Beau Henderson - How To Get Your Financial Life In Order

Boom, boom, boom.

Boom, boom, boom.

What's up, everybody? You're listening to the Hustle and Flow Chart podcast with your boys, Matt Wolf and Joe Fear. Hey, Joe, how's your financial literacy looking today?

It's looking much brighter.

Much brighter.

Yes. The sun has risen from the dark ages because we had Mr. Bo Henderson on the line with us here.

Yeah.

And the dude is. He laid down some solid financial knowledge. Not boring knowledge, though. That's the thing. You know, it's fun. It can be fun, and it should be. I don't know. It's crucial, man.

So, yeah, we talked about, you know, I mean, honestly, we talked a lot about financial literacy type stuff. We discussed topics like how to get out of debt, how to work with your kids, if you have kids, to make sure that they're very financially literate growing up. We talked about retirement and the sort of direction that retirement is going in this day and age. We talked about. What else did we talk about? We covered so much ground in this episode.

We covered a lot. I mean, really, Beau, at the end of the day, he's a financial advisor. He's a psychology kind of focused guy. That's what he went to school with, he said, which I thought was actually really cool because you get to the core root of what is happening, and he breaks down a lot of the stuff behind your money habits. And habits are psychology and patterns and programming. So we dig into that and actually like the root cause of a lot of the. Maybe the financial burdens or successes or just whatever in your life that's going on. So he breaks down, like, what are the key metrics that you should focus on? How to use those metrics and kind of a process to be consistent with actually improving your financial life. And again, it's like, it's. It should be a fun thing. And then we get in, yeah, kids. And how, like, you can actually. Because I have a kid on the way, you have two. And there's different things that you can program your kids so they don't have to feel the burden of debt or all the pressures that a lot of the schools aren't teaching these days or ever.

I mean, it's a topic that it's not talked about enough in the entrepreneurial world. And it's. It's a little bit of a departure from a lot of our other episodes where we kind of get into digital marketing tactics and. And things like that. But in this one, we get tactical on making sure your money is managed the right way. And that's very important for entrepreneurs. And I don't think enough entrepreneurs focus on that. And as a little kicker at the end, we talk about podcasting and the power and benefits of podcasting and why we all do it.

So he wrote what, seven books?

Nine books.

Nine. But seven were, I think audio is what he said. He said the first two he like begrudgingly. I think he took like a year on one of them, writing it out the old school way. So he actually gives his process for, for not only recording content and coming up with topics really quickly for podcast episodes, which is pretty much what we do too. Like when he said, I was like, oh yeah, this sounds familiar. It's that easy, really. And then also a way that you can actually create a whole book by just 12 topics, like 12 questions asking yourself that and then just riffing. So we'll leave that open. And then he also has a free book. You just pay for the shipping. A rich life book.com and we'll link that in the show. Notes, of course.

Most def.

And we got y' all back on notes as always@hustleandflowetchart.com comp c o m.

P hustleandflowchart.com comp go get those notes. They're only available for like a week or two after this episode goes live. Or if you're an EGP member, then you also get them there too.

Then you done got them. Yeah.

And also as the last few episodes, this one is also sponsored by ahrefs. That's spelled A H R E F s dot com.

I like how your voice goes into ahrefs.

I go into my broadcaster pitch voice.

Okay, keep it rolling. I like it.

So this tool, but I don't know where I was going to go from there. No, this tool is. They've got a seven day, $7 trial for Ahrefs. And you know, it's, it's a tool that we use every day. Either me, Joe, one of our team members were in there all the time. We were legitimately using Ahrefs before they ever came on and sponsored the show. It's. We've been using it for years now to do, to find, find gaps in our content marketing. In fact, that's one of my favorite things is there's a section in there called Content Gaps where you could go in and plug in your URL and plug in your biggest competitor's URL. I think you can plug in up to like three competitors URLs and it'll tell you, here's the things that they've written here's content that's on their site that they're ranking for that you don't yet have content ranking for on your site. And you can go find those gaps and sort of match your competitors in content. And then you can also see how how many backlinks each of those pieces of content are getting and go beat them out on backlinks. So if they have a content piece of content on how to trim tomatoes from your upside down underwater tomato garden and you don't have that article, you can go create that article.

Do you have a picture of this garden? I really want to shut up. Wow, he got angry video.

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That is very true. It's like, yeah, it's literally, it's a hack to your business and it's super cheap. I mean, I'm sure you can open up your desk drawer or your cigarette tray in your car. Do they even have those anymore?

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Dude, I literally have $8 in my pocket.

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Baller. I'm pretty sure you can make more than seven bucks. Probably that investment.

Probably. So go to ahrefs.com a h r e f s.com $7, seven days. Go get on it. We use it. We love it. It's one of our most recommended tools even before they were paying us to recommend it. All right, we love you guys. Go check out hustleandflowchart.com comp. Go check out Ahrefs. Let's go talk to Bo Henderson.

Bam. Hey, Bo. Welcome to the show.

Hey, guys. I'm excited to be here.

Yeah, man. It's always great to talk to another podcaster and one on the same wavelength. We were riffing right before the show, but just giving, giving, giving instead of that whole traditional, like hard nose selling, you know, and it's a different world these days. It feels like I love it.

Yeah. You know that. That's what I found is people don't want to be sold anymore. And the consumer out there, regardless of our business, they're a lot, they're savvy, they know they're being sold. And I think the more we can take this approach, hey, maybe I can add something that helps you. That's a lot better step to take. And this, this, a lot of these things. We're talking about creating content as podcast. I can't think of a better venue or easier venue for, for the average person to get into.

Yeah. A.B. everyone can.

Yeah. So let's start with your backstory. Let's kind of give the audience a little bit about how you got into what you're doing now, what you were doing before this, how that transition look. Let's just kind of give the five minute quick story there, the overview.

