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It's more than just a ticket. What are the benefits to getting out of debt and staying out of debt? Today on the show we talk with Steve Stewart from Money Plan SOS and he shares his story of being a normal guy who decided to get out of debt, got out of debt, and shares with us some of the options that opened up to him in his life.

Welcome to the Radical Personal Finance Podcast. My name is Joshua Sheets and I'm your host. Thank you for being here. This is the show where we talk about financial independence each and every day, try to give you the tools and ideas and strategies that you need to build your financial independence, and then walk with you, encouraging you daily as you do the work that's necessary to build financial independence for yourself and your family.

Today I invite Steve Stewart on to talk about the work that he has done in his life and how that has benefited him and his family. Steve is the founder of the podcast and website Money Plan SOS where he specifically focuses primarily on helping people get out of debt.

He's a budget coach. He's a financial coach. We met originally at I think it was FinCon maybe, something like that, a year ago. Maybe we even connected before that. I don't remember specifically. But what impressed me about Steve is his consistency of work and his consistency of message. I'm hoping that you'll get a couple of things from this interview, which is why I've invited him on.

Number one, Steve is just a normal American guy, just a normal guy. But I want you to hear the impact that focusing on his financial plan and working his way out of debt has made on his ability to get closer and closer toward his dreams. He really has a really neat story.

I love his story because it's very accessible. Oftentimes I feel like gurus that come along and want to tell you their story about how they're making millions and millions of dollars a month are simply not very accessible. At least they're not to me. Maybe they are to you. But to me, oftentimes I find more encouragement and hope from talking with people who are similar to me.

Additionally, I want you to pay attention, those of you who are interested in financial planning and financial coaching, I want you to pay attention to some of Steve's wins and learnings in his own personal journey as a financial coach. Steve really has a heart to help people and to coach people with their finances and he's worked hard at that.

Yet I also want you to hear the challenge that has been to make a business out of that because I know many of you are working on that same path. Here we go. Let's go. Steve, welcome to the Radical Personal Finance Podcast. I appreciate you being with me. Mr.

Radical PF, thanks for having me. This is your second appearance on the show. Yeah. It seems like I keep making events happen and opportunities come up. When I take action with you, it seems like it gets me on your show. Well, exposure creates opportunity, right? So I've been wanting to have you on to talk about debtlessness and debt freedom and the path out of debt.

You have a pretty cool story, just kind of a normal guy who got encouraged to chart out your own path towards debt freedom. I've been wanting to discuss this episode on the show but I just hadn't gotten around to it yet. Last time we talked a lot about Dave Ramsey but we didn't even go much into your story.

I'd love it if you'd kick us off with a little bit of a background on your story, especially as it pertains to money. Sure. I really wasn't that great with money. I wasn't horrible with money either. I grew up normal, livelihood, suburbs of a Chicago area, working retail, got married in 2000 and my wife and I moved into a house.

We had house debt. We had car debt. We had some credit card debt, nothing that we couldn't really take care of. Most of the time it was paid off every month but it wasn't until about 2004 I think is when I started to realize that a lot of the information I've been hearing about how money really works was wrong or it was confusing.

You get a bit of advice from this person and a bit of advice from that person and you got a friend over here who says this is the best way to go and there's a hot stock over here. It's kind of like you're running around saying squirrel with your money all the time.

What was an example of something that you later discovered was wrong? Later I discovered that buying single stocks wasn't for me. I didn't lose much money but I certainly didn't make money because I didn't know what I was doing. It was very inefficient. It was a great learning experience so I guess you could say that was a payment to education of my own.

What got you into that because very few US Americans actually own single stocks ever. My story is very boring. Your audience is going to tune out very soon. It's very, very simple and very boring. After 9/11 my wife and I were like you know what we know that the market's going down and it wasn't a market decision but we decided we're going to show those terrorists.

We're going to invest in the stock market. Here we are. We're just doing a little bit here and there in our 401ks. We thought well we got to get into investing in stocks. So we looked at a couple of things and I thought okay we live in St. Louis.

I've always been a very, very big fan of Boeing. Boeing we knew would have a future. Boeing is down because the market's down. Let's buy some Boeing. We committed a dollar amount to invest and it was $500. So we bought $500 worth of Boeing stock. We got 12 shares.

What I didn't realize was the Daytek account that I opened up. Daytek was then bought by Ameritrade and then Ameritrade merged with TD Ameritrade I guess it is. We were out of it before then. Anyway, I didn't realize that there was going to be a monthly maintenance fee on that.

So this 12 shares of stocks was costing us like I don't know if it was $8 a month or $9 a month. There was no value in that. We were thinking about buying hold. Buy the stock, hold it, let it go up. We held onto it for a while and finally I was like you know what?

This is just getting too expensive. We're not getting any value out of this. We've got two options. We sell the stock or we pay to have a stock certificate printed. It was $75 and I thought okay let's do it. So we spent another $75 on these 12 shares of stock to actually have the paper certificate in our hands and I held onto that for years.

I'll tell you there's a lot of education coming from this one little I don't even want to call it experiment. Yes, we saw the market go up and down but what I really lost in that deal more than anything was the time that I spent looking at Boeing all the time.

If I was buying hold, what did it matter what the price was that day? What did it matter what the market did that month? It didn't matter because we weren't selling, we were buying and holding. Finally we did sell and we actually did make a profit on it because it has gone up quite a bit since then.

But I'll tell you there's just a lot of energy that was expended in that one little emotional decision to get in the market and show those terrorists that we're Americans, we believe in our economy, we're going to fight by putting our dollars to work in the market. So you learned not to invest in single stocks.

What's one other piece of advice that you followed initially then later decided wasn't for you? It was credit cards. I've decided that credit cards are not for me. It could be a very dangerous thing in my hands because people who listen to my show or listen to me talk, they think I'm a big planner and every penny is accounted for and it is and it's not easy for me.

