76. Is Fear Driving Your Finances?

"I had to have everything figured out first 'cause I was fearful..." Fear can play a key role in your financial decisions that affect the rest of your life. Whether you're afraid to take a risk with your money or you're afraid to even LOOK at your bank account, it can drive our decision making more than we'd like to admit. 

So how do we overcome the fear of money, of making bad decisions with money, or not ever making enough money? How can we move past the dread in our guts we get whenever we think about our accounts? Big A and Wally talk about what they would have done differently in their past if fear hadn't stopped them. 

Key Takeaways:

• Making wise investments in real estate vs. the stock market
• How to overcome the fear you get when you think about your bank account
• Why your fear might be making emotional decisions before logic kicks in
• How Wally lost $600,000+ in 3 days

Navigating business growth can be as exhilarating as it is terrifying. This episode goes beyond the numbers, bringing into focus the transformative role of community, mentorship, and open communication. We're sharing the gritty lessons from our own entrepreneurial voyages, highlighting the crucial steps of taking action and learning from every outcome. We underscore the importance of unbiased advice and how facing our fears can lead to more agile business strategies.

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Connect with Big A and Wally:
View From The Top Website: https://www.viewfromthetop.com/
The Climb Newsletter: https://www.viewfromthetop.com/climb
Big A’s Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaronwalkerviewfromthetop/
Wally’s Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinwallenbeck/

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey, welcome back to another awesome episode of view from the top podcast where we help growth minded men who desire momentum in their business, their family and their finances get through the valleys and up the mountains into their very own view from the top man. I am so glad you're listening in today. My name is Wally and today Big A and I are going to uncover some issues and around the idea of personal financial fear. So maybe you have a lot of money and you still have some fear, and maybe you have very little and you throw all caution in the wind and you have no fear. But wherever you are, we're going to be sure to uncover and nugget for you today. So let's get Big A in the studio. Big A, are you ready to uncover your financial soul today?

Speaker 2: 0:49

I'm ready, I'm going to lay it all out there right on the altar for everybody to see the whole thing.

Speaker 1: 0:55

We're going to uncover all the financial fear.

Speaker 2: 0:58

Yeah, you're not supposed to peek at those yet.

Speaker 1: 1:01

You're pretty. There's some good stuff in there today. I don't know.

Speaker 2: 1:04

I don't know if it's good stuff or not, but it's truthful. It's truthful.

Speaker 1: 1:08

I mean by good stuff, man. I mean, hey, before we do that, let's follow up on something. So a few weeks ago I don't know how long ago, a month ago, maybe two months ago we did a quick riff topic as we opened an episode and talked about you know. I think you asked me the question about you know, do you take people to the airport or not? Oh no, here we go.

Speaker 2: 1:27

We're going to resurrect this.

Speaker 1: 1:29

We're going to bring this back. We are. I mean, you know why? Because Sonny and I were going on a cruise a couple of weeks ago and I just want to put this out there. I did not ask you. You graciously volunteered to take me to the airport. I did, you did. It's so funny too, because I was like the night before I think it was the night before actually I was like man, I want to ask him because our other ride fell through and I'm like I want to ask him, but I'm. We just did this whole thing of he doesn't like taking me to the airport and I was pulling, I was holding off on asking you and I was just about to do it and you text me. He's like hey, you guys need to ride the airport today.

Speaker 2: 2:09

I felt the Holy Spirit was convicted me to give you a call to take you to the airport.

Speaker 1: 2:14

It was an interesting venture, though it was, so like all the things we talked about in the previous episode of why you don't take people to the airport came true.

Speaker 2: 2:24

They happened, every one of them. It couldn't have laid out any better. I mean, it happened. We had some bad weather. So, just to give context, we had eight inches of snow somewhere here in Tennessee. That's too much, yeah.

