Life on Your Terms: The Remarkable Rise of Brad Abbott

Brad Abbott is a man who has navigated life's twists and turns with resilience, determination, and an unwavering commitment to his core values. Raised in northeastern Colorado in a humble, rural setting, Brad grew up in a single-wide trailer house, where hard work and respect were paramount values instilled by his military veteran father. Despite the challenges of growing up in poverty, Brad's childhood was filled with the joys of farm life and a close-knit family.

As he progressed through life, Brad pursued his passion for basketball, playing at various levels including semi-pro, Division II, and Juco leagues. Alongside his athletic endeavors, he explored different career paths, eventually finding himself in the oil and gas industry, where he achieved financial success but grappled with the toll of long hours and strenuous labor.

The turning point in Brad's journey came when he ventured into the world of network marketing, initially drawn to it by the promise of entrepreneurship and freedom from the traditional nine-to-five grind. Although faced with challenges and setbacks, this experience sparked a realization within Brad that there was a path to financial independence outside of conventional employment.

Embracing the principles of perseverance and faith, Brad embarked on a journey of self-discovery and personal growth, leveraging his experiences and setbacks as catalysts for transformation. Through dedication, hard work, and an unwavering belief in his ability to create his own destiny, Brad transitioned from the confines of corporate life to becoming a lifestyle investor specialist and creative finance expert.

Today, Brad Abbott stands as a testament to the power of resilience and faith, embodying the core values of integrity, family, fitness, and financial freedom. His story serves as an inspiration to those navigating their own paths, demonstrating that with determination and unwavering faith, anything is possible.

The change starts with you!

Transcript

Fred (00:00.862)
All right, what is up guys? This is Fred Castro and Sean Wilbanks bringing you the Stand For It podcast. Two real guys talking about real shit. The good, the bad and the ugly. And just like us, I'm sure you're wondering what the hell is really going on in our society.

Shawn (00:14.509)
Let's get one thing straight. This is not about left versus right. Black versus white gay versus straight. It's about doing what is right. Our goal with the Stand For podcast is to abolish the divide. It's about being free men and women that stand for our countries and create change one person at a time, starting with you. It's time to lead or be led. What's up, Fred? Thank you. It's only taken. Huh? It's only taken a year.

Fred (00:36.382)
Very nice. All right, that's the first one. That's the first one you, yeah, well, it's the first one you've nailed in the last three weeks, but congratulations. Hey, that's all right. I stumbled on this one because my internet froze up. So you guys got a nice picture of me looking special.

Shawn (00:45.353)
Come on, where's the love, man?

Shawn (00:54.117)
You got that Walmart internet in California. Did you pay your internet bill?

Brad Abbott (00:57.022)
Thank you.

Fred (00:57.026)
that I'm talking about. Yeah, for it for a premium price. Yes. California prices. So I've been pinned pedal of the metal. So I'm trying to switch gears here and had a busy day and busy week, busy month, but switching gears, get into podcast mode, get excited about this. So everything else is good. How about you?

Shawn (01:04.185)
What's up, man? How you been?

Shawn (01:19.601)
I'm good, man. It's Friday. Every day is Friday in my world and I'm happy to be alive. Girls are good. They're in spring break mode right now. So they're finishing. This is the first week of spring break and they got next week off and then they'll be back at it. So working hard and playing lots with my girls went to a spring training game yesterday. And yeah, man, everything's good. No complaints.

Fred (01:35.918)
There you go.

Fred (01:44.374)
That's good. Spring training in Phoenix. That's a busy time of year.

Shawn (01:49.173)
Dude, it was beautiful. Got to see the Cubs and the A's, and it was a fun game. But I'm excited, man. We got a good guest, Mr. Brad Abbott. He's actually a buddy of mine, and he's a creative finance specialist or a lifestyle investor specialist. So basically, what does that mean? He's gonna, we'll let Brad tell you, but he takes care of my stuff, and he's an overall good dude, and I'm glad to...

Honored to have him and glad he's here with us. Brad, what's up, man?

Brad Abbott (02:23.222)
Oh man, you know, just living the father lifestyle, you know, working out of the office home today and trying to stay alive, stay above water, you know, wait for the mom to get home. So they get to go out there.

Shawn (02:34.629)
You're a beautiful sunny Florida, aren't you?

Brad Abbott (02:37.306)
Yes, sir. I'm in the, what are they called, Sunshine State or is that California?

Shawn (02:43.613)
I don't know, but it is sunny there.

Fred (02:44.238)
I don't know, I think.

Brad Abbott (02:46.322)
Oh, yeah, no, um, nah, I don't think I'm eating only for really. You pretty much took care. I'll took all my thunder just introducing you there. So.

Shawn (02:52.853)
Yeah. No, but now you're not you're not originally from Florida. You've moved like three times, haven't you, in the last, I don't know, five, seven years?

Brad Abbott (02:59.661)
Yeah.

No, not that many. I would say originally from Colorado. So lived most of my life in Colorado, but moved several times within the state. But then, me and the family decided to pick up and kind of just, you know, move to Florida and do something different after the, you know, 2019, 2020, COVID crisis or pandemic. So, you know, yeah, just took off down this way. And it was kind of an interesting story how we ended up down here, but we...

Shawn (03:23.43)
Yeah, yeah, that's exactly hit it on the head.

Brad Abbott (03:31.25)
We really just sold our house down there. Market was great, market was high. Schools are going crazy, of course. They wanted to do the vaccines, all the things for the kids. And we pretty much were like, yeah, we're just gonna sell. And hopefully we were able to find a place in either Texas or Florida. And we were leaning more towards Texas at the time. And looking at schools, searching on, my wife's more of a school than that. We don't like public schools a whole lot just because, you know, our education, yeah, the education is important too.

Shawn (03:58.109)
understandably so.

Brad Abbott (04:01.566)
how our kids learn, but more than necessarily like the sports, athletic side of things. Like where's the best quality of both? That they're not gonna push an agenda essentially. So, wife, yeah.

Shawn (04:11.154)
So that was your main driving point or whatever is getting out of Colorado and going somewhere either Texas or Florida.

Brad Abbott (04:18.202)
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it was, it's time for a change. This was, we've been there whole lives for like, you know, we're not going to do this anymore. We're not going to put up with it. So, um, they're not going to solve it for us with fix their own problem and take care of ourselves.

Shawn (04:26.997)
That's crazy.

Fred (04:31.59)
We can commend that for sure. That's a, that's definitely a stand for it principle. So, uh, congratulations on, on making the move and making it worthwhile. I think what Sean locked up here.

Brad Abbott (04:43.582)
Yeah, he may have froze a little bit there.

Fred (04:45.95)
Now he's having a seizure. Hopefully he pops back in here, or we're going to have to kick this thing into gear one more time.

Brad Abbott (04:47.602)
Yeah

Brad Abbott (04:54.822)
so good. But yeah, we took a stand for it essentially, you know.

Fred (05:00.85)
Yeah, I was going to say, what part of Colorado did you come from?

Brad Abbott (05:03.59)
Northeastern Colorado, it's more that Denver metro area, but it was out of the city limits kind of the rural area time Yeah But oh lost them

Fred (05:05.058)
Okay.

Fred (05:09.941)
Okay.

Fred (05:15.198)
Yeah, he's probably logging back in. We'll just hang on a second.

Yeah, it's a shame that how many families that we run across, they were faced with the same challenges and decided to make a move for the better. I mean, that's really what you got to do, is take it into your own hands.

Brad Abbott (05:34.874)
Yeah, it was, it was, um, unfortunate. You know, I was kind of forced. My hand was forced at that point in time. So.

Fred (05:42.494)
Well, I think you made the right move, right? You want to be in control of your narrative for your family, not someone else's. Sean, welcome back.

Brad Abbott (05:49.449)
Right.

pop back on there.

Fred (05:55.467)
We don't even know if this is real time yet.

Brad Abbott (05:57.614)
Yeah, we don't. It's still, uh, chill.

Shawn (06:00.582)
I had a, I literally had a power surge. My computer shut down the whole, all the lights went off and I was like, what just happened? I was talking and the screen went black. So I'm sorry, did I miss anything good? Of course, dude.

Brad Abbott (06:05.767)
Yes, ho ho.

Fred (06:14.306)
best part of the show. It got, it got so good.

Brad Abbott (06:16.364)
Yeah, always.

Shawn (06:18.902)
Well, I'm glad I'm back. I'm sorry I missed it, but I'm sure I'll catch up. Well, go ahead.

Brad Abbott (06:24.231)
you're good.

