Introducing: Financial Automation with Andy Hoffman (sponsor)

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Today we brought someone on to talk about some of the fears that you might have around money and to remove some of the complexities that cause you to not take control of your financial situation in the description. There'll also be a link to our guests course, so feel free to go and check out that and let's get into the episode. Many of us, or many of the clients that I work with can have very stressful relationships with money as all of us can find at different points, especially in the economic climate we're in today. Real, real difficulty understanding the complexities and so many insecurities we have where it has big consequences to our health, our relationships and everything else beyond that. So I wanted to bring someone on today who could maybe talk about more of the tangible, specific, actionable steps that you can take with your money. Not just in terms of the mental perspective which we'll talk about today, but actually really understand well, what can I do from tomorrow and the day after, something I can put into practice which is going to make me feel like the future is going to be okay. So Andy, thank you very much for joining me on the podcast and I'd love to start with the following question, which is we all want to improve our situation with our money and our relationship with money.

Right?

We all want that. And yet so few of us actually go out and learn about money, learn the skills, take the time. So I'd love to ask you what was the moment? What was the situation that got you really passionate about learning about money?

David, thank you for the opportunity. I'm so excited to have this conversation. For me, it was very Stark. I was 21 years old. I had gotten out of high school, I was playing drums in some bands here locally, and I wanted to move to Nashville, Tennessee, where all the music musicians go to live and, you know, really make it. And no one else was quite as committed as I was. So in lieu of finding a job and a career, I ended up joining the United States coast guard at 21 years old and in doing so they gave me a $4,000 bonus. And that was a big chunk of money for a 21 year old Andy Hoffman. And it just slipped through my fingers very quickly. I laughed that I had an electronic toothbrush to show for. It was, was like something that stood the test of time for me for a while. And I also joke that like any normal person, I went into the bookstore straight away and bought a book on personal finance. And so I think come to find out years later, most people probably don't have that same reaction. So I ended up buying this book, it's called Rich Dad, Poor Dad. A lot of people have read it and that sent me straight down the rabbit hole. So from there I just began devouring everything I possibly could about money. And that sent me on this kind of bumpy ride for the next, I don't know, 15 years to learn everything I can about money.

This may be not the question you want to answer, but I'm desperate to know what you spent that 4,000 on.

At 21, I moved away from home for the first time, a few states away, about eight hour drive and probably a lot of alcohol and going out with the guys. I bought a flat screen TV for the barracks and probably a video or like a computer, something's like that that you know, sounded like a good investment at the time and quickly, you know, have a pretty short shelf life as far as long term things go in.

All serious know that, you know, lots of, lots of people will have bought books and finance. I'm going through a particular very long dense book on finance right now, as a lot of them are. And yet as you, as you quite rightly said, most people don't have that reaction, right? They don't have that thing that lights them up right when it comes to money maybe because of the complexity or how dense is. So in amongst that, that book had inspired you, what was it about the book or what was it about that moment that everything sort of lined up for you? Because as I said, lots of people that doesn't happen for them with money.

That's fantastic. I think growing up in a house where my family didn't know much about money or investing or anything like that. My dad worked night shift at a tire plant called General Tire here in the States. And so they would go on strike almost every three years like clockwork. And the last strike ended up being like 364 days. And so he ended up finding, you know, a different job. And that was a big hurdle for our family. And I Think I just, I knew that I wanted something different from my life. I know my dad told me, you know, I've got to go to college and all these things, which I never fully completed my four year old degree. So I think for me this felt like maybe a possible escape route to learn a skill and kind of change my own lot in life. And I don't know as a 21 year old that I had these preconceived notions of, you know, we're fixed and we can't do much to change it, or that, you know, with, you know, understanding of psychology and that, you know, our brains are very pliable and all that. I don't know that I was quite that deep as a 21 year old, but I knew that there's something to be learned and that I could hopefully sharpen my skills in the finance world and at least make things a little bit smoother in my life.

Okay, and you said it was like an escape, a potential escape route for you. Do you feel like you escaped?

Sitting here with you now, the answer is equivocally yes. I feel like having conversations like this is a dream come true to me. If I talked to 21 year old Andy and said that, you know, I would be in a place to where I can get to talk to people about money and hopefully inspire them to change their own lives, it'd be a dream come true for me. So, so absolutely.

