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- [00:01]
A
This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. You chose to hit play on this podcast today. Smart Choice. Progressive loves to help people make smart choices. That's why they offer a tool called Auto Quote Explorer that allows you to compare your Progressive car insurance quote with rates from other companies so you save time on the research and can enjoy savings when you choose the best rate for you. Give it a try after this episode@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates not available in all states or situations. Prices vary based on how you buy.
- [00:43]
B
Welcome back to another episode of the Candy Valentino Show. Thanks for tuning in and spending this time with me today. I am super excited about today's episode. I am also excited because we are live for the very first time. We tested this really quickly yesterday just to make sure I knew what buttons to hit and I think it went okay. So hopefully today goes without a hitch because I'm really excited to talk to Joe Saul Sehi and let me give you some background on Joe. Joe actually has a really big podcast that I was on and we went live on his show and I was like, I really love this concept. I love just the live element of doing it. And so I was like, joe, I'm going to steal your idea and bring this over to our show. And that's what we're doing. So Joe is the co host of the Stacking Benjamins. He is the author of Stacked your Serious your Super Serious Guide to Modern Money Management. And he was a financial planner for 16 years. So we're going to talk all about money, finances, what you need to do. Joe, thank you so much for being with me on the show.
- [01:42]
A
Candy, I'm so happy to be your first guest. I'm here to announce my retirement. This is the top of the mountain. I think I'm done.
- [01:49]
B
I love it and I love how you bring so much fun to money because for some reason people think money and finances are boring. And I'm like, you know what? They're not boring. They're sexy. They're actually the most important part, right? Like, we need to focus on what really matters and in order to do that, we need to talk about money and finances. So you have talked to so many incredible people. You've had such a journey. Obviously, American Express. There's so many things I want to unpack, but I have to start with something that I saw that's a recent current event that everybody is talking about in the headlines and it's about how stock funds are getting crushed. In the beginning of this year, Mutual Funds, a lot of individual stocks are getting crushed. And when I see this happen, I see a lot of investors say, I want to pull all my money out. Can we talk a little bit about just the overall market and what people should be doing when they see these, like, all red days or all red weeks or some sideline action in the market? What should we do?
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A
Well, Candy, I absolutely get that feeling, and I still feel it, you know, and. And I. I, by the way, I'm a guy that even as an entrepreneur, I feel a ton of fear. And I have this mantra. I have to tell myself every day that I think people have to tell themselves in this market particularly, which is, feel the fear, but do it anyway. And I tell myself that when we were going live just now, I'm like, joe, feel the fear, but do it anyway. Right? And it. And so here's what we're up against. The stock market goes up over long periods of time, about 70% of the time. And let's say that the market continues to decline today and you took your money out. Well, that feels like it would be the right move. But let me tell you why it's the wrong move is that the second your money's out now, you're betting against this thing that goes up 70% of the time. So you have to bet on the 30%, where. You know what I love about entrepreneurs that we. We do is that we make sure that we take those risks that everybody else thinks are risky, but they're not. There's actually less risk in staying in, because if I get out, the market invariably is going to come back. If we believe in the economy, it's not voodoo. The stock market is just a reflection of companies continuing to make goods and to prosper. And the smartest people run companies. So they are going to find a way. I mean, you know, when inflation was high, did we see the people that run Coca Cola go, well, the price of sugar's up, so we're screwed. They didn't do that. What did they do? They came up with ways to improve the system. So smart people are going to find a way. And if we believe that, we're in the stock market, so it actually is less risky to stay in. Let the market do what it's going to do and work from what pros call an investment policy statement, which is, here's how I'm going to manage my money, and I'm going to work on that machine all the time versus react whenever something bad happens.
- [04:38]
B
Mm. So good. It's like being Proactive, tempering the emotions, staying in. Because truly, if you're in it for the long game, you don't just pull out and jump in. I was talking to a friend, and he's now actually the CFO of a publicly traded company, which is why this is actually hilarious. But back in the day when he was in his, like, early 20s, you know, he didn't grow up with anything like super small town. There was this thing that used to come out called the Motley Fool. Like back in the day.
