Business Innovators Radio - The Inspired Impact Podcast with Judy Carlson-Interview with Erin Botsford, CFP®, Founder – The Advisor Authority™ & Barron’s Top 100 Advi

Episode Date: January 22, 2025

Erin Botsford, CFP® is known as The Advisor Authority™ Erin spent 31 years in the financial services business and achieved the highest levels as Barron’s Top 100 in all categories – Independent, Advisor, and Women Advisor. She sold her business in 2017 in a very successful exit.Erin had a desire to give back to the industry to help advisors avoid the missteps she experienced. Today Erin is the creator of the Elite Advisor Success System™ – a system that teaches advisors how to quickly grow their businesses exponentially and build firms that have all the elements needed for a future succession or exit. Her program delivers the 5 keys to business success in easy-to-understand modules, enabling advisors to gain decades’ worth of insights in less than six months.During an African safari in 2009, Erin visited an orphanage where 40 babies lay silently in 20 cribs—none of them crying. It changed her life. Not only does Erin give back to her industry, she also donates a large portion of the profits from her training company to several organizations in Africa including the Ebenezer Foundation, Zoe Empowers, and Overland Missions.With 31 years of field experience and an authentic personal story, she can relate to advisors at all levels. An international speaker, Erin shares her 30 years of wisdom at industry conferences worldwide. https://erinbotsford.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/erinbotsford/https://ebenezerfoundation.orghttps://zoeempowers.org*************************************************************Judy is the CEO & Founder of the Judy Carlson Financial Group. She helps her clients design, build, and implement fully integrated and coordinated financial plans from today through life expectancy and legacy.She is an Independent Fiduciary and Comprehensive Financial Planner who specializes in Wealth Decumulation Strategies. Judy is a CPA, Investment Advisor Representative, Life and Health Insurance Licensed, and Long-Term Care Certified.Judy’s mission is to educate and empower her clients with an all-inclusive financial plan that encourages and motivates them to pursue their lifetime financial goals and dreams.Learn More: https://judycarlson.com/Investment Adviser Representative of and advisory services offered through Royal Fund Management, LLC, an SEC Registered Adviser.The Inspired Impact Podcasthttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/the-inspired-impact-podcast/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/the-inspired-impact-podcast-with-judy-carlson-interview-with-erin-botsford-cfp-founder-the-advisor-authority-barrons-top-100-advisor

Welcome to the Inspired Impact Podcast, where dedicated female professionals share how they inspire impact every day. Authentic stories, passionate commitment, lives transformed. I'm your host, Judy Carlson. Welcome to today's episode of the Inspired Impact Podcast. Today's guest has made a huge impact on my life and inspired me. so many ways, both professionally and personally. I'm excited to introduce you to Aaron Botsford, advisor, author, and trainer, and known as the advisor authority. Welcome, Erin. Thank you, Judy. So I'd love to learn more about where you got started, what inspired you to pursue the path you're on.

You've made an impact in your field professionally, but then you've taken that much further since then. So I want to hear about all of it. How many hours do we have? Yeah, I know. So, and you and I have known each other for a little while. You know a little bit about my background, but for the people that don't. So I grew up in poverty. My dad died when I was 11 years old.

And he left my mom with six kids and a $10,000 life insurance policy. So we went from, let's call it, a middle class lifestyle to poverty overnight. So I've worked for everything. I've ever owned since I was 11 years old. I started babysitting for a wealthy couple. She was a nurse and he was a banker and they needed me like six nights a week and they paid me a whopping dollar an hour. And the going rate at the time was like 25 cents an hour. So I'm dating myself, but it was a long time ago. And but every day, all my brothers and sisters, whatever money we made, we had to bring it home and put it on the table. And my mother used that money to pay for her expenses with six kids. That was a lot of

mouths to feed, but everybody chipped in. And so I kind of didn't know the difference because I was just a young girl, 11, 12, 13 years old. And so I got my first job at McDonald's when I was 16 years old. And something happened along the way that was very traumatic. And all these things ended up leading to who I've become as a person, I think. But on my way to my job at McDonald's was the day after Thanksgiving, 1974. I was getting ready to make. make a left hand turn and all of a sudden I heard a bang and I got out of my car. I was going very slowly because I was getting ready to make a turn and I got out of the car and I looked around and there was a motorcycle handlebar. The motorcycle was embedded in my car but there was no driver of the motorcycle.

