Financial Freedom is Emotional not Financial - Jade Warshaw

Welcome to the proven podcast, where we don't care what you think, only care what you can prove. On this episode, we talk to Jade Warsaw, who took a half a million dollars of debt, paid it all off, saved her marriage, and built an empire. She teaches us that it's not the strategies, it's not the tactics, it's not all the books that you've read. It's one other thing that creates financial freedom, and it all comes down to your emotions. If you can't master your emotions, you'll never master your financial freedom. But so starts now. All right, everybody, welcome back to the show. Jade, I'm super excited to have you here.

0:00

Thank you so much for having me, Charles.

0:33

So for the four or five people on the planet who don't know who you are, could you explain who you are and how you got here and what's going on?

0:35

Yeah. Jade Warshaw. I am co host of the Ramsey show, which is one of the largest talk radio shows. I think it's number two now in the entire nation, and then huge on YouTube. We are a personal finance podcast talking about your life and your money. I began hosting the show back in 2022. My claim to fame is the fact that my husband and I paid off $460,000 of consumer debt and then went on to turn that into becoming millionaires.

0:41

There you go. Now, there's a lot about this that we hear about all the time. We've all heard about Dave and we've heard about Robert, and we've heard about all the games and all those other things about the strategies. But there's an emotional side of this that people do not talk about, and there's the process that connects it to that. You've written a book. Tell me about that. Tell me about that experience in the book that's coming up.

1:11

Yeah. It came out of my own. My own journey with my husband that seven and a half years it took for us to pay off the debt. I began to realize that people are talking about money and they're leaving out a very important factor. It makes sense when you think about money. Yes. Numbers, math factors. Yes. That is part of money. Behavior, another big part of money. So people are saying, here's the amounts that you need to be doing, and then they're talking about the behavior, and here's how you need to do it. Put it in a high yield savings account, you know, index funds, all of these things. These are the behaviors. But no one was talking about the drawstring of all of that, which is your Emotions. And, and the analogy that I use for that is if behavior is a vehicle, like, consider the behavior you want as a car. You get in the car. Well, your belief is, what's going to push on the gas. That's kind of like, hey, do I believe this can happen? If it is, then I'm going to push on the gas and go forward. If I don't believe, I might, you know, go a little slower and be very cautious. But your emotions ultimately are what's steering the wheel. So if you feel great about, you can zoom forward. But if all of a sudden you get spooked, you go like this, and you hit a tree, right? You. You swerve, hit a tree. So I found that many times because I had the plan, which meant I had the numbers, I had the behavior, which is do this, do that. But what was happening is it was butting up against these emotional barriers. And what I try to tell people is that emotions, when you talk about money, it. It touches every area of your life. And you know this. Emotions affect your career. I'm sorry, Money affects your career. Money affects your relationships. Money affects your past, how you perceived it as a child, what it was like in your previous relationship, you know, before the divorce, all of these things. And so when somebody like me or somebody like you or somebody like Dave Ramsey, whoever you follow, says something very simple like, hey, if you want to. If you want to get out of debt, consider cutting back your expenses. You go, wait a minute, what are you telling me? You're telling me I can't get my nails done? You're telling me I can't take that trip to the Bahamas? And you get angry or you feel fearful. You've never done something like that. Or all this. This litany of emotions comes up. You feel anxiety just thinking about talking about money, right? And that's what I. That's what I experienced. And I said, there's a whole. There's a whole set of emotions here. There's things that people aren't talking about. And I know all about this, so I'm going to dive into it and work it out for folks.

1:29

So it's not just financial mastery. It's emotional and belief mastery. And one of the things that I run into is, you know, I grew up. I couldn't afford the last few letters of poor. And I grew up in a very specific environment. And I can remember very specifically the moment that I switched. I flipped the switch, and I was like, this is not doing this anymore. This is unacceptable. I'm going to go this way. Can you remember the moment for you where you're like this belief, this emotion. I have to harness this and move things around?

3:54

Yeah, I remember it. So Great Recession 2008, 2009, that's when it popped off for my husband, Sam and I, that was the time where all of our student loans started becoming due. We started getting the mail and I started seeing the payments and realizing, holy crap, this is, this is wild. And I was looking for anything. And I remember turning on the radio, I hear Dave Ramsey and he's sitting in his cool air conditioned studio, right, talking about the fact that, that the recession wasn't really affecting him much because real estate's cheaper than ever. So I'm just buying it up. That's what he was saying. And he said, the storm has gone around. And he said, I, I'm not feeling the effects of the storm because I positioned myself above the storm. And I just remember the first, the first instinct I had, I was pissed because I thought, this guy, he doesn't get it. He's sitting there, doesn't he understand that my life is crumbling? You know, I got angry, which a lot of us do. That was the first emotion. Then next emotion was I got jealous. I said, oh my gosh, I'm so jealous. I want what he has. Then that jealousy, my brain clicked on and that jealousy turned into like a righteous jealousy. Like, wait a second, he has it. He didn't. He doesn't have it. By luck, he doesn't have. He has it because he worked for it and I can work for it. And I used that as I want what this guy has. I can get it. It was motivation at that point. So that, that's a classic example of taking anger and putting a very meaningful motivation behind it so that you're not just shaking your fist right at the clouds and, and being mad at somebody else, but you're actually letting your anger drive you and letting that get you to what you want. And that was, that was a click on moment for me because, you know, you know, like I do this great recession, COVID 19, you know, you can take it all the way back to 9, 11. That type of stuff is cyclical, right? There's a downturn, it gets better, we forget, it gets bad again, it gets better. And I said to myself, I said, man, the next time there's a chaos, you know, in the economy, the next time I don't want to be right here, I want to be above the storm. And doing that starts today, right? It's These little choices that compound over each other over time. And before you know it, you look back and you go, oh, my God, I don't even recognize that person I used to be. So that was the moment.

