Built Different Mindset | Erin Botsford | Growing Money with Sean Trace

I sat down with Erin Botsford and her story completely reframed how I think about money, resilience, and building something that actually lasts. 

From losing everything early on to building and selling a seven-figure firm, this conversation breaks down why most people stay stuck doing everything themselves and how real freedom comes from systems, people, and thinking long-term. 

What would your life look like if your business actually ran without you?

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Well, you know, as far as your daughters go, I I Demora had a daughter. I had one son, but he had a best friend, and it's my my best friend's daughter. And I remember when she came home and she did not make cheerleading. And for her, that was just, you know, at the time, just devastation. And, you know, so many of us want to go in and rescue, just like your wife said, you know, we want to my friend wanted to call the coach and da-da-da-da. And I'm like, you know what? This is going to be a lifelong lesson. And how she deals with this. So I said, my suggestion is tell her she gets to have a pity party all weekend long. Friday, Saturday, Sunday. When you have a pity party, I mean, you cry your eyes out and you stamp your fit and you really have a good pity party. You're intentional about it. But Monday morning at 8 a.m., it's over. And you move on. And you never think about it again. And so I think that I think that's one of the tools that I've used in my life is that I acknowledge the defeat. I acknowledge the disappointment. I acknowledge it wholeheartedly. And I give myself space and time to do that. And I set a time. And when that time comes, it's over. And that that is that discipline has served me well.

SPEAKER_00 1:17

All right. Welcome everybody back to the Growing Money Podcast. I've got an awesome guest with me today. Would you like to tell people who you are and a little bit about what you do?

SPEAKER_01 1:26

Yeah, my name's Aaron Botsford, and I was a financial advisor for 31 years in the industry. I'm came from a life of poverty and, you know, a lot of uh personal tragedy, and I made it to the top of our industry, Barons, top 100 in all the categories. So now I actually teach financial advisors how to build businesses. So that's what I do.

SPEAKER_00 1:47

That's awesome. How did you get into that? What was your journey to, you know, going from point A to point point whatever? You know, what was it that got you started in this financial advising journey?

SPEAKER_01 1:59

Well, it kind of goes back to my dad died when I was 11 and left my mom with six kids and no money, a$10,000 life insurance policy, which didn't go very far. And then when I was 16, I was involved in a very bad car accident with a motorcyclist. He actually, um, this young man, he went out of control and hit my car and he died. And I was charged with involuntary manslaughter as a 16-year-old. I went through a criminal trial and was found not guilty. This guy was clearly out of control. But then I that followed a um a civil lawsuit. My mother and I were sued for just a large amount of money. And so I went through a lot of, you know, it's it's interesting as I became a financial planner, you know, the experiences that I had in life really informed the way I think about financial planning. And a lot of people know me because I start off on the risk side of the balance sheet. Because and I talk about things like, hey, how much umbrella liability insurance do you have? Do you have teenage drivers driving automobiles in your name? You know, and how much life insurance does your adult son have on him? Do you really want to raise your grandkids if he has no life insurance? So again, you know, I think all of us are a product of the experiences that we've had. So one of the things my mother taught me, because I remember her saying, you know, honey, you got to get good grades. I was a straight A student, got a four-year full-paid scholarship to university based on grades. And she said, but one thing you always should do, you should you should always be able to type. She said, if you can type well, you'll always be able to get a job as a secretary. I mean, that is the that was the advice from my mother. But um the funny thing was, I went into a stock brokerage firm looking for a job as a secretary. And the man there said, I'm as in my 20s, and he's like, okay, he goes, I'm gonna make you a stockbroker. And I was like, what is that? I didn't know the difference between a stock, a bond, had never heard of a mutual fine, but there I was. So that's how I got into business. I went in looking for a job as a secretary and came out of stockbroker.

SPEAKER_00 4:05

That's wild. You know, it's interesting too because, like, you know, you wow, you had all of these core experiences. And I I talk to so many people and they talk about how early experiences really shape people's financial direction, you know, and you see that people who grow up, I mean, I had a grandma that grew up, my great grandma grew up during the depression. And I remember she lived with us when we were kids. And I mean, she was canning things, and we were canning like crazy. And people like people who don't know what canning is, it's where you take fruit and you put it into cans, you boil it in the like the mason jar, and once you boil it, it's sealed and it stays. It stays for the whole winter, you know, it is essentially preserved. And we did that every winter. And I would ask my mom, why are we doing this? We can go up to the grocery store and buy fruit. We can go buy this stuff. And she's like, Well, you know, it's it's not always there. And for me, the the idea of something not always being there was was crazy. Like, how do you mean? Like, what do you mean something might not always be there? But I didn't have that experience growing up, but she did, and it shaped who she was her entire life, you know. And now we have people that have been shaped by more recent events. You look at how I I'm curious how how COVID is going to affect some of the kids growing up, you know, like people who weren't able to get toilet paper for a period of time, you know, how is that gonna affect them, you know?

