[00:00:00] Dylan Bain: We’re saying goodbye to the rigid numbers and strict budgets and putting relationships back at the heart of personal finance. This is more than a podcast, it’s an invitation to reimagine your money story and journey with us through a landscape of intuitive strategies and abundance. Join a community that nurtures transformative financial mindsets.

[00:00:25] Welcome to Intuitive Finance. I’m your host, Dylan Bain.

[00:00:36] When I was in graduate school, one of the stories that my professor told me was of two men who were walking through a forest and they come across this river. And when they look into the river there are children, little babies, flowing down the river, screaming their head off in danger of drowning. And both men, realizing the problem, jump in. And they start pulling babies out of the river. And so many are coming down the river that they’re having trouble keeping up. And eventually they start creating a system, and they start figuring out how to deal with all of these babies as they continue to come down this river. And they get efficient to the point where one can take a break and the other can take a break. And then eventually, one of the men stands up and he says, all right, well, you seem to got it. I’m going to go. And the other man says, but what about all the babies in the river? The first man says, yes, I need you to stay here and keep up the good work. I’m going to go upstream and figure out who’s throwing the babies in in the first place.

[00:01:36] Now, the point of that story is to illustrate the idea that when you’re looking at any particular problem, you have two options. Number one, you can try to solve the problem right in front of you. Or option two, you can go upstream and ask some very uncomfortable questions, possibly find your way into a confrontation, and then have to actually address the root of the problem.

[00:01:59] Now, the reason that this is such an interesting conundrum in terms of how our personal economics are working is what would happen if the men, instead of eventually deciding to go upstream, founded a company to deal with the babies in the river problem. That is to say that, they find themselves being able to create a apparatus to profit from removing babies from the river, because after all, that is the steps of entrepreneurship, right? You find a problem, babies in the river, you create a solution, my company, and then you profit from it by running that solution.

[00:02:38] And the problem with this type of thing is that once you have that, once you have a company that is profiting off of addressing that problem, solving the problem is in fact a problem for the company. Because if you solve the root of the problem, if you actually went upstream and found a person throwing the babies in the river in the first place and stopped him, now that company has lost their livelihood. And there are jobs attached to that, and possibly political donations, and tax base for local communities, and you see how this goes. And that would be insane, right? Like nobody would do that. Until you consider that’s exactly what we find ourselves in on a community level.

[00:03:20] See, we in the United States specifically — this applies to Canada and increasingly to Mexico in North America — find ourselves in this situation. The food system is a great place to see this, where we start to understand that like, oh, the type of wheat that we grow is actually really good for the machines that we use to process the wheat and to all the the flour and all the other things that we eat, but it’s actually not really great for the humans who are eating it. And that causes them to become obese, that causes them to have gluten problems, that causes them all sorts of downstream externalities that are negative. But rather than look up and say, well, hold on a second. This seems like a sign of dysfunction. Human beings have been eating wheat for longer than 10, 000 years without problem. Why is it suddenly everyone’s gluten intolerant?

[00:04:10] But instead what we do is we say, well, here’s a new pharmacological compound that they can take, and that’s going to help them with their gluten problem. Oh, I’ll create an entire line of gluten free crackers. Here’s gluten free bread because that’s not oxymoronic at all. And you see how this works. Suddenly we’ve adapted this entire industry. And then you have the wellness industry that comes in, you have the doctors who are benefiting from this, and then there’s all the gyms and nutrition experts, and then there’s the entire cookbook franchises that come up around this problem. That if we actually said, wait, no, stop, hold on a second, let’s actually change the strain of wheat that we’re using in the United States into something more akin to what they use in Europe, which is an ancestral strain that’s non GMO, that’s the type of wheat we’ve been eating for over 10,000 years, and let’s switch over to that, what would happen? You would see the downstream effects of all of those people who are essentially pulling babies out of the river would suddenly find their jobs in jeopardy.

