Episode 186
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Episode Description
The 5-year survival rate of small businesses is 45%. This means that, on average, half the companies will fail in their first five years. The main reason for this high failure rate? Not having enough money!
When working with new business owners, one of the first things our guest Rocky Lalvani looks for is any limiting beliefs around money. How have they learned to think about money in their life, and what do they believe today? We can uncover so much from our past experiences. Yet, some business owners never explore their current financial mindset, which could be holding them back from making more progress in business or achieving financial freedom.
Rocky began his quest for the American Dream with $25. He immigrated to the United States when he was two years old, and his parents were in their 40s. Rocky knows firsthand what it looks like to build a wealthy lifestyle out of nothing through saving, investing, and spending wisely.
Rocky serves as Chief Profitability Advisor for business owners, where he teaches his clients how to ensure they get paid and make profit a priority!
He hosts two podcasts, The Profit Answer Man, where he helps people become more profitable. And another one called Richer Souls focuses on how to create the life of your dreams once you’ve made your money.
Rocky loves to share his journey and inspire others to achieve their dreams even faster. Visit, Profit Comes First and learn how putting profit first can make a difference in your business.
We really appreciate your time, and we hope that this podcast has provided some value for you. If so, please leave us a review on your favorite podcast app.
Connect With Rocky Lalvani
Episode Transcription
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[00:00:00] Bob Wheeler: Welcome to another episode of money you should ask where everyone has something they can teach you. I’m your host, Bob Wheeler. In this episode, we are going to explore why we do what we do when it comes to money as a CPA for the past 30 years. Wait, let me say 25, because that makes me sound younger. I have seen it all when it comes to money and emotions.
And if you think I’m talking about my. I’m not, I’m talking about myself. My relationship with money has been, and sometimes still is an emotional rollercoaster. Maybe that’s something you’re also familiar with. Good news. You and I are not the only ones. Our next guest is going to share their money, beliefs, money blocks, and life challenges as well.
Buckle your seatbelt and enjoy the ride.
our next guest is Rocky Lalvani. Rocky started with nothing. When his parents immigrated to the United States, when he was two years old and his parents were in their forties, it was parents. Second time starting over in life. As they moved here to experience the American. In spite of a lot of struggles and his mom passing away when he was seven, Rocky has been able to achieve financial and life success today.
Rocky loves to share his journey and inspire others to achieve their dreams even faster by serving as chief profitability advisor for business owners, where he teaches them, how to ensure they get paid and make profit. He also hosts two podcasts of his own called the profit answer, man, where he helps people become more profitable.
And another one. Richer souls that focuses on how to create the life of your dreams once you’ve made your money. Rocky, welcome to the show. It’s so great to have
[00:01:57] Rocky Lalvani: you. Thank you so much for having me here today. Bob, excited to chat with
[00:02:01] Bob Wheeler: you. Well, you know, we talked a few months ago on your show and I really enjoyed getting to connect with you there.
And I’m just excited to hear about your journey. One of the things that comes to mind when I read your book, Is this part about immigrant parents. I’ve just been reading this book outliers, and it talks about life events and certain things. And in it, it talks about a lot of very successful lawyers in New York whose parents immigrated from Eastern Europe and worked in the garment industry and became very successful.
And so a lot of lawyers you could look and see that their parents were immigrant garment makers. And I’m wondering how did having immigrant parents lay it out for you? Like make things good, make things bad. You know, I sometimes have a belief that immigrant parents have more appreciation than people that are born here.
I
[00:02:52] Rocky Lalvani: don’t know how much it’s a matter of appreciation. I think it’s a matter of when you don’t have anything and you have to work hard for it. It kind of gives you that is. And it also gives you probably a little bit of fear. Like once you’re successful, you don’t want to go back. So I think that’s a bigger part of it.
It’s that whole drive to succeed. And also I think no limitations would separate the immigrants who do real well is they’re willing to adapt to their new culture, a new country. But they’ve also got this underlying kind of drive to be successful in knowing that, Hey, I’ve come here for that. And they’re going to work hard for it.
The other half of that problem, we always talk about the third generation, right? Because the first generation really struggles propels the second generation. And then the third generation gets babies and. It doesn’t turn out so well. So there is that dichotomy that comes across from
[00:04:01] Bob Wheeler: that. How do you take care of the third generation?