4:18

Yeah. See, for me, that moment was. I was. I got mad not only at what was going on, but I also got mad at my parents, and I got mad at my grandparents. And I was like, what the heck? I was like, you didn't teach me this. What's wrong with you? The problem is they didn't know. They had no idea about financial literacy. They just put their head down and grinded and getting people to switch their belief systems. If I told you that Target was going to have a 90% off sale, you'd lose your mind. But it's all that a recession is. That's all that it is. It's. Hey, real estate's got a 70% off sale right now. Go buy everything you possibly can. There. You've been doing this for a while now, and you understand the emotional side of this. Is there an archetype? Is there someone who has a belief system or is running into certain things where you're just like, you know what? That's going to be a hard lift. That's a heavy lift. The juice might not be worth the squeeze if they're doing this emotional patterning.

6:39

Let me think through what you're saying. An archetype, if I understand what you're asking me. The hardest person to convince is the. The prideful person. I mean, we all, we all know pride goes before the fall. And there's a person who is. And I'm going to go, I'm going to continue on with the storm analogy. There's the person who is in the eye of the hurricane, all right? And a lot of people, if you're not familiar with hurricanes, most people think the eye is the worst part. I'm from Florida. The eye is not the worst part. The eye is sunny and 70. The birds are chirping it. You would be fooled to think, hey, weather's good. But if the wind blows, right, if the wind shifts to the right or to the left, you're actually. Now, if that ice shifts over this part right here, the outer band before the eye is the worst. That. Right. The most severe weather, hurricanes, tornadoes dropping down. And so the person who is. Has fooled themselves into thinking, hey, I'm all right, life seems good. But they're kind of in that house of cards. They're in a very precarious situation. That's the person who's hardest to convince that, hey, you're actually in a very dangerous spot. It's the person who's been robbing Peter to pay Paul is the person who knows, right, that they've carrying this lease on, you know, this, this leased vehicle is $1,000 a month. But that thousand dollars a month has been keeping them from investing, you know, for, for retirement. But they, they've been floating the payments, so they think it's okay. But really they're only one, I'm going to say, one disaster away from pure chaos. And a lot of people think, oh my gosh, Jay, that's so fatalistic. It's not, it's not. 40% of people, yeah, 40% of people will lose their job during their working career. Like you will lose a job at some point. The, the statistics around the amount of folks who will go on disability for a period of time because they get a diagnosis or they just step off the curb and break their leg. Right. And that's what I'm trying to convince people of, is life is going to life. Something is going to happen that is very normal, but feels like a chaos. Like, it feels like a moment of pure, like catastrophic moment. Um, and you have to be prepared for that. So the hardest archetype is the person who looks around and goes, hey, everything's just fine. You know, you, you've heard the saying, the enemy of great is just fine. So the person who's like, hey, it's sunny and 70, it seems like things are good. That is the hardest person to convince that, hey, you could actually be in a much better situation. You just have to be willing to get uncomfortable to ultimately create more comfort than you've ever had.

7:25

Yeah, and I don't think people understand that comfort is not happiness. They are fundamentally different things, and people bump into that all the time. One of the things you're talking about is that things are changing and we've lost 10% of the value in the last 12 months on the US dollar. We're heading towards an extinction level event for employees based on AI, globalization and everything else. So if I sit down and I give and I'll skew it to Robert's book or your book or Dave Ramsey's book. We sit there and say, hey, spend less, do this, invest in this. We have the strategy, we have the how, we know what to do. But the rules are chang changing. Now when you're seeing that the dollar is changing and I will not get political politics are changing and employees again are heading toward an extinction level event. How is that changing the ballgame for you? How are you advising people to say, listen, you're running into this. Your emotions are one thing, it's a huge part of it. Be able to mastery that have emotional mastery for every part of your life. But also, we're running into things as a society with birth rates and everything else that is fundamentally changing the economy. How do you prepare people and tell people, hey, you know what? This is the plan that works. This is what you need to do. What used to work, which is now like, you need to pivot over here. What are the things you're doing differently?

10:04

That's a good question. And I'm going to say something that's probably very opposite of what folks are going to think is the answer, which is principles don't change. That's why they're principles, like foundational principles do not change. And so no matter what, no matter what, the borrower is always going to be slave to the lender, period. Like, when it comes to money, if I put somebody else in control, they will be in control. So if I can put myself back in control in a situation, there are certain things that are going to be out of our control. That's such as life, right? That's the emotional component of it, is I can't control everything. That's like Alcoholics Anonymous 101, right? Give me the. Grant me the serenity to change the things that I can and to understand the things I can't control. Paraphrasing. There's certain things that are external that I personally am not going to be able to control. I can't control the US Dollar. I can't control whether or not Trump burps and the sno, the stock market drops, right? There's all these things that are completely out of my control, but there's a lot that's actually 100% in my control. And that's what I do on a daily basis. Those are my habits, those are my emotions, those the things that I value in life. And so that's what in. In times like this, specifically, that's what I tell people to cling tightly to at the end of the day, no matter what, having some money saved is going to be a great thing. Now we can talk about, hey, when you get to a certain point, have some money here, have some money offshore, like, there's a lot. But at the end of the day, what's going to help you sleep at night is what I'm looking for, because no one else is going to be There when you lay your head on your pillow, maybe your spouse is there, and you stare at each other for a few minutes before your eyes close. But you're gonna know, did I do everything I could when. When the smoke signal went off, did I ignore it or did I pay attention to it? And that's what matters. I think that's what gives people peace to have options in life. And that's all I'm trying to get, people, is more options. The truth is, and you know, this life isn't fair, and everybody's not going to have the same opportunities afforded them. That's number one, if you can understand that. Life is not a competition. It is not. It is a race, but it's not a race against other people. It's a race against yourself to get to your finish line, to make your best time. That's number one. There's going to be people when. If all hell breaks loose, there's going to be people who are just fine. There's going to be people who narrowly make it out, and there's gonna be people who don't. That's. That's it.

