March 19, 2025 • 51 mins
We argue that money itself isn’t a good or bad thing, it’s not holy or evil, but we do think it comes down to what you do with it that makes the world a better or worse place. That message is also at the heart of Derrick Kinney’s best-selling book “Good Money Revolution”... what are you doing with your money, what actions are you taking? That’s at the crux of the matter. And we’re joined by Derrick whose mission is to inspire individuals to use their wealth to align with their personal values, and to actually strive to make more money so they can create even more of a positive impact in the world! We discuss identifying your generosity purpose, putting together a plan to giving your money away, how it pays approach your W2 with the attitude of an entrepreneur, and plenty more today!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Had of Money. I'm Joel Matt's and today
we're talking make more money, Do More Good with Derrick Kenney. Yeah, so, Joel,
(00:26):
I would argue that money isn't inherently like a good
or bad thing.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
You know, it's not holy, it's not evil. But I
do think it comes down to what you do with
it that makes the world a better or a worse place.
I think that's not the heart of Derek Kenney's best
selling book Good Money Revolution. What are you actually doing
with your money? You know, like, what action are you
going to take? That's the big question. And we're joined
by Derek today, who works to inspire individuals to use
(00:53):
their wealth in order to align with their personal values
and to make more money so that they can create
even more of a positive impact out there in the world.
We think hopefully folks will be motivated to make a
bigger difference after hearing our conversation today. But Derek Kenny,
thank you so much for joining us on how to Money.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
Hey, my pleasure, Matt and Joel. It's a pleasure to
be with you both, and I'm looking forward to this conversation.
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Of course, Yeah, us too. Derek. First question we ask
everyone who comes on is what do you like to
suplourgeh On gives us a little insight into you, but
also we know you're saving your investing for your future,
but you also got to like spend money on fun
stuff in here and now too. What's that for you?
Speaker 3 (01:32):
Well, it's interesting. So I will readily splurge on of course,
hour Patch kids, those thick hershey bars that I love.
I just love those things, man, They're so good. Really,
anything that connects me better to my kids, you know,
for example, if one of my kids comes and says, hey,
could we can we download this or do this or that,
(01:53):
and we're going to spend time together in the geeb
maybe listening to it. I'm all about that. But it's
interesting though. I was thinking a little bit more deeply though.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
You know.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
The book is about making more money doing more good,
and it's really a reflection of how I am and
my deepest part of my soul. And so I would
readily splurge to support a cause that somebody else is
involved in. You know, if I was going to spend
money kind of on myself or choose to to donate
it or support a charity. I would do that for
(02:24):
some reason. It just just motivates me. But U but
also I mean, I guess a slurge might be eating
out a good prime rib somewhere, a good thing.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
You.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
Yeah, that would be that'd be a nice splurge.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
There, No, no, I think that's I think that's great.
It's very on points as far as being generous with others.
But you know, I also like the splurges on candy,
different things to connect you with your kids.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
That's yeah, patch kids awesome. That's a double way mee
because you get to Joel's all about it. Enjoy them yourself,
but also enjoy them with your children. That's a I
like that.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Derek. Let's kind of get to the like. One of
the core thesis of your book is the fact that
you say that money is like a good thing, but
not everybody feels that way. Like in our culture today,
there's a lot of wealth and money and people who
are rich are evil. Can you present in arguments against that?
Speaker 3 (03:13):
Well, So this is where this came from. So I
built one of the nation's top financial planning companies over
the past twenty five years. I sold it a couple
of years ago and What I found is is I
would talk to people, this vibe would come out in
their conversation. They would say things like, well, Derek, you know,
if I'm too successful, people won't like me. And if
(03:36):
I make too much money, people will think maybe I
cheated my way to do it. Or you know, these
people that own major, major companies that provide great value
to people, those people have to be oppressing their workers
and hogging all the money for themselves. And as I
heard this more and more, I was beside myself because
I've always enjoyed money. I've enjoyed making it and investing it.
(03:59):
And what led me to then build a business to
do that for other people? And I began to delve
deeper and I realized there's sort of this cultural vibe
that says, you know, in the Bible, it talks about
the love of money is the root of all evil.
And I think we can take that way wait, wait, wait,
way way too far. And it's not saying that the
love of money causes your life to be terrible and
(04:22):
you're going to lose everything. It's just what are you
putting your belief in and all of your hope And
is it money or is it what money can do
for you. And so that's where this kernel was born
out of. Was don't say to yourself, I don't want
to make money because I don't want to be viewed
as that evil, vile, greedy person. Instead, let's reframe that
(04:46):
and kind of rescript the model here and say, go
make a lot of money by adding a lot of
value to people's lives, but then use that money for good.
And then what happens when we do that? It motivates
you in a fresh way. It's the antidote to burnout.
It's the antidote to lack of meaning and purpose by
(05:07):
when you have a cause. We'll talk more about this
as we get deeper into this, but when you have
a cause that you care deeply about and motivates you
to think outside of yourself, and you want to do
everything you can to help that cause and help a
person impacted by that cause improve their lives.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
So I am curious about like the pursuit of money.
You're saying, hey, even pursuing more money not evil into itself,
as long as it's not maybe your core purpose. Is
there a limit though, to that kind of thinking? I
think we've just seen so many people say, well, money's
not bad, so let me go make a lot of it.
And some of those people have been maybe lost to
(05:46):
what I might call the perpetual hamster wheel of living
to make money. And a lot of those people then
have regrets on their deathbed, like I did make making
money too central to my life and I probably should
have lived in a more well rounded way. Like I
don't know, what would you say.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
To that, Well, it's funny you say that because one
of my favorite movies, you know, Brave Heart and other
movies like that, there's the main character in the movie
that says, if only I had lived a life of
more meaning, and if I had been kinder, and all
these regrets. And really what the book's central purposes is
to be against regret. We're against living a regretful life.
(06:24):
And so I am highly motivated by money, and it's
what drives me to be a good financial advisor. And
I think, you know, build and new worth and so forth,
you have to really enjoy it. But what I find
is when I first began building my net worth and
I set a goal to become a millionaire, it was
all about becoming a millionaire. And that's the only lens
(06:46):
I saw through and what it led me to do
then was maybe make some shortcuts in my relationships and
not spending as much time with family and friends. I
was just driven. I was a driven puppy to achieve
this goal, and I wanted it now and didn't want
to wait for it. But then when I had this
epiphany that awakened my eyes to say, man, if I
(07:06):
tie a cause to my cash and profits to my
purpose and a movement to my money, you know, meaning
to it, that made it palatable of like, why do
I want to go make money? And it wasn't just
the burnout of I just want to build a bulging
bank account. Now there was a real purpose tied to it.
And once I did that, now I don't believe that
(07:27):
there's any limit. You know, how much is enough? I
don't know. You know, that's up to each person to
figure out. But what I do know is you can't
outgive yourself. You know, when there's a cause and there's
something you're passionate about, let that be the fuel to
motivate you. Because you're either going to be a driven,
lonely person or a driven person who is making the
(07:49):
world better. And when you lay your head on the
pillow at night. One of them lets you sleep a
whole lot better.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
All right, So, well, you said you sold your financial
planning company. I mean you, I'm curious like as far
as like when it comes to like your own personal journey,
and you just shared that you got to a point
to where like your eyes were open and it seemed
like you sort of pivoted. Was that difficult for you
to do? Like, was it difficult for you to sell
your company and sort of change your purpose or was
(08:15):
that something that you were motivated to do, Like were
you wanting to get out of it? I'm curious what
caused that change to come about?
Speaker 3 (08:22):
Yeah, two things. Let me go back and take you
back to a twenty six year old who was a
brand new financial advisor. So I was stuck in a
dead end job at this very small technology company and
full worth and I got passed over for a big
bonus and two other people in the company did as well.
And it was this moment where I had to think
to myself, do I want to let myself be dictated
(08:47):
my value by someone else? And typically that's going to
be a four percent value increase every year with a
raise or do I want to bet on myself? And
so I'm twenty six. I didn't have a whole lot
of risk. There wasn't a whole lot of money in
my own bank account, so I chose the financial advisor path.
I saw my parents struggle, their friends struggle, and I
(09:07):
didn't want to see that anymore. I wanted to help
people like my parents do better financially, and so I
went back and got my licenses while I was working
full time and did that. But I didn't have the
gene pool of the popular kids. I didn't have all
the community contacts, the country club membership. I look like
a thirteen year old is really what I look like,
(09:29):
And here I'm asking people to invest with me. But
I had this passion, and the passion was I wanted
to go back to my alma mater high school, because
nobody ever did. When I was a senior in high school,
no successful business person ever came back and gave us
a vision as to what our future could look like.
As a high school student, they always said, just take
(09:51):
your math and science and history and everything will work
out fine. Well, nobody gave us a sense of how
do these things really work? In the real world, and
I said, that's just not right. Talked to the principal
and he said, yeah, we'd love to have you. So
I came armed with a fifty dollars Amazon gift card
and a twenty five dollars Amazon gift card, and I
gave the twenty five dollars one to a student of
the month and the fifty dollars one to a teacher
(10:13):
of the month. And it was my small, itty bitty
way of breathing life into these people, giving them a
sense of how much they mean to people, and to
the students, letting them know how bright their future was,
and to the teacher, letting them know that, you know,
you're the type of teacher that on Thanksgiving and Christmas
is years from now, it'll be your name that gets
brought up as having made that impact on students' lives.
(10:34):
And I thank you for that. Well, I didn't think
much of it, but we took a picture of the
teacher and the student, myself and the principal and put
this in the newspaper back in the day, well a
couple months ago. By I'm doing this pretty consistently. I
get a phone call and there's a woman that says,
and what she said to me completely changed how I
thought about my business. And she said, Derek, we know
you're young, but we want to invest our portfolio with you.
(10:58):
And I should not have set it this way, but
I said, why, I'm brand new, don't really know what
I'm doing. She said, we know you've got great credibility
we see in the community. But she said, we want
to work with you because you care about what we
care about. And it was those words that changed everything
for me, and I realized, wait a minute, this is
(11:20):
not about being the best looking, or the smartest, or
having the most contacts and relationships. It's simply about me
caring about what the people I want to work with
also care about. And so I began to do these
recognitions at all the local high schools, even some of
the elementary schools, and that lady became my first million
(11:41):
dollar client. And what it taught me was people are
drawn like a magnet, first of all, to a professional
that knows what they're doing. You can't give money and
be a complete loser in what you're doing, Okay, you
just can't. You need to be a pro and be
a special stat it. But when you can solve people's
(12:02):
financial pain points, and you have a cause that when
they work with you, they feel like they're part of
something bigger. When you combine those two powerful elements, it
becomes like a magnet that literally just sucks people in
who you want to work with. And that's what happened
and how we built our practice so quickly.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
So you yeah, I mean it sounds like you had
that vision, You had that mission kind of from day one,
as opposed to sort of an evolution of your own
actual I guess personal journey.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
Yeah. Yeah, it was funny because I enjoyed, you know,
even as gosh, I was even in high school. I
would set goals every year and I still have some
of them in a file downstairs. I go back and
look at them periodically. But I was just a very
gold driven person, and I realized when it came to money,
it was so much fun because being a financial advisor
was like this ultimate win win job. It was like
(12:56):
the more money that I help you, the client make,
the more money I get to make. It was this
beautiful thing. We're both in the same boat rowing together.
