Derrick Kinney (03:07):

And somehow I got connected with a guy who knew literally every advisor in Nashville. And as we began to talk, I thought this is a godsend. I mean, this guy knows everybody, I’m going to pay him for introductions. I’ll give him a part of the business. And out of the blue one day he hits me beside of my head and says, “Derrick, why are you doing this?” He said, “You’re 50 years old. Most people at 50, they’re pressing the brake. Instead, you’re slamming your foot on the gas pedal. What in the world are you doing?” And now I got to tell you, it really offended me because I’m like, dude, just help me grow my business for goodness sake. You’re going to come out of this well, I’m going to do well.

Derrick Kinney (03:45):

But I felt this voice in inside say, Derrick, when you go on your sabbatical, you need to ask yourself that question. And the question was, what is it that you really want for yourself? So, now there I am. I’m in Boston into the W hotel and I began to write out what are the things that I would enjoy doing in this next chapter of my life. And I wrote out things like write a book, launch a podcast, speak, write, coach. And on that list, surprisingly enough was not being a financial advisor. And I really had to take a step back and ask, why is that not on there?

Derrick Kinney (04:21):

It wasn’t that I didn’t love my clients. Didn’t love serving them, but I felt like I was going through the motions. It was 25 years of building this business. I wanted something brand new. So, I called my wife and said, “Honey, hope you’re sitting down. I think the time is now to sell it.” She was like, “Derrick, you’ve always been on yourself. I’m going to bet on you again.” And that put in motion basically a six month process to sell a nationally recognized practice that I was deeply questioned on by friends and family. But I knew in my heart it was a change I had to make to achieve the big goal that I really wanted for myself.

Clay Finck (04:55):

I love that. And it sounds like you definitely have a ton on your plate with the podcast in the book and everything going on. And I love that you really just followed your heart and went exactly with what you wanted and didn’t really care what other people thought about the journey you wanted to go down. Now, you found a creative way to differentiate yourself from all the other financial planners when you’re in that business. And you say that any business leader can use the same trick that you use for your own business. Can you talk to our audience a little bit about what you did?

Derrick Kinney (05:29):

Yeah. I just didn’t know it was a trick back in the day and here’s what happened. I sort of stumbled into this. So, when I graduated from college, I went to the local university here in Arlington, Texas, and I went to work for a small software company. I’m passed over for raises. My boss would tell all the employees, Hey, I know it’s Friday at five, but tomorrow, Saturday, I know you probably have plans. Sorry, it’s going to be a work day. He bounced our check twice. It was a terrible situation. And I reached a fork in the road where I had to realize, do I want to go through the rest of my life waiting for someone else, like a boss, like him to tell me what my value and worth is, or am I willing to bet on myself and say, you know what, let me start my own financial planning business.

Derrick Kinney (06:11):

And whether I make money or not, at least I’m betting on my own value. And that’s the path that I took. And so I’d only taken one finance class in college, but I studied part-time every evening. Every weekend, got all my licenses, my designations. And all that time I had a passion for education. I really enjoyed recognizing great teachers. And I would go back to my Alma mater high school and I would recognize student leaders. So, I would give out a $25 gift card once a month to an outstanding student leader as selected by the teachers. And I’d give a $50 gift card to an outstanding teacher as recognized by the principal. And 75 bucks is nothing but to these people, the students and the teachers, it was like they won the lottery for goodness sakes. So, I would get a picture with them and just get to breathe affirmation into these students and these teachers and just say, hey, I really appreciate the impact that you’re having on this generation of students.

Derrick Kinney (07:07):

And we would get those pictures in the paper and so forth. And what began to happen is what really shocked me and became, like you said, almost a secret weapon. And that was, clients began to call me and say, “Derrick, Hey, we saw picture in the paper, giving money away at these schools. We like to have you as our financial advisor.” And I said, “Oh, okay, wait a minute. I dig all that. And I’m glad that you like education like I do. But candidly speaking, why did you select to me as your financial advisor?” And they said, “Derrick, we know who you are. We see your name in the community. We see how you make an impact. And you care about the things that we care about. We want you to invest our money, because anybody can manage our money, but not anybody can make a difference in the community like you can.”

Derrick Kinney (07:47):

And what I realized was that these people wanted somebody who they could trust and know and like to manage their portfolio, but they wanted to be part of something bigger. And from then on we began to make that part of our unique proposition. I now call it our generosity purpose, that a part of all of our profits went to support local education, helping student leaders, helping recognize great teachers. And what happened was 10 years, 20 years later, people still come back to me. Some of them became my clients who were the very students I gave a gift card to, because they had belief breathed into them.

Derrick Kinney (08:22):

And so what I would tell any business owner listing right now is look one of the best ways to decommoditize yourself. If you’ve got any product or service, there’s no shortage of comparison of you to somebody else. But if you can begin to give and support a cause that you care deeply about, or even better, one that your customers or your clients care deeply about, they’ll not only pay more money to work with you, but they’ll have stickier relationships, they’ll refer more people to you, and they’ll be happier, longer lasting customers because they get a great product and service, but they’re part of something bigger. And they know that you and them are aligned with the same values.

