The Hidden Heist: How Business Owners Rob Their Own Wealth

Most business owners think money stress comes from not making enough money. But what if the real issue isn't your revenue? Maybe the real issue, maybe it's the story you've been telling yourself about money since you were like 12. And that's what we're talking about today on Marc Haine Live. Welcome to this episode of Marc Haine Live. Of course, this is where small business owners and entrepreneurs pick up some core skill sets to help them create the show-stopping, jaw-dropping experience that their customers and their employees deserve. I am your host, Customer and Employee Experience Strategist Marc Haine. And today, my guest is Bill Cates.

Hi Marc!

And we're going to be uncovering how broken money stories are quietly sabotaging your business growth, your profitability, and of course, your long-term wealth. The price of admission today is please make sure you subscribe to the podcast. And please make sure you share this episode with your circle of friends because chances are, if you're tuning in because you're kind of attracted to the topic today, there's other people in your circle who are likewise going, geez, I wish I could figure out this whole money situation. I'd love for you to share it. I'd love to see the business community really supporting and rallying around what I've been doing for the last 5 years. And it is completely free. And of course, this is December 31st, 2025. It is the last show of 2025. And I'm so glad you're along for the ride. So hey, let me set the scene. You're busy. The business is running. Revenue is coming in and yet, you hesitate to take profit. You delay savings and investing. And you tell yourself, you know, once things settle down, that's when I'll do it. Spoiler alert! They never knew. They never do. It never settles down enough for you to be able to do that. I know this movie personally. I starred in it for many, many I've lived in money denial. I've carried anxiety about it and suffered through it not talking about it. So that brings us to our Question of the Day. So, what story are you telling yourself about money? And how much is that story costing your business Right now. I'd love for you to share your experience with us. Why don't you go ahead, share a link to this episode on your favorite social media platform, hashtag it #ExperienceLeadership. Put down your comments and your stories and be part of this conversation. As I mentioned, my guest today is Bill Cates. And if there were a Hall of Fame for helping people grow businesses without losing their sanity, well, Bill would have his own wing. Bill is an exponential growth coach, a Professional Speakers Hall of Fame inductee, and a best-selling author of 8 books including his newest one called The Hidden Heist and of course, Radical Relevance. For over 30 years, Bill has helped thousands of financial advisors generate billions in new assets through his relationship marketing system. He also hosts the Top Advisor Podcast ranked in the top 5% globally. And just to prove he doesn't just talk about courage, he's climbed Kilimanjaro, trekked to Everest Base Camp, camped in the Arctic Circle, and toured as a drummer in a rock band. Bill, welcome to the show!

Hey, thank you so much, Marc. And sometimes, people confuse me with Bill Gates. Gates, Gates. Yeah, I missed it by one letter. And a few bucks. But look, Mr. Gates may have a lot of money. I like to tell the folks that I'll help them make a little more money in the spirit of service to others and shifting their mindset around money. So, let's get started.

Love it! Hey, so maybe we could start. Let's talk a little bit about who your clients are and how do you serve them?

Yeah, sure. So, I've been in this current business for well over 30 years. And for the most part, I work with financial professionals. I've helped literally thousands of financial professionals bring in new clients, bring in billions of dollars. I do step out of that industry from time to time as long as I feel that the processes I teach are valuable to whomever is interested. But generally speaking, if you think in terms of clients, meaning relationships versus customers, which means transactions, I might have something to help you with around bringing in new folks and having a new mindset around money.

I love it. Now, thank you very much. I have your book. I'm loving the stories that you wrap the whole learning through. But I've heard for years that as humans, we tell ourselves money stories. I've heard this for years. It's all the way we were brought up and all that. So, what does that actually mean to you within the scope of what we want to talk about today?

