Money Plays Tricks | Dan Allison | Growing Money with Sean Trace

In this episode of Growing Money with Sean Trace, I sit down with Dan Allison, a 22-year veteran consultant in the wealth management space with a background in clinical and behavioral psychology, to unpack why our relationship with money is rarely about logic. 

Dan opens up about selling his first company in his 20s for 8 figures, then buying Maseratis and a Range Rover chasing validation he didn't even realize he needed, and how recognizing that pattern changed everything. 

We dig into the psychology of referrals, why most financial advisors are stuck waiting passively for business instead of building intentional systems, and why a great service alone doesn't guarantee growth. 

Dan also shares the simple 20% savings rule his mother taught him at 12 years old, a habit that quietly built the foundation for his financial freedom decades later. 

What's one money habit from your childhood that still shapes how you spend or save today?

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Social media has amplified that like nothing we've seen in history. Um, you know, we have 20, my son's 22, and he has said multiple times, I just don't feel like I'm have accomplished enough yet. And I feel like everybody's ahead of me. And it's like, you got to get off the freaking TikTok and Instagram, dude. Like, you're watching too many of these. Like, I got I made 100 grand a month in 90 days. It's all bullshit. Like, don't judge yourself against these people that are so hollow that they're doing that so people will comment. Like, we we're following the wrong God, like this tension society, as we're on a podcast, right? But there's a difference between doing things like this that are good for marketing and brand awareness, and doing things so people will give you a like and tell you you're important.

SPEAKER_01 0:58

Welcome everybody back to the Growing Money with Sean Trace Podcast. I'm your host, Sean Trace, and 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_02 1:07

Yeah, my name's Dan Allison. Uh, for the last 22 years, I've uh owned a consulting firm in the wealth management space. Uh, background is clinical and behavioral psychology. So, first career there, had an exit. Uh, started studying the uh human behavior inside the finance industry, specific to organic growth and and referral uh business development. And uh 22 years later, I'm I'm still here, still in the finance space.

SPEAKER_01 1:36

That's awesome, man. I um it's interesting to see how people go down this path and what what called them into the path. But what was it that pulled you into the personal finance sector?

SPEAKER_02 1:48

Yeah, I wish I could tell you it was some kind of passion, but uh originally uh I sold my first company um when I was in my 20s in the mental health space, had a five-year non-compete clause that was very stringent. So I acquired a company in the finance industry because I knew the founders and uh they uh they had grown it to where they could get it to. Uh and it thought all the money's in the finance world, so why not acquire for five years here? Uh, and 22 years later, I got stuck here. And I I love it. I fell in love with the psychology of the industry. It's it's a fascinating business to me. Uh, and uh I think I'm probably here for good.

SPEAKER_01 2:31

I love the psychology of money because it's something that I think is getting talked about more now, but I don't think it's talked about enough because I think so much like when we think about why we do the things we do, why we buy the things we do, man, there is some deep-seated stuff there, you know, like why is it that you wanted that thing? And what drove you to that point, you know? And I think that we don't always know. And if you start asking and start going deep on it, you probably can unearth some things that you didn't know were in there, you know. I just picked up a new piano for my daughter, and we got her a nice piano because she had been practicing for the last five years on this old digital electric piano, and it was good. It was my wife's 25 years old. Her parents got it to her for her when she was young, and my daughter kind of inherited it, and I had been just pushing her to study. And then the other day, her piano teacher looked at me and she's like, This piano is dead. This is like it is like the screen had gone out on it, the speakers were starting to fade, it was quieter than it was supposed to be, but that wasn't the those things we could get fixed. What really was the thing that was the last straw was that um the the keyboard action started going. So I took my daughter and I wanted to get her a nicer piano, like nicer. It was still a 45-year-old piano, but I mean, it's a wooden upright, nice Yamaha that had been re-redone and it was it's beautiful, right? And it will last her for at least another 35 years. Like, she won't need another piano until she's in like far into adulthood, because this thing is amazingly good. And I was like, why was I wanting to get this piano so much? Like the wooden one. She was like, we looked at some other digital ones. First of all, for me, I think that like something that lasts is something like if we get another digital piano 10 years from now, it's like a computer. You buy a computer, something electronic.

SPEAKER_02 4:40

In years a long time, probably three years from now, the the tech is out of date.