Fred (06:24.366)
Well, yeah, so I'll just catch you up real quick. We were just talking about, you know, you know, the move from Colorado to Florida, you know, under the circumstances, you know, and taking, you know, the well-being of his family into his own hands and making sure that, you know, he's raising his kids his way, so we were just touching on that and then you magically pop back in. And so here, here we are.

Shawn (06:40.843)
Mm-hmm.

Shawn (06:45.662)
Well, that's good. And I knew that about Brad because I do know Brad from years past. So I'm glad you got to catch up to the real story of Brad Abbott. So...

Brad Abbott (06:56.04)
Yeah. You're just behind. You're just behind, Fred. You're behind. Yeah.

Fred (06:59.168)
Yeah, we didn't go that far. Come on, we're waiting for the juicy details.

Shawn (07:03.666)
Why, why do you think Brad and I are friends and he takes care of my money? Um, now he, he's, he's a good dude. And, um, you know, that's why I think one of the many reasons, but I think one of the main reasons that Brad and I connect so well is because of his stance and, um, the importance for his family. Right. Um, we talk about the four pillars all the time, the core four, and, um, Brad embodies that in his lifestyle. And it is his faith. It is his family.

Fred (07:07.775)
Yeah, he's like, he was.

Shawn (07:33.258)
It is his fitness and it is about finances. Um, and you know, we talk about all the time here, who's in your tribe and who's in your circle and Brad's one of the guys that's in my circle specifically for those reasons. So, um, yeah, man, I'm glad, glad we got to get that, get that out and established. But so go ahead.

Fred (07:52.858)
Yeah, so yeah, I was going to say how old are you, Brad? Just kind of curiosity.

Brad Abbott (07:58.674)
What, how old do I look? What do I look?

Fred (08:02.156)
You're pretty swole. We'll just put that on the table now. This guy's ripped.

Brad Abbott (08:07.36)
I do dedicate a lot of time to staying healthy, but no, I'm almost 40, so I'm 37.

Fred (08:12.006)
So, and I would say, you know, one of the things that we, I know Sean and I had battled with over the years and we'll have different guests on the show is just finding where you decide to take charge of your own life and find your own alignment and live within, you know, what's good for you versus what you think is you're supposed to be doing. So, I mean, obviously you're fit, you look pretty young, you know, I should, that's taken me over 40 years just to figure kind of what I wanted.

and get in alignment, start building your tribe with people that have, that are like-minded. And I'm not letting somebody push you around or kind of guide your family into a direction that's not suitable for the life you want to live and the outcome you're looking for. So I commend you on that for making that bold move from Colorado to Florida, you know, and keeping what's most valuable and most important to people like us as your family. Anything that resides inside those four walls of your home. So congratulations.

Shawn (09:07.387)
Yeah, 100%. What was life like growing up, Brad? You were from Colorado. And so peel back some layers of Brad for our listeners. And yeah, tell us.

Brad Abbott (09:18.346)
Man, that's, you know, so we're holding the onion right now. So we're gonna just chop this thing in half. Let's just get that.

Fred (09:25.144)
Just make sure you chop it in half the right way so we don't cry.

Brad Abbott (09:28.478)
You're gonna get me emotional thinking about it. So I was raised very, very poverty. So most people who think like, oh, I was raised in a middle-class family. I was below what middle-class and low-class. Like I lived in a single-wide trailer house. I grew up on like a little ranch with, you name it, animals, gardens. So we lived very minimal to say the least. But growing up, I didn't know, we didn't know we were poor. We had no idea what that even meant and what that looked like. All we know is we had.

We had some four-wheels and dirt bikes, we had farm animals, and we had a roof over our head. And when it hailed in rain and tornadoes, we had to run to a cellar like 50 yards away. So we knew we had a cellar, we had food on the table, we had a roof over our head. So when we'd go to our other friend's house and we'd see the actual houses, we'd be like, oh, this is what, that was middle class. We thought that was great. But then we would come back to our home, we're in a single white trailer house. So very on the far poverty end, I would say.

Fred (10:16.983)
Right.

Brad Abbott (10:25.414)
Dad was prior military, served in the service. Very rough, rough dude. He was a lot bigger than me, my size. He was 6'4", 260, built like a brick crap house, basically is what most people would say. Green beret. There might be kids listening. No, but so just very black and white type man, strict.

Shawn (10:43.984)
You can say shit house on here, you're allowed to.

Brad Abbott (10:54.182)
you know, tell you once, you listen twice, or getting something thrown at you, or getting smacked. So very strict household, to say the least, but built on maybe not the best values as we know at the time, you know. But character wise, he taught us a lot about respecting, you know, women, working hard for things that really mattered in life, and you know, getting what was yours, earning your keep essentially. We pick up.

4, 4.30 in the morning. If we weren't up, he'd flip the beds over on us. We'd get, you know, we'd walk down the hill 45 yards to feed him water, the cattle, the horses, whatever, chicken, poultry, you name it. We had to take care of it in the morning. And then in the winter, we had to drag the hose down there, buckets of water, break the ice. So the whole nine yards. So very, you know, labor type upbringing, which built a lot of good character. But that's essentially how it was raised when that kind of, that mentality, that mindset, if you have to work up sun, sun up to sun down.

Shawn (11:39.854)
Hmm.

Brad Abbott (11:49.89)
and put in the time to do it. That's where it comes from.

Shawn (11:53.282)
So your work ethic definitely is not in question because having a father like that and upbringing like that, you either worked and had stuff and as you said, you were poverty, but you didn't know you were poor, right? Until you went over to your friend's house. But your work ethic is not in question. So high school, you go into high school and then, now for our listeners, Brad's a big dude, like Fred said. He's six, seven, and he walks around. What about?

240 to He's a big dude and he's jacked but he's a

Brad Abbott (12:23.838)
at 240, 245, I'm just saying something.

Fred (12:30.601)
My 240 is not the same as his or my 260.

Brad Abbott (12:33.585)
Yeah, mine stretched out.

Shawn (12:37.501)
Fred's is like a keg of beer, yeah?

Fred (12:39.274)
Yeah, it's like a keg of beer. So, but I'm supposed to be seven foot tall. So that makes a difference, but I'm a good time.

Brad Abbott (12:42.842)
Yeah, you got the pony kegs, it's all right.

Shawn (12:42.968)
Hahaha

Shawn (12:46.998)
Uh, so you go to your, you're playing sports, you're obviously basketball player. Um, what kind of athlete or student were you in school? Did you get good grades? Like was your dad that you talked about character? Was your dad that, um, popping the whip, like education, academics plays a vital role or were you going to just be a blue collar guy and go into the military like your dad, you know?

Brad Abbott (13:06.412)
Um.

Yeah, opposite, opposite. He, well, he didn't like the military. He said, if you have the chance to shoot yourself in the foot, stay far away from it. He didn't trust the country. He's seen, he kind of saw what, how manipulative the country was, what they did, have the use. He just didn't like the system at all. Didn't believe in it. Um, so he said, don't ever go. If you don't have to go, don't go. It's not worth it. So he was actually the opposite. And then for school, he said, school's not worth it. Don't go to school. Go out there, earn your keep. You can make more money.

Shawn (13:29.251)
Right.

Fred (13:29.619)
Oh wow.

Brad Abbott (13:38.234)
working for yourself, then you'll ever get out of a degree, out of a trades. So he was very against any kind of schooling when I was, you know, being told to school, like go to school, get good grades and get a good job. And someday you might be able to retire. And that was the American dream that a lot of people put out there. Um, so it wasn't quite raised that way. His mindset was totally different. You, you go out there and if you want to make money, you have to work for it, trade time for money. Yeah.

Shawn (14:06.2)
Right.

So it takes you into college. And now when you went to, what college did you go to play basketball?

Brad Abbott (14:16.686)
Um, several. So first, um, out of high school, I got a lot of several offers to go play, but I came from a very small, small school, like out in the middle of the country school where I was the tallest across probably five districts, six districts. And there was one other guy who was probably, yeah, whatever work country community, right, playing basketball, these small schools at the one a level. So for me to even go anywhere was kind of unheard of in a few guys who'd kind of went.

Shawn (14:32.954)
Five counties.

Brad Abbott (14:45.578)
from smaller schools in the areas to play football, went pro to some extent, but no one really made it out as far. We had a lot of offers, so Euroleague, Australian League, so back in the day they were both different leagues, you know, wise, so getting over there was a pain. So played at semi-pro level, and then division two, so D2 level, and then Juco ball, travel league, and travel league was the most.

