Today’s episode blends career strategy with financial know-how, because who says you can’t build your personal brand and your balance sheet at the same time?
Joe Saul-Sehy and OG explore what it really means to shape your professional reputation—from the way you show up in meetings to how you set (and measure) your career goals. Whether you’re climbing the ladder, shifting industries, or mentoring others, this episode delivers practical ways to take control of how you’re seen and what you stand for at work.
Inside this conversation:
- The “RAVE” model for boosting your brand
- Why being a cheerleader for your colleagues makes you a standout
- How appearances and visibility (yes, even your Zoom background) impact your path
- Real-world tips for growing your influence without bragging—or burning out
We also get into the intersection of tech and money:
- Is AI ready to replace financial advisors? (Short answer: not quite.)
- What metrics every financially literate person should understand
- And why your credit card points strategy might need a second look
Plus, Doug breaks out a trivia challenge involving coin collecting, and we unravel the very weird truth behind the 1 cent piece.
Whether you’re building a career, managing your money, or trying to do both with a little more polish—this episode’s packed with insights that stick.
Deeper dives with curated links, topics, and discussions are in our newsletter, The 201, available at https://www.stackingbenjamins.com/201
Enjoy!
Our TikTok Minute
Doug’s Trivia
- Who inspired the design (and the unofficial name) of the first one-cent piece?
Better call Saul…Sehy & OG
- Stacker Nick is wondering if using AI to build your financial plan is worth considering.
Have a question for the show?
Want more than just the show notes? How about our newsletter with STACKS of related, deeper links?
- 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 On Wednesday!
Learn how to avoid turning your career into a three-ring circus with expert advice from Lorraine Lee.
Written by: Kevin Bailey
Miss our last show? Listen here: Building Wealth Through Every “Era” of Your Life
Transcript:
Joe: [00:00:00] Coffee’s hot. Microphones are hot. Gentlemen, you ready to go? I was born.
Doug: Ready? Yeah. Well, I was here before both of you, so clearly I’m chomping at the bit. I’m here.
Joe: I’m better person. Virtue signaling on a Monday morning. I’m so good. On behalf of the men and women, uh, make a podcast in mom’s. Where are we going?
I don’t know. We’re making podcast in mom’s basement and we’re raising our mugs to salute the troops like we do on every Monday morning on behalf of the men and women in mom’s basement. There we go. So you gotta run into it. You gotta get the motor running. Head out on the highway, search for venture .
Having the men and women in mom’s basement of the men and women at Navy Federal Credit Union. Here’s a salute to the troops on this fine Monday. Thank you for keeping us safe all weekend. Let’s go stacks and Benjamins now, shall we? Stacky
Doug: Stacky. Thanks everybody.
Nick – Call In: Good morning, Christopher Robin. Oh, good morning.
Winnie the Pooh[00:01:00]
Doug: Live from Joe’s mom’s basement. It’s the Stacking Benjamin Show.
I am Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug and today we are diving into your career brand. How do you put your best foot forward to score the deal, notch the raise, meet the right people, or make a good impression? You’ll find a ton of tactics in the next hour. Speaking of career branding, I’ll also share a TikTok minute video you can use to make your workplace meetings way more interesting and.
We’ll also share a question from stacker Nick, who’s wondering if using AI to build your financial plan is something worth considering? And now two guys who thought AI meant Aunt Irene was coming over for dinner, if you know what I mean. I don’t even know what I mean. It’s Joe [00:02:00] and oh Jean.
Joe: I wish we knew what you mean half the time. I wish we had any clue what Doug means. Hey everybody. Happy Monday. Welcome back to the Stacky Benjamin Show. I am Joe Saul-Sehy. Hi. And this is your home for relaxed discussions about, uh, well some pretty deep dive money topics. And today we’re tackling a career topic with my friend across the cart table.
Mr. OG is here. How are you, dude?
OG: Ooh, I am multitasking. Like a multitasking my machine.
Joe: Wait a minute. So you’ve got the microphone and you’re doing the one is, is it on the microphone, Andrew? Good coffee. Is that the multitask
OG: coffee? I, I got emails going, I’m, oh God, no. I’m doing the things with the stuff, man, because everybody knows that I might have had too much coffee.
Joe: Because everybody knows when you’re trying to build unforgettable presence as our guest on Wednesday, Lorraine Lee is gonna talk about, uh, Doug, what you do is you switch between a bunch of different tasks all
OG: the time. Hold on, hold on, hold on. You [00:03:00] said we’re getting presents. I can pay attention for presents.
Are they like birthday quality or, or more like Christmas quality? Unforgettable presents. Unforgettable presents being present. This is like Christmas.
Doug: I think I could add some clarification to the whole pan pan thing here.
OG: The end is silent.
Doug: And you saying pan.
OG: Pan. That was, that was well done. Doug. You get for full clap. People to see the movies. Oh. Getting a clap. Slow clap.
Joe: Step brothers. We just did our own little stepbrothers, uh, pull right there.
OG: I’m just excited about presence. Well, I don’t, I never get any presents. I did get a good present last year, but
Doug: you have bought everything there is that could have been a present for you.
So nobody can give you anything. It’s not like somebody’s buying me a new driver.
OG: So
Joe: he means first car, Doug. He doesn’t mean on the golf course. That’s exactly what he means.
OG: Not, not what it means. Tom
Joe: Peters way back in the 1990s management guru Tom Peters, was a guy [00:04:00] who began, uh, talking to people in middle management and, uh, young executives about Brand U.
And I remember how as we were transitioning out of the 30 years of the same career to people changing jobs and changing places that they work, how innovative that seemed. Brand u about not worrying about the company brand as much as you built your own brand. Well, and actually it was both, right? You build your own brand to help the company then build their brand.
And I remember how shocking that was then. Well now if you’re not focused on brand UI think it’s a huge mistake and uh, so does our guest on Wednesday, Lorraine Lee, who is an executive with both LinkedIn and Prezi. Now, she coaches fantastic executives, how to get unforgettable presence, maybe different presences than OG thinks, but uh, how to build your career brand.
So we’re doing that this week. Before we do our deep dive into one of Lorraine’s topics, what she calls the Rave model, [00:05:00] uh, we’re going to the Rave og. I know you’re a big dancer.
OG: I’m going to a rave and getting presents. This is the best podcast ever.
Joe: It’s, it’s incredible. Before we go to the rave, we are going to hear from a couple of our sponsors who make sure that this is free, all this goodness, and then we’re deep diving into career branding. Let’s go.
Doug: I am still picturing OG at a rave all hopped up on X. Can you imagine that?
OG: Actually, if you know anything about me and dance clubs picturing me would be like sitting in the corner with like a, you know, a beer just going, this suck so bad, can I go home?
Joe: You know why, Doug? It’s not because of the music or the rave, it’s because it’s nine 15.
OG: Exactly. It’s time to go. What are we doing? It’s like at least a 30 minute Uber.
Joe: One of the many things that Lorraine lays out that I wanted to dive into [00:06:00] today. And you know what? I think we’ll do this a little bit on Friday when we’ve got Sandy Smith, uh, who’s an HR professional extraordinaire, who lately online, by the way, has been telling stories about unforced errors, and I can’t wait for us to hear some of her stories.
But today what I wanted to go into was this thing that Lorraine calls her rave model about growing your influence. She writes that there’s lots of ways to become more influential. What matters is finding the methods and tactics that work for you. Last week with Taylor Swift, we were all about the strategies.
This week we’re gonna actually dive into, okay, do this, do this, do this, and the r. Her model stands for relationships. She says Ross Pomerance, the entrepreneur and content creator known to many as corporate bro. Sums up why workplace relationships are such a crucial part of building influence. I love corporate bro is gonna teach me about, uh, building influence.
