Afford Anything - What I’ve Learned from Interviewing 500 Millionaires -- with Jaime Masters of Eventual Millionaire

Episode Date: June 24, 2019

#200: Nine years ago, I had no idea that personal finance blogs existed. Then, as I was flipping through an issue of Kiplinger magazine, I came across an article about a woman who paid off $70,000 in debt in 16 months. Her name was Jaime, she lived in Maine, and she earned 3x her husband’s income. He made $30,000 per year; she made $100,000. They wanted to have a baby, and she wanted to stay at home for the first year, but their debt load made this impossible. She aggressively went into debt-crushing-mode, working 70 hour weeks while 7 months pregnant in order to tackle their debt. She started a blog (and later a podcast), Eventual Millionaire, to track her journey and interview millionaires. This article made me aware of the existence of personal finance blogs. I immediately thought, “I want one.” The following year, I started my own site, Afford Anything. Like Eventual Millionaire, it later became a podcast, as well. Today, we’re celebrating Episode 200 of the Afford Anything podcast. And so it feels fitting that the special guest for Episode 200 should be the woman whose story inspired the creation of this platform, Jaime Masters.   For more information, visit the show notes at http://affordanything.com/episode200  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You can afford anything but not everything. Every decision in your life is a trade-off against something else. And that doesn't just apply to your money. That applies to your time, your focus, your energy, your attention. It applies to anything in your life that's a limited resource. This leads to two questions. Number one, what's most important to you? Not what does society say ought to be, but what actually matters most in your life?

Is it travel? Is it family? Is it switching careers? Is it starting a business? What is that dream that you want to go after, even if that means making a unusual cuts in other areas. So that's the first question, and the second question is, how do you actually make daily decisions that reflect that? Answering these two questions is a lifetime practice,

and that is what this podcast is here to explore. My name is Paula Pant. I am the host of the Afford Anything podcast, and this is Episode 200. For our Episode 200 special, I have invited a very special guest to join me. There's a little bit of backstory here. In 2010, I was flipping through Kiplinger personal finance

magazine, and I came across this article about a woman by the name of Jamie Tardy. She lived in Maine, and she and her then-husband had just paid off $70,000 of debt. The article in Kiplinger talked about how the process of doing so, the process of paying off all that debt, had inspired her to start a personal finance blog, which she called eventual millionaire, because it was a blog about her goal of eventually becoming a millionaire, start a of course with step one, which was becoming consumer debt-free. Now, in 2010, when I read this article, I had no concept that personal finance blogging existed. And so this article about Jamie was the first time that I became acquainted with the idea of a personal finance blog. And as soon as I

read it, I thought, I want one. I want one. And one year later, in February of 2011, I started a personal finance blog called Afford Anything. That blog led to this podcast and the reason that we are now at episode 200 of this podcast, the origin of all of it, was this article about Jamie. And so who could possibly be more perfect as a guest on episode 200 than the woman whose story inspired me to start a blog and then later a podcast of my own? Since that article was published, Jamie has since moved to Austin, Texas. She got divorced. Her last name is now Masters.

And she continues to run the eventual millionaire blog and podcast of her own. And on eventual millionaire, she interviews millionaires about how they got to where they are. She and I sat down in a recording booth face to face a couple of months ago while I was in Austin, Texas. And we recorded about a three-hour-long interview, which I have whittled down to the best hour. So in this upcoming interview, we're going to talk first about how Jamie got out of debt and second about what she has learned as a result of interviewing almost 500 millionaires over the course of the last decade. Here she is, Jamie Masters from Aventual Millionaire.

Hey, Jamie. Hey, how are you? I'm good. How are you doing? Wonderful. So we're recording this face-to-face, which is amazing. Jamie, I've told you this before, but you are the reason that I started blogging. Which is amazing because you forget how many people you actually impact, especially amazing people like you, because what you've done is insane.

Oh, thank you. I mean, really. You already know that, though. Thank you. So, yeah, I read a story about you in Kiplinger magazine. It was right at the time when you were paying off your debt or you would just finish paying off your debt. that story mentioned that you had a personal finance blog, and I'd never heard of a personal finance blog before. I didn't know they existed. And so that was the impetus that got me to start my own.

But I so appreciate that whole story, because what you've created with the amazing amount of impact from one Kiplinger story is just insane. So let's take us back to the thing that happened that got you into Kiplinger magazine, you know, the precursor to the precursor. Exactly. You graduated from college and then I'll let you tell the story, but you immediately went down the consumer spiral. That's what you're supposed to do, right? I bought my first house at 19, thinking because that's what I wanted, a white picket fence and a two-bedroom cape, because that's what you do when you're 19, right? That makes sense.

Well, I wanted to have every, I was an overachiever and wanted to have everything that my parents already had. Well, quick time out. Yeah. How did you qualify for a mortgage at the age of 19? Great question. Again, overachiever. So when I was 18 and started college, I got a job in tech support, because I'm a geek. And I made probably like $25, $40,000 a year-ish.

And so I qualified mostly because houses in Rochester, New York cost $70,000. So it was actually cheaper to get a house even with property taxes than to have an apartment. So that overachiever mentality kept going for a while. So when I actually realized at one point I had a mortgage, I had two cars, I started adding up how much debt I had because I had a great paying job. I made a little over $100,000 a year at 22, which sounds awesome. Yeah. Like, if you make a lot of money, then you can spend a lot of money.

And it wasn't crazy, crazy consumer debt. I didn't have credit cards, but I had a home equity line. I had cars. I had that kind of stuff. And student loans. You had two cars just for you? Well, me and my husband. Okay, you and your husband had two cars.

So how old were you when you got married? I was 21. Wow. So you did everything very fast. You bought your first home at 19. You married at 21. You graduated college at 22. At 22.

And then you got a job paying $100,000 at 22. I can't even imagine making that much at that age. Right. Then I was like, I made it. And it was traveling. I did that for two years. And then from there, I was like, gained 20 or 30 pounds. I had an expense account.

I was like traveling all the time. I thought it was supposed to be super sexy and fun. I was like, I hate my life. Why is this what I want? And so it was sort of this quarter-life crisis back then in realizing that I couldn't quit my job because I was married at the time and he was a professional juggler. Wow. Yep. And contortionist.

