So many distractions. You can’t even read this title without thinking about your social media accounts, can you? That’s okay. Neither can we. So, to help ourselves AND our Stacker community, we invited Eric Qualman to join us. He embarked on the Focus Project where he just tried focusing on ONE THING for two hours a day. How’d it work out? We’ll share all, including his tips on New Year resolutions and how to block time for the important things on today’s show.
Plus (and before we discuss focus), we’ll dive even more into the topic as we talk about Klarna and Affirm, plus companies who’ve done the same thing over the last thirty years. Should our Stacker not go with the BNPL company? We’ll discuss winning strategies.
FULL SHOW NOTES: https://www.stackingbenjamins.com/increase-your-focus-in-2024-erik-qualman-1458
Deeper dives with curated links, topics, and discussions are in our newsletter, The 201, available at https://www.stackingbenjamins.com/201
Enjoy!
Our Headlines
Our TikTok Minute
Eric Qualman
Big thanks to Erik Qualman for joining us today. To learn more about Erik, visit Motivational Speaker | Erik Qualman (equalman.com). Grab yourself a copy of the book The Focus Project: The Not So Simple Art of Doing Less.
Doug’s Trivia
- On today’s date in 1971, a rule passed costing what types of companies millions?
Stacking Benjamins Lifeline
- Dino has a question about where his and his wife’s investments should be focused, and about catch-up retirement contributions as they turn 50 years old this year.
Have a question for the show?
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- Check out The 201, our email that comes with every Monday and Wednesday episode, PLUS a list of more than 19 of the top money lessons Joe’s learned over his own life about money. From credit to cash reserves, and insurance to investing, we’ll tackle all of these. Head to StackingBenjamins.com/the201 to sign up (it’s free and we will never give away your email to others).
Join Us Wednesday
Tune in on Wednesday for a special show where we’re diving into goal setting. Everyone knows the stats…new New Year’s resolutions don’t work! So we’ve brought in the guy who’s already proven to millions that HE can help you make it work. Jon Acuff!
Written by: Kevin Bailey
Miss our last show? Listen here: Our 2023 Magic 8 Ball Episode (Best of SB1457).
Episode transcript
Guys New Year’s morning. I’m so excited you guys are up recording early on. New Year’s Morning, og that must mean that you went to bed at 7:00 AM on New Year’s Eve as
usual. Uh,
I’ve
just rolled in from the Rose Bowl parade to record this real fast. We, we did, I,
we had to go to bed early. I, I went to bed at 7:00 AM I’m at 7:00 PM but it’s not beyond OG to go to bed at 7:00 AM like
OGs like, oh, new Year’s Eve, I’m done.
I figured out
where
I got that from because I was, uh, visiting my dad on his birthday a couple of weeks ago. He said, well, where do you wanna go for dinner? And I said, it’s your birthday, but it’s three 30, so we’ve got plenty of time. He’s like, well, we usually like to eat around 4, 4 15. We got an hour. And uh, so we went and did that.
And then about eight o’clock, he was like, well, what time do you usually get up? And I said, eh, how about the crack at eight 15, no matter if I got something to do or not. And he said, well, coffee will be on at five 30. Or six 15. Those are the two settings,
so might have to warm it up in the microwave.
Yeah.
So he said, I’m gonna turn in, it was like 8 0 5. I was like, all right. Plus it was 8 0 5 Eastern time, so it was really about seven o’clock central time. So I went and laid down and, and, uh, amazing thing happens when you go to bed at seven o’clock, you tend to get up at about six 30 at
the latest, talking
about Stacking Benjamins.
He’s Stacking. You’re Stacking sheep is what you’re
doing. Yes. It’s a key component to staying healthy. And you know
what? You can do that because of the men and
women in our armed
forces.
You like that, huh? Huh? Another year, guys. It’s very true. We know
who’s gonna keep us all safe. On behalf of the men and women at Navy Federal Credit Union, the Men and Women making podcast in mom’s basement, here’s to the troops stack some Benjamins together, shall we?
In
- Cheers. Cheers. Happy New Year
everybody.
Here’s the song that we’d like to do for all the younger set of people, the teenagers and what have you. This one’s called Vacation Over
Vacation,
Z
over.
Live from Joe’s mom’s basement. It’s the Stacking Benjamin Show.
I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and happy New Year stacker. Let’s crank up 2024 all the way to 11 by helping you focus on what’s important with special. Kick it all off. Guest Eric Kalman. Wait, focus. Hey, let’s start right now. There’s lots of great stuff on today’s show, so, uh, uh, you know, just, just listen.
And now two guys who do this podcast, Joe and og. Wow, I cut that a lot. This focus thing really works.
Welcome to Cut to the Chase in 2024 Podcast. My name’s Joe Sulci. Hi, I am average Joe Money on Twitter. Happy 2024 to you stacker and happy 2024 to our team here that we’ll introduce to you right now. Uh, across the card table from me, the other dude Doug, uh, mentioned very.
Uh, brusquely. Mr. OGs here. How are
you brother? Are you trying to do a heart with your hands? I dunno how to do the hearts. Oh, God, it works. He discovered a new one.
Damn. So, uh, people who just joined us for the first time ever,
og uh, not
realizing it’s an audio podcast continually makes, uh, all kinds of things that make his Mac go crazy.
The people at Cupertino like fireworks and hearts. We have to write a letter to the people at Cupertino. You would just check it.
What happens if you use the Tall Boy salute? Is there any reaction if you just give it the old number one sign, but you know the other number one side? Oh, no,
no. It doesn’t react to that.
No. I, I’m, maybe
there’s a
set. Hey guys, we’ve got a great show today. We got a fantastic show today.
Okay.
I’d rather talk about his match.
We’ve got Eric Kalman here. Eric is a
guy who I got to see live. I was super
excited that I was gonna get to see him because I’d.
I’d, uh, read a couple of his books
and he was a keynote speaker at a credit union conference.
I
ceed in Las Vegas, the relevant conference. He
is a guy who took a year and decided that he would work
on focus and why he did that and how he did it. We’ll have him explain that,
but, you know, focusing in 2024, great thing to focus on, huh? As
your New Year’s resolution. I see what you did there. Yeah.
Thank you Ninja.
Uh, but you know what else is ninja? Watch how I transition into this. Bam. Pow. How about this? Wasn’t that amazing.
Just transitioned right through those OG
you’re
font of transitioning power Doug. I can
hear the dripping
endorsement from og. He’s clearly on board. Eric Alman waiting in the basement.
Let’s get
moving. Hello darlings.
And now
it’s time for your
favorite part of the show, our Stacking
Benjamins headlines. Our headline today comes to us
from the USA today, uh, not USA yesterday. It’s USA today. Uh, Daniel Divis say it looks like Daniel de device,
but he’s got the little thing over his accent over the E, so it’s Dee.
Uh, Daniel writes
A popular payment plan offered by America’s big box retailers promises
no interest on your purchase if you pay it off in
say, six months. Sounds great. At least until you read the fine print in, quote, deferred interest plans. Consumer advocates say bad things happen to the consumer. Who fails to pay off the full balance by the time the promotional clock runs out.
If even $1 of the debt remains at the end of the promotional period, the deal’s off, suddenly the customer owes every penny of the deferred interest, often at a steep annual rate of 30% or more. It’s as if the zero interest promotion never existed. 62% of Americans OG say that zero interest
payment plans should be against the law.
What do you think?
Yeah, and probably those same, 62% of people are the people who actually use this crap. I mean, I have, haven’t you? No, no. You’ve never bought a piece of furniture on deferred interest or, or went to Lowe’s and, you know, did the 0% thing for 12 months, any of that stuff? Not for
a long time.
Not in a long time. Amazon,
no. Well, I mean, I didn’t say recently, but I’m just saying
never. No, I actually, yes. Uh, when I was first messing up my credit, I did, I
bought a, uh. I can’t say what I bought because it’s going to again be another Joe’s really old story turntable, but it was a word processor. It was before, it was before
computers that like a, the keyboard that had that little tiny LCD window on it where you could see like four words at a time.
Yeah, that one. Yeah. You’d
write like, and then you could enter It would type it. Yeah. You’d write 25 letters before it actually typed anything. It was brilliant. Thing was great. And so I,
I bought that and that was on deferred payment. And of course, guess who, uh, didn’t make the payments on time on that.
The mattress we bought, we did that. It was 0% for a year. As long as it was paid off within a year. I didn’t, I thought it was a great deal. I mean, jokes on them, obviously in my case, because I made sure I paid it off long before you knew that, before
you even entered into the deal, you knew you had the funds to pay it off and you were just gonna use their money as long as
possible.
Yeah. Why not? Yeah. I mean obviously it works out better for them in the long run, otherwise it wouldn’t offer this, right. Like it would, it would cease to exist. I mean, it’s no different than somebody, I don’t know. Somebody asked me the other day, Hey, should I get a new, I want, I need to buy a new car.
Should I finance it at 1.9% or should I pay cash? And it’s like, well, if you got the cash, then pay the 1.9 and keep your money in your savings account at five. Why? Why wouldn’t you do that? That’s a, you know, if you’ve got the responsibility to do that. Yeah. That’s the key I think with all of that’s
the thing.
