Jordan Goodman - Communicating Personal Finance Effectively

Speaking with TJ Walker, the show where we dissect how and what world class leaders communicate. In this interview, you're going to hear a secret technique, I admit I've never even heard of it before, on how to virtually guarantee that when you're interviewed on television, the anchors are going to follow your lead and talk about what you want to talk about. Our special guest today is a multimedia phenomenon. You've seen him on cnbc. His more than a dozen books are in bookstores everywhere. He's been on Fox, cnbc, cbs, you name it. He is a speaker, an author, a pundit, a talk show host, a talk show guest, and he's an expert on personal finance. Our guest today is Jordan Goodman, and he was gracious enough to spend an hour with me really talking about not only his area of expertise, but how he communicates his expertise in lessons that I really think are applicable to anyone who's trying to communicate a message, whether you are a business executive, a consultant, a subject matter expert, you name it. So now let's sit back and listen to my conversation with Jordan Goodman. Jordan Goodman, thanks for being our guest today.

Great to be with you.

T.J. turny, if you go back 30 years ago, there were all these studies about how Americans were becoming obese and there was an explosion of diet gurus, exercise fads and exercise diet food. Here we are 30 years later, our obesity problem is greater than ever. That may sound like an odd way to start an interview with one of the world's foremost personal finance experts, but I'm struck by the similarity between that and the study that just came out earlier this week from Go Banking Rates that shows that nearly 10, 7 out of 10Americans have less than $1,000 in personal savings. So it almost seems like the more personal finance gurus, the more advice there is on personal finance, the worse people are getting. What's happening?

Well, people's incomes have not been going up for quite a while and their habits are not good. In many cases, they're not putting money aside on a regular basis and their expenses are going up, they're going into debt, they're doing all kinds of things wrong. TJ and that's why a lot of people are not doing very well financially. Now, there are some people in this country doing extremely well, but a lot of people are not doing very well. And hopefully in this conversation we can give some advice to people so they can do better in all kinds of areas of personal finance, because if you don't do it for yourself, nobody's going to do it for you.

What is your advice to someone listening? Maybe they're nervous about their own personal finances. Maybe they're worried about their spouse's spending habits. What actually creates change in the. And I'm sorry, I'm not going to do this all show, but the analogy in the health world, it quite often takes somebody having a heart attack before they really change their eating habits. What is it that.

Well, that's pretty extreme. What is it that going bankruptcy.

Well, is it bankruptcy or what gets people to change their savings, spending and investment habits?

I mean, my having seen this for a long time, my view is setting up automatic habits for the right thing to happen is what actually changes things. Not kind of wishing, you know, gonna win the lottery or I'm gonna do a budget. People don't follow budgets. Setting up automatic systems. So the right thing. Let me just give you some examples. Savings. Okay, so a lot of people save little or nothing. Even 401ks at work. About 70% of the people being offered 401ks take them up on that. And 30% are leaving literally free cash on the, on the bargain counter right there. So signing up for a 401k, in addition to that, say you have a Roth IRA. We can have up to 5500 for an individual under 50, 6500 for somebody over 50. Put away and growing tax free. Do it $100 at a time. You don't have to put the entire amount in at once, but set it up so automatically your money is being saved and put into a mutual funder. Make it grow for yourself somehow. So that's just a simple example of setting up an automatic system where the right things automatically happen. A lot of people are in the situation where automatically the wrong things are happening. They're making the minimum payment on a credit card and having all this interest piling up against them. That's automatically the wrong thing happening. So that's my real world experience of how you can make things better.

Now you just said something a little contrarian that I like, which is, you know, people don't use budgets. No use setting it. Every other personal finance guru seems to stress set up a budget. Well, I can tell you I've never had a budget in my life.

It's a nice idea.

I'm not sure I know anyone.

I mean, some people do it. You can go to a place like mint.com and get a free budget. And there are some people who are having apps and watching every penny they're paying, which is great. That's 5% of the population. So to me it's realistic.

And I hope this is the last time I make this tortured analogy. It's kind of like the diet world where they just say, count your calories and just stop eating at 2000 calories at the end of the day. You will lose weight if you do that, but nobody counts calories.

I think I saw a report from the Surgeon general recently that 10% of the US population is considered physically active, meaning they exercise on some regular basis. 10%. So I mean, in my own case, for example, I have a personal trainer who comes over three times a week and beats me up. And if he didn't come, I would always find some excuse not to go to the gym. That's what I do. It's the same thing with a financial advisor. The problem with the financial advisor is they only want to work with people. If you already have a lot of money, you're putting aside $100 a month, they have no interest in you whatsoever. So to get a financial coach, you got to have enough money to make it worthwhile. And a lot of people don't.

So let's talk about financial advisors. Like any other field, like any other profession, there are good ones and bad ones. And I don't want to bore people with my horrible personal stories, but my own father was hoodwinked by an unscrupulous financial advisor and basically all of his money went into a Ponzi scheme. And after he passed away at a relatively young age, and my mother, who had been comfortable upper middle class, her whole life was really down to almost nothing. Fortunately, it rebuilt. But how does someone figure out if their financial advisor is truly adding value? Or is it just someone looking to generate fees?