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A
Oh, yeah.
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B
Email was just new, right?
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A
Yeah.
- [05:08]
B
So they would drop an email and it would tell you where to invest, and they would run and they would put their money in it, and it would cost like $30 to trade back then. And then they said like, the second their money was in there, it would go red and they would pull it out. So they literally paid for the trade, bought it. It was a pump and dump scheme. So then everybody jumped in. Right. But it was. It's such a comical thing that. That to me is a testament that even if you started back then in a pump and dump scheme with the Motley fool and you made all of those mistakes, you can still be the cfo, a publicly traded company one day, if you just develop your financial acumen. And I think that's what's so important about your show, my show, so many others, is that it's like, you can learn this, but you have to be willing to do, to put in the work, to play the long game and to stay in when it gets scary. Because it does get scary when you open that portfolio and it's all showing red.
- [05:56]
A
Well, no, and this is the problem, Candy and everybody, I'm sure your friend will even tell you what does the CFO hate more than anything. Quarterly results tables. Because you know, every. Every publicly traded company has to window dressing at the end of the year to make maybe something that we're in the middle of. That's a long term thing that we're doing at our company. We got to make it look good for shareholders or we get in big trouble. So I think thinking longer than one, you know, ten minutes, one quarter, six months. The cool thing is when we're investing our money, we can't. There's nobody telling us every quarter, how you doing? How you doing? How you doing? And don't get me wrong, I think we should have milestones to make sure that we're going the right way. But they can be longer than that.
- [06:39]
B
Yeah.
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A
This episode brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game, shifting a little money here, a little there, hoping it all works out well. With the name your price tool from Progressive, you can get a better budgeter and potentially lower your insurance bill too. You tell Progressive what you want to pay for car insurance and they'll help find you options within your budget. Try it today@progressive.com progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates price and coverage match limited by state law not available in all states.
- [07:18]
B
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A
Sure. Oh, not just taxes, just investing in general.
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B
Yeah.
- [09:03]
A
Yes. Step number one. Just like you do with your it's so funny. Just the the correlation between being a successful business owner and being a successful investor. Because a successful business owner, to your point earlier, thinks long term, not short term. Right. A good mentor of mine said a long time ago there's short term and obvious and there's long term and not so obvious and Whenever possible, we want to go with long term and not so obvious if we can. But I think that this guy, Stephen Covey, hit it on the head when he said, begin with the end in mind. Investors get in trouble when we go, what's the hot investment? What should I be investing in today? Is crypto good? Should I get into bitcoin? Should I dump stuff? Should I dump stuff in. I mean, our first question today, should I dump in the market? If I begin with the end in mind and I know where I want to go, then I take out my compass and I ask myself some questions. I don't. If I ask myself if bitcoin's good today or not, I'm going to ask, well, how much do I need to invest? What rate of return do I need? That's a consistent rate of return that I think is sustainable to get there. I mean, when you build a business, if you're going to do it successfully, you're going to do the same thing. How many employees do I need? Is there a way to do this more efficiently with fewer people? Is there a way that I can cut my cost and still make my, my, my customers even happier? It's the same thing. Begin with, when am I going to need this cash? What historically has done the thing in the least risky way to get me there and then how? So most of us think we need to know a little bit about 5,000 investments. That one line I just had shrinks it to just a few things I need to know about. Oh, okay. I've got 15 years to my goal. I need X amount of money. I know I need Y return. There's only a few investments that do that now. Instead of freaking out about all the different things out there, now I can really dive deep on the five or six things that might make sense and decide what really is going to be best for me. So if I begin with the end of mine, develop that strategy, then invest, I think, A, we're going to pick better investments, and then B, in a market like we were, you know, the stumbling that's happening right now, all this red, we're less likely to abandon ship and wreck our own plan.
- [11:14]
B
I love it. Reverse engineer the goal. I have to touch on something, though. You said there's only a few vehicles that can do that, right? So you want a certain rate of return. You want it to be stable. And you said, but there's really only a certain amount of vehicles that can really do that. What were you thinking of when you said that?
