Ep516: Richard Bliss – True Wealth Is Very Different From Income

Andrew Stotz 00:01
Hello fellow risk takers and welcome to my worst investment ever stories of loss to keep you winning. In our community. We know that to win in investing, you must take risk, but to win big, you've got to reduce it. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm on a mission to help 1 million people reduce risk in their lives to reduce risk in your life, go to my worst investment ever.com today, and take the risk reduction assessment I've created from the lessons I've learned from all my guests. It's time you start building wealth the easy way by reducing risk. Fellow risk takers, this is your worst podcast hosts Andrew Stotz, from Ace dots Academy and I'm here with featured guest, Richard bliss. Richard, are you ready to join our mission?

Richard Bliss 00:46
Absolutely. I'm ready to be here. Thanks for having me here. absolutely ready.

Andrew Stotz 00:50
I'm excited to get you on. And we've had some discussion before we started and I think we're gonna kind of be a fun one for the audience. But let me introduce you to the audience. Richard bliss is the founder of bliss point consulting a social media consulting company that helps improve executives, onlines executives, online communications and sales teams social selling behaviors, a LinkedIn top voices influencer, experienced executive communications manager, and social media coach Richard has helped 1000s of people master social media tools and become fluent in social conversations, building their platforms, and confidence to reach their audience and define their brand. Effectively, Richard, take a minute and fill in a little bit more about the value you bring to the world.

Richard Bliss 01:45
Well, Andrew, that value that I bring has a lot to do with the audience that I work with. And as you just said, I work with a lot of salespeople around the world, I work with executives of large corporations to small individuals, oftentimes looking to transfer or change or the way that they want their trajectory of their career. Now the value that I bring is one I've been there, I've been the Vice President of Marketing for a variety of software companies. I'm here in Silicon Valley, I work with executives, because I've been an executive. And the value that I bring is, is I'm able to help leaders, and individuals understand how to take that next step to overcome the friction points that are holding them back to understand why should I be doing this? How do I do this? And these are these little questions. Sometimes it's the smallest thing, particularly in executive because the higher you get in leadership, the lonelier it gets, and sometimes you it's hard to ask the dumb questions. And there are dumb questions. And it's really hard to ask when you don't know and you don't know who to turn to.

Andrew Stotz 02:46
And what do you think, I mean, maybe you can give some advice to myself and my audience. I mean, everybody's on LinkedIn these days, but it's hard to figure out what to share there. Or, you know, sometimes, you know, for instance, today, I shared a personal story. And it's a story of helping my mother who's survived a stroke, to start walking again on a treadmill. And each day, I put something up there about it, and what it means to me and kind of what we can, what lessons we can take from it. But that's kind of personal. Not everybody wants to do personal and you think about what advice would you give to us pertaining let's just say LinkedIn as an example, or any other place? Tell us some advice?

