Dylan Bain: It is time to reject the domestication of a manufacture society and reclaim the human wisdom that lives within our hearts. Welcome to The Human Revolution. I’m your host, Dylan Bain.

It’s May of 2017, and I’m getting ready to graduate from my MBA program. I have a gentleman who comes over and sits down next to me while I’m sitting in the coffee shop doing my last activities that I need before I can actually walk across the stage and collect my new degree. And I say, Hey, how’s it going, man?

What’s up? And he looks at me and he goes, I just have one question for you. And I said, okay, what is it? He goes, how did you do it? Now I’m sitting across the table from this man who has come up to me unsolicited and asked for my advice. And he’s wanting to know how I did my graduate school. How is it that I did the graduate school, graduated top of my class, got a job at one of the largest accounting firms in the world while having a wife and two kids who still talked to me.

This was what he was wondering because he was just starting the same path that I had completed. He was at the very beginning where I was three years prior, working a full time job, knowing that that job is never going to pay his bills, and now it’s time for him to transition to something else. And he’s worried.

And he’s scared, he’s full of doubt, and he’s coming to me because he’s seen that it’s possible, but he believes that there’s a trick. Now, ladies and gentlemen, I’ve thought about that moment a lot, because anytime that we’re trying to make a change in our life, anytime that we’re trying to get better, to move the needle, to go towards something that is more full of the things that we’re on this planet to experience, we’re going to be scared, and it’s going to be hard.

And we’re not going to want to do it. And we’re going to think that there’s all these reasons why it can’t be done, but it can be done because people do it all the time. And there’s an entire raft of naysayers who will point out all the reasons why that extra person had that extra special advantage.

And I’ll even tell you what mine was. You know, they point to Jeff Bezos with Amazon and say, well, he got a half million dollar loan from his parents. That’s true. Something I don’t have access to him. You probably don’t either. And he was able to leverage that into what Amazon is today. It was one of his first steps.

Bill Gates went to one of the most elite schools in Washington and his parents were friends with people on the board of IBM, Warren Buffett’s father was an influential Congressman who sat on the finance committee. These people had advantages. In my case, I already had an undergraduate degree, I already had a chip on my shoulder, and I had a father in law who was going to help me with childcare.

These are advantages. We all have advantages when we go and we reach for them. But I want to give you four steps that you can use to get going. Those four steps are, look at where you want to be. Look at where you are, take the next best step and go back to the very first one. Now look at where you are.

This is a step people don’t want to do so often in financial coaching. People come into the practice and they’ll say, Dylan, my problem is I’m not investing for retirement. I say, okay, that’s great. How much you got to invest? Oh, I don’t know. What’s your budget say? I, I’ve never, I don’t do budgeting. It’s a waste of time.

I have to learn how to invest. How do I pick a stock, Dylan? I have to say, brother, you’re focused on step eight and you’re not even taking step one. So here are the four steps. Number one, know where you want to be. Number two, know where you are. Number three, Take the next best step to get to where you want to be.

Number four, go back to step number one and reassess. Now, knowing where you want to be that this is the one where people will dream. People will say that they want to be a certain place. And this is the conversation that I have with clients when they come into the financial coaching practice, I’ll say, Hey, where do you want to be?

And they’re going to list off all these things. And one of the exercises we do is we sit down and we actually ask them, Hey, if I gave you a ridiculous amount of money. What would you do? What would happen? And they always tell me, well, I’ll buy the house and I’ll give it to charity and I’ll be able to do all these other things.

My question to them is why you said you wanted to be a millionaire and it sounds like you don’t actually want to be a billionaire. You want to spend all the money a millionaire has. There’s a difference and morally those two things are just neutral states of being. There is nothing inherently or intrinsically righteous or not about either one of those positions, but it’s a change in mindset.

So is that where you really want to be? Do you really want to have the super expensive car that you can’t really drive on American roads because they’re falling apart that you’re going to be constantly worried, but what’s going to happen to it when you’re at the grocery store, do you really want to have a massive house that you have to clean?

Well, Dylan, if I had all the money, I’d just hire somebody. Yeah, yeah. Now you’re, you’re adding complications of other people’s lives into your life. So when you’re looking at where you want to be, there’s a question of mindset that has to go on here of what is it actually that we want. And when people will talk about how they wish to spend all those millions, what they really want is the safety and security to not have to think about money anymore.

Or number two, they’re looking for the esteem and the admiration of other people for how generous they are. This is why they want to give it away to charity. Or they’re thinking that it’s going to somehow bring them right ethically and morally by supporting a cause. And so those are very different things.

