The following transcript is provided by YouTube. Mistakes are present. To hear the podcast episode, click HERE.
[Music]
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welcome to scaling up h2o the podcast
where we scale up on knowledge so we
don’t scale up our systems i’m trace
blackmore i get to host this fantastic
podcast and it’s fantastic because so
many of you out there the scaling up
nation make the podcast great because
you send information into me about what
you want to hear what you want to hear
talked about questions to get answered
and people you want me
to interview
now in previous episodes i have talked a
little bit about finances and many of
you have responded back to me wanting to
know more foundational principles so
i’ve invited a guest today that i know
you are going to love he’s one of my
trusted advisors but before we get to
that i want to talk about some of the
things that are coming up in
our water treatment community of course
one of my favorite things to attend is
the association of water technologies
annual convention and expo that’s going
to be september 22nd through 25th and
providence rhode island and if you are a
business owner come one day early so you
can attend
the business owners conference
so much to go on both events they’re
packing them right one after the other
so again if you’re a business owner you
want to come one day early and if you
are in the industrial water treatment
industry in the same industry that i am
you definitely want to come to the awt
convention
so as you register for that also don’t
forget to register for the business
owner series that we are doing in
conjunction with awt
that’s where we take business topics we
do a webinar where you can ask your
questions at the end and you will leave
with handles things you can carry from
that webinar directly to your day-to-day
business and start doing that very
second
our next business owners series is going
to feature michael wardy and michael is
going to teach us everything we need to
know about transitioning your business
now maybe you’re like me and you’re
nowhere close to transitioning your
business you have no desire to stop
doing what you are doing and you’re
thinking i do not need to attend this
here’s what i want you to think about
the better you can run your company the
better your company will be the easier
it will be to run your company and the
more data you have and the easier it is
to get that data the happier you will be
and the happier all your people will be
one of the ways to get to that point
is to treat your company as if it was
ready to sell at any given moment now
our friend marty stevens on episode 205
use this very analogy when we go to sell
our car
when we go to sell a car we want to make
sure it is as clean as it possibly can
be
all the cracks and crevices have
absolutely no dirt in them
and we call that show
room ready we’re going to get top dollar
for that car if it’s in that condition
but how do we feel about driving that
car
even if we’re not selling it there’s
just something about driving an
immaculately clean car it’s shiny it
just feels better it rides better i
don’t know what it is but i know you
know exactly what i am talking about
well apply that line of thinking to your
business
the business rides better i promise you
it will and we’re going to learn all
about that from michael wardy that’s
going to be on october 29th so if you
are interested in that i urge you to
register by going to scaling up h2o.com
forward slash business to learn
everything you need to know about
transitioning your business
speaking of business
as i have run mine for the last however
many years i learned that i need to run
it with the help of my friends now that
was a lesson that i had to learn when i
first started i thought i needed to do
everything
myself in fact that’s how i thought a
good owner was a good owner because they
knew how to do everything and they
actually did everything and the more i
immersed myself in people that knew what
they were doing around business and that
was primarily in masterminds and other
groups like that
i learned that successful people didn’t
have to know
everything in fact what they needed to
know is somebody that knew more about
them about the topic and they found
experts in all these various topics so
they could call that person let them
know what was going on and in addition
to learning what to do they also got the
experiences that that other person had
folks if you are not in some sort of
group where you can share experiences as
well as advice
life is just too hard the things that
get thrown at us are too hard to do it
alone
so i urge you to join a group we have
the rising tide mastermind you can find
out all about that by going to scaling
up h2o.com forward slash mastermind or
you can find another group the point is
you are going to get so much out of a
group like that
don’t suffer through trying to find out
mistakes on your own
so in my story i found that me being
able to do everything myself was the
exact thing i did not want to do
and i found people that could help me
with what i needed to make better
decisions on
they gave me counsel they gave me advice
and they also
gave me their friendship you’re gonna
hear from one of those friends today
ladies and gentlemen here is our cfo
mike iverson
[Music]
scout up nation we have a returning lab
partner today i’m here to welcome our
cfo mike iverson of trillium mike how
are you today i’m doing great trace how
are you
i’m doing fantastic mike i can’t thank
you enough for how you’ve helped me
throughout the years
i was looking back you were one of my
first guests you helped me out with the
podcast you were in the mastermind group
that helped me
decide that we were going to do this
podcast four years ago you were one of
the first people that recommended some
of the podcasts that i should listen to
john lee dumas entrepreneurs on fire one
of my favorite podcasts that came from
you
that was all four years ago and can you
believe that you were on almost four
years to the day episode 11 back in july
of 2017.