- [11:29]
A
Well, it depends on the goal, right? If I'm looking for a 15% return, I'm going to look differently than if I need a 4% return. So. Because there's a few things that do four reliably and there's a few things that do fit. Nothing does 15 reliably, but. But there's a few things that historically haven't gotten us there. So I'm like, okay, I can't invest in cash. I can't keep my money in treasuries. I can't use the bond market. If I need 15, probably not even large company stocks. I probably got to look at mid and small company stocks. Real estate, right. And if I'm looking at real estate stuff that I'm going to invest in and businesses, you know, investing in other people's businesses, but then we're looking also at a lot of different risks. So I'm not spec. I'm not specifically looking at one asset class, but I think that for a lot of goals, let's. Let's just go there for a lot of goals. If I'm looking 10 to 15 years, my primary goal, Candy, is to beat inflation. Because if I don't beat inflation, I've got to save dollar for dollar for every day that I'm going to exist once I've sold off my business. Well, think about how much money that's going to take right, at any type of lifestyle. If I'm going to live on today's dollars, 60, 70, 80, $100,000 a year, and I want to set myself up for 30 years and not working, like that's a lot of money. So I need my money in places that kicks inflation's ass. And there are only two that have done that reliably. Again, we go to risk and return reliability. Stocks have done it reliably and real estate has done it reliably. Those two things. Real estate, by the way, if we just take the value of land, that's just kind of be a placeholder, but it definitely is the use of leverage. How about that? I got a phone call. I didn't even know I had that on. That's what I love about going live right there. This is how the pros do it, people. That's right. Right. So. So real estate, though, because I can use leverage and because I can put tenants in the buildings, like real estate truly gets there as well, those are the two things I think I would focus on. If my goal is to beat inflation over long periods of time.
- [13:33]
B
Yeah, it's good. And I think that the thing about stocks that people hear stocks, they think they need to pick stocks. Kind of like what we talked about with the Motley fool, right? This is the new stock everyone jumps on. Do you, do you have a certain approach that you like? Whether it's, you know, certain high risk, certain low risk, certain mid growth stocks. Do you like 401ks that people should be maxing out? Do you like the Roth mutual funds? What's kind of your, your flavor?
- [13:58]
A
Oh man. Very, very simply we'll do the tax strategies part two because 401k and Roth and that stuff, that's a part two because that's the wrapper inside the wrapper, the investment. My bias is always toward indexes over individual positions because I don't know what the Candy Valentino company is going to do. I would predict it's going to kick ass, right? So investing in candy is going to great thing. But do I know that versus I know reliably the S&P 500 historically over long periods of time has given me 10 to 12%. And that's, that is while it's not clockwork every year, every 10 to 15 years it is clockwork. So if the economy is going to continue, I'm going to look at an index versus an individual fund because I want to bet on my business. And you know what candy for a business owner. Do I want to spend all day on the computer looking at other people's company or do I want to be out on the floor looking at my company? I want to spend all my time on the thing that I'm really good at and that is the thing that I do professionally. I want my portfolio on autopilot. I think a mistake a lot of entrepreneurs make with their portfolio is they ask their portfolio to do the heavy lifting versus this wonderful company they're building that they know a ton about. They've got a lot of expertise there. Do one thing well, which is be the entrepreneur. Then ask your, your, your, your funds to just move along and to be more of a safety net. So I think it's safer in indexes. My bias is toward large companies. My bias generally, you know, as an entrepreneur, we're growth engine people. So my bias with your portfolio for entrepreneurs especially is value. Value investors look at the world differently. They're like, if I took the Candy Valentino company and I sold it off for parts, like what would it truly be worth? And if you're selling it for less than that, well, then I've got a deal. So value and value indexes are generally going to be the opposite of what we're doing. So what I'm doing is I'm taking a different risk in my portfolio. So and, and by the way, and if I'm not an expert in real estate, I like a thing called a reit, a real estate investment trust. And you can get a RE index that buys everything from strip malls. Wouldn't do it. To nursing homes. Liking that a lot. Right. So you can look at demographics around real estate and choose ones. Ones that are good when it comes to the wrapper.
- [16:15]
B
Yeah.
