The Journey to Freedom Podcast
Journey to Freedom serves as an exclusive extension of the Living Boldly with Purpose podcast series—a platform that inspires powerful transformation and growth. Journey freedom is a podcast hosted by Brian E. Arnold. The Journey to Freedom is an our best life blueprint exclusively designed for black men where we create a foundational freedom plan. There are five pillars: Identity, Trust, Finances, Health and Faith.
The Journey to Freedom Podcast
Money Secrets the Rich Use!: How To Make Your Money Have Babies
The conversation takes a fascinating turn as Randolph reveals his "financial cheat code"—leveraging specific tax code provisions through properly structured life insurance policies. These vehicles allowed his money to grow tax-deferred, remain accessible tax-free when needed, and ultimately transfer to heirs tax-free. This strategy created the foundation that eventually gave him the confidence to leave corporate America after a chance encounter with a woman in her 50s who was earning $7,000 daily as an independent adjuster.
Perhaps most remarkable is Randolph's assertion that most people are just 5-10 years away from having retirement options—not to be "put out of use" but to gain the freedom to pursue meaningful work without financial constraints. "The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago," he notes, "but the second best time is today."
Ready to transform your relationship with money and accelerate your path to financial freedom? Visit ShieldWolfStrong.com for a free unofficial business valuation or estate plan, and discover how your money can start making babies—multiplying itself while you maintain both growth and access to your wealth.
In this powerful conversation, Randolph shares how a life-changing encounter on a Southwest flight pushed him to quit his high-flying job at State Farm and embark on an entrepreneurial journey. Discover his “cheat codes” to wealth, including tax-advantaged strategies using life insurance policies (Internal Revenue Codes 72E, 7702, and 101A), and how he helps business owners, high-income professionals, and retirees build lasting wealth.
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From his early days as an “old soul” to mentoring the affluent in South Florida, Randolph’s story is a masterclass in financial literacy, identity, and living with purpose.
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In this episode, Randolph reveals:
- How a conversation with a 50+ independent adjuster making $7,000/day inspired him to leave his 9-to-5
- The tax-free wealth strategies the rich use to grow money
- Why he bought a house at 22 and avoided debt with smart car-buying hacks
- The importance of knowing your financial “GPS” to achieve freedom
- How anyone can retire in 5-10 years with the right mindset and plan
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Whether you’re stuck in a job you hate, dreaming of financial independence, or seeking to make your money “make babies,” Randolph’s insights will motivate you to rethink your relationship with money and take control of your future.
#FinancialFreedom #WealthBuilding #Entrepreneurship #MoneyMindset #RetireEarly #RandolphLove #JourneyFeedInProgress
Http://theposcastingchallenge.com
I need to put down that idea that I have to work a nine-to-five for somebody the rest of my life. The first time somebody called me an old soul I was, I think, four years old. At the time I didn't know what that meant, but as I got older that's really people's way of saying you seem wise. She's doing exactly what she wants to do, earning a higher income than I, and she can barely walk and I'm working a job that I can't stand, but I don't have to that. Soon as the plan landed I went home to drop off some things and then I went and I put in my two weeks notice. That's how I started my entrepreneurial journey. The differentiator for me was in learning some internal revenue codes Internal revenue code 72E, internal revenue code 7702, and internal revenue code 101A. Before I got to the age of 32, was putting the majority of my income into properly structured life insurance policies.
Speaker 2:All right, welcome to another edition, another amazing edition of the Journey Feed-In Podcast. And I'm just, oh man, every, every today has just been one of those days where I'm rushing around, I'm on the phone, I'm doing stuff and get it done, and I didn't have any podcast this morning. So usually sometimes in the day I'll have one or two during the day, and today was this, is the podcast today. I don't know that time where you just go, I get to hear somebody else's story and what somebody else is doing in this life to make this life better, not only for themselves but for others. Because when we talk about living you know the journey to freedom and living in purpose and doing all those things, I don't know if we can do it without serving others, and I don't think I've had maybe one guest that says I don't want to serve nobody, it's all about me and I'm going to take mine and I've had one guest and I'm here on this planet better. I want to make it better for others and I want to leave a legacy, and that has kind of been, you know, as I think of my coaching and the things I do, where I help people become the person they need to be in order to do what God put them on this earth to do. It's just so fun. And so today, as I was thinking about meeting with you, randolph, I was just thinking about man, I cannot wait, it's kind of like. So I'm also a chaplain. So I'm a chaplain at a rehab center and I tell all the patients, when I go in there and I'm talking to them, I'm like I hate to tell you this, but I have the best job in this hospital because I can't fix you. I can. You know, I'm not going to pick up after you. You know, if I need to push you in a wheelchair, I can do that, but I'm here just to listen and let you talk, and so that just gives me so much joy to hear people's stories and then to expand that into this journey to freedom where we're talking about.
Speaker 2:What does that mean? I know you, you know, uh, ralph told me he's in Jacksonville, florida, uh, and so I was telling him that that's hot. You know, and I don't know. I was in Tampa and Clearwater and Orlando and you know, uh, fort Lauderdale sometime this year. So, but I didn't go back to Jacksonville, cause I don't know, cause I've been there one time. But it's the South and I understand the South because I took a group of men to Alabama at the end of January and we went on this civil rights tour and kind of just, this is our roots, this is where you know things happen and I, you know, before I did it last year I hadn't spent much time in the South and I didn't understand the South and you know what it, what it means to be part of it, and oh my gosh, it's been kind of amazing. The last.
Speaker 2:I have another podcast called Living Boldly with Purpose, and you know I had a couple of gentlemen in the last few weeks that are from that are from Birmingham, alabama. I even had a minister who came on and I was kind of talking about some of the things that you know we were learning when we went to the tour of Birmingham, or we walked over to Pettus Bridge or we went to the Equal Justice Museum and you know, just to see how segregated Alabama still is, you know, even in 2025. And you know and he looked at me like he had no clue what I was talking about I said you know where Shuttleworth's home was and you know where the wall is, where MLK and the 16th Street you know, 16th Street, baptist Church and he literally looked at me like, well, where's that? What's that?