Because I would assume you’ve got a third generation behind you and you know, it’s interesting, but I have a client and they’re in their fifth generation of a company and they bring in the kids and then they bring in the kids and it’s been passed down from grandfather to father to, and I don’t see that.
[00:04:22] Rocky Lalvani: No, it, part of that is you have to have an expectation that your kids have to struggle and that’s not what we all want. Right. We want our kids to have it easy. A lot of us will say, oh, I don’t want them to have to go through the struggles I went through. I can prevent. But it’s going through those struggles that makes them successful.
It gives them grit. And that’s the conversations we have is when you’re wealthy. How do you give your kids grit? How do you put that fire in their belly? And are saying, we have a very simple saying your parents are rich. You’re poor. You’re going to have to figure it out. I mean, we don’t make our kids suffer, but at the same point, they are not handed everything.
They understand that they have to work for things and creating an appreciation for doing the.
[00:05:21] Bob Wheeler: Do you find with the people you work for it? Cause I’m sort of jumping back and forth here. I know, but I’m thinking about the people that you advise and work with and not all of them probably have an immigrant story or it’s been many generations.
And I’m wondering if there’s like this part about making profit a priority and being able to pay yourselves. Do some people come into this unconsciously, maybe with a mindset of, you know, poor me. I’m a little bit of a victim. It just doesn’t always work out for me. How do you navigate that?
[00:05:54] Rocky Lalvani: So, one of the first questions that I ask all my clients is just basically tell me about how you grew up and how you learned about money.
So I want to understand the underlying beliefs that they already have. What they were taught his kids and what they believe today, because that’ll give me a pretty good idea. I think the bigger problem, and this was my big aha moment. I just assumed business owners understood the business of business and they don’t, most of them went into business for whatever it is that they loved.
They didn’t go into business because they were business people. And so for many of them, whatever money baggage, they come into the business with, they’re going to carry for. Most people just ignore the numbers. Math is hard, so I’m not going to look at it. And that’s, I think why so many business owners struggle because they don’t have a guaranteed picture.
[00:06:50] Bob Wheeler: Yeah. It’s interesting. As a CPA, I didn’t plan on having my own business. Like that became my business. Right. I was just, I’m doing. I have hired many CPAs that had their own business for about six months and then got out of it because they’re great at doing taxes. They’re not great at invoicing. They’re not great at saying, Hey, you got to pay your bill.
They’re not great at HR and navigating the staff. That’s a whole nother set of problems.
[00:07:18] Rocky Lalvani: It is not only that you have to be good at sales, you talk about the things people don’t like talking about money, doing sales, and yet those are the two biggest things that business owners got to focus on.
[00:07:32] Bob Wheeler: Yeah, absolutely.
Do you remember in your aha moments where you had a money belief that maybe came from your parents, you know, fear of losing it again or anything where you all of a sudden said, oh my gosh, we need to let this. What
[00:07:47] Rocky Lalvani: I am as a kid, I decided I wanted to be a millionaire. One of the things that we got being immigrants is that we saw people at different economic levels.
So even though we came over and we were starting at the bottom, we saw people within the family or relatives who had. And I was like, that looks pretty good. I want to be a millionaire. And so what do you do? You read the paper, you read the books. It was a long time ago, so we didn’t have the internet and all of this.
And I would always read the wall street journal or money magazine or something. And invariably about every six or seven years, it would be the same story. Some guy in his fifties, having the time of his life worked his way up the corporate ladder, big salary. And then the recession hits. He loses his job.
He doesn’t make any changes to his lifestyle. And two years later he’s broken his heart. Everything is falling apart. And I was like, I never want to be that guy at 50, who gets, let go. And his whole financial life falls apart. You fall off the top of the mountain. Yeah. And so I did everything I could to make sure that never happened.
[00:09:01] Bob Wheeler: Yeah, I did work for a couple of people and learned the ropes and I never wanted to be beholden to somebody else deciding whether or not I was going to get a paycheck.
[00:09:12] Rocky Lalvani: I mean, I had a very good working career and I wasn’t employee and I did really well until I didn’t. Right, right. But the thing is because I had built wealth, I was able to walk away and say, okay, I’m out.