- [16:16]
A
I really like if you work, if you have a business by yourself, explore the Solo 401K. The Solo 401K is an amazing tax shelter that you should have if you own your own business. And man, if you can do that where it's a Roth. The cool thing is is that your contribution then goes in after tax and it's all going to be tax free. But any match that you give yourself, which is pretty cool, having your company match you, that's going to be pre tax. And what those two things together are going to give you cand is it's going to give you tax flexibility later you'll get some write offs today but that Roth piece is going to make it so that I never have to worry about the tax demon again with any of that money.
- [16:56]
B
Yeah, it's so good. And I want to touch on so one thing solo 401k we talk about all the time that business owners need to make sure that they're understanding, seeing if it's something that's right for them because it is a way that you can take that money and really start to set up yourself for retirement. And it all goes back to. I want to just address what you said in the beginning. It all goes back to what your goal is. If someone's listening, they, they, you know, have a hundred million dollar company and they want to have, you know, quarter of a billion before they retire. Well, you're going to be taking different risks, you're going to be doing different things. As opposed to somebody that's still paying off Christmas debt from last year, which 32% of Americans are, and they're just trying to start stacking away cash for retirement now and they're starting late. Right. So there's two totally different conversations and I always like to caveat that for people to say depending on where you are in your situation is how the information applies to you, which is why it's not just blanket advice. And just like you said about the reit I think again, REITs are great. We hear real estate, real estate people want to buy long term, short term, all these different strategies. But if you in the very beginning don't have any skills in real estate, or you don't want to manage the properties until you have quite a few of them, it doesn't really make sense to have management companies. Right. Because you're going to get eaten alive.
- [18:08]
A
Right.
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B
A lot of times people hear real estate advice, they think they need to go find some property that they need to buy, which could be the approach. But it also could be that you don't want to be a landlord because now you got to take calls that take you away from your business. And maybe you want to just invest in a property through the REIT and not maybe a social media influencer that's trying to sell you into their syndicate. Right. Which you have no idea if they've done it before.
- [18:34]
A
And I'm stacking Benjamins, we've seen some of these. So many people get taken by syndicates because people are good. I mean, I'm a great salesperson, you're a great salesperson. Listen, if we're an entrepreneur, we have to be good at convincing people, but that we're the right approach, that we have the right approach. But there are people that have these syndicates and, and man, we report on these, I'd say three or four times a year on stacking Benjamins about another syndicate gone bad. And syndicates can be wonderful, but man, if you don't know the track record of that person, it's, it's horrible. And frankly, the track record even doesn't matter. Right. It's not what they did, it's what they're going to do next time. A track record will help you find the right person.
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B
Sure.
- [19:13]
A
And you want to ask about that.
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B
Some of them don't have a track record, let alone one. And it's only going to give you so much information because, okay, maybe those were two really great decisions post Covid, but can this person take what they learned and now apply it into a completely different real estate market? It's so funny you're risking your money with that. Hey guys, our show is made possible because of our sponsors. Without our sponsors, we would not be able to keep this show free for everyone who listens. And this is a message from one of our sponsors, Intuit TurboTax. You know, taxes was dealing with piles of paperwork and frustrating forms and then waiting and wondering and worrying if you were going to get any money back. Now taxes is easily uploading your forms to a turbo tax expert who's matched to your unique tax situation. An expert who's backed by the latest technology which cross checks millions of points for 100% accuracy. While they work on your taxes, you get real time updates on their progress and you get the most money back guaranteed. All while you go about your day. No stressing, no worrying, no waiting. Now this is taxes intuit. TurboTax get an expert now on TurboTax.com only available with TurboTax Live. Full service real time updates only in iOS mobile app. See guarantee details@turbotax.com guarantees when I became.
- [20:34]
A
A financial planner, I remember hearing Susie Orman, you know, the big online personality Susie Orman, saying, don't hire a financial advisor unless they've been in business for at least 10 years for the same thing. You're talking about, right? That we want to see that track record. And I remember thinking, I'm brilliant. And by the way, I was very good in my second, third, fourth year as a financial planner. I was like, oh, this is, that's, that's bs. That is a bunch of crap. You know what's funny? I've now been doing financial advising and now financial media for over 30 years between the two. Don't hire anybody that doesn't have 10 years experience. She, she was 100% right on like that. So you don't want to be somebody's track record. Just don't.
