Hey, what's up, everybody?

I am Robert Hughes, the host of the Hairdresser Strong Show.

And today I have a really exciting and special opportunity to talk about building wealth, investing, and retirement planning.

This is a big topic that a lot of you have asked to talk about.

So it's right there.

And so.

Hey, what's up?

Good morning.

Happy Friday.

Happy Friday.

How you doing?

You know what?

It's a good day.

Why do we eat so much junk food yesterday?

Oh, my gosh.

Yeah, we had.

We drove through our neighborhood, and it was like, we just had to park the car and get out because there was, like, no way to drive through the.

Drive through the streets.

It was.

Everyone was so.

It was, like, packed last night.

Absolutely.

Same here.

And I was like, oh, my gosh.

Just thinking this morning I was sending my kid to school, I was like, I think school is going to be a little bit of a today.

These kids are going to be tired.

That's funny.

So thank you so much for coming on the show.

I.

It's like, I think.

I don't know if it's my backlighting, but it looks like I have one of those filters on my face, but I don't.

This is just.

I need to borrow your lighting.

I was playing with mine.

Today's the first day.

It's been cloudy here in Georgia, so I'm like, what happened to the sun?

So I had to bring in some artificial.

That's funny.

Well, thank you so much for coming on the show and talking on this topic.

We had talked.

You and I had talked about having this conversation a while back, and so I'm excited to finally get to talk about it.

So.

Building wealth, investing, and retirement planning.

I know you talk on this type of stuff already, and I loved listening to you talk in the past on this stuff.

So I'm excited for today.

Perfect.

Yeah.

I wore my shirt.

You can't see it now, but when I originally started teaching classes, this was the class that kind of got me off the ground.

It's called make money, not excuses.

And it's like, okay, now that you've learned how to make the money, what do you actually do with it?

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, exactly.

So, like, I talk a lot.

With a lot of rising stylists going to schools a lot, and they're trying to figure out what.

Let me do something.

This lighting is really bothering me.

One second.

You're good.

I wish I could plug up.

My iPhone's not.

Or my phone's not plugged in either.

So we're hitting the Pause button all the way around.

All right.

I think that's a little better.

So, yeah.

So we talk a lot about like the building blocks and they're like making no money.

And I talk a lot about paying yourself.

Even if, like get used to putting money away, even if it's a small amount of money, every paycheck, like $10.

Get used to that kind of mindset.

But we could talk a little bit on that to start if you got any thoughts on different ways to save the money.

But we're also.

It's a big conversation to talk about saving money as well as where we put the money, where different places that we can actually put the money.

But why don't we start off first by kind of telling everybody a little bit about yourself, just to kind of give a little introduction to anybody who's listening and might not have met you before.

And I would love to hear you tell them a little bit about why I'm excited to talk to you about it because of how you think about money and business.

Yeah.

Awesome.

Thank you.

So first of all, I've been a hairstylist now for a while.

I'm Daniel Mason Jones.

I've been a stylist for a long time, 25 years, and it's been amazing.

And when I got into this industry, like so many people in our industry, many of us came from blue collar backgrounds, right?

So our parents worked hard.

We saw that example of what it was like to work now in where I started doing hair, we used to have to work all the time, right?

It was nine to seven, four, five, six, seven days a week sometimes.

And we were in a different time.

I'm so excited for that.

I actually coached to that very topic.

We try to get you to work as little as you need to.

However, earn as much as you want to.

And a lot of people are like, well, how does that happen?

We have a whole plan around that and it's proven successful.

We have 80 plus hairdressers here in our salon here in Atlanta, Georgia.

So what we're doing is working and just understanding money.

And I think a lot of us have fear around money and we have fear around investing or saving money.

And when I first got into the business, I started making money my first year.

It was a non negotiable for me that if I was going to stand on my feet 10 to 12 hours a day, that I could not go home broke, I couldn't do it.

And so I was like, what model salon is going to work best for me?

And then where do I need to position myself?

What type of clientele do I want to have?

I had to really have some deep thoughts there.

And so my first year as a hairstylist, I became a stylist.

I've told the story a million times.

I became a stylist in May when I got my license.

And for May until December, I had earned $117,000 in my first year as a hairstylist.

And that was 25 years ago.

Average ticket was $55.

So I was working.

What?

Yeah, but, so during that time though, I thought that if I made a bunch of money and I saved a bunch of money, that eventually I would be wealthy.

Well, that doesn't work, friends.

Saving your way to wealth is not even, it's not even a thing.

Especially with inflation.

Like the dollar becomes weaker.

So you have to put your dollars to work to get those dollars to make you money.

Absolutely.

So I'm glad you've said that because, you know, I think about money like my dad, how my dad thinks about money.

And my dad is very much a worker saver.

He taught me budgeting and he taught me how to be, think about, be very conservative with money.

