Entrepreneur | 7 Principles To Powerfully Manage Your Money With Tim Redmond

Audio Transcription

Get ready to enter the Thrivetime Show! Look, look, as a father of five, that’s where I’mma dive. So if you see my wife and kids, please tell them hi. It’s C and Z up on your radio. And now, three, two, one, here we go. We started from the bottom, now we’re in. Tim Redmond, how are you, sir? Really good, Clay. Good to be here again. Hey, so we are talking today about the seven principles to powerfully manage your money. Now, my understanding is, as a business coach, as an executive coach, you have helped clients all over the world. I say all over the world. Literally, you’ve traveled all over the world helping people, whether it be churches or businesses or anybody, kind of get their finances together. Is that right? Yeah. Cash is king, Clay. So if we don’t learn to manage the cash inflow and outflow, we’re not going to build anything of lasting value. And it’s kind of like the basic life skill that we’ve got to nail down as thrivers to really begin to succeed. Now, my son, he’s just now getting into that age seven zone. And what he’s doing is as soon as I pay him any type of compensation for work, I don’t give him allowance. I pay him for a compensation for services rendered. Very good. But he wants to spend it immediately. And as adults, it seems like we want to keep doing that, too. So I’m excited to hear kind of how we… We still have a seven-year-old mind in our spending today, even as grown-ups. Well, Tim, you know, when thrivers start implementing these best practices, we get emails all the time from people that, you know, you’ve coached and I’ve coached over the country, and they say, oh my gosh, I’m making more money than ever. Their marketing’s taken off, they’re making more money, but we have to learn, in order to build wealth, we have to learn how to control our money. Whether we’re upside down in our finances, swimming in an abundance of money, or basically completely debt-free. So, Tim, in your mind, why don’t more people know how to control their money? Well, you know, there’s just the steps of learning how to do it. That’s why we, you know, in today’s episode, we’re talking about seven principles, and they’re really seven steps towards really getting a grip on your money. So there is that. There’s just an ignorance of how to do it. And then there’s this huge emotional thing that swirls around money and our negative associations with money. Money is the reason my parents got divorced or my business partner betrayed me. And we’ve got all these negative things rolling around money and our need for instant gratification. So all these things are swirling around and it makes a mess with our money. Tim, here are some crazy stats and if your brain explodes at any point let me know. I’ll go get some duct tape and we’ll all kind of hold it together. So here we go. 27% of all households who make over $100,000 a year say they can’t afford to buy everything they need. Unbelievable. Now I know that some people watching this live in New York where for $100,000 you can get like a corn dog and then some people live in Tulsa where for $100,000 that goes a long way. But the principle here is that the majority of our U.S. population is saying they can’t afford what they need. They can’t afford what they need. That is just bizarre, especially those people over $100,000. Because that puts them in the top 2% of all wage earners in the whole world. And you know, why is that going on? You know, you start with how do they define what a need is? And so a lot of our cash management issues are because the way we look at wealth and poverty is more of a relative thing. You know, on the stat, I think the operative word there is they don’t have enough for what they need. And I think that’s something that we kind of blow up in our mind, Clay. That’s the challenge. Tim, in 2013, there was a study that was conducted about the dependence that people have on government. And it says, America is increasingly moving away from a nation of self-reliant individuals, where civil society flourishes toward a nation of individuals less inclined to practicing self-reliance and personal responsibility. What does that mean? And why is that beginning to happen? Well, it’s really, you know, this quote is really in the study is really talking about how people don’t want to take personal responsibility for their lives. They want the government, the big brother to take care of them. They want their company and their retirement to take care of them. They want their relatives to take care of them. People don’t want to take personal responsibility and that’s just the opposite of our thrivers. You’re not going to thrive if you throw away responsibility on somebody else. So Tim, why is money such a source of pain and anxiety for so many people? Well, again, it goes back to this association, this negative association they have with it. They don’t want to take responsibility. It requires them to take full responsibility of knowing where the income’s coming in and where it’s going out. They’re given into being very compulsive, very… this instant gratification, giving into their feelings. They want this, they want that. They don’t want to take this personal responsibility. And I think about this amazing… this amazing article I read in Motley Fool and it was this lady talking about Grace Groner versus Richard Fuscon. And it was this lady that was born in like 1910. In the Depression, she got a job as a secretary. She never really moved above the role as a secretary in a company. And she just died in like 2010. She lived to be 100 years old. Then this Richard fellow was a big time executive making hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars every year working for Merrill Lynch and he got out of the corporate realm in the year 2000. Ten years later, he’s got all the money he knows what to do with. Here’s this lady, this lady with secondary wages forever. Ten years later he declares bankruptcy in 2010. In 2010 this lady finally dies with has an inheritance of seven million dollars that she saved as a secretary. So it’s this whole idea where we just get absorbed in the moment of whatever we want to do, we just give in to our compulsion, we’ve got all this pain and confusion having to do with money. Well Tim, America’s spinning habits are really out of control at this point. You know, in fact, there’s research that was done in 2009 by the Census Bureau, and it was shown that basically for every dollar that I earn as an American, I’m gonna spend $1.33. That’s outrageous. It’s a good government spending thing. That’s less than what the government spends. Yeah, right. Yeah, so that’s a good budget cut almost. Okay, so now 52% of Americans are spending more than they earn. It’s basically what Huffington Post is showing. Okay, so most people are spending, greater than 50% of people are spending more than they earn. Yeah, and then our main man Thomas Jefferson, he says, this is what he famously said, he said, never spend your money before you’ve earned it. Okay. Which to me seems like pretty deep stuff here. So the idea is that, you know, we shouldn’t spend money before we’ve earned it and people are spending more money than they actually have ever touched. So Tim, what causes people to spend more than they have? What is the deal? Well, they, you know, everything is about lifestyle. Everything is about in the moment. Everything is about enjoyment and let’s just get it, because credit is so easy. It’s so easy to borrow. It’s so easy to spend more than what we have because we can get access to this money. So we’re going to give into our pleasures right now and so we we allow our lifestyle to our spending to follow our lifestyle instead of our spending to follow our actual income coming in. One more time, you’re saying we allow our lifestyle to control what we’re… Yeah, yeah we have number one we have lifestyle determines everything doesn’t matter what our income is. In the proper way, the way our thrivers are going to begin to really succeed, not only are they making money now, because we’re following these best practices here, but they’re going to be able to build wealth so they can become more powerful, more influential. And the way they’re going to do that is instead of allowing their lifestyle to lead their way, they’re going to allow the income that they have to determine what their lifestyle is. And just to, presumably everybody watching this right now, one thing I want to dive into these principles I want to share is I have had opportunity to consult with people that make half a million dollars a year, people that make a million dollars a year, and they have to work right now, today, in order to keep up with what they already spent. So they’re borrowing against their future all the time, and literally you have guys who are making massive amounts of income who have to work every hour of the day just to pay off what they already spent. And it’s sad. What we’re wanting for you to do as a thriver is to be able to not just thrive financially in terms of making a lot, but thrive as a person, thrive as a dad, thrive as a mom, be able to enjoy downtime, enjoy being able to go to your kids’ games and be able to hang out with family and friends. And so this is huge. And so we’re going to get into this first principle here. But as you’re getting into this first principle, be thinking about we’re trying to help you thrive as a person, not just earn as much as possible here. Who is the boss of your finances? Why is this your first principle? Well, what we have, Clay, is we have one of two roles, one of two relationships that we have with our money. Either we manage our money or our money is managing us. A lot of times our decisions, see our decisions should be determined by the goals that we set, that we’re working towards. And a lot of times we’ll say, well we can’t go on vacation, we can’t do this because we don’t have the money. We don’t… we allow our money or lack of money to determine our decisions. They’re the boss of us instead of us being the boss. And so when we learn to live below our means and we get a plan for where we’re going to go, and these are principles we’re going to cover here today, we begin to move to being the boss instead of being bossed around by money. So many of us are just, we go up and down emotionally because we’ve got