george grombacher 0:02
Uh, Travis, to get us started, give me two truths and a lie, please.

Travis Freeman 0:06
Two Truths and a Lie. So I have been to Disneyland in Tokyo, Japan. I am married to a Russian spy, and I have never purchased a brand new vehicle.

george grombacher 0:22
Oh, my goodness, been to Disney in Tokyo. You married to a Russian spy, and you’ve never purchased a new vehicle. My goodness, hmm, I don’t think you’ve ever been to Disney in Tokyo.

Travis Freeman 0:40
I have been to Disney Tokyo. Absolutely awesome. I was probably 19 years old. I got to go there and stay there with a family in a little town called Chiba, Japan. And just surreal. It was, it’s just like going to Disneyland and Disney World in the US. It was pretty neat.

george grombacher 0:58
Yeah, all right, so tell me about the Russian spy.

Travis Freeman 1:01
My wife is my wife’s Russian. And I joke around that sometimes she’s a spy and she’s messing around on her phone on social media. And I say, you’re, you’re texting with Putin again, aren’t you? And we have fun with that.

george grombacher 1:12
Is, is that? What’s going on right now? Are you? Are you giving secrets about the United States to Vladimir? There

Travis Freeman 1:19
might be, there might be codes, and I’m sorry if your phone gets tapped after this, George,

george grombacher 1:25
I think that maybe we should circle back and that I may be proven correct. Of course, I said Disney was the lie. Your wife could still be a Russian spy, I guess is.

Travis Freeman 1:35
Is very good, yeah, Deep State, yeah.

george grombacher 1:39
And new cars, used cars. Tell me about that. Yeah,

Speaker 1 1:42
we buy cars in cash and we buy them used. I have never in my life purchased a brand new vehicle. No, no. Nothing against anyone who does lots of my clients do but buy them used, and I drive them for anywhere from eight to 12 years. Okay?

george grombacher 1:58
What’s smart? Very, very Dave Ramsey esque. And I’m big fan of Uncle Dave, but he has good stuff. What do you do that’s dumb with money? Travis got to be something that’s dumb with money. Yeah, can’t be perfect all the time, buddy. Yeah. No, I

Travis Freeman 2:15
hear you dumb with money. So I, for years, I told myself I would never put my kids into private independent school. And while, while we pay plenty of taxes that pay for great schools and where we live, my wife and I have decided to find the most expensive independent school close to our house, and I’ll say we really love it, but the older version of myself would be kicking me, going, What the hell are you doing? So we spend a pretty we it would be cheaper to send them to college, frankly, but it is an investment, and that is, that is where I stand these days. They there are a grade above on a certain topics. Anyway, we’re happy with it. Yeah,

george grombacher 3:03
yeah. I appreciate that. And it makes sense that that you’re making your splurging on stuff for your kids and and not driving around brand new Ferraris for yourself. Travis, so

Speaker 1 3:14
you are a good dad, sir. The Ferrari is going to happen one day. Don’t worry,

george grombacher 3:19
yeah, for sure. You can just buy a buy a buy one. That’s, that’s, that’s, that’s, that’s a year old, instead of right off the lot. Perhaps I like that. I like that. Then you’re still good. So, all right, beautiful. Well, congratulations on being married to a non Russian spy and making good financial decisions all the time. What is, what is? What is top of mind for you right now.

Speaker 1 3:43
So, you know, the the message that I’ve been preaching recently, ever since the the book came out, is, what could people do when they have youth? And when I say youth, it doesn’t mean you’re 18 years old, right? 20s, 30s, 40s? What? What could somebody do when they have time on their side to reach their definition of financial success? So I’ve owned a couple businesses. My main bread and butter is my wealth management practice. So I’m a CFP certified financial planner. I help people that have anywhere from millions to 10s of millions. Some folks have upwards of $100 million in net worth, and I help them with all the complexity that goes along with that. I wrote the book, though, for all those folks that want to know how in the world, these successful people created the seven or eight or nine figure wealth that they have, so we can get into any aspect of that you’d like to

george grombacher 4:38
well, there’s no doubt that life is complicated for all of us. When you start adding money into it, it becomes more complicated

