In this interview, Rob Moore argues that money is an amoral, human‑created tool designed to facilitate universal exchange, not a moral entity. He challenges the common belief that "the love of money is the root of all evil," explaining that money itself cannot be good or bad; it merely amplifies the values of the person using it. Moore emphasizes that financial success hinges on emotional mastery: separating feelings from financial decisions. He contrasts the "broke" mindset—characterized by emotional spending, lack of leverage knowledge, and buying depreciating liabilities—with the "wealthy" mindset, which involves investing in appreciating assets, budgeting, forecasting, and making decisions from a neutral emotional state. The conversation also touches on cultural and religious conditioning that paints money as sinful, and how triggers (societal, media, upbringing) hijack emotions, leading to impulsive financial choices. Moore concludes that true financial mastery is less about mindset and more about understanding and controlling the emotions that drive money‑related behavior.
Chapters
In this Lessons episode, uncover the profound connection between money, mindset, and emotions. Learn why money is simply a tool and how mastering your emotions can transform your financial decisions. Discover the key differences between broke and wealthy mindsets and explore how self-awareness and emotional control are pivotal for achieving financial success. I want to ask a couple mindset questions because you have a couple points that you speak about often I thought are really interesting. So two takeaways from mindset, and you can choose which one you want to go into first, but I want to cover both. So relationship with money and then mindset of a broke person versus a successful or rich person. I think that both of those are interesting and you have opinions on those. So I'd like to go into those and just to talk about your experience as relationship with money as a mindset, as an entrepreneur?
Wow. You know, I could speak for a week on this straight. So money is simply a tool created by man to create universal fair exchange, to increase the speed and reduce the friction of interpersonal transactions. That's what money is. But the Bible says that the love of money is the root of all evil. So many people who have religious beliefs are indoctrinated with a negative mindset around money. Um, and you know, in some religions, Lending money and charging interest is a sin, if you like. It's even, I think, illegal. It's certainly immoral in some religions and cultures. So the Bible, I can't say the Bible was wrong because I don't know the context in which it was written. But what I can say is the love of money being the root of all evil, that is wrong. That is wrong. What is evil is humanity because money isn't conscious and money doesn't have emotion. So money can't be evil. Like, imagine someone committed murder with a hammer. You wouldn't try the hammer for murder and put the hammer on trial in front of a judge and jury. Because the hammer is a tool, and we all know that the hammer is a tool, and none of us debate it. We don't go, that hammer is evil. And when we put a hammer, get a hammer and it nails in a piece of wood, we don't go, this hammer is virtuous. It's a hammer. But money is no different to a hammer. A hammer is a great tool of leverage that humanity created. Money is a great tool of leverage that humanity created. Money is one of the greatest inventions that humanity has created because it universalized value and it removed friction for exchange and then it allowed us to trade from little villages to globally. It's a brilliant invention, but money never murdered anyone. Money was never greedy. Money was never powerful. Money was never evil. It was human beings. Now some people will say, oh, but money made them that way. No, it didn't. Money can't. Money doesn't change you. It makes you more of who you already are. So all money can do is exaggerate your traits. If you took a billion and gave it to a philanthropist, they're giving that money away. If you took a billion and gave it to a drug lord, or you gave it to, you know, fight a war, a gambler, an addict, then that's where it's going. So the love of money is not the root of all evil. Money is a tool that can be used for evil and good based on the values of the individual. So if you want to get really good at making money, you separate emotions and money. Just like you're not emotional about a hammer, you just know what it does and you use it well for what it does. Because you can turn a hammer around the other way and you can pull a nail out. So you can use a hammer in a few different ways. And money is the same. It's a brilliant tool. It's a brilliant tool. I can store value from something I bought or sold. That energy can be stored in money, and then I can buy or sell something to you across the world and transfer that energy from me to you. So when you know that money is amoral, a-emotional, and a-conscious, and it's a great tool for universal exchange, and you learn how to use the tool really well, just like nunchucks, you can use how to learn how to use nunchucks really well or not. Then you transcend all emotional and moral and judgment around money and you just use the tool well. And if you want to change the world, get really good at making money and then do good things with that money.
Is that the— now, how does that dovetail? Maybe it doesn't, so correct me if I'm wrong, but how does that relate to mindset? Is that the difference between a poor person's mindset and a successful person's mindset? It's the relationship, the healthy relationship with money as a tool versus something that is evil and people have too much of it and you can't You shouldn't base your whole life on pursuing it. Is that the difference?
Yeah. So a few definitions to clarify. So if you are developing world poor or you have never had education because you have lack of resources, then you don't have the same equal opportunity as someone who's just broke, whereby they're raised in America or England or Australia and they've got access to the internet and libraries and podcasts, but they're still broke. So let's go on broke rather than poor, because poor isn't your fault because you could have been born into it and know nothing, know no different. But most people who we talk to are probably, if they haven't got any money, they're probably broke over poor. So the mindset of broke is quite complicated, but to simplify it, it is allowing your emotions to control your spending. And not having a knowledge and wisdom of how you leverage money and value properly. So a broke person will always spend more than they earn, but a fundamental law of money, if you want to appreciate it, is to never spend more than you earn. A broke person will buy depreciating liabilities with money. A wealthy person will invest in appreciating assets with money. A broke person will use money to alleviate their volatile emotions. They feel really good, they celebrate, oh, I've had a really good month, we're gonna go on holiday. They feel really bad, they spend emotionally, spend a load of money to try and make themselves feel better. Whereas wealthy people can separate the emotions and they can go, right, this is the budget. This is the forecast. This is the investment. This is the saving. These are the projections, and they can remove emotions away from money. So in a way, I would say a more profound conversation to have around money is not the mindset of money, it's the emotions of money. And what emotions are, they're a level deeper than mindset because mindset is what you think. Emotions is what you feel. But I think most people feel before they think, i.e., they're triggered. I think when you're triggered, you feel before you think. And so I think impulsiveness is to be triggered, triggered by society, triggered by media, triggered by how our parents raised us, triggered by how we perceive corporations and billionaires, et cetera. We become triggered, we are hijacked with emotion, and then we make decision and we don't, it's not mindset. Mindset is a thought process to understand why we are triggered. Why did I hate rich people? Because I was broke and I hated myself. I wanted to be rich and I'd sold myself out, and that was embarrassing to admit, but it was easier to hate the very person that I wanted to be because it made me feel more comfortable in my own misery. But that's a very difficult thing to be self-aware about and to admit. The reason I'm triggered by this person is because it's a mirror and picks a scab of all the disowned parts of myself. That's a fucking hard thing to admit. But that's not just mindset mastery, that's emotional mastery, and that's mastery of your upbringing and your background and not blaming your parents and all these things. So, If you want to make it simple, the difference between the broke and the rich is they're able to control their emotions around money and make more balanced financial decisions in an untriggered, neutral emotional state. Whereas broke people are always spending emotionally. That would be actually the binary thing. If you were to put a gun to my head, Rob, I need one. That transcends them all. The difference between the broke and the rich. That's it. And I don't think anyone tells you that because everyone's using the word mindset. But if you upset me and trigger me, I'm not thinking straight. I'm just riddled with anger and emotion and shame and vengeance and all these other bubbly. And that's when you're the least clear.
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