this bad boss called money that’s bossing us around. Winston Churchill, this is the guy who basically stood up to Hitler and as without Winston Churchill and his boldness we’d all be speaking German I’m from German ancestry so I can make that joke We always speak in German language, but we didn’t want to be forced to have to speak it true true We would have all enjoyed driving the German automobiles though Yeah, I’m with you on that one. Okay, so the price of greatness is responsibility He says he says the price of greatness is responsibility. Tim, what is he talking about? Well, when you begin to be the boss of your finances and you become the boss of your cash flow, what I have found when I am coaching people, and I love to do coaching with businesses that need to turn around, they’re in cash flow, just a horrible shape here, but I really like coaching companies that are doing well and they just want to do gooder and gooder. I like doing that. And so, what I find that these abundant-minded people do is they love the word deliberate. They love taking responsibility. They love having the choice, making the choice. And so, when you are talking about managing your cash flow and really being the boss of your cash flow. You’ve got to be deliberate with your plans, with how you’re making the money come in, you’re tracking it, and then where the money goes, and really, really getting a grip on that, being deliberate with the plan that you have. In your book, Power to Create, which we happen to have a copy of here, in your book, Power to Create, you say that money has the uncanny ability to take on the nature of whoever controls it. Yes, this is a very very important point here. Money taking on the nature of whoever holds it. We subconsciously give a lot of power to money because with money we can get anything. There’s even a verse in the Bible that says that money answers everything. So there’s some truth to that but really when we take a look at the reality here money is just this piece of paper or this gold coin that doesn’t have any intrinsic value in and of itself. It’s whoever holds it. That is who has the power to put this money as an employee, to put it to work for us. Money begins to take on our purposes. It begins to fulfill whatever we want it to fulfill. So let me ask you this though. If I am struggling with this concept, what is maybe an action step that I can do to become the boss of my money? All right. We actually begin to, in the remaining principles We begin to show you how to become a boss you know a very practical step is to go right into principle number two, which is Knowing where you’re at and really keeping track of the money come in and money going out most people don’t do that Clay I have had Businesses I’ve coached that don’t keep track of their accounting. They have no idea where they’re at. So your principle number two says know where you are and the idea is to know where your money is, know what’s coming in, what’s coming out. Right. Now Tim, Socrates once said, an unexamined life is not worth living. What is he talking about and how does that relate to this concept of knowing where you are? Alright, so unexamined life is not worth living. You could probably say, and I’m sure Socrates probably said his next statement was, your unexamined finances is probably not worth sustaining you. We want people to thrive. Thriving is the whole concept of growing and increasing, not just with stuff you own, but your influence and your peace of mind and the relationships you have and so if we don’t know where we’re at and we’ve this is an Unexamined part of our life here. It’s really a place of irresponsibility that that how can we know? How can we get to where we’re we want to go if we don’t know where we’re at? it’s like if we’re on if we if we have a Map and we want to get to a place and the map is wrong And and we don’t know where we even are to start with, we’re going to get lost along the way here. And so this is really the power we have is if we’re going to take responsibility, we’ve got to know where we’re at. So are you saying that every entrepreneur needs to set up some kind of financial tracking system? Is that what you’re saying? Yeah. It’s something that I recommend with everybody in your business, even in your personal life to set up some kind of tracking system like Quicken, like an electronic system. Quicken, some people use a spreadsheet, some people use old ledgers, you know, that they write it down manually. What I recommend nowadays is they have programs like Quicken or Money or there’s all kinds of different… Is there one in particular that you would recommend? I personally use Quicken. That’s the company that I ended up buying, the company that I grew up in, and we sold it to them, and so I’m preferential towards them. We want to get a system, Clay, that’s very important, that automatically pulls in our transactions from the bank and the credit card. That’s where most of our transactions are. So to know where’s our money coming from and where’s it going to, if we can have it automatically pulled in for us instead of having to keep track of all these things manually, most people aren’t detail-minded. Most of my clients are brilliant business people, but they’re not detail-minded towards that. And so we want to create some kind of tracking system in this. Tim, I know that you’re a big proponent of automating the transactions when possible. Why is that? Why wouldn’t you just want to manually take care of bills? Okay, so automating is two aspects. One is the thing we just talked about here, where we have transactions from our credit cards or debit cards and the banks for the transactions. Those are automatically coming into our tracking system. And then what I have is as much as I can, I want to reduce the number of decisions that I make. The most effective people that I know become effective because they they stay creative on the most important problems to solve and they try to automate or reduce the number of decisions they make. Really setting up a system is setting up a series of decisions that you want to have made every time. That’s what a system is. And so we set up a system to automatically get all of our bills, utility bills, our mortgage payment, even the income coming in, direct deposit, which is an automatic deposit process for your pay. Even if you have your own company, you can set up direct deposit where things are automatically done. Even money that you have come in, you can have your bank set up a percentage that goes into a savings account for every dollar that comes in. So you want to do this just so that you pay your bills on time, you don’t have to think about it, you’re not worried about it, there’s no anxiety there because you know it’s being taken care of. So is there a specific, I mean, Quicken is a software that you use, is there a deal where you with your bank, I mean is there a certain process or a certain, like if I’m watching this and I’m totally unfamiliar with this idea of automatic deposits or automatic withdrawals or how to do that, is it all within the Quicken suite? I mean, I can do all this, or what do I? They may have all this stuff that you can do within Quicken. I think they’ve come up with those features. Most banks now will have a bill pay process. Cool. And most vendors, like your utility company, you can actually set up an arrangement where they give you provide them your bank account, or your credit card, and they get direct access to that. So you set this up, they test it to make sure it’s really you, and then once it’s set up, it’s automatically taken care of. So that’s an action step anybody watching this can do. This is something that you can do. I mean, either using your bank or going directly to the vendor that you owe and say, listen, I want to set this up where it’s automatically paid. And they love that because they get paid on time, you pay on time. Everybody’s happy, and you’re not wigging out about what’s being paid or what’s not being paid. Tim, there’s three different types of expenses that all of us have. First, there’s the mandatory obligations. Second, there’s the discretionary expenses. And the third, there’s the desired expenses. So, describe to me what the first one is. Describe to me what the mandatory obligations are. Mandatory obligations are, those are commitments that you have to make every month or every week, whatever the arrangement is. Mandatory obligations are like a mortgage payment, utility bills if you want to keep your house cold in the summer and warm in the winter. Student loans, you know, whatever loan product. Sweet student loans. I love student loans. And if you borrow money, you ought to pay it back. That’s my own personal viewpoint here. And so all these that you have to make payment of, and there’s no mercy from these people. If you don’t pay them, they’re going to sue you. If they don’t pay them, they’re going to turn off whatever you’re buying from them. So card payments, whatever types of loan payments it may be. Now the second you talk about is discretionary expense. What does that mean? Discretionary expenses are needed expenses. You can’t just like not do those expenses. They’re required but how much you spend of those really is determined by you. It’s determined by the income you have and you live in below those means, below that means. Okay, so living below your means is not this negative scarcity-minded process. It’s really a disciplined effort for you to get powerful control over your finances. What’s an example of a discretionary expense? Discretionary expenses could be like your clothes. Like we would like if you show up for work, we’d like for you to wear clothes. That would be a good thing. Or if you go in public, in most situations, most societies, they want you to wear clothes. So you ought to buy clothes at some time. But you don’t know how much. Like, let’s say your mortgage payment is $800 a month. Your clothes expenses not 800 or 400 or $200. You’re not required to spend that much money. It’s discretionary. You need to buy clothes or you need to buy food or you need to buy you know go out to the restaurant with your wife at least once a week or once every three years on these dates. But it’s up to you. It’s a decision that you make to determine how much of it you want to spend. Now the third is called desired expenses. What do you mean by desired expenses? Desired