037 From $174,000 in Debt to Zero with Brad Long

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Hey there.

Welcome to this episode of the affluent entrepreneur show. This one's gonna be a cool one, but I say that about all of them. But this one's with a. With a new friend of mine, Brad Long. He's a zero debt coach. This is a guy that went from $174,000 in debt to getting out of debt and building wealth within two and a half years. And now he's out there helping people kind of struggling with that themselves. But we go through a lot of different things, including the money philosophy, the challenges, the how him and his wife navigated it. So check out the episode. We'll see you in the episode. Cheers.

This is the absolute entrepreneur show for entrepreneurs that want to operate at a high level and achieve financial liberation. I'm your host, Mel Abraham, and I'll be sharing with you what it takes to create success beyond wealth so you can have a richer, more fulfilling lifestyle. In this show, you'll learn how business and money intersect so you can scale your business, scale your money, and scale your life while creating a deeper impact and living with complete freedom because that's what it really means to be an affluent entrepreneur.

Hey there, Brad. So good to have you on the affluent entrepreneur show, man. It's kind of cool because as I told everyone in the. In the intro, you and I didn't really know each other, and. And here we've had a chance to connect and have a conversation about money. You do some of the similar things that I do, but you came at it from a different perspective. You came to it from a different perspective. So for the benefit of those that maybe don't follow you yet, and they should or don't know who you are, can you just kind of let our viewers and listeners know where does Brad Long come from?

Great question. I'll do my best to succinctly answer that. So my, my name's Brad Long. I run a company called zerodebtcoach. Com. And what we do is we Specialize in helping five and six figure corporate burnouts escape their nightmare by teaching them how to organize and optimize their finances, obliterate their debt, and then move on to financial independence by learning how to invest and also by starting an online business. I came into this space, you know, over a decade ago, loosely, when I went through the process of paying off $174,000 worth of debt in two and a half years. Like so many people in this space after I discovered Dave Ramsey and very quickly realized, or it was really in the intersection of time, where I realized that I was a train wreck and I was headed into a ditch in a giant ball of flame. And so I discovered his material, really righted the ship, made a whole bunch of huge changes in my life in that two and a half years, and just got on fire for these, these principles and got out of debt. And then I immediately caught the bug for coaching people. So I immediately sat down and started teaching friends and family how to do a budget. I just really caught the fever for it. So I sort of coaching people kind of off the cuff for probably about the first 10 years that I was a quote unquote financial coach. And then in 2017, I went through Dave Ramsey's financial coach master training, was kind of a part of their organization as a contractor since for about a year and a half. And, and I really felt like things got too constrained in terms of, you know, I was learning about macroeconomics, I was learning about gold and silver and cryptocurrencies and all these things that I wasn't allowed to bring into the conversation being a part of their organization. So in 2018 is when I started zero debt coach.com and basically have really, you know, grown my audience from there. And, you know, essentially what we're doing is trying to help people get control of their money and find some modicum of financial independence.

Awesome. Awesome. So, and you, you actually did this journey. I mean, you, you came from that corporate maniac kind of existence, if you will.

It's a great way to.

Right?

Yeah. So I, I had been in corporate sales. So it's interesting going back even further. You know, I learned in my teenage years I'm a musician. I've been a guitar player since I was like 14 years old. But I also learned how to sell during that time. I got my first sales job when I was about 16 years old. And so I've always kind of had that concurrent skill set. But yeah, in my mid-20s, I entered the corporate space. I started off selling corporate Yellow pages advertising, back in the dinosaur days when that was still a thing.

And some people listening or watching probably have no idea what yellow pages is.

Yeah, Yellow pages. What's that? So I did that and then I, I basically left that career within the span of a few years to pursue my passion for music more full time. And that's when I really myself into trouble. And then during that two and a half years when I was going through my debt elimination process is when I went back into the corporate space. You know, basically that's what helped me put my music career sort of on the back burner for a while, get out of that debt, and then I was able to go back to it full time for some time. But then, you know, I, I, I met my wife in 2009 and decided that, you know, music was just not going to cut it. And so I went back into the corporate world for another five years. And we had some very serious financial goals during that five years. Our goal was to save and invest a million. We got halfway there and I ran up to the edge of my sanity and said, I can't do this anymore. And that's when we decided to really jump and go into being an entrepreneur full time.

