In the first episode of Be Wealthy, Brett Tanner explains why the story you grew up with about money shapes how much of it you ever let yourself keep. He walks through building a 30-year vision board, tracking net worth every month, and the mentor who told him she still spends 10% of her $4 million to $5 million a year income on her own education.
Brett TannerHost, founder of Be WealthyBrett has people imagine their life 30 years out like a movie, then build a vision board from old magazines of what that future looks like. He kept his on his office desk for years, and says his first board was full of cars, watches and planes. Today, he says, it is almost all experiences.
Jump to 4:13Brett started as a solo agent flipping homes, where his sales skills worked fine on their own. Once he built a team, he had to learn leadership from scratch. Leading people takes a different set of skills from the sales tactics that got him there. He calls most leadership books airy fairy and recommends Leading at a Higher Level instead.
Jump to 11:32One of Brett's mentors, who made $4 million to $5 million a year, told him she still put 10% of that into her own education, meaning $400,000 to $500,000 a year. Brett says he has personally spent over $1 million on his own education, including one mastermind that ran him $45,000 for a year.
Jump to 17:49A mentor told Brett, in front of a crowd, that if you don't track your net worth every month you will never be wealthy. He logs about 250 rows into his own balance sheet each month, a process that takes him 30 to 45 minutes, and he tracks roughly 45 checking accounts closely enough to guess any one balance within $10,000.
Jump to 20:58When Brett adds a property to his net worth statement, he uses 85% of its market value. Selling costs and commissions run about 6% to 7%, and he budgets the rest of the gap for repairs before a sale, so his net worth number stays conservative.
Jump to 27:15Brett never lets himself aim for more than double what he made the year before. He has seen people go from $50,000 to $150,000 a year, but says he has never seen someone jump from $2 million to $10 million in one year, because that needs a whole different set of skills than working harder.
Jump to 32:25Brett says everyone has an income level they are subconsciously comfortable with. If you suddenly double your pay for a month, he says random costs tend to show up, like a brake repair or a friend in need, until your bank balance drifts back toward that old number.
Jump to 39:43If you're not tracking your net worth every single month, you'll never be wealthy.Brett Tanner · at 21:50
Tap any chapter and the video starts right there.
“I believe that there are no costs in life. There's only good and bad investments.”
Brett Tanner at 17:20Model how fast money grows once it compounds, the same idea behind Brett's monthly net worth check in this episode.
Brett has people imagine their life 30 years out, then cut pictures from old magazines that match that future and put the board somewhere they see it every day. He kept his on his office desk for years, and his first board was full of cars and watches, while his boards now are mostly experiences.
Brett says a mentor who made $4 million to $5 million a year still spent 10% of her income on education, which meant $400,000 to $500,000 a year. Brett has personally spent over $1 million on his own education and masterminds, including one that cost him $45,000 for a single year.
Every single month, according to Brett. He says a mentor told him bluntly that if you are not tracking your net worth every month, you will never be wealthy, and he spends 30 to 45 minutes logging about 250 rows into his own balance sheet each month.
It is Brett's term for the income level you are subconsciously comfortable with. He says if you suddenly make double your normal income, random expenses like a brake repair tend to show up and pull that extra money back out, because your thermostat is still set at the old number.
Brett says he never lets himself target more than double his prior year's net income. He has seen people go from $50,000 to $150,000 a year, but says going from $2 million to $10 million in one jump essentially never happens, because it takes a different set of skills.
0:00Whoever dies with the most amount of money doesn't actually win the game. If you're not tracking your net worth every single month, you'll never be wealthy. Wealth isn't bad. I think there's a lot of comments out there today around wealth and the 1% and the rich and rich is bad and all this crap largely spread by people that just don't have any money. When the film podcast next week, you're going to be like, holy Brett's ripped. No, that's not going to happen. Welcome to Be Wealthy with Brett Tanner. This is episode 0001. And what that means is there's ultimately going to be tens of thousands of these podcasts out there. I'll be honest with you, I could not be more shocked if I woke up with my head sewn to the carpet tomorrow than I am right now. That is a Saturday morning. I'm here at my office with my guy Cole shot out of a cannon to film episode 0001. If you got that reference, that was a little National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, one of the greatest movies. Cole, do you do you listen to the National Lampoon's Cole? Christmas is a younger It's a younger guy, right? And I know we're young hip guys together
1:04here. Just us dudes. Uh just us dudes. Do you do you do a little of that, Cole, or no? I don't know what that is. You don't even know what that is. And see, that's the difference between 43 and Cole, you're 23? Well, a young 24. A young 24, nearly 20 years. Um and that's the kind of difference. And that's the kind of things we're going to bring to the Be Wealthy podcast. But uh in all seriousness, I'm here. I am beyond excited to share uh some of the things I've learned. I believe that financial education is something that's lost, I think, online in large part. A lot of it's not real. What do I mean? That all the people online, Cole, aren't actually crushing it in making millions and millions of dollars, driving Lamborghinis, and telling you how that you're broken and that maybe you need to get fixed. Maybe that's not the case. Maybe there's a simple way where you can leverage your job, your your skills as an entrepreneur and actually put those into place to be wealthy. So, what is it kind of starts where I want to start is what is wealth? Like when I say that out loud, what are the thoughts that go to your head? Is it