expenses are expenses you don’t have to spend at all. Now this has slipped into some of our needs. You’ve got somebody making a hundred thousand dollars living in Tulsa, Oklahoma or Broken Arrow or Coahuila which has got this huge cost-of-living increase here. I think it was like 0.3 percent increase hit their front page of their paper. And so we, you know, we have this hundred thousand dollars a year coming in and we need to have this and this and this. And so this desired expenses that stuff that we don’t have to spend but it’s like saving up for a vacation saving up for your kids wedding or education If someone watching this, there’s a couple things that I wanna bring up here. When you describe this, I’m thinking of things where you would confuse it as a need. I talked to a business owner the other day who has a totally safe vehicle, about 2004, 2005. It’s like a truck. And this vehicle works great for daily business stuff, right? And he comments, well, I’m getting a brand new one because I want it to be more safe for the family. And then I look, and I notice there’s a super sweet, just brand new, like one of those Samsung tablets, brand new one. Nothing wrong with Samsung, but a brand new tablet Just all latest latest word. Yeah, and a brand new phone and in the whole thing was he’d come into that’s a nice phone Yeah, I just got that you know that’s kind of stuff and and this guy’s barely making it financially, and I just thought In his mind he’s confused You know what is a want because he has a car that works But instead he’s choosing to get a brand new one because he needs to be safe, or he needs a phone to better communicate with his client, and he needs the… he keeps adding all these things. That’s self-justification. You are going to justify, well, it’s only… I’m only… that’s going to be a mandatory obligation because I’m going to justify it as that. It’s a deal where I think all of us are guilty of it. I know at some point early in my career I was doing it. I know that a lot of people do that. So I just want to make sure as you’re going through these these are powerful here You have the mandatory obligations the discretionary expenses and the desired expenses I think it’s really important that you might bust out a sheet of paper or type it on the screen here and Sort your expenses go ahead and go through the process of doing this because if not you might confuse categories Right and I would recommend if you’re married and you want to stay married to actually do this with your spouse. Where you decide together what is mandatory expenses, what are discretionary expenses, and with your income you’re at right now, how much is this discretionary income do you want to spend? Like we have to go out here, we’ve got to take a break. I can’t be cooking every night in the kitchen. We have to go, okay, well, how much is that? That’s discretionary. Then the desire is by all means, have desires, have plans and goals where places you want to go to and people you want to meet and things you want to experience, begin to save for that and begin to work to where you want to spend money. You have not money you’re going to eventually make. And that’s where we get into trouble here with this whole spending thing. Now principle number three is we want to know where you want to go. So let’s talk about this. Tim, you know Napoleon Hill, the best-selling author once said that the starting point of achievement is desire. Keep this constantly in mind. Weak desire brings weak results. Just as a small fire makes a small amount of heat. Tim, what are some powerful questions that we can all ask ourselves to identify where we really want to go with our life. This is good. Just take the whole thought here, Clay, of the power of questions. Questions unlock our mind. Questions, you know, our brain begins to answer the questions we ask it. And so if we ask weak questions, we’re going to get weak responses. If we ask it strong questions, it will solve for those strong responses. And so, what I have found as I’ve worked with these precious people, my clients, and people that I’ve talked to in seminars, and humanity. Myself, when I look in the mirror. Humans. Humans. People that are humanly human, you know. And what we’re talking about here is most people, when you ask them where they’re going or what they really want in life, they don’t have a clear answer. And I think for a lot of people, when we ask the question to you, we say, what do you want to do or what do you want to do with your life or what goals do you have? I think a lot of people will just say something like, well, I want to be successful. I want to be financially well off. And that’s the kind of answer we respond with? You know, we want to be successful. Well, if you make one more dollar than you did last year, I guess you’re successful in that you’re growing. You know, that’s the problem here, Clay, is when Napoleon Hill wrote that very powerful, powerful statement, he talks about definiteness of purpose and that definiteness of purpose is tied to, I can say, a definiteness of desire, a very specific desire. Those smart desires are specific, they’re measurable, they’re attainable, they’ve got some risk attached to it, and they’re time activated. And so, to know where we want to go, most people don’t know where they want to go. They know about where they want to go, but there’s no jet engine of the fire of desire that’s got to be very specific. And so I like to ask these questions here. You know, what do you want out of life? What are your key goals that you’re working towards? Are they specific goals? Are there places you want to go? You know, what in your life do you want to stand for? There are certain things that you want to have said over you, you know, when you die, in your eulogy. What are people going to say about you when they’re looking at your corpse and saying, there’s a good man and here’s why. What do you want them to say over you? You know, what are some things you wanna buy? You know, what are some things that you never gave yourself permission to buy that you really wanna give yourself permission to buy? Write them down, be specific about it. That’s what we’re talking about here. Where do we wanna go? Be specific about it. It comes to mind here, you know, when you think about thriving, which is what this organization is just passionate about, just being contagious and activate the thrivingness within people, you think, what is the opposite of thriving? You think, well, surviving, but here’s what I want you to think about. The opposite of thriving is drifting. One is very specific and they’re purposeful and they’re going for it. The other one’s just drifting along. Well, I don’t know, I don’t want to, like, have a goal. What if I don’t reach it? Well, you probably won’t. Drifting is so dangerous. It’s very dangerous. It’s this horrible sense of existence where you shut down your creative energies on the inside. I think drifting is dangerous because you have the illusion that you’re getting somewhere. And so I think a lot of entrepreneurs watching this, maybe you’ve always wanted to start a business or maybe you have one now, and what you’re doing is on a daily basis, you’re not actually saving money, but you’re saying that you’re wanting to get ahead. And you’re saying the right thing. You actually are professing that with your mouth, but you’re not doing it. And you’re just kind of drifting. And I think what you’re talking about is a lot of specific ways that we can begin to build some financial momentum here. Yeah, where do you want to go? That’s this principle we’re talking about. Where do you want to go? Why do you want to go there? I mean, you think about, you know, what kind of savings do you want to set up? How fast do you want to pay down your debt? I know when I was running the software company, we’d have these big bonuses that I would get and my wife and I agreed to have X percentage of those bonuses that paid down our mortgage. So we just paid down our mortgage down down down down. So we had a specific purpose that whatever came in this percentage of it we just applied it against that. So that’s what we want to really make sure that our thrivers in order to thrive in the cash management you’ve got to have a plan to where you want to go. And don’t think you have to have this grandiose plan. Even if you’ve never done this before, start small. But get something very specific you want to work towards. Okay, Tim. Now, principle number four is called close the circle. What are you talking about when you say close the circle? Well, it’s a term that I got from a friend of mine, Earl Pitts. He wrote a book called Wealth, Money, Wealth, Riches and Money. And he used the term closing the circle as answering wealth, riches, and money. And he used the term closing the circle as answering a question, a very important question in cash management, which is answering the question, how much is enough? So if we have the circle that’s open, that means when we have more income coming in, we’re just going to spend it, or we have a tendency to spend it. When we close the circle, that means we say, listen, if I get more income than I have over the budget, I’ve got a purpose for that to go into a certain savings account or wealth investment account. There’s a purpose for that. There’s a destiny for that dollars that I’m going to put aside. And that way, I’m not going to be all over the board and allow my lifestyle to go ahead of my income like it does so frequently. And I think a powerful example of this would be Warren Buffett, where he currently actually lives in the same house that he bought in 1958 for $31,500. You think he’s got it paid off? Well, apparently he doesn’t. He drives the same Cadillac he’s had for quite a while. He doesn’t have a computer at his desk, doesn’t really use a cell phone. And I think some of those things might be things that maybe wouldn’t be practical for you if you’re watching this and don’t have a cell phone or maybe not. But the principle here is that he bought a house a long time ago that serves his needs. He feels very comfortable with the house and so now he’s on to doing other things. Which is with his money he’s blessing a lot of people right now with a lot of his charitable things. But I think he decided at one point that he was going to cap his income. And I think I’ve read where he capped his income at about $175,000 a year, which is still a very high amount for a lot of people, but he’s capped it there. And it’s very unusual for people, because I think he has a value or a net worth of billions of dollars, but yet he’s capped his income at $175,000. So it seems like he’s really closed that circle, like what you’re talking about. Yeah, and this is really, really important for our thrivers here. So if you’re a sales position and your income is going up and down month after month, how does this principle apply? Yeah, this is in your sales, you’ve got a business, you’re starting the business, or let’s say you’re starting to use some of these marketing sales strategies that we’re explaining in these videos. You begin to apply these best practices and in the process you may have a month and you make $25,000, another month you lose $4,000 you’re all over the board And so what we want to do is is not have you live a boring life We don’t want our thrivers to live a boring life, but what we want to do is we want to create Stability for growth and so closing the circle is saying listen. I’m gonna live by this much money Let’s say it’s $5,000 a month. Yeah, so let’s say it’s a $5,000. Let’s say one month I make $8,000. Okay, so what you do is you take the $5,000 you’ve already got allocated, great, you put that to work just the way you’ve got that set up. The $3,000 you put it aside and do a savings fund. And let’s say the next month you maybe only make $3,000. Okay, but you want to live on $5,000 so you’ve already got stash on that. So you take $2,000 out of that to put in there. You think, yeah, but I’m just not that disciplined. You can be disciplined. It’s very simple by taking the mandatory expenses, you got your discretionary expenses, then you got your desired expenses, and then you’re living within that particular amount. And you’re not stuck there forever, Clay. Some people say, well, I just don’t like living in that bondage. Well, what’s the other bondage they live in? They live in the bondage of living from hand to mouth, living from month to month. There’s three things that I heard you say there and I want to hammer that. One, it requires making a decision and you have to start to say that you are disciplined. You have to start to say, you can’t just say, I’m not that disciplined. We need to start to say right now, I am disciplined. Thrivers are disciplined. I am disciplined. I can do it. Discipline. Discipline. Discipline. Discipline. Discipline. Discipline, discipline, discipline, discipline, discipline, discipline, discipline, discipline, discipline, discipline. And the second is we have to look at savings as actually a form of freedom. And I guess the example would be you have time freedom when you save. So as an example, whenever my wife and I move, and we have five kids and growing businesses and so we’re always moving, and every three or four years we move. And we move because I’ve saved money, I can pay a builder to move, and I pride myself on not packing a single item. I just am like, move that, move that, move that. So I can’t stand it. And so I was able to save time by saving money, and I can pay, I can basically get time back by paying people to do things I don’t wanna do necessarily. Yeah, you’re paying for a hassle-free life. You’re paying to not have to think about stupid stuff you don’t want to think about. But that’s because on a daily basis I decide to not buy things I don’t need. I don’t put things in my house I don’t need or buy new TVs every week. I just get what I need. You’re disciplined to plan the work and then work the plan. You’re disciplined to follow a plan. Closing the circle is saying, listen, I’m going to live within these means right here and when I’m all over the board I’m going to stabilize that. This is very, very important to build a platform for growth. It’s very important for you watching this right now. And what we’re saying here is we’re going to create that stability. When we go over we put the money aside and we’re, you know, at any time we can say, listen, living on $5,000 a month and now we’ve been we’ve been topping over $10,000 a month every month month after month I got all this money in this savings account I follow what you’re saying Tim and so now we’re gonna move from five thousand to eight thousand dollars and so you rearrange those mandatory expenses and those discretionary expenses and you you set up a plan and you follow the plan. I’ll give you an example of what not to do. My wife and I, we have five kids, and so our kids are always, you know, having a tooth that needs to be pulled. They always need to go to the doctor for something. You know, it’s just like there’s a constant injury, calamity, disease, dental something going on. Last week in your life. Yeah, yeah. Unless, and we did this years ago, but what you do is you say, gosh, you know, it seems random, but every few months something weird happens. So let’s go ahead and just raise our monthly budget and spend a little more for insurance every month, so that way those spikes aren’t quite as high. But if we don’t make an intentional plan, you end up reacting to a monster bill, and then another monster bill. If we intentionally plan it and we say this is the budget we want to stick with in every month and we go, well how are we going to do this? Well, we’re going to have to buy insurance and increase what it covers. That’s beautiful Clay. You’re stabilizing your life where you don’t have to go up and down and all over. concept puts you into the boss’s seat. Instead of cash being the boss and you’re serving cash, well, I can’t do this because I don’t have enough money. I’m doing this because of money. The money, money, money, money, money. We’re obsessed with this discussion and the creative view is not coming out. And so what this does is it really allows you to take that first principle and say, I’m going to be the boss of my finances. Now, you talk about the annual event. What does that mean? Okay, so what that is, is we are going to come together, we come together and we’re going to talk about what do we want this year to look like. We’ve got goals for this year of how much income we’re going to start to bring in. Go from a certain level, the increase that we want. Where do we want to do our giving? What do we want to give to? Giving is a big part of our life. What are some things we want to begin to save for? How are we going to… if we’re falling below our mandatory discretion and desired expenses, if that’s bigger than the income we’re bringing in, how are we going to work on bringing more income in? What can we creatively do? I will meet with my financial advisor that’s managing a number of my finances for me to get their feedback. But the annual event is really taking a look at the whole year, where we’re going to go with our money and how we’re going to get there. But you schedule a time to specifically sit down and be intentional about your planning. We’re going to do that. Now, principle number five, be a giver. What does that have to do with… Again, I’m just asking kind of devil’s advocate. If I’m watching this and I’m like, sure, be a giver. Meanwhile, I’m trying to buy chicken panini to feed myself while I’m starting a business, or if I’m barely just now making it. Maybe I’m watching this and I own a bakery and I’m just now starting to get ahead, and you’re saying, be a giver, and then I Google you, who’s Tim Redmond, and I discover that you built a company from two people to 450 people. You travel all around the world. You’ve had a lot of success. So I might look at it and go, well, it’s easy for you to say to be a giver. So walk me through. What does this mean to be a giver, and how does this apply to me if I’m maybe… Yeah, this is very, very important. When we talk about being a giver, it’s more of a mindset than an amount. Same thing as the next principle we’ll talk about. It’s more of a mindset than an amount. You live to give. What that is doing is you’re telling yourself on a conscious and a subconscious level that you are an abundant person and you’re not just striving just to survive. That you can learn to live below your means and there’s there’s there’s some aspect of your life that you can take out of what you have to give to somebody else that’s more needy than you are and there’s always somebody more needy than you in the world and so you reinforce that mindset of abundance, you reinforce that mindset you are a giver, you’re a creative giver and so being a giver is well it’s a whole attitude of life through your services, your creative problem solving, and through financially even giving. Are you intentional about giving? Are you intentional or is this just sort of now habitual for you? Where you just do it out of habit? Yeah, well I’m intentional in my giving over what we have set up. So like I believe in tithing. I happen to give 10 percent to my church and they take care of all kinds of outreaches that I participate in, my kids and my wife and I participate in, and that there’s a lot of different programs, community affairs, there’s something you guys were involved with even today that’s just outstanding that earlier today, you know, so I’ll find different things, my wife and I will find different things we want to give to to help support, to help those people. So there’s intentionality there, but most of it is just by rote. It’s like, this is in my lifestyle, it’s part of my budget, it’s part of my mandatory obligations. I want to hammer this home real quick, though, because there’s somebody watching this who’s a crazy giver, like you are a nuclear giver, like you will give everything possible. I met a lady years ago who was trying to start this home-based business, and every time she’d have a dollar, she would give it away, almost like a panicky, like I need to give it away. It’s more fear driven than generosity driven. And her story was, you know, I grew up poor, I want to help people who are poor, always giving money to family. What we’re talking about is being intentional about what you’re giving, setting aside a specific amount. And if you’re not familiar with the word tithe, and let’s just pretend that you’re not a Christian or you don’t believe in the Judeo-Christian worldview, the principle of tithing is setting aside 10% to give to a charitable cause. And I would just argue, if you’re watching this, if you look up, if you just get a chance to