The Get Ready Money Podcast

The Get Ready Money Podcast with Tim Calise: Understand Your True Goals

• Tony Steuer

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On the latest episode of The Get Ready Money Podcast, I spoke with Tim Calise, a serial entrepreneur about changing the way we think about money and understanding your true goals. 


In this episode we discussed:

  • The importance of knowing who you are.
  • Why you need to know your numbers.
  • The importance of building trust. 
  • Why sticking to what you know helps reduce risk.
  • Understanding that debt is the greatest financial quicksand. 

Tim Calise, a versatile entrepreneur, finance expert, and podcast host, founded successful tech fitness ventures and raised $325mm for his first hedge fund by age 25. He co-developed ALAN, an AI-driven SaaS platform, achieving remarkable growth from $0 to $20M ARR in 6 months. Currently, he is the co-creator with multiple 7 & 8 figure service business owners - aligning product, pricing, and positioning in order to install profitable acquisition systems.

Connect with Tim Calise:


Website: https://timcalise.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tcalise/


Podcast: 


 Leveling the field: https://open.spotify.com/show/5cE6i6IpWBgZQUYl9ldYvU

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Speaker 1:

Are you looking to get ready, be prepared and transform your financial future? Then you've come to the right place. This is the Get Ready Money Podcast with Tony Stewart, where Tony has insightful conversations with financial experts who are changing the way we think about money. Catch up on the latest financial trends and hear practical advice from Tony and his expert guests so you can build healthy habits that work, Be empowered with tips for implementing small changes that can have a big impact on your financial future. So sit back and get ready to hear from today's guest.

Speaker 2:

Welcome to the Get Ready Money podcast changing the way we think about money. I'm pleased to be joined today by Tim Kalise. Tim is a serial entrepreneur. In this episode, we'll be discussing how we change the way we think about money and how we can make dreams come true. Tim, welcome to the Get Ready Money podcast. Thanks for joining us today.

Speaker 3:

I'm thrilled to be here. Tony, Thank you so much for having me on the show.

Speaker 2:

Definitely definitely looking forward to learning more about you and what you're up to. So you know. Let's start off. Tell us a little bit about yourself. What is your origin story?

Speaker 3:

My origin story is. I grew up in New York, my father was in professional services, was in finance, and so I definitely was looking to score some cool points, but I think I always had this drive to understand how things worked and to reorganize them or reorient them in a way that I saw fit. So call that entrepreneurial, call it tinkering, but that was my kind of creative expression, if you will, and that followed me all the way through my younger years. Up through college, I started two companies while I was in college, which taught me a lot of great lessons, and then my first real kind of professional career was actually in. I started a hedge fund in my early 20s and, mostly driven by naivete more than anything, ended up raising over $325 million between 22 and 25. Right place, right time, learned a lot of lessons, but that led us up to just before the 2008 stock market crash, and we were very fortunate. We made a strategic decision to return all of our capital a number of months before everything fell apart. So that again, lots of lessons learned.

Speaker 3:

But then took my leave and actually moved into technology, which I was always a tinkerer, as I said, Uh, and my wife and I uh had recently gotten married. We were both athletes and so it went into fitness, fitness and technology and thought that was a? Uh, an area right for innovation. Uh, and we're in kind of the 2008, 2010 timeframe uh, pre Peloton, you know, before all these kinds of new gadgets were around, we started to revolutionize how people thought about strength training uh, training in and around the markets in which we served, and that was a wonderful experience.

Speaker 3:

It introduced me to a gentleman named Alex Ramosi, which a lot of people know these days and was fortunate enough to get to know Alex. And Alex brought me on board when he was building Gym Launch as one of the members of the executive team and I spent three years there until we exited to a private equity firm a couple of years ago. And now I sit kind of taking all these lessons of the last 20 years the blood, sweat, tears, the scars, the learning lessons and really packaging them as it relates to the one through line. It relates to the one through line through everything that I've done is it is oriented around personal agency and having freedom freedom of choice, financial freedom, the freedom to explore and try new things and so I have kind of oriented everything that I'm doing these days around the concept of how do we set a system and methods and processes to achieve freedom in every way?

