When life gets good and we start earning a lot of money, it can become easy for things to fall apart when you do not have the proper knowledge and systems in place to protect them. In this insightful episode, we dip ourselves into the knowledge of two amazing people who are dropping some nuggets of information for us. Host Scott Carson talks with Rachel Marshall and Bruce Wehner from The Money Advantage Podcast about some of the mistakes business owners make when it comes to planning for the long-term endgame. Discover the distinction between business owners and entrepreneurs and what their stressors are, the wrong places to put money in, and the mindset to use when thinking about starting a business.
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The Money Advantage with Rachel Marshall and Bruce Wehner
We are blessed to be joined by Rachel Marshall and Bruce Wehner from The Money Advantage Podcast. They do an amazing job for business owners and entrepreneurs. First and foremost, I was honored to be a guest on their podcast. I love what you are doing. I got to have you on my show. Not because we’ve got so many great people, but we’ve got so many entrepreneurs that are reading all across the country with Note Nation. Bruce and Rachel, how are you doing?
It is an honor and a pleasure to be here. We’re very excited.
Scott, I always like to be with somebody that’s got the energy you have.
Let’s talk a little bit about what you are doing out there and how you’re helping many people. If you’re reading this, you want you to check out The Money Advantage Podcast. You can google that and find their website and go from there. Rachel, why don’t you start off? You’re the Co-Founder of The Money Advantage with your husband. Let’s talk a little about what you are doing and we will go from there.
It’s the trio of us, with Bruce as well. We’re out there to help entrepreneurs figure out a way to accelerate time and money freedom because financially there’s so much that happens in your life. You’re making a lot of money, but a lot of times people don’t have a good system in place to say, “How do I keep more of this? How do I protect it? How do I not make a lot of money but how do I get cashflow from assets? How do I start having other things that are producing the income for me as Robert Kiyosaki talks about? We are on a mission to help people figure out how to do that and how to do those three steps, not one piece or not one product. A lot of people are focused on, “This one particular product is the answer to everything and all the world’s problems.” We are saying, “How can we help somebody not only start all the way back at the right mindset to come from a position of abundance and value creation?” Looking at their cashflow awareness, how can we help them keep more of that money, protect it and make more.
Bruce, what would you say is probably the biggest mistake that you see entrepreneurs and business owners make as they get rock and rolling?
First of all, the distinction between a business owner and an entrepreneur needs to be brought out. I always say a business owner is somebody that’s bought themselves a job and often they are the lowest paid person at that job. An entrepreneur is someone who is constantly looking for systems and processes to make their business better, whether that means to scale up or to make it where they don’t have to be an integral part of every decision making in the business. When that happens, they go through this phenomenon where they forget to retire. Why do they forget to retire? Because to answer your question, the number one thing that businesses fail at is they’re undercapitalized. Why are they undercapitalized? Because they put money in places they don’t control.
When they put money into places they don’t control in the normal boom and bust cycle of any economy, where business goes through those normal things, they are undercapitalized and thus the stress goes up. The employees are stressed out also. The main cause of the stress is they have lost control of their capital. That’s probably the number one thing. What happens is they’re all stressed out. They’re like, “I can’t wait until I can retire from this place.” They want to get out and they can’t stand the stress. What they do is they put more money into places that they can’t get to instead of back into their business. It’s a death spiral. They continue to have stress.
I would add to that. It’s not the entrepreneur or business owner’s fault though. There’s so much misinformation out there about what to do financially. There are many people saying, “You should pay off all your debt and that’s going to solve all your problems. Being debt-free means you’re financially free.” That is a myth and a lie. A lot of times people say, “If I plan for retirement, I get $1 million nest egg and I’m going to be all set.” That’s also a lie. You get $1 million and you’re going to be set for maybe three years if you preserve that principal. There are many things out there that we’re trying to make the right decisions but honestly people are saying, “This isn’t my area of expertise but I’m getting all this information,” whether it’s friends, family, the media, all this noise, telling them to do things that are not in their best interest.
Many seek advice and they’re not getting good counsel. Many people ask advice from their best friends, drinking buddies and the people they hang around on weekends. If they’re not in the lifestyle that you want, you probably shouldn’t be asking their advice.