But what's interesting is he made maybe $30,000 or $40,000 a year. And I'm like, ooh, quit the six-figure job. Right. Right, with health insurance. And I have a mortgage and I have $30,000 in debt for $30,000 or $40,000 a year. So you were making triple what your husband was making. Yep. So let's back up.

Where did you go to college and? What was your degree in? I went to school at Rochester Institute of Technology. And I started as a medical illustration major. Oh, I didn't know that was a thing. I was voted most artistic in high school. Then I ended up switching to computers. So I worked at an internet company when I was 16.

And then I ended up going, okay, well, computers are easier than art was for me. Because art took so long for me to do. I got an IT degree so that way I could do less work and work full time. So I just switched to computers for the money. I was like I could at least make more money in less time with this degree instead of paying for an art degree. So then when you graduated from college, how much student debt did you have? I had about 40 something thousand. My parents took a little bit and I got a lot of scholarships and stuff like that and I worked through it.

I worked for an internet company and the network operation tech made 45-ish thousand a year when I was 20. So I was like working with a whole bunch of guys that they were the breadwinner for their house working $40,000 a year. It was really interesting. I learned a lot. And knowing what I liked to do and what money mattered was very, very interesting. So then throughout college, were you making about $40,000, $45,000 a year as a college student? Yes. Wow.

I worked my butt off. Wow. I've rarely, if never, heard of a full-time college student who also had a job in which he or she was making $45,000 a year. That's impressive. That's very impressive. Yes. And I was the first female ever, ever to be in the network operation center. And so it was one of those eye-opening moments to go, oh, yeah, actually knowing what you want and going after it made a huge difference. And that started me really going, oh, maybe I can go the life path that I want, even if it feels

like it's hard to begin with. So then what was your wake-up call that allowed you to recognize the level of debt that you were in, the $70,000 worth of debt that you were in at the age of 21? I wanted to have a baby. So when I was about 22, 23 in the job that I hated, I was like, okay, well, if I were to ever want to quit my job, we have to live on $40,000 a year. And that's a business. That wasn't even net. That was gross. Right. Yeah. Side note. So your husband is making like 30,000 net. Yeah. So I bought all the books. I bought Dave Ramsey's book. I bought Suzy Orman's book. I bought all the books I possibly could. And so when I started getting into it and actually read the Dave Ramsey book and went through and was like, oh, I added up my debt. oh my gosh, it's 70,000. My heart dropped. Like, there's no way I can pay this off. And for a degree that I hated now, because I was in a job that I hated, I was like, I made horrible life choices or so I thought, right?

Yeah. Because now I can't stay home with my kid. And I didn't even have a kid at the time, but I was, I'm a pre-planter. So I was trying to figure that stuff out. And I was like, okay, well, even if we have to sell the house, because at that point, I had moved to New Hampshire and had a $250,000 house. Ooh, moving up in the world. Oh, yeah.

Your first house was 70,000? Yeah, so I bought a lot of houses. So 70,000 was the first one. And then I bought a flip sort of. Yeah. That was about 70. We put about 30 in. This was when I was 22.

But again, but going through all that and going, okay, what did I do? Now that I'm stuck in $70,000 in debt, my whole thing was, okay, now I just have to go on a crazy regiment, pay it all off because that's the only thing I can see that will make my life potentially better, where I could even part-time stay at home with my kid. or potential kids. But that was the wake-up call because my former husband would tell me to quit my job all the time. I was miserable. And I worked from home.

Like it was a cushy job. Everybody was like, she's made it, right? Yeah. And I was like, I hate my life. And that sucks. And so he would tell me to quit. And the only reason why I even really started doing that is because we started trying to have a baby.

And I was like, okay, I can't travel around the country. Not only like work 40 hours a week, but they made me travel. It was a traveling job. Right. And I was like, I can't take my kid with me. So to me, that was the catalyst because I had no other option. So this $70,000 of debt that you have, that's excluding your mortgage. Yes.

Well, it was student loans to, it was a home equity. And a home equity line of credit. 25,000. So when I bought the house, we didn't have enough payment. We only had a report down payment. We had maybe 10%. Right. And so we took a 10% 25,000 home equity line.

So we got the 20%. So that way I didn't have to pay PMI. Got it. Okay, cool. But that was an variable interest rate and it kept going up, which was awesome. So I counted that as part of my debt. Right, because it's not part of the foundational mortgage, the base mortgage. Exactly.

And we had a payment. Yeah. And it was a low payment, but still. Yeah. And so it was actually one car at the time. We had actually already paid off one car at that time. So it's not like I was completely irresponsible. It took us a little while to pay off that first car payment.

But the funny thing is that I had just bought a car, right, before I had this life-changing catalyst moment, I bought Honda Civic brand new. And so that was a huge chunk that we actually, I sold it. We lost a thousand bucks on it. And we bought a car that was seven, six or seven thousand a Jeep Cherokee. And it was- And you paid cash for that? No, because I still didn't have cash. Even though I should have because I was making such good money. No. So we ended up putting that loan in that $70,000 and debt snowballing all that. So it was like 25 for, 25 or 30 for my school and then 25 for the home equity and then the 20-something thousand on the car. And I think we had like a thousand dollars on credit card that we ended up

paying. But, yeah. It wasn't stupid stuff though. That's the thing. I kept going, it's not done. Like these were all quote unquote smart decisions. Right. Right. And yet I can't have a life I want because of it. Yeah, because if you think about it, that debt that you've just added up, which excludes the base of your mortgage. Yep. The rest of the rest of the rest of the rest of the The rest of the debt that you've just added up is more than half of your combined income. If you're making $100,000 and your husband is making $30,000, you're making $130 combined, and you've got $70,000 in debt. So how long did it take you to pay that off?

And what did you do in order to get there? 16 months. So number one, what is a very good catalyst is getting pregnant. I was like, oh crap, baby's coming soon. We better hurry this up. So when we sold that car, it went from 20-ish, 21, I think it was, to 7. So that took a big chunk of it off. Which was great.

