EP #97 Part 1: Escape The Money Trap

Wanting a richer life can quietly turn into a money trap: vague goals, emotional language, and habits that feel productive but never add up to real progress. We dig into why “I want more money” is one of the fastest ways to confuse your brain, and how NLP can help you build a well-formed outcome that’s specific, realistic, and tied to action you can actually repeat.

We also get practical about the part most people skip: the math. Big purchases and “dream upgrades” don’t end at the price tag. Property taxes, utilities, repairs, replacement cycles, and maintenance costs can crush a budget if you don’t plan for them. We talk through how to reverse engineer the lifestyle you want, using sensory detail and real numbers so your plan survives the real world, not just a vision board.

From there, we unpack the deeper patterns that drive financial behavior. We explore NLP meta programs like move away versus move towards, options versus procedures, proactive versus reactive, and in-time versus through-time thinking. The takeaway is simple and tough: wealth is built through consistent procedures, feedback, and learning over time, and one of the strongest wealth traits is living below your means so you can save and invest. If you want more choices without the stress spiral, this conversation gives you a cleaner map.

Subscribe so you don’t miss part two, share this with a friend who’s chasing “more,” and leave a quick review to help more people find the show. What’s one money habit you want to make more procedural?

Transcript

Welcome And Why Money Traps Happen

SPEAKER_00 0:05

This is the brain this is the brain language podcast. This is the brain language podcast. This is the brain language podcast. This is the brain language podcast.

SPEAKER_02 0:16

Welcome to the Brain Language Podcast, where we discuss NOP concepts for business and life. I'm James Lusk.

SPEAKER_00 0:23

And I'm Susan Stageman. And today, I think we have a very special. Well, I think all of our podcasts are special. However, I think this is an extra special podcast today. First of all, we have our returning guru, James Lusk, who originally helped me start the podcast. So we always love to have him come back and bring all of his ideas and energy to the podcast. We're going to talk about money today. And yes, we've had a podcast about money before. And maybe there'll be some repeating information. Hopefully, we can put this together in a way that will help some of you get through what I call the money trap. So, James, let's get going.

SPEAKER_02 1:13

Yeah, I'm excited. Thanks for having me on. And it's it's hardly a guru, always a student, but I think you kind of hit the nail on the head. I think it's a relevant time to maybe be addressing some things and thoughts, beliefs, and all the stuff that comes along with money.

SPEAKER_00 1:27

Yes, absolutely. So I guess I want to ask the question, and we're gonna talk about this. Is where do people get trapped when they're longing for a lifestyle? Because I think that's what the money trap is, that people long for some kind of lifestyle, and they get in this hamster on a wheel with a lot of their thinking, their language, their beliefs, and even how they make money, which stops or prevents them from actually making progress.

SPEAKER_02 2:01

Yeah, absolutely. Because a big part of it is not only the making of the money, but the managing of the money. And then you kind of get confused because you don't even know what piece of that puzzle you might be missing.

SPEAKER_00 2:11

Right. Exactly. Exactly. So let's go ahead. We're gonna talk about language and attitude around money and some of the things that I have found working with people who come to me, well, I want to make more money. And we'll talk about that and how that doesn't work. But we're also gonna talk about some of the meta programs that people need in order to do this, their beliefs versus the strategies and capabilities and behaviors that they're doing, because all of this fits together. And I think that it's important that people understand that money just doesn't come out of our beliefs, and they do, but it also comes out of our strategies. So you can have a you have great beliefs about money, but you may not have the strategies. You can always get the strategies, but that's one of the traps that people have. And then, of course, state management. And I've also wanted to talk today, James. This may be a six-hour podcast, we don't know. Uh, that what are some of the characteristics of people with wealth? And there's there's actually a lot of information about that. But here's how I think we should use it. And we'll get into that later. I think we should use this. You can use, all right. Are you not achievement oriented? You want to be achievement oriented? Okay, NLP can help you with that. So there's a lot of things that we're going to talk about today to how to get you the proper maps

Lifestyle Longing Versus Real Progress

SPEAKER_00 3:45

that will produce the kind of income that you want. All right. So let's go back at the beginning and start talking about the language. So people have language, obviously. They talk, they think, they have beliefs that are stopping them from making money, that they're having beliefs that don't allow them to have success. A lot of times people don't understand what it's going to take to make a significant income leap, or they don't have the meta programs, the meta programs they're having, the sorting patterns, they're working against them, amassing wealth. So they have the belief, but not strategies. They can learn the strategies, but not the belief, although it usually is from the top down. So, James, what do you think? I mean, you've this is something that is a topic near and dear to your heart. You're a good money manager.

