A hearty welcome to Grandma’s Wealth Wisdom with your hospitable hosts, Brandon and Amanda Neely. This is the only podcast for strategies to grow your wealth simply and sustainably like grandma used to. Without further ado here are your hosts.
Amanda: Hi, I'm Amanda, and welcome to Grandma's Wealth Wisdom, where we work with you to build wealth Grandma would be proud of.
Brandon: Hey, and I'm Brandon, and in today's episode, we're talking about the concept that most guides our life. I mean, like seriously, this has been something that's been central to both Amanda and I for, I don't know, since we have been married almost, I feel like. What we like to call it is "the overflow principle" and there's reasons we call it the overflow principle, mainly because that was our old business, Overflow and it guided the name of the business as well as just some even deeper, way deeper issues like in our soul. So this coffee shop name was a cool name, "Overflow." I loved it. But it was deeper than that. So, Amanda, what is the overflow principle? [0:01:18.1]
Amanda: Yeah, so we're going to define the overflow principle. We're going to share how it shaped our history and then we're going to talk about how it can apply to your life, but first, let me give you the picture of what the overflow principle is. So if you picture a fountain and this fountain represents everything. Okay? And you and your close friends and family are at the top of this fountain, and when good things happen to you, that can overflow your level of the fountain and impact your greater community, the town or city in which you live, and then the good things that are happening there can overflow and impact your state that you live in and then from there, it can overflow and impact our entire nation. [0:02:06.5]
Good things happening within our nation can overflow and impact the world, and then just like any good fountain - here in Chicago, we have the Buckingham Fountain, that's the one I kind of picture when I'm picturing this fountain - there's a feedback loop. The good things happening all over the world feed back up into the fountain and can impact you and your close friends and family. A good way to encapsulate this - Martin Luther King Jr. said that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. I kind of turn that into a positive and I say that good things, positive things happening anywhere can result in positive things happening everywhere and that kind of happens in this overflow way and we like to think of this in all kinds of levels with you know, the positive things can be, you know, just do you have a smile on your face and that makes a smile on your face with your kids or with your spouse or with your neighbor when you interact with them that morning and then at your workplace and then that can, you know, that smile, you can imagine just traveling all over the world. [0:03:15.7]
It could also look like when you do good, right, when you like help someone out, you bake cookies for your neighbor or you know whatever, then that can have a ripple effect. It's kind of like that pay it forward movie from back in I think the 90s - is that when that came out? I feel kind of old now.
Brandon: Yeah, I think it was in the 90s. I forget.
Amanda: Yeah, that idea, like that kid in the movie helps one stranger and if you haven’t seen the movie, go watch it to just kind of see what happens from there. I won't ruin the end of it. You might guess this fountain analogy, kind of how it plays out, but that's the idea behind this overflow principle. Now, we're going to talk about how it shaped our history, and in particular, what it has meant for our story with money and what money looks like when it's on this fountain. We titled this episode "Fountain of Wealth," so we're going to get into that part of it in particular. [0:04:10.6]
Brandon: Yeah and I want to go back to our inception, when we started in the business world. We were idealists and I think any entrepreneur, if you step into the entrepreneur world in general, you have to have some degree of idealism.
Amanda: Otherwise you probably wouldn’t start…
Brandon: Anything…
Amanda: Honestly…
Brandon: If you knew how hard it was, you would do a different thing. We got into this. We had that overflow principle and we were hugely idealists back then. I think we became a little jaded at points, but really, this overflow principle, it just made sense to us. I mean like, who wouldn't want to see these things happening around them in their lives and in their family? So we thought people would get it. We thought, oh my gosh, this is like, this made sense and even like the people around us in our building, all that stuff, they would just… it would just naturally gravitate towards it because it's just, it's good. But we were mistaken. I feel like we were strongly mistaken and we, I don't know, had to go back and really think through things quite a lot. Right? Does that make sense, right, Amanda? [0:05:27.4]
Amanda: Yeah, yeah. But we fundamentally continued to believe that the overflow principle was true. The biggest thing that helped us get to know this principle even more in-depth was learning from other people that people are selfish. Point blank. Period. Like, no questions asked. People are selfish. And that that's actually a good thing.
Brandon: So you're saying all people are selfish? Like some people are going to say, "I'm not selfish." I mean, they're going to say that. They're going to push back on you and say, "I'm not selfish." [0:06:02.5]
Amanda: Yeah. No, so it's actually, it's a good thing. You would never do anything unless you thought it was of benefit to you, even if that means helping someone else. You think that that's good for you too, for whatever reason. We donate in order to feel like we're making a positive impact in the world. We run across the street to help an old lady cross the street because we feel like it's the right thing to do and we would be mad at ourselves if we didn't do it. You know, like even when we do good things, it's for selfish reasons and that's actually a good thing and it means that when you focus on this top part of the fountain and you make sure that positive things are happening for you and the people close to you, that means that you're going to in some way, shape or form, overflow and see positive things happening for others as well.