But actually Ross has a huge platform and Ross says, how are you treating everyone else? Such an important part of moving up in a company [00:07:00] is simply how you are human with other people. And og I think this is a great place to start because you’ll see people that come into a company culture, maybe the company culture is tight knit.
People enjoy working together. And then you throw the one Machiavelli in person in, we all know this person, right?
OG: Oh, that’s a big word.
Joe: Yeah. We all throw the person who’s like, so Doug, did you hear about the thing that Nancy said yesterday? No, what’d she say? Well, it, it’s Nancy. When did
Doug: we hire Nancy
Joe: and why are we talking about this on our, our podcast?
Doug: Honestly, I don’t believe anything she says
Joe: either that or the robot, right? The corporate robot, the person who comes in and just as a, you know, 24 7 work. You never learn anything about the person. You don’t know anything about your coworker. It feels very plastic at five o’clock sharp. They’re the first person to punch out, right?
How human are you? I think being seen as another human being by your coworkers is a big step [00:08:00] to beginning the relationship. Not just the relationship journey, but the but succeeding in business journey. Being a normal person. Yeah. People buy from people. I mean, I know that’s a cliche. Mm-hmm. But people totally do buy from people.
How many times have you not comparison shop stuff because you’re like, no, no, no, I’m buying it from Nancy. ’cause Nancy takes care of me. Nancy’s doing a lot of stuff lately. Nancy’s all over the place.
OG: No, I mean, this is a great example. I was in the market, you know, I said something about a new driver. I was in the market for a couple new golf clubs and you can go to the store and they’ll do all the video and all that sort of stuff and fit you with, here’s how crappy your swing is.
So this is the club you need to fix it. Basically. I have a friend who also kinda runs some golf stuff. So I get this list of stuff and I called my friend and I said, Hey, here’s the stuff that the guy wants to sell me. What can you do for me? And he is like, oh, I can knock 50 bucks off that. And I thought.
This guy worked really hard and I had a good conversation [00:09:00] with him for the span of about three hours, you know, around golf, and I can see him being a resource in the future. Is it worth 50 bucks to not have that relationship? And I looked at it and said I would rather pay the 50 extra dollars to buy from the guy who helped me so that I can, you know, have that relationship in the future if I want to leverage it again.
Well, the
Joe: guy who saved you over $50 a misery by getting you to this point in the first place by going, I want this thing. Oh, versus that thing. Oh, well, yeah. I mean, if you, if
OG: you thought about it that way. Sure. Yeah, of course. I mean, it was an investment in investment in time and,
Joe: and his knowledge base.
OG: Yeah. So I paid a little bit more just to keep the relationship.
Joe: I was looking back at the millionaire next door last week, and millionaires, multimillionaires and billionaires shop almost exclusively OG via referral. I. It’s funny, people that try to market to these people, they think that, Hey, oh, they got a billion dollars so I can pull one over on them.
Well, guess what? Somebody didn’t become a [00:10:00] multimillionaire because of the fact that they’re dumb and because somebody pulled the wool over their eyes, they actually are fantastic at finding value and also figuring out who the people are. I can trust around me so I can make decisions quicker, and I can have velocity.
And it’s funny how we get these through lines, right? Alex Rozzi at the beginning of the year said, be useful. Well, if I can build that relationship with the right people and be useful to them, how kick ass is that? She’s got four things that really help introverts, well help all of us, but especially introverts.
Number one, she says, is set a goal. If, if you have trouble, you’re in a new organization, or heck, you’re in an organization, you’ve been in for a while, and you feel like you don’t have enough presence, she writes, you’ll always be more successful if you can give yourself a tangible target. Try aiming for something like meeting one new person a week and see how your gains compound over time.
Just set yourself, oh gee, a goal in this area, and then work to achieve it. [00:11:00] We’re gonna be breaking down a lot of this stuff into systems. I was watching a video with Roy McElroy talking about how he succeeds and he says, I can do one of two things. I can dream about winning the Masters like I just did.
Or I can focus on, he didn’t say like, I just did. I did. I don’t think ro backwards like I just did. What? A flex.
OG: He’s been amazingly humble about the whole thing. Yes. Like watching the video, there was a video of him walking into the champion’s locker room, you know, like literally pausing at each locker.
So good.
Joe: Well, did you see that? I was trying to explain to Cheryl who doesn’t follow golf and this will be good for our people, uh, our stackers who don’t follow golf as well. Did you see the group of what, five golfers that he joined who have won every major? He is now number six, I believe.
Doug: Right?
Joe: Three of them did it on their first try.
Ben Hogan, Jack Nicholas, or a couple that come to mind. There was a third one. Maybe Gary. Gary Player. Two others, [00:12:00] including Tiger Woods. It took three tries. It took Rory McElroy, 11 tries. We were at the airport and everybody was gathered around every tv. There were so many people around all the TVs as you walk by the different, you know, restaurants in the airport and Cheryl’s like, what’s going on?
I’m like, oh, it’s a masters in Rory McElroy. She’s like, I don’t even know who that is. And I said, oh, he is trying to win this. She goes, oh, it’s a golf term. I said, well, yeah, it’s, but it’s the masters and this is the one he needs. Yeah. And she’s like, well, why is that a big deal? And when she heard it was 11 tries, then she wanted to watch him because he kept working.
But what Rory said that I thought was compelling was, I can dream about winning a golf tournament. And a lot of people do, Hey, someday I’m gonna win a golf tournament. He goes, but that really gets you nowhere. It’s the result of your systems you can try to rise to. Your goals, but you’re truly going to fall to your systems.
He goes, so yeah, I wanna win the masters. I need to do this, I need to do this, I need to do this, I need to do this. So if you’re [00:13:00] not getting the raise, you’re not getting the promotion. People are overlooking you at work. Setting a goal to go meet one new person a week and see your gains compound over time is fantastic.
Second,
Doug: yeah.
Joe: Doug?
Doug: Yeah, I just wanted to chime in a little bit ’cause you, uh, before we started talking about Rory McElroy, uh, we were talking about your presence. If you’re joining a new team, uh, I think you talked about, you know, how do you increase your presence? What I saw as a common mistake for people in that situation, even if they weren’t early in their career, people just joining a new, they get, you get a new job and you think, I’ve gotta make a statement here.
Like, I have to let them know I’ve got the goods, I’ve got the skills. They hired me for a reason. It is very easy to come out of the gate a little too strong. It’s actually probably one of the most common mistakes. I can’t remember if it was Jack Welch, but uh, somebody talked about, or Warren Buffett, like, spend your first six months listening and speak very rarely.
And when you do that is what will create the presence that [00:14:00] you truly is the thing you’re seeking because your words will have carry so much weight coming out of the gate too strong, too early is a good way to lose credibility and lose pre you’ll get the wrong kind of presence.
Joe: Well, you know, how many times have you had that happen to you?
You’re like, really? You just got here? You’ve no idea the history. Right. Behind this entire project and you’re gonna solve everything today.
Doug: You nailed it. That’s exactly right, Joe. ’cause even if you, what you said was great because you come in with all this great previous experience. A lot of companies say, no, we want your outside experience.
You bring a lot of great perspective. The people sitting around the table probably didn’t make the hiring decision and are thinking, you don’t know all the pain and suffering we’ve gone through for the last six years on this project or whatever it is. You don’t have the history to be able to, to talk that way.
So it’s just nine and a half times outta 10. It’s not gonna work. Listen,
Joe: it’s, it’s funny because you can totally see the executive making that call and you can also see the executive setting everybody up for failure in that call. Like, if you don’t handle that right. Coming into that team, it’s gonna be horrible.
Yep. ’cause [00:15:00] they know you’re the the person coming in from the bullpen mm-hmm. To solve the problem with this problem unit. Yeah. Next is join an employee resource group, ERG. Join an ERG or a committee not, and this is the key guys, not directly related to your job. Something that is much different than your job.
