and then all my clients examples to make things be more palatable, I guess would be the word. Right. So they can digest it better. Am I perfect at it? No. But I’ve gotten to a point in my career where I’ll look at a client and say, you know what? I noticed that body language. I noticed that twitch. Did I say something wrong? Oh, no, you just triggered something. Oh, let’s talk about it. Oh, we were talking. No, that’s okay. We can. We can hold off in the numbers. Let’s talk about stuff. Let’s work on this.
[00:20:17 – 00:20:26]
You and Mark. I think I should dial that. This sounds like conversations I had with Mark, talking about saying you guys are dealing with the same customers and background.
[00:20:26 – 00:21:17]
Well, I just, I. I was a single when I got. I got taken advantage of by so many people, especially when I went through my divorce, because that was a long time ago. 27, 28 years ago. I’ve never got remarried, but at the end of the day, everybody knew what was best for me. But yet they couldn’t show me anything and give me examples and be empathetic toward me and say, you know what? I can relate. Here’s what happened to me. Vulnerability created that connection and that relationships and, and other. Other agents, people that I’ve had in my own business, they’re going out and they’re. They’re just throwing spaghetti at the wall and they’re getting lots of business, but there’s no retention. There’s no Dwight. Why did you get. You got invited to another wedding? You got invited to a birthday party? What, you get Christmas cards? Yeah.
[00:21:19 – 00:22:26]
What do you do? What did I tell you when I. When I brought you into my brokerage and when you went through all your training? Did you. When we went to your clients, did you see me do things differently than you do currently? Well, yeah, but you spend too much time. I’d rather use that time and get more. Right. I’d rather spend less time. And, and, and at one point in time, this happened years ago. And again, this shouldn’t be about me, but since you guys ask questions, I got recognized as one of the top 10 people in North America for doing production. And, and they Ask how many clients did you do? Right. And I told them the number. Right. And other people were saying well I’ve got 500 and I don’t even have close to that. Well the difference is is I get, I get connected with my clients and all of a sudden by reaching in and understanding their money monsters, their life monsters, maybe they had something happen. That’s why I said my whole life is about origin. Without knowing that origin, how can I truly help somebody? So all of a sudden, well, what’s Your average client? $3,000 in commission. What’s your average, Dwight? 10 to 15.
[00:22:26 – 00:22:26]
What?
[00:22:26 – 00:23:17]
10 to 15. What are you doing? I just finished telling you. I listen, I become a great listener. And I got to a point where I could, could say to myself do you know what? I’m taking a risk. Maybe this person has nothing there for me to make. But maybe two, three years from now they will. Oh maybe they got a broke brother in law or sister or mom or dad or a client in their own type of business and I serve referrals. Right. Just because people want to be. People want to be known that they’re being heard, that they’re understood more than they want to know what I know. Once they know that I care then they want to know what I know. Right. That connection to me is so important. I never got in this business to be a millionaire. I got in this business to make a difference when nobody would make a difference for me.
[00:23:19 – 00:23:20]
Great.
[00:23:20 – 00:23:22]
Sorry for the long answer.
[00:23:22 – 00:23:23]
Yeah, yeah.
[00:23:23 – 00:23:35]
Going back to when I was 20, now I was 25 before we had kids and I made my first million dollar roundtable because it was mostly insurance based back then. We’ve met Life Securities.
[00:23:36 – 00:23:36]
Oh yeah.
[00:23:37 – 00:23:49]
And I could not afford a train or a plane ticket. So my fiance at the time, we drove that car that I spoke of all the way to Toronto, Canada for the event.
[00:23:50 – 00:23:50]
Wow.
[00:23:52 – 00:24:03]
Because I had to go, I had to go to that, that round. It was supposed to be like the best convention ever. Well, I exited that world six months later.
[00:24:04 – 00:24:07]
I realized it was not what I thought it was supposed to be.
[00:24:08 – 00:24:16]
How many times though, Mark, do we not listen to our inner voices and we have the outside influences so we stay doing things too long.
[00:24:17 – 00:24:19]
That was only four years. That’s pretty quick.
[00:24:19 – 00:24:48]
Still, it depends, right? Four years is a long period of time. I looked at how long I owned a consulting firm and how much staff I had and I just walked away from it. Right. But I stuck with it for 10 years. Plus I had a retail computer store and I was Just go. Go, go, go. I became a workaholic like my father. And. And at the end of the day, when I had that epiphany from a friend who was bold enough to say, your life’s a shambles. Right. Did I take it well when he said it to me?
[00:24:48 – 00:24:51]
No. Do you ever. Do you ever work with divorcees?
[00:24:52 – 00:24:52]
Yes.
[00:24:53 – 00:24:54]
Yeah, yeah.
[00:24:56 – 00:24:57]
Yeah.
[00:24:57 – 00:25:04]
It is a niche. But you know what? I’ll tell you right now, it’s a very emotional, draining niche. Right.
[00:25:04 – 00:25:07]
Which side of the aisle would you rather be on helping?
[00:25:09 – 00:27:10]
I’d rather be helping the younger generations. I’ve worked for years trying to get into the school systems in. In Edmonton, which isn’t, you know, we’re 1.5 million people now. We’re not a small place, but just. I’d love to get through to the. The education system then to get to the students so that we can. And it’s not just about the money that I want them taught. I want them to be taught the same simplets, simplest life skills. They go home to a terrible family life. Maybe there’s abuse and they. And they’re taught some coping mechanisms or maybe they. You know what I mean? We go on and on about this. How, how. Because I know this is part of your guys’s conversation too, so I’d love to hear your take on it. But the education system to me is broken. They add these little courses or you get these people that have these programs. Because I’ve interviewed people that have. Trying to think of the name of the company now. I interviewed them. They have a program in the US that are. They’re trying to work through all the states to work in the college and university. And I said, you need to dial it back. You need to get into like middle school for us Junior high, right? You need to start talking to basics. What happened in Rome ain’t gonna help them. If they want to be a historian, great. Teach them that in college. Right? Teach them life skills in school so they come out and all you’re doing is teaching little automatons to be workers, worker bees. You’re not teaching them to be critical thinkers. Not teach. But I’ve stood on so many soapboxes saying this to people. They just get to a point where I want to focus on whoever wants my help. But I always try to focus on from about 25 to about 45 because I find that’s the sweet spot of where they’ll actually communicate and listen. Before 25, their frontal lobe isn’t developed enough. After 45, it it doesn’t mean I don’t work with clients. I have clients. I’m working with clients in their 70s right now. Right. Doesn’t mean you won’t find that one off. But I find there’s a sweet range of people that, that really need our help.
[00:27:11 – 00:27:11]
Yep.
[00:27:12 – 00:27:12]
I would say.
[00:27:14 – 00:28:42]
Yeah, I, I would agree. The more that we can teach it in the schools, the better. And I. It sounds like whether it’s the US Or Canada, we’ve got that problem. I, I was. There’s an organization in the States called Junior Achievement. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with that, but that teaches financial literacy. It’s really high school and younger, and that’s great. And then there’s a organization that I follow, next gen Personal Finance, and they are trying to do the same thing and where they’re trying to get it as a personal finance as a. As a graduation requirement, you know, having a class in high school, which is great as well. I have seen some research and I’ve seen it firsthand with my kids, and it sounds like maybe that either it’s a frontal lobe thing like you’re talking about, or it’s just the reality of until they’re living it firsthand, that’s when it really matters the most. So when they. Right after they’ve entered the workforce, whether that’s right after high school or right after college or university, that’s when the rubber meets the road. Because I remember my kids like, wow, it’s expensive to get your hair cut. It’s expensive to do these things. It’s expensive. Like, it really resonates at that point where we talked about all those things before. Every time they got their hair cut and my daughter’s got their nails done and things like that, you know, we. I’d always mention how expensive it is, but it doesn’t really matter as much until I think they’re out in the workforce.
