The LA Kings holiday pack is back the perfect gift for the hockey fan in your life. A three-game pack starts at just $159 and includes a holiday blanket. Buy today and you'll receive an additional game for free. Don't miss out visit lakings.com/holiday today. Today in Radical Personal Finance we talk about careers, how to plan for recession, and raising entrepreneurial kids with Mr.

Dan Miller of 48 Days fame. Welcome to the Radical Personal Finance podcast. My name is Joshua Sheets and I'm your host. Today I'm sitting here with Dan Miller and he's going to enlighten us on the theme of the show which is how to live a rich life now and how to build a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.

Drove up to Tennessee sitting here across from him. Sit back, get ready to relax and gain some real knowledge. Dan, welcome to Radical Personal Finance. This is the treat to be able to sit across the desk from a guest of the show. Well, thanks. This makes it easy for me when you just show up here in my office.

Indeed. So I'd love to first have you just share a little bit of your background. Many of my listeners will be familiar. I've recommended your books, your courses to them in the past. But how did you wind up becoming known as the career guru? You know, it really wasn't as a strategic career move on my part which may sound kind of counterintuitive because I help people plan out so strategically their careers.

But this kind of snuck up on me. I mean, I'm an entrepreneur from the top of my head to the tip of my toes. So I was always doing entrepreneurial things. But it was at a time when Joanne, my wife and I, were teaching a Sunday school class. We just were serving our community, serving in the church.

We were teaching a Sunday school class on career life transitions, these inevitable, relentless kind of changes that show up. And it was like a vacuum. I mean, we started having people come from not only other states, but other churches who had come to that Sunday school class. We moved it to a Monday night so it would make it easier for people.

But it was a time where we realized this was not an issue that was just confronting the 18-year-old who just lost his job at Burger King. We were having chiropractors and physicians and dentists and attorneys and pastors show up who are saying, "You know, people think I'm doing okay, but I'm not sure I'm on the right track." So it opened this amazing door of opportunity to help people walk through these kind of changes.

But it came about in a way that I wasn't prepared for. I wasn't predicting. But with that, being a sounding board for people and walking through them with the transitions helped me very quickly to develop materials that people started asking for. And I just opened this very entrepreneurial journey that I love being on anyway in this area, this very area.

So now I can teach, coach, speak, write on the very topic that drew me in the door. - And the good thing is that your area of expertise is in demand in good times and bad. Because in good times, people need to change and in bad times, they need to change.

- You're exactly right. I was asked, actually in Fox Business News not very long ago about that very thing. How does a recession, how does a slowdown affect my business? And I said, "I'm in a pretty unique business. If things are bad, my business is really good. If things are good, my business is really good." For exactly what you just identified, Josh.

If things are bad, people are saying, "Man, I need some new options." And so they're looking for things like we helped to offer them. If things are really good, they realize they're in the driver's seat. Now's the time to take, to put wings on that dream they had back when they were 20 years old.

- Right. So you just mentioned recession. And there are two themes that I wanted to talk to you about. And of course, we'll see what unfolds during the course of the interview. But the two themes are, number one, what would be some ideas and strategies, useful strategies to prepare for recession?

It's my guess, we're recording this in early 2016, my guess that in the next year or two, we might very well be back in recession. That's just a personal guess. It's been quite a number of years since we've been in recession and they come around kind of like buses.

Every once in a while, there's another one. So I've been trying to help my audience to think contrarian. When times are good, that's the time to prepare for the bad times. And when times are bad, that's the time to make plans for when times are better. And then the second one is I want to talk about entrepreneurship and how to teach that to the younger generation.

But let's start with recession. Do you think that it's a valid career strategy to plan for, to make career plans and job plans to prepare for recession? Is that something you think about and teach about? No. The short answer, I'm one of these guys, I'm an eternal optimist. If I find horse turds in my mailbox, I'm looking for a pony.

I'm not upset at somebody. I know there's something good close by. It's just how I'm wired. When I hear people talk about, "You remember that recession we went through back in 2008, 2009, which was probably the last big downturn?" I don't even remember that. I don't remember that as having any impact on me at all.

And I don't want to just be some Pollyanna, put my head in the sand. But I think if we've really discovered work that engages the very best of what we have to offer, work that we love, if we're really serving people well, I think there are opportunities for that no matter what the economy is doing.

I mean, my success, this is something I talk about frequently, but my success, your success has very little to do with what the economy is doing. It has very little to do with what's happening in the White House. It has a whole lot to do with what's happening in your house.

So I'm with you. I remember years ago, I used to love listening to, I spent years listening to Zig Ziglar tapes. And he would always say, he's my favorite, one of my favorite jokes is, "Economists have successfully predicted 17 of the last three recessions." And the point is that you can prepare and you can be insulated.

But what have you done that allowed you to come through 2008 and 2009 unscathed? Because I'll tell you, I was doing financial planning at that point in time, and there were a lot of people impacted by it. What did you do that my clients and friends and acquaintances didn't do?