Richard Bliss 03:30
No, we're gonna stick with LinkedIn, because I tell people that LinkedIn is your digital light, it's the start of your digital identity. It's the hub of your digital identity. And the reason is, now there's Instagramers out there and Tik Tok is out there who are gonna argue with me, but I'm gonna say no, I go into an audience of 1000 people. And I'll ask a raise of hands, how many don't have a Twitter account? And there'll be a lot of hands go up? How many don't have Facebook, don't have Instagram, don't have tick tock, lots of hands go up. And then I ask how many of you don't have a LinkedIn account? Not a single hand is raised. And that's why we have to think about the fact that our digital identity starts with LinkedIn, because you and I, the first thing we did is we looked each other up on LinkedIn. I didn't go to your website, I didn't Google you. I just went to LinkedIn. And that's where a lot of people are starting to realize that, well, that's kind of where it starts. That's where you have to start be thinking and I gotta tell you, Andrew, when I work with executives, or salespeople, when I look at their LinkedIn profile, the first thing I see is them looking for a job. And that comes in that comes back to how we think about LinkedIn. In the past. It was a place where we put our CV or cover letter of our resume. But, and then here's what I'll do. I'll go into a room, they'll be 50 people there. And I'll ask people, why did you get on LinkedIn? Networking, a Rolodex I have to explain to my younger audience that that's this round thing with dead tree on it, right? You and I can laugh about it, but they have to look it up. They have to Google it. And then So networking, electronic Rolodex and looking for a job. Those are the two reasons they joined LinkedIn always 100%. So that I asked them how many of you were on LinkedIn this week? Every hand goes up. How many of you are on LinkedIn this week looking for a job? Well, oftentimes, I'm dealing with sales teams, and their managers are in the room, or on the Zoom call. And then they're just like, I'm like, Wait, what is it you're doing on LinkedIn? You just said, yeah, that's why they joined in the first place. But they forgot now that they're actually interacting with customers and partners, and vendors and employees, not hiring managers. And so that's the number one advice that I give to people like, Look, you should be using LinkedIn to show people you doing your job, not looking for a job, even if you're happy in your position. But Andrew, you asked me a question. Let me answer that question. You asked me for a piece of advice. If I was to look at your profile. And I see I'm looking at your profile right now. And I see this beautiful post that you made with the video of your mother on the treadmill. But here, but LinkedIn. Is it like other social media platforms? Because I also see right before that another post with Avi loron, or Lyran. Yeah, yep. And it appears that those posts, those posts were made nearly at the same time. Yep. LinkedIn only allows you to keep one conversation active at a time. Wow. So when you make a post, go live on LinkedIn, it'll start to promote it for the next. And by the way, you've got how many got you got 28,000 followers. When LinkedIn, when you put a post out, though, it doesn't go to 20,000. It only goes to a small fraction of your connections, about 10% of your connections will see that post. And then for the next hour, it will monitor what's the activity around that post. And that will determine how popular the algorithm thinks your post is. And should it be shared with a wider audience. Yeah. But if you post something, within the first three hours or four hours after that first post, it disrupts it will hide, it'll hide it, it'll hide the second post from 99% of your network, because it's like, no, no, no, we're testing this one over here. Which is why now you know, why, how come some of my posts do so well, and some of them just die on the vine. Because you're stepping on each other. Now, let's say a day goes by, so the post about your mother went live day goes by and you post another post, LinkedIn will shut down that first post, test the second one, and then compare the two to see which one's performing better. And then go on to promote that post. This is something that is so fundamentally different than Tik Tok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, where more is better. LinkedIn is like, No, we're gonna give you one piece of conversation that you can really participate in with a post per every about three, four hours. And even then, if you start to abuse that we're gonna, we're only going to keep it. So that's one big piece of advice that a lot of people are unaware of. Yes, that's huge. That's huge.

Andrew Stotz 07:59
So if we were to think about, you know, so less is more, first of all, less is more. And that's great. And if I think about the pace, does it make sense, just to say one good quality post a day?

Richard Bliss 08:14
Yes, absolutely. So here's what I do, I tend to put out my most important content on Thursday. So I put out some content on Monday, I put out some content on Tuesday, this is the conversations I want to have Wednesday, I try to put out a post about my podcast. And then on Thursday, that's when I put out my most important piece of content. And that's when my team's mobilized behind it. And that's where I want the attention. Because I let that run now till Monday. I don't interfere with it. I don't step on it. I don't make something else. Nope, because if you a lot of people, I see them get into an automated cadence where they're using automating posting it tools. And then putting out a piece of content every day. Well, that's great. But every once a while, you're gonna have a piece of content that's gonna hit like wildfire. And as soon as that next piece of content goes out, it's like dousing it with water, it's like, well, we're gonna put that one out here, we're gonna promote this unimportant thing. LinkedIn is looking for you to be present, they are not looking for you to use them as a newsfeed for your content. So anything that automates the process of engaging or putting content out on LinkedIn, they will do LinkedIn algorithm will do everything it can to defeat you and your efforts, automated posts, it's going to defeat it. Hashtags, you use more than three to five hashtags. It's going to demote your post tagging. If you tag four or five people, and they don't respond, LinkedIn says you're spamming them. demote your post, add a link to YouTube. Remember, I said there's a tiny little fraction of your network that gets to see that post. If you add a link to YouTube, you are taking their advertising dollars and sending them somewhere else. They will demote that even further. So Sometimes you'll put out a post, you'll be down to 1% of your network is going to see that post because of all of these rules that LinkedIn is preventing you from doing, because it's just not good for their platform. Right? And so, I mean, I, sorry, this is not what we were here to talk about, but

