Cash & Sass™

From Broke to Millionaire: Identity, Wealth, and the CEO Shift with Andrew Poles

• Lisa Marie Robinson • Episode 111

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0:00 | 51:39

What if your biggest money problem has nothing to do with money?

In this episode, Lisa Marie sits down with Andrew Poles, business coach, entrepreneur, and someone who has personally been broke, bankrupt, and a multi-millionaire, to dig into the identity shifts that determine whether wealth sticks or slips through your fingers.

Andrew has built multimillion-dollar companies, coached thousands of leaders, and rebuilt from bankruptcy with nothing but hard lessons and a completely different way of seeing himself. What he shares in this conversation will stop you in your tracks.

They cover why money never feels like enough (and what's actually going on underneath), the two critical identity shifts every business owner must make to scale past six figures, what bankruptcy really taught Andrew about money, shame, and forgiveness, why your coaching, or your service, might be worth far more than you think, and how a "play account" is actually the smartest wealth-building move you can make.

If you've ever felt like you're making good money but something still feels off, this episode is for you.

What You'll Learn:

  • Why chasing money to prove your worth will keep you stuck no matter how much you make
  • The difference between what you think your service is worth vs. what it's worth to your client, and why that gap is costing you
  • How Andrew used a recurring dream about magnolia trees to triple his prices and change his business
  • Why annual programs raise the stakes (for you and your client) in a way that produces better results
  • The financial inventory exercise that shows you exactly where you stand, and what to do next
  • Why bankruptcy is a legal tool, not a moral failure, and how forgiving yourself is what actually unlocks wealth

Guest Information 

Andrew Poles is a CEO, executive coach, and entrepreneur who has built multimillion-dollar businesses, survived bankruptcy, and rebuilt from scratch. He specializes in helping leaders make the identity-level shifts required to build lasting wealth and sustainable success. 

Connect with Andrew

Resources

Connect with Lisa Marie:

  • Website: transcendentwealthco.com
  • Instagram: @thesassywealthqueen
  • Facebook: facebook.com/thesassywealthqueen
  • LinkedIn: Lisa Marie Robinson

Follow Lisa Marie on your favorite social platform:

Transcendent Wealth Co. LLC
https://www.transcendentwealthco.com   

SPEAKER_00

Welcome back to Cash and Sass, the podcast where we ditch the shame, talk real numbers, and build bold bankable wealth without sacrificing who we are. I'm your host, Lisa Marie, fractional CFO, money mentor, and the sassy wealth queen behind Transcendent Wealth Company. If you're ready to scale with strategy, own your power, and finally feel wealthy in every sense of the word, then you're in the right place. Today we're talking about the messy middle, that space where you can't hustle your way forward anymore, but you've also haven't fully stepped into your CEO yet. My guest, Andrew Poles, has built multi-million dollar businesses, coached thousands of leaders, and lived through bankruptcy, shame, and reinvention. We're diving into what it actually takes to move from survival mode to CEO wealth without burning yourself out in the process, which is one of my favorite subjects. So without further ado, let's dive into it. Welcome to the show, Andrew. Thank you very much for being a guest. And you've been broke, bankrupt, and a millionaire. Why does money never feel like enough for so many?

SPEAKER_02

Well, let's just say that it's not just money, too, okay, because this is a phenomenon that could be money, it could be relationships and love, it could be, you know, admiration, success, it could be many things. But why money doesn't ever feel like enough for some people is because you're trying to fill a hole that you feel internally, let's call it internally, with something external, and that can never ever work. It just never works. So when there's something that you think money means about you, like for example, if I have enough money, I'll be safe. If I have enough money, that means I am worthy. So when there's something money means for you about yourself, the quality of you as a person, then you're chasing ghosts by trying to make more money. Because, and I'll just I'll tell you a quick little story, Lisa Marie. Back in somewhere around 20, gosh, this must have been like 2015, 2014, somewhere around there. I was leading a seminar that was transformational in nature. So it wasn't an educational seminar about money, it was a transformational seminar about money. And so one of the big topics of that seminar was what is money? Like really getting at what is money. I remember that when I was preparing to lead the seminar, so that it was a very challenging gig that I had because you had like two weeks, three weeks before the seminar started to read the seminar, to kind of discover the whole world of ideas that it contained in your own life, so that when you went to lead the seminar, you had something real and authentic to talk about. And I just remember I was lying in bed one night and I was reading this seminar over and over, and I was just sitting with this dang question like, what is money? What is money? And it hit me so hard, I will tell you. Like, hey, someone smacked me across the face and woke me up from a dead sleep. I was like, oh my God, in the world of physical reality, money is little round discs of metal and rectangular pieces of paper.

SPEAKER_00

Paper.

SPEAKER_02

That is what it is. And everything else about money is something we have all agreed to in language. Right. Everything else is all just made up. In physical reality, it's a piece of paper and little coins is a metal. I was like, oh my God. I really believe, I really believe that if I had a certain amount of those rectangles of paper, if I had a certain number in the ledger of my bank account, that it would mean that I was smart, that it would mean that I was valuable, that it would mean that I was someone that people should listen to. Like I really thought that's what money was. And when I pulled those two things apart, I swear to you, I was gobsmacked. I was like, my life is absurd. My life is ridiculous. Like what I am doing with my life around money is nuts.