Yeah. So, another way to think of story really is just self-talk. And it's conscious, unconscious, our habits of thinking, believing that dictate our behavior. We all do it in every area of our life, not just money. We tell ourselves stories. And the challenge is that we tell ourselves these stories so much that we start to actually believe them. Now, sometimes they help us. Sometimes they're true. But a lot of times, our stories are based on past experiences that didn't go so well or things that we learned and maybe served us once in the past but maybe don't serve us now. So, when it comes to money, it's been estimated by a lot of psychologists that our money stories begin to solidify around age 7 or 8. It's earlier than most people expect. But we hear messages from parents like, What do you think I am, made of money? Or money doesn't grow on trees. Or rich people are greedy and evil and poor people are lazy and stupid. And all the stereotypes and all the different things that our parents or others who bring us up feed us. And then, society kicks in, social media these days kick in. And so, we end up forming a relationship to money that isn't always healthy. Now, sometimes it is. I do run into folks sometimes who were educated around money and know how to work with personal finance. But those folks are rare. It's not a topic that we talk about much. And I think one of the reasons why we don't talk about it a lot is because there's so much anxiety around it. And it just becomes this spiral of not talking and we get anxious and we don't learn how money works and it just doesn't serve us. And I know that a lot of your listeners are small business owners. And so, It affects us in 2 ways. It affects us in our business and how we perceive our business and charge for our products and services and how we pay ourselves first in our business. And then also, our personal finance. And so, that's the essence of what I mean by money story and the types of stories that go on out there that don't always serve us.

Yeah. I always find it interesting when it comes down to entrepreneurs to have kind of these mindset things around money. Because ultimately, when people start their business, I mean obviously, they're looking at risk. They're looking at, this is something I'm capable of doing. So, why do smart, capable business owners struggle most with this money mindset when they start making it? Is it because they didn't have it before?

Not always. And it's hard to say because unless you get in there and look at the links in the brain. But You're right. To start a business, there has to be a certain level of confidence. There has to be a certain level of healthy ego, a certain level of feeling that we know something and can create something that will be of value to others. Okay, that's good. Nothing wrong with that. But then, we got these other messages creeping around. So, let me give you an example.

Sure.

I've done over 100 money stories in writing my book, The Hidden Heist, and my TEDx talk. And I continued to do these money interviews with folks. And so, I want to tell you about this guy named Michael. He's an entrepreneur. And he grew up in a household where his parents, mostly his father, viewed people with wealth, with money as greedy, as grifters, as liars. He didn't respect them, yada, yada, right? So, that was the mindset that he kind of grew up with.

Wow.

Now, here he becomes an entrepreneur, wants to serve others, wants to earn a good living and create wealth for himself. But greedy people, wealthy people are evil. Wealthy people are bad. You can't become what you resent. And so, luckily for him, he became aware of that. He became aware of that money story that wasn't serving him. And he had to work on that and get past that, that it was okay to do well. It was okay to be successful. Kind of related to that, a lot of people, a lot of entrepreneurs, I face this myself sometimes, actually have a fear of success. They see that they equate success with more complicated. They equate success with having to compromise and all kinds of other mistaken assumptions. And so, if you're not aware of those, then they'll just hold you back. So, the first antidote or remedy to this, I guess, is self-awareness. And so, for myself, I learned about my broken money stories and my relationship with money when I learned how money worked. And that's one of the several ways to do this. But as I got educated around money for my business and my personal finance, then I started to see what I wasn't doing and should have been doing.

Yeah.

And all of that. And so, that became— that's when I became aware of my limited and broken money stories. So, one of the best ways is— easiest ways is to just learn some of the basics around personal finance and business finance. Now, you mentioned this briefly in the intro about money denial.

Hmm.

It's a thing. It's a big thing. And it shows up in a lot of different ways. For myself, I lived with a bad case of money denial. For a long time, I didn't look at my bank accounts. I didn't look at my statements. I didn't like to look at my bills. I avoided it. There was a part of me. One of my stories was what I thought was an abundance mindset. I thought that I had an abundant mind. There'll always be enough. It'll always work out. Well, actually, that was fiction. That was just masking the truth, which was I had an incredible fear of not having enough money. And so, it manifests in anxiety and stress. And so then, when you're feeling anxious about something, you kind of tend to avoid it, right? So, I ask the listeners, the people watching this, are you avoiding certain aspects of your money life, business or personal? If you are, then there's probably something deeper that's causing that avoidance. And what is that?

So, when we think about this idea of money denial as you outlined, how does this show up in day-to-day business decisions? What are the symptoms that owner-operator might have some of this money denial?

Yeah, so I'll tell you a classic thing is a mistaken belief. And this is related to money denial that I can't take enough compensation for myself and I can't take You know, ask a business owner, what are you doing with the profit for your business? And he or she will say, well, I'm plowing it back into my business.

Right.

