0:00

Today on radical personal finance we celebrate episode

0:02

1000 Welcome

0:21

radical personal finance show dedicated to providing

0:23

you with the knowledge skills insight and

0:25

encouragement you need the liberation Hold

0:28

on After

0:32

a thousand times or probably a hundred times

0:35

I Rich

0:40

and meaningful life now and a plan for financial freedom

0:42

in ten years or less. That is the line It's

0:51

good to

0:54

show you that concentration is never

0:56

it's never Something that

0:58

you should take for granted rather you got to

1:00

be focused at all times here I am running

1:02

on autopilot and not concentrating and messing it up.

1:04

But anyway, thank you for being here for episode

1:06

1000 My name is Joshua sheets.

1:08

I am your host and today on the show We

1:10

are going to celebrate a little bit together

1:13

because as longtime listeners know Episode

1:15

1000 is an important milestone

1:17

for me in the history

1:19

of radical personal finance Why

1:22

you may ask well because if you go

1:24

back in the very beginning of this podcast

1:26

back to the very first episodes You

1:29

will find in episode 11. I believe

1:31

it is that I committed

1:33

to doing a thousand episodes

1:35

of this podcast and I

1:38

said in the very beginning that

1:41

I'll do a thousand episodes of this podcast

1:43

whether anyone listens or not and Thankfully,

1:46

I'm quite grateful that many people have chosen

1:48

to listen that's an honor and I'm grateful

1:51

for that because Well, I'd

1:53

like to talk tough and say that I

1:55

would have followed on through on that whether

1:57

or not anybody listened That was my

1:59

intention and that was what I planned to

2:01

do, but it certainly would not have been

2:03

as easy to get to

2:06

episode 1000 as it was to

2:08

get here with having listeners and

2:11

having people knowing that I'm

2:13

making a difference, knowing getting so many nice

2:16

letters from so many of

2:18

you, etc., has made it much, much easier to

2:20

get to episode 1000. That's not to say it

2:23

has been easy. It has not been easy. It

2:25

has required a significant amount of determination

2:28

from me, and I'm proud of that. What

2:30

I thought we would do today, there are many things I was

2:32

considering. How could we celebrate episode 1000? Over

2:36

the months, I've had various big plans.

2:39

Originally, my goal was to do

2:42

a cross-country tour and have

2:44

meetups all around the United States and perhaps

2:46

all around the world. I had to put

2:49

those plans on hold. I couldn't quite bring

2:51

them to fruition. Maybe we'll be

2:53

able to do them. We are having a

2:55

family camp, which in my mind is a

2:57

celebration of more in-person events, something I've been

2:59

wanting to accomplish. Of course,

3:01

in episode 500, I played many

3:04

of your wonderful notes and audios

3:06

and things like that, but I

3:08

thought what would be most interesting

3:10

for me and for you

3:12

would be just to use episode 1000

3:15

and reflect a little bit on

3:17

the milestone and share with you

3:19

a few of the lessons that I have

3:21

learned from this experience. In

3:24

my own life, doing

3:26

radical personal finance was

3:30

one of the most significant

3:33

events in my life because

3:35

it was one of the most significant

3:38

times in which I

3:41

believed in myself and

3:44

I charted my own path. I

3:48

did it in the face of quite a lot of, not

3:51

opposition, that wouldn't be fair to say, but just

3:54

lack of people really understanding. Yet

3:57

for me, as a man, I was

3:59

a man. making a decision saying this

4:01

is something I want to do, I'm

4:04

going to do it even when

4:06

it's uncertain and here's

4:09

what I'm going to do. It's gonna be

4:11

a significant investment of time, resources, et cetera,

4:13

may or may not work out and has

4:15

enormous possibilities of failure, has some

4:18

slight possibilities of success. It's

4:20

outside of areas that I can

4:22

predict, it's

4:25

not predictable, but it's something that I wanna do and

4:27

I'm gonna do it. That is

4:30

something that for me has

4:32

been extremely transformative in my

4:34

life and in my character.

4:39

When I reflect upon that, I

4:44

can clearly chart the decision

4:46

to pursue radical personal finance

4:50

as a dividing point in my life. I

4:53

don't want to be hyperbolic. This

4:55

is not hyperbole. If

4:59

it is, hyperbole, it's only a little bit, but making

5:03

the decision to pursue radical personal finance

5:05

was for me a very large decision

5:08

where I had to believe in myself and I

5:10

hadn't done a lot of

5:12

that previously. It's

5:14

not a sob story. I've

5:16

lived a very privileged and charmed

5:18

life. I've had nothing

5:21

but blessings in my life, but there comes a time in

5:23

a man's life, in any man's life, in which he has

5:25

to make a decision, as

5:27

to what he's going to do, why he's going

5:29

to do it, and he has to make that

5:31

decision on his own. But when

5:33

he finally does that, it

5:36

seems to me that whether it's a success

5:38

or whether it's a failure, it

5:41

has good effects, good effects

5:43

in a man's life. And

5:45

it's something that I'm quite proud of because

5:47

it has spurred me

5:49

to make more of those

5:51

decisions. As I reflect,

5:54

there were other decisions that I

5:56

made prior to starting

5:58

radical personal finance. Of course, many... other decisions that

6:00

I made that were also in that similar vein. But

6:03

those decisions often seemed relatively small and

6:05

relatively safe. I can think of some

6:08

of them. For example, when I graduated

6:10

from college, I decided I was going

6:12

to go and travel around the United

6:15

States. And so I set off

6:17

by myself. I didn't have a job. I didn't have

6:19

any clear plans. I had a little bit of money

6:21

saved up. But I went off and I traveled all

6:23

around the United States in my old cheap car and

6:26

that was something that I did all by myself. It

6:28

was challenging for me but it was also a

6:30

great experience that I really enjoyed.

6:32

And I started to experience the

6:34

joy of having to rely on

6:37

myself and I saw how that

6:39

decision impacted me. There were

6:41

other decisions when I became an entrepreneur after getting laid

6:43

off from my corporate

6:45

job that I had after college. Then

6:47

I had to go and be an

6:49

entrepreneur. But it was still relatively safe

6:52

in the sense that I wasn't bearing responsibility.

6:55

Radical personal finance was different because I was

6:58

bearing more responsibility when

7:00

I decided to do that.

7:02

So let me lay out the story for so many of

7:05

you who were not there in

7:07

the early days. So I think you'll

7:09

find some of the inside history interesting.

7:13

After I graduated college, I worked

7:15

for a short time in a large

7:17

corporate marketing and brand management consulting

7:19

company. It was a

7:21

company that I had started working for during

7:23

college and they had provided me

7:26

the opportunity to have a flexible

7:28

work schedule when I was in college so

7:30

that I could finish my college work. In

7:32

exchange, they asked me to consider

7:35

working for them after

7:37

college. So when

7:39

I graduated, I went and said, okay, I

7:42

graduated. Do you have another

7:44

job for me? And basically they said, no, we

7:46

don't. I didn't want to keep working

7:48

in the relatively low level job that I was working in.

7:51

So I quit. But as I was

7:53

quitting on the way out, then they

7:55

said, hey, listen, we'd hate to lose you as an

7:57

employee. Come Back to us in a little time.

8:00

The when I went travelling, I loaded

8:02

up my car and traveled all around

8:04

the United States by myself, in an

8:06

old old tiny cheap car and. Then.

8:09

I went back and saw my boss when I

8:11

got back and they offered me a job and

8:13

that with the job came with a nice pay

8:16

raise. It came with it to a new set

8:18

of duties into a new jobs that they had

8:20

set up into the company and they hired me

8:22

and then two other ladies into the same position

8:24

that works for that company for I think a

8:26

year or so and. I. Was doing

8:28

it for I didn't like the job. I didn't

8:31

enjoy the job at all. Ah, by was doing

8:33

it because. I. Felt like I was fulfilling

8:35

the commitment they had given me some extra scholarship

8:37

money for college. In. Exchange

8:39

for my considering working for them so I

8:41

thought I would work for them. My plan

8:44

was to work for them for a year

8:46

and then to quit. And so my planned

8:48

quitting day was January of two Thousand and

8:50

Nine that I had decided I was going

8:53

to move on to something else. I didn't

8:55

have a clear idea or goal of what

8:57

else I wanted to do, but I was

8:59

gonna quit in January. Two Thousand Nine! In

9:02

June of Two Thousand and Eight I got

9:04

called into my boss's office and I got

9:06

laid off. Totally out of the

9:08

blue. didn't expect it's and Sussex. I

9:10

had just gotten a pay raise. I

9:12

thought everything was going Great Author here

9:14

I am. Doing. Something

9:16

I don't want to do to satisfy

9:19

corporate loyalty is that got laid off

9:21

and I don't exactly know what to

9:23

do. So I was looking around considering

9:26

options and then. Few. Weeks later,

9:28

I had lunch with those. To

9:30

one of the one of the my supervisor booth

9:33

than despise prisoner Something The I laid me off

9:35

and we were having lunch. And. I

9:37

was sharing with him a little with

9:39

a vision that I had of what

9:42

I wanted to do and he suggested

9:44

to me that I consider going into

9:46

the world of financial services and at

9:49

the time I was a personal finance

9:51

aficionados, but I had no interest in

9:53

the world of professional financial services. Being

9:55

a personal finance aficionados, I had developed

9:58

a in and pence skepticism towards financial

10:00

advice. There is the financial advisor industry,

10:02

all the scams, all of the worthless

10:05

financial products, etc and I had pretty

10:07

much become a bogle head and in

10:09

our I was a by term invest

10:11

the difference I was a Dave Ramsey

10:14

guy was a bogle head pretty through

10:16

and through an didn't have much interest

10:18

in financial services. but this guy son

10:21

had been a college intern during the

10:23

college in program at Northwestern Mutual which

10:25

is a large life insurance company and

10:28

now large paint services conglomerate. And.

10:31

They. Had good experiences as a he referred me

10:33

and I went in for an interview and I

10:35

went in pretty skeptical. I. Did. A

10:37

little research found out the whole. That northwestern.

10:40

Mutual is basically the whole life insurance king

10:42

and second half of my first interview I

10:44

spent growing the Northwestern guy about a whole

10:46

life insurance and how can you, what use

10:49

is this possibly have et cetera. And after

10:51

that though I liked him and I liked

10:53

how he was able to, he was able

10:55

to respond to my. Questions:

10:58

He was a thoughtful analytical guy.

11:00

The guy that I interviewed with

11:02

with Us retired Navy Navy guy

11:04

Engineer very analytical guy. really enjoyed

11:06

the interaction so I started interviewing.

11:08

Went through the whole round of

11:10

interviews, interviewed with a couple of

11:12

other companies and basically I realized

11:15

what I've always wanted to learn

11:17

to sell and to be good

11:19

chance for me to learn to

11:21

and that I don't have. Much.

11:23

Of something that's better. And if I do this and

11:25

I learned to sell all, be really grateful for that.

11:28

Even if I don't do this for the long term.

11:31

and I found enough. Discussions.

11:33

And arguments and information about financial products

11:35

that I realized that I was fairly

11:38

Overall, fairly ignorant the of the financial

11:40

space and I didn't think that I

11:42

was going to have an ethical issue

11:44

of. Working. In the financial services

11:46

industry as long as I was careful. so

11:49

i joined the company northwestern

11:51

mutual and i'm glad that

11:53

i did because the time

11:56

that i joined the industry

11:58

was during the stocks and

12:00

basically economic collapse of 2008. I

12:04

was driving to my insurance licensing

12:06

course in Miami every day, listening

12:09

at the time I was an inveterate

12:11

NPR listener. I would listen to NPR

12:13

all the time, back and forth, and

12:15

here I am listening to the world

12:18

collapse as I head into the financial

12:20

services industry. And that was when I

12:22

began. As I

12:24

began, I did fairly well in the industry. I was

12:26

never a real star, but I

12:28

was always a solid producer. But

12:31

over the years, I invested quite heavily into

12:34

learning more about financial services. Because

12:36

I got into the business more

12:39

with an interest in finance, personal

12:41

finance, rather than being entirely

12:44

focused on making a fortune for myself,

12:47

I was focused on education. And

12:49

I would still love to listen to talk radio.

12:54

I never listened to music. I still really

12:56

don't. And so I listened to talk radio.