Yeah. So that subtracted 14,000. So now your debt load is 56,000. Good job. Math. Yeah. Hashtag math. So then it was literally just the snowball.

So what we ended up doing is a lot of small things. So we sold everything in the house. We had a Jeep Wrangler. I was part of the Jeep Club. I love Jeeps. That was like 3 or 4,000. That was off-roading Jeep that we sold. So there was a lot of like little things like that.

We sold the kayaks. We sold sort of the stuff, the consumerism stuff that we ended up buying, which was a little bit helpful. not like huge chunks. But I was making a lot of money. Yeah. So we went on a budget. Who knew?

We paid $300 a month for groceries for two of us. And we were doing like the grocery game is what I called it. Like trying to figure out how low we could spend. I was the coupon clipper lady. Canceled absolutely everything. Did all the typical stuff that everybody does. Right. And then just tried to chunk it down.

So then we started doing extra income stuff. So one of the things that we did is every time I traveled, I got a stipend. I got more of a stipend. So I was gone all the time. Well, not only the per diem, I got an on-site bonus, which was not much. It was like 40 bucks a day. Right. But 40 bucks a day adds up a lot.

And then my former husband, who was doing the juggling and stuff, only worked whenever he had shows. And so he ended up doing graphic design work, web design work on the side, all sorts of stuff. And the snowball thing really, really works. Because I love the feeling of progress. Yeah. And so we could probably pay quite a few thousand per month. And it was just a snowball. I just took.

I mean, it felt like it took a long time. The other thing was is we also started saving a little bit more after that than, too, because I was afraid that if I did quit and something happened with a baby or health insurance or whatever, we needed to have a bit of a nest egg too. So I actually didn't pay it off until after my son was born. So we kept cash just in case something went wrong, and then we ended up paying it after he was already born. And that was a question that you had, right? You called the Dave Ramsey show and asked whether you should keep an emergency

you reserve for the birth of your son because you were pregnant at the time. Yep. Or whether you should put that money towards a debt. What was the exact question? That, you nailed it. Oh, cool. That was exactly it. It was like, well, we have all this money, but I don't feel safe if I'm debt-free but have

nothing. Yeah. And he told me to save it. He told me to wait. And I was like, that is very counterintuitive to what I thought you were going to say. Right. So, yeah. So we ended up holding that off for a while.

The funny thing is, too, though, is that I ended up, so my son was born in December of 2006, I quit my job probably in about April. We got a huge tax refund for some odd reason. And we ended up being able to buy a car with cash that was better than a $7,000 car after that. So the time that your son was born, you had a three-month emergency fund? Yes. Nice. Yeah, but it was on the lower bills. Right. Right. So I'm sorry, it was a six-month emergency fund. Oh, it's six-month, cool. Yeah, because the bills were so much lower without the home equity and all the other things. And we cut like crazy. That's a good point. So when you lower your cost of living, you then also lower the amount of money that needs to be in the emergency fund because you don't need as much to continue living.

Exactly. Exactly. It was great. Fantastic. Okay, so then it was this whole journey that you were going through of getting out of debt and going through all of this so quickly that sparked your interest in money management, yes? Yeah, because I was done first, though. So reading all the books and stuff, and this was 2006. So like, there wasn't a lot of law. My goal was to find some. somebody that had done when I did. Right. Guess what? There was like none. Right. I was like, who's the female breadwinner that pays off $70,000 in debt in a year because

she's pregnant, right? Like I was looking at all of the blogs I could possibly find. I found Get Rich slowly from there. And then I was like, you know what? I'm going to start my own blog, mostly just to keep track of my own stuff. Right. And you're absolutely right because even now in 2019, when you outline that scenario, female breadwinner making triple what her husband is making and pregnant and wants to get out of debt so that she can support her family.

Even now in 2019, when there's this huge proliferation of blogs, I can't think of many that would match that description. Farnoosh Tarabi, of course, is famous for when she makes more and for talking about both the challenges and the opportunities that female breadwinners face. Yeah, it's really interesting. Even now there's still not a lot of content around it. So 2006 is nothing. Absolutely zero. Absolutely nothing. So my whole thing is prove it, right? I was like, well, if I prove it, then I will one day tell my story. I remember going, one day I will tell my story and help people, right?

And then you're the one that saw the Kiplingers thing. And so it's just, I forget how much it has snowballed since because I remember that was the reason why I even started blogging to begin with was just, hey, we need to get this information out there because there ain't a lot of females out there that are like this or that we're blogging about it anyway. Right. And so then Kiplinger found your blog. Is that how that article came about? Yeah. So I started eventual millionaire back. Well, eventual millionaire is the name of your blog. Yes. And also your podcast. Yeah. And the interesting thing is I got to fast forward a little because I had the baby. I didn't start the blog when I started the blog, but it was just my own thing. It was not about getting press or anything like that. Yeah. So I had the baby. I quit my job, tried to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. Right. And then I ended up getting a mentor in business. And so I re-brought back the site, because I thought it was a

cool name, in 2010. So this, so Kiplingers came out in 2010. So, okay, your son was born in 2006, and you kind of took a four-year hiatus. You re-bought the blog back in 2010. That was the year the Kiplinger article came out. But in between that, you hired a business coach. Why? Well, so, no, so I didn't hire him thinking, I didn't have any money. I was working. So, so, Number one, piece of advice, don't quit your job when you have nothing to go to afterwards. So I wasn't a side hustler. I was so busy paying off debt. I didn't even look at business.

Right. So I was like, I want to work 20 hours a week. What the heck am I going to do? Right. And so I ended up freelancing a little bit. I ended up really doing, it was really rough. And I tell this to clients and serial entrepreneurs and people now when they're like, I don't know what my purpose is.

And I was like, yeah, I forgot how crappy that time. time was when I didn't know what I wanted. Yeah. Because it was years, it was years of me not understanding what I wanted to do. So I ended up, I thought life coaching was cheesy just as a side note. Yeah. I thought it was really cheesy. But I loved the premise of active listening and that sort of stuff. So I ended up taking a coaching course. Okay. It was like a $2,000 coaching course. And I remember negotiating with my former husband at the time going, okay, this will be helpful for me as a mom. I know it's $2,000. One day I will make that money back. So when I look at figuring that piece out, I ended up I knew I like coaching, and I found a mentor.

