You Money Features and What to Know

Your first point here is make money easy. Yes. And so when I ask you, when someone's coming at money, our relationship with money is already at a place kind of like finding love. We're desperate for it. We're stressed by it. We're paralyzed by it. We feel the pressure for it. What do you do when you're feeling all of that? What's the first thing you need to do? Step one is you need awareness. And again, you probably say this so often and people probably heard this so frequently, but if you don't have awareness on your attachment style towards money and how your nervous

system is when you receive money or when money leaves you. When you have to pay your bills or give money away. I want people to create just a scenario of awareness around how you feel and how you think when you receive money, when you pay money, when you look at your bank account, when you open your purse or your wallet, and just notice, how do I feel? Mhm. Do I have shallow breathing? Do I feel relaxed? Do I feel anxious? Do I feel scarce? Do I feel abundant? Just step one is have awareness on, how do I feel and how do I think about my money? The money I have, the money that's coming

in, and the money that's going out. Yeah. That's step one. And when you can just have awareness around it, you can start to say, is my relationship the one that I want to be having? Do I feel really secure around money? If not, okay, what's something I can think about? First, let me think about my money story. The story of my life around money. We grow up as kids and we watch our parents in their relationship and we tend to develop the relationship style of our parents unless we learn how to heal as a teenager and have some type of breakthrough. We're creating some type of attachment style based on what we see with our parents. But think about all the conversations your parents had around money. And if

your parents didn't have a secure relationship, if they fought, did they fight about money? Were you involved in the conversation about how expensive things were? About your school or sports or programs that they had to pay for that they couldn't afford? Did they argue? Did they have challenges? Did they get divorced? Money is one of the biggest reasons people get divorced. It's one of the biggest arguments in marriage as well. So, just notice, is my nervous system, is my body, is my energy, are my thoughts stressed out around money? Do I feel scarce or do I feel abundant? That's kind of step one, and then step two is understanding your money story. Because when you can reflect on your

money story, you can see what your money personality style is today. And for many years, and we can talk about both of us thinking about our past. For many years, I didn't understand money growing up. We didn't have a lot growing up. We weren't completely poor, but I wasn't as, you know, well-off as the other kids in my class. So, I always felt a little bit beneath everyone else. And so, my belief system was around that. I'm a just a little bit under everyone else. Everyone else is doing a little bit better than us. Sure, we have a home and I'm going to school, but everyone's got rollerblades, I'm in sneakers. People have Nintendo, I don't have one. I'm reading a book.

Whatever it is. It was like I was a little bit beneath. And that started to shape my story, my personality style. So, I felt very insecure around money. And when I got it, I got really excited, but I didn't know what to do with it. So, I was also like afraid, I was insecure, and I was just unsure of it. And it really started to shape my personality style. Now, when I was in my teen years, my dad started to make more money and started to teach me a little bit, but I was still like just I want to be a teenager. I don't want to think about this stuff. It seems confusing. I just want to have fun. In my 20s, when I got done playing football, I went to go pursue football, got injured, and I was on my

sister's couch for a year and a half, and I had no money. And I just felt like, how am I going to make this work? How am I going to make money? I don't know what my skills are. I don't know what my talents are. This is in 2008 when the economy was crashing. So, it kind of felt like it is right now with inflation going up so much right now and people worried about money in the future. I didn't understand. And I needed to find money mentors to start teaching me how to learn about how I can receive money and spend it in a more efficient way. Yeah, I think what I'm thinking about when I'm hearing you is if me and you went back to a place in our life where we really didn't have money.

Yes. And you think about someone who's in that position who's listening to us right now and in their head they're thinking, "But how do I become abundant Mhm. when I don't have Well, like my natural thing is like I'm just struggling to pay my next bill. And me and you have both been in those situations. I remember when I was growing up, I grew up in a house where we had just enough. Like that was the language my parents used. We have just enough. And my parents would often argue about money. I remember I wasn't allowed to buy cool shoes and stuff. I'd have like the knockoff cheapest brand from whatever, which was I actually didn't have an issue with that. I didn't have

an issue with any of it because we had food and that was my normality. But it's really interesting because the amount of times growing up, I started working when I was 14. And I think that gave me a really interesting sense of how hard it was to make money. Because I started working at 14. I used to get paid £2 per street that I delivered newspapers. Wow. So, imagine there's 100 houses, it's going to take me like Not per house? No, no, no. Per street? Per street. So, I did five streets. And so, I'd get £10 at the end of the week Wow. if I did five streets. And each street would take me at least an hour. Maybe I don't know, something like that. And so,

