Radical Personal Finance coaching call this morning. I want to share with you some ideas around social capital and the social economy. No, I'm not talking about Facebook. I'm talking about true social relationships and as we begin this week, I've got some encouragement that I think will make a difference for you this week.

Welcome to the Radical Personal Finance podcast. My name is Joshua Sheets and I'm your host. Thank you for being with me early Monday morning today. I'm excited about this week wrapping up a few projects and I hope to share some ideas with you as we begin a Monday morning here that I think will help you.

I want to talk to you about being a go giver. Yes, I'm stealing that from Bob Berg, but I'm not going to steal his book, but I am going to talk about giving and investing in other people. I've been working hard the last couple of weeks to get back in the flow of normal life and as I begin this week, it's about 630 right now.

I've been up kind of working through my plans, sketching out my goals, looking through this week and dealing with the priorities and working hard to get back into kind of the more normal flow of life. But as I was thinking about the shows that I wanted to do this week, I've wanted to just simply talk about the concept of the giving economy.

I'm not coming at it this morning from the perspective of being a giver. Rather, I'm just simply coming at it with a heart of gratitude of being richly blessed and having been a receiver of the giving economy. It's just caused me to consider this morning how blessed I am and how I really don't deserve it and thinking about, number one, how I can return some of those blessings to other people.

But also just the major impact of what a difference the blessings of other people helping me over the last weeks and months has made in my life. There are a few things that have come together. I'll just sketch out the two of them that really are top of mind and the two are childcare, helping with our very challenging baby, and also some of the help with transitioning and getting my house ready for the move.

As I shared on a recent show, the last couple of months have been incredibly challenging. I don't know how my wife and I had so many things going on, and you've heard a little bit about that on the show here. You've even seen it in the frequency of shows.

There was a week without any shows two weeks ago, and then last week I released two shows and getting this move done. It's all been part of the plan to simplify our lives, but frankly, it's just been challenging. And I'm not – again, don't be scared. I'm not here to complain.

I'm actually just here to be grateful because I don't know how it would have been possible for me to really make any progress the last few weeks or for my family to survive without all of the help that we've received. And yet very little of the help that we've received has been paid help.

Rather, it's been people out of their own goodwill and hearts choosing to help. A number of weeks ago, I went out to the Podcast Movement Conference, and when I – I had purposely delayed the decision to go until after the birth of our baby girl because I was waiting to see – you never know.

When there's a birth – when you're expecting a child, you don't know how the birthing process is going to go. Everything could go great or everything could be challenging. You don't know how the baby is going to work out. You don't know if she's going to be happy, if she's going to be healthy.

You don't know if she's going to be in the hospital for five months. You have no idea. So I purposely didn't book any tickets, didn't buy any, just didn't make any plans for the conference in advance. I waited until after she was here, and after she was here, the first couple of weeks seemed to be pretty simple.

Mama was feeling good. Baby was feeling good. Everything seemed to settle in. So then I went ahead and made plans to go out to Texas for the Podcast Movement Conference and purchased my – made my plans. Right before I left, a couple of days before I left, everything started to get challenging and challenging both with our new baby and also with our young son.

Both of them started to be extremely frustrated and our baby started to – they call it colic. Colic is basically an unexplained reason of why your baby cries more than three hours a day. There are a few theories on why it might happen but it's not directly attributable to a clear cause, something that you can clearly fix.

All of a sudden, everything got started to get very challenging for my wife. I seriously considered canceling the trip but by then I had made so many plans and I made such an investment that I decided I needed to go ahead and go. Well, it was an extremely difficult time on my wife.

It was extremely challenging. But it was only even made possible due to the fact of family support. My mom – while I was gone, my mother helped my wife every day, basically all day, helping take care of the kids. Even with the help, it was extremely challenging. But without the help, without that social support, it would have been impossible.

Now, things like that don't often fit well into the financial planning paradigm. How do you hire somebody to do childcare for you for a number of days? It's not just on a short-term basis. It's hard to – even if you did want to hire and were going to hire that type of work done on a short-term basis.

It's hard to figure out where would you find somebody that was qualified and capable and desirous to do that type of work for a number of days. But just the type and the nature of the work doesn't fit well into the money economy. It's part of the social economy.

And I'm incredibly grateful for all the work that my mother did to help me even in those days. You can't repay somebody for things like that. All you can do is just be grateful and look to serve and to love in turn. Coming back, worked hard to get things going and then even transitioning and working hard to get my house ready to go and get the apartment ready to move into.

I had a number of friends and a number of family members who volunteered hours and hours and hours of their time even up until today even, volunteering to help me. And I couldn't have made the progress that I've made. My family wouldn't have been able to make this transition as quickly and easily as possible without all the tremendous help.

I'm forever grateful. And it's help that frankly I couldn't even afford to pay, the thousands of dollars for people that have volunteered their time and their energy and just give it to me. And I'm sharing some of these personal details just simply because it's real to me and I hope it's an encouragement to you because, A, I'm humbled.