Brandon: Yeah and maybe for us, I think, like having that café and doing this in Chicago, our selfish thing was hey, this is a cool thing that we get to do and be a part of, but yet we… it is the community and the world side of things but we didn't think about the most focal part, which was each other and ourselves. [0:07:16.2]
Amanda: Right. Right. And we just, be full disclosure, we got to a point where because we thought we were putting others before ourselves and that was the primary thing to do, we got to a really, really bad place when that was our thing, not just …well, the really, really bad place was a relational emotional thing. It had nothing to do with our money, and it was because I think the main reason we got there is because we weren’t investing in ourselves and in our relationship as much as we should have.
Brandon: Yeah. So some of this really came to light when we were meeting with our, an attorney friend. We were thinking of expanding the business like to be a coffee empire. That was the idea, like how do we take this thing global basically is what we were thinking and with our little financial empire. [0:08:12.0]
We talked to this lawyer and we were like man, we are amazing, we are doing some awesome stuff - we have no debt and the lawyer asked us a really important thing. He asked, "So how much are you paying yourself?" And we said, for me, I was like, well why does that matter - like it doesn’t necessarily matter - look at the business - look at how everything is going. And what I came away from that is again, I was looking and saying, oh man, we're not…I felt like a failure a little bit after that meeting. Our focus was too much on the bigger system and not that top layer of taking care of ourselves. And that's where the water comes from. We saw that play out…
Amanda: We don’t create the water. Right? [0:09:00.6]
Brandon: The water comes deeper, but from the business side, if we are falling apart, there's no business. There's no other funnel or any of that happening and I saw that, not just personally with money but also in health and in other areas, which I talked about previously and all those things came crashing down or attempting to, but we still were able to overcome because we thought about it and learned and said, okay, what needs to change to make sure this overflow principle continues and maybe what's stopping is me.
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Amanda: So we took a really hard look at ourselves and we said how are we not actually living out this overflow principle. Yeah, sure, we're giving but are we receiving? Are we making sure we take care of ourselves? There's all kinds of positive things happening all over the place - how are we also benefiting from those? And it was that line of questioning, that realization that all people are selfish, including ourselves as much as our idealistic selves wanted to say, "No, no, no. We are doing this for everybody else," that helped us to get a better place in a lot of different ways and actually have even more of an impact today than we did at that turning point and also to see that that dream to really make the world a better place can be even bigger than what we were even imagining a few years ago. Not because we were looking at what can we do, what impact can we make, but starting with how do we need to change ourselves? [0:11:09.8]
Brandon: So with all of that, again, this is a vulnerable episode. We're kind of sharing some way under the hood kind of stuff, but how am I.. you apply these principles that we learned or learn through failure - how might you apply the overflow principles to your life. So I have a couple of things that I've thought about and a couple of things that again, the principles that we want to make sure we're thinking through this. So one is burn out. Burn out is huge in our world today amongst millennials, amongst even older people and part of it is because, as we talked about in previous episodes and I think two episodes, we're like taking care of other people, we're doing everything on the outside, but we are not taking care of ourselves. We're not doing it from a health wise, from a financial standpoint and burn out is a huge thing and you have to do what's right for you. Like that's the main thing and as, you know, it'll go to the family, your community and all of that, but burn out is real. How do we address that? Do you have anything you would add to that, Amanda? [0:12:28.2]
Amanda: Yeah, so you know, the overflow principle, like you're saying, a lot of people because they're not living this way that they experience burn out. So thinking if you're on the edge of burn out, maybe spend some time contemplating this fountain in your life and how it's working. If you are an entrepreneur, the second tip is huge for you. It comes from this really smart guy named Mike Michalowicz. He wrote a book called Profit First, and we highly recommend this book. We love it. We implement it ourselves within our business and the whole idea is to pay yourselves first, to make sure that when revenue is coming in to your business, a lot of entrepreneurs are the last to get paid. [0:13:15.0]
You got to pay for your products that you're selling. You got to pay all your staff. You got to pay your electric - you know, all the things that are non negotiable, you still have to pay but if your mind is thinking along the lines of paying yourself first and then making sure that all those other expenses fit into what is left, then that is a totally different way of approaching it than you got to pay all these things and then you just get whatever's left over. So we highly recommend checking out that book and just his work in general. If you want to nerd out about it, we would totally love to talk to you on the phone about it, give you kind of our, more about our experience, but we know not everyone listening is an entrepreneur. He actually also in the book talks about how this can be used just for family budgeting, that our family, you know, just how you use the money that comes into your family, that you know, you might think of you got to pay the mortgage or the rent. You got to pay the electric. You got to pay your cell phone bill. You get to then enjoy, after you know, the groceries you have to buy, you set your fun budget at the end. Right? [0:14:17.7]
Maybe instead, you can flip that on its head and say, "Actually, I want to save up for x, y, or z. Let me put that as the top thing I do and then figure out how everything else falls in line," which is actually… that means you are spending your money on what's most important to you. Obviously, you can't then skip your mortgage payment. You can't skip your electric payment, but you figure how to make it work, depending on what's most important. So that's kind of our tip there - how this overflow principle…be selfish. Pay yourself first.