This is a wonderful way to connect with people across the company you wouldn’t normally encounter. When we talk to Oscar Munoz at, uh, United Airlines, and we’ll link to that episode, he shares a lot of stories about this very stuff he talked about. He worked in manufacturing, he worked in engineering, he worked in finance, he worked in all the different disciplines of the company.
So he got to know the company from all these different people’s point of view, which was incredibly helpful later at helping him. To your point, Doug, listen to what was going on. I think joining these these organizations is a great way to get a leg up. [00:16:00] The third one, and this is funny, Doug, ’cause he’s not gonna admit this here, but this is actually og be a cheerleader when people share updates in a channel.
Be quick to add an emoji or offer a positive comment. They’ll appreciate you for being supportive and very public way. You’ve gone too far. I mean, come on,
Doug: OG is the basement cheerleader. He
Joe: totally is a cheerleader. You’re, you’re selling this right now. He, you know, he is a cheerleader. That’s not his public persona, but he’s a hundred percent a cheerleader.
He’ll call you outta the blue and go, Hey, I saw we did this. He’s got a whole
Doug: vibe going, man. Don’t ruin it. I know. Don’t show everybody under the blankets. Behind the curtains,
OG: under the blankets.
Doug: What
OG: the hell?
No. I will not go camping with you, Doug. It might not be the analogy we’re looking for. I know.
Doug: I’ve got this spacious one man pup tent for two. Oh look,
OG: there’s only one sleeping bag. It’s cold. [00:17:00]
Doug: Hold me.
Joe: So cheerleaders focus, Joe Cheerleaders. Yeah, this can go too far. There’s a gentleman in our community who I know is an incredible cheerleader, but what’s wild is Cheryl came to a conference that I was at and was just there for kind of the social time and met this individual and she goes.
What a slime ball like he is. So over the top, clearly cheerleading to raise his own profile that it just now. Now here’s the funny thing. I roll my eyes. Cheryl rolled her eyes meeting him for 10 seconds. This dude online, whenever he posts anything online, gets hundreds of comments on his post, hundreds of comments.
So, well, probably not for me. I don’t know, man. I think he’s the wrong type of cheerleader. Can’t go too far because Well, tons of people like you. You know, you never [00:18:00] know. You never know who won’t. It’s
Doug: shallow, right? It’s disingenuous. It’s just not, he’s
Joe: so disingenuous. You are like, really? He was really nice to me for about six weeks and I knew it was gonna drop Doug.
Then the request to come on, the Stacky Benjamin Show came. It was just so, so clear. Took me like six months. Dude, get in line. But I do know OG, that in your practice, you know, part of being a cheerleader is like celebrating people’s birthdays. Like part of this you can systematize.
OG: Yeah. I mean all of that’s fine.
Birthdays and that sort of thing, but I think when it’s, especially when you’re talking about money, if you’re looking toward the future, you’re more likely to kind of feel like there’s kind of no end in sight. There is no, there is no end game with money. If your goal is to be financially independent, that number is dynamic.
It changes. When I was 30, I remember thinking, my goodness, if I could have $3 million in the bank, that’s like $10,000 a month for the rest of my life. Like that is so much money. It’s [00:19:00] insane. I can retire as soon as I get there. And there’s plenty of people who would agree with me that whatever that number is, as you get closer to it, you go, well, maybe a little more, you know, little, a little more, a little more margin of safety, a little bit more maybe.
I, I, my lifestyle has changed a little bit. And so there’s never a end goal. And that can be frustrating. That can be, you know, like, I thought I would feel differently. Charlie Mugger says, as soon as you have a hundred thousand, your, you know, life is great. And it’s like people hit that number and they go, well, I don’t feel any different today than I did yesterday when I had $99,400.
And now I have a hundred thousand $600. Okay. You know? Or as soon as I get to a million, my life will be great. And it’s like, you get to a million and you go, okay, I, you know, as soon as you pay off the house, your life will be great. It’s like you pay off the house feels awesome. You know, it’s cool. Is your life profoundly different?
Probably not. Doug says it is. I think it’s important when you’re looking at financial goals to think back from where [00:20:00] you’ve come because it’s impossible for us to concentrate or agree with, or even fantasize about those compounding multiples of growth, right? When you sit down and do your, you know, grab your calculator and say, I’ve got this amount of money, I’m gonna put in this amount every month, and it’s gonna grow at 8% a year.
By the time I am 60 years old, I should have blank dollars. And, and you know, the compounding number is, it’s so profound, right? You’re like, I’m not gonna have $4 million. That’s silly. But if you look backwards, you can start measuring what you’ve done. You know, if you’ve built financial plans or you’ve taken notes in your life about money, go pull up the notes from 2020.
It’s been five years since 2020. Weird, right? Hey, COVID was half a decade ago, in case you didn’t know. Stop it. I know. So look at your financial. Status or what you were, what was going on, go pull your tax returns from 2020. Like look at where you were in 2020 and look at where you are in 2025. That’s how you can measure growth, is you have to measure it backwards.
So I think it’s important when you think [00:21:00] about money goals or financial planning goals to measure backwards. But I also think it’s important to recognize, you know, our friend Dan Sullivan says, you will likely overestimate, severely overestimate what you can get done in a year. And profoundly underestimate what can get done in 25 years.
25 years seems like a country mile away, but, but it’ll be here, you know, it’s a hundred quarters, you know, so you can take your lifetime goal and break it down into a hundred increments.
Joe: You can even take that with a year and a day. I think we overestimate what we can do in a day and we underestimate what we can do in a year.
Oh
OG: yeah. I mean, it’s the one even then, you know, it’s the one degree, it’s the one extra pound of lifting, you know, it’s the one more rep. It’s like, you know, whatever sort of analogy you feel like putting out there. I’ve talked before about my. Addiction to chewing tobacco when I was in the military. And, and that spilled over to being out of the military.
And, and one day I just stopped. I’ve said, I have never quit chewing. I’m just not doing it today. And now that’s gone on for [00:22:00] probably 15 years at this point. It’s not about a lifetime of decision making, I’m just trying to make a decision today. Like I’m just not gonna do that thing today. I’m not promising, I’m never gonna do it.
’cause you know, maybe I will, but I’m just not doing it today. So same thing with money, you know, just don’t spend money today, just save a dollar today. You don’t have to save a dollar every day.
Joe: Yeah. Or in this case, with building those relationships that build careers, right?
OG: Yeah. Just deal with
Joe: the relationship
OG: today.
Just work on one thing today. You don’t have to worry about like, how do I get promoted to senior vice president today, today is how do I, you know, be one
Joe: more person.
OG: Yeah.
Joe: Be nice to one person. How do I cheer, lead for something that doesn’t influence me at all and be somebody who’s in their corner. It is interesting too, when you’re in those, uh, company chats, like, I know.
We’ll see sometimes very public chats right in company, whether it’s uh, teams or Slack or whatever corporate thing that you use. I think you’ll wanna focus on all the people that aren’t commenting on what you say, because tons of people see the thing [00:23:00] that you did who will never ever comment on it, but they’re certainly forming an opinion of what you’re saying, what you’re doing in that meeting.
And if you can be a cheerleader for people when it doesn’t affect you as an aside. By the way, this is also really fun for you. Oh gee, I’m gonna say a woman’s name who you and I both know. Her name is Linda James. Linda James was the receptionist in the Southfield Ameriprise office when I was in, in my Ameriprise portion of my career.
Do you remember Linda?
OG: Not at all.
Joe: Oh, you, you don’t know her. Okay. Linda was easily the iest receptionist in the entire market group. She was absolutely horrible at her job.
