265: Financial Freedom with Grant Sabatier

Extraordinary is a choice. Take that in, soak it up because of the hustle grind, repeat mantra that society has been touting for decades. It had it all wrong. I’m Tanya Dalton. I’m a seven figure entrepreneur best-selling author speaker, mom, and rule-breaker I’m here to help you live to your fullest potential. That’s what this podcast is all about. The Intentional Advantage is doing live on our own terms,

 

define the status quo and seeing ourselves outside of the tidy definition. Society’s name for us. It’s intentionally choosing to step back away from the chaotic rush of your every day and choosing, choosing to see that it’s your world. And it’s filled with opportunities. Let’s challenge the bedrock beliefs that so many have wholeheartedly trusted because we were told they were truths. Let’s have a healthy disregard for the impossible.

 

Let’s choose to be extraordinary. Hello, hello  everyone. And welcome to the Intentional Advantage podcast. I’m your host, Tanya Dalton. This is episode 265. We are, we’re getting close to the end of our season on reclaiming your power. And we’ve had some really amazing while we could say powerful episodes. I feel throughout the season. And I knew that when I was mapping out the season,

 

I knew we had to tap into the idea of our finances talking about money, because I think money is one of those things that people shy away from when it comes to conversations about them, we feel like money is this dirty subject, or if you want money, that’s a bad thing. There’s a lot of emotions that are tied to money, which is really interesting.

 

My mindset is money is energy, right? It’s just another form of energy. We’ve been talking about pleasure. We’ve been talking about sex. We got to talk about money. It’s another form of energy. It really is about understanding your relationship with money and how money works for you. What is your mindset when it comes to money? You know, last week in my email that I sent out,

 

I talked about this idea of what are your non-negotiables, because I feel like that subject has come up again and again, throughout the season, we’ve heard it in multiple episodes. What is the non-negotiables for you? And today, what I want us to focus in on is, okay, those are your non-negotiables. What are you working for? Because if you’re just working for money,

 

then that’s not really buying you the happiness that you want. This is the mindset I really want us to get into today. And I knew that to really have a deeper conversation about money, I needed to bring on someone who I really respect my friend grant<inaudible> grant is an incredible resource. When it comes to thinking about your money mindset, he’s the author of the international bestseller,

 

financial freedom, a proven path to all the money you’ll ever need. That’s a pretty bold statement, right? But it’s been published in 10 languages. He’s also the co-founder of Topia. The first financial independence app. He is a huge advocate for becoming financially independent. And I think his, his mindset and his approach to money making money, what money does for us is really going to get you to think today.

 

So let’s go ahead and dive into today’s conversation with grant grant. I love that you’re here today because I know your story is going to really inspire my listeners. A lot of them have a complicated relationship with money and they don’t think they’re good with money, or they tell themselves a story about how money doesn’t work out for them. You though you have a really incredible story in your mid twenties.

 

I think you had a grand total of $2 and 26 cents in your bank account, not $2 and 50 cents, not 2 75, but $2 and 26 cents. But then by the time you were 30, you were financially independent. I mean, that seems like a crazy turnaround. Can you, can you walk us through how this happened? How did your path start?

 

Yeah, so, you know, I, I grew up with two parents who were very poor. They grew up in Southern Indiana in a one stoplight town. No one in their family had ever gone to college. Money was always something that’s very stressful. And so when I was born, my parents made the big decision to actually leave Southern Indiana and moved to the suburbs of Washington,

 

DC to give me a different life or a different opportunity. So, you know, six months old at the time, I’m an only child. And so growing up in the DC suburbs, it’s one of those places where it’s very a meritocracy driven, you know, what your job title is and where do you go to school and how well you’ve done.

 

That’s very important there. And so growing up, you know, my parents were, were still, always stressed about money. It was something they fought about money would just was very present in my life. And in fact, my dad, when I was five years old, he used to always say, you know, money is freedom. Money is freedom.

 

And, you know, it was something that was just always, always in our households. And so growing up, I had this real sort of scarcity kind of mindset around money. I was always worried about it. You know, I had to skip two seasons of soccer because my parents couldn’t afford it. You know, there were just all those types of things,

 

but growing up, I always did, you know, what I was supposed to do. I worked really hard. I ended up graduating second in my class and went on to study at the university of Chicago. So a top tier school got some academic sports scholarship money and, you know, really did everything that I was supposed to do. But, you know,

 

in my early twenties, you know, like a lot of people, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I wasn’t one of those people that was like, I’m going to be X, Y, and Z. You know, I didn’t have any of that clarity. And so everyone in my life was asking me, what do you want to be?