Shawn (14:53.368)
Yeah.

Brad Abbott (15:13.842)
was the craziest. I met more pros playing in the travel league than I ever did playing at college level. But Juco, that's actually where I actually met Carmelo Anthony and his friends from the hood, essentially. So I explained it. I met him in a small little town out in Podunk, nowhere, and ran into Carmelo Anthony out there. So that was one of the craziest stories actually. But anyway, that's kind of where I went.

And that was just more of an escalation of series of meeting the right people, but never really making it far enough and having a few knee injuries. It kind of took me out indefinitely. It was either that or go get multiple surgeries and then, and then maybe have a chance of going pro, going to the NBA. And that's what travel league was. It was like my last shot of being like, someone look at me, maybe I go over to Europe, something. And it just didn't pan out that way.

Shawn (16:10.806)
So what are you thinking during this time when you're in college and you're playing sports, like where's your mind at? Are you thinking, okay, I want to be an entrepreneur. I'm going to get a degree and I'm going to go get this nine to five job. And like you said, trade time for money. Um, I'm trying to get, um, an idea of, of when did the switch flip for you to become this entrepreneur and say, you know, I'm going to go out and get mine or I'm going to just work for somebody.

Brad Abbott (16:36.894)
Right. Well, after that, I kind of went into the oil and gas industry. I came back and got a job just delivering fridges, containers, all the stuff that people have in their house or outside farm equipment. So that's where I got the weight lifting, got pretty buff, carrying fridges and washing machines by yourself is not an easy chore. Like, hey, you're big, just carry that thing. Okay, great. But the transition was more so after that.

Fred (16:54.314)
Ha ha.

Brad Abbott (17:02.63)
you know, realizing I had to be in the oil and gas industry, I had to go work for a live and do blue collar, that college wasn't gonna work out, education wasn't working out, that I was just gonna trade time for money and figure it out. So I kind of fell back into that, you know, like, well, I can make better money in the oil and gas industry. You know, cleared 250 a year making air in the oil and gas. Great living, you know, and did that for quite a few years. But in the midst of that, I got into MLM network marketing. A friend shared an idea with me.

like most MLMs go, they share an idea, here, watch this video. And it was a travel club. So I was running a travel club, building that business out over four years to probably 500 reps in organization. Wasn't making the money of someone who should have been at that level. But that really, that transition right there, I saw a way out into the entrepreneur space, to owning your own business. I saw an opportunity to get out of the oil and gas industry and stop working 14 hour days.

Shawn (17:45.73)
Right.

Shawn (17:56.983)
Right.

Brad Abbott (17:59.238)
and really create my own freedom. So that's where that kind of started.

Shawn (18:02.434)
So there actually is a silver lining if you join an MLM, maybe not for most people, but that was the silver lining where you're like, hey, this is my chance to be an entrepreneur. It's crazy to think what life would be like. We talk about this all the time, Fred, where we're talking about seasons. We're always talking about seasons or paths or roads that we go down or that we're led down to.

Brad Abbott (18:12.625)
Yeah.

Shawn (18:29.462)
And it's amazing how the path can veer off to the right, left, or go center. And that one decision and that one choice you make can literally alter your life for the rest of your life for good or for bad, you know, um, and that choice to go down in MLM, um, my dad used to call it multi-devil marketing and not multi level, multi-devil. And so.

Brad Abbott (18:49.102)
Yeah. Ha ha ha.

Fred (18:51.522)
Well, it's good depending where you're at in the pyramid, right? But, um, you know, but I think one of the people always make fun of them and, you know, and I know people that have made, you know, a healthy living doing that. But at the same time, you know, worst case scenario, you're going to get a lesson. You're going to get some education out of, you know, having to take responsibility because you're only successful if you do the work such as most things in life, right?

Shawn (18:54.301)
Right?

Brad Abbott (18:54.706)
Yeah, sort of odd.

Brad Abbott (19:02.673)
Millions, yeah.

Fred (19:16.586)
And so you do the work and you, you get the rewards, but you know, unfortunately in multi-level marketing, you can do some work, but I think it pans out from anybody's truly going to do the work. It's probably harder if you're lower than the, uh, and the triangle, but if you're closer to the top, you're going to benefit more rewards, but you got to stick to it. It's not a overnight success, which people want and expect, but

Shawn (19:37.634)
Well, and that's I think that's one of the things that we talk about a lot, Fred is, um, so many people I know I did when I was in college, I had these ideas of grandeur of being this entrepreneur and I'm going to make it and I'm going to make millions and I'm going to do it this, I'm going to do it in this timeframe and I'm going to cut the years off and I'm going to blow people's mind and here I am 50 and we're just getting the ball rolling. You know what I mean? And it's like, yeah, you, you've got to put, you've got to put the reps in and you literally just have to

Brad Abbott (20:01.446)
chicken.

Shawn (20:07.194)
Eyes straight ahead, like Deion Sanders was talking yesterday with Ed Mylap when I was listening. Eyes straight ahead, ears straight ahead, nose straight ahead, and your focus is straight ahead and you just keep going.

Fred (20:18.706)
And he mentioned to the, even your member when it's excited points straight ahead.

Shawn (20:23.17)
Yeah, when it's erect it goes straight ahead. But I think that, you know, that it's something that's overlooked for so many people. I know for myself is it's going to take a hell of a lot longer than you think. And it's going to be a hell of a lot harder than you can imagine. And it's go, right? It's just go. So man, that's good. So you're in the oil and gas. And then what next, Brad? What I know you.

Brad Abbott (20:49.802)
Yeah.

Shawn (20:50.594)
Got some big things coming down the pipe after this oil and gas, but where did you go after that?

Brad Abbott (20:57.138)
Yeah. No, it is kind of a back and forth between, you know, oil and gas industry for a while and trying to figure out how to make, you know, get out of a industry where you work so hard, but made such good money. And you know how it is, it gets hard, you know, transitioning, you go make 25, 35, 40 grand a year doing an MLM, you know, and then you're trying to replace a $250,000 income. It's not.

Fred (21:19.136)
right.

Brad Abbott (21:20.81)
It's not always the easiest thing to do. And they talk about financial freedom. At some point you find it as a breaking point, whether it's in life, you know, through its business or working a nine to five job, or if you're a trust fund baby, something's eventually gonna fall on your lap where you choose to make a decision, a choice where you have to find your own way or live through someone else's, right? Live in the garden or you go build your garden. And I think a lot of people forget about the work that goes into doing that, the dirt, the soil.

the timing, you know, reap your harvest, plant the seeds, but reap the harvest. I think a lot of people forget about that timing along in that transition. So it took some time. I'm a, you know, 15 year overnight success. That's what I tell you. It seems like it goes great now. And I really don't even post that much about what I do now, just because I'm referred out. I don't need to. And I work on a pro bono basis most of the time.

But still took me a lot of time to learn to be around the right people, to have the right mindset. And it, you know, you kind of have to fill your way to the top. And Ed Mylet talks about this a lot. And I love Ed Mylet and so many people listen to it and have the knowledge of what that guy spits out is just insane. But it comes out so easy that it's so obtainable. But you're right, you have to do the reps. And if you can't get through the reps, like then you got to have.

Fred (22:27.583)
Oh yeah.

Brad Abbott (22:42.582)
unbelievable faith that you're going to continue doing those over an extended period of time. So no matter what you do, it's got to fall back on faith. You're going to come to a point in your life where faith, you're going to be hit rock bottom. There's nothing else for you to believe in but have the faith to pick up and go again of what you know whatever God's destiny has in

Shawn (22:46.906)
Sure.

Shawn (23:04.813)
Yeah.

Yeah, that's good. I like that. When did you get serious about your faith? I know that you're a man of faith and every direction that Brad goes, I know that you pray and you seek counsel from God. And I know that's paramount. That's one of your core four pillars, is your faith. When did that transition, when did that really kind of begin to take hold in your life?

Fred (23:09.735)
Yeah, we'll soon.

Brad Abbott (23:13.362)
Yeah.

Brad Abbott (23:27.614)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Brad Abbott (23:34.906)
Right. I'll be real and transparent to you. Because I wasn't the best. Even though I was raised with a very strict father, my father wasn't a great role model when it came to women. He'd respect them great, don't beat them. But all I knew was treat women with respect. You know, be chivalrous, essentially call them ma'am. But after, then that college area, in that oil and gas industry, your environment is who you are at that time. So a lot of strict clubs, a lot of things of that nature. So I never really had a lot of

like a male robot who said, hey, this is what your woman should look like in your life. For me it was, you know, pretty women getting laid, all those things, right, that most men have thrown at them and it's so easy, you know, the devil to attack you, put it right there, it's up that flesh, right, so easy to just do those things. So in the midst of all that, what led me to my faith was my wife. I married her. And I tear up when I talk about it because

Shawn (24:19.595)
Yeah.