I’m done. I’m not going to do this anymore. What do I really want to do? And then I focused on that, but it was a long drawn out process.
[00:09:37] Bob Wheeler: Why do you think people have these? I mean, you know, I have ideas like our parents don’t talk about money, but we have so many issues about talking about money and we have so many blind spots, it seems, and I’m always amazed with some of my entrepreneurs.
And I agree with you. I’ve got to know their story. Because anything I give them or tell them, isn’t going to matter if I don’t understand their money traumas or their money, you know, money defenses. Is there a common thread that you see with the entrepreneurs and the people you work with? I’ve asked
[00:10:11] Rocky Lalvani: a lot of people about their money stories and one common theme is it doesn’t matter where you start.
Right? The second theme is somewhere along the way they decided to get comfortable with. Or to learn how money works. Now, there’s a very small percentage of people that, that came naturally to, right. There’s a very small percentage of people where their parents actually talk the money for most of the rest.
At some point, somewhere along the journey, they had a money aha or a money realization, and they started to change the way that they thought about money. And then they went and started learning. And they figured it out for themselves. And that’s usually what has led to their success, getting comfortable and they don’t teach money in school.
They don’t,
[00:11:06] Bob Wheeler: they just don’t. And it’s interesting. I think, you know, I was talking earlier about having that a whole moment and then having to let it go. I don’t believe you always necessarily let things go. Like, there are certain things that I can still do and go, oh, there’s that again? But at least I can be conscious.
So when something pops up that says, let’s sabotage this, I could smack the crap out of it, but it may not mean that I fully let it go. I can just be more aware of that. That’s part of my makeup.
[00:11:34] Rocky Lalvani: And I think that’s true. I mean, you’re always going to have that underlying nagging issue. It’s hard to completely change, but once you have awareness, then you can address it and you’re going to constantly slide backwards.
You know, you’re sliding backwards and you shake yourself up and you get up and you go back and do it again. So
[00:11:55] Bob Wheeler: how do you deal with, and I did this. And I know a lot of people do this. Yeah. I’m going to pay myself first, starting in June, like three months from now, I’m going to start following the rules.
There’s just a couple of things going on today, but I’m going to get on the path like soon and I’m going to start saving, but I’m waiting. I’ve got a bonus check coming in a bit and I’m going to use that. What do you say to those folks? Because I find that a lot. Like it’s, I’m almost.
[00:12:27] Rocky Lalvani: So I think the biggest thing is to start with tiny habits, BJ Fogg.
There’s a lot of work in this space and I always tell this joke, do you know what the heaviest weight is at? My gym? The front door. Okay. Nobody can it, right. So if you think about this, the way to do this is say to somebody, Hey, just go to the gym and walk around. I don’t want you to do anything. Open the front door and walk around.
Yeah. And the next time you walk in, go pick out a piece of equipment and sit on it. And the next time you walk in, just use it, but don’t put any weight onto it. Just do the motion and little by little you get there. So what I tell people is take a baby step. Just save a little. Get in the habit of doing it and then over time cranked up your habits.
Yeah. So it’s the same thing. Just. Get the motion in place and then go from there. Now they say we’ve money. One of the things that does work is, and I don’t know that all 401k programs will do this, but if you set a date and you automate the start without you having to do anything else, that’s perfectly fine.
He’ll say, okay, in three months, we’ll go ahead, open up the account or set up the automation and then tell it to start on that date and get out of the.
[00:13:57] Bob Wheeler: Yeah, I definitely feel like automation is a real helpful way to trick ourselves for the better or to get ourselves out of our own way, whether it’s investing in gold, whether it’s putting money in a mutual fund or the stock market, or putting money in a savings account, start automatically with small numbers.
[00:14:16] Rocky Lalvani: Baby steps. And some plans will allow you to set an annual increase. And so they’re automatically making it happen for you. You set it up and you never have to think about it again. And over time you will see massive success, 1% at a time, but you keep adding 1% and you do it 20 times. And now you have a 20% savings rate, which is pretty good.
[00:14:41] Bob Wheeler: Absolutely. Do you find in your interactions with people, any pieces of shame or undeserving?
