The Ryan Hanley Show - Income Before Impact: The Melanin Money Blueprint for Wealth

Episode Date: June 29, 2026

The grass is always greener on the other side of scale. But underneath that grass is always shit. Most founders fall into the trap of believing they have to scale their business to be successful. We are fed a steady diet of entrepreneur porn that glorifies the hustle, the massive payrolls, and the top-line revenue vanity metrics. But what if scaling is the exact wrong move for you right now? What if your business shouldn't be your only asset? --- I help founders & executives generating more than $10M in revenue find their Easy Mode. Start here: https://ryanhanley.com/subscribe Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtube.com/ryanmhanley --- Carter Cofield and George Acheampong, the founders of Melanin Money, joined me to break down the reality of building wealth. We unpack the four distinct phases of business and why the decision to move from a highly profitable lifestyle business to a scaling enterprise must be made for the right reasons. If you are valuable to your business, your business is not valuable. You shouldn't scale your business unless you plan to walk away from it. We also tackle the massive pressure founders feel to make an "impact" before they have secured their own financial foundation. Carter and George argue that you must secure your income before you can truly make an impact. We discuss how to use content as a compounding growth engine, why the facts changing means your beliefs should change too, and how to stop chasing the next shiny object by defining your exact target. This is the way. Hanley. Connect with Carter Cofield and George Acheampong: Website: https://melaninmoney.com/ 5-Day Wealth Workshop: https://joinwealthworkshop.com YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@melaninmoney George Acheampong Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/georgeacheampongjr/ Carter Cofield Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cofield_advisor/ Melanin Money Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_melaninmoney_/ Follow Ryan: Website: https://ryanhanley.com Instagram: https://instagram.com/ryan_hanley Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

You shouldn't scale your business unless you plan to walk away from it. The grass is always greener on the other side, right? Ryan, but what people don't realize is that underneath that grass is always shit. It's almost like there's shame put on those people for choosing that option. Trying to make impact before you make income. Talk about it. It's almost impossible for you to be happy. My early success was built off of fear.

I didn't want to be broke again. It's very important to be truly connected with yourself so that your beliefs are actually yours. My success is not going to be governed by what I say yes to. My next level success is going to be governed by things I say no to. Garter, George, dudes, I'm so excited to have you on the show, particularly as we were talking about in the green room, because the way you guys operate your business and some of the ways that you teach, particularly building wealth, fits so in line with some of the struggles that I know the particular audience, my audience here, which is a lot of small business owners in the professional services space, you know, insurance, accounting, legal,

et cetera, right? You said something, Carr, so I'm going to start with you in the green room where big part of your work and what the two of you teach is that the business shouldn't be the only asset that we're growing as we're, as we're, you know, in our ownership of it. Kind of why do you think that is? Because I know a very common practice and there are consultants out there that will teach business owners this. Just dump everything back in your business. dump everything back in your business. Why could that potentially be a pitfall? Yeah, I think it's a great question.

And I think the answer is what a lot of business owners need today, and we're going through it actively, right? So your business is an asset, and your business can be your fastest growing asset. And me and George could testify to this. Our business is our fastest growing asset. But that doesn't mean it needs to be our only asset, because if you put everything back into your business and you never exit that business,

then how valuable is that business, right? Because if you're not taking high profits every single year and then you don't end up exiting because a lot of these businesses, if you're important to, if you're important to your business, if you're valuable to your business, then your business is not valuable, right? And people get to the end of the lives, they get to retirement. They're like, yo, I got this thing I built. Nobody wants to sell it. I haven't taken enough profits to build any personal wealth.

So now I'm in this place where I still have to work for the rest of my life. And we all can attest that that is not the goal of entrepreneurship. But I think the hard part that all of us deal with is like at what point do you start taking profits to start building personal wealth and not feel like you're robbing the business of its growth? And that is something that we actively help our clients decide so that they can have assets outside of just their business. That's great. And if I can, I'll just add a little more sentiment to,

that. So to Carter's point, right, if you're valuable to your business, then your business is not valuable. So I've kind of broken it down into like, you know, four stages, right? And so we have the start phase where, you know, you might still even be working a job, right? And you're just, your business isn't profitable yet. And so you're putting money, personal money into the business to get it off the ground or maybe you're a break-even, best-case scenario, right? So everybody has to start there. Then you have this growth phase where it's like, oh, man, like, I could just stay here, right? It would probably be your highest percentage. profit margin phase of the business on a percentage base. You might make more later on,

but it'll feel like less because of how much you're reinvesting and how heavy the business is at that time, right? So the growth phase is where you have to make a very important decision. Like, do I want to build a lifestyle business, meaning a business that can grow in proportion to the lifestyle that I desire and just be okay with that? Or do I want to scale this thing? You shouldn't scale your business unless you plan to walk away from it, right? Because your lifestyle business will stop, you know, at some point, right? You're like, hey, cool, I've done it. I've built it to be able to maintain my lifestyle. It's so profitable. I probably can put an operator in place to continue to take distributions, but you don't plan to sell it or give it to anybody else, most

likely. The scale phase is when you plan, you're starting the process of planning that. So we're in the scale phase actively, right? Our business is growing. It's thriving. We have 10x the team that we had, you know, when we were in the growth phase, but we're having to put so much back into the business. Now, what we did, we both did is when we were in the growth phase, as we started to realize we were going to scale, we made sure that all that profit margin that we were getting, we were taking that money off the table, right? So that way we feel more confidence and more liberation when we are in the scale phase, right? Because we don't feel as bad, like, okay, I'm putting all this money back into the business, but I took home personal profits and started

