How To Shift Your Money Mindset and Unlock Financial Freedom

This episode could transform your relationship with money for good.

If you’ve ever felt stuck financially, self-sabotaged your success, or believed wealth just wasn’t “for you,” you must hear this.

Today, Jerry sits down with bestselling author and multimillionaire entrepreneur Ian Prukner to reveal the truth about wealth that nobody talks about.

Ian went from working four jobs just to survive — to becoming a multimillionaire who now helps other create lives of financial freedom. How? By rewiring his beliefs about money.

You’ll learn:

• The exact thought patterns that keep you broke
• The 5 most common money lies (and how to rewrite them)
• Why wealth has nothing to do with luck — and everything to do with your subconscious
• The "T-BAR" formula that silently controls your financial future
• How to break generational cycles of poverty and shame
• Why your nervous system might be rejecting abundance
• The words and mentors that changed Ian’s life forever (and how they can change yours)

This is the episode you send to anyone who feels financially stuck or secretly believes they’re “bad with money.” It’s not just motivational — it’s transformational.

Get Ian’s free 5-Day Money Mindset Checkup here: [Insert Link]
Grab his bestselling books: 

Get it here on Amazon: Byproduct 

Get it here on Amazon:  12 Words That Change Everything

Connect with Ian Prukner on Instagram: @ianprukner

👉 Want to work with Jerry to create a life that feels as good on the inside as it looks on the outside? Book a free strategy call: jerryhenderson.org

00:00 – Welcome & Introduction  
00:59 – Before the Wealth: Ian’s Humble Beginnings  
07:47 – From Scarcity to Success: Mindset Shift  
08:23 – Wealth as a Byproduct of Identity  
08:59 – What is T-BAR? The Formula for All Results  
13:20 – The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy of Belief  
14:12 – 5 Most Common Limiting Beliefs About Money  
21:30 – Beyond the Surface: The Root of Unworthiness  
27:04 – Awareness, Reprogramming & Choosing New Beliefs  
33:58 – How Wealthy People Think Differently  
38:24 – Wealth Is Everywhere: The Myth of Scarcity  
40:05 – The Power of Asking “How Can I?”  
43:16 – Neuroscience, Curiosity & Growth  
45:08 – Growth Is Our Natural State—Even Financially  
47:32 – Your Relationship with Money = Your Experience with It  

I am grateful you are here,
Jerry

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Transcript

Jerry Henderson : 0:00

Hello everybody and welcome to the Personal Mastery Podcast. I'm your host, jerry Henderson, and if you're ready to create a life that feels as good on the inside as it looks on the outside, you're in the right place. Let's get started. Today, I'm honored to be joined by my dear friend, someone who I've known for over 20 years, ian Prochner. Ian's a bestselling author, speaker and entrepreneur who's helped thousands of people break free from financial limitations. But what I love most about Ian, it's not just what he's built, it's how he thinks. He understands that wealth isn't just about numbers, it's about our mindset, and that's exactly what we're going to be talking about today. Ian, welcome to Personal Mastery.

Ian Prukner: 0:47

Thanks, Jerry. It's fun to be on. I can't believe it's been 20 years. That's a long time. It makes us seem old it does, doesn't it?

Jerry Henderson : 0:54

Yeah, I know, and I think I'm feeling a little older, looking a little older than you are, my friend.

Jerry Henderson : 0:59

You're looking great, you know, Ian, I'd love to start with something that really can help kind of set the tone. And before all the books, right before the business, before the stage, the TED Talks, all the things that you've done you had a moment or you had a season in your life where money was tight, where things may not be working like they are now. So take us back to that time, and what did life look like then and what was the spark that shifted your mindset towards wealth? Because this is something that so many of us struggle with right Our mindset and we think that it's all this stuff out here that we need to rearrange and figure out, but it starts in here. So talk to us a little bit about that journey, please.

Ian Prukner: 1:44

Yeah. So the first thing I'll say is it's impossible to win in our wallet if we're losing in our mind. When it comes to money. Right, and that was me, I just didn't have any of the right belief systems or the right thinking, and I grew up in a really middle-class home. My parents we've been to that home. My parents still live there. It's a 900 square foot home in Royal Oak, michigan.

Ian Prukner: 2:06

We grew up with a lot of love, but not a lot of wealth. I didn't know any wealthy people. Nobody in my family was wealthy and, um, and so I got married really young. You actually officiated our wedding and, uh, we went off into the world and money was very tight and, um, I was working three and four jobs almost all the time just to make ends meet and it was extremely stressful, to say the least. Right, like every month, we had to watch everything that we were doing, every cent matter, because if it wasn't accounted for, we weren't going to have enough.

Ian Prukner: 2:39

Working for a church actually up in Michigan, and about a year before the great recession in 08, we were in Detroit and Detroit was one of the hardest hit areas in that recession and what happened was we're working for a church and charitable giving is like the first thing that begins to go and things are not good in the economy, that's the first thing that tightens up. Everybody in the 501c3 world starts to notice before everybody else. And that was happening to us. My wife and I were both working for a church. We were walking on thin ice financially. I was working other jobs and we got called into my boss's office one day and he sat me down. He said you know, I'm really sorry to tell you this, but the church is not doing well financially. We're behind on some mortgage payments Effective immediately. We're cutting everybody's pay by 10%. I don't know if and when we'll be able to make it up to you.

