The Journey to Financial Epiphany | Scott Yamamura

Hey creative, are you ready to discuss profits, the money, the ways to make it happen? The Profitable Creative Podcast is for you, the creative, how you define it. Videographers, photographers, entrepreneurs, marketing agencies, you get it. CEO of Core Group and author Christian Brim interviews industry experts, creative entrepreneurs, and professionals alike who strive to be creative and make money at the same time. Sound like you? Tune in now. It's time for profit.

Welcome to another edition of The Profitable Creative, the only place on the interwebs where you will learn how to turn your passion into profit. I am your host, Christian Brim. Special shout out to our one listener in Mason, Ohio. Um, never been to Ohio, so I don't know where Mason is. My guest today is Scott Yamamura, offer— offer— author of Financial Epiphany. Welcome to the show, Scott.

Thanks, Christian. Great to be here.

In the green room, we were discussing what this conversation was going to look like, and I really think that, you know, we're kind of kindred spirits in that we're sort of creative, sort of analytical, emphasis on the financial. And I'm— I don't have the benefit of reading your book and you don't have the benefit of reading mine. So, Scott, why don't you tell us, I guess, I could start with the experience side, but I think what I'd like to know first is what led you to write the book?

Yeah, 10 years ago, I challenged myself. I said, okay, there's 3 big pieces of life, and I should choose one to do something about. One, maintaining a house. Two, understanding how to fix a car. Three, learn personal finance. So I don't know much about taking care of a house or fixing cars. So I chose personal finance, and I dove in 10 years ago. To get over that big intimidating hurdle that most of us face. And I said, I'm gonna, I'm just gonna get to know this stuff. I'm gonna have to know this for the rest of my life. Most people make about 1.5 transactions on average per day. That's over 22,000 or so transactions in a lifetime. And it's like, we, we better figure one of these out. So I was like, let me, let me go after personal finance. So after studying it, uh, diving into books, um, taking workshops getting out there and talking about it, this thing that we're told not to talk about. In fact, when I was growing up, my mom used to say, "Talking about money is like talking about your underwear." And by that she meant it was a private topic. And private, I trusted what she said and I stayed quiet about it. I didn't ask questions. But when we don't talk about money, we could be going about it all wrong, silently suffering. And And in fact, the statistics do point that out. So when I was studying finance and I found out all these truths, wow, 78% of people might be living paycheck to paycheck. It doesn't look like that with the cars we drive, the vacations we go on, and the electronics we own. Wow, most of us are in debt, about 77%. Oh, I thought everybody owned everything and we were healthy with our finances. Not the case. Living on the edge is showing a different story than what's actually in the bank. And then the other thing is financial literacy. I thought that everybody had parents that showed a good example and they just followed that example. Also not true. Financial literacy, most have trouble passing a basic financial literacy test. And one of the biggest answers to, hey, what's going on with your 401? How you doing? This and that. Biggest answer is, I don't know. We don't have an understanding or confidence in this area. We're not taught it. It's not in all the schools.. And so it's kind of sink or swim, go figure it out for yourself. So once I discovered that that is what is really happening, uh, we look great out there in America, but, uh, the bank accounts say otherwise. I studied to become a financial coach, not exactly so I could run a coaching business one-on-one, but so I could get a message out. So I did spend 3 years writing a book called Financial Epiphany, uh, looks like this. And I really wanted it to be, uh, very, uh, approachable.

That's why there are some similarities in our color schemes. I don't know if—

yeah, yeah, I think we're on the same page with a lot of this. So, and that was the idea, is to make finance approachable, to make, uh, personal finance for you. Most of us think we're imposters. I myself thought I was an imposter. Oh, I'm not supposed to know this, but I certainly could hire somebody. Well, I think we all owe it to ourselves to learn about it. And so this whole journey over the past 10 years, I would say stumbled across 3 financial epiphanies. They're taught about in the book. We're going to talk about them today too. I don't keep it a secret. I just want to help as many people as possible. But these simple rules of thumb, they teach the basic person because this is where we're at with finances. We're not savvy. We're not all well-informed. Just to make that basic step. What do we need to know to step into healthy finances? That's what I boiled the book down into. That's the message.