2:07the Ballers from literally that show Ballers on HBO where, you know, they're out there with Ferraris and it's crazy boats and it's planes and Cole, it's just a lot. I mean, it's Hermes, it's Louis Vuitton. As the kids say, Cole, that's dripping. I believe that's drip drip drip. Cole, um we can we can we can check that out later and make sure that that's legit. But is it that? I don't believe it is. And so when I when I say what what is wealth, I want you to really think about what that means to you. Right, what is that lifestyle? And for me, it's ultimately going to be a lifestyle. One way to think through that um is going to be to take yourself some point out in the distant future. And I started doing this when I was about 25 years old and I I imagined 30 years in the future and I kind of let my life play out like a movie screen. And I would just think about, all right, when I wake up in the morning, what where am I waking up? Right, am I in the mountains or am I in the beach? Right, is the view of you know, some crazy tall mountain or is it the waves crashing in and near my house? And so I started thinking about
3:10uh who am I with? Who do I care about? Right, I've got my I've got a wife, I've got three kids. What is my relationship with them 30 years in the future? What does that look like? And then as I go through the day, you're running those activities and saying, all right, what activities do I want to be doing? Where do I want to spend my time and how does that create happiness and how does that make my life matter? And so I was able to figure that out, right? And once you've got that lifestyle figured out, I think you got to put some some financials around it. Start thinking about what does your ideal life actually cost? And I think this myth, if you look at the Ballers and the jets and the planes and all those crazy things, that costs a fortune, right? That's a really expensive lifestyle, but would you want Do you really you the plane or do you just want the freedom to go where you want and travel to be where you want to be? And I think that's what we're all really after. We're all really after something different. And so I would have you sit down and run an exercise and think about what does wealth really mean to you? Is it more time with the people you care about? Is it experiences? And is someone who all this I know it's very deceiving Cole with all this white hair
4:13uh that I'm so young and hip, but I will tell you that for me when I have done my first vision board. So in addition to this exercise I have you go to a vision board and kind of take the things that you wanted in that 30-year period of time. Now let's go crystallize that. Let's go get these magazines. Go get a bunch of old magazines and of all different types. Hopefully they'll have locations and things and and go cut those out and create your vision board that kind of symbolizes this life that you wanted to create 30 years in the future and go put that somewhere where you see it every single day. And for years and years and years that was on my desk in my office and now it sits in my my closet at home. And it's funny I've done lots of vision boards throughout my life and as I go further down my path, it's funny the material things if you look at my first vision board you might say God this guy is just a materialistic jerk. All of the stuff on here is planes and cars and watches and stuff. And as I go further down I all I really want is experiences. And there's an incredible book out there by Bill Perkins I believe called Die with Zero. And I actually don't fundamentally believe with the principle of the book. I don't believe you should go create all
5:15this wealth and try to die with zero, but he makes a really interesting point in the book. And the point he's making is that life is really about experience points. It's not about whoever dies with the most amount of money doesn't actually win the game. And I've heard it said a lot lately, but if you think about it three generations from now very very few people are even going to remember you or even know who you were. And so why are you so worried about what other people might think? Why are you not shooting for your dream life when it's totally possible listening to others where in three decades or three generations from now they're not even know who you were. And so I would just take a step back and go and ask yourself what do I really crave, right? Do I crave experiences? For me it's all about creating experiences with those I love. That's both my immediate family, my friends, right? My friends have become a part of my family. And I believe your your family, you get to choose who it is, right? You're going to have your blood relatives, but you're also going to have people that come into your life that aren't blood family but are more family than your real family. And we all
6:17know who those people are. Um I've got my boy Matty who probably one day Cole will totally my boy Matty will be on this podcast and no question he'll be our first listener. Um and so I want you to think about that. Go take your you take your future plan. I want you to crystallize that into a vision board. Get that on your wall and get really clear. Each picture you're on there should represent something of that future time and make sure it's something that you actually really want. And really spend the time to think about it. I will also tell you going from you know Cole a very very young hip 24 to 43, the things that you want at 24 uh you may not actually want those same things at 43 and that's the reflection part of life and really figuring out what do I actually want. So defining well's a big part of it. Getting your unique definition. Uh for me, right? When I really think about my mission statement, I'm big and it's the mission statement for our training organization for Be Wealthy, but it's the mission statement I used it for our companies, but I built it for my life. And when I looked at my life, I wanted freedom. If you took all of the other
7:20stuff out of it, the things I really wanted was freedom. I wanted freedom of the work I did. Freedom of how I did it. Freedom of where I got to do it and freedom of who I got to do it with. And then applies both to my life and to my work, but when I had that freedom, I felt fulfilled. It gave me the reason to go run really really hard and sprint in business and then I would go back and I would I would counteract that with massive travel and go spending time with my team. And so I I believe or my my family. So I go all the way in. I'm all in at work, right? It's a Saturday right now. I couldn't be more excited. My family's running around doing something awesome. I had a whole day of kind of errands and practices and stuff. And so I want to come in here and knock out a bunch of episodes, but I get to choose and pick how I'm counterbalancing that. And so that's what wealth really meant to me is freedom. All right, so if you've got Now we've we've got your We've got your plan of where you want to be in the future. We've We've got this vision board that will tie you to it. And so now I want to think about the wealth skills, right? How do you go thinking about developing your wealth skills? I When I go out and
