Today, Chris runs his own buying and selling businesses with his family team, which purchases 205 properties monthly, so they're in the trenches every single week. They also help their Associates and students do the exact same thing all across North America, working together on another 25-30 properties every month.

Free Webinar: www.smartrealestatecoach.com/webinar 
Free Strategy Call: www.smartrealestatecoach.com/action
 

Social media links:

Podcast: https://www.smartrealestatecoachpodcast.com
Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/smartrealestatecoach
Google +: https://plus.google.com/+Smartrealestatecoachchannel
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/smartrealestatecoach
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/smartrealestatecoach/
LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisprefontaine
 

Michael Quan is a personal finance blogger, financial coach, and educator based in San Diego, California. He's on a mission to spread financial literacy and wealth creation strategies to all who seek it.

Michael achieved F.I.R.E. (Financial Independence, Retirement Early) at the age of 36 through a combination of saving/investing, entrepreneurship, and real estate investing. He has been featured in media outlets such as Business Insider, MarketWatch, Yahoo Finance, The Huffington Post, and more.

When not helping others, he enjoys spending quality time with his wife and two children. He is an avid fisherman, world traveler, foodie, and tech junkie.

LINKS:

https://www.financiallyalert.com (blog)

https://www.financiallyalert.com/tfp (book)

https://www.breakthroughmillionaire.com (podcast)

Ken began his career as a professional engineer who subscribed to a lucrative investment portfolio that included aggressive joint ventures, real estate, and the stock market. However, shortly after the market crash in 2008, he pivoted to the insurance and financial industry - where he quickly realized he was one of the few people who cared about educating their clients rather than just selling to them. He recognized that the financial industry needed to be run with precision and integrity like the engineering community he had come from.

Subsequently, he founded his own company, Greene Finance & Insurance, and has developed an approach to finance with an emphasis on growing your wealth and protecting it with traditional financial principles and investments off Wall Street. His desire to continue to educate and help people led to the creation of his podcast, ENGINEER OF FINANCE, where he talks about how to enjoy today and have a wealthier tomorrow.

Ken currently resides in Reno, Nevada.

After interviews, speaking engagements, book signing events from San Diego, California, to Austin, Texas to the Midwest, Jackie published the sequel, Truce Island and continues to speak to groups on the writing and publishing process.

Her latest book, Brenda's Wish just released in October and has received national endorsements and other excellent reviews. She's appeared on Channel 8's show "This is Iowa with Eric Hanson" and Channel 13's new show "Hello Iowa" just in this month alone.

Jackie has a passion for writing, for making a difference and for helping others with similar passions. Besides speaking engagements and her writing career, she has over 15 years of experience in nonprofit management and began her own consulting business in 2012 doing strategic planning projects and more for nonprofit organizations.

Jackie has now launched a brand-new entity Dream to Author to help aspiring writers become published, providing assistance through online training and coaching services.

Scott’s social experiment has now evolved into an urban legend, world record, cultural phenomenon, and a profitable enterprise. Simply google the word nametag, and you’ll see his work benchmarked as a case study on human interaction, revolutionizing the way people look at approachability, identity and commitment.

Since 1999, Scott has authored 30 books, published an award winning blog, created NametagTV.com, released seven albums on his own record label, done 500+ interviews with every news outlet in the country, created a suite of creativity based software apps, given a TEDx talk and delivered hundreds of presentations and corporate training programs worldwide.

He also wrote, produced, directed and scored two concert documentaries.

And he was also inducted into Ripley’s Believe It Or Not as the world record holder of wearing nametags.

He lives in Brooklyn, where he often talks to strangers.

Watch Scotts TEDx Talk
Learn More About Scott on his Website
Check out Prolific

Learn more about Aaron:
https://www.viewfromthetop.com

Follow Aaron on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AaronWalkerVFTT
Follow Aaron on Twitter: https://twitter.com/vftcoach

David and John’s work has appeared in Forbes, Yahoo Finance, CNBC, ABC News and Good Morning America to name a few. They’ve partnered with some of the best in financial services, including MassMutual, Prudential, Capital One and Chase, additionally with LGBTQ+ organizations like, The Trevor Project, The William Way Foundation, One Colorado and numerous LGBTQ+ centers across the country.
Their goal is to connect LGBTQ+ people with the information and services they need so they and the queer community can do more and be more.

As a mental health therapist, Ramona works with individuals and couples, supporting clients in navigating challenges such as anxiety, depression, grief, trauma, relationship problems and spiritual concerns. Her innate ability to quickly connect with people in a personal and authentic manner allows her clients to feel safe and comfortable with the therapy process. Clients quickly learn that they are equipped and empowered to discover the answers they have been searching for.
​

As a motivational public speaker, Ramona’s style is best described as simple, straight-forward and uplifting. Ramona’s captivating personality quickly grabs and holds the attention of her audience. Whether she’s speaking to a small group of farmers at a local café, or addressing a mega-crowd of executives at an urban conference center, or leading people of faith who gather at a church, Ramona channels her God-given gifts and her on-fire passion to reach people. Her mission is to deliver power-packed, customized messages to aide attendees in living their best life and accomplishing their professional and/or personal goals.

-Say YES to Adventure…10 things l learned traveling in 10 countries with my family of 4
-12 Practical Steps ANYONE can use if they want to embark on a Family Gap Year
-YOU DON’T NEED IT….Steps to Downsize to Upsize Your Life!

www.facebook.com/manningtheglobe
www.manningtheglobe.co (not .com)
www.youtube.com/channel/UCysCtNVB3s1kvmrBmuOx24w

As a money coach, business consultant and spiritual teacher, Leisa host’s the Mindful Millionaire podcast as well as virtual workshops and life-transforming retreats. Her masterful blend of sound financial strategy and mindfulness training helps people break free of patterns of lack, scarcity and money fears, allowing them to finally lead the rewarding, fulfilling, and abundant lives they most desire.

Leisa has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, FastCompany, Forbes, The Week, Huffington Post and has been featured on many podcasts and radio shows. Prior to starting WealthClinic®, LLC, Leisa worked with some of the largest financial and business services companies in the world including Wells Fargo, State Farm Insurance, UNUM Life Insurance, New York Life, Federal Express, Pitney Bowes, Ford Motor Company, and General Motors.

In addition to her LinkedIn expertise, Sarah is known for helping fellow introverts market their business authentically & anxiety-free, sell their services & make a difference. She’s also the host of the ‘Introvert Biz Growth’ podcast where she has conversations with introverts who have grown their business using their introverted super powers.

Sarah’s upbringing and life’s experiences inspired a yearning to create a global movement that encourages people to bring more empathy and kindness to the business world, live a more meaningful life and take care of our mother earth and each other. Her Anxiety-Free Marketing Program is the building block of the The Gentle Business Revolution movement.

When she’s not working she loves adventure & traveling (ask her about her alter ego in Sicily), yoga & nature walks or hanging out with her 3 boys (a husband and two teenage sons).

Fate (and the Internet) brought him to discover Bean Ninjas via a blog post. Two years later and Wayne’s involvement with Bean Ninjas had grown from a blog comment to contractor to equity partner.

When Wayne isn’t managing a global team and equipping entrepreneurs with the financial tools they need to enjoy business success and lifestyle freedom, he’s being an everyday superhero to his wife and five children.

As a former standup comedian, he hosts an Apple “New and Noteworthy” podcast with over 100 rare interviews with a number of prominent leaders like Seth Godin, Brad Feld (TechStars), and Troy Carter (Spotify). He has given talks and taught at SXSW, Vanderbilt University, City University of London, USC and Loyola Marymount. He has been featured in Inc. Magazine, Huffington Post, Success Magazine, Business Insider, Social Media Examiner, Inc. Magazine and USA Today. He lives in Los Angeles and enjoys BBQ.

He was on MySpace before Tom was. He signed up for Twitter before it was cool. And after Justin graduated college in 2003, he hacked my college email address just so I could sign up for Facebook. In short, he's loved the medium since Day One.

If you're tired of wandering around in the digital desert, let Justin make it simple and show you the way.

Steve’s passion for developing people has impacted many of his former players, coaching and professional colleagues, and employees on his teams. Known for his ability to establish organic and transformational relationships; he has been able to raise the performance of others within every organization or team he has been associated with. The ability to consistently challenge others and help them strain their potential led to an annual “Run to Work” day where a group of people at all different fitness levels have participated in the 11 mile round-trip run each of the last three years. A seasoned speaker with over 13 years of public speaking experience, Steve engages audiences of all sizes and leaves a lasting impact. Steve is a proud husband, brother, and father of two young boys.

In 2016, at the end of his athletic career, Richie began life as a serial social entrepreneur. He has since founded 2 companies (Wild But Well, RICKiRICKi), toured as a corporate speaker, published works of poetry and writing, and appeared on 10+ podcasts. He continues to receive praise as a brand strategist, creative director, and idea generator, all the while emerging as a wellness activist working with business executives and Grammy-nominated recording artists. Richie advocates for an updated definition of wellness. One that includes: movement, stress, routine, habits, sleep, happiness, financial stability, relationships and food. He speaks with the spirit of alliance, and believes we can all update our defaults and unlock our greater self.

He also works with founding teams of companies positioned for hyper-growth focusing on implementing personal performance systems and positioning these companies to scale into industry or category-leading organizations. He works directly with these leaders or via their institutional and venture investors.

He has more than fifteen years’ experience working one-on-one with hundreds of top CEOs, founders and executives at Fortune 100 to 1000 firms such as Walmart, PepsiCo, DirecTV, NASCAR, Subway and Yahoo!.

Mr. D’Amore is a serial entrepreneur, founder, board member, investor and adviser to multiple international companies.

He founded multiple startups after long careers deep in the media and entertainment sectors producing programs such as Undercover Boss and The Apprentice.

Mr. D’Amore began his career in global finance building international businesses for the market leading firm Cantor Fitzgerald. He serves as mentor and lecturer to Top 25 MBA programs such as USC, NYU and Columbia, and acted as spokesperson and host for an American Express and Discovery Channel show promoting entrepreneurship.

Mr. D’Amore speaks internationally on the topics of legacy, personal development, and applying lessons of entrepreneurship and innovation to corporate environments.

Holly began teaching personal finance in 2006 as a service project with Rotary International. She received the prestigious “Rotarian of the Year” award in 2007/08 for her work in financial literacy.

After a successful career in real estate and finance, Holly founded Financial Impact in 2016.

Holly is recognized for her unique approach to money, which reinforces core values while creating wealth. Through workshops, courses, and masterminds, Holly has coached thousands to peace of mind and confidence with their money.

In 2017, Holly was recognized by the Association for Financial Planning and Counseling Education ® with the "Bridging the Gap" award for outstanding work as an entrepreneur and financial coach. Holly has spoken to audiences of 2500+ on the topic of money, leadership, and conscious living.

Holly has a B.A. in International Business & Japanese from the University of Colorado. She now resides in Boulder, Colorado. Holly loves to hike fourteeners, watch the sun rise, travel, and practice yoga.

Chad’s high energy and passion are engaging and infectious! He is a straight shooter and understands that business today is all about building even stronger relationships with the people you work with and serve.
During his 18 years, Chad has been fortunate enough to travel the globe working within all levels of organizations of all different sizes. Fortune 100 companies have sought out Chad’s assistance to discover where they want to be, to help create a plan to get there, and to issue a challenge to implement for real results.
Chad has had the privilege of being invited to the White House to discuss how to impact today’s small businesses, and is an accomplished author of two books, Winning The Money Game and P.E.P.P. He has also consulted, and sold products and services in over 40 countries and his work has been translated in over 15 languages.
He continues his vision of providing people and organizations a personalized formula for better employee engagement and positive progress.

Marisa has a true gift helping others discover their innate skills and passions. She has been through many transitions with her own career, relationships and geographical locations, and finds the greatest joy helping others with transitions that they are currently experiencing (or want to experience) in their own life. Marisa just spent the last four months traveling through Southeast Asia; over the next couple of months, you’ll likely find her exploring more countries in Central and South America as she continues to take on coaching clients and plan other exciting programs. Reach out to Marisa if you’d like to work with her as your one on one Life Coach!
Learn more about Marisa at:
www.marisameddin.com

Originally from Stockholm, Andres decided to pursue his dream of living in a tropical climate with lines of coconut trees; taking his grandfather’s inheritance of $2,000 and buying one-way ticket to Thailand. With $100, no contacts, jobs, or knowledge of Thai language, he ended up sleeping his life away on the beach strip of Phuket.
“I won’t give you any money, but I’ll give you a book that might help you,” said a friend from Sweden after he asked for help out of desperation. Both hungry and angry from the response, Andres belligerently read the book on an empty stomach. It was called The Secret: The Law of Attraction. With nothing to lose, the next day he set out to disprove the ‘law of attraction’ that he read about. He learnt how to implement practical business principles from visualization and positive thinking. He went from being a skeptic to a true believer of the law of attraction and practiced disciplined principals to attracting wealth, and that changed his life.

Andres got into the property business when he landed a job as a marketing executive handing out brochures for a real estate developer in Phuket. Within 3 years, he had harvested several property investors who believed in his vision and ambitions. This led to his first investor funded property development in Blue Horizon Developments.

Blue Horizon’s group of portfolios include the award-winning Best Western ‘The Beach Front’, award-winning Skylight Villas, Signature Villas, Himalai Oceanfront Condominium, Heavena Residences by the sea, and recently launched Phuket’s biggest hotel Ramada Plaza Grand Himalai Oceanfront Residences, to be completed in 2020. Blue Horizon Developments and its projects have received over 15 awards from internationally-acclaimed property awards groups such as International Property Awards, Thailand Property, and Dot Property Group.

David is a Christian; proud husband of one and father of two; fan of the Cyclones, Twins, and Vikings; and a golfer (ball and disc) and runner.

Molly Rose is the creator of The Academy for Virtual Assistants which trains and places VA’s nationally. She is also is the operations genius behind Build A Bigger Life, a retreat, events and consulting company with Adam Carroll.
Molly Rose is military spouse and solo world traveler who believes in creating a career and a life that allows you to do more of what you love.

Wes is the Chief Investment Strategist at Capital Investment Advisors (CIA). CIA currently manages more than two billion dollars in client assets. Wes is also a partner at Wela, a digital advisory service that offers free financial management tools and the ability for clients to work online with a financial planner.

In 2017, Barron’s named Wes Moss one of America’s Top 100 Independent Wealth Advisors. In the same year, Wes was featured in Barron’s where he offers a look back over his career in addition to offering an overview of the income-oriented investment strategy that he pursues for his clients.

From 2014 through 2018, Barron’s named Wes one of America’s top 1,200 Financial Advisors. Wes was also named one of Atlanta’s 40 Under 40 by the Atlanta Business Chronicle in 2015. And in 2014, he was named as one of the top 40 investment advisors under 40 in the country by Investment News on their inaugural list.

Wes is a regular contributor to the Atlanta Journal Constitution. He also regularly contributes to ClarkHoward.com. In 2014, Wes was the host of Atlanta Tech Edge, a weekly TV show on Atlanta’s NBC affiliate WXIA, covering the emerging technology boom in the state of Georgia. He also served as the financial consultant for Spike TV’s show, Life Or Debt.

Wes has written several books including Starting from Scratch (Kaplan) and Make More, Worry Less (FT Press). His latest book, You Can Retire Sooner Than You Think – The 5 Money Secrets of the Happiest Retirees (McGraw Hill 2014), has been a consistent bestseller in the retirement planning category. This book’s unique message and proprietary research struck a chord with readers and the financial community, making it go-to reference material for retirement and a widely referenced source by the media.

Wes has extensive media experience, serving as a financial professional for both local and national media including CNBC, CNN and Fox Business Network. He has been interviewed by USA Today, Forbes, Time, the Wall Street Journal, and Yahoo Finance, just to name a few.

Wes holds a degree in economics from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He lives in Atlanta with his wife and four sons and loves spending time with his family, coaching lacrosse, and playing golf and tennis.

Amanda uses a “WHOLE”istic, no B.S., approach to coaching and blends strategy, skill and mindset to help clients unearth the root causes of their struggles with food, body and mind to help them create the life they crave. She is passionate about challenging clients to create more time in their life for healthy living and giving them tools to get out of their own way to lead their fullest life possible. Amanda is also Mom of two, a wife to a fellow entrepreneur, and coaches CrossFit to stay actively involved in the fitness community.

He brings that same intensity to analyzing the best repayment paths for graduate degree professionals with six figures of student debt. He's helped over 1,500 clients save over $80 million dollars on their student loans, and he’s been featured in U.S. News, Business Insider, Rolling Stone, Freedom Formula for Physicians, Doctor Money Matters, The Law Entrepreneur, ChooseFi, Bigger Pockets Money, and more.

Ronan believes we’ve lost our connection to a “tribe“ A community that will help you solve your problems and accelerate your learning. He believes that there is more value in making real peer-to-peer connections than paying external contractors who have no vested interest in your success.

When he's not "talking money", Andy enjoys wrestling with his two kids and singing 80's karaoke with his wife.

Prior to founding Talk College To Me, Marisa held positions at PepsiCo, managing marketing campaigns for some of the largest brands in the world and spearheading on-campus college recruiting efforts. Marisa graduated from The Ross School of Business at The University of Michigan with a degree in marketing and a minor in environmental science.

Brian Miller is a corporate keynote speaker, youth motivational speaker, and magician. His TEDx talk, "How to Magically Connect with Anyone," has inspired nearly 3 million people worldwide to make better connections with the people in their lives. It is the most popular TEDx talk ever given by a magician.

Brian graduated college with degrees in mathematics and philosophy before turning down a Ph.D. offer in order to pursue his dream of being a professional magician.

He has since shared his magic and his message with thousands of audiences in over thirty states and on four continents. Brian first built his reputation as a college campus entertainer, earning two nominations for "America's Best Campus Artist" by Campus Activities Magazine. From there he began accepting invitations to entertain at corporate functions and exclusive private events.

A passionate guitarist and singer, Brian spends his rare free time writing and recording original rock and pop music. He lives in Connecticut with his wife Lindsey.

Check Out Brian's New Book:
Three New People is a manifesto on the beauty and power of human connection in a world where loneliness has reached epidemic levels. We’re rushed, frazzled, distracted, and frankly, scared to talk to strangers. But what if it didn’t have to be that way? What if we could easily connect with anyone we meet – on the airplane, at the coffee shop, waiting in line, in the elevator – and take the chance of making a new connection: one that might last for seconds, or for a lifetime?
www.ThreeNewPeople.com

The only thing Damion really fears is REGRET. His formula for success AND a fulfilled life by making tons of mistakes as quickly as possible. This guy literally plays by a different set of rules, even buying his first rental house on his VISA, a move that snowballed into 150 rental houses in less than 5 years. In 2008 he lost the entire 20 million dollar business but 4 years totally recreated his wealth and reinvented his life.

Today he leads 3 global companies with one unified mission: To Free 1 Million People from Financial Bondage.

Erik studied Anthropology (often voted the least-likely-tosucceed
major), and used anthropology in business, helping
a company grow from $7M to over $100,000,000 in ten years
as VP of International Business Development. He also
taught English as a Second Language for 10 years in Japan,
France, Thailand, and universities within the USA. Erik uses
entrepreneurial success formulas and motivational materials
in business, but he’s also pioneering their use in the field
of education.

Erik has traveled to over 80 countries around the world
and 49 states in the USA. He has ridden a motorcycle on
six continents and crossed the USA on one twice. He also
climbs mountains, having summited the highest peak of
eight countries and five states. Experiences ranging from
discussing philosophy at cafés in Paris to having a machine
gun stuck in his mouth in Nigeria to living with a remote Indian tribe deep in the Amazon
have forged a unique perspective that Erik uses to work through both the big, life
questions and small decisions we make every day.

Erik is a writer, speaker, adventurer, entrepreneur, and educator who refused to
let others tell him what he could and could not do. He continually worked toward his
goals even when others said they were unreasonable. Erik’s travels and intersections
with people from around the world weren’t just a fun romp around the planet, but
they were a deep study of people, love, struggle, and ways of thinking that can be used
to tackle problems in school, business, and life. His most current ambitions are sharing
the lessons he’s learned through his business and climbing mountains which he
says makes everyday challenges seem a lot easier.

Coaching CEOs, executives and professionals across the globe, Greg has recognized the
struggle that many senior managers face in breaking out of their operational roles and
advancing to executive level. With his knowledge of business and understanding of personal
excellence, he has made it his mission to help senior leaders rise above the overload and
politics of modern business and leave a big impact.

