S4E41 – Scott Maderer – Paid off $78,000 in 3 years

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Key Timecodes

• (00:52) – Show intro and background history
• (02:10) – Deeper into his business model
• (05:18) – Understanding his coaching strategies
• (09:39) – A bit about his clients
• (12:24) – Deeper into his philosophy and business vision
• (15:02) – What challenges did he face and how did he overcome them
• (24:22) – How he can help people with financial problems
• (32:44) – A key takeaway from the guest
• (36:40) – What is the worst advice he ever received
• (37:25) – What is the best advice he ever received
• (38:31) – Guest contacts

Transcription

[00:00:01.290] – Show Intro

Hey, this is Sean Tepper, the host of Payback Time, an approachable and transparent podcast on building businesses, increasing wealth, and achieving financial freedom. I’d like to bring on guests to hear authentic stories while giving you actionable takeaways you can use today. Let’s go.

[00:00:18.690] – Guest Intro

My next guest is a coach who helps people transition from the corporate world to becoming a full time business owner. In this episode, we deep dive into the specifics on how he helps people, but we also talk about why he created his business. In this case, he shares how he got into $78,000 worth of debt, how it almost led to him taking his own life, and what steps he took to pay off that debt within three years. If you’re someone who’s struggling with debt or trying to find a way to get ahead, this is an inspirational episode. Please welcome Scott Mater.

[00:00:52.970] – Sean

Scott, welcome to the show.

[00:00:54.300] – Scott

Thanks so much. I’m glad to be here.

[00:00:56.080] – Sean

Yeah, thanks for joining me. So why don’t you kick us off and tell us about your, you know.

[00:01:01.730] – Scott

I was raised in a log cabin in Kentucky. Oh, wait, no, that’s Abraham Lincoln. Sorry, I always get confused with that. No, basically, I’ve done a lot of different things in my life. I’m one of those people that even at a very early age, I started doing some business stuff on the side. But I also had a career, went to college, did all of those things. So I actually went to college with the thought I was going to be a medical researcher. I decided I hated that because it ended up to be basically chasing grant money all the time. So I pivoted from that, became a science school teacher for public school. I did that for about 16 years. Then I went into the corporate world and joined the testing industry. So I went from teaching to testing. My students said I joined the dark side. And during all of that time, I also got married. I had a son. I started another business on the side, which was a coaching business. And in 2017, I left the very high end executive corporate job, lots of benefits and all of that sort of stuff, and said, no, I’m going full time with my own business and I’ve been running my coaching business since 2017.

[00:02:10.450] – Sean

Got it. And I just want to understand your business a little bit further and then we’ll kind of dive into some details in your journey there. Sure. Now you’re coaching. Are you mostly coaching small and mid sized business owners? Are you coaching executives as well?

[00:02:22.780] – Scott

I mainly focus on folks in transition from where they feel like I know there’s something I really need to be doing, and I’m not able to do it. I’m a little stuck. Usually in the areas of time and or money, about 60% come and they say, well, I don’t have enough money. And about 40% come and say, well, I don’t have enough time. I know there’s this business I’m supposed to be doing. Maybe they’re already doing it on the side, but it’s just not working right. Some of them are full time small business owners, but most of them are kind of in that corporate world, and they’re trying to make that transition to, no, this is my passion. This is what I really know I’m supposed to be doing. I just can’t figure out how to get there.

[00:03:03.450] – Sean

Yeah, got it. Okay, so you’re helping people transition from the corporate world. They’re maybe burnt out. Maybe they hit it right, frustrated. They’re limited by maybe a boss or a series of people above them that they can’t jump up. So it’s like, okay, well, you do have an option. You can go create your own business, and you help them with that transition to dive in a little bit further. What are you kind of coaching them with? Are you kind of helping them structure their business model, how much they charge, maybe marketing and sales tips.

[00:03:31.560] – Scott

So mainly, I’m focusing on the fundamentals of how are you doing what you’re already doing that’s holding you back. So it’s a lot about realignment of your time, realignment of your finances. Most of us, when we say we don’t have enough time, what I challenge people is to rephrase that is, that’s not a priority for me, because all of a sudden, when you start saying that, it’s like, oh, wait a minute, wait a minute, that feels different. Same thing for money. A lot of times when we feel like we’re not having enough money to do things, I dive in and go, well, wait a minute. Is your money being spent on what’s actually most important? So if you’re making that transition, a lot of times it’s not only about setting up the business. Right. But, for instance, I’ve had folks that have been, they’ve been doing a business on the side, and they haven’t paid themselves for three years, okay, something’s wrong. And sometimes that means figuring out, okay, it’s a marketing problem. I’m not an expert on marketing, but I can help ask you the right questions, identify the problem, and then bring in those resources that are able to help.