Ian Prukner: 3:33

And like I said, jerry, we were on thin ice, like every dollar mattered. I was making 30 grand a year, so my pay cut was three grand $250 a month. Grand $250 a month, and we were $250 a month negative in that moment. Right. And so my radar went up to like how do I make an extra $250 a month? I was already working two other jobs and so the last thing I wanted to do was have job number four. But that's all that I could come up with Like my mindset and my creativity with how money was made was limited to what we learn in school, which is go to school, get good grades, go to college so you could get a good job. And I had four of those right and that wasn't working.

Ian Prukner: 4:14

And so I was actually going to be a night manager at Rite Aid okay, for like 15 bucks and some change an hour, and I was going to work three midnight shifts and after taxes and withholdings that was going to be enough to make up that $250. And I was dreading it, right, I was already working 80, 90 hours a week between the church and music lessons and playing in bands and singing at people's weddings and funerals and whatever else people would pay me to do. Now I'm going to be working midnights at writing. It was not fun. I was really, really down on myself. I felt like I had been cheated in life, a little bit Like somebody had told me a formula, that I was playing a game in the way that I was supposed to play. I was following the rules but I was losing the game. That was really disheartening to me and I can just remember thinking over and over. There's got to be a better way than this.

Ian Prukner: 5:08

And that church here is in a really affluent area in Michigan. It was called Million Dollar Mile back then when a million dollars was a lot of money, and it's where all the new money was. In Detroit, like all the Tigers and all the Detroit Lions, all the athletes were building these big, beautiful homes, and so I would drive by these mansions every day on the way to work, right, living in this tiny little condo, struggling to no end. And I said what do these people know that I don't know and I became curious. I became curious and about a month after that happened, I had a chance meeting, set up for me by my boss at the church, with a gentleman who is very, very financially savvy. He was extremely wealthy and, jerry, in that moment it was like alchemy hit right, like I was just in the right place at the right time as the right person. And most people find themselves in the right place at the right time, but they're the wrong person, they have the wrong thinking, they have the wrong beliefs, and so they're not able to capitalize on that.

Ian Prukner: 6:09

Today, the media has us hating people we should be learning from financially, if you should. These people are bad. These people are evil. Look, you're never going to become something that you hate, and so if you hate wealthy people, you're not going to be one of them. Okay, I promise you, you don't have to worry about that, bro. You got to take care of your kid and I was smart enough instead of being upset or thinking that this man had something because I didn't have.

Ian Prukner: 6:32

I said he knows something about making money that I don't know and I would be a fool to not sit under this man and learn from him. And that's how I started in my process of literally reprogramming my financial brain and my money blueprint inside of my mind. 10 years later, after meeting that manager, we were making a million dollars a year, which was more money than I could have ever imagined in a lifetime. 10 years earlier. It was really absolutely profoundly life-changing and it was all the by-product of a set of beliefs and thinking that financially successful people have that financially unsuccessful people don't have. Period. It's completely learnable and I'm the poster child for that. Working for jobs to make $27,500 a year that's not who I would want to be taking financial advice from, but that was me and I underwent this incredible transition because our thoughts are things and what we think about we eventually bring about. And I learned how to win in my mind with money and the byproducts ended up becoming winning in life with money.

Jerry Henderson : 7:47

Love that there's so much there, ian, that you said you know the curiosity, right, that shift to say I'm going to become curious, and that opens up something within us, doesn't it? And just almost instantly, right Then that opened you up. God brought in this opportunity for you just from that shift. And then you said something really key that we could be at the right place, we have the right opportunity, but be the wrong person because we have this wrong thinking. And as you were talking about that thinking and with this episode of this wealth, money, mindset and how do we get there, you mentioned byproduct.

Jerry Henderson : 8:23

You have a great book called Byproduct and in there you talk about something called T-bar. Talk to us a little bit about that, because I'm really curious. You said, hey, I had this thinking, I was this type of person, I became this other type of person and these mindsets and this insight that wealthy people have that other people may not have and they push against it, resist it, judge it, et cetera, and that creates its own block, its own barrier, as you said. So talk to us a little bit about T-Bar, what that does, how that byproduct shows up. What are some of the thinking that we need to start installing in our system?

Ian Prukner: 8:59

Yeah. So after a decade of leadership and wealth creation, leading a lot of people, I stumbled across a truth, and so this idea is. It's not my idea, this is an idea that has been on our planet since the first person and will be here long after I'm gone, but what I did was put words to it. I was able to describe that truth.

Ian Prukner: 9:17

There was a process by which all results are made in our lives, and I called that process T-Bbar, and it's an acronym. It stands for thoughts, beliefs, actions and results, and the idea is that the following is the byproduct of the latter. In other words, our results don't just happen. They are the byproduct of what we do or do not do. In other words, our actions create our results. Everybody knows that you go to the gym, you eat healthy, you generally live a better quality of life physically. If you don't do those things generally, you're not going to live as well there, and so our results are the byproduct of our actions. Fair enough, everybody can see that, but what most people fail to see is their actions are not an Island. You're not just doing. We always do what we believe we should. You know, there's a lot of people today that believe a lot of crazy things. I think we can all agree with that and those people take action on those things. They harm other people, they put themselves in jeopardy.