8:22meet lots and lots of people, I've never met a person I've absolutely never met a person that said, "God, I hope I die poor, broke, and not living an amazing life the last 10 years of my life." I've never met that person. And yet when you look at the actions of so many today, that's exactly where they're going to land. And that's not to me to be scared or negative, but I would argue that most people don't have a plan, right? They don't have the skills to actually become wealthy. Right? What does it take to actually develop those skills? Because as I learn as as a business person, right? When I first got started, I started like everybody else, broke with lots of time, no talent. What a gift. Three resources in life, money, talent, and time. And I was blessed with lots of time and no money and no talent. And so I decided that if I would use that time to develop my skills, right? The first skill I need to learn is how do I raise my income? Right? Some of the wealth skills you're going to want to develop, how do I raise my income? And that applies whether you're a W-2, whether you're the an executive at a huge company, or you're an entrepreneur, we're all trying to raise our income. And we're so blessed today with the internet and
9:24YouTube and everything, podcasts, books, every possible way you can reach the number one expert in your space today. You can reach out to them and figure out exactly what they did to become successful. Right, there's just so many opportunities to actually actually there's so many opportunities to educate yourself and yet so few are doing it. So, what's the one what where would I think about those well skills? Number one, get specific on the skill you're looking to develop. If you're looking to grow your income, odds are if you're an entrepreneur, we'll use that as an example, you're going to want to massively grow top line revenue. Yes, managing the bottom line is going to be a huge part of it. We're going to grow top line revenue. So, I would want to focus on my sales skills, right? Chet Holmes wrote The Ultimate Sales Machine. There's a number of incredible Fanatical Prospecting is a fantastic book. I would go into the area and I believe that when you want to learn a skill, I think you should go all in on a singular skill. Read all of the books on whether it's spin selling. Read all of those books on sales so that you can go grow your
10:29income. And if you make it very very simple in business, you you make profit by managing expenses on the revenue you already have, you grow the company by growing the top line revenue and making sure the expenses are in line so that you're left with a little bit of margin. So, the first skill I would think about a skill I want to develop in this example we use sales skills. I would go all in on that. And realize that as you go become successful as an entrepreneur, you're going to have to develop different skills. They're radically different buckets. The bucket that will make you incredibly successful as an individual person or as a a solo entrepreneur uh will have very little to do with leadership. Actually nothing to do with it, right? So, when I got going in real estate, I was an agent, I was flipping homes, and I got my license only so that I could flip those homes. And I fell in love with the agency side of the business. I helped a one of my buddies buy a home, I helped one of my buddies sell a home, and I realized that there was this beautiful blend of having this investment company that was flipping properties, and there was this other world where I would represent buyers and sellers. And the skills that I developed over here only enhanced the
11:32investment business. and so where there was this amazing kind of marriage between these two companies. And so I went and built them that way. Today they exist exactly the same way as two totally separate businesses that have different goals, but there's a ton of synergies between the two. What I learned, right? So my sales skills that worked really great being an being a solo entrepreneur is I went and developed a team, I had to develop different skills to be a great manager. Leadership had absolutely nothing to do with the sales skills, right? Leadership was all about people, you know, that emotional EQ, right? That conversation. And I'm going to recommend a tons of books as we go through this, right? Cuz I want to hit different people maybe in different paths of their journey. I've read every single leadership book out there. I can tell you overwhelmingly the leadership books that are written are terrible. They're written by people that aren't leaders or they're so airy-fairy, they're so pie-in-the-sky, the plane's at 50,000 ft and it's just like walk into a room and be charismatic and it'll work incredibly well. And it's just not true, right? You need specific tactics and models. And I was I had an intention to write a leadership book until I realized that the greatest
12:35leadership book, it's called Leading at a Higher Level and it would show you those skills. So I'm giving examples of those skills. Lastly, the skills in wealth are different, right? They're just a different set of skill. There are incredible books on that. The Psychology of Money is mandatory reading on the wealth side. So where would I start? I would start with an asset class, right? I'd start with the foundational part of how does money actually work? Right? How does it actually work and understand compound interest? For me, I thought I knew how compound compound interest worked. I believe that and I actually don't think I understood. I was a very, very wealthy person before I actually understood how it worked. I knew that hey, let's put some money away, let's let the interest rate do its thing, right? The rule of 72 that any interest rate you divide that by 72, it tells you how long it takes your money to double. I understood those things, but I didn't understand the true power of compounding, right? Einstein said it's the eighth wonder of the world. Once you understand it, you do start playing a radically different game. Here's what I mean by that.
