The Shroud of Fear Hit Him in First Class on the Way to Hawaii with His Family with Clint Greenleaf

Welcome to this episode of the Million Dollar Mastermind, where we get real world insights on winning from people who have accomplished amazing things. I'm your host, Larry Weidell. And let's get going. We're talking with Clint Greenleaf and having a lot of fun, talking about winning opportunities and setting yourself up for success by finding what really turns you on and how he's navigated his life to stay inspired and be successful and then continue to not get stuck, but to continue to move on and find inspiration with his new position in life. And so, Clint, I really liked the transition you had where you came out of super success, finally of selling your publishing company. And that was how quick was it that you, you sold the thing? How you know, after.

It was 14 years of hard work before I sold it.

14 years of hard work. And I really think we ought to spend a minute. You celebrated by the trip to Hawaii. You were talking about, go through that again and talk about how the thought came to you about writing the book. You looked over your kid's head, you were sitting in first class and the light bulb went on about the road you traveled to get to that point as a point of reflection that a lot of us would do well to think about that have been successful, had a chance to be successful, because like you said before about you're going to be the next J.K. rowling. A lot of that's luck, let's face it. A lot of that's just right place, right time and you get the right encouragement from the right person rather than the, you know, the door slammed in your face one time too many. It's amazing how many people are on the fence in life. And that's what this podcast is all about, to give those people encouragement by allowing them to listen to someone like yourself, Clint, rather than just be left over. I know you're a publisher and you've been involved in having to put some of these out there, but there's so many people that are the fake experts and life coaches and this, that and the other that really have not ever done a God blessed thing. And they what incur it, what it comes to them is this would be a great thing. I'll interview 50 successful people and write a book on it. And you know, the only thing is they can teach you. They can't teach you what they don't see, they can't teach, you know, they can't see what they don't know to look for. And the people who get the most out of these interviews, by the way, Clint Are people are million dollar earners themselves. That's why my audience is so many people that have been successful because they're hearing things that go over the heads of a lot of people. But at least the people on the way up get a chance to hear it, you know, the unvarnished truth and kind of get that coming to them. But when you get the right information, you can organize yourself for the right kind of activity. And even maybe you're not that perfect in the beginning, you can start to refine because you'll start to get success. You know, as well run lives are like well run businesses. They grow. A well run life is going to grow. And you know, you get on a good nutrition program, you are going to get healthier. You know, you get on a good fitness program, you are going to get healthier and you run a good business, you are going to get healthier. But you have to have input on that so you know how to make the right choices coming up the ladder. And that is why I appreciate you taking the time to share this. But talk, roll back through that thing that, that, that, that light bulb moment that came to you on that first class flight over to Hawaii celebrating the sale of your company. Let's talk about that for just a minute. I think that we need to get into that a little bit.

Yeah. And so light bulb is kind of the wrong term. It was kind of a lightning bolt, right. I think it was the same joy that someone gets. I've never been struck by lightning and don't plan on it, but it wasn't a good thought.

Right.

I mean, I was really, really excited about this trip. This was a culmination. I was planning on doing no work and I was, no kidding, I was probably breaking my elbow patting myself on the back about what a great dad I was, what a great husband I was, what a great business person I was. And this shroud of fear kind of hit me upside the head when I looked and said this isn't going to work.

Right.

My whole plan here has been to try and create freedom for me, for my kids to be able to make something wonderful. And instead I'm going to have the snotty kids from Charlie and the chocolate factory, right? Who I want that now, Daddy. And it scared me so badly. I thought these kids aren't going to know and it's not even going to be their fault. It's going to be on my shoulders that I created this unintentionally for them, but I created this for them. If I'm not careful. So I made these silly assumption that I could just do some research and with one or two magic pills I could solve this and teach my kids about money. I did a lot of research. I did a deep dive. Probably ended up reading a little over 700 different books in the topic and how to teach kids about money.

700 books.

I've interviewed 1600 different people so far. Almost 1700 people on the topic. High net worth people. And trying to find out what can I do, Right? So I'm a simple minded person. I wanted to.

And you, you have published my book and you didn't call me?

Well, no, I just told.

How the hell did you miss me.

In financial services already? I wasn't there. I sold the business by the time.

You came on board. Oh, that's right, it was 2015. Yeah, okay, all right. You're off the hook.