[00:04:38.540] – Scott

So as a coach, I’m more of a quarterback than directly solving every single problem. In that, a lot of times, it’s helping folks identify what is the problem so that they can go fix it, either themselves or by bringing in other resources. Sometimes it’s a book that they need to read, a podcast they need to listen to, whatever. There’s a million different things out there that can help you break free. But my job as a coach is to help you actually narrow down, identify where are you trying to go, and then what is the barrier that’s holding you back. I may be able to directly help you overcome that barrier, or I may be able to help you get a resource that can help you overcome that barrier. If I’m not an expert in that area, sure.

[00:05:19.220] – Sean

And then do you help them not only with the transition, but then maybe go into, like, a phase two to help them ongoing, like you’re there to support them over, let’s say now we’re in ramp up mode, and we want to maybe hire more people, and I can help you with that.

[00:05:34.730] – Scott

So most of my clients stay around for years. The vast majority of my client, I’ve got one I’ve been working with since 2019. I’ve got one that I’ve been working with since 2017. Most of them stay around for a long time. And you’re absolutely right. The framework I use is refocus, gain control, and set a plan. So refocus on what’s important, gain control of what’s going on, set a plan, execute. The problem is that kind of in the middle is growth. And think of it more as a ramp than a circle in that, as you grow, well, what happens? You hit a new challenge. You hit a new problem, you hit a new thing. That’s a barrier or that’s a plateau. Now you have to refocus again. You have to gain control again. You have to set a new plan, and then you have to do it again. And it kind of never ends. So a lot of times, my client may stay around for a long time because we keep uncovering new. You get rid of a bunch of limiting beliefs, and what do you discover? A whole new set of limiting beliefs. You get rid of one set of challenges, and what do you find?

[00:06:40.350] – Scott

Oh, look, now we grew to this level, and we have a different set of challenges that we’re facing.

[00:06:45.240] – Sean

Is there maybe one, two, or, like, common problems you see from one customer, or it could be your corporate client or a client, I should say, to the next that maybe you could share with audience.

[00:06:57.820] – Scott

Sure. A couple of them that come to mind and I’ll stick with the time and money. Kind of divide those two because they’re really fundamentally the same problems, but people think they’re different. And what I mean by that is most of the time, when we think we have a time or a money problem, it’s really a talent problem. It’s an us problem, because we’re both the solution to our problem and we’re the source of our problem. More often than not, it’s not really time or money. It’s how we’re handling our time or our money. So, for instance, what will show up a lot in the time realm is you’ve got folks that are spending all of their time saying yes to things. They fill up their calendar, and then they’re exhausted, they’re tired. Everything feels like it’s coming at them at once. And so then they often veg out and do other things to kind of recover and end up never actually getting on their calendar or making an appointment with themselves to do the things that they keep saying are the most important. This shows up. You could think about it from a health perspective.

[00:08:04.480] – Scott

You can think about it from a business perspective. You could think about it from a relationship perspective. It doesn’t matter. It’s. Instead of working from what’s most important and putting committing to that first and then filling the rest of your time with what’s not the most important, we tend to work the other direction. We tend to put a bunch of little stuff on our calendar and then complain that we can’t fit in the big stuff. The most important stuff. That could be date night with your wife, that could be time with your kids. It doesn’t matter. It’s not always just business, but it affects our ability to do business or do what is really important to us because it drains us. It sucks our energy out. Same thing happens in the money arena. It just shows up a little differently in that we end up, a lot of times either overspending, going into debt in business, those sorts of things, tying up future resources for today, or we end up saying yes to a million different things and never really stopping to evaluate. Are these the right things? Are these the necessary things? I know people that have been in business three years, and we do some evaluation at the end, and they’re spending four, five, $600 a month on stuff that they haven’t used in two years.