Speaker 2:

That's awesome. Yeah, a lot there. I think you know curiosity, I think is so important, but you know, as you talked about is the freedom to go out there and try different things. You've tried a lot of things. I was wondering if you could define for the audience a couple of the terms you used. What is a hedge fund, what is a private equity firm and what is the?

Speaker 3:

difference? Great questions. So a hedge fund very simply is a legal structure, but the way to think about it is if you have ever bought a stock on the stock exchange or invested in a mutual fund or anything like that. It is simply a vehicle that invests in assets like stocks. That was our universe. But unlike a mutual fund that can only place money with companies that they hope their stock price goes up, a hedge fund can also effectively bet that a stock price can go down, and so we had the ability to choose which companies we thought were on the rise, and we thought we could also find companies that we thought were. Choose which companies we thought were on the rise, and we thought we could also find companies that we thought were overvalued and be able to make money when those stock prices fell for our investors. And so that's what a hedge fund is. It comes in lots of different flavors, but it is effectively a vehicle that allows you to do that.

Speaker 3:

A private equity firm is and people might've heard of like a venture capital firm. Let's just start there. Venture capital is our professional investors who place money effectively on new ideas. So take Mark Zuckerberg. When he was starting Facebook, he said I have an idea. He went to a venture capitalist, Peter Thiel, who gave him money to say now go out and build Facebook. Private equity is a little bit further down the line and usually buys or invests in established businesses and hopes to either improve those businesses through its own intervention or they will package a number of like companies together and then sell those off to somebody else or operate them over the long term. So the difference being what we invested in was simply kind of publicly traded stocks and things like that. A private equity firm typically buys a large minority or majority state in a private company and hopes to see that investment improve over a number of years.

Speaker 2:

Awesome. Well, thanks for defining the terms. I know that you know there's a lot of listeners out there who've heard these terms and go okay, what really is going on with them? I think one word I want to highlight that you used is the word professional. I think when people think about shorting a stock, you know which. What you were talking about as part of what a hedge fund does investing in small businesses is that you know that you can definitely do those things or participate in those things, but it takes a little bit of education and thought that they're not just things to rush into, to short game stops. Short game stop because we can still talk about GameStop as something that people got, you know, didn't do so well on, I guess, is a good way to put it.

Speaker 3:

Well, there's very I think it's important let's you know. I think you're spot on and defining terms is important. There is a remarkable difference between trading and investing. Trading, in my opinion, is defined as looking for a short-term move in whatever the investment is. It's effectively trying to bet on a price discrepancy. So you believe that the market is wrong and, for whatever reason information, belief, et cetera you believe that that asset is mispriced and you are looking for that pricing difference to change. Gamestop is a great example. I think it's underpriced, I think very quickly it's going to make a big move, or it's overpriced, et cetera.

Speaker 3:

Investing is more of a value add component. It typically is a longer term timeframe and you're looking for the fundamentals typically to change for a number of different reasons and you will participate in that fundamental evolution of the company. For every personal investor out there, I will tell you with a lot of again scars to show, professional investors spend 24 hours a day, seven days a week, understanding the markets and understanding what's going to move and things like that. It is virtually impossible for a retail investor, passive investor, to try to beat those dynamics. It's very difficult.

Speaker 3:

That's number one and number two as an investor personally, you should think about investing in things that you know, and so I generally encourage folks to really understand what their kind of circle of influence is and their knowledge base and try to stick to that. I don't know the first thing about Bitcoin, as an example. It would both be speculative, it'd be a trade for me, but it's also outside of my knowledge. I can invest in service-based businesses all day long, of different shapes and sizes and flavors, because it's what I know, and so I generally encourage folks to stick to what they know, because that is where you reduce your risk.

