← Fullerton Unfiltered
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- [00:00]
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Foreign.
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You're now listening to the Fullerton Unfiltered Podcast. Straightforward, no nonsense business advice, completely on unfiltered. Grow your business, grow your life. Now here's your host, Brian Fullerton. Hey, what's going on, guys? Welcome back to another episode of the Fullerton Unfiltered Podcast. It is your host, Brian Fullerton here hanging with you guys and good morning. Today's podcast episode, a encore from our show about a week ago, week and a half ago that I wanted to come back and talk to you guys a little bit more about. And this one is going to be investing related. How about that? Liz, what do you think about that
- [00:46]
A
topic you were talking about wanting to do the show? And I'm like, there's like we talked about on a previous episode we did recently together. I usually really try and make sure that I'm educated on the topics that, like, we're making, like, decisions about in business. And I've come a long way, but investing is something that I am just not there yet with. And so the conversation can make me feel really inadequate and uncomfortable. So when you said you wanted to do the show, I'm like, why do you want me on this one?
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B
Well, in full circle full or full circle full transparency. This is the second time we're recording this show.
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A
Brian deleted. I was such a good episode too. And you came home and you're like, oh, I deleted our episode. I was so sad, dude.
- [01:24]
B
I went in the field to go film some content and the SD card that I took off my desk was the one for the, the mixer, the podcast mixer. Not for the one for the DJI OSMO pocket that I use. And so when I was in the field, like, I went to record a vlog and actually was the Bobcat video that's going to be coming down. It might even be dropping today, actually, if the timing works out right on how the podcast schedule is going. And I turned on the camera to record and it's like, format not recognized. And I'm like, that's weird. Like, why would it not? Because I just use the same SD card for my camera for my podcast mixer, my drone. Like, I don't interchange memory cards. And so it was like, well, I didn't have an extra memory card with me in the field. So I'm like, well, yeah, let's just purge this one. And as I recorded it, I was like, you know, I bet there's something valuable because you just always. I never delete or format.
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A
You know, don't say any. You never Do. Because you do. And you delete did Emmy's entire birth video.
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B
Yeah, okay, but like, wow, that. Let's, let's not go down that bike right now.
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A
Yeah, yeah, that still stinks.
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B
But don't worry.
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A
The birth of our first child.
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B
Look, Brittany Black has photos for all of it, right Somewhere. And boy, have there been some photo scenes from that. So. So I formatted the card to get the content in the field for this vlog. And I get back and I'm. And it's like, it's a fresh card. I go, you know, well, let me see if I can find that podcast episode I did with Liz. And anyway, deleted it. It was a really good show. It was a 45 minute show, very raw, like, got a lot of good emotions. And so. But you know, sometimes things happen for a reason and everything happens for a reason, I guess, if you will. So it's like, hey, maybe, maybe we were supposed to say things better on this show than the first round that we did it because it was a little not choppy, but it was like, it was just a really raw conversation about investing. And I do want to cover today's topic because there's a couple things I wanted to preface this with. Right? Like number one, and I don't want to say, like, this is not financial investing advice, but you can't almost do a show these days without somebody saying, well, this is an advice. And this is, this is what you could do. And this is what I do. Like, I don't want to go that route today. I want to tell you, like, exactly where I'm looking at things from where we are today, exactly how we're approaching things and just telling you guys exactly what we're doing. And, and this isn't a permission, you know, slip episode. This isn't a excuse episode. This isn't a reason episode. This is just where we're at and whatever we're doing is what we're trying to do and what's working for us.
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A
Like, it's so hard, like, when you're talking about retirement, investing or anything financial related because somebody first of all always got an opinion. Somebody's dad always told them to do something completely different.
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B
Finances, so sensitive and it's so personal.
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A
Like, everybody's story is going to be so different. Almost like your own, like, health journey, right? Like your financial health. Everybody's going to look different on paper. And what works for somebody is great. What works for somebody else is also great. It's not to say, like, this is the only way this is just our story and ours isn't the most traditional.
