Money

Hello, my friends. Welcome to capitalism dot com. It's a snow day here in Austin, Texas. A snow day means there's no snow on the ground. It's just really cold in Texas. We get this thing called black ice in Texas where the roads just get really nasty, even though they look fine. And so everything shuts down. It's kind of funny because we don't shut down for Covid, but we shut down for really cold days. So I do not have my normal recording equipment with me today. That's at my lake house where I do most of my recording. So I hope you'll forgive the less than ideal audio quality today. But I wanted to record something for you because I want to talk to you about money. My favorite thing to talk about. Besides politics and religion, money brings up so much emotional charge, which is why it is so interesting to talk about. And I have become fascinated with how human beings respond to and think about money and have drawn conclusions that I want to share with you that connect that emotional response that we have to money to the amount of money that you make. What a weird year it has been, right? We all know that. But when you look at the situation from a financial perspective, this conversation about money gets highlighted on a stage that is a way of seeing money that we haven't seen before. Because a year ago, we shut down, right? The whole world went into quarantine. The whole world was going to end, and the government got involved and created a whole bunch of money. It went and propped up markets. It sent us stimulus checks while commerce was slowed down. But markets boomed. And now this thing called digital money, cryptocurrency has become front and center in the conversation that we're having as a society. And so our ideas about money are changing very rapidly. Our ideas about where money comes from are evolving and changing. Our expectations of money are starting to change because now there are retail investors who just buy a bunch of gamestop stock and stick it to the man at the hedge fund and make lots and lots of money, right? Our ideas about how we transact are accelerating. They're changing, they're adapting. And at certain points, that's really scary because our understanding of how finances and financial markets work are changing and adapting. And the whole system is going through these growing pains where there's now more money in the system than ever. It's trying to go different places, and it's just being forced into assets and the stock market and cryptocurrencies. And it's a very interesting time to look at money. Now, if you are a normal thinking, rational human being, then you are having some emotional responses to that change. Sometimes it's exciting. Your 401k is up and a lot of businesses are having record years simply because there's more money in the system. On the other side, you might be experiencing some fear. Fear about something like being left behind. Fears about other people getting rich in bitcoin while you're left holding debt, fears about prices going way up and you being able to afford your lifestyle. These are totally normal things that are coming up because they've come up for me and they've come up for a lot of the people that I know well through kind of the examination that I've been doing around money and really thinking about what is this thing that we put so much energy into and so much thought into. Because when you break it down, money isn't really real. Money is a tool that we have. It's a tool that we think about and use. But if you look at $100 bill and you have a $1 bill, it's made of the same paper and it's printed with the same ink, and it has a president on it, and it has some lingo on it and some pictures on it. It's the same paper, the same ink, but one gets you 100 times the stuff as the other at the same time. When you get a paycheck, it's usually via direct deposit. So it's just digital numbers on a screen that are moving from one person's account to another person's account. And when you go to use that money at the grocery store or the coffee shop or to pay your rent, you often put it on a plastic credit card that is just a representation of how much money is in there. And so all of this happens, and there's no actual thing that happens. There's no actual thing that moves. It's all numbers on a screen. A good example of this is you might have heard the story about the man who has $100 million in Bitcoin, but he lost his password to his account, and so he can't access that. So there is literally just an idea of $100 million sitting around in some hard drive, sitting around in the cloud. You might also, if you're familiar with the world of cryptocurrency, know that about 3 million bitcoins have been lost. They're gone. No one has them. They're forever removed from society. So those coins, that money is just not there. It's just lost somewhere in the cloud, in the world. That's weird, isn't it? Because when you think about it in that way, you realize that all that really exists is this agreement that we have made of how we are going to trade and transact and serve one another. So if you buy your groceries with a credit card and it's linked to a digital bank account that is filled with digital dollars that come from your direct deposited paycheck at the place that you go to work, which got a stimulus check from the government who just made up new money.

Well, then all we're doing is having agreements with each other and securing the transaction with something that we call dollars.