12:59

And then this was the early days of podcasting. I had

13:01

started listening to podcasts in college. And so

13:03

I would listen to hours and hours and

13:05

hours of podcasts. And as

13:07

I learned and studied over time, I

13:10

became a chartered life underwriter and a

13:12

chartered financial consultant and a certified financial

13:14

planner. And about four or five other

13:16

designations, I ultimately started pursuing a master's

13:18

degree in financial services and

13:21

ultimately finished that. And as I grew

13:23

to learn more and more, I found

13:25

that I couldn't really enjoy financial media

13:27

the way that I once did. And

13:31

the biggest frustration in my life was

13:33

when I'd be sitting at a table talking to

13:35

somebody about finance, and they would say, well, Dave

13:38

Ramsey says such and such, or Susie Orman says

13:40

such and such. And I just got annoyed that

13:42

it seemed like Dave Ramsey could spend more time

13:44

speaking to my clients than I could. And I

13:46

thought, well, Dave Ramsey doesn't know anything about financial

13:48

planning. He's saying, this is this that's wrong, this

13:51

is wrong, this is wrong. And Dave's not looking

13:53

at it from this perspective and that perspective and

13:55

the other perspective. And after all, I

13:57

should be the guy who is. doing

14:00

this. And so as I observed

14:02

this and I became aware, I started listening

14:05

to a couple of podcasts about podcasting

14:07

and I thought, you know what, it's

14:09

probably not that hard, I should start

14:11

a podcast. And the

14:13

challenge is that being in a regulated

14:16

industry, I figured, you know what, I'm

14:19

not sure if I can do this. And I

14:21

tried to look into the laws, I tried to,

14:23

I spoke to a couple of lawyers and I

14:26

thought I had found a solution. I thought that,

14:28

you know what, I could start a podcast if

14:31

I could

14:34

do it and not make wrong

14:37

forward-looking statements and absurd claims

14:39

and things like that. And I just did it

14:41

anonymously. I didn't tell people I was a financial

14:43

advisor. Then I could start a podcast and then

14:45

I would have the ability to say to my

14:48

clients, hey, listen to this, I did a podcast

14:50

on this subject. Here's an hour of me teaching

14:52

about this thing. One of the

14:54

things that annoyed me as a financial advisor was

14:57

that in essence you have to have

14:59

the same conversations very

15:02

repetitively. And I just

15:05

grew really frustrated with it. I thought, why do I

15:07

have to have this conversation again and again? Why can't

15:09

I just send somebody a video that I make or

15:11

an audio file that I make and

15:14

explain, hey, listen to this and then you'll know everything

15:16

about, you know, there's these 10 questions you're going to

15:18

ask me and I'm going to answer all these upfront

15:20

but I'm going to do it in a way that's

15:22

going to be really time effective. And of course, I

15:24

didn't have to start a podcast to do that. I

15:27

could have just recorded those audio files and done it but

15:29

I wasn't smart enough to actually follow through and do this

15:31

at the time. I didn't test it and see how it

15:33

would work. But I decided

15:39

I would start a podcast. And so

15:42

in 2013, I sat down in my

15:44

spare bedroom and with a cheap little

15:46

voice recorder that I had gotten with

15:48

my dragon naturally speaking subscription and

15:51

recorded episode one of Radical

15:54

Personal Finance and I have still kept it in

15:56

the podcast feed. So if you're interested in listening

15:58

to episode one, it is still there. and

16:01

it's available and you can hear it.

16:03

It was just me talking, basically giving

16:05

my frustrations and my vision of what

16:07

I thought a good financial podcast could

16:09

be and what I was gonna try

16:11

to do. Then I worked through

16:13

all the tech of figuring out how to launch

16:15

it and then I started recording more podcast episodes.

16:17

So I wound up in the first three weeks,

16:19

I recorded 10 episodes and I found that I

16:21

really loved doing it and I felt like it

16:23

was good. After I had recorded episode

16:26

one, I went back and listened

16:28

to it and I basically just asked myself the question, would

16:30

I listen to that? After

16:32

all, here I am as a guy who

16:34

listens to huge amounts of talk radio and

16:36

podcasts and things like that. I

16:38

recognized that, yeah, I would listen to that, it wasn't

16:40

terrible, it kept my interest. I

16:43

said, well, good enough for me, let's keep going. So I

16:45

recorded 10 episodes of the podcast in the first three weeks,

16:47

figured out how to get a logo,

16:49

figured out how to get an RSS feed online,

16:52

did all the stuff and was just getting going.

16:54

During that time, again, I had spoken with a lawyer

16:57

at the home office and I thought, okay, I need

16:59

to go ahead and make sure they know about it.

17:01

I've got the legal standing here. So

17:06

then I submitted an outside business activity

17:09

form to my chief compliance officer, letting

17:11

her know what I was doing. I

17:13

get a phone call and

17:16

she basically said, Josh, are

17:19

you crazy? What on earth are you doing? How could you

17:21

possibly think that this is something that you're allowed to do?

17:23

What is wrong with you? Take that

17:25

thing off the internet, you can't have this on

17:27

the internet. And basically I was given an ultimatum

17:29

of either take it off the internet or you're

17:31

done here today. Well, at the time my wife

17:34

was six months pregnant with our first baby and

17:36

I had spent six years building a

17:38

financial planning business that was finally profitable, was

17:40

finally working, I was finally making money. It

17:43

wasn't that hard, I was pretty good at

17:45

it. And I had no idea of what

17:47

to do with a podcast. It

17:53

was just kind of an interest of mine. And

17:56

so I took it down. And I

17:58

remember that being an enormous. The.

18:00

Emotional. Crisis for me a

18:02

hissy remember writing a hook Cliff

18:05

Ravens Craft the podcast Answer Man

18:07

this emotional email of plus here's

18:09

my thing. I don't know what,

18:11

dude. Is gonna

18:14

dealing with it at me awhile to calm

18:16

down a little bit and does deal with

18:18

the emotions of it's and the society. I

18:20

think of what's going on here and I

18:22

started to look at the number of people

18:24

who download the podcast. I had a few

18:26

emails by them and then a third of

18:29

your research and I realized that hey, A

18:31

lot of people actually started listen to the

18:33

podcast that the initial download numbers were pretty

18:35

healthy it's and people were interested in what

18:37

I had to say which was very which

18:39

is pretty cool And more importantly, I had

18:41

found that I really love the experience of

18:44

recording at all during those first three weeks.

18:46

It was an obsession. I was getting up

18:48

at four o'clock in the morning working late

18:50

at night during recording. The podcast is loving

18:52

every minute of it and I realized that

18:54

was a real obsession of mine to talk

18:56

about this and I imagined all the different

18:58

things that it would be interesting to dig

19:01

into. That you can't begin to

19:03

and the wife of of normal everyday

19:05

financial advisor but I had no plan.

19:07

And so it took me about

19:10

six months to become convinced that

19:12

this was something but I wanted

19:14

to pursue and. Then.

19:16

The problem was I had no plans and

19:19

podcasting was just have a crapshoot. There was

19:21

no way to know how to make money

19:23

on. it's because basically I became convinced that

19:25

if you have an audience than there's lots

19:28

of ways to make money. If you don't

19:30

have an audience, there's no way to make

19:32

money. And all comes down to having an

19:35

audience were, How do you know if you

19:37

could have an audience? Ordinarily the the appropriate

19:39

path would be to build an audience little

19:41

by little and then only. Make.

19:44

Some kind of change when you have

19:46

an audience, but since I wasn't allowed

19:48

to do a podcast, then I didn't

19:51

see any pathway forward. What What am

19:53

I supposed to do? So at that

19:55

time. I decided. that

19:58

i needed another plan Now,

20:01

I had money saved, I wasn't broke, but

20:03

I had, again, a newborn baby and

20:05

a wife to take care of and

20:08

I was the sole income earner for

20:10

our household and wasn't

20:12

going to change that. So I figured, well, what do

20:14

I do? How am I going to get myself out

20:16

of this mess? And I

20:18

wasn't willing to spend savings

20:20

down because there was no predictability with

20:22

it. I didn't know how long do you need

20:25

to do a podcast for five years and then

20:27

you make a dollar, do you need to do

20:29

it for five months and then make a dollar?

20:31

I had no ability to project. So

20:34

finally, I realized that the

20:36

way to solve the problem was

20:38

two things. Number one was to

20:40

leave financial services because if I

20:42

couldn't do this as a licensed

20:45

individual, then I would

20:47

just leave financial services and step two,

20:49

get a job. And I just

20:52

needed a job, any kind

20:54

of job doing anything else in the world that

20:56

would allow me to record a podcast on the

20:58

side. So I looked around, I thought

21:00

about selling cars, I went

21:02

and interviewed with, I was looking for sales jobs,

21:04

so I went and interviewed with selling cars, thought

21:06

about a number of different things, tried a handful

21:09

of different things. But ultimately,

21:11

I was able to get a

21:13

job working as a back office

21:15

financial planner. And once I secured

21:19

that, then I closed my business, surrendered

21:21

all of my licenses, canceled all my

21:23

licenses and started.

21:26

And so again, what I negotiated was

21:28

I was working as a back office

21:30

financial planner for a financial planning firm.

21:32

So I would create financial

21:35

plans for other advisors and

21:37

then I would train young advisors on how

21:39

to present them, how to understand the financial

21:41

planning, etc. And that was just enough to

21:43

make a living. I wasn't making anything more

21:45

than covering my bills, but it allowed me

21:47

to podcast, work from home, etc. And

21:49

so in 2014, I

21:51

shut down my business, surrendered

21:54

all my licenses and

21:56

launched. And that was episode 11 of radical

22:00

personal finance in July of 2014.

22:04

In those early months, I didn't have a plan

22:07

other than just a podcast as much as I

22:09

could. Podcast, podcast, podcast. I

22:12

was basically doing four to

22:14

five episodes a week. I

22:17

was trying to figure out, well, as the show started to

22:19

grow and continue to grow, I was trying to figure out

22:21

how do I make a living off of this thing. In

22:24

the early years, my plan was to

22:26

go ahead and start a new financial

22:28

planning firm because I had figured out

22:30

that if I registered my

22:33

own registered investment advisory firm,

22:35

RIA, that I

22:37

could be my own chief compliance officer. If

22:40

I was my own chief compliance officer and I

22:42

wanted to go and do a podcast, then

22:45

I could go and do a podcast. To

22:47

comment on that for a moment, there's

22:50

no fundamental reason why a financial

22:53

advisor or an insurance agent

22:56

is legally barred from having

22:58

a podcast. You would

23:00

know that because many financial advisors for

23:02

years have had radio shows where they

23:05

answer questions and they advertise their

23:07

services. Podcasting

23:10

is fundamentally no different. Financial advisor may go

23:12

and have a morning money minute, can

23:14

go and be interviewed on a talk show

23:16

and YouTube and podcasts or just other expressions

23:19

of that. The problem comes

23:21

down to a large firm

23:23

controlling its liability. If you have a

23:25

large company that has a bunch of

23:28

lots and lots of agents, then

23:30

they have to create very large policies

23:33

to protect their liability. An

23:36

enormous company like Northwestern Mutual,

23:38

who I was working for, is

23:42

not going to let every agent just go out

23:44

and start a podcast. They

23:47

did have a compliance route for

23:50

doing things like TV appearances at the time. I'm

23:52

a decade removed from the business, so I don't

23:54

know much about it anymore. But at the time,

23:57

the process was you would... were

24:00

going to go be on the local TV show,

24:02

you would write out a script of everything you

24:04

were going to say, you would submit the script

24:06

to the compliance attorneys in advance, they would review

24:08

the script, give you their approval, you would go

24:10

do the show and then you would of course

24:12

have to keep a copy of it in the

24:14

compliance records in case it was ever needed and

24:16

that was how you could go and do public

24:18

appearances. But I couldn't figure out any way

24:20

that I could possibly do that with a podcast. I

24:23

wanted to do a lot of content and there

24:25

was just no way and they wouldn't let me

24:27

advertise it and I just threw up my hands.

24:30

But if I opened my own REA, then I

24:33

could be my chief compliance officer and I could

24:35

do that. And basically, the

24:37

thing you really have to stay away from if

24:39

you're a licensed financial advisor is

24:41

just being a bozo and making forward-looking

24:45

ridiculous statements. So

24:47

you would never say, hey, the stock market is going to

24:50

go up by 50% next year, here's why

24:52

you should buy this fund. But

24:54

most normal educated ethical financial advisors don't

24:56

even get anywhere near those kinds of

24:58

things. So it really doesn't matter. So

25:01

that was the original plan. I wrote up

25:03

the paperwork, wrote my form ADV,

25:06

I filed it with the state. I

25:08

was waiting for approval when

25:11

the show really started to go well and

25:13

I started to have a significant number of

25:16

listeners. And I looked at the amount of time

25:18

that I was investing into the podcast and I

25:21

realized I don't know that I can

25:23

do both of these things. I don't think I can

25:25

be a good financial advisor and also a good podcaster.

25:28

I don't think they work well together for the same reason

25:30

why it's hard to be a good financial planner and a

25:32

portfolio manager. The jobs are just better

25:34

served by two people. It's

25:36

better to have a financial planner and a

25:39

portfolio manager working side by side just like

25:41

it would be better to have a financial

25:43

planner and a podcaster working side by side

25:46

so that you have one person who's doing

25:48

marketing, who's doing the public facing stuff and

25:50

you know another person who's meeting with clients.

