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Becoming Financially Free with Curtis May · The SmallBizChat with Melinda Emerson

• 0:00
  Most people think too short term and you need to capitalize.
• 0:03
  See, if you have money, which means you gotta save it, opportunities will find you.
• 0:07
  You don't even have to go look it.
• 0:08
  Right?
• 0:09
  So most people have to we teach people don't be afraid to capitalize, save money so you can
• 0:13
  prepare for emergencies and opportunities, and we teach people to be the bank.
• 0:17
  3, 10, 1, 0, ignition, liftoff,
• 0:26
  Ending small business failure.
• 0:28
  Welcome to the small biz chat podcast with the number 1 small business spurt, Melinda Emerson.
• 0:35
  Melinda's goal is to end small business failure, and she'll give you the information
• 0:40
  you need to succeed and live the life you dream of.
• 0:43
  Now here's your host, the small Biz chat lady herself, Melinda Emerson.
• 0:52
  Have you been trying to figure out how to turn your side hustle into your main hustle?
• 0:56
  Well, listen, this summer, I'm gonna be teaching the become your own boss 10 week
• 1:01
  online course live starting June 20th.
• 1:05
  So every Tuesday night, you're gonna be with me, and I'm gonna teach you everything you need
• 1:09
  to know about how to start and how to run a successful small business.
• 1:13
  And I'm America's number 1 small business expert, so that's really saying something.
• 1:17
  Register today.
• 1:21
  Welcome back on the small biz chat podcast.
• 1:23
  I'm Belinda Emerson's small biz lady, your host.
• 1:26
  And now we're gonna be talking with a financial expert who's gonna get so straight about what
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  we need to be doing as small business owners with our money.
• 1:36
  Now if you are watching us on our YouTube channel or our Facebook place, please like us.
• 1:42
  Leave us a comment if there's another topic you'd like us to address.
• 1:46
  Please leave it, and we will respond, and you'll see that topic come up in a future
• 1:52
  episode.
• 1:53
  Now let me introduce my guest.
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  Curtis May, he is the host of the Practical Wealth Show podcast and the creator and owner
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  of the Practical Wealth advisers.
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  Curtis has been planning helping individuals plan what to do with their money for over 35
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  years.
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  That can't be possible, Curtis.
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  He is passionate about helping his client save money and live their best life right now.
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  His primary focus is financial planning for individuals and families to become financially
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  free for centuries around the world.
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  For more information, head over to practicalwealth solutions dot net.
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  Welcome to the show Curtis.
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  Thank you.
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  Thanks for having me.
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  Excited to be here.
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  Yeah.
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  No.
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  I'm so excited.
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  Oh gosh.
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  I think I have known you 30 years.
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  So I'm so excited to have you Finally, on my podcast.
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  So, Curtis, you've been doing financial planning for 35 years.
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  How did you get into the field?
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  Well, I I was 12.
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  Just said, you know, just just show the length in the in the actually, I still I started at
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  20.
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  I was, you know, I always tell the story.
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  I I realized the NBA was not looking for 11 shooting guards, and I got my insurance
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  license.
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  I mean, you know, when I realized that that wasn't gonna be a thing.
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  And eventually, we got our securus license, and I was typical, you know, by a term investor
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  difference maxed out your 401 k blah blah blah.
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  And I did that my 1st 15 years, but that's how I got in the business.
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  I was blessed to see that early because I I never got that go to school, get a good job
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  talk.
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  My my family had always been self employed.
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  We own a supermarket.
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  My grandfather's in business.
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  So I'd heard from a time I was 7.
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  Boyle never make any money working with somebody else.
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  So I, you know, I thought you made your business to go into business.
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  Didn't you perking me to get a job?
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  So that gave me kind of a head start.
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  Alright.
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  So I know that the one of the things that you teach is that
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  for people is that their number one business asset is their knowledge.
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  Explain that for me.
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  So you're because you're it's 3 assets.
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  It's your normal asset is you.
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  Right?
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  So what you invest in is your mindset, your skill sets, skills is what makes money.
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  Right?
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  And your network, who do you know, and more importantly, especially with your guest,
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  previous Shannon said, is who knows you?
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  And so you've got to invest in, you know, are you reading 10, 15 pages a day?
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  Are you listening to podcasts like this?
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  Are you going to conferences because If you can invest in your skills, you know, money is a
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  result of creating value in the marketplace.
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  So if you will invest in solving entrepreneurs solve problems for a profit.
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  Right?
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  So if you will solve bigger problems, you'll get bigger checks.
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  100%.
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  They know how to solve a big problem to get a big check.
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  I I'm I'm 100% code signing that So so why has traditional financial planning advice not been
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  good for small businesses?
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  I mean, you mentioned that the 1st 15 years of your career, you were shoving, you know, 41 k
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  stuff down.