Greg draws on his many life experiences to help shape his work. He has lived and trained
with the Shaolin Monks in China, tackled ultra marathons in the Gobi and Atacama Deserts,
consulted as a high performance coach for elite level tennis legends like Martina Navratilova,
Super Rugby and golf, and previously sat on the National Board for Bravehearts.

In late 2009, Melissa and her husband decided to “get better with money” by getting out of debt. Melissa decided that her #1 reason to become debt free was to have money to go to Elton John concerts and fulfill her dream of meeting him in person. On her 40th birthday, the last payment to Sallie Mae was made and in total, $43,544 of consumer debt was GONE in less than 4 years! Money no longer stands in the way of pursuing her dream!

Turns out, Melissa is pretty good at this budgeting stuff and in 2012 she became the owner/founder of Melissa the Coach where she helps people overcome the financial obstacles to pursuing a dream through personal finance coaching, speaking and writing. Melissa published her first book, “Building My Yellow Brick Road: Life Lessons from Pursuing a Dream” in 2017. 

Heather is the creator of the New & Noteworthy Podcast, the Mom Is In Control Podcast, and has been featured on the OWN network, Huffington Post, TedX, TV outlets and others. Through her Courageous Rewrite Initiative, Heather gives voice to many humans who courageously took inspired action to create lives they’re proud of.

With wit and wisdom, Heather inspires a global community of women to take back control of their lives and evolve how they lead, work, play, and parent.

Scott is the creator of Simplify Financial Coaching. He coaches, speaks and writes on topics of personal finance helping people in the Salt Lake City area. Scott also works as a Financial Counselor at the University of Utah where he also helps college students get the most out of their finances and create the right money habits that will help them for the rest of their lives. Scott graduated from the University of Utah with a degree in Business Administration and is an Accredited Financial Counselor® through the Association of Financial Counselors and Planning Educators (AFCPE). 

Scott is a husband and a father to a newborn son. He loves waking up early, exercising, reading and spending quality time with his family. 

Spending the bulk of her professional time running SIP, Shauna and her co-owner have certified image consultants in more than 25 countries through their one-stop-shop model for this niche career industry. SIP currently houses four certification programs, a seven-day QuickStart course, a suite of digital marketing products for image professionals, and quarterly virtual workshops.

In her remaining professional time, Shauna works one-on-one with select clients in the consulting and coaching industries on their personal brand, content strategy, and online presence to help them increase revenue, refine their business model, and scale their expertise.

Shauna is regularly hired as a keynote and workshop speaker, speaking on topics like lifestyle management, personal branding, and other relevant business topics for the self-employed community.

She has been featured in Huffington Post, FastCompany, Young, Fabulous, & Self-Employed Magazine, Mint.com, MSN, CareerBuilder.com, and other media outlets for her subject-matter expertise. She is also a 40 under 40 award winner and honored as one of Charleston's Most Influential Women in Business.

Later in life as an adult, I spent some time working for Deloitte & Touche as an Enterprise Risk Consultant. Our clients included big name companies like Berkshire Hathaway, Union Pacific, GEICO, and MidAmerican Energy. It was then I started to see the power of cash-flow and purchasing assets that produce cash-flow. During that same time, I also witnessed traditional financial advice and the limitations of having all of your money in the stock market as I watched 3 major down turns in one decade. I remember thinking “there must be another way” and I set out to find it. Given my love for numbers and building relationships with people, I decided to become a financial advisor, and I truly believe I have one of the best jobs out there!
I am blessed with three beautiful children, wonderful family and friends, and my health. Outside of the office, I spend my time playing tennis, building custom furniture, reading, consulting with entrepreneurs and traveling. I also have fun going toe to toe with Phillip in various competitions as we so often do!
We would love to listen to you and hear what your goals are for both you and your family. Our desire is to serve you and accelerate the realization of those goals through proven financial concepts. We strive to keep clients for life through exceptional care and expertise, and it’s how we approach our relationships with prospective clients. Let us know how we can help you and we look forward to meeting with you!

My name is Phillip Ramsey and I love my life! I know that sounds corny, but it’s true. I am married to the woman of my dreams, I have three amazing children, I have awesome friends, and I get excited every day to go to work. I am truly blessed! I currently live in Ankeny and I’m proud to say I am an Iowan.
I started in the financial services industry ironically because of my own negative experience. I never felt fully in control of my own money or decisions. I determined there had to be a better way, and began investigating a career in financial services. I started with Principal Financial Group and learned a lot about how finances worked, but I quickly saw that the goals my clients had (and the goals I had for my clients) were different from the company goals. After this realization, I began asking myself why this industry was set up this way. I started to put focus on the clients’ perspective, the way I wish someone would have done for me before I was in the industry. I left Principal and became an independent financial advisor. It was then I began to help clients create a plan that they felt they were in control of.
Being an advisor, one of my favorite questions to ask people is “What is your best asset?” There are lots of answers I’ve been given, but I believe the answer is YOU! Your ability to generate and create wealth is far more powerful than anything you can invest your money in. Have you ever heard an advisor say “Set it and forget it” when talking about your money? This can be one of the worst things for an advisor to say to their clients. You should not be taught or coached to forget about your money! Another problem I have with that mindset is that it doesn’t put you in control of your own money. I love working with my clients and showing them what it means to have an account integrated with their goals!
Why is it that some advisors will start by asking about your monetary assets, instead of asking questions about what you want your life to be like, or what your goals are? I don’t feel like I need to hear anything about your money to start forming a plan that works for you. Money is a means to an end- don’t focus on it. Focus on what you are passionate about, and make your money conform to your plan, not the other way around. After you figure out what you want your life to be like, you can use your money to achieve your goals.
It would be an honor to sit down with you and create a customized plan, where you feel in control, and so you can see the real power you have when working with a true advocate. We have a very simple process we take people through to see if we are a good fit. If we are, we’ll educate you on your options and let you decide what is right for your financial plan. We know you have so much potential and we would love to be the co-pilot in your financial life!

As a speaker, Grant has given hundreds of presentations and has spoken to over 400,000 people in 45 different states through leadership conferences, conventions, and other events. His book and curriculum for students, “Reality Check,” is taught in 400 schools around the country.

As much as he enjoys speaking and entrepreneurship, Grant loves his family more. He is married to his high school sweetheart and they have three girls. They live in Nashville, TN.

Founder of Alphavest, an industry pioneer that is right- sizing Wall Street one client at a time, Cokie inspires investors and entrepreneurs at-large with her vision and storytelling of her many experiences leading clients through the financial and work-life-balance maze.

Author of the Liberated Investor, a 40 under 40 recipient and Woman CEO of the Year 2012, Cokie is currently climbing the 7 Summits of the world and beat Stephen Colbert in the Charleston to Bermuda race in 2011. Founder of non-profits Rein & Shine and She CLIMBS, Cokie’s passion for entrepreneurship spans for-profit and not-for profit arenas, alike.

Jocelyn Pearson did exactly this. As the oldest of 5 kids, one of the first in her family to pursue a 4 year degree, and knowing that her family didn’t have the money to cover her entire tuition, she set out to find free money in the way of scholarships and grants enough to cover her entire college career.

As a junior in high school, Jocelyn began submitting applications into those bogus scholarship drawings, believing that if she just applied for as many as she could she would eventually win some of them. After an entire year of not winning, she decided to change her strategy and go after the applications that had an essay as a component (having won the ONE essay application she turned in as a junior). That’s when her winning streak began.

As a senior, Jocelyn won a number of smaller awards, and took those winnings to heart by continuing apply all the way through her senior year in college.

Fast forward to graduation, Jocelyn found herself working for a large multi-national company in a leadership rotational program. While she loved the people and the challenges, the work itself left her somewhat uninspired, and the raises had very little to do with her overall productivity. That, in the end, was what made her decide to pull the ripcord and leave the comfort of the corporate plane she had been riding in for the past couple of years. For Jocelyn, the key for her was to find something that allowed her to provide an amazing service, to make money based on her activity, and ultimately control her future.

To make the leap from corporate life to being self-employed, Jocelyn says she minimized her expenses to the minimal level, figured out how much she needed to last for 6 months with no income, and set a plan to replace her income in the first 6 months. After that, it was all about hustling to make it happen. And she has, within the first year, Jocelyn has replaced her income from that corporate job and helped hundreds of families find tens of thousands of dollars in free money.

The big picture for Jocelyn is she’d like to see her program and book The Scholarship System in front of as many students as humanly possible. Parents will often approach Jocelyn at speaking events or on webinars and ask what should they do given that they themselves are still paying off debt and now have students that need co-signers. The challenge, it seems, is growing from one generation to the next.

Around the 21:00 mark, I asked Jocelyn what kind of mindset shift she had to make in order to make the leap from corporate to solo. Her interesting answer included not pursuing her own passion, seeing a structure that no longer promises safety and security, and wanting to get paid for the work she did.

The one book that Jocelyn credits with changing her mindset over all others is The Four Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss. On the day she left her job, she pulled out the book and flipped to a page that had the following line highlighted: Most people will choose unhappiness over uncertainty. Whether it was cosmic or karmic or whatever, Jocelyn said it spoke to her immensely.

Books recommended by Jocelyn
The Millionaire Messenger by Brendan Burchard
Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg
The Four Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss
The Bible by … oh, you know.

For more information about Jocelyn and her programs, check out: www.TheScholarshipSystem.com.

This podcast is really meant to give you a glimpse into the trends I’m watching as I plan out the next year and beyond in my business and life. And, depending on who eventually is elected president, I may cash in all my chips and buy a condo in the Caymans and peddle shell jewelry on the beach. Heck, we’ll make it a family affair -- I’m sure my kids could sell the heck out of unique t-shirts going chair to chair.

The reason I wanted to record this particular podcast is I think looking forward is essential to planning. Sure, most of what you’ll hear over the next several minutes is speculation, but it’s also based on history and facts that I can corroborate. Nothing that you’ll hear is stuff pulled from my backside…. though it may be pulled from the backside of our Federal Reserve, our nation’s investment system, and possibly our political environment.

Yes, let’s start there, with politics.

Without a doubt we will have presidential hopeful shenanigans. I was listening to Pandora this morning while writing and the ads that kept coming up were for presidential hopefuls bashing each other. What a country we live in where instead of talking about the issues, we just bash the backgrounds of those we are running against. Because I live in Iowa and we’re the first caucus state, the environment is ripe with negativity. Every single one of the egos running for president is doing their damnedest to sideswipe the others.

I checked out the most recently running ads and decided what each was telling me about the candidate, so here they are in no particular order:

Jeb, who is doing his best to separate himself from the Bush name by adding an exclamation point to the end of his name, (I like to call him Jeb!) puts people to sleep according to an ad by Trump.

Bernie is flat out crazy and can’t defend a microphone let alone the US.

Trump is a dictator, disguised as a self-made businessman, and is terribly angry at most everyone.

Rubio appears to be a flip-flopper, and according to my wife has huge ears, (not a reason NOT to vote for him, but look at them next time, she’s right.)

Cruz likes guns and carpet bombing terrorists and quite frankly he scares the shit out of me.

and Hillary, according to most every ad shown in my market is on the FBI watch list and should be convicted of dozens of crimes against humanity.

The bottom line is this is the pool that we have to draw from and as a result of the relative unknowns out there, I believe that what we’ll see in 2016 is a very volatile stock market. None of them, in the primaries at least, have shared a formal plan for “saving” our economy, when what I believe actually needs to happen is a major market correction so companies can begin pouring the cash they have on the sidelines into value based stocks. You’d be hard pressed to find one of those at the moment.

There are two glaring issues on the horizon that, in my opinion, will rear their ugly heads this year. The first is the sub-prime car loan market which has absolutely exploded in the past 3-5 years. According to the WSJ, top regulators are sounding the alarm about the $70B in car loans that have been written to people with a 620 or below credit score. The issue, it seems, is these loans have been packaged into collateralized debt obligations and sold to investors. You might remember CDO’s from back in 2007 and 2008 -- they were pretty much the reason the housing market took a huge dump do to under and non performing mortgages. The theory is the same thing could happen in car loans.

The silver lining is the banks can always repo the cars and sell them again to borrowers who can barely qualify. Not to worry, we’ll just get you into a car loan at 18% interest over 8 years. That should make it better. (it’s called sarcasm.)

For something that can’t be repossessed and will also rear it’s ugly head in 2016, let’s look at student loans. Right now there is $1.3T in student loans (almost $1.4) and it’s growing at over $3500 a second. According to the CBO, 1 in 4 student loans will default in 2016. That’s 25% of the loans in repayment (only $600B). What will happen to the other $700B -- only time will tell. Default, by the way, only occurs after 180 days of not making a payment. Car loans are around 90-120.

Both of these issues will have an effect on the economy, though to what extent, no one really knows.

What we do know is the Federal Reserve’s Money Honey Chairwoman Janet Yellen has made the proclomation that interest rates WILL be trending upward over the coming quarters and years. No idea how much or how fast that will go, but because our economy is supposedly on the mend, it seems a good a time as any to begin easing up the interest rates that have remained close to zero for a good long while.

What you may not know is that an increase in interest rates from the Fed pushes up interest rates on a number of things like variable credit cards, car loans, home equity lines of credit and yes, new mortgages. Now this will be the big adjustment for 2016 -- interest rates on 30 year fixed mortgage products that could go above 5% or more. What this means to Joe and Jane consumer is their house will come down in price. The reason being when you have a set amount budgeted for your house payment and you start looking for places to live, there is going to be downward pressure on home valuations so that people can continue to afford the payment on their new properties. Not sure how much at this point, but you will most likely NOT see appreciation on your property in 2016. or 17 perhaps. It’s good if you’re in the market to buy, neutral if you’re staying put, and could be negative if you’re thinking of selling in the coming months.

When the market does adjust to interest rates, and especially as adjustable rates go up you’ll begin to hear about people deleveraging. This means you’ll have society as a whole paying down debts because the monthly holding costs are increasing. I bet we see a fair number of bankruptcy filings as well, but the legislation on that may be changing too.

In order to get some of those debts paid off, we’ll see a brand new genre of people making money on the side. On episode ____ I interviewed Nick Loper of Side Hustle Nation and he shared ways that some of his guests have been making money on the side. This will become more and more common. It’s predicted at this point that by the year 2020 nearly half of our population will be independent contractors, not working for one company, but for many.

If any or all of this frightens you, please don’t be worried. My last bit of advice is really geared for my Build a Bigger Life audience -- 2016 will be whatever you make of it. In down economic years, I’ve only always made more. I think the same will be true for you. It’s my honest to God belief that what we take in on a regular basis begins to cloud our judgment, so the more you see of negative stuff, the more you tend to believe it’s negative. All the more reason for you to soak in the good news, revel in successes, and learn from the setbacks. In EP 3 I interviewed my friend Chad Carden who often gives the advice from the late Wayne Dyer -- When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.

Great advice for building a bigger life. So for this week and beyond, focus on the positive, live to your core values, and ask bigger questions. It’s a pleasure to spend time with you.

See you soon...

Farissa owns RLM Media, a digital marketing agency, as well as the app What Are You Wearing, a social application for fashionistas to share their daily clothing choices.

Not thinking entirely about being an entrepreneur, Farissa found herself in 2008 working for a company that was going bankrupt. She immediately started thinking about getting another job when her husband threw out the idea of working with the clients she had been working with previously. Farissa sent out 5 texts while driving in the car with her husband and all 5 confirmed their desire to continue working with this newly minted business owner.

Farissa knew that she’d either have to work like a slave in the business, doing most of the work herself, OR she could bite the bullet and hire people to help her do the work. This decision proved to be the linchpin for her success because she was ultimately committed to the success of a “business” not just her doing the work.

Around the 10:00 mark, Farissa talks about being raised in an entrepreneurial environment, her mom running an in-home daycare and managing everything that went along with that. What her parents gave her was the belief that any dream she put her mind to she could accomplish.

Bouncing back from the down times has been a tremendous learning opportunity for Farissa -- figuring out how to make payroll or covering an expense that a client refused to pay for. These situations have forced Farissa to learn, to buckle down and accomplish what she sets out to do. In the long run, her goal is to be acquired by an agency who appreciates the work they do.

Farissa’s love of fashion (and what you’re wearing says about you) led her to create an application that allows women to share what they’re wearing on a daily basis. “We can see what celebrities are wearing every day, but what if you aren’t getting your clothes shipped in from France every day? How do we see what the average women who loves fashion is wearing every day. This was the reason behind What Are U Wearing?”

Knox says what people are looking for is an exclusivity around social media experiences where the users they’re around are people like them. When everyone on the app is ‘into’ the same thing, and they don’t have to waste time getting rid of pictures of kids in their feed, they’re far more engaged. High engagement = higher profitability.

The overwhelming source of users for WhatRUWearing has come from campus ambassadors on various college campuses recruiting their friends to use the app. The WhatRUWearing girl loves a great deal, loves how clothes make them feel, but isn’t about the label.

When I asked Farissa how long she went without a paycheck, she said right now she doesn’t pay herself anything right now. Instead, her income is invested back into the company because as she puts it, “I am my own retirement plan.” How freakin’ cool is that?

Books recommended by Farissa:
Hillary Clinton’s Hard Choices
#GirlBoss by Sophia Amoruso
Love, Sex and Friendship in No Particular Order By Farissa Knox

For more of Farissa, check out: www.FarissaKnox.com

Farissa’s answer to what does building a bigger life mean to you was profound: You can’t build a bigger life by yourself, it’s all about who you surround yourself with. #Truth

Dave had an unhealthy relationship with alcohol from the time he was in high school and college. In Dave’s own words, he felt better about himself when he was drinking. He thought other people found him more interesting, he fit in better, and a host of other falsehoods that he eventually realized.

Two major events happened for Dave that caused him to change his path. The first was waking up in a hotel room covered in vomit, a room littered with alcohol bottles and food containers, a trail leading from the bathroom to the bed, and the realization that he very well should have died that night but was spared for some reason. This 3 day binge he was on was after 43 days of sobriety which he described as a struggle. He came home to his wife and daughters and vowed to change his ways forever.

The second event was the passing of a close friend of his. A very successful, very talented brain surgeon who struggled with alcoholism unbeknownst to most people. Dave looked up to this person as someone that had everything going for him, a model of someone he could become in sobriety. Then one fateful day, the brain surgeon relapsed and took his own life with a shotgun. Sitting at the funeral and taking in the faces of the family that he left, Dave realized that he himself was not far from this situation. His commitment to remain sober was locked in.

Dave’s sobriety anniversary is August 16th, 2008 and he is now thriving in this new chapter of his life, now 7+ years in the making.

One of the things you’ll notice about Dave in the interview is he is a constant consumer of personal development literature and psychology. Programs from Tony Robbins, Jack Canfield, and Steve Harrison had Dave asking the best questions of himself. Proof, according to Dave, that the quality of your life is the quality of the questions you’re asking yourself.

One of the questions that Dave used over and over again, that ultimately got him his book deal with Jack Canfield is: What would have to happen in order for X to happen? In the case of the 30 Day Sobriety Solution, the question he asked Jack was: What would have to happen for you to agree to writing this book with me?

(Dave tells the story about how he used some guerrilla techniques to get to Jack around the 21:00 mark.)

When I met Dave in February of 2014, he was carrying a bundle of notecards that had every goal written down with a very clearly written description on the front and a photo of what that looked like on the back. He would pull them out daily, read the cards, and visualize what it would be like to achieve each of them. It was profoundly important for me to see someone actually using the strategies that personal success gurus have been touting for years. Dave simply took it to a completely new level.

Dave describes around the 26:00 mark what having those goal notecards did for him. They ultimately activate the Reticular Activating System in your brain which begins to assimilate data you’re seeing, reading, or hearing as if it’s there to help you achieve your goals. One of Dave’s goals was to get a $450,000 book deal for The 30 Day Sobriety Solution, and in the end, Dave and Jack signed a record 7-figure book deal -- this is rarely if ever heard of in today’s publishing world.

Setting goals for 2016 is incredibly powerful. According to Dave, just the act of writing the goals down is energy put into the achievement of them. Even if you never looked at them again, there’s tremendous power in the process. Most powerful of your goals is your Breakthrough Goal - this is the goal that, if achieved, would make every other goal you have massively easier.

Dave is a part of both mastermind groups and accountability partnerships and counts both of those in the top 5 reasons for his success in the past few years. His mastermind group allows him to bounce ideas off of each of them, gain different perspectives, and often get the nudge to do the things he feels nervous about. His mastermind has come about by attending personal development workshops and seminars and connecting with people that he both looks up to and admires.

Books recommended by Dave:
Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
The Way of The Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman
Brian Johnson of Entheos.com

To get more of Dave and his work, check out: www.T30D.com

What started as a part-time blog for Lauren, writing about extreme couponing, money saving principles, and how to raise a family on less is now a thriving business that supports Lauren and her family of 6.