[00:09:21.090] – Scott

It’s just there still. It’s luggage, it’s baggage that they’re carrying along, and it’s slowing them down and draining them down. And it’s because they don’t take the time to do the important step of, wait, no. Let me actually reevaluate and refocus and figure out what I’m doing so that I can build from a good foundation.

[00:09:38.980] – Sean

Yeah. Do you have an audit timeline? You encourage people like, hey, I should audit what’s on my calendar and what am I spending money on? Maybe once a month, once a quarter.

[00:09:50.030] – Scott

So it depends on where you’re at. So if this is something that it’s brand new for you and you haven’t ever done it before for a while, you want to do it frequently. So at least monthly, maybe even biweekly, because at that point you’re going to be finding a lot of stuff and you’re going to have to be doing a lot of work to transition and change. For my clients, usually in the first three months, we spend a lot of time together because this is that initial refocus stage. After about 90 days, it starts to slow down because you’ve kind of gotten a good picture now, and it’s not perfect. You haven’t solved all the problems, but it’s firing better. And at that point you can begin to kind of stretch that out a little bit more and maybe do monthly. And eventually you can even do quarterly. Pretty much quarterly is about as far out as I like to go with people because every three, four months, I don’t know about you, but if you’ve been in business for more than 30 seconds, you realize that every quarter is complete. You’re almost reinventing yourself sometimes from Q one to Q two.

[00:10:54.480] – Scott

So quarterly is about as far out as I like to go with folks.

[00:10:59.000] – Sean

That’s good advice. It’s one thing we’re kind of doing this year, 2024, reassessing what’s working, what’s not working more frequently. It’s kind of like an aha moment over the holidays. Like, hey, there’s a few things here we’re spending a lot of time and money on. That’s not based on the data. It’s not producing the results we’re looking for.

[00:11:19.510] – Scott

Right.

[00:11:20.280] – Sean

And then, of course, you got to have those tough conversations some people are going to. I use a lot of work with a lot of contractors in my business, and it’s like we got to figure out what’s going to move the needle and what’s not.

[00:11:34.190] – Scott

And sometimes that means making hard decisions. It can be letting go of something that you’ve done for a long time. It could be letting go of something that you love and you really enjoy doing it. And yet it’s not producing any results. And that’s the hard way, honestly, it’s easy to get rid of the underbrush that we hate. I never like doing that anyway. That’s easy to let go of. It’s letting go of the stuff that we actually enjoy that can be more challenging. And that’s where, because, again, I like to work with folks that they’re creating the business that they can love. So sometimes that’s replacing it with something that you love even more, as opposed to getting rid of something you love and feeling like, oh, I gave up the one thing in my life that I enjoyed doing, and now my life is horrible.

[00:12:25.090] – Sean

No, that’s good perspective. And that’s kind of what we’re looking at, is like, what’s the greater good for the business to thrive? And maybe you can dial up those things that you really like a lot and kind of lean into them a little more, maybe a little pivot to make sure they produce fruit for the business. But to zoom out a bit, I like what you’re laying down there is try to do this like monthly. I think that’s a great frequency. We were far beyond the quarterly mark, I’ll put it that way.

[00:13:01.050] – Scott

Yeah. And it depends on the stage of your business and the size of your business and where you’re at, too. Anytime you’re facing either whether it’s going into a new market or whether it’s just the market has changed, you increase that frequency, you shorten that frequency back down. I guess that’s the important thing to realize. It’s not a fixed thing where it’s like, well, if I do it weekly, I’m perfect, or if I do it monthly, I’m perfect. It may be different at different phases in your business, and that’s okay.

[00:13:32.690] – Sean

Yes. Right on. I want to kind of transition to more of your personal life here, which is, we’ll get into it in a second. But we talked about a little offline personal finance challenges and causing some issues with your marriage. And we’ll get into that in a moment. But that training was painful, but essentially, correct me if I’m wrong here, really helped lay the groundwork to help you help other businesses. And you can kind of see ahead of the curve, if you will, and see those issues and, like, you probably want to do this and this. If you want to avoid the same problem I went through, I’ll put it that way. Right?