At its base level. That's what money is. Money is simply a way to formalize an agreement with each other. That's what money is. I like to say that the purpose of money is to fund and sustain service to one another, because you would never enter into an agreement with someone that you didn't think served you in some way. So the purpose of money is to be there to make the service to one another possible. You agree to transact these digital dollars at the grocery store and the butcher 300 miles away agrees to butcher the meat and send it over to Whole Foods so that you can purchase it, so that you can eat it, so that you can feed the people you love. These are simply agreements that we have made. Agreements with the grocer, agreements with the butcher, agreements with all of the people who are involved in getting the meat to your table. Money is just the way that we make it easy to enter into those agreements. You see how much something costs. You agree to pay it, you've entered into an agreement. Someone sees what something is worth, they decide to supply it based on that price. They've entered into agreement that I will do this thing and I will sell it for that amount of money. Doesn't it get boring when you break it down to that simple understanding that it is just an agreement that we make and that money is the way that we solidify it? We actualize that agreement. I was speaking with a friend of mine recently about money, intenseness about money, and we were kind of laughing about the fact that we put so much energy and worry and thought and emotion into what is very simply an agreement that we make. If we want more money, what we are really saying is we want the ability to enter into different agreements. We want the freedom to be able to enter into the agreements that we choose. We want to buy the food that we like. We want to live in the places that we desire. We want to Go to the places that we want to visit. We want to be with the people that we love. But there is this part of our brain that adds an extra step that says I must have the money. I must have the way to transact before I can choose where I want to live, before I can choose who I want to be with, before I can choose to do the things that I want to do. But that is an error in the brain's computation. It's an error in the algorithm. Because if money is a way for us to solidify agreements, then it is the choosing of what you desire most that you want, and money is there to finalize those agreements. Let me put this in a way that is less nefarious and airy fairy. I run an investment fund called the Capitalism Fund. And I am getting so much joy out of helping entrepreneurs grow their businesses. And what I do is I have this pool of cash. I raised $1.6 million in 2020 to invest in mostly physical product brands that come from. You come from this audience. And right now we've got four deals under contract and about four or more that are in due diligence. And I'm having so much fun investing in and advising the founders of these companies. And what I have discovered is that all of the entrepreneurs that I've been speaking to are held back by these fears about money, this tenseness that they have about the business not working out and them losing the money that is in it. And it's that fear that is preventing them from making the decisions that will actually grow their business. For example, several of the people that I've been speaking to throughout this process have a direction that they want to go in their business. They have products that they want to release, they have partnerships that they want to make, they have content that they want to create, but they have back burnered all of it because they've added this extra step. And that extra step is I first must have the money in order to be able to go do those things that will grow the business. A beautiful example of this is I was speaking with a company that I'm doing due diligence on that I might invest in. And I've been helping them get on track so that they're ready for my investment. And, and I told them that there was a specific type of person that they needed to go find and hire. And I helped them put together a job description and be really clear about who that person might be so that they could identify them and hire them. And when that person is hired I would feel comfortable investing in this business. And the founder of this business said to me, how are we going to be able to hire that person until we have the money to be able to hire them? Basically what he was asking me was, how am I going to afford that person until you make this investment in my company? And I said, it's the opposite. You need to go find this person so that I'm comfortable investing the money for you to hire them. And he went, I get it now, I get it now. Similarly, I was on a coaching call inside of the capitalism incubator, and I was working with someone who had gone through some of the content and asked some questions about hiring for a business that he wanted to scale and sell. And he was a new business owner. And he said, all right, my business isn't profitable yet because I haven't launched yet, so how would I go about hiring someone that I can't yet afford? And I said to him, you know, if you secure the people that you want first, if you go make the relationships that you want first, even if you don't finalize the agreement with money, if you simply say to that person, hey, if I go in this direction, could we hire your agency or could we hire you part time? If you've got the verbal agreement first and you present that to someone like me, who's