So to clarify, there wasn't some, uh, financial reckoning in your life like bankruptcy or something like that that precipitated this. It was just a desire to have some foundational knowledge that you thought you needed to have as a human.

You got it. And I do feel like you use that word reckoning. I call it the day of reckoning. I feel like everybody is going to have that. I had a soft reckoning where I decided to do something early, but the day of reckoning can be a very hard hit-the-wall moment when retirement comes. Whoops. There's something called the retirement crisis where we realize we didn't save enough. We don't want to wait till retirement to find that out. So my reckoning was a personal choice, um, and did it hopefully early enough to make a difference in my own life and help other people out.

So some personal questions. Are you married?

Oh, absolutely. I'm a family man, married, and I have one son who's a teenager.

Nice. Okay. So you were telling me, and I just want this information out there as context. You said you have a full-time gig.

This is—

you're getting an author is not your bread and butter.

That's the passion project.

That's right. And your full-time gig is?

I work for Costco Wholesale, which is located in the Seattle area. So I'm outside of the Seattle area. I've been working there 25 years straight out of college and started as a web designer, went into multimedia, and now head up the— thanks to COVID, which made video communications a very big thing since we couldn't gather in person— I do head up the video communications department globally. Globally for the company.

Okay, so clearly you have a creative bent to your profession.

You got it. 5 days a week on it with Costco, and then there's the other 2 days a week in the evenings, which we can talk about as well.

Yeah, so, so, and I do want to mention that too because I found that interesting. But let— okay, so let's, let's start with this. In your research, what did you find that was most surprising to you personally? Not like the population as a whole, but like to you, like, oh, wow, okay, I didn't know that. That's going to make a difference.

Yeah. So the realization I had along this whole time, what motivated me, my main motivator— different things can motivate different people, right? Finances is incredibly personal. Some people, their big step is, I got out of debt. I was in this hole. It was for years. It was a chain around my ankles. And I am released and I have freedom. That wasn't so much my story, although I did get out of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of debt. Other people might say, wow, finances was a terrible argument every day with my spouse, and we almost got divorced over it, hanging on a string. And, you know, money problems are one of the biggest causes of divorce if you have that friction and abrasiveness on a daily basis. But for me, it actually was the biggest realization with finances was that we can multiply it. And I had always been told, there's the great advice out there. Albert Einstein is sometimes credited with saying, "Compound interest is the 8th wonder of the world." And you have people saying, "Save early." And you have others saying, "Save 15% towards retirement or have 10 times your income saved by the time you retire." All this great advice. That is about saving and investing, many, many things from Warren Buffett that talk about these things as well. But I needed to make it personal. I needed to make it hit. And I actually had this aha moment, this epiphany where I realized, aha, this is how it works for me. I'm a creative. I needed to hear this in a creative and simplified way because once again, creatives a lot of times think that we're imposters. We have imposter syndrome. We're not supposed to understand money or finances. That's someone to be hired. It's not for me. Uh, it became for me. I realized how it could become for me. That's the message I'm now spreading, is when I realized I understood how to multiply money, that actually helped me with my debt because I didn't put money into things, I put it into multiplying. And now life is healthy now The debts are behind me. I'm looking out for my son and helping him out early. We started teaching him in the single digits about finances, and he has a creative bend as well. And then now the future looks good as well, not only for our own family, but we can step in and help aging parents out and, and also just spread the word all over the place— creatives, coworkers, friends, family. Uh, that's the idea now is now that I got my, my, uh, financial life in places to help show others the way.

I love that. Yeah. My, you talk about, you know, setting your son up. My, my, my poor children were subjected to lots of Monopoly and, uh, Cashflow from Kids, the, the board game.

