Walking Shoes, Folding Bicycles, and Pallets of Toilet Paper – Interview with Joshua Sheats of Radical Personal Finance, Part 2
April 7, 2021
By Matt Miner, MBA, CFP®
Also, if you enjoyed this conversation and want more of Joshua and me, we’ve shared a couple episodes in the past on Radical Personal Finance:
Today’s show expands on our risk management discussion as my guest, Joshua Sheats from Radical Personal Finance, and I dip a toe in the water of physical preparedness. Whether you wear a tinfoil hat is up to you, but everyone can learn the lessons of Covid-19 and the Great Toilet Paper Crisis of 2020.
Joshua and I discuss disaster preparedness planning and Joshua’s career in podcasting where he reminds us “you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”
In our conversation, we recommend pairing risk-taking in career and business (you make your money in your career or business) with good financial planning (you avoid wipeout risk and accumulate wealth over time through financial planning).
Joshua and I address the role of independent media as a communication and marketing tool and the importance of high-quality content (low-quality content won’t get the job done these days) and niching down (laser-focus on your target audience. For example, when I record LMM, I have a very specific listener in mind).
Lastly, (at no prompting from me!), Joshua discusses the role excellent advisors, including financial advisors, can have in your life – cutting years off your learning curve on almost any topic. Joshua calls financial advisors the link between your dreams and where you are today, which is a pretty inspiring job description!
Transcript
Matt Miner: How did you fare through the great toilet-paper crisis of 2020? It's a light-hearted question and I ask it to highlight the importance of financial and physical preparedness. If you weren't financially prepared for 2020 in your lifestyle and career, this has been a tough year. If you weren't physically prepared, then it's been a headache. Today's show focuses on what you can do to meet any exigency this world sends your way.
It's how you wade through the manure and come up smelling like a rose. Hey, and welcome to the Work Pants Finance Podcast. I'm so glad you're here. I'm Matt Miner, your money guide and Work Pants Finance is the show for MBAs, entrepreneurs, and other professionals who want their financial plan to work as hard as they do.
Now, here's your money guide quick tip. As you've lived through COVID-19 in 2020, what have you learned about your life or your money? Where, for example, can you cut back your spending to increase your cash-on-hand? Alternately, what areas of your life cry out for increased spending? Do you need to make your home office more comfortable or professional?
Would you enjoy converting your back deck to a sun porch so that you can take some of your calls in the fresh air? While COVID is still fresh in your mind, take stock of what you've learned and plan the changes you want to make. Today's episode is the conclusion of my interview with Joshua Sheats of Radical Personal Finance. We discuss learnings from the lockdown, including how not to get wiped out in a toilet-paper shortage along with other more serious physical risks we may encounter in our life.
Today's show is, expect the unexpected, live consciously, and dream without limitation. Walking shoes under your desk, folding bicycles in the trunk, and pallets of toilet paper in the basement, my interview with Joshua Sheats of Radical Personal Finance Part 2. You can read more at workpantsfinance.com/15.
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Transitioning a little bit from the totally-traditional topics to the more fun stuff, I wanted to ask you. Physical preparedness is a key part of risk management, and sometimes people take this in goofy directions, even neglecting things that they shouldn't neglect in order to do that, which is not my goal today. There are some basic physical preparedness items that should be addressed with the same urgency as an emergency fund and basic insurance. I wonder if you'd talk us through what those are from your perspective.
[00:02:44] Joshua Sheats: You got about four or five hours here that we can [laughs]-
[00:02:48] Matt Miner: I don't know. You're going to run out of water to sip on here. I've seen your calves they're not as big as mine, so you're going to have to meter your response to match your supply of beverages.
[00:02:57] Joshua Sheats: Exactly. First, let me make the case for physical preparedness because I think that this is underrepresented in the field of financial planning. I believe that money is generally would be the best form of preparedness. I had a friend of mine who coined the term “money is an omni-tool”. He said that money is that thing that can get you almost anything else.
That's true. Money could be converted into almost anything in the world. The definition I like of money is that money is the most marketable commodity in the world. Money is the thing that everybody will accept. With money, you can buy almost anything out there that you need. You can convert money into anything in any circumstance at any corner of the world, unless the marketplace is so messed up that money is not working for now.
Now, usually, that's a temporary condition, but if the marketplace is messed up, then money is not working for now. Let me give a few examples as I answer your question. I think it's very fortunate that we're recording this podcast in the fall of 2020 because if we were recording this in the fall of 2019, people would have been looking at me saying, "Joshua, I don't really get it."