SPEAKER_01 5:32

You know, it's funny you say that because even I, you know, I'll go to the grocery store and if I walk down the toilet paper, I'm gonna buy me, I'm gonna buy toilet paper. I've probably got 50 rolls in my house because it's that same mentality, you know, when you suddenly wake up one day and you realize you can't get something, and you know, and and it was so bizarre, like in COVID, why toilet paper? Why not, you know, eggs? Or I mean, why was that the big thing? And I I don't know, but it does have an impact because I think about that. And I think about the world today and what's the next crisis to come along? What will be the next shortage? Is it gonna be toilet paper? Is it gonna be soap? I mean, I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 6:13

Yeah, you never know, but it's interesting because those things are so they run so deep and people don't have don't realize it. You know, I I live with a uh, you know, my wife's family, we live in the same general ad boat. It's it's an Asian family house setup. And so my in-laws live upstairs above us, and I love my mother-in-law and father-in-law, but they are hoarders, like massive way. But when you look, they grew up in the middle of a war. They grew up in the middle of of extreme, you know, lack, and there was this you they save stuff. And it's interesting too to see that people one of the things that I'm fascinated by is how subconscious so many of these things are. My mother-in-law doesn't realize she hoards, but then when we go and we go pull out like, you know, 10 trash bags of like plastic bags that have been shoved in corners of a room, and we're like, do we need all of these? You know, are these needing to be kept? You know, and it's like she doesn't even realize I didn't know I had those. And it's that so much of this is a subconscious. One of the things that I found is really interesting is trying to find ways to kind of be more conscious with this stuff, you know?

SPEAKER_01 7:26

Well, I can say uh on the other hand, I'm I have a daughter-in-law who I love, worship, and adore, but she is so cautious. I mean, she'll every time she comes over, she'll go into my pantry and she throws half my stuff away. Because if it's a month out of date, she's ditching it, right? And again, we grew up in a different era where when I was young and very, very poor, I mean, we didn't throw anything out. And so, you know, if if the can of beans was a year out of date, so being like deal with the diarrhea. You know, I mean, my mom was like, that's all there is right now. So, you know, when you grow up with lack, it does change, it just does change your perspective, I think.

SPEAKER_00 8:07

Well, it leads to a question that I had for you because like I wanted to ask for you, what were some early mistakes or hard lessons you learned? You mentioned the accident, but were there others that you had about money or from when you were building your firm that shaped how you operate today or or teach other people to operate today?

SPEAKER_01 8:25

Well, those are about four questions in one, but I can tell you um another another mess, another thing that happened was um I started dating my husband in high school. I was a junior, he was a senior, and he'd kind of walked through some really terrible times with me, which is was great. And then it was time to get married, and you know, the bride's parents are supposed to pay for the wedding. Well, my mom had no more money to pay for a wedding than she did my defense, you know. So, you know, I was pretty industrious even back then. So I found out that Wheel of Fortune was doing triads for Bride's Week, and I was gonna be a bride. So two of us, two couples of us, we went up and anyway, I tried out, I got on the Wheel of Fortune and I ended up winning. That's wild. And the puzzle I solved, you know, think about my background, where I was, I was thinking I was 20 years old at the time. The puzzle I actually saw was down in the dumps. So I by the time I was like 22 between my savings, the wheel of fortune, I had saved about$22,000, which was not a small amount of money back then. And so I was able to pay for our wedding. I took$3,000 and I bought a condo with a friend of mine, not my husband, but another friend. And we owned that for about 14 years, but I gave the other$19,000 to a stockbroker, and he lost all of it for me in about six months. So I can still relate to somebody's by at that point in my life, that was my life's work, right? I was young, all the money that I had, and he and he didn't even say, I'm sorry, he put us into four completely um investments that were so not appropriate for us, and they all went belly up. And um, you know, it was such a moment for me like, don't ever put your hands on other people's money and their life's work unless you truly care what happens to it. And so, you know, I always think all of these experiences I count it all for good because I think it it does shape who you become. Had that not happened, I don't know if I would have been as careful with people's money. I mean, hopefully I would have been, but that was such a pivot point, like, oh my gosh, you know? And so I always tell people by the time I was 22, I had a PhD in this school of hard knocks. But again, I look back on it and I will say this, I I I will, I wish I could go back to that 16-year-old girl or that 22-year-old girl. I wish I could tell her, hey, it all turns out okay.

