Income Before Impact: The Melanin Money Blueprint for Wealth

unless you plan to walk away from it.

- The grass is always greener on the other side, right?

Ryan, but people who don't realize that underneath that grass is always shit. - It's almost like there's shame put on those people for choosing that option. - Trying to make impact before you make income.

- Talk about it. - It's almost impossible for you to be happy. - My early success was built off the field. - I didn't want to be broken again. - It's very important to be truly connected

with yourself so that your beliefs are actually yours.

“- My success is not going to be governed”

by what I say yes to. My nest loves the success. It's going to be governed by things I say no to. (upbeat music) - Guard George, dudes.

I'm so excited to have you on the show. Particularly as we were talking about in the green room because the way you guys operate your business

and some of the ways that you teach

particularly building wealth fits so in line with some of the struggles that I know, the particular audience, my audience here, which is a lot of small business owners in the professional services space,

insurance, accounting, legal, et cetera, right? You said something, car or something, start with you in a green room where big part of your work and what the two of you teach is that the business shouldn't be the only asset

that we're growing as we're in our ownership of it. Why do you think that is? Because I know a very common practice and there are consultants out there that will teach business owners this,

just dump everything back in your business, dump everything back in your business. Why could that potentially be a pitfall? - Yeah, I think it's a great question.

“And I think the answer is a lot of business owners need today”

and we're going through it actively, right? So your business isn't asset and your business can be your fastest growing asset. And me and George could testify that it is. Our business is our fastest growing asset.

But that doesn't mean it needs to be our only asset because if you put everything back into your business

and you never exit that business,

then how valuable is that business, right? Because if you're not taking profit high profits every single year and then you don't end up exiting because a lot of these businesses if you're important to your business,

if your valuable to your business that your business is not valuable, right? And people get to the end of the lives, they get to retire them and they're like, you know, I got this thing, I built nobody wants to sell it.

I haven't taken enough profits to build any personal wealth. So now I'm in this place where I still have to work for the rest of my life. And we all can attest that that is not the goal of entrepreneurship.

But I think the hard part that all of us deal with is like at what point do you start taking profits to start building personal wealth

“and not feel like you're robbing the business of its growth?”

And that is something that we actively help our clients decide so that they can have assets outside of just their business. - That's great. And if I can't, I'll just add a little more sentiment to that. So to Carter's point, right?

If you're valuable to your business and your business is not valuable. So I've kind of broken it down into like, you know, four stages, right? And so we have the start phase where, you know,

you might still even be working a job, right? And you're just, your business isn't profitable yet. So you're putting money, personal money into the business to get it off the ground or maybe you're a breaking even best case scenario, right?

So everybody has to start there. Then you have this growth phase where it's like, oh man, like, I could just stay here, right? It probably, it probably be your highest percentage profit margin phase of the business on a percentage base.

You might make more later on, but it'll feel like less 'cause of how much you're reinvesting and how heavy the business is at that time, right? So the growth phase is we have to make a very important decision.

Like, do I want to build a lifestyle business? Meaning a business that can grow in proportion to a lifestyle that I desire and just be okay with that? Or do I want to scale this thing? You shouldn't scale your business

unless you plan to walk away from it, right? 'Cause your lifestyle business will stop, at some point, right? It's okay, cool, I've done it. I built it to be able to maintain my lifestyle.

It's so profitable, I probably can put an operator in place to continue to take distributions, but you don't plan to sell it or give it to anybody else. Most likely, the scale phase is when you plan, you're starting to process a planning that.

So we're in the scale phase actively, right? Our business is growing, it's thriving. We have 10x to team that we had, you know, when we were in the growth phase, but we're having to put so much back into the business.

Now what we did, we both did is when we were in the growth phase, as we started to realize we were going to scale, we made sure that all that profit margin that we were getting, we were taking that money off the table, right? So that way we feel more confidence,

and more liberation when we are in the scale phase, right? Because we don't feel as bad. Like, okay, I'm putting all this money back into the business, but I took home personal profits and started building personal wealth along the way, right?

And then the last thing, is something that we learned very new recently, is while we're in the scale phase, is there anything that we can do, while still being hyper focused on the business,

that will create more insight and give us feedback, loops to grow our business, but also makes us money. Because if we can do that, then that can give us more resources on the personal wealth side

that allow us to not have to put pressure on the business while we're in the scale phase. And that's just been our personal journey.

“I'm not saying that's the best way to do it.”

But we want to make sure that we're being mindful of the personal wealth part of it, because if not, you won't have the clarity in the mental fortitude to keep going because behind the scenes your personal wealth is in together.

And that's what we see with a lot of entrepreneurs that we work with is like, they're making decent money, they're making great money. But their personal wealth house is in an order and is creating a level of hidden stress

that only they know about, right? And so when they work with us, we start to unpack that, start to restructure things, and they actually become more successful in their business because now they have that burden and pressure off

with their shoulders. Yeah, I do, there's so much in there guys to unpack. I think one of the things that I, a major decision that I'm very interested in how you made it was the decision to go from,

this is supporting my lifestyle, this business that we're building, to let scale this thing to the next level. 'Cause I think a lot of people get caught in that moment. I think there's a lot of, we'll call it, entrepreneur porn that exists out there where it's like,

“you gotta scale, you have to scale, right?”