Well, a lot of them are looking to generate fees. And there's a big change coming in this world. The Department of Labor has put out something which fully goes into effect April 1, 2017, which is called the fiduciary rule. And what that means in theory is that the financial advisor is legally obligated to make you, the customer, come before their own personal interest as a financial advisor. As it relates to retirement accounts, IRAs and things like that. That is already causing a huge change in the financial industry. See, the past standard has been so called suitability is an investment suitable for you. And the so called know your customer rule, that's a different standard than the financial advisor has to put the client's interest in front of their own interest.

And by the way, this is not a political talk show, but the word fiduciary has been in the news recently with Donald Trump claiming he had to take every tax deduction because he had a fiduciary responsibility to himself. That's just not accurate. You have a fiduciary responsibility to other people. You have a self interested, selfish interest in helping yourself.

We're not a bunch of beasts just looking out for each other ourselves only. But I'm just saying as far as financial advisors, in theory, this is going to make things better. Where financial advisors are really supposed to be looking out for you instead of themselves and patting fees and all that doesn't mean it's still not going to happen. But there's a big push in a regulatory world for that. You got to talk to a person, see if there's a comfort level there. Getting references is obviously a good idea. Now, there's a bunch of different ways to get financial advisors. You can do it on an hourly basis. There's something called the Garrett Financial Network, for example, which is around the country. And you can do it for like $100 an hour. You can do it based on assets under management. You can do it based on a retainer fee. You can do it fee only with no commissions. There's a group called napfa, the national association of Personal Financial Advisors that only charge fees and no commissions. So there's lots of different ways. You want to see what their incentive is. And basically their incentive should be for you as the client to do well. But my overall concern about this, tj, is that most financial advisors only want to deal with the top five. I'll be generous, 10% of the population because the other ones don't, in their views have enough money to be worthwhile. And everything that's going to happen with the fiduciary rule is going to move that up even more because of all the fees and regulations involved. I think a lot of financial advisors are not going to want to touch you unless you have at least a million dollars. And that's the unfortunate side effect.

Who do you recommend to use the pay by the hour? So many people. And I'm guilty of this sometime it's just, it's easier to sort of pay hidden fees later than up front. $100 an hour. I could spend nine hours. That would be $900. Let me just put my money in a mutual fund over here. Meanwhile, you might put half a million in the mutual fund that could be charging as much as 2%. And you didn't spend $900 for financial advice. You basically spent $10,000 on financial advice, but you don't feel it.

But general, hopefully those nine hours would be very helpful and would get you into good investments and get you on a budget. Make sure you have enough insurance and do the things that you wouldn't get around to otherwise in a somewhat objective kind of way. I mean that's why it would be worth it and why people do things like this Garrett Financial Network because they find that valuable. That's one way to go. I mean another way is to have somebody sell you something. They get a commission. Just because they get a commission doesn't mean it's a bad product, just means that you're taking money up front for paying for that. This new fiduciary rule is going to change the the kind of model very much so commissions are kind of out. People don't want to be paying commissions or charging commissions. Assets under management is what's in so if you they're supposed to be gathering assets and they charge you a management fee of 1 to 2% per year for managing the assets, in theory, their incentive is to make the assets grow because if they 1 or 2% of a bigger number, they win while you win. That's the theory behind it.

Jordan, where can people get really good unbiased information about financial matters? I certainly going to recommend your website and our listeners should know.

I mean on my website, which is moneyanswers.com, i have a lot of specific resources in all aspects of personal finance, getting better mortgages, investing, getting out of credit card debt, small business loans, I mean a whole bunch of different things because these are people that I know are going to really help you one way or the other. There's obviously a lot of books out there. Everybody's got an agenda though TJ Everybody's got even the so called gurus of personal finance.

Let's talk about those in a moment. But I should point out to our listeners, I've known Jordan for more than 20 years. He's been around the scene for 30 years. He's been on every kind of CNB, CNN, CBS show. He is the real deal. He is mentioned in the bio, has written more than a dozen books. One of the ones that I'm enjoying right now, which we'll talk about later, is called mastering your debt slash your monthly payments. I am going to recommend your website which we've linked to in the show notes but are there any other sites that you can give a positive grade to? I mean what do you think of Motley fool for example? What do you think of it's okay.

It's a little bit quirky the way Motley fool looks at things. It's kind of good for stock picking. They have a particular view. They have what they call the disruptors. It's not only about them, it's about you and what's appropriate for you. Some people are going to follow the kind of stock. Some people just want to buy an index fund and not deal with individual stocks. But Motley Fool's okay. I mean, Dave Ramsey I think is okay if you want to get out of debt. It's a little bit extreme, I must say. He has what's called Financial Peace University. He does huge seminars with 25,000 people and all that. He's kind of into shaming people. You're evil if you're in debt. I don't kind of go there. I don't make a judgment about people. I just say, here's where you are. Let's see how we can help you. And frankly, Susie Orman does the same thing. She kind of shames people when they're in debt. You know, you're an evil, bad person for having bought a dress or something like that. So I don't get into the value judgment part that some of these people do.

