RPF0222-Steve_Stewart_Interview2
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00:00:30.000 | What are the benefits to getting out of debt and staying out of debt? Today on the show
00:00:37.000 | we talk with Steve Stewart from Money Plan SOS and he shares his story of being a normal
00:00:44.000 | guy who decided to get out of debt, got out of debt, and shares with us some of the options
00:00:49.800 | that opened up to him in his life.
00:00:56.800 | Welcome to the Radical Personal Finance Podcast. My name is Joshua Sheets and I'm your host.
00:01:12.960 | Thank you for being here. This is the show where we talk about financial independence
00:01:17.080 | each and every day, try to give you the tools and ideas and strategies that you need to
00:01:22.840 | build your financial independence, and then walk with you, encouraging you daily as you
00:01:28.600 | do the work that's necessary to build financial independence for yourself and your family.
00:01:35.600 | Today I invite Steve Stewart on to talk about the work that he has done in his life and
00:01:45.200 | how that has benefited him and his family. Steve is the founder of the podcast and website
00:01:51.400 | Money Plan SOS where he specifically focuses primarily on helping people get out of debt.
00:01:56.880 | He's a budget coach. He's a financial coach.
00:01:59.040 | We met originally at I think it was FinCon maybe, something like that, a year ago. Maybe
00:02:06.040 | we even connected before that. I don't remember specifically. But what impressed me about
00:02:10.300 | Steve is his consistency of work and his consistency of message. I'm hoping that you'll get a couple
00:02:16.200 | of things from this interview, which is why I've invited him on.
00:02:18.360 | Number one, Steve is just a normal American guy, just a normal guy. But I want you to
00:02:23.800 | hear the impact that focusing on his financial plan and working his way out of debt has made
00:02:29.680 | on his ability to get closer and closer toward his dreams. He really has a really neat story.
00:02:35.120 | I love his story because it's very accessible. Oftentimes I feel like gurus that come along
00:02:40.280 | and want to tell you their story about how they're making millions and millions of dollars
00:02:43.920 | a month are simply not very accessible. At least they're not to me. Maybe they are to
00:02:48.040 | you. But to me, oftentimes I find more encouragement and hope from talking with people who are
00:02:53.720 | similar to me. Additionally, I want you to pay attention,
00:02:57.120 | those of you who are interested in financial planning and financial coaching, I want you
00:03:00.400 | to pay attention to some of Steve's wins and learnings in his own personal journey as a
00:03:05.400 | financial coach. Steve really has a heart to help people and to coach people with their
00:03:10.480 | finances and he's worked hard at that. Yet I also want you to hear the challenge that
00:03:16.040 | has been to make a business out of that because I know many of you are working on that same
00:03:21.240 | path. Here we go. Let's go. Steve, welcome to the Radical Personal Finance
00:03:26.120 | Podcast. I appreciate you being with me. Mr. Radical PF, thanks for having me.
00:03:30.200 | This is your second appearance on the show. Yeah. It seems like I keep making events happen
00:03:35.380 | and opportunities come up. When I take action with you, it seems like it gets me on your
00:03:39.600 | show. Well, exposure creates opportunity, right?
00:03:41.920 | So I've been wanting to have you on to talk about debtlessness and debt freedom and the
00:03:47.280 | path out of debt. You have a pretty cool story, just kind of a normal guy who got encouraged
00:03:53.040 | to chart out your own path towards debt freedom. I've been wanting to discuss this episode
00:03:58.600 | on the show but I just hadn't gotten around to it yet. Last time we talked a lot about
00:04:03.760 | Dave Ramsey but we didn't even go much into your story. I'd love it if you'd kick us off
00:04:08.160 | with a little bit of a background on your story, especially as it pertains to money.
00:04:12.400 | Sure. I really wasn't that great with money. I wasn't horrible with money either. I grew
00:04:18.120 | up normal, livelihood, suburbs of a Chicago area, working retail, got married in 2000
00:04:26.800 | and my wife and I moved into a house. We had house debt. We had car debt. We had some credit
00:04:31.700 | card debt, nothing that we couldn't really take care of. Most of the time it was paid
00:04:35.060 | off every month but it wasn't until about 2004 I think is when I started to realize
00:04:41.320 | that a lot of the information I've been hearing about how money really works was wrong or
00:04:45.400 | it was confusing. You get a bit of advice from this person and a bit of advice from
00:04:49.600 | that person and you got a friend over here who says this is the best way to go and there's
00:04:53.360 | a hot stock over here. It's kind of like you're running around saying squirrel with your money
00:05:00.140 | all the time.
00:05:01.140 | What was an example of something that you later discovered was wrong?
00:05:04.760 | Later I discovered that buying single stocks wasn't for me. I didn't lose much money but
00:05:10.640 | I certainly didn't make money because I didn't know what I was doing. It was very inefficient.
00:05:13.920 | It was a great learning experience so I guess you could say that was a payment to education
00:05:19.920 | of my own.
00:05:20.920 | What got you into that because very few US Americans actually own single stocks ever.
00:05:25.160 | My story is very boring. Your audience is going to tune out very soon. It's very, very
00:05:29.000 | simple and very boring. After 9/11 my wife and I were like you know what we know that
00:05:34.320 | the market's going down and it wasn't a market decision but we decided we're going to show
00:05:38.440 | those terrorists. We're going to invest in the stock market. Here we are. We're just
00:05:42.600 | doing a little bit here and there in our 401ks. We thought well we got to get into investing
00:05:45.960 | in stocks. So we looked at a couple of things and I thought okay we live in St. Louis. I've
00:05:52.840 | always been a very, very big fan of Boeing. Boeing we knew would have a future. Boeing
00:05:57.840 | is down because the market's down. Let's buy some Boeing. We committed a dollar amount
00:06:01.960 | to invest and it was $500. So we bought $500 worth of Boeing stock. We got 12 shares. What
00:06:09.760 | I didn't realize was the Daytek account that I opened up. Daytek was then bought by Ameritrade
00:06:17.640 | and then Ameritrade merged with TD Ameritrade I guess it is. We were out of it before then.
00:06:22.400 | Anyway, I didn't realize that there was going to be a monthly maintenance fee on that. So
00:06:26.320 | this 12 shares of stocks was costing us like I don't know if it was $8 a month or $9 a
00:06:30.640 | month. There was no value in that. We were thinking about buying hold. Buy the stock,
00:06:37.480 | hold it, let it go up. We held onto it for a while and finally I was like you know what?
00:06:43.320 | This is just getting too expensive. We're not getting any value out of this. We've got
00:06:46.240 | two options. We sell the stock or we pay to have a stock certificate printed. It was $75
00:06:53.520 | and I thought okay let's do it. So we spent another $75 on these 12 shares of stock to
00:07:00.320 | actually have the paper certificate in our hands and I held onto that for years. I'll
00:07:05.760 | tell you there's a lot of education coming from this one little I don't even want to
00:07:10.880 | call it experiment. Yes, we saw the market go up and down but what I really lost in that
00:07:15.200 | deal more than anything was the time that I spent looking at Boeing all the time. If
00:07:21.920 | I was buying hold, what did it matter what the price was that day? What did it matter
00:07:25.920 | what the market did that month? It didn't matter because we weren't selling, we were
00:07:30.000 | buying and holding. Finally we did sell and we actually did make a profit on it because
00:07:33.720 | it has gone up quite a bit since then. But I'll tell you there's just a lot of energy
00:07:37.600 | that was expended in that one little emotional decision to get in the market and show those
00:07:42.640 | terrorists that we're Americans, we believe in our economy, we're going to fight by putting
00:07:48.960 | our dollars to work in the market.
00:07:51.160 | So you learned not to invest in single stocks. What's one other piece of advice that you
00:07:55.920 | followed initially then later decided wasn't for you?