SPEAKER_00

So that's the thing, though, is most people do that though. We forget that money is a piece of paper, literally, piece of rectangular paper or round metal. And we also forget that we as a society are the ones that put made it what it is, honestly. And so I think it's really important that that it's not that we're not saying it doesn't help make things easier. What we're saying is is when you take that concept and separate it out, it's like, wait, right, why am I putting so much pressure on that instead of looking at the whole big picture? And I and I love that. So because to me, what I tell my clients is we have to remember money is a tool. And if we use it as a tool, it makes life easier for us to make the impact and make the change we want to make. And we also need to remember that it's not the end all be all.

SPEAKER_02

Beautifully said.

SPEAKER_00

And then he said, okay,$225,000 or more, and you could do exactly what you were doing today in your business, would you go? You know, you'd be offered health insurance, would you go back to that, go back to corporate? And my answer was no. And I was told by many people in it was a thread that I was crazy. And I was like, they're like, why? And I said, because with even though it could be more than what my business is making or the same amount as my business is making, and yes, sure, it includes health insurance, and I wouldn't be paying for it as self-employed. It comes with balls and chains, and it takes the key thing away that I count as freedom or count as wealth, and that's freedom. I don't have to ask permission to take time off or take my children to appointments. I don't have to clock in and clock out. I'm not tied to a time clock. Yes, I have to be disciplined, but there's a big difference between the two. Been in corporate for 20 years, been doing this for eight or nine years. There's a big difference. And so when we equate and we look at the fact that wealth isn't just the money, right? For me, it's freedom as well, it's having that time freedom. And I think it's just really important that we have to take that almost that pressure of what it is away off of us so that we can actually see what it's truly is. It's a piece of paper and a brown metal piece of metal, right?

SPEAKER_02

Or number or numbers on a screen, right?

SPEAKER_00

Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. But what is actually happening psychologically though, when the goalposts move?

SPEAKER_02

Do you know the movie Citizen Kane?

SPEAKER_01

Mm-mm.

SPEAKER_02

So I think this movie was trying to answer your question. And so I'll just briefly share about the movie because I think stories do a better job of telling sometimes than explaining. So the story, the movie of Citizen Kane is actually based on the true life story of a very, very wealthy man in the William Randolph Hearst. But in the movie, so in the opening scene of the movie, you see this man lying in a bed, and he's on his deathbed in the final moments of his life. Okay. And he's sitting there with a snow globe in his hand. And he just as he's about to die, he looks at the snow globe and then he says the words rosebud, right as he dies. And the snow globe rolls out of his hand, falls on the floor, and rolls across the floor. Okay. And that's how the man dies. So this journalist, this reporter decides, this is the movie premise, decides that he needs to understand what these words mean, the final words of the most powerful and wealthy man on the planet. What does this mean? So he goes back and he does this retrospective of this man's life. And so as you see his life progress, this becomes the movie. And it so the next scene is you see what you see this character in his early life, and he's outside of his parents' home. They live in a very, very modest, you know, kind of like maybe like we would call it lower, middle, upper, lower class, kind of like on that, right on that verge of the prop poverty line or just above. And you see this boy outside in the snow with his sled and his dog. Okay. And he's throwing the ball down the hill, and his dog chases the ball, and he jumps on his sled and he's sliding down the hill, and he's like having so much fun. He's so happy. He's just happy. He's running up and down the hill inside the house. His parents get word that a relative died and that left them a decent amount of money, and they're arguing about what to do with their son's future. The dad wants to send the son off to a private boarding school to get the best education in the world, to give his son the best chance of being successful in life. And his mom is heartbroken and she doesn't want him to leave home. She doesn't want to lose her baby boy. But the dad wins out, and the next thing you know, you see the boy on a train by himself, leaving to go off to boarding school, just looking forlorn. Okay. So he goes to the boarding school, and to kind of make this very long story a little bit shorter, he goes into journalism, then you know, he starts to become very successful. He starts acquiring things. So he starts acquiring newspapers. He acquires his first newspaper, he makes a lot of money. Then he starts acquiring other newspapers, then he acquires people, then he acquires this big, gaudy, just disgustingly gaudy castle that he lives in, and he acquires art and he acquires statues and he acquires more and more and more. And and he he he acquires more money and more power and more wealth than anyone on the planet. Okay. And but he winds up dying alone and miserable in this gaudy, enormous, cold mansion filled with art and all these objects. And so this reporter gets to the end of his life story and he's like, I don't get it. What is Rosebud? What the hell was the point of that? And then in the final scene of the movie, you see this, these, these men in like working overalls, and they're down in the basement of the house, and there's a furnace down there. Okay. And they're taking all this man's crap and they're just throwing it in the furnace to get rid of it because nobody wants it. Okay.

SPEAKER_00

Right.