Yeah. Or the wherewithal. I mean, there’s people that just don’t have the wherewithal. They, they need a mattress now,
and so they go, oh, I’m gonna do the 0%
hope for the, for the best in the future. I can tell you how that works
out. Being a guy who’s been there, that doesn’t work out well. Yeah.
If you don’t have it, you need to, instead of solving the problem this way, I think the way you need to solve the problem, OG, is find
other streams of income.
To, uh, to, to create that. And I know that’s easy
to say, but
back when I was working three jobs just to
try to stay afloat, but but you gotta
find the money somewhere. You can’t use these programs. These, these will rip you off every time. They’ll rip you off if you’re in that, that paycheck to paycheck place.
oog. Well, and
I was gonna say, the other thing that it encourages you to do is shop outside of your comfort zone, so to speak. You know, using the bedding example, right? I need a new bed for whatever reason. I mean, what’s wrong with your existing bed? You don’t need a new one. You want a new one? And you should go buy one that’s 299 bucks out the door.
And instead you go, well, I can get this $4,000 one that has massage and heating and cooling and goes up and down and all around, and that’s only 2 99 a month for the next 22 years. So I’ll do that instead. And to your point, the right answer is if you absolutely need it, you should find the cheapest thing that will satisfy the actual need.
When in fact a vast majority of people don’t actually need the stuff they think they
do. I would edit your phrase that you just used, you said, outside of comfort zone. I think unfortunately, too many people are comfortable with buying on credit. I would say outside of your responsibility zone, and in fact, it’s about to get worse right before Christmas.
A Affirm, one of the companies that offers this, uh, their stock went crazy, uh, just before Christmas because they, I think they had like a 15% bump in one day because the, a deal was announced with Walmart. They’re now gonna be able to offer Affirm at the self checkout line. So people who, who are very comfortable using this kind of thing are, it’s now gonna be just right in their face.
That’s all I need to make their own. They need somebody in front of me in the self-checkout line, entering their social security number and their work address and how much money, they’re like, what is going on? You’re getting a pack of gum. What is happening? How many keystrokes does it take to self-Check out a pack of gum and a gallon of milk.
Sir, I need to enter my social and my mother’s maiden name. Give me a second please.
Right. Get out your cell phone camera. Oh. And uh, just record all of that. Oh my
gosh.
I don’t know if you know this, this
is the Kingsize Kit Katt.
Oh, how miserable. Can’t paid for that all at once. Don’t do that.
People, no, it doesn’t make it better.
And I think OG
Doug brings up a good point because how many times
have you heard people say, well, you know,
everybody’s in this case and maybe everybody around you is in that case where they’re like, oh, my buddy did it that way. And so and so did it that way. And the more we normalize this, you need other people in around you.
Yeah. The more we normalize this, the worse it’s gonna get. Like, you cannot use these programs and get ahead. There’s no, I don’t know that there’s any upside besides, you
already have the money sitting in cash and you have an
automatic payment that happens two days before your zero period ends. Yeah. And you pay it.
That that’s the only upside. And seriously,
if you’re somebody that’s messed up with money 15 times. You’re gonna put $500
onto a firm or Klarna, let’s say,
and pay 30% versus putting it in a high yield savings account. Like what’s six months in a high yield savings account of 500 bucks is how much money og?
12 bucks. Yeah. Is it worth 12 bucks?
Just it doesn’t seem like it is. Yeah. Like let’s a 12 bucks go until you’ve got good systems. Let it go.
I messed this up personally so many times. Not with this stuff, but with credit cards.
Oh, I got 30 days to pay
it. I’ll figure it out later. Didn’t we just come through the holiday period where we watched Christmas vacation for the 500th time?
I mean, this is a timeless story about a man who had a pool that he was putting behind his house for the whole family betting on the future, right? Betting on the fact that he was gonna get this big Christmas bonus and his Christmas bonus came. It didn’t jelly. The month club doesn’t put the pool in the ground.
It’s not
exactly the lesson I got outta Christmas vacation, but, but I can see how you made the leap there.
Was it kidnap? Your boss was kidnap your boss? The lesson,
that’s another little was it don’t host the Christmas party. That’s another little subtle micro expression that you can see from Randy Quaid in that movie when Clark is losing his crap over the fact that, you know, he got the Jelly, the Month club thing and everything’s going to hell.
And he’s like, you know what I want? I want my boss wrapped up with a tight little bow on his head drug from his house on Mallory Lane or whatever. And if you look in the background, you can see Randy quid’s like, Hmm, okay. Like he’s actually thinking, you could tell he’s thinking about it. It’s not a random thing that happens.
He’s like, he plots it out right then. He’s like. It’s very, very interesting in the background. We
will, uh,
dive more into this in our newsletter, the 2 0 1
Stacking Benjamins dot com slash 2 0 1. Start your new year right by the way. You can get your headlines
delivered every Tuesday, Thursday, right to your
inbox from us, Kevin Bailey on our team.
If you’re
new to Stacking Benjamins, Kevin Bailey does a great job at curating lots of the best on the
web in-depth articles on all the things that we talk about. Stacking Benjamins dot com slash 2 0 1. Always free and always on
Tuesday, Thursday. Coming up next time for our TikTok minute, this is the part of the show where we shine a light on a TikTok
creator who’s either created something brilliant or just maybe every once in a while there’s
something
on TikTok that is only air quotes.
Brilliant. I know. I know what you’re saying to yourself. It’s all brilliant. Every once in a while, one may slip through. So og are you beginning the new year? New Year, new you. Is this gonna be brilliant or air quotes brilliant.
Well, I mean I have to stick with the plan, which is that just about everything on the internet is trash.
So, oh, Doug, I should
have gone to you.
I thought it was gonna be a new year. You needed
my positive affirmation that this is gonna be awesome. At least 50 50. I mean, I can say that. I can say that as often as you want, but probably 51% of the time
it’s crap.
Alright, og, this is actually a user who said this is a scene from her favorite show of all time that, uh, she said, we’ll never get old.
And I’ll tell you what the show is in just a moment. It’s a great January 1st lesson. The weird thing is now I’m exactly where I want to be. I got my dream job at Cornell and I’m still just thinking about my old pals only now. They’re the ones I made here. I wish there was a way to know you’re in the good old days before you’ve actually left them.
That’s of course a
scene from the office. And I think that OG that we spend a lot of time thinking about our goals, but we don’t think enough about the people, about being in the present.
We had our dug in the three ghost, uh, late last year,
but man, there’s sometimes you’re living the good old
days right now.
We’re too busy thinking about the future to think about the right now. And right now
I feel like there’s gonna be some bowl games on, so we should probably keep this along, keep this thing moving. There’s leftover champagne in those bottles. Well,
I
tell you, she needs to hit
along with
a few cigarette buds.
We
gotta get on that stat. Uh, Eric Kalman’s
materials been
used in over 500 universities.
His animation studio works with some of the world’s leading brands like Disney, Oreo, chase,
and Cartier. His social genomics work has been on 60 minutes and has been in the Wall Street Journal,
been used by the National Guard and nasa.
But we’re going to dive into what Eric Kalman can teach us today about focus. He focused for a year on getting much more intentional, and what a great
day to get more intentional. January 1st
right now though, before we talk to
Eric, as he’s gonna come down and get settled across from us at the card table.
Uh, Doug’s going to share January 1st. Trivia. What do we got man?
Hey there, stackers. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and I love Eric Kalman Coming down to talk about focus. Check out how focused this is. Here’s today’s trivia question On today’s date, in 1971, a law passed, which cost some advertisers millions of Benjamins because they were no longer able to advertise on TV or radio.
What consumer products were they? I’ll be back, you know, soon.
Hey there, stackers. I’m the guy getting to the point. Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. On today’s date in 1971, a rule passed costing what types of companies, millions advertisers were no longer able to sell cigarettes or booze on TV and radio. And while those laws have softened to some degree, at least for booze, those companies someway, somehow have figured out how to make a profit.
How’s that for, to the point here to help you take your focus game to the next level? Say hello to Eric Alman
and I’m super happy he’s in Mob’s basement with us. Eric Wellman’s here. How are
you man? So good. So good to be here. Thanks for having me.
I am super happy you’re gonna help us kick off 2024. Let me ask this.
You’re an incredibly high performer, as we talked about in our introduction while you were coming down the stairs. What traditions do you have to kinda look back on a year and kind of set up the next year for as much success as possible?
Now for me, I love to draw out just one page with the biggest thing in the middle.
And so that’s always for me, family and you got family, God. Then from there it spreads out. What are the big, so the bigger the thing you want to get done the next year, it’s bigger on the sheet of paper. So if I’m gonna write a book, it might just be an image of the book that I’m trying to get published.
And then as I progress throughout the year on that, I color. So it’s good, it’s relaxing, it’s adult coloring. But I basically make a one page coloring book, so to speak, of what my
vision is for the year you color in is you do it so it, it starts off all black and white, just images. And then as you get it done, the year goes from, it’s almost like the Wizard of Oz going from black and white to color partway through.
