#39 How to learn about money (without getting overwhelmed)

Ryan: Terry had a great conversation with Scott Young, that last episode. You call him an autodidact. I call him a bit of a mad dog. What’d you take from that conversation? What was kind of a big learning, a big light bulb for you?

Terry: Yeah, just one point of sight. That’s such a cool side effect of what we’re doing here is I get to meet these people that have been in an indirect way.

I’ve read Scott’s book several times. And as we said, it’s really informed a lot of what we do and how we structure, what we do in terms of the program. But in terms of the number one takeaway on. That principle of directness, really just rammed that point harm, you know, the difference between educating yourself and then training yourself education is you having a sense of what’s going on, training yourself as you building skills.

And so I think it just really don’t learn something until you’re being direct with it. And you’re actually doing the thing and then building your competence and your confidence in that way. Definitely got that point. Yeah,

Ryan: which kind of links back to a lot of conversations we’ve had around like creating feedback loops for yourself, isn’t it?

The education is the consumption of a lot of information. Whereas the training is kind of really putting that into practice, colliding it with reality, creating those feedback loops, which leads us into today’s conversation really well. Right? Because today we want to talk about how to learn about money in particular and kind of wrapping up this learning series was kind of focusing on the subject matter, which is obviously really important to us and be part of what.

So I’m excited to kind of peel back the curtain a little bit on, I guess, the way we structure things and the way we focus on learning about money. And we say, this is such an important skill, right. We really kind of put it on that pedestal. Some of the key meta skills that you want to have as a person to be able to live a good life.

It’s really the ability to get along with others, to be able to collaborate, to be able to work as a team with others, the ability to be productive, use your time and talent, and why you make a contribution. You have an impact. And then the third thing to be really able to look after yourself and your loved ones, which is where really money ties into that, because it plays an important role of kind of underwriting, a lot of what we want.

And when you get that right, you get more of

Terry: what you want. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that money is actually a technology. If you think about it, it’s a technology that allows us to better manage their resources that we poured into earn it. And what are those resources, time, talent. And so if you can better figure out how to manage your money, you’re better allocating and using your resources.

If you’re going back and you’re okay, man, you’ve got only certain amount of resources around. You’ve got to figure out how to manage those resources to get what you want. It’s the same thing. Now it’s just a more evolved problem. Money is that medium that helps us figure that out. And it’s so critical.

And the thing is, if you don’t learn to manage it yourself, guess what? It’s still getting managed. Others are gonna manage it for you. And so it’s really a choice. Do you want what they want for you or do you want what you want for you? If you’ve struggled to get this part of your life sorted in the past.

We just want you to know that this is not your fault. The truth is we are mostly set up to fail and it’s not any one person’s fault, but it’s a system that’s designed to keep us in the dark to make us feel helpless, to make us feel inadequate. And there are three weapons that are used to be able to make this work right.

And the first is all these really complex weed acronyms that only insiders get these acronyms. They just create that sense of, I don’t know. And you have to be on the outside and it makes you feel like an outsider in that way. The second is the words they use have way too many syllables in them. And there’s a really important reason for that.

If you have three or four syllables in a word, what it does, it actually overwhelms the working memory of your brain. And it’s very hard for you to hold all those ideas. In your mind at once, you’re trying to process the word, but you’re also trying to process the sentence and the audience that are contained within that sentence.

That’s a very clever way to make someone feel dumb. So these words actually weapons when they’re using that way, the third and final weapon is just a shitload of paperwork and a lot of process and a lot of rules, a lot of regulation, they keep you. At a long distance from your money and I’m going through this right now, I’m trying to set up my self managed, super try to change my investment strategy.

And I’ve been on the phone this, this week to the ATO for six hours. And I know how important this is, and I know how valuable it can be. And I’m still asking myself the question, man, is this worth it? And those are the things that are in the way for us. But if you can see through all that shit, you can master this part of your life.

You can take full responsibility and you can make devastatingly good decisions that set you up for.

Ryan: And you don’t need to be some sort of genius or math ways to completely change your financial trajectory. Like anyone can do this. Like I think recently it’s probably a good example. Shout out, racing, lacer up in Sydney.

They got, as it came into our program, they wanted to do better financially, but probably had some vague aspirations and maybe not as much direction as what they would like. And they also weren’t working together. They’ve actually got a really good member review on the website or on Instagram. If anyone wants to have a look.

That’s actually a good one where race was trying to get her on board. She was a bit unsure. She’s like, no, you gotta do that. They have a good time, but they probably a good example if they decided, yeah, we want to focus our attention on this and make this a project to kind of speed things up. But they wouldn’t consider themselves necessarily geniuses in this space.

Right. Or math Mathways they’ve now recently bought their home up in Sydney at somewhere near the water. And as a lot of people would know, that’s a pretty hard thing to do. But now I guess the other side of having done. They no longer feel like their life is running away on them. Yeah. Like time now feels like it’s on their side.

And a lot of people that we work with don’t really consider themselves as super smart people or numbers. Yeah. And I

Terry: guess that’s the point we’re trying to make here is that over the last couple of years, working with hundreds of Aussies all over the country, all over the place from all walks of life, you start to figure out what works when it comes to learning about money.

Cause that’s essentially what we do is help people figure this part of their life. And I want to give you a hint. It’s not stuffing yourself with information. It’s actually more about informed action and really regular feedback as a part of that. So in this last sort of close out to this how to learn series, we want to take you behind the scenes and show you how we help people master this part of their lives.