wow no i did not time flies right
so yeah we’re well over 200 episodes now
and it all started because a couple of
people in a group of trusted advisors
said trace you need to do this thing
indeed yes and you sure have taken it to
another level too so congratulations on
that well i appreciate the encouragement
i know uh we’re trying to get you to
start a podcast but i won’t go into that
here i don’t want to give you any
pressure but the world is waiting for a
mike iverson podcast
well thank you well we’ll have to keep
working on that for sure well mike uh
it’s been four years since you’ve been
on the show well kind of sort of you
you’ve been helping out the rising tide
mastermind you came on last year
you talked to us about the eidl the ppp
and
it was just incredible all of our
businesses within the rising tide
mastermind learned so much through you
and and we now knew how to navigate that
client so i want to thank you for doing
that
my pleasure my pleasure it’s uh it was a
trying time for all of us and i’m hoping
that we have a lot of that in our rear
view mirror today
you and me both well mike there might be
some people that are just tuning in for
the first time
and they’re they’re listening to mike
iverson who’s mike iverson
who is this clown
nobody would say that
well let’s see my three daughters might
i don’t know
i’m originally from chicago came here to
atlanta really for school
but i’ve never left since so i’ve been
here over 30 plus years
and actually spent most of my adult life
here i’m a father of three girls
been married over 25 years to a
wonderful wife who helps keep us all on
the on the go and straight and narrow
which is terrific
uh started off in
the finance area with a large accounting
firm called kpmg
back in the day it was not quite that it
was a much smaller firm and there was
the big ten and not the big four as they
have today those are audit firms so
that’s kind of where i started my career
and then eventually
meandered out of that environment and
into the private industry and just
various roles from auditor to accounting
manager to controller to cfo and
business partner and and uh just a
wonderful journey and a great experience
and here we are today getting a chance
to talk and you and i have known each
other for a number of years through our
common mastermind groups that we’ve been
a part of yeah i was trying to think is
it 10 11 years yeah it’s been it’s been
over 10 years yeah how about that that’s
great mike you told this story back on
episode 11 but it’s just one of my
favorite stories your company is
trillium financial why is it named
that well you know it was funny when i
was getting started i had a colleague of
mine who said put a story with the name
so when you name your company put a
story to it and uh she said it’s best if
you know even though you’re gonna be
doing professional service work she said
don’t name it after you you know mike
iverson services or mike iverson cfo
put a name to it and put a story on it
so
i was sitting around one night bantering
with my wife going i’m not exactly sure
what to do here she’s like well one of
the things that my wife and i would do
is we love the western carolina
mountains and we go hiking up there and
i’m not the best identifier of plants
and so on but i could always pick out a
trillium for sure
and so i said well that’s an interesting
name
and she said yeah that that i think that
is an interesting name because you know
there’s some some validity to just
petroleum name itself that’s not beyond
that’s beyond a flower and i said what
do you mean by that
just like well think about it
we have uh some daughters right so
the journey with them started on the
third day
of the third month
of the third millennium we found out we
were having triplets
and so that’s kind of the spawning of
the name trillium and going well the
flower sounds great but that’s even
better yet that was the
impetus really for saying that’s the
name it’s got to be that so joining
financial is where i’ll keep it
i love it now mike let’s go back to when
you found out that you were you were
having a child so you’re like okay let’s
have one child and then you find out
it’s three what was that like
well let’s see um when we found out the
physician or my wife’s physician that we
were with she’s like um well please come
on into my office let me give you guys
some paper bags because it looks like
you could use a little um calming down
and
so yeah i was just sort of floored
completely
and
we both were overjoyed but yet at the
same time overwhelmed so it was one of
those things where you’re like okay well
we’ve got quite the journey ahead and
let’s see what we need to do
and it’s been a great one you know the
girls are now in their 20s and
it’s terrific it’s been a great journey
so far
amazing well i mentioned earlier you
came on and helped the rising tide
mastermind understand some things that
were going on in the pandemic no nobody
knew how to survive a pandemic nobody
knew how to financially plan during a
pandemic there were no books that were
written on that you came in you gave us
some tips she gave us some metrics some
things to look at so we can make sure
our company stayed healthy he told us
about some of the government plans that
were going on
now
as a cfo you’ve endured the pandemic the
companies you’ve worked with have
endured the pandemic what’s your outlook
for post pandemic
i’m very positive post pandemic i think
you know with it the
financial impact that we all felt was
one that we applied from a health
perspective the economy was very strong
going into it um and it’s remember it
was still very strong really underlying
it it’s just the fact that we had this
health
pandemic that we needed to you know
quell and uh so we had to do some things
that were pretty severe and that
impacted us economically
but coming out of it i see a lot of
positive signs i see a lot of pent-up
demand
i see customers some of mine who
actually
shined very nicely through it believe it
or not
now they were in different industries
that weren’t as impacted so for instance
