THE ED MYLETT SHOW - 5 Habits To Become a Millionaire: How Everyone Can Build Wealth in 2025!

Episode Date: May 17, 2025

👇 SUBSCRIBE TO MY YOUTUBE CHANNEL - so this show can reach more people 👇 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIprGZAdzn3ZqgLmDuibYcw?sub_confirmation=1 Click the Link Below to Subscribe to my email list to MAXOUT your life (all value, no fluff) https://konect.to/edmylett 💥 Get my exclusive Monday Motivation training in GrowthDay, the world’s #1 app for advanced mindset and personal development. Visit https://growthday.com/ed. This show is sponsored by GrowthDay. Want to Be the First Millionaire in Your Family? Start Here. In this episode, I’m bringing you a MASHUP of voices you need to hear if you want to stop living paycheck to paycheck and finally take control of your financial future. This is straight talk — no fluff, no gimmicks, just real conversations about the habits and decisions that actually lead to wealth. I’m joined by Vivian Tu, Billy Gene, Candy Valentino, and Marc Lore, and every one of them brings something real to the table. Vivian Tu breaks down her “STRIP” framework — not what you think — which stands for Savings, Total Debt, Retirement, Investing, and Plan. It's practical, it's relatable, and it's something every young person should be taught in school. I jump in to challenge her on the idea of tax deferral and 401(k)s, because too many of you are deferring money into accounts without fully understanding what that means down the road. And I want you to think about whether taxes are really going to be lower when you retire. Marc Lore takes us behind the scenes on raising capital — not just the logistics, but the mindset. He explains why equity often beats debt and how control doesn't have to mean owning 100%. And Candy? She drops some of the best financial parenting advice I've heard — teaching kids through action, not just words. “Caught, not taught,” as she says. Billy Gene brings the heat, reminding us all that trying to figure it out alone is a massive mistake. And his breakdown of how solving bigger problems leads to bigger income? That’s a formula you can take straight to the bank. This isn’t about having a million-dollar idea. It’s about building million-dollar habits — starting with what you drive, how you spend, and what you save. I’ve been broke. I’ve had cars repossessed and my power shut off. And I’ve also built real wealth — not just to have nice things, but to have peace, freedom, and control. That’s what I want for you. Key Takeaways: - Vivian Tu’s STRIP method for financial health — and why investing isn’t just opening an account. - Why trying to look rich is the fastest way to stay broke. - How Marc Lore thinks about equity vs. debt — and what it really means to keep control. - Billy Gene’s one piece of advice that could save you years of wasted effort. - How to teach kids financial discipline by modeling it, not preaching it. - Why the lie that “you’ve got time” is crushing the next generation’s potential. If you’ve been wondering where to start, or how to restart, this is it. Build the habits now. Save the money. Ask the right questions. Get the help you need. I’ve made the mistakes, so you don’t have to. This episode is your wake-up call — and your invitation to stop living like you're broke and start living like someone building wealth. Let’s go. Thank you for watching this video—Please Share it and get the word out! 👇 SUBSCRIBE TO MY YOUTUBE CHANNEL👇 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIprGZAdzn3ZqgLmDuibYcw?sub_confirmation=1 ▶︎ Visit My WEBSITE | https://www.EdMylett.com #EdMylett #Motivation Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

So hey guys, listen, we're all trying to get more productive and the question is how do you find a way to get an edge? I'm a big believer that if you're getting mentoring or you're in an environment that causes growth, a growth-based environment, that you're much more likely to grow and you're going to grow faster and that's why I love Growth Day. Growth Day is an app that my friend Brendan Burchard has created that I'm a big fan of. Write this down growthday.com forward slash ed. So if you want to be more productive, by the way, he's asked me, I post videos in there every single Monday that gets your day off to the right start. He's got about 5,000, $10,000 worth of courses that are in there that come with

the app. Also some of the top influencers in the world are all posting content and they're on a regular basis, like having the Avengers of personal development and business in one app. And I'm honored that he asked me to be a part of it as well and contribute on a weekly basis. And I do. So go asked me to be a part of it as well and contribute on a weekly basis, and I do. So go over there and get signed up.

You're gonna get a free, tuition-free voucher to go to an event with Brendan and myself and a bunch of other influencers as well. So you get a free event out of it also. So go to growthday.com forward slash Ed. That's growthday.com forward slash Ed. Hey, it's Ed Mylett. Let me share something powerful with you.

You know, in uncertain times, the smartest people I know protect what they've built. That's why Advantage Gold is a part of our program now. And what I love about what they're doing is they're giving away a free gold and silver investor kit that walks you through exactly how to get started. Text WIN to 85545 to get your free kit. That's WIN to 85545. Don't wait for the next crash. Be the one who's ready. Protect, prepare,

and prosper. Message and data rates may apply. Performance varies. Always consult your financial and tax professional. This is the Ed Mylett Show. Hey everyone, welcome to my weekend special. I hope you enjoy the show. Be sure to follow the Ed Mylett show on Apple and Spotify. Links are in the show notes. You'll never miss an episode that way. I'm fired up about today because we're going to talk about money and you having more, accumulating

more, making more and why it matters. It's not a topic that's discussed enough in polite society and it should be. And my guest today is immensely qualified to discuss this topic. I love her work. As an influencer, you know her as your rich BFF, but I know her as Vivian too. And Vivian is a multifaceted financial expert. She's an entrepreneur and she used to be a Wall Street trader. So she's got a background in doing this, but she takes complicated stuff,

financial and breaks it down simply so that people like you and I can understand it. She's got a crazy good book out called Rich AF, the winning money mindset that will change your life. And I cannot wait to jump into all this stuff with her. So Vivian, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. Someone's listening to this. They go, I want to be the first

millionaire in my family. Let's just start there. I want to be the first millionaire in my family. What would you say to that person who says I want that badly? You need to strip. And then they're like, Oh, I didn't realize this was that kind of guest. No, so strip is an acronym that I've put together that I find to be really helpful in remembering the steps you need to take. So first and foremost, S stands for savings.

You gotta have that emergency fund. And I say that as someone who needed mine. I was 25 and I was making a sandwich, cutting a piece of baguette. The bread knife slipped, hit my finger, and I saw a piece of myuette, the bread knife slipped, hit my finger and I saw a piece of my hand fall onto the counter, had to go to the ER and the bill was $16,000.

And even after insurance and I had really good insurance, I still owed $1,300, which was a lot of money for a young person. And so I always say, make sure you have three to six months of living expenses set aside in a high-yield savings account, because that is going to let your emergency fund essentially roughly keep up with inflation so that it's not being eaten away at. But you have your little nest egg in case something happens. Then we move on to T, which stands for total debt.

I am an Aries, so I'm very, very impatient and I like to do things fast and I like to do things very efficiently. So when it comes to total debt, I rank all of my debt from highest to lowest interest rate. You make the minimum payment across everything, but then any additional money you have for debt pay down, you're going to put towards the debt with the highest interest rate and then you'll pay it down in that order. This essentially just lets you pay the least amount in interest and get your debt slashed in the fastest time frame possible. Next up, our retirement. I am a little bit further from retirement than I'm sure Ed might be, but listen, I think we should all be thinking about it because I want to one day be

able to kick back my feet and just chill and And I think many of us want that. And some of the easiest things we can do to take advantage of tax benefits is to contribute to our employer sponsored retirement accounts, as well as our individual retirement accounts. So at work, that's going to be something like a 401k, a 403b, 457, TSP. It's typically got some weirdo name that doesn't make any sense, but leverage that. Oftentimes employers will match your contribution so you do get some free money. And then with an IRA or a Roth IRA,

that is your individual retirement account, but contribute to both of these because it is going to give you tax benefits and help you save and invest for the future. And we move into I investing. The mistake that a lot of people make at step are is that they open these accounts, they put cash in and they're like, all right, I'm set. I'm good.

I'm invested. No, you are not. When it comes to investing, I always compare it to the grocery store. Would you ever have $50 in your pocket, go to the grocery store, do a whole lap around, and then leave, and then go home and open the fridge and be like, why don't I have any food? It's like, well, you didn't buy anything.

That is how investing is too. You can't just open the account, you can't just put the cash in, you have to buy stuff. And when it comes to buying stuff, I recommend target date retirement funds, potentially if you're younger, just ETFs that track broader indices. And if you are getting a headache

with me saying some of these words, just consider finding a robo advisor. You take a quick quiz about your money goals, what you have, what you earn, how old you are, what type of family environment you wanna have, where you wanna live, everything about your personality and your money goals, what you have, what you earn, how old you are, what type of family environment you want to have, where you want to live, everything about your personality and your money habits. And then they'll spit out a diversified portfolio that you can use. So it takes all the guesswork out of that investing.

And then we move into P, which is plan, because you do not get to have a happily ever after or right off into the sunset without having a plan and backing into how to get there. And what I encourage people to do is actually calculate their FU number. This is a plan where you envision your perfect year. Where do you live? What does your family look like? Are you working? You know, what kind of clothes do you wear? How many times do you go on vacation? Do you have pets? What have you? And then you think about what that would cost for one calendar year. And then you take that number and divide it by 0.04

because that 0.04 represents a very conservative 4% investment return. So once you have this bigger number that you'll get after you do that calculation invested earning you 4% you will be able to essentially throw off enough in gains that you can fund your entire lifestyle while you just chill. I love strip. By the way everybody, we're gonna dive into some of the things she just said there. I want to say to some of you, some of this stuff already is a little bit more technical than you're used to. We are gonna get above at about 30,000 feet in a minute as well

And some of you are very young listening to this. I just want you to know how cogent that advice was I started planning for retirement. This is no joke when I was 21 years old. I started thinking about it I built an emergency fund first thing I did three to six months set aside I started to educate myself about money, which we're going to talk about a little bit later, just knowing basic things. So we'll get above this stuff here in a minute, but before we go, I want to, I want to challenge you on one of the things in strip. And I just want to hear your response. I'm not going to tell you that I have an opinion one way or the other,

but the notion of retirement plans, 401k IRA, that's a very commonly recommended piece of advice. Yet more and more, I know you know this, but more and more there's a contrarian viewpoint about that, which says that you're deferring those taxes probably into a higher tax bracket. That the theory is that, you know, what you're doing by putting money in forget the matching piece for a second but if there was no matching but you know i'm putting money into a 401k i'm deferring the taxes now while i'm earning them because theoretically when i retire i'll be in a lower tax bracket but the truth of the matter is a lot of people believe taxes are probably going up not down so am i deferring some of that money to more taxes and then the idea that I'll need less money in retirement than I do when I'm employed for most people that's

probably not true. So I'm just wondering that one piece of all of it, I've not seen you been asked this on any shows and I wanted to ask you, do you debate that in your own mind as well about the deferral issue where you may be sticking those those those eggs aside for a smaller harvest someday because taxes could be higher. Yeah, definitely. And I think that's why a lot of folks are now, and I say folks, a lot of corporations

are also offering things like a Roth 401k and more and more employees are taking advantage because essentially, you know, Ed knows this, but I hope everybody listening can learn this, traditional investment accounts typically that are for retirement, allow you to have a tax benefit today and you pay taxes in the future.