Well, all right, there's some value in that, but there's also a mistake in that, in that if you don't start to set aside profit as you go, you'll never have the money to grow and to scale your business down the road. You may not have the money to compensate you as you deserve to be compensated. So, a lot of business owners get into this almost— it's an unconscious poverty consciousness where they don't feel they can ever take money out of the business. And that's a form of this money denial. They're not really learning how it actually works. So, there's a concept in personal finance that I also believe relates to business finance. And that is, Pay yourself first. All right. So for personal, it's set up that 401 if you're an employee. If you're a business owner, you know, set up a profit sharing plan, whatever it takes to start, you know, paying yourself first, putting that savings away, you know, pretax. We should also do that for our business. And a lot of folks don't do that. So, for example, I have a— I have 5 Checking accounts. I have a net— I have a gross revenue account where the money comes in. That's where all the checks get paid and all the ACH transfers and all that. That's my big bucket, right?

Yes.

And then I've got a profit account. I've got an owner compensation account. I have an operational expense account and I have a tax account. And so, that money gets divvied by a A basic percentage based on what I'm estimating needing it to be. And so, the money is always where it needs to be when I need it. Have you ever had— I bet you a lot of folks on the call can identify with this— where your accountant says, wow, you made $50,000 in profit last year. What? Where's the $50,000? I don't see the $50,000. Where's the $50,000? Well, you made it, but you plowed it back into the business. You don't really have it. And then you got a tax bill due and you don't have the cash for that. Right. So the bottom line is we've got to stop ignoring what needs to be done for our business finance and our personal finance. We've got to learn how money works. And that will also start to show us where we've got some of these broken money stories and things that we're taught by other people that don't serve us.

Yeah.

And in my TEDx talk, I say, since money intersects all aspects of your life, there isn't an aspect of your life that money doesn't somehow intersect, influence. Change your money story, you change your life. And that's what I'm all about these days.

And so, I'd love to dig into some more strategies of that. And we'll get to that right after this.

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Welcome back! I am speaking with Bill Cates. Bill, why don't you tell us a little bit about your book? It is not only educational. It is really entertaining.

Well, thank you. So, it is called The Hidden Heist. Oh, thank you. Oh, you got it up on the screen. Thank you. Stop robbing yourself of lasting wealth. An irresistible tale of financial redemption. So, one of the things I've learned in this long life of mine is that one of the best ways to learn things is through stories. Not just straightforward how to do this, how to do that, which most of my books are. But the power of a story. And so, I decided to make The Hidden Heist a parable. You maybe know of other parable books, The Go-Giver by Bob Burg and John David Mann, who are both friends of mine. Who Moved My Cheese is a parable book. A lot of great ones. Anyway, So, I wanted to talk about money mindset, but I wanted it to be in a story that was interesting. A lot of parable books are pretty dang predictable, and that's not always bad. I mean, we watch movies and TV shows where we kind of know what's going to happen. They've already showed us what's going to happen, then we just wonder how they get there. But I just, I wanted to have something that was an interesting read. So, this takes place in a bank robbery.

Okay.

So, there's some instant tension. These bank robbers are also pretty bumbly. So, there's some instant comic relief. And as these bank robbers are trying to figure out how to get out of this predicament that they found themselves in because they thought they were going to go in and smash and grab and leave, but they didn't. The hostages are gathered in the vault waiting for these guys to figure it out. And in the vault is Alden Beckett, who is a financial advisor. And they start to talk about money. Why are these guys robbing the bank? And so, what I've done is I've taken a lot of these money story interviews that I've done and with my co-author, Jeff C. West, brought them to life through the characters in the story. And so, we examined some of the stereotypes around money, some of the mistaken beliefs. And we could talk about this. I would love to talk about this. Money is a scarce resource. That's one of the first ones we tackle. Hint, foreshadow. Teaser: money is not a scarce resource, and we can talk about that, Mark. But anyway, so so in the book you watch these guys go through this little robbery, and then you learn about how money works, and you self-reflect. And then at the end we have a couple of appendices that like in case you missed the message in the story, in case you got so absorbed in the story, you kind of missed what we were trying to teach. There's a few appendices that say all right here's. Here's what we were trying to teach you. So, it's kind of the best of both worlds. Great story, great non-fiction come together.

Love it.

So, that's the essence of The Hidden Hives.

And it is extremely entertaining, I have to say.

Thank you.

So, you mentioned the very first thing about this idea of money being a scarce resource or scarcity mindset.

When you tell people that it's not a scarce resource, why does that idea Well, because it may be scarce in their pocket or bank account at the moment. And so, when I say money is not a scarce resource, they say, well, I mean, that flies in the face of their own personal experience. And so, I get that. It's a hard thing to conceive of initially. So, let me break it down a little bit. Money flows. Money is energy. Money is a concept created by mankind as an exchange for products and services. And so, let me give you one way to think about this. Let's say you earn $100, you put it in the bank. Okay? The bank loans that money to a small business. The small business pays their employees. Money starts— and then somebody travels overseas, or maybe the business opens up a branch overseas and the money— we live in a global economy.