[00:14:08.320] – Scott

Yeah. As a coach, you pull on a lot of different sources, but absolutely one of them is your own personal journey and your own personal experiences. There’s no doubt about that. And that’s one of the reasons that I tell people. I try really hard to look back at my life and not have regrets, but have lessons that I’ve learned right on. Now I’m human. Doesn’t always work that way. There are things that I look at and go, that was stupid. I really shouldn’t have done that. But I try to get past that into the. Okay, yeah, but there was a lesson I needed to learn from that. What lesson can I take away? Okay, then it’s not really a regret anymore. It’s just, yeah, that hurt, but it’s what happened. So let me accept it, let me learn the lesson and let me move on. And that’s a big source of the energy that you use in coaching. Absolutely.

[00:15:01.840] – Sean

Right on. So if you could, why don’t you give us details here on some of the challenges you face and how did you overcome them?

[00:15:08.440] – Scott

Absolutely. So going back in time, I mentioned I was working in a corporate job, and before that I was a school teacher. So in that same period of when I left school teaching and entered the corporate world, my wife and I. One of the reasons that I ended up leaving teaching is everyone knows teachers don’t make much money. My wife and I were trying to build a house. We were living normal lives. We were trying to have a child. We had a lot of stuff going on in our life, and we just kind of drifted apart and weren’t talking anymore about money. And because of that, we were much further into death than I thought. My wife knew now, real truth. My wife knew what was going on. I just assumed she didn’t because I wasn’t telling her what was going on. That was part of the problem at that point in life. So we began to drift apart. It’s not like we were fighting. We just weren’t talking about it. And I actually got to a point where we were facing 78,856 dollarsforty two cent in debt, not that I know it to the penny.

[00:16:14.150] – Scott

And at that point, I made $42,000 a year. So it’s like almost twice what I made, and in a year is our debt burden. I became suicidal because of it, because in my mind, I got this brilliant thought that if I could end my life, then my life insurance would pay out and that would take care of the debt and my wife would be much better off. By the way, anyone who’s feeling that right now, you’re wrong. I know that now, looking back on it, but at the time, that seemed like a perfectly logical sort of decision to make. And at the same time that I was feeling those feelings, I began to hear messages in my life from. At the time it was the Dave Ramsey show. It was other books that kind of fell into my life, things that other people at work were saying that basically began to reaffirm to me that, no, wait a minute, you can do something about this, but you’ve got to reengage with your wife. You’ve got to do this together. And so I came home and I kind of came clean and told my wife the situation and told her that I’d been listening to these other resources.

[00:17:22.240] – Scott

It turned out that she’d actually been listening to exactly the same thing. I was listening to it at night driving home from work, and she was listening to it during the day when it was on live. But we were hearing the same messages. I just hadn’t talked to her about it. Again, she knew more about the situation than I thought she did. But it was still important that I kind of came clean. And we basically looked at each other and said, okay, we’re going to do this. And so in the next two years and eleven months, we went from $78,000 in debt to debt free. We’ve never gone back into debt because we basically just decided we’re going to live in a different way. You’ll notice that along that journey, too, I mentioned I got an executive job. I ended up earning more money. That certainly helped. But it really wasn’t just earning more money, it was the mindset change of, no, we’re not going to do this anymore. Because again, if you divide and figure out two years, eleven months, almost three years, we paid at 78,000. You figure out how much we paid off, and my average income in that time was 55,000.

[00:18:26.120] – Scott

So when you do the math, you realize we were living on nothing. But we did it because we wanted to change that. But then it also let me build up a nest egg and go, wait a minute. Rather than stay in this corporate job that I was no longer loving, I’ve been doing this coaching thing on the side, and it hits all the bells and whistles. It is the thing I’m supposed to be doing. Hey, I can afford to leave. I can actually make a transition. By the way, it also got me promoted in my day job because I was the guy that would show up at the meeting and say the uncomfortable thing out loud because I was no longer worried about being fired because, yeah, the income was nice, but we were going to be fine. Even if I didn’t have it. So I literally got promoted multiple times because I had the reputation of saying the stuff that nobody wanted to hear gander, because it’s not that I didn’t care, it’s that it didn’t matter. A lot of times we’re reticent to say something because it’s in the back of our head.

[00:19:27.850] – Scott

It’s like, I can’t afford to get fired. I can’t afford to take that risk. And you stay silent. And I wasn’t doing that. So it was weird in a way that it really was a rapid turn from I’m going to take my life because that’s going to solve the problem to, no, wait a minute. My wife and I are the solution to this problem. What are we going to do?