And that is a differentiator because certainly there are gurus with cult followings out there. And Dave Ramsey, I won't call it a cult following, but he certainly has a very strong following. You've got Susie Orman who has your you go girl and I was just a waitress shtick that a lot of people find down to, some people find grating. But some people find her very relatable. I've seen her at one of those big public speaking, positive speaking rallies with, you know, where she's speaking before Colin Powell and after Anthony Robbins. And I have to say, she was captivating. And she had 10,000 people in the palm of her hand. But that doesn't necessarily. I mean, you can be a great speaker and be horrible with your advice.

She's very doctrinaire. You know, she's right and the world is wrong. Basically the way it works. And there's never buy an annuity, you know, or always buy term life insurance or she just has these like rules that aren't quite as clear in the real world. There is gray. It's not only black and white.

And if you're angling for a three minute spot on the Today show, it helps to see things in black and white. Fortunately, fortunately, we have the luxury of depth here on speaking with TJ Walker. So let's go a little deeper. What are your thoughts on both annuities and life insurance?

Okay, well, with annuities, in certain circumstances that can be okay. The ones I like would be index annuities, where you get the upside of the stock market like the S&P 500, and you have protection against the downside. I would not like fixed annuities today because you're locking in extremely low rates, 2 or 3% for a long period of time. And you have a lot of surrender charges where if you have to get out of it for whatever reason, you need the money, it's going to really hit you pretty hard the first seven years or so. So an index annuity and similar, what's called index Universal Life or iul, is actually even better way of doing the same thing because inside the insurance policy money grows tax free as opposed to tax deferred in something like an ira. So I have an IUL myself and the idea is when the stock market goes up, like the S&P 500, your cash value is going up, not the full amount, but to a cap level. What I have is 12%. But when the stock market goes down, it does not go down. You get a zero in a bad year. In a 2008, you get zero. So I'm willing to protect myself on the downside to cap myself on the upside. I mean, 12% isn't that bad tax free. So that's what I've done. So I think as far as life insurance, that's the best way to go. In index universal life term insurance, you can buy more of it and it's cheaper, but chances of collecting on it are extremely low. I think insurance companies Pay claims on one out of 100 term policies. They mostly just get to keep the premium. So, you know, it's okay to have pure protection, but in the long run. We talked earlier about good habits. Index Universal life is a way of setting up a good habit. I put a certain amount of money every month into my iul and over time it's really going to be growing with the stock market. And then when I get to retirement, you take money out by borrowing it out, not taking it out. Then the loan that you take out is tax free and the loan is repaid by the death benefit when you die. So just to give an example, TJ say you had a million dollar index universal life policy and you took out 500,000 in loans during your lifetime. When you die, the million dollars is going to pay off the 500,000 and the remaining 500,000 would go to your kids or beneficiaries. But meanwhile you got 500,000 in tax free income during your lifetime. So that's the best way. I like to buy life insurance.

And what is that one called again for our listeners?

Index, Universal Life IUL for short Index. The index is, it's tied to the s and P500 index again on the upside with a limit like 12%, no downside. And the Universal just a flexible way of doing things.

Okay, let's look at two different extremes. On the one hand, Warren Buffett. On the other hand, Jim Cramer. Jim Cramer is giving about 1001 stock tips every single night. And even if you're the world's fastest writer, you couldn't follow all of them. Warren Buffett, who is by most accounts the single best investor ever, says most people should just get index funds or a Vanguard Life Cycle index fund or.

By Berkshire Hathaway, his company.

Well, he does it to his credit. He doesn't really recommend that to most people for their total investments. And long term, he doesn't know how long he'll be around. I mean, certainly, I'm not saying he's never self promotional. But how do you navigate those two extremes in advice?

I think the Jim Cramer kind of fast stock in and out kind of thing is for a pretty limited audience. I mean, it's entertainment. But if you're actually putting money on the line, if you're buying after you've heard his recommendation, it's already got the kind of Kramer premium in it, you might say, right, so the next morning he says, buy whatever, any particular stock and then it shoots up the next morning and you buy it right after that. And he never tells you particularly when to sell either. So it's fun entertainment, but I'm not sure that's the way you want to spend most of your money. Berkshire Hathaway and Warren Buffett is the complete opposite. He holds onto stocks for life. He almost never sells them occasionally, but rarely does he sell them because he believes in things long term, even when they go down a lot. I mean, recently he's been buying IBM a lot when it went from 200 down to like 130. And he gets to keep buying more of it as it keeps going down because he believes in the company. So do a little bit of each. An index fund makes an awful lot of sense for an awful lot of people. Most mutual funds do not beat the index funds over any longer period of time. Like the vast 99% do not, you know, make it hot in the short term. But the long run index fund works well. Now there are different kinds of index funds. You can DO S&P 500, which is the big blue chips. You can do a broader total stock market index. You can do a world stock index of major stocks around the world. You can do bond indexes, you can do mid cap, you can do small cap. There's lots of different index funds you can use. So I wouldn't put it all just into an S&P 500, just the big blue chips. Maybe do a blue chip one. Do a mid cap index, a small cap index, a world index, a bond index. And you know that that's going to work for most people and then just keep adding to it on a regular basis. Don't just put, you know, 5,000 in it and just forget it. Keep adding to it on a regular basis. And that's the way it can compound and have dollar cost averaging over time.