Ian Prukner: 10:17

They do all sorts of wild things, and it's because they believe that that's what they should be doing, and so our actions are always going to be the byproduct of our beliefs. What we believe we will act on Eventually, that is going to be the case. So our actions are coming from our beliefs. But our beliefs aren't just sitting there either. They didn't just randomly get there. They were actually created by our thinking. Whatever we thought about long enough, often enough, emotionally enough, eventually passes from our conscious mind, our filter system, and it gets embedded inside of us, in our subconscious, our truth holder, and so our thoughts eventually become beliefs. Our beliefs manifest into actions. Our actions create our results, and so that was a process that I could watch happen over and over and over again in the lives of everybody that I knew that was succeeding. I could watch happen over and over and over again in the lives of everybody that I knew that was succeeding. I could watch those patterns.

Ian Prukner: 11:08

They had right thinking, good belief systems, which caused them to take consistent, positive, productive actions which led to a compounding of results in their life. And then I could watch that happen. In the exact opposite. I could watch people with broken thinking, poor belief systems, take wrong actions or have inaction and then suffer the consequences of those results, and I could watch them happen over and over.

Ian Prukner: 11:34

What was crazy, jerry, is I saw that this worked so well that it became a self-fulfilling prophecy. In other words, somebody might say well, you know, I'm just, I'm just not supposed to be wealthy. Nobody in my family is wealthy and yeah, I'm just unlucky with money. That might be their thinking, right, and so so they don't bother learning about money, because why would you? You're so unlucky anyways, right, they don't bother investing money because they're probably going to lose, and they don't bother reading anything about it because why would we want to look at that? It's just such a bad subject for me. And then they lose financially. They say, aha, I'm right, I'm just unlucky with money. It's a cycle that works so well that it predicts and creates itself. Well, I saw the same thing on the other end with people saying you know what I can? I can learn about money, and as I get better with money, I'll have better results with money.

Ian Prukner: 12:24

That might be their thinking, and so eventually that turns into a belief system that says, hey, what I focus on grows. If I get better at things, things get better. I can't go through life better skilled with better thinking, better belief systems, better um uh tools, better relationships, better networks, and not get better. And so the byproduct of that belief would be well, let's go build those networks, let's get that education, let's learn a little bit about it, let's open that investment account. And then, lo and behold, five or 10 or 15 years of doing those things, and people are sitting on a fair amount of wealth that was literally created from their mind. I love what Napoleon Hill says thoughts are things, thoughts are things. And so, as we think as a man thinketh right, so is he. And so this is the pattern of T-bar and the byproduct that I recognize and utilize in my life and so many other people's lives.

Jerry Henderson : 13:20

Yeah, so powerful and fast forward. You know you talked about your first year of making a million and then from there is compounded and multimillionaire. At this point, and starting with the thoughts, the curiosity thoughts, are things I mean. I love that. I love the book Think and Grow'm listening to this and maybe I don't feel like I'm worthy of wealth and I have all these blocks. What are some of the tips that you would give? Not even tips, right, because this isn't about tips, it's about rewiring. But when you think about a person who has these limiting beliefs around money, what are some of the most common limiting beliefs that you've seen, that you've witnessed people repeat rehearse that has caused them to sabotage the life that they want to live?

Ian Prukner: 14:12

Yeah, I think there's five of them specifically that I've seen in now 20 years of helping people to create lives that they love and substantial wealth. The first one, for spiritual audiences, is that money is evil, or that the love of money is evil and the money is not evil. Money is an inanimate object. Right, okay, the Bible does say that the love of money is the root of all evil, but there's something after that, and when we take scriptures out of context, they can become a con text, right, okay, and so what happens? There said you know that the love for the love of money is the root of all evil. For some, having essentially been money hungry, have walked away from the faith right In pursuit of these things.

Ian Prukner: 15:00

And so one of the biggest belief hurdles that I had to overcome coming out of the ministry was does God want me to be wealthy? Does God want me to have money? And what I found is God does not mind us having money as long as money doesn't have us. That is God's position, and that's just not money. By the way, it's all things that want to exalt their position in our lives over his position. It might be a relationship with somebody that we over his position. It might be a relationship with somebody that we place above God. It might be our status or our image, it might be our health, it could be a hobby or some other thing, and God wants to be first place in our life. And so does God want you to be wealthy? He sure doesn't mind it as long as you are not being controlled by that thing, right? And so that's one of the first things If you disdain money, you definitely will not have any of it. Okay, yeah, that is belief Number one. The second belief that I see all the times of money changes people. I don't want money to change me.

Ian Prukner: 16:00

Folks. Money doesn't change people. It exposes people. It exposes people. It doesn't change who you are. It reveals who you are. When you have power, when you have money, when you have opportunity. Those things reveal your true, unbridled intentions. And so if you're a great person with money, you're going to help a lot of amazing causes. You're going to create a lot of incredible investments and opportunities. You're going to leave the world in a net better place. You're going to be a net contributor to society. If you have a lot of resources and you're a great person. Now, if you're a selfish person, if you're a mean spirited person, then all that does is amplify what you already are. You'll be greedier than you were. You'll be more selfish than you were.

Ian Prukner: 16:43

You'll be more self-centered meaner to people because you can get away with it. But the money didn't change you. You are always you. It just exposes you. And so what I always try to coach people on is if you're afraid of money changing you, why don't you just change you, and then you won't have to be afraid of money changing you. You change you first. You become the person that you're supposed to be. You live out the principles that God has called you to live out, and when you've changed you, you don't have to worry about money changing you. So that's the second belief.

