Paul Winkler: Welcome to “The Investor Coaching Show.” I am Paul Winkler, talking about the world of money and investing. That’s what we do around here. And today’s no different.
Today, so one of the things that those of you that know me know is that I am really passionate about how to fix the way people handle money, the way they handle it throughout their lifespan and into retirement, but also investing. And one of the things that I want to do with you today is a great pleasure.
Those of you know, I went to school at Trevecca and took a graduate-level set of classes in marriage and family therapy, adding to my financial planning degrees. I got to meet some really great people at Trevecca. And one of them is with me today, Dr. John Kennedy.
Dr. John Kennedy: Hey, Paul.
PW: Man, so good to see you. Thanks for coming in here.
Accounting and Psychology
PW: Tell everybody about your background because you’ve got a finance background with accounting. I mean of all things, how did you end up going from accounting, being a CPA, to end up getting into the psychology department?
More specifically, one of the things that I think is really great is your focus on research and understanding of research strategies. And we may get into a little bit of that.
In so many areas of life that we try to make decisions in — the research should drive everything, but people misread the research so often.
JK: Absolutely. Well, I’m a little bit of an enigma to be sitting here talking about investing and CPA topics and psychology. It started out as a career choice.
I wanted to be a preacher, and I did not have the gift of public speaking. It was pretty bad actually.
PW: Really?
JK: I had a little bit of a Jonah moment where I got angry and it was time to go to college. I said fine.
PW: Jumped in the boat and went in the other direction.
JK: It was horrible. In high school, you take a differential aptitude test.
PW: Uh-huh.
JK: Think about me being 17 years old.
PW: Uh-huh.
JK: I don’t know anything about assessment at this point. I think this test is supposed to tell me what I’m supposed to be when I grow up.
PW: Right, right, right, right, right.
JK: It’s an interest inventory, okay.
PW: Right.
JK: Imagine the vertical axis is art and the horizontal axis is science, it’s one of those two.
PW: Uh-huh.
JK: And all my interests are down in the bottom lower quadrant: mental health counselor, preacher, social worker, journalist, English teacher. I picked the furthest thing away, the highest on the science and art that was by itself.
It was accounting. And I literally circled it like a first-grader. And I said, okay, fine, that’s what I’ll go do. And I went to MTSU in, I don’t know, 1980, and said I want to be an accountant, whatever that is.
PW: Yeah.
JK: And that’s how I started my journey as an accountant.
PW: Just an act of rebellion.
JK: It was a full-fledged Jonah moment. I’m getting on the boat, I’m out of here. And so it’s interesting.
Statistics and Investing
JK: In fact, can I give a little shout-out?
PW: Yes.
JK: I’m actually looking for somebody, if you can find them. His name is William Utley.
PW: Okay.
JK: He taught at Lebanon High School in the 1980s and the late seventies. He was the algebra, physics, and trig teacher.
PW: Uh-huh.
JK: And I think he literally saved my life as a junior.
PW: Wow.
JK: I was having a really bad day at that time.
PW: Uh-huh.
JK: And I had my head on the desk, which was very uncharacteristic of me, and he was very kind. He said, “Mr. Kennedy, you might want to just sit up, you might learn more.”
And I said, “Why bother? Nobody in this class cares about anything. They’re all making fun of you. Why bother?”
I laid my head down. You don’t know this side of me, do you?
PW: No, no, no, no. This is fun. This is good.
JK: You opened up a can of something here that’s strange.
PW: Yeah.
JK: But he was so kind as a teacher. He came after class, he was very patient, and we were studying functions. Okay, f(x). Remember those in high school trauma algebra?
PW: Oh yeah, for sure.
JK: I just couldn’t get it.
PW: I usually traumatize people with statistics, but you can go and deal with functions. That’s fine.
JK: There it is. I just didn’t get it. But fast-forward all through going to counseling school, becoming a PhD, teaching statistics at Trevecca — it was maybe the second or third semester when I taught it.
PW: Uh-huh.
JK: I’m at the board and I’m drawing a multiple regression formula, trying to explain a break-even formula, which is just regression, the slope of a line.
PW: Right.
JK: And this moment comes up where I say, “This is f(x), this is functions.” And I really literally almost broke down thinking about how I’m teaching this stuff that I’d never understood.
PW: Mm-hmm.
JK: When I say I shouldn’t be here, I think it’s very much a God thing that got me here. It’s not something I saw on my radar and said, “I’m going to be a statistics teacher one day.” No, absolutely not.