I'd walk around. I'd pull this thing and I'd deliver it. And I got an understanding of how hard it was to make money. But then that became a story for me going to your point. Making money is hard. Mhm. And that there's only a certain amount of money you're allowed to make at this level. Like you're a 14-year-old. Then I worked in retail, I stacked shelves at a grocery store. I worked at a store called Morrison's, which is like working at Walmart. And there I remember I got paid like £5 an hour. And then you get like time and a half if you work the weekends and the evenings.

All of this to say that I probably spent my whole life only seeing zero in my bank account because everything that would come in would pay for my phone bill, my car insurance that I paid for, whatever it was that I was taking care of, so I wasn't relying on my parents apart from I lived in their home, obviously. But I always felt like money came in, money went out. And my story around money was people who have money are doing something bad. So I lived in a home whenever we went to a friend's home and they had a nice home, my family would always say, "Oh yeah, but they do dodgy stuff to make money." All the language around money was people with money are doing bad stuff. So in my head

it was like, "Oh, if you have money, then you must be doing shady stuff because we don't have money and we're not doing any shady stuff." Right, right. You must be hurting people to make money. Correct. In some way, exploiting Taking advantage of people. advantage, whatever. So everything you're saying is so true because then when I got to a point in my life where I was just trying to do good and I had something like 150, 200 million views on content. You had no money. I was 4 months away from being broke. I met you at this time. met you around this time. you at this time, yes. And it was really interesting to me

because that was the time that I was actually doing this work, which is why this book is so powerful, because I realized that I couldn't, even with 150, 200 million views, it wasn't that made money because my story and my personality style was anxious. I felt like it was wrong to make money. Like that's actually what it was. I felt like making money was bad. The first thing I think you need to be aware of is that your beliefs dictate your behaviors. So, if you believe that money is bad or people who make a lot of money are bad and take advantage of others. And therefore, me having lack right now means I'm a good person. And I don't want to become a bad person. Then that belief is going to dictate your behaviors and you're going to stay in

lack. You're going to stay in scarcity and you're going to see opportunities that only give you just enough as opposed to opportunities that could create incredible wealth for yourself financially, but also an emotional wealth that you've never had before. So, that's one of the things you want to understand. It's first that your beliefs dictate your behaviors. That's a big one by the way. That's huge. Like that I just want to point that out for people. Like that's so huge. your belief Yeah, that's huge. Your belief got you to a place of I am impacting hundreds of millions of people from these videos that I created with my talents. But I don't know how to make money with them and I don't know if I actually should because then I could be bad and

wrong or people could perceive me as I did something bad to make this money. And I'm a [snorts] spiritual person. I'm a monk. I've done all these things. I don't want to have that life. Yeah. But I want to make an impact and I don't want to be poor. So, I think a lot of people are struggling with that mindset. What are the other ones you hear? What are the other focusing on that beliefs here? What are you hearing from people about that's my belief Yeah. and that's very much my history and story as you said. What other stuff do you hear from people?

The biggest shift that will create abundance in your life is a mindset habit in unlocking wealth for yourself. And one of the big lies or one of the big blocks that holds people back from financial opportunity is that I cannot be generous with my time, my wisdom, my knowledge, or my secrets to others cuz if I am, they will take it and run with it and I will be left with nothing. So therefore, I'm going to hoard my energy, I'm going to hoard my time, my knowledge, and only keep it to me so that others don't have good ideas or have my help. And from all the different billionaires and millionaires and financial leaders in the world that I've interviewed, I know you've interviewed a lot of them.

