On the latest episode of The Get Ready Money Podcast, I spoke with Micah Autry, speaker, podcast host, author and entrepreneur about changing the way we think about money and finding the one thing that will make a difference.
In this episode we discussed:
Micah Autry is currently a serial entrepreneur that owns Aume Motion Arts LLC, Autry & Stanley Real Estate Investments, and the Secrets of Silent Success podcast. Autry also authored “Dorm Life to Work Life” a millennial’s guide to being an adult, bridging the gap with older generations and finding success. Micah has dedicated his life to improving living conditions for others and breaking generational curses.
Connect with Micah Autry:
Website: http://dirmicahautry.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/micahaumeautry
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/secretsofsilentsuccess/
YouTube - https://youtube.com/@Secretsofsilentsuccess?si=hSLTgxC3DoYThkeA
TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@sosspodcast
Podcast:
Secrets of Silence Success Podcast: https://www.dirmicahautry.com/secretsofsilentsuccesspodcast
Book:
On the latest episode of The Get Ready Money Podcast, I spoke with Micah Autry, speaker, podcast host, author and entrepreneur about changing the way we think about money and finding the one thing that will make a difference.
In this episode we discussed:
Micah Autry is currently a serial entrepreneur that owns Aume Motion Arts LLC, Autry & Stanley Real Estate Investments, and the Secrets of Silent Success podcast. Autry also authored “Dorm Life to Work Life” a millennial’s guide to being an adult, bridging the gap with older generations and finding success. Micah has dedicated his life to improving living conditions for others and breaking generational curses.
Connect with Micah Autry:
Website: http://dirmicahautry.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/micahaumeautry
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/secretsofsilentsuccess/
YouTube - https://youtube.com/@Secretsofsilentsuccess?si=hSLTgxC3DoYThkeA
TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@sosspodcast
Podcast:
Secrets of Silence Success Podcast: https://www.dirmicahautry.com/secretsofsilentsuccesspodcast
Book:
Are you looking to get ready, be prepared and transform your financial future? Then you've come to the right place. This is the Get Ready Money Podcast with Tony Stewart, where Tony has insightful conversations with financial experts who are changing the way we think about money. Watch up on the latest financial trends and hear practical advice from Tony and his expert guests so you can build healthy habits that work. Be empowered with tips for implementing small changes that can have a big impact on your financial future. So sit back and get ready to hear from today's guest.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Get Ready Money Podcast changing the way we think about money. I'm pleased to be joined today by Micah Autry. Micah is a professional speaker, podcast host, author and entrepreneur. In this episode, we'll be discussing Micah's thoughts on how we change the way we think about money and achieving success in our life. Micah, welcome to the Get Ready Money Podcast.
Speaker 3:Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm excited to jump into it and talk all things finances.
Speaker 2:Fantastic. Well, let's get down to it. You know, tell us a little bit about yourself. What is your origin story?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so my origin story. I'm from the sunny side of Houston, texas, sunny side of the neighborhood in which I grew up. However, there wasn't anything sunny about sunny side. Sunny side is the sixth worst neighborhood in the country in regards to poverty and framerate. Grew up in a single-parent household and we were blessed to always have a roof over our head.
Speaker 3:However, we always struggled financially. There was always some financial trauma in there, whether that's an eviction notice or the light skin turned off or cell phones getting turned off or hey, you got food on the table, but maybe that's not necessarily the food that you wanted as a kid. So all of those things we struggled with growing up and one of the things that I realized once I got a little older I didn't learn the word equity until I was 19. Growing up, we didn't own any of the homes or apartments we lived in, didn't own the cars that we drove. Even some of the consumer electronics that we had didn't own those either. Tv, they were rented and at least the owned things like that. And so when I was in high school, got to college, I was like, hey, I want to own my own stuff and that's why I chose entrepreneurship. I own my own equipment, I own equity in the company and that really started me on this financial literacy, this financial wellness journey through equity ownership and having control over my finances.