SPEAKER_00 11:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:07

Because I remember, you know, being knocked down so many times. I always, you know, those Russian dolls that you can got like they can like you knock them down, they come back up. I mean, that's what I feel like. And I will say this that the byproduct of that is I'm probably one of the most resilient people you'll ever meet in your life. Because you get knocked down and you, you know, when you when you can find your way back up. And I think, you know, you were talking about from a psychological standpoint. I think that having that kind of stuff happen early in life, because think about it, I didn't have access to drugs or alcohol. I actually had to get through it on my own. And I think that was a blessing because you do there is something in your psyche that becomes resilient. And so now it's kind of like throw anything at me. It just kind of, you know, I don't, I just don't take anything too seriously.

SPEAKER_00 12:00

I was just talking to someone today. Um, and we were talking about like I was talking about my daughter and some experiences that she had. First of all, someone was really she had to deal with a really challenging situation in school today. Um, and it was essentially her teacher being blatantly racist towards her. And it was my daughter's mixed race. And she uh was going up for this play, and they're like, Oh, you're not Asian enough for that. And she's like, But I I is I can I not play this character? Like, oh, you're not Asian enough for that. And I wanted to sit there and go, okay, we're gonna go into protective mode. But her mom said, let her handle it, let her process that, you know, because one of the challenges is people are gonna deal with setbacks throughout your life. But one of the most important things is learning to bounce back, it's learning to stand back up, it's learning to keep going. And I, you know, it's interesting too, because I hear a lot of financial advisors talk about that. That one of the most important things is to kind of stay steady when things hit the fan, when things are getting bad, is to kind of be resilient. I and I I don't hear anybody talking about this, but it's any like the idea of money resilience, you know, the idea of bouncing back financially when you hit obstacles. I don't actually hear that many people talking about it, but it's interesting because it seems to me that it's a big part of investing is that when things go down, you gotta wait for it to go back up, you know. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 13:28

Well, you know, as far as your daughters goes, uh I Demor had a daughter, I had one son, but he had a best friend, and it's my my best friend's daughter. And I remember when she came home and she did not make cheerleading. And for her, that was just, you know, at the time, just devastation. And, you know, so many of us want to go in and rescue, just like your wife said, you know, we want to my friend wanted to call the coach and da-da-da-da. And I'm like, you know what? This is gonna be a lifelong lesson. And how she deals with this. So I said, my suggestion is tell her she gets to have a pity party all weekend long. Friday, Saturday, Sunday. When you have a pity party, I mean, you cry your eyes out and you stamp your fit and you you really have a good pity party. You're intentional about it, but Monday morning at 8 a.m., it's over. And you move on, and you never think about it again. And so I think that I think that's one of the tools that I've used in my life is that I acknowledge the defeat, I acknowledge the disappointment, I acknowledge it wholeheartedly, and I give myself space and time to do that, and I set a time, and when that time comes, it's over. And that that is that discipline has served me well.

SPEAKER_00 14:41

I love that. I love the idea of being able to shut it off. It's like, you know, it's time. You you cried, you, you, you, you, you had your your release, but then it's time to stand up and move on. I I one of the things that I love is that I have my daughter in Muay Thai, and we do Thai boxing, we do martial arts, and I'm a black belt and judo. And you know, I I got that from falling down a lot, like a lot. You know, you get thrown on the ground again and again and again. And we were in Muay Thai the other day, and she got bopped, and then she was sitting on the ground, kind of having a pity party, and I said, Can you stand up? And she says yes. I said, Then stand up. Let's keep going, let's keep standing, you know, and see where we go from here. But it's interesting too because I wanted to ask you this like you built a seven-figure firm. Like, what was the moment things really clicked for you as you were building all that and you get things going? Because I'm sure that that took some resilience as well, you know.

