S3E55 – Chad Hufford – Celebrate the Inputs, not the Results

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Key Timecodes

• ((00:58) -Show intro and background history
• (01:40) – Deeper into his background history
• (03:53) – Understanding his business model
• (05:53) – Deeper into his mindset, business model and strategies
• (16:58) – How discipline can help people to achieve financial freedom
• (20:18) – How to make something difficult easier
• (28:26) – Patience and consistency as key factors in achieving desired goals
• (34:30) – What is the worst advice he ever received
• (35:08) – What is the best advice he ever received
• (37:00) – Guest contacts

Transcription

[00:00:04.520] – Intro

Hey, this is Sean Tepper, the host of Payback Time, an approachable and transparent podcast on financial independence. I’d like to bring on guests to hear authentic stories while giving you actionable takeaways you can use today. Let’s go. My next guest is a lifetime athlete who applies the same strategies of losing weight and getting in shape to building wealth. It’s all about celebrating the small inputs and not dwelling on the final results. The problem is that most people go into a goal focused on the results, which is why they fail. If you want to lose weight, you need to focus on consistent daily steps and celebrate when you complete those steps. The same is true for building your wealth. You need to establish small milestones and celebrate when you reach those milestones. Mindset is a topic we don’t talk about often enough on this show, but in this case, my next guest breaks it down. Please welcome Chad Hufford.

[00:00:58.800] – Sean

Chad, welcome to the show.

[00:00:59.780] – Chad

John, it’s great to be here. Thank you so much for having me.

[00:01:02.690] – Sean

Yeah, thanks for joining me. Why don’t you kick us off and tell us about your background?

[00:01:06.870] – Chad

Well, I have an indirect background. I think for somebody running a wealth management practice, I grew up in athletics. I had a pretty diverse athletic background, got into coaching and working with professional athletes, Olympic athletes. Somewhere in between there, I got a biochemistry degree. I’ve got a scattered path, but it’s really coalesced into what I’ve been doing for the past 16, 17 years. And that’s coaching investors. It’s coaching individuals to forge financial freedom and create a life of abundance.

[00:01:40.080] – Sean

Let’s back up a little bit here because I’m big into athletics as well. What sports did you play? What were you into?

[00:01:46.820] – Chad

So I grew up playing basketball, baseball, and football. And everybody’s like, Well, you live in Alaska. You didn’t do hockey or skiing. And I love being warm. I love the sun. I was born in the wrong spot and just never moved. So I loved baseball, basketball, football. Those are my things growing up, especially basketball. And that was something, at least up here, you could do year round. So that was a really nice sport for Alaska, especially for Alaskans who don’t want to be out in the cold. I went to college. And because I quit growing when I was 11, basketball was out. I was 5’10. I stuck there. So I walked on the track team. I did track in college. I just had some natural athleticism, but mostly an old work ethic. I even told the coach, I was like, Hey, I want to walk on. This is what I want to do. I’m not going to be the best at anything, but I’ll work as hard as anybody you have. Then when I got out of college, I just said, You know how to, Sean? You have that competitive drive. My wife was like, You need to find something because people don’t even like playing cards or monopoly with you.

[00:02:51.150] – Chad

So I started doing something. I started working with some USC fighters and started getting into mixed martial arts and combatives. That was a lot of fun, really enjoyed that. There’s some strong man competitions. Now with our kids, they’re getting into some of these things. Coaching my son’s football team right now, trying to get the kids into some jiu-jitsu, mixed martial arts because I miss it. It’s something that got to that point where you’re trying to find that balance in life. Sean, you know how it is. You’re running a business. You’re trying to take care of your own health. I just didn’t want one more thing to take away from my family, so quit doing the mixed martial arts 10-plus years ago. And now the kids are starting to get interested in it. So it’ll be something that I’ll add back into my life here pretty soon.

[00:03:37.830] – Sean

Sure. Right on. I love the context there and your athletic background. I always appreciate talking to athletes. There’s a certain vigor there. You hit the pain points and you just keep driving through. You figure out a way to get through it. It’s just innate, you could say. Jumping to your company, I’m on your website here. It’s Veritas. It’s just veritasalaska. Com for the listeners out there. This is your wealth management practice. When did you start this company?