SPEAKER_02

And then you see this man. Whoo! I always try to tell the story without crying, but it's hard for me because it hits me in the heart so hard. You see this man throw something in the in the furnace, and then the camera pans in, and you realize that it's the sled, right? It's the sled that you see in the first scene. And the and the camera pans in, and then you see as it's catching fire, that on the bottom of the sled is the word rosebud. So in the final moment of his life, his thought was going back to the time in his life, the one time in his life when he was truly happy. Before it all got broken for him, when he got shipped off to boarding school. And there was no amount of money, no amount of collecting things, no amount of collecting people who worked for him in his home, in his businesses, that ever repaired for him that break that he experienced in that moment. So why people move the goalposts is because they're not standing on a foundation of being whole and complete with themselves and in the let's just say right, not like right or wrong, but right like true relationship to life, or if you're spiritually oriented to universe or to God.

SPEAKER_00

Or or aligned, yeah. Or aligned. You got you got to be aligned with your values, your goals, and your beliefs. And if you're not, then you're doing nothing but running in circles just chasing, and you're not gonna get anywhere. And that is just that that and I love how you tell the story and it brings it right back to where we were talking about is you're gonna constantly have that goalpost moving because you're not making sure that you're whole and that you're aligned with your values and your beliefs. And the reason why I stress that word your, not your mama's, not your daddies, not your grandparents, not your children's, your aunts, uncles, best friends, who, spouse, whoever, yours. I cannot make that bold stressed enough as as as I'm trying, but it's yours because Andrews are going to be slightly different than mine. We may have some similarities and we may have some common, but they're still going to be different. And I think that's the I think that that's something, and that's something I've had to learn. I've had to shift and go back and say, wait a minute, let me take a step back. Am I aligned with my values, my goals, my beliefs? And if I'm not, what do I need to do to make sure I ain't? And I always suggest doing that check-in. So I love that. What have you noticed that the biggest identity shift founders must make to scale past the six figures? Because I mean, I'll be honest, I'm at six figures and I've got several other clients that are six figures, and a lot of them discuss how they get to that point and then they're not able to shift past it.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. So you asked what's the biggest identity shift, right? Because what when you ask that question, the way I see it is that it there some sometimes it's an identity shift, but sometimes it's a different kind of shift. So I'll just kind of throw out a couple of things. So, first off, I think people need to shift their relationship to wealth and worthiness. And this is a very challenging one for most people because I think most of us get raised, or if not raised by our parents, at least inculcated by the cultural milieu around us, into equating worthiness with earning something. And certainly earning is a part of business, yes? Like we have to, you know.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Okay. So the challenge is that that relationship to yourself as a being doesn't work. It might work in the domain of value exchange with a client where you're exchanging a service that has some value to them in order to earn their money, which has value to you. But when it comes to being a human being, earning is completely the wrong paradigm. It will never work. It's sort of like trying to get to flying by running faster. Like you cannot run fast enough to get to fly.

SPEAKER_00

You're not going to ever be able to run fast enough to start flying.

SPEAKER_02

So one shift I see people need to make is they need to do some business with this topic, with this issue of worthiness. And I will tell you very recently, I don't know if you follow this or not, or if you remember, because you you and I look to be more or less contemporaries. I think I'm a little older than you, okay? But I'm I'm 53.

SPEAKER_00

I'm a little I'm older than I look, so that'll depend. I'm 50, I'm 52.

SPEAKER_02

Okay, so we're contemporaries. So you'll remember this. So, like the actor James Vanderbeek, who starred in Dawson's Creek, right? He died very recently. He lived here in Austin, where I live. And uh on his birthday before he died, which was just weeks before he died, he uh he put out a video. Did you see that video?

SPEAKER_00

Yes, I did.

SPEAKER_02

Yes, so I think it's relevant to our conversation. So just so people get this, James Vanderbeek was an incredibly successful actor, very young in life. And on his video, he shared about the fact that identifying himself as an actor was never fulfilling for him, even though he was very successful. This is very relevant to what we're talking about. Then he got married, and identifying as a husband and a lover of his wife was way more fulfilling. And then they had children, and then identifying as a father who was protecting and providing for his family was even more fulfilling for him, right? And being the steward of the land that they lived on. But then he gets cancer. And he says, you know, cancer took all of this away from me. It was so physically debilitating that I couldn't be there to help my wife raise our children. I was off getting treatment while she was at home with the children. I couldn't work, I couldn't provide for my family, I couldn't even prune the trees on my land. I was too weak to do that. So cancer took away all the things I identified with. It stripped me down to nothing. And I had to sit there facing my mortality, asking myself the question well, if I am not those things, because I'm not now those things, then what am I? Who am I? What am I? And what he landed on, and look, for the people who are religious or spiritually oriented, this will really hum for you. For the people who are not religious or spiritually minded, there's also an access into this for you, which I'll talk about in a second. But what he said for himself was he said, I got that I am a child of God, worthy of God's love. And then he said, And surely if I'm worthy of God's love, I'm worthy of my own love. And that was the thing he landed on as the foundational answer to the question, what am I? Who am I?