And how do you, how do you feel specifically? Well, we'll come back that, you know what, I'm holding a book right now that I have to say I'm enjoying. It's master your debt.

Yeah.

And this came out a handful of years ago, but it strikes me that every day I see little ads pop up on all sorts of reputable website. You know, one little gimmick to get rid of your mortgage. There's all these things that sound like too good to be true gimmicks.

Well, there are some right ways to do that. This is what I call mortgage optimization. And I do have a chapter in master your debt which is called mortgage free in five to seven years.

Chapter six, I've just finished it and it's an excellent chapter.

Yeah, chapter six. And so there is a legitimate way to pay your mortgage off in five to seven years instead of 30 years on your existing level of income. It takes some discipline. But if that's something you'd like to do, say you're a couple at age 35, wouldn't it be nice to have your mortgage paid off at 40 instead of 65? What a difference in your life. Is that worthwhile? Yes, I think for an awful lot of people. Let me just briefly describe how that works.

Walk us through because we have time here. Walk us through how these home equity loans line of credits actually work.

Right. So it's what's called a home equity line of credit HELOC H E L O C which is a liquid line against your house. You can take money in, you can take it out, you can Write checks on it. It's completely liquid. It's a second mortgage, typically on your house. You're not going to give up your first mortgage, where you might have a good rate, but you're going to pay it off faster. You keep your income, which is normally sitting in your checking account, earning nothing for you. You, you keep your income in the HELOC, where it's pushing down your balance every day. Just to give a simple example, say you had a $50,000 HELOC. You'd borrowed 50,000 on it. You take $1,000, which would normally be sitting in your checking account, and put it into your HELOC. You now owe 49,000 instead of 50,000. So you're paying interest on 49 instead of 50. So every day you are making progress on your principal in the heloc, and you take money from the HELOC to pay down your first in big chunks. And then you keep doing this. And so, just to give a very simple example, say you had a $200,000 first mortgage and a $50,000 HELOC. You just open the HELOC so it's free and clear. You write a $50,000 check on the HELOC towards the first. Instead of owning 200, you owe $150. You pay off the HELOC as we just described, over six months, whatever it may be, you do it again. Your HELOC is now free and clear. You ran another $50,000 check towards your first. You now owe 100 instead of 150. You do that two more times. Your first is now paid off. You pay off the HELOC. You are now debt free. And that's something the bank will never tell you about tj. They do not want you to do this to pay these debts off faster.

And you do that in chunks. But is there a reason why, if you had a 200,000 mortgage, you wouldn't just get a HELOC for 200,000, you could do that.

The only downside of that is, first of all, of course you're going to have to have more than 400,000 in equity in the house, maybe 500,000. But the second thing is HELOCs are adjustable rates. So typically your first is going to be fixed at some low rate at 3 or 4%. And so if rates did go up, the HELOC would go up a bit. So people temperamentally feel better to keep their first and pay it off faster rather than move the entire balance to the heloc. But you can do it either way.

And is the idea you would, if you had to just pick them out randomly, pick the amount that you feel like you would be able to have extra in your banking. I mean, for example, if you own your own business and money goes up and down and some months you had an extra 50,000 that's just sitting there doing nothing is the idea. If you had a $50,000 HELOC, you would just be putting all that towards your mortgage and you can always just get another heloc.

Although I don't like to confuse business and personal. So you said you can use this technique inside your business as well. So say, for example, you have a commercial mortgage on the building where your business is. You could do the same strategy and pay down your business mortgage at the same time. But if you have an extra $50,000 in your business, you don't want to kind of give that to you personally and then take it back. You should keep personal and business kind of separate. You know, there is a website that can help people, TJ with this whole mortgage optimization, which is called truthinequity.com truthinequity.com and they kind of model the whole thing for you. It's a free website. You go on there, you give them your, what's called a personal profile with your income, your expenses, your house value and all that. And they say, okay, based on what you're doing today, it's going to take you 28 years to pay off your mortgage. Based on the numbers you just gave us, it's going to take you 6.2 years to pay off your mortgage, whatever the numbers come out to be. And they show you step by step how to do it. So there's an independent resource that can help you actually implement mortgage optimization and literally save you 25 years off your mortgage and tens of thousands of dollars in needless interest.