[00:05:12] This entire confluence of all of these things coming together can get real overwhelming, and when you start looking at personal finance, I’ve said before, when you start looking at this, you might come into a coaching practice and say, I have an expense problem. When you actually look at it, though, you have an income problem. And so the fact that you were always on razor edge has more to do with the fact that you’re not being paid in accordance with the value you’re actually providing, and you can see that because the company you’re working for had another record breaking profit year.

[00:05:45] These types of conversations are ones we don’t want to have. We, as a society, always deflect or we find some clever phrase or some way to put this off into somebody else’s wheelhouse. But the reality here is, if you want to actually solve problems, you have to go look at the roots rather than how I can profit off of it. And this flies in the face of a lot of how we think about, well, how we’re supposed to show up in society. For example, I have this conversation with my mother all the time where she’ll say, well, I mean in healthcare system the reason you have to pay so much is because there’s other people who don’t pay. I always have to kind of stop and be like, well, that’s great. I’m sure that feels really emotionally satisfying to blame poor people for the problem rather than the private equity firm that owns the hospital that is making off like bandits as they plunder the US healthcare system.

[00:06:38] And if you looked at it, there’s a deeper question. Why is it this person can’t afford health care anyway? Why has it been allowed to spiral out of control? And then you start going upstream and suddenly realize like, oh wait, hold on a second. They are charging 25 for one pill of Tylenol for no reason whatsoever. And if they stop that entirely, their bottom line will be barely affected. They’re not actually subsidizing these poor people. It’s in fact getting far more nefarious. When we start looking at the things that we are trying to improve in our lives, it is really important for us to start looking upstream, to start looking like, what is the core problem here? If success leaves clues, dysfunction does too.

[00:07:21] So whatever you’re looking at in terms of a problem, you have to start asking yourself, what is the actual core thing? In my own weight loss journey — I’ve been very public about that. I’ve had to step back. I’ve put on some of the pounds that I lost. Why? And I can sit here and I can spend a lot of time being like Dylan, it’s because you just can’t drop the chalupa. Like, okay, that would be again, emotionally satisfying, make me feel really good to I found the root of the problem! It’s Dylan’s lack of discipline. Or it could be that I’m under a ton of stress, which is driving bad habits, which is causing me not to sleep well, which is causing me to stay up at night. You can see how this goes. The core problem is what’s causing the stress, not necessarily the fact that I’ve taken a step backwards. So when I go up to that core problem and I realize, wait, hold on a second, this is actually something far more systemic than it is any individual thing.

[00:08:14] Well, now the question becomes, what do I do? And this, I think, in the self-improvement space is a huge question. Because as I’ve talked to more therapists, as I’ve talked to doctors, as I’ve talked to fitness coaches, they all seem to have this underlying idea that I shouldn’t have to treat these things.

[00:08:36] It’s the idea of like, when I was asked by a friend of mine from Europe, why is it that everyone in the United States seems to have a therapist? We don’t really have a whole lot of that going on here in the EU. And then they come to visit and they’re like, oh, you are all lonely. You all live in suburbs and are separated. And like, driving a car is really cool, but I couldn’t imagine doing it every single day. When you start to really break this apart and look at it and go, well, hold on a second. Why is male loneliness the epidemic that it is? Why is it that we have so much confusion in society? Why is it that we feel so far apart? But when you sit down with the people you know, even if they’re on a different part of the political spectrum from you, it doesn’t seem that far.

[00:09:17] And in my mind, it comes down to communities. It comes down to how we’re living our lives, how we’re organized society. And as I’ve worked in the personal finance space, I find myself as a man standing in a river, pulling babies out. And I don’t mind that job. I don’t mind it at all. In fact, I’m glad that there’s someone like me to stand in the river and do that work, helping people get control of their finances, helping people get control of what the foundation of their lives is built on, so they have a better understanding, a better educational base. But increasingly I’ve started to become aware that it’s more than just that.