[00:28:42 – 00:28:51]
Yeah, I agree. But I find a spreadsheet is something as simple as Excel sitting with my laptop, whether it’s on Zoom and I’m sharing it or I’m across from the client.
[00:28:52 – 00:29:23]
The shocking reality of. I’ll say, okay, let’s you tell me everything you think that should be in here. I don’t even tell them. Right. I want to see where they’re at in their mindset. And I’ll. And they’ll say, okay, we got it all. What do you think, Dwight? Oh, okay. Well, you got beautiful hair. Do you ever get your haircut? Well, yeah. Well, why don’t you have that in there? Well, why would I put a haircut in there? Does it come out of the same financial pot? Well, yeah. Well, perfect. Oh, oil changes. How. How much do you drive? How often do you get your oil changed?
[00:29:23 – 00:29:24]
Whoa.
[00:29:24 – 00:29:26]
Every 5,000? Every three? Whatever they say.
[00:29:26 – 00:29:26]
Yeah.
[00:29:26 – 00:30:57]
Okay. When did you have it last changed? We got to put that in. Okay, we’ll stagger it. Why are we doing that? Well, all these added extra expenses. What happens if the haircut and oil change and all this stuff comes up in a month where you were just breaking even? Now you’re in a negative. Maybe if you could see foreshadow and go, okay, that’s okay. What happens if a little Johnny or Sally come up to you and say, hey, I blew a. I blew a hole in my. In my sneakers, my runners that I need for gym, and you’re broke, but now you have the power to say, hey, that’s a need. I can spend that money. I’ll use a line of credit. I’ll use a credit card. I’ll use overdraft, because I know next month because I got all my numbers, I can do this. I said, that’s called empowerment. Don’t you want to feel empowered? Aren’t you tired of being on a hamster wheel? Aren’t you tired of going to work, go home, get paid, and hoping you’re going to be okay? Like, I just did a solo podcast that goes live. Went live today. I don’t do very many solo podcasts. You might want to listen to it just to get a better idea how. I think in regards to finance, in regards to people just living right. And I did another solo one Lately, I’ve been doing more solo ones than I normally do. I normally only do a couple a year, and I did seven in basically seven stance of financial independence. And it’s not always about knowing the numbers. You got to know you. You got to know you. If you don’t know you, it don’t matter. I can teach. I could teach you. Like, look at these core. Oh, I remember the course.
[00:30:58 – 00:32:00]
That they taught us. So we pick these stocks and do this. And we were using play money. And I’m thinking to myself, I look back at that, how about you did an actual life experiment. What’s going to cost? What’s the average cost of an apartment? What’s the average cost of whatever? Let’s drill a budget down. What’s that? Let’s base this on minimum wage to give you a real understanding and empathy toward the people that make minimum wage. And see if you can live off of it. Because you hear these little negative comments and sometimes they get it from their dads, their moms, or learn behavior. Right. We all have gone through it, but I think we did that in an educational level it would be a massive shakeup because their brains are wired by eight years of age. It’s been psychologically like by psychiatrists, by medical community. But that doesn’t mean you have to be stuck. I get tired of hearing that from people. You do not have to be stuck. You don’t have to be camped in life. We can educate you, we can teach you just like you guys are doing. That’s why I wanted you on this show and why I said we could probably have a four or five part series because.
[00:32:01 – 00:32:05]
We all have our takes and we seem to be aligned a lot. Right.
[00:32:06 – 00:33:16]
There’s a lot of as you were talking about stuff that we are aligned on it. So the first chapter in our book is the Power of positive Thinking. So you fry you and Mark, because Mark and I exchange ideas on this and I’ve. In my limited amount of financial education that I’ve given to family members, that’s, I think the most important thing. Can you, do you believe in this? Do you think that you can actually be, you know, whatever your goals may be? Because that is the most important thing is believing that you can get it done. You were talking about car payments and things along those lines. We have a chapter in the book that it’s only $400 a month and how we can justify, ah, it’s only this, it’s only that. And then we get into the mind frame of how marketing works to us and don’t fall for the marketing. Really dig into the numbers a little bit more. And don’t forget, when you do $400 a month, it’s going to go for the next five years. And your next year you’re going to say, oh, there’s this other bright shiny object and that’s only $300 a month. But now you’re at $700 a month, not $300 a month. And just sort of how these things all add up. But it sounds like you’re consumerism. Yeah.
[00:33:18 – 00:36:08]
I did a solo podcast last year about that and I got a lot of interesting responses to that. It was about consumerism, right. And, and fact of how we’re being manipulated. Right. And, and how we allow our families to manipulate us. Oh, we’ve always done this, we’ve always done that. This is their tradition, blah, blah, blah. And we don’t set up boundaries because we don’t want to, you know, aggravate, piss people off or whatever. But at the end of the day, all it would take is for us to get this into the schools, into families, to cause a catalyst. It might take another two generations to really make a big difference. But hey, if I can help one person and they help the next person, I tell people it’s like a spider, right? Aspire starts out with one thread and then all of a sudden what do you got, right? We just need to, to really believe that we can make a difference. And thank goodness. So I have kind enough. You probably have experienced this even with maybe you may not be Steve in finance directly, but through your own education and teaching people about, you know, because you being in the corporate world, educating people on anything that gratification of somebody that comes up to you. Mark, you probably understand this too. It goes, man, I didn’t think I’d ever could get here. A year ago my life was just horrible. Now I have hope, right? I have faith that I didn’t think I’d ever restore, right? I didn’t think it was possible that there was good people that actually cared, right? And that you did it for free, like for me anyway, like, and you did it for. I can’t do it for free for any. I only do it for free for two provinces where I’m licensed, Alberta and British Columbia, right? Anybody outside of that, that hires me, that I go on and I teach them all this stuff. I can’t help them with the products and services. So obviously there has to be a monetary gain, right? Because my time’s valuable. I only have so many hours on this planet. I don’t know on, you know, life’s in session. This isn’t a dress rehearsal. I am very honest with people, you know, sorry, you live in Australia because I’ve done that before or you live in New Zealand, no problem. I’ll teach you how to goal set. I’ll teach you. We’ll have the first couple calls and see if there’s a fit, no cost. If there is a fit, then here’s the cost, right? But otherwise I do it for no fee, for base, because my neighbor, I believe in village mentality. Canada is my country. If people, I help people and I’ll help people in, have people reach out to me in Ontario and Toronto and stuff like that. And why do I help them? Because they don’t get a lot of calls. Some of those people, I don’t even. I’ll take them to the process anyway. Why? Because I just want them to touch another person in their lives. Maybe say, hey, look what this guy taught me. Are you interested? Are you the willing?
[00:36:09 – 00:37:01]
They go back to the media manipulating for myself and maybe for some of the listeners, it was helpful for me when I taught my kids that every time you saw a commercial or something pop up for an ad for clothing or whatever it is, think to yourself how are they trying to manipulate you to buy something? You know, have like almost like a victim mentality. Like what are they doing to make me do something that I shouldn’t be doing? That was a game changer for my kids because they would look at every commercial and be like, haha, I see what they’re doing there. And they kind of make a joke about it. So if I got, if I prevented them from buying one thing, it was worthwhile. But when you look at things as how you’re being victimized, it’s very powerful. And especially I cannot imagine growing up with social media like it is right now. I mean it’d be tough, be very tough.
[00:37:01 – 00:37:03]
How do you scroll and not get hit?