Clay Finck (09:00):

I love how you put such a big emphasis on giving, like anyone else I like making money and getting that paycheck, but there’s nothing like that feeling of giving. For me personally, I also get a massive level of satisfaction and joy when I give my to time or a monetary contribution to a cause I believe in. So, I really like the emphasis you put on giving to your community.

Derrick Kinney (09:22):

Well, I appreciate that. And one of the things that led me to write this book was so many people think about giving as it’s win, lose. So, for example, like let’s say Clay, that I was going to give my money to a cause that you believe in. Well, money leaves my account and it goes to you. So, I lose you win. And that’s how giving is sort of characterized. But what I want to tell people, and this is for anybody who’s ever been told, they’re not smart enough. They’re not good enough. They’ve made bad financial decisions in the past. They feel like they can’t rebound from. I want this to be a reset for them. And that is you can use money and the generosity purpose, that cause you care deeply about, the wrong you want to right, the injustice that you see in the world and actually use it to make more money.

Derrick Kinney (10:09):

That’s the beauty of this whole concept is you can actually let that be a catalyst. And we’ll talk more about this later, but that’s the catalyst of how we rethink money. It’s no longer just go make a lot of money. Now go make a lot of money, because of the good that you can do in your local community and the world. And it doesn’t have to be big time money. It could be $5. It could be $10, but it’s enough to motivate you to make more money and do more good, to really make an impact in people’s lives.

Clay Finck (10:38):

I liked how in your book you hit on all the important pieces of a successful financial plan while also making it a very simple and enjoyable read. In addition to adding some of your own twists, such as the importance of giving and living a fulfilling life. I like to ask you, why do you believe that money is such a taboo subject that isn’t talked about enough?

Derrick Kinney (11:00):

You know, it’s interesting. And this is one of the main reasons why I was even thinking about writing this book was in culture today there’s a vibe out there that says, if you make a lot of money, you could be a bad person. If you run a successful business, if you’re the CEO of a large, well established firm and you’re making billions of dollars, you could be a bad person. And what I find is inside the circle of people that have money that are working hard, they take the risks to be the entrepreneur. They take the lumps to grow their own business. Inside those circles, that conversation is taking place. The conversation where people say money is bad is on the outside looking in. It’s sort of like lobbing those stones at the end of the windows and saying, well, because I can’t have money, therefore, anybody that has a lot of it, they must be really, really bad.

Derrick Kinney (11:56):

And one example I would give you is think back to 2020, COVID had just hit. Now we’ve got shutdown orders. People’s buying behaviors are dramatically changing. The local mom and pop shops where people used to go to buy things, even restaurants, now it’s all home delivery or it’s having somebody delivered to their house. I know my business thrive because of Amazon. I would hear that ring doorbell several times a day, and I was thankful for it. But many people do the comparison, Derrick, how can Jeff Bezos make so much money during the time when so many people aren’t doing well financially? And I can see the point of that. I understand that many people were hurting and some of them still are hurting financially. They struggled to put food on the table, to pay for their medical bills, to fund their goals.

Derrick Kinney (12:47):

And I understand the pain of that, but I also recognize that Jeff Bezos was providing a very valuable service to people at a time when many businesses needed it the most. Now can we evaluate and say, is it right for so much income disparity to occur? It’s a whole big conversation. But my point is, and I want your listeners to hear my heart on this. I’m not telling you that Jeff Bezos is a 100% all the time great guy. I’m not a 100% all the time great guy for goodness sakes.

Derrick Kinney (13:19):

The point is, I want to make sure that you can either take your energy that we have here on earth to criticize people like that and say, well, he should give away all this money. He should share more of it. What he’s doing is not right. Or you could learn from the success secrets of those people who are successful and say to yourself, you know what? I’m going to be successful too. This is my life. I get one shot at it and I want to go be the good person who’s making good money. And who’s doing good things with it.

Clay Finck (13:50):

Yeah. I think a lot of people aren’t taught a lot about money growing up and it obviously isn’t be being taught proactively in many schools. A lot of people just have to learn about it on their own. Like you mentioned, you can look up to people that are successful. It reminds me of when I was 18, I picked up a biography on Warren Buffet and I was just amazed by some of the things he was able to do over his life and was thinking of ways I could learn for from that and apply some of those teachings to my own life. I’d encourage the listeners to find successful people that you look up to and start studying and learning from them.

Derrick Kinney (14:26):

Well, that’s exactly right. And one of the takeaways that I want everyone listening right now to have is we all have choices and we can choose to villainize the people who are wealthy and say, well, they must have done something wrong to achieve their wealth. But oftentimes what I feel like is if we’re honest with ourselves and we’re serious about personal growth, we need to play back some films of what we were taught about money as kids. And so much of this goes back to bad money beliefs. How many of you listening may have seen a mom or dad or grandmother grandparent bang their fist on the table as you grew up. And they said, if only we had more money, then we could do more of the things that we want to do. And as a child you were left with, wow, money is the enemy.

