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): Hi everybody. This is Harold Green of Brightree financial group, and it is time to stop doing what you ate. I was everybody doing today. I'm doing fantastic. It is a Saturday for me. And I'm excited about the day I woke up super early this morning.
(00:38): Last night, my wife was like, yo, what time you got to get up in the morning? I was like, Oh, like four 30, four 40. And you know, normally Saturday is when I have a full schedule. I usually get up early, kind of go to bed early Friday night just to get my mind in the right mode to come and deliver what it is that I have inside of me in order to make a difference in the lives of the people that are listening to me and to make a difference in the lives of the people that are clients and people, maybe people that are not quite clients yet. So I have a very interesting show to deliver to you folks today, and I'm super excited about it. And the title of the show is money stakes. That's right. Money stakes, not like sweepstakes or anything like that, but money stakes.
(01:27): And I want to tell you a very interesting story. One day when I was working out with my trainer, I think this is back in 2018 or something like that. I was well over 300 pounds. And normally what he does is he has me he would have me keep track of my meals and what I ate. And if I drank how much alcohol I drank and all of that stuff, and, you know, I was paying him a sizable amount of money to hold me accountable to the goal that I had, which was to lose weight, to get myself in shape physically, but also mentally. And I had a hell of a time keeping up with the program. There was a lot that was going on in my life, owning a business, having a family, sending kids off to college, doing, you know, a couple of speaking engagements a week.
(02:13): It was just brutal. And I, I told myself, dude, you can't keep up this pace with all those weight. It's just not going to work because you're going to have to do something. And so that's why I hired the trainer. So one day we were working out and, and you know, it was just a rough session because, you know, he's kinda said some things to me in the beginning. And he was, you know, riding my butt, which is what I was paying him to do. And I wasn't quite feeling it that day. And so, you know, I had a little bit of a funk on me and at the end of the session, he said, dude, you're like a fricking elephant. And I'm like, what are you making fun of me because of my size, dude, what you, what an elephant? He said, yeah, you're like an elephant. And like, once you make up your mind, your mind is made up and you're not going to change it. And so I started doing some research
(03:00): And I'll tell you what I found out about these elephants. Are you guys ready? One, two, three, let's get it. So elephants, when they're babies, they're tied up with a single stake. And when they try to pull that stake out of the ground, it won't go anywhere after time and time and time again of trying to pull the stake out of the ground. They just, you give up. And as that elephant continues to grow, his mind is conditioned or her mind is conditioned that no matter how hard they pull
(03:37): That steak, isn't going to go anywhere and mind you, we're talking about an elephant that weighs a ton or more with massive amounts of power, but yet they can't do anything with the steak and their minds. So they give up and they don't even try. And so I had some stakes in the ground mentally when it came to my finances, I had some steaks
(04:08): Six in the ground when it came to my spiritual life and I had some stakes in the ground when it came to my, my money life. So we're going to into money steaks today. And some of the things that people have done to just drive a stake in the ground when it comes to, to the money that they have. And I don't know if you guys know this, but I'm going to put it out there. I said it before. Money is a force. Money is a tool that needs to be used and put to work. And money is there to serve you. You are not here to serve money. You cannot serve two masters at the same time. You're either going to love the one and hate the other, or hate the one and love the other either way. You can't serve two masters. Okay? And
(05:04): I look at that from a spiritual standpoint, because as a Christian, I can't serve God N and money. And here's the revelation that I, that I came to God is above my life. And I'm under him. I have my family and everything and money. Money is under that. Money is not above us. Money is below us. And any time you begin to put money above you and tell money is worth more than you,
(05:35): That's a very huge money stake. And so I want to talk about a few money stakes here. And for some people this may apply for others. It may not apply. So, you know, as I go through this and I talk and I share, you know, you can just kind of put the shoe on either foot, the left foot, right foot, whichever one, the shoe fits wear it. If it don't, you know, don't worry about it. So I'm not going to talk too much about investing today, and I'm not going to talk too much about the rapid retire program. And the rapid retire program is a program that I use to help people become independently wealthy. It's just a tool that I use. And if you want to know more about it, go to my website, retire now retire well.com web.com. And then just look that up. But I want to talk about money, stake. Number one, this is the biggest thing that I see hindering people all the time. And it is a mindset that people have that goes contrary in my professional opinion, to building wealth.