Speaker 1:Oblivious, oblivious.
Speaker 2:I mean, you live here. He tells me that he's serving. He says, well, we're serving low income folks in the ministry and you know he'd moved there like four or five years ago or something like that and he's serving in the ministry. And he said, so are you serving any black folks? And he said, yeah, you know, because you know Birmingham's like 85% black. And I said, well, how do you serve this community and have no clue? It was amazing to me and so that just kind of made my need to continue this podcast and continue the journey to freedom. You know thought process and getting people there and you know, when we went, we had 18 folks of color and then we had 10 people that were white that were there. And when we went, we had 18 folks of color and then we had 10 people that were white that were there, and then mixing and talking about racial issues and that kind of stuff was just phenomenal that we were able to do that.
Speaker 2:But that's not why we're here today, because we're here today to talk to Randolph today. Oh, my gosh. Like I said, I get excited because I haven't talked all day, right, so now I get to give three minutes at the beginning, but I can't wait to hear your story, like I do all my guests. I can't wait to hear what makes you you, what you know. Sometimes we talk all about what we do. People say, well, who are you? And then we answer with well, I'm a banker or I'm a lawyer, or I'm a dentist or I'm a doctor, like no, but who are you? Well, we get the opportunity to hear his story first before we find out all the crazy cool stuff that he does. But who is he? And so it's so fun, and so the floor is yours. Now I go ahead and start wherever you want in life, and then we'll just chop it up after that. But thank you so much for being on and being willing to be part of this podcast today.
Speaker 1:And you're definitely welcome. And, speaking of Alabama, I actually did some volunteer work. They have like a 4-H extension program, and don't ask me what 4-H means, but if you're from Alabama, you know 4-H, you know extension. I do some volunteer work out there for the programs or senior citizens and things of that nature.
Speaker 1:But who am I? Uh, I'm still trying to figure that out. Right, they say. They say know thyself, right? Um, and it's one of those things to where I treat who I am like a pair of clothes.
Speaker 1:Uh, I understand that I came into this world and a lot of the habits that I have, a lot of the customs that I adopted, were exactly what that was. I adopted it. It's things that I did not have before I got here. So every time, every year, as I continue to know myself if there's something that I thought was like that I held value to, uh, since I was a child, because I adopted it as a child. You know, I re-evaluate things and then I move on. So one of the things that I had adopted as a child was you're supposed to work, uh, nine to five, and you're supposed to work until you're 60 plus years old.
Speaker 1:Now I got to the age of 30 32 to be exact and based off the education I had by that time, I'm already a chartered financial consultant. I'm already a chartered life underwriter. I'm already a fellow life management institute. I'm already a chartered property casualty underwriter, like somebody told me. They say you know, you have more letters after your name than in your name. Right, so so. But so by the age of 32, I already had all of these professional designations and I had been working as a agent for one of the most well-known insurance companies in the nation, in the world, in fact. So I look at my accounts and, based off of my definition of success at that time, at the age of 32, I could retire, meaning I could stop.
Speaker 1:What Robert Kiyosaki describes. He says what's the definition of wealth asaki describes. He says what's the definition of wealth? He says the definition of wealth is if you were to stop working right now, how long can you continue to live? Yeah, with your preferred standard of living, before you have to go back to work again. And at that time, the standard of living that I was accustomed to, I had amassed my money in a certain, in a particular way, to where I was wealthy, because the lifestyle that I prefer I could live that theoretically for the rest of my life. So so I had that thought and then the thought, just you know. Then I started getting those concerns where you're not supposed to leave a good job right.
Speaker 1:You never know what's going to happen, right? So what I did was I was about to exit that position. And what I did and just so you know the position that I was working was whenever the brick and mortar State Farm agents that's the company that I work for, state Farm. Whenever the brick and mortar State farm agents that's the company that I work for in state farm Whenever the brick and mortar state farm agents would close at 5 pm Eastern, that's when I would pick up the phone from 5 pm Eastern to early in the morning from Florida to California. At the time I was the top salesman at the company doing that position, right? So so I'm like all right, I'm going to. I got enough. I need to put down that idea that I have to work a nine to five for somebody the rest of my life. I made my money. It's time to leave.
Speaker 1:Then I started having thoughts. I took a trip. I said you know what, let me take a quick trip to um, to Miami. I was, uh, I'm a, I'm a Jacksonvilleville native, but I was living in atlanta at the time. I said let me, let me take a quick weekend trip to, to miami, to to clear my head right, and in this trip to miami, all the fears crept. Oh, all, right, I decided that. You know what I do. Meet Robert Kiyosaki's definition of wealth? I do, you know. I have, you know, put down the idea that I have to work until I die, but maybe this isn't the time yet.
Speaker 1:On the flight back, I was right, I was flying about southwest. I don't know if you're familiar with how southwest works, but they don't assign seats. Yeah, you get on the plane and if a seat is open, if you want to sit there, you sit there, right, exactly. Also, at the time, I was one of those people who didn't, I didn't care to wait in the back while people exited the plane. You know, I say at the time so, so now I don't care where I sit on the plane, I just relax and sit down until we exit.
Speaker 1:But at the time I needed to be one of the first people off the plane, right? So as soon as I came onto the Southwest plane, in the very front seat, there was a middle open seat. In the very front seat, there was a middle open seat, and on the seat in the window seat, let's just say we had two very, uh, large dudes. Well, one large woman, one large man, I was going to say let's just say they didn't skip too many meals, it is what it is. But at that time I said you know what I? Hey, listen, listen, the seat is open. Is this seat available? And they looked at me like I was crazy. And I sat right there in that seat right Now, before we took off. Before we took off hey, it's Dr.
