PODCAST Episode #8
Solve for Freedom
(Part 2 – CAREER)
Freedom in your CAREER
It gives you the ability to make your own choices, turn emergencies into inconveniences, and save for your future.
LISTEN TO THE EPISODE
EPISODE #8: Solve for Freedom (Part 2 – CAREER)
“Hello, and welcome back to part two in solving for freedom. I was going to call this episode, solving for freedom in business. But then I remembered that not everybody’s an entrepreneur.
It’s hard sometimes to remember that because the circles I run in, a lot of people run their own businesses. Or are stay at home moms. All of these are beautiful callings that God has put on our hearts. And so I don’t want anybody to hear any shame or negativity in what I am saying today. Some of us are leaders. Some of us are followers. Some of us are pretending to be followers, when we should be leaders.
With that said, I want to start by talking about those of us that are working in careers for someone else. We have a boss.
We aren’t all in a place to have a job that makes our heart sing. I don’t know if you guys have heard that quote before, do something you love. Do something that makes your heart sing and you’ll never work a day in your life. I don’t agree with that. The work that I do, helping people change their financial lives. I absolutely love it. And there are parts of it that light me up, that I could do over and over and over again. Like recording this podcast. I absolutely love getting to be in your earbuds today. But there are other parts of my job that I do not love and do not make my heart sing. So I just wanted to go ahead and cancel that fallacy first. Some work days are just hard.
What we can do though, is find the pieces of our job, that are wonderful. And what I’m going to talk to you about today. If you were in a job that does not quote unquote, make your heart sing. If you’re working a job that you feel you have to work, because you don’t have any other choices, we’re going to be talking about that today.
My first job was at a movie theater. Now this is the perfect first job for 16 year old me. I love movies. I love popcorn and I got to take home as much popcorn as I could possibly stand.
And I love people. But I do not love cleaning up after people. So there were pros and cons to my job. This wasn’t a livable wage job. Or my forever position. It wasn’t meant to be. But I learned to show up on time. Go above and beyond for people. And to pay taxes. I also learned leadership. I learned that as I sweet talk the boys and to doing the stuff I really didn’t want to do.
Like changing out the soda. It’s a very sticky job and I didn’t like doing it. Taking out the trash. I didn’t want to do it. So I found ways to persuade people to do the things that I wanted them to do. And was very quickly elevated to a pseudo management position. I got paid a little bit more per hour and I got to be in charge of the concession stand. So even though I was not a manager per se, I did get to assign people to different jobs. And I got to assign myself to the cash register that had the most people coming. So it was constantly, constantly, constantly working.
What does this say about freedom? This was the job that I had to do before I could move up. Maybe you’re there right now. Maybe you’re working a job that you hate to pay your bills. You need the money to make the car payment so you put up with more crap. Then you really want to.
Is that car payment really worth it?
Let’s say that you actually enjoy your job. You have been doing this job for a number of years. You are thrilled with it. But now there’s new management. And they don’t treat you well. What are you going to do? And the one job that you hate, you know, you’re like, well, I’m going to find something else. Like, obviously this job that you love, you’re thinking.
I really wish I could find something else. If you have bills, you have to stay in that job until you can find something to cover your bills. You have to stay longer in a negative position. I don’t want that for you. And I don’t believe you want that for you.
But if you’re debt-free. And you have a boss that comes in as like, Hey, Look, I know you’re supposed to have next week off, but you can’t take next week off. Yeah, I know you have your kid’s graduation trip to Italy, but you’re going to have to stay at work. You know what you get to say to them?
Okay, bye. They’re like, no, no, no. If you, if you leave, you are fired, you say okay.
Take a cardboard box with you. Pack it up with all your stuff and you go because you don’t have golden handcuffs. Maybe you’ve heard of golden handcuffs before you’re in a position that feels like it is just… you have to be there because the money is good enough that you are stuck. We’ve talked about being a slave before. I don’t want you to be a slave to your career.
When you are debt-free. And have an emergency fund you are in the financial position. Where you get to make a whole bunch of choices. You get to decide: I love this job. I don’t love this job. I’m going to volunteer instead of going to work. Whatever it is you want to do, you have this option.
I know some people and who stay in a job because of benefits. And they think the benefits far outweigh the promotion or the raise that they would give at the other job. But if you sit down and cost it out, usually what you find is your raise at a newer position, the raise you would get at a private sector job, far outweigh the benefits that you’re getting at a government job.
Just look into it.
I also know people who I’ve worked with, I’m thinking of one lady in particular. When we started working together, she came to me and she just had a depressed spirit. She was not a depressed person. It’s just, she was very tamped down. Her job was draining. Her bosses were controlling and a bit misogynistic. And they spoke down to her all the time and she hated it, but she was making good money. She had good benefits. She thought she had to stay. So, what we did is we worked very hard and in the period of about four months, she paid off $10,000 of credit cards. She became completely free.