[00:14:51] Rocky Lalvani: Yeah. So there are a whole bunch of different money scripts and each of those money scripts kind of shows itself in a different way. So if some people think rich people are evil, well, they’re never going to get rich because they don’t want to be evil.
Right? Some people think you have to work hard to make money. So what are they going to do? They’re not going to accept working easily and making money. They want to work hard. So that they can make money again and other script, there could be a lot of shame with money. I think a lot of it is determined when we are young kids.
And if you don’t go back and understand that programming in those scripts, then sure you very well could have shame with money and you could have shame. And this is what’s not talked about, and this is kind of where we started. If you grow up in a wealthy family, And everything’s been handed to you. You have shame around money because you don’t think you’re worthy of anything cause you never had to do anything.
And so there’s a lot of guilt on that side too. So yeah. It expresses itself in a multitude of ways.
[00:16:02] Bob Wheeler: Yeah, absolutely. And I always say to people, it doesn’t matter how many zeros are after the one. We all have our stories around money. Now I do want to go back to one piece that I just want to reiterate for people.
You don’t have to work hard to make money. What you don’t have to work 20 hours a day and sweat and not enjoy it. And it has to be painful. This is, this is great information, same old. I think
[00:16:30] Rocky Lalvani: it’s a mindset. When you say to yourself, I have to work hard to make money. You’re automatically not going to think of easy ways to make money, and you’re not going to realize that there is even the possibility to make money without a ton of work, or you’re going to underprice yourself because you don’t think it’s worth that much money for somebody to pay.
And so again, it manifests itself in a variety of different ways, but the reality is you don’t have to work hard to make money. Right. You got to find a great idea or a great way to provide value to people and then go have it. I mean, let’s basic, you deal with a lot with the entertainment industry, right?
Yeah, absolutely. Seriously, how do you pay somebody 10 million bucks to be in a movie? Like, are they working hard? Like
[00:17:27] Bob Wheeler: really? Yeah, no, absolutely. I think there’s a lot of imposter syndrome in the entertainment world where people don’t feel like that they should have gotten $10 million. There’s a lot of struggles around that or being a true artist, you have to be a starving artist.
And so, you know, it’s a sellout if you’re actually getting paid and bringing joy to the world.
[00:17:48] Rocky Lalvani: And I think for artists, that is, that is one of the things they struggle with. The attach, the money to theirself self-worth. Then they struggle. And if they don’t get as much for a painting, you know, then they feel personally insulted it.
That’s all about creating a story. Right. Right. It’s not about working hard on the painting. I mean, let’s face it. These days, people are buying eight paintings that are JPEGs for hundreds of thousands of dollars. How did that guy work?
[00:18:19] Bob Wheeler: Yeah. I’m still trying to wrap my head around all the NFTs and all this stuff.
Or art that disappears after you buy it. It’s all
[00:18:27] Rocky Lalvani: about the story. Yeah. And if you know how to tell a good story, that’s where you make the money and that doesn’t necessarily have to be hard.
[00:18:36] Bob Wheeler: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Let me ask you this, because one of the things you talk about is it’s important to you to go out and inspire others and share your story and give people tools.
Why is that important and why is that important to.
[00:18:52] Rocky Lalvani: So we’re not going to get into politics. Sorry. Let’s face it. If you look at America, America has seen better days. Everyone is looking to politicians to solve their problem, but here’s the thing when you have. You’re no longer looking to politicians or government to solve your problem.
You’re looking to government to get out of the way, right. And that is what’s gonna make us a stronger country. So I believe that the more wealth people have, the more freedom they have, the more that they don’t need to rely on somebody else for their success. The better off we’ll. So let’s help people to be stronger and let’s do that right now.
You have, you have a pretty decent amount of wealth transfer in that there are a lot of people. Who have concentrated wealth, but the reality of that is we’ve elected to do that. Those people didn’t get wealthy because they were greedy or evil. They got wealthy because they provided something of value and we all decided it was valuable just as quickly as you can pay $10 million to a movie star or a sports star, you can say, you know, I’m not going to buy their stuff.
Right. And in that sense, then you build your wealth and you hold onto your money and then life is a little bit better for you. So for me, it’s about allowing people to create their own freedom, to make for a stronger country and a stronger world because people who have resources. Go out and make things happen.
