Unlock Your Millionaire Mindset: Financial Strategies from Derek Kinney

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Close Nodes, Scott Carson. Good morning, good afternoon and good evening everybody. Hey, welcome to this episode of the Note Closure show. As always, Scott Carson. Excited to be here with you today we've got an another amazing guest. I know most of you are sitting out there either full time investors or you're a part time thing. You're trying to make more money or build more wealth and many of you are going, you're hoping, well, hopefully you're all still in the middle class or you're wanting to get to the middle class or ultimately you're wanting to get to that millionaire. You want to get that seven, seven figure retirement, seven figure income. I know that's what a lot of folks want to do. I was excited to go from making six figures my first year and then the first year made seven figures was life changing. And today's special guest is a guy that specializes in helping people go from middle class to millionaires. He's been on just about every financial newsletter, news agency out there. He is an author of an amazing book, Good Money Revolution. Therefore you can see behind him here he is a guy we met at fincon. Got a chance to know him, visit with him a little bit. I was like, you know we gotta have you on here because we've got folks on here that want to go from middle class to millionaire all day long. So we're honored to have the rock star Derek Kenny join us here today. What's going on Derek, how you doing?

Great. It's great to see you Scott. I loved connecting with you at fincon. It was great. What a great experience. And I love that book cover too by the way. Thanks for showing that.

Not a problem at all. It's a good one. I've been enjoying it, getting a chance to read a little bit of it.

Thank you.

Stuff like that. Now you specialize in simp, in simplifying what makes many investors or many advisors make very complicated. Can you kind of give a little insight on your take to that? Because as an ex financial advisor I went for working for Smith Barney back in the day and was working for Chase and it would, I would always crack up because we get these guys that come in as brand new financial advisor who Love to try to wow with their vocabulary. And it left their clients like, what the hell did he just say? What is that a PE ratio? Am I. Is my kid out outside of PE expense ratio? What do you mean? It's expenses. I'm invested. So share a little bit your background before we dive into the nuts and bolts of today's episodes, I guess.

Well, it's funny because as I worked with clients, I built a financial advisory business for 25 years. And one of the consistent themes I would see Scott would be people felt sincerely, honestly, that there was this vault. And inside this vault were all the financial secrets of how they could become financially successful. And only a select few people had the combination to that vault. And I thought to myself, that is just not right. And so I really, I wasn't a financial advisor. I was more of a vault buster in terms of giving them the combination to say, look, this information is accessible to everyone. And once people realize that, that there's not just a select few people that have all the money and the rest of us have the crumbs that get tossed off the table. It's like this mind shift that people have that, oh, my gosh, you mean, I know it's not going to be easy and it's not going to be, you know, just a cakewalk, but I could actually become a millionaire. And I say, yeah. I mean, with a proven plan of action, yes, you can. And just the fact that they could know it was possible made everything much more realistic. And many of our clients, of course, became millionaires because they shifted from that mindset to believing, if they can do it, I can do it as well.

So true. It is. This is the biggest hurdle, these 4 to 6 inches between these years of most people, whether you think you can or can't, you're correct. Right. And sometimes that's right. Somebody to tell us two or three times or to hit us upside the head with a Louisville Slugger to get us thinking in that right direction. But so many of us come from where our parents didn't have any knowledge or our parents set us up with limited beliefs. And we need somebody like you to share that, show that. Yeah, it's not, you know, you're not behind the eight ball. It's not just Wall street making money. There are ways to get to that seven figure to become a true millionaire in a variety different ways. If it just put the game to work and start doing things like you should be doing. Right.

That's exactly right. I'll tell you a quick story too so this was a couple years ago. I came in the office on a Saturday morning to catch up on some things and I saw my voicemail light blinking and I knew if I check it, I'm probably going to get distracted and so forth. But a voice inside said, derek, you need to listen to this message. I press the button and what the woman said, I've never had anyone ever say to me before. She said, derek, you've got to call me back right away. They're about to send me to jail and I don't know what to do. Scott, have you ever had a voicemail message like that before?

No, I've had a few buddies. Hey man, can you come bail me out? The other way around?