And so there was just a motorcycle stuck in my car and turns out I looked around in about 100 yards away in a ditch, there was a young man basically bleeding to death. And so sadly enough, you know, these people came to, you know, this couple was taking a walk and they came along and the man came up to me and said, are you okay? And I was shaking, but I was physically okay. And the woman went over to the young man in the ditch. And it turns out it was his parents and they'd gone and taken a walk that day. And he was only about 50 yards away from his home. He was 18 years old. He'd borrowed the motorcycle that morning. He had never ridden a motorcycle. And unfortunately, for him, as he rounded a corner, he was going so fast. He, you know, he flew out of control and hit me.

And so, but unfortunately, Judy, as you know, it was in the state of California. There were no witnesses to the accident. So since somebody was, he actually died. And since somebody was dead in an accident, I was charged with involuntary manslaughter by the state of California. and so we had to defend myself. And I remember my mother and I met with this man called an attorney. And the man said, well, Mrs. McGowan, that was my maiden name, this is purely a matter of economics. If your daughter will just plead guilty to the charges, I can enter that plea at no cost to you. But if your daughter wants to, you know, plead not guilty, it's going to cost you a lot of money. Her defense is going to cost you a lot of money.

Well, my mother had zero money. And so, as you can imagine, she stood up and she shook the man's hand. hands that, okay, well, I guess we have no choice. You know, my daughter will plead guilty. And I tell people, I really had an out-of-body experience because I'm thinking to myself, oh, my God, my mom just said, I'm going to plead guilty to killing somebody. And I'm begging and screaming and pleading with her. And as a mother, can you imagine she looked at me and she said, honey, I'm so sorry,

we have no money and therefore we have no choice. Oh, man, no money, no choice. And I always tell people, that was the day that I learned that money, buys you choices or the lack thereof, right? Yeah. Well, fortunately, we went home and my older brothers and sisters were talking about me like I wasn't there, and they were saying things like, oh, my gosh, we can't let her plead guilty to killing somebody.

She'll be screwed up for the rest of her life. And so my older brother, he was 22 at the time, he was the wisdom of our family, just started a real estate career. And my mother had, we did have a family home. And so he suggested that she take a second mortgage out and to pay for my defense. to pay for my defense, which she did. And I was found not guilty. It was proven.

We had to hire expert witnesses. They measured skid marks. It was proven, you know, he, all that data, he was, he was going 47 miles an hour in a 25 mile an hour zone. I was going 17. Talk about being at the wrong place at the wrong time. I'm kidding. But a couple weeks after the criminal, in fact, I remember going into the criminal court,

and the judge saw the evidence, and he threw the case out. and he said to my attorney, take this little girl home. She's been through enough. And about three weeks after the criminal trial, the family of the young man, then sued my mother and me for just a ridiculous amount of money. So, you know, Judy as financial planners, you and I are both financial planners. Imagine being my mother at the time, you know, this horror that's going on. I was almost too young to really comprehend the enormity of the situation. but my mother, now we get hit with this lawsuit, and she was afraid we were going to lose the only asset we had,

which was the family home. And I have to admit, my mother's deceased now, but I have to admit to the audience that my mother didn't always handle all of this very well. In fact, I remember her looking at me at one time and saying, you know, because of you, we may have to pitch a tent on the high school football field. She thought we were going to, you know, end up homeless. And it was a really, really crappy time in life, you know. but along the way, the interesting segue or side note to this is, before all this happened,

a couple of months before this happened, it was the first day of my junior year in high school, and I knew everybody in my class with the exception of one young man, his name was Bob Botsford. And when the teacher was calling Role, you know, he said, you know, Robert Botsford, and he raised his hand. And I remember turning to my friends and said, I thought he was the most handsome creature I'd ever seen in my life. And I told my friends that day, I said, I'm going to marry that guy. But, you know, what was interesting is, and I, you know, I basically stalked him for the first couple of months, and he didn't even know I existed. But the way he realized that I existed was because my picture, after the car accident, my picture was on the front page of the local paper.