[00:04:07.180] – Chad

2007, right before the financial meltdown.

[00:04:11.140] – Sean

Perfect.

[00:04:11.990] – Chad

Timing. Perfect timing. I had a kid on the way. I gave up a six-figure coaching business right before the biggest financial collapse. So my timing was impeccable.

[00:04:23.660] – Sean

Right on. Well, you probably helped some people make a lot of money if you advised them into some stocks or funds and the market took off in 2009. Probably did very well.

[00:04:34.490] – Chad

Yeah. But if you remember what was happening during that time, the fear was so strong for so long. Even in 2011, 2012, we were a long past the bottom, but the news was still awful. People were really living in a scarcity and still do, live in a scarcity mindset. That’s why I mentioned living a life of abundance, because it isn’t just about money. In fact, I’ve sat down with people worth $10 million that still are so worried about losing their money. They haven’t thought about how to use their money. There was just this overwhelming sense of anxiety and scarcity. Like I said, it still exists today. We still see it. But what I learned, and this is why my coaching background was so important, is we have to change perspectives. We have to change how people look at things. Because giving somebody investment strategy and a financial plan doesn’t make them wealthy any more than giving somebody a gym membership makes them a great athlete. It’s about execution. It’s about persistence. It’s like you said, it’s about driving through those difficult times. Hey, this is what you said you wanted. Here’s the steps necessary to get there.

[00:05:45.290] – Chad

Here’s what it’s going to take. Are you still committed? Can you sacrifice to get to the level of success that you said was important to you? Sure.

[00:05:53.600] – Sean

Before we hit record, we talked about mindsets, and I really want the focus of this episode to be there. For context, I’ve had a lot of people on the show that are wealth managers, financial advisors, and we do talk about the products or strategies they use. That’s nice. I actually enjoy those conversations, but I haven’t had too many conversations on mindset. Let’s drill into that. When you first start working with a new customer, are there certain, I wouldn’t say red flags, but maybe you could tell there’s some areas where I need to coach them that jump out that seem to be common denominators from one customer to another?

[00:06:31.150] – Chad

Yes. Red flags is a great way to put it because they’re signs, just if you were sitting in front of a doctor and they were going through some things, there’s going to be triggers or symptoms they’re looking for like, Wow, okay, there could be something a lot deeper going on here. We listen for fear-based language. We listen for people who are always the victim. I realize there are difficult circumstances in life, but there are people who experience life as it happens to them, and there’s people that experience life as it happens for them. And those are the types of things we listen to. So if people come in and like, Yeah, the stock market lost me a bunch of money, and my boss doesn’t like me, and my 401(k) sucks, and this and that, and the world is out to get them, that’s a huge red flag. If we list people like, Yeah, you know what? I lost a lot of money back in 2008, 2009 because I got panicked and I was scared, and we hear them taking ownership and responsibility, even if they don’t know what the right thing was, but they realized they made a mistake.

[00:07:39.600] – Chad

They didn’t know what to do, but they acknowledged they messed up. Those are those green lights that we listen for that. Okay, this is somebody who’s taking accountability for their past mistakes and taking accountability for the path that they’re on. So a sense of agency is something we also listen to. A lot of times people focus so much on what they can’t control, that they lose sight of what they can control, and we listen for that. So people who are focused on variables and elements they have no influence over, that can be really disempowering because you’re basically telling yourself that, I can’t do anything about this. I’m waiting for the economy to turn around. I’m waiting for my boss to give me a promotion. I’m waiting for Magic Fairies to come around, eliminate my debt, whatever. But people who feel like they cannot act on their future. They just have to wait for things to fall into place. Those are some of the things that we listen for and look for.

[00:08:36.990] – Sean

Sure. Let’s say a new prospect. They’re not a customer yet, but they’re a new prospect. They have these red flags, these warning signs, that fear-based, scarcity mindset, placing blame on external factors, not taking ownership. How do you coach them through this? What do you say to them?

