Latest / The Entrepreneur's Wife: Finding Purpose as the Helper of a Small Business Owner in a Feminist Obsessed World / 5 quirky things that help you win in your 20's

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5 quirky things that help you win in your 20's · The Entrepreneur's Wife: Finding Purpose as the Helper of a Small Business Owner in a Feminist Obsessed World

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: What is up guys?
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to another episode of the Entrepreneur's Wife Podcast.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Carly Rain.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: If you're new here, this is a podcast where we talk about finding purpose as the helper to our small business owners in this feminist obsessed world.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: And today we're gonna talk about five quirky attributes that have helped Briston and I win in our 20s.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: And honestly, these five things I feel like older people in our lives, at least in my life, when I was in college, my grandparents really talked about these five things.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: And um I don't know, they've just really affected our 20s, and I feel like they they're really setting us up as like I'm 27, so I'm getting close to 30, and I feel like the further we've gone um in life together, they've just really helped us.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because I will say this this is like a philosophy that I live by and I will preach because I just think that it's so true, but like you're you start at a baseline, and every decision that you make either compounds you up to where you want to be, or it compounds you down to where you don't want to be.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so if you think about it, like whatever decisions you make today, they are going to compound you closer to your goals, or closer to the inspiration that you want to achieve one day, or closer to the outcome that you want, or they're not.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I I honestly don't think we live by this philosophy in the world.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like as humans, we just naturally are like, we we're just whatever I feel in the moment, that's what I want to do.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: We don't really, we don't really have fruits of the spirit, um, which is why we need Jesus and the Holy Spirit.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so usually our decisions are like how we feel in the moment, and that's very dangerous because if we made every decision based on how we felt in the moment, 50 years down the road, we're probably gonna end up somewhere that we don't want to be.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so these five things are things that have required a lot of patience, have required where we've had to put like our desires and our pleasures aside in order to choose the hard thing in the moment, but it's benefited us long term.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there's a quote that says, like, you can either choose pain now for long-term pleasure, or you can choose short-term pleasure for long-term pain.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: And if you will, I'll just throw in a little evangelism snippet right here, but that's the gospel, like that's eternity.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: So you can live your life, which is as Ecclesiastes says, it's like the vapor of the wind.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: It goes by so fast.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: You can live your life with short-term pleasures and spend eternity in hell, or you can live your life putting those pleasures aside in order to surrender and do God's will.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: And it always doesn't always feel good in the moment.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but denying your flesh, I think, is is a great, wise, mature practice, and it will benefit you in eternity when you're in heaven and the Lord rewards you.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: So here are five attributes that have helped us when in our 20s.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: Number one is a very controversial topic, and I am probably actually gonna write a book about this because this is a personal testimony of mine.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: But paying for college in cash, this is something that I am very passionate about, and I just believe that you should go to college and cash flow it.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: And you might be sitting here like, Carly, how is the average American supposed to go to college and cash flow it?