[00:37:03 – 00:37:35]
Well, also just from the I show my kids one thing I there’s a couple looked like they were in Mexico and they’re doing a selfie picture and they must have the video and they’re all smiling. And then as soon as they thought the picture was done, they went back to like this to their old frumpy self. They weren’t still smiling, they were smiling just for that picture. But when you scroll at 10 o’ clock at night and you’re upset about the world and you see how everyone’s happy on social media, it’s only for that one second.
[00:37:37 – 00:37:37]
And one.
[00:37:39 – 00:37:40]
I just.
[00:37:40 – 00:38:26]
Said right in the same line that every, especially for the generation we’re going after, delayed gratification is something we talk a lot about in the book because it’s very hard today. Everybody sees their, you know, whatever they want to see on their phone. And it to your point that you were talking about earlier, Dwight, you know, everybody’s got every two years I get a new car and that’s, that’s what everybody does, right? Kind of thing. And sort of changing that mindset of the power that you have by delayed gratification. One of the things to talk about in the book, you know, especially depending on how big the purchase is, give yourself more time before you make that decision because make sure it’s not, not like an impulse that you have right now that you want to just get it and Then the next thing you know you’re locked in for five or six years. But how can you use that power of delayed gratification?
[00:38:27 – 00:38:36]
I’ve always been, I’ve had a good success with never making a big financial or any type of business decision when I’m in a really good mood or a really bad mood.
[00:38:37 – 00:40:46]
Perfect, that’s. And that’s how it should be, right? Like I look at how many people go and purchase stuff. So this goes back to understanding people’s origins and finding out why they got into this kind of debt or why they’re stuck like this. And, and they, they make a dollar and they’re spending a buck 50 every month and they’re just, they’re just crushing themselves inside and they literally are miserable. So they go out and they do what? They go buy something for that dopamine hit, right? Or they, they make an extra hundred dollars. So they’re going, woohoo, I’m gonna go find something that’s a hundred dollar payment. Like I just, it hasn’t changed in the 25 years I’ve been doing this. Now it’s like, ah. And I can’t look at them and go, I’m not blameless. Like in the sense that I’ve gone through that, those circumstances of quiet desperation. As I was very honest with you guys, I had somebody that say you’re a high six figure income earner and you’re broke all the time. Like what, what’s going on with that? My dad, very successful businessman, never taught me anything about money. He did sit me down when I was 16, 17 years of age, said, come into my office and I watched him buy some strip bonds and a bunch of stuff like not watch but watch. Listen to him while sitting there watching him do it on the phone, he said, I want to give you an education. I thought we were broke at that point in time in my life. I had no clue my dad was wealthy, but he was one of 18 kids, right? Born in the 40s. And there is, there’s no, there was no you share things with your children. There was no, let’s teach our children that. That’s the school’s problem, right? And now today’s generations, like, you know, we’ll skip around like one of the things, might as well just ask you about it. You know, the principle of whether or not people believe that kids in today’s generation can even buy a house. What’s your either one or both? What’s your thoughts on that? And how do we get past that stuckness? That’s in people’s mindset because they’re telling them, that generation that you see it online, you see it in reports, you hear governments talking about it. Oh, they’re going to be. They’re the poor. But they said that about my generation. Right.
[00:40:47 – 00:40:47]
It’s.
[00:40:47 – 00:40:48]
You know what I mean?
[00:40:48 – 00:40:50]
I think it’s the biggest excuse.
[00:40:52 – 00:42:10]
To just do that type of propaganda rather than teach how you can buy something. Because in our household, not saying this is perfect, but I’m a very optimistic person and I would say, you know, how can we afford that? And a lot of times it turned into a process how we can afford something. Maybe not today, but maybe how we can afford something three or four years from now. I mean, I grew up in a household that is always like, oh, you can’t afford that. Oh, you can’t afford that. Well, that might be true, but what are some steps you can take today to change things for you can afford it. And I think they’re just being. Getting all this dogma from whatever source is out there. It’s just impossible. And I don’t see that to be true. I bought my first house in 99 for 58,000, I believe it was, and the interest rate was about seven and a quarter percent. That’s about average. It’s not high, it’s not low. But we’ve been so spoiled, you know, last 15, 20 years with, you know, 2 to 3% interest rates, that now they come back to average. We’re blaming the interest rates, we’re blaming the housing costs. But I’m with you. I don’t think that happened so much in the 90s. But the propaganda now is that it’s too expensive. I don’t understand why they’re feeding us that.
[00:42:11 – 00:42:14]
I just think the process has started.
[00:42:17 – 00:43:38]
The kids don’t know what they should be doing. And so I, I can see there’s a lot of them, that if you start off living paycheck to paycheck and you don’t save anything, it’s hard to put down 5% on a house or 20 if you don’t have an emergency fund. If you’ve, you know, God forbid you’ve had a health issue, you lose your job or you, you don’t have a plan like we talk about in the book in terms of setting up an emergency fund, and you get burned by something. I could see where some of that could happen, but that’s why we’re really working hard to get this book out to the generation as they’re getting into the Workforce because those habits that we all start when we’re young will carry on forever. So if you can start living a certain way, then it just makes it so much easier. Because you mentioned earlier, Dwight, you know, you don’t mention, you don’t miss the 5% or the 10% or whatever it is that you can start off putting into a savings account and then the next thing you know, you’ve got thousands of dollars that’s built up there and you don’t have the goals. And that’s another one we talk about a lot in the book is, I think you mentioned that as well earlier. We have in the book Visualize it. What do you want? Do you want to have a house? Do you see yourself, you know, with a house or whatever these things are that you’re saving for and then how do you figure out a plan to make sure that you can have that happen?
[00:43:38 – 00:44:09]
Well, that perceived education is terrible, right? It really is. It really holds people back when they’re given the fact that you can’t own a house or, you know, when people tell me what they want, I want to find out is it really them that want it or is it what they were taught they wanted? Because some people you’d be, I know people that are in their 60s and 70s that have never owned a house. It wasn’t their jam. They rented, they save, they’re happy, they’re going to be retired, they, they still don’t care to own a house.
[00:44:10 – 00:45:55]
That’s one of the reasons, that’s why we named our book the Simple Road toward Financial Freedom. Because financial freedom is different for everybody. And to your point, Dwight, if it’s not your goal and you can justify renting or it is your goal and you can justify owning a certain size home and you want X amount of income by time, you take into consideration maybe a 401k, Social Security in the United States, pension, etc. And you’re comfortable. Fantastic. If that’s your goal. Some people want to be, I’ve got a couple of these clients myself, they want to be the richest person in their graveyard and they’re happy. They don’t want to spend any money. They want to live very frugal lifestyle and accumulate a huge balance sheet when they die, that’s fine. But most of our clients, I think we, we strive to teach, you know, life’s trade off balances. You know, you have trade off balances, trade off choices. If you do this, yes, you’re going to have less money, but where’s that balance of Enjoyment of life. And still, if your goal is to leave money to a charity or leave money to your children or whatever, the goal is to be able to achieve that. And you can’t really achieve it. You could by default, but it’s like, you know, going across the United States or me taking a trip up to Toronto, I’d finally eventually find it. But having a game plan and a roadmap, I’m gonna get there a little bit more efficiently. And the same thing when it comes to financial planning, it may not be the thing that you get excited about doing, but when you see the end result and what you can do to get there, the excitement comes from people that are listening, is when you know what steps now you can do to get to that destination. If you see that it’s possible, I think it changes the mindset.
[00:45:55 – 00:45:56]
Oh, absolutely.