So for me the problem was I wanted to get a good solution. The first three books I read were talking about allowance because I figured that's a great place to start, right? One said, give your kids an allowance and tie it to chores. Okay, fine, great, I'll try that. Second book said you can give your kids an allowance but never tie it to chores. Okay, that doesn't help. Third book will break the tie, right? Third book, never give your kids an allowance. These are three different approaches. I don't care which approaches, right? Just tell me the right one and I'll go do it. Right. So I expanded the sample size, got to 10 books, still no clarity. And I kept on reading more and more books. And the problem is I was looking for a silver bullet or an on off binary choice, right? There is none. And you wouldn't know this, Larry, about kids, but even though they came from the same parents, kids are a little bit different in each family. And I'm sure you've got some personal experience, right?

Yes. Yes, sir.

So I had three kids. I know that they are all my kids and they are all dramatically different. They all behave differently. What motivates one is dramatically different from another from another. And the problem is the plan you need to be able to create to teach each child about money is different on a per child basis, let alone the fact that you're doing it with a partner often who doesn't see the world the same way. And again, you wouldn't know this, but not every married couple agrees perfectly on all things, especially about money. So you're dealing with two factors where inputs change all the time because different financial situations cause you to behave differently, right? If money's super tight, you're probably giving kids either a conscious or subconscious message about not spending too much. Whereas if you hit a big payday, you're super excited, you probably give your kids a little bit more. It's really important you try and plan that out. And so what often happens is we know it's important, but we don't teach our kids about money in an active way. We just do it passively through whatever we're dealing with. And a lot of parents don't even know what they're dealing with financially, so they sure as hell can't customize an approach for their kids. So the epiphany that I had was I need to be able to help people make this easier. So it's top of mind for them so they're clear on what they need to go out and do, and they're at least paying attention to the basics because financially educated kids become financially educated adults and we avoid things like massive credit card debt and payday loans and really bad financial choices for grownups.

Yeah. And so what did you find? When did you start to find some. You simplified this into a nice, wonderful, beautiful book, but you had to sort through it. Reminds me of like, I'm going to learn how to play golf and I'm going to go get. And I think I have had 700 lessons by 700 different instructors, right.

And each one tells you the same exact thing, which is hit the ball better. Right. But everything else after that is not going to help you get there. And it's not through their fault. They're not bad people. They're not lying to you. But you have to kind of customize it, right? And you look at a perfect golf swing like Freddie Couples. Yeah. That is truly perfect. And the number of people who swing like that are one. And his name is Freddie Couples. Nobody else can do that. So we all try to work on what we have. And the struggle for me was trying to say there has to be some simple, basic, elemental levels. Right. And what it came down to was I can't tell you what your allowance program should be without a really clear in depth discussion of you and your personal financial values. But I can tell you that most kids who hear about Give, Save, Spend by the age of four or five can start making inroads on it. So the book came because I bought my daughter three piggy banks and I said, we're going to practice the Give, Save, Spend concept and see how it works. So we had three little white piggy banks and I Gave her a red Sharpie, and she wrote, give, save, spend the side of them. And she looked at him and said, this is like the Three Little Pigs. And I said, no, honey, that's a different story. Like, they're the ones who had straw stick and brick houses. And she said, no, dad, this is the Three Little Pigs. Very indignantly, like a little child would, right?

Yeah.

And I said, well, I suppose you could probably make a sequel to the original story. And she said, well, you're a book guy. Make it happen, right? So obviously kind of laughed it off. And then over time, started, started thinking. And so we wrote the sequel based on that. And I got Phil to help me with the illustrations. And at that point, Larry, no kidding. I was done, right? I'd already written a book before. This was another book, and I was totally checked out, and my kids were little, so I had a kid's book and I was done. And I had some good friends. I'm a member of ypo, and I had some good friends in my YPO forum who came to me and said, that's great, but what about teenagers? And I was like, that's someone else's problem. That's future me's problem. I'm not going to worry about that today. And so the research and the data that I came up with had kind of given me that logic that there's really no silver bullet. It all depends. So I ended up building out for families this roadmap. And it really comes down to knowing what your values are within the family first. What are your goals? And then where are the kids at that moment? What do they value? What's important to them? What do they know? What do they need to know? So we kind of built up an education model on things like allowance and spending and philanthropy. And how do they learn about investing and savings and building out a bit of a framework for it? And that's one of the things I love doing as a give back is I teach parents how to teach their kids about money. And that's been a fun, very rewarding element for me.