13:37Everyone's obsessed with the initial return, right? So, when you study compound interest, one of the skills you want to develop, everyone's obsessed, I invest $100,000, I make 10% interest, so that's $10,000 per year. Everyone gets really excited about that, whatever this $800 and some dollars a month coming in. And And everyone's great with that. I love that. What I'm obsessed with is that 800 as it comes in, how can we get that back out in compounding? How can we make that go faster? And that's a skill, right? That's where you're building up the skill of velocity of money. How can I make my money go faster? Right? So, education. Number one, go find out Let's There's different ways I would think about your education. First, where can you go online? Go online, find the people that are having the conversation. You got to find a tribe. If it's a Facebook group, if you're a surgeon, I guarantee there is a group of surgeons who are investing their capital in a specific asset class that you're interested in, you could join that group. What's so amazing about online today, Cole, you could be a a dentist who owns a dog grooming business, and you could likely find a group of dentist
14:40dog groomers who would love to have the conversation. Now, obviously, that's an extreme example, and that's just completely made up in total It's probably not going to happen. But, what is the group that you're actually looking for? Go find that group. Join Find them online. Find who the authority is. Next thing I do, go go offline. Look at meetups. What about in your area? Like, if you're a aspiring real estate investor, you want to get into real estate investing. Most states have a real estate investment association, REIA. Right? Join that, and you're going to find a bunch of people that are having a conversation all about investing in real estate. Largely, it'll be single family, small multi-family, but you're going to hear different asset classes. You're going to be be people having a language. It's going to do a couple things. Number one, it's going to give you the education part. Two, it's going to give you the inspiration piece. You're around those folks having the conversation and you're starting to get in the game. So, those are free ways you can free or very, very low cost if the meetup has a $10 or $20 fee to join an an event. But, go look at that and every most every major city has a real estate investment association or very strong meetup. Now,
15:44let's look online. Let's go paid. So, now we're we're we're looking at our education and develop our skills. The next The next part of this is you're going to have to pay some money. Doesn't have to be tons of money, but find the number one educator and find out or educate tours and find out what courses they've already created. What do they have in terms of training that's out there that you can learn and get in their world and start having experience. Now, this is where I want to I want to look at investing, right? So, I believe that there are no costs in life. There's only good and bad investments. So, when you go buy this course for $200, your goal would be to invest that $200. And right, number one, we want to get our $200 back, but we want to get a return. Right? So, if I can invest money in education and I can spend $200 and that can teach me how to make a $1,000, uh that would be an incredible. It's a 500% return on my investment, right? It's a really great use of my capital and my time. So, there's no costs in life. There's only good and bad investments. Now, sometimes the thing we invest in may not be great. Maybe we bought a course and it sucked and it didn't deliver any value. Okay, well,
16:45anymore that's very, very hard to do because you get blown apart online. But, some of the value of that course is going to be how well are you able to take that course and do something actually with it. And so, it you've got to go in there and and hold yourself accountable. I go to tremendous amount. I've spent over a million dollars in my personal education. And I say that number not to brag cuz I started with zero. Uh but, I tell you how important I believe it is. One of my mentors went out there and they had they had a a way they broke up their income. And they believed that 10% of your annual income should be spent on your education. 10%. Now, that's really easy if you're making $100,000 a year and you want to spend $10,000 on education, that is very, very easy to do, right? You get a high-end mastermind, it's going to run you 12 grand to $100,000, right? But, um is that is your income goes up, think about that. This person that told me that was making about 4 to 5 million dollars a year as they said, I got to spend 10% on my education. Now, think about spending 4 to 500,000 dollars a year on your education. And the person that
17:49told it to me, she said it, you can't, Brett, you can't imagine how hard it is, how purposeful you have to be. So, that thought echoes in my head all the time as I think about my own education. Am I spending the right amount of money? Right, am I spending the correct amount of money in the right places to get me the best education that leverages my skills and life experience so I can get the most out of it right now. Next, I would say, once you've got your So, we went we found your Facebook group, we found your tribe, we went offline, we've got a meetup that we're we're meeting a local group. We we've got some we we've got a um we bought into someone's online course. And the last evolution of it, right, is a high-end mastermind. And I hear a lot of chatter online like, oh, who would pay 10 or 20 or 30,000 dollars to some guru? And don't get me wrong, there's some gurus out there that are total crap, right? That's why you want to go through the process, consume their content, have a lower have a lower entry where you got their initial course, but ultimately, the highest-level people uh are in high-end masterminds. Part of the fee is the barrier to entry, which