00:08:00.360 | It was credit cards. I've decided that credit cards are not for me. It could be a very dangerous
00:08:07.160 | thing in my hands because people who listen to my show or listen to me talk, they think
00:08:11.600 | I'm a big planner and every penny is accounted for and it is and it's not easy for me. I
00:08:17.680 | could easily just go out there and buy stuff just because I want it. If I ever walk into
00:08:20.720 | a Best Buy, I have to purposely go way around the Apple products because I know if I go
00:08:27.160 | anywhere near it, it's kind of like that, "Oh!" You know, the aura that shines and the
00:08:32.280 | shiny laptops bring me over to the area and I start playing with these new gadgets. So
00:08:37.440 | I decided and it wasn't like one day it just came to me. But I had stopped using them.
00:08:43.920 | We had gone to cash for a couple of things and debit card for most things and online
00:08:48.520 | billing for the things that you don't pay for when you don't go outside the home, electric
00:08:54.200 | bill and cable bill, all that stuff you can do on online billing. I just stopped using
00:08:58.640 | them. I realized after like six months, I'm like, "Why do I have these? What are they
00:09:02.320 | doing for me?" And we could talk about the whole credit score and things like that but
00:09:07.160 | I just decided I'm not using them. I'm cutting them up and then a couple of weeks later,
00:09:10.960 | I decided, "Well, I cut them up. I may as well cancel the accounts. Why deal with identity
00:09:15.800 | theft problems if the account gets compromised?" And I haven't had a credit card. I haven't
00:09:21.240 | used a credit card, personal use or business use since 2000, I want to say 2007 and probably
00:09:27.640 | cut them all up by 2008.
00:09:29.800 | In the money story, you said you got married in 2000. Did you guys get into credit card
00:09:33.560 | that early in your marriage?
00:09:35.240 | I think each of us, we might have had a little bit of revolving credit here and there. We
00:09:39.640 | used our cards and we "used them responsibly by paying them off every month." So, it wasn't
00:09:45.160 | a big heavy deal. I think we did get into maybe about 2 or 3 thousand at one point but
00:09:50.680 | I'll tell you what, some of the housing expenses that were coming up, I'm glad that we stopped
00:09:56.360 | because we would have easily started financing. We did a kitchen remodel in '09. We just got
00:10:03.140 | all of the windows replaced in the house and that was $7,500. That's all been paid with
00:10:10.160 | cash. But if we hadn't made that decision early on to save up for those types of things
00:10:15.840 | and we wouldn't have got as much of a deal either if we'd financed it, then we'd still
00:10:19.940 | be paying on some of those.
00:10:21.760 | So you don't sound, and this is a compliment, this is not an insult. It doesn't sound like
00:10:28.640 | that radical of a story though, at least from what you described to me. You sound like you
00:10:32.640 | and your wife were just normal, typical people. Not necessarily irresponsible but you weren't
00:10:37.200 | deeply in debt. How did you wind up getting involved with the Money Plan SOS anti-debt
00:10:42.680 | movement?
00:10:43.680 | It's a passion. I feel like there's a mission. If people listen back to, I think it was episode
00:10:50.280 | 61 of your show when we had the conversation about Dave Ramsey's advice.
00:10:57.240 | Was he the influence originally for you that made you start paying more attention to money?
00:11:01.360 | Yes. I guess let me start with that piece of the story. I was working for a company
00:11:06.160 | and it caused me to travel a lot by car. So I was driving around and this is back in '03
00:11:11.160 | or '04 and before iPods, before podcasting, I was just flipping stations on the radio.
00:11:17.800 | Came across a station, I heard the DJ talking out to a commercial break. It was over a song
00:11:22.400 | by the Rippingtons. And I thought, "Oh, I like the Rippingtons. That's cool. I'll wait
00:11:25.800 | through the commercial break and here's a station I might want to listen to." The DJ
00:11:31.560 | came back on and he was talking over a song by Heart, Barracuda. I think, "Oh, this is
00:11:35.760 | a really cool variety show." Turns out it wasn't. It was a talk show and it was Dave
00:11:39.720 | Ramsey. It was this crazy guy yelling at his audience. I thought, "Well, this guy's nuts.
00:11:43.920 | He's saying everything contrary to everything I believe about money." I've been told to
00:11:48.280 | use credit cards responsibly, keep the mortgage because of the home interest deduction. And
00:11:52.520 | I ended up challenging everything that he said and found out that he was right.
00:11:56.680 | I was like, "This is information that I had never heard anywhere else and it needs to
00:12:03.280 | be spread around." My wife and I then, of course, got on the plan. We got through the
00:12:09.960 | emergency fund, paid off the consumer debt by '07, which was the majority of that was
00:12:14.600 | an SUV that we had financed in '06. We paid off in '07. I've been debt-free since then.
00:12:21.880 | Got an emergency fund, all that. Started more on retirement savings.
00:12:26.560 | Good for you.
00:12:27.560 | Yeah. Really, it was once I started to learn how all those pieces fit together that, "Okay,
00:12:33.200 | this makes sense for me." Like you said, normal, simple, average American guy. We never got
00:12:39.160 | into huge student loan debt. We never got into huge credit card debt. We never had...
00:12:43.560 | I can't say we never had. We had a $20,000 car loan at one point in our life. That's
00:12:48.800 | a big car. We just decided to make choices that were better. It's funny how you make
00:12:57.040 | those choices eight years ago and today you look back and you're like, "Wow, that was
00:13:00.640 | some of the best choices we ever made."
00:13:02.960 | You're completely debt-free today. You paid off the house too?
00:13:05.680 | No, we have $8,500 left.
00:13:07.640 | That's exciting.
00:13:08.640 | Yeah, I know. We've started paying a little bit ahead. We've had some other things come
00:13:13.440 | up. That's another reason why I like the process that we're going through is because we could
00:13:17.460 | put everything we want towards the house but then that would keep us from doing some other
00:13:20.960 | things like taking a family vacation or paying cash for those windows. Those things came
00:13:26.240 | in place first and so there's a process. There's a step-by-step thing that we've gone through
00:13:32.440 | and it's very comfortable. It's very easy to understand and so we're not suffering.
00:13:37.280 | We're not starving at any rate.
00:13:41.760 | What's the first moment that you remember when you looked at your wife and you said,
00:13:45.120 | "Man, I'm glad that we started paying more attention to our money"?
00:13:49.860 | The first time, I honestly don't remember a moment. Let me share this story because
00:13:57.740 | I'll tell you this is one of those after effects of getting out of debt. We went to a friend's
00:14:05.900 | Fourth of July celebration. They have this farm area, there's a log cabin, then on the
00:14:11.420 | other side of this creek, there's a pool, it's all open area. We sat down and they were
00:14:15.860 | going to shoot off some fireworks. Well, they were on this one side of this hill and then
00:14:22.400 | you have a walkway and there's this chain link fence that surrounds a creek. You walk
00:14:28.140 | over the short bridge to get to the other area where the pool is and we sat underneath
00:14:32.020 | the tree. We're behind people so we figure this is a really safe place just in case and
00:14:37.900 | it just started getting dusk and they're shooting off some of the kid fireworks and stuff like
00:14:41.300 | that. All of a sudden, there's this flash and my daughter's laying on her back. We're
00:14:47.340 | like, "What the heck just happened?" We're freaking out because she's laying on the ground
00:14:52.260 | and of course she's scared. We didn't know what happened. It ended up that there was
00:14:56.140 | a firework that they shot off. It fell off on its side. It shot down the hill, went through
00:15:01.660 | the chain link fence, went between all these other people who were behind and hit my daughter
00:15:05.980 | in the chest. Had it been six inches higher, this would be a different story. Thank God
00:15:10.500 | she's okay. It was one of those army men with the parachutes. Thank God it was that. Why
00:15:16.460 | am I telling the story? Well, it was a week later that I was telling the story to my best
00:15:21.180 | friend and it was that as that woman I realized, "You know what? We didn't worry about the
00:15:27.060 | money thing for one second." I know that sounds cold but when you're in the heat of the moment
00:15:33.100 | like that, all your attention needs to go on your daughter. That's it. And I don't know
00:15:39.060 | about you but I think for most guys, that's going to be in the back of their minds. "Oh
00:15:42.980 | my gosh, how much is this going to cost? Do we have the money for that?" Well, we were
00:15:45.860 | already out of debt. We had a huge emergency fund. So if we had to call the flight for
00:15:49.780 | life, bring it on. It didn't matter because this was our daughter. So we were in a different
00:15:54.300 | place because we had made those choices. We were debt free and I didn't have any of those
00:16:00.900 | distractions about money going on in my mind at the most important two minutes of our life
00:16:07.700 | right there. So that was a big moment of realization of, "Hey, what we've done is really smart."