And on a Sunday morning, Bob Botsford picked up the paper and showed his parents that she said, he said, oh my gosh, this girl's in my algebra class. So I always tell people, you know, how's that for a new way to get a date? You know, you have to laugh because otherwise you would just, you know, you'd be so depressed. But sadly enough, you know, going through all of this criminal trial and the civil trial, I didn't have a whole lot of time to be thinking about Bob Botsford. But after it was all over, the nice thing is Allstate was the insurance company on the the civil trial, and they came in and they paid for my defense, and, you know, it all ended up

okay. So the following summer, when the bad things had gone by, I was still working at McDonald's and Bob came in one day and saw me and, you know, the rest, as they say, is history. We started dating and, you know, I have to tell you, Judy, you know, he dated and he married some pretty damaged goods. I was pretty damaged because not only was there no money for my defense, there was also no money for a counselor, you know, and everywhere I went, you know, as I just said, my picture was on the front page of the local newspaper. And think about it, I was 16. Back then, they didn't protect the identity of, you know, of minors. But they never printed the outcome of the, of the court proceeding. And so everywhere I went in that small town, it was, I was always the girl,

there's the girl that killed that boy, right? And so, you know, the good news, Bob and I, you know, We got engaged. And as I said, he had to deal with some things that a lot of young men probably couldn't have handled. I had emotional trauma at times, still thinking that I was responsible for somebody's death. I mean, it was a really crappy time. But anyway, we got engaged. And I will tell you this, if there's one word that can describe me, it's resilient. And I tell people I think of myself as one of those rushesians.

and dolls or something or those, remember those weebles wobble, but they don't fall down. I mean, you can knock me down, but I come popping back up. I mean, that's how I picture myself, because I've been through a lot of different things. And so it was time to get, you know, married and the bride's parents were supposed to pay for the wedding. Well, of course, my mother had no money to pay for my wedding, you know. So we found out that Wheel of Fortune was having tryouts for, it was called Brides Week. And so four of us, Bob and I, Mike and Marie are friends of ours. We all went up and we tried out and the three out of the four. Bob did not get selected to be on, but I did. And I went up and I was on the wheel of fortune and I won.

Oh my God. And yeah, I mean, you just can't make this stuff up. And so in the puzzle that I saw, the final puzzle was called Down in the Dumps. That's the puzzle that I said. So, so between my winnings and my our savings and stuff, Bob and I, I paid for the wedding. And then we had, I bought a town home. I put $3,000 down. I was only 19 or 20 at the time, and I bought it with a friend of mine. I did not buy that home with Bob, because I will tell you this, one of the lessons I learned or sort of thought about was I never, I bought the town home with a friend of mine as a business partner. And I decided I never wanted to be dependent on a man because I saw that the man, my mother was dependent on, left her penniless. And that was a big, huge, at the time I didn't know.

That's why I was doing things. But now, you know, decades later, I realized I just never, I never wanted to be dependent on anybody else. You know, it was too, that was too big a risk for me. I would never want to do that. So, so I bought the town home. And then Bob and I had $19,000 after the Wheel of Fortune in our savings. And we went to a stockbroker, a very famous stockbroker in town.

And we entrusted all of our money to him. And within six months, all four investments he put us on, had all gone belly up. They were, I can't remember what they were called. They were like real estate trusts or they were, I don't know, things that were so not, we were not qualified to be in those investments. And they didn't just go down by 50%. They went down to zero.

Right. And so I remember Bob and I looking at each other and we were so upset, not only with this guy, because one thing, he never said he was sorry. He never even acknowledged the loss. and putting us in such inappropriate investment schemes, really. And, you know, that was kind of my scarlet O'Hareem moment. I was like, as God is my witness, you know. I tell people, by the time I was 22 years old, I felt like I had a PhD in the school

of Hard Knocks, right? And I decided I was going to learn everything I could about money and investing. And I wasn't, I just, I didn't want to trust anybody at the time, you know. So Bob and I were married. And Bob went into the air. force as a pilot. He was a flew F-4s and then F-15s. And so as a result of his military career, we moved 17 times in the first 14 years we were married. And for me, though, Judy, it was very cathartic. I was so happy to leave the town that I was. And I got to reinvent myself. And truthfully,

and I'll tell you when this happened, once we left my hometown of Vista, California, I never told anybody my story. I really wanted to reinvent myself. I wanted them to think of me as, you know, happy go lucky Aaron who came from a wonderful background or whatever, right? I just never talked about it. I was ashamed and humiliated and there was so many emotions to, and it was, but for me it was just this ideal time to start over. So the military career for us, for me, was personally very helpful psychologically. And moving 17 times in 14 years, it was a, I considered an adventure. It was wonderful. And we got to spend three years in Germany. And I started a little business over there. And but when we got back in the United States, it was 1988. And I literally went in,