Now, Jordan, you've mentioned a couple of times, taxes. Some people, if you mention paying off your home faster, will say, oh, I don't want to lose my home mortgage interest deduction. Do you think that most people spend too much time worrying about tax deductions and that it's misplaced? Or is tax tax consequences something that's undervalued?

I would go to the first of what you just said there. You get a tax deduction in your tax bracket. So say you're in the 25% bracket, which is at the high end. But just say you are. That means still after tax, when you get deductions, you're still paying 75 cents on the dollar out of your pocket. I'd rather have no deductions and have all my money go into investments and making money grow or something like Index Universal Life we talked about where you can have your money grow tax free, then get deductions. So, so you're right. People do all kinds of strange things to get deductions, but after tax they're still way behind than if they had their mortgages and other debts paid off.

Jordan, this is a show that is about communication. That's about how world class experts do communicate. You're someone who really does it all. You've written more than a dozen best selling books. You give speeches at organizations all over the country. You do webinars, you're a guest on radio shows, TV shows, you host your own shows, which is a different skill set. How do you like to connect with people most? What do you think is the most powerful form of communication and where do you feel least comfortable? I mean, for me personally, the, the webinar where I can't see anyone, hear anyone, there's no host, no guest and the interactivity is low is what I would say is the hardest. But I want to hear from you.

Well, I think doing things in person is probably my favorite one because it is interactive. I just came back from giving a speech in Philadelphia to a group of dentists and I start talking about things and they ask questions and it was supposed to last two hours, it lasted four hours. So that is very satisfying when you can really go into depth with people and help them with their own situation. And just as we just did with the mortgage optimization, I like to give them specific resources, websites, phone numbers that they can actually implement the strategies with. So I would say that would be number one. Number two would be call in radio shows, which I do all the time where I'm able to help people and not only the people calling in, but all the people listening. So it's got a kind of a multiplier effect as well. And I would agree with you on webinars. I might do webinars, but it's not as interactive experience as either a call in radio show or doing an in person seminar.

And how do you, and you're an old pro at this, but if you have to be on the top rated show on CNBC and you know it's only going to be three minutes, how do you prepare for that any differently than if you are giving a speech or going to be a guest on an hour talk show?

You really have to make the most of that time. So the Way I do it when I'm doing a TV show, three or four minutes is I send them graphics that point by point, make the points I want to make, because I've done this many times. And if you go in there hoping for the best, the anchor is going to take it in some completely weird direction, usually about their own personal life or something, and you don't get to make the points you want to make. So I give them like three screens of graphics and like point one, go right through them. And by the end of the three minutes, you've accomplished something. You've given the audience what's helpful to them. And it's a way of disciplining the hosts who otherwise go off on all kinds of crazy tangents. So that's my strategy for doing TV shows, folks.

Make a note of that. That's worth the price of admissions right here today. Because that's not a tip. You see, I'm ashamed to say in my media training books or in most other books, but it's a fantastic tip. Don't just send a press release or your latest book to the producer because they're certainly not going to look at your book, but to create graphics that are TV friendly, make the producer's life easy, make the host's life easy, hand it to the letter.

Most people are lazy and you're taking advantage of that. Here it is. And they say, great, one less thing I have to do. And the end result of the interview is you get across the points you want to make in an organized way. And frankly, the audience, it's much better for them to see something than just hear it. Maybe they didn't have the sound off, but they can watch your. So, you know, I give out websites, I give out. Here's what you do. Da, da da da da da. Write on those graphics. And by the end of the three or four minutes, I've been happy I got across the point. I wanted to make the audience's benefit and the producer's happy he didn't have to worry about it. And the anchor said, oh, we actually got something done. Because I've learned this through experience, because I used to do it. I'd give some suggestions to the producer and then the anchor would go off on some incredible tangent about their own bill that they didn't pay or something. And the three minutes is gone. So every time in a nice way, I say to the producer, let's really make the most of this three minutes. And how about these graphics? And 99% of the time they go along with it. And it's a win win for everybody.

And for our listeners thinking, wow, that's a great idea. Where would you recommend they start? Would they do it within PowerPoint? Do you try to keep it to.

Just a couple of points just. And make it super simple. Title for slide is this bullet point. Number one bullet point and do like three bullets on each. What's called a full screen graphic and do three screens. Done. That's it. You don't have to make it fancy. You're just giving them the content of what they're going to put on the screen. And 99% of the time they're going to do exactly what you tell them to do.

Fantastic. Everyone wants to control the media and unfortunately a lot of people make the the blunder of asking for the questions in advance and they don't realize most hosts, reporters have no idea what questions are going to be asked, number one. Number two, certain organizations like the New York Times, a reporter can actually be fired for giving a source the questions in advance. But I like your strategy. And then you just, you email it to the producer and say, hey, I think this will be helpful to your audience.

