MSG Presents: "Eric On Money" - The Wealth Mindset: How To Think Your Way To Financial Freedom

In this episode of "Eric On Money", Eric explores how our attitudes and beliefs shape our financial decisions and reveals why mastering your mindset is the foundation for building lasting wealth.

Transcript

Master Your Mindset To Build Wealth

[00:00:00] I wanted to do this discussion and it'll be pretty brief, but I wanted to talk about this based on what's going on in the world right now. We have tax season coming up.

We have a number of different layoffs happening, especially in the tech industry. The tech industry is getting hit really hard right now, and we're in the beginning of a new year, so I know there's a lot of people out there who have made their New Year's resolution that they will do better by their finances this year.

You know, shout out to all my high income earners, you know many of us know how to make good money. And maybe your New Year's resolution was, Hey, instead of me making more money this year, I'm going to find a better utility or a better use for my money, or I'm going to manage my money better. And so at the center of that conversation, we start talking about mindset.

Now if you follow me on LinkedIn or any of the other social [00:01:00] platforms, I talk a lot about when my mindset wasn't really that great around money. And I always talk about, 'cause this is such a big part of my life, I always talk about when I was 19 years old, I got into a car accident, received a large settlement, and I blew through all of the money.

It was a six figure settlement. Blew through all of the money in one year. And so going through some money that quickly, it, it, it damaged My psyche actually developed something that I'm going to talk about a little bit later in his live, which is called financial imposter syndrome. And that financial imposter syndrome affected me for many, many years in terms of the way I thought about money and just my overall mindset.

And so mindset is crucial and we're gonna definitely get into that today. So. Who am I? My name is Eric McElroy. Some of my credentials are MBA in [00:02:00] finance, decade in the financial industry. As I mentioned, I'm a financial coach, also a fractional CFO, so I work with a lot of small businesses that are trying to build revenue and organize their finances.

And as I just mentioned, I am a former, former financial imposter, and we're gonna get into, get into more about what that means a little bit later. So in my work and over the years of dealing with mindset, I actually created a framework, and I love frameworks when they are sequential. I like frameworks because they kind of give us a guide on where we're trying to go.

They order the steps so that you know where you're going. And so I created one call for specifically for Mindset, and it is called Evolve. E-V-O-L-V-E. And as you can see on the screen here, the, at the very bottom, when we're starting to address our mindset is where we [00:03:00] come into evaluating our current mindset.

We move up to visualizing and affirming the future, opening up to new beliefs, leveraging other people's confidence, valuing financial literacy. And then at the very top we wanna establish some, some new routines and beliefs. And so let's get deeper into those. So defining mindset. So we hear this word, this term mindset, all over social media, all in the media.

Overall, what is actually a mindset, and I, and I actually put myself to the test on this too. I was asking myself, you know, what is my definition of mindset? I hear the word all the time, and I use it quite often, but what does it actually mean? And so what I've kind of defined mindset is after kind of thinking and just doing some research is it is a set of attitudes and beliefs that shape how you make sense of the world, a [00:04:00] set of attitudes and beliefs that shape how you make sense of the world.

And so in the context that we're talking about today, we're talking about a set of attitudes and beliefs that shaped. Shape how we make sense of the world, specifically as it relates to money. Now we have two different types of mindsets here. We have the fixed mindset and we have the growth mindset. The fixed mindset is assumes that the knowledge and skills are set, they cannot be changed.

And that's kind of what I was dealing with when I was 19. It was like, okay, I blew, there's nothing I. My mindset is messed up. It won't change. And so challenges and setbacks are kind of viewed as the reality, and you feel like you're trapped inside of that reality and you can't change it. That's exactly how I felt.

Then you have on the other side, you have the growth mindset and the growth mindset basically says that. [00:05:00] Your abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work and that any challenges and setbacks can also be viewed as ways to improve, and so you're not stuck because you had some issues with money.