let me back up and just say, now I did I move 17 times and 14 years? It took me 11 years and seven colleges to graduate from college. Because everywhere we, moved, I went to night school. So I always worked during the day. And then I found a local college. So I ended graduating in Germany at the University of Maryland had an overseas campus. And I graduated over there, summa cum laude. And so now I got a degree. What am I going to do with it? It was in business. But we came back to the U.S. and I still had no confidence in myself. So I went into a stock brokerage firm. I was looking for a job as a secretary because, boy, I could type well. And the man offered me a job as a stockbroker.

And the interesting thing about that is I didn't know the difference between a stock and a bond. I'd never heard of mutual fund. But I'm like, okay. You know, I was like 28 years old and okay. So they sent me to three weeks of training and I came back. And there you go. You know, I was on my own to sink or swim. And I swim upstream most of the time until at about the 10-year point,

you know, Bob ended up getting out of the Air Force. We moved yet again to Dallas, Texas, because he was flying now for American Airlines. So I'm starting over again in Dallas, Texas. And about the 10-year point, I really wanted to just quit. It just felt like for the return I was getting on my time, it wasn't worth it. And so I really went into the branch manager and said, I'm quitting. I'm done. I just want to go get a job.

And he said, oh, Aaron, you're not a quitter. Why don't you go get some coaching? I thought, well, I'm not a quitter. Remember, I'm really resilient. So I went and found a coaching program. And it was supposed to be a three-year program. And so at the end of the three years, we were all asked to stand up and find somebody and share the progress that we'd made with somebody else in class.

And so I stood up and I found this guy and said, hey, do you want to do the exercise together? He goes, yeah, let's do it. So I was actually really happy with my progress. So I said, I'm going to go first. I said, I'm Erin Bosford. I'm from Dallas, Texas. I said three years ago, I was doing around $300,000 in production. That doesn't mean that's the amount of revenue that was coming.

to me. That was a production number. I said this year I'm on target to do somewhere between 400 and 450 and I was thinking to myself like, woo-hoo, like look at me. And then it was his turn and his name was Paul. And it turns out he happened to be in the same business as me because in my coaching program, there was people in every kind of industry. It's just so happened. He was a financial advisor just like me. So he said he, you know, he had also started three years earlier at around 300,000 in production. And he told me this year he was on target to do three million in production. And I was like, what? And I, and I, and he said he also, he didn't now, now he didn't, didn't meet with all of his clients for all of their client reviews. He instead, he had built a whole team around him. So now,

but he did was he prospected for new business. He sold the philosophy of his firm. And he said, okay, but nobody gets me. You have to agree to work with various members of my team. And of of course the bell rings it's time to go back to our seats and I was sitting you know like what? I mean what just happened? I'm thinking did I miss a coaching session or did he go to a session on Mars or whatever? And I just, you know, the teacher's saying go back to your seats and I'm stumbling and stammering. And I say, can I just buy a few hours of your time? And he said, sure. He said, why don't you come to spend the day with me and my team? And I was like as quickly, literally as quickly as I came back to Texas. I actually made Bob, my husband come with me because I thought, I want to.

I wanted Bob to understand, like, surely there's going to be this big cost to getting results like that. And I wanted Bob to understand. Like, I probably was going to have to get a divorce because, you know, being married was going to take up too much time or sell my first born child or whatever. And but it wasn't like that at all. So I spent one day with Paul. And really, what he gave me was a vision for what could be. He gave me a new way to think because up to that point, I was thinking like a financial advice. advisor. I would call myself, what are you, a financial advisor? Instead, now I started thinking about

myself as a business owner. I happen to own a business, and the business of that firm happens to be giving people advice about their finances, right? And he talked to me about things like, you know, the problem with most financial advisors, and I would say this is a universal problem in many industries, is that typically most businesses, the owner of the business doesn't actually do the work of the business. I have a friend named Carissa in my hometown McKinney, Texas. She owns a huge plumbing company. It's all over the state of Texas. It might be even farther. And not once has she ever gotten on her hands and knees and repaired a toilet.

She hires plumber. She hires people to do the work of the business. And that was a huge aha moment for me. So I remember coming back. He gave me a couple of books to read. I think any business owner should read the book, The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber. Should be everybody's business Bible.