building personal wealth along the way, right? And then the last thing is something that we learned very new recently is while we're in the scale phase, is there anything that we can do? Is there anything that we can do while still being hyper-focused on the business, is there anything that we can do outside of the business that will create more insight and give us feedback loops to grow our business, but also makes us money? Because if we can do that, then that can give us more resources on the personal wealth side that allow us to not have to put pressure on the business while we're in the scale phase. That's just been our personal drug. I'm not saying that's the best way to do it. But we want to make sure that we're being mindful of the personal wealth part of it, because if not,

you won't have the clarity and the mental fortitude to keep going because behind the scenes, your personal wealth isn't together. And that's what we see with a lot of entrepreneurs that we work with is like they're making decent money. They're making great money. But their personal wealth houses is in an order and it's creating a level of hidden stress that only they know about. Right. So when they work with us, we start to unpack that, start to restructure things. And they actually become more successful in their business because now they have that burden and pressure off of their shoulders. Yeah, dude, there's so much in there, guys, to unpack. I think one of the things that I, a major, a major decision that I'm very interested in how you made it was

the decision to go from, this is supporting my lifestyle, this business that we're building, to let's scale this thing to the next level. Because I think a lot of people get caught in that moment. I think there's a lot of, we'll call it, entrepreneur porn that exists out there where it's like, you got to scale, you have to scale, right? Which we feel all this pressure. If I don't scale, I'm not going to be put on podcasts, and no one's going to ask me any questions,

and my business isn't going to grow, and people think that I'm a failure. And it's like, I know plenty of guys who own a one-person law firm that take just the cases they want, that make more than enough money, that have the country club membership, they're at their kids' sports game,

and they're happy as hell, right? And then I know other guys that have been the same quality that have decided, okay, well, because I'm good as a one-party, person shop. Now I need to be a hundred lawyer shop and all of a sudden they're miserable and they can't get to their kids sports games and they're making basically the same amount of money, but their business 10 times bigger. Like, how did you make that decision and how do you guide your clients if they're in this moment of scale versus lifestyle, right? Like, is there an equation? Is there a framework that you use

or some way to kind of think through this process? Yeah, this is about to be therapy. I'm really going to say the same thing. It's about to be therapy for everybody in the room. So I'll give you this quote by Alex Homozy, and then me and George would do our best to unpack it. And I'm going to try not to butcher this quote, but Homozzi was basically saying that he used to look at these business owners who were making a million dollars,

maybe $1.5 million, and then they didn't want to scale. He's like, dude, there's so much juice left in this business to squeeze. What are you doing? And after years of coaching people and doing it himself, Homozzi realized, he said,

yes, there's so much juice left to be squeezed in this business, but what gets squeezed is you. Right. And so when we make this decision to leave being an entrepreneur to becoming a business owner, and that's how me and George Delaney. Like entrepreneur, you're entrepreneur, you have this lifestyle business. You know, do whatever you want, no major pressure. But then you switch to business owner, right? And then it's not about you anymore. And I think that that decision is so important. And people make the decision for the wrong reasons. They make the decision for things you said, right? Like, I want to scale. because I want to have this big business. I want people to interview me. But what they don't realize is the cost, the price they have to pay to get the things that they don't even know they want it.

So the way me and George look at it, now that we know the good and the bad, the ugly on both sides, because the grass is always greener on the other side, right? Ryan, but what people don't realize is that underneath that grass is always shit. And it's so much of it, you don't know what's under the grass, right? And so when me and George look at it now, right, If you want to have that lifestyle business and you want to be at your kids games and you want to have a 70% profit margin, especially as a servant-based business owner, then do that.

Or if you want to say, I want to scale because I want to exit and I love what I do and I want to build this team and built this dream, then do that. But don't get the two confused. We see so many people who are trying to scale their business, not taking any profits, not even knowing their business won't be exitable. and that's where I think you have a problem. Yeah, 100%. And so to his point, the decision, the only thing that led us to making that decision is realizing the business that we were going to build

had to be something that we can exit. But the issue is most people aren't looking at it that way. They're just, they're looking at it from vanity metrics. I want to make, I heard somebody I meant, they're saying they're making a million a month or two. I want to do that, right? They didn't tell you about the team that they're paying or the multi-six-figure payroll.

They didn't tell you about the ad cost. They didn't tell you about the stress. They just told you about the vanity measure. They told you about the vacation, but they didn't tell about the travel experience, right? And so for us, like, it was a calculated decision. Like, we are in an industry and a building a business that we can see a path to be able to exit was one. Now, the other part of that, because that's just the money piece. We were already pretty solid financially before we made the decision.