18:52creates kind of that tribe that people want to have that conversation. So, think of think of the the higher the price, it's kind of your entry fee that gets you into a bigger game that we very much hope is better. Uh for my life experience, I've paid I've joined a lot of masterminds. Um up to the most I've paid, I'm trying to think cold, most I've paid probably, I think, $45,000 for a year for a mastermind. And every single time I've met a relationship, I've learned a skill. And it wasn't I went there and learned 55,000 things. I took away three things. That's my goal. I go into an event, I want to take away three things that will change my What are the three wealth skills I need to learn? Or what are the three relationships that I'm missing right now that would take my wealth skills to another level. All right. So, now we've got a way to go develop those skills. Now, how do you know? So, we we figured out what wealth is. You've got your education. You know, now we got to look How do we know when you're on or off track? So many things in life are how we measure them, right? We've got to come up with a better way to get data on how we're actually performing. If you say, "What was the
19:55number one problem if I was to go back to when I started my hustle?" Really, it was 1999. It tells you I mean, it's insane. I was going to college. Uh but I'd always been a serial entrepreneur. But back then, I had the worst measurement tools how I was actually performing. Like from a financial perspective on a business side, I would look at more money in my checking account at the end of the month, I'm winning. Less money, I'm losing. But that didn't take into account the flows of money or if I'd charge things on a card that weren't yet credit card that weren't yet paid. I would always pay my cards off, but I might be capturing the data at a time where it looks like I'm making more money than I am. So, I didn't have the way to really measure it. So, everyone out there in your wealth, in your business, in your life, anything you want to get better at, the key to that is daily awareness. If I want to improve radically my health and I can only get three numbers, I'd want to know All right, number one, how much am I moving? Number two, well, how many calories am I consuming? Right? If I even even just those two numbers, if I need those two things and I check and I I can step on a scale, right? So, if I
20:58state those those three things, I would in very quick order, daily awareness would allow me to get some pretty great indicators on the future likelihood of given success. Right, money's no different, right? So, there's not a ton of variables there and we'll cover that later in a future episode. But, we've got to figure out how do you know if you're on or off track? The key to improving any area of your life The key to improving any area of your life is daily awareness. Right, step on the scale, log into the bank account, check your passive income. When it comes to your net worth, you got to be tracking it every single month. Right, some things are daily, some things are weekly, some things are monthly, but you've got to figure out how are you going to create that daily awareness? Ultimately, when it comes to your money, and I'll I will say this, you've got to track your net worth every single month. If you're watching this and you're not doing it, I'll say it exactly like my mentor said to me, you'll never be wealthy. If you're not tracking your net worth every single month, you'll never be wealthy. I realize that's super aggressive. When it was said to me, it was said in front of a crowd, uh and it was very aggressive at that time. And I
22:00will tell you it was completely accurate. Right, if I'm not tracking my net worth, how can I possibly want to get better? I think about it like the golf person. They're like, "Say, hey, I want to get better at golf." Well, what do you shoot? "Well, I don't keep score." Well, then how in the hell will you know if you're getting better if you don't even know You don't know what you're shooting, you're not keeping score. We When we go to practice and you work on your putting or you work on a different skill, we have no way to measure that the work you're doing, the exercises, right, in this example, putting or chipping, is actually leading to a lower golf score. Right, so we need to get better measurement tools and find out are we winning or losing? Right, when it comes to your business, right, in that side of things, you've got to know how do I know that I won or lost the day that's not based on outcome, it's based on effort. Right, so when it comes to your wealth, you've got to track your net worth every single month. I would prefer you didn't use Mint or some tool like that. Get a basic basic spreadsheet. The active key you get in is the key. We'll have a link in the show notes to the tool I use that you can absolutely start implementing. Don't go use mint.com. I'm not saying all those tools are not
23:02awesome, but part of setting up your balance sheet the 30 to 60 minutes a month that you will spend on it will be the best thing you can possibly do to create more wealth because it allows you to see that. Next, right? As you think about it, we'll cover this in the our next episode, which is how do you build a plan to be worth $50 million. I want everyone to go out to some point in the future, right? When I do a live training event, I have every single attendee come in and I have them go create their plan to be worth $50 million. I don't care if today they're worth negative $300,000. I want them to build a plan over 30 years to be worth $50 million and I give them a few variables, I give them a sample, and I have them go to work. And the point of the exercise is you got to put in, well, how much money am I going to put away? Cuz there's not that many variables to your money. But you get those in there and now if I've got this plan, I'm going to be worth $50 million in the future, right? And I know where I'm at today, then the question becomes what do I need to do this year to be on track for January of 2025 and beyond so that I hit my 30-year plan, right? And what would that be? 2054?