Check out Lauren’s Financial Renovation Course! In the free course, she’ll share:
√ Learn how to create a budget
√ Learn how to stick to that budget
√ Learn a complete financial blueprint for success
√ Talk about how to get your spouse on board
√ Discover how to create a financial plan that WORKS!
√ A special opportunity to go even deeper!

Lauren and Mark’s origin story probably sounds much like a majority of Americans. They found themselves $40,000 in credit card debt, driving cars they could barely afford, living in a house that most 40 year olds would love -- at the age of 25. While both had great jobs and high income, they found themselves struggling to make ends meet living this Big Spender lifestyle.

Lauren was, at the time, addicted to spending. She freely admits she loved buying ‘stuff’ whether it was throw pillows for the couch or bigger items that just made her feel good. By the time she realized that they were seriously in over her head, she spread all the bills out on the bed and had a heart to heart with Mark. Lauren said Mark was “very supportive” and that his approach was simply to “get the problem under control”.

So they got honest, they got serious, and they got intent on getting themselves out of the situation of living off of credit. Within two years, they had downsized everything -- moved out of their sprawling home and into an 800 square foot rental home, got rid of the expensive cars, and formed a budget that worked for them. They sold massive amounts of furniture and “stuff” on craigslist, raising thousands of dollars to pay down the debt.

During this period of their marriage, both Mark and Lauren realized the challenges that come with a full-time job with a major commute and a collicky baby. While Mark spent hours a day driving to and from the job, Lauren tried to build the business while simultaneously raising their 4 children. As Lauren’s income from the business grew, her patience with the current situation waned.

And so, as a result of buckling down, paying off debt, and building a bigger life, Mark quit his (high paying job) as an actuary and is now helping Lauren build IAmThatLady.com, testing recipes and posting the successes on the site that is rapidly growing in popularity. The two of them also record their own podcast where they talk through the events of their life, how to save, and often answering the questions of their fan base.

When asked what she would tell a family in the same situation they found themselves in, Lauren had this to say:

Figure out what values you hold. Lauren and Mark have a financial bucket list about where their money should go. “If you value sending your kids to college, but you can’t afford your grocery bill, then maybe you shouldn’t spend $200 on cable every month.” Living in accordance with your financial goals should be about spending money where it most makes sense for your family. Too many families today aren’t living in accordance with their family values when it comes to their spending.
Setting a budget. Knowing how much you have to spend actually liberates you to a certain extent, according to Lauren. She and Mark operate on a cash basis, even though she admitted to forgetting the cash now and again and using the debit card (something that causes frustration with Mark and his numerous spreadsheets!). Whether it’s a budget or a spending plan, the key is to know how much is coming in and how much is going out.
Get excited about where you’re going financially. Set long term goals, make a plan for what you most want to accomplish, and get excited about the possibilities! Lauren says it’s the plan for their future that keeps them plugging along in their business. Their future goals today are around creating even more freedom for others by sharing their successes.

I read a beautiful post that Lauren wrote about what it means to her to have her husband by her side in creating this business. Super touching, super raw - Lauren wrote it at a time when they were trying to justify Mark leaving a job he’d trained his entire life to get. Please read Being Broke Is Enough by Lauren Greutman to get a sense of their ‘Why’ behind the major decisions they made around their financial life.

Lauren has had some extremely cool opportunities in the past few weeks including segments that have aired on Good Morning America and The Today Show.

Books that Lauren recommends:
The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey
A Framework for Understanding Poverty
The Money Saving Secrets of The Amish

Find more Lauren at www.IAmThatLady.com
as well as her:
Pinterest
Instagram
Twitter accounts.
Listen in on their Life On A Budget podcast.

The overwhelming debt load, coupled with their low light basement apartment, made it feel like their world was getting darker, not lighter. So, they began to shed light on their finances in a major way. They way they got more in touch with their money consciousness, realizing that if they were going to achieve everything they wanted to, they’d have to get serious about blasting away their debt.

As a starting point, David put every expense in a spreadsheet including every Einstein bagel and coffee, every lunch out, every $30 quick trip to the grocery store. And after looking at these numbers critically, they realized that David was the nickel and dime guy and John was the big spender, often buying $3-500 pairs of jeans, and more shoes to add to his growing collection. What became apparent was both partners in this couple were guilty of sabotaging their collective financial future - just in different ways.

Fast forward just a couple of years and David and John are living a debt free life and encouraging others to do the same. Having blasted away $51,000 in high interest debt in just under two years, the dynamic debt-free duo put their financial planning into overdrive. They followed a very simple process to knock out the debts, and have written about their experience in the book The Four Principles Of A Debt Free Life. Their book on living debt free features four principles to help others blaze the path that the two of them traveled just a short while ago. The four principles are:

Be Money Conscious. Understanding where you’re spending, how you’re spending, and WHY you’re spending is critical to getting a handle on your finances in a major way. Once David and John understood their own money consciousness, they tamed the debt tiger and began building real wealth.
Cash Is King. Both of the debt free guys said that when using credit cards to fund their lifestyle, it was way too easy to splurge and think nothing of it. By using cash instead, they have pulled back on some of the spendier purchases that used to be done on a whim. (Like the $500 John dropped at Diesel in 10 minutes because he had ‘nothing to wear’ one Wednesday night on the town. Hear this story around the 30:00 mark!)
Have A Financial Plan. More than anything, the DFGs say this is key to staying on track. Much like taking a vacation but having no plan in place for where you’re going or when, NOT having a financial plan makes it too easy to stray from your goals when temptation arises.
Live Below Your Means. In Build A Bigger Life speak, we’d say build a bigger life not a bigger lifestyle. Keeping up with the Joneses is what got David and John in the mess they were in from the beginning. But living below their means is the key to a life well lived for them.

According to David, being money conscious and having a financial plan are the two anchors because when you realize how much money you’re making and how much you’re spending, you can really begin to dial in to what are the most important things to spend money on. Travel is a focus for David and John, opting for great trips instead of $50,000 cars.

John commented on the show that people will often question how they can afford to take these incredible trips when they’re debt free. “People think debt free is synonymous with being broke”. It’s more about knowing where you’re going to focus your financial efforts to live the best life possible.

One of the ‘tricks’ that David and John use is very simply -- Excel. They track what they spend and where they spend on a regular basis, as well as tracking their net worth on sometimes a weekly basis. David says seeing progress keeps them on the path of making great financial decisions. I often recommend the budgeting and net worth templates found at www.Vertex42.com.

When I asked John and David how many money arguments they have on a regular basis, they offered up that today there aren’t arguments so much as money discussions. For them, the key is both of them are very passionate about what they want life to be, but it always goes back to the financial plan.

Books recommended by the Debt Free Guys:
7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
Think And Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
The Richest Man in Babylon by George S. Clason
A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton Malkiel
The Buddhist Bootcamp by Timber Hawkeye

My favorite quote from David and John is “credit card debt anchors your future to your past.”

To find more about David and John check out their website: www.debtfreeguys.com

My interview list has grown immensely and while I can’t list all of my favorite interviews from this year, I wanted to give you an inside glimpse into some of the more notable soundbites from episodes of 2015.

If you’ve been a listener of the podcast for some time, you know that my format stays pretty consistent, but the conversations tend to wander a bit based on the guest. One of my favorite stray conversations happened with my good friend Forrest Willet. If you don’t remember Forrest from episode 29, on Life, Love and Almost Dying, let me refresh your memory. Forrest was in a very serious car accident while he was the passenger seat of a car that he was selling (the person driving was test driving for his son). The driver lost control of the car while talking to his son on the phone and Forrest suffered a catastrophic brain injury that could’ve left him paralyzed for the rest of his life. He had to re-learn how to walk, talk, feed himself, write, read, and ultimately do a bunch of other “normal” activities. But what I love most about Forrest in addition to his remarkable transformation is the humorous lens through which he views the world. This clip is how Forrest answered the question, how much practice did it take until you could make love effectively again: Take a listen…

Ohhh, Forrest is indeed one of the rare ones. You can read more about Forrest in Jack Canfield’s 10th Anniversary edition of The Success Principles as well as see him speak at various events around the US, Canada and abroad.

Another of the highlight interviews from 2015 was with my friend, speaker and best-selling author Jenny Blake. Jenny has a new book called Pivot coming out in early 2016 and in the interview she introduced the concept of a “high net growth” individual as being the audience for her new book. If you’re wondering what the next phase of your life has in store, Jenny has some great advice for you. Here’s her clip….

Really cool content from Jenny Blake and I’m excited to take a look at her book coming out in January. You can relisten to Jenny’s episode by searching Jenny Blake on the site or downloading episode 22.

Another highlight for me was interviewing someone I met in Milwaukee, Wisconsin when I presented at the TEDx event there last year. Troy Wittman struck me as a man on a mission, but almost like The Blues Brothers, it was a mission from God. Troy is the ultimate teacher, making learning fun for himself and his students. His passion for educating young people today is only matched by his humility as you’ll hear in the following clip…

If you haven’t heard Troy’s interview, Episode 44, get inspired to do more of what you’re passionate about by tuning in. It was Troy’s passion and his humility that just inspired the heck out of me on and after the show.

The fourth clip I want to share with you today came from Amy & Jordan Demos, the couple from Scottsdale, AZ that abandoned their careers as educators to pursue a career as high end wedding photographers. I love this couple in the interview because you can just tell they not only love being together, but they’re having a ton of fun being together. Amy was a little reluctant to answer questions at first, but once she felt comfortable with my questions, she was totally on-board. I share this clip because it so succinctly states one of the core tenets in the Build A Bigger Life Blueprint -- that of being the architect of your own life. Amy & Jordan describe why they love what they do and what it took to get there. Here these little lovebirds are…

Can’t you just imagine how sweet they are together? Their episode #48 was all about Capturing Bliss because they described what it was like being paid to capture the bliss of their wedding couples and how awesome that was.

Last but certainly not least in my list of memorable interviews is my friend Max Piccinini. Max is considered the Tony Robbins of France -- he’s pioneering small business and personal coaching in a country where it is not readily offered, but Max says it’s not the money that drives him, it’s the contribution that he has to people around him. Max is a huge thinker and I know you’ll dig his episode (#39). Max was making $50,000 a month in a network marketing business, and he stepped out to begin a business that offers great contribution -- most people said he was crazy. Take a listen…

Profound words from a bunch of very profound people in their own right. You know, as I look back at the past year and continually go back and listen to these podcasts, there are so many similar messages that my interviewees have shared. Many of them talked about freedom and having the freedom to choose how their days went, dozens talked about pursuing work that fired them up, several spoke of following their core values in business and life decisions, and of course a focus of the show is making great financial decisions and we heard from many that either paid off their debts or were in the process of doing so in order to build a bigger life of their own.

Whatever the messages you’ve received from the show, I appreciate you allowing me to be in your ears every week. As I look towards 2016, I have no doubt the interviews will continue to be great, I’ll continue to up my game, and I’ll be announcing some very instrumental changes just after the New Year. All good things, all in the name of building a bigger life, and all to add to the wonder and joy that life has to offer.

I appreciate you and the difference you’re making in life.

Until next time, have fun building a bigger life.

Imagine doing “work” every day that doesn’t really feel like work. That’s how Nick Loper describes what he does on a daily basis through his website SideHustleNation.com, a site dedicated to helping people find meaningful work and income outside their day to day job.

What Nick has uncovered through his myriad of interviews with people just like you and me, is there is a lower risk version of entrepreneurship that people are exploring through the side hustle.

What prompted the website and subsequent show is Nick realized that relying on one income stream, as most Americans do in their primary job, was not the best method for the future. As a result, he’s built a business that features others who have pursued their side hustle, reporting back on the experiments that others are doing. He also writes as a freelancer, has a private mastermind, as well as courses that are offered on the web.

Around the 8:00 mark, Nick talks about one of the lessons that he learned from Robert Kiyosaki that your side hustle income doesn’t have to surpass your present income, it just has to surpass your expenses. So many people believe that they have to make what they’re making in their job before they officially make a job change. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Some people pursue the side hustle just long enough to cover a major expense, while others start something that becomes a whole lot more.

Side hustles, according to Nick come in a variety of different forms:

Freelancing. This can either be done on your own, or you price your services over and above what it costs to outsource to someone else. You’ll see a great many people freelancing at writing, editing and computer work.

Productizing. “I’ve done this, now you can too!” There are plenty of folks who are selling their experience being successful at something to others who want to be successful at the same thing. A great example is our mutual friend Chandler Bolt who figured out how to make books best-sellers. (His course is www.SelfPublishingSchool.com)

Content Marketing. Nick says there are lots of success stories coming from podcasting and blogging these days. Podcasting especially where if someone is willing to spend 30 minutes with you in their earbuds, that is a serious relationship you’re building with them. However, as this becomes more popular the level and quality of content will become ever more critical.

One of Nick’s first side hustles was a footwear comparison shopping site similar to Google Shopping, but only for shoes. The way the site made money was through advertising partnerships with Zappos, Amazon or anyone that was wanting to share their catalog online. When sales were made online, Nick would make a commission on the sale.

The traffic that Nick got to his site came from Google, Bing, and Yahoo to get visitors to their site. When the profit was eventually squeezed out of buying ads and making commissions, this business eventually went by the wayside, but Nick had already gotten out of his day job and was into the side hustle pursuit on a full time basis.

In peak years, Nick’s business was doing $400,000 a year in gross revenue. And when buying $10,000 worth of advertising a month he was able to rack up some serious airline miles. But the greatest advantages to Nick were some of the lessons he took away from his businesses like:
how to hire staff and developers to handle the day to day operation
how to experiment with buying ads
how to focus on the most important aspects of business
and how to shut down a company when it didn’t serve him any longer

Today, Nick tells people that what he does is he helps people make money outside of their day job. The three most common things that people list as their reason not to do something is:
Time - There just isn’t enough time in the day to be focused on building something worth building.
Money - Just not enough money to build a business.
ideas - Thinking that it takes a radically new or different idea in order to pursue a side hustle.

Nick’s advice to people who don’t have ideas is don’t try to reinvent the wheel, just offer something that people are already buying and do it better or differently.

One of Nick’s interviewees from the podcast made the comment “Sometimes the best opportunities aren’t visible until you’re already in motion” (24:00) To that end, Nick suggests just making a move on a business and seeing what the feedback ends up being.

One of Nick’s guests talked about your first business move is like the first move in a chess game. It doesn’t matter which piece you move, just move one to see what your competitor (or the market) responds with. (25:30)

Around the 28:00 mark, Nick describes his wife’s side hustle as a photographer, a project that started as a post on Craigslist offering photography services and has now grown into 15+ weddings that she and her business partner sold this year after raising their rates 15X. It’s a great story of someone close to Nick that’s also doing her own side hustle. According to Nick (and his wife), it’s just nice to know that you can make money outside your major or full-time job.

Mentioned on the show:
Zag
Ryan Finley - focuses on re-selling appliances from Craigslist.
Julie from TimeHackers Podcast
Amy & Jordon Demos -- photographers in Scottsdale. Listen to podcast here.
Smart Passive Income with Pat Flynn
Tropical MBA Podcast (Lifestyle Business Podcast)
Rule One Investing by Phil Town
A Happy Pocket Full of Money by David Cameron Gikandi

Books recommended by Nick:
Influence by Robert Cialdini
Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki
The Go-Giver by Bob Burg
The Millionaire Fast Lane by MJ DeMarco
The Top 10 Distinctions Between Millionaires and The Middle Class

In my estimation, Nick is a researcher and a reporter. He’s an excellent entrepreneur as well, but his ability to filter the information he’s receiving is incredible. He has a learning habit that has served him well.

When asked what Building A Bigger Life means to Nick, he said he refers back to John Acuff who says average is settling for a life less than what you’re capable of. So to that end, building a bigger life is doing everything you’re capable of.

SideHustleNation.com
SideHustleNation.com/Ideas

I think everyone has that list of books that has changed their life in some way -- my list seems to grow all the time. It’s funny when someone asks, “What are the top 5 books I should be reading?” I’m always at a loss because I can’t limit the list to just 5. Instead I’m like, here are the top 50 books you should be reading…

The book that I’m absolutely suggesting you should be reading on this episode is The Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss. Only 2 books hit me as hard and had as much lasting impact as this one and those would be the Bible and How To Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie.

The 4HWW was recommended to me by a very successful entrepreneur friend of mine back in 2007 when it first came out. I was in the middle of building a mortgage brokerage and was suffering from a bunch of the “busyness” challenges that Tim writes about in his book. But probable the one concept that really jumped off the page for me was the concept of joining the New Rich.

Ferriss describes the NR as those who abandon the deferred-life plan and create luxury lifestyles in the present using the currency of the New Rich: time and mobility. He described it as an art & science called Lifestyle Design, a term he essentially coined that created a whole industry of experts, gurus and consultants. The New Rich, as Ferriss described them weren’t focused so much on the brass ring, working 80+ hours a week to make a fortune, but instead those who used things like Elimination, Automation, and Productivity tools to make more per hour but work less.

All of this sounded like nirvana to a guy who was into the office around 7 am every day leaving around 6 and working nights after the family went to bed.

One of the paragraphs that jumped off the page for me was on page 7, it says: “Life doesn’t have to be so damn hard. It really doesn’t. Most people, my past self included, have spent too much time convincing themselves that life has to be hard, a resignation to 9-to-5 drudgery in exchange for (sometimes) relaxing weekends and the occasional keep-it-short-or-get-fired vacation.”

What I wanted at the time was to spend more time with my family and less time with my clients and co-workers, but I too had been brainwashed to believe that the more hours I put in, the more successful I’d be. The hours unfortunately, were spent in busyness, not productivity, a takeaway I’ll cover in the podcast that has served me extremely well over the years.

Ferriss features a quote by Mark Twain towards the beginning of the book. Twain says, “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”

I’ve probably taken the quote a little too much to heart after employing a number of strategies in my life, investments, and schedule that some people may call contrarian.

But what Ferriss calls Lifestyle Design, I bought into. In fact, as I reread the book last night I realized just how much influence the book actually had on me, the concept of Building A Bigger Life (which is essentially lifestyle design strategies), and what I do daily. LD is based almost entirely on massive action. But again, not action for action’s sake or work for work’s sake, but instead the massive action towards your highest and best goals -- those that serve your life in the highest form possible.

I did a show on the topic of Retirementality, EP ___, essentially making the claim that your concept of retirement will ultimately decide how you pursue it. I didn’t realize it, but the 4HWW influenced that show as well -- I have never liked the idea of working 40+ years of your life to retire on ⅓ of what you couldn’t get by on in the first place. What resonated with me was Ferriss’ idea of mini-retirements along the way. Short and sometimes long breaks in productivity and work to get away and enjoy life. Taking chances to recuperate and enjoy downtime. I have a hard time even imagining a retirement being idle, but have no trouble imagining spending 2-3 months on the Amalfi Coast in Italy with my family in a year or two.

Tim writes about the idealistic dream of having $1M in the bank, which is what a number of financial experts claim you should have in order to retire. But as pointed out in the book, $1M in the bank isn’t the fantasy.. it’s the lifestyle of complete freedom it supposedly allows that is the freedom. Well what if that kind of freedom doesn’t take $1M?

There are three strategies I’d like to share on the show today that have helped me in the pursuit of my own Bigger Life, my own Lifestyle Design: Productivity, Elimination, and DreamLining.

The first is looking at productivity in a completely different way. I mentioned that in the mortgage business, I was in a constant state of being busy. I remember a conversation with my Dad at one point during that time and I kept telling him how busy I was. He was coaching me on certain aspects of business and life and I kept saying, “it’s just so busy.” His response to me was, “you seem very committed to that.” “To what” I remember asking. “To being busy.” Maybe you should commit to something else.

That something else became readily apparent when I read The 4HWW. It was the idea that there was a difference between being effective and being efficient. That busyness was basically lazy, idle, indiscriminate thinking where you tackle whatever is in front of you because it’s in front of you. As it turned out, I wasn’t particularly efficient OR effective in most of what I was doing. Ferriss describes them this way:

“Effectiveness is doing the things that get you closer to your goals. Efficiency is performing a given task (whether important or not) in the most economical manner possible. Being efficient without regard to effectiveness is the default mode of the universe.”

My ineffectiveness and inefficiencies were showing up all over the place. How my office was organized, how I answered emails, how I answered the phone EVERY time it rang and didn’t specify how much time I had. In my mind I had all the time in the world, except I didn’t.

It occurred to me that every time I said yes to something I was saying no to something else. And some of the things I said yes to made no sense in the greater scheme of building a bigger life.

Ferris suggested two age old, time tested principles that have made all the difference in my life. I use them in creating content, in answering emails, and in handling planning projects of every size and scope.