And to Ed's point, you know, taxes could potentially be much, much higher and we don't know that. However, the Roth variety is you typically do not get a tax benefit today. You pay taxes, you contribute post-tax dollars today, but that money is free and clear yours in the future. It is why I am such a huge fan of the backdoor Roth IRA

for folks who earn more than the typical income limit for contributions. I think the Roth variety makes a lot of sense if that is your viewpoint. Ultimately for me, I am encouraging people to just get started. I don't want them to debate traditional versus Roth. I don't want them to like belabor the decision. Just pick one. At the end of the day, sure, will one option certainly be better for you than the other? Yes. But not contributing at all or waiting too long is going to be way worse than picking the wrong variety. You're right. And it's a big thing, everybody that's listening to this, like, and even you really young people listening, you got to get started. And I mean, even if it's $20 a month, you're like, I'm not going to get Starbucks four days a week. I'm just going

to start to have habits. I'm a wealthy man because I started the habits young of what a wealthy person did. I mean, probably when I was 21 that year, I may have actually only saved like 200 bucks, but all my friends saved nothing. And all of a sudden I had a little mutual fund with a little bit of money in it and I had an emergency fund set aside. And I kind of got addicted to paying myself first and buying things to impress other people like never or last. And so there's some real fundamental things here that you talk about and we'll get into the FU number in a minute too. I want to talk about that. I think that's cool. But before we do that, real rich people, you say, they're

really not interested in impressing you with their money. And I want you to discuss that, just the mindset of rich people as opposed to the mindset of middle class or someone who ends up staying poor. A lot of it is habits and mindset. Do you save money? Do you pay yourself first? Do you at least read a little bit or follow an influencer like you that has the topic of money? So it's just in the front of your mind, right? But what about that notion of impressing people versus accumulation of assets? Yeah, I mean, I can use myself as a perfect example. When I first moved to New York, I was in my early 20s, graduated college, and I had this fancy job on Wall Street.

So in theory, some people thought I was a rich person. I was not. I guarantee you, I was not. That New York City rent was very expensive, and I was certainly going out on weekends. I was getting drinks with friends. I was going out to dinner and the amount of money I spent on designer goods as a 22 year old was unbelievable. Like I look back and I'm, I like choke on the number and I bought things like a

little winter beanie just because it had a little logo on it, or red-bottom shoes that, by the way, are so painful. I've worn them once. They hurt so bad. And a big part of that was wanting to belong, wanting to look the part, wanting to look rich and feel rich and prove to my friends that I had made it.

When in reality, that was actually putting me in a worse financial position than had I just been, to your point, setting that money aside, investing it, building up some of those rich habits. And now, at 30, you know, I've made quite a lot more money. I have a business that I own. I'm doing very, very well for myself. And it's so funny that now I find myself spending less and less annually as a full, just a dollar figure than I did back in the day on designer goods. And in fact, not only do I not oftentimes buy designer,

sometimes I'll just buy the dupe off of Amazon. And I had a friend ask me, like, why did you do that? And I said, well, you and everybody knows exactly how much money I made last year, Forbes reported it. You know I can afford those. Why should I pay extra when these look exactly the same and you couldn't tell anyway and you thought I had the real thing.

It's so true, by the way, you're a thousand percent right. The wealthier I got, the less inclined I was to spend money to impress people. And it's actually one of the ways I got wealthy. And I don't mean this critically, by the way, cause this is not completely true what I'm about to say. So I'm couching this under, generally speaking, what I'm about to say everybody, and no criticism.

I have owned Ferraris, I have owned Lamborghinis, I've owned Rolls Royces, I've owned stuff, okay? By and large now, I just want you all to know this, because I am a rich person. By and large, when I see somebody driving a Lambo, do you know what I actually think when I see them? They are not wealthy. Because if they were were they more than likely wouldn't be. When I see someone with that beanie and I have two of them that has an LV on it because I thought

it looked really cool with my beanie and I remember when I wore the one the first time in the winter I was playing golf and a really rich dude, a friend of mine like a really rich dude goes, will you take that crap off your head please? It's ridiculous. And so in general when I see someone sort of decked out and stuff, I actually think they're probably broke in debt. What I think is I bet they make a lot of money and keep none. That's what I think. That's a general statement. It's not always true, but if you all want to know what a very wealthy person typically thinks like, now I have spent a lot of money on my homes because I live in them and I like to have a nice place.

I like to feel comfortable and safe and secure and look at beautiful things. So if you consider a home, a material thing, I have certainly spent money on it, but I actually believe a home, unlike most influencers, I think a home can still also be an investment long term. And an appreciating asset especially depending on the neighborhood. Okay say that, go ahead, you comment on that. Yeah so I think like there are things that we see as flashy but there are different levels to this. So when you think about big toys, cars, motorcycles, boats, those are all depreciating assets.

A car and a motorcycle or a boat, whatever, it loses 10% of a new car's value. As soon as you pull it off the lot, just throw it out the window, okay? Within five years, most of these have halved in value. And I'm not talking about the ultra luxury super car, there's only 10 made a year. Those are truly collectors items.

I can see those potentially appreciating, but just like your standard run of the mill Ferrari or your standard, I know that's like so crazy to say your standard run of the mill Lambo, but like the base model will depreciate. It'll have in value. Whereas typically with real estate investments, sure, some are a little bit flashy. Maybe you have an indoor Zen garden, you've got a pool, you've got the basketball court, whatever.

But like oftentimes real estate continues to appreciate in value. And on top of that, you know, once you get to your phase of life, there are opportunities to make investments when it comes to real estate, whether that be commercial, whether that be residential. But real estate truly is an asset that oftentimes appreciates there are going to be better investments than others,

but it's not the same as buying a luxury car. And I will say back to your point about that, you know, Louis Vuitton hat, like, I will, I'll also recommend us consider what we are specifically buying from those luxury brands, you'll notice that the very, very wealthy still do like designer goods. Sure, but you'll find them wearing the ready to wear that is not logo heavy, that is found in the very back of the store that you need to make an appointment to try on. Whereas the folks who want to show that they have money are buying the items at the front of the store, heavy monogram logos, heavy, heavy branding.

You are basically a walking billboard. And especially now in our line of work, I think about it, I'm like, no free press. I get paid to promote brands. Why would I wear something with a brand's name on it if they weren't paying me? And if I truly didn't like it. And so I think there's, there's levels to this thought process. You're allowed to want nice things, but like, there's different types

of things people are buying. You're right. You can still like nice things. And I have very wealthy friends who have Lamborghinis, but I'm just telling you in general when I see that. And at this stage of my life, it just gets when you get silly wealthy, you almost want to conceal it to some extent. It's interesting. I was younger. I wanted to sort of prove I was wealthy even when I wasn't. And this is like accumulated more stuff. I didn't feel the need almost embarrassed to do, it's just a mindset thing, everybody. It's not a judgment of anybody one way or the other. Today, we're going to talk about money. So many of you have been emailing and DMing the show saying, would you please, Ed, discuss budgeting and finances a little bit more, saving, retirement, and debt. So, that's what we're going to cover today. We're going to talk about savings, retirement,

and debt. And it's something I'm very concerned about, it's very much on my heart. Before I get into some of the things I'm gonna cover, let me just say, I'm not coming to you on some soapbox, as some guru or expert on a high horse, thinking I have everything figured out or that I'm perfect. I'm actually today coming to you,

you're listening to somebody who understands. I've had cars repossessed, unfortunately. I know what it's like to be behind on your credit cards and have them taken from you. I know what it's like to have a house foreclosed on. I know what it's like to really consider bankruptcy. I've had my power turned off. I've had my mobile phone turned off before. This is not stuff I'm proud of. I've had the water turned off. Man, you don't want that to happen. And most of that stuff was self-inflicted for mistakes that I made. And so I don't want you to happen. And most of that stuff was self-inflicted for mistakes that I made.

And so I don't want you to make those mistakes. And I see so much terrible advice on podcasts from these gurus, social media, the different examples that are held out there about what wealth looks like and what being rich looks like and what the right things are to do financially. And so we're gonna talk about some of those mistakes I've made and that I see being made in the world today

And it pains me. Let me give you some statistics first if you make $80,000 a year Do you know about how much money you have to have saved in order to retire just at the same standard of living? And when I say same standard of living I'm not talking about now you're retired you get to take extravagant vacations or anything like that I mean just to live the same as you live right now with your job If you make $80,000 a year, how much money do you think you have to have saved? Well, the data tells us you need about $2 million saved after taxes.

So what that means is, a lot of you say, well, I've got money on my 401k. You do understand, you haven't paid your taxes yet when that money comes out of that 401k or that IRA. So after taxes, you need about $2 million saved if you make $80,000 a year to provide the same standard of living. How do we know that?

Well, at a $2 million amount of money, 4% interest on that would spit off about $80,000 a year. You could live at about the same standard of living that you currently live at now. Are you on pace to do that? Because let me tell you what the average American, the median American has saved in the median. $5,000.

$5,000 bucks is the median. There's a difference between the median and the average. The median is the person in the middle. The average is when you take all of the affluent people, wealthy people, and all the people that have nothing. The average savings is about $100,000 currently. The median's five grand. That's a problem because when you look at debt, the average American has $114,000 of consumer debt. 114,000, that doesn't count their home loan. That's college loans, car loans, credit card debt.

Average person carries about $10,000 on a credit card, average interest rate about 15%. Can you see there's a problem? We are in a consumer culture. We're in a culture that tells us to spend, spend, spend to keep up with people. We've also got a lot of influencers out there telling you to get rid of all of your money,

that you should just, every dollar you get, you should get rid of it, spend it somehow, or invest it, and stay broke so you stay hungry. Let me say something to you about that first of all. That's terrible advice. This idea that the only way you can stay driven and hungry is to remain broke or to get rid of all of your money is insane.