But I came home. I had one part-time assistant that I was sharing with one. other, or I was sharing with like four other guys. I went to the branch manager, said, hey, can I pay for her full time? He's like, sure, if you want to pay for her. So she was 20 years old. She was right out of college. Super smart. I remember saying, okay, here's the deal. I'm going to go out and bring a new business and you're going to do everything else. And fortunately for me, she said, okay. So the rest, as they say is history. I end up growing the business. Three years later, I did three million in production and four

million, five million. The business kept growing. I ended up having two offices, one in Dallas, us one in Atlanta, Georgia. And I had 18 employees, seven conference rooms filled with clients of my firm, and I wasn't in any one of them. So I ended up making it to the top of the industry. You know, that's the miracle of all of it. And so what ended up happening, long story short, is I sold my firm in 2017. And I decided to start, I wanted to give back to the industry that it had allowed me to become successful because I was the least likely person coming from my and all the drama and trauma in my life. And so I created an online course

and I teach advisors. Really, here's step by step, everything to do to get to the place that you, follow in my footsteps. And when you get to the fork in the road, you know, go this way, don't go that way. So I'm trying to prevent them from making all the mistakes that I made.

So I really have, it's been so, wonderful to me. I feel like a force multiplier because I'm helping them and they're able to help their clients. And it's just, it's just been really cool. And I'll, I'll shut up for now. No, that's fabulous. The force multiplier is definitely what you've taken a hold of and taken with you from all of the experience you've had. And I can personally say it's amazing and I'm grateful. Yeah. That's not the only thing you've done since you sold your company in 2000. 2017, giving back to the industry in which you grew, there is more to the story than that. And I want to hear about that too, Aaron.

Yeah. So in 2009, my husband and I were on a safari in Africa. And we, every day, we'd go out early in the morning, you know, five in the morning, and then we'd go out at four in the afternoon. But there was this time in the middle where there was nothing to do. And so our guide would always take us on these cultural experiences. and this had been the second or third safari that I'd been on. So this time she happened to take us into an orphanage.

And, you know, there was probably 12 couples. And we walked into this baby home. And she said, hey, can you come in here? Can you just hold babies? And we're like, yeah, sure, we can hold babies. But we walk in and there was 40 babies and 20 cribs. Oh, man. And the oddest part about it was none of them were crying.

And we learned that, you know, they learned very early in life that, have one house mother to take care of them. And if they cried, there's no point in crying because nobody's coming for them. And so I picked up this little boy and his eyes were just vacant. I mean, it was like there was no life. It was a, it almost looked like a dead body. And I picked him up and I held him and I cuddled him and I talked to him and I could and I watched his eyes come alive. Wow. And it was so amazing. I had never, I mean, we're so, I don't know, jaded or fortunate in our country. We just don't know that things like this happen.

I mean, and there's 40 of them laying there lifeless. So as quickly as we could, we were getting, you know, between the six, 12, and 15 couples, we're holding babies and now they're laughing and someone were crying and, you know, and it was just amazing. And so talk about learning the importance of human touch. And so then she took us to the next, you know, a little cat. cabin and there was these two to five year olds and they were like kittens they were like crawling up and they just couldn't get close enough and they were like scrambling if you think about kittens

crawling up on a on a person they couldn't get close enough to us and and again the importance of human touch and these are little children whose moms and dad none of them obviously they're orphans and like what happened to their parents and you know in africa there's just not just AIDS of course AIDS took a entire generation out, but, you know, they live looking for their next meal. And when they can't find it, there's children left behind. So then we went, this woman, you know, there was a girl's home and a boy's home. They had a 40-acre farm. And they had a elementary school and a high school. And we got, we spent like half a day, like touring all this stuff with this one woman named Ranji. And Ranji, her story, she'd come over from Sri Lanka. Her husband,

was a medical doctor and they moved to Zambia, where his patient count would be two or three million people. And Ronji's story, she'd gone into a local grocery store, which is like a hovel. And she was getting food for her and her husband. She came out and she saw all these cardboard boxes and they started moving. And she picked him up and these little two and three-year-old kids are popping out of these cardboard boxes. And she said, what are you doing here? It's like Tuesday after Tuesday morning, where are your parents? They had no parents. And she said, you know, have you eaten? They said, no.