Slide one, slide two, slide three. Three bullet points on each. Give your website at the end and they're going to put it on and then you can. Now you've got something where you can lead the anchor right through the thing and no matter what tangent he goes on, you're going back to those graphics because you know that's making the point you want. I did this on the Today show, actually. I was up against a guy named Charles Gifler, who was a. Sorry about Charles Givens, who was a kind of a slick promoter in the 1980s. And I had a series of graphics arranged telling in advance why each of his strategies was illegal, impractical, fraudulent, whatever it may be. He had no idea this was coming, by the way. And instead of just having this fist fight over. Yes. No, I said, here are the numbers that prove why you just said it's completely wrong and illegal in one way.

And he took you off his Christmas card list, didn't he?

Exactly. I was not on his Christmas card list.

And you did have the last laugh there. Forgive me if my history is wrong, but wasn't he convicted and died sort of terrible? Penniless, Terrible?

Absolutely. Here I did this in 1986 when he was at his peak. And I said to him, to his face, right, with Jane Pauly, you are about to hurt millions of people. You shouldn't do it. You Know it's wrong and you're going to do it anyway, right on the Today show. And here's why. What you're doing is wrong. I'll just give you one of many examples. He said, employ your child and pay them some huge salary and make it a tax deduction, that kind of thing. I said, there are things called child labor laws you might have never heard of, but that's actually illegal, what you're talking about doing. You know, having your 2 year old with $100,000 salary as a deduction kind of thing. It's like you're going to get in real trouble for something like that. They actually have to be able to do the job.

All of those things do work until you get caught.

And he did end up getting caught and hurt all kinds of people. But I'm just saying, the way I controlled the interview was by having the graphics built in advance. So it wasn't just this slugfest back and forth. It's like, well, let's go to the graphics, Charles, and actually see point by point, you know, and then he was like, didn't know what to do. So that was kind of fun.

Very powerful. Not just your words, but the visuals too, and planning in advance. People think of that for speeches, but they don't think of doing that for TV interviews. Great innovation. Let's talk about speeches. You've been giving keynote speeches at conferences, consumer conferences, financial conferences, for decades. Tell us about your best speech, what worked, but also about your worst speech, what happened, either from a technical standpoint or something you said, boy.

Okay, well, my best speech, I would say, is a guy named T. Harvacker you may have heard of, who's a big kind of financial guru, kind of a motivational guru, kind of Tony Robbins Jr. I guess you might say. And he had something called Millionaire School. And I spoke at that seven times, actually. You can see it on my website@moneyanswers.com if you look under speeches, you can actually see the speech I gave to 4,000 people. And it was great because the energy was wonderful. And so I was really encouraging them. And they're clapping. And you know, when you have great energy in the room, it really is a wonderful thing. And then at the end, they all want to buy my books. It's like, it was a wonderful thing. They sold tons and tons of my books at that time. The book I was selling called Fast Profits and Hard Times. But that was probably one of the best experiences I had.

And then I apologize for interrupting, but I have to ask one Follow up question to that, and I hope it doesn't seem snarky, what percentage of the people who buy the book and that hyped up moment get past, let's say, page seven? And I'll say that with a caveat. I may be wrong.

I mean, obviously I'm not following them.

Yeah.

But I think a lot of them, I mean, I made it very clear what the strategies are. Now they come away from a seminar like that with all kinds of different stuff and bags filled with things. So I don't know how many people implement it all, but I think a good number of people would because I motivated them to put into action. So who knows for sure.

But I mean, I say that because I notice with my own online public speaking courses and media training courses, it is less than 1% who actually do the homework. Less than 1%.

A lot of people. I always say in personal finance, the two greatest forces are inertia and apathy. People don't care and they don't do, as crazy as that may be, because it makes a lot of sense to do and care, but a lot of people don't. So I assume that, and I try to overcome that by giving people such great concepts and practical resources like we talked about with mortgage optimization, that it's a way of breaking through, that if people can see they're on the carousel and they can see the golden ring, okay, they're going to pay attention to capture the golden ring if you make it easy for them to, to capture it. So I can't change human nature, but I know I'm battling inertia and apathy.

Okay, so it sounds like those speeches went really well. And hey, I'm all in favor of selling books. And if it's any percentage above zero helping people, then that's great. Tell us about your worst speech, something that flopped either mechanically technically, or something you did wrong.

I'll tell you my worst speech. I was giving a speech to the Traverse City, Michigan Chamber of commerce at 8 in the morning, okay? And this was in January. And I remember this very well. And I'm flying in the night before from Detroit, and all of a sudden, not so all of a sudden, there's a huge snowstorm. It's like, folks, we can't land in Traverse City. We have to land in Grand Rapids. It's like, okay, so we get in about 11 at night in Grand Rapids and there's snow going all over the place. The airports are closed down. So the next morning, remember, I've got this whole gathering of like 350 people there at 8 in the morning. Am I going to make it or am I not? And just by total coincidence, the vice president of the Traverse City Chamber of Commerce was on the plane with me. So they put us up in the Grand Rapids airport and there's all these negotiations going back. Should I have a satellite uplink from the Grand Rapids TV station to beam it down? And we should plant satellite dishes on the floor. I mean, it was just crazy, you know? So at like 6:30 in the morning, we're at the airport. We say, all right, well, let's give it a try. Maybe we can get in there, maybe we can't. So we did. We got up on the plane and like, this is at like 7:30. Ah, there's a hole in the clouds. We're going to go for it. So let's see if we can make it. And we did. So we landed at about 7:45. I rushed to the event, huffing and puffing. That's not a good way to give a speech. I did make it. I gave the full speech and I've said I've never missed a speech. That's as close as I've ever gotten to miss a speech. Not my fault, but. But we had all these negotiations overnight. Should I get like the National Guard to clear the streets for me or something? It was just.