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B
Well it's non traditional. That's like the, the theme of the idea behind today's show. And again a lot of words and we'll kind of get into it. But the next thing I want to talk about for just a few minutes was this is like what we're doing and it doesn't mean you have to do it this way. You know there's a lot of traditional investing that you can do. There's a lot of traditional approaches that you can do. But I wanted to look at it from a conversation of look at 18, 19 years old. I read a book, Rich Dad, Poor dad Haters are like it. That's the book that I read and it was like my true north for like finances for how I approached, how I wanted to approach my life, I should say financially for the remainder of my life. And basically assets pay for liabilities. If you ever see like the rich dad, poor dad, you know, as employee and self employed and then business owner, investor on the right hand side of the quadrant and I called it presenting the other side. I was never presented the other side. I was always taught growing up to be an employer, self employed. Did I like know of business ownership? Sure. But like that wasn't something that you tell a 15, 18, 19 year old kid. That was like, like I even owned my own small lawn care business. But it wasn't like I'm going to start the next Little Caesars or Marriott Hotels. You know, I was in accounting class and we an entrepreneurship class and it was back to back and we'd be there for an hour or two and we watch movies on Conrad Hilton starting Hilton Hotels and all this stuff. So like it's not like I didn't know business ownership existed. I just didn't know like I could do it. Like it's kind of like funny like other YouTube conversation. Like I other people did YouTube. I didn't, I didn't know it wasn't something you, it wasn't something for me, it wasn't something for us. And so when I saw or read I should say that book when I was 18 or 19 years old, a friend put it in my a hand, a copy of my hand. It really fundamentally changed how I want to make money for the rest of my life. Now that being said, remember some timelines here. I want to, I want to be hyper clear on years and dates and you know, decades because who we are today and what we can start doing today has been a literal 20 year journey to be able to get here, to do what we're doing today. Now, granted, that journey could have took five years or 10 years because we came from very far back and it took us a long time to get to zero, to start growing a business, to start, you know, generating some revenue, to start generating some cash flow. So, so don't get me wrong, it doesn't have to take you 20 years, it might take you five, it might take you three, but it will take you years, it won't take you months, it won't take you weeks, and it definitely won't take you days. Anything that's out there trying to propose that is going to be likely something, get, get rich, quick get rich, you know, type scam or just in general, just try to shore up a process that took every single other human being on planet earth decades to do. So there's nothing that's going to shore it up for you in 30, 60, 90 days or, you know, one, two, three years. It just, it just doesn't work that way in real life. And that's one of my biggest concerns with how much content is put out there on this topic today from every guru, every core seller, every whatever that's out there like this. It, there's a lot here and a lot of opinions. So I don't want to be mean, but I want to be very clear on what we're proposing here today. Well, my preface on this and Liz, I'll kick it back to you here in just a quick second, was the way that Liz and I approached finances and how I wanted to approach finances because Liz kinda like coupled her caboose to me, as Robert Kiyosaki proposes at the beginning of a couple of his different books, when you're just starting out, you're 18, 19, 20 years old. Like, the four or five things that really are very taxing in terms of a cost standpoint to be able to invest are things like student loan debt, credit card debt, mortgage or mortgage debt or mortgage down payment. And then traditional investing. Like when you're 18, 19, 20, 25 years old, and you're making 15, 16 bucks an hour, or maybe your first, you know, job, and you're making 24 grand a year, 28 grand a year, or maybe you start your first corporate, corporate job and you come out of school at $55,000 a year at 23 years old, which is great, nothing wrong with that. When you start factoring in things like credit card debt, student loan debt, mortgage debt, a wedding, maybe your first kid, you Know your first car, like auto debt, dude. There's just not a lot of money left to go around. Now traditional investing idea is, you know, put 200 bucks a month or whatever. A thousand bucks a month and should do your. Your investment vehicles at, you know, 18 to age 30 and you know, built up, put up 60,000 or $100,000 of a nest egg that compounds for the rest of time. That's fine. That's awesome. We did not do that. And we had no money left over between growing the businesses, investing into ourselves, which is going to be my topic today. There was no extra around for us to invest.
- [09:18]
A
We like argued in the grocery store over whether or not we were going to get like the $spaghetti sauce or the $50 spaghetti sauce. Like we did not have.
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B
That's a real story.
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A
Yeah. Like that was actually one of our first big fights actually.
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B
And then we drop a jar on the, on the ground or something and broke and I was like, oh my God, we gotta buy it spaghetti and that. Or was that us or somebody dropped a jar in front of us or something.
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C
This year, launch a preneur Academy Live is built for the whole team. Join us November 7th at Vibe Credit Union Showplace in Novi, Michigan for hands on learning, expanded breakout sessions and crew leader training designed to help your business grow. Group rates are available so you can bring the entire crew to this can't miss team building events.
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A
Tickets go on sale Wednesday, July 15th at 6pm I remember that story though
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in Kroger, the back road. Kroger, because. Yeah, yeah, we had like, we got into nothing. We got into our apartment and between our deposit or whatever you call it, or what do you call it, it
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A
was like first and last month's rent and then security deposit or whatever that like depleted our like, we had like
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B
$50 for like the next week or two.
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A
Yeah.
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Till our next paychecks. And Liz was the solid source of income back.
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A
That's crazy because I made like 13 now.
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C
Dude.
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B
That's what I'm saying. We had like 50 left for groceries and thank God my mom, who is just a freaking saint.
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A
I do remember this.
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B
Gave us a like a milk carton. Not milk.
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A
It was a box full of like carton crate. Yep. Full of like pantry staples and like paper towel ketchup. Things that like you don't think about buying until like you need it. Kind of just to get us started. Like, that was so kind. That's just. That's who your mom is.
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B
It was the kindest thing ever because.
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A
And she didn't even know me.
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B
We had no, like, looking back as
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A
a parent, Brian, when we got together, like, that's a whole other story.
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B
Yeah, we should get my mom on the show.
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A
Oh, my God, your mom. Well, I would love to do a show.
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B
Be you, my brother and my mom or somebody, you know, or whatever. Like, can you imagine? Or I'm not even on the show, you know.
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A
Oh, God.
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B
Have, you know, you, Sarah, Adam, and my mom on the show. Can you imagine?
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A
I'd be hilarious.
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B
So we had no money.
