Episode #608 - Start Where You Are and Grow! with Jonathan DeYoe, Senior VP of EP Wealth Advisors

Welcome to this edition of the Million Dollar Mastermind podcast. This is where we pick the brains of high achievers from all walks of life and get their hard earned real world insights on winning. I'm your host, Larry Wydell. Now, what have you done? You know, when you came out of your education phase, it seems like you were uniquely set up to have, like, the stability in your personal life and to do a lot of the right things in your personal life. Is that true? Did that turn out to be true or not?

No, I think that's. I think that's accurate.

Married to the same woman or you divorce 15 times or.

You know, I'm divorced once. I'm divorced once.

Yeah, I think everybody's allowed one or two.

So I think I have some stability and I think I have. I have a. I have a meditation practice that's been there for 25 years, but I don't know that that came from the study. I think that's something I got from my parents more than anything is just, you know, South Dakota, Midwestern. Work hard, do your best.

We're in South Dakota.

What's that?

Where in South Dakota?

Rapid City, South Dakota. Born in Rapid City.

Yeah. You know, it's spearfish.

Oh, yeah, yeah. My grandfather was a minister in spearfish.

Is that right? I've been. We'd go up there and. Well, he's a big hunter, but Pheasants, right?

Pheasants.

Yeah, yeah, pheasants. I've. Yeah, I have been pheasant hunting there in South Dakota, but we would go up primarily and do prairie dog hunting. Hunting.

Oh, that's not hunting. That's not hunting?

Yeah, that's shooting.

That's shooting.

Yeah, that's shooting. Getting ready those varmints. But, yeah, great country. And you grew up where you do. Did you grow up there wanting to get out or not wanting to get out?

I. I mean, I love. I loved it there. It's not that I wanted to get out. I mean, I.

So a lot of people move there now, you know, you know.

Say again?

A lot of people move there now, you know, that's what they want, you know.

Drives my parents crazy that people coming in from all over the place. I. I never wanted to leave. I never. I didn't leave because I didn't like where I was. I left because I wanted to go to school, and I went to school in Montana. I love Montana for skiing. You know, I skied four days a week when I was in Montana. And then when I left Montana, I came to The Bay Area, Berkeley, specifically to study Buddhist studies or I came to study to be a Lutheran seminarian, but I ended up studying Buddhist studies here. So I always moved because there was something that I was moving towards. I didn't, I didn't move away from things. I love South Dakota. I love Montana. I try to get my wife to, to buy a, buy a mountain home in Montana. She says it's too cold. I'm still working on her. We'll see where that, see where that ends up.

Yeah. So what are you most excited about in the future? You know what, what gets you super excited?

Yeah, I love it. So my Mindful money is designed to help people out that don't have access and that is now the sole focus of the company. We're a for profit company, but all profits get put into scholarships and things like that. So Mindful Money has courses, we have coaching, we have workshops that'll teach and help people do it themselves until their complexity justifies advice. The thing that the advisor world tries to convince everyone of is that everyone needs an advisor. And that's just not true. Most people's situations are very simple, can be handled with very simple things and people can do it themselves. We don't need to make this smoke and mirrors. We don't need to make this more difficult than it is. People can do it themselves. And I try to create a system that helps people do it themselves. And I'm super excited about how Mindful Money is coming about doing that. We're actually just creating the beginning to end. We meet somebody here, we introduce them to a webinar that helps them out here. We introduce them to workshop here. Here's the coaching after the fact. We're sort of creating an end to end support for anybody just starting out 23 years old, less than half a million dollars, $10,000, whatever it is, you're in debt. We can help people get through in some of these issues.

And the big thing that you would going to have to deal with is getting the word out. Yep. People know that this is an option. Have you gotten into any thinking about how to do that to get in front of these people earlier in their career? Because the idea is the earlier you can get, get their attention and get them on that track, the better. You're not having to pull them out of the ditch where you, you know, they wind up at, at 30, you know, after wife, kids, debts, this, that and the other. And it's like everything is, you know, they're fighting for survival. And so any, any ideas on how to get in front of those people. One, one thing that I try and provide on the podcast is a forum where people could find out about things that are out there that might do them some good and is, you know, I do know of a lot of young people that listen to the podcast. But you know, where, when's a better time than while you're on the way up, where you're getting your, your values and your mindset and you're learning about how the world works to find out how the successful people think, you know, and get yourself following some of those patterns. And so have you thought about how to maximize your outreach in that world? Because you know, it'd be wonderful if these kind of things were in high schools all over the country. You know, colleges all over the country, you know, they, you know, God bless them, teaching their sexuality, you know, that wokeness and how it affects like 1/10 of 1% of the population or whatever it is. It's not the majority, but the majority issues are just getting clouded by, by these, these side issues. And like nobody's taught about how to manage money. I mean, you know, you can, you can be one of the things that amazed me and I'm sure you've been the same thing. You get CPA partners sometimes and you go in there and talk about their personal financial situation and it's like no idea.

Yep.

You know, and they'll own things like whole life which is the biggest rip off of all time. And like that's not good. I thought was savings. It's like, yeah, one per half of a percent if you keep it over, whatever. And then by the way, they keep the savings if you die, you know, and so, you know, it's, oh, that's not a good thing. And so the thing is people, they go through their entire life being around it. It's like water, water, not a drop to drink if you're out on a raft in the Pacific Ocean, you know, salt water everywhere but no fresh water to drink. People around this stuff, but they never get the basics in there. But it wouldn't it be great if this was in all the schools and at least a drip, you know, if you got us a little, you know, during the course of their high school education, an hour somebody came in and spoke, you know, in a assembly or something like that.