Well, part of that, and I know you're a financial guy, and I don't consider that to be one of my areas of expertise. So I don't do the kind of traditional things that people who are in the financial markets do. I mean, and it's not that I don't have a bag of money under my mattress, trust me, it's not that.

But I don't worry too much about markets because they don't impact the kind of things that I'm doing. I mean, I like real estate, I like cars, I like things I can touch and feel. But even in just the day-to-day things, the reason those trends don't impact me a whole lot is because I'm always looking for what are the current needs of people out here?

What are people asking me about? One of the mantras that has served me really well in my business is if three people ask me the same question, I create a product. I mean, that's why we have the events that we do. That's why I write the books that I do.

That's why we have the courses that we do. Those have all come directly out of people asking me, how can I do that? I mean, a few years ago, my good friend Dave Ramsey and I started a little group, we called it our little mastermind, and we had guys meeting together.

Well, he would mention it, the impact of that on our lives and how it affected the trajectory of our business. He'd have people ask about it, I'd have people ask about it. Well, gee, can we be in that group? No, you can't. I mean, it's a closed group. It changes if there's 200 guys in a room as compared to 12.

But my response was, well, just start your own. Well, then the next question, obviously, is how do I do that? So I wrote a little ebook on how you start your own mastermind. Well, that did extremely well for us. We started hearing stories from people all over who had done exactly that.

I thought, man, that's a hot topic. So I pulled it back in. We've made it a little more robust as a course. So now the course is available. $48, we've had thousands of people who have purchased that. But it's not sophisticated, it's not high technology, it's just paying attention to what are people asking about and then providing help to help them through that.

And those opportunities are going to be there no matter what the economy is, no matter who's in political power, no matter who's in the White House, no matter where I am in the world, frankly. I mean, I could go anywhere in the world and duplicate what I'm doing. And I don't say that just, you know, flippantly, because everything requires intensity and intentionality and strategy.

But I think we can insulate ourselves from these ups and downs that seemingly affect people so readily and in ways that I really don't understand. - Is the insulation just simply taking the mindset of an entrepreneur? When you hear people complaining about a problem, you say, well, how can I fix this?

How can I make this problem go away? Is that the primary method or do you have some other ideas that would help my listeners insulate themselves? - Well, that is a lot of it, I'm sure. I mean, I don't get up in the morning worried about, is the company going to survive and give me a paycheck on Friday?

I've never had a real job. I've never done. - Never? - Ever, never, ever. All I've ever done since I was a little kid is just find opportunities and just put legs on, just live it out. So, and I mean, at one point I had a business where we were doing a lot of car customization.

We were doing accessories on cars. And it was one of those times, well, this was years ago, but there was a real spike in gas prices. And all of a sudden, car sales slowed down and my primary customers were new car dealers. And my mother said, Dan, what are you going to do if car sales stop?

It'll kill your business. I said, mama, I'll be putting pinstripes on buggies because people are going to have transportation. I mean, even that didn't scare me because if we resort to another kind of transportation, I'll adjust my business to adjust the needs that are there. So I've never been held captive by a particular company or particular industry thinking, well, if this doesn't go really well, then I can't make the mortgage payment.

I mean, but I'm the kind of guy too. Now, you know, I enjoy being an author, speaker, coach, but if something happened tomorrow that I couldn't do that, I guarantee you tomorrow morning, I'm going to have a lawn mowing business, a window washing business, a car detailing business. I don't care.

I could take 10 things and be back in business tomorrow and do perfectly fine and just providing good service to people who need it. - Why would you go and start all of those businesses instead of going and getting a job? - Oh my, well, there's a lot of reasons.

I would be an employee, employer's nightmare as an employee. I would suck at being an employee. I just don't think in terms of I have to be somewhere at eight o'clock and be there till five o'clock, sit in a cubicle and produce something where I know they're going to buy me at wholesale and sell me at retail.

I want you to think about it. There's gotta be the case. I just am not wired that way. I like the freedom, the independence. Now with that, the unpredictability, sign me up. No problem at all. That energizes me, not knowing, but there's never been times where I was really concerned.

Wow, am I going to be able to make it? Because if I think that I'm short on making the mortgage payment, by golly, I'll be out here doing something else. And there've been times, I've spent a lot of time in graduate school, getting all those fancy degrees to hang those pieces of paper on my wall that have very little connection with what I do perhaps, but I enjoy the process.

But to make that possible, I didn't go get student loans, not a chance. I mean, if I'm in graduate school, getting a master's degree in clinical psychology, which I did, during that period of time, we lived in a house where we never paid rent when I was there because I worked it off in doing improvements in the house.

The landlord was thrilled having us there at all the things that I did, and we just counted it against the rent. So I never paid rent. I did other things. I'd never looked for a job, but I would bid painting houses so I could do it on my own time.

If I was doing inside of a house, I could start at nine o'clock at night after all my other duties were finished with school. I could start nine o'clock at night, work till two o'clock. I was paid by the project, never by the hour. I've never bid a job by the hour, always by the project.