So I was able to like, I was able to, I was able to build up piles of cash.

Yeah, and, but, but yeah, like, I think, you know, and I think like some of us, I think the Gen Z is a little more hip and a little bit, I think they're going to be like, I think they're going to be impacted when it comes to money significantly.

But like, you know, I'm a millennial and I was in high school or not high school.

Sorry, I was, see I graduated in 2002.

So I was like, just kind of like make, starting to make some money and build a clientele when the market crashed.

And so I saw what it's like to quickly see your things kind of just be wiped away.

So that creates a conservative person in me when it comes to emergency planning kind of thing.

But I'm also hungry.

So I try to balance myself with two ends of the spectrum when it comes to risk.

So I have a solid cash pile for emergencies, but then the rest is like pretty and high risk stuff.

But I feel like people who are going through grew up in like their early years during the pandemic.

And coming out of the pandemic, we saw inflation pop off.

And so I feel like inflation is a very easy conversation to talk about right now.

So when you think of putting, where you're putting your money, well, first of All.

How do you think of, like, this concept of building wealth investing versus, like, retirement planning?

Like, do you think about the idea of, like, generational wealth at all?

Are you more thinking about your own lives?

Can you talk to me a little bit about that?

I plan for both, though.

I'm not going to let my kid know that, you know, being able to create an easier pathway is incredible.

However, with them not knowing that there's a pathway that's there, I need to instill work ethic and the responsibility that comes along with having wealth and money.

And when I first started, and I know what I'm gonna say is gonna be highly unpopular right now, so get ready.

But there's a lot of people that are, like, anti tip culture inside of our salon.

They're like, oh, I'm anti tips.

Tips are toxic.

I've heard all things.

That's fine because there's enough room for everybody.

As I say, often, there's a lid for every pot.

I just want to say, for me, when I first started out in this industry, I wanted to make as much as I could.

And so I had grown up poor already.

I had seen my parents struggle.

They worked and lived paycheck to paycheck, and I did not want that lifestyle.

So because I already knew how to adapt to not having a lot, I would literally take the tip income that I was making in the very beginning, and that was the money that I allowed myself to live off of.

And when I talk about tip money, I also want to put a whole entire banner around this to let you know that I have always done that ethically.

So, meaning that I have claimed the income that I have made, because that also I see a lot of people like, oh, I'm going to hide my cash.

I'm going to hide my tips.

That is probably one of the worst things that you can do.

It actually will make you poorer in the long run, because if you're not showing your exact income, then when it comes to getting loans for a home or a car, you actually pay higher interest rates, which actually hurts you in the end.

So I would live off of my tips, and then all of the money that I made on my paychecks, I would put that money aside.

And so I'm going to date myself.

There used to be a bank called Ing, and I would put this money into this bank.

It was like the first online bank.

And I would put my money in Ing because you would make more interest.

So at least I was making something.

Granted, it wasn't a high yield interest it was just a little bit of interest.

I think I was making maybe 4% a year, which isn't that much money.

So as I continued on, I started to build some compound money there.

And I started to learn about different things.

Like, I would get into first a Roth IRA at that particular time, you could invest $3,000 a year.

And I was like, I think I can swing that.

And so I would put that into that money, into that account.

And then I also started to learn about real estate investing.

And if you could buy a home and rent the home out, then that would create these additional revenue sources.

So I just started to kind of learn on my own, like, how to make my money, make money for me.

And I remember when I had my meeting with an accountant, and the accountant says, we have to come up with some additional strategizing here.

And I was like, why?

And my goal as a kid growing up, the way that I had grown up, I was like, I want to become a millionaire.

Like, if I could just touch a million dollars, wow, my life would be so complete.

Well, I didn't realize that I had already done that by the age of 27 years old in this industry.

And so that was kind of a cool moment for me.

And then once I learned how to put the money to work, the money literally started to explode.

And so investing your money and it's not too late.

If you're watching this or listening to this and you're like, oh, I'm 45 years old.

I'm 55 years old.

I don't know what to do.

There are so many strategies that can still get you to where you need to be without having to literally labor yourself to death behind the chair.

Totally.

And so we had a couple of comments.

Maria says, hey, what's up?

Two of her favorite people.

I love her.

Yeah, I love her, too.

And then we have Naomi Trotto says Tippy is a great solution for helping manage tips and creating a full detail report.

I so like when I totally.

I'm glad that you brought up the fact that they claiming the tips, because I talk about that and people always look at me sideways and the reality is honest.

Well, I can't.

I have to.

I'm going to be honest right now and say, I don't do it to be honest.

I don't do it for ethical reasons, just to be honest.

I do it for my own interests.

Because, like, by claiming.

Claiming the tips to your point, it gives me access to capital.

Like, the ability to borrow is determined, is based on your tips.

