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Do you hate the thought of working past 55 or 60? Do you hate not being able to live the life you deserve today? Do you hate not knowing what your financial future looks like? It's time to stop doing what you hate, here's your host, Mr. Harold Green.

(00:20): Well, hi everybody. This is Harold Green from tree financial group, and it is time to stop doing what you hate. How's everybody doing today? I am doing fantastic. It is the weekend for me and I am looking forward to a couple of days off of recharging my batteries. I've been charging at it pretty hard here. There's a lot of things that I'm working on. Some projects that are, that are upcoming. And then I'll probably share a little bit more about those a little bit later on, but I'm extremely excited to have the opportunity to share with you today. Something that is near and dear to my heart. I've been pondering something for the past few weeks, and I wasn't sure how to share this with my listeners or whether or not it would make any sense. And so I'm going to tie it into my show today.

(01:10): And the title of this show is success requires change. That is right. Success requires change. And I'm sure we all know that on some level, but I want to talk to you guys a little bit about some things that have, that have happened to me in my life and some things that forced me to change for the better and not the worst. So you guys ready? All right. One, two, three, let's get it some years ago when I started my business and I was trying to contemplate what direction that I wanted to focus in in regards to what I wanted to offer my clients and things of that nature. I settled for planning using insurance products and annuities, along with some other money management tools. And I began to do really well up until a certain point and I hit a wall.

(02:10): And then the next thing I did was I said, okay, how do I take this to an even greater level? And I added in the college funding side to my practice where we help families figure out the high cost of college and how to reduce cost and how to find the right schools for the kids and things of that nature. So I built a whole planning practice around that, along with the other insurance and annuity products and the other types of financial planning that I just kind of mixed together and became pretty successful at that and going down the road with that somewhere, I just, I hit a wall and I really didn't know what it was. And most of my clients, I would say are Asian or of Asian descent. And I do have quite a bit of local families with different types of nationalities, you know, kind of mixed in.

(03:09): And that's the way it goes here in Hawaii. And I'm a little bit embarrassed to talk about this and you can just kind of hear the hesitation in my voice, and I just really want to make sure I don't come off sounding the wrong way when I put this out there, when I would have the opportunity to meet with clients that are, that are potential clients that were white. I always went into the meeting with a, I think, I think I honestly had a horrible mindset and the mindset was Harold. You know, when you meet with white clients, you, you hardly ever do well with them. And so take the meeting, but don't expect too much. And so I would go into these meetings and I would fumble a little bit stumble and Bumble a little bit and sure enough, I would never hardly ever take on clients that were white, me being African American and all the different things that are going on in the country.

(04:10): I just want to share my experience and not everybody's going to have the same experience, but mine is a little bit different. And I want to show you guys what I did and how I, how I changed and what, what made me want to talk about this today was a conversation that I had yesterday with some of my favorite clients and, you know, they, they were coming in and they were bringing in a sizable amount of money to invest. But before we got into the investing side, they straight up asked me, they said, Hey, how is, how is things for you, right? How is your business being affected by the chronic virus? And I said, you know, honestly, you know, my business hasn't been affected all that much. As a matter of fact, I'm busier now than I ever was before. And they said why?

(05:00): I said, well, because now people are starting to listen a little bit more to what I have to say, because I've been saying different things for years in regards to what could potentially happen in the market. What could potentially happen in, in, in different scenarios. And this is why you need to have a plan. And they looked at me and they said, are you telling me that people are not trusting you because of your skin color or not trusting you because of, are you facing racism? And I said, you know, I don't think I've ever faced racism here in Hawaii. I said, but what I have faced is I've faced discrimination. And I said, the truth is, is we all discriminate. And we discriminate when it comes to the restaurants we choose. We discriminate when it comes to the shoes that we buy. We discriminate when it comes to the friends that we have, we discriminate when it comes to the home that we buy.

(05:52): And I told him, I said, you know, when you, when you bought your home, you just bought a home, another home or rental property. I said, did you just go buy any rental property? They said, no. And the husband said, it took us two years to find that place. And I said, exactly right. I said, so you're not just going to go and just buy something just to be buying it just to, you know, for, for no particular good reason you're going to discriminate. And I said, I understand that. But going back to the conversation that I was having about working with clients that are white, I went home and I was talking to my wife the other day. And I said, honey, you know, I finally realized why I had such a hard time. And what it was was I was not a exuding, the type of competence that they desired, or the type of confidence that they needed me to exude giving them a comfortable feeling that, Hey, this is our guy, this guy, Harold Green is going to get it done for us.

(06:48): You know, I, I did display that. And I also think I wasn't up to the level of skill that they needed in order to get the job done as well. So I had to make a major change and a major shift in my practice. And so I said, I see where things are going to go. I see where things are going ahead in the next three or four years. And I need to position my business in that arena, but you know what? I did not have the skill. I did not have a well rounded tool belt, what the different types of products and strategies that would help get the job done. So I went out, I decided to become a fiduciary advisor, got this series 65, passed the exam on the first try, which is really hard for a lot of people to do. And I began to study and study.

