RIGHT-SIZE Your MONEY MINDSET with Chris Harder [Bullpen Sessions Episode 19]

All right, welcome back, guys. I can't tell you how excited I am for this one. This one means a lot because I know how busy this man is and he has a lot on his plate. And for me, it means a lot because he has been a huge mentor of mine and I've only known him two years, maybe not even a year and a half. So with that being said, I want to introduce Chris Harder. If you don't know who Chris Harder is.

He is the brand, the name behind for the Love of Money. He's got an unbelievable podcast called for the Love of Money. It changed my life. He and his wife Lori, who has also been instrumental in my life as well, have ownership, or an ownership stake right now in eight different.

Seven or eight figure income businesses, which is absolutely phenomenal. So with that being said, Chris, welcome aboard, man.

Hey, Andy. My pleasure. So good to be on. How you been? Good.

Excellent, man. Again, I'm here on a podcast primarily because of you.

Listen, that's how it's supposed to work, right? Like full circle. Everybody helps with whatever little area of expertise that they have to lend to somebody else that lifts somebody else up and then they lift somebody else up in return. Like, this is just the way it's supposed to work. Like, for me, this is selfishly loving seeing you do this and flourish, man. It's. It's a cool thing to see.

Well, thank you. Yeah, it's awesome. And likewise, I knew I liked you from the minute I knew you were a fellow Wisconsinite. So, yes, Go Brewers.

Go Packers.

Even though you're in LA now, I'm in Colorado. We're Wisconsin. I set hearts.

I will never lose that Wisconsin blood. I go back to Green Bay a couple times a year, minimum. Every year.

Yeah. That's awesome. That's awesome. Well, Chris.

I'm going to start by saying this. One of the biggest game changers in my life for you. And I don't know if you remember or were aware of this because it was such a small moment in time. Time is I was a member of your FAST Foundation's Mastermind, which was, again, a game changing experience for me. And the last night of the first round, we were out at dinner celebrating the three days together and we were in conversation.

Yep, I remember.

It was another gentleman, another mastermind partner along in the conversation. You looked at both of us and without while keeping it clean, you basically said, quit being a wuss and start thinking. Thinking bigger. And this was March of 2019. It's a little over a year ago. And from that moment on. It's amazing where I sit today, May 2020, because of, literally because of that comment you made. So again, thank you. Now, for the audience who doesn't know who you are.

I want you to take us back a little bit, tell us your story, because right now you and Lori are thriving in this what's about to be next recession. Wasn't the case in 2008, was it?

