How to Handle Money

How to handle money? First wash your hands. No, it's a great question. How do you handle your money more intelligently so you can have more of it, so you can give more of it, so you can enjoy your life to the next level. Number one, I think you must revisit your orientation to wealth. If I say to you, rich people, what does that bring up for you? When you think about rich people, what do you think of? Are they good? Are they bad? Are the rich 1, 2, 3, 4% of the world good people, bad people? What are they like? What are their values like? Do you want to become one of them? You know, I don't know about you, but sometimes you discover that where you live or where you came from or what you heard of about money in your life is absolutely unconsciously driving your life today. Like, for example, for me, I grew up in a very difficult economic situation. I grew up in a very difficult town in place and an old Irish mining town that had been economically depressed for nearly a century, where people didn't have a lot and people really struggled, just, you know, very blue collar, tried to get through the day. Lots of poverty, lots of people struggling. And I can share with you that there was this conversation often about people on the other side, right? There's people on the other side of the tracks, or there's people on the other side who are wealthier. And there was a lot of the culture that I grew up in where, oh, those rich people. And there was this projection of frustration or restlessness or anger towards, quote, unquote, rich or wealthier people. And because of that, I didn't ever want to become one of them. And so I didn't for a very long time. It's funny because one of the basic human drives that we have is the human drive for congruence. We want to be congruent in our thoughts and our behaviors. So if we think that a type of person is negative, our body and our mind and our subconscious will do everything it can not to become that. Right? We don't want to become something that we think is negative. So if you think wealthy people or rich people are negative, guess what? You're never going to attain wealth. And that's why it's important to revisit all those old stories and all those old phrases we heard growing up. You know, you know, money's the root of all evil, or people are. People with money are insensitive, or people with money are selfish, or if you gain more wealth and success in life, you're just gonna Be more busy and you're never gonna have time for your family and you're gonna forget everybody who ever came along with you and never supported you and oh my God, and all these things, right? We think this big story about money. So what's your story about money? Is it positive, is it negative? Is wealth something that will bring you more joy, more happiness, more ability to give and serve with in your life? Or is it something that terrifies you because you think you won't be able to handle the obligations that come along with oath? You worry that if you make more money or to make more money, you're gonna have to be away from your family more. So you never try. See, most of us have a lot of really bad assumptions about what it would take to succeed, but also what it would take to make more money and ultimately to keep more money, to sustain more money. Because I bet you also think, oh, I heard it's lonely at the top. Well, who wants to be lonely? And if rich people are bad, who wants to be a bad person? And rich people are pushing family members away and becoming selfish, who wants to become that? So you gotta redefine what wealth would mean for you specifically, not what the culture told you it could be. I will share with you that after, you know, I've been through the ringer financially in my life, I mean, I grew up with nothing. Then I started making something in corporate America and built something of myself. I started working really hard, I got a good job, and I started climbing sort of that corporate ladder. I discovered that the corporate world wasn't for me. And so I left, I quit to start my own dream of doing videos and writing and doing my seminars and all of the things that I do now. And you know what? I did exactly what people predicted. I promptly went bankrupt. I went broke. I had no idea what I was doing. And it would have been easy at that point. Very easy to quit. Very easy to say, oh, you know what? Money is not for me. But I thought, no, I know that sometimes, you know, if you don't have money, you can't sustain the message. If you're not earning, then you can't keep giving. And I thought, I got to change my orientation here. I got to get serious about making money and do it without all the guilt and the nonsense that my culture or the past or, or the popular media thrusts on people with money. Because guess what? There are also philanthropists. There are also people who take money and they support their family. They send their kids to college, they get safer cars they do good in their community, they buy books for kids, they do things that matter with their wealth. And matter of fact, that's most wealthy people. And people, it's really hard for to believe that if you're not wealthy yet, but I can share with you. After I had my big breakthrough and I started learning how to build more value in the marketplace, everything shifted for me. For the first time in my life, I had money. And the funniest thing is I didn't even know what to do with it because I never had it before. So it was just there. And guess what? I've started finding things to do with it. No problem as you will. But those things I found to do with money, they didn't