 

What do you want to do? And I actually felt quite broken because I didn’t know what I wanted to do. And when you don’t know what you want in life, you know, you’re going to drift and you’re going to wander. And, you know, I was very stressed out about this and ended up having four different jobs after college and some okay jobs.

 

This is 2008, 2009, great recession. I ended up getting laid off twice and that $2 and 26 cents amount was what I had in my bank account in June, 2010. And I didn’t have enough money to afford rent. So I had to move back home with my parents, my parents that have given me really everything and sleep in the same bed that I slept in,

 

you know, as a seven-year-old kid. So here I was, my parents had invested so much into me. I’d worked as hard as I could, but still had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. And so I ended up back home. This was really one of those moments where, you know, such a low for me by parents were stressed.

 

I was stressed and they ended up inviting me to a picnic in July 4th picnic in 2010. And, you know, I was the only adult child there let’s say, and it was all my parents’ friends. And I realized I hadn’t seen a number of them in, in, in four or five years. And I realized that everyone had gotten a little bit older and my parents were older.

 

And the only thing that they were talking about was retirement. So this is a bunch of people in their mid to late fifties at this time. And they were just talking about this, this, this light at the end of the tunnel. I can’t wait to do this. I can’t wait to do that. And for me here, unemployed, it was such a huge reality check where I was like,

 

wow, okay. Not only am I broke, but I’m going to have to work for the next 30 years to get to this point. And I literally saw myself, you know, in my parents and even in my parents, a lot of the dreams that they had talked about as I was growing up, not only have they not accomplished them and I love my parents to death,

 

but you know, not only they’re not accomplished with them, they actually no longer have them. And so it was very, you know, philosophy major in me starting to thinking about money and time and my life. And I was getting very reflective, you know, at this point. And so I just did a simple Google search for best money books.

 

And the first book that came up was your money or your life by Vicki, Robin and Joe Domingas, which is a really incredible book. I remember reading it in August, 2010 and it’s, there’s kind of my life before it and my life after it. And the big premise of this book is that whenever you’re working, you’re trading your life energy for money,

 

and you’re trading your time that you can never get back for this, this thing of money. And so, you know, what trade off are you willing to make? And then how can you ultimately reach financial independence where you can free up your time? This book, it, you know, became my everything. You know, I followed it to a T for the next five years,

 

but I was still unemployed at my parents and I needed a new skillset. And so it was around this time, I was just doing another Google search and saw an ad on my phone and realized that Google was now serving ads on phones. And so I dug into that a little bit and learned about Google advertising, never had any background in it and saw the first result was from a survey that said jobs running Google ads are projected to grow 300% by the year 2030.

 

So it was like, okay, this is a growing market. And then the second result was actually called Google ads university, which was a series of free Google videos that you could watch and learn how to run Google campaigns. And most importantly, take a test and get certified if you pass that test by Google to run ad campaigns. So here I thought,

 

okay, Google, one of the biggest companies in the world growing industry, I watched the videos kind of got hooked, got interested in it, ended up taking the test over prepared after a month, passed the test and then had to figure out what kind of jobs I could get with this certification and ended up getting into the digital marketing space. Joined a company in Chicago,

 

worked for them for about a year started side hustling, building WordPress websites on the side, running Facebook ad campaigns very early on and Google campaigns on the side, ended up making more money on my side business than my full-time job. So quit started. My first company started building that a year later, partnered up with two other people to launch another company and ended up specializing in running Google ads for universities and primarily for business schools.

 

And so I really niche down and became pretty much the top person in the world, running Google campaigns in my, in my late twenties for MBA programs all around the world. And that allowed me to, to make quite a bit of money. And during this entire period, I was saving over 80% of my income. So I drove an $800 car.

 

I lived in a $700 a month apartment. You know, it was pretty much 24 hours a day working and saving and investing ultimately to acquire more freedom in my life. And I realized that I needed to live a lot differently than the people around me. And also then my parents, if I was gonna, you know, have, have the option to never work again.