an investor, I now have a clear route for my money to flow. If you come to the table and you tell me that you have this manufacturer lined up and you have this influencer on board and you have this employee or this agency in a verbal agreement and all you need is the money to be able to finalize the agreement, look how fast money shows up. Because money is just the way that we finalize those agreements. We often think that we need the money in order to seek the agreements, but the opposite is true. Money, once again, is not real. Money is simply the way that we represent energy. It's the way that we represent the importance of the decisions that we make. But it is the decisions themselves that we must prioritize. This comes up a lot when we're talking about the lifestyle that we want to live, the car that we want, the house that we want, the people we want to be with, and the belief that it is the money that will allow us to have those things. But in all of those things, there is something else that we want. There is really a belief about ourselves that we are after. If you have the car you want or the house you want, you will be successful. You will have Made it. You will feel easy, you will feel free. You will only do the things that you want to do. You won't have to sacrifice your energy for money. But I would like for you to consider that if you believed that you were successful and if you operated with ease, if you operated with freedom, and you had the commitment to yourself to only enjoy the things that you do, rather than to consider them a grind or getting burnt out, I would submit to you that the money would show up faster, that money would flow to you, because now you are making the decisions that lead to making more money. A lot of people who are stressed about money feel like they have to make stressed decisions about money. If I am stressed about money, then I have to go work really hard to get more money. And if I work really hard to get more money, then I will no longer have to be stressed about money. Kind of a silly example might be when the stock market crashed in 2020, people who were scared about money sold their stocks and they waited on the sidelines until things got better. But if you felt really secure about money, even if you didn't have a lot of it, you would have seen that the market had crashed, that this was a great opportunity, and you would have made a decision that was not from a stressed place. It would be a decision from an opportunistic place, from an optimistic place, from a positive place. And you would have bought stock, and now you would be up 300%, depending on what you bought. Maybe you would have bought Tesla and you'd be up 1000%. Maybe you would have bought Bitcoin, you'd be up 1500%. Those who were able to operate from a confident place got results that amplified that confidence. And that is how you shift your business. That is how you shift the direction of your life. Not by waiting for the outside thing, like money to tell you to go, but for you to decide where you want to go. And the money shows up to support that. Now, that sucks. Like hearing that phrase, the money just shows up. Well, where does it come from? It comes from the agreements that you make along the way. Agreements with investors, agreements with customers, agreements with bankers. And if you don't believe me, consider this as an example. I work with some students in the incubator who are getting ready for launch of their business or of their product. But they don't yet have product to sell. But we make them pick a date on the calendar and decide when they're going to sell their product. And if you don't have product ready, guess what. You still got to take a sale. How do you take a sale without having product? You enter into an agreement with the customer that you will ship it when it's ready. That's called a pre sale, that's called a Kickstarter. That's called a first in line sale where you take pre orders and you simply say on the page, these will be shipping around 60 days from now. It's just an agreement and if you say what it is up front and other people accept it, you now transact with money and you've got the money for inventory. Doesn't that feel good? Doesn't that feel light when you can just see it as I am going to make an offer that someone else can accept or reject and I'm going to move forward in the direction that I want. Life becomes a lot lighter and easier when you think about it from that perspective. I used to over obsess about crafting my offers and crafting my products and my sales letters to be perfect, to be able to convince someone to buy my stuff. Now I recognize that all I have to do is simply state what my side of the agreement is and see who wants to accept. That's all sales is. Our community manager justice told me that I'm the best salesman he has ever seen recently. And he said to me, what sales training have you taken? How did you get so good at this? And I thought, and I said I don't think I've taken a single sales training or course ever. And then I remembered I did have one. I did, I did work with Kevin nations for a little bit, but I don't like follow any scripts or anything. I just do my best to tell the truth. And the truth is simply stating what my side of the agreement is. And if somebody else jives with that agreement, then we finalize the agreement with money. I don't have to convince them, I don't have to sell them, I don't have to shoot down their objections. I simply state where I am on the side of the agreement. One of those agreements, for example, is the capitalism incubator. So I