No, not at all, man. So again, thanks for having me on. And you mentioned when you were introducing me that Lori and I have a stake, either sole ownership or partial ownership, in eight different seven and eight figure businesses. And so facing this current financial crisis. Right, crisis economy, as I've been calling it, we know what it's like to have team members to lead through it, to have employees that you have to keep their best, you know what's good for them at stake, to manage cash flow, to manage pivots, all these other things I know everyone listening is experiencing. And luckily. So as we're going through it right now, we're in the type of position where we're able to say to all of our teammates, hey, not only are you not at risk, like we commit to keeping you on one minimum, a one year minimum no matter how this unfolds, but we're also going to give each of you additional thousand dollar emergency funds if you have to use them, because we know that there's added expenses for you or your family as we navigate some of the craziest times of our life, if not the craziest time of our life. So that's today. Right. And that feels good to be there. But go back like 11, 12 years ago, 2008, 2009, facing a very similar financial crisis, different reasons at that time. And we were on the exact opposite end of the spectrum. Now if today we're entrepreneurs, back then we were corporate through and through. And I should say I, I worked for the world's biggest bank and I thought I would work there forever. And I had fun, like navigating hierarchy and navigating promotions and all that stuff. And it was great until the recession hit. And where's the one place that you don't want to be in a banking recession? Well, in banking. And so I went from one of the fastest rising executives in the world's biggest bank to not having a job. I mean, I spent a year flying around closing down branches and then it became my turn. They said, they called me and they said, hey man, you can either have your severance package or you can have a Demotion of a demotion of a demotion of a demotion and go ride this thing out at a branch in Jersey. And I was living in Minneapolis at the time. I said, give me the severance package because two things. One, I was so miserable at that point that I knew something had to change. Number two, I was so in over my head financially that the money, in that moment, the severance package, which is a multi, multi six figure severance package, seemed like the only logical lifeline to maybe scratching my way out of the situation that I had put us in. Because the great irony is this, when you work in banking, you would think that I would have put us into a really good position, you know, financial position, but I didn't. I was young and arrogant and ignorant. I would come home every year, sometimes twice a year, and be like, hey, babe, got a big promotion. We're moving to such and such city. Pack up the house, I'm getting on an airplane. And when you're young, you think it'll last forever, so you don't listen to anybody. And so we disrespected our money back then and we blew it all on dumb, useless stuff. We had just finished building this great big brand new beautiful home for just the two of us in one of those, you know, McMansion neighborhoods where everyone else had families and they maybe they had reasons to have their big homes because they had kids. It's just Lori and I, and they looked at us like we're the young 20 somethings. What are we doing moving into that neighborhood? And we had a bunch of new cars and we had stuff that has no meaning, that was probably bought out of very bored and empty moments, right when the music stopped, Andy, we were left holding this bag. And this was a bag of nothing but poor financial decisions and debt. So I took that whole six figure, multi, multi six figure service packet and I applied it towards paying off that debt and I applied it towards selling all the cars except for one of them that was so far upside down, Andy. We didn't make sense to sell it, right? So we held on to that one.

We had to short sell this great big home that we just finished building. And that was before everybody else was short selling their homes. I like to say I made short selling cool. But all joking aside, it was humiliating short selling this home. But what took it a step further than that was I had to list every single possession, every single thing on Craigslist for sale. The furniture, the TVs, the grills, the bags, whatever we had on Craigslist so that I could scratch up enough cash to go start over. Now, here's what it really looked like. I want people to picture this.

Car after car would pull up and park in front of the house. And person after person, couple after couple, they would come marching in through the front door and they would bargain for the couch, they'd bargain for the chairs, they'd bargain for the tables, for the grills, for the TVs, for whatever they wanted. And they would walk out with our possessions out the front door while the neighbors looked on judgingly. That, Andy, I can assure you, was the most humiliating part of my life up to that point, well, ever up to right now. And while I'm not going to convince anybody that it felt good in the moment, looking back on that point, I can tell you it was one of the greatest moments of my life. Here's why. What I did by sacrificing that ego and selling everything and getting rid of everything and liquidating everything, it gave me a handful of cash that was just enough to go downsize into a tiny, less than 900 square foot apartment loft in downtown, or actually uptown Minneapolis. And it was there that we were able to prepay that lease with a handful of cash for 12 months and give us the breathing room, give us the Runway, give us the space, give us the container, give us to pivot, to choose again, and to reinvent ourselves into how we show up today. And so if anybody is listening right now as we go into this really challenging financial time where there's been 30 million job losses in the US in the last six weeks and counting, if anybody feels financial uncertainty, financial fear, fear around their career, that they may lose their job if anybody feels like they have no options, number one, I know what it feels like when I teach, when I speak, when I get interviewed like this, it comes from that place of knowing how you're feeling, because I've been there, done that. Number two, I want you guys to realize that while it won't feel good right now, you too will be able to look back on this if you make a couple of right moves. And I'm happy to share with you, Andy, what those moves are, if you make a couple of right moves, that this could be that success story that you get to tell as a platform for years to come. And number three, as I give you guys advice today, as Andy and I have a conversation, I want you to know it comes from a place of having to build businesses, comes from a place of having to get creative. It comes from a Place of having to be resourceful and tuck your tail between your legs and get sweaty and get gritty and do extreme things in order to put ourselves in position to then have extraordinary things and be in an extraordinary position. And so if anyone's listening and you feel like, man, the odds are stacked against me, it only looks that way. But I promise you, you can navigate through this time and come out one of the great success stories that's going to happen out of this current economy. Because, Andy, I'll kind of end this little rant with this. I assure you that coronavirus will cause more bankruptcies than it will deaths, by far like 1,100. But I can also tell you that it's going to create more pivots, more brand new solutions, more brand new products, more brand new businesses, more brand new entrepreneurs, and more brand new millionaires coming out the other side of this thing than any other point in our life. And so right now, we're still early enough in this thing where everybody gets to choose which end of the story they want to come out on.