Speaker 2:

I need to take a quick note. So thanks for defining all that, because I think people struggle with some of these terms and the thoughts, and I do urge people to think about that when you're trading and investing, while it sounds easy, is that you're going up against professionals who do this all day. They've had education towards it, they have the E, they're working on it, it is their lives. It's like competing against a professional athlete. You're at a disadvantage, so that's awesome, thank you. So you know, let's talk a little bit about you know you talk about vision and success. Why is it important to have a clear vision to achieve success?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so I'll speak to kind of my personal evolution as it relates to how I think about money. When I started, I was under the impression, I was of the belief that when you start a business, the wealth building component, the payoff, if you will comes at the exit. And I thought about kind of the interim period, like from the time that we started the business until, hopefully, when we were going to sell it, as call it an automatic reinvestment time. I'm just going to take any profits and put them back into the business. And I think there was a badge of honor that I kind of held in that regard, like that's what you're supposed to do, that's what a good business owner does. And I think I failed to understand deeply that that was an investment decision on my part and I don't think that reinvestment I looked at as a true investment. I know the word is in there, but was it where I could get the maximum amount of return for that capital?

Speaker 3:

Number two, from a personal perspective, in my portfolio I had a lot of risk.

Speaker 3:

I was concentrating all of my investment in something that may or may not pay off, and so I was just burned so many times by this idea of the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, and so I would encourage folks anyone who owns their own business to really think about cashflow in the short term or the path along the way is not mutually exclusive, which means you don't have to choose cashflow today or an exit in the future.

Speaker 3:

How do you build a business that can serve you today, specifically having free cash flow that you can pay out to yourself, and have a business that has economic value into the future? I used to think you had to choose one or the other, and I've now realized over the last decade or so that you can actually have both, and that was Jim Walsh is a great example. That business went from zero to approximately $35 million a year in revenue in less than two years, but it was built on a cash flow basis and it had tremendous economic value because the investors that bought it saw the cash flow opportunity and therefore it made the company more valuable and more attractive to them.

Speaker 2:

Well that's awesome. I think there's so much there for people. But I think one thing that I'm hearing is really about balancing, and that's the decision you have to make as a business owner is balancing between the cash flow and the exit value. And that exit value may come in five years, it may come in 20 years, it may come in a year and you don't know and so many things can happen in that meantime. I mean that's, I think, great advice for business owners. So one of the things you talked about also is balancing goals. How can people balance their personal and professional goals? I mean, you've built businesses, so you know I'm sure that question has come up for you with your personal life. How do you balance that?

Speaker 3:

So I subscribe to the idea of there that we all have seasons in our life and those seasons can be measured in weeks or months and they can be measured in, you know, decades. And so I think, for me, how I think about it, is not a painting with a broad brush, meaning what I do today or this week or this month does not have to be forever. However, there are times where, which what season am I in? I might be in a building season, I might be in a balance season and I might be in you know, and that can go both ways building the business or focusing on personal. And I try to, about every month, try to calibrate where am I kind of, where are the needs that I have around me and I have personally in the businesses that I've built most recently in the beginning, I'm generally in a build season and I will.

Speaker 3:

My wife has now heard me say this like okay, if we're going to do this, that means I'm kind of going into the cave to some extent and and it's going to be a couple of months, because I'm really going to hunker down and and try to get this thing to go. I'm fortunate now, kind of later, a little bit further in my career where now I can build a team and things like that, but in the beginning you a little bit further in my career where now I can build a team and things like that, but in the beginning you have to know where you are, because the business has needs, whether you have desires or not, and I think that is there's a fallacy. I think right now, where there's work-life balance. I think work-life balance is measured over the course of a lifetime, not in the matter of a day or a week, because you generally can't do anything extraordinary by definition without doing things that are extraordinary, and that requires the sacrifice of balance in the short term.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think that's really important. You know, in my experience, I was working, you know, with a very small team at a startup and I found that, you know, it was a punishing pace for me. You know that and I think that's a decision that we all need to make. Like you talk about, you know, is this a season you want to be involved with and recognizing that these things change? And there's not. You know, there are times where you're going to have to be quote unquote, unbalanced, that you can't maintain that balance on a daily basis sometimes.