research the life of John D. Rockefeller, or Sam Walton, or Russell Simmons, I mean, all different people, they all have a systematic approach to giving. And the sneaky part about giving is when you give to somebody else, you actually feel better about yourself. So it’s interesting and there’s a quote here that the infamous investor sir John Templeton the founder of the Templeton fund said one thing we learned from these wise people is that giving is a test of maturity Those who are truly grown-up give the immature do not it is wise to practice giving in every area of life giving Happiness prayer and mind power are for building blocks in the formation of a fulfilled existence on earth. What is he talking about as it relates to giving there? Giving is really a whole attitude where you look at all of your life, either you can be a consumer that’s just, it’s all about you, or you can look at yourself as the whole basis of this Power to Create book as your primary purpose is to create value to serve other people. You’re living to give. And so, as it relates to your financial management here, you want to set money aside, even though you may be that baker that’s just starting out. How in the world am I? I can hardly feed my kids and pay the bills. How can I be giving right now? Well, it’s giving of the quality. That’s what Sir John Templeton is talking about. Giving the quality. Making sure that your customers have an experience with you. But also it’s good just to learn to live below your means where you’re putting money aside to give. It is actually an expression of gratitude. What giving does is it reinforces in your mind that you are an abundant creator. You’re living from that place of contribution. You’re living from that place of abundance. And literally when Jesus said is more blessed to give and receive and and and almost every great a philosopher and world leader talks about the power of giving and living to give we’re talking about how we’re wired as people that when you give especially when you give with this with this sense of a hilariousness or a positive mindset or this really powerful emotional state, you’re literally tapping in the reward center of your brain that activates it. It creates these attachments that this is a good thing and it expands your mind to be able to see. You literally begin to look at problems as opportunities. You begin to expand your mind to look at life completely differently when you learn to live to give. And I think that’s what John Templeton was talking about in the power of giving. Now, Tim, you make a profound statement in your book called The Power to Create, where you say, money reveals and magnifies what is in your heart. What do you mean by that? Yeah, it’s a point where money magnifies. Okay. Okay, so a lot of people will say, well, hey, listen, that person didn’t have a lot of money, they got a whole lot of money at one time, money ruined them. Well, did money ruin them? Or did money just reveal what was already in their heart? See, money magnifies. And what we’re talking about here is when we’re talking about managing our finances and putting money aside to be able to give, money is going to magnify your values. So I can look at your credit card statement, I can look at your checkbook, I can look at your bank statement and I’m going to see what you value here. I can see that money is carrying out your purposes. The discretionary money and the desired money and where you spend it is going to let me see what’s really in your heart. If you really peel into my financial statements, what you’ll notice is that I spend a huge amount of money on replica jerseys and not much on anything else. You spend a lot of money on those kind of jerseys and you spend a lot of money on buying books. That’s true. I’m a big, big book buyer. You buy books for yourself and you buy books for about a hundred other people that you love or you want to eventually love if they’ll read the book. That’s true. It’s a conditional love. Read this book and then I’ll love you. On to principle number six, be a saver. P.T. Barnum, the founder of Barnum and Bailey Circus, once famously said, a penny here and a dollar there. Place that interest goes on accumulating. In this way, the desired result is attained. There is more satisfaction in rational saving than in irrational spending. What does that mean in your mind? So, this whole mindset here of of an amount, we get obsessed with the amount and what we’re wanting here is the discipline of the action to set in motion their future, to set in motion these very powerful, abundant-minded, contribution-minded process of saving. It’s not the amount, it’s the action. It’s the mindset that really makes the difference. That the amount will grow in time. It’ll be like a snowball rolling down the hill. What are the key reasons to save in your mind? Key reasons to save. There’s so many of them. Number one, it gets you into this creative mindset. It tells you in a subconscious level that you’re coming from a place of abundance. You’re coming from a place of not inadequacy that shuts down your creativity. A lot of times we look at problems here and we just get overwhelmed by them because we don’t look at ourselves as capable. When we save, we actually, we literally reinforce this contribution, this creativity, this abundant mindedness that we can solve our problems better. Another thing here is we set ourselves up for the unpredictable stuff that predictably comes along. You said earlier about every few months one of my kids, you know, chases a parked car or always head first on concrete or whatever it may be. It’s awesome. And so we find ourselves having these unexpected expenses here. Well let’s begin to put money aside to begin to set up like an emergency fund. I’ve read a lot of articles but more importantly I’ve met a lot of people specifically who’ve been wiped out of business because of an emergency and they say well I was robbed and there’s no way you can plan for that or I had a flood or I had a and I can tell you this you’re going to have an emergency you’re going to have a flood a fire theft it’s going to happen so save for it buy insurance for it get ready for it because it’s going to happen. I think it’s really important that we all begin living that way because to truly thrive you also have to survive those big events that happen. Absolutely. There’s a stat here that just blows my mind. CNN Money in June 25, 2012 had an article they posted and it says 28% of Americans have no emergency savings. No, not just little but no, none at all. I’ve read different articles and I’m sure you could research it, but all the research I’ve ever done shows that about almost half of Americans don’t have enough to make it more than two weeks without a job. That is amazing. The idea of savings is setting yourself up to handle those emergencies. Sometimes when you’re not set up to handle the emergencies and it drains everything, it begins to shut you down in your business. It begins to, like, oh wow, you’re just, you get overwhelmed and your business gets shut down, you get distracted. You know, there’s a number of other reasons here. Just allowing yourself, most of our thrivers love to give. And someday, you know, I mean I’ve talked to so many of them, they said, man, I would love someday to write a check for a hundred thousand dollars to the charity my choice. And so when you get into the mindset of savings you’re saving all, you set yourself up to be an extravagant giver sometime in the future. You learn to to set yourself up where you’re living from a place that you have enough. You’re not going to be knocked off your, the rocker, knocked off your foundation so quickly. It allows you to to live your values. So many of us are just surviving with you know, you look at my checkbook and you’re going to see my values. All my values are buying food, paying utilities, paying my mortgage, letting my kids not die. That’s what I’m living for. And there’s no values there, it’s just survival. You can get to where you can begin to save beyond that you begin to think differently it begins to open up your mind. There’s one guy who’s one of the Thrive investors and he’s featured on the Thrive episodes, Braxton Fears, phenomenal guy. And one of the things that Braxton has done is that he and his wife have chosen to live below their means. They’ve chosen to save. Even though they didn’t have to save necessarily, but he went out and bought a basically we’ll call it a structure. He calls it a structure. It wasn’t really a house. It was more of like a garage meets a cabin or something out in the woods. But they bought that thing. I don’t know the exact total. Let me just say it was about 20% of what their house was that they previously owned. And they moved into the woods. They renovated this thing. It’s gorgeous. But the thing was is that they decided, hey, we’re going to live below our means. We’ll never have a house payment again. We will never have a, you know, they were just going to live below our means and I have never seen more sincere excitement and joy and somebody over a period of time because it’s like there’s no burden it’s completely carefree it’s like a child the child doesn’t wake up every day with this wondering how they’re gonna pay their bills or wondering how they’re gonna pay off something they committed to they just can be all in that moment and as adults a lot of times you see adults on vacation they’re calculating how much the expenses are going to be, how much their bills are going to be when they get home. Can I afford to be gone? And I just want to encourage you to move to a place like that. That’s what Braxton has done. I know a lot of people who’ve done it. And I’m telling you, living below your means is huge. Saving is just so powerful. With all my clients, I work with them to set up a savings process within their business. Why is that? With cash, you’re positioned for power. You can take care of these deals. There’s always that deals come along here where you can buy something for a dime on the dollar, 25 cents on the dollar. When you’ve got cash, you’re positioned with power. Bankers like you. When you need to get loans for this or need to set up your finances to move around, you need some participation with bankers. They love when you know how to put money aside. You know, when you borrow money, you’re taking from your future to have right