00:16:15.300 | Why did you get involved in coaching? I think we needed to dispel a lot of the rumors out
00:16:21.500 | there that the common pieces of advice that come across as, "This is the way that you
00:16:28.700 | do it and there needs to be a more cohesive plan." I like what you do and it's you say,
00:16:36.420 | "We need to take each person's situation individually." You believe that, right? With
00:16:41.060 | all your heart. I do too. But I also know that there's the average American who needs
00:16:46.820 | just a simple blueprint. It doesn't have to be this complex thing. Just a simple blueprint
00:16:52.100 | and then you can make fine tune adjustments on the way. So I decided I needed to go in
00:16:58.380 | and start to offer to sit down with people one on one, go through their specific situations,
00:17:04.260 | their finances, what their goals are, walk them through the simple path. What I do isn't
00:17:10.460 | that complicated. I walk people through how to manage their checkbook. This isn't investing.
00:17:15.860 | I might educate them on what kind of insurances would work best for them but I'm not an expert.
00:17:21.100 | I just say, "Okay, if somebody talks to you about whole life, you need to know about this.
00:17:25.300 | You need to know about these alternatives." So I got into coaching just because I wanted
00:17:29.020 | to help people to make those better informed decisions with their purchases, with their
00:17:34.940 | investments, with their insurance even though I don't sell investments and insurance. I'm
00:17:38.700 | not qualified to sell investments and insurance and I'm happy about that.
00:17:42.940 | I do think simplicity is incredibly important for change. I have a real disease of my – some
00:17:50.220 | people have a tendency towards over action and under education. My bent is toward over
00:17:56.820 | education and under action. So I have to be very conscious of that and I recognize that
00:18:01.860 | it limits my effectiveness at being able to accomplish change in other people's lives.
00:18:09.060 | A simple roadmap is incredibly important for people to follow and it's better to have
00:18:17.740 | a simple plan that you work, that follows than to have the perfect elaborate complex
00:18:23.380 | plan that's so overwhelming that you never actually get started.
00:18:27.540 | And so I'm very thankful for example, I'm very thankful for Dave Ramsey in the financial
00:18:31.840 | space or other people in the health space or any area of life improvement that just
00:18:36.940 | simply say, "Here are five steps. Do one, do two, do three, do four, do five," because
00:18:42.380 | that can help people to go from not doing anything to doing something. I don't actually
00:18:47.340 | think that I'll ever have the kind of impact at least with – unless I change my message.
00:18:52.620 | I don't think I'll ever have the impact that a guy like Dave Ramsey has with his simple
00:18:56.980 | message because I won't come into place when somebody is going from out of control
00:19:02.620 | to in control. What I think is people like him will be able to help somebody take those
00:19:08.480 | first steps and kind of where I see my discussion fitting in is almost when people are ready
00:19:15.120 | for another level.
00:19:16.380 | When you've mastered some basics from whatever philosophy and I'm philosophy agnostic when
00:19:21.300 | it comes to financial management, once you've mastered the basics and you're ready to
00:19:25.940 | go up a little level and I guess level up as they say, then I think that's where my
00:19:31.640 | content fits in. So I'm very conscious of that and my hat's off to those who can just
00:19:36.420 | simply lay out a simple plan and not see all the flaws because all I can see is all the
00:19:41.300 | flaws.
00:19:42.300 | Well, when you boil it down, you live on lesson you make and you do something smart with a
00:19:48.020 | difference. Well, the smart with a difference piece is where the investing and stuff comes
00:19:51.400 | in and that's where you've got a lot more knowledge in the area than I do and I'm not
00:19:56.020 | going to pretend like I know everything about annuities, things like that.
00:20:01.500 | Don't worry, there's no one that knows everything about annuities. There's not a single person
00:20:06.140 | that knows.
00:20:07.140 | So I want to move to the story of your entrepreneurial journey. As I understand it, you're no longer
00:20:13.780 | working for a salary, is that right?
00:20:16.420 | Exactly.
00:20:17.420 | When was this change?
00:20:18.420 | It was March of 2015, so it's just three months ago.
00:20:21.540 | And what are you doing now?
00:20:22.780 | I'm working on coaching. The financial coaching was the basis of it but I've also, it's funny,
00:20:28.140 | I get more requests on Facebook from people in the podcasting space than listeners to
00:20:32.220 | my show and I've been doing the show since 2010.
00:20:34.660 | You mean for interviews, requests for interviews?
00:20:37.020 | No, no, to be friends. Just people who want to reach out and contact and so I've built
00:20:42.740 | somehow, I've been coaching since 2007. I launched the podcast in 2010. I really started
00:20:50.060 | getting involved with the podcasting space as far as podcasters and encouraging them
00:20:54.580 | to do their own shows a couple of years ago. Not as, I'm going to put myself above Cliff
00:21:00.440 | Ravenscraft or anything like that. Just, hey, I'll encourage you, help you and I've had
00:21:04.620 | more people come out and want my help in the podcasting space so I'm tying those two together.
00:21:10.060 | It's coaching in general, financial coaching one on one but it's also podcasting which
00:21:13.640 | is really interesting.
00:21:16.540 | Let's stick with financial coaching to start with and I want to cover two aspects of it.
00:21:20.460 | Number one, I want to cover the actual help that you give to people because I do have
00:21:24.760 | listeners who are new and they're saying, "Okay, I'm a little out of control with money.
00:21:28.920 | Where do I start?" And then I want to flip to actually the business of coaching because
00:21:32.560 | I have a number of listeners who are following the path of becoming financial coaches themselves.
00:21:37.420 | If I come to you as a coaching client, what are the initial stages of your advice to me
00:21:43.140 | as a money coach?
00:21:45.540 | So you're the client, I'm the coach. First of all, of course, we have to figure out what
00:21:48.860 | your situation currently is. We talk about debt load, talk about income. I want a very
00:21:54.000 | basic idea of the types of insurances that you've got, coverage for health and life and
00:21:59.700 | disability, things like that, auto, home as well. Once we get that idea of where you are,
00:22:05.100 | then we can start to sit down and say, "What is it that you want to accomplish when we're
00:22:09.780 | done here?" Whether that's a day, a week, a month, a three-month plan, whatever. And
00:22:15.900 | that's where we then have to decide, "Okay, how do we take this income here and drive
00:22:21.100 | those purchases, the spending towards hitting those goals?" If it has to do with cutting
00:22:29.020 | the education, excuse me, that's a good one, entertainment, cutting the entertainment.
00:22:36.100 | And I tell you, we have a problem here with cell phones and cable bill in this house.
00:22:42.540 | I think we spend too much. It doesn't seem like enough for what we pay, but it's what
00:22:48.460 | we use. And so how does that help us reach our goals? Well, we have other things we can
00:22:53.140 | do. How about the client that I'm working with? Is their cell phone bill more than they
00:22:57.940 | need or is it appropriate? Somebody who wants to eventually become a fitness trainer, well,
00:23:05.300 | they should probably have a gym membership and go into a gym once in a while. So I'm
00:23:09.020 | not going to tell them to cut that out. That's not going to help them reach their goals.
00:23:13.880 | That's the type of things that we have to look into while we're sitting and doing the
00:23:17.340 | coaching process of, "Okay, you're getting this income. Where does it need to go?" And
00:23:23.060 | of course, I walk through a process of budgeting that I think is different than anywhere else.