PW: Well, and that’s the thing when I talk about investing: Statistics comes in all the time, such as standard deviation to measure risk and covariance and correlations to measure how you put a portfolio together and those types of things. And most people don’t understand it at all.
It’s really critical because that is how you can reduce the risk of a portfolio and maximize expected return. It’s through that.
But most people are clueless. I find even the financial advising community is clueless about it. And quite often it’s because they don’t know a lot about economics and not a lot about statistics and how those things are put together.
Meta-Theory
PW: Now, specifically, let’s talk a little bit about this. You and I have had a lot of conversations before with people about just the life phases that they go through and then the behaviors and how we actually choose our behaviors and how we act and how the brain works, and you have this model.
And I want you to describe that for people because I think it’s fascinating in helping people get to where they want to go because they don’t understand themselves very well. And you have cognitive behavioral therapy for example, and you build on that on top of that. But kind of describe what it is and how it relates to people’s finances and how to get yourself into a better place in regards to that, because a lot of people don’t save as much money as they should.
JK: Right.
PW: They don’t invest properly when they do save. And then they get to those older years and all of a sudden they’ll look around and go, “My goodness, how many years have passed by?”
I mean, I’ve even had people that I’ve worked with that they’ll just go, “I’ve wasted all of this time.” And a lot of it’s because of stinking thinking, to actually quote Zig Ziglar.
JK: Right.
PW: It’s how we think about money that really affects us so negatively. Talk a little bit about that model, if you will.
JK: Sure. Well, I’m working on a little bit of a book this summer. I’ve been resisting writing anything because I feel like if I write it, it’s stating that it’s all my knowledge.
And this is really just stuff I’ve gathered from lots of sources. I consider myself to be sort of like a bumblebee. I fly around these different flowers, just different relationships in life, and I pick up a little bit of knowledge from them and I leave some knowledge that I got from another relationship — and confidentially. But it’s just knowledge and wisdom from dealing with people in all sorts of situations.
As time goes by, I find myself just sharing things and I go, “Where did that come from?” I didn’t think it up. I really don’t want to claim credit for it.
It’s really a meta-theory. I think of it as a toolbox for organizing the knowledge that we have.
PW: Meta-theory. It’s like an eclectic way of doing things.
JK: Yes.
PW:
You pull things from a lot of different sources and you take the best from all these sources and put it together in one theory that you can use for people.
JK: Yes. As a therapist, you know this.
So we teach students: Don’t just pull out an intervention. I’m going to use the miracle question for example now with the client. Ask this magic question.
PW: Solutions-focused therapy.
JK: Yeah. I have to know about solution-focused therapy. I have to know what the balance of the theoretical framework is and the stance of what therapists know before I use that tool.
PW: Mm-hmm.
JK: This meta-theory came about because I needed something simple that my mind could wrap around so that I could also find out what people already knew. I think perspective is everything.
PW: Yeah. It’s critical.
JK: As a teacher, I don’t really give people knowledge. I try to give them perspective, which is just another way of seeing things. I kind of move them seating-wise around the truth that’s in the middle.
PW: Yeah.
Bases Metaphor
JK: If they want to go on the venture, we’ll do a 360-degree rotation. It’s not just, “Let’s move around a circle and see what we see from different angles. Let’s go on the top and bottom and side.”
It’s an infinite number of perspectives of looking at a phenomenon, for example, such as attitude toward money.
PW: Uh-huh.
JK: All right. I’d love to be able to draw it out, but let me see if I can do this verbally.
PW: Yeah.
JK: You take a pen and pencil and see if you can recreate this.
PW: Give me a word picture and I think I’ll be good.
JK: You’ve probably played kickball in your life or you’ve seen baseball or softball. You know how the bases are laid out.
PW: You got the diamond.
JK: A diamond, okay.
PW: Mm-hmm.
JK: If you drew a diamond and you drew the base lines, which would form the diamond from the edges, but you also draw a line from home plate to second base and from third base to first base.
PW: Okay. I’m going to draw this out in front of me. I’ve got a baseball diamond and I’ve got four corners.
JK: Right.
PW: And normally, I’m going to run to the right.
JK: Doesn’t matter which way you go.
PW: I’m going to run to the right, I’m going to go to first base. But you’re talking about taking the line and drawing it straight to second base.
JK: Yeah, draw them all. Draw all the lines.
