Transcript of Financial Freedom is Emotional not Financial - Jade Warshaw

Welcome to the Proven podcast, where we don't care what you think, only care what you can prove. On this episode, we talk to Jade Worsall, who took a half a million dollars of debt, paid it all off, saved her marriage, and built an empire. She teaches us that it's not the strategies, it's not the tactics, it's not all the books that we've read. It's one other thing that creates financial freedom, and it all comes down to your emotions. If you can't master your emotions, you'll never master your financial freedom. But so starts now. All right, everybody, welcome back to the show. Jade, I'm super excited to have you here.

Thank you so much for having me, Charles.

For the four or five people on the planet who don't know who you are, could you explain who you are and how you got here and what's going on?

Jade Warshaw. I am a co-host of The Ramsey Show, which is one of the largest talk radio shows. I think it's number two now in the entire nation, and then a huge on YouTube. We are a personal finance podcast talking about your life and your money. I began hosting the show back in 2022. My claim to Fame is the fact that my husband and I paid off $460,000 of consumer debt and then went on to turn that into becoming millionaires.

There you go. Now, there's a lot about this that we hear about all the time. We've all heard about Dave, and we've heard about Robert, and we've heard about all the games and all those other things about the strategies. But there's an emotional side of this that people do not talk about, and there's the process that connected to that. You've written a book about that. Tell me about that. Tell me about that experience in the book that's coming out.

Yeah, it When I came out of my own journey with my husband, that seven and a half years it took for us to pay off the debt, I began to realize that people are talking about money, and they're leaving out a very important factor. It makes sense when you think about money, yes, numbers, math, factors. Yes, that is part of money. Behavior, another big part of money. People are saying, Here's the amounts that you need to be doing. Then they're talking about the behavior, and Here's how you need to do it. Put it in a high-yield savings account. Index funds, all of these things, these are the behaviors. But no one was talking about the draw string of all of that, which is your emotions. The analogy that I use for that is if behavior is a vehicle, consider the behavior you want as a car, you get in the car, well, your belief is what's going to push on the gas. That's like, Hey, do I believe this can happen? If it is, then I'm going to push on the gas and go forward. If I don't believe, I might go a little slower and be very cautious.

But your emotions ultimately are what's steering the wheel. If you feel great about it, you can zoom forward. But if all of a sudden you get spooked, you go like this and you hit a tree. You swerve, hit a tree. I found that many times because I had the plan, which meant I had the numbers, I had the behavior, which is do this, do that. But what was happening is it was budding up against these emotional barriers. What I try to tell people is that emotions, when you talk about money, it touches every area of your life, and you know this. Emotions affect your career. I'm sorry. Money affects your career. Money affects your relationships. Money affects your past, how you perceived it as a child, what it was like in your previous relationship before the divorce, all of these things. When somebody like me or somebody like you or somebody like Dave Ramsey, whoever you follow, says something very simple like, Hey, if you want to get out of debt, consider cutting back your expenses. You go, Wait a minute. What are you telling me? You're telling me I can't get my nails done?

You're telling me I You can't take that trip to the Bahamas? And you get angry or you feel fearful. You've never done something like that. Or all this litany of emotions comes up. You feel anxiety just thinking about talking about money. That's what I experienced. I said, There's a whole There's a whole set of emotions here. There's things that people aren't talking about, and I know all about this, so I'm going to dive into it and work it out for folks.

It's not just financial mastery, it's emotional and belief mastery. One of the things that I run into is, I I grew up puh. I couldn't afford the last few letters of puh. I grew up in a very specific environment. I can remember very specifically the moment that I flipped the switch and I was like, Uh-uh, he's not doing this anymore. This is unacceptable. I'm going to go this way. Can you remember the moment for you where you were like, Uh-uh, this belief, this emotion, I have to harness this and move things around.

Yeah, I remember it. So great recession, 2008, 2009. That's when it popped off for my husband, Sam and I. That was the time where all of our student loans started becoming due. We I started getting the mail, and I started seeing the payments and realizing, holy crap, this is wild. I was looking for anything. I remember turning on the radio, I hear Dave Ramsey, and he's sitting in his cool air-condition studio talking about the fact that the recession wasn't really affecting him much because real estate's cheaper than ever, so I'm just buying it up. That's what he was saying. He said, The storm has gone around. He said, I'm not the effects of the storm because I positioned myself above the storm. I just remember the first instinct I had, I was pissed because I thought, This guy, he doesn't get it. He's sitting there. Doesn't he understand that my life is crumbling? I got angry, which a lot of us do. That was the first emotion. Then next emotion was I got jealous. I said, Oh, my gosh, I'm so jealous. I want what he has. Then that jealousy, my brain clicked on and that jealousy turned into a righteous jealousy.

Wait a second. He has it. He doesn't have it by luck. He has it because he worked for it. I can work for it. I used that as, I want what this guy has. I can get it. It was motivation at that point. That's a classic example of taking anger and putting a very meaningful motivation behind it so that you're not just shaking your fist at the clouds and being mad at somebody else, but you're actually letting your anger drive you and letting that get you to you want. That was a click-on moment for me because you know like I do, this great recession, COVID-19, you can take it all the way back to 9/11. That type of stuff is cyclical. There's a downturn, it gets better. We forget, it gets bad again. It gets better. I said to myself, I said, Man, the next time there's a chaos in the economy, the next time, I don't want to be right here. I want to be above the storm. Doing that starts today. It's these little choices that compound over each other over time. Before you know it, you look back and you go, Oh, my God, I don't even recognize that person I used to be.

That was the moment.