Speaker 1: 2:40

So you offered and of course it was, I believe, on a Friday. So your lovely bride, robin, was with you and you came to pick Sonia and I up at our house and literally I I got a text five minutes before you said you were arriving. I got a text that I didn't see for like three minutes from the airline that said there's been a two hour delay and it's like anytime there's been a delay at the airports with weather. Now it was. It was a direct flight, so I was a little, a little optimistic, but still, I'm like two hours, this could turn into going to the airport right now and we would sit there for two hours. They'd delay at three more hours and then they'd say, hey, the whole thing with luggage and getting it back, I was just a nightmare, right.

Speaker 1: 3:25

So I'm like you're a, texted you, hey, we just found out, you're like in my driveway and I'm like ah, so here you've been offered to take me to the airport, and you're in my driveway and I'm like what do I do? Well, I'm not gonna go sit at the airport for like two extra hours, just in case. And so you guys went to lunch and then I was like all right, I think we're ready to go. You came back and you got us and you still graciously took us to the airport, which we were very grateful for. But it was exactly happened that you said of like I'm thinking about the whole time. I'm thinking, oh man, like their time is valuable, it's their couples day. I know you guys take Fridays, do things as a couple, but I was like all the things came true and I'm like, oh, I'm living my worst nightmare here.

Speaker 2: 4:08

It was so funny. Sonia heard us in the house. We were in the garage laughing and finally we came out and we felt, hurrying, what was going on. She thought it was hilarious too. We actually did have a date day, and we took you and Sonia to the airport on our date day, so it was fun. We get to the airport and Wally said, hey, if they cancel our flight, we are not gonna call you to come get us. And I said no, no, no, no, call us. We're already in this far. What's another couple of hours, let's go. So, and you got on your flight and you made it and yeah, and so it was fun. Yeah, man, you know what, though? It was fun, it was a good memory. We built fun times, so we built something to talk about on this episode.

Speaker 2: 4:47

So, it was fun. It was fun. Hey, I do wanna dive in a little bit and talk about finances, wrestling with some of the fears that money causes. And it's an exciting topic because it's, first and foremost, on everybody's mind making money. Right, we all wanna make money. I mean, I've never met anybody that didn't wanna make money.

Speaker 2: 5:10

But, man, there's always some fear around finances. It is for me, it has been, you know, my entire career. There's a lot of things that we could talk about with fear in every area of our life. But today I really just wanna focus on how it affects us in our financial world. You know, we're gonna talk about some of our previous business decisions, some of the things that you and I've done over the course of our career. That really shaped some of our victories, some of our successes, but it also created some of our downfalls. I mean, when you start thinking about it, you're like man, should I've done that? Or I never should have done that in a million years, or I wish that I had done that. Instead of this, we're gonna look at some of the roles that fear plays in our life, because it has a strong emotional context. Quite honestly, it can save our life. You know, fear, care. It's like, hey, that's a good thing, I'm scared of that bear over there. It's like you better run. But it also can cost us a fortune. And it is so true when we're afraid we should have made some different decisions.

Speaker 2: 6:15

And I wanna openly admit right out of the gate and we said we were gonna say some things pretty vulnerable on this episode, and we are that I took plenty of risk in my career. I did, but in hindsight, honestly, I wish that I had taken more. When I look back and think, you know, I wasn't risk averse at all. I mean like I was like put it all on red. I wasn't quite that bad. I mean I wasn't, you know, irresponsible, but I was the risk taker Robin wasn't. Robin was much more conservative and but I was a pretty big risk taker.

Speaker 2: 6:47

And when I started thinking the back over my career, I'm like for this episode, I wonder what some of the things that I should share did not totally lose my man card. You know, not completely, but what are some of the things that I could share? And I'll just say, first and foremost, by living in Nashville, Tennessee that's where I live I should have bought more real estate. I will say that 50% of my income from my entire career has been derived from purchasing real estate or renting real estate out. It has it's been a really big part of my life, my whole career. But when I look back now, there's so many more opportunities that I had that I didn't take advantage of, and I can give you a whole, you know list of reasons why I didn't do that. But I should have.

Speaker 2: 7:35

Look, look in hindsight.