The first principle comes from an Italian economist named Vilfredo Pareto. Pareto was known for creating an idea of income distribution in the 1700’s. He had postulated that 20% of the people controlled 80% of the wealth. And the more he dug into the theory, the more he realized the truth in all aspects of life. 20% of our efforts create 80% of our results, 20% of our clients create 80% of our headaches, 20% of the seeds grow 80% of the garden. In effect, by using what we know as the Pareto Principle or the 80/20 Rule, we can focus on the 20% of our activities that are generating 80% of our income, productivity, happiness, etc.

I used this principle in creating the Power Priority List that is downloadable from the Adamspeaks.com site. The PPL for me is a way to identify what are my 20% activities on a daily basis and prioritize them based on output and time. It’s my own system and I can’t definitively say it will work for you as I think all productivity schemes need to be personalized, but a number of people have told me it works for them. The goal of the PPL is to identify which high priority items I need to do by 11 am every day. I would consider these High Dollar Per Hour activities.

The second principle that Ferriss suggests using is something called Parkinsons Law. Parkinson was XXXXXXXX back in the early 1900’s. One of the things he reportedly hypothesized is that the perceived complexity of a task is directly related to how much time you give yourself to complete it. I talked about this in Solocast EP XXX on creating content. Basically if you give yourself 3 hours to completely clean your house you’d take that long. But if someone called and said they were 45 minutes away, you’d get it done in that amount of time too. You probably remember this from high school and college when it was time to write a paper. You’d wait until the very last minute, most of us finishing the paper in the wee morning hours that the paper was done. And then you’d read it and think -- this is the best stuff I’ve ever written. The reason you nailed the project was you had a deadline and you had a limited amount of time to complete it.

Parkinsons Law suggests that if you limit the time given to complete a task, you’ll finish it in that time. I raced a timer in putting together the content for this solocast because that’s what I always do.

The 4HWW suggests that to really amplify your productivity, you combine both principles together, both the 80/20 rule (Pareto Principle) and Parkinsons Law. What happens when you do this is you focus only on the important tasks (the 20%) and you limit the amount of time given to do so (Parkinsons Law). The result is getting more high dollar per hour work done in less time. Boom. Instant productivity boost.

Now if you’re thinking, “what about all those other tasks I have to get to on a daily basis?” We’re going to get there. For me, tackling the rest of the list took elimination, automation and outsourcing -- the three of them individually not always the easiest to do, but once you do, it’s incredibly worth it.

Takeaways for you from the productivity section:
Focus on the higher dollar per hour activities by using the 80/20 rule and Parkinsons Law together. And know the difference between being effective and being efficient. When you use the two ideas together, magic happens.

Ferriss is a big believer in Elimination. And while his method of getting you there is pretty dramatic, the effect is profound. He asks two questions that get to the heart of the matter.
The first is: If you had a massive heart attack and were limited to working just 2 hours per day, what would you do during those two hours?

The second question is: If you had a 2nd massive heart attack and were told you could only work 2 hours per week, what would you do during those two hours?

The answers that you come up with are obviously different than those I’d come up with but the bottom line is you better eliminate some stuff.

The first thing Tim suggests ditching is the constant barrage of information that we get on a daily basis. For any of you that have listened to the show for any length of time, you know that my wife is an uber frugal shopper. I describe her as the coupon princess, having been raised by the coupon queen in the coupon castle. And just about every morning she clears out the 10-15 emails from retailers that are sending out online coupons. EVERY MORNING.

This is the information barrage I’m speaking of.

But it also comes in the form of blogs to read, newspapers stacking up on the counter, junk mail, television, radio, and on and on and on.

After reading the 4HWW, I went on an information lean diet. I stopped watching the news, stopped reading the paper, even unsubscribed from every broadcast email I was getting. Because inherently, there is a feeling that we’re supposed to be in tune with all of those things coming at us which takes up valuable brain space, not to mention time I could be using to build a bigger life.

Inevitably people will ask me where I get my news from and I tell them that I subscribe to The Week magazine which is a snapshot of everything newsworthy and sometimes not, that happened that week around the world. It provides a both left and right side view to every story and I find that skimming that gives me enough context to carry on educated conversations with those around me.

As for email, I use a service called Unroll.me which spots all of the broadcast type emails and puts them in one place which I can scan quickly and decide which ones to let through. Most of the time I ignore the email completely.

Elimination also involves interrupting interruptions. I once heard that for every interruption it takes 12 minutes to get back to the level of concentration we were once at. So if you are interrupted at work 4 times an hour, you’ve just lost 60 minutes throughout the day. That’s one hour! Keep track today of how many times you’re interrupted -- it will astonish you at the wasted time.

As a work from home guy, my kids are around me a lot during the week. And until I realized how much the interruptions were blocking my productivity, I allowed a somewhat open door policy. Now there are three dots on my door. Green, yellow and red. When it’s green they can come right in, yellow means they have to knock, and red means I’m in the middle of something important and they need to leave me alone. I realized and had to make them realize that there is a difference between access and availability. You may always have access but I’m not always available. Minimizing those interruptions has been a key to greater productivity. Your build a bigger life question for the day is : how are the interruptions in your day having an effect on your productivity? What could you do differently to minimize those?

One marketing firm I consulted with had “coning hours” during the day. If there was a bright orange traffic cone outside your cubicle or office, it meant that no one could bother you because you were doing intensive work that required undisturbed thought. Perhaps putting that into practice at your office would work too.

Elimination involves what Tim calls the Art of Refusal. Remember at the beginning of the show I said when you say yes to something you’re also saying no to something. The Art of Refusal was something I was terrible at. I’d get asked to coffee repeatedly throughout the week and I’d accept because that’s just what you do. I didn’t want to let anyone down. Today I’m more conscious of that time and try and batch tasks like running errands with meetings and networking events. Get really good and adept at saying no and then basking in the glow of getting shit done.

The last area that I found most helpful in the 4HWW is the concept of DreamLining. Yet another phrase that Ferris coined in the book, the idea of DreamLining is writing down 5 things you’d like to have, be and do in the next 6-12 months. Once you have your list, the next step is to figure out how much those things would cost and how to set up income streams and methods to pay for it. He’s got an incredible flowchart and calculator on the site at fourhourworkweek.com, just search Dreamlining and it will come up.

I like this process for a couple of reasons. First, it makes the idea of planning for mini-retirements very concrete and attainable. Seeing the “how the hell am I going to do this?” mapped out in detail is very comforting for planners like me. And second, I think there is a level of mental gymnastics that you go through in filling this out that makes you realize that what you really want in life is not that far off. I think it’s the ultimate tool to reclaim your title as the architect of your own life. A bigger life is actually much closer than you realize and this is the tool to get you there. (this and of course the Build A Bigger Life Blueprint.)

So, your takeaways from today’s show:
Use the Pareto Principle or 80/20 rule in combination with Parkinsons Law to get the highest importance things done in limited time.
Join the New Rich. Sure you can work 80+ hours a week and make $100k, but would you rather work 10-20 hours a week and make $50k?
What are your mini-retirement goals and how can you achieve those regularly?
Get on a low information diet -- stop with the mental chewing gum of all that ridiculously negative BS on tv, radio and in the papers.
And finally, in the pursuit of your own bigger life, pick up a copy of the 4HWW and read or reread it to see what comes up for you.

As always, I appreciate you listening, your friendship and your support. If you have questions or comments, shoot me an email at Adam@AdamSpeaks.com.

Make it a great day, and keep building a bigger life.

After graduating from the University of Iowa, Amanda took a job with Target managing a $65M store. What she described as ‘drinking from a firehose’, and problematic management issues had her waiting until the very last minute to get out of bed in the morning. She and I had met shortly into her Target career and I suppose I introduced her to living a life by design.

The rest, as they say....

What Amanda describes as the Lead Up, the Leap and the Land is what she went through over the next several years. The Lead Up is making that decision as to whether or not you’re going to jump ship and begin creating the life you’ve imagined.

Around the 10:00 mark, Amanda talks about making the decision to get out of her comfort zone saying that the timing is never perfect, but the Universe was supporting her in a number of ways. Once she made the Leap, Amanda worked with Wells Fargo in a 3rd party recruiting position, but it was a total interim position with no time off and no benefits. This was the time Amanda needed to do some networking and begin laying the groundwork for, ultimately, The Land which is doing what she’s up to now.

Amanda’s advice to people who want to leave their job is to spend some time figuring out what gives you joy. Learn as much as you can, and know that there is generally a system for doing anything you really want to do. It’s about finding those systems and people who know those systems to get you going.

Around 21:00, Amanda talks about being a solopreneur giving you more time to create. With some additional free time, the She Did It Her Way Podcast was born. Since the beginning of 2015, SDIHW has been mentioned in high profile places like Forbes. All because she took action and a slight calculated risk. The rewards have been enormous.

At 25:00, she describes the Lead Up, the Leap and the Land from her own perspective.

Mentioned on the show:
The Rhythm of Life by Matthew Kelly
She Did It Her Way Podcast

Books recommended by Amanda:
Secrets of the Millionaire Mind by T.Harv Eker
Man’s Search For Meaning
The Untethered Soul

For more of Amanda, check out: TheAlignmentProject.co, SheDidItHerWayPodcast.com

At the ripe young age of 14, Anese was scooping ice cream at Baskin Robbins, going through some pretty heavy stuff, and had a full body realization that she had total control over how she felt at that moment. That realization has driven her to live a very intentional, passionately detached life doing what she loves to do.

Anese’s career started in kinesiology, working with athletes, but after taping 400 feet she realized this would get very boring. Her advisor moved her to cardiac rehab which frustrated her because she was treating conditions that could’ve been prevented. That career choice moved her to corporate wellness, and eventually to what she’s doing today.

Try as she may to ditch kinesiology as she transitioned to doing more individual coaching, movement kept coming back to her. That has become the Intentional Energetic Process or the IEP Method. IEP is about the energy you bring, how honest you’re being about your present scenario, and how present you are in the moment given these variables.

Anese believes that we are making an impact in every moment of our lives. And HOW we show up is how we make impact. That is a factor of self care, how aware we are, etc. Awareness is both internal and external -- internal being the feeling you have at any given moment, and external being how other people experience your energy, intention, etc.

There are four areas where we show up energetically which Anese has identified as:
Physical & Environmental Energy
Mental Energy
Vibrational
Relationships

The book Contagious Culture due out by year’s end, is about creating a culture whether we know it or not. Written from the inside out, Anese has focused part of the book on you as the leader, you and your team, and then your culture all together. By the time you’ve gone through the entire book, you’re already showing up differently and making changes in the company.

Books Anese Recommends:
Leadership and Self-Deception (The Arbinger Institute)
Brene Brown -- Rising Strong
Byron Katie -- The Work

Building A Bigger Life to Anese means building a life that she gets to control every day. But the key for her is to pay it forward and having an impact on the greater good.

Go to AneseCavanaugh.com or ContagiousCulture.com for more goodies from Anese!

Kyle’s financial background started with his Mom giving him the reins to do the grocery shopping as a teen, a task he took on with gusto, getting the family grocery bill down to around $30 per week by stacking coupons. They did crazy contests like seeing how low they could get the utility bill — every day checking the meter to see if they beat the day before. In essence, his mom was teaching valuable lessons despite tough economics at home.

While Kyle was a political science major in college, he’d drop out of school every time a politician got him fired up and work until they were either elected or not. As political jobs don’t pay a great deal, Kyle was always looking for additional money and one of his jobs was as a beer auditor. His job was to try and ‘catch’ people selling beer without checking IDs. (The benefit of which was keeping the beer that he bought with the company’s money!)

He started The Penny Hoarder Blog to share some of his experiences around saving and making money. What started as a simple blog hosted on a yahoo blog type site, ThePennyHoarder.com is now a full-fledged business with over a dozen employees at their headquarters in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are sort of the holy grail holidays for retailers and those looking for the best deals. Kyle used to go buy black friday deals en masse and then turn around and sell those deals on Ebay in December, sometimes making tens of thousands of dollars. This year, you won’t see him standing in line, but instead working hard all weekend helping people find the best deals possible from their Penny Hoarder offices. Stay tuned for some behind the scenes videos of the Thanksgiving weekend at Penny Hoarder on Instagram and Periscope.

Kyle has built a successful business doing what he loves to do. His build a bigger life philosophy is finding something that you love to do and it never feels like work. Companies have even approached Kyle to buy the business and so far, but so far he’s not dealing.

Books Kyle Recommends:
Contagious
Books by Tim Ferris
Books by Jonah Ferretti

Find more from Kyle at www.ThePennyHoarder.com, sign up for the newsletter, and check out their instagram account for behind the scenes photos!

In 2006, Lisa got her first job after graduating from school and in 2008, she was in her first round of a series of layoffs in her industry after having bought a home well above her means. That experience: of being unemployed, of looking for work, and of trying to keep a house while struggling to make ends meet taught her some valuable lessons.

The job market took her to Ohio where Lisa was able to buy a condo for substantially undermarket and it showed Lisa that she could find affordable homes in virtually any market. And most key to the learning was people would live in these homes and pay market rents for properties bought substantially under market!

Lisa ended up having to foreclose on her home in Las Vegas (the one that was too expensive to maintain during the recession), so was faced with having that on her credit report. As a result, the homes that she’s buying in depressed or stressed markets are being financed creatively.

She started out taking money out of her 401k, then began to get creative by refinancing her car, taking advances from her credit cards, and finding short term loans through banks and credit unions. And she’s cash flowing the properties, paying off debt, and building wealth.

She paid $13,000 cash for one house that generates $900 a month in rent. Others were closer to $20,000 or $30,000, but still create really incredible cash on cash returns.

Lisa (at 16:00) admits to the fact that some of what drives her is the desire to prove people wrong. Yes, she says, she lost a home in Las Vegas because of poor decisions, but that will not be what holds her back from achieving everything she sets her mind to. In fact, in inspires her to work harder.

The main point Lisa makes in her online training platforms is you don’t have to be born wealthy in order to create wealth. She also spends a great deal of time figuring out how to make the most amount of money doing the least amount of work.

Property managers are critical to Lisa’s success. Because the closest home she owns is 3 hours away, she has some strategies for how to find managers (which she shares around the 22:00 mark).

It’s okay to start small is a prime takeaway from this podcast. At the beginning, this will be slightly uncomfortable, but totally worth it once you get your feet under you.

Around the 32:00 mark, Lisa talks about her offer strategies, many that depend upon the demographics of the neighborhood, how long the property has been on the market, and the condition of the property.

To find out more about Lisa, check out www.affordablerealestateinvestments.com or www.youtube.com/affordablerei.

Books Lisa Recommends:
Retire Young, Retire Rich by Robert Kiyosaki
Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki
Tax Free Wealth by Tom Wheelwright

It did mine.

Shortly after I graduated from college, I sold books door to door for a company called Southwestern Advantage. I spoke about it on Episode 38, The Hardest Job I’ve Ever Had. And while it was indeed a difficult job from an emotional and mental perspective, the rewards were pretty amazing. I met some of my closest friends doing this job, and also was presented with an opportunity to travel abroad with a friend of mine right after my last summer.

Clint Taylor, known to his friends as CT, invited me to travel with he and a couple other guys to Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, and Hawaii to celebrate a successful summer on the book field. And, because I was staring down the barrel of a full-time job, the prospect of traveling around the world appealed to me that much more. So I jumped at the chance.

However, by the time we decided on our plans and paid for tickets, it ended up being just CT and myself on the trip. To this day we tell stories about our journey, our mishaps, the end over end rollover accident on Day 2 of the trip (more on that in future shows), and probably most told are the stories about the people we met while on the road.

If you’ve never gone on a trip like this before, there is something that is not understood until you’ve experienced it. The “backpacker culture” is one that is incredibly open to everyone that is on a life journey, a walkabout, or a holiday, whatever you call it in your vocabulary. Backpackers staying in hostels, like the ones we stayed in, are very accommodating, very open, very hospitable in a variety of ways.

As such, when you first check into a hostel, there is a basic summing up of the people that walk in the door to see if you can tell where they’re from. Americans are pretty easy to spot because we chew gum rather obnoxiously, we’re loud, and generally speaking the way we dress stands out a bit. After traveling for awhile, it was always an honor for people to think I was from Switzerland or Italy. Don’t ask me why, it just was…

One of the first places we visited on the trip was Cairnes, Australia. Cairnes is a backpacker haven, a place where many travelers go on their way up to Cape Tribulation or on their way down the Eastern Seaboard of the continent. Cairnes was a place very used to the backpacker culture and place where everyone was welcome. In short, the place was amazing.

But the worthwhile part of the story came on Day 2 when sitting around the pool (admittedly nursing a headache from the late night before) when I struck up a conversation with a woman from Norway. She was reading a book that had a somewhat interesting cover, almost like an image of ancient text or a symbol you’d see on a centuries old building. She would smile to herself, put the book down for awhile, write things in her journal, and then return to reading only to do the same thing over again minutes later. I finally stopped her right before she returned to reading and asked her what book had her that engaged.

At that she handed the book over to me and said it’s one I must read. The fact that I’d even asked her about it was an omen she said.

Being a relatively naive traveler I wasn’t sure what that meant, but she assured me that once I read the book, I’d get it. She told me the story of how she came across the book in almost the exact same way with a person in Perth, Australia. She was sitting in a hostel and asked a fellow traveler what they were reading. She told me this stranger had signed his name in the front jacket of the book, dated it, and gave her the book telling her she must do the same. She was directed to read the book from cover to cover without anyone around. Then, the second time through she was to read it in public places and pay attentions to the omens around her. If someone asked about the book, they were obviously ready to receive it and she was to give it away with her name in the front of the book and the date. She had to instruct the next person to do exactly the same.

And this is how I came to read, love, and share the book by Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist.

If you’ve never read or never heard of this book, I encourage you to visit the show notes and order yourself a copy (or 5) to read and hand out to people in your life that may need to follow some of the directions that they seem to miss out on in life. Paulo calls them Omens in the book.

The Alchemist is the story of Santiago, a shepherd from Andalusia who had a deep desire to travel so saved his money, bought some sheep, and learned how to shepherd them through the countryside, the city, how to sheer them for money, and ultimately about how to live comfortably in his surroundings. The trouble for Santiago comes when he has a dream about a treasure that he is to find in Egypt at the Pyramids. The dream is so vivid for Santiago that he sees a gypsy fortune teller that tells him his dreams are a message from the soul of the world and he is to follow it.

A chance encounter with a king wearing a gold breastplate emblazoned with gemstones who seemingly knows Santiago’s fate, his family history, and the dreams inspires Santiago to go on a voyage to pursue his Personal Legend.

I won’t ruin the book for you if you haven’t yet read it, but I will tell you that Santiago’s voyage is not easy, it’s not brief, and it is full of conflict and lessons. Each of which will speak to you as you read the book, much like it did to me.

There are four themes from the book that I thought were most impactful to me. You may find these similar themes when you read it, or find a completely different meaning altogether. I think that is the power of The Alchemist. The message differs for everyone who reads it.

The first theme is watching for and following omens.

Santiago learns how to spot omens in the desert that tell him when a battle is about to be fought, but just as readily learns to read the omens of people that come into his life at just the right time.

Candidly, I re-read the book on an airplane flight this week, and was reminded that certain things in my life were most certainly omens that I hadn’t been open to. I’ll keep you posted on what happens as I follow some of those in the coming days and weeks.

The second theme is following your heart.

Paulo Coelho calls it your Personal Legend. That part of you that knows what your future has in store and calls you to it. Some people heed their personal legend while others ignore it for the fear of pursuing (and potentially missing) it.

Whether you believe in a personal legend or not, there have undoubtedly been times in your life when you knew exactly what you were supposed to be doing. Whether it’s a calling, a nudge, your intuition talking to you, following those things is akin to following your personal legend. I once heard a speaker say that we were not put on this earth to be employed, we were put on this earth to be deployed. Your personal legend is your deployment and those who build a big life generally are following theirs…

The reason that we don’t follow our personal legend is generally because of fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of failure, fear of success, sometimes just the fear of breaking out of what’s complacent and comfortable. A friend of mine suggested this once to me.. your heart never compromises but your mind will justify. That’s why those that don’t pursue what their heart calls them do will usually justify in their mind that “I have a good job” or “what if it doesn’t work” or “it’s probably just a fleeting desire anyway”. In reality, it’s your mind justifying what your heart most wants. And generally speaking, the heart wants until it gets.

Theme #4 is taking action.

Santiago never would’ve fulfilled his personal legend had he not taken action. His first action was selling all of his sheep and buying a ticket to Africa. Then it was figuring out how to save enough money to travel through the desert. And on and on and on, Santiago was faced with the decision to take action or not take action. Inevitably, the first action he took was enough to get the process started.