 

So I’d set two goals, save a million dollars as quickly as possible and try to retire as early as possible. I didn’t know how long either of those would take me, but I ended up doing it a lot faster than I thought that I would. So some, some pretty major mindset shifts that are happening here. Right. Because if we can just back up a little bit and talk about who you were before the,

 

before and after. I love that because it was very achievement focused, right? And a lot of us grow up with that achievement focused lifestyle. What does it look like to everybody else? We got to get the best grades. We have to do certain things. And I feel like if you’re in a position where you don’t know what it is you want to do,

 

it’s really easy to feel like a failure because you feel like you’re not achieving enough. It’s interesting. I’m having conversations with my son, Jack, who’s a freshmen, I guess now technically a sophomore, which is crazy. Cause I’m like 26 years old. So the math doesn’t work, but he’s a sophomore and he’s still trying to figure out what it is he wants to major in.

 

And I keep saying like, does it matter? Like just do what you’re really interested in because like you, there’s lots of and turns in there. Talk to me a little bit about this mindset shift of moving from achievement focused, feeling like you have to have it all figured out and checking all the boxes to, okay, I’m going to try something totally new and different something that you never anticipated.

 

What was that like for you? Yeah, I think it’s very hard for people to define success for themselves. I think we inherit certainly we inherit our views about money, but of course we also inherit our views about what it means to live a good life. You know, we see certain patterns and models from our parents and from people around us, in places that we grow up.

 

So I think a lot of our views about ourself and our relationship with the world, a lot of that tension stems from the fact that we’ve inherited them. We haven’t actually taken the time to form our own. And oftentimes forming your own is more a process of subtraction than it is addition. And so I think we have a naturally sort of attitude sort of mindset where we’re often like I want,

 

you know, when we have more success, I want this and I want that and I want to do this and I want to do that. But I think it’s actually more important to figure out what you don’t want. And for me, figuring out that I didn’t want to work for the rest of my life became a limit that I was setting. And I’m a huge believer that freedom actually only exists within limits.

 

And that so much of our life, we often think means unlimited choices and unlimited options, but our brains can’t handle that. You know, we know the paradox of choice, all of those studies. And so it’s important was important for me to say, okay, I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to have to wake up and go to a job that I hate.

 

You know, I don’t want to have to sacrifice, you know, my time for money. And so understanding that really allowed me to hone in on, on the things that I could do to make sure those things didn’t happen, not okay. I need to make a million dollars so I can add all of this added complexity into my life. And so it actually really simplified my path and made decision-making so much easier.

 

You know, it’s one of those things where it’s like, if you only can do two or three things and you focused on them, it makes it just a lot easier to do anything in life. And so that was, that was a huge, a huge shift for me. It’s so true. It’s and so right now my listeners are like, oh,

 

okay, I get it. I get it. Why Tanya likes grant, because literally we talk about redefining success in my book on purpose. And we talk about how knowing what you don’t want is more powerful than knowing what you do pushing against possibilities of regret builds our resilience. So I love that, that you, you really think freedom operates within the constraints no different than when we talk about,

 

when we talk about boundaries that there’s so much freedom there. I actually saw that recently, you said you actually want fewer choices. Sure. I want to wake up and be able to do whatever I want, but in reality, there’s actually only a handful of things I love to do. So instead of being able to do everything, I just want to do those things.

 

I think that’s so powerful. And that is a dramatic mindset shift of, I need to have more money. I need to have more cars. I need to have more watches. I need to have more, whatever it is that is your more, more and more, what is it you really want? So you do this beautiful job of really distilling it down to you want freedom,

 

right? And what, what does that freedom look like for you? Yeah, this is a hard one lesson, you know, it’s one of these things and you know, you know, this gives you do this work when you dedicate yourself to, to really going inside and figuring out, you know, who you are and what your relationship is to the world and writing and being open and being vulnerable.

