Greetings friends, this is Joshua Sheets and today I'd like to let you know about a sale that I'm running on my consulting services. Right now for a limited time I am celebrating a Black Friday sale on my personal consultations. If you would like to book at a rate of savings of $150 an hour off of my normal rate, go to RadicalPersonalFinance.com/consult.

That's where you book, RadicalPersonalFinance.com/consult. That will give you an automated booking page. You can see the times that I'm available. You'll just simply choose the time, put in your email address, put in a credit card number and the system will bill you and we will be set up to speak at some time over the next couple of weeks.

I'm running the sale. You guys seem to like the sales. My rate over the last year and a half I have billed at a rate when I do consulting at $500 per hour, which seems like a great rate but the calls trickle in but then when I run one of these sales you all flood in.

I try to keep the sales moderate in terms of the number of slots but I do love it when I talk to you guys. I really enjoy it. I enjoy serving you and I know that many of you appreciate and value the service. The Black Friday sale, savings rate is $150 an hour off so it will be at $350 an hour instead of $500.

So again, if you would like to book, go to RadicalPersonalFinance.com/consult. I have opened up a total of 50 slots. There are 50 available slots. Once those 50 appointment slots are filled then the sale will be over and we will be back to normal affairs. Also I don't have any appointment slots available in the future.

I'm not saying I won't do it again in the future but we finished up quite a bit of travel this summer. We are expecting a baby in January and so I don't have any specific plans to bring back consulting in the coming year. So if you would like to talk to me this is the best way for you to do that if you would like to get my insight and my thoughts and my advice on your situation.

Always remember by the way, if the consulting calls are outside of your budget or if you don't mind talking about your affairs publicly, remember that you are also always welcome to call in on a Friday Q&A show. I handle those Friday Q&A shows in a fairly free and open way.

So if you just have a simple or quick question then you would join the Friday Q&A shows. That will be your best deal. But if you would like to talk with me in a comprehensive way, review detailed facts, figures of your situation, then book a consulting call. RadicalPersonalFinance.com/consult. Limited time only, 50 slots available.

When those are gone, they are gone. Let me share with you a little bit about some of the things that I can do for you that might be helpful and useful to you. So first of all, while I often minimize my personal financial planning credentials when I'm talking about things, I guess I value modesty and I probably should talk about it more.

I am a highly credentialed financial advisor with a significant amount of professional experience. Again, if you want to hear my ability or my advice, just listen to one of the Friday Q&A shows and that's my resume right there. But I do have a long list of formal credentials that are probably more significant than most financial professionals with whom you might interact.

I have a master's degree in financial planning. I am a certified financial planner. I have a chartered life underwriter designation as well as a chartered financial consultant designation. I'm a chartered advisor for senior living, specializing in retirement and elder issues. I am a registered health underwriter with knowledge and experience in the health insurance space.

I'm a registered employee benefits consultant and a chartered advisor of philanthropy. So those are my current formal designations. I haven't added any new ones over the last few years, but I need to get back to the books and add a few more. I have a list of three or four of them that I'm interested in.

I may in the future add a CPA designation or an EA designation more likely, as well as a divorce consultant designation, as well as one of the college, I'm interested in one of the college planning designations that I think is pretty good. But I haven't added those yet. So we'll see.

The point is that I do have a significant amount of professional education in the field as well as extensive practical experience. If you'd like to talk to a financial advisor who has a deep breadth, a deep level of education and experience in a wide variety of levels, I'm your man.

The most interesting thing about talking to me, however, is that because of the way that I do these consultations, we can avoid the vast majority of conflicts of interest. I do not sell any financial products. I no longer have an insurance license. I no longer have any securities licenses.

So I do not sell any financial products. The only thing I sell is my advice. And when you buy my advice, you buy it specifically on an hourly basis. You can book as many hours as you like with me if you want to speak to me, but I do not, I'm not offering plans or even enrollment subscriptions or options or things like that.

I work with a handful of private consulting clients that I do work with on an ongoing basis with regular weekly coaching calls, but that's not something that I make publicly available. That's something that I hand select the people to whom I offer that, who all enter the door with an hourly consulting call.