Speaker 1 4:47
without a doubt. You know, the the mindset of somebody that might come right out of school is, I want to have the highest paying job that I could find, right? Yeah. Who could blame someone for that? But one thing that I always encourage people to do is, instead of thinking with your next paycheck in mind, think what path could you put yourself on with the most growth potential, even the Bureau of Labor Statistics, government statistics will tell you what industries they expect to grow over the next decade, right? What parts of the country are growing faster than others? Those are things that you probably want to consider when you think about your career. Quick. Math, George, if you have two people at 25 years old, one takes a job earning 48 grand a year, and they’re going to get 4% cost of living adjustments, nothing crazy. The other person makes 70 grand a year getting 2% cost of living adjustments. You might think good for them, 70 grand a year, they’re making a lot more. They get to buy the things they want. But the person at 48 grand, making twice the inflation adjustment, will end up making almost $100,000 more by the time their retirement age in the other and that crossover point is in the 40s, right? And we’re only talking about 4% I’m sure you’ve had many guests, and you’ve seen this yourself, be on a much faster growth path than that, right? So it’s not about the next dollar tomorrow, it’s about the growth you’re going to have the next 10 plus years.

george grombacher 6:16
I love that. I wrote down next paycheck thinking, and it makes sense, especially for a young person who is just getting out of college, that I need to start, or I really want to start earning money. So why wouldn’t I just take the the opportunity that’s going to pay me the most? But to your point, it’s, it’s very it could be extremely short sighted. Do you find, I mean, I can just think of myself. I was probably a big dummy. I still kind of am, but until I was probably 30 years old, do you find that is it? Was it a certain kind of person who’s just more thoughtful and can process information more like that? Were were you the kind of person who is more forward thinking.

Speaker 1 7:03
So people tend to learn through life in any area, by mistakes, right? We learn not to touch the stove when we’re younger, when it’s hot, right? And you pull your hand away and you never touch the stove when it’s hot. Again. We learn through our mistakes, but when it comes to financial mistakes, they can be taught costly, and you just lose so much precious time. I mean, money is infinite, right there? Any amount of money can be created. You could become wealthier than Elon Musk. Anybody can do it. But time is finite. We only have so many hours left in our lives. And since time is the magic ingredient to building wealth in addition to taking risk, time is the most precious commodity that we should all be focusing on and protecting. So what I often see people do, even highly technical, intelligent people who graduated from very impressive colleges, it’s forgetting that that precious commodity of time is what gets us to the level of wealth that we want to be at. And as I mentioned, I have folks that have 10s of millions of dollars, right? It doesn’t mean that everybody wants to get to $50 million some people might retire by the time they get to 10 million or 5 million. But whatever someone’s goal is over time so they can have financial freedom, it’s going to require a certain level of thinking and a certain level of risk using the time using the time that you have. Is it fair to say the number of the folks listening to your podcast, or entrepreneurs, or aspiring entrepreneurs?

Unknown Speaker 8:31
I think so.

Speaker 1 8:34
So I have seen people that have ventured out into creating businesses that didn’t work out, and folks that did it, and it’s worked out multiple times. I literally just left a meeting 30 minutes ago with a gentleman who has bought and sold four different companies, and he’s about 60 years old, right? I have found that the folks that are successful in that have a burn the boats mentality, where there is no turning back. They have decided they want to get to this goal in life, and they are going to take whatever risk necessary, ethical and legal risk, right? You know what I mean by that? That kind of risk to get to that point, and if one or two or three ventures don’t work out, they’re still not going to give up. It’s the folks that don’t have the fortitude and they give up after the first one fails that unfortunately don’t get there. And I’ve seen that happen, and it’s just heartbreaking, right?

george grombacher 9:28
I was just, we were talking, before we hit record, about how podcasts and audio books and just what wonderful resources that those are. I’m listening to Elon Musk’s the Walter Isaacson biography that just came out pretty recently. It’s extraordinary. And the amount of risk that that guy has taken throughout the course of his life and the fortitude to use your word is absolutely extraordinary. Now, whether or not most people are going to be like that, I you know who knows? But to your point, also, you have that gentleman who’s 60 years old. He’s bought and sold for however many companies it was. So being able to figure out and factor that risk is that a young person’s game where, how do you think about that? Because this guy was 60, it’s

Speaker 1 10:17
different, right? It is different. I think back to the way I started. I was 19, working on my finance degree. When I had my first taste of self employment, I actually became licensed in 19 and I was selling insurance, which I don’t I don’t do anymore, but that’s how I got my feet wet. By the time I graduated college, I had three different companies I had worked for, two of which were self employed, self employed type gigs, and I realized right out of the gate, I don’t want to work for somebody I love business ownership. Started my practice. Absolutely difficult path that I took right I didn’t, I don’t think I made my first dollar for four or five months, literally, my first dollar and working 70 hours a week. So I took a lot of risk. But I could do that because I was living in my parents basement. I didn’t have a wife or kids to take care of, so that yes, is it a young person’s game? To your question, George, a young person, even if they don’t have a bunch of wealth, they are poised to be able to absorb a certain element of risk, whereas if I were to do that now in my 40s, with 210 year old twin boys at home and a wife where our incomes are different, I’d be able to take a lot of the same risk. I think I’d have the same mindset, but there would be a different threshold that I’d be willing to go past or not, right? But even if one of your listeners is 43, years old, with three kids, there is still a plan that could be set forth to where they don’t have to risk their kids having to change schools because they ran out of they pilfered their 529, plan, but still be able to venture down this path in seeking the wealth they want over time. I