So I worked with him for two or three years. He's an amazing man. He was a business coach. He sold a million dollar businesses before. I started blogging for six months. I ended up doing a guest post for Get Rich Slowly for JD. Lots of journalists read that, apparently. So I was in CNN Money first.

Then I was on Yahoo's homepage, which was insane because people from high school contacted me like I was super cool. I made no money from any of the stuff, though, people, just so you know. And my server went down. But then Kiplingers came right after that. So I was in Kiplingers because of all of those other things. And that's where the site really started to grow. And that was how I heard your story. And that was how I found out that personal finance blogs existed, which was something that I didn't know.

And then that was 2010. So then one year later, February 22nd, 2011, I started my own site. And here we are today. Right. Wow, that's insane. It was only a year after, too. Wow. We'll come back to this episode after this word from our sponsors. If you're an entrepreneur or if you have a side hustle or a small business, tell me if this sounds familiar. Have you ever kicked off a project for a new client but didn't ask for a project deposit up front?

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and hundreds of millionaires about the common thread that unites them all. I'm curious in your experience of now having this blog and this podcast where you interview hundreds of millionaires. Anecdotally, what type of stories have you heard? How do people reach millionaire status? Okay, so mine's a little skewed, just as a side note. I skewed it to people that were in business. So the interesting thing was, is if I just say millionaire in general, it could be from investing, it could be from real estate, there's many different paths. And so I was specifically looking for, they have to have a net worth of over a million dollars, and it was made specifically from entrepreneurship and business. Oh, okay. So even when someone comes to me now and that they just do investing, we say no.

So my data is quite skewed as a side note. Right. But what is very interesting is, is that most of the people that make their money a business use real estate as the actual investment vehicle for later. They do investments too. Don't get me wrong, but it is skewed towards real estate as the second step after business. Wow. That's, that's me. That's me. Yeah, my... You're typical. No. I'm very average. But that's the funny thing is that we, I've almost interviewed almost 500 now. I'm trying to beat Napoleon Hill, right? So he interviewed 500. I'm almost there. And so, and so, and so, and so, and so, and so, and so, and so, and, But again, mine are only from business. So my goal with the whole podcast was not only talking about money. And my, my site is about life first than money. Yeah. I went after the money first. That sucked. Right. Yeah. I could have probably been a millionaire way sooner, right? But it sucked. Ironically. Yeah. I know. Isn't that hilarious? But it is, it's all about life first and then money. So when I ask the questions to millioners, it's less about how fast you made it. Now, don't get me wrong. I love tactics and all that fun stuff too. But it's retaining it. People. Right? That's why we care.

so much about the net worth, people will email me and be like, oh, we have an eight-figure business. And I'm like, yeah, but they don't, no. That's gross. Yeah. That's gross. Not net. Show me the rest of your stuff. And they're like, oh, never mind.

And there's a lot of people that'll back away. Okay. So what similarities have you heard from these people who have developed a seven-figure net worth, personal net worth through business and entrepreneurship? Some of the things that I found was, and these are sort of more of the habitual, holistic kind of stuff. one, continuous forward motion no matter what. So the no matter what is the biggest thing. You know how when you're in it in life in general, you're like,

it doesn't feel like I'm making any progress. Yeah. Or there's excuses or whatever it is. It's the commitment that actually matters more than the how of how to get anywhere. Right? As long as you keep moving forward continuously to whatever that piece is and you keep re-correcting your course, you'll get there. Even if the vehicle changes, even if you go from entrepreneurship to real estate,

as long as you continue on the path. Does that make sense? So that was a big thing that came up over and over and over again. But the amount of personal development. So when you're in business, as you know, it is insane how you get to know yourself, both the wonderful qualities and the horrible quality. Like what you're good at and what you're not good at. So the second part is that they really knew what their strengths were. They leveled up on their strengths times a million and actually got other people to do the stuff that they didn't like. So those were two of the things that I kept seeing over and over again in the context of business. Now, of course, they saved money too.

But that's what I feel like is so enlightening when I interview them because everyone was like, I'm just going to figure it out as I go. I don't know if anyone's done this before. I don't know if I can do it or not. But then they just, that continuous forward motion, they just do it and learn along the way. And it's inspiring. Like after 500, there are definite patterns. And I'm still interested.

It's not boring in any way to keep asking. questions and the nuances of what they go through, especially on the personal development side, to earn as much as they do, is just really fantastic. Okay, so a couple of ideas pop into my mind as I hear you talk about this. Now, first of all, when we talk about continuous forward motion and that the shared attribute that these millionaires have is that they're persistent, they don't give up no matter what else is happening. But that being said, there could be some survivorship bias there, right?

There are certainly many people who have continuous forward motion don't give up and, yes, yet their problems still are not improving. What is the differentiator? That's a great question. Okay, so that's some of the things that I want to know, especially a little bit of a tangent, but I'll bring it back around. I helped John Dumas start a podcast back in the day, right? Yes.

We went to high school together. He had no podcast. Now he teaches people how to podcast. Right. He is, for people who are listening, he's the host of entrepreneur on fire. But what's so interesting is he teaches people how to podcast, and I would get emails from people going, I started a podcast and it didn't work. or there were so many things that would come up.

And I would go, even with my own clients, well, how come that client could do it? And this client couldn't. How come this person, what the heck is going on? It really is mindset stuff. And I know that sounds super, super cliche. Right. What is so interesting, because I've worked with hundreds and hundreds of clients also. So whenever I take anything from the millionaires, I've been a business coach for 10 years now

and helped other people become millionaires also. And so being able to go through and look, ooh, why did that person do this? and why did this person do this, almost same exact industry even, it is what you believe about yourself. And so one of the other common traits, they do visioning a lot. They do meditation. They do all the stuff that now is cool. But of course, when I started interviewing them so many years ago, I was like, we can't talk

about that stuff. Like, this is woo-woo. Like, I'm science. I'm the analytical person. I'm not going to have a bunch of people coming on saying, you vision to success. Right. And yet, thankfully now, I have. come around and the world has come around a lot more. So it's not just continuous forward motion.

