Business Innovators Radio - Interview with Darryl and Alicia Pryor With DNA Financial Associates Discussing Breaking the Chains – Freeing Yourself from Money Myths

Episode Date: February 13, 2025

This is Darryl. As a financial well-being strategist, His goal is to remove the complexity of financial planning by provide coaching and mentorship, accountability, and a “let’s get it done” mindset which he gained through years of self-less service as military, government civilian and private industry servant helping the “good guys” find the “bad guys”His true passion however has always been in helping others pursue financial, personal, and professional success. This passion is fueled by the recognition that any success he has achieved in life has been through the support and mentorship of family, friends, and close associates. Although he is “just a common, hardworking ordinary guy” who like most has experienced life’s “ups” and “downs,” He attributes the successes he has had to the advice and guidance of those who have poured into me financially, personally, and professionally. It is this level of commitment He will pour into you.He has been in the financial services business for 13+ years, working primarily with families and business owners. He uses a unique approach that helps people find money they’re currently transferring away unknowingly and unnecessarily.Below are a few of the areas he enjoys coaching and advising individuals and small businesses with by offering creative and customizable 360-degree solutions tailored to fit their needs:Retirement planningWealth ManagementCollege planningAccounting/BookkeepingTax planning and consultationIncome tax resolution with IRS and StatePersonal/Business insurance consultation and product selectionLearn more: https://www.dnafinancialassociates.com/Podcast DisclaimerThis podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered financial, legal, or tax advice. The views and opinions shared by the host and any guests are theirs alone and do not necessarily reflect those of any organization. All investments carry risks, and past performance is not a guarantee of future results. Before making any financial decisions or implementing any strategy discussed, please consult a qualified professional who can address your specific situation. The content in this podcast is not a solicitation nor an offer to buy or sell any financial products or services.Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-darryl-and-alicia-pryor-with-dna-financial-associates-discussing-breaking-the-chains-freeing-yourself-from-money-myths

Welcome to influential entrepreneurs, bringing you interviews with elite business leaders and experts, sharing tips and strategies for elevating your business to the next level. Here's your host, Mike Saunders. Hello and welcome to this episode of Influential Entrepreneurs. This is Mike Saunders, the authority positioning coach. Today we have back with us, Darrell and Alicia Pryor with DNA Financial Associates, and we'll be talking about freeing yourself from money myths. Darrell and Alicia, welcome to the program.

Hey, Mike, how you doing? Glad to be here. Hey, it's great talking with you guys before, and I think we just have a great time. We all three seem to think the same ways about serving clients, and I think this is such a big topic, money myths. And we could probably list out four dozen myths that people would have about money. So let's just kind of get started with what are some of the typical myths that you are seeing your client struggle with and then you need to start addressing them to help them reframe

that in their mind but you know you talk about this that hold people back um there's a big one that i would think of is you know money's the root of all evil how do you help your client shift their mindset about this one oh that that that's a that's a good question uh we really if you really think about it is one of the more common miss that we encounter on a regular basis uh it's rooted in a common misperception of a biblical phrase that love of money is the root of all evil. What we strive to do is to help our clients understand the money itself, it's, you know, it's just a tool. And it matters how you use it, you know.

We encourage them to think about money from a positive impact and how it can help them support their families, invest in some of the things they would like to do. But more importantly, how it can help them, you know, grow their communities and influence others in their communities. This mindset helps them see money as a resource for good rather than something to be feared or avoid it. So that's important.

Good question. You mentioned that money is a tool. I would say also it's a vehicle. You know, you think about it's a vehicle to get you somewhere. It's a tool to help you accomplish something. And if we try to dig a ditch with no tools

in just your hands, it would take a long time. But if we have a shovel it would get there quicker. If we had a piece of machinery, it would be even faster. So using money the right way can be a vehicle and can be a tool. Alicia, do you have any thoughts around that myth from what you've experienced working with clients? Well, I think that they're all hit the nail on the head, you know, oftentimes, particularly, you know, in our, in the communities where, you know, people are very much into their religious faith, you know, that can be quite a challenge. to overcome that thought process.

But, you know, God gives us resources to use to help our communities. You're not to hinder. But when you take anything and you use it in excess, that's when it becomes a sin, right? And so when you misuse it, when you abuse it, and that's when it becomes an ill. But when you take it and use it for good and when you take it to use to build and grow your communities, to build and grow sustaining generational wealth for your family. When you use it to help the poor, when you use it for the good of society, then that's a good thing. So we just have to kind of change the way we think of things and use it for the benefit of good and not evil.