Yeah, I love that. Black and white to color, whatever they call it, color tech. I forgot the techno color. Techno color. So it goes into techno color. Can’t believe I remember that. But it goes into techno color. I used to work at a movie theater, but that’s a side note. But yeah, it goes into techno color, so That’s awesome.
Yeah, it just starts out black and white and it has all the big goals, the little goals. Not too much on there, right? You probably have like 15, 20 items and then you start with the big rocks first and start coloring those
in. Do you do much looking back on the year before or is it mostly just going
forward?
Yeah, yeah. It’s uh, the old adage, you know, we get less done than we think in a year, but more done than we think in 10 years. So it’s a good way to look back and go, man, sometimes I thought I was just running on that treadmill and getting nowhere. I. Looking back, wow, we got a lot of important stuff done.
And, and understanding that life’s not a to-do list. Like you don’t want your life to be a to-do list. That’s why it’s important to be intentional and that helps me. So it might help some of your listeners out there to kind of fun. Make a cr illustration like me. Uh, maybe you’re a great drawer. I’m not.
Yeah. So I do the best I can and then I’m, I’m a really good colorer though. I can stay inside the lines.
Do my stick. People don’t even look like stick people. Like it’s that bad. Oh, there
you go. I like that. I might borrow that. That’s nice. It’s so bad. I
draw, uh, let’s start off talking about getting focused, which is why I was so excited to have you join us.
Did you see Wonka over the
holidays? My daughter saw it last night, so I’ve not seen it yet.
It is amazing. Nothing says holidays more than talking to people who make candy, right. I mean, candy and the holidays go. So I was reading in the introduction to the Focus project, there’s a convention for everything.
As you know, you spoke at the National Convection Con. What was that like? Yeah.
For listeners that might not know, a lot of what I do is I’ll speak usually between 50 and 60 times a year, put on a performance of an hour for, it could be for a company, it could be, in this case it’s a large audience of confectioners and so.
Afterwards, sometimes in a cocktail reception. And I found myself with folks that I’m meeting as like a VIP cocktail reception after the event. And literally the names of these people, their last name is, is all the stuff you’d find in your Halloween smorgasborg. So if you’re doing trick or treating, like all of a sudden I’m talking, what’s your name?
It’s like, I’m a Mr. Mars, you know? Then I, then I talked about Mr. Three Musketeers or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I go, oh, wait, your last name’s Mars, like, like your family founded Mars. I mean, not Mars. They’re like, yeah. And I go, oh. Then the next person I talked to, I go, oh, where do you live? They’re like, oh, in Hershey, Pennsylvania.
I go, this is crazy. But all these people are super successful at what they do, which was they’re focused on creating chocolate. And I wanted to ask ’em, because I was struggling with focus at the time and, and I was starting the process of doing my project, which then went into a book. So I have all these people in the room and you, you wanna ask questions, right?
You don’t wanna be, you already know what you’re gonna say. So the best thing to do is just be a sponge. So I go, Hey, you know, you’re super successful, your family’s successful. What’s the key to that success? They’re like, you know what, Eric comes on to one thing, it’s focused. I go, oh, wow. And I go, well, what do you struggle with the most?
And they go, staying focused. And as I went through the room, it was the same answer. And then the next week I fly to India to give a talk at Google. I start asking those two questions. What’s the key to your success focus? What’s the biggest challenge you have? Stay in focus. So, ah, I’m not alone. And I started talking more and more people and so that’s what I started to do the project for two years and then, uh, wrote the book.
But it’s so hard to focus as you know. I mean, this time of year I’ve got 11. I think that’s a number now, 11 things that I wanna do. It’s so you’ve got plenty of statistics about how hard it is for us to focus.
Yeah, I mean, I wrote the book, so the focus project, and then I always ask myself, what did I learn?
Like what are the, what did I learn? I learned three things. The focus is very, very, very, very difficult. It’s supposed to be a one year project that it took a two year project. We might unpack that, we might not, but that’s how hard it is. But it can become a habit. So it’s the key focus can become a habit just like anything else.
The second thing was, is that people that are very successful. Are better at focusing than most of us. And it’s not something they were born with. It’s not inherent. It’s just they’ve set up systems and processes to make sure that allows them to focus. And more times than not, that systems around saying no to small things so they can say yes to the big things.
And then last but not least, this is gonna strike home as we kick off the new year. This is really important to remember fake progress, not perfection. Now, I’m not judging you because I am doing this. I’m saying it to myself. I’m talking right now, but I’m actually listening as I speak. ’cause I’m like, remind yourself.
So this is what we don’t wanna do. We don’t wanna say, all right, my New Year’s resolution, I’m gonna get up an hour earlier because now I’m gonna journal for 10 minutes. I’m gonna do gratitude for 15, and then I’m gonna do a little breathing exercise for 30. And then all of a sudden it’s the afternoon before you get your morning routine done.
So then that’s why like 7% of us adhere to our New Year’s resolutions. ’cause we set ourselves up for failure. So what you wanna do is just get 1% better, 1% better. How can I get better? And like you just mentioned, Joe, you have 14 things on your list. Some people out there have a hundred. What’s the one thing that you wanna do today?
What’s the one thing if you do it well, it makes all those other a hundred things easier or unnecessary. And so break it down to the bite-sized chunks. A lot of you know that it’s just inherent that the gravitational pull pulls us to try to do everything at once, and it’s really just, let’s focus on the big, not the busy.
To do that. You decide that you’re going to, ’cause you never do anything small, Eric. I mean, we could go through all the different things that you’ve done, but you decide I’m gonna focus on one area of focus every month for a year. Initially even this was a struggle, right? I mean, you write that in December, you tried to start doing this and even trying to get focused, it was hard enough.
It was hard to get focused on getting focused. Yeah, it’s
crazy ’cause then a lot of, you’ll be able to identify with this ’cause we’re similar, all of us are living the same movie or just different actors within that movie. And so I go, all right, I’d wake up, I’d basically lay awake at night. I’d go, man, how cool would it be if all I had to worry about, is that enough to worry about an animation project?
Didn’t have to worry about writing the script to be on stage. Didn’t have to worry about writing my next book. What is, if I just worried about cleaning the house or organize all this stuff in the house, how great would that be? How great would the house be organized? So I go, let’s do this just a month.
Let’s start off with two hours a day and focus on something. Then I go, well that’s kind of crazy. That’s not working because I tried five times. It didn’t work. So I, let’s just break it down to a half hour day. And most of you out there, you’re gonna focus on the one thing you have to do to have the luxury to do what I did, which was do this for a year.
So I go, I’ve gotta hit our sales number. At the beginning of the year, and that’s something I can measure. So let’s see if this focus stuff even works. And so what I primarily do, as I mentioned, was I speak on stage. So I perform on stage. So we gotta get booked to be on stage. So people think, do we want Eric Cuman, do we want Malcolm Gladwell to want Brene Brown?
Do we want, you know, Simon Sinek? There’s a lot of competition. So we’ve gotta get booked to be on stage. So our first month was, all right, I’m just gonna dedicate a half hour day to work on sales. ’cause historically we kind of, people call us or email us and say, Hey, are you available for these dates? We never proactively reach out.
Yeah. So what is, if we act proactively reached out, like that’s a good fit, let’s reach out to Eminem, Mars and get that. So to shorten this story up, it’s like half hour day and then all of a sudden, five times I did 18 minutes the first month, not 18 minutes for a day, 18 minutes for the entire month.
That’s how hard focus is. But on the fifth time, it finally clicked really through the half hour. And then it also allowed me to measure something. That’s why we picked sales as well. Because I gotta see if it didn’t work, we just wouldn’t have a book. We wouldn’t have a project. But the end of the story is that we had a record amount of sales, not only for that month, but we achieved our sales for the year, within that month, just by that simple thing of focusing for a half hour day on being intentional with that outreach.
And so very powerful stuff when you’re able to focus, ’cause you think about a magnifying glass, it’s not very powerful when you’re moving around all these different things. But when you hold it steady on a fixed point, all of a sudden that can burn through a wall. That small magnifying glass, using the power of that sun, can burn through that leaf or burn through a wall if you keep it focused.
It’s funny, I, I had a similar experience. I, I get coaching from a group called Strategic Coach. And we were talking about the looking back at the last decade of your life and what are the big things that you did. And it was always those times when I finally, Eric got rid of all the stuff, all the noise, and focused on things that the big rocks move.
Like I totally had to do it. And yet, to your point, there’s so much stuff that comes at us every day that it’s very difficult to get there. I wanna talk about some of the big Eureka moments you have from this, and then I want to ask you about the first couple months and really how you pick the things to focus on and what your results were.
’cause I think these are, these are really great. Your first eureka moment you write, focusing today is hard. Really hard. But it can be learned. Like it can be learned to focus. So how did you go from 18 minutes in that full month to the next month, setting sales records? Like what did you learn to be able to finally carve out that time?
Carve out’s a good word. We call it cowboy and cowgirl scheduling. What I learned was, hey, at the fifth failure, I go, why am I repeating what I’m trying to do? What am I doing? For the last 10 years, I’m doing the same thing. So I’ve gotta break that and change it up, you know, break, break it up. And so what I was doing was basically letting life happen to me.