SPEAKER_01 15:36

You might say so. Um, so some of the pivot points, you know, I started as a stockbroker with a warehouse firm, and um I got this opportunity, and I will say this, you know, opportunity favors those who are prepared. So the first couple of years in my career, back in the day, what we did was we gave, I gave seminars. And I was so lucky. I know that you had asked me another question, a preliminary question, and that was I had a mentor, his name was Hal. And Hal was only two years into the business before me. But Hal would um literally was giving seminars at public libraries and things like that. And he would allow me to come and I would like to pretend I was his assistant, and he allowed me to just copy everything. Now, think about that, he was a direct competitor of mine, but he had this spirit of generosity and this spirit of abundance. And I've never met anybody quite like that before. And so, fortunately for me, I started speaking, and public speaking served me well over my career because I'd only been, Bob and I were living in Panama City, Florida, he finished up his military career there, but I'd only been in business three and a half years, and I had to start over again in Dallas, Texas, where of course I didn't know one soul. And so, you know, I'm starting over and I teach advisors, you know, if you're starting over, here's what to do. Step one, two, three. But I had this guy in my branch, he came up and he said, Hey, I hear you're the seminar queen. And I'm like, Yeah, I've done quite a number of seminars. I feel comfortable with that. He said, Well, there's this local electronics company, they're laying off 900 people. I have the opportunity to get in front of 900 people who are being given early retirement funds. And I'm like, he said, but I don't know how to speak. You want to do this together, like you do the speaking, and then we'll split out the business. Well, think about that. I want to be in Dallas three and a half months, and I'm gonna get in front of 900 people who are gonna have millions of dollars. I mean, that was pretty fortuitous, but again, opportunity, you know, favors those who are prepared. He had heard that I could speak in public. So I did three seminars in front of 300 people each, and they were literally standing around this gymnasium to get an appointment with me. And the lessons, good news, bad news was this guy who was gonna split the business with me, he took off from Mexico. So now I'm meeting with all these people, hundreds of them, and they're like, I don't, and I, and the big thing is in this stockburgage firm I was working in, they gave me no support. I had one part-time assistant that I was sharing with three or four other guys because, of course, they were paying her. So I enlisted my husband, he was an airline pilot at the time. I'll be like honey, these people have$800,000, give them plan A, and these people have$1.3 million, give them plan B. And it was ridiculous. Now, the good news about it was in as a brand new, I'd been in business three and a half years, I brought in$25 million in three months, which by any stretch of the imagination was great. But the truth was this company paid out$792 million. Now, think about it. I had the implied endorsement of this company, but I did not have the resources to capitalize on it. So that was a huge pivot, a huge aha moment for me. Like, wait a minute, I was constrained by the the brokerage situation that I was in. If that ever happened to me again, I didn't want, I didn't want that outcome. So I ended up leaving the warehouse world. I went independent. And, you know, the good news is other opportunities like that presented themselves, but then I was able to capitalize on them. So I do you asked about a pivot point, realizing, you know, if I feel that we all need to be in charge of our own resources, right? You were mentioning that you have a bunch of people that work for you. By the time when I sold my company, I had two offices. I had one in Dallas, where I live, one in Atlanta, Georgia, and I had seven conference rooms consistently filled with clients of my firm, and I wasn't in any one of those rooms. I had 18 employees that worked for me and took care, good care of all of our clients. And so, you know, one of the things a lot of financial advisors don't do, my number one sort of mantra is, you know, from the day you start, you know, begin with the end in mind. What do you want to have happen on that last day you're in business? And I tell people, you know, do you want to get a big check like I did on the last day? Because I sold my firm in 2017. Do you want to leave your business to a son or daughter? I mean, I don't know, but get clear on that really early. Because when you can get clear on what happens on that last day, then really it's just backing into what your firm needs to look like to achieve that outcome. So I tell people advisors, I'm like, the day I sold my firm for an all-cash upfront offer. By the way, I'd had three firms sort of outbidding each other. And the reason they wanted my firm so badly was every buyer knew that no client ever expected to meet alone with me. I had all I did was I sold the philosophy of my firm. I said, nobody gets me, you know, and I told them why it's in their benefit that nobody gets me, and they have to be willing to work with various members of my team. So it was a coveted business because on the same day, the buyer bought another woman's firm. I'm told she had about the same amount of money as I did on the books. And I'm told she had a team, but she clearly hadn't empowered her team. She had two big things going against her. One, she hadn't empowered her team, and two, she had a massive stroke, and so she had to sell. And Sean, she got 25 cents on the dollar compared to me. And I think 25 cents on the dollar, can you imagine you spend your whole life, your whole career building this firm, building this business, and you have to go home and tell your spouse, hey honey, guess what? I got 25 cents on the dollar compared to what I could have gotten had I begun with the end in mind and built something that was scalable and sellable. So that's a lot of what I teach. But I will tell you, Sean, it's very hard for advisors. Because it means getting out of the way. It means empowering other people. It means not always having to be the smartest person in the war room. So it's a big challenge for a lot of advisors, but thank God I've trained thousands of them now. And they're kind of once the light bulb comes on, they're they got it, you know?

SPEAKER_00 22:18

I think that's that's um it's interesting because everyone wants so often we want to be the smartest person in the room. But you know, what would you say is more important than that? You know, is there just are there things that are just way more important than being the smartest person? Is it like just having the right answers at the right time? I mean, is that the being the smartest? You know, because let me ask it this way like you've trained, you've tried it all. What are some things that advisors think matter but actually don't?