Brad Abbott (24:34.206)
She saved me.

Brad Abbott (24:38.186)
She really did. She saved me. But it's good because he did it in the most crazy way. Cause I was coming back home from Sioux Falls, South Dakota, of all places.

Shawn (24:40.73)
That's awesome.

Brad Abbott (24:50.618)
hole in the wall, like the worst places to be, right? You know, gas industry. So, and I'm flying home my last day on that job because I'm doing this travel business full time. I'm like, I cut my losses, I'm gonna go full time. And she was the stewardess, well, flight attendant, now they call him flight attendant on this plane that was going back to Denver. And, you know, she saw, apparently saw me enough to be, to want to get to know me and talk to me on the plane. And from that day forward, she, you know, we have gone on a few dates.

Fred (25:06.472)
Right.

Brad Abbott (25:20.21)
You know for three months, six months, by nine months we were married. Like everything was just, you know, completely gone at that point, but she pretty much took me out of that environment. And, um, I think God has a plan for all of us, right? I went through all these women and dating and you go through all these examples of what a woman should be like in your life. And God's like, I need you to go through all this pain, suffering, the heartbreak too, so that you know what it is to deserve a woman like I'm going to give you.

Fred (25:50.03)
It's a good, good way to look at it. Um, I think we've all crossed that bridge somewhere in our lives. So for Sean, he's, he's got two down and we don't know how many more to go, but um, no, but I, but I can, I can connect with you on that. Cause you know, we all go down this path and we think we're doing what is right, you know, and it's, you know, everybody wants that, right? Even this, uh, Dion Sanders, you know, uh, podcasts with Ed Milette, he talks about how he had everything, but he had nothing.

Shawn (26:01.934)
Nooo...

Brad Abbott (26:02.142)
plan for that.

Fred (26:19.562)
a 15,000 square foot house, but he didn't have a home that he felt at home in. He had the cars, he had the women, but he didn't feel loved. You know, but then you find that one person that was called to be with you and it changes your entire direction in your life. Cause it's somebody that cares about you that deeply and sees the good in you and wants to be part of your, you know, build a family with you. That says a lot. And so I love the fact that you shared that with us with a level of motion.

Brad Abbott (26:19.644)
Yeah.

Brad Abbott (26:24.69)
Yeah.

Exactly.

Brad Abbott (26:49.214)
Yeah, I did see you guys turn up. It's just in the mirror.

Fred (26:49.514)
You know, yeah, I try not to cause I'm a softie man. I'll be, I'll be, I'll be crying out loud if we get, get me going. But, um, but anyways, yeah, it's everybody has that turning point. What's that?

Shawn (26:51.21)
I did. No, I did.

Brad Abbott (26:58.636)
Thank you.

Shawn (26:59.61)
Fred, Fred cries at Wendy's commercials. I said Fred cries during Wendy's commercials. So. Ha ha ha.

Fred (27:06.626)
I mean, they, can you blame me?

Brad Abbott (27:12.018)
It's the sauce! It's the sauce.

Shawn (27:13.37)
No, I, and in all seriousness, Brad, I commend you for what you said because that was powerful. And I got goosebumps when you said that because, um, man, there was something in you that your wife saw. She recognized something in you that you didn't yet recognize in yourself. She saw potential. She saw maybe the hand of God on your life saying that's, that's the man. Maybe she was obedient and he said, you need to talk to that man.

Fred (27:13.399)
It is a sus.

Brad Abbott (27:31.786)
Absolutely.

Shawn (27:41.906)
I have no idea. I've never even spoken to your wife. I've seen pictures and I've heard her in the background during our discussions, but that's powerful, bro. And I appreciate you sharing and the emotion that you shared with us and our listeners was genuine and real, but it shows and it's a testimony to you and your wife and the love that you guys have for each other. And I think that's super powerful. I know Fred, you and Denise have, you know, an amazing story as well. You guys have been married, what, 23 years?

Fred (28:10.798)
27 coming up. Yeah, 27 years. So, yeah. You know, but it is wild. Marriage is a tough game and it's not easy, but you got to find somebody that cares about you enough to go through the ups and downs and stick to it for the right reasons. And, you know, I think it's a blessing. You know, nothing's ever easy, but we try to find the good in each other and build.

Shawn (28:12.026)
27 years.

Brad Abbott (28:15.154)
make my 10 years seem like a stepping stone. Ha ha ha.

Fred (28:39.082)
the version of our life that we want to do, you know, building it the way we want it and living how we want it. We want to be good people. We want to be good citizens. We want to be good friends and, um, and love the shit out of each other. We're at the point where our kids are old enough now where they live with us, but they're, they're out of the house quite a bit. So we're almost empty nesters, but thank God we care about each other. Cause we have a blast even when they're gone, you know, we'll go out on Friday nights or Saturday night and do things with friends and hang out, kick back and talk. But

Brad Abbott (29:08.33)
Freedom!

Fred (29:09.226)
Yeah, so it seems like that when the kids are little, but now we miss them being around all the time because, you know, we have a bond with our kids that's second to none. And, um, but, you know, we'll take it wherever we can get it, but we love spending time with the kids or without the kids either way we're, we're good. So that bond is there.

Shawn (29:11.511)
What?

Brad Abbott (29:14.59)
Yeah.

Shawn (29:27.33)
You know, Brad, do you, and I know Fred does this, but they go on date nights, they go on bike rides, they go to a bar or a restaurant. And one of the things that Fred and Denise are passionate about is live music. They're always going to concerts. They go to a concert in the park. Somebody's in town. They go to just a local, you know, spot around the corner of their house. And they go listen to good music and you date your wife every week. Don't you, Brad?

Brad Abbott (29:50.546)
Yep, which we try. Obviously, there's, you know, things get in the way, but we do make a precedent to actually set time aside for us, our bonding, our connecting and being, you know, having time to discuss and talk about our life because life is so busy, you don't get time to discuss those things. And there's periods of time sometimes we don't get, you know, a couple weeks on end to go, you know? I'm human just like everyone else. We try to make that as important as possible in our lives because life does get busy.

Shawn (30:06.935)
Right.

Fred (30:07.167)
Right.

Brad Abbott (30:20.191)
It does.

Shawn (30:21.058)
Well, and you have what? You have three kids, yeah? And.

Brad Abbott (30:24.091)
Yep, yep. Twin boys, they just turned seven and my daughter just turned nine. So they're getting a little older. Yeah, yeah.

Fred (30:28.49)
Oh, wow. I'll keep you busy though. Are they all playing sports?

Shawn (30:29.603)
Yeah.

Brad Abbott (30:33.41)
Um, yeah, I think they have this kind of a background, background story that one of them is very, um, they're night and day different twins, you know, one's very energetic and outgoing and athletic and the other one's like I'll build a house build a block Put a puzzle together. Um You know night and day difference and you're like come on play sports and the other one just doesn't listen to you because he's athletic You know, he thinks he got it figured out already

Fred (30:40.065)
Oh really?

Fred (30:57.622)
That's interesting though. Usually it's, you know, they're rallying and competing with each other, you know, to be the better athlete or, but I mean, you know, kids I think are born the way they're going to be born, right? And so it's good that you respect that and let them be, you know, excel where they, where they shine. So when we were listening to that, I don't mean to keep referring back to that Ed Mylett podcast, but with Dion Sanders, but he was talking about his boys were two years apart.

And he cheated at baseball, said they were a year apart so they could be at the same team because heaven forbid go to two different practices at times. But I'm like, yeah, you'd be right in there. You'd be just fine. No bending the rules.

Brad Abbott (31:28.455)
Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely, I'd do the same thing. No differences. My daughter looks like she's, you know, like two years old or three years old. And she's because she's, you know, she's nine, but she's up to my armpit. Yeah, she was, yeah, she's well over, you know, she's five, five foot, five foot one. Like at a nine year old.

Fred (31:43.39)
Oh, geez, so she's got your height. She's on her way.

Shawn (31:51.662)
That's crazy. Yeah, my

Fred (31:53.282)
Jeez, is she athletic? She's got to be dangerous at that height. Ha ha ha.