I could easily just go out there and buy stuff just because I want it. If I ever walk into a Best Buy, I have to purposely go way around the Apple products because I know if I go anywhere near it, it's kind of like that, "Oh!" You know, the aura that shines and the shiny laptops bring me over to the area and I start playing with these new gadgets.

So I decided and it wasn't like one day it just came to me. But I had stopped using them. We had gone to cash for a couple of things and debit card for most things and online billing for the things that you don't pay for when you don't go outside the home, electric bill and cable bill, all that stuff you can do on online billing.

I just stopped using them. I realized after like six months, I'm like, "Why do I have these? What are they doing for me?" And we could talk about the whole credit score and things like that but I just decided I'm not using them. I'm cutting them up and then a couple of weeks later, I decided, "Well, I cut them up.

I may as well cancel the accounts. Why deal with identity theft problems if the account gets compromised?" And I haven't had a credit card. I haven't used a credit card, personal use or business use since 2000, I want to say 2007 and probably cut them all up by 2008.

In the money story, you said you got married in 2000. Did you guys get into credit card that early in your marriage? I think each of us, we might have had a little bit of revolving credit here and there. We used our cards and we "used them responsibly by paying them off every month." So, it wasn't a big heavy deal.

I think we did get into maybe about 2 or 3 thousand at one point but I'll tell you what, some of the housing expenses that were coming up, I'm glad that we stopped because we would have easily started financing. We did a kitchen remodel in '09. We just got all of the windows replaced in the house and that was $7,500.

That's all been paid with cash. But if we hadn't made that decision early on to save up for those types of things and we wouldn't have got as much of a deal either if we'd financed it, then we'd still be paying on some of those. So you don't sound, and this is a compliment, this is not an insult.

It doesn't sound like that radical of a story though, at least from what you described to me. You sound like you and your wife were just normal, typical people. Not necessarily irresponsible but you weren't deeply in debt. How did you wind up getting involved with the Money Plan SOS anti-debt movement?

It's a passion. I feel like there's a mission. If people listen back to, I think it was episode 61 of your show when we had the conversation about Dave Ramsey's advice. Was he the influence originally for you that made you start paying more attention to money? Yes. I guess let me start with that piece of the story.

I was working for a company and it caused me to travel a lot by car. So I was driving around and this is back in '03 or '04 and before iPods, before podcasting, I was just flipping stations on the radio. Came across a station, I heard the DJ talking out to a commercial break.

It was over a song by the Rippingtons. And I thought, "Oh, I like the Rippingtons. That's cool. I'll wait through the commercial break and here's a station I might want to listen to." The DJ came back on and he was talking over a song by Heart, Barracuda. I think, "Oh, this is a really cool variety show." Turns out it wasn't.

It was a talk show and it was Dave Ramsey. It was this crazy guy yelling at his audience. I thought, "Well, this guy's nuts. He's saying everything contrary to everything I believe about money." I've been told to use credit cards responsibly, keep the mortgage because of the home interest deduction.

And I ended up challenging everything that he said and found out that he was right. I was like, "This is information that I had never heard anywhere else and it needs to be spread around." My wife and I then, of course, got on the plan. We got through the emergency fund, paid off the consumer debt by '07, which was the majority of that was an SUV that we had financed in '06.

We paid off in '07. I've been debt-free since then. Got an emergency fund, all that. Started more on retirement savings. Good for you. Yeah. Really, it was once I started to learn how all those pieces fit together that, "Okay, this makes sense for me." Like you said, normal, simple, average American guy.

We never got into huge student loan debt. We never got into huge credit card debt. We never had... I can't say we never had. We had a $20,000 car loan at one point in our life. That's a big car. We just decided to make choices that were better. It's funny how you make those choices eight years ago and today you look back and you're like, "Wow, that was some of the best choices we ever made." You're completely debt-free today.

You paid off the house too? No, we have $8,500 left. That's exciting. Yeah, I know. We've started paying a little bit ahead. We've had some other things come up. That's another reason why I like the process that we're going through is because we could put everything we want towards the house but then that would keep us from doing some other things like taking a family vacation or paying cash for those windows.

Those things came in place first and so there's a process. There's a step-by-step thing that we've gone through and it's very comfortable. It's very easy to understand and so we're not suffering. We're not starving at any rate. What's the first moment that you remember when you looked at your wife and you said, "Man, I'm glad that we started paying more attention to our money"?

The first time, I honestly don't remember a moment. Let me share this story because I'll tell you this is one of those after effects of getting out of debt. We went to a friend's Fourth of July celebration. They have this farm area, there's a log cabin, then on the other side of this creek, there's a pool, it's all open area.

We sat down and they were going to shoot off some fireworks. Well, they were on this one side of this hill and then you have a walkway and there's this chain link fence that surrounds a creek. You walk over the short bridge to get to the other area where the pool is and we sat underneath the tree.

We're behind people so we figure this is a really safe place just in case and it just started getting dusk and they're shooting off some of the kid fireworks and stuff like that. All of a sudden, there's this flash and my daughter's laying on her back. We're like, "What the heck just happened?" We're freaking out because she's laying on the ground and of course she's scared.

We didn't know what happened. It ended up that there was a firework that they shot off. It fell off on its side. It shot down the hill, went through the chain link fence, went between all these other people who were behind and hit my daughter in the chest. Had it been six inches higher, this would be a different story.

Thank God she's okay. It was one of those army men with the parachutes. Thank God it was that. Why am I telling the story? Well, it was a week later that I was telling the story to my best friend and it was that as that woman I realized, "You know what?

We didn't worry about the money thing for one second." I know that sounds cold but when you're in the heat of the moment like that, all your attention needs to go on your daughter. That's it. And I don't know about you but I think for most guys, that's going to be in the back of their minds.