It's the belief that you can figure it out no matter what and make ebb and flows as you go. And a lot of people that are moving forward, even in the same business model that don't have that, don't take the continuous forward motion, even though they think they are. Or they're taking what I call passive actions versus active actions. What are the differences between a passive and active action? Great question. So passive actions are the ones that don't get you out of your comfort zone that probably have to be done. Don't get me wrong. But especially as a growing business owner, it's so much easier for you to go, oh, I have all these things that I have to do. And then when you actually look and divide them of a work week

of how many are passive and how many are active, it's huge. So not only does it have to get you out of your comfort zone, it has to align with the end goal that you want. So if you have a revenue goal and you're not doing sales and marketing activities, which most people aren't, even high level companies, just to say you know, I work with only six and seven figure business owners now. And yeah, they don't do it either. So don't feel bad. But the goal is to really make the active actions a lot more than the passive actions and prioritize those first. Okay. What about passive actions that have to be done? Like, for example, I have to download all of my bank statements and email them to my bookkeeper quarterly. You can have someone else do that. So that's where teams come in,

right? So I don't do that. But it also matters, of course, on how much money you have. As you start moving forward at the beginning, you have to do the crappy stuff. I'm not saying don't. Like, there's little things. I'm saying 80-20 it, right? Yeah. Best you can. And I batch everything. And so trying to be able to go, okay, these are passive. We're just going to knock all these out. These are the ones I have to do because so-and-so can or whatever the reason is. Right. But that your main goal, like eat that frog, productivity, quote unquote. Productivity is very important. Don't give me wrong, but I like being very effective, not necessarily efficient at the wrong things. Right. And so you could be really, really efficient at passive actions and make zero money. Right. How do you know the difference, though? I mean,

is the differentiating factor simply the active actions are going to bring you closer to the revenue goal? So what I do when I go into a business in general, the first thing I would do is go, okay, what's making you money right now? Can we double it? You make, that's like, okay, anybody can say that. She doesn't need to be a business coach in order to say that. Most people won't do it. So when you actually go through and figure out what your metrics are and what is actually causing the money to flow in, Right. And then you increase that activity, typically, it goes up. Instead of looking for new streams and all that fun stuff.

Don't get me wrong, that's a side note and you can do that separately also. But the goal short term is to do that. Doubling down on what works? Yes. Yes. And sometimes we don't step back and go, hey, because you have all these other small things that take up so much time. When in reality, if you actually double down on the stuff that works, you might have a little bit more cash so you could pay a right hand that can do a lot of the smaller tasks. And that's sort of how the snowball of growth goes, if that makes sense.

So I'm imagining somebody who's listening to this episode right now, who is maybe a freelance graphic designer on the side. Or they have a full-time job, but they have a side business as an event planner. Or they run a landscaping company, right? How would they take this lesson and apply it to their lives? That's a great question, especially when it's freelance and it's time for money. That makes it tough. So one of the first things, can you increase your prices?

because that's, hey, there's only so many ways we can do this, right? You can increase your prices. You can upsell your current clients. Okay. So, but that does go into developing out a new product or a new service then, yeah? Potentially, you could also do affiliates or something like that also. It depends on the business model. Right.

So when you look at what you have and what you can already do, if it's not scalable, that does make it difficult, you just have to get really good at not doing the little stuff. So if you go, hey, I'm worth this much per hour. And that's a really, I know people say this all the time, but it's one of the first things that we do is we have everybody do a time audit, which everybody hates. Right. You track your time. Oh my gosh. I hate it when my coaches do it to me. So it sucks. But the whole point is to go, what is the hourly cost of what this would be? Right. Because we can't clone ourselves yet, right? Yeah. No entrepreneurs want to and they can't. So as soon as we start going through and actually

seeing what you're doing, right, most people have aha moments of, oh crap, I'm doing a whole bunch of stuff that I probably shouldn't be doing no matter what it is, even if it's in your day job. Right. even if it's at home. And so when you start realizing what you actually have, and I know when you're on a lower end budget, it's more about making more revenue, but that's the point. You're supposed to be going, okay, what are the lower level tasks so that I can prioritize the higher stuff so that I can make more per hour, however many hours you have to work, right? Because we also want to have hours to enjoy yourself too, and you don't want to spend your entire time freelancing if possible. But if your goal is to quit your job, that's different. So to me, I would be figuring out,

how we can actually sell more people for a short period of time so that we can make a transition plan for that graphic designer example. But each example is a little bit different. Right. So let me go back to one thing that you said earlier. You said that you have interviewed millionaires about what types of businesses millionaires start and what they would do over again if they could do it again. Let's talk about both of those. What types of businesses do millionaires start? It was all over the gosh darn map. I thought it was going to be, I thought there was going to be patterns. Right. It was, what is Celebriducks, Rubber Ducky Celebrities, right? Like things that you wouldn't even think of, there was no correlations.

I was like, maybe it's service business, maybe it's software companies, maybe it's, it wasn't, it was all over the map. So it really, it's an amalgam of a whole bunch of different things. But the point was, is that in all of those failures that they had, in all of the startups that they had, they got really good at finding out what people want and what the actual value and in the testing of that value. Most of the ones beforehand wish they had done that better, faster, whatever it is on the upfront. But how do you find out that people want rubber duckies with a celebrity face on it? Right. Yeah. How do you discover that that is a human need that has been unfulfilled?

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Make ship happen. Other than the mistake of not adequately validating an idea prior to starting a project, what other common mistakes have you seen millionaires make? I laughed because all of them, right? I even asked about spirituality in it because I was like, ooh, maybe there's a skew towards the spiritual ones, have more faith or belief in themselves. That was nothing. And the other thing was I asked how many hours they worked at the beginning.