Yes. So today I'm more known as a financial advisor by trade, but I approach it more like a psychologist around behavior. So it's really, when I talk about the new model of financial planning, I'm talking about we've got to address the financial plan, which is so crucial to get the right, get that right, the math parts right. But if we don't do it in the context of all aspects of our life, you know, our health, our relationships, if we're not, if we're not working that money piece as a tool to get that clear picture of the life we want to live, we might just be missing the boat because we've all known and met somebody that's got millions of dollars and they're absolutely miserable, or we've seen stories or heard stories, you know, taking their lives to that extreme. So, so, so the backstory, it might help it make sense. I was actually at the University of Georgia, graduated from undergrad, and I was going to go in the fall to graduate school to be a psychologist. Around that time, my father passed away very young at 49 years old, and I went home to help my mom work through his business and some real estate and just help her through that because she was just kind of out of it at that point in time and in immersing myself in those, those financial it, those planning items, how they all integrate and fit together, it kind of came to me. I said, you know what? I might get to do this helping thing that's really ingrained in me in financial planning and not maybe be in such a burnout field as the mental health side. I'd already started to see clues of. So 17 years later, after starting in a financial planning field early on, and I'll tell you, kind Of a little bit about it was hard. I was taught to hard sell all these tactics about, about how you did things. But 17 years later, it's evolved and it's so funny. It's come full circle. And that really my message, my branding and everything I do really probably is just as much about the behavior, the whole person as the money.

Yeah. And like you said, money is a tool. That's not the thing for every. It's just a tool. You know, it's just like the Internet. The Internet's a tool. There's a lot more to life than just, you know, what we're looking at on the screen.

And I think that word is key that it's a tool because I think so many people out there and, and we might look at marketing for having a role in this. I know we do. Is that a lot of times people think about money. They think, if I just had another $5,000 a month, I'd be blank, I'd be happy, I'd be set if I just had more stuff. And that's really the. We're giving money a power. Money cannot make us happy. Right. Money can do things for us. It can help us navigate a plan. And I'm not one of those that says money can't do good things because, you know, I don't want to quote, misquote somebody, but I'd much if I had to choose between having money and doing life and not having it, I'd rather have it. Right. I mean, it's a lot less stressful.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

But, but yeah. So I think that key is, is that money is just dead presidents on paper. It's a tool. And if we don't give it the emotional energy that it can do crazy things to us as humans, we can really use it, learn how to master and have a good relationship with money.

Yeah.

So can you give us an overview of what your business looks like today? I know you've got several books and you've got podcasts and you know, what, what, what is the whole business? What is, you know, what are all the pieces and elements of it right now?

So the Rich Life brand. My primary business is still, I run in Atlanta, a retirement planning.

Office and it's called Rich Life Advisors. And really that's a little more narrowed down in that what I'm doing there is I'm helping people who are transitioning from their working into retirement life actually create all these plans, create the life plan, the money plan and all those things, financial and non financial aspects of a Successful life so that they transition into life better. Now we talk about the books and the Rich Life show, which is a podcast. I do, too. That's actually out to a more general audience because I realize all these things we're talking about, they apply to all of us. Right about, hey, we need to be one of the books. My favorite book still is. The first book I wrote is 10 investments for true Wealth. And although it was intentionally kind of a play on words because people would buy it thinking it was a get rich book, literally, and half of it was financial components, and the other was like, hey, we've got to commit to making investments in our physical health, our relationships, creating memories. All the things that people have taught me over the years are what's truly priceless to them.

Yeah, I love that, man. I love this psychological realm. You are this, I guess, a layer that you put on everything here because that's, that's. You can totally correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like that's the most important part, is just human behavior and then really understanding how you interact with your energy, with money, with people, of course, and the things you do. So how does that play in with. With your model at Rich Life right now?

Well, you know, one of the things we talk about and the word rich life, I talk about your definition of a rich life. And what's fascinating about that to me is several years back, I was really sad. I was just starting to step back and watch people, and I realized that most people.

Are kind of sleepwalking through lives. They're just going through the motion in their role as a brother, an employee, a son, a spouse, whatever that is. And they're just not. They're just kind of reactively going through the motions. And then, you know, we've all been around long enough to know you blink. And 10 years has gone by, 20 years has gone by. So what I started, the conversation started evolving, and it was really just stuff I was working on personally. I just started saying, hey, I'm going to integrate the stuff I'm excited about. I'm going to integrate it into my message. And I'm hoping if it works right, I will attract people that kind of believe things or have the same philosophy I do. And it's. Fortunately, it's worked. But the starting point is really is starting to ask people, what is your definition of a rich life? And what's. What's beautiful about that is I can't give that to you. You can't come to me and say, what should my rich life be. But we can talk about it and I can know when we're close. But it's because when you start talking fast and your eyes light up, I know we're getting towards something that excites you. And if I can start helping you create a money plan that moves you towards that, now we're really onto something.

Yeah. So from your experience, because I know you guys have helped what, over 30,000 folks with this kind of stuff here with your company, what are some common definitions of a rich life that you've seen? Maybe a top three or so.

Yeah, there's a lot of variations. One one is I'm going to travel the world with my spouse. Always joke and say to others, I'm going to travel the world without my spouse.

A big one. Especially because of the demographic I work with a lot is I'm going to start that business I always wanted to start. I want to go to that cabin in the woods and write that novel that's always been with me. I want to stay home. I want to be able to help raise my grandkids and be a part of their lives. I mean, it's across the board. It's really. What is that thing? I had a lady. I thought it was a fascinating story. She was a classically trained musician and then behind that had a 20 year career as a nurse and kind of lost that passion or lost that love and that gift of music or it kind of got buried, so to speak, and through some conversations and she kind of recaptured it. What she did was she created a music therapy program for the hospital that she worked at. And it was fascinating to me because she actually had two examples of two patients that came out of a coma with a certain note that was played in the deal. So just things like that as recap, don't bury that thing that lights you up or don't be that person sleepwalking through life. Let's shift from reactive, let's be proactive. Because I believe if we're all living a life that's exciting and we're excited, it's got to be better for us, our family, our community and the world as a whole. Really?