Ian Prukner: 17:13

The third belief is you can't take it with you. Well, you can't take it with you, and this is actually a quite accurate belief, but it doesn't serve us. You're right, you can't take it with you. You can stuff it in your coffin. It won't do anybody any good there. And that is simultaneously not a reason to um to relinquish our call on our life, to be great stewards and to learn to manage money, to multiply money, to make money. It's not an excuse for not having anything, because, yeah, you can't take it with you, but you can leave it behind to people you care about and causes that matter to you, and you can make a difference with it. And so, just because you can't take it with you, that's far too selfish of a way to evolve. I can't have it. When I'm gone, then forget about all these other deserving people and causes too Good riddance to them. Right, that's a gospel of selfishness that is masked in some form of altruism. Right, we can't take it with you. Okay, so that is a belief that I've watched over and over and over again in people's life.

Ian Prukner: 18:21

How much is enough? How much is enough? This is another one. When's enough enough? Well, I think we should make all we can, we should save all we can, we should give all we can, because in a capitalist society, money is a certificate of merit Money unless you're stealing it from people. They have given it to you in exchange for your goods or your services, or your time or your knowledge, and so the more of it we're able to accumulate, the more service we've rendered to other people. The only way we don't have money in a capitalist society is when we serve our needs alone instead of the needs of other people, because nobody pays you to serve yourself, right, but they'll pay you to take care of them. And so how much is enough? I want to get as much of it as I can.

Ian Prukner: 19:04

I want to give as much of it as I can.

Ian Prukner: 19:07

I want to invest as much of it as I can. I want to leave as big of a mark there that I possibly can. I want to be abundant with money, not in lack with money. So those, jerry, those four there's a fifth, but those four are the main areas where I see people struggle consistently with their belief systems and money because ultimately, they have negative feelings and emotions towards that, and that manifests in all sorts of self-sabotage and being unwilling to learn and grow and to take control over those things. And that's not what we want it to. We want to maintain our agency over the tool of money. I am going to give you the fifth one.

Ian Prukner: 19:49

Okay, money won't make you happy. This is a tough one, right? Okay, well, money won't make you happy. Okay, well, toasters won't drive you to work either. Money was not meant to make you happy. Money is a tool for transaction. It's a store of wealth and time. It is not meant to make you happy. Just like I said, toasters aren't meant to drive you to school and cell phones aren't meant to fly you to New York. They are not the right tool. And so, as long as we're looking at money to be something it can never be, was never designed to be, will never be. We'll always be frustrated with money because we misunderstand its place in our lives. It's not there as a tool to make us happy. It's there as a tool to help us transact and to help exchange value with one another.

Jerry Henderson : 20:34

So good. You know there's so many things that you know, as you shared, that even all these aha moments for me and as I even thought about it, was you shared in the beginning for the spiritual audience around. You know money is the root of all evil and if people aren't in that spiritual space they're like well, capitalism is evil, or this structure, this system, is all evil. There's always these things and here's what I've learned about us as people myself our first surface story really isn't the story right, that first surface story of money's evil. It changes people. I'm afraid of that, can't take it with you. How much is enough? It won't make me happy. All of those are often the narrative that we put forward, but there's usually something right below the surface of that and that thing that's right below the surface of it may be a sense of worthiness you know that if I get it it's going to be taken away, I'm not worthy to have it or a root in poverty.

Jerry Henderson : 21:30

You know I grew up on the welfare system in the US, very poor. You know we had to go to food lines at that time back in the day and we're the Salvation Army and all these other places to get our meals and my mother was shoplifting groceries at times in order to feed us, and money for me was a stress. I associated money as stress because it was a source of arguments in our home constantly and my nervous system got wired to see that as something that I didn't want to deal with. I didn't want to talk about it, I didn't want to look at it, because that's how I got wired and then I could then create a story from that, which is, well you know, money's evil. In this story and narrative, what's actually happening is I've got some trauma with money or I've got some sense of unworthiness. Talk to us about what you've seen in that space.

Ian Prukner: 22:21

Yeah, I love what you're talking about with the story, and the story is just the removal of our responsibility, our removal of our own responsibility to win with money. This is confusing. This makes me feel bad, I feel ashamed, I feel guilty, I feel stressed, I feel whatever these things are, and so this is a great cover story that alleviates me from having to perform in this area of my life. So, if I can just have this great cover, that sounds very altruistic, sounds very noble, I'm highest and above this little thing called money, and this is not a necessity in my life. It's a great cover story that deludes only us. We're the only one deceived by that. Your bank doesn't care about your story, and neither does your investment account or the vacation you want to take, or the family you want to give to or the cause that you care about. They don't buy your story. You're the only one by you're selling it and you're buying it, but you're the only one doing both of those things in our life and, like I said, it helps us to evade our responsibility, and I believe it is a responsibility.

