A lot of us feel squeamish about selling but even movie stars have to sell their work. Ash Ambirge, author of The Middle Finger Project: Trash Your Imposter Syndrome and Live the Unf*ckwithable Life You Deserve shares her story of getting inspired by Brad Pitt to get past her fears and succeed at selling.

Ash’s Money Story:

Ash Ambirge:
When I was watching TV one day from my apartment in Santiago, Chile, where I was living at the time, an ad for Brad Pitt's new movie popped onto the TV. And there, this guy is like giving this big interview. He's all over the place. He's really excited about his new movie. He's telling Oprah or whoever, Ellen at the time, all about this thing that was coming up. And I looked at him and I thought, "Oh my God, even people like Brad Pitt need to promote their stuff. He's not exempt from this either. And look at him doing a fine and eloquent job."

Bobbi Rebell:
How did you translate that to yourself?

Ash Ambirge:
Yeah. So when you see Brad Pitt standing up and saying, "Hey everybody, so my new movie comes out on March 3rd and here's what it's about and I really hope you guys show up," you realize that the key to selling has nothing to do with selling, it has everything to do with enthusiasm. Brad Pitt was enthusiastic about his movie and I wanted to feel that way too about the stuff that I was selling.

Ash Ambirge:
And so I started switching my approach. Every single thing that I was doing, whether it was an event or not, I started telling everyone about with the utmost enthusiasm. Because when I believed in the things that I was creating and making, other people automatically felt like they could believe in it too. And it created this chain reaction. And a part of that was also understanding that I could no longer sell the things that I wasn't really enthusiastic about.

Bobbi Rebell:
Wow. So true, and yet we don't always really process things that way.

“Selling is always helping”

Ash’s Money Lesson:

Bobbi Rebell:
what is the lesson for our listeners from that story? How can people make it their own?

Ash Ambirge:
Whenever you go into any interaction, and it doesn't matter if you're an employee or you are a freelancer, you have to approach it from the perspective of an advisor. This is what I look at now and it's like, "Okay, hey person. Yes, I'm really excited. Here's the stuff that I'm doing. Here's how I think it could help you." Talk to them about what you actually have to offer in the most brightest and brilliant way you can muster, as opposed to looking at it like, oh, I'm just a lowly employee or a lowly freelancer and I'm here just to kind of take orders from people and wait and hope that they give me their money and hope that they see that I'm actually awesome.

Ash Ambirge:
Instead, you have to look at it like you're an advisor and you are here to just be the most enthusiastic you can about this thing that you are selling. And when you approach it with enthusiasm and like, "Hey, I'm just here to help, let's talk about how I can help you," it changes everything from feeling ick and salesy, to being like, "Oh my gosh, this person is my guardian angel. I'm so excited that their here." They will be thrilled to hear from you.

Bobbi Rebell:
And that shift in mindset is key because people can tell when you're selling versus helping them. There's a difference.

Ash Ambirge:
Yeah. Oh yeah. And that's it, selling is always helping. We always feel like we're bothering people, but if you genuinely set out to help somebody, it doesn't even matter if you're just great at makeup, if you are great at finances, whatever the thing is that you're great at, that's all you're doing. You're showing up and being like, "Hey, do you need my help?" That's it. It's simple. "Hey, do you want my help? I have this thing for sale. You can totally buy it. Let's do it."

“Enthusiasm is the greatest pitch there is”

Ash’s Money Tip:

Ash Ambirge:
It does have to do with hot dogs and Jersey. It's called the hot dog theory of money. The hot dog theory of money is to help you anytime you get all scared and intimidated when you are sitting there in your boss's office, or you are asking a client to give you more money, A, because hotdogs are hilarious, and B, because they really do simplify this and make it way less scary.

Ash Ambirge:
So if you were a vendor on the Jersey shore and you're out there selling hot dogs, and some guy comes up to you and is like, "Yo man, hey, how much for a hot dog," you are not going to hm and haw and get all nervous about stating the price of the hotdog, you're not going to say, "Well, since it's the first time that you're here, maybe we could work out a deal," or, I don't know, "Did you have a budget in mind for how much you wanted to spend?" None of that, because we understand intuitively that if we're actually a vendor selling a hotdog on the Jersey shore, the price is the price is the price for a reason. It includes all of the manufacturing costs, it includes the delivery, it includes the packaging, the branding, it includes my time sitting there just selling these hotdogs, and whatever other costs are involved.

Ash Ambirge:
And it also is going to include the person who owns the company. It's going to include their profit, and we never ever factor in our own profit and our own worth when it comes to asking for money. So, the next time you have to ask for it, think about it. You are just stating the price of a hot dog. That's it. This is what it costs, would you like to buy it?

Bobbi Rebell:
That just makes so much sense. And that's something that really was a huge turning point in your business because you were making mistakes early on, and then by having that mentality, you started to have firm prices and it changed everything.

Ash Ambirge:
It did. I used to work in advertising before I became a freelancer, and one of the things I learned from that was they would send us out with rate cards and the rate was the rate was the rate for the magazine. And it was very straight forward. So I adopted that posture when I walked into meetings with my own clients now and just said, "Hey, so here's how much it costs. Here's what it includes." It's so much less complicated than we make it in our heads. The price is the price is the price for a reason and that includes every single thing about you that you're bringing to the table, from your enthusiasm about your stuff, to the way that you package it, to all the stuff that you know. I mean, it is so worth it, but sometimes we may seem way harder than it is.

Bobbi Rebell:
Well, it's hard because we can be insecure about our own self-worth. And your book, one of the many things that I love about it is there's so much in there that can give us the confidence to be more secure and to be stronger in negotiations, and also in advocating for ourselves and for our businesses. One of my favorite quotes in the book, there's so many, but anyway, one of them is, "If you build it, they will come is basically for a jelly donut to magically appear in your hand."

Ash Ambirge:
Okay. Seriously. I mean, and for my listeners, this is the kind of stuff, but you're making a real point. It's just not going to happen if you just think they're going to come because you built it, right?

Bobbi Rebell:
Yeah.

Ash Ambirge:
But the key really goes back to enthusiasm. Like when you are enthusiastic about the thing you're selling, even if it's yourself and your talents, then great. And it just shows up naturally and you don't have to put all of this weird professionalism around it and all this weird like anxiety that happens. Like you're just there to help everybody.

Bobbi Rebell:
And speaking of that, one of my favorite quotes is, "Enthusiasm is the greatest pitch there is," because of just what you said. If you love something and you believe in it and you believe that it's going to help the person who might potentially buy it, that's a much stronger sell.

Ash Ambirge:
It's a much stronger sale. And I've sold myself to companies that way as an employee and as a freelancer, no matter what it is. That's what they love about working with people because no one ever hired anyone to be unhelpful, right? So if you can demonstrate that you are here to legitimately help them, that's wonderful. And then they can figure out how to teach you the on the job stuff that they need to know. Enthusiasm is so underrated.

Bobbi Rebell:
Yeah. And a lot of us get tempted to offer to do things for free just to prove ourselves. But another one of the quotes that I love is, "Charging money is a sign they can take your offer seriously."

Ash Ambirge:
Yes. And so is showing up consistently for yourself in whatever form, and following up with those clients in some kind of a very systematic way shows them that you take their business seriously and they can trust you. Because there's nothing worse than some guy who's like, "Hey I can help you with your SEO for your website." And then he's like, "Hey, just give me admin access to your site," and doesn't do any kind of like contract or have any kind of process. Having those processes in place and actually sending out those kinds of things and charging fair good money is a sign the client can trust you.

“Charging good, fair money is a sign the client can trust you”

Bobbi’s Financial Grownup Tips:

Financial Grownup Tip #1:

You can find inspiration everywhere. Brad Pitt, not the first person you think of when it comes to business necessarily, and he didn't come from a privileged background. Brad Pitt did not go to a fancy college and he isn't even officially in the sales business, except he is, and to a large degree, we all are. Even if you are just even applying for a new job or trying to get a new client, you're selling yourself as a solution to their problem. That's the job to fill.

Financial Grownup Tip #2:

With all of us working from home these days, there is a temptation to go super casual. And in some cases, that can work, but Ash talks about processes, having set prices and being professional, running a business, a professional business. People take you seriously then. Let's not forget that you still need to be on time. You still need to look neat and professional, even if it's a little bit more casual. You want to follow up efficiently just like you would if you were getting up and going to an office. If you want somebody to give you money, don't forget her advice. You need to be enthusiastic, even as hard as it may be with everything going on these days.

Episode Links:

• Ash’s website - www.themiddlefingerproject.org

• Ash’s Book - The Middle Finger Project

Follow Ash!

• Twitter - @TMFproject

• Facebook - @TMFproject

• Instagram - @the.middle.finger.project

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.

Being wealthy is often a state of mind. Learn how to gain perspective and feel rich- no matter what your bank account says from Entrepreneur, New York Times best-selling author and Side Hustle School podcast host Chris Guillebeau. Plus a preview of his latest book: The Money Tree. 

Chris’ Money Story:

Chris Guillebeau:
Yes, a tour of the culinary landscape. Six year old Chris, when people would ask me, "What do you want to do when you grow up?" Other people were like, "I want to be the president. I want to be a basketball player," and at the age of six Burger King was my favorite restaurant. My parents were split up. My dad would pick me up on Wednesdays and go to Burger King. So I would say I want to work at Burger King, and I thought it would be like the greatest place in the world.

Chris Guillebeau:
So obviously I grew up, and I realized, "Okay, not the greatest place to work," but even as a teenager I kept eating there. Because that was the habit of the time. I thought, "One day if I have enough money to be able to go and eat at Burger King or whatever fast food place every day, then I will be rich. Then I'll be well off. I don't have to think about it. I can just go. If I want to get an extra apple pie," whatever it is.

Chris Guillebeau:
Then of course I kind of grow up and do other stuff. I was an aid worker for four years in West Africa. I'd always kind of worked for myself from the age of 19; I'd learned various little entrepreneurial projects selling things online and such. So I did the aid worker stuff, and then I had a project of going to every country in the world, started blogging about it. It turned into this whole unexpected author career and so on.

Chris Guillebeau:
At a certain point, I realized there was this moment when I was traveling in Hong Kong, which is one of my favorite places in the world, and I was at the W Hotel. Because of my hotel status, because I stay in hotels all the time, they give me free breakfast. It's a very elaborate breakfast, incredible buffet, and they also cook things to order and such. The price, if you have to pay for it, is like $35 or something.

Bobbi Rebell:
That's a lot for breakfast.

Chris Guillebeau:
It is a lot for breakfast, you know? I remember sitting there and thinking, "Okay [inaudible 00:05:17]. It's a lot for breakfast for sure. I'm glad I don't have to pay for it, but you know what? If I did have to pay for it, then I could." I could pay for it, and I would say, "Oh, you know what? That's an expensive breakfast," but I would still be able to pay for it. I thought, "This is how I know that I've made it," essentially. The fact that if I want to have a nice breakfast, I can do so.

Chris Guillebeau:
I thought about that a lot because if you understand for yourself what makes you feel well off, what makes you feel rich, maybe you realize that that thing is not as inaccessible as you thought. Especially if it is something that's somewhat obtainable. So it just helped me have some perspective as I've traveled and done different things throughout my life since.

Bobbi Rebell:
It sounds like throughout your life you have goals, but it's also okay for those goals and aspirations to adjust to where you are. They do change.

Chris Guillebeau:
Of course. Absolutely. I think people sometimes hold off on setting a big goal or making a commitment because of that fear of change. Because they think, "Well, what if I change my mind?" I always think, "Well, if you change your mind then you change your mind." You change your mind because you get experience, because you learn, you gain wisdom. And so maybe you realize the other thing that I wanted to do is a little bit different, or maybe that was the thing I wanted to do for a while, and that was fine. But now because of what I've learned and experienced, I want to do something different. But if you don't commit in the first place and pursue that goal, then you'll never get to that spot.

Bobbi Rebell:
It almost reminds me of when we all have sort of that number in our head that's sort of our safety number where I'll feel secure at this number. It's always changing.

Chris Guillebeau:
Right. That's like a whole different thing. Right? Because it always goes up. It never goes down, does it? You know what I mean?

Bobbi Rebell:
No, it never does go down.

Chris Guillebeau:
Right. So that's why it's like you have to really think about not just what is the number but, "What is the life that I want to have? How do I create that life?" Because ultimately, there's always somebody with more money or whatever the metric is.

Bobbi Rebell:
Exactly. The metrics change, basically. What you perceive as someone that's wealthy is going to change. But there's always going to be, in my mind, someone who is wealthier than you.

Chris Guillebeau:
Of course. Well, there always will be in reality. Not just in your mind. That leads to a whole other thing about, "What is happiness? What is purpose? Why are we doing all this stuff?" Of course we want to make more money, but it ultimately needs to be grounded to a greater purpose or else we won't actually be that happy.

“You have to really think about not just what is the number but what is the life that I want to have. How do I create that life? Because ultimately there is always somebody with more money or whatever the metric is.”

Chris’ Money Lesson:

Chris Guillebeau:
I think maybe it comes down to knowing yourself, knowing yourself and what are your goals. What are you working towards? What is important to you, and how are you going to make that happen? And how are you going to, as we said earlier, adjust as you go along and be willing to change your mind. I'm a work in progress like everybody, but I just keep doing stuff.

Bobbi Rebell:
Exactly. And it's okay to course correct. We're all human, we all change. Circumstances change, and it's okay for our goals and aspirations to change. But one thing that I think we will agree on is many people could always use an extra few bucks, and that's one of the things that you cover in The Money Tree, including a challenge. We're going to do a little bit of a spoiler. One of the characters is challenged by a mentor to make $1,000 in a week, which is extreme.

“The number one thing is not so much cutting back. It is increasing your income. ”

Chris’ Money Tip:

Chris Guillebeau:
My philosophy, and what I'm trying to teach with the book, is you can have a good job and still be under the water. You can still be struggling. Especially if you have debt. So many people have debt related to student loans, or credit cards, or all kinds of things. So you can be a hard worker, but you're not actually going to get ahead just through budget, or just through being frugal, or cutting back on your lattes or whatever.

Chris Guillebeau:
The number one thing I think most people need to do, especially young people coming into the job market for the first time but really anyone who's struggling, the number one thing is not so much cutting back, it's increasing your income. And so that's why in the book, the story of the guy Jake who is a hard worker, has a good job, but struggling with debt. It's affecting the whole rest of his life, his relationships, his job, and so on. So he gets this challenge, "Okay Jake, make $1,000 in the next week."

Chris Guillebeau:
At first he's like, "Well, if I knew how to do that I wouldn't be in the situation I'm in now." Essentially what he learns to do, at least at first, is the art of reselling, buying and reselling stuff. He begins with selling stuff that's just in his closet, basically his economics textbook from college. This is what I did 21 years ago, if I go back to the dark ages of my self employment history. I sold stuff on eBay. I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't have a degree in that. It's like I had a degree in sociology.

Chris Guillebeau:
Just selling things online, learning to buy stuff from a flea market, or a yard sale, or from another online source. Then selling it somewhere else like this arbitrage effect. It felt so, so empowering to me. I kind of recreated that in the story The Money Tree as like this guy has to buy and resell $1,000 worth of items over the next week, and then from there he learns and goes on to do other stuff.

Chris Guillebeau:
I think this is like ... It's not like everybody should go out and become a professional reseller. I'm not saying that, but if you're looking for something that's practical. If you're looking for like, "Oh, I need to actually make money next week. I need to actually do something in a very short period of time," then I think that's a good path to look at. Maybe from there, you'll get some confidence, you'll get some experience to go on to do something bigger and better from there.

Bobbi’s Financial Grownup Tips:

Financial Grownup Tip #1:

Bobbi Rebell:
adapting the definition of wealthy for yourself is part of becoming a financial grownup, and going through different life phases, and it's okay for your lifestyle to change as you go through those life stages. So for example, I remember my first full-time paycheck as a news associate at CNBC right out of college, first real full full-time job. I'd been making minimum wage, part-time jobs, and so on, but now I had a big paycheck, full-time. I felt so rich for about a minute. Just like Chris, as I moved up and got raises, my lifestyle changes, my expectations for what I wanted to buy changed, and so did my definition of feeling rich. That's perfectly normal.

Bobbi Rebell:
Look, there are a lot of people that will tell you, "Don't upgrade your lifestyle at all," but that's not always realistic. There's some happy medium there. At least, that's what I think. So it's also good to do what Chris does and remember how little it took to feel rich at one time in your life so that you can adapt. Also, you can appreciate your accomplishments.

Financial Grownup Tip #2:

Bobbi Rebell:
let's all get rid of stuff that we now realize we truly, and I mean truly, do not need. Look at what we're living with these days. So much less. While it's sad and frustrating that for many of us our world is smaller, and hopefully this is a temporary thing, a very temporary thing. The truth is, we're also learning in this temporary time, I'm going to go with that, what really matters.

Bobbi Rebell:
My family moved out of the city to self quarantine in a more rural area. We didn't have a lot of room. We each got to take just a little bit of stuff, and we're okay. We thought we'd go back and get more. I'm not sure we're going to be able to, but I'm not sure it really matters. We just don't need so much stuff.

Episode Links:

• Chris’ website - www.chrisguillebeau.com

• Chris’ Book - The Money Tree

Follow Chris!

• Twitter - @chrisguillebeau

• Facebook - @chrisguillebeau

• Instagram - @93countries

• LinkedIn - @chrisguillebeau

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.

TPG’s Executive Editorial Director Scott Mayerowitz joins Bobbi to answer the top questions he’s being asked about the travel business during the Coronavirus crisis. 

Your Top Coronavirus Questions Answered

Bobbi Rebell:
You are the executive editorial director at The Points Guy, so the perfect person for us to come to with all of our travel questions.

Bobbi Rebell:
Before we get to those, tell us what's going on at TPG?

Scott Mayerowitz:
We've just been so busy. A lot of people right now are in this cancel, cancel, cancel mode, and trying to figure out how to change trips, or cancel them. We've been guiding them through that, there are a lot of questions about elite status. Then, some of us, the most optimistic, are already looking towards those late spring, early summer trips, hopeful that we can book, but just a little bit fearful. So, we've been really busy, just helping people through this whole process.