You know, you bring up a great point there. And there are a lot of people that think, you know, oh, God just wants me to be, you know, literally poor. and, you know, I'm more useful to him that way. But in reality, what if you 10 extra income and you're like, oh, well, that would be so greedy? Nope. Because what if it's exactly what Alicia just said? What if you could give $30,000 to your church this year? What if you could also give $20,000 to support the homeless in your community?

What if you could now all of a sudden, you're like, oh, well, maybe I went out to dinner once or twice more per month. and then I'm doing all these extra things. So having more money doesn't mean you're greedy and getting more material things. It might mean that you're helping to make more impact. And I think that right there is a big mindset shift for people. That is because it's not about you. It's about being a vessel to be used. Absolutely.

Right. God bless your others through people. Absolutely. Yep. You got it. And I think a lot of people like they might not even admit it to themselves, but they kind of are afraid of getting wealthy, like making more money. It's like almost the fear of success.

Have you ever seen that with clients? Like, you know, I don't even know that I want more because it might be more responsibility or mean more time or my time. What are some of those thoughts around that myth of like rich people are greedy or I don't want wealth? I think oftentimes that comes because people don't believe that they know how to manage wealth. they don't know what to do with it. They only believe that they have a small capacity. And so they can work with the small capacity that they have,

but they can't expand their mind to believe they can expand their capacity to manage more than what they only have right now. So they're limiting belief in what they have as was keeping them from even wanting more than that. It's almost like a pauper speed palis. Yeah, it could be a poverty mindset, absolutely. But, you know, again, that's that false narrative because really, when you look at it,

we just kind of had a conversation about it in the previous section when we're talking about the ability to do more, to influence people, to be better stewards with our money and provide better blessings or blessings for our community. You know, you think about philanthropist, funding, education, health care. A lot of communities can use people to wealth them to uplift their communities. We encourage them to imagine what they could do with their own wealth versus looking at it as something that buys them and weighs them down. Yeah, that's a huge point. And, you know, like, you know, the whole thought of, you know, rich people are greedy.

It almost is a almost like a cop out to go, well, I don't want to be rich because rich people are greedy. Well, that might not be the case. It's just like you don't think you can get there. And if you can shift that mindset to go, hey, if I can contribute more to the community or more to the poor, more to the church or ministries or whatever the case is, that's certainly not greed. So maybe that shifts. And then maybe the thoughts, you know, get stuck in someone's mind to go, okay, well, if that's the case, you know, let's not set goals for the year.

Let's set giving goals. What if this year I want to give X number of dollars to this and X number of dollars to that? okay now darrell and alicia how do i get there well that might need you need to make some more money to be able to do that but that's a whole different feel than i want to 10x my income so that i could buy that limbo right well that's a shift in mind that for sure yeah so where do you um have your when you start working with clients where do you recommend that someone start like learning about these concepts or personal finance where where do you begin at least you want to take that one yeah yeah i think that probably up to learn about the concept

you've got to have to really kind of do some introspection, right? Look at yourself. And oftentimes these money mindsets come from childhood, what you grew up with, what was instilled in you or what you experienced as you were developing coming up. You know, like when I was coming up, I could remember some of these sayings, you know, money doesn't grow on trees, I'm not made of money, you know,

those kind of things. And so you grew up with these perceptual. about money, and so you carry that over into adult life. And then in your adulthood, you might not have been taught, you know, how to budget, you know, how to pay bills. You know, you just kind of live life on a whim because you didn't really have the structure of learning how to better manage and maintain and sustain what you did have. And so it starts with some basic things.

So I would say the first thing is to kind of think about and really assess what do you really think about money and where do your thought patterns come from and really fake those head on. Absolutely. You know, one of the things that we like to say is we really believe that when it comes to financial management, we talk about financial literacy, it's not just for the head of household, it's for the whole family. Everybody has a role to play in it, you know, so Alicia's big on these kitchen table

conversations. We believe that family should occasionally sit down around the table and kind of talk about, you know, goals and how, you know, the family is doing in general. And it's not, and it's not to impose anything, any, any thing on the kids in terms or the, the kids in general. Yeah. And I won't say in restrictions. I don't want to feel guilty or feel like they have to go out and do something.