The other piece was, is this about me or is this about impact? Right? Because if it's in them not, and neither one is wrong, right? Like, if it's about you, do not scale. right if it's about you build it to the level that you need to build it so you can be like your your friends who work in corporate america you can check out at a certain time you can watch all the sporting events you can like if it's about you and i don't want anybody to feel wrong if it is about you that's called self-awareness right if you're like you know what i don't have that itch i don't

have this this is this is big enough for me please stay there because all you're going to do is it's going to because it's going to be hard either way it's going to be harder if you don't want to be there or if you don't have a path right to be able to see the light at the end of the tunnel because it's going to be, even we want to do it, right? Arguably, you know, I made a drag harder a little, he's like, well, you sure you want to, but we want to do it, right? But even in wanting to do it, it doesn't change the weight, right? So imagine having to carry the weight that you didn't even know that it was going to be that

heavy and you don't even want to carry it. And so just really being able to sit with yourself and ask yourself is this impact that I want to have, this legacy that I want to lead, this mission that I'm trying to create through this scale, is it worth it? to me, right? Because if it's not, it's not going to be good for you, I promise you. And we try to be as transparent as pot. We literally have a new client right now who's crushing it. And we are talking her off a ledge every other way. I want to do this. I want to do that. I was like, I know you do, but you don't know what's on the other side of it. Right. Everybody wants to do it until they know

what's on the other side of it. And we just try to be honest with people to let them know what's inside of. And it's like, cool, if you know that, you still want to do it, then you much really want to do it, right? But we just want to make sure that we're using our platform and our voice to say, hey, look, we are happy with the decision we made, but we wish we also had more context so that we knew how to steward it even better than we're doing it now, but we feel great about where we are and we just want to spread the good news to anybody who's thinking about going down that path. Yeah, there's two things you said in there that I think are really, well, there's a bunch, but there's two things that stand out. One, and I know this wasn't the point of your conversation,

but I think it's very important to bring up. We all need coaches. We all need people that we talk to about this stuff. Like you said you're talking to this client, you're walking her off at the edge, right? I can tell you, I have a coach that helps me build my, it's helping me build out my coaching business, right? Like, I'm a coach, you know, helps entrepreneurs get through, you know, whatever the thing that I do. But, um, but like there were parts of it where I just didn't have my mind right, right? I needed someone to bounce stuff off. And I think a lot of these decisions get made in a vacuum, right? We're like uncomfortable or insecure. So we kind of, turtle up and don't talk to anybody. We don't want someone to think that we don't know what we're

doing. And it's like the most successful people I know have either business partners that they trust, kind of like the two of you, or they have coaches that they hire themselves or they have, you know, a financial advisor or they have an attorney or someone who they can go to and say, this is what I'm thinking, like poke holes in this thing. And I think too often we make these decisions in a vacuum. And that kind of leads me into my question here, which is you said it's it's either about me or my family or my lifestyle or impact and I would love for you to unpack like there is so much pressure on impact today like everybody you hear I was literally just listening to a podcast with um Cody Sanchez was interviewing Eric Jorgensen who just wrote that book about

Elon Musk and and even in that conversation right like it's oh if you're not doing this for impact and impact and they must use the word like a dozen times which I understand what right like the work Elon's doing is sending rockets and solar cars, and I get that. But like, I feel like there's so much pressure on impact that when people say, hey, what I really want is to take care of my spouse, take care of my kids, I want to be able to hang out with my friend, want to do good work. But like, that stuff after the bell goes off is just as important to me. It's almost like there's shame put on those people for choosing that option.

And, like, maybe break down, like, how you guys dealt with maybe. some of even your own thoughts and emotions around choosing impact, which is what you're doing by scaling versus maybe the extra hours you may have to put in at least at the beginning to get yourselves there and making that decision. I'll start about saying this, George, I'll pass to you. Trying to make impact before you make income. Talk about it. It's almost impossible for you to be happy because as the airline say, put on your mask first before putting on the mask of your neighbor. So I believe it is so much easier to focus and put your attention on making impact once you solve the income problem for yourself, which is why me and George say, if you're having this

lifestyle business, have it for as long as you need to take as many chips off the table, for you to feel secure. Because I think the thing that most business owners are missing is having your personal wealth secure allows you to become a better business owner because you're able to take bigger risk in your business because it won't kill you. George, before you jump in, I wish I had like a confetti button or like an implaus button because income before impact, like I want to, like that's going to be like the title of this episode.

I couldn't agree with you more. No one says that. I love that you are pushing that message because, you know, even from my own career, I wasn't able to take certain leaps until I knew, like, I'm not this like burn the bridge, burn the boats, burn the bridges, like have no options, guy. Like to me, that is the worst way to go about something because now you're making decisions from a place of like, if I mess this up, I'm at zero versus, hey, I can go all in on this. And if for some reason it doesn't work, like my kids still have food on the table. My, you know, my wife can still put gas in the car.

Like, you know what I mean? Like, I'm not losing my house because that's, that's pressure that nobody talks about in this entrepreneur porn, burn, burn the boats method. I absolutely love that point. No, that's, he hit the nail in the head. And I don't, and I don't have much to add besides the fact I know I'm a father. He's not. So when I think about it, it's not an either or it's just the order of operations.