[00:08:55.030] – Chad

We ask a lot of questions, and we allow them to unpack that and getting them to talk about what that experience was like and what would they have done differently. So I’ll just give you an example of somebody who says the stock market lost them a lot of money back in 2008 or 2009 or 2020 or whatever, and just say, okay, so back in 2008, the stock market peaked at just under 1,600. The S&P 500 peaked at just under 1,600. It’s down right now, but it’s still over 4,000. So how did the stock market lose you money when it’s increased so much since that day? And see if they can even tell the error or discover the error in their own ways. Some people might change and pivot right there and say, Well, okay, it didn’t lose me money, but I got scared, I panicked out. But we want people to get to, is again, that ownership, the accountability, not to poke them and say, Look, you screwed up. You’re bad. You’re stupid. But again, just to take that ownership because what we want to do is restore that sense of agency. Even if they made the mistake and they’re the ones that screwed up, there’s power in that because it reminds them they could have done something differently, and next time they will.

[00:10:08.570] – Chad

I’m the type of person who learns from mistakes. That’s a very important part of identity. We want people to take that on. Yes, I’ve made mistakes. I’m human. But I’m going to learn from those things. I’m not going to repeat the mistakes. So we try to get them to there, but we also try to get them to think about the problem differently, to not look at this as… You just use this, we already count the stock market example, but see if they can determine a difference between a temporary decline and a permanent loss. An analogy that we will give people is let’s say, wealth is an orchard, and you’ve been planting for trees for 20, 30 years, if the value of trees temporarily goes down 15, 20 %, let’s say you started out with 100 acres of trees worth a million dollars. The value of your trees have just gone down 15 %. How many trees do you have left? How many acres of trees do you have left? Some people work on the math equation and other people realize, Well, I still have 100 acres of trees. I haven’t lost anything. The only way I lose money is if I cut down my trees and sell them.

[00:11:15.100] – Chad

The other question we’ll ask people is, if your orchard is temporarily devalued in the moment, does that change how much fruit they can produce over a lifetime? It’s getting them to look at an old problem in a new way and to see if that changes their perspective on things. And it doesn’t. Some people have never been taught the right way to look at things. And once you can walk them through that, they’ll change their perspective. But other folks are bound and determined to blame somebody else. It’s somebody else’s fault. And what’s so destructive about that, Sean, is that when it’s somebody else’s fault, then there’s nothing you can do to change it. If we’re business partners and it’s always your fault, then I’m helpless. If you’re causing all the problems, then I’m helpless. But if you’re causing 80 % of problems, I’m causing 20, then I still have 20 % of the problem that I can work on. And there’s something really empowering about that. But when people are always or often shifting the blame, shifting responsibility to somebody else, and shifting fault to somebody else, it slowly gives away their agency. It slowly gives away their power.

[00:12:22.630] – Chad

And the other thing we want to remind people is you may have gotten bad advice. You may have been raised by people who made terrible financial decisions. You had terrible modeling. It’s not your fault that any of that happened. It is your responsibility to change it, though, and being able to differentiate fault and responsibility. I’m not beating somebody up because you made a mistake. It’s not beating you up because of circumstances you’re in. It may or may not be your fault, but it absolutely is your responsibility to change the future going forward.

[00:12:52.690] – Sean

I like how you phrase the question. You try to get them to look at things from a different perspective. That’s really smart. That probably ties back to your coaching days and athletics. You being an athlete, and I remember these days when I was more in sports, coaches like teachable athletes. There may be good athletes, but the headstrong ones that don’t want to learn are sometimes the worst athletes to work with. I’m sure it’s the same for customers, you being a financial advisor, trying to talk to those people, give them perspective and they won’t give an inch. It’s like, Should we working together? That’s the question that would come up next for me.

[00:13:33.500] – Chad

That’s ultimately what we’re looking for, is coachability, who is willing to do something different. If you don’t like the results with what you’ve been doing so far, you have to be willing to do something different, do something new, learn something new. That sounds so simple, but you probably wouldn’t be surprised. But it’s amazing how many people are like, This is what I’ve been doing. I want to keep doing it. They’re really not coming to me for advice. They’re coming to us for affirmation. They want to pat on the back and say, I know it’s not working. It’s been frustrating, but just keep doing it. Something will magically turn around. If you’re not happy with the results of what you’ve been doing, you should probably look for some new solutions. But it’s amazing how many people don’t want to do that. They just somehow want what hasn’t been working to somehow work better. If they just do more of it, it’s like finding out you’re driving your car in the wrong direction and your solution is, Well, I should just go faster. I just need more horsepower. I just need to do more of what already isn’t working and somehow it’s going to magically turn this around.