[00:20:32] Bob Wheeler: Absolutely. In the long run, it makes each one of us more self-empowered to actually be able to control our destiny as opposed to being a victim or floating in the wind, waiting to see where it takes us. So
[00:20:46] Rocky Lalvani: true. And my taxes go down. So I am selfish.
[00:20:52] Bob Wheeler: Well, nobody likes, well, maybe some people like to pay taxes.
I don’t like to pay taxes, but you know, I do when I have. When you have conversations with your kids, you know, I hear some people say, well, it’s so hard to have these conversations with kids. Right. It’s it’s a lot of work. Well, cause then you might have to admit you made a mistake or you might. Yeah, I didn’t do it perfectly now.
You’re going to point it out because kids love to point things out because they observe, how do you have those conversations and how do you encourage other people to have conversations with their children?
[00:21:23] Rocky Lalvani: I’ve always been a big believer. You can read all the golf books you want and watch all the golf stars you want.
And that’s not going to make you a good golfer until you hit the ball with your own club. You’re not going to learn to play the game. The only way kids are going to learn to play this. Is with money in their hands. So you’ve literally got to give them money and then allow them to start making decisions.
Now put up bumper guards, create the rails, but instead of sitting there and arguing with your kid over $200, pair of sneakers, go, Hey, your yearly closed budget is a thousand dollars. Figure out how you want to spend it. If you want to spend 200 bucks on the sneakers and figure out how to get everything else for 800, have it.
I don’t really know. And by doing that and then starting to have the conversations and let them make mistakes because that $200 mistake at 13 or 14 is a lot better than a $20,000 mistake at 22 or 24 or at 18, where we’re asking these kids to pick a college and they have no idea what the return on the investment is.
So I think a doing that B yes, kids are going to pick out your hypocrisy faster than you can imagine. So we had a problem in our house because my daughter would go shopping with my wife and go, that’s a hundred dollars for that dress. Isn’t that expensive, mommy. Work well for me about, for my wife, but because our kids had money and had those types of things, you could start to have conversations and we would do that, especially when they were teenagers and we would go to dinner.
We go out somewhere nice. We might spend $300 or $400 on dinner. Was it worth it? Did you enjoy it? Was that a wise spending of money? Should we do it differently next time? And it’s amazing when you give kids money and it’s their money, how much they will change their behavior.
[00:23:24] Bob Wheeler: Yeah, absolutely. I love this piece about reflecting back and saying, was it worth the meal, like post conversation to actually, how did it go?
What was that like? Right. Because in business we sometimes do that or at least I do, you know, after a tax season, I’ll sit with the staff and what did we do? Right. What did we do wrong? How can we better serve people? And you want to have an assessment you want to analyze. But having that conversation about the meal or spending for a vacation and would we do it again?
That’s an awesome conversation to have with the kids, because who knows.
[00:23:59] Rocky Lalvani: We even did that when they were young and they would see a commercial on TV and I’d be like, you have that toy. Is it that. And they be like, no, I’m like you see the only purpose of that commercial is to take your money. Don’t ever forget that.
[00:24:16] Bob Wheeler: That’s awesome. I
[00:24:18] Rocky Lalvani: love that. And kids learn that at six years old.
[00:24:21] Bob Wheeler: Yeah, that is so awesome. I love that. That’s great because that is the reality, right? Social media advertisers. They’re really just trying to separate us from our money and distract. ’cause sometimes people say to me, well, you know, everybody else, you know, they have it easier.
They have it better. No, we all get the same timeframes and we all have the ability to draw a line and say, no, And some of those people that have success have learned the ability to have healthy boundaries or to advocate for themselves in the same amount of time that you chose not to
[00:24:52] Rocky Lalvani: so true. We all have a choice.
[00:24:55] Bob Wheeler: We all have a choice. I love that Rocky. We are at our fast five, which is brought to you by cube money, which is a cash envelope system. Maybe. Realtime financial awareness without the hassle of tracking expenses and carrying cash for more information, click on the link in the show notes. So Rocky. All right, we’re going to just jump into these and let’s see where we land.
What did your parents teach you about money and what beliefs have you adapted as your own?
