Finance Roundtable Podcast
It is a complicated and tricky world out there. Without a solid understanding of how money works, life can be even more challenging.
We get it, talking about money is uncomfortable but we all can agree that it is an important topic to understand.
The Finance Roundtable Podcast team wants to bring you along as we interview some remarkable professors, professional athletes & financial strategists about money.
If you have ever wondered what is talked about between financial professionals and what goes through our minds when we are off the clock; then you will want to check out the Finance Roundtable Podcast.
Jacob Gold and Michael Cochell are Financial Advisors offering securities and advisory services through Cetera Advisor Networks LLC (doing insurance business in California as CFGAN Insurance Agency LLC), member FINRA/SIPC, a broker dealer and Registered Investment Adviser. Cetera is under separate ownership from any other named entity. Jacob’s California insurance license # 0E55425 Michael’s CA Insurance License # 0K90130. The views depicted in this material are for information purpose only and are not necessarily those of Cetera Advisor Networks. They should not be considered specific advice or recommendations for any individual. Neither Cetera Advisor Networks nor any of its representative may give legal or tax advice. Kelvin Gold is a Marketing Associate. Registered Address is 14850 North Scottsdale Road #255, Scottsdale, Arizona 85254.
Finance Roundtable Podcast
Transformative Life Lessons and Personal Growth from Matthew McConaughey's "Greenlights"
Ever wondered how Hollywood stars turn life's challenges into powerful opportunities? This episode promises to transform your perspective as we take an exhilarating journey through Matthew McConaughey's "Greenlights." Join us as Professor Jacob Gold and Michael Cochell recount their memorable encounter with McConaughey at an investment conference in Nashville and share the motivational insights they gleaned from his keynote address. We'll uncover how McConaughey's candid storytelling resonates with different life stages, offering invaluable lessons on overcoming obstacles and seizing life's green and red lights.
Discover the transformative practice of journaling and how it can shape your personal growth, inspired by McConaughey’s own experiences. We'll discuss his unique approach to life, his unwavering confidence, and his ability to embrace his quirks—lessons that are incredibly pertinent for students, parents, and anyone seeking motivation. This episode not only highlights McConaughey’s diverse achievements but also emphasizes the impactful narration of the audiobook, making "Greenlights" a must-read for personal development enthusiasts. Tune in and get ready to appreciate life’s challenges as vital components of your growth and self-discovery journey.
You are listening to Finance Roundtable, a podcast focused on demystifying money. The hosts, professor Jacob Gold, michael Koschel and Kelvin Gold, will educate and entertain you in all areas related to money. Sit back, relax and enjoy the show.
Speaker 2:Hello everyone, welcome to the Finance Roundtable podcast. I'm Professor Gold, I'm Michael Koschel and I'm Kelvin Gold. Today, we're going to be talking about a book that Michael Koschel and I just recently read, and that is Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey. Just last month, michael and I had the opportunity to go to Nashville, tennessee, for an investment conference hosted by Cetera Advisors Network. During that conference, I myself was a presenter, and by being one of the presenters, I actually had the opportunity to meet the conference's keynote speaker, and that keynote speaker was none other than Mr Matthew McConaughey, and that was a great opportunity. You can see. Here is a photo of Matthew McConaughey and myself.
Speaker 2:I had maybe three seconds with the gentleman and I got an all right, all right, all right from him when I told him that I too was a professor, just like he he teaches at the University of Texas and when he heard that I was a professor at ASU, he said, all right, all right, all right, keep educating them youngsters. I'm like, okay, yeah will do. But it was a fantastic opportunity to meet Matthew McConaughey. His presentation was phenomenal. His book, green Lights, is phenomenal as well. Nothing about finances, so we're not going to be diving deep into what Matthew McConaughey does financially. This book is more for personal development. There's a lot of ups and downs of his life in this memoir. He's very open and transparent about his journey, but I'll ask Mike, mike, what were some big takeaways of Greenlights that?
Speaker 3:you enjoyed. Oh well, first, as you mentioned that, we're getting off the subject of finance to a degree and hopefully have a little bit more fun today with this topic, and we'll probably find that some of the ideas that he mentioned in his book, how we can correlate it to our personal lives, financially, being a parent, being a brother, being a sister. So so many different areas where some of the, I would say, authentic stories that he's provided that we can relate to. And a few areas that really caught my attention was how a lot of these stories made a difference in, I would say, his future self or many of us who relate to how a story was a challenge that became an opportunity. So I wouldn't say there's one particular area or chapter that I would say that stood out, because it's one big story at different stages in his life.