If your motivation level is so low that you need to deplete all of your cash in order to stay hungry and motivated, you don't need to check your bank account. You need to check your actual inspiration level. That's insane. And so the other thing that's in our culture today, and I'm gonna give you some of the keys, is that we're trying to keep up with the Joneses.

We're trying to impress people by buying really expensive things. Let me say something to you. I've been very fortunate. I've had, you know, like I said, I've been, you're listening to somebody who's had their car repossessed, home foreclosed on, power turned off, water turned off. None of those are things that I'm very proud of, okay? But I've also been blessed to become very wealthy. I've been blessed to, you know, I've driven every car you could possibly ever have, I've owned them all,

basically most all of them. I've had six different jets, including a Global Express that I bought from Oracle. I own my own island, right? I've owned multiple oceanfront homes. My studio right now is in one of them. I've owned some of the homes in the nicest neighborhoods in the world. I've had all the material things you could possibly want.

And let me tell you something, they're really nice to have, but you can't enjoy them if you're broke. Living in a really nice house that you can't afford and that you're sweating the payment on all the time is no way to live. And trying to keep up with people, to impress people who don't care by buying stuff you don't need is insane.

And I see it happening. And so, striving to impress people with material things, let me just say this to you upfront, doesn't work. It doesn't impress them. And for the few that it does impress, those are the wrong types of people. You want people to be impressed with the content of your character, with the way you live your life, the way you treat your family and other people. And if to get them to be impressed by you, you need a particular purse, or a particular jacket, or pair of shoes, those are people

whose approval you don't want anyway. Yet we seek it, don't we, to keep up with people. We're in a consumer culture, which is why consumer debt is so high, relative to savings. And so, and by the way, if you're a young person, and this is, you go, well, I don't care about retirement, that's 30, 40 years away. First off, it's gonna happen, if you're a young person, listen to this, you go, well, I don't care about retirement, that's 30, 40 years away. First off, it's gonna happen faster than you think.

But let me ask you this, do you wanna be in control of your life? Do you wanna be able to call the shots and not have the world dictate shots to you? Do you wanna be able to help your parents or your siblings or your friends at any time you want to? Do you wanna be able to take advantage of opportunities when they come along and be able to write a check

at any time you want to buy something on discount That's an asset as opposed to a liability So at any age you should be saving money I figured this out by the time I was about 23 I had made some money and like I said I had a house for clothes a car repoed and I started to change the way I viewed things I found out most of these people I was impressing with these cars that I had they weren't around once I didn't have them They weren't impressed with me. they weren't impressed with the car. And you know the other thing about nice stuff? It's out of style in like two or three years anyway.

Right, like the truth is even a nice house you have, stylistically in 10 or 12 years it's dated. It just is. What I started to get addicted to was watching my savings account grow, watching my investments grow, watching my assets grow. I got more fired up every month saving money, stacking paper than I did with what I was buying to impress people.

And then I'm going to give you the keys in a minute. I'm 52 years old, I'm worth hundreds of millions of dollars, I've made hundreds of millions of dollars, and I've only bought two new cars in my entire life. Because buying a new car is one of the dumbest things you could do. You should be either leasing your cars or buying them used. Let someone else pay all that depreciation. You let that thing drive off the car lot, let them drive it for a year or two,

and then you buy that thing at a discount. It's still gonna drop after you buy it, but not at the same rate as the dummy who buys the new car. So let's go through a few things here that can help you. Number one, by the way, that stat I gave you earlier, if you make $80,000 a year, you need $2 million. That's if you're retiring today. If you make $80,000 a year

and you're retiring 30 years from now, if you factor in inflation, you'll need $5 million. So you have to start to ask yourself, are you on pace? Are you doing the things that will get you wealthy? And that's where I wanna begin. The first thing you have to do when it comes to money is get some goals and some outcomes. And this is for everybody who makes minimum wage all the way up to those of you that are making six or seven and even eight figures. You need to have financial outcomes, a financial focus. If you don't invest or save money when

you're making very little, you will not invest or save money when you're making a lot. That's one of the great fallacies and lies about money is that people think, well, I'm on this limited amount of income, so once I make more, I'll save more. That's not what I see happen. I see someone making $40,000 a year, living paycheck to paycheck,

and then when they're making 70,000, now instead of driving a Honda, maybe they got a Lexus, instead of having a so-so apartment, they got a nice apartment. And then when they go from 70,000 to 100,000, then they upgrade from the Lexus to the Mercedes, and they buy a house, and they deplete their savings buying a house.

And then when they go from 100, if they do, to 150,000, they get rid of that house, they get a more expensive house, and then they got a second car and a second house, and they never get around to really accumulating any savings. In other words, they upgrade their lifestyle as they make more money.

Smart people don't change their lifestyle for a long, long time when they begin to make more money, and they begin to build the habits and disciplines of a wealthy person when they're a broke person. I was saving money, see here's how old I am. I was making minimum wage work in McKinley Home for Boys, working at an orphanage that I worked at. And I was making minimum wage,

which back then was $8 an hour, and I was still finding a way to save $50 a month in a savings, in a forced savings. Because I wasn't going to Starbucks, I didn't have cable TV, I eliminated basic things because I wanted to build a, and I started to get excited, wow, I got $300 saved. I've got $1,500 saved, I've got $6,000 saved.

As my friends were buying expensive cars, in fact, there's a great story I tell often that even when I started to make money, I wanted to buy a Mercedes, I bought a fake one. I bought a kit car. I bought a Chrysler LeBaron with a Mercedes body on it because I wanted to look like I was driving a Mercedes but I wanna spend the money.

That's a true story by the way, I had a kit car. It was a LeBaron with a Mercedes body on it because I was so addicted to saving and accumulating money. So first things first, let me give you some keys. Number one is you need to decide what your outcomes are and what your goals are financially. Do you wanna have financial freedom and independence? Right, that's one level of wealth.

Or do you wanna be like stone ass wealthy? Those are two totally different things. And for a lot of people, the answer is, I just like some financial peace and independence. I don't have to have Lamborghinis and jets and islands and all these other things, but I sure would like to live financially peacefully. I'd like to someday not have to work.

I'd like to pay off my house. I'd like to have a bunch of money saved. Whatever that is for you. I want some element. I don't want debt. Scriptures tell us, oh no man, nothing. I'd like some financial peace in my life. And the truth is I think most people see the wealthy thing

on Instagram all the time and think that's what they want, but maybe it's not what you want. Maybe the truth is you just like more time. If you could just save enough money to pay all your bills and have your house taken care of and some basic stuff, maybe you'd like to take more time off. And if you're one of those people who say, money's not that big of a deal to me, I get that.

And the truth of the matter is that's how I started out. It was not that big of a deal to me, I get that. And the truth of the matter is that's how I started out. It was not that big of a deal to me. But I knew the lack of money, man I knew that was a real big deal. I didn't want to be broke. I didn't want to be stressed. I did not want to be in a position in my life where I couldn't help my family if I needed to. And so my first goals were not to be super wealthy.

They were to get financially independent. And the first step in doing that is you need to know your financial independence number, your FIN number. Your FIN number is the amount of money you need saved so that living off the interest on that money, you no longer need to work anymore. The next thing is this, you gotta stop going into debt. You gotta stop spending money to impress people. You gotta stop it.

You gotta stop buying meals on credit. Stay out of malls, frankly. I've been to a mall maybe five times in 15 years. You know what? Monitor and really be smart about your Amazon account. Don't have people shipping you stuff you don't need to your house. Take a look at all your subscriptions.

Do you need all of them? Do you need every single one of those subscriptions or could you eliminate some of those things if you're on a budget and start to put that money into savings? The next thing is to understand the distinction between three separate things. You need an emergency fund set up.

An emergency fund is three to six months of your current expenses accessible at any given time. You need that money set aside. That's in case of a job loss, car breaks down, somebody needs some help, emergency. Quite frankly, life's just going to happen. So the first things first is you need three to six months of money set aside in an emergency fund.

You should start to make that your goal and your ambition and start chipping away at doing that. If you're someone making a lot of money, right now, carve that amount out and put it to the side. The second thing that you need to do is you need to have savings. Savings is just money that you're accumulating, that in case you need it, it's there for a rainy day. You should have some savings. Anybody who tells you you shouldn't is wrong.

In case you have some measure of savings. And then the third thing is investing. That's money you're gonna take that has some risk to it that you're gonna try to get rates of return on. And I'm not gonna tell you where to put that money today, but I can tell you that you need an emergency fund, savings and then investments. The only advice I'll give you on saving money because I'm licensed, I can't recommend particular investments, what I will say to you is this, if you can't explain it to me you

shouldn't be putting your money in it. If you can't understand it and explain it back to me, it's not the place for you to be putting your money yet And if you don't have a financial professional in your life You can explain things to you in a basic way so that you can understand them You have to ask yourself why they're confusing you you have to ask yourself that right? Sometimes people like to make things seem very sophisticated and complex so that you think you need them and that maybe potentially you make A bad decision you ought to be able to explain to me why Your money's in there and how it works and what it's doing and anybody can do it

Even somebody who doesn't want to know a lot about financial education doesn't matter. You should be able to do that Okay, so that's number one The next thing is as soon as you can afford it make sure you have a competent tax person and CPA in your life If you're someone making a lot of money You really need a good tax person in your life. If you're someone making a lot of money, you really need a good tax person in your life. A professional competent tax or CPA and you probably ought to be working with somebody who can help you with your money as well. Make sure you have a financial gain plan and direct it and make sure you're running a budget. Now in my budget recommendations, here's what I'm gonna ask you to do.

I'm gonna ask you to take the first 30% of your money, if you can afford it, 30% of your money and give it to your tithing and to pay the first 30% of your money, if you can afford it, 30% of your money and give it to your tithing and to pay yourself first. If you can't do 30%, if it's down to even 10%, carve something out that you're gonna give away and carve something out because of the law of reciprocity and carve something out that you pay yourself first every month, take it off the top.

Don't pay yourself last because you're never gonna get paid. If you make $3,000 a month, take $ off the top. Don't pay yourself last, because you're never gonna get paid. If you make $3,000 a month, take $50 and pay yourself first, and now you make $29.50 a month. You say, Ed, that sounds good, you're a rich guy. Listen, I spend every single dollar I do every month. I understand it, I've lived on minimum wage,

and I'm telling you that even when I lived on minimum wage, I found a way to pay myself first. You need to get in control of your life. And the way you get in control of your life is you first control your spending, you control your budgeting, you control your financial discipline. You begin to make this a massive priority in your life

that you're gonna become somebody who is financially in control. Because if you start the habits of being financially in control, eventually you will be in control and you will call the shots in your life. So please budget and begin to save your money and don't invest in something you can't.