So I very rarely offer that. So the vast majority of my work is just simply done on the basis of a one-hour consulting call. So what that means to you is that we can avoid the vast majority of the conflicts of interest. You can be confident that I'm not going to show up to sell you something that you don't need.

I'm not, and I have no financial incentive to give anything other than my honest opinion. And so the way it works is, the way consulting calls work is I give you my email address and you're welcome to email me in advance any notes that you want to do, want to make.

Most of my consultees will spend some time writing out one to three pages of narrative about their situation, their background details. They'll provide me with a balance sheet. Some people will provide me with account statements, things like that. And I review all of that information prior to the call.

Then we show up to a scheduled call. It happens on Zoom. And we show up to a scheduled Zoom call. And in that scheduled Zoom call, I am available to answer any questions, give any advice, give any comments, give any feedback, etc. about any area that is of interest to you.

You are welcome to record the call so that you can reference it later. You can make any notes that you like. And when the call is over, then we're done. And so it's a great and appropriate way to do it. As I've talked about in public shows where I've commented on hourly financial consulting, etc., I think that this is a very useful service to have available where it allows a financial advisor to give his opinion in a way.

But it's not a huge moneymaker. And I know that sounds, if you're earning $30 an hour, I know it sounds bizarre and out of touch for me to say it's not a huge moneymaker when I bill normally at $500 an hour. It's not though. And what I mean by that is the amount of other work that goes into this kind of business to attract those clients is so significant that while I'm certainly very grateful and honored to be able to earn a significantly above average salary, the easier money in financial services is selling products.

But I've chosen to sell my advice instead. And I appreciate those of you who recognize that and who just want the advice. So the point is that I will provide you with my opinion. I'll give you my advice. One of the things I'm very good at is telling you exactly why I think what I think.

You're welcome to hear it or to reject it, however you like. But I'll always tell you exactly why I think this is the answer to your question. And then you can judge it for yourself. So that's how it works. My experience having done this for a number of years, here are some of the most common areas that I hear, most common areas of discussion that I wind up having.

Number one is I wind up providing a second opinion in many cases for other advisors' input. Very frequently when you are working with a financial advisor, especially with sizable accounts or large transactions or large purchases, it's nice to get a second opinion. And so I can provide and do provide a second opinion, an unbiased opinion.

If you want to check up on your other advisors, then I'm happy to do that. The only thing that I legally can't do because I do not maintain any securities licenses is I cannot provide any commentary on specific investments. I can't tell you to buy or sell a stock or a mutual fund that would approach the type of business that is necessary for licensure.

And so I can't tell you specific, "Oh, sell this stock and buy that one." That's a licensed occupation. What I can do is provide general background on things like asset allocation. I can talk about risk profiles. I can talk about things in a generalized way without specifically telling you to buy or sell an investment, specifically a security.

In addition, I can't tell you to buy or sell an insurance policy because I'm not licensed anymore to sell insurance. And again, that's an activity that is restricted to licensure. So I can provide background information, general ideas on insurance. I can explain to you everything from a very broad perspective and I can give you the background so that you can make your decision.

I just can't tell to you, "Hey, you should sell this policy and go buy this one." I don't even provide any referrals to insurance agents to minimize that conflict of interest. I could. I've thought about it many times, but at the moment I don't provide referrals to insurance agents or brokers or anything like that.

So it's just simple. So I can go pretty far. I just can't specifically make a buy or sell recommendation because that's something that you would need a license for and I no longer have those licenses. So it's common that I'll provide a second opinion. Another common area is talking through retirement planning.

I find that a significant number of my audience members are interested in topics relating to early retirement or even just traditional retirement. And so I have spent quite a lot of time consulting on these topics. In my experience, a component of that is kind of a financial readiness index.

So we go through and we talk about, "Are you financially ready?" But I'll tell you, I'll just give it to you straight. The vast majority of times when somebody calls me, they are ready. What I have found that is more common is that I talk with people about unique ways to go far beyond being ready.

As you know, I'm not a big fan of retirement per se. If by retirement we mean the traditional concept of just work until you're 65 and then quit and do nothing and watch TV. Now obviously no one does that, but the point is that this is the idea that some people have.