And as far as we know, we’re actually the only program that focuses on using behavior to build belief and make sure that that’s the focus because packets, the insight we’ve learned is like inflammation is not the edge it’s useful, but it’s not a. The thing is information is free and it’s everywhere.

It’s actually behavior that matters and behavior has to compound before money will. That’s a really important point. Your behavior has to compound before money wheel. So if you are not learning something that helps you compound behaviors, the right behaviors, install the right runs and repeal the wrong way.

And it’s very difficult for you to get those results. And like you said, anyone can do this as no special economy intelligence that makes it easier for some than others. We’ve seen people from everywhere do this and our most powerful success stories come from people who wouldn’t consider themselves as smart or really aggressive self-learners.

And the results are pretty reliable. If you just follow this process or about to lay out for you, you will get the desired result.

Ryan: Awesome. And so this episode is really just. Getting out of neutral when it comes to our money, Lafayette, really kind of getting into that first gear so that we can start exhilarating towards our goals, speeding up that learning so that we can underwrite more of what we want.

Yeah. With the obviously money being the key part of that. And so where do we start with this? What’s the first step. So

Terry: step one, we talked about this with Scott. I talked about this with him in his episode, he talked about this concept called meta learning, which is actually drawing a map of what you’re trying to.

And what’s ironic about that is that when he’s talking about that, I realized that we actually do this, but we do this on our actions setting call. When people actually book into chat to us to learn more about what we’re doing, we’ve pretty much done this. We’re walking people through a process where we help them figure out.

Okay. But what does success mean for you? What actually are you trying to accomplish? And when you do succeed, what will that look like? So we’re trying to help people go from these vague, ambitious. So there’s sort of foggy kind of ideas about getting to a different place financially and help them really clarify exactly what that means for them, not just what it means in general, but what does it mean for you?

How does it link back into who you are, what you’re trying to accomplish and what you’re trying to

Ryan: do here? Yeah, I think it was something that kind of probably came through from previous learning and he’s probably had an impact on that as well. And so it’s kind of interesting to kind of link that up.

Now, having had that conversation. And I think that’s so true. Like a lot of that conversation, you mentioned the action setting call that we do, that people can book on through the website, but it’s amazing what happens when you can just verbalize the feeling that you have around where you’re at right now, as well as what could be on the other side of getting this part.

Right. Because it just makes. It’s almost an instant relief that can come with that for a start. You go, ah, that’s what it is. You can put your finger on it. And I often hear people say like, oh yeah, that was worthwhile. Like, I nearly want to pay for this call because there is that almost instant relief because.

You can start to do something about it because it’s identified and really creates that good, healthy tension between, I guess, where you’re at right now, as well as what can be on the other side of that, it’s

Terry: almost like you helping them draw the mountain. I want to climb that I’ve had this idea, but they don’t really have a good sense of what it looks like.

And you’re helping them sketch out. This is the mountain and this is the pathway. These are the milestones along that mountain that I want to get. And that in itself creates, we talked about this in the first episode of this series that creates desire. You need desire. You have to have enough desire to be able to get off your ass and get into action.

And a lot of that is about taking it from that fuzzy goal to that really clear one. And this is what I find really. I love this part of it. We talked about it before we call it the opportunity statement when we help people go, yes, that’s what I’m trying to work on.

Ryan: Awesome. And I think also, as I mentioned, sometimes you go to irritate that problem a little bit.

Like you got to irritate the pain of it and got it. Oh yeah. I’m actually not really happy with the status quo. And now that I’ve kind of identified where that pain is coming from, that tends to be enough to go. All right, I’m going to propel myself into action. I’m actually going to take actionable steps as opposed to just kind of accumulating more information.

And the reality is if you’re listening to this podcast, then I’d say there’s a fair chance. There’s some discomfort that exists somewhere. Yeah. Otherwise, yeah. On Spotify, listening to music, you’re learning about money because this, some part of you think. I need to be doing more. I needed to be doing something better here.

This is limiting me in some way. And so it’s kind of just leaning into that and going, what is actually creating that let’s define that. And when you do that, you start to uncover the options and the pathways for climbing that mountain that you mentioned

Terry: about. And that’s the really important point. Like you getting very clear on what you’re trying to accomplish, but then there’s so many options.

There’s so many different ways you can go about this. And for me, sometimes we find ourselves saying, do you know what you’ve got option a B. We might exist somewhere within that, but there are a couple of things you should explore as well. And then sometimes we decide to say, well, this is not an option for you right now.

This is probably the pathway you need to take. I guess the role that we tend to take is that it’s more facilitator and advisor facilitating that goal-setting drawing of that map and then advising you on what to do next. And sometimes that’ll involve getting involved with us and sometimes it’ll involve going and talking to somebody else.

Yeah, absolutely.

Ryan: Or it could be like some really specific learning on something that’s actually linked with what you’re working on right now. You might actually be putting something into practice and you just need some specific resource at the right time. Sometimes being linked with the right ideas at the right time is something that creates.

And yeah, as I’ve said, like the clearer, the problem is the clearer, that opportunity statement for you is the more you kind of take that cybernetic brain. Yeah. That unconscious mind, that’s always problem solving, trying to figure out how to make things better, how to grow, how to evolve. The clear that problem is for that cybernetic.