Yeah.

Um, so I, it's, it is interesting to me. Some of the fundamentals that people assume that are wrong, right? And, and one of the things that really struck me— so I, I read Robert Kiyosaki's, uh, Rich Dad Poor Dad right after graduating university, and I had graduated the degree in accounting. I was a financial professional, right? Yeah. And I read his book and he said, "Your home is not an asset, it's a liability." And that idea where I'd heard it, I'd probably said it, "Your home is your largest asset," which, you know, I don't want to get in the weeds on defining an asset or a liability or any of those things, but there are some fundamental beliefs that we believe about money that just simply aren't true. What would you say your top 1 or 2 are?

Oh yeah. Such a great question because I got my number 1, which is wait to save later. When you make more money, when you get promoted, when you're older and wiser, you're going to have time to become savvy. That's the time to invest. Just wait till you're middle-aged or so. That is the greatest myth. Because it's actually the opposite. It's age and it is time. So those who are younger who choose to invest, they actually can do and perform better than their savvy version of themself who waits until later. You compare the two and those who start out early investing in very common things like index funds, mutual funds, target date mutual funds can actually outperform their older self because of this multiplying power. That they have when they are young. So there's that great myth, wait till later. It's just crush that into smithereens, throw it on the floor, stomp on that thing because it's all about starting early and you don't even need to be a financial expert or financially savvy. You just start in the most common things like a 401 plan, an IRA retirement plan, stocks and bonds, index funds, commonly available things. And thanks for that question because I love explaining that great myth.

Yes, and, and I think there's a lot of intentional confusion, um, by the industry out there. And I'm not talking about the people that are trying to get you to rent-to-own your couch, uh, or your, your, uh, TV. I, I'm talking about the Wall Street financial professionals We do wealth management at Core, and we have an internal phrase for it, which is financial porn. And it is essentially all of the stuff that's designed to grab your attention, right? And in a lot of ways cause fear and anxiety, right? Because then you'll want to find the expert and pay them essentially to help you. Um, but that's not necessary, right? Like, you're, you're living proof. You, you didn't have to go to school, um, and you didn't even have to be particularly good to start. You, you— the basics of finance, uh, are, are very simple, right? You know, like Einstein talking about the time value of money. Like, if you understand the time value of money, which is A dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow or a year or 10 years from now. Like, if you understand that concept, would you explain it to people? They're like, no, no, I'd rather have a dollar today than 5 years from now. Um, the foundational things are not complicated. Where you end up with, you know, uh, complex financial derivatives based upon, you know, mortgage securities that you, you, you end up with financial collapse. Yeah, you can make it as complicated as you want, and it's usually somebody trying to game the system to make money, right? Like, but that you don't, you don't have to, you don't have to know any of that.

No, no, you don't have to optimize. You don't have to be savvy. You don't have to be an expert. You can do simple things for a long time. And that's a great plan for most people. Because if most people are in the retirement crisis, the student loan crisis, or hit by the housing crisis, crisis, crisis, crisis, that's normalized for us. We're, we're good at crisis. Um, so just do the simple normal thing. Avoid crisis. Stay far away from it. The simple normal thing can get you to financial health, and you can always become savvy later.

You will, as you're around it and you experience it. And, but yeah, there's no reason to become an expert to start.

No, not to start. No, no, no. It's more important to, to do the common available things, get going, and then later look back and say, hey, let's start tweaking and optimizing from here.

Hey listeners, are you ready to turn your passion into profit? Then grab a copy of Profit First for Creatives. Click the link in the show notes to purchase a copy. And if you're not ready to make that full commitment, you can download a free copy of the first chapter. Check it out right now. Yeah. And in, in addition to the financial porn that's out there, there is this, uh, fear because to your point and your parents, you don't talk about it, right? Um, and you know, it's funny, I, I, I've talked about it before. I grew up in an entrepreneurial family. And so I didn't, I didn't grow up with a scarcity mindset around money, which a lot of people do. A lot of people, they believe that there's a limited amount of money and managing your money is about cutting spending. Like, that's the extent of it. Yeah.