Yeah.

where money is flowing around the entire world. And what we need to do is get into the flow. And so, money is often referred to as currency. Well, the root of currency is Latin, currans, which means flow or flow like a river.

Hmm.

And in my TEDx talk, I'm talking about this stuff a little bit. And I say, I believe that money is an abundant resource. And flows like a river and I'm jumping into the currency. All right. So, here's a principle that will help you with this. Money follows value. Money follows value. Money actually follows perceived value, the value that your potential customer or client perceives in the work you do.

Right.

And so, if we want to make more money, one of the ways to do that is provide more of the right value to the right people in the right circumstances. Now, for myself and my own business, the way I've gotten into the flow is I help other people make more money. It's not the only way to do it, but it's what I've decided to do. And so, when you help other people make more money, then you are getting into that flow of money. For my own products and services over the years, I've also written some books on how to get more referrals. And so, One of my assessments of the value of what I deliver is it referable? Are people talking about it to others? That's a measure of perceived value. So, I would say to the people watching, are you referable? Are people talking about you without you asking them to? Are they recommending your product, your service, whatever? That's a measure of the perceived value. Money follows value. So, if we're not earning the kind of money that we would like to, then one place to look is, are others perceiving the value in the way it needs to be perceived? Do we need to add more value to the equation? On the other hand, are we minimizing our value? Right? Do we have a broken story that's not allowing us to charge what we really could charge in the marketplace? Because we keep discounting our product or service even before someone asks for a discount, right? How many times have we all done that? My normal fee or our normal charges for this, but for you right now, it'll be this, right? That's just crap in our head that some— there's the devil on our shoulder telling us to discount before we even really need to do that. Well, that's a broken money story. That's an example, right? Now, I went around a little bit here, but when you're broken money— Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah, go ahead.

Sorry, Bill. As you were saying that, I was thinking about my background's been in hospitality advising casinos, hotels, restaurants. And when it comes down to like, I've worked with a lot of restaurant operators who just keep thinking like, when it comes down to the value thing, it's like, oh, I don't have customers. I don't have enough customers buying something today. So, I better add stuff to my menu. And before you know it, they have this massive menu that they then try to discount like crazy because if I don't sell this steak, it's going to go rotten in the drawer and I better I bet a deuce. And so, we have all this desperation around that not only is money scarce but sales can be scarce as well.

Yeah, I mean, it's true. There's all this whole scarcity thing. This is a big thing for humans. So, let's understand something. We are born into this world with a scarcity and negativity bias. It's wired into our brain. It's part of our survival as an organism. And so, knowing that helps us know that we're always kind of fighting against that, or at least initially, that our predisposition will be scarcity and negativity bias. It's the way the brain copes. I interviewed for my own podcast recently a neuroscientist who enlightened me on all of this.

Wow.

And so, if we know that that's kind of our resting place, scarcity, negativity bias, now we know we got to work a little harder to rewire that. And with the discovery of neuroplasticity, we've learned that we can rewire our brain. We can create new neurotransmitters and synapses in our brain and think differently, but it takes work. It's not something that will often happen naturally. We have to be aware and then, we have to do the work to rewire that thinking. So, this scarcity of money, scarcity of time, scarcity of love, scarcity of a lot of stuff, right? It's the human condition and we have to be aware and then rewire.

So, where does like scarcity is one thing. But I also run into a lot of risk aversion.

Sure.

Where it's like, I have the money now but I'm just really scared to do anything. And it's tied to scarcity. But when I think about people who started businesses had to risk something to get started, why all of a sudden do we have this huge component of risk aversion driving our business or not driving our business?

Yeah, well, I mean, it comes from fear of loss, fear of making a mistake. I mean, It's hard to generalize about this because each person is unique in terms of where their scarcity and mindset and fear may show up.

Mm-hmm.

But it's common and we should become aware of it and then change. So, I mean, how I became an entrepreneur, I mean, I've built and sold a couple of businesses. My current business is doing quite well. My parents grew up in the Great Depression. They were children of the Great Depression. And their money story was very cautious. They saw money as something to guard, not something to grow. So, they saved well, but they didn't invest very well. And they certainly never would have started a business. How I did that, I don't know. But in the midst of all of that, I still have fear of making mistake, fear of taking risk, even though I do take a risk.