Yeah. Yeah. Now. So here's an interesting thing. And you and your wife kind of did this together. And it's one of the things, one of the core elements that I tell it, usually one of the first things I tell people is that if you're in a committed relationship, I want you to go home, I want you to have a frank, real conversation with your partner. Because it's the traditional roles of, well, usually like in our household, I'm the one that really kind of takes care of the money, which is natural. My wife's in the medical field, so she makes sure that I stay healthy.

But in and of itself, we're on the same page. We're, we're, we're together. We know what the financial journey is. We're committed to what it takes to make that happen. When you, when you started to do this transition? Because I think that we have a number of people that are in that situation. When you start to do this transition, how did you and your wife start to either communicate and make sure that you were on the same page? This, I've not asked that question before, but I think that it's, it's worthy of a conversation. Oh.

And I think it's a great question, and I think it's very germane to anybody that has kind of an entrepreneurial inclination And I'm very fortunate in that, you know, my wife, she's from Columbia, South America, and I actually, we met when I was doing some mission work down there in 2009. And so I was already on. I had already gotten out of debt completely by that point. And she was. So. She was coming from a very different context. But when she came to the States in 2011, she already had a pretty good sense. We'd known each other for about two or three years at that point. She had already had a pretty good sense that I had kind of a mixture of skill sets. I was really good at sales. I was really good at music, and I had an entrepreneurial bent. And so the way that we sort of squared that circle in terms of making the jump into being an entrepreneur was to make sure that we were achieving some modicum of financial independence while I was still in the corporate world. So when I went back into the corporate world, you know, our net worth was probably about $70,000. And over the course of that five years, you know, my income went, you know, upwards of over $200,000 a year. And so we were able to really constrain our spending for those five years to where we got to that halfway point of what our goal was, so that we knew that we were buying ourselves some time in case it took three to five years for this venture to really get some legs and go. So I would say that the conversation really, it needs to start, but it needs to be an ongoing communication, and you all need, you know, you need to be on the same page. And that may take a little bit of coaxing and maybe selling of what the vision is. But I think, you know, my wife is probably like a lot of wives in that, you know, they tend to be a little bit more security focused. And so once we sort of had that blanket, once we had that foundation sort of laid down, I think she was much more comfortable with us taking sort of a calculated risk in that way. The other aspect of that is that I was fortunate because she saw how much mental anguish I was going through being in a cog in the corporate wheel and just how, you know, being an individual contributing sales rep and just how low I was on the totem pole and had a lot of responsibility, but not a lot of say in how decisions got made and just the cumulative effect that that had on, you know, me as a person and just kind of how I'm wired. I think that was the other aspect of the equation that really, I mean, we were very rock solidly on the same page throughout the whole process. And I would say even now, awesome, awesome.

Because I think that I've seen couples when they're not. And it's not, I guess for me, I look at it and say, it doesn't matter that we're not on the same line on the page, but we gotta be at least looking in the same direction.

Yeah.

And you mentioned something that I think is important, and that is this, that you had the same kind of vision. You bought into that. She bought into that vision. And I think too often we may not have the same vision. And that's why this conversation is necessary and everything. And so I'm just curious. I don't know, because we just met. I don't know a lot about your history and everything, but growing up, you grew up in a household that. Did you talk about money growing up or did you not?