So there's just opportunities everywhere. So I would, there was a time, and I'll tell you a real specific time, Joshua, where one of my business ideas, I jumped in with both feet like I tend to do, burned the bridges, and all of a sudden, things didn't go well in that particular business.

And I had a big downturn financially, sold the business at public auction, woke up the next morning, I was about $430,000 in debt. A lot of that to the IRS. They don't just walk away from that. They can be pretty nasty, which we discovered. But I had a choice.

At that point, I did have a graduate degree. I was teaching as an adjunct professor. I could have easily gotten a full-time position there making $60,000, $70,000 a year. But now you do the math on that. I had three kids at home. I owed $430,000. I was raised where your word is your bond.

So I was not going to file bankruptcy, even though it was a legitimate option. I was not going to do that. But I thought, if I make $60,000, $70,000 a year, we're going to barely live on that. I'm not going to be able to work away. I'll never see the light of day again.

So what did I do instead of getting a job, which would have been a very responsible thing to do in other people's eyes, not a chance. Jump right back in the entrepreneurial game. Jump right back in. In that period of time, I got a position where it was 100% commissioned sales.

So I used somebody's umbrella for business structure, 100% commissioned sales, and very quickly got myself back where I was making $8,000, $10,000 a month to start getting myself out of the hole and immediately started planning what is my next entrepreneurial venture going to be. I agree with you from the perspective of entrepreneurship.

Let me set this question up, though. I've had a similar experience. I've worked when I was a kid. I worked a lot of hourly jobs and some salary jobs. But my first year out of college, I got a job making, I think I started at $38,000. They gave me a raise to $45,000.

When they gave me the raise, it was a good raise, but I was just sitting there saying, "$45,000? My goal is to be making $100,000 in two years. How on earth am I going to get from $45,000 to $100,000?" I realized that this world of salaried work isn't going to get me there.

So I determined to become an entrepreneur. I went into commission sales. Since that time, I've had full control over my schedule since that first year out of college. I've told my wife, I said, "Listen, we're not giving this up. I'd rather go and have a hot dog truck or a barbecue truck and do that and still be able to retain control of my lifestyle versus go and have a job where I have to deal with these certain things." So I agree with you.

However, I have a good amount of self-confidence. I don't know whether I should tell other people that they should do what I've done because they can do it too or whether I should discourage them because I know that I have more confidence than the average person and I have quite a few skills.

So here's my question. Do you think everybody should follow that path of entrepreneurship? >> Well, I'll take a rabbi position and ask you a question. >> Deal. >> Why are you self-confident? >> That's a good question. No one's ever asked me before. I would say probably experience. I've failed, I've succeeded, and I'm not scared of either.

>> Because you've taken risk and seen that it can lead to success. So if somebody's not confident, why would you advise them to just stay there, take the safe path, just don't ever get yourself in trouble? No. If you're ever going to experience something extraordinary, you're going to test the limits of what is normal.

You're going to go into that area that most people would see as risk. But when we talk about risk, really risk is when you have no control. So if you and I go to Las Vegas and we put the deeds to our houses down on a roll of the dice, that's risky because we can't control it.

But that's not what entrepreneurs do. That's not what smart people do. That's not what self-confident people do. They create a clear plan of action and then walk that out. So my question is, I mean, there's always going to be people that work in jobs. I'm not saying that's not a good choice, but you ought to look at the whole spectrum of what the opportunities are and then choose what fits you best.

But there are a lot of people who feel trapped in jobs unrealistically when the opportunities are there readily for them. They just aren't confident enough. And sometimes they aren't willing to have the possibility of failure. And if you don't have the possibility of failure, you'll never experience really big success.

You'll stay in that land of mediocrity. And a lot of people just choose to live there. Again, that's fine. That's not where I want to be. I would rather have the risk of absolutely burning my behind, but also the possibility of just explosive success than to have a guarantee.

I mean, if you ask me to wash your car and you tell me, you know, you'll give me $5 for that, you'll guarantee me $5 for that, or $8 if I really please you. But if I take that option, if I don't please you well, you only pay me $2.

You know what I'm going to choose every single time. I'll risk only getting $2, but with the possibility of getting $8 over the guarantee of getting $5 every time. - I learned that lesson in college. My freshman year of college, I paid my way through school and I had gotten some scholarships, but not enough.

And so my freshman year, I was determined not to borrow money for school. And I wound up working three jobs concurrently, one of which was riding one of these bicycle taxis around a place in West Palm Beach. It's our city center. It's called City Place, one of these fancy outdoor mall type places.

And I would ride the bicycle taxi around. And what I decided to do was not to charge people, because if you charge people, then they're less likely to get into your bike taxi. And I looked around and I just see, somebody's walking by on a whim. You know they have the money where they could get in the bike taxi, but they don't want to.

And you say, "How much?" And you say, "Oh, where do you want to go? Okay, it's going to be $8." And they have a reason to say no. So what I chose to do was I just said, "There's no charge. It's just tips only. You pay me what you think the ride is worth." And I tried to lower the fear of them getting in, in the sense of make it an easy entrance.