Common.

Right. I didn't have that mindset, but frankly, The abundance mindset can lead to problems too, because what happened in my case, I always thought, well, I can always make more money. So I was not as intentional with my money as I should have been, right? Sure. And so there are a lot of— there's a lot of baggage that comes with money. And to your point, like talking about marital strife, yeah, you know, money is extremely personal, right? Like what Scott likes is not what Christian likes, and therefore what they spend their money on are not the same thing. And so when you have spouses that, you know, have fundamentally different values around money, You're going to have conflict, which, which, which for most people means, well, we're just going to avoid the topic, right? We're just because we don't want, we don't want to fight. We're just going to not talk about it. So you had that upbringing where, you know, you weren't supposed to talk about your dirty laundry. How have you changed your mindset on that with your kids? Like what, what, what was that transition like?

Oh, I love that because starting at age 7 is around the time that I started teaching my son about finance. And I thought to myself, everything that was kept a secret from me, I am going to teach my son early so he never is intimidated by these things. He never thinks imposter syndrome. Uh, I was told and led to believe that, uh, investing was gambling. And so it took me a long, long time to get over being comfortable with the stock market. And then I realized on the other end, looking at it as actually like Warren Buffett explains, do you do you work at, or do you trust and believe in the US economy and these 500 top businesses? Yeah, I work at one of them, Costco Wholesale. Do I believe in Microsoft and Amazon?

No, I don't like Microsoft. But they make a lot of money.

Sorry, sorry, I had to bring up Microsoft, Christian. I know you got some personal feelings on that one. But do I believe that each of these companies is going to try their darndest to succeed and to innovate and to keep making a profit? Oh yeah, everybody's out there trying to do their best. We're buying, uh, services and products that we are making ourselves when we're selling them to each other. And that's what we're going to do for all time, is keep making products and services and selling them to each other. But you got to be smart enough to know when your personal limit is. Um, but, uh, looking at, yeah, this, uh, understanding on personal finance, I had to get over that hurdle Personally, no one was telling me, um, stop thinking about, you know, money is like talking about your underwear, start thinking about investing as positively. I had to get over that hurdle myself. It was a personal choice. Uh, and when I taught my, my kid that, um, who's now 16 years old, we started with two things that I wish I had had early and I started a custodial account for him and I started his 529 college savings plan. And the thing about the college savings plan is we saved, we started saving at age 7 and we stopped at age 9. And my wife came to me and she said, why are we stopping? And these 3 epiphanies that I can get into explaining, but I'll tell you the example first. I understood how money was going to grow. So we stopped and I said, it's going to double before he gets into college. And it certainly has. He's 16 now and he's had enough money to, to go to state, uh, college for a while now because the money grew faster than tuition did. And so that's one thing that, uh, understanding these rules of thumb can do is help you plan and act early. I never would have saved money and stopped for his college if I didn't know it was gonna double. Uh, so that was one thing. His college— he's had enough money for college since you know, age 9. And then the other thing is this custodial account. And what I wanted to do was with his birthday money, with his Christmas money, um, we'd say, hey Logan, we want you to choose like one stock, two stock, just choose some, like a company you know and like. Like, what do you think? Disney? Okay. Netflix? Okay. Amazon? Okay. And then you know what happened during the pandemic? We watched it and we said, well, which companies did good? Amazon goes up because everybody's ordering things from home. Netflix went up because everybody's streaming entertainment from home. And he started to see these things happen when he was young, very young. He's also seen his Custodial account double in size. And so teaching him early with money that's not his, you know, it's gift money and things like that, he's learning And he's not even in college yet, but he's getting over all those things that people are commonly intimidated by or have imposter syndrome at. And I highly recommend that parents do that for their kids. They get them, get them in early and teach them so that they hit the ground running when it's time to start working.