That's great. That's great. And so let's, let's get on to some of the sort of tangible things. So we spoke about the, you know, not everyone has the relationship with money. We certainly, some people, you know, it's not something you're taught at a young age, which seems almost odd that it's something that's so incredibly important and yet we don't get the education on it, and yet we'll be educated on things that most of us don't use in our adult life. Right. Why do you think so many of us avoid learning about money? What do you think the main thing is or take the time?

I think it's a couple of things. I think the fear of the unknown can be very detrimental for all of us. There's, you know, there's a saying that everything new is difficult in the beginning. And I feel like that is something I say to clients on almost a daily basis that, you know, we get just scared to try new things. In general, I think a lot of us, especially the older we get, if we have, you know, these patterns, but also there's an overwhelming amount of information. And I think a lot of us are scared to make a mistake when it comes to money. I think a lot of us go to school and we're scared to try new things. We're scared to take risks and mistakes. And with money, there are mistakes to be made. Absolutely. And so I think people are oftentimes so paralyzed, excuse me, at the thought of making a mistake that they almost don't even try to begin with. And I think that's a shame. I think if you can, you know, fail small and just, you know, make some small mistakes to begin with, pull the thread of your curiosity and see where it leads you, I think that can be a great place for people to start.

Yeah. And with the conversations I have with people, it's. It's the feeling of. I always say the enemy of execution is complexity. And money in and around money always feels very complicated, very complex. Even with the amount of work and understanding I've done, it still feels very complex for me. On top of that, you understandably, and no doubt people will have the feeling that, well, you see these economic crisis happen. We're in a bit of a sort of a situation globally now. Go back to 2008, go back to previous decades before that as well, and people wondering about the financial system and how it does it, you know, take advantage of us in some way particularly. And then it's like, well, how do I know where to go to sort this all out? Do I go to the financial experts? But they're the ones that put us in this situation. Or what about this? How do you help people navigate that understanding of where's the best place to kind of keep your eyes open, what to be aware of, and so people can understand for themselves how they can develop some trust, which I'm sure is a helpful thing to do. How do you help people maybe understand that world?

The phenomenal question. And I think, I feel like. I wish we had. I wish this was one of the three hour podcasts that we could really dig in.

We'll get you Andre Rogan.

Yeah, yeah, right. Yeah, absolutely. No, I think that there's so much to unpack there. I think the short answer, and I'm glad to expand on this, is that ultimately we can only control what we can control. And I think so often we, myself included, get paralyzed with all these things that are wrong with society or the world or the global economic systems in place. I think a lot of it is, at least in the United States, you know, we've got central Banks, you know, our governments are printing more and more money. It devalues our money. It is currently going down in value. So what is someone to do? And I think ultimately even going back to that first book I read, Rich Dad, Poor dad, the advice is to typically invest in assets and things that are growing in value or producing income or both ideally. But I think that can feel overwhelming to people. And so I think just for some people, it's really just what is that first step that I can take to shore myself up financially. And maybe that's squirreling a little more money away in a savings account. At the end of the day, you know, even as our money is, you know, going down in value for a lot of us, just because of the nature of, you know, inflation currently happening, at least in the States, there's still actions that you can take that are better than doing nothing. And I think that that's what we have to sometimes lower the bar of what success looks like for ourselves. I. I know that I've wrestled with perfectionism for years, and I think sometimes it's saying, well, if I can't put in XYZ dollars or 500 or 1,000 or $2,000 a month, it's almost pointless to even try. And that's the furthest thing from the truth, right? That's a complete lie. And if we can just take one baby step today, you know the saying, get 1% better each day and apply that to our money, I think a lot of things can change for the better, including our stress going down, which is hard to put a price on.

I'm glad you framed it like that, because when I work with people, for example, if they, you know, lots of people, especially post Covid, for example, to go in a different direction post Covid, people wanting to maybe grow their social circles, or whether it's people want to meet an intimate partner or whatever else it might be, but feeling they're now in a world where how on earth do I make these deeper connections with people? I always talk through there being five stages to building relationships with people. And it's no obvious, you know, you like you, trust you, help you. And people in their head, while they don't know those five stages, they're ultimately trying to go from stage one to stage five in one jump. And that causes one of two things. Either you make that one jump and it's disorientating, overwhelming, and puts off the other person, or for most people, you go, that's too big a jump. So I'm not going to Take any action. And I suppose what you're saying is very similar in the, in the, in the financial world, which is if you feel like you've got to jump from 1 to 5 immediately, then you're not going to take any action. Whereas if you can get to stage one and through the various stages, just stage one is progress. And I find that in sort of human psychology, it's not always about how much progress you make. It's just the feeling that you're consistently making some level of progress, even if it's very small. So you mentioned about, you know, a first baby step, something simple that people can get into. So could we get into some maybe key things that people could do that can actually simplify all of this in their mind that help streamline so they don't actually have to digest too much information? What's the process? What's some key steps that you would help people take to navigate to a better sort of, you know, better financial situation?