But it also is reinvigorating and reinspiring to me to recognize the blessing that others have been in my life and to think about, "Am I being proactive with helping and blessing others?" That's the type of question that's best suited for simply consideration without actually answering it. Because if I say yes, well, number one, am I really?

Am I fooling myself? But it's just worth considering. And it's one of those ideals and focuses that one should continue moving toward. But this has been compounded with the fact that while I've been working, I have actually read two books or listened to two audio books about the history of money.

Book review is coming soon. But this has been part of my project of trying to dig into on this show more about money, some of the background. I want to dig into more of monetary – the monetary system because it's an important topic. And I've been trying to figure out how on earth do I bring the topic to you, my audience, in a way that's helpful and that's clear without – and it's accurate without being too far influenced to an ideological camp that doesn't need to be entered into.

So as I've been working, the two of the money books that I've listened to, one has been called – one is called Money, an Unauthorized Biography. And the other was called Coined, something about history of money. And both of them have talked about the giving economy and the gift economy.

And they've talked about the fact that economy – money was an institution that was put into an existing economy. When you think about that from a practical perspective, it helps you to see through the monetary unit to what's actually happening. The personal definition that I think of money is simply a representation of value.

It's a representation of a transfer of value. That's a pretty accurate definition of money. But in order to get some, you got to build some value. And as I've been thinking about the social economy, I've realized that the work that people have done to help me in the way that people have contributed to my life is something that I won't pay them for directly with money now.

And I can't. But I hope to repay the debt at some point in the future. And that has a real financial impact. For example, it's – and any person who has parents and they have a loving relationship, no child – most children would not ever want their parents to suffer.

They would not ever want their parents to be in need or in want. If anybody had the capacity to help their parents, they would. Most families that have a normal family bond are going to have that type of connection. But when parents have really invested in the lives of their children, especially their adult children, when I see, for example, the incredible blessing that my father and mother have been in my life over the last weeks, there's not a chance in the world that I would ever – if I had the means or capacity to change things, that I would ever let them be in want or in need.

If I had the money and the resources to support them and they were in need, there's not a chance in the world that I would ever do that. So it's interesting to me as the interplay between the social economy and the work that we do now and the potential dividends of it later on, even if the transaction is not measured in terms of dollars.

Because the way that my parents have invested in my life over the last weeks, if they needed it, would have a very significant financial return for them in their older years. Now, I don't think they'll need it. I think they're going to be fine on their own. But when you start to build goodwill and you start to build equity in the social marketplace, that equity has a major value.

Think of it – in one of the books, they were talking about the gift economy and the best example of this is thinking about when people help you move. I recently moved. I had a number of friends that I called on and all of them stepped to the plate and just did an incredible amount of work to help me move.

Well, I didn't pay them. I didn't – I could have hired movers but I didn't. I had friends that helped. But yet they did – that did – excuse me. That did create for them a measure of equity, a debt that I owe them that I will seek to repay at some point in the future.

The other specifically financial aspect that I've been thinking about has been in terms of that social debt and that social obligation and how it impacts the extent – my feelings, my personal feelings on the extent to which I'd be willing to go to help somebody. There are people who have been – there are people who have stepped in at some point around the edges of the social economy in my life in times past.

And they've helped out a little bit on something here and they've helped out a little bit on something there. But in watching them, I've realized that they're the type of person who – something of their character has shown through and I'm trying to be very careful here simply to be accurate.

Because when somebody helps you out, it's an incredible blessing. But you know how sometimes you – maybe you're at a job site and there's that employee, that coworker who you can just watch the person and you – everybody knows that they don't work. Everybody knows that they don't produce much.

Everybody knows that essentially what they are is a drain on everyone else all around. Everyone knows it but nobody says it. Well, the same thing happens in the social economy. The same thing happens in the normal circumstances of life. Or we all know who that coworker is, who is extremely productive and extremely focused and extremely diligent.

What's interesting is that person is the same kind of person that you're probably glad to have you there helping to move. Or that's the person that you call on when you're trying to do some landscaping or build a deck onto the back of your house. So the motivation that it comes from me is to say, "Am I that type of person all the time?" Because if I compare different people who have helped me in – even in recent months or in past years of my life, there are some people who, if they were in need, they were in need of a job.

They were in need of connections. I could absolutely, unequivocally affirm their value in the workplace. I could endorse them wholeheartedly and I would bend over backwards and move everything that I could to help them in a time of need. Consider the impact that this would play in, say, a time of recession where people are losing their jobs.

Consider the impact of somebody who's demonstrated their work ethic, demonstrated their character, their integrity in non-paid social situations to where when they need a job and they call their friends up – hopefully I would be one – and they say, "Joshua, hey, would you be willing to help me get a job?

Do you know of anything?" I would dedicate hours and hours and hours of my week to do everything I could to help them make a connection. There's no guarantee that I would be able to make that connection, but I would do everything that I could to help them. If you compare that, however, to somebody who in a social situation has demonstrated a lack of work ethic or a lack of integrity and that same person makes the call, I might make a token effort, but I'd be much less likely to do everything that I could.

