USE THIS Mindset To Achieve FINANCIAL FREEDOM! | Ryan Lee

Everyone comes to me and they ask me, what's my best investment? I mean, I hear that question so much, and if you're asking that question, you're asking the wrong question, because your best investment is you.

We always have such a great time. Anytime we connect. It doesn't matter if it's through Instagram or Facebook or whatever, we always have such a blast. And I think it's because you and I both had the quote, unquote, GED death sentence, right?

Yeah, we did.

Everybody told us we were going to be failures. Everybody told us we were going to fall off the deep end, but yet we've done okay for ourselves. Yeah, right. How did you make the switch yourself? What, what, what happened with you that actually caused that switch to kind of go from one mindset to the other?

You know what, that's, that's a great question, man. I think some of my greatest strengths are also my greatest weaknesses. I'm a stubborn guy, right? And when I get my mindset on something, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna do it. And even if it hurts, I'm gonna do it. And you know, I dropped out of high school just because I was a knucklehead. I was stubborn in the wrong direction, right? And, you know, it took me a couple of years to get my life figured out, but when I did, you know, all of the social conditioning that we all get, you know, it was programmed in there and I didn't even question it once I started to turn my life around and it was go to school, get a job, and, you know, everything's going to work out. And, you know, I found out I couldn't really go to school without a high school diploma. So I went, I did that super quick, got the little certificate, and then I found out my GED didn't count because I'd missed so much, you know, so many years. So I went and did under, like, under whatever, 99 level classes in junior college. College. But, you know, I went, I went to school without even thinking about it. And, you know, I landed in the corporate world bright eyed, you know, star starry eyed and ready to go. And man, just experience after experience there led me to really discover that that wasn't the path for me. It wasn't that it was wrong, it wasn't that, you know, it wasn't maybe good. I just, I couldn't be stuck. I couldn't have a, you know, a ceiling put on me. And so, you know, I really started to work my way out of that situation and a Lot of that just required me to challenge the beliefs that I was operating with, those limiting beliefs that put me in that situation. I had to break them and I had to adopt new beliefs. And that's really how the journey started for me.

Yeah, I love that. You know, one thing I want to maybe kind of circle back to, because we kind of glanced over it just now. It's a great, you know, great, great lesson. But there are a lot of people right now who are doing things that they don't love doing. They're going to jobs that they hate or they're not taking daily steps towards really what. What I would dare say is their calling. Right, Right. They're calling in their heart that the thing that, you know, God put them on this earth to do. Right.

How does someone actually get the courage to walk away from the comfortability of one thing, even though it's, you know it, and set out and do the unknown?

You know what, man? I don't know if there's a right way for every single person, but I think there's a few key steps. Right. You know, I've spoken with thousands of people over the years, and one of the main questions I ask them when we talk about money is, what do you want? And that sounds like a simple question to you and me because we've spent a lot of time on what we want. When I ask this to other people, I mean, with almost without exception, they can't tell me what they want. They can only tell me what they don't want. And that's a very difficult place to be because you operate out of pain, you operate out of scarcity, you operate out of limited vision of what's possible for your life. And so it's fine if you. You start in that position, but you have to start. And starting means doing things that get you uncomfortable, doing new things, starting to ask yourself and not let yourself off the hook because your ego, your subconscious is going to, like, beat the heck out of you saying, what are you doing? That's crazy. That's risky. Don't go that direction. You're safe over here. Right. And so you're going to have to start to test your limits and start to open up this curiosity again. As kids, we have this unlimited curiosity, but somewhere along the line, life, the world, profession, the corporate world, whatever it is, it beats it out of us, and we have to open that back up. So I think I'm a big believer in dreaming. I'm a big believer in meditating. I'm a big believer in Aspiring to be like people that I admire and not just saying, oh, they must be lucky. So those kind of things open up the possibility that maybe my life is meant for more.

Yeah, no, I love that. You know, when I think back to my journey, one of the things I think that you and I love to talk about is the just how similar some of the journey aspects are. But, you know, I think back to my journey, there was like. There wasn't one, like, really massive. Aha. Yeah, there was a bunch of micro aha's along the way. And I know one of your ahas came from a lunch lady. I love your lunch lady story. You got to share it with the audience, dude.

Well, you know, I love that you say those little mini ahas, you know, because I think those mini ahas, they'll build and they'll build and they'll build. And if you don't get the lessons, sometimes life will smack you down.

Yeah, yeah.

You got to learn it the hard way. But if you listen to those little ahas, you know, you can start to incrementally course correct and incrementally start going the right way. So, you know, for me, it's funny, I don't know how to cook anything. Like, when I. When I dropped out of high school, I moved out of my house at 15, and I was so excited that I got to eat Captain Crunch for dinner. And that was about what I ate Captain Crunch and Whoppers for like five years.

I had hot dogs and macaroni and cheese myself.

