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): Hello everybody. This is Harold Green of Berry tree, financial groove, and as time to stop doing what you hate as always, I hope you are having a fantastic day to day and hopefully things are going well in your life and be tuning in for the first time. Welcome to the show. If you're a returning to the show as a client, thank you very much for being on board with me and listening to me right. And rave at you guys. And I'm just grateful for that. I'm grateful for all the people that are in my life. I'm very thankful to my wife and thankful to my kids and just feeling real blessed right now, even in the midst of things that are not going the way I need them to go in regards to certain situations and circumstances. And it's just something I want to talk to you guys about today.
(01:10): And the title of today's show is out of character. And before I get into this, I'll talk to you guys a little bit about what I'm talking about here. You know, last night, my wife and I were having a conversation about something that, that has been taken place and, you know, it got me really, really upset. You know, it got me so upset that I used some choice words. I call them choice words. They're the words that I, I don't use the words that I don't, that don't come out of my mouth very often, or they probably should never come out of my mouth because I've trained myself to, to be articulate and to communicate my, my feelings and in a manner that's not unbecoming or or anything like that. So I was just really upset. I'm not going to say what I said, but I was just really upset.
(02:05): And I was just sharing with him, my wife, and we were just kinda talking about this thing and, you know, asking ourselves questions, you know, like when you're dealing with something and you're like, why, you know, like why in the hell? You know, like why? And, you know, and you just kind of get into it. And then it just kind of goes sideways from there. Sorry. I went to bed last night and I slept okay. And, but then I woke up at like one o'clock in the morning and these things were just like on my mind and went back to bed, woke up again at like five o'clock, this got up. And went to my spot. I was talking to you guys about spots the other day, how to deal with things. You got to pick your spots. So I went to one of my spots and sat down and was going through my daily devotional and right.
(02:53): Not my, my scripture things that I normally do in reading my Proverbs and things like that. And, and it just dawned on me, you know? And I always have these conversations with God about stuff. And, and I, I believe there are audible because when he talks to me, it's kinda like, you know, I hear this voice and people like, well, how can you hear God talk to you? Well, my thing is, if you spend enough time with them, just like you do with your kids or with your best friend or anybody else, you'll, you'll learn what he sounds like to you. And God sounds differently to everybody. He sounds he'll sound differently to me than he will to you. But some people don't believe in that. That's okay. I'm just sharing with you guys, my belief system and, and where I'm at getting to the point, the conversation kind of went like this, Harold, that's not who you are.
(03:43): You know, those words you used last night, that's not who you are. Do you know who you are? And I was like, yeah. I mean, yeah, I know, I know who I am. And he's like, no, do you, do you know who you are? And I was like, yup. Then I had to think about it. And then I, I straight up say, God, I'm sorry for the, I'm sorry for my attitude last night, you know, I'm sorry for the things that I said, that's not who I am. I was totally out of character. And this morning as I was driving to do this show, it dawned on me how important it is to, to stay in character. And the thing I was dealing with, and I tell you, it got me out of character. It got me out of sorts. And I want to talk about things like this because as you become wealthier and wealthier and more and more successful success, magnifies character, I'm going to tell you straight up successful magnify your a character, like say the more money you get, if you're a, you're going to become an even bigger one.
(04:55): The more money you get, if you're a giver, you're gonna become an even bigger giver. If you know, you become super successful and you do a lot for your community, you're going to, you're going to do even more money. Money is a magnifier. Success is a magnifier of who you are and people are going to see that they're going to see whether you're kind or whether you like vengeful or, you know, like just a, just a big idiot. You know, money's going to magnify that success is going to magnify that fortunately for some, and unfortunately for others. But I want to talk about things that man, things that will get you out of character and make you go off script. And it's important to have a script in life of your character, who you are, the things that you ascribe to, the things that you know, the higher standards that you hold yourself to.
(05:54): And a lot of times I have to remind myself how your Harold Green CEO of Brightree financial group. You're not some dumb schmuck that shows his tail when he gets upset or yells at people or puts people down. That's not who you are. And I have to remind myself that no, that's not who I am. And what are some of the things that can really get you out of character and get you out of sorts years ago, my wife and I, we went through some very horrible times and we ended up living in this place that wasn't the best of all places to live in, but it was all we could afford. And we were thankful to God for it, but the environment wasn't that great. It was affordable, but it wasn't that great. And I think I was in my twenties or something like that and, or, yeah, my late twenties and trying to start a business.