Yeah, yeah. I mean that's. We, we do this is, I mean this, that's right up the alley. Like we have, there's a, there's a couple things we're doing and that's you're, you're referencing something I want to do. So we're, we have social media presence, right? That's, you know, the young people are on social media. That, that's one of the places we are. I also work with employers, so I, I, you know, large employers that we'll do like a, a right. It's not a lunch and learn because it's not, you know, it's, it's virtual. So you can have 3,000 people listening to an educational piece and then you got 23 year old people that are just starting off in a, in a company. We, we teach them how to do some basic stuff. But the thing you're referencing, the idea of getting into schools. We do have digital programs and we have been in a number of schools and, and there's been Special Olympic, you know, groups of Special Olympics athletes have gone through the program. There's been, you know, groups of black entrepreneurs in East Oakland have gone through the program. There's been faculty and staff at small schools, primary schools, middle schools, high schools have gone through the program. Students in high schools have gone through the program. So there's lots of different small groups, but that's one off. I don't have, like I can't go to the National Board of Schools and say, hey, distribute this everywhere because there's just, there's too much crap. How are they going to pick me over somebody else? It's got it, we got to have, got to have a tribunal to figure out the right one and it's got to go to this person. You have to have congressional approval and all that. So I just, if a school wants it, I give it to them. Like there's a, there's a price on it, but I'm giving it to schools for free. Like I don't even. Anyone that wants it can have it. You've got a group of people, I give it away. Anyone that's listening, anyone listening that has a group of people. Could be a church, could be a school, could be an athletics organization. I don't care, email me, I'll give it to you for free.

And the thing is, one thing would be great. A good first step is get in on Khan Academy.

Yeah, it's not on Khan Academy. Khan Academy has its own stuff, all good stuff by the way. It's available in the same kind of structure though. It's a digital course that anyone can sign up for.

Okay. And so anyway, it's just a matter of thinking about it and even guys coming out of prison, you know, when they're in the prisons to get, you know, there's not, you know, it's, there's not enough done for the people coming out of the jails and everything. And it's a very traumatic time. And that, you know, when you can put good thinking in their head to getting them thinking seriously about their future, they're more likely to stay on a track. I've got. I know, fortunately, I know of a young person who was caught up in that system kind of just basically because he was just an idiot and kept doing wrong things. Nothing really serious, no real crime, was just being stupid. But he got caught up in that system and got out. And then he had to do the labor job. And I would tell him, look, just put up with it because you're climbing the ladder out of the thing.

And.

But he did it. Now he's making, working with Google as an engineer, making 150 grand a year, and it hadn't been that many years, you know. You know, go ahead.

In 1997, when I just started my first. The first thing I did, the first thing I ever taught when Terms of Personal finance was a class at a halfway house in South San Francisco, specifically, that's where I learned what a term, what the, what the term shot caller is.

Yeah, yeah. Shot collar. Yeah.

I didn't know what that was. And then I had a shot collar in my course, which terrified me. He had pointed out multiple people to die in prison, but there was a bunch of people there that were in this halfway house, and I was teaching him about checking account and balancing your checking account and just some really basic stuff. And as you said, work up the ladder. Job opportunities suck for you. I get that. Just start where you are and grow from there. You'll get out of it. It's a prize. It's. You're not done. Like, you grow, you get better. Let's just get better.

You know, I did a podcast with a shot caller called Casey. I forget his last name right now, but he wrote the book, the Shot Caller.

Oh, no kidding.

Yeah. Yeah. And at 13 years old, he was a shot collar.

Oh, wow.

He was that bad?

Yep. Everybody like at a 13. Yeah.

And he was, I think 13 or 14. He was also in solitary confinement up around your area for the rest of his life. And it's a miraculous story how he came out of it, but people can come out, but you have to have correct information and you have to have people that care. And I know that you do. And so I'm going to wish you the best on that. Anything that you want to pass on to people that are coming up the ladder and any kind of encouragement or fill in the cracks of what we've covered today that something might be useful for them.

I think that the two pieces of information that I always like to make sure we share is don't believe everything you hear. Test the waters. Don't believe everything you hear. Stay mindful of what the truth might be and then just realize you're not done. And we kind of covered it a second ago. But be willing to become better. You're out becoming. Look at the next step. Take the next step.

Yeah. Just because you're not good enough today doesn't mean you can't be good enough tomorrow.

That's right. That's right.

And you might be one piece of information away from being good enough.

Zig Ziglar. I think.

Yeah. You might not be that far away. And so keep on moving. Thanks so much. Enjoyed it and best of luck. The next big thing that you want to accomplish other than the program, what would you say in your life for you personally?

Wow. I have two kids that are getting. That are going off to college, so getting them into college would be the best thing.

Wow. Fantastic. And the life you're going to have after they go the house is. They're still in the house?

Well, yeah, they're both still here. One of them leaves next year. The next one leaves two years.

You're probably in that stage where you can't imagine the house being empty.

Nope.

Yeah. Well, let me just tell you that. Let me tell you this. It's like I can't imagine what it'll be like whether or not in a short period of time. It's like I can't imagine them coming back. House is going to be so full. I hope they don't stay long, you know.

No, I don't feel that at all. I love it.

It's amazing how quick your mind can adjust to the different things. It's like so quiet in here. But what are you going to do with your life? I mean, for you, for you.

I'm pursuing the goal that my brother and I had together. I still have that dream and I'm still pursuing that dream.

Yeah. Fantastic. And I wish you the best and let's stay in touch and maybe do this again down the road. Thanks so much.

Thanks, Larry.

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