now. When you invest and you save, you’re taking from your present to have in the future. And this is a very, very important concept for us to have when we begin to position ourselves with a mindset to put money aside. I had one client tell me, very successful business man, he says, why would I want to put money aside in the savings account? I want to get my money working for me. He is… we’ve shifted from that mindset here. We just got done buying a business for cash, by the way. Well, just a few weeks ago, about a year and a half ago, I introduced this concept, started working with him. He stored up enough money in his savings account within his business there that he’s just taking care of all kinds of special deals because he’s positioned with power. Because of that savings. It’s a very, very, very important concept for us to get into and practice. It’s not the amount, it’s the action that really counts. I would say this, with every time you save an amount, your confidence level goes up. And with every dollar you save, your confidence level goes up. And I can tell you, when you have $300,000 in the bank, your confidence is pretty high to choose whether to do something or not to do something. Even a million dollars in your bank account is even higher. You can be more selective about the jobs you take, the jobs you don’t take, the employees you hire, the employees you don’t hire. You feel less panicked. It’s just absolutely important. The final principle that we really want to get into here is managing your money. This principle here is getting out of debt. We have to get out of debt. We can’t manage our money if we’re in debt. So Tim, here are some interesting facts about debt. When Forbes, every year they do this feature called the Forbes 400, where they basically interview the 400 wealthiest people on the planet. And 75% of them said that the best way to build wealth is to become and stay debt free. That’s amazing. That’s amazing. That’s like their tip. Stay debt free, man. I would think that they would use this strategy to buy businesses or to do this to build your business but getting debt free was their key. That’s remarkable. Here’s a little notable quotable here. Dave Ramsey, he’s kind of the financial planning guru. He says that he calls interest from debt a stupid tax. Basically you have interest that you’re paying as a result of debt from financing a TV right now. If you bought a TV on credit, maybe you bought a couch, maybe you’re sitting right now on a chair or a couch that you bought and you’re paying interest on it month after month after month. I didn’t say it, but Dave Ramsey calls that a stupid tax, meaning that you’re paying a stupid tax because you borrowed against your future. You took money you didn’t have to buy something you really didn’t need and now you’re paying for it every day. And then final little notable quotable little statistic here for you is Sears Roebuck now, they make more money on interest from their credit cards than they do actually selling merchandise. That’s remarkable to me. Yet, and when their catalog first came out in 1910, it warned about the folly of buying things on credit. That’s amazing. Tim, from your perspective, dive in here about why is it so important for us to stay out of debt and why don’t more people stay out of debt? Well it’s easy to get into debt. We have to understand that. Why are people in debt? First of all, our credit systems around us, they make it so easy. You know, this whole problem in 2008, 2009, the whole, what is now called the Great Recession here, that we lived through it. It was really driven by a lot of this ease of credit with non-qualified people and them selling those and selling it again is this good security, when really it was bad security that they were selling. And so, you know, that it’s so easy to get money, and then we have this compulsiveness. We have this instant gratification. We’re driven to say, well, I’ve got to have that TV. The TV that I’m watching this Thrive show on here, it’s a 70-incher, and I’m telling you I got it on sale. It’s on sale. I saved $1,000 on this thing. I only had to pay five thousand dollars with all the extra stuff that I had to get with it here. And boy, I mean I could afford a $400 TV, but who wants a $400 TV? I needed to finance the rest of it. So we get in this debt here because it’s so easy and we’re struggling with this compulsiveness and what it does is it, debt is like putting a chokehold around our creativity. It puts a straitjacket around our ability to really move us around in our business to grow it, to be able to implement a lot of what you’re telling us to do, Clay, and through all these interviews and these incredible best practices that we’re proposing in these videos. When we have a straitjacket of debt around, we feel helpless with this thing. It’s horrible. Now, Tim, you say that you set up all your clients to be their own banker. What does that mean? All right, so I began to say that in our last principle, that I want all of our clients to begin to aggressively save money. I had one client last year that they had years and years of no profit. And I started working with them. We work on this principle of first be fruitful, then multiply. So we didn’t start really multiplying the sales, we took care of the systems in there. We took the same million and a half, two million dollars that they made for the last 13 years with no profit, and we actually generated $300,000 profit. In this process here, they hardly had any money in the bank account. Now, we paid down over $200,000 in debt. It’s a small company and they’ve got a hundred seventy five thousand dollars now. I just checked with them. It’s over two hundred twenty five thousand dollars in cash that they got. They’re being positioned with power and and when they can be their own bank, when they’ve got enough money where they can fund their own projects here, they can do it on their terms, on their timing. They’re not a slave to anybody else. Like, for instance, I’m working with one client that’s a fairly large client out in California, about $75 million a year. One of their clients is called the Irvine Company. They’re their own banker. They build these 500 unit apartment complexes, and they fund the whole thing with their own cash. They have found that they make so much money when they leverage this themselves here. And so being your own banker is really setting yourself up where either you don’t have to borrow money at all or you’re in a really good cash position so that your bankers give you the very best rates. Well, Sam, I know you talk a lot about how debt’s bad. We need to pay off debt, get out of debt. And I think we agree with you. But what is a specific debt payoff strategy that you’d recommend? Well, first of all, let’s take a look at the two kinds of debt there is. There’s good debt and bad debt. Good debt is when you’re going into debt to get something that’s going to make you money. Like when you buy these cameras that are filming us. That’s going to make you money. When you, and I understand you didn’t go into debt, you paid cash with it, which is even better. Bad debt is when you are buying consumer goods, couches and TVs, vacations. When you go into debt on things with discretionary and desired expenses here, you’re not going to ever make any money on that. That’s really, really stupid tax, as Dave Ramsey says, is just being overwhelmed. And so when you get into a debt structure, you have to make sure that you take a really good look at your debt, what kind of debt you’re getting into, that it’s so easy to go into debt. Really, I would recommend, Clay, a real action item when people find themselves in a lot of debt. When you’re in debt, you can go into even more debt. And a lot of our viewers have experienced that. I’ve experienced that. A lot of people have experienced that. And so I’m going to recommend as an action item is that before you go into debt that you’re actually gonna talk to somebody, maybe a financial advisor, maybe a coach, maybe a friend that you really respect but really talk to somebody. Do you really need to go into debt? Is this something you can put off until you’ve got some money saved for it? When we get into to the debt reduction plan I recommend what a lot of financial planners call the snowball snowball pay down. And we’ve got this on a chart here where when we want to pay down our debt, we first of all, we want to get a list of all of our debt. And a lot of times, people will not want to get a list of all their debts. They don’t want to know where they’re at because it’s so painful. It’s going to reveal all their bad habits. Well, not wanting your bad habits revealed doesn’t get rid of this bad habits. You need to embrace them. And so we’re telling people just embrace where you’re at. Find out exactly where you are. And I recommend first of all you get a list of all your debt. You want to get a list of all your debt here. And here we have a Visa, a Visa credit card balance of $800, Discover of $3,200, you have a car payment of $13,400, you have a house of $205,000. And there’s a lot of our people watching now that says you can buy a house for $205,000 and some of this this is like a half a garage or a garage door. Anyway, so you have this, we have the total amount of money that we have. So what is the debt paid? What’s the snowball effect? What we want to do is we want to line up all of our debt that we have and we’re not so concerned about the interest payments. I mean the interest rates. A lot of people say, well you want to pay off your highest interest rates first. I don’t recommend that. I recommend that you take the lowest balance and move up to the highest balance regardless of your interest rate. And the reason for that is that the debt pay down is not just a logical process. As a matter of fact, it’s more of a psychological and emotional issue. And so you want to get an early victory as soon as you can on that. And so you get this list, you put them in order of balance that you have. What is the minimum payment that’s required here? And then what’s really key on the snowball effect here, Clay, is you want to be able to have an extra debt payment that you can set aside each month. So step one is we’re going to list all of our debts from the lowest balance on top to the highest balance on the bottom? Yeah. OK. And then step two is you want to list the