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where creative ideas come in because I understand that not everyone has a 529 plan or their parents are paying for their school.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: And just to let you know, my parents did not pay for a dime of my school, and Briston's parents did not pay for a dime of his school.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: We actually had to pay for our own schools, and so knowing that we both decided to go to an affordable college.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: We both decided to do college athletics because we knew we could get an academic scholarship, we knew we could get an athletic scholarship, and guys, we both worked on top of doing school full-time and being college athletes.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: We both had part-time jobs, we always worked in the summers, we always worked on breaks.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: So I you might not get to go to Baylor, like you might not get to go to Texas Tech.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: And that's okay.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, my original plan, if you know me from back then, my original plan was to go to Texas Tech.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I wanted to cash flow college, and I thought I could get enough scholarships to go to Texas Tech.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: And quickly, uh, towards March of my senior year, I realized that yes, I had some scholarships, but like I was gonna go so much in debt to go to this D1 school to live this college experience for four years of my life, and I was gonna pay on debt for like 30 years of my life for four years.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: Like when you logically just map that out, it it just sounds, I'm sorry, it just sounds stupid.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and like now being 27 and being like college was so short, I'm like, yeah, like you really should cash flow college.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I encourage you to go ask 20 people who have student loans who have been paying on their student loans, ask people in their 30s, in their 40s, in their 20s, who just got out of college.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: I encourage you to go ask them how they like paying on interest for their student loans.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I guarantee you, all of them will say that they wish that they didn't have student loans and that they would go away.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think there would be one person who would say, Yes, I just love my student loan payment so much.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: So cash flowing college popped in at least my head when I took a Dave Ramsey class.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: It was a high school personal finance class in my junior year of high school.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: He taught me to cash flow college.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know what about that concept just like I don't know, just like hit me, but I was like, yes, I'm gonna cash flow college.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so when I realized my senior year that I could not afford to go to Texas Tech, y'all, we have to put our identity and our pride aside.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because everybody, like so many of my friends were going to D1 schools, a lot of my friends were going to Texas Tech, and I remember talking to my parents.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: My parents told me, hey, we can't, like, we're not paying for college, you're gonna have to do it on your own.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember sitting there being like, I like y'all, I vividly remember sitting there being like, is my goal of getting college paid for in cash, is it actually worth it?
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: Like, should I choose the college experience of going to Texas Tech, this D1 school that has all the bougie stuff, right?
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: The football games, the basketball games, the events, like the whole experience.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: Should I choose that and take out student loans over dropping out?
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: And at that time, when I was thinking about dropping out, I didn't have a scholarship for athletics yet.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: So my my plan was to just go to a community college and work and go to school that way.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: And the Texas Tech idea in the moment seems a lot better.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like it seems like, yeah, you need to do that, you need to go to Texas Tech.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you can figure out your student loans later.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: The community college working part-time doesn't seem glamorous, but long-term-wise, like when I'm 27 and I don't have a student loan payment, and I get to use that money for whatever Bristol and I want to use it for, that's nice.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: That offers a lot of peace.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: That puts us ahead, that lets us win.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so I had to choose like, am I gonna drop out?
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what am I gonna do?
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: And it was kind of like this identity moment of like, well, you know, because I feel like a lot of us we make decisions based on outward appearances.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what are other people gonna think?
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: And it was just a defining factor of my life where I was like, you know what?
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I want to stick to my goal.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know why I decided to stick to my goal, but I did.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I just thought that that, well, actually, I do know why.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: I watched my parents struggle.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: We were middle class, we had all, you know, the nice stuff that middle class people have, but I watched them financially struggle, and I did not want to repeat that cycle in my adult life, and so I chose dropping out of Texas Tech, and then like a month later, I get a call to do to go to SAU, and all that stuff happened.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: Y'all, I will also say this: even going to SAU, I didn't have school completely paid for my first two years of SAU.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: That's why I had to work.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like I had an athletic scholarship and I had an academic scholarship, but I still had to pay out of pocket.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: Also, I have a whole series.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: This is why I want to write a book about it, because there are so many ways that you can pay for school.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: And at the end of the day, the job that you get after college is an entry-level job.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: So, like, it doesn't matter where you go, like, just get the degree the cheapest way possible.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: Just get the degree.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: And especially if you're needing to go to law school or medical school or like have school past your four year, four years of bachelor's school.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: If if you're having to do more school, please do yourself a favor and not have to take out student loans for that.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: So I could there's a whole series on my YouTube channel, literally called From Student to Graduate, the Debt Free Way, and I explain exactly how you pay for school in cash.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're curious about that, you should go listen to it.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I I eventually want to turn it into a book because I think it's very helpful for our generations that are, I mean, I think we have like maybe a billion.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: You can look at like how much we have in, um, I'm actually gonna look it up right now.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: Like, how much we have in student loan debt um is crazy, and it might even be pushing the um, let's see, how much do Americans have in student loan debt?