SPEAKER_00

Now, for people who aren't religiously oriented, and he and he actually did this too at the end of his thing, too, for the one or someone did it surmising it, saying, um, please do it. Well, basically saying that even you're worthy of love, period. It's you're worthy are a worthy person and you're worthy of love. You don't have to equate God to it if that's not your thing, but it's the whole purpose is is we're worthy to be here. We're worthy of love. And literally, that's it. And it it humbled me in all the ways because I rem I mean, again, he's very, very successful. And you know, and him, and he he admitted he's like, you know, he liked to lift his kids up and he liked to go take care of them and play ball. And when he got can't, that took it all, it took it all away. He couldn't lift up his youngest child anymore above his head to play with him because he didn't have the strength to. And I think that when we take that piece back and we look at it, we once again see, like you're talking about, shifting how we see wealth and how we relate to it and how we relate ourselves to it.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, something right on your coattails, because that was really well said, is that another way of saying what he said that's a little bit easier to bridge to this conversation about money and wealth, is that there's there's nothing that money can add to who and what you are.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, I love that.

SPEAKER_02

And if you can really get that in your bones, then you will have no problem being wealthy. If you're money, it's gonna add something.

SPEAKER_00

It amplifies who you are, it amplifies who you are. It's not gonna add, it just amplifies what's already inside.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I mean, if you if you think it's gonna add something to what you are, who you are, then one of two things will happen. Either you won't let yourself have it, because what that's telling you is that your relationship to yourself is that you're not actually worthy. Or you will be one of those people like Kate Spade, like Anthony Bourdain, like Kirk Cobain, like Elvis, like Janice Joplin, and like the character in the movie, Citizen Kane, who has tremendous success. But when you get there, it's empty because you're empty, because you haven't realized the intrinsic value of your being. And so those are really the only two pathways I see if people don't do that kind of work, is that they either won't let them have the wealth, or when they have it, it won't actually give them what they're looking for. And so it either way, it doesn't work. So one of the mindset shifts, one of them or is identity shifts, is really doing so, so doing business with, and it is doing business, it's hard work. You gotta actually like open yourself up to discovering what is it about myself that I think isn't worthy. That's how you get there. You actually have to deal with the other side of the equation. And there are these moments for all of us, like the character in that movie, where there has been this break. Because when children are born, I'm a parent like you are. You know, for the people on who may be listening who are parents, you'll totally get this. But for the ones who aren't, I think you can at least relate to this, which is when your child is born and you see them for the very first time, you get intuitively, instinctively. And some moms struggle with this because they have postpartum. I get all that. But at some point you get this, okay? That that little being is a freaking miracle. And they have your love instantly, and they didn't earn it. It's not because they're going to one day be a good boy or a good girl, or because they're gonna follow your instructions, or because they're gonna get good grades. No, none of that shit.

SPEAKER_00

No, they just because eventually they're gonna turn into teenagers.

SPEAKER_02

Right. And and they're not gonna do that stuff, and they're still gonna have your love because it's just intrinsic. Now, if you can get That about a little being. You were that little being. You were that little being when you came into this world, but you don't relate to yourself the way your parents related to you in that moment. And you have to find your way there. And the way you find your way there is you have to deal with those places where you think I'm not that. Now, if you can do that and do that really powerfully, which is where things like coaching, therapy, psychedelics, all kinds, there's many, many, many roads lead to Rome, right? So whatever that is for you, if you do that work, I'm telling you, wealth will not be a problem for you. Because then you can really start looking at wealth in the financial domain, like what it is. It's a game. It's a game like chess. It's a game like tennis. It's a game like spades. It's a game. It has rules. There are ways that it works. There are things that work. There are things that don't work. And if there is something that you really desire to bring to the world as value, and you want to monetize that so you can have fulfillment and financial wealth all at the same time, you can play that game. I mean, it really won't be difficult for you. Now, are there other things you have to learn? A lot of other things you have to learn. I mean, you're the you're the CFO and and and wealth whisperer, so you can speak to that way better than I'm sure I could. But in terms of identity shifts, that's one of them. Okay. Now, here's the other one. And this one is really fun for people. And that is that, and uh uh, and I'll share my own story with this, okay? But you have to shift from looking at what the worth is of what you do from something internal to you, like, well, I think I'm worth that, or I should, you know, I want to demand my work or whatever, okay. You have to look at the worth of what it is you provide in the value exchange that money is, because money is a value exchange. You have to shift from that to looking at what is the value of what I do for the customer. You have to make that shift. And if you don't make that shift, again, it will be very hard for you to be wealthy. So here's my story around this, okay? So I in 2022, this is how vivid this is for me, Lisa Marie. In 2022, I had this same dream twice in one week, which is really unusual for me. And the dream had these magnolia trees in it. And someone in the dream tells me, Hey, if you take these magnolia trees, you can sell them for$5 million and it'll change your life. And I'm telling this person, you're crazy. Like, no one's gonna buy these magnolia trees for a million dollars. That's ridiculous. They're little sapling trees. And he gets angry at me. He's like, fine, I'll show you. And he gathers around, he's like, gather around. And these people come and he goes, How many of you will buy one of these trees for a million dollars? They all raise their hand. Okay. So in the dream, I'm talking to myself, Lisa Marie. So this is what we do in life. This is what I was doing in the dream. I'm like, these people are in some kind of weird money cult. I don't want to be in this weird money cult. Like, who the hell buys a tree for a million dollars, right? So I'm talking to myself. And then this voice shows up in the dream. That's not the voice in my head, this really deep, wise voice. And it says, maybe they are just in a different world about how money works. And if you accept this man's invitation and you take these trees, you'll sell them for the$5 million and it will change your life. And so the voice says that to me, and the wisdom of it hits me. I get so excited that I wake up out of the dream right at that moment, two nights out of three. Okay. So a friend of mine helped me understand how this dream relates to my life. She goes, This is easy. You've been coaching for 20 years. You've coached over 10,000 people, you have transformed so many people's lives, but you relate to your coaching like the trees. You're like, oh, it's just what I do. I just coach people, you know, and I've been doing it a long time and I'm pretty good at it. She's like, if you relate to your coaching like the trees, you have to confront what is your coaching worth to the people who get it, not what do you think it's worth. And when I started applying that dream logic in my real life, and instead of just telling people I coach, and you know, you can pay me this much a month, I started talking to people about what is it you want the coaching to produce in your business and in your life. And when we would get that fleshed out, and then I took my prices and I tripled them. Okay. I said, Well, this is how much I charge, and I can get you from here to there, and this is how long it will take. People were like, Well, I'll do that. Because even though it was to me a ridiculous amount of money, I'm like, no one's ever gonna say yes to this. They all said yes to it, like I like with the trees, right? They all said yes to it because they could see if I invest that much money, but I get this return, that's more than 10 times. That's more than 10 times a return on investment in a year, they're like, that's easy money. If you can help me get there, that's the easiest money I've ever spent. And so I had to I had to shift my identity from my coaching is worth what I think it's worth to it's worth whatever it's worth to them. So then if you're a person who's in a job and your job only pays at the peak of the market,$100,000 a year or you know,$80,000, whatever it is, because that's what your labor in that role is worth, but you want to create more wealth, you have to confront that whatever it is you think what you're doing is worth, it isn't worth that in the conversational environment in which you're doing it. So you have to figure that equation out. Is there another way to deliver it? Can you deliver it as a contractor? Is there some other way to tweak the role? You know, but once you get this, that that like beauty lies in the eye of the beholder, and so does value. When you make that identity shift, that my I have to find a way to position the value I bring in a situation in an environment where it is valued to the amount I want it to be by the other person, then also it can become very easy for you to build wealth. So those are the two big ones I see with small business owners. It's very different with your startup founders who are going for like a unicorn, a billion dollar valuation,$10 billion. That's a totally different thing. But with small business owners like us, that's what I see are the two biggest ones.