[00:09:55] Let me give you a good example. I had a client recently come in, we sat down, he said, I have an expense problem. Well, it became real obvious, real quickly, that he had an income problem rather than an expense problem. And I told him that. I said, look man, like, at the end of the day, this budget is going to be really hard to stick to because you are walking a knife edge. And if you look at your expenses, there’s not a whole lot that can be reasonably cut because you’re already close to the bone. He said, well, I don’t know what to do. It’s hard to find a job, especially with so many companies that are having record breaking profits, but also “right sizing”, which means that the CEOs have decided to lay off employees and economically devastate those people and their families and the communities in favor of maintaining an even bigger profit margin in their companies, even though they don’t need to be laying people off. That’s a systemic issue. And I don’t have control of that. I’m looking at my client.

[00:10:52] And I say, well, this is the field of play. You need to start asking yourself, what do I do to become more valuable in the marketplace so I can compete at a higher level.? And as I’m saying these words, I’m also thinking like, I did that. That is what I did when I went back to graduate school. It took me five years of hard work to raise my income to a point where I could buy the house with the yard, where my kids were playing with the ball while I was grilling steaks. And my wife comes up to me and says, honey, I love what we built. And I did it March 1st 2020. I did it. Bought the house. And by April 1st 2020, I was on the verge of divorce. There were too many problems, too many irons in the fire.

[00:11:31] So I’m reflecting for my client, knowing that he has a wife and he has kids, what I’m actually telling him. And I stop and I look at it and I say, well, okay. Well, let’s think about something else. If you’re looking at it, yeah, you should do this, but maybe you shouldn’t do it the way that I did it. I notice here, maybe there’s a cheaper way to do this. Can we buy some food in bulk? Can we start figuring out how to lower that grocery bill a little bit? Because everything else is a fixed cost, maybe there’s something we can do. And he says to me, well, I understand that, but I don’t know how to cook, so we have to continue to eat out. And they go, how am I going to feed my kids?

[00:12:08] Oh my God, here’s a problem. I’m looking downstream at this expense problem, it’s really an income problem. I can’t solve the income, so I try to solve the expenses. But immediately I understand that the problem isn’t necessarily that he’s unwilling to do it. It’s that he doesn’t have the skills to actually be able to do this thing. And so now through the process of financial coaches, I’m actually having a conversation about how you actually feed a family. And we’re going back up the river to the core problem. No one taught this man how to cook a nourishing, nutritious, heart led meal. And why not? Well, because we changed the economy where women entered the workforce in droves. And now suddenly everyone’s working a whole bunch. There’s no one left to cook, and then we’re all coming home after our commutes, after a hard day going, and now we have to figure out what the hell to do for dinner. And there’s only an hour to help the kids with their homework and get them to bed. And then we can spend maybe 10 minutes looking at each other and then we got to go to bed. And so what happened is an entire industry showed up and said, here’s fresh frozen food. Here’s a TV dinner. Here’s a prepackaged meal. Here’s a meal prep service. Here’s all of these things.

[00:13:26] And why? So that we, this family unit can continue to be economically productive. But they’re missing the life. They’re missing the community. They’re missing the pro human things that make life worth living, that help children have attachment to their parents, helping couples love and invest and date each other. It’s really easy, especially when we have so many hustle bros out there pitching this idea of just grind, grind, grind. I watched Alex Hormozi on a reel on Instagram say, wouldn’t it be great to have a job where you could invest 124 days out of the year into your dream and side business and try to establish it? That’s called a nine to five. Okay, cool. I did that. I lived that life. I followed the path. And you know what? I was in fact financially rewarded. Increasing my income by 97,000 wasn’t without its challenges, and challenge number one was figuring out how to work from 6 AM to 11 PM six days a week. And that was hard. And I did it. And I had accomplished the goal. I raised my income. I bought the house.

[00:14:37] And I’m a stranger to my kids, and I don’t know how to be in a relationship with my wife. It’s all malfunctioning. Because that, the mindset grind set, that sigma male grind set is just pulling babies out of the river. It’s a rat race that’s never going to end. Because as you get to new levels, you find new devils, and you suddenly find yourself wondering, how did I get here?

[00:15:01] I tell all of this, because a couple of weeks ago, I talked about this year being the year of apotheosis, the year where I craft the highest version of myself and bring that forward into the world. I spent 2023 in the year of emancipation, breaking all the chains and rewriting all the stories that I felt were holding me back about my health, about my wealth, about business, about living out loud, about doing this podcast and all of that stuff. So what’s the next step? Create the next highest version of myself.