Andrew Stotz 10:16
valuable for, for my audience, for sure. I know, for the listeners out there, there's stuff that you can implement right away from what you're learning. Yes, in you.

Richard Bliss 10:26
Well, the worst performing content on LinkedIn is video. By far, by a factor of 10. And the reason is, is because the LinkedIn algorithm and I can't come back to this, the LinkedIn algorithm is looking for you to be present. So it is looking for content that you put out there, that then drives a conversation in real time in near real time. And when I say near real time, I mean about that first hour. So if you put out a piece of content, and it starts and they measure that conversation by comments, you get a comment, you respond, comment, respond, comment, respond, the algorithms, watching all of that in almost real time saying, hey, they call it velocity, look at the velocity of all this activity, this must be important. Also, a comment is worth five to seven times more value, point value than alike. So what happens when I watch a video, I click the like button, and I move on, because that's what I'm taught in Instagram, Facebook, right, I'm showing you a little love and I move on. LinkedIn like that did not add any value. That didn't cause people to stop and stay on our platform that didn't start a conversation and videos tend to not start conversations. The second worst performing content on LinkedIn is anything with a stock photo. Because that doesn't drive a conversation, pretty much people just click the like button and move on. And Lincoln's like, now, they're going to give you two points for that like, but if you can get somebody to leave a comment, they're going to give you 10 points for that comment. And when those comments start to pile up, the points start to pile up the algorithms like up, it trips a little signature and says this content needs to be shared with a wider audience. And it doesn't matter how many connects doesn't matter how many connections you have, it doesn't matter how many followers you have, the algorithm is watching the activity of the post during that short window to determine how relevant it is

Andrew Stotz 12:22
so much gold out there for the listeners and just go to LinkedIn and type in Richard bliss, Bo. And you'll be able to see great examples. I'm just going as you're talking, I'm scrolling through your feed. And one of the things I noticed about and this one has been a hard one about LinkedIn that I just don't really know or understand is newsletters, see something digital first leadership subscribe. Yeah. Tell us just Yeah. Well, what are those? I mean, I think a newsletter, I think I'm sending out an email newsletter or something like that.

Richard Bliss 12:55
So there's a caveat with this one. So a couple of years ago, LinkedIn approached me. I was one LinkedIn top voices in sales, one of their top influencers number eight in the world. And they said we'd like to, by the way, when they reached out and told me that I thought it was a I thought it was one of those spammers fishing actually guy up on exactly

Andrew Stotz 13:18
voted by your peers.