But it's important that they understand the bigger financial perspective for the family. And so it's important for parents to begin seating that into the, the children early on how to be good stewards of the money and understand that, you know, sometimes you have to work, most times you have to work for things and you have to make sure that as you work for it, you're just a good steward of the blessings you receive. Right. You know, let's even, yeah. You know, you contrast that scenario with like the cliche trust fund baby.

You know, the person that grows up with millions and millions of dollars and their dad's trust that they can get anything they want at any time they want for any amount. And they don't really have an appreciation for how hard it takes to work for this amount of money or to buy this item. So learning about personal finance and how to actually budget and manage that, that's huge because guess what? If you don't handle that the right way, then all kinds of money is flowing out of your, you know, through your fingers proverbably. But then you can't invest for the wealth like we talked about last time. So I think it's really powerful for you to say, look, this is a foundational truth. If we can really get a handle on your money management, now you're setting the stage so that we can then invest it for the long term. For the long term.

Right. Absolutely. Right. Absolutely. And learning to save early. You know, oftentimes we spend as fast as the money comes in our hands. We're spending it. You know, so just learn this to put a little.

little away. Like I said, like I said, crawl, walk, run theory again, you know, put something away. And the more we learn to save, you know, then we can see the benefit of our money growing. And oftentimes we don't allow it to sit long enough to grow. Yeah. And you don't have to start off big, start all small. Start doing something, but do it regularly. And then as you become more adverse to save and get used to setting aside something. And in fact, we say a person should pay not just 10%, but pay themselves 20%, set aside 20% for themselves, and then pay the bills out of what remains. You know, that's a really great point that you bring up. And I know you can run financial projections for this.

And people have probably seen something similar like, hey, if you save, whatever, $100 a month till age 65 and you start at 30, here's how much you'll have. But if you started at age 20, oh my word, astronomically more. So start sooner, stay consistent, and watch that compounding take effect. Now, here's something that I want to ask you guys' opinion on because I think that this is something given the news of the day today, people hear these, you know, oh, and let's call it the quote unquote get rich quick. You know, oh, I'm going to get into blah, blah, blah, blah sector or crypto or whatever the case is because I can, I, I, I saw this person, well, that could be a really, really slippery slope. So talk to me about what you do with your clients that come to you with that kind of approach or idea.

Well, I personally say, hey, listen, I can't help you. We're not one of those firms that can, you provide you with get rich quick schemes. We are traditional, principal-based financial. investing. We certainly help people, depending on their risk tolerance or whatever, we help people put their money to work for them. But again, it's based off their risk tolerance and it's based on time. Okay. And another key principle is to make sure their money is working for them. So that, you know, as they earn their hard-owned dollars, they're keeping more of it. Again, we talked earlier about reducing their tax liability, but helping to make sure that they understand the impact,

of not having enough money and then having to go out and take an interest on a credit card, pay interest on a credit card. We look at that holistic picture to help them reduce all of the money, all of the situation where money flows out of their household and try to bring it back into the household and put that money to work for them. Have you guys read the book Millionaire Next Door? I have not. it's kind of an old one written by Thomas Stanley, but the premise of it is there are some people out there that live just right next door to you, that you wave every day, and they go to work and it looks like they just, you know, work at a blue collar job and they're millionaires. Why? Because they don't live a pretentious lifestyle. And so once you have these principles into place, these money myths that you've now conquered and freed yourself from these money myths, now you're starting that groundwork to let things.

grow, I would venture to say that this is an accurate statement, so I want to ask your opinion on this. When you can have these things mastered, it reduces some stress in your life, right? It gives you greater peace. It gives greater freedom because you now have put some guardrails in your financial life and you see things growing and heading in the right direction, and you don't have the problem of, I can't even make ends meet. So talk a little bit about that literally the new mindset that is the result of handling these money myths that deliver reduced stress and more peaceful outlook. Well, that does, it's truly liberating. That is financial freedom, isn't it? Because you don't have to have the concerns and the worries. Your life, your legacy,

you're moving forward. It's planned out. You don't have to worry about and be concerned with the day to days or, you know, the tomorrow's. And if you think about it, I was sitting here, hearing as you're asking that, kind of teeing that question of, I was thinking about COVID, you know, the days of COVID, where COVID truly exposed the deficiencies and inefficiencies we had across the nation, where people didn't have, you know, money saved, right? We didn't have that rainy day fund to kind of sustain us when everything shut down. We didn't have the health care that we needed to sustain us. And so it showed us where our deficiencies were. But when you have that, you know, we have the millionaire next door mentality, you know, you had what you needed,

you know, to sustain you. When things were closed, you know, okay, we had to kind of work around that, but you had the money, you had the finances, you had the things you needed to sustain you during those tough times. So you want to be able to tee yourself up, to shore yourself up, to have those guardrails up, to sustain you and your family during no matter what kind of times were in, and you're going to be okay. Because guess what? If you prepare for the rougher times and the rougher times don't come, then you're ahead of the game.