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A
Have a lot to start with. And then, like, on top of everything, like. Like, we touched on the most recent episode with our story. Like, we also doubled down and got in more debt eventually. Like, it wasn't like we started at zero. And then we also dug a hole together with the intention of, like, for a purpose, like, super educated kind of about it. But when I remember specifically us talking about, like, what is retirement? What is investment? Like, what is. What does our financial future. Future look like and what does it look like to get there? One of the best things that you had us do early on into the relationship was play the rat race game. Do you remember that?
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B
Yeah. The cashflow quadrant game with Robert Kiyosaki.
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A
It's like a board game, and it sounds kind of lame, but it's so fun. And it gets your mind thinking differently, and it gets you to go through the exercise of making different choices than the traditional investment system has you, like, buy into basically without ruining your life over and over again. Imagine, kind of, like work through it through the board game. And that did a lot for me to understand your thought process on, like, what we're going to talk about today.
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B
Well, and that's why in a board game or gamifying things, your brain rewires quicker than almost anything else you do.
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A
Sounds like our favorite thing to do is to get our friends to play that game with us, too.
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B
Well, and the crazy thing is the premise of the game is how to get out of the rat race. And if you've never played 100%, I endorse it. It's awesome. It's like $200.
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A
It's a great game. Yeah. I'm gonna look it up and see if it's still for sale.
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B
I'll guarantee you. I mean, I guarantee it's for sale. Our kids will definitely play it when they're 10, 12, 15 years old, because it just teaches you a different way of finances and how you're trying.
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A
$80, I mean, that's still expensive for a game. But, like, it's an educational. Oh, that's in Spanish.
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B
Cinco mas or whatever.
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A
I don't know. Oh, there's a kid version now.
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B
There is one for teenagers, I think. Listen. Okay, so let's keep going. Yes, but imagine, like you're dating and I'm like, hey, like, we're, you know, engaged and gonna be married. Hey, you want to play this board game with me? And she's like, what? Like, dude, you're a loser. Like, I wanna go party or, you know, go live the dream, or, you know, go to Chili's or Chipotle. And I'm like, hey, like, date night, Margarita night. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
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A
I was a different person.
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B
We came from so different backgrounds. It's not even funny. The fact that we're still here, folks, it's literally providence that we're still here. Like God's hand has protected us to be anywhere close to where we are today. Listen.
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A
Yeah, so you're, like, focused.
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B
No, but that's the thing. Like, we had no money. We're in the spaghetti aisle. And that's not it. This is not a sound bite. This is not a joke. Like, today we're like, oh, you know, $10,000 problem. $5,000 fuel tank for the Isuzu. 10,000. $20,000 mowers and plows. Look, do we.
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A
Literally the whole spaghetti argument was you made us get the cheaper one. And I'm like, no, this is going to be bad. We got it.
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B
No, I made it. It's the other way around.
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A
Disgusting.
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B
I wanted the ragu. You got store brand.
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A
Maybe it was.
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B
I would never cheap out on food.
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A
No, maybe it was.
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B
Dude, let's be real frank. Do you think I'm cheaping out on food person or are you?
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A
Well, when we only have a dollar and he wanted a dollar fifty, you
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B
know, dude, we really had no money.
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A
We can't have bread. Like little breadsticks.
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B
I remember us literally trying to figure out 50 extra cents in the budget for pasta. A red sauce. And. And this is like crazy, dude. It's crazy. Some of you guys can probably relate. You've been there. You're like, hey, dude, it's beans and rice, rice and beans. Or you're eating, you know, three day old burger meat from, you know, nachos one day burgers the next day, tacos the next day. Like, now we still do that because we're just scrappy. It's a whole another story. Like, I want some nachos and tacos.
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A
The other day, Brian was, like, horrified because I Made Zataran red bean and rice. And I put ketchup in it. And he's like, that's the most disgusting thing I've ever seen in my life. I was like, no.
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B
I remember going, this is good.
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A
This was like gourmet. Okay.
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B
I remember going, is it that bad? Like, and you go, what? I go, how bad is it?
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A
Having, like, war flashbacks.
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B
I was like, how. How bad is the checking count right now, bro? Like, dude, we. Listen, listen, folks. We. We. Beans or rice? It more than we probably should now.
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C
We'll.
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B
We'll go out to eat and steak dinner.
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A
So Jamie is salting with some butter on it right now.
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B
Some peanut butter crackers.
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A
Not even real butter. It's gotta be country. And it's delicious to me.
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B
We still use the. The packets that come with, like, our takeout.
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A
We're like, yeah, I have them in the cabinet.
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B
No, we got our syrup.
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A
I have guests over. And I'm like, oh, everybody can have their own individual packet. How many.
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B
How many cracker barrel syrups do up there? Looked like a munitions depot. We had like 20. 20 cracker barrel syrups.
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A
Brian eventually made me purge it.
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B
I was like, liz, this is embarrassing. Like, can you imagine Mark Bradley coming over, like, reaching into our cabinet and going, why do you have 75 Taco Bell packets? I mean, mild sausage. We have 75 mild packets. We have, like 50. 50 syrups. You know what I mean?
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A
And it's done weird things to me, though.
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B
Plastic silverware in the other drawer.
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A
If you've experienced, like, food scarcity, like, it changes poverty.
