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From Debt to Discipline with Kevin Talcott · Christian Business Growth Podcast

• 0:00
  Hello and welcome to Christian Business Growth Podcast.
• 0:03
  I'm here with Kevin Talcott.
• 0:05
  He's a financial coach who's going to be sharing a lot of unique things for us today.
• 0:09
  I look forward to hearing his story because he's just released a book recently and it's a unique concept.
• 0:14
  So hopefully we'll share more about that at end of the podcast.
• 0:16
  So Kevin, how did God get you started in business?
• 0:20
  Hello, thanks for having me on here.
• 0:22
  God got me started in business probably about three years ago.
• 0:27
  really, so what I do is I help people out with their finances to get on a budget, get on a plan, pay off debt, learn to save and invest and just be good stewards of their money.
• 0:37
  And God got me into business probably like, I would say even it goes back to probably 10 years ago where I just, I knew nothing about money, nothing.
• 0:47
  And so I just went on this
• 0:51
  journey to figure out how to actually handle my money.
• 0:54
  10 years ago, I actually started to help other people to learn about their money too.
• 0:59
  And over the last three years is really when I was like, okay, I would love to go through, I was always a fan of Dave Ramsey.
• 1:07
  I'd love to go through Dave Ramsey's course to become certified as what he called at the time, a master coach financial training or master training financial coaches, whatever it
• 1:18
  was.
• 1:18
  uh
• 1:21
  And so I went through that program.
• 1:22
  I got certified to become a Ramsey coach.
• 1:26
  And as a result, was able to start taking on some clients.
• 1:30
  And really what it was, how God got me into this business specifically is I did not take it seriously at first.
• 1:38
  I went through the course, nothing, nothing, nothing.
• 1:40
  And then all of sudden, early 2024, we figured out that my wife and I, were expecting.
• 1:46
  And all of a sudden it was like, all right, time to get into gear.
• 1:49
  Time to get this thing going.
• 1:50
  I'm really going to...
• 1:52
  And so from that start of January, 2024 to where we're at today, uh by September when our son was born, I was able to go full-time in the business.
• 2:03
  It was such a blessing.
• 2:04
  now it's what I do every day is sitting across from people.
• 2:09
  All my meetings are over Zoom.
• 2:10
  uh Not so much local, but just sitting across from people and helping them out, hearing their story.
• 2:16
  And uh that was...
• 2:18
  That's kind of the story behind how God got me into business.
• 2:21
  That's cool.
• 2:21
  What's God doing right now in your business?
• 2:25
  ah I would say a whole bunch.
• 2:28
  It's kind of wild actually.
• 2:30
  I'm thinking about, and I was reflecting the other day on, we're one quarter into 2026.
• 2:37
  And I think this has been kind of one of the wildest quarters that I've ever done.
• 2:42
  So not only do I do financial coaching, I also consult with some small businesses, small businesses and nonprofits.
• 2:51
  So from the start of the year, I was able to...
• 2:54
  We launched a uh little fundraiser from one of the nonprofits that I worked for, raised $32,000 in 30 days.
• 3:01
  uh Obviously, as you had mentioned earlier, Lyle, there's a book that I'm working on and this has been a longer process in the making.
• 3:10
  It's been about eight months as of today.
• 3:12
  It's called One Minute Money and it's just meant to take complex financial topics and break them down one minute at a time, make it a little bit easier to digest, understand
• 3:22
  practical examples.
• 3:24
  So between, yeah, the fundraiser, the book, I also lead financial peace university classes.
• 3:30
  Those are Dave Ramsey's uh nine week class.
• 3:34
  I've led 84 families just this year to uh pay off $320,000 in debt uh and $100,000 in new savings.
• 3:43
  That also doesn't include even my personal clients who are actually even paying off a little bit more.
• 3:48
  ah So there's just so many exciting projects in the work.
• 3:53
  ah It's just been an incredible year, an incredible start to the year.
• 3:58
  That's cool.
• 3:58
  You're doing all these different things and they're all aligning the same concept.
• 4:01
  I always ask this because we've got a bunch of financial people on here.
• 4:04
  What is the core value of finances in your opinion?
