♪ California's top casino and entertainment destination is now your California to Vegas connection. Play at Yamaha Resort and Casino at San Manuel to earn points, rewards, and complimentary experiences for the iconic Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas. ♪ Two destinations, one loyalty card. Visit yamaha.com/palms to discover more. - Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with knowledge, skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.

Today on the show, my guest is Tim Schmoyer, founder of videocreators.tv, and also you run a personal family blog, or family vlog called Schmovies, right? - I do, yeah. - Tim, welcome to the show. - Thank you, thanks for having me. - I wanted to have you on today because you are an entrepreneur, you are at least a modest personal finance aficionado.

- Aficionado, oh wow, that's a new word for me. - And you and your wife have seven young children. Your eldest is now? - Just turned 10, two weeks ago. - Seven children, 10 and under. So your life is an absolute joy and an absolute craziness. - Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

- I'm sure. - Also joy, yeah. - I started with joy. - Yeah, yeah. - I started with joy. But I wanted to have you on to talk about entrepreneurship and business as well as, of course, how family integrates into that. - Yeah. - Begin with sharing a little bit of your story.

You and your wife have been married how long? - 13, 2006, what year is it now, 2019. So, ooh. - 13 years. - 13 years, okay, that's what I thought. See, I'm not a good math aficionado. (laughing) - That's all right, that's all right. And when did your business and entrepreneurship journey begin?

- Yeah, I was a youth and family worker at a church for like 12 years. And that ended very poorly. We had a lot of bad things kind of going on in the church and it ended up with 10 of us being fired on staff. It was a sizable church.

And so I was number nine out of the 10. And losing your job when you need to make some money, you know, it's a quick, you gotta figure something out real fast. And the only thing I had was my blog. - Okay. - It was a really small town in Minnesota.

There's no other career opportunities or anything there. So all I had was my blog. And I was like, I need to turn this into something. But this was, at this point it was 2010 or 11 or something like that. And so yeah, it was nothing like getting fired and losing your income that kind of forced you to kind of figure something out.

- And you would have had one baby at the time then? - We had two at the time. - Two, okay. - Yeah, so I guess it was maybe like 2011 or I don't remember exactly. - There's nothing like getting fired and losing your job when you have two little babies at home.

- Yeah, and they gave me some severance, but it expired on Christmas day. So you're like, oh, Merry Christmas, everybody. - Right, right. - So yeah, so I started, I spent a few years just kind of living off the blog and turned that into an income really quick 'cause I didn't have a choice.

And it was a lot of fire under your butt to get that going. So I did that and then still looking for other youth ministry gigs and stuff, but there wasn't anything that was like, either I was really just trigger shy or whatever, gun shy or something, I don't know.

But eventually I took a job up in Cincinnati doing YouTube strategy for a company. I have already been, like our YouTube channel is already reaching like a million people a month. - Because you and your wife had started kind of an informal vlog. - Yeah, it started off when I was in grad school.

I just wanted to introduce her to my family across the country. And so we put together little videos and that was like 2006 before vlogging was a thing. And so we do those. And so the channel was growing. We're reaching about a million people a month. And so I started doing YouTube strategy for this company and had a lot of fun with that.

And then when the company's like, hey, we're no longer going to be doing YouTube strategy for our, they had a video production house. So they were like, we're not doing strategy for our clients anymore. Like, yeah, six months and then you'll, you won't be working here anymore. And I'm like, man, losing another job.

And so at that point I was like, let me just do for myself what I've been teaching other people to do on YouTube. And so I started Video Creators. I created the channel on January 2nd, 2013. My last day at that company of having like a real job was June 15th, 2013.

And within that six month period, like I knew I had to take this from zero to a full-time income in six months. And so I got started and with, by the time my job was, yeah, by the time my job ended, it was generating $10,000 a month. And I was like, oh, I should have quit my job a long time ago, you know?

But I think for me, it was like, no one in my background, my family, on my wife's side or mine have like started known businesses, you know? And I think it was just like a combination of being in the right place at the right time. It's also a combination of having like a personality that really likes to solve big problems.