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, let's see.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: As of 2026, Americans, oh, oh my gosh, y'all.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: This is like how hang on, how does this compare to the US debt?
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so just to put it into perspective, we as Americans, as of twenty twenty-six, a total of one point eight six trillion trillion with a T trillion dollars in student loan debt.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's federal and private combined.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, our American, like as as America, our US national debt is more than 38 trillion.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: I would not be surprised if we surpass the national debt in student loan debt.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: And this is the thing about student loan debt that I this is my last thing about student loans.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: There's no collateral.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: Like, at least with a car or a house, they can take something away.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: They can take the car away if you don't pay it, they can take the house away if you don't pay it.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: What are they gonna take away if you don't pay your student loans?
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like your degree, a piece of paper?
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: They can't like they can't take that away.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: So the whole logic behind student loan debt, I just think is dumb.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: So if you want to win in your 20s or in life, pay off your student loan debt as fast as possible, or just don't take out student loan debt and cash flow your kids' college or help them figure out how to clash flow their college.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I promise you they will be so thankful and just live a life where they win.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, that's number one.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, this is also controversial.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: I think all of these are controversial to be honest.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, is picking a career based on passion and calling, not money and income.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: This is big.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: So, like, if you were to do a survey and you were to ask people in college why they're picking their major, like I remember meeting people in college, and so many people would say, Oh, I'm I'm an accounting degree or I'm doing this degree, and you would ask why?
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: Like, why did you choose that degree?
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: And what do they say?
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: They say, because it makes a lot of money.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so we have this, like we're both as humans, we're believing this lie that the more money I make, the happier I'll be.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: The more money I make, the more I'm gonna win in life.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: The more money I make, the more successful I'm gonna be.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: And it's so funny because Mr.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: Beast is like this famous YouTuber, and he literally talks about how he makes millions of dollars and he still lives paycheck to paycheck and is broke.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so I just want to tell you that the more money you make is not gonna make you happier and it's not gonna make you more successful.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, I, as Christians, I feel like it's important to choose a career based on your passion and the calling that God has put on your life because one day you will give an account for the life that you lived.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: And the book Driven by Eternity by John Bevere is just so good because it puts this into perspective that like don't waste a day.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: And even like Tolkien, when he writes The Lord of the Rings, he literally says, like, use the time that you're given, use the time that you're given for God's glory.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: And how do we glorify God?
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: Well, number one, we as humans are made in God's image, and so when we are practicing with our hands the gifts and the talents that he's given us, in a sense, we glorify God because we are glorifying how he made us, and it's just it's just a beautiful picture.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so I want to encourage you to base a career and your job off of your passion and your calling, and um you know, people mean well.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna tell you that like these five things.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: If you do these five things, people are gonna not agree with you, they will judge you, they they will not agree with you, they might not like you.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like I promise you, because Briston and I have been there, we do these five things, and these five things have caused some friction in different parts of our life because uh it's hard, and I I don't know why people just don't do these five things, but people just don't do these five things, and it causes tension, if you will.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: So, like I was in college in our senior year, we had to decide like what field we were gonna go into in graphic design.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: We had to apply for a job in that field, and we had to show our professor, hey, I applied for this job, and we had to talk about the industry we wanted to go into.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: At this point in my life, I've really felt like God was shifting me to the nonprofit philanthropy sector.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: And it's so funny because like this is what I do with Briston in our business, like it's something that I'm super passionate about.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: And it's literally, I wrote a planner and devotional called Be Generous.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: Like, this is you know, and so I remember telling my professor, like, hey, I want to go into the nonprofit sector, all this stuff, right?
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: And he after class, he pulled me aside and said, Hey, can I talk to you?
