Money matters. It means freedom and control, provides family security and valuable opportunities for children, and allows for more options in life. Money impacts lifestyle, health, and happiness. But, if its complexities are not understood, or it is not managed properly, money decisions can result in hardships that affect generations.
On this Elementality, Carl talks with Justin Green, the host of Dollars and Dumbells and founder of Assist Financial Planning. They look at money’s impact—both the positive and the negative—and how altering a person’s financial trajectory while helping them gain confidence in their ability to manage money can have long-lasting and life-changing results.
Show Notes
AssistFP.com
Podcast Transcript
Justin Green:
You can’t overnight change 35 years of habits. You know what I mean?
Carl Richards:
Yeah.
Justin Green:
And so it’s a progression and you have to… It’s like with a fitness movement, right? If you were to walk in as a newbie, never come into the gym and you were gonna start deadlifting, the coach isn’t gonna put a 135-pound bar in front of you and just say, “Hey, deadlift that,” right? No, he or she is gonna break it down into multiple parts. I don’t know how many parts ’cause I’m not an actual fitness coach, but they’re gonna break it down into 10 parts. And you’re going to practice the first step, which you’re probably gonna leave the gym that day being like, “Why did I just practice the bottom part of a deadlift with a broomstick for an hour? It seems really, really simple,” right?
Justin Green:
And so I think as advisors is we forget that. We come in, we give this like full-on financial plan of like, “Here, A, the dream life. Okay. Here’s everything you’ve gotta do.” But like what we really need to do to make incremental changes that will compound over time is say, “Hey, here’s a plan to get you from A to B. It’s super, super simple. You think you can do this?”
[music]
Abby Morton:
Welcome to Elementality. I’m Abby Morton, CFP and producer of our podcast here at Elements. I love being a financial planner, but I know it’s a challenging profession as well. That’s why the number one goal of our show is to help you prosper as an advisor as you better connect with your clients. We know your time is very valuable. Plan on a good return when you spend it here with us.
[music]
Carl Richards:
Greetings. I’m Carl Richards and welcome to the Elementality podcast. So excited to have Justin Green on today. Justin, how are you?
Justin Green:
I’m doing good, Carl. Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it.
Carl Richards:
Yeah. Joining us from North Carolina. Is that right?
Justin Green:
Yeah. We just recently moved to North Carolina, so we’d been in Massachusetts for a while. My wife was doing some travel nursing, so we bounced around the United States for the year before that. And we just settled down here in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Carl Richards:
Very cool. Very cool. I would love to ask you a bunch of questions about North Carolina. My wife for some reason loves North Carolina, but we don’t have time. That’s a different show, Justin, [chuckle] a different show.
Justin Green:
Cool. Yeah, we’ll do it. We’ll do another show on North Carolina. Maybe I’ll know the history by then.
[laughter]
Carl Richards:
Exactly. Prepare for that. Let’s start. Let’s start with like an origin story. Why did you get into the profession, let’s call it, the profession of providing financial advice? Why did you get into it in the first place?
Justin Green:
‘Cause selling cheerleading uniforms wasn’t gonna cut it, and I’ll explain what that means. So no, we’ll back it up. I come from a low-income family. I was the first one to go to college in my family. And because I was 18 and I had no clue what I wanted to do but I liked business and I liked sports, I went and got a sports management degree. Probably the worst degree [chuckle] you can get in my opinion. And so I got that degree and then I’m like, “What the heck am I gonna do with this thing?” And so it actually led me out to Manhattan, Kansas. I was working at a sportswear company, selling youth cheerleading uniforms for a couple of years. And as fun as that was, I was just trying to figure out on my own, like, “All right, how do I build wealth?” Like, “I have no experience with this.” I didn’t even know what stock market was until after college.
Justin Green:
I didn’t grow up with wealth. I didn’t grow up having an uncle with wealth. I knew nothing. And so I started just going on my own personal journey to learn more about financial planning, et cetera, and that’s… So I went down this path for myself, and that’s when I was like, “Hmm, I really like this. I think I could do more with this.” And so I started looking into different programs, and that’s when I actually found my way back to Kansas State University. I got my Master’s in personal financial planning, and then I finished that up and just hopped into a fee-only firm back in Massachusetts. So that’s like the short, short consolidated version.