24:05Am I going to hit that plan? People do not miss their goals because they didn't have a great plan. Right? People miss their goals because they got off track and they never checked in. And that is what happens to people all of the time, right? They they they get down a road and they were off track for a decade or two decades or worse, they got to the end and realized they were short. Well, there's no time machines to go back. So, the key is like in my life, have I been off track on my financial goals? Have I been on off track of probably every goal I've ever set? 100% I have. Right? Well, what was the key? The daily or weekly or monthly awareness to check in so I knew I was off track so I could get back off track. So, any area of your life you want to improve, make sure you're figuring out those things, come up with a way to check it, and then make sure you're checking in and adjusting the plan as needed. So, I'll talk a little bit about a balance sheet that we'll give you again in the show notes. It's very, very simple to fill out. You're going to go in there, every asset it goes in there under the asset section, every liabilities goes in the liability section, assets minus liabilities equals
25:08your net worth, right? You're going to do this monthly in the beginning and you're going to create a new new row, or sorry, new column every single month. So, you got January, February, March, April, May, all the way down the line. Every asset goes on its separate line. If you've got nine checking accounts or two checking accounts, you're going to have two two lines on there in the two person on the two checking account example, you're going to have nine lines on the nine checking account example. Uh you're going to put your car, right? If you own a car, go get fair market value trading off Kelley Blue Book for your car, put that in there. If you owe money on your car, that's going to be on the liability section and tie that out. And so, you're going to go enter this in every month and it should take you in the beginning um it's about going to take you 10 or 15 minutes to key in all the data. I've got about 250 rows of different things I've had to add in in in my balance sheet and it takes me somewhere around 30 to 45 minutes to key in all the data. Again, there's programs that could pull that in. I don't want to do them. The act of logging into the bank account, pulling that number, kind of looking around and getting closer connected to your money. If you want to change the money in your life, get closer to it. Uh my wife would
26:11go out there and tell you that I am I'm one of those weird people and I am a crazy person and that'll definitely come out uh on this podcast. And crazy in a good way. But I actually we probably run for the different businesses and personal things I have probably about 45 different checking accounts. And I say that not to brag, but I could right now if someone threw up one of the checking accounts, I could like likely tell you the balance of that account within $10,000 and I could do it on demand all the time. Uh why do I do that? I'm close enough to the money that I can feel the deposits, I can feel the flows of that money and I want to see how each business or assets performing in in proximity. Logging into it allows me to have greater visibility. All right, so now you've got your balance sheet, you got to put every single thing in there, and you're looking at the net worth. All right, exceptions. Here are things that you shouldn't put in here. Your business, if it's if it's a business that does not have sale value, meaning other businesses like it, not huge ones that are 15 to five times bigger, hasn't actually been sold. My current real estate team, uh that has it helps buyers and sellers on a residential basis, I
27:15have it in my balance sheet at zero. Do I think is it We're doing some things I think it'd make it sellable long term, but it's not today. Right now, in other words, someone would not write me a check cuz it's based largely on Brett Tanner. And if you don't have Brett Tanner there, it's not going to perform, so the investment wouldn't make sense. On the other hand, I owned a brokerage for a while. I owned uh up to 50% of it. I bought shares into it, so it had value when I purchased them, and I sold I ultimately sold that business. And so, I had that business on my balance sheet because I bought the shares, and as I sold some shares, I had an established value, so I knew what those were worth. So, only put your business on your balance sheet if you know exactly what it's worth. All right, property values. When I put in a house, I put it in about 85% of value, and I'll give you a very specific reason why I do it. I want my net worth statement to be conservative, meaning I'm willing to be worth way more money than it shows. Uh I just want to be consistent. So, whatever you put on there, make sure it's consistent. I use 85% of market value. When I go to sell the home, I'm going to selling costs, commissions, title, uh all of the and whatever
28:16inspection negotiations, all the things that go with selling a home. I also believe when I go to sell it, I'm likely going to fix that up. I'm going to put some additional repairs. I might put a new kitchen in it. I might put new floors or do something to try to maximize its value. And so, I use 85% cuz it's probably going to cost me 6 7% to sell the house, roughly in terms of total cost with title and everything. And if I budget another roughly, what is that? Eight eight seven eight nine percent, I budget that part for repairs. Uh I'm I'm I'm going to number that's going to be very very close. So, I use 85% of its value as I place it on my balance sheet. That's the asset value and then I put the actual amount of the liability, what's owed on it if I have a mortgage, and I update that every single month to see how I'm paying it down. One of the interesting things I think people miss and one of the beauties of real estate, investment real estate, is you're buying a property, you're renting it out, and then someone else, right, is paying off your mortgage, right? That is If you said, "What is the beauty and why should
29:18people invest in real estate?" It's cuz someone else is paying off your mortgage. Rents have only gone down in a 3-year period in the history of Earth. So, rents on average go up over time, values go up over time, and you get depreciation. That is the reason why you do it, right? That is That is the reason. All right, personal property. Uh, when you think about your personal property, put it in there at fire sale value. Went through your cars, but if you've got a bunch of jewelry and watches, and Cole, you got a comic book collection, or you're into shoe, you got like maybe all the the brand new What would it be? The Jordan 4s, Cole, or the Yeezys, and whatever the kids are into these days. Um, I would put those in there. Maybe not at the Jordan 4 value on StockX. See what I did there, Cole? Dropping all the all the hip all the hip hip hip uh, sites. I too have young kids. Yes, just us young guys. And just us young guys hanging out together. Um, and so, but the shoes in there at fire sale value, not what they would be worth if they explode in value and become the rarest items ever.