You know, Kris, what you said so beautifully, right there was, number one, one reason I love you and Laurie's story is nothing was handed to you. You talked about you've had to build these businesses, you've had to go through the shit of building these businesses that you have today. But the other beautiful thing about the moment we are in, in this period of history is I feel like everybody's on a level playing field right now. Like, the slate is clean. Here is your chance to create your future. But before we get there for that individual, that is when this hit went like this. Uh, oh, because they know the decisions they've made with money and purchasing stuff.

Yeah.

What advice, what two or three things might you give that individual who finds him or herself in that situation right now?

There's actually four things. There's four very specific things that you need to do right now if you are anything other than wildly wealthy and abundant. Okay? So if you're anything short of that, you need to do these four things when you are facing a crisis economy. And the reason why you have to do these four things is the very definition of a crisis economy is a crisis, meaning the most unexpected once in a lifetime things will happen. So here's number one. Number one, you must stop the bleeding. By that, I mean you must bring your monthly household, your monthly business outgo down to the smallest number possible. And I mean, get radical. So this is the time, a very unique time in history where not only do you pull out your bank statements for the past few months and slash every single line item that won't be a part of your comeback story? And not only do you pull up your credit card statements, your bank statements, but then also you call your landlords, or you call your mortgage company, or you call your car loan or your credit card companies and you negotiate with them to stop the accrual of your interest because they will say yes to defer 3, 4, 5, 6 payments and put them on the back of the loan. Because they will say yes to renegotiate that bloated lease. Because they will say yes. Because here's why. All of those companies learned in the last downturn 11, 12 years ago that they would rather have a shared sacrifice with you right now through this, then hold the line and have you go bankrupt or walk away leaving them holding the bag. They learned that through the last problem that's very fresh in everyone's mind. Still feels like it was five minutes ago, right, Just a few years ago. So they are saying yes to some of the most incredible requests right now. And that's your chance to negotiate your monthly outgo down to the lowest possible number. And when you get that, that number down to just a fraction of what your expenditure is right now, then it makes it easier to do number two. Number two is this. Number two is you must find and create three to 12 months Runway at any expense. And I want to be really clear what I mean by Runway. So most of you listening probably know, but for those of you that don't, Runway simply means the number of months that you can remain in business without taking on another dollar. Okay? Now why do I say you must, even if you're just, if you work for someone else, you're just running your household. Why do I say you must go out and find 3 to 12 months Runway? Because we are in an economy that is full of surprises. For example.