Yeah. Yeah. That's. I think that's huge is the whole sleepwalk walking thing. Because I know what Matt and I here, we're. We both were in bands, we play guitar and you know, I've wanted to learn. I am learning drums and percussion, all these things. And it was actually last week we were just hanging out and finally had some clear space and we're just freaking jamming. And then I heard Matt playing some licks that I've never heard, like, of the 13 years I've known him or something. Like, where the hell that come from? It's just so cool. But you're right, man. Like, things get buried within the mix of life if you just don't focus on these passions that you might have had, and you probably still do have, but they're just buried under the quote unquote necessities of life, you know? So what are like, if you're working with someone, are there ways to kind of unpack that maybe, you know, unpeel the onion a little bit there? And once someone realizes what's going on. But how do you, how do you work with them?

Yeah, usually what happens is somebody either it's through a book or hearing something on the podcast or something, they resonate with that meaning they're to a place in their life, they're saying there's got to be something more. So usually by the time somebody comes in and talks to me or we're having a conversation, they're already kind of. They were kind of drawn in by the, by the messaging or the mission, so to speak. So it, so it's, it starts kind of open, but really the first part is, is really just getting. It's just like with finances. It's the same with, with the rich life is clarity. Most people have no idea where they currently are, and they really, a lot of people don't know where they would like to be if they could be where they wanted to be. Now that's fascinating, but again, it's just we put so many limits and constraints on ourselves. And unfortunately, some of these conversations I've had with people 70s and 80s and beyond, the worst thing we can do is look back and say, I wish I did that, or I regret that I didn't do that, or I spent all my time doing this thing that, now that I look back, doesn't really matter.

Yeah, man, that's heavy.

So when somebody comes into you and you sort of just define what a rich life is for them, what's the next sort of phase that you'd walk them through? Let's say, I know Joe and I, we both talked a lot about, you know, you sort of nailed it with the first example is we want to travel the world more with our spouses. You know, so if somebody came in and said that, that is kind of my definition of a rich life. What's the next thing you walk them through? Where do we go from there and.

When we get to this point, we really are putting on the coaching hat at this point and we're walking away with, after we ask the questions and get some clarity, we're saying, okay, well, what could be a step we could do right now to move towards that? And it might mean, okay, we're going to commit that within the next six months, we're going to take a trip, you know, the four of us together, a couple's trip, whatever you think. And then we go back and we start tying in the, the money plans and okay, what needs to happen there? What's one step that needs to happen in that money plan to move you towards that? So we're really trying to solve the puzzle with complete clarity because what happens is, say we use the same example, somebody say, hey, when we have the money banked, we're going to take that trip. But we never really did the work to say, you know what, we need to bank $10,000 and we need to back it into the day. And if we want to do it in six months, we need to be putting aside $1,200 a month. Now that's clarity and that's a plan. And that $1,200 a month, you might not otherwise say, but if you've exciting thing that you're moving towards, then you're much more likely to stay engaged and actually do the work, honestly that it takes to make that plan come through.

That reminds me of something Tim Ferriss said in. I don't know if it's his podcast or in his book, but he always loves to have a big trip planned, maybe six months out or so, because it's that thing. And I'm sure it's a psychological thing. It's like, okay, cool, I'm looking forward to this thing. But obviously you can build a plan around that with the end in mind and you can make it the most badass sounding feeling trip out there making the most epic thing. But with a plan, it feels real. And then you have some desire, this burning desire to actually make it happen because you don't want to fail yourself with that big vision that you might have.

Yeah, it's so true too, when you think about it. We're all working to, we're all pursuing, making more money, we're all building our businesses because we want to make more money. But if we don't have this sort of goal on the horizon that we're trying to make the money for, it kind of feels meaningless.

Yeah, it can, it can absolutely Just be a wow. I'm putting in 15 hour days here recently and if I'm not moving towards something exciting, I'm very likely to step back and question why am I doing all this that I'm doing. You're exactly right. There's got to be that thing. And I like with that Tim Ferriss example, what I like about having that, something like that, the six months out, a year out, is there's something to look forward to. Right? Yeah, but, but having that plan, it just increases the certainty that it'll actually happen. And it's not something we just continue to talk about. You know, we want to do next year, we want to do next year, we want to do next year and maybe we'll get around to it. We wake up and we're 65 years old and we wish we would have just did it.

Yeah, yeah, just, it just gets you out of bed. It gets that drive in your step a little bit more, you know.

Now on, on, on the, the Hot Topics list that we have here in front of us, one of them says the money habit, that puts you in the top 5%. Now I think most of our listeners would find that pretty intriguing. Can you speak into that and what does that mean?

Yeah, you know, so this is fascinating and it's going to seem very simple, but it's very true. We surveyed 1,000 people that came through and what we asked them was, do they know their numbers? And what we meant by that was do they know their income that's coming in? Exactly, precisely. Do they know their expenses, do they know their assets and do they know their liabilities? And it was one out of 20 people that actually had had a good idea what was coming in and going out. Most other people were guessing and just spending what was there if it was available and not really, again, reactively using their money instead of proactively having a purpose for it and giving it a place to go. So one of the first things I do with clients on the money side is, hey, if you want to have clarity to put you in that top 5%, let's, let's do a little exercise, spend a little bit of time and let's get clear on your numbers. And here's the trick with that, guys, is that a lot of times people won't do that because they think it might not, might not be what they would want it to be. So they'll put it, I call it the ostrich with your head in the sand technique. Right? I don't deal with it. Maybe I Just I don't have to worry about it. And I hope things turn out all right. And I always tell people that's a really bad plan. But. But it never fails that when we do the exercise and we get clarity and say, okay, here's what it is, it's always a sense of relief because when we know where we are, we can confidently take a step to move to where we're going. Otherwise, that first scenario, that passive scenario, you're just blindly kind of worried with a little stress on the sitting on your shoulders, that stays there all the time. And you're just hoping and wishing the other shoe doesn't fall. So I think that's the first step is if I can get people clear, a snapshot on where they are right now. And that's again, that's again essential for us to pull towards where you want to go.

Yeah. Now after you get clear. So is there something you focus on specifically? Like, not everyone could just greatly make more money. I know entrepreneurs feel like we always can because, you know, we're just like.

Oh, we can make that happen.