And YouTube stuff was a big one, especially back in the day. And also just being like, I can't, I'm not gonna go look for another job. I don't wanna do that again. And then it actually paid a lot better. So now today, here we are a few years later, and there's 11 people who work for me on my team at Video Creators, and we just love working with people to help them master the YouTube platform so they can ultimately reach people and change their lives with the messages and the businesses that they're growing.

So been a lot of success. We've done 14 billion views and 61 million subscribers for our clients so far, all organically on the platform. We've done strategy for Disney, Warner Brothers, eBay, Budweiser, HBO, like a lot of big brands, all the way down to people who are like, how do we just get started?

You know, whether it's just like the stay at home mom or a business owner or a brand or just a hobby creator. Like we love working with all of them. So been a lot of fun. - Now I know that in your journey, personal finance and good financial management is part of the story that you share.

I think Dave Ramsey was a major influence. - Yeah, for sure, yeah. - How'd you get connected with Dave Ramsey and his teaching? - So I was working at this church up in Minnesota and we had just got married like not too long before that. And I wasn't really making, when we first got married, I was making $14,600 a year.

- And how old were you when you married? - 26, yeah. - So not super early. - Just turned 26, yeah. But you know, you're like ministry. Like okay, it's not about the money, but you know, I can buy toothpaste once a year and that's about it, you know?

So yeah, so we took this full-time gig up in Minnesota at a church, went up there and I think it was like 50,000. I was like 50 freaking thousand dollars. Oh my gosh, what am I gonna do with all that money? I was like, I'm gonna be rich and wealthy in two years from now.

So we moved up there and we started doing a lot of dumb stuff where like, oh, we need a new car, you know? So we would finance the car, we'd do the down payment on the credit card and finance the rest. And like, oh, well, let's buy a house.

- 'Cause you didn't have any savings. - We didn't have anything, no, no, no. We were like, yeah, it was our credit card. - So it's kind of typical, we're married, let's build it up. - Yeah, yeah, so-- - That's impressive to finance a down payment for a car on your credit card.

- No, we did the down payment on the credit card, we financed the rest of the car. And then we wanted to buy a house. So I met with a financial advisor in our church and I was just like, hey, how much of a house can we afford? I don't know, we're looking at like 100,000, 600,000, a million point two, like I don't really know what range I should be looking at here.

And so he come in with all our statements, we slide them across the table. And that's the only question I wanted answered. He's like looking through it, he literally like runs his fingers through his hair, goes, his eyes get big and he's like, wow. You didn't say wow, but that's the expression on his face.

And he's like, okay, like before we talk about this, you guys first need to read this book. And he slides total money makeover, a day for empty across the table. He's like, read this book. And then once you read it, come back and then we'll talk. I was like, come on, dude, like that's not helpful.

Like just tell me the number. So we leave and I'm like kind of a little upset, like that was a waste of time. And so my wife reads the book and then she's like, Tim, you need to read this. I'm like, I don't, I just want to buy a house.

But I wanted to go back and get the numbers. So I like, I read the book and at the end of the book, I was like, oh, okay, we got a different trajectory. So we didn't have a lot of debt compared to some people. We had student loans in the car and credit cards and things like that.

But I think all in all, it was like $22,000, a little over 22,000. And cause I worked three jobs in college. So I graduated from college without debt. My parents, my in-laws pay for my wife's school stuff. So I had some grad school debt, but yeah. So we paid that off in 18 months and did our debt-free scream on YouTube, which went to like 20 some thousand views really quickly at that time.

It was a big deal. And yeah, we've been debt-free now for like 11 or 12 years. - All the way hardcore, like including the house? - Not including the house. So we were like, when we bought the house, our credit score was zero. So like we told the guy, we had to do manual underwriting, which was like not a big deal actually.

If it kind of fact, it kind of felt the way you should probably do it, Marcus. But yeah, so we got manual underwriting. It wasn't a big deal. We got that done. And at the closing, the guy was like, "Wow, you really do have zero. "Like I've never seen a credit history "that has nothing on it.