Oh, that's a great question. It's a very interesting question. And so my parents divorced when I was 10 and my mom remarried. And she was always very frugal. I would say we were by global standards. We weren't in poverty by American standards. I think relatively speaking, we were always on the verge of being in poverty. And so my mother was very frugal and taught frugality. I mean, she's really led by example with that. But I think I had sort of a. A negative connotation of frugality. I had a negative connotation about money, something that I was always kind of fearful of. You know, there were those people over there that always seemed to have more than enough. Whether that was true or not is another matter. But yeah, so I sort of grew up with that, you know, understanding the virtue and the practicality of being frugal in terms of getting ahead. But then when I graduated from high school, I went into the army. And then after I got out of the army, I went to college. And that's where I started to really absorb all of the middle class attitudes about money. Like, oh, you're always going to have a car note, you're always going to have student loan debt, you're always going to have a credit card, blah, blah, blah. And so that's really where the train came off the tracks for me and how I wound up getting myself into $174,000 worth of debt. So it was interesting because when I went through all the Dave Ramsey stuff and I went through that process, I came full circle back around to frugality with an added dimension of like, minimalism in there. And, and. But it Had a different sort of character to it because now I was seeing it from more of an abundance space. I was seeing it more like, well, this is one of the pathways to, you know, building some wealth and not just staving off dire poverty. So money wasn't talked about necessarily, you know, And I think with parents, as. As I'm sure you're aware, your. Your actions speak lo words. And so I think there was a lot of stuff that was modeled that was very positive, but I. I kind of made a. Yeah, I kind of made a detour to my own demise, at least for that earlier part of my life. So. But my mom's virtues won out at the end of the day, so. Thanks, mom.

Well, I think we all get. Have those hiccups in on the road when we're traveling. I've, I've. I've certainly had. Had my share too, but I, I think that that's a. It's an instructive thing because you, You. You dug yourself out. I mean, so often I'm seeing people that get on this treadmill and they don't think that there's a way out. And so I wonder, I'm curious, what was the catalyst? What was the thing that one, said, I gotta fix this? Two, that said, I can fix this?

Yeah, the very first, I would say the flashbulb moment or the defining moment for me was, you know, I had a really nice condo in downtown Atlanta, which really I had purchased beyond my means, even when I had, you know, a corporate job at that point. And my overhead, you know, this is back in the mid 2000s, my overhead was about $2,000 a month. And as I had transitioned into becoming a musician, I took out a $43,000 home equity line of credit. And over the course of the next three years, I proceeded to really deplete that because it was my emergency fund and I wasn't ramping up my music career quickly enough to rep income. And so I had this flashbulb moment I'll never forget. It was. I think it was the. It was March of 2004. I logged into my bank account and I saw that, you know, my. I knew my overhead was two grand. I had less than a thousand dollars in my bank account, and it scared the doo doo out of me. And I knew at that moment, like, all right, the gig is up. I have no more. I have nothing to fall back on in terms of my heloc. And I just, you know, I see that as the moment that I woke up. That's around the same time that I discovered Dave Ramsey. And. And that's really when I just had that, you know, my very first financial awakening and really got on track. And that was, you know, my why throughout the whole process and throughout. You know, I think a lot of. Even what I do now is that I never want to feel this way again. I never want to experience the terror of being on the verge of potentially losing everything that I have, because that's the slippery slope that I was on.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I think that some. There's many out there from the pandemic, they're on that slope right now. And so hopefully this conversation gives them hope. It's one step at a time. It's one foot in front of the other. And $174,000 that you were able to tick off into me what would seem almost record time in two and a half years.

So I was. I was serious.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, you. You definitely, definitely were serious. And. And so. So now fast forward, I'm gonna. Because you have kid. You have children, too? No. No. You don't. Okay. I thought you had children.

Okay, that's. All right. All right. I look like. I look like I have children.

I don't know what that means.

Cool.

So.

So here's the question then. At some point, you decided, I'm going to change the direction of my life from what I was doing to coaching and working with other people in similar positions. And what do you think when you start to talk to those that are in the corporate space that are trying to find their. Find their next step? What do you think is their biggest hurdle that you see that you. You work with them to try and move them through, to get them over that first step. Because it's that first step that they don't make it. They're never going to take the next steps.