25:53

Because the burden for a financial advisor of

25:55

serving clients and serving them effectively, it's

25:58

a significant amount of time, a significant amount of time. amount

26:00

of work and I didn't think

26:02

that I didn't see

26:04

how I could do both. So

26:07

I withdrew my application for

26:09

the RIA before it was

26:11

approved and decided I was

26:14

just going to go all in on podcasting

26:16

and keep financial planning as a backup option.

26:19

I decided that – so

26:22

one more comment. One of the

26:24

things that frustrated me for many years was

26:28

the enormous

26:30

quantity of real conflicts

26:34

of interest and perceived conflicts of

26:36

interest in the financial planning

26:38

business. I'm someone

26:41

who cares deeply about ethics, morality, right

26:43

and wrong. Part of it is my

26:45

nature, part of it is how I

26:47

was raised, part of it is just

26:49

– I don't know,

26:52

just I guess by nature. It's inward. I

26:54

want to see the weak and

26:56

the innocent protected. I despise bullies.

26:58

I despise predators. So

27:04

it's important to me to deal with those things. When

27:07

you're in financial planning or

27:09

any aspect of financial services, it's an extreme –

27:11

it can be. It's

27:13

certainly an industry that is fraught with

27:16

risk and potential problems and

27:18

in many cases throughout history, it is

27:21

and has been an extremely

27:23

predatory business because

27:25

of the nature

27:27

of the business where you're dealing

27:30

with large amounts of money, where

27:32

people can get rich quick. It

27:34

attracts a certain type

27:36

of person and there's a

27:38

high correlation between the kind of people who

27:40

are attracted to financial services and

27:43

to predators. There

27:45

are also other people who are attracted who

27:47

want to serve people and want to help

27:49

people effectively. Because there's big

27:51

money and it's all other people's money and

27:54

there are enormous leveraging abilities,

27:56

financial services Attracts a

27:58

lot of predators. Those predators

28:01

prey on innocent, helpless

28:03

on defenseless, their skin,

28:05

defenseless people, and. That

28:08

creates a very

28:10

difficult reputation for.

28:13

The industry at the time I was

28:15

very young when I started Incentives services.

28:17

I was twenty three years old and

28:19

so I was very young and I

28:22

didn't have the kind of self confidence

28:24

that a more mature man with have.

28:26

and so all the things that in

28:28

even just selling life insurance for whatever

28:30

reason there were on on of there

28:32

still are but maybe just my perspective

28:34

is change for their all kinds of.

28:38

Reputation All issues about people being

28:40

life insurance salesman life insurance salesman

28:42

or perceived as being aggressive and

28:45

pushy and and all of that

28:47

especially. Whole Life Insurance

28:49

Salesmen and I didn't want to

28:51

be associated with a lot of

28:53

that today. I. Now appreciate life

28:55

insurance salesman out more than I ever

28:58

did and but that discuss come with

29:00

maturity. So I

29:02

was frustrated with the conflicts

29:04

of interest. I remember when

29:06

I finally got out of.

29:09

Of. The. Of the

29:11

industry and I finally had severed

29:13

all of my licenses and I

29:15

was sitting at the breakfast table

29:18

with my family and I realized

29:20

I feel free. I

29:22

feel free for the first time in. Years.

29:28

And. It. Of and I

29:30

realized how heavy the burden of

29:32

all of was on me. And

29:34

it's not only conflicts of interest

29:37

to proceed conflicts of interests but.

29:39

When. Your financial adviser you constantly have to

29:41

think about making the right decision. Every single

29:44

time you have to think about your your

29:46

duties to the clients your to keep careful

29:48

case notes for when you get sued. It

29:50

is the non stop. Never.

29:53

Ending. Bird.

29:56

And. Even. Those who

29:58

bandage it. Straight. forwardly

30:00

still wind up with

30:02

issues because in

30:04

that business, even the most

30:08

righteous of intentions don't work out

30:10

because people are people. I

30:12

remember as an example of this, I remember one

30:16

friend of mine who was

30:18

a young lady. I came along, counseled

30:20

her with finances. I helped

30:22

her set up an investment

30:26

plan, helped her open up a

30:28

Roth IRA, helped her get life

30:30

insurance and I sold

30:33

her a small whole life insurance

30:35

policy. It fit everything

30:37

that – everything was good.

30:39

My recommendations were prudent. Everything was good. We

30:41

had done – there was nothing that was

30:43

wrong with my professional recommendations.

30:46

Everything that I had recommended to

30:48

her was reasonable and appropriate. Then

30:52

three months later, maybe six months, I

30:54

don't remember, but some months

30:56

later, she cancels

30:59

everything and bails on the whole plan.

31:03

When you do that, you lose all your money. You

31:06

lose all your money in the life insurance policy.

31:08

You get back money on investments, less

31:11

commissions and fees that I had gotten paid.

31:14

But the worst was she just canceled everything and

31:16

of course I got chargebacks, etc. It

31:19

took me a while to figure it out because I had –

31:22

what I realized was I had

31:24

a very forceful personality. I

31:26

never used aggressive sales tactics.

31:29

I think to the extent that life insurance

31:31

agents ever used to use those aggressive sales

31:33

tactics, that was basically a 1980s thing and

31:35

it just wasn't a thing when I'm –

31:37

and I don't think it's a thing anymore.

31:41

But I still – I was good at

31:43

painting a vision. I was good at showing

31:45

people where they could be, helping

31:47

them see a vision of where they could be

31:50

in 30 years if they started saving money. And

31:53

yet when I would disappear, then they would get

31:55

distracted and do other things and I

31:58

Just felt terrible. And those is

32:00

an example how you do your very best

32:03

than things don't work out and you know

32:05

then that you've harm someone. Of course you've

32:07

been harmed yourself. Because I you commissions are

32:09

reversed, you now have a canceled i Am

32:12

reversal on your history, etc. It is. It's

32:14

frustrating, but. I'd harm someone even

32:16

though I had to the best of

32:18

intentions. So being free of all that

32:20

felt amazing. And my mission in the

32:22

early days of the show was I

32:24

don't ever want to go back into

32:27

those conflicts of interest. I want to

32:29

be perfectly objective. I want to to

32:31

have. I. Want to have

32:33

perfect objectivity And to this guide in

32:35

my early efforts on the Shelves site

32:37

I in the beginning of the show

32:40

I said I'm going to build a

32:42

podcast that doesn't rely on things that

32:44

would harm my objectivity. Are not going

32:47

to take any sponsors, I'm not going

32:49

take any ads. I'm exclusively going to

32:51

bring people. Work. With people

32:54

in a purely independent and objective way.

32:56

That was division. That was the goal

32:58

of it's So my first plan was

33:00

to build a listener support model. the

33:03

time I was a great admirer of

33:05

Jack Spirit. Go in his The Survival

33:07

Podcasts and see Head built his. Revenue

33:10

model on a listener support

33:13

model where he had have.

33:15

Some. Extra member resources and things like

33:17

that for those a sport is show

33:20

financially and he had some advertisers and

33:22

so I thought this is a good

33:24

model I like I like how the

33:26

skin of work. So I started building

33:29

a membership site and set with us

33:31

difficult early stories think I was. I

33:33

was planning on on launching the membership

33:35

site with episode one hundred was the

33:38

plants I built others membership sites. And

33:40

a was gonna be a voluntary contribution from

33:43

my audience to support me so I could

33:45

be independent of of conflicts of interest. And.

33:49

Somewhere. around with called episode ninety five

33:51

right before i'm ready to launch my membership

33:53

sites i was getting everything ready and playing

33:56

with met changing with some of the settings

33:58

with my rss feed which is technical

34:00

behind the scenes thing that makes podcasts work.

34:03

And I wound up deleting my RSS feed. And

34:06

so I went overnight, right

34:10

before my big launch, I

34:12

delete my entire RSS feed, and

34:14

I deleted all of my subscribers.

34:19

Could laugh now, but it was not fun at the

34:21

time. And it was an innocent mistake. I can't remember

34:23

any of the technical details at the moment. I was

34:25

trying to redirect something, and I pushed

34:28

the red button somehow that I didn't

34:30

know was a dangerous thing. And

34:33

so I launched my listener

34:35

support model with my new membership

34:37

site, and the whole thing fizzled.

34:42

And it took a while. It took a

34:44

couple months, but all my listeners eventually found

34:46

their way back and more. But

34:49

it was a pretty difficult, it was a

34:51

pretty challenging thing. Anyway, some people signed up

34:53

for the listener support model, and

34:55

that was good. But then I faced this

34:57

challenge, that every time I would sit down

34:59

to create, I was trying to figure out

35:02

what is the value proposition, what do I

35:04

offer to my members that they're willing

35:06

to pay for? And my ambition, because

35:09

of all this conflict of interest stuff, was my

35:11

ambition was always to provide a 10x return on

35:13

anything that someone would pay me. So if someone's

35:15

going to pay me 50 bucks, I want them

35:17

to get $500 worth of value. It's

35:19

always what I've shopped for. And

35:23

I tried, but every time I would sit down to create

35:25

extra content, I would just say, oh, this is too good.

35:28

I should just put this out on the show. So

35:30

I would just create more podcasts. I would

35:32

just podcast, podcast, podcast, podcast. And I basically

35:35

didn't have much to offer the listeners. And

35:38

it was sort of kind of working. Along

35:40

the way, I upgraded the website, and a

35:42

friend of mine is a web developer, so

35:45

he started building me a really

35:47

beautiful website. So we just scraped the whole

35:49

listener thing, and I replaced

35:51

it with other things. I don't need to go through the blow

35:53

By blow, but these were continual themes

35:55

along the way that over the last

35:57

thousand episodes, the things that I've done.

36:00

They. Tried to figure out

36:02

and struggled with a i would do things

36:04

like ads I would bring on, add sponsorships,

36:07

And then some of them were good set,

36:09

some of them weren't a good sits. I

36:11

always worried hosts personally that all the sponsors

36:13

and I have to do this personal endorsement

36:16

and that was something that became very difficult

36:18

to do Because how do I check out

36:20

a company well enough to know. That

36:24

air that they are excellent,

36:26

etc. And. Again, I don't

36:28

need to go through all of the twists

36:30

and turns, but try to share just a

36:32

little bit so that you can understand that

36:35

while the life of a podcast or might

36:37

seem. A exotic and

36:39

our was just a wonderful who

36:41

just got a great podcast and

36:43

it's all made. No, it's it's

36:45

work, it's a business is like

36:47

anything else. I enjoy it. I

36:49

enjoy being able to exercise my

36:51

ideas for the most part, but

36:53

the twists and turns of the

36:55

business model are are difficult. What!

36:58

What I've ultimately done with his which has turned

37:00

out to be. Pretty. Good. A

37:02

pretty good fit was number one. I

37:04

started taking on private clients from the

37:07

work so at various times I have

37:09

done a number of different things but

37:11

the things that have really stock is

37:14

number one. I have

37:16

a small number of entrepreneurs that

37:18

I work with on an ongoing

37:20

coaching basis and usually starts with.

37:23

Personal. Finance but I mean funny

37:25

for planning, etc. People like my objectivity

37:28

and the fact that I am I

37:30

don't still don't have any connections with

37:32

have never sold financial products on here,

37:35

have never made those kind of connections

37:37

and so I have. A

37:39

syria have a a. Ongoing

37:42

clients. I work with an ongoing basis

37:45

and that is that I really enjoy

37:47

A really enjoy working with entrepreneurs because

37:49

it brings together all the best of

37:52

everything from personal finance and just kind

37:54

of standard Cfp type stuff. At Rings

37:56

in lot of times are the international

37:58

stuff that I really enjoy and it

38:01

brings in all the business starts and

38:03

all the marketing and things like that

38:05

that's worked out well. The second thing

38:08

that I do related individuals his I

38:10

offer paid consultations what has worked well

38:12

as I offer these throughout the year

38:14

at different times but. These.

38:17

Are just straight forward phone consultations and

38:19

what I like about them. Is

38:21

that I'm able to focus

38:23

on kind of the eighty

38:26

percent return, which is the

38:28

ideas or the direction. I've

38:30

developed a pretty unique skill of

38:32

usually being able to cut to

38:34

the heart of an idea do

38:36

too broad. Knowledge. And exposure

38:39

and due to just brought interests I

38:41

can usually focus on the heart of

38:43

the idea When I cut out of

38:45

the equation is all of the implementation

38:48

stuff so I don't implement financial plans.

38:50

The. Way that a financial planner would do. I don't go

38:53

through a make sure everything get signed and etc and so

38:55

it's kind of up to client line shows up the pay

38:57

me. And ah, the end

38:59

of the phone call, I'm done. I

39:01

move on. and then if there's implementation

39:03

of follow through then that has to

39:05

be accomplished by the clients. And it's

39:08

an imperfect model because a huge components

39:10

of the usefulness of a financial planners

39:12

being able to prod people forward and

39:14

get them to take action when they

39:16

otherwise wouldn't at. As with most of

39:18

us, how much better would we be

39:20

if we had coaches and all the

39:22

important areas of our lives nagging us

39:25

and prodding us and reminding us for

39:27

all the things are. Necessary to

39:29

that we continue to press

39:31

forward. That's really great, but

39:33

it's not something that I'm

39:35

interested in doing and so

39:37

offerings of kind of consultations

39:39

has been been good. I

39:41

also have found that I

39:43

really enjoy teaching courses and

39:45

I create on my courses

39:47

from scratch and basically what

39:49

I've discovered is my personal

39:52

superpower is. I.