Let's just make more money. I know a lot of folks listening and we've been in that trap before as well. Do you focus on any one of those four things that we just the income, expenses, assets or liabilities to really go deeper on?

Well, of course, on the balance sheet side, the assets and liabilities, the nice thing with that, we can master things. We can measure the assets minus our liabilities will be our net worth number. So what happens is whatever that net worth is, even if it's negative, we know we're doing good if when we revisit it, it's moving in the right direction. So it's a real simple measure to know. Just know where you stand. Now, probably the more important day to day is the cash flow. That's your income and expenses. Because with cash flow, that's where we can start assigning money jobs to do. Right. If we want to put it in that vacation bucket to create those memorable experiences that are priceless, now we've got it. We got to make that a priority and make sure that money goes into there. And we're not just saying, hey, when I have the money extra, we'll do that. If we have debt we're trying to work on, we got make that a priority and first say, okay, the first $500 of this, of this income that comes in, it's going to go to this debt plan and I'll be done with this in nine months. But if we don't have that clarity and don't give it that job, we'll probably carry that debt for five, six, ten years.

Got it. Yeah. So then figuring out a plan to essentially free up the cash flow, grow the net worth, and net worth seems. Yeah, it's more like a measuring stick, more or less on the whole thing.

Yeah. So are we moving in the right direction? If it were to go backwards, we just want to step back and say, is there a reason why and isn't an issue that needs to be addressed? Plus, it's fun, right. It can be motivating to see. Okay, yeah. That's another thing I found with money, is when people start getting a good relationship with money, they start seeing debt go down, assets increase.

Goals achieved. Those trips that we just talked about, those trips taken, it starts to motivate them and they start moving faster. They start actually, they find more money to save. They find more money to pay off the debt because they're seeing the results are creating momentum. So there's something to be said about momentum and money, too. So that's another topic.

Yeah. I want to touch on retirement for a second in this topic. It interests me because.

I kind of feel like. You may totally disagree, I don't know, but I kind of feel like the concept of retirement is sort of a fading concept. I kind of feel like with. With the sort of gig economy, you know, I was listening to Naval Ravikant on Joe Rogan's podcast, like, a couple weeks ago, and he was talking about how in the future, he believes that pretty much everybody's going to be an entrepreneur because the technical pursuits are going to be automated, but everybody's going to be focused on creative pursuits and those you can't really automate. So everybody's going to be an entrepreneur focused on creative pursuits. That's his sort of vision of the future. Maybe 20 years down the. The line. What are your thoughts on, like, retirement and how retirement is sort of shifting with newer, newer generations?

Yeah, you know, I think retirement's the word we have for it when we technically are supposed to supposedly stopping working. But. But I agree on a lot of that in that I think even if it's not that everybody's necessarily in an entrepreneurial role running a business. I do think, and I'm already seeing more and more of people doing their jobs from home.

Right.

And we changes things. But one of the bigger shifts, retirement is definitely shifting, and I just see it continuing as one. We have a deal where people are living a lot longer and they're healthier, longer. So that means, okay, we can't necessarily stop when our parents did and cut off our income sources and make it last for 30 years. So what I'm seeing is more normal, is it's not necessarily staying in that career job till 75. But what I start seeing is step downs, meaning, okay, I did this thing for 35 years, now I'm going to actually go down to two days a week consulting. But it still creates enough income coming in for me to stretch my assets over the rest of my retirement. And you do see a lot more. I'm fascinated. I do workshops every month here in Atlanta around topics, educational topics around retirement. And the rooms are filled up by people that came from Facebook ads and other online marketing avenues. So it just tells me this, this group in this demographic continues to be more and more tech savvy, using more and more of the social media, the technology resources we have available. And I do, I see them working, continue to work more from home, more remotely, more of what we think of maybe as kind of the lifestyle gig that's promoted a lot today. I see that turning into what retirement could be more and more of as we go forward.

I love that step down approach kind of concept because I could totally see that, especially for entrepreneurs. I mean, if you have something like, I mean, us as an example, this podcast, this isn't something that we, it's going away anytime soon. It's our passion, it's our love and so many things can come from this. But there's, yeah, there's a lot of folks, my mom and parents included, they're about to retire in a couple years and they just keep saying, oh, I'm going to be on a fixed income, I'm going to be on the fixed income. I'm like, man, I think you're like the last generation that can like really? Or at least. Yeah, it's not, it's a different way of thinking. So there is a shift that's happening and it's important that we're talking about this.

Well, I think another thing important to bring up there with the retirement, that step down and that next thing, whether it's starting that, you know, I told you one of the biggest. Well, this didn't come up today. I was having a conversation earlier. One of the biggest percentages of people that buy franchises are that 60 something year old demographic. So what it does that step down and that finding the next thing, there's something that people don't talk about that's crucial and that's what I call that new model of retirement planning is there's a dark side of retirement. And it's not you look at a magazine, it's that beautiful white haired couple with their hair blowing in the wind.

On the yacht in Tahiti or something.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But what they don't talk about is depression spikes, suicide spikes, alcoholism spikes, divorce spikes. And what's happening is people are leaving work, they're going into retirement thinking, hey, I'm not working, I'm supposed to be happy. And they're losing their identity, they're not feeling relevant, the relationships are changing or the relationships are gone. And if we don't start thinking about those things and having some of those conversations.

We run into problems. So sometimes this next step or this step down in job addresses many of those things. As far as the relevance. I've got identity because I do this thing I love, I work around, or I'm doing something that other people that like what I like are around. So there's a very important component to think ahead. Because what's happening when you leave that traditional job after 30 or 40 years, a lot. You lose a lot of things, but people don't really think about that until it hits them and it's a problem.

Yeah, I could see that. And it's community. It's not using your brain or feeling like you're bringing worth to everyone else, society as a whole, let alone bring some income.

Yeah. One of my favorite stories is when it comes to relationships. I had a couple in Houston and I went, I was having dinner with them and the guy pulled me aside during dinner and said, hey, boy, I'm so glad we pulled the trigger and retired. It's the best thing I've ever done. I wish we did it a couple years ago. And then we were walking out in the parking lot and his wife pulls me inside and said, bo, find him a job. You got to do something. Because he's driving me crazy. I tell that story because it's funny, but it's true. I mean, the dynamic shifts when maybe you've been together for a couple hours in the evenings and weekends, and then you're just there in a relationship. So you got to think about that too.