(06:46): And my wife was staying home with the kids and we were clipping coupons left and right, and chasing after one cell to the other, going from one store to the other, I probably burnt more gas chasing after deals at stores, you know, waiting in parking lots for my wife to go in one store and come out the other and then drive them all and go in another store and come out the other, I mean, we probably wasted so much fricking time. We could have just probably went into the store and got our stuff and came home and, you know, just dealt with it that way. But, but that was our environment at the time. And you know, the place we lived was that was, it was okay. But it was, it was ran down. Our neighbors fought all the time. We didn't have air conditioning or anything like that.
(07:29): The owner was so cheap and I mean, he was cheap didn't he hardly wanted to fix things in there when they broke. He would always come out himself to fix things and nice guy, I enjoyed our conversations, but w we S we wasted so much time. And I just, it, it really got to me. It really got to me and I was trying to grow and become a better person and escape some of my stupidity, because a lot of the challenge I was going through in my life was because of my own stupidity. But God said, you, you got to change your environment. You have to change your environment. So I used to go to this Bible study out on this place called Hawaii. That's where I live right now. And I've probably told this story before, and you know, how I got, I got lost on the way to Baba study.
(08:16): And then I had to go pick them up. And I, you know, he was lost over here at this gate, a community, and I drove up to it and I was like, oh my God, this place is amazing. What if I could live here someday? And from that point in time, I began to see myself and see myself and see myself living in that place. And I kept going out there for whatever reason, seeing clients and whatnot. I told a story before eventually, you know, I ended up moving out there, but it was a journey. We first moved into town and that environment was closer to work. But again, it was okay, but it wasn't the best. We had some, some neighbors that were just I mean, they were unruly. And so that as, as I'm trying to grow, these things are constantly challenging.
(08:59): My character, the environment is constantly changing and challenging my environment. And so we decided that, you know what we got to get out of there. We gotta get out of there. And so we ended up moving again. I mean, I tell you I've moved so much, I've moved so much. And my kids can tell you, we moved around a lot more than the average person, probably. And because we were always looking for a, a better environment for the character, the new character we were trying to build in ourselves, if you're ever trying to get anywhere, and you're ever trying to be in your, you know, trying to be successful. And you're trying to build great character, I'm telling you, your environment will hold you down. It will hold you back. I mean, it's a horrible thing to have to suffer through a horrible environment.
(09:45): And you'll hear this from sociologists and people like that, that a lot of these kids growing up today are a product of their environment. You grew up in a hood, you're going to be a product of your environment. And that's why I'm always telling people, you have to escape and change where you are. So this thing that got me out of sorts, I mean, where we live now, when we first bought it, it was deemed, it was a luxury condo. We had yards parked out front. I mean, we had really rich people living there. And at the time I bought it, it was darn near a million bucks. And, but this is a, this is years ago. This is back in 2007 or something like that. So, you know, for me back then being 32, 33 years old and stepping up into something that big, that was a real big deal.
(10:37): You know, gated community neighbors were wealthy. We had people driving Audi R eight, S a rolls Royces, all kinds of stuff, living in the, in this condo, like, you know, in this complex, it was indeed a luxury condo. We had our own maintenance staff. We had our own yard, man. I mean, it was like living in a hotel. And at one point in time, they even had maid service in there. I mean, this is how high end this place was. But over the years, this place has changed a lot. They can't keep a decent resident manager for whatever reason, and it's just, it's going downhill. And I told my wife last night, I said, honey, we're no longer at the level that this place has gone down to. We're in a different level. And you know what, if we don't change our environment, we are going to become a product of our environment.
(11:34): And man, I tell you this thing was challenging me because you know, we're looking here and we're looking at places to live in different things like that. And then a lot of times in Hawaii, you look at the real estate and you say, man, is this place really worth it? You know, if I'm going to pay $5 million, do I want to pay $5 million for an 80 year old house that I got a tear down from scratch and rebuild is really worth it. Is there a better use of my revenue and are there better things that we can do? And we constantly think about, you know, if we bought a house, say in Michigan, or we bought a house in Florida, not saying that I'm going to abandon my clients and leave them because that's not who I am. That's not my character, but I tell you if I don't change my environment, my character is going to change.
(12:16): I'm not going to be the person that I really need to be, to take care of people. And that's one of the things that really, really gets to me is when people misuse people, they take advantage of people. They talk down to people and I think in Hawaii, that's why it's or anywhere in the world. That's why it's so hard to trust someone because there's so many, you know, buttholes out there that take advantage of people. And they abuse people and they mistreat people. They, lot of people, they steal from them. They cheat on them. And that's why it's so hard when clients are trying to refer the people to me, because sometimes people have been burned. And I tell you, if you've been burned by a financial advisor, you don't ever, ever, ever want to get into another relationship like that. It's talking to a buddy of mine, golf buddy of mine, Scott OCHA.