I'd be much less likely to call everybody that I could. So as I consider that – and here's my encouragement for you this week – I am reinvigorated to ask myself the questions of, number one, am I caring for other people in their times of need? Because I've been in that place of need of not being a giver but being a recipient.

It's humbling to be a receiver, but it's also been an incredible blessing. I'm so grateful to those who have helped me, and I know the impact that it's made. When a friend brings you dinner unexpectedly and just says without advance notice, just says, "Hey, by the way, I'm going to bring you guys dinner over," those types of gestures make a big difference.

When somebody volunteers hours of their time to help you, those things make a big difference, and they're very humbling. It's an incredible blessing, and so I've been reinvigorated to say, "Am I being a blessing to others? Am I encouraging others?" Then the other aspect is, "Am I being a good giver and am I always working consistently and diligently?" Because in the same way that the input that people have made in my life over the last weeks creates a social obligation for me, then it's an obligation I'm happy to have, wanting to help them out.

The question is, "Have I been diligent? Am I being diligent in times when I'm not in need to do that for others?" I believe this is something that as we begin the week, I'd encourage you to consider it in your life with me and also to consider how you can train it if you have children.

The majority of who I am, my character, any – most of the character qualities that I have was shaped by my parents, and those things can't be faked. It's very difficult for somebody who's a 45-year-old man to have somebody come along and say, "Hey, by the way, Joe, you might need to consider adjusting some things in your character." But it's a lot easier for a 15-year-old man to hear that.

So consider, are you training your children? That's one of the key lessons that I have been taking also for the last few weeks to say to myself, "Am I being diligent with training my children?" First, am I modeling all of the character qualities and attributes that I desire for them to have?

Am I a person of integrity? Are they real in me? Is that virtue real or is it something that I'm trying to show off because you can't fake it. Everyone can smell a hypocrite, and people are quite happy to expose hypocrisy when it comes out. So first, am I modeling it but also am I training it?

As I've been working on the house, I've had opportunity to hire some people. I've hired some day laborers, but I've also hired some teenagers that I know that are friends of mine to help me with some simple tasks, some landscaping tasks and things like that. And in hiring them, I've tried to kind of help them share that lesson because I've watched financial success.

This is one of those lessons where you're not often taught. I have never asked my friends their GPAs, and I've never been asked my GPA in a job interview. But I've watched my friends' work ethics, and that's something that I would convey in a – if somebody were in need of a job.

So when you think about the actual impact financially in your life, focus of these character qualities. Think about the importance of work ethic. Think about the importance of demonstrating, developing, improving character. Think about the importance of being a consistent person and constantly giving. It's almost become a cliche to use the term "providing value." But it really is a big difference, providing value, giving value.

Again, I love the title of Bob Berg's book called The Go-Giver. In my mind, it's a beautiful parable of a truth in life. Being a go-giver, got to give first, and then when you're in a time of need, whether or not you deserve it, you probably will be benefiting from other people.

I hope these thoughts have been encouraging for you. They're just some of the thoughts and the ideas that are on my mind as I begin this week. I want to make sure to get a show done this morning just partly as saying thank you, as a note of gratitude for all those who have helped me.

But I believe there's also a lesson in it. As I've been learning that lesson, I wanted to share it with you. I hope it was articulated in a manner that was clear. Be a go-giver this week. Help others, encourage others, and you can build for yourself equity in the social economy.

Be thankful for the ways that people have helped you. Sometimes people help you when you deserve it. A lot of times, people help you when you don't. Many of you, I think of myself as a teenager and how I didn't deserve the help that I got, but people still were consistent and diligent to help me, and I'm so thankful for that.

That's the basis of what I want to share with you this morning. I hope it's been encouraging as you start your week. Hopefully, this week, I plan today, Monday, I'm working hard to finish everything on the house, and then I'll be back to being able to focus on the show.

I've got a lot of great show content prepared in the future, a lot of plans. It's just been a matter of executing them, and so hopefully this week, we'll start to turn the corner with a lot more excellent content for you, a number of additional interviews, and some more in-depth shows.

Hoping this Friday to be prepared for a question-and-answer show. If you've got a question you'd like me to answer, feel free to call it in on the voicemail line. Just go to RadicalPersonalFinance.com. Find the little microphone button on the side. Click that and leave me a voicemail. I enjoy having those.

I have a number of questions, and hopefully this Friday, I'll be able to do that. Also, thank you to all of you who are patrons of the show. I will be, if possible this week, I'll try to do the Q&A. Last month got derailed with technology issues. It may be this week or it may be next week, but keep an eye on your email.

Excuse me, and on the Patreon site is where I share that information with you. Also, if this show has been beneficial or if the show is at all beneficial to you, I'd be thrilled if you would consider supporting the show on Patreon. Thank you to the—we've had several new patrons the last couple of days.

As of today, Monday, August 31, we have 222 patrons supporting the show. If you find financial value in the content on Radical Personal Finance, please consider going to RadicalPersonalFinance.com/patron and signing up to become a patron. Thank you so much. Have a great week. Sweet Hop is an online marketplace curating the best in premium seating at stadiums, arenas, and amphitheaters nationwide.

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