OG: It’s, uh, joe az stacking benjamins.com. Linda,
Joe: a gentleman named, uh, Tony Whitbeck, who runs that office, had a decision to make. Do you fire somebody who clearly hates her job and isn’t good [00:24:00] at it?
Or do you send her for more training? And what I think was a brilliant move, because it’s so hard to create a new good employee, uh, he instead sent her to Nordstrom training versus hiring somebody different. Linda went from the worst receptionist to easily, the best receptionist easily within six months.
I asked her, I said, I even told her the reason I said her name is because she knows, I thought she was horrible. Like she was just ru You could, you would walk into this office and you could tell she was miserable and she made everybody else miserable because she was miserable. And then later on, every time you’d walk in, she’s like, Joe, how are the twins doing, Joe?
What’s going on with Ex? She always seemed to know what was going on in my life. What was cool though was if you stood by the, the coffee, which was right around the corner and you watched clients come in, she knew that about everybody. And I said, what did, what the hell did they teach you, Linda? Because you’re phenomenal.
And this [00:25:00] idea of cheerleading OG was the thing that she learned was that it is super fun to care about other people’s lives. Her job being a good reception, she thought it would be easier to get through her day by just counting the hours, you know, if she counted the hours to the end of the day, she would just get through it and live to see another day.
She’s like, you know what’s funny? The days went by much shorter. I. They were far more interesting when people came in and actually gave a damn, like it was, it was more fun for her, right? They taught her it was a better way to do
Doug: your job, og. If you haven’t figured it out yet, this is an intervention.
We’re trying to get a message through.
OG: I, I just need to be nicer. Start giving a damn and my day will be better.
Joe: So there was this guy on this podcast.
OG: We all know him. Great guy. We sent him to Nordstrom’s training, didn’t work. Gotta send him to Disney training. See if that’ll work.
Joe: Such a great lesson that caring about other people just makes you, makes you better at your job.
Fourth is a [00:26:00] tough one for a lot of people. Show vulnerability, offering up something about yourself tells people that you trust them and makes them more likely to reciprocate. It’s a cheat code for developing trust in the foundation for a strong relationship. There’s a series of books OG by this, uh, novelist, Tony Hillerman.
Joe Lehor is a main character in the novels. There’s a great series Doug called Dark Wind that I think you’d really, really like. Which features? Joe Lehor throwing that bait out there again, aren’t you? Can he just poke you? Yeah. Uh, Doug doesn’t like these at all. They’re fantastic. Everybody but Doug just, you know, yeah, some people like him.
I do not whatever, og Now the intervention goes the other way. So there’s this guy named Doug that doesn’t know a good, good series, but Joe Horne has this interesting approach, og, again, a tactic. I. He knows that the teller at the bank is not allowed to give away any of the client information, right? And not allowed to do it.
But Joe knows humans, and Joe knows that if he overshare [00:27:00] a little bit something vulnerable about him, the person is going to want to reciprocate and they’re gonna be a little bit more vulnerable back. So Joe would always overshare something about his life. Then the bank teller would like him more, and then he’d say, Hey, has this person come in here and maybe deposited a $10,000 check?
She’s not allowed to tell him that. Mm-hmm. She, she tells him anyway because of what I call the Joe Lipor rule. But I think that if you in a relationship, maybe share a little bit, maybe not about that rash, but share a little bit about you. That’s gonna go a long way.
Doug: Do you have a sve? Maybe that would help me.
I think it’s
Joe: pronounced self hypothe. Maybe we’ll talk about that hypothetically.
Second on her list is appearances. How many times OG has, uh, showing up, looking the part Got you the job.
OG: I mean, I’ve been doing the same thing for damn near 30 years, so I don’t, he’s never been on a job interview, I don’t think, I don’t think this would be a great, [00:28:00] a great thing for me. No. I mean, I can think of something else that I do where appearance really matters and it does.
I mean, it’s largely the things that you can control. And that’s, I think really what, what maybe that all encapsulates here. It’s like if how you look physically is important for, you know, if you’re a actor or a model or you know, whatever it is that you do that requires you to be client facing or whatever the case may be, right?
You can control how that package looks in some way, shape or form. Uh, you can control that you’re. Shirt is pressed or that your tie is tied correctly or that you’ve got a haircut recently. You know what I mean? Like, you can, it, it maybe seem superficial, but those are outward appearances that other people can see that you give a crap.
Doug: Well, you know, if it, you use the word superficial, which I think is a lot of people’s first reaction to that, but it says something else. It says that you can pay attention to details and [00:29:00] that you, you care about things that aren’t necessarily just the job. So I do think, I don’t
OG: remember if I, if I heard this in a movie or if I learned this somewhere else, you know shoes, right?
You can tell, you know, are the shoes shined? Are they polished? Well, you know, if you’re trying to shine your shoes really quickly, what do you focus on? Your spit the top right.
Doug: You spit. Well, that’s how you do it. It’s not how you do it,
OG: but okay.
Doug: Doug likes to just H to a, yeah,
OG: spit hot.
Doug: Two of those shoes, baby.
OG: But what’s the part that most people don’t pay attention to? They heel, right? Yeah. And so again, to your point about attention to detail, you can tell pretty quickly if somebody gives half a crap or a full crap, right? Like right, that’s true. You know, are the back of your shoes as shiny as the front of your shoe?
Like all of this I think is, I think more of a demonstration of you’re controlling what you can control. You can’t control. If you go to the sales meeting and the guy says no, right? You can’t control if [00:30:00] you go to the meeting with your boss asking for a raise of promotion and you don’t get it. But you can control how you show up to that thing as much as you can control that stuff.
The rest of it is just how it falls. You know, if you’re in a position where you have to look a certain way and you don’t look that way. That’s kind of some of your control. If you didn’t wear a nice suit and you could have, that’s on you. It’s not on them that they made you wear a fancy suit.
Doug: You know? Or even if, yeah.
I mean, we used to tell, you know, I coached a lot of youth baseball teams and other sports teams. We used to tell the kids, fail on the hard stuff. Don’t fail on the easy stuff. Show up on time, put in the effort. All of that stuff is in your control. You might have to take some risks and you might fail on that, and that’s okay.
But don’t fail at the easy stuff.
OG: Remember the movie? Uh, remember the Titans movie? Oh, it’s one of my
Doug: favorites.
OG: Yeah. In the scene where they’re playing the tough team from Grove and they decide they’re gonna warm up a little differently. Oh yeah. And they all come out and do their little thing. Think [00:31:00] about the intimidation factor of having that part of your life wired.
It’s like, oh my God, if they can coordinate the stretching routine mm-hmm. What’s their offense gonna look like?
Joe: Mm-hmm. Well, and how many times when you’ve walked into a meeting, and I’ve been in these meetings before and I’m sure you guys have too. You walk into a meeting and somebody’s appearance intimidates you and you realize it’s on purpose, it’s a tactic.
They actually dress that way specifically to intimidate you.
OG: I’ll give you the complete opposite of that. I, years and years and years ago, this is early in my career, trying to make, uh, center of influence connections, right. Mortgage broker, CPA, whatever. So I have this mortgage broker that I like. We’re getting some work done, and he says, Hey, I want you to come to this seminar that I think would be really helpful.
I’m like, all right, cool. So I go to this thing very quickly, figure out this is an MLM deal of some kind. You know, and everybody’s, you know, if, if you can’t tell who the sucker is, it’s you, you know, at the poker table, it [00:32:00] wasn’t me because I was like, I know what’s going on. But it was so staged, it seemed in my mind, people were clapping and like, woo.
Joe’s amazing. And it’s like, shut up. That’s gotta be staged. What a plant, you know? But what did it for me mostly had nothing to do with the words or any of the stuff because I had just been made fun of this personally, which was, I bought a suit, I was a new financial planner, I didn’t have any money. I bought a suit at JCPenney.