I'd like to refer to the great toilet-paper crisis of 2020, and simply say that in the great toilet-paper crisis of 2020, we see the perfect example of when money stops working. Now, this is an imperfect example because I don't think there's anybody out there who genuinely went without toilet paper just because the stores were wiped out. If you had a $20 bill and you needed a roll of toilet paper for your household, you could walk up and down your block knocking on your neighbors' doors and say, "I will trade you this $20 bill for a roll of toilet paper", and everybody found somebody who would make that trade with them.
However, it's illustrative because we know that the stores were wiped-out of toilet paper. This very, very simple, basic thing that many people all around the world use on a daily basis, it's the simplest thing possible and except, it was unavailable for a significant period of time. What you'll see if you think about that is that this was the easiest crisis in the world to avoid through a simple strategy of stockpiling, that any thoughtful person who sits down and confronts the problem and says, "You know what, something could happen that could disrupt this market.
Here's this product that we use every day in our household that is a very important valuable part of life, I need a plan in place for if this product doesn't exist.” That would lead somebody into a few basic obvious steps. The first obvious step is you set aside a couple of extra cases of toilet paper. If you just made a habit of not only buying one case at a time and then waiting till your case was depleted, and then going back to Costco and getting another case, but simply maintaining a spot on your shelf where you put two extra cases of toilet paper, then you weren't freaking out during the great toilet-paper crisis of 2020.
You knew I've got two cases of toilet paper, that's two months of toilet paper, they'll fix this within two months, the market will provide. You stockpiled the thing that you needed and then you weren't worrying when the market was messed up temporarily. That's a very simple thing, but it was a genuine point of panic for people. You could go into Costco during the toilet-paper crisis, and you could see people would pull up in a Mercedes-Benz, wearing a Rolex on their wrist, clearly well-heeled, and yet here they are basically tussling with people to try to get the last couple of cases of toilet paper.
That's pathetic if you think about it. It's totally pathetic, but a little bit of thoughtful planning could say, "I should stockpile this thing that we use." Now, of course, your plan could be more robust, and if I were teaching this course, what I would say-- This is a class, I would say, "Well, let's develop three different ways to meet this need." You would say, "The first thing I could do is I could stockpile. We need toilet paper, so what we'll do is we'll stockpile extra cases of toilet paper."
I would teach someone how to say, "How much time worth of toilet paper do you need?” “I want three months of toilet paper.” You calculate what that is, and you stockpile three months of toilet paper. Then we would say, "Well, I want to protect you, so you need a second way to provide for this need."
Maybe it would be something like washable gloves. Maybe instead of just buying toilet paper, you buy a large jumbo pack of washable cotton gloves, that if necessary, this could be used as toilet paper and then washed afterwards. Maybe the third thing is you install in your house a bidet. Whether that's a built-in appliance that you install or something that you would get out, they sell portable bidet, something like that. You have the ability now to manage this basic human need in three different ways if the market doesn't deliver for you.
That's good preparedness plan, that's robust preparedness planning. The point is that all of those things are easy to do before the fact, but they're hard to do after the fact. Life continues and things can be much more dire. Let's give another example. The toilet-paper crisis is funny because it's a little bit of a difficult thing for us to talk about because it's a little bit off-color, but we lived through it, which is why I like to start with it.
What about something like a building fire? Maybe you work downtown and you recognize that there could be a building fire. Recently, we have celebrated the 19th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. I want you to imagine you work in downtown New York City, and it is possible there could be a terrorist attack or it's possible there could be rioters setting fires outside your office. Or it's possible if the power could go down and the elevators might not work.
Do you have a plan that you could get safely out of your building if the fire alarm goes off, or if you'll turn on the news and see that an airplane has flown into a tower? I think this is an important area of discussion, and so it starts with the simple things. Now, you've got all the money in the world but do you have a pair of comfortable walking shoes at your desk?
There are legions of office workers, male and female, who wear the most stunningly-beautiful-fashionable shoes to work every single day. I like fashion. I like my nice leather-dress shoes. I don't want to walk five miles out of downtown New York City in my nice dress shoes. I don't want my wife with her three-inch heels to try to walk five miles out of downtown New York City.
Preparedness planning is very simple. You say, "Here, I've got a pair of walking shoes or tennis shoes or sneakers or whatever, that these are getting a little bit ratty, I'm just going to take these to work. I'm going to tuck them into the back corner of my drawer, in my desk or down in the filing cabinet or in the break room or something. Then if there's a fire alarm, I'm going to discipline myself to immediately stop, take off my high heels or take off my dress shoes and put on these walking shoes so that I can walk down 35 flights of stairs and walk out of the building."
