Well, the first thing is you got to figure out where you are right.
You gotta like just like with anything, if you're trying to go from
LA to New York, you got to figure out, Wait, where am
I am at the bus station? I'm at the airport. So with money
mindset, need to figure out what are the things that I learned, What
did my parents teach me? What did I take on to be my truth?
And is it working for me? So that we can look and say,
oh, I have the story that I'm never going to be enough?
Is that working for me? You are listening to Carrie Letz's Financial Survival Network,
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Survival Network now more than ever, and welcome. This is Financial Survival Network
you are listening to or watching. My name is Carrie lust You're a host,
and hey, we got a special guest for you today, Bob Wheeler.
The money nerve. You know, I find people do have a lot
of nerve when it comes to money. Especially when I expect to get paid
Bob. But hey, welcome to the show. Thanks for having mckerry.
Great to be here. Hey, So first, what is the money nerve?
I don't think it's quite what I describe, but how do you find
it? So money nerve? You know, we react to money viscerally,
Right, we win a lottery ticket, we're like, whoa, we bounce
a check, we feel it in our gut, and people have heart attacks,
we have health issues. The money nerve is that physical feeling of where
we're holding our joy and pain around money, and most of it's pain.
So where does the pain come from? Is this a youthful stuff? Trauma?
Where is it? A lot of it starts as kids. You know,
if you're the kid getting the free lunch and other kids are telling you,
wow, you're the poor kid, or you can't wear designer clothes,
or you're the kid that's always getting taken to school in a limo. Right,
we start seeing that stuff early on and our parents, you know,
you ask for a toy, you're greedy or we can't afford that or whatever
you want. So we start getting these messages we can talk about money.
We can't talk about money it's shameful. It's good. Rich people are greedy,
rich people are wonderful. We start making up stories and then we base
our life choices on that, so it turns down to beliefs then, right,
yeah, mindset, mindset, And it's really hard to change your mindset,
isn't it. Well it's hard. I mean it's doable, and sometimes,
like there's certain things I still have a scarcity mindset. Sometimes I'm like,
oh my god, there's not enough food in the house. I need
six warehouses. I can laugh at it, but I still have that huh
is there enough? All right? So I don't let it guide me.
I don't let it, you know, drive my life. But I'm aware.
Yeah, it's there. It's always there, lurking in the past.
So what is the best way to overcome it, to rise beyond your mindset?
Well, the first thing is you got to figure out where you are,
right. You got to like, just like with anything, if you're
trying to go from LA to New York, you got to figure out,
Wait, where am I am at the bus station? I'm at the airport.
So with money mindset, need to figure out what are the things that
I learned, What did my parents teach me what did I take on to
be my truth? And is it working for me? So that we can
look and say, oh, I have the story that I'm never going to
be enough? Is that working for me? No, I'm going to push
the boundaries and I'm gonna start doing things to get my confidence up. It
might be that I'm totally happy hiding in the bedroom and never speaking to another
soul. Nothing wrong with that. We're not here though. Hey, look,
you can play it safe, right, and then you don't grow.
So this is your helping people grow? Then? In effect, right,
absolutely, if we don't feel the pain, we're not going to grow,
all right, So how do you get people to feel the pain? So
what I do? Either, like if I'm in tax meetings with clients and
I do a lot of the hurtie work in my tax sessions, you know,
I might just ask people what's going on? When you know, I
saw that you sort of reacted to this, what's going on? I might
explore their stories and just give them a safe place to say, yeah,
my dad used to tell me I was an idiot, or whatever it might
be. If I do a lot of workshops where we go in and we
do experiential things about money and processes with other people, and people get to
sort of feel into oh wow, I really have resistance to this, or
I really like blaming my parents. I don't want to take responsibility, and
so I do different things to try and shake up the emotions to get people
really starting to think about, oh, how does gender play a role,
How does my sexuality play a role, How does my economic status play a
role, how does my religion play a role, any of those things to
just start Oh wow, that had impact. That that impact. Okay,
so so we get to the bottom of this, and but then, you
know, there's an old joke. I know, we're both into comedy,
but this guy's going to his psychiatrist because he's in New York City. He's
afraid to go on the subway. He just can't work it up. So
finally, you know, he goes goes down to the subway. First train
passes, he can't get on, the second train, the third, he
leaves the subway, goes back to his shrink and says, you know,
doctor, I'm still afraid of subways. I mean, a bad joke,
but it's a psychiatrist joke. So you got to expected to be bad,
right exactly. Yeah, It's like that guy goes on the subway and he's
just he's wrapped in a cellophane around his his midsection, and the shrink says
to him, hey, I can see your nuts. So anyway, but
you know so, but growth is hard. I mean it is for myself,
I know, like I, you know, to stop doing certain things
or to start doing other things that you want to do. Uh, you
know, I don't know what what actually moves me to do it, other
than the desire not to fail, or you know, or knowing there's something
wrong and I need to make a change. Yeah. I mean usually when
the heat gets too hot, we move. When we start to get really
uncomfortable, we want to get out of it. So as long as we're
comfortable, there's no need to look at things and move away. But the
minute we're starting to say, oh, this has impacting me in a way
that doesn't feel good, I think I'm going to move over here and see
if it's different. So it's sort of like you have to go through the
fire. You can't go around it, right, You got to you gotta
feel the pain to be able to move on from it. Yeah, yeah,
I couldn't to agree. I couldn't agree with you more so, Uh,
okay, So you obviously dealt with a lot of people that have these
issues. I guess we all do to a greater or lesser extent. Like
what was like the hardest case you ever had getting somebody to really really make
the move? You know? I think one of the cases were actually and
I didn't ultimately get them to make the move. And that's why I think
it was so hard. They had their own business, they were an architect,
and they were bleeding money. It was failing, and we looked at
all the numbers and I'm like, you're going to be out of business in
a year and a half. He got this incredible offer, six figures high,
six figures, lots of vacation. It was going to pay off everything
and actually give him a lot of freedom, and he said, yeah,
I can't do it. My parents are going to be really disappointed if I
close my business. And I said, you're going to close your business anyway,
and he's like, well it has to happen to me. I can't.