All the small business lines of credit by all the new fintech companies, they went through and they slashed without warning all of the small business lines of credit out there because they had to protect themselves from a liquidity standpoint. So all the small businesses that thought that they had these lines of credit set up to help navigate through this time, they logged in and they had no available credit at all. Surprise. Take it a step further. Credit card processing companies now are holding on to that transaction, to your transactions for up to 180 days as a security deposit. Because when the customer buys something like an event ticket or some coaching, and that Small business that they bought from goes out of business or isn't able to have that event, guess who's left holding the bag to refund the customer? The credit card processing company. So they, without notice, are now holding a lot of that money that's supposed to go from the customer to the entrepreneur or business for up to 180 days. And so you're saying, I sold my products. Where's my cash flow? Cash flow that you're counting on? And they're saying, well, check the fine print. We're holding it for a security deposit in case you go out of business. Guys, the craziest things will have your personal credit cards. They will come through and they will slash any available credit you have right down to what you owe, if they haven't already. Because the banks need to protect themselves and their employees, right? And so the reason you need 3 to 12 months Runway, is you need to make sure that you can keep a roof over your head, food in your bellies, your family taken care of, and that you are in position to take advantage of a lot of the opportunities that I'll talk about a little bit further into this interview. And most importantly, the reason that you need three to 12 months Runway, because it allows you to operate from a place of making good, long term decisions on what will be best for you in the future, instead of making decisions from what fires to put up right now. And when you're making decisions from abundance, like, hey, I've got a few months, I've got some breathing room. You make way better decisions than you do from scarcity. Like, holy crap, it's the end of the world. Which fire do I put out? Number three. Number one, stop the bleeding. Number two, you must at any expense, go find three to 12 months Runway. By the way, let me add one more thing. Number two, the reason I tell my story in the beginning is so you can see that I tucked my tail between my legs and I got rid of everything that I thought meant something to me to get that Runway. So I have high expectations that you'll get just as gritty if you want to come up this thing the other side as a success story, you can always go buy it again, right? So number three. Number three is you must create an absolute bulletproof, locked down routine for yourself. Daily routine. Now, if you're listening, you're like, wait a minute, I thought these were money tips. I thought these were financial tips. What's this routine style? What's this fluff, guys? This might be the most important one of them. All here's why. When you are trying to put yourself in position for a comeback, when you are trying to take advantage of opportunity, if you are in a reactionary state, if you are being affected by the negative news, the scary reports, the tragic numbers, your neighbor that lost his job, your family member that got sent home from work, that got a pay cut, I call all of that negative propaganda. When you let that stuff fall in your lap and we can't avoid it right now, then it's going to cause you to take pause. It's going to cause you to show up with less energy. It's going to cause you to make decisions out of fear and out of scarcity. And so you must be able to control the routine of your day so you can put yourself in position to show up and handle any circumstances that might happen to you to determine the outcome of those circumstances. So let me give you an example. When I wake up in the morning, the very first thing I do, Andy, is I say, I am happier, healthier, wealthier, more fit than I was yesterday. A mantra to some of you that might seem fluffy. I then roll over to my wife and I shake her by the shoulders and I wake her up and I say, babe, I'm happier, healthier, wealthier, more fit than I was yesterday. And I make her say it back to me. And I mean, I make her say it like she means it, and she, like, kind of loves it and kind of hates it. And then I roll back, right back over, and I close my eyes and I just say a really quick prayer of things I'm grateful for. And it's different every day. It's juvenile every day. It's just like making a list of assets you don't normally think of. Things like, I'm so glad that my dog is laying across my feet. I'm so glad that I woke up in a safe home. I'm so glad that I woke up. I'm so glad that I've got food today. I'm so glad that, like, it's just crazy things, right? But look what I've done in the first 90 seconds of my day. Because of my bulletproof routine, I have now chosen what colored lenses I'm going to see the morning through before my feet hit the ground. So it's impossible for me to wake up on the wrong side of the bed, so to speak. And when you choose what colored lenses you're going to see the beginning of your morning through, then that means that you have a much higher chance of controlling the outcome of the rest of your morning. When you control the outcome of the rest of your morning, you then have increased your chances of controlling the outcome of the afternoon. When you can control the outcome of your afternoon, you can absolutely control the outcome of your day. And notice I'm saying outcome, not circumstances. Things will still happen to you throughout the day, but you will handle them differently. You will act differently, you'll make decisions differently, you'll show up differently because of your bulletproof routine. And ours doesn't stop in that 90 seconds in the morning, by the way. It then goes on to me going down, grabbing that cup of coffee and.

We have a roll.