That's a very simple thing, but it can possibly save your life as it allows you to quickly escape a building before the building collapses. I'm not being at all flippant with this, this is real stuff. You want to think about these things that could happen. Your biggest priority generally is to get home, and so you think about, “What would I do? How would I collect my children, if all of a sudden there were some major physical emergency declared in my town? I've got to figure out how to get out from work. I've got to figure out how to get to my children's school. How could I do that? What would we do?”
You sit down and you talk with your spouse and you make a plan. “Here's what we'll do if there's an emergency, if there's a threat of some kind. It could be a snow storm or an ice storm, or any number of things. You're going to go and you're going to get our son from that school. I'm going to go to and get our daughter from this other school. Then we're going to get home.” How are you going to get home? Again, I said I could teach a four or five-hour class on it, but if you start thinking through these questions, what you find is you find some very consistent solutions.
Let me just give an example here, from the perspective of the office worker. If I worked in downtown New York City, but I lived in the suburbs, whether it's across the river or not, who knows. I lived in the suburbs, or if I commute to any downtown. New York's hard because so much is public transportation. I would think this through. I would start by having a pair of comfortable walking shoes and a good pair of socks, so that if the electricity goes out and the subways aren't working, because the electricity is out, I can walk. More importantly, I would do something simple.
Personally, if I were commuting, I would keep a folding bicycle in the trunk of my car. If I've got a folding bicycle and I need to get home and I need to go and collect my children, then I have the ability to simply go to my trunk of my car. Maybe the roads are jammed or there's an earthquake, maybe you live in an earthquake zone and I would have a bicycle. Of course, the primary goal is the car.
I always make sure that I keep my car with at least a third of a tank or half of a tank, or a quarter of a tank. You pick some number. You never want to find yourself in a situation where you don't have gas in your car. You want to have a couple of ways of getting yourself home. You have walking shoes. You have a bicycle. You have a car. You want to know how to get there.
You look at a map, and you don't have to necessarily go and walk it, but how would I get home if the bridge was blocked? I'm thinking about 9/11, because of all of the recent media stuff. The bridges are blocked. The roads are closed down. Everything is stopped. How do I get there? I have to physically walk out of the city. Do I know where to go? I would keep some basic provisions.
Back in the 1800s, there was this horrible ice storm that came in the Midwest that wound up killing hundreds of students because they went to school in the morning and it was very warm. The temperature plummeted to something like 60°F or 80°F within the course of an hour-and-a-half or two hours. I'm not exaggerating, it was this catastrophic scenario. All of these children were walking home and they died of exposure because of this catastrophic-plummeting temperatures.
Imagine you're at work, what would you need if you needed to hole-up in your office for a day or two? Maybe there's a catastrophic ice storm and it's not safe for you to go home. Wouldn't you rather simply be able to call your-- An ice storm is a good example. Many people die in accidents when they're driving home.
Wouldn't you rather call your wife and say, "It's not safe to drive right now. I'm at the office. We're totally fine here. I'm just going to stay here at the office until tomorrow, so they get the roads cleared, they get the roads salted or whatever happens, and I'll see you tomorrow." I would keep in my office, I would keep a couple of gallons of water, I would keep a little bit of food, some snacks, some basic things. You could maybe stick a wool blanket somewhere. Now you've got an office emergency kit squared away.
Other things like a first-aid kit. Whenever I go hiking with my children, I always carry a first-aid kit because I don't want to be that father, who is sitting there with a child that slipped and fell on a rock and now has a bloody knee, who doesn't have anything at all. Having a first-aid kit with you when you go in the woods, having a first-aid kit in the car with you, if you're going to go deep in the woods, making sure that you have a way to get out. Your cell phone is great, but what if you're beyond cell-phone distance?
A simple thing like having an emergency locator beacon is not difficult to have, costs a couple of hundred bucks. You read a story about a guy-- Who was the guy that was out hiking and rocks fell and he had to cut his arm off because he got caught. That's awful. I'm glad he got out and he didn't die, better to be alive, less one arm than to not be alive at all, but that's terrible.
With those of us who have enough money, it's not hard to spend a couple of hundred dollars and put an emergency locator beacon in your backpack. If a rock falls on you and you're stuck, you pull out your backpack, you pull out this flexible antenna, you point it at the sky and you press SOS. The emergency people show up two or three, four hours later, and they rescue you. These are all just components of emergency and disaster planning.
There's plenty of good education out there available. I don't want to go more than that. It's important that we think about it, because there are times in which money doesn't work. In those times in which money doesn't work, your physical preparedness will make the difference, maybe not between your surviving or not surviving, that's rare. It does happen, but it's rare. I don't like to be so apocalyptic and say, "You're going to die." You might and we want to avoid that.