The more, you harness a lot of your mental faculty towards solving it. Just getting that clarity in itself is such a big step. And so like, we’ve obviously talked to him. The action setting cold that we do. If anyone wants to jump on and do that, like there’s no obligation, we don’t expect you guys to do anything further.

Sometimes it’s worth just jumping onto that call and just kind of defining what that is, talking through, what the options are, what the pathways are, but just starting with that clarity piece is so important, which is why we spend so much time.

Terry: So step two, then you’ve got to have a structure to your approach.

So you drew the map and you kind of looked at the different pathways. So if you think about that analogy of the mountain, now you’ve drawn the mountain, which mountain you’ve decided to climb, and you’ve kind of mapped out these milestones along the way so that you know, what progress looks and feels like.

Now you’ve got to actually plan your approach and you don’t just start walking up the mountain at any point, you’ve got to ask yourself, what’s the best place to start here. When people climb this mountain, which way do they climb? And this is where you can answer. Leverage other people’s failures for your own learning and for your own progress.

And so it’s the value of something like coming into a program like ours or another one is that people that have gone before you have made all these mistakes and they’ve kind of paved this pathway and that works. So you didn’t have to figure it out all on your own. Doing that sometimes is we talked about this a bit, but like you’re doing it all yourself, being that rugged individual, you’re essentially trading your time for money.

Wealthy people don’t do that. Wealthy people use their money to buy back. And so you need a plan or a pathway that actually works. And so what we’re going to talk about his El model, which is a learning ladder. We’ve talked about this in the past, but how do we apply the learning ladder to learning about money and all the principles we discussed with Scott Young?

We’re going to talk about how some of these apply within this structure as well. Within this model for us, it’s pretty distinct, right? Nobody uses a model like this to actually take people through the process of mastering their money. It’s usually just, here’s a bunch of information where we’ve kind of really thought backwards about the problem.

Well, what’s the most expedient safest, most reliable path to be able to get someone from, he am not too sure about this part of my life. And I feel that competent to, yeah, actually I can see a future now where I’ve got this part of my life. Absolutely daunting. And I have built a firm foundation right now and the vision I have for myself in the future.

He’s definitely different. Yeah,

Ryan: no, I love that. And like you were saying before, You don’t need to be carving your own way through the jungle. Do you? There’s always a path that’s been already carved there for you. And what that comes from is, you know, I’m around money. I feel like we’re always tapping into the collective wisdom of everyone else.

Right? That’s how human beings got smarter. It was by being able to tell stories, pass on information through generations and kind of build on top of each other’s learning blocks. And so our focus is really kind of. How do you get the collective wisdom of what’s existing in the literature? And we kind of condensed and collided a lot of our learnings and bake that in, but it’s also, how do you have a good concentrated group of people that are learning from one another and then also taking what’s worked from those and kind of baking it into a process and a system.

Yeah. I’m excited to kind of dig into this because it’s obviously some of our life’s work, but also just knowing that, like you said, when you can create that feeling of momentum. Taking information doing and then creating those feedback loops and feeling progress, but completely changes the way you feel about how you’re going.

And what’s possible for you

Terry: as well. Yeah. Having that direction is critical for my luck. It’s you not being left in the dark going, okay, I’ve done that. What do I do now? You just don’t want to have that and you want to know exactly. All right. I took that step. The next step is. The next step is this. And the next step is this that’s half the battle, actually, because if you’re asking yourself, what is the next step?

You’re already wasting time. You’re already feeling a sense of fear and trepidation about whether this is the right thing. And it creates a level of uncertainty that can be crippling. And a lot of people get stuck here. So we’re about to talk about the structure of this model. And I would say a lot of people get stuck on the first rung of this ladder.

So there are three rungs to this learning letter. It’s independent learning, interactive learning and immersive learning. And then at the bottom of this letter is independent. And so independent learning is where you read, watch and listen, that’s what you’re doing right now. You listen to a podcast, you don’t need anybody else to be able to consume this information.

It’s you consuming information, very useful, but it’s like we say, it’s not enough. It’s convenient and you can happen at any time. But like we say, a lot of people get stuck here. They get stuck in the information accumulation stage without kind of connecting it to the. And I know for me, the difference was getting out of the independent learning phase into the actual doing part.

I wouldn’t have done it myself. I come to see you because I’m like, I’m now overwhelmed by the information that I’ve consumed and I’m kind of stuck by it because I’ve got a lot of ideas in my head about what I could should or would do, but I don’t know what all I should do. And so getting that conversation, having an outline.

Was very, very valuable because I could put my trust in, oh, this person has seen it before they know the directions and the different pathways to take. And they’re saying he is the next step. Now I can take that step, but I wouldn’t trust myself.

Ryan: Yeah. And I really think about that as like the foundation.

I think it’s super important. And obviously we do a lot of this, right. We read a lot, we watch a lot, we listened to a lot, but really it is that foundation that gives you the base level of knowledge to be like, all right, I can do something more with this, but it’s probably not quite the level that really impacts your behaviors.

Yeah. The kind of the things that do compounds to create the results over. It just arms you with the ideas and no doubt, like different ways of thinking. Definitely informs action, but I don’t think it’s the thing that really changes your behaviors drastically enough to kind of create discipline and consistency that kind of drives you forward, creates the progress that you’re wanting to

Terry: make.