 

You know, not only is that growth hard, but there’s a lot of not knowing that you have to sit in and exist in. And one of the things that I didn’t really expect is, you know, I thought that reaching financial independence, you know, certainly it created less money stress in my life. But one of the things that happened is,

 

you know, we spend so much of our day-to-day life when we’re working for money, thinking about money or being stressed about money. And when I have more money than I would ever need, it was like I got 90% of my brain back. And so that 90% of my brain that I got back, it has to be filled with something. And initially it starts being full of a lot of worry and a lot of anxiety because your brain and your body,

 

you know, I went through a huge physical and mental detox after I left the corporate world and retired early, that took over a year. I mean, my brain just had to, when you’re going a million miles a minute, you can’t just stop on a dime. It takes you time to unpack, takes time for your emotions and your brain to,

 

to catch up. It takes time for you to process things. And so for me, I thought that freedom meant unlimited choices. You know, it’s this perennial version it’s like neither can dream, right. I want to be able to do anything that I want whenever I want. Once I actually got to that point more than being really exciting, it was more scary because then I had to actually confront what,

 

what that meant in my life and what I wanted to do with my life when often when we’re working for money and we’re stressed about it, we just use that as an excuse. And we use the pursuit of money as a mask for something else. Right. So what I really craved in my life was actually more connection, more peace, just a simpler version of existence.

 

And so, you know, I had to kind of get to that point and then through trial and error recognize that. And when I actually sat down and looked at, okay, you know, what does a beautiful day look like in my life? You know, not every day is going to be perfect. You’re not going to be happy all the time,

 

but what, what does a beautiful day look like? And when I looked at that and thought back, you know, just a couple of years, you know, it’s hanging out with my friends, playing guitar, it’s sitting around, you know, a fire in my backyard. It’s being able to wake up and you know, we’re recording this now one at like 10 30 in the morning,

 

I woke up 40 minutes ago. I wake up at nine 30. You know, it’s about being able to read books as I want, you know, at leisure, not have to worry about anything, but it’s also being able to have conversations with really smart people and grow. And, and so when I looked at my life and thought about those things,

 

I realized that most of the things that I love are not only pretty inexpensive, they’re actually free. And so it was like, oh, okay, here’s what I actually enjoy doing. It doesn’t cost much money to do that. And so, but you have to be honest with yourself about that. And it’s very like hard if you’re worried about appearances and how other people think about you and,

 

you know, to say no to a lot of those things that other people want, but that you actually don’t want. And so I think a lot of this is really intuition driven as well. And for me, that huge shift was the pursuit of financial independence was quite intellectual. You know, it was like, how do I figure out how the system works and how do I,

 

you know, kind of beat the game or beat the system, right. By saving 80% of your income, you realize that you cut your time to financial independence from 40 years down to 15 years or less. And some of these things that, you know, it’s just simple math, but you have to think through them, whereas your intuition. I think we often,

 

especially at least I did. I kind of put my feelings to the side when it was actually my intuition and how I felt about something that was what I should have been listening to all along. And I think your intuition, when you do listen to it, it does get stronger over time. And you, you know, you already know what you need,

 

you know, you, you already know what you need. And so much of what you’re seeking you already have. You just don’t recognize it. So I always encourage people at the beginning of any money conversation to, before you even think about the dollars, just look around at your life. And you know, if you hear your kids in the next room and you know,

 

your dog downstairs and your partner making coffee and you know, the lawn mower, you know, going from the next door neighbor and you really listen in, and you look at your life, you often realize that a lot of what you seek and a lot of what you love, you’ve already created. It’s, it’s already there. And so why are you making this huge trade off for money often when at the end of the day,

 

really isn’t going to make your life much better. And in some cases it’s just taking you away from the things that you already have. Okay. Now, if I have to tell my listeners, I swear to you, I did not set grant up with this because our last episode grant was about intuition, about why we need to trust ourselves tabbing into that.

 

So I swear, I did not like I wasn’t like, Hey grant, could you go ahead and see this for me? But you did it beautifully. You totally talked about a lot of the things that we talked about in the last episode where it’s, we do need to trust ourselves this idea of what are you working for, working for money. I think that’s such a key phrase here,

 

and I’d love for our listeners just to stop for a second. And I want you to fill in that blank. What are you working for? What is it you’re working for? I love what you said, grant, you’re working for connection. You’re working for peace. You’re working for all these things that have meaning to you personally. And that’s the beginning of redefining success.

 

That’s the beginning of having that true freedom. So I’d love for us to talk about how you define financial freedom, because right now people are like, that sounds fabulous grant, but I don’t. I have $2 and 26 cents in my bank account. Right? So we come back from the break in just a second. I want to touch on some of that,

 

but let’s go ahead and take a quick little break. I hope you’re loving today’s conversation. I have a feeling that you are, you know, one of the things that I love to do is I love to go to speaking events. I love to go to events. I love to meet with you and have conversations like this in person. And speaking is one of those things that I truly,

 

it just lights me up. I love getting on stage. I love training and educating and helping shift mindsets in companies, corporations, and organizations. And I would love to do that with yours. Whether you are a person who chooses speakers or you’re working with a group, you can pass my name along. Speaking is one of those things that truly lights me up and getting to interact with you at a live event would be incredible.

