RPF0241-Casey_Lewis_Interview
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00:00:29.800 | Need a little motivation on your get out of debt plan?
00:00:35.120 | On your financial independence plan?
00:00:36.760 | Today I've invited Casey Lewis on the show and he's going to share with us some ideas
00:00:41.600 | and strategies that have been helpful to him as he and his family have dramatically transformed
00:00:47.040 | their financial lives.
00:00:52.040 | Welcome to the Radical Personal Finance Podcast.
00:01:06.400 | My name is Joshua Sheets and I'm your host.
00:01:07.960 | Thank you for being with me.
00:01:08.960 | This is the show where each and every day I try to work hard to bring you some ideas
00:01:12.560 | and some strategies that will be helpful to you.
00:01:16.720 | Some content that will make a difference on your earning, on your spending, on your planning,
00:01:20.440 | on your strategy, that will help you clarify your path to financial independence and then
00:01:26.240 | crush that thing.
00:01:27.240 | That's what we're about here.
00:01:29.360 | And today we're going to do all of those things.
00:01:34.400 | I'm going to deliver to you on some ideas, some inspiration and some strategy with my
00:01:40.360 | guest.
00:01:41.360 | My guest Casey Lewis is a really awesome guy.
00:01:43.560 | He runs a financial blog, has some financial coaching work that he does.
00:01:47.760 | And one of the coolest things is just simply his breadth of knowledge and information.
00:01:51.840 | He's involved in real estate and just a very diverse guy.
00:01:55.520 | When I was researching different potential guests to invite on the show prior to attending
00:01:59.320 | the Podcast Movement Conference, which is where this interview was recorded, Casey stood
00:02:03.300 | out to me as somebody that I definitely wanted to have on the show.
00:02:06.440 | And I think you're really going to enjoy this interview.
00:02:08.260 | We talk about a lot of different things.
00:02:10.400 | Specifically some conversation I think is probably the most interesting to me was about
00:02:13.360 | goal setting.
00:02:15.200 | And I'm going to be doing a lot more on goal setting in the future.
00:02:18.080 | But as a little teaser, here's the interview with Casey.
00:02:21.280 | Casey, welcome to Radical Personal Finance.
00:02:24.680 | Hey, George.
00:02:25.680 | Glad to be here.
00:02:27.320 | So I've invited you on today.
00:02:29.120 | I wanted to talk with you about some of your perspectives and some of the things that you've
00:02:35.320 | learned with regard to money.
00:02:36.960 | One of the things that I love to do with Radical Personal Finance is not always talk to everyone
00:02:41.320 | who is an expert, but also talk to people who've come from just a normal walk of life
00:02:49.320 | and hear their stories.
00:02:50.480 | So I'd love for you to share with me a little bit about your story.
00:02:55.400 | Yeah, sure thing.
00:02:56.400 | So I got involved in personal finance and helping people with money by accident because
00:03:01.400 | I was an idiot.
00:03:03.320 | And I went to college at Dallas Baptist University, didn't have any idea what I wanted to do.
00:03:11.280 | And made a bunch of really bad financial decisions as far as student loans and taking the student
00:03:16.320 | loan refund check and buying golf clubs with them instead of...
00:03:19.000 | That's a perfect use for student loan checks.
00:03:22.640 | Like that was when I first got my Mac computer and all of that stuff.
00:03:26.120 | So went through that, got married right outside of college, had a really good job.
00:03:32.720 | My wife had a really good job.
00:03:33.920 | We had a fantastic income.
00:03:35.640 | We worked really, really hard, spent a whole bunch of money that we didn't have, bought
00:03:40.600 | a house that we couldn't afford, bought cars that we couldn't afford, financed everything
00:03:44.360 | that we could.
00:03:45.360 | And as long as we were able to have our really, really good income, we could afford those
00:03:49.120 | minimum payments and everything was fine.
00:03:51.040 | Never missed a payment.
00:03:52.280 | All that was good.
00:03:53.360 | And then all of a sudden, we both lost our jobs within 30 days of each other and life
00:03:57.520 | kind of sucked.
00:03:59.040 | The stock market crashed and the real estate market tanked and both of our businesses were
00:04:02.600 | very tied to those industries.
00:04:04.480 | This was 2008.
00:04:06.520 | And you were one of the ones where both family members lost you.
00:04:11.240 | I lost my job.
00:04:12.400 | I was laid off.
00:04:13.400 | My company laid off about 3,000 people.
00:04:15.160 | And 30 days later, my wife was in real estate working for a real estate company and they
00:04:20.440 | laid her off 30 days later.
00:04:22.360 | What was that day like when she came home and said, "That's it"?
00:04:25.840 | I was just, "Okay, cool."
00:04:27.520 | And I had an idea.
00:04:30.200 | I'd been involved in the real estate market but wasn't full force.
00:04:34.080 | And I was like, "You know what?
00:04:35.440 | Job market's tough.
00:04:36.440 | I'm just going to start up in real estate at the worst possible time to start up in
00:04:39.120 | real estate."
00:04:40.120 | As an agent?
00:04:41.400 | Yeah, as an agent.
00:04:43.240 | We crashed and we fought off it.
00:04:45.960 | We did everything we could to avoid bankruptcy and foreclosure and repossession and everything
00:04:49.920 | we could.
00:04:51.160 | We sold everything that we owned.
00:04:53.600 | So all the cars, all the furniture, our house went down.
00:04:56.280 | We had nothing in the house.
00:04:58.200 | A small baby at home.
00:05:00.160 | I would work in real estate full time during the day and at night I would deliver pizzas.
00:05:04.800 | And when I wasn't delivering pizzas, I would work as a janitor cleaning toilets at our
00:05:08.640 | church.
00:05:09.880 | And when I didn't have anything going there, I would put ads on Craigslist to fix fences
00:05:13.360 | or do manual labor or install light fixtures.
00:05:17.440 | My wife got a job at Steinmart working.
00:05:22.040 | And we hustled.
00:05:23.040 | And we got rid of the debts that we had.
00:05:25.520 | We didn't file bankruptcy.
00:05:26.520 | We didn't have to go through foreclosure.
00:05:29.040 | You short sale the house?
00:05:31.080 | We still own our house to this day.
00:05:32.400 | Oh, wow.
00:05:33.400 | So you were a little boy then.
00:05:34.400 | And our income during that time was probably even better after we got through that stuff.
00:05:39.400 | Our income was better.
00:05:40.400 | It was just we were so sick and didn't want to be anywhere near bankruptcy, foreclosure,
00:05:45.040 | anything bad to do with money again, that we paid off everything.
00:05:48.720 | And it was a two and a half, almost three year of hustle.
00:05:52.800 | Let's get rid of everything.
00:05:53.800 | And then we just avoided ever going back that way.
00:05:57.520 | And in the process, people were like, "Hey, you are driving a 15 year old car now.
00:06:02.960 | Why are you doing that?"
00:06:04.760 | And so I got to start sharing our story of like, look, we got out of debt and here's
00:06:08.440 | the things we did.
00:06:09.440 | And all of that led into me helping other people with money.
00:06:12.200 | And I realized we're not the only ones that went through that stuff.
00:06:16.440 | Everybody that I met, 75% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck.
00:06:21.080 | Everybody is one paycheck away from being right where we were.
00:06:25.000 | And so it's my passion now to help those people realize what type of life you can live when
00:06:31.200 | you're not strapped of monthly payments, when you're not strapped to having a car payment
00:06:35.760 | or student loans, or the idea that if you really hate your job and you've got 20 grand
00:06:40.640 | sitting in the bank, you just say, "Hey, boss, have a nice day."