"It's completely blank." Like usually when people say zero, they mean it's like a hundred, like really bad. It's like, but I've never seen one that's actually zero. So we're like, yeah, we haven't done credit cards or debt. We've just done all cash for the past 10 years. So we did do the mortgage, but we followed all Dave's stuff, which was quarter of your take-home pay and 15 year fixed.

And so we did all that. And we are actually paying it off faster now. - Great, great. So along the way, your family expanded dramatically quickly. When your twins were born, you had four children, two and under. - That's right, yeah. - So I've been there, right? My wife and I, we have four children, five and under.

And that's a pretty-- - Yeah, I can do that in two years. It's crazy. - Yeah. - We had twins in there, which is kind of-- - I'm filled with empathy for you and also extremely impressed because knowing how challenging four, five and under are, I can imagine the challenge of even younger.

So how do you think your financial stability influenced your ability to handle the quick growth of your family and also your business? - I don't think we would have been able to handle the family without the business because, and by that time when the twins came along, my wife was bedridden for the final three months of that pregnancy.

So I had, I think at that time, there was like five, four or five people on my team. And so for those final three months of the pregnancy plus the next three months after, like I only worked like 10, 15 hours a week. I didn't really, I wasn't, like if I had a real job, like there was no way I would be able to do that.

Because I had other people in my business and my job who were kind of running things, it was a little bit easier for me to back off pretty significantly. So I liked having that freedom to be able to be like, I'm gonna put my family first right now and the business can, you know, it would do better with me, but the goal right now isn't to grow the biggest, baddest company in the world, it's to provide for my family.

And sometimes that's financially, sometimes with your time. And so that's why I was, I had that freedom to do that, which I'm really thankful for. And we also hired a nanny, one of the girls from my old youth group, moved down, they moved across the street from us. And so she was over every weekday helping with cleaning the house and meals and watching the kids while I did some work and some stuff like that.

So having the financial means to do that, to hire someone as well as not work as much is kind of what got us through that stage of life. - Yeah, that's what I've experienced as well is that it seems like, I mean, if I had to go to a 40 hour a week job plus commuting practically 50, 60 hours a week, and if I weren't making enough money to hire help, I don't know how we'd do it.

You know, I understand why many families have one or two children and it's hard to handle. It seems like a society, it seems like our society once had more support available for mothers, but today it seems like it falls squarely on your shoulder as a husband to figure out how to provide that support 'cause there's not much community support available.

- Yeah. - So when you look at your business, one of the themes for your knowledge, one of the themes that I've talked about a lot on the show is we try to balance the two horns of living a rich and meaningful life now and also working toward financial freedom.

And it seems like there's a proper tension between those themes that has to be held. When you look at your business, how do you think your family, has your family hurt you? In terms of your business success? - They're holding you back? - Yeah. - I don't know if they'd, I wouldn't say they hurt me because it's like I do it for them primarily.

- Right. - You know, so I would say that, like the only way I would say it hurts or is like a downside or something is like, like when we travel to events and conferences and things like you, I try to take my kids as much as possible. And sometimes they'll be like, oh no, you can't bring your kid, either on that pass legal or we have, I'm like legal.

Like, what are they, what are they gonna do? - I'm gonna get my seven year old a whiskey. - Yeah. - Whiskey here at the bar. - And then they're like, we need to get like insurance and like check with our insurance coverage. And I'm like, what? Oh, just like, come as like, what?

So, but, and there have been a few times where I'm like, that's, we share some different values. This is not gonna work. And I don't feel like that hurts though. I feel like that's kind of just helping me like, hey, we're just not aligned on some of these things.

And so we're just not gonna work together. It doesn't mean you're wrong or bad or anything. It just means like you are, no. It just means like, it's just not gonna be a good fit. So if there's anything, it might've just, yeah, it saves me from taking, investing my energy in things that might not have been fruitful long-term because I think they're most fruitful when they're aligned with people who share your values and your vision and things.

- In the data on income earners and wealth generators, fathers tend to have the highest incomes and tend to accumulate the most wealth. Now there's some debate. Why is that, right? Does fatherhood somehow change something in terms of your earning income? Or is it just kind of a correlation that oftentimes the kind of man who's likely to earn a high income or accumulate wealth is also the kind of man who's likely to be a father?