And I never had anybody stiff me, but once they were in my bike taxi, I had the opportunity to do a really good job. I had the opportunity to engage with them, cause them to like me. I had the opportunity to do that. And I got more $20 tips and I'm convinced it was by far the more financially productive way to do it.

Cause you get the $20 tip instead of the $4 ride. And when someone's paying you a specific set price, it doesn't create a sense of obligation. They feel like they've satisfied their obligation. But if you can offer them a free ride, and I was totally fine. I never was mad at somebody when they didn't pay.

I think I had a few people that probably didn't pay. I'm happy to do it. Otherwise I'm just going to be standing here waiting on a ride anyway. So what else do I have to do? But at least then I had the opportunity to earn the business and earn a much higher, much higher.

- Man, I love it. - So that was my pricing. - There's a shoe shine guy in the airport in Dallas who does that. I love that. I try to find him every time I'm going through there because I love that model. He signed your shoes, does an amazing job.

How much? Whatever you think is reasonable. And I'll guarantee that guy makes double what the dude who charges 10 bucks is getting. - I agree. I agree. And the thing I love is I've got aggressive goals and I can't imagine how depressing it would be not to be able to at least see some way, some pathway to where I might be able to hit my goals.

And that's the thing I love about entrepreneurship is having, if there's anything I want, whether it's monetary or nominal, I can set that as a clear goal. And then I can say, how can I earn this? How can I make this happen? You can't do that necessarily when you're in a salaried job.

- Well, and when you think about the things, the space that we're in, when you think about writing, speaking, now my dad was a farmer. He was bivocationally pastored a tiny little church, but didn't get paid for that. So we eked out a living as a farmer and he understood you plant soybeans, you harvest them, take them to town, you milk the cows and sell the milk.

But this thing about you get paid for speaking, for thinking, for writing, he never could really get his head around that. Anyway, what an amazing space that we're in where the profit margins are just obscene, sometimes 100%. But in that space where we are doing those kinds of things, this intellectual property space, especially, there are no real standards for what the value is.

It's not like you're buying an icon camera so you can go to three different stores and they're all gonna be within $20 of each other. No, I mean, there are attorneys, of course, that charge $40 for their services and some would charge 400. Well, it's not the ones 10 times smarter, they've just positioned themselves differently.

So when we get into this arena and you write a book, and the things that really get my attention are the things, what is it that I can do once and need to get paid 10,000 times? Where we move from linear income into residual income, that's where it just opens the door to unbelievable kind of opportunities.

Now, I don't expect everybody to do that. I mean, I like to have people that come and mow my yard and wash our windows and do the things that I wanna have and build a patio for me that are more tangible. But I've just discovered this amazing world in this intellectual capital space that provides opportunities that are just endless.

- Yeah, I'm doing my best to, I've been working hard on it, I'm doing my best to join you in enjoying the fruits of labor. I wanna ask about kids. Are your kids entrepreneurs? - Yes, I spoiled them totally. They would never-- - Do you recommend that as a parenting strategy or?

- Oh, well, I do because I think it opens them up to such a world of opportunity and lifestyle that they would never experience otherwise. I mean, I have a son who lives at 10,000 feet in Woodland Park, Colorado. They have a big house that they built. They have seven kids where the kids can ride their bicycles inside the house.

He couldn't do that if he were an employee. He does that because he's an entrepreneur. I have a son who lives in Nosara, Costa Rica, right down on the Pacific Ocean. I mean, there's hardly anybody within miles of there, but he can do it because he's an entrepreneur. My daughter lives here fairly close to us in Franklin, Tennessee, but she and her husband are getting ready to buy an RV and just rent out their house and just travel for six months or so because they can do that as an entrepreneur.

When Ashley, our daughter, got married at that time, her husband, fresh out of college, had gotten a position as a banker. He was very respected and moving up quickly in managerial programs and all that. Well, it'd be a Thursday afternoon. He'd run home for lunch, a pretty day outside, and he'd say, "Well, geez, honey, I need to get back to work." And she's like, "Well, what do you mean?

Can't we go to the park?" She had never experienced the man in the house being confined by the realities of a job. What a story. We grew up like that. My oldest son got into bicycle motocross racing. We'd leave on Thursdays a lot of time, go race somewhere, come back on Mondays.

I'd do my work, but we had total flexibility to go to the park, travel, do the kind of things that the kids want to do. I mean, the compromises that some people think you have to make to be an entrepreneur are totally unrealistic. Compromises in being a daddy or being a husband are so much greater in having that traditional job.

Now, you didn't set this up to be an entrepreneurial show, but you asked me about raising kids. Oh my gosh. Here's another example, Joshua. My granddaughter, who you just met a few minutes ago, she's eight years old. She and her yaya, my wife, her grandma, just wrote a book together.