00:06:44.360 | And you just walk out and you go get a new job.
00:06:47.280 | Or if you have this passion and something that you want to go do, which we're here at
00:06:50.240 | Podcast Movement, everybody's talking about these things that they want to go do.
00:06:54.640 | When you can free up your cash flow and you get your expenses down to a certain point,
00:06:59.880 | you don't have to make as much money.
00:07:01.400 | You can take some risks.
00:07:02.680 | You can go chase some passions.
00:07:03.920 | You can go chase some dreams.
00:07:05.620 | You could take some time off of work and go be with your family and do fun things when
00:07:11.400 | you can figure out how to get rid of that debt.
00:07:15.200 | Did you figure it out on your own?
00:07:17.720 | Did you have resources?
00:07:18.720 | Was that like a Dave Ramsey thing?
00:07:21.000 | Did you start listening to him?
00:07:23.080 | No.
00:07:24.080 | I mean, I'd heard of Dave Ramsey.
00:07:25.680 | I'd done those things.
00:07:27.080 | But it was hard knocks like, "We've got to figure something out."
00:07:35.800 | It goes for pretty much anybody out there.
00:07:37.720 | The fastest way out of debt is to boost your income.
00:07:41.320 | The fastest way to get financially free is to find ways to make more money.
00:07:45.920 | Because at some point, your grocery bill can be slashed to nothing and you're eating ramen
00:07:52.060 | every night and your grocery bill is what your grocery bill is.
00:07:56.600 | You've sold the cars, your electricity, your shit.
00:07:59.280 | At some point, you're going to reach the minimum that you can do there and you may still not
00:08:03.600 | be able to make the traction.
00:08:05.040 | But if we can take you from making $30,000 to $60,000 or from $50,000 to $100,000, this
00:08:11.400 | situation changes really, really quickly.
00:08:14.120 | That's what I realized when we were going through it is that I've got to go from, at
00:08:17.960 | this point, I was making nothing because I was unemployed, to I need to go make a lot
00:08:22.400 | of money really fast and what are ways I can go do that?
00:08:27.320 | Work more hours.
00:08:28.320 | That's always the solution.
00:08:29.320 | It was a lot of hustle.
00:08:32.160 | How much debt did you pay off?
00:08:33.360 | Any idea on how long it would take?
00:08:35.680 | Total student loans, credit cards, car payment, all of that stuff was about $250,000.
00:08:41.760 | That deserves a high five.
00:08:46.520 | So now what do you do?
00:08:47.880 | So now my full-time job is to help people realize the same stuff we did.
00:08:52.440 | I help people get out of debt.
00:08:53.760 | I walk them through their unique situations and go through that.
00:08:58.160 | My focus and passion is helping people and providing tools and resources for them to
00:09:02.480 | be able to make more money, to go from making $30,000 to $40,000 to $60,000 and really boost
00:09:09.480 | their income.
00:09:10.480 | I feel like if we can get people making more money than what they currently make, and this
00:09:16.680 | goes for the single mom that's struggling to get by making $25,000, if we can show her
00:09:21.360 | ways and equip her to go, "You know what?
00:09:24.360 | I'm worth more than $25,000."
00:09:28.560 | Once she can get to that point, she can start paying off those debts, get out of debt, build
00:09:33.040 | a firm foundation for herself, and then go start doing really cool things.
00:09:38.160 | Those really cool things could be whatever you want to do.
00:09:40.920 | I'm not going to define what awesome is for you.
00:09:43.120 | Awesome for me is like, I want to build water wells in Africa.
00:09:46.960 | I want to use the money that I'm able to do to fund other ministries and projects and
00:09:50.800 | things that I want to go do.
00:09:52.640 | I also want to travel.
00:09:53.680 | I want to go do fun things with my wife and my kids.
00:09:57.200 | Awesome for you, maybe you want to start that business.
00:10:00.320 | Awesome for you, maybe that you want to go buy a G6 jet and fly around the world whenever
00:10:05.940 | you want to.
00:10:07.320 | I don't care what awesome is for you, but awesome is not living paycheck to paycheck
00:10:11.480 | and worrying about the debts and the bill collectors and all of that stuff.
00:10:16.800 | Are you doing this with face-to-face coaching, with blogging, with podcasting?
00:10:20.160 | Yeah, so I've had a blog since 2008.
00:10:22.920 | Good for you.
00:10:24.680 | Kind of chronicled our journey out of all this stuff and then realized like, "Hey, there's
00:10:28.920 | people reading this and how can I help and give equipment and tools?"
00:10:32.920 | I have a blog.
00:10:33.920 | I have a podcast.
00:10:35.480 | It's the Casey Lewis podcast.
00:10:37.760 | Because I have a big ego and not very creative.
00:10:41.840 | And then, yeah, so I do some one-on-one coaching.
00:10:45.720 | I'm still a licensed real estate agent.
00:10:48.800 | And so if you need help anywhere in the country trying to find a real estate agent to help
00:10:54.000 | buy or sell a house, or if the agent you have is struggling to get your house sold, I have
00:10:58.600 | somebody in your area that can help.
00:11:00.640 | And so people through my blog or through the podcast will reach out to me and say, "Hey,
00:11:05.360 | I need a real estate agent and I'll help them find somebody."
00:11:07.960 | Are you at the point where you're able to live off of your online income and your coaching
00:11:11.000 | business or is it still being built?
00:11:12.960 | Absolutely.
00:11:13.960 | I have no other jobs, nothing.
00:11:16.360 | I am full-time on...
00:11:18.120 | I help people get out of debt and find ways to boost their income and then help them with
00:11:25.700 | real estate stuff.
00:11:26.700 | Of course, if you've been doing it since 2008, you obviously got rich overnight.
00:11:30.320 | Yeah, exactly.
00:11:31.920 | I launched out full-time doing this in December of 2014, so six months ago.
00:11:37.080 | Well, that's exciting.
00:11:38.360 | So let's talk about some practical tools and strategies for people who are looking to increase
00:11:43.760 | their income.
00:11:44.760 | Let's talk about the single mom.
00:11:46.600 | I love that example.
00:11:48.960 | I'm a single mom and I'm making $25,000 a year and I'm busy.
00:11:53.320 | I got to be home with the kids at night.
00:11:55.120 | I'm working a job that doesn't have a huge income potential.
00:11:59.320 | Where do I start?
00:12:00.320 | Well, a great place to start is with your boss.
00:12:02.920 | Are you a good employee?
00:12:04.480 | Are you working hard?
00:12:05.480 | Are you a valuable asset to that company?
00:12:07.300 | If you are, go ask your boss for a raise.
00:12:11.060 | That's a great first step.
00:12:13.000 | Just say, "Hey, I'm making $25,000.
00:12:16.600 | Other people that do similar work to me are making $30,000.
00:12:20.960 | I've been here for two years.
00:12:22.240 | I've been here for four years.
00:12:23.240 | I'm a good employee.
00:12:24.500 | I would like to make more money."
00:12:25.840 | And just see what your boss says.
00:12:28.000 | What's wrong with just asking for a raise?
00:12:30.920 | We sometimes get stuck in the annual review mindset where I'm going to get my 3% raise
00:12:35.240 | once a year or whatever.
00:12:37.080 | Just go ask them for more money.
00:12:38.280 | See if they'll pay you more money.