balance and the minimum monthly payment and the number of payments remaining? Yeah, we’ve got the balance here, we’ve got the minimum payments, we’ve got the number of payments remaining. Okay. Alright. And then the third thing, I guess your third principle is we want to determine the extra debt payment amount. Okay, so when we want to really get serious about paying down our debt that we owe. And that is a total of $1,750 a month. The extra debt payment is saying, listen, every month we have the $1,750. How much additional dollars do we want to pay down against our debt amount every month, month in, month out? And that is, in this illustration, we’re going to set aside $300 to add to that $1,750 so that we’ve got now a total of $2,050 every month that we’re going to apply against our debt. And here’s how we’re going to do that. How does it say the fourth step is? Well the fourth principle, or the fourth step it says is create a new column for adjusted remaining payments based on adding the extra debt payment amount. Okay so here we go right over here this is this column that we’re talking about right here is this adjusted number of payments that are remaining. Now this Visa card we’re going to pay this for 25 more months okay and so with this new plan where we were paying $40 a month on this, we’re still paying the other bills. We’re not forgetting our other bills. But we’re going to add this $300, and we’re going to add this to the $40 right here. And so we’re going to put in our snowball payment is going to be not just $40, but $340. So you’re building up momentum. We’re building up momentum from the first day on board. The real key on the snowball pay down strategy is we’ve got to set up an extra debt payment. It’s almost like a savings account. I want to speak to this a little bit. I know two people personally who have gone in and implemented a strategy very similar to this and have totally changed their financial trajectory within like a four-year window of time. And another guy I can think of is a guy I know who actually graduated from college from a private university with a ton of debt. And he decided to use this strategy to pay off all of his student loans. Well, somebody might say, well, student loans, but no. He actually had a Visa card and the Discover card like you’re talking about, the car. And instead of having a house, he had the student loans. And he used this strategy, this very strategy you have right here, and it was neat to see the little victory in his life over a two-year window of time as he began to generate that momentum. Oh yeah. Here’s what’s really important. Because debt, Clay, debt is so emotional and psychological. It’s not just steps one, two, three. We got into it emotionally through this compulsion. There’s tremendous emotion that comes out of this discipline that we have. Here we’re adding $300 to our $40 payment. Now we’re putting $340 a month against our $800. We’ve only got three payments there. Actually, less than three payments. Makes sense. Now here’s the key to really understand, because a lot of our entrepreneurs, a lot of our thrivers, some of them are really good with numbers, and some of them like check out when we talk about numbers. Stay in there with me. I tell you this is gonna be really really important because this is going to be it’s gonna be setting the captive free. I’m gonna do some Sunday morning preaching here. Alright so now we go on to our next debt is the Discover Bill. We have $3,200 balance here. We’re making this minimum payment of $150. Now what we’re gonna do is we’re going to get $150 payment, but we’re going to add $340. Now why is $340? Because we still have this $300 a month, which is the extra debt payment amount, it’s that snowball payment amount, but we also keep paying the debt we were paying. Even though this debt’s paid off in Visa, we’re going to continue to apply the money that we were applying to that Visa, now into the next payment. Now the snowball is rolling down the hill, it’s getting a little bit bigger. It’s gone from $340, now it’s $340 plus $150 is now $490 that we’re having coming against that. Now we only have $490. we’ve only got about six payments against this. Instead of having 27 payments, now we got about six payments to pay off this. Makes sense. Just discover. It keeps going down time after time. I just did this with a client not too long ago. They’re in my office and I’m telling them about this. We got all their debt lined up. They feel hopeless. They feel hopeless. They’re just overwhelmed, just drowning in his debt. I showed this chart to them and the wife starts crying, Clay. She’s crying. The chart was emotional. Not because I said something offensive, because I’ve had people cry when I say something offensive. This time it wasn’t that. She literally could see that they could be completely out of debt, completely out of debt with a simple plan in less than five years, and they felt like they were gonna be lost in it forever. Now, one thing that’s powerful here is if you feel like, if you’re watching this right now, and you feel like you just have no ability to get out of debt and you have a sense of hopelessness, I recommend that you do a screen grab. You pause it right now, and you immediately begin making a spreadsheet just like this. And if you don’t have a spreadsheet, go grab a sheet of paper, write it down, but go ahead immediately. I mean, we’re talking about today. Like if you’re watching this right now and you have to go to work in a minute, when you get home from work, let’s do this. This is something we want to do because you can get out of debt and you can be very powerful about how you manage your money. What I have found, Clay, remarkably, almost with any debt amount, including that home mortgage, that if they will be really aggressive with this extra payment amount to really… And I have worked with people that no matter what their amount is, Clay, when they begin to set this up and they get really aggressive with that extra payment and they can find the money for this extra… Oh, there’s no way I can have the money for this extra payment. They can find it by reducing the number of visits to Starbucks, bless its holy name, okay, for the life’s sake they’re trying. They, you know, there’s all kinds of expenses there, looking at their insurance, and you know a lot of times people are wasting money on their insurance and paying too much on this, or they’ve got bad habits of this or that. that there’s almost every client I can come up with $300 with $500. And what I have found is almost every client can get completely out of debt in seven years or less. It’s remarkable. It’s remarkable. Even though it feels like you’re way beyond seven years, give this, really give it a chance. Really focus on it. And I’m telling you, just the hope and the victory you’re going to feel and the power you’re going to feel, you’re going to start ripping off that straight jacket. You’re going to feel like a whole new man, a whole new woman. Tim, I know in your career you’ve had a lot of success, and one thing I think that’s exciting is you’ve helped a lot of people get their finances in order. I know that you could be anywhere in the world right now. Literally, you’ve been all over the world, and I appreciate you taking some time to be here with us tonight. And I just want to again say thank you so much for teaching us these seven principles for powerfully managing our money. Just I appreciate your time. Thank you so much for letting me be here, Clay. Thank you. The number of new customers that we’ve had is up 411% over last year. We are Jared and Jennifer Johnson. We own Platinum Pest and Lawn and are located in Owasso, Oklahoma. And we have been working with Thrive for business coaching for almost a year now. Yeah, so what we want to do is we want to share some wins with you guys that we’ve had by working with Thrive. First of all, we’re on the top page of Google now, okay? I just want to let you know what type of accomplishment this is. Our competition, Orkin, Terminex, they’re both $1.3 billion companies. They both have 2,000 to 3,000 pages of content attached to their website. So to basically go from virtually non-existent on Google to up on the top page is really saying something. But it’s come by being diligent to the systems that Thrive has, by being consistent and diligent on doing podcasts and staying on top of those podcasts to really help with getting up on what they’re listing and ranking there with Google. And also, we’ve been trying to get Google reviews, you know, asking our customers for reviews. And now we’re the highest rated and most reviewed Pescemon company in the Tulsa area. And that’s really helped with our conversion rate. And the number of new customers that we’ve had is up 411% over last year. Wait, say that again. How much are we up? 411%. Okay. So 411% we’re up with our new customers amazing, right? So not only do we have more customers calling in we’re able to close those deals at a much higher rate than we were before Right now our closing rate is about 85% and that’s largely due to First of all, like our Google reviews that we’ve gotten people really see that our customers are happy But also we have a script that we follow and so when customers call in they get all the information that they need, that script has been refined time and time again. It wasn’t a one and done deal. It was a system that we followed with Thrive in the refining process and that has obviously, the 411% shows that that system works. Yeah, so here’s a big one for you. So last week alone, our booking percentage was 91%. We actually booked more deals, more new customers last year than we did the first five months, or I’m sorry, we booked more deals last week than we did the first five months of last year, from before we worked with Thrive. So again, we booked more deals last week than the first five months of last year. It’s incredible, but the reason why we have that success is by implementing the systems that Thrive has taught us and helped us out with. Some of those systems that we’ve implemented are group interviews. That way we’ve really been able to come up with a really great team. We’ve created and implemented checklists. Everything gets done and it gets done right. It creates accountability. We’re able to make sure that everything gets done properly, both out in the field and also in our office. And