Sure. You got to think about the conversations you're having with your spouse at that age. You're like, okay, so what are we talking about? The news all day that's not going to be healthy.

Or worse. Or worse. A spouse that was a manager for his whole career and then he comes home and tries to fill that need at home. Right?

Yeah. That's horrible. Talking about spouses, I'm curious about how you approach spouse or like, relationships and money management. Are you? Yeah, because some people are very segmented. I manage the money and the other person brings the money or.

Yeah.

I imagine part of your role is being a little bit of a therapist to couples at points as well.

Yeah, I think one of the biggest things, the most important thing, and I'm glad we're kind of. That this was the next step I was actually going to bring up. So great segue.

When it comes to couples. And this isn't just retarded retirement couples. This is. I'm trying to catch people as new relationships, new marriage. And one of the first things that we can do to help our money situation, to help our relationship overall, is to make a commitment that we're going to communicate about our money. And what I usually do when I'm kind of that third party is I get people. And what happens is usually in a relationship, there's one person that's a little more interested in it and wired for it, and one that's not. But it's important that they're both at least know what's going on. And what I try to get a couple do say, okay, what we're going to do is now that I've taught you how to. How to know your numbers, we're going to update these once a month. And we're going to. We're going to spend whatever, 20 minutes and we're going to. We're just going to go over our numbers and update them and see if we're heading in the right direction. That communication about money will do a lot of things. One, it'll make both spouses feel more secure. Two, there creates more trust. I had a wife write in to me that she's never felt more intimacy in their relationship than when they actually started talking about money openly.

I believe it. Yeah.

Yeah. So I think that's one. But then we got to go even deeper. So, one, we gotta. We gotta communicate and kind of look at our snapshots and just be on the same page. Talk about things like, hey, if something happened to me, what's the plan? If something happens to us, what's the plan? If we, you know. And the other thing, the conversation we need to also think about this is getting back to the psychology side of things is what are my beliefs about money? And we gotta. We gotta think back because usually those come up when we're between 5, 6, 7 years old and it's you typically come from a memory of what a parent, a grandparent, or somebody really important in our lives taught us. And if one, one person in the relationship is coming in with, hey, only people with money are evil. And another one's like, hey, easy come, easy go, I'm going to get money and spend it as fast as I can, because you only live once. Those are two very different personalities. And if they don't talk about that, there's going to be some problems. And as humans, what we tend to do is we think, if I'm the guy that's the easy come, easy go, I think you are too. Because that's just how we see the world through our eyes, so to speak. So it's talking about, what do I believe? What do you believe? And then that can help us understand each other better. And then if you want to do a little self work to help you in the relationship, it's even looking for patterns. Have I every time I got a business running and successful, has it blown up? And if that happens every five years, every time something goes good, money flees me, or have I been in relationships that have been negative for me when it comes to financial things? So are there patterns? Because when we have patterns, those tell us a lot about what we need to be aware of and things we need to address and how we need to navigate things. So I think beliefs, behaviors, patterns, and then clarity. If we can do those four things and realize that in a relationship by doing that, that we're probably protecting ourselves from one of the biggest causes of relationship failure, and that's fighting about money because we're giving it this energy and power that it, that it doesn't deserve, as opposed to just this tool for us to use to navigate this life and our relationship the best way we can.

Yeah. Dude, that was so cool. I love the. Anytime we're talking about like programming, because programming and just childhood, all that stuff. Parents, the way we live and society and. But like you said, it's really like the first, what, four or five years or so? Yeah, you're freaking sponging up everything. If your parents are in horrible debt, well, then your likelihood is probably through the roof and it's something to focus on there.

Yeah, I mean, speaking on that, let's. Let's talk about the topic of kids. I've got two kids myself. Joe has a baby on the way. You know, what are some things that we can do, some practices, habits we can start to instill in our kids to make sure that they're Moving in the right direction with, with their financial literacy.

Right. You know, and I think I'm glad we brought this up too, because there's a financial literacy problem in this country, period. And the problem comes from cycles, meaning kids don't. Well, one is not taught in schools, but kids aren't being taught by their parents because their parents weren't taught. So we're in this, we look at the data and you have generations that are in worse shape than their parents. So it's kind of a cycle going downhill, so to speak. So I'm a big proponent of financial literacy. So what can we do as parents or you know, even, even in school systems, whatever, whatever that is, what can we do to address that? And I think as parents, I just had a, I have an eight month old daughter, so I'm new to the whole dad thing.

Congratulations.

It's making me think about it more. But I think the things you do as a parent is you look for learning opportunities. You look for learning opportunities and it might be a little bit of, a little more work to do it, but set up things about maybe them understanding if they do a job for you, you pay them something, they can use that money to spend on something, Kids can really start doing things and understanding things in a young way. You just got to kind of think of learning opportunities appropriately. I've had a lot of people that do chore boards and it's all the chores that the kids could help with and there's certain points or reward for each one. And again it teaches them that there's kind of, you have to work for compensation and the more you work, the more compensation. And then teaching them again when you buy, don't just necessarily buy them things, teach them that, hey, that money you work for, there's a direct correlation for you can choose to spend that, but if you do.

You equate that to the work you had to do to obtain that. So I think, you know, and something as simple as the three, the three sided piggy bank to where you teach kids, a very young kid, you could give them, give them, give them a dollar and you give them $3 to make it easy. And you know, they, they save a dollar, they give a dollar away and they can spend a dollar kind of thing, just start, start teaching some really basic money concepts. And then as a parent too, I think, listen and be careful kids, like you said, kids are a sponge. So if we're sitting there talking about the, the guy that's so greedy and, and bad because, and with Bunny, you Just want to be careful. The connection you might be making that, that kid might be making a lifelong hardwiring in their brain that's going to serve them bad in the future.

