What are YOU leaving behind? What is YOUR LEGACY? Don’t say money… it has to be so much more than that. In this episode, I dive right on in to talk about your legacy and what I don’t mention to my mama.
I have to start by saying… I LOVE my mother. Buuuut there are certain things I don’t talk to her about… such as money and business.
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I just got done picking my mother up, she lives part-time here in Michigan and part-time in Mississippi, and she really inspired me for this podcast and blog post. We were riding in the car, doing some errands, chit-chatting… and we had a conversation that went a little something like this:
Mother: How is your business going?
Me: It’s going great.
Mother: What is it you do, again? Do you give people investment advice? Or what is it?
Me: I don’t give advice, simply share what I am trading and I teach people how to do it and how to analyze stock and options. I explained about our community, how our members in the live Group Coaching sessions can share with each other and support each other.
Mother: Nice, that’s great.
Then it hit me: My OWN MOTHER doesn’t even really know what I do. And that got me to thinking… well, why not?? I realized awhile back, I stopped talking to her about what I do.
My mother grew up in an era in the South where my uncles and herself moved to Michigan to work at Ford or GM. They did the factory thing. They were raised with you go to school, you get a good job for 40 years, and then you retire. That mentality was extremely engrained in my mother.
There’s nothing wrong with education, I believe it is paramount, but I also believe there is a problem when people just believe that people can only get educated in a classroom. They don’t learn anything non-traditional like the stock market.
AGAIN: I LOVE MY MOM.
When I was younger for example, I would talk to her about my dreams and goals. And I remember one day I asked her, “How do you make money in the stock market?” And her response was that it was risky, that “people like us don’t get involved in it”. She used those words. And I remember thinking, “Who is ‘us’? Why am I apart of ‘us’?”
I got into the stock market anyway. I turned my student loan into $110,000 in the stock market. When I told my mother that she said, “That’s good, but don’t quit your job”. At the time I worked at Best Buy and Mervins, and it stuck with me that I made six figures not working and she didn’t come back with “Do more of that” or “Wow teach me, how did you do that?”
At this point I realized we were on two different wave lengths. Here I was trying to break the cycle, because I did not grow up in that era. I saw my mom get really close to retirement, when the company sold to another one and they clipped her retirement! She couldn’t get the full benefits… she had to get another job at Target. I thought, “There is no way I am following in the same path”. I have seen people come out of school with full degrees and not be able to get a job.
I wanted to control my own destiny.
But this is why I stopped talking to her about my dreams and goals. She simply wasn’t familiar with it, and it’s not her fault – that is what she was taught! But she didn’t have experience with it. You need to talk to people who HAVE experience – who get it. They are the dreamers, too. For example I now am in a Master Mind group “Inner Circle”, and everything we share is confidential but everything we talk about is being able to get feedback from people who are going after this similar lifestyle. I look up to these people – they are kicking butt in business and in life.
If you ever talk to someone who doesn’t get it (your hopes and dreams), you leave feeling worse – it gives you a negative vibe. You come out deflated, thinking you can’t beat the giant. This is why you need to get around people who GET IT.
That is one of the key reasons why I started the community in Power Trades University because I wanted traders who 1.) thought like me and 2.) trade like me. There are so many communities out there, even free ones… but then you have a bunch of random people with random stuff – no support of why they trade what they do. This is a platform where I teach my style and everyone trades how I trade – we all think roughly the same. Like-minded individuals together! I know what it is like to talk to people and they do not see you how you see yourself – they don’t see you as an Option Trader. They love you and they mean well, but sometimes it’s the same people who say, “It’s a scam” instead of, “Go for it!”
When I bought my first course for $4,000 I knew I would learn something! Either they would teach something OR… I went into the mindset, if I get scammed, at least I will know what a $4,000 scam looks like.
I was that determined to learn this industry. If you are around the right people, they will support you with it and will find the silver lining. You want people who will encourage you and will push you in a good direction. Unfortunately, this didn’t include my Mother. She encouraged me in a lot of beneficial ways on how to be a man, just not in this one exactly. I wasn’t going to push my views on her.
And as a special announcement, my wife and I are pregnant – we are expecting our first child on September 9th. And as we bring a child into the world, I think what values am I going to instill into my child? And what am I going to teach them about money?
Because I was taught was investing was not for people like us, that even if you make money with it to not quit your day job… and yes, some of it is true… but I didn’t have entrepreneurial encouragement from my immediate family. “Money doesn’t grow on trees”. Well I think I am going to tell my kid, “Yeah, money DOES grow on trees. You can’t just go pluck it off, you have to plant your own money tree seeds and water them.” But what is money made of? Paper. Where does paper come from? You get the point.
The Stock Market is a Money Tree – I have planted seeds, watered it, and it has grown a nice tree to shade my lifestyle. I go “pluck” money when I need it, meaning placing a trade profitable. I had to teach myself that. But what would have happened if I were taught that this were possible?
Each generation should do better than the previous – but how is that possible if you are teaching old principles? When you are teaching things that were popular 40 years ago? Can you imagine telling your kid, “I don’t want you to learn what an iPad is”, when that is the present and the future?
What are the things that I am going to teach my child to continue the legacy? it cannot stop with me. They say the second generation squanders the money if they are not taught right. If you do not teach them the right way to handle it, they may spoil it.
What ARE you passing down to your kids, whatever that is? Consider: what exactly are we teaching them? Most people are always saying to take risks and go after your dreams to little kids. We give them motivational words of inspiration. But when we look at ourselves in the mirror, we tell ourselves something completely different. We may lose money in the stock market, we don’t “get back on the bike” and try again. We give up easily as adults. We give advice to kids that we don’t even take ourself.
I do not have a child yet. But what my mother DID was way more important than what my mother SAID. You can tell them to get back on the bike, but when they don’t see you doing the same – which is speaking louder? If we do not go after our dreams and goals, our kids will notice that. Once you make a decision that you are going to accomplish something there is no such thing as, “Well, at least I tried”. No! There is only the destination of your decision. What are you SHOWING your kids as regards to values and finances? Those are some tough questions.
We always love to tell others what to do, but sometimes we got to look at ourselves. Like what do you think the dinner table conversations were like with the Ford family? Do you think they stopped dreaming? They have more money than they know what to do with, but they keep going in their ideas.
I plan to be on one of those families that have some unique conversations at the dinner table – not just about money, but also about life.
When you think about your circle, ask yourself:
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What are you passing down to your kids? What is your legacy? What are you teaching them about money, how to get out of debt, etc?
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Who is in your circle?
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What actions am I taking to back up my words?
I have great friends that I love that I do not talk finances or business to. I have other people I go to for that, in my Master Mind team. You need people to share crazy ideas with, you may find out those ideas are actually not that crazy or you may find that you actually aren’t the only one.
The difference between someone who says they want to quit their job or learn about the stock market is THEIR ACTIONS. They study, the turn off the TV, they put in the work to get where they want to be.
We are at the six month mark in the 2018 year. Are my actions lining up with what I set out to do in the beginning of the year? What am I doing to achieve those goals? If you do not want to ask these questions yourself, ask someone close to you who will give you the truth to these answers with love.
It is time out for saying “I do not know how the stock market works”, for “I do not know how to trade options”, and for “I hear that’s too risky”. Come see for yourself! Come on over to Power Trades University. Gain the education and community to be apart of your legacy.