"Oh my gosh, how much is this going to cost? Do we have the money for that?" Well, we were already out of debt. We had a huge emergency fund. So if we had to call the flight for life, bring it on. It didn't matter because this was our daughter.

So we were in a different place because we had made those choices. We were debt free and I didn't have any of those distractions about money going on in my mind at the most important two minutes of our life right there. So that was a big moment of realization of, "Hey, what we've done is really smart." Why did you get involved in coaching?

I think we needed to dispel a lot of the rumors out there that the common pieces of advice that come across as, "This is the way that you do it and there needs to be a more cohesive plan." I like what you do and it's you say, "We need to take each person's situation individually." You believe that, right?

With all your heart. I do too. But I also know that there's the average American who needs just a simple blueprint. It doesn't have to be this complex thing. Just a simple blueprint and then you can make fine tune adjustments on the way. So I decided I needed to go in and start to offer to sit down with people one on one, go through their specific situations, their finances, what their goals are, walk them through the simple path.

What I do isn't that complicated. I walk people through how to manage their checkbook. This isn't investing. I might educate them on what kind of insurances would work best for them but I'm not an expert. I just say, "Okay, if somebody talks to you about whole life, you need to know about this.

You need to know about these alternatives." So I got into coaching just because I wanted to help people to make those better informed decisions with their purchases, with their investments, with their insurance even though I don't sell investments and insurance. I'm not qualified to sell investments and insurance and I'm happy about that.

I do think simplicity is incredibly important for change. I have a real disease of my – some people have a tendency towards over action and under education. My bent is toward over education and under action. So I have to be very conscious of that and I recognize that it limits my effectiveness at being able to accomplish change in other people's lives.

A simple roadmap is incredibly important for people to follow and it's better to have a simple plan that you work, that follows than to have the perfect elaborate complex plan that's so overwhelming that you never actually get started. And so I'm very thankful for example, I'm very thankful for Dave Ramsey in the financial space or other people in the health space or any area of life improvement that just simply say, "Here are five steps.

Do one, do two, do three, do four, do five," because that can help people to go from not doing anything to doing something. I don't actually think that I'll ever have the kind of impact at least with – unless I change my message. I don't think I'll ever have the impact that a guy like Dave Ramsey has with his simple message because I won't come into place when somebody is going from out of control to in control.

What I think is people like him will be able to help somebody take those first steps and kind of where I see my discussion fitting in is almost when people are ready for another level. When you've mastered some basics from whatever philosophy and I'm philosophy agnostic when it comes to financial management, once you've mastered the basics and you're ready to go up a little level and I guess level up as they say, then I think that's where my content fits in.

So I'm very conscious of that and my hat's off to those who can just simply lay out a simple plan and not see all the flaws because all I can see is all the flaws. Well, when you boil it down, you live on lesson you make and you do something smart with a difference.

Well, the smart with a difference piece is where the investing and stuff comes in and that's where you've got a lot more knowledge in the area than I do and I'm not going to pretend like I know everything about annuities, things like that. Don't worry, there's no one that knows everything about annuities.

There's not a single person that knows. So I want to move to the story of your entrepreneurial journey. As I understand it, you're no longer working for a salary, is that right? Exactly. When was this change? It was March of 2015, so it's just three months ago. And what are you doing now?

I'm working on coaching. The financial coaching was the basis of it but I've also, it's funny, I get more requests on Facebook from people in the podcasting space than listeners to my show and I've been doing the show since 2010. You mean for interviews, requests for interviews? No, no, to be friends.

Just people who want to reach out and contact and so I've built somehow, I've been coaching since 2007. I launched the podcast in 2010. I really started getting involved with the podcasting space as far as podcasters and encouraging them to do their own shows a couple of years ago.

Not as, I'm going to put myself above Cliff Ravenscraft or anything like that. Just, hey, I'll encourage you, help you and I've had more people come out and want my help in the podcasting space so I'm tying those two together. It's coaching in general, financial coaching one on one but it's also podcasting which is really interesting.

Let's stick with financial coaching to start with and I want to cover two aspects of it. Number one, I want to cover the actual help that you give to people because I do have listeners who are new and they're saying, "Okay, I'm a little out of control with money.

Where do I start?" And then I want to flip to actually the business of coaching because I have a number of listeners who are following the path of becoming financial coaches themselves. If I come to you as a coaching client, what are the initial stages of your advice to me as a money coach?

So you're the client, I'm the coach. First of all, of course, we have to figure out what your situation currently is. We talk about debt load, talk about income. I want a very basic idea of the types of insurances that you've got, coverage for health and life and disability, things like that, auto, home as well.

Once we get that idea of where you are, then we can start to sit down and say, "What is it that you want to accomplish when we're done here?" Whether that's a day, a week, a month, a three-month plan, whatever. And that's where we then have to decide, "Okay, how do we take this income here and drive those purchases, the spending towards hitting those goals?" If it has to do with cutting the education, excuse me, that's a good one, entertainment, cutting the entertainment.

And I tell you, we have a problem here with cell phones and cable bill in this house. I think we spend too much. It doesn't seem like enough for what we pay, but it's what we use. And so how does that help us reach our goals? Well, we have other things we can do.

How about the client that I'm working with? Is their cell phone bill more than they need or is it appropriate? Somebody who wants to eventually become a fitness trainer, well, they should probably have a gym membership and go into a gym once in a while. So I'm not going to tell them to cut that out.

That's not going to help them reach their goals. That's the type of things that we have to look into while we're sitting and doing the coaching process of, "Okay, you're getting this income. Where does it need to go?" And of course, I walk through a process of budgeting that I think is different than anywhere else.