Yeah, see, for me, that moment was I got mad not only at what was going on, but I also got mad at my parents. I got mad at my grandparents. I was like, What the heck? I was like, You didn't teach me this? What's wrong with you? The problem was they didn't know. They had no idea about financial literacy. They just put their head down and grinded. Getting people to switch their belief systems. If I told you that target was going to have a 90% off sale, you'd lose your mind. But it's all that a recession is. That's all that it is. It's, Hey, real estate's got 70% off sale right now. Go buy everything you possibly can. You've been doing this for a while now, and you understand the emotional side of this. Is there an archetype? Is there someone who has a belief system or is running into certain things where you're just like, You know what? That's going to be a hard lift. That's a heavy lift. The juice might not be worth the squeeze if they're doing this emotional pattern.

Let me think through what you're saying. If I understand what you're asking me, the hardest person to convince is the prideful person. We all know pride goes before the fall. There's a person who is, and I'm going to continue on with the storm analogy. There's the person who is in the eye of the hurricane. All right? A lot of people, if you're not familiar with hurricanes, most people think the eye is the worst part. I'm from Florida. The eye is not the worst part. The eye is sunny and 70, the birds are chirping. You would be fooled to think Hey, weather's good. But if the wind blows, right? If the wind shifts to the right or to the left, you're actually now, if that eye shifts over this part right here, the outer band before the eye is the worst, right? The most severe weather, hurricanes, tornadoes dropping down. The person who has fooled themselves into thinking, Hey, I'm all right. Life seems good, but they're in that house of cards. They're in a very precarious situation. That's the person who's hardest to convince that, Hey, you're actually in a very dangerous spot. It's the person who's been Robin Peter to pay Paul.

It's the person who knows that they've been carrying this lease on. This leased vehicle is $1,000 a month, but that $1,000 a month has been keeping them from investing for retirement. But they've been floating the payments so they think it's okay. But really, they're only one, I'm going to say, one disaster away from pure chaos. A lot of people think, Oh, my gosh, Jay, that's so fatalistic. It's not. It's not. 40% of people- That's every day. Yeah. 40% of people will lose their job during their working career. You will lose a job at some point. The statistics around the amount of folks who will go on disability for a period of time because they get a diagnosis or they just step off the curb and break their leg. That's what I'm trying to convince people of is life is going to life. Something is going to happen that is very It's pretty normal, but feels like a chaos. It feels like a moment of pure catastrophic moment, and you have to be prepared for that. The hardest archetype is the person who looks around and goes, Hey, everything's just fine. You've heard the saying, The enemy of great is just fine.

The person who's like, Hey, it's sunny in '70. It seems like things are good. That is the hardest person to convince that, Hey, you could actually be in a much better situation. You just have to be willing to get uncomfortable to ultimately create more comfort than you've ever had.

I don't think people understand that comfort is not happiness. They are fundamentally different things, and people bump into that all the time. One of the things you're talking about is that things are changing, and we've lost 10% of the value in the last 12 months on the US dollar. We're heading towards an extinction level event for employees based on AI, globalization, and everything else. If I sit down and I give, and I'll give it to Robert's book or your book or Dave Ramsey's book, we sit there and say, Hey, spend less, do this, invest in this. We have the strategy. We have the how. We know what to do, but the rules are changing now. When you're seeing that the dollar is changing, and I will not get political, politics are changing, and employees, again, are heading toward an extinction level, then how is that changing the bogging for you? How are you advising people to say, Listen, you're running into this. Your emotions are one thing, and it's a huge part of it, to be able to mastery that, have emotional mastery for every part of your life. But also we're running into things as a society with birth rates and everything else that is fundamentally changing the economy.

How do you prepare people and tell people, Hey, this is the plan that works. This is what you need to do. What used to work, which is now like, You need to pivot over here. What are the things you're doing differently?

That's a good question, and I'm going to say something that's probably very opposite of what folks are going to think is the answer, which is principles don't change. That's why they're principles. Foundational principles do not change. No matter no matter what, the borrower is always going to be slave to the lender, period. When it comes to money, if I put somebody else in control, they will be in control. If I can put myself back in control, in a situation, there are certain things that are going to be out of our control. That's such as life. That's the emotional component of it is I can't control everything. That's like alcoholics anonymous 101. Grant me the serenity to change the things that I can and to understand the things I can't control. Paraphrase them. There are certain things that are external that I personally am not going to be able to control. I can't control the US dollar. I can't control whether or not Trump burps and the stock market drops. There's all these things that are completely out of my control, but there's a lot that's actually 100% in my control. That's what I do on a daily basis.

Those are my habits, those are my emotions, the things that I value in life. In times like this, specifically, that's what I tell people to cling tightly to. At the end of the day, no matter what, having some money saved is going to be a great thing. Now, we can talk about, Hey, when you get to a certain point, have some money here, have some money offshore. There's a lot. But at the end of the day, what's going to help you sleep at night is what I'm looking for. Because no one else is going to be there when you lay your head on your pillow, maybe your spouse is there and you at each other for a few minutes before your eyes close. But you're going to know, did I do everything I could? When the smoke signal went off, did I ignore it or did I pay attention to it? That's what matters. I think that's what gives people peace, to have options in life. That's all I'm trying to get people is more options. The truth is, and you know this, life isn't fair, and everybody's not going to have the same opportunities afforded them.

That's number one. If you can understand that life is not a competition, it It is a race, but it's not a race against other people. It's a race against yourself to get to your finish line to make your best time. That's number one. There's going to be people... If all hell breaks loose, there's going to be people who are just fine. There's going to be people who narrowly make it out, and there's going to be people who don't. That's it.