Speaker 2:Well, that's great, that's an inspiring story and it's hard for I know probably a lot of my listeners or viewers to understand that, because a lot of us are born more fortunate. So, with that as a paradigm, do you think some of that? I know you do some work for individuals of color. Do you think that there was a maybe not a bias built into the system, but that you know that it might have been a little bit different? You know, in terms of financial literacy and financial wellness, that you were a little bit further behind.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely so. I'm a descendant of a slave. I consider myself to be black American. My grandmother, who just passed away in February at the age of 87, her grandparents, were enslaved, especially here in Texas. I don't understand that the Juneteenth holiday, the slaves in Gallus in Texas, where I grew up 45 minutes from with the last slaves to be freed, and so because of some of those I don't want to say some of those, but because you know you're starting to raise so far behind it's harder to catch up.
Speaker 3:My grandmother grew up on the farm. My grandmother literally was picking cotton and eggs and things of that nature, just to put you know, help. Her family and she was one of seven put food on the table. She was able to move to the big city, but still was in the big city doing Jim Crow. And then, you know, once she was able to have kids, my mother went to a 90% white high school in 1980. Right, so you're still dealing with all of these systemic and systematic issues in regards to rates, privilege and financial literacy, and you know she has us.
Speaker 3:I'm a first generation college student. I'm definitely picking up the pieces and running a race, starting a little bit behind some of my peers and I don't want to make it simply black and white, because I know peers of mine who grew up in the North who families were a little bit further ahead than my family who grew up in the south. So, yeah, you definitely got to understand the story in totality, to understand, okay, first generation college student which you have five or six generations in. While that may have been the case, I definitely think it stems from some of the foundations our country would build on when it comes to slavery, prejudice, the lack of literacy, you know, just being able to read things of that nature.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's interesting. We could probably I'm sure we could put the whole episode going into that, but you know, but I think it's important for people to remember. If you feel challenged in your own personal financial life is that you know, maybe put it in perspective. You know that wherever you're starting from, you know that you know there's not much you can do about it.
Speaker 3:It's about the moves you make going forward and I think that's your story as well, yeah, when I go and do public speaking, my favorite quote to say is you're not a product of your environment, your product of how you respond to your environment. My professional speaking coach, a gentleman by the name of Chris Singleton, talks about how 10% of your life you can't control. You can't control the neighborhood you grow up, can't control your skin tone, you can't control the name you're born with, you can't control your parents or whatever financial situation that they basalt upon you. But you do have the other 90% to change it. Now I understand I got to work a little harder Right, it's a relay race and maybe I got to run with two buttons. I got to run the race twice and I can't change that. But I do have that 90% to be able to make decisions based upon how I want to respond to an environment. As opposed to. I am simply subjected to whatever the environment was that I was brought up in, especially when it comes to finances.
Speaker 2:And well, that's awesome and I think that's such a powerful message and takeaway for people is that you know there's so many things that you can't change. As you worry about what you do going forward and worry about those things you can change, I think the only thing I would say with your list is you can't change your name. You can't change it.
Speaker 3:Yes, that's, that's all. That's all I was saying. The name you're born with right.
Speaker 1:You're born with, you got to take that one yeah.
Speaker 3:You're born with absolutely.
Speaker 2:So I love that. So you know I mean you probably already personally answered this, but you know I want to ask you is you know what particularly inspired you to make this your journey to help individuals of color achieve professional success, health and wealth?
Speaker 3:It's just what I see every single day, and this starts with wanting to help the people that are closer to me friends, family, loved ones and then it branches out from there. I personally think through academics, first generation college student, I love to read books. As you can see behind me, I wrote a book. I love that.
Speaker 3:Self-education through professionalism, starting the company, understanding the game of corporate America, understanding the game of we live in a capitalist society you got to be able to make money and play the game. If you don't want to play the game, that's totally different topic for a different podcast. But we live in a capitalist society you got to learn how to play the game, be professional. And then the third thing was just that financial literacy. So for me, I believe I've been able to change my life and hopefully change the course of my family's life, break it no generational curses through education, professionalism and financial literacy. So I've been able to curate all of this from experiential knowledge and from self-education. I just want to go get it back to everybody else because I see how much of an impact it's had on my life.