Richard Bliss 13:19
Yes, I'm like that. I think you're mistaken. You got the right Richard bliss. And I went and looked up the guy on LinkedIn, and messaged them, they're saying, Is this legit. And then they were just trying this newsletter beta. And they said, we'd like to give you access to the newsletter to try it out. So that was about two years ago. And so my newsletter is now up to about 6568 to 70,000 subscribers, I think. But here's so. But the reason I say there's a caveat is because they just rolled it out to everyone, about two months ago. So you're probably getting in your inbox, a bunch of requests. Hey, subscribe to my Yeah, so got my newsletters, because everybody has one now. So my newsletter is slightly unique, because it was way out in front. But what it is, is that the worst? So LinkedIn has these things called articles. Think of a mamasezz blog entries right. Now, several years ago, that was a new feature. When LinkedIn rolls out a new feature, they just promote the crap out of it. That's why you're seeing polls everywhere. It's a new feature. Anyway, the articles were a new feature, so they promoted them heavily. Then they realized that it was damaging the experience on their platform because people were going to these articles and then leaving they weren't coming back. Right. And so they didn't shut down the feature, but they turned off the promotion. So when you write a long form article on LinkedIn, LinkedIn does not promote it to anybody. It doesn't promote it to a fraction of your network. It doesn't promote it to anybody zero The only way you can get somebody to look at an article is that two ways one, you put the link somewhere and send it to them. Or they come to your profile, and they see it in the featured section or your activity, that's the only way somebody is going to see it. Well, what the newsletters did was said, Okay, let's blend the two. So I can write an article, just a standard article, or I can write an article and make it a newsletter, and then LinkedIn will send it to the people they think would be interested in it. And that's the clue I have not I have 65,000 subscribers, and I did not ask a single one of them to subscribe to that. What happens is that it goes to a certain group of people who then share it, and then other people see it, and they like it. And so they subscribe. And so it's a very viral experience. So that's what you're seeing with these newsletters, you can jump on and try. And you'll probably most people will jump to one to 3000 subscribers fairly quickly. But just it's kind of that's what's going on with these newsletters.

Andrew Stotz 16:02
And yet, sometimes in this social media world, or maybe just in this world, sometimes we feel like we just test subjects in a math test

Richard Bliss 16:11
we are it's not that we feel we are subjects, our brains,

Andrew Stotz 16:16
our bodies, all of that. All of that. So you know, lots of gold in what you just shared. And I would like to wrap up this discussion before we move on to the main question by thinking about the average man or woman out there who's kind of, they're inspired to start to get engaged on LinkedIn, they see the value of it, they're overwhelmed with work, they're overwhelmed in their life. Another place that I got to devote time, what would you say is the simplest way to start on LinkedIn?

Richard Bliss 16:50
Great, great question. And I have a very specific answer. Unlike other social media platforms, LinkedIn advertises and promotes your activity, not just your content. And this is a fundamental difference that can be used to your advantage. And what that means is every time you like something, LinkedIn takes whatever you liked, and puts it into the feed of your connections, and says Andrew, like this. And so you, if you and I are connected, then I'm going to get every time you like something, not every time, but oftentimes, when you like something, I'm going to see that. Which means that you got to be careful what you're liking, because I'm going to associate whatever you like with your brand. But here's the so liking. We all understand how liking works. We're slightly different,

Andrew Stotz 17:38
like on Facebook, where you like, yeah, no, no, not like,

Richard Bliss 17:43
no, it is, I want this piece of content to be associated with my personal brand. So I will like it. That is not how we interact with likes on Instagram, Facebook, or any other place. Usually, we're just talking to the author. On LinkedIn, we're talking to our network. And that's not the advice, here's the advice. Commenting, remember, I told you, you get one post a day, you get unlimited comments. So when I see comments, I will see people saying Good job, way to go Happy Birthday, whatever it is, because they're still in that locked into that Instagram habit, that they think they're talking to the author. But here's what I would tell the what, here's what I'm gonna tell your audience. And that is, whenever you leave a comment on LinkedIn, you have to stop and think, Wait a minute, this comment. And the post, um, commenting on is going to be lifted and placed into the feed of my connections. What do I want to say in this comment that would be valuable to my connections? Not to the person I'm responding to, but to the connections who will see this out of context, because there'll be 1000 comments on a post. But if so, if you made a post, for example, the post about your mother has eight comments. If I was to leave a comment right there, my network would see your video and my comment, they wouldn't see the other eight comments. So what should I say, Oh, this was touching Andrew, I appreciate it. What my audience that says they have no idea what I'm talking about. And human nature is they're not going to take the time to go figure that out. Instead, what I would say is, this is very touching Andrew, it's incredible to see the amount of effort and commitment you're putting into this and sharing this story allows me to be part of it. Thank you so much for demonstrating how we can all remember to be in touch with the more important things in our life. Okay, so I just made that up. But there's that comment now is going to show up in my feed with your video. I have in some ways taken over the narrative for my audience, so that they know why I'm actually engaging with us. You'll get it you'll appreciate it, but my audience so what I'll tell your audience is, look if you're looking for a job, if you're looking for a prospect If you're looking to close a deal, if you're looking for anything, commenting is the number one way to get your face and your name in front of the widest audience. You don't have to go out and create brand new content, you simply comment on other people's content. And you know, and I both know you go look at content, there's not a lot of comments like that. People are just saying, congrats, good job. Okay. Good job. That's awesome. What? Awesome. Cool. Cool story, bro. Cool story? I don't know. Make a comment. And remember, you're talking to your audience, if that's a future hiring manager, if that's a future employer, a future or a future prospect? What would my prospect why would I want my prospects to know about why I'm commenting on this post that would be valuable to them? That is the simplest way to avoid this overwhelming need, oh, I've got to go create the perfect post Nope. start participating in other people's conversations in LinkedIn will start rewarding you your content, your face your profile, start showing up in other people's feeds.