Rather than attacking life. I was letting life attack me, meaning that I’d get up and I’d probably answer email. ’cause it was, it showed me that dopamine hit. If I’ve a hundred email, I get it down to zero. That feels pretty good, but maybe that’s not the number one thing I should be doing. So instead what I do is I’d carve out cowboy and cowgirl scheduling.
So if you know that song by the chicks, it’s like wide open spaces. So if you think about a cowboy or cowgirl, there’s a lot of things that are fenced off, but then there’s also wide open spaces. So on your schedule you wanna fence off specific times for sales. So I’d fence off half hour a day. Within that when I first woke up, when my brain’s at its optimum point.
And so focus on the most important thing first and then I get that half hour done. If I can get back to sales later, great. If not, I’m already playing with house money. ’cause I nailed off that 30 minutes. And so that’s what cowboy and cowgirl scheduling looks like is you block off certain times for certain things and then also leave wide open space.
And that’s hard to do. ’cause if you look at Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, they’re good friends. And when they first kind of connected and were going over, they were getting interviewed by I think Charlie Rose, and they looked at each one’s calendar, their exact opposites Gates thought was that as a good CEO, your schedule should be completely full with meetings.
And then you look at Warren’s, it’s just like this flip through piece of paper. He had like five meetings for the whole month and the answer’s in the middle there. And so it was really interesting and fascinating to see that Gates had no wide open spaces. And so it’s really cowboy cowgirls, guys, feds off time for the important things.
Usually in the morning, and maybe we’ll get into the, the power hour here in a second ’cause it’s fun for listeners to kind of guess what they are. But yeah, it’s just, it’s being intentional. That was the difference. I go, okay, I haven’t been intentional. I’d wake up and go, yeah, I should get to that half hour of sales.
But once I became flipped it and said I gotta be intentional, and then I had it written down the night before and then I checked that box off. I did that 30 minutes. But I’d also have it hard, fast on that calendar when you
cowboy car girl scheduling right at the beginning of the day too. I feel like a, you’re more likely to do it because your head’s not full of all the other stuff.
But then B, when you talked about playing with the house’s money, if you’ve already done it and you, you’re probably more enthused to try to get back to it, I would imagine later in the day, because I don’t know you, if you carve out time for the things that are fun, Eric, at the beginning of the day, like your brain then is focused there.
You must have found that that time became available as the day went on.
Exactly attack the day before it attacks you. But all of us can relate to this in school. It turns out our parents are pretty smart. They’d go, Hey, why don’t you study on Friday? Or Why don’t you get that term paper done on Friday?
Because even though you don’t think you’re thinking about that term paper, if you haven’t done it and you know it has to be due by Monday, your brain’s thinking about it. You don’t realize that. But it actually is thinking about that kind of storm cloud in the back of your head. So it, it’s freeing when you do this and it’s key to do it in the morning.
We’ll get into what time you do it here in a second. Yeah, but you wanna attack the day before it attacks you. So here’s a question for all your listeners out there. There. Well, and this is,
and this is, hold on. Because even to preview this, Eric, the second takeaway, which I think this, what you’re about to say is gonna espouse your second big Eureka, which is systems, processes, and routines, Trump willpower.
And I think this idea of your power hour is a big piece of this. If you just set the system, the process and the routine up. You don’t have to worry about do I have the will to do it? But, but, but tell us about the, the time of day.
Yeah, exactly. Willpower’s kind of worthless. So it’s really about systems and processes.
And so all your listeners out there, I want you to think about if it’s a Saturday morning, your kids aren’t waking up, there’s no alarms, uh, this sounds like a glorious dream. I know, but let’s just go with it, that it’s Saturday. Nothing’s going to wait. No dog. Next door is waking up. You’re just gonna get up whenever you feel like you’re getting up.
Think about when you’d naturally just get up, like wake up. Not, not necessarily get outta bed, but you like wake up. All right? So that’s your natural inclination. Before seven is a robin, then you’re an eagle. Seven to 10. Most people are eagles. And then very few people, it’s about 10% are owls. But creative people generally fall into the owl.
They wake up after 10:00 AM So what you wanna do is, let’s say you naturally woke up at six 30. So you’re Robin, the first 30 minutes, you’re kind of getting up, you’re kind of getting loose. What you wanna do is the power hour is really a half hour after you naturally wake up. So that’s from seven to eight.
So as much as you possibly can. Sometimes this isn’t realistic ’cause you gotta get kids out, but sometimes you can adjust your schedule so you adjust extra power hour. But let’s say seven to 10, seven to eight, that’s your power hour. That’s when you wanna tack that most important thing. That is not email.
So very easy to do. That’s something you do when your brain’s tired. So most of our brains, what it works like is an iPhone. So throughout the day, think about that battery charge, it gets lower and lower. So you wanna use your cognitive power when it’s at its highest, and that’s during this power hour. So that’s also what you want to carve it out when that power hour.
So if you’re an owl, that might be you actually get about 10 30, then your power hour is 11 to 12. So just figure out when that works best for you. But that is your power hour. Do not waste it on stuff that you can do when your brain’s tired. And
once again, have that fencing out of that time immediately, I would think.
Yeah,
exactly. Fence that off, fence off that time for your power hour. And it could be a power half hour maybe. Be realistic. That’s what the book’s all about. It’s like, hey. If you just do one minute more a day, that’s progress. So it’s just getting better. So it’s not, not just saying, you gotta do five hours.
It’s like just do better. That’s it. We do,
we start off the year, I think, way too far over our skis. Like we go, oh, I’m gonna be miraculously different tomorrow instead of just incrementally a little bit. And then two weeks later we’re doing nothing. It’s like all the people that show up at the gym for a week.
Your third eureka moment, this is gonna be huge. One stackers. Letting something go is sometimes the best way to complete it. You write letting go, Eric, that’s so hard.
It is so hard. But letting go. So let’s say your business, you wanna get on all social media accounts, but then you know the biggest drivers are Facebook and LinkedIn.
Let’s just argue that. But in your mind, you’ve gotten your list. Alright, we gotta get an account on TikTok, let’s say, and that sits there for month after month. And you go, you know what? It’s probably not gonna happen. Let’s let it go. It’s done. There we go. I let it go. That one’s gone. A lot of people, especially America, they think that’s like the fetus.
No, it’s being smart. It’s using your limited resources. It’s essentially a good analogy and we might get into how to say no. Let’s get into that actually. That’s really helpful. So you’ve gotta learn how to say no. It’s really hard. Um, I’m a people pleaser. Most of you out there are people pleasers normally that serves us well.
It serves us for thousands of years. That’s how we assimilate in a tribe. But when you say yes to everyone, you’re saying no to everyone. So this is the way I am able to do it. ’cause before I’d say yes to everyone and sometimes just half-ass something, so then everyone loses. But if you just say a definitive sharp, no at the beginning, like, Hey, I’d love to help out on X, Y, Z, but I’m already booked that day.
Sorry. And they’re like, that allows ’em to move on to ask somebody else. And it’s really getting those systems of saying no in place. So I have a copy and paste email that’s really just like, Hey, this is a great opportunity. Really appreciate you reaching out to me. But I’m actually heads down on my next book, so I’m gonna have to pass.
Best of luck. It’s hard to do that. But as you start to get better at it, then you learn, wait, if I say yes to everyone, I’m saying no to everyone. Or if I’m really struggling with saying no, I go, you gotta think about it like a surgeon. So if you’re a surgeon, you’re only allowed to operate a certain amount, amount of hours a week because then you become detrimental to the patient and yourself when you’re tired.
So you’ve gotta remember you have a limited inventory of, yes, you have a limited inventory of energy. So not time management, but energy management. So if you’re a surgeon, there’s laws in place to protect you and protect the patient. So you gotta think about yourself like a surgeon. Yes, you’d love to operate on everyone and save everyone’s life, but if you start to do that, you become detrimental to the patient.
And so that’s why you gotta remember, it’s all about saying no when you have to say no to the little things. So you can say yes to the big ones.
You have Eric, a story that really resonated with me about saying no. It’s, it’s Christmas morning and there is a client and you are furiously at 2:00 AM writing this email to this client.
And man, I’ve as a people pleaser, I’ve been there before. And you don’t wanna say no to anything. You don’t wanna say no to any business. And I know there’s people out there that have these people in their life that are just that’re sucking the fricking life out of you. And it seems like in this story, this client is sucking the life outta you.
Eric, do you mind telling us that story? ’cause this is the kind of thing that we should immediately say no to right now. And we don’t because we think we’re gonna miss out on money. No,
you’re right. I mean, and I’m glad I could tell the story of the basement so my kids can’t hear me. Say there’s, there’s, well, there’s a spirit of Santa Claus, let’s put it that way.
Yes. So you’re exactly right. We’re working with a client. Their busy time of year is the holidays ’cause they sell watches. It’s a big brand, most of you know. Uh, and we’re helping them with something with the digital side of things. I. And I thought it was, I wanted to run an agency as well, that everyone’s like, you should run an agency.