Speaker 2: 7:37

Another thing that I should have done, that I was terrible at, and I'm still not great at it, is saving cash, Cause I'd get a little bit of cash, you know, and I'd go buy real estate and I would get a little cash and I'd pay off some debt, or I'd get a little cash and I would go and buy more inventory in our retail business or whatever, and I was always in a bad place for cash.

Speaker 2: 8:00

And I look back now and think I probably should have been more diligent for having a set amount set aside and cash just kind of as a buffer. And a lot of you are out there thinking, yeah, I'd like to be in a position where I could save cash. You're gonna get there. You just keep working hard. I promise you, eventually you're gonna get there. But I would give a sense of encouragement to those that are listening to this that are not there yet Just really evaluate that, because a certain amount of cash does give you a little safety net. It does give you a little sense of security, not false security, but just in case an emergency comes up, something comes up that you know is not gonna keep you up at night. You need to have a little bit more cash probably Give you some flexibility too.

Speaker 1: 8:42

I mean it does it does.

Speaker 2: 8:44

It doesn't just keep your nose to the grindstone. You know, and you've had some family situations that have come up recently and you've been away from work and you've you know you were on vacation but you had to deal and it gives you the flexibility to be able to go do those emergency things that you need to, because you got a little cash set aside, you can go take care of it. It just gives you a little sense of peace and I just wish that I had really done a little. I had, you know, plenty of assets, but I didn't have a lot of liquid cash and kind of wished I had done that. And then, finally, I just want to mention that I'm not a huge stock market fan. I'm just not. I never have been.

Speaker 2: 9:25

I'm a huge real estate guy and I love real estate. I'm just not a huge fan of the stock market and we're not gonna get into all the reasons today for that. But I do think, looking back, a percentage of my portfolio was in the stock market, but I really think that I probably should have done a little better job with picking out some maybe some growth mutual funds, something that was solid, that maybe paid a little dividend that I could have just on a regular basis. Put X dollars whatever that is a month in. You know I've got some money in there, but it's probably not as much as that I would have liked. So those are some things for me. So buy more real estate, save more cash and maybe put a little more money in the market on a regular basis.

Speaker 1: 10:14

I see that as a. I mean, if I look at that as a whole, it's kind of like you would have diversified a little bit more.

Speaker 2: 10:20

Yeah, that's kind of what you're saying, yeah.

Speaker 1: 10:22

It makes sense. I do have a question for you. The very first thing you mentioned was that you would have, you know, bought more real estate, and you said there's a bunch of reasons why, but we're not gonna get into that today. Give me, give us our listeners, like, what's the top of mind reason that maybe you didn't buy more real estate?

Speaker 2: 10:39

Yeah. Well, there's always this trepidation of whether it's gonna go up or down. You know we're gonna reach another 2008 and the market's gonna crash. And here's what I've seen over the course of 45 years now. I actually bought the first piece of real estate I ever bought when I was 16 years old. Legally you couldn't even buy, and I did. I ended up buying a piece when I was 16 years old, but they didn't know I was 16 years old. Anyway, I did. About that, Real estate in my lifetime has always come back exponentially greater.

Speaker 2: 11:12

Everybody keeps saying it can't keep going up. Well, that may be the case and that may have happened sometime in the years gone by, but I've never seen it. I've never seen real estate get to a point where it took a dramatic decline and stayed there. I just haven't seen that. So, in retrospect, what I wish someone had taught me and we can get into all kinds of different, varying opinions around this this is just for me. I'm just saying for me, I would have bought it to where it would have paid for itself, even with a zero cash flow, to my good, and let somebody else pay for my real estate, not being concerned with amount of return on the cash invested More. So the appreciation is what I would have been looking for earlier. I just didn't have anybody really in my corner. That and it was my fault. I didn't go out searching for it, I just kind of figured it out on my own.

Speaker 1: 12:07

Well, you didn't know what you didn't know Did, yeah, figured it out. You didn't have someone with that perspective at that time. Yeah, I didn't.

Speaker 2: 12:13

So, yeah, those are one of the reasons, though I would have just bought as much as I could have afforded. That would have paid for itself.