I'm thrilled to unpack this. This is what gets me so excited because I'll start with a little bit of the problem in the traditional way of doing things, which is budgeting is typically step one. And sometimes for people, it just sends a shiver down their spine, right? Like I've got to get face to face with these, this money that I've spent on things that maybe I don't value as much as I thought I did, or, you know, I bought the thing on sale and I had to return it and it was embarrassing or whatever. We have these kind of challenging relationships with money and ourselves and wanting to do the right things and all of that. Right. Similar to dieting, I think, can be an easy analogy. And so when it comes to budgeting, I think for me it created this boom and bust cycle where I would get really excited and really motivated and do the budget or, you know, track all my spending on an app or a spreadsheet or something like that. And then I would fall off the wagon hard like a, like a crash diet. Right. And I think people treat their money like this so often. And so what I found to be the remedy is automation. And that sounds like a big, ooh, fancy word, but it's really super simple. I'll give a couple examples that people can relate to. So imagine if you are working your job and you get paid on a Friday and then you had a choice. You could either, you know, take that physical check, drive across town to the bank and then deposit it late on a Friday afternoon, or you could fill out a form and have it directly put into your checking account. I think most people choose the latter, right? And we have the same technology available to us in a variety of ways. The simplest is just through a bank transfer. And so what I help people do is set up these simple transfers that create a lot of positive behavioral change. And so I'll give a quick example. So really, step one for 99% of the people I work with is separating their spending money from the rest of their financial world. So literally, it might sound very laughably simple, but just getting a different bank account, different from the one that used to do everything else, and separate that with a new account. So, you know, my wife and I, we have a joint checking account at a different institution, and it's a different institution because the instant transfer between your savings account and your checking account is like this invisible line that you click one button and now you have access to your money. And so so many people, the stat here in the US is that 69% of Americans have less than $1,000 saved. And it's tragic. And so I would absolutely argue that the reason is we don't have these, you know, mechanisms to save us from ourselves. It's too easy. It's like going on a diet with, you know, a room full of sweets, you know, just tempting us day in and day out. And then we wonder why we fall off the wagon. So again, I suggest people open up that separate checking account and then just put a weekly amount of spending money there. And that week, weekly amount, seems to be the key to make the behavioral change so much easier, because as soon as you fall off the wagon, there's a new cash infusion coming, you know, and then a day or two later, typically. So what we do is we have a transfer, leave one bank on a Tuesday, it gets there maybe a Thursday, Friday, as we're going into the weekend, we buy our groceries. We have some money left over to go out to eat and do the things by the toiletries, those kind of basic spending things that happen. And then if we, you know, spend all that money a little too quickly, we have to maybe we say, here, brown bag it, you know, pack your lunch, go into the office for a couple days, and then your money's there again a couple of days later. And so just starting that process off makes it easy for people to kind of behaviorally adhere to. Call it a budget, call it a spinning plan, call it whatever you like, but if you can do that. And then the step two would be to automate all of your bills. You know, I joke all the time that, you know, Netflix or some of these streaming services, they don't make you write a check to pay them. You click a button and you pay the bill automatically, right? And so if we can do that with the rest of our bills, most of us can. There's occasionally one offs that you have to solve for, but by separating your spending and then automating your bills, you're halfway there, in my opinion.