Derrick Kinney (15:16):

Money is the bane of our existence. Or you might have heard a trusted family friend say, look, it’s not your fault. Some people have money and some people don’t. And what that meant was that you and your family were in the have not family, whereas the other people were the haves. And so people growing up believe that, well, I’m just not going to have money. Let me tell you a quick story too. Clay, this happened a couple years ago, I was at the office catching up on some things and inevitably the voicemail light began to blink. And I realized, okay, I can either let this go or a voice in inside said go and check it, because typically a voicemail that comes in on a Saturday, there may be a story behind it. So, I pick it up. There’s a woman with a frantic voice and she says, Derrick, you’ve got to call me back.

Derrick Kinney (16:02):

I bounced a check and I’m going to go to jail. I was like, what in the world are you talking about? So, I quickly called her back. I knew that if I didn’t, that would fester so much, she’d be fitting herself for prison garb over the weekend. So, I called her back and I said, tell me what happened. She said, I moved money from my checking to savings, but I didn’t let the bank know about it. And so the check bounced, and I know I’m going to go to jail. And I said, okay, first of all, we will talk on Monday. We’ll call the bank together and we’ll take care of getting in the money moved, but why in the world do you think you’re going to go to jail? She said, Derrick, when I was a kid, I saw my dad who had bought some school supplies for us as a kid.

Derrick Kinney (16:42):

And he accidentally bounced a check. And I vividly remember the store manager calling my dad saying, I know you did this on purpose and you’re going to go to jail. And so she lived about 50 years of her life thinking that you bounce a check, you go to jail. This was a successful woman, Clay. That this wasn’t just somebody who had no education, no business experience. But what it taught me was my gosh, if someone like that is thinking those bad money beliefs. You got to think that that held her back from making either more money in salary, taking risk or doing better with money, just because of what she saw and witnessed, and basically lived her life by, for over 50 years.

Clay Finck (17:26):

It’s funny that every single one of us uses money and works for money every week. Yet a lot of people just don’t understand money and understand how it works. And your book talks about how money is not bad and good people should have more of it. What do you mean by that?

Derrick Kinney (17:45):

Well, what I mean is that, are there bad people in the world? Yes. We can look at political regimes. We can look all around the world and we see dictators that are suppressing people’s ability to achieve fairness and even equity for their families. We see countries that are in dire debt, dire needed repair, but yet the palaces are palatial. We see all that. And do I think that’s wrong? Yeah. It’s probably flat, dead wrong, but those people don’t have much recourse. And so as I look at that, I go back to what can I own in this situation? And this just goes back to my own personal development way of looking in life. I can either choose to complain and I can choose to ridicule and I can choose to say, that’s not right, which is not right at all. But then what I can do is I can choose to be on the good side.

Derrick Kinney (18:40):

I can say, you know what? I’m going to go make money so that in that village where they probably need some help, I’m going to be a catalyst for good. And I’m going to rally my customer base around that to help them be part of it. And you know what, I’m going to make a lot more money, because my clients want to be part of someone who’s doing something bigger and we’re going to go make an impact over there. And what that does is for many people, there’s this feeling that you get on Sunday about four o’clock and it’s that feeling like, oh man, I’ve had a great weekend, but oh, tomorrow’s Monday. And you worry, I don’t want to get back on this treadmill again. The way out of that is through that generosity purpose.

Derrick Kinney (19:22):

Even if you’re in a job you don’t like, attaching meaning to your money, purpose to your profits, a cause to your cash is the pathway to getting through the job you may not like to provide for the family you love to really make an impact. Because so many people, they live paycheck to paycheck. And God forbid, we’re all, as COVID has taught us, we’re all one global catastrophe away from losing a job if we work for someone else, that’s why I think it’s important to teach our kids, not just to be the receiver of money, but to be the creator of money where whatever happens, they’re the ones in control of it.

Derrick Kinney (19:59):

So, right now you can choose to say, look, I know there’s a lot of bad people in the world. And if you think to yourself, well the bad people have all the money. I can’t get any more of it. That is not true. So, many people think that it’s this limited mentality that only if certain people … For example, if I think that Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk or Bill Gates or any successful CEO has all the money. Well, that means I can’t have it, therefore it’s already taken. That’s baloney. Dollars follow value. If you have an idea, you can easily open up this entire reservoir of new money for yourself simply by adding value and solving someone’s pain point.

Clay Finck (20:41):

In your book you talk about what you call the three good money levers. Can you talk to our audience about what those are and how they can help the readers and listeners build wealth?

Derrick Kinney (20:52):

I call those save more, crush your debt and earn more. And let me give you the backstory, Clay, on where this came from. Because four times a year, I update my net worth numbers. I call it the report card for adults and I enjoy tracking assets, liabilities, paying down debt. And by the way, my take on debt is a little bit unique that I’m not just a only pay cash guy. One of my mentors taught me a long time ago and I think you’ll like this. He said, “Derrick, I learned to bite off more than I can chew and then chew like hell.” Now that doesn’t mean I chew recklessly, doesn’t mean I don’t even know what I’m chewing. It just means that it’s a motivating tool for me to 10X or a 100X. I mean all the businesses I bought did I wait to save until I had cash for them?