What if it were possible is the title of the book. They had a school that just asked if they would come and speak about the process of writing a children's book. And Joanne says, sure. Well, and they came back and said, well, what is your fee to come speak to our school?

Well, Joanne would do it for nothing. I mean, she doesn't care. And I said, no, no, no, wait a minute. I said, you tell them $50. So she did. She told them $50. So, and they said, oh, that's fine. You know, and they got that scheduled. So then we went to our granddaughter, called her in the phone, in the car the other night and said, you and yaya are going to speak at this school on this date and you're going to get $50 together.

So half of that will be years, $25. That's her first speaking gig. That's fantastic. At eight years old. I called her mother right after that. And I said, you know that I'm totally ruining your children to ever have a normal career path because we show them opportunities. When we have events here, my grandchildren set up booths here.

They sell poppy seed muffins. They sell their own artwork. They sell cards. They do all kinds of creative things because they see the connection immediately between working, serving something well, doing something of value and getting money in return. Do you think it's possible for parents who aren't entrepreneurs to train their children to be entrepreneurs?

Oh yeah, absolutely. There are a lot of parents who recognize the vulnerability of the traditional workplace, the volatility there. There are people who just south of us here, there was a Saturn plant and I had the privilege of speaking to the leaders there as they were closing that down.

3,200 people put out of work. A lot of those people had never had another job. They had always worked for General Motors their entire working career. They were terrified. What are they going to do? Well, what a horrible position to be in to feel that vulnerable that a company that has been giving you a paycheck, a reasonable trade-off, you agreed to work for them.

They gave you a paycheck. If that relationship comes to an end, don't fall to company if things happen and they do things change, but you ought to be so clear in what your marketable skills are that you can go somewhere else. Well, a lot of parents realize, they walk in to a place where they've been for 23 years and then they're told you have an hour to clean out your desk.

We don't need you anymore. What they thought was security was nothing but an illusion. It wasn't security. Security is your ability to produce, to understand clearly what value you have to deliver. And aside from that, you're very vulnerable. And a lot of parents are saying, please don't set yourself up for the same kind of path that I chose.

That's what happened to me. That job, I said the one year salary job, I got laid off from the job and I couldn't believe it. I had just gotten a pay raise. I had glowing reports. I was very confident that I was doing a good job. I have all these ideas.

And then one random afternoon, they call me in for a meeting. I didn't suspect a thing. And all of a sudden, about five minutes into the meeting, I realized they're laying me off. And I was like, what? And I know it's not correct, but I tell you, I certainly have that perception that anybody who gets laid off from a job, that it's always their fault.

And I know that's not correct. And I, but I, cause here, cause well, maybe I just, maybe it's confirmation bias. I want to believe it's not correct because I got laid off and I want to believe there's nothing wrong with me. No, but when I was sitting there and I was just thinking, like everything just disappeared.

Like all of my plans. Thankfully I had done good financial preparation. It didn't wipe me out. I had, you know, emergency funds I had, I was okay, but still it was just such a total sense of vulnerability. And I was single at the time. I had no one to support.

And that's one of the reasons why at this point, I like, I think back on it and I don't want to be in a position to where I might have an unknown risk. Someone just walk in and because they're changing the direction of the company, which is why I was laid off.

They wanted, they were removing all the middle tier and, and had decided to change the whole, the whole structure. I don't want to be subject to their whims. I'd rather have a hundred customers and have, you know, five of them be angry with me so I can know, okay, I know, I know I'm losing those five.

And you have a little bit of a little bit of preview. But it, it, it, it rocked me emotionally. And do you see in the future? I think in the future, more and more work is going to be freelance entrepreneur, micro enterprise type work. Do you agree? You is that, am I right?

Am I wrong? Totally. We we've seen such a pendulum swing as we've seen the implosion of these big, major companies like, you know, Enron world commons. It's an unrealistic model to have that many people where you're guaranteeing them a salary. I mean, ultimately it needs to go. And so what we've seen is a correction, just like we see real estate correct every once in a while, you know, banking or whatever, you know, we see corrections.

Well, that's what we're seeing where that is an unrealistic business model. When Henry Ford started guaranteeing, paying people $5 a day for coming in, we saw the beginning of this assembly line work where people would do work. That was repetitive, boring, repetitious, but they would do it if you guaranteed him so much a day, that's a totally unrealistic business model.

So then we have people that are making $30 an hour under that model and they're throwing a hammer down in the assembly line. So it stops for 30 minutes so they can take a nap or they throw the keys to the tow truck over the fence. So it stops things because they're going to be paid the same, no matter what it works against everybody's best interest.

So we're seeing a correction going back to where people are just simply paid on results. I mean, if you came to me a hundred years ago, Joshua, and said, I want you to build me a wagon, we wouldn't have guaranteed me $15 an hour or 35,000 or your $45,000 a year.

We would have simply said, when you deliver the wagon, it's $200. That's a true business model. So going back to that and what we're doing now is a healthy correction. We're seeing companies that are saying, we don't really care if you come into the office or not, because here's the job we want you to do.

