How Money Creates Impact | DFS 393

Welcome to Destin for success. I'm your

host, Jennifer Takagi and last week Thomas Cox, all right,

let's start that over. That was just for fun. Aaron, welcome to

Destin for success. I'm your host, Jennifer Takagi, and last

week Thomas Cox was talking about how to build wealth. He's

a financial architect, if you will. And I want to take that a

little bit in a different direction for me, for my airy

fairy kind of stuff. And I want to talk about what money

actually is. Money is currently is currency, and we use it to

trade. So I give the electric company money, and they keep my

my lights on, my heat and air, working my internet up and

running, my computer powered like I give them money and they

keep things running. I give money to the grocery store and

they give me groceries back. I don't know if you caught an

episode A while back, but I was at a retreat, a women's retreat,

and this woman, for two days, just kept bemoaning money and

how evil it is and how terrible it is. And finally, I, you know,

I just couldn't hold myself back. I was like in the olden

days, like I would give you furs and you would give me fruits and

vegetables, like, that's how we traded. I would give you

something. You would give me something. Doctors and healer

type people often would be given chicken and baked bread for

coming to heal the sick person in the house. So it got, I don't

know when, maybe I'll look that up and do that in the future.

Then it became very standardized, and coins were

created, and the coins had a value, and you would trade them.

So I don't understand how all the banking system works, and

the gold, and there is no gold, and we make up money. I don't

understand how all that works, but I know if I go to the gas

station, I put my credit card in, and I'm able to fill my car

with gas, and then I get the notice from the credit card

company that I owe them money, and I pay them so money is just

an exchange. It's goods for service, or I'm paying for more

service, like however that works. So if you're struggling

because you have an idea that money is bad, money is evil, you

talk about, and quote the Scripture incorrectly, that

money is the root of all evil. It's not money that there is the

root of all evil. It's the love of money. Casinos, in and of

themselves, are not a problem. I don't have any trouble in the

world going to a casino, because I'm typically not going to

gamble at all. They might give me $10 of free play, and I'll

play those $10 and then they're gone and I'm gone. I don't have

a problem with it. That's That's not one of my things, but

somebody who bets their house, literally, you know the old

saying, Don't bet the farm, don't bet the house. It's a

problem that's a different thing. Anything to excess can be

a bad thing. Moderation is the key, right? Like we've hear that

all the time, you can go on a fad diet, and it's extremist,

and as soon as you eat a hamburger, you gain 20 pounds

back. Um, I don't know if that's true or not. I just made that

up. Don't come after me for that one. But you get my drift. We do

things too extreme, and it's hard on us, physically,

emotionally, spiritually, all the way around. It's hard on us.

So if you understand and have a healthy relationship with money,

then it's good to have a lot of it. Money flows. I heard this

very early on in my entrepreneurial career, and one

of the coaches I was working with said, Oh, money is just an

energetic exchange. Money flows. You have to invest money to make

money, you have to hire coaches to learn the skills you need.

But she didn't like help with any like parameters of that, or

how you know if you're going to get a good coach, like, Who is

that going to be? What is that going to look like? So I think I

might have needed a little more context there. Because I do

think you should be a good steward. You should really be a

good steward with your money and where you spend it and how you

spend it. I was raised where having a bunch of debt was not a

good thing. It just wasn't, and the goal was to have everything

you own paid in full. Your house paid off your car, paid off a

reliable car, because we can have a car that's paid for, but

then it leaves you dead on the side of the road. And that's not

necessarily a good thing, but we have to, like, look at what the

possibilities are with the money and the money flowing. I've had

seasons of my life where I was like, I want $10,000 in a

savings account, because I felt like that would really give me

some freedom, some latitude, and I worked really hard to save

that $10,000 there were a lot of Friday nights that when my

friend said, we're going out to dinner and drinks, and I was

like, Yeah, I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't set aside

$20 for that, because that's $20 not going towards my 10,000 and

once I got that 10,000 it gave me freedom, it gave me

flexibility, it gave me peace of mind. I had a little, you know,

issue with my car. I got that squared away because I had some

money I could draw upon. That's my comfort level. That's what I

wanted. And I did that for many, many years. I'd spend it a

little bit and I'd build it back up. That's what I was

comfortable with. I I wanted to know if I had an air conditioner

go out, I could fix it. I could replace it, I could fix it,

whatever, whatever it took. But it wasn't me hanging on to it

for dear life, as if I don't have any money, therefore I'm

going to starve to death. That wasn't the truth. It was, I

wanted a little stockpile so that I could freely operate

within my world. A friend of mine's husband lost his job, and

he was close to retirement, so he's doing some different things

now. And I was talking to her one day, and she said, I'm

broke. I'm just flat ass broke. I have no money. I'm broke. And

I said, Well, how does how broke Are you? And she goes, What do

you mean how broke I am? I'm broke. My husband isn't working

full time, permanent. I don't have a steady paycheck. I'm

broke. And I said, Are you broke you're at risk of losing your

house and your car, or are you broke that you can't go on

vacation, because those are two different kinds of broke. I

remember very early on in my career, I had moved to the

Kansas City area, and I had very little money, and my boyfriend

was coming to town, and I called a grocery store, and back in the

day, not everybody took a credit card, and you either had to have

cash or write a check, and you couldn't write a check unless

you had money in the bank to back the check. And I called the

grocery store and I said, Hey, I just need to know, Do you take

credit cards? And they said, Yes, absolutely. So I kind of

overdid it a little bit. I'm just gonna be honest, I overdid

it a little bit so we'd have a really fun weekend, because I'm

a really good cook, so I could cook and bake and whatever, and

it was going to be a great weekend. And lo and behold, she

checks me out, and I hand her my credit card, and she says, we

don't take credit cards.