SPEAKER_02 4:43

So yeah, no, I I mean you you definitely hit the nail on the head. The thing about belief systems, they're they're tied to our neurology, but even more importantly, a lot of times they are very deeply coded and beyond our conscious thought. So when we think we're having like a money issue, or maybe what the source of that might be, I mean, we're kind of fish and water. So it's really, it's really tough. And a lot of times it presents itself more as a red herring than the actual issue that might

Why “More Money” Backfires

SPEAKER_02 5:10

be holding us back.

SPEAKER_00 5:11

Yeah, good. So let's go ahead and start at the very beginning language and attitude around money. So I find people will come to me and they go, I want more money. Okay, more that ubiquitous word, more. And I hope anyone in NLP understands that this, of course, is not well formed, right? That if somebody wants more and more, it's not specific enough. You know, what's the number? And more important, is the number realistic for where they are now? Is it sensory-based? Is it self-initiated and maintain? So I say, okay, I want more money. And then this actually happened to me one time, not the I want more money thing, but it actually happened where I was at a gas station and I put the pump into the gas thing, wherever you put the gas in, and it kept falling out. It was really strange. In fact, it fell out twice before I turned it on. And when I leaned down to get it the third time or the second time, here's a quarter right down by my tire. This is oh, now I have more money. So please be aware that that can happen. You can be walking along the street thinking, wow, I want more money, and here's a penny laying in the side on the sidewalk. Okay, now you have more money. So when you're going for the linguistic structure, it's got to be specific. Your brain is very mathematical, and we've talked about this before. So oftentimes people describe why they want more money, all right? They envision a life filled with big houses and luxury trip and high-end clothing, as if this is the end in mind. And although I will agree that these things are drivers, they're not necessarily the end. So understanding how to maintain a level of money is as important as making it initially. It is a through-time process, isn't it, James?

SPEAKER_02 7:29

Yeah. Oh, absolutely. And it's so interesting that just the way you put it, because you know, my wife and I were looking to make a make an estate change here in the next two years, and that's gonna take a significant amount of money, one would imagine. But that's just ambiguous, right? So we want to buy a new property, sell our home, and and kind of make this transition. And what we've done, we didn't just vision board it or just, you know, kind of you know, ambiguously go, uh, we want this kind of property. We looked into it. What's it gonna cost? Like, how can we reverse engineer what it will actually take to achieve that? So we really did do all of those kind of

The Hidden Cost Of Big Purchases

SPEAKER_02 8:05

tropes with goal setting and drilling down and being very specific, and of course, the well-formed outcome.

SPEAKER_00 8:10

Right. So then here's the other thing. Of course, buying a house is an in-time process, right? It's you buy the house, now you have the house, and then you have to maintain the house. And there in Texas, there are property taxes on the house, and in Dallas County, property tax taxes are high. And so, yeah, there has to be. I remember when I bought my house about 23 years ago or so, I looked at a lot of things. I looked at what the mortgage was gonna be, I looked at a lot of things, right? I said, I can do this. Okay, so I get the house. What I didn't take into consideration was I bought the house for about twice what the property taxes were listed as. So when I bought the house at a significantly more for more money, you know, increased the value of the house, and up went the property tax. And I had not taken that into consideration, nor did I take into consideration the fact that it has electricity for utilities. Now, in Texas summers, of course, having air conditioning is absolutely a must, unless you want to live in your car. However, what I didn't know, or I wouldn't even have known how to ask for this, right? That it had electric heat. And electric heat is very expensive. Now, granted, it's not cold continually like it is up north, but still, when it gets cold, and these houses aren't necessarily built to with a lot of insulation because it's hot down here. Nobody thought about that. My house is was born in the 50s. So when I got my first electric bill in the wintertime, and it was back back in the old days, I mean, it was $600 for a month.