The other part of this too, is we’ve talked about it in the past, but knowing when you know enough and having that sorted for you. So it’s bloody overwhelming when you’re in this space, trying to educate yourself because the amount of information. And the source of that information, or just an ocean of information.

There’s so much there. And if you are kind of like me and you actually like to learn, you just want know when you know enough. And so the value of having it light out for you and saying, this is what you need to own now. Now this is what you need to know. Now, now do this. Now, this is what you need to know next.

Now do this. That is so much more valuable than just like read 35 books and then maybe start to think about taking some action. Like I said, it can be crippling when you have too much information without action, because you don’t have results and you don’t building a sense of yes, I’m making moves. I’m making progress.

You need the progress part to happen sooner. So half the value for us in terms of our program is all right, well, we’ve done all the learning. We’re just colliding it. And we’re giving you the most important part and saying, that is what you need to know first before you take the first. It’s like that story.

I read to my kids every night. I reckon I’ve read this hundreds of times now I’ve got the twins at night and they’re like, can you read me Hansel and Gretel and Hansel and Gretel. They get lost in the forest. And they lost that. I don’t know what to do, but cleverly, that to me is probably the most valuable part.

Right. You go into the portal and it’s like, he jumped in and it says booking your first meeting. And before the first meeting, watch this, just watch that and then turn up and then we do the next thing. And then you go from that next meeting and it says, now watch this. And then. It’s the pathways. It’s the pebbles that are laid out for you.

I read Goldilocks. The young fellow had dropped some pebbles. He kind of had a sense that maybe they were going to get lost. Maybe they’re going to get left there and he dropped these pebbles. So he could actually go, all right, this is the way back home. This is why to get to where we want to go. And that’s essentially what we’re trying to do, right.

Is just give you the pebble. Just give you the rock. So you can say, all right, that’s the first one now the next one. That’s the first one. That’s the next one. Now that’s the next one. This is critical for that independent rung, because otherwise you can just go in circles, gathering from.

Ryan: Yeah. Nice. So that’s independent learning.

What’s the second step. So interactive learning.

Terry: Yeah. So the next rung on this learning ladder, we call it interactive learning. So this is where we’re doing something different. Now we said before, we’re reading, watching, listening, but now what we’re doing is we’re discussing the biting and deciding. So what are we doing with this information?

This is where you can really accelerate your understanding. We talked about this in the first season, but the value of actually being in a room with. On the same journey, maybe slightly ahead, maybe slightly behind from you is that you can sort of do much faster sense-making. You can make meaning of what you’re learning much quicker because the amount of information you can process in a good conversation can exceed that of what you would read in a book over 12 hours, you can just get the best quality nuggets.

So interactive learning is critical, and I think you’ve done a really good job in the community. And maybe you can talk more about this. We’ve been building this app for the program. And we’ve really been thinking about the role of getting people to talk to each other around this stuff. We try to do that through the app, but also just even like this week, we ran a workshop on crypto and we talked about what is this sort of whole new space and what does it all mean?

And we’re having this discussion, this open-ended discussion the value of putting yourself in environments like that can not be understated. It’s a very fast way for you to pick up really good quality information. Absolutely.

Ryan: Like proximity has a powerful effect on behavior. I know you throw a stat at me, which was your chances of becoming obese are 50% higher.

If you have a friend that is obese, is

Terry: that right? It’s actually 57%. So the insight here is that be really careful about who you spend your time at. Be very deliberate about it because the social norms in the groups that you exist within, they actually start to become behavioral cues. So half the value, again, of being in an environment is that the people like you are doing the things you want to.

It starts to influence who you are at an identity level that shared identity becomes a personal identity and the two reinforce each other. So we talk about this at the end of the episode, we talk about the community, just putting yourself in the right environment. It’s a really powerful way for you to start to change really vital aspects of who you are and what you do.

Yeah,

Ryan: absolutely. If I want to become a runner, maybe I’ll want to run a marathon. That’s probably a pretty good idea for me to join a running group. Yeah. Like a group of people that are kind of training consistently. Going for scheduled runs once to three times a week. And what that means is all of a sudden, you start to share the same interests.

All of a sudden you’re like, oh, how good are these Garmin watches or the things that kind of help you train harder, run faster. You start talking about diet, you start talking about the things that are kind of condition you to achieve, I suppose, in whatever realm that that is. Yeah, like that shared identity of the group, you mentioned, it becomes a huge part because it determines where you focus and where your focus goes.

Obviously, a lot of your actions, your decisions, your energy flows in that direction as well. Hi, if you’ve been

Terry: loving our content and want to continue the conversation, then you need to check out our new private podcast, community, David lockout, digital Treehouse. This is a place where we can make hang out and talk shop it’s completely free, but the only way you get into the space is by being.

And we’ve, purpose-built the experience just for you as a listener. So when you join, you’ll be able to connect with others and tell us what you want to hear more about. You’ll also be able to get your questions answered in live Q and a sessions we’ll host after episodes. Plus we’ll make sure you get first dibs on inside his office and you’ll get access to our epic resource library.

This is a complete customizable database of the 100 plus top resources you can read, watch and listen to get your PhD in personal finance. As we always say the fastest way to learn something is to discuss the Baden, decide with others on the same journey at different stages, and the best way to make new positive changes stick is to participate in a group where your desired behavior.