PW: Draw all the lines, and connect everything together, including first or home plate to second base. Okay.
JK: And you need first and third connected.
PW: And then we need first and third connected as well.
JK: You got a little diamond with a cross in the middle.
PW: Yep.
JK: If you orient it, it doesn’t really matter where you look, but I’m looking at you. On your left, that spot over there will be home plate. We’re going to put a P.
PW: We’re going to put a home plate on third base?
JK: Just put a letter P on that.
PW: Okay, we’re going to put that, okay. That’s going to be P. All right.
JK: Now as you go down the bottom of your drawing, you’re going to put the letter F.
PW: F?
JK: F.
PW: F as in, okay, as in …
JK: Feeling.
PW: And that’s feeling. Okay. Well, and that’s feeling. I might as well —
JK: You might as well write them out. Okay.
PW: Home plate for a baseball player is feeling. But third base is going to be the P.
JK: The P stands for perspective.
PW: Uh-huh. Uh-huh.
JK: And so then as you go the other way from perspective, at the top of your diagram, you’d have thinking. T for thinking.
PW: Okay. All right.
JK: And finally, the final circle would have a B for behavior.
PW: Behavior. Okay.
Balloons Metaphor
JK: I’m going to mix metaphors, which I’m sure you’re not supposed to do, but I do it all the time. But you’re going to know why this makes sense in a second.
PW: All right.
JK: Instead of bases, I want you to switch. I want you to imagine what you’re looking at are four balloons that have been blown up. They’re the same kind of material. They inflate about the same, and they all are attached to one another with a hollow tube.
PW: Okay. Those lines between my bases, it’s like a straw or something like that.
JK: A bungee straw. It’s very flexible.
PW: A flexible straw.
JK: I could hold onto thinking, and you could take feeling and walk the other way two miles and the balloons would separate. It would stretch, but the tube would not collapse. Basically, air flows freely amongst all the balloons at all times.
PW: As the balloons move further apart from each other, the straw stretches and becomes more narrow.
JK: But still has —
PW: But there’s still flow between them.
JK: Yes. It never cuts off the flow. And this is important.
PW: Got it.
JK: You’re going to know this already, but if I take one of those balloons — just pick one, perspective — and I squeeze it with this system, what happens to the other three?
PW: The other three, if you squeeze it, are going to get bigger because the air is going to flow out of that one. It’s going to go to the other ones and make those bigger.
JK: That’s right.
PW: Yeah.
JK: Now, if I take my hands and spray sticky on my hand and grab a balloon and let it tack up so that it sticks to me and I stretch my hands, what happens to the others?
PW: The other ones are going to get smaller because the volume is going to be sucked out of those into the one that you’ve got in your hand that has enlarged in size.
JK: That’s right.
I call this temporarily relational physics because it’s based on physics, right? For every action in nature, there’s an equal and opposite reaction.
PW: Right.
JK: Air will flow from areas of high pressure to low pressure.
PW: Mm-hmm.
JK: All the things you learn in school, you’ll be able to apply. You’ll already know this, but if you think about this, that’s what human beings do.
The Connection Between Thinking, Behaving, and Feeling
JK: Now, there’s a lot more to this. We won’t be able to cover it all today, but just the gist of it. For the moment, just kind of take perspective and keep it out of the picture for a second. Let’s just talk about thinking, behaving, and feeling.
PW: Okay.
JK: All right. If something horrible happens to you or I don’t know, if your dog ran away, you couldn’t find him, or heaven forbid he got run over by cars, it’d be horrible, right?
Where does all the air go, the life energy go? Which balloon do you think gets all the energy?
PW: If your dog runs away, you lose your dog, it’s going to be scary.
JK: Yeah.
PW: But behavior also sort of, because I’m going to probably be running like crazy, trying to look for my dog, I suppose.
JK: Okay. While you’re running, looking for your dog —
PW: But what gave me the desire to go running and looking for my dog would probably be, I’m thinking, the feeling is that I’m scared. I’m overwhelmed by the loss.
JK: Right. All the air is going to be in the feelings, but it’s probably only there because you care about your dog.
PW: Absolutely.
JK: Your perspective, which we’ll get to later, if you don’t care about the dog, it’s like, “So what?”
PW: Yeah, sure.
JK: Terrible.
PW: Makes sense. Yeah.
JK: But it’s probably going to be in feelings.
PW: Mm-hmm.
JK: Just draw a big circle there where you have your feelings.
