B (5:51)

Wow. What an interesting story. And it's certainly. I know it's not the end of it. You, you said money is power, and it's, it's morally neutral. What matters is how you use it.

A (6:06)

Exactly. It's a tool, like a hammer. You can, you can build something beautiful or whack yourself on the thumb.

B (6:15)

What have you found in being a monk? Right. For example, for 20 years, are you different for thinking this way, or is this, is this, is this like the monk way? I, I don't know. So I'm, I'm, I'm naive here, but are you rebelling against anyone by saying that now, or is this the opinion that you've all had in your entire life?

A (6:35)

Oh, it took my, it took me many years to come to that conclusion. Like, I, you know, I, I believe St. Paul when he said that the love of money is the root of all evil. I took that a little too literally, and I didn't really understand what he meant by it and. Or there's different interpretations, to put it that way.

B (6:52)

What do you. That's interesting. Sorry to cut you off, but that's such an Interesting thing. I agree with that. We've all heard that, right? Money, like love of money or money is the root of all evil. What do you know? What do you believe now? What's your opinion now?

A (7:04)

Well, I. I did study a little ancient Greek in college. And so what was interesting was to go back to the original text. And what's interesting about the Greek is that when they use the word love, there's like five different words for love in Greek, and there's only one word for that in English. And so the word is philargeria in Greek. And that. And that, phil is like a. It means, you know, avarice, acquisitiveness, that. That phileos is sort of a. An earthly love.

B (7:33)

Right?

A (7:33)

It's a. And when you put it with money, that word means it has a sort of limited range of what it's talking about. And what I proposed in my first book is what we really need is what I call agape. Argyus Argyria means philo. Philo argeria, that means love of argy is money, philo is love, sort of. It's a lower form of love. And what I propose is what we need is agape, which is the highest form of love in Greek, in argy, which means money or silver. And that you can have this higher order thinking. If you think of spiral dynamics or people are familiar with that, or levels of development in the enneagram. There's another level above this that we can take, money that is more inclusive and expansive, that allows us to use money as a tool for love and service to a suffering world. Because you can't do anything without money. Like, money is the tool for action, for everything. So if you're going to reject money, you're rejecting the tool that. That gets stuff done. And that was my big frustration in the monastery, is everyone hated money, thought it was bad and might corrupt your soul. There was blah, blah, blah. And so then nothing ever got done because there was never any money to do anything, even though they had great plans and great projects and wanted to be of love and service and great hearts. But there wasn't the tool to make any of those things a practical reality. And so that was a big shift in my mindset that I had to come to. So I kind of go with Mark Twain's line now, which he said, it's. He said poverty is root of all evil. Is that right? Yeah, yeah. And I think that's a better way of looking at it. Look at the suffering that is created through a lack of money is most of the suffering. Well, a lot of suffering, let's put that, all of it. But particularly in the material realm, being poor is extremely stressful. It's a bad, hard place to be and it's not necessary. And so when people reject money, they're, they're setting themselves up for a life of suffering and a life of disempowerment, which I think is not the way a person of, with a good heart should want to live.

B (9:44)

Yeah, no matter of which faith you are, I don't think anybody's God, like, actually wants you to, you know, to live in scarcity, to live in poverty. Like, I haven't studied all the religions, but I'm pretty sure even if you're not religious, like, none of them, I don't think speak of, of that, that I'm aware of. Like, I think that we've interpreted. And again, I'm not the expert on, on this stuff, but my own opinion is as a society, we almost like turn Christianity, for example, into like it's actually virtuous to be poor and right. And, and to actually just have less than, you know. And I think this is more of a cultural thing that I think it's, I actually think it's completely wrong. I don't think that that's actually the intention of that. I think if anything is quite the opposite. It's like we want to live in abundance and we should not be, that's not saying we should go and be selfish, but that doesn't equal money, doesn't equal selfishness. Money doesn't equal those things. And we've somehow clumped them all in and made it all messy. And it's not true.