You should run an agency like Gary Vaynerchuk, like Gary V, you should run an agency. And and clients, after I spoke would come up and go, Hey, we want you to run our social. And I’m like, I don’t do that, I don’t do that. And finally I’m like, well, let’s just try it out. Because I asked my team, I go, you guys wanna do that?
Yeah, we should do that. I go, I’m not gonna be able to help you much, so you’re gonna have to run it. Yeah, let’s do it. Let’s do it. And long story short, things weren’t going well and we were beating the numbers, but they weren’t happy. So it was, and the contract had said that it’s gonna be rough the first three months, just like when you work out, you’re not gonna see anything for the first three min months.
So if you work out that day and look in the mirror, you’re not, you’re like, we’re the abs. It’s like, no, you gotta stay with the process. And the contract specifically says you’re gonna get frustrated in the first two, three months ’cause this is how it works. But you gotta see the process through. That’s why you cannot break this contract for 12 months.
’cause otherwise. We’re both gonna lose. But yeah, I’ve started getting these calls on Christmas Eve and then I’m getting these emails and I wake up and I get
this, you wrote that
it was 6:00 PM
on Christmas Eve. That is BSS
Christmas Eve that I’m up. I had to do pinging pong table. I had to put all this kids stuff together.
And so at two in the morning I’m, I’m like up with the email trying to respond to this ’cause it says, kill the contract. Kill the contract in the subject line. And literally they’re not allowed to kill the contract. Just like I mentioned, it’s just legally binding. But I’m sitting there and then all of a sudden I hear some pitter-patter from the feet upstairs and I had some stuff still out ’cause I was putting it together while I was answering this email.
And I’m like, oh my gosh. I was able to kind of avoid my daughter seeing anything. They didn’t know that I was saying, I’m putting this together. And then literally that just was a moment of focus for me. I go, you know what, if you guys want to get out of this, we’re beating the numbers and this is a process we’re supposed to see it through, but let’s just, yeah, you’re outta the contract.
That’s fine. Then we decided we’re not doing any of that kind of ad work, that that’s not the thing that we like. That’s not what we should be focused on. And so, yeah, there’s option. A lot of missed revenue there, but then we made a lot more revenue on the other stuff that we’re really good at and really wanna do.
And so that was just an aha moment for me. It’s like, nope, we’re not doing that. I’m not enjoying that. It’s
funny how, you know, 30 seconds after the email, ’cause I’ve had to write some of those emails before too, where writing, it just seems, Eric like the most painful thing in the world. But I’m thinking about a similar email I had to write and 30 seconds after I wrote it, I felt so damn good that you must have felt great.
Yeah, it’s liberating. It’s liberating. Like, gosh, you know, that’s fine. Like, okay, that’s perfect. We gotta move on. It’s like, no, we’re not gonna do that. And then sometimes proactive, before we even get into that, like if there’s an event and someone, I go, this is what, what we do, this is how it works. They’re like, no, we wanna do this, this, and this.
I go, Hey, we’re not a real good fit. But I can recommend three people that are, ’cause we own an animation studio, so we’re like, this is the way our process works. We’ve honed it down over 10 years. It’s gonna really help you. ’cause we’ve learned it helps with our partners and it’s gonna really help us.
It’s a win-win. But it’s really different. But that’s why you wanna hire us and ’cause it is different and you’re gonna get a different product. It’s gonna be really good, this piece of animation. But you have to see the process through and then they’ll say, well we want this or this and this. And then we go, yeah, yeah, perfect.
We’re not a good fit. I’ve got three people I’d love to recommend for you. Now, sometimes more often than not, what happens is they’ll go, whoa, yeah, yeah, yeah, we really want you. We’ll do that. We want that process. And so it’s funny that it works out better when you do it that way. When you set those parameters and set that focus.
’cause that’s what you have to do with partners sometimes is actually help them focus. ’cause I’ve been on the other side as well. I’ve been the client, I’ve been the partner and so I know what the challenges are at a big corporation and so it’s really like set those parameters and everybody wins.
The first month, you say focus on something different every month.
The first month you focus on building your business or and focus on the business, which you said was phenomenal. You set these sales records, I get that because you wanna make sure that the business is gonna run while you’re focusing on all these other things. What did you focus on in month number two?
Oh man, did I get excited? So the first one is daunting ’cause you’re like, sales man, if this doesn’t work, I don’t know what we’re gonna do from a business standpoint or this book’s not gonna happen. This project’s just not happening. ’cause that’s measurable. So like you come off of that, the wind’s behind you, you’re like getting organized.
How good does that feel? ’cause you can see it, right? If it’s, whether it’s digital organization or whether it’s physical, especially physical organization, people clean because it allows them to see that momentum, right? We wanna see that we’re growing. That’s the biggest key to fulfillment. So if you wanna feel joy and feel fulfilled, it’s about are you progressing?
And that’s why organization, a lot of people do it sometimes too much, but that’s why people do it. ’cause they can see that accomplishment. Oh gosh, this room’s a mess. And now look how organized it is. All the, everything’s, look at this fridge. It’s so clean. Everything’s all the labels, they’re outward facing.
You know, it’s, it’s, they’re all, I forgot there’s a name for it, but it’s. When all the labels, like my wife’s like, you’re crazy. Like every label has to be turned and face. Face, I think they call it facing. So it’s called facing where you have every, so think about that. If you’re one of me, send me an email.
Equal man and equal man. Go. I love having my fridge so organized that, yeah, all the labels need to be turned and facing the same way and they’re, and then now people are thinking I’m crazy. No, I love that when it’s just super organized. But it’s
great because those two things, the business has to run and then with everything organized, you can focus on the rest of it.
So this is very specific to you. I wanna ask you a question. You write this in the book, making something a reality. If you have an idea or a goal, you’re 10% likely to get it. You write when you decide that you’re gonna do it, that goes up to 25%. When you decide when you’re going to do it, you double it again, it goes up to 50%.
When you commit to someone else, you will do it. It goes up to 65. And when you schedule accountability, check-ins with those people 95. Percent. Now when you talk about scheduling accountability, I would imagine that accountability’s better if it’s somebody who’s in that arena or is it just an interested friend?
Is it a mentor? Like who am I checking in with?
Just an in anybody could be an interested friend. Some people have their own advisory boards that they set up for themselves. Like they have five people for the year. And I’ve got that on my to-do list. They’ve never done it, but a lot of people we interviewed for the book that are successful, that’s what they do.
They kind of set up a mini board and go, then they show ’em that, that mind map at the beginning of the year and go, Hey, I want you to kind of hold me accountable these five things and gimme advice just like a active board would do at a company. So it’s really being intentional with your life. Uh, because how we live our days is how we live our life.
And I know everything I’m saying. It’s pretty simple, but it’s not easy like what you just said. Yeah. If I write it down and if I tell someone and then if I have a lunch scheduled with that person that I told, oh my gosh, I haven’t done anything and I’m about to have that lunch, guess what I’m doing that morning?
Fiercely. I told ’em I’m gonna write this new book. I’m furiously writing a couple pages ’cause they’re gonna ask me, how’s the book coming? And so that’s the key is really when I say it’s simple, not easy. That’s why you’ve gotta do that. Now the question is, well why don’t people do that? Mainly because they don’t wanna fail.
So if they don’t tell anyone in their mind, they can’t really fail per se. Let’s say that you want to be the world’s greatest singer. You wanna be the next Taylor Swift and you sing in the shower, but you never actually go out and sing anywhere. So you never failed. But it’s impossible for you to become the next Taylor Swift ’cause you never put yourself out there.
So that’s why some people do that. ’cause they can always say in their mind, even if they’re 90, Hey, I can be the next Taylor Swift ’cause I haven’t failed ’cause I haven’t done it. But you’ve automatically failed ’cause you haven’t done it. It’s kind of weird how our brain works like that. But the key is telling people, sharing it with you.
And what you’ll find is they’re gonna be there supporting you and they’ll be there checking in and reminding you, Hey, how’s the book coming? How’s the book coming every time you see ’em, and so you know you’re gonna see ’em. Or sometimes you have specific lunches that are check-in meetings. Go, Hey, I just want you to, when we have that lunch, the first thing I want you to ask me is, how’s your screenplay coming?
Because that’s gonna remind me as I look at the calendar three days out, I go, oh gosh, I haven’t done anything for that. And that’s the first question they’re gonna ask me.
I wanna end on, I think, something that may be one of the most important parts of this project in month number three. You go right to family, which I think a lot of people, when they’re getting focused, we think about work.
Maybe because we’re money nerds on the show, we could focus about our money, but we don’t necessarily focus on family. What really happened during that third month when you prioritized that? So far up this list
Eric made. Everything else seem so small. When I get stressed out about stuff, it’s because I’m thinking inward versus outward.
I. That’s true for most of us. And so when that stress start to close in on us, it’s ’cause we’re thinking just inward, meaning about ourselves and not outward about other people. And so when you think about it, you think start thinking about outward with your family, that it makes everything, it puts everything in perspective.
You start to realize that no one’s gonna remember that you worked those extra hours. No one’s gonna remember that. You crushed it at the office. But your kids and your family can remember when you’re not there. That’s what they’re gonna remember 10 years from now, 20 years from now. And so reverting back to the Christmas story we talked about, that’d been disastrous memory for my daughter if she’d be able to make it downstairs.