Bobbi Rebell:
You personally, you're grounded? You're coming to me, from your home.

Scott Mayerowitz:
Yeah, I'm coming to you from the Upper West Side of Manhattan. I had canceled a trip to Texas for work the other week, and I just today ended up having to cancel my May 1st trip to Portugal. I was holding on for the last second, but today was the day to get my miles back, and I decided to do it.

Bobbi Rebell:
How far ahead are you personally canceling plans, Scott?

Scott Mayerowitz:
The May 1st trip to Portugal was the only one I needed to get rid of. I have a summer family trip in August to Aruba, hopefully that will go ahead, but who knows? Right now, what I'm actually doing is I'm using my miles and my elite status to book a lot of things with flexibility, so using miles to book flights. I've got Bermuda, and the Bahamas booked. I'm actually thinking of nesting some trips together, just in June, to hold them with the hope that I can take at least one of them.

Bobbi Rebell:
What does that mean, nesting some trips together?

Scott Mayerowitz:
So, I would put together the weekend of June 6th, a trip. I would book another one, for the following weekend, and one for the following weekend. Hopefully, one of those trips will actually come together, in the end. But, I'm doing fully refundable bookings right now.

Bobbi Rebell:
Which are more expensive, in general. How are flight prices, then? I mean, my gut would say they're dirt cheap, but then again, are they more expensive because there are so few flights?

Scott Mayerowitz:
What I'm seeing there is there's so many schedule changes, you can see great flights. Someone the other day was telling me they saw $114 from New York to San Francisco, for the peak of summer, compared to $400, which is a normal peak summer fare.

Scott Mayerowitz:
The catch with all these, the airlines are giving you a lot of flexibility, but you're not going to get cash back. What you're going to get is a voucher, that's only valid from a year of booking. So, if you book something on March 25th, you have to use that voucher by next year. I have elite status with airlines, so I'm booking on miles, because I can redeposit those miles, for no penalty, back into my account and just cancel a trip.

Bobbi Rebell:
So, that would be advice for people, if you are booking travel ahead, use miles?

Scott Mayerowitz:
If you have elite status, especially because then you don't have to pay the redeposit fees. If you don't have status, it's like $75 to redeposit, it may or may not be worth it. The flexible cash tickets right now are really good, as long as you know that you're going to get a voucher, not actual cash back, so hopefully within the next year, you can use that voucher if you have to change your plans.

Bobbi Rebell:
So now, let's get to some of the questions that we had planned to go over, these are questions that you're getting from a lot of your TPG followers. The first one was, and we've already touched on this, airline elite status.

Bobbi Rebell:
What are airlines doing?

Scott Mayerowitz:
Yeah, it's kind of amazing. The folks at The Points Guy keep writing into us and saying, "How is my elite status going to be affected?" All the airlines are saying, "We understand this is an issue, that you are grounded for three, maybe four months, you can't fly as often as you want to, to get your elite status." Right now, some of them are doing some cuts.

Scott Mayerowitz:
Like British Airways is doing a 30% reduction, for all of its members on tier status and basically saying, "Here's the new threshold, good luck with this. Hopefully, we can get you there." They're all doing extensions of any vouchers, or companion tickets that might be out there. US Airlines haven't yet pulled the trigger on this. They are, I think, waiting to see how big the fallout is going to be for them, and just how long the pain is going to continue. But, I would look to see, probably, a 20, 30, even 40 percent reduction in what the qualifications are for elite status for airlines.

Bobbi Rebell:
Of course, let's also turn to the second question you're being asked, which is the hotels. What are the hotels doing for their elite status customers?

Scott Mayerowitz:
Yeah, here's it's a little trickier because we're seeing all sorts of different policies out there. Similar, there have been a few where its been 25% reduction in the qualifications. Others are not even talking about this, yet.

Scott Mayerowitz:
Hilton has, actually, one of the most generous policies. They basically said, "If you have elite status right now, we're going to give you another year, for free." Even if you don't have to travel, they're going to extend the status out for another year, they're doing the same with their free night certificates, any other vouchers that people will have. That is, by far, the most generous program that we've seen, to date. Hilton is in a battle with Marriott, they want to win over a lot of people who weren't happy with the merger of Marriott and Starwood, so they're coming out first with this policy, and trying to be as pro-consumer as possible. I give them a lot of credit for this, I think this is one of the best things that we've seen any airline or hotel do, and I hope others will follow.

Bobbi Rebell:
Do people need to do anything proactive with both the airlines and hotels, to get these? Or, is it just going to be automatically put on their account?

Scott Mayerowitz:
It should be automatically put on accounts, but one of the things that I always say is keep very close eye on all your accounts, and make sure you're getting what you're due.

Bobbi Rebell:
Let's go back to talk about the airlines. How are domestic airlines handling cancellation? This is for just everybody, not just the elite people. And, talk about flight waivers?

Scott Mayerowitz:
Yeah. Flight waivers keep changing, as the cancellations keep going out. There's a lot of flexibility right now, that if you have future travel, you can go ahead and get a voucher that you can use within a year of your purchase date to travel.

Scott Mayerowitz:
Let me just explain that. Let's say you were going on vacation April 15th, and you had a ticket purchased back in January, and you decide that you want to get a voucher for that. That is good only until next January, so it's one year from the date of you actually purchasing the ticket. A lot of people just need to be aware of that.

Scott Mayerowitz:
Others want their cash back, they don't want these vouchers. What I would say there is hold onto that ticket, be patient. The airline is probably going to cancel your flight on you, and once they cancel that flight, then you are legally entitled to get a cash back for it. Watch carefully, the schedules, and as soon as they cancel it, then you can get cash instead of a voucher.

Bobbi Rebell:
How much wiggle room is there if you call? Have the agents been given more latitude, in terms of how much they can accommodate customers, when you call a customer service line?

Scott Mayerowitz:
Not tons, airlines are desperate for the cash so they're trying to upsell you into vouchers. I've been hearing a lot of, if you ask for a refund they're going to say, "We can do that, but are you interested in a voucher instead?" They might add 20% extra value onto that. So, some people can come out ahead, if you definitely know that you're going to fly that same airline, and within one year of the ticket purchase. You're getting an extra 20% bonus there, you could use that for a trip that is hopefully discounted, given all that's going on.

Bobbi Rebell:
Right. There's negotiability, in terms of the value of your voucher. And maybe there's negotiability, you tell me, on that date? Because, what if you purchased your tickets very far in advance for a big trip, and the trip is a month away? But, you purchased it 11 months ago, that doesn't give you a lot of wiggle room from the purchase date. Is there negotiability there, just being reasonable?

Scott Mayerowitz:
It doesn't hurt to ask, but that's one that the airlines, traditionally, have not budged on, and that's where you're going to run into your headaches, especially for those trips that you booked a while ago.

Bobbi Rebell:
So then, you want to be watching for that flight to be canceled?

Scott Mayerowitz:
Yes.

Bobbi Rebell:
How are flying conditions changing right now? I got a notice from an airline today, talking about their social distancing efforts, because planes are notoriously ... We're squeezed in there so tight, how do they, then ... I mean, I guess it's happening naturally, that so many people aren't showing up for flights, but what's it like to actually fly, for people that are flying? The few and far between, and I guess far between literally, in between their seats.

Scott Mayerowitz:
Yeah, if we talk about airline occupancy, about a year ago you had about 89, 90 percent of all seats filled on planes. What I'm hearing from the industry sources right now is you're looking at 10, maybe 11 percent of seats filled, across the entire system. There are plenty of flights where there are just completely empty planes out there. Some that they'll run, some that they'll cancel. There are tales of airlines actually booking the middle seat, when you book a seat, to actually create that social distancing.

Scott Mayerowitz:
The TSA is saying 85 to 90 percent of the passengers that normally come through its checkpoints aren't coming through. You're seeing cases in airports like New York and LA, where they're actually closing terminals. So, you don't have a TSA checkpoint, you basically have empty airports.

Bobbi Rebell:
That's because so many of us are staying home, okay. We love to travel, what can we do to satisfy our travel bug, literally from the couch?

Scott Mayerowitz:
This is one of the great things about technology, is everybody has been doing virtual tours, or YouTube videos, where they're guiding you through their museum, zoo, aquarium, theme park, whatever it is. I've been amazed at this. We've been watching some of the Cincinnati Zoo videos with my daughter. All the major museums, art galleries, natural history ones, are doing virtual tours. Disney World is letting you actually ride all of its rides, through these great videos that they've put together.

Scott Mayerowitz:
I could go on and on about the list, between national parks, state parks, places like the Biltmore in Asheville, North Carolina, they've all come out with these amazing virtual tours, to keep you entertained.

Bobbi Rebell:
And we can find those through your website?

Scott Mayerowitz:
We have a story up on ThePointsGuy.com of some of our favorites, and then any institution that you want to visit has a link on their home page, too. But, we've curated a list at The Points Guy, of our favorite virtual tours.

Bobbi Rebell:
Last question. I want to end talking about good things. Tell us, how will the travel industry come back from this?

Scott Mayerowitz:
This is one that's going to take a while for the industry to really become much more profitable, but for travelers, they're going to be fighting for us to come stay at the hotel, so this will be a renaissance of deals, earning points and miles, and we'll guide you through all of those.

Scott Mayerowitz:
But I think it's also going to change the way we travel. I've been, for two weeks, with my wife and daughter, in our Manhattan apartment. We go out for a daily walk, and keep our social distance, but that's about it. I'm an extrovert, I love to travel, and I always love talking with people. But, I think now, I'm going to look at my travel very differently. Yeah, I'll probably still go and sit on the beach at some luxury resort, but I'm going to want more experiences where I get to learn from other people and interact, because that's really what we're craving.

Scott Mayerowitz:
As much as I love my family, and I do, I want to get out, and meet other people, and have actual conversations. I think you're going to see people, around the globe, missing that connection, and really changing the way that we travel, in the coming months and years.

Episode Links:

• Scott Mayerowitz's website - www.thepointsguy.com

Follow Scott!

• Instagram - @globetrotscott

• Twitter - @GlobeTrotScott

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.

Pre-coronavirus we joked with Dumpster Doggy Blog’s Amanda Holden about her decision to upsize her life and move to New York City, and all the ridiculous expenses that were becoming part of her new NYC life. 

Amanda’s Money Story:

Amanda Holden:
I just made the move. I came out to New York City alone. I've never lived on the East Coast before. I moved from Portland, Oregon, and so it was a super big change, but one that I had started thinking about probably about a little bit more than a year, a year and a half, two years ago as something that I wanted to do. And so I saved up my money. I built up my business. I waited until I was ready and then I moved out here for no reason other than I wanted to be here.

Bobbi Rebell:
I love that. Tell me more about what the change was like financially.

Amanda Holden:
Sure. So I did market research on rent prices and then also just normal cost of goods, groceries, also sales tax. I moved from a state that didn't have sales tax, so everything is going to be automatically about 10% more expensive in New York City, so taking that into account as well. And what I did, and this is not necessarily what everybody has to do, but what I did is I wanted to make sure that I had a year's worth of rent saved and a year's worth of my business taxes saved. So I actually saved quite a bit of money in cash before making the transition, knowing that it's really hard to understand how expensive it's going to be to live in a city until you're actually doing it yourself.

Amanda Holden:
I asked friends and I can hear from them, but they live different lives than I do and so what I spend money on is not what they spend money on. I knew that some of it's a guessing game and just getting to a point where I had a big enough cushion that I felt comfortable doing so was essentially all that I did. And I'm really lucky in that I am extremely light on my feet. It's just me. I moved with literally two suitcases and I'm not even exaggerating, and that just makes it really easy as well. If I need to pick up and leave and go back, then I can certainly do that, which helped give me some flexibility as well.

Bobbi Rebell:
So tell us more about what was as you expected financially and what surprised you financially moving to a bigger city and a more expensive city?

Amanda Holden:
Bobbi, every single cocktail here cost at least $18.

Bobbi Rebell:
Yeah, that's not bad. 18 sounds about right. Definitely, you can go more.

Amanda Holden:
It's truly terrible. So I moved from Portland, Oregon, but I also lived in California for the majority of my adult life. I was in school in L.A. and then working in investment management in San Francisco. Which is an expensive city.

Bobbi Rebell:

It's an expensive city.

Amanda Holden:

It's not cheap there either. No, it's not. But when I was there, the years that I was there, I left actually in 2013, which is crazy that it was so long ago, you could absolutely, the bars I went to, you could absolutely walk in and get a whiskey soda for $6 or $7. At least the places that I was going to. But in New York city, I don't think that I quite expected that my fun budget was going to need grow by more than double because Portland is a really cheap uneasy place to drink. And so that has been a surprise. Obviously, I'm paying more in rent, but there's some other things where I feel like I'm saving money. I don't have a car here. I had a car in Portland, and so that's nice. I love being able to walk. I love living in a walking city. I love public transportation.

Amanda Holden:

That's been really great to not have to have my car and so after it all shakes out, yeah, I'm definitely spending more money here, but I'm also just pretty naturally good at sticking to a spending plan and even in a more expensive city, I do a pretty good job of saving.

Bobbi Rebell:

One thing that a former guest here on Financial Grownup said, Barbara Corcoran, she talked about the fact that she liked having a little bit of a fire under her because it made her want to earn more. And she says it works, that needing to have more money to live the life you want actually motivated her successfully to earn more money. What do you think about that? Do you think that being here has helped your business because you want to do all the things, you want to be able to go have that $18 cocktail, if you want it?

Amanda Holden:

Absolutely. I think that's absolutely a driver and maybe even more than that, just being surrounded by people who are doing and who are ambitious and who are trying to squeeze every last drop out of life and it's not like people in Portland aren't doing that, people in Portland are absolutely doing that, I know some of the most wonderful and creative people there, but the pace of life is certainly slower. And so there's just a different cadence to being in New York City that I think helps and it's energizing and I feel very alive here. Man, nothing like walking through the streets of Manhattan and getting an umbrella right into the eye to really make you feel alive when you're here. Yeah, that's definitely a motivating factor.

Bobbi Rebell:

Looking back, are there things that you in retrospect would have done a little bit differently in terms of the preparation to basically up-size your lifestyle? I mean, it's just a more expensive place to live.

Amanda Holden:

I think that doing the saving is doing the work. Coming with some sort of financial cushion was imperative to me moving without taking on a whole bunch of financial anxiety, because I could see having a bunch of financial anxiety. If I was to do one thing differently, I probably would have worked on creating some more passive income streams before I got here, not only because having a passive income stream is really helpful, but also because the cost of building out something like, let's say, a video course or something like that is going to be much cheaper to create in Portland than it is going to be in New York.

“There’s just a different cadence to being in New York City ...  it’s energizing and I feel very alive here.”

Amanda’s Money Lesson:

Amanda Holden:

I think that the lesson here is that if you have a financial goal, it is worthy and you don't have to listen to what anybody else says your financial goal should be, but just make a picture of it in your head, make a bank account to match it, and then just hit that goal hard. I'm a firm believer in the value of really conceptualizing your goals and really thinking about it often, like, whatever, put it on your mood board, I don't use Pinterest, but put it on your Pinterest, whatever it is, and working towards that specific goal because it is so much more motivating than if you have just some random savings account that you're just putting money into with no particular goal in mind.

Bobbi Rebell:

Did you have deadline and a specific amount of money and work back from there?

Amanda Holden:

Well, really my deadline was earlier this year doing my taxes.

Bobbi Rebell:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Amanda Holden:

And so I had an idea of how much I would owe in taxes. Last year was my first full year self employed doing my own business and so I had an idea of what I would owe in taxes. But you always kind of are like, "Well, until I actually do it, I could be way off. Am I going to owe $1000 or am I going to owe $40000? Where is it going to fall?" And so luckily once I did my taxes, I hired a CPA to do my taxes for the first year, I found out that I owed exactly what I expected and so therefore I had enough cushion where I was like, "Okay," I told myself this was my deadline. If I kept my cushion and didn't pay it all to self employed taxes, that I would move to New York City.

Amanda Holden:

And actually one of my good friends, I don't know if you know Emma Pattie, but Emma in Portland, she, on tax day, literally looked at me and she's like, "So are you moving to New York City?"

Bobbi Rebell:

Oh.

Amanda Holden:

I know, and I was like, "Oh, I guess I did say that, didn't I? Yeah, I guess I should go. I guess I should go now."

Bobbi Rebell:

We love accountability. Accountability is everything.

Amanda Holden:

I know. I was like, "Dang, I forgot I had said that.

Bobbi Rebell:

Yes, tell people things. That's one of my favorite tips, is actually telling people because then you have more ownership and accountability.

“If you have a financial goal, it is worthy and you don’t have to listen to what anybody else says your financial goal should be”

Amanda’s Money Tip:

Amanda Holden:

So my everyday money tip, if you found $300 to spend at Target, then I encourage you to consider that you have money that you can also invest in a company like Target or invest in companies in general, invest in yourself and in your future,

Bobbi Rebell:

Right. So take whatever budget you were going to spend wherever you were going to go shopping and instead shop for the stock of that company. But make sure it's a good investment too. Don't just buy blind leave. We don't want to tell you to do that, of course.

Amanda Holden:

Right, right. And this is just an example.

Bobbi Rebell:

Right. But I love the analogy because when you rethink it and you approach something differently, wait, I was going to spend $300 on groceries for my very large family at Whole Foods, maybe I can spend less and invest the extra in Whole Foods. Not necessarily recommending that investment, but the idea is there.

“I’m a firm believer in the value of really conceptualizing your goals and really thinking about it often”

Bobbi’s Financial Grownup Tips:

Financial Grownup Tip #1:

I love that Amanda's friend Emma held her accountable. Accountability is a great tool to use. Without it, I know I would not have accomplished many things in life, so however that works for you, tell a friend about a goal and give them permission to check in with you on your progress, and yes, to hold you accountable.

Financial Grownup Tip #2:

Let's talk about risk tolerance. It's being tested for a lot of us right now. Amanda took a huge risk uprooting her life and moving into a more, let's say, financially challenging city. Given the economic chaos we are all now seeing with the impact of the coronavirus, was it a mistake? I say no. We make the best decisions for ourselves based on the information and the goals we have at that time.

Episode Links:

• Amanda's website - www.dumpsterdogblog.com

Follow Amanda!