Which, which we feel all this pressure. If I don't scale, I'm not gonna be put on podcasts and no one's gonna ask me any questions and my business isn't gonna grow and people think that I'm a failure

and it's like, I know plenty guys who own a one-person law firm that take just the cases they want, that make more than enough money, that have the country club membership, they're at their kid sports game and they're happy is hell, right?

And then I know other guys that have been the same quality that have decided, okay, well, because I'm good as a one-person shop, now I need to be a hundred lawyer shop and all of a sudden they're miserable

and they can't get to their kid sports games and they're making that basically the same amount of money but they're business 10 times bigger. Like, how did you make that decision and how do you guide your clients

if they're in this moment of scale versus lifestyle, right? Like, is there an equation? Is there a framework that you use or is there some way to kind of think through this process? - Yeah, this is about to be therapy.

- I really gotta say this. - Yeah, this is about to be therapy for everybody in the room. So I'll give you this quote by Alex Ramozi and then me and George who do our best to unpack it and I'm gonna try not to butcher this quote

but Hamozi is basically saying that he used to look

at these business owners who were making a million dollars

maybe 1.5 million and then they didn't want to scale. He's like, dude, there's so much juice left in this business to squeeze, what are you doing? And after years of coaching people and doing it himself from Ozi Realize, he's saying,

yes, there are so much juice left to be squeezing this business but what gets squeezed is you, right? And so when we make this decision to leave being an entrepreneur to become a gay business owner

“and that's how me and George delineate like entrepreneur,”

your entrepreneur, you have this lifestyle business, you know, do whatever you want, no major pressure but then you switch to business owner, right? And then it's not about you anymore. And I think that that decision is so important

and people make the decision for the wrong reasons. They make the decision for things you say, right? I want to scale because I want to have this big business and want people to interview me but what they don't realize is the price they have to pay

to get the things that they don't even know they want it. So the way me and George look at it, now that we know, the good and the bad to ugly

on both sides because the grass is always greener

on the other side, right? Ryan, but people don't realize that underneath that grass is always shit and it's so much of it, you don't know it wasn't in the grass, right? And so when me and George look at it now, right?

If you want to have that lifestyle business and you want to be in your kids' games and you want to have a 70% profit margin especially as a servant based business owner, then do that or if you want to say I want to scale

because I want to exit and I love what I do and I want to build this team and build this dream, then do that but don't get the two confused. We see so many people who are trying to scale their business not taking any profits, not even knowing their business

won't be acceptable and that's where I think you have a problem. - 100% and so to his point, the decision, the only thing that led us to making that decision is realizing the business that we were going to build had to be something that we can exit

but the issue is most people aren't looking at it that way. They're looking at it from vanity metrics. I want to make ours where I make this thing

I'm making a million a month or two.

I want to do that, right? They didn't tell you about the team that they're paying, or the multi-six-figure pay roll. They didn't tell you about the ad costs. They didn't tell you about the stress.

They just told you about the vanity metrics. They told you about the vacation but they didn't tell you about the travel experience, right? And so for us, it was a calculated decision. Like we are in an industry and a building of business

that we can see a path to be able to exit was one.

When we were already pretty solid financially

before we made the decision. The other piece was, is this about me or is this about impact, right? Because if it's in them, and neither one is wrong, right? Like if it's about you, do not scale, right?

“If it's about you, build to the level that you need to build it.”

So you can be like, "Your friends are working corporate America. You can check out at a certain time. You can watch all this morning events. You can, like if it's about you and I don't want anybody to feel wrong if it is about you."

That's called self-awareness, right? If you like, you know what? I don't have that itch, this is big enough for me. Please stay there 'cause all you're gonna do is it's gonna be hard either way.

It's gonna be harder if you don't want to be there or if you don't have a path, right? To be able to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Because it's gonna be, even we wanna do it, right?

Arguably, you know, I made a drag car

or a little piece like, "Are you sure you wanna?" But we wanna do it, right? But even in wanting to do it, it doesn't change the light, right? So imagine having to carry the weight that you didn't even know that it was gonna be that heavy

and you don't even wanna carry it. And so just really being able to sit with yourself and ask yourself, is this impact that I wanna have? This legacy that I wanna lead, this mission that I'm trying to create through this scale

is it worth it to me, right? 'Cause if it's not, it's not gonna be good for you, I promise. And we try to be as transparent as Bob. We literally have a new client right now who's crushing it. And we are talking to our off-leadge.

Every other, I wanna do this, I wanna do that. I was like, I know you did, but you don't know it's on the other side of it, right? Everybody wants to do it until they know what's on the other side of it.

And we just try to be honest with people to let them know what's inside of it. And it's like, "Cool, if you know that,

“you still wanna do it, then you must really wanna do it."”

But we just wanna make sure that we're using our platform and our voice to say, "Hey, look, we are happy with the decision we made." But we wish we also had more context so that we knew how to store it even better,

that we're doing it now. But we feel great about where we are, and we just wanna spread the good news. Say anybody who's thinking about going down that path. - Yeah, there's two things you said in there

that I think are really pillars of bunch, but there's two things that stand out one. And I know this wasn't the point of your conversation, but I think it's very important to bring up. We all need coaches, we all need people

that we talk to about this stuff. Like you said you're talking to this client, you're walking her off of the edge, right? I can tell you, I have a coach that helps me build, it's helping me build out my coaching business, right?