Ian Prukner: 23:25

Jerry, I think that the Bible is really clear. There's a story in there called the parable of the talents that Jesus talks about, and in its most literal sense. There's a wealthy landowner who leaves his three servants, and he leaves each of them with a measure of money. One has five pieces of money, one has two, the other one has one and he goes away. He doesn't say when he's going to come back. The one who has five doubles it to ten. The one who has two doubles it to four. The one who has one is afraid, doesn't know what to do. He doesn't have the education, he's never been bothered by this little thing called money, and so he's entrusted with this, doesn't know what to do with it, so he buries it. So at least I'll give it back to him. So the master comes back and the one who has five says master, here's your five and I've gained you five more. And he says to him well done, good and faithful servant.

Ian Prukner: 24:14

The one who has two also has multiplied his money. Now, he didn't have 10, he had four. He doubled it. So he took what he had and he grew it. He had four and the master said well done, good and faithful servant. Well, the one who has one says master, you're a hard man and you reap where you haven't sown and I was afraid and I didn't want to lose it, so I buried it. Here's your one back.

Ian Prukner: 24:36

And that servant thought that that would have been acceptable. But that's not what the master said. The master said you wicked lazy servant, you should have at least put it on deposit with the bankers, where I would have received interest. And then he says something very, very interesting, and it's still happening today. He says take from the one who has one and give to the one who has 10. And what he's saying here is, when we don't steward money, what we have will be taken from us and given to the people who have it. In other words, the rich become richer and the poor become poorer. Why? Because the rich understand money, they understand its place in its life, in their life, they respect it, they honor it and they use it. And poor people are afraid of it, they reject it, they avoid it, they try to stay away from it, and so even what they have ends up being transferred to the wealthy right, because money won't go where it's not wanted, it won't go there, it won't stay there, it won't multiply there.

Jerry Henderson : 25:37

Yeah, so good. Yeah, because you think about in that story, right, the fear that was there and there's so much fear that comes around money, and the fear of I don't know what to do with it, I don't know how to handle it, I don't want to lose it. I, you know, I don't know if I'm once again worthy of it, and if I I don't have it, maybe it reinforces my story of not being worthy of it. And, once again, if I get it and I lose it, well, that's going to reinforce my narrative that I have about myself, because it often feels like that money can be in some ways, in all cases, right.

Jerry Henderson : 26:09

There's people who choose a certain lifestyle, and I think about very rich people who choose a certain outward lifestyle that you'd never know, right, and so they make these decisions around, but they still have those resources and they have a certain mindset. And so, as you think about helping people transition from the fear, from the worthiness or the unworthiness because you talked about, thoughts are things that then install belief systems that then cause us to take certain actions or not take certain actions, and then we get results from all of that. You know limitations to something that's expansive, to something that opens them up to their worthiness to changing their relationship with it. And what is the mindset of those who open themselves up?

Ian Prukner: 27:04

Yeah, that's a great question. I think that awareness is always the first step to change, and, specifically in money, the awareness that my belief systems around money are not serving me. If we're not winning with money, there's a reason that that's occurring, and that reason is us, it's me, it's you, and that's a really uncomfortable truth. It's easier, sort of, to blame the world or your upbringing or the community you live in or any other number of things, because it's really hard to say, hey, I'm the problem, but when we can, but when we can be aware that we are the problem, there's an equally powerful truth on the other side of that that I'm also the solution. And so I think step one to changing our money mindsets is to recognize that our money mindsets are broken, or they're at least not serving us well. They're not serving us well. How many times, jerry, have you seen a motivational speaker in front of a tree and he's just firing?

Jerry Henderson : 28:00

that tree up.

Ian Prukner: 28:00

You're going to be the biggest oak tree. You're going to be so. You're going to be so strong. Your trunk's going to be so wide, your leaves, they're just going to be magnificent. How many times have you seen that?

Ian Prukner: 28:10

Never seen that in my life and I've never seen it either. I'm sure maybe one day we will with the world out there. These days, the reason trees don't need motivational speakers is because they were born to grow. They don't need any sort of outside help to do what they were made to do. Well, we were born to grow too, and one of the areas that we're supposed to grow in is financially, in our resource management, our ability to make, save and multiply money. Okay. And so when we're not growing in that area, it's because something has gone wrong in the wiring.

Ian Prukner: 28:45

What our natural status of growth and expansion, like all living things? Okay, we have walked away, most of the time unknowingly, from that natural programming. In other words, we picked up a belief somewhere somehow that doesn't serve the natural wiring in our life, and so it's creating sort of a malfunction there. With money, if, financially, I'm strapped right now, if I'm stuck, if I've got a lot of anxiety around money, if I don't feel like I'm worthy of it, my belief systems aren't serving me. That's awareness number one, okay. So we need to become aware, and then we we've got to replace that belief system. And so how do we do that? Well, what I did all those years ago is I found this man who had the right belief systems about money, and what I went to him to study was how he thought I.

Ian Prukner: 29:37

Literally whenever I have a chance to hang around very, very wealthy or very, very successful people in any field, whether it's sports or business or the arts and I've been very blessed. I have several billionaires that have been personal mentors to me. I mentors that are some of the most recognizable names in the world and when I'm with them, the number one thing I want to, I want to get from them is where do they think differently than I do? Because that is where their different results are generating. Their results are different than mine because their thinking is different than mine. Remember T-bar way? At the very beginning of all those results are these pesky little thoughts, these four inches between our ears and, if I can figure out, jerry, where their thinking is different than mine and I can begin to question that, challenge it, learn it and begin to accept some of that thinking.