So by joining our community, you won’t just be accessing everything I described above. You’ll actually be costing a crucial vote on who you want your future self to be what they’ll do, and then what you’ll have. So if you’ll came to connect with us, make locked, monitored, legends, and PFOS track your progress.

All you need to do is click the link below in the show notes to join our community.

Ryan: You’ve just pulled out a book off the shelf. What

Terry: is it? I just pulled out ultra learning. I was actually just thinking which part of this. This is actually where I think Scott Young’s approach is more individual. So I look through these principles learning and it doesn’t really talk too much about community.

And I feel like it may be a bit of an oversight because I feel like as a motivator, as something that does help you change your approach, it’s actually so underrated. There’s three levels of it. Right? We talked about it before, but there’s asynchronous interactive learning. So that’s where you might jump on.

Twitter or Facebook or Instagram. Right. And you’re having a conversation, you’re in a thread and you’re kind of talking about it. So for us in our app, we’ve got kind of a couple of different community areas where you can be talking about what you’re learning in terms of money mapping, what you’re learning about in terms of investing and having asynchronous conversations, basically conversations that aren’t happening in real time.

They might be happening at different times where someone’s writing a comment today and other person replies tomorrow. That’s the first. It’s useful to actually gather information over time and help with that. Then there’s like real time online, sort of interactive learning. And that’s like what we talked about with the workshop where you’re actually in a room with people, you got four or five, maybe five to 10, maybe 15 to 20 people, all discussing a topic.

Maybe you’ve got a few experts and you’ve got an audience. Maybe it’s a panel. That kind of thing. That’s the next level, but it’s online. And then the highest level, the most information rich is the same thing. You know, workshop. Maybe it’s a conference topic environment, but it’s a real-time and it’s face-to-face in-person those are the three levels of this interactive learning rung.

Then you can kind of cover. And for me, the value of face-to-face, it’s still very much there. It’s just harder to get these days and something that we’ve been going and going back and forth. I would love to say us through some meetups in the future. So I don’t know where we get to with that, but that’s that sort of third rung that I really want to add to what we’re doing.

Cause I think we’re covering off on wrongs one and rung two really well run three would be the next step for us. Yeah, absolutely.

Ryan: So that probably wraps up interactive learning really well. And so now we’re getting to the third rung, which is immersive learning. Talk

Terry: me through that, as we said, you walk up these rungs like a letter, right?

So rung one, you’re gathering information. You’re sort of starting to figure out all the terminology and actually gain a sense of these concepts. Rung two is where you decide how they starting to apply to you and what you might do about it. Rung three is where you start to actually, as you said before, let’s put some of these principles into pre.

And so what we’re going to do on this third rung here is we’re going to act, assess and adjust. And we’re going to try to do that as quick as we can. We talked about the OODA loop. It’s very similar to that, but basically sort of figuring out how can we speed up this process of gathering information and insight from our results to be able to speed up actual understanding.

If you don’t act, then you don’t get results. And if you don’t have results, you don’t have feedback. And so if you don’t have feedback, then you cannot course correct towards what you’re trying to accomplish, because it’s the feedback that’s fuel for your progress. You have to have it, you need the insight that comes from whether something worked or didn’t work.

And we talk about this all the time, but it’s negative feedback. That’s actually the most valuable knowing what doesn’t work is, how you figure out what does. And so if you thought that process by just always just consuming information and discussing it in group, You will not, and you cannot feel a sense of progress.

And we know that actually progress is the most potent motivator for any human feeling. Like you’re getting some way ease the way to get somewhere. Now, I think the key point here is like, we talked about emotion at the start and drawing the mapping and building desire. Desire is really important to getting you.

But it’s actually the sense of progress that keeps you going. And so the principle of directness is how you get it.

Ryan: Yeah. So when you say that most people learn that really ultimately is that training, right? It’s the actual doing and the practicing, the steps that you’re actually taking to create that momentum.

Oh, I think about the heat seeking missile analogy. When you set yourself in motion, as you move through the atmosphere, you get the opportunity to gather the feedback. Yeah. To help you say whether or not you’re on track. Obviously you’ve got to create that target. You’ve really got to get clear. And that’s why we mentioned before the opportunity statement, creating that point in the future to say, that’s where I’ve got to go.

That’s where I’ve got to be. This is what my money has got to do. And that means that you can gather that information from the environment around you that hates taking off, not necessarily correcting by being on target, but by being off target by going, no, that’s not getting me there. That’s not getting me there.

That’s not getting to that. That’s getting me there. And I mentioned before, like, what we’re doing the program is definitely this independent learning, this kind of some information that is specific to what you’re training and what you’re doing. But most of it is around training in the tool. The really make sure that the behaviors stick you’re like creating the structures and the practices, this really kind of specific tools that influence behavior influence decision and make that progress visible.

And so that you’re getting the fastest feedback possible, but it’s also easy to course, correct. I think that’s where a lot of the behavior change comes from as well. Like having the tools that really kind of influence the changes in the way you see how you’re going and what you’re doing on a regular basis.

Terry: The one that Springs to mind for me, when we get to the end of the program and people have kind of been mapping their money, they’ve learned the method and they’ve actually used the tool that actually takes you through the money mapping process. So you don’t have to ask yourself the question, what do I do now?

It’s literally step one, step two. The tool actually facilitates it for you. So you’re not, they’re kind of left to fend for yourself while you’re building that skill and training yourself to develop it. And once you’ve done that for a couple of months, what that’s doing is it’s helping you. Be really intentional with your money.