[00:45:56 – 00:47:56]
I was going to add to that. One of the things that we talked about that I know has been very compelling in the reviews that we’ve seen is we have this example of a fictional person, Pat, that has an entry level job. So again, catering to that workforce, sets aside 20% of their salary, which again is a great goal to have some people, you may want to start off and, and start at 5% or 10% and work your way to 20%. But anyway, if you do the 20%, and this is the example that I did for my daughter, and the stock market returns what it’s historically returned, which we all know, it can have its ups and Downs and 401k match here in the states and things along those lines. Long story short, it’s showing that this very average entry level job with 20% savings can this person can become a millionaire in about 20 years. And I did that example, that specific example with my daughter and she’s like, she was floored. She’s like, what do you mean I’ll be a millionaire? And I go, you’ll have a million dollars in your account. And she’s like, but I’m not making six figures. I’m not doing. It’s like, that’s the power of the time and the match and the stock market. And then mind blowing version two was when I say, you didn’t need, you don’t need to save a million dollars to accumulate a million dollars. You save about 250,000 dol, you get about a million dollars. That’s the power. Again, all the stuff that you guys know as financial advisors, but again, it was just completely new information for this generation where it’s just unfortunately not taught. And I think there’s a lot of people that if you could have the conversation with. We just were lucky enough to be selected for a class like a senior class capstone project. And that was one of the things that in those classes, just like the power that we harness right now because of our age and how he can really accumulate a lot of wealth without not a lot, you know, a little bit of pain here, but by budgeting and things like that, but not a ton of pain.
[00:47:56 – 00:48:17]
But it’s pain that’s easy to transverse. Right. You know, just like they get used to saving this amount of money and living off of this. And then I always focus. Drives my kids nuts. Even as adults. They’ll roll their eyes or talking about something. They’ll look at me when they were younger, now they roll their eyes even more and they’ll say, yes, we know, dad. Like it’s a want, it’s not a need.
[00:48:18 – 00:48:18]
Right?
[00:48:19 – 00:48:38]
Before they come, they come because eventually I became a full time dad of them. Originally. I, initially we had the first few years I joined custody and then I got, I took them on all full time. Right. As a single dad. And they got more and more lessons that they had to live for. Okay, well, you don’t believe me? Okay, see the budget? It’s right over there.
[00:48:38 – 00:48:39]
Open it.
[00:48:39 – 00:49:13]
See. What does it say? Does it. Do we have extra, extra this month? No, we don’t, dad. So let’s talk about what do you need again? Or is it a want? Yeah, sometimes they wouldn’t even say anything, just walk off. And I’d let them walk off, go up to their room. Because like I said, you know what? It doesn’t matter what we do, no matter who we are, no matter what age we are. You got to be the willing. You just have to be the willing to go through that uncomfortableness. I think it was you that said Steve might have been marked. That uncomfortableness is, isn’t going to last long.
[00:49:14 – 00:49:20]
Just move forward. Let’s do something. Aren’t you sick and tired of being sick and tired? Right.
[00:49:23 – 00:49:45]
How long we heard that in our lives? Right. So can you guys break down either or break down a little bit more? Because you did touch on it and you talked about it again. That 20% break down that save first model at 50, 20, 30 model, more specifically, so that people have an actual grasp as part of the conversation, not just a drop comment.
[00:49:46 – 00:50:31]
Well, we, we have the. So the 50, 20, 30. And then we talk about some ideas and some thoughts of where that 20% should go. Taking a step Back. The first thing we talk about is outside of the power of positive thinking is an emergency fund. Because we’re really committed, as I know you are, Dwight, to make sure that our readers are setting up an emergency fund to have roughly six months worth of expenses covered. So if something were to go, you know, you need new breaks or you need something that you weren’t budgeting for, that you’ve got the money so you don’t have to pull it out of your long term investments and things along those lines. But. And then we get into bucketing. So.
[00:50:33 – 00:51:51]
Bucket one is basically your short term things. So that’s your emergency fund in a super safe kind of CD or money market fund where you can get the funds out. And then we roll into bucket two, which is two to five years from where we are today. And kind of what those might be a down payment on a home or some purchase that you know you’ve got coming up to where you put it into that bucket. It can be a little bit more locked down to where you could buy two year CD or something that’s a little bit, you’re not going to lose value in it, but you might be able to get a little bit better return. And then we really spend most of the time talking about bucket three, which are your five plus years and really talking, trying to explain how the stock market works a little bit in terms of remember if the stock market goes down 10% or 20% today, it doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. It is going to go up, it is going to be go down. We have examples of Schwab did this survey that maybe you’ve seen in terms of like trying to time the market. And we really just kind of try to explain all that because remember if the stock market goes down that you don’t need that money for five plus years from now or until you’re retired. And so trying to get into the mindset a little bit.
[00:51:51 – 00:52:41]
Well not. And that’s great that you’re doing that because so many people like in Canada I’ll use the index chart a lot and I’ll go through and it talks about who is in power, who wasn’t in power, what was going on in the world. And, and these charts are super specific. And I’ll tell them, I’ll say, you know, don’t worry about the same thing. Markets going down. Why? Well, I said any given 10 year period in Canada since inception of the markets, right. Even balanced investing has returned net 8 to 10% even with these hiccups like pick a, pick a year, let’s go 10 years and see like things are going to reset. Just keep, if anything, if you have extra money and the market’s on sale buy. Because the investor behavior as Mark would know is what do people do? They buy high, they sell low. Like.
[00:52:43 – 00:53:17]
So now if you have somebody that’s been saving into a bucket and, and the emergency fund and maybe that bucket’s also got some discretionary money in there so that they can have, you know, oh, the market’s on sale, it’s 2008, the market’s just crashed and depending on what index you’re looking at, it’s down 30 to 40%. Wow, wouldn’t that be great to have a little bit of that money to buy it? Because you know, naturally the market’s going to come back and you bought it on sale and you woohoo, you’re not going to be like that. I had some clients that sold off. I couldn’t convince them any different. Even the ones that come up that were smart.
[00:53:18 – 00:53:44]
I remember walking into my parents house in 08, my mom had the Oprah Winfrey show on and I think Susie Orman was on there as well, another financial person. And they were like, seriously, take your money and buy a U.S. treasury bill. Because what was happening in October and November of 08 with the financial calamity, there’s very few people talking heads on TV that were promoting buy buy into the market.
[00:53:46 – 00:54:13]
It was so much fear out there and there’s so much money lost from people that, you know, not everybody, everybody has one of these little mouses to click out of the stock market on their 401ks. And that is so dangerous, so dangerous. And the amount of money that was lost, I’m not sure how much it would have. I’m sure somebody has calculated the opportunity loss of people getting out of the market in 08 and 09. But yeah, people go by their emotions. I mean, I do too.
[00:54:13 – 00:54:17]
We all do. We’re human creatures but the difference is we learn.
[00:54:17 – 00:54:25]
Six days ago my wife made, my wife made sugar cookies, which I love. My brain said have one and I had four, maybe five.
[00:54:27 – 00:54:29]
The stomach went. The stomach wins.
[00:54:29 – 00:54:32]
So it, you know, we all make.
[00:54:32 – 00:54:39]
A passion with people’s passion with money. For some people, not all people, but some people, their money is more precious than their children.
[00:54:41 – 00:55:46]
They value it different and they look at it different. And when they’re in retirement specifically, that’s why we’re so, we promote the bucketing system in retirement, that safe Money. What’s that? Money you’re gonna need for two years of your retirement. Because when there’s no new money coming in. So we talk about the journey going up the mountain and climbing 14,000 foot mountains and climbing to the top of a mountain is hard, but it’s just as hard coming down from the mountain. And when you hit retirement, staying retired can sometimes be equally as challenging as getting to retirement as well. We touch on that as well in the book. So the book, to Steve’s point, the book grows with our reader. So there’s things and principles that people can listen to or read. I should say now the book that will help people that are, you know, late to the game. 40s and 50s, maybe you haven’t saved a lot of money, but now with maybe children moving out of the house, less debt, you’ve got a way to accumulate a lot of money before retirement. And then those that are in retirement, we talk about that as well.