SPEAKER_00

Well, and I like that because I mean, especially with that first one, is that shift that we have to have with wealth. And then, like you're talking about being able to also you're basically you're shifting how you see the value. You're taking it from how you see the value to how they how your client would see the value, which are two very, very important things.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And this is gonna kind of be a continuation. How does the the identity, the leadership identity, like directly impact profitability? I want them to understand how um having or doing the shift, how that's going to also help them, if they're business owners with the profitability where they're actually they're becoming wealthy. There, because I tell people you're make you're making the money now, learn how to manage it and multiply it, which means keep more of it, because you want to keep more of it. It's not necessarily how much you're making, it's how much you're keeping. Because people start making more business-wise, and they start spending more. And I'm like, No, no, well, sometimes yes, but not directly, all the time, immediately. Like, keep some of this.

SPEAKER_02

Right. Okay, well, so you know, one of the things that I find really useful around what you're talking about is having people go through the exercise if they don't already think this way, which I know is the way you think, but it's not the way most people think because most of us didn't get taught. We just did not get taught this, right?

SPEAKER_00

Oh, I didn't get taught any of it either. I taught myself. Yes.

SPEAKER_02

So once you get past some of those more, let's just call them ontological sort of or identity level issues, then you got to start learning the game of money. And to do that, it's really helpful to have people do an inventory. Like, say, okay, I'm gonna run a PL, a profit and loss statement on my business and a balance sheet. What are my assets? What are my debts? What are my liabilities? And I'm gonna find out exactly what what I have is worth. What is the business's worth and what is my net worth in life outside the business? And oftentimes people don't understand just some of the basic definitions of that. What is an asset? What is a liability? What is a debt? How do those things function? How do they affect your profit and loss? Because, you know, assets, and I'm going to go into a little bit of technical stuff here that isn't necessary for people to understand to really get the point you and I are trying to make here, Lisa Marie, but you know, assets in your business probably depreciate as opposed to appreciate, right? Which means they get less and less valuable over time. Your debts probably have an interest-related expense so that they sit there on your balance sheet and they reduce your total worth. Because if if you have$100, but you have$200 of debt, well, you your net worth is negative$100. So you have these, you have these debts that are part of this, maybe, and those have interest, and that interest reduces your profitability. So there are ways in which your prop your assets and your liabilities and your debts affect the profitability of your business. So the real game of business beyond if you're doing it the way that I hope you are, and I know at least some ready the way you hope people are, which is that it's a value-based business. It's a fulfilling business because it's something that's deeply meaningful to you. It's something you were put on the planet to do. If you've got that piece checked, and now we're just looking at the finances of this, the point of your business is to increase your wealth. So to increase wealth is pretty straightforward. First of all, make more than you spend and maximize the difference, right? So that the amount of money left over, you maximize that. And the easiest way to do that, you know, is to spend less. The harder way to do that is to make more. And you know, most people who want to really build wealth figure out how to do both at the same time. How to make more revenue and spend less of what they make, and they get more and more money left over. So that's start can be starting to build some wealth. So you have this cash engine that's your business. Your business generates cash. And then what you do with that cash also builds wealth. Whether you invest it in, you know, in the home that you live in, and now you own a home, or you invested in, you know, whatever. Um, your 401k, or you invest in gold or crypto or whatever, you have this cash engine that you invest. So there's this whole game to wealth. And most people don't yet know how to play that game really smartly. So what I have people do, Lisa Marie, is I have them go through the exercise of what is my net worth in life? What is the value of my business right now? And it's shocking. People are like, oh my God, my net worth is negative. I have no, I have no wealth. That's what people have to get. If your net worth is negative, in terms of the financial piece, I have no wealth. Okay, how do I turn that around? What does that look like? And I think once people get the game of it, like, oh, if I had a million dollars of um of assets of wealth, wow, that would be a state change for me. Now, even just the interest on that is paying me as much money as half my salary. Just the interest is sitting there, right? And so people need to understand the game and the rules of the game and then get smart about how to play that. And once you are not trying to use money to tell you something about yourself, to add something to yourself, once you're not doing that crazy stuff anymore, it becomes way easier to then just get, all right, I'm gonna learn the, I'm gonna learn the rules of the game and learn how to play it really well. And so for me, it's kind of got to go in that order, right? Because if you try to get people to be smart about money, but they think money is gonna tell them that they're worth something and they're gonna try to make, they'll just make more money, but then they'll be like, Yeah, but I deserve this money. I worked hard for it, I'm gonna go spend it. And then they'll spend the money that they made and they won't ever build wealth. So I think it kind of you gotta confront the the identity piece first so that you can get it.