A (10:48)

Exactly. Like there, there's no. Be a decent human switch that flips on or off depending on the size of your bank balance. You know, your kindness and your tax bracket are not correlated.

B (11:03)

Completely agree. And I, I, with that being said, I, my, my own opinion here is that money is the amplifier of who you already are, who you want to be. Money. If you're a pretty bad person, you're gonna be when you're poor, you're gonna be pretty, probably a worse person when you have more money.

A (11:21)

Right. It doesn't, it doesn't, it doesn't change it one or the other. It's like. But what I hope to do is take people who don't, who have good hearts, who maybe rejected money for the wrong reasons to try to convince them that they're playing the wrong game and misunderstanding these sacred texts and you have to remember, and we don't have a lot of time, I know. On this show. But when we look at the Bible, whatever, whatever your tradition is, those texts were written in a time that was very different from ours. You know, free markets hadn't been invented yet, corporations hadn't been invented yet. Democracy, free trade, all these things were, were not. They didn't exist. It really was a zero sum game in the old days where if you were wealthy it was because you were taking from the poor. That was probably true in the time of say Jesus or Muhammad or you know, Buddha.

B (12:11)

Like it was attacking your civilian like taxing people like Heav and just kind.

A (12:15)

Of like, yeah, slavery. So much of the economy was slave based too. So like all these other things. So of some sort or feudalism of some. For some sort or another. And now in a free market. That's not true. Being wealthy is, can be a win win. It's not zero sum. My wealth doesn't make you poor. Just the opposite. We can all. We can in theory. I know it's, I'm not trying to wave my, my fairy dust magic wand and say it's all peaches, cream and.

B (12:40)

Roses, but capitalism is perfect. Right Doug?

A (12:43)

Like. Right. I'm not saying that. But, but wealth doesn't make you poor. In fact, the more, in many ways, the more wealthy you become. In some ways it can actually help the economy. And a number of, you know, I'm not. That gets complicated pretty quick, but you get the point.

B (12:57)

It does, but I, I general. Generally speaking, we're saying the same thing and I think generally you're. We're right about this. I truly believe that. I agree. Like the idea that, I think. Who was it? It was Paul Graham, I think a startup. YC startup founder. He had this interesting article or I guess whatever write up about the idea of the pie fallacy. Right. Is, is like the limited pie fallacy. Are you familiar with that? You probably explain it better than I do, but it's essentially it's like because you have a, you know, pie, a piece of pie and I have a pie. That means there's less pie for other people. Right?

A (13:32)

No, there's no, there's no point where the amount of money runs out. Money is constantly being generated in our economy all the time. Right. That's why we have inflation. Yeah. So. So there's no limit how much money we can generate and there's no limit to how much money you can have. And that it doesn't. Yeah. It's not zero sum.

B (13:49)

Yeah.

A (13:50)

It is, isn't. It isn't always zero sum. Sometimes it is, but that's the exception to the rule in a free market economy. There's externalities and there's problems like that which we can get into. But that's the, that's the downside of capitalism. Of course. But that's another conversation.

B (14:05)

Yeah, I, I find that in many of my circles or, or maybe when I grew up there was this, especially with the most. Honestly, like such good hearted people. There were so many, so many good hearted people that somehow took the victim route of, of the money thing and just said like, well that's like almost. There's like a. Right, like I'm, I'm virtuous.

A (14:27)

Yeah, right. Well, that's why, that's what I get into in my book. So and so, so maybe we could pivot to the book a little bit. Yeah. Which is again, it's taming your money monster. Nine paths to money mastery with the Enneagram. Thanks for the plug. And so what I, what I, what I do is I identified the, these different archetypal patterns of personality and the different money monsters that people are likely to have. And you just described some of them very, very clearly. Like that, that victim mentality is one of the money monsters or that sense of being pious because you've, you think money is impure and so you don't touch it, you reject it. Have a holier than thou attitude because I don't play the game, I'm better than you or those are so, so it really helps. The book really goes deep into the structure of individual personalities and then helps you understand where you are going to likely get stuck in your relationship to money.