(06:39): And that is getting out of debt. There's so much out there about how you should not be in debt. You ought to be tackling your dad. You ought to be paying off your debt. My opinion is very, very different. And I've learned this from experience paying off debt is one aspect of getting financial independence. But instead of focusing on decrease, you must focus on increase because it takes the same amount of brain power to sit there and figure out how to pay off debt that it does to figure out how to increase money. It's the same brain power, right? But the elephant mentality says, no, no, no, no, no. Let's decrease less decrease. We got to, we got to get out of debt. We gotta get out of debt first. And then from there we can then we'll have money to invest. The one thing people never do is they never sit down and count the lost opportunity, cost of paying off debt versus investing the money or putting the money to work.
(07:37): Once you pay off debt, that's dead money. To me that money can never grow because if you're paying off consumer debt with money, you're saving interest. But at the same time that money is buried. It will never make you another dime ever again. And this is what I see when people are dead set and adamant about paying off their house because they say, well, how Harold, if we pay off our house, we'll have, we'll have more money to invest. You understand that? And I got to put the statement out there, all investments carry risk of loss. So do your due diligence. Past performance is no indicator of future results. So if you work for 10 years to pay down debt, and let's say, you're paying down debt at maybe an extra 10, 15, $20,000 a year to get all your debt fully paid off. And I only other hand took that 10, 15, $20,000. And I bought Apple stock now, and 10 to 15 years, your debt will be paid off fully. And then you can invest on the other hand, I'll be paying down my debt slowly, but I would have been buying Apple stock at 10, 15, $20,000 a year. What do you think that Apple stock would have been worth? If we just go back and look at past performance and let's say it was a
(08:56): Thousand percent return over that 10 to 50 to 18 years, do you think at that time I would have enough apple stock to sell some of it and pay off all of my debt. And still I have tons of more Apple stock left, but the elephant mindset is one of safety. The elephant mindset is one of security. The elephant mindset is one of stability and the elephant mindset is one of being comfortable. Now I've heard it said before, if you want to be comforted
(09:29): Someday, you have to learn how to be uncomfortable. Now that's a very interesting concept because it leads me into my next money stake. And that's the safety and the security of money. There's a study out there that shows people, fear loss more than the opportunity to gain people, fear a loss over the opportunity of gain. I've talked to so many people about investing in getting started.
(10:01): And what they say to me is you don't, I'm not, I don't, I don't know. I don't know. I don't, I don't want to lose my money. I don't want to, I don't want to risk it. I don't want to take a chance. The market is not good right now. I hear so many excuses. Why people won't take advantage of an opportunity when it is presented to them. And it's because of their elephant mindset. They want the safety and they want the security of money. But money is a tool money. It has to be put to work. Yes, it may be comfortable and safe for a while, but you're going to come up upon an opportunity or a situation where that little bit of money that you've saved is not going to be enough
(10:47): To get the job done. And guess what you will have to do in order to make something happen. You have to take on debt. And that's why many Americans struggle today because they don't put their money in the right places and they're constantly paying off debt. And so when something comes up, they're not in debt, but in order to make it happen, they got to borrow money. And that's why so many parents have to borrow money in order to get their kids through college, because they've put their money in the wrong places. And they focused on the wrong thing. They focus more on building retirement. They don't have a multi-prong financial plan that has dual purpose dollars built in money with a mission that does more than one
(11:31): Everyone's single-minded like that elephant comfortable, safe, secure. And that's what they're looking for. Another money stake that I've seen. And one that I've had before was this. I can never be rich. I can never be rich. I'm I'm barely making ends meet right now. How can I rich? That was one of my many money steaks. And one of one interesting thing happened to me. I began to put myself around
(12:04): People that had an increased mindset over a decreased mindset. And I went out on a limb. I didn't have the money, but Mr. Bob Harrison bless your heart, man. I love you. And I don't think he listens to my show, but they call him Dr. Increase. And he began to tell stories about how he owned a Chrysler dealership, which I think is probably not a big car, but he believed in the product and he sold, he had a Chrysler dealership and he talked about how he took that thing from zero to hero when in a matter of months, because he adopted an increase mindset and not a decrease mindset. So he was having an event on Maui, which he was doing every single year before the COVID hit. And one year I told my wife, I said, honey, let's go to an increase event
(12:56): On Molly. So I made a big money move and I had to borrow and put that on my credit card, thousands of dollars. And it was at the Ritz Carlton hotel and Maui. So I took away, I took my kids. They were small. At the time we went to the Ritz Carlton and boy, man had a blast. We came across and rubbed elbows with people who made millions of dollars. And they were some of the most humble people. And they had the
(13:27): Increase mindset, not the elephant mindset, but the increase mindset. And they shared stories and they shared stories. And that began to build my faith. And it began to show me that, Hey, if these people can do it, what's the difference between them, their effort and their mindset. Those are the ones
(13:46): Only two things that I had to change was the amount of effort I was giving it. And my mindset. I was out doing my daily devotionals this morning and getting ready to do the show and a gentleman that I see all the time walks by me. And they, they speak and I'm sitting at the table in my notes, right. In my, my goals in my planner, right. Not my day.