Like, I'm a coach, helps entrepreneurs get through, whatever the thing that I do. But there are parts of it where I just didn't have my mind, right? I needed someone to bounce stuff off. And I think a lot of these decisions get made in a vacuum,

right? We're uncomfortable or insecure, so we kind of turtle up and don't talk to anybody. We don't want someone to think that we don't know what we're doing.

And it's like the most successful people I know have either business partners that they trust, kind of like the two of you, or they have coaches that they hire themselves, or they have a financial advisor,

or they have an attorney or someone who they can go to and say, this is what I'm thinking, like, poke holes in this thing.

“And I think too often we make these decisions in a vacuum.”

And that kind of leads me into my question here, which is you said, it's either about me or my family or my lifestyle or impact. And I would love for you to unpack, like, there is so much pressure on impact today,

like everybody you hear. I'm absolutely just listening to a podcast with Cody Sanchez, who's in your viewing Eric Jorgensen, who just wrote that book about Elon Musk. And even in that conversation, right?

Like, it's all, if you're not doing this for impact and impact, they must use the word like it doesn't times, which I understand what, right? Like the work he runs doing is sending rockets and solar cars and I get that.

But like, I feel like there's so much pressure on impact that when people say, hey, what I really want is to take care of my spouse, take care of my kids, I want to be able to hang out with my friend, I want to do good work.

But like that stuff after the bell goes off is just as important to me. It's almost like there's shame put on those people for choosing that option. And like maybe break down like how you guys

dealt with maybe some of even your own thoughts and emotions around choosing impact, which is what you're doing by scaling versus maybe the extra hours you may have to put in at least at the beginning to get yourselves there

and making that decision. - I'll start by saying this during the past two. Trying to make impact before you make income. Talk about it. It's almost impossible for you to be happy

because as the airlines say,

put on your mass first before putting one of the mask

of your neighbor. So I believe it is so much easier to focus and put your attention on making impact once you solve the income problem for yourself. Which is why, me and George say,

if you're having this lifestyle business habit for as long as you need to take as many chips

Because I think the thing that most business owners are missing is having your personal wealth secure allows you to become a better business owner because you're able to take bigger risk in your business 'cause it won't kill you.

- George, for you jumping, I wish I had like a confetti button or like an implausible button because income before impact. I like, that's gonna be like the title of this episode. I couldn't agree with you more. No one says that.

I love that you are pushing that message because even from my own career, I wasn't able to take certain leaps until I knew. I'm not this burn the bridge, burn the boats, burn the bridges, like have no options guy.

“Like to me, that is the worst way to go about something”

because now you're making decisions from a place of like, if I mess this up, I'm at zero. Versus, hey, I can go all in on this. And if for some reason it doesn't work, like my kids still have food on the table,

my wife can still put gas in the car, like I'm not losing my house because that's pressure that nobody talks about in this entrepreneur porn, burn the boats method. I absolutely love that point.

- No, that's, he hit the nail in the head. And I don't, I don't know how much to emphasize the fact, I know I'm a father. He's not so, when I think about it, it's not an either or it's just the order of operations

and he's in it perfectly, right? So I'm in a position now, right?

Because I made the income first.

We made the strategic decision to have the additional impact. That's not, it's not, it's twisted, like being present for your child is impact. Being present for your spouse, if you're married, is in fact, right?

Being present for the members of your community, your family is impact as well. It's just about the decision on, I wanna outside of the impact internally until in my internal world,

do I wanna have impact externally, right? In a bigger way, 'cause you still can have impact.

“And I think they're just making that distinction”

to your point, not shaming people for their choice 'cause at the end of the day, here's the truth. Anybody that's forcing you or pressuring you into these decisions are not gonna send you money on the first of the month to pay your bills.

They're not gonna show up and watch your kids when you are burnt out of both ends, they burn the kind of both ends and you need support. So when you understand that, it's like, I'm truly making this decision for me and for the desires

that God has placed on my heart to have an impact and a legacy beyond what's happening internally, then do it. But if it's for any external reason, if it's because of validation or some childhood wound, or I'm not good enough and I'm chasing this external feeling

to feel something that can only be feel by me healing, the parts of myself that have nothing to do with entrepreneurship in business, if it's for any other reason, then that's gonna be the issue. But assuming all things remaining constant,

it's like God has placed His vision on my heart and I'm doing this for the right reasons, right? And I believe that I can transform all the people's lives so for example, our mission is to decrease the wealth gap by $100 billion, right?

Every year, our clients improve their collective network by hundreds of millions of dollars, right? We went to have a client event last night and there's some of our clients are young, some of our clients are older.

We have older clients who have just my portfolio is just about 20%, 20%, I'm getting so close to financial, like, that's worth more to me than any amount of money than my business gap at me at this point 'cause I already got the income first.