I thought it would be a good idea to get the wrinkle free one, you know, who wants a wrinkly suit? So I got the Hagar Wrinkle free. I remember this distinctly because I was sitting in a room with two of my bosses and they were talking about custom suits and whatever, and then they, they made just a side comment of, yeah, like, not like I’m buying Hagar Wrinkle-free.
They both kind of look at me like, oh crap. And I open up the, the, you know, the inside of my coat and it says Haggar Wrinkle-free on the inside. And we just had a big [00:33:00] laugh with this. Well, anyways, so I now know that Haggar Wrinkle-free apparently are not the creme de la creme of suits that I thought they were, I mean, for $299.
Anyway, you remember, you know, if you buy a suit sometimes it has the tag on the outside. Yes. And you gotta cut that off. Yes. The presenter was wearing a Hagar Wrinkle free with the tag on the outside. He hadn’t cut off yet. Wow. And I knew watching that, I was like, this is so staged. This guy doesn’t even know he’s not supposed to wear a Hagar Wrinkle free.
And he’s projecting, I drive Lamborghinis and, and I make millions. I’m old money,
Joe: I’m surrounded by old money and yeah. Blah, blah, blah, blah. No
OG: you’re not. No you’re not. And so that whole appearance component of it, you know, kind of collapsed for me because I knew just being exposed to those other things, like he wasn’t controlling that component of it.
He could have bought a thousand dollars suit and would’ve convinced me.
Doug: Well, I don’t know if the message you were trying to send was buy an expensive suit. I don’t think so. I think it was no. Pay attention to the details. Cut the damn tag off. Yeah, I mean, you might [00:34:00] only be able to afford the JC Penney suit.
That is fine. But just make sure that it’s, yeah, clean press again.
Joe: Control the control.
Doug: Don’t
OG: have the little sticker around the side that says 35 by 30, that goes all the way down the leg of your pant. You know, you gotta take that sticker off.
Joe: And I’m glad you brought that up, Doug, because I think the takeaway here is super important, which is, OG just pointed out two things.
There are people that know about the tag on the suit. There are people that will look at the heel of your shoe, right? People are looking at it. Some of it you’re gonna be able to control, some of you can’t, at the very least, show up controlling what you can inside your budget. Take care of what you can.
It’s amazing how often, I remember showing up at the office early in my career, and there was a dude who had a lot of, uh. Had a lot of body hair. He was just, he had just a lot of chest hair. This guy, oh. And he would not wear a t-shirt under his white shirt. He thought nobody was paying attention to that.
We were all paying attention to that ever. You could not, not pay attention to that. Mm-hmm. Like that was huge. [00:35:00] I thought. Og, to your point, you wore two white
OG: T-shirts
Joe: under your, I started wearing six just to make sure that all this doesn’t get out there. Early in my career, I thought that I could save some time by just buying these shoes that I found at like, you know, cheap shoe place that were plastic, right?
That just looked like they were shine perfectly all the time. And I thought nobody, nobody noticed like rental tux shoes. Oh, they totally, totally looked like that. And, and I thought, this is the best. This is fantastic. Well, when those wore out, I decided, I don’t remember what happened, but I decided to buy some good shoes and, and so I bought some just Heim shoes that go with your suit.
And uh, I remember walking in with those, I mentioned Tony Whitbeck earlier, the manager of the Southfield office. I walk in, I wasn’t there oog for more than 30 seconds before Tony goes. Hey, you finally got rid of those cheap ass shoes. Ooh. People don’t say stuff to you when [00:36:00] you’re wearing it. They say it when you figure it out later.
You know what I mean?
OG: Oh, no. They said it to me while I was wearing it. They thought about wearing a Hagar Wrinkle free. Oh, sorry.
Joe: That’s just, uh, some love. All right, there’s the R and the A. Uh, by the way, just to put a point on appearances, two things I love that Lorraine talks about if you work outside the office.
When you’re in the office because you’re not there very much. Super important when you actually show up face-to-face, whether it’s a Zoom meeting or if it’s face-to-face in the office, remember, those times are gonna matter even more. And then second, when you’re on that zoom call, think about the, not just the background behind you, but things, uh, like I had to learn for television.
Don’t wear stripes. If you wear stripes, especially on a zoom call or green.
OG: Yeah,
Joe: yeah. Or don’t wear green,
OG: then you’re just like ahead,
Joe: do the virtual background and wear green. That goes over Great. That’s the R and the A. Relationships and appearances. We got the VE after the break, but Doug, I think we’re gonna [00:37:00] take a little pause here because I think it’s about time for some damn trivia.
Come on. Sure is Joe.
Doug: Hey, there’s stackers. I’m Joe’s moms. Are we a Talladega? What are you doing?
Joe: Come
Doug: on. No, I’m saying Hey there stackers. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug and I was this many years old when I found out what a file list was. I thought he or she was, you know, someone who fld. Which just sounds gross, right?
But call off the alarm while you standing up there on the moral high ground because it turns out a philatelist is someone who wait for it. Collects stamps. Good news too, because they’re collecting, they don’t even have to lick ’em. Which is weird considering. That’s totally what I thought anyway. No,
TikTok Minute: no.
Doug: Moving from stamps to coins, I then wondered what a coin collector was called, and that’s apparently a Numi Sist, which I always [00:38:00] thought was. Some sort of magician, but apparently a NIST takes coins and magically tells you what they’re worth. So let’s talk new Tism. I nailed it. I got it. Let’s talk New mysticism for today’s trivia.
On today’s date in 1787, the Continental Congress authorized the first 1 cent coin. The guy who was the inspiration for the design is a legend in these parts. So there’s the question, who inspired the design and the unofficial name of the first 1 cent piece. I’ll be back right after I find out more about the buffalo nickel.
I hope it’s not anything like buffalo chips. I learned about those things the hard way.
Hey there, stackers. I’m Buffalo nickel lover and guy who’s always willing to share his 2 cents. [00:39:00] Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. Today we celebrate the Continental Congress giving the green light to the creation of the first 1 cent piece. I mean, then it wasn’t called a green light though, was it? It was probably just called like all clear.
Or you can go ahead instead because there weren’t any green lights yet. Well, I mean, there might have been I guess, but probably not for traffic controls. I have it on. Good. Oh my God. What was I talking about? Just dark highways. Okay. Anyway, I’ve got it on good authority that the inspiration for the 1 cent piece created a lot of great innovations, but not a green light per se.
So who was the inspiration for the first 1 cent coin? I. That would be none other than Mr. Benji Franklin, which is why they call it the Franklin Scent. Oh, thank God. It isn’t what I thought about his Bo Wait, what?
To now. Here come guys who are gonna continue helping you pick up the scent on a [00:40:00] better career. Joe and og. I love it when Doug St. Stumbles over the joke he wrote. I, I mean, sometimes I lose my train of thought. He thought it was so funny in the read through
Joe: and then in the real thing. He’s like, I got no clue what what it.
Hey, um, Ben Franklin for the win. Oh,
Doug: wait, wait. I just got it sent. And scent. Oh, it just hit me. Ah, it’s like the whole thing we did at the beginning with presence and presence.
Joe: Yes.
Doug: It’s all woven so tightly together. This show is so well crafted. Sometimes it, it evades me
Joe: so well crafted. We gotta explain it to you.
Gotta draw a diagram. Let’s get back to unforgettable presence and making a good impression. You know, the whole, the whole reason for this discussion is because of the fact that, uh, Lorraine was passed up for promotions because she thought that if you just kept your head down, did a good job, people would notice, which brings up the third [00:41:00] piece of her rave.
RAVE. Relationships. Appearance. The third one is visibility. Even if you’re the best. Smartest person in the room. It won’t help you og if you’re not being seen Unfortunately today. You, you gotta tell people what you’re doing. You have to do that. Now. I think we’ll talk with Lorraine about this on Wednesday because, uh, this is, frankly, the visibility is what it’s all about.