It was amazing that concept. And so what happened was
what I realized if I want to really grow this thing.
People loved a cause, and so mine happened to be
supporting and investing in young people. So we would have
(13:19):
like our holiday event every year and a nice place
to recognize and really make our clients feel valued VIPs.
But I would also have the principle of one of
the schools be there that I would give these awards out,
and we'd even have a few students sometimes, and I
got to tell you, I thought they were there to
hear me talk, but they weren't. The highlight was hearing
(13:42):
these students talk about, Hey, because you're working with this
group and they're recognizing us, you know, this is the
impact that's having on us. And the teachers talked about
that of the principle, and what it happened was it
became like this moat around our business because every day
I learned that all of my clients were also getting
(14:04):
prospected by other financial advisors to become their next client.
And one of the best ways to defend against that
was not to promise high returns and lower fees and
all the things that people playing that comparison financial advisor game.
Instead was provide great service, even charge at a premium
for what I was doing. But the cause is what
(14:25):
drew people in. It made especially busy people who want
to give but they don't know how and they don't
have the time to do it. It allowed them to
feel like they were part of something bigger by working
with us. That's cool. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
I would say, Derek that our country is a fairly
philanthropic country. Individuals tend to be, by and large, reasonably generous,
at least when compared to what happens in many other
countries around the world. And one of the things you said,
although I don't know, that might be changing a little
bit and probably has, it seems like over the last
few years where maybe they're more mega donors and fewer
(14:59):
small time But you say that giving money away produces
real and lasting happiness, which for all of the I mean.
Arthur Brooks writes a column in The Atlantic about happiness.
How you get how you become happy? Right? And is
that the ticket? Is it giving money away? I mean,
is that is that how we get there?
Speaker 3 (15:18):
I think it's one of the ways. And I think
it depends on what your individual motivation is. For example,
if you like to make money like I just enjoy
making money. Then for me, part of the joy is
giving money away, specifically anonymously, if at all possible. That's
even more fun. But there was a study done a
guy named doctor Michael Norden. He was a I believe
(15:39):
a Harvard professor. He did this experiment on a college
campus a couple of years ago. I right about this
in the book. And he gave a certain group of
students a couple envelopes and they each had twenty dollars
in them, and to the one group, he said, by
five o'clock today, I want you to spend this on yourself.
You can buy whatever you want for twenty dollars. Then
(16:00):
we're going to have you come back and report how
you feel about it. Okay. Then the second group of students,
he gave them each an envelope with twenty dollars in it,
and he said, now I want you to give this
money away to someone. You could buy something for them,
you could just give it to them, you could do
something with them, and then report back at five o'clock
how you felt about it. So the day goes on,
they do what they do with their money. They come
(16:21):
back at five o'clock and doctor Norton asks. The group
of students who were asked to spend it on themselves,
and some bought like a music CD or some candy
or this kind of stuff, but none of them felt
any noticeable increase in happiness. It was just I bought something.
It was nice, but it didn't generate any type of
(16:42):
change in their happiness levels. Now, this other group talked
about what they did. You know, one bought a Teddy
Bear for a friend, one took their friend out for
snow cones, one bought some candy for a friend, et cetera,
et cetera. And surprisingly, two days later, that group still
felt an elevated level of happiness. And that was just
(17:05):
based on someone else giving them twenty dollars to give
away to someone else. And so the whole concept of
that experiment was that when you do give and you
do something for someone else, it gives you this lasting,
elevated happiness level. And one of the things I mean,
I think we can all relate to this is let's
say that you know somebody would really like something, and
(17:29):
let's say that it's a football, okay, and you anonymously give.
You might leave it on their mailbox or on their
door and you know they're gonna get it, and there's
excitement in the back of your mind, like they're gonna
see this and they're probably gonna call and wonder who
did it. And when we've ever done that in the past,
it's always kind of fun because and again this is
(17:50):
in all humility. The giving piece is just what I
enjoy doing. Our family just loves this, and so because
it generates such great memories, but it also we just
find them more. Or you give, opportunities tend to come
your way. So in our Sunday school class back in
the day, there was a couple who was really struggling
financially and all of us kind of chipped in to
(18:11):
help them put the deposit down for a new roof. Okay,
and all of us did this anonymously, nobody, nobody fest
up to it. Well, they happen to call me and say, hey,
do you know anything about this? And I have never
had a better poker face than than any time in
my life. So I lied for the greater good, and
(18:32):
that's what I what I hold on to here. But
it was so fun just to see the excitement and
to see how when someone else impacts you, how good
it makes them feel. But now I've learned it's really
the giver that receives the most blessing. So to me,
it's more fun. So the whole model of the book
is I call it good money revolution, meaning when you're
you're making more money, then you can do more good.
(18:55):
And then when you're doing more good and motivate you
to make more money, and the cycle continues and continues.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
So truly you do believe then that the more money
you have that's going to lead to greater levels of happiness.
Not because you are self centered and you're spending it
on yourself to buy a CD which feels a new
album today, or some times music subscription there you go,
but because you're actually spending it on others. Not that
somebody would do this, but someone could hear this and say, okay,
(19:24):
well I'm just going to give away everything. I'm going
to live in poverty. Like I guess someone could take
it to an extreme. Have you seen in your research,
given your clients, given you personally, that there is I
guess a type of diminishing return to the happiness that
you would receive by giving away more and more money.
Speaker 3 (19:44):
Yeah, there could be. What I do is I tie
it back to my motivation. Okay. So I'll give you
an example. There is a pastor that we have an
arrangement with and he does a lot of overseas mission work,
and so we just told him, whenever you need a
ticket to pay for you and your wife to go
over there to do your mission work, we will pay
for that ticket. Okay. Now, inevitably, the month when that
(20:09):
email request comes out of the blue has been a
down month for me financially, okay. And so what that
predecision allows me to do then is say yes, and
then we figure out how to do it. And what
I find is giving can be structured in different ways.
Some people like to give based on money they already have.
(20:30):
Now that what I'm going to say next is going
to sound crazy, crazy, but it may connect with a
few of your listeners. Some people like to give with
money they don't yet have, and so they make the
commitment to give, and now they know, I need to
put my butt in gear to grow my business hit
this goal, so I can fulfill that commitment. It's kind
(20:52):
of called backing, you know, putting yourself against the wall,
burning the ships. And you got to make this happen.
So that can be a way where you're both giving,
but also now you have a sudden fire underneath you
to motivate you. I've got to go grow this thing
to do and make the commitment that I made. So
what I find is whatever motivates you is what to
(21:13):
tie into. So let's say you're listening right now and
you say, I really feel like all the plastic bottles
in the ocean it's just wrong. I want to do
something about that. Or when I pull up to the
stop line and I see a homeless person with a
cardboard sign, I want to do something meaningful about that.
For me, I look back and say, I wish people
(21:35):
would have invested more in me when I was in
high school. Nobody did, and so I don't want that
to occur to somebody else. And so that's why investing
in young people is so passionate. So once you figure
that out, then it's not a matter of well, I've
got to wait until I've got a thousand dollars. I've
got to wait until I've got ten thousand dollars to
make any impact. What I'm going to share with you
flies in the face of how math typically works. Okay,
(21:58):
So we need to suspend math for a second, because
most people believe that the future value of money is
always greater than the present value. I mean, that just
makes sense, right. But what we find is when people
wait to give, there is a cost of impact that occurs,
because if I give a smaller amount today, there's an impact.
(22:19):
If I wait, there's an impact that's lost, even though
the impact may be greater down the road. So when
it comes to giving, what I would tell people is
the present value is always greater than the future value.
If you have five dollars today and you're tight on
your budget, when you hold that five dollars bill in
(22:39):
your hand, you have control. You may not feel like
any other part of your life is in controller. Now
you're totally out of control. Everybody else is telling you
what to do with your life. But without five dollars,
you have a moment where you get to choose what
you do with it. And that is powerful. That's agency
at its highest level. So if you want to give
(23:00):
the five dollars or ten dollars, twenty dollars, the key
is that you do it, and even better, enroll your
family in it. If you have young kids, this is
especially powerful to bring your kids around the dinner table
and say, hey, we've set a family goal. We're going
to give this twenty dollars or fifty dollars, whatever the
dollar amount is, even five dollars. Is there a cause
(23:21):
kids that you care about. Is there a family at
school that you've heard about them may be struggling. Well,
now your kids have their giving antennas up, and you're
training them in very, very practical ways that they can
help have a giving heart but also make a real
impact in people's lives. I like you, all right.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
I feel like we have set the table well on
this one and we got to get into some practicalities.
So Derek will dive into more questions with you about
being generous right after this.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
All right, we are back from the break talking with
Derek Kinney about being generous, and Derek, I feel like
it can be hard to feel like that you have
the ability to be generous, like I mean, especially like
these days. If you're if you're like the Samish generation,
you're trying to you know, you're thinking about your kids,
You're also thinking about your folks. You're trying to be generous,
but you're also trying to hit your own personal saving skulls, Like,
(24:17):
what do you think of someone out there who's trying
to find some balance between saving and investing effectively while
still being generous. Is it just a matter of almost
suspend not suspending reality. But just what I heard you
saying before the break was tying your generous giving, how
you handle your money in regards to others, to a
greater purpose, to something larger than yourself. Can you unpack that.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
Some for us? Yeah? Well, what I have found, and
again this may not be a popular opinion because most
people are living paycheck to paycheck, or the real living
below that, and wonder I don't even have a dollar
extra to give. What I find, though, is when you
decide what's important to you, and everything changes. And what
I would say to that would be if there is
(25:01):
a cause that you want to start giving to. Now,
I'm a believer, so I grew up, you know, tithing
ten percent of my church, et cetera, et cetera. So
ten percent is always coming off the top. And how
I do that is the first of the month is
when that ten percent comes off the top. So I'm
not in a situation where there's more month left than
there is money and then waiting at the end of
(25:22):
the month to say, whatever's left over is what I'll give,
and I'll save or I'll invest. It's like I treat
it like a bill, not how I feel about it,
but how I treat it so that psychologically I know
I've taken care of my most important things first. But
one of the things that we have found, and I
don't talk about this a ton in the book, but
this is just is I talk to other successful people
(25:43):
who have gone from middle class to millionaire. Which is
really my matra now is helping people escape the middle
class and become millionaires. Is they had a generous mentality
before they had the ability financially to be generous. And
what that means is that they weren't thinking about huge
dollar amounts. They were just thinking about In most cases,
(26:05):
even though you may feel like you're dirt poor, you
have more money than a lot of the other world
has in terms of a percentage, and so giving a
small amount of that right off the top, it just
makes you feel better and it kind of takes you
outside of your own problems. Because we can get so
self centered and so focused on just what's our life
(26:26):
and what's happening in our little bubble here. But when
you give, you're leaving your bubble temporarily and you're helping
someone else in their bubble make it a better bubble.