Speaker 3:

And what I found for myself, which I think is very common, is, let's just say, you kind of set a goal for yourself of you know, I'm going to sprint for the next 90 days.

Speaker 3:

Where I see it go wrong is then 90 days becomes 120 days, becomes six months, becomes a year, comes two years, and then you feel like what am I doing this all for? Your antenna should go up at some point and say that this feels like it's an ongoing basis, and what that usually looks like is you're not replacing yourself, so something's not working. Either you're not making enough money in the business to backfill your responsibilities or you don't have what's called product market fit, meaning you haven't figured out how to match the value you have to the right audience. So where I thought that was just let's kind of grit will win, just kind of keep pursuing, persevering. I now have learned to be much more attuned to when things don't feel like they're fitting, and that's usually because something's not aligned properly or I'm taking on too many responsibilities or things like that. So it's yes, there's seasons, but season should not become, you know, the sprint, shouldn't become the marathon, if you will.

Speaker 2:

Or to mix analogies, I like that and I think that's something also for people to think about too is that these things kind of do tend to sometimes bleed over and if you set your goals and I think that's just important goals if you come back to your goals, so if your goal is to make sure you have time with your family and your business is impacting, that, that you know recalibrate to fit in with your goals and your vision, rather than just what's going on, because it's easy to say, okay, I'm going to do this for one more month. You know it's only a couple more weeks. You know, and as you point out, that those, those two weeks could become six months pretty quickly.

Speaker 3:

Absolutely. It reminds me of that story I was reading a couple of months ago and it was like a plumber who said he worked for himself and had time with his family and was able to work when he wanted to. And then somebody said you should hire a team. And he's like, well, why would I do that? He's like, well, you would make more money. Like well, why do I need to make more money? He said because then you can buy back your time. He goes. Well, he said because then you can get, you can buy back your time, he goes. Why do I need to do that? He said, so you can have time with your family, like I already do that.

Speaker 3:

So why do I need to go through all of this? Just to get back to where I am right now? And I think that's an. There's an important lesson, and you know, embedded in there which is, uh, to your point, uh, understand what your true goals are, and sometimes it may not be in the form or fashion that you believe it to be. I think that's important to recognize. You know, kind of from, obviously from the outset.

Speaker 2:

That's awesome. That's awesome. I appreciate that. That's really valuable, I think, for everybody you know. So let's talk about trust real quick. Why is building trust important?

Speaker 3:

So trust for me comes in so many different forms, but ultimately, the one thing that I have above everything else is my personal brand. So it's falls under the adage of you know, do what you say, say what you know, say what you do and do what you say, um, and so I build trust amongst you know, with the people that are around me, my team, uh, the people that I'm fortunate enough to have as supporters, uh, trust with customers and clients and vendors. So I think trust is ultimately, especially in this day and age, uh is one of, if not the most important uh aspects of being out in the marketplace. Because right now there's so much noise and we're all probably familiar with there's a famous line that the confused mind doesn't buy. Well, how well let's define confusion.

Speaker 3:

Confusion means you can't make heads or tails of what to do next. It leads to paralysis. Well, how can you break that feeling of being stuck? Because if you have a trusted resource who can help lend you some vision or lend you their competence to move you from that position of inability to move forward to a position of action, that is how progress is made. So, for my clients a lot of them will just say the people I'm fortunate to work with and be invested with.

