#264: Money Habits That Build Wealth From Nothing | Steve Short & Mark Schlipman

Speaker A: It's boring to be totally honest.

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Speaker A: Most entrepreneurs spend years building income and almost no time building wealth. So Steve Short and Mark Schlitman are financial strategists who've helped business owners break that cycle. On this episode, they're sharing the exact steps to stop trading time for money

Speaker B: and start building a future.

Speaker A: Your business funds.

Speaker B: Steve and Mark, welcome to the podcast. Thank you.

Speaker A: Thanks for having us on.

Speaker B: Now Steve, you've spent what, 30 years leading billion dollar divisions and Mark, you've been advising clients for two decades. What made the two of you team up and decide to write a book for Gen Z instead of really focusing on high net worth individuals?

Speaker A: Really? The story goes back to my trust child. My children had graduated from college and after sitting, after getting their first job entering the workforce, it was pretty clear to me that they did not get any personal finance skill. Really lacking in our school system, as you might know, in terms of whether it's high school or university level. And the kids were entering and so I had the conversations with them. Then my next child graduated, same sort of situation. And I was talking, Mark and I became friends and through our sons actually. And as a financial advisor, I've always enjoyed personal finance. And I said man, I'm really seeing this firsthand for my kids that they have not learned anything and some of their friends are starting on the path of living paycheck to paycheck and things along those lines, bad habits that, that you see. And I go, do you see it? I go, you probably don't see it because you're a financial advisor. And Mark, I see it all the time. He goes, I, because he's not focused on recent college graduates or recent high school graduates. He's focused on higher net worth folks. And, and then when he told me he's, you'd be shocked. Number of high net worth people that really have not entrepreneurs, probably a great example that really have not saved their money and just don't have a plan and many of them are making a lot of money but not saving it. And he said let's write a book. And I said that sounds great. I'd recently retired and this has been a passion project for me. I've led different teams and really enjoyed talking about personal finance and helping My employees get on the path to uh, setting up their 401ks and maximizing free money and things like that. And so that's what started the journey for us.

Speaker C: Yeah, that's Sheree, that's one perspective.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker C: To echo on what Steve said in full transparency. And Steve knows this. We met when our like he said our boys were freshmen on dad's weekend. And normally as a fiduciary advisor looking for to align myself with other people, I can help assist on their finances. Steve was like the perfect candidate. He seems successful, he's moderately hired, good looking, just fit all the boxes.

Speaker B: All the boxes is that look for in customers.

Speaker C: Right. Life short and being Steve short, that worked out pretty good. But Sheree, I would tell you, I told Steve to his surprise, I said listening to you talk about how you helped your family out and just I was testing him on some of his in my area. I said, you are way above the curve. You probably know more than most brokers. But as a uh, fiduciary advisor, I will tell you that if you are paying a fee for somebody to transact trades you and this is something clearly you can do yourself, you should probably fire your advisor. And that was my recommendation. He goes wow. I go yeah, it would not be behoove me as a fiduciary responsibility to even prospect you at this point. He was taken back of uh, how not that the compliment because he wasn't used to getting a lot of those, but it was more the fact that he thought that everyone knew this stuff. And then we started talking about like exit planning with business owners and what I really enjoy doing. And sure enough, I believe he fired his advisor and uh, has been getting free advice ever since. But the passion behind the book is that there's so many young professionals or even people that are just starting out in high school, college, they're not confident to move forward on a game plan. They don't know what it is to invest. And I find it cherie that my existing clients that are great physicians or great engineers, they're great contractors or plumbers or whatever their trade was, they're really good at working in their business. But when they have wealth, they're like, what do I do with it? They don't have the confidence. And so what I like about the book idea that Steve agreed to do it is that it goes and breathes and moves along with transitions through life. So if you're new to the workforce, middle age to even retirement years, there's information there to help help bridge the Gap of the lack of knowledge that's not there, that's not being taught early on in schools or even in college.

Speaker B: I think the fact that you guys hit number one on Amazon is a testament to the fact that this is some information that people are actually utilizing that they. So congrats on that.

Speaker C: Thank you, Sheree.

Speaker A: Thank you.

Speaker B: And uh, the question that everybody's going to want to know once they grab a copy of this book is how did you get Will Ferrell to do the Ford?

Speaker A: Will? It is a great question. Will and I go back to college. Actually he and I have stayed in touch. We've been great friends for too many years now, but so he has been a great friend. We talked about this book or I was talking to him about the book and asked if he would be open to it and he said absolutely. The concept really resonates with him. He's got kids that are college age, two that are college age and one just a little bit younger. But he talks about these concepts all the time. Then part of our book proceeds are going to a charity that he and I are both involved with which is another friend of ours that started which is cancer for college. Been around for, for about 30 plus years now. It provides need based college scholarships to cancer survivors and actually amputees as well because our buddy is a three time cancer survivor and a double amputee. And it's just a, uh, it's an unbelievable charity that's really helping so many people. More than 2,000 scholarships have been given and so Will's very involved in that and I'm very involved. Mark's been involved as well. And so a portion of our proceeds are also going to cancer for college. So it just seemed like a great intersection of everything.