SPEAKER_01 4:45

Yeah. 100%. But we bought it, and I kept thinking about like why I wanted this so much, why I wanted her to have this one so much. And I thought back to my childhood. I went to my uncle's house when I was a kid, and we we studied piano. We had this old beat-up, you know, thing that had been probably a barn find or something. I'm surprised there weren't mice of something living in there. I exaggerate. It was just an old-ass piano, not great. And my mom had us learning on it, and we picked it up for probably 150 bucks, you know, which in the 80s it was not cheap, but it's not bad. My uncle had this baby grand in his living room that just sat there and no one touched. And it was bought for my niece, uh, for my not my niece, my cousin. Uh, and she never played it, she never touched it. She did some classes, but like, and I always would go in there and just be scared to play it. I'd be scared to like touch it because to me, I was worried I was gonna get in trouble. Yeah with, and I was always worried that like, and it was interesting because there was money avoidance that just was in my whole life. Like, if I get extra money, I'm gonna get in trouble for touching this or playing with this. And when I got this piano into my house, I just saw it there and I was like, well, that's really nice. And it just made me suddenly think of that. I was like, hang on, did this help, you know, cause this cycle of events that made me get my daughter something nice? But to be fair, my daughter played on the cheap piano for, you know, well, it wasn't cheap, but it was old piano for five years, and she's playing Bach now. The fact that she can play Bach was something I was like, maybe it's okay to buy something a little bit nicer when you're kids playing Bach, you know. But like, I how do you think, like, do you think so many people have these, these, these motivations that they just aren't aware of that cause that shape their lives all the time?

SPEAKER_02 6:39

Sean, I I we we could probably spend six hours even having that conversation. The in psychology, you know, we when we talk about money, we refer to it as a secondary conditional reinforcer. And all that means is the the amount of it is irrelevant. It's the emotional connection and the representation of what does that mean? So, like my my sister is a single mother, right? You give her a million dollars, it's a life-changing thing. You you give that same money to Floyd Mayweather, you know, he he buys lots with it, right? So it it's like the buttons is what you said that is more important. It's the why. Why do I have these feelings around money? And a lot of our upbringing, uh, you know, I grew up with parents that ever they they grinded their whole life, and when they finally retired, we barely went out to dinner ever. But if we did, they would ask, how much is a gen and tonic? How much is this? How much, and if the price was wrong, they would say, No, no, we can't afford that. And I so some people would learn that, and that would be how they are. They're very frugal their whole life, and they they they are penny pinchers, and that's fine. I observed that as I don't want to work my entire life and still asking how much the thing I want is to determine whether or not I enjoy a meal. And so for me, the observing those things was more of a motivation than something I wanted to adapt or adopt. So you see money behavior when you're a kid and you decide, you know, which path do I want to go down. Um, sometimes it's a conscious choice, sometimes it's just you fall into the habits of your parents through like operant conditioning, and it just becomes who you are. But money, there's a lot of research in this industry about the behavior, behavioral finance, the book, yet psychology of money is a great book. And my focus, where I wanted to look at is that the actual behavior of advisors' clients when it comes to referring. You know, every advisor is trying to get uh grow their business, and preferably most of them would rather just have great referrals. But that's a behavior. Not every client refers, and everyone who does does it for different reasons, has different motivations. And I became fascinated by what does it take for a client to even have an experience where they say, Hey, I work with this advisor, you should as well. Um, what is that trigger point? And then what after that? And it so I just 22 years ago, I started conducting interviews and and doing focus groups with advisors' best clients to see if I could figure out what's underneath referring or not referring so they could change client behavior by understanding it in the first place.

SPEAKER_01 9:36

I think about referrals like this, you know, when you start finding people that refer someone else, you know, whether it be for, hey, you know, I've got this bank that I love. Oh, hey, you know, we've got this babysitter that works really well. Hey, you know, I've got this food that is one of my favorite foods. Like, what makes someone want to refer something? You know? And I want to ask you too, because when you're talking about financial advisors or banks or whatever, like, what makes somebody naturally want to tell their friends about a financial advisor or a business? Like, what is that secret sauce that makes people go, you know what? I need to tell someone about this.