Get clear on what you want and if you're younger, start saving money now. You'll build the habits of a, trust me, I'm 52 years old. I started doing this in my early 20s and I really believe that's why I'm wealthy. Stay with me on this. There's a bunch of people you see on social media that won't be rich someday that look rich right now. I have more

friends in my life, listen to me, those of you that are making a little bit of money that used to be rich than that currently are. I've watched them go seasons of five or eight or ten years where they were balling. They were making real money, they were driving the nice car, the nice vacation, they bought this or that, and then bam, things changed. They got caught with their pants down financially. They had no money saved, no cash, dead up to their eyeballs.

You're not. And so I have more friends that used to be rich than currently are because they weren't in control of themselves. They didn't have delayed gratification. They had no financial discipline, no budget, no game plan, no goals, no outcome. Now, when it comes to your investments, let me just say this to you. There's lots of places to save money.

I can't recommend it. I know kind of the cool thing right now and I've made a lot of money in real estate. That's a great place. You know, start flipping houses. That's one of the real vogue things. That's great and maybe that is what you should be doing. But you're one bad flip away from being broke too, which is why you still need cash saved.

How about having a plan in your life where if it goes bad, you're still okay? And I'm not talking about, I know maybe you listen to that, you go, well, Ed, that's just a luxury I don't have. Of course you do, you can save some money. There are ways to do it. And if you're not making enough money, then you need to get a second job.

Work a second job. I've had multiple jobs at any given time, many times. When I was an entrepreneur, many times I had to go back and get a night job to support my entrepreneurial hustle. Being an entrepreneur is not easy. Being an entrepreneur is difficult. You entrepreneurs listen to this, and maybe you're going behind for your,

maybe you need to get a job two days a week or stocking shelves at night. I stocked shelves at a grocery store for two years while I was building my business because my business wasn't keeping my family afloat and I still had to save money. So some of you that are entrepreneurs, maybe it's a second job.

Some of you that have a full-time job, maybe it's starting a second business. Maybe you need a second income stream. The truth is that in this day and age, with how crazy things cost and how out of control taxes are, you may need secondary income. So if you have a job, maybe it's starting a side hustle on the side or a second job. If you're an entrepreneur, maybe it's having a second job on the side that's part-time to support your business. It's okay to work a lot. It's okay to have your business. It's okay to work a lot.

It's okay to have financial discipline. It's okay to go through a season of your life where you sacrifice lots of things, including time in order to get wealthy. But the hardest thing that I see, the most heartbreaking thing are those people doing the grind, making the sacrifice, doing all the things to make money,

and then they have no game plan, no financial discipline, and they watch all these idiots on Instagram or social media go, man, I gotta have the car, I gotta have the house, I gotta have the nightclub, I gotta have the steak. Man, sometimes even me, when I show the things I have, I've got, you know, I'm lucky now. In this video, I got a stupid expensive watch on, right?

I didn't start buying expensive watches or cars until I could write checks for them and not just write checks for them, not sweat the check where it didn't make a dent in my savings. Can you imagine saving up $200,000 and dropping 130,000 on a stupid watch? Now you got 70 grand?

I didn't start writing checks for watches like that until I had millions of dollars saved. And sometimes I think that's a bad example. Because the truth of the matter is, this watch is great. And you know what? I barely ever look at it. I got a couple other ones, they're stupid. I've had a lot of nice cars.

And you know what? The minute you drive by somebody, they're not impressed anymore. And if I am impressing them, it's probably the wrong person. That's not to say part of getting wealthy isn't to have nice stuff. I get that. I like nice stuff. I've become accustomed to it, but I didn't start partaking in it until I had earned it and

I had earned it with the work I did and all of the savings and investing I had done. And then if it's 1% of my money, okay, who cares? That's play money. But if it's 20, 30, 40% of your cash and you're spending it on stupid stuff like cars and clothes and steaks and wine, that's dumb, right? And trust me, I've had every car you could possibly almost think of. Lambos, Ferraris, Mercedes, Rolls Royce, whatever. I've had six jets.

Like I said, the last jet I bought from Oracle, a global express jet, I've had all those things. They're amazing. They're not amazing if've had all those things. They're amazing. They're not amazing if you have debt on them. They're not. They're not amazing if you have to worry about paying for them. They're not amazing if they're a major chunk of your cash. They're not.

Remember that, the average American has $100,000 in consumer debt and $5,000 of savings. The average American needs $2 million to retire and they got five grand. Is that sad or what? And so we need to budget, we need to save money. Why is saving money matter, Ed? It gives you control.

And whether we like it or not in this lifetime, we need to be able to protect our families and protect ourselves and make decisions. As an entrepreneur, one of the reasons you need to have financial discipline is that lack of financial discipline will cause you to make bad decisions as a business person. You'll make decisions based on money or pressure

because you haven't saved money. As a friend, let me say this to you, you just remember this, your lack of financial discipline as an entrepreneur will eventually affect your business. It'll eventually affect your business. What's the number one mistake I see entrepreneurs do? They don't pay their taxes. They get behind on taxes.

They say, wow, I made $30,000 last month. No, you didn't. You made $30,000 if you're a 1099, you're self-employed, you're 1099, real estate agent, insurance agent, business owner. You made $30, dollars last month before taxes You probably made more like eighteen thousand, but you're living like you made thirty those you that are employees that have a job It's your lack of discipline saving money. It's your lack of having a game plan

It's running up debt that you don't need and again I'm not trying to be insensitive to anybody who doesn't have a lot of income coming in. I've lived that way. I lived in a single parent, I lived in a family where my mother stayed home and raised our family, the most important job on the planet. And we had one income, which was my dad's. And I know what that can look like.

I know when my, I remember one time when my dad lost his job and how absolutely destroyed our family was and worried about what was gonna come when my dad was unemployed for a while. And thank God my dad had an emergency fund and we had money to live off for those months where he was finding work. And so this stuff matters, it has ramifications.

Begin to educate yourself. Evaluate what you drive if you're on a budget. Do you need to drive that car or could you get something less expensive, reduce the payment or actually cash something Do you need to drive that car? Or could you get something less expensive, reduce the payment, or actually cash something out and do something with that savings? Evaluate what you subscribe to, your subscriptions. Get serious and get focused.

And stop caring what people think about what your stuff is. I promise you, nobody cares that matters. Nobody does. And I wanna say this to you about real estate. A lot of you ask me about real estate. I think that's a great place. I do not believe it's the only place though And so begin to educate yourself about the different places you could put money But the most important thing is to begin to build the habits So that you become long-term financially independent and maybe stone-ass wealthy and for those of you that are making money

Please don't be one of these people that was rich just for a little while or successful just for a little while, that you had this tremendous blessing of making some money, maybe more than you've ever made for a little window of time, and you blew it on stuff, and you didn't save and accumulate and invest. Don't go into debt that you don't need to. Some debt is good debt, we all know this. Debt on liabilities is terrible. Debt on cars, debt on clothes, debt on food, debt on stuff you don't need. That's terrible.

Debt on assets, everyone says, well, that's great. Well, maybe. I mean, sometimes it's great. You still got to buy the right property at the right price. It's still got to be something you can afford and handle, right? Just because it's debt on an asset doesn't make it good debt, it just means it's definitely not stupid, right? I've had so many friends that were doing pretty well for a while, and now they're not. And they're not because their lack of savings created pressure in the bad times.

And when the bad times came because they were under pressure, unnecessarily they should have had money saved and invested. pressure in the bad times and when the bad times came because they were under pressure unnecessarily, they should have had money saved and invested but because they didn't they made bad decisions under pressure and Ultimately those decisions were made because of financial pressure and that financial pressure ruined their businesses had they just saved money in the good times They could have wrote out the bad times. And so this is the same whether you have a business or a family, you've got to plan for winter. Listen to me, winter comes in everyone's life. There's four seasons for a reason. There's summer, spring, winter and fall. And that metaphorically is true in our lives.

You're gonna have a spring in your life probably at some point where you've got some financial opportunities and it's gonna be sunny out in the summer. And then there's gonna be a time where you've got some financial opportunities and it's gonna be sunny out in the summer. And then there's gonna be a time where you start to have anxiety and things begin to change, the leaves of your life begin to change and you can feel it maybe not the way you want it to,

which is fall. And ultimately, there's gonna be a winter. And all of our lives, there's a financial winter, there's a winter where we lose our job or our car breaks down or there's a disaster or a family need or our income and our business drops or we just have massive expenses in a short window of time that we have to make.

So that winter is going to come. Please prepare for winter, whether you don't make a lot of money or you do make a lot of money. I can tell you this, if you begin to develop the habits of budgeting and have an emergency fund and saving money and staying out of stupid debt, right?

And investing after your savings, wherever you believe that that's appropriate. When you have those habits and you make good choices and you begin to live in some financial harmony and peace consistent with your values, that when winter comes, you can ride it out. I've had probably four or five winters since my mid-20s and I've been able to ride them winters since my mid 20s,

and I've been able to ride them out. And if I can be really candid with you, because I had saved a lot of cash, I was able to make a lot of money during other people's winters when they had to sell their house or their business or their asset. I could buy them at a discount because I had cash or I had investments.

So I hope that helps you all very much. I care about this topic tremendously. You got any brain fog, any fatigue, your workouts not what they once were, maybe your drive in every area isn't maybe what it quite was. I know that that started to happen to me. I make no secret about it. I've been on hormone replacement therapy now for about a decade. It changed my life and that's why I'm really fired up about Bloak's. It's a next-level hormone and longevity platform. Starts with a simple blood test. They'll check all your viral markers.