What I would say is your physical preparedness can make the difference between something being a perhaps dire, and in most cases, very uncomfortable experience, versus being a minor inconvenience, a minor nuisance. It's not always life or death, but you can turn a very uncomfortable experience into a minor nuisance. To me, that is worth it. That's worth it to pay attention to, and to engage in good personal-preparedness planning.
[00:15:41] Matt Miner: I have a couple of things I want to share back by way of response. The first actually relates to you again, I don't remember the exact date, but it was around February 24th or February 26th. You released a show on COVID, and what you saw that was coming. COVID was certainly in the news at that point, it's been in the news since January. We didn't really know what the disease was going to be like, and we can criticize all we want the policy responses through the spring of 2020 in the United States.
Around that time, I went to Costco. I did buy toilet paper extra, even though we had a case already, and stocked up on some food. The result of that was that we didn't go to Costco for about four to five weeks in the first part of COVID. We were all still grappling with, “What does it mean to live in these conditions and exactly how bad is this thing?”
Anyway, I wanted to say nice shot on calling that one in time that our family was able to do something about it, specifically because of that show, even if toilet paper was the only thing that we had plenty of. Then the other thing was that through these principles of lifestyle design that are so important to me and to you, we live where we want and we have the stuff that we want around us. It was no great hardship for us to be here at the house and have our things and have each other.
We certainly missed social interaction and seeing the people that we love but because we put some thought into the preparedness stuff, and then also into designing the life that we want. We are thankful to say much more of a non-event than so many people experienced.
[00:17:17] Joshua Sheats: I think that it's important to focus on that because as we record this in the fall of 2020, COVID is much clearer than it was in the spring of 2020. It was not clear at the time what the actual circumstances were, it was not clear how bad the disease was going to be, it wasn't clear what the risk was. It simply was not clear. You had videos coming out of China, people dead on the street, and you're thinking, "Are we dealing with a minor flu or are we dealing with Ebola?" There was just no way to know, and that's normal. That's a normal part of most disasters, is just unclear.
To me, what I would encourage every one of your listeners to do is to learn the lessons from COVID, because while COVID is definitely a significant pandemic, I'm personally persuaded at this point in time that we dodged the big one. That COVID is not going to be the big one. That sounds a little bit harsh and uncaring, when you're dealing with hundreds of thousands of people dead around the world, as we speak, and this is going to continue for a long time but it's a matter of fact that it could have been far worse.
If we look at these examples, it shows us what we need and what we don't need. When we analyze a subject like COVID, it gives us a good war game, a good test that we can look at. Now, we're close enough to those early days that we can remember what happened, but we're far enough away that we can make plans for the next thing.
It's important to look at it and to recognize that, although this one case didn't turn out to be dire for most of us, I want to be thoughtful and respectful in my language, especially towards those who have become sick by it and faced death from it. Speaking very broadly, although in many cases for many families it's not the physical sickness, you didn't know that at the beginning. You were able to be cautious at the beginning if you had good physical preparedness in place.
Let me use another example. If you have food in your house so that you know that when the ice storm comes, you don't have to run to the grocery store to stock up on milk and eggs. It may very well keep you from being out in dangerous conditions that can result in a bad car accident or death. If you have food in the house and your boss-- I'm sorry. If you have money in the house and you're not living on the razor's edge financially, and your boss says, "You better get down here today because I need you" but you know it's not safe for you to drive. You say, "I'm sorry, boss. I want the job, but I can't come in safely today. I'll come in another day." You can do that. When you pull back from being at the very edge of risk. When you minimize your exposure because you don't have to go to Costco with the crowds in the early days of the pandemic, when you're not sure how bad it is, and you can stay at home. You can make everything better and on almost every level of emergency that can happen, that improves things. For example, you're better off getting COVID in September of 2020, than you were in March of 2020 because now the medical professionals have a much better understanding of the therapies that are going to help you beat it than they did in March.
If you could sit home and minimize your exposure for that period of time, you maximize your probability of surviving the disease and of thriving during the disease because of that buffer. I don't want to go on with example after example, I just want to emphasize that these things work harmoniously together. That physical preparedness and financial preparedness make otherwise catastrophic situations, non-catastrophic and they make difficult situations more comfortable.
Although we often feel a little bit of guilty to say what you said Matt, I say the same thing, that hey, it hasn't been that bad. I think it's important to say it with appreciation for the benefits that we have but it's also due to good planning. COVID has not been a hardship for me and my family because we have a lifestyle that is designed to be resilient.