Speaker 2:That's awesome, that's powerful, and I think that's. The best thing you can do with your knowledge is to pass it on to others instead of keeping it for yourself. And one of the things you said that particularly resonates for me is that when you mention that it's a game and it's understanding the rules, whether or not, I think for some people they may say, well, it's not really a game, but I think what you're saying is it's understanding the rules of whatever you want to call it, so you can be successful, and I think it's powerful.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think I'll push back. It's absolutely a game, especially here in America. We're in a capitalistic society. Mark Cuban who I'm hearing now so I love Mark Cuban, been able to meet him a couple of times he says business is the ultimate game. The game of business, the game of money, the game of life it's an infinite game as well.
Speaker 3:So I don't think there's very many rules. There are some rules and laws of the land in which we live. So if you step out of those rules there will be consequences. But for the most part, for example, the way that you keep score and how you impact people in life. Maybe you keep score monetarily. A lot of people keep score by the amount of zeros they have in a bank account, but someone else may keep score by the impact that they have on others. Some people may keep score by the raising of their offspring, of their children. So that's life. You're going to judge how successful you are based upon your own metric. So it's not any set or rules per se, but I think we do have to get up every day, take action in this ecosystem that we live in Because, like I said, you live in a capitalist society.
Speaker 2:So money is important, business is important, taking action is important 100%, and I think you said something there that I want to emphasize is, you know, judge your life by your own metrics, and that I think sometimes people worry too much about what other people are doing rather than you know. Like, hey, is this making me happy? An example that I like to use is you know Warren Buffett, who he lives in the same house he bought in 1958. I think he bought it for like I can't remember, you know like $35,000 or something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah you could probably afford an upgrade if you wanted, but you know yeah. Amazing. So you know, let's let's talk about your book. You mentioned it. You know, tell us a little bit about your book, dorm life to work life and how it can help college graduates, yeah.
Speaker 3:So the book is a book that I wrote by accident. I was giving public speaking presentations over a bridge and a gap between millennial, gen Z, gen Alpha and Baby Boomers and Gen X. So I was writing a book about bridging the gap between young people and the more seasoned professionals right, because I always felt I was kind of the middle child. I had my own company but I was working with generations that were older but I was managing generations that were younger. So I wrote this book to help make that transition from being in the dorm room to being in the work arena. Based upon my experiences. I say I wrote the book by accident because I was doing the public speaking presentations and I read a quote by Jeff Bezos. We all know Jeff Bezos, amazon and he talked about.
Speaker 3:You don't really know content for a presentation. If you're only putting on PowerPoint slides. You need to write it out verbatim and pro-sform. When you write out a couple of presentations verbatim and pro-sform, you end up having 30, 40, 50,000 words. That's what I had and I was like I should probably turn this into a book and continue to help people, and that's kind of how it came about.
Speaker 2:That's awesome and I think that's such an important topic. I recently did a talk to a group of college students who are about. It was fully focused on financial literacy. But it's amazing how these people, even if they don't go to college, they go from high school and they're jumping into work life and all of a sudden they're expected to know all these things. But it's like where do you find them?
Speaker 3:I'm glad you wrote that. Yeah, yeah, and I think young people I'm biased. I love young people. I think, in terms of skills, they are more skills than we are. I know a gentleman making five figures a month using TikTok and Shopify and he's like 19. So they're extremely skilled. It's the soft skills, whether we say, hey, it was a byproduct of Corona, or whether it's the byproduct of just being at information age. Right, we're all on technology, we're all on social media. We're not having these interpersonal connections anymore. That's where I feel like a lot of people are lacking, and so, for me, I wrote the book and I'm like, hey, here are these soft skills that I've learned. You add that to the hard skills you already have, you can take over the world.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's definitely, and I'm sure we can even go back to what we were talking about with rules and say there are almost rules in some respect. This is sort of what's going to change. So let's switch gears here. For a second, Micah, get into the Get Ready questions. So the first one is what basic money concept do you wish people knew?