Speaker B: Yeah. And I know that is by far not the main question that people are going to ask, but I really thought that was awesome that he would promote that as well. Now Mark, you've been in wealth management for decades. Aside from um, the, these, some of these concepts not being taught in high school or junior high or just through college, what are some of the most, some of the most recurring financial mistakes that you see early adults make that they can avoid with this book?

Speaker C: Sure. So the reason why, there's actually a couple reasons, but the main reasons why we titled the book the Simple Road toward Financial Freedom is that uh, cherie, everybody's goal in life is not the same. So I believe when people say there's a couple things that kind of a lot of families, I grew up in a family that you just said we can't afford that. And I like to flip the script that, uh, how can we do things different to be able to afford something? And so a lot of times just saving money just to be saving money doesn't sound like a lot of fun. It's not as productive. But if you actually line out why you're saving money. So if in Steve, and I think a lot of it has to do with Steve's concepts that he helped explain in the book as well, is if you have a focus, let's say the focus is to have X amount of dollars. Let's talk about that. So if you want X amount of dollars when you're 40 or 50 or whatever it is, let's see how much it takes per year, per month, per paycheck to get to your goals. And so maybe we talk about delayed gratification. So maybe you don't spend money on everything you want and maybe just focus on the needs. And then knowing that you're sacrificing for a reason makes a lot more sense. And we reference a lot of times with climbing a mountain. And early in my career, people in our organization were going to go climb a 14er, and I had no idea what a 14er was. And so I googled it after I agreed to it, I'm like, oh, we're going to climb 14,000ft. That sounds like a lot of fun. So anyway, so I went and I started preparing my working out. And I did find it more rewarding that I'm working out for something I was working out not to die on the mountain, basically, and to get to the top. And so I think it's just a different mindset that the planning. A lot of people spend so much money in their business, but they don't spend time on their business and treat your. It doesn't matter if you're not a small business owner, but treat your family income as a business. And what's our goals? What are we trying to achieve here? So I think to answer your question, cherie, is that the goal setting and the planning and visualization of what our goals are going to look like is something that a lot of people don't spend a lot of time at. They just feel like, hey, this is. Let's just work hard. And which is true. You got to do the work, but sometimes when you know it's doing, uh, you're doing the work and making sacrifices for a greater purpose that you can visualize what those benefits could be. I think that's what's missing early on. And even, even people late to the game in their 50s, they don't know if they have enough money or if they should have enough money or what they can do 10 to 12 years.

Speaker B: So how did you guys handle when you were having these conversations and people say, I just don't want to feel broke? How do you handle some of those objections?

Speaker A: I think part of it is really having the game plan in the book. As Mark touched on. The book ages as we all age and it's really catered to those that are new to the workforce and really teaching some. It starts off with the power of positive care thinking because we're both believers in believing that you can get some of these concepts like that you can get this done, that you can reach the top of the mountain, that you can have your financial freedom. That's the first thing. But then we get into budgeting and different things along those lines. And the main thing that we're talking about is there's a lot of folks that are out there that this generation is hearing about to where you have to sacrifice, you can't. And we're not saying you shouldn't sacrifice a little bit to Mark's point on delayed gratification, but you can never have avocado toast, or you can never have a latte, or you can never. You have to eat ramen until you these goals. And that seemed a little too. As we would have our conversation over two years writing the book, it was evident to us that there's a different way. And so we created a little bit of a spin. And so we call it the 5020 Save first model. And we go into more details in the book, but basically it's a simple model that's a little bit different than you've probably heard out there where 50% of your income goes to needs. We say 20% should go to savings and then 30% to one. So it's a simple framework that's out there that allows people to fairly easily look at how much they're making and figure out where they may have some opportunities. Now, 20% is goal. And we talk about how you can take this 20% and turn it into a million dollars in about 20 years just through basic stuff, 401k matches and salary growth and stuff that if history repeats itself, which it typically does, but the main thing is a balanced approach for people to be able to not feel broke because maybe they're over saving when maybe they could also enjoy life a little bit more. But also at the same time this framework allows them to maybe grow into it. So if they're just getting started and maybe their budget doesn't allow for 20% savings, maybe they can start with 5% of savings. And then next year maybe they can see how easy it Is to automate 5% of their salary going somewhere and them not noticing that it was PA painful or anything like that. And it starts some momentum for them. And so that's one of the main things that we're really focused on. There's a couple others when we talk about bucketing money and stuff like that. But the big one for us that we really are really proud of is a 50, 20, 30 safe first model.

Speaker B: And I believe you talk about other opportunities like unclaimed.