And it just boils the process down to one sheet and it puts everything on there. And it shows your heart. It shows your priorities. They come out in the discussion where some people are like, "Oh, yeah, that is more important to me than I thought." Or, "Oh, I thought that was really important, but you're right.

This needs to be above that in our prioritized list." I'll share with you one of my observations. I think that the concept of railing against people who are out of control with money for spending too much money on cars is quickly going into the ground. There are certainly many people who spend quite a bit of money on cars, but I don't think that's the most damaging thing facing most of our financial lives.

It's not necessarily for many of us, it's not the biggest appreciating asset. I think that what's replaced that is phones and electronic gadgets. If you were to go into the life of the average, I'll just say 20 to 30 year old, let's just say early millennials. If you were to look at the amount of money that my generation spends on a $1,000 phone every couple of years, $600 phone, $700 phone, an iPhone, an iPad, a MacBook or other Windows laptop, whatever it is, and you were to put all of that together and figure out the depreciation costs, my generation is we're driving at a lower rate as far as the number of us who have driver's license.

We're getting driver's license later, and the cars that we drive are not quite as expensive as they once were. That dream that used to be in the culture of, "Okay, I'm going to be 16 now. I can go ahead and get my own car. I'm defined by my car." Most of us aren't defined by our cars anymore, but that doesn't mean that the marketers haven't been able to sink their teeth into our budgets.

Some people's cell phone bills, some people, that sounds so horrible because it used to be me too. We've cut ours down recently, but you're talking about a car payment. You'd be driving your phone because it's like a car payment. I agree with that. It's funny how 10 years ago, a monthly cell phone bill was $30 for 100 minutes.

How that has changed to five times that. You can make phone calls and text all you want. It doesn't cost you a penny. It's the data, which is just an internet portal in your hand, but we pay for that right. I love it. I enjoy it. I find it hard to give up.

I was just going to say, but flip it around, even though I'm aware of the cost, I wouldn't give it up because if you look at the sheer number of things that you can do that enhance your lifestyle, yes, communication, but also being able to run your business from anywhere.

I remember when I was on my honeymoon, three or four years ago, I was a financial planner at the time. I was sitting on the beach in the Dominican Republic and sitting in a little hotel in Haiti with my wife. I could just grab my phone, take about 10 minutes, answer my client emails, forward stuff to my assistant, just handle things in about 10 minutes and go on with my life.

If you look at the sheer flexibility of mobility that is available, and then you take and add on the ability to enhance your life with the sheer massive volume of education and inspiration that's available free on demand. If I were starting out flat broke, one of the first things I would be doing would be getting an appropriate mobile device and getting started because I couldn't replace.

When I think back to the thousands and thousands of dollars that I spent on CD audio learning programs and I were to compare that to what's available to me now, it's a good deal if used productively to advance you towards your goals. So back to the... Well, you know what?

I'd like to jump on that one more time because like you said, if I was just starting out, what is the one thing that people always say you need to do in business is to network. And I really, I mean, I can network with anybody anywhere, Facebook, Twitter, there's other things that you can use.

So I can't discount the fact that this little portal here, this little phone, the iPhone is letting me talk to anybody anywhere at almost any moment's notice. And it's a lot easier to do it that way than to try and find their phone number, find when they're available to take my call, things like that.

So there is a value to that, but I guess we have to weigh out how much of a value is that compared to what we're paying on a monthly AT&T bill. Yeah, the sweet spot is just go about a year behind everyone else. And if you just stay a year behind everyone else, then prices drop.

I mean, right before iPhone 6 came out, you could get an iPhone 5 for like a buck or it was a buck or 99 bucks, whatever. But the prices plummet in value and you can go ahead. And as long as you just stay about a year behind, you're close enough to be able to take use of most of the stuff that's going on, but you're not on the cutting edge where you're taking the biggest hit on depreciation.

It's funny. That's exactly what we did. Our contract was up, so we're on a month-to-month for a while. We decided, okay, the battery on my phone was dying because I use my phone a lot. So it was getting low. We needed, needed, hello, needed to upgrade my daughter from a LG Touch, which had the buttons, you know, it wasn't a touchscreen.

We wanted to upgrade her for her Christmas gift. So in November, we went and picked up new phones and it was right after the 6 was announced. We could have gotten 6s, but we decided, you know what, we don't need it. We're going to stick with the 5s. So my wife and I both got 5s and my daughter got, I think it's a 5c.

It's a lime green for a dollar. How do you beat that? So there is that initial cost up ahead, but it really is the data that we have to be more conscious of and how much data you use going forward. Yeah. And the cool thing is, as soon as I'm finished with this interview, though, I'm actually interviewing a guy who has been homeless for nine months.

And, uh, but yet it, during that period of time, he's building and has built a web business, but somebody gave him a smartphone and he's just taking advantage of the free wifi and literally running a web business, uh, without owning a home and without having any data connection. So it's going to be a cool story.

Uh, and I'm looking forward to bring it to the audience, but it illustrates, I think just the amazing opportunities that are available that have never been available regardless of how you actually have to do them. If I were going to do it over, uh, if I, you know, if I lost everything, I'd be down at the library.

I wouldn't go back to traditional business. If I lost everything, I'd be down at the library, um, typing out blog posts on the library computer. I'm going to check out my local library system here. I don't have, my computers are woefully underpowered to do any kind of media graphics, but I just got noticed that one of my local libraries has established a big computer system, a bunch of fancy, I think a bunch of fancy fancy max that have all of the audio visual production stuff on them.

So I'm going to go and kind of see if I can make a video or something on their equipment. And those opportunities exist today that for with a throwaway phone and access to the library, you can set up something even without an established home base and even without the, uh, even without all of the things that we come, come to know and love.

The advertisement that the flyer that I got from my library actually advertised podcasting as one of the things you can do. And I'm going to go check out and see kind of what their setup is with microphones and computers that using the public library, you could go and establish a, an audio podcast all using their equipment.