00:12:39.280 | Now, don't do this if you've been at your job for 60 days.
00:12:43.240 | Don't do this if you stink as an employee.
00:12:47.320 | What you say, I agree with it, but it drives fear into my heart of thinking, "Okay, well,
00:12:51.880 | wait a second.
00:12:52.880 | The first place I would start is not go ask for a raise.
00:12:55.240 | The first place I would start is make sure that you've done a good job of being a startup
00:12:59.440 | employee."
00:13:00.440 | Well, yeah.
00:13:01.440 | So, start with, "I need to be a good employee that's worthy of a raise."
00:13:03.880 | Second, go ask your boss for a raise.
00:13:06.920 | And if that doesn't work, maybe you need to apply for some other jobs.
00:13:10.320 | And if you're going to apply for other jobs that are paying $30,000, $5,000 more, why
00:13:14.160 | not go ahead and apply for some jobs that pay $50,000?
00:13:17.360 | Maybe you're just charismatic enough to convince somebody and trick somebody to pay you more
00:13:20.600 | money.
00:13:21.600 | Yeah.
00:13:22.600 | What's wrong with just throwing some applications out there for a $50,000 a year job if you're
00:13:26.800 | making $20,000?
00:13:28.320 | There's nothing wrong with doing that.
00:13:30.320 | And then the last thing, or another way that we can do this is realize that you are one
00:13:35.800 | person that has multiple talents and multiple passions and multiple things.
00:13:40.960 | I'm a writer, but just because I'm a writer doesn't mean that I have to just write.
00:13:46.360 | So I make money doing all kinds of other things that have nothing to do with writing.
00:13:52.120 | You could have a full-time job and maybe you could start up an Etsy store or maybe you
00:13:56.080 | could start up...
00:13:57.960 | My wife is a teacher who also develops curriculum and sells that on a website called Teachers
00:14:03.520 | Pay Teachers.
00:14:04.520 | That's awesome.
00:14:05.520 | So you're not limited to one income source.
00:14:08.160 | And I think sometimes we're like, "Oh, I'm busy and I've got all these things going on."
00:14:12.400 | My wife is a teacher.
00:14:13.400 | She prepares lesson plans for her job and then just sells those on Teachers Pay Teachers.
00:14:19.320 | It's not anything extra.
00:14:22.360 | It's no extra work.
00:14:23.360 | It's just an extra resource for her.
00:14:25.520 | But once we can start getting out of the mindset of, "I have a job and this is where my income
00:14:29.400 | comes from and it pays me what it pays me and that's all I'm going to earn," when you
00:14:32.960 | can realize you have other resources.
00:14:35.420 | We live in a time and an age where we are not limited to the income that one job produces.
00:14:41.480 | And so in the Lewis household, we have 17 different ways we make money.
00:14:46.800 | And some of those are $20 a month.
00:14:49.520 | That's fine.
00:14:51.440 | It's $20 a month.
00:14:53.200 | Over a year, that's $250 I can take my wife to a nice dinner.
00:14:56.240 | What's the littlest one?
00:14:57.900 | What's the smallest of those 17?
00:15:00.440 | So I've got a deal.
00:15:01.440 | I was with a real estate agency that has a profit sharing system when you refer an agent
00:15:06.800 | in and you get paid off of the profit for that.
00:15:09.320 | And so that's the smallest one.
00:15:10.560 | It pays about $20, $25 a month.
00:15:12.480 | And what's cool is I've had buddies of mine.
00:15:13.720 | I mean, another example, I've had buddies of mine who were real estate agents say to
00:15:17.600 | me, "Joshua, you've got to get a real estate agent just so you can get the referral commission
00:15:21.320 | when you refer a buyer or a seller to another agent."
00:15:25.560 | That's how I started and that's about 50% of our income.
00:15:30.320 | My business revenues is from real estate referrals nationwide.
00:15:34.640 | Somebody finds I write a blog article or something like 10 reasons why you need to sell your
00:15:38.160 | house or whatever because clickbait and drive people to the website.
00:15:44.000 | They read that and at the bottom of the website I say, "Hey, if you need help in your area,
00:15:47.800 | click here."
00:15:48.800 | They fill out a form.
00:15:49.800 | I call them, talk to them, find out what they're looking for, what they need, and then I reach
00:15:53.680 | out to another agent in their area and refer them and I get paid a commission off of that.
00:15:58.360 | And anybody with a license could do that.
00:16:00.320 | Yeah.
00:16:01.320 | Anybody with a real estate license is able to do that.
00:16:03.120 | That's awesome.
00:16:04.120 | What is the weirdest, most unusual of the 17 streams of income?
00:16:09.720 | Most unusual.
00:16:11.360 | I've been fortunate in my business to use different tools like Leadpages or different
00:16:17.700 | tools that have affiliate commissions.
00:16:19.640 | It's just been surprising to me how easy some of those ways to make money are.
00:16:25.760 | Easy because you spend hundreds of hours writing articles and then there's the easy $3.67 at
00:16:31.400 | the end of it.
00:16:32.400 | But Leadpages is a great example of one because there are other business owners that want
00:16:36.760 | to know how to build their business and what to do.
00:16:39.600 | I just happen to have some tools and I did a quick 30-minute webinar screen share of,
00:16:44.360 | "Hey, here's the tools I use and here's how you could do it for free, but I use this tool
00:16:48.120 | because it makes my life easier, but I do have to pay for it.
00:16:52.840 | And then here's my affiliate link if you want to buy."
00:16:56.200 | So for that 30-minute webinar, one sale is $120 commission.
00:17:02.040 | One sale, 30 minutes of work.
00:17:04.200 | It was fairly a simple process to do it.
00:17:07.440 | That's what's cool about online business.
00:17:09.400 | If you've done the work of being underpaid in the beginning of building something that's
00:17:15.560 | a value such that people notice it and value your opinion, then over time there are many
00:17:21.200 | ways that you can earn revenue in a way that helps your readers and community and also
00:17:27.400 | helps you and helps the companies that you work with.
00:17:29.520 | Yeah, from an online business standpoint, 98% of what I do is free.
00:17:34.120 | I have 2% of things that I charge for.
00:17:37.320 | And so if you need help budgeting, you can go to my website and you can get budgeting
00:17:40.400 | forms.
00:17:41.400 | If you need help figuring out how to get out of debt, you're going to figure out how to
00:17:43.760 | get out of debt.
00:17:44.760 | If you need tips and tools and resources on how to boost your income, I've got 20 podcast
00:17:49.080 | episodes dedicated to boosting your income.
00:17:53.000 | There's everything that I do is free.
00:17:54.600 | And then if there's something that you need help with, you just call me up and we work
00:17:59.960 | something out.
00:18:00.960 | So let's go back, continue on the income.
00:18:02.600 | If you've got 20 podcasts, you've got more ideas around increasing income.
00:18:06.400 | What else?
00:18:08.400 | So a great example is find multiple revenue streams.
00:18:12.640 | Find multiple things that you can do to earn income.
00:18:15.680 | So I've been doing online business stuff for years, but I've had a full-time job along
00:18:22.280 | with that.
00:18:24.720 | So boosting your income really comes down to finding multiple ways to do it.
00:18:30.600 | Because at some point, you're going to hit a ceiling.
00:18:33.680 | The CEO of a company that's making $350 or $500 or a million, they've hit a ceiling.
00:18:39.120 | There's nothing more they can do.
00:18:41.320 | But we live in an age and a time where you can create something of value for somebody
00:18:46.880 | else that somebody else wants to do.
