Yeah. So I can't remember who it was, but someone said automation is the new discipline. Mhmm. What happens on automatic, it just happens. In regards to the bank accounts, you nailed it, and it is another behavioral technique. Your accounting system, whatever it is, is a far superior resource to make those type of decisions because it can allocate where money has been spent, where it should go. You can do budget and forecasting, always wonderful things. So the question, of course, is if it's so powerful, why doesn't everyone have a very profitable business? Because no one looks at their accounting. I don't. I log in my bank account because it is the path of water. It's the path of least resistance. I checked my bank account, I think, two or three times today already just to see if that deposit came in. How we doing? So if that's our natural path, we have to set up what I call a behavioral intercept. And, a good analogy for this is with exercise. I this is back fifteen, twenty years ago. I I I played sports in college and after college was over, I'm like, I'm never gonna move again. Well, that that didn't work so well, and I wasn't looking so good. And I said, I better I better get back in shape. So the first reaction was I'm gonna do this out of discipline. I'm not gonna miss a workout. I'm all in on this. The next morning I woke up, I was all fired up, got a great workout in. And the next day, I was sore and said, ah, maybe this is the day to take off. And it it fell apart within a week. So I said, okay. What am I doing naturally where I can insert, like, a James Clear intercept or system to ensure I get it done? And I noticed, Bob, I'd wake up in the morning, go to the bathroom, make a cup of coffee, scroll through the news, and then I lose another day of exercise. But in that consistent pattern of wake up bathroom, I was like, oh my gosh. I'm gonna take my sneakers and put them on the toilet seat, which I still do to to date. And when I wake up in the morning, the only way I can use the toilet is by grabbing the sneakers. Once the sneakers are in my hand, momentum kicks in, like, just put on my feet and go to the gym, walk down to the gym. And sure enough, I work out five days a week religiously because I can't avoid it. And that's what we do with the bank account. We're gonna set multiple accounts at your bank because I know that's where you're going. That's the toilet seat. And when you go there, we're gonna see accounts with its pre intended purposes there. So money flows in instead of one account, which it comes into. We're gonna then carve it up automatically on a percentage basis, see different accounts. So you have one to pay for your taxes, one to make sure you're getting a salary for yourself, profitability, of course, one for your capital expenditures, one for your ongoing operations. And in in most businesses, we start off with five accounts. But a business that rolls us out over time could have ten, sometimes fifteen. We have twenty accounts, and that that's like that's like profit first on steroids and unnecessary for almost all businesses. But more accounts give more clarity.

Yeah. Interesting. And that yeah. That shoes on the toilet resonates too. I think about I've never thought about how to apply that some of that psychology to my business though because but I do think about it all the time. Like, oh, shit. I do not wanna run. And I you know, okay. Just get up and do your stretching. And then once you get your shoes on, well, you know what? I'll just go for a short run. And then you get outside and you're like, well, you're running. It's like, well, why would I go for a short run? I've done the hardest part. Like, I've already done all the you know, I've gotten through the mental hurdles, so I might as well go a little further.

It's the absolute truth. The momentum, you throw in a couple extra kilometers. And, you know, the the shame is with profit for businesses, most of them don't do it. And therefore, they wait till the end of the year, and there's no profit. And there's this this big deflating moment. It's like, gosh. When is it ever gonna happen? So what I say is profit is not an event, as in it's not an eventuality. Profit's not an event. Profit is a habit. But as the weeks and months and ultimately quarters and years go by, it's unbelievable how much money you will save and store for for profit. Because the beauty of the system is too, is when when profit gets into the account, we don't necessarily distribute all of it. We usually distribute fifty percent of the accumulated funds. And so not only do we take a profit distribution in that moment, we also know next quarter, we're halfway to our goal or beyond. You know, we can grow that even further, and it it's just a wonderful feeling that every single quarter, you have a profit making machine.

Hey. It's Bob, and I'm taking the growth mixtape on the road in a series of keynote speeches inspired by the stories of my amazing guests. At their core, these signature talks are about how to get you and your teams off autopilot and stop settling for small incremental improvements. This isn't gonna come from spewing business advice. My podcast is full of people that have done incredible things, and every one of them struggles with self doubt, imposter syndrome, and the crippling fear of judgment that holds so many of us back. They've also found ways through it by rediscovering their creativity, their curiosity, and the confidence to do scary things. Imagine the power of bringing these vulnerable stories to life live and on stage to help you and your teams hit your targets, find your voice, and be the rock stars you are. Book me for your next event at bob mathers dot c a. Now back to the show. Okay. So then the book, the net your tenth book, The Money Habit, it's tenth. Right?