B (15:24)

Interesting. What are the other ones in there? So how many or how many is there? How many monsters are there?

A (15:28)

Okay, so. Well, there's 18 in total because there's not. But the good news is you probably only have two to deal with one or two. And so the Enneagram is a.

B (15:39)

I.

A (15:40)

Don'T know how many of your listeners are familiar with it, but it's a very robust personality, personality typology system. It basically breaks personality down into nine archetypes. It's sort of based on Jungian understanding of human nature. And you think of it like cars, like there's infinite variety of cars. And yours is completely unique. But you drive a particular model of car, style of car, and we can put your car in sort of a general bucket. We can say, well, that you drive a family sedan or you drive a sports car or you drive an suv. And there's infinite variety in each of those categories. But the general chassis or structure of your car, just like that, there's only so many ways you can design a car and still have it be roadworthy and have it function right. You're going to fall into one of these buckets of car classifications, or you're not really a car. And so the same thing is true with the human ego. There's only so many sort of chassis or external shells we can create for your ego and still have it be road worthy. And that's these nine patterns that we have in the Enneagram. And each type, and then each type has two unique money monsters. And I'm layering on top of the Enneagram what I call the attachment theory of money. And what that says is that it's just like the attachment theory of relationships. If anyone's familiar with that. I don't know if you've run into that attachment theory, it's okay. I'll just stick with the money side and say so are the two money monsters you could have for your type are one that's anxiously attached to money, maybe too acquisitive, too obsessed with it. Think Ebenezer Scrooge or Gordon Gekko or the show succession. You see all these examples of people who are overly obsessed with money to the detriment of themselves or the people around them. And then you also have people like me, as how I was in the monastery, who are money avoidant, meaning we reject money. And you're talking about your friends who think, you know, rejecting it because they want to, for whatever reason, they're avoiding it. They're pushing it away because of an underlying unconscious. These money monsters they have or what's really coming up for them that need to be dealt with. And so they're avoiding the financial world in some key aspects. And then to add a little more nuance to it, if I can, I also talk about what I call the four pillars of finance. And so you can be anxious or avoidant in one area. You might be. Might be what we call jumbled style. Like you might be anxious in one area of your financial life, but avoidant in another. So the four pillars of finance are going to be earning, saving, investing, and giving. So earning, saving, investing. Those are the four core pillars. So, for example, if you're an anxious earner, you might make a high salary, but if you spend everything on stuff and there's no savings, then you're an avoidant saver. And some people are really good at saving money, but they're terrified of investing. Or some people are great at investing, but they don't get to the giving part. They never do anything meaningful with their money. They never turn around and give back to the world in some significant way. It's just an ego project. And so, so I go into all the nine types and then dial down into these money monsters. And the book really can help you over, give you a roadmap and a path to your particular personality and how you can overcome them so they don't trip you up in. If you're an entrepreneur, you know, these things are the, these are the blind spots that you're likely to hit in your relationship to money. And if you're, if you're a business owner, it's really helpful to know the money monsters for your employees. And so you want to know that. Okay. Or what their personality type is, because that's going to affect your business. If you got these untamed money monsters running around inside the heads of your employees, you know, it's really good to like, at least know what they are and address them and have a way to move forward more.

B (19:26)

It's really interesting. What is. Something comes to my mind when I, when I hear you talk about this. And a little bit of like, I want to understand the ideal, the goal for this. Like, what is. Is there such thing as an ideal? Like, is there like a. You, you know, you reach them. That we explain the two extremes, right.

A (19:42)

Which is like the scrooge.

B (19:43)

And then there's like, I guess the person who rejects money, avoids money completely. Is. Is ideal in the middle or is it ideal all unique for each individual person? Like, what is the ideal?