I also think there's people who don't make it that in the actual event, be it the hurricane or whatever it is, come back stronger later because they understand it's you against There is no one else coming. It's you against you, and one of you has to die. It just gets that simple. You've got to pivot out of your old patterns, and then you can get into it and go from there. There was an individual I met a while ago, and he was driving me, he was taking me, and I was going to the airport, and he was, I have three Tauro cars. I was like, I don't know what Tauro is. Can you walk me through that? He's like, I have three Tauro cars. I was like, That's amazing. I retire on entrepreneurs. Just keep me updated. Love you to reach out. He's now reached out. He goes, I sold my Tauro Empire, and now I own all these properties. This kid had no education. He was not an individual who had any backing. He barely was a citizen. He did it, and there's a way to do it. But he realized it was you against you, and he decided to pivot that out.

When people go into this idea, and there's a lot of talk about this, and this might be beyond the book, where we're having people aging out like we've never had before, and they're getting rid of their businesses. People are hunting after these businesses, and they're purchasing, and they're going from there. When someone does that, I've got obviously specific advice What are those things that you guys are seeing? Because again, you're on the talk show and you and Dave are doing it, and this is another book, and you're mastering your emotions. There's a lot of people that are running to the get-rich-quick stuff, which they've always done. What do you say to the people who are going after that idea? That, Hey, I'm going to go in. I understand I need to do something, so I'm going to go do this thing. What is your normal advice when you head towards those people?

It depends on what situation they're starting out in, first off. I would advise them, Man, please do your research. I had a guy call in the other day. He called in with a business deal. He'd been working in the business. It was him and the son of the owner. The owner didn't want to leave it to his son, so was willing to sell it to him. They were doing horse training. He said, Hey, I want to buy the business. We said, Tell us what you know about it. He says, Well, he has $8,000 in profit every month. He says, We can have that. The business itself, the land and the farm on it, it's worth about $750,000, but he's going to sell it for $650,000. Already, I'm thinking, Hey, something's not right about this. Why is he going to give you such a discount? So first thing is, Hey, do your due diligence. If it sounds too good to be true, it's likely too good to be true. Next, how are you going to structure the deal? A guy like this, he doesn't have the $650,000. So is there a way that you can structure it to say, Hey, I'm just going to pay you the profits until you make your money back, and then we'll do it like that.

So structure the deal in a way that it's not going to put you at so much risk. I would never tell a guy like that, Hey, go take a loan for $650,000, and then try your luck. So there's a lot to that. It would also be his first time as a business owner. I'm factoring all that in. If he had told me, Hey, I've had several businesses. I've been able to sell them off for profit. I'm looking at this one. It looks like a good deal. Already, my radar is going in a different direction. I'm thinking, Okay, this guy knows it. I guess what I'm saying is self-awareness is a big part of it. A lot of people want to get into entrepreneurship. A lot of people want to be their own boss, but it's more of the idea of it, Oh, I get to be my own boss. That means I get to make my own rules. That means I don't have to work 9: 00 to 5: 00. Yes, you do. You still have to work.

You do. You just work 5: 00 to 9: 00. That's the difference. You just reverse that. Yes.

And expertise matters even more. You have to know what the heck you're doing. My husband and I, we own an entertainment business in the cruiseship industry, and we've done that for 15 years. I tell people, it's not for the faint of heart. Getting into something on your own, everything is on you. The stakes are on you. To your point, you're working more than everybody else who's got the 9: 00 to 5: 00 because everything's on you. You can't take a day off. You can't take a sick day. You don't get days off, and you hardly get paid in the beginning.

Yeah, you're the to eat. That's the thing that most people don't understand. You are always the last to eat because your employees might be having steaks, but you're eating ramen noodles because you're the last to eat.

Exactly. People don't understand that. Really trying to set the expectation and set people up to say, Is this really for you? Talk to some folks who have done it. See if there's a way that you can get adjacent to it before you just jump into it. All of that is so, so, so, so important. But certainly, please don't go into debt buying a business because it looks good on paper if you don't have any experience in that industry.

Also, understand, are you an employee or do you have employee-like tendencies? They are not the same. They are not even remotely the same. Having certain questions that you want to ask beforehand. I know in your book, there's six very specific questions you broke down to really lock in your beliefs and to understand those. We could go through the entrepreneur side and rip all that apart because I love that. But I really want to get people to understand the belief system first. You've done this, not from, Hey, I read about it somewhere, but no, this was the exact questions that I went through with my husband. This is what we were doing. This is what got us out of debt. Can you walk me through those six questions?

Yeah. The book is really a diagnostic in story form. Over the years, I've done countless webinars, Bring People On that need help with their money, offer them free coaching in exchange for understanding how do you feel about money. In the beginning, we'll do a survey and say, Hey, tell me, out of all these emotions, tell me the one you identify most about money. Over and over, it comes back stress, anxiety, frustration, anger, fear, guilt, and shame. When I heard that, when I got the feedback time after time, I thought, Man, there's something here because I felt the same way. When I crafted the book, it was on those emotions we talk about. We talk about we go through fear, and we identify what it is. I show you what does it look like at work in all the different ways, because sometimes Sometimes these things are running in the background like a ticker tape, and we're not aware of it until somebody says, Hey, that thing that you just did, that's fear. I'll go through, I'll say frustration. That's frustration. You just didn't know it. You just thought it was part of your personality, and you let it go, and that's why you're stuck.

So fear, frustration. We go through pity, selfpity. We go through guilt and shame. I'm leaving something out off the top of my head, anger. We go through anger. And then the point that I want you to get to is acceptance. And so as I go through all those, we'll call negative emotions, for lack of a better word, they can be positive. I show you how to turn them from negative to positive. Very much so.

Rage against a machine said it. Anger is a gift. It's a gift. If you can learn a weapon, it's an absolute gift.

Anger, yes. Out of all those, anger is the one that is probably the most powerful because I know anger is a cry for justice.

It's a fuel source. Yes.

That's what you want. We just got to wield it in the proper way to your point.

