Bedros Keuilian Podcast Show - 049. How To Stop Being BROKE

Episode Date: September 5, 2023

Look, I know what it's like to be broke. To count every penny, always running out of money before you run out of month, and to wonder if things will ever change. In my newest episode, I’m breaking down the steps you need to climb out of any financial hole, so that you can change your life and get right side up just like I did. And I’ll be exposing the mental traps that keep you broke and how you can escape them. JOIN MY FREE 6-WEEK CHALLENGE: Transform into a Purpose-Driven Man https://bedroskeuilian.com/challenge

You have to understand that you have to leave this poor mentality. You know, I used to tell people that I've been broke and poor, and they would ask, well, what's the difference? And I would always tell them, I said, poor is a state of mind. Broke means you made a bad decision financially, and you lost a lot of money, and you were currently money poor. Broke is something I can bounce back from. Welcome to the Bedroves Coolie and Show.

Hey, friends, welcome to the Bedrose-Culian show. Today we're going to talk about a topic that seems to be plaguing a lot of people, and that is y'all going broke. So I want to talk about how to stop being broke because, well, listen, we all know that things got very expensive, very quickly, since the pandemic since 2020, between the inflation and between prices going up on everything and between interest rates are through the roof, housing, transportation, food, utilities, everything's expensive, right?

And you find yourself making money, but at the end of the month, you're like, where the fuck did my money go? And so today I want to help you guys who are kind of in this position of you're broke and you don't know how to be broke. And this doesn't mean that you're working at, you know, fucking Taco Bell for 15 bucks an hour. You could very well be making 100,000, 200,000 a year and be broke. And the reason I know this is because, well, many of you slide into my DMs and go, hey, I'm making good money, but I'm broke.

and typically it's a byproduct of how you're spending your money, right? How you're spending your money and how you're not investing your money. The truth is this. You could be making millions, and I actually know several people who make millions and millions of dollars, but they're constantly chasing the money because their expense out is like just a little bit less than their money coming in, right?

And so when that happens, when you're making a lot of money, you typically have a lot of employees. You're paying a lot of taxes. And if you're buying this car and that yacht and multiple cars and stuff, before you know it, your spending can get out of hand. And so oftentimes it's not about that. So let's get into this. And I think you're going to see that there is something you can do to stop being broke and

then actually get yourself to a place where you're right side up and then get yourself to a place where you're actually creating wealth. And wealth is multiple income streams. wealth is having income that's passive or maybe more like semi-passive. I'm not really sure if there's any passive income streams out there, but you can certainly have, you know, semi-passive income streams. And so income streams that are scalable,

not with just you trading time for dollars, but income streams where maybe you've got other people trading time for dollars on your behalf. At the end of the day, if you have a job, you are that other people. You are trading your life's time for dollars to grow someone else's company, right? That's not a bad thing if you're happy with your workplace, if they pay you fairly and you're learning skills and you have opportunities to grow.

That's not a bad thing. But you should also consider creating a side income. In fact, we're just talking right here before the camera started rolling. Ed, who's always behind the cameras, he's really good at buying cars and building it up and flipping it. Right. Well, so he works with me here. He also has his own business where he's a DJ photographer and he also buys cars and flips them. And so think about how many ways you can create income opportunity.

But income opportunity alone is not enough because, again, if your expenses are constantly chasing your income, you're going to find yourself always borrowing from Peter to pay to Paul. So let's dive into it. Here's the thing with being broke. It sucks. It sucks because your human experience is lessened. Like you just have less of a human experience. If we all have, whatever, 80 to 100 years on this planet, do you really want to have a lower

quality human experience, like in terms of travel, in terms of lifestyle, in terms of housing, in terms of places you get to visit. You always want to have to be in a position where you have to negotiate and compromise things, you know, fly weird flights, multiple connections, never seeing first class, living in, you know, whatever crappy hotels, staying at crappy hotels, staying going in the off seasons to a resort or whatever, right? Fuck that shit. And even beyond that, like, let's say it's not vacations. Let's say just your human experience at home. Like, don't you want to have a better place? Don't you want to live in a better part of the community?

Don't you want to have a more reliable vehicle? Don't you want to have some financial cushion, right? Of course you do. And the reality is the last couple of years have really accelerated the erosion of people's bank accounts. Because while your pay may have gone up by two, three, four, or five percent, cost of living has gone up by nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen percent. maybe even higher in some cities. And so there's no way your pay is catching up. So what do you do to do that?