11:13

I also think there's people who don't make it, that in the actual event, be it the hurricane or whatever it is, come back stronger later because they understand it's you against you. There is no one else coming. It's you against you, and one of you has to die. It just is that simple. You've got to pivot out of your old patterns, and then you can get into it and go from there. There was a. There was an individual I met a while ago, and he was driving me. He was taking me, and I was going to the airport, and he goes, I have three Toro cars. And I was like, I don't know what toro is. Can you. Can you walk me through that? And he's like, I have three Toro cars. I was like, that's amazing. I retire entrepreneurs. Just keep me updated. Love you. To reach out. He's now reached out. He goes, I sold my toro empire, and now I own all these properties. This kid had no education. He was not an individual who had any backing. He barely was a citizen. So. And he did it, and there's a way to do it, but he realized it was you against you, and he decided to pivot that out. When people go into this idea and there's a lot of talk about this, and this might be beyond the book, where we're having people aging out like we've never had before, and they're selling on their, they're getting rid of their businesses. So people are hunting after these businesses and they're purchasing and they're going from there. When someone does that, I've got obviously specific advice. What are the things that you guys are seeing? Because again, you're on the talk show and you and Dave are doing it, and this is another book and you're mastering your emotions. There's a lot of people that are running to the get rich quick stuff, which they've always done. What do you say to the people who are going after that idea of, hey, I'm going to go in, I, I understand, I need to do something, so I'm going to go do this thing. What do you, what is your normal advice when you head towards those people?

13:51

It depends on what situation they're starting out in first off. And, and I would advise them, man, please do your research. I had a guy call in the other day. He called in with a business deal. He'd been working in the business. The, the, it was him and the son of the owner. The owner didn't want to leave it to his son, so was willing to sell it to him. They were doing horse training and he said, hey, I want to buy the business. We said, you know, make sure tell, tell us what you know about it. He says, well, he has $8,000 in profit every, every month. And he says, we can have that. And the business itself, the land and the farm on it is worth about $750,000, but he's going to sell it for 650. And I'm already, already I'm thinking, hey, something's not right about this. Why is he going to give you such a discount? I, so first thing is, hey, do your due diligence. If it sounds too good to be true, it's likely too good to be true. Next, how are you going to structure the deal? Right? A guy like this, he doesn't have, he doesn't have the $650,000. So is there a way that you can structure it to say, hey, I'm just going to pay you the profits until you make your money back and then we'll, we'll do it like that. So structure the deal in a way that it's not going to put you at so much risk? I would never tell a guy like that, hey, go, go take a. Go take a loan for 650,000, right? And then, and then try your luck. So there's a lot, there's a lot to that. It would also be his first time as a business owner. So I'm factoring all that in. If he had told me, hey, I've had several businesses, you know, I've been able to sell them off for profit. I'm looking at this one. It looks like a good deal. Already my radar is going in a different direction. I'm thinking, okay, this guy knows it, right? So I guess what I'm saying is self awareness is a big part of it. A lot of people want to get into entrepreneurship. A lot of people want to be their own boss. But it's a, it's, it's more of like the, the idea of it. Oh, I get to be my own boss. That means I get to make my own rules. That means I don't have to work nine to five. Yes, you do. You still, you still have to work. You do.

15:23

You just work five to nine. That's the difference. You just reverse that.

17:22

That's the difference, yes. And expertise matters even more. Right? You have to know what the heck you're doing. My husband and I, we own an entertainment business in the cruise ship industry and we've done that for 15 years. And I tell people it's not for the faint of heart. You know, getting into something on your own. Everything, everything is on you. The stakes are on you. To your point, you're working more than everybody else who's got the nine to five, because everything's on you. You can't take a day off, you can't take a sick day, you don't get days off. And you hardly get paid in the beginning. So.

17:24

And yeah, you're the last. That's the thing that most people don't understand. You are always the last to eat because your, your employees might be having steaks, but you're eating ramen noodles because you're the last to eat.

17:59

Exactly.

18:08

And so people don't understand that.

18:08

Really trying to set the expectation and set people up. Say, are you really, is this really for you? Talk to some folks who have done it. See if there's a way that you can get adjacent to it before you just jump into it. All of that is so, so, so, so important. But certainly, certainly, please don't go into debt buying a business because it looks good on paper if you don't have any experience in that industry.

18:10

And also you understand, are you an employee or do you have employee like tendencies? They are not the same. They are not even remotely the same. And having certain questions that you want to ask beforehand. And I know in your book there's like six very Specific questions you broke down to really lock in your beliefs and to understand those. And we could go through the entrepreneur side and rip all that apart, because I love that, but I really want to get people to understand the belief system first. And you've done this. Not from, hey, I read a about it somewhere. But no, this was the exact questions that I went through with my husband. This is what we were doing. This is what got us out of debt. Can you walk me through those six questions?

18:35

Yeah. So the book is really a diagnostic in story form. So over the years, I've done countless webinars. I'll bring people on that need help with their money, offer them free coaching in exchange for understanding how do you feel about money. So in the beginning, we'll do a survey and say, hey, tell me, out of all these emotions, tell me the one you identify most about money. And. And over and over, it comes back stress, anxiety, frustration, anger, fear, guilt, and shame. So when I heard that, when I got the feedback, you know, time after time, I thought, man, there's something here, because I felt the same way. And so when I crafted the book, it was on those emotions we talk about. We go through fear, and we identify what it is. I show you what does it look like at work in all the different ways? Because sometimes these things are running in the ground like a ticker tape, and we're not aware of it until somebody says, hey, that thing that you just did, that's. That's fear. I'll go through. I'll say frustration. That thing that you're. That's frustration. You just didn't know it. You just thought it was part of your personality, and you. And you let it go, and that's why you're stuck. So fear, frustration, we go through pity, self pity. We go through guilt and shame. I'm leaving something out off the top of my head. Anger. We go through anger. And then the point that I want you to get to is acceptance. And so as I go through all those we'll call negative emotions, for lack of a better word, they can be positive. And I show you how to turn them from negative to positive.

19:10

Very much so, yeah. Rage against the machine. Said it. Anger is a gift.

20:36

It's a gift.

20:40

If you can learn to weapon. It's an absolute gift.

20:40

Anger. Yes. Out of all those, anger is the one that is probably the most powerful. Because, you know, like, I know anger is a cry for justice and fuel.

20:42

Source.

20:51

Yes. And that's what you want. We just got to wield it in the Proper way to your point, right?