Derrick Kinney (21:39):

No, I borrowed the money, bought an existing cash flow. That’s what helped grow my net worth dramatically. So, if you’re listening right now, thinking I have to of all cash, you don’t. I’m not saying that’s not a bad idea, but you don’t have to be the all cash guy. Our economy is not built to grow your net worth using all cash. You just have to understand and embrace that concept. But when I talk about save more money here. One of the things I like to talk about is what’s called commoditized expenses. So, I live here in Texas and so we could choose our electricity provider. All across the country people can pick their cable provider for the most part, their automobile insurance company, homeowners insurance, renters insurance, and more times than not when I have a conversation with people and I say, look, call those service providers and tell them you’re considering making a change.

Derrick Kinney (22:28):

Tell me they say. And they say, Derrick, you were exactly right. They say, we can find a way, let’s find a new customer special for you. Let’s find a way to save money. And so there’s always ways to keep your business. I got a call just the other day from direct TV calling me saying, hey, we have a proactive way to save you money. So, people know that customers are on the move right now for these commoditized anywhere you want to buy them from expenses. But here’s the deal. So, many people will do what I call, capture the money. They’ll get the savings. Maybe it’s 50 bucks a month. That’s $500 a year, whatever it is. But then what often happens is the new laptop shows up on their front doorstep, or they suddenly have the new truck out front of the house, or they have the new gaming system that appears.

Derrick Kinney (23:12):

And so they’ve really not made any progress toward their goals. What I want to do is add the word keep. So, capture the savings and then keep it. And you want to then put that savings toward your number one highest financial pain point that you’ve got. If you owe $25,000 on student debt, you want to put it toward that. If you owe $10,000 on credit card debt, that’s in an obscene interest rate, you want to drop it right there. I know in my own case, I used it to pay my house off about 10 years early. I would just simply accumulate these savings and drop it into my pre-done automatic house payment that I made every month. It would just increase that amount. And so it was out of sight, out of mind, but the bottom line is I want you to be a dollar detective.

Derrick Kinney (23:56):

You work, and I say you, I’m speaking everybody listening right now. Each of you work so hard for your money. Don’t take any dollar for granted. I want to make sure that you’re working hard for it. That then your money’s working equally hard for you. And there’s one example I give in the book, Clay, you might have read this. It was by a friend of mine named [inaudible 00:24:14]. And she talks about this example that your dollars hanging out in the break room unsupervised. And she talks about this concept of that you need to become the CEO of your dollars. If you have employees who aren’t supervised, they go off and do random stuff. They don’t show up on time. They leave early, they’re not productive. And your dollars are the same way. You want to tell your money, here’s where you’re going before you even arrived.

Derrick Kinney (24:41):

And that sounds so basic. We call that set and forget, whether it’s a 401K contribution, an IRA contribution and a payment toward debt. But when you’re faced with that decision of, well, I want to go party with my friends or save for retirement, one of those clearly has a more attractive option to it. And so it’s very, very important to have a game plan for that money. But then also when we talk about crush your debt, just taking every dollar available and not overcomplicating thing. So much of financial planning today I find is people just get scared because it feels like it’s so over the top.

Derrick Kinney (25:16):

I’ve got to have a Harvard degree. I’ve have to attend Stanford. I have to. It’s like, no, no, no, no, no, no. With a couple of simple, basic powerful lessons you have the exact tools available as the people on Wall Street do. You just have to embrace those things and keep it simple. And one of the most simple ones is just setting one major financial goal a year. Not 10 or 20. People get overcomplicated. They over goal themselves. But if you can set one goal, you’re going to be surprised and put all your energy toward that. Help many other goals will get paid off and made progress toward, because you’re focused on that one thing.

Clay Finck (25:53):

I think one of the most important pieces of this is automation, especially when it comes to your debt payments, your savings and your investments. Once you automate those payments, all of the friction is removed. Whether it’s the day you receive your paycheck or the first day of the month, whatever it is, it’s like you’ll hardly even notice you even had the money in the first place, yet you’ll receive the benefits from that one simple decision for the decades to come.

Derrick Kinney (26:20):

Yeah. I mean, Clay, what you said there, it almost sounds too simple the way you said that. And I want our listeners to embrace what you just said. I mean, a way to make money is actually very simple. You want to make as much as you can, save as much as you can, but you’ve got to find a way to fight back the peer pressure. Back when I was in junior high, there were those days you’d wake up and there was that fresh pimple on your face. And you’re like, oh no, my day is ruined. And I thought, when I graduated high school the peer pressure went away. But no, no, no, no, no. Now the peer pressure is, where does my kid go to school? What car does my kid drive or do I drive? Where do I live?

Derrick Kinney (27:04):

What country club am I part of? Where do I hang out? And that’s the game that so many people are playing. What I want them to do is just say reset. I find successful people have a reset button that they press often, and this is the time to just press it over and over again, because frugality is back friends. If you want to be wealthy, super, super wealthy, you can’t keep up with the Joneses. You can’t just buy things to impress people you don’t like with money you don’t have. It’s not going to work. It’s just simply not going to work.