A (19:55)

I think it's going to be unique for each person. But there is an idea for each of the nine archetypes. There's a specific ideal for each of them, right? So for you, your ideal is going to be different than for me. And that's what I call becoming a money master. So there's a money master archetype inside your personality system within the enneagram that says, okay, this is when you kind of. This is kind of the highest level of your. Where you want to be thinking and feeling and doing in your relationship to money. It doesn't necessarily have to do with the size of your bank account, but hopefully that helps you get a big bank account. But it's, it's really more about how are you relating to it in the healthiest way possible for you.

B (20:33)

I get that. And, and most people listening to this Right now are entrepreneurs actually probably all of 100 are or want to be. What would you. Is there a. Do you think there's a category like entrepreneurs kind of just belong in naturally? Like kind of just. Well, they tend to kind of be over in side of things or.

A (20:54)

Well, within the nine archetypes, I would say there's certain types that are more likely to be entrepreneurs. Like a type. Threes and eights are probably the highest percentage that would want to be entrepreneurs because they're very extroverted and very independent. But it doesn't. I don't think there's any. I would probably suspect that type sixes are less likely to be entrepreneurs for a number of reasons. And sixes and nines probably wouldn't necessarily be entrepreneurs as often as other types. But there's a tremendous, again, variety inside each of the types because you have to think of the Enneagram like a fractal. Like, it's a. If you know what a fractal is, it's a geometric pattern that goes on infinitely with infinite variety. But it's a very simple. It's a very simple mathematical equation. So it's got a firm structure, but infinite variety inside of it. And so when we're talking about the nine types of the Enneagram, that's like the surface level of this fractal. There's infinite layers that go down, and that creates tremendous nuance within each of the nine types. So it depends where you land within the subtypes of your type, which is too much to go into here on the show. So making broad generalizations that don't always apply to everyone within a category, but generally I would say the threes, the eights, are probably likely to be entrepreneurs. Sixes and nines less likely. But I don't want to hold that too, too, too strongly.

B (22:13)

How does somebody go from one? I guess it wouldn't be archetyped to go to another, but it's more. So, like, how do you kind of master these things? Right? I imagine that you've kind of figured out like a formula for at least. Okay, so if you are money avoidant, what are some strategies to like, actually change that? If you're like, almost like anti money, you're just like, no, I just don't want to play that game. I'm better than that. Or that's.

A (22:35)

That's evil.

B (22:36)

Is there actually a path to go.

A (22:38)

To the other side?

B (22:39)

And what is that path?

A (22:40)

Yeah, well, I laid that path all out in the book Taming a Running Monster. It's all there. And it's just, it's a lot because essentially what we need to do is heal those childhood wounds that built those scripts inside your brain. And so we needed to go deep into your childhood psychology. Like where did these come from? What was it in your childhood that first of all created your Enneagram type? Because what the Enneagram tells you, its most profound insight is it tells you what your greatest unconscious fear is. And we all have one because it was ne. It's a. It's too much to explain in the time we have why that's the case, but it's even grounded in neurobiology and developmental psychology. That's what we've managed to put the enneagram really rest in that space now. So it's not woo woo, but it's. It's saying in order for you to develop a personality or an individual consciousness, you had to experience some trauma for a number of reasons. Because it's hard to grow up basically. And the. We need to look, I call those your sacred wounds. And we need to figure out what that wound was for you and what caused it and find a way to heal and forgive those wounds that are then creating your Enneagram type. The negative aspects of your type. And then there are also those, those same wounds that are caused those negative money scripts. Like where did they come from? And so you have to first identify them. Number one, that's the first step. Two, then you need to start addressing them through some form of contemplation, whether that's therapy, yoga, meditation. So there's a contemplative practice that's necessary of some sort. And then, and also I think some spiritual grounding to container to help you move through this trauma, whatever that container would be, whatever that community is for you. But finding ways to really address it, acknowledge it and then. And see how it's creating unnecessary suffering for you and the people around you. And then it's mindfulness. Essentially. It's a mindfulness practice is what you need. And then, and then, and then you can move forward for it.