Carl Richards:
Yeah. Well, that’s… I like that. Thank you. And I’m gonna ask the question again from a slightly different perspective. Like why did you… Like now that you’ve been in the… I’m gonna use this term business or industry, but I’m speaking really broadly ’cause there’s a subset of the industry that are what I call real financial advisors. And for people who listen to that often, like when I tell people about real financial advisors, sometimes people don’t even believe that they exist. But so often people think we’re part of a big industry, which we are, but so back to the question. Why get into the perfection of financial advice? What was the reason you did it? What was the dream?
Justin Green:
So I saw how impactful it was for myself coming from the situation I did, and so I wanted to help others do the same. I wanted to help individuals who maybe were the first in their family to go to college. Maybe they didn’t go to college, but they were entrepreneurial and they wanted to change generations to come in their family and build wealth and show future generations, “This is how you build wealth through ownership of business, real estate, stocks, whatever it is.” Because what I found as well was once I started going down that personal journey, not only did I realize I really enjoyed the process of learning about how to build wealth, it also reminded me that I had an entrepreneurial spirit that I had tucked away and hid for quite a while. And so I really found a way to like, I had this dream, like, “How can I help individuals who have this entrepreneurial spirit, but they know absolutely nothing about money? How do I help them build wealth and then change the trajectory of their bloodline for years and years to come?”
Carl Richards:
Ooh, so curious about so many things. Tell me more about that. Why did it matter to you to build wealth and change the trajectory of, I think you used the word “bloodline,” for years and years to come? Why is that important?
Justin Green:
There’s studies that show that after you make like 70,000… And the study is a little outdated, so I would argue this number might be higher now. But the studies show that like at 70,000, happiness is no longer impacted by… At $70,000 worth of income, that’s the highest. Like once you hit that, money’s not gonna make you any happier, right? And so if you’ve ever actually been poor or come from a low-income family, you do know that money actually matters, right? So there is a level and I do agree that once you hit a level, like your lifestyle choices will change, but at the end of the day, it’s not really gonna change your happiness, right? You might have a more expensive car, a fancier car, but like at a certain level, you have a running car that works and gets you from A to B. But if you’re under that level, like you truly do see the impact of money on your lifestyle, your health, your opportunities, your flexibility, all of that. And so I saw how that could be available to more people, and I just wanted to spread that.
Carl Richards:
Yeah. Can you give me an example of maybe even from your own life, like what’s an example of an impact on your health or your family situation? Can you think of an example of like, “Oh my gosh, when this first occurred to me or when I was first able to do this?”
Justin Green:
Let me think. Probably getting health insurance. So my mom used to carry the health insurance. She passed away when I was in college. And so I went uninsured for a couple of years, had some medical debts that when I had turned 18, just like a week after I was 18, I had my wisdom teeth taken out. And that bill came due, and I had no clue. And I didn’t really realize it fell on my shoulders, and my parents had no clue and just tossed it in the trash ’cause, well, there was other bills to pay.
Carl Richards:
Great.
Justin Green:
And so I went to get… Years later, I went to get a car loan, and they were like, “Hey, you got a credit score?” And I was like, “No, I really have never taken out debt, and I’ve never had a credit card, et cetera.” They’re like, “You sure?” And I was like, “You know something I don’t, so let’s just talk about it.” And I found out that my credit score was pretty bad because I had this debt on there that I honestly had no clue, right? So that was one of the early… Like early on in my life, I realized like, “Okay, money matters, right?” I can’t even like… I can’t get health insurance because I don’t really have the money, and so I would avoid going to the doctors. I would avoid… And I was young. Luckily, I was young and pretty healthy. So there wasn’t like any emergency situations where I avoided it. But having health insurance there would have been pretty important and I just didn’t have the money to go out and get it.
Carl Richards:
Yeah. Isn’t that crazy? Like to think about that one of the things you have to think about when you’re sick or somebody’s injured or something… The first thought is like, “Oh, I hope they’re okay,” and then so many times… ‘Cause I’ve been in a situation where my daughter tears her ACL and you have this thought of like, “Oh my gosh, I hope she’s okay. It’s gonna be okay.” And then there’s this crazy thought that comes, it’s like, “Oh, how are we gonna pay for that?”