[00:14:38.160] – Chad

Our government hasn’t figured this out. Well, we spent billions of dollars on this thing. It hasn’t worked. Let’s spend a few billion more and then maybe a lot of people will magically turn around. But that’s typically how a lot of human beings think. If we can shift them out of that, and a lot of times, again, it’s getting to look at an old problem in a new light. To your point about athletes, it’s not necessarily the ones who are the most gifted, the most talented athletes, the biggest, the strongest, that succeed long term. That stuff gets you to a certain point. But when you get into college or especially professional athletes, everybody’s gifted. Everybody has amazing natural talent. Now you look at effort and intentionality to differentiate people. It’s the same thing in building financial freedom. If you want to get to a place where you no longer need a paycheck, doesn’t mean you quit working. It doesn’t mean you shut it down, but you get to a place where you no longer need your job, your business, your career to make ends meet and to have a comfortable life. A lot of people think, Well, I need to be a doctor, a lawyer, I need a celebrity, and you’re making hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars a year to do that.

[00:15:48.010] – Chad

I talk to people that make multiple six figures, five, six, seven, $800,000 a year that still live paycheck to paycheck because their actions, their behavior is incorrect. If you give somebody who is a bad manager of their finances more money, it makes a bad problem worse. It’s like giving a bad driver more horsepower. It just amplifies the issue. But on the other side of the scale, we have folks that make under $100,000 a year that are multimillionaires. It took a lot of time. It took a lot of patience. There wasn’t one quick thing. They didn’t magically buy some fly-by-night stock and make millions of dollars. It was that orchard that… Yeah, the orchard that grow slowly over time. They just showed up every day, kept planting trees. And good weather, bad weather, and droughts, and storms, and they just consistently did what most people do only occasionally. I’m not kidding. We work with folks that never made $100,000 a year and are multimillionaires, and they just did it with slow and steady plotting. It’s not how much money you make, it’s what you do with it that really matters.

[00:16:57.520] – Sean

Yeah. There’s a lot of self-discipline there, because people, as they increase their income, even if it’s by a little bit, there’s the temptation to now spend on things that don’t have an ROI, whether it’s that nice new car, taking more trips, or buying more things, more stuff that’s sitting in your house and collect dust. If you can have the discipline to say no to those things, not all of it. I know Dave Ramsey, I got a point of finger here. I mean, he’s got some strategies that work for burning down debt. But this whole concept of not spending and not enjoying, I don’t agree with that. I like playing a lot of golf, and golf is not cheap. But anyway, with the discipline of doing things consistently, you nailed it. It’s like I’ve seen people in my network too, that same thing. They haven’t made a fortune from one year into the next with a salary, but they have a huge net worth because they have the discipline to be consistent and they keep their spending relatively under control.

[00:17:53.960] – Chad

Yeah, it is that intentionality. Intentionality mixed with discipline, right? So you’re absolutely right with spending under control, that’s what gets people in trouble, is for people that do have high earning potential, their spending gradually catches up with their income. We say spending habits like a goldfish, they will grow to whatever size and closure you put them in. The bigger the closure, the bigger the fish gets, the more that your spending habits will consume. But the other thing, too, is when it comes to, again, that discipline and that patience, we do have to be willing to live a little bit differently. If you want to get a result that other people aren’t getting, you do have to say no to some things. You do have to make some short term, temporary sacrifices. They’re not forever. One of the things that people, I think, often get misconstrued is they look at a wealthy person and they see what that wealthy person is doing, and they confuse the habits that got them there with the things that they’re doing because they’re wealthy. There might be certain things that you notice wealthy people doing, but that’s what they do because they’re wealthy.

[00:19:05.620] – Chad

Those weren’t the things that got them to be wealthy. Driving a BMW or Mercedes doesn’t make you wealthy. You get to do that. You get to write a check for Mercedes once you are wealthy. But driving fancy cars is a terrible way to get wealthy. It’s a nice way to spend wealth, but you know what I mean? People often look at what somebody is able to do now and think, Well, that’s what got them there. And being able to separate that is really important because I do think people can get that confused.