00:18:49.960 | And I love the idea that it's like a sixth grader can help a third grader with math.
00:18:56.360 | You don't have to be an expert.
00:18:58.080 | I don't have to have a math degree to help a third grader with math.
00:19:00.640 | I just have to be further along than you.
00:19:03.160 | And so a great example here that we've learned this weekend at Podcast Movement is if you
00:19:08.560 | have a podcast, we know how to set those up.
00:19:11.960 | So create a quick little class and show people how to set up podcasts.
00:19:15.640 | There's people that don't know how to do it that would gladly pay you money to learn what
00:19:20.400 | you already know how to do.
00:19:21.800 | Right.
00:19:22.800 | And the two variables that are benefits of that is number one, information out there
00:19:27.080 | is free.
00:19:28.320 | Every little bit of information that you need about how to set up a podcast is available
00:19:33.280 | free on the internet with no charge associated with it.
00:19:36.680 | But personalized advice and service is not.
00:19:40.400 | And people value personalized advice and service.
00:19:43.440 | If you want to get all the knowledge of the world, it's sitting down in your local library
00:19:48.080 | and it's sitting on the internet connection that you can go to get at the local library.
00:19:51.680 | But if you want specific applied knowledge to your situation, that's a really valuable
00:19:56.520 | thing.
00:19:57.520 | So just because somebody else has created a class already on it doesn't mean...
00:19:59.880 | Well, yeah.
00:20:00.880 | And a lot of people think, "Oh, well, I'm not qualified to do that," or "I can't do that."
00:20:06.560 | Yes, you can.
00:20:07.560 | You have that knowledge to do something that nobody else does.
00:20:10.160 | I have read over 200 books on personal finance, so I know more than you do about personal
00:20:16.040 | finance.
00:20:17.040 | Not you personally.
00:20:18.040 | I'm sorry if I offend you.
00:20:19.680 | But I know more than the average person is going to know about personal finance.
00:20:23.320 | And so would you like to dig through and read all the books and go through the classes and
00:20:27.560 | go through the bankruptcy and the stuff that I had to face?
00:20:30.920 | Or would you just like to pay me a little bit of money to figure this out?
00:20:33.760 | And so when people start to realize what you know and what you have is valuable and there
00:20:38.000 | are people out there that would gladly pay some money to shortcut that or to get to where
00:20:42.560 | you are faster, then yeah, that's what online business is all about.
00:20:46.760 | And that's what has value.
00:20:47.880 | So the book example is a good example.
00:20:50.760 | Takes time to read 200 books.
00:20:51.760 | Yeah.
00:20:52.760 | A lot easier to pay somebody $200 than to read 200 books.
00:20:56.240 | Exactly.
00:20:57.240 | That's it.
00:20:58.240 | It's worth it.
00:20:59.240 | And if you aren't worth $200, go read 200 books and you'll be worth $200 to other people.
00:21:05.240 | Takes time to create lesson plans.
00:21:07.020 | So it's a lot easier for someone to pay.
00:21:08.800 | How much does your wife charge for lesson plans?
00:21:10.240 | Anywhere from $5 to $50.
00:21:11.680 | A lot easier to pay $5 to $50 and save yourself hours and hours of work if someone else has
00:21:16.560 | done it.
00:21:17.880 | Get that lesson plan, get out $5 and you're done.
00:21:20.080 | And if you compare in many people's scenarios, I'm a teacher making $40,000 a year.
00:21:25.240 | I pay $15 a week for my lessons plans.
00:21:27.580 | That's going to have a negligible impact on my lifestyle in terms of the monetary component
00:21:32.340 | of my lifestyle.
00:21:33.720 | But it might have a massive impact in saving me a huge amount of time.
00:21:37.080 | Exactly.
00:21:38.080 | And it's worth it.
00:21:39.080 | Yeah.
00:21:40.080 | Yeah.
00:21:41.080 | And don't say like, again, we live in this time that's pretty stinking awesome.
00:21:46.060 | Don't say, "Oh, I don't know how to do that."
00:21:48.000 | Because like, "I don't know how to do that" is just an excuse for, "I haven't Googled
00:21:50.980 | it yet."
00:21:53.040 | Just go to Google, go to YouTube and figure out how to do some of this stuff.
00:21:56.760 | We live in a time where you can make more money than what your boss is paying you.
00:22:02.160 | And a great place to start, be a good employee, go ask your boss for a raise, and then start
00:22:08.400 | finding other ways to bring more money into your house.
00:22:11.040 | I promise you, if you're making $30,000 by the end of this year, you could be making
00:22:15.000 | $50,000.
00:22:16.000 | It just takes some tips and some hard work to do it.
00:22:18.880 | It takes focus.
00:22:19.880 | Yeah.
00:22:20.880 | And you have to listen to 20 podcast episodes about how to make more money.
00:22:24.720 | And likely, none of the ideas that are in the 20 hours of content are appropriate to
00:22:30.400 | your situation.
00:22:31.820 | But the creative contrast, the creative connections between those ideas will get your brain starting
00:22:41.400 | to look around you and say, "Ah, in my area, here's something that I can do."
00:22:46.200 | Yeah, exactly.
00:22:47.200 | You could figure something out for your situation.
00:22:49.680 | And one of the things, when I talk to people, is that they don't have an income goal for
00:22:53.440 | the year because they're like, "What's an income goal?
00:22:56.560 | This is what my boss pays me.
00:22:58.400 | Why would I..."
00:22:59.400 | I set an income goal for the year.
00:23:01.800 | And so I challenged people at the beginning of 2015 to double what they made in 2014.
00:23:07.280 | They're like, "How?"
00:23:10.280 | That's your job.
00:23:11.280 | I don't know how.
00:23:12.280 | I don't know how.
00:23:13.280 | And so many people have reached out to me over the last six months like, "Holy cow,
00:23:17.800 | I'm making $30,000 more this year.
00:23:20.520 | My debt's going away all because I just said, 'Well, I made $50,000 last year.
00:23:25.680 | What if I made $100,000?'"
00:23:27.600 | And then they track it and everything else you would do with a goal.
00:23:30.320 | You'd write it down, you'd track it, you'd follow it, you'd see where you're at and try
00:23:34.200 | to make course corrections.
00:23:35.440 | But just the sheer idea of writing down, "I'm going to make $100,000 this year if you make
00:23:40.800 | $50,000 or if you make $30,000, let's say $60,000, or we're in July, or we're in August
00:23:45.920 | now, so there's four months left in the year.
00:23:48.840 | What if you can in the next four months make an extra 30% over what you've done the rest
00:23:54.440 | of the year?"
00:23:56.080 | Just a little bit changes your situation drastically, especially if you're living paycheck to paycheck,
00:24:02.120 | have debt, don't have a savings account.
00:24:04.580 | Just a little bit, $200, $300 a month, and that is really easy to come up with in this
00:24:08.760 | world.
00:24:09.760 | And the cool thing about just thinking about a little bit instead of a lot is that it's
00:24:17.320 | easier...
00:24:21.400 | Earning a little bit of money as a side income is a lot easier and a lot more doable than
00:24:25.280 | replacing your full-time income in the first few months.
00:24:29.160 | Earning an extra $1,000 a month because you're delivering pizzas, that's really useful if
00:24:34.320 | it's on top of $5,000 other dollars that you're already earning.
00:24:38.400 | But if you're trying to earn the total amount that you need to support your family on delivering
00:24:44.120 | pizzas, that's a lot more challenging.