you know we all needed to go to the
grocery store still needed to feed
ourselves so those who are servicing
that industry did just fine as a matter
of fact had some of the best years
they’ve ever had
hospitality another story very difficult
travel and hospitality entertainment
restaurants
but they’re coming back out
and those who sort of planned and
prepared for
you know just basically saying the i
call it the uh oops factor you know or
you never know there’s a black swan
that’s going to come your way and you
don’t know what it is um it can be
economic it can be
something else that just totally hits
you out of the blue it could be losing a
very large client that you thought hey
i’ve got this in the bag it’s a contract
it’s there
and we’ve had a great relationship for
many many years but then all of a sudden
it’s gone
so
those clients that were prepared had
enough cash on hand
monitored their businesses
closely i think they found themselves
meandering through it much stronger than
others who were who were not it’s always
well planned
and the government programs did help a
lot for sure we had talked about that in
the previous episode they came around
with another round of
loans
well a few other you know restrictions
to it but very similar to the first
round but some restrictions to the
second round
and then recently with the eidl loans um
they’ve allowed for some expansion on
that
originally a certain amount now you can
borrow
a little bit more to help
with some capital because i think what
they’re looking for is how can we get
businesses to invest invest in ways that
will
propel
us forward from this point
and some of the economists i listen to
that i like they’re saying positive
signs they feel like we’ll still go
through the cycles like we normally do
recessions come you know and go so we’ll
have those but they see mostly a good
reasonable trajectory at this point so
do i
well we all hope that you are right i do
too we are long overdue for for getting
past all of this we’re all ready for it
we started off mike on one of our
regular meetings you and i were having
lunch together we were looking at some
numbers uh you were asking me not only
about our company but also about
retirement and that got us into a whole
conversation that i had the aha moment
that this would be a fantastic podcast
as you know with my work with the rising
tide mastermind and speaking with some
of the people in there we’ll talk about
retirement we’ll talk about how they’re
they’re putting money away and a lot of
people do a great job and they have a a
good history of saving for themselves
but
there are some people and and it’s
mainly younger people they will look at
their retirement or whatever financial
vehicle that their company set aside for
them or something that they can do
personally that they’re locking their
money up so i don’t want to lock my
money up i want to be able to use it
when i need to use it
and that got us talking about what what
do people need to know about retirement
why is that locking up mindset just not
the right mindset that they need to have
and and the last thing i’ll mention
about our conversation is
you said that we need to treat things as
if we were paying a bill we need to
treat ourselves that way because we
would pay the electric company we would
we’d pay the gas company but we’re the
last people that we pay
so i’m trying to wrap that entire
conversation up i just need to ask you
about it so so where should somebody
start with that why is why do they need
to change their mindset and what do they
need to do
finance it’s funny folks say you know
it’s it’s all about the numbers but
whether it’s business finance or
personal finance at least over the years
i’ve i’ve come to believe this for
myself it’s about 80 behavior
20 math
we can all do the math
one plus one equals two so et cetera we
get all that
uh i think where we lose it is just sort
of the you know financial behaviors we
have and so a lot of that is going to be
your mindset uh so for me i know when i
was starting out
while you’d think a finance guy would
have a leg up right not necessarily i
know plenty of folks who struggle with
this that are bankers or accountants or
other financial folks and they struggle
with it just like all the rest of us do
and again it comes back to behavior so i
know when i was starting out
i’m not sure what got me to do this
but i always said to myself if i pay
myself first if i take that off the top
and i leave what’s left over to live on
then i know that’s that’s the pot of
money i get the budget for all my other
living expenses
and so if i take it off the top i won’t
see it i won’t feel it and that’s where
that 401k
the time when i was with a company and
even with my own current company i do it
that way because i don’t see it it’s out
of sight out of mind and it’s an easier
way for me to sort of plan and budget
some folks when they hear the word
budget they’re just like oh my gosh they
run it it’s like it’s like the
antithesis of what they want to do and
so there’s there’s been some mindset
around
well you know you don’t necessarily have
to budget per se but maybe what you
think about is
this pot of money over here is what i
get to spend this pot of money over here
is going to retirement and it’s going to
also for my rainy day fund for example
that i always espouse for businesses and
individuals to have
you know you
things are going to happen
you’re going to have things in the house
break you’re going to have things in
your business with equipment break and
you need cash on the side in order for
that to be fixed
so
that’s where i get to that mindset of
let’s you know put it off on the top and
that way then what’s left over i get to
work with
i think what scares some people too is
they’re like well i don’t know what to
put my money in
it’s just a whole bunch of stuff out
there
and it gets confusing
um they you know i didn’t even know a
lot about it but really this area when i
combine business finance and personal
fans i personal side of it is really
it’s like a hobby for me
