17: Take The Financial Red Pill with Brad Gibb From Cashflow Tactics

October 16, 2019 By yaxyoga Comments are Off

brad gibb financial yoga

What Is This Episode About…

In this episode, John and Chris will share the first part of their 95-minute interview with Brad Gibb of Cashflow Tactics, where they talked about the scariest part of taking the leap into entrepreneurship.

They will also dive into the one thing that holds most entrepreneurs back, what we secretly sacrifice for money, how to find balance in all areas of our lives, and how money can support that.

The Yax brothers attribute a lot of their current life and business trajectory to conversations they’ve had with Brad over the past few months. This series won’t be your typical financial advice so, if that’s what you are looking for, you’re in the wrong place. However, if you are ready to have your mind blown and opened up to a whole new possibility of money and how it works, then this series is for you!

Hang around until the end of the episode to hear what will be covered on part 2.

Key Points Discussed:

How Brad came to be who he is today (03:31)
The breaking point: From employee to employer (09:32)
Investing in a coach and mentorship to bridge the gaps (16:23)
Building a great business and parenting 6 kids (21:49)
Being driven through purpose to grow and expand in all areas (25:07)
Knowing where you’re going is what enables you to get back on course (28:48)

Learn More About The Content Discussed…

Join The Facebook Group –> http://bit.ly/yogaentrepreneur

When Was It Released…

This episode was released October 16, 2019

Episode Transcript…

Disclaimer: The Transcript Is Auto-Generated And May Contain Spelling And Grammar Errors

Chris: 00:00 So, what you’re about to hear is an interview we did with Brad Gibb. Now, why we’re saying this, cause you already know that, is the interview went for probably about 95 minutes, so over an hour and a half. And instead of throwing all 90 minutes into one episode, we decided to chop the episode up into three separate episodes. So what you’re going to hear about today, in this episode, is the scariest part of taking the leap into entrepreneurship. The one thing that holds most entrepreneurs back, and what we secretly sacrifice for money, and how to find balance in all areas of your life, and how money can support that. So we are super excited for this episode. We hope you enjoy and give it a listen.

Intro: 00:45 What’s up everyone? You are listening to Yoga Entrepreneur Secrets. I am Chris Yax, and I’m John Yax. We are part of a small group of yoga entrepreneurs who are committed to making a living, doing what we love, without feeling guilty about making money, or ashamed of being successful, because we know the real value of yoga and how the world needs it now more than ever. This podcast is here to teach the strategies and tactics so we can thrive financially as yoga entrepreneurs. We are the Yax brothers and welcome to Yoga Entrepreneur Secrets.

John: 01:15 Alright. Welcome, welcome, welcome. So, we are thrilled. We are so excited for today’s episode. We have a good friend of ours, Brad Gibb, coming on, and so, a little backstory. We… Chris and I are part of a mastermind group called OfferLab, and back in May, we had the privilege of going to the… to this mastermind, and, during the very last day, they call it the Asset Day, during the very last day, we got a chance to go from table to table, and have a 10 minute conversation with all the coaches that are involved in this mastermind. Well, Chris and I went to one table, 10 minutes later, we were at another table, and then, we finally ended up at Brad’s table. And, when the 10-minute alarm went off, we didn’t move. We are not moving, and another 10-minute alarm went off, and another one, another… we were literally there for an hour, just getting our minds blown. We looked behind us and there are 10 people gathered around us, and listening to the goal that this gentleman was spitting out.

Chris: 02:12 Yesterday, I mentioned they had to stop us, but fortunately, we went to dinner that night, and we got to sit right across from him. And he… like, the reason this podcast exists, was from the conversation we had at dinner that night. And, our trajectory right now is like, is influenced by this gentleman, Brad Gibb. And so, I mean like, I’m so excited for you to hear this, because we are… in full disclosure, we’re a part of his mastermind too, called Cashflow Tactics Acceleration mastermind. And, it is changing our world. And, our hope for this podcast, is that what you hear changes your world. So Brad, thank you so much. Welcome to Yoga Entrepreneur Secrets.