Yeah, yeah, that's the more common. So I knew I couldn't wait until Monday to call her back. So I called her back immediately and I said, hey, I got your message. Tell me what's going on. She said, derek, they're about to send me to jail. And I said, first of all, why do you think they're going to send you to jail? What's happening? And she told me she got a letter in the mail that said she hadn't moved money from savings to checking. She wrote a check and it was a non sufficient funds letter. They basically said, your check bounced. And I said, wait a minute, why do you think that letter is insinuating that you're about to go to jail? So she then tells me a story. She says, derek, back when I was seven years old, I overheard my dad receive a phone call from a store owner. Her dad had just gone to the store to buy school clothes for she and her sister. And the store manager said, hey, you bounced a check and I know you did it on purpose. I'm going to send the cops over there to send you to jail. Well, here was a seven year old girl who then heard, oh my gosh, if you screw up financially, you're going to jail. This woman was now 55 years old. Okay, on the outside, looked like the picture of success, had it all together. But inside, she was this wilting flower. And what was happening is, as we would talk over the years, this was a longtime client. She always complained about getting passed over for the raise and getting skipped over for the promotion. And most importantly, she never, never took my good financial advice. She was not ever making the money she could. So I said, I tell you what, first of all, you're not going to go to jail. There's no need to prepare to wear pinstripes. The rest of the weekend. You're good, but let's call. I'm going to call you on Monday. I'll help you move the money at your bank, but let's meet next week. So she comes in the office and what we began to realize was she had filled her mind with the belief that, number one, if you screw up, then you're always a screw up. Because she saw her dad make that mistake. She wanted to make sure. I'd rather not make any mistakes and take any risk. But what she also grew up with, Scott, and this is perhaps the most troubling, is she grew up believing that there's the haves and the have nots. And her dad would say, you know, in life there's other people that have more money than us and we will never have that. We just have to settle for what we can get. She was in the have not category. So that mentality, even on the outside, she looked successful. She was never believing in herself. And so what happened from that meeting was we began to pull back this onion. Surprisingly, within three months, she got a $20,000 a year raise and got promoted to vice president. All because a mental shift occurred that, wait a minute. Just because I made past mistakes doesn't mean I will continue to make those mistakes.

So true. So true. Little things like that and having somebody show you the gate, show you the way and hold your hand. I think a lot of people, whether it's investing or their job growth or climb the corporate ladder, they're scared to make that next move because they don't have somebody, they're holding their hand or they especially that. We see a lot of folks that still work at their job and they're afraid to make that leap full time in a full time entrepreneurship or full time investing because I can't let go. I got to hold on to this here as much as I can. And actually ends up strangling them more than what they would do if they made that leap by leaving the job. Because like, hey, you're not by yourself. You've got a path to follow. You've got success patterns and habits that if you follow this path, you'll find success. You'll find that a lot in your business too, I imagine, huh?

I do. Matter of fact, I met with a client, this was about 10 years ago. He came into my office, he was 40 years years old. And he said, derek, I've got some bad news. I lost my job. I said, oh, I'm so sorry to hear that. But he said it couldn't be Better news in terms of my future. And I said, why would you think that most people who lose their job are not excited about it. He said, derek, I had this epiphany recently that I'm 40 years old and I'm in a job that I made with the mindset and experience of a 20 year old. And I've been in that same job for 20 years with the thinking of a 20 year old. Now I'm 20 years older, wiser, more experienced, and I had to pull back and say, why the heck am I still in that job? And so he looked at it as freedom. He actually went on to get a much higher paying job, more responsibility. But it forced him. To your point, Scott, it forced him to make a change. And I'll tell you a personal story. You know, growing up, we moved around six times before the sixth grade. And my dad was a metallurgical engineer. He would either, you know, lose a job, take a new job, etc. But as I, as I asked my dad more questions as I grew up and wanted to know more about our family's financial history, my dad, and God bless my dad, he was a great dad, great husband to my mom. But he struggled making financial decisions. As a matter of fact, the only time that they would ever move would be if he lost a job. He would never ever actually take a new job where it wasn't forcing his hand to do it. And even when they moved back to Oregon and all of our kids are here in Texas, they would not move back to Texas because he was so fearful that he was not forced into doing it. Now he got to make the choice himself. He simply couldn't do that. So I say that to you, not in any way to disparage my dad, but that's very, very real. These are very real holdbacks that people have that affect not just their money, but their relationships and most importantly, Scott, their potential. It's like those scenes in all the movies where the main character looks back and says, if only I had done more of this. And they have the regret list. I am like the anti regret campaign manager. I want to make sure that people look, if you have a regret, let's identify it now so you can live the life you were meant to live.

I love it. Yeah, I mean, I would totally agree. The same thing with my dad. Mom. Mom and dad were very smart, great parents, great spouses to each other. Married for 34 years. My dad passed away. But the first ever loan I did, Derek, was actually refinancing my parents House paying off all this height, credit card debt where it was less. Instead of them taking 30 years, pay off their mortgage they had paid off in seven. And my dad crying at the closing table.

Wow.

I mean, and so yeah, when you can help somebod, it is powerful. But a lot of people, like you said, they're, they don't take that step because they. Well, I always say you can be. Who's tired of being tired, right?

Yeah.