B (24:44)

It's. It's so interesting. Yeah. Because I remember when I was first building my businesses and kind of like learning how to like I think we're getting.

A (24:53)

Oh shit. Hang on.

B (24:56)

Yeah, you're. It was interesting because I think back about the like my first journey about getting an entrepreneurship and my, I was trying to form my, my opinions around money and the biggest thing that I ran into was I was fearful of is oh you more money you have to equal. Has to result in divorce and typically unhappy life later on. And because all the celebrities of the world, right, that seemed to be true for the ones that were in the, in the magazines and the media and all the richest people in the world were always like divorced somehow and like somehow like evil. And so the story was kind of being formed and fortunately I feel like I rejected that. I, I just felt like something told me that that's not true. That can't be true for everybody. That might be true for them. Something happened. No one told me this, but someone, something had happened in me that. And, and then it kind of eventually kind of sharing my story a little bit is eventually I kind of like took it as, okay, well, I guess I'll be the first one then. I'll be the first one that's super rich and also super, super good dad and also a super good husband, also a super good person. And like I kind of just took that as a challenge internally. If I look up at my, my story inside and then it turns out I'm like, oh, that was totally just a story. There's a lot of people like that, right? They're really good and super wealthy, right?

A (26:22)

You just, you're sort of selection bias, right? You're just looking at the, you're only hearing about the people who, who are in trouble. You're not hearing about all the people who are doing really great.

B (26:33)

Very, very true. And what about like, do you, do you feel like you've learned or experienced people probably talk about in your book of like the people that kind of self sabotage themselves with money.

A (26:44)

Oh, yeah. Oh, that's again, that's what, that's all, that's what the whole thing is about is. It's what, that's what the money monsters are. These are the ways you can sabotage your financial life in, in these, these two different ways of anxiety or avoidance. Both of them, you know, probably with these rich people. You, you saw that were you, you were getting this negative story from because of the money. Anxiety was coming out in unhealthy ways and blowing their financial life apart and a personal life apart. Excuse me. And that's really easy to do with money. You can, you know, the way it trips you up and not, not earning enough or saving enough or investing enough. Like that's, that's the whole, like, that's, that's the essence of the book is what are these scripts? What are these money monsters? What are these, this unconscious programming that you have that you really can't see very easily unless someone points it out. To you that are going to cause all this unnecessary pain.

B (27:37)

It's super needed. I mean, books like this, like, thank you for writing it because it is so needed. I wish that like this stuff was taught in schools and I mean I went to public high school and we didn't talk about anything, Finances, you know, so no wonder like our financial system and our people make bad choices and end up having these weird complexes around money. Much needed. So thank you for writing the book. I'm excited to read it myself.

A (28:04)

Yeah, well, hope you, hope you enjoy it. And if you do, and anyone out there who does read it, if you could post reviews for me, Amazon or Goodreads, that'd be a huge help.

B (28:12)

Awesome, man. Ready for the rapid fire questions?

A (28:16)

Go for it.

B (28:17)

What is your favorite business book? And you can mention your own. That's totally okay with me.

A (28:22)

Yeah, I have to mention my own. But other than that, I think the one that, other than that one that really helped me was called Naked Economics by Charles Wieland. It's really good, gave me, it really helped me understand the macro level of how economics really works and I really enjoyed it.

B (28:39)

Interesting. I have not heard of that book and I would love to read that book. What's the biggest thing that you wish that you knew before starting your business?