And he said it perfectly, right? So I'm in a position now, right? Because I made the income first. We made the strategic decision to have the, additional impact. Let's not get it twisted. Like being present for your child is impact. Being present for your spouse, if you're married, is impact, right? Being present for the members of your community or your family is impact as well. It's just about the decision on, do I want to, outside of the impact internally in my internal world, do I want to have impact externally, right, in a bigger way,

because you still can have impact. And I think they're just making that distinction to your point, not shaming people for their choice, because at the end of the day, here's the truth. that's forcing you or pressuring you into these decisions are not going to send you money on the first of the month to pay your bills. They're not going to show up and watch your kids when you are burnt out at both end, burn the kennel of both ends and you need support. So when you understand that, it's like I'm truly making this decision for like for me and for the desires that God has placed on my heart to have an impact on a legacy beyond what's happening internally, then do it. But if it's for any external reason, if it's because of validation or some childhood wound or I'm

I'm not good enough and I'm chasing this external feeling to feel something that can only be filled by me healing the parts of myself that, you know, that have nothing to do with entrepreneurship and business. If it's for any other reason, then that's going to be the issue. But assuming all things remaining constant, it's like, God has placed his vision on my heart and I'm doing this for the right reasons, right? And I believe that I can transform other people's lives. So for example, our mission is to decrease the wealth gap by $100 billion. Right. Every year, our clients improved their collective net worth by hundreds of millions of dollars, right? We went to have a client event last night, and some of our clients are young, some of our clients

are older. We have older clients who, like, my portfolio is just up 20, 20%, I'm getting so much, so closer to financial, like, that's worth more to me than any amount of money than my business can pay me at this point, because I already got the income first. And so, but if you don't have that and you're dealing with external factors, you will chase and move the target forever. it'll always be something different because you need something to keep replenishing that cup

that has a bottomless hole. And think about the imposter syndrome that comes with coaching people who are doing so much better than you and you are not financially secure. Think about the imposter syndrome that comes with that, right? And so for all those reasons, I just personally think it's powerful

to choose income first and then in an impact. Then your impact is so much bigger, right? Because you get impact, if you want to give 10% of, you know, a thousand dollars is $100. If you get 10% of a million, now you can have a bigger impact, you know? And so, yeah. Yeah, I'd say I saw that my, so I started as a boots on the ground producer hawking home and auto policies and selling small business insurance back in like 2005. And, you know, it's funny, to your point, like when I first started and I wasn't financially

secure. I'm in my, you know, early to mid-20s. And, you know, I figured out corporate America wasn't for me and was trying a sales job for the first time, it was like, I saw everyone not as how do I help this person get the best insurance, which was my job, but like mentally it was, what can I sell this person? How much money can I make from this person? You know what I mean? So it's like my, even though I was, I would love to believe I was always doing a good job for them. I was never trying to like do anything nefarious. But like everybody was like a dollar sign. And then as I started to get more secure in

my career, I started to be able to look and go, okay, like, it's more about how do I craft the right collection of policies? How do I make sure what my purpose is in this transaction, risk prevention, et cetera? Like, how do you mean, it's like my, I was able to be better at my work when I wasn't looking at everybody as a dollar sign because I had the money in the bank. And if they said no, or it didn't work out, it wasn't like my entire month was ruined, you know, because of that. And that is something. that I feel like so, there's so few conversations around that point, and I love it. I love this idea, or not, I don't love the idea of chasing, but I love that you guys are

bringing up this idea. George, you said it, like, we're constantly chasing. And I think every entrepreneur or someone who has tried to be an entrepreneur who maybe didn't necessarily have this decision made, it does feel like chasing. Even in my own life, I know the moments where I wasn't as sure about scale versus lifestyle I did feel this sense of like, I'm saying yes to things. I shouldn't say yes to.

I'm constantly got like searching for new ideas. You know, what if I start a faceless YouTube? I mean, you start chasing this stupid stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How do you, so let's say someone finds themselves and they feel that chase, right? They feel like they're saying yes to too many things. How do you coach them or guide them

to kind of reining back in and figuring out what really is more important to them. How do we correct ourselves? Yeah, that's a great question. The first conference I ever went to, I actually started out on the insurance side too. I worked from Mass Mutual early in 2011. I went to this conference,

and the lady said in 2011, a billion drill bits were sold. She said, but nobody that buys drill bits cares about the drill bits. She said, let's just assume they were used to hang up artwork in offices, homes all across the country. And she said, well, what would you say

if I told you nobody cared about the artwork? And she said, what they cared about is the feeling that they got when they walked in the room where the artwork was hung. And her point was this, right? Like, most things are just a means to an end, right? The money you have in your bank account or the money you have in general is the hammer and the nails in this example, right? If it's a Roth IRA, a solo 401K, private equity, right? Whatever, right? That's the painting, right?

But the real thing that we're after is deep down inside, there's a desired lifestyle, right? There's things you want to do for your family, for your spouse, for your community, for your loved ones, for yourself. And if you sit with yourself for a few minutes, you can probably define what that is, right? And then that creates kind of a container around what you're really marching towards. Because, but if you don't have that target, right, you will continue to chase because you don't have a target. You don't have a measuring stick on when enough is enough, right? You won't have a measuring stick. But if you define that, hey, if I could just have my primary residence in my home city,

I will love, this travel destination that I absolutely love. And if I could have a nice little place there, if I could help my mom out financially because she didn't understand about retirement, as long as I could do the, when you add it up, that will create a target for you, right? Most people haven't sat down to define it and add it up. And it will also let you know what's not inside that container. So when you start thinking about all these other things, like, oh, wait, that doesn't fit inside of this. So you have to at least question why, not to say that things can evolve or things

can't change and your worldview expands. I'm not saying that, but you at least will cause you to question because you have a recipe and it's like, oh, well, this ingredient wasn't there before or I didn't need it before. Why do I think I need it now? But most people don't have that benchmark or measuring stick to be able to figure that out. So everybody has to define what their target is. Like, and then that way you know when is enough enough. You know if something doesn't align or doesn't align or you at least have the framework to be able to challenge it when it comes up. because we're humans, entrepreneurs historically have shiny ball syndrome.