Because we can generate a steam and not need 10 million to do it. We can generate safety and security and not need 10 million to do it. We can have better relationships. We can go on vacations. We can create more life in our work life balance without having to have 10 million. Most of us will never have 10 million and yet a good life is possible.

Probably you got to be real clear on what you want, because there is no way that you can get to where you want to be. If you do not understand where that is. What it is really. I remember I had a client who came in and we went through all the financial coaching and everything else like that. We created a good cashflow plan form and investment strategy.

He was getting on the budget train to a really good job managing his cashflow. And a year goes by and I get a call says, Dylan, I don’t know what’s going on. I said, okay, well, let’s let’s schedule some time. Let’s have a chat. And he gets on the zoom with me and he says, I just, I thought I’d be happy now.

So what do you mean? He said, well, I bought the truck. I bought the truck. I got the lift on it. It’s amazing. I said, great. Was that your dream or someone else’s? Is that what you wanted? Or is that what you thought all your friends wanted for you? Are you trying to impress your dad or are you trying to impress yourself?

You can see the dilemma here. He went through the entire coaching practice. We worked out what his vision was. And the second he had the money to do it, he went and did somebody else’s goal. And he’s not happy. And what happens in those situations, because he didn’t know where he wanted to be, he’s going to continue to chase shit he doesn’t need.

And he doesn’t want to impress people who are never going to be impressed anyway. And It’s insanity. And yet it’s the hamster wheel society has built for us to continue to run on because they don’t want you to be real clear on what you want, because if you were, well, then you’re harder to economically exploit.

And if you are very clear on what you want, you can start working for it. And I got some bad news for the economy as a general whole, when people start working on the things that are true to their heart, we stop participating in the infernal machine. And so there’s a lot of distractions out there that are designed to stop us from actually asking that very first question, what do you want?

Where do we want to be? What kind of relationships do we want to have? Okay. So that’s step one, get real clear on where, where you want to be. Step number two is assess where you’re at. Here’s one thing that I see all the time. And I just had this conversation with the client, not two weeks ago, or he comes in and we’re talking about where, where do you want to be?

Where do you want to be? And he says, we will outline the vision. We really sit with the inner child and figure out what really lights this guy up. It’s nothing that he has in his life right now. In fact, he’s terrified that other people would know that this is the thing that he wants because he believes that they will reject them.

But we get clear on it. We get crystal clear on it. I say, okay, now where are we at? And he immediately starts talking about retirement savings. Where he wanted to be had nothing to do with retirement savings, not one thing. It was a factor, but that wasn’t the point. And where we’re trying to say, where are you now?

He immediately jumps to the investing question. I’m sitting there as his coach and saying, Hey, brother, I get this. I too want to have that type of thing, but how much money do you have to spend? How much money can we invest into this dream? You want to have that camper van that you can go on massive adventures with, with your, your Burmese mountain dog.

Great. What’s your cashflow look like? Well, I don’t want to look at that because it’s intimidating. Okay. Well, we have to, is there a way we can skip that step? No, there’s not. Because this is where people get into trouble when they say, I don’t know where to start, or I don’t know where my money goes or I’m scared and intimidated.

What they’re all really saying is I don’t ever look at what’s actually going on in my life. I look at everything else. I look at what the Joneses are doing, whatever else is expectations are for me, but I’m not looking. At the thing that’s actually occurring because I’m afraid of it because I’m intimidated by it because I’m worried that there’s a lot of judgment or this is going to say something about me as a person, ladies and gentlemen, let’s recall that a healthy relationship with your money is one in which your money doesn’t actually say anything about you as a person.

And yet we still have to look at this. If we know where we want to be, but we don’t know where we are, there’s no way to chart a path there because I don’t know what mountains I’m going to have to climb, valleys I’m going to have to cross, and rivers I’m going to have to swim in to get to that destination if I don’t know where I am.

Knowing where I am is critically important to this path. And how do you know where you are? Well, you start with your cashflow. So if you’re at home and you’re like, I know, never know where to start with my finances. Here’s where you start, sit down, look at last month and list out every single one of your expenses.

And give it a category. Then sum up the categories and look at where your money went. That’s step one. We know where our income is coming from. We, everybody knows how much they make, how many people know how much they spent on groceries to the dollar last month? I do because I look at it. My clients do because I look at it with them.

Do you, do you know how much money you’re spending on subscription services, on car insurance, car payments? Debt payments. How much interest are you spending on a credit card for the privilege of carrying a balance with them? What is the most effective path to pay off debt if you have any? Which most of us do.