And so but if you don't have that and you're dealing with external factors, you will chase and move the target

for ever, it'll always be something different

because you need something to keep replenishing that cup that has a bottomless hole. - And think about the imposter syndrome that comes with coaching people who are doing so much better than you

and you are not financially secure. Think about the imposter syndrome that comes with that, right? And so, if all those reasons, I just personally think it's powerful to choose income first in the impact, the impact is so much bigger, right?

“'Cause if you want to give 10% of $1,000, $100,”

if you give 10% of a million, now you have a bigger impact, you know? And so, yeah. - Yeah, I saw that my, so I started as a boots on the ground, produced or hawk in home and auto policies

and selling small business insurance back in like 2005. And, you know, it's funny to your point like when I first started and I wasn't financially secure, and in my, you know, early to mid 20s and, you know, I figured out corporate America wasn't for me

and was trying to sales job for the first time. It was like, I saw everyone not as, how do I help this person get the best insurance, which was my job. But like, mentally it was, what can I sell this person?

How much money can I make from this person? You know what I mean? So it's like my, even though I was,

I would love to believe I was always doing a good job for them.

I was never trying to like do anything nefarious, but like, everybody was like a dollar sign. And then as I started to get more secure in my career, I started to be a looking go, okay. Like, it's more about how do I craft the right collection

of policies? How do I make sure what my purpose is in this transaction,

Like how do, you mean, it's like my,

I was able to be better at my work when I wasn't looking at everybody as a dollar sign because I had the money in the bank. And if they said no or it didn't work out, it wasn't like my entire month was ruined,

you know, because of that. And that, that is something that I feel like so, there's so few conversations around that point. And I love it. I love this idea, or not, I don't love the idea of chasing,

but I love that you guys are bringing up this idea, George, you said it, like we're constantly chasing.

“And I think every entrepreneur or someone who is”

tried to be an entrepreneur who maybe didn't necessarily have this decision made, it does feel like chasing. Even in my own life, I know the moments where I wasn't as sure

about scale versus lifestyle, I did feel this sense of like, I'm saying, yes, the things I shouldn't say. Yes, too, I'm constantly got like searching for new ideas, you know, what if I start a faceless YouTube channel?

I mean, you know what, you start chasing this stupid stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How do you, so let's say someone finds themselves and they feel that chase, right? They feel like they're saying yes to too many things.

How do you coach them or guide them, to kind of reigning back in and figuring out what really is more important to them? How do we correct ourselves? Yeah, that's a great question.

The first conference I ever went to, I actually started out in the insurance on the insurance side too, I worked from Aspichu, or I went to about an 11, I went to his conference.

And the lady said in 2011, a billion drill bits for soul.

She said, but nobody to buy drill bits, cares about the drill bits. She said, let's just assume they were used to hang up artwork in offices, homes all across the country. And she said, well, what would you say if I told you,

nobody cared about the artwork? She said, what they cared about is the feeling that they got when they walked in the room where the artwork was hung. And her point was this, right?

“Like, most things are just a means to win it, right?”

The money you have in your bank account, or the money you have in general, is the hammer and the nails in this example, right? If it's a Roth IRA, a solo 401k, private equity, right? Whatever, right, that's the painting, right?

But the real thing that we're after is deep down inside, there's a desired lifestyle, right? There's things you want to do for your family, for your spouse, for your community, for your loved ones, for yourself, if you sit with yourself for a few minutes,

you can probably define what that is, right? And then that creates kind of a container around what you're really marching towards. Because but if you don't have that target, you will continue to chase because you don't have a target.

And you don't have a measuring stick on win enough, is enough. Right? You won't have a measuring stick. But if you define that, hey, if I could just have my primary residence in my home city, I below,

this is this travel destination that I absolutely love. And if I have a nice little place there, if I could help my mom out financially because she didn't understand about retirement, as long as I could do that, well, you add it up.

That will create a target for you, right? Multiple events sat down to define it and added up. And it will also let you know what's not inside that container. So when you start thinking about all these other things,

oh, wait, that doesn't fit inside of this. So you have to at least question why. Not to say that things can evolve, or things can't change in your world view experience. I'm not saying that, but you at least will call you

to a question because you have a recipe, and I'm like, oh, well, this ingredient was in there before,

“or I didn't need it before, why do I think I need it now?”

But most people don't have that benchmark or measuring stick to be able to figure that out. So everybody has to define what their target is. Like, and then that way you know when is enough enough, you know if something doesn't line or doesn't align,

or you least have the framework to be able to challenge it when it comes up because we're humans. Entrepreneurs historically have a shiny ball syndrome. It is what it is, right? How do we curb that appetite by reminding ourselves

and having an actual benchmark all what we said is what we wanted to do, if that makes sense? - It makes complete sense. I don't know, do you guys know, Nikon, he's got a very big podcast right now.

He's blowing up, Nikon Plug, he's a very good buddy of mine. And met him through the insurance industry and he's owned and sold a couple agencies and consulting businesses and now he's running essentially a media company and he's doing very well.

And I asked him one time, you know, we're just having a conversation and he likes bourbon. I like bourbon, we're just chillin' and talk in. And I said, man, you've been like so many different things, right, like you've been, you know, insurance salesman.