There is a question I would always ask individuals who've made incredible amounts of money. And that keeps helping them create more wealth year after year. And they all say the same thing. Those who have had a sustainably good heart in the process. Is that you have to have a generous mindset. So the mindset habit is the first thing that you have to think about when creating abundance with your money, but also feeling abundant internally. And it's coming with generosity. So if you feel like you're stuck right now, if you feel like you have nothing. This was what you were at 8 years ago when I met you. This was where I was at 15 years ago when I was on my sister's couch. I had no money. I was in student loan

debt. Was sleeping on her couch. I didn't think I had any skills. I didn't have a college degree yet. I was like, how am I going to make money if I don't know how to make money and I don't have any talent or skill and I'm in debt. I didn't understand it. It felt impossible. And the thing that I shifted when I started to meeting money mentors is I needed to learn the first habit, which is the mindset habit, which is a habit of generosity and gratitude. So what did that look like then? What was the practical step? What it looked like was how do I meet money people? People who have money, people who have success, people can teach me knowledge. I needed to come with the sense of energy, of curiosity, of possibilities, and of joy. I

literally wrote a list down of all these different things that I thought were my talents. I go, how can I make money? I don't have any skills. I played football and now I'm injured. What can I do for people? But I was like, well, I'm really curious. Maybe I can just ask people questions. And never did I think in a million years that I could have a 12-year-old podcast just asking questions and make millions of dollars a year. I never thought that was possible. I was in my early 20s, and I was like, you know what? I've got a lot of energy. I've got a lot of passion. So, let me bring passion and energy to other people and excitement. And that energy was infectious. And there's a currency

that's tied to that energy of passion, joy, excitement, curiosity. That currency may not look like money, but for those who are older, who have no more passion, they're burnt out, they're exhausted, it is the highest form of currency. They want that. They crave that energy. They've burnt themselves out for decades. They want to feel young again. They want to feel curious again. They want to feel excited again. And when you come to someone with that energy, you are bringing a different mindset. So, the mindset of curiosity, joy, passion, presence, like just connecting with someone and asking them a question

is such a valuable currency. So, we have to look into these untapped skills, talents, currencies inside of us that are hidden to others, but inside of us, they can create magic. That's one of them. Another one is just being generous with your time, with your resources, with your ideas, and helping others succeed. I love that because I didn't even know that then, but I was doing it unconsciously. Yes, you were. So, I really wanted to interview incredible people, but I didn't have a platform at the time when I met you. And so, I'd partnered up with Nasdaq. And by the way, just to be really clear with everyone, I didn't get paid to do this.

So, Nasdaq had something where everyone's using Facebook Live, and I said, "Hey, could I have an hour in the Nasdaq building whenever I have an amazing guest that says yes, so that I can interview them on Nasdaq Live?" And they would put the picture up on the middle of Times Square. billboard. So, now I could reach out to people I looked up to. That's the reason why I went on the show. Exactly. didn't know who you were until I saw, "Hey, I can get you on a billboard on Times Square." I go, "That's value to me right now." generous and I'm trying to find a way because I don't have anything to offer, but I admire you. And it was all people

I admired. It was yourself, it was Ryan Holiday said yes. Me and Ryan had met maybe once before that, but Ryan came on that show. And there were a bunch of other authors. Deepak Chopra came on that show with me. And it was all people that I'd admired, looked up to for a long time. And exactly that. That's how First of all, we became great friends off of it. But the point is, it's exactly what you're saying that even though I felt I had nothing to offer, I had to find a way to create something to offer someone of value. I didn't get paid for it for that show. I didn't get paid to run it. I didn't make any money from it. But it created an opportunity for me to connect with friends, to connect with people

that were doing incredible things. And of course, allowed me to showcase my talents so that then I could show it to other people. I remember I had Ryan Harwood on the show who founded PureWow. And he just sold it to Gary V. Yeah. And that's how I met Gary. So Ryan came on my show and he was just like, "Jay, I love you. You're a great interviewer. Like, you have such great energy." He was He really liked my passion. And he said, "You got to come meet Gary." And I was like, "No way. Like, I love Gary." And so he took me to meet Gary for the first time. We had a meeting in his

office and that's how I built my relationship with him. It was all thanks to Ryan. And so when you think about it now, like when I'm I've never thought about it until what you're saying. Yes. Now when I look back, Ryan's been on the podcast like four times now, whatever. I love his books. So many relationships came out of that. And so I think when you live in a world of I have nothing to offer and I don't have anything, it becomes really hard to create. And most people think when I have nothing, I need to take from someone else. Yes. I don't have anything, so I can't give anything if I don't have it. So I need someone to give me money right now cuz