So with, with the work that I do, we have content that goes out every single day on all these different social media platforms and it's all automated. So, you know, we, we set it up and it's done and it's sorted and that the value provides greater value with the sort of less headache, less decline in energy and all of that stuff. And I just, I just thinking of how many things in our life where, whether it is, you know, weight loss or something else, where a lot of people I work with, I, I'm very keen to get people to schedule what they do or the commitments they say they're going to make. Because unless something is scheduled, it might be something so basic where I'm talking or helping them with their sleep. And I say, right, so when, what time is this? And they say, what do you mean, what time is it? Well, it's got to be in the diary because you've got to schedule it. The whole, the whole next step, of course, of all of that is if you could automate it where you didn't even have to do the scheduling, it just happened. And I can totally buy into what you're saying that fundamentally the simplest way to bring some level of ease, but also to reduce a lot of stress is. And for anyone listening, yeah, maybe it does feel a bit uncomfortable to face your financial situation currently and to look at it, and part of the avoidance of doing that is you're associating more pain with looking at your money rather than just pretending it's kind of not there. But the consequences in terms of short, medium and long term pain are so much more severe that you just wake up and you realize there are all these strategies you can put in place. If only you've done 20 years, 10 years, five years earlier, wow, what a great position you could be in. And I take it that you probably agree with this. Lots of people get in the headspace of, and I've worked with people who've made lots of money in their lives and people having the thought that you have to make a lot of money to have a lot of money and that's actually very rarely the truth unless you get the other part of it right, which is understanding how well you save it and how well you keep it. And I know that you quoted Warren Buffett's line, which I've always loved as well, about paraphrasing about the don't save after you spend, spend after you've worked out to save. When you break that all down for people and try and simplify it, when people maybe are still feeling a bit resistant to change, do you ever talk to them about the long, the medium and long term consequences of not taking action now? And if so, what are the medium and long term consequences? Because I think people listening, if they hear what those are, might be thinking, well, actually, yes, it is uncomfortable to look at my situation, but it's much, much better than what the alternative is. So what are the medium and long term consequences of not doing some of this now?

Absolutely. I think inflation is one of the things that helps us paint the picture, and I think it's helped a lot of people wake up to the reality of their situation. Because here in the U.S. you know, inflation's hovering, I don't know, maybe around 7%. At the time of recording, it's been as high as 9% and May, you know, we don't know the future. No one has a crystal ball. So the reality is that is that in any given year, it's about 3% here in the States, historically, on average. And what that literally means is that your purchasing power is eroded by 3%. You lose 3% every single year. And so if people can begin to understand that reality, that begins to paint the problem for them in that, you know, for years in the States, you know, the savings rates for a savings account was, we would laugh, almost 0.1%. And so if your money is losing 3%, but putting it in a savings account is only gaining 0.1%, where does that leave you? You're still going backwards, right? So imagine, you know, extrapolating that problem over multiple decades and you're not, you know, growing any of your money along the way, then that puts you in a very tough position because here in the US we have what's called Social Security, which is not really intended to replace all of your income. It's only going to replace a fraction of your income in the long term. And so theoretically, if you don't ever invest or save enough money, then you will theoretically never retire and you'll have to work until the day that you die. And in the best case scenario, Maybe that's in your sleep on the last day you are physically capable of working. But for so many people, unfortunately that's not the reality. You know, health conditions deteriorate. You can be in a very, very tough predicament if you don't take the bull by the horn, so to speak, and begin to get your money right. But the good thing is, you know, through automation, through I think just this anti perfectionism mentality is if you just start smaller than you think. I love to use the analogy of like flossing, if maybe you're not a great flosser, you know, lowering the standard of success and say it's day one, I'm just going to floss one tooth. And it's silly, right? We laugh about it, but the reality is you get in there, this isn't so bad. I'm going to probably get all of your teeth lost right the first time. And so that's an easy way to incrementally build a habit. And if we can use automation to outsource the behavior needed to build these habits, then we're halfway there. And if we just take the second action and just start laughably smaller than we think when it comes to saving and investing literally maybe $10, maybe something like that to start out with. And then what I love to tell people to do is just to set a reminder on your smartphone.

Yeah.

Because we're drowning in to do's and tasks every single day. And so if you can outsource that as well, then the reminder kicks in maybe a month later and says maybe can we $15 this month?

Yeah.

And then slowly dial that up until you know, because we want to not experience the pain associated with adopting the new behavior. Ideally.