Speaker 2:B and let me ask you something just here real quick. Are you tired of doing the same thing over and over and not getting the results you want? Are you serious about making some changes this year that will impact you in a huge way? Maybe you're putting out content right now and it's not turning into customers. Or maybe you're uploading videos but you're not sure why or how it's even gonna help. You know, I've seen a lot of people that are making a whole bunch of cold calls to the wrong people and no one's answering. No one wants to talk to you. It might just be that you're just doing what you've been doing and crossing your fingers, hoping it finally works this year, but let me tell you what. That is not a strategy and it will continue not to work. That's why I created the podcasting challenge and it's coming up fast.
Speaker 2:In just a few days, I'm going to walk you through the mindset, the tool set and the skill set you need to create a powerful podcast. That's right, a podcast. You won't believe what a podcast can do, one that builds real value and creates new clients. And if you grab a VIP ticket, you'll get to join me for a daily Zoom Q&A sessions where I'll personally answer your questions and help you tailor everything to your goals. This is your moment. This is your year. Go to thepodcastingchallengecom right now and save your seat. The link is in the show notes and the description. Thank you for watching these podcasts. Now let's get back to the conversation.
Speaker 1:The lady next to me and it must've been her that initiated the conversation, because me I usually don't initiate conversations if I'm on a plane until after we, you know, got served, like if once the drinks and the food are coming, then I might initiate a little conversation, but usually not before takeoff. But before takeoff she and I was engaged in a good conversation. Cool. Now, this lady had to be at least 30 years older than me. Keep it Well, at least 2025. Keep in mind I'm 32 at the time, so she has to be 50 plus years old.
Speaker 1:This lady tells me that she has been working as an independent adjuster for the past seven weeks and she's been making $7,000 a day A day. Yeah, seven days a week, oh, my gosh, for the past seven weeks just doing independent adjust to work like something that's out in the field, something that's not bogged down, right. And then she told me that and I'm like, hold on. So I, you know, of course I make good money, but I didn't, I don't make that much in seven weeks, right, when the plane took off and landed because by the time I got to the plane she was already sitting down, the lady got up and she could barely walk. So I'm saying, hold up, she's doing exactly what she wants to do, she's earning a higher income than I and she can barely walk and I'm working a job that I can't stand, but I don't have to that. Soon as the plan landed, I went home to drop off some things and then I went and I put in my two weeks notice.
Speaker 2:Really, oh my gosh.
Speaker 1:So that's how I started my entrepreneurial journey. It went from all right, I have the option to retire the standard corporate nine to five setup and I can go ahead and start helping people, servicing people, like you said, because it's all about the more you give, the more you received. Yeah, Wow.
Speaker 2:So let's fast forward now. I mean so? So you've now become an entrepreneur. You've decided, hey, I'm leaving this now. I guess, before you jump into the rest of your story, did you think that your lifestyle was going to change, Because that's where you know you come into like, for the lifestyle that I'm living, this is enough to retire. But did you think that you would increase, like a bigger house or nicer cars or any material things or a family or all these things that now increase the need for income? Was that in part of your thought process? I need more because I want to increase my lifestyle? Or you were just like, hey, my lifestyle is cool for the rest of my life, but I still want to do more.
Speaker 1:Before you jump in, kind of go through that a little bit so it's one of those things to where, um you, you, you don't know what you don't know, like, the more you know, the more you know, the more you don't know. Like I said, all this is happening at 32, but I bought my first house at 22.
Speaker 2:OK, so I don't know.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I don't know what the you know, different parts of the country, different people develop it, you know. You know different things, but where I was from 22,. That was outrageous.
Speaker 2:That's insane that somebody could do that and have you know. It's usually you know, unless you have parents or somebody who is giving you down payments and they've been teaching your whole life and I'm kind of thinking while I'm watching you that that wasn't the case, where they're like, hey, your whole life, we're talking about money and we're going to make sure you got your first house to be able to get going.
Speaker 1:You know well. Well, they have been teaching me my whole life. But it's it's about you can learn from anybody and one of the things about the people that I service. The people that I service are typically the people who are the first in their family to start earning over $100,000 a year. And, to your point, my family taught me and they taught me what they knew about money. But once you become the person in your family, the first one to make over one hundred thousand dollars a year, that mother, father, uncle, auntie, grandmother, grandfather that used to always give you the best advice when it comes to money, despite their best efforts, typically whatever they tell you is the worst advice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they don't know. They know what it means to have $40,000 to keep it and to maintain and to just be able to live life, because most of the time they're living paycheck to paycheck, trying to figure it out. Now you're making $100K where you're not paycheck to paycheck anymore. I got a lot of money to be able to save. I have money to be able to invest all those different things that you're able to do. That is no longer. You know something you can do. So that's you know. Yeah, keep going.
Speaker 1:So to your point per what I thought, if I live the lifestyle that I was brought up under at the time, that's all I was going to do, and that lasted maybe two, three months, maybe two, three months. So so you can only sit on a beach for so long.
Speaker 1:You can only sit on a beach on a Tuesday for so long, right? So what ended up happening was all right. I said all right, well, I sold the promise for all these years. Now I need to protect the promise. So I went ahead and got my independent adjusters license. I had my own company as an independent adjuster. Now here's what clicked in my brain. The territory that I was working was South Florida. South Florida has some of the most, and I was in. I forget the exact area, but it's the one of the worst affluent areas in South Florida, and that's when my mind was blown. What I thought was normal Wasn't so well. Maybe it was normal, but it looks like I prefer to be abnormal.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:So, so, so, as I'm looking at all of these possibilities, increasing my network, that's when I started I went from insurance adjusting to insurance appraisals, then insurance appraisals, the public insurance adjusting, then public insurance adjusting to expert witness work. And when I looked at my trajectory, the reason why I was able to take these risks and do these things, that drastically increased my income and even though I already had enough money in my cachet to live what I thought was my preferred standard of life with the skill sets, I was shooting past that. Now, once I started talking to my colleagues and they're like man, how did you do this? It's because I had the options. And then, when I had those conversations with them, I figured out that they didn't have the options. I thought everybody had the options and the liquidity to just stop doing something they did not like and do something else.