[00:19:39.380] – Sean

Yeah, that’s great advice. Let’s take a quick commercial break. Hey, this is a quick heads up that we have a second podcast titled Top Stocks. With Top Stocks Podcast, I talk about investing, business, and finance. The audio content is published on your favorite podcast platforms such as Apple, Spotify, Google, or Amazon. Then the video content is published on the Tykr YouTube channel, so you can either watch or listen to each episode. These episodes are just me, so no interviews. The overall goal is to help you become a better investor. Go ahead and look up Top Stocks Podcast or check out the Tykr YouTube channel. All right, back to the show. I’ve seen people out there who take on the mindset of you got to fake it till you make it. They start with the expensive cars, the expensive suits, expensive watches to look the part, expecting that will manifest wealth into their life. And that’s a big mistake a lot of people make. It’s like, no, there’s fundamental principles. You back the cart up. But they actually did things to get to that point like you just phrased, keeping their finances under control, being consistent with investing.

[00:20:51.150] – Sean

We have issues within our community where you’ll get an investor who will buy stocks and then they’ll wait two months, three months, four months, and then they’ll buy their second stock or second batch of stock. It’s like, Uh-uh, that’s not going to work. You have to be consistent every month. If you’re in wealth building mode, you can’t be skipping months. You get a stuck to this over months and over years. So with an advisor like you, you can live, you can stay on them. Whereas we have a software platform. I’m not an advisor, don’t have plans to be, we don’t have certification. So we give them the tools and give them the education. They’re really taking that on themselves. I see that where people come back, Well, I bought my last stock in July and here we are. And I told them, I’m like, What did you do between then and now? I didn’t know what was going on. I’m not sure about the markets. All the excuses in the world come up.

[00:21:42.010] – Chad

Well, that’s another thing, too, is you bring up this idea of timing. There’s never a perfect time to sacrifice for the future because that’s what we’re doing. We’re paying our future self. Because we haven’t met our future selves, I’m sure future, Sean, is very nice and handsome, but because we haven’t met that person, there’s this intangible relationship. Paying into our future can feel like a cost in the moment. In order to be able to do that consistently, we have to build those habits. And it can’t be based on feelings. It can’t be based on, Oh, I feel like putting my money into these mutual funds, or I feel like investing this real estate, or I feel like getting up early and going for a run in the dark. You’re just making those decisions beforehand in advance. This is what I do. And the nice thing about investing is a lot of times we can automate those through our 401(k), through automatic contributions. Money is taken out, just like your mortgage payment beginning of every month goes into an investment, or maybe just going into a fund. Maybe it’s seed money for real estate purchase in the future.

[00:22:51.250] – Chad

But automating those good habits, I think, is really, really critical because there are some days, months, weeks where we don’t feel like doing the right thing. A big part of building a great future is creating good habits and it’s those small little building blocks. I think the quality of somebody’s life is often dictated by the quality of their habits. But if we can make those habits easier, if we grease the wheels a little bit, it doesn’t have to be as difficult.

[00:23:21.490] – Sean

Right. But let’s drill into that a little more. How do you coach somebody to that mindset where something that was once difficult is now easier? Maybe it’s the concept or not the concept, the strategy of saving or investing more. Give us an example there. How do you get them in that point? Because I know the listeners right now, they’re wondering, how do I make something difficult, easy?

[00:23:45.290] – Chad

One of the things is removing the obstacles. We’ve already talked about athletics. If I’m trying to get in better shape, I want to remove the obstacles. I’m not going to keep a bunch of ice cream and beer in my fridge and freezer. I’m making the difficult path harder because now if it’s nine o’clock at night, I’m sitting down and watching TV, I have to go to the store to go get beer and potato chips. The other side of that would be I’m going to load up on healthy fruits and vegetables or high quality protein or something like that. I’m going to stock my fridge with that. I don’t have to go to the store to buy those things when I’m hungry. For some people, it might be premium making their meals one or two days a week, they just make a bunch of meals. So when they are hungry, when they’re tempted by, okay, I want to go out and get tacos or McDonalds or something like that, but I’ve got my broccoli and chicken sitting right here. I just need to pop at the microwave. It’s really easy. So that’s just one example. From a financial standpoint, though, removing obstacles, if you’re struggling with spending too much, you’re not living within your means, Amazon makes it so easy to spend money, you just have to unplug some of those things, remove your credit cards from all these different websites, from Google Chrome, where it remembers all your info like, do you want to buy this?