SPEAKER_02 10:13

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 10:14

I went, oh okay, we have a problem. So these are the kinds of things that it's not only putting your name on the dotted line and getting, you know, the D to the property, but it's also all these other things. Things break down, systems break down, things will have to be replaced. Let's see, here we've in our house we've replaced the system, the air conditioning and heating system. We've replaced the water heater. You know, things wear out. We've replaced the roof. All of these things cost money. So these are the kinds of things that I think people need to take into consideration when they're going for something like this. Any thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_02 11:02

Yeah, definitely. So it's one part of it, kind of like you said, is using language that helps you to be specific about what it is exactly that you are wanting in terms of the money or the numerical or dollar amount, and then the things the unforeseen and foreseeable, like how do you maintain that? But it seems like there's more to it, or I, you know, I would ask, isn't there more to it than just that part of some of our relationships and language and money?

SPEAKER_00 11:29

Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. So I want, I want to just talk a little bit

Freedom Is Vague Choices Are Real

SPEAKER_00 11:35

about. I'll say, okay, so what is this going to do for you? And you know, it can do all kinds of things. It gives people recognition, it can give people recognition where people recognize that they've been successful. Sometimes that's important to people, or they will say, Well, this is the big one, it'll give me freedom. Okay, so freedom's a nominalization, it means a verb turned into a noun, which stops the action, it's frozen in time. You know, freedom from what? Freedom for what it's not specified. So let's go back to the idea when I have all this money, I'm going to be able to go on all these trips, maybe work part-time. Everyone I know who is well in the wealthy category, I mean wealthy category, um, works their butts off, you know, until they're retired. And some of them are retired now. But it means oftentimes long days, missed family celebrations, the freedom that they're envisioning comes much later in life. So when somebody says, you know, when I say, okay, so what do you want this for? For what purpose? You know, it's outcome all always for what purpose is well to have more freedom. No, it's to have more choices. I know that that is also that's a noun. You can choose, you can choose to have more choices, right? But it is true that people that have a substantial amount of income do have more choices. You know, they have a broader choice of the kind of car they drive or the trips they take or the house they live in, or all these material things, tangible things. So, in a sense, they are freer in the sense that most people think, but they also have more responsibility. So I like people to think of having money as a way to increase choices.

SPEAKER_02 13:41

Yeah, absolutely. That's a way that I definitely map onto it. Or, you know, you could consider it just as a means to help you resolve issues, solve problems, but definitely uh not something that is fulfilling on kind of those deep-seated values. I remember any time that you and I worked together, if you were um coaching, coaching me, one of the best questions you you always ask me is, you know, what will having that do for you?

SPEAKER_01 14:05

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 14:06

And sometimes you drill down to the bottom of what you think money is going to do for you. You either A already have, or having that is not actually dependent on what you think money will do to help you achieve that, right? Right.

SPEAKER_00 14:20

You know, sometimes people think that money is going to be the answer to all of their problems. It may be the answer to the problems they have right now, like not being able to send their kid to a school they want to, or not having the kind of car that they want to drive around in, or you know, there's all kinds of stuff, but it's replaced by oftentimes a set of responsibilities or other problems that they're going to have to deal with. I tell people if you already had the resources and capabilities to manage the kind of money they're asking for, they'd already have that kind of money. So obviously, something stops or prevents them from making the kind of income or having the kind of lifestyle that they want. All right. So that's one thing. So for the understanding that it's the journey, it's a process, understanding that it's choices rather than freedom.