39:54

am world class at taking

39:56

a subject that i'm interested

39:58

in absorbing either

40:01

all of the material or huge quantities

40:03

of the material that

40:05

is available on the subject

40:08

and then organizing and synthesizing

40:10

those ideas to where

40:12

they're practical. And that's

40:14

what I'm really good at. And

40:17

so then the natural expression of that is

40:19

to take that and reorganize the material

40:21

from a question

40:24

or a topic or whatever that we're

40:26

dealing with, reorganize the

40:28

material in a way that makes

40:30

sense so that you understand what's

40:32

important now and what's important

40:34

later and you can move through a process

40:37

of change in a really effective and efficient

40:39

way. And for me

40:41

creating those courses is again

40:45

a real joy because I'm

40:48

able to I think answer questions

40:52

that people have about seeming

40:55

paradoxes in various industries. And

40:59

I'm able to do that by using things

41:01

like a lens of scale or understanding

41:03

what matters now and this is

41:05

why so much and

41:07

helping people understand where is advice

41:10

actually in conflict and where are you

41:12

just perceiving advice to be in conflict.

41:14

And most

41:16

financial issues especially really

41:19

are fairly straightforward and if somebody

41:22

understands both sides of an argument

41:24

or eight sides of an argument

41:27

you can see how it's the

41:30

individual conditions of the person that

41:34

ultimately determine which of these eight arguments

41:36

is the correct argument. And

41:38

to me that stuff just falls in place

41:40

pretty easily and logically etc. And so I've

41:42

tried to do that with my courses and

41:44

I'm pretty satisfied with with most of them.

41:46

Put some of them on the market, pull

41:49

some of them off, gone

41:51

back and forth. But

41:53

I'm satisfied with the quality of the content. I

41:56

was never been really satisfied with the quality of

41:58

the production. What I think is it's happened. in

42:01

the world of ideas is

42:03

simply we have created

42:06

more beautiful production around ideas

42:09

and that has made it

42:11

harder for idea people to

42:14

match that level of production. There's

42:17

a real balance here because – let

42:24

me just articulate this to teach the concept.

42:28

Ideas are a profoundly

42:31

valuable way to

42:35

share ideas and throughout history

42:37

one of the key features of a book

42:39

is simply that a book requires

42:42

one person to create it. One

42:45

man can sit down with a notebook,

42:48

a legal pad and a pen and write a

42:50

book and that book, if he

42:52

has skill as a writer, that book can

42:54

be powerful and persuasive and that's all of

42:56

the great books that we read. That's how

42:58

they've been created with one guy

43:00

sitting at his desk writing it out, one

43:04

lady with a vision for what she wanted to create

43:06

sitting down and writing out the book. Most

43:09

other forms of media require a much

43:12

larger team. This is the difference

43:14

between a book and a movie. A movie to bring a

43:16

movie to fruition requires an

43:18

enormous team of skilled specialists

43:20

to create something. In

43:23

some cases, it's better and more satisfying than

43:25

the written version. In many cases,

43:28

it's not. But it

43:30

requires a lot more specialists. In

43:34

the past, the way to get

43:36

rich on ideas was to write them down and

43:38

then sell people the ideas

43:41

for a cost.

43:44

That has been a very effective

43:46

business model. I've spent a lot

43:48

of money over the years on

43:50

extremely valuable information products. I still

43:52

reference many of those information products.

43:55

Today, the expectations have changed

43:57

and digital courses because of their...

44:00

ease of administration and

44:02

delivery have become much

44:04

more attractive. But creating

44:06

successful digital courses starts

44:09

to create the

44:11

problem of transfer,

44:13

of needing a big team, the same way that you

44:16

have the problem of needing a big team to create

44:18

a movie as compared to writing a novel. And

44:20

so I've always been frustrated with

44:22

my ability to create the high production value

44:24

that I've wanted. And

44:29

so that's one of the reasons I took a lot of

44:31

my courses down. Not complaining, not

44:33

saying I should have just sharing honestly

44:35

a little bit about the journey. Fast

44:38

forward, those

44:40

are the basic and then advertising of course

44:43

I have ads on radical personal

44:46

finance now. It has

44:48

been frustrating to me to figure out a solution

44:50

for that. I had planned to

44:52

create a solution where there were ads and then

44:54

there was a premium version where you could just

44:56

pay to have the ads off. That

44:59

hasn't worked but the ads matter. They

45:03

pay me enough to keep me wanting to

45:05

go and wanting to create podcasts. And so

45:07

those are the basic things that I have

45:09

done. Now in the future there's a lot

45:11

more room for more things but

45:14

I'm not getting into the future today. Just sharing that these

45:16

are some of the twists and turns of entrepreneurship.

45:19

Thanks to you, the show has grown. The

45:21

show has provided a lot of opportunity for

45:23

me. I haven't

45:25

looked up recent numbers but it's in the top few

45:27

percent of all podcasts. Right

45:30

now with episode 1000, my total downloads

45:32

and these numbers change based on whether

45:34

you want to use impressive numbers or

45:37

less impressive numbers. There's

45:39

a bunch of metrics for measuring this

45:41

but something like 30 million downloads, just

45:43

under 30 million downloads for episode 1000

45:46

which is great. It's

45:49

been quite the journey. I've enjoyed it.

45:52

And personally, my long time listeners

45:54

have gone with us on

45:57

quite a journey. I never really expected all of

45:59

the time. twists and turns over the

46:01

last 10 years, but I'm grateful for them. When

46:04

I began the show originally, again,

46:07

my wife was pregnant with our first baby and then the

46:09

second launch in 2014, we had our first baby. Well,

46:12

fast forward 10 years later, here

46:14

we are in 2024 and we've had five

46:16

babies. We've

46:19

traveled quite a lot. We've lived

46:21

in multiple places. We've

46:23

traveled a good amount. We've traveled

46:25

all around the United States. We've lived in

46:27

an RV with our three children. We've

46:31

lived abroad. We've traveled around the world.

46:33

I don't know how many countries,

46:35

but quite a lot. A

46:38

lot of that stuff has just been me testing things. I

46:41

enjoy learning ideas, testing them, and sharing

46:43

with you some of the lessons that

46:46

I have learned. Radical

46:48

personal finance in many ways has been a

46:51

perfect outlet for me in that way. I

46:53

can take an idea that I'm really interested in. I

46:55

can talk about that idea. I can learn about that

46:58

idea. I can share with you the ideas

47:00

and concepts and

47:03

then see those

47:05

ideas implemented in other people's lives. That's

47:08

been really exciting. Some of

47:10

the things I never anticipated. I never anticipated

47:13

leaving the United States. That was not 10 years

47:15

ago. It wouldn't have surprised me, I guess, if

47:17

you had said, this is where you'll be, just

47:19

because I'm open to that. But it was never

47:21

a plan. It was just one of those things.

47:24

It's a reaction to various events and

47:26

saw an opportunity and went for it and then learned

47:28

a little bit more and then realized, hey, you know

47:30

what? I kind of like this stuff. That

47:34

was part of the dream. Also,

47:37

though, the dream has changed. Even just the

47:39

business plan has changed over the years. When

47:42

I was 15 years old, that

47:45

was the point in which we

47:48

were first starting to use the Internet to

47:51

sell ideas to one another and sell

47:53

packages. I remember I bought some online

47:55

business course at 15 and then I

47:57

developed the goal of of

48:00

a laptop lifestyle. And I

48:02

wanted to be able to make money from my laptop. That

48:04

way I could live anywhere in the world, do what I

48:06

want and live how I want. And

48:08

it took me 15 years to accomplish it,

48:10

but eventually I did. And

48:13

in the beginning, my goals were

48:15

rather modest. When

48:18

I started radical personal finance, I wasn't trying to

48:21

make a million dollars, I wanted to make a

48:23

hundred grand from a laptop. Because I figured with

48:26

geo arbitrage and with time arbitrage and et cetera,

48:28

if I could make a hundred grand from a

48:30

laptop anywhere in the world, man, I'm doing well.

48:32

And so that was good. It took

48:34

me two or three years to do that. And

48:36

I was content. That

48:39

was what I was going for. And

48:42

then I realized though, that because

48:44

that model of just kind

48:47

of a rather

48:49

modest business, I

48:51

realized that I was never gonna be able

48:54

to have the kind of impact that I

48:56

was capable of having. I

48:59

remember distinctly in the beginning of 2017, I

49:03

was reading my Bible and I

49:05

was reading the book of Matthew. And

49:07

there's a passage in the book of

49:09

Matthew that really struck

49:12

me in a way that I had never

49:14

thought about. But it basically says, your

49:17

light of the world, a city set on a hill cannot

49:19

be hidden, nor do people light a lamp and put it

49:21

under a basket. But on the stand, and

49:23

it gives light to all in the house. In

49:26

the same way, let your

49:28

light shine before others so

49:31

that they may see your good works and

49:33

give glory to your Father who is in

49:35

heaven. And I'm sitting here looking at

49:37

my Bible and I have a note in it, but it just seemed

49:39

like in 2017, it

49:42

just felt like with that verse that

49:44

God spoke to me and said, stop playing

49:47

small. And I realized that I

49:49

had this very small vision

49:52

and I needed to change that. Because if

49:54

I was going to be faithful, then

49:56

it's not enough just to see to what I need or

49:58

what I want or have enough. money to pay

50:00

my bills, but I needed to be much

50:03

more diligent than that. That

50:05

started a process of trying to figure out how do

50:07

I stop playing small? How do I think bigger? I

50:09

think this is an appropriate time for me to pivot to over

50:12

the years many things have

50:14

changed in my own philosophy relating

50:17

to money and

50:20

long-term listeners have heard those changes. Probably

50:23

one of the biggest ones, if I

50:25

went back to 10 years, was that when

50:28

I started the podcast, I very

50:31

much saw myself as

50:33

part of the fire movement. I

50:36

was extremely interested in financial

50:38

independence, early retirement. That

50:40

was a real vision of mine.

50:43

I read all of the

50:46

big influence that I first found was

50:48

Early Retirement Extreme by Jacob Lund Fisker.

50:50

Then this was the time that Mr.

50:52

Money Mustache became popular. I read all

50:54

of his stuff and I just loved

50:56

it. I started integrating those concepts with

50:58

my clients even when I was a

51:00

financial advisor. I was really committed to

51:02

hyperfrugality and working hard

51:04

for early retirement as much as I

51:07

possibly could. When

51:09

I started Radical Personal Finance, I

51:12

was still interested in that. I had

51:14

made the decision that if

51:17

I had stayed in traditional financial planning,

51:19

I would have made a lot more

51:21

money faster. As I saw it, that

51:24

was a faster path to financial independence.

51:27

I realized if you have

51:29

a business that provides you with a lifestyle

51:31

of financial independence, it allows you to live

51:34

the way you want to live, then you don't have to

51:36

wait 10 years or 20 years or whatever it takes you

51:38

to accumulate the money to retire. You can just do that

51:40

now. I realized, okay, I'll just

51:42

do that. I felt a little bit

51:45

hypocritical because I was going to be talking about money, but

51:47

I figured as long as I'm honest about it, then

51:50

that'll be fine. I'll just tell people honestly, but

51:52

this is why I'm doing it. After all, there's

51:54

nothing morally wrong with it. Just build a lifestyle

51:56

business instead of trying to build an enormous fortune.

51:59

I was really, really... interested in early

52:02

retirement. It was important

52:04

to me. But over

52:07

time I had a variety of realizations.

52:10

The first one was simply

52:13

that a significant

52:16

problem for me in those

52:18

years was not that I

52:20

needed to retire from work, but just that I

52:22

was in a job for which I was poorly

52:25

suited. That was the

52:27

basic thing. I realized what I

52:29

teach now, it's easier to find a different job

52:31

than it is to build a fortune and retire.

52:35

That probably should be the first thing that you

52:37

do. That was why my first course that I

52:40

did was the radical personal finance career and income

52:42

guide. If you can

52:45

generate your income in

52:47

a way that is pleasing to you,

52:49

that provides you with the kind

52:52

of lifestyle that you want to live, you

52:55

don't need to build a fortune so you

52:57

can quit work at 30 years old. It's

53:01

easier for you to spend a couple of

53:03

years trying different jobs, trying different businesses, going

53:05

from this to that until hopefully after a

53:08

few years you can find something that really

53:10

fits you. That's a lot easier than

53:12

building a fortune so that you can retire early. That

53:15

was a big realization that I had. A

53:18

second big realization was something that

53:20

occurred more slowly and it's probably

53:22

just a natural phase change of life,

53:25

but I became a lot less

53:28

selfish in my thinking. I

53:30

started to care more about the

53:33

world in general, the

53:35

kingdom of God more specifically,

53:37

my own children more specifically.