And to me, that's a great way to live.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
I love that.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
We say that sometimes too when it comes to investing,
Like sometimes folks they don't have a ton of money
to invest, but it's like, you know what, even just
investing a little bit, it makes you an investor. It's
a skill, it's a practice that you develop, and.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
It changes your psychology to a certain degree in a
helpful way. And I think the same is true of giving,
even if it's a small amount. It's like, now you're
like on the path towards a generous person. And identity
has changed a little bit too. You're like, now I
am a giver. Yeah, there's something really healthy about that. Derek.
We've talked a lot about giving. But it's interesting a
lot of what you talk about in the book too,
is increasing your earnings, and the goal of that, in
(27:13):
many ways is so that you can be a more
generous giver. But yeah, what practical tips do you have
for people who might say, man, Derek, earning more. It
feels like a tall task. I'm over here making eighteen
dollars an hour or something, and it doesn't feel like
there are promotion prospects in the near term horizon. How
(27:34):
do I go about making more money?
Speaker 3 (27:35):
Well, this is something I'm very passionate about because my
first job out of college, I was passed over for
a big bonus and it really made me upset because
I worked as hard as everybody else, but it came
down this selective decision the boss made of well, the
engineers are more important than the marketing person, therefore no
bonus for you. And it just taught me that when
you put yourself in a position of letting someone else
(27:58):
dictate your value, than you are devaluing yourself. Okay, I
mean this may sound very, very harsh, but all of
us have a dollar amount on our heads as we're
walking around, and what that means is that we're letting
whatever we're getting paid right now dictate. Well, our value is.
You know, when you cash your check every friday, every
(28:19):
other friday, you're agreeing with the company that you're with
that that's your value because you keep cashing that check.
And there's only one way to change that and add
is to ask yourself, in my current job, can I
get a raise? But more importantly, the bigger question is
not just can I get a raised, but in twenty
twenty five, what is the income goal that I have.
(28:44):
So when you ask that question and you pull back
from your current job situation and the limitations you're in
and whether it's true or not, or you're able to
get a raise or not. Let's say that you're making
right now seventy five thousand dollars a year, and your
goal is I want to make one hundred thousand dollars.
Well in your current job, that may sound like a
far fetched deal, and it may be. Let's say you're
a teacher, Well, you are not going to get a
(29:07):
raise unless every other teacher in your district gets a raise.
That's just the reality. Or if you're a nurse or
a pilot, or you know, you work on the shop floor,
whatever that is. And so you got to ask yourself, okay,
a can I even get a raise in my job?
And it's a valid question to ask that way, you're
defining reality. So if the question is no, I cannot
(29:29):
get a raise in my current job, then you have
to ask yourself, is this a job I want to
stay in because I'm passionate about it. I just enjoy it.
And then therefore we go then into this side hustle conversation. Okay,
or you may say, you know what, after looking at
this exercise that Derek talked about, I want to look
at getting a different job where I have the opportunity
to make more money. Well, now you're changing a job,
(29:51):
but I would submit to you also then looking at
the side hustle would be very beneficial because what we
learned in COVID was a lot of highly skilled, very
very educated, hard working, well meaning people have their entire
job category wiped out of no fault of their own.
And so I'm a huge proponent of you need to
(30:12):
own a portion of your income so that only you
can fire yourself. Only you can say to yourself, you're
not going to get paid more, but at least you're
the one making the decision. So now let's go to
the part about if I want to launch a side hustle.
So many people make the fatal mistake of well, i've
got to go back to college. I've got to get
this advanced degree, I've got to get the certification, and
(30:34):
then they keep delayed, delayed, delay, and opportunity does not
come their way. Instead, you want to ask yourself a
couple simple questions. What do your friends and your coworkers
normally ask for your help with. Are you the paper proofreader?
Are you the website developers? Are you the closet organizer?
Are you the trip planner? Or you the organization queen.
(30:56):
Are you the person that is able to take young
kids and teach them soccer so they can score a goal.
Whatever that skill set is that comes to you naturally
and normally that people just ask you for, that is
your focus group. I call it your financial freedom focus group,
telling you here's what you're good at, and therefore, because
you're good at it, and we think you're good at it,
(31:18):
and we keep asking you. Because you're good at it,
you can charge for it. So that's the easy way
to parlay your skill set into that side hustle. But
it all starts with what is my income goal for
this year? Once you have that, it becomes simply a
math problem of how you solve And I don't want
to oversimplify it, but if you're going to make more
money this year than last, year, you have to think differently,
(31:41):
and that's what I'm offering you today.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
I like how you call those friends your financial freedom
focus group. It's actually a free financial freedom focus group,
if you come to think of it. It reminds me
one of the lessons that you share that like that
we are in charge of teaching our kids is to
be the creator of money, not the receiver of it.
Which way that's specifically out there for kids. But I
mean you would encourage all folks to consider starting their business.
(32:07):
I mean there's a difference, I know, between like a
side hustle and starting your own business, But like, where
do you draw the line as far as folks who
might be cut out for owning their own business as
opposed to just kind of dabbling with the side hustle
in their free time.
Speaker 3 (32:20):
Well, first of all, the reason I made that common
in the book was it's important for parents not to
teach their kids based on only what they know. So
many parents, unwillingly and actually unknowingly I should say, give
their kids a lid above their heads only because the
(32:41):
parent themselves has a lid above their heads. And typically
that verbally sounds like you know, I don't want you
to do that because you might lose money, or I
don't want you to do that because you might get hurt,
or it might cost you the job. It's better to
play it safe. Only because their parents told them the
exact same thing. So I think right now the wise
(33:01):
parents says, Look, I may not know how to do this,
but let's learn together. Let's go on YouTube, let's buy
a course. Let's figure out how while you're in high
school or even in college, that you can launch something
that becomes your own that could parlay itself into something
full time. Now, what I would say to people listening
right now that are employees, and this I think is
(33:22):
one of the best hacks that you have. Most people
who are caching that paycheck have a paycheck mentality, and
that is they think like an employee. Whatever the title
is on their business card, that's what they do. If
I'm the marketing vice president, if I'm the general manager,
the middle level manager, the executive assistant, that's what I do.
(33:44):
And instead, we want to twist that just a bit
and really ask yourself the question, what is the problem
that you are helping the company solve? What is the
problem that you're helping them solve so they can make
more money, save more money, and be more productive. You see,
you're no longer the title on your business card. You
(34:05):
specialize in solving a unique problem. And when you see
yourself from that angle, your value goes up. And that
gives you the ability, then in your current job, to
say now that I'm a problem solver and I have
this unique ability and my skill set to solve this
problem and it's actually helping the company make, save and
(34:25):
be more productive. Now I can go to my boss
and say, hey, you know, I'm a problem solver in
this space, and here's what it's been doing for the company.
I've got a couple ideas I want to talk about
with you, and I like to get a bigger raise,
And based on if these things happen, let's pre negotiate
a what a salary increase could look like based on
the value that I'm providing. Now, what I didn't say,
(34:48):
and I want to be very careful to say this
is I didn't say, go knock on the boss's door
and demand a four percent raise or demand a ten
percent raise. That gets you nowhere. Okay, Ultimately, every boss
their favorite radio station is WIIFM what's in it for me?
And they listen to it twenty four to seven. And
(35:09):
so when you play to that and you let them know, look,
I'm a specialist. I love working here, but I want
to help the company make save and be more productive.
That opens the door for you to be viewed as
an entrepreneur inside of a corporate setting, which puts you
in very rare air.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
I like that because not everyone's cut out to be
an entrepreneur. Not everybody wants to go start their own business.
Some people like the security of a ninety five, or
they really like the job that they've been in for
fifteen years, and they're like not looking to torch it
in order to go start their own thing. So thinking
of yourself as an entrepreneur inside of a traditional business,
I think is a way that it makes sense for
(35:48):
a whole lot of people. So let's talk to the
people all right who say, all right, I've come up
with this idea, how much more money I want to
make in twenty twenty five, And let's say at the
end of the year they hit that number using some
of the stuff we just talked about, some of the
tactics we just discussed, how do you suggest people go
about increasing their giving as their income growth. Are you
(36:10):
focused on increasing the total dollar amount? Are you focused
on increasing the percentage? I know some people might say,
especially you know you mentioned growing up in church and
the tide than ten percent cool? Well, ten percent of
one hundred thousand is way more than ten percent of
fifty five thousand, which while I was making last year.
So I'm being more generous by default? Or are you
(36:31):
more intentional than even just that?
Speaker 3 (36:33):
Well, I like to keep it simple and so I
like to keep it as a percentage. And what I
find is because I like to give more, I mean,
if that's in your heart to say, look, I really
see this pain point other people are in. I want
to help solve that. And part of my rationallyst to
go make more money to do more good with it.
Then I'm just simply giving more as I'm making more.
(36:55):
And what I find is, now, again it's hard to
slice this hair in half if you will. I just
find personally and other people I've coached with this and
have put this into practice, is they are happier the
more generous they are, and they want to then make
more money to be more generous. Now it doesn't mean
that you have to that making money is the precursor
(37:19):
to being generous or being happy. But for motivated people
that I'm typically around, whether they be other financial advisors
or other entrepreneurs that I coach now to help them
grow their businesses, I call this your generosity purpose. It's
one of the five key steps that we weave into
their business because it's the antidote to burnout. You know,
if you're focused on I just got to hit this
(37:40):
sales goal and hit my revenue goal, and the goal
is just the goal, then there's no meaning or purpose
to that. But when you can think about even putting
a little page on your website or picturing your office
of the school building that if I can help you know,
grow this business, I can help make that happen, or
I can help these children be able to go to school.
(38:00):
It reminds you and your clients as they come in
your office, Hey, this is a bigger cause. And so
I just find the more you're making, the more motivate
you to be part of something big.
Speaker 2 (38:11):
I love it. Derek, We've got more to get to.
We're gonna talk about focusing on mindset, I guess, and
just how he can kind of break down some of
the barriers and the scripts that we've constructed over time.
We'll get to that more. Right after this.
Speaker 1 (38:30):
Our we're back Tore still talking with Derek Kenny talking
about making more money, which is awesome, and doing more
good with that money, being generous, which is also awesome,
two things I like, Matt and in his book, Derek,
you focus a good bit on mindset, especially towards the end.
I'm curious what are the typical maybe knee jerk, no,
thank you. This doesn't make sense to me responses you
(38:50):
get from people when you're kind of talking through this framework,
because I think, is it just limiting beliefs of how
much money people can make? Is it this un willingness
to think they can be as generous as they as
they would hope? Like, what sort of pushback do you get?
Speaker 3 (39:05):
Well, let me tell you a quick story. So I
was in the office on a Saturday morning catching up
on some things, and I saw my voicemail like blinking,
and I had this decision to make do I do
I press it and listen to it and maybe get
off track or just keep working. And I just felt
this voice inside say you need to listen to that message.
When I pressed it, I did not expect to hear
what I heard. It was a woman's frantic voice. It said, Derek, Derek,
(39:28):
I know it's Saturday. I hope you get this. They're
about to send me to jail. I need your help
right now. Let me ask you guys this, Has anybody
ever said that to you that if you don't help them,
they're going to send you to jail.
Speaker 2 (39:41):
No, I'll just ask for time to get a friend's
motorcycle because he was in jail.