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B
Poverty.
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A
I will buy things now. And I'm like, I just need an extra of. An extra of ketchup. Because, like, ketchup's a luxury. Like, it's so. I know. Like, I don't know. It's. It changes your. The way that you're brain.
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B
This isn't us trying to relate to being poor folks. We were actually we. Every financial decision that could be good or bad, we've probably made most of the gamut. Okay. Other than the timeshare. Other than the timeshare. I think so far, not yet, but not yet. We're still young. But listen, so. So we. We. We have been there. I remember us like, dude, doing like, the tide. And we're like, oh, tide pods. Could you imagine one day like, oh,
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A
my gosh, are you kidding me? No. We're using, like, Ajax powder, okay?
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B
From the dollar store, bro. We're like, a little bit goes a long way, you know? Like, hey, that sure was that like, is that dirty or like just one.
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A
Oh, you ran out before the month ran out. Here's some fabulous.
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B
So we would take. We would take like samples. We would take like the sample sheets from Costco. Like do. Listen, we. When we would go out to like a hotel, they'd be like sometimes have like laundry or soaps. We take those. We still do fucking shampoos a little now. We stay a little bit nicer hotels take them from Disney.
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A
The thing is I take them before housekeeping so that they give me new ones the next day. Yeah, so then I take the new fresh ones the next day. I'll just bring out the ones that we were using so that they give us a new one every day that I'll just take home.
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B
I'll just find the person in the hallway changing the rooms out and I'll just grab five off the truck, the cart. Listen, we used to shampoo with like Pantene Pro v in the volume 5. Remember the orange bottle?
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A
Yes, I do.
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B
Yeah, we all listen, folks.
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A
Suave.
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B
Suave.
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A
I think it's just suave.
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B
The pink and the purple bottles, like. And if it gets a little bit, you know, a third of it, fourth of it left. My mom would fill that thing up with some water, shake and bake.
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A
You just yelled at me the other day for doing that with the dish.
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B
I just did it yesterday with the kids. Conditioner.
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A
The Tommy, that stuff's expensive.
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B
That's what I'm saying.
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A
To be fair.
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B
How much is that?
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A
I don't want to talk like 60,
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B
80 bucks a bottle on Amazon.
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A
It's ridiculous for these, the kids. What is it called, Tom?
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B
It's like Tommy.
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A
No, no, no, it's Todd's.
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B
No, Todd.
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A
Tubby Todd.
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B
Tubby Todd. I got the two names right, but dude, it was not coming out. So I had a third of water that bottle. I shook that thing up a little liquidy now. But dude, that's what I'm saying. I'm like, that's soft. Is 60 bucks.
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A
Benzo her little kids. But their kids are sensitive.
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B
So listen, when I start talking about investing here, trust me, we. We've come from nothing. Like, I mean, nothing.
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A
So if you're like, oh well, you should have just been investing 20 bucks a month. I couldn't.
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B
We don't have any money. Anybody who's like, oh, dollar cost averaging. So there's terms I would love to
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A
have done things the quote unquote correct way. But you know what? I bet there's a bunch of people listening right now. Because this is one of the most common questions that we get is like health care and retirement. And so like, I just hope, if anything, before we get into it, that this gives somebody out there, like hope or just understanding of like, you're not the only one who's made like a different choice.
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B
Not, not at all.
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A
So listen, whether it's a choice or
- [19:14]
B
it's debatable, but let's bring it in. So right now, at age 40, me age 40, and Liz is not 40.
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A
I am.
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B
We're, we're just now going to start this conversation of investing. I say it like in a very like traditional sense. We're going to start investing this year. We've got some big moves. I'm going to tell you about some of what we're trying to do in a non traditional way. We've been investing for 20 years of our life. And that's what I want to talk about here today because Liz and I, and hopefully some of you guys can relate to this. You're like, oh, I'm 30 or 35, I don't have anything invested. I got this like lawn care business that's hanging on by a thread. It's not making any money. One day I need to retire. I see these Instagram reels about what age I'm supposed to have, what amount invested already. And you're behind.
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A
So impossible.
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B
You're like, oh, I'm supposed to be at age 34, have 70. The average net worth or the average investment accounted for a 34 year old is 72,556. And you're like, I don't have 72 grand. My main checking account, let alone my personal checking, my business checking account, let alone invest it into a separate, you know, account brokerage account. There, there's just no way. And I want some of you guys that are like feeling this, like claustrophobic. I'm, I'm not winning. I'm not doing very well. That's how I felt. I was like, dude, I'm on. I, I could easily feel like this would never work. And I knew like we had a plan. So let's go to the other side. Let's go back a little bit. And yes, I do want to hit on something that you've just mentioned. Like I've, I've decided purposely to not talk investing, not talk healthcare, not talk about retirement, if you will. Like a couple of these different things because there are so personal. And you start mentioning, oh, here's what I do. And then somebody goes, well, yeah, but you should think about this. No, no, no, no, no. I'm not here for opinions. I'm not here. I'm not here to do anything. I'm just sharing with what we're doing. I have learned almost all of this the last 20 years. I know enough to know where we're at and I know enough to know what we need to do next. I'm not here to convince you, so I don't need anybody's opinion on any of the subject line. Also, there's an entire different blogosphere that exists for all of these areas. And I can talk blue collar business entrepreneurship and let some other influencer, the Graham Stephans, the iced coffee hour, the Caleb Robbins. Right. Or whatever his name is, all these different guys. I don't think it's K rolled. The guy that does the, the other finance show right now. He's really like hot. I'll let all the other finance gurus talk finances. I'll tell all the stay at home mom, Christian moms and healthcare moms talk about private healthcare insurance through group shares that we do and the secular versions as well. There's group shares and health shares exchanges where you can get health insurance, traditional or non traditional. I'm telling you, like we know what we're doing for like we've decided to do. But I don't want to start having an investment hour on the podcast or an investment video once a month, you know, well, last week we talked about Roth iras and today we're going to be talking about whatever else.