Yeah, yeah, I know. One of the things we actually do with our kids is we, we have this, this marble jar concept. Both of my kids have a jar and we have a bag of marbles. And every time we see them doing, doing something nice with each other or sharing or helping or, you know, we ask them to go make their bed or something like that, we give them a marble and they drop it in the jar. And then they can use those marbles to, you know, to get iPad time. They can. They like for one marble, they can. Or for two marbles, they can get like an hour of iPad time or 4. And then we have larger things that they can get as well. So if you save up 500 marbles, we'll take you to Disneyland kind of of thing. And so that sort of teaches them that if they use all their marbles on these short term things, then they never seem to ever collect enough marbles to do the bigger things that they want to do. So we've been trying to teach our kids with marbles instead of actual money. But it's kind of a similar concept along the lines of what you were talking about, because what they end up finding out is.

This short term pleasure worth losing this thing that I'm working for in the long term.

Right. I love that exercise. You're teaching delayed gratification, which is the key thing to be successful with investing. I've had another example this made me think of, I love that, is that I'm a big fan of, as opposed to, like I said, giving your kids things just to give them things. Give them something, say, hey, if you save $20.

I'll add five to that, you know, whatever it might be. $100. If you save X amount, I'll match it. But you have to do the work and you have to show me that you'll be disciplined enough to save it to this trigger point. And then I'm going to reward you with a match of some sort, whatever that might be. And then again, that teaches the delayed gratification and that there's a reward for.

Not just doing the going to the store and buying a toy, so to speak.

Yeah, that's super cool. Yeah. The Marvel concept, I mean, it's currency in its own right, but yeah, the delayed gratification. Super cool. I love that. Man, I didn't even know you guys did that. Man, that's rad.

And don't you actually have a partnership too with. I don't know if it's someone else, but for kids with financial literacy, because you mentioned it's not really taught in schools. Are you guys working with folks on that?

Yeah. So what, what we're doing is we realized that we're talking about those cycles not being taught in school. The parents aren't teaching their kids. So Rich Life Advisors, we've been putting together teams and helping bring together teams to go into middle and high schools and teach financial literacy topics. And the publisher of a couple of those books that we talked about earlier, they're on board. And what we're working on now is they're going to create a middle school, high school appropriate financial literacy book. And anytime I sell another, anytime somebody buys one of the Rich Life books that'll kind of basically get a kid in the school system, financial literacy. So. And the goal is a million, right? So I wanted a big goal. So we want to get a million kids exposed to financial literacy. Because when I started thinking about that, I started thinking, you know what, we might grow a business, we might make millions of dollars. But, but 20 years from now, when I'm looking back, what'll make me really proud is if we said, hey, we know we changed some of those cycles by getting a million kids exposed to financial literacy. So that's a big thing. It's a big vision that we're working towards.

Props to you, man. It's a huge ripple effect that you'll have from that teaching them that young. And who knows? I mean, right now it's just crazy with college debt and that stuff. Skyrocketing, bankruptcy for these kids, that doesn't wipe that away, which is crazy. But.

And that brings up another good component of this Rich Life idea is this what in happiness and fulfillment, if we're doing something, what is it we're doing that's creating a legacy, meaning something that will outlive us? Right. Those are the kinds of things that can't be taken away. And again, they're going to give you the most fulfillment when you look back one day and say, hey, I'm so glad I did, did that and invested in these people.

Yeah, I love it, man. That's cool.

Now, I want to talk about debt and shift the topic over there because I know we have a lot of entrepreneurs listening. The audience is mostly entrepreneurs that focus on online digital marketing. But I know that there is a lot of debt among entrepreneurs. I know a lot of people go into debt to get their college degree, and then when they start building their own business, they have these startup costs and they could get deeper and deeper and deeper into debt. What are some practical tips or advice that you can give people to kind of start working their way out and feel like they're making progress? Because I know one of the big sort of pains in the butt with debt is, you know, let's say you've got credit card debt and you're. You're maybe can only afford the minimums. Well, as you pay the minimums, it feels like you're never really paying it down. You're paying $200 to pay $50 of principal. What are some practical tips and advice you could give to the listeners to start chipping away at it, maybe at a greater rate.

Now, debt's nefarious, meaning it'll sneak up and it'll be something that you make big progress with it. Something comes up outside of the budget, so to speak, it ends up going back on a credit card. So what I'm saying there is what I see. A lot of people, the problem is their credit cards are their emergency fund. So anytime they get ahead and something inevitably in life throws them a curveball, it just goes right back to where it started. So it's just this endless cycle and loop. So one of the things that is kind of going back to what we talked about, we got to get clarity. What's the real situation? What exactly is own? What's the interest rates? And I'm a big fan of like we talked about and stuff, passively saying, hey, I'm gonna, I'm gonna work real hard and whatever extras left, I'm gonna put towards my debt and say, hey, you know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna figure out a way to take an extra $400 a month. Because if I look at it, that's probably realistic. It might be a little bit of a stretch, but it's a priority to me, and I'm gonna start attacking those debts. And it's something similar you've heard from other, like debt snowball, debt avalanche. You just want to start stacking, stacking the cash flow, paying minimums on everything, freeing up the cash flow, typically on the lowest item and rolling that down. Usually people will process through that the quickest because there's a psychological benefit too, because you're getting little wins as you go along the way. But the key is once you're committed, usually when people will do a plan like that, it's because they're sick of the debt. The other thing is, once you commit to something like that, we gotta make sure we're just living off of what we can afford. Because nothing's worse than to make progress, charge it back up, or make progress on one and charge up another. Right. So it's kind of being committed to, to run your business in the entrepreneurial example or live your life on cash until you're in that situation to where you can make those decisions. Because there's very much a good debt and a bad debt. Right. And typically the bad debt is going to be that consumer debt that we just keep paying and paying and paying.

On credit cards and stuff like that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, credit cards. Things that depreciate, basically. So I think the one thing is just to. Because what debt does it truly is a thief. It's stealing us from the financial priorities that we want to accomplish. Because I can't go save for my kids college, I can't go put into my retirement, I can't go put into my vacation bucket. If I, if I'm spending a thousand dollars a month making minimum payments on debt, it's truly stealing from, from my rich life. Right. In my language. So. So it truly is a thief. Now the.