That's crazy. That's cool. I wonder if they have a little room for you in the sound booth or something. That's fun. Yeah, I'm going to go check it out. So back to the business story. So we talked a little bit about where you would start and I like that starting point.

And obviously coaching then becomes intensely focused and personal. Now with regard to developing the coaching business, what's worked and what hasn't and have you actually made money enough to support yourself doing financial coaching? The quick answer is no. And that's very disappointing. Again, I've been building this business for years on the side and when the opportunity came to leave the full time job, it really was the best choice for me and the company I was working for.

I knew that was the place I needed to go. I think this is a story that's still being written. I don't think it's, I think we're still kind of at the beginning, which when I look back, I'm disappointed because like I've, you know, I've worked so hard to build a name for myself and to show people my heart and they can, anybody can go to my website and just hear, you know, who I am from listening to any of my episodes.

Maybe that's my problem. But yeah, it hasn't quite transitioned to that yet. So I'm still wondering if that story is being written. You want to know what has worked, I think is what your question was. Yeah. I'm going to rephrase the question though. Tell me the story of transformation in the client's life that has most impressed you.

Keep obviously their personal details private, but describe the client and the change that happened because of coaching that for you has been the biggest encouragement where you said, wow, look at, look at what this person was able to do with some good coaching. You know, it's funny we talk about money and financial coaching, but it really turns out to be how the relationship has changed.

There's a couple I still keep in touch with who the husband was going to be laid off at the end of the school year. So he had a few months notice. They were deeply in debt. They were arguing. And in fact, they were arguing when we met. We actually met closer to where they live.

We met in the St. Louis Bread Company, which is a Panera Bread in other areas of the country. And we were sitting there and the conversation got heated. Between them or between them and you? Between them. Yeah, I guess. Thank you. Thanks for clearing it up. Between them, it was one of those, she was pointing at him, he was pointing to her and it was getting a little bit loud and stuff and I kind of tried to calm down.

I explained something. I don't even remember what it was, but I remember walking them through something to show them that they're going to be okay. It's not going to be easy, but they're going to be fine as far as feeding the family and getting gas in the car, getting them to the basics.

And something clicked and the wife's face changed. Her shoulders dropped and all of a sudden they just kind of looked at each other and they high-fived. And it was the weirdest thing. It was such a weird turnaround. And I still keep in touch with them today via social media.

Because life's great for them. They still have a lot of problems that they have to deal with financially, but they're still together. They have a newborn. Tell me that doesn't happen. Marriages are resolved. Marriages stick together. That's probably very, very powerful right there. You just look back on that and say, "I think something that I did there fixed that or helped to solve, to save that marriage." Why do you think the business model hasn't worked to the point where I don't know of anybody that probably has a bigger footprint as a budget coach?

You've got, let's see, you've done, I think you're a Dave Ramsey certified coach, right? Or certified counselor? Technically no. I went and got training from them, but no, that model doesn't exist anymore. But people who used to go there did. So I want to come up with you. But my point is, you've learned some things.

You're not just hanging out a shingle without having studied anybody else's plan. But yet you haven't been able to build a full-time business exclusively on financial coaching. Why not? What hasn't worked? There's going to be some things in here we could talk about. I don't know how to close.

I don't know how to make the sale. It's absolutely true. I just like to give and I know that causes me to not ask for the sale properly. So there's that. There's no advertising my show so I'm starting to change some of that to kind of show that, "Hey, I'm available if you want to get one-on-one coaching." And really I think the business model for coaching now has to, it doesn't exist on one-on-one coaching.

A lot of the income that I'm getting is coming from affiliate sales. There's opportunities when you go and do financial wellness speaking at businesses. Because businesses, they will have the money to develop their employees, to help their employees. I mean look at the whole health wellness thing. Eight years ago that didn't exist and now you're just beginning to hear about financial wellness.

If you can help somebody with their health and you can see the monetary impact on that, why wouldn't a business want to do that for their finances? Because the finances are what are taking them away from being productive at work. They're worried about the money thing. They're taking off extra time.

Sick days, we found in studies that sick days are reduced once somebody has gone through some kind of financial coaching or financial wellness classes. Other studies have shown that the most common, I guess the time, what am I trying to say here? People check their bank accounts the most on Monday at 8 a.m.

and they're doing it usually 8 a.m. is the beginning of a workday. So what does that tell you about people are worried about their finances? So as far as why is it not working, one-on-one coaching, I think that business model for me hasn't worked. Maybe it's because Joshua Sheets has all this wonderful information on radicalpersonalfinance.com.

He's stealing all my business away from me. The reason I'm pointing it out is simply because it's a common theme. So I've received so many inquiries from people who want to be financial coaches. They don't want to be financial advisors. And so because I've received so much personal correspondence, I'm sure that there are other listeners I wanted to talk about your experience.

I think the reason it doesn't work is because you're trying to help people who are broke, who by definition don't have any money to pay you for your help. And the fact that they're broke is indicative of the fact that they're not proactive about going and seeking out help.

So the only way that I can see that it's possible to serve people who are broke and not proactive is on a mass basis. So the way that Dave Ramsey has on where you've got a free radio show and then the next step supported by advertising and then the next step there is a $10 book.

And then the $10 book and the free radio show might do a good enough job to help someone to not be so broke and to inspire them to say I need to search out some information. And then at that point in the process, then they can afford to hire somebody for help.

And I don't think it's necessarily – I'm trying to be very frank about the situation but that's the reason. It's hard to get rich selling services to people who can't pay you very much. So if it's about personal enrichment and building a business where you can earn a lot of money, your best bet is to work with people who are the wealthiest.