- [21:13]
B
Right? And now, oh my gosh, we see it on the business side too. It's people that are in their very first business, right? Maybe they had a corporate career or they were in network marketing or something. They now have their first business which is teaching you how to build a business, right? It's like, wait, they're actually building their business, teaching you how to build a business. And it is so easy. Like people that have been doing this for a long time, you said 30 years. I've been at this 26 years. It is really easy to have success in the beginning. It is really hard to sustain success over market churn, market turns, decisions, embezzlement, like, you name it, like, bad choice. Like it's really tough to navigate long term investing in business. And so I think, I think Susie might have been right on that.
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A
I think Susie was too. I'll take back what I said back in my second year. She's full of it. No, she wasn't.
- [22:00]
B
Yeah, well, we talked a little bit about taxes and you said, well, let's talk about that next. So is there Something that. And we talk a lot about taxes on the show. I am not a CPA or an ea, but I always say I'm a tax nerd. Like, I study this because I do think you need to have enough information that when you're talking to your CPA or your accountant, like, they're not all super invested in making sure that you get every single loophole or strategy that's available to businesses. They're minimizing your risk, most of them. They're trying to be conservative. They're trying to get you to not get audited or get drug into tax corps, which nobody wants to do. But I think that they're also leaving a lot of money on the table. Is there something that you've experienced in the last 30 years that you love when we talk about taxes? Is it real estate? What's kind of your thing that you always just want people to know a little bit more about?
- [22:48]
A
The one thing actually is even more broad than that, Candy, which is that I want to hire people to help me in areas where it's going to make a difference, and I don't want to hire people in areas that it's not going to make a difference. This is an area where having the. The right person makes a ton of difference. Without getting too far into my story, the original tax help that I had were people that were transactional, and they were doing exactly what you said their goal was, to help me get the biggest refund possible, because then I was going to hire them again next year. It was truly transactional. The first time that I hired a true tax advisor to work on the other half of that, which is tax planning. Oh, my goodness. They were able to look at my business and go, you know what? You don't want to buy that this year. You want to buy it in January. Because, look, looking at. Because it's all going to tie into how you make money and when you make money. And then how am I going to depreciate it? Do I depreciate it or not? So there's two sides to the equation. I think a lot of people starting out business don't realize this, the transactional piece. When you go to hire a tax person this time of year to work on your taxes for this year, what they're really doing is taking the puzzle that you already completed December 31st, and they're trying to make it look prettier than anybody else's puzzle or as pretty as it can look. Look, our goal with tax planning, which I. And I think this is where the money's truly made is in setting up that puzzle ahead of time so that by the time we get to January, I've got so many cool tools that I've already used that the tax preparer, the transactional person goes, oh my God, this is going to be easy because we've got this, we got this, we got this. So I began several years ago working with tax advisors that I met with monthly to a, stay on top of it because B, it's easy to go, oh, this is complicated. I don't know enough about it. So I'm just going to deal with this next year. And then what do I do? I sit down with a bunch of markers and I'm doing my vehicle log. Right. I know there's people that have done that before you probably. I'm, I'm catching up on all this. No, stay on top of it all year long. But then number two, that tax advisor knows enough about you to go, you know what that solo 401k, we do need to do that the ROTH way or this thing that you're doing. What if we depreciate that office? I know, you know, for a lot of advisors, if they don't know you well, they're like that home office, I don't know. That's going to be a real gray area. My advisor knows me really well, knows that my office is in my house. And she goes, this is a layup. We could defend this with the IRS all day. We're going to write the hell off of this stuff. And so I think this is an area where it actually pays to get somebody on the tax planning side, not just the put the puzzle together side.