30:20All right, we're going to update the loans. We talked about that. And then, make sure the value of all your investments is correct, right? If you've got stock, put in the is the stock value went up or down, whatever it is, monthly. Plug that in and make sure you've got your net worth absolutely perfectly filled out. Looking at that every single month, it is the key to you getting where you want to go. And again, there's two parts. We're going to have the future part where we're looking where we want to be, but we've got to start operating accurately on exactly where we are. So, when you leave this podcast, I want you to absolutely go to your calendar, block time right now. I want you to do this. Because this one act, and I want you to schedule that time every single month on the first day of the month. So, go right now to your Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, however you do it. I want you to put an hour in on the first of every single month. I want it to be the first thing you do that day. From 7:00 a.m. or whatever you the first thing you do, I want to key it in. I want to get all that data, and I want you at the end of it I want you to ask yourself some questions. Uh number one, I want you to look at where you are.
31:22And you're going to watch the next episode which is going to talk about your $50 million plan. So, I want you to go and do that. But you're going to want Where are you at now? Where do you need to be at the start of the next year? And are you on or off track? Just ask that question. On or off track, yes, no. If you're off track, what changes do you need to make? Make that list. Okay, we're always looking at where we're at now, where we need to be in the future. Once you're done with that, I want you to ask one more question. How do I make this go faster? Right? Asking that question, let your subconscious go to work on that because as you ask that question, you'll instantly start thinking about different ways, different decisions you could have either made in the past or different decisions you can make in the future. And that's going to allow you to get there in a more efficient way. The last part of this game, again, I told you I'm a crazy person, so I look at where am I supposed to be in January of 2025? I play the game, how many years in the future can I get ahead? Cuz I I set up a 30-year plan, but the only thing more cool than a 30-year plan is doing the
32:2530-year plan in 12 to 15 years. And that's currently the path I'm on. Right? And it didn't happen by accident, it happened by studying that, getting my net worth every single month, asking those questions, am I on track, and what things can I do? Where can I get better? Right, one of the reflection points, you were filming this in in the early part of 2024, and one of the reflection parts I do every year is I look at how much money I made last year, and you can go do that exercise right now. Go through, what did I make in 2023? How much money did I make? And then I look at the next year, and I say, what do I want to make next year? I never allow myself to go more than double my net income what I made. Why? I believe that if you're very very small numbers, like if you're making um I don't I don't want to go It's weird I don't want to use numbers. But let's just say if you're making if you're making $50,000 a year and you want to double and make $100,000 a year and you're an entrepreneur, that's totally possible, right? That's a realistic goal, it's doable. As those numbers get larger, it becomes very difficult to go beyond double, right? If you It's possible, Cole, I've seen people go from $150,000 to making or from 50,000 to making $150,000. I've seen that.
33:29Okay, I've not seen the person go from I mean, the rare exception goes from making $2 million to four, right? But two to 10, it's a whole different set of circle there, or two to six in that example. And so what I have you do though what in my my idea is, whatever I made last year, if I want to double it, the question I ask is, okay, everything I know, everything I believe, all the tools, all my talent, all my ability has led me to a single place where I am making X dollars. That's a fact. That's what I made last year. So if I want to double that amount, I've got to think radically different, right? And in other words, the skills and the ability and the things I'm already doing have led me to get the results I'm already getting. So I can't say I'm going to go do last year, Cole. I'm just going to run around and do what I did last year, and I'm going to get a totally different result. That is the definition of a crazy person, right? Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a radically different result. Instead, I look at, okay, I want to go from making whatever pick the number, $2 million. I want to make $4 million. Okay, what are the skills that I need to do that? What am I willing to do different? And if you look if you've
34:31got an organization with people right in a business world, odds are if you've got staff, which you probably do if you're in that if you're making $2 million a year, you're going to have to double your head count. Right? A lot of people might that might have a mic drop Cole, we just lost everyone, but you might have to actually go not might, you're going to have to double your head count. If you've got 20 people in the organization, you got to go to 40. So I got to oh, what do we at 40, what does that look like? Right? So there's a people component, there's likely some monetary component. Do we have the capital needed to go do that? And so anytime I look at that I have a reflection of where am I at now and I want to be somewhere different, I've got to change those skills and that usually guides the learning, the education and how I think about the future and what I'm going to go to work on. Lastly, I mean it wealth isn't bad. I think there's a lot of common out there today around wealth and the 1%, the rich and rich is bad and all this crap largely spread by people that just don't have any money. And I don't mean that to be disrespectful, but it wealth is a choice. Uh I was I grew up very poor. My parents business took off later
35:35um as we were you know as I was a as a kid, I would say we definitely didn't have money and then as we got older, as I got to be 10, 12, my dad's business started taking off and I got to see money. But in that environment I grew up in, what was really really interesting is I got to see both sides of wealth. I got to grow up not having it and I got to grow up I would say, you know, upper middle class, right? We had some money in more than most in our our small town. And what it allowed me to do is it allowed me to see how wealth was talked about. And so what I always think about out here as you think about your wealth, there's a story that all of you have, right? There's a story you're telling yourself about wealth. And so I want you to ask you I want you to answer these four questions as we're getting ready to wrap up here today, but I want you to answer these four questions, right? Number one, when you when you go back to when you're 10 years old, you're sitting at your parents' table, or you're sitting at your family dinner table, you're eating dinner, and then we think about how money was talked about. Okay? Was it celebrated or was it criticized, right? Was it
