Let’s talk about what it takes to become a millionaire in today’s day and age. We are thrilled to bring you a special roundtable episode with three outstanding contributors: we welcome CEO of BFG Financial Advisors, CFP® Eric Brotman; the force behind the website Yes, I am Cheap, Sandy Smith, and our resident doctor and host of the Earn & Invest podcast, Doc G.
In the first half of the discussion, we cover two of the primary ways to reach millionaire status: saver/investor, and passion-based activities (starting a business, reaching celebrity status, etc.)
In the second half of our discussion, brought to you by DepositAccounts.com, our roundtable dives into 2 more ways that people achieve millionaire status: the company-climber path and the virtuoso path.
Plus, our year-long trivia game continues, with none of our roundtable regulars. Which sit-in will bring home the W for Paula, Len, or OG? Tune in to find out!
Deeper dives with curated links, topics, and discussions are in our newsletter, The 201, available at https://www.StackingBenjamins.com/201
Enjoy!
Watch On Our YouTube Channel:
Our Topic: A Few Word Description
There are 4 main paths to becoming a millionaire—and this is the easiest one, says money expert (CNBC)
During our conversation you’ll hear us mention:
- The saver/investor’s path to wealth
- Asset allocation and diversification
- Timelining your financial goals
- Saver vs. spender mentality
- Creating a spending plan that guarantees you reach your financial goals
- Balancing frugality and living for today
- Abundance vs. scarcity mindset
- Entrepreneurship
- The role of luck vs. agency in your “dreamer” path to wealth
- Success as entrepreneur vs influencer
- Company-climber path to wealth
- How to get ahead working in corporate America
- Weighing stability of a job vs. enormous upside potential (and risk) of entrepreneurship
- Getting ahead in your career by job hopping
- The understated importance of corporate benefits
- Relationship building and networking skills
- The virtuoso path: building specialized knowledge to become the best in your field
Our Contributors
A big thanks to our contributors! You can check out more links for our guests below.
Eric Brotman
Another thanks to Eric Brotman for joining our contributors this week! Hear more from Eric on his show, Don’t retire…graduate podcast at Don’t Retire…Graduate Podcast on Apple Podcasts.
Learn more about Eric’s financial planning practice by visiting BFG Financial Advisors – Empowering families through financial planning. (bfgfa.com).
Sandy Smith
A big thanks to Sandy for always being up for a visit to Mom’s basement. You can find more from Sandy at her site: YesIAmCheap.com. Also check out her latest business Uncle Clarence BBQ BBQ Rubs, Seasonings, and Barbecue Sauces (uncleclarencebbq.com).
Doc G
Hear more from Doc G by checking out his site and subscribing to his podcast: Earn & Invest.
Grab your copy of his hit book, Taking Stock: A Hospice Doctor’s Advice on Financial Independence, Building Wealth, and Living a Regret-Free Life.
Doug’s Game Show Trivia
- How many battles did Joan of Arc lead her troops into?
DepositAccounts
Thanks to DepositAccounts.com for sponsoring Stacking Benjamins. DepositsAccounts.com is the #1 place to go when you’re looking to see if your rate is the BEST rate on savings, CDs, money markets, and even checking accounts! Check out ALL of the rates ranked from best to worst (and see the national averages) at DepositAccounts.com.
Mentioned in today’s show
- Rich Habits: The Daily Success Habits of Wealthy Individuals
- Leadership Lessons To Help Your Career Take Flight (with Oscar Munoz)
Join Us on Monday!
Tune in on Monday when we dive into our top building blocks of creating a good plan to put together an investment portfolio.
Miss our last show? Check it out here: Our Primer On Making Better Insurance Decisions (SB1504).
Written by: Kevin Bailey
Episode transcript
Select or type to add speaker
Select or type to add speaker
Select or type to add speaker
Select or type to add speaker
Select or type to add speaker
Select or type to add speaker
Select or type to add speaker
── You heard of this thing, the eight minute abs? ── Yeah, sure. Eight minute abs. Yeah. The uh, exercise video Uhhuh. Yeah. Well this is gonna blow that right out of the water. Listen to this ─━ seven minute ━━ abs. ━━━━━─━━━━━─━━━━━─━━━━
Live on the YouTuber machine. ━ It’s the Stacking Benjamin Show. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
I’m Joe’s Mobs neighbor Doug, and it’s a good thing you’re here because we’re asking the question, how are you planning to grow your fortune? We are walking through your four choices, so you find the path that fits you with our Friday round table gang. Today that gang features certified financial planner, Eric Braman, plus the hero of the popular website.
Yes, I am cheap. Sandy Smith, and finally joining the round table for the very first time. It’s the president of France. ── Oh wait, we couldn’t, it’s just Doc G, but that’s not all. Halfway through the show I’ll share my saintly trivia question. And now a guy who even the Pope listens to, well, I mean he could hypothetically it’s Joe ━ Saw Salt Sea. ━━━━━──━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Hey there buddy, and happy Friday. I’m so glad that you’re with us. Whether you’re here live or listening to the podcast, I am Joe Sulci High, and you know what? Doug, I’m sure the Pope is in the audience. I’m sure you know, big fan of the show weekly. Nothing else that he’d rather be doing. ━ We’ve got a great group of people to talk about these four different ways that you can go from.
Beginning to build wealth to all four of these paths will lead you to uber wealthy spots, but they also have pitfalls. So we’re gonna go through the four ways you can do it. If you’re just beginning, I think it’s gonna be exciting. And if you’re midway through your path, you might go, oh, maybe I need to, maybe I need to rethink where I’m at based on this.
And before we start to this episode of Stacking Benjamins, brought to you by State Farm, if you’re a small business owner, it isn’t just your business, it’s your life. Whatever your business might be, you want someone who understands. That’s where State Farm Small business Insurance comes in. State Farm agents or small business owners do and know what it takes to help you prioritize your policies.
For your small business needs, like a good neighbor, state Farm is there. Talk to your local agent today. Let’s talk to our good neighbors, uh, on the round table. We’ll start off with, well, we’ll start off with a woman in, uh, the Greater New York area. I’m not sure where she’s at right now. I’m in the walls of Long
Island where I’ve gone to
die. ━━
It’s Sandy. I miss you so much. How have you been?
I’ve been good. I
see you looking spel. Well, thanks. Likewise. Yes. Yeah. So what’s been up in Sandy Smith’s world? What’s going on is the Elevate Conference happening this year? Sh ━━
I can’t like preemptively announce anything on this, um, show that two people watch.
Um, ━────━─ she comes out swinging. Wow. It’s, ━ it’s like I never left. It’s totally like she’s never left. Yeah. But busy, annoying people on Instagram and building a business with my husband and watching you guys make all the money.
Yeah. All, all the money. Yes. All the money’s in podcasting. I don’t, I don’t it. There was so much money in podcasting, Sandy, that our, our next guest, uh, got out of it.
Eric Providence here. Yeah. No, I,
that was the fifth path to building wealth. It didn’t make the top four. ─ Uh, so I, I hosted a show for five years. I had a lot of fun doing it, and, uh, I can put everything I earned from those five years of podcasting in one pocket comfortably.
So I have to ask you for the baseball fans out there.
You have a new ownership group we do of your local baseball team? We do. There, there might be some good stuff here again this year.
What’s going on in Baltimore? Well, listen, the os are giving us some hope. This town needs it because we just had a major bridge go down a couple of weeks ago, and so we’ve got, I didn’t hear anything about that.
Oh my goodness. No, we had a a, we had a giant ship destroy a major thoroughfare and it’s gonna take four plus years to rebuild it and so the, uh, the port and the economy here are gonna get clobbered, but the baseball team looks good. So, you know, you take the good with the bad, I guess. It, it is gonna be a fun season.
The, uh, expectations are high, which is usually a recipe for disaster, but my fingers are crossed.
Boy and uh, and about the bridge for people that didn’t know how sarcastic I was being, I was being, I was being very sarcastic. In fact, watching that video, Eric. Yeah. I was watching the cars crossing Oh, God.
Knowing what was coming. Yeah. And hoping everybody got off. And sadly, almost everybody did. But
yeah, no, that’s not, so I, I was in, um, Colorado at the time. I was at a, a conference and I saw that on TV and said, oh man. And then flying back, I saw it from the air, which was really crazy. But yeah, that’s gonna affect a lot of people and a lot of businesses.
And I was on I 95 yesterday going back and forth to Philadelphia, and I’ve never seen more trucks on I 95, which means the new route is gonna change traffic patterns, not for the better for a lot of people.
I saw that there’s assistance for local, small businesses. Yeah. Uh, they set up some, uh, loan programs, uh, low cost or zero cost loan programs for people.
Yeah. To try to make it through. Well, and the, and the Chamber of Commerce is getting involved in, uh, assisting and the governor’s office has been good. And so I, I, I think it’s gonna, you know, always, always takes a village and sometimes it, it takes a disaster to bring people together. And so there’s always a silver lining.
