MSG Presents: "Eric On Money": Turn Down the Noise, Turn Up Your Net Worth

This episode goes straight at the “noise” that stalls real progress: money blocks, old scripts, and the beliefs that keep you circling the same results. Eric shares a practical mindset workflow you can use to move from confusion to consistent action. 

Why? Because just telling someone they need to improve their money mindset is not enough--people need strategy. 

In this episode Eric covers:

• Spotting money blocks, including financial imposter syndrome
• Your money origin story and the scripts it created
• A framework to open up to new beliefs and act on them
• How to value and improve financial literacy so knowledge equals outcomes
• Using mentors and coaches as leverage, not crutches
• Building habits and routines that make saving, investing, and reviews automatic
• A weekly check-in that tracks one KPI and one next step

Why it matters:

Clarity beats noise. When you change the script, your choices change, then your numbers change.

Chapters

• 2:12 what are money blocks?
• 2:45 financial imposter syndrome
• 3:16 how to shift your mindset
• 4:31 how to open up to new beliefs
• 7:53 leveraging other people's confidence
• 8:04 value and improve financial literacy

Transcript

MSG Presents-Eric On Money: Move From Noise To Networth:

So if you see my content on LinkedIn and other places you noted, I definitely struggled with money for many years.

I was an imposter because I really didn't believe that I deserved to have money. I didn't believe that I deserved to have wealth, and a lot of that stemmed from a car accident that I had when I was 19 years old, got a large settlement, blew the money in a year, and after that I just felt like an imposter, didn't feel like I deserved it.

Any money that touched my hands, I blew through it. And so over time I was able to work my way through that. And today I'm able to talk to people like yourself about mindset, and I think it's a thing that we, you know, we work on it for the rest of our lives. You know, I, I work in the financial industry now and I work with people, but I still have things that I continue to work on.

And so today I want to get into the how to, because I know a lot of people talk about, you know, hey, you need to get [00:01:00] your mindset right and you need to do this, that, and the third mentally, but how do you actually go about doing it? That is the purpose of this conversation. So lastly, we defined mindset. We talked about it's a set of attitudes and beliefs that shape how you make sense of the world.

There's fixed mindset, growth, mindset. You know, when you're fixed, you kind of feel that your mindset is, is what it is. There's no way to change it. Growth. You kind of look at everything as sort of an an opportunity to get better. Money mindset. We actually define that and that is how you think about money.

But how you think about money actually influences how you save, how you spend and how you manage things like debt. And it's your core beliefs about money and your attitudes towards it. What's holding you back or what's holding me back is a question that we a lot of times will ask ourselves and that comes down to understanding money block.

Money blocks [00:02:00] are things that are like the silent killers of your financial progress. It's kind of like diabetes and high blood pressure things that are affecting you, but you don't really necessarily know it. The classic definition is a series of thoughts, a mindset, a feeling that gets in the way of you accomplishing financial success.

And we talked last time about some examples of money blocks. I don't care about money. I don't deserve money. I just want to help people, which is my favorite one that I've heard quite a bit. And then we got into something, and I talked about this when I first started today, which is financial imposter syndrome.

And really that's just a belief that you're not good with money and that you don't deserve to have money. And then we talked about how to evaluate your financial mindset. So money, origin story, money script. Writing out your limiting beliefs and behaviors and then pulling out the things and within those that are kind of blocking you.[00:03:00] 

And then the last thing that I believe we touched on was visualizing and affirming the future. And some ways to kind of, so we know what a mindset is, but how do you shift it? How do you move it to another, to that millionaire mindset? So I, I kind of know now that a lot of people desire to become a millionaire.

That's probably the post that I get the most engagement from on LinkedIn. But how do you get into that millionaire mindset? Some of the things that you can do is vision, boarding, journaling, books, podcasting, joining financial communities where you can kind of see these conversations and participate in in them.