It is what it is, right? How do we curb that appetite by reminding ourselves and having an actual benchmark on what we said is what we wanted to do, if that makes sense? It makes complete sense. I don't know, do you guys know Mick Hunt? He's got a very big podcast right now. He's blowing up, Mick Unplugged.

He's a very good buddy of mine. And met him through the insurance industry. and he's owned and sold a couple agencies and consulting businesses, and now he's running essentially a media company, and he's doing very well. And I asked him one time, we were just having a conversation, and he likes bourbon,

I like bourbon, we're just chilling and talking. And I said, man, you've been, like, so many different things, right? Like, you've been, you know, insurance salesmen, you've been, you know, agency owner, you've owned a consulting firm, you've started technology companies, you've done all these things.

Like, how did you make the decision to move through these various businesses? And he had one goal. He was raised by a single mom. And he's like, my mother will never have to worry about money or lifestyle. Again, right? She did her job getting me into the world and making me who I am. And he's got this idea of that's his because. Like, your why is important.

But his because is making sure his mom's taken care of. And like the hard days. the next decision it was, does this next thing allow me to obviously live my life, but also take care of these people in my lives who got me here. And he's like, that's what drove me. He's like, if I knew to say no to something, because it was easy. My filter was, does this thing, you know, service this goal. And if it didn't pass through the filter, it was a no.

And to your point, like, he's so clear. And I envy him because I know in my own life sometimes I've lost my filter. I think it's natural that we do. But, you know, I've lost my own filter sometimes. Various things happen. And then you find yourself too scattered. And I think this is like one of the most important exercises an entrepreneur can do. And this is where I'm interested in you guys and how you operate.

Like I think it's okay to reset that filter sometimes, right? Like now his mom is set up. He's got his family and the people he want to take care of and his kids and stuff. So now his filter is he's moved it to. impact in terms of his message and what he's trying to do with the communities that he searched, right? So he was able to change it in time. And I think some people think that you pick one and like that's it for the rest of your life. How have your filters moved and changed? And how do you know when to create a new filter for the decisions you make? Yeah, that's phenomenal insight.

And so I'm always a firm believer that what gets you here won't take you there. Right. And so at the beginning, I was at my my personal journey, right? Like, you know, just coming from not having money, losing my parents early, having my back against the wall my whole life. My first why was to survive, right? I never want to be in a lack of control of my life and my circumstances ever again, right? That's the filter. Anything not getting me close to that filter, I'm not paying attention to it.

Then once that's done, is like, all right, Carter's good. Now, I want to make sure my sister was good, right? And so when you come up with these filters, I believe once you achieve them, you need to change the filter. Because here's the problem if you don't change the filter. My early success was built off of fear. I didn't want to be broke again.

And fear drove me for a very long time. But at a certain point, the same thing that keeps the house warm, well, as yours says, it will burn it down, right? And so now, like, at that, I can't operate out of fear anymore because it won't help me get to, the next level. So I need that didn't change my why to, oh, I want to help this person. I want to have

this amount of impact. And I think if you don't change your why after you accomplish it, it could be an unhealthy motivation. Right. And so I just believe, like, that's why I think doing like yearly checking is like reviewing, I'll review the year at the end of every year. What did I do? What I say I was going to do? Do I like it? And I'm in a stage where like, my success is not going to be governed by what I say yes to. My next levels is that's going to be governed by the things I say no to. Because my number one goal is just to not get distracted, period.

I love that. I love that. George, what about you, ma'am? Yeah, I have a simple quote. I know Carter's heard we say often is when the facts change, so do I. Right? So I think we're operating from our worldview with the information,

the context, the resources that we have at that time. At any given time, right, that could be disrupted, that could be changed. We could learn something new. And as a result of that new information and new insight, right, in this context, it might require us to change our filter. Right. And so that's, that's kind of me. So I think that the issue is people hold so closely to their own beliefs that being a truth seeker, you have to live on the edge of contradiction. Right. It's like, okay, well, I said this. I believed this last year. Well, I'm not the same person I was last year. It's okay for me to say that,

oh, I did believe that with the context, information, resources, worldview that I had at that time, people hold so closely to those beliefs that they're unwilling to make that shift because they feel like if it's a bad reflection on them. You know what I mean? Even in business, right? Like, we just get to give a completely separate example,

like we were using this one CRM system, but then at that stage in business, just be honest, which was too expensive. I was like, I'm not, but you know, this is getting bigger than charges more. I don't, we got to find a better way, right? And so then we went to the iteration trying to use two or three other,

CRM systems only to come back to the original one. But the facts were still true at that time. The facts were that was too expensive for where I was in business and I couldn't justify the cost, not that it wasn't the right CRM system. It wasn't right at that time. And so being willing to like, you know what, let's try this. Oh, that doesn't work. That doesn't work.

But now we circle back because this works in this season with this information, this context, this reality. But you got to think from a leadership standpoint, that can make me look like I'm doing it. Like, hey, I have ops team that has to unravel and stay. this up and set up this automation again. It's like, we were just using this six months ago. But I don't care about holding on to my beliefs because I know that my beliefs can evolve, right?

And I'm okay with that is the first thing. And the other thing is just, and this is more about self-awareness, but the true root of all disease, if you break down the word, dis-ease, is being disconnected from oneself. I think so many, I think people don't get enough solitude. They get so much outside noise from social media, from peers, or everything else that's going on. they have a hard time making a decision. That's their own decision because they're getting so many outside influences and they're not even hearing their own thoughts.