But I, I feel for the people who lost their loved ones, obviously that’s the most important thing. Fortunately, there weren’t very many, which doesn’t lessen the impact for those people who were impacted, of course. But, um, the ship had called in a mayday and they closed the bridge to new traffic. Saved a ton of lives, a lot of lives.
Plus it was one 30 in the morning. I mean, that had been nine o’clock in the morning. There’d have been hundreds of cars on that bridge. So, you know, there’s a, a piece of good fortune there. It’s that they knew it was coming, they couldn’t do anything about it, but they gave some early notice and it was not during rush hour.
So,
well, a guy who one 30 in the morning is like 9:00 AM to him. He’s here. Another podcaster from ER and Invest Doc G joins us. How are you man? You’re in the middle of a construction zone right now. Are you? Are you over there rebuilding the bridge? Is that what
you’re doing? ─ Well, I was gonna make all sorts of funny pithy jokes and now you started talking about the bridge.
So I can’t make any jokes about debris hitting me and knocking me out. And you guys calling 9 1 1. I mean, I had this whole setup here and then you had to start talking about the bridge. So needless to say, if you hear all sorts of loud noises, it’s not my stomach, it’s the construction going on in my studio, my podcasting studio, which looks strangely like my house.
So you can collect even
more money from all the podcasting that Sandy’s looking to get into. Correct. ━─ Well, we’ve got a fantastic show today. We’ve got all three of you. If everybody can hang on for just a second. This show is free, and the way we keep it free is because of these wonderful sponsors. So hang out for just a moment. ─
All right. Sandy Smith is back. Eric Brotman’s back. Doc G’s here and we’ve got Neighbor Doug. How about that? So let’s go. ━━━━━━━━─━─━─━━━━━━━━━━━─━
The inspiration for today’s discussion comes to us from CBC’s. Make it, I saw initially a blog post that talked about two different ways to reach wealth, and then as I was searching and, and doing my homework to prep for it, I actually found this piece that I like better that carves it into four different ways to build wealth.
So this is by Tom Corley, who did a whole project back in the. 20 teens around rich habits and what things millionaires do. Kind of a follow up to the millionaire next door. And as a piece of that, he talked about four. So let’s carve these out one by one. The first way, and this is the, uh, quote, the easiest way to build wealth for most people.
Sandy, the first way he calls the savor investors path. Do you mind, uh, sharing with our stacker community what, what this
means? Those are folks who saved 20% or more of their income invested and then retire to Long Island. To live with me
is this of the four paths? And I’m gonna, I’m going to, uh, foreshadow a little bit.
Is this the one you’re on me? Are you kidding? Yes. ━━─────
You made the assumption that I’m ever gonna retire. Absolutely, ━━━ absolutely not. I mean. To be fair, of course I’m saving, but I, I have no illusions of thinking that my savings will set me on the path to counting my thousands in my sleep.
But you’ve done a ton of investing over the years.
You’re always very public about the stocks that you pick and the I am The investments
you make. I am, I am super aggressive. I’m, I’m by the way, 45. And your, any investment advisor worth their salt would tell you to start being a little bit more conservative because, you know, you’re 20 years from retirement age and I am invested 95% in the stock market straight up, which my advisor, uh, has a heart attack about, but I’m beating any returns that he could have had for me.
So he sat back. So, yeah, I’m. Pretty aggressive with that, but that’s not where I think that it’s gonna catapult me into like wealth. I don’t believe that, but I’m hedging my bets.
Well, you know what though, Sandy? I mean this might be a side conversation, but I think it’s important because we do see these rules of thumb, right?
Mm-Hmm mm-Hmm. Start slowing down, landing the plane. But, but Eric, I know OG is not on this. Let’s get more conservative at 45 train. He’s still, he is like, listen, equities, equities, equities. Where do you sit on that? Does Sandy at 45 need to be, need to be taking her foot off the gas pedal?
Well, I, I’m smart enough not to render advice to Sandy without taking a really good look at her financial picture.
And if she’d like to hire me as her financial advisor, I know we can talk after the show. You’re gonna have to find it out with my guy, fidelity. That’s all right. I, I think I can take him. Um, you know, in terms of, in terms of my own plan, Joe, I have not gotten particularly more conservative with the exception of the money that I set aside for education for my daughter, because as she’s getting closer to presumed matriculation, I do wanna sort of have that in a, in a pretty secure place.
But in terms of the long-term money, you know, my portfolio probably looks quite a bit like Sandy’s, a lot of public equity, a lot of private equity. I do have some cash, and I, and I’m more concerned, frankly, about taxes than appreciation. Uh, you know, I, I’ve, I’ve reached a point now, and I, I am definitely in this first group, sort of the, the saver investor path.
I started young and I’ve been putting away a lot of money for a long time, and I’m, I’m, I’m almost at that point where I’m working for fun. It’s really close. And so I
don’t think you are in this first group, though. I mean, we, we, we’ll circle back to that later, Eric, when we get to the later groups, but I, I don’t th I think you do all these things, but I don’t think you’re part of this first group.
Well, I don’t know. I’ll be, I’ll be anxious for your assessment and willing to accept that in and do some introspection. Right.
Group five Dumpster fire. That’s where Eric is. ━ Yeah, I was gonna say, Joe, I wanna know where I am too. So Joe, make sure you, because I’m looking and I can’t quite figure out where I fit either, so I’m looking forward to your assessment.
Well, and it is funny though, doc, is that there is some cross pollination as we get through these. You know, it’s nice to put things in these black and white boxes, right? But life is not that. But certainly this seems to me to be the one that all of us can try to take part in.
Yeah. And it depends on the season of your life.
So this is a great path when you’re beginning your career. And so as opposed to saying, I have to be in this one group and I have to stay there my whole life, you know, a lot of people start to savers and investors and then they’re willing to take the jump and become a dreamer, right? Because all of a sudden they have some fuel under their wings and they feel like they can really kind of, they have some wind under their wings and they feel like they can really take off.
So there’s nothing saying that you have to stick to one path for your whole career and for our
stackers that are hanging out and haven’t looked at this article, dreamer. Has one connotation in, in society. We’re not talking about that type of dreamer. We’re talking about one of the four types of dreamers that, that, that Tom Corley has here.
And you know what, we’ll, we’ll get to what a dreamer is here in just a second, but as Sandy said, they typically have this middle class income. Tom writes, they had a low cost of living and preferred to save rather than spend lavishly. I mean, Sandy, that’s got you written all over it. Yes. I am cheap. One of your previous appearances was about your wedding.
I mean ─ Yes. Your, your wedding was my
$5,000 New York City wedding. Absolutely. It was
epicly cheap. Yes. We went over this. We’ll link to the full interview that we did with you about this ’cause it was so badass. But just can you give us like the two minute version of how cheap Sandy went with her wedding?
Yeah. I spent $5,000 including my dress. The venue, flowers, food, everything, because I absolutely refuse to spend the money that people were spending on their weddings when I wanted to buy a house. So I’m sitting in my wedding fund instead of having spent that money for one day, one great party, and I’m sure people, you know, spend what makes sense to you.
But we had a small wedding. We had 35 people, people who really meant a lot to us. You can see where we rated Subway us. You can see where we rated spinning this ring, right?
Still married. We were, none of us were top 35 Joe. I was there. Where were you guys? ──━━━━ You were there in spirit. You were, there were
officiating.
Doug. We had a little cutout of Joe so people could close with him. So, ── but yeah, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being a saver. Let me, let me say that for, for where I was for most of my life, that ability to save money didn’t always exist. That’s the first thing. Let’s be honest about that because I.
A lot of people don’t have that cushion and that that wherewithal to be able to save that money, a lot of people where I was, was just trying to survive. And you, you get to that point where you can finally start to save and the ability to be able to save is a, a really good thing. And getting comfortable being in that phase where you can save, you don’t miss the money you see your money working for you is a great first step if that’s the ladder that you land on and where you stay and where you’re comfortable, more power to.
You love that for you. But thankfully I’ve been able to surpass that and been able to evolve, I think.
Yeah, forget about savings. I’m not saving
anymore. That’s how you evolved. No, ━━ I mean I’m still saving, but that’s not the only thing that I’m doing and that’s not my top priority. Like, um, Eric said you can do multiple things at once.
Right. So it was a priority at some point, but it’s not,
let’s talk about a tactic here though, Sandy. As your income grew, it seems like what you’re saying is you were able though to still lock down the expenses, to build the difference between what was coming in. I mean, a lot of people, you talk about people struggling.
I remember in the early nineties I wrote about this in my book that it was so hard for me to save, but man, when my income started going up, Sandy so did the expense train. Like I was like, oh, ’cause quote, I deserve it. Yeah, that
creep, right? Yeah. We all have that lifestyle creep and, and I always tell people there’s nothing wrong with that creep either, but.