I'm broke, I'm poor, I'm stuck, I'm stressed, I'm anxious. I can't think out of myself. And this first habit is really gratitude and generosity is the gateway to abundance. And it may not mean you're going to make money right away. You didn't make money by having me on the show right away. But we became friends, I helped you, you helped me, over time we helped each other create more abundance together. Not only financially, which we've done together, but a type of richness that isn't about money. And this book, again, it's it's a money book, but it's really like it doesn't matter how much money you have if you don't feel like you have a rich life

inside of you. That's real. It does not matter how much is in your bank account, how big your net worth is, if you don't feel like you have an abundant life, if you're stressed, if you're overwhelmed, if you're anxious, if you're constantly in drama, that is not abundance. A high net worth does not mean you are free. And the goal is for us to feel free every moment of our lives as often as possible, and allow money to be a tool to create incredible opportunities, memories, moments, where you can be generous with it, with the people you care about, the causes you care about, the institutions you care about, to serve more people, and feel good about doing it, not feel bad about doing it. And that's part of this process. Most people, when they

lack money, they want to take from others. They want someone to help them. And you need to flip it on its head and say, "How can I help others? Even when I have nothing." That is the time to be more generous and in more gratitude, and say, "Thank you for this opportunity." Even if you have to just lie to yourself for a moment say, "I'm stuck, I'm on my sister's couch, I have no money, I'm 4 months in 4 months I'm going to be out of an apartment, and I don't know where the money's coming." Just say, "Thank you, God. Thank you, universe, for this opportunity to learn. to grow cuz I'll never be here again. I interview I don't know if you've had Ken Honda on, but he wrote Happy Money, but I haven't had him on.

Dude, he's so cool. I love this approach to this. And he's talking similar style about how do you just live a rich life irrelevant of whether you have money or not. And again, this is the what I want people to get to. When you are poor, when you're broke, when you're struggling financially, it feels really hard to feel abundant and rich. And we want to start shifting our thoughts, our emotions, and our energy "Okay, I know I'm in this financial situation. It doesn't feel good, but in order to get out of it, it's not feeling worse about it. It's starting to feel better about me, better about my values, my character, my kindness, my generosity, and seeing how can I add value to others?" And that's the first thing we need to be

thinking about, how can I get into a richness inside of me to serve others and take care of me at the same time? And one of the practices are these social experiments or exercises similar to you that Ken has is that whenever money comes to him, whether it's a check, whether it's a Venmo payment, whatever it might be, he just says thank you to that money. He looks at that number, if it's a penny, if it's a million dollars, if it's your normal check you get coming in the mail every 2 weeks, he looks at it and says, "Thank you." And literally opens his heart and loves that money that comes to him. He says, "Thank you. Where do you want to go?

Do you want to go to my bank account? Do you want to go to my savings? Do you want to go to investments? Do you want to go towards paying off debt? Do you want me to give you away?" And it might be a weird kind of like it. Yeah. exercise, but I love this approach to just being mindful of money when it you pay bills, when you pay off debt, say thank you as well. "Thank you for allowing me to pay off this debt. Thank you for paying my cell phone bill so I can call my friends and family that I love. Thank you for the ability to live a richer life.

Yeah. And when we start to approach money in that way, it doesn't mean money's going to fall from the sky and come to us abundantly. But we're going to start to feel more rich and abundant internally, which that energy is what will attract more opportunities. Those opportunities could lead to millions. This hostess that came to you, she brought that thankful energy, that present energy, that loving, joyful, curious energy, and it created an abundance of opportunities. Yeah. And connection. When you have no money, when you're broke, when you feel stressed out, overwhelmed, burnt out, you lost your job, you feel like you need help. And you may And the best way to create abundance is to go from helplessness to

helpfulness. So instead of saying, "I feel helpless. I don't know what to do." You've got to flip and say, "How can I be helpful? How can I help myself but by also helping someone else? How can I shift out of this negative energy into an energy of abundance?" Which is so hard to do when you have nothing. I remember for a year and a half feeling trapped on my sister's couch with no money, thinking, "How am I going to do this?" And there just got to be a decision where you say, "I'm going to get up and I'm going to get out of this funk, out of this energy, and choose and decide to bring energy to someone else without asking for anything in return." When you do that, you'll start to build momentum.