• Instagram - @dumpster.doggy

• Twitter - @dumpsterdoggy

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.

Financial Anxiety is surging in the wake the coronavirus crisis. Here are some ways to manage it and get through it without making financial moves you will later regret. 

Some ways you can manage financial anxiety:

• Resist the urge to do something - like sell stocks- just for the sake of doing something

• Be sure that you are making regular contributions through your paycheck to your retirement account

• if you aren’t already, automate as much of your finances as you can- including debt repayments and savings.

• Try to lower your interest rates on any debt you have

• Spend time at home with family

• Catch up on some reading

• Watch a movie at home (throw in some popcorn if you want)

• Take a walk in the park or around your neighborhood

• Listen to some music

• Practice some meditation

• Talk with a Financial and/or Mental Health Therapist- Many of which are available remotely

• Anti-Anxiety Medications- After talking with your doctor, of course

• Be mindful about where you are getting your news

• Do the things you meant to do, but could never find the time

Stay healthy everyone!

Episode Links:

• Headspace app

• Tally

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.

Entrepreneur coach Cait Scudder built a 6 figure business while living abroad overcoming numerous obstacles. She shares her specific strategies to help build a grownup business focused on sustainable product growth and revenue streams. 

5 essential ways to create a successful business

Cait Scudder:
Well, thank you so much for having me. It's great to be here and I'm so excited to be talking about this. I think for so many entrepreneurs, creating a successful business, whether you're running it from a laptop or abroad or whether you're running it out of your living room, feels like it's this enigmatic thing. So, I'm really excited to break down some really tangible steps to help your listeners apply it to their own businesses.

Bobbi Rebell:
Yeah, and I'm a little bit of a snob about this. I don't like all this mumbo jumbo. You are specific, and focused, and I love that. So, you've got five tips and then we have some other special stuff after this. So, stick with us, guys. Number one is basically, figure out the problem that you're going to solve for people, right?

Cait Scudder:
Absolutely. So, the first thing I would say if you are looking to build a six-figure business, and scale it to multiple six figures and beyond, is you have to be so crystal clear on the problem that you help people solve. It is not enough to just say, "Well, I want to be a consultant for leaders" or "I want to be a health coach" or whatever other niche that you're in. Dial that right in to get so specifically clear on the problem that you help your clients solve and how you do that with the solution that you offer.

Bobbi Rebell:
So, what would be an example of a client that had this problem and how do they really figure out what problem they were solving for?

Cait Scudder:
So, one of the exercises that I lead my clients through, let's take a health-coaching coach, for example. If you are looking to build out a health-coaching business, somebody who helps their clients achieve either weight loss or higher levels of energy, the problem that you might help somebody solve is losing 15 pounds or losing 20 pounds. What you need to do if you want to dial that right in and then be able to build a compelling brand and a compelling message from that is, get super clear. Not only on that problem point as if it's a bullet point in your notebook, but what's the pain that somebody is experiencing as a result of having that problem? So, one of the things that I think happens a lot is entrepreneurs get stuck in this messaging spiral of, well, I'm listing out my client's problems, but they're not responding.

Cait Scudder:
I think the biggest thing that happens when we do that is that we're not actually speaking to the pain, the ripple effect pain I call it, that those problems caused. So, for example, if a client is struggling with low energy, they're feeling overweight, they're feeling not confident in their bodies, how is that actually playing out in their lives? Maybe they can't walk up the stairs without running out of breath. Maybe they can't bend over to pick up their grandchild and not feel like they have to sit down. So, really dialing your messaging straight in to the problem that you help people solve. The pain that it's going to help them get out of in painting the picture and creating offers that help somebody do that in a step-by-step way is such a powerful step for your business and for your marketing.

Bobbi Rebell:
Which brings us to your second tip, which is to figure out what exactly the offer is.

Cait Scudder:
Exactly. So, the second thing that you need to do is build out an offer. I always say to my clients, especially who offer their services, so consultants, any kind of strategists is, it's very, very important to be able to build a product in your client's mind as if it were a tangible product that you could put on top of your desk. So, if you're offering a six-month consultancy package or a retainer offer, what does that look like? What's the result that somebody is going to get? And the way that you want to think about your offers is in two different pieces. The first is the framework, and the second are the features. So, your framework might look like, for example, in my business coaching consultancy, I have a framework that's based on three different things: energy, strategy, and sales. When you can nail all three of those as a business owner, you are golden.

Cait Scudder:
So, the energy piece is, what does your vibe put out? How are you attracting your ideal client, how you are attracting your audience. The second piece of strategy is, what are the offers that you're building out? How are we marketing you in a way that is magnetic in a way that draws your people in? And thirdly, in sales, obviously, we need to make sales if we're going to be in business. So, what I really recommend entrepreneurs to do if they're struggling to build out an offer, is think about what's the framework that you move somebody through and what are the features? How long is your package for? What does it include? What's the scope of work? And when you can be so specifically clear on the process that you move somebody through, the framework, and the way that you do that in the tangible breakdown, the features, that's when you really have a rock-solid offer to bring to the market.

Bobbi Rebell:
The third thing is something I am so uncomfortable with myself, get comfortable with marketing. It is so hard, Cait. I feel this personally.

Cait Scudder:
Really, Bobbi? You're definitely not alone. And I have to be honest, at the beginning when I started my business, I felt so uncomfortable with it. I felt like, "Hang on, squawking about all of this stuff that I do for other people like this is so uncomfortable." Here's what I've come to see it as. When you are marketing your services or your products or your free content even, because let's be real, promoting a podcast or promoting a blog article, all of that is marketing. You are educating and you are empowering your audience with pieces of content, with pieces of information, and pieces of education that help them move towards a result. And I think that when you can have that internal shift as an entrepreneur from, "Oh, this is so self-indulgent. Who would want to read about this? This is so self-aggrandizing." And really flip that script to say, "Hey, me showing up and waving this flag loud and proud is helping somebody else who's seeing this achieve a result," and that is such an empowered place both for you and for your audience.

Bobbi Rebell:
The fourth one, also a pain point for me, confidence in selling. I always struggle with this, Cait. I really do.

Cait Scudder:
You know what? I hear you and especially for women, Bobbi, I personally think that we are not necessarily taught to move into a sales conversation or move into a sales context, with the same level of permission and confidence that for whatever reason I feel like men just intrinsically feel. I'm sure that's not the case for everybody, but I definitely know so many women who struggle with this piece.

Cait Scudder:
Here's my take on this. When you sell somebody your product or your service, you are giving them the pathway to a solution. If you don't sell, if you don't speak about what your offer is, if you never let somebody know how they can work with you and what's possible as a result, you are literally robbing from them the possibility for getting that result and you helping them. And I think when you really flip that script and look at, "Hang on, this is not just some selfish manipulative, greasy car salesman tactic. This is me showcasing the possibility that somebody has to achieve this solution with me." You really put yourself in the game, and you give your market confidence to buy from you.

Bobbi Rebell:
And the fifth thing is, be consistent.

Cait Scudder:
That is absolutely right. I think that there is no... One of the best pieces of advice, Bobbi, that I've ever been given in entrepreneurship is, don't get too high and don't get too low. When it comes to being your own boss and running things your own way, creating your own schedule, running your own team, there's so many opportunities to get knocked off your horse to feel like you just want to throw in the towel and crawl back into bed and you just don't want to do it. And that is the biggest thing that I think swipes entrepreneurs off their path is, feeling like I had a good day, I want to show up, had a bad day, I don't want to show up. Guys, if you take one thing away from this, let it be this. You are going to have great days. You're going to have hard days. It's your commitment to staying the course. That is the thing that's going to see you through. Just remember, you cannot fail if you just keep going.

Bobbi Rebell:
I also want you to share, it's kind of a bonus for our listeners. You have a lot of everyday things that you do. Some things I do too that really help in terms of the day-to-day, like the way that you schedule your week, which is something I do as well.

Cait Scudder:
Yes, absolutely. So, one of the best hacks, oh my gosh, this just saves so much time, so much mental bandwidth for me is scheduling a CEO day. So, on Mondays, I mean, I'm on the phone a lot of the time, whether it's on the phone with clients, group calls, individual calls, collaborators, I'm on the phone a lot. Mondays are my CEO day, which means I don't take any calls. Monday is my day to work completely on my business, and not be in anybody else's business. And that has been so helpful for not only block scheduling and batching out what I need to do in a week, but also for keeping me super on point when I'm coaching on the other days and just very, very focused on what I need to do. I think that as entrepreneurs and as CEOs, one of our biggest forms of currency is our focus and our attention. So, scheduling in a CEO day is going to massively help you feel organized and sane as you move into the week. And I recommend doing it on a Monday because who doesn't love moving into the week feeling organized and sane?

Cait Scudder:
The second thing I would say is, create a little routine for yourself on a daily basis. And I don't mean wake up at 5:00 AM, meditate, do power yoga, sit in lotus for 25 minutes. No, you don't have to do any of that. For me, one of the things that I have is a non-negotiable. I wake up, I have some water with lemon, I exercise for half an hour to 45 minutes, and I move into my day after doing a little bit of gratitude practice. And I might think about things in the shower. I don't spend hours journaling in the morning. But I think that if you can mentally and physically prime your body in the morning, you're really setting yourself up for success.

Bobbi Rebell:
You also talk a lot about the mindset that's involved because it's important that we be aware of what other people are doing. First of all, we learn from them and you should just always be aware of competition, let's be real. And also, I believe a lot of competition, it's actually expanding businesses. So, I believe in cooperation over competition in general, but it's also important not to compare too much, right?

Cait Scudder:
Absolutely. So, I think one of the biggest things that knocks us off our horse is this feeling of imposter syndrome of, "She's doing it better than me" or "they already have this established company" or "who am I to come into this space?" And I think whenever that happens, and let's be real, it happens for all of us, the most important way that we can shift out of that is moving your attention from comparison, from analyzing all of your flaws and your worthiness and your capability. Taking your attention off of all of that comparison and "not good enough" noise, and moving it back to a place of service, and moving it back to a place of all of the reasons why you and you alone are the best equipped to serve your people. Why you have moved through everything that you've been through in your life, in your business and your experience in order to be able to offer what you're doing.

Cait Scudder:
And just remember, if you are not showing up for your people, you're taking away from them the opportunity that they have to experience what's possible on the other side. So, the more that you can give yourself permission to let go of the comparing mind, which is our ego's way of keeping us safe, and go back to all of the ways that you're equipped to help somebody, you're going to be of so much more service and you're going to make a heck of a lot more money.

Bobbi Rebell:
I want to finally just touch on something that you have some strong opinions on. And that is MLMs, multilevel marketing. It's important. There's some really good ones out there, but you also have a lot to say about the fact that some of them are scammy. What do people need to know?

Cait Scudder:
I think that there are a lot of amazing people out there building a successful business in network marketing. I think there are great companies out there that offer possibilities for people, but do your homework, guys. I think it's very important to know what you're getting into and to really... And this is the case, whether you're in an MLM or you're building your own business or you're working for somebody else, quite frankly, is you need to be 100% behind the mission, the ethos, the values of whatever it is that you're selling.

Cait Scudder:
So, rather than just looking at a shiny object as a way to make a little bit more money in your bank account month after month, really ask yourself, "Is being affiliated with this community or this company something that I'm going to feel proud of in 10 years? Do I align with the values and the greater impact that this company is making?" Because ultimately, whether you are just one person in a rank or you are an entrepreneur under your own brand, you are representing a brand and that brand is yourself. And so, you really want to make sure that you align at a deep level with whatever it is that you're standing behind.

Episode Links:

• Cait's website - www.caitscudder.com

• Cait’s podcast - Born To Rise

• Cait’s Ted Talk - www.caitscudder.com/episode/tedxtalk

Follow Cait!

• Instagram - @caitscudder

• YouTube

• Facebook - @caitloneragan

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.

Learn how to make 2020 the year you up your net worth with these specific and very do-able strategies that will motivate and inspire you. 

4 ways to increase your net worth in 2020

Bobbi:
And we're going to talk more about the specifics of the book, but first I want to get to these four ways to increase your net worth in 2020 that you have brought to us for this Financial Grownup guide episode. One whole chapter before we get into the four, one whole chapter of your book is actually becoming a net worth warrior.

Norm Champ:
Exactly. And so much of what's in the book is really basic financial literacy and financial planning kind of ideas. Unfortunately those ideas have really gotten lost in it's the consumer society and we don't really give messages to people about financial literacy and how to build your net worth. So the whole idea of the book is to get some real concrete tips on how to build net worth.

Bobbi:
Before we get into your four ways that you brought to increase your net worth in 2020, let's just explain what exactly is your net worth. How do you calculate that? Because people kind of think they have an idea of what that is, but they may not know exactly how that is calculated, what's included and what's not.

Norm Champ:
The way to calculate your net worth is to make a balance sheet just like a business would. On the left hand side you list your assets. That's everything that you own, including things you own with debt. So home, car, savings accounts, securities account, your 401(k), any other retirement accounts. So all the assets on the left side. Then on the right hand side you put all of your liabilities, your mortgage, any other debt that you have, anything else where you owe money and it subtracts from the asset side.

Norm Champ:
So then you total up the left side, all your assets, you total up the right hand side, the liabilities, you subtract that and then the resulting number is your net worth. So what we're trying to do is build up that left hand side, build up the assets and cut down on the right hand side, cut down on the debt, so that you can increase your net worth.

Bobbi:
Great. And it takes patience. And it takes a lot of frankly being intentional. So we're going to go through these steps that you can take. And again, this is lifetime goals. This isn't something that's just going to happen overnight, but you have to start now. So the first thing that you talk about is cutting spending. And this isn't just about don't have those lattes. You talk about finding your inner governor. What does that mean? That's not a political statement.

Norm Champ:
No. And exactly is a joke in the book, it's not finding the politician running your State. So essentially we are living in a consumer society. You hear that all the time. What that means is our economy right now is primarily driven by consumer spending. I'm not so much of an unrealistic person to think we're going to stop that. However, consumer spending is not each person's friend when it comes to building their net worth. So I love your point about intentionality. You need to be intentional to reduce the spending side, because until you get the spending under control, any idea of getting out of debt, any idea of building net worth is a pretty distant goal. One of the things I talk about in the book is the subscription service mentality that we're in.

Bobbi:
Right. You say think before you click.

Norm Champ:
Think before you click. Every time you're on your phone, and literally, I mean it's gotten to absurd levels. Every time you download an app, Oh, just open an account and have a free trial and then you can always cancel. Well, human behavior and studies have shown people don't cancel. And I think the side in the book is people have nine apps that they don't use and that they're still being charged for. It's the average or something like that.

Norm Champ:
So it's just an example of how the consumer society gets you to spend and if we're going to get into positive net worth territory, we've got to get spending down. The apps are an easy one. You know the latte one is funny because you hear that all the time. I'm actually not a huge believer in that. If you want to get a cup of coffee, I would get a cup of coffee. But-

Bobbi:
It's meant to be a metaphor.

Norm Champ:
Exactly. And I think you want to be very, very conscious of every message in our society is to buy and I think some of the best learning on this ever is the thought of listen, what do I really need? There's a great principle of, Hey, you could buy the 72 inch TV and do it on a layaway plan and all these other things, but do you really need that TV? Is your current 62 inch TV okay? And starting to really think through, do I need to buy these things?

Norm Champ:
Here's another great example. This one I didn't learn about until after I did the book. Almost a majority of Americans who have a car loan owe more on the car than the car is worth mostly by two to one. So around 40,000 in debt on cars that are worth around 20,000 you're asking how can that possibly be? It's because as you trade in cars and you get different ones, the debt keeps going up and you're never making any progress. Right? So the whole cutting spending side has to be the first principle. That's where we start out in the book with, because you've got to get a control of that side if you want to get to net worth.

Bobbi:
Right, and I think you make a good point about layaway plans. People are taking longer and longer loans for cars and that's why those car loans are getting a lot more attention. It's something we've covered actually on my other podcast, Money with Friends. We've done a bunch of episodes about how that consumer behavior towards cars and car buying is evolving. Let's get to number two and that is kind of the flip side. The sister to the spending is pay down your debt.

Norm Champ:
Debt has to be, if I want to single out one thing, it's the single most corrosive thing going on in our society. This is from the very top of the country all the way down. So we are now running massive deficits at the top level, at the government level. We have had low interest rates, although somewhat better return to more normal rates now, but we had zero interest rates for all the entire Obama administration.

Norm Champ:
So the whole society has moved towards debt. The problem with debt is that people keep incurring it for the spending we were talking about, and they're always incurring new debt and they're not paying off the old debt. And so that's how you end up with these balances rising up. And so it's very important to think about, you'll think super carefully about debt, I quote, it's Benjamin Franklin in the book.

Bobbi:
Yes, I love that quote. I was about to mention that.

Norm Champ:
It's just that debt gives someone else power over you and if want to make it to be a net worth warrior, if you want to get there, you've got to get out of debt. And so it's correlated to the first principle, right? You got to cut down on the spending so you can devote that money to paying down debt and the goal should be to get out of debt.

Norm Champ:
And one of the biggest ones which I devote an entire chapter to is home buying. Our government and our society continue to press home buying as a route to wealth. The only problem with that is talk to all those people that were closed on in 2009, in 2010, they're not going to tell you the home buying was a path to wealth. Before you buy a home, it's a financial decision just like any other, and it's the number one debt, typically the biggest debt any US citizens take on their life is their home debt. Make sure that you do that with an appropriate down payment and you're really intentional about what you're doing.

Norm Champ:
As I say in the book, everyone says rent is a waste of money. Well, in a mortgage, all you're doing is renting that money from the bank. So we've got to get real on the things we're spending and going into debt for and get that debt down. And it is tough, right? It's always easier to do the new spending than pay off the old, but it's a critical part of building net worth.

Bobbi:
Yeah, that's an interesting perspective. Okay, the third way to increase your net worth, you talk about taking advantage of a 401(k) and that really goes ... I mean in your book you talk about the tax free investing. You have a whole chapter on that.

Norm Champ:
Exactly. You know something is good if the government is trying to get at it. So remember that the Obama administration proposed taxing people's 529 college savings plans, that quickly to hide a political death. But the 529s, the 401(k)s, IRAs, these are all the rare gifts of the tax code. Generally the tax code takes from you. These accounts allow you to grow money tax free. Now whether it's a Roth or traditional, it has different tax impacts, but either way you are allowed to grow your money in those accounts tax free.