SPEAKER_00

It's like my 14-year-old who won it, it's like my 14-year-old who wanted this goldfish last night, and she got there, I said, You got too big of a bolt, but I deserve it. And she's got her hand over the bowl and I deserve it, and she's not gonna give the bowl, and she proceeds to eat the goldfish. That is exactly the mindset of I mean, she's literally in her bed, just went like this, over the bowl, and I deserve it. And I'm like, Right. Really? It's a bowl of goldfinish coming. And so that's exactly that's the first thing that popped into my head.

SPEAKER_02

That's so funny. But that's how we are, isn't it? Isn't it? And look, by the way, here's what becomes really fun is that there is something fun about doing that kind of stuff for yourself. I'm gonna buy myself this car, I'm gonna buy myself this pedicure, I'm gonna buy myself this dress, I'm gonna buy myself this night out in the town or whatever, because I'm gonna do something nice for myself. Okay. But when you're playing the game of money smartly and you're like, you know what? If I if I generate this much revenue and I generate this much profit and I put aside this much in my 401k, I have this much leftover to play with, I'm gonna give myself a play account. Great. Now you can say, like, I deserve this, I earned this, I made this happen, right?

SPEAKER_00

Play account. Okay, I already like it. You said I have y'all, I talk about multiple accounts all the time, and I talk about yes, you can save and live now. Put the account, plan for it. So then you can celebrate and you can go get the things that you want, and you're still building wealth at the same time.

SPEAKER_02

And you know what? When you do all those other things that you said, right, and you have all those other things in place, and then you go like treat yourself. I promise you, it feels 10 times better than when you're not doing all the other stuff and you have this back of the mind concern, like if I'm gonna go treat myself, but I deserve it, my God, what's it gonna cost me? And all that crap is going on, you can't even enjoy it as much. But when it is like free money, because it is not spoken for, it is your play account money, and you go spend it, God, that feels so good, right? Because you've already paid for your mortgage and put aside the money for your kids' college and da-da-da-da-da-da, you know. So, anyway, I just wanted to put the period on the end of that.

SPEAKER_00

I love, I love that though. I love that. And matter of fact, I'm gonna change my my mind's called uh Lisa spending. I'm changing it to play account because I like that.

SPEAKER_01

Okay.

SPEAKER_00

But you talk about you talked about um how charging the charging the worth. So my question now is one of the things is how do you talk about the shift from and because I think this is really important because a lot of entrepreneurs do this monthly billing to one-year programs and raising prices 200%. I think people need to understand equate to why having one-year programs and and instead of month to month to month.

SPEAKER_02

We're talking about people who have service offerings that could be offered either way. Probably a lot a lot might be coaches or like consultants, right? Financial consultants, things like that. Okay, great. So I don't know. I'm personally of two minds about this, and I do it both ways depending on the situation. So I don't have like a hard and fast rule about this, but I'll share what I've seen about it because this transformed my business. When I moved from going month month to month to going for to annual programs, I had to deal with something, and my clients had to deal with something. And that something was okay, what's the outcome we're saying we're going to produce in this year? And what's the investment of time and money? And as the investment of time goes up and the investment of money goes up, the stakes go up. This is really important to get the stakes go up for them and the stakes go up for you as the service provider. There is more you are promising. There is more that is expected. And on the client side, there is more that they stand to lose if they don't fully engage and do their side of the work. So the lower the investment of time and money, the less there is at stake. And the at stakeness, for lack of a better word, it's not like a real word, I don't think, but it'll work. That at that at stakeness is a major factor in the results that will get produced. Because the more that's at stake, the more people will take it seriously, the more they will think about it, the more work they will do, the more if you have integrity as a service provider, you will hold yourself to account. You will do better work, you will be looking more closely. So the structure of an annual engagement with a price tag that it can be paid monthly, but it's a contractual agreement for paying this lump sum, whether all at once or monthly, it was going to have you, you will feel it. You'd be like, whoa, I am really on the hook here. And that will elevate your game. So the commitment and the investment raise the stakes for everyone and it increases what results get produced and it increases everyone's performance. That's that's what I have found. Okay. Now, so as not to be a hardliner about this, the truth is sometimes I don't know if I want to be in a one-year relationship with someone, but I do know there is something we're supposed to do together. And I don't want to lock myself into a year if we can get it done in one call or in a month. And so sometimes I'll do it that way. But other times I can be like, I want to get married to this person. I love this person. I want to be on their whole journey, in which case I will do an annual contract. So I'm just saying that so that people don't think like, hey, you should only do it one way.