[00:25:22] Rocky Lalvani: So they taught me to save, even when. They were here at the beginning of their journey and they weren’t making a lot of money. They were still saving and it was always about the gap. And the other thing they taught me is you can live a rich life on a Popper’s budget.
And if you actually take the time to realize that you can have a very nice life without spending a ton of money.
[00:25:47] Bob Wheeler: Absolutely. Those are great lessons. Do you have any, or did you have any anxiety around money growing up and do you carry that.
[00:25:56] Rocky Lalvani: I don’t know that I’ve gotten rid of it, that he goes back to that story.
I taught you, you know, like we’re supposed to go to college, get a job, work hard, and life will be wonderful and you’ll retire and you’ll be good. But in that time period, from when I graduated all the pensions disappeared. The guaranteed employment at one company for 40 years disappeared, the gold watches gone, you know, and every time a recession comes along, you get left out or the company hits their own personal recession and you let go.
And I went through that and I walked away. I started my own business, but I couldn’t have done that if I didn’t have that fear, that always drove me to make sure that I had my foundation built.
[00:26:43] Bob Wheeler: I want to be able to eat in the morning and have a place to go. I hear you. I hear you. How do you define success?
[00:26:53] Rocky Lalvani: It’s literally about being able to control your time, your day, being able to say yes and no to what you want to say. Yes and no to it’s not about Maseratis and fancy houses and all of that. It’s more about the freedom. Yeah,
[00:27:09] Bob Wheeler: absolutely. When in your life where you, the house. Now I’m alive and breathing and kicking
[00:27:18] Rocky Lalvani: I’m alive, breathing and kicking.
I’m in great shape. I work out all the time. Life is pretty good right now. I mean, if you’re not, you know, everything compounds, so happiness should compound too. If you’re not making yourself a little bit happier each day. Then what’s going on now, are you going to have pitfalls and things that happen?
Sure. We can’t control everything, but your overall trajectory should be going in the right direction.
[00:27:48] Bob Wheeler: I love that. I love compounding happiness and based on compounding interest, let’s compound some happiness. That sounds awesome. Do you have an embarrassing money moment that you’d be willing to share?
[00:28:01] Rocky Lalvani: I always thought I knew how to invest in stocks.
I still don’t. But I can tell you that I have made so many mistakes in investing with regards to selling. You know, we’re supposed to buy low, sell high. The reality is we all buy high and sell low, and I continue to do that just this morning. I was looking at a snack. I don’t know. Oh, my God, that was a horrible decision.
It’s down 90%. I’m like, well, how did this happen? But that happens all the time because we don’t, again, I didn’t set an automation up for that. I should’ve put in my cell order. As soon as I bought it, I should have had an exit strategy. I didn’t. And you forget about it, then this is what happens. And a lot of this.
When the stock market goes down, it triggers the same emotions in us that happen when a tiger leaps out of the forest, it in front of you and learning to overcome that is really difficult in most people just close their eyes and walk away. Unfortunately.
[00:29:11] Bob Wheeler: Yeah, it’s so hard because even though I talk about money and emotions all the time, I’m looking at my investments right now and I’m trying not to have a heart.
I’m not trying not to panic. Right. I’m like, ah, and then I know, I know better. So now I try just not looking because it’s too stressful. It’ll bounce back. But like the stock markets are going up and down because of emotions, not just because of the economy. If we can remember that I’ve had so many clients jump out when everything dropped and then, then it is definitely a realized loss, you know, it’s hard.
Correct?
[00:29:46] Rocky Lalvani: Yeah. And I’ve had a few people who were in the hedge fund business, who said to me, when we see a mass Exodus of money, we know the markets are about to take off. Because that means that everyone has thrown in the towel in the blood is in the streets.
[00:30:02] Bob Wheeler: And now we absolutely, if everybody else is exiting, it’s not the time to exit.
Right. Stay strong, hard to do. It’s hard to do well. We are at our M and M moment, our sweet spot money and motivation. I’m wondering if you have a practical tip or a piece of wealth wisdom you could offer our listeners. We’ve
[00:30:21] Rocky Lalvani: kind of talked about this, but there is one reason that I’m wealthy it’s because at 21 I automated my savings.
And you can easily do it through a 401k plan. And I tell you to have multiple savings plans. So your 401k go in there and click. Even if you start with 1%, do 1% today. And next year when you get a raise and everyone’s getting raises. You get a five or 10% raise, put half your rays into your savings. And keep doing that over time.