(14:04): And he said it, he said, you're working on a Saturday. And I said, yep, I'm working on a Saturday. It was early this morning. And I'm working on a Saturday again, the elephant man
(14:18): Mindset and me before it was, I want Saturdays off, honey. I, I five days a week, that's all I want to do is five days a week. And I want my weekends off so I can relax. And I don't know on and on because I wanted to be comfortable. I was making some decent money at the time, but I did not follow through on the increase mindset. And so once I
(14:38): Began to change and said, yes, I'll work some Saturdays. As a matter of fact, I had been working Saturdays now for about six to seven years on Saturdays. Am I going to work Saturdays forever? No, I don't want
(14:49): To do I have to, no, but I want to serve my clients. I want to serve my community. I want to be available to people as much as possible without killing myself and then getting myself ahead and helping my clients get ahead. But I had to dump that mindset of, I can never be rich, but being around those people allowed me to see into the world of prosperity and that it was possible. If I just made a few changes. That last money stake I want to talk to you about is this action. Action, action. If you take the proper action, you're going to get the proper result. That's very important. If you take the proper actions, you're going to get the right results. There are people that have been taking actions and actions and actions and actions, but they're getting the wrong result. And the computer programming, which I went to school for partially is simply this.
(15:50): You put in the right input, you get the right output. You put in the wrong input. You're gonna get the wrong output. And I see it all the time when people call me and they say, Harold, Harold so-and-so said, I should be doing this. And I'm like, I'm sorry, but so-and-so, they kind of don't know what the hell they're talking about. They're giving you advice in a vacuum. They're not giving you advice and totality. And a lot of times clients will get bad input from individuals that they respect and it ends up turning into a bad outcome. So here's my thing. You've got to check the knowledge that you are receiving. You just can't believe everything. Somebody is telling you, heck don't even believe everything I'm telling you, go look it up for yourself. Go study what I'm saying to you for yourself. Take this knowledge that I am providing you and check it out or your self.
(16:52): And that's what I do. Now. I vet everything. I'm cautious of everything. I hear. I take the information in, and then I process the information and then I do my best to take the appropriate action. And I don't wait forever to take action. Sometimes people decide way too slow and they wonder why they never get anywhere because they're always waiting for the right opportunity. They were waiting just for the water to be just right, right. Sometimes man, you got to jump in. The water. One is hot. It'll cool down. But sometimes you got to get in when it's hot. Cause if you're getting one is cold, it's a little bit too late and it's going to be problematic. So if someone presents you with an opportunity and you vet that opportunity thoroughly, and it's the right opportunity for you, make sure you take advantage of it, take advantage of your opportunities and don't let stupid people talk you out of them.
(17:47): I don't like to call people stupid. I don't even really like to use the word ignorant, but it really frustrates me to see people who don't know what they're talking about. Just spewing all kinds of stuff out there. And people are following that advice and is not in their absolute best interest. But when your opportunities come and take advantage of your opportunities, and if I didn't take advantage of my opportunities, I would not be sitting here talking to you right now. Everybody will be presented with opportunities to be successful either. You're going to act on it. Are you going to let that opportunity pass you up? And you know what? It's going to find somebody else. Who's going to take advantage of it. That's why the rich get richer and the poor get poor. And sometimes people are just comfortable having enough. But I'm going to tell you, there are real problems in those world that only you and I can solve.
(18:44): I'm going to say that again. There are real problems in this world that only you and I will be able to solve would the amount of resources that we accumulate so that we can then distribute those resources to make a difference in the world. It's not about just having enough money and then sitting back and retiring and say, Oh Harold, I'm good. I'm just going to retire. And then kick it. No there's work that needs to be done in our communities. And my goal is to help build you up and build your finances up so that then we can go and target some of these things in the community like homelessness for one mental health is a big one on my mind right now, this country is being destroyed over mental health issues, right? Because there's just not enough funding going into these areas. People talk about helping all the time.