Speaker 1:Once I realized my family, friends and colleagues did not have their money situated the way that I learned how to situate it with my chartered financial consultant curriculum, with my chartered life underwriter curriculum. Once I learned that, that's when I said all right, that's how I'm going to serve my community, I'm going to solve the problem and I'm going to bridge the gap between the financial literacy of the wealthy and the people who are quote unquote middle class. Because I grew up in a time where you said I don't know where you're from, but where I grew up, oh yeah, I'm middle class and people they say it real proud, and I'm not saying there's nothing to be ashamed of, but I don't think there's nothing to yell from the top of the roofs as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, those are the folks that were able to move up from the ghettos, or move up, you know, because I remember when I was teaching, when I first started teaching high school. Remember when I was teaching, when I first started teaching high school, and there was a community that was built way far. So I'm in Los Angeles area and so there's a city called Moreno Valley that is a hundred miles from LA, almost a hundred miles, 80, 90 miles from LA, and are from Compton and Inglewood and the communities that we think you know as as typically being socioeconomically disadvantaged, you know, at the time. And so these families had moved out to Moreno Valley because they could afford to buy a house, they could afford to get their house, and so now they're proud, Like you said, we're middle class, we've moved up from Compton, we've moved up from Englewood.
Speaker 2:The problem was is a lot of their jobs were still in LA, so they would drive that 60, 70 miles every day to go to work, with LA traffic, you know, an hour, hour and a half to work, hour and hour and a half to back, three hours a day on the road and then realize that their lifestyle, that they thought meant middle class, but they didn't tell their kids that they hated it. They were just telling their kids we're giving you a better life, right?
Speaker 1:And that's a part of it, the traditional way of thinking. Not only do most people discover because you know they like to call it, you know, sometimes people describe it as a middle age crisis. Really, it's just people finally realizing all this stuff that I've been told was was, was a lie, right, but, but? But what happens is a lot of people, a lot of parents, are so proud, too much pride to where they don't even want to say the stuff that I did. Maybe I should have did it different. So now the kids are growing up under that. All right, I need to do uh stuff like that. It seemed like the right reason. But once you, once you calculate the gas, once you calculate the hours, you, it, you, your margin is dropping for this, uh, perceived dream of the middle class. I once again, it's nothing wrong you, somebody deciding that that's the station in their life that they want to be. But if you ever say I prefer not to be in this station, there are ways to get to that other station, yeah, man, that's, that is so cool.
Speaker 2:So you end up as in what you call an expert. Expert witness Does that mean you're like in courthouse. What was the expert witness?
Speaker 1:where I'm from, they would call me a professional snitch, right? But no, no, but basically the way it works is uh, whenever, whenever there was a um like an insurance claim right, insurance claims are ambiguous uh, some somebody might say it costs ten thousand to fix, somebody else might say it costs a hundred thousand to fix. Whenever there was a, a conflict and you couldn't agree on the, what it would cost in order to fix this damage that was caused by a claim that was insured. Uh, first it would have the underwriters, then it would have the attorneys. Once attorneys get involved, they don't want. Attorneys don't like to be embarrassed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right so what they do is they don't just rely on the data that they got. They go ahead and send out somebody that they know like and trust to go ahead and put feet on there. Now, you, you very rarely you will see an attorney get out there with their $1,000 loafers and walk a loss right. For the most part, they have expert witnesses, uh, uh, people who know the field go out there, capture the images, ask the right questions, do the right tests, and then that allows them to get those documents and read through it and make a decision on how they should move with the claim. And if they decide to move forward with the claim, they typically ultimately use that documentation to win. So that's what I would do. Ok, gotcha.
Speaker 2:So are you still doing that? What is now life turned into since you were doing that? Or is it Talk to me a little bit?
Speaker 1:So I consult now a lot of the same attorneys that I did expert witness for Now they're my clients. The same public adjusters that I educated Now they're my clients. What I do is I want because you know, even though you're in the industry, a lot of attorneys make a lot of money, right. A lot of insurance professionals make a lot of money. There are a lot of industries that make a lot of money. What I do is I show people how to make their money, make babies okay, it's the way I say. I say if you can impregnate a hundred dollar bill, would you not, of course, and usually people say absolutely all night long. So I just show people like, yes, you're getting a lot of money, but this is how the wealthy take this, this what I call a big shovel, and make your money, make money for you.
Speaker 1:Money is called currency for a reason. Just like a current, it's meant to keep moving. I show them how to keep it moving in the most effective way possible, how to keep it liquid, how to keep it safe, how to have it keep getting good rates of return and how to have it be in tax advantage, because if you put it in a typical savings account. Yes, it's liquid, you can get to it within one to three days. Yes, it's safe, but it's earning less than one percent. An average rate of inflation is two to three days. Yes, it's safe, but it's earning less than 1%, and average rate of inflation is two to 3%. So every year, your money is worth less and less and less. Your buying power goes lower and lower and lower.
Speaker 1:I educate people, uh, and I and cause I know one of your big things is identity. One of the first things that we have to do when you're working with us is we have to identify. So a GPS, a global positioning system. I ask a lot of people when I first work with them. I say what's the first, most important piece of information that the GPS needs in order to get you where you're trying to go?
Speaker 2:And what?
Speaker 1:they say is put in the address right.
Speaker 2:That's what they typically say Is this where you're at? And I say no.
Speaker 1:The GPS uses triangulation. It first needs to know where you're at. Where you're at, of course, yeah, identity is so important to me and that's one of the ways that I connect with you, because until you can admit and identify where you're currently at, you'll never be able to go anywhere else.