Speaker 1: 12:19

That's good, and I think that really highlighted itself. I know I've been a few months now this past summer, I think we mentioned it on this podcast. You've lived in Nashville the same area, your entire life and we took a day I think we took half a day, actually four or five hours and you drove me around and went to where you grew up and the house you lived in and school you went to and all the different businesses and a bunch of different real estate that you have bought that you did buy over time, and I was really surprised, actually, how much different real estate you had bought. But one of the questions I asked you was why didn't, why didn't you still have it? What was your thought process around it?

Speaker 1: 12:57

And I think that's that same thing is that you did what you knew and it may have paid off a little bit for you. There was a reasonable payoff, but for the long term it wasn't necessarily like part of a portfolio. You were intentionally putting together that. Now you would do differently, and so that's really interesting. That's good man. Thank you for sharing that. I think it's. Yeah, it's so much of a man. What we do every day is about you don't know what you don't know and learning the perspective of someone else that just opens up doors and opportunities that you didn't even know existed. It's crazy.

Speaker 2: 13:35

You know, what I wished I had had earlier, wally, was men that had these kind of conversations on a regular basis. I didn't even know it was a thing and I'm sure it was, obviously but I didn't know anything about it. I didn't know that business men got together on a regular basis and had these kind of open dialogues, these open discussions. It was just foreign to me. I just didn't know it. And I wonder how much better of a position I would be in today had I had that unbiased, trusted advisor, that kind of wisdom that people could just share and encourage. And yeah, it's so fun today to be able to do that In an environment. You and I have conversations daily like this. You know we get to mastermind together and work together and have these kinds. You know we learn so much from each other and then you get into a larger group and they just so many different perspectives. It's just, it's a cool way to be able to garner more wisdom.

Speaker 1: 14:33

Yeah, and I want to get lost. I don't want this point to get lost either. We're talking about fear financial fears today, and so that naturally lends into mistakes and maybe regrets or things that we would have done different. At the same time, I know that both of us are finding have found some really big successes that have been valuable to us personally and to our families, of things that we have learned over the last 10 years six years, five years and applied. And so let's not. Yeah, we're talking about a lot of the negatives that come from fear because of things, but We'll get to the positive though.

Speaker 1: 15:10

Yeah, all right. All right, we're gonna. What about you? I just don't want that to get lost. I've laid my soul out there, so what about?

Speaker 2: 15:15

you Any fear for you?

Speaker 1: 15:20

I think if I regret because of fear, a couple of things come to mind. One of them is in business. I always thought that I was fearful that if I didn't have the latest gadget, that I wasn't gonna get ahead somehow. That, somehow, like that latest gadget, that latest software, that latest training course, that latest conference, like whatever it was like, the latest thing was gonna somehow be the thing that got me to where I thought I wanted to go. And it was fear, and I think at the root of it, that caused me and that really came out in the last few years when we moved from Michigan. It's easy to buy a bunch of gadgets and stuff and over the years and then I didn't realize how many bins of things that I had accumulated that.

Speaker 1: 16:12

You had a whole U-Haul full of your gadgets Not really, but out of date and things that that I thought were gonna be like the thing that was gonna take us to the next level.

Speaker 1: 16:25

And it really wasn't about that thing at all, and I was just fearful that it was, and so I spent a lot of time and money on those things. I would do that differently, and I think the second thing lends to the same mindset is that I would have focused more on what mattered the most when it came to, especially, business and money. Let me give you an example the idea of I used to, along with the gadgets, thinking that I had to have all my ducks in a row, so I had to have everything figured out first, because I was fearful of like, oh, if I go try to sell something before I'm ready, then you know I was fearful, I wouldn't be able to sell something. And, man, I know a lot of guys over the years I've talked to get stuck in that trap of I've got to have this all figured out before I can actually, you know, make a sales call. Were you?

Speaker 2: 17:25

afraid of the deliverable or you were afraid that you didn't have every process to speak to. I was afraid of it but wouldn't have an answer to something you know.