[00:15:33] I had a friend here in Denver this weekend who asked me, well, what comes after that once you’ve created your higher self? And I said, well, the man who will be able to see that doesn’t exist yet. I have to create him this year. We’ll figure that out heading into 2025. Right now, I’m focused on 2024.

[00:15:50] And this podcast is a big part of my life. I do a lot of my recordings in the evenings while my kids are getting ready for bed. That is, in fact, as I’m recording this right now, exactly what is happening. And I do this because I love this form of communication. I adore it. And I’m thinking about what message I’m putting out there in the world and what impact it’s having. I’ve had almost a hundred clients come through the coaching practice at this point which has been kind of cool. Working with people’s personal finance, I’ve had wives tell me that they’ve had conversations with their husbands they never thought possible. It all started with money. I had a husband tell me that the free toolkit you can find on my website, DylanBain.com/Toolkit is the conversation starter with his wife and he finds those weekend budget check-ins with her and that weekly business meeting they have together to be a big foundational piece of their marriage at this point. That’s huge.

[00:16:54] And increasingly I’m finding myself broadening out and saying to myself, well, okay. I didn’t just learn how to manage my finances for five years well, barely making it by, I didn’t create just financial expertise, I created social skills, I created all sorts of different skill sets. How to give a presentation, how to cook, how to spend time with my kids, how to really see my wife, how to sit down and interface with my children on an emotional level so that they feel safe and 360 degrees in a holistic fashion at my house. And a lot of this podcast and talking about communities and going upstream has a lot to do with where this is going to go.

[00:17:37] I know as of this recording, my men’s group, the Ascendant Legion is open, and men have signed up. And these men are coming into this group to find a path forward through brotherhood in order to become the best versions of themselves. And this is a practice that can’t happen in the darkness, it doesn’t happen in secret. It happens when you start living out loud. And in getting that group set up, I’ve had to ask myself a lot, why am I doing this? Does the world need another group? And the answer is yeah, I think it does. Because I don’t know what we’re going to do when we figure out who’s throwing the babies into the river in the first place. But I do know that when I do, I hope to have a band of brothers around me to help us deal with that problem. I’m hoping to be able to create a better world for my daughters by helping create better fathers for the men that they’re going to find themselves dating. I’m hoping that my grandchildren will look back and say, yeah, my grandfather had an impact with men. In a time of great confusion, he started creating communities.

[00:19:02] And that’s what the Ascendant Legion is all about, looking at your life and how we can help you move forward in a 360 degree holistic way. Where you can be the man who gets shit done and can also hold your wife when she cries. The man who, when the chips are down, no better bet than him and somebody who can appreciate poetry. The man who can bring home the bacon and create a masterpiece on the table with it. This is what we are looking for. This is what we’re building. And that is going to start with our communities. That’s going to start with us taking one step, putting one step foot in front of the other, getting our life together. And a big part of that is finances. And there’s a whole lot more there.

[00:19:51] Ladies and gentlemen, part of the podcast is helping to grow. I’m asking for you, each and every single one of you, especially for those who’ve been with me from the beginning — if you haven’t, please leave me a rating and review, and share the podcast with somebody who could benefit from this message.

[00:20:10] Pick one of my interviews, send it to them, and ask them to leave a five-star rating, review for me as well on Amazon, on Spotify, on iTunes. Those are my three most listener-laden platforms. Help me grow this. Let us help figure out how to address some of the things that are ailing us as a society and help us move forward maybe in surprising ways, maybe not so surprising ways. Maybe in fun ways, maybe in boring ways. Maybe the beauty of all this is going to be found just in the communities that we’re going to start building.

[00:20:46] Thanks for listening. The conversation doesn’t end here. Please share the show with friends and make sure you keep up with all the latest updates on Instagram and Threads @TheDylanBain, and dive deeper into the world of finance with me at DylanBain.com where you’ll find insights, resources, and strategies to reimagine your money story.