So she went in, she got a bag of rolls. And she came out and she gave the oldest one, which is like five. She gave them these rolls. And he whistled it. All these kids started coming out. And she's like, oh, my gosh. And so Ranji was a teacher by trade. And Ranji, she said, you know, are you in school?

No, they're not in school. So she said, meet me every day here under this tree. I'm going to teach you. And she would give them a little bit of food. Well, Ranji had one friend, Sri Lanka is one of the poorest countries in the world. too. But Ranji had one friend named Kristen from Sweden. Kristen sent her $300. And Judy from 2000, and we were there in 2009 in nine years. Ranji Chara had created what I was seeing in nine years. A baby home, a toddler home, a girls home, a boys home, an elementary school, a high school,

a 40-acre farm in nine years. Wow. She had built all of that. And I got to the day, she died in 2016, but I can't tell you how she did it. But I remember saying it was time for us to get on the bus and leave. Now our cultural experience was over. And I asked her, I said, can we have a private month with you? She said, yeah. I said, Ronji, how much does it take to do all of this, you know? And she said, $400 U.S. dollars a year.

Oh. I said, you do all of this for $400 a year and, excuse me, $400,000, excuse me, $400,000 a year. but it still was like, what? And she goes, yeah. And so Bob and I got on the bus and all of us were crying, you know. And I looked at Bob and I said, you know, we could make a huge, huge difference here. Because, of course, at this point, Rangji's, all she's doing is spending her time raising money, right? Right.

So Bob and I became a primary donor for them. And we were, we were at one time we wanted to be the sole donor. I mean, we wanted that to be our family project. But we realized that was a really risky proposition for them. So then we actually started raising money. Now we have hundreds and hundreds of donors that come alongside us. And we've been able to do a lot more and take on a lot more projects. We're feeding 1,000 kids a day, three meals a day, year round.

I mean, there's a lot of stuff that we're doing. And then more recently, a year ago, because of the success of my training program, we actually went to another safari last year. We spent a week at the orphanage. And then we went to Kenya because I'd heard about another program. called Zoe Empowers. You might want to put that link in it. And Zoe, they take young children ages 16 to 23. They put them in families of 25 kids. Of course, none of my parents. They're all orphans. They're living on the street. And in this case, they teach them how to create a business.

What's really interesting is their model is very different. They don't actually, they're the only NGO operating in Africa that doesn't actually give them anything up front. A lot of times these kids will come because they'll get food or they'll get you know and i will say judy for your audience i feel like the continent of africa has become is a continent of dependency and i think much of it has been caused by we in the west and teach instead of teaching them how to fish yep given them fish so tom's shoes buy a pair of shoes give a pair of shoes instead of teaching them how to make shoes yes a lot of that we've caused a lot of this dependency and i think we do it because it's it's feels it's easy to write checks rather than get your hands dirty and do the work, right?

Yeah. So Zoe, these kids have to, they have to apply and they have to show up every single week for nine months and they're taught something. They're taught sexual abstinence. They're taught money management. They're taught, you know, hand washing and cleanliness. And after nine months, if they stick with the program after nine months, that's the first time they get anything.

They get a reward. They get a warm blanket and they get a collection device. for water. We got to meet with 25 of them and they stood up and they speak English. They speak Swahili as their primary language, but English they learned in school. And they were so proud of themselves. They had accomplished and actually, instead of being given things, they felt like they had accomplished something.

So after that nine months then, they're now given a trade. So they discussed with them what you could do in your village and make money. So one girl had become a plumber. She said, I want to become a plumber, so they help her get plumbing training and the first couples of tools, et cetera. So anyway, we were so impressed by the project. All 25 of these kids now had businesses. They were between the ages of, let's see, 16 and 23. Some of them had multiple businesses.

The plumbing girl decided she wanted to open a grocery store. So we got to go visit her grocery store. And I said to her, how do you keep people from stealing at night? because there was like barely a lock on this place. She goes, well, I hired a homeless man and he comes in and he sleeps. So he now has a job and he gets to sleep at my grocery store at night. So I asked our guide, you know, the guy who runs this program, Zoe Empowers, I said, how much was one of these kids?

This one's 19. How much does she make? He said, well, just in one business alone, she makes as much as a teacher in Kenya. So Bob and I said, okay, are you guys in Zambia? Because Zambia is where our orphanage is. Okay. Right near Victoria Falls. and he said, no, but we'd really like to be.