Yeah, I think the first step is like, what we talked about a minute ago in my situation is why, you know, why do you want to get out of debt? Or why do you want to get out of corporate America? What's the overarching reason? And so with. With our students, we have this. This start with why. It's kind of like a play on Simon Sinek's book. And there are basically like five or six different questions where just kind of sit down before we even go through any kind of coaching process with them and say, you know, what's your overall why here? Why are we having this conversation? And it really kind of helps unlock, like, where they are mentally. And really, you know, I'M sure, you know, you've probably seen this in your own efforts at coaching as well. Some people think they want a certain thing, but maybe their why isn't strong enough. But there's another, you know, perhaps goal that they can pursue. So for example, like I have a lot of students that, you know, they want, they come to me, they want to get out of debt, they want to get out of corporate America. So we know that maybe the strong why, the stronger why is to get out of debt. And we know that they want to get out of corporate America. But as we kind of drill down in the, into the process, maybe it's not that they want to get out of corporate America, they just want to get out of the company or the role that they're in. So there's a lot of self discovery, I think, think financial coaching, really it kind of spills over into like life coaching. I mean, I don't know what all these titles are. It's really just, you know, it's leadership, it's discipleship. It's really, you know, helping people kind of sit down and think through their situation and really kind of have, do a process, what I call future pacing. Like where do you want to be in two to three to five years and really kind of uncover that? And then depending on what their responses are to that really, you know, we talk about the next steps a lot of times. You know, most times I work a lot with five and six figure entrepreneurs and even a lot of them are living paycheck to paycheck. So the very first thing we have to do is get control of their money. And then as we progressively go through that process, if they do really want to get out of corporate America or a government job, then we'll start looking at side hustles or starting some kind of online business and kind of work through that process. So I think there are a lot of different stages and I think that's part of it. That's very individualized. Yeah.

When we talked on your show, for those of you who don't know, I'm. I was a guest on Brad's show and I'm bringing him on because we connected. And I think that we come from similar philosophy, similar value systems on how this works. Why I think is one of the first things that we also. It's one of the first principles that we actually hit on too, to move through any of the difficult times, any of the things that might be going on. So I'm going to shift gears. I want to talk maybe a Little bit what might feel like philosophical kind of things.

I like that.

Yeah. So, I mean, when we talk about money, what does money mean to you? And you may answer it and say, what did it mean to you when you're struggling and what does it mean to you today?

Yeah, man, that is a really. That's a really deep question. There are a lot of facets to how I think about money. I think how I used to think about money and sort of my old brain and the old way that I interacted with it was very much from, you know, more of a scarcity mindset, because I grew up in an environment of scarcity. And it wasn't just financial scarcity. It was sort of the scarcity of. It was a scarce. Just an overall scarcity mentality about how the world worked and how opportunity worked and, you know, just always kind of seeking safety and things like that. And I think my. I talk about my first financial awakening is when I went through Dave Ramsey's program and I learned about micro finance, which was, you know, basically organizing my finances, getting them in a budget, tracking expenses, obliterating debt, and then moving on to some sort of financial independence, some modicum of that, which my wife and I have now. So that was my first financial awakening. My second financial awakening and how I really got interested in macroeconomics was during the 2008 crash. So I saw that happen. And I was one of the weirdos that was watching the C SPAN hearings, the congressional hearings, and I saw the banks and these financial institutions that had basically caused the financial crisis coming to Congress asking for a bailout. And I was like, wait, wait a minute. So that was a huge light bulb moment for me. And then after that, I saw. I remember the car companies coming and asking for a bailout. So. So I. It really just started this really deep thought process in me. And that's when I really started thinking about and researching how the Federal Reserve System works, how the banking system works, what monetary policy is, you know, hard money versus, you know, Keynesian economics and all those kinds of things. So I can go down, you know, many rabbit trails on that. But I think that, you know, there's a. That, you know, there's this trajectory of thought process that I've had that really has led to me as, you know, obviously money is an energy source. Money is, you know, it's. It's a problem solver. I think the way that I really think about money now is that it is. It's a resource to be used, but it's also a Resource to be constrained. And you want to be conservative with it. You want to be putting it in places where you're getting a return on your investment. And so we do that with a lot of our, I guess I would call more static funds, like the funds that we've already earned and paid taxes on, or they're in tax deferred, you know, accounts. But the biggest thing now that I'm interested in in terms of, you know, increasing our income and increasing our wealth is growing my business. So that's a really multifaceted and probably overly diverse response to the question. But yeah, it's a. I think about money in a lot of different ways, but I think of it really now more than ever as opportunity. And there is always the ability from an energy perspective to go out and create more value, which is precisely what, you know, you and I are trying to do with our businesses.