Andrew Stotz 21:02
That's great, you know, such actionable advice. Let me just ask a question about something that I often do. So I'm looking at a post here that you did two days ago. And it says, coming insurmountable obstacles is one of the truest tests of leadership. And then you go through here some leadership qualities that he exuded to bring Chipotle back increasing revenue by nearly 2 billion. And then you go through items number 1234567. And one of them, I think, really resonates with me. And that one is dial into customer pain points. What I normally do if I see a post, and I read it, it's kind of a way of showing the author that I read it number one, yes. But also, that is the statement that resonates with me. So I use the copy, paste that into my comments, say, dial in, and I say quotes dial into customer pain points. That's what really resonates to me from your post does that that's nothing to do.

Richard Bliss 22:05
That's a perfect thing to do. Because now, your comment with my quote, shows up in your feed of your network. And now you have taken the part that you feel is most important to your network, put it front and center so they don't have to read the whole thing. And this is the major transformation of LinkedIn. And marketing in general is don't drive your audience to your content, put your content in front of your audience. And that's what you've done, you found the quote that was most pertinent. Here's an even a better trick, Andrew, and this is what I teach in my advanced salespeople. Let's suppose you wanted to get my attention. Let's suppose I was a prospective client. We've never met. But you see me make that post. So what you should, what you could do is do this, you actually create a post that says, I read an interesting post the other day by Richard bliss, and you tagged me in the post. Now we don't wait now. We don't know each other. I'm a prospect of yours. Here's what he had to say. And then you drop that quote in there. The reason I find this so important is because in today's world is I work with my clients, I find it so important that we understand the pain point, blah, blah, blah. I really enjoyed the read and I found this really valuable. Now, what's gonna happen as soon as you hit post, I'm gonna get notified that Andrew Stotz just mentioned me in a post. Yeah. What's the first question I asked myself?

Andrew Stotz 23:30
Oh, shoot, what is he saying?

Richard Bliss 23:32
That's the second question. First. The first question is, who's Andrew? Yeah, who is this guy? And then I go find out what he had to say. Now what's cool, then, is that you mentioned I read an interesting post by Richard bliss. you've tagged me. You mentioned what I said. But then you went on to take ownership of this conversation and talk about to your audience, when in reality, you're really talking to me, but it doesn't look like it. It looks like you're talking to your network. Hey, I found this really interesting quote by some guy, George Clooney. And here's what he said, Well, you're but you're really going after me. This is an inquiry teach this to advanced salespeople, for people for advanced sales. I have gotten feedback, Andrew, where when they have done this technique, the prospect the next day, reaches out and says, Hey, I saw your post, could we set up a call? I'd really like to talk about that thing that you posted. And, and it's been, I mean, it almost feels like cheating. But in today's world, we would do this naturally in face to face but here it's very purposeful, but it doesn't see I don't see it that way. I wouldn't see that you had done that on purpose. I would see that you shared some of my content. It was flattering. I was impressed. And then you talked about something that I found really valuable. Hey, hey, can we connect and I call this in my organization giving before asking you gave me recognition you gave me authority you gave me validation. Before you ever ask for a connection. request or an InMail, or a call anything

Andrew Stotz 25:04
GBA giving before actually asking ladies and gentlemen, are you doing that? Are you asking before giving?