SPEAKER_02 10:19

Yeah. And it it it the question is framed perfectly because it's it's really not about the service, what is about the service, but moreover, it's the person. Like a person who is likely to say, we had the best, we ate at the best restaurant, man. You gotta, you gotta check this out. Those are the same people that are likely to say, you need to talk to my advisor. It's it's a behavior that they like to exhibit. And it's a it's a combination of uh a confidence, uh, because let's face it, you have to have a little bit of confidence to assume anybody cares what you like to think that they should like it also, right? So there's uh a confidence or an extrovert kind of mentality there. There's uh influence, uh, somebody I may have influence over, and I want to guide them toward what they're looking for. But at the core of all of it, that the behavioral part of it, I believe, not not, I believe, it's pretty well researched, is they just want to be helpful to people. They they want other people to have a positive experience in the same way that they have had a positive experience. And that's where it's like it advisors specifically, you know, if you look at 30 years ago, what the training was like, it was very uh transaction-based. The industry were skills, um, so the cheesy kind of one-liner hokey things were more appropriate for a transaction-based business. But as it evolved into a relationship-driven business, now that person, I've got to sit across the table from them once a quarter, twice a year. Um, I manage millions of dollars of their assets. Those hokey one-liners, they're they're not natural, they're too salesy. So, what most advisors do is they sit back and just hope if I deliver a good enough experience, hopefully referrals will occur, um, which is how most uh established companies grow. Unintentional uh referral activity, not unintentional in the way they deliver value, but they they didn't initiate a conversation that led to the referral. It was just do what I can to serve them well, sit back and hope the clients do what I'd love for them to do. Um, but underneath that, there's way more opportunity that most advisors never get a really actualize because they don't know how to have the right conversations because they were trained in the past as sales, and they're not comfortable with that. They don't want to be viewed as a salesperson. So they're stuck between this thing they'd love to have and these strategies that don't feel natural to them, uh, and it's all they've been taught to get that outcome.

SPEAKER_01 13:09

It's so interesting. You know, and it's like I I want to figure out sometimes because, you know, for me, as I'm growing my business, I see some of the traps that people fall into, you know, and you see some grow businesses grow one way and other other businesses grow others, and you sit there and go, Well, what's going to help me grow? You know, and I want to ask you like, why do some businesses grow mostly through referrals while others are always chasing strangers online?

SPEAKER_02 13:40

I think when you look at growing organically, you know, if you I consider organic a lot of the bigger wealth management companies, if you you look at where does growth come from? You've got uh MA activity going crazy. So they buy books of business or firms. Uh many of them are on Schwab or Fidelity referral platform. So they get institutional referrals. Um, market grows, so their company grows. But when you strip everything away that is not something that was executed by the actual people inside that company, your options are really uh design marketing strategies that are effective, predictable, and bring the right people to your company, uh, or referral, uh, which can feel unpredictable and it's tough to scale. And most firms are stuck in one or the other. They've got a marketing system dialed in, which very few wealth management companies do, but some do. And we find those companies are so busy sifting through leads that are not a good fit that that they don't realize that if I just took a little bit more time with the people that said yes and became clients, you could also duplicate those clients. So when you have marketing flow coming in, your existing client base is cloning itself as well. Uh, more prevalent are the the advisors that have enough growth to sustain um through unintentional referrals, you know, giving a good experience, but yeah, not being intentional talking about it. And they they don't want to get into marketing. Most wealth management firms, um, marketing's never been a thing outside of maybe branding. They they don't cold outreach, that kind of stuff. A lot of them feel like it's beneath them almost. Um, but yeah, you think about Sean, where we're at today with tech. Like there is back in I'm I'm 50 years old when uh when I the internet was just starting when I was in college. Back then, if you were in sales, like you had a phone book, you didn't know how old these people were, what you didn't know any. I can identify everything pretty much about everybody. Never been easier to find the right people, um, never been easier to connect with them via social or email or whatever. Um, but yet advisors are still really reluctant to develop marketing systems because I think they they think cold prospecting is not a way to grow an established business. And I believe both. When you have a good engine on the marketing front, that you know, the messaging you're conveying to the market is designed for the people you're trying to attract. Uh, you have a good close rate when you get to meet prospects, and then you have a system or a strategy to to give them that great experience, but also talk about the right things that will lead to them to refer more often. Then you've got an organic growth engine that's working on both sides.

SPEAKER_01 16:42

Yeah. It's interesting too because one of the things that I think I've seen with people is that they don't understand that marketing is something that you that's creates exposure and leads to referrals. You know what I mean? Like it is they want to say, okay, I'm doing this or I'm doing this, but literally they're two sides of the same coin.