But, you know, so bad. I mean, through your teenage years, it's not so good right now, but, you know, but when I went to school, I went to school for like a management degree because I thought, man, that's how I'm going to make money. And I landed in the corporate world, you know, managing K through 12 school district food service programs. And it was so crazy, I didn't know what the heck to do or how to do it. But, you know, it was a really good learning opportunity for me. And I'll never forget, you know, when I got my first big promotion, I took over my first big account at DFW and I was managing over 100 people. I was like 18 months out of college and it was a big account to take over. And I remember, you know, I was making like $40,000. And the people I was managing, like, we're making twice, three times as much as me. And when. When the. When my manager brought me in, when my district supervisor brought me in, she's like, okay, hey, you're going to. We're going to give you six months, right? And if you can't do the job in six months, you're out. But we're not raising you until you prove you can do the job. And so six months later, I was doing the job. And I remember we met and we started talking, and, you know, I felt like I needed more and I wanted more. I wanted to be compensated more, but I wanted more out of the position as well. I wanted her to let go and let me just, you know, kind of run it. And, you know, we were talking about money, and I remember she asked me, ryan, what do you want? And I remember I didn't really think about it, but I just responded, I want to be happy. And she's like, cut the crap. How much money do you want to make? And at that point, right then, like, it was a real big lesson for me that in. In, you know, a lot of times in professional world, in the corporate world, it's all about the money. And if you're not really careful, you will start to sacrifice what you truly care about, what you truly want, for money. And the dangerous, slippery slope for a lot of people is it's this idea that one day, one day when you have enough money, then you can go back and figure your life out. But I've seen it so many times, and it happened. That's really what led me down my path. I was losing everything I cared about in the pursuit of money and in the. In the hope of one day. And so that was kind of the big one of the big wake, little teeny wake up calls for me that started shifting my mindset around, what do I really want and how do I build a life fueled by money that helps me live a life that I want, not wait for one day?

Yeah. You know, I'm glad you said that, because, you know this. It's funny, as I listen to you talk more and more, always get fired up as we talk. But, you know, one of the things that keeps coming up is this question. What do you want? What do you want? What do you want? You've basically said it literally and then figuratively, like six times already, and we're barely ten minutes in. Right.

So much for me of discovering what I wanted came down to the people I was listening to. Right. And I would dare say that the people that I was listening to when I wasn't able to climb out of my own junk, were broke, broken, and bullheaded.

Yeah.

Why on earth do we listen to Bad advice from people when we know it's bad advice?

Yeah, man, that's such a good question. You know, we've kind of taken that in the financial space that we operate in. You know, people ask us, they, you know, want to compare us for us, you know, us to them and this guy and that credential and all this kind of stuff. And my number one question back to that person is, hey, you're. I don't care what credentials the person has. All you need to ask your financial advisor is, are you financially free?

Yeah.

Like, if that's not the answer, why are you taking advice from that person? Right. And so I don't know why we do that. I think it's comfortable for us because people that are in our same, you know, economic, you know, environment, they're in our same political environment, whatever, we believe that they're not really going to challenge us. And it's uncomfortable to be challenged. Like, dude, it's really meant some of the mentors that you hang out with, you know, the mentors that I hang out with, yeah, it's. It's kind of. I get the tingles when I'm around. They make me uncomfortable because of who they are, how they live, you know, the profits that they generate in their business, the value that they create, the teams that they manage. It makes me uncomfortable and that uncomfortable. You know, that uncomfortability, you know, if you're not careful, will cause you to shrink back into what is comfortable or it'll cause you to level up.

Yeah, I mean, I've always said that principles govern promises. And I think the biggest difference between.

Where you are today and where you are tomorrow is the principles that you use to get there and to kind of guide you down that road. You know, I think there's this, this misnomer, if you will, that you have to be 75 years old before you can retire or be financially free. That you're supposed to go punch a clock somewhere, take whatever they give you, regardless of whether or not the organization cares about you or not. Thank God there are organizations, hopefully like mine, that care about the team that's there. But then at the end of the day, you go home, you're depleted, you're exhausted, your relationships begin to suffer, you're not really connected to your kids. And the next thing you know, a decade has passed and you're in the exact same place as you were 10 years prior.

Yeah.

Break free from the financial. The financial bondage.

I mean, you get into a rut, right? I mean, you develop this habitual behavior that you do, those things that you just talked about, and before you know it, you don't even think about it. That's just how you operate. That's how you wake up. That's the way you drive to work. It's the way you act when you come home. I'm sure there's other ways to do it. You know, I've seen people have life just crash down on them, and in a moment they change their perspective overnight. Near death experience, sickness or whatever it might be. The way I found to do it was take my life back. And that sounds like easy, but it's. That's really difficult. And so the way I shifted it. And I bet you have the same thing, Steven. And I bet every person you follow has the same thing. I had to start winning the day before the day even started. And that was my path to taking my life back. I would wake up earlier and I would say, look, I want to be healthy. And, you know, up to this point, I was trading all this time. I would wake up, I'd hit the snooze button, I'd hit the snooze button till I had to get up. I'd eat something crappy. I'd get on the road, I'd be stuck in traffic by the time I got home. I wasn't ready to work out and be healthy. But if I started that in the morning and I started working out and being healthy in the morning, I got my mind right or I got my body right, and then after that, I got my mind right and I put information in my head that would help me get to the next destination that I wanted to get to inside of my life. I started elevating my mindset so my body, my mindset. I started praying again. I started, you know, connecting with a bigger vision for me and my family. I started leaving notes for him. I started tapping in and making deposits in those accounts and. And I started the journey of becoming financially free. And I remember, you know, I call. I still practice this today. I call it my freedom power hour. Now it's expanded to a couple of hours, but if I can take one hour a day and if you just, you know, add that up over a month, over a year, at the end of one year, it's like I lived one extra month, one complete extra month I spent working towards a life that matters to me. I mean, if you start adding that up over a decade, over two decades, like your. Your life starts to radically change because you take it back and the Cool thing, you know? Once my power hour was done, it was hard to close the computer and shut down my side hustle. It was hard to put down the book that I was reading that was helping me start a business. It's hard to do those things. Yeah. But I felt like I'd won. And no matter what came at me at the rest of the day, whether it was good or bad, whether it was a corporate, like, onslaught, I had to go to meetings, whatever it was, yeah. At least behind me, I had this momentum because, man, I won the day. And if I can do that one day, two days, a week, a month, I start to get into a sense of momentum where rather than it being my DNA, that I'm just going to wait for one day, I become the person. One step at a time.