Speaker 3:What I really got from it is I, as I was listening to it and then I read it.
Speaker 3:So I like to do both, because I read slow and I like to try and really get involved in any books I'm reading, so I read very slow, but because of that I'll listen as well.
Speaker 3:That way I get a different insight to it, and what I kept doing is I kept referencing different stages in my life, whether I was in high school or college, becoming a dad. So I would say that that was probably the most important piece is I started to correlate a lot of my experiences in life and I didn't know what I was doing at the time or how to accomplish a goal or work through a challenge, and it was helpful to know that we're all in it together, that we all go through different obstacles, and some of the insight reminding us to look beyond that, because some of those obstacles may make us stronger. So it's too difficult, honestly, to say this is what really stood out, because some of the experiences that he had were very impactful in my life as well, were others I couldn't really correlate and that's why I think those who might decide to read the book, it'll be a different experience for everyone. It really will.
Speaker 3:So so too difficult to really answer what really stood out, except the all the stories and the particular ones that, um, I related to most.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, it is true. Uh, I too like listening to books and I'll listen to him when I'm working out or running or in the car driving to ASU to teach, and he reads the audio book, and he doesn't just read it, he sells it. Right, he's got accents of his mom.
Speaker 2:He has a German accent of when he rented motorcycles with his buddies and drove through Europe and he sells it and it is a lot of fun. And you can tell that he's a man by design. He knows who he is, he knows what he's not and the whole title Greenlights is kind of like you know, you got to have a plan, you got to know where you're going and as you're headed in that direction, sometimes you get a green light. And if you know where you're going and you get that green light, you just go, you see the opportunity and you take advantage of that opportunity. But other times you might have a plan to be going down a certain path and there's a red light and there are circumstances that you can't control and you've got to just wait, you've got to stop, you've got to wait for that light to turn green again so you can then keep moving forward. And life is full of green lights and red lights and sometimes some yellow lights that he talks about and that kind of makes you slow down and pause to make sure that you're going in that right direction.
Speaker 2:And one quote that he said in the book which I really appreciate. He said we cannot fully appreciate the light without the shadows. We have to be thrown off balance to find our footing. It's better to jump than fall, and here I am. I think that that's really good is if we know what we want to accomplish. We've got to lean into it and we've got to know that we're going to fall but that we're going to pick ourselves back up. We're going to keep moving forward. And you can't really appreciate the sweet without tasting the sour, or you can't really appreciate the light and the heat that that light gives us until you've been in the dark and you feel the coldness.
Speaker 3:And.
Speaker 2:I think that that's really important. I mean, we see Matthew McConaughey and he seems like he's got it all together right, but at the same time, when you read Greenlights, you can see that he's had some major obstacles as well, and when the time got tough like when he was living in Australia and every day he was eating a head of cabbage with ketchup and living with some pretty interesting people it was a foreign exchange program and he had to be in Australia for a year.
Speaker 2:It was just after high school and that was a time that he really found himself. One thing that I really took is he's a journaler and I've been journaling my whole life. I've always been advocating to my son, kelly, to be a journaler and he references his journals quite a bit and I guess. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think when he went out to write this memoir he went into the desert or somewhere in the desert with a bunch of journals and for a couple of weeks he just he knew his story was in those journals and he was reflecting on that and he came across a lot of entries that he's like whoa, I don't remember writing this, but it was so impactful to him when he first wrote it and super impactful for him when he was rereading it.
Speaker 2:And me being a journaler. Every once in a while, especially as I'm prepping for a new semester at ASU, I'll go through some of my old journals to see you know where my thoughts were, and I'll write something. Or I'll come up with a quote from something that I saw along the way and I completely had forgotten it, and all of a sudden the memories just come rushing back in when you read it. And he wrote that the reason why he writes in his journal is for him to be able to forget. So he writes it down. He then is able to flush it and then create more room for new experiences, which I thought, was pretty cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree. And Kelly, I know that you haven't read Green Lights, but I do think that this is a great book for you to read. Because he's a journeyman, he is in it for the experience and a total family man loves his wife, loves his kids and, I think, really gets the essence of what life is about and wants to have fun.
Speaker 1:And you know.