Go open a brokerage account and tell them, Hey, take 50 bucks a month, a hundred dollars a month and invest it for me and a year from now. Just keep doing that little by little, taking the baby steps of having all your savings automated. You’ll never miss the money and over time it’ll grow. And pretty soon you’ll have a very high savings rate and then you’ll blink your eyes and you’d be like, wow, I’m wealthy.
[00:31:21] Bob Wheeler: Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s so true. I have people put it in the budget as an expense. And you just have the money come out. If you haven’t come out weekly, you’re just not going to notice it. I just always tell people, please don’t have it linked to your checking account because it is not an overdraft protector.
It’s a savings account because you know, some people are like, oh, well my savings covers it. Well, then that’s not your savings. That’s your overdraft. Like I, for myself made sure that all my accounts were at online banks or different banks other than my main checking account so that I couldn’t be tempted to just go, oh, the overdraft to cover it.
No, no separate. Keep it separate.
[00:32:00] Rocky Lalvani: Very, very much.
[00:32:01] Bob Wheeler: Yeah, but it’s amazing how that money can grow. And you can do that also for buying gold. You can do it for a lot of different things where you set that up. I go crazy. When people tell me that their company matched on the 401k and they didn’t take advantage of it, it’s free money.
I like free money. So I mean, they’ll tax it eventually, but, or Rocky we’re coming to the end here. And you know, one of the things I really appreciate about this conversation and just in general, talking with you. You’re very grounded, even in telling the stories about investing there, wasn’t like, oh my God, I’m so ashamed of it.
It’s just a knowing and owning of where you are with things. And even with the ups and downs or the getting fired. There’s no like, oh, this was horrible. This is, they’ve got to blame everybody. It’s just part of the ups and downs. I really, really appreciate this piece about just reminding everybody that you don’t have to work hard for money, because I think so many people think you do, but that other piece about compounding happy.
For me, the whole point here is to be happy. Like, can we have a little fun and can life be a little enjoyable? Cause otherwise what’s the point for me, what’s the point. And if we don’t nurture that happiness, if we keep thinking, we’re going to be happy when we get over there and we’re going to be happier.
When we get the bigger house, we’ve got to cultivate that happiness and let it compound rather than I’m waiting for my happiness to show up. I was guilty of that.
[00:33:30] Rocky Lalvani: Yeah. Yeah, I’ve learned
[00:33:32] Bob Wheeler: it’s easy to do, but I really appreciate that reminder that we’re here to have a good time, be a little bit kinder, be a little more grateful and just show up in the world in a way that can serve other people and inspire other people.
And so I just really appreciate your very practical. And grounded approach to things. I love baby steps. I’m a big baby step person. I talk about that a lot as well, because I think that’s how we cultivate habits. And I love now I will remember that the biggest weight is the gym door. Cause that is so true.
That is so. So thank you so much. Where can people find you online and in social media? So
[00:34:10] Rocky Lalvani: if you’re a business owner, we teach all of this for business owners in the podcast is profit answer, man. And then regardless of who you are, if you kind of want to figure out the rest of life beyond the money and have good money skills, all of that is that Richard soul.
And either of those places or just Google my name, you’ll find.
[00:34:31] Bob Wheeler: All right. And it’s a pretty distinct name. It’s Rocky Lao.
[00:34:35] Rocky Lalvani: Vani. Yeah. You put that in. I’ll show up the first 10 pages of Google. Ah, there you
[00:34:40] Bob Wheeler: go. Well, Rocky, thank you so much. It’s been such a pleasure and I really appreciate you taking the time.
[00:34:45] Rocky Lalvani: Thank you so much for having me today. It’s been a lot of.
[00:34:55] Bob Wheeler: we hope you enjoyed this episode. Did you learn something new about your relationship to money today? Maybe you have a friend who has some financial blocks or beliefs that are holding them back. Please share this podcast. So they too can get off the rollercoaster ride of financial. And journey towards financial freedom to learn how to have a healthy relationship with money, visit the money nerve.com.
That’s nerve not nerd. We’ll be back next week with another perspective on money and the emotions that bind us. .
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