You got have bill collectors calling you. You may have filed bankruptcy. You know you're spending too much on food. As we transition over to that growth mindset, we kind of look at the fact that, hey, you know what? These things actually did happen, but I am going to view them as things that I can build on to improve, and I'm gonna use those situations to develop, dedication and hard work to create a different reality.

And those are just some decisions that we can make. Now let's actually define money mindset. So money mindset. And we hear this is the, you [00:06:00] know, we hear this a lot in social media. We hear that term, what does it mean? And it really just means how you think about money. And as we're going through this, I want you to start thinking to yourself when the word about how, when the word money comes up, or when you start to think about your money.

What comes to mind because the things that come to mind, or those feelings that we have, they end up influencing how we save, how we spend, how we manage debt, and it's those core beliefs about money and our attitudes toward it that define our financial success. Either our financial success or when we feel like we're losing the money game, it's going to come down to.

How we think about money. And then again, those thoughts influence what we do. The saving, the spending, the investing, the managing debt, and all of these things are our core beliefs and our attitudes towards money. [00:07:00] So what's holding me back now, this is a question that I really had to ask myself years ago because it was, I knew something was wrong.

But I had to really get into, you know what specifically is holding me back. And at that time I didn't have anybody around me to really help me out. I just had to kind of figure it out. So I wish I had known about these when I was younger because money blocks are really what hold us back and I'm gonna define what those are.

So money blocks, what I call money blocks are the silent killers of financial progress. So this isn't too pleasant, but I want you to think about diabetes and high blood pressure, right? Two things that are considered silent killers of human bodies, diabetes and high blood pressure. Well, money blocks are the same.

They're silent, but they are very much deadly. And if you were to [00:08:00] describe them in words and would kind of read like this, a money block is a series of thoughts, a mindset or feeling. It gets in the way of you accomplishing financial success, thoughts, mindset, feeling when it, when it gets to the point where those thoughts and that mindset and your feelings are getting in the way of you accomplishing financial success, those are money blocks.

That's exactly what a money block is now. You know, we're, we're getting a little bit deeper into this conversation, and so I wanna get into how you can sort of determine whether money blocks are an issue for you or someone around you. When you hear people say things like, I don't care about money. I've heard that a million times during my lifetime.

I didn't realize that it was a symptom of a money block, or you have to work hard for money. [00:09:00] I don't have time to manage my money. I'm not good with money. I don't deserve money. I'm gonna die broke. Money is evil. How many of us have heard that rich people are evil? Has somebody in your family said that?

Do you believe that? Or, my favorite one, and I still hear this quite often to this day, I just want to help people. If you hear someone saying these things or if you're saying them to yourself. These could be indications of money blocks that are holding you back from financial success. I don't care about money.

I don't deserve money. I just wanna help people. Any of these things. So start listening to your, the people around you or really honing into your thoughts and, and asking yourself, am I saying any of these things? And then another thing that comes up when we talk about money blocks, when we talk about beliefs is this thing called financial imposter syndrome.

[00:10:00] So I often see posts on social media where people are talking about imposter syndrome, and it's usually related to corporate. Or sometimes, you know, just being a CEO or something to do with business or career where people feel like, you know, they're a fraud and they really shouldn't be there, and they're not necessarily a hundred percent comfortable with how they're showing up or the fact that they should be there in the first place.

But there's also this thing called financial imposter syndrome, and it's just this belief. The set of beliefs that one of them would be, you know, I'm not good with money, or the one that I kind of had when I had my situation, which was, I don't deserve to have money. So you feel like you're an imposter, like, man, I don't even deserve to have the money that I have.

And, and the reason why I bring this up, a lot of the people that I work with are high income earners. They're getting the money, [00:11:00] but they don't feel like they deserve to have it. Or they're getting the money and they're saying to themselves, I'm gonna blow this money. I know I am. I remember getting bonuses when I was younger and corporate and saying to myself, I'm gonna blow this money that I had.