Yeah, you know, it's. That's so good because, you know, I did a store. I was trying to. The team's got me doing more Instagram stories now. You may have seen a few of them recently. I'm trying, I'm trying to.

Camera man, you're.

I appreciate that. I'm trying. I'm trying to figure out my way. Right. My team was like, yeah, this, this, this video is really good. I'm like, okay, great. And they're like, what are you doing? I'm like, just trying to be me, but I'm talking to myself. Talking to myself. But anyway, you know, in doing so, there's been this.

Piece of mindset, and whether people realize or not, you just gave them a masterclass on mindset, like starting your day. And one of the principles that I've been trying to get them to govern. Right. To take ownership of is get your butt out of bed. Start off with some prayer meditation. For God's sakes. Be thankful and grateful when you first walk out of the. Ask for good things to come, your direction. Ask for opportunities to be of service to others, and then get your butt to the gym. Right? Gym, yoga, whatever your stick is, right?

Dr. Justin, just get moving.

Blood flow helps, dopamine hits, serotonin rises. All that good stuff. And it was crazy because, in fact, I've gotten in trouble for this. Apparently, I'm accidentally roasting them on stories as well, because for a week, everybody shows up at 5am we're all working out, we're all getting it. And then about four days in, you know, one person's missing. Seven days in, two people are missing, 10 days in, everybody's missing. Right? And I think literally right now, I've got one person that's actually been consistent.

Yeah.

And so much of it is starting what you, starting with the mindset and when the, with the intentions that you just set out and actually just being consistent. You know, I want to jump into the financial stuff, but I think this mind thing, it controls how you handle everything.

That's where it starts, man. You know what I always tell people is, look, everyone comes to me and they ask me what's my best investment? I mean, I hear that question so much and if you're asking that question, you're asking the wrong question. Because your best investment is you. It's you. And it starts with you thinking and acting like a producer. A producer that will produce results, that will create the reality that you want, that will, you know, become relentless. And those things aren't easy. You have to develop those just like a muscle, you have to exercise them over and over and over and develop consistency. You know, one of the things that's been key for me over the years, especially when it comes to waking up early, is having an accountability partner. Right. There's, there's mornings that I don't want to get up. I know what my vision is, I know what my goals are and I'm really motivated when I go to bed at night and then I wake up in the morning, like, ah.

It'S too early, it's still dark outside. Right. But having an accountability partner, I know that person's either going to be at the gym or going to come pick me up or I have to go do the same for that person. That's massive. Right? Because then I, I think we're easy, we let ourselves off the hook pretty easy, but it's harder for us to let someone else down. So. Right. Get other people involved in your journey. I'm a very visual person. You know, I think a lot of times we lose sight of what our goals are. They're fuzzy, they're ill defined. So define your goals. And you know, man, I know some people like to have these really big visions. I like those as well. But I like to define goals that I can see relatively good. Right? Yeah. I mean, I don't know what's going to happen 10 years from now. I have a general fuzzy idea of the direction I'm going, but I have a pretty good idea of what my life can look like in 90 days. So set something that's close enough to my current reality that I can actually see myself making progress mentally towards that new reality 90 days from now. And so setting short range targets, focusing on you being the Producer getting help. Like, you don't. You're not on this journey alone. There's other people out there, I guarantee you, that want to elevate the quality of their life, and they feel alone. Find that person and elevate, rise together.

Yeah, I love that because you're. You know, what you're talking about is, like, the mist. Right. So I. One of the things that I've been sharing with my team is like, all right, what's your. What. Where are you at six months from now? Because you can see that pretty clearly. Where do you think you'll be at 12 months from now? Still pretty clearly past that. It gets further and, like, foggier and foggier and foggier. And 10 years from now, dude, I never thought 10 years ago that I would be standing on stage, speaking at places or writing books or being on camera or doing any of this stuff.

Right.

And I know you didn't either, probably.

No.

You know, so I think that. I think that's so pillar. But I want to jump into financial stuff here in just a second. I got one more question on this whole mindset.