It's nice to know they thought you were that important.

Well, it had been planned for a long time.

So let me ask, did you change anything about your practices there? I mean, something that you hear a lot, and I try to practice, is never get the last plane that would get you into a venue the night before.

Well, yeah, it wasn't. It wasn't the last plane, but it was the snowstorm that would stop all planes. I mean, the plane was like 4 o' clock in the afternoon. I wasn't, you know, but by the time it got there. So I agree with you. I like to get to places in plenty of time. Don't fly in on the day of the event. Totally, because that's asking for trouble. But I was doing the right thing. I was flying. But there was a snowstorm and I couldn't have predicted that.

And nowadays if that happened, I was.

I was harried. But I pulled it off. I must say, I did pull it off. I was kind of rushed and I told people the story, that part of it is actually being genuine and like telling people what I just went through to get there. I immediately had a lot of sympathy, you know, so that was good. So I kind of pulled it off. But I probably was not as most common collected as I've ever been. That's kind of my worst story, I guess.

And nowadays, if that happened, you could pull up a laptop and as long as you bring a nice clip on microphone, you could give the speech via Skype through a hookup.

I guess I could. It wouldn't be the same, but at those days they didn't have that. We were trying to figure out if we were going to go to the Grand Rapids TV station, could they do an uplink and could the Chamber of Commerce do a downlink. And it was just crazy. Anyway, that was my most dramatic story of a speech, which I ended up making, but not in the most calm way as possible. So definitely, if you're going to give a speech, get there plenty of time before check out all the details. Go to see the room, make sure the mics are working. Assume things are going to go wrong, okay, like the projector and make sure the computer has the right cord to go to the projector. And all these things, these little things can upset you. So just make sure it all works in advance.

It sounded like that one had a happy ending and the problems had nothing to do with you. Have there ever been speeches where you personally made the blunder?

I have a warrior attitude. I'm going to get there no matter what it takes. And if I had to take the National Guard and, you know, be in a snow truck for three hours, I was going to make it. So I took a chance and luckily there was a cloud. A break in the clouds allowed me to get in there. It could have gone the other way.

Well, that is a great.

You definitely have a warrior attitude. And the people who I speak for appreciate that. They know I'm going to do whatever it takes. In fact, last week when I was speaking in Pennsylvania, I got a flat tire on the way there. And luckily I have run flat tires. And I went on my run flat tires for over 100 miles and got there on time. They never knew the difference in a case like that.

I'm sorry, what is a run flat tire?

You want to get there on time and do it no matter what it takes.

What is a run flat tire?

It's a tire that runs even though it's flat. In other words, in a normal tire, it's flat. You can't go anywhere. You have to change the tire. But the new tires. Now even if you. I hit something or got a nail or whatever it was and it was a Flat tire. It still runs for like 100 miles. So I was saved by my run flat.

I had no idea. I don't know if I have that on my car. I hate to drive. So I, I try to never ever drive to a gig unless it's 10 miles away. So I'll look for that.

In general, when you're doing speaking engagements, the speaker's bureau or the people, the meeting planner really appreciate if you kind of put yourself into it, which I do, totally. I help promote it in advance. I get there early, I do handouts, I stay afterwards, answer questions. A lot of people just kind of fly in, do their thing and fly out and don't even take questions. And you just get a good reputation by doing that and really commit. I did a speech in St. Cloud, Minnesota last year. It was supposed to go from six to eight. It went from six to 10:30 because people kept asking questions and I answered every one of them until they were satisfied.

Now let me ask what you do there because I, I do applaud that attitude on the one hand. And I love when people ask questions. It shows they're interested, they want more. But there's also a situation and it sounds like you were the last speaker of the day. So you weren't running into.

Well, I was the only speaker.

Okay, so you weren't running into anyone else's time. But meeting planners do often have in their mind, okay, we told everyone, we finish it 8. Some have planes to catch. Here's what I do. I want to know what your approach is. When I see that we are at the end of the allotted time, what I say to people is, I really appreciate all of you coming here. I'm happy to stay as long as it takes to answer every one of your questions. Some of you I know have other appointments to get to. I'm going to take a 32nd break now. So any of you who need to get up and leave can do so. And you're not interrupting anyone. And then I'm going to resume in 30 seconds and stay as long as it takes. That usually because there's always somebody who, they don't want to be rude, walking out in front of people, but they got to pick up their kid or something. So that's just my own approach. What do you do when you're going way past?