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: Totally meant well, like, totally meant well.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: He himself is a Christian, and he said, Hey, I just want to let you know, you will not make money in this field if you go into it.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: He said, you know, he complimented me based on like my work that I did in graphic design.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: He said, You can go work for a design agency for corporate America and you can make a lot of money in this field.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I just looked at him and I just was like, look, like that, I don't want to do that.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to work corporate America, I don't want to work for a design agency.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: I want to work for something that I believe in and that I'm passionate about and that I can actually get behind.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the biggest thing, guys, is like something that growing up my parents were very adamant about is they always talked about giving 100% effort.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't care if we got last or if we didn't win.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: At the end of the day, when we left the sport, they always asked us in the car, did you give 100%?
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: Did you leave everything out on the field?
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: Like, did you try your best?
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: And that was their philosophy.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: That's what they taught us.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I really feel like it's affected my adult life, especially in my work.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like if you're in a job that you don't love and you're just doing it for the money, you're not gonna give 100% and you're not gonna give your best.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: And as Christians, I also feel like we are called to give our best, and it's a disservice to your boss and to that company if you don't give your best and if you slack off, and you will give an account for that one day when you stand before the Lord.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: So I just encourage you to base a career off of your passion and calling.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: And this is how Texas Outlaw came to be.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: Like, literally, Briston based his love for entrepreneurship and his love for running, and he made Texas Outlaw, and he got so much backlash, like it's just crazy how how many people were like, Yeah, you know, they thought it was a hobby, and they were fine with him doing it when he was in college.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: And but when he decided to go full-time in the business, y'all, oh my gosh, like you would have thought we were like jumping off a cliff or like moving across the world, like you know, we you would have thought we were doing something illegal.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it was just came with a lot of ridicule, and uh it's he is so passionate about this area and this industry that he I feel like because of his passion, like it has succeeded because of that.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: Like he's gonna work so hard because he loves what he does.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: He guys, he loves coming to work, like he literally will come to work at 6 a.m.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: and he will work for like 12-14 hours.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: And um even when we're on vacation, he's constantly thinking of ideas and different stuff.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so I just want to encourage you to choose a career based on your passion and your calling.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I promise you, if you choose a career based on that, number one, you're gonna love what you do.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's gonna make you happier.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna win, you're gonna.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like when Mondays come, you're gonna be excited to go to work.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I've been in a job where I didn't love it, and it was so hard when Mondays came, and all I was looking forward to was Fridays, and that's a terrible way to live.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: That's awful, it's miserable, okay?
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: But like when you love your job and Mondays come, you're so excited for Monday, and you just can't wait to start the week.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: And that's just that's what I want for you guys.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: So, number three, okay, number three is putting Jesus first.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: And when I say putting Jesus first, I actually mean that you don't make decisions.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: Like you actually, before you make a decision, you pray about it and you go to the Lord about it, where you live, who you marry, what you do, how you spend your money, if you move or not, like where you go to church, like every decision, pray about it.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: Because the Lord wants to be a part of your life.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: And this has really caused us to win because I because God knows the future.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: And it's so funny because like this guys, this concept of what I'm talking about, this was the fall.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: Like, this was the Garden of Eden.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so like if you think about it, God knew, like, God knew, hey, Adam and Eve, if you eat of this fruit, you will spiritually die.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: He knew the fullness of their uh the effects of their decisions, he knew the future, right?
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: And yet, they as humans, rather than listening to God and going to God, they decided to use their own wisdom and their own understanding about the situation and their own perspectives, and they took of the fruit, and guess what?
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: They died spiritually, and they were so shocked at the outcome, and it caused this whole fall to happen, and then God had to send Jesus and then this whole ripple effect, right?
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: And then they had kids, and then their son kills their other son, it's just one thing after another.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: And it again, I at the beginning of this podcast, I literally talked about how your decisions either compound up or compound down.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: So if we take Adam and Eve, they're here, and guess what?