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Very short intermission here folks. I'm glad you're enjoying the show so far. Be sure to follow the Ed Milett show on Apple and Spotify. Links are in the show notes. You'll never miss an episode that way. This week we're going to talk a little bit about money and financial peace. Now I'm licensed so I can't give you any real specific investment advice or anything like that but I can talk to you a little bit today about just some basic principles that will give you more financial peace in your life and some insights into some of the things I see that are very commonly spread on social media by many influencers that I just don't

necessarily agree with and so one of the things that I've been very fortunate to do is to build a pretty significant net worth. And I believe part of that net worth was built because of some basic principles that I've adhered to that I want to share with you. And so let's start from the very beginning. Number one, you have to decide that you want to save and accumulate money. It has to become a priority for you. And I'm going to say some things that sound a little bit contrary to what you hear on social media all the time about. I hear people say you should get

rid of all your money right? You should use debt like crazy. You know debt on appreciating assets you should always use and there's no reason to save cash you should be investing all of your money. That's just insane. Like some of that's true but this notion that I keep hearing on social media from people, that's like get rid of all your money and so that you stay hungry. Yeah, you might end up being starving if you do that. And so let's go all the way back for a few minutes about some basic things that I believe about financial security. I think this is something, by the way,

you could share with your children all the way up to somebody who's, you know, 80, 90 years old listening today. There's a few things. There's two types of people in life. There are savers and spenders. They're just are and you need to know right now which one are you and how do you know that? You know that based on the amount of percentage of the money you make that you save and I

want to say something to you. If you can't save money when you're broke when you're making very little you will not save money when you're making more that's a fallacy people say well once I make more money then I'll save if you can find a way to save any amount of money right now build the habit the pattern of being a saver and I'm talking about when I was making minimum wage as a bus boy at the whole enchilada restaurant. Yep, that was my job. I was a bus boy at the whole enchilada. The very next job I had basically after that, I worked in an orphanage for five dollars and sixty cents an hour. That gives you an idea of how old I am because that was a minimum wage then. And in both of those careers

as a young person at 17 and 18 years old and then I got the job at the orphanage when I was 21 years old after college I saved money now I saved $18 a month into a forced savings program when I worked at the whole enchilada and I saved $20 a month when I was working at McKinley Home for Boys but what happened was that was money that I never missed and it was forced savings and it created a behavioral pattern in me when I was poor and broke that I'm a saver and so what I went without I went without the Starbucks's of the world I made my coffee. I brought my own lunch to work. These things like very insignificant things,

but what I was doing was ingraining in myself the ability and pattern of saving. So which are you right now? Are you a saver or are you a spender? Cause you're one or the other. I've never been addicted to what kind of shoes I had, what kind of jeans I was wearing, the shirt I had. I was much more addicted to accumulating wealth.

I got off, if you will, on showing somebody my mutual fund or my bank account statement much more than I did on what kind of car I drove. And I've always been that way. And I wasn't that way naturally. And I knew early on, I learned that I needed to establish this pattern of which one was I. And so ask yourself this. And by the way, you could be making a lot of money right now when you're not saving

or you could be making very little. It's an idea that you just begin this pattern of some sort of forced savings. Have it taken right out of your account, have it drafted out of your account. I don't care if it goes into a, I'm not going to tell you where it can go because I'm licensed or where it should go. And for the purposes of today today's message there are qualified people you can see in your life that can tell you what to do with that Money, but are you a saver or a spender a really scary thing is when two spenders are married to one another I hope in your if you're married that one of you at least is a saver and That if one of you is a spender the saver has influence

one of you at least is a saver and that if one of you is a spender, the saver has influence. But when two spenders are married, that is a formula for a lot of toxicity and a lot of stress. This idea that I keep hearing from so many people have get rid of all your cash, get rid of all your cash is insane, right? Oh, it'll keep you hungry. It'll put pressure on you. Really? No, what it'll do is put stress on you. If you can't be hungry when you're saving cash at what point does that end or to all your life? Do you just keep spent think logically about that? So you're supposed to get rid of all your money to stay hungry Are you that unmotivated that uninspired that you have to have no money or very little money to be hungry?

There's not other higher purposes and callings that can keep you hungry in your business life. That's so stupid, but I keep hearing it. So stop that nonsense. Of course you should save money. Now there's a difference between saving and investing. There's a percentage of, now once you start to make money, you should have savings, which is just cash,

and then you should have investments. And I'm not gonna tell you where to invest your money. You'll make those decisions Those are two totally different things But I can tell you right now like to this day and I'm not exaggerating this I add up like what am I spending on? My streaming services. What am I spending on Starbucks? What am I spending on door dash? What am I spending on Amazon? You should audit all of these things. Like do you really, and by the way, if you're an addicted spender, shut out your Amazon

account. Just shut it down. Right? But the amount of money people spend on frivolous things, silly things like, like their door dashes or their Uber deliveries or these things that you could just go to the grocery store and save money or all your streaming services. Plus you still have direct TV Plus you got cable service

These are this may not seem like a good eight dollars twelve dollars twenty dollars. This adds up to places you could save money and And again, it's that habit. It's that feeling that I love saving as opposed to I love spending This is so counterculture what I'm saying right now. It's crazy to me that it is counterculture, but I've always felt like I have this huge advantage financially in my life because like I'm into that, not the other stuff. And then once I had enough cash, then I became an investor and you can decide where you put that money for you. It could be real estate. It could be the market. It could be CDs. It could be treasuries. I'd have no idea. And I'm not suggesting any of those things. it could be treasuries, I have no idea, I'm not suggesting

any of those things, let me be very clear. What I'm saying is that you should have savings and then investments and they're two different things but I cannot begin to tell you how many times in my life that because I had some cash saved I took advantage of different situations. What if you don't have cash you can't or you don't have investments you can't. Now secondly audit where you spend your money, Do you have a budget every single month? You should have a budget and the first thing in that budget for me is my tithing If you're a person of faith, it's what you give to God's kingdom

It's the seed you plant and again if you're broke that may be five dollars in the hat at church when it's passed I don't know but it's some seed you're planting. If you have a hundred pennies in a dollar the first pennies go there. The second pennies even if it's a small amount go to savings. You pay yourself first. Let me say it again. You pay yourself first. That's after you pay God if you believe in that okay next Now you have your money that you live on and then I would audit that where am I being wasteful and silly and I got to tell you it blows my mind people say we're in a recession right now. I don't see that I mean, maybe we are but I got to tell you I go to airports. They're full. They're packed with people, right? I see people using their credit cards at airport food

and spending, do you know how much it bothers me to buy a bottle of water to this day? I'm worth hundreds of millions of dollars. I still cringe when I buy a $5.60 bottle of water at an airport, yet I watch people who have no money frivolously spend it there. Still, it's like, oh my gosh, I can't believe I'm doing that. I still scrutinize things like that. I still don't feel great when I overspend on Amazon. I don't. I just cut out three streaming

services. I'm not exaggerating this. Last week, I'm like, I'm not using this is $8 a month. I've watched it three times in a year. Right. That's it's a hundred bucks a year. That's silly. I could put that hundred dollars somewhere else. I could give it away So begin to really Micromanage and audit where you waste money where you spend money. What type of gas do you put in your car? I'm not kidding. What kind of car do you have? What's your car payment? What could you do with that if the car payment was half and it was a not as nice a car, what could you do with that extra three or four or $500? And when you look up the rule of 72 and how money compounds, what could that do for you? So look at that. The next thing is your debt. Why are you spending

money to buy things that impress people who don't care that you can't afford? Who gives a crap what they think why would you do that why would you put it at 15 interest or 20 interest on stuff that no one gives a crap that you have to impress people who don't care who are hating on you behind the scenes anyway when that could be money you're saving or investing in your life. So stop using debt on depreciating assets and then even debt on appreciating assets. There's a threshold to which you should be doing that with but you should be scrutinizing when you do it. And so I've always tried to get myself to be someone who listen, I'm gonna say it to you the way that I think it. If you're gonna if you're gonna invest money and it's an appreciating asset and you want to use debt to get access to other people's money and rates are still relatively low by the way that I think it. If you're gonna invest money and it's an appreciating asset and you wanna use debt to get access to other people's money

and rates are still relatively low by the way. People say, oh interest rates are so much higher. I've been alive when interest rates were 18%. So interest rates are still relatively low, money's cheap. If you can end up leveraging debt in order to buy an appreciating asset, you should consider it. But what a lot of people do is they go,

well I can get the money cheap. they don't really scrutinize you make your money in most things on the buy on the buy so you still have to get the right price and if you're saving in the stock market you can dollar cost average in if you don't know what dollar cost averaging is you can look at that you can look into that too but the point that I'm making to you is why not get focused on getting wealthy you do not become wealthy by mistake. You become wealthy by your habits and your disciplines and your routines and your rituals. And so many people that are in the personal development space, you've really gotten good

at your personal habits, your workout, your morning routine, your meditation, your gratitude, your cold plunge, your, your, the food intake that you have. You have these great routines. What's your financial routine? What's your financial routine? Well, I'm gonna get around to that. You know, I'm only 21, I'll get around to that. Really? Well, I was getting around to it when I was 17.

And just for the record, you will never get around to it. And typically someone who's a spender will attract another spender because they like shiny things. And they can both go out and impress a bunch of people with shiny things that nobody gives a crap about Not any really good people

I'll be really honest with you Some people do this, but I don't I don't know what kind of watch you're wearing I have a I actually have a Rolex on right now and I didn't buy a Rolex until I was worth 100 million. I bought my first new car, brand new car, this year. And I'm worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Every single car I have ever bought was used. Every car.

This year I bought a brand new Range Rover. First time in my life. Why would I buy something that depreciates the minute I roll it off the parking lot? How stupid. And then some of you finance this asset that's depreciating off the parking lot. What are you doing? What are you doing? So what's your financial habits, your financial routines, your financial disciplines? Consumer debt is horrible. Try to stay away from it. Even business debt be careful with or even debt on real estate doesn't mean it's right just because you've got debt on it. And then there's just a certain threshold of debt that I don't want. I love cash and so this notion that you

should get rid of cash and cash is dropping in value because of inflation and all that stuff There's some validity to that and then it's also just wrong Because when the economy changes cash is king and people that have cash and by the way If you're gonna get really wealthy It's a bunch of cash but it could even be that you are able to get different services or products on discounts When you have cash at your disposal, there's a security and a confidence that comes with cash when you have cash at your disposal. There's a security and a confidence that comes with cash.

I'm convinced that the reverse is true. This lie that if you get rid of all of your cash, you'll be hungry, just creates more stress. I can tell you that my accumulation of cash gave me strength, gave me confidence, gave me comfort, gave me the ability to walk away from a deal or a table because I didn't have to have it every single time. Cash is still king. And I'm telling you, I still leverage debt as well.

But this notion that you should have all this debt and no cash breaks my heart. Because that advice works great when the economy's going up. All these people who tell you they get rid of all their cash and they're leveraged to the hilt and they're really rich right now, wait till those values come down and the equity isn't there. Or when their loan renews

or their adjustable rate mortgage changes, or they just don't have any cash in life. And so I'm a big believer in cash. I'm a big believer in savings. I don't believe you need to make millions of dollars to become financially independent. You know, there's different levels of wealth. The first one is dollars to become financially independent You know, there's different levels of wealth The first one is just to become financially independent and financial independence just basically means that you saved enough money where that you don't have the

Necessity for your job, but ask yourself this right now No matter how old you are. What if you went six months with no income? Can you live? Can you pay all your bills? Can you if you had no income coming in, right? Do you have enough cash saved? Because by the way, some of those investments that you've leveraged, they can't be liquidated. So these people who have told you get rid of all your cash, use debt to buy a bunch of assets, really? Well what happens if that cash flow is not there?