A lot of times we don't make moves because we're lazy, because we don't want to get out of our comfort zone. We get so used to status quo or who want to rock the boat. Well, sometimes you need to rock the boat to move on to bigger and better things, right?

Well, you're right. So fast forward now. So I sold my financial planning business in January of 2020. So every year I go on a sabbatical.

That's a pretty good time frame to sell business.

I give God the credit for that. I could not have figured that one out myself, believe me. So every year I go on what I call a sabbatical. I take about five years. Not five years, five days by myself. It feels like five years sometimes. But I asked myself three questions. How do I be a better husband? How do I be a better father? And how do I be a better business owner? And what I found is, as I was self assessing myself many years ago, is I tend to run pretty fast, as I know you do a lot of a personalities. And if we don't know what we're running toward, we can run really fast, but in a circle. And I realized that's what I was doing. I was kind of chasing my tail. And so the sabbatical is a chance for me to reset by myself and ask myself, what is it that I really want? And so I began to write a list of all the things I would enjoy doing. And I wrote down, write a book, launch, a podcast, coach, speak, consult. But on the list, shockingly, was not being a financial advisor. And I had done that for 25 years. I loved my clients, loved my team. But I realized I was kind of going through the motions and to do it effectively, I would need to basically sell my business in order to bet on myself to create something new. And I say all that because what I realized was there's a lot of people who felt like and I was helping them achieve wealth. A lot of them had half a million dollars. A million dollars. And we grew it to 5 million, 10 million, whatever it may be. But there is this Middle class of people who want access to that, but there's nobody there to help. Give them a hand and say, I'm going to help pull you out of this. You use your strength, I'll use mine. Let's get out of this together. So I created a what I call the Millionaire Money Map. It's a five step, easy to follow system which I use with my clients to help them become millionaires. And now we're making it accessible to people. What we're finding is people like Derek. Is it really this simple? I said, well, there's a lot of hard work to follow the simple steps, you know that Scott. But as long as you follow them and have a plan, you know, just like if you planned your family vacation, you no family is going to just say let's hop in the minivan and see where we go. Somebody in the family has gone to the gps. You mapped it out. You know exactly the game plan and doesn't mean you may have a flat tire or run out of gas or make a wrong turn, but you know where you're going. And what I find is people's lives are so stressful today. They feel like the system is stacked against them. They feel like they're working hard and making no progress. They feel like everybody else has the millionaire blueprint and they were left out in the line. All of these concerns and so people just need a simple game plan and once it's made simple they can make progress and we find people really start to grow and make the money they want.

What's the first step on that five step process? Because I think that's probably the most I'd be willing to bet. It's probably the one that's the most eye opening and awakening when it comes to people actually taking action on their path to their future selves.

Well, it's going to sound so simple, but you think about what I'm going to tell you is what every major sports team, if you're an actor, an actress, every company, they all do this and it helps them be successful is they set goals for what they want. So step number one is to identify three personal goals and three financial goals that you've got. And what that does is it gives you a sense of purpose. Now I know what I'm focused on and what I will have people do is on a simple note card is write those out and, and really give some detail around specificity. By this date I will pay off $10,000 of credit card debt. By this date I will save X amount for my son or daughter's college education by this amount. I will save this amount for my home down payment or for my first property, for example. And the key, though, to all of this, Scott, is it's one thing to set the goal. And we know that psychologists tell us that just by writing it down, you're like 87.325% more likely to achieve the goal. Okay.

Yep.

But here's what I find is more powerful, and that is write down what is at stake if you don't achieve the goal. What terrible thing could happen? What horrible thing will you miss out on if you don't achieve this? Picture not holding your kid's hand as you walk with their grandkids on the beach. Not having the health to crawl on the floor and chase your grandkids. Not getting to do the things you've wanted to do and work so hard to do. And sometimes the negative forces you to think more positive about reaching the goals. And then the key is to then set in place. And this is step number five. The celebrate and reward yourself so much. Today is about guilting and shaming people. Listen, if you like your favorite latte, you will never, ever retire. If you want to buy something that you haven't budgeted, you will never, ever. You have no chance of retiring with any type of dignity. That is just not right. What I tell people is if you want to have your favorite latte every single day, then we just need to find a way to help you make more money to afford the latte. Because the reality is, relationships equal revenue. If I'm having coffee with a quality person and ideas are going back and forth, I will probably spend, say five bucks on the coffee. I, I might leave that coffee and I may make thousands of dollars just on ideas that we talk about. So coffee was the best use of my money ever. So the bottom line is you want to set goals that are personal to you, that mean something to you, but also then set quarterly incentives to say, if we make progress on paying down the credit card, we'll go to our favorite coffee shop, we'll go to our favorite new restaurant or catch a show together, pay cash for it. But it keeps you motivated because you're saying so many no's to the long term. Yes. And when you stay motivated, you're more likely to do that.