Questions. Because I really believe, like, dollars follow value. If you can become a person of value, if you can, and value starts with you rising. Like, I can't help someone if I'm on a lower level than that person. I have to raise my level of expertise, my level of ability, my level of confidence. People can see confidence. They can feel it. Do you have a palpable energy when you come into the room? If so, people are going to gravitate towards you. If not, if you're. If you're uncomfortable in your own skin, if you're, you know, sad, if you're, you know, obsessively tired, if you're grumpy, like, no one's going to gravitate towards that. So become a person of value. That makes your financial life so much easier, because then learning how to keep the money and turn it into cash flow, that's honestly pretty simple. It's trying to figure out how to get yourself in gear and start making money with the value that you create.

Yeah. And then you brought in the accountability side of things. So here's. Here's where I think people are getting some stuff wrong. They choose the wrong person to be the accountable person.

Yeah.

It's kind of like. It's kind of like learning from the broke doctor. Right. How to practice for 20 years. Spent all the money he had, and he's trying to give you financial advice.

Yes.

How are you how are you, or maybe how or in what way do you choose your accountability partner? What is your. What is your filtering mechanism?

Man, that's such a good, Such a good thing. I love that. And you hit the nail on the head when you were talking about your team. Um, if my accountability partner does not have a vision, then they shouldn't be my accountability partner. Right. I mean, what are they working towards? Because they might be motivated in the moment, but motivation has a battery life. And that might last a day, a week or a month maybe. But after the motivation fades, what is the thing that's actually driving you? And so I can see 90 days out, I can see six months out. 12 months out is close enough that I can see it. So any. Every accountability partner that I've had, we've set, clearly define goals together. And it's not just financial goals. It's, you know, what books are we reading? How do we report back to each other? What, you know, are we going on date night with our. With our spouses? Right. Are we actively making proactive deposits in the lives of our children? Are we saving the money that we need to be saving to hit the financial goals? What's our business revenue? I love having an accountability partner that I can check in and say, hey, you said you were going to do xyz. Not just the gym, but you said you're going to do xyz. Did you do it now? What happens? Why? Why not? And if that's consistently doesn't happen, that's probably not the right accountability partner. Because if they can't live it, they can't hold me accountable. If I can't live it, I can't hold them accountable.

Well, what if they're doing the things that you've asked them to do with accountability means that whatever commitment they've made as a group, they're doing that. But you find out that they're maybe being unfaithful or find out they're doing some shady business practice.

Yeah.

Do you break ties or do you keep ties?

Man, I would, you know, because like you said, you are the average of the people that you hang out with. And man, I, I remember, you know, I told you I dropped out of high school, and when I finally started getting my life back on track, I, like, I traced my life back to the exact moments when I made the first decision that got me in trouble. And it was in third grade. And it was crazy tracing it back because, like, I'll never, ever forget, we moved from California to Utah. We moved into a New neighborhood. And I wanted to be popular, right? And I remember in third grade. This is third grade, dude. But I want. There was two guys, Cody and Chris. And I wanted to hang out with Cody and Chris. And these guys, they were hellions, they were rebels, they were tough dudes. But I wanted to hang out with them. And for third grade I did it. For fourth grade, for fifth grade I did. And I remember one day I was out in the backyard with my dad and he was building a dog house. And Cody and Chris, you know, someone was coming to pick me up so I can go hang with them. And my dad said something to me. He's like, ryan, you've got to start being very careful who you hang out with. Like, these guys are a bad influence on you. And I was like, ah, you don't know what you're talking about. About. Yeah, man. I'll never forget in junior high, like, I kept thinking I could be close, but I didn't have to cross the line. I didn't have to do the things they were doing. I just be close to him. But in junior high, I fell off the rails. And I remember when I did it, like the first time, like, it just happened without thinking about what I had just done. And after that point, like, I had a choice. Do I want to give everything up or am I just going to let go and go all in and man, for junior high, to be in a sophomore in high school, man, my life just went down, down, down until I dropped out. It does come by who you hang out with. Your association matters big time.

Yeah, I mean, my story is very, very similar. Ultimately, that led me to being homeless and stuff like that is being around the wrong people, listening to the wrong ideas and doing the wrong things. Yes. And then not having the. I myself had a high sense of pride that kept me from having my quote, unquote, humbling moment. I could have gotten started earlier, not had to go through that suffering. And one of the reasons I wanted to bring that up is because a lot of the folks that are now that are watching and listening to the show on a regular basis, Right. We used to be 30 years old, up to like 50 years old. And they used to be like the sweet spot. We're dipping down to 16 years old now. Right. The people that we used to be. Right, right. So we're now talking to them saying, hey, look, you might not be listening to mom and dad, you might not be listening to your aunt, your uncle, but here's something. Here's something that's Legitimate. We did stupid. It cost us zeros in time. Don't do it that way.

Yeah, no doubt. Zeros. Lots of time. And, man, as I look back at some of those early friends that I hung out with, I mean, Cody and Chris, you know, one of them's dead, and I don't know where the other one is now, but, you know, look, as I look back at those people, the ones who didn't learn the lessons, at some point, their lives continue to go down, or they're in that rut that they just not going to escape from. And the only way. The only way. When I decided to change my life, man, it was crazy, Steven. Like, I had a very, very crazy thing that happened to me, and it caused me to question everything I was doing. And the next morning I woke up and I was like, I'm done. And I moved out of the house that I lived in. I stopped dating the girl I was dating. Like, everything stopped for me. Like, it just stopped. I had to make a 180 because I couldn't be close to that life and. And get the things I wanted out of it.