Justin Green:
Yeah.
Carl Richards:
Yeah. It’s crazy. Yeah. Tell me, given that, this dream of helping people understand like money matters, understanding wealth change, family tradition, right? Who’s your work for now?
Justin Green:
So I work with online health and fitness coaches, and part of the reason for that is when I was going on that personal journey for me, I was really involved in learning about personal finances, but I was also really involved in fitness. And when I came to this path in the road where I was figuring out, “Which way am I gonna go with this?” And I thought about becoming a fitness coach and just learning about finance for my own personal benefit. And ultimately, obviously, I decided finances, and then later on, it was like a full-circle moment where I was like, “I’m gonna do this for online health and fitness coaches.” And that’s kind of expanded a little bit. I get a lot of online coaches in general because they have the same problems. And usually they’ll have like a personality where they enjoy fitness, right? So I’m dealing with the same persona. It’s just they’re not technically a health and fitness coach.
Justin Green:
And what I found early on, this wasn’t intentional, but I realized a lot of them have problems with… So I’ve gotten away from like originally I thought I was like to build wealth for generations, et cetera, and that’s still there, but another thing I discovered was that like taxes are a huge issue for these individuals. And not knowing that you [chuckle] need to pay your taxes will kill you, but doing it incorrectly and then when it finally catches up to you could just like implode your everything you’ve built, right? And I never really connected these dots, but that actually happened to my father. So we lived probably decent middle-class family and he ran a painting… Like a house painting business. And my dad had a ninth-grade education. So he knew how to do things, but the business side was just beyond him.
Justin Green:
And so he was really good at painting houses. He’d get people to come paint houses for him, but what happened was they were mischaracterized. I think this is how it went ’cause I was young, but they were mischaracterized as 1099 employees. Well, eventually, the IRS comes knocking and says, “Hey, they’re actually W2 employees. Therefore you should have been withholding FICA taxes, et cetera. You owe 70 grand.” And to my father, that was the nail in the coffin. Like everything changed. I think he probably still owes that money to this day because at that point he was having health issues and everything, and it was just like, “All right, the dream is over.” Right? And so when I started working with individuals who were in the online coaching space and I realized, “While you guys are really amazing coaches, you don’t know anything about money and business and you’re not paying anything into your taxes. Let’s fix that because this will change your life quicker than anything out there.”
Justin Green:
And so I started connecting the dots with that. So I work with them, and we focus a lot on not just saving and building wealth, but also, “How do we save you on taxes, and how do we make sure that everything is kosher?”
Carl Richards:
Yeah. That story of your dad is amazing. And the one sentence that really landed for me was, “The dream was over.” So interesting to think about like I’ve got… ‘Cause it sounds… You can hear it in your voice, like the work you do, you’re passionate about that work, and you’re working with people who are probably pretty passionate about their work.
Justin Green:
Oh, absolutely. Most coaches become coaches because they love whatever it is they’re coaching, right? Health and fitness, mindset, life coaching, marketing coach, sales coach, whatever it is, they love their craft, and that’s why they’re coaching. Making a million dollars a year is a side effect of that. It’s nice. Don’t get me wrong. Not a whole lot of people are complaining about that, but it’s really usually… The really good ones, that’s really not why they got into the business.
Carl Richards:
So it’s interesting to me that they love… They got into coaching because they love coaching. They love their clients. They love the transformation, they see with clients. They love the change they’re making, but then you circle back to your dad’s story and you’re like, “And not knowing one little thing, the dream is over,” right?
Justin Green:
Yeah.
Carl Richards:
And there’s nothing wrong necessarily with throwing boxes at UPS, but you could be back throwing boxes at UPS when your goal was to run this gym.
Justin Green:
And it just comes down to, “You don’t know what you don’t know either,” right? It’s not that they were being intentional about getting around it. They just don’t know what they don’t know, and a lot of advisors sometimes scoff at how simple and basic these things are. And it’s just like trying to remember is like, “We know so much more than the average individual does about personal finance.”