Speaker 3:One basic concept I wish people knew that you can't earn and save your way to wealth. In my opinion, I think you have to stop trading your time for a dollar. Time is a finite resource. It's the most valuable thing that we got and it's very limited. And we are so spread thin with it with family obligations, with community obligations, with job obligations, that if we only trade that time for money to be able to be a wealth exponentially, it's gonna be really hard. So we have to figure out ways to invest, make our money work for us, gain equity, things of that nature.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that. I was just making a note on how to make our money work for us because I think that's powerful for people to understand that you have to find that balance. Some people are gonna trade time for money but it's like, okay, you can still split the difference and have some of your money working for you. That it's not always either worth proposition, but transition as much as you can.
Speaker 3:And the last thing I'll say to that it's also I still trade time for money, whether it's professionally speaking, whether it's my video production company. But I do try to find things that are higher leverage and that it's not a direct correlation of money for time. For example, when I first started my video production company, I'm like, okay, well, I'm $50 an hour to film. Right. Now I'm saying, okay, for a four day rate, we're $3,000, right, because we have higher leverage. Or instead of charging per hour for edit, it's like, hey, if you want this type of video, you gotta give us a thousand bucks because I may be able to do it in 30 minutes. Someone else may be able to do it in four hours. They shouldn't get paid more. I should get paid more because I have the expertise to be able to do it more efficiently. So just changing that mindset around how we are valuing ourselves, and not just by the hour but by our expertise, I think will make a big difference as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, by our expertise Sorry, you're saying so much great stuff rather than by our Well, and I think that's an important lesson for people, because I know even when I was doing consulting, I often struggled with like okay, well, how much do I charge per hour rather than charging per project, and I think that's a mindset and I think that's the hard thing for people is because it's one thing to say stop trading time for dollars, but what I love is that you have a really crystal clear way of doing that, and I think that's what people struggle with.
Speaker 2:Is they go okay? Well I hear all these great things and it makes sense like how do I actually do it? Yeah, I love it. So what is one simple thing you can do each year to set yourself up for financial success?
Speaker 3:Tracking your net worth, one of the things. Well, I was gonna say net worth. There's one of those things. I didn't understand that concept, know that term or anything, until I'm 19, 20, 21 years old. I remember the first time I had $10,000 in positive net worth, Right after you'd knock out all the student loan, all the consumer debt, et cetera, et cetera. I was like, okay, well, I'm getting somewhere. Now I can build upon this.
Speaker 3:So, once or twice a quarter, I look at my network. I reevaluate how much the real estate properties are that I have. I go and look at, hey, what do I have in this stock? It goes up and down like crazy, especially right now. But what do I have in this stock market? What do I have in cryptocurrency? And it really just gives me an overall picture, in my opinion, of my money health. It's like going to the doctor and getting that wellness checkup to understand okay, this is your blood pressure. These are the things that you need to do to maybe course correct if it's a little high. And so having that idea of your net worth, understanding how many assets you got, how much money you got versus what's your debt is, I think give you a very good picture on where you are, and then you can focus on where you're going.
Speaker 2:Definitely and I love that because I sort of refer to it as car dashboard is you can see if there's any changes. If there's a problem with the oil but so you're taking on too much debt, you can adjust it, but if you're not looking at it it's hard to know.
Speaker 3:What we pay attention to gets better.
Speaker 2:Exactly, squeak wheel gets re-sauced. So, micah, what is one habit that people can change when it comes to their money?
Speaker 3:One habit, not making purchases and money decisions based upon emotion. Finances, money, whatever we want to call it is a very emotionally charged topic, in my opinion. I start making these YouTube videos about finances like, hey, don't buy that car, buy a cash car, or maybe we should downsize and get roommates. I had roommates for nine years and people feel so personally attacked when you start talking about what they're doing with their wallets, and so, in my opinion, some of the best things that I've done financially, for example, was have roommates for nine years, from the age of 18 to 27,. I never paid more than $650 in rent. You know how well that sets you up financially. Right, and then you also have a car that's paid off at that same time.