36:37celebrated or criticized? Um just outwardly, right? Like in your home, right? Was money scarce or was it abundant? Not did you have it, but was the was the context of it was it scarce or abundant? Number three, I'm going to have you write down what does wealth actually mean to you? We started there today, but what does it actually mean to you? One to five sentences on what does wealth actually mean? And try to be hyper granular, not things like, "Well, it involves great experiences and wonderful things." That doesn't help at all, right? Get very What does wealth mean? Last question, I'm going to write down what is who or what causes benefit most when you become wealthy? Who or what causes benefit most when you become wealthy? So, I I go back to my example. When I in the area I grew up in, um in my dad's world, money and his friends, his circle, money was celebrated. But in that small town, money was criticized. Uh the people believe the people that
37:39had money, they did something to get it, they did the wrong thing. And whatever that story is, the reason why you've got to go back and work through it, that story will impact later how you think about money. You're going to think about money totally differently because of that story. And for all of us, you've got to go out there and you've got to change your story. So, you've got to change your story. So, as you think about that, we're having this discussion, comment below. What What was money abundant, right? Or I mean, sorry, was it feared or criticized? Was it scarce or was it abundant? Comment below, I'd love to know your story. And I want you to think about how that's impacting you, right? So, again, we grew up, we didn't have money, but money was a money was abundant. You know, my parents, my dad is a really abundant thinker. I just I dinner with him last night. I will tell you the ultimate optimist. Everything's going to work. Uh but he believes it's going to work because he's going to outwork and make it happen. And we didn't have a lot of money, so money should have been scarce, but it was abundant. It was There was plenty for everyone. We just hadn't had it quite figured out how we were going to
38:41get it. And so that abundance mentality, when I experienced the opposite, it was weird and that affected my story. So my story is we kind of almost had to hide some of the things. So when I went to college, I was worried actually about being judged for having a little more money cuz in that small town, I I experienced some judgment around money. And I went to college only to find out I bought a actually a piece of crap car. Cole, you could actually look this up. This will be incredible for the show notes. I bought an 88 Cadillac Sedan DeVille. I think I bought this thing for $3,000. And I brought it in college cuz I didn't want anyone to judge me for having a nicer car. Because as I grew up in high school, I had one of the nicer cars and I was I was judged for that. I wanted to go to an environment and get to be me. And that impacted my story quite a bit, right? I was I had this story around money. And so I'd have you go through and you've got to address that story so that when you create wealth, there won't be guilt. You won't have this financial thermostat where you feel like you got to go give the money back. You know, one of the the concepts I talk
39:43about a lot is everyone has a financial thermostat. Here's what I'll tell you what what that means. Everyone has a certain amount of money they're very, very comfortable making. You you're You've got an amount of money you're very, very comfortable making. So let's just pretend you're making $10,000 per month and that's your comfort your financial thermostat is pegged right at $10,000 per month. And all of a sudden, Cole, you did something radical. And you made $20,000 in a month. What do you think likely happens? What do you think happens? What happens is the universe goes and conspires and it extracts it right out of your checking account. It's going to show up like brake repair or some random thing or a friend needs something or failure needs something. Something's going to happen in your life that will take that money out. And what happened was it wasn't because that was a random event. Your financial thermostat was built for $10,000. And so you've got to go work on raising that thermostat. You do that number one through the education piece, right? Understanding how money actually works.
40:46It doesn't money does not work money and fitness have such a tie out together. Meaning that if I start going to the gym today, Cole, and I start doing cleans and jerks, right? And I'm going to work on lats and traps, mostly lats, Cole, and I start crushing it. I am not going to be fit tomorrow. I'm not going to come in to film podcast next week and you're going to be like, "Holy Brett's ripped." No, that's not going to happen. And just like because you start putting $1,000 away a month into your favorite mutual fund or saving up to make a great real estate investment, you're not going to be rich tomorrow. Right? Wealth takes time. You got to have a plan, you got to understand how it actually works. Right? It is going to take tremendous, tremendous lift for you to get to your first $1,000 in passive income, totally passive. It is going to take the next thousand is going to seem stratospherically easier, right? It'll be It'll be more easy to create the next 9,000 to get to 10,000 than it was for the first thousand. Trust me. Right? The first thousand will feel It's kind of like a rocket taking off, right? Cole, stuff shaking, a lot of things are going
41:48on. I bet that's going to be incredible on the sound. Right? It's taking off and it takes so much lift to get it off. But once it's going, it doesn't take that much energy to keep it going, right? Wealth is the same way. So, it's not bad. You've got a story. I want you to go through that story, do the exercises that we outlined here, and join us on this journey as we kind of demystify wealth. This show's all about creating more wealth, helping you make more money, and then really living wealthy with really cool experiences and things. I'm so excited to take this journey with you. Welcome to Be Wealthy with Brett Tanner.
One day in the room with Brett on your real numbers. You leave with a 5-year plan.