[00:25:07.020] – Chad

Okay, click this button. It inputs all your stuff. Our society has made it so easy for us to spend money that we don’t have to buy things we don’t need to impress people we don’t even like. So if we can make that process a little bit difficult, a little bit more difficult, it makes doing the right thing a little bit easier. I already talked about automating investment strategies, automating your investment plan. You have a 401(k) at work, go in there and have it automatically taken out of your paycheck and tell your HR, every few months, bump it up. Every time I get a raise, take half that raise, put it in my 401(k) before I’m used to that money. And just making some of those small habits. Another thing we do, and this is more of a mindset thing than a habit thing, but getting people to see what they’re doing now in light of their future goals. So we think of this as a blueprint, Sean. First of all, there’s a lot of people out there that call themselves investors that really don’t have a goal for what they’re building towards. They know they don’t want to have to work forever.

[00:26:10.170] – Chad

They know they want to quit their corporate job, but they don’t know what that end goal looks like. They don’t know what their life would look like if they never had to work again. They don’t know how much money it would take as far as monthly income goes to be able to give up their job. One of the first things we do is get really clear about what that goal is. What do you want your life to look like and how much would cost every month to live without a paycheck? What would you need showing up your checking account? Because what that does, Sean, is it gives us a strategic objective to work towards. Now we’re not just collecting investments, we’re strategically building towards a desired objective. But a lot of the people that we talk to don’t really have a strategy. They’re just collecting investments, which means that they’re being pushed and pulled by market trends and by what their brother-in-law says or what some guy at the water-cooler said. They’re following everybody else’s path because they don’t have their own. So if we can take a specific meaningful goal and then reverse engineer it.

[00:27:09.780] – Chad

So let’s say, hey, I want a passive income of $8,000 a month, $100,000 a year by 55. We can reverse engineer that process from where they are to where they want to be and break down those steps. So now they got this goal where they might need several million dollars of net worth to produce that income, which is such a big goal. But can we break that down to monthly chunks? This is where you want to be at 55. This is the pathway. But here’s what a win looks like in October. Here’s what a win looks like in November. Now you’ve brought the future into today. You’ve broken down this big, huge lifetime goal into, What do I need to accomplish this month to stay on track? It gives them a milestone along a much longer marathon of a path. But the biggest thing I think is it gives them something to celebrate. Every month has a win attached to it. Because as we talked about, this is hard. It’s a long process. It can be exhausting. It can be lonely. A lot of people aren’t going to be on this with you. So if you can set up little victories along the way, it’s easier to stay persistent.

[00:28:19.090] – Chad

It’s easier to stay disciplined. It’s easier to stay patient. It will never be easy, but these are all ways to make it easier.

[00:28:26.060] – Sean

Yeah, that’s smart. I like how you made it relatable to somebody who to get in shape. I’ve been in the fitness space for most of my life, and I do run into people that they’ll be on it for like a month or two months, three months, and it’s a lonely journey. Then they start falling off. They don’t create those short wins. Get rid of the temptations. I like that. Get rid of ice cream and potato chips and beer. It’s like you create stuff like that, those little steps, those little milestones that can make a big difference to achieve those goals. Same thing in finance, what we’re just talking about here. So great comments, great advice.

[00:29:01.990] – Chad

Well, and you think about it, somebody who’s trying to get into shape is hard to be patient because you’re putting in the work. Let’s say you haven’t worked out in 20 years. You’re at least not consistent. You’re starting a workout. You don’t feel better right away. Your trainer tells you you’re going to feel more energy, you’re going to get stronger. All that stuff is true, but that’s not what happens initially. Initially, you’re exhausted, you’re tired, you’re sore, you’re sweaty, your heart rates up, it feels like you’re allergic to the treadmill, it’s not easy, but you’ve got to get over that hump. So if you can set up victories along the way, and a lot of times what we try to do is get people to focus on inputs, not outcomes. Sean, if your goal is to add 25 pounds to your bench press over the next year, that’s a measurable specific goal. That’s a great start. But you can’t just snap your fingers and make that happen. So what are the inputs? Well, I can work on my flexibility this many days a week. I can work on chess exercises this many reps a week.