Meta Programs That Stall Income

SPEAKER_00 15:25

And what is it going to do for you? Like James says, what is it going to do for you? And then there's, of course, there's the meta programs versus beliefs. You know, sometimes people mistake the problem of not having limiting beliefs when it's really about a meta program. And meta programs are those deep structure sorting patterns that determine what people pay attention to and what they ignore and distort. Well, you know, sometimes if people have some success, then it's probably not a money belief. It's probably a metaprogram that's operating where they get to a certain place and then they stop. You know, we've we've talked about this before, James, where you have that move away from move towards. If you're moving away from something, uh, say for instance, you know, a person's making $75,000 a year and they want to make a million dollars a year. Although I've said this over and over again, and I mean it, it's just a number inside their head. They may get to 250 and find that that's perfectly fine. And that's what happens when you're moving away from something, is that you have where you are, and then you have the the big goal out there. And as they move away from where they are, and that pain gets less and less and less, they slow down. They don't work as much because they wanted to move away from that situation. They weren't moving towards having you know the big payday. So that's one thing to make sure that people understand is that you're moving away from something, the farther you get from it, the less you'll work. And then wonder why you're not working, you know. So when you move towards something with a vision, you're moving towards someone. And someone, you know, many people will say, well, they're moving towards the this luxury life, but really they're moving away from not being able to pay their bills. So when they're able to pay their bills, then there's no problem anymore. And if there's no problem, what do we say, James? Oh well, and don't be as worthless as what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_02 17:47

Yeah, then we're out, you're kind of out of a job.

SPEAKER_00 17:50

Yeah, yeah, that's right. Anyway, so that's one thing is that move away from you've got to move towards, and you know, sometimes we just that's a pattern that's put in very early in life, then they're not always easily changeable, although everybody has move away from move towards patterns, just may not be using them in the right context.

SPEAKER_02 18:15

Yeah, definitely. And I I just couldn't help but think how analogous what you're saying was to a lot of times when we think about our health and fitness, where uh you know, I think there's a a large swath of people out there who might be move away from when it comes to their body weight. And so when they diet or exercise and they get far enough away from something that makes them feel uncomfortable in terms of maybe that's how they feel or maybe how they think they look, they'll tend to kind of start slacking on the diet and stuff. And I I just think that totally applies here to the financial situation. But I'm curious, unless you have anything more to say about moving or move towards, because I think there's so much with the meta programs, I'm eager to hear what other ones might apply to finances.

Options Versus Procedures That Pay

SPEAKER_00 19:00

Oh, yeah, okay, good. Yes, so options and procedures. All business and money is made through procedure, according to Roger Bailey, who is Mr. Meta Program. So I'm not gonna argue with him. And I agree, all business and money are made through procedure, and that's what happens is procedure is never compromised. You know, it's done faithfully, day in, day out. You don't decide to do a procedure one day and then take off the next. And a lot of people who are options people do that, and so your income goes up and down and up and down and up and down. So, you know, as your income changes or grows, your procedure may change. Procedures can change, but you can't keep doing options, and it's the same, like you're saying, with diet and exercise, it's gotta be procedure. And I know that I'm a fairly thin person. And uh, but every once in a while, you know, after the holidays or vac sometimes it depends on where we're vacating, but sometimes, you know, I start to get a little thick around the middle. So I I go, okay, I need a procedure because I know if I just try to kind of kind of is the really option optional word, option word there, is that if I kind of do it, then it doesn't work. I have to have a procedure. That's what Weight Watcher is all about. Uh a lot of these newer programs, they're all about procedure, and they'll give you options in those procedures, but it's basically a procedure. Sales is a procedure. You get the procedure, hopefully it works, and then you do it over and over again. And those are the things that you want to pay attention to.

SPEAKER_02 20:52

Yeah, very much so. So I got a question. Let's say, and and and by the way, you touched on this a little bit, but it's definitely worth noting that all of this is contextual. So, like the options versus procedures, quote unquote person, is specifically in the context of money, and they might be something totally different in a completely different context. But let's say someone gains enough awareness or uh has the observation that they are they tend to lean options in the meta programs with their financial situation. Do you have any like thoughts or suggestions on how they might operate, or you know, how can they go about doing something about that?