We talk about that all the time with my clients or if I do a seminar, I’d say, “How many people are married? I have them raised their hand. How many people have children? How many people have children still at home? How many people have aging adults? How many people think they’re overworked? We asked all these questions and I say, “Look around, everybody raised their hand for every one of those questions. Why are you trying to do what everybody is suggesting? You’re doing one cookie cutter approach. You have to have an approach that’s tailored to you and also to your goals.” Scott, I don’t think you seem like a person that retirement is even on your radar. The reason it’s not on your radar is that you have so much value to give to people with your business, your education and your expertise that you’re going to structure your life to work and live the life that you love. Why would you ever do that?
If you did have a goal to retire, why would you not want to build a business up to where it’s not dependent upon you to run it every day? When you go out into the public and try to sell that business so you can do whatever you want to do for retirement, it’s going to be a lot more valuable to a lot more people. They’re looking at, “I can buy this business. The owner has proved to me they don’t have to be there every day. I can run other businesses. I can have other adventures, so on and so forth. When you take money out of business and you place it in someplace else that doesn’t enhance the business, that’s what you get. You get a business that’s devalued and you get the exact opposite of what you’re trying to accomplish. It’s counterintuitive but it happens.
Rachel, what are a couple of places that you see people putting their money in the wrong spots or in the wrong places? Are there some common misconceptions?
I will start not even where they’re putting money. Let’s back up a little bit. Everyone wants to have more money. They want to be further ahead financially. What does that mean? They want to have more money in the future. They want to know that there’s some type of income tomorrow. How do they do that? There’s one way which is work harder. That sounds like a great idea. Most of us are probably already working a lot of hours in business and if you double that, you will have twice as much money. Who is going to do that feasibly? It’s not happening. You can’t work your way to have higher income by putting in more hours, it’s simply is not sustainable.
They say, “I’m going to take on more risk. I’m going to go ahead and I’m going to do this thing that everyone says is a risky investment and I possibly could lose a lot of money.” High risk does not mean high return. High risk simply means a higher potential of loss. Instead of getting more money, what usually happens is they end up losing more money and starting back at square one. The third thing is they say, “I could sacrifice my lifestyle.” Everyone loves to do that. It’s the worst thing ever. You’re trying to live on ramen noodle soup and you’re not running your air conditioner and your heat and you’re trying to say, “How can I have lower expenses?” The person I talked about this said, “If you want low expenses, you could get a goat to mow your lawn. You would ride a bike instead of driving a car everywhere you go.” Who in the world wants that lifestyle? Nobody. You can’t sacrifice your way to financial health. It’s not possible.
Mistakes Business Owners Make: High risk does not mean high return. High risk simply means a higher potential of loss.
I want to blow up one issue. Everyone says, “I should be further along by now and everyone else has it together except me.” That is not true. It layers on all this shame, guilt and frustration and it prevents us from making good decisions. Those are some things that people are trying to do the right things. All of us are well-intentioned. We all want the best for our lives, for our kids and for our legacy that we’re leaving. It’s simply not having the right education and not knowing what the right things to do are causing us to make all these mistakes. Those are the three mistakes that we want to avoid. What do we want to do instead? The first thing that we need to look at is where’s the money flowing out of our control and how can we get that money flowing back into our control? We can jump over to, “Where are people storing money and where should they be storing it instead?” Bruce, do you want to jump into those Money Leaks for a little bit?
The main one is well-intended accountants or CPAs are saying things like, “You need to put money into a separate account for your retirement.” Even if they don’t do it for retirement, they say you’re going to reduce your taxable income. Scott, I don’t know about you but if you have a good accountant, if you have a good CPA and you’re writing off the proper amount of deductions, you might already be in a very low tax bracket. You think you’re saving a lot, but you might only be saving 10% or 12% on your federal taxes. Only then to take it out in the future at a higher tax bracket. People always say, “You’re going to be in a high tax bracket while you’re working but you’re going to be in a lower tax bracket when you retire.” I always say to them, “First of all, do you want to be in a lower tax bracket when you retire?” That means you don’t have as much money coming in.
Secondly, has anybody done that analysis? Because right now on the Tax Code, there is about $235,000 difference within one tax bracket. If you make $390,000, you’re in the 28% tax bracket and if you’re making $167,000, you’re in the 28% tax bracket. There’s a big discrepancy there. You could lower your taxable income by $150,000 and still be in the same tax bracket. To add a little caveat to that, in 2026, our current tax cuts are set to expire. We’re going back to the previous and if not higher, because we have $21 trillion in debt.
That’s the part I’m most concerned about. We have no clue what taxes are going to do in the future. If we ask our clients or anyone we sit down with, most people say, “Taxes are probably going up overall as a whole.” Why would you want to pay tax in the future, postpone it, kick the can down the road and pay in the future rather than paying now?