So ask yourself this right now. Can you go six months of paying all your bills right now if you lost your job? How about six years? How about 60 years? So at one point, at some point in your life, you won't have a job at some age. And by the way, I just did an interview where life expectancies may be getting to 120, 130, 140, 150 potentially. How much cash do you need? How much revenue do you need to live long term so you don't have to work anymore?

That's called getting financially independent. Wealth, that's a totally different thing. But some of you at least need to get to financial independence before you can get wealthy or then stone ass wealthy, right? And I could tell you that, you know, people say, well, certain cars go up in value. Yeah. You're probably not buying those cars. Well, watches, ed, you Rolex is, you know, they got, yeah, they got up the last five years.

I don't know what they'll be worth in 15 or 20 years. Maybe they will be, but I would, I'm not going to have a bunch of watches and call myself a rich person. Rich people don't just have watches. They have cash. They have assets. And so I say this to you today because I love you and I'm concerned about you. I'm concerned about our culture. I go to airports. They're packed. I don't think we're in a recession. I go to a mall. They're jam packed. I was just in a, I was at a very expensive resort recently, packed with people and next to it, there was a casino packed with people and next to it there was a casino packed with people

people are spending money like it's water so i don't know that we're in a recession or people are just delusional right now and spending money they don't have and i get all this past the pandemic we want to have some experiences i get all that you just have to decide what makes you happy what makes me happy is saving what makes me happy is accumulating abundance and wealth so that I can give to the churches that I want to or give to the charities that I want to and take care of family when they need us. Listen, what's the likelihood of there not being

a financial crisis in your family in the next five years? What's the likelihood of someone in your family not needing you for something? A medical emergency, a cash emergency, a tragedy of some sort, just life. What's the idea? What's the probability the next five years, there's no chance of that? How about the next 10 years? And so what if you found yourself with no cash and just a bunch of debt and

assets at that time, you can't help them. So this this stuff is nuts, what's being taught out there. So the bottom line is this, what I wanted to encourage you today is just to become more aware financially and this notion that I'm going to get my life together, my self together, my business together, my body together, my relationships together and then my faith together. Once all of that's done, the money thing will just take care of itself or I'll eventually get around to the money thing or I'm so young or whatever. That's just take care of itself. Or I'll eventually get around to the money thing. Or I'm so young or whatever. That's just not how it works. You start it now.

You start with a budget now. You start scrutinizing your money now. You start trying to become a saver now. And again, I wanna be clear. I have leveraged debt on appreciating assets and made a lot of money doing that. But I didn't just do that. I also saved money because opportunities,

and I'll be honest with you, I've made more money with my cash than I have with debt. Because when you've got cash in difficult times, you can get deals and steals and amazing opportunities because you can pull the trigger immediately when someone needs it, immediately, rather than waiting for financing waiting this so both are powerful but man my heart breaks when I see these very influential people constantly telling you this stuff and by the way I know many of them and they

also have cash they also have cash and so it's both it's not one way or the other I wish I could give you more specific financial advice, but today's a wake-up call You want to have more confidence when you walk in a room have some money saved You want to have more confidence and bliss and peace in your life have a pattern of being frugal Have a pattern of being smart with your money Listen to me Show me a human being who is under control financially. Financially under control.

They have disciplines, they don't give into the temptations of immediate gratification. Show me a human being who shows me emotional control and discipline financially, and I'll show you a human being who's probably a pretty happy person. You show me someone who is out of control financially, but thinks they're gonna get control over their emotions and their relationships and these other areas of their life,

I'll show you a person living a delusion. How you are doing financially at every stage of your life is a reflection of how you were doing in almost every area of your life, and don't you dare say to me right now, Hey, that sounds good, but I'm on minimum wage right now. I know it's very, very difficult, but if you could begin to, if you're paying, if you're a person of faith, just a little bit to your tithing, if you could just do a little bit to some savings, if it's $5 a month,

$5 and you go, Ed and I don't have it you do You do there's five dollars somewhere if you're employed you do and I've got this many kids as much. I know I'm telling you There's five dollars somewhere to say if you go well five dollars isn't gonna amount to anything yes It is because it's a habit. It's a belief. It's a pattern. It's a routine It's a part of who you become And I'm telling you right now when you go from that minimum wage And now you're making twenty dollars an hour and fifty dollars an hour

And then you make an a hundred grand and two hundred grand if the pattern all the way back in the beginning is to spend Everything you get you'll find a way to do it. You have a nicer car a better apartment you'll eat nicer restaurants you'll upgrade the way you drink when you go out and all of a sudden the money's gone and then you go well no now I'm an entrepreneur and I'm making 250 or do you know how many people that are nodding right now they go man I I have the same amount of money saved that when I was making 50,000 that when I made 100,000 I just went from having a Honda to a BMW and I went from a two-bedroom apartment to I rent my house and Then there's people listen as to go man when I went from a hundred grand to 250 grand I basically have the same life except now I drive a Benz. I

Got a Benz and my partner's got a nicer car too, and now I got a decent watch and much nicer clothes, and I'm eating at Mastro's once in a while, and the truth is, there's no tangible difference in where I am financially. How many of you right now know somebody like that or are nodding? And by the way, then I got the four or 500 grand a year,

and now I bought a house, I bought a house, my business debt is up, my credit card bill seems to get much higher every single month, because now I am not disciplined on Amazon, I've got 19 streaming services, I door dash my meals, you know, I don't pay attention to what I pay for my airfare, other things I do, and all of a sudden, man, I just spend, spend, spend,

and the truth is, now I'm at four or five hundred grand a year, and I'm not that much further ahead financially than I was when I was making fifty thousand dollars a year. And then what ends up happening is you go, it's not worth it to keep getting more and more income. And that's when people stall out. Most people stall out, even if they're really good, two fifty, three hundred, four or five hundred grand a year. Why do people stall out most people stall out even if they're really good 250 300 for 500 grand a year Why do they stall out because the truth is their financial life didn't change very much. They got a nicer car They got a house now, you know, they eat in nicer restaurants. They've got nicer clothes on their body

But the truth of the matter is they're really not that much further ahead financially than when they were making minimum wage or they're making $50,000 a year because the habits weren't ingrained back then. I promise you that I'm right right now and I promise you most of your friends that you think are rich that make a hundred or two or three or four or five hundred grand a year, they are quietly going, he's a completely right about this right now. He's a hundred percent right. The truth is most people can't go six months without their paycheck and almost nobody can go six years and that's sad because it could be different if their habits, their beliefs and their patterns were different and so today was

just simply a wake-up call to create more financial peace in your life even on a limited budget and if you don't have a limited budget this is a huge wake-up call for you to begin to become a saver and have a conversation with whoever you're in a relationship with About your spending and saving begin to scrutinize it begin to break it down begin to have a real budget Begin to have some outcomes and goals for how much you want to save as a percentage of your money and then let the Professionals you deal with in your life Or your own research by the way determine where those money should go

That's not the topic of today and I'm licensed so I can't go through any of that with you but I can talk to you about basic blocking and tackling as a human being of creating financial peace in your life I hope today helped you hey guys like my shirt guess where I got it quince yep quince is an awesome place to go get first-class quality stuff first-class suitcases clothes gear you name it at affordable prices like lightweight shirts and shorts from $30 pants for quality stuff, first-class suitcases, clothes, gear, you name it, at affordable prices like lightweight shirts and shorts from $30, pants for any occasion, comfortable lounge sets with premium luggage options and durable duffel bags

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technology revolutionizes an old industry. I also think one of the tragedies of education is that our kids get out of school. They know a lot about history and algebra and all these other things. They don't know how to budget. They don't understand the value of money, the value of work, and that's why I love Greenlight. Listen to this. Greenlight is a debit card and money app made for families that helps kids learn how to save, invest, and spend wisely. Parents can send money, keep an eye on what they're spending. Meanwhile, kids build money habits and confidence and skills at the

same time. You can also do a thing for chores, a recurring one for that. I wish my kids had this when they were young, but they did have me and as they got older, I made sure they had these skills, understood the value of money, budgeting, etc. It's easy, it's convenient, it's a great way for parents to raise financially smart and responsible kids. Start your risk-free Greenlight trial today at greenlight.com. That's greenlight.com. That was a great conversation. If you want to hear the full interview, be sure to follow the Ed Mylett show on Apple

and Spotify. Links are in the show notes. Here's an excerpt I did with our next guest. If you want to get more customers, if you want to learn how to create the right content and how to get that content to people, I have the best dude on planet Earth sitting to my right here. So Billy Jean, thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much for having me. It's long overdue. And so whether they're 22 years old, 21 years old, 42 years old, African-American, Latino, Asian, man or woman, gay or straight, Christian or agnostic, there are people watching this

who are like, hey, I'm kind of where he was back in the day. You know what I'm saying? I'm where he was. I got big vision. And I know it's a big part of your message. You can even add a little of that if you want. But like I've got a huge, I got a vision for my life. I want to be somebody.

I want to win. I'm not completely sure exactly what that looks like, and I'm just not sure what I do next, and if they could get a meeting with you, which is pretty damn hard to get, it was hard enough even to get you here today, what would you tell somebody asking you that question? This one hits me, because I told you in the beginning of this interview how I lost 27,000 bucks

Just like that. That wasn't really even my money. Mm-hmm The biggest mistake that anybody watching this can have that I genuinely believe is trying to figure it out by yourself. I Just There is so much you do not know there is so much I don't. The more successful I become, the one thing that holds you every time is, wow, I wake up every single day and damn, I don't know a lot. There's so much. Every single entrepreneur, person, human being that you meet, everybody's got their own superpower. There's stuff that you'll take away from Ed.

There's stuff you'll take away from me. The more superpowers that you can create an alliance with, the faster that you will grow. But do not try and figure that out by yourself. I cannot stress that enough. It is the soul, it just, you waste, you save no money because you end up making new mistakes. You save no time, please get help.

And that's something especially, shout out to women, you guys are so much better at it than we are. We are guys, we tend to be stubborn, know-it-alls, arrogant. It's so insane and ridiculous. And it just costs us so much pain that can easily be avoided by just finding people who have already been there. And you will be surprised at how many people are willing to help you. But also too, when you go to help, make sure that you have something in exchange to offer.