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A
Just not our lane.
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B
It's just not my lane. And so it doesn't mean I haven't consumed as much or more content about all of that than I have with lawn care or as much as lawn care content the last 20 years. It's just not my lane. And I just respectfully, like don't want to be responsible in a way for all of that. My goal is to help you make money and what you do with that money after that is up to you. Does that make sense?
- [22:36]
A
Yeah.
- [22:36]
B
And so let's go back to the beginning. I want to talk about investing in a non traditional fashion. For 20 years, Liz and I literally invested into ourselves. We didn't have like Liz were joking, 50 extra bucks a month, 100 bucks a month, 500 bucks a month, 1,000 bucks month, $5,000 a month. We didn't have any extra because we were putting every single dollar we had. And Maybe there was 50 bucks or 100 bucks that we could have squeezed out of all this, but we didn't have any of that going into the traditional investment. We put it into ourselves. We put it into books, conferences, webinars, replays, courses, obviously events, mentorship, coaching calls. Right, right. And we, we did that. It's easy for me to say, wow, you're. I'm right. And, you know, told you so. Because this is a 20 year process. Some of you guys are like 20 years old, some of you guys are 30. You're like, dude, 40 is the decade away, dude. I'm telling you, I snap my fingers, I'm 40. That's insane. But, like, for 20 years, all we did was take every $15 extra that we had or $20 extra we had and bought a course or bought a program, or bought Tom Wheelwright's Wealth Ability Training course. It was like 3, 800 bucks. We didn't have fucking 3,800 bucks in 2019.
- [23:57]
A
I don't know where we pulled that
- [23:58]
B
money from, you know what I'm saying? Like, I think we did two payments on it, honestly. But to be able to work with that firm at the time, we since switched firms, but we invested into our education about taxes and wealth and scheduling our businesses as S corporations, dude. And, you know, wealth strategy and asset protection and liability protection, like that and ten times more. And some coaching calls and some private conversations with a bunch of great folks in the financial industry space. Which you have access to, I have access to. Like, that's what we decided to do for 20 years. Because again, as Robert Kiyosaki was like, look, you can spend every extra, like crumb that you have trying to pay down your auto debt, pay down your mortgage, put money into investing, put money into savings, which is just going to get eaten away by inflation. Right? And all this stuff. Or you can really solve the main core problem, which is my conversation today. You need to outrun the problem. You need to 1x2x3x5x10x your income over the next 10 or 20 years to get out of the current financial predicament that you're in. Because you can only do so much with 20, 30, 50, 60 grand a year.
- [25:18]
A
We weren't there is we would never be able to save our way out of where we were. Like, you can't save your way wealthy is what you've always said. And you did a podcast episode on this probably two weeks ago now on a Friday about, like, just taking massive action towards something. And like, we have a philosophy of, you know, you make a decision, you make it right, and then you just take absolutely insane action to make that decision.
- [25:42]
B
Yeah.
- [25:43]
A
Right. And that's what you've done. Like, and it was hard because, like, neither of us work traditional jobs. Like neither of us are college educated. And talking about this made me so uncomfortable because I didn't know how to get to where we needed to get other. Other besides doing what you've done. And it kind of felt like a gamble, to be honest. Like, I really had to put my faith and trust in you. And like, that's when it comes to like, oh, how did you get like, like, are you always here? How did, how did Brian get you on board with stuff? Why are you so supportive? And it's because I've seen you, I've seen your work ethic behind stuff. And I Now know almost 20 years into our relationship like that when you say that you're going to do something, you're going to do it. But this was a big one. This was a big trust factor.
- [26:25]
B
This is our retirement.
- [26:26]
A
Yeah. This is like the rest of our life, right?
- [26:29]
B
Yeah. And instead of squeaking out right, imagine a traditional sense. And again, I'm not saying this is what you should do. I'm not giving you permission to do this. I'm not saying you should or shouldn't. Look, if you're 21 years old and you've been building your lawn care business for seven years and you're doing, you know, 180,000 bucks and you're owner operator and you're making a hundred grand net profit, you should be way more smart and diligent, prudent with your finances at 19, 20, 21, 22 years old and you can do some traditional, non traditional investing with that surplus. But that, that you're a very anomalous person at. Like, it seems like that's all social media is, is a bunch of 18 year olds making 100 grand, trust me, that's still one in a hundred. One in a thousand that approach the service industry. So you're not. Right. Like you're, you're, I'm gonna say you're special. You're just, you just beat the odds. And I'm really proud of you. And you should be very smart with what you do.