Yeah.

So, I mean, when we find that going on for ourselves, we have to just look and say, all right, what are we afraid of? At the bottom line of it, there's some fear that's keeping us from moving forward. There's a fear of loss, fear of making a mistake, fear of losing esteem, fear of looking bad in the eyes of other people. There's all kinds of fear motivations going on. Everybody's a little bit different.

Yeah.

At the end of the day, we got to look and see what that is. Then, we have to examine what is worst-case scenario. Can we live with worst-case scenario? If we can, then we move forward. If we can't, then we probably adjust. And so, I mean, that's been my formula around taking risks. And there are times when I wish I took risks that I didn't.

Yeah.

And there are other risks I took that I wish I hadn't.

Well, you know, but you've given a huge benchmark. And if people are tuning in, I hope that they kind of bookmark this level because I think that right there is a really solid nugget, is being able to evaluate your current circumstance. Evaluate what is the worst-case scenario if I blow this. What is the worst-case scenario? And this is something when I started investing, I used to tell my wife. She's like, I can't believe you put $2,000 in on a stock. And it's like, but I looked at it and I said, what would happen if I lose this $2,000? What would happen to us? And she goes, well, nothing. And I said, so that's the worst-case scenario is we lose it and nothing really is going to affect us. So, why not do it? Right? So, being able to evaluate if we do this and we fail horribly, what's the worst-case scenario?

Right? Yep, exactly.

Obviously, we have business owners who tie their businesses to their house. to their mortgage. If they lose their business, they lose their house. Obviously, these are really, really big challenges. So, when business owners are trying to shift this mindset, how do they start getting out of this? How do they start shifting the fear that I might lose everything and be able to do this in a way that they're evaluating kind of with a premise that is sound, logical, and Helps them become more secure in the future?

Yeah, gosh, that's a huge question.

I only ask little questions, Bill.

Well, beyond the, you know, can we live with the worst-case scenario, one of the things I've not always done, I do it more now than I used to, I have, you know, it's one of those don't do as I say, don't do as I've done, do as I say, you know, 'cause I've made this mistake. And where I'm headed with this is proof of concept. How many times do we have ideas that we kind of rush to market, we rush to, you know, we borrow money, we get emotionally involved with our idea, but we really have no proof that it's actually a viable concept?

Right.

And so, I'm a big believer in developing a way to test the proof of concept. Part of that is talking with our clients or customers. So, in my book, Radical Relevance, one of the 17 rules of radical relevance is give your clients a seat at the table. And what I mean by that is as you're thinking about how you're going to talk about your business or if you're thinking about launching a new product, a new service, don't do it in a vacuum. Go to those people. And it could be prospects, right? It could be prospects for your products or service. And learn from them before you just rush it out because you think it's a great idea. And don't just ask your friends and mastermind people. Ask the actual market. I mean, so Marc, you and I all the time, we hear from people like ourselves. We hear from other speakers and consultants and authors. What do you think of this title? What do you think of this speech? What do you think? Okay, fine. I'm happy to give you my feedback, but I'm not a candidate for this product or service. So, ask me, fine. I'll give you my semi-educated opinion. But ultimately, you've got to ask the marketplace.

Yeah.

And so, that's one of the ways to mitigate the risk is to do proof of concept. I didn't do that with a product once. It was a number of years ago that I thought would be perfect for the banking industry. And I probably lost about $60,000 developing this incredible, what I thought was incredible product that really went nowhere. And ever since then, everything I do now is, you know, baby steps. Talk to people. Put it out there. See if it gets the right response. Test, test, test before I put a whole lot behind it. And then, get some unbiased opinions as well. Get some people who don't You know, don't have a stake in your success or failure and can look at it with more neutral eyes. And we've got to have those people in our life as well so we don't rush off and do something that our emotions tell us will work. But the truth is it may not work.

I love that. Hey, for the people tuning in, if this is resonating with them, how can they get a hold of you, Bill?

Sure. Well, billcates@referralcoach.com is my email. Bill Cates. Not Bill Gates. Bill Cates, a referral coach. LinkedIn, look for me at Bill Cates on LinkedIn. Start a conversation. Happy to chat. Let me know we met through our relationship with Marc Haine. My main business website right now is referralcoach.com. And then, my newest venture is not just growth through referrals and value prop, but also this whole money mindset through my book, The Hidden High.

So, thehiddenheist.com.

I should share that where you can learn more about the book.