Where are the capital investments you need to be making into your life that would actually make things easier? How do you find that? You look where you are. You look at what you’re doing right now. What money is coming into my hands and going out of my hands? Because whatever step one was of where you want to be, you need to know where you are right now and then, and only then, once we have those two things crystal clear, can we go to step three, which is take the next best step, not step eight, step one, whatever that is.

Maybe that step is I need to learn how to manage my cashflow. I’m not going to focus on trying to save X number of dollars into an emergency fund. I’m not going to fiddle around with my 401k. I’m not going to try to develop a real estate or Bitcoin strategy or some other loon shot that’s going to possibly pay hugely, but with a low probability and a lot of arts and crafts in between, I’m just going to try to manage my money.

I’m going to learn to stick with the budget. I’m going to start asking myself, why is it that I eat so much Chick fil A? That was mine. The last three months, my wife and I have been having this discussion because I’ve been going through with some emotional turmoil. I’ve, I’ve, my life kind of got turned upside down for about a quarter.

And I told my wife, I said, I think I did. I think I handled this way better than I would have in the past. She said, yeah, you didn’t blow your budget by drinking beer and eating chicken because that’s what I did in the past. Okay. What was the next best step for me to be taking? In the past, it was learning to not do that.

It was learning how I can be in relationship with myself and not need to numb out on it. Okay. There’s a lot of gentlemen who are listening to this would be who have heard the message of don’t numb out if you’re numbing out, whatever that numb out looks like, whether it’s porn, whether it’s alcohol, pot, weed, but hey guys, let’s be honest, rage and anger is an addiction to doom scrolling is an addiction.

Anything having to do with your cell phone is probably addictive. Researching, whatever it is, whatever the new hotness of scary is. Well, that’s, that’s an addiction too. That’s a numb out strategy. Reading up on Wikipedia, learning about the Roman empire, binge listening to podcasts. These are all numb out activities.

Whatever it is, it’s covering something up. So nine times out of 10, when I’m working with a client, we know where we want to be. We know where we are. And so then the next step is you got to have a conversation with yourself, with your loved one, with anybody else. Why is it that we are spending this much money on dine out versus the groceries or the food prep service or whatever?

What is our priority as a family? What are our values? That’s a step. Maybe you’re already crystal clear in that. And your step is I need to save money. Okay. We set a target. This goes back to managing your cashflow, because if I’m saying I want to have 10 grand set aside in a savings account that I can use for emergencies so I can just sleep better at night.

Hey, great. If you’ve. Already started to manage your cashflow. You know, how long it’ll take you to get there. Can you put a thousand dollars into savings every single month or not? Because if you can, well, 10, 000 is 10 months. And now it’s comes down to managing your cashflow so that you can accomplish that goal, that next step.

My next step is to get 10, 000 in the bank because where I want to be is financially independent, where I could lose my job and it’s not going to matter. Okay, cool. Step one, let’s get some cash. That might be the next best step. The process of going through steps one and two, knowing where you want to be and knowing where you are will help you figure out what step three is.

But I will promise you, I will promise you that it is probably not YOLOing into duplexes in Columbus, Ohio. I promise you, it’s not trying to find a great way to build an options ladder in the stock market. So you can try to be better than Goldman Sachs and Citigroup and Merrill Lynch. You’re not going to be, you’re probably gonna lose a lot of money.

That’s the advanced class, the very advanced class. There’s a lot of daylight between where the vast majority, 99 percent of Americans are in that place. So you got to take that next best step, whatever that is in your unique situation. This is where having a coach, having me in your corner can be really beneficial for you because I can help you find that and set that and help you understand why it is that that is in fact the next best step.

Step number four, perhaps the most important, go back to step number one. But Dylan, I just did step one and two and three. Why am I going back? Well, for two reasons. Number one, this creates a loop because you don’t win wealth. You don’t win budgeting in the same way you don’t win health and you don’t win good relationships.

And you don’t win happiness. These are continual infinite games in which the rules of engagement are going to continue to change as other players, as are the enemies and allies. There’s no set goal posts. It’s a state of being. So managing cash flow is not an activity. It’s a state of being. It’s a, Continual thing that you’re doing, and part of that is to go back to step one, having already gone through step one, two and three, I know where I wanted to be.