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  People start what what was the shift for you?
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  What made you be like, no.
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  That ain't it.
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  Well, you start studying people with money.
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  Right?
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  And, so what would would open my eyes, as I read, about 10, 12 years in a really probable
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  car rich dad port And I started realizing what he was talking about, and what I was doing was
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  different.
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  And then what you look at, like, in typical advice is not designed for you to get rich.
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  It's designed for you to send your money to some institution for 30 years and you wanna
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  become financially free.
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  You want cash flow.
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  So business owners send their money away, never to be touched and to lock it up, But what you
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  need is you need storage so that you can invest in your number one asset, which is your
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  business, Because if you put a dollar in your business and you make $2, that's a 100% return.
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  I don't why should I put my money at risk?
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  To maybe get 6 or 8%.
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  And so what happens is most of the clients that find me, they kinda already know that because I
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  mostly work with real estate investors.
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  Well, business owners, and they know they can make their money make more in the S and P.
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  And so I just let them lean into what they already know is right.
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  I show them how to position their capital so they can invest in what really makes money for
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  them.
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  And because what happens is if you look at what people are taught to do, they're taught to
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  accumulate so what happens is there's 2 schools of thought in the financial world.
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  There's an accumulation theory, buying whole, dollar cost average, get out of debt by term
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  investor difference, But if you look if you took a corporate finance course, they don't
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  teach you that stuff.
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  They teach if you look at Mister wonderful, they teach velocity of money, cash flow,
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  leverage, and they're focused on growing their money in their cash flow.
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  So we teach that works in personal finance.
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  So I teach people how to do that.
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  So you also teach people to tell their money where it's going instead of asking where it
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  went.
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  How do you do that?
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  So we call it cash flow mapping.
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  So most people are focused on budgeting or looking at their P and L.
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  Budget is like driving your car looking through the rearview mirror.
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  Okay?
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  And so you wanna look through the windshield.
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  Right.
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  So when money hits your accounts and somebody's referring to your boy, Mike McCallowage, right,
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  you wanna what you do is you wanna, like, alright.
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  Look.
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  Every way it hits your account, you gotta tell your you gotta sign your dollar a place to go.
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  Right?
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  And so the first thing you have to do is you've got to pay yourself first.
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  See, people are taught to pay themselves last.
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  And so you've got to save it.
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  You need to set aside money for taxes.
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  So what happens is we really similar to what he does.
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  I we call it cash flow mapping.
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  We have our own software for it, but we teach people how to organize your cash flow and I
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  don't care about micromanaging money.
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  If you can save 15.20 percent of your gross income, I don't care what you do the rest of
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  it, honestly.
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  And And but most wealth is lost by how people manage cash flow or don't manage cash flow.
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  How they manage their they don't manage their business cash flow.
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  A lot of people can't even read a profit loss.
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  And, again, the profit loss is looking at history.
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  Right?
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  And you need to forecast.
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  What are you gonna do over the next 2 or 3 months?
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  And so we teach that, and then you gotta separate church and state your personal from
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  your business.
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  Right.
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  And that's a real issue.
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  A lot of people's commingled funds.
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  I mean, because part of that happens because a lot of people are running a lot of their
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  personal expenses through their business, though.
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  Right?
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  Yeah.
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  But, you know, but how can you, you know, keep it clean and and and miss you.
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  You have to keep it clean because, yeah, because you're because the
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  thing is you a lot of times, you your business is not making enough money, but That's your
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  business talking to you.
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  Right?
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  So that's do you have
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  a marketing problem?
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  If you're not making enough money for the business support yourself, you have a cash flow
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  problem, which translates into a marketing problem.
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  So you need to separate that so you can tell the truth.
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  Right.
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  So so what kind of an And retirement vehicles are best for small businesses.
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  What should we be doing?
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  So I don't like retirement.
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  You know that?
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  I know retirement is an agricultural term.
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  It means that I'm a you're contrarian guys, just so you know.
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  It's almost step on a lot of those.
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  Retirement means to withdraw or to put out of use.
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  Alright.
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  So is that what you want?
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  So we want people to focus on becoming financially free.
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  Financial Freedom is a capacity.
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  Okay?
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  And so that means you have passive income greater than your expenses.
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  We call that gain to a position of FU.
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  Right?
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  So and, passive income twice your expenses.
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  But what happens is when you get money, you wanna buy assets, right, What is an asset?
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  Something that puts money in your pocket.
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  See, see, so we're talking to invest for capital gains and hope markets go up.
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  That's what's wrong with financial planning because you can't control any of that.
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  And so what you wanna do, you don't need to retire if you build a business that works,
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  right, to quote your book, fix your business.
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  Right?
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  And then and then you wanna build assets while you're building your business that work.