Norm Champ:
There's no better way to build net worth than to take advantage of those tax free accounts and they are part of your net worth. Don't think of them as retirement accounts. Think of them as part of your net worth. And if you get, you should max your contribution to them and max any employer contribution to them.

Bobbi:
Right and don't exactly. The employer contribution is very important. Let's explain that. You can basically get in some cases as much as 100% return on whatever part the employer is matching, which is a better return than you're going to get in almost any mainstream investment, right?

Norm Champ:
As I say in the book, it's free money and anytime they offer you free money, there's the old saying, when they hand you money take it. When you get the chance to get free money from your employer in your 401(k), you have to take it. Unfortunately, statistics show low participation rates in 401(k) and then low participation with the match. And that's just free money that people are leaving on the table. And to your point, your return on that money is 100% because it's just free to you.

Norm Champ:
And then secondly, once you have it in your account and it grows tax free, then you get a compounding effect of that. And particularly for young people. But even later in life you're talking decades of investing in tax free and compounding in that account, there's nothing more valuable. And I just urge people to think of those accounts as part of their net worth, not as retirement accounts. They are part of your net worth.

Bobbi:
Right. And the fourth way to increase your net worth in 2020 that you want to talk about is the actual investing component. You say in the book that if you can read, you can manage your portfolio. A lot of people are intimidated. It's important also to understand that the vehicle we just talk about, the vehicles are buckets effectively. You don't just put money into a 401(k), you then have to invest it, it has to go somewhere. And those are choices that you have to make. You can't just put it there or it's basically like stuffing it under a mattress. Yes, you're getting the tax savings in the match, but then it has to go somewhere.

Norm Champ:
Exactly. And this point about investing, if I think of my time in the US government at the Securities Exchange Commission, this had to be the most traumatic thing I learned there, which is you see headlines about the SEC working on big cases around big financial firms and all that kind of stuff. But the vast majority of those cases are a teeny little percentage. The vast majority of what the SEC works on is something called affinity fraud.

Norm Champ:
This is where someone in your church group, someone in your community group, someone in your friend group, unfortunately people turn money over to them and that money typically gets stolen. And the reason for this is that people are scared of investing. To your point, they just don't know what to do with it. Don't know where to go with it. Oh, the nice young man in my church group said he would handle it. And of course the money's never seen again.

Norm Champ:
And so, one of the basic points that I make in the book is until you get to, I just picked half a million dollars, but there's no magic number. But until you get to a significant net worth, there's no reason to do anything other than divide your money between stocks and bonds and mutual funds. Mutual funds are low cost. They're regulated very closely by the federal government. We have never had a mutual fund failure that cost anyone money. It doesn't mean the investments are going to go up, but they are heavily regulated. They're intended for the retail investor and they've become very cheap. if you look at the cost ratios, they've gotten incredibly cheap as far as fees.

Norm Champ:
My real point on this is don't be afraid because it's the fear of investing that leads people to the scam artists, the affinity frauds. And so don't be afraid. Do the simple formula that I have in the book of the split between stocks and bonds, go into your 401(k) or your taxable County, you're absolutely right. These are just buckets of money, taxable and nontaxable. Go in there and get your asset allocation set up and then forget about it. You're not going to trade, you're a busy person, you're hiring those mutual fund managers to do it for you. And it's a very safe way to invest.

Norm Champ:
Again, it doesn't mean you're going to make money. However, over the longterm, I just was reading an article over the longterm stocks remain at about an 11% return per year. There's obviously big ups and downs in that. The key is to stay in these funds and let them reinvest and let them ride out over time. And on a longterm average, you're going to make a ton of money and in the 401(k) you're not going to be taxed on it. So it's just trying to get people away from the risky investments, unfortunately, because of the fear of investing, people reach for investments that they shouldn't be investing in.

Bobbi:
Yeah, and I do want to just give some context to the comments that you're making. You are a former director of the division of investment management at the SEC, and also under your leadership I should say, the SEC did adopt a new rule to reform money market mutual funds. So this really is an issue that's very close to heart. You were there right after the Bernie Madoff scandal and you know Bernie Madoff, a lot of that happened because people trusted him. He was in these affinity groups. He had validation having been in leadership at the Nasdaq and so on and so that is a very real thing. So thank you for bringing that up. Before we wrap it up, anything more to share about the book? I mean it's very readable I think, and it's only 150 pages, but it is packed with a lot of great information.

Norm Champ:
Oh, thanks so much. This is a passion project. Financial literacy is something I believe in deeply. I'm starting a nonprofit organization to pursue that mission of trying to get these messages out there and I'd love to do, if anyone wants to do an event, I'd be happy to come and bring books and just give them away. Frankly, I want this message to get out there, it's really something I feel very, very strongly about.

Episode Links:

• Norm's website - www.normchamp.com

• Norm’s Book - Mastering Money: How to Beat Debt, Build Wealth and Be Prepared for Any Financial Crisis

Follow Norm!

• Instagram - @authornormchamp

• Twitter - @NormBChamp

• Facebook - @NormChampAuthor

• LinkedIn - @normchamp

• YouTube

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.

Reese Everson was able to drive off in a Mercedes on a Nissan budget by making some creative choices and getting real about her priorities. We also preview her latest book and share a money tip that will help you get past procrastination and feeling overwhelmed.

Reese’s Money Story:

Bobbi Rebell:

there's a lot more to the story. There's a lot of dramatic twists and turns. And what I loved about the book is that you use it as a foundation to share a lot of information about things that people don't know about in terms of how finances work, especially in terms of the things that you're talking about. Inheritance, reverse mortgage and so on. So that's a little teaser for the book, so everyone needs to check out The Babes Guide to Generational Wealth. Let's talk about your money story. It's something that you kind of mentioned briefly but I want you to expand on. It's about going shopping for a car and you were originally going to buy a Nissan and then again you're so dramatic Reese, another twist in the story.

Reese Everson:
Yes. I got to the dealership to go pick up my Nissan and they were just giving me all sorts of hoops to jump through. Oh, we don't have that color. Because, here's the thing. They posted an advertisement that said the Nissan Maximas were $199 with no money down. Now when we hear those things, we think, oh, okay, that sounds good, but when you really get there, there's a couple other stipulations. They may limit it to a certain color and then when you get there they don't have that color. Kind of like when you want something from Target but they're sold out and you can't just get a rain check. And so I got to the dealership and they were trying to give me all this runaround because they really wanted me to pay a much higher price and that advertisement was just to get me in the door.

Reese Everson:
So I told them, I said, "Listen, I'm going to go to lunch and I'm going for a walk. When I get back, I'll be ready to sign off on the car and you'd better have the color or whatever you need to have so that I can have the price that you advertised and I'm not paying a penny more." During my walk, I walked across the street to the Mercedes dealership and I saw the car of my dreams. I said, "Oh my gosh, I just want to take a picture inside this car so I can put it on my vision board." I need to see myself in this vehicle. So I walked in and I sat down and I told the guys, I said, "Excuse me, can you take a picture for me? He said, "Of course." So I take this picture, and he said, "Well, what car are you looking at today?" I said, "Oh, a Nissan Maxima." He said, "You don't look like a Nissan girl to me. You look like a Mercedes girl."

Bobbi Rebell:
He's a good salesperson.

Reese Everson:
And so I was so caught off guard by that, I mean, he was really talking to what really gets most people to buy is our emotional validation feeling. And of course we all want to be affiliated with a much higher fancy luxury brand than just a regular Nissan. He said, "Well, what's your budget?" I said, "$199 no money down." Because I wasn't going to spend more just because it was a Mercedes. I literally had a budget and I was going to stick to it. And so when I told the guy that he was just, "Well, you've got to come up with a little more for a Mercedes of course."

Reese Everson:
And you know what? I stuck to my guns and I want to say that I walked in there around 12 noon and I drove out at 7:00 PM in a brand new Mercedes. But here's the trick to it. I wanted a new car. Well, what Mercedes has available sometimes are cars that have been used but they've only been leased for a year. Those cars are substantially less than a car that's the brand new model but it has all of the features and gadgets of the brand new model usually. So I was able to get a car at a much lower price, which was almost the same as what I was going to pay for a Nissan, maybe $10 more. You just really have to be willing to negotiate but also realize that cars depreciate 40% as soon as you drive them off the lot. So having a new car, it sounds good, but is it the best financial fit for most of us? And the answer is usually no

“What really gets people to buy is our emotional validation feeling. ”

Reese’s Money Lesson:

Reese Everson:

The one thing I realized is that you have to be willing to walk away and you have to be willing to say no. A lot of times when we're shopping it can get emotional. It's about, oh, this makes me feel good, this makes me look good. People will look at me a certain way in a Mercedes. But the truth of the matter is when you're really happy none of that stuff matters. Fast forwarding from that experience, I was actually in California maybe two years after I had gotten my Mercedes and I was riding up the coast, the Pacific Highway, past Malibu and all of that stuff. And I was driving a rental car, a Hyundai, and it's just a basic Hyundai, nothing fancy about it.

Reese Everson:
But I was just as happy and just as peaceful in this Hyundai as I was in my Mercedes. So what I realized is when you're really happy it's not about the car that you're in, it's about how you feel about yourself and inside yourself. And so when you really are at a place where you've made sure that you are walking in your happiness and you're not putting up with unnecessary drama or going through stress and harassment at work, you're going to be perfectly fine with whatever vehicle gets you from point A to point B.

“You have to be willing to walk away. And you have to be willing to say no.”

Reese’s Money Tip:

Reese Everson:
Well, one of the first tips I have for people is, open your mail. And it sounds really, really elementary and simple but here's the truth of the matter. When I've done coaching with clients, one of my clients, I remember walking into her kitchen and I opened up her kitchen cabinet and she said, "I'm embarrassed to show you this. Don't ever tell anyone this, but I need to tell you guys it's a big deal." I opened her kitchen cabinet where her pots and pans were supposed to be and the door swung open and piles of mail for maybe two or three years were stuffed in her kitchen cabinet. And it made me realize you can't be in control of your money if you're not even opening your mail.

Bobbi Rebell:
Which we assume but that's amazing. I mean this had to have been some kind of a denial situation where she just couldn't handle it.

Reese Everson:
Absolutely. So what we have is a person who had gone through a divorce and to some extent things kind of started to pile up and when it overwhelmed her, instead of saying, "You know what? I'm going to get a system. I'm going to have a desk where I spread things out where I maybe hole punch things and keep them in a binder." It began to intimidate her and she buried her head in the sand. And so all of that mail instead of reading it and hearing more and more bad news because it started to bother her, she just started to throw it under the cabinet. Well probably in a drawer.

Reese Everson:
Some of us start with a drawer and then I think it just overwhelmed the drawer and somehow just filled up a cabinet and she had years of documents in a cabinet and what I'm learning is that if you don't know how to handle what you're dealing with and what's coming at you, you've got to get some help. We've got to say, "Wait a minute, pause. This is starting to overwhelm me." And when you realize that, keep in mind this is going to affect my credit. It's easier to stop the train early on and get some help than to try to pull the train from the river.

Bobbi’s Financial Grownup Tips:

Financial Grownup Tip #1:

Create reasons to open the mail. Stay with me here. This may sound silly, but because I personally do have a habit of letting the mail go a few days, sometimes even a week. I have recently started creating reasons to open the mail. Specifically the idea that money could be coming in good things. So for example, I have an account on Rakuten. It's a browser extension that pays you a few percent back on things that you buy. It doesn't always add up to that much. Although I've gotten as much as $99 in a month, which is not all that bad. It's still nice to get a check, a paper check. It's kind of retro, but it feels good. I've set it up so that I get those checks in the snail mail rather than say auto deposit or points in their system, whatever.

Financial Grownup Tip #2:

I love when Reese says to just walk away. As a consumer, we need to be reminded, but we should always remember that it is our money. If the purchase doesn't fit your needs and especially if somebody tries to pull what was clearly a bait and switch on you like they tried to do with Reese, she didn't fall for it, hit the road or at least hit pause like she did and figure out what you can do with that situation. And by the way, as long as your expectation is reasonable and they can make a profit, you'll almost always certainly get some version of your way in the end.

What's your take on deciding when to walk away and how have you been able to upgrade the things that you want? DM me on Instagram at Bobbi Rebell one or on Twitter. I'm at Bobbi Rebell. Please help us grow the show by subscribing and telling your friends and if you have a few minutes, please take the time to review the show. I read and truly appreciate every one. Pick up a copy of The Babes Guide to Generational Wealth. It's a great read. I truly enjoyed it and recommend it and big thanks to Reese Everson for helping us all be financial grownups.

Episode Links:

• Reese's website - www.babesintheworkplace.com

• Reese’s Book - The B.A.B.E.’s Guide to Generational Wealth

Follow Reese!

• Instagram - @thebabesguide

• Twitter - @thebabesguide

• Facebook - @TheBABESGuide

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.

Bobbi reveals her favorite new money related books, and how to decide if they are right for you. This month’s picks include Don’t Keep Your Day Job by Cathy Heller, The Big Stretch by Teneshia Warner, The Future is Faster Than You Think by Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler, Napkin Finance by Tina Hay and Bow Dow by Lindsay Goldwert.

These are recommendations so I am going to focus on why I was drawn to them and what I got out of them- and full disclosure we do focus  on books written by authors that appear on the podcast- because if we are being honest when I love a book- I want to know more and I want to share that with you guys so we tend to reach out and try to get them on.

Book #1: Don’t Keep Your Day Job: How to Turn your Passion into your Career by Cathy Heller

Here’s what I liked about it: 

-The book is practical and specific. She gives down to earth advice about how to realistically follow your passion but in a very practical way. 

- She shares advice from experts including authors Jen Sincero and Gretchen Rubin and actress Jenna Fischer. There are also stories about every day people to make it relatable.

-There are lots of inspirational quotes like "Why did it have to be an ‘either-or’ when it could be a ‘yes and’?”

Who is this book for:

Don’t keep your day job will motivate just about anyone but it is especially for people looking for advice on well.. how to leave their corporate jobs. Also Entrepreneurs who need a little nudge to connect doing what they love, with doing something that another person or entity will pay for. Emphasis on getting paid.  

Book #2: The Big Stretch: 90 Days to Expand Your Dreams, Crush Your Goals, and Create Your Own Success by Teneshia Warner

Here’s what I liked about the book: 

-It shares the success stories of some of the dreamers that have spoken at those conferences

-It has a time line: 90 days with specific assignments

-Teneshia’s personality shines through and is the real gem in this book

Who is this book for:

It’s for people willing to do the work to get to their goals and The Big Stretch will help you decide if that is you. Not everyone is ready to go for it- and Teneshia sets expectations that will push you to get there- but only if you are ready. 

Book #3: The Future is Faster Thank You Think. How Converging Technologies Are Transforming Business, Industries and Our Lives by Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler.

Here’s what I liked about it: 

-At first I was intimidated by the book- in part because it’s authors are so accomplished as “Big” Thought Leaders. But once I started reading it, this actually became a page turner because of the very accessible way they approach what are often complicated topics, 

-It’s a little like looking into a crystal ball except after- and only after they lay out theories and predictions, you realize that to a large degree. the way things play out was logical all along. They touch on everything from AI, to digital biology, virtual reality, robotics and blockchain.

-The book made me smarter about our world and who doesn’t love just feeling like they have a better handle on our world. 

Who is this book for:

Truth- This is all stuff I just wasn’t that into- until I started reading the book. So even if this isn’t your thing- move out of your comfort zone and just start. You might be surprised how much you like it, just like I did. 

Book #4: Napkin Finance: Build your Wealth in 30 seconds or less by Tina Hay.

Here’s what I liked about the book: 

-It addresses the very basics of financial literacy in a unique and approachable way

-Napkin Finance explains some of the most misunderstood and confusing topics ranging from blockchain to credit scores and paying off student debt.

-Fun fact: Napkin Finance partnered with Michelle Obama’s Better Make Room campaign 

Who is this book for:

Napkin Finance is a book for beginners- and for those of us that can benefit from some re-enforcement and sometimes clarification of financial concepts- most basic but some kind of complicated. 

Bonus Book: Bow Down: Lessons from Dominatrixes on How to Get Everything You Want by Lindsay Goldwert.

Here’s what I liked about it: 

-Lindsay is very revealing about her own challenges and makes you feel like you are in it together with her

-The doms- as Lindsay often refers to the dominatrixes share some very specific advice about how they negotiate and hold on to power

-There is a lot of psychology and real insights into human behavior and what triggers certain reactions. By revealing these Lindsay helps us see why we get the reactions we do, and how we can pivot to get.. well everything we want. 

Who is this book for:

Everyone that wants to get everything they want- of course. 

Episode Links:

Cathy Heller’s Financial Grownup episode + Get your copy of Don’t Keep Your Day Job: How to Turn your Passion into your Career

Teneshia Warner’s Financial Grownup episode + Get your copy of The Big Stretch: 90 Days to Expand Your Dreams, Crush Your Goals, and Create Your Own Success

Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler’s Financial Grownup episode + Get your copy of The Future is Faster Thank You Think. How Converging Technologies Are Transforming Business, Industries and Our Lives

Tina Hay’s Financial Grownup episode + Get your copy of Napkin Finance: Build your Wealth in 30 seconds or less

Lindsay Goldwert’s Financial Grownup episode + Get your copy of Bow Down: Lessons from Dominatrixes on How to Get Everything You Want.

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.

Author Lindsay Goldwert interviewed Dominatrix’s and learned how to push back when  it comes to mixing family, friends and business along with other life lessons. Plus she gifts us with an everyday money tip that will make everyone’s lives richer and more fulfilled. 

Lindsay’s Money Story:

Lindsay Goldwert:
So, I keep in touch with some of the doms. They've become friends, they're terrific. And it was funny, one of them was telling me a story about, she teaches a lot of workshops. She's a sex educator. And she had the opportunity to go and teach a class in another city where she had to travel to. And then, she realized they were going to pay her significantly less than what she normally charges for a weekend workshop.

Lindsay Goldwert:
She really wants to do it, but she felt that she had to figure out how she can... She doesn't want to say no, she's such a good person-

Bobbi Rebell:
Right.