You've been, you know, agency owner, you've owned a consulting firm, you've started technology companies, you've done all these things, like, how did you make the decision to move through these various businesses? And he had one goal, he was raised by a single mom

and he's like, my mother will never have to worry

about money or lifestyle again, right? She did her job getting me into the world and making me who I am and he's got this idea of, that's his because, like, your why is important,

And like, the hard days, the next decision, it was does this next thing allow me to obviously live my life but also take care of these people in my lives who got me here and like, he's like, that's what drove me. He's like, if I knew to say, notice something

'cause it was easy, my filter was, does this thing, you know, service this goal and if it didn't pass through the filter, it was a no. And to your point, like, he's so clear and I envy him 'cause I know in my own life sometimes

I've lost my filter, right? I think it's natural that we do, but you know, I've lost my own filter sometimes, various things happen and then you find yourself too scattered

and I think this is like one of the most important exercises

an entrepreneur can do and this is where I'm interested in you guys and how you operate, like,

“I think it's okay to reset that filter sometimes, right?”

Like now, his mom is set up, he's got his family and the people he want to take care of and his kids and stuff. So now his filter is, he's moved it to impact in terms of his message and what he's trying to do with the communities that he's search, right?

So he was able to change it in time and I think some people think that you pick one and like that's it for the rest of your life. How have your filters moved and changed? And how do you know when to create a new filter

for the decisions you make? - Yes, that's phenomenal insight. And so I'm always a firm believer that what gets you here won't take you there, right? And so at the beginning, I was at my first one's journey, right?

Like, you know, just coming from not having money, losing my parents early, having my back against the wall my whole life. My first why was to survive, right?

I never went to be in a lack of control

of my life and my circumstances ever again, right? That's the filter, anything not getting me closer to that filter, I'm not paying attention to it. Then what's that's done is like, all right, card is good. Now, I wanna make sure my sister was good, right?

And I think, and so when you come up with these filters, I believe when she would achieve them, you need to change the filter 'cause here's the problem if you don't change the filter. My early success was built off of fear.

I didn't want to be broke again. And fear drove me for a very long time, but at a certain point, it's the same thing that keeps the health warm, well, as you were saying, it will burn it down, right?

And so now, like, at that, I can't operate out of fear anymore 'cause it won't help me get to the next level. So I need to change my why to, oh, I want to help this person.

All I wanna have this amount of impact,

and I think if you don't change your why to happy you accomplish it, it could be an unhealthy motivation, right?

“And so I just believe, like, that's what I think doing”

like yearly checking is like reviewing, I'll review the year at the end of every year. What did I do? What I say I was gonna do, like I did, I'm not like it. And now, I'm in a stage where like, my success

is not gonna be governed by what I say yes to. My nest levels of success is gonna be governed by the things I say no to, because my number one goal is just to not get distracted, period. - I love that.

I love that. - George, what about you, man? - Yeah, I have a simple quote. I know Carter's Harvey said often is when the facts change so do I, right?

So I think we're operating from our world view with the information, the context, the resources that we have at that time. At any given time, right? That could be disrupted, that could be changed.

We could learn something new. And as a result of that new information, new insight, right? In this context, it might require us to change our filter, right? And so that's kind of me. So I think that the issue is people hold so closely

to their own beliefs that being a true seeker,

“you have to live on the edge of contradiction, right?”

It's like, okay, well, I said this, I believe this last year. Why not the same person I was last year? It's okay for me to say that, oh, I did believe that with the context information, resources, worldview that I had at that time.

People hold so closely to those beliefs that they're unwilling to make that shift, because they feel like it's a bad reflection on them. You know what I mean, even in business, right? Like we just get to give a completely separate example,

like we were using this one CRM system, but then at that stage in business, just be honest with you, it's too expensive. I'm not, but you know, let's get in big at a charge of this more, I don't,

we gotta find a better way, right? And so then we went to the iteration trying to use two or three other CRM systems only to come back to the original one. But the facts were still true at that time.

The facts were that was too expensive for where I was in business and I couldn't justify the cost. Not that it wasn't the right CRM system, it wasn't right at that time, right? And so being willing to like, you know what,

let's try this, oh that doesn't work, that doesn't work. But now we circle back because this works in this season with this information, this context, this reality. But you gotta think from a leadership standpoint,

that can make me look like I'm, don't know what I'm doing. Like hey, I have ops team that has to unravel

it's like, we were just using this six months ago. But I don't care about holding onto my beliefs because I know that my beliefs can evolve, right?

And I'm okay with that is the first thing.

And another thing is just, and this is more about self-awareness, but the true root of all disease, if you break down the word, this is being disconnected from oneself. I think some, I think people don't get enough solitude.

They get so much outside noise from social media, from peers, from everything else is going on. They have a hard time making the decision that's their own decision because they're getting so many outside influences

and they're not even hearing their own thoughts. And so everything is very important to be truly connected with yourself so that your beliefs are actually yours. Like why do you want this? Like if you can't answer that, right?

Then you got a challenge like where is it coming from? Why do you want this? And if you can't, and if you're not clear on that, it's probably time to challenge that belief. This is like therapy entrepreneur masterclass

that you guys need down right here. This is just, we're talking about, what's going on?

“- That's what's going on. - That's what's going on.”

- If you're talking about being together right now. - Yeah, I think that the best out of us, so who goes to you as a, as a five answer. - This is, I have this philosophy. And it's exactly what you guys are saying.