PW: Okay. Make my feelings big.
JK: We know that if that’s bigger, what had to have happened to the other balloons?
PW: I’m not thinking straight.
JK: That’s right.
PW: It’s probably going to be a big part of it, right?
JK: Your thinking probably has constricted and it’s more like, Oh no, what am I going to do? This is horrible. Life will never be okay.
And if you’ll notice, thinking and feeling, they’re across from each other. There’s a reason for that. They’re very much like a seesaw; when one’s larger, the other one’s smaller.
PW: Oh my goodness. Yeah, you’re hitting me here because this is what I think of in terms of investing.
JK: Yes.
PW: So often what happens is you hear something scary about what’s going on in China, what’s happening in Russia, what’s happening in Washington DC, what the president is doing, what the president is not doing, and all of a sudden those feelings of fear and just anxiety start to take over. And then I stop thinking and I am more prone to make decisions that are absolutely the opposite of what I ought to be doing.
JK: The stock market, right? I want to get all my money out.
PW: Yes.
JK: I don’t want to behave in the market; I want to be dormant.
PW: Yeah, for sure.
JK: Literally, that’s exactly what happens.
The feeling balloon gets big, and the thinking and behavior get small.
PW: Mm-hmm.
Invalidating Your Feelings
JK: Here’s the first rule of balloons of relational therapy: You don’t mess with the big one. You don’t try to squeeze the feelings down and go, “Let me tell you why you shouldn’t feel that way.”
PW: “You shouldn’t feel this way. You shouldn’t be upset, you shouldn’t be worried.” And you don’t go and invalidate that, right? Because you’re feeling it, dude.
JK: I’ve had investor people in my life when I’ve called up and I’ve said, “Hey look, I’m watching the numbers here and I think I don’t want to fall below 175 in this account.”
PW: Right. Sure.
JK: And they go, “Oh, but it’s going to come back and you shouldn’t feel scared.” Don’t try to tell an investor what they should or should not feel.
PW: Right.
JK: You will make it worse.
PW: Right, right, right.
JK: What we have to do is we have to make space where the other balloons are. We have to expand behavior or we have to expand thinking.
If I can make you behave a little bit or think one other new thought, you will have to feel better, according to physics.
Let me give you a prime example, a real-life situation. I had a client who lost a husband.
PW: Mm-hmm.
JK: They lived about an hour and a half from where I was practicing at the time off in the country on this little dirt road about a quarter mile off the road.
PW: Mm-hmm.
JK: The client called me up and said, “Hey doc, I lost my spouse and I can’t go to work, I can’t get out of the house, I can’t do anything. I can’t go grocery shopping, nothing. Can you help me?”
I said, “Well, I’ll be glad to give it a try. When can you come see me?”
They said, “I’ll be there Wednesday.” Now, do you hear that?
“I can’t get out of the house, I can’t do anything.” But all of a sudden, they can drive an hour and a half to see me.
PW: That’s right.
JK: Notice the thinking is so small that they can’t even recognize it because the emotions are big.
PW: Right.
JK: Lose your husband, yes.
PW: Yeah.
JK: The client shows up. I’m talking through this and I go, “Well, I’ve got some homework for you, but I don’t know if I want to give it to you or not.”
And I sat there, I said, “Well, maybe I could. I don’t know. I don’t know. That might be bad.”
After about a minute she just goes, “Well, if you don’t tell me, I can’t do it.”
PW: Mm-hmm.
JK: “Okay, but if I tell you to do it and it doesn’t work, I don’t want to make it worse.”
PW: Mm-hmm.
Feelings Controlling Behavior
JK: I’m doing this therapeutic technique here of going slow.
PW: Right.
JK: And it’s related to a specific theory.
PW: It’s like a little bit of a takeaway.
JK: Yes. I said, “Okay, here’s what I want you to do. You live about a quarter mile off the road or something?”
She said, “Yes.” I said, “You get the paper?” “Yes.”
PW: Mm-hmm.
JK: “Well, I want you to set your clock for in the morning at 8:00. I want you to get up, put your Mumu on, because you’re the country girl, and your slippers — not fully dressed. I want you to shuffle down down to the mailbox, get your paper, and come back home, and I want you to go right back to bed, but I don’t know that you can do this. I’m really worried about telling you to do this.”
And she goes, “Oh, I can do that.” I said, “Now, wait a minute.” And I really pushed back.