• 4:10
  Stewardship if I had to put it in one word, it's all God's so Being a good steward of the money that we're given we get to keep 90 % he asked for 10 % and It's really okay.
• 4:24
  What am I doing to manage my money in a way that you're we're honoring God and that we're not I Think most people that I meet with even people that are good with their finances
• 4:39
  they're really not as good as they think.
• 4:41
  And I was there.
• 4:42
  So I can honestly say that.
• 4:44
  I thought I was really good with my money.
• 4:46
  And as a result, what happened is in this book, talk, I don't get so much into it in the story, but on the back, it talks about how I lost $100,000 just by making simple, stupid
• 4:59
  mistakes.
• 5:00
  I can only look back now and see that they were simple, stupid mistakes.
• 5:04
  But at the time, I thought I was doing a good job.
• 5:07
  And...
• 5:09
  In some ways I was being a good steward
• 5:13
  So share one of those mindset.
• 5:15
  Share one of those ideas that you had that was that shift for you.
• 5:23
  Yeah, I think the only thing that you can really do is look back in hindsight.
• 5:29
  So I'll give you an example of this is part of my story of how I lost a bunch of money.
• 5:35
  It's in a way, it's wise to invest the money that you earn so that it can grow and so that we can um do more for the kingdom.
• 5:45
  How you go about investing is another story.
• 5:48
  And so the reason that I lost so much
• 5:51
  is because I took it from investing to not to get into the weeds too much, but investing using a leveraged product.
• 6:02
  And in a way it was more just gambling.
• 6:05
  You can facade it all you want as investing, but it was gambling.
• 6:11
  And it was by this time that this individual stock was gonna hit this price and I'll make a ton of money.
• 6:21
  So the idea is like, okay, you're trying to invest.
• 6:26
  But what I learned out of that is like, okay, it didn't hit that time.
• 6:29
  It didn't hit that price.
• 6:31
  I lost all that money.
• 6:33
  And that right there was, I had to make that realization that day.
• 6:36
  I remember it, because that hurts.
• 6:39
  For me at the time, was about $10,000 and that hurt in one afternoon.
• 6:47
  10 grand, boom, gone, not getting it back.
• 6:50
  And it was like, wow, that stings.
• 6:53
  I don't ever want to be here again.
• 6:55
  And that's where from there, I made a lot of still decisions along the way that it's like, all right, looking back, that probably wasn't the best, but every step from here on is
• 7:10
  more in the right direction.
• 7:11
  And that's what I help other people to do too.
• 7:15
  Yeah, money is such a unique thing.
• 7:17
  Yesterday on the podcast, we did the previous podcast of this, we were talking about the emotional aspect of money and how it's so tied into it.
• 7:26
  And it's important that people realize that you do tie emotion, whether you realize or not, when you're doing something.
• 7:31
  I saw somebody's budget.
• 7:33
  It was online, you know, Facebook type thing.
• 7:35
  This woman was like, how can I survive on this much money?
• 7:37
  And she was spending $2,000 shopping $2,000.
• 7:41
  traveling.
• 7:41
  I'm like going well that's your problem right there.
• 7:44
  It's priorities isn't it?
• 7:46
  And we don't even realize it.
• 7:48
  We get so used to it.
• 7:50
  I had the exact same thing this last week.
• 7:52
  I was meeting with a client who lives in a high cost part of the country.
• 7:57
  He lives in Colorado and he's spending as an individual about $2,000 a month.
• 8:03
  I showed him.
• 8:04
  I was like, here's where a good chunk of the money is going.
• 8:09
  And he just told me, he's like, I don't know how to live on less than that for the groceries.
• 8:14
  That's a problem.
• 8:16
  That's a problem when we get so used to it.
• 8:18
  I remember back in the day, this was probably 10 years ago, but I was really, I was like, okay, I'm not married.
• 8:24
  I want to get married.
• 8:25
  That was a big driver for me.
• 8:27
  That was a decision that I'm like, I want to get married.
• 8:30
  I know that finances, they're one of the top reasons, if not the number one reason for divorce.
• 8:36
  So I'm like, I want to put as much aside.