Because now that you know that you could still make good money and be broke, well, what can you do? One, you have to understand that a job puts you in a position where you're trading time for dollars. And that's a good place to start, but that is not a good place to live. Once you have a job, you have to figure out what can I do either in that job, can I manage people so that I can maybe start leveraging myself and maybe getting some revenue share because if I'm a manager or a leader at this job and not just a cog in the wheel, maybe I can make more money, right? And if I'm making more money, can I do this next thing? Thing number two is obviously can I carve out 10, 15, 20% of my income and actually save it?

And when I say save it, I don't want you to just save it in a savings account because if you do, savings accounts are probably right now paying half a percent, quarter of a percent, maybe one percent if it's some credit union. Well, guess what the bank does when you save money in a bank? They take your money from that savings account. It's not just sitting there in a vault in a bank with your name on it. When you deposit a sum of money in the bank and it's digitally there for you to see it, it is actually being used in different investments, right?

Maybe they're investing in annuities. Maybe they're investing in tax liens. Maybe banks are investing in insurance policies. Maybe banks are investing in the S&P 500. Maybe they're buying real estate with it, right? Developing real estate with it. These are all things that you could be doing as well. And you're thinking like, dude, how can I do this?

I don't make enough money to be able to buy real estate. Well, you can. I'm not talking about buying a 200 unit apartment complex by yourself. I'm talking about maybe joining a syndicate. Like, for example, if you were going to get into investing in real estate, you might join a syndicate. Like Grant Cardone has a syndicate. One of my coaching clients, Robert Martinez, if you look them up on Instagram, has a

syndicate. In other words, what Grant Cardone does, what Robert Martinez does, Tony Stephan, my coaching client, has a syndicate. they will go out and they will buy an apartment complex and they will say hey you can actually pitch in money to buy this apartment complex and you can pitch in $3,000, $5,000, $10,000, $20,000, $100,000, right? And we'll give you a guaranteed interest rate on it, right? 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13% interest rate. And so if you are in a position where you can build up money in a,

a savings account where then you can deploy it to actually have it generate money for you, interest, you're in a good spot. But that's not all you can do. There's other things I'm going to share that with you. But one, we need to understand that we can't go trading time for dollars. We have to elevate ourselves from trading time for dollars to a place of either managing people, leading people where we can actually get paid more. And what I want you to do is when you go from one pay. Let's say you are a person working in a cubicle somewhere and you're getting paid $55,000, $60,000 a year, right? Think about this. You could now elevate by asking for more training or developing your skill sets and traits that they're looking for to get into management.

If you're making $65,000 per year, now let's say you move up into management, you're making $75,000 a year, that extra $10,000 a year that you're making, instead of adjusting your lifestyle to it to now live a better life and use up that extra $10,000, you're going to still live off that $65,000 and that extra $10,000 is going to go into savings. And then what I want you to do is I want you to commit to actually reducing your cost of living by 10 to 20%. 20% is pretty aggressive. 10% is very realistic. You can kind of meet the sweet spot at 15%.

How do you do that? Well, how many times are you eating out? How many times are you ordering food through those food delivery services that charge you in a premium for the delivery service? How many different subscriptions do you have to Netflix, to Prime, to Hulu, to whatever? How many different music platforms

are you subscribed to? How many different, outgoing income streams are there on your credit card statement? Actually look at your bank or your credit card statement and see all the different outgoing income streams for $4 a month, $9 a month, $19 a month, and start chopping away at those things, right? Because if you are constantly flowing money out of your bathtub, if your bathtub has 100 holes in it, you are really going to have to work extra hard to fill up that bathtub with water for it to sustain anything. Your job, first of all, is to plug up as many of those holes as possible. So by reducing your cost of living, your expense,

right? So food delivery services, going out, do you need a gym membership to four different gyms? I don't know. Maybe you do. Do you need a prime and a Hulu and a Netflix account? Maybe you do. You probably don't. Right? When you cut all that out, what you're looking to do is cut out as little as 10% as much as 20% of your income. And now you're going to put that into a savings account. And then you're going to also develop skills where you are higher value at your workplace. And if you are higher value at your workplace, you're going to now apply for that position and take that new position that might pay you $10, $15, $20,000 more per year for managing

leaderships or another skill that you can bring to the table. So now that you're saving, let's say, 15% on your current cost of living, right? You've reduced your cost of living, your expenses by 15%. Now, let's say six months from now, you've developed better traits and skills to lead and manage or to add value to that company in a different way and you're getting 10 grand more because you're now doing something different, more high value for that company. Now you're accelerating your savings process. So you've cut out expenses.