PW: It reminds me of the pendulum. When somebody’s all the way this way — let’s say a pendulum is going all the way to 9:00. You go all the way to 3:00 on the other side.
JK: Meet you in the middle, right?
PW: And they’ll meet you in the middle. Yeah. That’s funny.
JK: She came back the next week and what do you think happened?
PW: She came back the next week.
JK: She showed back up to therapy. She showed up, she crossed her arms, and she said, “Well I did your homework.”
PW: Yeah, yeah. I was just going to say, she’s like going, “I’m going to prove you wrong.” For sure.
JK: I said, “What did you do?” “I did what you said.”
“What’d you do?” And she said, “Well, I set my clock for 8:00, got up, went and got the paper.”
I said, “Did you go back to bed?” She said, “Well, no.” I said, “Why not?” “I didn’t feel like it.”
“Well, I told you to go back to bed. See I told you you couldn’t do it.”
I said, “Now you can’t tell me that you can’t do what you don’t feel like doing. You can’t tell me that feelings control your behavior and there’s nothing you can do about it because you just demonstrated you did it even though you felt as if you didn’t want to do it.”
PW:
This is so good because what we find with people is many times they think that their feelings are driving everything.
JK: Well, they are. From birth, that’s how we work.
PW: But you can reverse that, is the point that you’re making.
JK: Yes.
It Starts With Perspective
JK: Maturity or a change of nature means we don’t home plate. For example, back in the previous analogy, home plate is not feelings.
PW: Right.
JK: It doesn’t start there. It starts with perspective.
PW: Right.
JK:
Perspective is all about three things. For spirituality, it’s about God, self, and others.
PW: Mm-hmm.
JK: Or it’s about the unknown, the past, the macroscopic, the microscopic, who’s going to win the election in 3040, self, and others.
PW: Mm-hmm.
JK: If those aren’t in balance, then everything else — thinking, behavior, and feelings — is going to try to accommodate to get that in balance.
PW: What I want to do is let’s take a break, and I want to come back and talk about how we apply this because so often I find with people that they’re dealing with overwhelming feelings and they don’t know how to get out of the funk that they’re in. They don’t know how to get out of the fears and the anxieties and even depressions to some extent. And that all seems to be where you’re headed with this.
JK: Yes.
PW: So often those feelings are driving the behavior in a way. And what you’re saying is this can be — because remember, this is what we’re talking about — why people fail to save enough money.
They fail to invest properly, they fail to do a lot of the things that they know they need to do, but they can’t seem to get themselves to do it because the feelings are driving the bus. But what you’re saying is you can turn that around and you can change that and literally affect the rest of your life in a positive manner, is really what you’re saying.
JK: Absolutely.
PW: And I want to spend some time on that.
Episode 2
Paul Winkler: All right. We’re back here on “The Investor Coaching Show.” I am Paul Winkler. He is Dr. John Kennedy from over at Trevecca. He’s in the psychology department, but he’s got that financial background as well. He’s one of those guys who has a left hand, right brain, type of thing going on.
Dr. John Kennedy: A little bit of both.
PW: We can’t quite figure …
JK: Not a lot of either.
PW: He’s an enigma, as he said earlier. That’s who he is. But great guy.
We have developed a relationship over the past, I guess it’s a year now. And it’s been a blast getting to know you.
Change Your Perspective
PW: We were just talking about how we are as humans, always trying to influence each other for the better, for the most part. We try to help each other. And so often we have family members, people that we love, that we want to help.
So often, what we do as parents or what we do as friends is try to just educate. “Here’s what happens if you do that.”
It’s like, “You had heart surgery and you have stents or bypasses, and you have to eat better. And here’s why you have to eat better.” And that maybe lasts for about a week.
And then, all of a sudden we start to change our behavior again, and we go back to the same stupid stuff we were doing before. That doesn’t work.
Just educating doesn’t work to help change behavior. What does?
JK: Well, I think one of the keys, and I hope this doesn’t sound arrogant or simplistic, but one of the keys is, if I want to change my behavior, I have to grab ahold of this perspective, and I have to see the future — for example, myself and other people — in clear, true fashion.
PW: Okay.
JK: If that’s out of whack, it’s going to get compensated for somewhere with thinking or acting out or feeling. I have to control my feelings, which means I just have to sit with them.