And I know of no proof or evidence for one way or the other. Looking at your life, who you're making a high income, you've accumulated wealth and are continuing to work on that path. Looking at your life, do you think that fatherhood has affected positively your earnings and wealth accumulation?

- Yeah, 'cause if it was just me, I'd just be spending for myself and have a very narrow perspective on the world. When we bought this house we just bought a few months ago, before we even started looking at the market, my wife and I sat down and we're like, "What's our vision for our family during these kid years, during the teen years, during the grandparenting years?" You know, we fussed out.

We called it our Smoyer Estate Vision, this little google doc, and we just started writing everything down. And so as we fussed out, what's our vision for our family going forward, we started in this exercise, started putting together what kind of space would serve this vision that well. And so we started putting in the more practical terms of this is what we would need and how much and all that kind of stuff.

And so then we went and looked at the market to see where would we find this type of tool, 'cause we see our house and our property and stuff is like a tool. And money in general we view as a tool, it's not a goal. It's a tool we use.

So when we started, yeah, we started to go down that path, there was only like one property that's ever been on the market that checked all the boxes and all of the greater Cincinnati area. 'Cause we looked on all the past two or three years as well to see if this is like a once in a, like a unicorn type of property, or is this a like, oh, it comes on the market every two years or once a year.

This is just one, you know? And it was on the market at that time. And it was in our price range if we took out the mortgage and still stayed within our Dave Ramsey limits. And so we decided we were just gonna go ahead and do that. And so we went ahead and did it and it worked great.

But even then it was like, we're buying this because it's gonna be a tool that we're gonna use for accomplishing this bigger vision for our family. And which boils down to hospitality and influence for us. Both of those as tools that we wanna use. - But do you feel like you're more motivated to earn more, build a bigger business because of having seven little mouths depending on you?

Or do you think that, well, if I were Tim and my wife and I had no kids, I'd still be just as motivated? - I don't think so. No, you're probably right. I think it was because I had a family and lost my job twice. I'm like, this is, getting a job feels irresponsible.

- Right. - You know? Like I can't keep doing this. So I, yeah, I think that was probably part of it. Like I didn't go start the business because I had some sort of entrepreneurial dream. I didn't even, I didn't know anything about business. All my education's in theology, right?

So it's like super not practical for day-to-day, like revenue type of generating stuff. - Indeed. - So yeah, so it was all self-taught. And I was homeschooled growing up my whole life too. So that probably helped a little bit. And I'm like, I'm gonna go, I know how to teach myself stuff and figure it out.

So yeah. - Tell me about homeschooling. You just said that you gained from it and now you and your wife have decided to homeschool. - Mostly me. - That's parents as well. - Yeah. She's on the fence. She can go either way. - Right, right. - So it's mostly my thing.

- Why do you homeschool? - Because I want them to, I want the primary identity that they form growing up to be in our family, not the identity that they're going to likely get just by the sheer like volume of time they're spending. Like eight hours a day at school and then a few hours, you know, like you just break down the hourly rate.

I'm not saying that you lose your influence as a parent or anything, but if they're in school, it's just more like, we wanted to, I should say I, my wife, like I said, she could go either way. She's a certified elementary school teacher. So she doesn't think, I don't think like school is bad either.

It's just kind of like, we have the opportunity to be able to invest into our kids' lives all day long and do this integrated thing rather than this separate bucket thing where you have like churches and spiritualities over here and then you have like educations here and then you have like family times over here and like, what if we just put all that together and we taught our kids like Bible at home and we spent time together by learning together and then they worked in our family business and like rather than trying to find time for everything and then there never feels like there's enough time at the end of the day, what if we just did it all together at once?

I know not everyone has the freedom to do that, but I wanted to orient our life around a rhythm that would get us there. And so for me, it was less about like buckets and more about integration and having the influence on our kids that I want them to have, especially at that young impressionable age.