Ian Prukner: 30:31

I can begin to believe and act on that. So we first need to be aware that our thinking systems are not serving us. The second thing we need to do is we need to replace that with better, more positive, productive thought patterns. Okay, and then the third thing we do is we reprogram those things right. So it's one thing to think, it's another to know and believe. And so we reprogram through either repetition or through emotional anchoring.

Ian Prukner: 30:59

Napoleon Hill calls it auto-suggestion, in other words, what we listen to often enough, frequently enough, eventually we begin to believe. This is how pathological liars believe their own lies. They lie to themselves so much that eventually it becomes true to them Not to anybody else, but they believe it. They do because they've heard it so many times. So that's a negative example of that.

Ian Prukner: 31:20

But the same is true when we begin to program new and more positive thoughts about your relationships with money, why you deserve to have success with money, why money is not stressful, why money can be a great tool in your life. As you begin to reprogram that, it becomes a default and we begin to move through that. We're always moving towards our most dominant thoughts, and so most of us are not thinking about what we're thinking about. We're not even choosing our thoughts. They've been put there by our parents, our upbringing, the media, what we scroll by today. Right and outsourcing your thinking is an expensive job, and I don't ever want to do that. I want to make sure that we're thinking accurately and that we're programming those beliefs so that they become automatic. That's where I would start.

Jerry Henderson : 32:07

Love that. So the awareness piece, and then even the awareness of responsibility, right, because as we even think about the psychology of happiness, all the research tells us, right, that it's an inside job. And then when we think about our mindset, and you know, we want to blame the world, we want to blame how structures are set up, and there's some real hard truths in this right, and some listeners may listen to this and go, wow, that feels a little harsh, but here's the truth. You know, if our systems are rejecting that and seeing that as harsh, then we have to get curious about underneath.

Ian Prukner: 32:46

That's actually the place where we should be getting. Yeah, it is precisely in the place that we reject the strongest that is likely the location of our greatest opportunities for growth, because those are our most deeply held, deeply rooted instinctual beliefs that are coming up in opposition to that rooted instinctual beliefs that are coming up in opposition to that, and that's a good clue to start right. When you get really wound up about something you hear about money, that's probably a good place to examine your beliefs.

Jerry Henderson : 33:11

Yeah, absolutely. And get curious about it because I love what you said that they have different results because they think different. And we can look at the results and say it was luck, it was this or that, but there is a thinking pattern that is different. And then that reprogramming, that auto-suggestion. Now, if you were to just share something with the audience where you go, hey, the number one place that I would start doing the work you said is awareness. Then beginning to start doing the reprogramming work, right, understanding what that replacement work. And then the reprogramming work. What are some of those thoughts, those top couple of thoughts on how the people who have wealth keep wealth. What are some of the ways they think differently?

Ian Prukner: 33:58

Yeah, I think number one is they have money in its rightful place in their life, which is they honor it, they respect it, they understand it, they steward it, but they are not controlled by it, they are not in love with it. They just have it in its right order and proximity to them in their life. I think that's a great starting place for wealthy people. They respect it. Listen, if you talked to your spouse the way you talk about money, you probably wouldn't have a spouse and that's why you don't have any money, because it knows it's not. You're never going to become something that you disdain and you're never going to do the work to learn something that really pushes back against you. And so, again, having this in its rightful place, being able to say money is important, money is important. Money helps me live my life more effectively. Money makes me a more effective parent, makes me a more effective leader, it makes me a more effective spouse, makes me a more effective citizen. It helps me have control over my agency. There's all sorts of things that are good that come from this.

Ian Prukner: 35:15

So very successful people have money and their understanding of money in its place, and it's a healthy relationship that they build with money. That's a first belief system and thinking pattern that I would want to make sure that I have. Right that this is not something I'm afraid of. It's not something that I think is bad or evil in some way. It's not something I think that God does not want me to have. It's not something that I feel is going to want me to have. It's not something that I feel is going to be harmful to me or to others. Right? It's the idea you mentioned that capitalism is bad People who think that capitalism is bad work on a fixed high ideology.

Ian Prukner: 35:51

If you ever read, there's great books, a very tough read. It's a humongous book. It's written in the 1600s, called the Wealth of Nations, and it's by Adam Smith, and he was basically one of the founders of modern economic thought, and he talks about the creation of money. And so, to paraphrase this, imagine going into the woods. You didn't have to do anything for woods to exist, right, jerry? You were born on this planet and there were woods, and a hundred years from now there will still be woods in the planet. And so you could go into the woods and you could take your effort, your physical energy, and you could chop down a tree, and nothing has happened until you sell that tree to a lumber mill who pays you money. And because you went into the woods with your effort, new money is created in the system. That money did not exist before that wood was chopped down. But before it can get to that lumber mill it's got to get shipped. So a shipping company makes some money for taking their logs down the river and then it gets there. It gets cleaned, the cleaning company makes some money, they ship it to the mill, the mill chops it up into two by fours, two by sixes, all sorts of stuff right. They sell it to Home Depot. Those guys make some money. Home Depot sells it to the home builder. Home Depot makes some money. They ship it on a truck. The trucker makes some money, shows up to the job site where the carpenters frame the house they make some money. The house gets finished. The builder sells the house. He makes some money. The realtor who sold it makes some money. The mortgage loan officer who did the loan makes some money. The title insurance, the homeowner's insurance, the lawn guy, the irrigator.