So like, if you're 45 and you're watching this and you never claimed your tips, well, you can get a massive.

If you like, the way I do my math, it's almost 40% of my income.

So, like, if you can get that big of a jump in your income within two or three years of claiming tips, you can be borrowing 40% more money, which is.

And people are also scared about that.

People are like, oh, you know, borrowing money is so scary.

Borrowing money is.

It can be scary if it's.

If it's just like with anything with money, if you're using it for the wrong reason.

But if you're getting yourself into good debt, you know, we.

We now own both of our salon buildings that we're in.

And that's crucial, you know, to be able to have that.

When we were renting our salon, our first location, we were paying $18,000 a month in rent.

And so over time, that's a ton of money.

And I was like, you know what, if I could get a mortgage for around the same amount of money, I could actually own the building.

So you just have to be smart inside of our industry.

And one of the things that drives me crazy, if I'm going to be completely honest with you, is our industry people make up these crazy excuses like, oh, I'm an artist.

I don't do math.

There's a reason I'm a hairdresser.

And like, we dumbed down our industry and we are supposed to be professionals, especially with the amount of people that own their own businesses.

You have to know your numbers.

And when I coach to people, you know, we can talk about investing all day long.

And in addition to that, if you don't know how much money you're actually making, then you don't know how much you can actually afford to invest.

And so I'll say to people, what is your average service ticket?

And they literally will look at me like, is that retail?

I'm like, no, like your average service service ticket.

And then there's a retail ticket.

They don't know their number.

Well, I think it's around $400 a customer.

I'm like, because you did one customer that was 400, because then maybe you did eight haircuts that were 65.

So there's an average that has to happen there.

So we have to start knowing our numbers.

And I often laugh inside of our industry because we have the most capability of earning.

It's limitless, honestly.

And people will be like, oh, I'm making so much money now.

I'm in this particular business model.

I'm keeping all my cash.

Nobody's keeping all their cash.

You have to pay taxes, you have to buy supplies, you have to buy products.

You have all the things that we have to do.

If I own a salon, I'm buying tons.

I can tell you my salon centric order every Tuesday.

Holy Lord.

It is expensive to supply that much color for that many stylists.

So you have to understand your numbers before you can invest the numbers.

So you have two salons now.

Yeah, I think you said.

Yeah, that's so awesome.

And you, you have mortgages on both of those buildings.

Yeah, one is.

One is almost no mortgage.

And I'm very excited about that.

We bought that property 11 years ago, and it's cool because it's on a great location.

Both are in great locations.

And that allows me freedom to.

Once that's all handled, that allows me to give more back to my team.

And that's been our philosophy all along was how much can we give to our team?

How can we create financial freedom for this generation now?

Like, we've created it for ourselves.

Now we're responsible, or I feel that we are responsible to train the next generation and give them the same freedoms and opportunities so that they can teach the next generation.

So it's a responsibility that I feel that we have as people that have actually done it.

And what is your real estate profile?

I mean, I don't know if you feel comfortable sharing this, but as much as you're willing to share, just to give everybody watching and listening an idea of what we're talking about, where we can kind of work up to.

Yeah.

So one of the first things that I purchased was just a simple rental home.

And that.

That's been.

We've had that forever.

And then I bought a couple of, like, town homes, rented those out, and then when the market came back up, I sold those, doubled the income.

So just give you an example.

I'm just going to throw a number out.

It's not going to be an exact number just because I don't want to offend anyone.

Just say that I paid $150,000 for that town home, and then the town home became worth $350,000.

So then I sold the town home and made money.

And then.

Then you take that money and maybe you divide that money that you earned off of that after you pay your taxes, and then you roll that into two properties.

So I sold one to get two, and that allowed us to get into bigger properties, beach properties, and Lakefront properties and then real estate properties.

And so you just, you're able to start playing this game.

It's like playing a real life game of Monopoly.

And so it's like, once you start to do that, it's just amazing.

And so it's a headache.

Let's be real.

The more things you have, the more responsibility and the more, especially with hurricanes happening all the time.

Holy smoke.

We had seven properties in the path of the last hurricane.

And I was literally, we were out of the country and I was like, oh my God.

Like, come on, Milton.

Like, get your life together.

Or Helene.

Sorry, it was Helene.

And so it was stressful.

But you do have to take those risks.

And I love that you said that in the beginning you are a high risk person.

And when you said that, the first thing that calculated into my mind was that you're young enough that you can have calculated higher risk.

You know, if you're 65 years old.

And I would not say, hey, go gangbusters and just like open this up to a very risky market.

If you're talking to your financial planners, they're going to, they're going to do some pretty amazing.

If they're good, they're going to have some great tests that you should take to find out if you're a moderate investor, if you're a super conservative investor or if you're a risk taker.