And then we’re giving you the feedback with the cashflow Cod. We’re showing you what actually happened this month versus your intention. And it’s the gap between those two things. It’s the, what I wanted to do, what actually happened. That is what actually speeds up your competence. That’s how people start to figure out what is the very best way for me to squeeze every single bit of value out of my dollar right now, and to be able to provide for myself in the future when that’s happened for a couple of years, The next tool that you get is the forecast.

And so we’re gathering information and then it all comes through into this forecasting tool and it gives people a way to zoom out and to look 12 months ahead, based on what’s happened, using information that we know, and then actually start to forward plan. And it looks for months ahead. So when we’re making big decisions, we talk about this all the time, but it’s very hard for you to make very good investing decisions.

If you don’t really have. That 12 month view and a really good sense for how things can and will change over that period of time. You can’t predict the future, but you can plan accordingly, but without the tool that helps you do the forecasting people won’t do it. I can’t do it for myself. I’m actually booking with you this week to do it.

Cause I’m like, it’s just why bidder. It’s. Why, why better? If I’ve got someone facilitating that for me, it’s not my skillset. All I need to do is figure out what my decision needs. And so that’s for me critical, right? It’s one thing to have a whole bunch of information, but if you don’t have tools that help people actually apply the information and put those principles into practice, you might as well just keep listening to podcasts.

So that’s why people come in and I say, I thought it’d be just be, you know, you have so much in the podcast, that’d be more of the same. And they go, actually, no, it’s not the same at all. There’s so much more in this. And I think that’s the reason tools is massive for changes. Buckminster fuller was this old dude.

He was very smart guy. If the guy who came up with a geodesic dome, a lot of the world’s biggest thinkers, always credit this guy for being formative in their development. And he always said, if you want to change someone’s behavior, don’t tell them what to do, give them a tool. And that’s really something that we’ve, I guess, held pretty data to what we’re doing is making sure that we always give people the tools to be able to do.

Ryan: Yeah. I think that really as well back into, as you mentioned before, the principle of directness that you guys talked about in that last episode, because the reality is you can read all the books in the world about how to play the piano, but you’re not really going to learn how to play the piano until you play the piano.

You’ve got to actually be doing it. You’re going to be putting things into practice. And really just getting a feel for that rot and learning your own ways of doing and developing your own style, the things that kind of support you, the things that make you better at what you do and technology and tools.

Definitely, always informed that they always make it easier because it’s like, oh yeah, I’m going to learn and do this. And it’s going to have an outcome. Like it’s not a tool unless it’s created something on the other side of it. It’s gotta be very specific to the thing that you’re doing, but you gotta be doing first and then finding the information that supports.

And so yeah, really valuable.

Terry: And this is where that idea of meta-learning becomes really important because you can just act, but if you’re not acting in reference to some kind of milestone or target that you set for yourself, he actually don’t have a sense of whether you’re getting better or not. So if you miss that first step, then you come into this pile.

You’re like, why am I doing, what am I doing this. You’re complying, but you’re not really necessarily committed. And you’re not really being cognizant of all the insight and information coming back at you from your results. So you need that first step. You cannot skip that first step around metal learning what we call this is like, we say it a lot, but making money a project, this is not something that’s an open-ended thing that, you know, you have to be reading books for the rest of your life on make it a project, give it a great start.

And that’s why we say it’s an eight week mental shift the way do we want to give people that container to be able to act. And that creates momentum in itself. They will say, well, what if I can get it done in eight weeks? We said, look, it doesn’t matter how we’re going to work with you, but we try to make sure that you’re moving.

And so that there is an end point because if there’s no end point, because that’s to feel exhausted, you want to know, am I getting some way, how am I actually getting. Yeah. And

Ryan: I think it’s kind of thinking about how you Polish different parts of your life. Like we talk about it in terms of our business, right?

We go, oh, let’s focus our attention on this part of the business. Let’s now focus our attention on that part and kind of make that better. If you’re trying to do everything at once, you do spread yourself thin and nothing really gets your full attention and makes the progress that you want to make. And I think that’s true in your own personal life money.

The thinking about life after. It’s always worthwhile, just going on a bit of a sprint and just saying, you know, let’s make money, the big project right now, as you said, does great start and finish, but let’s put a lot more about tension than we otherwise ever need to on this now, so that we can hop step forward.

And then we can kind of use that to springboard and then sit it back down and then focus on something else.

Terry: I think accountability is huge because this is uncomfortable. Nobody wants to feel like an amateur. Nobody wants to stop from where they perceive to be. But having somebody to hold your hand in the beginning and say, Hey, just move to this next pebble, just get to this next pedal, just get to this next one.

That is what gets you beyond that sort of sense of discomfort. Having somebody that is walking you through it. And the thing is status is another really powerful motivator for humans, right? Because we’ll let ourselves down more than we want to let other people down. We care about other people’s perceptions of us more than we care about our art.

So if. Brian’s waiting on me for next week and I’ve got to accomplish two or three things before then I’m going to get that stuff done. Whereas if I set that for myself, it’s easy for me to just keep pushing it aside because it’s feels uncomfortable. But a lot of people that the very self-aware guys that come into the program say, no, I’m coming for the accountability.