We're going to pay you X number of dollars when that's completed. So it frees everybody up from the artificial work environment that we've seen only in the last 150 years or so. And yeah, I think it's healthy. So free agents, entrepreneurs, whatever you want to call them, is a healthy move back to a more realistic work model.

So I'm going to pump you for some parental coaching. I have a two and a half year old son and a seven month old daughter. And I have the virtue and the benefit of being an entrepreneur. So I can get my work done around those schedules. And we often do.

If my wife's having a tough day, I can set aside my work. Or if it's beautiful outside, we go to the park. Or I take a book and go to the park. And when I'm preparing for a show for Radical Personal Finance, I can hang out with my son while he's on the playground.

But here's my question. What are some specific strategies and tools or tactics, tips, techniques, ideas would you share with someone like me who desires their kids develop that entrepreneurial mentality to implement? Sure. When my oldest son, Kevin, who now hosts the Zig Ziglar podcast. Really? Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah.

I used to. That was Zig Ziglar podcast was the very first podcast I ever listened to. Really? Yep. And it was hosted by a guy. I forget his name. He hosted it for a long time. He was blind. And he hosted it. Blake Blake, Lindsay, I think something like that.

But the Zig Ziglar podcast was how I found podcasting was based upon finding the Zig Ziglar podcast. So tell your son that he's doing a great job. And that was what introduced me now a podcaster with an established brand that it's the Zig Ziglar podcast that I haven't listened to New York.

I have to go start listening. Oh my. Yeah. I bought every tape and CD that Zig Zig sold. So I just, my theory was always just buy the whole collection and listen to it all. So I probably heard the audio. Can't go wrong. Well, he's interviewing people. He just interviewed Seth Godin.

He just interviewed Michael Hyatt. But yeah, what a great position. But, you know, he went with me when he was a little kid to hear Zig Ziglar. Come over on the side of the stage, get down on one knee like he would do and talk to this little kid.

And he signed a gold leaf, gold planner for my son when he was about 12 years old. Anyway, it's funny how the full circle comes around. But when Kevin was 10 years old, BMX racing, bicycle motocross racing became popular. Well, the kid who lived right across the street from us, his name was Jeff.

His daddy got him a bike. And I thought, hey, that's cool. And Kevin says, I want one of those red line bikes to race BMX. And I said, well, that's the great, you know, how much are they? Well, $400. I said, okay, how are you going to get one?

Let's go down to the store. You can write a check. I said, well, that's not the way it works in our family. That may be the way it works in Jeff's family, but not ours. I said, I think that's great. Let's figure out a way to get that. So I bought a motorcycle.

I had an auto accessories business at the time. So I was connected with all the auto dealers and they'd take things in on trade. So I bought a motorcycle from one of them. It was kind of in poor repair. Now keep in mind, Kevin was 10 years old. We worked on that for two months, every day.

We took it apart. We repaired things. We got things chromed. We put it back together carefully, you know, got new leather in the seat. I put a little pin striping on after we hand painted everything, got it already, put it out in our yard. The very first person that came by bought it.

I took all my costs out. We kept track from day one, dollar one, what I paid for it. Every improvement we made on, I kept track of my money that I put in as his dad. I took all my money back out. We had $410 left over. I said, that's your money that you earned it.

What do you want to do with that? I want to go get that bike. So we did, but that bike didn't stay out in the front yard, you know, in the ditch over the weekend, like the neighbor's bike did. It was in his bedroom, immaculate. He took care of it because he had skin in the game.

So that's an example, but I've always done that with our kids. You want something? Let's figure out how you can get it. Absolutely. I want you to have that. Let's figure out how you can get it. So just showing them a connection between work and getting the things that they want.

You know, with your son, you could have him be a guest in your podcast and pay him $10 as a guest, and then have him three envelopes, you know, giving, saving, investing, split your money three ways or however you want to divide it and start showing him how quickly you can accumulate in those worthy envelopes, those piles.

So you can decide you give, you don't have to strain yourself to give because you plan in advance that you're going to give a portion of what you have. You're going to spend, you're going to invest. Sure. But you can start teaching them very, very young. Our granddaughter who you just met here wanted her own computer.

What was like $250? Her parents did exactly the same thing. They said, okay, how are you going to get that? Well, she's one who then she and her grandma made poppy seed muffins and she made a whole bunch of them. And she set up her little stand. She dressed up like in a Victorian era and had her little basket.

She'd work the crowd. Believe me, she'd go in and work the crowd. She was incredibly outgoing. And so it's good sales skills that she's been learning. I was impressed with her. Teach new sales skills and teach new the connection. You want a $250 computer? That's fantastic. Eight years old.

Let's figure out a way to get it. So she comes up with different things that she can do where it's not just, gee, mom and dad giving her an allowance. No, teach him very early, the connection. And once they see that connection, they're going to recognize opportunities at every corner.