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  So, like, if you've got, you know, if you're buying an apartment building a year, or you're
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  buying a property a year, what you wanna be able to do is buy income producing assets and
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  now you have the capability of working or not So we don't necessarily want our people to put
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  out of use.
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  So I don't love what you want me to say.
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  Like, so I don't I'm not I don't love steps and solo 401 ks because you're only they only do 2
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  things.
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  They defer taxes, which are more accurate word is postpone, and they deferred a calculation of
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  those taxes.
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  So you gotta ask yourself, do I think in the future will the government need more money or
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  less?
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  Right?
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  And so do you all want all of your money in a joint account with the charging department?
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  I'm just saying.
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  And so, you know, you got it.
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  So you tied up to see what people do with with tip goal advice is with accountants and
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  financial people is to put $50 in sheer steps.
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  They'd write a $50,000 check to avoid writing a $10,000 check.
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  To the tax man.
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  Right?
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  And then you tie your money up in an entity you can't have access to for 10, 20, 30 years.
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  Now you got a couple of $1,000,000 in your in your qualified plan.
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  You think, well, I wanna retire now.
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  This is my money.
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  It's not your money.
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  Right?
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  So just wherever you have in here, take 35, 40 percent off of it because that you only
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  postpone taxes and money comes out as ordinary income.
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  And so you a lot of people are not looking at the back end and the wealth transfer that are
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  associated with what they're taught to do.
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  A transfer for me
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  is going from your asset column to somebody else.
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  So is it really about liquidity?
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  Like, is that why you're saying it this doesn't work because small business owners Things
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  happen.
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  Recession happen.
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  Pandemics happen.
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  People need access to their money.
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  Is that why you're saying that Yeah.
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  It is if I'm doing it in a order, it's liquidity.
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  Right?
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  Liquidity use and control is the 1st place where I want people to put their money.
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  So when we talk about our principles, we want people to save.
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  Save.
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  Let me define savings.
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  Safe, liquid, a accessible, guaranteed.
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  Okay?
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  So I'm not saying not do that.
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  You have to to to look at that, and you've gotta ask yourself to see, when I talk about
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  investing, So
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  and it
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  let me define how what I think is the investment.
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  Investment, so I use Warren Buffett and and Benjamin Grahams, his mentor's definition.
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  Some of you put your money into your principal, is safe, and you have a reasonable opportunity
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  to make a profit.
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  Okay?
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  That's Benjamin Graham.
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  You said it doesn't fit that definition.
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  You are speculating.
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  You're not investing.
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  So most people are speculating with the majority of their capital because you can't
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  control whether mark is go up or down, so I don't think that's a prudent use of the
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  majority of your capital.
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  Most if you look at the 4400, these people get rich.
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  Or if you read the million next door, They only credit their stockbroke or the financial
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  person, like, for a reason why they're millionaire, like, 11%.
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  They've they found a business that they liked, and they grew that.
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  So it'll make their millions of mutual funds.
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  They make it building your business and being a good steward of their resources investing in
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  what they understand.
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  I completely I completely agree with you.
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  This is a fascinating conversation.
• 13:00
  And when we come back on the small biz shot podcast, We're gonna talk more with curtains
• 13:04
  may about what all of us business owners need to be doing to get our money straight.
• 13:09
  On Melinda Emerson, you're watching the small podcasts, and we will be right back.
• 13:15
  Are you ready to become a boss?
• 13:17
  Hi.
• 13:18
  I'm Melinda Emerson's small biz lady.
• 13:20
  Click the button below and take my free boss quiz.
• 13:23
  This assessment will help you learn your entrepreneur type and find the right business
• 13:28
  model for you.
• 13:29
  Get this information about the number one asset in your business.
• 13:32
  Yeah.
• 13:33
  That's you.
• 13:38
  Welcome back to the small business chat podcast.
• 13:40
  I'm Melinda Emerson's small business lady, your host, and we're talking with Curtis May
• 13:45
  practical wealth advisors, and he's talking to us about some new information that I'm not sure
• 13:50
  all of us know about what we should be doing with our money to create financial freedom and
• 13:55
  not necessarily retirement.
• 13:57
  Alright, Curtis.
• 13:59
  You know, one of the biggest challenges that small business owners have is not being able to
• 14:04
  borrow money.
• 14:04
  Right?
• 14:04
  8000 lows are turned down every day in America, but you say Everybody should be working on
• 14:10
  being their own banker anyway.
• 14:13
  Tell us about that.
• 14:14
  Yeah.
• 14:14
  So it's funny.
• 14:15
  I spoke at the laundromat Millionaire Conference, and these guys have a lot of
• 14:18
  financing And so people give away 35¢ of every dollar to some other financial institution.
• 14:25
  Right?
• 14:25
  So when we teach people to save 15, 20 percent of their gross income, and then we call it the
• 14:31
  money for life program, which our formula is get money, bank it, borrow it, spend it, repay
• 14:36
  it.