And so it’s really about understanding the long game. And so with family, that really allows you to understand. You’ve gotta play the long game. So I always say be persistent in the short term, but patient in the long term, persistent in the short term patient and
long term. And there’s the time that you cowboy schedule right there.
Everybody cowboy, cowboy that off. ’cause I always find that before I did that, uh, that’s the time that got away from me. Yeah. ’cause you
think it’s the easiest thing to move. Yeah. I’ll get to it later. Yeah. Hey, can you reschedule to that meeting to five? Very few of us will say no. I’ve got, I’m coaching my girls’ basketball game.
Sorry. Well this might be a good way to end it on. So first of all, I struggle with this to this day with focus. So here I did a two year project. I wrote the book. I continue to go back to the book ’cause there’s institutional research and also street science. Me actually testing this stuff. ’cause the gravitational pull is always to kind of fall back into our bad habits.
And so when the world gets wild and crazy, especially I. Certain times a year, I go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Let’s go back in. Let’s deep dive on that and try to try to figure out what that looks like. So I coached my girls’ basketball team and we’d gotten in the championship, Hey, but I had, yeah, it was great.
You know, I know that I’d booked an event the day after that. ’cause I’m like, you know what? They’ll just guarantee we’re in the championship because now I’m in a, a tough situation. So contractually I need to fly in the day before to be there. And then the game would not allow for that to happen. So I’m going, oh my gosh, what do I do?
Do I just have the assistant coach coach it? But that’s gonna send the wrong message to the girls that, you know, when you need me boast I’m out the door. I gotta go to this business thing. I talk to my parents, they go, what are you gonna remember 10 years from now I go coaching the game. Or if they lose and I wasn’t there, I’ll feel like I let ’em down.
Uh, if we lose when I’m there, at least I was there. And so I, I’m gonna roll the dice. I’m gonna get on that. I book three flights the following morning. At like five 30 in the morning. Fortunately it was an afternoon event, so I’m like, okay, I’ve got three ways to get there. Book three flights. The good news.
We start off the game terrible, and I’m sitting on the sideline going, did I just stay here for this? But then the girls came back. It was a great comeback. We won the game by one point. Wow. It was the right decision. Oh my gosh. Win, lose or draw was the right decision and the next morning, first flight’s canceled.
But fortunately that second flight away, we went and it all worked out and it was just easy to look back and go, man, my parents. Those parents get smarter with the years, don’t they? They get smarter with the years.
Isn’t that wild? I felt like when I was 16, maybe 15, my parents started losing brain cells.
It had
nothing to do with me, Eric,
my parents, totally. I don’t know how they got dumber, like they just got dumber and maybe about 2021 they started something. Maybe they started eating their Wheaties or carrots or something, but those brain cells started coming back. It was so strange. It’s
wild. It’s wild how that works.
The book is the focus project, the not so simple art of doing less. It’s available everywhere. Eric, thank you so much for mentoring us here at the start of 2024. If people need your message at their next business keynote, by the way, we’ll also uh, link to your website on our show notes page at Stacking Benjamins dot com.
Happy New Year, my friend. Happy
New Year. Always good to join you and also I love doing this ’cause it reminds me to get back on track as well. Hi, I am Derek, and when I’m not working on the hook for Joe’s Mom’s next greatest rap album, I’m Stacking. Benjamins baby.
Huge
thanks to Eric. What a great guy to start off the year with.
I think this idea of Focus og, I mean, I’m gonna reiterate what he said early on, it’s, it’s hard. You,
you can say all day long you’re gonna get focused,
but I think you’ve
gotta have a little machine
around that.
I’m sorry, what were you talking
about? Well, it was a pretty long diversion there. I don’t blame him for being a little bit like, wait, where were we?
Because you were way off to the right and then all of a sudden you’re like, here we go.
No, dude, that was the joke. That was OGs joke. Doug. That was the joke. Doug missed
the joke. Oh, well he should be funnier because I didn’t get it
shocking. No, I uh, I was focused kind of maybe for sure, maybe partway through, I got distracted.
It’s interesting, the impact of one extra attention, you know, like spending a little bit of extra attention on one thing for a period of time. How, how you’ll have success. Or increase success
in the area. I know you’ve had systems to do that. You, shockingly, at the end of last year, did ant ask me anything, which
made everybody on the Stacking Benjamins team go, what?
Who’s this guy who’s back on social media for one day after over
a year being away that takes systems?
Well, let me tell you a little something about not logging into Facebook for 13 months. It is a gigantic pain to get back in. They’re like, okay, we sent you a password to your email. Okay, now give us the code.
Now reset your password. Now go back in your email and get a code. Now download this new app. Oh, you don’t have this, this login system. Too bad. Uh, it’s gonna send us an id. I’m like, well, I don’t really have an id. This is OG Stacking Benjamins on it. So this is, we have to find a new way to get into this
account.
You should, you should have taken the hit and go, you know what? It isn’t worth it.
It’s fun. Yeah. I, I actually got by 90% of the way through and I went, this is why this is, this is, this is it right here.
But the universe is giving you a message.
It was fun for the two hours while I was, I’d literally watched every movie on American this year, so I.
Got ‘
em all. That was important. Uh, thanks for everybody who participated in that. By the way, those are people in our basement Facebook
group, and that was a
really fun chat. Let’s throw out the lifeline and tackle some of life’s most important questions. This is the part of the show where we help a stacker in need, get
the help that they’re looking
for.
And, uh, if you would like us to answer your question,
head to stack at Benjamins dot com slash voicemail. Today we’re
gonna throw out the lifeline to stacker Dino
Joe and OG Doug has me really interested in these T-shirts with his fashion sense. These shirts must be really top notch. I feel like the wife and I are in a good position, but wanna review a few items.
We both turn 50 next year and have two boys in high school. What are some of the things we should be thinking about in terms of where our investments should be focused? The bulk of our funds are INS four oh. Outside of starting with enough for the full match our.
5 29 or after tax, non 4 0 1 KIRA to give flexibility to early retirement and helping with college costs. We’re in a good position to make the full contributions to our IRAs in the month of January with catch contributions starting at 50. How does that work? When can we make those contributions? Is it right away or do we have to wait until we turn 50 in October or November?
Looking forward to your advice. Just no driving advice for my boys from og. Thanks. Gonna have some coleslaw
while I wait.
Dino. Oh,
Mike. He’s just checking all the boxes. Checking every box. Dino, thank you. Thank you for the question. Impressive.
Well, and to be fair, I wasn’t driving. I wasn’t even instructing, driving.
I was sitting, maybe if you instructed
patiently
by, maybe that wouldn’t have happened.
Maybe Dino was laying the blame at your foot. Maybe you would’ve had to had garage reconstruction surgery. Had you actually been there for your children?
Maybe. Maybe that was it. You’re probably right. Let’s start
off
with, uh, the age 50
rule, because maybe
a lot of people don’t know this.
When you get to age 50, all of a sudden you could put more money into your
retirement
plans. But Dino, has that happen at October? Is it the year of, does he have to wait until October? Let’s begin there. ’cause that’s the easy part.
Yeah. Super simple. Uh, it’s the year of, so the, the contribution is considered to have been done at the end of the year, regardless of when you actually do it.
So as long as you meet the criteria by the end of the year, AKA December 31st, then you’re totally fine. There is a new provision for Catchup contributions that was supposed to take effect in 2024. I believe they’re delaying it until 25 because not every a company can participate in this. This is for Catchup contributions in your workplace plan.
So this is, I’ve contributed the maximum and I’m over 50 and I wanna do more. If you’re over 50, you can do another 7,500 bucks. Right. The Secure 2.0 Act had a rule that that extra needed to go into the Roth. The thinking being, if you’re rich enough to be able to save $23,000 in your 401k and then another 7,500 you need to pay your taxes today.
We get to tax it now. Yeah, we, we want our money right now, but the industry has not been able to keep up with that. That, you know, that requires all sorts of changes to every single solitary 401k plan in the country to be able to, uh, manage that. That was supposed to take effect the first of year and it is not.
So you can do that in your workplace plan as well. Even if you don’t turn 50 until late in the year and you say, well, there’s no way I can get that extra 7,500 bucks in by, you know, December if I turn 50 in in uh, November. You can do that throughout the year. Now your company may not let you do it until that period of time.
You can, as far as the other questions in terms of liquidity and where should I put extra savings and, and all of that’s just gonna boil down to when do you need the money? There’s this big, um, I think myth that. You can’t access retirement money if you wanna retire early. And I don’t know how to combat that anymore than when we talk about it every so often, which is the IRS doesn’t care when you retire.
They care about you taking money out of your retirement account for something other than retirement. If you’re a great saver, a great investor from the time that you’re 16 and you wanna retire when you’re 41 and you go, but all my money’s in my 401k, the IRS doesn’t care. There’s a provision for you to get money out of your retirement plan without penalty as long as you’re using it for actually retirement.