00:24:46.320 | And so adding up these little things, there can be little businesses where every now and
00:24:51.440 | then someone calls you and asks you for help on this.
00:24:53.560 | Sure, I do it.
00:24:54.560 | It's $100 an hour, and you go and you only do that six hours a month on one Saturday
00:24:58.760 | whenever somebody calls you.
00:25:00.920 | There's no reason why you have to have just one thing that you're known for, one business.
00:25:04.800 | There's no reason why you can't have 17.
00:25:08.120 | That's why I was able to transition from a full-time job where I was making really good
00:25:11.880 | money to a career where I'm a self-employed entrepreneur going out and hustling and getting
00:25:18.960 | stuff done.
00:25:21.720 | If I had to depend on just the salary from my coaching, for example, I coach two new
00:25:28.000 | clients a month.
00:25:29.480 | I'm never going to make enough money to feed my family off of two clients a month.
00:25:33.540 | But if I have two clients a month in coaching and I help somebody buy a house or sell a
00:25:38.120 | house and I'm in Texas, so in Michigan, we start adding all these things up and revenues
00:25:43.380 | get to where they need to be to where it's really easy for me to say, "You know what?
00:25:47.380 | Full-time job?
00:25:48.380 | I'm going to go ahead and let you guys go away, and I'm going to go focus on those 40
00:25:51.940 | hours for what else I can build and do."
00:25:54.140 | It's got to feel good.
00:25:56.340 | Doesn't it feel great to be in the position of a teacher and see people taking action
00:26:00.940 | on...
00:26:01.940 | It's so great.
00:26:04.860 | I'm not going to sugarcoat it.
00:26:06.300 | This has been a hard journey.
00:26:08.140 | I think everybody has a hustle season in their life.
00:26:10.980 | Even in your 20s, if you hustle early on with money in your career and you get your income
00:26:16.060 | up and you start saving, you get the benefit of 40 years of compound interest on your investments
00:26:20.380 | and you retire.
00:26:21.860 | People that do their hustle season in their 30s and their 40s, well, they're doing it
00:26:25.860 | because they are trying to clean up some messes that they made in their 20s from overspending.
00:26:30.620 | If you don't hustle in your 30s and 40s, you realize in your 40s and 50s, the kids are
00:26:34.380 | getting ready for college, I'm coming up on retirement, I should probably hustle, clean
00:26:37.700 | up some messes, get ready to retire.
00:26:40.020 | And then in your 50s and 60s, it's like, "Oh no, I've got to hustle."
00:26:43.820 | But if you don't hustle any of those times, you're going to be hustling in your 60s and
00:26:47.180 | your 70s, working a lot harder and a lot longer hours when your body should really just be
00:26:52.060 | relaxing on a beach.
00:26:55.980 | My hustle season, I'm coming up on the end of this five to eight year journey of working
00:27:02.060 | all the time, living on next to nothing, putting as much money in savings as we can.
00:27:08.380 | And I've got two small kids, I want to hang out with them too.
00:27:12.460 | That's a hustle season and get through it because I promise you, I promise you, I promise
00:27:15.940 | you it's worth it when you get to year eight and year nine and year 10 after you start
00:27:20.620 | getting rid of the debts and you've got a good healthy savings account, you can afford
00:27:24.380 | to make less money, you can afford to take some time off work, you can afford to spend
00:27:28.100 | time with your family and kids.
00:27:30.100 | It's so much more rewarding once you've gone through this hustle season to be able to be
00:27:35.740 | on the other side and say, "I don't have to work for somebody else just because I need
00:27:41.140 | the paycheck to pay the bills."
00:27:42.820 | Do you set goals?
00:27:44.540 | Absolutely.
00:27:45.540 | I figured.
00:27:46.540 | I was just giving you an out.
00:27:47.900 | You just gave a sermon on you got to set goals.
00:27:51.180 | How did you learn to set goals and when did you start?
00:27:54.820 | So I learned setting goals when I was in car sales.
00:27:57.260 | That was the first job I had right out of college.
00:27:59.900 | I had a great mentor in it that just said, "Hey, your bonus level started when you sell
00:28:05.300 | 12 cars and when you sell 15, you get another big bonus."
00:28:08.780 | So we broke down like, "Okay, I'm going to sell 15 cars a month because that's where
00:28:13.380 | the big bonus money is."
00:28:15.340 | And so for every 10 people I talk to, I sell one car.
00:28:19.940 | So let's do that math to find out how many people I need to talk to in order to sell
00:28:24.380 | 15.
00:28:25.380 | Well, for every 10 people I talk to, one buys.
00:28:29.940 | So I need to talk to 150 people this month.
00:28:32.220 | There's 22 working days in the month.
00:28:34.420 | Divide that out.
00:28:35.420 | I need to talk to 2.3 people a day and I'm going to sell 15 cars.
00:28:40.300 | How do I talk to 2.3 people a day?
00:28:42.180 | Well, I have to make these many phone calls to make that happen.
00:28:45.380 | That's how I broke down, like really getting really nitty gritty with the details to a
00:28:49.540 | daily level of, "Oh, I just need to make 15 phone calls a day that will generate 4 appointments
00:28:56.860 | coming in the door for me to talk to this many people about buying a car.
00:29:01.260 | And if I do this every day for the whole month, at the end of the month, I will have sold
00:29:05.140 | 15 cars."
00:29:06.620 | And so when we started getting out of debt, it was the exact same translation of, "Oh,
00:29:11.580 | we've got $250,000 of debt.
00:29:13.980 | Here's how much money we have available to do it.
00:29:16.260 | It's going to take us X amount of months and just do the math, set the goal and follow
00:29:20.780 | the daily disciplines of making it happen."
00:29:23.780 | What percentage of your coworkers in the car business set goals that way?
00:29:27.980 | Half.
00:29:30.580 | Not to the detail.
00:29:31.580 | I was number one when we were doing it.
00:29:35.820 | I would imagine most salespeople are told to do it and then never actually break it
00:29:39.400 | down and do it.
00:29:40.580 | And then what's worse is you set the goal and then you don't do any of the action steps
00:29:43.380 | that you said you were going to do.
00:29:44.380 | Right.
00:29:45.380 | Well, that's the thing.
00:29:46.380 | It's just funny because it's so simple.
00:29:48.820 | In the financial services business, it was exactly the same.
00:29:52.580 | I knew that if I was introduced to 1,000 people, I would call and I called 1,000 people.
00:29:59.180 | 500 of them would meet with me on an initial basis.
00:30:01.380 | Of the 500 that would meet with me, 300 would give me all the details of their lives and
00:30:06.540 | share with me their goals, what they were working for.
00:30:08.940 | Of the 300 that would do that, 60 of them would start working with me, would buy a product
00:30:14.100 | from me, or would engage in some further work with me in the first year, the first 12 months
00:30:19.420 | after first meeting me.
00:30:20.660 | 30 of them would engage with me in the second 12 months, 12 to 24 months of meeting with
00:30:25.300 | me.
00:30:26.300 | And then 10 of them would engage with me in months 24 through 36.
00:30:30.300 | And after months 36, nobody that was still in the initial 1,000, they would have found
00:30:36.820 | someone else.
00:30:37.820 | They would have moved.
00:30:38.820 | I don't like you, but I don't want to do big things.
00:30:42.260 | If you know that number, let's just go find 1,000 people.
00:30:45.180 | Exactly.
00:30:46.180 | So you break it down.