Speaker C: That's a big one. That's a big one that a lot of people read the book and that's the first thing they did is go check the state websites to see if there's any unclaimed money and public information. So if you see your family or friends on there, you can go ahead and reach out to them. It could be, I've had something on there small as, uh, a dividend check for less than a dollar or two. I've seen clients that had unclaimed life insurance proceeds of 10 to $15,000, for example. So you just never know what's out there. But yeah, the states now do a pretty good job that if things haven't been cashed or maybe get a refund that you thought maybe the check was, uh, not relevant or actually maybe it's fraud, those things go unclaimed and now the states do a good job. So we have specific directions in there on the book, depending on what state you live on, live in, is to go claim and do the process of looking for that free. Uh, it's not money, but it's found money that you just maybe had a misstep and just didn't cash a check

Speaker A: or something becomes free. And we also talk about just a quick addition to that too, but we also talk about family members, parents, grandparents, things along those lines. Obviously, you have to prove that you're the rightful owner of this. But yeah, it's a pretty simple process. And you might be surprised. We've heard from a lot of people that were surprised to find out how much money be sitting out there, that these companies cannot keep the money. So if they mail a refund, uh, check or whatever for insurance, $1,000, they can't keep the money. It has to go to the state. And so there's billions of Dollars that the states are holding on to. That is a great opportunity to tap in.

Speaker C: Unlike my mother growing up, if you left money in your pockets and it went to the laundry room, that was a tip. It was not returned. It was not returned.

Speaker B: As a mother who, you know, does laundry, I would agree with your mom. That would be a great tip.

Speaker C: It's a tip. Yep.

Speaker A: Deserve.

Speaker C: Hey, the shirts are great.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: I mean, it wasn't that important to you, right?

Speaker C: Yeah. But is it amazing, though, when you do every once in a while, find like a $5 bill or something? It'. It's great money.

Speaker B: Let's get tactical, because I'm the type of person, if I can automate something and it just happens in the background, that works out so much better for me because I'm busy. Is there a way that you guys have found that people can consider automating their wealth so that they are saving or investing and doing all the things without having to manually do something every month? Every week?

Speaker A: Absolutely. Yeah. We keep saying it's in a little more detail in the book, but we talk about it in the book that we highly recommend opening a brokerage account. So someone especially. Especially if you're new to the workforce and maybe it's a concept haven't been taught. So how would you know about some of these concepts going out to a Fidelity or a Schwab or a broker like that, Free of charge, set up an account, and then you can set up an automatic transfer. And after you go through your. And you figure out how much you want to invest, and there's a couple steps ahead of that, we really highly recommend, like, having an emergency fund for three to six months worth of savings to make sure that you've got that before you invest. But you can also keep that money at the brokerage as well. You can set up an automatic transfer that on the 1st. Let's say you get paid on the 1st and the 15th. You could. You could have the transfer happen on the 5th of the month and the 20th of the month after money's in the account to automatically go to your Schwab account. And as I tell my kids all the time, just because it goes to Schwab or Fidelity or wherever your broker is, doesn't mean it can't come back to your checking account if you need it for some other reason. And we talk about that in the book. It's so critical just to automate this because I think we're all guilty of, oh, yeah, I'll sit down and I'll invest That and I'll do that tomorrow. And then it just. Life happens and you never get a chance to do it. So automation is the first key. And like I talked about earlier, that if you can start small and get hooked on it, as we allude, like, I didn't miss that money, that $50 that was going to my brokerage account, it just sort of was there and next thing I know I've got hundreds of dollars in the account. And the automation is just so key with that.

Speaker C: And another thing too, Cherie, on automation, on the flip side is we encourage people through the book to go back through their credit card statements and what is being autom charged to you? Maybe it's an app that you signed up for at the first three or six months are free and then now you're getting charged 4.99amonth and now you have to go through the process of getting that canceled. How many of those things are going on in the background? You think that's a waste of time? I don't have time to cancel that membership. But those things add up as well. Is the automation on the other side of just paying every month for things that we're not using?

Speaker B: Yeah. Speaking of credit cards and things being on your bill, I remember as a freshman going to college, I came from a family, I didn't even know what a credit card was. I lived with my grandparents for a wild. We lived on a farm and they just paid cash for stuff. So I literally, when I got to school, they had all these people in the student union literally like signing us up for credit cards. So after my freshman year, I had maybe five or six credit cards and I really did not understand debt at that point because these same conversations, no one had these with me. So if you are talking to someone about trying to get a handle on their debt, you have different people with different schools of thought. What is your take on the Dave Ramsey debt snowball versus the avalanche method or other methods to resolve debt when you know the whole concept is new?