And then affirmations, you know, looking yourself in the mirror and saying things like, I will become a billionaire. I will become wealthy one day. So here's part two. Here's where we're starting with part two. So opening up to new beliefs, [00:04:00] and this is all part of a framework that I came up with called Evolve.

So evolve your mindset to build wealth, and the oh and evolve is open up to new beliefs, open up to new beliefs. Now how do you open up to new beliefs? So if you've done that work of your money origin story and your money script and you've kind of identified the patterns and you kind of see like you have certain beliefs things that you believe to be true about money and finance.

And so when you're thinking about how to open up to new beliefs, hopefully you've done that work to say, okay, here's my current belief system. And it does take a little honesty to just say, okay, this is what I believe. It could be as simple as saying, I don't believe I'll be financially successful. That's a belief.

Or it could be something like, I don't believe. I believe rich people are evil. I've heard that before. You know, [00:05:00] whatever your beliefs are, try to identify four or five beliefs to kind of guide the way that you deal and interact with money. Another thing you can do is meet new people. So this has helped me tremendously.

So in my corporate career and also just doing entrepreneurial things, I was able to meet new people, go to networking events. Hold my own events and just when you're meeting these new people, you just get exposed to new ideas. Somebody could say one thing that could open you up, somebody could invite you to another event.

Someone could introduce you to someone you know, someone new. That kind of sparks your mindset and takes it in a different place. Visualization is big. This is something that I continue to do, just visualizing myself where I want to be. Versus where I am currently. It took a lot of work initially to do that, but I eventually was able to do it, you [00:06:00] know, able to, you know, saying to myself, Hey, you know what?

I want to be a person who has abundance. I want to be a person who has wealth and just sitting there and visualizing that reality. We talked about this next one a little bit with the events, but just showing up in new spaces. It doesn't have to be in person, it could be virtual, but just show up.

Initially when I was doing that, I would go to chat rooms online like OK Player. For example, some of us may be a little bit older, may have been on OK player.com, even though it was a music. Platform. A lot of the chat rooms were talking about things like real estate. In those chat rooms is where I learned how to become a real estate investor, at least to get that, that initial understanding.

So that was very significant for me. I was on there talking about music. I was on there talking about sports and all this other stuff, but then I started getting into different chat rooms and, and just showing up in these new spaces. [00:07:00] And then once you get this new information, one way to solidify your new beliefs is to take that new information and win with it.

So we've all probably con continue to assu, you know, consume a lot of information on social media, but taking that information and actually winning with it is something totally different. And it does take a level of commitment. You wanna win. So it is not just receiving, it's like, okay, how can I take this information and actually use it to improve my financial life?

So this is opening up to new beliefs. This is one of my favorite ones here. And it's leveraging confidence. Leveraging confidence. Now the word leverage. We're always talking about using something that someone else has to your own benefit. So here we're talking about borrowing [00:08:00] confidence from someone that has a track record of financial success or transferring feelings and emotions.

And I do this daily too. Transferring feelings and emotions from someone or something that's inspirational onto yourself. So it's either borrowing from someone else with the track record or transferring feelings and emotions coach. So we have a lot of coaches that have emerged, you know now for life coaching, financial coaching, all these different things.

But ultimately, that relationship is designed for you to leverage some of their confidence because you might not have the confidence on your own initially. That's okay. It is not, there's nothing wrong with leveraging someone else or something else's. The energy of confidence, a therapist. I definitely spent time in therapy just analyzing myself as a whole, but also as it related to money, because I just wanted to understand why couldn't I [00:09:00] get it together?

Why do I keep getting these past due notices? Why is my car, you know, one time my car actually got repoed. And I just got tired of it. So I had to get to the root of what the problem was, and I needed some support in order to do that. A mentor, so a mentor is someone like we talked about, they have the track record.

They might not sign on to actually coach you, but they might say, Hey, you know what? We can meet up here and there to talk about different things. I can help give you some perspective, or I can introduce you to some new people. You know, I'm okay with doing that. Lemme make sure these headphones, okay.