And I was mortified, because this was a Thursday or Friday, I

didn't get paid till Monday, and I was pretty sure I didn't have

enough to cover that check before my paycheck deposited.

And that's called kiting a check, and it's illegal you are

not to write a check that you don't have the money for so I

had no choice, because I had all these groceries. I didn't feel

that I had a choice. I could have put something back, let's

be clear, I could have put something back, but at that

point, I'd already had it all bagged and ready to go, so I

wrote the check, and I left very disheartened and devastated. And

I was like, yep, that's not going to happen to me again. I'm

going to make sure that I've got $50 in my checking account. So

if I go the grocery store, I can buy some groceries. It's all

your level of comfort. It's all your level of comfort. If you go

around telling yourself you're broke all the time. You'll keep

being broke. If you go around telling yourself you're broke

all the time, you'll keep being broke. Money flows. There's an

abundance of money. There's an abundance of careers and job

opportunities. It may not be what you thought you were going

to do. And we are in the age of AI, and there are many

predictions of the jobs that will be lost, and that is true,

and if you're not on the cutting edge, forefront of using AI and

being able to implement it and work well with it, that it could

happen. It could so focus on what you can do, focus on what

you can learn. Set aside an hour of day to start learning the AI

tools that are out there to make you valuable. And as you bring

money in, as you amass money, as you create your wealth in your

business, be sure to use it for good. I do not watch the news

very often. There's just no point. It doesn't make me happy

or breathy joy, and somebody's gonna tell me what's going on.

And so if you watch the news and you see all the horrors, then

it's very easy for our brains to start connecting dots, and you

can start connecting dots that all money is used for evil. And

the bottom line is, it is not. It is not, when you hear about

the billionaires doing all these horrible things, the bottom line

is that's just a few of the billionaires. There are many

that are doing a lot of good in the world. And I will look those

up, and I'll do those in another episode, because I have looked

into it, I've seen it, but I don't have it at my fingertips

today as I record this audio. But money can be used for good.

You can help other people. I remember one time a friend of

mine was really in a bad spot, and $400 was really going to

make the biggest difference in the world, in her life. And I

went to my husband, and we hadn't been married very long,

and I said, I want to send my friend $400 and he said, Okay.

And I said, but we have to do it with the right mindset. We're

never going to see it again. She's never going to offer it

up. It's never going to be here again. When we give this, it is

a gift, and that will be that, and we cannot harbor any ill

feelings. And he said, Perfect, yeah, I'll send her the money.

And I did, and I was very happy that I did, and I'm still happy

that I did, and I would do it again. If I had the $400 to help

a friend out, and it would make a big difference in their life,

I would absolutely do it and do it again. So you can use money

for good. You can use money to ease someone's burden, to help

someone out, I am going to Stillwater Oklahoma, the home of

Oklahoma State University, this afternoon. Not that you really

needed to know this, or you don't even know when this has

happened, huh? But I am going to meet two of my great nieces who

are in school there. One's a sophomore, one's a senior, my

best friend's daughter, who's a freshman, and another dear

friend's granddaughter who is a junior, and I'm going to run up

there and I'm going to take them all to dinner,

because I can, because I want to, because it's going to make

their day really great to go have pizza. I think we're going

to Empire slice, I don't know, um, but not to have to worry

about it. And I'll just buy dinner tonight. It will be my

treat. When I was in college, if anybody ever bought my dinner or

my drinks, I was thrilled to death. It made my day, randomly,

my aunt gave me a $10 bill, and I was shop stunned, thrilled and

amazed. So when you have money, when you've built up some money,

when you've created what you want to create, and you're paid

well for what you do, then you can help others, even if it's

just buying dinner for four college students, a freshman, a

sophomore, a junior and a senior. Actually, now that I

look at it, that's the that's the spread we have tonight.

Money helps create in. Impact. What impact do you want to make?

And I challenge you to sit down and journal. They say, journal.

Write about write in your diary, whatever it takes. Write it

down. What would you do if you had an extra $1,000 not for

yourself, but for somebody else? What would you do? What impact

could you make? And keep in mind, you impact one person's

life. Chances are what you did for them will impact 10 more and

10 more and 10 more until you're at a million people. I'm

Jennifer Takagi with destin for success, and I look forward to

connecting with you soon. Bye.