(19:30): They, I hear all of this hyperbole about, we need to do this and we need to do that. We need to raise taxes so we can pay for this. And we can pay for that. And things are getting worse and worse and worse and worse and worse and worse. We are being distracted. But I want to tell you this. We need to dump our elephant mindsets and make a break for it. Pull that fricking steak out of the ground and let's run. Let's go, let's get it. Let's do it. Let's climb. Let's rise. Let's fly. Let's leave this garbage of, you know, we can't do this or we don't have enough or let's leave that behind and run. Let's leave those behind that do have that mindset and let's run. Let's get ourselves around Eagles, people that fly high. Like I say, all the time, you can either fly with the Eagles or scratch and cluck around on the ground with chickens and eventually chickens end up fried.
(20:20): And on the dinner plate, I never seen no fried Eagle. I've seen fried chicken, boiled chicken, baked chicken, but I ain't never seen no fried Eagle for one is against the law. Number two. I don't even think you can catch them if you tried, but I want to get into something real quick. I want to look at ways that you can make money, serve you. Money is there to serve you. Have you ever gone out and had a thousand dollar dinner with friends and paid for it? Have you ever done something like that? Some people say, Oh my God, I'll never do that. Well, that's fine. But don't ever, you say you're not worth it. Don't ever say it's not worth it. Just say, that's not my taste. That's fine. Never say it's not worth it because when you say it's not worth it, then you're saying you're not worth it.
(21:05): So here's some way, ways. I think you can use money to serve you by the home you live in. Okay. I bought the car, keep his condo and one of the nicest areas. And I think I told a story. People didn't like me for it. Cause it was cheap. And when I bought it, it drove there, you know, the comps down in that, in that condo. But then they rebounded in a one up like, I don't know, 200 and $250,000 in a year and a half. I made all like abandoned. But I took advantage of that opportunity that was in front of me. The vacations you take, right? Where are you going on vacation? Are you trying to get there as cheaply as you can sitting all squished up, trying to save points, Brian, offline points. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but you can't go on vacation.
(21:46): Like Scrooge McDuck, pinching, and pinching everywhere. That's not a vacation. That's like experiment. And you come back all tired and feeling like, what did I even go on vacation? Not really because you were serving money, not letting money serve you. The car you drive. Some people like to keep their cars and that's fine, but don't go complain about every time you got to take the car to the shop and, and brag about, you know, and like, Oh my God, they're repairable so much. And like, you know, and then on the other hand, I keep my cars for 30 years. That's fine for you if you want to do that. But never say having a new car is not worth it. Never say that it's not worth it. Just say, that's just not for me. That's fine. But never say something is not worth it. You can be worth $20 million in drive a Honda.
(22:31): I could care less because those are your values. But you don't say I'm not worth it. You just choose to do something different. For whatever reason you have the places that you go out and eat. I tell you I'm low key. A lot of times, and I can eat at a hole in a wall, but when I'm in a certain mindset and certain mode, and I want to try to grow my mind, I'm not eating out a hole in the wall. I'm eating somewhere where there's marble in the bathrooms and it smells really nice. And the people dress decent there because I'm trying to get in a mode. I'm celebrating something. I'm trying to get to a certain mindset to refresh myself, the colleges that you send your kids to. Don't say that it's not worth it. If your case I've worked hard, it's okay to send them to really good schools because you're going to reap the benefits.
(23:13): And they're going to reap the benefits for many years down the road, but close you. Now, this is interesting for me. I can pretty much afford like whatever clothes are out there. But I sometimes I, I I'm low key I'll shop at Costco for clothes. Why? Cause I, I wear them out or whatever. I throw them away. I don't care. But when I'm going somewhere decent and around decent people, I have decent clothes. Okay. It's a mindset. Another thing is when are you going to retire? And then what are you doing in retirement? Like, are you just working, working,
(23:46): Working just to pay off a house or build up a huge nest egg, right? You can retire when you get to the point where your money is serving you and it's bringing in enough itself, your money is replacing your income and you don't have to work for it. Money is working for you. But if you never get rid of that elephant mindset, you will never put yourself in position where money and serve you. And you are not serving money. You cannot serve two masters. You either hate the one and you love the other. You can't serve both. So if you're out there and you want to get rid of your elephant mindset army, you got my number (808) 521-4401. And let me help you pull that steak out of the ground and run because that's what we are going to have to do. So what they raise taxes, we got out run taxes. So what costs go up? We got out, we got to run cost. So what the cost of tuition goes up, we got to outrun it. We gotta be smart about it. We can't cry about it. We can't whine about it. We got to take action and we got to get it. All right. So until next time, one, two, three, let's get it.
(25:00): This is ThePodcastFactory.com.