All right. The next one. I think a lot of people do sort of do this in society, and that is song.[00:10:00] 

Ooh, we're on mute. [00:11:00] The.

Anyway, so your song, the song might be something ins inspirational for you, something. It may not actually be about money, but it could just be something that makes you feel confident. And gets you through your day, and it gets you through things, situations that you have that are dealing with money, and there's nothing wrong with that.

Now, the V, so we're talking about the evolve framework. The V is value and improve your financial literacy. Now remember, all of these things that we're talking about are really getting into how do you move from one mindset to another. And financial literacy is definitely one of the things that are important in doing that and going through that process.

So I have a little bit of a different definition of financial literacy than most people and getting into, I think financial literacy is more than just knowing a bunch of [00:12:00] definitions to words. It's the really, to me, the ability to be competent as it relates to your own financial situation. Competent.

Meaning that you can take the information that you've learned and actually utilize it to your benefit. And I always believe this to be true, and I think it's important to understand this. Taking a financial literacy test will help you to find out what you know, which is good and that's cool, but calculating your net worth will show you how much you actually understand.

So knowing is having a bunch of information, but understanding. Is the result of you taking that information and putting it into action? Two different things. Now there are some components to financial literacy. I want to talk about when we talk about being competent and earning is number one. How do you, so you understand how much you bring in weekly, [00:13:00] monthly, annually from investments and other sources.

How are you spending those earnings once you have them, which is number two, spending three, paying yourself first and establishing a consistent schedule of doing so as part of financial literacy. Four is investing, so understanding what you bring in weekly, monthly, annually from investments, your job and other sources.

Five is. Oh, hold on. Number four, understanding what you bring in weekly, monthly, annually from investments and other sources that's investing. Five, how are you spending those earnings once you have them? Six, paying yourself first and establishing a consistent schedule of doing so. Seven. I think I got a little bit of a typo here, but seven is bring, understanding what you're bringing in.

Eight. How are you spending those earnings once you have them? [00:14:00] Nine is saving. So establishing a consistent schedule of doing those things. And then the last one here is the e in the evolve method is establishing new habits and routines. Now habits are things that we do with little or no conscious thought.

Routines are sequences of action that are done regularly. So here's, so think about it like this. If you have a habit, it's something that you just do, you don't even have to think about it. But a routine is more of a sequence. It's like step one, step two, step three. You need a little bit of both of these in order to evolve.

So I gave you some examples of some of the things that I do. One is budgeting early in the morning, so that has become a habit for me. I do it every morning. I don't even have to think about it. It's just something that I automatically do. I've done it so many [00:15:00] times as part of my routine that now is actually a habit.

Notes on your phone when you're making purchases, so if you're trying to cut back on spending a great habit is to make notes on your phone as you're spending in real time. One, it lets you kind of be more conscious of what you're doing. Two, you are actually keeping track. So at the end of the day, you know what you spend.

Sunday financial planning, I've done this so much, it's just a habit at this point. Every Sunday I do planning for the week coming up. So whatever has happened from the previous week ending on Sunday, I reconcile all of that. But then I also plan what I'm gonna do for the week. Coming up, I made a habit of investing corporate bonuses.

So when I would get a bonus at the end of the year, it just became very much a habit for me to just tell the HR [00:16:00] person, go ahead and put that in my 401k. I don't want any of it. Put it in my 401k, or I might take a couple thousand for myself and then put the rest up. But it became a habit. Daily credit monitoring.

I do this every single day. I have Apple on my phone. I can check my credit. I don't really think about it. This just something that I end up doing. And then morning affirmations are powerful too. So again, there's some overlap with this from what we talked about earlier, but here it's more about when are you doing it?

So are you gonna do those affirmations in the morning? You don't have to. You might be more of an evening person. You can do those affirmations in the afternoon, evening, anytime. But just setting a schedule of when you're going to do these things and making sure it happens every day. Habits and routines.