So that is an example of what— which of your 3 epiphanies?

Okay, the first one. So the first epiphany is with the simplest, most common scenario. Because you got to make money freeze. Money is intimidating, it's all over the place, it's like the stars in the sky. How— where do we get started? So I freeze it, and freezing money, uh, can be done via these 3 things. First, what is the most common age to start a career at? Age 22. Could be 21, could be 23. Let's freeze it at 22. What is the average duration of a career? 40 years. Could be 39, could be 41. Freeze it at 40. And third, what is the average, uh, rate of return for investments? Well, a good number to throw out there for stocks and bonds over the long term is 7.2%. That rate of return— and the reason why I and others love that rate of return is it leads to the easiest math possible, and that's what we need. Remember, we don't want to inundate people with complexities. We are going after a simple approach for non-savvy people, which is the largest population in the US is not savvy with finances. Okay, so 7.2% money with those 3 things, money is doubling every 10 years. So you put $1,000 in, say into a 401 plan, don't even touch it. Look 10 years later, $2,000. That's what is happening. That's a very common scenario is when we invest, that money can double every 10 years. That's the first rule of thumb. And when we don't have that framework, we have no idea what's happening. But when we have that, two of the simplest concepts ever, money doubling, well, doubling is simple. $1,000 turns into $2,000. And one of our favorite numbers of all time, 10. 10 years later, it's doubling. So that's the first epiphany. And with that, we're describing the inch mark on a ruler, something to start measuring by. But with that small calculation, you can figure out so much of finance for the rest of your life. And so I've enjoyed using that simple math in my financial life as well.

Yeah, so let's take your— continue your example. You start at 22 with $1,000. At 32, you're at $2,000. So at 42, you're at $4,000.

$4,000.

At 52, you're at $8,000.

Yeah.

And at 62, when you're contemplating retirement, you're, you're at, what did I lost my number? Was it 8 or something?

Well, at that point, yeah, it's, it's a multiple of 1. And at that point you are hopefully near retirement. It is average retirement age and you're enjoying the fruits of your labor. So it's no longer multiplying. You're starting to spend it. So you described the very thing that I usually have to explain, but you said it on your side. And those are the numbers, those numbers, 1, 2, 4, 8, 16. Those are doubling numbers, and that is exactly what can happen. So now we have our ruler. We talked about the inch mark, that money can double every 10 years. Let's talk about the ruler, which measures your career. Now, because people usually work for, we said, the average of 40 years, now we know that if you put $1,000 in, at the end when you retire, it should be about $16,000. Right, there's this multiple of 16, and that's what we want to look at. Because when people start their careers now, they know what's happening when they put $1,000 in over the long term. Instead of, I don't know, we say, oh, every $1,000 I put in, that should turn into $16,000. Wow, I should act now. And that's the point, is that, uh, when you talk about multiplying money, this thing, it can feel impersonal. But when you flip things around and you say, wait a second, you have this multiplying ability of 16. You have an ability. You're actually more like an athlete. NFL players, uh, Olympic hockey— uh, ice skaters, I should say, and gymnasts, uh, many sports athletes are at their prime in their 20s. And the same is true for money. It's when you start working and you have the ability to invest, that's your most critical time to act. That's when you have the most leverage. And I'm here to tell people and coach people into realizing their multiplying power is to put a number on it rather than nothing. As I say, you have the power of 16 when you start working, and 10 years later it's going to half into the power of 8, and 10 years later it's going to be 4 and 2 and 1. So if you have the power of 16 when you start working, don't you want to act now? Uh, it creates a sense of urgency. And so I just blended Financial Epiphany 2 and 3 there. Financial epiphany 2 is you have the power of 16 when you start working. Financial epiphany 3 is that you're multiplying power halves every 10 years. Now that we know what's happening, we have a framework to act. And that's exactly why I saved for my son's college when he was 7 years old. And that's exactly why I max out my 401 plan and have an IRA and invest in these other methods. I wouldn't have done that if I didn't know these 3 epiphanies. I would have acted timidly, which is what I did before. But I'm spreading the word so that others understand what's happening very simply with a simple framework and can take action.