I mean, that can work, but if there's a meeting plan, there's a whole series of speakers, you've got to end your time. The next speaker has to go on.

Oh, yeah, definitely. I definitely Wouldn't do that if there's another speaker planned.

So what I did, I actually had this recently at a Florida convention I was giving. And I was on, in theory at 11 o' clock in the morning until 12, and then lunch was at 12. Okay. All the speakers that morning ran late. Okay. So by the time I actually got on, it was about 11:20. And I mean, my speech would normally be like two hours and I was condensing it into one hour and here I had 40 minutes. Okay. So I said, okay, I'm going to do this as quickly as I can. And at 12 o', clock, this was like 750 people. There's like a whole lunch on the lawn with like 200 waiters out there. It's like not something you can delay, really. You know, hot food, the whole thing. I said, let's do a Q and A session this afternoon. So we scheduled a Q and a from like three to four, which about 400 people showed up to. So I did it in a short way. Got out of there pretty much at noon. They got their lunch on time because you don't want to be standing between the attendees and their lunch or their lunch.

Oh no, no, that's not a good idea.

But then later on in a less pressured way, I answered questions for an hour and then after that people came up to me and asked for another hour and just kept going and going. So that's the way I handled a situation like that. And that happens a lot with the meeting runs late and if you're taking the brunt of that, that means you get the short end of the stick. So that was my way of handling it very.

You know, it does bring up. I applaud your resourcefulness. But here is a dilemma I've occasionally faced because I do pride myself in always ending on time or even a couple of minutes early, no matter what. But if it's a situation where, you know, I'm given a full hour 11 to noon and now it's 11:40 and I go on and they say, yeah, we got to finish by noon and everything is completely booked the rest of the day or the conference there it is a bit of a dilemma because I can make the meeting planner extremely happy ending at 11:59. And now the whole messed up day has been right sized. But I really kind of cheat the audience and myself because there's so much value I wasn't able to give. How do you deal with a situation like that?

Well, I mean, I go into these things loaded up with PowerPoints and handouts and I mean, I really try to give them as much value. When I do a one hour speech, I literally have a 45 page handout that goes with people helping do their budgets and how much insurance they need and all kinds of different things. So, I mean, in that case, when I had that, I got on 11:20, I went through it much faster than I normally would and I finished at noon. But I said, I throwed a lot of stuff at you quickly here and let's deal with it later in the day, you know, and that's the best we can do. And I stayed around and answered questions and they ended up being very happy. If you go over, they're really not going to be happy. So that's not a, you know, a solution is messing up the meeting planners itinerary for the day.

It's definitely the mark of an amateur. Jordan Goodman, you are a professional and a professional warrior. I can definitely see why meeting planners like you and, you know, we can't control all the circumstances. There are going to be car crashes, there's going to be snowstorms, there's going to be flat tires. All you can do is recalibrate and do the best with what you have. I would imagine you've even suffered fools who call you up, interview you, and they botched the whole interview and it was a waste of your time. I imagine that's happened. And I'm saying this, I try to.

Control it as much as I can, but sometimes you can't control it.

And I'm saying this, I'm going to tell a story on Jordan because that actually happened last week to him. Some hapless fool, some hapless fool called up Jordan, interviewed him, took a whole hour out of his time for a podcast and the whole interview was unusable. And Jordan, to his credit, didn't lash out at the person. Say, you moron, you took an hour of my time. Here's a $5,000 bill. He just said, okay, when can we reschedule the complete, complete consummate pro who worked on a solution for him to reach another audience? And I have to thank you, Jordan, because obviously I'm talking about myself here. I'm still embarrassed about it.

I'm glad to do it. You know, just don't burn bridges. Just go on and make it happen and you just don't get thrown by anything.

And it's quite often how you react in tense situations that actually builds bridges. Because I can tell you right now, you ever call me again for a favor or you got a new book out, you need some promotion, you go to the top of the list. And most people just get so annoyed in the short term, they just write the person off as a clown. So thanks again for that.

No, long term really makes a difference. Business is all about relationships ultimately. And I've dealt with companies and individuals for 20, 30 years in many cases. And that's what builds things over time. And those relationships produce other good relationships. You know the key, if you want the key to success in business, I'll give it to you in one word. TJ Are you open for one word?

Sure.

Leverage. Okay. And by leverage, I don't mean debt. I mean using other people's skills and time to benefit you and you benefit them. And both sides win that you only have 24 hours in a day and you actually have to sleep, sleep a little bit. So you can only do so much. But if you leverage other people and other organizations, efforts to benefit you, and it's a win, win thing, you can do really, really, really well. So that's the key to success, is positive leverage.

Well, I feel leveraged today, and I feel like this was a win win. I feel like I've benefited. Jordan Goodman, thank you for being our guest today.

Thanks so much, TJ.

Thanks for listening to speaking with TJ Walker.