it’s kind of scary you know it’s like i
geek out on that kind of stuff
my kids just laugh at me they’re like oh
my gosh here he goes again dad the geek
you know with his finance stuff
and so i’ve just been learning about it
for the last 35 40 years books i’ve read
that run the gamut from
you know the bulger head books
to the simple path of wealth by jl
collins to tony robbins book um
i forgot the name of the title book
recently read his and
just a whole host of other
resources like kiplinger’s magazine so i
would get involved in reading all that
material and then trying to figure it
out for myself
and you know what it comes back to is
if you get into the market and you
invest and if that’s where you’re
comfortable some people aren’t and i get
it but
if you look at the history of that the
market has always gone up
always
in fact you can go back a hundred plus
years
now does that mean it goes up all the
time every year no it goes up and down
it’s volatile in the short term but in
the long term 30 40 50 years
it’s always going up and so
when i started doing it myself i started
putting money aside and then i thought
well i really need that
so that way someday i want to be able to
retire or at least if i don’t retire
i can have this pot of money so i can go
do something maybe that feels
you know a different uh season of life
where i can do some different type of
work
and the amount of pay i get from it
is irrelevant
i have all this savings set up it’s been
in the market it’s grown for years
um
so i just simply put stuff aside and i
started you know looking at simple ways
of doing it like index funds mutual
funds
um
and i encourage all my business owners i
mean if you are not setting aside
um your money kind of even at least a
pre-tax basis and you’re losing out on a
lot of great
um ability to retire long-term
using this what einstein calls the
eighth wonder of the world
compound interest
there you go and you know he says i like
to say he says
uh there are those who understand it
and there are those who pay it
well let me ask you about compound
interest so
once once upon a time i was in my early
20s
now i’m in my mid 40s what’s the
difference if i started saving back at
25 versus 45
can be huge
so there’s been studies done and i’m not
going to get any of the numbers quite
right but they do a little example of a
person who invests
from age 21 to age 30
investing a thousand dollars or so a
year
and then they look at a person who
starts investing at the age of 40 or 50
right around there
what they find is that person who just
invests from age
in his 20s and then stops
doesn’t invest ever again and then the
person who starts investing that same
amount of money
around the ages of 40 or so and
continues that all the way up to the age
of 60 or so
the guy that’s the 20 year old investor
has more money than the guy
it started late
and he’s put more in
the eighth wonder of the world
and it’s just that thing it’s like once
you start compounding it you know it’s
interest on one dollar interest on two
dollars interest on five dollars
interest on ten dollars and then
eventually you know what’s the
difference between earning eight percent
on a hundred thousand dollars versus
eight percent on five hundred thousand
it’s different it’s huge and so you just
keep adding that on top of each other
especially in a 401k
that is uh you know a pre-tax
non-taxable account and all that
compound interest is adding up inside
that account over the years
i like what um
i forgot who i was listening to i think
it was uh jl collins and one of his
podcasts he’s an author of the book
simple path to wealth he was talking
about an interview he had with john
bogle uh vanguard
john bogo is what they call it the
grandfather of the mutual fund industry
who essentially
helped
invent mutual funds and index funds
funds
and he said you know if it were him what
you do is
take some money you put it in on a
regular basis into a mutual index fund
forget about it do it every year don’t
ever look at the statement nothing and
then open it up when you’re at the age
of 60 and you’ll be
really surprised how much you’ve got
it’s just
that compound interest is amazing
mike during our lunch we started talking
about my retirement and i gave you the
question well how do i know that i have
enough
and you gave me a formula which i just
thought was brilliant because it was
simple can you share that with us
sure well what we were talking about was
you know
years ago a lot of what i heard from
the planning arena was well have at
least 75 or 80 of your current income
are replenished and
the income is not really what drives
um
planning
especially these days and when you think
about it it’s not the income it’s really
what you spent
okay so if you spend all your income and
then some i mean
that really is not a measure of
then
having 75 of your income here you’re not
going to be able to retire because
you’re spending more than your income
so
what i’ve come to
study and look at there’s a there was a
study that was put out came out of this
10 15 or so years ago it’s been a while
called the trinity stuff and it was done
by bill banging
and the trinity study basically looked
at over time various different market
cycles
you know
what amount did you actually pull out of
a portfolio of mixed
investments
that you could pull out comfortably
for at least a 30-year span and not run
out of money and what they came up with
at the time was four percent
so at the end of the day meaning
if i had a portfolio of let’s say just a
million dollars
then that would say that i could pull
out 40 000
do that on a consistent basis
and probably for the next 30 plus years
not run out of
that money
now there’s different theories and
there’s different you know folks have
come back and said well you’re not
taking certain things into account which
true there’s probably different they
call it sequence of returns and i’m not
going to go into what that means but
essentially
when you go back and you look at it what
is a real simple way to look at least
something that would give you a sense of