Speaker 3:But I was able to make that sacrifice because I wasn't thinking emotionally, all right, I wasn't saying, okay, I can go get this $2,000 a month one bedroom apartment because it looks cool or because it's gonna make me feel good, or hey, I'm gonna go to have my own place. I was thinking logically, and how I define logic is making decisions that's gonna help me get towards my goal, and my goal was to be able to buy an investment property every year. My goal was to have a million dollar net worth by the time I turned 30. Those are my financial goals. Having $2,000 a month in rent and having a $700 card note was not gonna help me get to those goals, so I was able to make the sacrifice to have roommates for nine years to help me get closer towards those goals. So I think if there's one habit that I would tell people to change is making those financial decisions based upon emotion. Start making them based upon logic. That gets you closer to the goals that you set for yourself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I agree completely, and it reminds me of what you were talking about earlier. It's setting your own rules and making your own metrics, because for a lot of people they're gonna say, well, I don't really want roommates, but neither one is good or bad, it's whatever works for you. But I think, you see, that you said is that there's a trade-off. So you don't want a roommate, well, that's okay, but you have to understand that that's gonna impact you somewhere else and then you gotta make that change. So I love it.
Speaker 3:Great input is an output.
Speaker 2:Exactly exactly Every action reaction. So what money myth are you trying to break?
Speaker 3:What money myth am I trying to break? I would say the idea that you have to become, or you have no choice but to become, those around you. Maybe your parents weren't great with money, maybe you come from disadvantaged socioeconomic circumstances. Only because you come from those environments doesn't mean you have to succumb to those environments. As I said earlier, we're not a product environment. We're a product where hybrid respond. We see it all the time. There are plenty of people who grow up disadvantaged financially, who do extremely well, right. But then you also see people who may inherit a lot of money, or athletes who get a million dollar contract at 19, and then they no longer have that money. So it's not really the environment, right, it's the way that they responded to it. So I just want people to understand that we do have. We do have choice when it comes to controlling our finances.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree with you completely, and it's disheartening when it goes either way, as people think that I can't do that. This is where I come from. These are my resources now. Or you see an athlete that loses all their money and it really gets back to one the metrics that you were talking about. Two, understanding the rules of the game. Three, it's getting out there and learning something, and you also have to be proactive, in my mind, in seeking out the knowledge that it's just not gonna come to you usually how to do these things. You have to learn. Yeah, it'd be open to learn, absolutely 100%. Yeah. So, micah, let's get out the time machine. Okay, what advice would you give your younger self if you could go back in time knowing what you know now?
Speaker 3:Yeah, this one may be a little controversial. However, I was talking to I do video production, so I was doing videos for a law firm. I was talking to the two managing partners of the law firm they do wrongful death and serious injury of all and I asked them hey, what makes you get into this field of law? And they were both saying, hey, you know, we you wanted to get in the law. One of them talked about wanting to potentially go to medical school, but hey, I wasn't really smart enough when it came to the math and sciences, so I went to the law profession. But they went into the law profession and specifically serious injury because they knew the type of lifestyle that they wanted. They knew the type of wealth they wanted to accumulate for them and their families and they made a choice on their schooling. They made a choice on their career path. They made a choice on the actions that they would take to be proactive to get that future self that they wanted in regards to their wealth and finances.
Speaker 3:For me, I went to school based more upon feeling, which is nothing wrong with that. It was, hey, I like this media stuff. I think it's cool. It's the last thing that I did in high school was, on my last elective, Like, let me go to college for that.
Speaker 3:However, I started getting exposed to different ways of life and I'm like okay, well, I want my income, my wealth, my financial wellness to look like this. However, incoming jobs as a media professional is $45,000. Those are a big disconnect, and if I could go back and tell my younger self something, it would be hey, establish the type of life that you want in the future. What do you want your finances to look like? What type of wealth do you want to accumulate to break generational curses for your family? What type of things do you want to do financially and then be able to dictate what you do professionally based upon what you want to go with your finances? Maybe a little bit of a controversial take, but if I had to do it over again, I definitely would, Because now, as I approach my 30s, I think about why I'm going to trade my time and money and what's going to give me the most leverage to get the type of life I want financially.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you know that's that's great advice, I just know. So. My son is 18. He's in college and giving him that type of advice, yeah, I think if I could go back, you know that'd be great advice for myself. But you know it's hard to give somebody 18 years old that type of advice. Yeah, yep, but it's what I tell all my guys.