Yeah. Yeah. I think we all had the catalyst moment where ultimately you've gone off course enough times, where you finally get to a point where it's like, either you're gonna choose life, you're gonna choose death, in many respects.

Love that. Yep.

You know, I want to go ahead and. Let's go ahead and pivot the money, Right. How many people lost a ton of money in the 401k market and the Wall street area? Right. Lots of people have lost money, made money, lost money, but mainly lost money.

Yeah.

Why is Wall street maybe not the best way to invest?

Man, I tell you what, it's. It's again, that social conditioning, like the. Like the. The numbers are so evident. Like, you can look everywhere online and see case study after case study, professional report after professional report. Ted, what's his name? Oh, gosh. Who's the guy that invented Wife just forgot. I think it's Ted Bana. But like, the guy who invented the 401k says it's his biggest regret of his entire life because it literally destroying and ruining the average American today.

Wow.

So it's this. It's. It's like the matrix that you can't see anything other because, like, that's what people are told to do. And going away from that is considered.

Risky and a faux pas and a football.

It is, man. And, you know, I think the greatest risk of all is being stuck in average because here's the crazy part about the markets, right? I mean, if we're talking to people that are, that you attract, these are goal oriented people, they want more for their life. But if you look at how the stock market works, the stock market is based on one thing, average. Everything that is reported, measured and defined inside of the stock market is average. And if you want to beat the average, it's, hey, maybe I work with this guy or maybe I do this thing and I beat the average plus one. But at the end of the day, if you go from 5% to 6%, 6% to 7%, does it matter? No, it doesn't matter that, you know, you can't do average and expect to get extraordinary results. In order to get extraordinary results, you have to look at the average and you have to walk away from what I call the cult of the average and do the exact opposite. And if we take our finance hat off for a moment, look at everyone that's successfully financially everyone, they've all done the exact opposite. You know, Warren Buffett, Warren Buffett doesn't buy mutual funds and doesn't invest in 401k. Warren Buffett buys companies, companies that he can control and that he can generate profitability from. So, you know, it's really just this mindset of average versus extraordinary. And.

The difference and the distance between those two is getting more and more pronounced every single year.

Well, so if we know what we shouldn't be doing or, you know, because I have, I would say that, you know, I'm fairly financially independent as you are. You know, I don't have a ton in the stock market. I'm not trying to game the system and make money on, was it GameStop or whatever the hot thing is this week. I've watched more people lose more money thinking they're about to hit it big and have some kind of get rich quick kind of thing, rather than an actual strategy, an actual process to get there. So if that's the wrong way, what's the right way?

I love that, man. And I'll ask you this, like, if you could look at your life and say from front to back, when you got into the game of money, right? From investing to working for money to running a business, what has been your greatest investment of money and time?

My greatest investment of money and time, as far as a positive return would be myself and my businesses.

Boom. That's it right there. That is the game of investing. And so here's the reality, guys, when you invest. So we call this the Core 4 anytime you invest, you have to look at that investment and increase two things within the investment and decrease two things within the investment. Okay. The first thing you have to increase is your level of control. Stephen, how much control do you have over yourself and over your business?

I would dare say pretty close to 100%, because I would say my biggest financial mistake is spending money on stuff that didn't make me money.

Heck yeah. So you control it. If you're, if you have a losing month or a down month, you can come in and say, hey, we're course correct and we're going this way. Right. So increase your control. You then have to increase your return. But on the flip side of that, you have to decrease your risk. And the best part about that, at production, when you're producing, you sit at the center of that. If I want to increase my return and decrease my risk, I have to develop mindset skill sets in a network. I have to put better people around me. I have to develop a better, stronger mindset and better skill sets to increase my return and decrease my risk. And last but not least, the biggest destroyer of wealth is tax. Period. And if I make money and then I put it in a place where it's going to be taxed today or taxed in the future, I've got a big problem, right? And so when we look at investing, I think the best thing you can invest in is your, yourself, your ability to produce and make money. Then the next thing you need to do is just figure out how to keep it, keep the money you make. Because I see so many entrepreneurs who get good at making money and then they're really good at losing it, Right? They make money and it lives in their business bank account. They think they're rich and then they dump it all in their business. They weren't careful enough and then they lose it. Or they listen to their brother in law and they go put it in some, you know, whatever newest stock or.

They buy some fancy sports car they really can't afford yet.

Yeah. And so it's this constant roller coaster of making money and losing money. So make money, keep it, keep the money that you make and then turn it into cash flow. One of the biggest challenges with people in the game of money. You got it right there.

You guys didn't see that because he was talking cash flow. Shirt courtesy of Mr. Lee.

Yes, yes. And here's the reality. Like you have to, you have to have a way to define are you winning or losing in your financial gain. And most people look at their traditional 401k or their IRA or their markets. And there's money in that account. Whether it's going up or going down is somewhat irrelevant, but there's money in that account. And I would dare say we all want the same thing. At the end of the production road, we all want to be able to own our time. And whether we want to call it retirement or financial freedom, it doesn't matter. We want our time.