Speaker 3 (39:45):
There you go.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
Matn has a lot of friends that have been to jail, Derek,
if you hang around them long enough, you'll find that out.
Speaker 3 (39:50):
That'll be a different episode.
Speaker 2 (39:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (39:52):
Yeah, So I've never had anybody say this to me before.
So I quickly called her back. I knew that bad
news would not age well until Monday, and I said,
I just got your message. What happened? She said, Derek,
I got this letter in the mail and it says
they're going to send me to jail. And I said,
first of all, what does the letter say? Well, she
described it, and she said, basically, it says you wrote
a check and there was not sufficient funds to cover
(40:15):
the check, and I said, wait a minute, why do
you think that means they're going to send you to jail.
So she begins to tell me a story. She says, Derek,
when I was seven years old, I overheard a conversation
that my dad had with a local store owner, and
the girl at the time heard the person tell her dad,
you bounce this check, and I know you did it
(40:36):
on purpose. I'm going to send the cops to your
house and haul you off to jail. So, as a
seven year old girl, she grew believing that if you
bounce a check or make any type of substantial financial mistake,
they're going to haul you off to jail. Now I
told her on the phone, I said, first of all,
they're not going to send you to jail. There's no
need to get fitted for the orange jumpsuit over the weekend.
(40:58):
You're good. I will call you Monday. I'll help you
manually move money from savings that checking will cover it.
But more importantly, come in the office next week. Let's
talk about this. So she comes in the office, and
keep in mind, on the outside she looks like the
most successful woman there is. She's been a client of
mine for ten years, but she rarely ever took my
(41:18):
investment advice. She was so risk averse, and she always
complained about not making what she deserved and getting passed
over for the promotions. So we dug in that visit
together in the office, and what we found was that
these money beliefs that she had held since she was
seven years old, that if you make a mistake, you
go to jail, if you make any type of bad
(41:39):
financial decision, then you don't deserve to have money, that
you don't deserve to have the finer things in life.
Once we unpacked all that and she began to realize,
oh my gosh, I didn't realized that was the case.
She began a journey that within three months, a shockingly
short amount of time, she got a twenty five thousand
(41:59):
dollars years, got the promotion she wanted, and most importantly,
she finally took my investment advice. But but here was this
woman who on the outside looked like she had it
all together, but on the inside she was a wilting flower.
And I thought to myself, what a great example that
she's not the only one. And even in my own
(42:21):
client base, I didn't know it at the time. So
I began to have more open dialogues about Look. I know,
people talk about their their their mindset, and it can
sound kind of woo woo and fortune cookie ish, but ultimately,
what you believe to be true is typically what comes
to you, you know, when you when you look at
these big sporting events and they go in the locker
(42:41):
room with the camera and typically the athletes, men and women,
they've got their headphones on, their eyes are closed. Are
they taking a nap? Are they thinking about how they're
going to miss the shot? No, They're visualizing what success
and winning looks like. And so that transformed my thinking
about with my clients. They weren't just hiring me to
be their financial advisor, but almost their mental guide in
(43:04):
terms of, look, we need to be thinking well so
that we can build well your portfolio.
Speaker 2 (43:09):
I love that. I think actually, Rabbi Daniel Lappin, he
did a little blurb about the beginning of your book,
and I think about how so I actually read his
book like fifteen twenty years ago, and it had a
pretty massive impact on how I see money right, and
it literally informed how I viewed earning money and the
value that we essentially put out into the world, which
(43:30):
is I mean, it's real, so much to your message.
What is your best device for folks out there who
have realized that they have been thinking about money all wrong? Like,
what is your advice for them to flip the script?
Because it feels like it takes longer to change your
mindset than it does to do almost anything else within
personal finance. How would you recommend for folks to address that?
Speaker 3 (43:49):
Well, two things, And I say this kind of kind
of cheeky, but don't die before you're dead. Don't have
this mentality, then well I'm too old. What I've done,
I'm locked in. That's the life I'm going to have.
Speaker 1 (44:02):
So you say you can teach an old dog new tricks.
Speaker 3 (44:04):
Yes, and you can teach multiple types of dogs and
even cats new tricks. But we want to take that
piece of paper, crumble it up, and throw it out
the window. And what I would tell people is, look,
we only get one life, and so what you wanted
to be, it gives it the best chance for it
to be that way. And one of the exercises I
give to people, and this is going to sound crazy,
(44:26):
but it's step one of what I call the Millionaire
Money Map. And that is set five meaningful goals, and
one of the exercises of that is after you set
those goals is to write on a note card your
ideal year as though it's already happened, and you're writing
down twenty twenty five was my best year ever financially.
(44:49):
I paid down this debt, I saved this amount. My
relationship with my spouse is the best it's ever been.
My kids and I finally have opened communication. We're going
out to dinner with friends once a month. This was
the best year I've ever had. The whole point is
that you're writing with as much clarity and detail the
ideal year that you want that you may be thinking,
(45:12):
how can I possibly get this, but you're writing it
in a way where your brain and your subconscious mind thinks, well,
I guess that already happened. We need to go make
that happen. And so part of that is this jolt
of reminding yourself and looking at that note card on
a daily basis, reminding yourself, this is my ideal year.
Anything less, I'm settling for less. And when you picture that,
(45:35):
it begins to focus your mind on what's possible, because
the reality is life will come at you hard. You know,
I'm a big goal setter, and if I don't look
at my goals every couple of days, I can forget
about them. You're easily distracted. There's kids needs, there's you know,
my aging parents' needs, there's business needs, friends needs, all
this stuff happening, and without you taking a few minutes
(45:57):
every day to determine that's where I'm going, and I
want to make sure them on the path to get there,
you can easily end up someplace you never intended to be.
Speaker 1 (46:05):
Yeah, it's a great point. It's easy easier to meander
through life than it is to go in a specific
direction that you have outlined for yourself. So, Derek, that's
great advice. Hey, thank you so much for joining us
today on the podcast. Where can our listeners find out
more about you and more about your book?
Speaker 3 (46:22):
The best place would be to go to anyone can
become a millionaire? Dot Com is our website. There's also
a free downloadable that's been very very helpful for people.
They tell us that you can go to get the
rays you Want dot com. Get the Rays you Want
dot Com. It's a downloadable about how to get paid
more in your current job, and then Instagram is a
(46:42):
great way to follow us at Derek T. Kenny.
Speaker 1 (46:45):
Awesome, very cool. Thank you so much for joining us.
We appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (46:48):
Thank you, Matt, Joel, this was a great conversation. Thanks
for having me.
Speaker 2 (46:51):
All right, Joe. I feel like this is a hopefully
a thought provoking episode for a lot of folks out there.
This is one of the things that you can do
with your money, one of the ways you can quote
unquote spend it that we don't often talk about, right, Like,
you earn it, you can spend it, you can invest it,
but we don't often talk about giving it away.
Speaker 1 (47:08):
I think too, those two things combined, they often feel
like polar opposites. Make more money, give more money away.
It's like, oh, yeah, which direction will I have to choose,
and Derek saying no, no, no, you could choose both.
Speaker 2 (47:19):
You can do both.
Speaker 1 (47:19):
I think he's I think he's spot on. And maybe
that's my big takeaway is like those things, those things
are not in direct opposition to each other. They are
not polar opposites by any stretch of the imagination. And
in fact, you can be more generous the more you make,
and that driving principle of wanting to be more generous
can actually be the fuel to help you think more
(47:40):
creatively about making more money. So it's something I hadn't
really thought of in those terms until I stumbled upon
Derek's work and dove into his book, and then I
was like, wait a second, you're right, like those things
actually are not only not mutually exclusive, I think they
can intertwine really nicely together and push you in a
really positive right.
Speaker 2 (48:00):
Totally. Yeah, And on a practical note, one of the
ways that you can actually like implement a plan to
give your money away, And this is when he was
kind of talking about structuring it, like some folks like
myself needs some organization. And one of the things he said,
and he's like, this might be a big controversial, but
to commit to giving that money away even before some
of that money is necessarily completely in hand, a little
(48:20):
pre committing. Yeah, well, and like a lot of organizations
do this, but that's a pledge. It's a giving pledge.
It's saying, hey, I'm going to commit to giving this
amount of money, and like you've set sort of the standard.
It's almost like I was going to jump in and
interrupt them, but I didn't want to interrupt them, but like,
it's like signing up for a race, and this is
something that you've been doing more of lately, Joe. But
once you've signed up for a race, it's on your
mind and you're like, all right, well, I know I've
(48:41):
got to do that. That's a great And so because
of that, that's going to kind of motivate me to
get my butt out there. I'm gonna freaking hit the trails.
Speaker 1 (48:47):
If I've got a half marathon on, you know, on
the calendar three months from now.
Speaker 2 (48:51):
You don't want it to suck the entire time.
Speaker 1 (48:53):
It will motivate me to get out and run next week,
right exactly.
Speaker 2 (48:57):
Yeah. So I liked how he mentioned that because on
one and someone who's more financially I guess conservative would
push back and say, no, no, no, you can't. You
can't commit to giving money away that that you don't
have yet. But I see the sort of like dangle
the carrot motivational side of that. But then he was
talking about making your giving a priority and just at
the top of the month, making sure to give that away,
(49:19):
Like you have the ability to prioritize that giving, to
treat it like a bill, not from a mental standpoint, right, like,
not from like a oh I got to do this thing,
like no, hopefully folks are giving happily, joyfully, right. But
I think the point that he was trying to make
is that by making sure you're doing that first, well,
you have no way of having run out of money
because I guess what, you already give that money.
Speaker 3 (49:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (49:41):
So yeah, I like that. I felt like those were
a couple of good practical tips, right. But let's get
back to the beer that you and I enjoyed it
during this episode, which was a Lower Falls IPA by
Highland Brewing out of Asheville, North Carolina.
Speaker 1 (49:53):
Would you think, man, this is what the kids refer
to as a session ipa.
Speaker 2 (49:57):
Totally is It doesn't say session anywhere on here.
Speaker 1 (50:00):
That is what this is, yeah, and which basically means
it's low abb and that's kind of nice. It Also
it just means it's a very chill vibe coming forth
from this ipa. And we're used to the big, heavy hitters,
the mouthbusters, the ones that just assault your taste buds.
This was nice, clean, and to me, it had more
(50:22):
flavor than most session IPAs too. I'm thinking good for
something that's three percent or whatever. This had actually a
lot of IPA flavor going on. This is like one
of those I would put regularly in my fridge if
I'm like, I want some beer on my tongue, but
I don't want something massively abrasive and huge.
Speaker 2 (50:37):
It's light, citrusy fresh. These are all thoughts that were
going through my mind as I was drinking it. By
the way, it's called Lower Falls IPA. Do you know
what the lower Falls is referring to?
Speaker 1 (50:46):
I'm guessing somewhere in Nashville.
Speaker 2 (50:49):
It's I'm pretty sure it's I'm assuming it's referring to
Grade Yard Falls, which is like a series of waterfalls
up there.
Speaker 3 (50:55):
There's upper Falls, Lower Falls.
Speaker 2 (50:56):
Awesome swimming spot in the middle of the summer, a
great way to feel refers not unlike drinking this beer.
But for your story, that's gonna be.