Like I'm just, I line up so, so closely with the way you guys are talking about this in teaching because like one of my core principles is operate in reality, right? What you said, exactly what you said.

Like I can want to believe anything is true, right? I can want to believe that if I go outside my house and shake the tree, money's going to fall out of it, but that's not reality, leaves are going to hit me in the head, right? Like that can, that's a nice belief.

So many people that, particularly that, that I'll work with that, they have these, like they, it's almost like they're wishing something was true, they're operating based on a wish, right? I wish that things would, you know,

that this CRM worked perfectly for me and we could afford it and it was the right, you know what I mean? I wish that this type of customer would do business with me. I wish that I would get more attention

in this for, for this, and it's like, well, you don't have a bold claim, so no one cares. Ah, the fact that it is that CRM is fancy and people talk about it, but it's not right for your business. You know what I mean, like, how, how do you ground someone,

like if you, someone comes to you

“and maybe they just have delusional ideas of money, right?”

Of our delusional ideas that they can spend as much as they are and say like, how do you get someone? How do you coach someone back to reality, back to operating the way that you just described where we're actually taking real inputs

and not just working off of beliefs or, you know, things we see as we're scrolling through reels on Instagram or whatever. What I can say is I can tell you about how we deal with it internally because internally, and then how that translates

to the people that we serve. So internally, pretty sure you read the book, what is it, traction or one of those books, but they talk about like the integrator and what is the integrator? - The integrator is the originator, right?

- So in our early ages of our partnership, even though we're both co-founders of the business, you know, the visionary, McCarty is the integrator, right? So it's like, hey, look, this is what I can see 10 years in the future, this will be got to do,

and then he runs the place so just to oversimplify, right? And in that context, right, we create this very healthy balance of like that is great, and I'm glad that that's 10 years in the future, but what about the next 10 days, right? And then it pulls us back, right?

So like, although, okay, great, like we have there's certain things we have to do today.

And so we're always balancing, like let's look at it

from a business standpoint, what will be our retirement plan? And what pays our bills today? Our retirement plan, meaning we exit a business for a substantial amount of money, right?

“But there's so much that you have to do leading up to that”

for that to be a possibility, while keeping the lights on right in real time. So for us, it's just knowing that we can play in that space and have that balance of like, yeah, I'm going to let you have that autonomy to see as far as you can,

and I'm going to play the role of making sure that we take step one, two, three, four, five, right? That's how it's worked out for us. Now for our client, who may not have the luxury of having a built-in business partner, brother, who, you know,

who can have that balance, we're always acting as the innovator for them, right? Because most of them are, they, whatever their business, they see more clearly than we were, but see as their vision. And so we're able to say, since we're not emotionally attached

to it, and because we've experienced the highs, the lows, the ebbs, the flows of, you know, all iterations of business, we're acting as that ground, I think Gary V puts it as clouds in dirt. So if they're in the clouds, we're helping them stay rooted

in the dirt like, hey, that's great. Not mad at you for this vision you have,

but here's what needs to be true today,

and making sure that they're calibrating on this, if that's something that they really want, because oftentimes, it's almost like, oh, my social media, I have like an interest folder. I'll see something like, oh, I want to buy it anyway.

I used to, you know, I used to hit it with, with impulse purchase, now I add it in interest folder,

So how much money have I say by just like adding it there

and saying, oh, you know, if I still won it, I'll go back to it, I had the link handy.

“I've got the, I've gone back about one of those things, right?”

And so it's the same thing, like we just helped them understand, like, hey, we're gonna park this for now, we're gonna focus on what matters most, and if you really, really wanna do this, and you're really convicted by it, we can revisit it.

And just reminding them of their North Star, which a lot for a lot of times, you have a lot of class that are women, is like they wanna be able to take care of their family and have, and, you know, show off for their daughters.

And like we were minding, like the more you do more of that, like it may not allow you to do as much of this as you think it is. And just reminding them of their true why. - Yeah, I love that. I wanna pivot now, I'm not sure Carlos,

you were George has said this early, it may have been you, Carter, but there was one of you mentioned,

like you're always looking for potential activities,

businesses, et cetera, that not only can help support your main interest, but also potentially generate revenue. And I think content and how you guys are doing your content games are a big part of that. And I'd love for you to talk through

how you thought about how you frame building the content side of your lives and of your work with how it then supports the business itself. You're at the advisory and tax firms, et cetera.

“Like, so I think a lot of people get confused”

in that one they have to be directly related all the time or that they have to be too completely separate things or that you can actually support the content business on its own that all of the support has to come out of that business is where a lot of people get caught.

So, how did you think through this and how did you start to build it so that your content side of what you guys do wasn't just a burden to the business, but was actually thriving alongside of it and supporting it?

- Yeah, so I'm a firm believer that it is not the best who makes the most money, it is the most well-known, right? We all can make better burgers than McDonald's. Yet they make a building, they made a building burgers, right?

So, for me, I think that as a few things, number one, when it comes to content, people will buy from you because they believe because of what you know, other people buy from you because of who you are.

And when you have content, you are able to,

“you have content, you are able to show bulk, right?”