00:23:28.460 | And it just boils the process down to one sheet and it puts everything on there. And
00:23:34.020 | it shows your heart. It shows your priorities. They come out in the discussion where some
00:23:39.620 | people are like, "Oh, yeah, that is more important to me than I thought." Or, "Oh, I thought
00:23:44.380 | that was really important, but you're right. This needs to be above that in our prioritized
00:23:48.700 | list." I'll share with you one of my observations. I think that the concept of railing against
00:23:55.500 | people who are out of control with money for spending too much money on cars is quickly
00:24:00.540 | going into the ground. There are certainly many people who spend quite a bit of money
00:24:04.140 | on cars, but I don't think that's the most damaging thing facing most of our financial
00:24:09.060 | lives. It's not necessarily for many of us, it's not the biggest appreciating asset. I
00:24:14.620 | think that what's replaced that is phones and electronic gadgets. If you were to go
00:24:20.020 | into the life of the average, I'll just say 20 to 30 year old, let's just say early millennials.
00:24:27.380 | If you were to look at the amount of money that my generation spends on a $1,000 phone
00:24:32.220 | every couple of years, $600 phone, $700 phone, an iPhone, an iPad, a MacBook or other Windows
00:24:40.460 | laptop, whatever it is, and you were to put all of that together and figure out the depreciation
00:24:45.620 | costs, my generation is we're driving at a lower rate as far as the number of us who
00:24:51.420 | have driver's license. We're getting driver's license later, and the cars that we drive
00:24:55.400 | are not quite as expensive as they once were. That dream that used to be in the culture
00:25:00.860 | of, "Okay, I'm going to be 16 now. I can go ahead and get my own car. I'm defined by my
00:25:04.820 | car." Most of us aren't defined by our cars anymore, but that doesn't mean that the marketers
00:25:09.220 | haven't been able to sink their teeth into our budgets.
00:25:14.460 | Some people's cell phone bills, some people, that sounds so horrible because it used to
00:25:17.700 | be me too. We've cut ours down recently, but you're talking about a car payment. You'd
00:25:24.380 | be driving your phone because it's like a car payment. I agree with that. It's funny
00:25:29.460 | how 10 years ago, a monthly cell phone bill was $30 for 100 minutes. How that has changed
00:25:37.940 | to five times that. You can make phone calls and text all you want. It doesn't cost you
00:25:43.740 | a penny. It's the data, which is just an internet portal in your hand, but we pay for that right.
00:25:50.460 | I love it. I enjoy it. I find it hard to give up.
00:25:53.860 | I was just going to say, but flip it around, even though I'm aware of the cost, I wouldn't
00:25:59.420 | give it up because if you look at the sheer number of things that you can do that enhance
00:26:03.820 | your lifestyle, yes, communication, but also being able to run your business from anywhere.
00:26:09.020 | I remember when I was on my honeymoon, three or four years ago, I was a financial planner
00:26:14.100 | at the time. I was sitting on the beach in the Dominican Republic and sitting in a little
00:26:19.020 | hotel in Haiti with my wife. I could just grab my phone, take about 10 minutes, answer
00:26:24.100 | my client emails, forward stuff to my assistant, just handle things in about 10 minutes and
00:26:28.160 | go on with my life.
00:26:29.540 | If you look at the sheer flexibility of mobility that is available, and then you take and add
00:26:34.780 | on the ability to enhance your life with the sheer massive volume of education and inspiration
00:26:43.560 | that's available free on demand. If I were starting out flat broke, one of the first
00:26:49.880 | things I would be doing would be getting an appropriate mobile device and getting started
00:26:55.300 | because I couldn't replace. When I think back to the thousands and thousands of dollars
00:26:59.480 | that I spent on CD audio learning programs and I were to compare that to what's available
00:27:04.180 | to me now, it's a good deal if used productively to advance you towards your goals.
00:27:11.860 | So back to the...
00:27:12.860 | Well, you know what? I'd like to jump on that one more time because like you said, if I
00:27:16.700 | was just starting out, what is the one thing that people always say you need to do in business
00:27:20.700 | is to network. And I really, I mean, I can network with anybody anywhere, Facebook, Twitter,
00:27:28.980 | there's other things that you can use. So I can't discount the fact that this little
00:27:34.340 | portal here, this little phone, the iPhone is letting me talk to anybody anywhere at
00:27:38.280 | almost any moment's notice. And it's a lot easier to do it that way than to try and find
00:27:42.840 | their phone number, find when they're available to take my call, things like that. So there
00:27:48.680 | is a value to that, but I guess we have to weigh out how much of a value is that compared
00:27:54.360 | to what we're paying on a monthly AT&T bill.
00:27:56.400 | Yeah, the sweet spot is just go about a year behind everyone else. And if you just stay
00:28:00.360 | a year behind everyone else, then prices drop. I mean, right before iPhone 6 came out, you
00:28:06.120 | could get an iPhone 5 for like a buck or it was a buck or 99 bucks, whatever. But the
00:28:10.200 | prices plummet in value and you can go ahead. And as long as you just stay about a year
00:28:14.640 | behind, you're close enough to be able to take use of most of the stuff that's going
00:28:18.600 | on, but you're not on the cutting edge where you're taking the biggest hit on depreciation.
00:28:22.840 | It's funny. That's exactly what we did. Our contract was up, so we're on a month-to-month
00:28:27.840 | for a while. We decided, okay, the battery on my phone was dying because I use my phone
00:28:33.840 | a lot. So it was getting low. We needed, needed, hello, needed to upgrade my daughter from
00:28:39.360 | a LG Touch, which had the buttons, you know, it wasn't a touchscreen. We wanted to upgrade
00:28:43.960 | her for her Christmas gift. So in November, we went and picked up new phones and it was
00:28:49.240 | right after the 6 was announced. We could have gotten 6s, but we decided, you know what,
00:28:52.920 | we don't need it. We're going to stick with the 5s. So my wife and I both got 5s and my
00:28:58.000 | daughter got, I think it's a 5c. It's a lime green for a dollar. How do you beat that?
00:29:04.240 | So there is that initial cost up ahead, but it really is the data that we have to be more
00:29:08.480 | conscious of and how much data you use going forward. Yeah. And the cool thing is, as soon
00:29:13.360 | as I'm finished with this interview, though, I'm actually interviewing a guy who has been
00:29:16.920 | homeless for nine months. And, uh, but yet it, during that period of time, he's building
00:29:23.240 | and has built a web business, but somebody gave him a smartphone and he's just taking
00:29:27.920 | advantage of the free wifi and literally running a web business, uh, without owning a home
00:29:32.760 | and without having any data connection. So it's going to be a cool story. Uh, and I'm
00:29:38.120 | looking forward to bring it to the audience, but it illustrates, I think just the amazing
00:29:41.840 | opportunities that are available that have never been available regardless of how you
00:29:46.600 | actually have to do them. If I were going to do it over, uh, if I, you know, if I lost
00:29:51.600 | everything, I'd be down at the library. I wouldn't go back to traditional business.
00:29:55.880 | If I lost everything, I'd be down at the library, um, typing out blog posts on the library computer.
00:30:01.000 | I'm going to check out my local library system here. I don't have, my computers are woefully
00:30:05.680 | underpowered to do any kind of media graphics, but I just got noticed that one of my local
00:30:10.180 | libraries has established a big computer system, a bunch of fancy, I think a bunch of fancy
00:30:16.160 | fancy max that have all of the audio visual production stuff on them. So I'm going to
00:30:21.240 | go and kind of see if I can make a video or something on their equipment. And those opportunities
00:30:27.180 | exist today that for with a throwaway phone and access to the library, you can set up
00:30:33.960 | something even without an established home base and even without the, uh, even without
00:30:40.840 | all of the things that we come, come to know and love. The advertisement that the flyer
00:30:44.360 | that I got from my library actually advertised podcasting as one of the things you can do.
00:30:48.080 | And I'm going to go check out and see kind of what their setup is with microphones and
00:30:51.740 | computers that using the public library, you could go and establish a, an audio podcast
00:30:56.840 | all using their equipment.
00:30:58.480 | That's crazy. That's cool. I wonder if they have a little room for you in the sound booth
00:31:02.600 | or something. That's fun.