Like when was the last time you called your car insurance? right and said hey um look i haven't gotten to a car accident i haven't gotten any tickets what can you guys do to lower my car insurance did you know that you can do that do you know that you can consolidate your bills and pay off your credit card debts like right off the bat if you're paying any credit card debts right now you probably have interest rate somewhere between 10 11 12 percent on the low side to as much as 20 20 23 24 25 percent on the high side like if you have credit card debt pay that out first by go into that saving strategy that I just taught you, right? And then using that money, instead of putting into a savings account, use that money,

the 10, 15, 20% that you dropped, reduced your cost of living. You're going to use that to pay off those credit cards first because there, that interest rate is killing you. So bring down your credit card debt to zero. Lower your cost of living by minimum 10%, ideally 15%, aggressively 20%. increase your income at your workplace by adding more value. All of that now goes towards a savings account. As now you have a savings account, ask yourself this,

what can I do to deploy this money that I have in my savings account? Once you have about 10 grand saved in a savings account, you can actually deploy that money. So now you're debt-free. You have a lower cost of living for yourself, right? You're managing your expenses. You're eating in more. You're making your own food.

If you really want to treat yourself, you're going out and buying the food instead of using a delivery service. You're not using all these different subscriptions for your iPhone or your Android or your TV services. Now you're in a position where it's like, shit, man, I just saved 10 grand in a matter of a few months. Guess what that allows you to do? That puts you in a position where now you could use that 10 grand one of two ways.

You can find places that you can invest in, right? Because remember, when we have a lot of money saved up in a bank account, a savings account, you're earning half a percent, right? it's probably you're losing money. It's eroding. Inflation, if you have $100,000 saved in a bank, each month you're losing 9% roughly, which is the cost of inflation.

So imagine that in a year, like that $100,000 that you had, instead of gaining value, is now worth less. It's not like there's actually 90 grand left in there or 80 grand left in there. It's just the stuff, life costs more. So that money now is not worth as much.

much. And so instead of having that money sitting there in a bank account or under your mattress, you are going to put it into a place where you're going to be able to generate more revenue. And I am not a stockbroker. I am not an investment expert, but you can simply go and Google the what has the S&P 500 been averaging for the last 20 years, 30 years, 40 years. You'll see that it averages north of 10%. Right? And there's something called dollar cost average. So you might put, let's say, five grand of that $10,000 into the S&P 500 and let it sit there. Even if it goes down, crashes, whatever, let it sit. And then you start doing dollar cost averaging.

Dollar cost averaging means every month, because we're going to be disciplined, you're going to put an additional $500 into, let's say, the S&P 500, right? Well, by doing that every month, you're growing it. Some months, the S&P 500 might be high, some months it might be really low. over time that is growing and compounding with that average of 10, 11, 12% interest. Interest might go down really low during seasons like we're in right now in mid-20203. And then interest rates might go really high when the economy is thriving. But if you're doing dollar cost averaging, you're putting money in. That money is growing through compounding interest, right?

So now you have, what did I say, a semi-passive income stream or you're growing wealth. How are you growing that wealth? Because you're putting money in to the S&P 500, and then it is growing by way of interest so long as you don't take it out and you routinely, through a disciplined habit, keep depositing every month. Say, 500 bucks or 1,000 bucks, right?

Again, I'm not a financial services person, so do not take any financial advice from me. I'm just giving you an example of something you might do. But then you might take that other $5,000 of the $10,000 that you had and you might say, all right, is there a course that I could buy online, that I could learn to create a side hustle, right? What I don't want to do, what I don't want to do if I'm you is I don't want to go into another position where I'm trading time for dollars. So what you're not going to do is you're not going to go, well, I work 40 hours a week here. I'm also going to go

drive Uber, you know, for five hours a night. And then on the weekends, I'm going to work as a bartender somewhere. Like all of that is still trading time for dollars. Yes, you're making more money, but you're literally giving up more of your life, right? And I don't want you to do that. So if you were able to bring together 10 grand under your mattress or into a savings account, five grand of it went to a modest investment like the S&P 500, the other five grand now, what you're doing with this is you're literally creating a opportunity to create a side hustle. What I want you to do is go from a employee mindset to an entrepreneur mindset. What I'm really proud of is like probably more than half of our employees team members here in this building