- Building a family team is your core motto. You guys introduce every one of your videos on your personal vlog with exactly that, building a family team together. How is that currently expressing itself with your children, especially as it relates to their schooling and your business and their work, et cetera?

What are you doing right now? - Yeah, there's a couple different things on a couple different levels. On a business level, my kids get paid as child actors. So the business pays them, it goes into an IRA for them, which they don't care about right now, but one day they will, right?

So they get paid on one level and they are assets to our family because we get like lots of stuff, you know, like toy companies will just send us hoping to be in a video, but also just in terms of being on the channel and things like that. They also have their own channel now that they shoot and edit and publish everything on their own.

So, I mean, my wife and I will prove it before they publish it, but they're editing an iMovie now and doing all that. So that's like one aspect. Another area though is as a team, we all play different roles for a common goal, common vision. And so for our older kids now, they are helping serve in ways that the younger kids don't.

Like, so for example, just this past week, our youngest daughter, who's almost two, has had this sinus infection going on for weeks and it's just nonstop nose, runny, coughing stuff. And a friend of ours who's a nurse thought that maybe she was getting pneumonia. So we're like, okay. So my wife's like, drop everything.

I'm going, I gotta take her into the doctor and get this checked out. And, but she's like, but that means I'm not gonna have dinner prep tonight. So our 10 and eight year old cook dinner for our family, the whole thing from scratch. They ground the beef, they chopped it up of everything.

They grated the cheese, put it all together and made this really nice dinner for us. And they didn't drain the beef as much as they probably should have, but no one complained and they were super proud of themselves. 'Cause I think kids wanna feel like they're contributing. They wanna feel like they're valuable.

And when they just sit on TV all day, not saying we don't do that, but when they just feel like they're couch potatoes or they just get to do whatever they wanna do, they become these really selfish, self-centered people. I think as all of us naturally would. And so them feeling like they're part of this bigger team, it really helps shape their identity and what it means to be a team player, but also what it means to serve.

And it's not always about me all the time. And sometimes I give up something I wanted to do in order for the rest of the team. So it's not perfect. You know, they're kids and we're all human, but that's kind of the vision we cast for our kids is like, we're not one individual person and everyone needs their own world revolving around them.

We're like, right now it gotta revolve around the little one and we're all gonna pitch in and be a team for that. So yeah, so whether it's meal planning or it's doing yard work outside or it's going to serve another family who's in need or something like that, we all kind of pitch in and do it.

- What are you guessing or hoping to see in the coming years as your children move into teenage years given the opportunities you have with entrepreneurship, homeschooling, et cetera, what are some of your dreams for them or the things you think might happen in their life as they grow?

- The main thing I want them to happen is that they adopt some really important values and that they become people who kind of embody some of these things more so than like, I want them to make sure they start a business. I don't really care if they start a business or not.

Like maybe it's right for them, maybe it's not. Like maybe they'll marry someone who's more successful or has different aspirations. I don't know. I'm not trying to dictate their life, but I do want them to grow up to have certain character qualities where they can think big picture and longer term.

They can plan for the future. And what they're doing is all kind of ultimately revolving around Matthew 6, it says, "Seek first the kingdom of God," all these things we gotta do. So most of the time we use language like build the kingdom or invite the kingdom. We're like, I don't even know what that thing means, to be honest.

But when it's like seek the kingdom of God, or we seek like where something important is happening and how do we join in that. And I want them to be sensitive to being able to spot those opportunities and being like, this is what it means for me to be a team player in this context right now.

And so that could be in the home, it could be outside the home, it could be in a career, but I just kind of want them to grow up like with the core values that we put people first and that we are mission oriented, that we do it right.

These are our five things. So people first, so that's like above everything else. Like sometimes it makes, like for even in our business, sometimes it doesn't make good revenue sense for us to do this, but it serves the person the best. So we put people first. We're mission oriented, that means like there's a bigger cause behind what we're trying to do here.

There's a family or there's a business then. Like for us, it's not really just about growing views and subscribers for entrepreneurs. It's more about like how do we spread a message that changes people's lives, right? And that we do it right. And so it's like, it's not just something that you do, but you can do this right and then you own it, which is number four.