I always talk about this. Anger, think of it like a football game. Angle will get you to the five-yard line. It's going to get you. It won't get you across it, but it'll get you across that field. The thing that I'd love to talk about is fear. There's a dear friend of mine, self-made billionaire, and we were sitting down and we were going, we were about to do this to you, we were about to buy two hotels, and he's like, What's going on? I'm like, Terrified. He's like, Really? I go, Dude, I'm absolutely terrified. He's like, Awesome. I love that. I was like, What do you mean? He goes, You're going to be afraid, period, nonstop. You cannot get that out. That's hard-coated in who you are as a bald pink monkey walking around on this planet. You are going to be angry, just excited. You're going to be afraid, accept it. But you get to choose what you're going to be afraid of. Are you going to be afraid of being poor and broke and not having XYZ residual income? Or are you going to weaponize it to say, Hey, I'd rather be afraid of this, that, and the other?

You get to choose that and harness it just like you would do anger. Would get people going to, Hey, these are negative emotions or these are positive emotions, just like money, they're tools, and you get to use them towards that. When you're doing this with a spouse, though, since I don't have that right now, how do you go through that process and how do you deal with when it's someone else's stuff? You might be on the frustration-anger loop, but they may be on the self-pity loop. How do you work through that and find the balance?

Well, you do have to work. I mean, as a married unit, you're together, but you're still separate people, and so each person still has to do their work. For Sam and I, he struggled most with the guilt and shame. He brought the majority of the debt into the marriage based on choices he made, Berklee College of Music, University of Miami. $230,000 student loans is a lot. My side was more... It was a struggle. My side was the self-pity, was the anger, frustration. That was mine. That was mine to work through. Now, I'm not going to sit here and act like it was pretty because it wasn't. Those were some tough years of our life, but hindsight's 2020. Being able to look back and pull out the gems and pull out the things to learn from is really what matters. We did that. I think both of us dealt with the same amount of fear. It can take many, many forms. I go through several of the different forms. Obviously, fear of change, fear of the unknown, fear of failure, fear of success. I go through all of those and what they look like. But at the end of the day, the thing I want to teach folks through that is fear, when you think about it, when I think about it in terms of money, it's a negative expectation of the future.

That's really what it is. It never exists in the now. It exists in what will happen out there then. Correct. I really liken it to ChatGPT. Fear can only, just like ChatGPT, it's only existing on what you feed it, what's already out there, what's in the ether, what's been told to it. Most of us operate like that. We only know what we saw. We only knew what we grew up with. We only knew what so and so did to us. Our fear operates on that. There's no new information added until we turn around and say, Actually, let me look out and let me change that. That's the thing. Sorry. No, go ahead.

Chatgpt, it's AI, it's artificial intelligence. The problem is that's not what AI stands for. Ai stands for always incorrect because it's using data that's stuck in this little box and you got to feed it in that different data. But when you're going through and you're dealing with, he's on his, thanks again, Sam, for bringing all that debt. We're just bashing Sam, sorry. You're getting all the debt and you guys are rock and rolling through it, and you're going through your stuff, and you guys are bashing against each other. How is a couple, do you guys find that, I love you, you're my home, I'm not going anywhere. How do you reconnect to that? How do you establish that relationship where there's times where your fear might be acting out and be like, Oh, well, it's him. If you had married so and so, that it was the Prince of blah, blah, blah, We wouldn't have any. How do you go through those loops and say, You know what? No, this is my person. I'm in my foxhole with my person. I'm not leaving. How do you survive those relationships? Because I think it's the number two indicator of divorce is financial.

Yeah. That's when we're shifting out money conversation. At that point, it goes, at that point, it really isn't about money. You think it is, but at this point, we're talking about commitment. We're talking about goodwill. We're talking about how you view that person and really the value that they hold in your life. For Sam and I, in the very beginning, I'll be honest, for us, it was pretty natural to say, What's yours is mine, what's mine is yours. There is no I or you, it's we. I teach people that I say, Hey, if you can go into marriage with a we mindset, it's going to very much help you stop yourself from pointing the finger, because that's the first shift. It's not easy. I will admit for some couples, that is not easy because they didn't grow up that way or that's very different from how they were brought up or how they view their independence. But if you can do that, I think that that is so, so key, because now it's a problem that we're solving together, and now the individual is not We can gang up. We, as people, can gang up against the real issue, which is the debt or the bad business plan or whatever the thing is, versus you ganging up against your spouse or your partner saying, You're the problem.

Shifting that in our minds so, So, so, so key. I'd say that's a big part of it. Number two, we're human, so we're going to have those moments where we forget what I just said, and it does shift to, I can't believe it did this. A piece of advice that I got that I hold very tightly because it It's so important is if you can remember goodwill towards your spouse, in the heat of the argument, in the middle of the frustration, if you can look over at that person and ask yourself, Do I really think that they're intending to hurt me? Do I really think that they're intending to stop me, to push me down? Or do I think that they really do have goodwill for me? This is just a bad moment. This is just a moment where they're doing the best they can and I'm doing the best I can, and we're just both on a struggle bus. If you can look at that person and go, You know what? They have goodwill for me. They do. That changes everything.

Yeah, I don't think anyone wakes up and says, Hey, listen, I woke up this morning and whatever, dating Susie. God, I hate Susie. I want to make Susie's life hard. I don't think anybody does. If you're in that relationship, please just leave. Right.

That's an It's a relationship.

Yeah, 100%. But if you're in that situation and you're like, If I have this idea that so-and-so is not purposely trying to hurt me, but they're going to do it anyway because they're human. Consciously or unconsciously, they're going to do something. It doesn't put the toilet seat down, doesn't put the dishes away. Whatever that litany is, it's going to happen. Having that filter of, okay, they probably need to do it on purpose, but they're men and they're dumb, so let me just walk through this. It's okay. You can put it in the sink, honey. It's okay. Oh, my God. Doing that. Then also, I love what you said. It's very much us versus whatever the problem is. We're going to unify against whatever it is. It's us versus that. Yes. As you go through this and go back in the money stuff, once you are a person who has gotten rid of almost half a million dollars worth debt. Now all of a sudden you're like, Hey, we don't have that on us anymore, but it doesn't stop here. Now we start the investment process. Now we start going after those things. I have found investments are very unique based on your personality.