So, so good. So true. You hit some nuggets there. Definitely the, the fact that we shame. Oh, the latte or the eating out, stuff like that, but it comes. I'm a big believer in the Whole quantum physics of things. What you focus on, you attract.

Yeah.

And we see people like, like, oh, I need to pay off my credit card, I need to pay off my credit cards. Well, they attracting more credit card debt versus like you said, we just need to go make more money and we'll pay off our credit cards with the more money aspect of things. Right.

Well, and the key there, this is where, and by the way, this is step number two and that is earn what you deserve. Now I like to use the word earn because I'm not an entitlement guy. Some, some people don't like that. They, Derek, we should just be handed out stuff. I don't believe that because the handouts are typically not handing you up, they're handing you off. And we don't want to do that. So instead of banging on your boss's door, which so many people do, and demand the raise, they might give more money. The only way to finally get paid what you deserve is to add more value to the company. When you add more value, then you become more valued. And what I would tell your audience to think about is now, by the way, before I say that not every company you work for will you get a raise. You might be the best teacher in town, you might be the best nurse in town, you might be the best pastor in town, but you are probably not going to get a raise unless everybody else gets a raise as well. Okay, so then you've got to make a decision. Do I stay in that job because of the passion of impacting others? That's great. But then you can't complain. I will hold you to this. You can't complain about making the money you're not wanting to make because you've got to launch a side hustle. But first of all, ask yourself, in a current job, can I get paid more money on my own merit? For example, if you're the executive assistant, you're the vice president, you're the mid level manager, ask yourself three questions. In my current job, how can I help the company make more money, save more money and increase productivity? For example, this is, this is going to sound crazy, but it was so simple. One of the, the women that came to one of our events, she said, derek, I'm an executive assistant. How can I possibly make more money? I said, well, for example, we brainstormed things. She did well, she was in charge of ordering supplies for the whole company. I said, what if you did this? What if you went to your boss and said, hey, here's what we spent on Supplies last year, assuming things stay pretty much the same this year. For every dollar I save you, I want 20 cents of the dollar and then you keep 80 cents of the savings. Her boss was like, this is genius. Finally someone around here thinks like an entrepreneur, for goodness sakes. So here she's doing her job, but now she's incentivized and she's reaping the rewards of that. The other thing I would tell people is if you want to launch a side hustle, don't make this complicated. Don't go back to school to get the advanced degree and the MBA and take this advanced course. Courses are good, but the key is just ask yourself, in my normal course of my life, what do people ask for my help with? Are you the man or woman who everybody asks, Would you give soccer lessons to my kids? Hey, can you proofread this paper? Can you design the website? Can you plan the trip? Can you book the event? Basically that's your focus group telling you, you are good at this. Now simply package it and start to charge for it. We don't want to over complicate, we want to oversimplicate the situation. And people make more money that way.

So true. And, but people often have a hard time charging what they're worth though too in a lot of cases, right?

That is so, so true.

You know, or they look at and they're, you know, one of my favorite sayings is if you're doing a 15 an hour job, you'll be making, you'll have a $15 an hour bank account, right? And delegating off or using assistance or AI or figure. You know, it's like you said, if you're valued at $50 an hour, just put it that just simple thing, you know, I think everybody should be valued more than that. But you're doing a 15 job to change the oil in your car and that takes you two hours to do. Well, that's not two hours effectively used. You should have paid somebody to do it. Jiffy lub. And you've gone to something else that would have made two hours of time for you in a lot of cases out there, right?

Oh, I, I cannot agree more. Now, now keep in mind, I'm also sensitive to some people thinking, Derek, my budget is too tight. But keep in mind, what I would ask you to think about is you can only save so much money. No one ever saves their way to financial freedom. If I spend less and live on rice and beans and even find the cheapest brand of rice and beans, I can Save even more money. Not only will you not save money, but you're going to live a crappy life. And I'm against that. I'm against crappy lives and against regrets. Okay? Those are two things on my list that we've accumulated, accumulated so far. But the key is making more money, saving that money, but more importantly, investing it where even as you and I are talking right now, as you're spending time with your family, investing it even in something simple like real estate or the s and P500 or something where you've got high quality people who are bonused heavily on how well the company does. You simply sit back and let them do their work and, and they're making money for you while you're working hard to make it. So the key is all thinking strategically and thinking of yourself really, as the CEO of your money. No one's coming to your rescue. The government's not going to come to your rescue. Ultimately, four years from now, Trump's in the office, a lot of good economic things happening, but it's really probably not going to affect your bank account much. You've got to go make it happen if you want to make it happen.