A reasonable creep. Right. What’s reasonable and what’s reasonable for me versus what’s reasonable for Joel might be different. He’s living that lavish lifestyle in Texarkana. Yes. So that, that creep might be different than me on lonely Long Island, ─ you know? So you’re
so far away from civilization. I’m so much closer to it, is what you’re saying.
I’m telling you, I’m, I’m hearing the sand and and water in Long Island, waiting for death, squeezing my grapes to make extra money. ───────
Eric, I gotta imagine this, of the four that we’re gonna talk about, this is where you spend, this is like your bread and butter area.
Well, I, you know, I, I think it’s, it’s not so much about being frugal.
I’m definitely not cheap. I like to spend money on nice opportunities, nice trips, nice experiences, more experiences than stuff. I’m not really into stuff, but I am into experiences and fine dining and good wine. And I, I do like to spend money. ─ As long as you’re putting away that percentage and the, you know, the, the article, the author said 20%, for some people it’s 10.
For some people it’s 30. I mean, it depends where you are and, and what your track looks like. But I know what I need to put away on an annual basis to make sure that work is fully optional at some point, which is not to suggest I’m not gonna work ’cause I love what I’m doing, but it does mean I won’t have to.
But what comes in beyond that? I don’t like to use the B word in mixed company. I, I don’t the B word budget I don’t like to use and so I don’t care when, when we’re working with clients, I don’t care how you spend what’s left. If you’re putting away 25 cents on the dollar and you’re spending 75, I don’t care how you do it, that makes no difference.
You enjoy it your way. If that means you like to go to a fine restaurant twice a month instead of going to Applebee’s every Wednesday, you do it. Whatever makes you happy. But, uh, ultimately, but that, that two for 25 though, well see every Wednesday I know where you are. They have a Applebee’s right next to all the shoe stores in Long Island.
It’s nothing but shoe stores up there. Um, but, but anyway, it’s, I, I do think once you’re putting away that amount, that percentage so that you avoid what’s Andy called? Creep. ─ You know, if you put away 25% of x, then when you make three x and you still put away 25%, yes, your lifestyle can improve, but it won’t change your, your opportunity at success financially, your future.
Yeah. Yeah.
You don’t like stuff, but you certainly like Legos with your daughter.
I do. Although she’s outgrown Legos and mostly me, we are working. This is a true story. We’re working on a jigsaw puzzle now, and I’m pleased to share with your audience that the jigsaw puzzle is a thousand piece puzzle, and it’s a cartoon of 101 pooping puppies.
Oh, good. Perfect. That’s the intellectual pursuit going on at our house in the evenings right now. But, uh, yes, we, we’ve built every Lego we could find. Uh, we’re gonna need a second home to, to store them
and that’s why we thought Eric was perfect for this
rental. Have you gone a Legoland?
Oh yes. Have you gone a Lego?
Oh, of course.
I just went recently and I loved it. I think I loved it more than my son did,
probably. But your
son must have loved it. Sandy. Oh my god, he went nuts. Legos all in
the underwear. ━━━━─ I just, whenever I hear Legos, I think about sore feet, right? Oh yeah. I just think about ugliest of my feet. Uh, Dutchie.
Where’s the gotcha here for people that are going down this path? Where do they get messed up?
Frugality obviously becomes an issue. When you are keeping yourself from those things that truly make your life better, then you’re putting it yourself at risk for not living the life you wanna live. Um, the other risk, obviously, or something to think about is it’s, it can be a really slow path.
Mm-Hmm. And so a lot of people talk themselves out of this ability to make more money and they have these limiting beliefs. And the truth of the matter is, I love this idea of living in abundance and not scarcity. And so the problem with that savor pathway is it can feel too much like scarcity. And so I think that’s where people really get in trouble and something you have to watch out for.
Sandy, you’re nodding
mostly because I, I lived it because that’s where I was for a long time. You know, my background is that I’m, I’m an immigrant, came here with a suitcase, so I think that was, that was normal. To be in that place for a long time. And it took a while for me mentally to evolve and including my husband would have these conversations with me because a penny was a penny to be saved.
And I finally evolved to the point where life is to be lived and enjoyed that might be involving spending some money that I otherwise would’ve saved elsewhere. Right? What quality of life are you living is the real question. And if all that does the saving is instilled fear and restricts your ability to really live a good quality of life, that’s where I think you need to kind of evolve your, your thought process around just being a saver. ──
I think a lot of it has to do with just listening to you talk, Sandy. A lot of it’s around, you know, people put this happiness idea into the future. Doc, you and I have had long conversations about this, and happiness is wherever you are right now. I mean, trying to be as happy as you can wherever you are today, I think, and that’s, that I think is half the battle.
Number two, doc referenced this earlier, the Dreamers path. ─ Tom, the author of this piece calls this The Hardest Path to Build Wealth. Eric, what are the Dreamers trying to do?
Well, a, according to the author of this article, the Dreamers are trying to start a business or something that creates a passion project for them.
Although it, he, he used the examples of becoming a successful actor, musician, or author or author. And I’m here to tell you as a, an author that that did not create the path anymore than podcasting did. Podcasting didn’t make this list, which means it’s slightly behind actor, musician, and author. And you know, if you can go be Beyonce or Taylor Swift or something, God love you, but I.
That really is a dreamer situation. I mean, you really, there’s only a very small, a tiny infinitesimal percentage of people who can go that route. I mean, my daughter’s a theater kid. She’s looking at Broadway for her future, and I’m like, good. ’cause nobody else thought of that. It’ll be fine. That’s not how it works.
There’s a, a tiny group and, and you look at professional athletes and entertainers and all these people who reach this incredible pinnacle of financial success, or at least income, whether that’s financial success or not. ─ But if you consider how many people, you know, went from the peewees to the, to the high school ball, to the college ball, and each time it gets cut and cut and cut and cut, and then even in the pros where your career might only be three years and the minimum salary is not enough over three years to live forever.
You know, it, there’s a very small number of people who make an extreme amount of money. So I, I do think the Dreamers path while rewarding and I love the idea of entrepreneurship, if you had said entrepreneurs. I would’ve felt a little differently about it. But I think this dreamer idea, um, I, I think George Carlin called it the American Dream.
He said the reason they call it the American dream is because you have to be asleep to believe it. Uh, and so, so that’s probably the way I feel about the dreaming piece. I love the entrepreneur piece,
I think is there splitting entrepreneurs into two types of people. I think one type is in that first savor investor path.
They just want to be self-employed while they do it. Uh, the second piece, I think really when I read this, I felt like they were trying to become famous. Yeah. Right. These are people that, that wanna become, you know, they wanna be Elon Musk, they want to be Beyonce. Well, what
about the people like me who are building an actual business?
I mean, you have to, first of all, be intensely crazy to think that you can create and, and build a business that will be successful.
But Sandy’s successful enough to be a saver investor, right? I mean, you’re investing in this business. Oh yeah. Instead of a stock. I mean, a stock is an equity. Your business is an equity. ─
But I, I feel like higher risk if you’re starting from scratch, right? What is there that you have to really build on? Unless you’re, you’re like a consultant or something. Somebody where you’re leaning back on your expertise, right? But then there are so many of us who are, who do have an entrepreneurship.
Background or who? Who have that mindset, who are willing to start something from scratch Because the payoff could be great or it could be a passion project. It, it could be both. Why not? Mm-Hmm mm-Hmm. And there are a lot of us that are doing it. And you guys have heard the stacks. Black women are the highest percentage starting businesses today.
Why is that? There are a number of different reasons. I think his description was, was intensely narrow because it doesn’t really capture all of the nuances about what’s going on and who’s in this category and the why of it all.
Yeah. I think it has a lot to do with agency, right? So the idea behind being a dreamer is exactly what Eric was talking about is we don’t necessarily have agency to be a major league baseball player.
Like you have to be the right person at the right time with the right skillset and a heck of a lot of luck. Whereas being an entrepreneur, and this is where I think he really missed out in this article, being an entrepreneur, we have a little bit more agency over, right? That is something that we can build towards.
And so I think that’s what really separates these two and why this article, I think in that piece was lacking a little bit. They now doc sell.
Ring lights at Target and Walmart ring lights. And I think when we talk about Dreamer, this is, this is kind of what he’s getting at. Do you think more people taking the risk that Sandy’s taking with a business versus the risk of buying a ring light and you’re gonna hit it big on TikTok, ─ should more of us be going toward option one?
Oh, for sure.
I mean, I think we should all go for joyful entrepreneurship as opposed to fame and influencer status. ’cause again, what you’re really doing is setting yourself up for anxiety. And this is, is very much how I talk about purpose. Like if you make your purpose a big audacious purpose, or if you decide you’re going to get wealth through this big audacious plan, but you don’t have a lot of agency to get there, what you’re doing is you’re setting yourself up for disappointment and anxiety.