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I'm gonna eat of this fruit.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, okay, spiritually die.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, now because I did that, now I have kids, and now my kid is jealous of my other kid, so he decides to kill his brother.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, you know, it just keeps like doing that.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: So putting Jesus first is not just you know throwing the label on that you're a Christian and you go to church on Sundays.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: Putting Jesus first means, hey, like, Jesus, what where do I need to work?
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: Or Jesus, like, what job do I need to have?
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: Or like, Jesus, how are we supposed to parent our kids?
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: Or are we supposed to homeschool?
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_00: Are we we supposed To private school, are we supposed to public school?
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: Or are we supposed to move?
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: Like, are we living where you want us to live?
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the biggest experience that Briston and I have is when he was getting ready to graduate college and we wanted to go full-time into this business, he prayed, like, do we stay in Arkansas or do we move?
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: And the Lord, through different confirmations, through dreams, through people, through scripture, he just confirmed over time, hey, I want you to move to a place called Longview, Texas.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: And we have seen the effects of obeying, and it has one in our life.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, like the business has grown rapidly.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: And have there been hard times?
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, this podcast is called the Entrepreneur's Wife Podcast.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm going to be honest, it's been hard on me because we have two girls and we don't have any family in the area.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, I'm sitting here like, okay, God, like, we're obeying you.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: We're seeing the blessing of being faithful and obeying you.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: But at the same time, this is hard.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I would love to live, love to live close to family, love to live closer to my parents, love to every day just be able to, you know, see them and hang out and whatever.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: We had a great community in Magnolia where we lived in Arkansas.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not gonna lie, it's been hard here finding great community.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: We have some friends, but it's not like how it used to be.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so I don't want to say that like every single one of these, they come with their challenges, but overall, they're gonna set you up for a better life.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I hope you're seeing that through these testimonies that they just make your life so much better and peaceful and worth it, and not as stressed and just worrisome and fearful.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so that's my biggest encouragement for you.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: Number four.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: This is also another one.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, this has to do with money.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: Living below your means, living a conservative lifestyle.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: So, something that Briston and I are very adamant about that I learned also in high school in the Dave Ramsey um class is cash cars.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: So, our personal car is a cash car, it's a 2006 Ford Expedition, and I love that thing.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's a V8, it has three rows, leather seats, like top of the notch for it's a year.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: It was like$7,000.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: We decided to sell our Jeep, pay cash for this car.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: We don't have a car payment.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: I never won a car payment, to be honest.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: I never won a car payment.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: I have had a car payment for a few short time and I hated it and it sucked.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: So, what's the benefit of living below your means in a conservative lifestyle?
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: Well, number one, you get to save money.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: So, like, y'all literally, we went to Petty Jean and went hiking this past weekend, and we come back home, and for some reason, the power went out in Gilmer, and so we didn't have any power in our house.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: So finally the power turns back on, and our AC is not working, and we are flipping the breakers, doing all the stuff, it's not working, guys.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so we call an electrician, he lets us know hey, your fan in your AC, the thing that makes it blow.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: Well, when the power went out, it like tripped it up, and it you need a new one.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: And that is not a cheap thing, by the way.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: It was like hundreds close to a thousand dollars.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so this is a very expensive thing.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the average American lives paycheck to paycheck and can't pay for a$400 emergency thing.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: So when you live a conservative, when you live below your means and you live a conservative lifestyle, when things like this happen, you don't panic.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: Like it sucked in the moment.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_00: It was like, okay, well, we have to pay for this fan because our AC is not working, and we need our AC to work because it's still hot in Texas, even though it's November, still gets up to like 70 degrees.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so we need our AC to work, and but when you live a conservative lifestyle, it's okay.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's not the end of the world, and it helps you win because guess what?
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: We're not having to go in credit card debt to pay for this.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: Like we save every month.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: We save.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: We try to budget as good as possible.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: We try to be conservative with our spending.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_00: We don't, you know, I don't get my nails done, I don't do my hair.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying these things are bad.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you can go get your nails done, you can go do your hair, you can you can buy expensive stuff, but are you living below your means or are you living this lifestyle that's actually more expensive than what you can actually afford?