Speaker C: Yeah, I do, I do like aspects, uh, of other people that give advice on finance. Finances and debt elimination is something that we want to target. If you have credit card debt, it's hard to match that in the stock market to get an 18% return on interest. It's just, it's very hard to combat that. And for a lot of younger people, you're struggling with credit card debt and we look at things holistically. Obviously you want to pick some of the money that is free. For example, like if your employer's got a 401k match, that's 100% return on that. But maybe above that, if you have credit cards and depending on your current situation, I do like the idea that you take the balance of the credit cards. If you've got multiple credit cards, let's say you have five credit cards, take m the lowest balance, get that paid off, and then snowball that payment into the next one and then eventually pay them all off. But really going to the root of that is not repeating the pattern. So if you get them paid off, great, but then you don't want to end up again with another 5 to $10,000 of credit card debt. And it's one thing to take and fix an issue, but the only way to really fix it is one thing is to get it paid off. But second of all is how to curt you're spending to not get yourself in that same situation. So a lot of times we will also encourage people to go back on your credit card statement for the last three or four months. And if you had to hit a do over button on a purchase that you're like, you know what, I really didn't need that and just play the game and then like maybe do that and then how much money would you have saved if you really did not need something? But keep that in mind when it comes time to the next purchase because, you know, the past is history, that's concrete. We can't go back and fix, we can't go back and change that. We got to be able to fix it it. But then the next best decision is your next decision is don't feel bad about what you did in the past, but now the new shiny object pops up and you take more of a, uh, vision of that solicitation as like, how is this company trying to manipulate me to buy something and what are they doing to me to make me want to go buy something? And so take more of that perspective on your next decision and empower yourself to say no and go into the delayed gratification. Steve.

Speaker B: Now Mark, do you know how hard that sounds for Black Friday and Cyber Monday and Prime Week? So that's a hard conversation you gotta have with yourself. Yeah.

Speaker C: Ah, I tell you what, I was in that same situation, cherie, if we. I think you're much younger than I am. I'm 50. But I could have been shoulder to shoulder with you in college applying for those credit cards. And they were new to me. They were new to me, cherie. I remember when I was in high school Going to basketball practice and a friend of mine and his dad were talking about CDs and I thought they were talking about the new music club membership. I didn't know what, what they were talking about. I thought about compact discs. I'm like, these renew. I don't understand what you're talking about. So I. My limiting scope was the fact growing up, we can't afford it and just work hard. But when I turn 23, 24 years old and realize that maybe my car payment should not be more than my house payment, you learn a lesson that, do I want to feel this way again or do I want to change habits to feel better about my situation? And I think a lot of times going back to the way you felt about the pain of being underwater or having credit card debt, I think hopefully that helps on Cyber Mondays and Black Fridays and all of the other kind of holidays that we shop and buy things. But I don't know.

Speaker A: I was going to add the visualization that we talked about earlier that we really are big believers in and talk through those steps in the book is so critical to that because. And we've heard it from people that are like, you know what, When I stop and really think about what am I doing? What am I working for? Am I looking to retire early? Am I looking to give more to charity? Am I looking. Whatever it is, and you think about that and you, you log that away. It helps with some of these purchases now, it's just not, ah, it's tomorrow, I'll deal with it tomorrow. But it's actually a tangible thing that's in your mind that hopefully can help you think through what your next purchase is going to be. We also talk in there, which is a great exercise, if you could do it is especially for a bigger purchase, is give yourself time, sleep on it overnight, whether it's a large purchase or whether it's a monthly purchase. We have a chapter in the book that it's only $400 a month because I think we can all justify a large purchase, car, whatever it is. Oh, it's only $400 a month. And we're not really thinking through how much is the total price of this thing that we're buying versus $400 a month. Because $400 a month is that keep the gift that keeps on giving. You're going to be making payments for five years or six years. And then we have a tendency to forget about that purchase when the next shiny object comes around the corner and it's only $300 a month. And so we talked through some of those, those things that again goes back a little bit to the marketing. Don't fall for some of the marketing that's out there.

Speaker B: And you mentioned mindset as well and having a plan. So part of that is that you guys have an opinion about the service debt versus savings first and making those purchases. Because sometimes people may feel like I need to go ahead and pay off all my debt before I actually start saving. Or should those be two activities that are occurring at the same time?

Speaker A: I will let uh, I'll touch on what I know and then I'll turn it over to the financial professional. And that is that, that for sure you should take advantage of where you're getting what we call free money. So if you have a job that pays a match in your 401k or equivalent for sure to take advantage of that first and foremost. Maybe emergency fund is first and foremost, but outside of that, because we talk a lot about the emergency fund just for a second, is because the key thing is you don't want to get off strategy if all of a sudden you lose a job or you have a big repair that you've invested in the stock market. We want, as we talk about in the book, we want that those investments in the stock market to be five plus years out because the market's going to go up and down. The last thing you want is to put knowledge into the stock market, have it be worth $500 and then have to pull it out for an emergency. So the emergency fund is really quick, is really critical, but at the same time you have to take advantage of the free money that's out there. In our example of getting our uh, uh, basically 20 to $1 million method as we call it, it's basically the 20% to a million dollars in about 20 years. A lot of that is for from free money. And in fact you can get to a million dollars and only save $250,000. And this isn't like uh, some get rich scheme as I'm talking about. It sounds like too good to be true, but it's just the reality of 401k matches your salary growth, the stock market growth. If you give yourself plenty of time, you don't have to save a million dollars. To get a million dollars, you only have to save about a quarter of it. So it's really important that you take advantage of those matches. Then I'll let Mark handle the other stuff on what he suggests for it.