On the other hand, if you decide to build a business that’s manageable, something that you might find some joy in doing or something that’s appealing or pleasing, or that you care about, there’s a lot more abundance there. Like going for the big audacious goal is actually scarce because only a small number of people are gonna get there.
And it’s a, a win-lose game. You either win or you lose. Whereas what I think Sandy’s talking about is building entrepreneurship is much more abundant and a lot more Yeah, we have, we have a lot more abundance we can go after and there’s a lot more winners in that game. You, you’re
bringing a whole bunch of people with you if you’re building a business.
Totally. Oh yeah.
Even for us, we look at it as, uh, one of our partners in the business as my 6-year-old son. We there, he was scribbling his name on the documents. Not very legible, but he’s a partner. For us, it’s a, an opportunity for us to build wealth that could outlast us and create something that he could potentially want to be involved in in the future.
And then a 60-year-old, he’s involved anyway in some areas. So I would say there are dreams that are involved in this, but I think we are. If you, you, you’re an entrepreneur, this kind of an entrepreneur, you have to be very realistic as well. It’s not, you know, I’m gonna be an actor, I’m gonna be Taylor Swift.
Sure. There’s a lot of like realistic thought process that goes into to being this kind of an entrepreneur.
Yeah, I wanna focus for a moment more on the Taylor Swift wannabes, because I think that’s where his head is at. Eric, did you, did you say earlier that your, your daughter’s going into the arts?
Well, she’s, uh, going into high school, but she’s a musical theater kid, so, so far yeah, that’s the direction I think we’re headed.
And so we’re learning a lot about some of the summer programs and we’ve talked to people who have succeeded in this career and she’s finding mentors and, and she’s wonderfully talented, but wonderfully talented at eighth grade, is very different than wonderfully talented for a career. And so, um, you know, my hope is that when she goes to school, which presumably she will do, she will study fine arts, but also something else so that she can.
If it becomes a career, lovely. If it doesn’t, it can be a hobby and a joy for life. But she can also make a living at something that’s a little bit more mainstream, whatever it is. And, and of course I want her to be happy more than I want her to be wealthy. She can do whatever makes her, makes, brings her joy.
But that’s a tough path. I have not talked to very many actors who aren’t also waiting tables at three different places and yeah, doing a hundred auditions to get one gig and then having a gig not happen. And I mean, it’s hard. And they got five roommates in Manhattan and I mean, it’s, it’s not an easy life, but I think they love it.
And so if it’s a passion thing and it brings you joy, uh, who am I to say it’s the wrong path?
I was hired when I first switched over to financial media, I was hired by a wonderful woman who is teaching financial literacy to actors and, and dancers and performers of all types. And she brought up something really interesting, which is anyone who’s in an artistic field. ─
Has this belief that being knowledgeable about money is irrelevant to them. It doesn’t matter. It does. They don’t go hand in hand. And yet she says that it matters even more because when you don’t know where the food’s gonna come from next, you better know where the budget is. The B Sorry. Uh, Doug.
Earmuffs. We gotta tell Doug earmuffs every time we say the B word. Yeah.
I don’t like the B word. We, we,
but you know, we gotta have the expenses locked down. We gotta know what’s, um. Where things are at. We gotta know the heartbeat.
Yeah, I, I think at the end of the day, it’s great to chase something that makes you happy.
But to go back to something Sandy said, when you talk about you, you know, being entrepreneurial, which is definitely not a guaranteed ticket to some kind of success there, there are plenty of businesses that don’t succeed. In fact, there are people who are serial entrepreneurs who have had three or four whiffs before they hit something that really makes sense.
And so I think it really comes down to your personality, your grit, your drive, and your comfort with risk. It is far riskier, in my opinion, to start a company, especially if you’re borrowing to do it than it is to pick a, an, an investment in the market somewhere. And you’re investing in yourself and you’re investing in an idea.
And you better sure darn know your why. And you better find a way to do well by doing good whatever business you’re in. Because if you’re helping people, you will never starve.
You know, as you’re speaking, you’re talking about the risks involved. Some of our stackers listening to this might think, well then there’s a safer path, this secure path.
And I remember somebody telling me early in my career says, there’s two doors in life. One says opportunity, the other one says, security. Whoever reaches for the security door gets neither. Meaning that working for somebody else also has its own risks and pitfalls and issues. And I mean, we’ve seen that with layoffs.
I was talking to somebody, by the way, affiliated with Bank of America, which Doug, you know how much I love Bank of America. ━━━ Uh, that’s my best joke of the day so far. And said point blank that Bank of America loves working from home. They love people working from home. And Doug, I actually talked about the thing that you and I.
You and I were talking about where you said it’s better and it’s yada, yada, and I said, no. And guess what? Bank of America loves people working from home. It’s easier to lay people off, easier to lay people off, easier to let them go. Don’t get attached to people, makes people just robots and puts them in.
And while everybody’s rejoicing about work from home, your employer loves it too because they’re the, in this case, because they’re the evil empire. ━
God, Doug Joe’s not gonna let it go. ━━
I just, even
this many months
later, Joe’s not gonna let it go. Shouting his strong opinion from the mountaintops, every chance he gets ─ you.
Like, I worked
that into this episode too. Doug.
Wow.
Yeah, it’s a, it’s a ongoing fight, Sandy. It’s ongoing. I gotta keep the dream alive. ━ Coming up next, we’re gonna talk about the other two paths, the company Climber Path, and also the Virtuoso path. What are those, and I think you guys are in. I think all of you either are in those or know somebody who’s close to you, who’s in one of those two paths.
So we’re gonna dive into those. But at the halfway point of every show, we have a, we have a year long trivia competition between our three frequent contributors, ─━━ og, who is not here. ── Lenzo who is not here, and Paula Band who is not here. So I think to keep it, uh, make it very easy. Sandy, I think we’ll keep the genders the same.
So you’ll be playing, can be Paula, be playing, you’ll be playing team Paula, how about that? Alright. And I think we’ll keep the sorry ahead of time, Paula. And, and I think we’ll keep the CFPs together. So Eric, you’ll be playing for og. It’s my pleasure. And then we’ll keep the wing dings together and we’ll put ━━━ the old bald guys together.
We’ll keep, we’ll keep them together. Letting Doc G and, uh, Sandy’s been the longest for you, I think, since you’ve been on. So, uh, I got good news and bad news for you around playing for Paula. All right, fire away. Well, do you want the good news or the bad news first? Ah, I’ll take bad news. Well, the bad news is, is that Paula as usual.
The most brilliant person on our show. Is she beating the pants up? No, she’s always in last place. And she’s in last place again. Yes, come on, Paula. Besides Doug, I’m sorry. The score here is Len four, OG four, and Paula two here, still fairly
early in the season. And Paula’s defense though, she’s the youngest if you guys, so you’ve got, you know, a bunch more years of experience to get those right answers.
So I think it has
more to do with Paula pays zero attention to the baloney we put on the trivia. ━━ We, well we, the irrelevant stuff, she doesn’t pay any attention to that, but good cover. Yeah, but there is good news, Sadie, which means you get to guess last. Eric, because Len is last year’s winner. You will guess first.
Excellent. And uh, ’cause that’s our tiebreaker and doc, you’re in the middle. So there we go. All right. We need a trivia question though, Doug. And I know we got a good
one today. Coming right up, Joe. Hey there, stackers. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. On this day in 1909, the Catholic church made Joe of Ark a saint born into the peasant class of France in the midst of the a hundred years war.
Joan, I love look on Sandy’s face already. ───━━━━━━───━━
I feel like this is a setup. ━━━━ Anyway, Doug, sorry, Joan felt a divine calling to defend her home country against invading English forces. I mean, who hasn’t? We feel you Joan, we feel you acting on order. She claimed to have received from Saint Michael, Margaret and Catherine. She joined the war effort at the age of 17.
I guess kids didn’t have much else to do without smartphones back then with no military training whatsoever. Joan led French troops to victory at the siege of Orleans in 1429. Remember, Joe, although that single victory ─
right here, dude,
although that single victory was a catalyst for the English Army’s retreat, the war went on for another 34 years.
Well, I mean, what choice did they have? It wasn’t called the 66 year war. Today’s trivia question is how many battles did Joan of Arc lead her troops into? ── I’ll be back right after I find out how to apply for sainthood, although I bet yes, somebody’s probably already submitted me. I’m sure they
have on multiple occasions, Doug. ─
All right. Uh, Eric, you’ve got the honor of
going first here. Jonah, you’re a big fan of Jonah Ark, a huge fan. I, I wanna make sure that I understand the question. I would like some clarification here since I have to go first. We’re talking about how many battles that, that she led her troops into, not how many she won.