Got it all in the show notes as well. So, you mentioned before about the flow. So, for somebody who recognizes because of everything we've talked about, yes, I'm in scarcity mode. Yes, I'm challenged with this. How does one know if they're in the flow versus not in the flow? Maybe they don't have scarcity anymore and they're working towards shaking themselves out of that. But what's the difference being in the flow of money versus just kind of tolerating, just being kind of, okay, I don't want to be scarce. I don't want to have risk aversion. I want to be able to. But they're not quite in the flow yet. What does that look like for them?

Yeah, so it's a feeling more than anything else. It's a feeling where Well, where the anxiety is less.

Okay.

So, money anxiety, stress, scarcity, all of these, the negative side of things that we've talked about a little bit, they are so ingrained in most of us, not everybody, but most of us, that they're— I liken them to like a song on the radio that keeps playing. And it'll never stop playing. We just have to learn to reach over and turn the volume down. So, it's the awareness. Am I in a scarcity mode or an abundance mode right now?

Hmm.

Am I in a fearful mode or an expansive mode? And it's more of a feeling than anything else, but we can, we can get quiet and we can assess. Where am I right now? What is my level of fear and anxiety? What is my level of joy? And then, that's our barometer of knowing we're in the flow a little bit more. Also, a measure of that, of course, is this business is starting to do better, meaning people are starting to see the value in what we do for all the right reasons, right? We love it when our clients or customers value what we do for the reasons we want to be valued. Does that make sense?

So good! What that means to me is if you turn around and say, well, nobody's going to buy unless I discount something, or nobody's unless I put a coupon out, or if I put a special up, then there's something wrong with our value proposition. Is that fair?

Yeah. And now look, discounting coupons, beta test offers, all that's part of marketing. It's fine.

Sure.

Just be aware of what's the motivation, right? You know, it's one thing to put it out in a marketing effort to test and to test pricing and to test the offer and to test how people respond.

Or product launches and that sort of thing. Yeah.

Exactly. It's another thing to get on the phone or Zoom with a client and they ask you what your fee is for that service or whatever. And then like you automatically discount, right? I mean, I had that happen yesterday for this guy that's helping me with some videos. And he says, well, our normal price is this, but for you, Bill, because I like you, it's this. I go, okay, well, I'll take the discount. I didn't ask for it. Right? I probably would have given him whatever he asked within reason. Let me give you another thing to go by. I just found this is really valuable for myself and with people I coach. It's a little acronym and it's JEM, J-E-M. When you're thinking about a new initiative, a new area to explore in your life or your business, does it bring you joy? It's not often talked about in business, right? Does it bring you joy? Does it bring you good energy? And does it make you money? And if it doesn't bring you joy, it can make you money but doesn't bring you joy and good energy. Well, it's probably not going to be successful anyway. Right? If it brings you joy and you like it and you love it but there's not a tie to the dollar, well, you could do it anyway if it brings you joy. But if you're doing it for business reasons, then it may not be a good decision. So, that's one little way to analyze forays into new areas is the GEM model.

I love that. Yeah, because all too often, I think people do. I think people also jump into businesses because they're frustrated like I learned about a welder who got so tired of working for the man that he opened up his own welding shop. Well, he's a great welder but he didn't know anything else about his business. So, he had a passion for doing his own stuff and for kind of running and doing what he does that he knows he's magical in. But ultimately, his business was failing because he didn't have the rest of the foundation in order to support that business. And so then, the scarcity mindset is just kind of bulldozing down like a snowflake turning into a snowball, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, I'd like to get into some common challenges that leaders face when they try to improve this situation. And we'll get to that right after this.

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Welcome back! I hope you're getting tons of value from today's episode. As you can tell, Bill and I are on a mission to support businesses just like yours. So, if you belong to an organization that could use our help, or you or someone you know might be planning a leadership retreat, a conference, a gathering of leaders to help solve a problem, drop us a line. We'd love to explore how we could be of service to you and your people. Bill, when you're talking to people about kind of this mindset shift and stuff, What's the biggest mistake owners make when they start trying to take profit?

Well, the first mistake is thinking they can't. That'd be the first. And so, even if it's a small amount, you're better off just starting getting into the habit. You know, $100 a week, $100 a month. I mean, that's not very much obviously. But you got to get it started. You got to set the account up. You got to get it started. So when I got started with that, the first thing— now it's automatic, but when I first got started, every time a check would come in or an ACH transfer or whatever, I would just automatically take 10% and put it in my profit account. You know, I had a reminder in my calendar once a week, any profit to take this week. It was very simple, very rudimentary.