SPEAKER_00 21:29

So there's a number of different ways to change meta programs, which there's a lot of varying ideas. I'm not gonna say opinions, but there's a lot of varying ideas. Can you change them? You know, maybe sometimes I think people just being aware of what's going on can help them be more intentional about what they're doing. There is an anchoring process that you can use for changing meta programs. So, and in that case, you take a situation that has a problem and you take your outcome, and then you have on the other anchor, you have something where you take the appropriate action. So maybe in this case, you're not running a procedure in money, you know, making money or doing business or sales or whatever it is. And then you take on the other side, you do what are you procedural in? Most people get up every day and they really in the morning run a huge procedure. So that's when if you're a morning person like that and you you have a procedure, a routine, sometimes they call it, routine down, put what you need to do in that place. So if you need to exercise, put it there. Don't wait till the end of the you know night and go, well, I think I'll go work out. Because it that's not when you're the most procedural, if that's true. It just depends on, you know, because everybody has procedures and everybody it does options. It just depends on what context and if it's in context, but usually the anchoring is probably one of the best ways to do it. It just has to be what's the word I want, very I don't want to use intentional, but it it has to be well thought out and planned, just like you know, managing money, so that you get the results that you want.

SPEAKER_02 23:41

Yeah. I mean, changing a meta program is probably an entire podcast in its own. Yes. But I think, I think what you said there, one of the nuggets I just gleaned was just having the self-awareness and kind of uh leaning into the belief that this, that this specifically of finances, it is off it is procedural, can help you just, you know, just knowing that can help you try to apply the procedure process. But you said something I thought was really great too. And I shared with you when you brought up the topic of money as the potential for the podcast. I myself was going through quote unquote a money, we'll call it situation because I didn't really find it to be a problem. But uh I just wasn't managing my finances as well as I would have liked to or I've had in the past. But exactly kind of what you just said, I thought about something I am very procedural with, which is my diet

Anchoring Better Habits Plus Coaching

SPEAKER_02 24:30

and exercise. And I just thought about how do I engage with that? What's my relationship? Like, how do I think about it? How do I plan that out? And then I just mapped that over to managing my finances, and it seemed to just click for me like a light switch and just worked out really well.

SPEAKER_00 24:43

Yeah, that's brilliant, absolutely brilliant. Yeah, and just FYI folks in our listening audience that NLP training can really help you with this. I'm I'm not really sure. And I'll I'll start another training next year in January. And I've had people from all over the world take it on Zoom and they've done really well with it. So even though you're not in a classroom, it is a live training, and it's you're not looking at videos or anything like that, you're actually interacting with people and me. It's just that you may be seven or eight hours out from us. So there are possibilities, but because James is a master practitioner and he's also done a lot of work and a lot of study on NLP, it becomes a lot easier to apply these kinds of things in situations when there is a problem. NLP is a tool chest, and so you get the tool chest and then you have a problem. Then you take out the tool that you need in order to do that, in order to make that change.

SPEAKER_02 25:51

Yeah, absolutely. Uh sorry to cut you off, which is one more thing, because you are absolutely right. I would have not been able to even have that level of awareness to be able to think about those things in that way. But I think something that's really important to touch on in addition to, and I don't want to derail this too much, maybe we circle back to this, is that even though I've been through the master practitioner program and it is helped exponentially, there is times when I'm going through a stressful situation or where there's a lot of bandwidth being stretched, whether it be work or whatever, or with like business, big business uh decisions that need to be made, where continued coaching is absolutely critical.

SPEAKER_00 26:28

Yeah, it does help.

SPEAKER_02 26:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:30

You know, a lot of we're gonna talk about successful, wealthy people, and a lot of them have coaches, consultants, people that they talk to, you know, sometimes on a regular basis, sometimes as a as need basis, but it's always useful to, you know, even if the person can't solve their problem, they can certainly lead them to look at different perceptions of what they're dealing with and help them make the decision that they need to make. So I

Through Time Wealth And Learning Curves

SPEAKER_00 27:05

think it's very, very, very important. Anyway, okay, so let's talk about another one in time through time. And time, how we manage or not manage, organize time in our head is so critical to being successful. Learning is through time, you know, a behavior is in time. You do a behavior, then you stop doing a behavior. But making money and maintaining wealth is a through time process. So people will say, okay, well, I want this now. Well, you can't have it now, it doesn't work like that. The through time is the unified field, and it allows you to take a step, adjust to feedback, take another step, adjust to feedback rather than being stuck in a box, which is in time and dealing with whatever you're dealing with, but not having really access to your past or future. So it's oftentimes decades, not always, but decades before people reach a level of income that can provide them with the luxury that they aspire to. That's not always true, but it just depends on a lot of previous choices. What are you doing for a living? You know, how are you making money? You don't necessarily have to have a degree in poetry, right? Something you can use right away, but you do have to have some kind of education. I have great nieces and nephews. None of them are really are interested in going to college, and they could. One of them is a young gal, she's it almost 20 now. She's an apprentice for an electrician.