20:52

I always talk about this, you know, anger. Think of it like a football game. Angle will get you to the five yard line. It's going to get you. It won't get you across it, but it'll get you across that field. The, the thing that I'd love to talk about is fear. And there's a dear friend of mine, self made billionaire, we're sitting down and we were going, we're about to do this, we're about to buy two hotels. And he's like, what's going on? I'm like terrified. He's like, really? I go, dude, I'm absolutely terrified. And he's like, awesome. I love that. I was like, what do you mean? He goes, you're going to be afraid, period, nonstop. You cannot get that out. That's hard coded in who you are as a bald pink monkey walking around on this planet. You are going to be angry, just excited. You're going to be afraid, accept it. But you get to choose what you're going to be afraid of. Are you going to be afraid of being poor and broke and not having XYZ residual income or are you going to weaponize it to say, hey, I'd rather be afraid of this, that and the other. And you get to choose that and harness it just like you would do anger. So would get people going to, hey, these are negative emotions or these are positive emotions. Just like money, they're tools and you get to use them towards that. When you're doing this with a spouse though, since I don't have that right now, how do you go through that process and how do you deal with when it's someone else's stuff? Like you might be on the frustration, anger loop, but they may be on the self pity loop. How do you work through that and find the balance?

20:57

Well, you do have to work. I mean as a married unit, you're together, but you're still separate people. And so each person still has to do their work. So for, for Sam and I, he struggled most with the guilt and shame. Like he brought the majority of the debt into the marriage based on choices he made. Berkeley College of Music, University of Miami. $230,000 of student loans is a lot. My side was more. It was, it was a struggle. My side was the self pity, I was the anger, frustration. That was mine and so that was mine to work through. Now I'm not going to sit here and act like it was pretty because it wasn't that. Those are some tough years of our life. But, you know, hindsight's 20 20, and being able to look back and pull out the gems and pull out the things to learn from is really what matters. And we did that. And, you know, fear, I think both of us dealt with the same amount of fear. And, you know, it can take many, many forms. And I go through several of the different forms. Obviously, fear of change, fear of the unknown, fear of failure, fear of success. I go through all of those and what they look like. But at the end of the day, the thing I want to teach folks through that is fear. When you think about it, when I think about it in terms of money, it's an ex. It's a negative expectation of the future. That's really what it is. It never exists in the now. It exists in what will happen out there then.

22:08

Correct.

23:32

And I really liken it to Chat GPT. Fear can only. Just like Chat GPT is only existing on what you feed it, what's already out there, what's in the ether, what's been told to it. And most of us operate that like that. We only know what we saw. We only knew what we grow up with. We only knew what. What so and so did to us. And so our fear operates on that. There's no new information added until we turn around and say, actually, let me look out and let me. Let me change that. And so. No, go ahead.

23:33

No. So chatgpt, it's AI, right? It's artificial intelligence. And the problem is, that's not what AI stands for. AI stands for Always incorrect, because it's using data that's stuck in this little box and you got to feed it in that different data. But when you're going through and you're dealing with. He's on his. Thanks again, Sam, for bringing all that debt. We're just bashing Sam. Sorry. And you're all the debt, and you guys are rock and rolling through it, and you're going through your stuff and you guys are bashing against each other. How, as a couple, do you guys find that this is, you know, I love you, you're my home. I'm not going anywhere. How do you reconnect to that? How do you establish that relationship where there's times where your fear might be acting out and be like, oh, well, it's him. If you had married so and so that it was the prince of blah, blah, blah, you wouldn't have any. How do you go through those loops and say, you know what? No, this is my person. I'm in my Foxhole with my person. I'm not leaving. How do you survive those relationships? Because it is the. I think it's the number two indicator of divorces is financial.

24:05

Yeah. So that's when we're shifting out of the money conversation. At that point, it goes. At that point, it really isn't about money. You think it is, but at this point, we're talking about commitment. We're talking about goodwill. We're talking about how you view that person and really the value that they hold in your life. And so for Sam and I, in the very beginning, I'll be honest, for us, it was pretty natural to say, what's yours is mine, what's mine is yours. There is no I or you. It's we. And so I teach people that. I say, hey, if you can go into marriage with a we mindset, it's going to very much help you stop yourself from pointing the finger. Because that's. That's the first shift. That. And it's not easy. I will admit for some couples that that is not easy because they didn't grow up that way, or that's very different from their. How they were brought up or how they view their independence. But if you can do that, I think that that is so, so key. Because now it's a problem that we're solving together, and now the individual is not the issue. We can gang up. We as people can gang up against the real issue, which is, you know, the debt or the bad business plan or whatever. The thing is versing versus you ganging up against your spouse or your partner saying, you're the problem. Right. So shifting that in our minds. So, so, so, so key. I'd say that's a big part of it. Number two, we're human. So we're gonna have those moments where we forget what I just said. And it does shift to, I can't believe you did this. A piece of advice that I got that I hold very tightly because it. It's so important is if you can remember goodwill towards your spouse at the very. In the heat of the argument, in the middle of the frustration, if you can look over at that person and ask yourself, do I really think that they're intending to hurt me? Do I really think that they're intending to stop me to. To. To. To push me down? Or do I think that they really do have goodwill for me? This is just a bad moment. This is just a moment where they're doing the best they can and I'm doing the best I can, and we're just both on a struggle bus.

24:58

Right.

27:09

And if you can look at that person and go, you know what? They have goodwill for me. They. They do. That changes everything.

27:09

Yeah. I don't think anyone wakes up and says, hey, listen, you know, I woke up this morning and whatever. Dating Susie. God, I hate Susie. I want to make Susie's like, horrible. I don't think. I don't think anybody does. If you're in that relationship, please just leave.

27:16

Right. That's an abusive relationship.

27:29

Yeah, 100%. But if you're in that situation and you're like, you know, if I have this idea that so and so is not purposely trying to hurt me, but they're going to do it anyway because they're human, consciously or unconsciously, they're going to do something like, doesn't put the toilet seat down, doesn't put the dishes away. Whatever that litany is, it's going to happen. And having that filter of, okay, they probably didn't do it on purpose, but they're men and they're kind of dumb. So let me just walk through this and say, you put it in the sink, honey, it's okay. Oh, my God. Doing that. And then also, I love what you said. It's very much us versus whatever the problem is. We're going to unify against whatever it is. It's us versus them.