Brad Abbott (31:56.886)
She's getting married, she's playing basketball, this type of thing, which is super great. But you know, kind of directing where she wants to go, basketball, volleyball. And the boys are the same thing, you know, ones in swimming, love swimming, doesn't like anything else because he can't even, you know, jump over his own shadow, he'll trip over it. So he does swimming. And the other one just doesn't know what he wants because he's good at everything. And so, but yeah, they're all going to be tall. Doctors, you kind of estimated them right around six foot six, six foot five, all three of them. So.

Fred (32:23.795)
Oh wow.

Shawn (32:24.219)
Wow, that's crazy.

Brad Abbott (32:26.606)
I'm like, great, thanks. Thanks, Freak Genetics. All my dad's, they're all huge. You know, they're all front and they're all like, what's the, you know, not Navajo, but my dad's Cherokee, but his side of the family, they're like Vikings. Huge, huge Norwegian guy, like seven foot, seven foot one, 400 pound, like Woodstock men working in the lumber services. Like just giant men.

Shawn (32:40.492)
Norwegian.

Brad Abbott (32:51.454)
Dad was a little bit shorter than that his dad was like six five six But his brothers were just massive men working in raise in Missouri. Just this woodstock type men Yeah

Fred (32:57.934)
Oh well.

Fred (33:03.668)
Real men.

Shawn (33:05.206)
Well, so you're in this MLM, you're crushing it, and then where'd your next avenue go? So break that down. You meet your wife, you guys get married, and then what's the next chapter for Brad? What's life looking like at this time?

Brad Abbott (33:21.418)
So I'm working out of the oil industry, kind of taking steps down, managing my money and my income. I'm doing this on my own. I don't know anything about my assets from my own. All I know is that I don't wanna do what my dad did because he made really good money, but lived paycheck to paycheck, bought a bunch of nice cars and vehicles, always had the greatest, good things after we left, things he had, which was great. And I was like, well, he's not gonna really retire. I don't want that. No freedom, he's always asking for money. It's...

Shawn (33:37.742)
Mm.

Shawn (33:42.692)
Right.

Brad Abbott (33:50.634)
craziest thing. But not really asking in a way that you have to give it to him. Like he's a good negotiator and he's, I've helped you so much, you can help me type of thing. Your job is to take care of your dad. I've given for you what I gave up for you and really it's not the way it works. And that's not how I would respect his legacy if that was me. I'll work for my own, I'll keep my own type of thing. But anyway, so going back that way, I got into finance

Shawn (33:51.692)
Right.

Shawn (33:56.91)
Mm-hmm.

Brad Abbott (34:20.742)
All because of a fluke. In 2012, 13, after I kind of just stopped playing basketball and was working in the oil and gas industry, I did this for about a decade, up until like 15, 16, the oil market crashed in 2012 based on that whole market fluctuation. And then I took an explosive to the face in the oil and gas industry. I was doing wire lining and pumped down types of things and P&As, which is like taking out wells and basically just servicing them. They're no longer.

wells anymore, you're taking them out of the ground. I had a setting tool go off in my face from the set off an explosive. The team I was working with at the time was supposed to disarm it. They didn't disarm it. I went over to start taking off the firing head, which basically looks like a giant spark plug with 22,000 pounds of pressure behind it. And so I was taking it off and there's a fail safe on those. Thank goodness, because if it wasn't, I would have shot off like a missile, went through, killed somebody, threw a car or whatever. But...

Fred (35:07.748)
Oh damn.

Shawn (35:18.115)
Right.

Brad Abbott (35:18.566)
It fired 22,000 pounds of pressure through a pinhole, like a side, you know, top of a ballpoint pen. And it hit me in the right side of my face, like not even a foot away. And so basically, it happened so fast, all I remember hearing is a poof, and I was out. So had I died, I wouldn't have known anyway, wouldn't have felt anything, just, you know. They had a blast shield on, safety PPE, which is crucial. That's why most people die, is they don't have those things on. They don't wear goggles and glasses.

Fred (35:28.391)
Jesus.

Shawn (35:40.15)
Right.

Fred (35:46.611)
Right.

Brad Abbott (35:48.71)
So, you know, thank God I did that. But I think it was kind of a, to kind of go into the faith side of things, I think it was a wake up call. I wouldn't say, oh God, you know, he did this because he wanted me to wake up. It was more of like a, it was a situation that I chose to be in that he decided to use to give me like, hey, you're meant for something different. And I wouldn't have left, honestly, if something like that had not happened and I had not had a kid. It made me really think, second guess, what I was doing there.

Shawn (36:05.033)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Fred (36:14.07)
Be out.

Brad Abbott (36:17.862)
and reevaluate my life situations. And kind of, I think he kind of course corrected me, like, oh, I already know this is gonna happen. I'm gonna use this. He's choosing to do this. Cause you know, it's free will. God doesn't make choices, we do. So I think it was waiting on the guy to me, but it ended up brazing this right side of my face, under my shield, so I got like sandblasted burns on the right side of my face, gunk in the eye. I was kind of out for three or four days, just kind of recovering from that, my face.

Shawn (36:25.848)
Yeah.

Shawn (36:30.883)
Right.

Fred (36:30.935)
Right.

Brad Abbott (36:48.53)
And as men, you know how we are. We get hurt, but we live, right? And then what's our response? Oh, I made it. Not today, devil, like you ain't getting me today. You ain't stopping me. Like I'm tough, I'm fine, I'm okay. Wife did not take it that way at all. She pretty much was like, you're done. I can't, we can't do this. If I lose you, what happens if you were gone? Like.

Fred (36:51.82)
Right.

Shawn (36:52.057)
Right.

Shawn (36:56.101)
it

Right.

Brad Abbott (37:15.366)
I can't do this, you gotta find a way out. You're not doing this anymore, go find a different job. And so I took lower paying jobs every year to kind of scale out of the industry, like I mentioned, and a buddy of mine was like, you gotta, dude, you got a family, you gotta look into some life insurance. Like, be smart about this. Life insurance isn't for like just the dead, it's for if you die and when you die. Not if, when. And he opened up this whole world of how money actually works to me. I sat down with him and I was just like.

Fred (37:34.571)
Right.

Shawn (37:35.946)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Brad Abbott (37:43.25)
blown away, I'm like, this is how money works? What, you're telling me if I put this here and this works like this, I can do this? Like, how come no one's ever taught me this? He's like, there's not enough people teaching it. They don't want you to know. If they did, there wouldn't be a system for them to work off of anyway. And I was like, this is, they just like ignited me. I don't know what it was, but it ignited me. So I feel like God was like, I'm gonna use this to get this guy where I need him to be. And it just lit me on fire. I'm like, just.

what I could learn and what I had learned for myself that my dad didn't know, my family didn't know, anyone around me didn't know how money was supposed to actually be used. So that's essentially how that transition short.

Shawn (38:18.007)
Right?

Shawn (38:21.556)
Hmm

Fred (38:24.898)
Yeah, I was going to say there's got to be something that takes place to get you to wake up and be able to accept that gift that your friend give you, with a life threatening circumstance that there's a reason they pay you a lot of money in the oil fields. I work in the PPE business for less, so I've been in it for 25 years. And so I know PPE is just a measure to lessen the impact or reduce the risk.

But at the same time, you get paid handsomely because it's high risk, heavy labor. It's usually not something you can do forever unless you move into management, but it's high risk, high reward. And then they know they got the golden handcuffs on you. So like you said, if that incident wouldn't have happened, it wouldn't have slapped you hard enough to knock some sense into you to be willing to consider something else. So then the timing rolled into there's the next door that opens for you, which is...

We're looking forward to learning more about from you here, that journey.

Brad Abbott (39:24.894)
Yeah. It'd be awesome.

Shawn (39:26.108)
You know, you're telling this story and I'm thinking of Jonah, right? God tells Jonah, go to Nineveh and he's like, no, I'm not going to Nineveh. And he ends up in the belly of a whale and then three days later he gets out of the belly and he's like, all right, I'm going to Nineveh it looks like. And it's, I know that I've been a hard learner in my 50 years.

Brad Abbott (39:42.94)
Thank you.

Shawn (39:47.222)
I've touched the stove once, wasn't hot enough. I touched it twice. It was pretty damn hot. And the third time I'm not looking to go back and touch the stove again, but it's, you know, there's something to be said about God's able to use extraordinary things that happen in our lives to make this, you know, radical change, if you will, and we talk about it a lot, Fred, radical change requires radical change. And this radical change that you're facing and that you experienced, it was, you know,

Fred (39:53.354)
Hahaha.

Brad Abbott (39:54.005)
Thank you.

Fred (40:09.558)
Yeah.