’cause to the best of my knowledge, France only won, won battle in history. Is that true?
I don’t know about winning one battle ever, but I do know that, uh, we’re talking about yes, not one. Yeah.
How many did she lead her troops into? How many did she lead her troops into in 34 years? From 17 to 51, assuming she was in fact alive for all of them?
Um, ─ I’m going to go with, ─── uh, 170, 170 times. ─ She took a 70 and the reason that I chose that is twofold. One mathematically I’ve been thinking in my head, and two, it caused Sandy a lot of consternation, but she was like, where in the hell did you come up with that? ───━━━━━━━ I don’t even know what to say. I mean, I saw her panic and that’s what I was going for.
Did the girl sleep like, well, you know, 34 years, 12 months per year. I mean, that’s 400 months. I figure it wasn’t every other month, but it was regular. Every 10 weeks they got in some kind of skirmish. I’m going with 170. 170 Doc, what do you think? ──
I don’t know if you can hear me ’cause there’s a lot of noise going on here, but I’m gonna say that he’s a little bit high.
I’m gonna go for one 50. One 50. ━━────
So Sandy and your giant, uh, is that a giant Stanley Cup that you have? Oh no, I don’t, I don’t support $138. Come on. I’m still cheap. ━━─━━─
When I think Stanley Cup, I think ice hockey Joe. You know that right? I do too. Yeah, do
I’m like what people drink it on? But it is. Have you seen how big they are though?
They are the size of
the Stanley Cup.
Yeah. Yeah.
This is a brew mate. So, and someone sent this to me because I would never spend that much money for a cup. Absolutely not.
Enter the red solo cup. ━━
Classic.
Yes,
you’re explaining beer pwn while we’re recording
this, whatever’s in here. I’m not telling you what’s in here, but I gotta get through this show.
Something’s gotta be in there for you to guess that number. ─━ All. All right, Sandy, what do you think? And we got, uh, wait, how, how many, how many years was she at this for? 30 years.
What? He didn’t say. She didn’t live that
long,
did she? I don’t know. We got one 70 and one 50.
I
think
you guys are
ridiculous.
This is, this be, there’s no
question. I’m just, there’s no, no question. We’re both ridiculous.
I’m gonna help you out here a little bit, Sandy. You can either, you can either go to try to be, get an accurate number or just play strategy on where their guess are versus where your guests could be. Oh, I think they’re
ridiculous.
I’m gonna go much lower. ── I’m gonna be Bob Barker at, I’m gonna go F 50 50. 50
50. So she could have gone 1 49 is what Doug was saying. You could’ve gone 1 49 and still been the closest. Oh, I could’ve done
the, I I could’ve done the one dollar’s too late.
She’s gone to 50. That was
Doug, Eric’s the new, ━ the show.
Apparently he was trying to help the rules official. Sorry, I don’t, I I haven’t watched the prices right. In a while. ─ I said 50, so I guess I’m, well, she can’t change her answer now. Not allowing, sorry, Paula. Sorry. But I don’t think they lived that long back then. They, she didn’t live long enough to,
to write
that.
You were following
Joan’s career the whole time, weren’t you, Sandy? She was a saint. ── No, she was a saint. She, saints don’t just die, they hang out. Sandy, Sandy’s the saint for being on the show and putting up with this. Amen. Like ━━─── we will have an answer. One 70 is Eric’s answer. One 50 is Doc G’s Answer. Sandy cuts him off at the knees, goes with 50.
Way lower. We’ll see who’s right in just a minute. ──────━─ All right. Uh, the answers are locked in. Eric, you began with 150 with battles. No, 70. ━━━ Sorry. You were 70 ─ after you heard Doc G. And Sandy, you feeling confident? ───
I, I literally have no idea. And so, uh, I, I was doing a little math, uh, thinking maybe she lived a lot longer than many in her, in her era, but the answer could as easily be 200 as it is seven.
So, I, I, I literally have no idea and that’s what’s gonna make this fun. But if, if I didn’t win, I’m hanging up. So it’s all right ──
doc. Doc. Uh, 150 look good. And I, I think you’re gotta feel a little lucky that Sandy’s a little rusty at this game and, uh, didn’t say 1 49.
What I’m feeling is that at worst, I’m second place.
Right? Someone will probably be farther from it than me. So as long as I’m not the worst of the three, I’m good. Like I’m good. That’s, that’s as much as I can hope for in these games. I used to have a guy we played board
games with, his name was Doug, actually. Doug, and it’s not this Doug, but Doug’s goal playing board games was just don’t finish last.
And that’s kind of you. Doug G Just don’t finish Last. ── Sandy, you’re either first or last with 50. Okay. What are you thinking? You feeling confident
feeling?
I
think that she didn’t live that long ’cause I recall that she was just young and hygiene wasn’t great. Yeah. And they were in battles all the time.
Yeah.
I heard she kind of torched her career. Boom. Boom. Wow.
What? Too soon?
Is
it too soon? It’s soon. It’s, it’s been a couple hundred years. I think you’re good. ─ I think these guys are ridiculous in their numbers. I don’t know.
Here we go. Doug, you’ve got the answer. Who’s gonna win this thing? ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Hey there, stackers. I’m natural born leader and probable future Saint Joe’s mom’s neighbor. Doug. Yeah. ━━ Right. In May of 1431, at just 19 years old, Joe Navar met her untimely death when she was famously burned alive at the stake on orders from the British government. That’s what I’m talking about. Today’s trivia question is, how many battles did Joan of Ark lead her troops into the answer?
Well, she’s known for her shrewd military leadership. Joan never actually fought in combat, opting instead to carry a flag into battle. It’s like that saying the flag is mightier than the sword. ─── Oh, that’s saying, that’s the, that’s the saying, right. Yeah, probably. Yeah. Anyway, Joan and her troops won the siege at Orleans, along with, ──── well, I’m not gonna tell you.
I will say that it was 157 fewer than ━ Eric guessed. 137 fewer than Jordan guessed. Just 37. Fewer than what Sandy guessed, because the total number of battles she let her troops into was 13, giving her a winning percentage of 6 92. Good for second place in the American League east. ━━─── Come on, Paula.
I just wanna say that Eric was more wrong than I was. ━━━━
Well, and in behavioral finance doc, you allowed my one 70 to change your mind. Yes. Yes. Because you would’ve gone a lot lower if you’d gone first. It
was all your fault.
You set the anchor, Eric. But I also want to acknowledge that when you talked about her untimely death at the age of 19, Sandy was celebrating.
No one has Ellis ever, ━ no one has ever reacted that way to that part of the story. Wait,
wait. In my defense though, I, I said I didn’t think she lived that long. So there weren’t that many battles. She, she could have been, but to be that
enthusiastic to find out she didn’t live that long is troubling to me
again.
Well, how do you, how do you get to Saint Hood? I mean, you, you gotta die. That’s the first step, right? I’m just a little first, I dunno. ─
Maybe Doug doesn’t want the gig anymore, if that’s true. ────
Time for the second half of our, our maybe, uh, little bit higher stakes discussion. The one that, uh, we probably should get back to.
It’s brought to you by deposit accounts.com. Sandy Smith. You know what happens when you go to deposit accounts.com? ─ Um, you put money in you. Well, no, actually just go to deposit accounts.com and you can compare. More than 275,000 deposit rates from over 11,000 banks of credit unions for free. You’ll see whether that account that you have is actually competitive.
And let me tell you, I just pulled it up here. And, uh, the National Average Savings account, I have it on good word at Bank of America speaking to them, it’s 0.01, but the national average is 0.51. ── If you’re in the top 1%, it’s 4.98. So you can take a look at your accounts, whether it’s savings accounts, CDs, checking accounts, money markets, compare, ditch the rotten one, switch to the better one, and save a bunch of money for yourself@depositaccounts.com.
Alright, into the second half. And, and we’re gonna go back to corporate America, which was part of that, you know, saving. I think that that, uh, thes investor path to wealth includes a lot of entrepreneurs. This one clearly doesn’t. Doc, what is the company Climbers Path all about?
These are the people who made decent money in corporate America and just stayed there and worked it out.
Middle management put money in their 4 0 1 Ks. This is the 401k millionaire, and there’s tons of them in the United States. So there are people who mindlessly probably didn’t even realize what they were doing, put their money in their 401k that went into a target date fund, or nowadays a lot of them go directly into target date funds.
And they just worked like busy bees for 20 years. It says this is the
second hardest path to becoming a millionaire. And about 31% of the rich people that I studied, uh, Tom says, fell into this group. Sandy, if I know your backstory a little bit, you were kind of on this train at one point, the company climber.
Oh, yeah. And I also know there were people trying to claw you back into it as you were like, no, thank you. No thank you. Please let me off this train. Yeah, I
definitely was a climber and according to Fidelity, very much on the path to be a 401k millionaire. ── However, ──━ for those of you who don’t know, I’m a, um, senior certified professional in HR as well, doing stuff in, in finance.