Yeah.

If you have a bucket of money, unless you know how much cash flow that bucket of money is going to generate for you and how long it's going to last and how predictable it is, then you're never free. And so if you're measuring your success based on traditional average standards, which is net worth, you're always stuck. You're always scratching your head saying, I don't know if I can retire or not. I don't know if I'm close enough. I don't know if I'm winning or losing. But when you start basing it off cash flow, it starts to narrow your focus to say, okay, I'm making money, I'm keeping it, and I'm investing in an assets that I have control over and that are generating me a predictable stream of cash flow month over month.

Yeah, I want to go back to taxes for just a second because obviously things are changing in the economy. Right. There's a lot more conversation about raising taxes on quote, unquote, the wealthy, because we. Because people that are wealthy don't deserve it. Which hurts my feelings given how far, how hard I fricking worked and how. Right. And I want to hit that really hard because some of the audience has been skewing a little bit down into the early teenage years, because what they. What they hear a lot is we're going to get all this tax money from all the wealthy people, these evil people. We're going to get their money, and then we're going to help you have all these different programs with all this different money that we get. So I want to kind of just break it down from my perspective. I want to hear your thoughts. So my thought is this. If my tax rate goes from roughly 50% of my income, so for every dollar that, like, imagine if you're a dishwasher working at Chili's, okay. And you're making 10 bucks an hour, and you had my tax rate, okay. My. My state and federal tax rate combined. Right. Not too far off from 50% nowadays.

Yeah.

That means that every hour that I make, I'm not actually making $10 an hour. I'm making $5 an hour. Okay, now let's imagine that I had a bunch of that. Let me. I'll fast forward to the CEO suite seat. So I'm sitting in the CEO seat, okay. And my net income is whatever it is that year or net worth changes year to year based on your investments and whatnot. But let's say that. Okay, well, that's. Okay. Well, now I want to go to 70% tax rate. Well, because if you could do 70% tax rate combined again, state and federal. If we do that, then we're going to have more money for more programs. And the wealthy people, they don't need it because they're evil anyway. So that's bad. They're bad people. Right. Well, then you take that methodology and then you apply that. The question I asked, that I've literally asked myself, because the fact that my tax rate has been what it had been for the last several years behind, behind us, allowed me to hire more people, allowed me to give more people a better opportunity to better their lives. Right. Open up positions, be able to offer a little bit more than the market is typically paying for that position on a consistent basis. As my tax rate increases, my cash flow decreases. And as my cash flow decreases, the amount of money I'm able to invest in my team and other things is drastically reduced.

Okay?

Which means for me, high tax rates equal low employment. Right. I can't help the people I used to give because now I'm giving money that someone else didn't earn to someone that didn't earn it for them to go blow it. Which really bothers me as an entrepreneur who's worked my ever loving butt off. Right. I'm still working 14 hours a day. Now, granted, I don't know how not to. Right. But I'm still in that zone. So as I look at that tax side of things, it makes me want to pull back on how much effort I actually put in. Right?

Absolutely.

My logic makes sense. But if it does, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Yeah, man. If you go Back to the 1970s and 1980s, income tax rates on a progressive, you know, an incremental tax increase basis, tax rates were 70, 80%. Okay? So if you were a high income earner for whatever, you know, whatever profession you were, you had the potential of paying upwards of 70 to 80% of your income in taxes. Ronald Reagan, before he jumped into the Oval Office, was a very successful actor. Ronald Reagan, at the end of his career, intentionally pulled back. He intentionally only produced and acted in a movie or two a year because it wasn't financially responsible for him to do any more work. Yeah, when he came in, he cut the tax rates and they've been, they've been, you know, upwards of 30 to 35% for high income earners on, on a tiered level from that point on. But look, man, we live in a dangerous world right now. And it again, it goes back to where we just started this conversation. It's the mindset. It's the mindset thinking that you can get something for nothing. Thinking that if, if that person worked really hard and I take some of it, my life will be better. Look, the reality of it is money is, money is just a tool. Like if someone gives me a chainsaw and I've never used a chainsaw before, I've never picked it up, man, I might as well, I might kill myself, right? But if I'm really good with a chainsaw, I can go cut down some trees and build a house.

Or make a sculpture.

Or make a sculpture. Exactly. My sculpture. Right. And so here's the reality. Money is just a tool. If you don't know how to earn that money, if you don't know how to protect that money, if you don't know what it took to actually get that money, man, that money's going to be gone overnight. And we've seen that over and over again as well. I mean, you know, one of, one of the people inside of our community, he's a top executive for Nike. Yeah, And Nike sells in the last, what, 18 months during COVID Nike sales have been almost 300% of their previous year sales in the U.S. wow. And at the same time, sales are 300%. Employment got, went way down. Where'd the money come from? Well, it was these, you know, little incentives and government handouts to stay home from work. All of that money didn't go into, hey, how do I get a better job? How do I make more money? How do I start a business, how do I do to do, went into, hey, maybe I'm going to go buy that thing over there. Maybe I'm going to go buy that thing over there. And so the reality of it is taxes.