Speaker 3:

They might say I don't know what to do. Okay, well, you actually do know what to do, you know what the options are, but you are lacking confidence. So do you trust my opinion, or trust my vision? And let me share that with you, and then you'll see if that helps kind of sort through what your options are, and nine times out of 10, it's like oh yeah, I just needed somebody else I trusted to help me go to work through that. And it works with finance as well. I mean, trust is one of the main components to how we operate in our day-to-day lives, and so true trust is very, very hard to come by, but when you find it, it's probably the most valuable asset that you have.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I would agree, because it does come down to you know, your word is your bond. We've all heard these sayings about it. But trust is, at the end of the day, I agree that it is one of our most valuable assets. Uh, making a quick note on that because I love that um comment, um. So you know, as we talk about trust and all of these things that you know we are all individuals and then we're all building our own personal brands. You know we're on LinkedIn, we're on wherever.

Speaker 2:

So you know that is something that you'll benefit in your careers if you do build that trust like you're talking about, because then people go hey, this is, you know, like, this is what Tim stands for, this is, you know, like, this is what Tim stands for, this is what he believes. And this is what I can rely on Tim for. And I think that's the magic where we have advisors is when we go okay, I can rely on my advisor's word, not just what they're saying, but I know that they're going to follow through and that this is who they are, because they show this. I think that is super important. So you know, let's go into the get ready questions. The first one is what basic money concept do you wish people knew?

Speaker 3:

I have been thinking a lot about investing in the stages of investing through your life. So in the beginning it should be about skill acquisition. You take active income and turn it into knowledge and learning. The more skills you have, the more marketable you are, the greater your active income can be, and then as quickly as possible. The concept I would leave everybody with is I think everyone's goals as soon as possible is to get their passive income greater than their monthly expenses. That is how financial freedom is built, in my opinion. You can be early in your career and time certainly has a value, but if I went back to when I was 22, the one thing I would tell myself is the only ratio you need to know is your passive income to your monthly expenses. If that is a positive number, ideally greater than two 200% passive income to monthly expenses, you will forever be able to do what you want, how you want.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's valuable advice and in my new book I talk about that. Financial independence is really what we're talking about, rather than retirement, because that's really, at the end of the day, when somebody is able to retire is when their passive income is enough to meet their daily expenses, because you can't retire and you're going to be working until 70 or 75 if you don't have enough passive income. You know, which can include social security, 401k income, whatever annuities, whatever floats your boat, but at the end of the day, you know, that's that. I think that is really. I mean, we could stop the podcast there and I think this would be incredibly valuable for people, but we do have a few more questions for you. Fantastic, that's awesome. What is one simple thing people can do each year to set themselves up for financial success?

Speaker 3:

uh, for me, I every year think about what is the one skill that I don't possess, like what is the one thing I don't I'm not familiar enough with that I need to be familiar with to have agency around my finances.

Speaker 3:

So, for example, there are areas of. I was listening to a recent podcast with Tony Robbins and Dan Martell Dan's a great guy and it was all around how Tony actually got a financial education lesson from some of the best investors in the world. Yes, he has access to them, but it showed me that there was so much he didn't know and he had committed to every year. But it showed me that there was so much he didn't know and he had committed to every year to constantly evolving his financial knowledge, because the more you know, there's a I like the saying of you know we are only limited by our options, and our options are only limited by our imagination and by having continuing to pursue new things, that expands our imagination about what is possible, and so I think that will give everybody a greater sense of what they can achieve, because I think the limits of your language are the limits of your universe. That's awesome, yeah.

Speaker 2:

And I think you know it does come down to knowledge, and I think a good way for people to think about this is like with anything that you like. For example, if you're a chess player, you're going to only be better at chess if you learn. You know like chess masters go back and they watch other people's chess games and stuff like that. Chess isn't really my thing, but I do know that if I wanted to get better at chess, that it's all about learning and experience. So that's awesome advice. What is one habit that people can change when it comes to their money?