what to look for in terms of
your retirement dollars
and so i use that as just a simple gauge
to tell me how much
in terms of investments or whether it’s
you know in the market or whether it’s
even real estate
and the cash that comes off that real
estate i basically use that as my marker
to say okay
if i spend
and let’s just take some simple numbers
if i spend fifty thousand dollars a year
and i need to get that amount of money
off of my investments
then what’s four percent
of a portfolio to give me fifty thousand
dollars well that would be basically a
portfolio of about 1.2 million now
sometimes that’s like oh my gosh that’s
scary that’s a lot of money
but i talked to you about
that investor who might have started at
the age of 20
and invested and again i don’t know the
exact dollars but it probably is
a thousand dollars or two thousand
dollars a year at least
but at the end of the day when you
looked at it you’re like amazed that by
the time they turned 65
they would have over a million dollars
in their pre-tax 401k
okay because it’s compounded over the
years
so
i say all that it’s at least gives you a
way to say well how much do i spend
annually
and then come up with at least a number
that gives you a guide pose to say well
this is about how much i might need
and then you work with a financial
planner and somebody who is an expert in
this field who can then kind of tweak
that and give you more
um guidance in terms of models and
your your specific needs and that way
you can kind of
narrow it down and tweak it but i’ve
always just sort of followed along that
i’ve enjoyed listening to folks in the
financial independence movement like jl
collins and others and um and he’s lived
that sort of process
i want to say if i recall correctly
certainly over 25 years
so that’s what you and i were talking
about and
i at least give you a sort of a
okay what’s it look like what should i
what do i think i need
and then you can then go from there
and at least have a number to understand
so somebody’s out there listening and
they’re saying that they’ve got to
replace 50 000 that was the example that
you gave us
and divided by 4
that would be 1.2 million
and let’s say they do that math and that
is a scary number because they don’t
have anything near that
so there are two options is they need to
start putting a bunch of money away
or they need to get more return
on their investments are either those
things really possible with coming out
of a pandemic with the things that we’re
going to see coming up i’m just curious
what are your thoughts on that
well you know a lot of it will depend on
savings and how much you can’t put away
i mean there’s no doubt about it
i mean there’s that old
proverb that says you know when should
you plant a tree
well
20 years ago
or now
right when’s your good time so
whether you started 20 years ago or
whether you’re like gosh
i’m in my 40s or i’m in my 50s and i got
to start now
well start now
and then what you can do is you figure
out what could i do what do i feel i
could do
over these next
10 20 30 years of putting money aside
what could that look like
and then
certainly you know
it’s a risk reward when you go into um
investing for instance into the market
where i do you know i’m i’m not a real
estate person because i don’t know real
estate well so i’m just
i know companies and i know the
market better than that than real estate
so
uh you can go and if you want to raise
your risk tolerance and
you know go mostly all equity and makes
a lot of small cap equity
you might juice up your returns and get
a higher level of returns
over a period of time but you just got
to realize it’s a wild ride too
and you got to be able to have the
stomach to say okay i can handle that
or you
have a little bit lower return because
you’re not going to you want to mitigate
some of that risk
i think the hard part is
um i’ll give you an example from me
back in 0.708 you know we had the great
recession
what a perfect time to go oh my gosh i
can’t i can’t take it i gotta get my
money out of the market you know pull it
all out
well
i had the stomach i go no i’m not doing
that because i know it’s gonna come back
i know it will in the long run
i’m leaving it all in and as a matter of
fact i’m going to add to it where i can
because now stuff is on sale
so i know if
i go to a store and i look at
some clothing or something that i want
to buy or a piece of electronic
equipment and it’s more expensive than
i’m willing to pay
then i wait you know until it goes on
sale
and then it goes on sale it’s like oh
great i’m gonna buy that
same thing with um when the market is
going down
for me that’s a sale
and i want to buy more if i can
because i know it’s going to come back
up
and sure enough you know 10 years later
i had more than recovered from what the
downturn was
and
have experienced great returns
now here’s a an interesting thing about
that
and i’m i don’t have the specifics on
this but in general
if you um
timing the market folks feel like i can
time i get out now and then go back in
later
but basically at the end of the day over
like a 20-year span
there are basically
maybe a dozen or two dozen periods of
time
that actual returns really contribute to
the full 20-year return that we get
so it’s not that many days
it’s not that many periods of time
and so for someone to try to figure that
out
is
near impossible
so i’ve always been a proponent of for
me and for any colleagues and business
owners stay with it stay in it
in the long run
and you will always see that it will
pan out and you will see growth
at least i have and i’ve been in the
market now through 1987
black monday
through the early 90s recession
2001 recession and first of the internet
bubble and the
0.70809 real estate
been through all of those
stayed in the market
and have been glad that i did ever since
mike in our trusted advisors group one
of the things we try to hold each other
accountable to is that we’re getting
annual physicals from our doctors
because if if we’re not healthy nothing
else matters