Yeah.

But it was the way I would remind myself to do that. And then slowly I got a little more sophisticated, made it a little more automatic, and now it's based on percentages. But so the first mistake is just thinking you can't do it.

Great.

Now let me give you another trick. Another trick is to actually set up another account. Could be savings, checking, almost doesn't matter 'cause you don't make much in savings accounts anyway. It is in a separate bank. So make— so initially, so I have one bank, the money comes into the bank, the revenue, then it gets divided into these other subcategories I mentioned. But then my, my tax and my profit accounts I have replicated in another bank. The reason I'm doing that is to make it harder to access that money. Another step has to come into— now, I could get the money, you know, if I wanted to.

Mm-hmm.

But it just makes it a little bit harder. And you want that, right? Because you want to create that discipline and that just that little bit of a barrier to save you from yourself when you're tempted to go and take that profit money out when you really don't need to. Maybe you need to cut an expense first. Maybe you need to do something else before you dip into that profit account. So it really, it boils down to discipline is what it really boils down to.

Yeah.

And it boils down to having your accountant on board. There's some accountants that understand this, some don't. And so, having the other, whether it's an accountant or CFO or whoever else is in your organization, to understand what you're trying to do here so they can support it and encourage that and not— You know, sabotage the system is what I'm trying to say. So, the main thing is just to start it. I mean, it's the same thing with personal savings. Just start it. And then another way to think about this is start— see, saving and investing and taking profit first, this is about delayed gratification. And we're not all great at delayed gratification.

True.

Yeah.

Especially in the world of Amazon.

Yes.

Yeah.

Hello. We've got to exercise that muscle of delayed gratification and being able to be okay with that. In fact, derive joy and energy from the delayed gratification to feel good about setting aside that money for the future of the business or the future of ourselves and our family. Look, here's another way to think. There's nothing worse than an unfunded dream. If you have a dream for your business or for your personal life and you're not funding it, it's not real or it'll never become real.

And so, there are a couple of things that popped into my head as you were talking about having the different bank accounts. It means that if you're being super intentional, Right? So, if you are going to be pulling from this second bank, it's with intentionality because it's going to do something for you that you've been able to stop and analyze and make the decision rather than being impulsive and just switching money from one bank account to another bank account because a bill came in. And so, I love that intentionality.

Yeah, little artificial barriers that we often need to do that. Some people like when they want to buy something on Amazon. A lot of folks who, especially people who have gotten into the debt will say, all right, whatever decision I'm going to make, I'm going to give it 24 hours. I want to do it now, but dang it, I'm going to be a little bit disciplined. I'm going to wait 24 hours, or I'm going to wait a week, or whatever it may be. And then starting to derive intrinsic pleasure from the waiting, from the putting it off, feeling good about putting it off. And then you realize a day or two later, nah, I didn't really need that.

Yeah.

And so, that's a shift. It's a shift in in how we feel gratified and what gratifies us. And rather than the dopamine hit from buying something, we get the dopamine hit from not buying something.

Right. And so, the second piece to that I like is when you said, reach out to your accountant. And that is that ability to create accountability behind the decision to do this. I mean, why shouldn't people do this work alone? Like, I mean, I'm a big fan of coaches. I know the answer. But maybe we need to talk just a little bit about the importance of not doing this by ourselves.

Well, because we're weak.

No.

We are.

Maybe that is the truth. I say that flippantly. But yeah, I mean, we have these beliefs. We have these drives. We have these inclinations. We have habits. And sometimes, we're unconscious to them. Sometimes, we're aware of them and we still can't control Them, whatever. You know, okay, I'm not judging anybody. We all have it. Find the mechanism. Yeah, right. So one thing that drives that's always been good for me is measuring. Whenever I have a certain kind of goal, so like for instance, I've lost 35 pounds, and one of the ways I've lost 35 pounds is I have a scale now that measures my body mass index and my. Hydration and needed it. But what it does is it shows me a chart and it shows me the graph. And I'm watching the fat go down and I'm watching the lean tissue go up. And so, that motivates me. And so, that's one thing we put into place is just to measure.

Yes.

And a lot of people are driven by that. Other people need that outside accountability. They need someone else. I've often found when I used to do a lot of work with sales teams, And working with a sales manager, I discovered that a lot of people who— the people who resist accountability are often the people who need it the most.

Right.