Speaker 1: 17:34

Yeah, I was just afraid and looking back now that I know now, like man, I do things totally different. Now I still, I still am methodical, like my personality hasn't changed, but my methods have absolutely changed. I remember I remember sitting in a meeting with Brooke she's our director of operations. It was just a couple of months ago and we've been working so diligently over the last, you know, two years of just building on what had been created just by sheer will and determination, and taking that and making that into something that was scalable, that we could move forward with. And you know, as more guys come into the ISI mastermind and into the coaching and into our events that were able to serve them well at scale versus what we were doing before, and so a lot of it was whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on, hold on, hold on hold on. Let's not like, let's, let's, let's get rid of some things that we shouldn't be doing anymore and let's really focus and let's, let's plan this out better.

Speaker 1: 18:34

And then I think there was one, one moment. I remember the look on her face in the meeting. She's staring at me and she's it's just like I can't believe you're saying that, because I was saying, hey, let's just, let's just try it and see if it works. And she's like what? And that's not you. And I'm like, well, we're at that point now where we can actually do that.

Speaker 1: 18:50

So it's not that I still don't do those things, but man, I think about that totally different and I look back and think what was missed in our business because I tried to have too many ducks in a row first before we pulled the trigger on some things, and so I know I missed a lot of opportunities in business with some products and some services. And what that all comes down to is that we needed just to go out, and you know we have a. We have had a great team, had a good brain. We do today, and you know we're honest about what we're, what we're offering may not have all the details nailed out, but if we can't sell it, if someone doesn't find value in what we're able to communicate as an offering, then there's no. It doesn't matter how much processes we have or how many frameworks we have, it doesn't matter, because there's no income being generated. I definitely have learned I'm still guilty sometimes, but way better at that and, looking back, I definitely would have changed that in the previous business that I had for sure.

Speaker 2: 19:58

You know, John Lee Dumas has been a friend of mine for almost 10 years now, entrepreneur on fire, and there was a product that we were building years ago and I called John and I said, JLD, I need some help. And he said, yeah, big A, what is it? And I told him what we were doing and I told him that we were creating this thing.

Speaker 2: 20:15

He goes no, no no, no, no, stop, stop. And I was like what'd I say? He goes you don't want to create the whole thing right now. I said well, how am I going to sell it? He said you want to create the first part of it and put it out and let people help you create it. You could build the most amazing thing on earth to you, but if it's not solving the problem for the end user, you're going to have to redo it. So you want to build it with the people and so, for whatever advice that is worth to the people that are listening today, just put out enough to get interest in enlist, kind of a beta team, and let them help you build that along the way. I think it would really eliminate some of the fear, because you go build this thing and nobody wants it. Then you could be in trouble.

Speaker 1: 21:01

There's actually a resource for that called the Irringid company. The guy that authored this and created this system is called Jeff Walker, and he created what's called the product launch formula, and that's exactly what JLD is referring to, so you can actually go out there and look for product launch formula and find that it's a good tool.

Speaker 2: 21:23

You know, when I started thinking more about fear and I thought you know what is it keeping me from and what are some of the things I'm missing as a result of it. And oftentimes fear can create this risk aversion where individuals avoiding any kind of risk at all might be costing themselves a substantial amount of success. And so you've got to really balance that fear, that risk aversion, as I get older. I think I'm recognizing it more and more now, because used to, I'd roll the dice and I'd be all in not literally, and I said that earlier but I would take a lot more risks was I get older. I'm more risk averse, simply because I don't have the time to make it up right, and I think that's a natural process that people go through as they get older.

Speaker 2: 22:15

So I want to encourage the younger entrepreneurs 20, 30, 40 years old. This is a time in your life where there's a percentage of your income or your net worth that you should be taking more risk, right. I remember my mom saying when I first went in business you know, take a risk, because if you don't risk something, you're never going to gain anything. Great. And so, Wally, what about you as you get older? You're a little bit behind me, quite a bit behind me, but do you find yourself being a little more risk averse?