00:30:47.180 | And what do we have to do daily to go find those 1,000 people?
00:30:48.180 | You break it down.
00:30:49.180 | You make 40 phone calls a day.
00:30:50.180 | Of the 40 phone calls a day, you set five appointments a day.
00:30:52.560 | You set five appointments a day.
00:30:53.620 | You go into the week, you have 25 appointments.
00:30:55.620 | 25 appointments, 15 you'll keep, 10 will cancel on you.
00:30:58.380 | You keep 15 appointments.
00:30:59.700 | Next week you follow up.
00:31:00.700 | You schedule again the appointments on the day.
00:31:02.380 | You know, you just track the numbers.
00:31:04.260 | And so the way that you set an income goal, okay, I want to make $100,000 a year.
00:31:10.220 | What's my average commission per sale?
00:31:12.180 | What's the average?
00:31:13.180 | And then you do that.
00:31:14.180 | And then you start to control what you can do.
00:31:15.180 | And the only things that you can control what you do is your actions and your activities.
00:31:18.700 | And so you take each part of your business and you say, all right, well, I can control
00:31:23.060 | the number of phone calls that I can make.
00:31:24.460 | I can't control who says yes or who says no.
00:31:26.380 | I can't control if they say yes or if they say no, but I can control the number of phone
00:31:29.980 | calls that I make.
00:31:31.220 | Number two, I can control the questions that I ask.
00:31:33.040 | So if I recognize that my average commission per sale is $52 because I'm working with people
00:31:38.460 | that make $20,000 a year, I can ask to meet people that make $120,000 a year.
00:31:44.700 | And then just due to the fact that they need much more help, everything goes up.
00:31:48.620 | And I think that's one of the things I, it's cool that you learned the same lesson from
00:31:51.860 | car sales.
00:31:53.500 | That was one of the things that I wanted to learn when I went into financial services.
00:31:56.420 | I wanted to learn how to do that.
00:31:58.420 | And it's so useful when you do that because then you always look at the world the same
00:32:01.940 | way and you take any goal and you break it down to a list of action steps and you say,
00:32:05.900 | what are the activities that I need to do to accomplish this?
00:32:08.380 | And for your listeners, if you're struggling to get out of debt, the first logical step
00:32:12.940 | is let's write it down.
00:32:14.820 | How much debt do I have?
00:32:15.820 | Like a lot of people, you've probably buried your head in the sand and just have a stack
00:32:20.160 | of bills sitting at the house and you're like, I know I owe people money, but I don't know
00:32:23.860 | how much and where.
00:32:25.500 | When you actually write down who you owe money to, how much you owe money to, you get all
00:32:30.060 | that stuff down.
00:32:31.060 | The next logical step is, okay, so how do I get rid of this stuff?
00:32:35.500 | And you set a goal and you start working toward it.
00:32:38.820 | Writing it down is a huge first step that you can take to really accomplishing, if I
00:32:43.900 | want to boost my income, if I want to reduce my debts, what is it?
00:32:46.620 | Just write it down.
00:32:47.620 | The other aspect of income, if we can apply the same thing to income even without the
00:32:52.780 | numbers regarding car sales or financial product sales, you can apply it to income in the way
00:32:58.740 | of just simply per hour.
00:33:01.580 | So if you want to make $200,000 a year, that means that your hourly rate needs to be $100
00:33:07.180 | an hour.
00:33:08.180 | So $100 an hour is $200,000 a year over the course of a 40-hour, 50-week per year working
00:33:18.980 | schedule.
00:33:19.980 | And a little trick there is, you put me on the spot, all of a sudden I'm questioning
00:33:24.500 | my math.
00:33:25.500 | I didn't put you on the spot, you jumped into this one.
00:33:27.620 | So if you just take the hourly rate and you double it and then you add some zeros, you'll
00:33:32.500 | get the annual income.
00:33:33.500 | So somebody is making $8 an hour, you take the 8, you double that to 16 and then you
00:33:39.220 | add some zeros, you wind up with $16,000 an hour.
00:33:42.640 | So you can convert any hour, $10 an hour is $20,000 a year, $20 an hour is $40,000 a year,
00:33:47.880 | so $100 an hour is $200,000 per year.
00:33:51.340 | But if you look at the $100 per hour, that means that every single hour that you work,
00:33:56.480 | you have to create more than $100 worth of value for your employer or for yourself.
00:34:02.220 | If it's for your employer, you have to create more because your employer has other costs
00:34:06.420 | and expenses that are associated with you.
00:34:09.780 | They're paying your employment taxes, they're paying insurance, they're giving you an office.
00:34:13.020 | So you might have to create $170 worth of value per hour.
00:34:18.460 | If you're an entrepreneur, you can figure it out yourself.
00:34:20.420 | How much more do you pay?
00:34:21.420 | What are your taxes, etc.?
00:34:22.980 | So you have to look at every single hour of work and say, "Am I producing $200 worth of
00:34:29.060 | value so that I can earn $100 per hour in the last work?"
00:34:33.560 | The answer is if you're not doing it, you're not going to earn $200,000 a year.
00:34:38.740 | That's why you're not earning $200,000 a year is you're not producing for every hour of
00:34:43.160 | work in excess of $100 a value per hour.
00:34:46.620 | But breaking the goals down, the reason I went into that is very few people do that.
00:34:49.840 | A lot of people set goals and say, "I want to make $200,000 a year."
00:34:52.520 | I kind of sit around and wish and hope and think, "Well, I can make $200,000 a year."
00:34:56.960 | And I've been guilty of this myself, of saying, "Well, something's going to happen."
00:35:00.840 | Well, something might happen, but you should also look and say, "I'm going to work 40 hours
00:35:05.020 | a week.
00:35:06.020 | If I'm going to earn $200,000 a year, every hour that I work, I need to be doing work
00:35:10.720 | that's valued more than $100 an hour."
00:35:13.280 | Exactly.
00:35:14.280 | Well done, sir.
00:35:15.280 | This is your podcast interview and I just stole it.
00:35:18.520 | No, that was great.
00:35:20.960 | I think this is why I love the world that we live in because we all have a little different
00:35:24.920 | angle and we need all of our input because different people's brains work differently
00:35:30.280 | and different examples work and it helps.
00:35:34.280 | People can find the person who speaks their language who's able to convert a complex topic
00:35:39.280 | into something simpler and more straightforward.
00:35:42.680 | Get outside of the hourly mindset of it and just say, "If I've got a product for sale
00:35:47.040 | for $200 and I want that product to make me $200,000, well, how many of this product do
00:35:52.240 | I have to sell in this time period?"
00:35:56.320 | You get that taken care of.
00:35:57.320 | That's from an entrepreneurship world.
00:35:59.480 | I did this exercise a couple of months ago.
00:36:01.480 | I sat down and I said, "I would like Radical Personal Finance to make a million dollars
00:36:05.800 | gross income per year."
00:36:07.640 | Okay, a million dollars gross income, where can that come from?
00:36:10.200 | So I designed 10 individual income streams, each of which can produce $100,000 of income.
00:36:17.480 | Then I broke the $100,000 of income down and I said, "Okay, let's say I write a book.
00:36:22.200 | How many books would I need to sell at what rate in order to reach $100,000?
00:36:27.720 | If I'm going to create a product, a training product, how many products would I need to
00:36:31.520 | create at a certain course level to do it?"
00:36:34.440 | What's helpful is I look at a million dollar goal and I get completely overwhelmed.