I am the anti HR HR person, ━━ so where I, I definitely was a ladder climbing individual. I’m not a supporter of the, the ladder climber per se. And I think a lot of people think that they will be these ladder climbers who will make oodles and noodles of money at their jobs. And for most people, that just is not true.
That’s not what happens with most people.
Eric, uh, Sandy kind of presents this, I don’t know, as I’m thinking, I’m thinking like it’s a Ponzi scheme. Everybody trying to get there. Or maybe we’re selling multi-level marketing. Like, Hey, you start off on the bottom wrong and work your way up. And if you work really hard, we’re all family here until they
fire you.
Lemme get you that pizza party.
We had one of those for lunch today, the pizza party, but it wasn’t a goodbye and it was good pizza. Um, see here, here’s the thing. I, I spent in my career, a glorious 10 and a half to 11 months in corporate America before realizing I never wanted to do that again. ─ I always wanted to be in a small enterprise and to be an entrepreneur and was not gonna play the politics of the ladder climb.
And I just couldn’t handle most of the nonsense. And that was, that was 30 plus years ago. The nonsense is dramatically worse now. Oh, it’s 10 times worse now. It’s so much worse. The politics and the problem with ladder climbing and the problem with the corporate path is usually to move up, you have to move out. ─
Because for some reason, somebody else’s talent looks better than the talent you have. It’s the grass being greener. And so in order to get a real raise other than cost of living, you have to switch companies. ’cause somebody’s trying to lure you back and forth and back and forth. And that can involve geographic moves.
It certainly involves culture shock. It’s disruptive. And, and that’s not to say you can’t make money in corporate America. You certainly can, but for me, that would be akin to selling my soul. I’m not doing it. Um, I, I just can’t do it.
Well, what’s interesting, before you take a stab at this doc, by the way, for everybody listening, it does not surprise me that we have a round table of anti ladder climbers.
Like this is, this is kind of who we are in the community that we’re in. So I will say the ladder climbing aficionados are not represented that much here. Doug, I’m gonna go to you in a second, but they’re not that represented on a round table like this doc. ──
Well, so I, I am somewhat of a representative of that, not because of my own career, but that of my wife.
She joined a company after college and has been at that same company for the last 25 years. How rare is it? I don’t, well, actually, in her company, lots, and I mean, she’s, by far, she works with lots of people who’ve been there 30, 35 years. And that company over this time has paid for our health insurance, has given her tons of bonuses, has given her tons of stock, has added a huge amount to her 401k. ─
Even though I don’t like some of the tactics of this company and some of the things I’ve seen this company do, I will tell you we have benefited by far, as a family from this company, and she has a lot of colleagues and cohorts who have, and not only when they did occasionally get fired, a lot of them had such good experience that they were grabbed up by another company right after they were left and made more money.
And so, yes, I couldn’t live that life myself, but my family has definitely been served by it and, and they’ve been. ── Generous in many, many ways, but the expectations were high.
Doug, uh uh, you’re married to somebody who’s also on this path.
Well, and I was too. I spent 30 years in corporate America, and I would say it served me quite well as well.
Look, it wasn’t easy, but nothing is. Being an entrepreneur isn’t easy. I love the, the quote you’ll see occasionally. I don’t know who said it or who made the meme, but you know, everything’s hard. Choose your heart, right? I mean, being in shape is hard. Being outta shape is hard. Being overweight is difficult, and being, you know, on.
So ━ yeah, there are definitely a lot of frustrations working in corporate America. And are the upsides potentially stratospheric as an entrepreneur? Absolutely. But there’s an awful lot to your point, doc. There’s an awful lot to be said for the stability. Uh, reasonable stability. I know there’s a lot of people scoffing, uh, at their devices right now ’cause there’s nothing that’s super sure, but it’s a little bit more certain, at least for three to five year time periods in a corporate environment than there is in an entrepreneurial environment.
And there’s pros and cons to both. And I would say it doesn’t suck. I mean, there’s a, there’s a lot to be said for getting that healthcare and for having a clear understanding of what your mission is every day and, and what your opportunities are.
So I think there are a couple of things that we probably need to discuss.
One is definitely the changing landscape of work. Of jobs and what that is. Doug, you were a climber for like 30 years. The office has evolved quite a lot. Uh, I would say rapidly in the last five years. I feel, I feel it for Gen Z because they have a completely different environment that even I’ve got as a Gen Xer.
Uh, and the other thing is the, the climber. It used to be the case where you could come in and you could expect to get promoted within that company and really build a career, et cetera. Now you have to be very strategic with your career and know that the best way to potentially build your career and to climb is by leaving.
Oh yeah. That hasn’t changed Sandy. Right? And so you have
to engineer your own career. That’s not new at all. Well, the tenure is now, well, the average tenure now is depending on if you’re a male or female, is different, by the way, is about four years. Yeah. You have to be very strategic in thinking what’s next, not just in terms of earnings, but.
Where am I gonna go up? That
was true for me for most of my career. That length of tenure for the, you know, from the early nineties through the late teens in it, which is where I spent my career, was typically four to five years. And you had to act like an entrepreneur. Sorry, Joe, but I wanna say it’s, it’s not all just post covid.
No, no, no, no. The number has always been there. I think that you’re right that the number’s been there. When I’ve seen people, back when I was a financial planner, I saw clients, you know, that would really hit their stride. It was always moving companies. But to Sandy’s point, that number has gone up. I remember quoting a number 10 years ago that the average person’s gonna work for four companies.
I think that number now, the average person is seven. I think it’s seven. It,
it could be 12 by the time, it could be 170. Oh, for sure. That’s my number of the day is 170. But here’s the other piece of that is that when you leave a company in three, four years, a lot of times you leave benefits behind. You don’t vest in various things.
So you might change for the salary. ─ The salary might be better, but you could be leaving a bunch of money on the table in unvested restricted stock or options or 401k matches or all these other things. And I think people look at that gross salary, like it’s the number that matters the most. And you know, Joe, I think you said it’s at one point in, in your five minute open that the employee benefits don’t have to be the ice cream.
They can be part of the, the deal. And one of the benefits to corporate America is usually better benefits. Yes. But they’re only better if you use ’em and if you know how to navigate ’em. And if you take some with you, ─ the HR director here saying, hallelujah. ─━─
Well, no, it’s true. I, I definitely benefited from employee benefits.
I, I had a six figure hospital bill that. I had to pay a copay on, which was just like $250, not the six figure. The company that I worked for, thank God I had started five days before I ended up in the hospital. Wow. They had to pay for that bill, not me. I was in my hospital bed retroactively signing up for the medical coverage.
Wow. Right. So there are those benefits that we don’t think about that, that are really good, but we’re, we’re talking about the pathway to building wealth. You have to be strategic working for an organization. If you do get things like restricted stock, et cetera, those can be very, very attractive and, and really help to build quite a lot of wealth.
But we have to emphasize with the younger generation that they understand the benefit of that as well versus. Just strictly their salary that they’re seeing that they’re taking home every day. Mm-Hmm. Because there’s a disconnect with that. It’s big disconnect a lot of times that, uh, huge. A lot of times I end up, because I also manage my company’s 401k plan, I end up having conversations with the younger employees about the benefit of just even being in the 401k plan and leaving that money match money on the table, which has no vesting schedule.
You get it, it’s yours immediately, and they’re leaving immediate returns. They don’t understand. Long term implications of that as well. So if in terms of building wealth with an org, we do have to take a look at the whole entire package as well to be able to build, you know, wealth. But
even when we’re entrepreneurs, we will sometimes take clients, I’ll just make up an example.
We’ll take clients, not necessarily because, and the balance sheet, it is the most profitable thing to do, but we’ll do it because it helps grow capabilities for our new and burgeoning company, or that it creates a network, it gets us connected with somebody that we feel is gonna put us on a different path.
And so while we’ve just in the last few minutes, focused quite a bit on some of the more black and white. Financial aspects, benefits and pay and, and stock options and those kinds of things. When you’re in your early career, there’s an awful lot to be said for possibly switching opportunities, maybe different companies if necessary because of a skillset that you’re gonna gain that will change the path that you’re on long-term.
And that’s easier to do when you are, I’ll say less encumbered with spouses and kids and, and other in-house mortgages and, and other responsibilities. But it’s still a very lucrative. A potentially lucrative priority to choose versus just what pays me more? Who’s got a better match on the 401k?
I’m glad you said that Doug, because E, even in this piece, what Tom writes is the biggest thing you need to know if you’re gonna be the saver investor is to have that difference between the amount you’re bringing in, the amount that’s going out.
You really gotta pay attention to income versus expenses to get that big saving rate. If you’re gonna be the dreamer, you’ve gotta have the right ring light and you gotta make sure I’m kidding there, but, but you seriously have to continually monitor where is this going? Because you gotta be in the 0.1, 0.1, 0.1%.