Well, yeah. And I love your analogy to an athlete. And I realized at the time that when I said— you asked where I was from and I said Oklahoma City, home of the world champion Oklahoma City Thunder. I didn't know you lived in Seattle. And I did not mean to scrape that wound. I apologize. We love the SuperSonics.

Yeah, yeah. No offense taken.

Yeah.

Okay.

So, but, but like an athlete, you degrade over time, right? And so if you, if you've got a 16 to 1 leverage or an even an 8 to 1 leverage, you've got a lot of room to screw up and still be further ahead, just like the athlete in his, in his prime can get away with stuff that they probably couldn't later in their career. Like, they got to be more conservative, they've got to, they've got to like maybe not take that extra step, or, you know, etc. But it's— I love that analogy comparing it to an athlete because it's, it's, it's good.

Yeah, yeah, I, I love it because what we want to do is explain using something people understand to, uh, parallel it to something people don't understand. People understand athlete, they don't understand finance. Another person I talked to— I love this analogy, it's a little bit more for women— she said, uh, that you've got your— this is like a biological clock, you've got this financial biological clock ticking. And I was like, that's perfect, that's a whole nother way, another parallel of explaining this. And here's an example that I actually love that really gets you to feel what the Power of 16 is like, because people say, oh, Power of 16, that sounds great, that's good. But here's the example. If you work a week of work and get paid for that week, that's what you signed up for. Now let's say you work a week of work and your boss says, you know what, you did such a good job, I'm going to pay you double. I'm going to pay you 2 weeks worth of pay for that 1 week. You would be ecstatic. Right. That's the power of 2. Everybody would sign up for that. Get paid double. Yeah, absolutely. Now, what's the power of 16 like? It's like working a week of work and getting paid for 4 months. That is ridiculous. That is off the charts. And until I explain it like that, most people don't realize what the power of 16 is like. And when you realize it's like working a week and getting paid for 4 months, and then the next week you work a week and get paid for another 4 months, and you keep doing that. Then that creates that urgency to act, that, oh, that's how good my multiplying power is right now. I should not sit idly by. I should start that, that investment account today and put in as much as possible. And once again, stay far away from debt. Take that money I was going to spend on the thing or the upgrade and, and put that into an investment vehicle.

Yeah. And, and, and it, it That's not to say that if you're already in your 30s or 40s that you still shouldn't act quickly because the clock is still ticking. You're losing your power.

Yeah, absolutely. And I like to say, if you have that power of 2 or more, meaning in your 50s or more, I was like, you have got some off-the-charts ability. People think, oh, I have the power of 2, not the power of 16. That's a small thing by comparison. There are parts of the world where money doesn't double. We live in a country that is affluent, that there is opportunity. And like I said, Warren Buffett says, you know, if you bet against America, you're betting against yourself. You, you're in a place where he says we've won the ovarian lottery. We've been born into a lucky sperm club. There's another way of saying it right there. And so, so multiplying your money by 2 by doing nothing, just putting it here rather than spending it. That's the thing of beauty. That's like, it's like putting something on a boat, sending it off, and 10 years later there's twice as much and you didn't do anything. And it's like, that's, that doesn't happen everywhere. So to be, to have gratitude and thankfulness that we do live in a place where that does happen, that is our economy, that is the structure. Uh, it's a beautiful thing. So we should all take advantage of it.