The thing you said about the flossing one tooth and it being laughably simple, it reminds me of a story, I think it was with the Lakers. I. No, it wasn't. It was basically one of the NBA teams in the, I think it must have been the early 90s or late 80s. They just lost in the NBA Finals the year before by one point. And the head coach the next year said to all the players, I want you all to improve by 50%. And they, they were sort of tanking at the beginning of the season. They were just doing terribly. And the head coach went to go and speak to someone and he said, I don't understand, I've asked them all to improve by 50% and we're playing worse. They're all playing terribly. So what's happened? And this person said to her coach, well, you've asked them to do more than they think they can do. And what that is is crossing their threshold of belief. They've it said so. And he said so just remind me, you lost, you lost the NBA final, but what, how much? They said one point. So they put in their blood, sweat and tears, and they lost by one point. And now you're asking them to improve by 50%. Again, it's just not going to happen. So he said he told the head coach, I want you to go back and apologize to all of them. I want you to apologize, say you should never have asked them to improve by 50%. Go in and say, I just want you to improve by 1%. I just need you, each of you, to improve by 1%. Okay, I'm not going to ask you to do more because I'm not sure if we can or if you can. And he said, imagine what that's like saying to a group of competitive athletes, I only need you to improve by 1% because I'm not going to ask you to do more. Because ultimately we're not sure if we can do that. At the moment, all these athletes are sitting around going, I can. What are you doing? Of course I can do that. And they all end up improving by 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10%. So that thing you're saying about making it laughably simple, but also for anyone listening, the part of that principle is people often set themselves targets where it's like, oh, I could do that. No, when I work with someone, I get them to set a target where they're 100% certain. Because confidence in taking action ultimately is just certainty, absolute. So not maybe I could do certainty until you can prove to me or prove to yourself that you can absolutely, absolutely do that on a consistent basis, then, then you can make decisions after that to get, get yourself moving. And I think especially in finance, the thing everyone's looking for is absolute certainty. Now, you don't have certainty in the markets, and this, this, this, you do have certainty in creating very simple small actions, presumably that at least get you moving and gets you more financially confident. Now, that's one principle you've spoken about, maybe increasing confidence in finances. Is there anything else you said about flossing one tooth? Is there anything else that can create the same level of certainty, some confidence that people might have about how they feel about money or how they understand money? Is there anything else that you would say is a good way to develop some confidence? Because I think people lack the certainty and confidence in Themselves, it might be. I don't understand this stuff, but do I trust myself to. To take some good action? So how can people maybe improve their confidence around money?

Absolutely. I think. I think education is what really breeds confidence around money, as understanding how it works. Some of the basics, and one that comes to mind is Parkinson's law. I'm sure you're familiar with the concept, and it's often applied to work. And Parkinson's law states that, you know, work expands to fill the time allowed. So if we've got two weeks to do a project, it'll take us two weeks. If we have one week to do the project, we're going to figure out how to get it done right. And I think in the same way, I like to think of money as like, this gas, this evaporating. If we just have. I call it like the slush fund. If you have a checking account and a savings account in the same bank, it's very hard to get clean, clear on what is going on and what's coming in and what's going out. You have a $5,000 income month or a $10,000 income month. Very difficult to discern how to manage that differently and what behaviors to take. And so I think by understanding that if I do nothing, the money will get spent. I think that's the basis of understanding to where you can begin to take different actions and shore yourself up. So, again, I think that to me, goes back to the separating the spending account, doing these things that behaviorally just make good behavior very easy, and the default versus, you know, in this other scenario, I've got to budget everything out to the penny. So I have some understanding of what's going in and what's required of me, you know, to get from this month to the next month without overdrafting or without, you know, going into the negative or anything like that. So I think that's where it really begins. And then just continuing to pull that thread of curiosity and beginning to learn more about money, about the markets, about ways that you can protect yourself and outsource different parts of your financial life to make these good behaviors easy and make better outcomes automated in my. In my experience.

So I'd like to. I'd like to touch on, go back to sort of your. Your personal experience with money and, you know, people. I remember Zig Ziglar once said, money won't make you happy, but everybody wants to find out for themselves. And, you know, money plays such an important part of the world, and there's sort of no point you know, ultimately you get to a certain amount of money and it doesn't continually increase your happiness, but everyone wants to get to a certain level so that they can live their life with a level of comfort. For you personally, Andy, you know, when we talk about money, people worry about deep down the effect has in their relationships, the effect it has on their health and the other consequences. How is your relationship with money understanding money better? How has that benefited you personally in terms of your health and your relationships with people?