Have you wound up doing a lot of speaking?

Yes. So Covid definitely threw a wrench in that. But I did a good bit of speaking on a regular basis for that. We sold a lot of customized versions of that to financial planners and to banks and to groups who wanted to use this as a lead gen tool. So, for example, imagine a bank that wants to increase deposits. They give out the book if you open up an account for your kids. And if your kids have an account there. Chances are the parents will have an account there, too. Right. So they'll use the book as a marketing tool to get them in the door. And that usually leads to speaking gigs as well. Yeah, but it's much less about selling books or speeches than it is about trying to make sure that we educate the next generation. We've done such a bad job of that over the years.

Absolutely. But just to touch on the thing, we tend to forget these things and gloss over it and the price we pay when we launch a business and we say, like, you know, well, you know, what else could I do? And this. But you forget it because it's a blur. But you said, right in that moment on that flight, it rolled back to you the thing that your kids would not have. You know, the lessons you had to learn from, you know, you had a great upbringing, you had a great education, you know, you got a great job. But then when you wanted to launch your business, you had to work like a dog, you know, a maniac, and talk about the thing, all the flights in the middle seat, you know, and, you know, Bill Gates, way into his career was riding in the back of the plane in the middle seat, you know, of course, he was like you, you know, a nice, slender guy. So it wasn't. So it wasn't the price that a lot of us would have to pay, but it's still the center seat. And you could have, you know, often have a couple of tummies on either side of you, you know, so maybe it's a half a seat, but all of the hours and flights and things like that, I mean, it's hard to. You can't transfer that to, you know, kids never hear about that from successful parents. Right. And so to go in and say, you know, you know, it's like the whole thing, you know, when I was young, we used to walk three miles in the snow to school.

Uphill both ways. Uphill both ways.

And, you know, that means nothing to a kid. And so the way to, you know, successful people are never going to be able to communicate to their kids what real work is all about and everything. But you can jump ahead with this concept of your book. And so congratulations on that. You're teaching them the concepts.

Thank you. Yeah. Let me tell you one quick story on that, because you're right, kids aren't going to listen to you. I mean, I watched. My son's a football and baseball kid and loves playing. Both my daughters play volleyball. I can give them advice in sports all the time. They don't care what dad says. Right. A coach says the exact same thing. They're listening, they're paying attention. There's a guy named Jerry Bell who's one of the nicest people I've ever met. He's a leadership professor at University of North Carolina, the Bell Leadership Institute. And he's got a data point. He said that he's interviewed close to 100,000 high net worth folks, high level CEO type people. And the one string data point of highly successful folks is that most of them had a job outside of the home where they answered as someone who wasn't a parent at a very young age, like 10, 12 years old. So one of the things if you really want to give them that chance to learn how hard work works is you want them doing something, ideally shoveling something that came out of the working end of an animal, but something that kind of sucks. Right. You know, I painted houses growing up. I had a paper route, I had a bunch of jobs that I didn't really like that much. But they encouraged me to try and use my brain a little bit more and think a little bit rather than work with my back. Not that there's anything wrong with working with your back for sure. But it was important for me that a day's worth of hard work was a lesson that I learned. And that's something really important for my kids. They currently get, you know, they work a lot with sports, but they've worked at every business that we've had one way or another.

Yeah, fantastic insights. And that book is something I recommend. I'm going to get it. And I recommend everybody get the three. Was it the three pigs?

It's called Give, Save, Spend with the Three Little Pigs.

Yeah.

And then there's a parent's guide called beyond the Piggy bank which is the kind of the how to manual for parents.

Okay, fantastic.

I'm all@clintgreenleaf.com if you're listening to this.

Okay. That's how also they can get in contact with you on other things.

Yeah, happy to reach out. If you've listened to this, you have questions and you just want to talk to me about how great Larry is, just reach out to me and we can have a fan club meeting.

I'll have all my relatives call. That wraps up this episode. Consider leaving a rating and review if you like what you heard. In addition, I have a free video for you and it contains my best insights from 20 years of running my own business and also coaching million dollar earners. You'll find it whitelowinning. Com Webinar thanks for listening. And do it big.