Brad: 02:49 Thanks you guys. I am equally excited to be on here. It’s so cool how when worlds come together, like, I’ve said stuff about like I can’t, you won’t believe how smart the Yax brothers are about what they’re doing, and their business, and in yoga, and just their approach to life. I’m talking about knife throwing and martial arts, and all the school stuff. So it’s fun that we just, we gotta be nerds in the things we’re good at and then exchange with those that are… That are better than us in other places. So I’m.. I’m excited to be on. Thanks man.

Chris: 03:14 Yeah, absolutely. Again, so like, I know you’re humble and you probably won’t admit this, but I know personally like you are the smartest dude. I know everyone in my life and I would just want like to give, like to give the listeners a backstory as to like your education. How did you come to be the guy that you are today?

Brad: 03:31 Yeah, so I’ll, I won’t go. Like in the beginning I was a twinkle far back, right? But back. So I grew up very entrepreneurial but didn’t know that that was a thing I grew up on. Uh, my brother is now our fourth generation family farm in the state of Washington. So my dad, his dad, his dad, and there isn’t a more entrepreneurial place than a farm. There’s no instruction manual. And if you don’t do what you need to do, things die on you. Right? And so it’s just like get it done. And so, so I grew up in that, but then, you know, farms can only support so many people and we knew need a lot of labor when your kids, but then only one’s going to stay and take over the farm. And everybody knew that was my little brother that was like, he was, that was his destiny, not mine.

Brad: 04:20 So packed up and left him and said, well how am I supposed to go out to be successful? And I’ve heard the same narrative told to everybody else, well, you need to, you need to get good grades and you need to go to good school and get a good education and get a good job. And then that’s, that’s what’s going to lay the foundation. So I did those things that I’m, I’m a little bit competitive. You guys know that. We’ll find that out. But, and I’m kind of, if one degree was good, why not get four? Right? So I got into the world at accounting and then so I got a bachelor’s, a master’s in accounting. But while I was there, instead of doing what everybody else did, like I went to summer school, not to graduate any faster, but so that I could take all the classes that they wouldn’t let me take inside of my major.

Brad: 05:01 So I’m actually only a few credits short of an MBA from BYU, from the college. I went to wish BYU, but I also in that process of just taking extra classes because I wanted to, I got a degree in economics and statistics as I went through and did that. So as you can see, I like kind of all things numbers and all things analysis with that anchor in an accounting. So that was my, that route. And then when I graduated I was still making this good job [inaudible] land and really solidify my future. So I fought and fought. I took some pretty massive, at the time we didn’t realize how big of a risk they were in failing hindsight, but I was entering the job market when the economy is nothing down in 2008 and I graduated with no job, no prospects and said I’m going to get a job on wall street. When it was, well he goes a little bit before it was imploding, but so I started with Goldman Sachs in New York city and spent some time there. And so that’s kind of my background from an education and that professional was, I kind of got my start in those two areas.

Chris: 06:01 Gotcha. So when you said you worked for Goldman, Zach’s, yeah. And like you, so you were in Goldman Sachs during the 2007 2008

Brad: 06:14 yeah. So our building, if you remember, like the big tee off to the whole collapse was Lehman brothers bankruptcy overnight. Right. Solid. When they closed their doors, when they open, their nurses were insolvent and bankrupt and sent everybody home. Our building was next door to their building and that morning I still remember getting off the subway, walking out and then floods of people coming out of Lehman building with box cargo boxes in my hands. So we were like at ground zero and so obviously nothing got done for two weeks. We just sat in the lobby hoping they weren’t going to lock the doors on us at Goldman to, because everything and the whole financial world was in upheaval. But yeah, we had a literal front row seat to what was contributing to it, what was going on, what was being done about it. I mean we had, we had policy makers coming in and meeting with our teams and talking through how we’re navigating all this. I mean it was just one of those just sat there and absorbed amazing Lee. Terrible but an amazing experience to sit there and have a front row seat to that.