SPEAKER_01 22:49

Um being so being being the smartest person in the room is probably the biggest hurdle that an advisor has. And um what's interesting is I used to tell clients, you know, after the first meeting, I would close a prospect in the first meeting in 99.9% of the time. And I would tell them, you know, you have to understand this is the philosophy of my firm, nobody gets me. And I said, here's the thing. Now you know everything I know. And what I've done really well is I've hired people who are way smarter than me. So from the get-go, I'm deflecting my credibility and projecting it on other people. And what a gift that is. And so, you know, I tested it out in 2015. I wrote a book called Seven Figure Farm, How to Build a Financial Services Business That Grows Itself. And I thought, does my business really grow itself? So I had to test it. So I took six months off. So I went to actually went to China and Asia, all kind of where you live. I went there for a month, I went to Africa for a month, I went to India for a month, and then I took the summer off. And I did that, I went to those places because you know the time difference issues. I wanted to be asleep when the office was open, and vice versa. And I came back in 2015 and my firm had had a record year. And how cool was it for me to congratulate, you know, the people on and my firm that did it? You know, I didn't have anything to do with the success. And so I guess the question is does it always have to be about me? You know, can I not transfer some of the credibility and the reward and awards to other people? I mean, I was so proud of them, and the net result of that was what do you think? Total freedom.

SPEAKER_00 24:39

I love that.

SPEAKER_01 24:41

I mean, think about a business. You know, Michael Gerber wrote that book, The E-Myth Revisited. I'm sure you've read that, right?

SPEAKER_00 24:48

Which one?

SPEAKER_01 24:49

The E it's called The E-Myth, like entrepreneur, the E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber. It really started off as my first business Bible.

SPEAKER_00 24:59

I haven't read that.

SPEAKER_01 25:00

Well, you have to, Sean, because one of the main guiding principles of his book is that, and think about this. Most businesses in our country, let's just say our country, I don't know about where you live, but they hire other people to do the actual work of the business.

unknown 25:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:18

Like one of my friends here in town, I live in Texas, she owns the largest plumbing company in the entire state of Texas. It's huge. She is this five foot two little girl. She walks around in six-inch Manola blonde heels. I mean, do you think for a moment that she's ever gotten down and fixed a toilet? That's what her business is, right? No, I mean, she hires other people to do the work of the business. And for whatever reason, and think about dentists, they hire hygienists and attorneys, they hire paralegals. Everybody else hires other people to do the work of the business, except my industry. And, you know, because we all think we have to do it all. And therefore, we are our own bottleneck. We are the constraint on our business. And so if you can, you know, and a lot of times I have to, I use the dentist model for my advisors because they struggle with not being in on every conversation, not being in every room. And that's a big struggle. And so, okay, let's pretend instead of being an advisor, you're a dentist. Because my dentist here in town is huge, and there's probably 15 dental hygienists at any given time working on somebody's mouth. And so I'm fine with that because they're doing the maintenance work of my business, right? Of my mouth. Now, it is it is nice. I kind of know the dentist is probably in the building someplace. And if I needed his expertise for a root canal or an extraction, he's there to help me. So if an advisor can think of themselves in that manner, like, hey, you can hire people to do the day-to-day a client review, a quarterly, a semi-annual annual annual review is a maintenance function. It does not need to be done by the advisor. Other licensed people can be trained to do that. And that's how you scale, grow, and create a firm that can sell one day. So think of yourself as a dentist.

SPEAKER_00 27:17

I love that. Because it's like one of the things, too, is like I'm actually in the process of hiring a new, a new executive assistant because I thought I could do everything. And I'm, you know, just trying to have my fingers everywhere, handle communication, and do all of this stuff. And I hit this wall and I was like, there's some things that I need to hand off. And so I was, I've been, I have a great, great candidate coming in tomorrow that's actually a good friend of my wife's executive assistant. And he's a rock star. So I was like, if these had people have anything in common, I'm gonna be much better off than I am right now because you only have so much time. And if you are burying yourself in the minutia, in the tiny little things, you're gonna be having a hard time moving forward. And this is this is in any area of life, if you're doing trying to carry everything, you're not gonna be able to enjoy the little things, whether that means time with your family or something else. Because, you know, it's like one of the things too that I think of um when advisors are are are talking to clients, what are the things that they should really be handing off then? You know, what are some of the things that they should be allowing the dental hygienist to do?