 

My fall and winter calendar is starting to fill up with speaking opportunities and I would love to include yours. So feel free to pass my name along to whoever it is in your organization or your company that makes decisions about who you bring in as a trainer, who you bring in as a keynote speaker, you can send them to my website@Tanyadalton.com slash speaking. I’ve got a whole page set up and all kinds of information to help them make that decision.

 

So Tanya dalton.com/speaking, I would love for us to be able to connect with me keynoting your next event. All right, grant. Let’s, let’s talk about this. Cause I love this idea of money is freedom. It’s really shifting because money is, is a form of energy. If we really want to get to the heart of it, money is energy.

 

Now, how do you personally define financial freedom? Cause I know you’re talking about all these freedoms, you know, of, of waking up late, getting to do the things that really matter to you, but I know some people are thinking to themselves, well, how much money do I really need to be financially free? And I don’t think it’s as much as they imagine.

 

Am I right about that? Yeah, oftentimes, so we tend to in popular culture to think we need, you know, $5 million or we hear about, you know, Rihanna, Rihanna is a billionaire and you know what happens, especially when you’re just starting out and you’re in debt and you don’t have any money. The idea, even for me, when I had $2 and 26 cents,

 

the idea of saving a million dollars seemed so insane to me that especially when we’re starting, the goal is so big and so far away from where we are in time or amount that we just don’t do anything. And so for me, even setting that goal, it wasn’t the goal that I pursued every day. The goal that I pursued every day was how do I save my first $10,000?

 

And I always did the double up goal strategy, which is when I save 10,000, how do I save 20,000? Then how do I say 40,000? And one of the interesting things is it rewires your ma you know, your brain pretty quickly, when you start tracking your net worth, you know, it gets very dictating and in a good way, you start seeing that the money that you’re investing is growing,

 

as opposed to the money that you’re spending is going down. So naturally you think, Hmm, I think I’m going to invest this money so it can grow as opposed to spending it, you know, and I always say that, you know, when, whenever you’re not spending money, you’re saving it. Right? And so this idea where you start getting this momentum and at the,

 

at the beginning, when you’re just starting out, you know, financial freedom, it’s important for you to figure out what it means to you and realize that it’s likely going to change as your relationship to money changes. And so financial freedom at first might mean just not waking up in the morning. And the first thing that I’m thinking about is money. Okay.

 

So if you’re waking up and you’re just thinking about money, that’s the way to do that. Let’s look at the tactic, save up six to 12 months of expenses in a savings account. And so you’re not worried that if you get laid off, you’re not going to be able to feed your family or, you know, pay for, you know,

 

a repair on your car. So the tactical step is, you know, work as long as it takes, just make the trade off to save six to 12 months of your expenses. But at the end of the day, this is really about making your life better, not about, you know, deprivation, for example. So, so many of,

 

you know, so much of the conversation around money in the U S is about cutting back and, you know, just make this sacrifice, you know, cut back, you know, everything. And, and the problem with that is oftentimes especially personal finance experts, they tell you to cut out those things that in reality are quite small and actually bringing you the most joy in your life.

 

And so what happens is if you’re saying, gosh, you know, I, I’m not going to get that Manny petty every two weeks, I’m going to cut back and not spend that, you know, 50 or a hundred dollars when that time that you go with your sister or your best friend or your daughter, that time is actually the most meaningful time of your entire week.

 

That’s when you’re having the great conversations, that’s when you’re taking care of yourself. And so that 50 to a hundred dollars that you’re spending is actually the best money that you’re spending. And in fact, you should be doing more of that as opposed to cutting it back. And so we’ve got a really messed up kind of, you know, relationship with money,

 

but money, as you said, you know, it’s really energy and you can decide what it means to you in your life. This is one of the things about it. And the problem with life is that I think a lot of people have a, an irrational level of fear and be an illusion of control. And this illusion of control is we often think that we can control so many things in our life,

 

but really recant. You know, we don’t know how long we’re going to be here. We don’t know if another pandemic is going to happen. We don’t know what really is going to happen, but one of the things that we can control, of course, how we see the world and the second is our money. And so you can choose what money means to you,

 

and you can make certain trade-offs for it at times in your life. And then you can change what it means to further down the line. My relationship with money is always changing. You know, it’s a lie. It’s something that, you know, I sacrificed my late twenties, you know, five years and three months of my life, pretty much for an entire lifetime of freedom.