27:30

Yes.

28:05

So as. As you go through this and go back into the money stuff, once you are a person who has gotten rid of, you know, almost half a million dollars worth of debt, and now all of a sudden you're like, okay, we don't have that on us anymore. But it doesn't stop here. Now we start the investment process. Now we start going after those things.

28:06

Yeah.

28:23

I have found investments are very unique based on your personality. For example, I am not a cryptocurrency guy. I learned from Melvin Simon, who was the 64th richest person on the planet at the time, he goes, I don't invest in things I don't understand. He goes, don't ever do it. If you don't understand it, do not do it. So when NFTs came out, I was like, huh? And I still don't understand crypto. And I'm an IT guy. I still don't understand Bitcoin. I could have bought it when it was a hundred bucks. I still don't understand it. What do you do when you're like, okay, we paid off this debt, we came out of, um, we've survived the hurricanes. South Florida person as well and you're going in that environment, what do you start investing in? And how do you start filtering through your investments now because you have a certain level of success and you don't have this wall of debt pulling you, how do you start researching it and evaluating what to invest in to create that financial freedom?

28:23

Well, I love. I love what you said. I am a 100% in agreement. I don't invest in anything I don't understand. And I would never advise anyone else to do that either. As a matter of fact, I say to people all the time, don't do something because you heard Jade say it. Don't do it just because you said, well, Jade said it. I trust her. I'm going to do it. No, please do your research. I'm going to tell people all the time, you know, my path is to make it as simple as possible so that anyone feels like they can do it. Because I grew up in a household. I don't know if I mentioned this to you when we talked before, but I moved around a lot as a kid because of my dad's job and the time period in which I grew up and the folks around me when I grew up really affected the way I viewed money. So whenever we would move to a town, most of the time I'd be the only black kid in the classroom and a lot of times in the entire school. So it was just me and. And then on TV at the time, there wasn't a whole lot of representation. So I didn't see wealthy black people. I just didn't see them. I saw people making it paycheck to paycheck, middle class, just like my family. And my extended family lived halfway across the country. And if they were doing well, I never saw it okay. So growing up like that, the only thing I saw was the Huxtables. You know, it was like, okay, is this possible? I didn't know. I'd never heard of it. And I remember being at a party. Fast forward to me being in my early 20s. I remember being at a party and there was a bunch of men. I'm just gonna say, there's a bunch of white men standing, talking. And I heard they were talking about investments. And my first instinct was I could never be in that conversation. That was my first instinct. And then brain clicked in and I said, you know what? I need to be in that conversation. So I walked over, and against all my fears, I stood there with my drink in my hand and I acted like I knew what they were talking about. And I listened And I learned, and that's what I want people to understand, is you can learn this, that if you can trust yourself enough to know that you can be educated on something, that's half the battle. Because so many of us go, they hear a couple words. They don't. That's jargon I don't understand. And they tune out, please don't do that. And it's okay if you need to hear something once and then hear it again and then hear it again for it to click. Because for a lot of people, it is like that. So when I teach it, I try to teach it in the simplest way possible, because I don't want anybody to feel like it's out of reach. It's so simple. And so I explained to them, I'm like, okay, first off, let's keep it simple. Most of us have some sort of, you know, investment vehicle available to us through our job as a 401k. And I just really try to explain it away. I don't want to make them sound like they're stupid. I don't want to make it sound like, you know, they're in kindergarten and I'm teaching it. But I do want to make it feel like it's very accessible. And so, yeah, I teach. I teach mutual funds. Index funds are fine. That's fine. But I really teach diversific diversification. Try to spread it out over the four different types. You know, I want you to do growth and income. I want you to do growth. I want you to do aggressive growth. I want you to do international. Balance it out, you know, 25% of whatever you're doing into each of them. That's great. That gives you the diversification. And I teach people, hey, go back and look at the track record. Look at it over the past. See how long the fund has been in existence. Has it done well? That's a pretty good indicator that it will continue to do well if you're diversified, just simple techniques. And then I say, hey, if you don't understand, ask someone who does. You know, the Internet is out there. There's. There's. There's no excuse not to be educated today, right? But for some of us, we learn differently, and we want. We want the validation of a human being saying, yes, that's right. You understand it. And if you need a teacher, reach out to a teacher. But for me, it's very simple. You know, everything's automated. For me, the money goes out. I don't even see it. You know, I. I take a look at it every Once in a while, you know, obviously, you know, I am a long term investor. I said it, I forget it. I'm not a trader. I don't, I don't do the day trade. I don't do the crypto like you. And that's what I try to teach people is this is a long term gain. It's a long term game. It's very boring and it should feel boring. It should feel like. It should feel like I didn't even do anything today. Jade. That's right. That's how it should.

29:13

Yeah, I like what you're talking about, the education. There's a saying in the military. First time, every time. Which means you do it right the first time and it works every time. That's your goal. That's never happened in my life with anything I've ever done. Whenever someone taught me something, I was like, huh? I have to go through it over and over and over and over and having that and understanding that. For example, you do index funds. Not index funds. You do mutual funds and all that. I am the opposite. I will not touch that because I'm like, I. My thing is, like, I have no control over that. I'm going to go into real estate because for me, real estate never hit zero unless there's a sinkhole, which there's insurance for that. That's where I'm comfortable. Where. I got a buddy of mine, he's like, I don't understand why you don't do crypto. I got another buddy of mine who does day trading and he crushes it. He's lost all of his hair, but he crushes it. And I was like, dude, that's your gift, man. God bless you. So finding your lane and what resonates with you, if you're. If you love basketball, mazel. If you love baseball, mazel. But if you love baseball, don't go play basketball and vice versa. So it is what it is. Stay in your lane. So as you're going through this and you're walking through this, and there's belief systems that hold people back. There's also, and I love you talk about your family. There's also your environment. And I grew up in Hialeah and I was. Where. I'm not religious in any way, shape or form. My last name is Schwartz. So I was one of two Jewish kids in the entire environment.

33:30

Yeah.

34:44

So I was right. Right next to Opelaka. So we in a very different environment. So if you're from South Florida, you will understand where I'm going.

34:44

I Do.