Number that is number ten, actually. Yeah. The Money Habit. Yeah.

So maybe you maybe you hinted at this earlier, but how do you come up with something new and interesting to say that still got all the passion and, yeah, all the passion behind it as your first book? And where did where does that story come from? Where does The Money Habit come from?

Yeah. There there's two elements. I was just telling you before we went on air, I was at this author's meetup, that I facilitate. And there's a guy named Joseph Winn. He wrote a book called Don't Believe Everything You Think. Just the nicest, most unassuming guy who has a book that is crushing it. And as opposed to the other authors, he said, I write books and we all should write books because it serves an internal challenge that we have so deeply. It fixes it so well for ourselves. Because write the book first to serve yourself. Secondly, when you do write it, before or before you write, you gotta make sure that there's a community that thirsts for this. So you're actually serving yourself as you serve others. And when when you're helping serve yourself, I I think there's a higher level of curiosity and desire. So the money habit, how it came about is like well, in my business, I first deployed profit first, and it was great. And my business is getting more and more profitable. But then I noticed my my lifestyle started to expand. All of a sudden, I need that fancier car, man. Like, you know, everything starts going up with it. And I was start I still living check by check at home. Like, this is crazy. With such a healthy business, I still have check by check. I'm like, Oh, yeah, idiot. You got to do this at home, too. So I deployed the system for myself. Now, if I did profit first, say, seventeen, eighteen years ago, this would have been like a year later. And it transformed the relationship I have with my wife Prior, when it came to finances, I'm the person who handles finances at our house. Usually, there's one, person in the household that's the primary financial person. That was me. And we had this kinda, like, parent child relationship. Like, my wife would say, hey. I wanna go out with my friends for lunch. May I? And I'd be like, not this time. Not enough money. Or I'd say, okay. Here's your lollipop. And there's this unspoken almost animosity. Her because there's a frustration she's gotta ask permission, and I have this authority over. Me, for her being so thoughtless to think about going out with friends when we need the money. And so there's this conflict. So seventeen years ago or or it was, we implemented this profit first system but translated to home finances. And all of a sudden, it was no longer parent child. We were both observers of a system, and it follows the exact same script. There's multiple accounts at the bank. And as recently as just yesterday, my wife texted me. He goes, oh, I was saying, we should go out to dinner. And we have an account that says, go out to dinner. And there's, like, this favorite restaurant we have. I'm like, oh, we should head out to our favorite place. And she texts back and says, hey. While we wait a week, the account's a little low. It's it's beautiful. There's no longer me telling her or her telling me. There's no conflict. It's the system and how do we work it together as a team. So that's that's why I needed it. Then I started hearing from entrepreneurs, which was fascinating, having the same problem for themselves. I'm like, okay. So you need it. But the bigger thing was an entrepreneur called me and say, you know, I have fifteen employees. I have a hundred employees. I have two employees, whatever it is. They were all saying the same thing. My colleagues that work with me are often coming to me saying I need a raise or a loan or something. There was some financial struggle. And I wanna accommodate it, but I'm bit I'm burying my business in this process. I can't do it. And if I can't do it, they they're gonna leave me. So how do I help people that need more money, and not lose them because I don't can't afford to give them more? And the answer was none of us need more money first. We first need more clarity. And so I'm like, oh, we gotta teach our colleagues, our employees, financial understanding. To give them something that's they can wrap their hands around, it's super simple, to give them financial clarity, which then brings back control. With financial control comes financial independence. Then as more money flows in, they have much more authority over it. So the money habit was clear. Entrepreneurs needed it, but so did our teams. Yeah.

For, you know, regular listen listeners to the podcast, I quote Rick Rubin a lot in him. He wrote a book a couple years ago called The Creative Act. And he talks about what you were talking about as well, Mike. You've gotta create for yourself.