For example, I am not a cryptocurrency guy. I learned Melvin Simon, who was the 64th richest person on the planet at the time. He goes, I don't invest in things I don't understand. He goes, Don't ever do it. If you don't understand it, do not do it. When NFTs came out, I was like, and I still don't understand crypto. I'm an IT guy. I still don't understand Bitcoin. I could have bought it when it was 100 bucks. I still don't understand it. What do you do when you're like, Okay, we paid off this debt. We came out of UM. We survived the hurricanes. South Florida person as well. You're going in that environment. What do you start investing in and how do you start filtering through your investments now because you have a certain level of success and you don't have this wall of debt pulling you down? How do you start researching and evaluating what to invest in to create that financial freedom?

Well, I love what you said. I am 100% in agreement. I don't invest in anything I don't understand, and I would never advise anyone else to do that either. As a matter of fact, I say to people all the time, Don't do something because you heard Jade say it. Don't do it just because you said, Well, Jade said it. I trust her. I'm going I'm not going to do it. No, please do your research. I'm going to tell people all the time, My path is to make it as simple as possible so that anyone feels like they can do it. Because I grew up in a household, I don't know if I mentioned this to you when we talked before, but I moved around a lot as a kid because of my dad's job. The time period in which I grew up and the folks around me when I grew up really affected the way I viewed money. Whenever we would move to a town, most of the I'd be the only Black kid in the classroom, and a lot of times in the entire school. So it was just me. Then on TV at the time, there wasn't a whole lot of representation.

So I didn't see wealthy Black people. I just didn't see them. I saw people making it paycheck to paycheck, middle class, just like my family. My extended family lived halfway across the country, and if they were doing well, I never saw it. Okay? So growing up like that, the only thing I saw was the Huxtables. It was like, Okay, is this possible? I didn't know. I'd never heard of it. I remember being at a party. Fast forward to me being in my early 20s, I remember being at a party, and there was a bunch of men, I'm just going to say, there's a bunch of white men standing talking, and I heard they were talking about investments. My first instinct was I could never be in that conversation. That was my first instinct. Then, brain clicked in and I said, You know what? I need to be in that conversation. I walked over and against all my fears, I stood there with my drink in my hand and I acted like I knew what they were talking about. I listened and I learned. That's what I want people to understand is you can learn this.

If you can trust yourself enough to know that you can be educated on something, that's half the battle. Because so many of us go, they hear a couple of words, that's jargon, I don't understand, and they tune out. Please don't do that. It's okay if you need to hear something once and then hear it again and then hear it again for it to click, because for a lot of people, it is like that. When I teach it, I try to teach it in the simplest way possible because I don't want anybody to feel like it's out of reach. It's so simple. I explain to them. I'm like, Okay, first off, let's keep it simple. Most of us have some investment vehicle available to us through our job. It's a 401k. I just really try to explain it a way. I don't want to make them sound like they're stupid. I don't want to make it sound like they're in kindergarten and I'm teaching it, but I do want to make it feel like it's very accessible. I teach mutual funds. Index funds are fine, that's fine. But I really teach diversification. Try to spread it out over the four different types.

I want you to do growth and income. I want you to do growth. I want you to do aggressive growth. I want you to do international International. Balance it out. 25% of whatever you're doing into each of them, that's great. That gives you the diversification. I teach people, Hey, go back and look at the track record. Look at it over the past. See how long the fund has been in existence. Has it done well? That's a pretty good indicator that it will continue to do well if you're diversified. Just simple techniques. Then I say, Hey, if you don't understand, ask someone who does. The internet is out there. There's no excuse not to be educated today. But for some of us, we learn differently, and we want the validation of a human being saying, Yes, that's right. You understand it. If you need a teacher, reach out to a teacher. But for me, it's very simple. Everything's automated for me. The money goes I don't even see it. I take a look at it every once in a while. Obviously, I am a long-term investor. I set it, I forget it. I'm not a trader.

I don't do the day trade. I don't do the crypto like you. That's what I try to teach people is this is a long-term game. It's very boring, and it should feel boring. It should feel like I didn't even do anything today, Jade. That's right.

That's how it should feel. It's just something It's all right. I like what you're talking about, the education. There's a saying in the military, first time, every time, which means you do it right the first time, and it works every time. That's your goal. That's never happened in my life with anything I've ever done. Whenever someone taught me something, I was like, huh? I have to go through it over and over and over and over and having that and understanding that. For example, you do mutual funds and all that. I am the opposite. I will not touch that because my thing is I have no control over that. I'm going to go into real estate because for me, real estate never hits zero. Unless there's a sink hole, which there's insurance for that. That's where I'm comfortable, where I got a buddy of mine. He's like, I don't understand why you don't do crypto. I got another buddy of mine who does day trading, and he crushes it. He's lost all of his hair, but he crushes it. I was like, Dude, that's your gift, man. God bless you. Finding your lane and what resonates with you.

If you love basketball, mazel. If you love baseball, mazel. But if you love baseball, don't go play basketball and vice versa. It is what it is. Stay in your lane. As you're going through this and you're walking through this, and there's belief systems that hold people back. There's also, and I love you talk about your family, there's also your environment. I grew up in Hialea, where I'm not religious in any way, shape, or form. My last name is Schwartz. I was one of two Jewish kids in the entire environment. I was right next to Opalaca. We were in a very different environment. If you're from South Florida, you will understand where I'm going. I do. There was Carroll City and Opalaca right next to me, and I was the one little Jewish kid there. I didn't see wealth like everyone else did if you had my last name. I didn't understand that. I was the richest kid in our community because we had carpet. So it was a different world. Expect that what got you here didn't get you there. I got a question about this. People talk about, I don't know how to do it.