00:31:03.600 | Yeah, I'm going to go check it out. So back to the business story. So we talked a little
00:31:08.200 | bit about where you would start and I like that starting point. And obviously coaching
00:31:11.660 | then becomes intensely focused and personal. Now with regard to developing the coaching
00:31:17.600 | business, what's worked and what hasn't and have you actually made money enough to support
00:31:24.080 | yourself doing financial coaching?
00:31:27.000 | The quick answer is no. And that's very disappointing. Again, I've been building this business for
00:31:32.700 | years on the side and when the opportunity came to leave the full time job, it really
00:31:37.840 | was the best choice for me and the company I was working for. I knew that was the place
00:31:42.620 | I needed to go. I think this is a story that's still being written. I don't think it's, I
00:31:47.600 | think we're still kind of at the beginning, which when I look back, I'm disappointed because
00:31:51.000 | like I've, you know, I've worked so hard to build a name for myself and to show people
00:31:55.440 | my heart and they can, anybody can go to my website and just hear, you know, who I am
00:32:01.160 | from listening to any of my episodes. Maybe that's my problem. But yeah, it hasn't quite
00:32:07.400 | transitioned to that yet. So I'm still wondering if that story is being written. You want to
00:32:11.840 | know what has worked, I think is what your question was.
00:32:14.400 | Yeah. I'm going to rephrase the question though. Tell me the story of transformation in the
00:32:20.480 | client's life that has most impressed you. Keep obviously their personal details private,
00:32:24.560 | but describe the client and the change that happened because of coaching that for you
00:32:29.360 | has been the biggest encouragement where you said, wow, look at, look at what this person
00:32:33.360 | was able to do with some good coaching.
00:32:35.200 | You know, it's funny we talk about money and financial coaching, but it really turns out
00:32:39.280 | to be how the relationship has changed. There's a couple I still keep in touch with who the
00:32:45.680 | husband was going to be laid off at the end of the school year. So he had a few months
00:32:49.440 | notice. They were deeply in debt. They were arguing. And in fact, they were arguing when
00:32:54.800 | we met. We actually met closer to where they live. We met in the St. Louis Bread Company,
00:32:58.520 | which is a Panera Bread in other areas of the country. And we were sitting there and
00:33:03.160 | the conversation got heated.
00:33:05.600 | Between them or between them and you?
00:33:07.800 | Between them. Yeah, I guess. Thank you. Thanks for clearing it up. Between them, it was one
00:33:12.520 | of those, she was pointing at him, he was pointing to her and it was getting a little
00:33:16.520 | bit loud and stuff and I kind of tried to calm down. I explained something. I don't
00:33:20.840 | even remember what it was, but I remember walking them through something to show them
00:33:25.240 | that they're going to be okay. It's not going to be easy, but they're going to be fine as
00:33:29.200 | far as feeding the family and getting gas in the car, getting them to the basics. And
00:33:34.720 | something clicked and the wife's face changed. Her shoulders dropped and all of a sudden
00:33:41.640 | they just kind of looked at each other and they high-fived. And it was the weirdest thing.
00:33:45.960 | It was such a weird turnaround. And I still keep in touch with them today via social media.
00:33:52.960 | Because life's great for them. They still have a lot of problems that they have to deal
00:33:55.560 | with financially, but they're still together. They have a newborn. Tell me that doesn't
00:34:00.240 | happen. Marriages are resolved. Marriages stick together. That's probably very, very
00:34:06.600 | powerful right there. You just look back on that and say, "I think something that I did
00:34:12.440 | there fixed that or helped to solve, to save that marriage."
00:34:16.480 | Why do you think the business model hasn't worked to the point where I don't know of
00:34:20.640 | anybody that probably has a bigger footprint as a budget coach? You've got, let's see,
00:34:25.680 | you've done, I think you're a Dave Ramsey certified coach, right? Or certified counselor?
00:34:30.400 | Technically no. I went and got training from them, but no, that model doesn't exist anymore.
00:34:35.540 | But people who used to go there did. So I want to come up with you.
00:34:38.440 | But my point is, you've learned some things. You're not just hanging out a shingle without
00:34:43.880 | having studied anybody else's plan. But yet you haven't been able to build a full-time
00:34:48.880 | business exclusively on financial coaching. Why not? What hasn't worked?
00:34:54.560 | There's going to be some things in here we could talk about. I don't know how to close.
00:34:58.000 | I don't know how to make the sale. It's absolutely true. I just like to give and I know that
00:35:05.080 | causes me to not ask for the sale properly. So there's that. There's no advertising my
00:35:09.920 | show so I'm starting to change some of that to kind of show that, "Hey, I'm available
00:35:14.800 | if you want to get one-on-one coaching." And really I think the business model for
00:35:19.280 | coaching now has to, it doesn't exist on one-on-one coaching. A lot of the income that I'm getting
00:35:27.280 | is coming from affiliate sales. There's opportunities when you go and do financial wellness speaking
00:35:34.000 | at businesses. Because businesses, they will have the money to develop their employees,
00:35:40.240 | to help their employees. I mean look at the whole health wellness thing. Eight years ago
00:35:43.600 | that didn't exist and now you're just beginning to hear about financial wellness. If you can
00:35:49.160 | help somebody with their health and you can see the monetary impact on that, why wouldn't
00:35:54.400 | a business want to do that for their finances? Because the finances are what are taking them
00:35:58.640 | away from being productive at work. They're worried about the money thing. They're taking
00:36:03.640 | off extra time. Sick days, we found in studies that sick days are reduced once somebody has
00:36:11.520 | gone through some kind of financial coaching or financial wellness classes. Other studies
00:36:17.440 | have shown that the most common, I guess the time, what am I trying to say here? People
00:36:24.760 | check their bank accounts the most on Monday at 8 a.m. and they're doing it usually 8 a.m.
00:36:32.520 | is the beginning of a workday. So what does that tell you about people are worried about
00:36:36.840 | their finances? So as far as why is it not working, one-on-one coaching, I think that
00:36:41.340 | business model for me hasn't worked. Maybe it's because Joshua Sheets has all this wonderful
00:36:47.700 | information on radicalpersonalfinance.com. He's stealing all my business away from me.
00:36:54.000 | The reason I'm pointing it out is simply because it's a common theme. So I've received so many
00:36:58.840 | inquiries from people who want to be financial coaches. They don't want to be financial advisors.
00:37:04.760 | And so because I've received so much personal correspondence, I'm sure that there are other
00:37:08.640 | listeners I wanted to talk about your experience. I think the reason it doesn't work is because
00:37:13.160 | you're trying to help people who are broke, who by definition don't have any money to
00:37:18.080 | pay you for your help. And the fact that they're broke is indicative of the fact that they're
00:37:23.560 | not proactive about going and seeking out help. So the only way that I can see that
00:37:30.920 | it's possible to serve people who are broke and not proactive is on a mass basis. So the
00:37:38.520 | way that Dave Ramsey has on where you've got a free radio show and then the next step supported
00:37:43.880 | by advertising and then the next step there is a $10 book. And then the $10 book and the
00:37:49.320 | free radio show might do a good enough job to help someone to not be so broke and to
00:37:54.280 | inspire them to say I need to search out some information. And then at that point in the
00:37:58.200 | process, then they can afford to hire somebody for help. And I don't think it's necessarily
00:38:02.920 | – I'm trying to be very frank about the situation but that's the reason. It's
00:38:10.400 | hard to get rich selling services to people who can't pay you very much. So if it's
00:38:15.240 | about personal enrichment and building a business where you can earn a lot of money, your best
00:38:21.040 | bet is to work with people who are the wealthiest. And that's why we have this incredible skew
00:38:25.960 | in the financial advice industry where the majority of financial advisors are exclusively
00:38:32.320 | focused on or planning to be exclusively focused on serving the affluent. So the higher your
00:38:38.280 | balance sheet grows, the better advice you get access to and the more competition there
00:38:43.160 | is for your business. The lower the costs go, the more competition there is, the higher
00:38:47.240 | the service which is really, really weird because those are the people who frankly don't
00:38:53.000 | need so much help. It's the broke people who need a lot of help and who are being preyed
00:38:57.040 | on by scummy people selling scummy crap to them. And so the only way that I can see that
00:39:05.080 | we can change it is with information. Unfortunately, when working in the bottom end of the market
00:39:13.440 | income wise, there are reasons why people are there that aren't a character deficiency.