[00:30:03.610] – Chad

I can work on adding this much protein to my diet. All those are inputs. Those are things that we can control. And too often, we are so focused on the outcome that we miss the inputs that we have agency over and we have to celebrate our wins differently. So for that person who’s trying to get into shape, showing up at the gym three days a week, that’s the win. We’re not going to undo 20 pounds of not working out and forcing butter and sugar into our mouths in two weeks. But we can count those victories. Okay, I showed up at the gym 12 times this month. That’s 12 times. Maybe it’s not the 15 that I was shooting for, but it’s 12 times more than I shot up last month, and figuring out how to celebrate little wins, little victories along the way. And a lot of times in life, again, this is not just finance, a lot of times in life, we celebrate the outcome. We celebrate when we do lose 20, we celebrate when we’re able to retire. We celebrate when we do pay off the house, but we also need to reward the inputs.

[00:31:08.050] – Chad

We need to reward the steps along the way that will eventually get us there, because otherwise we burn out. It’s hard to stay motivated for a long period of time. And the last point I want to make on this is why consistency matters so much. So you can build wealth, but then if you lose consistency, if you stop doing the things, and not everything, you can have a little bit more fun when you’ve paid off all your debt and you have a couple of million dollars. You can relax a little bit. You can enjoy, take a little bit longer vacation, a little bit more golf. But you still can’t take your foot off the pedal. You still have to maintain those habits. Because, Sean, you and I have both talked to so many people who have built wealth and they quit doing the things that got them there. They quit executing and it gradually eroded away. We see the same thing with health. Look at professional athletes, somebody who is a star running back, star wide receiver, championship NBA player. You look at them now, you’re like, I cannot believe that you were ever a professional athlete.

[00:32:11.510] – Chad

You’ve let yourself go because they stopped doing all the things that got them there. So I think health and finance have so many parallels because it’s a lifetime commitment, Sean, as you know. And we have to look at what’s doing sustainable over the long run rather than what is maybe optimal in the moment, because that’s what gets people in trouble sometimes. They try to optimize before they standardize.

[00:32:34.740] – Sean

Right. I’m going to transition here to the Rapid Fire round. But a really strong key takeaway, even for myself as a reminder, is to reward the inputs, not the results. Sure, you can reward the results, but place more emphasis on those inputs because that keeps you consistent. That keeps us all consistent. Whether it’s building wealth or getting in the better shape, or getting that golf score below 80, which is a topic for another day. I love it.

[00:33:02.160] – Chad

I just quit after nine holes. That’s the easiest way for me to keep my golf score below 80.

[00:33:06.500] – Sean

Right on. Hey, we got a player’s strengths, right?

[00:33:09.660] – Chad

Exactly. Golf is not… You would lose all respect from me if you watched me play golf. Too many years playing baseball. I have a baseball swing and my golf swing. It’s pathetic, Sean. It’s just really bad.

[00:33:20.650] – Sean

Probably a bit of a slice. We could work on that.

[00:33:22.460] – Chad

Yeah, it’s awful.

[00:33:25.130] – Sean

Nice. Well, I love the combination here between finance, health and fitness. That’s my jam. This has been great. All right, let’s transition to the Rapid Fire round. This is the part of the episode where we get to find out who Chad really is. If you can, try to answer each question in 15 seconds or less.

[00:33:43.190] – Chad

You ready? I’m ready.

[00:33:44.580] – Sean

All right, so what is your favorite podcast?

[00:33:47.750] – Chad

Right now, it is probably Psychology of Money or the Morgan Hausel Podcast. It’s not actually called Psychology Money, but he’s the author of Psychology Money. And it’s a once-a-week podcast about 15 minutes. Morgan Hausel. It’s fantastic.

[00:34:02.780] – Sean

Awesome. All right. What is a recent book you read and would recommend?