Financial imposter syndrome. So start also keying in on your thoughts and the people around you and listen for that, these beliefs or these things that you feel like you don't deserve as it relates to money. Now, how do we evaluate, because some of this would require some evaluation. How do we actually evaluate whether where, where we stand as far as our mindset?

How do we do that? Let's talk about it.

So how do you evaluate, and I like this because it, I, I feel like it's not enough to tell people, Hey, [00:12:00] you know, your mindset is off, or You have this issue with money or this, that and the other. We have to give them some tools to evaluate, to figure out where they are so they can get to where we want to be.

Everybody wants, many people want to build generational wealth. We hear that all the time. A lot of people want to just be able to have that confidence that they're managing their money, whatever it is for you. Or you might be the person in your family that you wanna make sure that the rest of the family is good as it relates to money.

You might be that person. So how do you get to the bottom of it? So one thing is called your Money Origin story. And if you listen to my podcast, money, sex Gen X Scott Stewart and I actually did an episode about this. We got really deep on it, but the money origin story is one tool, the money script, and writing out limiting beliefs and behaviors.

Now let's talk about this [00:13:00] money origin story. The money origin story is really simple. It's really just you committing to doing this, but it's you basically going back through your entire life and writing your story as it relates to money, and maybe we've never even written our life story before. Right.

Okay. That would be a good exercise in and of itself. But for this, we're going back and we're really looking at events as it relates to money, so let's think. And go back as far as you can remember. So some things that might come up, for example, are maybe there was one Christmas where your parents weren't able to get enough gifts and everybody in the house was sad.

Or maybe you asked your mom for some money to go get some candy and she said she didn't have it and she really didn't have it. How did you feel about that or. Maybe someone in your family passed away and there was no insurance money, there was no life [00:14:00] insurance money to cover the expenses, the burial expenses, all of these events, believe it or not, they're part of our story, but they also kind of are the reason why we have some of the beliefs and attitudes and actions about and around money.

So I would encourage you to do that. Go write your money story, your life story as it relates to money. The next thing is we have, and I love this one. It's called The Money Script. The Money script is now, so you've got the story, but in present time, what's the dialogue that's going on in your thoughts when you interact with money?

So I used the example a few minutes ago where I would get bonuses in corporate and that would be nice. I mean, sometimes they'd be five figure bonuses or whatever. And I should be excited about it. I should have been excited about those bonuses. But I'm thinking to myself, man, you're gonna blow all this money.

And so I was feeling, [00:15:00] I was having these thoughts before the money even hit my account. So that was part of my money script. Or if I was to think about money right now, what's the dialogue that's going on? What's being said? So kind of being thoughtful enough to think about. Kind of step outside yourself a little bit and evaluate your thoughts and figuring out what is my money script?

And as things happen throughout your life, just taking note of what's that conversation that's going on in my thoughts? Money, origin story, money script. Two great tools. And so when you go through that process of doing your money origin story and you go through the process of doing your money script, then it is time to start looking for the patterns.

And pulling out the limiting beliefs and behaviors. Right? So what are the consistent themes as you go through, as you went through the process of doing your money story, what are the consistent themes as you went through the process of [00:16:00] doing your evaluating the thoughts that are going into your head and writing those down?

So one consistent theme is, for example, could be, I get nervous whenever I talk about blank. Or one consistent theme could be whenever I'm around someone who I believe is doing well financially, I feel the need to overcompensate in the conversation. You know, these are just examples that we, some, some of us have probably done and just trying to get to the bottom, or what are the patterns that are leading up to your behavior and pulling those out and taking note of them.

Now, I told you all at the beginning we have something called the, I'm operating out of something that I created a methodology called the Evolve method. And so the E was for evaluation. And we're gonna get as far as we can. Lemme see what time it's we're gonna get as far as we can today. I'll probably do a part two, [00:17:00] but the V is as it relates to evolve, is visualizing and affirming the future.