On the entrepreneur, on the business side, the other thing I say, I think is very important to be very, very careful and think very long and hard. And I have a lot of these conversations with people and maybe have a third party that you trust that they might be a step or two ahead of you, where you want to be when. What I see entrepreneurs do a lot, especially when they're first starting out, is they'll spend money counting on it, counting on a result, right? So if I just buy this great equipment, if I buy this $10,000 of podcast equipment, it's going to sound so good. I'm going to sponsors or if I do this marketing campaign, I'm going to max out five credit cards to this marketing campaign and I know that it will pay itself back. Now, not that marketing campaigns can't pay themselves back, but that's very detailed, systematic, strategically measured, tweaked campaigns that start small and usually grow big. I think a lot of times as entrepreneurs, we just kind of bet the house because it's easier to just try to delegate some of those things and it can come back. And I see it bite a lot of entrepreneurs and put them in a hole again. Now we're dealing with. To do the. Before we can move on to do the things we really want to do with our business now we're dealing with this big debt hanging over head. We're back in that first situation I talked about to where part of our cash flow is going to have to go to a plan for a while or a period of time to take care of that.

Yeah, man, that's. Yeah. You're speaking to a lot of folks here and I know we've had that mindset as well. You know, as entrepreneurs, you always have this like grassy grass, grassy vision of like our, you know, grass is greener and like this marketing campaign is just going to hit home run every time. It's like now.

Do you feel there's some times where like, debt is sort of inevitable? You've got to use it. Like, let's say a pipe bursts in my house and I have to get, you know, I mean, obviously we've got insurance for that, but, you know, something unexpected pops up and we don't have the funds in our bank account to do it. Do you have advice or in some scenarios, because debt might be the only option.

Yeah, I mean, if it's something like that, where that's the only option, that's the only option. But then we want to be. Where it becomes a problem is where that is our source for emergencies. The ideal is for that when that pipe bursts for whatever deductible we might have, we have a good. Probably since we're talking to a lot of entrepreneurs, we have a good at least six months of expenses banked.

And then what we do is we don't get in that trap of using the credit card as our emergency fund because that's one that you'll just see progress backslide. Progress backslide. And it seems to go on forever. So sometimes that's another thing we need to look at is, okay, I'm spending $10,000 a month on this business. I need to come up with a plan to make sure that at first I'm banked at least one month reserve, that's my first goal. And then three months. And then when I'm there, it's ideal if you could even bank up to six months. Because what that does is that just gives you fluidity. Because anybody in business knows your month as an entrepreneur, it's not going to go. You're not going to make the exact same amount every single month. It's kind of a. It looks like a stock chart almost. Right, Right. And you've got an average over the course of the year. And what will help you smooth out those ups and downs zones is having that, having that reserve in place so that again, you're not, you're not making decisions reactively and doing things that are going to prevent you from making positive moves in the near future.

Love it. Love it.

That's good.

Cool.

Well, I'm going to, this is going to be a complete, like, complete shifting of gears here because I want to talk about podcasting. I know you've, you've got, I think you said you've got a couple podcasts, right? And obviously we're very, very bullish on podcasting. Podcasting is probably our biggest passion in our business. If we can cut everything else out that we do in our business, the podcasting would be the one thing that remains. So I'm curious, how does podcasting fit into the mix of your business?

What I realized it was started off in the financial planning business. I started with a, with a large multinational company.

17 years ago. And when I went through their training program, what they taught me was a lot of really what I think are outdated old school sales tactics, sales techniques. And you know, I went through the program as a young person, started, you do what you do to start and learn. But then there was always a discontent and that, man, this isn't natural to me. This isn't normal. And I realized over time, and it really took me six, seven years into the business to really, to this kind of, this philosophy of the rich life and how we do things kind of came together for me that, that you know what, it's much more comfortable for me to. Well, I like to do two things. I love to learn and that's one of the things I love about this business. I'm never run out of stuff to learn.

That's right.

So I love to learn and I love to help people with what I learned. So in a sense, I like to learn and I like to create content. So if that's something I love to do and it's something I naturally have an aptitude for, then why in the world don't I start learning things that will help my clients and you know, because I'm learning them to be a better advisor and then start sharing them. And it started off early on. I wrote, I wrote some books and then I, then I. So it was a lot of writing early on. And then I did a radio show probably 10 years ago and I got the bug because audio was even I could, you know, most people that have a business or a passion about something, they could talk about it all day long. You might not ever get them to sit down and write out an article or A book. So what I love about the audio is this, the content like we're doing here today, we could create a book out of it. If we were being intentional with how we're laying it out, we could write articles with this. So it's, you know, we multi purpose that. But the podcast, which is even shifting into podcast, video, more, and I think that's kind of where things are going, they are for me anyway, is it's just a way for me to be.

To be a resource to the people that I'm trying to serve. And what I found is when I take that approach, I'm positioned as an authority. I'm positioned as the guy they can trust. Because remember what we talked about earlier is that people are savvy to being sold. And if you look at 100 other people in my city that do what I do, they're being salesmen still. So if I'm this guy that helps them, teach them something, learn something, maybe even walks them through an exercise, that's valuable. Now I'm in this unique position to be okay when the time comes and I'm in this transition and I've got to make some decisions, that's the trusted resource that I'm going to go to. So that positioning from a salesperson. I used to do a workshop and I'd say, here's what people think of financial advisors. And it's like a used car salesman with real greasy hair.