• 14:36
  Right?
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  So get money, make money, bank save it somewhere.
• 14:40
  It'll allow you to be the bank where you can collateralize an asset.
• 14:44
  So we we use I don't usually get too much into products, but properly structured dividend
• 14:49
  paying whole life insurance.
• 14:50
  We over fund those.
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  Now our clients have a situation where they can access capital.
• 14:55
  I have people that can access 100 of 1000 of dollars with a fax or a phone call.
• 15:01
  And then so an opportunity to buy a business, or do you have to make payroll, or are you
• 15:06
  uh-uh, COVID happens.
• 15:07
  You can buy somebody else's business or you need capital.
• 15:11
  You don't have to jump through hoops and qualify to get it, but you do have to build
• 15:15
  your business.
• 15:16
  You must be able to think too short term, and you need to capitalize.
• 15:19
  See, if you have money, which means you gotta save it, opportunities will find you.
• 15:23
  You don't even have to go look it.
• 15:25
  Right?
• 15:25
  So most people have to we teach people don't be afraid to capitalize, save money, or so you can
• 15:31
  prepare for emergencies and opportunities, and we teach people to be the bank.
• 15:34
  Love it.
• 15:35
  Alright.
• 15:35
  And what are the three rules of investing, Curtis?
• 15:38
  So the 3 rules of investing are this will keeps me out of a lot of trouble.
• 15:41
  Investing what you know Okay?
• 15:44
  Ra or invest in knowing.
• 15:46
  Right?
• 15:46
  So if you don't know if this is what you wanna know, invest in knowing, invest in or invest in
• 15:52
  vetting people.
• 15:53
  If you wanna give it some l sheen to learn how the vet good operators, like, you'd like to do
• 15:57
  a syndication or something like that.
• 15:58
  Invest in what you can control and what you can influence the outcome up.
• 16:04
  Does it generate cash flow?
• 16:06
  That's the 2nd rule.
• 16:07
  And the 3rd rule is Don't chase returns.
• 16:10
  See, most people are chasing returns.
• 16:12
  They're just, damn, they're hoping that the market goes up.
• 16:15
  They hurt this at the water cooler.
• 16:17
  They're, suffer from FOMO fear of missing out, and this is where everybody else is doing.
• 16:22
  But if you quote uncle, What do I call Earl?
• 16:25
  Earl Neingale?
• 16:26
  He says, listen, the majority is usually wrong.
• 16:28
  You have to do the opposite of the majority.
• 16:30
  The majority is broke That's why there's 99%ers and 1%ers because they do opposite stuff.
• 16:35
  Got it.
• 16:36
  Got it.
• 16:37
  Alright, Curtis.
• 16:37
  And what is the best business advice you've ever been given?
• 16:41
  The best business advice
• 16:42
  I have, Eric, given, is that my dad told me it takes 2 to 5 years to build a business.
• 16:46
  So he says you have to give your efforts time to compound.
• 16:48
  Most people just they don't save enough, and they don't stay in long enough to give it time
• 16:53
  to work.
• 16:54
  That is excellent advice, and it's absolutely true.
• 16:59
  I completely agree with a great advice.
• 17:01
  Curtis Mae, thank you so much for being here with me.
• 17:03
  I think you've dropped a lot of pearls out here today.
• 17:06
  So Hopefully, people will be following up with the truck more at more advice.
• 17:12
  Alright.
• 17:12
  Well, we come back.
• 17:13
  It's time to talk about sales enablement tools with my buddy, Phil Carver Jack.
• 17:18
  Alright.
• 17:19
  I'm Melinda Emerson's small biz lady.
• 17:20
  America's number one small business expert, and I will leave you with this last thought.
• 17:25
  You never lose in business.
• 17:27
  Either you win or you aren't.
• 17:29
  God bless everybody.
• 17:34
  Have you been trying to figure out how to turn your side hustle into your main hustle?
• 17:38
  Well, listen, this summer I'm gonna be teaching the become your own boss 10 week online course
• 17:45
  live starting June 20th.
• 17:47
  So every Tuesday night, you're gonna be with me, and I'm gonna teach you everything you need
• 17:51
  to know about how to start and how to run a successful small business.
• 17:55
  And I'm America's number 1 small business expert, so that's really saying something.
• 17:59
  Register today.
• 18:05
  Thanks for listening to the small biz chat podcast with Melinda Emerson.
• 18:10
  Subscribe to this podcast, wherever you listen to podcasts, and join us next Wednesday for
• 18:15
  more fantastic information and interviews.
• 18:18
  You can find more sources and small business success strategies by visiting Melinda's
• 18:22
  website succeed as your own boss.com.
• 18:26
  Thanks again for listening, and we'll see you next week.