34:51

So there was Carroll City and Opelaka right next to me. And I was the one little known Jewish kid there. I didn't see wealth like everyone else did. If you had my last name, I didn't understand that I was the richest kid in, in our community because we had carpet. So it was a different world. Expect that what got you here didn't get you there. And I've got a question about this. People talk about, well, I don't know how to do it. I'm like, yes, you do. Because Michelangelo said, I didn't create David, I just took off all the pieces that weren't David. Start with what you don't know. When someone has this limiting belief and they go in like, I can't do this. I'm from a minority. I already have the things stacked against me because I'm a minority, I'm a female. I wasn't educated on this. And you have all of these things. When do you sit there and go, huh? But then let that go and say, but I have to do this. How do you find that? Because there's such a limiting lock in on that limiting belief.

34:52

I talk about this in the book. We have to be curious. We have to be. It's very easy to. When you're from a situation like you described, when you're from any sort of marginalized situation, even if it's not marginalized, even if you just find yourself comparing yourself to something on social media, okay, Anytime you're in a situation where you're looking over there and you're going, they have something I want, I want it, they deserve it. It seems like, I don't deserve it or I don't understand why they deserve it and I don't deserve it, or do I deserve this? Whenever you're in that situation of less than or you're viewing yourself as less than, you've got to change your mind. So what most of us do is will fall into a couple of areas. Well, first one is you can tell if you're in that area, if you have a really hard time celebrating that. If you have a hard time celebrating people who are doing well, if you have a hard time acknowledging people who have accomplished things that you've never accomplished, you need to. That that's a, that's a flag. That that's an indicator something needs to switch on here. If you're a person who has a hard time, you can name everybody else's blessings, for lack of a better word, and accomplishments, but you can't name your own the light switch needs to turn on. If you're a person who becomes very passive aggressive in the face of other people's success, Light switch needs to turn on. If you're the person going, well, if I made $300,000 a year, I'd be doing that too, right? Or if you're the person who says, well, it must be nice. Everybody can't afford to take vacations like that, right? You're that kind of like, snide, backhanded compliment. Be honest with yourself, first off. And then what has to happen from then is we have to go from being very critical to being very curious. We have to be willing to go to people and say, hey, what degree? What degree is required to do what you do? You have to be able to go up to people and say, hey, you know, I've never written a business plan before. What's the first step? How do you do it? We have to be willing to ask questions. Because you and I both know, unless you're a complete jerk, a lot of successful people love to answer questions. They love. They love to talk about themselves. They love to be. Yeah, yeah, sure. Let's sit down. Let's get coffee. Be willing to ask, because if you don't ask. If I had not walked up into that conversation with those men who seemed like. Who seemed like they knew more than me, were smarter than me, none of that was true. They had just asked the right questions in life and been willing to get the answers. That's the only difference. Are you willing to ask? Are you willing to receive the answers? Period. That is the only difference. You're smart. You can understand this.

35:43

I also think it matters not only what you're saying, but who's surrounding you. What are they saying? Because if you're around people who are saying that, oh, if I had this, I would do that, or you're in the wrong room.

38:22

Yeah.

38:31

Period. And the example I give on this all the time is Ryan Reynolds from Blade. There was a movie he was in, Ryan with Blades. It was in this scene. And I was like, man, he's in good shape. And I was like, wait, that's possible. That's a thing. I could get in shape like that. I was like, okay, I need to talk to somebody now. And that became the narrative that different the mindset. And I did have friends who were less than. I mean, they did have bodies of gods. It's too bad it was Buddha. So we're round. Round is a shape. That's the shape they were in. And I was like, I can't, I can't go eat with these guys anymore. I have to change some patterns. So getting people to change the patterns, if there was one pattern or one path that you would want people to go through right now, because again, you hear it every day. You're talking about financial literacy. And I do love that you mentioned that. Successful people, we want to talk about it because the problem is we want to talk about it all the time and our friends are annoyed by us talking about it all the time. Someone comes and said, yeah, they go away, they're like, hey, I don't, I don't want to hear about your investment right now. But if it's really cool, like dude, we're hiking, can you shut up for a minute? I was like, oh man. So getting those different people. But as you're going through this and you're gift shifting yourself and you're looking for things in a partner and you're looking for things in yourself, what are the work that's been proven to do right now as you go through it? Say, hey, you know what, I'm going into this, this is what I'm doing. I found Jade. Her book talks about belief, where everyone talks about strategy, which is useless unless you have belief, your beliefs locked in and understanding the emotional side of it, which I think people should read about that first before the tactical stuff. Absolutely doesn't matter. What are the things that people can start doing now? Like is it, is it journaling or what do they can do right now to start gear shifting?

38:32

Yeah, you know, I do talk about the fact that systems matter. Atomic habits.

40:05

Right.

40:11

We know about systems and it's the same thing with money. I can teach you this stuff all day, the emotional side of it, but at the end of the day when it's time to lock in and actually do it. Yeah. There are daily habits that matter. I talk about depending on the emotion that we're talking about changes what I might have you do. So for instance, if you're a person who has dealt heavily with different fears. Yeah. I'm going to tell you, mental check ins matter. It matters for you to check in with yourself. Some people, because of traumas that they've experienced around money, maybe they grew up with homelessness, maybe they grew up with, you know, food scarcity, maybe they grew up with a, a dad who was abusive and lorded over the money. Right. Those are very real things that are going to impact the choices that you make today. And much of that you can't walk through alone. Much of that you do need the help of a counselor. And so I suggest that if you're a person who has a major financial turnaround that has to take place, in the case of, you know, me, maybe you're paying off significant amounts of debt. Yeah. You need ways to track it. Tracking is so important for your psyche. Right. You want to have, you want to be able to, you want the dopamine hit. Right. You want the thing that says, hey, I was successful, now I want to do it again. And that could be something as simple as journaling. So you can go back and look, it could be something, anything that's measurable. You need to be doing it if you're trying to stay motivated. Measure. Measurable is so important for, for staying motivated. So I tell people, I tell people that make, make one of those little trackers the same way if you're, if you're. I was running a marathon back in 2024 and one of my favorite things on the app was it would tell you the streak of how many days you've run in a row. And you don't think that that's going to be a big deal, but it be, it becomes a huge deal. Like, oh, I can't miss a day. I can't, you know, and not only the tracking of the streaks, but to be able to say, well, when I started I was only running three miles, now I'm running 13. Holy crap. So being able to see that progress, being able to measure it, being able to keep track, that awareness is so key if you're trying to stay motivated on a journey. So really depending on what it is that you're doing. And I go through all of that in the book, whether it's daily habits, mental check ins, tracking your trans, tracking your, your progress, or even creating different milestones, all of that is so important. And I talk about all that in the book.