SPEAKER_03 17:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:05

Like you're you're starting out this process, but you have to know, you have to introduce people so they have a reason to care and they have a reason to know you, you know? And it's like, um, because I this is something that I think some people can be exceptionally good at what they do, like really, really good. But the business doesn't grow automatically by itself. And then they're left asking the question why is that? Why is it not growing when everything is supposed to be right?

SPEAKER_02 17:36

Yeah, being being great at what you do um is a lot different than alerting the marketplace that you're great at what you do. You got it, it's no different than I see your guitars back there, I've got them back here. It's like you can be an amazing guitar player, one of the best in the world. But if you don't have an audience, you're you're playing to yourself, which might be gratifying. That might be fine. But it's like if your goal is to monetize that skill set, you have to have strategies to get that music out to people. And it's there's no one size fits all, you know, secret, you know, silver bullet that is gonna just, it's a combination of marketing on social, marketing through email, marketing, you know, some people are going back to television and and doing ads and and YouTube ads, but it's like it at the end of the day, um, a referral, you know, even a referral is going to Google you. They're gonna go into chat and and check you out. So a lot of advisors, we audit like a lot of advisors' websites, their their digital footprint, and it's so disjointed where I wouldn't even know it's the same firm in different kinds of content areas. Uh, number one. Number two, it doesn't speak directly to any target population. So it's like, hey, we're a comprehensive, holistic, helping high net worth. It's like that means it means nothing. So it's like, what do you mean by that, right? Yeah, what what it what does comprehensive mean and then fiduciary and fee only? Like, we throw this jargon out to the marketplace and wonder why is our our marketing not generating things must be the marketing company we hired isn't working. It's like, well, the the messaging is broken. And if I get referred by you to somebody, I may just have blind trust. And hey, if Sean likes it, I'll like it. But most of the time, people are gonna check it out and say, well, let me let me see who this firm is. And if I land on content or videos or whatever that that don't connect with me, you've just even though I was referred by somebody I've trust I trusted, you you decrease the likelihood I'm gonna reach out. So it's like even if you're not doing high quality marketing with the intent of generating prospects, you need to understand that the prospects that come through referral are still gonna land on that stuff. So it's gotta be impactful, it's gotta be on brand, it's gotta speak to a certain marketplace, or even your referral activity will not close at the rate that it should.

SPEAKER_01 20:14

I I love that. One of the things too is like I I see people that are building things, and sometimes they can't explain what they do. And like they might be so good. Like I met this one guy and he was so good at what he did. But I asked him what he did, and he's like, you know, I don't really know how to put it into words. And like if you want to grow a business, if you want to get people through the front door, you have to know. I mean, and this is one of the fun things with websites. You know, websites really have that idea of like, this is what I do. But, you know, not the way you were talking about earlier, like with all of those catchphrases. Like, you know what? I I help people with media and content. And I really is realize very early on what I do. I guide people and I help them get shit done. Yeah. Like that's it. I it's not the editing, it's not that I get stuff done. Like, if you come into me with a project, I'll make sure it gets finished. Yeah, like that's it. And I'm very good at that. I'm very good at making sure that nothing gets the ball doesn't get dropped and that we get you from point A to B. But there are a lot of people, if you ask them how to explain their job or business in a way that actually makes people curious and ask more questions, they don't know how to do that, you know?