And unfortunately, what the data of those people said is that they worked all of them. And now that I've been in it for so long, entrepreneurs just think they're working all the time because they're thinking about it all the time. In hindsight, when we go back to that toggle of the time tracking, they're usually not. They're usually just feeling like they're working on it or doing very passive, like, little things instead. Right. We interviewed Laura Vandercam on this podcast. We actually had her on twice. And what she has discovered is that oftentimes people who perceive themselves to be working at 70 hours a week are actually only working 40. And it might be the case that they're in the office for 55 or 60. But once you subtract out the time that they came in a little bit late because they had a doctor's appointment, the time that they left a little bit early to go to run and errands. the lunch that they took, the 15 or 20 minute break that they took when they got up from their desk and then just did a lap around the office and had some chit-chat with some of their coworkers. When you subtract those out and you look at the actual time spent working, which is different than the time spent at work. Yes. Then it actually, it's highly unusual to go above 40. So what's interesting about that too is imagine the people that have day jobs, they are probably not working 40 hours a week either.

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, if you're spending 40 at the office, you might be working 30. Yeah, and that's the key point when we have visibility to what's actually happening. Just like in business, in general, metrics, really important, actual data. And our minds are so incorrect. Right. Like 50% of the things we remember are wrong or something like that, right?

So when you start going back and going, oh, I work all of them, that's the story we tell ourselves all the time also. So when I have my clients come in and I go, wait, and then I reorganize it, I'm like, this is only this many. hours. And it's usually, this is funny, it's usually like there's personal, personal, personal, personal. I was like, oh, you can, you can do your personal stuff too. But when we separate it, it's literally like 35 or 40. Right. Maybe. You know? And then when we categorize and flip it and go, these are the top priority tasks, you're spending an hour and a half on them a week. Like it literally is, oh no, like as a shot to the chest, you're like, oh gosh, you're right. But do you think that there's fear behind that? Like, I don't want to do the top priority tasks

because I'm afraid that it might fail. And so I'm going to distract myself by checking email and updating Twitter. We are human. You know, so that I don't have to work on this big, scary project that might invalidate my very existence. Yes. Ding, ding, ding. You got the exact same thing.

Yeah. And that's my whole point. That's the point of why we care as business owners to evolve as a human because we are counteracting ourselves constantly. It's a brain thing, right? On the neuroscience side, when we start actually thinking our thoughts, that's what stops. Of course, getting out of your comfort zone shouldn't be a thing. Right? Like, oh, we're afraid that we're going to get hit by a tiger or a bus or hit by a bus. Yeah. eaten by a tiger. It's the same thing. Do you know what I mean? And so,

so what we're doing is we are still the human brain from long ago. We're still evolving at a very slow rate as far as our brain goes. But as entrepreneurs, we see things as threats that we're, they're made up threats. So one of the things that I do with clients too, and I do this, I go, okay, If I had so-and-so's brain, what would they do in this situation? Because the person that's done it before, easy to do it again, right? Done it 100 times before, super easy to do it again. Right. Me, who had never done it before really hard to do.

Yeah, I tell people, I tell my students that about rental properties. The first one is the hardest. Yep. The fifth one, you like do it casually in your pajamas while you're channel surfing and eating the just picking the marshmallows out of the cereal box and eating only those. That's what you're doing by the time you're buying the fifth. It's so casual. Well, and that's my point, right?

So we can get used to anything, public speaking. So I turned bright red. Nobody can see me right now. But I turn bright red with like, it looks like a rash when I public speak. It's awesome. It's not fun. And I'm a keynote speaker now, people, just so you know, don't let anyone tell you anything.

But I had to practice, I don't know how many, I had such stage fright, such anxiety. I would stutter all sorts of things. And I was like, you know what? Just do it 100 times. I'll get used to it. I still turn red. I can't change that. I make jokes about turning red.

Because it's weird. It looks like I'm breaking out in hives. But you get, like, that's not a big deal anymore because I've done it so many times. And so what we want to be able to do is imagine putting on whoever that is that can do it. Right. And then it makes it so much easier. So the other thing, actually, it's funny. You're asking about all the traits of millionaires.

One of the traits is this voracious sense of learning, but learning newer things, right? Business ownership is a lot of that, right? As you start growing, I know you were talking about trying to delegate. it's a whole new skill set to hire somebody. It's a whole new skill set to delegate. We're not taught how to do that. We teach people how to hire. We teach people how to run a team.

We teach people how to manage because these people are entrepreneurs and they only learn the sales and marketing piece first. And then they don't know any of the rest of them. And so what's funny is as they're growing, especially in those smaller stages when they can't afford a super, super high-level CEO or CEO-O or anything. An executive assistant. Yeah.

Well, even that. You hire somebody and you're like, I think they're going to be great. And are you the bad manager or are they the bad employee? Right. Yeah. And so it's trying to figure out what those pieces are because we're all in new situations and learning. And thank goodness for the internet and for people that have done it before that tell stories like this because that's how we learn also. But it's all about getting outside of your comfort zone and pushing that envelope to something new. Then it becomes your comfort zone. In the millionaires that you have interviewed and that you've surveyed, how long between the point at which

they began their business and then the point at which they had a personal seven-figure net worth, what was the gap between point A to point B? Oh, I wish that was common also. So one of the things that I found, one of the trends that I found, so it wasn't, it depends. Some people started a business at 45 and it took them 20 years, right? It really, really depended. So the interesting correlation, though, is the people that had parents that were entrepreneurs were successful faster. Interesting. Yeah. Probably, was it because they had picked up some of the skills? So when I, when I, when I chatted with them, it was because they started either younger or they were around it more, and they failed earlier when they still had cushion, right?

Right. So my kids are in an entrepreneur kid school now, and I'm like, learn all the crap now while you've got under my roof. Yeah. And so to me, that's just the correlation of either they have a mentor in a parent that can actually do that, or they started doing it a little bit earlier and were able to fail faster in it. Does that make sense?

Right. So there were those things. But there wasn't like a, ooh, this type of business model just goes much faster or this person learned quicker or whatever. It didn't seem like there was any real correlation. There's no singular formula. Yeah. I wish, right? That's what everybody wants for. Right. And that's what everybody wants. Like, come on, just give me the special sauce. That's what everybody asked for. What's the secret of millionaires? And I was like, they just worked hard and they kept going. Right. Yeah, exactly. But that's not a satisfying answer because a lot of people work hard and do not succeed.