And that's the biggest thing. So like, listen, you want to talk about money in the simplest form, at least the amount of money majority people want to make, which is just to cover their needs. I will break down money to you very simply. The amount of money you make is directly correlated to the amount of problems that you solve and how big that problem is. So for example, if your problem that you solve is being able to clean a place, well guess what, there's seven billion other people on the planet that can also do the same thing,

so therefore that is worth $10 an hour, period. You have to figure out what can you dive into for years to practice, what craft can you can give that you can charge more money for because you can solve problems that other people can't. Doctors make so much money because if one of us drops down to the floor right now, either one of us will pay any amount of money that we need to survive, especially with children.

Attorneys get so much money because if some goes down and we're looking at prison time, then we will pay any amount of money to avoid them circumstances. If a business is going to fail, and that's how they provide for the family, they will do anything in the world to avoid that and they will pay for marketers,

or whatever the hell it is, right? So the bigger the problem that you solve, the easier it is to make money, very simple. Fact, I knew, I gotta tell you, like what you're saying there is scarcity equals value. And so the more scarce the service you provide is, the more valuable it is. And I've had guests, and I've said,

today exceeded my expectations. Today it did not, and I'll tell you why I know how scarce your skill set is and so I knew before we did this how valuable today was going to be for everybody and I feel so good knowing I've been a part of something today that provides such massive value for people and you crushed you flipping crushed it and if you want to know by the way we're meeting right after this because I'm getting his help and so if you you need any endorsement, there you go. I'm getting his help. And so thank you, Billy, so much today.

Thank you, and honestly too, like, when Ed Mylette asks you to come to his house, you can come. Like, okay. Young people out there, including their parents who ask me so many questions about, are there things I could be doing with my children to position them for success as they get older?

And for you young people out there that are constantly messaging me about wanting to be an entrepreneur, wanting to be successful, or just wanting to be happier in your life, I want to dispel one thing that I hear other influencers say out there on social media or on YouTube that could not be more wrong, which is telling young people all the time to just be patient. Enjoy your teens, enjoy your 20s. You've got forever. You're going to just be patient. You know, enjoy your teens, enjoy your 20s. You've got forever, you're gonna live to 130. There's no reason to get so worried

about being successful now. And I gotta tell you, that is the most ridiculous advice. I don't care how many followers the person has that's telling you this, they could not be more wrong. It's ridiculous and it's nonsense. There's no reason simply because of your age that you should not be after it, that you can't be hustling that you can't become sicker

Is it is it 18 is it 28 is it 38? It's ridiculous because there isn't a number if you've got the desire to win if you want to be somebody if you want to Make your dreams come true. I don't care if you're 12 years old or 82 years old your age is irrelevant It's a form of ageism to tell a young person just be patient. If you're like me, my mom and my dad didn't give me a business. I didn't start on second or third base like some of these people that are telling you somehow to be patient. I had to pick myself up by my bootstraps and make something of my life and frankly the sooner you get going, the sooner you start working on yourself, the sooner you make progress, the sooner you're going to get there and enjoy your life.

So don't listen to that crap. Think about this, when I was in my 20s, I made six figures early in my 20s. By the time I was 30, I was making seven figures. By the time I was 40, I was earning an eight figure income. What if somebody had told me, ah cool it, be patient, don't worry about it. My entire life would be different. I wouldn't be looking at the ocean, living ocean front now, or flying on my jet, or taking care of my parents, or having multiple homes, living on the lake, having multiple boats, multiple cars, whatever the material things

are, donating to the charities that I want. And I listen to that absurd, ridiculous, stupid advice. So please don't listen to those people who tell you that. They have good intentions. They're talking about not putting pressure on yourself. You've got all kinds of time. The truth is a little pressure is probably pretty good for you. Think about this. Steve Jobs was in his 20s and teens when he started. Bill Gates, Mark Cuban, Kylie Jenner, any entrepreneur that's out there today that you

know pretty well, most of them started young. Jay-Z started young. LeBron James started young. Why is it that you can't start young? Steve Jobs did, I did, Cuban did, Bill Gates did. There's thousands of entrepreneurs. In fact, the list of billionaires in the country gets younger every single year, as do the millionaires.

You want to know why? Because of these things right here. Technology, your phone, your iPad, social media allows people at any age to win, including preteen and teenagers. And so please, parents, don't hold your kids back if they want to grow. Now, now that we can get rid of that myth, what should I be working on? Well, the first thing is this. I think you need to start to read books on persuasion and influence.

And when you're watching social media or YouTube or listen to audio, somebody like myself, study their style, study how they roll their words out, their vocabulary, begin to model them and then modify to your style. Model and modify. Model people and modify. It's going to be your ability to persuade people, to influence people, to cast a vision, to transfer energy at any age of your life that's going to determine how far you go. So start to study the great communicators. That's number one. Begin at any age to have your children or if you're one of those kids listening to this

young people, begin the process of setting goals early. Right now begin to set goals and achieve them. Write down your outcomes. Right? Third, begin to work on personal development. Read some books. Read Max Out Your Life, my book. Go to maxoutbook.com. Read that book. There are other great books out there by many

people that you can begin to read around your school books or in the summertime on personal development, on personal growth, on influence, on persuasion, on leadership. Begin to feed yourself these great books, these great thoughts early in your life and it'll change things. Begin to think about and work on what am I gifted at, what am I good at, what am I passionate at, how could I turn that into a business, how could I turn that into a cause, what are some of my natural gifts and blessings and how do I leverage those into solving other people's problems. Great businesses solve people's problems. How can my gifts, my blessings turn into a

business that can solve people's problems? The next step is being a leader. You have to decide that you want to lead. You have to step forward. That means not being like everybody else in your school. I don't care if you're in sixth grade or you're in college right now. It's being a leader. It's not being one of the guys. It's not being part of the pack. It's being different than other people. It's thinking different than other people. It's learning early in life that other people's approval, your friends, your buddies liking everything you do and believing in everything you do is not going to get you where you want in life.

It's being a leader. It's being a visionary. It's being unique. It's stepping out. And when you're young, you're going to take criticism for it. You're going to take flack for being different, for not going with the flow, for not drinking with everybody or smoking weed with everybody. Stay away from those things when you're young.

Stay away from them when you're old if you can. These are not the practices of people that win. Let everybody else smoke and do drugs and smoke weed and get in trouble and go down that path and you lead. You step out. You be different. You be extraordinary and you be proud of the fact that you're different. The next thing is you've got to work on your self-confidence, right?

You've got to become more confident. You know when you're listening, it's something you don't have enough of. Self-confidence is the process, listen to me, of keeping the promises that you make to yourself. When you begin to make a promise, I'm going to get up at a certain time, or I'm going to clean my room, I'm going to get a certain grade, I'm going to study, I'm going to do something, deliver on the promise you make to yourself. Not what you promise your parents or you promise your friends, what you promise you. When you begin to

stack what you promise yourself and you deliver on it, you begin to build a reputation with yourself that you can trust you and that will serve you the rest of your life when you trust and you like you. That's self-confidence. Keep the promises you make to yourself. The next part is start to work on your self-worth, your identity, which is different than just your confidence. Self-worth means I deserve this. I'm worth this. And that comes from doing the hard work. That comes from being unique. It comes from noticing it when you're a leader, noticing it when you do things other people don't do, noticing it when you turn away from bullying somebody and you're the kind one, or you interrupt someone who's bullying and you stop it, or you step up in a situation and you lead and

you do the right thing and you begin to realize you're different, you're unique, you're special, your self-worth begins to change and you believe over the time in your life, I deserve to win, I deserve to be different. The next thing is this, you got to take some steps, you got to take some actions, make some mistakes, fall down, allow yourself to fail. Failure is only failure if you don't learn something from it. But the younger you are and the sooner you begin to take action and allow yourself to learn and get experience, the stronger you become.

And if you stack experience onto self-worth onto self-confidence, you have a formula that is going to separate you from everybody. So what is it that you love? Is it sports? Is it music? Is it business? What are some of your gifts? Is it your ability to speak, listen, your math skills, your kindness, your humor, your beauty, your intensity, your passion, your ability to learn, your ability to teach, right? Your programming skills. Maybe it's thinking creatively, thinking strategically, maybe it's just hard work, but what are you

gifted with and begin to leverage those gifts and talents towards your goals and dreams and you'll be much happier. And the next thing is this, dream. I want you dreaming, I want you picturing your life. I live ocean front here and when I was a little boy I used to walk on this beach and say, someday we're gonna live there, someday I'm gonna have that house.

There was nothing in my family that told me we should live somewhere like this. My family were big dreamers, they're just good people doing good things in their life, but no one thought about owning jets or multiple homes or the beach. But I started dreaming. I started thinking big. I'm standing on the beach. My home is right up there. And this entire process started with just a thought in my mind of living here. When I was much younger I walked on this beach with my then girlfriend and I began to think about living

here one day and it opened a space in my mind as a young man about what would it be like to live oceanfront. I didn't know who these people were that lived here. I didn't know how they got here. That wasn't important. What happened was I thought, I had the thought about living here someday, the dream,

and it created a space that didn't exist with me before I had that thought. And then over time in my life, I went to work on finding the people, the places, the things, and the resources to make this thought a reality. Just like the chair you're sitting in started with a thought, all of the details, the fabric, the seat, the structure became real. This beach house, me living here, just started with a thought and it created a whole new space in my life, whole new set of possibilities that over time I filled in

to make a reality, just like you can if you think those big thoughts. I started to think about what I wanted my life to look like. Ultimately, if you don't take control about what you think about, you don't begin to dream and picture your life for what you want, the rest of the world's going to dictate to you who you turn out to be. But if you start to stack, man, I've got self-confidence, right? I'm a leader. I've got the ability, man, I've got self-confidence, right? I'm a leader.

I've got the ability to persuade. I've got self-worth. I'm taking these actions. And then you start to really get a clear picture and a clear dream using your blessings and your gifts. You've got such a chance to do something great. And here's the good news. You don't have to be any age to do that. You don't have to be 30 or 40. There's not some magic number. It's you. You're the magic and this time can be yours. Start to get that experience. Always be positive. Stay away from negative people. Next thing, be careful who you associate with. Don't allow negative people in your circle. You're going to become the four or five people you hang around the most. Make sure you're

hanging around positive and growth-oriented people who also want to make their dreams come true. Because as you get older in life, your parents will tell you or your parents can tell your children. It's what separates us, it's who we associate with. So I want to challenge you, read, pray about it if you're a praying person, ask God to join you in your business, and believe me when I tell you anything is possible at any age at any time if you stack up some of the things we've talked about today.