Absolutely. I think stress reduction is the number one way that that's helped me personally. You see that I've got a lot of gray hair for a 38 year old. And I joked that that was when I was trying to cut my teeth as a financial advisor and kind of build this business from scratch and all of that. Two kids are certainly adding to it. But I think having the automation in place has allowed me to shift my focus. And so almost thinking of it from like a hierarchy of needs standpoint, you know, when our brains are bogged down, I mean, you think about like a Mark Zuckerberg or some of these tech CEOs that they wear the exact same thing every day because that decision fatigue is so painful that they want to free up any bandwidth they possibly can. And so I really think that the whole automating your money does that. And it really liberates you to get out of the granular day to day of just trying to survive and live, you know, one paycheck to the next, to being able to zoom out and think bigger picture of what else is possible, possible in your life as it relates to money. You know, maybe I don't have to take this job that is sucking my life away because I can afford to go to do something else. And so even in my own life, you know, I was in the corporate world for a long time in the personal, you know, financial services space. But I realized that I am fiercely independent and I want to do my own thing and I want to work for myself and all those things. So all of that has kind of culminated to affecting my life for the positive by making some of these changes by automating things, by, you know, knowing that. So I'll give a few examples from my personal life as a married person, especially that, you know, we've got, I mentioned the spending accounts almost ad nauseam, but we have this kind of joint account that takes care of our groceries and our kind of mostly our like day to day stuff, right? Groceries, going out to eat the toiletries and those kind of things that most of us have to buy in a given week. And just by knowing that that money is going to be there, you know, every week, that is, you know, threshold of stress. That is, I don't have to think about, I don't have to worry about the money is going to be there. And that enables us to just enjoy it and feel guilt free about these decisions as we make because we know that specifically as it relates to groceries. And I think going out to eat is a big problem for people that are maybe things are tight. You know, you want to go out to the restaurants and have a good time and not feel guilty. Like I'm putting this on a credit card, I'm going into debt for this and how am I going to pay this off or things like that. And so we just know that if we just do a good job at the grocery store, we're going to have some money left over and we're going to be able to go to eat and not feel guilty about it. And so that is just like one example. And then my wife and I have our own spending accounts that we're able to, you know, use that money how we see fit. For me, it's usually grabbing a drink with my friends or something like that and my wife will squirrel all of her money, money away and then end up going on a clothing shopping spree as it seems. But I think that just being able to know that the bills are going to be, if I do nothing, the bills are paid, our money is where it needs to be. Money is getting invested automatically, it's optimized for investing behavior and I can just go live my life and have these conversations with you and go do my day to day tasks and all of that is taken care of if I do nothing. So that has been an extremely liberating position for me personally.

What sort of, what sort of hobbies and things do you like to do? So now you've got that sort of level of liberation, freedom. You can go out on podcasts, you can, you can sort of share, you know, share maybe advice more widely with people, etc. What do you like to do outside of work?

Thank you. Yes, I feel like self improvement is my hobby. It feels like. So I'm in the gym, you know, ideally five days a week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, lifting weights. And then Tuesday, Thursday I'm on the bike for about 30min, just to kind of get out of my own head. Obviously, you know, I want to take care of my body as I'm, you know, getting older. And things like that. But man, I just know that the mental and emotional benefits of that are magnanimous for me personally and that enable me to, you know, continue to take other stresses down, to be present with my family and friends and things like that. So I love that I'm playing the drums probably every day if I can help it. Yeah. So that's been really fun. And if you're familiar with them from a productivity standpoint, like the Pomodoro technique of, you know, maybe working for 40 minutes and I'm. I'm sure I'm getting the numbers horribly wrong, but, you know, working for a chunk, taking a break. And so that's been, I add that into the mix and that's been really fun for me as having a creative outlet that happens to be a stress reducer because I'm, you know, banging these things really hard and that gets me excited. So that's most of it. But frankly, I'm working to grow my own business now and so that's that a big endeavor. I'm working certainly not eight hours a day, every day, but working about six days a week. And that's been a very good rhythm for me. Whereas when I was in corporate America, I could not wait to get out of the office. The second five o' clock came around and I'd be running to my car. But now I love what I do and I'm choosing to spend my free time learning and growing and, you know, educating myself on different marketing strategies or how to effectively communicate, you know, these concepts to help as many people as I possibly can. So not sure if that counts as a hobby, but I feel like that's my life right now.