And so then that introduces the question of what is the differentiating factor? Is it merely luck? or is there some other, you know, is it the right place at the right time, which is that combination of where preparation meets luck? Yeah. Well, and so my dad was a failed business owner as a side note. So I saw him fail and I had all sorts of issues of, well, he couldn't do it. So I can't do it either. Like he ended up working in a job that he hated for the rest of his life.

He just retired last year. So I didn't have a lot personally. I didn't have a lot of business ownership or anything like that or any mentors that had really done it until I found that mentor. And so I had all sorts of mindset crap on it. So to me, any evolution as a human is picking apart what your specific operating system is malfunctioning in and getting better at that. So it could be relationships for some people. Millionaires have bad relationships too.

I'm not saying that they're all holistic and everybody's happy, sunshine, and roses. Everybody has problems. Everybody has problems. It's where are we and what are we working on most. One thing that's interesting to me about the description that you have from, From the information that you've gathered about the millionaires that you've talked to is that while they may be succeeding in one specific arena of life, which is their business and their personal net worth, that does not necessarily mean that they have healthy habits, that they're eating

well, that they're getting adequate sleep, that they're exercising, that they have good relationships. So success in one arena does not necessarily correlate with success in others. Correct. And that's to me why it matters so much about having a life you enjoy first. What I have found, and I find this really interesting anyway, is that the people that are looking at holistically, like if you chat, and I have friends with a bunch of them now, if you chat with their wives, their wives are happy too. Everybody in their life is pretty holistic and happy, the ones that are actually paying more attention to their health,

the ones that are really trying to level up all areas of life, not just business. You used earlier an analogy that I really liked, which is that if a human is an operating system, then you have to do a scan of the operating system to see where. the code is corrupt or where it's malfunctioning. Yes. Right. So how do you develop the self-awareness to be able to do that? Yeah.

Great. Life story of everyone, right? Trying to do that. So in business, I will start doing what we do to sort of assess what a business is. But I really have to assess the owner because a lot of it is about the owner. Yes, you can have all the systems in the world. You can have all the whatever it is in the world. If the owner is going through a divorce, business suffers.

If the owner is going through a health crisis, business. It's about the owner. But it's not only about the owner in the big stuff, it's about the owner in the small stuff. So sometimes I'll get in and working with them and be like, you had some sort of trauma as a child that I cannot, you're not doing any of the things that I tell you to do. Right. And so I have to go, I have referrals to trauma coaches. I can't work with them if they have trauma that is stopping them. And that's one of those doing a scan things where I'm like, oh, that is not serving you.

That is not my specialty. That is childhood or whatever, or therapy or whatever those pieces are. and that's the line that they should go. So it's hard to self-diagnose. I mean, I have coaches and therapists and all sorts of things too because I can't self-diagnose very well either. We're in the bottle. We can't see the label from in the bottle, right?

I was just thinking of that. It's hard to read the label when you're inside the jar. Yeah. And so you need outside perspective on some of this stuff. And that's why asking questions to your friends that really know you when you can actually be really vulnerable is a fun one, being like, so what am I not good at? So having people like that that you really trust that you can share your secrets with, that's definitely a piece that you can go down. So that way they can go, hey, did you notice you're doing that stuff?

Because it's so much easier for us to see other people, you know, wrapped around the axle and going, why do you keep doing that over and over and over again? Right. Right. But it's a pre-patter for them and they don't realize it. Another thing that we discussed earlier is that oftentimes you know what are the highest level or most important tasks within your business. And yet when you audit your time, you're only spending an hour and a half a week on the thing that will actually drive your business forward the most. You're spending a small amount of time on the things that matter and a large amount of time on the noise. I've seen this in myself a lot as well.

And I'm highly aware that when I do it, and I think when a lot of other people do it, that is procrastination, which is fueled by fear. right so what do we do at anyone who who notices that fear is the biggest blockage within their life so i was just with chase bank and mel robbins and mel robbins has the five second rule when you think that you have to do something like whether it be something hard even if it's just waking up in the morning yeah you go five four three two one and then just do it because because our brain is dumb and we'll come up with all the excuses to not be able to do it right especially for smart people This is actually probably worse for smart people for the procrastination side. Because we can be like, oh, you know, it would be, I should email them at 2 o'clock because they'd be after lunch.

So therefore, they would get it sooner. So they would probably reply sooner. So I'm just going to wait a little while on that one. Yeah. Right? Yep. Oh, I'm so smart. Yeah.

Smart people can rationalize anything. Oh, my gosh. I love talking people down on this. So first step is awareness. So first step is when you actually look at the toggle, I don't even usually have to say something. People are like, oh. Yeah, I kind of. Yeah.

That's first step. First step is like, okay, not actually doing what I'm supposed to be doing. I know I need to improve. Now what? And so having someone to keep you accountable is huge. Having someone that you have to report your metrics to or your data to or whatever it is, even if it's somebody in your team, even if it's a buddy, a mastermind, something like that where you can't back down and you have to be honest is huge because it's just

pulling a trigger. You have to build it up like a muscle. And that's what I feel like a lot of the millionaires got really good at. They got really good at doing knocking after door after door and getting a no and knocking on another door and getting a no. But the goal is just to do a little bit better than you did before. And as long as you can keep skewing it that way, that's the point of continuous forward motion.

You keep pushing forward on the thing that really matters most. You keep increasing that edge, it will grow. A lot of the people who are listening to this right now are people who currently have a nine to five job and they are members of the fire community. They're trying to reach financial independence. they want to at least have the option to leave their day job. Many of them are interested in side hustles and possibly one day increasing that side hustle into a full-time thing as that's something that's in the maybe five-year plan.

What can they do right now to apply some of what we've talked about into their lives? Great question. Don't make it a five-year plan, make it a two-year plan, and then figure it out. Ouch. Okay. Well, the reason why is because it's scary, we've been. put long timelines on things. Right. So instead, the reason why I wanted to pay off the debt so fast is because it's painful. I didn't want to have to do that for that long. Right.