So. And then now you look at it, and we've used the term a couple of times here. Financial independence. What. What does financial independence mean to you and why do you think it's important?

Yeah, another great question. So financial independence, I view financial independence in degrees, and there are lots of different sort of micro definitions of financial independence. There's fatfi, which is basically where you can, you know, you can retire on all the assets that you've accumulated and invested over the years and live, you know, a lifestyle maybe higher than what you did when you were working. So that's fatfi. There's lean fi, where you can, let's say, for example, if you're using the 4% rule, you have a million dollars of invested assets and you can live on $40,000 a year. That would be sort of a lean fi. There's coast fi, which is probably where my wife and I are. So we have enough, you know, assets saved and invested where, you know, as we're growing the business and we're sort of living off of some of that money and investing more, we're sort of in that coast phase. But I think financial. I think no matter what. And this is part of the reason that, you know, my. One of my courses, Eight Steps to Erase Debt, the Foundations of Financial Independence. No matter what, you should be pursuing some modicum of financial independence. That doesn't necessarily mean that you're, you know, completely financially independent. You know, sitting on a beach, sipping a pina colada, you know, the whole cliche, it's really getting to a place where you can have more time, freedom, more freedom of choice in terms of the career that you have. Especially for myself and a lot of the people that I interact with in the context of my own business is getting out of something that you hate doing, perhaps. And Ethan, even more than anything else is being able to say no. You know, if your employer's coming to you with some kind of nonsense that you just can't accept. Most people can't say no because 78% of the population lives paycheck to paycheck. So they can't put up a boundary and say, no matter what you're asking me to do, I mean, I kind of have to do it because I need this job, I need this money. So that's my passion is, you know, the eight steps to erase debt is really just the basic blocking and tackling of learning how to organize budget, track expenses, obliterate debt. And that is the foundation of financial independence. Once you. It's kind of like Thomas Stanley talks about in the Millionaire Next Door, you know, the average millionaire has that basic blocking and tackling down. And so once you have that down, it's just a matter of incremental improvements. And so you can reach, I believe just about anybody can reach some modicum of financial independence.

Well, I think that the important thing is too often. I believe that too often when we talk financial independence, they equate it to being wealthy. But it actually, it can be that. But I think it's more deep seated than that in the sense that what we're really talking about is what you just mentioned. And that is to have alternatives, to have choice, to not be dependent, not to be Holden to anyone, anything that at some point, just like when you left your job. I left my corporate job a long time ago, but it was one of those things where I realized I was living a life that was the traditional path, in my case of a cpa, of an accountant at a big firm and a consulting firm, which would have been a. A phenomenal career if I wanted to have no nights, have no weekends, work like crazy, get a paycheck, be stressed and go through all of that and not have the promise of partnership, although it was being dangled in front of me versus turning around and saying, I want to be able to say I control my destiny. And I think that we're in a time where a lot of folks are hungry to be able to find a way to say that I'm in control of my life, that I'm not forced, and temporarily we may be, because bills got to get paid, we got to put food on the table, got to take care of the Kids, if we got kids, we got to take care of health, we got to do those things, but with an eye towards having choice of how we do those things in the future. And I think that's, for me, where you kind of hit. Hit. The point is, is not. It's not a dollar amount. It's actually a feeling. It's actually a way of living to be able. I mean, for you and your wife to be able to sit back and go, we're good, we're good.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's. There's also a big misnomer, I think, for people that are fi. Aspirational that they're going to. Once they hit that number, that they're there. But there's this whole other process that you have to. This whole other thought process that you have to engage with as you're moving through that process is, okay, once I get to that number, then what? And so that's another really big piece of coaching that we do is like, all right, yeah, so you're trying to achieve financial independence, but if. If. Especially with a lot of the type A salespeople that I've worked with in the past, you're going to be bored to death if you reach your financial independence number and you're just not doing anything. So part of it is, what are you going to do with that financial independence once you've reached it? And so that's. That's something that's a really important component that I want to. I want to bring up as well.