I can’t just go, “I’m going to feel differently about this.” Feelings, pun intended here, are created when we have an observation or an experience of a phenomenon, like the top layer of an Oreo cookie. The bottom layer of an Oreo cookie, the same, is the thought about it. And in the middle, the filling is a feeling that is a result of those two pieces pushing together.
PW: The top Oreo cookie is what now?
JK: That’s the experience. It’s what I’m seeing or experiencing, observing. It could be what I’m thinking about.
PW: Okay.
JK: Yeah, I’m trying to think of the other. And the bottom layer is my perspective of that, what I think.
If I look at a roller coaster and I’m looking at it, I go, “Oh. I’m going to die. It’s going to break down. It’s going to fall, and I’m going to die.”
PW: Okay.
JK: My heart will race. I’ll have an emotion of fear.
But if I look at that same roller coaster or someone next to me says, “Let me look at that. Oh, that looks great. That looks awesome. That’s going to be the most exciting thing,” we’re going to have the same heart rate, same respiration rate, same physical reaction, but it’s going to be perceived differently in the brain because of the perspective.
So, you can’t say, “How does that make you feel?” No, no, no, no. “How do you feel when you experience this?”
We have to get control of that. We are responsible for our feelings. If you want to feel something different, look at it a different way.
Change your perspective.
PW: I’ve heard before that fear is just the other side of the coin of excitement.
JK: Yeah.
PW: They’re two sides of the same coin, in a way.
JK: Yes. Yes.
Second-Order Change
PW: So, how do we change perspective?
JK: Okay, so this gets tricky. Because now we’re going to bring back your MFT training here for just a second. You remember first-order change. It’s a change within the system.
PW: Right.
JK: These balloons, get them all back to where they’re normal.
PW: Second-order change is, you have this surface level change. You haven’t really changed.
JK: That’s first-order change.
PW: Your heart. Okay, first-order change. That’s right. First-order change is —
JK: Just getting back to normal.
PW: It’s the surface level.
JK: The balloons get back —
PW: Yeah. We’re acting right, but we really haven’t changed our heart.
JK: We get back to homeostasis. It’s like the status quo.
Second-order change — you can’t make that happen, but you can create an environment where you invite it to happen. But second-order change is a change of the system.
PW: There you go.
JK: You’ve seen “Happy Gilmore.” He’s a terrible hockey player in the movie, right?
PW: Okay.
JK: Chubbs comes along and puts a golf club in his hand, changes the rules of the game, changes the game. Now, he’s great. He’s still the same person with the same skill set, but they put him in a new context with new information, and he’s a success. That’s second-order change.
PW: Okay.
JK: That only comes about when new information is introduced into the system from the outside.
PW: So, information can change.
JK: It can be an impetus to change. It won’t be what changes it. Because remember, you’re fighting. You’re trying to get an investor to think about their future.
“I’m 25 years old. Oh, I got plenty of time to do this. I’ve got to get my house first, I’ve got my new car I got to buy. I’ll think about it when I’m 40.”
PW: Okay. Here’s where my brain’s going, right now. I’m thinking you’re talking about information. We’ve talked about how information doesn’t change things, necessarily.
If I’m trying to help somebody by changing their behavior, if I just tell them that whatever they’re doing is destructive, it won’t work.
But I think about people using metaphors to get people to change, something you already understand. So now, the impetus to change or the thing that motivates me to change is something I already understand, and I can relate it to the new subject matter.
JK: Yeah. It’s a new way of seeing things. It’s a change of the game or system.
Different Perspectives on Money
JK: Let me give you an example.
PW: Okay.
JK: As a CPA, people think that we are experts at everything. I’m sure some CPAs are. I was not.
PW: Sure.
JK: I had a gentleman maybe in his 50s, around 55, come to me, referred, and he wanted retirement advice. He had a million dollars.
I’ll make up some numbers, here. A million bucks.
“What do I put this in, because I want to retire?” So, I already know I need to give you a business card for a friend of mine, because I’m the worst person.
PW: “Don’t ask me, because you think I know everything, but it’s not my wheelhouse.” Yeah.
JK: So, he explains what he wants, what he has. He’s got a house he’s building. He got a little bit of mortgage on it, but I said, “Here. Let me give you somebody else.”
He said, “Well, what would you do with it?” And I remember, this is one of the reasons why I became a counselor.
Before 9/11 happened, I was sitting there and I was just tired enough to give him the truth. “What would you do with it?”
I said, “Okay. There’s a church in the town I live in that is next to a housing project. They own a bunch of land there.”