Speaker 3:

This might be controversial, but I am very much aware of approximately 35 cents of every earned dollar in income in this country goes to interest. Think about that for a second. 35 cents of every earned dollar goes to paying a bank or financing company for something. In my opinion, it is the greatest financial quicksand that exists, and I think so. What is the one thing that I would have them really think about would be where you fall in that spectrum, and the activity I would encourage folks to do is have one bank account where your income comes in and have one bank account where all of your expenses are paid, and the reason you do that is so that you have a very clear sense each month of exactly how much money you're spending.

Speaker 3:

Because I think most of us didn't at least I know I didn't I didn't know what that number was, and we talked about passive income to monthly expenses. It was just money went into the same account as it left, and hopefully there was more at the end of the month than there was in the beginning. But I think separating them makes you very aware of exactly how much is going out. And then I challenged myself to try to cut that number by 10% over the course of each year Because in my opinion, I'm usually generally overspending in areas where that gave me the awareness of where that money is going.

Speaker 1:

So whatever the number is.

Speaker 3:

I try to cut it. I try to end the year 10% lower than where I started, if you will.

Speaker 2:

Well, that's awesome and I think that's great advice for people, because, at the end of the day, if you want to get ahead, you have to spend less than your. And how?

Speaker 2:

you do that Some people call budgeting, some people call cashflow, I mean, but at the end of the day, you can't spend more than you're bringing in, otherwise you are carrying debt, and that becomes a slippery slope pretty quickly if you're carrying too much debt. And it's all about balance, because what you're saying is not that you have to give up X, y, z. You're saying you have to spend less than your income, and I think that's important for people to remember. You can make your own choices what you spend your money on, but the important part is, as you point out, just spending less than you bring in, exactly right.

Speaker 2:

Awesome advice. So what money myth are you trying to break?

Speaker 3:

So right now and I don't have an answer for this but I am very interested in the concept of creating my own banking system, and that is a controversial topic concept of creating my own banking system and that is a controversial topic but I, throughout my life again, as I mentioned earlier, I was in fitness there were conventional wisdoms that I have now found personally don't hold true. So just because it's widely acknowledged doesn't mean that it's right, and so I'm interested in pursuing that concept to understand it better, because I think there's a lot of validity to the concept. The methods are where it gets controversial, of how you actually carry out establishing your own kind of personal financial system, but I think in systems, anything that is repeatable and repeated should be automated and systematized. That's just how my brain works, and I don't think I've done a great job personally of setting up my own personal financial system in a way that is optimized for where I want to go, and so that's a focus for 2024 for me.

Speaker 2:

I guess my challenge would be if you have a system.

Speaker 3:

if you don't have a system, try to figure out what is the system for you and whether that be what I just mentioned about setting up different bank accounts or a different planning process, or whatever it might be, I think the establishment of a system with understanding if it's working, is a very powerful concept.

Speaker 2:

Definitely Well, and I'll give a plug out to my latest book, the Grady Blueprint, which people who watch and listen to the show. That is what it is. It's a system for viewing all areas of your financial life and seeing how everything fits in. But, tim, I just want to clarify for our listeners. So when you say create your own banking system, you're not talking about be your own banker, right? Or is that what?

Speaker 3:

you're talking about I mean, I think that's where it gets controversial is the concepts of infinite banking as a terminology, as a term. I think where I'm starting right now is just how do I become more sophisticated not necessarily more complicated, but more sophisticated in my thinking around my personal financial system. How that gets executed, I don't have an answer for yet, because I think I need more education in exactly what that might look like. How that gets executed. I don't have an answer for yet, because I think I need more education in exactly what that might look like, but that is a focus of mine. I quantify everything and every other aspect of my life in a different way, and I think I saw that it became really clear to me about six months ago. But I don't think I have the same level of sophistication as it relates to my personal money systems, and so that's a focus on it.