also doing the podcast like Jared had mentioned, that has really, really contributed to our success. But that, like I said, the diligence and consistency in doing those in that system has really, really been a big blessing in our lives. And also, it’s really shown that we’ve gotten a success from following those systems. So before working with Thrive, we were basically stuck. Really no new growth with our business. And we were in a rut, and we didn’t know. Oh, sorry. The last three years, our customer base had pretty much stayed the same. We weren’t shrinking, but we weren’t really growing either. Yeah, and so we didn’t really know where to go, what to do, how to get out of this rut that we’re in. But Thrive helped us with that. You know, they implemented those systems, they taught us those systems, they taught us the knowledge that we needed in order to succeed. Now it’s been a grind, absolutely it’s been a grind this last year. But we’re getting those fruits from that hard work and the diligent effort that we’re able to put into it. So again, we were in a rut, Thrive helped us get out of that rut. And if you’re thinking about working with Thrive, quit thinking about it and just do it. Do the action and you’ll get the results. It will take hard work and discipline, but that’s what it’s gonna take in order to really succeed. So we just wanna give a big shout out to Thrive, a big thank you out there to Thrive. We wouldn’t be where we’re at now without their help. Hi, I’m Dr. Mark Moore, I’m a pediatric dentist. Through our new digital marketing plan, we have seen a marked increase in the number of new patients that we’re seeing every month, year over year. One month, for example, we went from 110 new patients the previous year to over 180 new patients in the same month. And overall, our average is running about 40% to 42% increase month over month, year over year. The group of people required to implement our new digital marketing plan is immense, starting with a business coach, videographers, photographers, web designers. Back when I graduated dental school in 1985, nobody advertised. The only marketing that was ethically allowed in everybody’s eyes was mouth-to-mouth marketing. By choosing to use the services, you’re choosing to use a proof and turnkey marketing and coaching system that will grow your practice and get you the results that you’re looking for. I went to the University of Oklahoma College of Dentistry, graduated in 1983, and then I did my pediatric dental residency at Baylor College of Dentistry from 1983 to 1985. Hello my name is Charles Colaw with Colaw Fitness. Today I want to tell you a little bit about Clay Clark and how I know Clay Clark. Clay Clark has been my business coach since 2017. He’s helped us grow from two locations to now six locations. We’re planning to do seven locations in seven years and then franchise. And Clay has done a great job of helping us navigate anything that has to do with running the business, building the systems, the checklists, the workflows, the audits, how to navigate lease agreements, how to buy property, how to work with brokers and builders. This guy is just amazing. This kind of guy has worked in every single industry. He’s written books with Lee Crocker, the head of Disney with the 40,000 cast members. He’s friends with Mike Lindell. He does Reawaken America tours where he does these tours all across the country where 10,000 or more people show up to some of these tours. On the day-to-day, he does anywhere from about 160 companies. He’s at the top. He has a team of business coaches, videographers, graphic designers, and web developers. They run 160 companies every single week. So think of this guy with a team of business coaches running 160 companies. So in the weekly, he’s running 160 companies. Every six to eight weeks, he’s doing Reawaken America tours. Every six to eight weeks, he’s also doing business conferences where 200 people show up and he teaches people a 13-step proven system that he’s done and worked with billionaires helping them grow their companies. So I’ve seen guys from startups go from startup to being multi-millionaires, teaching people how to get time freedom and financial freedom through the system of critical thinking, document creation, organizing everything in their head to building it into a franchisable, scalable business. One of his businesses has like 500 franchises. That’s just one of the companies or brands that he works with. Amazing guy, Elon Musk, kind of like smart guy. He kind of comes off sometimes as socially awkward but he’s so brilliant and he’s taught me so much. When I say that like Clay is like he doesn’t care what people think when you’re talking to him. He cares about where you’re going in your life and where he can get you to go and that’s what I like the most about him. He’s like a good coach. A coach isn’t just making you feel good all the time. A coach is actually helping you get to the best you and Clay has been an amazing business coach. Through the course of that we became friends. I was really most impressed with him is when I was shadowing him one time. We went into a business deal and listened to it. I got to shadow and listen to it. When we walked out I knew that he could make millions on the deal and they were super excited about working with him. He told me, he’s like, I’m not going to touch it. I’m going to turn it down. Because he knew it was going to harm the common good of people in the long run. The guy’s integrity just really wowed me. It brought tears to my eyes to see that this guy, his highest desire was to do what’s right. And anyways, just an amazing man. So anyways, impacted me a lot. He’s helped navigate. Anytime I’ve gotten nervous or worried about how to run the company or navigating competition and an economy that’s like, I remember we got closed down for three months. He helped us navigate on how to stay open, how to get back open, how to just survive through all the COVID shutdowns, lockdowns. I’m Rachel with Tip Top K9, and we just want to give a huge thank you to Clay and Vanessa Clark. Hey guys, I’m Ryan with Tip Top K9. Just want to say a big thank you to Thrive 15. Thank you to Make Your Life Epic. We love you guys. We appreciate you and really just appreciate how far you’ve taken us. This is our old house. Right, this is where we used to live a few years ago. This is our old neighborhood. See? It’s nice, right? So this is my old van and our old school marketing. And this is our old team. And by team, I mean it’s me and another guy. This is our new house with our new neighborhood. This is our new van with our new marketing and this is our new team. We went from 4 to 14 and I took this beautiful photo. We worked with several different business coaches in the past and they were all about helping Ryan sell better and just teaching sales, which is awesome, but Ryan is a really great salesman, so we didn’t need that. We needed somebody to help us get everything that was in his head out into systems, into manuals and scripts and actually build a team. So now that we have systems in place, we’ve gone from one to ten locations in only a year. In October 2016, we grossed 13 grand for the whole month. Right now it’s 2018, the month of October, it’s only the 22nd, we’ve already grossed a little over 50 grand for the whole month. And we still have time to go. We’re just thankful for you thankful for thrive and your mentorship. And we’re really thankful that you guys have helped us to grow a business that we run now instead of the business running us just thank you, thank you, thank you 10,000 Whoa, the Thrive Time Show two day interactive business workshops are the world’s highest rated and most reviewed business workshops because we teach you what you need to know to grow. You can learn the proven 13 point business systems that Dr. Zellner and I have used over and over to start and grow successful companies. We get into the specifics, the specific steps on what you need to do to optimize your website. We’re going to teach you how to fix your conversion rate. We’re going to teach you how to do a social media marketing campaign that works. How do you raise capital? How do you get a small business loan? We teach you everything you need to know here during a two-day, 15-hour workshop. It’s all here for you. You work every day in your business, but for two days you can escape and work on your business and build these proven systems so now you can have a successful company that will produce both the time freedom and the financial freedom that you deserve. You’re going to leave energized, motivated, but you’re also going to leave empowered. The reason why I built these workshops is because as an entrepreneur, I always wish that I had this. And because there wasn’t anything like this, I would go to these motivational seminars, no money down, real estate, Ponzi scheme, get motivated seminars, and they would never teach me anything. It was like you went there and you paid for the big chocolate Easter bunny, but inside of it, it was a hollow nothingness. And I wanted the knowledge, and they’re like, oh, but we’ll teach you the knowledge after our next workshop. And the great thing is we have nothing to upsell. At every workshop, we teach you what you need to know. There’s no one in the back of the room trying to sell you some next big get-rich-quick, walk-on-hot-coals product. It’s literally we teach you the brass tacks, the specific stuff that you need to know to learn how to start and grow a business. I encourage you to not believe what I’m saying, but I want you to Google the Z66 auto auction. I want you to Google elephant in the room. Look at Robert, Zellner and Associates. Look them up and say, are they successful because they’re geniuses or are they successful because they have a proven system? When you do that research, you will discover that the same systems that we use in our own business can be used in your business. Come to Tulsa, book a ticket, and I guarantee you it’s going to be the best business workshop ever, and we’re going to give you your money back if you don’t love it. We’ve built this facility for you, and we’re excited to see it. And now you may be thinking, what does it actually cost to attend an in-person, two-day And now you may be thinking, what does it actually cost to attend an in-person, two-day interactive Thrive Time Show Business Workshop.