Ian Prukner: 37:29

From the man in the woods who said I'm going to take my time, my energy and my effort and I'm going to produce something with it my energy and my effort and I'm going to produce something with it there began an entire stream of new wealth creation. And so understanding that wealth is in super abundance, that it is everywhere around you, I think is the second belief that we want to cultivate, because when you believe that for you to have more, others must have less, you won't go get more. It's also a false belief when you believe that all you need to do it to have more is to create something that has not been created before. Now you will become super creative and super abundant in how you approach things. You know, I grew up in Michigan and the Detroit area is very, very hard hit by race riots in the sixties, again by the shutdowns in 2008, the bankruptcies of the big three automotive companies.

Ian Prukner: 38:24

And there are blocks, jerry, in Detroit you know, you've been there okay where there are more homes in Detroit than there are people. They were just all abandoned, right, and there are blocks that are just decimated. But do you understand, in a square mile, in the most impoverished area in the city of Detroit, there are hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars sitting in that one square mile between the homes, the cars, the raw materials. Hundreds of millions of dollars in what a normal person would say is a very impoverished area. Why? Money is very abundant, it is everywhere. There's no lack of money, only lack of ideas and effort to translate into money through creation.

Ian Prukner: 39:08

That's the second belief that I would work on is getting an awareness of the opportunities around you. The third belief that I would begin to work on or thought process, really more of a thought process than a belief is how can I, how can I see most people. They look at a dream home and say I'd love to have that, but I can't afford it. They look at that car oh, it must be nice, but I couldn't afford that. They look at the nice dinner or the nice trip and I can't, I can't. And I can't is a lie. Can't and won't are two different things. Okay, and when we say I can't, our subconscious mind says okay, sounds good. And shuts off and goes to rest. But when we begin to think, instead of I can't, into how can I, how can I afford that? How could I acquire the resources for this? Now our mind becomes infinitely creative. Jerry, what's your birthday?

Jerry Henderson : 40:05

October 7th.

Ian Prukner: 40:06

Why did you answer that?

Jerry Henderson : 40:08

Because that's the day I was born, man, it's just who I am, but because I asked you. Yeah, because you asked me yeah.

Ian Prukner: 40:14

I asked you a question, and so your brain is wired to come up with answers to the questions it is asked. And when we say I can't, we stop asking questions. But when we say how can I? We become infinitely curious. Our brain goes into overdrive.

Ian Prukner: 40:30

There's a fun illustration I love to do when I speak and I've done this on stages with 20 and 30,000 people. It's a lot of fun. I'll bring two random audience members up. I don't talk to them beforehand and I have a shiny $20 bill that I bring up. Smack that thing in my hand, right, shiny 20. And I say hey, we have talked about this right now. Okay, you don't know what we're doing. Okay, well, we're going to have a contest and here's the rules of the contest. You've got to go from this side of the stage to this side of the stage. Okay, you get three seconds of downtime on each side. Here's the rules you can't walk and you can't repeat yourself, and you can't repeat what somebody else has done, and the last person still crossing this stage is going to win this $20. Are you ready? And it becomes so much fun. People get their cameras out. It's wild. The audience erupts.

Ian Prukner: 41:22

You got people doing the crab walk, you got a barrel rolling. I had one guy one time become a wheelbarrow partnership where the one guy was walking on his hands and the other dude was holding his legs pushing him behind him. I mean really crazy things, right. And so sometimes this will go on for three or four minutes and they'll see you see 20, 30, 40 different variations and eventually one of them will blank out and they just won't be able to think in that. Three seconds and they're done and the winner is crowned. I'll bring the winner up. I say now.

Ian Prukner: 41:53

Now let me ask you a question. I saw you do this move and this move and this move. When's the last time you did that in your life? When's the last time, jerry, you crab walked? It's probably been a while, right, if ever. Okay, so you didn't come to this event today planning to crab walk across the stage in front of 20,000 people, but you did right, and you did some other stuff that it quite honestly looks like your body has never done before.

Ian Prukner: 42:17

Okay, and you had three seconds and you were in front of 20,000 people and your brain fired those things off, one after another, after another after another, effortlessly. It came to you, it controlled thousands and tens of thousands of movements and muscle movements in instantaneous fashion. Why? Because when the why is clear, the how to appears. When we give our mind a challenge, a question, a problem to solve, it becomes infinitely creative. And when we say I can't, we shut off our creativity stream. When we say how can I, we open ourself up to a world of possibilities. I could tell you so many stories of incredible wealth that's been generated in my life by asking myself this question, ian how can I? And letting my brain do that work for me as it will for you?

Jerry Henderson : 43:16

Yeah, absolutely, and I want the listeners to make sure you hear that as it will for you. Yeah, absolutely, and I want the listeners to make sure you hear that as it will for you, because we're all on this planet trying to figure it out. We're living this life for the first time and what I loved about what you said is, once again, it's anchoring in that curiosity, right, and so many people will adopt that story that it's not for me or I can't, or whatever that narrative is. And there's a long history that goes behind that story that it's not for me or I can't, or whatever that narrative is. And there's a long history that goes behind that story and the development of it. The good news is is it can change faster than it was developed. We do the work of rewiring yeah, much faster as we think about those stories and the I can't.