My listeners don't. Where I have really come to excel over the past years is with providing an alternative viewpoint to help people to see the freedom that they have and then use their life in a more productive way. So sometimes that means personal pursuits of enjoyment, travel, etc. I love to travel.

I've provided, you know, talked to people about travel sometimes. But often it means ways of giving back or ways to structure your life so that you don't have to retire. I've developed a real skill set in that area of really helping people. Ironically, this has resulted in my being able to help people feel a lot richer earlier.

It's interesting how many people there are, especially in the United States and Canada and other wealthy countries. There's so many people that have, you know, half a million dollars saved, a million dollars saved. And they can't retire if by retire what we mean is quit and do nothing. But what they can do is they can reinvent their life.

And I'm really good at helping you think through the issues, clarify what your desires are, and then give a practical financial plan that will help you to do that. So that's fairly common discussion. And that can benefit people of all ages. I've really enjoyed working with many people in their 30s and 40s and basically help people to get out of the trap of thinking that you got to work until you're 65 and you can reinvent things significantly.

Another very common area of discussion over the last few years has been the world of internationalization. I never set out to become kind of an international consultant. I pursued it because I was interested in it for myself. And then I've shared with you on the show some of the things that I have learned because I believe that it solves a significant number of problems.

And I have sold a number of courses over the years. I still have one, right? Internationalescapeplan.com. That's available on the market right now. And so that's available. But what I have found over the years is that probably 20% of my calls now relate to something related to internationalization. And while I don't profess to be the world's most knowledgeable expert, I admire and respect the people who have large businesses built in that scenario, I've developed quite a bit of practical expertise having done this stuff myself now for a good number of years and having studied it pretty intensively.

So if you think there's any component of internationalization that could be helpful to your plan, your freedom, then I'd be happy to work with you on that as well. What is internationalization? It often refers to getting second citizenships so you have freedom in case your country imposes a draft or comes out with some onerous law saying where you can travel and where you can't travel or what medical freedoms you have or don't have, things like that.

Relates to second residencies, getting the legal permission to go and live in another country so that you have multiple options, places you can live. And sometimes those residencies turn into citizenships, etc. Relates to international banking, how to set up international accounts, international bank accounts so you have diversification of your money, diversification of your currency.

Sometimes we get into gold storage, things like that. We do a good amount of Bitcoin consulting with this course that Gabriel Custodia and I have developed. We've done a good bit of Bitcoin consulting and how to buy Bitcoin privately and anonymously and that's a component of internationalization in some cases.

And then sometimes just international living. How can you live well, get more bang for your buck, earn in dollars, spend in pesos, enjoy a more freedom-oriented and interesting international lifestyle. And I often share personal details on consulting calls that I don't share in public just to protect the privacy of my family.

And so that's a component of things as well. And it's been fairly popular and I really have enjoyed that. And another benefit is I don't have any, I don't make any commissions, I don't refer business, I don't have lawyers that I'm working with, etc. I don't think that's a problem for those who do.

I'm just telling you I don't. And so I respect the many good consultants who have gone out there and developed those relationships and brought those specific things to perspective. If that's what you're looking for then I encourage you to engage with another consultant. I'll just tell you my hard-won experience from having spent tens of thousands of dollars tromping around the world with four children in tow and kind of setting this stuff up.

I have done it successfully. I have over the last, coming up on three years, no more than three years now, over the last three years of tromping around the world I've set up multiple residencies, multiple citizenships, multiple bank accounts diversified around the world. I've done it. And there's something about having done it that gives you a little bit more perspective on it.

And so that's another component. There are many other things as well. I tell you who I don't get the, I do a good amount of career planning. In the past I've sold a course on career planning and it's not a huge component but I wish there were more. I have often wished for, one of the things I love about running a sale is it makes my services more accessible for people who are perhaps not yet mega wealthy or who are not accustomed to paying kind of normal professional rates for financial advice.

And so from time to time I'm thrilled when I get a call from somebody who is young, who is getting started, somebody who maybe is doing fine but wants to go to the next level because we can really get into next level career advice, really focusing on how do you turbocharge your career, interesting kind of national global opportunities, changing industries, etc.