SPEAKER_01 28:29

You know, everything. So um, you know, Michael Gerber in that book, The E Myth, he has a saying if you want to make$300 an hour, you have you've got to quit doing$30 an hour work. So you're you're you're you're gonna do it, right? Your person is gonna come in and he or she's gonna do work and you're gonna pay them X so that you can do higher level things, right? So advisors from um I if the way I've pictured myself when I was in my company, and today is I train advisors. I always tell my team, I said, I'm like Michael Jackson, I'm the star, right? And and I want the only time I want to show you get everything ready, you get the you get the concert booked, you get the tickets sold, you get the venues set up, you get the mics, you know, on stage, and I will come in. I'm the talent, I'll come in for X amount of time to do my shtick, and then I'm out. And so for an advisor, that's I want them to think through that. Again, I give them a lot of analogies, like the dentist and the hygienist, or like some other things, but if they can think of themselves as the talent, and the number one job that most advisors have to do till the day they sell their company is they probably are still the primary rainmaker. And so, for instance, by the last five years of my career, my in my business, the only time I came into the office was if we had a, excuse me, a prospect of at least$5 million or more. Otherwise, I had no role in the business. And probably that task could have been given to somebody else too. But it's just something that I like to do. I like to close prospects in a first meeting. And so we had many, many, many wealthy prospects. And so everything else was handled by the team. You know, every client review, the sorry, I told you I had a called the paraplanning, the just creating the plans, I mean, scheduling, portfolio reviews, meeting with wholesalers, every other thing in the business was done by somebody else on my team. So I'm the rock star. I come in, I come in when scheduled, and I'm in and out.

SPEAKER_00 30:46

I might have a wife who's a famous singer, and I understand that very well. Yeah, it's interesting too because one of the things, too, that I think that, you know, man, I have been I have been working hard. And, you know, one of the reasons that I have been, you know, biting the bullet on the my executive assistant is because um I like doing things myself, but there's a certain point in time where you have to realize that if you keep up going the way you're going, you will burn out. You know, you will hit a wall and you will get to a place where you just can't keep up that that momentum. So a lot of people grow their income but lose their freedom. You were talking about how you had all this freedom. How do you build a business that actually gives you gives you back your life, you know?

SPEAKER_01 31:34

You have the you hire other people to do the work of the business. It's it's very, very simple. It's just hard to do because we're all control freaks. Now, what happened? I was I was allowed, you know, lucky let me back up. The first 10 years in the business, I struggled really badly. And to the point that I just wanted to quit. Because I thought, you know, this is hard. I was doing everything. I was like everybody else, running around like a chicken with my head cut off. And I decided to quit. And my branch manager said, Oh, you're not a quitter, go get some business coaching. So I got some business coaching for three years. And in the 12th session, I was paired up with a guy who was happened to be in our industry. Not everybody in our coaching program was in the financial services business. So, you know, we stood up and said, share your results over the last three years. So, you know, I shared my result. I'd gone from like 300,000 in production. That's what we called it back then. And now I was on target to somewhere between 400 and 450. And truthfully, Sean, I was really happy with my progress. So and then it was his turn. He'd gone from 300,000 to 3 million in the same time period. Now think about that. I went from 300 to 400, he went from 300 to 3 million. Well, of course, you know, the bell rang, it's time to go back to our seats. And I was like, oh my gosh. I kept thinking, did I miss a coaching session or what? So um I was begging him, I said, can I just please buy a few hours of your time? Unfortunately, he said, Hey, why don't you come spend the day with me and my team? So I went there and I got to see, you know, what a bona fide business in our industry looked like. And so what you know, he had told me, he said, all I do is I I go out and hunt, I prospect for our ideal clients, I sell the philosophy of our firm, and everybody has to be willing to work with various members of my team. So again, I I can't take claim for having created that model. I just followed what he was doing. And a couple of years later, I did 3 million and then 4 million and 5 million. My business just kept growing. So it to get time freedom to make a lot of money to go a business that you can sell, you must hire other people to do the work of the business. Now, you know, I heard that and I came back to my branch manager and I was like, oh my gosh, her name was Susan. And I said, you know, what happens if they screw things up? What happens, you know, it's so hard to get a client. What happens if they mess things up? You know, and so she said to me, she challenged me, she said, Erin, let's say for a moment you had three conference rooms filled with clients of your firm, and you weren't in any one of them, but you had these licensed people that were in there. She said, What if they were only 65% as good as you? Would that be good enough? Well, you know, I have my spreadsheet, girl, so I had to go home and think about it and sleep on it. I came back, like I decided, yeah, it that will be good enough. The math worked, right? It turned out they were actually much better than me. Right. That's the really weird part. They were way better than me because I'm now I'm giving them first. I get I gave them all my C and D clients. They were excited to work with a C and D client. That wasn't exciting to me anymore. It was exciting, you know, the 12 years before that, but not now. And then I gave them the next year all the B clients, and eventually I turned over all clients to them. And they loved doing that work of the business. And so it turned out she was right.