Speaker 1: 24:57

I'll be 51 next month, so I would never have thought like. I've always not been. I've always been pretty prudent, I take prudent risks and all the way up till I was 47, and I had this, you know, whatever you want to call it like watershed moment, whatever where I had opportunity to sell the business that I owned and that gave me, like this crazy shot in the arm. But what it did is, the shot in the arm was, essentially, it gave me what I would have been working towards the next, say, 10 to 15 years. That's how I looked at it. So here I've got this amount of money now and quick side story on this. So this is just talk about taking risks and trying to be prudent and all that. We sell the business in 2019, the end of 2019. So November, right, bank account, phew, springs up. Right, well, it's just cash and I'm like all right.

Speaker 1: 26:05

So I'm really praying through getting counsel on what am I gonna do with this? And I was feeling uneasy and I was still working full time at the company that had bought us and planned on being there for a while, so I didn't really have a lot of extra time to go figure out. Hey, how do I invest this, where am I gonna, what's the best place for it and what am I really passionate about? And I heard from a number of guys in our mastermind group from their experience, which was don't go do stupid things with your money right away, because they all thought it was just a bunch. Seriously, multiple guys said man, don't just go like throw 300 there, 400 there, 50 there. Don't do that. Make sure that what you're investing in you understand and you're passionate about. And so I took their advice and I held it.

Speaker 1: 26:56

Well, february rolls around, so it's been three or four months and I'm like, well, I definitely don't wanna just keep this in cash. Like I paid that tax bill which made me sick to my stomach and I was like all right, here's the remainder of the money. And I was like you know what? I'm gonna save his bets right now. It's just prudent risk, cause I'm just gonna put this in the stock market. They weren't stopped. They were mutual funds and things like that. So, and I had gotten counsel and gotten help to do that and wasn't placing it all on my own. Well, what hit this is February of 2020. What happened March 3rd or whatever it was?

Speaker 2: 27:33

in 2020.

Speaker 1: 27:33

Yeah, COVID shows up. Yeah, in 35 days, 45 days, I lost $625,000 on paper and I was like sick to my stomach. I'm like holy smokes. You know what it was. It wasn't about what I'd lost, it was about I knew, if I had $625,000 extra at that moment, what was possible for the future. But I didn't have it anymore and so I couldn't utilize it for the future. I was like ugh, and so, going through that whole right, I didn't go sell anything, I didn't make any stupid moves, nothing like that. And of course you know the stock market came back and all that and things improved since then and I benefited from that. But man, you know, there's those thoughts of like man, if I hadn't, if I had held it a little bit longer and the stock market came down, and then I put it in and somebody said to me they said what financial advisor right now said well, when would you have put it in when it was going down? Like, when would you have them?

Speaker 2: 28:43

Like, that's a good question you gotta decide there.

Speaker 1: 28:45

Yeah, I wouldn't have. I wouldn't have right.

Speaker 2: 28:46

Well, it really takes us to kind of what I wanted to talk about next and that's that emotional response when we're fearful and that could have led you to do like a panic sale during the downturn. And I'm gonna be honest with you, I've done it numbers of times, even with the amount. Yeah, I'm not a huge stock market guy and you know that. But yeah, during different situations that's happened in our economy before you know, I've sold off things, panicking like, oh man, I'm just gonna get out while I can get out, and I'm like, oh my gosh, well then, you can't recover. No, you can't. And I remember and I'm not boasting about this, matter of fact, I'm embarrassed about this to some degree but for a period of time I did some day trading and it was addicting quite honestly with my addictive personality.

Speaker 2: 29:39

It was addicting. I was getting up at three or four o'clock in the morning and I was doing research and I was buying large positions. I might as well tell the whole story. So I'm buying huge positions and I even got into not knowing some of the things I was buying.

Speaker 1: 29:54

Can I ask you what a huge position was?

Speaker 2: 29:57

Well, it varied, it varied and no, I'm not gonna tell that because Robin may listen to this episode and I don't want her to know but it was significant and I was even buying positions when I was playing golf. I have bought a position in Dollar General stock on the T-Box and sold it before I got to the green and I was trading some of these things on pennies.

Speaker 1: 30:26

We weren't very focused on golf game, were you?

Speaker 2: 30:29

No, I wasn't.