I can do this. I can do this myself. I’m just not doing it myself. And so what I need is on 80. To be the person who’s counting on me to actually do it. And that’s how I know it’s going to get done. So that’s the first part, I think of mental ship accountability that comes in this immersive learning wrong.

The other part of it is feedback. And so Scott Young talks about this in his book. He talks about different types of feedback. So there’s three different types of feedback. There’s outcome-based feedback, which is, did you accomplish what you’re trying to accomplish for us? That’s essentially when we give people the cashflow cut.

So they do that. And I sit there and tension for the month and then we send them the school board at the end of the month. It was, this is what you intend to do. This is what actually happened. That is outcome-based feedback. All right. That’s really important because you can now start to see what the gap is and you start to refine your decisions and actions to close that gap.

The second is informational feedback and that’s where you’re saying he is what you’re doing wrong. He is why it didn’t work. And that’s just giving you a sense for where things might need to change. And then the last one is correctional. And I think this one’s very important when you talk about mentorship because correctional feedback can save you a whole lot of time.

Right. You know, a lot of people want to get on top of this part of their lives, but that doesn’t have the correctional feedback that says, here’s how you do it. This is the process. And we talk about it. This comes back and it links back to tools. The tool is here’s how to do it. That’s a sense of correctional feedback in itself, but when people have issues or problems or queries or questions, then we always have that interactive learning approach where it’s a Q and a session every month where they’re turning out.

How do I do this? I didn’t quite understand this part, or I feel like I’ve got this part wrong. Can you help me out? That’s when we can give correctional feedback and actually get people out of zero again, get them out of neutral and get them back into Kia. So I think those three things are massive and key when it comes to mentorship and accountability.

Ryan: Yeah, not so I’m mostly blown is really, as you said before, it’s acting, it’s assessing, it’s adjusting and really getting help creating that accountability and. Having tools that you’re mastering to help change behavior and align it with what you actually want and create the feedback loops. It needs to speed up the learning in that realm that really covers step two about, right.

So we talked about independent learning, the interactive learning, the immersive learning that exists within that learning ladder and how they, I guess, work together at different levels, but definitely worked together as well to make sure that money is something that you feel confident and the proximity of your environment is kind of pushing you forward in that.

Terry: What step three. Yeah. So once you’ve got your map and you’ve drawn that, you know what it looks like, you’ve got a structure, you’ve got a plan and a process and a pathway, and you starting to walk that path. The next thing you need to do is you need to celebrate your wins. You have to stop and smell the flowers and say, hang on a second.

You know what? Two months ago I was here and I wasn’t even doing this, this and this. Now I’m doing this. And now, I mean, I will accomplish this. And so you’ve got to think about two parts, like what you actually accomplished, but number two, who. What you’re doing, how that’s building a new identity and the processes that you’re actually working on right now.

So enjoying the process is so, so important. And so underwrite it BJ Fogg. Who’s the guy who wrote this book, tiny habits, really good book. And everyone talks about a lot about James clear and atomic habits and some really good principles in that book. Absolutely. But. Understanding this point of celebrating your wins, learning the importance of that from a, I guess, a psychology from a neuroscience point of view is critical, right?

Cause he talks about actually feeling good. We said it before, but feeling good is a way to get good at something that sense of progress. And so if you don’t stop to allow yourself to enjoy what that sense of progress feels like, then what happens is your brain does not encode this new pathway, this new.

Y of B. And the best example that he gives in this book is he talks about, you have to think about how babies learn to walk, guess what they’re doing every day they filing. But as soon as I make one hint of progress, guess what they get. Wow. Well done. Amazing. All right. Their parents are in their face going amazing job.

Now, why is that important? It’s critical because when they get that feedback, when they get that basically being celebrating that, why, what does it do? Dopamine, the brain rushes through. That dopamine encodes that learning on a much, much deeper level. The brain loves it. The brain wants it, and I want some more of it.

So it’s like, cool. Do more of that. All right. So I think something that we’re working on in the program is at a one-to-one level. We do this quite well to help people celebrate and go, well, this is where you’ve got to it. This is what you’ve done. And a big part of that is actually the review process.

When people have gone through the mental shape and reviewing it with. They come through and they talk about their experience, what it was locked, where they came from, where they’ve got to. But the other part of it is when it catching up one to one, actually being able to celebrate that as well. The next layer on top for us and something that we’re working on right now in the app is actually helping people to share their wins with each other.

And this is massive coming back to that community sense. It’s huge for building. I just put up a post last week, right. I shared a win around money mapping and it’s what it’s done for me. And I just bought that camper trailer and just actually just turned up after about a year of waiting. Right. It’s vitally here right now.

I put the postdoc cause I want to celebrate that when I’m like, I own that camper trailer. I worked with that camper trailer. We mapped for it. And now here it is. And now it’s this vehicle. It’s this mechanism to a whole bunch of memories that I’m going to be able to enjoy with my family over the next five to 10 years.

If you don’t stop and smell the flowers around. Then you actually don’t connect the dots and say, because of this, now that you have to do that, could we, because of this now that into this is that last critical step on how to learn about money. You have to give yourself the permission to say yesterday, I was doing nothing today.

I jumped on the phone and I did this, and then I made a decision to do this. And now I took action and I’m doing this, those small, small things are not small things. When you string them together, they are actually.

Ryan: Yeah, and I don’t even necessarily think it needs to be some, these winds that are quite tangible.