But I did wanna talk a little bit today about how top managers can make this happen. And so time for a TikTok minute. This is, we’re actually gonna do two TikTok minutes today, ’cause I’ve, I’ve got another one. But, um, this is Byron Morrison who. Is a guy who works with leaders to make them better. Byron has this to say for senior leaders where a lot of leaders mess up when it comes to meetings.
And Doug, I’d love to get, as a guy that’s been in a lot of these corporate meetings, I’d love to get your take on this.
TikTok Minute: While [00:42:00] running Amazon, one of Jeff Bezos’s rules was the most junior person in the meeting should be the first to share their thoughts and ideas. Why? Because he recognized as soon as he spoke, everyone in the room would be influenced by his opinion, but by letting junior employees talk first, it could then ensure a more open and honest discussion.
This is one of the biggest mistakes I see in the first time CEOs I work with, where often they think that they need to lead the room by sharing their ideas and driving the direction of the conversation. The problem with that is if you share something that goes against other people’s ideas, they may be reluctant to speak up.
This could make you miss a ton of valuable insights that may have shaped your ideas or completely changed your decision. And this is why the best leaders speak last.
Joe: It’s interesting because I can see a, you’re meeting running amok that way, but also I think that, um. I think those junior people are gonna have a really tough time sharing anything if Jeff Bezos [00:43:00] talks first.
Doug: Well, first of all, I disagree with the guy’s accent. Like I, I mean, it’s like he merged three or four different nationalities and I mean, dude, pick one. But, uh, I agree with part of that notion. I do like the id you, first of all, you’ve gotta have the right culture to empower and make your junior people feel safe enough to share their thoughts early or first in a meeting.
So make sure that you’re doing what you can at any level, wherever you are in the organization. Make sure you’re doing what you can to create that, that space, that vibe open, that that culture, openness that it’s open. Yeah. And. You know, it’s the old, there’s no dumb idea kind of thing. Well, sometimes there are, but you might have to just eat it, not laugh because the culture win is more valuable than, than anything else.
But the second thing that I like about that, uh, and is critical, is the leader should drive. The shape of the discussion, but [00:44:00] not by their comments, by a, a great leader frames problems in a way that sets the discussion off in the right direction. That’s what a great leader should do, is frame the challenge, frame the thing that you’re trying to solve without overly influencing what the solution should be.
And yeah, once you set up the table, set up the board game as it were, you know, I’m appealing to you there, Joe. Look, you looked up. Oh, look at that. As soon as I said that, he’s like, what Doug’s saying something I care about. Uh, then you sit back and you start with however you wanna, whatever your culture is, whether it’s the most junior person or the newest person to the team, uh, but not necessarily most junior, you know, however you wanna do it, but frame the problem the right way and a lot of other things take care of themselves.
Joe: It’s so important, I think, to build that trust. And to your point, it’s not something you can do overnight, Doug. I, I mean, it is, it is something that is proven over and over and over and over and over. Lorraine has a ton of tips on how to make yourself unforgettable to executives. Speaking of [00:45:00] executives.
And one of the things, OG, is to get comfortable with numbers and data, like being able to talk to people about, especially executives about numbers and data. And I know that for a lot of people speaking that way initially is kind of foreign. But I know if you wanna get an executive’s attention immediately, being able to call up, Hey, here’s how we’re doing, you know, percent growth in, in this division, or, uh, this X, Y, z.
Like turn your emotional arguments into data-driven arguments is gonna go a long way.
OG: Yeah. I mean, the less opinion that you have with, I think, and I feel, and the more that you can back up your decision making with real life results, the more likely it is that I. You’ll be listened to or at least be considered
Joe: for numbers.
You need to learn to boost your financial literacy, especially inside of your career. Number one, revenue growth. You need to know og what that means [00:46:00] if, if, if you don’t understand revenue growth, that I think probably, I would think for most CEOs wouldn’t you, would be the key metric.
OG: Well, I mean, revenue’s great, but profit’s better.
So
Joe: well, number two on Lorraine’s list is profitability. How about that?
OG: Yep, there you go.
Joe: Number three is cash burn. Know what that means? Yeah. And then number four is customer retention. Know those four metrics and you’re probably 80, 85% of the way there.
OG: That’s a good idea. I like that.
Joe: Last one that she has is, uh, this, well before we get there, she talks about with visibility, find the right spaces.
Look for those meetings that you can be in. Those groups that you can be in that are high visibility. Some groups are very low visibility. They’re fantastic, but you need to be in high, highly visible places. Next one, volunteer to present at meetings. The more often you can get in front of people and volunteer to present, uh, the better off you’re gonna be, even if you’re afraid of presenting.
I’ve been [00:47:00] in some corporate meetings where the person clearly was afraid to be presenting and in 99% of those though, the audience was so warm to that ’cause it showed some vulnerability. And if you just focus on helping the meeting and doing your part to give to the team, I don’t think you gotta be the world’s best speaker.
You should definitely work on it, but I don’t think you have to be the world’s best speaker. The last thing in their model, uh, we’re gonna end with is, is expertise. And this is interesting because Doug, you talked about people that don’t listen enough and that they give their opinion too quickly. I.
Lorraine says that when you do give your opinion, though, definitely focus on areas where you have an advantage. It’s something that you’re really good at where you know that you can shine. Give people feedback in areas where you excel, and the more you give feedback in that one area, it establishes you a leader in that community that people wanna go to, especially if it’s insight to make them better at that role.
So go, Hey, Doug, [00:48:00] based on my background, da da, da, here’s, here’s a tweak you could make that’ll make you better, man. I think if you give that in private to a lot of different people, that’s gonna go a long way.
Doug: Yeah, absolutely. Now you have to establish that credibility first before you can just start acting like, well, I’m the expert in this area.
Let me tell you what I think that’s gonna go over a lot like. The guy, you know, that, uh, lured OG into a MLM thing. You know, as soon as people realize that they’re out, they, they’ll check out and, and they won’t listen to you again on almost anything. So be careful on what you project yourself as an expert as, but if you can sort of use the whole Aristotelian logo, ethos, pathos as a way over time as they’re getting to know you and your team and build up some of that credibility, then, then yeah, maybe you focus on an area or two where you feel like you can be that go-to person
Joe: and a place where you can establish that.
Uh, Lorraine writes is LinkedIn. Start writing on LinkedIn about your one thing. Nobody reads that stuff, Joe. Oh, I do. [00:49:00] I, I think it’s really good, man. I’ve, I’ve noticed a lot more people on LinkedIn than when I was there even five years ago. They’re starting to use it now.
Doug: Like Facebook, you see the people who post their vacation photos, like, dude, wrong platform.
Joe: Yeah. Don’t, that’s not LinkedIn. I don’t wanna see your Facebook, but I do want career advice from people that are really good at the thing. I will dive into that all day, but curating that content, you know, create your substack, whatever it might be, that’s the rave model. And we will draw those up on our Facebook group tomorrow so that you have all four of those and some tips in each of those areas.
Also, Kevin Bailey at the 2 0 1, we’ll dive into those stacking benjamins.com/ 2 0 1. That’s our newsletter that comes out every week. And, uh, you will get even more links into how to, uh, create the rave that OG wants to leave at nine 15.
Time for one more segment, guys, uh, this is where we help a stacker in need. From time to time, a stacker goes, you know what? I better [00:50:00] call Saul, see Hi and og and if you have a question for OG and I and Doug, head to stacky benjamins.com/voicemail today. Let’s take a question from Nick. Hey Nick.
Nick – Call In: Hey Joe, Doug and og, thanks for taking my call.