SPEAKER_02 28:57

That's really cool, actually.

SPEAKER_00 28:58

I I know it's just uh I'm just amazed at that, that this is what she wants to do. And she just finds that she's really, really smart, but she didn't have any interest in going to college, you know. She wanted, she wants to make money. And she and her sister, you know, all through whenever when they were old enough to get a job, they were working, making their own money. So I don't know what chip, microchip their mother put in them, but I'm telling you, they are focused. And some of them will hold down two waitress jobs. It's really interesting how what their work ethic is. And uh, but yeah, she's already working as an apprentice. An apprenticeship is, I think, seven years. So there are all kinds of options. What are you doing? You know, I know that for years I had a plumber that he independent guy, you know, his business, built the book of business over the years, and he did really well. He was traveling all over the world. It would be really frustrating because we'd need somebody. And but he had, you know, backup, obviously. But eventually he retired and has a great life with uh exactly what he wanted. And you think of a plumber, okay. It traditionally we haven't thought of these things as very glamorous jobs, but when you don't work for somebody, you do have all the equity, and that's one of the keys to having something at the end is getting equity, whether it be in somebody else's business or your own. Anyway, that's another conversation for uh topic. Okay. So when we're through time, even though it would might take years to get to where they want, they will learn from things and failures become part of the process. Those are failures become learning situations. They're not a reason to quit. And I know that just from studying what some of the characteristics are of wealthy people, they just stay away from get rich quick schemes. Absolutely won't have anything to do with them because they know when you're building something that it's a through-time process, even though they may not talk about that. And in time, every time they don't get what they want, they look at themselves as failures. They never seem to get what they want. And in that situation, the in the Bandura curve, which we've almost talked od nauseum about, because I love the Bandura curve, it just explains so many things. That as cognitive dissonance, there's a huge gap between what we expect and our performance. And they'll reach this plateau period, have a relapse, not get a new strategy or give up before the new strategy gets put into place. And you want the new strategy and the gut to keep going to get the performance to match the expectation again. And then that helps people with identity beliefs. So at some point, you we know how to make money. Now we have to decide whether we're going to be a wealthy person. And a wealthy person is defined differently from someone who makes a lot of money, which is a behavior. There's a mindset to this that you know there can be people that make a lot of money that aren't don't necessarily think of themselves as wealthy. So obviously, definitions, but also perceptions.

SPEAKER_02 32:42

Yep, very true. I think a great example would be Warren Buffett. I mean, he may be the king of the non-glamorous through-time procedural, like uh, you know, ultra-rich guy who just spent years and years and years sticking to the process. And it was a long time, you know, he wasn't wealthy like in his 20s. Uh, it took a long time for that to hit critical mass. And, you know, kind of something to your point of what you just said, it's a mindset, it's a process, but also there'll be people who are financially wealthy, but they drive a Toyota Camry or something. You know, they don't have the Lamborghini.

SPEAKER_00 33:20

My husband's favorite car.

SPEAKER_02 33:22

Is it? It's a it's a good car.

