Mastering Finances: A Holistic Approach to Life with Mark Yegge

Hello, I'm Dr. Robert Rome and I'm excited today to have our guest, Mark Yeage with us. He's going to be talking to us and sharing with us about financial information along with how it works with a holistic approach to all of life. I don't know about you, but Zig Ziglar used to say money's not everything, but it's pretty close to oxygen. So I'm excited about having Mark on the call today. We look forward to getting some of his wisdom and insight.

Welcome to becoming wiser with Dr. Robert A. Rohm, author and world renowned public speaker, as he shares stories involving his experiences and lessons learned in a good, spirited, positive and fun way. Here's Dr. Robert A. Rome.

So, Mark, I understand you're in Athens, Greece right now for a period of time. How's everything over there?

I am. I just love it over here. I come over to Greece a couple of times a year and right now I just got a new motorcycle. So I'm traveling around the hills of Athens and, and, and an island that I just got off of. And so I'm just, you know, enjoying, you know, that's my lifestyle now. I go to different countries and, and enjoy myself that way. So Athens is great. Starting to cool off a little bit. Greece is great, but it's, it's, it's a lot of fun to do this.

That's awesome. I've been to Athens, Greece, several times. I've even walked around the track where the very first Olympics were. I believe they were in like 1896. I'm not 100% sure I'm going from memory, but I've walked around that track. And also, I've got to tell you, I've been everywhere in the world, pretty much. I've been everywhere except Antarctica. I haven't been there, but I've been on the other six continents. And my favorite memory really was when I was in Athens, Greece for about four or five days doing a big convention. Those people are just wonderful. They love to eat, they love to dance, they love to sing. There's just a great atmosphere. So I guess you've experienced that already a little bit, haven't you?

One of the reasons I'm here, they have a major zest for life. Plus I really like their food. So I come over here and I really enjoy the Greek people and the culture.

That's great. Well, Mark, one of the things we're talking about today on the call is not just money and not just finances, but the holistic approach to life. To learn about family, to learn about ourselves, to learn about relationships, but also to learn about specific ways that we can improve our lives with additional financial resources. Speak to that and share a little bit about your journey and how you've hopefully tried to find some balance in that area.

Well, I'm, I'm no different than anybody else, Dr. Rome. I was. I'm a victim of programming that we have in our culture, right. In our Western society. And we are bombarded with marketing messages all the time. And it's always about how you have to spend more money, consume more things, have nicer things. And what that does is, it's short. It's a short term enabler, right? You, you feel good in the short term, but long term, you might be hurting yourself because you're not really you. You're sacrificing a little bit of future.

Future benefits for current benefits. And unfortunately, that's the programming. And so I was programmed like that too. Growing up. I was, I was learning about money. I was a personal development kind of a junkie where I was always trying to learn about personal development, but it was also personal development in the financial area. I love that financial area. So I've read thousands of books now, especially in that area as well. And I always thought, you know, I used to watch this show called Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. And it was this guy, Robin Leach, who had this annoying Australian accent or something on there. And he was like, you gotta have this big house and you've gotta have this really nice car. And I was like, yeah, that's what I want. But after I got all that, then I was like, okay. And I looked around and the people that were around me while I had all that were not the people that, you know, that I was, that were fulfilling me. And so I realized there's way more to life. And I've heard this. We're all, We've all heard this, right? We've all heard that. It's. That money is not what makes you happy. But when you don't have it, like you said with Zig Ziglar, you want it. And so you think that's the thing that's going to make you happy. And it does for a very short period of time. I mean, just think about the last time you bought a new car. It was really a good feeling when you got in that car and you drove it off the lot. And then maybe for another month or two, you felt great about it. But after a while it was a car. And then a couple years later you started looking for another one. And so I think that's the same thing with money is, you know, we chase it, and then once we get it, we realize the rest of the stuff has to be there. And so I take a bit of a different approach now. First of all, what I've realized later in life here now, is that it's all about people, especially helping people. Yeah. And so the money is certainly important. And it's easy for somebody listening or watching to say, oh, yeah, easy for you, now that you have money. But, you know, there was a long time where I didn't have any money. And so I know both sides of it. And I can tell you the truth is you've got to have a holistic approach to your life. You have to be what I call a virtuoso in your health, in your wealth, in your. In your spirituality, in your relationships. So important in your soul, in your. In the way you travel, the way you approach time. So many different things that are a part of life you need to be virtuoso in, not just the financial part.