Speaker 2:

Well, and I think you said something that's really important it comes back to what you were talking about earlier is education For somebody who's been in money since what? Middle school? Yes, you know you started business in college. You know that you are still on the path of knowledge when it comes to your money, and I think that's, you know. Important for all of us you know, whether we're financial advisors, whether we're consumers, whatever hat we're happening to wear that day is that there's always something new to learn and that it's always a process, not an end time. I guess the end time is when it's done, but that's another no, but you're exactly right.

Speaker 3:

And just to put some more clarity around this, I get asked all the time what should I invest in? Very simple question or should I invest in X? Invest is very bio-individual. What is right for you is not necessarily right for me. Our goals and expectations are different, and so when I say a money system, I look at it as how do I set all the pieces up in a framework that is optimized for my bio-individual way of seeing the world? So, are the investments that I'm making? Are they in line with my investor DNA? Is it in line with some of the things, the desires that I have? Is it optimized for cashflow?

Speaker 3:

I got you know last week I had you know do I want to fund a startup? Do I want to be part of a series A for a tech company startup? Do I want to be part of a series A for a tech company? And the next day I got asked do I want to do basically a loan, a six month loan to a company? That's kind of in between funding rounds.

Speaker 3:

Those are two opposite ends of the spectrum. One is a I give them some money and hopefully it turns into something in the next five to 10 years. The other one is they're going to start paying it back in 30 days, and that, for me, exemplifies how do I evaluate those, because I have limited capacity. I can't say yes to everything, so what is my in the professional services term is what is my buy box, which basically says what are the things that are important to me and how do I evaluate systematically the things that I'm going to come across and I think that's super important for all of us to understand and whether that be your saving, whether that be your investing, whether it be just your spending patterns, how do I think about how I want to use the capital and the money that I have, and how does that move me closer to or further away from independence, freedom, however you want to define it, as ever, you know whatever that means for you.

Speaker 2:

That's awesome. Well, and I think that's really key. What you just said there at the end is what's right for you. That and it comes back to you said goals. That it comes back to like, what do you want to achieve? Don't think about the product service, because that's not what you said you didn't lead with. Okay, I want products that are going to return 5%, and you know now, maybe that's part of your buy box and your parameters, but that's not what you're leading with. You're leading with well, what do I actually want to achieve? And but that's not what you're leading with. You're leading with well, what do I actually want to achieve? And then, is that buy box going to get me to my goals? So I think that's important for people.

Speaker 2:

You know whether you're looking to invest in a business or whether you're looking to pay. You know, take out a loan, whatever You're like, is this going to help you get to your goals? Is it going to drive you to financial independence, if that is your overriding goal, or is your goal to? You know, enjoy your life now, and not necessarily. You know save. You know do fire, which we've talked about on the show, financial independence, retire early. You know that's not necessarily for everybody. You don't have to give up too much today to meet your long-term goals, so that's awesome. You know, tim, let's get out the time machine for a minute. What advice would you give your younger self if he could go back in time, knowing what you know now about money?

Speaker 3:

uh, I because of the kind of story arc that I had. Uh, I was fortunate to do fairly well in my early to mid-20s. I would go back to that person and I know it's not necessarily topical for this show, but I would be like I. The first thing I do is understand what I truly care about and related to that. The second point I would tell myself is nobody else cares, and I think it can.

Speaker 3:

You know that takes lots of forms, which is, you know, keeping up with the Joneses or thinking that thing will make me happier or more content or whatever you know, whatever, whatever that means for you. I think I would just tell myself that it's like know who you are and stick to that. Uh, because I don't know about. I still remember like middle school dances and it's like most of the boys sit on one side and all the girls on the other, and the reason why they don't come together, especially from the boy's side, is like I don't want to embarrass myself. It's like nobody cares, nobody's watching, and I think to just remind myself of that gives me a lot of freedom. And I think now I'm in a place in my life where I now am only responsible for kind of or accountable to who I want to be, and not because I'm trying to be something or do something or show something to anybody else, which gives me contentment in and of itself.