So my build a bigger life question for you on todays show is: are you taking action on what your personal legend is? If not, why not? Fear, complacency, lack of knowledge? What is one simple step you can take to get to the next level in pursuit of your personal legend? and most importantly, will you take it?

The fourth theme of the book is waking up to your life’s calling. This is similar to following your heart, but requires that you get very focused on listening to the inner knower. My interview with Cassandra Bodzak, episode 51 is a prime example of waking up to your life’s calling. Cassandra was an actress in New York, loved to cook and do yoga, and she was woken up to the vivid fact that her life calling was to use all of her experiences to help other people create a life that lights them up. She woke up to her life’s calling, and in pursuing it, moving from New York to Southern California, she has empowered a whole new tribe of people to reengineer their lives for the better.

The Alchemist, from the story is someone Santiago meets towards the end but helps the boy achieve his personal legend. According to wikipedia, alchemy was the medieval forerunner to chemistry and an alchemist was someone who could turn base metals like lead into gold.

The Alchemist, the book by Paulo Coelho has the ability to do that for you. In the pursuit of building a bigger life, I cannot recommend the book and it’s lessons enough.

As you experience your own omens, let me know about them by emailing me at Adam@AdamSpeaks.com. If you have questions, book suggestions, people I should interview, or just want to share your story, I’d love to hear from you.

Until next time, here’s to you building a bigger life.

Rocky is the founder and chief writer at RicherSoul.com. He’s a financial coach, an enrolled agent with the IRS, and a money savvy blogger who’s helping people live richer more contented lives.

One of the things Rocky and I have in common is our desire to prepare our kids for the financial decisions they’re going to make in life. His stories about teaching his kids delayed gratification happen around the 13:00 mark, and I think you’ll be inspired to do the same things with your children. The strategies he uses are extremely intuitive, very simple, and incredibly effective.

“Wealth is doing what you want, when you want, how you want.” According to Rocky, the definition of wealth is different for everyone. It’s not a number, it’s not an exact science. However, there are ways to redefine what it is that makes your life happy and leave you feeling successful and fulfilled.

Putting money away month by month is the process that Rocky encourages and gives some really valuable advice when he says (at 25:00), that the first $1,000 is hard but the second $1,000 is easy. Same for the first $10,000, $100,000, and $1M. But while it may take you 30-40 years to build the first million, it may only take 5 years to build the second million.

At 29:00, Rocky talks about no one having a statement of cash flows and/or a budget. If you don’t know where the money is going or what it’s bringing you, are you really living in alignment with your values? Or are you just going through the motions but getting farther away from the life you imagine?

Books recommended by Rocky:
The Richest Man in Babylon
Money Master The Game by Tony Robbins
Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki
If in debt, anything by Dave Ramsey

For more information on Rocky and his services, check out his website: www.RicherSoul.com

Michael Gelb is an organizational development consultant, a professional speaker and seminar leader, and a pioneer in the fields of creative thinking, accelerated learning and innovative leadership.

Leonardo DaVinci, if you slept through high school, was only the quintessential Renaissance man who was not only the leading artist of his time (you might recall paintings like the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper), but he was also an enormously talented inventor, musician, scientist, military engineer, and arguably one of the strongest athletes of his time. He lived in the late 1400’s and early 1500s.

I’ve been fascinated by DaVinci’s work ever since seeing a traveling exhibit at our local science center which featured many of his drawings and some life-size replicas of what he had designed. DaVinci reportedly was a pacifist, yet designed many machines that were used in battle -- like our modern day tanks. He designed catapults, pulleys and levers, machine guns with bullets as big as water bottles. But he also designed flying machines, the earliest ideas of a modern automobile, and even dissections of humans.

The science exhibit suggested that DaVinci was so enamored with learning and especially the human body that he would practice dissections (which were completely illegal) by bribing those responsible for the recently deceased into letting him cut them open to diagram what the insides of a human look like. To this day, his drawings of the inner workings of the human body are the first known examples of modern day biological science.

In Gelb’s book, he describes the 7 principles of DaVinci’s genius -- not necessarily described by DaVinci, but deducted by Gelb from a wealth of study about the man.

I’m going to give you the 7 principles and do my utmost to pronounce them in my best Italian. (Best being in quotation marks as I only learned Italian for 4 weeks through Duolingo, a language tutorial program owned by Google. But hey, I think Duolingo and a couple weeks in Italy does wonders for a guys dialect).

Principle #1: Curiosite - basically having an insatiable curiosity for learning

Principle #2: Demonstratzione - committing to testing knowledge through experience, not fearing failure or mistakes, but instead learning from them

Principle #3: Sensazione - a continual refinement of the senses, especially sight, to clarify experience.

Principle #4: Sfumato - (which means literally ‘up in smoke’) - it’s a willingness to embrace ambiguity, paradox and uncertainty.

Principle #5: Arte/Scienza - developing the balance between art & science, logic and imagination. Essentially, he was a master of whole brain thinking.

Principle #6: Corporalita - The cultivation of grace, ambidexterity, fitness & poise

Principle #7: Connessione - recognizing and appreciating the connectedness of all things. He was a master at systems thinking.

These 7 principles were at the heart of everything Leonardo DaVinci chose to pursue in life. And we know about most of them because of the volumes and volumes of notes he took in notebooks that are now on display in museums all over the world. Gelb notes in the book that DaVinci’s drive to take notes in journals was proof of principle #1 Curiosity. It is estimated that Leonardo DaVinci left over 7,000 pages of notes and in 1994, Bill Gates bought 18 sheets from his notebooks for a reported $31million. Those are some valuable ideas!

My Build A Bigger Life Challenge for you today on the podcast is this: Are you a journaler? Do you keep daily or weekly pages of your life and ideas?

About 5 years ago I started journaling on a semi-regular basis in moleskine notebooks. I found a package of 4 moleskines at Barnes & Noble, all of the same color and took a permanent marker and made marks on the spine of the notebooks to denote the order in which I wrote in them. I now have a collection of about 18 notebooks that will continue to grow over time. I write everything from my feelings, to ideas, to my net worth and projects I’m working on. It’s fun to go back and read entries from 5 years ago to see what has changed, but the real reason I continue the journaling process is I think someday my kids, grandkids and great grandkids will find it interesting to read what life was like for us. I know the one or two journals notebooks we found of my grandparents is incredibly meaningful to me, thus the reason I’ve been helping my last living grandfather get his memoirs published on Amazon so that all of his family has access to it.

Speaking of DaVinci’s notebooks, Gelb writes, “He carried a notebook with him at all times so that he could jot down ideas, impressions, and observations as they occurred. His notebooks contained jokes and fables, the observations and thoughts of scholars he admired, personal financial records, letters, reflections on domestic problems, philosophical musings and prophecies, plans for inventions, and treatises on anatomy, botany, geology, flight, water, and painting.”

It seems writing down most of your thoughts is pretty freakin’ powerful.

[A Partial Collection Of My Journals]

One of the most powerful ideas shared in How To Think Like Leonardo DaVinci was the 100 Questions List. The exercise Gelb suggests is giving yourself about 60 minutes to write down 100 questions that you’d most like the answer to. The questions can range from Why is the ocean salty to what is my main motivation in life. Literally any question that comes to mind should go on your list until you make it to 100. Then segment the list into the top 10 most important questions on that list. List them in importance from 1-10 and ponder them on a regular basis. The author suggests that the happiest people in the world ask, “What if I could find some way to get paid for doing what I love?” Hmmm… .sounds like they focus on building bigger lives. Curious…

In the Build a Bigger LIfe Blueprint, one of the tenets is Asking Bigger Questions. You can listen to a solocast on that topic by downloading Episode 43. It was a good one if I do say so myself.

A large part of DaVinci’s notebooks involved what today would be called Mind Mapping. Mind Mapping is a brainstorming process that was first originated by a guy named Tony Buzan. When his book The Mind Map Method first came out I devoured it. I realized that I’d been doing something similar to write content for years. My mindmap for this solocast is posted on the blogsite if you want to see how I do it. Someday soon I’ll record a show about how I create content in record time. It’s a process, a system if you will… something else I learned from Leonardo DaVinci.

There are plenty of apps available today that will help you get started mind-mapping, just google mind mapping apps and an exhaustive list will show up. However, my recommendation is to mind map the way Leonardo did. With a blank sheet of paper, using your right brain to be creative. I’ve found that attempting to mind map digitally just doesn’t work for me, so my normal routine is with either a blank sheet of paper or a white board and different colored markers. The process of mind mapping is simply finding connections with everything you’re writing about. Each connection is an offshoot of the original idea until you have a “map” or spider web of ideas that were sparked from the original subject.

When you look at LDV’s journals, they are full of diagrams, line drawings, and mind maps. Further proof that he believed in combining art and science. Don’t underestimate the power of your creative side and a blank sheet of paper. I write EVERYTHING using mind mapping.

It seems DaVinci tapped into a secret reservoir of knowledge on a regular basis as well. He was an ardent believer in trusting the inner wisdom, what I called the inner knower in the Build A Bigger Life Blueprint. Gelb describes it as the Unconscious Database. In his book he states that neuroscientists estimate your unconscious database outweighs your conscious thoughts ten million to one. I’ve always believed that your brain is the most powerful supercomputer ever designed and it’s literally captured everything you’ve ever heard or read. But much like a computer, there is random access memory, there’s a hard drive, and there’s a garbage can where stuff you never access goes. The best visual representation of it was from the Pixar movie Inside Out. All of those memories that we never access anymore are still there, they’re just down in the basement collecting dust until they’re moved out of RAM and your hard drive.

DaVinci trusted his inner knower, tapped his unconscious database often, and as a result was heralded as a genius. But what if you have the exact same ability and just haven’t been using it? Is that enough motivation for you to spend 15-20 minutes a day in silence pondering the big 10 questions of your life? I sure hope so!

Two of the other big ideas in Gelb’s book about How To Think Like Leonardo DaVinci involve affirmations and taking care of your physicality.

Leonardo wrote affirmations in his journals regularly and they were phrases such as:
‘I shall continue.”
‘Obstacles do not bend me.’
‘I never tire of being useful.’
‘Every obstacle is destroyed through rigor.’

Some of my favorite affirmations are phrases like:
‘I’m alive, alert, happy, healthy, firm, friendly, cordial, and enthusiastic.’
‘Money comes easily and frequently.’
‘When things get tougher I get better.’

What are the affirmations you’re saying to yourself on a regular basis? My friend and mentor Jack Canfield says affirmations are the mind’s way of releasing the brakes. Until we release the brakes, we’re constantly riding them on the highway of success. So today, journal a few of your favorite affirmations and keep them in front of you daily. Remember that they are always positive in nature, always in the first person, and always a statement of having or being what it is you most desire.

Lastly, and probably most interesting to me is the fact that LDV was one of the greatest athletes of his time. His physicality was incredibly important to him, evidenced by his study of the human body, the sinewy muscles in his drawings, and the obvious obsession he had with his drawing of the Vitruvian Man.

DaVinci called it Corporalita -- the idea that cultivating movement, balance, poise, and fitness was incredibly important to achieve everything you set out to achieve. Just a great reminder to take care of yourself, if you want your body and mind to take care of you.

So, without question, I highly recommend the book How To Think Like Leonardo DaVinci by Michael Gelb. In the process of building a bigger life, I can think of no greater advice than to pursue curiosity, to demonstrate knowledge through experience, to embrace uncertainty, balance art and science, to be your physical best, and most notably for this Renaissance Man, to journal every thought, experience, and idea while staying attuned to your inner knower.

As they would’ve said in DaVinci’s day, Ciao for now. Here’s to you building a bigger life.

Get your copy of How To Think Like Leonardo DaVinci HERE.

Jules Schroeder is working in collaboration with the People and Planet Project with the United Nations to redefine education and how it’s delivered through CreateU.com. More on that in a bit.

What you should know first about Jules is she is a serial entrepreneur, having launched her first 6 figure business in her teens and her first 7 figure business in her early 20’s. She’s a trailblazer and a pioneer when it comes to following businesses and paths that light her up.

CreateU is a platform for re-imagining our educational delivery platform. The goal of the platform is to reverse engineer the process of educating young people as they look to what they want to do for a living. Today’s system has many graduates leaving in tens of thousands of dollars in debt and no idea what they want to do. This broken system is what CreateU will tackle.

At the end of the one year CreateU program, students will actually be out in the world “doing” the next step in whatever they choose to pursue. The experience factor, now being what companies are looking for, is an intense focus of CreateU. The online course aspect of the program is just part of a $170B industry that’s popped up in the past 10 years.

While CreateU is in the application development phase right now, the classes will begin in early 2016 and Jules says applications are being taken on the site right now. To get advance notice, click here: http://createu.life/

Books recommended by Jules:
The Presence Process by Michael Brown
Choose Yourself by James Altucher
The Obstacle Is The Way by Ryan Holiday

If you’re anything like me, and you’re listening to the podcast so I have to believe you’re somewhat like me, you have big projects happening on a regular basis. Maybe you’re working on the next big thing, or a book or video project. Maybe you’re even considering starting a business, getting involved in a charity of some kind, or just planning a major vacation.

I’m going to share with you today an idea that has helped me immensely in the pursuit of my own bigger life. It’s a concept that came to me on a plane one day while flying to a speaking engagement on the West Coast. The idea that I’m referring to hit me like a ton of bricks and I’ve been somewhat obsessed with the idea of using this method ever since. Essentially, as I sat on the airplane, waiting on the tarmac, I began tracing back through the conversations I’d had with various people that led me to the engagement I was heading to. It all funneled back to a contact of mine who has been instrumental in me getting a fairly serious amount of business. That got me wondering where a majority of my business came from and I could trace almost every gig back to a handful of people -- many of them people who’d been in my “camp” for some time. In effect, they were people that I would describe as having my back. They were people who liked, loved and respected me.

At this point on the plane ride, I began scribbling in my notebook all of the names of people in my life who liked, loved and respected me. The list grew with each airline mile and I now have a list of nearly 400 people that fit that description. The list continues to grow today and I hope it always does.

For a time in my early 30’s, I was really into studying what the best internet marketers did to build their businesses. One relatively famous marketer I was studying said in an interview that if your house were on fire and you could only take one thing out of your home, it would be your list. Because the mailing list for an internet marketer was like their own gold mine that they had to mine every now and again to make massive amounts of money. It’s part of the reason you’re seeing a proliferation of squeeze pages and enter your name and email boxes on websites. Everyone, it seems, is in the game of grabbing your email for future marketing.

So, my recommendation to you, which I’ll go into greater detail on the podcast is: Begin building your list -- what I call the Power 100 List. It’s a list of the 100 people in your life that like, love and respect you. To get the pump primed a bit, consider adding people from these categories to your list: College friends, coworkers, family friends, advisors, mentors, pastors, professors, parents of friends, business peers, networking buddies -- literally anyone that comes to mind that you feel would have your back if needed. And keep in mind, the reverse is also true. If you would do the same for others in your network, then put their name on your list. The key to people being on your list is they want YOU to succeed.

My deep dive into my own list got me thinking about networks in general and how effective they are at the rapid transmission of data, information, contacts, and the like. I started to think about it this way -- if you were going to do some research to write a paper or put together a talk on something, you’d go to google to do the searching. Whenever I put a search term in google, I will get hundreds of thousands of results in milliseconds. And if you really dug into how that happens (behind all the complicated algorithms used to find it), you’d find one of the largest networks in the world -- that being the interconnected computers that are all part of the world wide webs. The more connections there are, the faster the data can be combed from all of them. Since Al Gore invented the interwebs, you have the ability to look up data on your phone in less than a minute which would’ve taken you a year or more to find 25 years ago and 10 years to find 50 years ago. In short, the more connections there are, the more data you have access to, faster.

Similarly, in your brain there are interconnected neural pathways that the neorons travel along. The more interconnected your neural pathways, the faster the neurons travel allowing you to access the information even more readily. So, if you wanted to learn Spanish and you wanted to learn guitar, you’d be better off learning them at the same time to create more neural pathways in your brain, therefore having more connections and an ability to access the information more readily. The guy who competed against IBMs Watson in Jeopardy -- his name is Ken Jennings -- the guy probably has more neural pathways than just about anybody. Hence his ability to pull information as quickly as he does. The more neural pathways, the faster the information can be obtained.

So, I began to assume that if the more connections on the web meant we could access stuff faster and the more neural pathways in your brain, the faster you could access stuff, I wondered if the more connections we had in our network, the faster we could accomplish what we set out to accomplish. In my talk on Networking, called Networking POWER, I do an example of this called the web of connections. Ultimately, my goal is to show every audience that there is tremendous power in a room of people to help each other get where they want to go. I connect as many people as possible in the room with a ball of yarn, each person within 1 or 2 degrees of what the other person most wants or needs. It’s most effective when someone is looking for a job, an introduction into a company, or wants information about a person or place. It’s astonishing to me how well this works.

So, if you’re asking yourself WHY would I do this? Why would I make a list of the 100 people in my life that like, love and respect me? (Other than the fact that it feels really good to make a list of people who care about you like that), the reasons are many:

Are you trying to find a job?
Wanting to market a product?
Need help getting connections?
Want to build a mastermind group?
Feel like success is just up to you?

I have a perfect example of how I used the Power 100 list to help me with something last year. In early 2014, two partners and I launched a crowd-funding campaign to raise money for a documentary on student loan debt. The name of which is Broke, Busted & Disgusted. You’ve no doubt heard me talk about it on the show. Having never crowdfunded anything before, the most logical thing for me to do was to reach out to my POwer 100 list and ask them for help spreading the word, and help with the crowdfunding campaign. The list responded in a BIG way.

At the end of our 45 day campaign, we had raised $67,000 and almost 90% of the funds raised came directly or indirectly as a result of my Power 100 list coming alongside. They shared the message, they donated, and they supported us in our charge towards raising enough to finish the film. It was an awesome thing to see.

The way I leveraged my Power 100 list was simple -- I built the list in a google spreadsheet. And contrary to my story earlier, all 400+ people on my list weren’t listed on the airline flight. I’ve added to the list over time, mainly by having the google docs app on my phone, opening that particular spreadsheet whenever I was moved to, and added someone to the ever-expanding list.

On the spreadsheet are four columns. First name, last name, email address and phone number. Everyone on the list has all four columns filled because you never know when I’ll need to either send them an email or a text message.

As I build the list, I import the list into Mailchimp, which is an email automator and allows you to write one email and send it to your mass list as if you’re sending it to an individual person. Mailchimp is a super simple service to use and allows you to have a list of up to 2000 people for free. It’s literally dead simple.

For the crowdfunding campaign, I sent a simple email that asked them for their support in an incredibly important project I was working on that had the capacity to change lives en masse. One little secret is people will get behind a BIG vision. One of my favorite quotes is: Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logicaldiagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency. Remember that our sons and our grandsons are going to do things that would stagger us. Let your watchword be order and your beacon beauty. -- Daniel Burnham an American architect.

So whatever your ask of your group, inspire them with a big vision that wants them to jump on board.

And the bottom line of sending out the email is this - ASK. Let me say it again, 3 times: Ask, Ask. Ask. Jack Canfield once told me if you ask, ask, ask, then you’ll get, get, get. Ask so much you begin to feel like an askhole. It’s a beautiful thing when you ask for what you want and then get it.

Once you’ve built your list to a substantial number, and you know who is going to respond positively, you’ll begin to segment your list based on business deals, outreach to the public, who are the marketers, the connectors, etc. And through segmenting, your asks become that much more powerful.

It has been said that your net worth is determined by your network. So, if you are having a hard time coming up with 100 people in your life that like, love and respect you, perhaps it’s time to do a little more networking. Consider throwing a party for the people that you most want to connect with in life and introduce them to each other. IF you don’t feel like you have the right network, the key is to build it yourself.

Reading books like Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi and How To Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie are a great first step. Throw a Power 100 party or a cool people party and be known as the guy or gal that makes shit happen for your network and your own Power 100 will grow stronger with more connections.

Building a bigger life is about being the architect of your life, imagining the life you most want to live and going for that in big ways. Having people in your corner that have your back is the fastest way to accomplish that.

And as a final word, if you are asking, be also giving at the same time. The law of reciprocity is as powerful as gravity and is working behind the scenes always.

Good luck in your Power 100 List creation, and have fun connecting… I sure do.

Natalie Bacon found herself in this situation -- $206,000 in student loans and a career in law that wasn’t especially rewarding or fulfilling. Her response to the situation: she began to pursue what lit her up and got into fee based financial planning.