40:11

I also think, you know, because I'm a triathlete, when you're doing these things, sharing that tracking with an accountability partner that celebrates it for you, that sit there and they ping, you're like, dude, did you really go 16 days? Absolutely. The other thing is, and I'll reference it towards running, if you're doing a marathon or triathlon or anything like that, there is going to come a point where your body is going to shut down. It's going to come a point where you're going to be in pain. A thousand percent is going to happen. And when I was being trained on how to do this is you sit there and you acknowledge it and you're like, yeah, I can hurt. I can absolutely. I can feel the desire to quit and want to shut down. I just don't get to feel it right now. I get to feel it later when I'm eating a donut. But right now I gotta push through it because I made a commitment. It's like, so you can feel the fear. You can't fear the doubt. You can be scared. You can have the insecurities. You just can't do it right now. You just push it off to the side and we deal with it at another time where it's more appropriate. It's the dumb thing from what was the movie Predator, where the guy gets shot and he's like, I really don't have time to bleed. He's like, I got time to bleed right now. I'll bleed later. It's not critical. I'm running. It hurts. Of course it's running. It's not. It is what it is. So when you're going through this and. And you're trying to find a way and you're working with, you know, you've done yourself, what are the things you look with, because now you've done it with a partner, which most people have a hard enough time doing it with themselves. But what are the things that. If you could have gone back before you had connected with Sam, Connected with Sam. And you're like, hey, these are the things that I've learned that I needed to not only work on myself, but what I need to look for in a partner to have that connection say, hey, how do we work through these things? How do we talk about that? Because a lot of people in my world, you know, they don't. They don't believe in prenups. Like, why would I do a prenup? I could just put it in trusts. I can put all the trust in the Cook Islands. You can't touch it anyway. So they're. They've already weaponized that because these are people who have made an immense amount of money. So when you're going into this, which I don't feel is healthy, let me preference that I've had to coach them out of that. Do it for 20 years anyway. When you connect with people and you have those conversations, what are the things that you look into the partner? Like, hey, I'm doing this work. What are the things you look for in the partner to do that so you can get through some of this stuff?

42:33

If I'm. If I'm coaching someone, I'm looking for someone who And I have this, which is why it worked for Sam and I. You want somebody who's interested in bettering themselves, you have to have somebody who's interested in doing work. And some people aren't. Some people, you know, you've heard it. You know, I've always been like this. This is the way I do it. It's not going to change. It is what it is, right? The it is what it is mentality that is like, oh, gosh, you have to have somebody who is willing to change. You have to have somebody who's willing to be able to say with sincerity, I was wrong. Because some people can't say that. I mean, you say like, oh, well, yeah, some people cannot admit when they're wrong. They just can't. So these are big things, and those are personality traits, character traits, really. But on a, on a more practical level, what the person needs to be doing is having conversations that will allow those things to be revealed. Right? So you need to, you need to strike up that conversation in the dating process pretty early on. And I say it like this. I say, when you're dating someone, what I, what I do, what I would do and what I did is you bring up the conversation of money, but not to share your viewpoint points. You view it up to put, put the ball in their court. Because when you like someone, you kind of change your answers. And so what, what you don't want to do is say, oh, gosh, you know, what are your views on money? I hate debt. You know, I, I just stay away from credit cards. And I don't say that because then they're going to go, oh, yes, me too, me too. Right? Especially if they really like you. So what you do is you just say, hey, what are, what's your philosophy on money? Just let them talk. Just let them say it. And if they could say something that's completely opposite from you, don't stop them. You want to hear this. You want to hear everything you want to say. Have you ever, you know, I'm thinking about visiting a counselor. Have you ever seen anybody? Like, what do you, how do you feel about, like, checking in? Like, how do you feel about. Understand these are going to be things that tell you do. Are they interested in self improvement? Are they interested in bettering themselves? What, do they have a lot of pride when it comes to unveiling themselves? Are, are they forthcoming? These are the things that you want to know because those are the hardest things to change in someone. Somebody who doesn't want to change is going to Be very hard to change or, you know, that's. That's the best advice I can give you.

44:33

Yeah. It's the understanding that therapy is a gift to give yourself and everyone. I absolutely think everyone should do it. The shortcuts that I use in this world, one of them is escape rooms. If you're getting serious about with someone by about the third date, go lock it. Two of you in escape route. Go to the. One of those things. It's a fun date idea. See how the person reacts when there's time pressure. See how you react when there's time pressure. See how you guys work together. Huge. And the other thing is, there's a game, and I know it's not connected to your environment. Sorry. But there's a game called Cash Flow. And you play this. It's like Monopoly. It's made by Robert. You play Cash Flow with each other, you will learn more about yourself and the other person. Do those two things completely change the environment of who you're going for and what you're going into and how it works going forward? Now that you guys have and you've done this and you've had a level of success that most people aren't used to, and they haven't had that because it's a blessing to have what you have to the talk show and the success and the marriage and running a marathon and doing all this. What's next? Like, what is the next thing that you're sitting there going, okay, this is. I've done this. What is my next hurdle right now?