[00:19:50.430] – Sean

I remember reading a book years ago called Radical Candor, and that kind of relates what you’re doing here like that. I don’t care what other people think. I care about the customer, and I’m not going to pander to another person’s feelings in the company. Like, we’re in business to serve our customers. Are we? Right. And that requires those radical candor conversations. So that’s kind of cool. You speaking the truth, right? There you go, you get promoted.

[00:20:21.350] – Scott

And it’s ironic because everyone was like, wow, you said that in the meeting. The VP sitting in this meeting. How could you say that? It’s like, well, but it’s true. And quite frankly, if I got fired over it, I didn’t want to work for that company anyway because they couldn’t handle it.

[00:20:39.560] – Sean

Exactly. You established the high ground in that situation. I want to just backtrack a little bit, just to peel back down a little bit on the debt. The 78,000, was this a mix of like a mortgage and credit cards? Was there business debt in there? How did that break down?

[00:20:57.120] – Scott

Sure. It was pretty much almost all consumer debt. When I said we were building a house, I don’t mean we had gone and gotten a construction loan to build a house. I mean we were physically driving nails into boards to build a house. Okay, so we started by living in a twelve x 14 shed. My in laws lived in the first story, we built that. And then once that was built, we built a second story and my wife and I moved into the second story. So we were paying for it as we went. Put that in air quotes because what we were really doing was putting it on credit cards as we went. And so it was our mortgage, but it really wasn’t a mortgage. It was a mortgage on visa, which, quite frankly, is even worse than a mortgage. But it was what I thought we should do to get the house done, so to speak, and do it in a timely manner. And all of that wasn’t the wisest choice, but I didn’t know that at the time. So that was the vast majority of it. There were ods and ends and some other little things in the middle of it.

[00:22:00.470] – Scott

I actually had a collapsed lung, was rushed to the hospital, they fixed it, released it, and two weeks later, it collapsed again. And they had to do emergency surgery. And by good luck, the first one was in December and the second one was in January. So if you know how deductibles and all of that works, it means I got to pay the deductible and all of that twice.

[00:22:22.430] – Sean

Ouch.

[00:22:23.110] – Scott

And so it ended up being about $18,000. So that was another big chunk was medical, but the rest of it was all credit card.

[00:22:31.490] – Sean

Yeah. Wow. Got you. Okay. And I know this applies for most life insurance policies, but suicide does not pay out any life insurance.

[00:22:42.040] – Scott

Believe it or not, that’s actually a myth, which I didn’t know at the time.

[00:22:45.860] – Sean

Really good.

[00:22:48.150] – Scott

After an insurance policy has been in place for about two years, the vast majority of them will pay out for suicide. It’s brand new policies that don’t pay out for suicide, typically. Sorry, I have to correct the factual information.

[00:23:03.320] – Sean

Doesn’t give the green light for anybody.

[00:23:04.940] – Scott

That being said, it doesn’t give the green light. Please do not go. Trust me, either. Read your actual policy. Yeah. Hey, I should convince it. That’s not what I’m saying.

[00:23:15.710] – Sean

No.

[00:23:16.530] – Scott

And honestly, I’m glad I didn’t know that information, because I had actually planned to do it in a way that it would have looked like I fell asleep at the wheel. There’s a really bad curve where people drive off of it.

[00:23:27.810] – Sean

Multiple people have died there strategizing. Wow. Okay.

[00:23:32.770] – Scott

I planned it so it wouldn’t look like it.

[00:23:34.820] – Sean

And thanks for being a little vulnerable there with the details, because I know a lot of people out there, especially in today’s world. We had a rough two years. The recessions and inflation and interest rates just. I mean, inflation has come down now interest rates are starting to come down, but consumer debt was just skyrocketing, and people cannot find ways to keep up. And they asked those questions like, how in the world am I going to make rent or pay my mortgage? And then they were thinking about, okay, so how do I pay down credit card? And then my business is focused on investing. And they get into a position, how do I invest? How do I invest? And I can’t get ahead. So it’s like a snowball effect, and then there’s anxiety that drives through the roof, and people are in that position. Thanks for sharing that. Because, in other words, people out there listening, it’s like you’re not alone. Absolutely not.