Carl Richards:
Yeah. Yeah. And your specific… The clients that you enjoy working with, know so much more about whatever they’re coaching on specifically fitness and it’s easy for people. I think it’s easy for people to understand in those domains that like, “Yeah, it’s not because you’re dumb and it’s not because you couldn’t do it yourself, you probably could if you just really wanted to grit your teeth and focus on it. It’s because you’re focused on something else.” Right? And it’s like, I go to the gym now. When I go to the gym, I don’t even like to know why my coach has programmed what he’s programmed. I just want to be told what to do because I don’t have time or the space cognitively in my head to learn that. So I’m super glad somebody else knows that. That doesn’t make me dumb, maybe it does, but it doesn’t make me dumb or lazy. Again, maybe it does. It just means that I know somebody else who’s got domain expertise and I can get someplace way faster if I just rely on them.
Justin Green:
Yeah, absolutely. And you’re an expert in your field, and so you understand relying on other experts in other fields is extremely important. And that’s one of the cool things about working with coaches is they get that. So they know I’m the expert in my field. Obviously, they’re the expert in their lives and so we have to appreciate that.
Carl Richards:
Yeah. I like that.
Justin Green:
But for the most part, they’re going to rely and trust that I know the finance side of things and I have their best interest in mind. Every now and then you’ll get some people who they do want the education, like you were saying, I don’t really wanna know why. You do get individuals who are just wired that way. They do wanna know why, but a lot of times… And I learned this as I went on ’cause I would more explain the why, how the sausage is made, et cetera. They’re really successful business owners. They don’t have the time or the energy. They just want you to tell them, “Here’s what to do, and here’s why.” Not like all the unnecessary detail in between.
Carl Richards:
Yeah. Yeah. When you look at clients that you’ve worked with for a little bit of time, so you’ve got some history with them, tell me a story or two about the change that you’ve seen happen that you’re most excited that you got to be involved in.
Justin Green:
Yeah. So first and foremost, one thing I’m focused on is progress, not perfection, because I do work with a lot of younger individuals. And they’re between the ages of 21 and 35, and they’re really successful, high-revenue coaches. And they come in with pretty much nothing done yet. And so what we’re trying to do is not get them from like A to Z, right? We’re gonna start incrementally and go from A to B. And so a lot of times, I do do some cashflow work upfront, and I didn’t realize I was gonna do so much cashflow work. But it’s the reality of work…
Carl Richards:
What does that do? Justin, hold on for just a second. Explain real quickly just to me.
Justin Green:
What cashflow is?
Carl Richards:
What does that mean? What does that mean, cashflow work?
Justin Green:
Yeah. Just the money coming in and out of your bank account. Cashflow is a term that I try to avoid, but I do use it way too much. But it’s a financial lingo, but it’s just the money coming in and out of your bank account, so the revenue and your expenses essentially.
Carl Richards:
Yeah. And so doing that, so keep going with your story. Sorry to interrupt. I just wanted to make sure I was on the same page.
Justin Green:
Yeah. So, we always have to start there, right? ‘Cause that’s a pulse of your business which reality is that if you’re like a small business owner or solopreneur which you just own your own business and have maybe no team, your business is like the life of your financial plan. So we really can’t figure out your financial, like personal financial plan. We can’t really do that until we figure out your business and make sure the finances there are in order, so that way we can figure out, how do you pay yourself?
Justin Green:
And so I have one client, to get to the actual story part, who she makes an extremely high revenue. And so honestly, she can spend whatever she wants and she’s gonna to be fine because she leans frugal. But we’re having a really hard time figuring out, what is she actually spending? And for probably like five or six months, I’m trying to get to this figure and like we’re not making any progress and I’m getting to the point where I actually, I think I’m gonna probably get fired ’cause I’m not getting results and… Long story short, she’s working with another, like a CPA who’s also an advisor on the business side and she’s like, move some accounts over there that I didn’t have ’cause I don’t require management, but I was just like, “Man, it just doesn’t make sense. Why is she working with the two of us?”
Justin Green:
And so I started getting all this head trash and we finally, we had this meeting after like, I don’t know, like six to seven months and shameless plug, for Elements, this is my first Elements meeting with her, and we simplified everything. I had tried to skip too many steps. We were too far ahead and I had to bring this down to the basics and I showed her why it’s so important we understand what she’s actually spending, not because she’s gonna run out of money, but just because it factors into so many, I don’t wanna use equations, but that is the right term, equations just for different situations, right? Like understanding if she ever wanted to take a year off, like how much does she need there? If she ever wanted to pivot to a different project, right? She’s 24. So talking about retirement doesn’t make sense. Put that away. She just started living her dream life. Why are we gonna talk about stopping that? So put that away.