53:41

I started to realize

53:43

that it was kind of dumb

53:45

to spend all my life thinking about pleasure

53:48

and I realized that was a

53:50

unifying theme through much of

53:53

the content that I was absorbing at the time, that

53:55

I was spending all my time listening to people who

53:57

would go on and on and on and on about

53:59

it. about pleasure and happiness and personal pleasure,

54:02

etc. It's a

54:04

never-ending list. There were differences.

54:07

Jacob Lundfisker, for example, is not necessarily that

54:09

way. He's much more of a guy who

54:11

wants to be creative. But Mr.

54:13

Money Mustache and Tim Ferriss and all

54:15

these other people that I was really

54:18

looking up to and absorbing all their

54:20

content and really trying to do everything.

54:23

As I grew older, I've just come

54:26

to think of their ideology

54:28

as very immature and very

54:30

short-sighted. And to be

54:32

clear, I don't want you to think I'm saying more

54:34

than I am. They've matured. They've changed as well. All

54:37

of us go through a process of maturing in life.

54:39

And so I don't fault them. But

54:42

what I realized is I don't want to be

54:44

one of these guys who sits

54:46

around and smokes weed and

54:48

goes on and on about how all I just do is what

54:50

I want to do. And I don't make

54:52

a difference in the world. Like, I want to make a difference in

54:55

the world. And I expect it to be a rather modest difference, but

54:57

I still want to make a difference where I can. As

55:00

I sorted through my own theology and

55:02

realized that work is not a curse,

55:05

work is a blessing, then it's not

55:07

something that I want to be without.

55:09

And I want to work. And

55:14

I just want to

55:17

work in things that are meaningful and things for which I'm

55:19

well-suited. So that was an

55:21

enormous change for me as I stopped

55:23

being interested in the fire stuff because

55:26

it just seems like a, in

55:29

many ways, not all, doesn't have

55:31

to be, but it seems like

55:33

something that attracts people to a

55:35

rather shallow vision. And

55:39

I probably came to that conviction

55:41

somewhere around, I don't know, 2017, probably

55:43

2018, but

55:46

I've watched other people come through that journey as

55:48

well. And that's really fascinating for me. I'm

55:50

glad we come to the journey. And again, I'm not

55:52

upset at anybody. We all go

55:54

through our own journeys of learning. And

55:57

although we wish we could be

55:59

smarter and... Find things without learning

56:01

them the hard way. A lot of times of course we wind

56:03

up learning things the hard way. My point

56:05

is simply that what resonated with

56:07

me then doesn't resonate with me now. What

56:10

resonates with me now is desire

56:12

for impact and change. And

56:16

this leads me to the next topic which is that

56:19

a lot of my ideas have changed as well.

56:21

There's some foundational stuff. For example, I'm

56:24

no longer as radical as

56:26

I once was. I

56:28

think the radical personal finance brand is

56:30

good branding. It really works well. It's

56:33

intriguing. I'm happy with the brand.

56:35

But I'm not as radical

56:37

as I once was. And the

56:39

best expression of this is that as

56:41

I've grown older, I realized how

56:44

many of my radical ideas were

56:48

not supported by

56:50

a clear examination of

56:54

the systems that be. Rather,

56:57

it was me looking

56:59

at something and saying, well here's everything that's wrong with it and

57:01

here I'm gonna fix it. I've

57:03

come to love the example

57:06

of Chesterton's Fence Post.

57:09

Well-known writer named G.K. Chesterton. He wrote

57:11

something. I'll read the original quote. But

57:14

here's the original quote. He says, there

57:16

exists in such a case a certain

57:19

institution or law, let

57:21

us say, for the sake of simplicity,

57:23

a fence or gate erected across a

57:25

road. The more modern type

57:27

of reformer goes gaily up to it and says,

57:29

I don't see the use of this. Let us

57:31

clear it away. To which

57:33

the more intelligent type of reformer will do

57:35

well to answer, if you don't see the

57:38

use of it, I certainly won't let you

57:40

clear it away. Go away

57:42

and think. Then when you can come

57:44

back and tell me what you do see the

57:46

use of it, tell me that you do see

57:48

the use of it, I may allow

57:51

you to destroy it. And

57:54

again, that's G.K. Chesterton. And

57:56

what I have realized over the last

57:58

decade is that when I began, radical

58:00

personal finance, I was reformer number

58:02

one. I was a modern reformer

58:04

who goes gaily up to the fence and says, I

58:06

don't see the use of this fence, let's clear it

58:08

away. I don't see the use of working in offices,

58:10

let's get rid of that. I don't see the use

58:12

of working on a certain time, let's get rid of

58:14

that. I don't see the use of, you know, working

58:17

till you're 65, let's get rid of that. I don't see

58:20

the use of this, that, and the other thing and just

58:22

kind of this very young, immature,

58:26

find nothing but fault with the

58:28

system and want to be a

58:30

fire, a brand waving revolutionary. Today,

58:33

I probably

58:35

still have that tendency, but

58:37

today I'm much more in camp number two,

58:40

which I want to understand the structures

58:45

of society. I want to understand the

58:47

structures of life,

58:49

of finances, etc. I want to

58:51

understand them very, very well before

58:54

I call

58:57

to abolish them. It's

58:59

not to say that the opinion

59:01

and direction may not still

59:03

be true or that the overall

59:05

thing could be true, but I want to

59:07

be very cautious about that and I want

59:09

to be wise and affirmation. So for example,

59:11

I still hold lots of unusual

59:14

opinions, you know, I'd love to

59:16

see the welfare state disbanded, but

59:18

if I were today anointed emperor

59:20

of the world, I would

59:22

not disband the welfare state today. I would

59:24

try to put in place some kind of

59:27

slow plan that

59:29

would actually come to fruition to make

59:33

that happen, but it needs to

59:35

happen slowly. I'm a bit of a

59:37

firebrand when it comes to the topic of education. I'd love

59:39

to, I mean, I think most people should pull their children

59:41

out of government schools, but if I were

59:43

anointed emperor of the universe today, I wouldn't just

59:46

whole-handed, you know, right away, shudder

59:49

the government schools and

59:51

financial examples as well. I

59:53

wouldn't just end everything today. I wouldn't end the US dollar.

59:55

I try to be thoughtful

59:58

about these things because we need to

1:00:00

grow. into new changes. And I reflected

1:00:02

this years ago with a show that

1:00:04

I think it is a

1:00:06

show on basically the difference between revolution and

1:00:08

reformation. When I was younger, I saw

1:00:11

myself as I aligned

1:00:14

or identified with the revolutionaries. Today

1:00:17

I don't identify with the revolutionaries. I

1:00:19

see the revolutionaries as dangerous. Today I

1:00:21

identify with the reformers. And

1:00:23

I don't want to be a revolutionary, I want to

1:00:25

be a reformer. Revolutions go, you

1:00:27

can never predict the direction revolution will go.

1:00:30

But you can predict the direction

1:00:32

that reformation can go. And

1:00:34

I can clearly see that this is something that is due

1:00:37

to age, due to experience. I can

1:00:39

clearly see the frustration

1:00:41

that young people have with older people

1:00:43

who want to slow things down. And

1:00:46

I hope that my generation,

1:00:48

or at least I, can effectively

1:00:50

harness the zeal and

1:00:53

enthusiasm that young people have

1:00:55

and then point it in a healthy

1:00:58

direction and inform it by wisdom. I

1:01:00

don't think that zeal has to always

1:01:02

be ignorant. In fact, it shouldn't be.

1:01:04

I was never one myself who I

1:01:07

had a lot of zeal. I still have a lot of zeal. But

1:01:10

I've always tried to listen to people. If people could

1:01:12

explain to me a better way, I'll happily get

1:01:15

rid of one set of ideas and

1:01:17

adopt another. I see

1:01:20

myself as independent from my ideas that

1:01:22

in the sense that I

1:01:24

can pull any set of ideas out of

1:01:26

my mind, put it on the table, look at it from

1:01:28

all the different directions, assess it, see if it's valid. If

1:01:30

it's valid, I'll pick it up, stick it back in my

1:01:32

mind. If it's not valid, toss it in the garbage can

1:01:34

and pick up a new set. And while

1:01:37

certainly ideas are connected, that I'm

1:01:39

not threatened by thinking about ideas

1:01:42

and talking about them. And so I hope that we can

1:01:45

do a good job of continuing to nurture

1:01:48

youthful zeal and enthusiasm. But

1:01:50

it should always be informed

1:01:53

by the wisdom of the elders. And I see

1:01:55

that more clearly today than I did a decade

1:01:58

ago. I'm generally satisfied

1:02:00

though with testing ideas. I

1:02:03

can share with you some of the ideas that I've

1:02:05

tested at Radical Personal Finance. Tested

1:02:07

the concept of entrepreneurship

1:02:10

specifically. And what I'll

1:02:12

tell you about entrepreneurship is it

1:02:14

is a solution to many of the

1:02:16

things that frustrate people about work

1:02:19

and business. I

1:02:21

prize very highly

1:02:23

the general sense of independence

1:02:26

that I have. The fact that I can say what I

1:02:29

want and do what I want. That

1:02:31

is very meaningful to me. When

1:02:34

I was just starting

1:02:36

the podcast, there

1:02:38

was a very popular financial

1:02:41

brand who had a

1:02:43

very established brand. And this guy

1:02:45

begged me, this guy entreated me

1:02:48

to come and work with him. He could see

1:02:50

that we could make a good partnership,

1:02:52

et cetera. And I seriously

1:02:55

considered it because I admired the brand, I was

1:02:57

a big fan. I

1:02:59

considered the advice very

1:03:02

strong and excellent. It's just all good.

1:03:04

I was happy with it. I

1:03:07

ultimately said no. And I said no to

1:03:09

retain my independence of speech

1:03:11

and my independence of action. I knew

1:03:13

that there was a good chance that

1:03:16

in the coming years I wanted

1:03:19

freedom after having so

1:03:21

many restrictions on my speech for so many

1:03:23

years in the formal business.

1:03:26

I didn't want to establish some

1:03:28

kind of sense of duty or obligation

1:03:30

to a business partner that I had

1:03:32

to tone down something that I

1:03:34

genuinely believe in order to not

1:03:37

harm his brand or

1:03:41

do something that I thought was right. And so

1:03:44

I stepped aside from, so

1:03:46

I didn't take that partnership. And

1:03:48

I think I would have made lots

1:03:51

more money if I had, but I

1:03:53

haven't really regretted it because I've been grateful

1:03:55

to have the freedom that I've had. And

1:03:58

so entrepreneurship can provide a lot of those. things. When

1:04:01

I look at why people want

1:04:03

to be fine, why they want to be

1:04:05

financially independent, it a lot of times just comes down

1:04:08

to these silly things that I have to be here

1:04:10

at a certain time and a certain day and I

1:04:12

don't have any control over my schedule. And

1:04:14

so I appreciate entrepreneurship as one potential

1:04:17

solution to those things. However, entrepreneurship brings

1:04:19

with a whole different set of advantages.

1:04:21

I think

1:04:23

I'm a pretty good match for entrepreneurship

1:04:26

but there's a lot of things about it that

1:04:28

I find really frustrating and there are

1:04:30

many times that I have wished just for a

1:04:32

job where I just went to work and

1:04:35

I think that's common. So

1:04:37

if you're in a job, don't think that entrepreneurship is

1:04:39

going to solve everything and likewise don't think that if

1:04:41

you're an entrepreneur, everything's going to be solved if you

1:04:43

just go and get a job. I now

1:04:46

think that I could go back and forth between

1:04:48

these things fairly happily. Things

1:04:50

like working in an office. When

1:04:52

I was younger, one of my goals was not

1:04:54

to have to work in an office. I didn't

1:04:57

like going to an office every day. Today, I

1:04:59

now appreciate an office. I work in an office.

1:05:01

I just work in an office alone but that's

1:05:03

one of the things I don't like about entrepreneurship.