Richard Bliss 25:10
What we know the answer? We know the answer to everybody's asking before giving?

Andrew Stotz 25:14
Yeah. Well, so much gold. I mean, truthfully, I don't normally go into that much detail. But I think you just have a lot of value to add. And I think you really delivered for the audience. So we really appreciate and now Oh, my pleasure, my pleasure time to share your worst investment ever. And since no one goes into their worst investment thinking it will tell us a bit about the circumstances leading up to then tell us your story.

Richard Bliss 25:39
There's a lot, a lot of different stories, I have one in particular. I had an opportunity, through some good luck, that I was part of a company that had a huge windfall, and the owner of the company, I felt that I had made a huge contribution. I wasn't a stock owner or anything like that. But I had made a huge contribution. And he gifted me or he gave me $500,000 cash as a thank you. That is a shockingly big number for someone to say thank you. But yeah, I had earned it in some ways, because he walked away with millions. And, and we were sitting, we were actually sitting in a room one time when he was. And he was a young man. And we were going through negotiations with a vendor who was looking to acquire him. And I worked for him, I was an employee, I was much older than he was. And I can remember the, the, the finance guy talking to him and asked him about the structure of the company, you know, who owned what percentage and he told them. And then the guy got a confused look on his face and looked at me says, Well, what's your share of this? And I said, I have none. And he looked at me said you're very loyal, or you're very foolish. And I gotta tell ya, that was not a fun feeling. Now, the young man I was working with had incredibly high integrity. And when the deal came through, and millions ended up in his bank account, he was generous. And came cut a check for $500,000. Well, now that's like winning the lottery. Right. I mean, that's, that's, I won the lottery, although I had to pay 50% in taxes, just so we're clear that

Andrew Stotz 27:26
you live in an interesting state in regards to taxes, I think.

Richard Bliss 27:29
Yeah, yeah. So I had, I had to, I had to give a lot of that. So now I've got $250,000 What I'm gonna do with that? Well, I paid off my taxes, I paid off my debts, student loans, things like that. I bought a new car. I bought a house. I bought some furniture. I bought some my relatives, some furniture. And in about eight months, I had zero money in the bank account. Zero. I might have had $20,000. And I think about it, but I think that even went away too. And I look back at that, because I'm in here to the young man who actually gifted that to me, he took his money and bought Cisco stock. Okay. And this was quite a few years ago and Cisco, Scott Cisco, Cisco stock was pretty low. And here I so when you talk about the worst investment I ever made, Ethan Allen furniture is the worst investment I ever made. Because I took I had no debt. I had, I had all of this cash. And I could have done so much with it. And now I have continued to make some foolish investments over time, buying houses high and selling them low continues to be a problem I had. But that one in particular. I look back and think I was a foolish young man had a family. I had kids. And I didn't have anybody around to tell me. Oh, wait, stop. You have no debt. You have no home. live within your means. And take this and set this aside. Set this up. I got a phone call right about that time from a dear friend who said hey, you've never heard of this thing. But it's called Bitcoin. I think you really should take a look at it. And this, we're talking 1520 years ago, and no, I bought Ethan Allen furniture. And it has to do with sometimes not being aware, and having mentors who are around to give you some advice. I thought it was pretty savvy and pretty smart. I look back and it was just it was so foolish. It's moved beyond pain. I can laugh about it now. But it still is shocking to think that I had all my debts paid off and I'm sitting there with a quarter of a million dollars cash just sitting in my bank account. I can remember I lived in a small community at the time. And the bank president knew who I was. I was right, he would take me to lunch. Because I had all this. There was so much going on there that the vice president of the Federal Reserve for the western United States came and visited this bank president, because at the time I had so much money going back and forth, you know, they wanted to know what was going on. But know that, Andrew, that was my most foolish, it's not even a true investment. Right. It was the most foolish use of money. And I look back, and I think today, as I look at what's going on today, and it's not the same world, but I just want young people particularly to be careful. And my children are so much more savvy with their money now. And I don't know if it's because I made such fools mistakes. But I gotta tell you, it's so there you go. I don't know does any time is that the worst? That's a pretty bad invest.