is it as important to do the same type
of checkup on your finances
definitely i know for me personally what
i do is once a year i sit down
with
my wife and we sit down with our advisor
and advisors and go over our plan
say you know how did we do last year
and then what are the plans for um this
next next year
what are some of the things we need to
account for uh so i’ll give you a great
example of you know a couple years ago
my girls were heading off to college
well up to that point
we were meeting annually trying to make
sure are we on track to help them get
their college careers kicked off
and and then as their college careers
have gotten kicked off now we’re trying
to make sure okay as we finish that
how does that what’s that plan here is
it executing the way we want it to so
i think absolutely just like an annual
physical for your health be an annual
physical for your wealth if you don’t
then just like your health if you let
that slide
on the other side you let your wealth
slide
it’ll be the same result
as if you let your health start to
so both of them
are very very important in my eyes and
it’s really been a very helpful for for
me and my family mike for somebody
listening today and they want to become
more financially savvy what should they
do what should they read
it’s the question i’ve read just like a
whole host of stuff but some of the
books that i’ve read
over the years that i’ve really liked
one of the most recent ones that you and
i talked about at our launch was uh jl
collins
and his book called the simple path well
i really like that he wrote it in a way
that he was actually writing to his
daughter
and
doing it because
i as a father know that sometimes when i
would tell my kids you know or
say you know you need to think like this
or do this
they look at you and roll their eyes
oh dad oh dad
so i think it was really smart of him to
go you know what when the student
is ready the teacher is here and so or
it’s sort of a saying but
and so he decided i’m gonna write the
book that would give you the tools to
teach you and when you’re ready as a
student you’ll pick the book up and
you’ll read it so i think that was a
great way
um i’ve also read
again i can’t remember the title but
tony
robbins uh who wrote a book on money
management as well
i really like dave ramsey’s total money
makeover if you are trying to get
yourself out of debt consumer debt and
on that pathway
i think it’s a good book i’ve given that
to folks
when they’re in that situation
and they really want to get back out of
debt and into a more positive
financial foundation
so
um and i’ve also over the years
subscribed and
read kiplinger’s magazine over the years
they’ve had some good tips
um and good resources there
those are the ones that are coming to
the top of my head
but really it’s you know there’s there’s
a lot out there i think the best thing
is is start with something that feels
right for you if it’s a beginner’s
mindset or you feel you’re further along
than that and get into some books that
that the boat i mean john bogle wrote a
book also
talking about investment
so i think if you look at some of those
authors
what they’ve read i think you’ll find
yourself in some good company with some
good material at least jump off and
continue your your journey because i
still read a bunch
i mean i just read uh you know several
months ago dale collins book i hadn’t
read it before but other books i’ve read
you know 20 years ago always trying to
learn
well i will make sure to have the ones
that you mentioned on our show notes
page so people can find those
uh mike let me ask if you could only get
one point crystal clear from today’s
interview what do you want that point to
be
for business owners as well as for those
who are employees of companies
you’re looking at everybody’s working
hard
look and make sure that you’re always
thinking about how can i set aside
some money for my future
my future retirement or maybe my future
change of season some folks are like i
don’t want to retire
that is that’s totally great
if you might want to pivot
what do you want to pivot to
let’s try to see if you can take
financial situations or financial
resources let’s take that off the table
make that something that’s already done
it doesn’t matter it’s it’s
taken care of
so then you can focus on
really what is it that you’re passionate
about when you decide to either retire
or change
your pivot to go into something that’s
different than what you’re doing today
i have found that uh to be sort of
really liberating for me
i’m doing what i’m doing today because i
truly enjoy it
uh
and
i’ve i’ve been able to do so
with uh the ability to set things aside
and eventually give me a good solid
foundation so that i can continue for
however long i want to do it and that’s
that’s a true blessing so
if you haven’t started today
and you’re you’re like you’ve been
sitting on the sidelines i don’t know
what to do i’ve got some savings i don’t
know what to do with it and
get in
get and start investing or start
researching it start reading about it
take some action
because there’s no time like the present
and i don’t care what age you are
it’s never too late
it’s definitely never too bad
plant the tree today that’s right indeed
well mike when you were on back in july
of 2017 i asked you my first set of
lightning round questions so you’ve
already answered those so i’ve got a new
round for you today oh okay
are you ready
uh
fire away i’m ready
all right so my first question to you is
what would you say your superpower is
um
you know i just have an insatiable
desire to learn
and learn about things that i don’t know
what i don’t know
continue that path
and realize that even as i’ve grown
older i won’t say how old but let’s put
it this way i’ve been around a while
it’s that ability to
keep learning and keep reading
because i do believe in that added
leaders or readers
so
that’s uh hopefully what i think of as
the superpower
well mike i think your superpower is
you’re able to take a very complex
subject
and make it make complete sense to
whoever you’re
talking to