It's been frustrating, it's been annoying, but it hasn't been a hardship. My marriage is not on the rocks because of constant fights and strains. My business is not in shambles, and our household is not filled with sickness but it's because of taking the prior steps of planning that have made everything smoother, and turned a difficult situation into more of an inconvenience rather than into a catastrophe.
[00:21:49] Matt Miner: All right. Well, I think that we have about plumbed the depths at least relative to what we can handle in a single show, some of this risk management and expanded that beyond both traditional financial planning as well as products like insurance. I'd love to just take a minute and ask you, where you're at with Radical Personal Finance these days and where you see it headed in the future. In specific, I'm curious how you see it going in the next year or two, and what's a stretch goal for you that would represent you exceeding what you dreamed about there?
[00:22:23] Joshua Sheats: When I started Radical Personal Finance, I loved the format of a podcast. I feel that a podcast, meaning an audio podcast, is one of the most effective tools of communication and education that is available. Audio is much more accessible for most people to create than is video. Audio is easier to consume than is video because you can do it while you're doing other things. I had this dream that I would be able to provide a world-class financial education in an audio podcast and I think I've done a pretty good job with that. The audience has appreciated what I have done.
What I learned over time is a few things. Number one, while an audio podcast may be good, it doesn't get nearly as wide of an exposure to the marketplace as other forms. From the exposure side of things, I'm trying to figure out how I, with the skills and abilities that I have, can provide excellent educational content in a format of audio, also in a format of video, and also provide more written content. That's number one.
Number two, is I've learned that while I can create a lot of valuable education in an audio podcast, it's often too unwieldy at answering people's questions. What I need to do is I need to create more focused specific courses that answer people's questions. In the beginning, I thought, "I'm going to give it all away for free." Well, now what I understand is that there's no way for me to give it all away for free, because the answers that people are looking for get mired and buried in the sheer volume of audio files to wade through.
I'm working on doing those two things. Number one, is I'm increasing my exposure with more formats to attract people and number two is I'm building high-quality courses that answer specific questions that people have, so that the education is tailored to the specific need that they're in at the moment so that they can have answers. Those are my projects for 2020 and 2021.
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I wanted to ask you, Joshua, what do you love about where you are today with life, work, and money?
[00:25:36] Joshua Sheats: Years ago I had a dream, I'd do all these weird goal-setting exercises, I would do this dream where I imagined my day, my perfect day. I'd do this journaling exercise where I just think through my perfect day from beginning to end, exactly what I would do. I imagine myself lying in my bed, and I open my eyes and I look around and I see where am I and what am I doing? I go through the whole day, and that perfect day for me had a number of important components. One of those components was for me to do work that I cared about, I love to educate, I love to teach, I love to engage with people, to be able to do it entirely free of any kind of scheduling and cumbrances.
I spent many years as a financial advisor with 25 to 30 appointments scheduled every single week. Major constraints on my time, with scheduled-weeks out, and I didn't want a high-scheduled life. I wanted to be able to live anywhere in the world, I wanted to be able to run a business anywhere in the world. I dreamed that a number of years ago, and I have achieved that. It genuinely is great. It's not perfect. I've come to realize some of the things that I miss about a more traditional-looking lifestyle. Some things I miss about being in an office with coworkers, there's things that I miss about being anchored to one place, but I've been able to build a lifestyle that is more free than anybody I know.
Where I can come and go on a daily basis, how I like, when I like. I can come and go anywhere in the world, I can do very well, I can do work that matters to me. It's just a total blessing. It's a real blessing. I believe that these are some of the opportunities that we have in the modern world because I'm not financially independent. I can't live on the income from my investments yet. I'm not there yet but I feel like I'm already living the lifestyle that I would live, if I were financially independent. To me, to have the ability to build that in my mid-30s, to have the ability to have built that, to have been living that since I was 30 years old or a little bit earlier, is just a remarkable statement on the golden age that we're living in.
We're genuinely living in a golden age in human history. There is more opportunity for us now than there has ever been before, there's more financial opportunity there is now than ever before. Global Wealth is increasing at a rate that's never been seen before, we live better than ever before, and so we're living in a golden age. It's such a blessing to be able to have benefited from that, and to be able to help other people benefit from this time that we're living in.
[00:28:07] Matt Miner: Good deal. This is a show, it's all about learning from the experience of others. I wonder, how do you reflect on your decision to go all in on podcasting in summer of 2014, which was a big choice that you made at that time and then of course, we could say expanding more broadly into personal finance media since that time?