I really believe the tax code. It's a treasure map. And at the top, right, the irs, politicians, like the tax code is used to incentivize behavior. It changes all the time. But at the end of the day, if you understand how to use the tax code, you'll understand why Donald Trump four years ago, when he was debated By Hillary Clinton could say on live TV in a debate that he pays nothing in taxes. Now that's kind of a facade. He pays taxes in other areas, but the reality is he knows how to use the tax code. And guess what? Every single year when there's a new president, you know, sworn into office, they release their tax records and we get to look at what tax rate they have and where their assets are. The rich, including the politicians, including the ones making the laws. Guess what their tax rate is 17%. I think Obama was the highest. He had like an 18% tax rate. Biden's man, after 40 years in politics, that dude's paying less than the average American by far in taxes as a percentage of his income. So he's just using the tax code to put his money in certain locations, to report income in certain ways and to keep it off the tax radar. That's really what the tax code is meant to do. It's meant to help incentivize behavior. And they use tax deductions as those incentives.

Yeah. Now I wanted, the reason I wanted to bring that up is because I think there's this, there's a big misconduct misconception about what taxes are, you know, that there are no government funded programs. The government does not create revenue. All of their revenue is based on tax.

The thing that drives me insane about this idea, whenever we talk about taxes in the government, we talk about they like, they. It's this, is this arbitrary entity. No, it's people taking money from other people, giving it to other people, or spending it or pocketing it. Right. It's, it's not. They. You're exactly right. It's, it's an entity.

Yeah, well, I wanted to bring that up too because, you know, I want people to understand that when it comes down to it, I want people to learn to play the long game. Right. And that's one of the things that I love about whatever, all of, all the stuff that you teach. It's all about the long game. Right. The long game is going back to the tax example that I gave is the higher taxes are going to eventually decrease production, which decreases opportunity, which in turn decreases the amount of tax that is actually going to be received even at the 70 or 80%, whatever the percent tax rate is. Right. So I just want to set that in people's minds and have them kind of understand they've got to pay attention to what's happening within the tax structure, especially if they had have intentions on becoming self sufficient and free financially. And that being said, yeah, go ahead, bud.

One of the biggest things, you know, Stephen, that you're talking about there, like in that Core four, when I talk about increasing control, increasing return, decreasing risk, the biggest destroyer of your wealth is tax.

Yeah.

And it doesn't like the politicians and the wealthy. They're playing a different game. They're using the tax code completely differently than you are. And one of the best books that I ever read on this that makes it super, super simple is Cash Flow Quadrant. You know, Robert Kiyosaki, Cash Flow Quadrant. He talks about the different buckets that you report to the IRS that you make money in. And depending on how you tell the IRS you made money, that really determines how much of that money you're going to hand over in taxes. And if you're a W2 wage earner, the entire tax code is written to tell you how much taxes you're going to pay. If you're a business owner, the entire tax code is telling you how to reduce your taxes. Because honestly, you know, unless there's going to be a government takeover, I'm going to move to socialism. You know, I think people understand businesses run the economy. Businesses generate the jobs that they're the ones solving the problems, creating the solutions. And so, generally speaking, businesses have been tax favored from the beginning of the tax code.

Yeah, I'm actually glad you mentioned the private sector, because I don't know if you know this or not, but the private sector actually just sent citizens to space. Thereabouts.

Yeah.

Billion dollars less than the government did it with. All right, so that's another side tangent I want to go down too far. But anyway, look, you've got an amazing masterclass on handling finances, handling money, what you should be doing, learning how to play the long game. Tell the audience a little bit about the program.

Yeah, man. You know, when I was stuck in the corporate world, I felt stuck. I really did. And, you know, I, for whatever reason, couldn't see my way out until I had built my way out. Right. And I could have. You know, I think a lot of people think entrepreneurs are these scary. You know, they jump off the cliff and they figure out how to fly on the way down. I'm sure there's a few of them, but I think most of them are a lot like you and me. We're cautious, we're careful, we're strategic. Right. And so I didn't jump from W2 fixed income until I had cash flow behind me to say, look, even if my salary goes away and it takes me some time to figure out how to do this business thing. I've got enough cash flow to put food on the table. I've got enough cash flow to keep the lights on. And that opened up possibilities that were always there. I just couldn't see them. Right. So our mission inside of cash flow tactics is look, number one, you have to understand traditional finance is dangerous, misleading or wrong. And so we're not going to teach you how to do average better. We're going to teach you the exact opposite. And we take a principle based approach. We've studied millionaires and financially free people from the beginning of time all the way to now. And really it's a principle based approach. The rules of money haven't really changed. It's just, do you understand the rules? And so the reality is our mission is rise up, take control. No one's going to come do it for you. No one's going to come save you, especially the government. Do something about it. Invest in your mindset, skill sets and network. And with the right principles, anyone can become financially free. And 10 years, years or less. So that's what we do, man. And we, we run a masterclass. We run a challenge. Cashflowtactics.com you can check us out on Facebook. We have a five day challenge. I think that's how most people find us. Because what we do is so opposite from what most people have heard. It takes them five days to kind of learn. Oh, well, this doesn't work. I have to measure on cash flow. How financially free am I and how do I focus my attention?