Chris: 07:17 Yeah, totally. So when you were there, you were an employee for Goldman Sachs and saw the meltdown around you. Did you know the writing was on the wall for you at that point in Goldman or is there some other thing that like

Brad: 07:27 I will, that was, and I knew it pretty early. I just couldn’t admit it to myself cause like I said, I have these entrepreneurs seeds in me. I was suppressing and even while I was at college I was, I didn’t want to just take the list of classes they gave me. I’m like, that sounds cool and that sounds cool. That sounds cool. It’s like I designed my own educational path through there. And then while at Goldman, same thing, I was always the one being like, why can’t I go to that meeting? Why can’t I learn this? I want to take this training, tell me how to do this. And nobody pretty quickly, people didn’t like me there and so there was already tension. But what pushed it over the edge for me to say, dye guy, get out of here. Well first off, just the moral side of it.

Brad: 08:06 I want to get into like everything that’s there, but we, I just couldn’t do wall street. But a bigger thing that pushed me out was I remember very distinctly sitting in these meetings and in the lobby watching the financial news and I was low man on the totem pole. So I knew I was done. Like if they were caught up, you know, layoffs or cutbacks, whatever. Like I knew I was on the chopping block, but I looked at the person next to me who’d been there three years and he was just as scared as I was. And the person there was five years was just as scared as I was. And my manager’s manager who’d been there 15 years was just as scared and worried as affected as I was. And I was like, wait a minute, this whole get a good job and there is no security in my job, in my profession, even at Goldman Sachs.

Brad: 08:52 And so that’s when I was like, well, if I can’t get that out of all of this, then I need to be the one in charge. And at least if I go down, I know that I was, the, my hands were on the wheel. And so that was the shift to say, can I can’t, I can’t stay in a independent of Goldman Sachs. I couldn’t stay in a firm’s structured kind of that way. And so now I’m doing entrepreneur, I need to figure out something. So Brad, with that, that was kind of, so that was the, was that the catalyst, was that like the breaking point when you’re like, I’m going into a my own thing? Or did you, did you after that still search out a quote unquote nine to five or working with somebody or was that, it was, I’m always the kind of person that like I can’t let go of the vine when I’m swinging to the next one.

Brad: 09:37 Like I want both of them. And so I leveraged my contacts and my brother also graduated accounting. And so just like you guys, we’ve sort of teamed up and we joined a firm with a very new startup. And so it was just four of us there. And then we quickly stepped into ownership and then we actually split from that root cause. We developed a little different expertise and then within a year or two we were on our own with our own firm. And so that was kind of the process, how it is. We looked for something that had the seeds of I get to bridge the gap and I mean I had kids and a mortgage, I had stuff I need to take care of. And so it was, it was a bridge into it, but in the interviews it was how does ownership work, how do we get in and how do we contribute and and how do we make this, so we were brought in with that kind of that expectation of it. And then you said within then a couple of years we were in fully into our own thing, my brother and I am and one other partner.

Chris: 10:31 Gotcha. That’s such an interesting transition because you went from employee to employer. Like from I’m working for somebody to, this is now mine. That’s not a lateral shift. That is an entire like paradigm shift that requires more than just a decision to like pay. But I think I’m gonna my own business. Like what was that like for you and what were some of the, like the struggles that you had or and what like the epiphany’s and I mean obviously you had the entrepreneurial spirit that was being suppressed and maybe it just felt natural for you. What, was there something specific about that that made it more challenging than,

John: 11:01 Oh man, like I’ll give credit to my wife on this one. Like she all the way along was the one being like, why are you still here? Like why clearly you’re good at this. You can handle all this stuff. You’ve got to figure out, just just do it already so that you can stop coming home and being miserable and complaining to me like let’s just, we’re in, let’s go do it. So a lot of it was, we laid, we laid a lot of those foundations. But honestly, the scary part about it is the conditioning I had to, I had to get out of my mind around was that one of the most damaging things about a college education, as amazing as it isn’t as important as mine was like I couldn’t have had the technical ability that I needed to start my business because I started my business around my technical expertise in accounting.

Brad: 11:44 So our firm, what we did was we became the CFOs for hire to take a company public. So if you wanted to go public, you hired us, we came in, we played your books out and we interacted with your investors, the sec and the entire process to like launch you and take you. And we did over 2000 companies, two dozen public launches with our clients. I had to have an accounting degree to be able to do that, but the thing I had to unlearn was in college you were taught that there’s an answer in the back of the book and you would do the problem and then check your answer. Stepping into entrepreneurship was like, wait a minute, like where’s the back of the book? Where do I check if my answer’s correct, your bank account was the back of the book of sweat and the answer work tonight, you couldn’t find it.