SPEAKER_00 35:17

So one of the things that I think is interesting is when you hire well, it makes your life so much easier. And I trained him and I got him on the right path, got him trained. God, he makes my life easier. And it is ridiculous the upgrades that he brought in because I trusted him. He says, Hey, do you mind if we try this? I was like, go for it, show me what that would look like. And boom, it leveled up our whole production quality. And I was just like, Wow, that's that's awesome. And every single person that I've hired, I've given them that degree of flexibility. Show me what we can do, show me how we can improve this. And it is better than I could do it. I still have to get in sometimes and go, okay, I'm gonna show you this thing that I've learned that really works. And I show it to them and they're like awed by that. Like, that's awesome. Thank you for that. But then they take what I just showed them and level it up even more. And I'm just like, oh man, I'm blown away by how it how powerful it is. Because one of the things that I find is it's not about me, but it's about the systems that I create. If I create systems that my workers can succeed in, it's so powerful. And like you talk a lot about systems. What's one system that changed everything for you?

SPEAKER_01 36:38

Well, I mean, again, it's there's really only one system that changed, and that is having other people do the work of the business. Now, everything else is a system. You know, we had a greeting and seating system. You know, we wanted to see the woman at the head of the table and the man on the side of the table when he's looking at me. There's nothing behind me to distract him. We had systems for everything. And what I would do is when I and whenever I would hire somebody, them, you know, I would pay them X amount of dollars. But if they were going to get it, because all of my team got quarterly bonuses based on the profitability of the firm, I wanted them all sitting in the boat, rowing the boat in the same direction. But the new person had to always update our systems and process manual. That was their primary job. Because they would, they would be seeing it. First of all, they'd be learning how to place a trade, how to do a financial plan, how to, you know, whatever the business needed, how to record, you know, trades, whatever it was. And so they would be learning it with fresh eyes. And so they could, you know, if if if they couldn't follow the documented system, then the system needed to be upgraded, right? So I always wanted to make sure my systems and process manual stayed upgraded. So every new person that came in, that's how they got bonus, is to prove to me that our systems were working. Because if you don't have documented systems and processes, your employees can come put a gun to your head and said, I want more money. And, you know, I had to learn this lesson the hard way. I had it uh when it was just me and I had things more, I had two or three people working for me. My primary assistant, who was like, she was half my brain, and she would tell me where to go, what to do, you know, she was amazing. Well, her husband got brain cancer. And turns out, you know, he went through a lot of treatment. But the last four months, she was home by his side, you know, and he died. And I, knowing she was going to be out four months, was like, I might as well just shut things down. I didn't know anything. So fortunately, I asked her, I was gonna pay her. I paid her the entire time anyway. And I said, you know, would you mind if what I did was I hired a college kid to come in and sit at a desk, and we and I just started asking questions. I said, Laura, how do we send birthday cards? How do we know whose birthday it is? Where do we buy the cards? How do we, you know, where do we buy the envelopes? Where do we buy the stamps? What's the system for getting it out? Do we does it go out three days before their birthday? I mean, what is the system? That's how we started. And now this was 20, 20 years earlier, but but it was all because, you know, she could at any point in time, she could have said, give me a$20,000 a year raise because she knew everything. And so she would type up while she was sitting there, she would type up the system. Now the nice thing is you can create systems on your phone, you just record what you're doing. But um, she would send it to this kid, Andy, this college student. So I so if Andy could send the birthday card, then I knew I had a system, right? So for four months, we created the systems and process manual by her sitting there. And all you have to do is ask the question how do we place a trend? How do we open a non-qualified account? How do we open an IRA account? How do we, it's always how do we? So once you have a systems manual, that's great, but things change. And so, and that's why every new employee, that's how they got their quarterly bonus for the first year, is keeping that manual up to date. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 40:10

If you could go in and um think about this, because you know, you you talk a lot about also the process of giving back, you know, at this point now, with your career and your growth and what you're doing now, what is it that you really find meaning in and for your next steps as well?