Andrew Stotz 30:57
Pretty bad one. So what lessons did you learn? How would you summarize them?

Richard Bliss 31:02
I learned that true wealth is way different than income. Right was a wealthy I was from I was for a split second, I was wealthy, but I had no way to sustain it. I had no way to sustain that level of wealth that would match Oh, hey, I've got a quarter of a million dollars in the bank account, that means I can go buy stuff. No, I had no groundwork of understanding that. And so today, I don't, I get thrilled when I've got some cash in the bank that I know doesn't have any claims on it. And my wife looks at me sometimes, because I've remarried since. And she doesn't realize just how appreciative I am, that there is money in the bank that is not going anywhere, or in the stock account or in the investment. So what I learned was small, incremental investments over time, is so much more important than large lump sums of winning the lottery or whatever. And so I focus on the consistent, timely, small, incremental steps to growing wealth and growing success, rather than trying to go hit the home run and or throw the Hail Mary or whatever it might be, because I've had that happen more than once and learn my lesson. Like the third time, I was like, Okay, enough of that.

Andrew Stotz 32:25
So maybe I'll share a few things I took away, I've been writing a lot of notes, as you've been talking since the beginning. But, you know, it kind of reminds me that there's so much value in earning our money. Now you earned it. But like that, that monthly earning of money is such a valuable thing. And I wrote a book, How to start building your wealth investing in the stock market. And, basically, you know, I explained how it's important to live below your means. But a lot of times when we what I try to teach people is that if you want to get rich, don't invest in the stock market. The stock markets where you grow your wealth, you create your wealth, usually through business, the richest people out there have businesses, that's where they created their wealth. But also, if you're earning a salary of $100,000, and you're living on $70,000, you've just created $30,000 of wealth in that year, let's say, right, created that wealth, you have created a cash machine. l businesses struggle to build cash flow, you've created it. And so focus on creating that cash machine earning that and then use the stock market to grow it. And that made me think you should have probably bought the stock of Ethan Allen rather than the furniture of Ethan now.

Richard Bliss 33:52
That's exactly right. Although I wish it would have been Apple, I wish I would have bought apple it was it was at $4 a share.

Andrew Stotz 34:02
And then you also realize it bank presidents only pay attention to cash, not furniture.

Richard Bliss 34:09
That's exactly right. That's exactly right.

Andrew Stotz 34:12
All right. So based upon what you learned from this experience, and what you continue to learn what what action would you recommend our listeners to take to avoid suffering the same fate let's just look at a situation where they do get a windfall. And this is a fireball It's like someone throwing you a fireball. Like yeah, this is gonna burn you up or what listened to Richard's advice so that you you know, you don't make this mistake, what would be that one piece of advice?