And they can't hold themselves accountable. There's some denial. There's who knows what's going on around that. They don't want to be treated like a child. There's all kinds of crazy psychological stuff going on. But I love to be held accountable. I love putting a I used to have— I had a— I have several mastermind groups, and I had this big goal that I was trying to accomplish. And I put out, if I don't accomplish this in the next month, I'm going to pay you guys, I'm going to pay a charity, I'm going to pay somebody $500.

Yeah.

And they go, okay. Well, at the end of the month, I ended up writing a check for $500. So somebody said, well, obviously the penalty wasn't enough.

There you go.

So, I upped it to $1,000, right? Sometimes, it's $20. I can say, look, if I don't do this, I'm going to pay you $20. And that little bit of accountability is enough to make me think twice and just do the dang thing that I've been resisting. So, I'm a huge believer in that.

Yeah.

And everyone's different. We got to find what works for us. Bottom line is what works for us, what produces the result. So, yeah, coaching, I'm a coach. You're a coach. That's a piece of the puzzle. Yes, accountability, support.

And that's a tough point with being an entrepreneur as well. It tends to be a lonely position unless you have an open culture, work culture where you can ask people to help keep you accountable. It gets to be a little bit tough.

It's lonely at the top. You got to have a mastermind and an advisory board. A partner or a partner-like, even if they're not really a partner, a partner-like employee. There's all kinds of ways to do that. Yeah, but no question, having that support mechanism around us is just so critical.

Yeah. Are there any other cautionaries or pitfalls we should be aware of as we try to kind of bridge this differential now and move and evolve ourselves so that we're not So freaked out by money? Anything we haven't talked about?

No, not really. Although, I would like to emphasize.

Sure.

And what I mean, and that is essentially really, and I mean this sincerely, genuinely, learn how money works. Learn how to read your P&L sheet. Learn how to understand where the money in your business is, where it goes. Why it goes there. No denial. No, you know, I don't have enough time to look at that. I don't really understand. If you don't understand how money works, then learn how money— you know, if one of your stories, your broken money stories is, I'm not good with money, well, dang it, make a decision to get good with money. And so, it's like no more excuses here. If you want to create the life that you really want, And money is integral to that. It's not everything. And I'm not talking about greed. I'm just talking about creating the abundance that we are all capable of, financial dignity to financial stability, eventually to abundance and lasting wealth. We've got to do what it takes to get there. So, I wrote The Hidden Heist because I wanted to give people a starting point, a fun way an interesting way to become aware of their broken money story and what may or may not be serving them anymore. And that's my TED Talk, my TEDx Talk, same thing, was to start with the awareness. But then ultimately, you got to do the work and then surround yourself with some people that will help you do the work if you're resisting it. So, that was my path. It worked quite well for me. I've seen it work with a lot of other folks as well. And I wanted to write a book that wasn't dry. It wasn't just straight, do this, do this, do this. That people would say, oh yeah, I should do this but I'll never do it. I wanted to write a book that would be fun and interesting so it would actually inspire people to do it.

Right. Well, and what I appreciate about it, it is fun. It also fills in some knowledge gaps because to your point, a lot of us have not been trained on how to look and view money. And so, being able to fill in those knowledge gaps, through your narration, I think is brilliant. Bill, this has been absolutely phenomenal discussion. Could you remind everybody one more time how they can get a hold of you?

Yeah. So, the book is thehiddenheist.com. My TEDx talk, by the way, is Bill Cates TEDx. billcatestedx.com. It's a redirect to the YouTube. And then, just look me up, Bill Cates. Look me up on LinkedIn and tell me that Marc Haine sent you. And we'll have some fun.

Bill, thank you so much for doing this today. It is absolutely— it's been brilliant. It's been so much fun hanging out.

It's my honor, my pleasure. Thank you.

So, if you have any questions about today's episode, or maybe you're thinking, hey, we could really use a complimentary 30-minute brainstorming session with Marc, or maybe with Bill. Well, good news! You can snag a spot on my online calendar. The link is in the show notes. It's the one that's marked Meet With. And of course, Bill's contact information is also in the show notes. Feel free to reach out and tap into his resources because it's brilliant. It's definitely worth your time. As always, I am at your service. And if you haven't done so yet, please, please make sure you subscribe to this podcast. Follow me on social media. Each week, I bring you fresh new content with new experts, different experts just like Bill today. So, I appreciate that you're hanging out with us. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you, Marc. My name is Marc Haine. I hope you stay safe, stay healthy, and I hope you dare to be the exception. Bye for now.