[00:28:26] Joshua Sheats: When I decided to go all in on podcasting, it was a difficult decision for me. It was a very expensive decision for me, I had to close a financial-planning firm that I'd spent five years building, I had to walk away from my residuals, I had to leave clients that I cared deeply about and I had to walk away from all of it. It was extraordinarily expensive but at the time, I did it when I did it for two reasons. Number one, I feared having regrets. I saw the marketplace, I knew what was happening and I feared having regrets. I feared not acting and how I would kick myself for not acting years later, versus acting.
The second thing was, I saw what was happening in the marketplace and I saw the timing that was in the marketplace and for me, this has always been something very difficult for me. I've always come from a fairly-mainstream financial background, mainstream investing background. I'm a very conservative guy, but I would read biographies of people who are very wealthy and I observed that what's necessary is that when you see something, you have to take a bet on it. That if you read the biographies of wealthy successful people, they see an opportunity and they take the bet. You have to actually take the shot.
We can of course recite the famous quote “you miss 100% of the shots you don't take” but it's true. When I was looking at podcasting, I said, “This is a shot I'm going to take,” and I'm glad I did because I hit the timing right. I rode an increasing wave at a certain point technologically, socially, et cetera and that laid the foundation for me. For me, having had the confidence in myself to do that was a formative thing in my own personal life because it caused me to come to trust myself more than I previously did. When I started Radical Personal Finance, nobody agreed with me. Not that people were disagreeable but most of my advisors didn't understand. They didn't know what I knew. They didn't understand the marketplace like I thought I understood it.
I had to take the bet basically on my own, which as a man, I'm incredibly grateful that I did it. I continue to take bets on my own, do things that other people didn't understand, and every time I do that, I see the benefits and I see that it builds my confidence and allows me to trust my own judgment more. That's been incredibly valuable.
Along the way though, I continue to see the benefits of good financial planning because while you have to take some risks in life, you can dramatically minimize the effects of those risks with good financial planning. I'm not willing to take a wipeout risk. Good financial planning allows me to feel confident that it's very unlikely, I won't say impossible but it's very unlikely that I'll ever be wiped out because I don't take wipeout risks.
To me, that's a very useful and valuable lesson that I have learned early enough in life where I hope it'll continue to pay off throughout my entire lifetime.
[00:31:27] Matt Miner: Awesome. It's a pretty different landscape now than it was in 2014. I wonder how you think people like me in the financial media space should think forward from 2020, rather than looking back at the playbook from five years ago.
[00:31:42] Joshua Sheats: That's a complex question because it's covering multiple levels. On the one hand, it's harder to break out in 2020. We live now in a world where independent media creation is normal. Almost all of your listeners have a media creation device in their pocket or in their hand at this moment, and that media creation device is single-handedly capable of making world-class audio, making world-class video. It's capable of broadcasting to the entire world at a single moment.
You can make a living, you can make a six-figure income with nothing more than a Twitter account. I'm not exaggerating with that. If you have interesting things to say and if you can generate value to people, you can generate six figures from any corner of the world with a Twitter account and a couple of other ways to collect money from people.
In that context, what I think it means though is there's more of a desire for high quality. The exposure is good because it builds the audience. The potential listener-base for your podcast is far bigger today than the potential listener-base for my podcast was in 2014. What it means though is that we have to create better stuff that attracts people and we have to learn the new tools of the marketplace. That's where it's difficult.
I think that most of us probably wish sometimes to go back to a simpler life, I certainly do. It's so difficult to keep up in the modern world because the pace of change is so fast. The things that worked in 2014 do not work anymore, and the things that work in 2020 will not work in 2022, which means that all of us have to be on the top of our game, none of us can sit. We get to choose our mindset though. We can either regret that or we can embrace it. I think it's much more powerful to choose positivity and choose to embrace it than not.
I don't have all the answers. Although I had an earlier start, I've not executed well on all the things that I need to execute on and so, we're in the same position. What's remarkable though in 2020 is that when we do things right, when we do things effectively, the growth rates can be astronomical. I think that it's important to be gentle with ourselves and it'll be important to be willing to try things, multiple things.
I've recently just simply recognized a number of people whose stories, where they've had these major successes but what I have found when I've researched is that the major success came after three other failures. I've seen this with a number of media brands where they did this, didn't work, they did that, didn't work, did the other thing, didn't work, and then all of a sudden they tried something new and boom it worked.
I would point out that you don't need the home run to be successful, but by continuing to try and to put yourself in the position where you can take pitches, there's a better chance that you will be able to find the home run. That's a bit of a nonspecific answer to your question but it's my answer for right now.