have the entrepreneurial mindset have another income stream or two or three that they are bringing in for themselves. I like knowing that. I want them to be able to benefit from the stuff that I'm teaching. I don't have this fear that I might lose them. Of course at some point, all employees at some point you're going to lose. Hopefully you're going to lose because they are in a new phase of life and they've outgrown your organization and they are doing something better. Sometimes as a leader you lose people because you have to part ways with them. You have to fire them, right? It's pretty rare that we have to fire anyone in this building. But I digress. The point I'm trying to make here is you ought to put yourself in a position where you might have a

career, but you also want to create that side income. So use that other five grand to buy a course. Maybe it's Amazon drop shipping. Maybe it's how to buy shit for cheaper from Alibaba and then sell it on eBay for more, right? Maybe there's some affiliate marketing course. In fact, if you look up my friend Robbie Blanchard, he was a former coaching client and still a friend of mine, great guy. Robbie Blanchard has a great course. And in that course, he teaches you how to become an affiliate. An affiliate is using Facebook and social media ads to sell other people's products and services

for commission, right? That's an affiliate. So if you learn the skills that he teaches, and by the way, I don't get a penny from Robbie Blanchard for talking about this. I know his course works. I've actually met lots of people who use this course and have added another income stream into their life. If you have the work ethic, you go through his course.

I imagine you would get similar results, right? And so what I want you to do is adopt this mindset that I don't have to be broke anymore. So first it starts with the mindset of not accepting a lower quality of life, not accepting a lower standard of life. And that means understanding that you're gonna have to do the second thing, which is to cut expenses as much as you can, ideally 15, 20%, start saving.

Then of course, you wanna increase. increase your worth to whatever organization you work for so that you can demand and command more money by managing people or bringing in more value. Whatever you work, if they have a sales position, that sales position probably makes more money than you're making right now, assuming that you can learn to sell. Now, if you're like, well, I'm not a good salesperson. Guess what? Humans are very adaptable. We are very capable of learning new skills and traits. And if you want to learn the skill of sales, you can start making more money from your organization. That's how you become more valuable to your organization. You can't just go to your boss by the way and go, hey boss, I decided to

move out. I'm not going to live with my roommate anymore. I'm going to live by myself. So my expenses are going up by three grand a month. Can you pay me more? See, that boss is not your mom. That boss is not your dad. So your boss does not owe you more money simply because you decided to adjust your lifestyle. Instead, you must go to your boss and demonstrate how you can add more value to the organization. You have to demonstrate how you can bring in $100 more a day so that you can get $10 more per day from that workplace, right? And so whether it's a sales position, whether it's a leadership or management position, whether it's a position that involves more skills, therefore you are in higher demand, you make more money.

And now that you save more money, you are deploying that into, like I said, a real estate syndicate. And I give you three people to look at, look at Tony Steffen, look up Robert Martinez on social media, look up Grant Cardone. And again, I'm not here to endorse any of these guys, but I am here to tell you that they have real estate syndicates where you can input money and let them make their investments. And if they do they make those investments right, you're going to get back more in interest than the current inflation rate, which is what you want.

You always want more money to grow faster than the rate of inflation because inflation is eating up our money. We want to counterinflation by making more. So if inflation is at 9%, right? and you are getting 11% interest, you're making 2% increase in your money, in your $100, let's say, if you deposited $100 into a syndicate

or the S&P 500. So now you understand how that works. What else can you do? Well, you have to understand that you have to leave this poor mentality. You know, I used to tell people that I've been broke and poor, and they would ask, well, what's the difference?

And I would always tell them, I said, poor is a state of mind. Like you could be in a very poor state of mind, which is this poverty state of mind. Broke means you made a bad decision financially and you lost a lot of money and you were currently money poor, but broke is something I can bounce back from. Broke is a temporary state. I made a bad decision in investments and a business deal and whatever. And by the way, when you start a business, just so you know, not a lot of gurus, experts,

whoever talk about this. But when you do start a business, you are going to make some bad decisions and you are probably going to lose some money. In the process, you're going to figure out how to make that money back or how to make that money back from somewhere else. And that's another lesson, another feathering your cap as an entrepreneur, right? So don't for a moment think that as an entrepreneur when you start a business, like you have to be perfect at it and you can't make any mistakes.

You will make mistakes. those mistakes will cost you. And that is the price that we pay as entrepreneurs to become really good at what we do. In fact, a lot of my successes in building seven big giant companies and selling some of those companies and experiencing mistakes, financial mistakes and losses in those companies is why people pay me to become a business coach for them, to coach to mentor them so that they can avoid those mistakes and they could see the success faster. So don't for a moment think that, you know, you're supposed to have a perfectly

successful business, you will have peaks and valleys, you will have ebbs and flows, and you will lose money, but you will gain lessons from that process. But you've got to completely break away from the poor and the poverty mindset. Don't, don't for a moment take pride in being poor, being ghetto, being blue collar, right? Like I have so much respect for those blue collar workers, man, contractors, construction workers, cops, firefighters, very blue collar. Cool. but also go start making some white collar money on the side, right? Find ways. My friend Chanta, he has those sprinter vans.