 

That’s a trade off that I was willing to make. Not everyone would be willing to make that trade off. And what brings you joy? And you love this probably very different than what brings me joy and what you know. And so I think we often have this kind of very black and white understanding about money when in reality, you should spend on those things that really make your life a lot better.

 

And then the other stuff, you know, just, just cut back, you know, as much as you can. And really the next three to five years of your financial life are the most important. Don’t even worry about 10, 20, 30 years down the road. What can you do in the next three to five years ultimately to invest in the you you’ve yet to become.

 

And that’s the beautiful thing about money. If you do the work now, you’re not only creating more options and freedom in the future, but your future self is able to benefit, you know, from, you know, the sacrifices that you’re making today. But I also don’t even think about saving money as a sacrifice. It really is an opportunity. And so I think some of that,

 

that reframing is very, very important. And going back to the intuition piece, money in your money decisions should be driven based on how you feel. And so when you look at your bank statement, look at what you spent money on and just The opposite. Right, right, right. Totally. Yeah. But look at your bank statement, just looking at bank,

 

send me your credit card statement and go line by line, just do this, do this today or tomorrow, and look line by line. And instead of like, you know, feeling bad and shame and regret for how you spend your money, look at it and think, you know, you know, did this make me happy? Did this make my life better?

 

Did this help me in some way? And when we look at how we spend our money through that lens, it completely reframes our relationship with it because then you’re like, oh, absolutely. I totally want to spend that $2,000 on that spa trip with my sister. Like, that’s a memory that I’ll have forever. I got relaxed. It was amazing.

 

Absolutely. That made me really happy. So you should be spending your money on things that make you happy and all the other stuff where you’re like, gosh, my $900 car payment, I really don’t even like this car. I don’t know why I bought it. You know, that sort of thing. And it’s all a trade off. It’s really,

 

really all a trade off. And so the better that you understand how certain things make you feel, the easier it is to make decisions and want you to do this for a little while, then it becomes second nature where you start to know where you’re going to get the maximum happiness per dollar and where you’re not, you know, just, it becomes easier.

 

All the sounds for someone who’s just being exposed to this. It sounds like it could be a lot of work, but it’s actually quite easy after you do it for a couple of months. W w when, when you look at it through that lens, and then, then, then you really don’t even have to budget much because you kinda know from an intuitive perspective,

 

you know, that’s really not going to be worth it. It’s not going to make my life better. Whereas that, yeah, absolutely. I’m totally gonna upgrade to first class as opposed to coach, because I hate flying and I’m anxious and this makes it a little bit easier for me. And I like feeling, you know, Lux or bougie, you know,

 

when I travel, for example, I mean, sometimes it is fun to feel a little bougie, isn’t it? I put, this is a thing it’s, it’s different for everyone. And so, I mean, the way that you talk about money wasters is exactly the same way I talk about time-wasters. It all goes down to feelings. How do you feel?

 

Is it nourishing or is it negative when you look at that line item on your bank statement, do you go, oh God, I can’t believe I did that. Or that was an incredible trip or, oh my gosh, I loved that fancy dinner that we went out to, to celebrate my husband’s birthday or whatever it was. It goes down to customizing it and making it really fit you.

 

Just like we talk about customizing your productivity system, same thing for your money systems. And I like this. Like, you kind of snuck it in there, but this idea of having the separate account, right? The separate account that you’re watching grow, because that’s one of the motivators, as you’re watching that get bigger. That’s for me, I,

 

I have like, I don’t know how many separate accounts, like I have accounts that I set aside that I’m like, this is money that I’m putting aside each one, like money month for taxes. This is money I’m putting aside for profit. This is money. So I have all these different separate accounts and I love watching them grow. And it makes it so much easier.

 

I love that, that little tip that you shared there, and that idea of going through, focusing in on how you feel it is a lot of intuition. It is a lot of leaning into what you want grant. I think you do such a great job of explaining it, but also living it. I love a person who doesn’t just talk the talk,

 

but walks the walk. Right. And you definitely do that. And I think that’s really powerful. Yeah. I think the one constant in life we all know is changed. And so we’re often changing in ways that creates friction in our life because we’re not paying attention to that change. You know, that’s one of the paradoxes of life is that we’re holding on.