That's right, Uncle Joe, Obama, Trump, nobody's saving you. Jesus saves, but everybody else has to invest.

That's right. I love that.

Use it a couple times.

But you also.

Besides, I like what you said and you talk about this in the book too, about doing, especially on the topic, do more good, how if you can intrinsically tie your goals, and you talked about that before and what you would miss out on personally, but still tying it to sharing and volunteering and giving more, that also can help in a fast paced aspect because I think you end up getting more excited about things. Right. Can you touch on that a little bit?

Yeah, yeah. It's interesting because as you say that I'm reminded of one of my clients. His name was Dave. And you know those relationships you've got, Scott, where without people even saying anything, you can tell something's bothering them. They're just kind of wearing the weight of the world on their shoulders, you know. So Dave comes in the office. I could tell something was wrong. And I said, Dave, just spill it, what's wrong? And he began to tell me, he said, derek, I'm just not excited to go to the office anymore. And Dave was a successful businessman in my hometown, well respected, a consultant. Everybody loved him, his team loved him. He said, I feel like I'm mailing it in right now. Like I'm not Motivated. And for whatever reason the words shot out of my mouth. I said, dave, is there a cause that you care deeply about? And he looked at me kind of puzzled. And then he sat back and began to tell me a story. He said, you know, a couple years ago, I took my family on a trip overseas. And he remembered the tour guide talking about this particular village they went to, that it was so desolate and so poverty stricken, and the solution was if they had a dedicated schoolhouse, it would transform this entire area. And he remembered exchanging a glance with his wife as if to say, hey, wouldn't it be cool to fund that school? And they smiled and kind of got the point between the two of them. Well, they got back to the states, life got busy, business took over. He forgot about it until I brought it up in this question. I said, dave, what if he did this? What if you said, over the next six months, I'm going to set a sales increase goal and I'm going to take half of that increase and use it to fund that school? Well, now his eyes got as big as saucers. And we began to talk about what that could look like. And I said, you know, what if you mocked up a picture of the schoolhouse and under the tab called Generosity Purpose on your website, you put it there, and then you emailed all your customers and said, look, we love working with you, and we know that you can work with any consultant, but when you work with us, we want you to know you're going to help make people's lives better and fund this school. And what happened was his customers got excited because now they can work with anybody. But when we know you work with people with a cause, people are even willing to pay more because they feel like they're making a bigger impact, which is a point nobody should miss. Also, referrals came in. But the two biggest lifts were his team got remotivated. They were no longer just working for Dave or pushing paper. Now they felt like they had a job with a purpose. But the biggest winner was Dave. So I thought Dave would come in three months later. He came in a month and a half later. He looked about 10 years younger. I said, dave, what's going on? He said, well, Derek, I just took the idea that you gave us and spread the word about it. They were already up almost 20% over last year. They had almost gone halfway in funding that school. And so the point of it is, so much of money is villainized. You know, Scott, if you like money and you make a lot of it, you must be Cheating people, you must be a bad person. And we think about these big CEOs, boy, if they're successful, they must really be taking out from other people to fill their own bank accounts. Well, what I say to people is you've got the same amount of brain cells and oxygen as pretty much everybody. So how will you choose to waste your breath criticizing the ultra wealthy or buy the book, buy the course, listen to what they say and learn from them so that you can become wealthy as well. But what we find is there's a problem. And the problem is so many people think, well, if only I have a million dollars, I'll be happy. If only I have half a million dollars, all my worries go away. Then they sacrifice their family, their spirit spouse, their friendships, all their relationships, their kids. And they get there and they look around and there's nobody else on the mountaintop with them. And they feel crummy now. They feel like they've been sold a bill of goods. What we find is the antidote to that problem is to give along the way. What we find is if you find a cause you care about, weave it into your business, weave it into your family, and let that be fuel and motivation to say, I'm going to make more money so I can do more good with it. Because we find high net worth prospects, love to work with advisors and business owners that open a door for them to be part of something bigger. They can work with anybody, but when you're part of something bigger, they'll pay more and they want to work with you. But when you lay your head on the pillow at night, you know you've lived a day of meaning and purpose. That's what it's all about. So suddenly now it's cool. I say to people, go, make as much money as you possibly can and then do as much good as you possibly can with it. And you'll find it's just as the book is called, Good Money Revolution. It just revolves. More money, more good, more money, more good. That's what I want for everybody.

That's right. Money is not the root of all evil.

Definitely not. You are so right.

You can't pay bills with just caring. And we see people all the time that spend all their time volunteering and not focused on their money needs and they're broke or they're facing financial ruin. I'm like, we got to stop spending all this time volunteering. I get it's, you got to have a passion, but if you're not taking care of yourself, it's Hard to feed the world with a half empty cup. Go fill your cup first and feed the world with the overflow and you'll feel a lot better, make more money and get a whole lot more done and have a bigger impact versus just what you barely can get by on. Right?