Wow, that's such a good word. You know, I think I first learned that in 1991. I was in the backseat of a limousine with Zig Ziglar. We had been speaking at a big Chick fil a conference in Greenbrier, West Virginia, and I had just started my company. And I asked Zig about us. As Zig, I don't want to be driven by money. But I said is all I think about. I have payroll, I have rent, I have utilities, I have insurance, I have taxes. I said, I. I'm trying to make it go away, but it's like it won't leave me. And I'll never forget what he said, basically what you just said. Zig looked at me and he said, don't chase money because you'll never catch it. It's too fast. It'll always be one step ahead of you. He said, but I'll tell you what you need to chase. And I'm leaning forward, listening. And he said, chase. He said, chase helping people, and money will chase you. And so that night, I went to bed and I just kind of said a little prayer. I said, you know, God, help me to learn to chase, helping people. And whatever that had been, that chokehold around my throat for so long went away, and it's never returned. And I know, you know, we Both would agree 100% that you have to have finances. Money. It's just a tool to pay your way and to Give you different options. But boy, you, if you, if that's all you're living for. You know, someone once said he was all wrapped up in himself, has a mighty small package. And I, I realize it. All wrapped up in yourself and money is just a dead end street. But helping others and learning, personal growth and development in order to be a better person, to help our families, to help our children, our grandchildren, people that we're in business with, our business associates, our employees, that's what makes a difference. So it sounds like you've worked your way to that point of realizing that's where it said, am I correct?

You are 100% correct. And, and Zig Ziglar was a big part of my formative years. I read, you know, see you at the top when I was in high school and, and you know, just listen to a lot of his programs and I even do a little Zig Ziglar impression and, you know, and that his, his most famous quote is, you can have everything you want in life if you could just help enough other people get what they want in life. And so when I listen to that quote, that is what I try to do today. I try to help other people get what they want in life. And I've turned out, it's turned out that Zig's quote has been right because I've had a pretty fortunate life.

That's really, really great. You know, we teach the DISC model of human behavior, and I'm sure we've talked about in the past how you understand that model. And you know, the. It, It's a circle. It starts with a circle, and then we divided horizontally the top half, people who are more outgoing. The bottom half are those who are more reserved. So I want to talk about that just for a minute. If a person's more outgoing, if, if there's, if their motor or their speed is a little more. Hey, hey, Jose, get to the point. Let's make it happen. How would they look at investing versus someone who's more reserved and is cautious and careful? And I don't know if I want to do this or not. And I know I want to improve my life, but I don't want to take a big risk. So there's two parts to the model. The first one we call the motor or our speed. Address that. How do you notice that people handle investing whether they're more outgoing or reserved?

So I think there's a, there's a spectrum, right? And, and you can, if you're too outgoing, you're probably not going to be attuned to the details that you might need to have in an investment. And, and I, you know, there's, there's two types of things that we look at in the stock market. There's real estate investing and business investing and other kinds of investing. But I primarily do the stock market. I have some real estate as well. But when you're doing any kind of investing, you should do fundamental analysis. You need to figure out what the fundamentals are of your business and that is details. Right. You need to look at what in stock market, you need to look at earnings growth and re and sales growth and return on equity and these things. And you need to compare them to other stocks. Still no guarantee that you're going to be right. But if you can start to study some of the things that the great stocks before you have done, you'll have a better probability. The stock market game is just a probabilities game. There's no guarantees in any investing, especially in the stock market. So if you're one of those people that just doesn't want to sit down and do the details, you're probably going to be at a disadvantage. But on the other side of the spectrum, if you're somebody that is ready, aim, aim, aim, aim, aim. And you never pull the trigger, you miss out on some of those investments that are just looking at you, you know, right in the face and that are obvious, especially when looking back how obvious they were. So it's a spectrum.

That's really, really good word. I agree with that. I'm not a financial advisor or a financial coach, but I have noticed over the years, D's and I's who are in the top half of the circle, the dominant inspiring type tend to be a little more runner, gutter, take more risk.

Yep.

But don't pay attention to details. And those in the bottom half of the s and the Cs, the supportive and cautious type, are more careful. They do their homework, they do their due diligence. They. But then they may be afraid to, to take a risk. So there's not a perfect situation for any of us. Let's go to the next part. The next part is where we divide the circle vertically. There's the left side and the right side. And this is where I really see what you do take on a new meaning. Because the left side's task and the right sides, people, the left sides, that D and C part of the personality blend, the D dominant C cautious, the left side task, the right side, more I and S. The inspiring and supportive Type. And someone once shared with me that the real secret to all of life is to be good to people. That's the right side. But to get things done, that's the left side. Talk about that. How to, how does the left side, as far as money, task, investment, data, detail, information, statistics work, as opposed to the right side where there's relationship, caring, sharing, emotions, feelings, friendship, family.