Clay Finck (27:37):

Another intriguing part of your book is what you call a seven step good money framework. How is this framework different from any other financial strategy that’s out there?

Derrick Kinney (27:48):

Yeah, so 25 years I would walk my clients through a financial planning process. And basically went something like this. Let’s say that Tom and Susan came in and they both wanted to retire when they were 65. And I would ask them, hey, what are some things you want to do? I want to spend time with my grandkids. I want to go to the beach. I want to be able to travel when I want to do it. And so that was important. Or someone would say, I just want to be debt free. I want pay off my mortgage. I want to pay off the student debt, the credit card debt, all of those things. But one of the things I realized that was missing was when the market would drop and inevitably a large amount of stress and pressure and emotional baggage would kind of seep in, there really wasn’t a cause tied to people’s money that kept driving them to do more good.

Derrick Kinney (28:37):

And they often felt panicked. What am I doing all this for? And so now let me bring this up to COVID. I talk to so many people Clay, and they tell me know Derrick, I’m tired of just making money. I like to make it and I like to have a good living. I like to have a nice automobile. I like to be able to take my boyfriend or girlfriend out. I like to enjoy life, but I feel like there’s something missing inside of me, this fulfillment that I want for myself, but I don’t know how to get it. And where I believe our seven step framework dramatically helps with that is we start off instead of saying, what is your number one financial goal? It’s what is your generosity purpose? And what I’d like to ask people is, whether it was when you were growing up, did you see a need that you wanted to help solve?

Derrick Kinney (29:23):

Was there a cause that you cared deeply about, or even right now, an injustice that you see in the world or even in your local community that you’ve always wanted to have an impact in. I’ll give you an example. There was a couple who I knew who was really concerned about the homeless population in their local town. And they had this idea that, Derrick, I don’t want to just keep giving money to people at the stop sign, because am I really making an impact? And so I encouraged her. I said, you know what? There’s a good organization, your local area, go talk to the director, here’s her name. And why don’t you educate yourself on what are some practical ways that you could actually help solve this homeless crisis? And so she found out there were some programs that they were already doing that she could easily slot into, but it was all about preparing them to be independent.

Derrick Kinney (30:09):

And so she then began to say, hey, I’m going to start saving X amount of money per month. And she then went to her boss. And what she did with this was so powerful. She said, look, I love working can here, but I want to make more money, but I know I can’t just ask you for, hey, just give me more money. That’s the cheapest way to do things. Just because my standard of living has gone up doesn’t mean that you owe me anything. But she said, if we can find ways for me to add more value to this business and help you save money, grow the business, increase your own capacity to make more money.

Derrick Kinney (30:41):

I’d like to have a part of that. Well, her boss was immediately interested. They began to work up a game plan and she then took a large percentage of her newfound wealth out of a raise she got and began to fund this homeless shelter. So, now when she laid her head on her pillow at night, she knew she was working hard, getting paid what she was worth, which was so, so powerful. And she was making a difference, not just in the community, but in her own bank account. She was actually making more money and doing more good. It was a powerful combination.

Clay Finck (31:12):

I think another point to add to that, everyone knows that you can give your money to a cause you care about, but you can also give your time. One could choose a career that is committed to helping a cause they deeply care about, or even just volunteering or working a part-time gig that achieves that same goal. I think not only giving your money to a cause, but also devoting your time and energy can be very powerful and fulfilling as well.

Derrick Kinney (31:39):

That’s exactly right. It’s interesting because so many people go to jobs right now that they may feel like is not the perfect fit for them. And one of my friends who I quote in the book, her name is Bea Boccalandro. She wrote a book called Do Good At Work. And her whole concept was that it’s up to you, whether you choose to stay at a job or leave a job. And especially right now, there’s so many options for people. If you choose to stay, I would encourage to try to attach meaning to that job. One example that she gave, this was kind of a crazy example, but she recognized that when the cleaning staff every night would clean the bathrooms, they would empty out toilet paper rolls that were like a fourth of the way used. And so she said, look, and instead wasting that toilet paper, just leave it on my desk.

Derrick Kinney (32:27):

And so she became affectionately known as toilet paper Tina and in her office there, because she was the person who they dropped all this toilet paper off. And what she found was she was able to go to the homeless shelter and donate this toilet paper that would’ve just been thrown away. And it saved them enough to have an ice cream social every single month. And so it was just one way that she was able to put meaning to doing what she did. And one of the examples I quoted in the book also was for example, a valet parking attendant. Typically you think somebody who parks the car, they get the car back. There’s no big deal there. He would go around and he would actually measure the depth of each tire tread of each tire. And what he would do is in his mind, he felt like I’m going to let everybody know, hey, by the way I noticed your car you dropped off, you’re going to need a new tire here pretty soon.

Derrick Kinney (33:17):

It was his way of helping protect and add more value to people for free, but it gave him a sense of meaning. And so what I would tell people listening right now is whether you work for someone or you’re about to start a business. I think it’s essential that you find a cause that you care deeply about. I think it’s essential. One of the things that Daymond John told me, one of his favorite charities is a place called Bombas socks. And Bombas recognize the homeless community and the issue that socks play. Without good socks people’s feet really can deteriorate. And so their model is simple that each pair of Bombas socks you buy, they donate a pair to a reputable homeless community. And what happened was is when you line up the cost of socks, Bombas socks are typically more expensive.