Speaker 2:No, and I think that's the biggest thing with money, that people they think they're at a whole different spot or they think they understand or they have no idea, and then it's hard to get because they just have these. I guess the relationship with money you know, and that's what I found, I know when you know how I've heard it, you know talked about or uses like a pool of money is not to be viewed upon like a lake, would be right. You need to have inlets and you need to have outlets because it has, like you just said, circulate. If it's a pool of money, then it just gets lower and lower and lower all the time because there's nothing that's moving throughout and so, oh my gosh, that's good. So when we talk about identity, let's just jump back a little bit.
Speaker 2:What did you think in your childhood or your young adulthood? Because now you have a house at 22. So you now have been able to be the person who can own a house at 22. So, in order to do that, what was your identity? Because most kids who are 18 and they graduate high school, the last thing they're thinking about is home ownership. They don't have that identity. That's going to.
Speaker 2:I didn't have that identity at 22. My first house wasn't until I was 28,. I think you know that I could have said, oh, this is important. Now, my parents, they had a house right, and I don't know how old my dad was when he got. You know, I don't at this point I should probably ask him how old were you when you got your first house? But my identity wasn't there. So what made you, this go-getter person that can make income, that knew, hey, a house is a great investment, I should get into it, I should buy it, because I doubt you've moved into the nicest house in the entire neighborhood when you were 22,. Because you kind of know I got to step up. I mean, walk me through that a little bit.
Speaker 1:So it's one of those nurture versus nature things, right. So, uh, nature wise, you know. Sometimes you know you're just born with it, right. Uh, one of my mentors, doug andrew, says uh, uh, all of your kids are born factory installed. Right, you can have three children and you can raise them the exact same way. They're going to do whatever they do based off that factory installing. That came with them, you know, sometimes despite your best efforts.
Speaker 1:So, uh, when the first time somebody called me an old soul, uh, I was, I think, four years old. Uh, in jacksonville they had this program where they would take the elementary school students to visit the nursing home residents. So it's like the youngest of us meeting the oldest of us. And I remember I had to be about four years old. I remember the people there talking about uh, you got an old soul right, and at the time I didn't know what that meant. But as I got older, that's really people's way of saying you sound, you seem wise, or you sound wise. So I've always had that.
Speaker 1:But outside of that, I would say at the age of seven and people don't I told people this story and they don't believe me, but it's definitely true at the age of seven, my granddaddy had me out cutting a yard and this yard had to be half an acre. So I'm seven years old, I can barely reach over the uh, the rails, but I'm cutting this yard and to me it's normal and to him he's from the country, he, uh, he's. He's 92 years old now. Uh, to him that was normal too what my granddaddy made. So he watched me cut this yard. This is my first time cutting this yard half an acre. I get finished and you know how, when you. I don't know if you ever used a push lawn mower, but you know you got to be a little bit older.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the wheelhouse. You know how the wheel goes through?
Speaker 1:Yeah, he let me cut that whole yard without telling you that and then I had to go and then after I finished, I had to go back and cut, cut it the right way and it was. It was that thing of measuring twice, cutting once. So outside of that old soul that I just had factory installed is lessons that I got from my grandfather that, like that, made made me think all right, what are you, what are? What do I have to have? I have to have food, I have to have a place to stay. All right, great Uh is it. Should I stay in a place where I'm paying rent and the rent is just going to keep increasing every month, or should I? Should I lock in a fixed rate for the next 30 years? I think I will have the most options if I lock in a fixed rate for the next 30 years. So that's how I got to that, that stage at 22 man, you are one.
Speaker 2:You like Mensa, aren't you? You like? You're on that genius level. I can tell already well, I think.
Speaker 1:well, you, everybody's a genius man. Everybody has their, their genius, but yeah, when it comes to figuring out how to situate my food and my living for the rest of my life, I am a genius.
Speaker 2:So when we think about living above your means, below your means, stretching that kind of stuff, your means stretching that kind of stuff, it sounds like you figured out a formula or a way that people or you have been able to live below your means and continue to invest. Is that something that has continued through your whole life or was it now? I mean, I obviously I don't think you live above your means right now. But what? How did you get that? Because in our culture, as you know, we are spenders, we are consumers, we are the have. Then we try to do and then become the person, and it seems like you became, you did and then you got to have.
Speaker 2:What kind of thought process went through this whole process of okay, wait a minute, I shouldn't spend. This is I bought the house that I knew I could afford and still have money to eat, you know, and still have money, but you didn't go buy the rental furniture to live in the house. I'm assuming you know, cause I'm just having a conversation. I can tell you didn't go buy the you know, the rental or whatever it is.
Speaker 1:I bought my own, got my own furniture. So for me, the differentiator for me was in learning some very important internal revenue codes Internal revenue code 72E, internal revenue code 7702 and internal revenue code 101A. Internal Revenue Code 101A. Internal Revenue Code 72E says as long as it's considered a life insurance policy, whatever you have in it grows tax deferred. Internal Revenue Code 7702 says as long as it's considered a life insurance policy and you access it correctly, you get access to this money tax-free and it's not considered income. And Internal Revenue Code 101A says as long as it's considered a life insurance policy, whatever you have left blossoms to a larger number and passes to your heirs tax-free. So what I started doing before I got to the age of 32 was putting the majority of my income into properly structured life insurance policies, and what ended up happening was I still was able to spend because, uh, when you, when you structure a policy the right way and it's with the right product, you can put money in and still be able to access money to live right now. So I'm still out hanging with my friends, I'm still going to the events, but they're only able to spend their money once because I access the money from my policy. The right way is still growing interest in a tax deferred uh vehicle. So, so that's, that was the differentiator of of what I did.
Speaker 1:Uh, leading up from that, you know, all right, I got my uh living, I got a fixed mortgage set. Uh, all right, uh, I, I, I figured out, okay, I pay this much a month. Uh, the cost of everything doubles approximately every 14 to 15 years. Okay, so if the money of it so, so I'm doing the math of everything doubles approximately every 14 to 15 years. Okay, so if the money of it? So, so I'm doing the math of all right, 14 years from now, all right, my, my normal standard of living is 60 grand. That I that I prefer, like that. That just keeps me just feeling good, all right. So if, if it's 60 now, 14 years from now it's going to be 120. And then 14 years from now it's going to be 240.