Lindsay Goldwert:
And she wants to teach these sorts of things. So she had to figure out how she can teach the class but do it her way so that she didn't feel like her students were short changed. The ones that paid-

Bobbi Rebell:
Right.

Lindsay Goldwert:
Full price.

Bobbi Rebell:
Oh, so she normally charges full price. When she was approached about doing this other thing, is it for a friend? Is it for a relative? And how did she just not mention that she normally gets paid? I mean, do you know what kind of conversation happened to set the situation up and put her in this uncomfortable position?

Lindsay Goldwert:
I think people just reached out to her. The people reach out to her like, "Hey, we'd love to have you. You'd be a great guest. We'd love to have you come teach a class." I don't think people do the research as to how much people charge, that you can't really expect people to know how much you charge. So she had to, it was sort of tough for her to have to come back to them and say, "Actually I charge a lot more."

Lindsay Goldwert:
And I think they were a little surprised, because she does charge a premium for her experience and her services. It was really interesting hearing her talk about how she wants to do it, she wants to share all of her knowledge. But how can she negotiate coming and teaching but doing something a little bit different so that her students wouldn't feel shortchanged, and she could still deliver a nice experience for these other students who are not paying as much.

Lindsay Goldwert:
So she sort of split the baby a little bit by offering them something, which, I think is a very classy thing to do. You know, if someone says, "Oh, can you come over. Can you do my makeup for free?" Or, "Can you do this for free?" One thing you can say is, "No, but I could just do your eyes for you." I once had a friend, she did my makeup, and she said, "I can just do your eyes for that amount of money." And I said, "Deal". And it worked out for her, she got to put in less time. And it worked out for me. Again, I got to do the rest of my makeup myself.

Lindsay Goldwert:
So you have to really figure out what your time is worth, and if you want to expend time with somebody and you want to do them a solid, just be careful how much you're giving, and just tell them that you can only give them a small part of it. Otherwise, it's showing respect for yourself. So it's showing that you're an expert at what you do.

Bobbi Rebell:
Well, and I think it's also respecting the fact that her regular mainstream students, her everyday students that are paying full price, it's valuing that. Because it does, I think it really resonates. It's not just about her, it's about the students. Why should they pay this rate when she's willing to charge so much less for other people. At least she can say, "You're getting my full presentation and everything, and all of my education, they're getting a light version."

Lindsay Goldwert:
Yeah.

Bobbi Rebell:
"A friends and family version, it's different. It's a different product." It's changing the scope.

Lindsay Goldwert:
Yeah.

Bobbi Rebell:
Which is what it's doing, which is something a lot of speakers do. They can say, "I can't do a keynote for that, but I can go, just be on a panel."

Lindsay Goldwert:
Yeah, and I think that's just a really classy way of saying, "I want to work with you. I want to help you. I'm excited to be a part of your community, and this is what I can do that feels true to myself and my brand, and what I charge. And also, I want to be respectful to my students who pay the premium." We all struggle with, what am I worth? What are my services worth? What are other people charging? What if other people are charging less? I found so much of the dom's struggles so similar to mine as a writer.

Bobbi Rebell:
Yeah, because they are entrepreneurs.

Lindsay Goldwert:
They are.

Bobbi Rebell:
At the end of the day. I mean, you went, we'll talk about this more in a minute, but you went to a convention, and they're talking to you about SEO and negotiation, and all the ways that they have to manage their business. Let's first though, I want to just get to what the takeaway is for our listeners. I mean, this almost goes, it reminds me of the, can I just take you out for coffee and pick your brain, for consultants and such.

“A handwritten note is literally the classiest thing you can do”

Lindsay’s Money Lesson:

Lindsay Goldwert:
I really don't like that. It's one thing, if you have to seek someone's advice for free, they should be a good friend, they should never be a stranger. And if, for some reason, you have a lot of charm and they write you back, come to them and buy them coffee. Make it as easy for them as possible. Don't ask them to meet you in the city, someplace that's close to you. Just literally go to a block from their house. Keep it to half an hour or an hour, and come with your questions in hand. Or else just say, "Can I have you for 15 minutes on the phone?" People are very busy and they're not getting anything out of talking to you. Not that everything has to be so transactional.

Lindsay Goldwert:
And if it's a friend, it's different. I will give my friends my time because they give me lots of love and support, so it's all okay. But everyone's looking for a mentor, but don't force your desire for a mentor onto them.

Bobbi Rebell:
Yeah, it's a case-by-case basis, and I do get approached by a lot of people that want to "pick my brain", and what I do is I do set aside a chunk of time once a week where I'll take these appointments. They have to come to me, and I'll talk to people briefly, but it's absolutely important to be respectful. You don't have to hire everybody as a consultant just to get a little bit of time with them, but understand that that time is valuable. I think is important.

Lindsay Goldwert:
It really is. And it's a lot of effort to meet someone and have to listen to their story. Whatever you can do to make it easiest for somebody. I tell that to journalism students all the time. I say, "If you want someone to talk to you for an article, even email them, be as gracious as you can. Be very brief." But say, "I saw that you wrote this article or that you're an expert on this subject. I have three questions, here's what they are." And just be very gracious and complimentary, people love to be complimented. But just show you did your homework and make it easy for them as possible.

Bobbi Rebell:
It's all about valuing their time, which goes back to your money story. And it also feeds into your everyday money tip, which I have experienced and it's just so lovely. What is your everyday money tip?

“I don’t trust people with easy answers”

Lindsay’s Money Tip:

Lindsay Goldwert:
My everyday money tip is to always send a thank you note. I know that seems sort of strange, like, how is that a money tip? But every time, I have followed up with a handwritten card or a handwritten email every time someone has interviewed me, every time someone has done something nice for me, and every time someone's given me a little bit of advice over coffee. Even if it's a friend, I always write back and I always, even if it's a text, I always write back and say thank you. And people don't get thank yous very often. If someone does you a real solid, makes an introduction for you, or just goes a little bit above and beyond, you send a gift. And I know gifts can be expensive, but it is the thought that counts.

Lindsay Goldwert:
People think, "Oh, what if your thoughts are cheap?" But it is the thought that counts. My friend sent me, when the book came out, a friend of mine sent me some bath oil, and it was just the most thoughtful thing. A handwritten note is literally the classiest thing you can do. And if you don't have time for that, an email or a text. And don't you just use emojis, just really write out the words, write out the words.

Bobbi Rebell:
Yeah. No, I do think that's so valuable. And I have been on the receiving end of some of your lovely gifts, and they make all the difference. It's really lovely to, a few days after whatever happened, in this case you came to a brunch and we had a great time. And getting a followup gift from somebody is so lovely and so thoughtful and really, it cements a friendship in some ways, and it really shows that you appreciate each other. And it goes a long way. And then, also just, I think, being considerate, going forward, of that person. It's just, just being a friend is worth its weight in gold.

Lindsay Goldwert:
I mean we just think that because of LinkedIn that a connection is just a connection, that's what people do. And the answer is no, people are putting their own reputations on the line when they introduce you to somebody. So it's not just, hang out with my friend or talk to my friend. It's like, no, if my friend turns out to be a lousy person, then you're going to think I'm a lousy person. So having somebody vouch for you is a gift. And a gift should be returned with a gift.

Bobbi Rebell:
Yes. Well, I think that's lovely.

“I don’t think people do the research as to how much people charge. You can’t really expect people to know how much you charge.”

Bobbi’s Financial Grownup Tips:

Financial Grownup Tip #1:

I love what Lindsay had to say about sending thank yous. It's something I've been trying to get better at, frankly. If it's not in your budget to send an actual physical gift, one option, and I've used this, is to send a personalized really nice eCard. I've recently been using Paperless Post. I'm sure there's other services you can use as well. And specifically not sending group thank yous. I make each one out to just one person with a specific and detailed personal note, and yes, I even use those extra coins, as they call their currency, to pick fun backgrounds and envelope liners and extra touches. They are simple, affordable and fun, and you can see when they opened it so you know that it didn't get lost in the mail.

Financial Grownup Tip #2:

When you book friends and family appointments, make sure that there is a specific start and end time, and let them know about it. Be disciplined, send a calendar note. And don't be afraid if it is, for example, a phone call, to just do 15 minutes. And make sure to be on time on either end, even if you're the one helping. Be respectful of their time so they understand that it's appreciated, that you're respectful of theirs.

I use a service called Calendly. There's many different ones that you can use out there, but that's how I set up my interview appointments. And I have it preset with extra time before and after, so I have extra pad time so I don't have back-to-back appointments. So if I run late for one, I'm still on time for the next one. I should say if one goes over, if it goes too long. I also keep a to-do list nearby, of easy tasks that are small, that I can do quickly. So if I have a few minutes in between I can be productive if I'm feeling focused and want to check something off my to-do list. And it's okay by the way, also, to take a break in those times if you need it. So definitely build in that pad time between appointments. Keep those appointments tight though.

Episode Links:

• Lindsay's website - www.lindsaygoldwert.com

• Lindsays’s podcast - Spent

• Lindsay’s book - Bow Down

Follow Lindsay!

• Instagram - @lindsay_goldwert

• Twitter - @lindsaygoldwert

• LinkedIn

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.

Starting your life is expensive, and so is starting a business. Canvas and Hyde Founder Lisa Pongrass quickly learned that not having insurance, or ordering in bulk to save money can come back to hit your bottom line before you even have a top line. 

Lisa’s Money Story:

Lisa Pongrass:
So interestingly, I'm self-funded and when I started the business I had to go out and source all of the materials. And having never worked in this field before, I went door to door, found the great leathers. In fact, I flew to Miami to get the hides hat I was using initially for the bags. What I found, and because I guess when there's skin in the game, your own skin in the game, so much of it you really want to get the best prices for everything. And I found that people offered me greater discounts when I bought volume, which is pretty much standard in the industry. So of course what did I do? I bought volume in the assumption that I would be making certain amount of inventory.

Bobbi Rebell:
Did you have any presales at this point?

Lisa Pongrass:
None.

Bobbi Rebell:
You had no orders. Okay.

Lisa Pongrass:
No orders at this point. I'm a brand new brand. Never made a bag before. And I guess someone had said to me once that one of the single biggest contributing factors to small business failure is a lack of cashflow. And it obviously didn't resonate enough because I found quite quickly that I had all this great material but not the cashflow to use it to go into production with all the bags. So had I had my time again, I definitely would have done that a little bit differently.

Bobbi Rebell:
So what happened? How'd you get out of this mess?

Lisa Pongrass:
How did I get out of the mess? Well, I didn't use all my capital and I did start selling the bags quite quickly. I got into 23 stores and that was then able to bring money back into the business. There were a few sleepless nights in there. In this industry, in the fashion industry, you make things and you, unless everything is for order, you never know if it's going to work or not. There's a little bit of a risk and a lot of luck. Fear is a little bit paralyzing. So I tried to not come from a place of fear. I had to have confidence and I did have confidence in what I was creating. I was just very lucky to be around women friends who empowered me and kept me going. For example, when you're buying the skins, you get a better price to buy more. But when you buy the hardware, I use the very best nickel plated brass, the best hardware, and it's expensive.

Lisa Pongrass:
But if you buy a thousand of something, it's not as expensive. So I was buying in the thousands of these pieces of hardware. I use them all in the end. I mean, it's three years in, so I've actually had a chance to use them all, thank goodness. I've still got some skins sitting in storage, but how did I get out of it? I think just then the cash flow started to change the sales. So I would be getting checks from my retailers and I was able to get myself out of it. You know, looking back, if someone had said to me, "Pay a little extra but get less so you're not in the hole for that amount of money." I probably would have listened and that would've been a more prudent way to go about it.

Bobbi Rebell:
Did it motivate you in a way because you suddenly had a clock ticking, even though you had a little extra cash? There's something to be said for that pressure, whether it's welcome or not, it was there.

Lisa Pongrass:
Absolutely. Look, it's a catch 22, because by getting a better price when you're doing your costings, you're able to use that better price to put together what it actually costs you to make. However, if the money is tied up on developed or manufactured bags, then it's dead money.

Bobbi Rebell:
Did you have any business background? I mean, what were you basing all these ideas on?

Lisa Pongrass:
So I'd worked in PR and Marketing. I'd worked for a magazine as a Deputy Editor of a fashion mag, and I'd also worked as an agent, a fashion agent. So I'd been in sales, but I'd never been in the business side of production before. The logistics of just going into production, of sourcing materials, of getting the best prices for things. I'd never done any of that and I had zero experience. Luckily I was very naive, because I look back now and had I known what I know now, I think I would have been too fearful to go into it. But I was ... ignorance is bliss in a bit of a way, and I thought, "How hard can it be? It's not brain surgery."

Bobbi Rebell:
How did you educate yourself?

Lisa Pongrass:
Trial and error. I've made some mistakes that were very costly. One mistake that cost me $8,000, that I'll never see is my manufacturer delivered my first order from overseas. So now I've diversified manufacturing. It's New York and Italy, and they just sent the order and they didn't insure it. I didn't know, I just assumed that that was part of the shipment. They didn't insure it and FedEx lost one of my boxes. So they didn't cover it. My manufacturer didn't cover it and I had to wear it.

“Slow down and don’t rush into committing to things you don’t need.”

Lisa’s Money Lesson:

Lisa Pongrass:
You know, one of the ones that I've learned is there are lots of hidden costs that you don't see day to day. For example, when you have a website and you're with Square, there's a monthly fee. When you sell something, there is a vendor's fee, which is I think three or 4% transaction fee. Google Drive. There's a monthly fee. QuickBooks, there's a monthly fee. There are so many fees that you sign up for at the beginning and then after a while you're thinking, "Wow, why is the bank balance diminishing so rapidly?" And then when you go back in and you check it out, you think, "Well, I don't really need that anymore. I don't need QuickBooks yet." Certain businesses, every business is different, but I certainly learnt that I signed up for things like Yelp or certain social media things that I really didn't need to do and I thought I did.

Bobbi Rebell:
So it sounds like basically when you started your business you had costs, whether it be from buying too much inventory initially, too much supplies, and also maybe signing up for so many things that are ongoing subscriptions that maybe you found out you didn't necessarily need, they weren't quite right. What is the lesson from all of this for our listeners?

Lisa Pongrass:
I think take it slow. I think probably slow down and don't rush into committing to things that you don't really need. At the time, you think that you do need them. And then maybe revise it more regularly than I did. I certainly know that for the first year I worked out of my home, which was a good thing to do. I had that advice from people, don't go and get an office or a showroom too quickly, which I didn't do. And I'm very glad I have an office and a showroom now and I don't think I could ever work from home again, because I've just grown too much. But take it slow, take it slow.

“Unless everything is for order, you never know if it’s going to work or not. It’s a little risk and a lot of luck.”

Lisa’s Money Tip:

Lisa Pongrass:
I recently was going through my finances and I saw that one of the biggest expenses I had monthly was my dry cleaning bill.

Bobbi Rebell:
We can all relate.

Lisa Pongrass:
I do buy quality, so I'm wearing things that are from 10 years ago, [inaudible 00:10:49] beautiful quality. So I bought a steamer and I realized that you can have something that's beautiful that says dry clean only, but it doesn't literally mean that you have to dry clean it. You can steam it yourself. So I'm hoping that that's going to really reduce my cost.

Bobbi Rebell:
Well, you also, and I'm going to force you to throw in another one that you mentioned to me before we started recording, about your dog, which is another fun, easy way to save money. Maybe not always fun.

Lisa Pongrass:
My baby. Well, grooming is so expensive. So, now I obviously I can't cut him myself, but I wash him myself and it's a really nice bonding experience for my baby and I, but it also saves me between 80 and $100 for a wash. So I do that. We do that every three or four weeks and he loves it and I love it.

Bobbi Rebell:
And it's so cute. It's so cute. And that's significant money. That's for real. I mean, if you're saving a hundred bucks a month, that's $1,200 a year. That is a lot of money.

Lisa Pongrass:
Yeah. Not only am I saving money, but he and I are having a fun time. In fact, it always seems like one of those things, "Oh, I've got to wash the dog." And then the minute you started, it's so much fun.

Bobbi Rebell:
It is. We actually, we wash our dog. My listeners know my dog is Waffles, she's a Morkie and my husband's really primarily in charge of the washing. I am in charge of the drying. And she loves it, she loves it.

Lisa Pongrass:
Does she love it?

Bobbi Rebell:
She goes into the shower? Yes, and she's super cute and she always looks so good when she comes out all clean.

Lisa Pongrass:
Does your dog run around the house crazy when she's wet?

Bobbi Rebell:
No, she does not. She stands nicely and waits for us to dry her. She's a very well behaved dog, so I take it yours does.

Lisa Pongrass:
When he's wet. He can't wait to get out of the towel and then he just zooms around the house and rubs up against the sofa. It's very funny.

“Luckily I was very naive, because I look back now and had I known what I know now, I think I would have been too fearful to go into it.”

Bobbi’s Financial Grownup Tips:

Financial Grownup Tip #1:

Lisa went through her business expenses and realized that all the little things were really adding up to big things. This applies to apps, subscriptions, and probably a lot of things that I'm not even thinking of right now. Some of them may be worth it, but sometimes you realize maybe you don't need the premium version of everything. Maybe you can step it down a notch. Do an inventory of all the little things, cut as many as you possibly can, maybe cut all of them even and then just add them back in one by one, the ones that you feel you really need or you miss.

Financial Grownup Tip #2:

Lisa talks about buying a steamer and slashing her dry cleaning bill. She also washes her dog at home. The truth is we can all do a lot more at home. If you're into facials, maybe go sometimes, but do some at home for example, or find ways to make things last longer. Take your shoes and have new soles put on them instead of going out and purchasing new ones. It's also a lot more sustainable, better for the environment.

Episode Links:

• Lisa's website - www.canvasandhyde.com

Follow Lisa + Canvas & Hyde!

• Instagram - @canvasandhyde

• Facebook - @canvasandhyde

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.

Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler, authors of "The Future is Faster Than You Think: How Converging Technologies Are Transforming Business, Industries And Our Lives" join Bobbi with a preview of their latest book, and specific ways money-related changes will impact us in the coming years. 