00:39:17.680 | There are people all throughout the world who are in very difficult circumstances. There
00:39:22.200 | are people who have faced unfortunate events that have wiped them out. Everything from
00:39:26.360 | the failure of a business to dropping out of the workforce to care for a loved one.
00:39:32.720 | Money and its accumulation is not an indication necessarily of a character deficiency or a
00:39:39.600 | character virtue. It might be one indication but it's not the only thing. But the problem
00:39:44.440 | is the information is out there for free but really without just some basic limited personal
00:39:51.400 | interaction, it's hard to figure out how to access those customers. The information is
00:39:56.920 | sitting there on the internet and the information has always been available for free. And those
00:40:00.680 | who are proactive about getting it, who are proactive about going down to the library
00:40:04.800 | and starting to read the books on money and talking to people that have money, they're
00:40:09.680 | the ones who change over time and are able to access the services of a financial advisor.
00:40:15.640 | But unfortunately, the people who most need the help oftentimes just don't go and seek
00:40:19.720 | it out. Oftentimes, the fattest people are the ones who are the least likely to go and
00:40:25.040 | talk to a nutrition coach or talk to a nutrition expert. You look at somebody who's an Iron
00:40:29.680 | Man and you think, "Here's this person. They're reading every book they can on exercise and
00:40:34.280 | nutrition and they're consulting coaches," and you're saying, "You don't need it. You're
00:40:38.240 | an Iron Man." But the reality is it's that character quality of that thirst for information,
00:40:43.880 | thirst for coaching, that's what's driving them to success. And here, Joshua, the fat
00:40:50.200 | slob over here in the corner, he doesn't want to pay anybody to help him with his weight
00:40:54.800 | problem.
00:40:55.800 | Absolutely. I think we all have our desires and our dreams and what we want to focus on.
00:41:02.520 | I guess one of the problems is when we get out of balance with some of those other things.
00:41:06.640 | We talk about work-life balance, those types of things. If you work a lot, then your family
00:41:11.280 | life suffers, though your finances might be okay. But then if your family life suffers
00:41:15.200 | and you get divorced, now your finances fall apart as well. There's got to be a little
00:41:18.280 | bit of a happy medium there. If you don't focus anything on your finances, you're never
00:41:23.440 | going to get control of the money thing. And the money thing is that great equalizer of
00:41:31.080 | purchasing value from somebody else. If I have money in my hands, I can buy value from
00:41:37.500 | somebody else and whatever that is, it could be food, it could be a restaurant experience,
00:41:41.160 | there's two different things. It could be a gadget or it could be something I need to
00:41:45.560 | fix my car. There are two different things, but the money is exactly the same. If I can't
00:41:49.640 | keep that money coming in and spending that wisely, then I'm not going to be able to get
00:41:55.400 | that car repair when I need to. And so we limit our choices then by not managing that
00:42:02.080 | money properly. So yeah, you're right. If people aren't seeking some of that knowledge
00:42:05.900 | and applying it to their lives, they will find themselves without those options. And
00:42:10.920 | that's where I think a lot of our culture is lost on it. Even the ones who make some
00:42:16.160 | good money get lost just because of the debt loads.
00:42:18.920 | It's the most frustrating thing I think for social scientists, sociologists, I guess maybe
00:42:28.920 | that's the right name for the academic discipline. But everything seems to go together. People
00:42:35.880 | talk about the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. I think the rich get richer and
00:42:40.040 | the poor get poorer. And also the rich get richer and they get healthier and they get
00:42:43.560 | happier and they get better relationships and they get just more fulfilled lives because
00:42:50.080 | it's primarily a character quality. That's what makes the biggest difference. It's drilled
00:42:55.320 | into my head. I just love what Jim Rohn used to teach. He said, "The point of accumulating
00:43:01.800 | a million dollars is not having the million dollars, although that's certainly fine. But
00:43:05.720 | the point of becoming a millionaire is to become the kind of person who accumulates
00:43:10.440 | a million dollars." And that's the ultimate worth of the million dollars.
00:43:15.720 | And I do everything I can here on the show to try to be an encouragement to the few people
00:43:23.480 | that will take action on things because the majority of people listening even to this
00:43:26.840 | show won't ever take action on the information. But some of them will. And each of us has
00:43:32.080 | an opportunity with our own circle of influence to be able to affect and encourage just a
00:43:37.120 | few other people. And then those people will affect and encourage just a few other people.
00:43:41.400 | And little by little that has a ripple effect. And so whether it starts in money or whether
00:43:45.680 | it starts in health or whatever, it starts and then it moves on to other things. And
00:43:49.920 | little by little we can affect people's self-concepts and give them some confidence. And I love
00:43:55.840 | that it can start at the basic level of running a budget and running a checkbook or it can
00:44:01.280 | go at a very high level of whatever the highest level is that you or I would say and it has
00:44:06.880 | a ripple effect throughout life.
00:44:10.680 | I can add on to that.
00:44:11.680 | I stole your thunder. So forgive me. So on the coaching business, I didn't want to make
00:44:20.680 | it sound like you're somehow a business failure, but I wanted to point out that where you are
00:44:28.200 | finding success is in the ancillary services. And go in just a little bit now into even
00:44:35.120 | the podcast business and describe how you wound up even with that as being an expression
00:44:43.560 | of your business work.
00:44:44.920 | Well, I decided back in 2010 that the podcast was going to be kind of what you're talking
00:44:50.280 | about, that first step to education for somebody. It was going to be a greeting card as well
00:44:55.200 | to let them know a little bit about who I was before they ever picked up the phone to
00:44:58.400 | reach out to me. That was the purpose of the show. It's kind of taken a life of its own
00:45:03.720 | since then. I have actually, and I don't know if I share this a lot. I know I say it a lot,
00:45:09.080 | but I don't know if I share it to my listeners, but I've often thought about, what am I doing
00:45:13.400 | this for?
00:45:14.400 | The show, technically the show doesn't bring in any money. The money comes from the people
00:45:19.360 | who hire me as clients, which is funny because recently the clients I've been getting are
00:45:24.160 | not Americans. It's weird. And they didn't find me from my show. Maybe my show is ranking
00:45:30.400 | me better in Google and that's how they're finding me, but it's not because of the podcast.
00:45:33.560 | So I keep thinking, why am I doing this? Do I need to rebrand, relaunch? It's still a
00:45:40.320 | big question mark. So I'm sorry, I've forgotten what your question was. I've gone off on another.
00:45:45.440 | The ancillary services that have been bringing in income and how they relate to the education.
00:45:51.000 | Well, if we look at, you know, the education piece was the podcast blog posts, sort of,
00:45:57.760 | though my blog posts are really show notes for the podcast. And then there's a $25 budgeting
00:46:03.720 | program that I sell. It's a video course that I walk people through my budgeting process
00:46:07.840 | that gets them, you know, from not ever starting or hating all budgets to something that they
00:46:12.960 | can really use. And that kind of introduces them into ways that they can spend more wisely,
00:46:18.320 | which then will get them more financially solid. They'll have that basic emergency fund
00:46:22.640 | and be able to live on this and they make. And then it builds into the coaching idea.