I knew where I was. I took a step. Guess what? The view changed. You’ve moved. Your perspective has changed. You’ve grown. You have new experiences. And all of that needs to be reintegrated into where we’re deciding to go. My good friend and mentor, Robert Wunderlich always likes to say, if you took off from Denver flying towards Australia and you made a one degree change over the course of that time, you wouldn’t end up in Australia.

You’ll end up someplace radically different. And that’s the point. Once we’ve gone through these steps, we wanna return back to the beginning and start over because we’re different people with different perspectives. So if we need to make an adjustment, because I know differently and I know better now we gotta make it early, and then the cycle starts again.

I sit down and I figure out where do I wanna be? One of the things that. Has happened to me is that I went through that graduate school program and I graduated top of my class and got the big prestigious job and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I became really career oriented, really focused on it. I was going to be the best in my office.

And then I realized my relationship was actually starting to fall apart, not because I went through grad school, but because I never came home from it. And that changed things. And more recently I’ve made career decisions that aren’t good for my career. Even if they’re really good for me, my goals and my family, that’s a change.

I’ve changed. I’ve grown. And when people that I went to grad school with, some of who listened to this podcast will say, wow, Dylan, that’s not you. Well, it’s not anymore. Dylan, you’ve changed. You’ve changed. Yes, we’re supposed to. And that’s the point. That’s why this is a loop, a continual conversation that never ends.

In the same way that loving your partner never ends, learning to get to know your kids never ends. My daughters are having birthdays soon, another year on the calendar for both of them, another year of fatherhood for me, another year of being with this woman who first was my friend, and then was my lover, and then was my wife, and now is somebody’s mom.

Things changed. They’re supposed to. It’s going to be a constant ongoing process, constant stepping through, where do I want to be, where am I now, what do I need to do? And then I go back after I’ve taken that step. These four steps, you can apply them to anything, your health. Everyone who’s seen me knows that my struggle is always my weight and it’s a struggle that’s gotten easier as time has gone on because I’ve learned one of the things I’ve learned is, well, with cardio, I don’t think that I’m going to be out there running a whole lot because it hurts, but man, I feel alive on my bike.

I’m like a little kid and I love jujitsu. I love rolling on the mats. And so the majority of my exercise now is coming from them and I’m continuing to lose weight. That came from the fact that I looked and I said, okay, where do I want to be? Where am I now? What’s the next best step? Well, I’ll start riding my bike.

And I go back and I go, where do I want to be? I want to be somebody who rides his bike a lot. That changed in that equation. You look at your kids, where, where do I want to be? I want to be the father that my daughter is just over the moon to introduce to her friends. I want to be the type of dad that when my daughters talk about me, it’s not, man, my dad, it’s, oh man, my dad is the best.

Okay, great. Where am I now? Ooh, that whole going to graduate school thing and being gone for two years, uh, left a mark. Okay. What’s the next best step? I need to spend some real quality time with her for her and not for me. Okay, take that step, come back around and keep doing it. These four steps are simple, but make no mistake, ladies and gentlemen, simple does not mean easy.

In fact, simple probably means easy. The hardest things you’ve ever done. We as humans love to overcomplicate things. We love to layer on nuance and complexity and all the different things because it makes it so that, well, it’s not simple. It’s complex. It’s hard to do. No, it was simple. It just wasn’t easy.

And because it wasn’t easy, we figured it couldn’t possibly have been simple. So we make up crap that doesn’t apply. It really is as simple as it sounds, but it’s not easy. It’s really hard. It’s incredibly hard. My wife and I learning to budget took us nine months. Me learning how to connect with my kids and not be a corporate drone is an ongoing process.

Me maintaining a healthy weight and being healthy for my kids, taking care of me for them. That is an ongoing process. It’s something I’m learning and it’s incredibly hard. It’s incredibly hard because as I excavate things, I find new aspects of myself and society. I find new ways to think about and see things.

And then my entire perspective changes and a year goes by and I turn around and go, I’m a completely different person. Great. I should be. That’s the point. That’s how self development works. I was the same person. I failed. So ladies and gentlemen, those four steps, I know where you want to be, know where you are, take the next best step and go back to the beginning and start over again.

Hope this helps ladies and gentlemen, if it does, if anything in this podcast has helped Touched you meant something to you has resonated with you share the podcast, particularly on social media, please, please, please leave me a five star rating review. It will help me get more of the word out to more people and be able to continue the human revolution as we start putting humanity back at the center of everything.

Thank you all for listening and we’ll catch you real soon.

Thanks for listening. The conversation doesn’t stop here. You can find me on all the social media platforms at the Dylan Bain, and you can sign up to get updates on workshops, events, and more at DylanBain. com.