[00:34:46] Matt Miner: No, I think it's great. Joshua, what's one piece of advice that you've benefited from in life or that you'd like to share today?
[00:34:54] Joshua Sheats: One great skill that I think all of us can develop is the skill of weighing alternative courses of action. As human beings, we have a faculty that no other creature has, which is abstract thought, the ability to look to the future and to imagine different possibilities. You can do all of this from your own mind.
In today's world, one major benefit that we have that past generations didn't have is you can in a way test-drive things that you're interested in, through being exposed to the experiences of others through good-quality media. A number of years ago, I took my family on a full-time RV trip. We sold our house, we sold all our stuff, we got rid of all our stuff, and we moved into a 30-foot travel trailer.
I'm the wacky one in the family and I was the one who had the idea. My wife had never in her life sat down and thought, "Oh, maybe I want to go and live in a travel trailer." What I did was I started talking to her about the idea and then I started finding YouTube channels of people doing it. I started having her watch YouTube videos of people doing it. Over time, she started to realize, "This isn't as crazy as it sounded at first glance. This is possible. This is doable."
Eventually, we came to the point where we said, "Yes, let's do it." We did it, we had a great time and I'm glad we did it, we'll do it again. I think we'll do it again. Our experience though was informed by the example of other people actually doing it. The same thing occurs in life now. We have access to people's stories and we have access to people who transform themselves from broke to multi-billionaires.
We have access to people who are broke and who stay broke but who live these really interesting lives, living in a van in the desert for free. You can access all of them through the palm of your hand, which is just stunning. What I encourage people to do is develop broad experience, expose yourself to what other people are doing, and then imagine life in the way that you want it to be because we have the choice in today's world to choose the way that we want to live and that's awesome.
You can think carefully about the paths that you might want to pursue. You can think about where you might want to be and in your head as a human being, you can imagine, "If I do this, it will point me in that direction. If I do the other thing, it'll point me in another direction." Socrates famously said, “An unexamined life is not worth living.” I don't know if he was right, but if he was right, we have the ability to examine our lives more now than we ever did before.
As I'm growing older, I'm growing more confident in my willingness to take advantage of these opportunities we have, my willingness to try things, and I see the joy that has come to me from that. I want to encourage other people to do that, to live consciously, to think, to dream, and to dream without limitation and then work back to today to where you start to put together a plan that moves you in the direction of your dream.
[00:37:54] Matt Miner: I look forward to continuing to watch your journey from afar as we continue our own. Joshua, is there anything else that we haven't covered today? We've had a big and far-ranging conversation that I really enjoyed.
[00:38:06] Joshua Sheats: I think the key thing I'd like to say is as a plug for the work that financial advisors do. I'm no longer a licensed financial adviser, I don't hold any insurance licenses, any investment licenses, I don't really even work with individuals anymore. There's this tremendous challenge that people have when it comes to how to engage with a financial adviser.
Obviously, that's the work that you're doing now, that you've transitioned into when you weren't previously a financial adviser. What I want to point out though is that a good financial adviser, a good counselor can cut years and years off of the learning curve that we all have with life. A good financial adviser who listens to you and who helps you to dream and who thinks about that, and then applies that dreaming and that thinking to the money is an incredibly valuable resource.
Is it possible to do it by yourself? Yes, but it's a whole lot faster and more effective to work with somebody else. I've seen again and again when I was working as a financial adviser and I've seen again and again when working with people, how an outside person doesn't have the same emotions that you have in the middle of your circumstances. The emotions get in our way, they cause us not to see solutions.
There've been so many times where I speak to somebody and I say, "Listen, if you just do this, you'll achieve your goals." They look at me and say, "Why didn't I think of that?" I just want to encourage you, Matt, and also to your listeners that the work that you do as a financial adviser is extraordinarily valuable. The financial adviser is and should be that link between accomplishing your goals and where you are today, because any lifestyle goal, any dream that you have set out for yourself is going to include money in some capacity because money is how we fuel our lives. At its core, it's valuable to dream, it's valuable to think, it's valuable to imagine what life could be, but you've got to bring it back to today. To what you do today with your time and with your money, and that's where a good financial advisor is an incredibly valuable resource.
[00:40:17] Matt Miner: I agree, and it's one of the things that keeps me getting up every morning and one of the reasons I love my work, so thanks for sharing that. Well, Joshua, how would you like people to follow up? Where should people look for you today and what are the things that you are most focused on promoting from Radical Personal Finance and the work that you're doing there?