Shawn (40:16.074)
I get that question a lot, you know, why does God allow, why did God do this? And well, it's not so much God did this, but it's, he allows things to happen in our life, but it's all for the greater good. Right. And look at the direction your life is headed now going from the, being a rough neck, you're in the oil, oil industry. And now you're exposed to this new concept of how money works and the light ball went off for Brad, and then what? You just dove deep in that industry.

Brad Abbott (40:27.306)
Absolutely.

Brad Abbott (40:46.79)
Yeah, I started working part time in a firm, and to kind of go back to what you said, it's not, when something happens in people's life, they don't look at it like a good thing. They're like, oh, why me? Everything was going this direction, why me? Why this? It's not why me, it's for me. Everything in life is, if there's a challenge, there's something behind it, there is something greater on the other side of that challenge. Whatever it is, however many years you have to do it, how long you have to push from there, something.

Shawn (41:05.306)
Mm-hmm.

Fred (41:05.41)
Yeah.

Shawn (41:11.598)
That's right.

Brad Abbott (41:16.826)
If there's a lot of stress, there's a lot of growth. It's like diamonds, right? You've probably heard this a thousand times for every entrepreneur that ever talks, but diamonds are formed under a great, immense amount of pressure.

Like the most beautiful gym, sought after gym in the world is created out of pressure.

Shawn (41:32.586)
Yeah. And years and years of pressure. Yeah.

Fred (41:33.422)
Yeah, exactly.

Brad Abbott (41:34.934)
I think so every entrepreneur in the journey, it's like I got here because of all this pressure, all this difficulty, all this stuff I had to go through, all this people who paved the way. Look where it got them. And so yeah, I took a lower paying job and I got out of the oil field going that way and I managed over 150 wells getting out of it and 80, 90 grand a year, which is still high income. But then I started working from there. I started working with a firm part-time to get into the finance industry because I was

Shawn (41:46.946)
Yeah.

Brad Abbott (42:05.054)
How do I get in it? How do I learn? And this guy was like, you gotta start here. I was like, do I have to go to school? Cause I don't wanna go back. I don't wanna go to school. There's nothing for me at school. I was already a certified welder. I did massage therapy, right? I did all these things that required certificates that I could do as a trade to become, you know, make my own money, not live on someone else's time their clock. But I was like, cool, I just gotta get a license and study, do all the things required to do that and that transition. So I said...

How much can you make? Because I make X amount of dollars. And if I'm going to do this, I have to be able to recoup double or triple what I was making to make it even worth my time. Cause I never made anything less than 45, $50 an hour. Like that's, that's hard for someone to say, Hey, I'm going to take a pay cut from 250 a year to go to 70 grand. You know, our expenses, luckily I didn't spend a whole lot of money on a lot of things. I actually lived pretty minimal. I didn't buy new cars. I didn't buy new trucks. Like most of the guys in the oil field, I live pretty subpar, you know, but.

Shawn (42:38.97)
Great.

Shawn (42:50.899)
Yeah.

Brad Abbott (43:02.354)
So I started working at a firm part-time, just selling life insurance, trying to figure out how to use that as a key to help families grow and protect them from things that had happened to me or that happened to other people who've lost their families, who've lost their income and didn't have life insurance. Now they're out there posting GoFundMe pages. So that's where I went from there, is gotten to that finance industry, working part-time on that, just with a small little private firm.

Shawn (43:30.986)
Nice. So are you doing self-help, like personal development in this time? Like, cause I know that you're a big advocate of that. And when did you, the whole time you're doing this, were you doing this in college or was this like something you started after college?

Brad Abbott (43:40.57)
Yes. Yeah, all the time.

Brad Abbott (43:48.93)
After college, I mean, college for me was just a place where I could, you know, try to go pro, get a good look at it, get good grades and meet lots of girls. And that's, I mean, there was no direction for it. Yeah, no direction for it. You play on the basketball team, football team or something, you're like, you're going to be around girls all the time. And, and, you know, that's going back to that was like shooting fish in a barrel. So it was like easy for me. It was a place where every guy who was an athletic athlete could just be a man, essentially.

Shawn (43:56.12)
Yeah.

Fred (43:57.655)
That's the place.

Shawn (44:10.456)
Yeah.

Shawn (44:15.062)
Yeah. So, but at the same time, so unfulfilling, yeah?

Brad Abbott (44:19.27)
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it was, how do you, rewarding of the flesh, but also, but not for the mind. Like you're saying, like, I'm doing all these things and this is great, but it's temporary. It's like a feeling, a temporary need for a permanent problem that we weren't solving. You were just, like a dog is only so mad to eat and if you keep feeding it just a little bit a day, it's not gonna be mad anymore. It just knows it gets fed every day, once a day. It's a missive.

Shawn (44:45.046)
Yeah, right. That's good. So you join, you're doing personal development, you're in this firm.

Fred (44:45.6)
Right.

Shawn (44:57.826)
When was the next chapter where things just started blowing open for you? And not saying that, you know, you're not working hard or whatever, but the next level, I guess, the next advancement, promotion, if you will.

Brad Abbott (45:10.535)
Right.

So I have a, and my wife tells me this all the time, I have a very keen sense of when things are going south. And I don't know what it is, but I just, whenever a new opportunity arises, and I have to question what I'm doing, I know it's for a reason. So even when the MLM company was in, that was making decent money, I thought, you know, I should, I'm gonna go do this more insurance, you know, sell this company, do this more full-time. I feel like with the changes that are happening with the company, and you know, they always have these conventions, and they always.

Shawn (45:25.237)
Mm-hmm.

Brad Abbott (45:41.386)
talk up what's happening, need changes, and don't worry about this, the economy's doing this. And then, you know, something felt weird that year. So I ended up selling my whole down line, basically whole up line, up to my up line, and getting out. Basically just sold the business for a profit. Made, you know, thousands and thousands of dollars doing that, which was great. And then went into insurance full time. I was with that firm, and I transitioned that firm into more of a, I would say network marketing type insurance, you know, Prime America, World Finance Group. So I had my let.

Shawn (45:52.066)
Mm-hmm.

Brad Abbott (46:10.906)
is actually where I met him through World Financial Group because he was a huge, it's where he made his wealth was this insurance company. And most.

Shawn (46:15.978)
Yeah. Didn't you sell it for like 500 or 700 million?

Brad Abbott (46:21.062)
I mean, he's a partner, he was a partner in it for as long as I can remember. But he was a big part of building that whole firm up, just like Patrick and David. Amongst these guys have started insurance, Ty Lopez started insurance. Like all these guys have started in insurance for a reason. So, so I met, met him basically doing that in this company and made some pretty good success with that, you know, and I was working like locating services part time, but, you know, doing that as well for a while on top of building the insurance agency. And that's what I know our promotion is that, and then I learned about.

certain type of financial strategies that people can use creatively, not like normal 401k IRA type things that most people hear about, you know, that all the generic W-2 employees have or do, but really to take money and use it in such a way like most investors use real estate as debt, but not using their own money. And I just got down to this promotion, you know, to a senior marketing director, a marketing director of the company, which is a great, you know...

a great area to be at, good money, but not great money. And in that time, the company was going through a transition. They got a new CEO, and it was that CEO, the first two years of it, he came down and started speaking to all the main offices with all the big producers. And it triggered something in my mind where I was like, why would he come down to a very small team, but a high producing organization, to tell us everything's gonna be fine?

Which in some cases, a lot of things would transition would be fine. But I felt that I'm like, something's, something's going to happen where it's not, it's not right. So I ended up just leaving. I'm going independent this time. So I started my own firm, my own firm, everyone recruited my own agents, run my own business and I make more money. I like triple my income the first year when I'm on my own. But in that time period, that two years that I was away, or a year and a half I was away, all the top earners in that company started leaving. Like I had gotten rid of that business. I.

Shawn (47:55.327)
Your radar's going off.

Brad Abbott (48:17.874)
got rid of my upline, whatever I got, I just basically left. And that keen sense kind of went off again, like hey, it's time to move. Like something's gonna happen, you need to get out when you can, and you've done what you could do here, now it's time for you to, now really I can use you in what I've set you forth to do. And that was my trigger that just went off. But yeah, I even said today that one of their main guys, he was making like 12, 12 and a half million dollars a year running this organization.

He just left and started his own brokerage. And I was like, man, I just, I just met him. I was like, man, I have a unique ability just to know when to move.

Fred (48:51.143)
That's a small sign.

Fred (48:59.146)
Yeah, that comes to experience, right?