- [27:18]
A
Responsible.
- [27:18]
B
Yeah, yeah, responsible with your profit. But that's still one in 100, one in a thousand. So I'm gonna speak to the masses of that conversation here today. The preface of this is because Robert Kiyosaki was proposing and suggesting that it's so hard to do so much with like 30, 40, 50 grand a year. And again, I here's the thing, I don't want to get into a fistfight argument. Like, I can't make an Instagram post on this because you're just going to get into a fist fight about, oh, anybody could live on 50 grand a year. Anybody can live on 60 grand a year. Oh, anybody can live on 70 grand a year. I'm like, in a major, major metro market, right? People like, oh, you should just buy sled cars and, you know, live below your means. Dude, we were doing all of that and we still had no extra money at 50, 60, 70 grand a year.
- [28:00]
A
And we were trying to invest heavily into the business too. Like, it's not like we just. Like, you. You can make what you can make and you're just gonna stay there.
- [28:07]
B
Yes.
- [28:07]
A
Or you can choose to, like, reinvest it. And that's what.
- [28:09]
B
Instead of the, the Dave Ramsey conversation. The, the Evan. What's his name? Or not Evan. Oh, the other dude on his show who I literally would want to punch in the face. They're like, oh, you know, you could save your thousand dollars a month if you guys just stopped driving Suburbans and you guys ate Chick fil A and the girl, I forget, I don't know if this daughter, Rachel, whatever, Rachel Cruz. Oh, my God, these people are literally rage. They're just rage bait at this point. Like, oh, if you guys just stopped eating chick fil A and just made, you know, grilled chicken nuggets, it's like, dude, they're so out of touch.
- [28:45]
A
Child care alone right now is $2,000 a month. It's insane.
- [28:49]
B
You try to get a mortgage with a 7% rate, it's 20. It's 2,600 bucks a month for anything reasonable on a $400,000 home and above. If not, it's a 20 year old double wide trailer. Oh, you should just live below your means. Look, the average car payment, I think today is like 8 or $900. It's not 300 bucks.
- [29:06]
A
Right?
- [29:07]
B
It's insane. So people are like, oh, you just. You're living above your means. Or you're, you're, you know, you're eating. You know, hey, stop getting Starbucks. Cancel your Netflix subscription. That's really what's causing you gross poverty. You know why you can't afford a $400,000 home. Or, you know, to be able to take your kids to Disney is because you eat Chick fil A.
- [29:25]
A
It is such a slap in the face. People who, like, you're just so far removed from what it's actually like that you have no concept.
- [29:31]
B
They've never, they've never been there, they never will be there. And they're talking to the masses of people like they can relate.
- [29:38]
A
You know why they're not there is
- [29:39]
B
because they're selling, they're selling literally education to, to the, the church for the most part in school systems.
- [29:46]
A
This is completely.
- [29:47]
B
It so makes me angry. And anybody that defends that position is just ridiculously out of touch. And anybody who doesn't know now you
- [29:59]
A
know, like, are there people out there who could live farther below the means? Absolutely. But when you're talking to blue collar America, like I just, maybe I'm biased but I feel like blue collar Americans aren't and I'm not usually not hard working people who will scrape by like
- [30:18]
B
they are doing living luxury right now. Listen, like, and look, if you've got the $85,000 platinum diesel, we're not talking about that guy in that position here today. I agree. That guy probably needs a 40 or $50,000 truck, not the $90,000 truck. No problem. I'm with you. We're not even talking about that. I'm talking about you're a good person doing a frickin, you know, mowing 100 lawns a week. You and a guy, you got a team of five and you're taking 80 to 100 grand home. And maybe your wife's even still working part time or full time or maybe just became a stay at home mom. 50, 80, 100 grand does not go very far. And I just literally get me on Dave Ramsey's show and I'll have a frigging conversation with that dude. It's insane. I would never borrow money. I would never do this. You don't even have the choice to not borrow money if you're going to grow a business. And anybody that's like debt free or this or whatever. And I'm not saying like certain friends or peers that have that going on for them, I'm really excited for them and proud of them. But it's almost still again a one in a thousand unicorn. That's just not how it works, right or wrong. So I'm not even going to debate that conversation. I'm going to talk to the 999 folks out of there out there like you guys like me, like me like you that had one or two mower payments, a truck payment, you're running out of storage lockers or you're renting from a small barn from some dude trying to do 300 grand in revenue, trying to make Sense of this damn thing. Like, we have been through the thick of it. I have had no money. I've had some money. I. I don't forget a single thing, like an elephant brain. And all of this because it's so emotionally. This is what I'm saying. You're so emotionally attached to finances. And when people that are so out of touch, that have never even dealt with this kind of stuff, offer advice, I'm like, dude, you started on third base, you hit a base hit, you got a home run, and you think like, you're God's gift to the finance space. That's so bullcrap. It's so bull crap. None of these people started at a base hit like we've had to, and then try to get to a double and stretch a double to a triple. None of these people. And I just get so frustrated. So in terms of, like, trying to put my emotions back in the box, that's why I don't want to just start blasting out all this finance conversation, because it just, it's not a direction I want to go with my content. Right now.