Vis visualizing and affirming the future. Because once we go back to the past, we get into the present moment as far as our, our, what's going through our mind. Now we have to start thinking about the future, right? We can't get stuck there, and I've made that mistake as well, getting stuck in the past, even sometimes being so caught up in the present moment that I can't think beyond that into the future.

And so how do you do that as it relates to money? Here's some tools and, and a lot of these tools I've actually used, and I use them with clients that I work with. Vision boarding is extremely powerful. I'm, I mean, extremely to the point where, and I haven't done my vision board for this year yet. I need to do that asap, but I'll use the last one that I did.[00:18:00] 

It came true literally to the, to the letter of what I had on my vision board, and I mean to the letter like that is crazy. It was actually kind of scary because what it made me say was, man, I should have went higher. I should have envisioned more than what I actually put down. Journaling is something that I still do going in my journal and saying, man, I'm not really feeling how I'm interacting with money.

I know I'm gonna get there and this is what I'm gonna do this week. And you know, I got that bonus. I saved half of it. I put the other half up. You know, just kind of being in real time saying what, what's going on with you and how you're feeling. It's a more productive thing than just sitting around saying, I'm not good with money.

I'm not gonna, I'm not good with money Over and over books. Big deal. I know we're all, we all busy. If you're moving around to, to your job or your business, sometimes you can get those books [00:19:00] where you don't have to read 'em and you're just listening to a audio book. You might listen to a few minutes here and there.

A few minutes here and there. You're reprogramming your subconscious, and I know it's people out there watching this or see this at some point. They're probably like, that stuff doesn't really work. It does, it does work. You can reprogram your subconscious the same way that it got programmed. You can reprogram it.

Books, podcasts, and some dope podcasts out here. Earn Your Leisure Money. Sex Gen X. There are podcasts that talk about money and just watching a few minutes of those can be life changing because one, you might learn something you didn't know. The host is telling you some of their experiences that they fought through.

You know, they might be a multimillionaire. Now they're kind of telling you their path. You get a chance to hear from guests. A lot of them are very visually appealing, so it can be entertaining as well, something that could help reprogram and shift your mindset. [00:20:00] Joining communities has been a big deal for me.

Sometimes the community is not even necessarily about finance, finances necessarily, but it comes up indirectly. Like you might be in a group that is, is about building your business, for example. But of course if you're trying to build your business, the con, the conversation about revenue is going to come up.

And so money ends up coming into play and any good community is gonna have something dealing with mindset in that community. I recently got exposed to a framework that in a community that I'm in, speak your way to cash, and the founder, Ashley Kirkwood, has one called Mindset, belief Action. A mindset, belief, action.

I thought that was dope. So these are just things that you can pick up at being part of these communities. Then the last one that I have here in terms of shifting your mindset, affirmations. So I do posts [00:21:00] on social all the time about affirmations that I say to myself every day, and being able to look yourself in the mirror and say certain things to yourself.

Is this a power in that, that I can't describe? You just have to do it. Like today, I put up a post where I was talking about I think the affirmation was, you know, my experiences with money are positive, and I literally looked in the mirror and said that this morning. It's something about facing yourself or confronting yourself and saying these things that not only shifts your mindset, but you're really actually looking at yourself.

Change in real time. Because when I first got started with the affirmations, there were certain things I just couldn't even say. I couldn't even say it out of my mouth. One of 'em was, you will become wealthy. If you're out there watching this right now and you're, you don't feel like you're wealthy, just say to yourself, you will.

I [00:22:00] will. I will become wealthy. Say, you're not a millionaire yet, and you want to become a millionaire, look in the mirror. Or just say to yourself, see if you can even utter the words. I will become a millionaire. Try it. Some days I couldn't say it. Some days I couldn't say the words, but eventually over time it got easier.