00:36:39.560 | I say, "How on earth can I build a business that makes a million bucks gross in a year?"
00:36:45.120 | I've never made a million bucks gross in a year.
00:36:48.120 | But if I break it down and I say, "Well, let me think about this," and I break it down
00:36:51.080 | to a certain number, now I know I need to sell 2,432 books or I know I need to sell
00:36:57.120 | 452 tickets to a three-day seminar.
00:37:00.080 | Then I can take each of those things down and I can say, "How can I develop the plan
00:37:04.560 | behind it in order to make sure there's value?"
00:37:07.280 | So if I'm going to charge $452 for a three-day seminar ticket, how can I develop a seminar
00:37:13.520 | ticket that's worth, my goal is 10x return, that's worth $4,500 in value to a participant
00:37:21.640 | so that they'll be willing to happily pay me $450?
00:37:25.160 | You can break it down.
00:37:26.160 | When you break it down, over time you create your action list, you create your daily list,
00:37:30.120 | you break the goal down, you start working on it.
00:37:33.080 | Create one line of business, get that going, create another, and then improve, tweak, improve,
00:37:36.800 | tweak, and that's how you get from zero to a million dollars per year.
00:37:40.160 | - That was the key, one at a time.
00:37:42.440 | If you're listening to this, you're like, "Holy cow, he just said 10 things with 100."
00:37:47.560 | Pick one.
00:37:48.560 | - Right, right, right.
00:37:49.560 | - Pick one.
00:37:50.560 | If it's a course, do the course.
00:37:52.000 | If it's a book, do the book.
00:37:53.680 | If it's you need to go ask your boss for a raise, go ask your boss for a raise.
00:37:58.320 | One at a time, slowly and steadily, set the goal, write it down, come up with some plans,
00:38:02.600 | and just go take some action on one thing at a time, and then over time, one thing at
00:38:08.920 | a time leads to you did 10 things, which leads to those 10 things getting $100,000 a piece,
00:38:14.640 | which gets you to the million dollars.
00:38:17.040 | - I wish your wife were here.
00:38:18.680 | I'm interested in her business.
00:38:20.720 | Talk to me, hopefully you know enough about it that you can share a little bit.
00:38:24.880 | How did she come up with that idea?
00:38:27.120 | - The website exists, and it's called Teachers Pay Teachers.
00:38:30.080 | It's like an Etsy store for teachers, or just an online little classroom thing for teachers.
00:38:35.920 | - But I mean, did she ... She was a teacher, and were you guys just sitting down and brainstorming
00:38:40.700 | ideas for businesses?
00:38:42.200 | - No, this is just something she did.
00:38:44.840 | - Somebody else created the website, and then she just submits lesson plans.
00:38:47.120 | - Yeah, it's like Etsy store.
00:38:48.120 | All she did with this is she created it, and was like, "I have this.
00:38:52.880 | I've heard of Teachers Pay Teachers.
00:38:54.040 | Let me upload this and see what it did."
00:38:55.800 | In the first month, we made $80.
00:38:57.280 | We were like, "Well, that was weird."
00:38:59.880 | She was like, "Okay."
00:39:00.880 | We checked, and they have a premium plan where you can pay them ... I don't know how much
00:39:04.520 | it is for the year, but you pay them, and their commission rate goes way down.
00:39:08.080 | I think it's like a 70/30 split with you, but if you pay them money up front, it's like
00:39:12.760 | a 90/10 split on the commission that you get.
00:39:17.760 | - That's awesome.
00:39:18.760 | - We paid that, and yeah, I mean, it's an extra several hundred dollars a month.
00:39:23.000 | When teachers complain that they don't have enough money to buy supplies for their classrooms
00:39:27.080 | and stuff, my wife is like, "I have $200, $300 a month coming in that I can go buy supplies
00:39:32.200 | for my classroom."
00:39:33.200 | It's things that she's able to take care of that way.
00:39:35.320 | - That is so cool.
00:39:36.320 | - Yeah, it was a great thing that just simple, easy, and if she wanted to, which she doesn't
00:39:44.040 | want to, she doesn't have to, she could upload a whole lot more stuff and do a little bit
00:39:48.160 | more work inside of that, and really create a business.
00:39:50.400 | There's teachers that have stopped teaching because they're making more money just creating
00:39:55.320 | content and selling it on Teachers Pay Teachers.
00:39:57.960 | - Reminds me of that guy who, he worked for a big company in some kind of software engineering
00:40:05.760 | job, and he was being paid $40 an hour, and he outsourced all of his work to China, or
00:40:11.200 | to India, and paid a guy there $15 an hour to do all of his work.
00:40:16.000 | He just collected the difference.
00:40:17.000 | He did it for years before he got caught.
00:40:19.520 | He was immediately fired when he got caught, but he had outsourced his job for the last
00:40:23.520 | three years, and he just kept the spread.
00:40:25.920 | He kept the float between the 40 and the 15, and put it into his pocket.
00:40:30.360 | - This is not an endorsement to do that.
00:40:32.560 | - No, but it's just funny because you think, "Okay, I'm going to go get a teacher job,
00:40:37.600 | and the government school system, okay, I got the job.
00:40:40.520 | I just got to do the bare minimum.
00:40:42.840 | I don't feel like making lesson plans or doing them.
00:40:45.000 | I'll just go buy them.
00:40:46.120 | I'll pay someone else $15.
00:40:48.560 | There's enough money sloshing around that I can take enough to live on while someone
00:40:52.520 | else does a lot of my work."
00:40:54.200 | Of course, I still have to actually teach in that scenario, so the programmer's job
00:40:58.200 | was better.
00:41:02.440 | What tools, do you have any specific tools that you really have found to be beneficial
00:41:08.560 | for you in managing the process of your finances?
00:41:13.040 | - This is a question that comes up every time, like, "What software do you use?"
00:41:16.880 | Everybody wants to know what's the secret.
00:41:18.280 | There is no secret software that makes your money better.
00:41:21.960 | There's nothing.
00:41:23.000 | It's a pen and paper, and knowing where every dollar is going.
00:41:26.920 | That is what makes your money better.
00:41:29.200 | When you sit down and you write it down, and to this day, I don't use a software.
00:41:32.800 | I don't have a budgeting tool.
00:41:34.200 | There's a ton out there.
00:41:36.240 | I sit down with a pen and paper.
00:41:38.040 | I say, "This is how much money I'm going to make this month.
00:41:41.080 | These are my bills.
00:41:42.380 | This is what I want to save.
00:41:43.620 | This is how much I want to give to our church.
00:41:45.240 | This is how much I want to give to these ministries," and make all that balance out.
00:41:50.920 | Then I just go execute that game plan every month.
00:41:53.680 | Some months it's hard.
00:41:55.120 | Some months, like we're at a conference this month that three weeks ago I wasn't planning
00:41:59.280 | on coming to, so I had to adjust the budget to make that stuff happen.
00:42:05.600 | We always, it never fails, get to the 25th of the month, and we've used all the money
00:42:09.000 | we said we were going to use for groceries.
00:42:11.760 | We've got six days left in the month, and we eat out of the pantry because it's the
00:42:15.560 | last six days of the month, and we don't have any money left for groceries.
00:42:22.200 | When we do that type of stuff, my investment accounts get filled.
00:42:26.060 | My savings accounts get filled.
00:42:27.440 | I get to give the money to my church that I want to give.
00:42:30.040 | My kids' college funds get taken care of, and all of that stuff is done.