As we’re on the tax situation, I don’t know how many times a CPA will tell a particular business owner to buy a piece of equipment so they can write-off the deduction on it. It doesn’t do anything more to help the cashflow in the business. That drives me crazy too. You got to understand the CPAs and accountants are never asked a proper question and here’s the proper question. “Do you want me to solve for paying the lowest taxes this year or do you want me to help you pay the lowest taxes over your lifetime?” That question is never asked by your CPA and accountant. You should be asking that question because most people want to try to figure out how to save the most taxes now. They don’t even think about how to save it over their lifetime. Those are the two first things where people are losing control. Putting money into a SEP IRA, a regular IRA, a 401(k) or so on and so forth and they tax defer and buying the equipment that is not needed to produce additional cashflow.
Can I clarify something on first? Are you saying people shouldn’t be putting money into their retirement accounts if it’s just sitting there? Are you talking about using their self-directed IRAs where people are putting money in and then using that money to buy debt or buy loans and returning stuff? Can you clarify a little bit more for us?
Self-directed IRAs if you’re doing that and you’re getting that money to work for you right away and you’re getting cashflow from that. That is different than what I’m talking about sitting there and hoping for appreciation twenty years down the road. That’s a completely different situation. Self-directed IRA, where you’re using it to produce cashflow now is a different situation than hoping for appreciation. We call it to buy, hold and hope. That’s what everybody has espoused. If you hold it long enough, it will be fine but what is long enough?
It is not a strategy. It’s not what not to do.
What other ways are you seeing people shooting themselves in the foot? Because I can understand what you’re talking about. They buy this big piece of equipment versus maybe leasing it or renting it where it hits better for the books and stuff like that because in a couple of years you’re going to replace it anyway. Are you saying it depends on what kind of equipment is or is it situation to situation?
It’s situation to situation but every time you’re buying a piece of equipment for your business, you should say to yourself, “Is this going to produce additional cashflow,” and then that analysis has to be offset with what the additional tax savings are doing. If you’re just doing it for tax savings, I’ve worked with a construction company that built highways. That’s what this particular CPA said, “You need to buy a new dump truck because it will save you $20,000 in taxes this year.” I said to the person, “How many dump trucks do you have?” He said, “We have eight or nine.” I said, “Do every one of them go out of your lot every day?” He said, “No, only about half of them.” They have hundreds of thousand dollars equipment that’s not even producing any cashflow.
Here’s another example. Overhead has to be looked at all the time. You said people are surprised how small your office is. That’s because you are looking at your overhead. You’re not putting additional cashflow in the overhead. Another example of a business owner that I was helping is what’s called buoyant. Everybody wants these self-deprivation tanks for relaxation. They went to get an SBA loan for $1 million. The SBA gave them $750,000. The pods which produce the actual cashflow, the thing that you lay in, were $150,000 of the $750,000. Of the $600,000 left, they took $500,000 to build out this beautiful lobby with all these places where you could have these beautiful couches to sit on, the reception desk and all these elaborate lights. I said to them, “You’re bleeding cash because of all your overhead.” I was mad at the SBA association because the P&L didn’t even support the $750,000. They put money into stuff that did not produce cash for them. That’s another example of overhead. Having that small office shows you what business owner you are, Scott. You understand the value of not having an overhead.
I can take Scott right into the next one. Bruce has mentioned cashflow about twenty times in that little segment that he shared. Cashflow is critical and it’s all about having more cashflow, which means having more profit. It means having a bigger gap between what you make and what you spend. What you keep is more and when you have more cashflow, you’re able to put more money into things that you can save, that you can invest, and you can do a lot of stuff with that cashflow. Most people are not focused on cashflow. That’s why I wanted to highlight what Bruce was talking about in terms of cashflow. Debt is another huge piece that has people bleeding money out and not increasing cashflow.
Here’s what happens. They think, “I want the lowest interest rate because I don’t want to have a high payment.” Interest becomes this blaring thing that is the most important idea about everything to do with debt. “I don’t want to pay interest” and more than that, “I don’t want to pay any payments,” therefore, “I’m going to pay off all my debt.” The problem is when debt becomes a scary word, first of all, it’s because we don’t understand what debt is but it also causes us to have all this cashflowing to reduce our liabilities instead of building assets. Here’s how it happens. What debt means is not having a loan. A loan can be a good thing. It can have you getting capital so you can go put it to work somewhere. If you can earn more than what you’re making, that’s called arbitrage. It’s called leverage. That’s what the bank does. They’re using that. They use someone else’s capital, your money when you put it into the bank and then they loan it out at a higher interest rate and they earn money on that. Why not instead think about how can we be the bank by doing the same thing?