Speaker 2:So it's really just learning the statistics, doing the math and then putting it in a vehicle to where I can use it today but it's still growing for tomorrow, yeah, and it's so cool that you were able to learn that because you did this when the life insurance portion of it was so inexpensive, because for a 22-year-old, whatever amount of life insurance you're purchasing is super cheap. And that same thing. If somebody tried to start that in their 60s, it's going to be eaten up by the amount of premium that costs, right, I mean, unless you just have a whole bunch of money. So I love that, the fact that you were able to do that.
Speaker 2:Now, when I think about the the different things that you were doing, like you're saying my lifestyle, you weren't driving around a Beamer at 22, like all the 22 year olds are like, right, you just drive around a car. That you know. Were you making payments on the car? Were you, you know? Was you buying the cash? What was how? How was your thought process on that kind of stuff? On debt, you know, was you buying the cash? What was? How was your thought process on?
Speaker 1:that kind of stuff on debt. It wasn't until recently. I'm thirty nine years old. Thirty seven was the first car note I ever had. Up until then, every car I always bought cash, ok. So so to answer your question, that's how I treated a car. A car for me was a item that depreciated. I didn't need to utilize it to do. I used to go to the um, the rental car companies like hertz or enterprise, and so hertz and enterprise, they take perfect care of their vehicles, like oil change on time, uh, all the all the everything yeah, everything, and they would put their cars for sale at 20, uh, 20,000 miles.
Speaker 1:So what happened? I would go every every other year. I would go to Hertz. I would buy a car for about 15 grand and the market value was, uh, at least 10, 15 grand more, but they were selling it because they needed to get the new cars in. So that was my process Go to the rental car company, buy a car cash, sell the old one and then drive that one for the next couple of years.
Speaker 2:It's so smart because when I was in my twenties I worked for enterprise, right, and it still didn't dawn on me we were selling cars. Oh, I should go buy my cars. Or even though I was selling the cars, I mean hello, and you would get great.
Speaker 1:The rental car companies gave the best prices and you didn't have to worry about buying a lemon. For the most part, yeah.
Speaker 2:Oh my God. Well, yeah, not at all, because, like you said, every maintenance was done, every oil change was done At 20,000 miles. The car is just getting broken in. It's going to be a good car for you.
Speaker 2:I think the biggest issue that people have or have had is when we think of credit and we think of, you know, having the liquidity of having money to be able to say I got 15 grand Because even if you sold it for 10, you still need that extra five that's sitting in the bank to go ahead and pay the 15 grand, to pay it off right, and what I see where folks, if they're living up to their means, there is a five grand in the bank, right, that can pay for that extra card. There's, like you know, $1,000 in the bank you wonder about, like the payday places you know it's you worry about like the payday places.
Speaker 1:Most people don't got a thousand. I mean, they've done a poll. What 60% of people don't have $1,000 in their accounts? Yeah, that's six out of 10.
Speaker 2:When you say that you know 60 is like a big number, you drop it down to like if you walk down the street, six out of 10 people do not have $1,000 that they could access to take care of an emergency, to take care of family, buy something that they really need if their car breaks, can't get it to the shop.
Speaker 1:They're living on this revolving credit thing that just stops them from being able to achieve, and that is another one of the cheat codes that I used. Um, so one of the cheat codes that I'll use was when I was coming up, because I knew that emergencies happen and then all it takes is one emergency to throw you completely off your game. I always made sure I had at least a thousand dollars that I did not touch because when that, when that unforeseen emergency would happen, like a tire blows out or something like that, I could quickly go to that a thousand fit because I thought most, most emergencies are fits by a thousand dollars.
Speaker 2:well, you, I don't know.
Speaker 1:It's a lot of inflation now, but most emergencies used to be fixed by $1,000. Back then I never would get off track because when something unforeseen would happen, I always had a tank of money to pull from. Because I knew that statistic. I knew that most people didn't have that much, so I just made sure I had that much and then, you know, just kept on moving and then my cash just kept growing.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well and then, if emergency happening, I bet you replaced it.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Right, it wasn't like oh OK, one emergency now, oh, I used it, and then, like a year later, another one happens. Oops, I didn't put no money back in there again, right?
Speaker 1:and you just made me think uh, you're going, depending on who you are, you're going to actually have to write your definition of what an emergency is, because you know as soon as you want that money, all of a sudden, a trip to cancun is an emergency my boys are gone, I gotta go with them's exactly. Did you do? Make sure it's a real emergency and make sure you replenish it after you use it?
Speaker 2:Did you ever use like the envelope system where you had like money for this thing here and then money for this thing here, or do you just kind of said, okay, I got my investment money, I'm going to kind of live off of that and then I have emergency set aside, cause I know some people, when I was starting to learn about money and how it worked, is I would have different envelopes. You know, this is back in the day when everything wasn't swiped and you actually got to see money and there was something about if I put this five hundred dollars in for entertainment, you know into my envelope that when I'm going to the movies or whatever, you know, maybe it was thirty dollars or forty dollars during that time when I want to give that money, it kind of hurt a little bit. Do I really need this? Is this movie really going to be good? Baby, you don't need that popcorn. Let's get the smaller one, because you don't want to give up that money, right? Did you ever do anything?
Speaker 1:I'm familiar with the envelope system and it's very effective. My envelope system was digital, though, because I had multiple life insurance policies. What I would do is each policy had its own function, or it still do to this day has its own function. All right, I put money in here. This is the entertainment life insurance. This is the help out family and friends life insurance. This is the travel life insurance. So if I did not have the available cash value in that particular category, then I didn't do it. If I, if there was no available cash value in the travel, then there's no travel into their ears. So, yes, I had an envelope system, but it was more so digital and each was a life policy.