Speaker 1: 30:29

I wasn't playing very well then either.

Speaker 2: 30:31

But here's the thing is I bought a company I don't mind saying it Waste Management and I did the Unpartnable Sin in day trading and that's I kept the position overnight and I woke up the next morning to learn of fraud and waste management and the stock went in half and I had a significant position and I sold it and I got out. I said it's already turned to gambling for me. It wasn't just day trading, it's already. I'm buying positions and see what my point in that I was caught up emotional. Yeah, I've got friends of mine that control 10% of the metals market in Europe from offices here in Hendersonville, tennessee, and they have a strategy. They sit down and they know exactly what they're gonna buy. They know what their tolerance to risk is. They know when the stock or the positions go to this amount they sell. And they do that every single day and they're making fortunes by doing it because they're non-emotional. There's no fear in this, it's all a calculation for them and so just be mindful of that.

Speaker 2: 31:36

When you're dealing with anything financially is when you do kind of impulse buying.

Speaker 2: 31:45

Some of it's the FOMO, fear of missing out, and I'll be honest, I almost got caught up in this recently, within the past two years, in which I know nothing about cryptocurrency, but some of my buddies were trading in it and they were making sizable profits, and I had FOMO.

Speaker 2: 32:03

I was like, hey, I you know, and I dabbled with it a little bit, but I didn't know enough about it. I was that that was a good fear that kept me from getting involved in something that I wasn't knowledgeable about. But so fear can be used in a good sense. But when you do what you said earlier, you didn't make the emotional decision and bail out. Thankfully, the market came back and you recovered as a result of that, and so we've just got to pay attention to that and not be an emotional responder when it comes to finances. You know, I heard once that when you win $100, it feels good, but when you lose $100, it's horrible. Like the feeling that it gives you is multiple times stronger when you lose money than when you make money, and so we just got to be mindful of that when we're dealing with these emotional decisions.

Speaker 1: 32:56

You know, fear? I didn't. I know this sounds really silly, but I hadn't really thought about it until you just mentioned it before. But fear itself is really an emotional response. Just the idea of being fearful of something is wrapped up in emotion. Not necessarily I don't use the word logic, because they're not totally opposite of each other, but I don't think. I think it's important to have both emotion and logic in our lives. But, man, the idea of fear being just an emotional response, which means that it's usually, you know, void of logic, void of counsel, void of reason, void of, you know, a framework that helps us make decisions, man, that's really good.

Speaker 2: 33:52

Wally. This dovetails into our topic, but this is really true for every area of our life. If I could coach just for a moment Please Isolation is the enemy of excellence, and this proves to be true even with dealing in fear. When we're left with a scenario that we don't shed light in, for others to help us work through, it's exponentially greater in our own mind than the reality of it. And when you get into a position of fear, when you can get around trusted advisors, your family members, other peers, people that you trust, mentors and you're able to express that, you can articulate what it is that you're experiencing, it sounds way different than when you keep it in your head. When you say it out loud, you're like man. When I say this out loud, it sounds silly. I mean there's no rationale really behind this fear and intellectually I even know really not to be afraid of that intellectually, but this emotional trauma that I'm going through, it sounds horrible in my own head. So that's the reason I process and think about things out loud and if I'm making a decision, I'll call a half a dozen or a dozen of people that have known me for years and I say it, I articulate it out loud and when I do, it gives a whole different perspective than when I keep it in internal and don't share it, and that's the reason it's so important.

Speaker 2: 35:19

If you're going through a situation right now and a lot of people listening to this are going through financial scenarios right now I want you to take the time to gather some people around that you know that can be trusted and share what you're going through, and let them help you walk through a strategy and a plan to work you out, because you don't have to go alone. We often time to afraid other people are gonna think different of us or, you know, it's like he's not as smart as I thought. Listen, that is so not true. You forge this indelible relationship with other people when you're vulnerable and transparent, and the sooner we can learn that with trusted people, the better off we're gonna be. So I wanna encourage you today if you're going through some type of fear, be sure to get around other people and work through it.