I'm like, yes, you do. Because Michelangelo said, I didn't create David. I just took off all the pieces that weren't David. Start with what you don't know. When someone has this limiting belief and they go in like, I can't do this. I'm from a minority. I already have the things stacked against me because I'm a minority, I'm a female, I wasn't educated on this, and you have all of these things, when do you sit there and go, but then let that go and say, But I have to do this? How do you find that? Because there's such a limiting lock-in on that limiting belief.

I talk about this in the book. We have to be curious. We have to be. It's very easy when you're from a situation like you described, when you're from any marginalized situation, even if it's not marginalized, even if you just find yourself comparing yourself to something on social media. Okay? Anytime you're in a situation where you're looking over there and you're going, They have something I want. I want it. They deserve it. It seems like I don't deserve it, or, I don't understand why they deserve it, and I don't deserve it, or, Do I deserve this? Whenever you're in that situation of less than or you're viewing yourself as less than, you've got to change your mind. What most of us do is we'll fall into a a couple of areas. Well, first one is you can tell if you're in that area, if you have a really hard time celebrating that. If you have a hard time celebrating people who are doing well, if you have a hard time acknowledging people who have accomplished things that you've never accomplished, that's a flag. That's an indicator. Something needs to switch on here. If you're a person who has a hard time, you can name everybody else's blessings, for lack of a better word, and accomplishments, but you can't name your own.

The light switch needs to turn on. If you're a person who becomes very passive-aggressive in the face of other people's success, light switch needs to turn on. If you're the person going, Well, if I made $300,000 a year, I'd be doing that, too. Or if you're the person who says, Well, it must be nice. Everybody can't afford to take vacations like that. You're that snied, backhanded compliment. Be honest with yourself, first off. Then what has to happen from then is we have to go from being very critical to being very curious. We have to be willing to go to people and say, Hey, what degree is required to do what you do? You have to be able to go up to people and say, Hey, I've never written a business plan before. What's the first step? How do you do it? We have to be willing to ask questions because you and I both know unless you're a complete jerk, a lot of successful people love to answer questions. They love to talk about themselves. They love to be, Yeah, sure. Let's sit down. Let's get coffee. Be willing to ask. Because if you don't ask, if I had not walked up into that conversation with those men who seemed like they knew more than me, were smarter than me, none of that was true.

They had just asked the right questions in life and been willing to get the answers. That's the only difference. Are you willing to ask? Are you willing to receive the answer? Period. That is the only difference. You're smart. You can understand this.

I also think it matters not only what you're saying, but who is surrounding you. What are they saying? Because if you're around people who are saying, Oh, if I had this, I would do that, You're in the wrong room.

Period.

The example I give on this all the time is Ryan Reynolds from Blade. There was a movie, he was in Ryan Reynolds, and he was in this scene, and I was like, Man, he's in good shape. I was like, Wait, that's possible? That's a thing? I could get in shape like that? I was like, Okay, I need to talk to somebody now. That became the narrative that different the mindset. I did have friends who were less that... I mean, they did have bodies of gods. It's too bad it was Buddha. We're round, round as they shaped. That's the shape they were in. Oh, I was like, I can't go eat with these guys anymore. I have to change some patterns. Getting people to change the patterns. If there was one pattern or one path that you would want people to go through right now, because again, you hear it every day. You're talking about financial literacy. I do love that you mentioned that successful people, we want to talk about it because the problem is we want to talk about it all the time, and our friends are annoyed by us talking about it all the time.

They're on that checklist. Yeah, they go away. They're like, Hey, I don't want to hear about your investment right now, but it's really cool. Like, Dude, we're hiking. Can you shut up for a minute? I I was like, Oh, man. Getting those different people. But as you're going through this and you're gift shifting yourself and you're looking for things in a partner and you're looking for things in yourself, what are the work that's been proven to do right now as you go through it? Say, Hey, you know what? I'm going into this. This is what I'm doing. I found Jade, her book talks about belief, where everyone talks about strategy, which is useless unless you have your beliefs locked in and understanding the emotional side of it, which I think people should read about that first before the tactical stuff because it doesn't matter. What What are the things that people can start doing now? Is it journaling or what are they can do right now to start gear shifting?

I do talk about the fact that systems matter, atomic habits. We know about systems, and it's the same thing with money. I can teach you this stuff all day, the emotional side of it, but at the end of the day, when it's time to lock in and actually do it. Yeah, there are daily habits that matter. Depending on the emotion that we're talking about changes what I might have you do. For instance, if you're a person who has dealt heavily with different fears, yeah, I'm going to tell you, mental check-ins matter. It matters for you to check in with yourself. Some people, because of traumas that they've experienced around money, maybe they grew up with homelessness, maybe they grew up with food scarcity Maybe they grew up with a dad who was abusive and lorded over the money. Those are very real things that are going to impact the choices that you make today. Much of that you can't walk through alone. Much of that, you do need the help of a counselor. I suggest that. If you're a person who has a major financial turnaround that has to take place, in the case of me, maybe you're paying off significant amounts of debt.

Yeah, you need ways to track it. Tracking is so important for your psyche. You want to You want to be able to... You want the dopamine hit. You want the thing that says, Hey, I was successful. Now I want to do it again. And that could be something as simple as journaling. So you can go back and look. It could be something... Anything that's measurable, you need to be doing it if you're trying to stay motivated. Measurable is so important for staying motivated. So I tell people that. Make one of those little trackers. The same way if you're... I was running a marathon back in 2024, and one of my favorite things on the app was it would tell you the streak of how many days you've run in a row. And you don't think that that's going to be a big deal, but it becomes a huge deal. You're like, Oh, I can't miss a day. I can't. And not only the tracking of the streaks, but to be able to say, Well, when I started, I was only running three miles. Now I'm running 13. Holy crap. So being able to see that progress, being able to measure it, being able to keep track, that awareness is so key if you're trying to stay motivated on a journey.