- [32:36]
A
The.
- [32:37]
B
The whole story today is anybody who's like making 50, 60 grand a year, there's just not enough left over, in my opinion, to do everything you want with your business, everything you want in your, you know, personal life to a degree, and then start to invest for retirement. Now I get the, you know, hundred dollars a month, thousand dollars a month.
- [32:56]
A
Like some. I could see the argument like some is better than none. For sure you have another game plan to launch, like, or. Or.
- [33:03]
B
The other one is sorry to cut you off. The other one is you should start taking profits out of your business to go invest into mutual funds and start diversifying. In my opinion, you don't need to do any of that. Until you have your business making solid, solid revenue and solid, solid profit, what is the point of going to get 4 to 6 to 8, 10% returns outside of your business, when the industry average is 30 to 44% returns on cash, on cash returns inside your business, there's no reason to say, well, we're just diversifying for a rainy day. We're just, you know, trying to spread it around. You don't have anything to spread around. 20 grand, 10 grand, 50 grand is not going to do anything for you, especially when you're in your 30s and 40s and, well, if you looked at compound for 25, 30 years, it's 800 grand for sure. Now put that same return of rate calculator inside your business. If you're going to put your money where your mouth is. Like you're going to have that same growth rate and you'd be turning down a 34 million dollar business in that same compounding conversation. So don't give me this 4 million, this when I'm like, dude, if you put that same commitment and thought process into your business, you would have $34 million. I'm not here to argue with anybody about what you should do. I'm just telling you like you have to really learn this conversation. Here's what I wanted to talk about here. Today we took a non traditional path to get to exactly where we are today. To now be able to take large surpluses of cash and cash flow from both cash flowing businesses, to now fund large deposits into retirement in a non traditional way while still investing as much as we can hand over fist handedly into both businesses.
- [34:46]
A
We've gotten to this point in business this year where we're like, there are no other direct investments that we can make today in the business at the moment. At the moment. So what are we going to do with this amount of money? And it's, it's really crazy to me because like Brian just turns this machine on and makes a decision and then like I said, makes it right. And instead of like taking the last, you know, 15 years or whatever of like investing into a retirement, he's able to now almost basically lump sum it.
- [35:16]
B
Yeah.
- [35:17]
A
Which is crazy. That's like an, that is crazy. Like I don't know if you realize how crazy that is. That's an unnormal thing.
- [35:24]
B
No, it's not. But we don't live a normal life and nobody around us lives the life that we live. Not because we're great, not because of anything other than.
- [35:32]
A
You're able to do that though because of the investments that you made in yourself. Going back to like we would literally at you know, the end of the month be like, okay, we have like $20 left over, let's buy this book in business. Or we're going to invest this twenty dollars that's going to make us a hundred dollars in three years. Like it just, you know, and so we, as un. Untraditional as it is, yeah, that's it. It's paid off.
- [35:54]
B
So if somebody was like, hey, go put $20 into your Roth IRA or $20 into buy back your time. The buy back your time book from Dan Martell has made me.
- [36:03]
A
There's, there's no way to math it.
- [36:06]
B
Yeah, it's unquantifiable. There's no 16,777 return on investment. It's maybe a hundred grand. There's no, there's no way to quantify other than my income continues to grow, go grow through all of the businesses and all the ventures that we have because of the thought process that we learned on whatever that skill set, thought process, leadership topic, strategy, conversation is. And again, I'm not here to convince you that this is the way to go. I'm not saying, hey, you don't have to be mindful of investing for a retirement or a traditional retirement, let's say this certain way. I'm just telling you what's worked for us. The $20, $100, whatever thousand dollars a month that you might be able to peel off every month at best, at best, while still eating dog food until 30 or 35 or even 40, your contributions would be 20 grand, 50 grand, 100 grand. Now, yes. Compounding for the next 25, 30 years. Yeah, you'll have $2 million in the bank. But I'm saying, would you rather have 50, 60 grand invested by the time you're age 35 or 40 with dollar cost averaging, peeling off 100, 250 bucks a month or putting that money back into you to now have 100, 200, 300, 400, $500,000 a year?
- [37:19]
A
On top of that, being a new person, like a different person, a totally different person. It's not the same as like you can't even quantify it, just with the finances. It's also looking at who you've become, who your kids are going to become, who our children, children are going like. Yeah, our family legacy is so different than just us investing into, you know, just invest and invest versus investing in ourselves. Growing to be better people, better business owners, better understanding of the world, better
- [37:46]
B
understanding thought process all around in every area of life. Yeah, that's a great point. So I got to $2 million and I can retire. But my kids, they're, they're, they're just like, you know what, we're gonna, we're just gonna at best go through the same game plan that dad just spent 50 years from. And nothing stacks, nothing compounds.
- [38:04]
A
Yeah. And I feel like that's where like a lot of people are so frustrated. And this is not to like dump on the boomers because the boomers get dumped on a lot. But I think that is what we're seeing the results of now is people being very self focused, very selfish with their retirement and thinking of retirement in a certain way where it's I'm going to save enough money to not have to work and then spend it and hopefully I spend it all before I die and I'm going to live it up versus the way that Brian and I have talked about retirement looking like for us. Like I don't ever see us sailing off into the sunset doing nothing with the second half of our life.