So you're responsible for the outcome and the results, not just like I technically did it, but you know, that one. And then what's the last one? I'm throwing a blank here for some reason on the spot. - People first, mission oriented, do it right. - Oh, results driven, results driven.

Yeah, results driven. So yeah, results driven is like, we're not just like think we're doing something nice for someone and we feel good about it, but does it actually have like a tangible result? You know, so in the business, like I don't wanna just help people grow their audience on YouTube.

I wanna be able to track, is the stuff we're doing actually moving the needle? Is it actually making a difference? And so even when we're like serving people as a family with hospitality, one of our visions behind this place is that we can host family who are in transitions and need a place to stay.

So it's got like two extra units on it. It's got three kitchens in this place. So we can host families who need that and be hospitable, but we wanna track the results. So are we just enabling them to like not get a job or something, or are we actually helping them get the results if they want it?

So it's not just about putting people first and then becoming, you know, whatever. But you have the idea, yeah, so those five things. - When you think about, I admire what you're doing. I can see how, I'm not a big consumer of people's stories, like the family vlog is not really my thing, but I've watched enough of your content to really come to appreciate how you are serving as a source of encouragement and inspiration for others, especially many who are lonely and who are in need to feel like nobody understands them.

And increasingly in today's world, where we're personally isolated, but technologically connected, I feel like what you're doing is valuable and I see why you're doing it and how it fits into your overall mission. I've also personally really struggled with the impact and the challenge of, is this good for my children?

Like to expose my children to the challenges that come with some measure of celebrity and notoriety, whether it's on the grand scale, children of famous actors, famous child actors, to the minor scale of preacher kid syndrome or missionary kid syndrome, things like that. I've often wondered about that. And my wife and I, a few years ago, we worked to take our children off the internet and decided, you know what, we're just not gonna, we're gonna keep them off there.

But I've really struggled with that 'cause it doesn't seem like a very confident thing to do. It seems more like a fear-driven thing to do instead of moving forward in confidence and in faith. How do you think about that as a father in terms of the impact on your children?

- I don't think there's a right or wrong answer with that. I think it's just kinda based on your kids and your values and your vision for your family and what your kids need. Like I don't think I can, yeah, I don't. - But in terms of, obviously you're aware and you're watching, what I'm asking is, as you're watching your children, are you seeing effects of the public lifestyle that you're living that you like, seeing effects that you don't like as compared to your friends who are more private?

- I, yeah, so I think about that. And when I, and I haven't really noticed anything that's making a huge difference either way. Like I haven't noticed that, if, like one kid will get a bad attitude or something and I feel like, oh, that's because they're part of this public lifestyle or something.

And I also haven't noticed that they're really shy and introverted 'cause I feel like everyone knows who they are and they wanna be more private. So I try to kind of keep my pulse on that and kind of keep an eye on it. But I don't think that there's, I haven't really noticed anything that makes it like, this is like bad or this is good or anything for my kids.

So I do notice, I think if there's anything, I think my older ones are probably feel a bit more confident in being around people. And I don't know if it's because they're like, everyone loves me, who doesn't love me? You know, everyone I meet. - I'm constantly getting. - Anyone who meets me is like excited to meet me.

I must be awesome. I don't, that's what I'm trying to be careful about. But I know I haven't seen that happen. And I think a lot of it is how my wife and I model that for them as well. But then there's another kid in my family who's like really, really shy and like would probably prefer to just be by themselves.

So yeah, I guess I don't really have a strong opinion about that either way. It's something that we're conscious and aware of, but I don't have any like, this is how we do it and this is the right or wrong way. I think it's like an always evolving, changing thing as the kids grow.

- When you, you guys are very connected with digital technology, for obvious reasons, right? That's how you're interacting with the world. You're constantly connected and your children are engaged in producing that technology. But you obviously have a vision in terms of your homeschooling and your education, et cetera. When you think about the impact of that technology on your children, the connectivity, et cetera, do you think it's a net positive?

Do you think it's a net negative? How do you engage with it as a father? - We monitor it and we limit it. So it's like, so one of the sayings in our house is good work brings good reward. So that's our, one of our, I don't know, yeah, sayings, mottos, creeds, whatever.