Derrick Kinney (34:08):

And so one would think, well, why would people buy more or pay more for those socks when they could buy a cheaper alternative. It’s because they’re part of a story. They’re entering into a story where they’re helping make people’s lives better. All of us, I mean, Clay, you’re busy. I’m busy. To think that we’re just going through life and the motions here. But if we can actually pay a little bit more money to add more value to people’s lives, to help improve their situation, that’s a really good feeling. It’s a feeling of fulfillment that I think so many people are lacking and really hungry for right now.

Clay Finck (34:45):

You touched a little bit on ways people can make more money at their job and that’s by providing more value. Do you have any other tips people can think about in ways they can potentially earn more money?

Derrick Kinney (34:57):

Yeah. One of the ways that we often hear about is the side hustle the side gig. And let me go back a step here just a second, because one of the biggest holdbacks I find for people are parents who have had job losses and they really don’t want their kids to go through that same rollercoaster ride, but they feel ill equipped to teach their kids what to do about it. And I mentioned this earlier, and that is this whole concept of teaching our kids not just to be the earner of money, but the creator of money, not just the receiver, but the creator of it. Meaning that if for whatever reason the government stepped in and said, okay, this entire industry has to be shut down. Well, you’re not subject to that whim. You’d still run your business based on how you want to do it.

Derrick Kinney (35:44):

Or if your company came back and said, hey, we’ve got to cut everybody’s salary by 30%, you got some other alternatives to do that. And the way to do that is to tell your kids, look, I’m not the expert. I’ve made some decisions I’m not even proud of, but let’s be curious together. Let’s learn this together so that you’re not somebody who doesn’t have the tools and all the opportunities available to make more money. So, let me go deeper into this subject now, Clay. So, one of the pushbacks I often get from people comes from teachers. Now you may be the best teacher in the world. You may be a teacher of the year. You may be the teacher that every parent wants their kid to have, but you have a low likelihood of success if you bang on your principal’s door and say, I demand a raise. Okay, it’s probably not going to happen.

Derrick Kinney (36:32):

Same if you’re a cop, if you’re a firefighter, if you’re part of a union. There’s just different pay areas that you just can’t do that in. So, you have a choice to make, and that is either to stay in the job you’re in. And I know you’re working lots of hours and you’re tired when you get home or you could choose to change the career and provide more opportunity for yourself. Or you could stay where you’re at and launch a side hustle. And what I find the easiest way to launch the side hustle is not to invent yourself into some, I’m going to learn quantum physics because that’s where I think the market is or I’m going to do … No, no, no, no, no. Just ask yourself and ask the people around you. When people have a problem, what do they ask your help to solve?

Derrick Kinney (37:17):

That’s the money making question. The bottom line is you already have what you need to do a successful business. If you enjoy education, if you’re a good teacher and often teachers ask you, hey, give me some advice on how to establish more classroom management or how to grow this particular opportunity. Then that’s what you want to do. So, the bottom line is all of us have choices to make. You can choose to stay in a job where you’re likely not going to get a raise, but you can either choose to find someplace else to go or find that side hustle. It’s going to be up to you, but you want to make it simple. And one thing that I find is you can choose to agree, disagree on this based on what you found, parents will pay obscene amounts of when you help their kid do better in education and in sports. If you can add value to people’s kids, they will pay big time because you’re adding value and you’re helping achieve their kids’ dream for them.

Clay Finck (38:14):

Yeah, I’m sure they see that as just a fantastic investment for them to make. Thank you for sharing at great advice. Our show talks a lot about investing and investing strategies and you break down investing in this really cool analogy that I think our listeners will really like. Could you talk about that for our audience?

Derrick Kinney (38:34):

Well, I presume you’re talking about the four lanes on the investing highway. So, money, as I’ve mentioned before, can be made so complicated. And when I was a financial advisor, I would use an analogy of three buckets short term, medium term, long term. But what I want to do is get people to think about money as part of their everyday life. So, picture yourself now on the highway. Now in Texas, we have a lot of four-lane highways. So, let’s start on this far right-hand lane. And typically that’s the slow lane. That’s the lane where I think about your checking account and your savings account. It’s not the get rich quick fund. It’s money that’s accessible, ATM, you need money. An emergency comes up, you’ve got the available. Maybe it earns one 10th of 1% on a good day, but the goal there is, do you want to have enough money there to give you peace of mind?

Derrick Kinney (39:24):

That’s the whole strategy there. This next lane over, I call this the three to five year timeframe. So, this might be, Derrick, I want to save enough to buy a house. I want to buy that next car. I want to pay down $10,000 of credit card debt. So, this is money that may be earning, let’s say maybe two to 4%, again, not get rich quick, but it allows you to have some flexibility there that if an opportunity comes up, you’ve got cash available. Now this third lane over, this is the longer term retirement lane. So, about your 401k, your IRA, depending on your advisor’s advice and what they may be telling you to do that may include an annuity of some sort that can provide some guaranteed income. It could involve real estate, big fan of that. It could involve stocks, bonds, mutual funds. One of my favorite or some exchange traded funds. Those miniature indexes that are there.