When we look at debt, a liability, it simply means a loan. It could be a mortgage, a payment on your office building, a credit card loan. It could be any type of payment where you have an obligation to pay someone else. True debt is having negative equity, which that’s a fancy word but what that means is you have fewer assets than liabilities. Assets minus liabilities is a negative number. When that’s negative, that’s true debt. We don’t want to be there. Having a loan does not mean you’re in debt. We want to flip that mindset about debt and say, “How can we use this to increase cashflow?” A couple of things that you can think about are number one, if you have great credit, you’re going to have lower interest, which means lower payments, which means you keep more cashflow for the same exact item that you purchased for the same loan amount. Another thing you can think about is the longer the loan length, the smaller the payment. I talked to somebody there in the realtor field and they said, “I’ve got a 40-year mortgage.” I said, “How do I get that?” Bruce and I talk all the time. We say if we could get a 100-year mortgage, we would do it. The reason is not because I want to be in debt for 100 years.
We want to flip the mindset and say that payment is going to be so much smaller than I keep more of my money. I can control that and put it somewhere that I can use it, put it to work and that’s going to be powerful for me. Coming back to the credit thing, if I want to have great credit, how do I get good credit? I want to make sure that I can always make my payments. I do that by building up the capital that I control so that even if I have a situation where income is low or something is happening that month, I can still figure out a way to make those payments. It’s about looking at debt with a different perspective saying it’s not bad. Debt freedom is not the end-all be-all and how can I figure out how to shrink those payments, get as much of that to be secured loans as possible and get as much of that to be tax deductible. You want to be in a position that you have the smallest payments.
Mistakes Business Owners Make: The banks have had the biggest head-over-the-bag act with borrowers and brainwashing people.
We feel that every day. A guy called me and said, “I sold something. Should I go ahead and pay off my house or should I keep the loan on?” I’m like, “What’s your money going to earn if you invest it in the market?” He goes, “Probably 8% to 12% or better.” I’m like, “What’s your interest rate?” He’s like, “3.5%, 4%.” I’m like, “You’re going to be the most stupid person in the world if you don’t keep paying off that loan.” If you pay off the house, you now can’t tap into, unless you go get another loan. Why don’t you keep making payments and then put that money into something that’s going to make arbitrage that the banks have been? I always make the joke that the banks have had the biggest head over the bag act with borrowers and brainwashing people. “Put your money in a savings account. 1% to 4% is very safe. 4% to 8% is risky and 8% to 12%, you can’t make that.” Why are you making it when you give me half a point in my saving account but you’re charging me 19% on my credit card?
They have figured out how to make cashflow. They figured out how to use capital that they control and earn something. We can look at them and say, “How can we model that? How can we be the bank?”
Are you best friends with Dave Ramsey and what he preached with paying everything off?
First of all, Dave has done a lot of good with a lot of people. However, Dave is good at getting people out of debt, but I don’t think he’s good at helping people build wealth. That’s a big distinction. I don’t have any problem with Dave’s overall philosophy of helping people with monetary issues. I think he focuses on people getting out of debt rather than helping people build wealth. Those are two different types of situations. I don’t know if you want to add anything to that, Rachel.
That’s what I would say as well. I respect him for helping people build from where they were, which is in a spiral out of control to get into a little bit of control and put some systems and processes in place. At the same time, the steps for building an exceptionally extraordinary life of true wealth that we all as entrepreneurs are aspiring to and being part of the 1%. I don’t think that most of that advice is going to take you in that direction.
If somebody’s looking to re-evaluate their things, I’m sure you have a path or a guideline to sit down with them and walk them through where they’re at and where they want to go. Do you want to talk a little bit about your process for helping people?
What this starts with is it starts by looking at their current financial situation. We always start everything that we do with a strategy conversation. We are wanting to say, “What are you currently doing? Where’s the lay of the land for you?” Bruce can even talk about this more distinctly. We’re looking at a financial picture for them. Where’s your money flowing? Where’s it going? Where’s it sitting? Is it providing you cashflow and control? Those are the top two things. Is your financial situation giving you the most control that you can possibly have or is it not? If not, how can we get you in a position of control? If it’s not producing as much cashflow as possible, how can we increase that cashflow?