george grombacher 11:56
think that that’s really well said. There’s from an emotional from a temperament standpoint, the amount of risk that we’re comfortable taking on. And then there’s simply, I’m in a certain financial position where, if I have resources, if I am that person who is making $48,000 a year, and I got 4% more every year, maybe I’m at a point where I’ve got hundreds of 1000s of dollars saved up, and I can step away from climbing the corporate ladder and pursue entrepreneurship,

Speaker 1 12:26
you got it. And though it’s a great example of someone who might have exited the corporate ladder with a bunch of stock options and cash they saved up that a young 20 something isn’t going to have available to them, right? The young 20 something has probably a wider tolerance for risk and all this time on their side, the 4550 something year old probably has a lot of liquidity and experience, but not the time, right? But I think the point is that regardless of where somebody’s at in their journey, anybody can decide to go down that path, and I’ve seen it work very well for a number of people, multiple times over.

george grombacher 13:02
So talking about as as more money enters the equation, enters my personal financial situation. I have assets. I’ve got stuff, and now I need to be working with professionals, or I just need to do planning. For lack of a better term, it’s probably pretty good term for it is this, like, I should start when I’m younger, what is, what is the right time to start thinking about actual planning?

Speaker 1 13:33
So I’d say there are three, three trades that go that people go down over time, right? First, you trade your time for money, right? You work for an hourly wage. I’ll give you my time. You give me money. Then we all get so busy that we are now willing to pay somebody else, like an assistant, to get time back. And we leverage that time, and eventually we have so enough capital that we can take our money and turn it into more money, right? That evolution naturally happens to people? Sometimes it’s slow, sometimes it’s fast. And the reason I preface your question with that George is because if, if somebody really values their time, they’re probably willing to go pay for a personal assistant. If they don’t want to sit there on a Sunday and figure out their complicated tax return, they’re probably going to hire an accountant, right? If they don’t want to have to figure out how a revocable living trust works, they’re going to hire an attorney. And it’s no different. Working with a financial planner, you have this circle of people around you, whether it’s an assistant or people that you pay by contract. The main reason that people would do this is because you respect your time enough to be able to pay an expert to do it and do it well, so that you can focus on what you do really well, right? If you’re a podcast extraordinaire, right? You probably want to pay someone to walk your dog and do everything and you just your most valuable thing you could be doing is being in front of your microphone, right? If somebody is an x. A lunch salesperson I pay for maybe this is, maybe this is where I waste money. I pay for custom suits, right? I go cheap on a lot of stuff, but not my suits. My suit guy. I was meeting with him years ago, and he goes, Oh, I’m just so busy. I wish I had more time to call all my prospects and leads. What’s your assistant do? He goes, I don’t have one. I said, Ben, hire somebody. The next time you see me, I hope you have hired somebody. And he was able to increase his number of meetings by like 30 or 40% because he valued his time. One, right? So I’d say that’s my answer to your question. Is, yes, you create a plan. It can happen any point, but it’s going to happen once someone has valued their time enough to leverage it with other people.

george grombacher 15:42
It’s a perfect story. And hopefully Ben gave you some discounts or some free shirts or something like that.

Speaker 1 15:50
Actually, he did. He gave me a discount and a free shirt. Perfect,

george grombacher 15:53
perfect. And I think in a lot of ways that’s that’s kind of like when we started our conversation, I was telling you about how I’ve been a dummy for a long time, and even if, even if you would have told me these things, would it have sunk in. And I was thinking back, I just, I don’t know that anybody told me or counseled me and said, Hey, I know that you think that this is a good job and it is what you’re what you’re talking about. The career path you’re considering is awesome, but you’re probably going to leave a lot on the table. And so you having the conversation with with with your tailor, with Ben saying, hey, you know, do you, I bet you value your time. You respect your time. How much do you think it’s worth? And that’s simple putting in somebody’s head and thinking about, like, Oh, yeah. And then sometimes people actually do act on it.