The result has been a successful blog at TheFinanceGirl.com, and a growing number of followers who do almost exactly what Natalie suggests they do online. I uncover on the show that she’s a Delayed Gratification Expert (a status I’m going to trademark), and her ability to make, manage and direct money has her student loan balance down to the $124,000 mark in a very short amount of time.

Natalie shares on the show how to side hustle your way to lower debt, how to face your student loans and tackle them head on, and what never to say to her if you’re looking to date her. (Here’s a hint - financial miscreants need not apply.) :)

I loved interviewing this sharp shooting attorney turned financial pro, and you will enjoy the listen!

Books Natalie Recommends:
15 Invaluable Laws of Growth by John Maxwell
I Will Teach You To Be Rich by Ramit Sethi
Secrets of The Millionaire Mind by T.Harv Eker

Find more of Natalie at:
http://NatalieBacon.com
http://TheFinanceGirl.com

But most amazing about Hal’s story is the fact that he wrote the book at a low period of his life, but had a vision for the book that it would change the world in a massive way.

A quote by Jim Rohn was the catalyst for Hal -- “Your level of success will never exceed your level of personal development.” So Hal went out to find what the most successful people in the world did on a daily basis to create their ideal life. In the end, it wasn’t ONE thing, but about SIX things that the most successful people in the world do every day.

So Hal got up at 5am and started doing these six things every day and it profoundly changed his life.

Around the 16:00 mark, Hal describes what happened when he was hit head on by a drunk driver at the age of 19 and woke up in a state of complete unknowing of what had happened. A week after the accident, the doctors were seriously concerned about Hal because they thought mentally and emotionally he was in denial. Physically, he was in repair, but internally (emotionally) Hal had learned how to live by the 5 minute rule. That is, for 5 minutes you can be mad, sad, angry, frustrated, etc. at a situation, but after that, you have to accept what is and decide how you’re going to live your life.

If you’re thinking about reading The Miracle Morning, but afraid that you’re not a morning person, Hal says don’t worry! In The Miracle Morning community, almost 70% of the people asked were not originally morning people, but in waking up BETTER, it became easier to get started with their days.

According to Hal, it’s about Impact, Income, and Legacy. Building a bigger life is simple when you’re focused on making a difference in the lives of other people.

I hope you enjoyed the interview with Hal!

To find out more about Hal, check out www.HalElrod.com
To find out more about his event, check out www.BestYearEver.com
And to get your copy of The Miracle Morning, click HERE.

To his credit, Bill has helped hundreds (if not in the thousands) of people get out from under their most oppressive debts and do it in record time. It’s by using a process known as equity optimization, something Bill and his partners have spent the last 12 years promoting through his company Truth In Equity.

You’ll hear on the podcast that the reason we wrestle with debt most of our lives is a direct result of the way we bank and borrow in this country. In Bill’s book Master Your Debt he uncovers how to change your life by re-wiring your understanding of massive debt reduction.

Bill and his team call their strategy Equity Optimization, but what he offers is primarily education and consulting on how to use the process to radically change your financial picture. Your greatest tool is your income, yet many of us have income sitting in bank accounts not doing anything but making money for your bank.

To understand the model that Bill espouses, you must first understand how interest accrues against you on daily debt. Whether it’s your mortgage, your car loan or student loans, the interest is accruing on your average daily balance -- yet the income that we’re using against debt is usually limited to the payments that the bank tells us to send them. (Guaranteeing them the most amount of return on their “investment” in you.)

Bill’s method uses a Line of Credit that all of your income goes into, which you then leverage against your debts to eliminate them in record time.

The rule of thumb for this system to work, according to Bill, is to be LEAN, LIQUID and INDEPENDENT.

LEAN: Keep your monthly payments as low as humanly possible. This way you have extra disposable/discretionary income to blast away debt.

LIQUID: The money that you’re using needs to be readily accessible. That’s why using a line of credit is recommended -- particularly one you can write checks against.

INDEPENDENT: You don’t need approval to access the money. It’s readily available to you with no strings attached (i.e. having to be OK’d by a loan officer).

What Bill does is outside the norm, but should be normal for everyone. This model deserves winning a Nobel Peace Prize for economics. To find out how to work with Bill and his team, check out www.TruthInEquity.com.

Or Email him at Bill@TruthInEquity.com
Or Call: 352-232-1751

Books Bill Recommends:
Master Your Debt by Bill Westrum and Jordan Goodman
The Blue Ocean Strategy by W.Chan Kim
Three Value Conversations by Erik Peterson

Stefanie’s education path took her through New York University and majored in musical theater & psychology. For the past 8 years, she’s been working as a “starving artist” in the musical theater scene, but as of the past couple of years realized that she could work in tandem on projects she’s passionate about -- like living a broke and beautiful life!

While on a bus & truck tour (where you travel with other entertainers on a bus from city to city doing a show per night), she realized that maybe this vehicle wasn’t the dream she was pursuing. She started a blog on her musings about life, money, and art in general, and within 6 months had developed a solid foothold on the interwebs.

Around the 9:00 mark, Stefanie talks about what she’s been doing the past couple years -- mainly focused on growth and investing any extra money she had on personal development. This was an interesting phenomena for Stefanie who admittedly was broke just prior, with only enough money to pay her bills and literally nothing else.

“Walking into an audition room into NYC is probably one of the most miserable experiences…” (14:00) Stefanie says that many starving artists in the city are living paycheck to paycheck just waiting for their big break. As a result, the passion for what they do is limited to the auditions they go to, while the rest of their life doesn’t fulfill.

Stefanie is now blogging full-time, freelance writing, and building her business. When she says full-time, she means it -- often working 10 hours a day building her income streams. And… she LOVES it!

Books Stefanie Recommends:
Rising Strong by Brene Brown
The Art of Work by Jeff Goins
The Broke & Beautiful Life by Stefanie O’Connell

Find more about Stefanie: http://stefanieoconnell.com/

Check out her music video about student debt: http://thebrokeandbeautifullife.com/how-to-pay-off-student-loans/

What started out as sharing a recipe-heavy blog with occasional personal stories, Cassandra’s business took on a new life as a coach, a chef, an author, and now a bonafide celebrity. She has certifications as a holistic health coach which led her to Kundalini Yoga, Marianne Williamson, and Gabriel Bernstein -- all directing her down a path of helping people find their joy.

Cassandra’s call from the Universe came from ABC when they were looking for people to be on the show The Taste. She had the realization that what she was doing on the show was what she was supposed to do. Not be a TV personality necessarily, but helping people on a grander scale live a grander life.

“Stepping into it” is the advice that Cassandra gives when it comes to pursuing what you feel your calling truly is. Her primary income before blogging was acting, which was an interesting shift for her -- making money pretending to be someone else, versus just being herself.

Around the 15:00 mark, Cassandra talks about how to figure out your own meditation process. Hers started on YouTube meditations, then branched into a morning routine where she asks her inner guide what the 3 most important things are for the day. Sometimes you’ll summon a to-do list that is exactly what you had created, and sometimes you’ll go on a complete tangent.

At 20:00, we discuss “holding space” for what your vision of the future looks like. Cassandra describes how she lives in alignment with her values and what she represents. Living 100% in integrity is ultimately what Cassandra “holds space” for on a daily basis. For her, that means doing writing and meditation because it fills her, how she works with her assistant and intern, how she talks to the barista at the local coffee shop. Because you’re living in alignment and holding space, the ‘sprinkles on the cupcake’ are the great opportunities that show up because of the way you’re operating daily.

One of Cassandra’s secrets to success is putting quality food in her body and paying attention to what she says yes and no to socially. Taking care of yourself frees you to build a bigger life, including what you put in your body, your mind, and your entire being.

When I asked Cassandra about whether or not she was pursuing mastery, her answer was perfect. She replied, “I’m in pursuit of mastering my own life.” (34:00). The key is to do the work on yourself first, then turn the inner work into the outer work.

Books Cassandra recommends:
The War of Art by Steven Pressfield
The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer
4 Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss

If you want more of Cassandra (and who wouldn’t), check out www.CassandraBodzak.com.

Quotes:
There is so much joy and fullfillment in being YOU
-Cassandra Bodzak

Be unapologetically YOU
-Cassandra Bodzak

Listen to you inner guide
-Cassandra Bodzak

The more influ

The questions he started asking others became part of his business as a business and executive coach. The inner questions are at the heart of Jason’s work with his clients… mastering the inside eventually helps the person master the outside.

Around the 8:00 mark, Jason tells the story of someone that was made fun of as a kid because of vocal cord damage. The story she had told herself made her afraid of getting on the phone, afraid of opening up, and ultimately was keeping her from performing in her job. By removing the emotional blocks, this client of Jason’s created some amazing breakthroughs.

Create a purpose based on your top emotions, is the advice Jason gives people that are either pursuing happiness, fulfillment, success, or some other nebulous idea. (12:30)

At 16:00, we begin talking about Jason’s book Social Wealth. On your deathbed, no one will celebrate the fact that they worked hard. Instead, it’s about relationships and making connections no matter where you go. Social Wealth is about building deep meaningful connections.

“Are you asking questions that really matter to the person you’re talking to?” is Jason’s advice to making lasting connections. If you help someone do something that at their very core is important to them, you’re building Social Wealth.

Be authentic, vulnerable, generous, and present in everything you do. (23:00)

For the introverted, who may find meeting others to be difficult, be more targeted about where you go and where you meet others. Fund-raising events, the symphony, art shows, etc. are great places to meet others. Jason recommends volunteering at the check-in table so that you can meet everyone that walks in the door. Then you have a reason to go up to them later in the evening by saying, “we met earlier, but didn’t have a chance to chat. How are you finding the evening?”

One of Jason’s secret weapons is his willingness to introduce other people to each other -- even those that HE doesn’t know personally. It opens the door for new relationships which is what everyone truly wants!

Books Jason recommends:
The ONE by Gary Keller
Daring Greatly by Brene Brown
Give and Take by Adam Grant

To be claiming your power through your purpose is what it takes to build a bigger life!

I hope you enjoyed the interview!

Find more of Jason at BeExtraordinary.TV!

These two are amazing in their love for each other, for their business, and for helping others create a bigger life. What started as a contagion, turned into a part-time hobby, then a business, and now a business helping others pursue the same fantastic business.

Jordan has not watched college football in 2 years. Shooting 40 weddings in the luxury market of Scottsdale, Arizona keeps the Demos’ super busy, but doing what they love every day.

Amy and Jordan believe that just being married means you’re in business together. But additionally doing a business together has been very marriage enriching for both of them. The key to making it work, according to Jordan, is having grace for one another on a daily basis and being each others’ biggest supporters.

The next 3-5 years for Amy and Jordan are about taking things one day at a time. Jordan described the scene from Good To Great where Jim Collins wrote about pushing a boulder up a hill and right at the top of the hill is the tipping point where you’re now chasing the boulder back down the other side. The boulder, for Amy and Jordan, has started to roll!

Amy and Jordan have offered a quick start guide to pursuing your dream job which is available HERE.

Books Amy and Jordan recommend:
The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey
Quitter by Jon Acuff
EntreLeadership by Dave Ramsey
Start by Jon Acuff
Love and Respect by Emerson Eggerichs

Hope you enjoy the podcast as much as I enjoyed the interview!! --AC

But Philip, at his heart, is a dadpreneur who just wanted to hang with his family more and build a bigger life in the process. He is able to work from home, create his own schedule, and spend as much time with his kids as possible.

Philip started his career as a CPA, following in his father’s footsteps. He worked with and for his Dad, KPMG and a couple smaller firms prior to building PTMoney.com which is a highly regarded financial blog. The bloggers he was talking shop with began sharing how they were doing business, how they were building products, and ultimately how they could share more insider tips and tricks. Looking to expand the people he was surrounding himself with, he started www.FINCONexpo.com to attract some of the coolest cats online in the financial world.

According to Philip, the internet has allowed people like Mr. Money Moustache to win the media war against magazines like Money and Kiplinger. (12:00)

Paying off your house is a good thing according to Philip. “Typically a last step if you’ve paid off everything else”. At the 13:00 mark, he talks about what his family is doing to prepare for a sound financial future.

I asked Philip about college and the viability of spending a significant amount on a degree. His answer was he was for pushing his kids towards a low-cost college alternative. It taught him how to live amongst others, how to be a good student, and also got him licensed to be a CPA.

PTMoney.com was an easier business model 10 years ago because just posting articles meant google was sending traffic to the site. Today, the model has changed and bloggers and podcasters have to be more creative about how they market their sites. If he were starting today, Philip says he would move to make his own products and services much more quickly as Adsense and affiliate products aren’t producing the same income today as they were years ago.

If someone wants to do what Philip does, he discusses this around 29:00. First, he and his wife got rid of their debt -- credit cards, student loans and car debt. This was to prepare themselves for the first few months where the money wasn’t guaranteed. He recommends getting a mortgage prior to leaving an employer, having good life insurance, and investigating health insurance options.

Books Philip recommends:
Automatic Millionaire by David Bach
The E-Myth by Michael Gerber
Millionaire Fastlane by MJ DeMarco

“Building a bigger life is about building freedom into your life so that you can be intentional.”

I hope you enjoyed the podcast as much as I enjoyed interviewing Philip!

Troy Wittmann and I met in Milwaukee, Wisconsin while both of us shared the stage at the TEDx event put on by UW Milwaukee. Troy’s message about taking back the educational keys was one of my favorite talks of the week and we definitely hit it off at the event and on this podcast.

Troy’s dad was a teacher and he remembers a memory of wanting to go over to a friend’s house, but the friend said he couldn’t come over because his dad had had a bad day. Troy’s dad was in a good mood every day when he came home from school, and seeing the love that he had for his 6th graders and their passion for learning, Troy pursued education with the same passion.

The relentless testing that is happening today is keeping some teachers from getting kids to LOVE learning. The kids don’t necessarily have ADD, they’re forced to “sit and git”. Troy has used simple strategies to increase his kids’ love of learning and it shows in the classroom. (11:00)

“We need rooms full of thinkers and debaters in classrooms today.” (13:45)

Troy created a time machine that literally was built into the classroom where he teaches. If the class is learning about James Madison, James Madison comes out of the time machine and answers questions from the students in the first person. (17:00) “As educators, we have to be willing to put ourselves out there, to be a little silly, and to pursue our passion of sharing knowledge in a way that students appreciate.”

Troy has a program called ‘Teaching Rocks’ which features 33 ⅓ active learning strategies. He’s a frequent speaker at teacher in-service events, and inspires teachers to deliver ‘the goods’ in a way that students thrive as a result of.

The bottom line, according to Troy, is the fact that the kids that come into school everyday just need someone in their life that cares about them. For some, their teachers are the only people that do this.

Troy created a water ski-ing simulator in the cafeteria of his school. The story is at 27:00 and is AMAZING.

Books recommended by Troy:

Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren
Teach With Your Heart by Erin Gruell
States of Mind by Roberta Conlin

If you want to get more of Troy (and you SHOULD), his website is: www.TeachingRocks.com and his TED talk can be viewed at: https://youtu.be/sQcc1AiaFL0

Pay attention to the questions that you are asking today and think about how asking bigger questions would change your mindset and output. Examples are How do I make $500K annually? How do I travel the world for a living? How do I own a yacht in the Caribbean?
If you ask these questions your subconscious mind will support you and provide answers. You will think to surround yourself with millionaires or adventurists that are living out your future dream. This is how Peter Branson is able to launch Virigin Airlines into space or how a 100 year old can feel like they are 60… Ask big questions and see how your life begins to change.

Books Mentioned

Bold - Peter Diamandis

Freedom and flexibility are passions for Leslie and her business as a debt resolution attorney was founded on helping people thrive financially. As such, her business is focused on keeping individuals and business owners out of bankruptcy, sometimes through “unconventional” means. Her strength is in resolving debt and reallocating funds to make life happen more efficiently.

When Leslie graduated from law school, she had $80,000 in student loans AND a child -- now realizing she didn’t know the first thing about her student loans when she took them. After figuring out how much she had paid over time in interest and fees (10 years later), she found herself in a position to eliminate the rest of her student loans.

That experience humbled Leslie and gives her the humility and the empathy to handle client situations from all walks of life.

In Leslie’s book, she talks about loving your debt and talks about the analogy of being in a relationship with your debt. In a relationship, you focus on the relationship and make it work well, or you ignore the relationship and find yourself in dire straits. (15:00)

I loved Leslie’s take on how she teaches her kids money. Whether your kids are 10, 12, 15 or 17 or as Leslie says 40(!), you are empowering your kids to either make good financial choices or poor ones. Kids having a fit in the store who’s parents eventually give in and purchase the item causing the fit are creating not only negative behavior, but negative FINANCIAL behavior!

Leslie plays a closet psychologist with her clients (21:00). Trying to understand the psychology of her clients is imperative -- sometimes bad financial behavior is the result of programming you received as a child. She calls credit card marketing the greatest marketing success story out there as some people really believe the only way to buy things is by using their credit cards.

Love and money are not the same thing. (25:00) For most people, just making a payment for a child is like a band-aid over a dam. The problem is cash flow in most cases. Want to truly love your child, help them solve a problem, don’t solve it for them!

Around the 28:00 mark, we talked about what to tell parents who want their child to go to an expensive school, but haven’t saved the money for it. Leslie’s no-nonsense advice to a parent like this is SPOT ON!! It’s not the college you go to, it’s what you do at college that will set you apart.

Leslie says 95 times out of 100 she can fix a credit card issue, so declaring bankruptcy due to $20-30k in debt is ridiculous. (35:00)

Books Leslie Recommends:
Anthony Robbins books
Author Brian Weiss
Hayhouse Books

Find out more about Leslie at http://attorney-newyork.com/
www.TayneLaw.com
www.LifeAndDebtBook.com

Leslie will talk to anyone over the phone for free. So if you have debt or a debt problem, give Leslie’s office a call at (866) 890-7337.

Richard’s life change happened on 9/11, after a 5 hour drive home trying to imagine what happened in New York, and how it related to him and his family. He decided on that drive that his passions had to be pursued and quit his job just a month later.

For changing behavior and changing attitudes, Richard thinks training should be the last ditch effort -- but if not for the training, many of the attitude changing conversations never happen. Peak Solutions figures out what pill their clients are trying to feed their employees, and they then wrap the cheese and bacon around the pill in the form of training. (12:00)

Relationships have always been a cornerstone of Richard’s core operating system, but he didn’t realize trust was at the center of building effective connections. (19:00) The exercise that Richard put his kids through is a great example of how to teach trust, and specifically the power of our words in destroying trust. (23:00)

Books Richard recommends:
Essentialism by Greg Mckeown
Better Than Good by Zig Ziglar
The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman
The John Maxwell Leadership Bible

Richard is all about having say in what he does and when he does it. His measure of success is the quantity and quality of time with his family, the level of legacy he (and his kids) leave, and ultimately having as little obligation as possible financially.

I hope you enjoy the podcast!

Max is a guy who dreams about freedom, then pursues it relentlessly for himself and for others. His fulfillment in life comes from helping those around him pursue contribution to society.

The richness of life, according to Max, is in giving of yourself. Early in life, Max heard over and over again that they (his family) “had no money”. And while in pursuit of money, Max learned that forgetting about himself and focusing on others made money come to him.

Max’s fortune was found early on in the network marketing business, and through mentors, trainings, coaching, and personal development workshops, he realized that helping others transform their lives was his true passion.

His philosophy around the 10:00 mark is remarkably accurate -- he alludes to the fact that when someone has a “traditional” business (one with four walls and employees) they tend to look down on other businesses (like network marketing).

80% of our success is our psychology (12:00). How much time is invested in our psychology to become successful while in school? Zero. Yet it’s our psychology that will determine our success in the long run and we spend no time focusing on it. That’s the reason Max goes to 6-10 seminars a year to further his skills. It’s important to grow mentally, from the heart, and the guts! (16:00). [PS> I love the way Max speaks. He’s one of my favorite interviews!]

Max’s mother died from cancer when he was 26, and as a result he became focused on finding healthy alternatives to his eating and his lifestyle. If you have half of your energy, then you are handicapped for the rest of the day. As such, Max has all but cut sugar out of his diet, he wakes his body up first thing in the morning, has cut out red meat and processed foods and maximizes his mind on a daily basis.

Making nearly $50,000 a month in his network marketing business (and having so for years), Max transitioned his business to coaching and transformational training and was questioned by everyone ‘why would you DO that?’ His response is fantastic -- I lost passion for it. He’s now turned his attention to what he’s passionate about: human development.