SPEAKER_00 33:25

He just thinks that car is amazing. I mean, he's had several of them. He tells when people come to him and they go, What kind of he's a car guy, you know? And he'll come to him and he'll go, What kind of car should I get? Toyota camera. They'll go 500,000 miles. See, that's my husband's criteria. Something that will last a life. Right? Exactly. So, and that that addresses something else about money, and that is to live underneath under your means. But we'll get into that. That's one of the characteristics that I found. And they tend to save a lot, especially in the beginning. And also, people who, you know, they're in their 20s, which of course they're still trying to figure out who they are, but they're looking around them and they're seeing people make money, and especially people now, because these young people were raised in material wealth, a lot of them. And so they expect that there is no starter home anymore. It's all, you know, people want a 4,000 square foot house. First of all, do you know how much the taxes are in Dallas on that kind of a house? A. B, do you know what it takes to heat and cool it? Uh, C, and clean it and upkeep it. Oh my gosh. I wouldn't, well, at this point, I have no interest in it because I don't know what I'd do with all the room, except maybe a lot of the upstairs would be storage, but I would or closets or something like that. I don't at this point in my life don't want that. And yeah, I've not ever been, I grew up in a big house, and I know some of the problems that come with it, and I just never felt like this was something that I really wanted. And since I didn't have a boatload of kids, it wasn't really necessary. So anyway, but I digress. Okay, so the thing I was gonna say is the young people, they want to start out big right away. And the problem with that is yeah, they maybe a lot of them can make the kind of money that gives them the lifestyle that they want, but they don't have the wisdom. And so what happens is they make a lot of mistakes and sometimes they can't maintain it. Whereas a person who is, like you say, Warren Buffett, who's evolved through time and learned along the way, they get, oh yeah, okay, they recognize this. I've been here before, blah, blah, blah. A person has never been there before, they don't know what to do with that. And so there's no wisdom attached to her insight. They're just flying

Proactive Moves Feedback And Living Below Means

SPEAKER_00 36:05

by the seat of their pants. So let's talk about initiate and wait, which is originally proactive, reactive. So a proactive person takes the plunge, but you want to do that only after you understand what you're going for and what the numbers are. To be an outside sale or strike out on your own in sales, by the way, you must be proactive. You have to be. If you're wait, consider analyze, analyze, wait, wait, wait. You're never gonna get off the ground. You might as well go work in retail sales in a department store or a cashier, or you could be an analyst of some sort, which they do really well. However, if you're gonna be in sales or outside, work on your own, work for yourself, you've got to be proactive, which means take the plunge, go do it. Don't get ready, just do it.

SPEAKER_02 37:01

Yeah, a big part of that too is iteration. So instead of, I think you hear a lot about people getting a little bit of the analysis paralysis, but the best thing you do is figure out some process, go after it. And like you said, there is no such thing as failure, only feedback, learn from the setbacks, and then iterate and then just continue moving forward.

SPEAKER_00 37:18

Yeah. And then, of course, sameness, difference. You want to sort for differences. If you sort for sameness, you can do the same thing and be very happy for long periods of time. So you've got to be able to sort for differences and notice how things change. And of course, we're talking about sorting the sorting patterns, the sorting characteristics like people, place, time, people, place, activity process, those things. And money is one of them. Rogers Bailey says money is one of them. And people who make a lot of money tend to sort for money. And most people don't sort for money. Can you change that? I suppose, like anything else. It's a meta program. So you could make give that a higher importance. And then internal, external. If you're external and you're waiting for someone to tell you what to do, uh then work for someone else. You know, if you're gonna run a successful business, you have to be both. It's a great combination. You have to know that you know that something is right, but you're also you also have to take feedback from your customers, and you also have to look and adjust to what your experience is. So it's not that you're just running and gunning, but that you're taking in feedback as you go along. Your customers and a coach, you know, sometimes I tell this story about Boris Becker and how when he started out playing tennis, he was so bad. It wasn't bad, but he didn't have the natural talent that a lot of his contemporaries did, you know, at that age. And so he was playing the girls, but he was the one that actually became a star, right? World-class tennis, and the rest of them disappeared. And they, you know, somebody asked him, Well, what happened? He goes, Well, you know, it wasn't that they didn't have the talent, they just wouldn't. He said the biggest thing is you've got to be able to take feedback, you got to be able to listen to your coaches and do what they tell you because they know more than you. And so that's part of the problem with a lot of people. They think they know what they're doing, and that's not necessarily true. And oftentimes the younger you are, the less you know what you're doing. And I hate to say that because I was young once, and I absolutely thought I knew everything there was about the world. And of course, now I know that was a ridiculously stupid idea. Okay. So anything about that, James?