[00:34:07.770] – Chad

Atomic Habits. I just read it and finished it for the fourth time. We actually got into a lot of those principles today. Its from a practical life change aspect, it is phenomenal. Atomic Habits by James Clear.

[00:34:20.990] – Sean

What is your favorite movie?

[00:34:22.980] – Chad

Braveheart.

[00:34:23.910] – Sean

Good choice.

[00:34:25.140] – Chad

Freedom.

[00:34:26.290] – Sean

William Wallace was right. Freedom. A few business questions here. What is the worst business advice or advice in general that you ever received?

[00:34:38.360] – Chad

I think worst business advice is capitalizing too early and going into debt to fund a business and taking on unnecessary risk. I hear that a lot. It’s not just a financial issue. It actually messes up people’s psychology. It increases the fear factor. It increases anxiety. I think it leads to people making more need-share emotional decisions because they have this burden of debt on their shoulders.

[00:35:05.500] – Sean

Amen. Yeah, totally agree. All right, flipped that equation. What is the best advice you ever received?

[00:35:12.200] – Chad

It’s what we already talked about. Manage inputs and outcomes will take care of themselves. I started this business doing a lot of prospect and calls. Jumping out of the bush, somebody saying, Hey, Sean, you just met me. You don’t know me. We’re in the middle of financial crisis. How would you like to entrust your family’s life savings to me? Not a conversation that goes super well all the time. People like, What? Who in the world? Just get away from me, weirdo. I had to count the wins as how many people I approached and offered my advice to and offered my services to, rather than how many appointments I made, how many new clients I got, all the things that people in my profession usually measure, those are the outcomes. What I learned to do is celebrate and reward the inputs. How many people can I put myself in front of? How many times can I risk my own rejection and an ego by saying, Sean, here’s what I do. Here’s how I can help you. Are you willing or are you interested in joining that relationship with me? Yeah, managing inputs and letting the outcomes take care of themselves.

[00:36:19.780] – Sean

Brilliant. All right. Last question here is a time machine question. If you could go back in time to give your younger self advice, what age would you visit and what would you say?

[00:36:29.160] – Chad

I would probably be 19 and I had a very traumatic life event. It should have been it for me. It should have been lights out. And I was very angry. And it took me a long time for me to realize that I was given a new lease on life, even though I’d lost some things. We’re going to take some time to recover, that it was really a potentially new beginning, a new chapter for me. And I was looking at what I thought I had lost instead of the opportunities I had been given.

[00:36:59.230] – Sean

Yeah, it’s a good perspective. All right. Where can the audience reach you? And mention whether it’s a website, LinkedIn, but I also understand you have a book. Why don’t you tell us about the book real quick here as well?

[00:37:11.020] – Chad

The book, Sean, is called Forging Financial Freedom. And if your audience visits forgingfinancialfreedom. Com, they can put in their contact info. And what we’ll do for your audience, we’ll give them access to the Kindle prerelease for… I think Amazon makes us charge like 99 cents for it. We can’t give away for free, but we’ll give it to them for 99 cents. But it’s about a lot. We talked about the mindsets and perspectives necessary to execute the tools and tactics long enough to build wealth, to create financial freedom, to build financial independence. So forgingfinancialfreedom. Com, where you can get more info on that. Our website is veritasalasca. Com. You can find us on Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn. Awesome.

[00:38:03.900] – Sean

Right, Chad. Well, thank you so much for your time.

[00:38:05.710] – Chad

This was great. Sean, it was a great conversation. I had a lot of fun and it was an honor and privilege to be here.

[00:38:11.200] – Sean

Awesome. All right. We’ll talk to you soon.

[00:38:13.350] – Chad

See you. Thank you.

[00:38:15.580] – Sean

Hey, I’d like to say thank you for checking out this podcast. I know there’s a lot of other podcasts you could be listening to, so thanks for spending some time with me. Also, if you have a moment, could you please head over to Apple Podcast and leave a review? The more reviews we get, the more Apple will share this podcast with the world. So thanks for doing that. And last thing, if you do hear any stocks mentioned on this podcast, please keep in mind this podcast is for entertainment purposes only. Please do not make a buyer sell decision based solely on what you hear. All right. Thanks for your time. I’ll talk to you later. See you.