The problem occurs for, with penalties and all that other sort of nonsense when you say, I’m gonna take this money out and go on vacation, the IRS penalizes you to help you, you know, think twice about that. So I really wouldn’t concern myself too much with, well, I can’t get the money, you know, if I wanna retire early and put it in the in your retirement plan, IRAs or workplace plans.
But some of those other things that you mentioned, like I. College or, uh, flexibility for other short-term or intermediate goals are gonna require you to put your money in a different place. So I think I would start with when do you need the money and how much do you need? And where do you sit in each one of those buckets?
You know, you got a couple of co uh, high school aged kids. College is coming fast and furious. Mine’s a, mine’s a junior, my oldest, and we are writing checks in 18 months from now. Probably sooner, I guess. I don’t, I don’t even know when they, when do they start asking you for money when your kid goes to college?
Like how far in advance is it? Does anybody know? I don’t know.
It’s generally the second day they’re on campus.
Yeah, I was gonna say, it seems like August or so would be an appropriate time to ask for money, but yeah, something makes me think that check’s gonna be needed to be written sometime earlier in the summer.
Might be. But anyway, so you need to write a check in 18 months from now, your money better be in a place that allows you for 18 month check writing, if that makes sense. Yeah, so that’s kinda how I would start with that is, is thinking about it that
way. You see, oh gee, this is why in my book, I, I started off with timelining out your goals.
’cause this calls for that right scoreboard. He, he totally needs a timeline of when I need the money. And I know for some people that gives people hives. Like, I, what if I don’t know? What if I things come up?
Well then you want to,
uh, have some
money that’s liquid.
That’s not for any goal. But I also understand that people, especially if you’re a long way from the goal, I mean, Dino is fairly close to some of these things.
To a lot of these things. So for him, he could probably timeline those out. Well, for most people, I like starting with what you’re doing now. Start with your lifestyle now and based on what you do now, plot out, okay, I’ve got income streams here coming in. I’ve got this amount of money that I spend today. I.
I apply inflation to that using one of the many calculators that are online. And, uh, and this shows my deficit, like how much money I’m gonna need at this, at these different junctures, then different investments do well for those time periods. I still know it’s better to get more granular than that, and that gives a lot of people hives thinking about what’s my purpose?
What am I gonna do in the future? Oh my God, I don’t know. I don’t know. We’re gonna help you solve that question on Wednesday. John Acuff coming
back on the show, og, and he’s got a great, great way
to unlock the future and not be so nervous about. John’s a guy who’s
even says, he’s like, whenever anybody’s like, so what are you gonna do next week, next month, next year?
He is like, I don’t know. I don’t, I don’t know. And if you’re one of those people, he, he picked that lock and we’re gonna have him on.
Sweet. Yeah. And as you timeline that stuff out, to your point, it becomes clearer in terms of the next level questions, which is, well, how do I invest for insert thing here?
You’re looking at it and you say, oh, I’ve got this extra money I wanna invest for my retirement. It looks like my retirement’s 10 years away. How should I invest for the first year of my retirement? Well, 10 years, right? I, I haven’t saved any money for my kids’ college. The first check I writes, 18 months, how should I invest for it?
It’s too late. You’re not investing for it now. You’re just saving for it. You get the opportunity to answer some of these questions when you put timelines on ’em because, uh, it becomes pretty obvious when those events are gonna happen. And you don’t have to look back, but 18 months to see the volatility in the stock market and investing and say, okay, that would’ve been unpleasant if I was holding onto this money in a long-term bucket when I had a short-term need.
Dino, I think, has been with us a long enough time because of all the, the different, uh, things that he mentioned in his call. But the big thing that he mentioned that I liked OG was flexibility. You know, a lot of people over optimize their taxes. They don’t think about where do I get the most flexibility with taxes And your point, the IRS has programs where you can get to your money, but if you wanna make it real easy for yourself, we have this, this concept, uh, we call the tax control triangle, where the three different ways that money gets taxed and having some of the money in each of those buckets is a good place to start.
We have that as a tool that you can get on our website because we’ve referenced it so much. It’s Stacking Benjamins dot com slash tax triangle. Just go there, it’s written up as a PDF. You can then
see what buckets you’re using now, which ones are a little
bit more deficient, and, uh, and try to give yourself maybe a little more balance.
Thanks for the question, Dino. If you’ve got a question for the show, Stacking Benjamins dot com slash voicemail. If you’ve got more than one question, though, you really
need help in a big way. OG and his team are taking clients
here in early 2024, so to get on his team’s calendar to see how they’ll interface with you to make better money
decisions this year and beyond,
Stacking Benjamins dot com slash OG gets you there.
That wraps up the lifeline, which looking at our agenda means we are headed out to the back porch with these cups of coffee and, uh, back porch on New Year’s Day. Good, good times. Coffee. Yeah. Doug, uh, no, no coffee. It’s a coffee
cup. It’s the back porch, dude. It’s
alcohol only. There’s something in the coffee cup porch that reminds me of my kids’ swim meets, by the way, I, I
remember going to my kids.
My kids’ swim meets and every dad had a coffee
cup, so I would put out my coffee,
you know, six o’clock at night, I got my coffee,
my coffee cup, and a buddy of mine goes, man, what are you drinking?
I’m like, I’m like, oh, it’s just this stuff I bought down at Kroger.
He’s
like, but what? Wolger? And I told him what coffee?
He’s like, do you actually have coffee? There isn’t another person who’s an
adult around this pool with a
coffee cup who actually has coffee in their, and I’m like, oh.
Oh, at six in the morning. Geez. What kind of circles are you running in?
No, didn’t you say it was six at night? Oh, I thought you six at night.
Six at night. Yeah. Yeah. So it’s a su it’s and it’s an outdoor pool, right? You’re, ’cause I remember I went to, I think I went to one of Nick and Autumn’s meets, it’s an outdoor pool, right? So it’s a summer night, night atmosphere. It’s six o’clock. Yes. Yeah. You were the idiot. If you, even if it even occurred to you to put coffee in to go hang up by a pool at six o’clock on a summer night, that’s on you, man.
I had
no
idea, guys, that swim meets could be that fun. After, after that I was, I went from, eh, I’ll show up at my kids’ swims to,
I’m going for the whole thing. Oh, they’re warming up too. That’s
fantastic. Cheryl’s like, we gotta go. I’m like, well, there’s
something that, there’s still, uh, kids in the pool that are warming down.
We gotta stay lots of fun. Doug what’s happening, uh,
on the back porch. What do we got?
First
thing I wanna talk about in the new year, Joe, is this great competition that we’re starting called The Joke Off. Joke Off. So this is like a, like a tournament bracket style setup where we want slash need our listeners to send in jokes.
I’m gonna read the jokes off. So as funny as those jokes are to start with, I’m gonna make ’em that much funnier and we’re gonna see which one of you two doesn’t laugh. It’s gonna be nearly impossible. You’re gonna have to take antidepressants or
something. I don’t think we can do that because Oh, gee’s not gonna laugh at anything.
We tried that one before. Doug. I think all we have to do, we had to take a vote on which joke of the two we think is
better. That goes
to the next one. ’cause we already know that that one of
us has a great sense of humor. And the other one, well, maybe not right. And he doesn’t even look at
me when I say that
right now even, and
I get the salut right now.
Even he’s not able to smile, laugh. I finally got the salute there
it was, and enjoy life. That’s the equivalent of a laugh when no G flips you off. That’s the equivalent of He laughed. That’s right. That’s right. That’s him like writing. LOL.
Yeah. Okay. So are you two gonna be voting on, on whether or not it’s funny?
Yes. Yeah, we’ll
decide which of the two jokes. Who’s who? Who’s the jury? Uh,
the two of us. Okay. So we need our listeners to really step up here ’cause we’ve been bringing the comedy for like 10, 11 years with the occasional of some very funny Haven Lifeline and Lifeline Callers over the years.
Should
we modify that?
I mean, we haven’t started,
we haven’t started yet. So we can even talk about this on the show. Should we be doing it or between this show and
the next show? Should we have a poll and the stackers in the basement decide which of
the two jokes is a better joke? Maybe we should do that.
I think we absolutely should have, uh, the stackers in the basement vote on which joke is
funnier.
Yes, absolutely. We can weigh in OG and I can give our opinion, but then we’ll give it a, we’ll give it a couple shows,
uh, maybe till the next week to go. But we need some jokes here. Here’s the deal. Doug, I don’t think the division of labor’s fair
here. Not at all. ’cause I’m bringing all the entertainment and you guys are just bringing like, oh God, no.
That’s not what I’m referring to. The
factual information. I have a whole book. Lemme know when you’re ready. All this all, yeah. OG had to go buy books about how to be funny.
Here’s what we’re gonna do, Doug. If you make it to the second round, you get a prize every round you go, you get a prize
and the prizes will be better.
Well, we haven’t decided what
the actual prizes are. We gotta ask mom for a bigger allowance to do that, but we’re gonna make that happen. So we need some jokes. They had to be math jokes. So here’s the joke that I used math jokes that that OG thought was hilarious.
They have to be math. They have to be we’re money nerds.