My name is Nick and I live in Dallas, Texas. I was calling about what your thoughts are of using AI like chat, GPT to help you make portfolio decisions, whether that’s, uh, asking it to use the efficient frontier to build a portfolio, asking it for stock tips. Do you find it trustworthy? Do you think the output is useful or do you think because it’s still in its infancy that it’s risky to take its advice?
Thank you for taking my call and, uh, look forward to your answer.
Joe: Thanks for the call, Nick. Oh gee, we actually did a couple shows on this already about ai.
OG: Did we ever put it into chat? GPT?
Joe: Did we ever ask chat, GPT [00:51:00] if it’s, uh, if it’s helpful,
OG: yeah.
Doug: Chat, GPT. Are you any good at your job? Yes. It’s time for the annual review to self-assess.
Joe: We have a friend named, uh, Robert Farrington, who leads the college investor. Robert, uh, wrote along with us one day and, uh, his team actually did a, uh, study where they asked it a bunch of questions and OG the results. If you remember that Robert and his team found they weren’t good, it was very confidently wrong.
A ton.
OG: Yeah. I mean, ultimately the more that the, the bot, the chatbot or chat GT or Claude or whichever one you’re using, the more that it knows about you, the more that it’s gonna answer the questions based on what’s going, what, what it believes that you believe. So if all of your conversation with chat GPT is about Nvidia, and you go, Hey, by the way, outta curiosity.
How should my portfolio look at age 35 with a hundred grand, it’ll be like a hundred percent Nvidia, obviously Nvidia and Amazon, but you might wanna diversify [00:52:00] into Apple. And so when I put it into chat, JBT, it knows how I think about, you know, investing because it’s, I’ve used it for different questions over the years and so for me it says, oh, you like to tilt toward small cap and value and profitable companies because you believe in the three factor model and, and efficient frontier and efficient market hypothesis and that sort of stuff.
So you wanna be a low cost passive investor and it’s gonna give me an asset allocation. That kind sounds like what I like. The thing that I find chat GPT good for is answering the questions that I don’t feel like looking up and Googling. And what I mean by that is this, like for example, the TSP, many people have the TSP, you know, it’s a government 401k plan, right?
And in the TSP, there’s five different funds. The C, the S, the I, the F and the G, right? Everybody’s familiar with that. That’s in the TSP. But then there’s also lifestyle funds. That’s what they call basically target date funds. So you might hit the Lifestyle 2040 fund, or the [00:53:00] Lifestyle 2050 fund, or the lifestyle 20, you know, whatever.
What I like to do is I would say, Hey, chat, GPT, what is the allocation of the lifestyle? 2050 fund broken down by S, you know, C, S, I, F, and G. And so it can give me the asset allocate, like it’s a fancier way to Google, in my opinion. It’s not quite ready to make portfolio decisions and honestly it’s not quite ready to make portfolio decisions because it’s gonna just.
Respond to the loudest voice, if that makes sense.
Joe: Well, and that’s also a problem that Robert and his team found and that I know from taking some classes on how this stuff all works, which is it’s predictive modeling, it is trying to predict what the right answer would be based on the body of knowledge that’s out there, and especially OG in areas where the rules that may be changed recently, I would say beware what you ask it.
Because as an example, if the Roth IRA has had a [00:54:00] significant change last year, 98% of the stuff that’s on the internet is from previous years and hasn’t been updated yet. The new rule is not what chat GPT is going to predict
OG: it’s gonna go. Yeah. ’cause of the loudest voice is whatever the highest search term was, you know, hasn’t been replaced yet on Google of the new updated thing.
Absolutely.
Joe: So the thing I’ve needed to learn is. Am I asking this a thing that it can predict pretty well and then I’m very confident asking it the question, but I’m not gonna ask it for tax advice.
OG: I’m not gonna ask it for Speaking of tax advice, I, I was working through a tax problem that I was trying to solve and I was asking it ta you know these questions, right?
Hey, how does you know, how would I do this? How would I do this? And it goes, oh, this is how you do it. But I know just enough about this problem. That I knew that the answer was not that, so it’s wrong. Yeah. And I was like, well, hold on. Isn’t it, isn’t it true that this is the answer? And it goes, you, you know what?
You’re absolutely correct. [00:55:00] The right answer is this. Like, okay, well you’ve given me two answers in the last two sentences, which one of these is correct? And it’s like, it’s obviously this one. And it was a third option. And I said, okay, now I need, I need you to source it. It’s like, well, there is no source available for this information.
It’s like, okay, I can’t, I’m not gonna take tax advice from, from the internet. That can’t even give me the source that it got the information from. It was just clearly making it up.
Doug: It’s basically when Kramer had the phone number for movie phone and he just started giving people fake movie times out.
Yeah. And then finally he is like, why don’t you just tell me what movie you’d like to see?
Joe: Uh, so good. Yeah, Nick. So I’d be careful. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Uh, buyer beware there. Or if it’s free, uh, free.
OG: Search, beware even $20 a month on chat. GPTI find it helpful. I like playing around with it, but you have to have some knowledge in that area.
Otherwise you’re just gonna go down a rabbit hole of, [00:56:00] of completely. Or you have the potential to go down the rabbit hole of completely incorrect information and not know the difference, not know, you know, what this means. So be very, very careful. Be very, very f wayed.
Joe: Thank you Nick, for the question. If you’ve got a question for us, uh, stuck benjamins.com/voicemail gets you there and, uh, we’re happy to take your question too.
By the way, this was question. 999 to get out the Stacking Benjamin show. Really? Yeah. Really. Next week’s question, we are going to give a special big time swag and books and we’re going to At a boy or
Doug: at a girl outta the back. Yeah.
Joe: Somebody’s getting the whole balloons like you show up. You got no idea.
We we’re about to give them some really, really good stuff. So that’s next week on Stacking Benjamins. Alright, time to wander out on the back porch. Doug, we’ve had some fantastic discussions. I know lately,
Doug: well the best one on, I mean this is one of the best ones I can even remember. Ashley Deaconing [00:57:00] put one out there and it just, she put a poll out on Facebook and it just simply said there was no exp This was fantastic.
This shows that you were paying attention to the show. All it said was pronounce the L or do not pronounce the L. And what she was talking about was on one of our Friday episodes recently, somebody said, Sal, who was that? Somebody, Joe. It was you. Oh, it was me. Oh, I’m sorry. You said Sal and I’m like, hold on, stop the presses because it is, Sal, did you just say salve?
It’s a hundred percent self and I just love that Ashley just put that poll out there. I thought people, I thought Oh, Jesus said it though. In
Joe: fairness. Uh,
Doug: no,
OG: I, I might have said it after you to maybe Backhandedly make fun of you.
Joe: Oh, in fact,
OG: I probably did say that. Yeah,
Joe: fine. Okay.
OG: It was a little inside joke between me and Doug when I was like, Sal,
Doug: but I love that Ashley just put that out there and like a hundred.
91 people voted. I think it’s more than that [00:58:00] actually. But I mean, a lot of people caught this on the important stuff on the show, on the important stuff. This was just, this just comes from a position of lockdown. It made me feel so validated and seen. Oh no, we, we got a letter on
Joe: this
Doug: topic as well. We did, and then we get a letter from somebody who’s very credentialed.
What
OG: was the vote, by the way?
Doug: Okay, so the vote, what was the
OG: outcome?
Doug: The vote is that there are 34 psychos out there who think that you should pronounce the LAKA smart people. Okay. The
Joe: silent majority.
Doug: There were 43 who said you don’t pronounce it, but then a couple of other people thought they would be cute and funny and they put, you know, you can add your own thing to the poll.
You can add your own question to the poll. Another option for an answer, I should say. Somebody put in, if it’s Italian word for a formal greeting, you pronounce the L. Otherwise no, because that’s just weird. And five people, so that’s a, that’s a vote for, you don’t pronounce the L. That’s five people clicked on that, and then another five people said.