They're not going to be vulnerable. Gee, I got a degree in English lit. Who's going to give me a job? Right. It just doesn't compute. They see opportunities that they can act on. Even if nobody's hiring, the economy is bad. It doesn't matter. Well, and the benefit of it, what I want to touch on, I'll tell you just because I think it's important for the audience to recognize.

So you and your wife were on a conference call when I came in. So I was waiting in the other room and I went over and just said hello to her. And unlike, she didn't act shy. She didn't turn her face and run like so many young women would do it.

She's eight, right? She's eight. Yeah, eight. I asked her, what are you working on? She starts showing me her pictures, tells me about the kids book that she's publishing. Said I had to redo this illustration for the kids book. I asked her about her other artwork. She's showing me all her artwork.

She's doing a sales job on me. By the time I get two minutes later, I'm ready. If she had the book printed, I would have pulled out my wallet and bought the book. And when you compare that to the relational handicap that so many people have, so many young girls her age would have, it's just night and day.

And so these entrepreneurial activities help to build that healthy self-image, that self-confidence, which can be the foundation of, it's a foundation of job skills, of business skills, of life skills, of relationship skills. That's what helps her to have enough confidence in herself to wait on an appropriate husband instead of throwing herself at the first person.

That's what allows her to have the confidence in herself to be able to wait for the job offer that's a fair offer or to charge what she's worth. And so, I mean, I can see the benefit even in a 10 minute interaction waiting in the other room. - That's awesome.

Well, you also described there what true pure selling is. A lot of people are intimidated about the idea of selling. Well, gee, I'm not a salesman, so I have to just go get a job. That means somebody else is responsible for selling. Well, that's a tough position because you have to recognize you're selling your skills every single day you show up.

But pure salesmanship is simply sharing enthusiasm. And that's exactly what you experienced with Clara. She believes in what she's doing. She knows she's good. She is excited about it. And her excitement has an impact on you very quickly when you're reaching for your wallet. - If it were ready, I would be walking out of here with a book.

- That's great. - You touched on financial strategies. And as we start to wind down here, I want to ask you, I always loved, Jim Rohn always said he teaches kids to have two bicycles, one to ride and one to rent. So I always loved that turn of phrase.

And I've thought about how to implement that with my own kids. How can I teach them these ideas? And you mentioned a few, but specifically with money management, did you use the give, save, spend? What did you do with your kids? How did you teach them about handling money?

- We did exactly that. - Okay, the give, save, spend. - Yes, yeah. - Did you apply percentages or teach them a specific percentage that was appropriate? - In the early years, we just simply made those a third, third, third. So they were all equal. Just to give them exposure to the model.

Now, as they got older and wanted to adjust that, but our kids are generous, generous givers. I don't have to beg them or try to teach them the biblical principle of the tithe. They could care less about that because they give generously where there are needs. They aren't concerned about, as Joanne and I are as well, they saw us model this.

I really don't care about things that the IRS would deem deductible. If a young lady is in an apartment, newly out of prison, trying to make a life for herself, and she's really going to be in a hard spot if she doesn't pay the rent by Tuesday, can we pay that?

Absolutely. Is that deductible? No. - It doesn't matter. - It doesn't matter. If we really consider that we're stewards of everything that we have, which Joanne and I do, then those lines can be blurred. So it's not a legalistic kind of thing at all. But money flows through you.

And even when you get to a point where you aren't concerned about paying the mortgage or aren't concerned about having groceries on the table, it doesn't mean that we then just unplug. That goes into a whole other area that we probably need to spend more time on. And that's this idea of retirement.

I cringe when I hear that word. - I see on my page here, of possible questions, I said, "Tuck, I just did a show called 'Why It's Pointless to Focus on Retiring Comfortably if You Haven't First Focused on Working Comfortably.'" So it's on my list. We can go as long as you want.

- Well, here's the deal. Here's the irony with that. Retirement implies, as soon as I get enough money to take care of my own needs, then I'm gonna unplug from this stupid job that I have and just spend the rest of the time doing what I love doing. Well, what a novel concept.

I mean, if you found out how to do what you love doing and had an economic model for doing that, the appeal of retirement dissipates immediately. It doesn't have any appeal. - Amen. - That's why we have people who are in their 80s who are working, not because they have to get a paycheck, but because they're doing something that they know has value and they just enjoy doing that.

And what a wonderful position to be in where, I mean, I've got some really aggressive goals for this year with things that we're launching right now. Do I need a house that's four times bigger than what we have? No. Do I need a car that's faster than the one I drive?

No. I simply enjoy the process. I enjoy the hunt. And if that taps us into resources that we can share generously with other people, I still enjoy the process of earning it as we go. Not so I can hoard more and accumulate more at all. It has nothing to do with that.

But to simply be a vessel. And if God has given me the ability to generate money, I think there's a stewardship issue that requires me to continue doing that. I don't have the option to just say, "Okay, I'm going to stop because I have enough for myself." Ooh, that makes me cringe to think about it.