Brad: 12:24 So that was the biggest struggle of getting okay with how do I make a decision that I then say this is right, right with without anybody else without any back to the book answer. Does that make sense? Yeah, totally. And then one of the reasons I wanted to ask it is because in the yoga world and even in the business ownership, people who actually have yoga studios, there is a lot of them who still hang on to their other job. They’re nine to five ish or whatever side hustle they have going on for fear of going all in on it. And I to articulate that exactly that mind shift that had to happen in that, that willingness to leap to not have the answer but to go forward anyway. And then you find the answer in. That’s kind of like the in the process in the process.

Brad: 13:09 Yeah. It just comes out as you go. And we’ll get to there. And this is why I was so excited to be on here, is a lot of what we now teach with our clients is the process of how does your money match your entrepreneurialness, um, and gives you, cause we’re taught to give away all our money and give away all of our power because we have our job, right? And because that’s the steadfast thing, we flip it around and that’s what I had already started building. So I got to make a transition in a much different position than most people do. I was, I was much more liquid than most people did. I already had multiple sources of income coming in and so it wasn’t going from zero to one on the knots. A lot of what I would teach. So in the transition, now that you’ve got two sources of income and you’ve got a job and you’re still doing your yoga studio, what we need to do is, is just keep that Teeter totter balancing until the value of the job is to where it’s like, you know what?

John: 13:57 This isn’t even that important to me anymore anyway. And a lot of it just comes into how to mirror those challenges of an entrepreneur with the money to support that decision instead of actually make it worse, which is what most financial vice does. So there like what you described as you had this expertise that you had to have, right? You had to have that mastery level to move into the entrepreneur space and start your own thing. But then there’s also like in the yoga world is the same thing as like Chris and I got really good at teaching yoga and breaking down systems and putting frameworks around them. And then, but then when we got into actually running a business, we realized this isn’t yoga, this is running a business. Like we studied yoga, we didn’t study running a business. We got to level up our game.

Brad: 14:47 Was that, what did you bump up against that and did you seek out coaches and like what did you, was part of your training, your education? Did it help with that? Oh man, that’s, so, mine is stretched out a little bit more. So having an accounting firm is like cut and paste as I can attorneys firm as well. Like the business models there, the structures, you know, decision making. I’d already folded into it like it was literally copy paste and now I can do what I was doing over there on our side and it all works out. So a lot of that, the initial challenges of how do I run a business like billable hours was already there. The pay structure, it’s already there because they’re buying a service that already exists in the marketplace. Right? So for that initial transition it was a lot easier to say, how am I going to like put the structure together?

Brad: 15:35 It wasn’t until I left that business behind and started what we’re doing now. A cash was [inaudible] where we’re like, we have to create, I’ll hold something no one’s ever done before in an industry and in a way that is so traditional. That’s where we have run into that over and over and over again. And that’s like every quarter. It’s like you show up to our planning feeling like we just got kicked in the groin. But like taking reframing that as no, these are just opportunities to make our business better. We’re only having these problems be kids coming out of the success we’ve had leading up to this point. But you mentioned that the turning point, like we, the biggest struggle I had in business was not leaving Goldman to start my own because like I said, we had, we had a roadmap for that. That was actually pretty easy.

Brad: 16:23 The harder one was shifting out into what’s now Cashflow Tactics and we got almost zero traction and so we wrote a check, you have a mentor. And that was the first investment directly into ourselves and saying, I see a gap and I don’t have the answers and I can’t get the answers out of reading another, another 300 page business book or a personal development book. Like it has to come from somebody that has experienced, have locked it before. I need a coach. And as soon as that was the shift and I, we’re on video, right? I’m going to grab this, I’m going to show you guys what this led to and you guys will relate to it. I keep this in my closet right here to make this point. But this is every tag or conference or program that I’ve gone to since making that first investment. Like the first one is in here somewhere. I think it’s actually this one. Right. But it led to just constant needing to go and find and invest in myself to, to be able to bridge those gaps. That’s huge. That’s huge cause that it’s the investment in yourself. And so I have one question cause I really want to dive into like the tactical aspect of what we’re going to talk about today and I’ll bring up a spreadsheet. No, I’m just kidding.