SPEAKER_00

But I love that you say in that is because it kind of comes back to trusting your gut too. Right. When you're when you're when you're getting the information and you're trusting your gut, then you're like, you know what? Okay, this is what I'm off. I we can do this in two months, or we can do this in a call, right? And and you put the value there, or you can I want to be on their whole blessed journey. Let's go. You know what I mean? Yes. And then you put that, and so I love that because it's one of the things I do is I I've learned to trust my gut. If I feel in my gut I know we can, we can, I don't want to work with them, then I'm not. If I know we what we can do, we can do in three months. Okay, great. Or, oh no, I want to be there the whole kit and caboodle the whole time. Okay, you know, then okay, we're gonna do the year. You know what I mean? So I love that. One of the last questions I have, or I have two, but one of the last questions I have, and I think it's really important. I have myself have been through bankruptcy long before I owned my own business. And I think it's important to talk about, especially right now, with the way our economy is and and the fear that a lot of people, whether it's business owners and entrepreneurs or people who are working a full-time job, we all we all at some in some way, shape, or form have had have this fear or had it. But what did bankruptcy teach you about money, identity, and shame?

SPEAKER_02

Well, okay, so I felt a tremendous amount of shame when I declared bankruptcy. I felt like a failure. I felt like I define shame as anything that gives you an experience of being worthless. I don't mean worthless like worth nothing. I mean even if it's like 10% less today than yesterday, you know, that's shame. And so I definitely felt that. Um, so it it pushed me to really confront my relationship to money because once again, obviously I thought money could add or to take something away from me. So I had to deal with that. But um, the other thing that it forced me to think about was bankruptcy is a legal option. So that was hard for me to get because it just to me it felt like quitting. Bankruptcy felt like quitting. And I was like constantly questioning myself, am I just quitting? You know, am I just giving up? And I thought of it as easy.

SPEAKER_00

I thought of it as the easy way out. Lord, was I wrong?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I mean, it has it has a whole bunch of consequences, right? It's not a good thing. I know, right?

SPEAKER_00

That's what I was saying. I was like, I I I personally beat myself up saying, I'm taking the easy way out. I'm taking the easy way out, and it is anything but um but I so I I get where I get where you're coming from.

SPEAKER_02

But I th I think many people maybe have the same struggle with divorce, you know, as they have with bankruptcy. And but like, here's the truth like sometimes divorce is the best thing for a family, and sometimes it's not. And it's a very difficult choice to make. And bankruptcy can be the same thing. Um, in my case, at the time when I looked at everything, and this was before, you know, I I came from kind of a middle class or upper middle class family. So we never were poor, we never like were worried about food or anything like that, but we weren't, we weren't like wealthy. And then when I started off in life, I was pissed poor. I mean, I had nothing. And um, you know, when when my daughter came into the world, I was a single dad when my daughter was born, um, and I wasn't with her mom. That was the moment when I sort of cut myself off from my own parents. I was 23 years old when I found out I was gonna be a dad, and I was in graduate school. My parents were supporting me in graduate school, and I was like, that might have been okay in graduate school, but now I have someone I gotta take care of, and that's not my parents' problem. So I kind of cut myself off. So here I was this kid, I had literally no money, like literally no money. And my parents were there like a safety net, but I refused to have them support my daughter. That's my job, right? And so I started off with nothing. I started a business, and uh, my business uh was successful and then started losing a bunch of money. And I tried other businesses to try to help, you know, make this whole thing work. And I wound up getting hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. Then I was like, okay, fine. I'm going to shut down my business and go get a job. I'm going to pay off my debt. And da-da-da-da-da. And after a couple of years of that, I was like, I'm not even keeping up with the interest. I'm paying on all my debts the amount I can, and I'm getting further in debt. And I just had to look at like, what would it take to actually get on the other side of this? And I couldn't see a way to do that and be able to provide for my family the way that I really wanted to, especially my daughter in college. And so that was the basis of my decision. It made logical sense, but emotionally it felt like cheating. So I had a lot of business debt that I wound up in, you know, becoming personal debt because I personally guaranteed it for my businesses that didn't work out. And so I just had to kind of tell myself, well, look, people lent you money, banks lent you money, knowing there was some risk that your businessman and they asked you to guarantee it, but you can't actually pay this. The only reason to hold on to this debt is because if you think in the next couple of years you can meaningfully like quadruple what you're earning, which I couldn't see. So that's why I did it. Okay. When I finally got, look, it was a move that I made. It was a legal move that I made. I had to give up every asset that I had, minus like one. I had to take the hit to my credit score. I still had to pay for that bankruptcy. Um and I forgave myself. And that was probably the big thing. I really felt like a failure. And I forgave myself, you know, and knowing that I did everything I could see to do to have the business be successful and to pay that debt. I gave myself a break. I forgave myself. And then I actually started over and I started building wealth immediately. Once I no longer had all that debt, I had learned how to live lean and I started making money for other companies, running that I had learned a lot. Like I was running other people's companies. They were paying me more money and more money. I was making them money. They were paying me money. I didn't have any more debt. I was like, oh, wow. I can actually, I can actually pay for my daughter's college, maybe. Like, wow, I can actually have some money for retirement, maybe. You know, it's like it started there. It started there with those little things. So I think bankruptcy taught me how to forgive myself. Bankruptcy taught me that business is a game of calculated risks. It taught me that sometimes you have to go for broke in business and really believe in yourself and there's no evidence. But sometimes you had to call your shot and say, this is not the right direction for me. And that isn't quitting. That's just telling yourself, this isn't the right direction for me. I need to go in another direction. And so you have to trust yourself to know, am I quitting or am I doing the right thing for me?