You got or involve numbers. Yeah, they are math
jokes. This is a math joke. Joke off. Where have you been? We’ve been talking about this over and over and over. He was at the store
trying to find funny,
trying to find the funny, in his
math joke, trying to buy a sense of humor.
He, he walk, he walks into the store and says to the guy, Hey, uh, I’m looking for some funny math jokes.
Guy at the store looks at me. There are no funny math jokes. What are you talking about,
sir? You’re in a seven 11. The
sheep dog. Sheep dog walks up to the rancher and goes, Hey, I, uh, just wanna let you know I rounded up your 40 sheep. And the farmer
goes, okay, sure. Thanks man. And goes out, counts ’em, and comes back and goes, wait a minute.
There’s only 37 sheep. Dog looks at ’em and goes, well, yeah, I rounded them up. See, that’s, that’s what
we’re looking for. Ha. That’s exactly
what we’re looking for, right? You’re killing, killing me. Send those to me, Joe, at stacky
Benjamins dot com. We
need some jokes. So it’s gonna
have to be, this is a 16 team slash joke bracket, right?
It’s gonna
take a long time. So this is gonna take a long time. The first
16 jokes that we get that’s knows who’s in the contest.
You’re locked in and I gotta tell you,
there is, uh, one good
one, one really good one, and one that’s just absolutely horrible of, of all the jokes that we’ve gotten so far. So we’ve got, we’ve
got our 16 seed.
You can beat,
you can beat one joke. There’s one joke that’s beatable in here so far, so you can do it even if you think it’s pedestrian maybe. I dunno
guys. I know a lot of people on New Year’s around this, uh, last week of the year went and saw movies and, uh, uh, our family is no exception. So we went and saw this,
this little film with just a star or
two in it
that, uh, talks about a man that I don’t know, people may, may not have heard of.
You guys ever hear of this character
called Willy Wonka. It’s pronounced
Wonka Wonka. You stole
fizzy lifting drinks, you bumped into the ceiling, which now has to be washed and sterilized. You get nothing. Good
day, sir. Wow.
You even, you even memorized it. Oh, I’m a huge fan. Here’s a
little piece of the new movie,
which is a prequel about how Willy Wonka became Wonka.
I’ve spent the past seven years traveling the world, perfecting my craft. You see, I’m something of a
magician, inventor, and chocolate maker.
So quiet up and listen down. Nope. Scratch that.
Reverse
it. Mr. Cro
can say, you’re a man of gray ingenuity.
What are you doing? I’m making chocolate. Of course. How do you like dark, white, nutty, absolutely insane.
Many people have come here to sell chocolate. They’ve all been crushed by the chocolate cartel. You can’t get a shop without selling chocolate. And you can’t sell chocolate without a shop.
No daydreaming. What are we gonna do, Willie?
Huh? Huh? A double, huh?
Get the pencil
and paper uhhuh. I got an idea. And Willy Wonka, of course, has an idea. You know why? ’cause he is Willy Wonka. That’s why this film dives in really early into Wonka’s career. Begins with him as a guy with no money, just big dreams going to this city where he wants to set up, shop and become a chocolatier.
There are one or two or a billion uh, stars in this film. I, I have no idea. I didn’t look up what the budget was for this film, but it had to be maybe a billion dollars. Uh, not only is Willy Wonka, uh,
Timothy Shamier, who, who? I don’t, I’m not a big, uh, sham. Are you guys
og? Do you like Timothy Shamier?
Never heard of him.
So don’t have an opinion. I
think that’s a food. Joe. I think the last name you’re saying is not the word you think it is. Shamier.
Oh, that’s the guy who gives you your wine at the restaurant,
right? Yeah, I think
that’s right. Yes.
Maybe that’s my point. Big time actor, but in a lot of big stuff. And uh, you guys are like, what?
What? Olivia Coleman is in this movie, Keegan-Michael Key from Key and
Peele is in this movie. You heard the voice of Jim Carter. That’s an unmistakable voice. You like, who’s Jim Carter? But he’s the voice you heard if you watched out And Abbey every person that watched out. And Abbey just went, oh, that’s a D and Abbey guy, the Butler
sure was Sally Hawkins from Shape of Water.
And uh, Hugh Grant also has a, has a big role in this movie. So lots and lots of names. Somebody asked me before I went in, they said, is this going to be a musical? And I said, God, I hope not. Turns out it is. And also turns out I. This, this movie’s fantastic. Yeah, I could hard pass. I don’t know if I like this film or the holdovers
better.
Both of these
movies were just so fricking well done from the beginning to the end. I did not really wanna go see Wonka. Cheryl wanted to see it. I’m like, seems dumb to me. It was super good. This is going to be a classic. You can see in the Rotten Tomato score, which is I believe a 96% audiences gave it a 98.
I said, okay. Cheryl wants to see it. We go back and forth on the movie, we wanna see I can sit through anything for two hours for my amazing bride. And uh, within 10 minutes I was in, uh, Keegan, Michael Kee. Uh, all the characters just, it is so well done. The new songs are well done. Of course, there’s reprises of the old ones that you remember from the Gene Wilder days.
I did not like the Johnny Depp version of this. I thought it was stupid, which is another reason why
I thought, I’m like, oh God, they’re bringing back Willy Wonka again to ruin it again. Like it’s so good. The Gene Wilder one is
so damn good. That I, my expectations were sky high and it exceeded it. I could
see why it’s breaking records.
But you generally
like musicals, right? Like there are a lot of musicals you’ve
enjoyed. I’ve enjoyed some, I can’t stand it. I enjoy
a good, a good story that dives into who characters are, who the characters are. And I absolutely love this. I like the hope in it. I like, I like the aspiration. I like the fact that it’s about, you know, there’s lots of forces that are against you.
There’s this cartel against him. And yet, man, if you’re somebody with a dream and a, and the desire to do something, like go do it. Like you can’t
not leave Wonka inspired. It was so
inspiring. They
got a Pablo Escobar character in here. There’s a cartel against him.
There. There is, there’s the chocolate cartel.
They’re awesome. There are three, there are, excuse me, not three. There’s two movies that I absolutely love this year and I’m still trying to, to figure out which one I like
better. The Holdovers
and Wonka, I’ve got his equal favorites. Like those are,
those are two movies I can tell anybody to go see. Go see the holdovers.
Starring Paul Giamatti. Well, yeah. Oh gee,
you’ve gotta see this ’cause it’s one of your favorite actors. It’s Paul Giamatti.
Holdover is amazing with Giamatti, but also completely different. Feel like both of these are hopeful movies, but completely different. Feel. Holdovers is very seventies on purpose, where Wonka is very, of course, very colorful and big budget.
Good to see. And it’s a guy that got dragged to see it.
Can’t recommend it enough. Go see
Wonka with Timothy Shaw.
Yes.
Timothy Guy that brings your wine on Wednesday. John Acuff coming to join us. Can’t wait to go from
focusing
to focusing on great goals. His goal
setting week here on the
show. Doug, what were our takeaways from show number one of 2024?
Well, Joe, here’s what’s on our stacked to-do list for today. First, take some advice from Eric Kalman. Wanna focus more in 2024? Pick a thing, two hours a day, jump on it. Second, buy now and pay later. Don’t get caught up in the cycle of, I’ll figure out how to pay for this later. That does not end well. Trust us on that.
We’ve been there. But the big lesson, this focus thing may be off. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I love it, but less of me.
Are you crazy? You need more? Get ready
for a great 2024 stacker because here comes
Doug.
Thanks to Eric Kalman for joining us today. You can find all his number one bestselling books wherever books are sold.
We’ll also include links in our show notes at Stacking Benjamins dot com. This show is the Property of SB Podcasts LLC, copyright 2024, and is created by Joe Saul-Sehy. Our producer is Karen Reine. This show is written by Lisa Curry, who’s also the host of the Long Story Long podcast. With help from me, Joe, and Doc G from the Earn and Invest podcast, Kevin Bailey helps us take a deeper dive into all the topics covered on each episode in our newsletter called the 2 0 1.
You’ll find the 4 1 1 on All Things Money at the 2 0 1. Just visit Stacking Benjamins dot com slash 2 0 1. Wonder how beautiful we all are. Of course, you’ll never know if you don’t. Check out our YouTube version of the show. Engineered by Tina Eichenberg. Then you’ll see once and for all that I’m the best thing going for this podcast.
Once we bottle up all this goodness, we ship it to our engineer, the amazing Steve Stewart. Steve helps the rest of our team sound nearly as good as I do right now. Wanna chat with friends about the show later? Mom’s friend Gertrude Stacey Doe and Julia Garib are our social media coordinators, and Gertrude is the room mother in our Facebook group called The Basement.
So say hello when you see us posting online to join all the basement fun with other stackers, type Stacking Benjamins dot com slash basement. For more interactive fun, join us in Instagram every Tuesday and Thursday for our Instagram lives. Kate Yakin and Joe host these weekly. 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.
And Doug, you’ve got the pronunciation.
Yeah, it’s exactly how it’s spelled. Chalamet. Shaima. Well, how it’s spelled should be Chalamet. But Chalamet,
our apologies to Timothy Chalamet. I’m sure he is a big fan of
the show and, um, my bad.
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