And for me, I'm very diversified.

I've got some things that I do take really big risk in.

More recently, I've invested into kkrs, which is, it's basically companies.

I'm not going to name any of them, but it's larger companies that maybe have fallen into trouble in the past year.

So investors have come in and maybe pumped in $100 million to buy that business.

So I invest into their portfolio so that when that business comes up, they sell it.

Then I get my money off of that and it's pretty much, it's very safe.

That's exciting.

Wow.

Cool.

So let's kind of do a.

I have a couple, I prepared a couple of questions.

I love them.

So we have, let's see.

Okay, everyone's.

I know we've kind of touched on this, but I feel like what we've done is like a high level kind of overview.

We talked about, we talked about like having some sort of knowing your numbers, making sure, you know, like, where your money's coming and going so you can identify how much you have to invest.

And just for the record, we.

This is not financial advice.

You should call talk to a financial advisor.

We are talking about what Daniel does and what I do and how we think about this topic.

And we're hoping that it's a good jump off place for you to go and talk to your financial advisor, do your own research.

That's a great one, by the way.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Do you have any recommendations for how to find a good financial advisor?

I'm going to keep it super simple just because like you said, we're not offering financial advice, we're just sharing our own journey.

So if I were starting out two companies that have been around and kind of bulletproof for a long time, I mean their track record speaks for itself and I would encourage you to research them.

Is Fidelity.

You can do Fidelity or even Vanguard.

And they both are really, they're pretty incredible sources to get you started and just read and see if it's something that feels comfortable to you.

Of course, you can also go to your local bank.

You know, they typically have someone.

I don't do that personally because that does not work for me.

But it might work for you.

Nice.

Okay, cool.

All right, so.

So we have like to find it.

Find somebody to help you with your finances.

That's always, that's what, that's what all the people with money do.

They all, they all have experts to help them with this.

Even it.

Unless they're, of course, unless they're maybe in a fine.

Even financial people might have, I don't know, financial advice anyway.

I'm sure.

Yeah, I'm sure.

So, okay, now and then we talked about like risk, like risk tolerance.

Like risk is important because lower risk.

You talked about time horizon.

If you have, if you're older, you might want to take less risk just because you're probably thinking about retirement and that and then.

So like that's a risk conversation that's important to understand.

Like the higher the risk, the higher the return you should be getting.

Right.

Okay.

And then we also talked about.

I brought the word generational wealth.

You talked a little.

You brushed on it.

So my first question is under generational wealth, everyone's talking about creating generational wealth.

It's a very much a buzz thing.

What does that even mean to you?

And what simple steps can we take?

Now I know some of this might be repetitive, but what does it mean to you?

And if you had, if you went back with your hindsight, what are the, what are three things that you would do, would.

Would do at you know, maybe various points of your career?

I would have started investing earlier.

I Can tell you that's a huge mistake that I made because I would be so much farther along.

I didn't understand at the time what compound interest was.

And I think once you understand compound interest, then you understand kind of the secret to wealth.

So what is.

If I compound.

What is compound interest?

So think about someone that goes to the gym, and maybe we're going to be silly for a minute and just say, okay, I'm not going to the gym, clearly.

But if I.

If I were to go to the gym and I were to take a weight and I'm going to start lifting on my right arm, and every day I go to the gym and I do 10 or three sets of 10, and I'm like doing the curls or whatever you call them, but I'm leaving out this arm over here.

This arm over time is going to start to become larger because I'm building muscle, but I'm doing little bits every day.

So compound wealth and compound interest is really the same thing.

So if, if I, you know, just say a simple number, $3,500 a year.

If I invest $3,500 a year, because maybe that's all that you can afford to do, 3,500 a year.

And over 10 years, you know you're going to have $35,000.

You already know that.

But over that time, interest has been compounding.

So if I only invested maybe to say I got a $10,000 in the bank, I've got $10,000 in the bank in an investment account that's going to naturally grow.

Maybe it's got a little bit of risk associated with it.

In seven years, that money is going to essentially double.

So only put in 10,000, but in seven more years, it's going to be 20,000.

And in seven more years, it's Going to be 40,000, and then 80,000 and then 160,000 and so on, so forth every seven years.

So it naturally will compound.

Of course, you should continue adding money to that so that it can get a larger compound effect.

But that's how compound interest works.

It's just like buying a house.

If your parents have bought a house 40 years ago for $100,000, that house chances are now is probably 6 to $700,000.

So the inflation, though, people, and this is what I also want to say is there's so much rhetoric around economy and inflation.

You need to understand it.

Don't regurgitate what you've heard.

And everybody's like, oh, the economy is so bad right now.

I'm Going to fight you on that and tell you that the stock market has been amazing this year.

And that's numbers.

That's not emotion.

I have the printed out report so I can see the numbers that grew.