1:05:06

I get lonely and not on

1:05:08

an emotional level but in

1:05:10

a sense of feeling

1:05:12

like I'm working alone. Not

1:05:14

on a daily basis. Don't sound

1:05:17

so pathetic. Don't get lonely. What

1:05:19

I mean is on a daily

1:05:21

life, I'm around a lot of people

1:05:23

but I miss the sense of camaraderie

1:05:25

and purpose that comes from working with

1:05:27

others. So there's really something really

1:05:31

strong and valuable about being in an office,

1:05:33

feeling like you're part of a team, working

1:05:35

towards the team's outcomes and not just

1:05:38

my own outcomes. That's something that is

1:05:40

really wonderful that I miss

1:05:43

and I haven't found yet the offer or

1:05:45

something that would take me but I've thought

1:05:47

about it and there are I have ideas

1:05:49

about the kinds of things that I would

1:05:52

take where I would take a job again

1:05:54

or I would take a

1:05:57

job or an opportunity because of

1:05:59

that desire. desire to have a sense

1:06:01

of camaraderie with other people and wanting to work

1:06:04

with other people towards a common vision,

1:06:06

towards a common goal. Those

1:06:08

things make a difference. I've

1:06:10

tested other things. I've tested many

1:06:13

retirements along the way. I've tested

1:06:15

travel and what I've

1:06:17

discovered is simply

1:06:20

that there's a reason we

1:06:22

live in houses just as a very practical

1:06:24

example. When I was younger,

1:06:26

I thought I was pretty obsessed

1:06:29

with the idea of just living in an

1:06:31

RV. I was a Tynan fan years before

1:06:33

most people were and I just

1:06:36

thought, oh, this is how I want to live. I

1:06:40

still am attracted to that, but there's a

1:06:42

big difference between being attracted to it as

1:06:44

a single man or as a

1:06:46

married couple versus doing it with children. With

1:06:49

children, there's a reason why we have

1:06:51

the ideas that we have about people

1:06:53

going to the suburbs that in order

1:06:56

for a family to build towards something

1:06:58

productive, stable infrastructure is very useful. Now,

1:07:01

it's not that traveling is

1:07:03

bad. We've done full-time RV

1:07:06

travel. I have a plan to do more of

1:07:08

it in the future because I think it provides

1:07:10

a cool set of adventures and experiences

1:07:12

that really are hard to get in any

1:07:15

other way. But it doesn't

1:07:18

magically solve anything. It doesn't magically fix

1:07:20

your life just because you have these

1:07:22

external things. One

1:07:25

thing I've given up on is finding some

1:07:27

kind of thing that's just going to magically

1:07:29

fix anything. It doesn't. Changing your location doesn't

1:07:31

just fix anything. Changing the time of day

1:07:33

that you work doesn't fix anything. You're still there.

1:07:35

You still got to do the work. So disciplining

1:07:37

yourself to sit down and do the work, whether

1:07:39

you feel like it or not, is

1:07:42

still kind of a fundamental

1:07:45

secret of success. I've changed

1:07:47

some perspectives on various financial planning things.

1:07:49

Some of those are pretty significant and

1:07:51

a lot of them have to do

1:07:53

with the sense of being

1:07:55

radical. For example, one that is probably the

1:07:57

first one that comes to mind is is

1:08:00

I used to be against home ownership.

1:08:02

I was in the early days of radical

1:08:05

personal finance, I was influenced by Jim Collins

1:08:07

essay, J.L.

1:08:09

Collins essay on how you're

1:08:12

better off renting because you're flexible and you

1:08:14

can move here and move there and after

1:08:16

all, your money's more productive in

1:08:19

the stock market. I think that's interesting and

1:08:21

a useful perspective. And

1:08:23

I think again, there's a proper application for

1:08:25

that. A

1:08:28

21 year old guy or girl who's working

1:08:30

on building a career, I would

1:08:33

say home ownership might turn out to be

1:08:35

less of a blessing than

1:08:37

flexibility, stay flexible. On

1:08:39

the other hand, I've come to appreciate and

1:08:41

also I felt that a

1:08:44

home should be viewed as an expense

1:08:47

rather than as an asset,

1:08:49

kind of channeling the Robert

1:08:52

Kiyosaki, Rich Dad, Poor Dad ideology.

1:08:55

And that was my perspective back then. Today I don't

1:08:57

see it that way. Today I'm persuaded

1:09:00

that investing into

1:09:02

a primary home that you live in

1:09:04

is a perfectly legitimate form of real

1:09:06

estate investing. Not only is it legitimate,

1:09:08

but it's often quite profitable. John Reed

1:09:10

wrote his book, An American

1:09:12

Principal Resident of the Most Advantage Investment

1:09:14

in History. Worst title ever, I don't know why

1:09:16

he did that, but it's a very good book

1:09:19

and it persuaded me of the

1:09:21

value of simply investing into your

1:09:23

home. And that's become something

1:09:25

that I've frequently done. Whereas in

1:09:27

the past, I would say to

1:09:30

a wealthy business owner, a wealthy

1:09:32

doctor or something, I would say, oh yeah, you should

1:09:34

go ahead and have real estate today. I just say,

1:09:37

no, listen, if you wanna do real estate,

1:09:39

that's fine, but just go ahead and buy

1:09:42

a more expensive home and upgrade your home

1:09:44

systematically throughout your life. And that's a perfectly

1:09:46

valid form of real estate investing. And

1:09:48

so I think that's a good example of something changing.

1:09:51

On the whole, there's

1:09:53

not a lot in my views

1:09:55

on money or investing

1:09:58

or financial planning. planning that

1:10:00

have changed a lot. The

1:10:03

biggest one that I was pretty blind

1:10:05

to in the beginning was internationalization. Like

1:10:09

most financial planners, I didn't know anything

1:10:11

about international planning. When I started doing

1:10:13

this, you can be a CFP certified

1:10:15

financial planner and not have a clue about

1:10:18

anything that I talk about now

1:10:20

international. I was

1:10:22

doing this show when I first learned about the foreign earned

1:10:24

income exclusion. I was like, what? As

1:10:26

I've shared, that came in response to

1:10:28

me of a moral crisis of basically

1:10:31

how on earth can I pay taxes

1:10:33

and have a clear conscience. I

1:10:35

realized, I'm not stuck. I can choose who I pay

1:10:37

taxes to. I can actually choose whether or not I

1:10:39

pay taxes. That was one of the

1:10:41

things that launched the whole international space. That

1:10:44

would be a big thing. I now see

1:10:46

international planning as something that really everyone should

1:10:48

do to some degree as I

1:10:50

teach in my international skate plan course, but not

1:10:53

something that is – it's something

1:10:55

everyone should do to some degree, but it's

1:10:57

– and

1:11:00

it should be more mainstream. It is becoming mainstream,

1:11:02

which I'm glad about. That would be a big

1:11:04

change. I have a list of

1:11:06

other things, but I won't go deeply into them

1:11:08

at the moment. I've tried to

1:11:10

track the things that have changed and the things

1:11:13

that haven't changed. On the whole, probably

1:11:15

the biggest one was my own

1:11:18

opinion of early retirement and of

1:11:20

retirement in general. I thought,

1:11:23

oh, okay, you can just navigate through it

1:11:26

in terms of early retirement. It was in the

1:11:28

beginning of the show where I did shows on

1:11:30

the retirement scam, but then I

1:11:32

realized and I still realize that work

1:11:35

is such a profoundly valuable

1:11:37

part of our

1:11:39

life and it's how we contribute to the

1:11:42

world around us. All

1:11:47

the great change that we all want to see in

1:11:49

the world is going to come from work. That

1:11:51

work doesn't have to be paid. It doesn't have to

1:11:53

come with money, but it does need

1:11:56

to happen and it is valuable. component

1:12:01

of our overall life. I

1:12:04

thought it would be fun now to share with you

1:12:06

some thoughts about individual episodes of Radical Personal

1:12:08

Finance. Share with you some of the more

1:12:10

popular episodes, share with you a few of

1:12:12

my favorites, share with you the most

1:12:15

controversial episodes, etc. Let's

1:12:17

begin with the most popular. As

1:12:19

of this current recording, the most

1:12:21

popular episode of Radical Personal Finance ever

1:12:23

was episode 666, How

1:12:26

to Prepare for the Coming Recession, followed

1:12:29

by episode 716 called How

1:12:31

to Profit from a Recession.

1:12:33

It's interesting, we certainly see that

1:12:36

the most bad

1:12:39

news, clickbait works first

1:12:42

of all. So if I

1:12:44

try to not use too much clickbait, but

1:12:46

clickbait works, and I say how to prepare

1:12:48

for the coming recession, then I say there's

1:12:51

an element of people who

1:12:53

want to just hear, wait a second, how do I

1:12:55

prepare for it? And also, is there a recession coming?

1:12:58

So that's clearly a component of it. And

1:13:00

then also, our eyes are attracted to bad

1:13:02

news, far more than good news. We hear

1:13:04

a lot about when the stock market is

1:13:06

falling apart. We don't hear so much when

1:13:09

the stock market is doing well. And

1:13:11

so let's just be aware of that

1:13:13

with regard to overall psychological

1:13:16

understanding. I'm proud of those episodes.

1:13:18

I think they're useful. I've tried

1:13:20

to always strike a tone of

1:13:25

sensibleness and

1:13:27

yet seriousness. I've tried to treat topics

1:13:29

with seriousness and yet be

1:13:32

sensible. So those would be the two

1:13:35

most popular. If you're curious, the next one is how

1:13:37

to read a book, and

1:13:39

then how to set financial

1:13:41

goals. There was really probably

1:13:44

a golden time in those

1:13:46

download numbers where some

1:13:49

of the most popular ones are from episodes

1:13:52

in the high 600s and early

1:13:54

700s. Most of the most popular

1:13:57

episodes come from

1:13:59

that time. And that was before

1:14:01

the coronavirus pandemic. So that was 2019, 2020.

1:14:05

And that was when the podcast was

1:14:07

getting the highest number of podcast downloads.

1:14:09

Then when coronavirus came on, it

1:14:12

seemed to change the podcast listening

1:14:14

experience and downloads were down, have

1:14:17

been down across the industry since

1:14:19

then. And then there's been

1:14:21

some technical changes that have happened behind the

1:14:23

scenes that have also created changes in the

1:14:26

download numbers. So those are

1:14:28

most of the highest shows for

1:14:30

me come from the high 600s and the lower

1:14:34

700s there

1:14:36

are, I'll skip kind of the least

1:14:38

popular shows. Cause that's not

1:14:40

something that's interesting necessarily,

1:14:42

but it's been

1:14:44

interesting to me to watch how

1:14:48

I'm basically incapable of predicting

1:14:51

what is the most popular and

1:14:54

that's been frustrating. Because I'd

1:14:56

like to plan and create

1:14:58

popular content. I've done that a

1:15:00

little bit. One of the things I said I was going

1:15:02

to do in the early days of the show was that

1:15:04

I was going to teach my way through the CFP curriculum.

1:15:07

That was something that I originally said I would do, but

1:15:10

I kind of, I didn't intentionally

1:15:12

abandon it, but I just practically abandoned

1:15:14

it after several dozen

1:15:17

episodes because I just found that people

1:15:19

didn't listen to those. And

1:15:21

yet they required enormous amounts of time to

1:15:24

create. And the things that people listened to

1:15:26

were often things that I just sat down

1:15:28

and had an idea and boom went for,

1:15:30

and then, uh, and

1:15:33

then people, people listened to them. So

1:15:35

that was something that I

1:15:37

learned from, from that perspective. Some of my

1:15:40

favorite episodes, I've really enjoyed

1:15:42

a lot of the series that I have

1:15:44

done. Uh, one of my favorites was the

1:15:46

asset protection from your mortals series. I

1:15:48

enjoyed that because it dealt with a

1:15:50

technical area of financial planning that is

1:15:54

wildly under

1:15:56

discussed in serious ways. And

1:15:58

I was satisfied. I love

1:16:01

the sense of empowerment that I got,

1:16:04

that I could empower ordinary people to

1:16:06

protect their assets in a

1:16:08

time that they

1:16:11

might most need it. One of

1:16:14

my favorite series was also kind

1:16:16

of foundational philosophy series, my Seven Rings

1:16:18

of Liberty series. I

1:16:20

really loved doing that

1:16:22

one because I

1:16:26

feel like in that series I

1:16:28

encapsulated the ideas that lead

1:16:30

to a free lifestyle. And

1:16:34

while they're not easy to implement, I

1:16:37

think that they are the

1:16:39

most effective way of accomplishing some of the

1:16:41

things that people are looking for liberty with.

1:16:45

I have this continual challenge that I try

1:16:47

to answer people's questions and

1:16:49

what people are looking for, but

1:16:51

I don't see a lot of the financial

1:16:53

solutions as the fast and straightforward way to

1:16:56

achieve the kind of lifestyle you want. And

1:16:58

so when I started that podcast

1:17:01

series and I talked about ring number

1:17:03

one, which is spiritual liberty, to

1:17:06

me that drives at the heart of what people

1:17:08

are trying to do. They're trying to solve things

1:17:10

with money where their spirit is

1:17:12

broken. And you have to, but if

1:17:14

you can find spiritual liberty, you can be free

1:17:16

no matter what the money looks like. And

1:17:20

I think that's something that's dramatically under

1:17:22

discussed. And we talked about all the

1:17:24

different lifestyle design things that for me

1:17:27

have really paid off. And

1:17:29

so I talked, so that

1:17:32

was one of my favorite series. And I

1:17:34

think the third one that I really loved

1:17:36

doing recently was the Investing into Children series.