We’re looking at what strategies could that person use to say, “Without making any more time, without cutting back and eating top ramen for the rest of your lives and without taking on a huge amount of risk. How can you make the same dollars that you are having come in go further by shoring up those money leaks and saying, ‘Let’s figure out a way to minimize fixed payments through loans. Let’s figure out a way to shrink the tax liability?’” which is way easier to do if you’re a business owner. There’s not as much flexibility as a W2 employee. You can maybe change your withholdings. That’s all you can do as a W2 employee. There’s a lot of tax strategy on the tax side. We’re looking at what strategies can be employed. We’re saying, “Where are you holding your cash and can you get to it?” If you wanted to invest in real estate or notes or buy a business tomorrow, can you get to your cash? It doesn’t matter if you have $5 million if you can’t access any of it. We’re looking at, “How can we get more of your capital into a position that has safety, liquidity and growth?”
What we do is we take a complete financial picture. We look at people’s goals. We look at their overall P&L or balance sheets on their businesses. We talked to them about, “If we’re sitting here three years from now and we’re looking back over those three years, what would have to change in your life for you to feel good about those three years?” We’re trying to take people out of the present because the present is oftentimes stressful that they can’t see themselves in three years. I’m trying to get them out of the present into the three years and we can have an intelligent conversation. Here’s the other thing about mindset. If they don’t have the right mindset, we can’t help them.
I’m sure you have the same thing with We Close Notes. If people don’t have the correct mindset on the processes and guidelines that you’ve put in place to do this, you don’t want to work with them until they can change their mindset. We’re the exact same way. We talked to them a lot about their mindset too. We take a complete financial picture because some people tell us we do a lot of things with the infinite banking concept. The reason we do that is we use especially designed whole life insurance to store money for the businesses because you have control. Not only do you have control, you get uninterrupted compound growth. An example would be what we were talking about with the banks earlier. You said the banks are giving us 1% to 4% on our savings and they’re charging us 19%. That arbitrage is very high.
Let me bring it down to even a simpler thing. When I tell a person the bank has given you 1%, which they’re not, they’re probably giving you 0.1% but I’m just going to use this for simple math. They’re giving you 1% and they loan it to somebody for 5%. What is the percentage their making on that arbitrage? Most people will say the banks are making 4%. They are not. They’re making 400% on that. That is an education that people need to know. It’s not 4%, it’s 400%. Banks like low-interest rate environments more than they like high-interest rate environments because they make more on that percentage on the arbitrage in a gross situation. You can simply do the math because if they have given us 6% on our savings accounts and loaning it out on to a car at 20%, people would say, “They’re making 14%.”
If you do the math on it, it’s a lot less than 400% because six goes into twenty less than three times or a little over three times. That’s something that people need to know as for the way that they have to think about where they’re storing their money. When you take the money out of the bank to purchase for something, you lose that opportunity costs in there. After we free up the cashflow, we teach people where are you going to store this extra cashflow? Hopefully, we’ve educated them enough that they’re not going to pay off additional debt. We’ve educated them enough that they’re not going to put it away into a SEP IRA unless they’re going to do a self-directed IRA like you were talking about and do additional cashflow with it, buy some notes or whatever. We might help them set up to buy real estate but they take the discipline to take whatever cash they’re flowing, back into their own personal bank and grow that bank up for future and repeat the process over and over. Now they’re in control. The bank is not in control. That’s a 10,000-foot overview of what we’re trying to accomplish with every business owner. I try to keep it simple but it’s not that simple.
As I make the joke, everybody’s had their own country Western song. They’ve got to figure out some things. I love the fact that you’re not talking 20 to 30 years. Let’s look at the past three years and let’s figure out how we can reverse and gradually knock off some of those mistakes or errors, and start revamping, refocusing our focus, our cashflow and our goals to get on the right path where we want to get too.
The big thing people always say is, “I wish I would’ve started this ten years ago.” I say to them, “Let’s not say that ten years from now. Let’s get started. Let’s change your mindset. Let’s get rolling again. We don’t say that again in ten years.”
Here’s the value there. I want to come back to something I said at the beginning. I said we’re not just about one product. We’re not just the infinite banking people and we do a lot of work with infinite banking. A lot of people come to us because they want that and that’s specifically the reason. When you look at your whole financial situation, you want to say, “What are we accomplishing? Are we staying principal-focused?” First, we want to increase the capital, we want to protect it and we want to make more. If you’re in a position where you say, “I make great money but I have no idea where it’s all going. I’m paying too much in tax and I have no cashflow. I’m not keeping any of my money.” First, you need to keep more of the money you’re making.