So through our content, we will be able to show our expertise, but we've also been able to show who we are as humans. And some clients hire us because they love our expertise. Some clients hire us because George is a good father, right? And so you are able to leverage this

and be able to get more clients here.

So for me, content has always been a very big

and very important pillar of our business because with our cell phones, we can get millions of views and not have to worry about marketing for our business. Then after we get the content piece figured out, so okay, how can we now that our content is bringing us

in customers? How can we also make money from this content, right? So we have a podcast, we can sponsorships, we have a podcast where we get brand deals, all those things like that.

And what we notice is the more money we make outside of our advisory firm, the easier it is to reinvest money back into our advisory firm, right? And we in Alice Ramosi has this concept called Sawdust, where it's like, okay, look at areas of your business

where you can turn it on and make money but it cost you no extra time investment in X, Y, Z. So for us, it's really been around, how can we figure out ways to make money outside of our business that takes to stress off of reinvesting in our business?

And I'm a firm believer, and I'm sure as he sent him in on this, I believe that we all can become a millionaire by doing the big three. Number one, you get experience and whatever you're doing. So if you say you wanna be the best podcast

or get podcasting experience. Number two, through that experience, we'll make you a expert, right? 'Cause with enough practice, anybody can become expert at whatever they do.

And then once you become an expert, you then can educate people on how you became an expert. So people will pay you for what you know, people will also pay you for who you are. So once you become these, we are now very, very known

in the financial space, some advisors will literally pay us thousands of dollars. Just been one day with us to so that they can get the lesson without having to get the scar, right? And so now we can be that coach for that person.

We can be that advisor for that advisor. And that money is all profit 'cause it costs us nothing. And the more we make doing that, we don't even need to say distributes from our business, we don't if we don't need to.

And that again, because we're in the scale face, and we knew this already. So we're like, okay, how can we still make sure our personal wealth is secure,

and stay profitable. - Yeah, and so, Card, I gotta eat ad to that for you. So you said, we said, expertise, experience, education, or educate that, you said? - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

- Yep, you can also add equity to that, right? So maybe you want a familiar with like consulting for equity. So, one hand, we could educate, right? And people pay us 25,000 or whatever it is for a day or like, hey, if I could help your business,

grow by x-personage, would you be willing to give me a percentage of the business, right? And in many instances, people are willing to do that. So, I agree wholeheartedly what he's saying 'cause we're both doing the same thing.

Now, the other piece, going back to your question on looking at the media aspect of the business and the content and how does that serve? Well, the beyond's, which we spend 100,000 dollars a month on paid advertising, right?

So, for us, it's like you only build an audience, in a few ways. You can buy it, which is what we do a lot of, fortunately, unfortunately, you could borrow it, right? Like, going on platforms like this

and you build an established audience that people were hearing like, oh, I like these guys. I'm gonna go see what they have going on.

“You can build it and that's what we're doing with the content, right?”

'Cause then it becomes own media. So it's like, okay, well, if we have hundreds or thousands of videos on YouTube across all platforms, I don't even, I can't even bad them how many these are the content it is.

But if we have five years, five to six years of content archives, some of which is long-form, right? We are building our audience through that content and we're able to nurture our potential clients at scale. There's a gentleman who actually sent up our podcast

to studios and he helps people do this. But he, I can't remember exactly what he said. Carter will remember probably more eloquently than me. Actually, I let you interject real quick to what he said. - Yeah, yeah.

- So, but basically, we always talk about

the power of compound interest when it comes to investing. We put a dollar in today, it could become $10,000 a mile. He looks at every piece of content as a dollar in the content market. And that will compound, that same compound interest that happens with investing can come from an audience.

That will help you build your business here. - Yeah, so from that vantage point, when you, but you have to again, it's about the frame. If you don't have that frame, content's gonna feel like that drags, oh my gosh, like, 'cause we record,

I record a video that goes live every Monday. Carter of course, we wanna go live every Friday on YouTube. We have a podcast that goes live every Wednesday. We've been doing that since 2021, every week have not missed a day, right?

And then sometimes it's like, did that hit, that one got a thousand views, this one did 80,000, that did really well. I don't know if anybody saw that. Did this one Saturday when I could have been relaxing,

but you never know when someone's gonna see

that piece of content is gonna be the reason that they make a decision. And more importantly, imagine your favorite show, right? You don't, you don't, some episodes you love more than the others. But if it comes on every Wednesday at 8 p.m.

and in one Wednesday they don't make an announcement and it just doesn't come on, you've lost all trust and credibility with your audience, right? And so at some point, once you make the decision to become an authority to become a leader,

to become someone who says they do, who does what they say they're gonna do,

“that's what brand is, brand isn't your colors,”

brand isn't how you make people feel, brand is, I know them for this and I can trust them for that. In the moment that changes, you start to lose brand equity. And so for the foreseeable future, if our brand is saying our podcast airs every Wednesday,

doesn't matter if Carter's sick, doesn't matter if Georgia's sick, doesn't matter if all the sun's not feeling well, doesn't matter if it's raining outside, if that's what our brand says, that's what we have to do,

that's the commitment that we make. And we understand the dividends that I can pay. Every time we acquire clients now, it doesn't rain, sleep, or snow, so it says, oh, I was watching that YouTube video

and that was what made me sign up. So that keeps us going on the days when like tomorrow, when I got a record of YouTube video, I don't feel like it, right? I know that it's a part of the brand.