In that amount of time, I saw her spirit lightened and I saw joy come back to her face. And by the time we finished my Money Mastery Program. She has a smile on her face every time I talked to her. She was just beaming with joy. And then she told me something absolutely beautiful.
She said I’m moving. And I was like, oh, you’re you’re getting a new apartment. She said, no, no, no, no. I’m moving. And she was picking up and leaving Florida and moving to Texas because she didn’t have to work at that job anymore. She could be completely free. And it was such a lovely experience to watch her flourish. I just wanted to share that with you right now. She didn’t have those gold handcuffs. She got to leave.
Another set of golden handcuffs that we hear about a lot in our society right now are people that work in lower income areas in jobs like law or medicine. And these people get to work for 10 years and then they’re supposed to get student loan forgiveness. Unfortunately, less than 3% of the people who were promised student loan forgiveness after working in these areas for 10 years, only 3% of them have been granted that student loan forgiveness. That’s a really, really sad state of affairs.
Don’t let someone else dictate what you do and do not do with your career.
When you’re free. When you’re debt free. When you’re free of the bills and the golden handcuffs. You negotiate differently.
I was listening to a podcast the other day, where a lady was completely debt-free and she had been running her own business. But this job opportunity was presented to her. It was in a field that she had done before. She said she negotiated so well with the person bringing her the job opportunity that she negotiated herself into a salary that was so incredibly large she couldn’t say no.
And she was like, I wasn’t planning on doing that, but I threw out a number. Because I had no limits. It didn’t matter to me whether I got the job or not. So I threw out a really big number and they countered back with, yes. When can you start? And she was so surprised. She ended up working that job on the side of her full-time business, for about six months and she made multiple six figures in six months because she threw out a number. And they said, yes.
You hold yourself differently and your better positioned to take the best position possible for you? Something that does make your heart sing. Rather than a salary you get to position yourself to volunteer. You get to position yourself to be of service, as opposed to being a slave to your salary.
Okay. My entrepreneurial friends. Being debt free helps you negotiate too.
A broke salesperson smells desperate. Have you ever worked with a broker salesperson? You can see it on them. They hold themselves differently. They walk into a room. Desperate, and you can read it all over that. And nobody wants to work with desperate. If you’re a broke actor.
And you’re walking into an audition room. They smell it all over you. No one wants to work with a media actor. That was me. I used to work, walk into an audition room and it was, if I don’t get this job, I’m not going to be able to eat this week. I really need this job. And you just hold yourself differently. You have a different energy. But when I walked into rooms as an actor,
Debt-free and it didn’t matter financially whether I got the job or not. I just got to play. Can you imagine walking into work and just getting to play? It was so incredibly fun. And also lucrative for my career.
When you’re running a business and you’re running it completely free you can weather tougher storms.
22% of gyms closed during 2020 and 2021. 22% of all gyms and that’s anything from CrossFit gyms, small business gyms. I know orange theory places that closed down. There are plenty of bigger name gyms that had to close their doors because they were being run in a precarious position.
31% of small businesses closed permanently during 2020 and 2021.
By September of 2020 97,966 small businesses had permanent closures. That’s a staggering number. That is a very large group of people who are no longer allowed to fulfill their dreams. At least not in the way that they were doing them at the beginning of 2020.
When tough storms come, make sure that you’re not at risk. And debt is risk. If you’re worth is your assets minus your liabilities and you have no liabilities and you are completely all assets, you are high on the hog, my friend.
One of my favorite things to do on long road trips is point out Public Storage buildings. Now, this may seem really silly to you, but I took an accounting course in college where I had to write a 50 page term paper, 50, five zero, 50 page term paper on a company. And the one that I was given was Public Storage. Now, some of those pages were graphs. And let me tell you, I made some of those graphs much bigger than they need to be.
But it was 50 pages on Public Storage. One thing that I absolutely loved about Public Storage is this company buys all of their land and buildings in cash. They do not owe a single cent of rent. They do not leverage their buildings or their land. And because they do that their businesses are almost all profit.
Public Storage is a very stable company. I do not have any single stock in Public Storage. I’m not recommending that you have a single stock and Public Storage. But that said Public Storage is a very stable company because they don’t owe anything to anyone. That’s how they run their business. And I absolutely love that. At least that’s how they were running their business in 2007, when I had to write that term paper.