and in addition to that
allow them to now use a tool that was
too complicated for them before and now
they can actually take handles from your
meeting and say this is how i can run my
personal finances this is how i can run
my business finances you are fantastic
at that thank you and i think that’s
where you got the nickname the numbers
coach
yeah that’s true that is true all right
mike you now have a magic wand you can
change anything in the world what would
you change
today i think we’re coming out of a
pandemic where
we all have you know kind of had some
shell shock and just knowing that let’s
start getting back together when we can
when we feel comfortable and just having
these great conversations
regardless of what our backgrounds are
where we’ve all come from
and just really
get back into that robustness that i
think you’ve had before
that’s been missing
i know i’ve i’ve missed those types of
conversations
so i’m really looking forward to getting
back to that
i guess it’s just a good civil discourse
you know it is really what i’m looking
for
and excited about because i think it’s
coming i think it is it’s just a matter
of time
i hope you’re right i think we’re all
waiting for it but we all need to be
part of it we all do indeed absolutely
totally
mike the book that i read is escaping me
uh but the point that the author was
trying to make in this book was if we
look at our lifetime there were seven
pivotal moments that really changed the
trajectory to get to where we are right
now what was one of those moments for
you
i’d say there were
there was two
one was believe it or not back in uh
college i thought i was gonna come out i
really wanted to go into marketing
and sales sales and market but i had a
class and i just for some reason it
wasn’t working for me i don’t know what
it was i remember talking to my dad and
saying
just doesn’t feel i just don’t know what
to do
and so his advice was well look why
don’t you look at going into something
like
finance or accounting or something of
that nature because if you can learn the
numbers
behind the business
then even if you go back out into sales
and marketing then at least you’ll
understand the numbers and i’ll give you
a chance to
you know maybe help your customers even
more because you know some of the
financial implications behind things
so that’s what started me into
accounting and finance
and i never left
so
i think that was pivotal because i
wasn’t i wasn’t looking at this
profession
at all it was not even on the radar
i think the other was our girls um that
was the pivotal moment
so having triplets changes things is
what you’re saying a little
it sort of gave us this ah moment like
wow things are gonna change drastically
from zero to sixty
uh so
it was quite a change but at the same
time
it also
gave me the impetus because i was going
out on my own my own business at the
time
and it really made you think okay i
gotta hustle i’ve gotta make this work
i gotta put food on the table a roof
over our head and clothes on her back
and we really gotta make this work i
think that was also critical
mike my last question for you what
modern convenience can you just not live
without
uh my kids and uh wife will laugh at
this but for father’s day one year they
got a
coffee maker for me that’s one shot it’s
an espresso coffee maker and i love
coffee i’m a coffee affectionateo
and we discovered this on one of our
trips over to europe in vienna
and uh
i was like cooked
and it made some of the best coffee i’ve
ever had it’s like every morning i get
to have my own little latte at home
and
it’s one of those things where when i go
away and i come back i know how much i
miss it
when i when i don’t have it so it’s
one of those small little pleasures that
i enjoy
mike if i had a card where i was gonna
guess what that was i i would have i
would have put that up because you’ve
told me about that coffee maker and
other people about it i know that’s one
of your favorite things so we should
have put money on that to see if i could
have guessed that
yes mike thank you so much for coming on
the scaling up h2o podcast again and
again teaching us a lot of things that
we need to start doing and giving us
some ways to start if we haven’t yet now
if people want to reach out to you and
learn about the services and the tools
that you provide how can they do that
well they can go to uh
trilliumfinancial.com
or they can certainly email me you know
directly to at mike at
trilliumfinancial.com
but yeah going to the website they’ll
see
what what i do and some of the products
and someone that we offer as well
and certainly you know
for your audience if they have questions
or they’re like lead clarifications on
some of the things that we’ve talked
about here today
well mike it was great talking with you
today and i’m sure we’ll have you back
again
well thank you face it’s been a true joy
and uh
great to be again with you
thanks again
[Music]
mike thanks for coming back on scaling
up h2o as i mentioned in the
introduction mike is one of my good
friends mike
just knows so much about finance and
he’s one of these guys that can look at
spreadsheets
and just glean all this wisdom from the
numbers
and when he comes over for a visit he
will look at our numbers and he will
tell me things that i only know
about the business so folks if you are
not getting the data from your numbers i
can’t look at them the way that mike
does but because i know mike and because
mike comes to help us out he lets me
know what he sees he teaches me so i can
see better what he sees and with all
that i’m able to make better decisions
mike is actually one of the people that
i first mentioned the idea of starting
this podcast too mike was in my
mastermind group and i told him about it
and everybody else and he was one of the
strongest encouragers for me to start
this podcast that was a little more than
four years ago
and i’m so glad that i have people like
mike that can encourage me and i’m going
to return the favor because mike is
thinking about starting his own podcast