And if I were to sell my house right now, it's actually doubled in value from what I paid for it five years ago.

So if I were to sell my house, I would make a fortune right now.

So the economy is not as bad as people say.

Now there are people that are in bad economies, but for those of us that are, that are working the economy, it's not bad.

Groceries are expensive, yes, I get it.

But the numbers don't lie.

So with that being said, just really, again, knowing your numbers, that compound interest starts to build over time.

So you want to do reverse engineering.

So if I plan to retire, my goal is 55.

So if I plan to retire at 55 years old, I know how much money I need to have in savings and how much money needs to be there invested so that I can continue to live the way that I currently do live.

Factoring in that inflation will increase every single year around a rate of 3 to 5% right now.

It's the highest it's ever been.

Yes, but you have to factor in all these numbers.

So if I know that I need to have X amount of dollars at 55 years old, how much do I need to start investing now?

Does that mean that I need to start talking more about conditioning treatments inside the salon?

Does that mean I need to add on one extra highlight a day?

I don't know.

I don't know your numbers.

But we have to start thinking at the big picture and then working back into macro.

I love that.

I love that.

So, and then what is, when, what is the word generational wealth mean to you?

Say I do really well in my lifetime and my time is up and I am no longer then my child, and then my child's children will eventually inherit some of the things that I have invested in.

So, and that's another thing, like the homes or properties that we own, everything that we have, we put them in LLCs because there are people out there that might want to come take what you have.

So having individual LLCs, limited liability on each property that you have, on each thing that you have that protects you.

And then also checking with your financial people, with your legal team to find out if putting your properties in a trust worth it.

I recently lost my mom.

Her property is not in a trust.

There was, there wasn't even really a will.

There and so we're having to navigate that.

And.

But if things had been in a trust, there wouldn't be taxes paid on that.

It would just naturally flow to the next person.

So there's ways to defer taxes and tax payment on properties also.

So you really do need to have a strong team around you to help you navigate these conversations.

But there's so much information online.

If you get it from a credible source.

Again, Vanguard and Fidelity are two that you I would trust, because there's a lot of bad information out there as well.

Totally.

And my condolences for your loss.

Thank you.

That was relatively recent, right?

Yeah.

It's the worst thing anybody would go through, I'm pretty sure.

I'm sorry.

And thank you.

Yeah.

And.

And I do appreciate you taking the time in the midst of all this to talk with us about this topic.

I really do.

We're all here to help people.

I think that's the key to success, and that's the key to life.

And the key to happiness is when we understand that we're only here to help and serve other people.

The rest of everything falls into place.

Amen.

Okay, so let's.

I got a couple more questions.

Okay, so, see, retirement planning.

There's a lot of talk about early retirement online, but what does realistic retirement planning look like for hairdressers?

And how can we balance enjoying life now and saving for later?

I know that's a big topic.

You're so cool.

I love this.

All right, so how do we start to plan?

Now, again, looking at the big picture, what does early retirement look like for you?

Are you paying down your debt?

Listen.

Okay, so I've told this story a million times.

I love what I get to do.

I travel all over the world, literally.

And I get to train and work with the most amazing people, which happen to be hairdressers.

And when I go to the shows in certain part of.

Let's just pick on the United States.

I go to certain shows in certain parts of the country, whether it's Dallas, Texas, Houston, Texas, or la, that market in particular.

I show up to these events, and the people are literally so beautiful.

Sometimes I'm like, how are they all so gorgeous?

And you get there and they're all wearing Gucci belts, and they've got Valentino and they've got their Chanel bags, and they have all these things, and in my mind, they look beautiful.

I get it.

We're in the fashion industry.

We're rocking the fashion.

We're leading the way.

I also know that the average hairdresser, if you Google this, average earnings is around $25,000 a year.

So if you're carrying a Chanel bag that costs 7,500 and you earn 25,000, we need to reevaluate.

Unless you're planning to retire inside that purse, you know, right now, like, if you, if you were to hang around me like I love, I have zero shame.

I will go straight to Walmart right now and buy jeans.

I have zero problem with that.

Do I have nice things in my closet?

100%.

But I don't need to impress anybody with high end brands in particular if it's going to allow me not to retire.

Because when you're 65 years old and you literally are trying to figure out how I'm going to continue to do this, or maybe you're even older than that, you're still having to work not because you want to, but because you have to, are you going to think that, like, wow, I really impressed the crowd at the club with my Gucci belt on or, oh my gosh, I, I'm going to have to keep doing this.

So we need to put things into perspective on, like, what really matters.

And I think that's really critical.

If you can afford those things, fantastic.

That's wonderful.

But you also need to pay yourself first.

Every time you get paid, you should set aside a certain amount of money.

You know, if you are young and you're maybe still living with your parents, you should be setting aside so much money right now.