And I said, “I would take that million dollars and I would go and partner with this church. I would build this Civic Center for the kids in this project. I’d have hot meals and tutoring, and all this stuff.”
He just looked at me, and said, “That’s why I didn’t come to you.”
I said, “Yeah. That’s why I don’t have any money.” And I just blew it off.
Well, maybe five years later, I’m out —
PW:
What you should do and what I would do would be two different things.
JK: Totally different. So, you’re looking at two different perspectives of money. I don’t have a million dollars, so I don’t have to worry about it, maybe.
The Risk of Losing Money
JK: Well, I ended up going out to do a little network job, an install job. I did technology consulting.
And this person was there at this job site. I’m like, “Oh. It’s good to see you.”
I don’t remember any of this conversation, of course, but we’re walking through a little muddy way up to the building. And he said, “I’ve thought about you a million times.” “Really?”
He said, “Yeah. You told me that advice.”
I said, “What? I didn’t give you any advice.” I didn’t, right?
PW: That’s right. You didn’t.
JK: But 9/11 happened, and his portfolio was such that when those planes hit those buildings, he lost about three-quarters of it, just like that.
PW: Yeah. And I could tell you what he was in, based on that.
JK: You probably could.
So, he had to go get a job, had to get a mortgage on the house. He said, “I wish…”
Because one of the questions I asked him was, “What would you do with it if you knew you were going to lose it in six months? There’s nothing you could do.” He said, “Well, I’m not going to lose it.”
But see, money never stays with you. You always have the risk of losing it. You will lose it.
You’ll lose it when you die. It will go through your hands.
It’s just, I want to tell it how to do that, so it’s the best benefit for others. Or do I just want to try to hang onto to it? But you can’t hang on to it.
PW: Right.
JK: It can’t be swapped for life.
PW: Well, let’s take a quick break and come back right after this. I want to get into a little bit more about, change, how do we create it?
Three Practices to Create Change
PW: Here we’re just getting into the three things. Let’s just get into three things that would help people create change, because we’re all always trying to help each other, whether it be our kids or family or whoever. What are three things that you would say?
JK: All right, three quick, easy things to think of that are maybe hard to put in practice. I want to control my behavior when it comes to investing or spending or handling money. I want to take care of feelings, thinking, and perspective. So the first thing I want to manage is feelings.
I want to go, “Okay, when I feel scared because of news I hear, I want to reassure myself. I want to seek reassurance for my feelings, from a trusted person, someone I know, who knows me, that I can know has my interest in heart. They’re not trying to sell me a bunch of products or make me feel good when I shouldn’t feel good. They’re helping me hold a space for my feelings and validate those.”
PW: Yeah, somebody that’s going to be real with me.
JK: Yes. So that takes care of the feelings balloon. And then I’m going to also want to next, most importantly, grab a hold of that perspective. I want to see, how do I see the market in my future?
PW: Well, before you run out, I want to hit this really, really quick, because you have the nine dots. How do you get this outside the box, the thing that they use?
And I often tell people, “It’s really hard to get outside the box if you are the box.” So it often takes somebody outside of you to help you.
JK: That’s second world change. That’s exactly why it has to happen, that nine dot problem. We did that in class.
So we have to have some sort of balance between me and my investor coach. I’ve got to have someone who helps me feel empowered.
Not that they’re way above me and they’re too smart for me. I want to feel equal and in relationship with them.
PW: Totally. Oh my goodness. You’re talking my language. Yeah.
JK: So if I do that, and then I can manage, how do I view the future? How do I view what money means to me? And does my investor coach match that?
Okay. I have feelings.
PW: Okay. So yeah.
JK:
Now if I change my thinking, and if I’ve got those three things set, my behaviors ought to be much easier to carry out, and more consistent.
PW: We just didn’t have enough time. We’ve got to do this again.
JK: We’ll do it again.
PW: This was so, so much fun. Yeah.
Dr. John Kennedy from Trevecca University. He’s a phenomenal, phenomenal teacher. And he’s going to be coming out with a book, so I promise you all — well probably even before that — we’re going to talk again. Thanks so much for coming on here.
JK: Great being here with you.
Advisory services offered through Paul Winkler, Inc an SEC registered investment advisor. The opinions voiced and information provided in this material are for general informational purposes only and not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. To determine what investments are appropriate for you, please consult with a financial advisor. PWI does not provide tax or legal advice. Please consult your tax or legal advisor regarding your particular situation.