Justin Green:
So getting her in this meeting, it clicked for her like why that number matters. And so we just got her into Rocket Money just to categorize transactions. This is on the personal side, by the way. She’s got a really good bookkeeping system on the business side, that was all set, which you can figure out on the personal side, like what was she spending? Didn’t really matter, she wasn’t overspending, but we need to know what it was. And so she went from like not looking at the numbers, not tracking at all to finally tracking everything in Rocket Money, formerly known as Truebill, which is a really good free tool out there that I sometimes recommend to clients who need a tool.
Justin Green:
And what we found is she was mixing a lot of personal and business expenses. And so just having her do this got everything cleaned up. We had already cleaned up 90% of it. We realized, “Oh, some things are sneaking through here.” And so that was like a really eye-opening discovery process for her to like, “Ooh, we’ve gotta fix that,” and then like, “Oh, cool. I only spent this much this month.” And then she’s like sending me these check-ins every week. And she’s excited of seeing where her money is going.
Carl Richards:
Right.
Justin Green:
So excited. She actually posted the one-page plan on her Instagram. It was like so many big big breakthroughs this week. This was a week after I thought I was getting fired. [chuckle] So I’m going in this meeting thinking I’m getting fired, and then a week later she’s posting on her Instagram the one-page plan where we just simplified everything. And she’s just like, “So many breakthroughs in this call.”
Carl Richards:
So good. You know what? I’ve been curious if you find… Because it… I’ve done a lot of work with creative artists who are like, “Ah, money,” like “Money, I don’t wanna… I don’t want anything to do with money. I don’t like… That’s… ” And then once something like this happens and I would imagine in the, especially the fitness space, you’ve got the number now to focus on. These are relatively competitive people.
Justin Green:
Yep.
Carl Richards:
Who understand first principles, who understand getting technique right, who understand where the right focus is, who understand coaching of like just the little tweak of, “Hey, could you just move your wrist a little bit to the left?” Right? Like once you give, I would imagine, and I would be curious to hear your take on this, like once you give them a KPI, a Key Performance Indicator, once you give them a number, have you seen it suddenly like… ‘Cause I’ve seen this shift where, “Oh, now I understand. I look forward to seeing my income statement because profit equals permission to keep doing this thing. It’s the lifeblood, the fuel.” Do you see this shift with online fitness coaches specifically? Like once they understand the game, that they become really good at playing it?
Justin Green:
No, I don’t. And I’m gonna explain. [laughter] And I’m gonna explain.
Carl Richards:
No, that’s great.
Justin Green:
It’s not a number for them because most of the coaches I’m working with, they’re making enough money. They’re pretty high revenue coaches. So it’s not a number for them. That’s not enough for them to figure it out ’cause they can make more money. They can turn on their marketing trick and they’re gonna make more money tomorrow. It’s figuring out why it’s important. So I have another client. She’s actually a marketing coach, but she’s a competitive bodybuilder. And her discipline is unreal when it comes to bodybuilding. But these are human beings we’re working with. And so while they teach all their fitness clients, all the behavioral cues to avoid and what not to do, ’cause fitness and finance are very similar. You can make 100 analogies. So while they’re teaching their clients all these things to avoid, they’re guilty of doing all of them on the financial side because they’re humans.
Justin Green:
And so she’s a competitive bodybuilder and just unbelievably disciplined in her fitness journey and not in her finance journey. And we were really struggling with how to get her motivated. And finally, one day I suggested, I said… She had just earned her pro card. I said, “Why don’t you promise to yourself that you won’t compete next year?” ‘Cause she’s in the off season. She’s not gonna compete for another year. “You won’t compete next year unless you hit these goals or these benchmarks. And they’re action goals. They’re not results-oriented, right? I’m not looking for you need a net worth of X amount. I just need you to do these following actions over the next 12 months consistently.