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: And to me, watching my parents struggle like this because they lived paycheck to paycheck for many years growing up, I don't see it worth it.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: Like, yeah, you might get the bougie stuff, and like in the moment you have this present pleasure, but again, like I said at the beginning of this podcast, you have two options.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you can choose pleasant, you know, short-term pleasure for long-term pain of years of credit card debt or bad credit score or worrying every month how you're gonna make it till the end of the month.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: You can choose that, or you can say, you know what, you're young, you're in your 20s.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: Save, put it in the stock market, put it in a high-yield savings account, let it grow on interest, right?
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: Let it compound.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: And long term, it might be painful in the moment to say no to eating out and cooking at home or not getting your nails done or whatever.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: But like long term, you're gonna be so thankful because when your AC goes out or when something happens, like you're gonna have the money to take care of it.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: So um another thing we did is we have a very conservative house.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I was very adamant about that.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: When we went to buy a house, I did not want to be house poor, and house poor is when your house payment is so much that you don't have enough money to like go do activities.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: We are very much an activity family, and so you know, I think it just comes down to your goals.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: Do you want a bougie house?
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_00: And if you have a bougie house, you're probably gonna stay in your house for most of the year because all that money is going to your house.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: Well, for us, we like to travel, we like to camp, we like to go do things.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_00: So I wanted a house where it met our needs, but at the same time, it's not constricting us or making us stressed if we want to go take a weekend to go camping in Arkansas to see the pretty leaves or whatever, right?
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: So that's this thing.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm gonna move on to number five.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: So, number five is setting goals, and this is something that I think just started because we were in sports, and when you're in sports, you usually set a goal and then you try to achieve it during that season.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: But um, setting goals is really important to growing as a person.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think we should set goals in like our marriage and in our family.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we should set goals in our finances, we should set goals in our fitness.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, right now, like I'm training for a half marathon that's in one month, guys.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's in one month.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's the St.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: Jude half marathon.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: And this keeps me accountable.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: Like when you set a goal and you make a plan to achieve that goal, you now have an accountability system and you're gonna grow as a person.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I just think it's really important if you want to win and you want to get better.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's important to set goals in different areas of your life.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you don't need to overwhelm yourself, you know.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: Like I have goals that are realistic based on the life that we're living right now when we didn't have kids.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: I could set goals in a different way.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: We could save more money, we could do more ambitious fitness goals, I could write longer.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I think setting goals comes with also balancing the life that you're in and the season that you're in, and just realizing like, okay, God, this is the season I'm in, but what can I do with the time that I have?
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_00: Like I I literally repeated that.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_00: But what can I do with the time that I have?
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, how can I discipline myself and just achieve, you know, a reading goal or even like the Bible?
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I want to read a scripture a day, or I want to read a chapter a day, or I'm gonna pray every day, or write three things that I'm thankful for every day, you know, different things like that, setting goals like that.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: So these are the five quirky attributes that have helped us win in our 20s.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I know because I've seen the fruit of them, so I know if you do these, they are gonna help you win in your 20s too.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_00: They've helped us win in our business, they've helped us win in our personal life.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I'm just gonna list them really fast.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's paying for college in cash, picking a career based on your passion and calling, not money or income, putting Jesus first, um, living below your means in a conservative lifestyle, and setting goals.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: So, my prayer for you today is that as you look towards the end of the year and you think about 2027, how can you start implementing these five different quirky attributes in your life?
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_00: And let me know how you plan on doing them.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_00: Comment below how you plan on putting them in your life.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: Are you already doing some of these five things?
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: And if so, please let me know.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, give this a like and a share to someone that this is helpful for.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_00: Be sure to subscribe so that you get all the episodes, and I will see you guys on the next one.