Yeah. And there's there's this little magic in there too. I said this author's retreat just because it happened so recently. I think there's some relevant stuff. I'm seeing I I actually shared a, a home with, Michael Bunge Stanier. He's the author of The Coaching Habit. Scott wants to sell millions and millions of copies. One of the nicest dudes on the planet, by the way. And, whenever I do a trip, if there's other authors in the area, I'm the guy who's like, hey, I'll get the place if we can all stay together because I can pick these people's minds. So it's it's like six in the morning. Michael's eating breakfast and I walk over to him like, hey. I asked you a question. How how do you sell a lot of books? Because he sold so many. And he used a curse word. I'll I'll take that out. He goes, hell if I well, that's still a curse word, but hell if I know, basically, he said. And then, you know, we're meeting up with fifty other authors later that morning. He goes, they don't know either. He goes, the only thing I can tell you that determines a hit, the Hotel California equivalent, is if you've lived it, he goes, there's that one percent of extra stuff that makes it into the book because you've been through it. It's maybe it's relatability, maybe it's technique, maybe it's all the above. But he said it that's the only thing he can attribute a blockbuster book to versus a great book that never sees much of the light of day. Yeah.

I love that. You share a lot of some pretty heartbreaking stories in the book from your life and from the lives of other people that have, that have shared them with you. Are there is there one story that you never get tired of telling even if it's hard to tell?

Yeah. I mean, I have my own stories. I don't get tired of telling it. It's, it's why I hit financial rock bottom. But this is a little spin on that. I rarely tell. I think I did put in this book. Built some businesses, had no financial acuity whatsoever, didn't have any system, was spending money frivolously and thinking I'd grow my way to a lifestyle, and that's never the case. And I remember I was in the I had I had hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt. I wanna say it was, like, over three hundred thousand dollars of debt, credit card debt, an SBA loan, which I personally guaranteed, all these different things. And I had no income coming in. It was it was a rock bottom moment. I'm driving in my car, and on the radio, there's, like, one of these debt consolidators, you know, like, we'll get you out of debt type of thing, which is super interesting. When you when I have that stress on me, like, I'll actually listen to that stuff and want to believe it. I was saying something in the mail saying, like, you know, lick envelopes or whatever and make a thousand dollars a day. And I'm like, more financially sound means like that's a scam. But in desperation, I'm willing to believe desperate things. I'm like, well, maybe I'll let Convo. Sure. I can do this. Total nonsense. But on the radio comes one of these debt consolidators and they say, the average American has seven thousand dollars of debt. And these tears start welling up and I'm streaming. I had to pull a car over and snot bubbles snapping. I'm like, I wanna be average. Oh, god. I wanna be average so badly. But, that that's not my favorite story. That just one other story comes to mind. There's a guy, Sam Horton, I put in the book. This dude had the ultimate courage, married, his spouse dies. When his spouse died, they left him hundreds of thousands of dollars. They had a terminal disease and they wanna make sure that Sam was taken care of And he squandered it. Just because he didn't have not because he wanted to. He just had no financial acuity, so he just blew it all. And the shame we had our first call. So I'm I before I write a book, I will work with people through this. And the shame he had around this. He's like, I squandered it all. I've ruined it. And this is never what my spouse wanted for me. And, the courage he has, like, you have to share this story. He's like, because I'm not alone. Like, there's so many people go through this. Because I'm at rock I'm at I'm at rock bottom in this moment, and I don't even know if I can get out of here, but I'm willing to start using the system. That that story just rocked me. It was actually a very hard one to write because I just felt so bad for this. It's a good person who's struggling in a bad way.

Yeah. And when I was so you provided me an early version of the book. And, yeah, it's so I've got a you know, I graduated in economics. I wouldn't say I've ever I've been particularly smart with my money. And I'm so at fifty five, I look back and be like, yeah. I could be crippled with kind of the the regret of knowing that I, you know, probably left a couple million on the table by not being smarter over the last thirty years. But on the other hand, I also believe, and I think a lot of people I talk to believe that I probably have another career or two still in me. So the greater, you know, the greater tragedy would be looking back when I'm eighty or eighty five and looking back at this moment and saying, well, it was too late. Like, it's you know, I was fifty five. Right? Like, I can so I guess that's a long winded way of saying, yeah, what advice do you have for people that might think that this book was written for them thirty years ago?