Speaker 3 (51:03):
It for this episode.
Speaker 2 (51:04):
We'll make sure to link to some of the resources
that Derek mentioned there at the end, and you can
find those up on the website at Howtomoney dot com. Buddy,
that's going to be it. So until next time, Best
Friends Out, Best Friends Out,
Welcome to Had of Money. I'm Joel Matt's and today
we're talking make more money, Do More Good with Derrick Kenney. Yeah, so, Joel,
(00:26):
I would argue that money isn't inherently like a good
or bad thing.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
You know, it's not holy, it's not evil. But I
do think it comes down to what you do with
it that makes the world a better or a worse place.
I think that's not the heart of Derek Kenney's best
selling book Good Money Revolution. What are you actually doing
with your money? You know, like, what action are you
going to take? That's the big question. And we're joined
by Derek today, who works to inspire individuals to use
(00:53):
their wealth in order to align with their personal values
and to make more money so that they can create
even more of a positive impact out there in the world.
We think hopefully folks will be motivated to make a
bigger difference after hearing our conversation today. But Derek Kenny,
thank you so much for joining us on how to Money.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
Hey, my pleasure, Matt and Joel. It's a pleasure to
be with you both, and I'm looking forward to this conversation.
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Of course, Yeah, us too. Derek. First question we ask
everyone who comes on is what do you like to
suplourgeh On gives us a little insight into you, but
also we know you're saving your investing for your future,
but you also got to like spend money on fun
stuff in here and now too. What's that for you?
Speaker 3 (01:32):
Well, it's interesting. So I will readily splurge on of course,
hour Patch kids, those thick hershey bars that I love.
I just love those things, man, They're so good. Really,
anything that connects me better to my kids, you know,
for example, if one of my kids comes and says, hey,
could we can we download this or do this or that,
(01:53):
and we're going to spend time together in the geeb
maybe listening to it. I'm all about that. But it's
interesting though. I was thinking a little bit more deeply though.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
You know.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
The book is about making more money doing more good,
and it's really a reflection of how I am and
my deepest part of my soul. And so I would
readily splurge to support a cause that somebody else is
involved in. You know, if I was going to spend
money kind of on myself or choose to to donate
it or support a charity. I would do that for
(02:24):
some reason. It just just motivates me. But U but
also I mean, I guess a slurge might be eating
out a good prime rib somewhere, a good thing.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
You.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
Yeah, that would be that'd be a nice splurge.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
There, No, no, I think that's I think that's great.
It's very on points as far as being generous with others.
But you know, I also like the splurges on candy,
different things to connect you with your kids.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
That's yeah, patch kids awesome. That's a double way mee
because you get to Joel's all about it. Enjoy them yourself,
but also enjoy them with your children. That's a I
like that.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Derek. Let's kind of get to the like. One of
the core thesis of your book is the fact that
you say that money is like a good thing, but
not everybody feels that way. Like in our culture today,
there's a lot of wealth and money and people who
are rich are evil. Can you present in arguments against that?
Speaker 3 (03:13):
Well, So this is where this came from. So I
built one of the nation's top financial planning companies over
the past twenty five years. I sold it a couple
of years ago and What I found is is I
would talk to people, this vibe would come out in
their conversation. They would say things like, well, Derek, you know,
if I'm too successful, people won't like me. And if
(03:36):
I make too much money, people will think maybe I
cheated my way to do it. Or you know, these
people that own major, major companies that provide great value
to people, those people have to be oppressing their workers
and hogging all the money for themselves. And as I
heard this more and more, I was beside myself because
I've always enjoyed money. I've enjoyed making it and investing it.
(03:59):
And what led me to then build a business to
do that for other people? And I began to delve
deeper and I realized there's sort of this cultural vibe
that says, you know, in the Bible, it talks about
the love of money is the root of all evil.
And I think we can take that way wait, wait, wait,
way way too far. And it's not saying that the
love of money causes your life to be terrible and
(04:22):
you're going to lose everything. It's just what are you
putting your belief in and all of your hope And
is it money or is it what money can do
for you. And so that's where this kernel was born
out of. Was don't say to yourself, I don't want
to make money because I don't want to be viewed
as that evil, vile, greedy person. Instead, let's reframe that
(04:46):
and kind of rescript the model here and say, go
make a lot of money by adding a lot of
value to people's lives, but then use that money for good.
And then what happens when we do that? It motivates
you in a fresh way. It's the antidote to burnout.
It's the antidote to lack of meaning and purpose by
(05:07):
when you have a cause. We'll talk more about this
as we get deeper into this, but when you have
a cause that you care deeply about and motivates you
to think outside of yourself, and you want to do
everything you can to help that cause and help a
person impacted by that cause improve their lives.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
So I am curious about like the pursuit of money.
You're saying, hey, even pursuing more money not evil into itself,
as long as it's not maybe your core purpose. Is
there a limit though, to that kind of thinking? I
think we've just seen so many people say, well, money's
not bad, so let me go make a lot of it.
And some of those people have been maybe lost to
(05:46):
what I might call the perpetual hamster wheel of living
to make money. And a lot of those people then
have regrets on their deathbed, like I did make making
money too central to my life and I probably should
have lived in a more well rounded way. Like I
don't know, what would you say.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
To that, Well, it's funny you say that because one
of my favorite movies, you know, Brave Heart and other
movies like that, there's the main character in the movie
that says, if only I had lived a life of
more meaning, and if I had been kinder, and all
these regrets. And really what the book's central purposes is
to be against regret. We're against living a regretful life.
(06:24):
And so I am highly motivated by money, and it's
what drives me to be a good financial advisor. And
I think, you know, build and new worth and so forth,
you have to really enjoy it. But what I find
is when I first began building my net worth and
I set a goal to become a millionaire, it was
all about becoming a millionaire. And that's the only lens
(06:46):
I saw through and what it led me to do
then was maybe make some shortcuts in my relationships and
not spending as much time with family and friends. I
was just driven. I was a driven puppy to achieve
this goal, and I wanted it now and didn't want
to wait for it. But then when I had this
epiphany that awakened my eyes to say, man, if I
(07:06):
tie a cause to my cash and profits to my
purpose and a movement to my money, you know, meaning
to it, that made it palatable of like, why do
I want to go make money? And it wasn't just
the burnout of I just want to build a bulging
bank account. Now there was a real purpose tied to it.
And once I did that, now I don't believe that
(07:27):
there's any limit. You know, how much is enough? I
don't know. You know, that's up to each person to
figure out. But what I do know is you can't
outgive yourself. You know, when there's a cause and there's
something you're passionate about, let that be the fuel to
motivate you. Because you're either going to be a driven,
lonely person or a driven person who is making the
(07:49):
world better. And when you lay your head on the
pillow at night. One of them lets you sleep a
whole lot better.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
All right, So, well, you said you sold your financial
planning company. I mean you, I'm curious like as far
as like when it comes to like your own personal journey,
and you just shared that you got to a point
to where like your eyes were open and it seemed
like you sort of pivoted. Was that difficult for you
to do? Like, was it difficult for you to sell
your company and sort of change your purpose or was
(08:15):
that something that you were motivated to do, Like were
you wanting to get out of it? I'm curious what
caused that change to come about?
Speaker 3 (08:22):
Yeah, two things. Let me go back and take you
back to a twenty six year old who was a
brand new financial advisor. So I was stuck in a
dead end job at this very small technology company and
full worth and I got passed over for a big
bonus and two other people in the company did as well.
And it was this moment where I had to think
to myself, do I want to let myself be dictated
(08:47):
my value by someone else? And typically that's going to
be a four percent value increase every year with a
raise or do I want to bet on myself? And
so I'm twenty six. I didn't have a whole lot
of risk. There wasn't a whole lot of money in
my own bank account, so I chose the financial advisor path.
I saw my parents struggle, their friends struggle, and I
(09:07):
didn't want to see that anymore. I wanted to help
people like my parents do better financially, and so I
went back and got my licenses while I was working
full time and did that. But I didn't have the
gene pool of the popular kids. I didn't have all
the community contacts, the country club membership. I look like
a thirteen year old is really what I look like,
(09:29):
And here I'm asking people to invest with me. But
I had this passion, and the passion was I wanted
to go back to my alma mater high school, because
nobody ever did. When I was a senior in high school,
no successful business person ever came back and gave us
a vision as to what our future could look like.
As a high school student, they always said, just take
(09:51):
your math and science and history and everything will work
out fine. Well, nobody gave us a sense of how
do these things really work? In the real world, and
I said, that's just not right. Talked to the principal
and he said, yeah, we'd love to have you. So
I came armed with a fifty dollars Amazon gift card
and a twenty five dollars Amazon gift card, and I
gave the twenty five dollars one to a student of
the month and the fifty dollars one to a teacher
(10:13):
of the month. And it was my small, itty bitty
way of breathing life into these people, giving them a
sense of how much they mean to people, and to
the students, letting them know how bright their future was,
and to the teacher, letting them know that, you know,
you're the type of teacher that on Thanksgiving and Christmas
is years from now, it'll be your name that gets
brought up as having made that impact on students' lives.
(10:34):
And I thank you for that. Well, I didn't think
much of it, but we took a picture of the
teacher and the student, myself and the principal and put
this in the newspaper back in the day, well a
couple months ago. By I'm doing this pretty consistently. I
get a phone call and there's a woman that says,
and what she said to me completely changed how I
thought about my business. And she said, Derek, we know
you're young, but we want to invest our portfolio with you.
(10:58):
And I should not have set it this way, but
I said, why, I'm brand new, don't really know what
I'm doing. She said, we know you've got great credibility
we see in the community. But she said, we want
to work with you because you care about what we
care about. And it was those words that changed everything
for me, and I realized, wait a minute, this is
(11:20):
not about being the best looking, or the smartest, or
having the most contacts and relationships. It's simply about me
caring about what the people I want to work with
also care about. And so I began to do these
recognitions at all the local high schools, even some of
the elementary schools, and that lady became my first million
(11:41):
dollar client. And what it taught me was people are
drawn like a magnet, first of all, to a professional
that knows what they're doing. You can't give money and
be a complete loser in what you're doing, Okay, you
just can't. You need to be a pro and be
a special stat it. But when you can solve people's
(12:02):
financial pain points, and you have a cause that when
they work with you, they feel like they're part of
something bigger. When you combine those two powerful elements, it
becomes like a magnet that literally just sucks people in
who you want to work with. And that's what happened
and how we built our practice so quickly.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
So you yeah, I mean it sounds like you had
that vision, You had that mission kind of from day one,
as opposed to sort of an evolution of your own
actual I guess personal journey.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
Yeah. Yeah, it was funny because I enjoyed, you know,
even as gosh, I was even in high school. I
would set goals every year and I still have some
of them in a file downstairs. I go back and
look at them periodically. But I was just a very
gold driven person, and I realized when it came to money,
it was so much fun because being a financial advisor
was like this ultimate win win job. It was like
(12:56):
the more money that I help you, the client make,
the more money I get to make. It was this
beautiful thing. We're both in the same boat rowing together.
It was amazing that concept. And so what happened was
what I realized if I want to really grow this thing.