Speaker C: Yeah, I would say on the most part outside of fashion. We're on the same page when it comes to financial talk. I should say no. I'm in my. I'm in my work mode today. Usually I'm black.

Speaker A: Am I under? Is that what you're saying?

Speaker C: No, I'm just glad you're dressed. But no. I think a lot of times people, like, they talk about a match at work, and there's nothing wrong. And I. That's what the book is for. I want to empower people to have some knowledge. Because a lot of times people are like, what is a match? They may not want to even ask that question. If they're listening right now, what is a match? And we explain what a match is. You have your employer investment game plan, your 401k, whatever the plan is at work, you put a dollar in, they put dollar, and up to a certain percentage. I like to explain things like that. The book talks about that. Some people talk about, oh, my gosh, the Dow Jones is down. Unless you own exactly those 30 stocks, your portfolio may be doing better or worse. And I have business owners that have millions that don't understand what the Dow Jones is or what the s and P500Is, which is actually 502 companies, but they just don't realize what the index is. And we throw this language around like it's water. Everyone knows what it is, and people don't understand. And I get it. I'm okay showing my lack of knowledge because there's a lot of material there. I can make fun of myself. So there's medical terms being thrown out. I'll ask what a medical term is. But even physicians do the same thing. They throw out these acronyms and you got this, that, and the other. And we just don't know what they are. And a lot of times we don't want to speak up. And so we want to empower people of all ages to get some basic knowledge from the book to empower them to either make a decision or to provide guidance. And to Steve's point, he makes a great point that he talks about the. That we all know how to drive a car, but a lot of times we don't know how to teach our children how to drive a car. There's difference. You can know how to do something, but learning how to teach it is completely different. And we look at this book as. When we first released it about a year ago, I gave it out to, uh, some of my top clients that are retirees, and to give it to somebody that they find that may need this book. To in their lives. And a lot of my clients came back and said Mark, we read the book first and there's things in there that we had no idea. I had a CPA that said Mark, we, I came away learning some information from the book that I didn't realize. And so that's the goal because it's just such an intimidating process and very uncomfortable thing to talk about. And we even bring it up Cherie with before you get married there's some topics you should talk about and if it's uncomfortable before you get married, it doesn't get any more comfortable when you get married. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: So guys, what is some m of the work financial or hurt that people widely accept as true?

Speaker C: I think there's a lot of get rich quick schemes on the Internet and there's just a uh, there's such a first in our country to get rich quick. It is amazing on all the different ideas out there and my kids show me things that they see on Tick Tock or whatever the meat doesn't matter what social media it is. If there's a lot of, there's a lot of great information out there, there's a lot of bad information. But I, I think that's the thing is that people are like there's a penny stock that's worth a dollar forty or uh, there's a stock that's 85 cents, it's gonna pop. And but on the same token, I don't like we try to keep it simple in the box book because the thing that we're trying to get people to do is save. And a lot of times people get so hung up by their well meaning intended friends that they're trying to get free advice from on giving them advice on where to invest the money. They get so hung up on where to invest the money, cherie. They either do nothing or they do something very aggressive and risky and then they get a bad taste in their mouth and then it discourages them to move forward. And I would say that's probably the thing that I see is that there's just too much of that type of mentality that you still gotta do the work work. There is really no free lunch except for the match on the 401k. But there's ways to get to your goals and objectives than uh, looking for

Speaker A: that quick buck just to add to that. Couldn't agree anymore. It's boring to be totally honest. But if you were to tell somebody that hey you're going to put in a dollar and all of a Sudden it's going to be $4 in 20 years from now. Would you do that? And I think everybody like, yeah, that sounds like a pretty good deal. And that's what we're talking about with the saving with the 401k and things like that that you can. Talking to my daughter, I took out an uh, Excel spreadsheet and modeled how much she had an entry level job and how much she was able to put aside the 20% and all that. And I go, you'll be a millionaire in 20 years from now. And for that concept for an early 20 year old was I'll be a millionaire blew her mind. Which is understandable because she'd never heard of some of the concepts that we were talking about here. And being able to be a millionaire in 20 years from now, which is not right around the corner, but not like when I'm retiring or when I'm 80 years old or something like that. Yeah, it was pretty mind blowing to her. And then the next part of saying, you only need to save a quarter of that to be it. I don't have to save a million to be a millionaire. I think that hopefully hit home. And we talk about just some of the stuff that's just tried and true in the book and try to avoid some of those get rich quick things that unfortunately I think are probably on TikTok more than anything. Just here's some stuff that you can do and almost try to stay away from those because. Because not only are you going to lose money, but that's money you could have invested in this other one that's a little bit more proven.

Speaker C: Sheree, don't you find to be amazing how easy it was to get a credit card in college?

Speaker B: Too easy. It was easier to drive to the mall and run the limit up in a short period of time.