Yes, 100%. And I, I would, I couldn't agree with you more. I mean, not that America doesn't have its problems. It has its problems. Yeah, but you know, if, if you don't wake up, uh, and, and thank God that you were born in this country with the opportunity— it, it doesn't mean equal results, but you, you, you have a better shot here than anywhere else. Um, you're, you're, you're kind of missing a little bit of gratitude there because we are very fortunate. Um, so tell me about this third leg of, of your, of of Scott, which would be your— I forgot the name you told me, but it's—

Created to Create.

Yes.

Thank you. Yes. That is the passion project. So if one piece of the pie is my career, 40 hours a week, that's Costco Wholesale doing video. Then we've talked about Financial Epiphany, which is helping spread the word and helping people get healthy with their finances simply. The third piece of the pie is Created 2 Create. And that's an organization that started 10 years ago to take my passion of video and put a purpose behind it. And so that purpose is we create videos for nonprofit organizations and causes. We just went to Sierra Leone, Africa a few months ago, my son and wife and I, and we filmed a video for a ministry called the Bridge of Hope. And they create schools and churches and clinics, and we went with several nurses to film a video about what they do, help with malaria, malnutrition, snake bites, things of that nature. And one of my favorite ministries here in the Seattle area is called DADS, and they help reconnect fathers that have been separated from their kids, divorce, abandonment, incarceration. Working on a video for them right now. And that's what we do. And because there's financial wellness and other areas, Created to Create just takes care of itself. It doesn't need to fund my life or pay my rent. It is a passion project. It's what I would do anyway, whether there was money involved or not. But we usually like to have our expenses covered so that it can sustain itself.

So do you do fundraising for that? Or do you like charge the nonprofit sometimes to create the video?

Like Yeah, the best scenario is if, get this, okay, here's a quick story. So the first time I went to Sierra Leone, 5, 6 years ago, the trip was covered and the video was compensated for. So I went for less than a couple weeks, came back. It was about a 100-hour project from shooting to editing. And so put this piece together and it showed at the fundraiser. I sat next to a tall man, elderly man with a cane His name was Ernie, and I thought, okay, this is assigned seating and I'm seated near the front of this room. That made me feel like they were a little special. And why, why was I here? And what do we have in common? Who is Ernie? Turns out Ernie paid for me to go and compensated me for the video. He took care of it himself, he and his wife. Uh, he watched the video for the first time at that breakfast, and he leaned over to me and he said, hey Scott, that's the first time I've seen that video. And he said, my wife and I came here with a number in mind that we are going to donate. And he said, don't tell her, but I just doubled it. And so not only did he pay for my whole trip and expenses, travel expenses, which is not cheap, and the video, he just doubled his his donation to the Bridge of Hope. That's only his wife, so hopefully she forgave him for that. But here you've got this guy that offered to pay for things. So thanks for asking that question because sometimes a donor will come forth and say, "I'll take care of that. I'll underwrite that. Don't worry about that ministry. We've got it covered." But always the ministry is having a donor cover the expenses in some way, shape, or form. We, of course, charge nonprofit prices and have ongoing relationships with the ministries we work with.

I love that. I met a videographer last year who that was his niche, was working with nonprofits. And he talked about how difficult it was. And we kind of talked about like the nonprofit mindset versus the for-profit mindset and like it is very different. And I've worked with nonprofit organizations and been part of nonprofit organizations. And, you know, the mindset's not the same as when you're sitting at the— in the boardroom at Costco, right? I mean, and it shouldn't be because they've got different purposes. But one of the things that I kept coming back to specifically around videography is like the power of story. To influence donors, right? And how many causes there are that are truly great causes that are just nobody knows about, right? And this isn't like about manipulating people's feelings. You know, we're not talking Susan Sarandon and the, you know, PETA commercials, get your $15 t-shirt, donate. We're not talking about that stuff. I'm talking about like true causes like the one that you're referencing in Sierra Leone, where like if more people knew about it, they would absolutely contribute money to it and just how powerful that story is in supporting their cause.