And so I think it's very important to be truly connected with yourself so that your beliefs are actually yours. Like, why do you want this? Like if you can't answer that, right, then you got a challenge like, where is it coming from? Why do you want this? And if you can't,

and if you're not clear on that, it's probably time to challenge that belief. This is like a therapy entrepreneur masterclass that you guys are laying down right here. We told us. We told me. We asked those questions we said, bro.

We are all right. We're all in the other right now. Yeah. We're attracting the best out of us. So kudos to you as a podcast. This is, you know, man,

I have this, I have this philosophy. And, you know, it's exactly what you guys are saying. Like, I'm just, I line up so, so closely with the way

you guys are talking about this and teaching it. Because, like, my, one of my core principles is operate in reality, right? What you said,

exactly what you said. I can want to believe anything is true, right? I can want to believe that if I go outside my house and shake the tree, money's going to fall out of it, but that's not reality. Leaves are going to hit me in the head, right? Like, that's a nice belief. So many people that, particularly that I'll work with,

that they have these, like, it's almost like they're wishing something was true. They're operating based on a wish, right? I wish that things would, you know, that this CRM worked perfectly for me and we could afford it, it was a right, you know what I mean? Like, I wish that this type of customer would do business with me. I wish that I would get more attention in this for this. And it's like, well, you don't have a bold claim, so no one cares. The fact that it is that CRM is fancy and people talk about it, but it's not right for your business. You know what I mean? Like, how do you ground someone? Like, if you,

someone comes to you and maybe they just have delusional ideas of money, right? Of, or delusional ideas that they can spend as much as they are and say, like, how do you, get someone, how do you coach someone back to reality, back to operating the way that you just described where we're actually taking real inputs and not just working off of beliefs or you know, things we see as we're scrolling through reels on Instagram or whatever. What I can say is I can tell you about how we deal with it internally, because internally, and then how that translates to the people that we serve. So internally, I'm pretty sure you read the book, what is it, traction, or one of those books, but they talk about like the integrator

and the, what is, what is it, the integrated? Visionary, right? So in our early ages of our partnership, even though we're both co-founders of the business, you know, I, the visionary, McCart is the integrator, right? So it's like, hey, look, this is what I can see 10 years in the future, this is what we got to do,

and then he runs the place, so to speak, just to oversimplify it, right? Yep. And in that context, right, we create this very healthy balance of, like, that is great, and I'm glad that that's 10 years in the future. But what about the next 10? days, right? And it pulls us back, right? To like, oh, okay, great. Like, we have,

there's certain things we have to do today. And so there's, we're always balancing, like, let's look at it from a business standpoint. What will be our retirement plan and what pays our bills today? Our retirement plan, meaning we exit a business for, you know, a substantial amount of money, right? But there's so much that you have to do leading up to that for that to be a possibility while keeping the lights on, right, in real time. So for us, it's just knowing that we can play in that space and have that balance of like, yeah, I'm going to let you have. have that autonomy to see as far as you can, and I'm going to play the role of making sure that we take step one, two, three, four, five, right? That's how it's worked out for us. Now, for a client

who may not have the luxury of having a built-in business partner, brother, who, you know, who can have that balance, we're always acting as the integrator for them, right? Because most of them are, they, for whatever their vision is, they see it more clearly than we will ever see is their vision. And so we're able to say, since we're not emotionally attached to it, and because we've experienced the highs, the lows, the ebbs, the flows of, you know, all iterations of business, we're acting as that ground. I think Gary V puts it as clouds in dirt. So if they're in the clouds, we're helping them stay rooted in the dirt.

Like, hey, that's great. I'm not mad at you for this vision you have, but here's what we, here's what needs to be true today. And making sure that they're calibrating on this, if that's something that they really want. Because oftentimes, it's almost like on my social media, I have like an interest folder. I'll see something like, ooh, I want to buy that. I don't buy it anyway. I used to, you know, I used to hit a, what they call impulse.

purchase. Now I added my interest folder and I almost never go back to it. So how much money have I saved by just like adding it there and saying, oh, well, you know, if I still wanted, I'll go back to it. I had the link handy. I've got, I think I've gone back and bought one of those things, right? And so it's the same thing. Like, we just helped them understand like, hey, we're going to park this for now. We're going to focus on what matters most. And if you really, really want to do this and you're really convicted by it, we can revisit it and just reminding them of their North Star, which for a lot of times, you have a lot of clients that are women. It's like they want to be able to take care of their their family and have and you know show up for their daughters and like you like we remind them like

hey the the more you do more of that like it may not allow you to do as much of this as you think it is and just reminding them of their true why yeah I love that I want to pivot now um I'm not sure carter whether you or george has said this early it may have been you Carter but there was one of you mentioned like you're you're always looking for potential um activities businesses etc that not only can help support your main interest, but also potentially generate revenue. And I think content and how you guys are doing your content game is a big part of that. And I'd love for you to talk through how you thought about how you frame building the content side of your lives and of your work with how it then supports the business itself, you right, the advisory and tax firm,

et cetera. So I think a lot of people get confused in that one, they have to be directly related all the time or that they have to be two completely separate things or that you can't actually support the content business on its own, that all of the support has to come out of that business is where a lot of people get caught. So how did you think through this and how did you start to build it so that your content side of what you guys do wasn't just a burden to the business, but was actually thriving alongside of it and supporting it? Yeah. So I'm a firm believer that it is not the best who makes the most money, it is the most well-known, right?