Speaker C: So fun. I had so many good, I had so many good meals on a credit card.

Speaker A: Yeah, we're all like those credit cards were they. You had no, no underwriting. There was just nothing going, uh, on. No credit limits weren't high. But at least it unfortunately started off just horrible behavior.

Speaker C: It was higher than what I had in my back pocket a lot.

Speaker B: So guys, should entrepreneurs follow the same wealth building advice as W2 employees or is there a different playbook if you're an entrepreneur?

Speaker C: I think the first of all, I think the visualization is the same and I think entrepreneurs are. I love working with entrepreneurs. I love business owners. And there's different types of business owners too. There's ones that are creating a business that can run without them. We talk about that before people want to exit. Do you have a business or do you have a lifestyle business? So if you are just. If you're not in your business business working, is the business still running? And so how to, if you're looking at put all your eggs in your business and growing it, and obviously someday you may want to exit and sell it. And so what are some things you can do from an exit planning strategy to make it more appealing for anybody to come in and step in and buy your business? It's like flawless, it's seamless. And so those are some strategies that we love working with our business owners about is getting their business ready for sale. But a lot of people in this country, country were founded by small business owners. And a lot of small business owners, unfortunately get to a point where their business is worth their inventory. And that's about it. Because if they're not doing the work every day, no one else is. Maybe somebody doesn't have their skill set. And so I think a lot of times the mindset for a lot of business owners, we try to talk to them when they're early on is, yeah, it's easier just to do it yourself. But if you train somebody on a skill set in your business and they work for you and with the company, then you're creating a business that is scalable.

Speaker A: I'd say the other thing that we have in the book that would apply is what we call STL moments. So these are stop talk and listen. Most of what we talk about in the book is something that anybody can. You don't need, no offense to Mark, don't tell him this, but you don't need to hire a financial advisor to do a lot of the stuff that we're talking about here, the blocking and tackling. But there are things that all of us need to keep in mind and we talk about those in the book for these STL moments. So as you're probably selling your business, that would be one. You really need to stop talk and listen to a professional to do that. If you're unfortunately having to go through a divorce if you're looking to cash out your 401k, there's certain things that you really need to talk to a professional because if you make the wrong turn there, it can really cost you a lot of money.

Speaker B: So do you guys think that home ownership is still like a cornerstone of wealth building or is that an outdated concept?

Speaker A: I think it's. I wonder if we agree. I Don't know if we've had this question before. I still think it's a, It's a great opportunity. I get so frustrated. And that's where we really. There's not many books that cater to those of, uh, the Gen Z that we're going after. Because a lot of times people are only doing books to try to sell something and we're not trying. This is truly a passion project for us. I get so frustrated when my kids hear on the media all the time that they can never afford to have buy a house or they can never afford to have kids. And part of that might be true just because of how habits that they were never taught so they started bad habits, maybe living paycheck to paycheck, never saving for the future or the case. Maybe the 400amonth thing that we talked about. And we're trying to hit that head on with this book. How can we make an impact? Because I'm not ready to give up on our generation or our kids generation, not being able to buy a house and not being able to afford to have kids, because I think that's still possible. We just got to give them the tools.

Speaker C: And I totally agree with Steve. Steve, interesting thing on the economy with housing, we're seeing a lot more in current today's standards, a lot of people buying multiple homes. So it's not a trend. But you talk about the upper echelon of the country that are buying multiple homes in different cities and. But we're also seeing a trend. A lot of people in their 20s are opting not to buy a home, but they're opening up investment accounts because it's so easy to open up an investment account. So they're like, I don't have this mortgage. And I was just. My son's got. He had a handful of friends that he was hanging out with a couple weeks ago back at his old college. Town. Town. And we happen to be around them. Not in an annoying way, but just around them.

Speaker B: Of course.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: As far as, you know, vicariously through them.

Speaker A: Sure.

Speaker C: Uh, I just didn't leave. No. Anyway, I was talking to them. They're like. And I asked them how many of you guys have investment accounts? And everyone had one. And some people are like, I do $10 a week or I do 20amonth or whatever the situation is, because. And then a lot of the comments were, I don't have anything else to spend my money on. I don't. I rent and I live with four other guys or three other guys. And all this Kind of stuff too. So I think uh, what it does come down to, and it goes back to our book principles is what's your goals and objectives? If you stress about owning a home and there is a liability there, you have property tax, you got insurance, you're a roof, you got the hot water heaters, you got the maintenance, all that kind of stuff versus somebody who wants to rent. And so I've got clients, majority of my clients own their own homes. But I do have a pocket full of clients that have rented all their lives and they've got tons of money, but that was their comfort zone. They didn't want to have the stress because everything you do is stressful. There's going to be a down, there's going to be an upside and downside to what you want to do and accomplish. But so to answer your question, if, uh, and also not to that point, but people are more apt to move m now and with job stability they may have to move to another city or state for employment. And I think people are more apt to want to jump around and find what they want to do. But if your goal is to own a home, then by all means I'm a big advocate of that to support your goals and objectives. And I do see homeownership as being a great way to build wealth as well. And it's a, it's that also there's a mindset when you have make sure that mortgage payment's paid. When you're a lot of times the mortgage pay payment is always paid and then maybe some other things are being left behind. But it's also a way that you wake up someday and you got equity in your home. But to answer your question, I'm not trying to skirt the issue. I can make an argument to support what somebody wants to do, what their goals are. If it's to rent, they understand there's an upside and a downside and to own there's an upside downside and work with the person on what they want to achieve.