46:57

I love that question. And again, I think the answer is not going to be what people think. For me, I'm always looking for peace. I'm always looking for the next level of peace and freedom. My goals are rarely monetary. They're rarely career driven. I look and I go, where's an area that I feel like I'm not as free as I want to be? Where is an area that feels like I don't have as much peace as I want to have? Where's an area that I feel like I don't have as many options as I want to have? And that's going to be the guiding light right there. So that's how I do it. I. I had a couple of projects on the burner in 20. We're in 2026 now, Jade. I had a couple of projects on the burner in 2025, and they were really, they were really cooking. And in the, in the final quarter of 2025, they were really supposed to Pop off. And they didn't, they didn't. And, and you know, when you get to that point where you're just, you're just pushing and pushing and pushing and it's just, it's not happening. And you have to make that choice. Is it not happening because I'm not pushing hard enough, or is it not happening because it's just not supposed to happen? And I just need to take all the signs, right? I decided that this is taking, it's taking everything, like it's taking all my piece. And sometimes, you know, to quote Mr. Wonderful, sometimes you have to just take something out back and shoot it. And it's hard to do that, but once it happens, you're like, oh, yes. Yeah, okay, that was right, that was the right thing to do. And I want more of that. I, I, right now I'm looking for the things that I need to let go of so that I can have more peace. And that's, that's, that's what my focus is on right now. And so for some of us, it could be, what do I need to let go of? Do I need to let go of debt? Okay, yes. Now I can start thinking about the numbers. For some of us, it's, do I need to let go of a relationship that's very toxic? Yes, I do now. And maybe again, I need to start thinking about the numbers because maybe you were living together or maybe you had, you know, your lives were intertwined in that sort of way. So I usually let those things be the, the guiding light of what do I need to pursue next. And you know, I've got young kids, they're five and seven. And so for me, I'm looking at, okay, I would like to, I would like to be locked in a little bit more with them in this season. I've had seasons where I'm very like, career, career, career. I need to lock in a little bit more there. So that's where my eyes are right now.

47:59

So when, when you do that, because again, with, with kids 5 and 7, the statistics is you really only have them for, what is it, 19 years total of their lives. The amount of time, because you have the first 18 and then collectively about a year left out of that. And once they hit that teenage year, that 13ish year, you become an ATM and an Uber driver for them. So it's a really small pocket of time that you have for them. And most of the people at first were like, well, I just want to go to Costco and get more duct tape. So they Just leave me alone. They're quiet. But this is the most precious time that you have with them. You've spent a lot of seasons, you know, helping other people, listening to other people, walking them through those things. What are the things that you have found that's proven, that has, after seeing it over and over and over again, that has proven to create success not only in themselves, but also in their financials. Because people are going to want me to ask that. When I told people that I was interviewing you, we were going to come on the show, they're like, what is the one thing? And I was like, first off, y' all need to stop asking me that. I just don't ask questions. It's never just one thing. You need to stop that. But with that said, what are the things that you've seen overall, the proven things that work?

50:21

The person who stops caring what other people think is a superhero. The person who completely could give two rips about what anyone else thinks is the person who will win and will succeed, period. Because we don't even. We do so much with the intent of what somebody else will see and how they'll judge it, how they'll perceive it. The minute, oh, goodness. The minute you let go of that, it's like, yeah, I'm gonna do what I want to do it. Think about how many times we're. We choose a career path because we're thinking about what our parents are thinking. We pick. We buy a car because we're thinking about how it'll look in the parking lot next to Bob's car. You know, who works in accounting, right? What, what people will think about the fact that we picked up a side hustle. Well, if they find out I'm driving Uber, then they'll think, oh, so you don't pick up a side hustle. Even though, you know, that's just the thing you need, right? The minute you stop caring. Because here's the thing. No one is. No one is checking for you. No one is thinking about you. We. We're so self centered, Charles, that we think folks are thinking about us all the time. They are not thinking about you. They are trying to live their own life with their own stress, their own families, their own worries, their own paycheck. And at the moment you go, okay, I was being extremely self centered, thinking that the whole world was watching me. Now you just do what you want to do and you make the choices that you want to make and you follow the path that you know you're supposed to follow and you don't give a beep what anybody else thinks.

51:24

I think it goes back to what we're, everything that we're talking about. It's not the strategy, it's getting after going after the belief system, going after your emotional, going after your mental status when they do that. Which is why I was excited to have you on to talk about the book. So if people wanted to track you down and people wanted to find you, wanted to connect it and learn more about this, because I want people to understand you already have every answer on the planet on how to invest, how you have access to a phone, you have access to Google, you can build a nuclear submarine. You don't need more bloody tactics. You need to get this other stuff. And this is why I was so excited about the book and talking about it. You need to get your emotional, you need to get your mindset, you need to understand your identity. Need to lock that in first because then the strategies work. So if someone wants to track this down and get a copy or get in touch with you or do all of that, what's the best way to go ahold of you? What's the best way to connect?

52:54

Yes. So the book is what no one tells you about money. Obviously, you can pick that up anywhere books are sold. Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Target.com RamseySolutions.com is where you get it. Through my company, where I work, I'm on all the socials. But if you want to interact with me directly, go on Instagram, because I'm there. I'm in the comments, I'm in the DMs, and I give. I'm just, I'm like, I know, Charles. You, you, you are a giver. I give all the game that's in this book, I give it on, on the Internet. I remember when I couldn't afford to buy a book that somebody was buying, you know, selling. So if you can't afford the book, just follow me on Instagram and you will. I will spill it out over time, I promise you that I will, because I want you to have the information and I want you to have the tactics to really, really win. It's not numbers, it's not behavior, it's you on the inside. I'm going to help you see it and diagnose it. I'm going to give you the antidote to fix it and work through it so that all those things that you thought were negatives become positives.

53:39

I also say with that because, you know, we're both, we've both written books for those who haven't written books. The amount of insecurity that goes in. When we're writing a book, we want to just overload it with value. We're like, oh my God, I didn't give enough. I didn't give enough. So we're constantly just adding more and adding more and adding more. So for like, I'm very expensive to work one on one with, but if you just bought my book for whatever it is, you're going to get more value than spending that month with me. It's all there, so please understand. Just get the dang book, please. So anyway, Jade, thank you so much. Really appreciate you for coming on and sharing all this with us and being so vulnerable about everything.

54:37

Yeah, it was my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. This was a great conversation.

55:12

Absolutely. That's a wrap on another episode of the proven podcast, Money isn't math. It's mindset Strategy doesn't work until belief does. Stop blaming the system. Start owning your decisions. It's because once you master your emotions, your money finally follows. And then remember, if your progress isn't intentional, it's just debt in disguise.

55:16