8 Ways Money Will Change the Future

1. We’re going to live longer—we’ll need to approach retirement very differently

2. Demonetization is going to radically alter education, travel etc.

3. Convergence means that future financial investment opportunities can lie between industries and in mash-up markets

4. New players in Finance (Google, for example, just went into banking)

5. Insurance is going to radically change and whole categories will vanish

6. Your AI is going to be making a lot of your buying decisions for you.

7 You also say we are moving to a cashless future 

8 -Blockchain will continue to disrupt traditional banking, spreading widely into the developed world much like it’s already transformed financial systems in developing countries.

Episode Links:

• Peter's website - www.diamandis.com

• Steven’s website - www.stevenkotler.com

Follow Peter!

• Twitter - @PeterDiamandis

• Facebook - @PeterDiamandis

• LinkedIn - @peterdiamandis

Follow Steven!

• Instagram - @kotler.steven

• Twitter - @steven_kotler

• Facebook - @KotlerSteven

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.

Transcription

Bobbi Rebell:
Tell us a little bit about the book, just quickly before we get into some really cool stuff you're going to share with us.

Steven Kotler:
The future we talk about in the book, for some people is scary, because people are not used to this rapid rate of change. The best solution for that fear is really having an understanding of where the world is going. Part of the mission of the book is to give people a clear vision of the future that these converging technologies are enabling. For most of the case, this is an incredible win for consumers, an uplifting of abundance in the world, where ultimately these exponential converging technologies are helping to meet the need of every man, woman, and child on the planet. That makes for a world that is, in my ... in our mind, I would say safer and better for humanity, so this is a hopeful book that builds the case for creating a better world for tomorrow.

Bobbi Rebell:
It's really a roadmap into how money is going to change in the future and, most importantly, how we can and frankly need to be ready. A lot of this is not just you guys talking. There's a lot of scientific research here and a lot tying in technology to money and how it's going to specifically impact our lives. You're going to give us a preview, and you brought with you a list of different ways that all these things are going to affect money and our lives. Let's start with the first thing on your list. This is about our approach to retirement and longevity.

Peter Diamandis:
Sure, let me jump in there, because it's an area that I spend a lot of time investing in and time building companies around, and it's the notion that we're going to be heading to a world in which we're not dying at age 70 or 80, that we're living a healthy lifespan to 90, to 100, to 110, eventually 120. In our book, The Future is Faster Than You Think, we have an entire chapter on healthcare and a chapter on longevity that tracks these different technologies, billions of dollars flowing into them. If you think about it, there's no larger business opportunity than extending the healthy human lifespan. So, I think this is a reality and I think people need to start thinking about, "Do I have to save enough money to live to be 100 years old or 110 years old?" Because if you can have the aesthetics, the cognition and mobility at 100 that you had at 60, why wouldn't you want to? It's not about living in a wheelchair, it's about living a vibrant life. So, that's the first thing. We're going to live longer. We're going to live healthier, and we have to prepare for that.

Bobbi Rebell:
Such a great point. Let's move onto the second point. This is fascinating, demonetization, because this goes into things that we love, like travel, right, Steven?

Steven Kotler:
Yeah, so demonetization is essentially the removal of money from the equation. The simple example that we're all familiar with is the smartphone. So when Peter and I wrote the first book in the trilogy, [inaudible 00:05:30], we're calling the Exponential Mindset trilogy, with our latest book, The Future is Faster Than You Think is the third installment in. In Abundance, back when we started, we looked at all the technology that shows up for free, demonetized completely, in your smartphone. In 1980s prices, it was over a million dollars-

Bobbi Rebell:
Oh my gosh.

Steven Kotler:
In music players, in Encyclopedias, in GPS, and on and on and on. So, this is a million dollars worth of stuff that has been dematerialized. It doesn't exist anymore. It comes for free in your phone. This is ... Whenever technologies go exponential, one of the things that starts to happen almost automatically is they begin to demonetize, and this is going into every industry. Travel is a really radical example, both because we're seeing ... over the next 10 years, we're going to see technology such as the Hyperloop, which is high speed trains, maglev trains, 750 miles an hour, so suddenly San Francisco to LA is a 20-minute commute or Las Vegas to San Francisco is a 20-minute commute, which, by the way, totally changes the real estate picture and your local school metric and your dating pool and all that stuff, besides the point, but you've got five or six other technologies, autonomous cars, flying cars, rockets, et cetera.

Steven Kotler:
Then, you have avatars and virtual reality, which completely demonetizes travel. Now we already have avatars and virtual worlds, but if you can put on VR goggles and have an avatar attend a meeting that you need to attend and you've got haptic technology so you can shake hands with other people and be there, or you can have telepresence robots waiting for you that you sort of rent by the hour in your destination city and you can port your senses using VR into the robot and then send the robot onto stage to give a speech for you or whatnot. This sounds crazy far future, but Peter's company, the X Prize, it's [nepon 00:07:29], right, Peter?

Peter Diamandis:
It's all Nepon Airways, ANA Airlines, has basically said, "How do we displace the need for airplanes? How do you not put yourself in an aluminum tube and fly someplace?" They launched a $10 million dollar avatar X Prize. Can we build the avatars, like Steven was saying, then I can transport my consciousness, my senses, and my actions hundreds or thousands of miles away instead of flying in an airplane.

Bobbi Rebell:
Wow, so cool. Let's talk about the investment opportunities angle here, because you say convergence means that future of financial investment opportunities can lie between industries and mashup markets. What does that mean?

Peter Diamandis:
It means that we have pure play investments before in a computer company or communications company or a healthcare company, but all of these things are beginning to blur, right? We're seeing Amazon all of a sudden going from a bookseller to a food company when it buys Whole Foods and it's now moving into healthcare and into finance. So, we're going to start to see companies that are blurring the lines between what have been traditional areas. A lot of the companies that are going to be crushing it are data-driven companies. Google and Amazon and Apple are in our home and they're going to start to play increasingly different roles. It was interesting that Tim Cook, we talk about this in The Future is Faster Than You Think. Tim Cook makes a statement like, "In the future, Apple is going to be best known for its impact on healthcare." Wow. So, we're going to start to see a lot of these blurred lines. So, when you are excited about investing in a particular industry or particular area, it's not going to be the traditional players. It's going to be a new set of players coming in from unpredictable adjacencies.

Bobbi Rebell:
Which dovetails to your point that there's going to be a lot of new players in finance.

Steven Kotler:
There are going to be a lot of new players in finance and finance as a whole is going to radically change. We've seen this already. We've seen what AI did to finance. At this point, when there's height rating volume, for example, 90% of the trades on Wall Street are being made by computers at this point. That's just today and where we are, but to Peter's point, the advantage you get is data, right? The more data you have, the bigger understanding you have of markets. We'll see this in traditional finance. We're going to see this playing huge roles in insurance. We're going to see this show up in real estate. It's really going to transform the financial landscape. The first inklings of it, companies like IBM, lots in doing wealth management services, right? It's going to mean that people working in the finance space, creativity is going to become the most important skill going forward. This was not a skill 20 years ago you would have really associated with finance and now it's the key skill because everything else that can be automatized will probably be automatized.

Bobbi Rebell:
Insurance, it is going to radically change.

Peter Diamandis:
Insurance is going to change dramatically and we are going to go away from what was the old actuarial tables of, statistically, over a population of 100,000 people, here's the probability. That's not going to be the case. Now it's like, okay, this is specifically the probability for you, given the technology you're enabling, given the way you eat, exercise, and so forth, your genetics and such. We're going to insure you personally and we're going to work to keep you healthier longer, alive longer, fire free, theft free, and that's our job now. So, interesting change, which makes the world a better place, and people will want that kind of insurance over the "We'll pay you after the disaster occurred."

Steven Kotler:
The other thing I want to add to that is, of course with autonomous cars, car insurance as a category goes away. Right? If the cars are driving themselves and they don't crash, car insurance goes away or at least the risk, it shifts from the consumer, right? Google, with Waymo, [inaudible 00:11:33] with Waymo, they provide ... everybody who gets in the car automatically gets insurance because they're the one who controls the autonomous car, so that's another category that's going to disappear.

Bobbi Rebell:
Let's talk about artificial intelligence. How will this affect, for example, the everyday consumer, people buying stuff?

Peter Diamandis:
So, interestingly enough, we're all going to have a version of Jarvis from Iron Man. If you remember Jarvis, Tony Stark had this AI that was in his suit and in his home. He would talk to it and Jarvis would be like a personal, intelligent butler or assistant in this regard. We have the early versions of this with Amazon Echo. We have the early versions of that with Google Home and such, but one thing that's going to happen in the consumer world is that your AI's going to do your buying for you. If your AI is doing your buying for you of foods or consumer products in general, what's that do to advertising, right? If I'm not making the decisions anymore, you can throw all the ads at me you want, but my AI is actually looking at my genetics and the molecular makeup of the toothpaste and saying, "This toothpaste is better for you than this one. Everyone in your peer group, Peter, is buying this and enjoying it and it's cheaper, so I'm buying that for you." You get a new toothpaste and go, "Oh, I like this one better." Right? So the world becomes auto-magical.

Bobbi Rebell:
I love it, because it can save a lot of money for consumers, and time and energy, to not have that decision making stress, because every decision is stress.

Steven Kotler:
Absolutely. These are parts of where the world is going, and not in 30 years or 20 years, this next decade, which is what we outlined in the book.

Bobbi Rebell:
Last thing I want to go through is you say we're moving to a cashless future, to the surprise of, really, no one, I think. I think everyone kind of sees the writing on the wall with this one.

Steven Kotler:
Where it starts to get really interesting is, for example, Amazon Go. This is a cashierless checkout where you scan a QR code on your way into the store on your phone, you take the items off the shelf, sensors in the items notice that you've taken it, the AI cameras pick it up, and it's automatically deducted from your account, which is linked, too, in your cellphone and there's no more cash in the equation. This is ... Those stores are here. They're rolling out at scale over the next couple of years. I'm sure there are probably always going to be craft retail stores, like throwback stores. We still have [inaudible 00:13:50] and the chain here, but at convenience stores, at gas stations, at grocery stores, places we're already seeing automated checkout anyways, right? We're checking ourselves out and it's a pain in the butt, but now the hassle is gone. Obviously the savings for retail is enormous. There's no way to compete.

Bobbi Rebell:
What can the average person be doing to get ready for this future?

Peter Diamandis:
We put out something called Abundance Insider, which is a weekly email of how the world is getting more abundant and how to see this positive news. There are amazing books that Steven have written. Please read Abundance and Bold, which are the first two books in the Exponential Mindset series.

Steven Kotler:
Yeah, the only other thing I would add is, there's a human performance side of this, which I tend to work on the Flow Research Collective, so if you want to know what you can do in your own life to keep up in an accelerating world, the website for the flowresearchcollective.com will give you tons and tons of information there.

Music entrepreneur, author, coach and podcast host Cathy Heller was crushed early in her career when her record label dropped her. But she discovered another way to make money from her music and staged the ultimate multi-million dollar comeback. 

Cathy’s Money Story:

Cathy Heller:
Yeah. My money story. I came out to LA wanting to write music. That was all I knew I loved doing as a kid. I thought, all right, I'm going to do that thing that you see them do in movies. I'm going to go out to LA. I grew up on the East Coast. I was going to figure it out and I had to get a job and pay the bills. I got a job as an assistant in an office and I had a roommate and she was an actress and I was doing my thing. And eventually I started writing music and I wrote some mediocre songs and they got better. And I finally got a record deal. I actually did. I remember sitting with Ron Fair at Interscope, I had just signed and Lady Gaga was there recording Paparazzi and I was like, oh my God, I'm sitting in this room. It's amazing.

Bobbi Rebell:
That must've been so surreal.

Cathy Heller:
It was really surreal. And by the way, hearing Paparazzi recorded is really cool because if you go back now and listen, you'll hear what I'm referring to. There's all these strings on the recording and it makes the pop music just sound like some other dimension is going on and it's beautiful. It was just amazing. But I got dropped from the label a few months later. While I was actually sitting there in the studio, Ron Fair, my producer at the time, he said to me, "You know Cathy, when I first came out to LA, I met with Bill Conti." Bill Conti is the guy who did the music for Rocky and so many other iconic movies and he said to him, "You know Ron, you're a really good songwriter but you're an amazing producer." And he said, "And I wound up making a living really as one of the best producers in the industry."

Cathy Heller:
And I remember that story and I didn't know three, four months later that I'd get dropped from the label, but I did and I wound up going and getting a quote unquote real job and I did so many things. I worked in a floral design studio. I thought, oh, if I can't do the thing I love that's creative, I'll do something else creative. As if it's going to scratch that same itch and it doesn't. I think we all have tried that. And then a friend of mine said, "If you're not going to do what you love, just make money." And I said, "Well how do you do that?" She said, "You do real estate." She said, "I know a guy who works in commercial real estate, he lives in Brentwood. You should go work for him."

Cathy Heller:
She introduces me and I start working in commercial real estate. I don't know the first thing about cap rates or mortgages and he says, "All you have to do is pick up the phone, call about 20 to 30 people a day and set some meetings for me and I'll give you good money if you can set meetings." And I wound up being pretty good at it and then I was there for two years and it was really like golden handcuffs because he was paying me a 150 grand to sit at this desk and make phone calls for him.

Bobbi Rebell:
Life is going by and you're not in the music business.

Cathy Heller:
No, I wasn't doing anything I loved. And I remember one day I was driving and I was crying so hard, I had to pull over to the side of the road and I thought to myself, I just, I don't know where I went, but I don't recognize myself. I am not this girl. I don't wear pantsuits. I don't blow my hair out. I don't talk this way. And I thought, gosh, we were talking about Tony Robbins before because he wrote the forward to your book and he always says, "Success without fulfillment is like the ultimate failure." And I felt like I couldn't breathe. I was like, I don't care that I'm driving a cute little Mercedes convertible. I don't care that I can eat sushi whenever I want. I don't feel like myself. I am so not me.

Cathy Heller:
And I decided I was going to quit and I quit my job, which I don't recommend to people. What I recommend to people now is that you build a runway and build a side hustle and validate your idea. And there's so many great tools and ways to do that so that you don't have to just jump. But I did. I couldn't take it. I just jumped.

Bobbi Rebell:
What was that like when you went in? You just went in one day and quit. Did you have overhead? Rent? You didn't have a family at the time, I assume.

Cathy Heller:
No, I was only 26. I quit and I thought to myself, oh by the time I run out of whatever tiny amount of savings I have from this job, I'm sure I'll be making money in music. And I saw that there was a whole world of musicians who were licensing their songs to TV shows, like Grey's Anatomy in One Tree Hill at the time and ads for McDonald's and Pepsi and Walmart. And I was like, what is this whole road? I wish I would've known about it.

Bobbi Rebell:
I'm thinking that now. I never even thought about that whole world. And you're just observing it and there's a business behind that.

Cathy Heller:
Oh, it's a huge business. And this article, this article was really opening my eyes. It was telling me that people in this field were making hundreds of thousands of dollars because ad agencies were paying the artists 50, 60, $70,000 a pop for just the use, just the license, not the ownership to use the song in an ad. And television shows were spending something like five or $10,000 per song in an episode. Of course it's more for an ad because there might be one retail ad for a campaign versus 22 episodes and six songs an episode, but still five or 10 grand to have your song used in a show or $50,000 to have your song used in a Walmart spot.

Cathy Heller:
I was getting pretty excited about that and so I made that decision that I would do everything I could to figure out who were the clients, who were the people choosing songs at Paramount and NBC and Lion's Gate and ad agencies like Ogilvy and Deutsche and McCann. Who were those people? And what did they need? And I had never asked myself that question before. Up until that moment, I thought that you either did something you loved that came completely from your heart or you built someone else's dream and you sold out. I never really understood that you could marry the two things, that you could be who you were and feel authentic and at the same time you could know that someone else has a need and a want and that you could answer that with your gifts. And then that's really how you make a living.

Cathy Heller:
And it made so much sense. All of a sudden it's like the lights went on and I thought, wow. And I started telling songwriter friends of mine who were starving and working jobs that they hated, barista jobs and insurance jobs, and I said to them, "Look, have you ever looked at this this way?" And they said, "Oh my gosh, you're going to be such a sell out. You're going to hate the music you write." And I said, "Oh my God."

Bobbi Rebell:
They said that?

Cathy Heller:
Oh, they had so much resistance.

Bobbi Rebell:
Really?

Cathy Heller:
Because people, especially artists believe that if you're really an artist, then you're probably starving because you're so authentic. And that definitely doesn't account for people like Michelangelo who died with $50 million to his name before inflation. He would be a billionaire today. It doesn't account for people like John Williams who's written all the scores to Star Wars and Jaws and all of these movies. It doesn't account for any of the people you've ever supported. Whether it's somebody concert, you go to a piece of art. Why? Because all of the people that I just mentioned are people who absolutely care what their customer, what their audience needs and wants.

Cathy Heller:
And I realize that the difference between a hobby and a business is that a hobby is something you do for you. But a business has to have at its core, radical, radical, radical empathy because it means that something that I'm doing in this world, someone else is going to value and they're going to pay me for it. I got that. And so I got excited. I actually got excited to find out how I could serve and I started to do the next thing which I tell people to do, which is I think everybody has Michael Jordan talent at something. But we're really missing momentum. And what we need to do is validate our ideas and we need to get feedback by going out and talking to human beings about what they need.

Cathy Heller:
And so I started to do that really scary, scary thing, which was pick up the phone and call Warner Brothers and call all these ad agencies and call Disney and call brands and ask questions about what kinds of campaigns, what kinds of stories they were telling, what kinds of things they needed musically. What kinds of sonic palettes. Did they like strings? Did they like ukuleles? Is the story this year about sisters? Is it about female empowerment? Is it about being there for someone? And people I am telling you, they were so happy to tell me what they needed. They were so happy that for the first time in a long time somebody reached out and it was refreshing to them that I wasn't calling to pitch myself and to read a script and try to be impressive.

Cathy Heller:
I was calling to ask what I could do to use my talent to help and long story short, within 18 months I started making $100,000 writing songs for film and TV and then that grew second and third year I started making $300,000 a year and then I got written about in Variety and Billboard and the LA Weekly and when I say written about, it wasn't a two line blurb about this girl who was writing music for film and TV. It was a full page story, not just digitally but in print magazines with a picture of me telling the story about how I was taking matters into my own hands and I was really successful.