Books Max recommends:
7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
The Magic of Thinking Big by David Schwartz

Mentioned on the show:
www.nuskin.com
www.pomodorotechnique.com

Find out more about Max at his website: http://www.maxpiccinini.com/

Becoming the most recommended real estate agent in the state, Mark says, was all about nurturing his spiritual gift of GIVING. Around the 8:00 point, Mark talks about how he focused his business on growing the opportunity for everyone to get something. Doing business with Mark has become the easy choice because of everything he’s offering his clients who work with him.

“Pros focus on relationships and amateurs focus on sales” (14:00) Mark says the challenge for most people is the relationship building aspect of business takes focused effort. From Power Vs. Force, by David Hawkins, Mark said the idea of urging versus inviting has impacted how he works with real estate clients.

Mark is adamant about the fact that he likes to work with people who like to work with him. (18:45) As such, he’s more than willing to do what some agents won’t do, like write checks to make deals happen, doing some deals pro bono, and attempting to move mountains to make the clients happy.

Books Mark recommends:
The Bible
Drudge Report - News Articles

The bottom line magic according to Mark is DON’T QUIT! And through loving what you do, the life you seek gets bigger and bigger!

Find out more about Mark at http://markcharter.com.

From 401K's and Roth IRAs to building you own business. Adam lends insight on how to invest and set yourself up for your ideal financial future.

Retirement is on you, the sooner you realize that and do something to prepare for retirement, the sooner you can retire. You can learn more in episode 28 - What is your Retirementality

You can walk through the streamlined steps of setting up yourself for financial freedom by downloading the Build a Bigger Life Blueprint on Adamspeaks.com

Julie holds an organizational development position with Chanel currently, though worked for Google previously, and had done consulting just after receiving her graduate degree. The Google culture for her was an eye-opening experience, one where actual value that people bring to their jobs was the focus, not just how many hours they put in a day.

The experience led Julie to write the book The Work Revolution after sharing stories about Google and having people show such intense interest in how to make that happen in their organizations.

One-by-one, Julie believes companies will realize that they have to change their models of leading and how “work” happens or else they won’t be able to attract the right talent. (12:00)

If companies would give some leeway or discretion in how hours are set and work is done, Julie says organizations may realize greater profits and productivity. When you’re so used to doing something a certain way, it’s tough to know what will change when you change the system, but that is exactly what needs to happen (if only just to test the system). (16:00)

A great example brought up on the podcast of changes happening in the global economy is the changing of ASTD -- the American Society of Training & Development -- to the Association of Talent Development. A more global feel to the organization and a greater sense of talent and the development thereof. (19:00)

Communication and prioritization become the most important elements for the leaders of tomorrow. The most effective leaders are ones that will:
Set the right priorities, very clear, very meaningful to the overall goals
Communicating the priorities over and over and over again

Julie tells a story about teaching her dog to fetch a beer from the refrigerator around the 26:00 mark, and it inspired me to attempt the same with mine. :)

Books Julie recommends:
Anything by Martha Beck
Influencer: The Power To Change Anything
The Hard Thing About Hard Things

Julie has a fantastic perspective on what Building A Bigger Life truly is -- it’s the eternal question of being torn between the desire to change the world and the desire to enjoy the world.

Get your copy of 30 Days to $1K over at Amazon, and for this week at only 99 cents.

Many of Bob’s friends had been downsized and let go from automotive manufacturing in Flint, MI and thought they’d just be hired back on the line. As he answered questions, consulted with professional peers, and started coalescing all of the information on his blog, Bob was called by a publisher asking if he could put a book together from the content.

The idea that work is changing is beginning to pick up. Some people are calling it GIG-enomics as people cobble together full-time work from 3 or 4 different sources.

Some of the things changing the world of work today are:
An advance in technology
Rapid pace of globalization
Local and Global Regulations

In 2013, 77% of the jobs that were created were part-time jobs. Add to that the official unemployment numbers (that aren’t widely reported) hover between 12-17%, and it’s instrumental to have a more forward looking view of what work actually is becoming.

Bob talks about “anchors” that will hold the next generation back -- mental, emotional, and largely financial in the way of student loan debt, cost of living, having a hard time finding a job, etc. (14:30)

When you flip the paradigm of our grandparents having only one career, and we can have multiple, multiple careers, it actually becomes very exciting.

Bob talks about the correction in the market that’s on the horizon around 17:30. He speaks about companies stockpiling cash and the necessity of families to do the same. This becomes the insurance policy to weather the storm that may occur in the (near) future. He says to expect volatility and expect a correction. (19:00)

The love of challenge, adventure, and having impact are all being met for Bob currently at Crown, so changing his current role is not on the horizon. He’s loving what he does for the organization and talks about it around 25:00.

Books Bob Recommends:
Money Master The Game by Tony Robbins
The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz
The Speed of Trust by Stephen Covey

Here’s a hint: I’m not a plumber, but I swing a mean ax. Hope you like the lessons!!

Shannon and I are kindred spirits -- her father taught her some valuable financial lessons at the age of 13 and those lessons instilled a passion in her to teach others money for the rest of her life.

As the author of The Heavy Purse, a book for kids, a blog, and the host of a new podcast called Financially Sound, Shannon spends her days as a Certified Financial Planner helping individuals reach their own version of financial freedom.

On the podcast, Shannon talks about her dad and his influence on her life. He was a surgeon who was very analytical in his job, yet had a very high EQ and wanted to make sure Shannon made decisions that she felt good about. To him, it was about living life according to core values, something he passed to Shannon.

Around 12:00, Shannon talks about making a shift from working for a big corporation to buying a financial planning firm and deciding how her values would shape her new business.

Her two books, The Heavy Purse and The Lemonade Stand, she wrote as picture books to help teach kids financial lessons before bed or in the nooks and crannies of the day.

At the 17:00 mark, Shannon relays a story about her daughter planning her own birthday party, doing it with absolute joy, and learning some valuable money lessons along the way. Her daughters are responsible for buying their own clothes and school supplies (allowance provided), but the lessons Shannon relays along the way are priceless.

Shannon’s clients hear something from her regularly and that is to spend money joyously. To do so, we must understand what is most important to us, what we value, and what may be standing in our way. (23:00)

“Robo-advisors” are good, according to Shannon, but it misses the mark on what’s important to you about your money. This is why it’s important to work with an advisor.

A great discussion at the end of the podcast popped up about raising kids intelligently about money. Shannon is dialed in with the lessons she’s teaching her daughters and WE could learn a lot from her!

Books recommended by Shannon:
Man’s Search For Meaning by Victor Frankl
The Untethered Soul
The Girl on The Train
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

I hope you enjoy Shannon’s interview as much as I enjoyed interviewing her!!

I first met Forrest Willet at a Jack Canfield Train The Trainer Event -- and to meet Forrest is to love Forrest. He absolutely exudes love, loves life, and loves other people for who they are and who they can become.

I had no idea about Forrest’s traumatic brain injury when I first met him, and through our interactions he shared the events that led up to him lying in bed in a seriously depressed (and near suicidal) state. It was clear from the moment I met him that he would be a great interview on Build A Bigger Life.

Forrest’s first piece of advice was to accept where you are in life. Today, he works with other victims of brain injuries to help them recuperate and re-envision their lives.

One such story is Melinda, a young woman who had a traumatic brain injury, was in a coma for 9 months, was told she’d never walk or talk again -- yet goes to coffee every week with Forrest who tells them they can do anything they set their mind to. (15:00)

With a son who was two years old at the time, Forrest had to re-learn how to read alongside his son. They would read Berenstain Bears over and over again, sometimes his son correcting the words his dad would say. (20:00)

Forrest owned a chain of check cashing and payday loan businesses, at the time one of the fastest growing franchises in America, as well as buying and selling homes. The business allowed him to become a multi-millionaire in a relatively short amount of time. Yet, one of the lessons Forrest preaches is never judging anyone and treating everyone the same no matter their situation or circumstance. (26:00)

Books recommended by Forrest:
The Success Principles by Jack Canfield
The Greatest Miracle in The World by Og Mandino
Awaken The Giant Within by Tony Robbins
The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

Mentioned on the show:
Outwitting The Devil

Building a Bigger Life to Forrest means building a life INSIDE of you, not outside of you. I hope you enjoyed the interview as much as I did!

What do you do with your 401K, equity in your home or financial investments? Every financial expert has a “golden method” for retirement, what is right for you? On this Solocast, Adam digs into his personal thoughts and insight on retirement.

The 3 themes Adam speaks on:

Your Risk Tolerance
Your Retirement Timeline
Your Lifestyle or your “ideal lifestyle in retirement”

Listen in to hear Adam’s insight, advice and tips on retirement. You will never have more time then you do right now. Change your retirementality today!

Enjoy.

I first met Diego Corzo about four years ago when he was a student at Florida State University. Immediately struck by what a driven, inspired and motivated young man he was, we struck up a keen friendship, mentorship, and profound level of mutual respect.

Diego’s story is an inspiring one of someone who didn’t let obstacles stand in his way -- you’ll be impressed at the level of responsibility he takes for his life, his success, and for finding ways over, around and through everything life put in his way.

Around the 9:00 mark, Diego talks about going to Succeed Faster and how that changed his life forever because his mindset changed. As a recent college graduate with no green card, Diego pursued work with GM in Austin, TX -- but roadblocks kept appearing -- no drivers license, knew no one, and the immigration process was lagging on months longer than he thought.

At 16:00, Diego talked about how he pushes through obstacles by viewing them as challenges to be tackled one by one. “When my mindset shifted, everything changed.”

After reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki and surrounding himself with the mentors at GoBundance, Diego dove headfirst into real estate sales and investing. He’s been an agent with Keller Williams Realty for nearly a year, has closed enough home transactions to put him in the “successful realtor” category, and has invested in 4 rental properties in Florida and Austin, TX.

At 24, Diego has decided part of his life is about helping others. His mindset is about being happy with what he has now while he builds the life of his dreams. I hope you’re as inspired by Diego as I am!

Books recommended by Diego:
Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki
Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas Stanley and William Danko

I found Sarah by way of some other dynamic BABL interviewees, all of whom said the same thing -- “Sarah is incredible”. Most notably on the interview is her story of how she raised $33,000 for Charity Water on her 29th birthday. Without spoiling it too much, she promised to something very bold (and very naked) if her tribe could raise over $29,000. This one is definitely worth a listen.

Sarah is employed full-time with the start-up OneMonth.com, and through a very generous partnership, they’ve arranged for BABL listeners to receive a discount on their monthly education programs.

Books recommended by Sarah:

The Martian by Andy Weir
Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami

Thanks for tuning in!!

On this Solocast, Adam discusses the importance of having a vision playing against your perceived reality and how having a clear vision and adding weight to that it will always overcome.

You need to have a vision and lead in all aspects of your life. It should be so clear that you can articulate it to anyone that asks.

What is your vision? For your family, your life, your career, your money, or your health?

What does the next 6-12 months, 5 years or 20 years look like for you? To get started download the Build A Bigger Life Blueprint and start outlining your vision.

Show Quotes:
"We are Love, We Are One, We are how we treat each other when the day is done."
"Be Nice to Each other" - House Rules

Recommended Books
The Magic of Thinking Big-David Schwartz
The On Purpose Person- Kevin McCarthy

Jake Chesney is definitely someone building a bigger life for himself. He’s been an entrepreneur for the past 20 years, and when you’ve really never depended on anyone but yourself for your paycheck, it changes your mindset around work & money.

Thanks to a strong financial upbringing by his father, Jake operated his own business while in college, carried that forward 7 years, and was ultimately introduced to something known as The Infinite Banking Concept. He’s built a very substantial business for himself over the past 15 years, centered around helping people build a foundation for real wealth.

In the nature of full disclosure, Jake and I both sold books door-to-door for the SouthWestern Company back in college, which is partly how we reconnected several months ago. SW recruits about 4,000 college students every summer to knock on doors selling study guides to families. It’s extremely lucrative for those that apply the SW principles.

During his SW experience, Jake was introduced to Nelson Nash, the creator of the Infinite Banking Concept. He was hooked on the concept and began applying the principles right away (13:00).

Infinite Banking is not a product, it’s a philosophy or process. (15:00) By using dividend paying whole life insurance, you’re able to store money in a safe secure place that pays a higher dividend than what you might make in a traditional bank. IBC is not about “investing” but really about having cash available to you as opposed to borrowing from a bank at high interest.

Around 20:00, Jake talks about who he really likes to work with -- 20-25 year olds that can put away $100-200 a month to begin creating their “bank”. The formula is: as much as you can for as long as you can, then it’s yours to withdraw and use as you see fit.

Financial literacy is a foundational interest for Jake -- he recommends the following books by Robert Kiyosaki:

Rich Dad Poor Dad
The Cashflow Quadrant
Cashflow 101

Mentioned on the podcast:
www.infinitebanking.org
The Richest Man in Babylon
www.ownyourlifewithus.com

Thanks for listening, I hope you enjoyed the podcast!

On the recording, you’ll hear Jenny talk about high net growth individuals -- smart, hungry people that are about building themselves as much as building business. For those that are ready to pivot and you’re stuck or frustrated figuring out your life purpose, just try helping other people as much as possible. (And maybe it’s about helping yourself!)

Jenny’s dream job at google collided with an entrepreneurial drive to launch her first book and do her own thing. At that point, she saved 6 months worth of expenses and plowed forward on her own in New York City. (9:00)

In January 2014, Jenny hit a roadblock in her business and learned some valuable lessons about pivoting into another way of doing business. Those realizations directed her to create a strategy around making changes in your career.

Start with what’s already working. What are your strengths/interests and what did you love to do as a kid? Anything you know about what’s already working, start there.

The Four Strategies of How To Pivot
Plant - get your known variables captured
Scan - who’s around you that can help
Pilot - run small experiments
Launch - when you know it’s time

Jenny mentions that nowhere in the pivot method does she focus on what isn’t working -- it’s all about what is. (18:30)

There is a theory Jenny has put forward called Punctuated Points of Career Success. She says we hold out for certain moments in our career called “The Pinata of Far Off Dreams”. We could instead find punctuated points of career success. The celebration instead should be experiencing forward momentum. (23:00)

Mentioned on the podcast:
Scarcity
Anti-Fragile by Naseem Paleb

Books recommended by Jenny:
Smart hacks
The Antidote by Oliver Berkman
Anti-Fragile by Naseem Paleb

Building a Bigger Life to Jenny means expanding all of the small moments of the day and finding enjoyment in just sitting in the park and feeling the breeze on her face.

To get more of Jenny, check her out here: www.JennyBlake.me
www.MomentumCrew.com/FunWithFriends

Thanks for tuning in!

Danny Beyer is the author of The Ties That Bind, Networking With Style and a networking ninja. His core message behind the book is the importance of and the power of networking will literally change your life. Most of the books on the market were focused on high level ideas but not actionable tasks, so Danny decided he’d publish the book on the topic.

Danny’s level of branding himself is second to none when it comes to consistency. He wears a bowtie 5 days a week (though never when he’s mowing the lawn). The bowtie has become his calling card, what he’s most known for, and ultimately formed the bowtie ball, a charity event where everyone wears a bowtie in the name of raising money for great causes.

Around the 8:00 mark, Danny talks about the Bowtie Ball, how much has been raised, and how they’ve grown the event year over year.

Danny is a guy who is building his life and reputation on relationship and service freedom. Having only been networking professionally for the past 2 years, Danny has leveraged the power of social networking to see what others are posting, and uses that as a method of giving back to his network. It’s about putting in the time and finding out enough about others that you can offer value to them.

14:00 -- Networking is not about passing cards, it’s about creating a real relationship with someone, and then finding out how you can help each other.

Around 15:30 Danny dives into how much you should be on social media, and how much is too much. The bottom line is some people are posting some really great stuff, and it’s up to you to either be one of them, or find them and follow them. Danny maintains there are content creators and content filterers, and even filterers can build substantial lists.

Danny shares a personal story about comments that he made about Carrie Underwood on Twitter that were completely taken out of context. (21:00). Let’s just say he’s a fan of her legs.

The recommendations Danny gives in terms of social media are:
The first meeting is free, but you have to earn the second. Always agree to meet with someone that requests a meeting.
Don’t be afraid of the platform. Having nothing on social media can harm you in the event of a career search if you’re up against someone who’s shared successes on social media.

As a bonus, at the 30:00 mark, Danny shares how to end a conversation effectively in the most non-abrasive way possible. It’s MONEY!!

Mentioned on the show:
How To Get More Out Of Twitter In Just 10 Minutes a Day Article

Books Danny recommends:
To Sell Is Human by Daniel Pink
Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi
The Race For Relevance

Find Danny Beyer on Twitter: @DannyBeyerIA
Find Danny Beyer on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dsmbowties?fref=ts
Find The Ties That Bind on Amazon
www.DannyBeyer.com

I hope you enjoyed the show!!

Since money savviness is kinda my thing, we’ve worked really hard to build the capacity to understand money in our kids from a very young age. Every trip to the bank or credit union had some discussion points and questions asked -- essentially turning every swipe of a credit or debit card into a teaching opportunity for our kids.

I did a TED talk about it recently that you can view HERE. Please leave a comment and a thumbs up if you dig it.

In the meantime, take a listen to the podcast about allowance and how we handle that in our home.

Enjoy!!

Jeff Mitch was a man on a mission -- to blast away ALL of his student loan debt in record time. Jeff paid off a significant amount -- nearly $50,000 -- worth of student loan debt from Duquesne University in just under two years!

Jeff used Google Sheets in the Google Drive app to create a monthly expense tracking mechanism. Through this, Jeff and his wife used this method to track how much they’ve spent, AND to keep their spending at a certain level.

“Why is the guy who runs 10 miles a day skinny? Because he runs every day.” Same is true for someone that tracks what they’re spending and is conscious about blasting away debt. Jeff shares his methods for blasting away his debt around the 9:00 mark.

The numbers Jeff shares on this podcast are phenomenal. He and his wife put nearly $30,000 a year towards student debt, and are now focused on the future of what an extra $30k can do for them. The first step, according to Jeff is maxing out all of the tax advantaged accounts, then turn their attention to a rental real estate business. (12:00)

Around the 14:00 mark, Jeff begins to ask the questions that many millennials are asking themselves: Is this is? Is this what I have to look forward to until I’m 65? What do I really want my life to be about?

Jeff’s advice to recent graduates (and not so recent graduates) about paying off debt (20:00):
If it’s truly something you want to do, ask yourself when you’re about to go out to eat, buy the new toy or piece of clothing, or seeing a movie: Do I really need it? Will it help me tomorrow?
And, are you willing to delay gratification in order to do exactly what you want to do in the somewhat near future?

What sold Jeff’s wife on his debt elimination plan was that his plan was that money would never be an issue in their life/marriage. (22:00)

Build A Bigger Life Ratio -- at what point can my passive income cover my annual expenses?

Books recommended by Jeff:
The Millionaire Next Door by Stanley and Danko
Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki
Winning The Money Game by Adam Carroll and Chad Carden

Mentioned on the show:
www.taskrabbit.com
Smart Couples Finish Rich by David Bach
Primanti’s sandwiches

The book is called A Happy Pocket Full of Money and is by David Cameron Gikandi. I hope you enjoy the solocast and order your copy of the book straight away!!

Rob Pivnick is Associate General Counsel for a major investment firm with a passion for educating young people about money. Our connection was made through some financial education contacts that have promoted each of our books. Because we’re in the same space, I thought Rob would be a fantastic addition to the Build A Bigger Life Podcast interviews.

Rob is passionate about two things:
Negotiating
Financial Literacy

Pivnick wrote a book called What All Kids (And Parents Too) Should Need To Know About Investing. It’s a very simple way to explain investing to kids, a product of Rob’s desire to teach his kids about investing in the market.

Around 7:00, we discussed the philosophies around allowance, how to pay kids for chores done, and what kids should be responsible to pay for. Rob suggests having kids paying 10% of the fees to sports and activities that they’re a part of -- it puts skin in the game and keeps them from making excuses about why they don’t want to go to practice, or play in a tournament.

At the 11:00 mark, Rob and I discuss investing in real estate and his general feelings about investing in R.E. His advice is trying to time the market is not a great idea, but if you’re looking at real estate as a long term play, it’s a great opportunity to create long term income.

The act of knowing you can save and saving a quantity of money is important, and Rob says that there is the business of making wealth and the business of growing wealth. Both require different skills. (15:00)

Around the 17:00 mark, Rob talks about his opinion around kids going to college and the investment thereof. “If you’re playing the odds, it’s a smart bet on yourself.”

Rob’s kids started the financial education process with his kids early on -- as early as 6 years of age. It was about educating them along the way about where their money was going, having conversations every time they made a deposit, invested in the market, etc. (22:00)

There is a general idea that there is a family budget in Rob’s household. When the kids say they want something because their friends have it, Rob and his wife will suggest to the kids that “it’s not in the budget”. To the point that the kids now request things they want go in the budget!