00:42:34.040 | Whereas, if I'm not paying attention to that, it's, "Oh, we need groceries.
00:42:38.240 | Go to the grocery store.
00:42:39.240 | Spend the $200 for this last week of the month."
00:42:42.320 | Okay, sure, no big deal, but over time, that's $2,400 a year over a five-year period.
00:42:49.360 | That's $10,000 a year, and you can see how people over a two and a three and a five-year
00:42:53.240 | period wake up with $10,000 of credit card debt.
00:42:57.440 | No, it's the principles are timeless and can be applied consistently.
00:43:03.520 | You say you've read over 200 books on personal finance.
00:43:07.880 | What's your favorite?
00:43:08.960 | Which one do you recommend more than any other, more frequently than any other?
00:43:12.440 | Besides my own.
00:43:13.440 | Tell me about your book in a second.
00:43:16.840 | I didn't know you had a book.
00:43:18.280 | I have a book, and it walks people through personal finance, everything from budgeting
00:43:22.000 | to everything else.
00:43:23.440 | But Dave Ramsey's is a fantastic book.
00:43:26.000 | Total Money Makeover is a fantastic way to start.
00:43:28.480 | Then he has another one that I really, really recommend.
00:43:31.840 | It's called More Than Enough.
00:43:33.740 | If you haven't read that, it is about how you have more than enough money right now
00:43:38.580 | where you're at, and it really, really focuses on the contentment aspect of you don't need
00:43:44.740 | that new car.
00:43:45.740 | You don't need that bigger house.
00:43:47.100 | You don't need that nicer furniture.
00:43:48.620 | You want it.
00:43:49.620 | You may want it really, really bad, but what do you want more?
00:43:54.140 | The book's called More Than Enough.
00:43:55.780 | What else?
00:43:57.900 | Those are probably the two best to just get started and really get moving forward.
00:44:02.780 | Rich Dad, Poor Dad's a great one for small businesses getting into the mindset of transitioning
00:44:08.420 | from the "I'm an employee" to "I'm a self-employed person" to really moving over to the right
00:44:15.940 | side if you've read the book into "I'm a business owner and now I'm an investor."
00:44:21.140 | When you can start making those switches in your mindset of how you earn money, you really
00:44:25.580 | start getting to earn a lot more money.
00:44:27.860 | Awesome.
00:44:28.860 | Tell us about your book, your website, podcast.
00:44:29.860 | All right, cool.
00:44:30.860 | I have a book.
00:44:31.860 | It's called Impact.
00:44:33.500 | The whole idea behind it is the four phases of personal finance.
00:44:37.100 | Phase one is education.
00:44:38.740 | We all have an education in money.
00:44:40.300 | It's how it was taught to us when we were kids and our parents didn't do anything.
00:44:43.580 | We're taught by the world that we need car payments and we need student loans and all
00:44:46.100 | that stuff.
00:44:47.260 | I really tear down those walls of the old way or the way the world teaches us about
00:44:51.420 | finance and just teach you what we've been talking about.
00:44:56.060 | Then the second step of that is to take action.
00:44:59.480 | Really start doing things that are better with money, making better decisions, and that
00:45:03.140 | you're not going to be perfect with it.
00:45:04.460 | The third phase is that you're going to have time to get mastery in this stuff.
00:45:08.980 | Then the last phase is being awesome.
00:45:10.860 | Like I said earlier, I don't know what awesome is for you, but if you go through and you
00:45:16.300 | learn the right ways to handle money, you take action on it, you get better over time
00:45:19.720 | at doing that stuff, eventually you get to be awesome.
00:45:24.220 | Awesome for you may be that you're writing people's electricity bills for them because
00:45:28.180 | they can't afford to pay their electric bill or like I said, maybe it's that you want to
00:45:31.420 | buy a G6 and fly around the world.
00:45:33.220 | I don't know what awesome is for you, but eventually over time, enough discipline, you'll
00:45:38.060 | get more awesome.
00:45:39.060 | That's the book.
00:45:40.060 | It's called Impact.
00:45:41.060 | It's available on Amazon.
00:45:42.060 | I think it's like five bucks.
00:45:44.020 | That is my book.
00:45:45.020 | You can find me on Twitter @CaseynLewis.
00:45:48.300 | The N stands for Ninja.
00:45:50.900 | My website is Casey-Lewis.com.
00:45:52.380 | Casey, thanks for coming on Radical Personal Finance.
00:45:58.140 | Thanks man.
00:45:59.140 | It was fun.
00:46:00.140 | Sound so simple when you hear other people talk about it, right?
00:46:03.420 | Guess what?
00:46:04.420 | It is simple.
00:46:05.420 | Not easy.
00:46:06.420 | Not at all easy, but it is simple.
00:46:10.740 | Especially the approach to goal setting, laying things out, making a plan.
00:46:15.420 | In the future, and we'll see depending on I'm pre-recording this, probably leaving for
00:46:19.700 | FinCon and XYPN.
00:46:21.980 | So we'll see if I'm able to get it done before or after this.
00:46:24.620 | But I've got a little sneak peek for those of you who made it to the end of this interview.
00:46:28.100 | I've got a little goal planning software that I want you to check out.
00:46:33.260 | It's at RadicalPersonalFinance.com/goals.
00:46:35.740 | The software is called Goals On Track.
00:46:37.260 | I'm going to do an entire episode to introduce it to you, but it's something that I went
00:46:40.180 | out and searched for some number of months ago and I've really found it to be useful.
00:46:44.060 | It's basically a lot of what I've talked about, but it's put into a computer software system
00:46:47.980 | that can be helpful.
00:46:48.980 | So if you want a sneak peek on that, go to RadicalPersonalFinance.com/goals and look
00:46:53.460 | forward.
00:46:54.460 | That is an affiliate link, so it'll make me a little bit of money if you buy.
00:46:57.740 | But that is something that I went out and searched for because I was dissatisfied with
00:47:01.900 | a lot of the other software solutions that I found.
00:47:04.660 | So entire episode coming about that.
00:47:06.500 | But lay out some goals for yourself.
00:47:09.500 | Work on some plans.
00:47:10.500 | And then get busy on the action steps that will make them happen.
00:47:15.440 | Check out some of Casey's work, links in the show notes for today's episode.
00:47:19.500 | Hopefully many of you can find some of his content to be helpful.
00:47:21.740 | That's what I love about profiling other financial bloggers, financial podcasters, other people
00:47:26.940 | who have different voices is they can bring an air and a different style that will appeal
00:47:33.980 | to different people.
00:47:34.980 | We all resonate more with different styles.
00:47:38.460 | And so make sure to go out and check out some of Casey's work and hopefully many of you
00:47:42.500 | will find him to be an expert coach and advisor to you.
00:47:48.300 | Thank you so much for listening.
00:47:49.300 | Thank you especially to the patrons of the show.
00:47:50.980 | If you gain benefit from today's show or any of these shows, would you consider supporting
00:47:55.180 | the show directly?
00:47:56.180 | This is a voluntary deal.
00:47:57.780 | I work hard to give away a bunch of value.
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00:48:04.300 | would send a little money my way.
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00:48:09.420 | Thank you to the over 220 of you who do that.
00:48:12.260 | We're working hard to get by the end of September to in excess of 250.
00:48:17.020 | So if you want to see how we're doing on that, go to RadicalPersonalFinance.com/patron and
00:48:20.980 | you can see the numbers.
00:48:21.980 | Since this was pre-recorded, I don't know the number, but you can.
00:48:25.040 | See you all soon.