1:17:38

That series was longer than I intended, but

1:17:41

once again, it was

1:17:44

me indulging that frustration of

1:17:47

years of people saying, what about my 529

1:17:49

plan? And my answer is 529

1:17:52

plan is great, but it's not gonna save what

1:17:54

you're, it's not gonna do what you're hoping it

1:17:56

does for you because it's only

1:17:58

one thing and what you need is this. more comprehensive

1:18:00

plan, this more comprehensive approach. And

1:18:02

if you'll do these other things,

1:18:04

then the 529 plan is completely

1:18:06

unnecessary. And it's often hard for

1:18:09

me to judge with things

1:18:11

like that, those kinds of ideas,

1:18:13

it's hard for me to judge

1:18:15

how much people can implement them. I'm

1:18:19

something of an extremist by nature. When

1:18:21

someone says, this is really hard, I say,

1:18:23

ooh, let me pay attention. And

1:18:26

I'm aware though that hard things are hard to

1:18:28

do, but you do hard things and

1:18:30

you get great results. But

1:18:33

I don't know, I just

1:18:35

record stuff and let things

1:18:38

go where they may be. Most

1:18:41

controversial episodes of radical personal finance?

1:18:45

Well, this one, touching on hot button

1:18:47

topics, probably the, to date

1:18:49

still, probably the most controversial one

1:18:51

was, I think 181, 181. I

1:18:56

talked about why we need more of a

1:18:58

discussion of politics, religion, and I don't know,

1:19:01

something else in

1:19:05

financial discussions. And

1:19:07

obviously a bit of an inflammatory title

1:19:09

here, why we need more discussion of

1:19:11

politics, religion, philosophy, morality, and ethics and

1:19:14

finance, not less. That was

1:19:16

the title of it. And what I shared in that

1:19:18

episode was, I had

1:19:20

just read, I had an enormous epiphany.

1:19:22

This was 2015, when I did that

1:19:24

podcast episode. And this was

1:19:27

right at the time of the

1:19:29

passing of the Obergefell decision in

1:19:31

the United States, legalizing

1:19:33

same sex marriage in the United

1:19:35

States. And as

1:19:37

I was following those events, I

1:19:39

read a book called

1:19:42

After the Ball by Hunter

1:19:44

Madsen and Kirk something

1:19:46

or other, sorry, I can't remember the author's name,

1:19:49

but they had written a book called After the

1:19:51

Ball, How America Will Lose Its Fear of Gays in

1:19:53

the 90s. And when I

1:19:55

read the book, I was absolutely

1:19:58

blown away. that

1:20:00

for the first time in my life, I

1:20:03

understood and could believe

1:20:05

how societal influence

1:20:07

and propaganda works.

1:20:11

I had been aware of the concept

1:20:13

of societal change

1:20:17

prior to that, how could you not?

1:20:19

I had been aware of conspiracy theories,

1:20:21

et cetera, how could

1:20:23

you not be at least aware of some of these things?

1:20:26

But I've never been a big believer in most

1:20:28

of those things. And a lot

1:20:30

of it is just that I don't understand

1:20:33

how most conspiracies could

1:20:35

come to fruition. So

1:20:37

for example, there are

1:20:39

two ideas that I think

1:20:42

some people hold. Idea number one

1:20:44

is that government is incompetent, and

1:20:47

idea number two is that government

1:20:49

is engaged in a vast conspiracy.

1:20:51

And I don't see how either

1:20:53

of those ideas can go together.

1:20:56

Either you believe that governments are

1:20:58

incompetent and thus most big

1:21:01

conspiracies, at least on a

1:21:03

governmental level, can't happen. Or

1:21:05

you believe that government is

1:21:07

highly competent and thus elaborate,

1:21:09

carefully held, multi-generational conspiracies

1:21:12

can come true. Now that may be

1:21:14

a simplistic expression of the idea, but I

1:21:16

was always bothering me. And so,

1:21:19

but when I finally read the book After the

1:21:21

Ball, and I realized

1:21:23

I could look back on my

1:21:25

entire lifetime, growing up in the 90s and

1:21:27

the early, the

1:21:29

90s and the 2000s, leading up to 2015, that

1:21:33

not only was there the single

1:21:35

largest measured change in opinion in

1:21:39

recorded history, where the entire

1:21:41

country in about 15 years went

1:21:43

from strongly opposing the

1:21:46

concept of same-sex marriage

1:21:48

to strongly

1:21:50

supporting it. And I could

1:21:52

see all the politicians of my lifetime,

1:21:54

President Obama, was in for same-sex

1:21:56

marriage. And then he was against same-sex marriage to get

1:21:59

elected the first time. first time, then he was four,

1:22:01

same sex marriage, he got elected the second time, and

1:22:03

just kind of this flip-flopping. And I never understood it.

1:22:05

And when I finally read after the ball, it

1:22:08

just opened my eyes in an astonishing way

1:22:11

because I realized, wait a second, I

1:22:15

was a victim of all these societal things.

1:22:17

I was present for all of these. And

1:22:19

as a young man, that was an enormous

1:22:21

eye-opener for me because it was one of

1:22:23

those things where for the first time in

1:22:25

your life, when you're young,

1:22:27

you can't really, the world that you're

1:22:29

born into is the world that you conceive of. If

1:22:32

I try to describe to my children how, when my

1:22:34

dad would come back from a business trip, we would

1:22:36

go and wait for him at the gate and he

1:22:38

would walk off the jetway and we were there, hanging

1:22:41

out and giving him a hug. They

1:22:44

have no concept of that because their

1:22:46

entire concept of airports is this elaborate security

1:22:49

theater that we all go through all the

1:22:51

time. And so they will

1:22:53

have a hard time believing. So when

1:22:55

you're young, you have a hard time

1:22:57

believing that the world was different than

1:23:00

how it is in your childhood. But

1:23:03

then as you start to live for a while,

1:23:05

you start to see change. And

1:23:07

you realize that, wow, this is different,

1:23:09

that's different, this is different. And

1:23:12

for me, reading that book was

1:23:14

just an enormous

1:23:16

epiphany. And it

1:23:20

really impressed me enormously because I could

1:23:22

for the first time see how societal

1:23:24

change happens and to see

1:23:26

how societal change is manipulated

1:23:29

and how you and I are

1:23:32

manipulated by propaganda and

1:23:36

those who desire to change us. And

1:23:38

sometimes they have good intentions, sometimes they

1:23:41

don't, you judge for yourself. But an

1:23:43

awareness of that is really fundamental. I

1:23:46

was part of my homeschooling curriculum for my

1:23:48

children. I plan to have a very deep

1:23:50

dive into propaganda so that we can understand

1:23:52

it so we have a good defense mechanism.

1:23:55

Anyway, that one is the one that I,

1:23:58

that episode though. I've

1:24:01

published the episode and then non-stop

1:24:03

for the next week, non-stop emails,

1:24:06

non-stop comments

1:24:08

on the show of, Joshua you hate gay people, blah

1:24:10

blah blah blah blah, just never ending. And that was

1:24:12

good. It was hard for me. I don't

1:24:15

know. I think I cried. I don't remember. I

1:24:17

just know it was really hard because I'm a people

1:24:19

pleaser. I like people to, I want

1:24:21

everyone to be happy. I don't like to disagree with

1:24:23

people. I don't ever like to tell people they're wrong.

1:24:25

I'm a people pleaser. But that

1:24:28

experience hardened my skin quite

1:24:31

a lot and I was really

1:24:33

grateful for it. What I find fascinating

1:24:35

is passing on since then, 2015.

1:24:38

I should go back and listen to

1:24:40

that show, but here we are almost

1:24:42

10 years later and the trends have

1:24:44

only continued. And we continue to

1:24:46

be subjected to the same social manipulation

1:24:51

tactics, but I see people

1:24:54

waking up and paying attention to that. So it'd be

1:24:57

interesting. I haven't listened to that show. It would be interesting for me

1:24:59

to go back and listen to what I actually said and

1:25:02

consider it. Other

1:25:05

controversial ones, the only shows that I've

1:25:07

ever, ever, I've

1:25:09

only ever deleted in the history of

1:25:11

radical personal finance, one show, one podcast.

1:25:13

And that was the interview that I

1:25:15

did with Andrew Tate. This was a

1:25:18

few years ago

1:25:20

and I interviewed Andrew. I

1:25:22

observe a lot of things

1:25:24

and so I try to keep my proverbial fingers

1:25:28

in the stream of culture and

1:25:30

understand what's happening. And I saw

1:25:32

Andrew and his content coming to

1:25:34

the fore and I

1:25:37

followed him closely because Andrew has a lot

1:25:39

of things and

1:25:42

he's an incredibly smart man and

1:25:45

incredibly well spoken. He has honed

1:25:47

his craft very, very diligently

1:25:50

and a lot of his

1:25:52

ideas are very, very useful and

1:25:54

a lot of them are very appealing. So I saw

1:25:56

him coming up and I asked him for an interview

1:25:58

and he said, yeah, I'm going Yes, and

1:26:00

I did it because I've

1:26:03

learned now long enough, I've recognized

1:26:05

that I'm not bad at seeing

1:26:07

trends. I can see trends happening

1:26:09

and I can predict with some

1:26:12

degree of confidence where they're going. I

1:26:15

haven't been able to figure out how to apply this

1:26:17

to financial markets but I can see this with social

1:26:19

trends at least to some degree. I knew Andrew was

1:26:21

getting ready to blow up. I was

1:26:23

clout chasing a little bit, asked him for an interview

1:26:26

and his background, his business,

1:26:32

his persona, a lot

1:26:36

of his public persona is for shock value.

1:26:41

He has embraced the idea that there's

1:26:44

no such thing as bad publicity. A

1:26:46

lot of his background is very distasteful to me

1:26:48

but I also felt like he was good at offering

1:26:50

ideas. Anyway, point is I asked him for an interview

1:26:52

and I interviewed him. It was a

1:26:55

good interview. I thought I did a pretty good job

1:26:57

with it and I published it

1:26:59

and then a couple days

1:27:02

later I got an email from a listener, this

1:27:04

wonderful sweet woman that wrote me a very

1:27:07

nice email and talking

1:27:09

about persuasion and whatnot, just kind of

1:27:11

a textbook case of persuasion. She wrote

1:27:13

me this story and she said, Joshua,

1:27:17

I don't fault you for

1:27:19

interviewing Andrew Tate and talking

1:27:22

about interviewing and

1:27:24

et cetera and I don't

1:27:26

fault you for that but she

1:27:29

said, let me tell you my story.

1:27:31

She told the story of how her

1:27:33

daughter from her perspective, how her daughter

1:27:35

was victimized and was by a predator

1:27:37

and was pressured into –

1:27:40

was basically sex trafficked and

1:27:42

had faced all these difficult

1:27:45

situations. I don't remember

1:27:47

all the details of the letter. What I remember is her tone

1:27:49

and she was so kind, she was so

1:27:51

respectful. She didn't yell at me. She didn't

1:27:54

say take the showdown.

1:27:56

She didn't say anything just to share her story and

1:27:58

then she asked the question. is, this is

1:28:00

who you want to be associated with. And

1:28:05

she had just that sweet, motherly,

1:28:07

grandmotherly tone that it really

1:28:09

shook me. And I thought, no,

1:28:12

I don't want to be associated

1:28:14

with this. I

1:28:16

do, I think today especially, I would

1:28:18

say Andrew is a predator. And

1:28:21

if I'm

1:28:23

involved in promoting a predator, what

1:28:27

moral guilt do I share in

1:28:30

that? And on

1:28:33

the one hand, and I've never

1:28:35

solved this because generally speaking, I'm a

1:28:37

free speech guy. I want to hear

1:28:39

from people. And so I want journalists

1:28:41

to do their job. I want journalists

1:28:43

to go and interview nasty evil people.

1:28:45

I want psychologists to interview people on

1:28:47

death row. I read all the terrorist

1:28:49

manifestos. Like, I want to hear what

1:28:51

people say and what people think because

1:28:53

I don't think that we do right

1:28:56

when we hide from information. And

1:28:59

I don't know, that just to me is, so

1:29:01

I don't like to be the guy who engages in

1:29:04

censorship. I don't, like

1:29:06

that's not me. I don't, I try not

1:29:08

to censor. But then on the other hand,

1:29:11

there is obviously some element of responsibility. So

1:29:13

I may go and I go

1:29:16

and read terrorist manifestos, but I

1:29:18

don't publish them. And

1:29:20

so then as a publisher, you feel

1:29:22

like you have some sense of responsibility. And

1:29:25

I just, I don't know. So I don't know if

1:29:27

I made the right decision. I took the show down

1:29:29

and I've gone back and forth and back and forth and back

1:29:31

and forth on should I publish it, should I not publish it,

1:29:33

should I publish it, should I not publish it. And

1:29:36

it's, I could

1:29:39

talk about it with my wife. She's like, why

1:29:42

do you, just who cares? Move on with your

1:29:44

life. But babe, freedom of speech. Like, I don't

1:29:46

want to be censoring people. He's like, but come

1:29:48

on. Anyway, I still don't know if

1:29:50

I did the right thing. On

1:29:52

taking that down, it was

1:29:54

just a split second decision. It was

1:29:57

just the, the I

1:30:00

just imagine talking to my mom about it. My

1:30:03

mom would say, Joshua, are you really promoting

1:30:07

this guy who's made his fortune

1:30:09

off of pornography? That's who you

1:30:11

want to be. I

1:30:13

realized that I was clout chasing quite a lot.