Chris: 17:43 A little bit. So when you made the transition from the business, you

Chris: 17:50 quit to start Cashflow Tactics, was it the pool of Cashflow Tactics and this new different thing that you wanted or was it a struggle in the world that you were in? Because I remember talking to, you said you were making a bunch of money. Things were good financially. Was it in good totally. Or was it there was something there going on. You see what I’m saying? Where you,

Brad: 18:07 yeah, I mean I, I hear the stories of like entrepreneurs that rose out of the ashes, right? Like they were at rock bottom. And while those stories are amazing and inspiring, I don’t want to take anything away cause I’ve never been there and I don’t want it like that is like instead of paying your rent, like doing ad spend on Facebook, like I’ve never been in that situation and there’s, there’s that’s incredible and amazing. But the flip side to that that I think is never talked about but equally as difficult and in and in front elements more difficult cause like part of me wants to be like of course you had nowhere to go, you were at the bottom line. What else were you going to do? Quite that’s not that big of a choice because if it didn’t work, you were out of rent and you didn’t have rent money, you didn’t have two months of rent.

Brad: 18:51 So spending this one doesn’t matter like, but again, I don’t want to take anything away from that. Like mine has been constantly looking for, sacrificing the thing that’s good and comfortable. Now for the possibility of what could be better. And that’s that is to me, one of the things that probably holds back more entrepreneurs than burning the boats and saying, I got nothing to lose anyway. It’s how do you get to where you can let go of what’s good? And in my case, like I was, but I, the top dog had the most influence in the organization that I was part of. I had a comfortable half a million dollar a year gig going and I didn’t have to do much, but just show up and leaving that, that letting go of the comfort for the, what I knew was going to be painful was, was the thing that held me back.

Brad: 19:38 But simultaneously I knew I had in me what is now blossom in the cashflow tactics that I was in a box and prevented from expanding. And that’s what ultimately pushed me out when I got called in and said, Hey, I’ve been told you’re doing this, this and this. Is that true? My gap? Well, that’s not what we do here. It was like, actually it is what I’ve always done and I’m going to continue to do. And they said, no, this is the box you get to play in. And that’s what I was like steer to one, I’m out, I’m done. I’m figuring out how to get out of here. And we, and we built that. So it was, it was more the constraints and again the entrepreneurial idea being put in a box. It was constraints being put on there. It didn’t matter how good it was.

Brad: 20:22 I had to be who I am and be able to further develop what now is this message as casual tactics. And it was the best, worst thing that ever happened. Cause we had to burn a lot of relationships in the process. I wish I could go back and do it with the knowledge on now cause maybe we could’ve saved some of those. But relationships were burned. Bridges were burned. That it was difficult to undo that. But it’s all been for what we have now, which is amazing. Yeah. That’s awesome. What are the other Chris about some tactical. What’s his, what’s his, I know he wants to when he has in Texas, but um, but I do want to, I just want to address something that kind of, yeah. One of the things that Chris and I look for in coaches and mentors like yourself is it’s the ones that have kids.

John: 21:03 Like this is such a kid a little bit, but it’s serious. It’s such a big part of like following someone because before kids read it, we, you know, you have an amazing amount of time, but you convince yourself that you’re so crazy busy and then you have your first kid and you’re like, Holy shit, I didn’t all this time and now I don’t have any time. And then you have your second kid, you’re like, Whoa, I had so much time with one now I don’t have any time. You have your six kid coming on the way, right? Number six, six on his way up, which is like, it was just phenomenal in itself. And you just, you’re rocking out such a beautiful business that’s helping crazy helping people and extremely successful. Like, and on top of that we’re crazy enough to homeschool all of these kids. I love it.