And that's why we have this incredible skew in the financial advice industry where the majority of financial advisors are exclusively focused on or planning to be exclusively focused on serving the affluent. So the higher your balance sheet grows, the better advice you get access to and the more competition there is for your business.

The lower the costs go, the more competition there is, the higher the service which is really, really weird because those are the people who frankly don't need so much help. It's the broke people who need a lot of help and who are being preyed on by scummy people selling scummy crap to them.

And so the only way that I can see that we can change it is with information. Unfortunately, when working in the bottom end of the market income wise, there are reasons why people are there that aren't a character deficiency. There are people all throughout the world who are in very difficult circumstances.

There are people who have faced unfortunate events that have wiped them out. Everything from the failure of a business to dropping out of the workforce to care for a loved one. Money and its accumulation is not an indication necessarily of a character deficiency or a character virtue. It might be one indication but it's not the only thing.

But the problem is the information is out there for free but really without just some basic limited personal interaction, it's hard to figure out how to access those customers. The information is sitting there on the internet and the information has always been available for free. And those who are proactive about getting it, who are proactive about going down to the library and starting to read the books on money and talking to people that have money, they're the ones who change over time and are able to access the services of a financial advisor.

But unfortunately, the people who most need the help oftentimes just don't go and seek it out. Oftentimes, the fattest people are the ones who are the least likely to go and talk to a nutrition coach or talk to a nutrition expert. You look at somebody who's an Iron Man and you think, "Here's this person.

They're reading every book they can on exercise and nutrition and they're consulting coaches," and you're saying, "You don't need it. You're an Iron Man." But the reality is it's that character quality of that thirst for information, thirst for coaching, that's what's driving them to success. And here, Joshua, the fat slob over here in the corner, he doesn't want to pay anybody to help him with his weight problem.

Absolutely. I think we all have our desires and our dreams and what we want to focus on. I guess one of the problems is when we get out of balance with some of those other things. We talk about work-life balance, those types of things. If you work a lot, then your family life suffers, though your finances might be okay.

But then if your family life suffers and you get divorced, now your finances fall apart as well. There's got to be a little bit of a happy medium there. If you don't focus anything on your finances, you're never going to get control of the money thing. And the money thing is that great equalizer of purchasing value from somebody else.

If I have money in my hands, I can buy value from somebody else and whatever that is, it could be food, it could be a restaurant experience, there's two different things. It could be a gadget or it could be something I need to fix my car. There are two different things, but the money is exactly the same.

If I can't keep that money coming in and spending that wisely, then I'm not going to be able to get that car repair when I need to. And so we limit our choices then by not managing that money properly. So yeah, you're right. If people aren't seeking some of that knowledge and applying it to their lives, they will find themselves without those options.

And that's where I think a lot of our culture is lost on it. Even the ones who make some good money get lost just because of the debt loads. It's the most frustrating thing I think for social scientists, sociologists, I guess maybe that's the right name for the academic discipline.

But everything seems to go together. People talk about the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. I think the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. And also the rich get richer and they get healthier and they get happier and they get better relationships and they get just more fulfilled lives because it's primarily a character quality.

That's what makes the biggest difference. It's drilled into my head. I just love what Jim Rohn used to teach. He said, "The point of accumulating a million dollars is not having the million dollars, although that's certainly fine. But the point of becoming a millionaire is to become the kind of person who accumulates a million dollars." And that's the ultimate worth of the million dollars.

And I do everything I can here on the show to try to be an encouragement to the few people that will take action on things because the majority of people listening even to this show won't ever take action on the information. But some of them will. And each of us has an opportunity with our own circle of influence to be able to affect and encourage just a few other people.

And then those people will affect and encourage just a few other people. And little by little that has a ripple effect. And so whether it starts in money or whether it starts in health or whatever, it starts and then it moves on to other things. And little by little we can affect people's self-concepts and give them some confidence.

And I love that it can start at the basic level of running a budget and running a checkbook or it can go at a very high level of whatever the highest level is that you or I would say and it has a ripple effect throughout life. I can add on to that.

I stole your thunder. So forgive me. So on the coaching business, I didn't want to make it sound like you're somehow a business failure, but I wanted to point out that where you are finding success is in the ancillary services. And go in just a little bit now into even the podcast business and describe how you wound up even with that as being an expression of your business work.

Well, I decided back in 2010 that the podcast was going to be kind of what you're talking about, that first step to education for somebody. It was going to be a greeting card as well to let them know a little bit about who I was before they ever picked up the phone to reach out to me.

That was the purpose of the show. It's kind of taken a life of its own since then. I have actually, and I don't know if I share this a lot. I know I say it a lot, but I don't know if I share it to my listeners, but I've often thought about, what am I doing this for?

The show, technically the show doesn't bring in any money. The money comes from the people who hire me as clients, which is funny because recently the clients I've been getting are not Americans. It's weird. And they didn't find me from my show. Maybe my show is ranking me better in Google and that's how they're finding me, but it's not because of the podcast.

So I keep thinking, why am I doing this? Do I need to rebrand, relaunch? It's still a big question mark. So I'm sorry, I've forgotten what your question was. I've gone off on another. The ancillary services that have been bringing in income and how they relate to the education.

Well, if we look at, you know, the education piece was the podcast blog posts, sort of, though my blog posts are really show notes for the podcast. And then there's a $25 budgeting program that I sell. It's a video course that I walk people through my budgeting process that gets them, you know, from not ever starting or hating all budgets to something that they can really use.

And that kind of introduces them into ways that they can spend more wisely, which then will get them more financially solid. They'll have that basic emergency fund and be able to live on this and they make. And then it builds into the coaching idea. Other things I do are affiliate sales.

I'm sure at least a good portion of your audience has heard of, if not using YNAB, which is a short acronym for you need a budget. And it's funny, I was always a spreadsheet guy. And when I found out what YNAB really was, I was totally in love with it, totally on board with it and became an affiliate for them.