You make smarter financial decisions with your money, as opposed to working with other people’s money. Maybe you’ve heard and they’re like, oh, I’m going to use other people’s money. I’m gonna use the bank’s money because then… I don’t understand it. Honestly, if I use other people’s money then it’s easier for me. How was that easier for you? Using other people’s money. There’s somebody else’s coming up to you and going, Hey. Hey, what are you doing? Where are you doing with that money? I don’t understand how that makes things easier, somebody else being on your back and telling you what you can and cannot do.
But there are some people that think other people’s money is a smarter play. Maybe because you get to keep more cash in your pocket on the short term. But in the longterm, you have to pay back those penalties. Right?
When you are playing with your money you make smarter decisions. We’ve talked about this in a previous episode. When I have $5 in my pocket I am going to be smarter about how that $5 is spent than, if I’m spending my mom’s $5. Let’s just be honest. That’s kind of how it is.
I don’t know if you guys have ever seen the show Bluey. There’s an episode of booby where the dog… It’s a cartoon for children. The dog has a $5 bill that she was given. She walks around a local market. She’s trying to find something to spend this $5 on, but she doesn’t want to just spend it on anything. And so she goes from place to place, to place, to place, to place, to place, to place, to decide where she wants to spend it.
That’s how we behave with our money. However on another episode where she has her parents’ money to spend she just goes and spends it, and then ask for more. This is human nature. Yes. That is a cartoon about a child dog. But this is how we as humans behave.
When you use cash in your business, you are more innovative. You come up with more creative ideas. If somebody came up to you and said, Hey, if you buy this widget then your business is going to grow by 10 X.
You don’t have debt on the table. You can not go take out a loan to buy this widget, but you know, that widget is going to cause your business to grow 10 X. You are going to do anything and everything you can to come up with a creative solution to find the money, to buy that widget. And in doing so you might come up with an idea that is going to 10 X your business on top of 10 X in your business with a widget.
Now let’s, let’s also think about this. You throw out a bunch of ideas. Some of them aren’t going to be any good. But if you’re using your money, And you’re being smart about it. You’re thinking about it more. You’re going to sit down and think about it. You’re going to think about the pros, the cons, the goods, the bads, the uglies. Is this going to be a smart decision?
However, if you’re using other people’s money, you’re more likely to run into a new product or line of service without going through all of that analysis because it’s not as painful to swipe a credit card. You can just go in. So this could in fact, keep you from creating something really negative.
Keep you from creating something that’s going to cause harm to your business.
I really quickly wanted to talk about people who were innovative in a downturn. We are looking at a possible recession right now. And I don’t, I don’t want you to be afraid. I want you to make sure that your business is as little risk as possible. If you are working for someone else, I want to make sure that your home life is as risk-free as possible.
But I don’t want you to be afraid of a recession. And here are three companies that were started in the 2008 recession. And these are little companies you may not have heard of them. One of them is Venmo. Have you ever heard of it, have you ever used it? Probably not. It’s probably not that big.
Another company that I know nobody has ever heard of or ever used. It’s called Instagram. That started in 2008 when people had to be innovative. And they needed to make a pivot in what they were doing so they created Instagram.
And then another company that was started in 2008, that is absolutely tiny that nobody has ever used. I’m certain that if you’re listening to this right now, you’ve never used it. It’s called Uber. And this little company, where they drive people around. It’s kind of like a taxi, but different.
Can you imagine your life without those three? Can you imagine your life without Venmo? Or Instagram or Uber? What your life will look like today? These people saw, yes, we are in a downturn, but they have the ability to go out, make something innovative and grow and thrive. Here we are. We’re not in a 2008 style recession. It is a very mild recession, if there is one at all. And you have the ability to be completely innovative and to grow and to thrive. But you have a better chance of doing that if you are not leveraged to the eyeballs. So take risk out of your life.
We go into business to be our own boss. Don’t let MasterCard be your master. Don’t let Amex dictate your spending choices. You don’t need investors. What you need is patience.. Whether you work for someone else or work for yourself, I want you to solve for freedom. Determine what you want to do with your life and then do it.
Don’t let your money choices from the past dictate your money choices in the future. You’re in charge. You tell your money where to go.
I just want to encourage anybody that is listening today. If you feel the need to reach out to me for any reason, if you want to argue about anything that I said here, or you want more information I would love to be a resource for you. I do have my Five massive money mistakes to Avoid in Business. We talked about a couple of those here today on this podcast. If you own a small business you really want to pick up this ebook! It is a quick read. It is 11 pages, 12 pages. So it is the tiniest book you’ll ever read. But it’s too big to be a pamphlet. . I’d love to give that resource to you. And I would love to have a conversation with any of you about what it means to solve for freedom in your career.
I hope that this encouraged some of you today. That some of you heard some things that you hadn’t heard before. Feel free to reach out to me. I am always, always here for you. All right guys go solve for freedom. I’ll talk to you next week.”