So if you earn money, you know in my career and income course the entire focus is on tax, 10xing your income in 10 years or less. And I can personalize that advice for you in a really effective way. And I promise your money will be very well spent. So there's more I'm sure but again my work is, I mean it's all public right?

You can assess for yourself. If you're listening to this I don't know what I could do to convince you. You can go and listen to my podcast. If you can't afford the money then just go and listen to the 900 episodes of Radical Personal Finance, it's all available for free and most of the great ideas are probably sprinkled in there.

If you want the right place for consulting, quick lesson for you on how to engage properly with services. When you are young, there are two aspects of it. Number one has to do with age and time versus money and the other thing has to do with spending money to cut out time.

So first, when you are young, most young people have quite a lot of time and not a lot of money. And so when you are young, one of the best things that you can do is be careful with your money and focus on frugal options to absorb information. This is why for young people we encourage extensive reading, extensive listening of free materials, podcasts, YouTube videos, etc.

Gain the information that's out there and then think about applying it to yourself. As you get older, your time starts to get much shorter and your money starts to get more significant. And as your income increases, one of the secrets is to always take your income and invest it back into yourself.

And so it's hard to come up with a proper number but I would say something like 5% of your income is what should be invested into yourself and into your own knowledge and skills on a regular basis. You can go higher than that if it allows and I don't have a perfect formula for that but I've always aimed for about 5%.

And so what that means is if you're earning $50,000 then 5% of that is of course $2,500. And so your annual budget, in my opinion, of investing into yourself should be about $2,500. Now that money can be very effectively spent largely on group level courses. Books are your best value in terms of information density per dollar spent.

You can get a $10 or $20 or $50 book and get massive information density for that. And so maybe you spend $100 a month on books, that comes out to $1,200 a year. That's half your budget. In most cases, for somebody who's getting started there, your other budget should be spent on things like classes.

Those can be digital courses, classes, seminars of various kinds. And most of this should relate to your primary income generating activities. And so your course selection should be connected to your job, your career, either your current one or the one you would like to move into. And so you can pretty easily spend $2,500 a year on books and on courses, etc.

If you start hiring people at $500 an hour, that could be useful if those people are really good and can really deliver. But you can burn through money pretty quickly at that rate. Now as your income goes up, usually due to age, let's say you're earning $150,000 per year and you're targeting spending 5% of your budget on yourself and on your improvement.

That's $7,500. Pretty quickly it becomes much more difficult to spend that on generalized advice. And as you advance in your career, it becomes much more profitable to spend it on experts in specific focus industries and focusing on your life. So you might still spend $1,000 a year on books.

You might spend $3,000 a year on conferences. But your budget still now needs to... now you're going to wind up hiring personal consultants. And by the way, I use this term very broadly. It shouldn't all be a financial advisor. Financial advisor might be one component of it, but it might be a personal trainer.

It might be a therapist. It might be a career coach. It might be an industry expert who can advise you on something related to your career. This varies depending on the person. The point is as your income goes up, then now you can get more usefulness from personalized advice.

The other aspect of this is your general knowledge will now allow you to better assimilate and act on personal advice. Let's use a health and weight loss example. If you have... let's say you're fat and you're out of shape and you want to improve your health and physique. Well, probably just about any program will do.

Meaning anybody who's gone together and put together a program, that'll do. Any book you pick up from the bookstore is probably a good place to start. And any generic thing is ideal for you. But as your skills grow, then you need more and more specific advice. So compare... I don't know, who do we pick?

The Rock. So when Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson was a young lad, then he could just go to the gym, pump iron and make gains, go out with his buddies, eat normal food, etc. As he got older and his income increased, then his body became a more and more crucial part of his personal brand.

And as his muscular development increased, then he needed more and more expertise to advise him on his personal muscular development. And so at this point, he has the world's greatest personal trainer who is looking at his movie roles, thinking about his physique and designing very, very careful exercise regimes that are tailored specifically to his needs and his body's ability to grow muscle, to lean out, to fatten up, whatever it is that's appropriate for the roles that he's engaging in.