Richard Bliss 34:38
My advice would be to give it up in such a way that you can't get that it's not part of your, your daily life. And what I mean by that is to give it to a financial planner, give it to an investment broker, give it to somebody who you trust, who's going to then keep it away from you. Because in my case, there was nobody to stop me from making incredibly dumb and terrible decisions on a daily basis. And if I had just had somebody, the bank president, I know anybody that said, hey, hey, want to hear once you give, not to give me but what I'm saying is, is that get it out of your life, this windfall that you just got, yeah, one, pay off your debts, and then take whatever's left and get it out of your life, and it is not part of your living expenses. It is not part of your anything. It was easy in, easy out, you didn't have it before. So pretend like it never came, but use it to reset that this happened to me just a few years ago, Andrew is that had another windfall, but the windfall here went from, I was $700,000 in debt. And because of a windfall, I went to zero. And I gotta tell ya, I was feeling pretty happy with myself. But at that point, it was like, okay, what can I do to never, ever drop below this new setting of zero, to make sure that the end so that would be my advice is when the windfall comes in, set yourself back to zero, now get whatever is left. Do not touch it, get it out of your hands, however, that takes it even if it requires called picking up a phone and having to call somebody to get it back. Whatever, because it's, we get enamored, and I would like to think that I've learned I finally did, actually. So that's what I'm doing. Okay, now.

Andrew Stotz 36:32
So what's a resource that you'd recommend for our listeners?

Richard Bliss 36:37
So my resource that I'm going to recommend is not based on financial, but it is a book. It's a book that I have been talking about a lot. And there might be, there's gonna mention three books. Atomic habits, by James clear. You got yours right there. There you go. Absolutely. Got mine, my bookshelf, fantastic book, to change your behavior. And you've already picked up on our conversation that I really focus on advice that changes behavior. Yep. Number two, the power of habits. Yeah. Okay, Charles, and number three. Yep. And the number three is the motivational myth. The motivational myth basically is, Hey, before I do anything, I gotta get motivated. And the truth is, I got to do things, and that will motivate me. It's the actual action of getting things done that brings motivation, more than motivation to go get things done. And that is the myth. And it's incredibly powerful. So when you combine those three Tomic habits, power of habits and motivational myth, you find this triangle of reinforcement that allows you to change your life, with very easy steps back to the whole financial thing, take tiny little steps to make huge changes down the road. And that's what those three books will help your listeners do. And they've helped me tremendously

Andrew Stotz 37:54
great resource. All right. Last question, what's your number one goal for the next 12 months,

Richard Bliss 37:59
I just set that goal with my team. From a business standpoint, we doubled our revenue last year, we're looking to double our revenue again, this year, it said, I picked the word of the year. And the Word of the Year for the company is audacious. Our fundamental year word for our company is empowerment. We believe in empowering our employees, I publish, I pay my employees, because we write a lot for executives and that type of thing, I pay my employees to write books for themselves. I pay them to sit down and write their own book, we edit it, we publish it, so that they can be a published author and feel good about themselves. And I really enjoy that. But the goals that we have set this year for the company is to continue this trajectory of growth that we've had, because we've you've heard my value that I've delivered here to your listeners. Yep. And this is really resonating with a lot of my clients. And then the other one is to get my two oldest daughters married off, I have two weddings coming up for my two of my five daughters decided to get married within weeks of each other in two different places in the United States. So that's the other big goal that I have. So that would that would be my goals. Yeah.

Andrew Stotz 39:07
So my word for the year, ladies and gentlemen, is Richard. A lot of value that you got listeners, and there you have it another story of loss to keep you winning. If you haven't taken the risk reduction assessment, I've challenged you to go to my worst investment ever.com right now and start building your wealth the easy way by reducing risk. As we conclude, Richard, I want to thank you again for joining our mission. On behalf of a Stotz Academy, I hereby award you alumni status for turning your worst investment ever into your best teaching moment. Do you have any parting words for the audience?

Richard Bliss 39:41
It was a pleasure to be here, Andrew and I encourage people to reach out if they have any questions, feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn and I'd be more than willing to answer any questions you might have. Take

Andrew Stotz 39:50
him up on that ladies and gentlemen, that's a wrap on another great story to help us create, grow and protect our wealth. Remember ladies and gentlemen, this podcast is about one guest one story mission to help 1 million people reduce risk in their lives fellow risk takers this is your worst podcast host Andrew Stotz sang I'll see you on the upside.