Yeah. So can I talk about. Just ask you your. Your perspective on. On fi in general, financial independence or the fire movement in general? Because one of the things that I. I've heard and I've seen people post about it, there's plenty of people that are talking about it is I feel like. And this may be not the same experience you. That's why I'm asking the question is that they get a minimum threshold of what that number for financial independence is, and they say, I'm there, I'm good, I quit. And what I believe that a lot of them have not considered is having some level of margin for volatility or margin for error, which puts them at risk if they're not careful. Has that been your experience with some of that?

Yeah, I think that there are just like. With anything that becomes kind of an overarching movement, there are lots of degrees of naivete of people that are sort of getting into it. And so pursuing financial independence is just like anything else. And I think what you have to do is inherently build into that number that you're pursuing. Let's say, you know, for the sake of round numbers, you're. By the 4% rule, you're trying to save and invest a million dollars so that you can, you know, comfortably live on $40,000. Maybe for the rest of. You really do have to build some margin in there. And part of that was, you know, going back to what I was saying a second ago is like, what are you going to do once you get that? Because you can't just sit around and do nothing. I mean, that's where we were created to work. We were created to add value and to. To put our hand to the plow. And so I think that there has to be kind of a real. I think the FI journey, a legitimate FI journey is. Is a journey of self discovery and saying, all right, you know, why am I pursuing this? Is it just because I don't want to work anymore? And I think that what happens through that process, and I've seen a good bit of this in the FI community, is there's kind of a change in priority that happens. But maybe especially as you get closer to the number, the other thing is that, you know, my wife and I were pursuing that, you know, million dollars, you know, in the last five years that I was in corporate America. And we only got about halfway there. But what I found, what we found is that I actually could have dropped out. I could have dropped out way sooner than I did because I'm so devoted and so dedicated to, you know, helping people with their finances. And that is a business model in and of itself now. You know, being an entrepreneur, just like I do that, being an entrepreneur is really kind of the thing. And it's online entrepreneurship, and it's guys at the front of Facebook ads, standing in front of Lambos and mansions that they probably don't even know.

It drives me batty.

Yeah, it's. It's a three to five year process, if you're really pouring yourself into it. So none of this is easy. None of it is. And that's not really glamorous either. Even the process of getting defy wasn't. And so there's just a lot of balance. And I think it's just really good to, you know, it's good to connect with people like you. It's good to connect with a coach, good to connect with a community of people that are sort of pursuing that, to find out, all right, what's behind the veneer of the fire or the FI Marketing, you know, and what's, what's the truth? And how is that going to supply? How is that going to apply to my situation? Which I think is precisely what you're asking.

Yeah, it exactly is. Because on the surface it sounds wonderful, it sounds easy. And I would say that in some cases it might be easy, most cases it's not easy. But it is simple. The principles are simple. I mean, it's no different than losing weight. Move more, eat less. Okay. Building wealth, spend less, make more. I mean, it's simple. We complicate it. The financial services industry complicates it because then we're become dependent on them. But we've got tools, technology, and things at our fingertips today that we never had before that give us access, which is both a pro and a con. Because we gotta be careful. Because when you gamify investing, all of a sudden it's all fun and games until it's not fun and games anymore.

That's right.

So those things matter. So I appreciate your, your perspective because, you know, you're, you're right in the, in the thick of it just the same, and that type of thing. So here's a question that I would love to kind of get your thought on, is that if you had one money message to give your younger self, what would it be?