Speaker 1 16:44
You got it right and that, but you’re right. It’s usually someone has put a Y in the road that you never thought of, and it’s forcing you to choose a path, right? It’s really hard to discover that. Why in the road on your own? It’s usually because we made a mistake, and now we’re forced to it right? So, but you’re right that that has happened many times in my my career path. It was put in front of me, and then I had to choose, and I got lucky because of it, and that’s kind of what the book is, right? That’s exactly right, right? Don’t, don’t learn by mistake. Don’t learn over time. Learn all these things early in life, while you have the time. And my goodness, if you only implement half of what’s in that book, you’ll be just fine long term. Yeah,

george grombacher 17:26
it’s such a funny thing how we as adults and children learn, you know, there’s some things we’re going to put our hand on the stove. We’re going to stumble along and run into certain ideas. And if you’re in the habit of consuming books as you are reading, you know, dozens on a monthly basis, or whatever it might be, you’re just going to have more opportunities and more ideas and more thoughts bouncing around your head. And that’s, that’s, that that’s, that’s, that’s one of the keys.

Speaker 1 17:59
Yep, you got it 2025, book, 25 books a year on average, a lot, a lot of audio books. So I feel like I constant college course, right? It’s anything from child psychology to be a better dad or how to hack that, you know, my health and live till I’m 100 and be able to hike when I’m 90, or a lot, a lot of business and entrepreneurship books, right? So it’s just like your podcast, right? You bring on all kinds of interesting folks to to bring about ideas, and if everybody walks away with one thing that that’s actionable, you’re making the world a better place. Yeah,

george grombacher 18:31
totally. So you started in financial services at 19. How did that happen?

Speaker 1 18:39
I wanted an internship because I didn’t have any money. And turned out my internship was not really an internship, because they said, Oh, congratulations. You have the job that sounds familiar, yeah, on the spot. Oh, and pay $400 for this book and study it and then take this test. But I’ll tell you, even though it was a sales gig and it was it was terrible, I learned so much about business, and I had my own self employed tax return that year. And then I went to work for American Family Life Assurance Company. And then I went to Scott trade financial, which is which was acquired by TD, and then Schwab. And that helped me know exactly what I wanted out of the gate, right? So in my in my 20s, I had pretty good clarity, where a lot of my friends were still trying to figure it out. I knew what to do right. And you obviously know that the concept of compounding right, the snowball that’s rolling down the hill and keeps getting bigger faster, the career paths work the same way. So if someone can articulate and think about these things you and I have already talked about geography, what kind of Labor Statistics and showing your career growth, if you can put your career path on this growth trajectory and do it early, I mean, you can wind up with so much more income and money over time, rather than being 60 and go, Gosh, I wish I would have you. Tried to do this differently, right? Learn, learn the lessons. Now, I mean, there’s a lot, there’s a lot to be said about growth and sacrifice. Now it’s short term pain for long term pleasure is the easiest way to put it, and

george grombacher 20:12
it’s true. It is true. That’s a good one, right there. Travis, and we’re ready for your difference making tip. What do you have for us? Difference making tip.

Speaker 1 20:22
Everybody has plans, right what, what they want to do with their life or their business or their future or retirement or whatever it is. But if, if those plans, those ideas, are just in our minds, their wishes, there is something to be said about documenting them and then creating a true written plan and projecting out every successful business in America does this right? They do corporate projections for the next five to 10 years. If people thought about their financial lives more like a business, more people would not only be satisfied with their finances, in my my opinion, I think they would get to their goals faster and more efficiently, because without a true, written, analyzed plan on where we’re heading or where we want to go, how do we know we’re going to get there right? It’s okay to have them in your brain, but until they are documented and analyzed over the next 10 years, it’s not a plan. And that’s the difference maker that I see in the folks that have gone from not having a plan to having a plan that we’re executing and monitoring every single year.

george grombacher 21:29
Well, I think that is great stuff that definitely gets Come on, that’s probably the best advice that one can give somebody else, is to actually take what’s in your head and put it down on a piece of paper. For goodness sakes,

Speaker 1 21:43
you got it easy to do? Just gotta do it. Yeah, easy

george grombacher 21:46
to say, really hard to do, apparently, because only 3% of Americans have written down plans or goals. So sadly, well, Travis, thank you so much for coming on. Where can people learn more about you? How can they engage with you. Where can they get their copy of the fortune of youth? Sure,

Speaker 1 22:04
everything you just said [email protected] so when you go to growth info.com the link to the book, some other blog posts and articles on intrapreneurship entrepreneurship, a little contact section. It’s all right, there.

george grombacher 22:17
Excellent. Well, if you enjoyed this much, as I did so Travis, your appreciation. Share today’s show with a friend who also appreciates good ideas. Go to growth info.com and check out all the great resources that Travis is offering and working on. Get your copy of his book, the fortune of youth, and if what he’s been talking about we’ve been talking about today resonates, which it definitely did with me, reach out and have a quick conversation with them, see if it’s good fit. Thanks again. Travis, All right, thanks, George. Finally, friendly reminder, never going to be anybody more interested in your financial success than you are, so act accordingly. You.