We all can make better burgers than McDonald's, yet they've made a billion burgers, right? So for me, I think that it's a few things. Number one, when it comes to content, people will buy from you because they believe, because of what you know, other people buy from you because of who you are. and when you have content,

you are able to, we have content, you are able to show both, right? So through our content, we've been able to show our expertise, but we've also been able to show who we are as humans. And some clients hire us because they love,

they love our expertise. Some clients hire us because George is a good father, right? And so you are able to leverage this and be able to get more clientele. So for me, content has always been a very, very big and very important pillar of our business because with our cell phones, we can get millions of views and not have to worry about marketing for our business. Then after we get the content piece figured out, I was like, okay, how can we, now that our content is bringing us in customers,

how can we also make money from this content, right? So we have a podcast, we get sponsorships. We have a podcast where we get brand deals, all those things like that. And what we notice is the more money we make outside. out of our advisory firm, the easier it is to reinvest money back into our advisory firm, right? And Alex Formose has this concept called sawdust, where it's like, okay, look at areas of your business where you can turn it on and make money, but it costs you no extra time, investment, you know, X, Y, Z. So for us, this has really been around. How can we figure out ways to make money

outside of our business that takes to stress off of reinvesting in our business. I'm a firm believer, and I'm curious that here are sentiment on this. I believe that we all, everybody can become a millionaire by doing the big three. Number one, you get experience

in whatever you're doing. So if you say you want to be the best podcaster, get podcasting experience. Number two, through that experience will make you an expert, right? Because with enough practice,

anybody can become an expert at whatever they do. And then once you become an expert, you then can educate people on how you did how you became an expert so people will pay you for what you know people will also pay you for who you are so once you we become these you know we are now very very um known in the financial space some advisors will literally pay us thousands of dollars to spend one day with us to so that they can get the lesson without having to get the scar right and so now we can be that coach for that person we can be that advisor for that

advisor. And that money is all profit because it costs us nothing. And the more we make doing that, we don't even need to take distributions from our business if we don't need to. And that again, because we're in the scale phase and we knew this already. So we're like, okay, how can we still make sure our personal wealth is secure, but make sure our business can still scale and stay profitable? Yeah. And so, Card, I got an E to add to that for you. So you said, we said expertise, experience, education, or educate that you said? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You can also add equity to that, right? So many people aren't familiar with like consulting for equity. So on one hand, we could educate, right? And people pay us 25,000 or whatever it is for a day. Or it's like, hey, if I could help your business grow by X percentage, could, would you be willing to give me a percentage of the business, right? Like in many instances, people are willing to do that. So I agree wholeheartedly what he's saying because we're both doing the same thing. Now, the other piece, going back to your question on looking at the media aspect of the business and. the content and how does that serve?

Well, to be honest, which we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a month on paid advertising, right? So for us, it's like you can only build an audience in a few ways. You can buy it, which is we do a lot of, fortunately, unfortunately. You could borrow it, right?

Like going on platforms like this and you've built an established audience and people are here and like, oh, I like these guys, I'm going to go see what they have going on. You can build it and that's what we're doing with the content, right? Because then it becomes own media. So it's like, okay, well, if we have hundreds or thousands of video throwing, you two, well, across all platforms. I can't even fathom how many pieces of content it is. But if we have five years, five to six years of content archives, some of which is

long form, right? We are building our audience through that content. And we're able to nurture our potential clients at scale. There's a gentleman who actually set up our podcast studios, and he helps people do this. But he, I can't remember exactly what he said. Carter will remember probably more eloquently than me. Actually, I'll let you interject real quick to what he said. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So basically, we always talk about the power of compound interest when it comes to investing or you put a dollar in today. It could become tens of $100,000 tomorrow. He looks at every piece of content as a dollar in the content market. And that that will compound, that same compound interest that happens with investing can come from an audience that will help you build your business. Yeah. Yeah. And so from that vantage point when you, but you have to, again, it's about the frame. If you don't have that frame, content is going to feel like a drag. Oh, my gosh. Like, because we record. I record a video that goes live every Monday. Carter records one that goes live every Friday on YouTube. We have a podcast that goes live every Wednesday.

We've been doing that since 2021, every week, have not missed a day, right? And then sometimes it's like, did that hit? That one got a thousand views. This one did 80,000. That did really well. I don't know if anybody saw that. I did this on a Saturday when I could have been relaxing, but you never know when someone's going to see that piece of content is going to be the reason that they make a decision.

And more importantly, imagine your favorite show. Right? Some episodes you love more than the others, but if it comes on every Wednesday at 8 p.m. And then one Wednesday, they don't make an announcement. It just doesn't come on. You've lost all trust and credibility with your audience, right? And so at some point, once you make the decision to become an authority, to become a leader, to become someone who says they do what does what they say they're going to do, that's what brand is. Brand isn't your colors. Brand isn't how you make people feel. Brand is, I know them for this and I can trust them for that. In the moment that that changes, you start to lose brand equity. And so for the foreseeable future, if our brand is saying our podcast airs every Wednesday, doesn't matter of Carter's sick, doesn't matter of Georgia sick, doesn't matter if my son's not feeling well, doesn't matter if it's raining outside. If that's what our brand says, that's what we have to do, that's the commitment that we make. And we understand the dividends that can pay. Every time we require clients now, it does rain sleet or snow, someone says, oh, I was watching that YouTube video and that was what made me sign up. So that makes us going on the days when like tomorrow when I got to record a YouTube video and I don't feel like it. Right. I know that it's a part of the brand. And so hopefully that answers your question. No, it does. It does. Inside the insurance industry, I get brought in to do a lot of workshops on marketing

because how I kind of cut my teeth was using content, which in the insurance industry was when I first started doing it was very rare. The insurance industry in particular operates about 10 years behind the rest of the world in terms of both technology and general marketing and sales stuff. and God bless the monetization structure that insurance has. It's able to do that. But my point is what I used to say is think of every piece of content that you create as a salesperson working for you 24 hours a day, seven days a week, right?