Brad Abbott (49:01.298)
Yeah. And Ed Mylette knew this too. He actually got back in the business, not even five years ago with World Financial Group. And then he got back out. And recently, I don't know if you saw his last podcast, but he was like on with his doctors saying, Hey, you need to scale back. You're done. Like you need to just, you're done.

Shawn (49:16.374)
Yeah.

Shawn (49:20.962)
Yeah, he's done with social media. He's cutting way back. He's not traveling, he's not doing shows, nothing. He's gotta get his health in order, right? But.

Brad Abbott (49:30.534)
And he's healthy, but he's not, he's not what he used to be.

Shawn (49:33.694)
Right. You said something that was profound and it was being able to understand or you had that keen sense of knowing when something was wrong. And it's not just knowing, but you actually knew and then you still had to make that decision to move. And I think even for myself, that's been a problem in my life is I know something's off, the radar is going a certain direction, but guess what? I didn't move.

Brad Abbott (49:39.274)
Hmm.

Shawn (50:05.034)
And that's happened a lot in my life. And, um, I've gotten better over the last several years. When I say several, four or five years where it's like, okay, your intuition, that voice is speaking to you, whatever you want to call it. God is letting me know, Hey, something's not right here. You're going to have to move. If not, you're going to be a casualty of this. And I think that's, you know, for our listeners, I think if you're listening and you've.

Brad Abbott (50:07.699)
Right.

Brad Abbott (50:29.275)
Yeah.

Shawn (50:34.838)
had that same experience in life, it's equally important to be able to just move. And it's never comfortable, right? It's always uncomfortable to do that thing that you don't wanna do, but when you move, that's when the magic happens.

Brad Abbott (50:51.238)
Yeah, it's true too. I mean even in most cases like I don't know if you guys know this maybe I talked to you about this a couple times Sean, but There's times where it's a learning lesson when you don't like I just you know Hey, it's testament to your character that i'm gonna make you even more of what I have planned for you even sooner And so when we don't move he keeps at us god is so persistent. He's chasing us always He's always pursuing no matter how much we put him back He's always gonna find a way to

Fred (50:51.258)
Yeah, you know, I think.

Shawn (51:07.158)
Yeah.

Brad Abbott (51:20.274)
where we're able to rely and build a relationship with him. And I don't want to get too spiritual, but every aspect of our lives is God's in place, a part of what he has to do, when he has set for you to accomplish in the kingdom. And whether it's, that's not what we do, it's how we're doing life. And who are we doing life with? And it's just a true testament of, even when I invested in Bitcoin, I didn't get, I got in because, this is back in 2012, 13, by the way.

Shawn (51:33.24)
Yeah.

Shawn (51:38.863)
Yeah.

Brad Abbott (51:49.938)
dollar 70 whatever was that back then about 2 000 of them and I sold because I thought these were devil plays tricks on you I thought like this isn't real there's no way this is real kind of thing sold them what is it at

Shawn (51:52.899)
Yeah.

Shawn (52:04.707)
2,000 Bitcoin, 70,000.

Brad Abbott (52:07.786)
It's like $142 million today.

Shawn (52:11.405)
Yeah.

Fred (52:12.519)
Ouch.

Brad Abbott (52:12.894)
So what's the lesson? Don't always listen to your bodily intuition, but listen to where you're being called. Yeah.

Fred (52:24.063)
Yeah, so...

Shawn (52:24.875)
How many times a day do you kick yourself for that?

Brad Abbott (52:27.814)
I tell people I lost like, you know, $100 million. And they're like, how? And I'm like, well, I didn't lose it. I lost the opportunity. So I made money. Honestly, I made, because I sold it all of them when it went up about 75 cents. So I made like 30 grand or whatever it was. So I made up ahead, but it was like, I had a weird, Oh, dude, that's the thing. Like I've had waited four years. It would have went up to like, I think it was like 20,000, 25, 30,000 four years later. It was like 52 million, I think at a time, but I was like today, today.

Fred (52:34.606)
All right.

Shawn (52:38.446)
Yeah.

Shawn (52:44.442)
but it wasn't 140 million.

Fred (52:53.143)
Right.

Shawn (52:54.051)
Yeah.

Brad Abbott (52:58.766)
It's 72 brand right now today. Jeez, yeah. So, lesson in that is saying not knowing when the tuition is versus when God's calling you to do something. I was going to the gym the other day, or going to my Bible study, listen to this, and I never don't plan anything on my Bible study, my men's group. I go to my men's group every 6.30 every Thursday morning and I like clockwork, I'm there. Nothing deters me from it. And for some reason that day I had my gym bag and vaccine in my car. I was gonna go.

Shawn (53:00.227)
Yeah.

Fred (53:02.146)
That's crazy. What other?

Shawn (53:08.227)
That's right.

Brad Abbott (53:27.11)
maybe afterwards, but I'm driving there. Just there's either a turn to get on the interstate and go, or I could go to the gym. And that day I was being told to go to the gym. And I've never, they're being crossing my mind. I just go straight to Bible study most of the time. It was like, go. I was right there. I go to Bible study or gym. And I went to the gym. And I didn't know what I was for. I was kicking myself in the butt. I was half way down. I was like, oh, I should have just went. Like,

I never missed this. Why did I do that? I get there, there's a guy in the locker room I've talked to several times. He's telling me, I got this going on. I was like, really? This is what I do. He's like, you do this? I was like, yeah. He's like, well, I got to figure out all this because I'm getting ready to retire and I have all these problems and I have this coming on. I was like, dude, you made me at the right time. This is great. This is what I do. And it was that I listened to God's calling on what he was using. He called me to do something. I was listening.

and I acted on it. And it wasn't because I just didn't wanna go. I was being called. I was listening to the intuition that God was giving me. I can go deeper, but it was just.

Shawn (54:36.026)
Hmm. No, that's good.

Fred (54:38.826)
No, that's yeah, that's it's interesting. I always wonder on the, you know, you know, you talked about growing up, you guys lived in, you know, in poverty and, you know, as you as you grow and get older, you got to make decisions for yourself. But we talked about listening to the voice and then, you know, I listened to the one that's like, you know, the overreacting, you know, you got to determine where this the voice is speaking to you. Is that gut? Is that feeling getting you in your in your mind and your heart or in your gut?

And so, um, cause I've had a tendency like, cause I, you know, I grew up poor. So I'm like, when every time something happens, I'm like sell everything. And my wife's like, you always overreact. And then she's probably right. Sometimes I just got to hold the line and, you know, but I'm like, shit, you know, the car spun out, so we're going to crash and die. That's my take on it. Cause that's how it wasn't, I was growing up. And so, you know, and we've learned quite a bit, Sean and I, through our coaching groups, we've been into the scarcity mindset.

So it does take some time to be able to trust the voice and be a good steward of the voice that's speaking to you. And then being able to digest what message is coming and what the level of severity is, you know, cause you work hard your whole life and there's things that you've earned and you value and you wanna keep and then, you know, the longer you have them, things become sentimental in your family. And, you know, I didn't grow up with much, so I don't expect much. So I'm like, hey, I could live with a lot less than.

Brad Abbott (55:50.614)
Mm. Great.

Fred (56:09.218)
than we have today. But my wife always, you know, she's always the voice of reason. She goes, I think you might be overreacting. You know, and I'm like, no, sell everything now we're going, no different than when I got back from the first warrior conference, I'm changing everything tonight, you know, and I was a crazy person, but, um, so anyways, I, I always, I love hearing those kinds of stories, especially when it has a positive outcome, you know, but I, I always worry too about

Brad Abbott (56:25.438)
Yeah.

Fred (56:36.762)
shortchanging yourself because you had a knee jerk reaction like selling the Bitcoin, right? That's like, you know, usually those investments are a long-term investment. And, you know, usually they say invest what you can afford to lose on those things. And if you were to put it in and just stuck to it, you know, you'd have been, you know, not on this podcast, you'd be on Ed

Shawn (56:59.082)
So let me ask this, Brad. We're coming up to about our hour coming here in a few minutes, but if you could give our listeners two just key nuggets, two or three key nuggets of where they should even start or where they should plan. And for our listeners, you guys can find them on Instagram, bradabbott underscore CEO, is that correct? Brad Abbott, A-B-B-O-T-T underscore CEO.

Brad Abbott (57:06.515)
Bye.

Brad Abbott (57:16.052)
Bye.

Shawn (57:29.646)
Or on Facebook you can just look him up, but you can't miss him. He's six seven and He's a financial guy But if you could give our listeners two or three, you know key nuggets or where should they start? What should they focus on something drop some value on our listeners?