 

So tightly to who we were when we should be letting go so we can become the new version of us. Right. And I think our relationship to money is always changing. Just like our relationship to time is always changing. And at some point it’s when you’re willing to make trade-offs for money or for time in a way that, you know, six months down the road,

 

you might not be willing to make those changes. But the only way that you can figure that out is to listen to yourself because we move so fast in our day-to-day life. Oftentimes what we want has changed. We’re just not being honest with ourselves. And this is one of the things like if you feel stuck in life, that’s really all you need to know.

 

Like you feel stuck because you are, you know, or if you feel behind and stressed out about something, the reason you’re behind and stressed out and you feel that way is because you are. And so then if you recognize that it’s important to take this step and figure out why, and then remedy in it, remedy it while also being gracious to yourself and recognizing that life is challenging for everybody.

 

Life is, is immense. The time we’re living in is immense. It’s moving faster than it’s ever moved before. Things are getting more complex and more difficult. And freedom to me really is wrapped up around in recognizing that freedom is freedom of mind and that amidst increased uncertainty. I am the one who controls my relationship with money and my relationship with time and my relationship with my partner.

 

And, you know, there are some things that I can control. And for me that’s incredibly freeing and empowering because no matter what’s happening in the world, I feel like I can create space from it for myself and engage with it on my own terms, how I want to, but that’s a complete realignment. Like how I talk about this is so radically different than how I would have been talking about this five years.

 

And certainly 10 years ago when I was so analytical, so driven by my mind, but it took, took a lot of work of letting go and getting comfortable with not knowing and uncertainty to let the freedom sort of settle in and embrace, you know, just what it means to be human. You know, in this, in this moment, The human and this moment,

 

I liked that phrase. The, you, you have yet to become grants. Let me ask you one, one last question. If you were to give my listeners some advice on how they can really start making this happen for themselves to really invest in the, you, you have yet to become, what would you tell them? The first thing is realize that the tactics,

 

you know, as you talked about sort of having multiple savings accounts or investing in a 401k or an IRA, the tactics are actually the easiest part. And there are many books, you know, my book, financial freedom, there’s so many great books where the tactics are all laid out. Very simply. You read them, you follow them. These blueprints have already been written and thankfully you don’t have to relearn them.

 

You just have to pick up someone’s book or a couple of books and figure them out. The more difficult work is the mindset shift your relationship with money. And so that’s the exciting thing here is because everything else has been taken care of to just pick the system that you want to use, and then focus your time instead on creating your own relationship with money and realizing that you are in control and that you can decide what it means to you in your life.

 

And it gets easier over time. It really, really does. If someone who’s dedicated their life to this, and I’ve been, you know, I think about it all the time. And I’ve talked to hundreds of thousands of people around the world about this. I see it over and over the feeling that you feel about money, the person, two doors down from you,

 

they feel the same way. You’re not alone. Money is something that our society has not set you up to succeed with, but thankfully there’s so much amazing information. And so many amazing people writing and talking about this that you can learn from them and very quickly, you know, to change your relationship with money and use it to build a life you love.

 

Cause that’s, that’s really, you know what it’s for and its purpose. And I can guarantee you you’ll, you’ll think back on this in two to three years from now, and you’ll have more money than you thought you’d ever have, and you’ll not be thinking nearly as much about money or certainly stressing about it as you thought, there’s very few things in life that you can really figure out and control,

 

but money is one of those things and it has the power to do so much for you and the people around you in the world that it’s worth taking the time to, to, to do this and build this relationship with, because it, it’s not only going to impact you and your family, but you know, your family for generations to come and the planet and the world it’s about what’s taking,

 

it’s about taking the energy that’s inside of you and what you want to happen in your life and in the world and using money to actually make it come to life, you know, to, to, to make it possible, to make it happen. And all of this is real. And thankfully, yeah, you’re, you’re listening to this today for a reason.

 

And I’m a huge believer now, more so than ever that we, we, here are the things that we need to hear when we’re ready for them. And I think this this month, Absolutely, absolutely. Well, now I know you said there’s a lot of amazing people talking about this, but you’re one of those amazing people. So can you share with my listeners the best place to find you best place to find your book because that can give them a lot of those tactics and strategies they really need.