So true. And you know, it's interesting, you know, we think about, think about athletes or think about watching someone run a marathon or the ultramarathon. You know, these people exert so much energy and they're just physically exhausted at the end of the race. And the benefit they've got though is they typically don't run another race right after that they take a break. You know, most, most athletes have an off season. Well, the term I heard many, many years ago, which I like, is this whole corporate athlete term where for people like you and I and our listeners, there's no off season. They work hard and then they're expected to do it back again tomorrow morning, 8 o' clock and every day after that. And so what I tell people is everybody is working hard, but how can we just work better? And I find if there is a cause you care about, if you know that the work you're doing, a portion of that money you're going to give to help other people's lives get better, it sort of takes the pressure off of you. You become less selfish, you become less self, self centered and it makes you feel like you're doing something meaningful. It's like that feeling of when if you've ever given something to someone anonymously and you know they're going to like it and you're just waiting to hear the response and suddenly you get the call or the text and you're like, you're like, you're like a kid on Christmas morning because of how good it makes you feel. And I know this, this sounds so crazy, but even ultra wealthy people, what I find is they want to be respected, they want to be admired, but more importantly, they want to know that their life has made a difference in other people. And if you do that, starting now, whatever level you're at, start where your feet are today. And even if you're giving five bucks a week, ten bucks a week, fifty, whatever it is, pick the cause you care about. Because what I believe is when you think about, well, I'm going to wait until my dollar amount is larger, well then I can have a bigger impact. I mean, that's what economics would say. But I believe that a present value of a dollar is worth more in a smaller amount than Waiting till the future because of the life impact that gets missed if you wait. So start now, and as your dollars grow, you're already in the habit of giving. It'll just continue even more.

Well, it's also kind of the same thing of saving and putting money away in your IRAs. Your retirement gets a little bit. You know, we don't say, oh, I gotta wait till I have 100 grand to put before I start saving for retirement.

There you go.

Start a little bit. So it's the same impact. Not only is it impactful for your bottom end, but for the cause that's near and dear to your heart, too. That little bit each day goes a long way.

Yeah. And what I would tell people, too, is kind of shifting gears a bit. I had a doctor come in the office about 10 years or so ago, and he was complaining about where his money was going. This guy was making a million dollars a year, Scott. For most people, it was like the dream income. Okay. Well, as we pulled back the curtain a bit, what we realized was he was spending just over $1 million a year. And what I told him was, I said, how important is it to you to get ahead financially? And his wife chimed in, and this can go both ways in the conversation, but what happened was they said, we're not willing to sell our second Mercedes, and we're not willing to sell our second house or give up the country club membership. And I said, why? And what they told me was shocking, but revealing. He said, because if we don't look successful, our clients and our patients will think that my business is failing. And I said, well, out of curiosity, how many of your patients go to your house? Well, none of them. How many of your patients see what car you drive? Well, none of them. Well, now he could realize he was put in the logic box, which typically doesn't end well for the person in the logic box. And they didn't want my help. They just simply wanted me to affirm what they were doing. And as far as I can tell, things never changed for them. I offered, if I can help in any way in the future. I didn't wait by the phone. I'll put it that way. They never called back. But. But I say that because so many people idolize people like that. Well, he's a doctor. He's got his act together. He's making a million dollars a year. Whatever your situation is right now, whether you're making 50 grand, 75 grand, 250 grand, and you feel like, if only I had more money, that's true. But I want to ask you what is your belief structure? First of all what happens in your mind then is what happens in your bank account. And if you're living like a million dollar spender and not saving any of it, that's going to keep perpetuating itself and that's not going to be your pathway to financial freedom.

No. Having champagne taste on a beer budget.

Never worked out well for most people.

You know, living what is, what's the whole lifestyles of the rich and famous, caviar dreams and champagne toast, whatever how it would be out there. But you mentioned something good there a lot of people don't want to hear truth of it, they, they've grown up or the keeping up with the Joneses. And that status symbol is the Mercedes or the second house or the country club membership. And when you start looking at things, those things don't add value in a lot of cases. I mean it can be in some cases but if you're struggling and you're not hitting your goals, a lot of that egotistical goals or egotistical keeping up with the Jones things really sets us back when honestly tell people if somebody's not contributing my bottom dollar, paying my bills, I don't really give a rat's ass what they think about me.