Well, I would say and, and I haven't really done much thought on this, but now that you're making me think about it, it's a good question. I think, you know, there's, there's both sides of that spectrum. So you're never going to save your way to wealth. So if you're just going to wait and wait and wait before you make that investment, you'll probably never save your way to wealth. On the other hand, if you're just whipping it, you know, you're running and gunning, you're probably not going to do that well either. On the task side, you've got to make some decisions to be able to get into things. Right. You've got to, you know, you've got to go through your checklist and then make a decision to buy. On the other side, it's more of a people game, right. And so what is that money probably going to do for you? And maybe that's your leverage and that's your motivation. So I think it's like, I love the disc model because it's a blend of everything. Not just, you know, personality types, but it's, it's the way you approach life, right? And I heard a quote a long time ago, how you do anything is how you do everything. And it's funny how it, it blends into investments and it blends into your hobbies and it blends into other things. But the disc model is sure, surely a great tool for doing.

Yeah, there's so many great quotes. How you do anything's how you do everything. I think about Henry Ford. He was credited with. There are two kind of people in the world. Those that think they can do anything, those that don't think they can do anything. And you know what? They're both right. So I think that's great. What I was really. Let me, let me touch on this just a little bit more, if I could. On the left side is more of a. The success of accomplishing the task. I've got the money I made, I was successful and I accomplished my goals. The right side is more along the lines of, well, what am I going to do with this? Emotionally, how am I going to handle this as a person and with my family and friends? Address that, if you would.

This is a big topic for me, and in my mastermind group, we teach people that emotions are 90% of what we do. So you can learn. And this is true for anything, Dr. Rome. It's true for learning how to play golf, it's true for learning a language, is true for investing. Mindset is 90% of what you do. And so especially when it comes to energy and money, because money and energy are the same thing, right? Money is just stored value. It's exchange value. It's stored, and. And people get very attached to it, so it takes on an element of emotion. And what I always say is, when emotions go up, intelligence goes down and vice versa. Because I don't know about you, but I don't make very good, very good decisions when I'm emotional. So our goal is to try to limit the amount of emotion we have in the stock market, because it's tied to your money and it moves on a very liquid basis. You can actually look at it on the screen second by second. When the market is open, you can see it moving around. And so our goal is to limit emotions and to increase intelligence as people get into investing and you can fill in where in the circle it falls.

Yeah, yeah, that's. That's such a good word. Because, you know, the right side of life is that part that has to do with emotions, feelings, caring, sharing feelings, friendships. I have heard all my life, someone say the sentence, well, they hurt my feelings. Yeah, but the left side is more of the thinking side. And I've never heard someone say, well, you heard my thinking. And yet the thinking part of life is very, very important. You know, I spend a lot of my day thinking through things because you all want. All of us want to make, you know, intelligent decisions and being wise as possible. This podcast is because. Is called Becoming Wiser. And I just think that life is designed in such a way, is that we have to be good to people, but we have to get things done and think it through. And one of my clients that I coach, he told me one day, he said, well, I've changed it a little bit. I said what? He said, be good to people and get things done, but don't forget to be good to people. And I thought that that's really interesting because 2 to 1, the relationships top Just being smart, just having money, just getting things done. There have been many days I've gotten everything on my to do list checked off But I didn't feel like it was a good day because I didn't have enough interaction with people. Well, Mark, kind of wrap this up, if you would, and tell us where you are on your journey now as far as what you see for your life in the future.