SPEAKER_01 40:33

Yeah. So, Sean, um in 2009, my husband and I went on a safari, and we'd been on a couple before that, but this particular time, um, one of the cultural experiences we walked into, we were gonna go visit an orphanage. I'd never been to an orphanage before, but I've been through lots of cultural experiences with tribes and whatever. So this particular one, we walked in and this we walked into this first home, and there was a it was called the baby home, and there was 40 babies and 20 cribs, and the weird part about it was not none of the babies were crying, it was quiet. And so the lady said, Hey, you know, there was like 20 of us. Can you guys hold a baby? And so I picked up this baby, this little black baby, well, like six or eight months old, and his he was just lifeless. His eyes were just, it was like there was nothing there, nobody was home. And I held him and I cuddled him and I talked to him, and I saw his eyes, I saw life come back into this child's body. And I was so moved by that. And the next place we went was to the toddler home, and the toddlers, there's probably 30 toddlers, and they just they were like kittens, they just call crawled all over and they wanted to touch your hair and your face, and and you know, the power of human touch, and you know, we went to the girls' home, the boys' home, you know, this lady had done such an amazing job. And at the end of our time together, I said, Ranji, this was the lady who she was from Sri Lanka, but she'd moved to Zambia. You've got a baby home, a toddler home, a girl's home, a boys' home, a 40-acre farm, an elementary school, and a high school that teaches 500 children. How much does it cost to do all of this? And believe it or not, she said 400,000 US dollars. Can you imagine doing all of that? I was thinking she'd say four or five million dollars. And I remember thinking, oh my gosh, you know, we could have a huge impact here because you know that all she did, Sean, she spent all of her time doing what? Raising money. Well, if I could take that burden off of her, because money was easy for me by this time, you know, imagine what she could do here. And so Bob and I became uh one of the primary donors. And then we ended up realizing, you know, the kids, us being so involved and giving so much, that actually puts the kids at risk. So at one point we had a five million dollar uh life insurance policy on us, and our son knew, hey, this isn't for you, this is to continue to take care of these kids. Well, anyway, since 2009, we've done that. Now we have lots and lots of donors that help us. And so Bob and I were over in um, we were over in Africa in 2023, and we found another project, and instead of having an orphanage, they take kids right off the street, most vulnerable children from age 16 to 23. It's called Zoe Empowers. And they teach them how to start a business. And I think that's really the wave of the future. So when we were there, I was so impressed by the model. I said, So, are you guys in Zambia? I wanted them to be right there where my orphanage is. And they're like, No, but we'd really like to be. I said, Okay, what would it take to bring this model to Zambia? And they gave me a number, a dollar. It was very large. And so I, you know, I slept out the next day I said, if we decide. To donate this money, how many kids' lives will be changed? And they said four to five thousand. And I said, okay, it's worth doing. I'm all in. So for the last three years, now we've been helping these four to five thousand kids from Zambia, some are in South Sudan, and they're starting businesses. And so, you know, it's the old adage, you can teach a man to fish or you can feed him. I think teaching him how to fish is a much better model. So now, you know, every day when I get up, my work matters to somebody else. And, you know, I find that um, with especially with the financial advisors, I try to inspire them because Sean, in our business, it's not really hard to get to a level of personal comfort. Most advisors can they own their home, they've got some kids, they can put them through college, they have two cars. And so I always say, you know, the world out there, I, you know, I don't know exactly where you live, but I've been to a lot of third world countries. And, you know, I always tell people, there are millions of people, there's 1.7 million orphans in the country of Zambia alone. God knows how many there are in your country, right? And I just say, if you can, my definition of success is if you can be comfortable yourself and create margin, give that margin, give that excess and help somebody else. I always say the world is rooting for your success. And um, and I think that like now my next goal is 50,000 orphans. And so, you know, I lay awake at night wondering, okay, what shifts do I have to make in my current business, or do I need to start another business or another product or whatever to create the capacity to help more people? Because at the end of the day, what's life about, you know?

SPEAKER_00 45:44

Yes, that's it. That's it. I was talking to my daughter. This podcast has always been about that, trying to teach my daughter about how to use money. And I grew up with uh an upbringing that money was evil and that, you know, money was not good. And that was something that I really quickly realized was ridiculous. Because when I was driving down this the road and I saw this poor person on the side of the street that was begging and had no food, and when I was went to check my wallet, I didn't have anything to give. And I said, Isn't it much better to be the person who has a wallet that's overflowing with cash? And then I can help someone else. Because if you can't even help yourself, how can you help the person next to you? It's like on the airplane where they say, put on your own mask before you help the person next to you. And so that's where I think that we've got to reframe wealth is not just this mass accumulation, it's this beautiful thing that you can get all of this money and then figure out what you want to do with it, share it, do good things with it. But that's where the power lies, you know?

SPEAKER_01 46:46

Well, it's the power that keeps me up, you know, and gets me up to do an early morning interview with you, you know. Um, it's the it's the it's the power that keeps me working and thinking and being creative. Because I have like I play pickleball three or four times a week. I love pickleball, I'm addicted to it. But I can't play pickleball all day long, every day, you know? And I I would be bored out of my mind. So to me, the being a being able to be creative about um how to make more money to impact more lives, you know, is just so fun. That's just like the most fun thought process that I have.

SPEAKER_00 47:20

I love that. Well, where can people find out more about what you do and and the the causes that you work with?

SPEAKER_01 47:27

Yeah, I um they can just go to my website. It's www.arinbodster.com, my first and last name. And we just turn financial advisors. And so we have two different programs. One's called the Accelerator. It's only a 12-week program, but it can help advisors who are kind of stuck at a level, move up market and be able to close really high net worth people in the first meeting. And then the other one includes that, but it's also then how to scale. So, you know, how to hire other people to do the work of the business so that, you know, one day you get a successful exit like I did. So again, easy to go to airmbodse.com