[00:55:47 – 00:57:04]
You know what, your book sounds like a great companion to mine, or vice versa. And I’m being serious because my book starts with the origin of. Helps break down some mindset issues, right. And then gets into talking about spiritual things. It talks about goal setting, it talks about budgeting, it talks about right up to where I started my podcast. And. And literally people need both, in my opinion. We have. I’m not saying you, you don’t cover some of the things I cover or vice versa. I think sometimes one book isn’t enough. Sometimes people need a wake up call to realize that, oh my gosh, two separate individual, like two separate entities, right? Writing books about how to live life on purpose, not by accident, how to live purpose with intent, how to understand the fact that you can achieve anything. You just got to start somewhere. And if you start younger, like you’re mentioning, you can be a millionaire. Like it’s just, it implores me the lack of understanding. But it all starts from learned behavior. Parents learn it rotate, rotate, rotate to the next generations. And who’s going to break that chain? The government? Not going to happen.
[00:57:05 – 00:57:05]
Right.
[00:57:05 – 00:57:11]
That’s not, that’s not the wheelhouse they’re in. So we have to take responsibility to make a difference in people’s lives.
[00:57:11 – 00:59:08]
We somewhat related to that. We had this vision, you know, two guys had never written a book before and you’re probably in the same boat being a finance guy, but didn’t really know what we’re doing. So we write the book and it’s gone kind of beyond our wildest dreams and excited to be A bestseller and those things. And we’re like, okay, our job’s going to be promoting the book. How do we do marketing around that and all that? And it’s really taken a turn because we start talking to people who are in the workforce who say, hey, I’ve got a lot of employees that work for me that don’t know anything about it because they didn’t learn it in school. Will you guys come and speak to them? Or I’d like to buy. I’ve got these kids that are graduating from optometry school and they’re going to be running their own business and they learn some of the stuff, but I’d like to give them the book, too, to help them run a business properly. And so we started analyzing that and looking at the research that’s out there. And financially stressed employees are two times more likely to be job hunting. And 62/3 of employees are financially stressed. And the ones that are financially stressed are spending hours at work on the stress, you know, taking away from their productivity at work. And so we’ve sort of pivoted a little bit. Obviously, we want to sell as many books as possible and give people the roadmap, but also kind of enhanced it, I guess, is the best way to say, like, going in and start talking to these businesses, to their employees, to say, hey, let’s help you with this. And we don’t have an agenda. And, you know, a lot of times people come in, not you guys, because you’re not catering to this area, but a lot of times people come in with an agenda of what they’re trying to sell. And we’re not trying to do that. We’re really just trying to educate people. But it’s been kind of a blessing in disguise a little bit in terms of this whole new area that we didn’t think was going to be possible or probable with the book.
[00:59:08 – 00:59:34]
Yeah. You haven’t even begun to. To know how much effect it’s going to have. You. You have an idea, obviously, with people wanting you to talk. Can you imagine where this little molehill could become that mountain in five, six, eight, ten years from now? Like, it’s. It blows me away how people don’t realize. You guys obviously aren’t underestimating it. I’m just saying I can’t. I’m going to be following your journey because this.
[00:59:34 – 00:59:55]
Yeah. You probably see the same thing with your book. I mean, we see at first, when we got reviews on our book, we knew, you know, it was somebody that you knew that was leaving the book, you know, they really liked it. And now all of a sudden we’re getting reviews that we weren’t playing. You know, we don’t know who these people are. And so things like, I paid off $10,000 in three months thanks to your book. And just like different stories.
[00:59:55 – 00:59:56]
I read that review.
[00:59:57 – 01:00:09]
You’ve changed my mindset. You know, I. I only made it to page 30 before I had to put the thing down and start taking action on some stuff because I was really picking up what, you know, you guys were throwing down, so to speak.
[01:00:09 – 01:00:11]
So it’s been fun.
[01:00:13 – 01:00:36]
And it should be, right? Because at the end of the day, again, life’s in session. This ain’t a dress rehearsal. We don’t know when our ticket’s going to be punched. So live in the moment. Live in the journey of today. The past you can. Is not indicative of the future, which everybody says it is. That’s. That’s. It can be an indicator, but it doesn’t mean you can’t necessarily change things. So people listening and watching. It’s never too late.
[01:00:36 – 01:00:44]
History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme. I’ve heard Mark say that a few times. A book.
[01:00:45 – 01:00:46]
How it rhymes.
[01:00:46 – 01:00:52]
Yeah, Gotta be. It’s gotta be. Yeah, I’ve heard it. It’s a good. It’s a good one.
[01:00:52 – 01:02:13]
Yeah. You know, the biggest thing that we can do is continuing to stand on soapboxes and talk and talk and talk. I had somebody reach out to me. I met him at a conference I spoke at years ago down the US and he reached out to me. He lives in Pennsylvania. He says, I like doing a lot of volunteer work. And me and these other guys are going to do this youth retreat, and it’s going to be about life and about, you know, learning some things about finance. What would you char. What would you charge me for? For books. I want to. You know, we’re gonna have 40 some people there. I said, let me think about it and I’ll get back to you. Well, I reached out to my publisher and I said, hey, do you have any books in your warehouse right now? He goes, yeah. He says, we got about 50 left. Because. Because the people from. Or want to order from the US from a website, I have to. They’ll ship it, right. It’s easier than going across the border. I said, well, can you send that. Send that box to. Here’s the address in Pennsylvania. Well, is he going to pay for him? No. Well, why are you doing this? I said, because it’s for a bunch of kids in middle school going into early high school for this club that they belong to for learning life skills and different things. And I think it can make a difference in their lives. Well, you’re not going to. How is that going to benefit you? Makes me feel good.
[01:02:14 – 01:02:14]
Right. That’s.
[01:02:14 – 01:03:24]
That’s how it benefits me. Right. So I did. I did that. It was in April, May, I can’t remember. And he reached out when it was over. He says, unbelievable. He says, oh, by the way, I give. He said, because we had a few kids didn’t show up. I give the other people that were running it, we all got copies and a couple of them read it already and said they loved it. I said, well, thank you. I pre. That’s all I need. There you go. There’s the payment. Right. I made a difference. I had a girl that lives in the U.S. she wrote an article about me about three months after the book was written. She was in high school. She read an article for her school newspaper about her two favorite authors, and I was one of them. She. She still to this day now is into her. She’s like 23, 24. She still watches my listens while she prefers to watch my podcast on YouTube because this can be watched by people and how much of an influence I’ve made on her. And we actually still communicate. And so when. When people don’t think that you can make a difference, when it’s somebody that wasn’t even 18, found value in a book written by a Canadian. Right. Living in the States. And her dad bought her the book. He read it too.
[01:03:25 – 01:03:25]
He.
[01:03:25 – 01:03:36]
He bought two of them. One for his daughter, one for him. He’s. Because he had been on some calls with me and it. He. He owns a couple businesses in the. In the States, and it just. That’s what drives me.
[01:03:38 – 01:03:48]
We. We hear you the. Yeah, same thing for. I mean, it sounds like they’re both passion projects for us, for you and us, but it’s.
[01:03:50 – 01:04:39]
It’s very rewarding. I will say that we’ve heard also from parents and I think it’s probably. We’ve heard face to face, but also there’s some reviews that are out there that parents will use it as a guide because a lot of parents don’t know what to do with their finances and they don’t. I always make the comparison. I’m not sure if it’s a good one or not that I knew how to drive, but I didn’t know how to teach my kids how to drive. And so I had to do a little research on that before I sat down, like, what should come first and all that type of stuff. And so we’ve had a lot of parents basically say that to us. Like, I wanted to talk to my kids about finances, but I wasn’t sure, like, how to talk to them about it. And your book was great because it was a guidebook for me to be able to flip through. And it sort of step by step kind of laid the thing out. And, and we also hear from parents that are like, you know what? I learned a few things along the way too, you know, that I hadn’t really thought about. So it’s kind of.