So I set it up as a challenge. I highly recommend whatever you're doing in your side hustle, set up a challenge because you would be surprised how quickly you can actually make money. Like I have stories after stories after it. We used to have a seven days to one K challenge, right? Seven day to one K? Seven days. So people in business. It was all about how do we make an extra $1,000 in a week. So it's not all long-term stuff. I want to close out with this question. What is the one thing that somebody who is listening to this can do today in order to improve their side hustle if they have one?

What's so funny about that question is it's very similar to the last question I asked for every single millionaire that I interviewed. Did you know that? Oh, no. Okay. So the question that I ask them is what is one action listeners can take this week to help move them forward towards their goal of a million. So I'm going to use the answer that they have repetitively come up with, which is completely on par with what we're talking about right now. So the most common answer of five, almost 500 interviews is do the one thing that you know you should be doing and haven't.

So ask yourself this question if you're listening right now. What is the one thing that you've been avoiding or not doing that you know would make the biggest impact. It's probably scary. Probably don't want to admit it to yourself, but that's the thing that they should do this week. So what you're saying is, we already know what to do. We're just not doing it. Yeah, ding, ding, ding. Yay, go us. And we're scared. And that's fine. And that's what's going to get you closer. Well, thank you so much, Jamie. Where can people find you if they'd like to know more about you? If you go to eventual millionaire.com, you can check out all that. We actually have eventual millioner.com slash afford anything for some of the resources that we talked about today, too.

Oh, excellent. Jamie Masters, thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Jamie. What are some of the key takeaways that we got from this conversation? Here are three. Number one, going back to her conversation about paying off $70,000 in debt. What we hear from her story is that there are many degrees of freedom. Within the fire community, it's often tempting to think of money equaling freedom only in one dramatic regard. But even if you have not reached financial independence, improving your money situation can bring massive degrees of freedom to your life. And what we hear in Jamie's story is that getting out of debt, finding freedom from consumer

debt, such as her car loan and her secondary mortgage, that debt freedom was what allowed her to be able to quit her job temporarily and pivot into a more meaningful and more autonomous career. Going through all that and going, okay, what did I do? Now that I'm stuck in $70,000 debt, my whole thing was, okay, now I just have to go on a crazy regiment, pay it all off, because that's the only thing I can see that will make my life potentially better, where I could even part-time stay at home with my kid or potential kids. But that was the wake-up call because my former husband would tell me to quit my job. all the time. I was miserable. And I worked from home. Like, it was a cushy job. Everybody was like,

she's made it. And I was like, I hate my life. And that sucks. And so the takeaway is that while there is a huge link between money and freedom, it's not a binary yes, no, you're either financially independent or you're not type of a situation. It's that as you improve your money situation, you get gradually greater and greater degrees of freedom. It's a sliding scale, and as you do things like pay off debt, build a runway, build an emergency fund, you'll find that the amount of freedom in your life expands even before you reach fire. So that's key takeaway number one. Key takeaway number two. Self-knowledge, in part, comes from tracking. Our minds are often incorrect about self-assessment. And so if we can track or quantify aspects of our lives,

like how many hours we work during the day, you know, if we go to toggle.com, T-O-G-G-L.com, it's a free website. And if you go there and actually track your working hours, you may discover that reality is different than perception. Similarly, tracking our exercise, tracking calories, tracking macros, tracking the number of steps we take, tracking the number of hours that we sleep each night, tracking our water intake. These various ways of quantifying ourselves and our habits allow us to close that gap between what we think we do and what we actually do. And that's the key point when we have visibility to what's actually happening. Just like in business in general, metrics, really important, actual data, and our minds are so incorrect.

And so key takeaway number two is to track your time and to track any other element in your life that you want to improve because that's how you can develop greater self-awareness. Finally, key takeaway number three. In order to overcome fear, embrace an alter ego, it can sometimes be helpful to put yourself in somebody else's shoes, someone whom you perceive to be more competent, more confident, or both. and then ask yourself, all right, what would this person do? Or embody that person. One of the things that I do with clients too, I go, okay, if I had so-and-so's brain, what would they do in this situation? Because the person that's done it before, easy to do it again, right?

Right. Done it 100 times before, super easy to do it again. Me, who'd never done it before, really hard to do. And so the key takeaway is to embrace a bit of alter ego because it's a way that you can draw out latent versions or latent qualities within yourself that you want to develop. Those are three key takeaways from this conversation with Janie Masters of Eventual Millionaire.

If you want to check out the resources that we mentioned during the conversation, just head to Eventual Millionaire.com slash afford anything. That's our show for today. If you enjoyed today's episode, please do three things. Number one, most importantly, share this with a friend or a family member. It's the single most important thing that you can do to spread not only this podcast, but the message of lifestyle design, money management, financial independence, mini-retirements. Designing a better life. That's what this movement is all about. Conscious, intentional living.

So if you know somebody who's trying to pay off their debt or who's interested in starting a business or a side hustle, share this episode with them. Number two, please leave us a review in whatever app you're using the listener podcasts. As of the time of this recording, we have 1,578 ratings on iTunes. Woo-hoo! So if you had to Afford Anything.com slash iTunes, please rate us and leave us to review. Help us get to 1600. And number three, make sure that you hit the subscribe or the follow button in whatever app you're using to listen to this podcast. For those of you who are interested in real estate investing, we have a free e-book.

The title of the e-book is seven expensive rental property investing mistakes to avoid. The title more or less tells you exactly what's inside of it. And you can download this ebook for free by going to Afford Anything.com slash real estate. That's Affordanything.com slash real estate. Thank you again for tuning in. Come hang out and discuss this episode at our Facebook group. You can find it at Afford Anything.com slash Facebook. Or come chat with me on Instagram.

I'm there at Paula P-A-U-L-A, P-A-N-T. Coming up on future episodes, Nomadic Matt is going to be joining us. Matt has traveled around the globe full-time for the last 13 years, and he's going to talk about how he has spent nearly a decade and a half as a full-time traveler. We're also going to be chatting with New York Times bestselling author David Epstein about how generalists can triumph in an increasingly specialized world. Make sure that you subscribe to the podcast so that you don't miss any of those upcoming shows. My name's Paula Pant. This is episode 200 of the Afford Anything Podcast. Thank you so much for being part of this community, and I'll catch you next week.