SPEAKER_02 21:31

Yeah, I got a great example of this. We were at an event and they were having various advisors get on stage and answer the question, hey, what do you do for a living? Well, you know, networking event, whatever. You get asked that question. And uh even knowing they were gonna do it, their responses were, you know, well, I'm a financial planner, I'm a wealth manager, I'm a comprehensive. It's like number one, there's not a well defined What does financial advisor mean? It's a very broad term. But number two, you're allowing yourself to be lumped into whatever stereotype that person already has of that profession. And by the way, it tells me nothing about what is the outcome of what you do, is what you should answer. So one guy said that uh I'm a I'm a wealth manager and we focus on in the uh entrepreneurial space. And people thought, well, that's that's good. And then I was on the panel and I I kind of role-played with somebody on stage where they asked me to play the role of an advisor, which I'm not one. But he said, you know, what do you do? And my response was, um, well, you know, entrepreneurs work their whole life to hopefully someday sell the company and enjoy, you know, that all that hard work, the payoff of that. But a lot of times they make a lot of mistakes leading up to the sale and don't capitalize on the business the way that they could. So I help firms avoid those mistakes and capitalize at the highest dollar amount when they sell. And I left it there and the the advisor said, Well, that's really long. And I said, Well, you didn't say, you know, what do you do for a living in three seconds, right? But and he said, Well, what if it's not an entrepreneur that asked the question? And I said, Well, what if it is an entrepreneur? And my response was, I'm a wealth manager. Like, if if I have a target market, I don't care if when they asked what I do for a living is boring to them because they're not my target market, just like marketing. My marketing isn't designed for everybody to resonate with it. It is so my target market reads it, watches it, and says, This person solves the kind of problems that I have, or I could get benefit from somebody like this. And that permeates through how you explain what you do, how you answer the question, what do I do for a living, how your clients explain what you do for a living. And too many advisors, they don't think at that really foundational level, what do I do for a living? Who does that impact the most? And what are the problems and things that those people go through that I'm uniquely qualified to serve? Instead, they think one of the questions I ask my consulting clients, when I say, who's your target market? And they'll say, uh, well, we want to work with, you know, business owners. And I'll say, but why would business owners want to work with you? That's the question I'm asking. It doesn't matter who you want to work with. Why would they choose you over other people? And that's where it's like comprehensive wealth management. That doesn't speak to an entrepreneur, that doesn't hit any of their pain points. It doesn't, and that's where they get stuck in that. I think compliance really makes everything so vanilla that that it makes it even harder to get a succinct message out to the public on we help people who have this problem solve this problem and get this outcome. Well, you can't promise that. You can't, you got to take this part. So it really is a difficult industry anyway, but most of it just so vague, it doesn't connect with anybody.

SPEAKER_01 25:19

And I think that's the danger, too, is like when I getting back to the marketing, I see people just putting stuff out there that we're getting into this spammy area right now where people just spam people and they think I'm creating trust because I'm getting content out there. But the reality is, is like, are you getting the right stuff out there? Are you really interacting with people? You know, I love stories. For me, one of the things that I love to do is to anchor things with stories, you know? And I think that stories are one of the ways that I create trust with people when I, you know, I'm on my podcast, because they see that, oh, this guy's like a regular guy. I can handle that, I can interact with that. And I think that if you can establish your connection with the person on the other side of that video, of the other side of that website, of the other side of whatever that means is that you're transmitting that information, you're gonna be closer to creating a connection that you can then monetize. You know, and I mean, this can be anything, this could be any business out there. But it leads to my question: like, why do you think trust matters so much more in money and financial planning than people realize?

SPEAKER_02 26:34

Yeah. Well, think about it, Sean. If I were talking to two different advisors and trying to figure out which one to work with, and the first one told me all the credentialed, you know, that they're a CFP and they're comprehensive, they're holistic, they're a fiduciary, this and that. Um, and and their firm's investment philosophy, and that's what a lot, one path. But if I'm talking to another advisor that says, my passion for this industry came because I was an entrepreneur that had an exit. And I learned a lot of things that I did wrong that I should have done differently. I wanted to help other entrepreneurs avoid that same mistake or those mistakes. So I decided to become an advisor. It's like, which one am I going with? I don't, I don't have to hear anything about the credentials and the investment philosophy. This guy's been where I'm at. He's lived it. He can tell me stories about the path he went down. And that's a lot of us don't think about what unique experience do I have in life. Forget about my credentials that that make me passionate about helping this population of people. Um, that is my credibility, that that I have an empathy for what they go through. I understand what they go through. And it doesn't have to be just me. It could have been a real good friend of mine's incredibly successful in the uh insurance space. And his personal story was, you know, he's 15 years old. Uh his dad was his absolute hero and out of nowhere, dropped dead. Um, he was breadwinner for the family. He, you know, was the one who would have paid for my buddy to go to college and all the, and he was just gone out of nowhere, no life insurance, no nothing. That kid lived what it's like to see unexpected death in your family from a front row seat. And he doesn't want that to happen to other young children, other families. So he brings a passion to it that nobody can compete with if he's able to talk to somebody. Uh that's a value proposition. That is your marketing. That's I've I've lived the experience I help other people avoid, um, versus credentialed experience that I took the time to sit in a classroom and and pass a test. So I have the these, you know, letters behind my name. It's like that, that guy's got the scars behind his name of living the journey that he doesn't want his clients to live. Um, and I think too few of us really think through what is that for me? What is my story? You know, you asked me about my passion for the finance space. And the reality is it there wasn't one that initiated my journey into the finance world. I had five years to kill before I could go back in the mental health field and compete with the people that bought my company. My passion was in that industry. But when I moved into finance, I found there's so much human behavior and psychology in this industry. I became accidentally passionate about the industry and and never went back.