Speaker B: And so Mark, you mentioned, you know that all of your son's friends had investment accounts. So if someone has never invested before and they were looking at investing, what sort of account do you think will be a nice starter vehicle for them? Like what would be a good amount to get started?

Speaker C: That's the great thing about technology we reference. Charles Schwab is a brokerage company that you can open up account with them or even like Fidelity Brokerage company and you can pick stocks or an index to invest in and start it Was I think a lot of these have 10, 15, 25 to open up an account. They all have their own minimums to do that. And so I think whatever you open the account with is great but then adding to it on a monthly basis or a weekly basis, however you can, it's so easy. And we talk, we have step processes in the book, how to do it yourself. Because Steve is exactly right. And like I told him, there's people that have a lot of knowledge that do not need a financial advisor even at his stage of life, his late years in life. And then there's people that are young that don't know a lot that also don't need a financial advisor and we give them the step prostitute.

Speaker A: Just to touch on, I'm going to ignore Mark's comment, but just to touch on, on another topic that I think is really important to this conversation is bucketing that we talk about in the book and is really critical here and especially as you're asking the question Sheree on opening a brokerage account. So we go again deeper in the book but basically there's three buckets that we would recommend. One is your short term bucket, we'll call it bucket one. So that's zero to two years. So that's your emergency fund and any funds that you may need in the next couple years and we suggest putting that in some something safe. There's no chance that it's going to go down in value. So like a money market fund or if you don't need it for a year, a cd, something that, that's super safe, then you get two to five years. Those can be maybe something that's a little bit more. You could buy some bonds or some stuff that you can still have safe but you've got a little bit longer time horizon. And then you've got bucket three which is typically where a lot of the money will go after you have your emergency fund which is five plus years. So this could be when you retire this, whatever that case may be. And we really advocate for a heavy stock portfolio in that bucket. So that could be the s and P500 that Mark referenced earlier, which is a uh, basket just explaining for those that may not, a basket of stocks. So when you buy one share of the S&P 500, you're buying a portion of the top largest 502 stocks that are out there. So Apple and Microsoft and Google and all those stocks. A lot of times we would hear from folks saying I'm worried about it's gambling. To put it in the stock market and all that. And so we say the chances gambling, you have a clear winner and you have a clear loser. And it's like the penny stocks or some of the TikTok trends that we were talking about that you could invest $1,000 and it could be zero in a short period of time. The stock market, the chance of all 500 companies going bankrupt and that to zero never happened before and God willing it won't happen in our life. The chances of Apple going bankrupt tomorrow, they might have some ups and downs and things like that. So we really advocate for that S&P 500 just it gives you diversification, it's fun. You can go in there once the folks have an account set up and you can scroll down and see the largest holdings that you've got in there. And so you can see which companies you own. Which is fun. But that's really, it's really critical to have a strategy around that because, because as we mentioned earlier, you really don't wanna put money into this and then have the market go down and then that you're counting on that money for a down payment on a house or something along those lines. You really wanna put this money out into the future. And sorry, one last thing is look at it every day and we talk about that in the book. So if the stock market goes down, hopefully we're training folks to look at that as a buying opportunity to get the same stocks that you bought yesterday, but maybe they're 20% cause the value fell 20%. Maybe you're getting them on sale for 20%. But don't worry about your funds because you're not cashing out on those for five plus years from now. So it doesn't really matter what it's at today, it really matters what it's going to be in the future.

Speaker B: This is so good. Now here is the question that everybody really does want to know. Um, if you guys had one piece of advice to share with entrepreneurs on how to play big faster, what would that advice be as it relates to their personal finance?

Speaker A: Mark, I'll let you, you deal with more entrepreneurs than entrepreneurs.