[00:40:37] Joshua Sheats: The best thing to do is if you're listening to this as a podcast, just go subscribe to Radical Personal Finance. There's 750 episodes of life-changing content if I do say so myself, of spectacular insights and riveting stories and incredibly entertaining delivery, all by me. Just find Radical Personal Finance wherever you like to listen to podcasts and check it out. The library of titles is voluminous, but what I would say is just skip through and grab a couple of titles that sound interesting. You may get hooked enough as many of my listeners have reported to me, to just go back to episode one and listen to your way through.
In addition, I teach a number of courses which can be found at radicalpersonalfinance.com on the store page there. In those courses, I have a course on credit cards called How to Borrow Money Safely and Never Pay Interest Using Credit Cards, which if you have a credit card or if you ever will have a credit card, I consider it a mandatory form of education. I have a course called How to Survive and Thrive During the Economic Crisis, which is all about how to put in place a plan that deals with the worst-case scenario but does it practically, and there are a number of other things there as well. If you're interested in any of those topics, you can find them at radicalpersonalfinance.com/store.
[00:41:45] Matt Miner: Terrific. Well, it has been my pleasure to have you on Work Pants Finance today, I really have looked forward to this conversation and you have definitely delivered the gold. Thank you for your time and just for your friendship and support and encouragement as I've been on this journey for the last few years. I hope you have a great afternoon, Joshua.
[00:42:04] Joshua Sheats: Thank you for having me on, Matt.
[00:42:06] Matt Miner: Physical preparedness is underrated in the discipline of financial planning, whether it's highlighted by a scatological joke about toilet paper or something much more serious. Giving consideration to this aspect of your plan is part of providing for your family. What are the takeaways? First, learn what you can from COVID in 2020. Next, think about the primary, secondary, and tertiary effects of disasters in your area. Here in the Southeast for Hurricane planning, for example, primary preparation means knowing where to shelter in my home during a bad storm. Secondary preparation involves having batteries, gasoline, tools, and non-perishable food on hand to live through the cleanup.
Tertiary planning involves knowing how I'll provide financially for my family due to a major disruption from the storm. When it comes to podcasting, like Lin-Manuel Miranda in Hamilton, Joshua did not want to throw away his shot. Instead, he learned from his observation of successful people that when you see an opportunity, you got to take a run at it. Of course, this is no guarantee that everything works out, but as Joshua and others have noted, you miss 100% of the shots you don't take as Hamilton also discovered at the end of his life. Now alongside taking the good shots, do some planning, take risks, but minimize the downside and avoid wipeout risk.
Joshua and I talked about independent media like this podcast. Joshua called independent media creation normal, not unusual and I think this is more true than ever in 2020. Since in 2020, you're unlikely to win the internet, the kind of stuff you should be making is super high quality with a very carefully defined niche. My niche is MBA's, entrepreneurs, and high-income professionals who value planning and who resonate with me personally. If that describes you, please leave me a review on iTunes and let me know if it's working. Lastly, Joshua discussed the role good advisers can have in your life cutting off years in a learning curve on almost any topic.
I was touched to hear him call financial advisors the link between your dreams and where you are today. It's that purpose that keeps me going in this business. Thank you for being here and sharing some of your valuable time with me. In next week’s show, I take Joshua and I's wide-ranging risk management discussion as a case study and apply these principles within a hypothetical financial plan. I look forward to introducing you to my made-up clients, Mike and Jennifer Marie.
Mike is a Consulting Engagement Manager with a big four accounting firm, he owns about $250,000 a year. His wife homeschools their three children, ages 10, 8 and 6. They own a $600,000 home in a leafy Atlanta suburb and we're going to make sure that they have taken the necessary steps to protect their family in the event if something terrible happens. Until then, this is Matt Miner, encouraging you to make a financial plan that works as hard as you do.
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[00:45:09] Speaker: Matt Miner is a fee-only, fiduciary financial advisor and Founder & CEO of Miner Wealth Management, a North Carolina Registered Investment Advisor where Matt provides personalized, unconflicted, advice to clients for a fee. He’s also my dad, so please be nice when you talk to him! Matt is a Certified Financial Planner Professional and holds a Series 65 securities license. He earned his bachelor’s degree in Finance from Arizona State University, and his MBA from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business.
Work Pants Finance is Matt's financial media business where he talks about work, entrepreneurship, kids and money, taxes, investing, and other personal finance topics. WorkPantsFinance.com exists to share wisdom and provide general financial information. It is not financial, tax, or legal advice. You are an individual and probably need personal advice for your specific situation. You should consider building relationships with helpful, caring, and competent professionals who understand your unique context and can provide advice that is tailored to your needs.