There's tons more stuff that I'll be covering on this channel, but I want to give you permission now at this age to win. Don't listen to the people who tell you you can't do it at this age or you should be patient. Get your hustle on now. Start making progress now and where you could go is magic. The difference in your life, the direction, the places you can go when you start taking action and dreaming big, it's magic, it's magnificent. When I was young, I walked this very beach,

and I told myself, someday I'm going to live there. I didn't know how I was going to do it. And for right now, that's not the most important thing. The most important thing is to get that brain of yours and that heart of yours, that spirit of yours, dreaming about the big things you want in your life. And at your age, if you're young, if you're a parent of a young person, don't hold back.

Think huge. Think big about what you want in your life. And the more specific it is, the more likely it is to happen. So I want to challenge you. Where do you want to live? Who do you want to be someday? What are the specific places? And dream big and touch your dreams if you can.

And the more you get specific about what you want, the more you begin to really think about it and touch it and feel it at a young age. It just gives you that advantage on doing it younger. I mean, wouldn't you rather be wealthy young than wait until you're much older to be wealthy? And so I want to challenge you, go touch your dreams, go see the things you want, start dreaming bigger right now. And the more you can go see them and touch them and read magazines and social media about them or physically go to those places, the more likely it is to happen. There's gonna be moments of your life that just take your breath away

because you can't believe how far you've come. And then you're gonna go even further and further and further. Wanna challenge you to do that now at any age, you can do it. Max out, we'll see you soon. We're gonna talk entrepreneurship today. We're gonna talk business.

And the man to my left is impeccably qualified. He's the CEO of Walmart E-commerce. He's built and sold multiple different companies. Sold one of them to Amazon, sold another one to Walmart. This man knows an awful lot about building businesses, starting businesses, scaling businesses, selling businesses. And so we're gonna get a chance to talk about all that today. So Mark Laurie, thank you for being here, brother.

Thanks, Ed, great to be here. I get asked a lot, and I don't always know what the right answer is. Sounds to me like you've raised a lot of money in the businesses you've done, but I have entrepreneurs ask me often, I don't know whether I should go borrow money, because money's cheap right now,

or should I be giving equity away in my business? Do you have a theory about when one is better than the other? Should they be going to get cheap money and leveraging their way to success or should they be giving equity away? Do you have a theory about that? I do. You can make a case for either way.

I like the idea of giving away equity. One because you just don't have, if you're raising debt, depending on this usually covenants, usually a timeframe, and you could have a good business and it could fail just because you can't meet the debt obligations, like that kind of thing. I never want that to be an issue. I never want a good business to potentially fail

because it wasn't financed correctly. If you raise equity, you always have the ability to lay your debt on if you get into trouble. You can't, if you already have debt, you can't get in trouble, there's no more debt, right? And it goes the other way. When you get in trouble, the covenants kick in and you have to repay the debt.

So I definitely think equity is the way to go. Now, a lot of people say, well, I don't want to give away a percent of my business, or they're scared to lose control. One thing I tell entrepreneurs is a really important thing to know is that there's a difference between selling a piece of your business and giving away control. You can control the board of directors, control every decision, make it so that you can't

be fired, and still not on 100% of the company. And there's lots of in between. There's nuances. I mean, it's hard to get like, you know, zero, or 100%, you know, control, but there is, you can have 95% or 90 or 85, and feel really good about the control piece, and still only own 20% of the company, or 10% of the company.

So, the ownership needs to be thought of differently than control. So, people worried about control, you can solve for control, and still sell a piece of the company. I think that's a really important lesson. And then in terms of the percentage ownership, some people are like, hey, you know, like

I want to own this whole thing. I don't want to just own 20% or 10% or 30%. Yeah. Well, at the end of the day, it's 10% of a billion dollar business. That's a hundred million. That's a lot better than 100% of a 10 million dollar business, right? And so as you're raising capital, all you have to think about is that this is a stock, and if you raise capital,

can you with this capital increase the stock share price by more than you could without the capital? It's actually just a simple equation. And so you go to somebody and you say, okay, your business is worth, it's worth a million bucks. Okay, great. If you don't do anything and raise any money, what's it gonna be worth next year? Like your business is worth, it's worth a million bucks. Okay, great. If you don't do anything, raise any money, what's it gonna be worth next year?

Like, oh, I hope it's worth two million. Great. If you raise 10 million, it could be worth 50. Yeah, well, that seems better. You know, like it's sort of. So wait a minute, this is so good, because I was gonna ask you this, what you're saying right now, because,

and this is interesting, because you do think that way. Like, I get the sense that you want a big place and you've had some big successes. So this is so fascinating. What if I do have a million dollar business? I wanna know how you really feel about this. I'm an entrepreneur, because that's the majority of people

probably listening to this, right? They are an entrepreneur, they've got a business worth a million bucks, maybe they're pulling 150, 200 grand a year out of it. And they're saying to themselves, this is a lot better than when I used to work at a bank when I was making 90. They weren't like you or your bank. I was making 90.

I had to be somewhere every single day. Now I'm making a couple hundred grand. I've got a business. We've got a dream. I kind of like the way that it is. Is your advice like, hey, you have to go play big? Because there's a lot of people in the space that are saying that now. If you've got a two million dollar

business it could be a 20 million dollar business you should be thinking that way or is it okay? Yeah I think it's I think it's perfectly okay this is where it comes back to not everybody's got the appetite yeah to take risk and go for it if you're happy then today hey we're all trying to just be happy in the end day right it's like happiness if somebody says to me hey I want your advice Mark I got this million dollar business. I'm making 200,000 a year. I don't know what to do.

And I ask them like, are you happy? Oh, I love it. It's great. I have some time with my kids. I'm able to do this. I'm so happy. There's your answer. It's like, you know, there's your answer.

I'm so glad you said that. Because I feel the exact same way. Like I think everything we do comes back to one thing, wanting to be happier. I actually also think some of the best entrepreneurs in the world understand that, and their subliminal message they sell for all their businesses is that somehow being involved

with us will make you happier. I think that's the subliminal message. Look at Ray Kroc with McDonald's. Guy sold hamburgers based on happiness. His number one meal is a happy meal, and he's got a clown as a mascot. They sell meat and burgers. They're unrelated, but they are related, right? Candy Valentino. Welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me. It's truly an honor to be here, Ed. It's an honor to have you. I'm not going to have you on and not talk more, not enough about the money pieces of things. So let's just go right to it. First of all, what would you teach children about money? Because I think a lot of us, I think a lot of adults who have an elementary understanding still of money to no fault of their own. It's not taught in school. I learned to geometry and algebra. I haven't used it since. Actually, I'm not even really sure I ever learned it.

I'm pretty sure I cheated off Melissa Ramos's paper for three years. But aside from that, even had I learned it, I'd never used it since. I would have loved some basic budgeting, like how to read a financial statement, you know, some of that stuff. So what advice would you give to somebody? Would you teach your kids about money? So I want to say one thing before we get into all of this, because like we shared, there's a lot of things, right? The alcalades, the lists, the things that overcome.

But I want to make sure everyone knows that there is nothing about my story. There is nothing about my journey. There's nothing that extraordinary. I wasn't that smart. I wasn't that connected. I wasn't. I just did a lot of ordinary things.

So this isn't going to be some like life-changing innovation that we're going to charter a rover to Pluto. Like these are gonna be very basic things that anyone can do. And I think that where the schools really miss are teaching basic fundamentals. And I mean, it could be as simple as like, like we were saying, don't take on bad debt.

Don't buy the car because you can make the payment. Just because you can make the payment doesn't mean you can afford it. If you can't can make the payment doesn't mean you can afford it. If you can't actually write a check for something, you cannot afford it. But what people wanna do is that they want to look like they can afford something, so they take the payment as opposed to writing a check for the car

that they can actually afford. And so I think that's key. And our kids are only gonna do what we do. They're not going to listen to what we say. Yeah, caught not taught. Yes, caught not taught, yes. So if you are telling them, hey, you don't want to take on bad debt, and you don't want to live

beneath your means, and you want to save, and you want to give, but you're not actively doing those things, you're a hypocrite. Right. So it's like, first, you've got to be able to do these things and teach them to kids so that you can close the gap where the schools leave out. So a lot of it is, I think one of the quickest things you could do for kids is if you give your kids anything,

an allowance or make sure that instead of just buying them the next thing, that you give them a way to budget their own money. Let's say instead of giving them, we're just gonna go buy your clothes. You say to them, you know, we're just gonna go buy your clothes. You say to them you have $300 for school clothes. I don't care if you buy a five hundred dollar or a hundred fifty dollar pair of shoes and two shirts Or if you buy 14 shirts and pants, but you have three hundred dollars and I'm not giving you a dime more And you allow them to look at prices and figure out what they want and be able to go shop sales and maybe look on

Amazon or online to find it cheaper, but oftentimes I see parents just look at prices and figure out what they want and be able to go shop sales and maybe look on Amazon or online to find it cheaper. But oftentimes I see parents just shopping. Very good. So that's one quick lesson. Shoot, I wish I would have done that. No, for real, that's great. Right?

And then it helps them if they ever want to build a business or just with their own family how to budget money. Another one is my late friend Anne always did this with her three kids. And she actually came from money. So this is a really hard thing, I I think for people with money to even do. But she would have her kids, she would give them whatever their allowance was for the month and they could only spend half.

They had to invest 25%, they had to give 25% and they could spend 50%. So what are you actually teaching your kids? We can say, well, make sure that you donate, but if you're not actually framing it in a way that they can be successful, kids, I see it every day at the shelter, kids love to get involved in causes that they can see. You know, donating their birthday presents to a charity

instead of just collecting more junk that's gonna sit in a landmine year down the road is a great way, getting them involved and helping and giving back. Like, like you know we didn't have a lot of course but I remember every Christmas going to Hills do you remember Hills department store and they had a tree with with little angels on it and you could pull a kid's name off a tree and I knew that that meant I got one less gifts because we only had so much. But I remember that.

I remember pulling the angels and giving the gifts far more than anything I ever got. And that's so important. And so I think some of those things are really, really key. Making sure that... You're totally wrong about one thing. Where you said, like, what you're gonna say isn't revolutionary or life-changing.

That really was. Like, I've raised two great kids. I wish I'd have done both those things. Like, I've raised two great kids, I wish I'd have done both those things. Like, that's really a big deal, teaching them how to, I mean, I want to go back through it. It's just, it's super good. It's really, really good. This is The Ed Myron Show.