Now here's the whole framework of what we talked about today. So it's evolve your mindset to [00:17:00] build wealth. We talked about evaluating and defining your mindset first. Visualizing and affirming the future. Opening up to new beliefs. We talked about leveraging confidence. We talked about valuing and improving your financial literacy.

And then last we got into establishing new habits and routines needs. Now, why did I put this together into a framework? Because I didn't want people to be wondering, how do I get my mindset? Shifted. Again. We hear all the stuff in social media about the fact that we need to do it, but what are the steps?

And so I wanted to give people sort of a guided way to work on their mindset step by step by step. And even once you get to establishing new habits and routines, this is sort of a, a thing where you can rinse and repeat. So you're always gonna take, come back and evaluate [00:18:00] your mindset again. You are always gonna come back and visualize a new future.

Once you want to go to a new level, you're always gonna wanna open up to new beliefs. This is something that never stops. So you might be looking at all this and saying, you know what, Eric, this is cool, but I don't know if I can do this by myself. So, and this goes back to leveraging confidence. You may want to consider financial coaching.

If financial coaching is a term that I do think is thrown around a lot, so I want to talk about what it actually is. It's a just a tool to help committed people reach their financial goals faster. Everybody, every financial coach that you run into is gonna have their own method, and I of course have mines.

I focus on four major pillars. One is prioritizing your mindset. That's all we're talking about today, which is mindset. I feel like [00:19:00] mindset is the foundation of anything that you want to do in life, and definitely finances fall within that. Facilitating accountability. So yeah, you could do it on your own and there's nothing wrong with that, but you might feel like, Hey, I need a coach to hold me accountable.

I said I was going to open up an IRA. I don't think I'll do it if it's, if I'm just left on my own to do it. I need some help. Increasing financial literacy is definitely one of the pillars because when you're coached, you wanna make sure that you learn what the coach knows so that you can improve your own decision making and you're not depending on others unnecessarily for things that you can learn yourself.

And then the D is develop new habits and routines. We just kind of finished talking about that. Part of, I think, part of successful financial coaching is, in my experience, is working with someone to make sure they develop those new habits and routines, [00:20:00] examining what the current new habits current habits and routines are, but then figuring out, okay, what new ones do we need to establish to move forward?

My process is designed to get you clear. Also, I want you to have clarity on where you stand. I want you to learn your key financial metrics, like what is my net worth? How much do I have in my emergency fund? How much do I need for retirement? All of these important numbers. The literacy comes up again, answers to burning questions.

So having a coach allows you access. You might be in the moment. You might be like, look, I'm thinking about leasing this car. I need some feedback. Should I do it? Sometimes it's good to have that access. You might be able to just shoot somebody a quick message and get some feedback. Your coach, which that's great.

There's nothing wrong with that, and it's actually very beneficial. And then this is an important one, reframe reframing financial challenges into goals. Because we don't wanna stay on the [00:21:00] challenges, right? We know there's some work that needs to be done, but we can flip those into a goal, right? So for example, you might feel like, man, I am not able to pay my bills on time.

So flipping that into a goal would be in the next 30 days, my goal is to pay all of my bills on time. I'm going to do this by setting reminders. Monitoring my budget on a daily basis and working with my coach to hold me accountable for those due dates. That would be reframing goals in the financial challenges reframing your financial challenges into goals.

Some of the benefits from financial coaching are increased confide. Accelerate your growth. So you, this is one that I think people miss sometimes because they're hesitant to invest in coaching initially, but it's just gonna speed it up. Your coach is, if the coach has a background and a history of [00:22:00] helping other people win, they might be able to speed up where you're trying to go because they've already done it.

It can help you just move faster. Three consistent and measurable results. Four literacy comes up again. Reduce financial mistakes, direct access to expert insights, customize action plan because you do wanna plan. You wanna make sure that you are, have a blueprint for what you're trying to do and not just operating randomly.

And number eight, which I think is the most important, is just having a greater level of happiness. When your finances are in order, you're just happier. You don't have all the stress and anxiety from dealing with a lot of the issues that come up from not managing your finances well.