Speaker 3:I try to tell all my, my, my nieces and nephews I have 70s of nephews. I don't have any children of my own. But I'm like, hey, you know, what do you think about coding? What do you think about it? What do you think about this? What do you think about that? Because they all want to do, you know, video production and content creation like their uncle, which is fine. I've been able to make a living for it. But hey, what type of life do you want? Right, you want a bigger house in mind. You want to have more impact to donate to your community than I do. Well, hey, maybe we do different professions as well. So I try to. But, like, just say, we talked to 18 year old who are, you know, bright, out, bushy tail and want to go to the big university, to go to football games. It may be hard to get them to think about. Should I do medicine, coding or law versus you know, content creation.
Speaker 2:Exactly, it's just not as much fun. But you know I mean and that's I mean, that's a whole other topic is, you know, that sort of mismatch between our educational system and reality. What they're going to be doing, what they can do in high school, so you know, to start to wrap up, is what is your number one tip on changing the way we think about money?
Speaker 3:Number one tip. Oh, I have a couple If I could say two, if that's okay, of course and we've covered both of them a little bit. The first thing is, to your point earlier, proactive self education. Everything that I learned about money I would literally say everything that I've learned about money came through some form of self education, whether that was reading books, watching podcasts, going to conferences, finding someone who had a financial life that I wanted to emulate and asking them questions. Unfortunately, traditional schooling taught me nothing that I currently use in in apply to my financial life, and traditional schooling taught me none of it. And, unfortunately, my family taught me none of it. They didn't understand brokerage accounts, investments, real estate. They didn't understand that those weren't even terms that we've heard. So everything that I've learned has been through self education. And then the second thing I would say is understanding gratification.
Speaker 3:I believe we have to redefine and delay gratification. When I say redefining gratification, I was a big gamer. I love the game. I still like to buy sneakers, but I bought a lot more sneakers when I was younger. But that's just to feel good. You're feeling worried, you're doing these things to make you feel good, but you could also get that same dopamine hit of gratification through seeing that little ticker on the stock market go up right, or signing the papers when we're buying another rental property. I got that same gratification that I would if I would have bought the sneakers. I bought the new Range Rover, I bought this, I bought that. So that's the first thing, redefining the gratification.
Speaker 3:And then the second thing is delaying the gratification. The sacrifices that I made when I was 18, 19, 20, starting the business no party, no this, no that. Saving money, being extremely frugal right when I was 19, 20, 21, having roommates for nine years. I'm able to reap the benefits of those seeds that were planted through delay gratification when I'm 30. And hey, if I don't want to work this week, I necessarily have to. I have a staff of business, I have multiple streams of income coming in. All of that is a byproduct of the sacrifices that I made when I was 20, 21, 22, et cetera.
Speaker 2:That's powerful, and I think you just said something there too multiple streams of income. That I want to emphasize, because I think that's important for people to start to think about is, you know, whatever that means for you is that it's good to have more than one source of income if you can, so you're not wholly dependent upon that. So that's an important thing, and I think it comes around to some of what you're talking about, to which we're very first starting to talk about with your origin story is that you know you, in your background and in your family, you guys didn't talk about stocks and you didn't talk about investment just because that was your parents.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So how are your parents going to teach you something that they don't know themselves? So you know. So it's important for us to all be self starters with our education and show ourselves.
Speaker 3:The one point I would say to that you know being able to teach your kids about stocks. How are you going to teach something that you don't know? I think for anyone who may have grown up in a similar situation that I was in, or currently in a similar socioeconomic state that's disadvantaged I would say we have to get to survival as quick as possible. You can't focus on thriving if you're focusing on surviving and for years my mom is just focusing on surviving. We're just focusing on keeping the lights on. We're just focusing on making sure the kids get to school and that the bills are paid and the cars don't get towed. We're just focusing on survival.