00:46:27.640 | Other things I do are affiliate sales. I'm sure at least a good portion of your audience
00:46:35.600 | has heard of, if not using YNAB, which is a short acronym for you need a budget. And
00:46:42.280 | it's funny, I was always a spreadsheet guy. And when I found out what YNAB really was,
00:46:47.760 | I was totally in love with it, totally on board with it and became an affiliate for
00:46:51.920 | them. So now when I mentioned on my show, I'll mention a link that will get my listeners
00:46:56.480 | 10% off and then I get an affiliate sale for that as well. So there's affiliations that
00:47:01.640 | come through my blog, my podcast that also bring in a little bit of income. At least
00:47:05.720 | that covers a lot of the business expenses, I guess you'd say of, you know, hosting. And
00:47:11.560 | I've got three different hosting programs, website, video and audio. And that doesn't
00:47:16.920 | come cheap. So let's see what else. So the beginning is the free advice, the podcast,
00:47:25.800 | the resource guide they can sign up for, which is free. Going to a $25 budgeting school class,
00:47:32.440 | I guess you'd say, online and then moving into the one-on-one coaching, which I think
00:47:36.640 | will really start to move the needle because there's that accountability piece. When you
00:47:41.480 | know you're going to meet with your coach next week, "Oh, I should be doing this. Otherwise,
00:47:45.520 | you know, Steve's going to yell at me" type thing.
00:47:49.360 | Was it, has it been, you've been in the field of entrepreneurship now for three months.
00:47:57.280 | What was it like making that decision?
00:47:59.960 | It was easy.
00:48:03.280 | Did your job close out on you where the opportunity there, your job kind of ended and it made
00:48:06.920 | a natural transition or did you have to leave and get out of a warm bed and get into a cold
00:48:10.800 | room?
00:48:11.800 | No, let me, I guess I'll walk through the story again. Before I met my wife, I was working
00:48:17.360 | for a company as an internal auditor. It involves some travel, but I was single at the time,
00:48:21.280 | so that was fine. Then we got married and moved, actually moved and then I was chasing
00:48:25.880 | her to St. Louis is where I ended up chasing her to. So I moved here, took a different
00:48:31.920 | auditing position with a different company and it started out, okay, it's 25% travel,
00:48:36.920 | no big deal. Then it started to become 50% travel and then it was 80% travel and it started
00:48:42.840 | to really become a drag on my health, my mental state. I'm not going crazy, but it's like
00:48:49.560 | when you sit in a car for four hours, you know, "Hey, I can get caught up on Joshua
00:48:53.800 | Sheets podcast. Great."
00:48:54.800 | Four hours, you're going to need more than that.
00:48:57.800 | Well, it wasn't four, it was, you know, it wasn't four hours a week. And then, and then
00:49:05.240 | I found out like in December that it was going to turn into like 98% travel. It was just
00:49:09.840 | ridiculous. There was no way it was going to work for anybody. So I knew the writing
00:49:13.680 | was on the wall, so I was making, making changes at that time. So it just came to a head right
00:49:18.680 | in the middle of March. I was waiting for the trigger to come as far as there were,
00:49:24.000 | without getting into too many details, there was going to be a sale of an area to a franchisee.
00:49:29.280 | And when that happened, there was nothing for me to do locally. There was no way to
00:49:32.320 | keep me in town. So I don't even know that's happened yet, but it just came to a point
00:49:36.520 | where it's just too much travel. It didn't make sense for anybody. So I ended up leaving
00:49:39.920 | the job knowing full well that my heart, my passion, my desire, and from what people tell
00:49:45.880 | me, my talent lies in this coaching thing. And so, oh, I guess I still have to figure
00:49:52.600 | out exactly where my place is, but I've seen people do very interesting things in niche
00:49:58.760 | spaces. I've heard you speak of it before, or maybe your listeners are familiar with
00:50:06.280 | Cliff Ravenscraft. He's known as the podcast answer man. What was he doing? He was selling
00:50:12.880 | insurance and then he got into podcasting and then he decided, I need to get into this
00:50:17.640 | thing more and he created a business around it. Then there's a guy named John Lee Dumas
00:50:22.720 | who came in and decided, I wanted to make a podcast, one, you know, release an episode
00:50:27.780 | every single day and it's a 30, 38 minute interview, same eight questions and sell advertising
00:50:34.580 | in it to make money. And he did that. Who teach, what school do you go to learn that?
00:50:41.440 | There's no education that. So there's places and people who find these odd things that
00:50:46.440 | they can then develop and they master it in some way and they become the podcast answer
00:50:51.920 | man. You know what I mean? And that's what I'm thinking I'm looking for is where do I
00:50:55.980 | fit into this grand scheme of, you know, you and I, we attend the financial blogger conference.
00:51:02.200 | There's hundreds of bloggers there. Where do I fit into that? You know, how does my
00:51:07.080 | voice sound or resonate with somebody louder than somebody else's?
00:51:11.720 | Was the plan to start a business easier because of being debt free except for your mortgage?
00:51:18.960 | Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, because right now, we could survive on my wife's income.
00:51:25.620 | We could survive. It doesn't get us ahead in our finances, but we're not falling behind
00:51:29.520 | either. We still have an emergency fund. We're still debt free. We're still headed, you know,
00:51:34.640 | headed towards that last payday of our payday that that last home payment in it's a half
00:51:39.800 | of a house payment in February of 2016. That's not going to change. It'd be kind of weird
00:51:46.080 | to change it right now. You know, if I had to refi $8,500 for a smaller payment, it doesn't
00:51:51.160 | make any sense. So, you know, we're getting by. We're fine. I don't look at that though
00:51:57.940 | as, you know, why did I leave the job so I could, my wife could support me. No, absolutely
00:52:02.340 | not. It was more of a decision because I feel like this is where I need to be and from those
00:52:10.000 | people that I have connected with, networked with, you know, I'm sure you get the same
00:52:17.140 | feeling when somebody writes to you saying, Joshua, you know, I'm listening to your show
00:52:20.240 | and you've changed my life. Well, how do you put a price on that?
00:52:24.600 | Yeah. The reason I was emphasizing that and kind of leading you there is because in my
00:52:29.480 | mind this is the central benefit of debtlessness is flexibility and freedom. I'm not a clear
00:52:44.520 | cut guy as far as in terms of the way that many, I'm not like you as far as being very
00:52:50.480 | hardcore on don't borrow money. I'm not like others in that perspective. I look at it in
00:52:56.040 | the terms of borrowing money for investment purposes, backed by appreciating assets versus
00:53:04.440 | wasting money. It's always stupid to borrow money for stuff that loses value and unfortunately
00:53:08.480 | that's where the majority of people borrow money. If you go back and look, you find some
00:53:12.680 | businesses that start without borrowed money, but the vast majority start with borrowed
00:53:16.220 | money. But the problem with leverage is that even if used effectively, it has a reverse
00:53:22.240 | impact on your own personal financial life. And so even if you can use it to effectively
00:53:28.400 | build a business such that someday they put you on the cover of a business magazine talking
00:53:32.200 | about the many millions that you made, it puts an intense pressure on your personal
00:53:38.120 | life. And during those years where you're hustling and the bills are coming in and you're
00:53:43.280 | doing everything you can to get the business going, that is a very stressful time. But
00:53:47.760 | if we can just simply help people to avoid borrowing money from the beginning and then
00:53:52.320 | we can help people to get out of debt from wherever they are, then when the life transition
00:53:58.200 | happens, they find out this job is not working out, they're helped with a nice nudge out
00:54:03.200 | the door based upon the decisions, then it frees them up. And no matter what they do,
00:54:09.360 | they're always free to pursue whatever the next thing is. And the stories that break
00:54:14.720 | my heart are when people crank up their lifestyle, especially cranking up their lifestyle with
00:54:19.680 | borrowed money, and then all of a sudden they suffer a business turnaround of some kind.
00:54:24.520 | And the stress that it puts their family in is immense. And for me, I just don't want
00:54:29.500 | to be in that situation because the impact of my life of having an extra 10 or 20 million
00:54:36.600 | bucks after I'm already rich is not going to be that big of a deal. But the potential
00:54:41.080 | negative impact of being highly stressed in a stressful time in a business change or in
00:54:46.160 | an economic change, that's huge. And the freedom that comes with debtlessness, the freedom
00:54:51.800 | to change, the freedom to start businesses, the freedoms to pivot, the freedoms to build
00:54:56.760 | an ideal lifestyle, that's ultimately serving our daily life, which is the only thing really
00:55:03.320 | that we have to live is each day today.