I think the pivotal mistake that I made when I was younger was that I bought that condo in downtown Atlanta. And I remember specifically my conscience, or that gut feeling, you might say, my conscience was screaming at me not to do it. And I let my real estate agent talk me out of that. And that decision alone was the beginning of a whole lot of heartache for me. And so I think the.

You overbought.

Yeah, that I totally overbought. And I knew it, I knew it. But I second guessed myself and I trusted the professional, you know, and he didn't have my best interest in mind at the end of the day, you know, I mean, good, good enough guy, all of that. But at the end of the day, it was about the sale for him. And he was just encouraging me not to chicken out. And the reasons for me chickening out were very, very legitimate. I was buying above my pay grade very, very clearly. So the message there is, listen to your gut, be conservative when it comes to money. Don't watch the culture, you know, don't just accept all of these middle class memes of, hey, oh, you always, you're always going to have a car payment or a credit card payment or student loans. It doesn't necessarily have to be true. Question that stuff. So, yeah, trust your gut and question everything else.

God, we could, we could do a whole show, you and I, on, on this little piece here and, and how, how social media, media, societal supposed norms, societal pressure, peer pressure, all that stuff, start to affect our financial and our money decisions and put us in a precarious position to make decisions and not listen to that gut, not listen to the logic, not listen to the things that we know in our soul are the right things to do for ourselves.

Yeah, I mean, I would argue that we're living in a mass psychosis in many, many ways, but particularly in the, in the financial realm because we're the most marketed to generation and these marketers know what they're doing. I mean, the marketing principles that we use that, that we learn to market our businesses are, you know, deeply based in propaganda, essentially. And so if unless and until you have a really solid, strong financial underpinning of knowing how to budget, you know, like you were saying earlier, it's like the, it's simple, spend less than you earn and earn more. But there's such a behavioral capacity to that that we're always, we're being bombarded with this stuff. We're being bombarded with what I would argue used to be keeping up with the Jones. I think it's keeping up with the Gates and the Kardashians. Now. Everything is hyper consumption, hyper luxury. You can't just have, you can't have a Lexus, now you gotta have a Lambo. And we all buy into that to some degree. And unless and until you've really gotten the foundations of that basic blocking and tackling, you know, budgeting, expense tracking, all of that stuff, because that becomes your external brain. It's, you can look to your budget and say, okay, all right, let me press pause on this pressure that I'm feeling and go to my budget and let my budget tell me if I can afford it or not. That's my external brain and that's the external decision maker for me. And so that's, you know, it's astounding that almost 80% of the population lives paycheck to paycheck. And it's precisely because of those kinds of things and easy credit and peer pressure and all the rest of it, it's crazy.

It really is. And it's a sad state of affairs when we start to think about that. And if all we can do, if all you and I with our platforms do is raise the awareness level a little bit, then we can make a huge difference. Because once we become aware of what's going on, then we can find our way back to control, just like you did in your journey.

And it's so worth it. It's so hard, it's so difficult. It's going to be scratching and clawing, but I promise you, it's so worth it. It's so worth it.

And I think that it goes back to what we first started this thing with and this idea of why. Because I believe that in order to truly define your why, you need to understand your values. And when we understand our values at a visceral, at a deep level, and we determine and are disciplined to make our choices in alignment with those values, then we don't succumb to some of the pressures, the tactics, the things that might go on out in the world that can affect us. Because there's a whole lot of people out there that love looking wealthy but aren't, and then there's a whole lot of people that are truly living a wealthy and rich life. And you wouldn't know it, right?

Absolutely.