Speaker 2:

Well, that's great advice and, again, that continues. The theme that you were talking about is that it's individual, it's goals driven. It's like what do you want to achieve, Not what does somebody else tell you that you want to achieve. And I think in the financial world is we so often run into that, as you know. We think we should be doing this or we think we should be doing that instead of going okay, what's going to make us happy? What's going to lead to our balance, as we talked about you know? So, Tim, to wrap up the show, what is your number one tip on changing the way we think about money?

Speaker 3:

Alex said something. Alex Ramosi, if you don't know him, he runs a company called acquisitioncom. He did a YouTube video, I believe it was, and he talked about investing in the S, not in the S&P 500, but in the SME 500, meaning invest in yourself, and I thought there was a lot of power in that message. I think we, you know, investing in mentors, in skill acquisition, I think in certain circles is well received and I think in many others, at least for some of the things that I held earlier in my life, it's like you pay $10,000 to go to a weekend to hang out with a bunch of people. But that seems crazy, that seems frivolous. In reality, every good thing that has ever happened to me in the last 20 years has come through knowing someone or being exposed to someone, or knowledge or things like that. And so you know, I've generally said in the last couple of years, if you're not kind of at the point of commanding, you know, $100,000, $250,000 a year or whatever it is, you should be investing in yourself up until that point, because at that point,000 a year or whatever it is, you should be investing in yourself up until that point, because at that point you at least have enough resources available to go and do the things you want to do and continue to invest in yourself. And so the number one thing would be the S&P 500 averages 7%, 8%, 9% a year, you learn a skill that can return 10,000%. Just think about those skills as an investment and not just a nice to have.

Speaker 3:

And I come out of the fitness world. So many people would say I would do that when I have lost weight. Well, if you lose weight, you'll feel happier. Be happy now and you will lose the weight. I think in so many cases we haven't switched, so don't think of it as sometime in the future I'll invest in being in those rooms or I'll invest in myself, or I'll invest in knowing those people do. That now in the world will unlock for you.

Speaker 2:

That that is awesome advice and you know that's a great way to wrap up the show, and I and you know that's a great way to wrap up the show and I think you know it's a through line to everything you've talked about in the show is that you know you have to get your skills, you have to learn, you know, work on yourself and then that will allow you to achieve your goals. You know, but you need to. You can't jump to running a hedge fund in two days or being a day trader just because you've read an article on YouTube on day trading. I mean, you can become a day trader, you just won't be very well, exactly.

Speaker 2:

Anybody can become a day trader.

Speaker 3:

Well, it's like everybody can start a business Doesn't mean you can sustain it, so the starting is literally the start, not the finish, and sometimes we get those backwards.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. And then the execution is. Knowing how to actually execute on what you're doing is the key. So, tim, where can people learn more about you? Where can they connect with you? Where can they follow?

Speaker 3:

your work. Yeah, so my website is timcalisecom, t-i-m-c-a-l-i-s-ecom, and primarily on LinkedIn and Facebook, and I monitor all my own DMs. So if something resonated with you, please reach out, send me a note, let me know what resonated and if there's anything I can do to help.

Speaker 2:

I certainly will do so. Awesome. Well, thank you, Tim. And, as always for everybody watching and listening, there'll be links to Tim's website and social media profiles in the show notes so you can definitely find out and connect with Tim. So, Tim, thanks again for joining us on the Get Ready Money podcast.

Speaker 3:

I appreciate you having me, Tony. Thank you so much.

Speaker 2:

Get Ready Money podcast. I appreciate you having me, tony. Thank you so much. Yeah, this is great. Appreciate your insights and, as always, thank you everyone for tuning into this episode of the Get Ready Money podcast. If you learned something today to change the way you think about money, please be sure to subscribe and share with a friend. Until next time, let's change the way we think about money.

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Tony Steuer

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