I can't actively close my business. And so I watched him just completely
fail because he didn't want to disappoint. He didn't want to disappoint his parents
rather than have an honest conversation with his parents and say this is what I
need you to do, And so he chose to. He ran the business
into the ground. And he had such an opportunity, and a lot of
us have opportunity and we just don't want to see it because it's scary or
uncomfortable or somebody might judge us. Yeah, oh, that's really a sad
story. It's a sad story. I have the happy story now, you
know. I had a client who was about one hundred thousand dollars in debt.
She worked in she works in the entertainment industry. She would do clothing
for costumes and all that stuff, and she would put everything on a credit
card because she was getting miles, you know, and then get reimbursed.
Well, a couple of studios didn't pay her. She had to pay the
debt. When I showed her how she could do it differently. Within a
couple of years, she saved up money, bought a house, paid off
all her debt, and every time she gets a tax bill and she ows
forty or fifty thousand dollars, she's like I'm so excited to pay all this
money because I'm making money. And she loves paying taxes because we're not paying
the most taxes, but she knows she's making money and her life is good.
Hey, you gotta you know. That's always like, oh God,
I made it, all this money, all these taxes. But hey,
you made all this money, right, you made all this money. It's
a good thing. It's a good thing. It's a good thing, all
right. So what are three things that anybody can do to help rein in
or make positives that money nerve they can make a decision today, I'm going
to start doing things differently, even though in the past I was scared.
They can immediately start saving five bucks a week and putting it away just to
start to see that that they can actually create a new habit. And the
third thing they can do, I think it's really important to let yourself off
the hook. Actually forgive yourself for your past mistakes and say, yeah,
I did that in the past. I did the best with what I had,
and now I know better, I'm going to do better. That's probably
the hardest thing to do, is to forgive yourself your stupidity, right,
Yeah, yeah, for sure. For sure. Yeah, that's a tough
one. All right. Well, hey, you know it's hard to get
beyond those mistakes that you make. But you wouldn't be the person you are
if you didn't make those mistakes, would you. No? Absolutely, And
if you can convert those into teachable moments instead of fails, right, then
we never fail. We're just constantly learning. Well, I always say,
you're never a failure unless you believe you're a failure, right right, absolutely,
all right, keep getting back up. Okay, Well, hey,
you're quite inspiring. Like what you have to say. Just tell us about
comedy and how using comedy can make you more effective in any business, any
venture, relationship that you're in. Well, for me, comedy is a
great icebreaker when I'm trying to work with clients, tax clients and things are
tense, I can throw out a joke. I can tell a funny story
that might happen to be paralleled with their life, and they can hear that
story because it's not them, and they'll say, wait a minute, that's
me. Oh maybe right, So for me, comedy it also transcends language.
I've traveled a lot, and I have been to countries where nobody speaks
English, but I can be playful, I can joke, and it just
is a connector to a lot of people when we're willing to say, yeah,
I want to hear, I want to have some fun, like I
want to do things. I want to accomplish things, and for me,
the whole purpose when I'm doing business, when I'm doing any thing, I
always ask myself, am I having fun? Because if I'm not having fun,
what's the point? Yeah? I so agree with you. When it
starts not becoming fun, then it's time to move on. And I've actually
done that in a few businesses before. Hey, people are definitely going to
want to find out more about you, Bob, your podcast, your book,
tell us how we connect with you on the internet. Yeah. Absolutely.
It is the money Nerve dot com. The Money Nerve, not nerd.
I'm a nerd, but it's the Money Nerve dot Com. And my
podcast is money you should ask. All of that is on the website,
The Money Nerve, my books. I've written a couple of books, the
children's book and the Money Nerve Book, and we've got a lot of free
resources. We always love talking to people about money and their mindset. All
right, Hey, this is a great having you on. Really appreciate the
kind words, the inspiration. It's definitely inspirational. No matter how low you
fall, you could always go lower, but you can always raise yourself up
as well. If you got a question for Bob or myself, shoot me
an email kl at Carrie LUTs dot com. Link to Bob's site. You'll
find it in the show notes to this interview on Financial Survival Network dot com
and please sign up for a free newsletter when you click it. Bob,
Total pleasure. Thanks so much for stopping by. We'll have you on again.
Great Carrie. Thanks, have a great rest of your week. Thanks
for listening to Carrie Letz's Financial Survival Network, your solution to today's trying times.
For the latest, go to Financial Survivalnetwork dot com. Financial Survival Network
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