People loved a cause, and so mine happened to be
supporting and investing in young people. So we would have
(13:19):
like our holiday event every year and a nice place
to recognize and really make our clients feel valued VIPs.
But I would also have the principle of one of
the schools be there that I would give these awards out,
and we'd even have a few students sometimes, and I
got to tell you, I thought they were there to
hear me talk, but they weren't. The highlight was hearing
(13:42):
these students talk about, Hey, because you're working with this
group and they're recognizing us, you know, this is the
impact that's having on us. And the teachers talked about
that of the principle, and what it happened was it
became like this moat around our business because every day
I learned that all of my clients were also getting
(14:04):
prospected by other financial advisors to become their next client.
And one of the best ways to defend against that
was not to promise high returns and lower fees and
all the things that people playing that comparison financial advisor game.
Instead was provide great service, even charge at a premium
for what I was doing. But the cause is what
(14:25):
drew people in. It made especially busy people who want
to give but they don't know how and they don't
have the time to do it. It allowed them to
feel like they were part of something bigger by working
with us. That's cool. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
I would say, Derek that our country is a fairly
philanthropic country. Individuals tend to be, by and large, reasonably generous,
at least when compared to what happens in many other
countries around the world. And one of the things you said,
although I don't know, that might be changing a little
bit and probably has, it seems like over the last
few years where maybe they're more mega donors and fewer
(14:59):
small time But you say that giving money away produces
real and lasting happiness, which for all of the I mean.
Arthur Brooks writes a column in The Atlantic about happiness.
How you get how you become happy? Right? And is
that the ticket? Is it giving money away? I mean,
is that is that how we get there?
Speaker 3 (15:18):
I think it's one of the ways. And I think
it depends on what your individual motivation is. For example,
if you like to make money like I just enjoy
making money. Then for me, part of the joy is
giving money away, specifically anonymously, if at all possible. That's
even more fun. But there was a study done a
guy named doctor Michael Norden. He was a I believe
(15:39):
a Harvard professor. He did this experiment on a college
campus a couple of years ago. I right about this
in the book. And he gave a certain group of
students a couple envelopes and they each had twenty dollars
in them, and to the one group, he said, by
five o'clock today, I want you to spend this on yourself.
You can buy whatever you want for twenty dollars. Then
(16:00):
we're going to have you come back and report how
you feel about it. Okay. Then the second group of students,
he gave them each an envelope with twenty dollars in it,
and he said, now I want you to give this
money away to someone. You could buy something for them,
you could just give it to them, you could do
something with them, and then report back at five o'clock
how you felt about it. So the day goes on,
they do what they do with their money. They come
(16:21):
back at five o'clock and doctor Norton asks. The group
of students who were asked to spend it on themselves,
and some bought like a music CD or some candy
or this kind of stuff, but none of them felt
any noticeable increase in happiness. It was just I bought something.
It was nice, but it didn't generate any type of
(16:42):
change in their happiness levels. Now, this other group talked
about what they did. You know, one bought a Teddy
Bear for a friend, one took their friend out for
snow cones, one bought some candy for a friend, et cetera,
et cetera. And surprisingly, two days later, that group still
felt an elevated level of happiness. And that was just
(17:05):
based on someone else giving them twenty dollars to give
away to someone else. And so the whole concept of
that experiment was that when you do give and you
do something for someone else, it gives you this lasting,
elevated happiness level. And one of the things I mean,
I think we can all relate to this is let's
say that you know somebody would really like something, and
(17:29):
let's say that it's a football, okay, and you anonymously give.
You might leave it on their mailbox or on their
door and you know they're gonna get it, and there's
excitement in the back of your mind, like they're gonna
see this and they're probably gonna call and wonder who
did it. And when we've ever done that in the past,
it's always kind of fun because and again this is
(17:50):
in all humility. The giving piece is just what I
enjoy doing. Our family just loves this, and so because
it generates such great memories, but it also we just
find them more. Or you give, opportunities tend to come
your way. So in our Sunday school class back in
the day, there was a couple who was really struggling
financially and all of us kind of chipped in to
(18:11):
help them put the deposit down for a new roof. Okay,
and all of us did this anonymously, nobody, nobody fest
up to it. Well, they happen to call me and say, hey,
do you know anything about this? And I have never
had a better poker face than than any time in
my life. So I lied for the greater good, and
(18:32):
that's what I what I hold on to here. But
it was so fun just to see the excitement and
to see how when someone else impacts you, how good
it makes them feel. But now I've learned it's really
the giver that receives the most blessing. So to me,
it's more fun. So the whole model of the book
is I call it good money revolution, meaning when you're
you're making more money, then you can do more good.
(18:55):
And then when you're doing more good and motivate you
to make more money, and the cycle continues and continues.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
So truly you do believe then that the more money
you have that's going to lead to greater levels of happiness.
Not because you are self centered and you're spending it
on yourself to buy a CD which feels a new
album today, or some times music subscription there you go,
but because you're actually spending it on others. Not that
somebody would do this, but someone could hear this and say, okay,
(19:24):
well I'm just going to give away everything. I'm going
to live in poverty. Like I guess someone could take
it to an extreme. Have you seen in your research,
given your clients, given you personally, that there is I
guess a type of diminishing return to the happiness that
you would receive by giving away more and more money.
Speaker 3 (19:44):
Yeah, there could be. What I do is I tie
it back to my motivation. Okay. So I'll give you
an example. There is a pastor that we have an
arrangement with and he does a lot of overseas mission work,
and so we just told him, whenever you need a
ticket to pay for you and your wife to go
over there to do your mission work, we will pay
for that ticket. Okay. Now, inevitably, the month when that
(20:09):
email request comes out of the blue has been a
down month for me financially, okay. And so what that
predecision allows me to do then is say yes, and
then we figure out how to do it. And what
I find is giving can be structured in different ways.
Some people like to give based on money they already have.
(20:30):
Now that what I'm going to say next is going
to sound crazy, crazy, but it may connect with a
few of your listeners. Some people like to give with
money they don't yet have, and so they make the
commitment to give, and now they know, I need to
put my butt in gear to grow my business hit
this goal, so I can fulfill that commitment. It's kind
(20:52):
of called backing, you know, putting yourself against the wall,
burning the ships. And you got to make this happen.
So that can be a way where you're both giving,
but also now you have a sudden fire underneath you
to motivate you. I've got to go grow this thing
to do and make the commitment that I made. So
what I find is whatever motivates you is what to
(21:13):
tie into. So let's say you're listening right now and
you say, I really feel like all the plastic bottles
in the ocean it's just wrong. I want to do
something about that. Or when I pull up to the
stop line and I see a homeless person with a
cardboard sign, I want to do something meaningful about that.
For me, I look back and say, I wish people
(21:35):
would have invested more in me when I was in
high school. Nobody did, and so I don't want that
to occur to somebody else. And so that's why investing
in young people is so passionate. So once you figure
that out, then it's not a matter of well, I've
got to wait until I've got a thousand dollars. I've
got to wait until I've got ten thousand dollars to
make any impact. What I'm going to share with you
flies in the face of how math typically works. Okay,
(21:58):
So we need to suspend math for a second, because
most people believe that the future value of money is
always greater than the present value. I mean, that just
makes sense, right. But what we find is when people
wait to give, there is a cost of impact that occurs,
because if I give a smaller amount today, there's an impact.
(22:19):
If I wait, there's an impact that's lost, even though
the impact may be greater down the road. So when
it comes to giving, what I would tell people is
the present value is always greater than the future value.
If you have five dollars today and you're tight on
your budget, when you hold that five dollars bill in
(22:39):
your hand, you have control. You may not feel like
any other part of your life is in controller. Now
you're totally out of control. Everybody else is telling you
what to do with your life. But without five dollars,
you have a moment where you get to choose what
you do with it. And that is powerful. That's agency
at its highest level. So if you want to give
(23:00):
the five dollars or ten dollars, twenty dollars, the key
is that you do it, and even better, enroll your
family in it. If you have young kids, this is
especially powerful to bring your kids around the dinner table
and say, hey, we've set a family goal. We're going
to give this twenty dollars or fifty dollars, whatever the
dollar amount is, even five dollars. Is there a cause
(23:21):
kids that you care about. Is there a family at
school that you've heard about them may be struggling. Well,
now your kids have their giving antennas up, and you're
training them in very, very practical ways that they can
help have a giving heart but also make a real
impact in people's lives. I like you, all right.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
I feel like we have set the table well on
this one and we got to get into some practicalities.
So Derek will dive into more questions with you about
being generous right after this.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
All right, we are back from the break talking with
Derek Kinney about being generous, and Derek, I feel like
it can be hard to feel like that you have
the ability to be generous, like I mean, especially like
these days. If you're if you're like the Samish generation,
you're trying to you know, you're thinking about your kids,
You're also thinking about your folks. You're trying to be generous,
but you're also trying to hit your own personal saving skulls, Like,
(24:17):
what do you think of someone out there who's trying
to find some balance between saving and investing effectively while
still being generous. Is it just a matter of almost
suspend not suspending reality. But just what I heard you
saying before the break was tying your generous giving, how
you handle your money in regards to others, to a
greater purpose, to something larger than yourself. Can you unpack that.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
Some for us? Yeah? Well, what I have found, and
again this may not be a popular opinion because most
people are living paycheck to paycheck, or the real living
below that, and wonder I don't even have a dollar
extra to give. What I find, though, is when you
decide what's important to you, and everything changes. And what
I would say to that would be if there is
(25:01):
a cause that you want to start giving to. Now,
I'm a believer, so I grew up, you know, tithing
ten percent of my church, et cetera, et cetera. So
ten percent is always coming off the top. And how
I do that is the first of the month is
when that ten percent comes off the top. So I'm
not in a situation where there's more month left than
there is money and then waiting at the end of
(25:22):
the month to say, whatever's left over is what I'll give,
and I'll save or I'll invest. It's like I treat
it like a bill, not how I feel about it,
but how I treat it so that psychologically I know
I've taken care of my most important things first. But
one of the things that we have found, and I
don't talk about this a ton in the book, but
this is just is I talk to other successful people
(25:43):
who have gone from middle class to millionaire. Which is
really my matra now is helping people escape the middle
class and become millionaires. Is they had a generous mentality
before they had the ability financially to be generous. And
what that means is that they weren't thinking about huge
dollar amounts. They were just thinking about In most cases,
(26:05):
even though you may feel like you're dirt poor, you
have more money than a lot of the other world
has in terms of a percentage, and so giving a
small amount of that right off the top, it just
makes you feel better and it kind of takes you
outside of your own problems. Because we can get so
self centered and so focused on just what's our life
(26:26):
and what's happening in our little bubble here. But when
you give, you're leaving your bubble temporarily and you're helping
someone else in their bubble make it a better bubble.
And to me, that's a great way to live.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
I love that.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
We say that sometimes too when it comes to investing,
Like sometimes folks they don't have a ton of money
to invest, but it's like, you know what, even just
investing a little bit, it makes you an investor. It's
a skill, it's a practice that you develop, and.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
It changes your psychology to a certain degree in a
helpful way. And I think the same is true of giving,
even if it's a small amount. It's like, now you're
like on the path towards a generous person. And identity
has changed a little bit too. You're like, now I
am a giver. Yeah, there's something really healthy about that. Derek.