Yeah. Well, it was. And it's still applicable now. Right? So it's the old, when do you plant the tree proverb, best time, I should say, forty years ago. Second best time is today. Wherever we are in our financial progress, or wherever our struggles are, the best time to have started was then, but then's gone. Yeah. The second chance is now I'll show you something. I got it here. I actually rarely show this, but this is a I I use an AI app. That's supposedly me. So what I'm holding up is a aged picture of me, when I turn eighty five. That's by the way, if I look like that eighty five with a full head of hair, you know, like like Santa Claus, I look amazing. I will take that all day long. There's no way I'm going to look like that. But I look at that picture every morning. It sits here on the side of this desk, and I say, is he grateful for what I did today? It's a great it's a great conversation to have. So you and you just had it. You said, well, my eightieth, am I gonna look back? It's funny that the financial progress we'll make in the moment will be drips in a bucket, and it feels like there's nothing. But fast forward a few years from now, it's like, oh, there's a little something. And then I I explore investing very at a very surface level. This book is not about investing. It's about cash discipline, which I think is fundamental to money management. You fast forward five years from now. The analogy I put in the book is that you can take money and store some under your mattress, or you can put in some kind of compound interest bearing thing. In the very beginning, they run it parallel. But slowly over time, the compounding starts exploding. And twenty years from today, it will become unbelievable of how much money you've saved and how much that money has worked for you in interest bearing opportunities, that it becomes transformative. And gosh, if we can get thirty years and you're still talking thirty years, that's a game changer. And, maybe, you know, with AI and stuff like this, maybe it's actually a forty year trajectory which isn't unrealistic anymore. And, it it can provide you a life of of theoretically infinite returns. So the that's my loquacious answer to say, today's the day to start. It's never too late. Yes. It could have been earlier, but it's never too late. Yeah.

Yeah. That's amazing. My son just, like, today signed the his first the offer for his first job at a college. Right? So he's got a salary. Oh, yeah. It's amazing. Mazel thought. And, man, this conversation couldn't have happened at a better time. It's just like, okay. Here. Let's get into this book. Let's set up some bank accounts. And, and you know what? You're never gonna miss that. You know? You're never gonna miss five to ten percent of that money that's coming in every two weeks. You just you're never gonna see it. You're never gonna miss it. And you've got this sort of, you know, this version of your AI old man there. It's like, yeah. That guy is gonna be sitting on a shit ton of cash.

Yeah. It's a beautiful thing. So congratulations to your son. My my son started his first career job now about eight months ago. And one thing we've done with all of our children we're similar age and and my kids are, my youngest is twenty four. But we sat down with all our children and said, when you when you get a job and you're you're building income stream, we're gonna set up multiple accounts at the bank for different things, including an automobile account. In your first car, you're gonna buy it for cash. And it ain't gonna be a great car, but you're gonna buy it for cash. But when you own that car, you're going to continue to make car payments on a car that you own outright for the next car. So each of my children now I don't have access to their finances, so they report to me and I hope they're not lying to me and themselves. Have an automobile account. And so my youngest son is I think he's hawking away four hundred bucks a month as his car payment, but it's going to himself, which is also compounding. And the car he bought, the life trajectory on a used car of that type, maybe seven years if you really push it, but likely five years. In five years at four hundred a month, is five thousand roughly. That's twenty five grand plus interest. That's a substantial down payment on a new car, but you can also buy a used car in today's dollars for that. And then maybe next time he does seven hundred or maybe halfway into this, he moves at four hundred to five or six hundred. But you stay in that discipline and now you're in front of debt, which is amazing. I I aspire none of my children to have debt except for some asset based debt like a mortgage or something. I think that's prudent use of funds. But otherwise, I wanted them to be in in front of cash, in front of the the debt. I think what's also interesting that isn't often discussed around money is the psychology. I can't tell you how many people come to work, because I'm in the entrepreneurial space, as employees or the owner and they're struggling financially and therefore they they actually can't work it as well. There's this I have what's called tinnitus which is a ringing in the ears birth effect, but I always hear rain. I always felt financial worry, and it is distracting. Like, how am I gonna pay for the mortgage this week or this month? How am I gonna pay for the groceries? And if that's going on, we can't be our best selves. And I don't want my children to be in that spot. I don't want anyone to be in that spot, and I think this is the way out of it.

Man, I could I could talk about this forever, Mike. This has been just god, I love this. If there's one thing you want people to take away from the money habit, what is it?