So now when I mentioned on my show, I'll mention a link that will get my listeners 10% off and then I get an affiliate sale for that as well. So there's affiliations that come through my blog, my podcast that also bring in a little bit of income. At least that covers a lot of the business expenses, I guess you'd say of, you know, hosting.

And I've got three different hosting programs, website, video and audio. And that doesn't come cheap. So let's see what else. So the beginning is the free advice, the podcast, the resource guide they can sign up for, which is free. Going to a $25 budgeting school class, I guess you'd say, online and then moving into the one-on-one coaching, which I think will really start to move the needle because there's that accountability piece.

When you know you're going to meet with your coach next week, "Oh, I should be doing this. Otherwise, you know, Steve's going to yell at me" type thing. Was it, has it been, you've been in the field of entrepreneurship now for three months. What was it like making that decision?

It was easy. Did your job close out on you where the opportunity there, your job kind of ended and it made a natural transition or did you have to leave and get out of a warm bed and get into a cold room? No, let me, I guess I'll walk through the story again.

Before I met my wife, I was working for a company as an internal auditor. It involves some travel, but I was single at the time, so that was fine. Then we got married and moved, actually moved and then I was chasing her to St. Louis is where I ended up chasing her to.

So I moved here, took a different auditing position with a different company and it started out, okay, it's 25% travel, no big deal. Then it started to become 50% travel and then it was 80% travel and it started to really become a drag on my health, my mental state.

I'm not going crazy, but it's like when you sit in a car for four hours, you know, "Hey, I can get caught up on Joshua Sheets podcast. Great." Four hours, you're going to need more than that. Well, it wasn't four, it was, you know, it wasn't four hours a week.

And then, and then I found out like in December that it was going to turn into like 98% travel. It was just ridiculous. There was no way it was going to work for anybody. So I knew the writing was on the wall, so I was making, making changes at that time.

So it just came to a head right in the middle of March. I was waiting for the trigger to come as far as there were, without getting into too many details, there was going to be a sale of an area to a franchisee. And when that happened, there was nothing for me to do locally.

There was no way to keep me in town. So I don't even know that's happened yet, but it just came to a point where it's just too much travel. It didn't make sense for anybody. So I ended up leaving the job knowing full well that my heart, my passion, my desire, and from what people tell me, my talent lies in this coaching thing.

And so, oh, I guess I still have to figure out exactly where my place is, but I've seen people do very interesting things in niche spaces. I've heard you speak of it before, or maybe your listeners are familiar with Cliff Ravenscraft. He's known as the podcast answer man. What was he doing?

He was selling insurance and then he got into podcasting and then he decided, I need to get into this thing more and he created a business around it. Then there's a guy named John Lee Dumas who came in and decided, I wanted to make a podcast, one, you know, release an episode every single day and it's a 30, 38 minute interview, same eight questions and sell advertising in it to make money.

And he did that. Who teach, what school do you go to learn that? There's no education that. So there's places and people who find these odd things that they can then develop and they master it in some way and they become the podcast answer man. You know what I mean?

And that's what I'm thinking I'm looking for is where do I fit into this grand scheme of, you know, you and I, we attend the financial blogger conference. There's hundreds of bloggers there. Where do I fit into that? You know, how does my voice sound or resonate with somebody louder than somebody else's?

Was the plan to start a business easier because of being debt free except for your mortgage? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, because right now, we could survive on my wife's income. We could survive. It doesn't get us ahead in our finances, but we're not falling behind either. We still have an emergency fund.

We're still debt free. We're still headed, you know, headed towards that last payday of our payday that that last home payment in it's a half of a house payment in February of 2016. That's not going to change. It'd be kind of weird to change it right now. You know, if I had to refi $8,500 for a smaller payment, it doesn't make any sense.

So, you know, we're getting by. We're fine. I don't look at that though as, you know, why did I leave the job so I could, my wife could support me. No, absolutely not. It was more of a decision because I feel like this is where I need to be and from those people that I have connected with, networked with, you know, I'm sure you get the same feeling when somebody writes to you saying, Joshua, you know, I'm listening to your show and you've changed my life.

Well, how do you put a price on that? Yeah. The reason I was emphasizing that and kind of leading you there is because in my mind this is the central benefit of debtlessness is flexibility and freedom. I'm not a clear cut guy as far as in terms of the way that many, I'm not like you as far as being very hardcore on don't borrow money.

I'm not like others in that perspective. I look at it in the terms of borrowing money for investment purposes, backed by appreciating assets versus wasting money. It's always stupid to borrow money for stuff that loses value and unfortunately that's where the majority of people borrow money. If you go back and look, you find some businesses that start without borrowed money, but the vast majority start with borrowed money.

But the problem with leverage is that even if used effectively, it has a reverse impact on your own personal financial life. And so even if you can use it to effectively build a business such that someday they put you on the cover of a business magazine talking about the many millions that you made, it puts an intense pressure on your personal life.

And during those years where you're hustling and the bills are coming in and you're doing everything you can to get the business going, that is a very stressful time. But if we can just simply help people to avoid borrowing money from the beginning and then we can help people to get out of debt from wherever they are, then when the life transition happens, they find out this job is not working out, they're helped with a nice nudge out the door based upon the decisions, then it frees them up.

And no matter what they do, they're always free to pursue whatever the next thing is. And the stories that break my heart are when people crank up their lifestyle, especially cranking up their lifestyle with borrowed money, and then all of a sudden they suffer a business turnaround of some kind.

And the stress that it puts their family in is immense. And for me, I just don't want to be in that situation because the impact of my life of having an extra 10 or 20 million bucks after I'm already rich is not going to be that big of a deal.