We've talked a lot about giving. But it's interesting a
lot of what you talk about in the book too,
is increasing your earnings, and the goal of that, in
(27:13):
many ways is so that you can be a more
generous giver. But yeah, what practical tips do you have
for people who might say, man, Derek, earning more. It
feels like a tall task. I'm over here making eighteen
dollars an hour or something, and it doesn't feel like
there are promotion prospects in the near term horizon. How
(27:34):
do I go about making more money?
Speaker 3 (27:35):
Well, this is something I'm very passionate about because my
first job out of college, I was passed over for
a big bonus and it really made me upset because
I worked as hard as everybody else, but it came
down this selective decision the boss made of well, the
engineers are more important than the marketing person, therefore no
bonus for you. And it just taught me that when
you put yourself in a position of letting someone else
(27:58):
dictate your value, than you are devaluing yourself. Okay, I
mean this may sound very, very harsh, but all of
us have a dollar amount on our heads as we're
walking around, and what that means is that we're letting
whatever we're getting paid right now dictate. Well, our value is.
You know, when you cash your check every friday, every
(28:19):
other friday, you're agreeing with the company that you're with
that that's your value because you keep cashing that check.
And there's only one way to change that and add
is to ask yourself, in my current job, can I
get a raise? But more importantly, the bigger question is
not just can I get a raised, but in twenty
twenty five, what is the income goal that I have.
(28:44):
So when you ask that question and you pull back
from your current job situation and the limitations you're in
and whether it's true or not, or you're able to
get a raise or not. Let's say that you're making
right now seventy five thousand dollars a year, and your
goal is I want to make one hundred thousand dollars.
Well in your current job, that may sound like a
far fetched deal, and it may be. Let's say you're
a teacher, Well, you are not going to get a
(29:07):
raise unless every other teacher in your district gets a raise.
That's just the reality. Or if you're a nurse or
a pilot, or you know, you work on the shop floor,
whatever that is. And so you got to ask yourself, okay,
a can I even get a raise in my job?
And it's a valid question to ask that way, you're
defining reality. So if the question is no, I cannot
(29:29):
get a raise in my current job, then you have
to ask yourself, is this a job I want to
stay in because I'm passionate about it. I just enjoy it.
And then therefore we go then into this side hustle conversation. Okay,
or you may say, you know what, after looking at
this exercise that Derek talked about, I want to look
at getting a different job where I have the opportunity
to make more money. Well, now you're changing a job,
(29:51):
but I would submit to you also then looking at
the side hustle would be very beneficial because what we
learned in COVID was a lot of highly skilled, very
very educated, hard working, well meaning people have their entire
job category wiped out of no fault of their own.
And so I'm a huge proponent of you need to
(30:12):
own a portion of your income so that only you
can fire yourself. Only you can say to yourself, you're
not going to get paid more, but at least you're
the one making the decision. So now let's go to
the part about if I want to launch a side hustle.
So many people make the fatal mistake of well, i've
got to go back to college. I've got to get
this advanced degree, I've got to get the certification, and
(30:34):
then they keep delayed, delayed, delay, and opportunity does not
come their way. Instead, you want to ask yourself a
couple simple questions. What do your friends and your coworkers
normally ask for your help with. Are you the paper proofreader?
Are you the website developers? Are you the closet organizer?
Are you the trip planner? Or you the organization queen.
(30:56):
Are you the person that is able to take young
kids and teach them soccer so they can score a goal.
Whatever that skill set is that comes to you naturally
and normally that people just ask you for, that is
your focus group. I call it your financial freedom focus group,
telling you here's what you're good at, and therefore, because
you're good at it, and we think you're good at it,
(31:18):
and we keep asking you. Because you're good at it,
you can charge for it. So that's the easy way
to parlay your skill set into that side hustle. But
it all starts with what is my income goal for
this year? Once you have that, it becomes simply a
math problem of how you solve And I don't want
to oversimplify it, but if you're going to make more
money this year than last, year, you have to think differently,
(31:41):
and that's what I'm offering you today.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
I like how you call those friends your financial freedom
focus group. It's actually a free financial freedom focus group,
if you come to think of it. It reminds me
one of the lessons that you share that like that
we are in charge of teaching our kids is to
be the creator of money, not the receiver of it.
Which way that's specifically out there for kids. But I
mean you would encourage all folks to consider starting their business.
(32:07):
I mean there's a difference, I know, between like a
side hustle and starting your own business, But like, where
do you draw the line as far as folks who
might be cut out for owning their own business as
opposed to just kind of dabbling with the side hustle
in their free time.
Speaker 3 (32:20):
Well, first of all, the reason I made that common
in the book was it's important for parents not to
teach their kids based on only what they know. So
many parents, unwillingly and actually unknowingly I should say, give
their kids a lid above their heads only because the
(32:41):
parent themselves has a lid above their heads. And typically
that verbally sounds like you know, I don't want you
to do that because you might lose money, or I
don't want you to do that because you might get hurt,
or it might cost you the job. It's better to
play it safe. Only because their parents told them the
exact same thing. So I think right now the wise
(33:01):
parents says, Look, I may not know how to do this,
but let's learn together. Let's go on YouTube, let's buy
a course. Let's figure out how while you're in high
school or even in college, that you can launch something
that becomes your own that could parlay itself into something
full time. Now, what I would say to people listening
right now that are employees, and this I think is
(33:22):
one of the best hacks that you have. Most people
who are caching that paycheck have a paycheck mentality, and
that is they think like an employee. Whatever the title
is on their business card, that's what they do. If
I'm the marketing vice president, if I'm the general manager,
the middle level manager, the executive assistant, that's what I do.
(33:44):
And instead, we want to twist that just a bit
and really ask yourself the question, what is the problem
that you are helping the company solve? What is the
problem that you're helping them solve so they can make
more money, save more money, and be more productive. You see,
you're no longer the title on your business card. You
(34:05):
specialize in solving a unique problem. And when you see
yourself from that angle, your value goes up. And that
gives you the ability, then in your current job, to
say now that I'm a problem solver and I have
this unique ability and my skill set to solve this
problem and it's actually helping the company make, save and
(34:25):
be more productive. Now I can go to my boss
and say, hey, you know, I'm a problem solver in
this space, and here's what it's been doing for the company.
I've got a couple ideas I want to talk about
with you, and I like to get a bigger raise,
And based on if these things happen, let's pre negotiate
a what a salary increase could look like based on
the value that I'm providing. Now, what I didn't say,
(34:48):
and I want to be very careful to say this
is I didn't say, go knock on the boss's door
and demand a four percent raise or demand a ten
percent raise. That gets you nowhere. Okay, Ultimately, every boss
their favorite radio station is WIIFM what's in it for me?
And they listen to it twenty four to seven. And
(35:09):
so when you play to that and you let them know, look,
I'm a specialist. I love working here, but I want
to help the company make save and be more productive.
That opens the door for you to be viewed as
an entrepreneur inside of a corporate setting, which puts you
in very rare air.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
I like that because not everyone's cut out to be
an entrepreneur. Not everybody wants to go start their own business.
Some people like the security of a ninety five, or
they really like the job that they've been in for
fifteen years, and they're like not looking to torch it
in order to go start their own thing. So thinking
of yourself as an entrepreneur inside of a traditional business,
I think is a way that it makes sense for
(35:48):
a whole lot of people. So let's talk to the
people all right who say, all right, I've come up
with this idea, how much more money I want to
make in twenty twenty five, And let's say at the
end of the year they hit that number using some
of the stuff we just talked about, some of the
tactics we just discussed, how do you suggest people go
about increasing their giving as their income growth. Are you
(36:10):
focused on increasing the total dollar amount? Are you focused
on increasing the percentage? I know some people might say,
especially you know you mentioned growing up in church and
the tide than ten percent cool? Well, ten percent of
one hundred thousand is way more than ten percent of
fifty five thousand, which while I was making last year.
So I'm being more generous by default? Or are you
(36:31):
more intentional than even just that?
Speaker 3 (36:33):
Well, I like to keep it simple and so I
like to keep it as a percentage. And what I
find is because I like to give more, I mean,
if that's in your heart to say, look, I really
see this pain point other people are in. I want
to help solve that. And part of my rationallyst to
go make more money to do more good with it.
Then I'm just simply giving more as I'm making more.
(36:55):
And what I find is, now, again it's hard to
slice this hair in half if you will. I just
find personally and other people I've coached with this and
have put this into practice, is they are happier the
more generous they are, and they want to then make
more money to be more generous. Now it doesn't mean
that you have to that making money is the precursor
(37:19):
to being generous or being happy. But for motivated people
that I'm typically around, whether they be other financial advisors
or other entrepreneurs that I coach now to help them
grow their businesses, I call this your generosity purpose. It's
one of the five key steps that we weave into
their business because it's the antidote to burnout. You know,
if you're focused on I just got to hit this
(37:40):
sales goal and hit my revenue goal, and the goal
is just the goal, then there's no meaning or purpose
to that. But when you can think about even putting
a little page on your website or picturing your office
of the school building that if I can help you know,
grow this business, I can help make that happen, or
I can help these children be able to go to school.
(38:00):
It reminds you and your clients as they come in
your office, Hey, this is a bigger cause. And so
I just find the more you're making, the more motivate
you to be part of something big.
Speaker 2 (38:11):
I love it. Derek, We've got more to get to.
We're gonna talk about focusing on mindset, I guess, and
just how he can kind of break down some of
the barriers and the scripts that we've constructed over time.
We'll get to that more. Right after this.
Speaker 1 (38:30):
Our we're back Tore still talking with Derek Kenny talking
about making more money, which is awesome, and doing more
good with that money, being generous, which is also awesome,
two things I like, Matt and in his book, Derek,
you focus a good bit on mindset, especially towards the end.
I'm curious what are the typical maybe knee jerk, no,
thank you. This doesn't make sense to me responses you
(38:50):
get from people when you're kind of talking through this framework,
because I think, is it just limiting beliefs of how
much money people can make? Is it this un willingness
to think they can be as generous as they as
they would hope? Like, what sort of pushback do you get?
Speaker 3 (39:05):
Well, let me tell you a quick story. So I
was in the office on a Saturday morning catching up
on some things, and I saw my voicemail like blinking,
and I had this decision to make do I do
I press it and listen to it and maybe get
off track or just keep working. And I just felt
this voice inside say you need to listen to that message.
When I pressed it, I did not expect to hear
what I heard. It was a woman's frantic voice. It said, Derek, Derek,
(39:28):
I know it's Saturday. I hope you get this. They're
about to send me to jail. I need your help
right now. Let me ask you guys this, Has anybody
ever said that to you that if you don't help them,
they're going to send you to jail.
Speaker 2 (39:41):
No, I'll just ask for time to get a friend's
motorcycle because he was in jail.
Speaker 3 (39:45):
There you go.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
Matn has a lot of friends that have been to jail, Derek,
if you hang around them long enough, you'll find that out.
Speaker 3 (39:50):
That'll be a different episode.
Speaker 2 (39:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (39:52):
Yeah, So I've never had anybody say this to me before.