You always gotta be at the top of your game. I mean, you, you have to be at the top of your game to make that work. But then third, he says, for these company climbers, it is relationship building skills and networking. That is the big thing, not even, and I totally agree, Doug with the skillset piece. Like you get this skillset, this skillset.
When we talk to Oscar Munoz from United Airlines. He talked about his time as a, uh, engineer, really helping, and he knew all the different departments of the company before he ran United, which was super helpful. But Doc, how important has relationship building and networking been for your spouse?
Oh, I think it was very important.
And over the years I imagine that she probably, like a lot of people ended up keeping their jobs because of the relationships or moved up in position because of the relationships or, or were up for the promotion raise. So I think that’s incredibly important. You know, in any big environment like that, it’s all about the politics.
And I think you have people, for instance, here on this podcast right now who probably. Tired of the politics and therefore we chose other pathways. Yeah. There are people who navigate those type of waters very well, probably like Doug and therefore, you know, thrive in that kind of community. How do you all feel about this?
This
what about me tells you I have the tact to to be political. That’s
what I’ve Only the fact that you spent
like 30 years in corporate America, that’s what I wonder was getting the benefit of the doubt. It was
170 different companies.
That’s what I wonder about the whole 30 years I’ve known Doug, so, so I’m like, how did you survive in that environment?
Dude, let
me pose a question to each of you, and I mean this sincerely. Do you feel like in the company climbers path versus the entrepreneurial type of path. ─ Do you agree with me? ’cause I, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll share my, my theory on this, that the company climbers path also has a more finite end date. There comes a point where that ladder jumping and climbing becomes almost impossible, if not very difficult.
You know, when you’re, oh,
retirement’s a mandatory thing. You mean when you’re
28 or 38 or 48 and you’re building your skillset, people can’t wait to hire you when you’re 58 or 68. It’s a different game. And so as an entrepreneur, you start trading on wisdom and relationships that go beyond the academic and intellectual path that you might have been on.
But it’s, it’s. Open-ended. I mean, entrepreneurs. Yeah. You could, are surrounded by the right people. You can work till you die. Well,
but you could work very differently. I know. Yeah. But corporate people become entrepreneurs, so a lot of them leave their corporate jobs and become consult. So is that because
they have to or because they want to?
Like, in other words, I, I, I agree with you that a lot of times corporate folks then go and start their own consultancies. The question is, would they have been, and it’s hypothetical, would they have been better off had they done some of that sooner and built some equity in themselves rather than helping the, the company stock grow by three points? ──
I have to say though, I don’t think people do that as much to make money as they do it, because that’s the only sense of purpose they’ve ever known. That’s
fair too.
So I think a lot of these people, and I’ve, I’ve known a lot of them, right. Especially through my wife, et cetera, a lot of them have those huge 4 0 1 Ks Mm-Hmm.
And have, have some wealth saved up and have done very well in corporate America. But a lot of times, you know, they either see their end date at work or are part of a downsizing or realize they’re just not getting anywhere anymore in that business. And ─ that’s the only sense of purpose they’ve known for all of those years.
And so they try to reproduce a situation that feels as good, but where they have a little more agency,
women’s earnings peak at 40. And I’ve been very conscious of that as a black female in corporate America, what the, the peak earnings are, and also having been on. ─ Both sides of either handing out layoffs, making the decisions on layoffs and having been laid off.
There definitely comes a time when you max out. Either you’re going to be too expensive and they’ll, they can employ somebody much less knowledgeable, but they can find somebody that’s half the price. You will get priced out. Or sometimes unfortunately, you, you age out. Um, nobody wants to say that’s what it is, but that’s essentially what ends up happening.
And so, yeah, there is a finite amount of time and what I counsel people to do is remove anything that indicates dates on your, you know, resume, drop off your older jobs, whatever, to increase your, your as an opportunity and also focus on as you get older. That’s great advice. Oh, yeah. As you get older, yes.
Build those relationships 110% because your relationships can lead to your next job. Or somebody who’s worked with you before, they’ll recommend you. My last three jobs were off of recommendations from people who I’d worked with. Those relationships were incredibly important. And then as you’re nearing your end date.
Your, your number one job is to maximize your earnings, whatever that ends up being, and then you can leverage that into a consultancy, maximize your earnings and your, your information education so that if you do age out, you can leverage that into a consultancy and you could possibly start your consultancy with people who you’ve worked with before.
You have these relationships that you’ve built before, so it does happen, and it doesn’t just happen in corporate America. You’ll see it with line workers, et cetera. Yeah, there’s some jobs where you just cannot do it after, you know you’re an airline pilot. They age out after a certain time. Uh, so they have a finite amount of time.
So it, it does happen. They’re
like podcast hosts that way. ─━━───
That’s why, that’s why I’m telling all the people I know in corporate America that if they’re doing their 401k, you want that target date to be 2095. ’cause you don’t want anyone to know how old you are, so, yeah. Right, right. ━ What date, what day she
got on the phone? ━──
You know, the fourth one, I don’t think we have to spend a lot of time on, but I do wanna spend a little here. It’s called the Virtuosos Path. These are people, rocket scientists. Nuclear physicists, uh, doctors, attorneys, I mean people that spend a lot of time with very specialized knowledge. Mm-hmm. That will then pay them a lot of money for that specialized knowledge.
And it says roughly 19% of the participants in a study chose that path. They’re among the best at what they do at that profession. Sandy, you’ve got a member of somebody who’s virtuoso in your family.
Yeah. My cousin has a number of patents in the automobile world. He’s about my age. He’s about 43 and he’s set to retire in the next year or so has two homes that he owns.
Bring clear one here. One overseas, um, has. A hefty retirement fund, and now he’s looking for his next thing. His thing is he’s going to retire. But I said, what? You’re gonna be bored? Mm-Hmm. Within six months. Mm-Hmm.
I
know you will. You’ve spent all the, you have this education, this knowledge. You’ve got these patents under your your belt.
What are you gonna do? And he hadn’t thought about that. He thought he was just gonna be retired and have live life and be great. And I was like, no, you won’t. You’re gonna be so unhappy. You cannot spend that much time doing all this and think you’re gonna sit and do nothing and twiddle your thumb.
That’s always what the
jealous people say. ━━━━━── These people in the dreamers, I think are the most likely to attach their identity to their job. Right. I mean, Taylor Swift is Taylor Swift. That is her identity. Doug and I know know a physician in the Detroit area where we both lived, who died in his nineties, still going to work every day.
And it wasn’t because he needed the money. He was successful way earlier than that. That was who he was. Mm-Hmm. Yeah, he was Dr. Dorsey. He was a badass. Just a cool dude. I love that guy. But, but yeah, and the whole community loved him, but he was the doctor, uh, a lot a, a, a doc GI mean, you know, you, you went down this path.
Yeah. I mean, we talk about what motivates people deeply, internally, motivates people to do things and, you know, often comes up. It’s, it’s purpose, autonomy, and mastery. And so what you’re really talking about is the virtuo. So as a master, they do something that they spent 10,000 hours or whatever. The crazy number is learning how to do what they do.
And so there are a lot of people in my former field and I definitely call it my former field ’cause I don’t really identify as much as a doctor anymore. But although you still do practice. ── I do, I do, and I do practice out of the joy of doing a very specific type of medicine. But I think for a lot of people it’s intoxicating.
It’s intoxicating. Having this sense of mastery. And when you take something like being a physician or a rocket scientist, or for a lot of people even being like a CPA, they also have this great sense of purpose. So when you get purpose and mastery, all you’re missing is autonomy there, right? And so if you can also be a little bit entrepreneurial and build in a lot of a little autonomy, you’ve got kind of those keys to what looks like success and happiness.
They’re making fun of the fact in the YouTube comments that I’m, we haven’t heard anything about the fact that I’m going on vacation yet. So I think I’m contractually obligated to, uh, to talk about this for a second. But seriously, I’m going on vacation ─ with, uh, six virtuosos, and I’ve done this before. It kind of sucks ━ because they’re so good at what they do.
They’re used to calling the shots, and when you get six people on a trip together, and they’re usually the person who is the smartest person in the room and everybody’s always following what they say, and now we’re deciding where to go to dinner. Like it’s, it is, it’s the downside of traveling. Don’t travel with a bunch of virtuosos.
That’s gonna be my takeaway. But seriously, Eric, what is the pitfall for people exploring this path? Somebody that, you know, wants to be the next future rocket scientist? Well,
first, I, I think it takes a very long time to get there. You know, doc said 10,000 hours and, and it also requires a lifelong education because you’re not gonna learn what you need to know in undergraduate, even graduate or PhD.