 

Yeah. The book I spent 2,800 hours writing it announced in 15 languages, it’s added a lot of value in people’s lives. You can get it pretty much every single library in the entire United States has it. Whether you can get a copy or not is another thing, but get it from your libraries. If you don’t have in your library, ask them to get it.

 

You know, you can get the book for free. You don’t even need to pay for it. You know, the book publishing industry, it’s like you get a dollar or $2 a book. You don’t make any money on books anyway. So I encourage you To, we don’t make any money I’ll sell. It Can get it for free when you can Get it,

 

get it, get it for free. You can, you can also buy used copy for like $3 now. So check out financial freedom. It’s a good book. It really, really is. Everything I talk about in very step-by-step prescriptive steps is, is in the book. So check that out, just launched a new website grants about ta.com, where I have tons of my favorite writing.

 

I have a podcast too. I’ve had like Tony Robbins, James clear, and some awesome people on my show. Oftentimes I disagree with them. So if you want to hear me disagree with Tony Robbins and James clear and Backers, You can listen to those podcasts. Often a lot of the people in the personal development space are all about more and more and more,

 

whereas I’m really focused on how much is enough. And so those are really fun episodes. And those are probably the two best places to check me out. I’m working on my second book now, but it’s not going to come out so early, early 20, 24. So hit me up on Instagram at grants about TA I pretty much answer all of my direct messages.

 

So if you want to reach out, that’s the best way. Thanks so much grant for coming on the show today. It was fabulous having you. Thanks, Tanya. I’m wondering when you heard grant story, how much of it you related to, especially when he talked about being so achievement focused? I think for a lot of us and I’m including me in this group,

 

there has been a big focus on the achievements. What have you done? What have you accomplished? And that does cause us to rush through life. It caused us to really hang our hats only on these big accolades, which are external rather than really diving into the, you, you have yet to become, I love that phrasing the, you, you have yet to become,

 

I think this is something that we’re going to need to talk about a little bit more in thinking about next season and even, you know what, next week’s email next week’s email. I’m going to talk about this idea of the, you you have yet to become and what that really looks like. So if you’re not signed up for my emails, go to Tanya dalton.com/email.

 

I send an email out every week and I promise I don’t spam you. I’m not, you know, sending out ridiculous number of emails I send out basically for the most part one email a week, usually giving you a behind the scenes, understanding the thinking behind the podcast episode, helping you dive deeper, giving you actions and strategies or resources. So you can really start applying it.

 

But I want you to really think about that. The, you, you have yet to become, I just love grants, his willingness and his generosity with this information. Even the fact that he was like, go get the book at the library, right? And I want to encourage you, go to your library, get the book, financial freedom,

 

a proven path to all the money you’ll ever need. That’s Grant’s book. He is an incredible resource. And the fact that he has been able to make this happen going from $2 and 26 cents in his bank account to financial independence, if that doesn’t inspire you or make you believe that you can do this too, I don’t know what will, because truly you hold the power.

 

You’ve had the power all along. It’s just stepping into it and understanding your relationship with money, understanding what you are working for. Well, that is the Intentional Advantage. Thanks so much for joining me today. Quick question though, before you go, do you like prizes? When you leave a rating and review of the Intentional Advantage podcast, you’ll be entered to win my life changing course,

 

multiplying your time. Simply leave the review and then send me an email@helloatTanyadalton.com with a screenshot. I choose one winner at the end of every month. So go ahead and do it right now. Just a quick comment with what you loved about this episode or the show in general and a rating and send it our way. Not going to lie by stars is my favorite,

 

but I’d love to hear what you think of the show. And if that’s not enough of an incentive for you to win the multiplying your time course, I have to tell you the reviews are the number one thing that supports this podcast. And me, it’s the best way to spread the word and get business tips and strategies to all those other women out there who need it.

 

So there you go. Two great reasons for you to go and leave a review right now. So go ahead and do it, send that screenshot my way, because I want to give you a free course. And thanks again for listening today. I’ll be back next Tuesday and I’ll plan to see you then.

 

 

**This transcript was created with AI, please excuse typos and misspellings.

Tanya Dalton is a top female keynote speaker, productivity expert and best selling author of 2 books on how to be more productive. She is an inspirational and motivational woman who loves speaking to audiences about time management, goal setting, finding balance and discovering your purpose.