SPEAKER_02 40:00

Yeah, you know, I like to think of myself as I hope to be internally referenced with external considerations when it comes to business. Like I like to uh to believe that is what I do. I consider the external information deeply, uh, but at the end of the day, I try to be eternally referenced. I think, right? But I'm kind of a fish of water on this as well. Yeah, no, that's all really great. I love I love the tennis story there because it's it's so true. Being able to take the feedback and uh learn and grow from it, I think is absolutely critical.

SPEAKER_00 40:31

Yeah. Okay, so now let's talk about beliefs and strategies versus strategies and capabilities and behaviors. If you're doing

Do The Math Automate Spending Closing

SPEAKER_00 40:40

the math and all of this, you know, living the dream costs money. So how much money? And this is what you alluded to earlier, James, is when you said, okay, with your wife, we want to buy a house, buy another house, maybe uh, I'm assuming you're going to upgrade. Is that it? Or no? Are you just yeah?

SPEAKER_02 41:02

I mean, just to give you a cliff notes, we want to get land and uh and start building some some stuff on there. Um, yeah. So good.

SPEAKER_00 41:09

Okay, so that's good. Yeah, but how much? How much? So use sensory terms in your dream building. What are you gonna say? What is it gonna look like? I remember I wanted um get a bigger house. This was years and years and years ago. Not that my other house was it was great, it was a my first little house, but I wanted a bigger house. And my friends, I had two friends, one of them moved out of my neighborhood. She just lived down the street and bought this house, uh, this big house. It wasn't big, but it was kind of. And then my friend out east coast, they moved and bought a bigger house. So everybody's moving, and I'm thinking, I better, you know, maybe I better do so. I started visualizing the house, me moving in, all this sort of thing. What does it sound like? Of course, then I didn't do the math. So I got the house, and you know, I did move in and then didn't realize that you know I was gonna get killed on property taxes and keep, but I didn't get killed, it was just a little blip. But go test the luxury car, go through luxury houses if that's what you want, but do the math. What is it gonna take money-wise to live there? What are the utility costs, the property taxes? What are your income taxes going to be? In Dallas, a three to four thousand new bill in my neighborhood, it'll come with anywhere from a million to two million dollar price tag and around thirty-two thousand dollars in property taxes a year. Oh man. So, yeah, they're not mansions, they're nice two-story houses, but they cost money to heat and air condition. And a lot of them are spec houses. Well, when they're spec houses, these builders they don't put in these big air conditioning systems. So these people will move in and discover they're gonna have to upgrade their some of their systems in order to get the kind of heat and air conditioning that they really need. And then let's not talk about maintenance. Oh my gosh, the cost of having something done is skyrocketed because the materials have skyrocketed. A Ferrari, which I could not even get in and out of at this point, it's so low to the ground, but a Ferrari costs between $3,000 and $8,000 a year maintenance. So catch my drift on this, folks. I mean, I'm not saying this to be discouraging, I'm saying it to do the math, figure out what it's gonna take. This isn't something that is kind of a nebulous, oh yes, I'm gonna have this and this and this. Like James is saying, if you want something, then you've got to be very specific and intentional about it. And one of the strategies that wealthy people, because it's a through-time process building wealth, is to live below your means. You cannot spend yourself into wealth, you have to be able to save and invest, which I know James has done all the way along, right?

SPEAKER_02 44:27

Oh, yeah, absolutely. And and just not to kind of beat the dead horse there, but that is so like the my process, and I've read a lot of books on it. And honestly, I've not reinvented any of these wheels. I just went out and found books and processes and automatic. What I was gonna get to is what I learned was it's so much automization because it's not something you don't want to have the stress or the applying your bandwidth every single second of every single day, following every single dollar. But you can automate, especially in today's world with a lot of the technology. You just you have to automate controlling your spending. And of course, like you just said, the golden ticket is to absolutely spend less than you make. I mean, you have to start there.

SPEAKER_01 45:08

This is the end of part one of this two-part episode. Part two will be published on the heels of part one, so you can check that out right away. Subscribe to our show on Spotify, Apple, Bud Sprout, or your favorite listening platform to keep up with our newest episode. Be sure to visit our website, www.nlptrainingconcepts.com, and find us on Facebook, LinkedIn, and X by searching NLP Training Concepts to keep up with free resources, upcoming training, and fantastic content.