[01:04:39 – 01:05:08]
Those are the people that are willing to change, though, to admit that they didn’t know, those that give and don’t admit they don’t place themselves in that template and go, hey, I really didn’t know myself some of this stuff. Those are the people for me that are willing. They’re the ones that now can change along with their kids. Right? It’s, it’s always goes back to the wing. One of the things I wanted, because we’re running out of time here. I know you guys wanted to end earlier.
[01:05:10 – 01:05:46]
What was the writing the book on a healing principle. And the reason I bring this up, for me, writing my book was very cathartic. I found that I was patting myself on the back and other times kicking myself in the butt as I was writing this book and had realizations of things that I had compartmentalized and didn’t really give myself credit for or didn’t fully correct within my life. Not just finance, but just. So what’s. What was each of you, please tell me, what was it like writing the book for you? Was it cathartic? Did it bring up any other light bulb moments or did it just confirm what you already knew?
[01:05:47 – 01:06:03]
Well, I think for me, Dwight, I’ll tell you that I like the challenge. And actually Steve and I went to a Rolling stones concert in St. Louis, Missouri with our wives. And after a couple glasses of wine, maybe three.
[01:06:05 – 01:07:46]
We both agreed to write this book, or at least consider it. And I called Steve the next day and I go, hey. And he’s like, are you serious? I’m like, yeah, I think we should write the book. And he was equally as excited. But for me, it was the challenge. And then how were we going to do this? I mean, we had no experience of writing a book. And most people have no experience on how to save and invest for retirement or to reach their short term midterm or Long term goals, it takes us to teach them. But I knew if we had a game plan. So what we, Steve and I agreed on is we would spend two and a half hours every Monday morning and we stuck to those two and a half hours every Monday morning. And just over two years we had a book. So this, it was rewarding for me because very few people actually do that talk where they actually put words into action to do something. And I like the challenge of it and the fact that if you spend enough time, focused time on a singular topic, what you can do over the course of 12 to 24 months. And so if it’s writing a book and we’ve got zero experience about writing a book or if it’s about trying to hit your short term midterm or long term personal goals, it’s nice to be on the other side of the desk with clients that hey, I had no business or interest really or no, I should say that I had no background, I should say in writing a book and how to format that. But getting the right person on board and we’re both kept each other accountable. It’s amazing what you can do when you focus. And I think you can, you can play, you could, you could utilize that same thinking or drive with anything else you want to accomplish in life.
[01:07:47 – 01:07:48]
Oh absolutely.
[01:07:49 – 01:08:51]
Yeah, I would, I would just echo that that I think we got almost giddy as we were doing this because that we were seeing firsthand. I was going through my experiences in terms of what I saw with my kids and their generation. And then Mark was talking to me about some of his customers who are. And you probably see this Dwight as well that might be high net worth individuals but don’t have any saving and how this book actually could help them as well in educating me on some of that. And I was, we would get excited as we talk about different topics because we were like, you know what, I think this is really going to make an impact. And so it was fun. Just stubborn our toe along the way when we didn’t know what we were doing and getting rid of a chapter because it didn’t make any sense to have it or you know, moving it around or whatever it is. But having that book come out that and then start seeing the reviews that rolled in was, was super rewarding.
[01:08:51 – 01:11:13]
That’s, that’s awesome. I know for myself I didn’t have necessarily add people that I’d send chapters to, but I was blessed to be in an event actually in 2020 when everybody was scared to travel and go anywhere I, as a silly Canadian, decided I was going to go down to Utah to an event, and it was all about hiking. And there was. There was half day of speakers. That’s it. The rest was just all of us connecting and networking and going hiking together and breaking bread together. And I met my publisher there. He was one of the speakers. And I thought to myself, I’ve always wanted to write a book since I was younger. Not. I wanted to write children’s books, not necessarily a book, right. So we had many conversations over the next few days. And he says, you know what? This is what I think you should write your book about and why. He says, your name is incredible. That’s your legal last name. I said. He says, man, he says, you. He says, all these marketing teams and people you’ve used over the years, they’ve never told no. He says, well, I’m not a marketing genius, but I. I’m been. We’ve published 300, 300 and some number one books. He says, well, he says, we’re gonna figure this out. Let’s have a call. And we literally just discussed the fact of making a difference writing a book. And I needed that. I didn’t have. Like you guys have, right. So I bounced things off of him. And then he. And he wasn’t the editor book. He had an. He had two different editors. And literally we just had conversations. And I’d say, I don’t. I don’t know. You’re not in this industry, Mike. You read. Read that chapter and tell me what you think. The editor wants this and this, this and that. And he’d come back to me and go, it’s not about what they want. Right. They’re there to make sure that it’s at a grade 8 level so that people can understand. They’re not there necessarily to critique your. Your vulnerability and your. And your origin. He says, but he says, because he’s way younger than me, 20 years younger than me. And he says. He says, I read it and this is what I think. And we just had. I did that lots. We jump on zoom calls, bounce ideas. Thank goodness. So I hired him because five and a half months later, the book was out. And any more longer than that, if I would have had hair still, I wouldn’t.
[01:11:13 – 01:11:48]
Yeah, that’s impressive. Yeah, I think we, as Mark sort of alluded to, I don’t think we. I mean, obviously we. We brought different pieces to the table in terms of our backgrounds anyway, but in terms of just. We’ve talked to a lot of people how hard it is to write a book because especially if you don’t have that partner. And as Mark said, you know, we’re holding each other accountable. Nope. We’re both, you know, I know I’m busy this week, but guess What? Monday, from 9 to 11:30, we. We’re tied up because that’s just what we do. And we just, you know, we. I can’t bail on him and he couldn’t bail on me. And it sort of.
[01:11:48 – 01:12:06]
Which. Which is fantastic. My guy would reach out and say, hey, where’s this? Right. Where is that? You know, the editor just got ahold of me and was bugging me that you haven’t responded since I said, well, he sent it yesterday. I also have a business that I run.
[01:12:06 – 01:12:06]
Right. Right.
[01:12:07 – 01:12:21]
I don’t have this opportunity. What did I tell you guys before? You got to give me 24 to 48 hours. This unfortunately is a 48 hour situation. I take it serious. I’d read the chapters out loud so I could hear myself. People.
[01:12:21 – 01:12:21]
Right.
[01:12:21 – 01:12:40]
So powerful people don’t realize. Emails, texts, whatever. Read it out loud. Your brain will hear the truth. Right. That’s the way I lived life. So, yeah, it was. It was intense. Five and a half months to get it out. Obviously my book isn’t quite as long as yours, but it was. There was chapters just like you talked about. No, can’t be in there.
[01:12:40 – 01:12:41]
Yeah.
[01:12:41 – 01:13:13]
No, no. Or the. The one editor. I ended up asking her to be fired from working on my book because she’d ad lib stuff all the time. And I don’t like people at ad lib. Right. I’m into facts. I’m into. You can make things more emotional or with words. Because I love wordsmithing. Right. You can use it. It can mean this, but it must be factual. So if you want to drive the point across and you believe this is a better way to say it, perfect. But don’t go and add things. And I gotta go. What? What?
[01:13:13 – 01:13:14]
What?
[01:13:14 – 01:13:38]
Well, they thought that would fit in there. What? You know, so it was. Anyway, we’re gonna have to have another episode because we’re getting to the end of. Of, you know, I want to respect your guys this time. Obviously, I would love to have another episode sooner than later. Obviously. We’re coming up to the Christmas season because you guys have no clue how many more things I wanted to communicate with you about.