And all of those actions and these things that in this slide here, they compound over time. It's not going to be immediate. I'm not sitting here suggesting that we can shift our mindset overnight. We can't. But these activities over time. I promise you we'll compound and shift that mindset. Now, if you're watching this and you're like, Hey, this is pretty cool, you know, I'd like to actually work with somebody to, to do this type of work.

I don't know if I want to do it on my own. That's fine. [00:23:00] I do offer financial coaching. Financial coaching is interesting and it's, I think it's new for many people in certain cultures. It's certainly something that I wasn't aware of because it's a little different than like financial advisory services.

Usually with financial advice, people are honing in on something very specific. You're going to them for insurance, you're going to them to create an investment portfolio and manage it for you. You might going be going to them for financial planning. Coaching is a little bit different in the sense that the concern is more about your development as a human being as it relates to money.

Not necessarily, oh, you need some insurance. You might, but what is your mindset around the insurance or, and that's what you see in number one here. Some people like to have accountability. So say somebody created a financial plan for you, and this happens very often [00:24:00] and one of the things on the plan was, I need to get the, the adequate amount of life insurance, but you haven't done it yet.

Coaching can be helpful 'cause you might need somebody to hold you accountable and you know, you meet with this person next week and you said you were going to, you were going to get it. Sometimes having that person there to help hold you accountable can help you achieve your goals faster. And they're able to continuously coach you on some of the things that we're talking about right now.

Mindset, changing those beliefs and behaviors, evaluating yourself. Like say you wrote, wrote out your money origin story, but you want a second pair of eyes to kind of evaluate and help you pull out some of the patterns and limiting beliefs that you found a coach can be helpful for that. The second thing, money mindset development.

So all of this would fall under developing your money mindset. It, the coach can help you do that. The goals, they're a big deal. You know, the goals give you the structure to know what is the outcome. We're doing all of this stuff, but [00:25:00] what is it for? When is it going to get done? We all incorporate, we know about the smart goals and, you know, having all of these different pieces to a goal, but ultimately we just wanna make sure it gets done.

I'm gonna buy real estate in 2023. Okay. You may need somebody to hold you accountable to make sure that actually happens. Then there's the actual assistance with goal implementation. So you might have a goal like, Hey, I wanna get some business credit. A coach might be able to actually sit there with you, help you fill out the paperwork, or do whatever you need to do online to get a business credit profile set up.

Where you're kind of moving beyond the person just telling you what you need to do and them actually assisting with you in real time, assisting you in real time to actually get it done. And then the last thing that I really like is this. As you go through this process of building, we go through this process of building our mindset.

You're going to [00:26:00] start evolving right at the end of this year. Your mindset will be more advanced, and so you start thinking about new things. You might be like, Hey. All right. I got the budgeting thing down. I'm managing my finances on a daily basis. I saved up the money for my emergency fund. I might wanna get some treasury bills.

I might wanna get some treasury bonds. I might wanna get a money market account. You start getting into other things, and so number five is critical because you might need some introductions to some other professionals that can help you in that area, and so financial coaching can help with that. Also things like if you need an accountant, which, if you're an accountant out there and you're watching this, definitely link up with me because I need to be able to find more CPAs that I can refer people to.

That's, that's, that's an issue that I have right now in my business. I need more dope CPAs that I can refer people to. If you're CPA, please list late. 'cause I want to be able to do that. I haven't been [00:27:00] able to, to refer people to a good CPA in a while. But that's just an example of some of the things that financial coaching can help.

And here's the thing, you're just gonna, you're going to reach your goals faster. You get with a coach if it's a good fit, you're gonna reach your goals faster because you have the guidance. You have the accountability, and you have the support that you need for the goals that you've committed to. So, something to think about, here are some of the outcomes.

So people who work with me, here's some of the outcomes. I'm sure other coaches have similar outcomes. One of them to me should always be your net worth should increase. I mean, even if it's something as simple as a person getting their budget under control and being able to save more, that's gonna increase your net worth or reducing debt, those are things that are going to just automatically increase your net worth.