SPEAKER_00

Or if you only you will know. This is the this is the way to do that. And I love that. I love that.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And and I think what I want mostly for my listeners to get out of this, y'all, I tell y'all constantly, please stop beating yourselves up for decisions you've had to make. And you know, like Andrew's talked about, he forgave himself. It's one of the things I did. I had to forgive myself. I forgave myself for the foreclosure and for the bankruptcy. It was a position I was in. I had looked at all the other options. There was no other way. And this is before I had my business. It gave me the fresh start that I had been trying and trying and trying to make where I was not getting anywhere. It was like you're talking about I no matter what I did, I the interest was piling up, the debt was going higher. There was nothing that was making it, and it didn't matter how hard I worked. It I just felt like on this never-ending merry-ground. And I was like, okay, I need to do something so that I can get ahead of this and I can I can do it differently. And I think that that's really, really important for everyone to get.

SPEAKER_02

Can I say one more thing about that to try to support people? I think the other thing, since we're talking about money and identity and all that, there's a there's an important piece of that in here. So when people declare bankruptcy, oftentimes it's because they're carrying a tremendous amount of consumer debt and or medical debt. Um, it's and sometimes it's because a business failed, then you have business debt, but a lot of times it's consumer debt. Like my business debt became consumer debt. Um, so what does that mean? It means it's debt that you accumulate that's not attached to any asset. Like if you have a home with your foreclosure, you have a home, there is some value in your home. And so the debt attached to your home gets repaid when if you have to give up a property, the lender gets paid back. Okay. With consumer debt, if you're a lender, this is what I want people to understand about the game of money. If I'm a lender, I'm a credit card company, you know, whatever. And I know here's here's my business. Okay, I'm gonna lend people money with a certain credit score, whatever. I'm gonna lend them a certain income, I'm gonna lend them a certain amount of money. I'm gonna take risk that some percentage of people are not gonna pay me back. And some percentage of people are gonna pay me back. That's the game. That's their business risk, is that some people will pay them back and some people won't. The people who don't pay them back, those people pay the consequence of the bankruptcy laws and the hit to their credit and how hard that is to rebuild as the owner of that business. I have to take that loss and hope that it's offset by the people who do pay me back. That's the game. So if you have all this consumer debt and you choose the right action for it for you is to pay bankruptcy, I invite you not to feel bad for the bankers. They're doing really, really well. And they're doing just fine. Because one of the one of the things I did in my bankruptcy was some of my money debt that I had was money that friends and family had invested in my business. I paid every one of those people back because it was a very different thing for them than it was for the bank who lent me money at 19% interest. You know, my friends and family lent me the money and didn't charge me any interest. They were hoping it would all work out and they would get paid based on the business, right? So I paid them all back. Some of them I had to force them to let me pay them back. So don't feel bad for the bankers if you have commercial debt. I'm not saying they're bad people. I'm not saying screw them, who cares? What I'm saying is this is a part of their business model. They understand this is a part of what they have. They have to be smart about how much money I should lend to this person. And if they overextend themselves, that's part of the risk they have to be responsible for. Your job is to be responsible for your life.

SPEAKER_00

Right, right.

SPEAKER_02

I just wanted to put that in. Oh, I love it.

SPEAKER_00

And that's just part of that beating yourself up, right? Don't take responsibility for the banker's thing is you're you're doing responsibility. I have absolutely loved um this conversation. And honest to goodness, I think I probably could go another hour because I have like more. Um, but we're out of time. I didn't say what's that. We are out of time. So if this episode hits you right in the identity and you know you're still operating like the employee instead of owning your own business, then it's time to fix that. I want you to book a wealth alignment call with me and let's look at how your leadership, your systems, your money are working together or not working together and instead fighting each other so that you can scale profitably and sustainably. And y'all, until next time, remember as I always say, confidence and cash are the ultimate power duo. Go check in with your money, and as always, have a fantastic and wealthy day.