(12:59): If you're out there listening, thank you very much for helping me find some balance along with my other good buddy, Brian Bianchi. And you know, you guys helped me. You helped me find balance to be able to do a checkup from the neck up. That's a very important thing. And so we're sitting out there, we're talking after a round a golf. And I know he was just kind of sharing with me about some people that he's kind of been referring in. And it's been hard referring people in because a lot of times people have been burned. Why? Because they're dealing with people who have shady characters, they have all the external things going on. They look good. They went to the right college. They went to the right high school. They, their, their parents run the right business and they're in the right circles. And, but then deep down inside, like I said, success magnifies the character.
(13:49): And that's something you don't get to see from a person. Now, sometimes you can be a good judge of character, and sometimes you can misjudge a person. You can miss judge character and I've misjudged character before. And I've been burned. I've had my butt burned so many times it's unreal, but I'm not going to start mistreating people. And just looking at everybody with a John, that's odd because I've been burned before, but I can tell you this, it will get you out of character when you deal with shady people. When you deal with people that don't give a crap about nobody but themselves, it'll get you out of character. And I'm going to ask you a question, who are you, what is your character like? Are you ascribing to be a kind person? Are you a diligent person? Are you an honest person? Are you a kind caring person?
(14:41): Are you sympathetic and empathetic? Or are you apathetic to somebody else's situation? Like, like who are you? Right. Sit down somewhere. And just kind of think about this because as they say, you never know what comes out of a person until they get in hot water, like a teabag. The flavor says one thing on the outside of the bag, but the only way, you know, is you, if it says, hi biscuits, whatever you put it in, hot water, you, and if that's real, you know, hibiscus tea, or is it long tea or is it breakfast tea, right. That's a very important thing. Who are you? Right? What are some of the other things that can really get you out of character? For me, a lot of times it's environment or it's it's people. But then the last thing that, that I find sometimes that get me out of character is my thought process, right?
(15:45): The things that I think proverb says as a man thinketh. So is he as a man thinketh or a woman thinking, so are they, your thoughts will, will dictate your character. You think in shady thoughts. So you're going to have shady character. If you're thinking negative thoughts, you're going to be gonna have a negative character. Again, who are you? And I just wanted to share with you guys how important this stuff is. Because again, success will magnify who you are. These are all checklists that you're going to have to look at on your way to becoming successful. And some of you who are my clients that are already successful, you know, we do talk about these things from time to time. We talk about life on a very meaningful level, not just the bunch, your money. I don't, I don't just care about my clients from a monetary perspective.
(16:40): I care about them from the bottom up. Like I care about their kids. I care about, I care about everything. Some people say, well, why do you, why do you care so much? Well, because I like to live by this principle of do unto others, as you would have others do unto you. You know, if I was a client and going through a situation and stuff, and one of my advisors knew what I was going through and they, and they, you know, they reached out to me. I mean, that means a lot to me because you know that just one extra touch of, Hey, how are you doing? Hi, is everything okay? Hey, is there anything I can do for you? Hey, is there anything we can do to make things better for you? Hey, is, are we missing anything? And that's very important to me.
(17:22): And a lot of times people would just want to know that you care, right? You can say you care, but a lot of times actions do speak louder than words, and that will help you with your character. Right? Lot of people pour kindness on you guess what? That keeps happening. You're going to be a kind person, right? You're receiving that. And again, you become a product of your environment. So if you don't like the character that you display, sometimes check these things out, check out your environment, check out the people that you're dealing with on a day in and day out basis, and then check your thoughts, right? Check your thoughts. And so if this show has helped you today, thank you guys for tuning in, please pass it on to other family members, friends, you know, people that that need to hear this information to help them get from where they are today, to where they want to be.
(18:18): And if you're listening to me and you're not a client yet, I'd really invite you to get on my calendar and let's have a conversation. Initial consultation is free, but if you want me to analyze your current financial plan, make sure it's running the right way, give you some ideas. That's going to cost you 3 75 an hour. And that's not a lot of money to make sure you're on the right track. I mean, if you work 2, 3, 4, $5 million, just to have a conversation with me and see if your plan is working right, $375 is not a lot of money. Okay? So thank you everybody for tuning in. And until next time, 1, 2, 3, let's get it.
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