Derrick Kinney (40:18):

The goal there is that you’ve got a strategy in place where you know where the money’s going. Now, this far left hand lane, keep in mind, that’s the lane where most people get their tickets. That’s the speeding lane. That’s the fast lane. This is where you want to put money into things like those cryptocurrencies, NFTs things that may make you wonder, what am I putting money into this for? But it’s all about the trends of where consumers are going. And the bottom line is we know right now the millennials up to about 75% of them all have something in crypto. That is a huge demographic, not follow the lead on of someone who’s owning cryptocurrency. Now, is it going to feel like a smooth ride in the country? No, it’s going to go like this. It’s going to be a wild, wild ride.

Derrick Kinney (41:08):

But what I suggest people do is maybe they put in 25 bucks a week, 50 bucks a month or whatever it is that doesn’t cost your retirement. But the bottom line is you’ve got money going in each of those lanes on the highway. And one thing I would also add is those people who are married or they’re doing life with someone and managing money together. One of the biggest mistakes I made, Clay, early on was I was both the day to day and the long term investing guy, it had really got me messed up.

Derrick Kinney (41:37):

I really had several traffic jams and accidents on my four lane investing highway. I didn’t like managing the day to day at all. I was the long term investment guy. Had a good eye for it. Still loved doing that to this day. My wife, once I got her enrolled, she was able to see the big picture. And so even to this day, she manages the day to day, I handle the long term investing and we get along great. So, it’s important to know your roles. If not, you may have some unintended accidents on that four-lane highway.

Clay Finck (42:08):

I think that investing is so widely misunderstood by a lot of people. It just seems to be the societal norm that if you can afford the newest trending car, the new house, the extra vacation, then you should be purchasing that just because you can. And then people wonder why there are millions out there that don’t have enough money saved up come retirement time. I’m a firm believer that a lot of people don’t truly understand and the power of your retirement accounts and investing for the long term in that third lane analogy that you’re using. And another thing I think many people miss is that saving and having conservative finances gives you optionality. With conservative finances. You’re able to do things like take a pay cut to start your dream business, or work your dream job. If someone is strapped down by a large mortgage payment, a large car payment and such, then that likely isn’t possible for them.

Derrick Kinney (43:04):

Well, that’s exactly right. And it’s all thinking about how can you get your money to work hard for you? That’s the bottom line and whether you’re making in $30,000 a year, or some people are making a $100,000 a year, $200,000 a year, whatever that is, I want you to have accountability to each of those dollars. That’s very, very important because obviously I want you to go make money for the good you can do, but also making more money is very strategic your long term success. For example, the more you get paid, that means if your company matches part of your 401k, well, they’re matching a higher dollar amount. That means if you’re saving more money than a percentage of a higher salary means you’re saving more money. So, all of those are easy ways to make sure that you’re definitely making more money.

Derrick Kinney (43:58):

But again, right now, I think now more than ever, especially in this great resignation we see people who are, they’re jumping ship. Often though, they’re finding that the grass isn’t as green as they thought it would be on the other side. And now they’re stuck. I would just encourage you to not just make a move to make more money, but make a move to be in a culture that brings out the best in you. As I would often tell my kids growing up, my job as a parent was to be a professional potential extractor. My job was to express belief at such a high level that I could just pull out the goals and the dreams and the things that were important to them.

Derrick Kinney (44:37):

Not me living my life through them, but me walking, alongside them as they live their life right in front of me. And bosses these days are short in supply. And I would really, in those interviews, you’re about to think about changing jobs, ask about the culture. What does a winning culture look like? How does your boss handle conflict? What would winning look like for you to be there a year from now? And if you can be in a culture that wins, you’ll be much more motivated to make more money and be part of something much bigger as well.

Clay Finck (45:09):

I love that. Not just being so one that gives yourself. You want to be surrounded by people that share those same values that you do. For example, my company here at TIP started giving a portion of their profits to charities of the employee’s choice. And that goes to show that they have similar values that I have, which I find very important in the place that I choose to work.

Derrick Kinney (45:31):

That’s powerful. I mean, right there, that’s such a big differentiator. And I’ll tell you a quick story on that. One of the things that the Bea Boccalandro told me, she said, “Derrick when they measure brain waves and people look at regular advertisements, for example, if it’s buying a new car or buying a new house, whatever the hot product or service is, your brain registers it and then goes on down the path. But if it’s something like save the whales or support the Olympic team, or right this injustice in the world, that’s out there right now, the way the brain responds it’s as though you’re looking in to the eyes of someone you love.” I mean, that is powerful. Just that brain activity that goes into, when you think here’s a company who’s actually helping make other people’s lives better. And you express that as well. Again, I just can’t underestimate that if you want to be a company that really stands out in a crowded marketplace and one that’s heavily commoditized, your generosity purpose is the catalyst that will help you stand out now more than never.