So really, depending on what it is that you're doing. And I go through all of that in the book, whether it's daily habits, mental check-ins, tracking your progress, or even creating different milestones, all of that is so important, and I talk about all that in the book.

I also think, because I'm a triathlete, when you're doing these things, sharing that tracking with an accountability partner, that's celebrated for you. That's it there. They ping you like, Dude, did you really go 16 days? I'm like, Absolutely. The other thing is, and I reference it towards running, if you're doing a marathon or triathon or anything like that, there is going to come a point where your body is going to shut down. It's going to come a point where you're going to be in pain. It's a thousand % going to happen. When I was being trained on how to do this, is you sit there and you acknowledge it and you're like, Yeah, I can't hurt. Absolutely, I can feel the desire to quit and want to shut down. I just don't get to feel it right now. I get to feel it later when I'm meeting the daughter. But right now, I got to push through it because I made a commitment. It's like, so you can feel the fear, you can feel the doubt, you can be scared, you can have the insecurities. You just can't do it right now. You just push it off to the side and we deal with it at another time where it's more appropriate.

It's the dumb thing from what was a movie Predator, where the guy gets shot and he's like, I really don't have time to bleed. He's like, I got time to bleed right now. I'll bleed later. It's not critical. I'm running. It hurts. It's running. It is what it is. When you're going through this and you're trying to find a way and you're working with... You've done yourself. What are the things you look with? Because now you've done it with a partner, which most people have a hard enough time doing it with themselves. But what are the things that if you could have gone back before you had connected with Sam, connected with Sam, and you're like, Hey, these are the things that I've learned that I need to not only work on myself, but what I need to look with a partner to have that connection to say, Hey, how do we work through these things? How do we talk about that? Because a lot of people in my world, they don't believe in prenups. Why would I do a prenup? I could just put it in trusts. I could put all the trust in the Cook Islands.

You can't touch it anyway. They've already weaponized that because these are people who have made an immense amount of money. When you're going into this, which I don't feel as healthy, let me preference that. I've had to coach them out of that. Do it for 20 years. Anyway, when you connect with people and you have those conversations, what are the things that you look into the partner? Like, Hey, I'm doing this work. What are the things you look for in the partner to do it so you can get through some of this stuff?

If I'm coaching someone, I'm looking for someone who, and I have this, which is why it worked for Sam and I, you want somebody who's interested in bettering themselves. You have to have somebody who's interested in doing work. Some people aren't. Some people, you've heard it, I've always been like, this is the way I do it. It's not going to change. It is what it is. The it is what it is mentality. That is like, Oh, gosh. You have to have somebody who is willing to change. You have to have somebody who's willing to be able to say with sincerity, I was wrong. Because some people can't say that. You say like, Oh, well, Yeah. Some people cannot admit when they're wrong. They just can't. So these are big things. And those are personality traits, character traits, really. But on a more practical level, what the person needs to be doing is having conversations that will allow those things to be revealed. You need to strike up that conversation in the dating process pretty early on. I say it like this. I say, When you're dating someone, what I would do and what I did is you bring up the conversation of money, but not to share your viewpoints.

You view it up to put the ball on their court because when you like someone, you change your answers. What you don't want to do is say, Oh, gosh, what are your views on money? I hate debt. I just stay away from credit cards. Don't say that because then they're going to go, Oh, yes, me too. Me too. Especially if they really like you. What you do is you just say, Hey, what's your philosophy on money? Just let them talk. Just let them say it. If they could say something that's completely opposite from you, don't stop them. You want to hear this. You want to hear everything. You want to say, I'm thinking about visiting a counselor. Have you ever seen anybody? How do you feel about checking in? How What are you feel about.? Understand, these are going to be things that tell you, are they interested in self-improvement? Are they interested in bettering themselves? Do they have a lot of pride when it comes to unveiling themselves? Are they forthcoming? These are the things that you want to know because those are the hardest things to change in someone. Somebody who doesn't want to change is going to be very hard to change.

Or that's the best advice I can give you.

Yeah, it's the understanding that therapy is a gift you give yourself, and I absolutely think everyone should do it. The shortcuts that I use in this world, one of them is escape rooms. If you're getting serious with someone by about the third date, go lock two of you in the escape room. Go to one of those things. It's a fun date idea. See how the person reacts when there's time pressure. See how you react when there's time pressure. See how you guys work together. Huge. The other thing is there's a game, and I know it's not connected to your environment, sorry, but there's a game called Cash Flow. You played it. It's like monopoly. It's made by Robert. You play Cash Flow with each other. You will learn more about yourself and the other person. Do those two things, completely change the environment of who you're going for and what you're going into and how it works going forward. Now that you guys have and you've done this, and you've had a level of success that most people aren't used to, and they haven't had that because it's a blessing to have what you have, to talk show and the success, and the marriage, and running a marathon, and doing all this.

What's next? What is the next thing that you're sitting there going, Okay, I've done this. What is my next hurdle?

Right now, I love that question. Again, I think the answer is not going to be what people think. For me, I'm always looking for peace. I'm always looking for the next level of peace and freedom. My goals are rarely monetary. They're rarely career-driven. I look and I go, Where's an area that I feel like I'm not as free as I want to be? Where's an area that feels like I don't have as much peace as I want to have? Where's an area that I feel like I don't have as many options as I want to have? That's going to be the guiding light right there. That's how I do it. I had a couple of projects on the burner in… We're in 2026 now, Jade. I had a couple of projects on the burner in 2025, and they were really cooking. In the final quarter of 2025, they were really supposed to pop off, and they didn't. When you get to that point where you're just pushing and pushing and pushing, and it's not happening, and you have to make that choice, is it not happening because I'm not pushing hard enough, or is it not happening because it's just not supposed to happen, and I just need to take all the signs.