Cigar in his mouth. Right, right. And then the shift idea is that from wanting to run from something like that, my goal was, I called it resource marketing. I wanted to market myself in a way that I was truly a trusted resource for the people that need my help, really, that I want to serve. And the goal was to shift from something a salesman that people run away from and avoid. And I'm thinking, visualize this slide. The slide I had, the resource marketer. They actually have a line of people waiting to see them. And that's really the shift of what I've been able to create with rich life advisors and kind of just. It's having a unique deal, a unique vision, message and narrative. 1. The most important thing is though, is that you've got to believe in it. It can't just be a nice marketing idea. You've got to believe in it. Because I believe it's my belief in what I do, that people believe it too. I think that's it. Find what you connect with, find what your strengths are and then give people that or teach people or share people, and that's what? Podcasting is just. Just so nice and easy to do. One of the exercises. You guys will love this. I would help people. I'd say, hey, I don't care what it is, what you do. It could be. You could be writing about puppies if you want to, but something you want to talk about and why is it important? Okay, now I want. Now I want to know. I want you to list three things about that that I need to know. And then I want to get. I want you to give me a summary and wrap it up. Now, I give people five minutes to do that, and then I'd frequently come out because I'd bring up a couple on stage and I would do an. A podcast interview. And the whole. The whole reason I did that was I was teaching this group of business owners how simple it is to create content and do this. Because a lot of people will never do this because they think it's some magical thing. You've got to have some magical voice and aptitude. No, it's really not. Anybody can do this. And with technology now, it's very simple. It's not that. When I was talking about, you don't have to do what I did go get the $10,000 a year, thinking it's going to make you sound better, because right now, most of my interviews are done on a $69 microphone.

Oh, dude. We use $100 microphones, and they sound amazing.

Right.

We actually have more expensive equipment. We don't use it, don't need it.

It's the same way. It's about getting it done. And what's. Yeah, it's not about the gear.

That's right.

One of the things that you mentioned was with this podcast content, you could theoretically go and convert it into a book if we were purposeful about it. And the funny thing is, part of our business model is we actually sell a printed newsletter. So every month, our subscribers get a newsletter in the mail. And the newsletter is essentially the Cliffs Notes for every podcast interview we did for the previous month.

Oh, that's beautiful. And let's just. For entrepreneurs. And this might be an idea you've shared. I'm thinking, what if. Why don't you write out your top 12 frequently asked questions? Okay, Whatever your business is. I don't. It doesn't matter. And then, okay, that's gonna be. That's gonna be the topic for our 12 podcast. Your first 12 podcast episodes. And then we're going to transcribe them and make that your faq. Everything your client needs to know about what you do. And as your book. Right. All of a sudden, now you're a guy with a book, a show and all this stuff. How's that going to be different than the guy up the street that's doing things the way people have been doing them for 50 years?

Yeah, I love that. That was. That was actually gonna be. My next question is what is some of the ways that you repurpose the content that you're already creating?

So nailed it.

It's. It's. But the part of it is, is almost having a content strategy, meaning I try to think in a quarter at a time. So it's. If I have a project and I want to do a course, so I want to do a book or a mini book or something, it's okay. That's great. That's a great goal. It's kind of get the clarity right. We got clarity where I want to go. Okay. How do I back into that and still deliver standalone valuable content? But. But in a way, this. Creating something tangible, that. That's very intentional because if. If you do like I did one early on, I would get the day before the cop. The podcast, or actually the day of the. The radio show at the time, and I would scramble to come up, pull some topics together. So it wasn't very intentional. I was just trying to pull something together because I had a. The show was about to start. A big shift came. I said, okay, how do I. How do I know I'm going to spend this time doing this anyway? How do I use this to. And like you said, I think audio to me is the starting point because for me, and I think for a lot of people, it's. Not everybody speaking is easier than other forms of their deal, particularly writing, but from there, and it's much cheaper if you want to. So the first two books I wrote, I wrote old school. It took me. The first one was painful. It took me over a year.

I believe it.

And it was a process. I learned how to do it faster. But anymore, most of the time I transcribe the books, then have them edited down, and that can be done really quick. So it's just a learning and evolution. But I think for somebody that wants to. And for me, again, it's. How do you want to be positioned to the people who care about what you do?

Yeah, man. Yeah. You're doing it right. And you have nine books out there. So I could see you've been on a roll with all this.

Yeah. Speaking of those nine books, do you want to. We're kind of getting to wrap up mode. I know you said you had another meeting here in about five minutes. So do you want to, you want to kind of quickly list off the books for our audience so they can go check some of them out?

Well, I think that the easiest thing, what I would love everybody to do here because it's kind of my favorite book. And I think it's the starting point for the philosophy that I've. There's been a through line of everything I've done is the 10 investments for true Wealth. And you can find that at Amazon. But better yet, if you go to richlifebook.com it's still set up on a free plus shipping deal so you can get that book for like six, seven bucks.

Sweet.

Sent out. So richlifebook.com and then if you want to check out the other things, just Amazon, Bo Henderson and you can see those. But for most people, I would start with that book because it's really a foundational philosophy that, that I found most people really kind of believe in. It's nice.

Yeah, man, you're laying it out great here. And yeah, we'll check it out and we'll link everything in the show notes as well. For you guys listening and speaking of books as well, one of our questions we always love to ask, what's something that you just tend to, a book that you tend to go to? Maybe it just left a massive impact or you just refer it to others. You gift it to the folks that just should have a shift, you know, the same kind of feeling you did.

You know, I've got. I'm gonna give you two, if that's okay.

Sure you're allowed.

Yeah. The War of Art by Steven Pressfield's always When I read yearly good reminder about why I do what I do and kind of a kick in the pants. Right. Another is essentialism by a great. He was a great guest on one of the shows, Greg McEwen. Yeah. And it's really about focusing on, you know, the art of just doing the most necessary thing. So that was one that's a revisitor one to revisit to me because one of the things I could say for a lot of the conversations we already had, if there's a component of moving towards your goals, being more successful, it's learning to be better. To say no to things that aren't the most important thing.

Yes. Great, Great recommendations. Pressfield, I don't think has written a bad book. I think every book he's written is amazing. But the War of Art's a great starting point for sure.

Yeah. Essentialism is amazing. That's actually. Reminds me I should reread that. Yeah, that is a. That's a yearly reader for sure.

Yeah.

Awesome, man. Yeah. Well, we'll link everything up. We already. We already said where to go. Richlifebook.com go get that free book. Free plus shipping there and all the other good stuff. Bo, it's been a pleasure, man. Thanks for your time.

Hey, guys. I've had a lot of fun.

All right, buddy. Take care.

See ya.

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