Clay Finck (46:35):

I think for most business owners making money is their scorecard. But you say that what you give matters more on your scorecard after you pointed that out, I realized that companies do marketing and advertising around this idea all the time. I think there’s definitely something primal behind this marketing idea as well that companies are really tapping into.

Derrick Kinney (46:57):

Yeah. Yeah. It’s very true. And what I would also differentiate is are companies doing it just as a marketing message or is it really part of their DNA? And people can sniff that out very, very quickly. That’s why it’s important to have the founder of the company talk about the story or have them have a customer talk about how their product or service dramatically impacted their lives so that people can buy into this story where they can see themselves as a hero in a story helping solve a big, big problem, but if they come across and just say, hey we give X amount of money every year. That’s great, no fault of their own, but it can often come across as just, hey, we just kind of give money away. And so this is where I think smart companies today will take practical examples and they may say, hey, just so you know, we give away a portion of our proceeds.

Derrick Kinney (47:57):

And here’s an example of how those proceeds were used. And here’s a short video of this couple who benefited from this. So, just so you know, every purchase you make from us is helping couples like this improve their life. You see that’s magical, that’s magical. Now, does it take a little bit of work? Yes. But again, I believe that we’re at a crescendo here in terms of it’s a new way to think about money. And we know you think about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. You think about people at the end of their life. They want to have a sense of fulfillment. They want to have a sense of meaning, a sense of having made a difference or an impact.

Derrick Kinney (48:34):

All these great movies, the main character often, if only I had done this and given more of this and I just don’t want that for people’s lives. I want each of our listeners to be able to have that impact right now. And I believe, it’s not the only lever, but I think it’s the big lever for positive change is making more money. And I hope I’m giving you a compelling reason why to go make more money and the good that you can do with it in your local community.

Clay Finck (49:03):

I a 100% agree that people can sniff out the motives behind the actions. And I think that small businesses especially can use giving in their small community to their own advantage. I see it all the time from successful businesses that actively promote shopping locally and supporting the local schools and charities.

Derrick Kinney (49:23):

Yeah, that’s so important right there, Clay. I just think many people don’t feel like they can make a difference. I think people think, well, I have to have a $100. I’ve got to have a $1,000. I’ve got to have a $100,000 to do any kind of an impact. But what companies are realizing is the power of the GoFundMe or just the power of the movement. And it’s just, hey, I want to raise $500 to help provide school supplies for this student who needs money to get a leg up on their life. People will join that. And that’s all that it takes. One of my friends, Bob Goff shared with me on the podcast, Derrick. He said, “If you want to make a difference in the world, start by walking across the street.” And it was so powerful. So, many of us think we’ve got to go overseas.

Derrick Kinney (50:05):

We’ve got to go all around the world. No, hey, if there’s somebody that needs something, if there’s a homeless shelter, if there’s a food bank, if there’s a family member who’s lost their job, man just drop an anonymous amount of money in their mailbox. I mean, that’s how you do it and involve your family. That’s really powerful for your kids to see mom and dad being generous and involving them at their school. Hey, if you hear of needs that your friends have, let’s anonymously help take care of that, because we want to be part of the solution, not the problem.

Clay Finck (50:37):

Fantastic message. For anyone that wants to check it out. It’s The Good Money Revolution. I highly recommend the book. Derrick, thank you so much for coming onto the show and giving your time to our audience. I love the message you’re sending out with your new book. Before we close out the episode, where can the audience go to connect with you and learn more about the book?

Derrick Kinney (50:58):

Well, Clay, I have really enjoyed this. I love your podcast. I love each of your interviews and it was a real honor for me to be with you today. My hope with this book is that it will just help impact people’s lives. It will help them be motivated to make more money and do more good and they can go to goodmoneychapters.com, goodmoneychapters.com. We’re actually giving away the first five chapters of the book for free, just to add value to people right away. We talked about asking your boss the best ways to add value. I want to add value to each of your listeners. Goodmoneychapters.com would love to have this book in your hands. And I feel like it’ll make a big difference in your individual personal life and your business life this year.

Clay Finck (51:37):

Awesome. For those interested, I’ll be sure to link that in the show notes so it’s easy to get access to. Derrick, thanks again.

Derrick Kinney (51:44):

My pleasure. Thank you, Clay.

Clay Finck (51:47):

All right, everybody. I hope you enjoyed today’s episode. Please go ahead and follow us on your favorite podcast app so you can get these episodes delivered automatically. And if you haven’t already done so, be sure to check out our website, theinvestorspodcast.com. There you’ll find all of our episodes, some educational resources we have as well as some tools you can use as an investor. And with that, we’ll see you again next time.

Outro (52:09):

Thank you for listening to TIP. Make sure to subscribe to We Study Billionaires by The Investor’s Podcast Network. Every Wednesday we teach you about Bitcoin and every Saturday we study billionaires and the financial markets. To access our show notes, transcripts or courses, go to theinvestorspodcaster.com. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any decision, consult a professional. This show is copyrighted by The Investor’s Podcast Network. Written permission must be granted before syndication or rebroadcasting.