[00:24:32.810] – Scott

One of the number one causes of male suicide is actually financial challenges. In fact, I’ve seen several studies that say it is the number one. Cause it’s for sure in the top two or three. And that’s partly because I think as men, a lot of times we take on a lot of responsibility for being a provider. And by the way, that’s even if your spouse is employed and even if they’re making more money than you, a lot of men still take on a lot of stress of being the provider. It’s just a thing that we do and not right or wrong, we just do it. Unfortunately, that can lead to that feeling of, well, it’s my fault. The reason we’re in debt is it’s my fault, and therefore it’s my job to solve it. Sometimes that leads to suicidal feelings or suicidal ideation. That’s unfortunate, because honestly, there are other ways to solve it. Hundreds and usually 99% of the folks that I work with, we find other ways to solve it. We for sure find ways to do it without suicide 100% of the time. But 99%, we find a way that’s not even.

[00:25:43.100] – Scott

Because a lot of times, people immediately go to, well, it must be in bankruptcy. No, actually, most of my clients don’t do that either. We find other ways. Not saying it’s easy, because it’s absolutely not easy, but it is actually kind of simple in that a lot of times I joke and say, as a coach, part of my job is to tell you stuff that you already knew, like live on less than you make. Well, brilliant, Scott. But as a coach, I go further than that into now, how do we actually do that? But it is really live on less than you make. Do something smart with the difference. Invest it in a way that’s wise. Pay down debt with it. Do things with the difference, that are smart, as opposed to doing things with the difference that cause no growth or no increase of any sort. And that includes wise investing, that includes sometimes paying down debt. It depends on their situation as to what’s more important and how do they need to get there. And that’s the other thing is you’ll hear a million one size fits all solutions after working with 1000 plus clients, there is no one size fits all solutions.

[00:26:53.340] – Scott

There are some rules of thumbs, there are some patterns, there are some things to look for. But personal finance is personal. That word is important. And there’s so many little nuances that have to do with your life and your decisions and your business and your situation that it’s really hard when you go read a book or have a blanket answer from somebody or hear know everybody should do this may not actually be true for you.

[00:27:23.950] – Sean

I love that comment because I’ll get these people, these Dave Ramsey wannabes that are, well, just, it starts with the word just do this, this and that. It’s like you don’t understand the full story here. What I like is what you did here sounds like you were able to increase income. And I respect what Dave Ramsey has talked, know the debt snowball method and use the momentum, get paid down. But he doesn’t place a lot of emphasis on teaching people how to increase their income. Like how do you polish a resume? How do you improve your interviewing skills, how do you create a side hustle? He doesn’t talk about any of that. But it sounds like you were able to increase your income. However, at the same time, keep your expenditures the same.

[00:28:08.890] – Scott

Exactly.

[00:28:09.610] – Sean

Yeah. So that right there, that is a winning formula. I think a lot of people, if you’re really struggling in debt, how do I increase my income but have the discipline to keep my expenses the same? Because what happens is, and you see this with a lot of younger people, they increase their income and guess what? They’re going to increase. They’re going to get that brand new Tesla.

[00:28:29.170] – Scott

Usually their income goes up 10%, their lifestyle goes up 20. Yeah, that’s the problem.

[00:28:38.130] – Sean

The math isn’t math. There’s the temptation there. So if you can try to keep those expenditures where they were at. One guy, a mentor of mine, Phil town, he talked about like he went from a career as a river rafting guy making like $6,000 a year, not per month, it was per year, living out of a tent and driving a motorcycle. And when he started making money in finance, he was like, I can kind of keep my expenses the same because I don’t need a whole lot. I was like, that’s a smart play. I mean, I want a few more things, but he could just live a.

[00:29:11.590] – Scott

Little more frugal and that’s the same thing. Know, so you’ll hear things. And again, Dave Ramsey helped me a know. I admire a lot of what he teaches. We followed a lot of what he teaches to get out of debt. At the same time, as I’ve gone deeper with it, I’ve learned that there’s more nuance sometimes than the seven baby steps apply every time in the exact same order, in the exact same way to everybody. And there’s more nuance than that. There’s more gray than that.

[00:29:40.570] – Sean

Sure.