Like sometimes it’s just the shifts that you’ve felt in terms of how you feel about it as well. Like, I get a lot of comments from people saying I’m just really not thinking about it anymore. Bridges for me is something that it’s not necessarily buying a house or buying a month back in passive income with investing or anything like that.

It’s something that’s created so much freedom in someone’s mind the other things that are important for them. And so, yeah, it’s kind of even just the self-reflection of how you’ve changed as a person, as well as some of the tangible rewards and financial progress that you’ve made as well. Well,

Terry: that’s what money’s for, isn’t it?

Yeah. It’s not about the thing you got it’s about what the thing does for you. So yes, it’s a house, but it’s not the house. It’s a sense of accomplishment, maybe security that you want to from. You’re right. You want to actually think about what’s the internal state change that signifies for me success.

What have I done in that way? Absolutely critical.

Ryan: Yeah. Not so that was steps, right? Celebrating your wins. Yeah. Like kind of making it really visible the things, the progress that you’re making, how things are kind of changing and kind of really instilling those, those habits. So like, just to quickly summarize everything that we’ve discussed.

Right. So three really big stuff. The first step was setting a goal and drawing a map of your learning. So really kind of starting with where’s the top of that mountain, you know, where are we standing right now and kind of verbalizing the feeling of what exists right now. We talked about the opportunity statement that we do on our action setting Cole, and really kind of creating the tension there so that you can start to see the path to climb that.

The second set, we talked about structuring your approach. So figuring out what that plan is, what that pathway is. Obviously we talked about our model, the learning ladder, the combination of independent learning, interactive learning and immersive learning, and really, I guess, prioritizing the immersing piece.

So it kind of acting assessing and adjusting and kind of creating action that gives us and taking informed action. That gives us feedback loops that helps us correct course and speed up. Um, obviously we’ve mentioned our program, the money mentor ship, which is really about making sure that people climb that ladder.

Yeah. Step up each rung and not get stuck on that independent learning one, which is, I must say, it’s this podcast, right? And it’s, and it’s reading the books and all the information that’s out there. It’s a lot about kind of taking the steps up and above, which takes people into step three, which is really celebrate those wins.

Yeah, we are using dopamine to our advantage, you know, instilling the habits, the things that have supported progress to now and make sure that they stick into the future. We want to be little babies getting clapped at that. We

Terry: are, we want to be clapping ourselves.

Ryan: Yes, absolutely. We want to give ourselves a clap as well.

And so step one, set a goal, draw a map of your learning step to structure your approach and step three, celebrate your wins. And so if you feel like you’ve got. If you feel like you’ve been on stuck on that first rung, maybe as we’ve alluded through that action setting call, feel free to jump on the website.

There’s no kind of expectation of doing anything, anything further, but it’s probably worthwhile spending some time just identifying what that opportunity statement is. And at least creating the map, ultimately, having a look at where that mountain is, and I can forge a path from there. And so that wraps up this series.

It does,

Terry: man. Yeah. We’ve covered off on what we wanted to cover it off in terms of learning how to learn. Hopefully you’ve got a lot of good information, some really good insights loved having Scott Young on as well, but just regarding the point, learning how to learn, ease a superpower, it’s so valuable because you can take it from wherever you are and you can use it in any domain.

We’ve just been talking today about how to use it in the domain of money.

Ryan: Yeah, I love it. And so I love the words of wisdom from that first episode, which was the fastest learners are the highest. And obviously the directness of learning that came from Scott Young, he’s kind of approached there. And then with this one focused on money, the importance of using tools, the importance of using mentorship and acting and assessing, creating the feedback there is so valuable.

And so what are we talking about next? What’s coming up next in the passive income project,

Terry: right? The big one. We’re going to do a whole series on decoding crypto. And it’s been such a, I don’t know, crazy. Journey down this massive rabbit hole. And I don’t even think we’re getting close to the bottom of it, but we just told ourselves we were going to do a lot of work to actually understand this space.

Before we started to talk about it. We’ve got a lot of questions about it, and we were kind of avoiding talking about it till we actually had a good sense of, of what was going on. And so we’re going to, I guess, give you the very best insights of that journey. This has involved a whole lot of learning, a whole lot of us doing a lot of independent learning, but.

Familiar, I’ve been interviewing some of the best thought leaders in the world in this space. And then we’re going to bring you the best insights in the most condensed manner so that you can get a sense for whether this thing’s actually, is it, is it a fad or is it the future of money? And that’s what going to help you understand in this next new series.

So I’m really excited about it. I’ve learned so much in this time and I know you have as well, haven’t you? Oh,

Ryan: absolutely. As you said has definitely challenged us and it’s going to have a big impact on how we build our wealth into the future. And so. I would say tune in because it’s going to be a bit of a wild ride and I look forward to kind of rotting some of those ways with you guys.

Well, so mate,

Terry: we’ll keep an eye out for that. Episode’s going to be coming out in a couple of weeks. We’re super excited. And please, if you got value from this series, Share it with someone that you know, or that you love, if you feel like it can help them. And even if you can just add to a good conversation that you’re having together, do a job for us and share what we’re doing here.

We love doing it, but we want to reach more people and that relies on you. So. Share it with someone you love and, or keep reviewing the podcast. Love, love, seeing those ones come through and tell us what you locking in, what you want to see more of also might we’ll, uh, look forward to chatting to you then.

Cool. I met that’s a good, I legend. I hope you enjoy this episode and thank you for listening.