Well, we go back to that, that famous Zig Ziglar quote. If you help other people get what you want, and that's what I'm trying to do, that's what the rest of my life is all about. It's trying to help other people, especially want to help kids. There's sex trafficking going on with kids and there's an education problem that we have in our culture now. And, you know, I think we can all agree that, that our education system needs some work. And, and, you know, we all go to school and we, we get taught things about Copernicus and we get taught things about Romeo and Juliet and the Pythagorean theorem and isosceles triangle and algebra, but I don't use any of those at all, ever. And I use money, I use relationships, I use communication, I use, you know, how to do my taxes, how to invest. You know, I learned all those other things. Those all, all those other things became electives in my life. I had to go outside of the school system to learn them. So I have a real passion for helping people learn what I think are the real skills that you need, the real success skills in the key areas of your life. Your health, your wealth, your relationships, your spirit, your spirituality, the way you use your time and the way you travel and then especially wrapped up in connection with ourselves. Because if you don't love yourself, if you don't work on yourself and develop yourself and make yourself better on a daily basis, nobody other else is going to love you to the level that you want to be loved. And you're not going to have that capacity to love as well. So I've created a mastermind called Light Circle. And that's what we're, that's. We're actually what we're launching now. It's an exciting project because it starts with education. I call the three E's of what we're doing. It starts with expert education. And then we layer on top of that a, an environment. Because you and I both know that, you know, Jim Rohn said the great quote, you know, you're the average of the five people you spend time with. And if you look to your left and you look to your right and you find out who you're spending time with, there's a good chance that you're mirroring a lot of the. The things that they've got in their life. If they're successful, you're probably a little bit more successful, and if they're not, you're probably taking on some of those. Those traits as well. So environment is critically important. So we have a. A community with. With accountability, but support and encouragement in there. And then the third E is. Is what we call empowerment. It goes back to that mindset discussion we were having. And mindset, like I say, is 90% of everything. And we put in, you know, if you. You know this, if you're around people that are negative, it. It's really tough, very hard for me to be around a negative person. And they kind of bring you down and. And it stifles ideas. When you're around a really great, positive person, man, it feels like time stands still and things are happening. You're just loving life and. And there's all kinds of possibilities. And so mindset is a critical component to those first two E's of education and environment. So that's what we're doing through a company called. Through a little nonprofit that we started called Light Circle. Excited about.

That's great. That's great. Well, we certainly want to stay connected to you. I don't want to be surrounded by wise people. Charlie Jones taught me in 1975 that you'll be the same person you are right now, 10 years from now, except for the people you associate with in the books you read. And, you know, I've graduated from five colleges and universities and really didn't understand what a book was until someone explained that as someone's life. It's someone's time, effort, energy that they put down on paper to teach you the things that they painfully have learned in life and in seminars and training and not so much in school. So, Mark, I understand there's an event coming up in January. Tell us a little bit about that, please.

Sir, we do have. And by the way, we're excited about you being a part of the event and contributing because we got some great speakers. It's called your greatest year. You know how most people just make, like, a new year's resolution, I'm going to lose ten pounds. And by the end of January, they've quit going to the gym and they've forgotten all about it. We want to change that. We want to make it a holistic. Like, everything's holistic and alignment for us. We want to have people sit down over a weekend and really think about their lives and be intentional. So it's January 13th and 14th on the Saturday and Sunday, five hours each, where we're going to go deep into all the areas of your life, the ones we've just talked about and we're going to actually plan out 2024 so that you can have your greatest year. That's why it's called your greatest year.

Yeah, yeah. Anybody who's listening. And this is going to be a great two day event. Let me encourage you to do this. You go to becoming wiser podcast.com mark. That's all you need to do and then you'll find out more and be able to register and surprise, surprise, surprise. If you do this, we want to also get you started by giving you brand new. Nobody's ever even heard about this before. I want to personally gift you a code that you can redeem the value 79, 95 for a financial disc personality profile. Personality Insights has developed this over the last two or three years and we're finally rolling it out and we want you to be able to be the one of the very first one. It shows you, as Mark and I were talking about earlier, how your personality plays a role in your financial investing. Wherewithal, in other words, your emotions, your mind and intellect are all going to enter into this. And so you'll get that 79.95 value as a gift by registering to come to the program in January that Mark mentioned. So Marks, thank you, thank you again for our time. I look forward to being on that program with you 10 hours. I don't know. I knew. I know there are going to be other people besides you and me. I don't think anybody can take either one of us for 10 hours. There are going to be other people, right?

Yeah. We got five or six other speakers that are going to be talking in the different areas of their, of their expertise. So we're bringing a lot of, a lot of ammo to the table. It's going to be really exciting.

That's great. And it is a very, very, very reasonably priced event, I promise you. So again, go to becomingwiserpodcast.com mark and there you'll be able to find out all the additional information and register. Mark, I look forward to seeing you again somewhere along the way. Don't eat too much food in Athens, Greece.

I won't. I'll keep it, I'll keep it lean. And by the way, that is an online event, not an in person event.

But yes, yeah, yeah, that's right. They'll all be together for those two days, five hours each. We'll all be joining through a Zoom or some kind of platform call, right?

Yes, sir.

All right. Thank you again, everyone. Have a great day. Look forward to our training next time. Thank you.

For more information about this podcast, please visit www.becomingwiserpodcast.com.