• 8:39
  I don't know if my wife...
• 8:40
  My future wife, I don't know if she's gonna have student loans, I don't know if she's gonna have credit card debt, but I wanna start us off on the right foot.
• 8:46
  So I did everything that I could.
• 8:48
  almost, Lyle, I almost made a game out of it where it's like, I wanna see how much can I save?
• 8:54
  I lived so frugally.
• 8:57
  And that's what Dave Ramsey talks about.
• 8:59
  says, live for a season, live like no one else so that later you can live and give like no one else.
• 9:06
  And Lyle, we're very fortunate to be in that.
• 9:09
  live and give like no one else later today because of some of the decisions that we made earlier.
• 9:15
  And that's really what it comes down to.
• 9:16
  It's a decision.
• 9:18
  Yeah, people talk about sacrifice, but sacrifice doesn't have to be a huge sacrifice.
• 9:22
  They could be the small things like don't go out to eat one time a week if you go every day, you know, just start trimming things.
• 9:28
  I think that's what I like about your one minute book is there's simple concepts.
• 9:32
  It's just one little thing, one little adjustment, one little fine tuning that could impact your finances forever.
• 9:38
  And there's another really great book out there that I love.
• 9:42
  I send out to a lot of people.
• 9:43
  It's called The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy.
• 9:45
  Have you heard of that?
• 9:47
  So I will take some concepts from there as well and implement them into my own coaching.
• 9:53
  So for example, and I don't always do this, Dave Ramsey is like kind of an all or nothing guy.
• 9:58
  For some people that works.
• 10:00
  For some people it does not.
• 10:02
  So one of my clients, uh she was eating out.
• 10:06
  And I didn't know this until like three months in.
• 10:08
  She was doing Uber Eats every single day.
• 10:12
  It had been this habit that had been ingrained for her.
• 10:16
  Yes, I could tell her like, no Uber Eats, like cut it completely.
• 10:20
  How do think that's gonna work out?
• 10:22
  Probably not very good.
• 10:23
  So instead what we did is we said, okay, do think you could go one day a week without doing Uber Eats?
• 10:29
  She's like, yeah, I could do that.
• 10:30
  Great, let's do that.
• 10:32
  We'd meet again a month later.
• 10:35
  Now she had gone four days without eating Uber Eats, saved $250.
• 10:38
  Do you think you can go two days?
• 10:41
  Well, yeah, I just proved to myself that I could do one day.
• 10:45
  And then you see how that starts to compound versus, all right, no eating out, no doing Uber Eats.
• 10:52
  She does it for a week and then she goes right back to it.
• 10:55
  And that's where most people are at.
• 10:56
  Like they'll do it.
• 10:57
  They'll have this motivation for a while.
• 10:59
  Really what I am focused on is instilling those habits over a longer period of time.
• 11:05
  Yeah, that's a good way of thinking of it.
• 11:07
  Yeah, exactly.
• 11:09
  So we're going to kind of do our shift now into our business growth segment.
• 11:12
  Tell us what are you doing currently that's helping you grow your business that might help some other Christian entrepreneur grow their business?
• 11:18
  Oh man, there's so many things.
• 11:21
  This is really where I'm excited, Lyle.
• 11:26
  I would say the top thing of mine is I have this book.
• 11:32
  And this book is, you can tell, there's this, it won't have, this is a proof copy.
• 11:36
  That's why it has this uh over the top of it.
• 11:39
  So I don't know if this is gonna be on video or not.
• 11:42
  People throw away business cards.
• 11:45
  Do you think anybody's gonna throw away a book like this?
• 11:50
  Maybe, I would hope not.
• 11:52
  ah It might just be that bad.
• 11:55
  Hopefully not.
• 11:56
  ah But this is gonna be a tool that I use for years, decades to come.
• 12:05
  I am so excited about this.
• 12:08
  And not only that, I've got friends, families.
• 12:12
  family, people that are just excited to read this book.
• 12:15
  They're excited because they know somebody who wrote a book.
• 12:18
  And I think the opportunities from there are just like, I can't even express how excited I am when it comes to the book.
• 12:28
  Other business growth.