[01:13:38 – 01:13:39]
Oh, my goodness.
[01:13:40 – 01:15:32]
Oh, no. I’m very. There’s four pages here. This conversation, I’m. I swear to you, I read all those conversations over so that I Don’t even have to. How often do you see me look down? I don’t have to, because now I know. Oh, you brought up this about the house. Let’s talk about this. I don’t have to have it so rigid, but I still think you guys have so much more value that you can add to my listeners. One of the things was about, you know, how can people claim unclaimed money? I have a workshop. My first workshop of the series that I’ve been doing now for 24 years is it goes through, and people say, oh, I can’t free up a hundred bucks. By the time I’m done to workshop, people have freed up 200, 300. Right. It’s. People just don’t understand, and we don’t have time to get into it because I don’t respect your time and. And be done by a quarter after the hour. So if you guys are up to it, let’s get this booked. I’d love to have a couple more good conversations with you, and I think we could go on and on to listeners. This is what the Give a Hip podcast is. If you’re brand new to this show, it’s conversation. It’s getting to the nitty gritty. It’s being compassionate and kind, and having a conversation goes both ways. So I really appreciate you guys asking me questions back as well. You know, it’s. It’s respectful in the fact that you believe I have something valuable to add. So I appreciate that. And a lot of times people don’t get that. So. And respect you guys enough to know that we need to have another conversation. There’s just too many things that. That the listeners are going to be going, you know, well, you brought up this, you know, one in seven people of unclaimed money, but you’re not going to talk about it. No, we’re not. We’re gonna keep it. We’re gonna keep you hanging. It’s called the cliffhanger. You ever watch Dallas back in the day, and then. Oh, yeah, you had to wait till the next season, right?
[01:15:32 – 01:15:33]
Exactly.
[01:15:34 – 01:15:34]
Right.
[01:15:34 – 01:15:35]
It’s a cliffhanger.
[01:15:35 – 01:15:51]
Absolutely. So one of the ways I wrap up my podcast. So. And it’s going to take us at least a few minutes, hopefully that’s okay. Is I want people to understand. Right. I refuse to quit my life. Right. I’ve never been. I always stuck with the.
[01:15:51 – 01:15:51]
What?
[01:15:52 – 01:16:38]
You know, winners never. Winners never quit, Quitters never win. Right. And. And I always believe that. And Les Brown was one of the most positive influences in my life from the early 90s all the way up to now. I still listen to his stuff and about, you know, if you can land on your back and you can look up, you can get up. Right. Just the way we program and way we talk to ourselves sometimes we need to hear that from other people. So I’d like to hear from you, both of you. Right. What does giving a heck mean to you personally? Right. And what would you say to somebody who’s, who’s just given up on life? What would you say to them? And it doesn’t have to be about money. It can be about however you want to share it. What would you say to somebody about giving a heck about themselves and just never being a quitter?
[01:16:38 – 01:16:43]
I think a lot of people say, you know, we only die once, we only live once.
[01:16:45 – 01:16:47]
That is powerful. Simple, short.
[01:16:51 – 01:17:31]
Mine might go a little bit longer. I just think we talked about it earlier in terms of the positive thing and I could tell that’s why Mark and I have such a great connection too is in the corporate world you don’t have, if you’re a well run business, there’s no plan B. Your plan is to succeed and you figure out a solution to succeed. And if you’ve got people that, that don’t believe and don’t give a heck, then they’re generally not going to probably do well on that team. And so I think it all just comes back to the mindset and the positive thinking and, and how you can sort of frame it to figure out solutions instead of trying to have excuses.
[01:17:32 – 01:18:04]
Yeah. People that don’t give a heck, I tell you that’s. I’m glad you brought that up Dwight. Because the foundation that we’re charity that we’re supporting Cancer for College which provides the needs based college scholarships for cancer survivors and amputees. It’s amazing. And those kids haven’t given up and they do give back. They give a heck about a lot of things. And to give back what we’ve given back and throughout all the areas they raise money and that’s where you know Will Ferrell comes in, a great actor who is.
[01:18:04 – 01:18:06]
Yeah, bring, bring that up if you have a few minutes.
[01:18:07 – 01:18:43]
Yeah, great, great person. Helped us out with the book doing the forward knowing that part of the proceeds are going back to cancer for college. But you look at what those kids are going through and what, what they have been dealt, they haven’t given up. They do give a heck. And it’s a, it’s empowering to see that fight. And we sometimes we look at our own limitations as a reason to give up. And boy, there’s people out there that somebody told me one time that the person who envies you the most, you don’t even know. And the person that probably despises you the most is probably pretty close to you.
[01:18:46 – 01:18:48]
That makes, that makes too much sense really.
[01:18:48 – 01:19:08]
Yeah. Doesn’t it? Doesn’t it? So I mean there’s so many of those kids I admire, there’s people in business I admire that they don’t know I admire them and then, but you know, given a heck, I mean why, I mean why not? I mean we’re on this earth for only so long like you said, why not give it your best.
[01:19:09 – 01:19:41]
Well, in a cancer survivor, why are they somebody that is, is in that state after their survive because they’ve learned gratefulness, they’ve been given another shot. So many people have entitled lives where they’ve got all this access to easy credit, easy money, go get this, go buy that. And with no consequences of the long term behavior because they don’t think of their longevity. They don’t think about when is their chicken going to be punched. A cancer survivor just got, oh my gosh, I’d be given another lease on life.
[01:19:41 – 01:19:42]
Right, right.
[01:19:43 – 01:19:44]
Perspective.
[01:19:44 – 01:21:04]
Oh, perspective. And that’s one of the things I coach so much on. Part of my lifestyle and life skill, part portion of my finance business is how I develop the coaching business where people hire me just to coach them on their lifestyle stuff. And I tell them what do you do for gratefulness? How often times in a day do you reflect how, how many times do you say to yourself I’ve had a bad day. Right. And, and no. And they’re floored. This will be now my 8th year coming in 2016 since I’ve had a bad day. I have to work at it though people. It’s not automatic. It’s what I’ve programmed my filter, my brain to not discount and take away from the greatness and gladness of waking up the simple little thing of being able to brush my teeth, have running water, take a shower, have food in the fridge and people listening you might go on, blah blah, blah blah. Guess what? Have gratefulness for the simplistic things and then the tough things are easy to deal with. That’s a character building moment in your day that does not have to define your day. I’ve had people pass away in my life. It’s still not a bad day because we sit as a group and reflect on how great that person was and the differences and joys and stuff. So we’re still connecting, we’re still a community. Yes, I’m sad, but that doesn’t mean my. It’s just what we tell ourselves.
[01:21:04 – 01:21:05]
Yeah.
[01:21:06 – 01:23:10]
I was just gonna say there’s this one. You know, through the corporate jobs, many of us get presenters that come out. And there was this one presenter that I remember vividly, and it’s probably been 20 years ago, and he would talk about people and how your perspective is, and I use it on my kids. You talked about life. We called them life lessons in our house. They love, love life lessons. But it was there when you’re passing somebody in the hall. And his big thing was super fantastic. How are you doing today? I’m super fantastic. And he’s like, you know, it’s. It’s just this mindset that no one. Like you say super fantastic. It’s impossible not to smile when you say super fantastic. And it just changes every. And it’s not like fantastic, it’s super fantastic. Like, it’s so over the top, but it changes. Like his line, and I’m gonna probably screw it up, you know. How are you doing? I’m okay. Oh, you know, and they’re sort of negative. In his line was something along the lines of, well, you better tell your. Your, your face, because your face doesn’t look like you’re doing fantastic. You’re doing okay. And so perspective is just. And these. Going back to cancer for college. I just went to a charity event over the weekend and sitting next talking to this kid that he’s 20, whatever, in medical school and was a cancer survivor, got cancer and just lived. He was saying he lived in a garage with his mom, dad and his grandmother, who is in a vegetative state. And that’s where they lived in Los Angeles, outside of Los Angeles. And so his. His perspective on things is totally different than others. So this guy is going to change the world. And he’s. He’s basically. I’ve had cancer. My goal is to be a doctor and try to help other kids not have to go through what I went through. And he’s going to do it like he’s going to discover things. Some of these kids, when these scholarships are just the most impressive people that you’ll be around because they just. Their. Their perspective is completely different.