This is your ticket.

And get that money invested early on because the earlier you start, the more wealth you have, so much sooner.

So that is, that is a critical conversation that should be had everywhere.

And in fact, our schools, I feel like our schools are failing in the education system because they're talking about trigonometry, which is great.

If you're going to be an engineer, we need to be learning about finances, like the overall economy and how it works.

And if you don't have it, you don't spend it.

If I make a, I can tell you this for myself.

If I make $100, I can promise you right now, $50 of that 100 is going into an investment.

That's how that's going to go.

I'm going to pay myself $50 and then the other $50 I can play with.

So I've just always kind of lived that way and it's worked out.

And what that allows is, it allows us also to help a lot of people that are in need that maybe can't get on their own feet.

And so when I see those situations, having that additional money allows us to do better things.

Totally.

And like Elise Michelle says, says, well, that's because they aren't claiming income on taxes.

And it's like, yeah, like back to that kind of connecting it all together.

It's like, yeah, maybe people are making more than $30,000 or 20, whatever it is, but what are they making?

60,000.

I mean, I still think your point still stands with a $7,500 purse at more than 10% of your income.

Or 10%.

I mean, to me it sounds crazy, but unless, unless that bag is going to go up in value and you're going to resell it.

Value, but you still can't afford it.

Okay, go to Target and get a seasonal bag and you'll look just as fine, I promise.

Okay, well, to, to the other piece, I just want to add my, my two cents on, on what you're saying is like, and what we're talking about here and to the, all these points like at claiming, claiming your tips.

Enjoying, enjoying.

On paper, higher income gives you access to more capital to buy.

Acquire more assets that go up in value faster.

Then a savings account can increase the value of your money.

And so to your point, being able to help other people and whatnot, well, the more opportunity you have to take advantage of, the more opportunity you have to help others.

So it's like a compounding.

Go back to compound interest.

It's like making interest on top of interest is awesome, but you also have the compound effect of being able to help others as you grow your own.

Wealth too, which is key.

And with that being said, we could have a whole entire podcast about when you give, you get and you never give to get or you should never give to get.

You should just give because it's the right thing to do.

But every time I've ever been in a situation, I've got so many absolutely off the wall stories that are just proven.

I gave a large amount to a charity in 2020.

Our salons was closed, we didn't know what we were doing, but that charity still had to go on.

It was her childhood cancer charity and we had supported them every year and I was like, I can't not support them because these children are still getting sick and they need help.

So I made a contribution.

I just put my amex in and did my thing and it was a five figure contribution.

And I'm going to tell you what happened.

I have goosebumps right now because I Know the end of the story.

So crazy.

So no one had been in my home.

Nobody should have been in my home.

It was just a really crazy time, and we didn't know anything during that time.

And I don't keep money in my home.

That's a big no, no.

We keep it invested.

And so for whatever reason, that amount of money that I gave, I found in exact.

In exact money.

And neither of us know where that money came from to this day.

And it's just wild, but it was confirmation to me.

And this wasn't the first time something like that had happen.

It was the largest it had ever happened.

But it reminded me that we are supposed to do good in the world.

And so the more that we earn.

You know, I grew up really religious, and there was a passage that I did take from that that says, to who much is given, much is required.

And so I just feel like when we are given a lot, we're given opportunity, we're given luck, whatever you want to call it in your world, we are supposed to give back.

And it's really nice to be handed these opportunities so that we can earn, so that we can invest, so that we can invest in others, too.

I'll get off my soapbox with that.

No, that was so good.

Just let's do, like, two more questions, and we'll wrap it up.

Does it sound good?

You're so good.

I would literally talk to you all day long.

I love it when I get to be around you.

I get excited.

Awesome.

Well, thank you.

I feel the same way.

Thank you.

Okay, so let's see.

Investing.

So the conversation of stocks versus real estate, it can be kind of a hot topic.

Anybody who, you know, I know that coming up in the industry, the only real advice I got was invest in real estate.

And it wasn't until later studying money and finance and that I kind of learned about.

I mean, I always knew about stocks, but I never really quite understood what I was doing.

And.

But anyway, that said, how can hairdressers decide?

Obviously, this is.

We're not giving financial advice, but, like, in your opinion, when you think about putting money.

So we talked about real estate, but, like, could you talk on some of the other investment opportunities that you take advantage of and what you.

What your thoughts on are.

Are on each course.

My gosh, we could get started on that and go down a whole rabbit hole.

There's mutual funds where multiple people invest together.

There are hedge funds.

There are.

There are Roth IRAs.

There are Roth 401ks.

There are 401ks.

God, there's so many ways.

There's even certain insurance policies, if you can find one that's ethical, there's ones that you can use to build wealth.

Also we have a policy right now, I can tell you that we've had in place this an 18 year policy and if we don't have to use that policy, it turns into a certain monetary number.