“A hobby is something you do for you. But a business has to have at it’s core radical empathy. Because it means that something that I am doing in this world someone else is going to value and they are going to pay me for it.”

Cathy’s Money Lesson:

Cathy Heller:
You've got to validate your idea and I think what most people do is they think about businesses backwards where they think to themselves, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to sit in my little cave and I'm going to come up with this line of cupcakes or this jewelry I'm going to do or I'm going to write the whole book before they ever test it. Before they ever figure out who would buy this jewelry? Who would eat these cupcakes? And maybe I should go and in tandem with this person who I'm making it for, maybe I should be getting their input, getting feedback and then weaving that feedback into my process. I think that people just don't realize that we make it harder than it needs to be and if you look at any successful company, they are testing ideas all the time. They are paying for your feedback. They are doing focus groups because it works.

Cathy Heller:
And then this sounds really simple but it's usually really hard. You have to go out and tell people about your idea. You have to make sure that you're going out in the world and you are letting people know about it and instead of saying, "Well, I'm going to think about this and noodle around on my about page for 40 hours." No, it's pick up the phone and make the call. Let them know what's so awesome about what you're doing as opposed to telling them, how you do what you do. People forget that we don't buy things, we buy feelings, we buy results. And so often when you ask someone, "Tell me about the thing that you're creating or service you're offering." People sort of get tongue tied.

Bobbi Rebell:
How many people do you think you called for every time you place a song in the early years before you were known?

Cathy Heller:
It's hundreds.

Bobbi Rebell:
Hundreds?

Cathy Heller:
Yeah. And when people would say no to me, and there were times that people not only said no, but said, "Don't ever send music like this. It's so mediocre." And instead of me being completely devastated, because obviously I wasn't completely devastated. I felt bad, I felt gross, I felt stupid sometimes. But I would take the feedback and I knew that I would give myself the grace to get better at it.

“I would take the feedback. And I would give myself the grace to get better at it.”

Cathy’s Money Tip:

Cathy Heller:
Yeah. My everyday money tip is something that I learned from Jen Sincero who wrote, You are a Badass. When she was on my podcast, she was living at 40 years old in a, she was living in a garage eating cans of tuna fish and she's like, something's got to change. And she did a bunch of self help stuff. And finally somebody said to her, why don't you write a letter to money? And she's like, what does that mean? And she wrote a letter to money and she was like, money, I hate you. Money, you're the reason for everyone's problems. And she realized at the end of the letter that she was carrying around feeling so much resistance to money because deep down money is something that she felt would make her less of a kind person. And that was a choice she didn't want to make. She didn't want to either have money and be a jerk or not have money, but she chose not having money if it meant she would have her integrity.

Cathy Heller:
And so I often tell people, "Why don't you write a letter to money?" Because sometimes what we find out is that at the root of it we might be sabotaging ourself because we might believe that money is something we feel shame around. If it's not shame for having it and being a jerk, sometimes it's shame like who am I to deserve to have good things? And when we can get to the root of that, it's very important because ultimately in life the results of our life, it has to do with what we really deep down want.

Bobbi Rebell:
Tell us more about where people can follow up and learn more about you and your podcast and your book and all things Cathy Heller.

“We don’t buy things. We buy feelings. We buy results.”

Bobbi’s Financial Grownup Tips:

Financial Grownup Tip #1:

Some of Cathy's best clients were the very ones who rejected her earlier in her career. When I asked Cathy about this after the interview, she explained that if she was being honest with herself, her work just was not that good initially when she pitched them. She had to get better at her craft. It's business. It's not personal. Early rejection is not forever rejection. Try to find out why your work wasn't accepted and then work on the work.

Financial Grownup Tip #2:

Cathy talked about how some of her musician friends called her a sellout. Look guys, making an honest living is not selling out. There is no glory in being a starving artist. It doesn't make you a better artist to not earn money. Nor by the way, is there any historical precedent for this over romanticized idea. Professional artists, Michelangelo, for example, died in 1564 at the age of 88. His net worth by many reports in the ballpark of $7 million.

Episode Links:

• Cathy's website - CathyHeller.com

• Cathy’s podcast Don’t Keep Your Day Job

• Cathy’s book Don’t Keep Your Day Job

Follow Cathy!

• Instagram - @cathy.heller

• Twitter - @NoDayJobs

• Facebook - @dontkeepyourdayjob

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.

When Hint CEO Kara Goldin started getting calls from celebrities about investing in her company, she quickly learned to make sure she only partnered with those who were authentically aligned with her brand values. Kara shares the story of why she said yes to John Legend, but took a pass on another big pop star. 

Kara'’s Money Story:

Kara Goldin:
Well one of our investors, probably the most famous of our investors is John Legend. I mean, John Legend, every time he's playing he a bottle of Hint on stage with him. And people always say, "How do you get John to do that?" I'm like, "I don't." I mean, John does it on his own. John just brings it up there because he loves drinking our product.

Bobbi Rebell:
So I have to ask you, how did John Legend become an investor?

Kara Goldin:
So John, actually, it was almost 10 years ago now that he reached out to us. He had been drinking Hint, actually in Starbucks. We were in all 11,000 Starbucks stores nationwide, and he had picked up a bottle and really enjoyed it. Then reached out to us, and I have to be honest, I didn't know who John was, and you know he's grown a lot in the last 10 years.

Kara Goldin:
He called just trying to understand if this was a product of Coke or Pepsi. He was surprised to hear that it wasn't, and that he was like, "Gosh, this is really good. You're not using sweeteners of any kind. You're not using preservatives of any kind. I think that you guys have an incredible mission that is sitting in front of you to really help people get healthy."

Kara Goldin:
And he's said, "I am super curious if you guys are taking on investments, I'd be really interested." So when we did our next round, I reached back out to him and I said, "I'm not sure if you're interested, but you know, in addition I really want to meet you," because that's a whole other piece that I wanted to meet everybody who's invested in our company as well.

Kara Goldin:
And so, I might not meet them on a monthly basis, but I think it's also a very important thing to really understand where these people are coming from and do they buy into your mission. I think that's really important.

Kara Goldin:
So yeah, so that was how John came on, and he's just been a huge advocate, and has been, even called by people who were thinking of investing in the brand that knew him as well, even before when they found out that he was an investor. He's just a great advocate and good reference too for what we're doing.

Bobbi Rebell:
We talk about different stakeholders and different investors and what they bring to the table. So with a celebrity investor like John Legend, what does that bring to the mix that is complimentary, that's different from just your average investor?

Kara Goldin:
It's interesting. I think the key thing that I share with other entrepreneurs who are raising money, about celebrities, whether that's a sports figure or an actor, or performer, is that, do they actually believe in your product? Do they drink your product? Right?

Kara Goldin:
Because I think that if they don't actually understand what you're doing, and if they aren't a fan already, it's very confusing to the consumer, and it looks phony. And so, gone are the days where you can pay a celebrity to do an endorsement and throw it up on a billboard and people actually believe it.

Kara Goldin:
And so, I think that there has been a shift in, "Let's go invest in these companies." But I still think there's a lot of these celebrities that are really just doing it and then they're not actually ... They don't believe in it, and they'll be walking down the street and drinking something that is totally counter, in the case of a beverage company, to sort of what you're doing.

Kara Goldin:
If you end up on TMZ and you're not really living the brand, then I think it's just really phony. So I think there's confusion to so many, like, "Do I take the money from these celebrities or not?" The sniff test, as I call it is, do they love the product already?

Kara Goldin:
I mean, we've had calls over the years from a lot of celebrities, and I'm always willing to send them a case if they haven't had Hint, and just see what their response is. If the response is, "Yeah. You know, they liked it okay." Then I'm like, "You have to love it. You have to really understand why we're doing this." Because for me, again, it's not just about having a great tasting product, it really is about a mission to really help people drink better tasting water. That's like a huge thing.

Kara Goldin:
I mean, I also just don't want people involved in the company who are going to ultimately do something to tarnish the brand, and that's really the challenge I think with celebrities overall. So that's the key thing.

Kara Goldin:
I think another piece that comes up for a lot of entrepreneurs, and we've never done it this way, but I've heard that there are celebrities out there that just want equity in the company and they don't put any money into the company because they believe they can help the brand in some way. I don't know, I think you really have to have skin in the game and put some kind of money into the company too, because if you're just getting equity in the company, it's probably a deal that you ultimately want to pass on.

Bobbi Rebell:
I think it's interesting because a lot of celebrities ... I mean I think about Ashton Kutcher and Bono, and they've done real investing for real ... The ones that from what I know, have been most successful, are the ones that really are putting their money into it and their time and their attention, and they believe in it. And it sounds like that's something in your case that Mr. Legend does do.

Kara Goldin:
Yeah, and I think, I mean, very similar to successful entrepreneurs today, I think that if you have an investor who doesn't know why they're investing, then you should not have them investing in your company. It's such a key thing. Like, if they're just investing because they've seen that John Legend invested and they want to ride the coattails of John. I don't know, I just think that that's like, they're too high profile and they will be asked along the way and they will be watched along the way.

Kara Goldin:
So again, I don't want to do anything for them that's going to tarnish their image either. So I think that's such a key piece. I feel like just because you're saying, "I don't want your money," it doesn't mean that you can't have them, in the case of Hint, drinking the product. Right?

Kara Goldin:
I think basically having the conversation with these people like "Look, we want to create a win-win here for you too, and if this is going to be uncomfortable for you."

Kara Goldin:
I'll never forget this one quick story. We had a celebrity approach us, actually an agent approached us, and he said, this individual singer loved Hint, and called me, and he said, "He loved it, he thinks it's really great."

Kara Goldin:
And I remember going home to my daughter and I said, "Gosh," like the singer you know, who will remain nameless, "just loved our product and thought it was really great." And I said, "We might actually do something with him he wants to invest," et cetera. And my daughter, who is a teenager, she knew exactly who he was, but she said, "Oh, that's really interesting." And she said, "Well, last year he did a deal," an endorsement deal, not an investment, but, "an endorsement deal with 7 Up."

Bobbi Rebell:
Which has a lot of sugar.

Kara Goldin:
Which has a lot of sugar in it. And I said, "Huh," I googled it and saw it was true. And unless he was willing to actually say like, "I've seen the light and I don't want to have sugar anymore and I found Hint," and he's able to tell us why and speak to it, then I just think it's affecting your own brand ultimately, and it will be like he could be ridiculed.

Kara Goldin:
Here a 14-year-old was telling me this, and I went back to this guy's agent and I said, "I have to tell you the story." And I told him what my daughter had said and he said, "Well, no matter where this conversation goes, could I please hire your daughter because she really understands this stuff?" So being careful about where you're taking an investment.

“Gone are the days where you can pay a celebrity to do an endorsement and throw it up on a billboard and people actually believe it”

Kara’s Money Lesson:

Kara Goldin:
I think the big takeaway is know where your money is coming from and how it could ultimately affect you down the road.

“Know where your money is coming from and how it could ultimately affect you down the road”

Kara’s Money Tip:

Bobbi Rebell:
So for your everyday money tip, you have some advice of some basically free or almost free things that people can do and get discounts on right at their own company that many people don't even pay attention to.

Kara Goldin:
Yeah. So it's the beginning of the year and, maybe you're looking at a new job opportunity. Definitely look for jobs that have equity potential because that's ownership in a company, that's almost free money to have in addition to your salary. So definitely look for opportunities like that. But if you're also in a company that does not offer equity, there's often stock incentive plans at discounted rates that you can join onto and participate in.

Kara Goldin:
And then in addition to that, there's all kinds of benefits internally, that just makes sure that you know about those things at the beginning of the year so that you're not stuck at the end of the year realizing that you left a bunch of money on the table.

“John Legend, every time he is playing, he has a bottle of Hint on stage with him and people always say, How do you get John to do that? I’m like, I don’t. John just bring it up there because he loves our product. ”

Bobbi’s Financial grownup tips:

Financial grownup tip number one:

Has to do with taking money from investors or for just any reason from somebody where you need cash. Money has strings. That's why you pay interest to banks. They want something which they should get because they're lending you or giving you the money.

When you take money from someone or an entity, think about their angle. Are they giving you money to help you and/or what you are building, or do they have maybe an ulterior motive that you may not be in alignment with? Could they become a liability because you're affiliating with them, and depending on the terms, they could have a lot to say about the future of wherever that money is going.

Financial grownup tip number two:

There's a lot more to compensation than just the cash in your paycheck or from a client paying their bill. As Kara recommended, don't leave money on the table or wherever. Go read your HR website in full. It may not be boring and maybe kind of interesting.

Maybe take notes if you aren't going to do the things now, or if you are self-employed or a freelancer, read up on the tax code. Yeah, the tax code and what you can do to maximize benefits you may not even realize you were entitled to.

Look into groups that you can align with to get benefits. As an example, here in New York City, we have TDF, that stands for Theater Development Fund, and you can join if you fit a number of categories, one of which is freelancer, and that means you can get tickets for Broadway shows for as much as 70% off. That's a benefit, much like you would get when you work for a company. You also can get free membership, for example, to cultural institutions like museums by getting a New York City ID. So check what's available in your city.

Episode Links:

• Kara's website - www.drinkhint.com
  
  

Follow Kara!

• Instagram - @hint

• Twitter - @hint

• Facebook - @hint

• Pinterest - @hintwater
  
  

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.

New Year, New Grownup attitude towards your money. We chat with Tina Hay, author of  the new book Napkin Finance: Build Wealth in 30 seconds or less, about how grownups can approach savings, investing, retirement strategies and philanthropy in 2020. 

4 Simple and fun ways to be a financial grownup for the New Year

1. Savings

2. Investing

3. Retirement

4. Philanthropy

Episode Links:

• Tina's website www.napkinfinance.com

• Tina’s book Napkin Finance

Follow Tina + Napkin Finance!

• Instagram - @napkinfinance

• Twitter - @napkinfinance

• Facebook - @napkinfinance

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.

Welcome to a new year and a new decade. Bobbi shares some personal news and insights, and then some big changes coming to the podcast, the financial grownup community, and her other podcast, Money with Friends. 

Happy New Year. I hope everyone enjoyed the holidays and maybe some vacation time with friends and family or however you wanted to celebrate- even if your holidays were solo or whatever- because as a grownup you should be able to celebrate however you want. 

This is a special episode and I’m going to be talking first about some personal decisions I am making and then some decisions having to do with changes here at financial grownup and with my other podcast Money with Friends. 

First- the personal. Today, the day this episode is being released, is my birthday. And the crazy thing is that despite being married, and being a mom, a stepmom and having my dog waffles.. I still am coming to terms with the fact that apparently I am a grownup. 

I am also coming to terms with the fact that I am tired of being overwhelmed and exhausted. At one point last year, I was offered an opportunity by a friend of a friend that I really wanted to do, and I was so busy- I literally just wrote back something like- want to but in overwhelm. It may have even been just the word overwhelm. Between all my business related projects and my personal responsibilities to my family and friends, and just way too many things I said yes to, I was going from early in the morning until I collapsed into bed at night. And that’s not a good state for anyone to be in. And so I need to stop the overwhelm. 

Some of you may have noticed that my instagram got reeeallly quiet in the last 2 weeks of 2019.  We were running encore’s  of the podcast and I just decided not to share my general personal activities while on vacation- at least not in real time. As has become a thing to say- I wanted to be present with my family.  I’m sure it will kill any positive algorithm related momentum because instagram does not like it when you are not active, but I wanted to see how it felt to just not participate. I also didn’t look at what my friends or anyone I follow were up to. Mixed feelings. The truth is I enjoy seeing what my friends are up to. I like knowing where they are going when they travel and what family milestones they are celebrating or just feeling connected even when we are all busy. But it is also time consuming Same thing with posting- love sharing but taking a break freed up lots of time- even if I did use that time to not be all that productive over break. Taking a break, over a vacation break, is a good thing. I’m glad I did it. 

I’m also trying to figure out WHAT to post. I tend to post a lot about my podcast guests because I think they are amazing and really want to get the word out- and I love supporting their projects.  and I’ve been shy about going on camera myself and talking too much about my own life on instagram stories.. but I’d love to hear more about what you guys want. Maybe DM me now that I’m back online- I’ll look out for the notes I promise. 

On that note, I am going to start sharing more about the things that I use on a personal level. If you are signed up for what used to be the financial grownup newsletter- and I know you haven’t gotten one since 2018-  you will soon get something my assistant Ashley and I have been working on for quite some time called The Grownup List- and it will be a very short resource of things I enjoy that you may want to incorporate into your own grownup life. If you want to get on the Grownup List- just go to my website bobbirebell.com and you will see the sign up button. There’s also a link in my Instagram bio at bobbirebell1. I would love to include listener suggestions- so feel free to be in touch at hello@financialgrownup.com if you have ideas to include. 

So now let’s talk about the podcast. I started the podcast about 2 years ago. This is episode 267. I can’t even believe it. My editor Steve Stewart- made a great suggestion to share some of my favorite episodes and I was going to- then came that overwhelm I was taking about! It’s like choosing your favorite children. What I will do is remind you that if you want to learn more about a topic or a guest- go to my website, bobbirebell.com/financialgrownuppodcast and use that search bar - it’s a great resource and can help you find an episode that hits that topic. You can listen or just read the transcript in the show notes. 

I have also felt that because I have been putting out sooo many episodes each one doesn’t always get the attention it deserves because there is always a new one that kind of bumps it from the top of the feed, and from my focus on promoting it. So- I’m going to focus on releasing just one episode  a week going forward. As of now that will be on Tuesdays. 

It will also give me and my social media channels a break from what I sometimes feel is a lot of well.. promotion. Maybe leave a little more space for more content just about life and other things I want to share with all of you. 

I also want to make time for my other projects including my next book- which is going to be a parenting book- more on that to come- and I also am fortunate to work with some prominent brands helping to get their message out, and I enjoy speaking to groups so I want to make sure to keep time for those projects as well. And be in touch if I can be helpful in those areas- if you have events coming up where you need an emcee, a speaker or moderator. 