[01:23:10 – 01:23:12]
Their energy. Yeah, yeah.
[01:23:13 – 01:23:15]
Mark, you had something else you wanted to add.
[01:23:16 – 01:23:22]
You know, I’ve been saying this for years, is. I’ve had. I’ve had good days and better days.
[01:23:24 – 01:24:01]
But it’s perspective. Back to what Steve’s saying it’s. It’s what we tell ourselves. Like, oh, and the principles of association. Why do you think that way? What do you. And I’ll ask people, what do you watch? What do you normally read? Like, I have. I’m very compassionate about the questions and, and obviously appropriate when to ask him. You gotta know. Right. I had to learn through mistakes. Right. Mistakes. And, And I do call them, Steve. My, my. If my kids were here, they’d laugh. I’d always say, there’s nothing. There’s no mistakes in life. There’s a life lesson now, if you don’t learn from it, then that’s a mistake because you chose to stay stuck.
[01:24:01 – 01:24:01]
Right.
[01:24:02 – 01:24:19]
What’s your life lesson? So I love it. I love it. I keep on smiling when you guys say stuff because, wow. It’s like we. We lived in a. In a different world. You know, maybe this is a multiverse or something that we’re this much aligned, three different individuals in two different countries.
[01:24:20 – 01:24:24]
The cool thing is, when Steve and I met, it’s been, what, Steve, five, six years ago?
[01:24:25 – 01:24:26]
Yeah, probably. Yeah.
[01:24:26 – 01:24:33]
I mean, his. His fortunate part about that. I had less gray hair than he did six years ago.
[01:24:35 – 01:24:36]
You had less than I did.
[01:24:37 – 01:24:38]
I think six years ago I did.
[01:24:38 – 01:24:39]
Did you?
[01:24:39 – 01:24:41]
I really ramped up here in the.
[01:24:41 – 01:24:43]
Last six years, ever since we wrote the book.
[01:24:43 – 01:24:47]
At least you’re. At least you’re holding on to some of your hair.
[01:24:47 – 01:24:48]
I’m just joking.
[01:24:48 – 01:24:50]
I seen a client earlier today.
[01:24:50 – 01:24:51]
I have less gel in mind right now.
[01:24:52 – 01:25:01]
Oh, yeah, I. I wouldn’t know. I just. I gotta put more of that stuff off because my lights above me here keep. Keep on making that glow.
[01:25:01 – 01:25:03]
You got a nice hue. It looks good.
[01:25:03 – 01:25:06]
Yeah. Yeah. I’ve been told I got the perfect bald head.
[01:25:08 – 01:25:08]
There you go.
[01:25:11 – 01:25:13]
That’s a power of positive thinking, but, yeah, exactly.
[01:25:13 – 01:25:13]
That’s.
[01:25:13 – 01:25:43]
We’re good. We’re gonna wrap up the show, listeners, I promise you, unless I’ve totally messed this conversation up, these gentlemen are going to be back on. I can’t wait. I have. I love my listeners know because I talk about it when I’ve done a podcast. I’m emotionally and mentally drained in a good way. And I know it was a great podcast when I get the warm and fuzzies where I can’t stop smiling during the conversation. And I just. I lean into it. I just.
[01:25:44 – 01:25:44]
Yeah.
[01:25:44 – 01:25:47]
So thank you, both of you. Right.
[01:25:47 – 01:25:48]
I really appreciate it.
[01:25:50 – 01:26:21]
How do people find your book? Obviously you mentioned Amazon and what’s the best way that they can reach you obviously, just as an addition. I’ll make sure this goes into the show notes. Go to giveaheck.com anybody new to show watching or listening. I’ll have detailed show notes. I’ll have chapter summary. I’ll have the entire transcript of the episode as well for you to go and review as well as their social media links that have been shared with me. So please share though verbally. What is the best way and quickest way for people to reach you?
[01:26:21 – 01:27:21]
The best way is to go to simpleroadbook.com and we’ve got a link there to purchase the book. Obviously if you could buy direct from us, it helps the margins a little bit more and allows us to give back a little bit more to cancer for college as well. But it’s also available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble and all your typical bookstores. And then we’d love to have people follow us on all our social media channels. So simple road book is typically what they are on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube. And so what we’re trying to do there is really have bite sized clips. Really knowing our younger generation that we’re going after. We typically have clips that are under a minute and they’re just a little bit more in terms of tips from the book and it’s not often, usually once a week there’s a post that’s up there. And so social media is growing. We’d love to have people follow us and, and chime in.
[01:27:21 – 01:27:25]
YouTube channel. YouTube channel, yeah, I subscribe to that.
[01:27:25 – 01:27:26]
Oh, thank you.
[01:27:26 – 01:28:10]
So, yeah, so whatever you had in Pod Match, I’ve already reached out to you guys. I didn’t look at the job for one because again, it was so early this morning, I had so much other stuff going on. So yeah, I’d love to stay connected with both of you. Obviously we’re going to be communicating. I’m going to send you a message shortly to get you back on. So obviously you’re going to have to communicate with one another and see what’s good for you. Even if there’s something that doesn’t line up on the schedule. Let me know when I’m excited about stuff. I’ll record on weekends, I’ll record in the evenings with people. Right. Because when somebody’s message needs to be heard, as a servant, I need to serve my listeners, serve the people in, in the world with that information sooner or later. Right.
[01:28:10 – 01:28:11]
We appreciate it.
[01:28:12 – 01:28:40]
No, I appreciate you guys. This was great. So again, listeners to the Give a Heck podcast, just go to the website, your Podcast episode. I can’t remember if it’ll be next week or the week after. It’ll be live. You’ll. I’ll let you know. You’ll get tagged and everything. Right where we’re connected, obviously. Collaboration. If. If you have it set up where I can set you as a collaborator on Facebook or Instagram, you’ll be able to just reshare the same because.
[01:28:40 – 01:28:40]
Excellent.
[01:28:40 – 01:29:02]
I get. I get my editor to do videograms, two to three of them. Right. I used to do more. I just don’t have the time. But usually that’s pretty good. That’s more than most people get when they go on to shows. I’ve been on so many shows, I don’t think I’ve ever. Very seldom. But I wonder how they even keep their show active in the sense of listeners, when they don’t post about it. How are people gonna know?
[01:29:03 – 01:29:08]
Yeah, I totally agree. Maybe once we’re done recording here, if we take 60 seconds or something, we might be able to find a date.
[01:29:09 – 01:29:10]
Sure, that would be great.
[01:29:10 – 01:29:11]
Calendar.
[01:29:11 – 01:29:47]
I’ll wrap up the show. Thanks again, gentlemen. So, as we wrap up today’s episode, I want to leave you with something I’ve learned through hosting this podcast and living my own journey. Living on a purpose is not a destination. It’s a daily decision. Guests like Steve and Mark remind us that financial freedom is not about perfection, but about consistency and mindset. So wherever you are right now, whether you are stuck searching or soaring, remember, you have the power to live your life on purpose, not by accident. Until next time, remember, it is never too late to give a heck.