Jerry Henderson : 43:57

You know, the neuroscience shows us that when we get curious and we start to say how can I, it actually activates the approach system in our brain that is motivated, that causes us to move towards change in our life. And when we say things like I can't or I never will, that actually connects to our avoid system of our brain that's based in fear, anxiety, and it causes us to avoid moving forward. And for the listeners who are thinking about well, it's just words. It goes beyond just words. It's actually neuroscience. It activates, lights up regions in your brain that causes you to start approaching something. And here's the interesting thing about this Will, as you talked about earlier, the tree right. Its natural state is for it to grow and we'll give that, you know, our head nod towards 99% of things in our life in some sense right. Like you know, it's natural for me to, you know, learn how to get better if I'm pursuing an education. Or it's natural for me to grow in this area, that area, etc. It's natural for a kid to start growing, you know, and adding inches to their height.

Jerry Henderson : 45:08

But for some reason, when we start talking about money and we start talking about wealth, there's something that just starts to shut down, because we know emotional growth, mental growth, you know even relational growth. Yeah, those things are good, we should be doing those things. But, as you talk about, I should have evidence of financial growth in my life, because it's not some separate thing. We like to categorize it and chunk it over to something that we can avoid. It's a natural extension of what you said creating value in this world.

Jerry Henderson : 45:39

Am I creating value? Am I activating the creative parts of who I am to bring something into this world that allows everybody in some sense to begin to benefit in some way? And so when we think about that natural growth piece, the desire to want to become self-expansive, we exclude that piece for some reason. And so if you were to give you know the Ian who was you know 20-some years ago or how many ever years ago, who was in that moment, who all of a sudden shifted to curiosity and you know you might have somebody listening right now who's in that exact state, what would be the one piece of advice that you would have given to your younger self earlier on, or give to the listener, who just needs to hear that they do have the potential to transform their life in this space?

Ian Prukner: 46:31

I tell myself two things Think a whole lot bigger and find the right mentors. That's the two things I would tell myself. Right, because, knowing what I know, on the other side of it, I played too small for too long and that kept my earning potential down longer than it should have, kept my net worth uh, uh, acquiring potential down much longer than it should have. And then having the right mentors, getting around people specifically seeking them out, paying for them if you need to, but putting myself in proximity of people who had the life that I wanted, so that I could meticulously study the thoughts that created that life and begin to model those back into my own life.

Jerry Henderson : 47:14

Love that so good, ian. Before we close out, I just first want to say thank you so much for everything that you've shared with us today. Is there anything else that you'd like to share? Before we move on, and I want to highlight your book and some other resources for people- yeah, I would just tell you that great relationships matter in life.

Ian Prukner: 47:32

I think we all know that. A great relationship with your spouse if you have a spouse, that'll make you or break you, I think, great relationships with your kids, with coworkers, with friends. Well, relationships with money matter too, and I would encourage you to go on the journey of cultivating a positive, productive and empowering relationship with money, and as you develop that, you'll have a much better experience with money. Your experience will always match your relationship, and so if'll have a much better experience with money, your experience will always match your relationship. And so if you have a troubled relationship with money, you're going to have a troubled experience with it. But if you have a great relationship with money, a positive one, an empowering one, you're going to have a great positive and empowering experience with money. And so if our experience hasn't been all that we want it to be, let's go back to the relationship that we have with it and begin to work there.

Jerry Henderson : 48:22

So powerful, totally shifts our energy when we look at it as a relationship, versus some finite thing that we're just trying to grasp onto. And you've got a new book that just recently came out and the title of it is 12 Words that Change Everything. Why don't you tell our listeners a little bit about your new book?

Ian Prukner: 48:39

Yeah, so it's my second book just became a bestseller against. That's amazing. And the premise of the book is that our words are creating our world and that we have a lot of creative power inside of us. And there are 12 words that I found especially useful in creating the life that I've lived now, overcoming a lot of the obstacles that we've overcome and building a lot of the dreams that we've been able to live. And those 12 words are not words that are taught in school regularly. They're not part of the discourse, of everyday conversation, which is why they don't create lives that look like everyday people's lives. These are powerful ideas that are wrapped into words that can describe them, and so there's 12 chapters in the book. Each chapter is dedicated to one of those words that has profoundly impacted my life, a word that doesn't get the credibility and the traction that it deserves, but is much, much needed if you want to live a life of significant success. So that's the moral of 12 words that change everything.

Jerry Henderson : 49:38

Awesome. Thank you, ian. Thank you so much for taking your time to be here and listeners. If you're interested in picking up either one of Ian's books whether it's byproduct or his latest book, 12 Words that Change Everything you can simply see the show notes in this episode. You'll also see a link to a free resource that Ian has created for this audience. It's Five Day Money money mindset checkup. And so encourage free resource, get access to that and start your journey on changing the way that you think about money and your relationship with money.

Jerry Henderson : 50:10

And also if you're interested in learning more about how to work with Ian in this space of shifting your money mindset, you can reach out to him on Instagram. His handle there is at Ian Prochner. I'm also including a link to his Instagram in the show notes of this episode. I just want to say thank you so much for being here for another episode with Personal Mastery, so grateful for this community. If you've not yet had a chance to subscribe or follow, take a moment to do that, because I don't want you to miss out on a single episode. Chance to subscribe or follow. Take a moment to do that because I don't want you to miss out on a single episode, and I want to remind you that you are worthy of a life that feels as good on the inside as it looks on the outside.