well mike you did a great job here this
is not the first time you’ve done a
great job here i mentioned that you were
on an episode before uh but i know that
you’ve been on at least two other
episodes you have been sharing knowledge
with the scaling up nation for years
and there’s no doubt about it you have a
lot to share so the scaling up nation
and everybody out there in the
podcasting world wants you to start your
podcast so come on mike the world
is waiting
i started off talking about how i met
mike through the mastermind and of
course i’ve started a mastermind called
the rising tide mastermind and we talk
about that on the podcast so i’m sure
you’ve heard about the mastermind before
one of the things that we do is we read
books together and then we talk about
what are the different things that all
the different readers and the mastermind
are getting out of that book and how are
we going to help each other do something
with that information well one of the
books we just finished reading together
was called procrastinate
on
purpose
by rory vaden and folks this is such a
neat book to help us figure out where to
spend our time and we’re never going to
get any more than 24 hours in a day but
if you can use certain techniques to do
something now so you don’t have to do it
later ever again
rory calls that a multiplier and he
starts to get us to think and what are
the things that we can do to multiply
our time
so we don’t have to spend time doing it
again it’s a great read you’re going to
find out so much stuff about how you
should be spending your time and
techniques to spend that time in fact
rory’s going to be on this show in just
a few short months to discuss this book
but i want to talk about a concept that
we really grabbed onto within the rising
tide mastermind it was the value of your
time and specifically rory references
the money value of time or the mvot
and simply what that is is what is your
time worth now how you figure that out
is you take your income and you divide
it by the average hours worked so here’s
the example let’s say someone makes
forty thousand dollars a year
the average hours worked in a year is
2080 hours so if i divide 40 by
2080 i get 19.23
so i know that if i’m doing anything or
if i’m
not doing something that’s not equal to
more
than 19.23
i shouldn’t be doing it maybe i can hire
that maybe i can pay somebody else to do
that and now i have the opportunity
especially if we are involved in
activities such as sales that i can
drive that number up
so his point was so many of us don’t do
that because we don’t have time to do
that but if we look at where we’re
spending our time are we really spending
our time on things that will make that
mvot
go up and allow us to get a higher value
for our time
now a lot of people say they don’t have
time to make
sales calls and i can’t help but
remember my story that i’ve shared with
you before but it really applies here so
endure me as i tell it again
my business coach tim fulton and i were
meeting and he asked me if i was going
to do all these various things that i
said i needed to do but didn’t have time
to do them and he asked what was i going
to do as soon as i left this meeting and
i told him i was going back to the
office and i was going to cut the grass
tim then smiled and asked me how much
would i charge one of my customers to
cut their grass
that immediately got me thinking about
the invote the money value of time and
if i paid somebody to cut
the lawn around my office
i can then do activities that would
allow me to make way more than what it
cost me to get somebody to cut the grass
and of course that helped me grow the
business which allowed my business to
support more people it allowed me to
take time on my relationships which
meant my quality of life greatly
improved and that was all because
somebody took the time to share with me
am i spending my time properly think
about that term spending your time if
you were going to buy something and you
knew it was going on sale next week most
likely you would wait for it to go on
sale because you would get more for your
money
spending your time i believe is that
expression because if we look at where
we’re going
to use our time we need to make sure
that we’re getting the most out of it so
i urge you
to consider
spending your time the same way as you
spend your money well speaking of time
it’s now time to find out what our next
james’s challenge is
[Music]
hello scaling up nation the next james’s
challenge as we grow as an industrial
water treatment professional drop by
drop is
find and share parts per million or ppm
analogies
a million is a large number to imagine
parts per million can be even more
nebulous and hard to fathom is true
scale
there are some eye-opening analogies
such as one ppm is approximately equal
to one minute in two years
what are some others
please share your examples on linkedin
by tagging them with hashtag jc21 and
hashtag scalinguph2o this is james
mcdonald and i look forward to seeing
what you share
well thanks james nation if you have an
idea for a show please go to scaling up
h2o.com and let me know what that idea
is people were asking me some financial
questions so that’s why we started this
show i want to make sure that i am
bringing you exactly what you want to
hear and the only way i can do that is
for you to let me know that folks i
can’t wait to bring you a brand new
scaling up h2o next week until the
meantime stay safe
[Music]
nation almost two years ago i started
the rising tide mastermind we have over
four groups and a waiting list for a new
group folks it is wildly successful and
what i mean by that is that we are able
to process issues together and get new
ideas about how we solve the issues that
we all face day to day in ways that we
might not have come up with on our own
folks look into the rising tide
mastermind to see if it is right for you
by going to
forward scalinguph2o.com
mastermind if what you see looks
interesting schedule an appointment with
me and we will see if the group is right
for you and you are right for the group
you