Yeah, so true. It's so true. And it's important to think about who are you taking advice from? But I go back to step number one of the millionaire money map and that is what goals are important to you. Because what we know is, and I do this with my family, for example, we, it's coming up pretty soon here. Typically New Year's Eve morning, my family and I have a goal setting meeting. We go about two hours. Now I know people may think what in that world are you talking about, Derek? At first, we've done this now for 10 years. At first my kids, they would, they would call me various names behind my back. They would throw things at dad. It was terrible. Now they bring their friends. But what's cool is we've kept their goal cards over the years. So as your kids handwriting changes and stuff, it's kind of cool. But what we taught them is the power of goal setting. And what I tell my kids is, and I have to practice it as well is we write it on a note card. Here are the goals in five areas. Here's what's at stake. That may sound familiar if we don't achieve this goal, but then we've added, here is my ideal year and I have my Kids and I, we write out, if we're looking back over the year, here's what happened, as though it's already happened, to define what that visualization looks like, and we put a Bible verse with it and so forth. What I find though is, and I make copies of it, I keep one in there in a file at our house, but I have them put it on their bathroom mirror. And the purpose of that is that life is going to come at them and it comes at our viewers and comes at you and I fast. We know psychologists tell us that the average person has three to four crisises per year. That's if your average interrupted by the occasional emergency, okay, which means aging parent, son or daughter has an issue. AC breaks down, we've got an issue. Medically, that means our lives are like a roller coaster. They're on the way into a crisis or you're out of one all the time. And once you begin to just accept that, that, that is life, you're going to get much less derailed. You're going to let adversity affect you less because you know, that's life. So many people get thrown off by every little thing. Once you realize my life is either about to go into an emergency or come out of one, that's normal life. And I've got a game plan in my goals. And I remind myself what my goals are on a daily basis. You're going to be far more likely to get it. Plus, it's motivation because your goals are things you like and you want. So when you face hard things in the morning, at night, before you go to bed, read those goals to keep you focused on. Here's why I'm working hard.

So true. I can think of every guru mentor that I've had has said, write your goals down. Put it somewhere you can see it on a regular basis in that mirror in the morning, that mirror at night, before you go to bed, on the tv, on the fridge. Put it where you see because yeah, life is. We have two to three crisis is a year. That sounds a little below average depending on what's going on out there. With things like, especially with people having a hard time affording sometimes, sometimes crises are probably happening a little bit more often. But I love what you said about having your kids involved on there. Is that part of that simple, simple teen success program that you've put you put together? Is that kind of part where that came from?

That's part of that as well. Yeah. I've always been a big goal setter. I didn't come from the gene pool of the popular kids. Growing up, I felt like I had to just kind of will myself into doing certain things. But writing goals for me gives me hope. It gives me hope every single day of here's what I want to do. So when I face hard things, I realize first of all, if you're doing anything of meaning, it's going to be hard. So once you accept that fact, then you realize that's why there are so few other people in the world who are doing this hard thing, because it's hard. So it just motivates you. But for our kids, it's just a good reminder for my wife and I, and then we'll ask our kids, hey, of the goals you've got, how can we support you and your goals? I remember like when my son, I think he was like six years old, he said, you know, I want to walk on a tightrope across the ocean. I said, okay, well let's brainstorm. How do we do that? But the point was I meet so many parents and there's no issues here. So many parents want their kids to achieve the parents goals. But parents, you need to let your kids achieve their goals and you be the parent to walk alongside them to achieve their goals. Even if they fail, they'll always remember, hey, mom and dad always had my back, even when I did the goofy stuff. And it just deepens that relationship.

So true. I mean it's. I think we need more of that. I think, I hate to say this, I don't have kids of my own I don't know of anyway. But the point being is I think failure is a good thing wherever as I think in the last 10 to 15, 15, maybe 20 years. Oh, failure is a bad thing. Participation trophies. I think that makes kids these days not be willing to work hard or work is that four letter word. That is a negative connotation when I think work is actually a good thing in a lot of cases.

Oh, it sure is. And you know, it's interesting too with like, with simple team success. You mentioned there was a business club. I would teach our kids high school. And so I would teach them different principles and so forth. Once a year I would bring a stack of $5 bills and I would hand everyone, there was like 60 people in the class. I would hand each of them a five dollar bill. Well, obviously it was, it was the most exciting meeting of the year. And I said, okay, here, here's the deal. I said, I'm about to give you an opportunity and I'm going to describe this, but if you don't want to participate, then keep the $5, spend it on yourself, or just do something for somebody else. So I said, the goal is, over the next 24 hours, can you turn this $5 into $25? How many of you in the room would be willing to do that? Always half the hands go up, and then half the hands say, I'm not going to do it. Okay. So now we go into this thing about how they're going to do it, because the goal is. And I say to the kids, there's going to be a point in your life where your back is against the wall and you've got no other way out, and you have to make something happen. So one young man took the $5. He bought a package of garbage bags, and there'd been a storm in the area. He went door to door in his neighborhood and asked if he could pick up debris, tree limbs and leaves in everybody's yard. He made $78.