A (28:49)

Before starting my business, everything I put into my books, it's a cliche, but they say most authors really what they do is they write to themselves. And so everything I'm writing about is all the stuff I wish I had known. It could go back in time and tell my 20 something self about life and trying to pass that wisdom down so people coming up behind us don't have to go through all that. They, they, they could. It's a cheat sheet essentially for, you know, where you're likely to get going to get tripped up. But other than that, I think I would have told myself, yeah, it's all, it's all in the books, man. Especially the first, the first one especially because, well, it's got so much about just the basics of financial. I was so financially illiterate when I was starting, you know, and, and you know, all the things I just wish I had known about compound interest in particular. It's just that just the power of compound interest is so important. And if you don't know that, then you really don't understand investing at all.

B (29:54)

Interesting. Okay, I love that last question. Who do you think should be a business owner?

A (30:01)

Well, who should be a business owner? I think first of all, you got to be independent. You Got to be able to think for yourself. You have to be good at time management, setting your priorities, and figuring out the difference between busy work and real work. But I think if someone, if you have a mission, if there's something that you feel like you've got a service or a product or idea that the world needs and deserves to have, that can solve a pain point, then you should be a business owner. Like a lot of people say, say, I want to be a business owner. I want to, I want to be an entrepreneur. I'm like, okay, well, what's the pain point that you, that you are uniquely qualified and to fix? And they just go, I don't know. Like, well, then you probably shouldn't. There isn't a spark there. There's a fire there to go solve a problem or deliver a product or a service. So you got to have a why. You know, you always, Simon's sake, start with why. Why are you doing this? Right? Because it's going to be hard. And if you don't have a good why, then you're gonna fall. You're not gonna be able to make it through the hard parts, the rough patches. And as Nietzsche said, right? This is Nietzsche quoting Nietzsche. He said, you know, he whoever, if you have a why, you can endure any how. And that's, I think, really important. So what's, what's the why for you? And then you'll be able to power through, endure it. The very long, difficult road to being an entrepreneur.

B (31:26)

I, I completely agree with, with this. I would say, like, one thing for me that I would maybe modify a little bit is some of that stuff you don't need yet. Like that person who says, I want to be a business owner. And because I remember myself when I was coming up, like, I wanted to, let's say I wanted to start a business, but I didn't necessarily know what, what product in the market I was going to solve or like, what problem in the market I was going to solve. But I knew that I had this, like, personal problem, you know, my personal mission, my personal why, which was like, dude, I hate being poor. Like, I hate seeing my mom struggle. I hate seeing my dad struggle. I hate seeing my sisters. I just hate this. You know, I just want to solve that. That's a problem and I just need to solve the problem. And most of those things were money driven.

A (32:06)

Yep.

B (32:07)

And so that was my pain point, my big why. But then, sure enough, I didn't know the how of any of the businesses yet. That was the how. That was going to be revealed later on. And sure enough, like universe works in amazing ways where you get shown the how and the how just kind of unveils its the perfect time. And so that, that was my own experience was I didn't know quite yet what the pain point was, but I, I started to form my why pretty early on. But it wasn't related to the product or the pro, you know, the problem in the market.

A (32:36)

Yeah. Yeah. Well that's just good enough. That's. Yeah. As long as you got the fire in you for whatever reason, then you'll be okay.

B (32:41)

Yeah. Interesting. Doug, where can people learn more about you, follow you? Grab your book.

A (32:47)

Yeah, you can check me out. My book's available, Taming your Many Monster. It's on booksellers everywhere. But Amazon's always easy. And then you can reach out to me. If anyone would like any coaching or good keynote speaker or just wants to get in touch, you can reach me on my website, which is just my name. Douglynam.com D O U G L Y N as in Nicholas A m as in michael.com and my email is the same, is my name doug dougline.com so those are all great ways to reach out.

B (33:19)

Beautiful. And we'll link to all Doug's links in the show, notes in the description below, depending on where you're watching this. But Doug, thank you very much for coming on and sharing your time with us.

A (33:27)

Well, thanks, Cody. It was a pleasure. Hope you have a great day.

B (33:30)

You too. Talk to you soon.

A (33:31)

Be well.