• 12:29
  um I would say, you know, um this is something that you have to be really careful of, I would think, especially uh as a Christian, is not relying too much on AI.
• 12:41
  It's not God.
• 12:43
  I do use AI a lot and I think anybody who doesn't, to me that would be like, okay, well I would ask, do you use the internet?
• 12:52
  Because that was the next step in the 90s when it's like, you could go look at an encyclopedia Britannica, you could go down to your local library, look at the encyclopedia
• 13:06
  Britannica to try to find that one little factoid and it might take you a few hours or...
• 13:12
  In the 90s, you could just go click on the web.
• 13:16
  It might take a few clicks, but you're there in 10 minutes.
• 13:18
  You find the answer that you're looking for.
• 13:19
  That's how I envision how AI is right now.
• 13:23
  And I think it's so important to stay ahead of it.
• 13:27
  I don't think it's going away, but at the same time, it's not God.
• 13:30
  So we can't rely on AI to solve and fix all of our problems.
• 13:36
  How I use it is as a tool, almost as a personal assistant, to literally take eight hours worth of work.
• 13:42
  And this is why I've had so many things that I've been able to do this year is because I'm leveraging my personal assistant to be really, really efficient, use the most out of my
• 13:53
  time.
• 13:54
  There's no way I would have been able to help 84 families go through Financial Peace University on top of the other clients that I'm working with personally and write a book
• 14:03
  and launch a fundraiser and, and, and like do all these things.
• 14:07
  I'm not bragging about me.
• 14:08
  It's because of the tools and
• 14:11
  resources that I'm utilizing to be able to help more people.
• 14:15
  And I think ah that's been a huge win for me in my business is, how can I give?
• 14:22
  And then I'll end it here.
• 14:23
  This is another thing that I've been realizing in my business.
• 14:26
  The more information that you can just give away, the more you'll be seen as the trusted advisor in that.
• 14:34
  So rather than saying like hiding everything behind a wall and okay, like I've got this one PDF, but if you want,
• 14:40
  like it's gonna be $27, just give it away.
• 14:44
  Become the trusted resource in that space.
• 14:46
  And then if they wanna work with you later, that's when your offer comes in.
• 14:50
  The more that I give away, the bigger my business grows, hands down.
• 14:55
  That's a way looking at it.
• 14:56
  I love that you said that AI is a tool instead of a replacement.
• 15:01
  So many people use it as a replacement.
• 15:02
  So I know people that write their entire book, but the book's written by AI and that scares me because you've got to have your personality.
• 15:09
  know I won't grill you on that part of your book.
• 15:12
  I'm assuming you wrote your book because you seem like a writing type person.
• 15:16
  But
• 15:17
  do do a lot of writing on my own.
• 15:20
  absolutely use leverage.
• 15:21
  I absolutely use AI to leverage my book to help me write it that much quicker.
• 15:25
  But you'll see in there, like it's all my tone.
• 15:31
  It's my words, it's my concepts.
• 15:33
  And a lot of it is not going to be, you know, when it comes specifically to finances, a lot of people will wonder, okay, are you worried about AI replacing you as a financial
• 15:42
  coach?
• 15:43
  Absolutely not.
• 15:44
  Because AI focuses, right now it focuses on the math side of things.
• 15:48
  It doesn't focus on the logic and the human behavior.
• 15:51
  And even then, it hallucinates.
• 15:53
  It tells you, okay, you should go do this.
• 15:55
  It doesn't get the full context, not like a human would, not like I tried to get when I'm sitting in front of them.
• 16:01
  It doesn't see the full picture and understand the human psychology.
• 16:04
  And so as long as people are out there pushing debt, I will continue to have a business.
• 16:11
  And I don't think that's going away anytime soon.
• 16:14
  makes absolute sense.
• 16:15
  And a of people are afraid of doing books, but a book is just like we're talking about finance.
• 16:19
  It's a daily habit.
• 16:21
  It's something you do on a regular basis and having that structure and that strategy behind it to where you know what's coming next.
• 16:27
  You have any input for someone who's thinking about creating a book for themselves?
• 16:33
  Yeah, ah I will say this was a uh huge benefit to me, but I happened to get connected.