Finally- exciting news about my other podcast Money with Friends. I hope if you are not already subscribed, you will do so. I’m so proud of how Money with Friends has evolved over the last 7 months since we launched in June. It is now 6 days a week - don’t worry - we batch record so we don’t get overwhelmed). And it is also a short podcast like this one. My co-host is Joe Saul-Sehy - who some of you may know from his other podcast Stacking Benjamins. We have been recording  on Facebook Live but we will be moving to YouTube imminently so please go subscribe to the Money with Friends YouTube channel we started so you can watch us record live- we actually take questions and comments form the audience. You can also be part of the show by participating in our instagram stories polls and questions- the handle is @moneyfriendspod. We also have a cast of thought leaders who come in to co-host with us- journalists, shopping experts, Real estate entrepreneurs, CFP’s  and so on, so you get to ask them questions as well. Right now we are putting together the cast for our third season and it is looking to be amazing. 

Money with Friends has been growing faster than Joe and I ever imagined- there have been a lot of unexpected twists and turns in the show’s short history- and we’ll be talking about that and revealing a lot of behind the scenes secrets-at  Podfest in Orlando in early March- so let us know if you are going to be there- or if you are in the  Orlando area. We are considering doing a meet up and would love to make it happen. You can DM us on our instagram at moneyfriendspod.

I want to finally thank all of you for being part of my grownup journey. I truly appreciate your support and look forward to us all growing together as the financial grownups that we are. 

Episode Links

• Instagram - @moneyfriendspod

• Stacking Benjamins podcast

Sadie Kurzban won $25,000 in a college contest for entrepreneurs by using a strategy that has continued to drive the growth of her boutique dance fitness chain. The millennial entrepreneur shares her secrets to building a business on a low budget, along with her personal tips on how she manages healthy meals on a budget with her relentless schedule.

Sadie’s Money Story:

Bobbi Rebell:
For your money story, you're going to actually talk to us about how you got the funding to start this, because you were just in college.

Sadie Kurzban:
I was, yes. I started teaching aerobics classes really for fun in college because I was passionate about it. I had always loved group fitness and I thought, well let me take my hand at giving this a try. So I was teaching it for fun and when I was thinking about what I wanted to do for my career around graduation, that my senior year my friend turned to me and she was like, "Girl, like this is your passion, you need to do this" and I was like, "What? I'm not going to graduate college and go be a fitness instructor".

Bobbi Rebell:
You were at Brown University by the way.

Sadie Kurzban:
Yes, I graduated top of my class. Everyone around me was getting a job in consulting. They were going to medical school, going to law school and I was like, "I think I should go do something like that". So I was like, "How am I going to go?" I even, I remember I looked up in Brown alumni who's in fitness, even just as a category and there was like one alumni from the 70's like it's just not a very popular thing to do. So, I was like, "God, I'm not going to go. Yeah, I have bigger ambitions than being a trainer". So she said, "Why don't you just start a business?" I was like, "What?" I had never even thought about starting a business, truly. This was right before senior year.

Sadie Kurzban:
We started looking up in the course curriculum, entrepreneurship, accounting, really we were kind of scrambling and I ended up majoring in economics, which was really funny and unexpected. But I took every entrepreneurship related, business related, accounting related. It was my entire senior year I was filled with these courses, studying my tail off and I entered the big annual business plan pitch competition. So it's a 10 minute pitch. It's all students, almost all the teams were all male. A lot of the teams were graduate students who had invented like incredible things like medical devices, like really impressive businesses and here I was, I was like, "I'm going to start this dance cardio workout. It has a DJ. It's really fun. This is why I should win". It was really surprising at the end of the day that I won, but it really was the sign from the universe that I needed to move to New York and make this happen.

Bobbi Rebell:
Why do you think you won? What was the differentiator?

Sadie Kurzban:
Yeah, I'll tell you why I think I won was that it's held in the school auditorium and it's a pretty nerdy competition. A lot of business majors, a lot of masters students that I got hundreds of kids who would come take my class every week. I said, "I'm entering this pitch competition. If you love these fitness classes I've been teaching, please come and cheer me on". So I packed the room. I mean, honestly, with 300, 400 students that were screaming their heads off for me. So I think the judges, while they thought, well maybe, I don't know if they felt this was the most impressive business, but what they definitely saw was I had proven the concept and I had really gotten a handful of ... More than a handful of really passionate evangelists. So they knew I was onto something and getting people super passionate about this early on has been the biggest gift and the biggest way that we've grown so quickly, as you know with limited resources, getting customers to really evangelize us and tell their friends.

Bobbi Rebell:
Right, and then you got the $25,000 to get going.

Sadie Kurzban:
Yeah, it was enough to at least give me the confidence to move to New York and give myself nine months to try and make it happen.

Sadie’s Money Lesson:

Sadie Kurzban:
I think the biggest lesson there is, I didn't worry so much about all of the 'what if's' and the house and even moving to New York and all of these things and renting space. I just thought about how can I get every customer who walks in to really go back to their next dinner, to work the next day and talk about this like it's nobody's business, right? So with pretty limited resources, $25,000 in New York City is not a lot of money at all. I knew I didn't have a lot of room for error, but what I did have was customers in front of me every day and if I could get one person super jazzed about this, telling 10 people, that was free marketing for me. So I had to really deliver on the experience and most importantly stop worrying about all the 'what if's' and what could happen. Really think about that person in front of me and look at them as a real opportunity to keep just running through the doors that have been opened for me and breaking the glass ceiling.

Bobbi Rebell:
Your instructors are really brand ambassadors.

Sadie Kurzban:
They are, yes. We all live in Brea, 305 and we know how important that client in front of us is.

Sadie’s Money Tip:

Sadie Kurzban:
So yeah, I was thinking a little bit about this because they listened to your show and I have to admit I'm not great at saving. I'm a little bit better at just creating things and I tend to kind of close my eyes and drive at the same time when it comes to money. But the one way that I really do, I think successfully saved is again, in a city like New York where it's really tempting to do seamless every night or go to dinner, that can really add up big time, like $30, $40 every night. So instead what I do is, I cook and I eat a lot of homemade meals or I'll pack it to the office. But the best thing that I found is really, instead of, it would just be so daunting to get home late at night and cook for myself every night this [inaudible 00:07:48] meal.

Sadie Kurzban:
So what I do is I cook a whole bunch on Sundays, like a bunch, as much as I can. I refrigerate enough for three days and then everything left over I freeze. So by the time the weekend rolls around, unfolding and I'm cooking again. So it's enough what I make on Sunday to really carry me through the week and within that what I've found is another tip within that is, that if I put all this pressure on myself to make these gourmet meals and I'm chopping onions and all these things, I'm just not going to do it. I'm going to wake up on Sunday and I'm going to think no way, no way. So instead I'll splurge a bit on the pain in the butt stuff like chopping onions, chopping garlic. This stuff that I know is going to come up in every recipe, I'll get those precut so I'll spend the extra dollar at trader Joe's knowing that someone else's has cut or a machine has cut the onions for me and that way I know I can make the meal in five minutes instead of taking me 15 minutes to make everyone.

Bobbi Rebell:
Love it. That's so practical and it's also important because you aren't just sitting in an office, you actually go and teach these classes.

Bobbi’s Financial grownup tips:

Financial grownup tip number one:

Sadie won that first $25,000 in college by doing something no one else did. She literally brought her own cheering section of happy clients. They were there to cheer for her, but they were also there with her. None of us can do everything alone. Sadie doesn't, she brings others along for the ride. If you do that in your life with anything, not just business, but anything that matters to you, include others, make them stakeholders in your success and also you can hear it in her voice, it just made it so much fun.

Financial grownup tip number two:

I love Sadie's hybrid approach to cooking at home. You will not get a prize if you chop every single onion. It is more than okay to splurge and pay a little more to have some ingredients prepped for you so you're more likely to not only eat healthy but also not waste money ordering out and having food delivered. The key thing, and I'm still working on this myself, is the organizational element and the planning.

Episode Links:

• Blinkist - The app I’m loving right now. Please use our link to support the show and get a free trial.

• 305 Fitness career opportunities

• Money with Friends podcast

• Sadie’s website - 305 Fitness

Follow Sadie!

• Instagram - @305fitness

• Twitter - @305fitness

• Facebook - @305fitness

• Pinterest - @305fitness

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.

A big part of being a financial grownup is getting organized- and not just with our finances. This goes for our stuff, our technology and even our scheduling. Barbara Reich has shared her secrets with millions appearing on programs like the Today Show and in publications like the New York Times, and now shares with financial grownup listeners.

Here 3 organizational tips for Financial Grownups

• The importance of knowing what you have

• Why it's important to store things where you can find them

• How labeling what you have can really help to keep things organized

Episode Links:

Barbara's website www.ResourcefulConsultants.com

Follow Barbara!

• Instagram - @BarbaraReich_Resourceful

• Facebook - @ResourcefulConsultants

• Pinterest - @BarbaraReich

• Twitter - @BarbaraReich

• YouTube

• LinkedIn

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.

Sarah Larson Levey is becoming a familiar example of millennial entrepreneur success, recently being featured on the cover of Inc magazine and her company Y7 studio being named one of the magazine’s most inspiring companies last year. Keeping her costs at extreme minimal levels helped entrepreneur Sara Larson Levey grow her side hustle yoga startup while still working her full time job for two years.

Sarah's money story:

I actually was really unsatisfied with the yoga experiences that I was having throughout the city. It left me feeling really frustrated and lacking in what I was looking for. I wanted something where I could still move and sweat and get a really great workout in, but at the same time get that mental clarity that is touted for yoga. I just really couldn't find that so I decided to start my own place to practice.

Bobbi Rebell:
Let's take it back a little. You're working in the fashion industry, you're married, you're in Brooklyn, you've got a job, you're busy, you're living your life. Most people, if they're not happy, they're going to fill out a form, a feedback form. You instead start a pop up. How does this happen and where does the money come from? Because you're 20 something, how old are you now?

Sarah L. Levey:
I'm 32 now. I was 26 at the time.

Bobbi Rebell:
Most 26 year olds are dealing with other financial things. How did you literally start this? Where did the money come from? What did you do?

Sarah L. Levey:
The money came from my job. I have always been really good at saving. It was really just supposed to be a pop up at first, right? We found a super, super cheap space. We hired teachers off of Craigslist who are willing to work just to get the teaching experience and that was kind of it. As soon as we realized that this was going to be a thing that there were other people who resonated with the kind of yoga that we are providing, that's when I started looking for a little bit more of a permanent space.

Bobbi Rebell:
One of the things, and I know this as a student, the space is unique. Can you talk a little bit about that and also how do you pay for that? Especially in a pop up because there's a heat element to it. The studios are darkened. It's a very different atmosphere, so there's definitely some investing that has to go on when you set up a space.

Sarah L. Levey:
Yeah, I think for us, we really knew what we wanted and we were lucky enough to find a space that already didn't have windows. We brought in our own heaters and we rented it out by the hour. This space was actually a very large recording studio that was not used during morning hours on the weekends, and that's where we went in.

Bobbi Rebell:
I think that's interesting because a lot of people don't think about that option to rent by the hour when you're starting a business. They might think you have to sign a lease for a longer period of time or come into a space. You were able to manage your cost that way.

Sarah L. Levey:
Absolutely.

Bobbi Rebell:
Then how does it go? You have this pop up, how are you getting the word out and how do you start expanding and funding that expansion?

Sarah L. Levey:
It was all word of mouth. We would go out at like 4, 5:00 AM and just flier all over Williamsburg and Brooklyn where the first location was and that's how people came in. That was really all we did. It was all Instagram, Facebook and flyering around the neighborhood. We didn't have budget for anything. There was no budget to spare. Everything was being funded by my job and my husband's job at the time.

Bobbi Rebell:
How did you get it to the next level? When do you feel you reached a critical point where you started thinking, this is really a thing and I might leave my job to do it? Because a side hustle doesn't always evolve.

Sarah L. Levey:
Right. It took a while. What's so great about New York is it is one of the few places where you can find a space that's willing to do a month to month or maybe do a split tenant kind of thing. We found a small 300 square foot space in an artist loft. All of the little suites were around 300 square feet. We paid a very, very small amount. Everything was included and we started out that way. The studio room could only fit 10 people maximum, and that's how we ran classes. We ran classes four a day before work and after work. I worked the front desk morning and night. My husband and I would switch off. The teachers were paid per student, so it was all dependent on them really getting the word out about their classes and bringing people in. We operated like that for a good nine months before we grew out of that space. Then we were fortunate enough to find another month to month space where we didn't really need to lay all this money out for security.

We were fortunate enough where the business was starting to generate enough cash that we could continue to float the business but that was it which is the reason that I continued working up until the spring of 2015. A good two years after we opened the studio.

Bobbi Rebell:
What kind of conversations were you and your husband having about money while this is going on? What was it like?

Sarah L. Levey:
It was interesting, it was the first time either of us had operated a business on a retail level. We didn't really know what we're doing, but I felt really confident that I didn't want to put classes on the schedule or do things around the studio that would put the vision of the experience in jeopardy. I wanted to always make sure we could pay rent, pay the teachers and also continue not to put pressure on ourselves so we could still do the things we wanted, have both really.

Bobbi Rebell:
Looking back, what is the best thing you did in terms of financial decisions with the business and what's something that maybe you would do differently?

Sarah L. Levey:
That's a tough one because I love our journey so much. I think it's super interesting and an ode to really the fact that you can self-fund a business. We didn't take on private equity funding until we were six studios in and that was a choice on our part. It was definitely a little bit stressful but it was a choice we made so we could really hone the experience and not bring on partners who just had ideas to make more money, have a better cashflow. We were able to preserve the experience of the business. We included mat and towel at first and our laundry expenses were really, really high. I would have started charging for those immediately because we always felt the pinch around that. Other than that, I can't really see doing in another way.

Bobbi Rebell:
How did things change when you did take outside funding?

Sarah L. Levey:
We decided to take on outside funding to really be able to sign nicer spaces. If anyone has ever been to the Flatiron studio or the Union Square studio, those were studios that I painted the walls. I was the one on Craigslist finding people who could throw up a devising wall. We did all the electrical. We commissioned people to build the front desk or things like that. It was super, super bootstrapped. The more people that were coming in and out of the studio, we really wanted to have a little bit nicer amenities because it is hot yoga. We wanted to be able to have showers if we needed to and those things were really, really expensive. Taking on capital for us was a way to really open the doors to higher end retail spaces and have the money to invest in the build-outs.

Sarah’s money lesson:

I would say be realistic. It is totally okay to do two things at once and it's important, that way you don't lose sight of what your actual vision is. I think that if you're stressed about your personal finances, you're always going to be looking for ways to have your business make more money, right? Because you're feeling the pressure personally of like, oh my gosh, how am I going to do this? How am I going to do that? I think that's when people tend to lose the passion for their business because it becomes more of like, it's not growing fast enough, it's not doing what I want to do fast enough. A lot of good concepts take time and they take consistency to work. I would say just be really realistic and don't assume anything when you're planning. Don't assume things are going to work out exactly the way you want. There's always going to be hiccups and you have to be ready to combat that.

Bobbi Rebell:
Is there an example of a hiccup that you can share?

Sarah L. Levey:
Oh yeah, of course. Our first Williamsburg studio was in the basement and there was a spring where we had a ton of snowstorms and then all of it melted and then it rained for like a week straight, the entire studio flooded. It cost us $20,000 which was a huge amount of money to us at the time. We had to replace all the floors, all the electrical. We had to redo basically the entire studio because of a flood. That's something that I never, I don't know, I'd never lived anywhere with a base. I don't know, it just didn't occur. It didn't occur to me and I was like, oh. I was like, I guess we have to close and do all this stuff. Then we had to get a mold check and just all of these things that you don't even think of. That was something that I was like, oh, okay, cool.

Bobbi Rebell:
Oh my gosh. Did you have insurance? Did you have insurance?

Sarah L. Levey:
Not at the time.

Bobbi Rebell:
Okay, but now you do.

Sarah L. Levey:
That is right. Lesson learned.

Sarah's everyday money tip:

Well, I used to all the time, purely out of convenience. I'm a big Postmates girl, I'm Postmating everything and then all of a sudden I was looking at my credit card bill. I was like, what am I spending so much money on? Everything was adding up. Once you do the delivery fee, you add the tip. I'm spending $30 on lunch every single day and it just adds up. Now I make a point where every Monday, I'm very lucky Whole Foods is directly across the street from our office. I stop at Whole Foods every Monday. I'll grab lettuce, vegetables, chicken, whatever it is so I have enough and I bring it to the office and I stick it in the fridge and it's basically like I have enough at the office to make lunch for myself every day. It takes so much pressure off of like making sure I order with enough time before I have to go to a meeting, being really stressed about it. It's here. I can make it when I need it and I'm set for the week.

Bobbi’s Financial Grownup tips

1.Create additional stakeholders in your projects. Sarah empowered her initial round of teachers by paying them per students. The first win is that it saved Sarah on her cost, but the even more important thing it did was it rewarded the teachers for the impact that they made on the business. The more students they could bring, the more they made.

2.Buy insurance if you need it. Sarah blew it at first on this one. The flood sounds like it was a nightmare. Insurance would have cushioned the blow.

Episode Links:

• Blinkist - The app I’m loving right now. Please use our link to support the show and get a free trial.

• Sarah’s website - www.y7-studio.com

Follow Sarah and Y7!

• Facebook - @Y7Studio

• Twitter - @Y7Studio

• Instagram - @Y7Studio

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.

Ditch the coffee and forget the drinks meeting. Walking is a proven way to bring out the most creative ideas- and make the best connections with the people who can help you succeed. We talk how to set up walking meetings, how to generate ideas while walking, and how to keep walking when the weather foils your plans. 

Here are 5 Ways to Walk Your Way to Success

• Walk alone in silence

• Walk while listening to spoken audio

• Walk while listening to music

• Walk with a friend

• Walk for a business meeting

Episode Links:

• App for library books: Libby

• Nice piece in Readers Digest on the benefits of walking

• Erica Keswin Financial Grownup episode

• The Tim Ferriss Show podcast

• Charles Duhigg The Power of Habit audio book

• Tony Robbins Awaken The Giant Within book

• CNBC story on business leaders walking meetings - The meeting hack loved by CEOs at Google, Facebook and LinkedIn

• Stanford University study - Give Your Ideas Some Legs: The Positive Effect of Walking on Creative Thinking

• Richard Branson’s blog post Why You Should Stand Up In Meetings