And that number, we do have a college savings for our child.

But in addition to that, we also put these two policies in place and if we live those 18 years when they're mature, they have cash value and that will also.

And it was tax deferred, so we're able to use that toward college also.

So whether that's housing, it doesn't matter.

So that kind of thing is important.

This year has been an amazing year for me.

I am not, I'm going to put a massive disclaimer.

I am not giving financial advice on this piece.

I'm going to tell you, no different than I had a hamburger that was really good at this restaurant.

You may hate hamburgers, but I invested this year in a pharmaceutical company.

I'm not even going to say the name of it, but it's in one of the weight loss drugs that everybody's taking one of the shots.

Holy smoke.

Oh, oh my gosh.

For all the people like, oh, the economy's doing terrible this year.

I'm like, well, you should have invested in that because baby has been good over here.

So.

But yeah, following, you know, I'm in, I'm invested, I'll tell you, I'm invested in Disney, Coca Cola, Home Depot.

There's certain companies that I'm gonna always, just because those companies to me are always gonna do pretty good, that doesn't mean they're always gonna do good.

But for right now, that's what I chose to do with my own personal decision making.

So.

But my financial team, they chase all the numbers all the time.

And you know when you're looking for a financial advisor, there's going to be fee based and there's going to be commission based.

So you have to figure out just like rental or commission in a salon, you have to figure out the model that works for you.

I'm not saying that one is right and one is wrong.

I'm actually in both.

But what I'm going to say is like, if you have someone that's making commission on your money that tells me that they're going to work for me personally, they're going to work harder because the more Money that my money earns, the more money they earn.

So that's the model that works for this guy.

Maybe you're somebody that wants to pay a flat rate of $1,500 a year.

I don't know.

So just understanding what works for you, you need to become educated.

You know all the time that we spend scrolling TikTok and Instagram, watching everybody's hairstyles and colors and extensions and whatever we're doing, that's great, but you probably already know how to do hair.

What you may not know how to do yet is how to invest.

So start following people that are really sharp in the financial world.

Absolutely.

I love that.

I'll add to that.

So just from like a, what do they call it, like a scholarly perspective, like if you study finance, then the conventional wisdom is having your emergency stack of cash have it, be able to access it in the event of emergencies.

And then you have whatever that three to six months that that's up.

You know, talk to your financial advisor obviously to see like if this conventional works for you and then, and then putting money.

And when you do go to invest, starting off in like index funds, which is like a combination of a bunch of stocks, so it's diversified.

So you don't like if you pick, let's say that you picked, you picked one of the pharmaceutical companies out of two and only one of them went up.

You didn't make that money.

But a fund might buy, invest in both of them.

So it kind of reduces your risk.

You don't get the big return, but it's safe.

And then you kind of layer on the risk as you go on.

And did you know that real estate is considered not low risk investment?

Which really blew my mind when I was doing my research.

I thought that was really fascinating.

Maybe real estate as an investment property, maybe not as your home, is a higher risk.

I don't know if you have any thoughts on that as a landlord.

The laws have changed a lot.

You know, when you, when you have a primary residence, there's a certain tax deduction that you would get from that.

And then when you start buying secondary, like a rental home or a beach home, of course there's depreciation.

That's going to be a factor when you're doing your taxes.

Depreciation is going to always happen on a home.

Like I have a place in Florida and you know, if it doesn't rent the way that it's supposed to rent, then I'm going to, it's going to, I've lost Revenue because it's a business and if it didn't generate X amount of dollars per year, so there are ways around it that are illegal.

So understanding that.

But overall real estate to me has not been that risky.

Now there was one time that real estate became incredibly risky and that was in 2007-2009 when the banks were giving out loans to people that couldn't necessarily afford to pay them back.

And so that was catastrophic for the real estate world unless you were smart during that time.

And that was the time that we were building wealth in capital.

And so all the properties were like severely undervalued.

Maybe there was a property that was $1.5 million that now is on fire sale for 600,000.

So then you would buy the $600,000 property and then just a couple years later it came back up to the 1.5.

So you were able to get the 900.

Well then you could pull out a line of credit from that, the equity line, and then you could buy something else.

That was how we got into our first salon was we couldn't, we didn't have enough money that we could borrow money at that time.

We were, we were trying to figure it out, but we had purchased a home.

In that home, we had paid down enough.

We are the people that pay two payments a month on the house or we pay additional principal.

So if your payments 2000amonth, then you pay 1000 and then you pay 1000.

Or I would pay 1500-1500, but the 500 each time to our principal, you literally reduce that mortgage by half.

So if you have a 30 year fix now, it's a 15 year fix.

There's so many things that we could talk about right now.

Hello and good morning.

Del Potts.

She's a rock star here in Atlanta.