- [25:28]
B
Yes, I love. It's like it's being proactive as opposed to reactive. If you're just going to someone and the year is already done, you, that's already the first mistake. Like anything else that you did in the year, you're hoping that you made the right decisions because you can make, you can make choices at the end of the year. Like you said, hold off that purchase or make that purchase on December 31, hold off on that contract. Like don't, don't call on that contract to pay you wait till January if you need to deflect some income. So there's so many ways that literally, if you know enough to be dangerous, you can really reduce the amount of money that you send to the irs. And if you're working with the right person, they can ask you those questions, like, I'll give you you mentioned the home office. I had a massive studio in the house that I. That I'm not in right now, but my other house, massive studio for the podcast in there, and that, you know, oh, this is too big. I'm like, no, no, no, no. If the IRS needs me to send them a photo of this massive studio that is in my house, I will gladly do it. Like, we can defend this all day because it's legit. It's. It's when you're walking the line of you're doing things that are not substantiated, that you can't substantiate, and that, okay, this is probably not usual, this is not customary, and now you really can't defend it. That's the line you don't want to cross. I always say I want to put my head down on the pillow at night, not have to worry about the irs.
- [26:46]
A
Absolutely.
- [26:47]
B
But let's not send them more than we need to. I remember.
- [26:50]
A
I remember when I was at American Express, there was a. An older guy who was one of our business advisors named Jim Weinrich. He was an amazing guy, and he had this. He had this gruff voice, and he was like the. He. He really knew his stuff. I remember he got a call one day from a client, though, Candy, and he. The client goes, jim, I got a problem. The IRS is in my lobby. What do I do? And Jim goes, don't go in the damn lobby.
- [27:15]
B
That's good advice. That is really good advice. Oh, my gosh. It's so.
- [27:21]
A
It's.
- [27:22]
B
It's a crazy thing. You definitely want to be able to. You want to take all the loopholes, take all the deductions, but you want to be able to sleep at night. That's. That's my advice. Um, let's talk a little bit about your show, because you have interviewed so many incredible people, obviously talked to so many business owners, entrepreneurs, investors. So I know this already. I've not been doing a show as long as you, but I know already after a couple years, man, you just have great conversations and you hear great advice. Um, and you can't help but just have a few that kind of stick out in your mind. So when we're talking the world of business, entrepreneurs, finance, are there some people that maybe you interviewed or some advice that you got or just things that you. Bombs that you heard them drop, that stick out in your mind that maybe you want to share with our audience that they could learn from as well?
- [28:03]
A
And it is funny, Candy, to your point, and you're seeing this already, you know, one or two people say something, and it's. It's their thing, it's their shtick, or maybe it is cool. But you hear something from people that are successful over and over and over. And there's this recurring theme, I think the one that I see that most entrepreneurs violate a ton, that I've heard successful entrepreneurs talk about. I've heard time management experts talk about. I've heard CPAs on our show talk about. And that is we get roped into working on everybody else's agenda but ours, like. And it makes so much sense because we want to be useful to our. Our community. We want to make sure that we respond to our customers. But if I spend all day working on somebody else's stuff, I'm not working on what truly is going to be the driver. And the driver is this. There is one thing that I am truly good at, and it is the thing that will drive my business more than anything else. And if I focus on that one thing and I delegate the rest, I think. I think also too many people, they go, well, you know, and I did this, Candy. The thing that I found out that I was really good at after five or six years was doing what we're doing right now, talking to people. I was really good at talking to people. Well, I saw other advisors that were hugely successful, very analytical. They had all kinds of roadblocks between them and their client so that they could do the. The. The thinking. Well, for me, I'm really good at doing the thinking, but I'm much better at doing the explaining of how the thinking works. That is truly my differentiator with other people. First person I hired was an assistant who would talk to my clients, and I wouldn't. That was the dumbest hire ever. That was stupid. So what I've done differently now is that I make sure that I can be out explaining to people how this stuff works, and I have other people do the thing that. Don't get me wrong, I love getting into the analysis and into the things that a lot of financial planners do. But I. I know other people can do that, and our people can do it as well as I can. So look at your one thing. What is it that I do make that your priority early in the day? Because, man, if I open up email first thing in the day, you know what happens, Candy? Immediately I'm working on everybody who emailed me's priority, and I'm not working on that thing that's going to drive my business forward. That's the Resounding thing I've heard over the last 14 years that really, if I see entrepreneurs still get it wrong day after day after day, it's that we're not focused enough.