Exactly. You're smooth sailing. Yeah. Absolutely. Smooth selling. So can you think of some examples of a client you've worked with that they kind of came in with some rougher money situations or myths and now you started polishing them up and now they're on the path and they're experiencing some of these benefits?

Alicia? Well, it's pretty much the same example. I can't, I can't, I'm calling our daughter now. But, oh, yes, she's been able to get rid of debt. Actually, we had to start with the eliminating the higher debt interest kind of debt that she had. Eliminated debt was able to now build her savings and retirement via a few different kinds of vehicles. life insurance and annuities along with her retirement plan on her job. So now she's got different levels of planning that's working in her benefit.

She has a very good paying job that offers additional benefits for her. And so it gives her freedom pretty much to do like she wants to do in her young years because she's a young lady. So we're excited about all the things that she has going for her at this time in her life. Yeah, we have another client who became a part of our monthly coaching package that we offer. And she started out, she was constantly made great money, but always made bad decisions when it came to money. You know, so a year and a half later now, she's got, you know, excess money in the bank. Still travels quite a bit and enjoys life. But more importantly, she doesn't have that debt anymore.

And she's not going into her performance. her 401k and her IRA to pull money out. You know, you both mentioned two examples using the word debt. And I think we could take about four and a half more hours to talk about that. But I think it's really curious and interesting that both of those scenarios were people that made good money, great money, plenty of money. And it wasn't like, oh, I can't pay the bills this month. It was they make great money. But guess what else they had?

debt and probably that debt was maybe credit cards consumer debt where it's like you know what if you could just redistribute some of that income and knock out that debt you might have three four five hundred dollars a month more live in the same lifestyle and now you can divert that into some of these additional things for wealth building so talk a little bit briefly just about how when you see a client that comes in with that debt it really is a result of a mindset of i want this thing i want it now i'm I'm going to put it on my credit card, and I don't have the money to pay it at the end of the mouth. I'm just going to maintain the debt, but how that can be an impeding factor. Well, unfortunately, that happens to be a significant part of clientele, especially in this region. We have people who are high six-figure income, can be married couples. And so I'm talking about income rich, house rich, all of the luxuries that you could ever imagine. But as soon as the crisis hits, just as Alicia mentioned,

You know, they're in a state of flux. They're, you know, because now they're overwhelmed because they can't pay their bills. And so we have to sit them down at square one and talk to them about developing or saving some money to establish that liquidity. Next step is we're working with them on their taxes to help reduce that tax liability of this that we can now, you know, There are some people who really believe that it's bigger to get a larger tax return or refund at the end of the year. And we have to have the basic conversation with, listen, you're giving Uncle Sam a free loan to get a $10,000 tax return. We have $30,000 in debt over here that you're paying 21% interest on. How about we?

You could have kept that in your back pocket all year long and paid off that debt. Absolutely. So we help them navigate through that. scenario and then they begin to see the benefits of just making some small mindset shifts. They really help them start cash for all that money

and paying on their debt and saving for the long term. You know guys I want to just wrap up with this comment because this has been so great of these money myths and it really gets down to mindset and you said so well, they're all small mindset shifts. Not dramatic,

not life changing, not you can never spend money ever again. Just small shifts and then over time with consistency, all of a sudden you look back, it's like, wow, I barely felt that. But now look at what this benefit is. So this has been so helpful. And I think if someone is listening to this thinking maybe where can I get some of that coaching and guidance you guys provide, what's the best way that they can learn more and reach

out and connect with you? Well, they can reach us out on my visiting our website at www. DNA Financial and Associates.com or calling us at 301,38. 1040. Absolutely. Excellent. Well, thank you so much for coming back on today. It's been a real pleasure talking with you. Thanks for having us. Thanks for having us. You've been listening to influential entrepreneurs with Mike Saunders. To learn more about the resources mentioned on today's show or listen to past episodes, visit www.com.com.