Speaker 2:I kind of have to remember that sometimes I can get a little too serious in this, but I think Matthew McConaughey he does not take himself serious. I'm sure he does, but he very much just enjoys who he is and his quirkiness, which I think is pretty cool when someone can embrace their quirkiness. Like he likes to bang on the bongos without clothes on, and actually there was a story in the book where he was banging on the bongos naked at like midnight and the cops call, or his neighbors called the cops and the cops actually arrested him and be for disturbing the peace and the cops were like hey, put some clothes on. He's like no, I'm going to jail without clothes because I know this is wrong and this is just going to prove my point that this was wrong, that you broke into my house and you're arresting me, and then all the charges got dropped and everything. But like talk about a man that can like stand up for what he believes in it's pretty cool.
Speaker 3:It is, it is, it is. Well, you were mentioning Kelly. I think it's a great book to consider reading and you'll probably take bits and pieces from it.
Speaker 3:I truly love the concept of the lights green light, yellow light, red light so that definitely drew me in and the ideas of it's not always clear Green lights.
Speaker 3:Obviously, one of the major factors, or the idea behind that, is trying to recognize what is a green light, what is a yellow light, Even the red lights, which many of us probably feel I want to avoid. Those Things aren't good. If I head down that path or go through this experience. However, recognizing the idea of all three of those, as you mentioned earlier about dark shadows, you got to have all of them. You can't have only green lights and think that there's no yellow lights or red lights exist. However, if we could recognize them at least this was I took from it then maybe we can convert or view that red light as something that made me better, made me stronger, made me go through pain to be able to understand something that later on becomes a green light, if you will. He did express a number of stories where, even from a career standpoint, uh, that it wasn't going so well or so smooth. Uh, maybe that was a red light in his life to get him to prepare for the next stage.
Speaker 3:So the concept, the idea of green light, yellow light, red light I love the idea behind that. And then the other part that I thought of, which maybe I might put it more towards yellow light, is having momentum. Yeah, he expressed this once or twice and I've read this with some other books is leaning in towards that momentum, because to go from red to green is so difficult, to green is so difficult. If you think going from a stopping point and moving, whereas a lot of times, even though yellow lights might seem a little slow, or I'm not seeing the fruits, or whether it's financially or, say, exercise, and seeing the results that come into play, you have that momentum and it's so much easier to maintain a momentum rather than a stop to start. So so I love the concept.
Speaker 2:Hopefully you got some of that from from it.
Speaker 3:Kelly, it really might spark some ideas or plant some seeds as you finalize your, your last year in college, but you might relate to some ideas.
Speaker 2:So the concept was fantastic. Yeah, it's definitely going to be number one on my list, and it seems like it's a pretty quick read too. It wasn't too long ago that you were in Tennessee and we're already reviewing it.
Speaker 3:So it's pretty quick. It's a fun book. It's fun. Yeah, it sounds fun.
Speaker 2:If you want to like, read a story of a person's life, a person that has a tremendous amount of confidence in himself but is also very talented, very humble. I mean he's a philanthropist, he's an actor, he's a New York Times bestseller, he's a father, he's a husband, a spokesman. I mean it's just like he's a cool cat.
Speaker 2:And a spokesman. I mean, it's just like he's a cool cat and I think that, like, when someone is as original as he is, you just kind of have to respect that approach of life, and I think it's a good read. If someone's looking for something to like build them up of, like I need to read something that can help me say whatever I need to do. I can do this.
Speaker 2:I think Greenlight is a good place to start, because he talks about how sometimes you just got to pull yourself up by the bootstrap and you know, put one step in front of the next and go in that direction, that you want to go and hope for a few green lights, and so, yeah, I think that it's a really great book for personal development. Yeah, yeah. So well, we hope you check out Green Lights by our friend Matthew McConaughey and stay tuned for future episodes of the Finance Roundtable podcast. Thanks for joining guys. Bye-bye, thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you. Thank you for listening to Finance Roundtable. Make sure to check out our episodes at wwwfinanceroundtablepodcastcom. We also encourage you to explore wwwjacobgoldcom to find articles, research, videos and more from Jacob Gold and Associates Inc. If you have a question for the show please email Jacob at jacob at jacobgoldcom.
Speaker 2:Cfgan Insurance Agency LLC. Member FINRA, sipc, a broker-dealer and registered investment advisor. Cetera is under separate ownership from any other named entity. Jacob's California Insurance License 0K90130. The views depicted in this material are for information purpose only and are not necessarily those of Cetera Advisor Network. They should not be considered specific advice or recommendations for any individual. Neither Cetera Advisor Networks nor any of its representatives may give legal or tax advice. Kelvin Gold is a marketing associate. Registered address is 14850 North Scottsdale Road, suite 255, scottsdale, az 85254.