Mentioned on the show:
Smart Couples Finish Rich by David Bach
Harry Dent -- a student of economic cycles

Books recommended by Rob:
A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton Malkiel
The Prince by Macchiavelli
Any Historical Fiction

Find Rob’s book on Amazon HERE.
Or for bulk buys of the book check out: www.whatallkids.com

I hope you enjoyed the interview!

In this solocast I give a rundown of his favorite Apps and Sites that help me stay productive.

Travel
Hilton Honors
American Airlines
Hip Munk - Go to for looking up airline travel
Airbnb.com
vrbo.com

Organization/Productivity
Evernote
Toggl Timer
Asana

Financial
Expensify
Bench.co
Shoeboxed
Zen Payroll

Fun
Starbucks
94%
Netflix

Entertainment
Calm
Omvana
SNL
Ted

I would love to hear the Apps that you are using. Tweet @adamcarroll.

Dorie Clark is embarking on a 6 week book tour for her new book Stand Out, How To Develop Your Breakthrough Idea and Build a Following Around It. The book is a follow-up to her successful TEDxBeaconStreet talk.

Dorie interviewed 50+ business executives in creating her book, some of the most notable names: Seth Godin, Robert Cialdini, Dan Pink, John Maxwell, and a handful of people you may have never heard of but are doing incredible things in their lives.

Around the 10:00 mark, Dorie discusses how everyone could become a local expert -- thought leaders that have breakthrough ideas. Her mentality is by creating a framework through which people have a greater understanding of what your expertise is, you are logically thought of as the thought leader.

In Dorie’s pursuit of acquiring best-selling status for her book, she found out that hitting the list is less about cumulative sales and more about what is sold in ONE WEEK, generally speaking, the first week. As a result, Dorie’s strategies for the book launch are multi-faceted featuring a book tour, bulk sales, and several speaking events along the way.

Dorie started a dinner series in New York (around 21:00), one for business speakers and authors, and the other series is for “interesting people”. It’s a mix and match with people that should get to know each other. She’s been doing this for somewhere between 6-8 months and has built a great network as a result.

To maintain the relationships that Dorie has created she uses an email service called Contactually. She also has a list of productivity tools on her website (found HERE).

Around 28:00 Dorie discusses her time at the Harvard Divinity School. (I found this especially interesting…) She discusses having incredible speakers at the school like Nelson Mandela.

At 32:00, Dorie talks about using content creation as a way of creating small bets. By creating a lot of content, you’ll begin to know what works and what people are interested in.

I hope you enjoy the podcast as much as I enjoyed interviewing Dorie!

Mentioned on the podcast:
Contactually
Stand Out
www.DorieClark.com

Books Dorie Recommends:
Power, Why Some People Have It and Some People Don’t
Never Eat Alone
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion

Chad Carden is a name you will be hearing very often in the near future. He is a speaker, author, consultant and success strategist for some of the most well-known companies in the country -- Weight Watchers, AT&T, UBS Financial -- the list goes on and on.

What I love most about Chad’s message on the podcast is the fact that the choices we make every day help us achieve our visions. The choices must be conscious which at times is exceptionally hard to do.

“Experience is not necessarily the gift of life, it’s the experience of others that helps us get closer to what we want to achieve.” (8:00)

Chad got caught up in the lifestyle game and when he woke up one day with more payments than he really wanted, he made a conscious shift in his business to build his future. (12:00). He discusses paying off debt, investing for the future, and making choices to keep him involved in family, friends, and building his legacy.

Chad’s mentors were very influential in his life. His dad introduced him to Zig Ziglar, Charlie ‘Tremendous’ Jones, and other very well-known success minded people. He discusses what mentors did for him at 14:00. His mentors:
challenged him to look at everything from an abundance mindset.
set an amazing example (they embody what they preach).
were there for him when he needed them. (And it’s easier to approach them than you think).

When Chad was fourteen, the first book his parents gave him was How To Win Friends And Influence People. It became his inner-personal bible and he ultimately ended up working for the Dale Carnegie organization. The principles, in action, were amazing to Chad and he still uses the materials he learned in groups today. (19:30)

“I tried depressed, it didn’t work for me.” (21:30)

Chad’s boys are at the center of his life -- he talks about what he wants for his boys at 23:40.
How the world works.
How to be grounded.
Success in life and adding significance by adding value to society were two things he really wanted for his boys.

If you’re interested in following in Chad’s footsteps:
Stop looking for answers, and start asking the right questions on where it is you want to go. “I’ve never done this before, but if I did, what would I do?”
Make sure that you’re always in CANI mode. (Constant and Never-ending Improvement).
Find others with commonality -- masterminds, communities of like-minded people.

Books Chad Recommends
How To Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
The Greatest Salesman In The World by Og Mandino

In this solocast I share the story of the psychological experiment I conducted on my children. The premise of which was $10,000 in cold hard cash sitting on the kitchen table with a sign that said ‘Don’t Touch The Money Yet’.

You’ve honestly never seen a kid’s eyes light up as mine did when I handed each of them $1,500 in starter capital.

The podcast recording is my re-telling of the story as well as a take-away message of teaching financial literacy to young people early and often. I maintain that the next generation is inheriting a new way of paying each other - one that is based in financial abstraction. And, if history is any indicator of our ability to manage debt, we’re setting the next generation up for failure.

Enjoy the solocast and I’ll be very curious to hear your feedback, including how you’re raising money savvy kids of your own!

To building a bigger life!

Amanda Brown is a force to be reckoned with. She has a smile that warms a room, an interest in others that is palpable, and the desire to help women realize their calling to be the Leading Lady in the movie of their lives.

Amanda teaches The Lipstick Principles through her business The Leading Ladies Company based in the U.K., impacting women everywhere.

The Leading Ladies Company is a relatively new business venture for Amanda, someone who’d been doing coaching and consulting in the corporate world, but was seeing lifeless looks from some of the women in the audience. The Lipstick Principles were developed to help women step into their starring roles and Make Life Happen.

The Lipstick Principles are success steps and strategies we can all apply to our daily life:
L ove
I magine
P assion
S tepping In
T ruth
I nvite others in
C elebrating
K eeping It Simple

Around 11:00, Amanda and I spoke about comparing ourselves to others. The fact that when we play the “than me” game (better than me, smarter than me, etc.) there is really no good to come from this.

Amanda says everyone has the same bank account - it’s filled with 24 hours, and what you do in that time to fill it with happiness, laughter, love, etc. is the best comparison there is.

Leading Ladies TV is Amanda’s interview program (somewhat similar to BABL, but only found on YouTube and mostly women interviews!). She routinely features everyday people with unbelievably inspiring stories.

Amanda’s advice to someone who wants to be more of a leading lady in their life is:
Feel great about yourself -- mindfulness, meditation, affirmations
Every day is a day of choices - the green button is yes, the red button is no. The minute you realize that everything is a decision, that’s when you can start taking control of your life.
Think about three things that you’d like to create memories for at this time next year.

Books recommended by Amanda
The Success Principles by Jack Canfield
The Magic Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

For more of Amanda’s goodness, check her out at: http://theleadingladiescompany.com and on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCERSfRxaCeDxpr-a_Jt--iA

Nearly 15 years ago, I uncovered some nuggets of truth when it came to paying off debt and living (virtually) debt-free for the rest of my life. It took me about two years (25 months to be exact) to blast away all of my student loans, credit cards, car loans and consumer debt -- with the help of my most incredible wife.

For the next decade, my wife and I lived a life that was perfectly suited for us. Great houses, paid off cars, quality time with our children, vacations when our lives demanded them…

And in October of 2012, we undertook the next step -- to blast away the house debt. We buckled down, got super serious, had definiteness of purpose, and are just months away from retiring the largest debt most people ever take on.

I’m fully aware of the fact that many people don’t agree with doing this, especially with money as “cheap” as it is right now. Yet here’s the angle for me -- it’s not about what’s smartest or investment savvy or tax-advantageous -- it’s about the fact that when it’s gone and we need $1,000 a month to live on and everything else goes to build our wealth and legacy, LIFE GETS BIG!

Give the podcast a listen and see what you think. It’s just 15 minutes and might have you thinking differently about what you’ll do with the next bonus!

Mentioned on the podcast:
John Commuta’s Debt Into Wealth Program
www.vertex42.com -- download the debt elimination spreadsheet for FREE
www.ShredMyMortgage.com -- The fastest debt shredding tool on the planet

For starters, Drew McLellan and I have been in a mastermind group for the past 7 years, so this interview comes from a deep understanding of who Drew is at his core. It was a special interview for me to do because I love Drew as if he was a brother of mine:

Twenty years ago Drew McLellan began an advertising agency that has survived ups, downs and sideways twists and turns and has supported the Bigger Life that Drew imagined for himself.

What I appreciate most about Drew is his commitment to being a Dad, and his life has been all about parenting in the best way possible for the betterment of his daughter. Listen to Drew around minute 6:00 discuss how he organized his days to make life work with his daughter.

Drew talks about investing in something for the long haul and eventually seeing the fruit of that relationship, whether it’s work or in relationships. (8:00)

One of the things that most don’t know about Drew is he has been in the front row of more Josh Groban concerts than any man his age should be. He’ll explain why around 12:00…

Because of Drew’s businesses (and a profound affinity for Disney), he’s made it a point to be within a Disney theme park at least once a year. (And has since it’s opening in 1971). Hear more around 15:00…

Asking the right questions and making correct assumptions has become part of Drew’s inner monologue. He’s begun asking better questions and finding ways to Build A Bigger Life. (20:00)

You can find more of Drew’s musings at http://DrewsMarketingMinute.com. Drew uses crazy and daily experiences (including his many airport layovers) as content in all of his writing.

Drew’s advice to the listeners:
Get really clear about how you want your life to be as you look back on it down the road.
Be absolute about the fact that it’s going to happen.
Set aside all make believe barriers, and decide how you’re going to make it happen.
The things that are in your way are of your own creation.

Things mentioned on the show:
Scott Ginsberg - www.hellomynameisscott.com
Drew’s Marketing Minute Blog: http://drewsmarketingminute.com
Drew uses the to do list: http://Wunderlist.com

The three books Drew recommends:
The Radical Leap by Steve Farber
Selling The Invisible by Harry Beckwith
Everybody Writes by Ann Handley

To find more of Drew’s goodness, check him out here:
http://DrewsMarketingMinute.com
Twitter: @DrewMcLellan

In this second solo-cast from BABL I am going to share with you what I learned from a software engineer named Matt years ago. While I never thought this by-chance encounter could have such a profound impact on my life, the Four Legacies Matt explained are simple, impactful, and fulfilling.

The Build A Bigger Life blueprint is the first step to Living the Four Legacies. In the next 15 minutes I am going to break down and explain the Four Legacies in further detail. I will dive into each of these legacies and tell you why prioritizing and gaining influence from these core values will set you up for an abundance of happiness throughout your life’s journey.

Thomas Frank set out to create a site that would allow people to effectively “hack” their college experience. The site today is a podcast and YouTube Channel with unique monthly users of over 150,000! Oh, and did I mention he’s making around $70k per year with just the site?

One of the things that I most appreciate about Tom is his desire to do really epic things -- to that end he created his own Impossible List and is sequentially knocking them out one by one. On this list was paying off all of his student debt prior to graduation -- which he did about 6 months before walking the stage. He talks about how he did that around minute 6.

Thomas has an amazing YouTube Channel and he has succeeded in creating really quality videos with fantastic content. Check him out here: http://collegeinfogeek.com/videos.

Thomas’ book 10 Steps to Earn Awesome Grades can be found here: http://collegeinfogeek.com/book.

Want a unique stress relieving strategy? Thomas discusses how he puts “holes in the bottom of his stress bucket” by being an idiot around 20:00.

Advice to someone writing a blog? Don’t go into it with monetization as the goal. Have stuff that you’re interested in on your blog and study people who do things really well.

Thomas is also the co-host of Listen Money Matters : Listen to them HERE.

Mentioned on the show:
Chris Guillebeau - blogger and founder of World Domination Summit.
Dale Courson - Courson technique: a method of studying and identifying problem areas with a professor.
Equal Odds Rule - The average individual publication of any scientist doesn’t have a greater chance of success. You just have to be willing to put out a ton of work. Your odds go up from there.
Fizzle.co - Online training for entrepreneurs.

Books Thomas recommends:
The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg
Debt Free U by Zac Bissonette
The Discoverers by Daniel Borsten

Want more of Thomas? Check him out at http://collegeinfogeek.com and follow him on Twitter @TomFrankly.

This is the first of many “solocasts” where you get to hear from just me. No guests, no script, just a little rambling on something that got me fired up, or a question sent in from a listener.

This particular solocast is all about my life and specifically my life philosophy that we are in one grand experiment. I’ve lived my life this way for the past decade and a half and it’s served me very well. There are a couple hints on the show as to how I did this. I hope you enjoy it!

This podcast is one of my favorites as Tim Rhode is one part dude I want to hang with everyday, and one part dude I want to BE everyday. You’ll find Tim to be high energy, high passion, and high on life.

Tim is a successful real estate investor, having been in real estate for 18 years and working his tail off to enjoy the BIGGER life he’s built for he and his wife.

On the podcast, you’ll hear how Tim thinks daily about the highest and best use of his time. He’s consumed with being EEP -- Efficient Effective and Productive.

Around 22:00, Tim talked about being in neutral in his life where he was winding the propeller to then think about what’s next.

Around 25:00, Tim’s 501(c)3 1LifeFullyLived is brought up. The core messages from the conference are:
Who am I at my core?
What’s my plan for me?
Offense: how am I going to make money?
Defense: how am I going to avoid debt and invest wisely?
EEP - How can I be efficient, effective and productive?

1LifeFullyLived has a group called The Young Hustlers. Some of these kids are doing things out of the ordinary like getting a real estate license, living at home as long as they need to, but they’ll become millionaires by 25. (33:00)

Around 34:00, Tim discusses Dollar Productive Activity and something he learned from one of his mentors.

Around 40:00, Tim talks about the number of paychecks he receives per month and the importance of having horizontal income versus vertical income.

Some things talked about on the podcast:

Robert Kiyosaki’s Cash Flow 101 Game
1LifeFullyLived.Org - Tim’s non-profit success conference
Jim Rohn - America’s foremost business philosopher (http://jimrohn.com/)

Books Tim Recommends:
The Richest Man in Babylon
The Millionaire Next Door by Danko and Stanley
The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman
You can find more about Tim Rhode at http://timrhode.com, and can check out Tim’s non-profit program 1LifeFullyLived at http://1lifefullylived.org. Tim’s email is Tim@TimRhode.com.

Download the Build A Bigger Life Blueprint to find out how to live like Tim!!

Derek was a multi-millionaire in his 30’s when the world came crashing down around him leaving him and his business broken and bankrupted. Then, the revelations came. Derek realized that the money he pursued was in an attempt to fill a void from his childhood years.

Derek is a man on a unique mission -- to help people find the synchronicities of life, to ride the waves of life, and to live according to your deepest beliefs and values.

In this week’s podcast, you’ll learn how to take control of the bad things that happen to you and turn them into lifelong positives.

Derek’s code is boiled down to three rules:
If you don’t ask the questions the answer is always no.
If you don’t go after what you want you’ll never have it.
If you don’t step forward you’ll always be in the same place.

Around 10:00, Derek talks about letting go instead of fighting…
Around 14:00, Derek goes into asking for what you want in life…

Are you FRAUDing yourself?
F - Focusing on the money instead of what makes you happy
R - Racing to the next milestone
A - Allowing for outside interests - “you are the average of your 5 closest friends”
U - Underestimating your own value/worth in this worlds
D - Driving in the wrong direction

At 21:00 Derek talks about just being with himself (after ditching all of his material goods).
Around 28:00, Derek discusses his 10 day meditation experience in Joshua Tree.

The secret to life (according to DH): Keep moving forward. Always.

Mentioned on the podcast:
Start Something That Matters by Blake Mycoskie
The Success Principles by Jack Canfield
The Passion Test by Chris and Janet Attwood

If you want more from Derek, check him out at http://synchronicitysurfing.com/.

Derek Hendricks is the original Synchronicity Surfer, he’s a guy that is riding the wave of life and helping entrepreneurs create an authentic passion-centered business. On today’s podcast you’ll hear the story of how Derek went from multi-millionaire playboy to enlightened world traveler, and I can assure you the lessons he shares are life-changing. So without further ado...

Mitch Matthews and I met on a networking “blind date”. We planned on spending 30 minutes or so together and ended our first meeting 3 hours later. The bromance had begun…

Mitch is a warrior at heart, a total creative, and a guy that has spent a decade or more studying Dream Jobs in an attempt to find his own. In the process, he did. Mitch now coaches, consults, writes and speaks, and has a popular podcast on iTunes called Dream.Think.Do.

On the podcast, you’ll hear Mitch talking about the early years when he and his wife lived the sitcom life (Single Income Two Children Oppressive Mortgage), and how he transitioned into testing business concepts in one hour a day blocks.

Around 8:00, Mitch talks about how he began to feel the pull to get out of working in pharmaceutical sales and into being self-employed. They made some serious changes to their lifestyle, simplifying by ditching the big spread in the country for the smaller home across from the elementary school, and the aftermath of that both positive and negative!

At the 13:00 mark, Mitch goes into depth about the “season” of your life and how planning for that season becomes incredibly important.

God works in Mitch’s life in a BIG way, and around 16:00 he talks about being a wandering curiosity and a missionary in the marketplace.

Mitch created a concept called The Big Dream Gathering, which has now been held in dozens of environments, from college auditoriums to city centers to churches and gyms. The event showcases the power of what happens when someone dreams and is supported by other dreamers in the same room. Hear about it around 19:00.

At 28:00 Mitch gives some solid advice on making the leap from full-time work to full-time business starting. His concept of having a “leap number” is dialed in and fantastic advice.

At 38:00 Mitch talks about killing businesses that you like, but maybe are keeping you from the business or life you love.

Books Mitch recommends:

The One Thing by Gary Keller

The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod

Poke The Box by Seth Godin

The Shack by Paul Young

You can find Mitch online at http://mitchmatthews.com or http://bigdreamgathering.com.

You can be trained by Mitch to become a life coach at: http://trainingtobealifecoach.com.

Lori Harder and I met at Jack Canfield’s Train the Trainer event in 2014. We spent three weeks getting to know each other’s businesses and, quite frankly, I’m completely jealous of the success she’s created for herself. She is a self-made multi-millionaire, author of The Busy Girl Cookbook, a successful network marketer with Isagenix, and the founder of The Bliss Project - an life empowering event for women.

The next Bliss Project weekend is February 27th-March 1st in Newport Beach, California and tickets can be purchased at http://loriharder.com.

Lori maintains the most important thing we can do for each other is share our stories, become vulnerable, and realize that we’re all just trying to get over the same stuff. When we connect on a personal level, we can finally support each other instead of comparing ourselves to one another.

Health and fitness are top priorities for Lori, but her money mindset is… well, money. She read T. Harv Eker’s book Secrets of The Millionaire Mind and things changed immediately in her financial life.

You’ll hear Lori talk about forgiving yourself, breaking down goals into bite-sized chunks, and how to take every day as a gift, a blessing, and a lesson to be learned. Lori is someone that has absolutely built a BIGGER life!

Lori and her husband Chris live in Southern California with their crazy dog Waffles.

Things mentioned in the podcast:

Landmark Forum
Isagenix

Books recommended by Lori:

Secrets of The Millionaire Mind by T. Harv Eker
Spirit Junkie by Gabrielle Bernstein
Within by Habib Sadeghi

I first met Scott Ginsberg at a conference for Young Professionals where we were both speaking. It was impressive to me that Scott had such an approachable air about him and then after hearing his presentation, I completely understood why.

Scott has made a business out of wearing a nametag for the past 15 years of his life. What started out as an experiment of “what would happen if I didn’t take off this nametag” turned into a reputation, then a lifestyle, a career, and now a calling.

Meet Scott once and you’ll be blown away by the level of creativity this artist shares. And he is, without question, an artist. Scott spent the past year releasing his documentary called Tunnel Of Love. It’s all Scott, raw and rough playing guitar and singing his own music in a walking tunnel in Brooklyn in between stories of his life.

You can see his full documentary here: http://www.tunneloflovedoc.com/

You can read some of the nuggets of brain candy from Scott on his website: http://hellomynameisscott.com/.

If you want to become a dominant content creator, you MUST read Scott’s most recent book Prolific. You can download it for free HERE.

On top of the 30 books that Scott has written, he recommends the following books to change your life, just like these have changed his:

The Gift

The Meanings of Life

Tao te ching

The War of Art

Songwriters on Songwriting