And that's what's going to help you get to the next level. [snorts] The biggest trap is when you feel scarce and you start making money and you still feel trapped. When you see everyone else having fun with money and going on that trip with their girlfriends or buying that expensive car to show off to their guy friends or getting the nice watches or having the cool shoes and you're thinking, "Oh, if I could really have money, then I have these things that would make me feel cool or feel better. But if we can approach life and just be like, "Man, life is so good with what I have." That is true wealth. I asked them, you know, if money walked in and you were at a party, how would you respond?

And they said, "I would run to the bar. I would not make eye contact. I would gossip behind their back to other people there about money. Uh I would look down at them, but then I would use them and abuse them because I would really need money. And I would ghost them afterwards." Wow. And I go, "Wow." And they were like, "Yeah, I know. It's really bad." But they were being honest. Yeah. So I want people to be honest. Like, what is your relationship with money? And just imagine That's crazy. if you were money and someone treated you that way.

I remember [snorts] the day after I realized I was 4 months away from being broke. I must have emailed a thousand people saying, "I will do anything. Here are my skills." Consulting, right? videos. I will consult. I'll run your social media. Those weren't things I wanted to do with my life. But I needed to create a foundation from which I could then invest that into what I wanted to do. And actually that year, everything I made, I invested into starting this podcast. Yes. So everything [clears throat] I made this year went into launching On Purpose because that's not what I wanted to do.

I didn't want to edit other people's videos. I didn't want to launch social media profiles. I didn't want to coach and consult. But I had those skills. Yes. this is one of the things sometimes is that we all have skills that are valuable somewhere. And they may not be the skills that you want to do for the rest of your life. Now, but the season of life you need to do that. of life and I think there's something to be said for that because we all want to be paid for what we love doing. But even my life today, I have there's a lot of things I have to do.

Yes. And there's a lot of things I love to do. And that's life. Yeah, and like you said, the seasonal side of things. Like, when I was just getting started making money, this was in 2008, 2009, 2010. I was using LinkedIn as a platform and a tool to meet CEOs, executives, and business leaders. And I was helping them originally with their LinkedIn profile. To then just saying, "Hey, how can I help you optimize your profile? I see that it's missing some things here. I'll do it for free." And I did this to build relationships with them. And through that, they just all wanted to help me and give back to me. And then eventually someone said, "Hey, I'll pay you for this. This is really helpful." I was like, "Oh, I can make money on

LinkedIn." It's not what I wanted to do, but I had a skill to do it right then. So, I did that for a few years, and once I had that foundation, I used that money to launch The School of Greatness as well, because I had a couple years of runway now. And I didn't want to do that forever, but I did it for the season. I got skills, I made money, and I created a sense of freedom for myself to do what I really wanted to do later. Yeah. What about this idea of I want to make money quick. Like I just want to make a million dollars in a week. I want to find that hack that solves my money problems. Like what's your take on that? Is that possible?

I've got money wounds, and it's because I wanted to make easy money in my past. Not make money easy. And I don't know anyone that doesn't want to make easy money. Like our ego wants it to come to us now. And we want to find the quick hack or the the quick investment that's going to 10x in 2 months. Sure, there's always outliers that figure out a way to do that. But every time I've tried to do that, I've lost my money. And it's been painful. And I'm like, "Okay, I think I've learned that lesson." But there's this new like quick easy money opportunity. And every time I do it again, I'm like, "What was I thinking?"

Yeah. You see that others acts like there's a way to do it so easy. If you just invest in crypto, if you just invest in this, if you just do this thing, you're going to make quick and easy money. I don't know anyone who's made hundreds of millions, millions, or billions who's lived that way. They might have invested and gone all in on one business and created generational wealth or maybe they went all in on investing in one main stock that ended up 10 or 20 x in over time. But going the quick make easy money way doesn't usually work and it's painful lessons you have to live afterwards.