There’s danger no matter how you pronounce it, which leads us to another discussion. Yeah, [00:59:00] we’ll get to that in, in a second. Danger, we’ll get to that in a second. But, so really, another 10 people voted for you don’t pronounce the l and a couple of other weirdos said it’s salve, which, so I mean, now salve, we’re getting carried away, but you don’t pronounce the L people.
So here’s, here’s proof. We get a letter from a very credentialed listener. Adam White gave us all his credentials after his name. The student knows what he’s talking about. In my experience, not credentialed in this area, Doug. I disagree. He’s very credentialed. Listen to this letter. This dude is the shizzle on this area in my extensive Marion Webster.
That’s what the kids say these days is where he works. In my exp experience, this is so from Adam. In my experience, SAV has been most commonly pronounced Sav, and he puts SAV in quotes with a short vowel sound shared by the A in apple and a very silent L. If you simply Google the pronunciation, you will find links to pronunciation guides declaring one way.
Correct. In some links in another [01:00:00] way, correct? Another links. These formulations. Now he’s talking about the pharmacological. Use of formulations. Oh geez. Dying. These formulations are not frequently used anymore. Going the way of tinctures and such, albeit even less frequently used tinctures. That’s a great word right there.
We gotta find a way to use that in a sentence because it is such a seldom utilized formulation. I would not be surprised if it is more frequently pronounced phonetically nowadays because people are idiots. He didn’t say that part. Uh, having said that, I have worked with a number of pharmacists from different areas of the country that pronounce common drugs very differently from other pharmacists.
So this is likely just another regional question. It’s not Adam, this is universally known to not pronounce the l Adam is pharm DI think that means he has his undergrad in in pharmacology and then he has an MBA and he is the pharmacy and clinical, he takes care of animals, right? Takes care of
Joe: animals.
Pharmacology,
Doug: right. Uh, pharmacy, clinical and operations manager for a company he doesn’t wanna share with us for probably smart reasons, but this guy is in the [01:01:00] drug world and says there’s no l.
Joe: There you go.
Doug: He’s a druggist.
Joe: So my apology, I would like to have a heartfelt apology to everybody. It was completely incensed by my use of the letter L.
But let’s explore the other
Doug: controversial thing that came up, which is danger.
Joe: Oh, we had so much fun with danger, whether there is danger. OG started this one. OG said there’s no danger.
OG: The danger is that this show is a two hours
Joe: long so far. I said, nay, nay. There’s no danger. And, and so John, Doug,
Doug: yeah.
Loyal listener John with no H. It’s a silent H. Just like the L John. Just put a simple post up, says hashtag team. No danger.
Joe: And then the comments flew from there. Oh boy. Including, including on that, uh, poll. The poll, there’s danger whether you pronounce it with an L or without an L. So, uh, it w we had a lot of fun with that.
That was [01:02:00] great. Love that. In fact, I got roasted a little bit on, uh, Spotify by Silent Shade, who said my angry tirade was unnecessary. Turns out it created some great discussion, uh, which led to a Friday episode where we talked about all the danger in investing, and OG had all kinds of comments about the nine different types of danger that there were investments.
’cause you
OG: made me do it.
And,
Joe: and on that note, let’s, let’s crown this off. Uh, Doug, what are our big takeaways from today’s
Doug: episode? Well, Joe first take some advice from our career branding, deep dive focus on honing your personal brand and you’ll find more Benjamin’s in that wallet of yours. Second, thinking about using AI for your big financial move, remember that AI is predictive and especially with your money, there’s lots of old advice AI sifts through before giving you an answer.
One that might not be correct. Let the big lesson, don’t share. Today’s [01:03:00] Ben Franklin trivia with Joe’s mom. Next thing you know, she’ll be sharing her favorite pennies from 1972, which are really cool. And then she’ll share her pennies from 1973, which are also kind of cool. But then, and this was super fun, the pennies from 1974.
I keep telling you more, but we’re talking 1979, upstairs in three minutes, and I’m not allowed to miss it. This show is the property of SB Podcast LLC, copyright 2025, and is created by Joe Saul Sea. Hi, Joe gets help from a few of our neighborhood friends. You’ll find out about our awesome [email protected], 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 [01:04:00] Joe’s Mom’s neighbor, Duggan. We’ll see you next time back here at the Stacking Benjamin Show.
Guys, you know that I’m a little bit of a, uh, I don’t know the correct
OG: term [01:05:00] points. Whore, is that, is that acceptable?
Doug: Uh, wait, lemme look it up. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. What did the judges
OG: say? Okay. That wow. Uh, for credit card points, that is, so I get a letter in the mail from American Express, and it says, Hey, you’re eligible.
You’re pre-approved for the business plus cash card. I’m like, hell yeah, I am. So, so off. I go do my little login thing. Apply. Congratulations. You’re approved with your $4,000 line of credit. I’m like, okay, not zero, but it’s gonna take me a while to get my, you know, to get the spend, to get the free bonus points, right?
Because I don’t know what the spend is. Maybe 15,000 over three months or something. Then comes in the mail, you know, you get the envelope and you gotta log to, to register. It sits, you know, on my desk for a while week. Finally, I’m like, all right, I gotta get this done. So I log in to do it, and it pops up and it says $25,000 line of credit.
I’m like, oh. Finally those idiots got to, you know, came to their senses, came to their senses. But I [01:06:00] notice, and when you, you know, when you log into your credit card, it shows like, it’ll say the credit card and then it’ll have the last four digits or whatever. Yep. And I go, well, that’s not the same four digits that I have.
What the heck is going on here? So I, you know, kind of click around and look at it. Nope. This is the Business Plus card for the business. It’s the, it’s the blue one. This is what it looks like right here. It’s just the little blue guy. Oh. And I’m like, Nope, that’s the same one. And so I start going through my, uh, stack o credit cards, which is, this is part of the stack right here.
Do as I say, not as I do kids. Oh. I mean, as long as you pay ’em off. But, um, so it turns out that I had another envelope from a year ago where I got this card a year ago.
Doug: Oh man.
OG: And it was still in the envelope. So the reason that the one that they sent me was a $4,000 limit was because I already had one that had 25,000 a hu limit.
Anyways, so the moral of the story here is, uh, open your mail. Yeah. [01:07:00] Sounds like the, the moral, not open your mail, but like, you know, keep track of your stuff. So I am, uh, I’m, I’m turning over a new leaf just so everybody knows I am into consolidation phase and simplifying. So just ’cause I have three of these already, we are gonna get rid of two of them.
Doug: Well, really going out on a limb there. Eliminating two of the three blue amexes. Yeah. Well, you know, wow. I mean, talk about Marie Kondo and your,
OG: I have an addiction.
Doug: You gotta get out the bandsaw to cut through all those cards.
OG: I know. Well, these are the cheap plastic ones. These aren’t even the cool metal ones, but
Doug: the ones that all of you little people have.
OG: Not that at all. Actually, the plastic ones are better. They’re lighter in the wallet. You could carry more of ’em with you.
They are, they’re, so you’re like, which one of these seven do you need today? Yeah. Anyway. Needless to say, I did not get the bonus points for last year’s card because I didn’t open it [01:08:00] or know it existed. Did
Doug: the, did the new 4,000 card negate the previous 25,000 card or were they
OG: No, they were the same cumulative.
They like literally had two line items. Like I had two, you know when you logged in two cards, one was a 4,000 limit, one was 25. So I called Amex and I said, can you just put it together and make it 29? Like just gimme one. They’re like, no, pick which one you want. I said, well, okay. Obviously I know which one I want, but
Joe: let me think.
I want the 4,000. ’cause clearly I can’t be trusted. It’s clearly
OG: I can’t. That’s right. Be trusted. 25.
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