And I said, what would it take for us to bring Zoe Empowers to Zambia, specifically Livingston, Zambia? And he said, he gave me a number. It was a very large number. And I said, if we make this pledge, it would be over three years, how many lives will be changed? And he said, between 4,000 and 5,000 kids will have businesses within the next three to five years. And I said, you know what, that's a great R-O-W.

on our money, we're in. Yep. So they brought, so now last April, April 2024, they opened a Zoe project in Livingston, Zambia, and it's working. And it's super exciting. So to make a long story short, I think, I often wonder, people say, why did you get involved in Africa and why orphans? Well, I kind of was an orphan.

Because, and especially when it comes to financial planning, think about it, not I deal, I lose my dad that day on Valentine's Day in 1970. but I also lost my stay-at-home mom. My mom had to go back to work. So I put myself, and I worked six nights a week. So I kind of was an orphan. I think I could at least relate a little bit to them. I did have a mom, right?

But I feel so badly for them. And why Africa? Well, we know it well. We've been there now, I don't know, 10, 15 times. And the difference, in the U.S., I don't understand any. Anyway, I shouldn't say it. There are no social services in Africa.

there is no welfare, there's no food stamps, there's no nothing. So it's very much a live or die, you know, and we feel like, you know, and we're going to put more and more emphasis on this Zohian Powers because I'll tell you a statistic, Judy. Yeah, we felt really good about what we did starting in 2009 with the orphanage. We've held between 500 and 1,000 kids in that time frame. That's been 17 years or something. Zoe Empowers started the same year. It've impacted 225,000 children worldwide. Wow. And for a lot less money, too, I might add.

So we're really, we think a lot of, we think that the orphan model is broken. Because the kids, yes, we kept them alive. And they have an education. But there's very little use for education in the country of Zambia, at least. And what's really odd is those kids are marginalized. They're jeered by the local people in the village. Imagine this. The locals hate these orphans because they're like, you got three meals a day.

You had a warm place to sleep. So instead of embracing, I mean, it's such a weird culture, right? Yeah. Instead of saying, you poor kids, you had no mom or dad to bring you up. Right. They reviled them. Yeah. And so I really think the Zoe model is a much better way

go, you know, that is teaching a man how to fish instead of giving them fish. So one of the agreements that we made with Zoe was, I want our kids at the orphanages, our orphanages is Ebenezer Foundation, Ebenezer Child Care Trust. I want them to be given the opportunity to be a Zoe kid. I want them to have the opportunity to start a business and all that stuff. The sad thing about it, the Zoe people is that Aaron, we've tried it. It doesn't work a lot with orphans that are in an orphanage because they really have been taken care of. They haven't had to, you know, work for anything. They, you know, it's a really strange thing, but I said, okay, I just want my kids to be given an opportunity.

I don't want them to give them any partiality or, you know, treatment. But if they don't follow the guidelines and if they don't, if they don't do the work, then, yeah, kick them out, right? But I want them to be given the opportunity. So that was the agreement that we ended up making. So, so yeah, a lot of what I do, when I sold my company, Bob and I have plenty of money to live the rest of our lives. But I just feel like, you know, I have more to contribute. And so a large portion of the money that we make in the training company goes to serve not only orphans, but we give a large portion of our money away because we can. Because I believe in that old, I think it's a Bible saying to who much is given, much is expected.

And I've been given so much that I would be, you know, it would be dereliction of duty to not always be looking for ways to help. So that's what I'm all about. Yeah, the multiplying effect that you did what are doing with the advisors is also with the orphanages and with the kids in Africa. And you're getting people to come alongside of you to build that. Yep. So that's amazing.

Wow. We could talk for a whole day, couldn't we, Aaron? Yeah, and I don't know how inspiring it'll be to somebody else. I think, I'm hoping the inspiration will be, you know, make every day count. I have a saying upstairs in my home, and it's about, I've been given this day to do, you know, as much as I can with. And once the, once midnight tonight comes, this day is gone. And anything I could have done is, is, lost, right? So make each day count. And that's what I try and live my life by. Well, that's very obvious in your talk. So thank you so much, Erin. This has been amazing. A huge blessing. Make every day count is a great note to wrap up with. Thank you so much. All right, Judy. Thank you. You bet. Thanks so much for joining us for the Inspired Impact Podcast. To listen to past episodes, please visit the inspiredimpactpodcast.com.