tear me from my family or make me a bad person. I gave more to charities, I spent more time with my family. I could take them on vacations, we could go to the Caribbean together. I could do things for people that I love. Little gifts and little treats and little acknowledgements that made them feel happy. I found ways to utilize it that made me happy. And now I had no negative associations to it anymore. So all I can encourage you to do, if you've got any hooks or negativity about rich people or about wealthy people, or about the top 1%, 2%, 5%, 20%, 30%, 50% if you have any negative thoughts about people in general, it's time to clear those up and try to rewrite your own meaning about what it would take and what it would be to have wealth in your life. I think the second thing you already know, I just want to make sure that you're doing that, is that you are automatically investing. If you're not already doing that, please do that. It's so simple. There's so many books on how, on what you need to do. It just basically means if you are in charge of putting money in your savings or into your investments, you're in trouble because you're never going to do it. And I'm not saying go hire somebody. It just means when a check comes to you from your employer, have it automatically divert some funds to a savings account or investments account so you never even see the money. You don't have to write the check to yourself. You never see it, it's just gone. Just take 5, 10, 15, 20%. No matter what. You can do something, put it directly into savings or put it directly into an investment account. You can ask your banker about it. You can ask anybody about. You can read tons of books like the Automatic Millionaire or Money Masters, you can learn how to do this. All it means is you just never see the money. Because if you're in charge, you'll forget or you'll say, this month, I'm not going to do it. And then for four months you don't invest and put your money away. Look, Warren Buffett was asked, what would he do if he didn't have, you know, if his family didn't have money, what advice would he give him? He said, you know what? To take whatever extra money they do have, put it in an index fund. Index funds beat the market over a period of time. Almost always. Not always, but over the period of time. They're one of the safest investments. So put your money there. If you don't know anything, just keep putting money there. Over a period of time. It seems to do pretty good. Usually seems to work. You can talk with any investment advisor or your banker to set it up so that your employer's money comes to you or your business money comes to you, but not in your account. It comes to and through your accounts, right into your money market fund, your index fund, your savings. Just have it happen automatically. So you never in charge of that money. Because if you're in charge of it, you know what you do, you spend it, or you lie to yourself and say, one day I'll put it in there. And it's not earning money from you. Once it's in that investment account, that index fund, or that savings fund, it starts earning money for you and it's working for you. Most Americans, unfortunately, are going to retire with little to no retirement funds because they never set it up automatically. Personally, I feel like it should be a political thing, that people should have to do it as part of employment. It's like, make sure that they're guaranteeing their future will be okay. But I know that's very controversial. And the reality is now we have such a situation of so many people retiring with no money. Not because they're stupid, not because they're bad people, because they didn't learn to beat human behavior. Human behavior is to delay. Human behavior is to utilize resources now. And that process of setting up automatically make sure that you're just out of the equation and money is being diverted into your own account. Earning money from you, setting you up. You got to do that. Third, I think it's important for you to ask, how can I add more value in the time in which I serve? Meaning if your day is eight hours a day for company, how can you squeeze in more value in that eight hours. I don't think it's necessary if you work 9, 10, 12, 14, 15 hours. And I think that's really, for most people, a negative thing. It causes too much stress, too much lack of sleep. So their creativity goes down, their productivity goes down. But if you're working, then that time you're working, how can you do a little bit more than the next guy or the next gal? How can you hustle a little bit more? How can you see the connections between what everybody else is doing in the company or what everyone else needs in the company and serve them? How can you come up with a new idea for your clients, for your customers? It's about adding more value in the marketplace in the same amount of time. That gets you more productive and it gets you to be recognized more for what you're doing, right? The janitor who does more than just sweep the floors, but starts asking intelligent questions around the place in which they work to discover how can we add more value, starts to get recognized more and soon gets other opportunities, right? It's time to add more value in the same amount of time that you are currently working. Most people are working at a mediocre level. And that's not to be judgmental. It's just the reality of, right, the stats, the graphs, efficiency clauses, or efficiency curves. You can just tell most people are just kind of going through the motions in the day. They're not adding a tremendous amount of creativity or value. They're just