- [38:38]
B
There's no way selfish, there's no way,
- [38:41]
A
like truly, how selfish do you have to be to be like, I'm just done committing myself to the world, to a good, better cause than myself? Yeah, I, that's a whole other topic for another day. But I think traditional, like retirement is incredibly selfish.
- [38:53]
B
Well, listen, listen, give us some latitude as we have this discussion with you guys. But one of my favorite reels I remember from a long time ago is like, I don't remember, I didn't learn anything successful. I didn't learn anything important from the system. So I'm going to go and have kids and then put my kids in the system to then have them make them ill equipped to be able to handle life at 18 years old from the system. That didn't teach me anything either.
- [39:14]
A
That's the whole home school versus yeah,
- [39:16]
B
that's homeschool versus public school or non traditional school. Non traditional school versus traditional school. Like that's exactly it. So even at best, if you traditionally invest and at best you were able to get money at the end, now your kid's gonna have to what, go through the same 50, 50 year process of barely scraping by, eating PBS and J's, driving 20 year old sled cars? Per Dave Ramsey, living in, you know, a $200,000 home that's, you know, from 1977. Nothing, not judging that, just saying, you know, and, and they've never owned a boat, they've never had a nice car, they never took the family vacations and they never built memories like what's the point? Yeah, like the Millionaire Next Door book, folks, is the absolute abhorrent, worst piece of fucking financial literature that has ever been written in the God awful world of bad financial advice. It's so stupid, it's so terrible. Now you want to squeak out a little miserable existence. I encourage you to make that book your financial bible. Otherwise, with some very basic skill sets, some very basic thought process, some very basic financial literacy, you can start a traditional business, whatever area. I know blue collar businesses, I know lawn and landscape industry, but a H vac, plumbing, you know, whatever you want business, you should be able to in a 3 to 5, 10 year max window, be able to generate that thing to a million bucks and take home 100 or 200 grand a year out of that thing. Have arguably the number one lifestyle in America. If you build it right, have a little bit of time, freedom to go with it and be able at 150 to 200 grand, take home, be able to pretty much buy or finance maybe one or two big ticket items, but buy or finance a pretty awesome lifestyle in existence. How do I know? Because we did that. We've done that for four years now and it's only going to get better. And by the way, not only have we done it, we're teaching it now to our guys in the finances that they're now having, the stability that they're having. There's a whole conversation about profit share with my company. That first time home buyer type assistance through my company, not the government, through our company.
- [41:19]
A
And that's how we're going to do like this country is by enabling small business owners to get to. If we just understand that like you don't have to operate by this traditional system that's been sold to you and shoved down your throat basically by society if you are in the wrong by choosing differently. And we can make these investments into our guys. And this is how the trades grows into something better than just a truck in a truck, you know, mowing a couple lawns on the side and anybody
- [41:46]
B
who look and if that's like you want to just do that and have high margins, dude, that's awesome. Like every business model has its pros and cons for sure. But you should be able to make money at your business. And this is like wow, like groundbreaking stuff. My whole conversation is we're now 20 years now again this should have took most of you guys five or ten, but you guys are very smart. Took me 20, took Liz and I 20. Okay, but you know what? We still now today can this year take off some. We can peel off a couple bands, some good, good numbers, put it into some non or I'm sorry, some traditional investing vehicles and yes, still make contributions to that. It didn't take any revenue away from the companies. The profit is over and above anything I was going to take out or pay us out of the business anyway. Right. Like Liz said, we've already maximized the investment into both of the traditional businesses that we have. The media business and the lawn care business and even Brandon Bowl. There's no more money we can put into it because cash is now outpacing growth. So we are taking some necessary steps to alleviate bottlenecks in both business hiring full time salespersons, directors of this staff for the media, the brand of bulk company for development. You know it, you know software developing, you know to bring a lot of stuff in house. So we're trying to alleviate bottlenecks with capital, but right now cash is outpacing growth, which is a wildly new problem that we've never had.
- [43:10]
C
I think this is the perfect place to conclude Part one of Betting on Yourself. I do hope you'll come back on Wednesday as Brian and Liz continue the conversation about building wealth through entrepreneurship, investing in your own growth, overcoming comparison, and trusting the long term of betting on yourself. See you then.
- [43:33]
D
Thanks for taking the time to listen to the Fullerton Unfiltered Podcast with Bryan Fullerton. We hope you enjoyed this production. If so, please consider leaving us a five star review for the show. While the techniques and ideas presented here are designed to help you grow a more successful and profitable business, no one can guarantee these results for you. We want to emphasize that entrepreneurship is not easy and the ideas presented here are just the opinions of Brian Fullerton and his respective guests. No one can guarantee success for you. That being said, we hope the ideas presented here help you and motivate you to go on out there and crush it with your own business.
- [44:07]
B
Fullerton Unfiltered Podcast thanks for listening and
- [44:10]
D
we hope to see you on the next episode.
- [44:13]
C
This has been a Bryan Fullerton and Mr. Producer Production.