SPEAKER_01 29:52

I love that. And I think that that passion is something that people can pick up on. That passion is something that people can feel, and that passion is the gateway to all of this because if you don't care, people pick up on the fact that you don't care, you know? And and I mean, and I think that that passion and and that that mental side is something that your background in psychology played into, at least. Like, what did your but leads to my question? Like, what did your psych background teach you about how people make decisions with money and relationships?

SPEAKER_02 30:26

Well, it it it taught me, you know, we I employed when I sold the company, we had about 600 like full-time clinical staff. So it and we had hundreds of families uh that we helped where the kids had schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, you know, you name it. And what you would observe is a behavior, and that behavior could be violence, anger, you know, sadness, whatever. And if you just react to the behavior, you're paying no attention to the cause underneath it that most people don't see. So you can't fix the behavior. I'll I'll give you an example from psychology and then I'll translate it into finance. One of the kids in one of my facilities, he was very disruptive to all the other kids. Every time he walked through the facility, he would run through the facility. He was loud. If there was a group gathered in the living room, he was going to storm through there and create a you know diversion for everybody. And I came to observe the facility, and it it his name was Daniel. Um, and I told the group, let me work with Daniel for a little bit. And when he would walk, I caught him walking slowly through the living room and would say, Dan, hey, everybody, look how slow he's walking. It's almost like he's going in slow motion through all of a sudden he started getting positive re reinforcement for the behavior we wanted to see. And the bad behavior stopped. It was a replacement behavior. What he wanted was attention. And he knew that if he negative attention is better than no attention. So where is the root cause? And let's find a replacement behavior that gets them that same outcome, but but gets us the behavior we want to see. You translate that into finance, it's the same thing. What when somebody is it? We live in a fascinating world with social media and the the constant need for validation. You know, I when I sold my company, I was 27 years old, and now I'm a multimillionaire at 27, right? And I'm like, what do I do? I buy the big house, uh, bought a Range Rover, bought two Maseratis, because who wants one? You got to have a two-door and a four-door. And about a year later, that for about the first six months, it felt cool. I'd drive my Maserati and kids would want pictures of the car. I live in Nebraska, so you don't see a lot of sports cars. And about a year into it, I looked at the cars. They were all dusty because I only drove one after a while. And I'm like, what am I doing? And I realized I felt imposter syndrome. The sale of my company was too good to be true for somebody like me. So I those things to get validation from other people to prove to me that I was successful. And when I moved past that need for validation, it it's almost like when somebody drinks a lot or has drug, drug habits, and then they stop and then they they zoom out and they observe that behavior in other people, and you're like, oh my God, I was I was trapped inside of that. And I think a lot of what we spend money on has nothing to do with anything except for social norms, validation. You look at like this week, and my my wife owns a big uh event planning company. She does these big weddings, and I watch the level of stress these brides and the in-laws, and they're like, oh my God, it's a circus. Texting her at pocket night on a Sunday because there's an urgent situation with their save the date invites. And it's like, you look at these kids, they're 23 years old. They just got done blowing 120, 150 grand on college to get a degree. Probably isn't going to do anything for them. And now what's the next social norm? Well, you get married, and what do you do? You throw a massive wedding and you buy dinner for 400 people, 300 of which you haven't seen in years, because that would think about that's 200, 250 grand in the that critical phase of your life, that if that money was invested and you just left it alone, nobody'd be complaining about retirement. But we have these social norms, then combined with the validation of I have to keep up with what everybody else has, social media has amplified that like nothing we've seen in history. Um, you know, we have 20, my son's 22. And he has said multiple times, I just don't feel like I'm have accomplished enough yet. And I feel like everybody's ahead of me. And it's like, you got to get off the freaking TikTok and Instagram, dude. Like you're watching too many of these. Like, I got I made 100 grand a month in 90 days. It's all bullshit. Like, don't judge yourself against these people that are so hollow that they're doing that so people will comment. Like, we we're following the wrong God, like the ascension society, as we're on a podcast, right? But there's a difference between doing things like this that are good for marketing and brand awareness, and doing things so people will give you a like and tell you you're important.