He's got at least, I mean, probably a team of doctors, but he's got personal doctors who are overseeing his personal health, all of his biomarkers. He's got world-class doctors with chemical expertise who are supervising his supplement stack, his drugs, his, you know, the steroids and testosterone and everything. And they're carefully watching it.

They're watching his liver results, trying to balance his, again, his drug stack with his personal health, etc. He's got trainers that are people who are dedicated to making sure that he always has his gym set up, his personal assistant. He travels with the gym when he goes on set.

He's got a personal chef who cooks all of his meals exactly to his macro requirements as laid out by his dietician, etc. And the point is, you know, this is just one example. It's no different from a professional athlete, etc. But you don't need, he didn't need any of that when he first got started.

He needed that down the road, but he didn't need that when he first got started. When he first got started, he just needed to be in the gym lifting weights. And at virtually all levels of performance, you find the same themes. If we continue picking on The Rock, right, with his acting.

In the beginning, he was probably a very poor actor, certainly was a very poor actor. And so he, any generic acting coach was appropriate for him. And as he passed along, then he progressively moved up to better and better coaches. And I don't know anything about his acting coaches, but no doubt he has the world's best team of them that are appropriate, some hired by him, etc.

And so as your economic engine grows, then the amount of money that you spend on things increases. And what you do is you move from generalized advice to personalized advice. And it's the same in virtually all areas of success. Your physical coaches, your doctors, your trainers, etc. Your mental coaches, whether it's a therapist, a business coach, a performance coach, etc.

Whether it's coaches and advisors for your specific industry. In some cases, if you're in sales, then it's sales training and sales coaches. If you're in science, then it's the world's greatest scientific minds and who's going to be my PhD mentor, etc. Or who's going to be my post-grad mentor that I'm going to publish with, etc.

Every industry has its own wrinkles. The point is that as you grow, you move from this generalized knowledge to the specific knowledge. Now here's the other aspect, though. The thing that I have never...I've never known exactly how to say or to model. I haven't built the perfect mental model for it.

There's no doubt that when you're young, you have more time than money. And yet, can a high-priced coach save you a lot of time so that you get more money faster when you still have the time? My answer is I think so. I think so. And I want to qualify that.

You need to look at it usually. In many cases, the thing that the coach might say is, "This is not necessary." If you're not 55 years old trying to maintain the super-jacked superhero physique, or if you're not trying to put on 50 pounds of muscle in one month so that you can star in a role, you don't need the world's greatest chemical advisors on what drugs to put into your body to help that to happen.

You just need someone...and so that expert would say, "No, you're not at this level. You don't need that. You should just go to the gym and be in there three times a week and lift, etc." But along the way, paying for information and better advice will often help you make more progress.

And I like to believe, and I've got a good stable of satisfied clients who would affirm this, but I'd like to believe that I can help you cut a lot of years off of your journey. What I think is not helpful, again, is those like, "Okay, every week." For example, I mentioned that I do some coaching.

I work with zero employees in that. It's all entrepreneurs because employees don't have enough things they can do on a week-by-week basis to change things dramatically. Entrepreneurs do, employees don't. But the point is that even if you are just getting started, if you think that I might be able to provide you with some useful ideas, I'd love to help you shave years and years off of your success path.

I often wished that someone had come along and told me at 15 some of the things that I can tell a 15-year-old. And I wasn't smart enough to go out and look for the information, so I wish different for you. I think that sums it up. The point is that as you're thinking about consulting, do what makes sense for you.

I guess I should add other things. I do work with people on occasion who are in financial duress. In most cases, people who are in financial duress, if your situation is small and simple, you should just go and pay your bills, increase your income, decrease your expenses, pay off your debts.

But if you're in a real bind, many times there are things that you can do, whether it's making a plan to play hardball with your creditors so that you can get your feet back under you or whatever it is. I have worked on occasion with people in that situation.

So when I put this on sale, it's a good value for you as well. If you'd like to book a call with me, go to RadicalPersonalFinance.com/consult. Remember 50 slots only. Once those 50 slots are gone, sale is over and the calendar is closed again. Go to RadicalPersonalFinance.com/consult. Book now, save almost 25%, probably 20% on my normal fees.

RadicalPersonalFinance.com/consult. I look forward to talking to you soon.