- Final question. Do you have any counsel for how to manage your focus and intensity as time goes on? So at this stage of my entrepreneurial journey, I'm very focused on building. This is the building stage. And there are some little things. I really like to buy some standup paddleboards.

And I've been waiting and waiting and waiting to buy the standup paddleboards. But it's hard for me to... But I look and I'm like, "When should I go? I have the money. I could go do it." But I don't want to burn my capital. That's my capital, which is the foundation of my business pursuits.

And I don't want to be in a situation where I've consumed my capital. Do you have any wisdom for how to know when to start enjoying some of the fruits of your work with consumption items instead of focusing on always reinvesting and building bigger and bigger? - Yeah. And most of my ideas are pretty contrarian and pretty personal.

Not that I mind sharing at all, but I'm not sure they're a model for other people to emulate. One of those, and you'll find this really revolutionary probably in your financial models. I could never convince myself that I was going to save my way to wealth. It was always, "How can I earn my way to wealth?" If I owed the IRS another $25,000, it wasn't like, "Oh, gee, if we cut out going out to eat twice a week and don't go to the movies and don't go on vacation this year." No, it's like, "All right, what do I need to do to make another $25,000?" That's how I always have approached it.

So when do you enjoy things? From day one. I've never been one to put life on hold thinking that there's some kind of magic number that I get to. So where are the things we enjoyed more simple? 30 years ago? Perhaps. Yeah. Were our vacations a little less expensive?

Yeah, perhaps. But we never deprived ourselves, even from day one, from enjoying fully the things we were doing. Now, part of your question though is, when do you get finished with the building phase and just going into the maintaining phase where things are really rolling well? I've got some things in place that would continue if I disappeared for six months.

And I'm really grateful for that. I don't take that for granted. I don't take that casually, but I'm really grateful to have those things in place. But I am not looking for a business that simply maintains itself. I'm a terrible maintainer. I have a history of if something becomes predictable, even if it's very successful, I'm going to start sabotaging it because the sameness, the predictability bores me very quickly.

Joanne still calls me a three-year man. She knows I'm good for about three years and I'm going to be bringing new things in or I'll burn out. I've got a very fluid model to my business even today, where I have seven different components, but that means there's a lot of moving pieces at any given time.

At any given time, something's on the bubble. It's going to be deep sexed. It's going to be taken off, but I'm going to be adding something new every year when I'm making my goals. I'm going to look for what is the 15% that I've been doing now that I'm going to eliminate because I don't want to just keep growing broader and bigger.

That's not my goal. I want to stay very streamlined, very entrepreneurial, but the only way I can bring in new exciting things is to eliminate something so I make room for it. 15% is going to leave. That opens the door for something 15 new. Of course, in a compounding world, we understand that essentially that means every four years I've got a brand new business.

There'll be some components that come forward, but that's the way that I operate. I'm not interested in maintaining. I'm interested in the new, unpredictable challenges that are available to us. - Yeah, and that's what's so exciting about entrepreneurship. I think about that as far as the life cycle that I see of my business.

The cool thing about entrepreneurship is you're never stuck. If you start to get bored, you can change, and it's better to do it intentionally. - Totally. - And what's the old saw? The only way to predict the future is to create it? - Yes. Yes. - So, Dan, tell us about your books.

Your website is 48days.com. Tell us about all the products, or some of the products. You've got too many to list. Tell us about where people can find you and search more of your resources. - Those products are what make it easy for me to travel and drop out of sight for weeks at a time because they're so predictable and just continuing.

The 40 Days to the Work You Love is kind of my core message. We just did the 10th anniversary edition, the hardback version of that. We're introducing a brand new seminar that goes with that. We're bringing on a thousand new business partners that'll help facilitate that. That's part of where my financial goals are.

For right now. But then books like No More Dreaded Mondays, Rutter of the Day, Wisdom Meets Passion. But a lot of things happening. Of course, 48days.com. 48days.net is that group of now over 15,000 people who are saying, "I want to do something significant. I've got a dream I want to put legs on." Those people share ideas and resources readily.

No cost to be involved in that group there, and it's a way to have other people who really help elevate your success. That kind of use the principle there, a rising tide raises all ships. So those are some of the ways that people can connect. We love to encourage people any way that they can.

And also, I just mentioned your podcast. You have a great podcast, 48 Days Podcast, and it's really a great source of inspiration for people. Entrepreneurship can be lonely, and it can be tough, but it's nice to have a voice like yours there with us. So thank you for coming on the show today.

Oh, absolutely. My pleasure. Thank you so much for listening to today's show. If you'd like to support Radical Personal Finance directly, consider becoming a patron of the show. Your dollars are the reasons that I am up here in Nashville, Tennessee, sitting down with Dan Miller. So for information on that, go to RadicalPersonalFinance.com/patron.

RadicalPersonalFinance.com/patron. You can sign up to support the show there. Till tomorrow, have a great day. Hey there, treasure hunters and bargain seekers. Are you on the lookout for a local thrift store that has it all? Look no further. PixExchange is your thrifting paradise right here in the heart of Torrance.

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