And so they know that like when they get like the screen time to tell, it's usually because it's a result of good work. It's like a reward that they've earned. So yeah, so it gets kind of limited. Like we'll say, no, you can't watch TV. You gotta go outside and play right now.

So it's, but we don't shut them off from that either. If they had their way, they would just sit there and watch it all day long, every day, which is why there's parents involved. So it doesn't happen. - Do you limit the video creation at all or the work of video creation?

- Not really, they kind of limit that themselves. They'll be like, if there's something that they really wanna shoot, they'll shoot it. But they're not trying to like put themselves out there all day, every day. It's kind of like, oh, I'm really excited about this. And this fits with what we're trying to do on our channel.

Like, can I make a video about this dad? And then I'll say, well, tell me the idea. What's the story you're gonna tell? And we walk through a character who wants something, overcomes conflict to get it, right? And we just kind of like, what is, what's going on here?

And then I'll say, okay, good. So after they've kind of thought through it, then I'll let them shoot it and edit it. But yeah, that's, I would say they, they go through spurts with that. They'll make maybe like four videos in a day and then they won't touch it again for like a month.

So yeah, that's not a huge source issue for us. - Are you aware of, in the personal finance space, the financial independence, early retirement movement, or any of the people-- - I've done some consultations with people in that niche. Yeah, who are like, live on, I mean, Dave's very amused, words, beans and rice and just save everything so they can retire at age 35.

Yeah. - Yeah. Do you, do you think about how your children will impact your retirement, those kinds of things? - So I'm only 30, only 30, I guess I'm midlife, 39. And I haven't really thought, I mean, we're putting money in the way in the Vanguard and all that kind of stuff, right?

But the company has a 401k. But I read a book called "Thou Shalt Prosper" by Daniel Lapin, have you read that book? - Yes. - Okay, so he, in there, like one of the analogies he uses for retirement, he's like, they say the word, Jews believe that the word doesn't exist in Hebrew, that it's a man-made concept, and it's not from God.

And so there is no equivalent word in Hebrew for retirement. And so they believe that this is not an actual concept that should exist. And so he uses in the book, the analogy of when you swing a golf club, you don't, like if retirement is the goal, hitting the ball is the goal, you like slow down before hitting the ball, and then you don't really drive the ball that far.

But if there's no concept of retirement, then you hit the, you follow through in the ball, and you're constantly swinging into that one big push until you die, and you'll get a lot further. And so that kind of hit a chord with me. I'm not like, we are saving for retirement, I'm not anti like, I think for me, it's less about retiring and more about shift, being able to shift my focus, on not having to generate income right now, instead I can just go be there for my grandkids and let my kids and their spouses go have date nights and be able to serve in other capacities than I can currently.

So I don't think that answers your question. I think it more in terms of a season of life rather than like ceasing of work and doing what I finally wanna do. - Final question. If you were to be in a room speaking with people who are young parents and who are struggling to manage the challenges of children and the challenges of jobs or businesses and feel like they're not doing anything well, what words of encouragement or advice would you share?

- It gets worse if you have more kids. No, that's not even true. No, it's the encouragement I would say, like in terms of a practical, like what to do, 'cause we've, I mean, you've been there, everyone's been there, that's not a unique thing. Is, sorry if that hurts anybody, but it's like the thing that's helped us the most is thinking more about, rather than prioritizing and balance, is to think more in terms of integrating and priorities.

So it's like, what do we say is our family, this is the most important thing for our family, let's put a list of priorities, and then we draw a red line, and whatever falls below the red line, it might be great things, it just doesn't get done, right? So it's like, we wanna make sure we put the most important things first and that those stay a priority.

So if that means, like our kids don't do sports because it would be impossible for us to drive kids around to different sports and still have time to get together as a family. Time to go as a family for us is more important than our kids playing sports, and so we just don't do sports.

Now maybe, as they get older, we could maybe do something like tennis, where we could all four of us be on a court at a time, you know, and kind of double up with that, integrate a little bit better, but there's, yeah. So prioritizing is how we think about it rather than balance, and then it's better systems for us.