But the potential negative impact of being highly stressed in a stressful time in a business change or in an economic change, that's huge. And the freedom that comes with debtlessness, the freedom to change, the freedom to start businesses, the freedoms to pivot, the freedoms to build an ideal lifestyle, that's ultimately serving our daily life, which is the only thing really that we have to live is each day today.

So in my mind, it's a bad trade to say, "I'm going to trade five years of misery and stress just to be the richest guy in the business magazine." I'd rather have five years of low stress and not be listed in the business magazine, but still be rich at the end of the day.

Because today, once it's gone, we never get it back. Yeah, while you're saying that, I was thinking of a... This might be taking us a little off topic, but I remember the other night, some people have said, "Steve, you've got to watch The Prophet." And I'm like, "The Prophet?

What's that? It's a TV show." I'm like, "Oh, I don't need another TV show. Get away from TV if I can." Well, guess what? I started watching it. And the other night, there was an episode that was a couple of ladies who started a... I think it was EcoMe, some kind of a chemical-free cleaner.

And they're saying, "Okay, what is your revenue?" "Oh, we bring in $500,000 a year." "Okay, what is your debt?" "$250,000 a year." And their process... I mean, it was clear to everybody that their process for how they created the product, packaged it and everything, all they needed was some equipment to make it go by.

It was a very manual process. And that would have immediately changed their profitability, but they weren't doing it because, well, they had that debt load already sitting there. So, would you call that a successful business? I don't know. But had they not had that debt, they could have easily made some just, "Hey, let's get this equipment." And they could have really made a change in their business.

But instead, they had to have the host of The Prophet TV show come and solve their problems for them. Steve, last question. If you were going to give yourself some encouragement, kind of wake yourself up a little bit, go back to 2005. Sounds like that would be about a year to...

That would be right to 10 years ago. How would you encourage yourself based upon what you now know? That's a really good question, Joshua. I don't know. Let me think about that for a second. How would I encourage myself? I guess the answer to that is, if I knew then what I know now type thing, right?

There are a lot of people in my life that are encouraging me, both in the professional and the personal sense. I've got some things coming together actually. A little self-promotion here. In August, I'm going to be one of three, probably four guys who are going to be facilitating a one-day business conference or a business summit I guess you'd say in Indianapolis.

And that's going to be really cool. It's something, again, I don't think the story has been written. So if I was to encourage myself, I think I would just have to say, as shy as I am, people don't believe that. My daughter doesn't believe it one bit. I force myself to get on the mic and I force myself to talk to people because I see the value in that.

Not just for me and my benefit of talking to someone but I think I can help them in some way. Find out what their desire or their need is and be able to help them. I would definitely point towards that making friendships, solid friendships, networking. Don't hide in the house all day or something like that.

Get out there more. I think that's the thing is getting out, shaking hands with more people, getting to know them more, seeing what their needs are, see if there's a fit. Just like in a sales negotiation. Where's that common ground? Where's that piece of the negotiation that makes it benefit both the salesperson and the person who's buying the product or service?

So yeah, the networking, the getting out and meeting more people. Had I done that back then, I think we'd be in a different situation now. I'd probably be a couple of years ahead of where I am right now. So, MoneyPlanSOS.com and you have, is it YesYouCanPodcast2? Is that your site too?

Yes. YesYouCanPodcast2 and that's T-O-O.com but I'm going to be moving all that to my home base which is SteveStewart.me. But right now, that's where people can find me is MoneyPlanSOS.com or YesYouCanPodcastT-O-O.com. Okay. And give us a plug for your Get Out of Debt course. Yeah, it's a virtual budget coaching course.

It's $25 on MoneyPlanSOS.com/start. It's six high definition videos plus some bonuses that walk people through my budgeting process in less than an hour. Awesome. Steve, thanks for coming on. I really appreciate it. Hey, thank you. I value your friendship. Take heart from Steve Storie. Notice the impact that getting out of debt and getting control over your financial situation can have on your life.

Start where you are and just work continually day by day toward your goals. If you work hard on it year by year, well day by day, week by week, month by month, year by year, then over time you'll be able to take advantage of some of the opportunities that previously you never would have thought of being able to take advantage of.

It's worth the work. It's worth the effort because in time it really can pay off extremely well. Hope you're encouraged by Steve Storie. Thank you all so much for listening today. I really appreciate each and every one of you who's listening to the show. Hopefully, if I'm able to do it, hopefully we'll have a Friday Q&A this week.

I'd love to have your questions come in on that. So feel free to email them to me, joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com, or go to the website and call them in on the voicemail line. I got a bunch of voicemail questions in the queue. Sorry, I haven't gotten one of those out in a couple of weeks with new baby in the house.

I haven't been able to do it. Those are the most time consuming shows for me to get those lined up and prepare my answers and do it in a way that's useful for you. So I just simply haven't been able to get it done. But if you'd like to support the show, please go to radicalpersonalfinance.com/patron.

Sign up directly to support the show at radicalpersonalfinance.com/patron. Got a bunch of bribes and incentives there listed out for you to incentivize you to do it. You can sign up with as little as a buck a month or as much as a couple hundred bucks a month if you want access to our private mastermind call.

Also, this week we will be doing the, in fact, this show will be tomorrow. This week we are doing the, on Friday, the Q&A for the $10 a month and up supporters on Patreon. So if you haven't done that yet, if you haven't subscribed yet as a $10 a month supporter on Patreon, please go to radicalpersonalfinance.com/patron and there will still be enough time for you to get onto the monthly Google Hangout where you can ask me your questions live and I'll do my best to answer them for you.

So thank you all so much for listening. Be back with you soon. Cheers. Thank you for listening to today's show. Please subscribe to the podcast with our free mobile app so you don't miss a single episode. Just search the App Store on your device for Radical Personal Finance and you'll find our free app.

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