Brad Abbott (57:36.839)
Yeah.

Brad Abbott (57:47.486)
Yeah, you know, a lot of this is controversial. I'm not a Dave Ramsey fan at all. Like, yeah, not even a least bit. Now, there's some things that, you know, I would say are good mindset qualities to have because he is an entrepreneur, he understands some certain things, but his strategies aren't made to benefit those who want the freedom. They're made for people who are just trying to just get by and the middle-class people who are just, you know, making that switch between poverty and middle-class.

Fred (57:52.632)
Join the club.

Shawn (57:54.164)
Me neither.

Brad Abbott (58:16.478)
Stop the suffering, stop the bleeding a little bit, wrap with a bandaid type thing, but don't get out of it. He's a marketing genius. He's made his millions, millions and millions of dollars just marketing to the poor and middle class. So it's different for everybody. Everyone's situation is different. It's not always debt related, some like debt, some don't, some invest. Had I invested, if I'd sold the Bitcoin, who cares? What if I took that 20, $30,000 and invested in the business now worth hundreds of millions of dollars?

What if I hadn't done that? So we don't know whether our choices are gonna affect us good or bad. I would say just lead with a few things. If it's good, it doesn't hurt people, and it's better for everyone around you, and it's a win-win, then those are the right decisions to make. And we're never always gonna make, not never, not always gonna make the right decisions. And this is one thing that my dad said that did stick with me. And if you're not always gonna make the right decisions, then the ones you do make wrong, you have the opportunity and the ability to make it right.

And he always ended it like this, and God damn it son, you better make the right decision. That's what he always told me. But yeah. But for two key nuggets, can I wrap it up? Always life insurance, for things you should get and understand life insurance isn't for, is not just for death. It's for using it while you're alive. And Sean, you know this, because I have strategies wrapped up in what we do. It's the only place you can put money where it can't be touched, taken from you.

Fred (59:16.942)
Ha ha.

Shawn (59:20.467)
That's good.

Brad Abbott (59:43.902)
garnished. It's a safe haven. The government can't touch you. Your divorcees can't touch. No one can touch that money that's in there. To get used as creatively as you can to design to help you fund whatever it is your aspirations are in life, that's one of the biggest keys to the planning world is life insurance. And most people don't know that. And it's a huge key to leave them behind a legacy if done the right way. So always watch your pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves. So always take your money and keep your money. Keep as much as you can. So that's number one.

Watch your money because the government's not going to do it for you. Compound your money as best you can. So, and then take care of your family and have faith, you know, in God, that's going to make the right decisions for you and protect you and lead you the right way. But as long as it's your money, your money's your money. What's that J.G. Wentworth commercial? It's your money and you need it now. The government's trying to do that with your money. So I would say if you have a financial planner, which I don't say those are the best guys to work with because they usually kind of veer away from life insurance strategies in general.

Shawn (01:00:16.962)
That's right.

Shawn (01:00:32.106)
Yeah, right.

Fred (01:00:32.375)
Right.

Brad Abbott (01:00:43.966)
But don't look at it as life insurance strategies, look at it as like a freedom strategy. It's something that you get to set your family free with. I don't know any other place that you can take $1 and use it twice and never pay taxes on it, ever. Tax free, the rest of your life, no matter how many times you use it. Now there are some, you know, how do you use them and strategize them are completely different to how each person uses them. You gotta customize these things. That's why they get such a bad rap. It's because no one designs them or customizes

Shawn (01:00:56.858)
That's right, it is tax free by the way.

Fred (01:00:58.709)
Yeah, good point.

Brad Abbott (01:01:13.854)
that person needs it for. If you just want a lot of life insurance, then go get a bunch of term. That's what term insurance is for. It's renting a large amount of money for the cheapest cost. Now, Dave Ramsey pounds that in your head. Go get term, buy term and invest the difference. Great, no one knows how to invest the difference. And all the managers out there who are taking all this money for a percentage, you'll lose. Yeah, you can lose your money, but they're still getting 1% no matter what you do.

Shawn (01:01:16.835)
Yeah.

Shawn (01:01:26.562)
Yeah.

Fred (01:01:34.642)
Right. They're looking to move your money.

Shawn (01:01:40.495)
That's right.

Brad Abbott (01:01:41.674)
So there's not a lot of ethical people in the finance world. So I'm against certain CPAs who don't believe in those strategies, helps out their clients free. I don't believe in managed money as much. There are great qualities to it, but for the right person, specific timing. And I just feel like people are misled when it comes down to money, where to put it and what to do with it at a very basic level.

Shawn (01:01:59.746)
Yeah. I, uh, I appreciate you sharing that. And you know, as I mentioned before, I have my, my strategies with Brad, he sat down with me and we went over our and a couple of different times. We've done it, you know, what do you want? And what I want is to leave my girls a legacy. I'm going to make mine. I'm going to get mine. And, but I want to make sure my girls are taken care of and Brad helped me set that up. And you know, I'm going to be honest with you. I'm going to get more life insurance here.

in the next year or two. It's just a good strategy for my girls. It's not for me, it's for my girls and their future. So it's a good strategy. You said something, I'm gonna wrap this up, but you said something about strategy. And Fred, you and I were talking about this the other day. The right strategy at the wrong time is still the wrong strategy.

Brad Abbott (01:02:33.49)
Yeah. All right.

Brad Abbott (01:02:51.146)
Thanks for watching!

Shawn (01:02:52.026)
It's good, it's profound. And timing plays a huge role. So, Brad, I appreciate you coming on, man. Fred, do you have anything else?

Brad Abbott (01:02:54.567)
Yeah.

Fred (01:03:02.322)
Yeah, I appreciate you. Likewise, Brad. I think I've kind of liked this conversation we're having towards the end of the show. And I think it'd be, it would warrant having you back on and maybe share with our listeners. Because I think this is a big gray area for most people. And it's, it's pretty terrifying because I mean, just like anything that gets abused, there's people that abuse the financial system to get what they want to get out of it. Churches, congregations have, you know, led with despair and

Brad Abbott (01:03:23.466)
Oh yeah. Right?

Fred (01:03:29.878)
getting what they want to get out of it, you know, but when we bring people along that have a true essence and a commitment, a level of authenticity that they want to share, you know, I think that this would be a fantastic show to tee up some, some key points on what people were. They could start kind of like what you said here at the end, but maybe we can dive a little deeper into that because so many people I know myself, I've had very good seasons in my life, earning potential. I've had some, some not so good seasons, but

when you can capitalize that early age on some of the good seasons and know what to do with your money so that you can leverage it. You know, obviously the rich learn how to leverage their, their money. But even when you're sitting with a CPA, you don't know the questions to ask. So unless you just happen to get lucky, find the right CPA and creates a good financial, you know, or give you some guidance to connect you either with the right people, the right team. So anyways, in closing, you know, I'd love to invite you back to the show. It's been great getting to know you. And I think, you know,

Brad Abbott (01:04:11.21)
Great.

Fred (01:04:26.898)
our listeners would have a tremendous advantage if we could jump on again here in the near future and you know just share some of those things because it is too grave an area. People are afraid and there's too many people taking advantage. So you know let's after we get off this call we'll coordinate something with Sean here and get you back on and we'll do one that's specifically based around that and some of the lessons you've learned along the way some of the insight and we'll take it from there. So but we love having you on the show. We appreciate it.

Shawn (01:04:53.05)
Thanks for watching!

Yeah, it was good. Thank you, Brad. And, uh, thank you for being vulnerable and sharing, uh, about your, your wife, your family, your history, your fan, your dad, your family. Um, I know it's not easy, but just that story, that message, if it helps one person, it's always worth it. Right. And that's what it's all about. So to our listeners, thank you guys so much for, uh, tuning in to the Stanford podcast, if you guys found value and you liked the show, please share it and tell people about

what we got going on over here, because we're trying to make that change one person at a time, and it does start with you, our listeners. So hope you guys have a blessed afternoon, evening, morning, whatever time of the day you're listening to us. Keep tuning in, Fred. It's always good to see your smiling face, my bro. And I like that hat.

Fred (01:05:42.05)
Shoke.

Brad Abbott (01:05:43.513)
I'll take that. We'll have next time, Shawn. Yeah.

Shawn (01:05:45.146)
I'm gonna have to get one of those fancy hats red.

Fred (01:05:47.524)
Sounds good. I appreciate it. So yeah, thank you guys for listening to the show and we'll catch you next week.

Shawn (01:05:51.726)
Take care.