1:30:17

Who knows? I never figured out whether

1:30:20

that was the right decision, but since I took

1:30:22

it down, then I just figured, well, it's down.

1:30:24

I told a friend of mine that I was going

1:30:27

to put it back up. I went through endless months

1:30:29

of deliberations on it, and

1:30:31

I still don't know how to reconcile

1:30:34

those decisions. I think if I

1:30:36

were doing it over today, I wouldn't have

1:30:38

taken it down, but that doesn't mean that I want

1:30:40

to republish it. The problem

1:30:42

was that then at the time, Andrew

1:30:45

was controversial, but there

1:30:48

wasn't as much evidence of

1:30:52

who he really was at that time.

1:30:55

To be clear, I'm not ascribing to Andrew

1:30:58

legal guilt. I believe in innocent until proven

1:31:00

guilty in a court of law. Even

1:31:03

then, legal systems can be messed

1:31:05

up. I

1:31:07

think there's enough evidence that there's abundant

1:31:10

court evidence to confirm

1:31:12

my own assessment

1:31:14

that Andrew is a very smart and

1:31:16

well-spoken predator. I

1:31:18

don't really like predators. I don't like bullies.

1:31:20

I don't like predators. I don't like people

1:31:22

who prey on men. I'm

1:31:25

not alleging, for those of you who are big Andrew

1:31:28

Tate fans, I'm not alleging anything that

1:31:30

even based on court documents of his alleged

1:31:34

crimes, I'm just talking about

1:31:36

things from his own mouth of the way that he

1:31:38

made his money. As

1:31:40

much as I enjoyed the conversation and as

1:31:43

much as I thought I had tried to

1:31:45

walk that line, that

1:31:47

was the one episode of radical personal finance that I

1:31:49

deleted out of a thousand. I

1:31:53

pulled, a few months ago I pulled a question

1:31:56

from a Friday Q&A show because I had answered

1:31:58

it poorly. Other than

1:32:00

that, I don't remember ever deleting anything

1:32:02

else. It's all there. Good, bad, ugly,

1:32:04

long-winded, crisp, concise. It's

1:32:06

all there for you to

1:32:08

see. And that was always my hope. That

1:32:11

was always my idea, was that, and I

1:32:13

said this in the very beginning, I'll leave

1:32:15

up the early episodes so that other people

1:32:18

can see that you don't have to be

1:32:20

great to start, but you got to start

1:32:22

to be great. And you

1:32:24

can go back and you can see early episodes on

1:32:27

some things I've gotten a lot better. And

1:32:29

a few things, I've come to the conclusion that

1:32:31

I've been standing still. Recently

1:32:34

my forays into the world of deliberate practice

1:32:36

really showed me that I have

1:32:38

not been engaging in deliberate practice with

1:32:40

my speaking abilities. I've been engaging in

1:32:43

naive practice, just doing more of the

1:32:45

same and not getting better. That annoys

1:32:47

me, so I'm changing that. So

1:32:50

I intend to be a lot better 10 years from now

1:32:52

than I am today. And

1:32:54

so now the obvious concluding transition is, all

1:32:57

right, Joshua, what's next? I

1:33:00

can hear you saying, all right, that's all in well and

1:33:02

interesting, and it's kind of fun to talk about old times,

1:33:04

but after all, the past is dead and gone. What's next?

1:33:07

What's your plans? Well,

1:33:09

I'm going to disappoint you by not

1:33:11

publicly telling you what's next, but rather

1:33:13

just say watch and see. And

1:33:17

the reason is simply that I have learned

1:33:20

over the years that

1:33:23

ideas are a dime a dozen. It's

1:33:25

great to talk about plans, but

1:33:27

it's meaningless. All that

1:33:30

matters is execution. Ideas are

1:33:32

a dime a dozen. Execution is everything.

1:33:34

Doing is everything. And I've learned

1:33:36

that the hard way because being

1:33:39

a good talker, I'm also

1:33:41

good at talking to myself. And

1:33:44

I realize, and there's some good data

1:33:46

behind this from the scientific,

1:33:49

psychological community, but talking

1:33:52

about the things that you're going to do gives you

1:33:54

a little bit of

1:33:56

a burst, a little bit of a dopamine hit of,

1:33:58

hey, this feels good. and you kind of

1:34:00

feel like you've achieved something because you've talked about

1:34:03

it. But then in reality, you've

1:34:05

achieved nothing and all you've done is talk about

1:34:07

it. And I've found that this is a great

1:34:10

problem for me. It's very easy to say

1:34:12

all the things that you're going to do,

1:34:14

but it's harder to actually do those things.

1:34:18

And this has been a significant

1:34:20

form of frustration for me over

1:34:23

the past years, especially over

1:34:25

the past five to eight years. In

1:34:27

some ways over the last decade, I

1:34:30

felt like I'm swimming in mud instead of

1:34:32

swimming in water. And

1:34:34

I can identify a few reasons

1:34:36

for them, some explainable and understandable,

1:34:38

some not so much. So

1:34:41

one obvious thing is that

1:34:43

I have five children. And

1:34:45

so those responsibilities

1:34:47

require time, attention,

1:34:50

distraction, all of those things. And

1:34:53

so I'm not as effective of a businessman

1:34:55

as I was when I was single on

1:34:57

that regard, just because I have more weight

1:35:00

on my shoulders. And it's a good

1:35:02

thing. I think it drives me to

1:35:04

do more, accomplish more, but it

1:35:06

also makes it more difficult

1:35:08

to accomplish. And so that's

1:35:10

been one factor. Another factor is just

1:35:12

the fracturing of my mind.

1:35:15

I've been victimized

1:35:18

by the same

1:35:20

trends that we all have been victimized

1:35:22

of, of fracturing of attention, fracturing

1:35:25

of our ability to

1:35:27

pay attention. I

1:35:29

remember this going back very early.

1:35:31

And for me, I

1:35:34

can clearly remember the

1:35:36

world of pre Firefox tabbed

1:35:39

browsing versus post. I'm

1:35:41

not kidding. I was in high school when

1:35:45

Firefox came out and I think it

1:35:47

was them that invented tabbed browsing. And

1:35:50

at the time, my family, we had computers and

1:35:54

whatnot before a lot of other people did because my dad was a

1:35:57

software engineer. And yet... But

1:36:01

at the time, the internet was a linear

1:36:03

function. For

1:36:05

someone who's interested in everything, the internet was a great

1:36:07

boon to me. I

1:36:09

grew up in a fairly quiet

1:36:12

way. I read a lot. We never

1:36:14

had a TV in the house, so

1:36:16

I didn't have my attention distracted by

1:36:18

those things. So I read books. I

1:36:21

had an enormously powerful attention span.

1:36:24

Then we had the internet. And now

1:36:26

I could indulge all of these different

1:36:28

interests. And I distinctly remember

1:36:31

when we had the concept of tabbed

1:36:33

browsing. For me, it was the greatest

1:36:35

thing in the history of humanity. Because now, instead

1:36:38

of having to follow a train of

1:36:40

thinking forward and backward, I

1:36:42

could click on every shiny little thing. I could

1:36:44

open up 50 tabs in my browser window, or

1:36:47

whatever the limit was at that time. And

1:36:49

I loved it, because I could

1:36:51

absorb everything. But I noticed

1:36:53

how that approach

1:36:58

started to harm my attention span. I

1:37:00

noticed that I would be halfway down

1:37:02

a web page. And

1:37:05

now I was just bored, and I would click

1:37:07

to the next web page. Click

1:37:09

to the next tab in the browser. And

1:37:12

I didn't like how that felt. And

1:37:14

I started very early at that time to try to

1:37:16

pay attention to it and be careful of it. And

1:37:19

over the years, I've had

1:37:22

times of advancement and times of

1:37:24

retrenchment, of more

1:37:26

distracted, less distracted. But

1:37:28

in some ways, over the last 10 years, it's been

1:37:30

a fight. And I think it seems like it's a

1:37:32

fight for all of us. It's not just me. Because

1:37:34

not only is it now, we have tab browsing. But

1:37:37

now we have endless opportunities for distraction. And

1:37:39

so cultivating the ability to do

1:37:42

important, meaningful work without distraction,

1:37:44

and cultivating the ability to

1:37:46

pay attention to hard work,

1:37:49

that's a never-ending challenge. And I'm doing

1:37:52

my very best, but I am frustrated

1:37:54

with my results at times. And

1:37:58

I guess the final reason... Would

1:38:00

simply be one of the

1:38:02

great challenges of an entrepreneur is to know what to

1:38:04

do again, the when

1:38:07

I think about the swimming in mud a

1:38:09

big portion of it is basically

1:38:12

represented by me sitting at my

1:38:14

desk having a bazillion things

1:38:16

I could do and seeing

1:38:18

how every single one of them could be successful

1:38:20

and could lead me in the direction that I

1:38:23

want to go and not

1:38:26

knowing how to choose among them and

1:38:28

that's very different than a job and a

1:38:31

job your boss says here do this or

1:38:34

If you are a leader in the company you come

1:38:36

together with other people You talk to the boss and

1:38:38

the boss says we want to go in this direction

1:38:40

You talk about plans and you commit and say this

1:38:42

is what we're gonna do, but as

1:38:45

a solopreneur You

1:38:47

can go in any number of directions and you can change

1:38:49

on a dime and you can pivot and you can switch

1:38:51

and you can do all kinds of things and as

1:38:54

a very creative person who's good at coming up

1:38:56

with ideas, I am king of

1:38:58

sitting down and writing a list of ideas

1:39:00

and they all sound super new enthusiastic and

1:39:03

exciting to me and Interestingly

1:39:05

kind of a classic cycle for me goes

1:39:08

basically like this. I have the idea

1:39:10

to write a tweet So

1:39:12

I sit down to write a tweet and then I start writing

1:39:14

the tweet and I realize you know what? This is probably a

1:39:16

good podcast episode. So I expand my

1:39:19

tweet into a podcast episode then I

1:39:22

In the middle of writing the outline for

1:39:24

the podcast episode. I realized this is not

1:39:26

an episode This is a series because

1:39:28

this would put in this be a great series So

1:39:30

I started expanding into a series and then I realized

1:39:32

I've got such good stuff that I'm

1:39:35

like this should be a course like if I just created

1:39:37

a course on this that'd be so much more helpful And

1:39:40

so then as I'm most of the way into the

1:39:42

course then I'm like, no, you know what instead of

1:39:44

a course This should be an entirely different brand like

1:39:46

this just be amazing business if I built

1:39:48

this So then I go and buy

1:39:51

a URL for the brand and stick it into my

1:39:53

stable of URLs and then It's

1:39:55

such a big project that I don't

1:39:58

know where to to to begin And

1:40:00

so I just quit because I've

1:40:02

got 30 pages of notes

1:40:05

on something that could be its own brand and

1:40:08

I don't even have a tweet. And so I

1:40:10

hope that you'll laugh at me

1:40:13

because it's ridiculous to say it out loud

1:40:15

but I believe in honesty. But

1:40:17

that's basically the experience that I've had of

1:40:19

so many things. I've got a dozen courses

1:40:21

with dozens and dozens of pages of notes

1:40:23

of outlines of these elaborate things that I

1:40:26

have built of great content and

1:40:28

then I've been frustrated by my ability to

1:40:30

get that stuff out and serve

1:40:33

anybody with it because oh it's

1:40:35

so good it should be its own separate thing. So

1:40:38

as me trying to deal

1:40:41

with that I have told

1:40:44

myself to stop talking about things that I'm

1:40:47

going to do and just

1:40:49

do stuff and then talk

1:40:51

about what I've done and to do

1:40:53

the same thing to myself as well.

1:40:55

So I still set goals and ambitions

1:40:58

but I'm trying to avoid the deadly

1:41:00

trap of thinking that you

1:41:02

made progress just because you wrote your goals down

1:41:04

or talking about your goals because

1:41:06

that's something that I think

1:41:08

really happens. You say this is what I'm going to

1:41:10

do and you feel great because you talked about what

1:41:12

you're going to do but now that you feel great

1:41:15

you move on to something else because you talked about

1:41:21

it and in reality talking about

1:41:23

it doesn't matter. The ideas don't

1:41:26

matter. The only thing that matters

1:41:28

is execution, execution, doing, doing, doing,

1:41:30

doing and that's been

1:41:32

something that I'm doing.

1:41:35