Yeah, man, I love it. I love it. Look real quick, you know for me, how I handle my money, how I handle my family, how I handle my friends, my team members, all that stuff, if I'm honest with myself, actually comes up from a root of faith, like what I believe in God to be and the love that I feel like he showed me. Has your faith played a role at all in how you conduct business and how you kind of conduct yourself?

100%, man. You said it earlier. You said, look, a lot of people aren't living their purpose, their talents. I believe, Steven, you have unique talents and gifts. You have a message, you have a personality, you have a way of being that you can serve other people. Your talents naturally solve the problems that other people have. My talents naturally solve the problems that other people have. Everyone listening to this podcast right now or watching on YouTube, they have innate talents that are 100% unique to them that will solve problems that other people have. And if we look at the World today it looks like there are just problems compounding until there's no solution on site. And I believe the reason for that is the majority of the people out there aren't living their God given purpose. They're not exercising their God given talents to serve other people. Because here's the cool thing man, when you can tap in and align with your God given purpose and your talents and abilities, you get into this state of flow. You're doing something that comes relatively natural to you, you're doing something that you really like and time that used to drag now flies, right? We've all been in those states of flow where it's like, man, this is awesome, I love. But here's the other thing, like when you're exercising your God given talents and abilities, you're creating value and from an economic standpoint you're likely going to make more money. Yeah, and here's the awesome part. You find more fulfillment. Like money by itself, money in and of itself is meaningless. But when you can see the lives that you've impacted, the problems that you've solved, the people that you've helped, you find fulfillment. You're wealthier, you're healthier, you're more fulfilled and you're living an all around better life. So I, I believe it all starts with a purpose and I believe the purpose comes from a higher being. So find that you know and however you find that, have the courage to believe, have the courage to test, have the courage to experiment with what your talents and abilities might be, they're probably covered up with layers of self doubt, with layers of stories, with layers of limiting beliefs. And so a lot of times it's ripping those things apart one by one until you start to find what makes sense for you. But it's a journey, it's so rewarding, it's difficult. But man, life isn't meant to be this smooth selling, you know, never have a problem. Life is going to give you challenges to help you become a stronger, more capable person.

I'm so glad you said that because you know, I've said it before on the show for our listeners that listen all the time and watch and whatever. They're probably tired of me hearing to say it, but I, I still to this day believe the greatest purpose in life you'll ever have is serving the person you used to be. The I the only way to serve the person you used to be is to become something better than you are today. And you know, what's in the middle, what's in the white space adversity trauma experiences, broken hearts, mistakes. Right. I mean, if I look back at everything that I'm doing now. Right. Everything that I'm doing now. In fact, if I look at your life and just the businesses that you've built and everything that you're doing, you're actually serving the person you used to be. I'm serving the person I used to be. So if the person's listening right now and they're in that struggle, like, just give them a. Give them a quick word about what they need to know.

Man, I love that you said that. You know, a lot of times we shy away. We're embarrassed, we're afraid of our messes, of our mistakes, of our shortcomings. But those oftentimes, just like you say, they become your message, they become your solution and your inspiration to other people. I'm going to give you an example through my wife. My wife, we have three beautiful, amazing kids. But pregnancy on her has been so difficult. And in the third pregnancy, man, the anxiety that built up inside of her and the emotional. Just stress and trauma that she was going through was. I've never seen anything like it. I mean, she went days and weeks with very little sleep because she was so hyperventilating and stressed out. And I remember one. And we slept in different rooms because I just kind of took care of life while she just tried to survive.

Yeah.

And I remember one day she came up and she was crying, and I was like, oh, man. Another. Another tough night. And she's like, God told me. I asked. I've been begging him for two weeks to take this away to help me. And I'll never forget what she said. She's like, I gave this to you so you can help other people.

Yeah.

And I didn't take it away. Like, the rest of her pregnancy and years after were so hard. But now she has person after person after person that call her up, and she's there to empathize with them, to understand, to help give them some courage. And, man, I didn't mean to get emotional about that.

Come on.

So proud of her for that. And she's been such, like. She's been such an inspiration to help other people. Her mess is 100% her message, and she embraces it.

I love it. I love it. Well, tell us one more time where we can find your homes.

And I got me all emotional.

Steven, I told you that you brought it out because we're bros, man.

Yeah, man, that was good. That was good. I mean, so look, here's the thing, Cash Flow tactics. You know, cash flow tactics. Our mission is financial freedom in 10 years or less. I don't care where you start. It's regardless of your age, your income, or your experience. If you're ready to rise up and take control so that you can live free, then visit us on our websites. You know, you can listen to our podcast. But the best thing is go to cash tactics.com forward/challenge. And that way you can get involved in our game and see if what we do is going to work for you.

Rock on. As always, man, love hanging out with you. Our time always flies by every single time, man.

So I'm looking forward to seeing you again, dude. Take care.

I appreciate you.

If you love that interview, go ahead and check out this next one right here. Nobody has an excuse. Steven. Steven. No one has an excuse. If they do, they're. They're just. They're not seeing that they can actually get there. For some reason. They're stuck. And we've all been there. But you have to find a reason to get to the next level.