Mistakes Business Owners Make: You are your greatest personal asset. You’re the person that’s going to create the value that’s going to be returned by having income coming from you.
We look at those strategies. We say, “We want to protect that money.” What’s the best place we can protect that? We want to put it in a place where it is safe, it’s liquid, it’s growing, and you can use it. That’s the main thing. We want to be able to access that money if an emergency arises like a medical emergency or something happens in your business. You have no income for a month because you had a great month and now you have a tight month or anything happens where you need access to $10,000 of cash or $100,000 tomorrow, where are you going to get that money? We want to make sure you have capital that you can access for emergencies but also for opportunities. It’s like this, if you have the opportunity to buy a house in cash and you can do it tomorrow or you would have to give up the opportunity because somebody else is going to buy it in cash, you are going to be in a position of advantage if you have the cash accessible and available to steal that deal.
The good investors are saying, “How can I invest in what I know and control?” How can I not just say, “I’m going to invest in what everyone else is investing in because it might happen to work out that hope strategy,” which we’re talking about earlier? How can I say, “I know this asset and I want to invest in it.” You need cash to be able to do that. As Bruce was saying, what we want to do is have that capital that we control, then you are safe in emergencies. You have the leverage to be able to take advantage of opportunities. The cool thing with privatized banking or infinite banking, we use those words interchangeably, is using whole life insurance policies. You have the cash value that continues to grow. I can borrow against that capital. I can put it to work in another asset like notes, real estate, buying businesses and I’m still earning a return over here inside the life insurance policy. I’m earning interest and dividends. Over here in the investment, I’m also earning a return.
I’m getting my money to multitask and do more than one thing. The coolest part about it is I’m never taking the money out of my life insurance. It’s not resetting the compounding. It’s not going back to zero when I take the money out as a bank account would be. I’m continuing to earn that interest. I’m doing a lot of jobs all at once and putting myself in a much better state of mind that allows me to keep more of my money protected well and then make more by investing well. It also helps you leave a legacy. That’s how you are able to use a product to accomplish particular principles and goals in your life. It’s not just saying, “Here’s a product that ends all be all.” It’s about what are you trying to accomplish.
We get a lot of people that are working in their jobs and they’re looking to leave this job. They start a business or investing, leaving a job and stuff like that. What is some advice that you would give those people? I’m a big believer in starting with the end in mind or preparing ahead of time. What are some recommendations you would give to people out there when you think about doing that?
I agree with starting with the end in mind. I agree with that 100%. I’m not a big business plan person. I call that liar’s poker because oftentimes you’re lying to yourself. I try to work on a 25-year vision and that’s your end in mind but work on it in 90-day increments so that you can refocus when you need to refocus on your 25-year vision. If somebody is thinking about quitting a W2 job, sitting down with somebody that can help them with their vision and figure out how they can start in 90-day increments is a good thing to think about. People are always trying to find capital. That’s how we started the show. That’s probably where we need to go again. Where do you find the capital?
You’ve already helped a lot of your people find capital by doing self-directed IRAs. There are other ways to do it even if you don’t want to self-direct that people can figure out. You can do SBA loans. You can do regular personal loans. You can do HELOCs. You can do a lot of other things. What I have to tell people is it’s your mindset and you are the greatest personal asset that you can have. A lot of people say, “I need to go read this book and I need to have this investment product.” No, you are the greatest personal asset. You’re the person that’s going to create the value that’s going to be returned by having income coming from you. Those are the mindset that is probably the biggest thing.
It’s the mindset. It’s also saying, “How can I figure out how to increase my cashflow with the current money that I’m making from my W2 job?” Preparing and setting that money aside so that it’s being stored and grown in that emergency opportunity fund. You might use life insurance. You might use something else as well. We love life insurance for that purpose. It’s storing that money for emergencies and opportunities and saying, “Now that I’ve got some capital and I have some ability to move forward, I can slowly transition into a business or to real estate or to whatever the entrepreneurial endeavor is. As that’s creating cashflow, I can walk away from the job.” I am not an advocate of somebody jumping ship and saying, “I have a dream.” They charge forward with great ambition and they say, “My dream is going to catch me.”