So I quickly called her back. I knew that bad
news would not age well until Monday, and I said,
I just got your message. What happened? She said, Derek,
I got this letter in the mail and it says
they're going to send me to jail. And I said,
first of all, what does the letter say? Well, she
described it, and she said, basically, it says you wrote
a check and there was not sufficient funds to cover
(40:15):
the check, and I said, wait a minute, why do
you think that means they're going to send you to jail.
So she begins to tell me a story. She says, Derek,
when I was seven years old, I overheard a conversation
that my dad had with a local store owner, and
the girl at the time heard the person tell her dad,
you bounce this check, and I know you did it
(40:36):
on purpose. I'm going to send the cops to your
house and haul you off to jail. So, as a
seven year old girl, she grew believing that if you
bounce a check or make any type of substantial financial mistake,
they're going to haul you off to jail. Now I
told her on the phone, I said, first of all,
they're not going to send you to jail. There's no
need to get fitted for the orange jumpsuit over the weekend.
(40:58):
You're good. I will call you Monday. I'll help you
manually move money from savings that checking will cover it.
But more importantly, come in the office next week. Let's
talk about this. So she comes in the office, and
keep in mind, on the outside she looks like the
most successful woman there is. She's been a client of
mine for ten years, but she rarely ever took my
(41:18):
investment advice. She was so risk averse, and she always
complained about not making what she deserved and getting passed
over for the promotions. So we dug in that visit
together in the office, and what we found was that
these money beliefs that she had held since she was
seven years old, that if you make a mistake, you
go to jail, if you make any type of bad
(41:39):
financial decision, then you don't deserve to have money, that
you don't deserve to have the finer things in life.
Once we unpacked all that and she began to realize,
oh my gosh, I didn't realized that was the case.
She began a journey that within three months, a shockingly
short amount of time, she got a twenty five thousand
(41:59):
dollars years, got the promotion she wanted, and most importantly,
she finally took my investment advice. But but here was this
woman who on the outside looked like she had it
all together, but on the inside she was a wilting flower.
And I thought to myself, what a great example that
she's not the only one. And even in my own
(42:21):
client base, I didn't know it at the time. So
I began to have more open dialogues about Look. I know,
people talk about their their their mindset, and it can
sound kind of woo woo and fortune cookie ish, but ultimately,
what you believe to be true is typically what comes
to you, you know, when you when you look at
these big sporting events and they go in the locker
(42:41):
room with the camera and typically the athletes, men and women,
they've got their headphones on, their eyes are closed. Are
they taking a nap? Are they thinking about how they're
going to miss the shot? No, They're visualizing what success
and winning looks like. And so that transformed my thinking
about with my clients. They weren't just hiring me to
be their financial advisor, but almost their mental guide in
(43:04):
terms of, look, we need to be thinking well so
that we can build well your portfolio.
Speaker 2 (43:09):
I love that. I think actually, Rabbi Daniel Lappin, he
did a little blurb about the beginning of your book,
and I think about how so I actually read his
book like fifteen twenty years ago, and it had a
pretty massive impact on how I see money right, and
it literally informed how I viewed earning money and the
value that we essentially put out into the world, which
(43:30):
is I mean, it's real, so much to your message.
What is your best device for folks out there who
have realized that they have been thinking about money all wrong? Like,
what is your advice for them to flip the script?
Because it feels like it takes longer to change your
mindset than it does to do almost anything else within
personal finance. How would you recommend for folks to address that?
Speaker 3 (43:49):
Well, two things, And I say this kind of kind
of cheeky, but don't die before you're dead. Don't have
this mentality, then well I'm too old. What I've done,
I'm locked in. That's the life I'm going to have.
Speaker 1 (44:02):
So you say you can teach an old dog new tricks.
Speaker 3 (44:04):
Yes, and you can teach multiple types of dogs and
even cats new tricks. But we want to take that
piece of paper, crumble it up, and throw it out
the window. And what I would tell people is, look,
we only get one life, and so what you wanted
to be, it gives it the best chance for it
to be that way. And one of the exercises I
give to people, and this is going to sound crazy,
(44:26):
but it's step one of what I call the Millionaire
Money Map. And that is set five meaningful goals, and
one of the exercises of that is after you set
those goals is to write on a note card your
ideal year as though it's already happened, and you're writing
down twenty twenty five was my best year ever financially.
(44:49):
I paid down this debt, I saved this amount. My
relationship with my spouse is the best it's ever been.
My kids and I finally have opened communication. We're going
out to dinner with friends once a month. This was
the best year I've ever had. The whole point is
that you're writing with as much clarity and detail the
ideal year that you want that you may be thinking,
(45:12):
how can I possibly get this, but you're writing it
in a way where your brain and your subconscious mind thinks, well,
I guess that already happened. We need to go make
that happen. And so part of that is this jolt
of reminding yourself and looking at that note card on
a daily basis, reminding yourself, this is my ideal year.
Anything less, I'm settling for less. And when you picture that,
(45:35):
it begins to focus your mind on what's possible, because
the reality is life will come at you hard. You know,
I'm a big goal setter, and if I don't look
at my goals every couple of days, I can forget
about them. You're easily distracted. There's kids needs, there's you know,
my aging parents' needs, there's business needs, friends needs, all
this stuff happening, and without you taking a few minutes
(45:57):
every day to determine that's where I'm going, and I
want to make sure them on the path to get there,
you can easily end up someplace you never intended to be.
Speaker 1 (46:05):
Yeah, it's a great point. It's easy easier to meander
through life than it is to go in a specific
direction that you have outlined for yourself. So, Derek, that's
great advice. Hey, thank you so much for joining us
today on the podcast. Where can our listeners find out
more about you and more about your book?
Speaker 3 (46:22):
The best place would be to go to anyone can
become a millionaire? Dot Com is our website. There's also
a free downloadable that's been very very helpful for people.
They tell us that you can go to get the
rays you Want dot com. Get the Rays you Want
dot Com. It's a downloadable about how to get paid
more in your current job, and then Instagram is a
(46:42):
great way to follow us at Derek T. Kenny.
Speaker 1 (46:45):
Awesome, very cool. Thank you so much for joining us.
We appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (46:48):
Thank you, Matt, Joel, this was a great conversation. Thanks
for having me.
Speaker 2 (46:51):
All right, Joe. I feel like this is a hopefully
a thought provoking episode for a lot of folks out there.
This is one of the things that you can do
with your money, one of the ways you can quote
unquote spend it that we don't often talk about, right, Like,
you earn it, you can spend it, you can invest it,
but we don't often talk about giving it away.
Speaker 1 (47:08):
I think too, those two things combined, they often feel
like polar opposites. Make more money, give more money away.
It's like, oh, yeah, which direction will I have to choose,
and Derek saying no, no, no, you could choose both.
Speaker 2 (47:19):
You can do both.
Speaker 1 (47:19):
I think he's I think he's spot on. And maybe
that's my big takeaway is like those things, those things
are not in direct opposition to each other. They are
not polar opposites by any stretch of the imagination. And
in fact, you can be more generous the more you make,
and that driving principle of wanting to be more generous
can actually be the fuel to help you think more
(47:40):
creatively about making more money. So it's something I hadn't
really thought of in those terms until I stumbled upon
Derek's work and dove into his book, and then I
was like, wait a second, you're right, like those things
actually are not only not mutually exclusive, I think they
can intertwine really nicely together and push you in a
really positive right.
Speaker 2 (48:00):
Totally. Yeah, And on a practical note, one of the
ways that you can actually like implement a plan to
give your money away, And this is when he was
kind of talking about structuring it, like some folks like
myself needs some organization. And one of the things he said,
and he's like, this might be a big controversial, but
to commit to giving that money away even before some
of that money is necessarily completely in hand, a little
(48:20):
pre committing. Yeah, well, and like a lot of organizations
do this, but that's a pledge. It's a giving pledge.
It's saying, hey, I'm going to commit to giving this
amount of money, and like you've set sort of the standard.
It's almost like I was going to jump in and
interrupt them, but I didn't want to interrupt them, but like,
it's like signing up for a race, and this is
something that you've been doing more of lately, Joe. But
once you've signed up for a race, it's on your
mind and you're like, all right, well, I know I've
(48:41):
got to do that. That's a great And so because
of that, that's going to kind of motivate me to
get my butt out there. I'm gonna freaking hit the trails.
Speaker 1 (48:47):
If I've got a half marathon on, you know, on
the calendar three months from now.
Speaker 2 (48:51):
You don't want it to suck the entire time.
Speaker 1 (48:53):
It will motivate me to get out and run next week,
right exactly.
Speaker 2 (48:57):
Yeah. So I liked how he mentioned that because on
one and someone who's more financially I guess conservative would
push back and say, no, no, no, you can't. You
can't commit to giving money away that that you don't
have yet. But I see the sort of like dangle
the carrot motivational side of that. But then he was
talking about making your giving a priority and just at
the top of the month, making sure to give that away,
(49:19):
Like you have the ability to prioritize that giving, to
treat it like a bill, not from a mental standpoint, right, like,
not from like a oh I got to do this thing,
like no, hopefully folks are giving happily, joyfully, right. But
I think the point that he was trying to make
is that by making sure you're doing that first, well,
you have no way of having run out of money
because I guess what, you already give that money.
Speaker 3 (49:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (49:41):
So yeah, I like that. I felt like those were
a couple of good practical tips, right. But let's get
back to the beer that you and I enjoyed it
during this episode, which was a Lower Falls IPA by
Highland Brewing out of Asheville, North Carolina.
Speaker 1 (49:53):
Would you think, man, this is what the kids refer
to as a session ipa.
Speaker 2 (49:57):
Totally is It doesn't say session anywhere on here.
Speaker 1 (50:00):
That is what this is, yeah, and which basically means
it's low abb and that's kind of nice. It Also
it just means it's a very chill vibe coming forth
from this ipa. And we're used to the big, heavy hitters,
the mouthbusters, the ones that just assault your taste buds.
This was nice, clean, and to me, it had more
(50:22):
flavor than most session IPAs too. I'm thinking good for
something that's three percent or whatever. This had actually a
lot of IPA flavor going on. This is like one
of those I would put regularly in my fridge if
I'm like, I want some beer on my tongue, but
I don't want something massively abrasive and huge.
Speaker 2 (50:37):
It's light, citrusy fresh. These are all thoughts that were
going through my mind as I was drinking it. By
the way, it's called Lower Falls IPA. Do you know
what the lower Falls is referring to?
Speaker 1 (50:46):
I'm guessing somewhere in Nashville.
Speaker 2 (50:49):
It's I'm pretty sure it's I'm assuming it's referring to
Grade Yard Falls, which is like a series of waterfalls
up there.
Speaker 3 (50:55):
There's upper Falls, Lower Falls.
Speaker 2 (50:56):
Awesome swimming spot in the middle of the summer, a
great way to feel refers not unlike drinking this beer.
But for your story, that's gonna be.
Speaker 3 (51:03):
It for this episode.
Speaker 2 (51:04):
We'll make sure to link to some of the resources
that Derek mentioned there at the end, and you can
find those up on the website at Howtomoney dot com. Buddy,
that's going to be it. So until next time, Best
Friends Out, Best Friends Out,
Hosts And Creators
Joel Larsgaard
Matthew Altmix
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