doing what they were told. And so if you can go beyond that, it's like that old saying, there's no traffic beyond the extra mile. If you add a little bit more extra than anyone else is doing, you're flying out there. You're out there and you're standing in a world by your own. I mean, you've gotten to a place where so few people can keep up with you, they're not even around. People don't try at work as hard as we think they do. And it's negative to say that, but we can see that from every single productivity study, efficiency studies at workplaces. Most people, because they don't like their job, they're not giving to their job. But here's the deal. What if you could teach yourself to like your job by giving more to your job? What if you could learn to enjoy what you're doing by thinking of new creative things to add to what you are doing? And by adding new creative things, you start to get more results. By getting more results, you usually get more recognition and rewards. And you start to add value and eventually move on up or get paid more. Now, in some cases, that doesn't happen, which is why I have this last point, which is also raise your standards for reward. What do I mean by that? It's like if you're a top contributor, if you're what we call a high performer, right? Many of you know I teach a program called High Performance Academy. I hope you've attended it. It's one of the best programs in personal and professional development in the US Today. I hope to see you there sometime and I can share with you what we know. High Performance Academy. If you're a high performer, if you are giving and you are not being recognized, it's time to leave or to have a very honest conversation with the people around you and say, look, I'm giving a lot. I feel like I'm doing great value of service here, and I don't feel like I'm being compensated enough. So I need to have a forthright conversation whether or not it's time for us to revisit my contract or it's time for me to leave. And you have to have the boldness in life like that. If you are not being rewarded for your true contribution, and you have to question it because lots of people are entitled to. I'm contributing so much. And you look at it like, no, you're really not. You're contributing the same as the 15 people around you. But if you're really raising the bar on yourself and you're really hustling, you're really adding value, then guess what? You deserve to be compensated. And if you're not, it's time to look for new places to go work. It's time to look for new job opportunities or new employment or entrepreneurial opportunities. Raise your standard, raise the expectation, right? Raise what we often say, raise your minimums, right? Raise your minimums of what you allow in your life that is not good for you, not something that honors or respects you, right? Raise your minimums, what you expect to have your bank account if the only expectation. If every month you're like, gosh, I hope I can have 500 bucks in my bank account this month, you're never going to become wealthy ever. And it's mean to say that because especially when you're there. And I've been there, right? I've been in places where I couldn't afford a burrito. So believe me, I get what it sucks like when you don't have money. But if your only expectation is, you know, I hope I have 500 bucks. And every month you have 500 bucks and you're coasting through at 500 bucks. You're never going to become wealthy because at some point you have to say, well, what is that number for me that I can aspire to and work myself into? Right. A lot of people who discover that six figure job, that $100,000 job, when you interview them and you ask them how'd you, you know, how'd you end up at a six figure job, they all say the same thing. They say, I started looking for a six figure job. Like, whoa, isn't that amazing? How did you get energy of having a six figure job? They started looking for jobs that were like that and they earned their way into it. They got the experiences or the results that were necessary to earn their way into it, or they just went buck wild, crazy. And they just started applying for jobs that were beyond their capabilities and some of them lucky enough to get hired into them. And that's what happened. Sometimes to get paid the next level, you need to move your city, you need to move another place, you need to move the employer, you need to quit, you need to do something new. But you shouldn't be afraid of doing something new that could potentially bring some new value, new lifestyle into your life experience. Sometimes you got to be bold, try new things, push the boundaries. And I think the more you do that with your career, your entrepreneurial opportunities, the way that you look at money, then you start to experience what we call the charge life. Hey guys, it's Brendan. Did you like this episode? If you did, you can do three things right now to continue your journey. First, you can subscribe right here to my channel, which I hope you will, so I can keep sending you videos on a weekly basis to change your life. Second, you can get my brand new book for free by clicking the link right here. And third, you can also go to my website, sign up for my newsletter so that I can send you free offers, free products, free programs, updates on my events, new podcasts, and everything else that we don't do on this channel here. If you like to do that, just go ahead and click any of these buttons you see right here. Look forward to seeing you on the next video. Until then, go out there every single day of your life. Live fully, love openly, and make your difference today.