You don’t make money by working in a passion. Your passion is great. God gave you that passion and those skill sets for a specific reason, but it needs to be married up with what serves people? What do people want? What are they going to pay you for? What are you good at? When all that comes full circle, that’s going to go way back to the number one wealth principle, that dollars follow value. People pay for what serves them. If you’re going into business as a brand new entrepreneur, you need to find a way to serve people. As you serve people, you give them value. That’s when money’s going to flow into your life. Sometimes it takes a while to get that right. You might have an idea but when it’s in the seed stage, it’s probably not going to be producing a huge amount of revenue and income right away. Jump ship slowly as you plan and put that safety net underneath yourself.
One of the best advices I’ve ever heard is from Marcus Lemonis of The Profit. He talks about entrepreneurs, true business owners, those that are successful don’t go down with the ship. They have a passion for it, but they don’t ride that all the way to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. If they start taking a dive, they cut it and they jump onto something else. They play frogger. That’s why I love what you said, Bruce, about having that 90-day focus because many people wait for the end of the year or they look at numbers after the fact. 90-days gives you the ability that if you start seeing something going left or right, you can make that adjustment to correct your course. I love that focus aspect of it because I don’t think people focus enough with that end game in mind.
We get so bogged down into The E Myth strategy, if you’ve ever read The E Myth by Michael Gerber, of being passionate, working in the business, and trying to control everything. Something that you said very early on, the sooner you can outsource all that day-in activity, that control freak that we all have, the happier you’re going to be because the business is not relying on you to make the decisions. Things happen with or without you being there. What are some of the best ways for people that are interested in reaching out to you and start looking at what they’ve got going on too before they reach out, they were putting their plan together beforehand? What are the best ways that you would recommend people to get started?
This is something we’ve put a lot of thought into because we believe in giving value first. We believe in educating people and giving them the tools to succeed. If our story, our message, and who we are resonates with what you’re trying to accomplish, you come to find us. What we would say the number one thing is that if you go to TheMoneyAdvantage.com/findmoney. There’s a webinar there that you will be able to see somebody walking through. It’s a business owner who made about $400,000 in their life but wasn’t saving anything. They found a way through using these money finder strategies to increase their cashflow. It was significant for them. It was $97,000 per year that they freed up using some of these strategies.
They were able to say, “What am I going to do with this cashflow?” Cashflow is great but what do you do with it? Where are you going to store it? How are you going to invest that? How are you going to accelerate time and money freedom? How are you going to invest that in assets that give you cashflow? That’s what the webinar is about. I would encourage you to the website. You can also find us all over social media channels, LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram. We would love to connect with anyone. If you are resonating with what we’re talking about. We have a podcast as well. You can find all of that at The Money Advantage. I would start by going to TheMoneyAdvantage.com/findmoney.
I love what you are doing here because I don’t think enough people take their accounting seriously, their bookkeeping and their cashflow strategies. One of the things that we’re constantly looking at too is if we’re going to use a new piece of software or do some sort of tool, how’s it going to bring money in? How the end game of what we’re bringing in is going to be worth? What was the cost in the market? Trust me, as entrepreneurs, we all make different mistakes in marketing ideas. “This didn’t work as well, let’s nip it in the bag and get rid of it.” There are a lot of things.
I’m fortunate that Steph, our VP of Operations, is looking at like, “Scott, what did you charge? What is this $150 a month thing?” Being able to evaluate that, we’re able to generate another extra $5,000 off of adjusting some of the different things that we’re using or the duplicity of a lot of systems and websites or tools that people are using. They don’t realize that something can be used. You can use one website versus 60 different websites. Another big thing that I’m sure you are good at is it’s not just the return on investment that they’re getting but probably ROT, Return on Time.
More entrepreneurs want a return on investment. That’s what I opened up the show about like how can you free up more time so you don’t have to be in the day-to-day operations of the business? That doesn’t mean you’re retired. It doesn’t mean that you’re taking a vacation. It means you can be starting other businesses or just thinking about your thinking. If you think about your thinking, you can make your own business more efficient. Return on time is awesome.
The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It
That’s why we say time and money freedom. I didn’t even explain that because we say it frequently. It’s interesting that people say financial freedom or have a lot of money or have a lot of income. What’s interesting is if you talk to any successful person, they will tell you that it is not about the money. It is about what their time and what they’re capable of doing with their time now that they have that financial freedom. It’s looking at it completely different and yes, return on time. How are you putting your time forward and getting the best return out of that possible?