• 16:41
  think if I wouldn't have got connected to the right person when it comes to publishing, and that was just a connection that we had as a group that I was a part of, uh that was
• 16:51
  huge.
• 16:51
  I actually didn't have writing a book on the horizon.
• 16:54
  I would have not tried to do it on my own.
• 16:57
  uh To put together a quality book takes a lot of time and effort.
• 17:03
  and it has to be a decision that you make upfront and then just actually sticking to it.
• 17:09
  So having somebody that could help you to publish, even if it's on Amazon KDP and you're not trying to do it on your own, because if you try to do it on your own, like you're not
• 17:19
  an expert on that.
• 17:20
  If you are, go ahead, but if you're not, find somebody who can help.
• 17:25
  It's not that expensive and it's worth every penny.
• 17:30
  Good work.
• 17:31
  Yeah, having a team in place is important.
• 17:35
  That's a key in your connections with other people who you connect with.
• 17:38
  I'm sure if you're in business, you have lots of connections, just start asking, who's written a book?
• 17:42
  Who's published a book?
• 17:43
  What did you do?
• 17:44
  Who did you use?
• 17:44
  How did you use it?
• 17:47
  Great tips, all of it.
• 17:49
  Reach out, use your existing connections to figure out, how can I do this?
• 17:54
  Yep.
• 17:55
  Cool.
• 17:56
  As we end up, one little tidbit of wisdom you want to leave us with and tell us how we can get in touch with you.
• 18:01
  Yeah, one tidbit of wisdom is, and I'm gonna take a play from my financial coaching playbook, but it also applies to all business owners, whether small or large.
• 18:11
  uh Most people in their personal finances and business don't plan as well as they could or should for the unexpected non-monthly expenses.
• 18:23
  Let me give you an example.
• 18:24
  Let's make it personal finances.
• 18:26
  You pay insurance.
• 18:28
  you pay car insurance.
• 18:29
  It's $2,000 a year.
• 18:31
  It goes out one time a year.
• 18:33
  If you're not planning for it throughout the whole year, all of sudden $2,000 in your budget for that month, it just makes it look like, well, how am I supposed to budget if I
• 18:44
  have one $2,000 if this is your personal life?
• 18:51
  How do you budget around that over the course of that one month?
• 18:53
  It's gonna be really hard.
• 18:55
  So it's an easier option is to use what's called sinking funds.
• 18:59
  Sinking funds are basically just a designated saving account for that, that you plan for throughout the course of the whole year.
• 19:06
  So if you know that in January, sinking fund or your insurance is coming out, then I'm going to start in the following month, I'm going to set aside $200 in February, March,
• 19:19
  April, May, June, all the way up until January.
• 19:22
  And then by then you'll have enough
• 19:25
  money in your account.
• 19:26
  And same thing when it comes to business.
• 19:28
  If you have uh an expense that you know is coming and it will probably make that month's budget.
• 19:35
  If you're doing a budget for your business, which I hope people are, if you're doing a budget for your personal finances, which I hope you are, it'll make that much easier to
• 19:44
  budget around if you plan for it throughout the course of multiple months and actually set that money aside.
• 19:49
  That's a key point.
• 19:51
  Actually setting that aside versus just
• 19:54
  trying to do it all in that one month.
• 19:56
  It gets really hard and that's where most people fail, sinking funds, um little savings account.
• 20:02
  How people can get in touch with me, Liao, is uh you can check out my website.
• 20:06
  That's the best way to contact me.
• 20:08
  It's telco financialcoaching.com.
• 20:12
  So, yeah.
• 20:12
  T-A-L-C-O-T-T, Financial Coaching.
• 20:18
  Yep, telcoffinancialcoaching.com.
• 20:20
  You can also look up One Minute Money on Amazon.
• 20:24
  It's one-minute money.
• 20:26
  uh And you can feel free to check me out there as well.
• 20:30
  I would love it.
• 20:31
  My goal, I mean, this is a short book, but it hopefully has a lot of helpful finance uh tips packed in there.
• 20:40
  So, Lyle, thanks for letting me be a part of the podcast.
• 20:44
  Thank you.