Speaker 3:We can never think about thriving. We can never think about another stream of income or how to be better with our finances or how to save or how to invest when we're simply surviving and staying afloat. So, as quick as you can get to surviving, get those bills on auto pay, get that one stream of income that's going to be able to keep the lights on, and as soon as you get to survival, then we can focus on thriving. But there's so many individuals that I still know personally that we're still just trying to survive, that we can never focus on thriving.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's tough when you have people who are, I guess, on a treadmill, where it's, you know, you make just enough to pay the rent, buy the groceries, maybe get some clothes, and it's like, and there's people who can't cut back, at that point they're already cut back, so it's like you know. Then maybe it's like I don't know, you know, can you pick up extra income? I mean, I don't know what would you say to those people you know who are, you know, right there at the survivals, like how do you start to move the needle a little bit?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I read a book called the One Thing. And even when I'm thinking about, you know, finding a wife, right? Or when you're thinking about making a move from Texas to California, whatever that may be, any type of major transition in your life, there's one thing, there's one thing that you can do that can get you off that treadmill. You may fall on your face when you do that one thing. It may hurt, it may suck, but it's that one thing. And when I say that, people will think about that one thing. And even though you're on the treadmill, you're just making enough for rent, you're taking care of the kids, you're buying the groceries, you're doing all of that. But you know you have two hours of free time, from seven to nine. What do you do? Do you watch Netflix? Do you play the video game? Do you drink alcohol? Right, what are you doing in just those two hours? Just those two hours, what's that hour and a half look like? Or, okay, maybe you slept eight and a half hours. Could I do one thing and sleep six and a half hours? Wake up two hours earlier. What could you do in that two hours? Just one thing. Just one thing, I think, will help you get off the treadmill.
Speaker 3:Now, you may fall off the treadmill, you may get some carpet burn, but that's gonna be your way of getting off. So I think you gotta figure out what that one thing is. That's gonna get you off the treadmill and it's gonna hurt and it's gonna suck and it's gonna be hard to stay consistently consistent because you're gonna wanna hop back on that treadmill and whatever you stop doing, that one thing is okay I'm done playing video games. I'm gonna dedicate this one hour of free time to learning about money. You're gonna go back and play the video game. That's human nature. We're gonna quote, unquote, relapse to whatever that one thing is. That's okay. You just need to fall back off the treadmill again and do it enough until you build a new habit, until you redefine what gratifies you, and I think that's what it is. You gotta figure out what that one thing is. It's gonna hurt really bad, but I think you just gotta do it.
Speaker 1:And for me I used the video game method.
Speaker 3:I used the video game example because that's one of the things that I gave up. I haven't played video games for like four or five years. I was a huge gamer, multiple hours a day and I was like, okay, cold turkey, this is not getting me to where I wanna be financially. I'm just gonna stop the video games. I'm just gonna throw them away and I'm gonna come over here and look at Fidelity. I'm gonna come over here and read this book by Simon Siddick or by Ryder Kiyosaki, like I'm gonna go do that and it sucked and it hurts, but you read the award in the future.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for example, like they say in working out no pain, no gain.
Speaker 3:No pain, no gain.
Speaker 2:Unfortunately, you do have to pay for success, but I think that's powerful. Advice is to find that one thing because I think that's something that people miss is that you think you have to make these huge changes and if you can start to make one small change, one small step, double-edit your next step and then your next step, and then you've got the big change. What is it saying? Every journey starts with. You know, I can't remember what it is, but you know, every journey of a thousand miles starts with one step, something like that, you know.
Speaker 3:Yep, yeah, yeah, that sounds close enough.
Speaker 2:Well, we'll close with that. So, micah, weird people learn more about you. Keep up with your work. Pick up a copy of Dorm Life to Work Life and just generally what you're up to.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you can visit my website, which is D-I-R. Micahrtreecom, or follow me on all social media YouTube, instagram, all that good stuff, tiktok at secrets of silent success, which is also the name of my podcast.
Speaker 2:Perfect. Well, thank you very much for joining us, kay, appreciate your time and your insights. No problem, I've been forced to do it again sometime, definitely, and everyone. Thank you, as always, for tuning in to the Get Ready Money podcast. Please remember to subscribe and to change the way you think about money Until next time. I'll see you next week.