We deal with many real estate investors. I get all excited about HGTV, Flip This House, those fictional TV shows. They go out and buy a piece of property and they put 60 hours or 80 hours of time in rehab. “I’m going to do this all by myself” and in the end, they would have made more money if they’d taken a part-time job at McDonald’s flipping burgers. How’s the podcast? I love your podcast. I’ve been binge-listening to it and stuff like that. How does the podcast help get the word out? Does it allow you to break it down into bite-size chunks for your listeners, your audience and your raving fans?
Thank you for asking. That has been a huge work in progress. We started at the same time if I remember it right. We’re about 80 episodes. In about mid-2017, we started. What’s been interesting is with the podcast, we wanted to make sure that we didn’t jump to the cool stuff first. We wanted to lay a foundation because we wanted people to understand the principles of wealth creation. The things that probably are much more boring and they sound not as exciting, things like saving. Who wants to talk about saving money? At the same time, we realized that if we don’t lay this foundation, these principles and the groundwork first, we’re going to have people jumping on the strategy idea that we’re talking about and not having that solid foundation.
It’s been an exciting time. We’ve had a lot of amazing guests on. You are one of them. We had Mike Michalowicz of Profit First on the show and he was fantastic. That was an amazing show. I love talking about his book and the focus on profit first, which is the same thing as paying yourself first and saving money. We’ve had some amazing guests in real estate. We’ve had turnkey providers. We’ve had investment companies that are places where somebody can say, “Here’s a way I can create cashflow by investing.” We’ve had a lot of powerful and fantastic people who can help you build your business or invest well. It’s been a blast.
Rachel and I like to keep it conversational. I love meeting new people. That’s been the thing that has been the most rewarding. Not the message that we get out but building a network of like-minded people. It’s been the most rewarding thing of all.
I totally agree with that in our podcasts and stuff like that. It’s such a great feeling to see and surround yourselves with great people. My buddy Greg Reid is the author of Think and Grow Rich, Three Feet from Gold. He’s commonly saying, “Five years from now, we’ll be the same person except for the books that we read and the people that we surround ourselves with and the people that we meet.” There’s so much negativity out there. I don’t care what side of the politics you’re on or what color your skin, your sex and race, whatever. What’s awesome about podcasts is people are coming together to listen to like-minded people, to listen to people that can surround themselves that think the same way, have the same positive energy. It will change America one day or I say, make America great again one podcast episode at a time.
It’s easy to listen to podcasts too, especially for somebody who is busy moving all the time. I remember many years ago that I started listening to podcasts when I was exercising, cleaning, whatever and it’s amazing how much you can listen. You can listen on two times speed and you can build this repertoire of knowledge and a relationship with somebody. You can learn so much through podcasts. It’s fantastic.
Guys and gals, you’ve heard it here, reach out to them, give them a phone call and watch that webinar. You’re going to love the breakdown on what they do there. Bruce and Rachel, you do a tremendous job. I want to thank you so much for coming on the show and share some great nuggets. It’s awesome to see somebody with so much passion coming across the microphone and coming across the screen. It’s easy to see that you do genuinely care about entrepreneurs, about business owners, about people out there and help to get them on the right track and help them find that money advantage.
Thanks a lot, Scott as well. It’s been wonderful.
You heard it here first. Check them out, TheMoneyAdvantage.com is their website but check out the webinar in TheMoneyAdvantage.com/findmoney. If you get a chance to listen to their podcast, great stuff. Mike Michalowicz from Profit First book, phenomenal. I had a chance to hang out with him in Philadelphia a few months ago at the Podcast Movement Summit. Check it out, you will love their show, love what they’re doing. Pick up the phone, give them a phone call, touch base with them, and see if they can help you put your money to better work for you. Otherwise, have a great day and we will see you at the top.
Important Links:
- The Money Advantage Podcast
- The E-Myth
- TheMoneyAdvantage.com/findmoney
- LinkedIn – The Money Advantage
- Facebook – The Money Advantage
- Instagram – The Money Advantage
- Think and Grow Rich
- Three Feet from Gold
- Mike Michalowicz – Previous episode The Money Advantage Podcast
- Profit First
- Podcast Movement Summit
- http://www.TheMoneyAdvantage.com
About Rachel Marshall
About Wehner
Bruce Wehner (WAY ner) is the Chief Cash Flow Strategist and Podcast Co-Host of The Money Advantage. He oversees the client experience and serves as the lead advisor, designing and communicating individualized solutions that help their clients increase cash flow and financial control. Bruce is also an Authorized Infinite Banking Practitioner with the Nelson Nash Institute.