Nice.

Another young man bought two cases of water bottles and sold them at his sister's soccer game over Saturday and Sunday. He made like $92. Okay. The beauty of that is the young man who took and bought the garbage bags went on to apply for University of Texas Business School. And he asked me for a reference letter. I get emotional thinking about it, sure. But I said in the letter, I said, you're about to accept a student who, with $5, made $85. Think what he'll do with an MBA from UT Austin. I highly suggest you give him every amount of scholarship dollars that you possibly can. He almost got a full ride to UT Business school. And the point of all that was that even at a young age, we need to give our young people opportunities to push themselves and feel uncomfortable. So they get used to it and they realize, oh, if I'm going to make money. It was preceded by feeling uncomfortable. And once they connect the two, they're a lot more easier and wanting to do because they know how it feels.

I love it. I love it. I love it. We can sit here and spend all day talking about this stuff. What is you've got? A couple things you mentioned beforehand, we've talked about a little bit here that you've got is something to give to folks out there to help them maybe overcome some stuff. It was like the raise thing or what else? What. What are those tools that you'd like to give the audience?

Yeah. One of the easy to implement tools I want to give everybody free of charge. You can Go to our website, which is gettheriseyou want.com gettheriseyou want.com and basically it's a downloadable that will walk you through. If you're in a current job, how can you ask for more money, the right way to get a serious raise at your current job? And also how can you launch a side hustle to then begin to make more money as well? The bottom line is if you want to achieve your dreams, it starts by making more money. So, yeah, gettherise you want.com also you can go to anyone can become a millionaire.com and join our newsletter where we send out a free resource to everybody. And the goal is to give you practical money tips, proven tips that I've used with clients for many, many years to become millionaires, to move you from middle class to millionaire at Anyone Can Become a Millionaire dot com.

I love it. We'll put those links in the description. Everybody that you can click on, go through. And of course you definitely want to go out and get the book. All right. Good Money Revolution. And if you've enjoyed this podcast and how Derek talks about, it's exactly like how he writes the book. The book is phenomenal. No wonder it's a bestseller out there. If you've got kids, this is definitely something you can teach them. But maybe you need to learn those as well and walk side by side with your kid this next year and helping not only them accomplish their goals, but you helping your goals as well out there. Is that the best way going to the website there, Derek, to connect with you to follow your journey and path?

Yeah, yeah, go to. You can buy the book also through Anyone can become a millionaire.com there's a link to Amazon. And also one of the best ways is to follow us on Instagram at Derek T. Kinney, where we produce ways to save money, make money and do more good every single day.

Love it, love it. It's been a pleasure. We're definitely gonna have to have you on again sometime soon here and as we get into the New year as well, Derek, great stuff, buddy. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing your knowledge. We look forward to not only your success, but helping, taking more people and making them from middle class to millionaires. So everybody, guys, go out there, download those tools, put them to work, sit down with your kids, check out Derek's classes, and that's up there. That's a great thing for you guys. And I know many people are thinking about the New Year's, are worried about what's going on Forget about who won the office or the election. Focus on you winning your own race and going out and taking action and we'll see you at the top. Thanks everybody. Hey note investors. So you want to dive into the world of note investing but no know how to get started or you don't want to pay 30, 40, $50,000 for a one on one coaching program that just completely does not deliver the deals or the funding or the access that you need to take your note business to the next level. That's why we have our one on one coaching program. I'm Scott Carson. I've been buying notes for 20 years. I've helped thousands of investors buy their first note direct from banks using either their own funds or other people's money to buy non performing, reperforming or performing notes yielding them an above average return. Now what's involved with my one on one coaching program? It's unlike anybody else's because guess what, you're working with yours truly. Not some paid student, not looking at some recycled list of stuff. Now what we do is differently than anybody out there and that's why we have such a huge success rate with our one on one coaching program. What's involved? 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We are here to help you because guess what ladies and gentlemen, there is plenty of inventory out there. We're not going to focus on owner finance notes. We're going to focus on how to get people calling you with their deals or how to get banks sending you lists on a regular basis that you can cherry pick and show you how to raise all the capital that you need. Our one on one coaching program is the most complete program out there. That's why you have such a high success rate and it's cheaper than most the others out there. And we also give you the biggest bang for the buck by helping you make the introductions, looking at the tapes, helping you bid if you're coachable. Now, not everybody's coachable, not everybody can afford this. But what we can do is we can set up payment plans and different options for you. I encourage you to either book a phone call with me@talkwithscottcarson.com and we can talk about it. See if you're a fit and not everybody's a fit and that's a okay. 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