00:55:06.160 | So in my mind, it's a bad trade to say, "I'm going to trade five years of misery and stress
00:55:11.780 | just to be the richest guy in the business magazine." I'd rather have five years of low
00:55:16.740 | stress and not be listed in the business magazine, but still be rich at the end of the day. Because
00:55:22.040 | today, once it's gone, we never get it back.
00:55:24.880 | Yeah, while you're saying that, I was thinking of a... This might be taking us a little off
00:55:32.880 | topic, but I remember the other night, some people have said, "Steve, you've got to watch
00:55:38.280 | The Prophet." And I'm like, "The Prophet? What's that? It's a TV show." I'm like, "Oh,
00:55:41.400 | I don't need another TV show. Get away from TV if I can." Well, guess what? I started
00:55:46.320 | watching it. And the other night, there was an episode that was a couple of ladies who
00:55:49.920 | started a... I think it was EcoMe, some kind of a chemical-free cleaner. And they're saying,
00:55:56.080 | "Okay, what is your revenue?" "Oh, we bring in $500,000 a year." "Okay, what is your debt?"
00:56:01.640 | "$250,000 a year." And their process... I mean, it was clear to everybody that their
00:56:06.680 | process for how they created the product, packaged it and everything, all they needed
00:56:11.360 | was some equipment to make it go by. It was a very manual process. And that would have
00:56:16.800 | immediately changed their profitability, but they weren't doing it because, well, they
00:56:21.720 | had that debt load already sitting there. So, would you call that a successful business?
00:56:26.360 | I don't know. But had they not had that debt, they could have easily made some just, "Hey,
00:56:30.800 | let's get this equipment." And they could have really made a change in their business.
00:56:35.800 | But instead, they had to have the host of The Prophet TV show come and solve their problems
00:56:40.640 | for them.
00:56:41.640 | Steve, last question. If you were going to give yourself some encouragement, kind of
00:56:47.000 | wake yourself up a little bit, go back to 2005. Sounds like that would be about a year
00:56:53.400 | to... That would be right to 10 years ago. How would you encourage yourself based upon
00:56:58.440 | what you now know?
00:56:59.440 | That's a really good question, Joshua. I don't know. Let me think about that for a second.
00:57:07.400 | How would I encourage myself? I guess the answer to that is, if I knew then what I know
00:57:14.800 | now type thing, right? There are a lot of people in my life that are encouraging me,
00:57:22.600 | both in the professional and the personal sense. I've got some things coming together
00:57:27.440 | actually. A little self-promotion here. In August, I'm going to be one of three, probably
00:57:35.080 | four guys who are going to be facilitating a one-day business conference or a business
00:57:39.280 | summit I guess you'd say in Indianapolis. And that's going to be really cool. It's something,
00:57:45.320 | again, I don't think the story has been written. So if I was to encourage myself, I think I
00:57:49.240 | would just have to say, as shy as I am, people don't believe that. My daughter doesn't believe
00:57:55.240 | it one bit. I force myself to get on the mic and I force myself to talk to people because
00:58:00.600 | I see the value in that. Not just for me and my benefit of talking to someone but I think
00:58:06.000 | I can help them in some way. Find out what their desire or their need is and be able
00:58:10.680 | to help them. I would definitely point towards that making friendships, solid friendships,
00:58:16.400 | networking. Don't hide in the house all day or something like that. Get out there more.
00:58:23.520 | I think that's the thing is getting out, shaking hands with more people, getting to know them
00:58:29.720 | more, seeing what their needs are, see if there's a fit. Just like in a sales negotiation.
00:58:34.880 | Where's that common ground? Where's that piece of the negotiation that makes it benefit both
00:58:40.600 | the salesperson and the person who's buying the product or service? So yeah, the networking,
00:58:47.440 | the getting out and meeting more people. Had I done that back then, I think we'd be in
00:58:52.640 | a different situation now. I'd probably be a couple of years ahead of where I am right
00:58:56.280 | now.
00:58:57.280 | So, MoneyPlanSOS.com and you have, is it YesYouCanPodcast2? Is that your site too?
00:59:02.880 | Yes. YesYouCanPodcast2 and that's T-O-O.com but I'm going to be moving all that to my
00:59:08.600 | home base which is SteveStewart.me. But right now, that's where people can find me is MoneyPlanSOS.com
00:59:15.240 | or YesYouCanPodcastT-O-O.com.
00:59:16.800 | Okay. And give us a plug for your Get Out of Debt course.
00:59:21.240 | Yeah, it's a virtual budget coaching course. It's $25 on MoneyPlanSOS.com/start. It's six
00:59:29.000 | high definition videos plus some bonuses that walk people through my budgeting process in
00:59:33.200 | less than an hour.
00:59:34.560 | Awesome. Steve, thanks for coming on. I really appreciate it.
00:59:36.880 | Hey, thank you. I value your friendship.
00:59:41.720 | Take heart from Steve Storie. Notice the impact that getting out of debt and getting control
00:59:47.560 | over your financial situation can have on your life. Start where you are and just work
00:59:53.040 | continually day by day toward your goals. If you work hard on it year by year, well
00:59:58.920 | day by day, week by week, month by month, year by year, then over time you'll be able
01:00:03.320 | to take advantage of some of the opportunities that previously you never would have thought
01:00:06.440 | of being able to take advantage of. It's worth the work. It's worth the effort because in
01:00:12.720 | time it really can pay off extremely well. Hope you're encouraged by Steve Storie. Thank
01:00:17.400 | you all so much for listening today. I really appreciate each and every one of you who's
01:00:20.080 | listening to the show. Hopefully, if I'm able to do it, hopefully we'll have a Friday Q&A
01:00:25.280 | this week. I'd love to have your questions come in on that. So feel free to email them
01:00:28.880 | to me, joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com, or go to the website and call them in on the
01:00:32.240 | voicemail line. I got a bunch of voicemail questions in the queue. Sorry, I haven't gotten
01:00:36.000 | one of those out in a couple of weeks with new baby in the house. I haven't been able
01:00:38.880 | to do it. Those are the most time consuming shows for me to get those lined up and prepare
01:00:43.120 | my answers and do it in a way that's useful for you. So I just simply haven't been able
01:00:47.160 | to get it done. But if you'd like to support the show, please go to radicalpersonalfinance.com/patron.
01:00:52.560 | Sign up directly to support the show at radicalpersonalfinance.com/patron. Got a bunch of bribes and incentives there
01:00:57.760 | listed out for you to incentivize you to do it. You can sign up with as little as a buck
01:01:01.560 | a month or as much as a couple hundred bucks a month if you want access to our private
01:01:04.920 | mastermind call. Also, this week we will be doing the, in fact, this show will be tomorrow.
01:01:12.440 | This week we are doing the, on Friday, the Q&A for the $10 a month and up supporters
01:01:17.840 | on Patreon. So if you haven't done that yet, if you haven't subscribed yet as a $10 a month
01:01:23.400 | supporter on Patreon, please go to radicalpersonalfinance.com/patron and there will still be enough time for you
01:01:28.120 | to get onto the monthly Google Hangout where you can ask me your questions live and I'll
01:01:33.200 | do my best to answer them for you. So thank you all so much for listening. Be back with
01:01:36.440 | you soon. Cheers.
01:01:37.200 | Thank you for listening to today's show. Please subscribe to the podcast with our
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01:02:39.040 | and at facebook.com/radicalpersonalfinance. This show is intended to provide entertainment,
01:02:45.040 | education, and financial enlightenment, but your situation is unique and I cannot deliver
01:02:51.200 | any actionable advice without knowing anything about you. Please, develop a team of professional
01:02:57.360 | advisors who you find to be caring, competent, and trustworthy, and consult them because
01:03:04.040 | they are the ones who can understand your specific needs, your specific goals, and provide
01:03:09.640 | specific answers to your questions. I've done my absolute best to be clear and accurate
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01:03:25.240 | tomorrow, thanks for being here.
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