- [30:39]
B
So good. Oh, my gosh. And we are in such a distraction, shiny object, you know, world. It's easy for that to happen. So if someone's listening, you're like, oh my gosh, this is me. It's probably 80% of entrepreneurs also. And I heard you said about the, the hire with the admin when I first kind of came because, remember, I was behind the scenes building businesses. No, my name was not out there. No personal brand, nothing. And I had kind of like, just opened TikTok, I think, in like 2021. And I remember thinking, I heard somebody say the very first hire every business owner should make is an admin. And I remember thinking, that is the worst piece of advice I have ever heard. Like, you and this person had a lot of followers. And I was like, oh, my gosh. Like, you don't even. That person could be really great at customer facing and on the phone and doing all of that stuff. You hire an admin, you remove them from what it is that they're doing. They actually might need to hire somebody that's an income producer. Right. Somebody else that brings in income so that then they can do like, there's no blanket situation. Which is why I love the fact of see what you're really good at. And I don't know that a lot of entrepreneurs do. People in general, I don't think, know what they're really good at because they're often willing to roll up their sleeves and do anything. So they have acumen developed in certain areas and they really don't know what they do really, really well. So do you have any, like, hack that you have found out that you know what? Yeah, I can do the analysis, but I'm really great at breaking it down. I'm really great at communicating and teaching it. How did you develop that process to know, wow, this is my one thing? Or did you have to taste a bunch of stuff and just kind of like, roll it, roll it out?
- [32:17]
A
Yeah. You know what I had to do? I had to learn to look in the mirror. And I'll, I'll tell you this, and this is a thing that I know. You know, if we're going to be really good at this, we need to mind our dollars. I'm a dollars guy. I'm a finance guy, and I definitely, you know, having a good budget and good free Cash flow is the sign of a healthy company. But the thing that I invest aggressively in, and we say this just in personal finance in general, Candy, invest huge in things that light you up and then be really frugal about stuff that doesn't. And you can morph that into the entrepreneurial world into something that's similar, which is invest huge in things that are going to increase that bot and then ruthlessly cut things that don't, even if they feel nice or they're great or, you know, it just be. Be really clear about that. And where I'm going with this was I was okay at that until I started getting coaching from other people. When I started getting coaching and I went to a group called Strategic Coach, a guy named Dan Sullivan, where I was in a room with 30 other entrepreneurs and somebody that's a hell of an entrepreneur practitioner in front of me. They have history of helping entrepreneurs, and they taught me a few things, and I thought I knew a ton. I'd already been in business for a good 20 years when I. When I discovered Strategic Coach. And I remember the first thing they taught me was two things most entrepreneurs don't know. Number one, what. What made you successful to this point is not going to be what makes you successful later.
- [33:49]
B
Yes.
- [33:50]
A
So don't just say, I got to keep hitting this same nail with the same hammer. I got to do other things. And the second thing, which blew me away was the less I'm in the office, the better my team's gonna do. That also messed me up because my team, it turns out, feels much more empowered to be great at their job, which they want to be great at their job, and they want to own it when I'm not around. When I'm around looking over their. Their shoulder, they don't own it. And they feel like coming in and asking me. And Joe becomes the HR department. And those two things that seem like paradoxes, I didn't learn without having somebody like a Candy Valentino to listen to or a Strategic coach. You know what I mean? Like, for me, spending good money on coaching is an area that now is paramount to my success because I don't have a hack. I seriously, my first answer to your question is, yeah, I don't. I don't know. I just know that when I got in a room with 30 entrepreneurs, I learned through good coaching what I'm strong at. And it was, I'm great at talking about this. I can talk about it like the guy next door and tell you in very simple ways how this works. So my team knows the more I'm on a microphone, the better. The better stacking Benjamins is doing. The more I'm in the back room trying to figure out how a camera works, the worse we're going to do.