Brandon: And I think all of this goes into if there's no water at the top, it's not going to flow to the other of your fountain. So I think, again, paying yourself first, avoiding burn out. If there's no water at the top, it's … I mean, again, it's ..there's burn out like water and fire don’t mix. [0:15:08.7]
So, those things that have where you're feeding into that. The third, and I think this is really important - self-care. This isn't the same as self-maintenance. Like that's like again, maybe for me going to the gym and that kind of thing, but self-care - thinking about what nourishes you and helps you be in the right mindset. As we work with clients, I see self-sabotage more than I sometimes I see self-care and I don't know, how are you putting into self-care as opposed to self-sabotage? Does that make sense, Amanda?
Amanda: Yeah. So Brandon, yeah, give me an example, be … I'm going to ask you to be vulnerable, extra vulnerable here - what nourishes you?
Brandon: Like food wise or what?
Amanda: No, no, no. What nourishes your soul? You mentioned, you know, going to the gym is just self-maintenance. Like what is self-care to you? [0:16:05.0]
Brandon: Oh, I'd say like hanging out with a close friend or a couple of close friends and I'd say that is really … that's helpful for me. However, I know what self-sabotage, I would at some level, well I don’t want to go out, like again, just the other day, I went out, I go storming out. I went out and hung out with some guys and I almost didn't go because I was like, eh, I'd rather just veg out and watch TV. That probably would have been self-sabotage. Maybe - I don't know. Right?
Amanda: Yeah. So Brandon is an extrovert, so nourishing him, he needs to get around other people. You know, especially he talks to people on the phone all day long but that's different than just hanging out with some friends, and they don’t have to spend money. They just get together. Right? For me, what nourishes me is taking in information. So reading, listening to podcasts - I need to be doing that kind of stuff in order to feel like I'm nourished. Again, just be, you know, a novel, although I love novels, they do feel a little nourished, but also some other materials as well. I love reading some of the magazines I get from nonprofits that are teaching me about the work that they're doing and the impact that it makes. [0:17:16.4]
I feel really nourished when I read that kind of stuff. So you know, that could look like a lot of different things for a lot of different people. I hope the examples kind of give you some ideas.
Brandon: And you just had something in regards to this even …we listened to a church service on Sunday mornings and they were talking about I think self-care or something like that that really stood out to you about this topic. Right?
Amanda: Yeah, so the overflow principle is a philosophy. It's a way of looking at the world and the thing that they said in the sermon that we were watching, it was that philosophies don’t change anything - actions change stuff. So it was actually a little bit of a getting into what we're going to talk about in our next episode. But today, you know, we kind of shared the philosophy, the overflow principle. We shared a couple of actions that you could take like if you're in a burn out situation, take that seriously, do something about it. [0:18:12.2]
If you need to, make some shifts so that you're paying yourself first, whether within your business or as a family. And then definitely think about what nourishes you, but don’t just think about it, actually like figure out what nourishes you and make sure you incorporate it as part of your routines on a regular basis because just in your mind and thinking about it isn't going to change anything. Actually taking action will. And so this next episode that we are going to do comes out just before Thanksgiving, and of course, turkey day is a great time to give thanks. You know, be thankful and grateful for all the things that are happening in our lives that are positive and it just so happens that that weekend after, a lot of people have time off work and it turns out to be a great time for action. We would ask you, and we're going to dig into this in the next episode, like what actions might you take instead of shopping the Black Friday deals, you know? [0:19:08.2]
And we have got some ideas for you, some actions that you could consider trying that weekend. We actually are going to be doing some similar things for ourselves as well. We're going to, you know, dig into that a little bit, and we'll, of course, be talking about the importance of taking action, not just thinking your way to a better future.
Brandon: Yeah, so this episode is kind of off the cuff here. We are sharing some deep stuff that really drives us, again, the overflow principle - it founded our old business name and all of that. We have some amazing.. I may in the future here for Grandma's Wealth Wisdom - be paying attention because some really great stuff as we take action. You're going to see that implementing, the active we have been working towards coming out, so it may be - it might happen right at the same time as the podcast episode drops possibly. [0:19:58.7]
So, cool. So until next time, you guys keep building your wealth simply and sustainably for your own future and the future of our grandchildren's generation.
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