Yeah, yeah, story. Yeah, we are the— to talk about for-profit organizations first, We are the most marketed, advertised to society on earth. So we're number one in that. So I don't know if that's something to be proud of. $400 billion per year. That's more than $1,000 per person, even the babies. So congratulations. I think China's runner-up. That is nuts. It's pretty nuts. And so, but when you come to, and obviously there's gonna be, when you spend those advertising dollars, the money comes back through revenue. But nonprofits aren't able to advertise like that. And so, there's certainly, I call it going from products and prices to people and purpose. When you're doing products and prices, there's this flow of money. When it's people and purpose, that's a little bit harder because you are inviting people to a fundraiser and hopefully, they show up and have that heart to donate. They are choosing what they are giving for maybe that free meal on the table they're getting that night. Whereas in the for-profit world, you're purchasing something and getting this product of a certain value in return. And so, totally different worlds, totally different animals, like you say. But the nonprofit world, it's something we almost have to go to. It's not coming to us. It's not in our email accounts or on the billboards or before the movie starts.

Yeah. And to your point, like, you know, like you explained this ministry to me verbally, right? And, you know, it may resonate with me, right? And I might say, you know, that's something that I might follow up with Scott and see if I could support, right? However, if you showed me a video with the people that you change through that ministry and hear their stories, right? You talk about multipliers, that's a multiplier off the chart. Right? Like it's a totally different level of engagement.

That's right. Yeah, I think to maybe draw a little comparison, I saw, I went to the Coke Museum in Atlanta a few weeks ago and they had this beautiful piece that played about everybody being happy and families coming together and just having the best time of their lives. And then they were drinking and sharing a bottle of Coke. And I was like, that's amazing.

And getting diabetes together.

It was beautiful. There you go. Hey, we're in it together. We're in it together. And when you, But when you talk about what you just said, which is here are the lives that are being helped, you know, in Sierra Leone, the child's able to go to school that wasn't able to go to school at all, uh, this family is getting fed and otherwise they would have maybe one meal a day where the, the child is actually getting it at school and it's rice mixed with sauce. Um, that sort of thing, if I were to go buy a bottle of Coke and someone wanted a tip for it, you know, I might I might, I'll give them that 20% tip, you know, on the receipt when I leave that restaurant. But if I go watch a story where a life is being transformed and changed and a community is in Sierra Leone, I'm going to give more than a 20% tip. There's, you know, some people are donating just tens of thousands of dollars to something like this because there's this life-changing value and a human life is infinitely valued. You can't put a price on it. And so you could give forever to something like that. And not lose out. Whereas if you overpay for a product, we feel like we're being taken advantage of. And I do feel like that with the way it's been going.

Yes. And if you drink too much Coke, you're going to get sick. It's going to affect your health. Right, right. There's no— there's no negative in, in helping other people. Like, there's no— there's no downside. Scott, um, how do people find out more? Well, first of all, how do we purchase your book?

What's the— what's the Uh, the book is on Amazon, available for purchase, Financial Epiphany. And the easiest way to get connected with me or find out more is financialepiphany.com. Uh, you can also get to the book through that way. You can, uh, view— I'll post a link to this podcast once it's available on there. And, uh, there's a free download for those who want to learn how to make their first investment. Starting a Roth IRA or get out of debt. There it talks about something called the debt snowball, uh, the process to get out of debt, and also find out how much to save for retirement. What is your retirement number?

So love it. I love your website, by the way. I, I'm in the process of redesigning mine, and I sent mine— I sent yours to the designer, and I said, I like this one.

So, um, all right, glad to hear it. And, uh, that's kudos to, uh, the web designer that did for me, Shane. So thank you.

Thanks. Shout out to Shane. Uh, listeners, we'll have, uh, that link in the show notes. If you like what you heard, please rate the podcast, share the podcast, subscribe to the podcast. And if by some strange reason you did not like Scott, uh, you can send us a message and let us know what you want to hear, and we'll replace him. Uh, until then, yes please. Tata for now.

Thanks, Christian.