I decided that this is taking. It's taking everything. It's taking all my peace. Sometimes, to quote Mr. Wonderful, sometimes you have to just take something out back and shoot it. It's hard to do that, but once it happens, you're like, Oh, yes. Yeah, okay. That was right. That was the right thing to do. I want more of that. Right now, I'm looking for the things that I need to let go of so that I can have more peace. That's what my focus is on right now. For some of us, it could be, What do I need to let go of? Do I need to let go of debt? Okay, yes. Now I can start thinking about the numbers. For some of us, it's, do I need to let go of a relationship that's very toxic? Yes, I do. Now, and maybe again, I need to start thinking about the numbers because maybe you were living together or maybe your lives were intertwined in that way. I I usually let those things be the guiding light of what do I need to pursue next. I've got young kids, they're five and seven. For me, I'm looking at, okay, I would like to be locked in a little bit more with them in this season.

I've had seasons where I'm very career, career, career. I need to lock in a little bit more there. That's where my eyes are right now.

When you do that, because again, with kids, five and seven, the statistics is you really only have them for, what is it, 19 years total of their lives, the amount of time, because you have the first 18, and then collectively about a year left out of that. Once they hit that teenage year, that 13-ish year, you become an ATM and an Uber driver for them. It's a really small pocket of time that you have for them. Most of the people at first were like, Well, I just want to go to Costco and get more duct tape, so they just leave me alone. They're quiet. This is the most precious time that you have with them. You've spent a lot of seasons helping other people, listening to other people, walking them through those things. What are the things that you have found that's proven, that has, after seeing it over and over and over again, that has proven to create success not only in themselves, but also in their financials? Because people are going to want me to ask that. When I told people that I was interviewing you, we were going to come on the show, they're like, What is the one thing?

I was like, First off, you all need to stop asking me that. You just don't ask questions. It's never just one thing. You need to stop that. But with that said, what are the things that you've seen overall, the proven things that work?

The person who stops caring what other people think is a superhero. The person who completely could give two rips about what anyone else thinks is the person who will win and will succeed, period. Because we do so much with the intent of what somebody else will see and how they'll judge it, how they'll perceive it. Oh, goodness. The minute you let go of that, it's like, Yeah, I'm going to do what I want to do. Think about how many times we're We choose a career path because we're thinking about what our parents are thinking. We buy a car because we're thinking about how it'll look in the parking lot next to Bob's car who works in accounting. What people will think about the fact that we picked up a side hustle. Well, if they find out I'm driving Uber, then they'll think… So you don't pick up a side hustle, even though you know that's just the thing you need. The minute you stop caring… Because here's the thing, no one is checking for you. No one is thinking about you. We're so self-centered, Charles, that we think folks are thinking about us all the time.

They are not thinking about you. They are trying to live their own life with their own stress, their own families, their own worries, their own paycheck. At the moment you go, Okay, I was being extremely self-centered thinking that the whole world was watching me. Now you just do what you want to do, and you make the choices that you want to make, and you follow the path that you know you're supposed to follow, and you don't give a beep what anybody else thinks.

I think it goes back to everything that we're talking about. It's not the strategy. It's getting after and going after the belief system, going after your emotional, going after your mental status when they do that, which is why I was excited to have you on to talk about the book. If people wanted to track you down and people wanted to find you, and wanted to connect it and learn more about this, because I want people to understand, you already have every answer on the planet on how to invest, You have access to a phone, you have access to Google, you can build a nuclear submarine. You don't need more bloody tactics. You need to get this other stuff. That's why I was so excited about the book and talking about it. It's like, you need to get your emotional, you need to get your mindset, you need to understand your identity. You need to lock that in first because then the strategies work. If someone wants to track this down and get a copy or get in touch with you or do all of that, what's the best way to go? Hold a view, what's the best way to connect?

Yes. The book is what no one tells you about money. Obviously, you can pick that up anywhere books are sold, I'm on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Target. Com, ramsey solutions. Com is where you get it through my company, where I work. I'm on all the socials, but if you want to interact with me directly, go on Instagram because I'm there. I'm in the comments, I'm in the DMs. I I give. I know, Charles, you are a giver. I give all the game that's in this book. I give it on the internet. I remember when I couldn't afford to buy a book that somebody was buying, selling. If you can't afford the book, just follow me on Instagram, and I will spill it out over time. I promise you that I will because I want you to have the information, and I want you to have the tactics to really, really win. It's not numbers, it's not behavior. It's you on the inside. I'm going to help you see it and diagnose it. I'm to give you the antidote to fix it and work through it so that all those things that you thought were negatives become positives.

I also say with that, because we've both written books, for those who haven't written books, the amount of insecurity that goes in when we're writing a book, we want to just overload it with value. We're like, Oh, my God, I didn't give enough. I didn't give enough. So we're constantly just adding more and adding more and adding more. I'm very expensive to work one-on-one with. But if you just bought my book for whatever it is, you're going to get more value than spending that month with me. It's all there. So please understand, just get the day book, please. Anyway, Jay, thank you so much. I really appreciate you for coming on and sharing all this with us and being so vulnerable about everything.

Yeah, it was my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. This was a great conversation.

Absolutely. That's a wrap on another episode of the Proven Podcast. Money isn't math, it's mindset. Strategy doesn't work until belief does. Stop blaming the system. Start owning your decisions. It's because when you master your emotions, your money finally follows. And then remember, if your progress isn't intentional, it's just debt in disguise.