Justin Green:
“Why don’t you commit to yourself that?” And immediately, I saw it in her eyes. It was like, “Oh, that’s what I need to motivate me. None of this other stuff is gonna motivate me ’cause I just know I can go out and make more money if I have to. But if I’m not giving myself the permission to compete, which is what I truly love, that’s my vision to just compete all the time, then I can’t do this.” And the reality is competing is very expensive, right? And so that’s how it really ties back to money. It’s like, this is like a very expensive hobby. So if you can’t do all these other things, you really can’t give yourself permission to have this expensive hobby. And it clicked and ever since then, things have been getting on the right path.
Justin Green:
These aren’t… You can’t overnight change 35 years of habits. You know what I mean? And so it’s a progression and you have to… It’s like with a fitness movement, if you were to walk in as a newbie, never coming to the gym and you’re gonna to start deadlifting, the coach isn’t gonna put a 135-pound bar in front of you and just say, “Hey, deadlift that,” right?
Justin Green:
No, he or she is gonna break it down into multiple parts. I don’t know how many parts ’cause I’m not an actual fitness coach, but they’re gonna break it down into 10 parts and you’re gonna practice the first step, which you’re probably gonna leave the gym that day being like, “Why did I just practice the bottom part of a deadlift with a broomstick for an hour?” It seems really, really simple, right? And so I think as advisors, as we forget that, we come in, we give this like full-on financial plan of like, “Here, A to dream life. Okay, here’s everything you’ve gotta do,” but what we really need to do to make incremental changes that will compound over time is say, “Hey, here’s a plan to get you from A to B, it’s super, super simple. You think you can do this?” And I was just reading a book called Change Maker by John… Yeah, I have to look.
Justin Green:
John Berardi, and he was the founder of, what is it? Precision Nutrition, I believe, it’s a big coaching company, sold it long time ago. And what he says is, if they can’t with a confidence level of nine or 10, zero or 10, do you think you can do this, Carl? If this is not a nine or 10, it’s not simple enough. You need to simplify it more. And so I think understanding that it’s just about progress and not putting this like perfect plan in front of people because at the end of the day, we’re coaches too, right? I know financial coach is like a different term in our profession or industry or whatever. And we put lipstick on it. And so we call ourselves advisors and we put our suits on and our ties on. But the reality is we’re all coaches, right? We’re trying to help people make change in their lives. It’s just our financial lives. And so it’s all about progression.
Carl Richards:
So good.
Justin Green:
I don’t even know what the question was. I just answered.
Carl Richards:
That doesn’t matter because that was the long way, you told me no. Yeah, that was super good. Justin, let’s just wrap up with this. Let’s pretend like we’re three years from today and you’re looking back on the last three years. What’s the change you hope to make in the lives of the people you serve?
Justin Green:
I want them to obviously be wealthier. However, we’re gonna back that up and make that… Let’s get rid of the dollars. I want them to be more confident in their ability to manage the money. I don’t want this to be a scary thing for them that they’re always running and hiding from. I want them to be confident that they have the right systems and plan in place where they’re going to be okay. That’s it.
Carl Richards:
Amen, brother. I don’t know that I could say anything better. Thanks so much for this chat. It’s super good, Justin. Thank you.
Justin Green:
Carl, I really appreciate you having me on. Love what you’re doing with everything you do. So keep it up. You’re a great inspiration for a lot of us advisors out there.
Carl Richards:
Yeah. Cheers, brother.
Abby Morton:
Next time on Elementality.
Mike Johnson:
I never thought of myself as like a great, great teacher, but I always led with passion, meaning they were taking economics class, which maybe didn’t have a good… Oh, economics, right? So they may have heard some bad stories from their parents or whatever, but I wanted them to understand that this is, especially the personal finance part, this is relevant, unlike their math class or at least from their perspective or their English class from their perspective, they will be using this stuff. And then when I was helping adults, having the same kind of conversations even like, “Hey, here’s a Roth IRA versus a traditional IRA.” Students know it’s important, but they’re still students. And when you talk to an adult and they’re like, “Oh, I’ve never… I’ve always heard those terms. I’ve never understood it,” I found that maybe my teaching skills makes things simpler for an adult too.
Abby Morton:
You can learn more about the Elements Financial Monitoring System at getelements.com/demo and schedule a time to talk with one of our friendly financial planning experts. Elementality’s executive creators are Reese Harper and Carl Richards. Elementality is produced by Abby Morton and directed by Jordan Haines. Have a good one.