Your hobbies are what you love to do, so. Absolutely. And I would love to hear if, if there's one that you can share with, with the relevant discretion, maybe a story of someone that you've been able to help them with their situation where, maybe where they started off, whether it's an individual company or whoever started off in a particular predicament, particular situation with certain sets of fears and anxieties and stresses and how actually they'll be able to turn some of that around into a position where, as you said, it did for you, remove some of that stress. You, you knew your money is optim. Optimized that someone that you've worked with where we could really connect and relate to that story of someone you've been able to help turn around. Is there one that you could springs to mind for you?

Absolutely. So I've got A guy that. So I play drums at my church here locally and we've got a handful of musicians that are on rotation. And so I ended up working with a guy here that he plays guitar. And ultimately he's a single guy. He's got some debt. He had at the same time squirreled away a good chunk of savings. And oftentimes, at least, you know, a lot of financial people will say, well, hey, that's a complete waste of time. And if you've got all this money in savings, but you're paying 20% in interest on a credit card, then it doesn't make sense and you need to just liquidate your savings and pay off all the debt. Right. And so I think he really wrestled with this concept because that money was security to him specifically. And he, I think like most of us have kind of the, you know, one checking account, everything's all commingled and you don't know what's what. And so in working with him over several weeks and months, we were able to help separate and parse these things out to where he had more clarity. We did take a chunk of the savings to pay down some debt, give a little more breathing room. But he tapped me on the shoulder the last time we played together to say that he had a few thousand dollars accumulated by no extra effort on his part. And he's play some as a side musician and some other bands and things like that in addition to his normal job. But we kind of set up a, you know, a business account for this kind of side hustle, if you will, and set it up in a way to where once certain income comes in, you're paying yourself a salary that then automatically goes into the rest of your kind of personal financial system. And so in doing so with no additional effort, no need for that perfect behavior, he realized, oh, I've got a few thousand dollars saved without any effort. And to me that was a very eye opening moment to see kind of that stress go down for him that I didn't have to like work harder or sometimes in American culture we talk about like I'll just hustle harder.

Yeah.

And oftentimes that's not the remedy that people need.

That last point you just made. Absolutely. I used to. Maybe you felt the same at one point in my, in my twenties I would. Well so the, my early twenties, I probably three or four or five years would. I was working corporate affairs and I do the eight hours at work. But I knew ultimately the business I have now, I wanted to build that. So I do eight hours when I got home as well. And that was pretty much every single day for maybe four or five years. Then I had to eventually pull back a little bit because it was too much, but it was still ridiculous amounts of hours. Just because everything you read and see online is grind, Hustle, this, that and the other. At the end of the day, if you are, if your energy level is down at 50% and the reality isn't many of us aren't even anywhere near 100% anyway, so down at 10%, then the, the how much longer it takes you to do everything, how much less enjoyable it all is, how much, how poor the execution then is, it just takes longer. It doesn't make any, it doesn't make any sense. But we have such a desperation for that instant gratification. So we do things at a speed and a pace which is either unsustainable or also just leads to bad performance and you won't get the results anyway. Well, until I slowed the whole thing down that actually I thought there's not so much that needs to be done here. So what you're saying that in that story and changing some of those beliefs a little bit and helping, you know, letting the money do the work, essentially, you realize you don't have to constantly work hard. Really, really, you know, well over the top, too hard all the time. And all the people who post Hustle and things like that on social media, you know, they posted it and then a lot of them are just, they're not, they're not even hustling, you know, their team is hustling for them or, or they're not in that moment, work, whatever. So it is a very good point you just made. And I want people to listen to that, which is say, you know, you work smart, but much more important is having the requisite energy level with enough sleep and well hydrated, good diet. You work out pretty much every day. So do I. And getting those foundations right, because it just allows you to do things slower, more simply and then actually improve the execution of the whole thing. And ironically you get things done quicker. So I really like that point.

Yes.

Before I get onto what, maybe this is my final question I wanted to ask you today. I appreciate you sharing that story. So I know that you have a very simple course that people can use to take some of these sort of foundational, foundational principles that we've spoken about today, but that they can actually do it for themselves so they don't have to sort of worry about having long conversations. They don't have to worry about someone trying to explain things in huge amounts of detail. There's someone out there who's trying to some, you know, somewhat democratize the whole thing and make it more accessible and available to people. So I know you've got your sort of automatic money flow sort of process. I know you've got automaticmoney flow.com as well where people can learn more. Can you just tell us a little bit more about what that course looks like and why you put it together?