But anyway, so, yeah, it's just there's so much thought that has to go into the things that we do.

And these are conversations just like the other topic that I talk about all the time now is mental health.

These are two major conversations that if they're being had, they're being had by people that don't need to be having those conversations.

Like those people are giving advice.

I'm like.

Or they're not being had at all.

So we really have to continue having bigger conversations on this.

Absolutely.

Okay, so as we wrap up, I wanted.

There's a, there is a question the audience, it's I think Leavage B.

Levi's.

Sorry, Levi.

All right.

Yeah.

So Levi says suggestions on Pete do You have any suggestions on people to maybe follow or look into that?

Are that you like in the world of investing?

Maybe.

Maybe online, maybe in the news?

Oh, I don't watch the news.

I'm allergic to the news.

Good for you.

It is so scary.

I choose happiness each day.

So no, there are people.

And Levi, I can send you a list of those people.

I'm scared to give advice here because maybe somebody invests wrong and then they might blame it this way.

But yeah, I'm happy to share some of those names, but there are some really incredible people out there.

Even I personally am not a fan of the personality.

But he's got great advice is Dave Ramsey.

That one I'll endorse.

I can't listen to him personally because he's angry all the time.

If you have that much money, you should be happy.

But anyway, the only thing that I don't agree with him on is the credit card theory.

He thinks that you shouldn't have credit cards, that you should use a debit card.

And I can tell you completely and 100% in my body and soul, I love my American Express.

I pay it off every single month.

But the amount of points that I get from that American Express, it literally helps me travel my team all over the globe.

We just took eight of our team to Paris and Vienna, Austria last month and we used a whole lot of American Express points.

So if you're responsible with a credit card, do that.

If you're not responsible, maybe you should stick to a debit card.

But yeah, Dave Ramsey overall is good.

His emergency fund, the whole segment that he has on emergency funds is incredible.

You know, if something were to happen to you, God forbid, can you live one year without being behind the chair?

And most stylists and industry professionals don't have insurance.

Long term, short term, we don't have short term, disability, we don't have anything.

We do, my company does, but most don't.

And so making sure that you can afford to live in a crisis, that's so good.

Yeah, yeah.

No, you know, it's like, I'm glad that we're wrapping up on this note because I feel like a lot of times the conversation about money and investing and wealth starts off with the super boring stuff that no one wants to hear.

Like, need your backup fund.

You need to have like some base level foundation of like, lower risk investments.

And it seems like every single financial advice or planner or anything that I've been to, anything I've watched, they do really emphasize that.

And the insurance, like the life insurance, the short term disability, long term disability, all that.

And health insurance, like having all that stuff, which is not sexy to talk about.

And it just sounds like I got to spend more money because insurance is not exciting.

You don't get to watch your insurance grow.

Yeah.

So.

But I'm glad that we're wrapped up here because it is very important to, like, you.

We could talk all day about.

I mean, I'm, I'm a crazy investor.

I like crypto.

Like, I, you know, like, I, I could talk, I could talk with you.

Like, we could go down rabbit holes on like, fun, like sexy real estate and stocks and crypto and all this high risk stuff, crowdfunding, crowd investing, you know, all that stuff.

But the reality is, like, I'm glad we had the conversation and we ended on.

But make sure you look into these things before you go off and like, do anything crazy on your own.

So get advice, have emergency funds and consider having some low risk stuff and some insurance.

But absolutely.

And be careful of the conversations that we have as professionals too.

I'll leave with that.

Just be careful of the conversations.

I have one quote that if I had a tattoo, it would be down my whole entire arm.

I say it all the time.

I say it probably 50 times a day.

But the words you speak build the house you live in.

So if you constantly are speaking poverty into your life.

I don't have, I'm just a hairdresser.

I'm always going to be broke.

I don't know what to do.

If you continually speak that mindset, you're going to build the house of that.

So just be careful with the words you speak and start to envision yourself in a different lifestyle, if that's what it is.

Manifestation.

I talk about that all the time.

The house that I'm sitting in right now, I actually drew a picture of this house when I was 14 years old in eighth grade.

And I live in this house right now.

And so your mind is powerful.

Your thoughts become actions and your actions become behavior.

So with that, happy investing.

Well, you.

I thank you so much.

You're awesome.

I love talking with you.

This was so good.

Thank you so much.

Keep doing the thing that you're doing.

Your vibe is always good and you're the real deal.

So if you're just watching this guy for the first time, don't lose contact.

He's the good one.

Awesome.

Thank you so much.

And I look forward to talking to you again soon.

Have a wonderful day and yeah, happy holiday season.

Hey, thank you.

Yeah, we kicked it off, didn't we?

Here we are.

Let's eat and be merry.

Yeah, that's right.

Take care, friend.

Happy Friday.

All right, See ya.

Bye.