I think. I believe that wealth is actually a silent journey in the sense that most people aren't parading the Lambos and the jets and that type of thing, because they don't need to. My wife and I just got back from London. We stay in the same hotel. It's a wonderful hotel. It's a luxury hotel. And we walk down this street, and I got to tell you, on this one street that we walk down, there's probably. Well, if I don't count the Bugatti. Okay, if I don't count the Bugatti, there's probably $5 million in just vehicles parked. Wow. And in one hotel, I see a Lambo and a Ferrari with a license plate from Buran, and I go, how do they get them here? And the guy says, they fly them here. I said, do they drive them? He says, no, they're parked here the whole time they stay here. So why do we bring them? And so all of that is this external billboard, if you will, to say, hey, I'm here. And I think that when we stop feeling the need, which is hard in the social media environment and Instagram and TikTok and all the stuff that's going on, we stop feeling the need to feed that we start making decisions, especially monetary decisions, financial decisions that feed our future. So it's interesting. So here's the thing. I know we're running short on time. There's a couple things. And I've got one more question for You. But before we get to it, I'd love to know, to let some of the folks because you and I, I think you and I could just keep on talking.

Yeah, I would love that.

So. But where can, where can people find out about you? Where, where can they follow you? Where can they, they know who you are and, and see what you're doing.

Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate that. So my website is zero debt coach.com zero spelled out z e r o debt coach.com and most of the public facing content that I put out is on my YouTube channel, which is Brad Long Dash Zero Debt Coach. And I, I release at least one video a week, sometimes a little bit more. I go live on various sort of trending topics sometimes. My wife and I have started doing a live stream every Thursday evening at 4:30pm Eastern. So that's been a lot of fun as well. But yeah, so ZeroDeckoach.com and then my YouTube channel are the two main places you can find me.

Awesome. Awesome. So for the viewers and listeners that are in this game and realize that it's time for them to change their financial destiny. It's time for them to change their financial trajectory. It's time to live life differently. What would be your kind of your parting words? What would be your kind of call to action, your rallying cry for them?

Yeah, I think along the lines of what we've talked about thus far is to sit down and sort of count the cost. Like what is your. Why? Like what are you trying to accomplish? You really need to think through that. The second thing is that there is a ton of excellent personal finance content out there. Maybe there's too much at this point. So what I would say is, you know, find somebody that you resonate with that is kind of in line with your values and where you're trying to go. That could be Mel, that could be me, it could be a thousand others like us and really sink your teeth into their content. The information is everywhere and it's cheap. The thing that you're probably going to need next is to plug into some kind of system. You know, buy a digital course or two, get involved in a coaching program. You know, we both have those, those kinds of resources. I have a, a couple of digital courses, one on debt elimination, one on budgeting, and then I also have a private financial coaching community. At some point you're going to need, you can follow the system, whatever it is, whether it's Dave Ramsey system, my system, somebody else's system, and at some point you're going to need community for accountability and encouragement. And then that third level is you may need proximity to somebody, you know, to someone that can help you really pinpoint and troubleshoot your particular situation in only a way that they can do it. So I think that that's kind of the sort of the success path through it. But you really have to know why you want to do it, and you really have to know what it is that you're trying to accomplish. And you can even engage a coach to help you define even that part of it. But there are tons of great resources out there. So I think the thing is just to take action, do something.

Absolutely, dude. Brad, thank you so much, man, for your time jumping here. And I look forward to doing some more, you know. Yes, I think it'll be fun. And I appreciate you, those of you that are out there listening, watching, you know, check out Brad, check out what he's doing. I appreciate you being here, Brad, and I look forward to many more.

Thank you so much, Mel. And you're in our thoughts and in our prayers as well. And it's been awesome being on. Appreciate it.

Appreciate it, man. Thank you for listening to the affluent entrepreneur show with me, your host, Mel Abraham. If you want to achieve financial liberation to create an affluent lifestyle, join me in the affluent entrepreneur Facebook group now by going to melabraham.com group and I'll see you there.

And that's it for this episode of building your money machine where we help you learn how to master your money, eliminate financial stress, and live a life of choice. If you found this valuable or helpful to you, here's what I'd love for you to do. If you do me a favor. Go to Apple, Apple Podcast, or wherever you're listening to this podcast and rate and review the show. It helps us tremendously to keep us at the top of the list so we can continue to get this information and this message out to people. Because I truly believe that financial freedom, freedom's your birthright, and I want to help each and every one of you claim it. Thanks so much.