will agree to give you my processes and access to my network and put you through a process that I've seen create eight figure exits for myself and for some of the people that I've worked with. And you can go through this process for 12 months and it costs six payments of $3,000. That's my side of the agreement. If you want that you agree to it, we transact and we both move along our way. I do My side of the agreement. You do your side of the agreement, and we finalized it with money. And the idea is that both of us are better off at the other side of that agreement, because otherwise why would we make that agreement? So as a salesperson, when I'm selling someone, I simply help them decide if they would benefit from that side of the agreement. And if not, I have no problem ending the conversation because I don't want it to not be a win win for both of us. Money simply exists to make it possible for you to choose the agreements that you want to enter with less friction. Now, you can buy a Lamborghini with money. You can also get a Lamborghini in other ways. You can get a Lamborghini by trading your time to the dealership and getting a discount on it and selling enough cars for you to have a Lamborghini. You can get a Lamborghini by winning a sales competition. You can get a Lamborghini by winning a contest. You can get a Lamborghini by trading your intellectual property to a dealership that is gonna end up selling more cars. And you don't take any money, you just get a Lamborghini. All of these things are agreements. They're all entering into an agreement in which the scenario is you end up with a Lamborghini. Money is simply one of those agreements that makes it really fast for you to get into. And when you can think about the decisions that you make and the things that you purchase and the direction of your life as simply a set of those agreements, then money becomes the byproduct. You get to set your sights on the directions, on the end points, on the desires that you have. Without this loophole in the system that says, first must have money, first must have money, must get money. That's the fear in your brain talking. But when you realize that the fear part of your brain is actually an error in the algorithm and you can look past it towards what is it that you want the money to do? You want the money to free you up, to enter into the agreements that you want. What are those agreements? Put all of your energy there. What do you want on the other side of that? And money shows up to support that. One final example that I will give to you. There's a business that we're mentoring inside of the fund that I'm so pumped about. It's about a $2 million business. And this person is really stressed and overwhelmed. Now. He's profitable, he's got a great little business, but his life and his business is constrained by his own bottleneck. Right? He's only one person. He can only do so much. He would like the business to grow, but if it grows anymore, his life gets worse because. Because he is the bottleneck here. So he's got money, but he's not free. My job is to free him up. And the way that we do that is we bring some capital to the table to be able to buy, some help to help him enter into an agreement with some team members that can collaborate and take the burden off of him and free him up to think about what are the next products that he's going to launch. What is he going to create from that place of not being stressed, but feeling easy, feeling free, having fun, wanting to contribute, wanting to serve, because that state is what he wants. It is not just about the money. Money is a nice byproduct of staying in that place of creation and fun and service and collaboration and choice and ease. That's what you want. And it just so happens that when you're in that place, you create great stuff. And when you create great stuff, other people voluntarily want to buy from you. And when they voluntarily want to buy from you, you make a lot of money because money is there to support the service to one another. And when you can get to that place, even before you can see where the money comes from, that is when you create the business of your dreams. There's a whole community that's rooting for you. If you're not a member of it, head over to capitalism.com the number one, and we would love to be a part of your journey. Thanks for listening to the show, everybody. I so appreciate it. I'll talk to you on the next episode.

It's a true stat that 99% of business owners never clear a million dollars. And that is why I started a mentoring group called the one percent. I have helped hundreds of entrepreneurs cross seven figures. There's a reason why that's the case, and it's because we have a formula that works really well. And this year, in 2021, we've introduced mastermind groups at each level in the process. That's the grind, the growth and the gold. So when you come join us inside the 1%, you'll be partnered with other entrepreneurs who are at your level to help you get through that level and accelerate onto the next step in your journey. You'll be following the same roadmap that I teach in my book, 12 months to 1 million. That's why we have such a high success rate. Getting people to where they want to be. So go to capitalism.com1, scroll to the bottom, hit the join button, and for less than you spent on eating out this past month, you'll be in a room of entrepreneurs who are pushing you to go from where you are right now to the next step in the process. It'll be the best investment that you make all year. Come join us. We're ready for you. Go to capitalism.com1.