They don't take vacations. They don't get sick, right? They don't bitch about the health insurance plan or 401K, right? It's just working for you all the time. And when you start, like just as you guys said, when you start to think about it, not as this thing I have to do, this task I have to get through of creating content, but like this video could make me a sale, right? Someone could hear me talk about what I do mixed with the fact that I like the

Buffalo Bills and, you know, whatever. And all of a sudden they're like, oh, like I like the Buffalo Bills and I need growth consulting. So, you know, I'm going to give this guy a call. Like all of a sudden, those things click. And I really like your point about you never know which piece of content is going to be the one that hits. Right? Like you in your mind can be like, the hook is perfect, the graphics are done, the pacing, and it just bombs. And then you can put one out where, you know, you're just kind of stream of consciousness and you're like, ah, whatever. And it clicks to two people. And now all of a sudden you got two new deals in your pipeline. Like you just never know, so you got to do the work. I love that. I absolutely think that. And this is kind of where I'm going and where I want to finish here in the last few minutes.

together. You know, AI is everywhere. We know AI is everywhere. I believe that with the, with AI taking such a big portion of, of the work we do, it's slowly just taking this work away, content and the human aspect of that content is actually becoming even more valuable every day. Because if we still believe that despite automation, AI, that kind of things, we still want know who the humans are that we're doing business with, if you're just putting out AI slop and this kind of stuff or you're not creating any content, what differentiates, you know, my business from your business, right? If I don't know who the humans are behind it. So how are you guys kind of leveraging that and making sure that people know who you are in this maelstrom of

AI content and shit that's coming out? We just talked about it yesterday, actually. So, We do in-person events at a pretty, I would say a pretty, pretty grand scale. And I think the experience economy in general, if you do any research now, you'll see that the experience economy is actually upticking quite a bit because of what you said, right? No one can distinguish online. What's real? What's fake? Et cetera.

And so with us, you know, we have the fortunate luxury of having a decentralized team. Everybody can work remote. And we run a successful business. As we think about how we connect and engage with the people that we serve, we understand that at some point, right? maybe not every day. They have to walk into our office and shake our hand, but they need to understand who we are

and that we're real, right? Simply put, right? And so, you know, for us, the events that we do serve as that opportunity, for us to just really separate ourselves. Again, you can fake online now. You know, AI, you can have a nice background. There's a lot of things you can do on the internet,

but you can't fake hosting a multi, multi, multi, six figure event with hundreds, if not thousands of people. You can't fake that, right? And so for us, that's been something that, not because of that. We did this before AI existed, but it has now allowed us to leverage an infrastructure that we already had to create that separation to remind people like, hey, we're not just talking heads online. We do this in real life. We get real results.

We have real clients. And so that's the ways in which we're distinguishing ourselves, or one of the ways, at least. Carter, I know you got to run, man. Last words, you know, on this topic. And then hit me with, I know that my audience is going to want to go deeper into your world. Like, let me know how they do that. this has been a tremendous primer for who you are as people in your mindset. And obviously it lines up so perfectly with my own.

And I know it will with the audience. Like, where do they go to get deeper into your guys world? We'll have all the links, whether you're watching on YouTube or wherever you listen to podcast, guys, the show notes will have all the links there. But like, where can they go to get into your guys world deeper? Yeah. If they go on YouTube and just search Mellin and Money, I think that that will probably be the place for them get the most amount of value, just because we put it on.

I post three videos a week in long form content. We also host these virtual wealth workshops a couple, a few times a year to really give people like, you know, we believe in greatness on display, right? Well, we literally spend five days with these people and give them our best wealth and tax strategies and then allow them to become clients after. And they want to, an instant and that is just join wealth workshop.com. I'll get you both links. I'll have the teams here you are, you know, our YouTube linking and that link. and that link if they want to get closer to us. But that's really, you know, that's really it.

And we just put a lot of time, effort, and energy into showing people that we can help them by first actually helping them. Love that. Guys, this has been phenomenal. I wish that we had three hours to go through this because we could keep going even further away. But I appreciate the hell out of you. This has been a tremendous conversation. Anytime you guys want to come back on the show, open invitation.

Because I just, I love the way your guys' minds. work. I love what you're talking about and the way you're doing it. I wish you nothing but the best and I just appreciate the hell out of you. We'll probably take you up with that offer. You'll probably save with some money on therapy because this was great. This was great. This was great. Likewise, we shared the same sentiments, had an amazing conversation and we appreciate the fact that we didn't have to dive too deep on the things that people always ask us and extracted more value out of us than we could have imagined. So we appreciate you as well. Thanks, man. Well, with that guys, we're out of here. Peace.