And so hopefully that has your question. - No, it does. It does inside the insurance industry. I get brought in to do a lot of workshops on marketing 'cause how I kind of cut my teeth was using content,

which in the insurance industry was when I first started doing it,

was very rare. The insurance industry in particular operates about 10 years behind the rest of the world in terms of both technology and general marketing and sales stuff. And God bless the monetization structure

that insurance has, it's able to do that. But my point is, what I used to say, is think of every piece of content that you create as a salesperson working for you 24 hours a day, seven days a week, right?

“They don't take vacations, they don't get sick, right?”

They don't, they don't bitch about the health insurance plan or the 401k, right? It's just working for you all the time. And when you start, like just as you guys said, when you start to think about it,

not as this thing I have to do, this task I have to get through of creating content, but like, this video could make me a sale, right? Someone could hear me talk about what I do mixed with, the fact that I like the Buffalo Bills and whatever,

and all of a sudden they're like, oh, like I like the Buffalo Bills and I need growth consulting. So, you know, this is, I'm gonna give this guy a call, like all of a sudden that those things click

you never know which piece of content's gonna be the one

that hits, right? Like you can your mind to be like the hook is perfect, the graphics are done, the pacing, and it just bombs. And then you could put one out where, you know, you're just kind of stream of consciousness

and you're like, ah, whatever. And it clicks to two people and now all of a sudden you got two new deals in your pipeline. Like you just never know, so you gotta do the work. I love that.

I absolutely think that this is kind of where I'm going and where I want to finish here in the last few minutes together. You know, AI is everywhere, we know AI is everywhere.

“I believe that with AI taking such a big portion”

of the work we do, it's slowly just taking this work away, content in the human aspect of that content is actually becoming even more valuable every day because if we still believe that despite automation, AI that kind of things, we still want to know

who the humans are that we're doing business with. If you're just putting out AI, slopp and this kind of stuff and or you're not creating any content, what differentiates my business from your business, right? If I don't know who the humans are behind it.

So how are you guys kind of leveraging that and making sure that people know who you are in this maelstrom of AI content and shit that's coming out? - We just talked about it yesterday, actually. So we do the in-person events at a pretty grand scale

and I think the experience economy in general if you do any research now, you'll see that the experience economy is actually up taking quite a bit because of what you said, right? No one can distinguish what's real, what's fake, et cetera.

And so with us, you know, we have the fortunate luxury of having a decentralized team, everybody can work for Mo. And we run a successful business. As we think about how we connect and engage with the people that we serve, we understand that at some point,

maybe not every day, they have to walk into our office and check our hand, but they need to understand who we are and that we're real, right? Simply put, right? And so, you know, for us, the events that we do

serve as that opportunity for us to just really separate ourselves. Like again, you can fake online now. You know, AI can have a nice background. There's a lot of things you can do on the internet, but you can't fake hosting a multi multi six figure event

“with hundreds, if not thousands of people, you can't fake that, right?”

And so for us, that's been something that, not because of that. We did this before AI existed, but it has now allowed us to leverage an infrastructure that we already had to create that separation of our own people like it. We're not just talking heads online.

We do this in real life, we get real results, we have real clients. And so that's the ways in which we're distinguishing ourselves. One of the ways at least. Carter, I know you got to run men last words on this topic. And then hit me with, I know that my audience is going

to want to go deeper into your world. Like let me know how they do that. This has been a tremendous primer for who you are as people in your mindset. And obviously it lines up so perfectly with my own.

And I know it will with the audience. Like where do they go to get deeper into your guys' world? Well, all the links, whether you're watching on YouTube, or wherever you listen to podcasts, guys, show notes, we'll have all the links there.

But where can they go to get into your guys' world deeper? Yeah, if they want YouTube, it's just a search, melanin money.

“I think that that'll probably be the place”

for them to get the most about a value. Just like we put out those three videos a week and long-form content. We also host these virtual world workshops. A couple of few times a year to really give people--

we believe in greatness on display. Well, we literally spit five days with these people and give them our best both in tax strategies and then allow them to become clients out there. And they want to-- it is just showingwealthworkshop.com. I'll get you both links.

I have the same center. You know, our YouTube link and in that link, if they want to get closer to us. But that's really, you know, that's really it. And we just put a lot of time, effort and energy

into showing people that we can help them by first.

Actually, helping them. Love that. Guys, this has been phenomenal. I wish that we had three hours to go through this because we could keep going, rather weird.

But I appreciate the hell out of you. This has been a tremendous conversation. Anytime you guys want to come back on the show, open invitation, because I just-- I love the way your guys' minds work.

I love what you're talking about and the way you're doing it. I wish you nothing but the best. And I just appreciate the hell out of you. We'll probably take you up with that offer. You'll probably save us some money out there

because this was-- This is great. Yeah, this was great. You know, like Bob, she had the same sense of us had an amazing conversation.

And we appreciate the fact that we didn't have to dive

to deep on the things that people always ask us

and extract it more value out of us than we could have imagined. So we appreciate you as well. Thanks, man. Well, with that guys, we're out of here.