Speaker 1: 36:07

Big A. I gotta tell this story. I met with a guy I don't know four weeks ago now, before I went on, before he took me to the airport that day. I met with a guy that I've known for quite a while and he's been in the Iside Mastermind for a long time in a group that I'm in and super great guy loves Kyle, loves his family. They took on some responsibilities with ministry around adoption and things like that that have been really difficult for them, as well as making some decisions to build a business, and he found himself in a place where he was really financially struggling and not really understanding why he had the most sales top line revenue that he's ever had in 2024, pretty significant sales compared to previous years Yet he found himself with his bank balances being smaller than they'd ever been.

Speaker 1: 37:15

Sitting down with him, he drove down from where he lives and we sat down for about four or five hours and took an afternoon and I went through his P&L. We looked through how he quotes jobs and broke it all down and what he came to realize for himself is that he, first of all, was making decisions based on information that wasn't accurate and that came ultimately from a root of being hopeful around his finances and what he thought to be true versus actually having facts. It's like the light bulb went on. He does great work, he's a great salesperson, a great leader in his business. He just suffers on. He's not strong on the financial data management side of his business. And so what? The light bulb went on going through that not necessarily anything that I said that was like, oh, look at me, I've got all the wisdom. No, it was because he was taking the time to look at things from a perspective he hadn't looked through before.

Speaker 1: 38:25

That took courage on his part. It did, and he was fearful. I mean, he said to me. He said you know, I I was thinking of every excuse not to drive down here today. And he said my wife actually didn't want me to come because she knew that you were going to look at things that we weren't proud of.

Speaker 1: 38:45

And he texted me on the way back that night when he was almost home Hopefully he voice texted, but he texted me and he said. He said the understanding and the decisions that I came to today are things that are going to I forget the exact wording, but basically things are going to help me be able to create a future for myself and my family and my legacy in a way that I didn't know was possible before. Now he's got a lot of work to do. Sure, he's not out of the woods yet, and it was just so interesting that, like even having been in a mastermind, he'd done so many things well, and yet, at this point in this time for this season, there was still something that God was like hey, I need you to work on this.

Speaker 2: 39:34

And so now he's working on that. Well, you helped give him, you gave him a pathway. Yeah, and see, what's so cool about that is is you don't think less of that guy.

Speaker 1: 39:41

Not at all.

Speaker 2: 39:42

I have more respect for him today than I ever have you do, and that's the fear that we need to overcome is people think, well, they'll thank less of me.

Speaker 2: 39:50

You have greater respect for him today as a result of that and you've got a relationship with him now. That is inseparable, because you work through a challenge with him and you've given him hope and encouragement and inspiration, and that's the way we build real relationships. Well, listen, guys, as we wrap up this episode today, man, we've taken such a deep dive into how fear affects our decision making. We've explored really delicate balance between risk and opportunity and how fear can lead missed chances and emotional choices. Listen, our personal stories that we've shed light on today could be a significant opportunity for you to really think through your fears in the decisions that you're making so that you can truly align your longterm and your short term financial aspirations. Wally and I want to thank both of you today for joining us on this journey and remember that understanding and managing your financial fears is the key to a more secure and prosperous future, so that you, too, can also have that much sought after view from the top.

Speaker 1: 41:00

Hey, as we finish up this episode today on facing financial fears, man, I really want to encourage you. There is a we talked before about this that we put together a private Facebook group. Well, I've got some good news. We've changed that to a LinkedIn group and already we've more than like quintupled the amount of Christian business owners that are really striving men that are striving really for success and significance, and some of the conversations that are going on in there right now today I just looked at some this morning I'm super encouraged by.

Speaker 1: 41:34

So we'd love for you to join us over there and LinkedIn and a Christian business owners group for men. You can do that by just going to view from the topcom slash group that's view from the topcom slash group and you'll be redirected over to join that group. It's free to do that on LinkedIn. Happy to have you over there, participate in the conversations. We're going to pick up some topics we're talking about in here and expand on that as well. So we look forward to having you over there and seeing you there. So until next time, until we get together next time and we appreciate you Go make a difference. We'll see you next week.