(07:34): I already knew quite a bit about investments, but it was just that I knew about them, but I wasn't licensed to talk about them. I wasn't licensed to sell them or put my clients in them. And so I felt that coming down the road, I'm going to have to make a switch over into the investment world, not for sake, life insurance and annuities, but to get a new skill and to hone in on that skill and to fine tune that skill so that although I haven't been doing it long, I would give myself the look and feel of someone who's been doing it for 30 years. And so for everyday, almost for the last three years, I have immersed myself in the investment world, learning everything. I can study everything I can sharpening and honing my skill. So at one point I thought to myself, maybe, you know, these people aren't becoming clients because they don't, they don't like black people, but you know what?

(08:31): I, I did not let that soak into my mind and growing up, I think I formed a bit of an inferiority complex because every single time I would, those clients would come in, I would look at them and say, man, they got a lot of money. I don't, I don't know if I can convince them to do it this way, because they've already amassed this amount of money. And you know, here I am going to tell them to do something different and they're going to look at me like I'm crazy. So just, just take the meeting and go through it. And you know, I got tired of that happening. I said, you, you have to get better. You can't sit here and say, someone is not giving you an opportunity because of the color of your skin. You are not getting the opportunity because you don't know what you are talking about.

(09:12): And that is the reality that I had to face, because if I did not change, how was that a point in my business where either I sold it off to somebody else. And when back into the corporate world and got another, you know, eight to five job, or I had to bust my tail and figure out how to do something different than what I was used to success requires massive change. It requires constant change. And it requires you to, to thrive and to grow in many different areas in order to see that fulfilled in your life. One of the other things I realized was that I wasn't communicating properly. I wasn't speaking their language. And what came to me was I was in Japan for a while with my wife, before I got married, we were dating. And then eventually we got married and then we came to Hawaii and I thought to myself, what if, you know, I lived in Japan and I wanted to communicate with people.

(10:08): I wanted people to hear what I have to say, but I stood there on the street and I yelled at the top of my voice in English. And imagine if nobody spoke English, no matter how hard I yelled or how loud I yelled, they wouldn't understand what I was saying. They would look at me like a raging lunatic. And so one of the things I had to learn about becoming better as a financial planner and a fiduciary advisor is I had to learn how to speak the language that my clients will understand. Every single person who comes through my door, they all speak a different language. And some of them, the language that they're speaking from their heart is about getting their kids through college. Sometimes the language that they're speaking, when they come in, as about maxing out their 401k or growing their retirement, sometimes the language that they're speaking when they come in is how do they better provide for their family?

(11:10): And one of the things I always do is I sit down and I make sure I take time to listen to them, to hear them out versus me coming in with some sort of product or some sort of strategy without even hearing what they had to say. So for a lot of the clients, when I first started, it was basically like I said, life insurance and annuities, and we didn't do any investments or anything like that. As a matter of fact, a lot of the people coming in were scared of investments and they were losing tons of money and they were looking for a safer option. But the truth is, is they had advisors where they had people that really didn't have their best interest in mind. And so they were losing a lot of money and they just didn't know what to do.

(11:48): So they, they gravitate more towards life insurance and annuities. But as time went on, I began to realize was the fact that if you develop a better strategy, they're safer things that have more flexibility out there than just pouring all the love, your monies into life insurance and annuities. And so I had to go back and begin to reeducate my clients on how the market is not a terrible, crazy, scary place that is going to take all of your money. And you're never going to see it again. And a lot of them, that's the belief system that they had, but in order to begin to go back to them and to talk to them, I had to hone in on my skill level and to make sure that I am, you know, making these changes. Same thing happened when I built rapid retire. I realized the information that I was sharing with my clients was working, but it wasn't working to the level of success that it could work.

(12:43): And so therefore I developed the rapid retire program, which helps people retire seven to 10 years sooner than they think they could retire. Something interesting has been happening here lately, where companies are forcing people out of their jobs. And they've been there for, for many, many, many years. And now all of a sudden they're faced with the difficult decision of taking different types of severance packages or risking, you know, staying on board with companies. And then who knows what happens after that. And a lot of these people are between the ages of 55 and 60 years of age. And some of them still have kids in college. And that's why I built rapid retired to help put you in position so that if anything like that were to happen, you would be taken care of. So if you want to know a little bit more about rapid and go to my website, retire now, retire, well, download the brochure and just kind of read through that.

(13:40): But if you want to be successful financially, you're going to have to check your mindset at the door. Okay? So you can either have a growth mindset or you can have a non-growth mindset. And if you have a non-growth mindset, you're probably dealing with some sort of inferiority complex when it comes to your finances. And it was funny. I was meeting with a client yesterday and she said, and you know, we're talking about wealth and different things like that. And I began to explain to her some of the things that I shared on my last show about how the rich get richer. And she looked at her husband and she said, see, I told, I told you there, there has to be a way that's, you know, when we see people that are wealthy and it looks like everything is just going great for them.

(14:26): I told you, there was a way I told you there's something that we could do to add more value to, to our lives. And I said, yep, you're absolutely right, but it's going to require some change. And so if you're ready to change, if you're ready to grow, if you're ready to go to that next level in your finances or any other area in your life, I'm just going to ask you to reach out to me, get in touch with me. And eight Oh eight five two one four four one. Let me coach you up and help you overcome those types of thinking and the things that are holding you back. So thank you very much for allowing me to share a little bit about my life and, and some of the challenges and things that I've been through. I'm always in growth mode and I want you to be in group mode too. And so until next time you guys, one, two, three, let's get it.

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