[00:29:41.260] – Scott

And that’s sort of the application and the beauty of a coach. We can get in there. Well, it’s, again, it’s like what you do with investing. It’s getting in there and going, okay, yes, here’s some rules of thumbs, here’s patterns. But you need to know enough about your situation and your reality that you’re not going to just apply. Every single person does exactly the same thing, exactly the same way at exactly the same time. And that works every time. That’s simply not true. People have different risk tolerances. People have different horizons for when they need to do something. For that matter, people have different things that they find joy in. And again, if you’re cutting your lifestyle back so that you can live better and live like no one else is, the Dave Ramsey phrasing, well, then sometimes, though, that includes finding little ways to live in the moment. It’s, I hear people that are like, well, I’m doing everything for retirement so that I can travel in retirement. It’s like you’re not even guaranteed to live to retirement.

[00:30:44.890] – Sean

Exactly.

[00:30:45.600] – Scott

So why don’t you find a way to live a little bit today and don’t sacrifice the future so that it’s not yolo, it’s not, you only live once. Let me just sacrifice the future for the present. But it’s also, don’t sacrifice the present for the future. You have to live in both.

[00:31:00.470] – Sean

No, that’s good advice. I love that my wife and I would kind of live that way. It’s like, okay, we see people who are starting to retire at 65 70, sometimes low 70, and they’re in a position where they actually can’t travel. They waited all this time, and now they’re having knee troubles or troubles with hips or whatever. And it’s like even flying in a plane, it’s uncomfortable to the point where they don’t even want to do it. It’s like, boy, you don’t want to wait your entire life and get, I retired, but I can sit in my sofa at home and that’s it. Right? Enjoy life. Travel when you can do things you want to do now, but at the same time, plan a little bit for the future.

[00:31:42.320] – Scott

Do it in a way that it doesn’t sacrifice the future. And again, 99% of the time, you can find a way to do both. Yes, it may not look exactly like you think it’s going to look, but you can find a way to do both 100%.

[00:31:59.990] – Sean

Let’s take a quick commercial break. So do you have an interest in investing in the market, but you’re not sure where to start? In that case, I invite you to join Tykr for free. However, if you want to go a step further and really get up to speed, you can go to Tykr.edu. So check this out. If you go to Tykr.com and then click on courses, it’ll take you right to Tykr.edu, which includes a few courses such as stock investing for beginners that can help you get up to speed in about a week or less. And then I also have how I get the most out of Tykr, which shows you exactly how I use Tykr in every way, shape or form and even has a few real life stock reviews within. So if you want to start investing with confidence, I invite you to check out Tykr.edu. All right, well, before we transition to the rapid fire round, what is one key takeaway you can give to anybody who is, let’s say they want to because this is the big one we hit on today. We hit on a few things, such as starting a business or making transition from corporate life to business life.

[00:33:00.730] – Sean

But I’d say what is one key takeaway you can give to somebody who is they’re struggling financially and they want to get ahead.

[00:33:07.400] – Scott

The biggest thing is that taking that time to stop and really look at it, sit down, figure out what you’re spending, figure out where it’s going, figure out what’s coming in, figure out what’s going out, and then reevaluate, refocus and go back to what’s your why? What really matters? What’s the most important things to you? What is why you’re doing everything you’re doing? And notice I said a why? Because a lot of times we focus on things like getting out of debt. That’s a goal. That’s a what the why is. But why are you getting out of debt? Or why do you want to travel? Or why do you want to invest? Or why do you want to put your kids in private school? Or why do you want to spend money on going out to eat? Or why do you want to, you can keep asking yourself, sound like a toddler for a little while. Why do that thing to yourself? And really dive in and do it. If you’re married, have a partner, do it with your partner, do it with your spouse, and get their why, too? Because there needs to be sub alignment between those.

[00:34:14.840] – Scott

They don’t have to be identical, but they need to at least be going the same direction and then reevaluate, refocus, reevaluate, and look at it and go. Is what I’m doing today moving me in the direction of that? Why not? Am I already there? But is it moving me in that direction? Is it making that why more real? Is it giving more freedom? Is it giving me more flexibility? Is it giving me more whatever. Fill in the blank to your emotional drivers. And then basically, it’s as simple as simple, not easy. Get rid of stuff that isn’t moving you that direction and double down on the stuff that is moving you that direction. Now, the implementation of that, that’s a lot harder, but that is actually the simple tip and advice. And honestly, you could do that on your own at any time. You don’t have to wait till the end of the month. You don’t have to wait till the beginning of the year. You don’t have to wait till I get that. Wait till I get my tax return in April. No, just do it now. Right now. When you’re listening to this, if this is an area of struggle for you, by tomorrow afternoon, you could have done this.