Brad: 21:49 A balance. That’s my question. Like what? Where’s the balance with it? How do you find like family balance? Like how is it the instruction with your calendar? Is it, how do you find a balance of like building a business and doing something like following your dream at the same time having kids and a wife you need to support, I mean this is what, you know, a lot of striving entrepreneurs run back to the false sense of security with the nine to five because of this like, no, I have, I have kids, my wife, I’ve got to support. I’m going to just stick with this because that’s safe. Yeah, that’ll be such a good question. Can I draw, I’m going to draw this out. So this is my super power is making things simple enough through diagrams, but the way we look at it, so this is a principle we actually teach on a regular basis as well, is as balanced.

Brad: 22:34 You talk about, we look at it that there’s four areas of life that we’re all seeking. Balance, right? Physical, spiritual, emotional, mental, right? So we want to develop in all of these ways, right? And anytime we’re in constraint in one of these, the what’s going through our mind does not have enough time or I’m unhappy for some reason cause we’re constrained in growth in one of these four areas right now to answer your question of, of balance, I want to ask you guys a question first and everybody listening, if I could write a check with as many zeros as you need on it to be free forever, which one of these four boxes would you give me in exchange? I think they’re all more valuable than that Jack. Right? Yeah, I would because it would diminish my quality of life. I’m going to call BS.

Brad: 23:25 Do you know why? Because this is what’s, this is the reality. Like I don’t remember who said it, but somebody said show me your calendar and your bank account and I’ll tell you where your priorities are, right? Yes. How many of us are like, think about yourself when you graduated from high school versus right now your physical condition. Are you in as good a shape as you were? You were senior in high school. A lot of people would say no, right? Or think about the quality, like how much learning have you done since you graduated from college? Yeah, from a mental standpoint, how much you’ve invested there. Right? A lot of people are sacrificing that and what’s the excuse that they use to say I’m not able to do that. While they’re too busy working. So most people’s life, they think that money is going to get them what they want and as they pursue money, what they find is this box here expands and pushes out one or more or all of those areas pretty accurate to represents.

Brad: 24:25 You’d like the harder we push for success to get things financially, to have our time back, it actually squishes out and we don’t have any time for the things than that. Yeah. Yeah. So to me, here’s the answer. Imbalance is what we teach and what we strive and what I strive to do. And I’ll tell you how I do this in a second. We just want, I need to do this. We take the box of money and it becomes the foundation that we build expansion in these four areas. And if you’re listening, you can’t see this. But if you’re watching it, it’ll make sense. Money is not what we want. We want these four areas, but um, but it requires money to be able to do those things. Okay? We have to have money. We have to control it. We have to understand it, it has to support us.

Brad: 25:07 So as it comes down and now we flipped the script and instead of working for money, money works for us and we’re empowered in that conversation. And using that as a tool to get our outcomes, something opens up that’s been hidden behind it. And it’s this box of purpose. And as we pursue purpose, it does not crowd out the other areas, but it expands the entire box. And so for me, wrapping up purpose into what I do at cashflow tactics, it drives me and allows me time. While, yes, it’s incredibly difficult and demanding to grow a business, it gives me more capacity because I’m driven through purpose to be able to give myself permission to expand in all four of these areas.

Outro: 31:43 It’s gonna be in part two of this episode. So, definitely check out the episode for next week. Yeeees, being an entrepreneur is the best, but it has tons of challenges, right? Two of the biggest are; how to make more money and how to keep more of the money that you do make. Just recently, John and I were at an event called Offer Mind, and we had the opportunity to see Brad Gibb deliver a presentation that just blew our minds. It was called, “How to Turn Business Cashflow into Personal Cashflow.” His whole presentation was designed to teach entrepreneurs like us, the principles of how to make more money and keep more of the money you make. After this interview, we asked him if we’d ever be able to get our hands on his presentation. Well, because he’s awesome, he said yes. And, for a limited time, he agreed to let us give it to you. To get it, all you have to do is join our Yoga Entrepreneur Secrets Facebook group. So, go over to Facebook, and search for Yoga Entrepreneur Secrets. When request to join, you’ll answer three simple questions. Just be sure to leave your best email in the third question, so we know where to send the link. And remember, do the work, honor the struggle, and make the world a better place.