So like, as a business grows, things break as the business grows, and same thing is true as your family. As your family grows and the kids get older and things change, the difficulties there aren't because like, oh, we can't sustain more than four kids, it's like saying, oh, we can't have more than four employees.

It's like, no, you can grow to thousands of employees, you just need better systems to manage that. And the same is true for a family. If like the discipline is breaking down, but you need a better discipline system. It's not like you can't take a third child because you're having too much struggle with the two you currently have.

It's like, you know, you just need a better discipline system. And so we think about it like, yeah, that way. Like, what's a better system? This is not working with these four kids or with these seven kids or whatever. What do we need to do different? And so we grow the family structure the same way we grow a business structure.

Does that make sense? - You may disagree, but my opinion is I think that there is a direct influence on your ability to run an effective business. I can tell your business is effective. And it's extremely unusual for somebody who never had entrepreneurial ambition to be able to run an effective systematized business.

And I think you feel free to say if you think I'm right or wrong. But I think that it is some of the lessons that you learned in learning how to order your family that apply over to the business. - I think it went the other way around for me, actually.

It was like, when we started the business, we had a few kids. And as I was learning about growing the business, things would break down. I remember the first time I made my first hire was because things were breaking down 'cause I couldn't do it all anymore. And so I made one hire, and then I learned a ton of lessons about communication.

And then I'm like, oh, this applies to my family. And then as I was learning more about having a vision for your business and a mission behind it, oh, my family needs a business. And even branding, what are the things that make it easy for a customer to fall in love with a brand are the same things that I can do with my family.

Well, what's gonna capture my kids' hearts for our family? And the marketing world's doing it all day long to them, being very successful at it. But as a dad, I can use those same tools that I'm using to grow the influence that our business has. I can do that as a family, and capture my kids' hearts in terms of our creed and our mission and our vision and our core values and all that stuff, like icons and the rituals we do together as families and the things we say we're not, like all these primal branding type of elements that we have just taken and done for our family and captures our kids' hearts.

So I think it's like running the business has actually taught me how to lead my family better 'cause when it's a pain point in the business, it's like, oh, I need to fix this. But if it's a pain point in the family, the normal response is like, we just can't have more kids, or we just need to go to therapy because there's something wrong with you.

It's like, oh, well, maybe that's true. There is always something wrong with us, but maybe there's a better system that we could figure out. Does that make sense? I think it was the other way for me. - Yeah, fair enough. I'm happy for it to go both ways. I think for some people, for me, I think it's often gone the other way in simply that you have to learn lessons.

And I'm convinced that one of the benefits of being a father is you have, whether you work for someone else, whether you have no job freedom whatsoever, at least in your home, you have your own, you can be the king of your castle. And that means that you bear the responsibility and you recognize that if I have this authority and this responsibility simultaneously, then I have to wield it well because I'm responsible.

If I don't wield it well, I get disastrous results. If I wield it well, I get really good results. And I think it can have an influence both ways. - Yeah, sure. - So I'll buy it. - Totally, yeah. - I think you're one of the most effective, simplest, clearest teachers on YouTube.

Take a moment and share with my audience about some of the work that you do, where they may be interested to go to learn more, and if they wanna become one of your students, how they can do that. - Yeah, you just go to, we have a podcast every, I have a podcast, I just said, every Tuesday.

And it's just, you search iTunes or wherever you listen to podcasts for YouTube, for video creators, or you can search my name, Tim Schmoyer, it'll probably pop up too. And so if you wanna learn more about diving into YouTube strategy and how to grow a business around your YouTube content and how to use video content to grow your business, yeah, you can just check out the podcast every Tuesday and love to dive in.

- Tim, thanks for coming on the show. - Yeah, thanks for having me. - Don't just dream about paradise, live it with Fiji Airways. Escape the ordinary with Fiji Airways Global Beat the Rush Sale. Immerse yourself in white sandy beaches or dive deep into coral reefs. Fiji Airways has flights to Nadi starting at just $748 for light and just $798 for value.

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