SPEAKER_01 35:53

For someone watching today that feels like they are behind financially, what are some things that they can do to get their life going on the right track right now?

SPEAKER_02 36:02

Well, I'll give them the advice that my mom gave me. When I and I'll tell you, Sean, the when I was 12 years old, I wanted CD players. Do you remember CDs? Are you old enough to know CDs? All right. Well, you got guitars hanging up. You better know what C. I got a bunch. I got I got cassettes and CDs. I got CDs now. Oh, you got cassettes.

SPEAKER_01 36:23

I've got cassettes.

SPEAKER_02 36:24

I got I got album. There you go. So they had portable, uh disc man had come out, and it was a hundred dollars.

SPEAKER_00 36:30

Oh, dude, I know I had a disc, man. Love it. Did you ever go on the school trips where you had to put it on a pill a pillow while you were traveling?

SPEAKER_02 36:37

Because if it if it bumped, it skipped the CD. I wanted one so bad, and it was like a hundred bucks, which back then, to your point, like in this is the late 80s. That that's like a thousand bucks now. And I asked my parents and they were like, absolutely not, never. Well, I got this job at 12 years old. You could work in the farm in the field, like detasseling corn.

SPEAKER_01 37:00

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 37:00

And I remember that my first paycheck was like $240. And I remember I signed that sucker and I cashed it at the grocery store that had a little bank in it. And I walked out and I bought one of those things. And I like thought, if I am willing to do this, nobody can tell me what I can and cannot buy when I'm the one who's earned it. But my mom taught me very early on that my dad was a musician. Uh, he he toured with like Johnny Cash and all those guys back in the late 50s, early 60s. He was uh toured with the Grand Ole Opry. So his life was a weird life. He retired younger, though, and didn't be he didn't become rich in music back then uh like you do today. But my mom said, every you set up a separate bank account, every dollar you earn, you take 20 cents and you put it in that account and you never look at it again. And if you can live off what's left, do that for the rest of your life and you'll be fine. Because they didn't do that. They didn't save, and then college came for me and my siblings, and like then in retirement, they have to ask, how much is a gin and tonic? I started that habit when I was 12 years old, and I did it until the day I sold my company for eight figures when I was 27. So anybody, it sounds so stupid and simple. I'll bet Dave Ramsey would agree with me that if you first thing you have to do is make sure your spending doesn't exceed your income. And I think the the the credit card thing, like cut that up for a little bit, get build up your reserves, and then try to live the rest of your life on 80% of your income, whatever that is. Um, and if you're not willing to do that, you you don't really deserve that freedom in retirement because you're not willing to make sacrifices now to enjoy that later. That delayed gratification, man, it is one of the most difficult things for people, especially in the world we live in now, because right now, if I want, I can grab my phone and I can have Chipotle dropped off on my porch in 30 minutes. Like, we don't, we I don't even want to drive to it. I want it dropped here. We we've I think hard working hard, being disciplined, spending less money than you make is a lost art, and our financial literacy is bad. So I would tell people start by really mapping out what you spend every single month. Not like just your bills, like your actual spending, and figure out how to get that to 80% of what your income is and start today allocating 20% into an investment account and never look at it. It's not an emergency fund. It's not being saved for a trip to Europe. That is that's gonna be there when I'm 65, 70 years old to be accessed for that period of my life where I want to enjoy working my whole life and the rewards of having done so.

SPEAKER_01 40:06

Yeah. Where can people go to learn more about you and what you do?

SPEAKER_02 40:11

Yeah, I'm because Sean, I'm kind of a weird guy because uh social media for me, I've I never really was on it. Um Instagram I'm on there personally just to keep up with people. But LinkedIn is really uh they can just check out my LinkedIn profile. I try to uh post some good content on there around organic growth. Um, there's a lot of videos online for people who want um to hear some of my content. Uh, but I I don't have a lot of other uh social, all my business has been referral-based. Um, so I haven't engaged in a lot of the marketing. You know, I speak a lot at conventions, and when I'm on stage, you know, they'll ask, hey, do you want the list of the attendees? And it's like, what am I gonna do with 500 email addresses, right? I've I've never been much of a marketer, but people can check out LinkedIn. Um, and that that's about the only place I put my content right now. We are gonna launch a YouTube channel uh here in a few months, but that's not gonna be late until then.