Speaker C: That's a great niche. I think so many entrepreneurs are so busy working in their business, they don't work on their business. And visualize who's going to want to buy your business 10 years, who's got the skill set, who's got the means to buy your business and then you get closer to wanting to sell. But having that game plan of uh, what it's going to look like and not be caught off guard when you turn 60 and realize that just the inventory you have on your shelves is what your business is worth. You look at your. There's a lot of different things to evaluate a business and we love looking at those things. But it starts. It starts from day one. But if you're busy being in your business and not working on it and you're in your 30s now, you're in your 40s, now, you're in your early 50s, it's time to get things organized. That you make your business available for sale, that you've got an asset. If that's not your goal, it's fine. And you have a lifestyle business and you can pass it on. Maybe somebody in your family. But typically, a lot of business owners expect to get some type of value out of their business when they sell it. But so many businesses just don't end up that way. And so you got to treat your business like a business. But we tell that, cherie. We tell that to even our non entrepreneurs. Our w like you refer to them as W2 employees. And you look at your income coming into the household yourself, your spouse, significant other and all, uh, the money that's coming in treat that as a business. And what's our expenses? What's our outflow? What are we going to invest in for the future? So I think if entrepreneur have more of the mindset to plan and also our W2 employees that are getting a paycheck every week or every two weeks. But the commonality needs to be treated like a business. It is a business. And do some projections of are you on the right track of where you want to be 10 years from now or are you on the wrong track? And. And you can fix things now. Sooner you can fix them, the better. But majority business owners are so busy and please. And also W2 employees are so busy being busy that they don't stop and. Okay, let's take a moment and pause now. Not to get off topic. I'm not trying to. But Cherie, I would tell you the analogy we use is a comparison. What Steve and I did. Steve and I had no intentions of writing a book. We had a, uh, bottle of wine with our wives at a concert. And I said, hey, let's do this. And then the next day I called him. I said, we agreed to do in a book. He thought. I thought it was the wine talk. I go, it was, but we're going to do this. And so we is a passion project. Steve and I have no skill set in Writing a book. But what we did is we had the ability to format a plan and we committed to two and a half hours every Monday morning until we got it done. And it's just a little bit over two years. We got it and had no intentions that we actually become a number one bestseller on Amazon. But it shows you that having passion, having, having focus and drive and only talking about the book for those two and a half hours, which you can imagine how miserable this was for Steve to have to meet with me every Monday. But we got to know each other a lot better. Good, better and different. But we got it done. And so I like to use that example because I had, I had no business writing a book. I've never written a book before in my life. A lot of people don't spend any time doing planning, but if you need some structure, the book has it in there of uh, actually just sitting down with your spouse, your business owner, your business associates, your spouse, whatever, and formulate a plan for your business and, or your personal finances and do some projections. Because if you're not the person you were that you wanted to be 10 years ago today, you're probably not going to be on the same track ten years from now to be the person or the goals that you want to be ten years from now.

Speaker A: I think that is great. I echo everything that Mark said. I will add to it that I think and maybe this is my background in the corporate world. Just working for a $30 billion company and running a uh, multi billion dollar division is you have strategy meetings all the time. Time where you're trying to figure out what is your goal for the next year, two years from now, five years from now. Because for a large company you clearly can go in a lot of different directions and you really have to be very laser focused on what your goals are and what your strategies are. And I've seen that with a number of boards that I've been involved with that are startups or smaller businesses. So I think it applies to the entrepreneurs is sometimes you get going in just this day to day, hey, you're just running and running your business, which makes sense. But how do you break and make sure that you're strategically thinking about your business and then that also comes to taking care of your employees. And we've seen through this book, originally we were planning on doing the book and then people have had us on podcasts like you, which is awesome. Thank you. But then now we've got businesses that are saying, hey, we want you to come in and Talk to our employees because our employees are financially stressed and we, and we recognize what you guys are saying that they've never been taught any of this stuff. And so we start seeing research out there that are financially stressed employees are two times more likely to be job hunting or two thirds of them are spending time, personal time at work on personal financial matters. And I guess the other piece of that, as an entrepreneur, if you've got employees, what are you doing to maybe help them in terms of be more well rounded individuals and personal finance might be near the top of the list.

Speaker B: So guys, we've heard a lot of great things, but I think what the people that are watching or listening to this will also want to know is where can they find the book and where can they contact you guys if they want to keep this conversation going?

Speaker A: Thank you. The best place to find information is on simpleroadbook.com there's a link there to purchase the book. It's also available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble and all the great retailers that are out there. There's a little bit more margin, as you might imagine, which allows us to pass on more to cancer for college, for books that are actually sold on our website. And then there's tips that are on there and we ask people, we'd love to have people help us spread the word. If you've got ideas, let us know. In terms of how we can spread word to younger generation, our social media, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube. We have been posting videos every week or two and financial tips that are super simple, under a minute. Typically just things from the book, concepts that we talk about, new ideas that we're like, hey, we just wanted to talk about this and spread that knowledge. So we'd love to have people join us and follow us on those platforms as well.

Speaker B: Guys, thank you so much for being on the podcast and if you are listening to this or watching this on our YouTube channel, please leave us a comment. Let us your takeaways and definitely if you can go out and support these guys by purchasing this book. Proceeds, some of the proceeds do go to charity, so definitely do that as well. And leave comments on their socials to let them know how this conversation has really improved the way that you look at your personal finances. And until next time, play big faster. And for those who may be watching or listening, if you've enjoyed this conversation, please please follow us on YouTube or wherever you get your podcast and you'll get more great conversations like these. Until next time, play big faster.

Speaker A: Thanks for listening to this episode. And remember to play big faster.