You’re, you’re not gonna know everything at 27 that you’re gonna use at 77. ’cause the world is a different place six times over in that path. So I think it’s a commitment to lifetime learning and lifetime, uh, growing. And, you know, Sandy talked about how her cousin was gonna be bored stiff. And I have to plug the fact that someone should write a book on that.
So I did. The whole premise is that retirement is terrible for you and nobody should do it. And then instead, we should graduate to the next iteration of ourselves and figuring out that purpose. Once you’re debt free and you’re financially independent and you’ve maintained your health and you’ve taken care of yourself singularly nothing more important than maintaining a sense of purpose and not having your LinkedIn page just say retired, because it might as well say dead. ───
You know, you need to have a reason to get outta bed every morning. You need to continue to make a difference in people’s lives, and it doesn’t have to be for money. If you wanna do consulting or mentoring or coaching, or teaching or volunteering, or you do anything you want, ─ if you’ve reached financial independence, what I beg people to do who are contemplating retirement is to have a plan qualitatively, not just quantitatively know what you’re gonna do long before you get there.
Give yourself a two year runway to reinvent yourself because you don’t just wake up that next Monday morning and figure out a new plan. That’s not how we work. You’re gonna want to build the network in, in that area. If you’re thinking of starting a consultancy, have it set up in advance. Know some of the things that you’re gonna do.
Have your website, have your collateral. If you’re gonna be volunteering already, know how to get on one of those boards or on one of those committees or already know the right people in that sector so that you can go in and make a difference Monday morning and not then try and just figure it out like you’re surfing online.
’cause people will stop getting outta bed every morning and it’s tragic. ───
I love how you’re pointing to the cross skills too. Like, you know, there is still relationships and networking when you’re a virtuoso. You’re smart, but to really fulfill your promise, you gotta be able to communicate that with other people.
Mm-Hmm. I think also being able still to separate income versus expenses for everybody. Like the saver investor person. And then, uh, also always thinking about how do we sharpen the saw? How do we sharpen that career? Like the dreamer. I think there is all this, a lot of cross stuff, unfortunately. I think that’s where we gotta leave it guys.
I could talk about this topic much, much, much longer, but um, I think we did a great job. We have four virtuosos on this call and me, so nice job team. Let’s find out what’s going on, where all of you are. Uh, so Sandy, you’re clearly not gonna talk about Elevate. No. ’cause I tried earlier. You did. So instead, let’s
talk about your business.
Yes. The business is Uncle Clarence Barbecue. Uncle clarence bbq.com. Shameless plug. No, not yeah. Shameless plug. And what it is, is this is my husband’s passion project that’s now turned into a business for him. And I am in the background of said business. And the signature product is a barbecue sauce made with blueberries.
I had the benefit of watching this product be created and evolve over the last 20 years. I said to him, Hey, you have an opportunity to create this business while your wife is slaving away and talking on podcasts with these guys. Why don’t you, why don’t you create a business and I’ll be a sugar mama?
And he said, uh, you don’t have to tell me twice. So that’s
where
we
are. How do I find one of those? You know, ━━ I want one too. Sandy. Sandy, I gotta tell you. That sounds delicious, but it will stay in a shirt. ━
Uh, you know what, I, I have to figure out if it does because I haven’t gotten as far as dripping it on my shirt.
That’s a good one. Well drip it on somebody
else’s shirt.
If you put enough silicone in it, Sandy, it won’t stick to anything. I would recommend adding that to the recipe. Delicious additive. Mm-Hmm. ━━━━━─
What could possibly go wrong? Uh, Eric, thanks for joining us again. You mentioned the book and the book Don’t Retire, graduate.
Yeah. The
second
edition was published today. It hit Amazon today. Congrats. Thank you. Fabulous. The second edition is a huge thing. It’s the second edition. It took me, uh, four years to finally realize that this should be timeless and not timely because it’s immediately, uh, obsolete. One piece of legislation can ruin any nonfiction book.
So, uh, so now it is designed to be. ━ The tools people need to build their own financial plans with or without an advisor starting at whatever age they are, whether they’re a virtuoso or a career climber, uh, or, or an entrepreneur or a dreamer. So there’s a workbook with it. It is a path to financial independence starting wherever you are.
I’m still sitting in the CEO seat for as long as I’ll have me here at BFG Financial Advisors in Maryland. Actually, I heard your boss is horrible. Well, he’s, I’m, I’m not gonna use the word ’cause we’re, you know, it’s a, it’s a family friendly show, but you’re mu you’re Mustang. Yeah, yeah. Don’t, don’t do it.
Actually. I’ve already identified my successor and I’m on a sort of a four year path and she’s gonna be the CEO and she’s gonna crush it. She’s gonna do better than I ever could. So my job is gonna be to become a growth officer and be doing a lot of m and a and, and growing the company, uh, from a business development standpoint and doing a lot of consulting, which, you know, as I mentioned already have it set up.
That’s done. I’m already doing some consulting and doing the media and the podcast will be back at some point, Joe, but not until you’re ready to co-host it with me. No. ━━─
In your free time. ─ Yeah, I’ve got, I’ve got nothing else going on. Big guy.
I know. I appreciate you.
The, uh, well I appreciate you very much and we will link to the book and, and your financial planning practice.
Thank you. On our show notes page and we’ll link to Uncle Clarence’s barbecue sauce on the show notes page, as well as doc what’s happening over at the Beautiful Earn and Invest podcast. Speaking of podcasts, so
at Earn and, and Invest, we just interviewed Kevin Anderson, who has a company of ghost writers, and so that’s something that’s very interesting, exciting to me since I’ve been an author and I’ve gotten intimately familiar with publishing.
And then coming up, we have an interview with Amy Daughters who started writing her friends on Facebook, handwritten letters, and we talk about the magic of handwritten letters and just kind of, she wrote two books about it and all sorts of interesting things happened when she put pen to paper and started writing people who she only knew from social media.
Wow. It’s my favorite thing.
It’s very cool. It is. Whenever I get a handwritten thank you from someone, I’m always like, I should do this. And I’ve been saying that for 10 years and I don’t, but I still appreciate it. So very, it, it makes it every day that goes by, it makes a bigger impact than it did yesterday.
It just, Jill, if you’ll give your home address on the air, I bet a lot of people would be glad to send you a note. Handwritten right now. ━━━━━━━━
And pictures and
photos, right? And photos. And on
that note, I think we’re about done, ━━━━━─ Doug. There were a lot of takeaways from this show. That might not be one of ’em.
Uh, what are our top three man?
Well, Joe, here’s what’s stacked up on our to-do list. After today’s discussion. First, take some advice from our piece. Which path are you on to building your fortune? Is it the one that fits your goals best? If not. Switch paths and chart a course. If so, maximize and prioritize based on the strengths of that path and stay diligent, stacker.
Second, take some advice from Doc Jeep planning on hitting the big time in sports or music. While you may not have a three octave range or a cannon for a right arm, but almost everyone can be an entrepreneur and create their own wealth, but what’s the biggest to do? ━─ I’m gonna go grab the Texas flag and lead the neighborhood troops over to Arkansas.
Time to take this city for Texas once and for all. Who’s with me? ───────── Thanks to Eric Brotman for joining us today. You can learn more about eric@bfgfa.com and don’t forget to pick up 10 copies of his book. Don’t Retire, graduate Wherever books are Sold. We’ll also include links in our show notes at Stacking Benjamins dot com.
That’s the minimum order I’m told. Thanks. ━━ Thanks also to Sandy Smith for hanging out with us today. You’ll find everything you wanna know about Sandy at Yes, I am cheap.com/weddings or for suckers? Wait a minute. What’s the, what’s the URL for Uncle clearances?
Uncle cla bbq.com. Mm. And you gotta pick up a case that’s probably the minimum order
must Oh, of course.
Or you can go on Amazon or Walmart ’cause we’re there too.
Fabulous. And finally, thanks to Doc G for coming on the show today. You can listen to more of Doc G on the Earn and Invest podcast. ───
And what can they buy of mine? ━━ They just, because they gotta buy at least a case or 10, whatever it is. I, maybe 170.
They gotta buy 10 copies of taking stock.
There you go. That’s what they gotta do. Or listen to 10 episodes of the show. ───
This show is the property of SB podcasts, LLC, copyright 2024 and is created by Joe Saul-Sehy. Our producer is Karen, Repine. Karen and Joe get help from a few of our neighborhood friends.
You’ll find out about our awesome team at Stacking Benjamins dot com, along with the show notes and how you can find us on YouTube and all the usual social media spots. Come say hello. Oh yeah, and before I go, not only should you not take advice from these nerds, don’t take advice from people you don’t know.
This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any financial decisions, speak with a real financial advisor. I’m Joe’s Mom’s Neighbor, Duggan. We’ll see you next time back here at the Stacking Benjamin Show. ━──━─━━━━━─━━━━━─━━━━━──━━━━━──────────────
Leave a Reply