A big shout out to Chanta because I know you listen to this. And if you don't know who Chanta is, by the way, Chanta, I've known this guy for going on 26 years now. We were bus boys at Disneyland together. And we got into a shit ton of trouble together in Disneyland. And we'll have to share some more stories about Chanty and the Disneyland shenanigans some other time. But Chanta buys these sprinter vans that he loans out to people, rents out to people through that. There's an app out there called Turo, I believe.

Like, he buys these beat up sprinter vans, old ones for $4,000, $5,000, makes them functional and running again. Puts in a whole bed and tiny little kitchenette, does it himself, right? He's figured out by watching YouTube videos how to build a whole little four-wheeled hotel. And then he'll rent it out on. Turo for people that come to Southern California and want to go glamping. In fact, he now has four of these vans in circulation and then he'll randomly buy vans, build them out like that, and then sell him just like Ed for a profit. He might buy a van for, you know, five grand, spend another four or five grand in building it

out and making it reliable and also building out a bed and a kitchen and a little shower area, whatever, right? Perfect for overlanding. and then he'll sell it for $15,000, $20,000. And so these are things you can do while still having a job. And you could also get a course and learn to become an affiliate and sell other people's products and make commission by selling other people's products. You don't have to deal with the customers. You don't have to deal with the product delivery.

You don't have to deal with making the product itself. You don't have to deal with actually even making a website to sell the goddamn thing. You just literally learn how to promote. And I told you, follow Robbie Blanche. get his course and you learn how to do that. There's syndicates for real estate investment where you can make partial investments and you can say, hey, you know,

I'm getting a return on investment from that real estate deal that that guy is running. Yes, that guy is using your money and his money and his money and his money. He pulls it up as a syndicate to buy that apartment complex. But he's also guaranteeing you money plus interest back, your money plus interest back that you wouldn't be able to do on your money. your own, right? So he's doing all the hard work, putting into the money, taking the risk,

putting his name on the line, but then he's giving you interest for it. So think of all these ways that you could do this and understand that the more value you add, the more money you will make. And if you could scale yourself through technology or through other people, then you can make even more money. And if you can have multiple income streams, you know, semi-passive income streams and have interest rate working in your favor by investing in things like the S&P5 100, now you really put yourself in a position where as you continue to have more cash flow coming in than going out, you might want to go, hey, I might start a bigger business now because I've got bigger cash flow and I'm going to make the number one investment that I know is

always going to work, which is me. I'm always going to invest in me, right? So imagine just by saving that initial $10,000 over the next six months by cutting your expenses, by increasing your worth and value to an organization and getting more pay, that $10,000 you can parlay into starting a business like as early as a year and a half, two years from now that can really hockey stick and make you multiple six figures, seven figures, and beyond. And that is how you stop being broke. But you must also adopt the mindset of, I cannot outspend what I make. And this is how there are millionaires that I know that outspend what they make and therefore are actually broke and, you must be. And, you must also adopt the mindset of, I cannot outspend what I make. struggling and stressed and not sleeping well and out of shape and angry and having fucking heart

attacks like you don't want to do that i remember one time um i think i was a grant cardone's office in miami uh when i went to go on his show me and ed flew out to miami and he said man i can't understand why people always have these competitions like guys in our circles you know there's some guys that i know and i'm not talking bad on them but i will tell you this that you know this guy has a jet that guy has a jet with two engines and not just one engine on the tail he has two engines on one on either side of the tail. So this guy's like, hey, I'm going to get a two-engine jet. I'm going to get a bigger jet. And I remember Grant Cardone saying to me, we're just shooting a shit. He's like, man, there's always someone with a bigger jet or more jets than you. I go exactly right. So you can

always outspend what you make. So you have to develop the habit and the discipline to not do that, to live within your means, to live below your means. This way, you multiply your income, you grow your wealth, you create several different income. streams and you become the guy that lives a better lifestyle has more freedom and doesn't have to stress out every time the bills are due guys thanks for watching and listening to this episode of the bedros-cooling show always remember that average is the enemy that success is your responsibility and change can take place in an instant when you decide to flip the switch i'll see you guys later You know,