Your net worth, meaning what is your economic value? And I've been talking about net worth, worth a lot lately because it's a [00:28:00] word that gets thrown around a lot. But just think about it, for all my corporate folks, you talk about KPIs and corporate key performance indicators. All of net worth is is a KPI for money.

It's an indicator of where you stand financially. So if your net worth is a hundred thousand, it means that all your efforts at the end of the day. Have accumulated to give you an economic value of a hundred thousand dollars or if you're a millionaire. All of your efforts have accumulated to make you a person that has a net worth or net economic value of $1 million.

Some people are able to do that in cash. Other people have their net worth based on the assets that they have accumulated net worth. Managing that budget. So that's the main reason that a lot of people come to me. You definitely can get that done. The way I approach it is helping you manage your budget manage your budget with you in real time.

We talked about goal [00:29:00] establishment and implementation, which is a big deal. Lower that debt to income ratio. Even now, a lot of times we don't worry about that unless we're buying some real estate, but it's something to keep an eye on whether you're buying real estate or not, because we want, as time goes on, to make sure that your debt is much lower.

That ratio is in your favor as it relates to debt to income. Because if it's off balance, that means you have too much debt in relation to the money that you're bringing in. Number five is a big deal. Establishing an emergency fund. Gotta have emergency fund because things happen and we don't want to be swiping a credit card every time there's an emergency.

So where's your three to six months worth of liquid money that you can go pull If something happens, your car breaks down, your furnace breaks down, or whatever it is, you have that money. And then six, where it could be something as simple as getting your car towed. Not having to swipe a credit card because you gotta pay these [00:30:00] people three or $400 to get your card back.

Six, improved financial literacy. So here's what I love about a great financial coach. They don't want you dependent upon them. Their whole goal is to make sure that you know the same information that they know. It is a transference of knowledge. It's a transference of belief. It's a transference of confidence.

It's a transference, it's not a dependency situation. So a coach is not there to make you dependent. A coach is not there to keep you in a situation where you are always asking them questions. If that transference is happening correctly, it, at some point, you're gonna know just as much as that coach did, and then at your relationship will change to where you are able to share with one another.

Just as much because people go off into different niches. Like one person might be really strong in business credit, where the other person is strong in insurance and investments, and you can, you know, you can [00:31:00] collaborate with your coach in the future. So, something to think about. I'm gonna end this here.

I may do a part two, but just as a quick recap, I just wanna make sure we talk about this recap really quickly. And if you don't remember anything else from this presentation, just remember these things. One, you, the way you think about money influences everything else that you do. Examine your core beliefs about money and your attitudes.

Really get into what's holding you back. Money blocks. Specifically, what are your money blocks? Everybody has them. They're silent. Figure out what your words are. Here's some examples of how they come out verbally. You may have financial imposter syndrome, which is fine, but you want to be di you. You want to kind of diagnose yourself with this and say, Hey, if I'm really thinking these negative beliefs about myself with money, or I don't deserve to have it, or I'm not [00:32:00] good, maybe I have financial imposter syndrome.

Your methods of evaluation, start with your money origin story, do a money script, and then pull out those limiting beliefs and behaviors you're looking for Patterns. Beliefs don't just are not just one-offs. Your beliefs are ongoing, your behaviors are ongoing. So you're looking for ongoing things. You want to note those patterns, pull those out, and then start getting into the future.

So as I've always said to people, money exists in three different dimensions the past. So that's your money origin story, the present. That's your script in the future. Visualize and affirm. Get into your Mindset, vision Board, podcast, all these different things that we talked about. Consider financial coaching if it's right for you.

You can master your mindset. You absolutely can build wealth, and I do believe you'll become the first millionaire in your [00:33:00] family. Thank you for your time. I will talk to you also.