Speaker 2:What would you say to people who I know we're talking a lot about money who struggle with the ATIN card? Because I have a granddaughter right and she wants me to go buy stuff and she's like I'm like, well, we don't have money for that today and she's like, well, use the card, but I think I mean that makes sense for a five-year-old or a six-year-old right. But I hear adults thinking the same thing, like they're trying to stick their card into a machine and it's saying declined, and they're trying to figure out why it's declined, like they don't know they don't have any money. How do you like, when you're educating and teaching people, you know, how do you help them understand that? I know it's digital but that doesn't mean there's money. And I guess people used to write on my age. They used to write checks when they know they didn't have no money in it. You know.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, I see in checks that in it you know. Oh yeah, see in chess that was. You know I like I hang around with a lot of older people checks. That was a. That was a. That was the uh old school payday loan, right, you write a check even if you, even if you knew the money wasn't in there, because you knew the check wasn't gonna make it to your bank for about three days. So that was a. I think that was the first payday loan, right? Uh, you write, you write the grocery store check and then, even though there's no money in there, they'll get to it.
Speaker 1:So, to answer your initial question, it's really like an addiction man and just like any addiction. Let's say, if it was drugs, you can't help a drug addict until they're ready to be helped. Drug addict, until they're ready to be helped. You can't help somebody that's addicted to swiping their card until they're ready to be helped. Uh, because, uh, once again it's.
Speaker 1:It's almost like insulting somebody's religion or political beliefs. Once you start telling people how to treat their money, you get unsolicited, you get disdain, you get you know it's all types of energy, negative that comes. It has to be wanted. So it's all about the education first. So the way that I help is I educate. I just change the way that people see things. I help is I educate. I just change the way that people see things and cause usually, uh, and and my wind, our window is getting shorter now, right, but when I first started on this side, uh, of what I do, from the day that I met somebody to the day that we actually did business used to take approximately 18 to 24 months Really A long sales window.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, that is a long cycle, but I can imagine.
Speaker 1:But I'm overcoming decades, of course, of course, of wrong thoughts. As it relates to money. The cycle is getting a lot shorter now, but back then it used to take forever. It's a lot of education. A lot shorter now, okay, but back then it used to take forever. It's a lot of education, well, a lot of falling down and a lot of getting back up and I can tell you.
Speaker 2:so, remember, I told you I was a high school teacher and back then and I don't know if it's any different now but we got paid once a month and I started having my family.
Speaker 2:So I had my first, my son, you know oldest, when I was 24. And so we were barely making it at first and that's when, like, costco opened up so we decided you know, in that time we have three kids now, so we're going to Costco. I can remember taking it's kind of embarrassing to say this now, but I would take checks because we were getting paid on the 31st of the month and at the 22nd of the month we out of food. So I would take the checks and I would put goals in the number at the bottom of the check, because when it went through the reader they would have to type it in manually, and so that would give me an extra four or five days in order to for the check to go through, and so that I mean that that was my mindset, because I didn't know that I could do all this, that that wasn't part of the process of my parents.
Speaker 2:You know my parents grew up really poor. You know my mom can tell me about times they were picking cotton on the farm in California. You know, just to you know, that Christmas tree was a tumbleweed. You know my dad lived next to an orphanage in Kansas City where he said like when the truck came in with clothes and shoes they were right in there. Even though they live next door, they were right in there getting their clothes and shoes at the same time and so we didn't talk a lot about money when we were growing up.
Speaker 2:we didn't talk about those things and I mean it was so proud of them for now that they were able to get a house and that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2:And you might even get yelled at if, as a kid, you tried to talk about money. Oh gosh, oh yeah, it was just crazy. And then I go to college and somebody's offering me a credit card, and I didn't know what a credit card was. I'm on a track scholarship at the school. They have these lines of tables, you know, and Sears gave me a credit card. Well, I didn't know.
Speaker 2:I thought it was like my scholarship where, you know, if I had to take a loan out, I'd pay it when I got done with school. And, like, I went and bought a whole bunch of stuff for my dorm room with the credit card because they gave me like $300 credit. And you know I get back. You know they send me a bill at the end of the next month. I'm like what am I supposed to do this? I don't have a job. I'm like. I'm like why are you giving me a credit card when I don't have a job? And now I'm thinking the mentality of our systems, that's how they're built, right, they want to keep us in that debt and so, oh yeah, it's, it's.
Speaker 1:it's a different way of looking at it. All right, am I going to give this? I'm used to not giving these people money at all. All right, so now I have to give them money? All right, let me. Okay, if I have to give them money, let me raise the cost of everything so dramatically that it's as if I'm not giving them any money.
Speaker 1:So I so I have a lot of conversations with a lot of, you know, students like now they're adults now, but I know that they attended certain schools, right, you know my, you know HBCUs and and different things that that are geared toward, uh, our community. And when I, when I asked them because, and keep in mind, I grew up low income uh, now I'm where I'm at now, I got friends of all social economic levels, so I know the value of certain things and what other people are paying. I'm speaking to them and, of course, they have a lot of them have bachelor's degrees and, to your point, these people with just standard and when I say standard bachelor's degree, it can be, I'm not, I'm not talking about no specialty, but just like a standard bachelor's degree with over $200,000 in debt, wow, wow. And I'm like how did that happen? And it's just like you just described. First off, you couldn't nobody talk to you about money, and if you brought up money, you got yelled at, you got shame, it was almost blasphemy. And then you get to.