Absolutely. Thank you for that. I put it together because I feel like these things can be easier than people think. And I spent, you know, spun my wheels for years and years, as I mentioned, kind of doing the budgeting and like looking for the perfect solution to this problem that I was having of I had what I thought all the head knowledge in the world, you know, from being in financial services for a decade, from reading everything I could, from blogs to pot, you know, podcasts, YouTube, going down every rabbit hole I could find to learn everything about money and feeling like something was missing that my own behavior wasn't matching with my learning and feeling like budgeting was that squeaky wheel that was holding me back or just making it extremely painful to the point where I would have like, chest pains and I would be like, super stressed out at the thought of like, okay, I've got to try to find another budgeting solution and maybe this one will work for me. So I say that to say, you know, I kind of created it for young Andy. And I think so many people can resonate with this feeling of like, I want to get it together. I know that I should be doing something different. You know, we don't have to have it perfect, but just finding a way to kind of get ahead with money. And so I've just discovered over time that automation really does make this so much easier. And the barrier to entry is so low. I mean, everyone has an online checking account these days, right? You can set up a few transfers and kind of get on with it, but you don't have to have a master's level understanding of personal finance to get ahead, you know, investing all these democratization of these things is becoming more and more available. Sometimes the hardest part is finding one place to kind of get all the information you need to make those changes. So long winded answer. But that's the reality. I think so many people have the capacity, whether they believe it about themselves or not, they absolutely have the capacity to be really good with money if they have the right systems in place. And I'll end with this quote from James Clear, who wrote Atomic Habits that, you know, people don't rise to the level of their goals, they fall to the level of their systems. And I think with money that's absolutely, absolutely the case.

Yeah, I think that is the perfect quote for, for what we're describing in this situation. So thank you for that. So before I get to my final question, so automatic money flow.com if anyone to wants, wants to get in contact with you, Andy, where's the best place for them to reach you?

Absolutely. You can go to the homepage which is andyhoffman me. That's Andy H O F F M A N me. All the social links there are at the bottom. You can certainly shoot me an email at hi D. Hoffman Me absolutely love to connect with you there.

Fantastic. Okay, so final thing I'd like to ask you, so when I speak with people, very common question or thing I want them to think about is when you. I tell this story of, you know, two boys growing in poverty and they see a sign on a post and it says, if you want to be a great leader, meet me at the beach at 5am tomorrow. So they both go to the beach at 5am and elderly woman walks over and says, you both here to be great leaders? And they say yes. And she goes to the first boy, okay, I want you to walk as far down the beach as possible. So he starts walking and he walks about two miles, does pretty well. And then he's exhausted and he says, he says, the woman, you know, why are we doing this? I don't understand the point of it. I'm tired, I'm exhausted. And she goes, no, keep walking. He's going, no, but you're not telling me why we're doing this. And they get into an argument. He goes, no, screw this. And he goes home. So she goes to the second boy, goes back to the star and says, the second boy, I want you to walk as far down the beach as possible. So he walks about a mile and then collapses in exhaustion. And he says, I, I can only walk a mile. I'm tired, I'm exhausted. I couldn't even walk as far as the other boy. So how am I ever going to be a good leader? She said, no, just keep going. She draws a line in the sand in front of him and she just says, what are you going to do now? He gets up, he takes 10 more footsteps and then collapses in exhaustion again. And he says, I don't understand. What is the point of all this? And she said, I wanted to know, at the moment you collapse in exhaustion, and I drew that line in front of you, what are the footprints? You're going to leave them. I don't care how far you walked in the first place. I wanted to see, when you're exhausted, how many footprints you're going to leave there for other people to follow. Point of making. And the question I want to get to is at some point we leave footprints for various people, and those people are going to look at those footsteps and try and follow them, and we get to decide what those footsteps ultimately are for people, whether it's now or much later in our life. So, Andy, what footprints do you ultimately want to leave for other people, do you think?

Powerful question. I think that you are capable of doing more with your money than you ever thought possible. And thankfully, the heavy lifting can be taken by the robots. You know, you don't have to have it all figured out. You don't have to be perfect. You don't have to have the perfect financial plan, but you can leverage this tool called money via automation and live a life that you maybe didn't think was possible if you set things up the right way. So that's kind of my battle cry. That's what I'm hoping to put out in the world and inspire other people to live the life that they truly dream about.

That's great. Andy, thank you very much for your time today.

Thank you, David.