- [35:07]
B
Yes. And it drains the life out of you. There's something about it, I feel like entrepreneurs, when you are doing something that isn't in the highest use of your time, somehow it drains the life out of you. And so pay more attention to that. You know, when it's sucking the living life out of you, whether it's a client or a task or something that you're doing. And I often, to the point you said about team 100%, like, so often people will go in and think they're helping their team, but they're actually disarming them by being you're. That now they're going to go to you with every question because they. They really want to do a great job, so they want to do it the way you'll do it, but then they keep going to you. And so I always say, if that's happening to you, if you can't fully remove yourself from the office, create a process. And then when that person comes to you say, you know what? We just wrote a process for that. It's right here. Go check it out. And then don't actually solve their problem. And you'll teach them to solve their own problems.
- [36:01]
A
So that's fantastic. Sam Altman, by the way, at OpenAI AI, the makers of ChatGPT, he talked about burnout. Burnout is when you're spending, you know, and people say entrepreneurs get burnout all the time. And he made this great point, Candy, which was that you get burnout when you're working on the wrong task.
- [36:18]
B
Yeah.
- [36:18]
A
You know, you're working on the right task and your unique talent when you can do it all day, forever, ever, ever. There's no such thing as burnout if you're doing the right thing.
- [36:26]
B
Yeah.
- [36:27]
A
You get burnout when inside your inner brain is telling you, why the hell am I spending time on this?
- [36:33]
B
So good. And so pay more attention to those moments where you're like, oh, my gosh, I just. I want to quit. I think sometimes entrepreneurs will push themselves so hard and then they'll be like, forget this. And it's like, well, wait a second. What little nudges did you ignore along the way that got you to that point where you just don't want to. And I'm. I can speak to this because I am guilty of it. Not so much to this day, but I was really great at it for 20 some plus years. Now I try to listen a little earlier but man, it's still. I'll keep going and then I'll be like 100. How do I do this?
- [37:05]
A
Yes. Oh, there's a wall there. I'm going to run toward it faster.
- [37:07]
B
Yes, exactly. And let's break it down before anybody else can, can like so I get it. Joe, this was so awesome. I feel like you said in the beginning we could have talked for two hours. I want to do this again. But in respect of your time and our listeners time, I just want you to share. Where can everyone find out more about you? Obviously you have a phenomenal show. Katie Valentino was on your show. Talk about the book. Where can they find all things.
- [37:28]
A
It was, it was okay till Candy Valentino's been on. She's been on twice. You're going to hear her a bunch in 2025. I hope we're on the same network work. So it's the Stacking Benjamin show. Every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, it's a variety show. The goal is to make money approachable, which is why our teaching method is having fun. It's live from my mom's half finished basement for that reason. Because you know what, if dudes in their mom's basement can make it work, so can you. And we try to give you a lot of confidence to make it happen. My book stacked CNN last year called the number one personal finance book that you need to read in last year. So which is cool. I felt like I owed somebody there 10 bucks for saying that because it was so awesome. But it again is called your super serious guide because my teaching method there is also the same. It's very much we have a lot of fun because it's so serious that we need to make it light so you can get through it and get the big lessons I think people need.
- [38:23]
B
I love it. So good. We'll link everything at the bottom for the recorded version and for those that are live watching us us. Thanks for watching our first live version of this. You can watch on Thursdays on x and on YouTube so subscribe to the show. We'll also be streaming on Rumble and then of course on Apple podcasts or Spotify for the audio version of this. Joe, thanks so much for your time today and for talking about how people can stack their Benjamins. It was fun.
- [38:49]
A
Thank you so much and happy to you and to everybody hanging out here.
- [38:54]
B
Thank you.
- [38:55]
A
Hi, I'm Joe Salsihai. Host of the Stacking Benjamins podcast. Every week, we talk to experts about saving, investing, personal finance, trends, crypto. Can't do it. You could have done all that research, all the breadcrumbs, and thought, this company's never going bankrupt. Foiled again. You never knew personal finance could be this fun. Throwing down the gauntlet. I'm bringing it today. I'm only gonna be off by six figures instead of seven. Every boy has a dream, Doc. Every boy has a dream, for sure. Stacking Benjamins. Follow and listen on your favorite platform.