[00:35:24.150] – Sean

Great advice. All right, let’s transition to the rapid fire round. This is the part of the episode where we get to find out who Scott really is. If you can, try to answer each question in about 15 seconds or less. You ready?

[00:35:37.130] – Scott

Okay, I’m ready.

[00:35:38.220] – Sean

All right. What is your favorite podcast?

[00:35:40.450] – Scott

Probably read to lead by Jeff Brown.

[00:35:43.270] – Sean

Okay. Never heard of it. I’ll check it out.

[00:35:45.900] – Scott

It’s an expensive podcast to listen to because he interviews really great authors, and I end up buying every book that he talks about. So be careful with it.

[00:35:55.410] – Sean

So it sounds like you listen to an episode, and now I have to buy this book.

[00:36:00.050] – Scott

Absolutely.

[00:36:01.410] – Sean

Rinse and repeat.

[00:36:02.440] – Scott

Rinse and repeat about 90% of the time. That’s exactly what happens.

[00:36:06.550] – Sean

Nice. All right, speaking of books, what’s a recent book you read and would recommend?

[00:36:12.180] – Scott

So I literally just finished about three days ago. The five thinking hats. It’s been around for a while. I don’t know exactly when it was published, but it’s been out for a while. But it was the first time I sat down and read it. Really appreciated it. Got a lot out of it.

[00:36:30.130] – Sean

Nice. All right. The movie question. What is your favorite movie?

[00:36:33.950] – Scott

Probably the Star wars. Probably the original Star wars.

[00:36:37.830] – Sean

Nice. The first 177. All right. What is the worst advice you ever received?

[00:36:45.790] – Scott

The worst advice I ever received was keep my day job. And it was really, in terms of when I was looking to transition and go do my own thing, there were 100 people that told me how stupid that was because I was in, again, high end executive. Oh, you’ve got the dream job. Don’t give that up.

[00:37:06.340] – Sean

A lot of people are there. If you’re not stimulated, you’re not fulfilled. You wake up Monday morning, like, what.

[00:37:13.950] – Scott

A place to be. And to be clear, it wasn’t like it was a terrible job, and it wasn’t like I hated every minute of it. It really wasn’t. It just wasn’t giving me what I needed anymore to grow and to thrive.

[00:37:25.380] – Sean

Right on. All right. Flip that equation. What is the best advice you ever received?

[00:37:30.270] – Scott

Live on less than you make. And I think live on less than you make. There. In terms of not only money, but in terms of time, in terms of all of the energy that we put out into the universe. It’s that idea of saving some things back to grow for the future as opposed to spending everything. And again, not literal spend in terms of money, though money applies. Spending everything you have in today’s moment and ignore the future.

[00:37:58.500] – Sean

Right on. All right. And the 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?

[00:38:07.020] – Scott

I would probably go back to the end of high school and graduation, freshman year in college, that kind of time frame. And I would tell myself to really stop and think about what you want to do with the rest of your life and then go focus on that area, because I spent a lot of time doing what I thought I was supposed to do instead of what I really felt called to do.

[00:38:31.350] – Sean

Awesome. Great advice. All right. And where can the audience reach you?

[00:38:35.270] – Scott

So I actually set up a page. If you go over to inspired stewardship.com payback, you can actually access my, I’ve got some resources there on time, talented treasures that you could access. I’ve got some more information about how you could find out more about me. Of course, I’ve got a podcast. I’ve got a book coming out. I’ve got a whole bunch of stuff, but you can find it all over there@inspiredstership.com. Slash payback.

[00:39:01.710] – Sean

Awesome. We’ll make sure that link is below in the show notes. All right, Scott, thank you so much for your time. This is great.

[00:39:08.190] – Scott

Absolutely. Thanks for having me.

[00:39:11.230] – Sean

Hey, I’d like to say thank you for checking out this podcast. I know there’s a lot of other podcasts out there you could be listening to, so thanks for spending some time with me. And if you have a moment, please head over to Apple podcasts and leave a five star review. The more reviews we get, especially five star reviews, the higher this podcast will rank in Apple. So thanks for doing that. And remember, this show is for entertainment purposes only. If you heard any stocks mentioned on this podcast, please do not buy or sell those stocks based solely on what you hear. All right, thanks for your time. We’ll see you close.