Speaker 1:So now nobody educated you on it and now people are just giving you money. Oh, you need. Here's some extra money for your dorm. Here's some extra money for this. Here's some extra money for your dorm. Here's some extra money for this. Here's some extra money for that. Here's some extra. And what happens is now you know, figuratively not literally might as well be, but figuratively now you're working for nothing because everything that you uh bring, that you bring in, is going out. And what's the only debt that a bankruptcy can't get rid of? Loans, yep. So all of the money, as they say. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:Wow, this is so good. Now I have to. I'm going to just turn the table a little bit because this has been a great conversation and I'm going to find out if we can get you back on. But when I talk about identity and I'm going to find out if we can get you back on but when I talk about identity, you know I'm looking at your background and I'm seeing Eddie Murphy and Holly Berry 40 years ago. Right, this is before you were born, because I remember the movie, because I'm 60. So it was in my time, when I was right at that time. How has your identity come with Boomerang and what's the tie here with that? Why, that's a big part of who you are, just curious.
Speaker 1:So anybody that knows what a boomerang is. It's like an Australian, like a tool that you know. They throw it in the air and then you know they use it to. You know, do certain kill animals or whatnot, but when they throw it in the air it comes right back, or back back to them. You know what goes around comes back, yeah uh, what I enjoy about the movie boomerang it was like a paradigm shift it was. It was showing. It basically taught empathy and it taught you how to look at things from different situations.
Speaker 1:Typically if you're in a workplace Right and let's say, you know, usually, just like any workplace, the species intertwines Right and usually if you're in a workspace and the species intertwines, if anybody gets embarrassed, a lot of times it might be the woman that gets embarrassed and a lot of times it's a man that, uh, is in a higher position. What boomerang did was they put the woman in the higher position and they made it to where the man was the one that got embarrassed, right. And it showed you how that whole everything can complete be completely different just by changing one variable. Everything that I do in life is all about every quarter, every week, every quarter, looking at what's going on. What's one variable? What? What small minute thing that we can change to change the whole paradigm shift, to change the whole way that we see things, just like Boomerang. So that's how I connected with that movie. I love it.
Speaker 2:Thank you for sharing that. That is really cool. What I love. You know, we're kind of towards the end of our show and I want you to give a chance, because I was very selfish and asking all the things. But I want to find out if you might be willing to come back and maybe do like a financial top 10 things you should do with your money that could make a difference in your life, and maybe we just spend just a little bit of time, you know, on another show just talking about that. If you'd be willing to come back, I would love to ask you to do that. But I want to take the last part of the show for you to just kind of there's things we didn't get to talk about, the things that you really want to make sure, how to get ahold of you all that kind of stuff you maybe spend a little bit of time, you know, talking about, you know you and what you do and how we can help you or just be part of the world that you're in.
Speaker 1:That would be great. Absolutely, in my opinion. Most people are within five to 10 years of having the option of retiring. And what I mean by retiring? I don't mean the definition, because the term retirement comes from the industrial revolution, meaning to put out of use. I'm not. I'm retired, but I'm not put out of use. I want you to have the option to retire, but I don't want you to be put out of use. I want you to have options. So, uh, what we do at Sheil Wolf Strongholds? Uh, we primarily work with business owners and high income, um, high income corporate people and affluent retirees. Uh, we help them figure out you know where to put their money. How to put it A lot of times, your money should not be.
Speaker 1:A lot of people are like all right, I want the biggest return possible, right? But even if your money is earning 100% a day, if your money is doubling every day but you can't get to it, does it matter If your money is doubling every day, but when you go to sleep at night, you have no idea if you wake up tomorrow, if it would be at a zero dollar balance. Does it matter if it's causing you down that stress? If your money is, yes, it's safe, uh, yeah, yeah, it has good, predictable rates return. But if, if it's, if it's not, if it's one of those things to where, uh, as soon as you try to get to it, the government takes all of it in taxes. Does, does it matter?
Speaker 1:Uh, what we do with the people that we work with, the fair first thing is education, because here's the thing Uh, I'm, you know, I work with you hand in hand, but what if I'm not here tomorrow? Anything that I do, I want you to still be able to keep going, even if I get hit by a bus, right? So so that's what we do. If you visit Sheil Wolf Strong dot com SHIELD WOLF STRONG dot com, we'll do. If you own a business, we'll give you a free, unofficial business valuation so you can know where you're at, right. If you are individual, we'll give you a free, unofficial estate plan so you can know where you at. Just like Dr B says, it's all about identity and, once again, there's no cost, no obligation, and the reason why we do that. We feel like if we can help people figure out where they're at and establish their foundation, then they can have the option of deciding to build with us. Oh my, gosh.
Speaker 2:Thank you, mr Love III. I sure, oh my gosh, just having you on today. Folks, if you got something out of this, if you didn't rewind and go back, because you're going to get something out of this, but go ahead, subscribe, hit the notifications. We have so many of these just incredible podcasts with people who are doing something for the community to understand.
Speaker 2:When I said Randolph is a genius, I was not playing, and you can probably tell by just the options that we talked about today in the podcast, and so we're going to have him back. I'm going to have him do maybe just a quick series on the top 10 ways that he can things that you can do with your money. That'll make a difference. So you're going to want to come back to that episode because we are going to help solve some of your money problems if you're willing to listen. But, like he said, you might have two, three, four decades of this program stuff in your mind.
Speaker 2:So if you think you're going to just watch one show and not have to do anything, then you're fooling yourself. Don't come on. But if you think you're willing to start learning and be moving, then look for when that notification is and when we're going to do this show again because it's going to be something literally to change your life. He just told you, within five to 10 years, that you could be able to retire not put out of use, but retire and do the things in the way that God put you on this earth to do in five to 10 years. He didn't say 20 to 40 years, like our, our job system does. Forty years you'll be able to be put out of use. We're talking about five to 10 years for you to go do something that you love to do. So, radha, thank you so much. Do you have one closing thought before we end today?
Speaker 1:I say this, whether you believe you can or believe you can't, you're probably right what Henry Ford say. And they say the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. It may be true, but the second best time is today, Right now today.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you, can't wait to have you on again. This has been a pleasure. Don't forget. You are God's greatest gift. He loves you. If you allow him to, and we'll talk to you on the next one, have a good day.