If you really want to achieve wealth, it comes through business Growing a business, having equity participation in a business, investing in equities of public companies, whatever it is but it's through business. That's just my opinion. This is BYFIQ. Wealth and success come from understanding how finance works in business, and together we'll explore the most important topics to 10X your financial results. My hope is that we can work together soon. Please share and enjoy Today. I want to do something a little different in this episode because, first of all, I want to give you a sneak peek behind the curtain and share something personal with you, and then, second, what I'm going to share with you will also benefit you in your personal and professional life and give you clear direction and more access to tools and resources. Sound good, okay, great. So check this out.

I run two podcasts I don't know if you knew this. It's called Boosting your Financial IQ and Business Strategy. Now, here's just a little bit of background on this. When I started the Boosting your Financial IQ podcast, I did it because, before I was teaching these workshops called boosting your financial IQ, I would go into companies and I would sit down with their teams. Sometimes it's just their executive team, sometimes it's more expansive, it's the whole company. And I would teach boosting your financial IQ. I would show them how to read financial statements, how to set KPIs and how to just become more financially literate so then they can make better decisions in their companies. So that's what I was doing.

Then one day I came up with this idea. I was like you know what? I should make a podcast and I should record a few episodes about how to read the income statement, the balance sheet, the statement of cash flows, about working capital, et cetera. So I did that. Then I throw this podcast out there I don't do any sales and marketing and at first I got like two downloads my sister and my mom oh my gosh, they're so sweet to me, right and I was like, okay, all right. So then as time went on, it went to like two to 10, to like 50, to like a hundred and I was like, oh, wow, this is great. Like a hundred people are tuning in and downloading this podcast. Like there may be something here. But I was also working at a FinTech company as a CFO and I was growing the business, I was buying a bunch of companies and you know I was crazy busy, so I wasn't doing any episodes, I just had those 10 episodes just sitting there. And then, as time went on, I'd get these download reports. It's like okay, 500, 750, a thousand, 2000, 3000, 5,000. I was like, oh my gosh, I'm onto something here. I'm getting thousands of downloads a day across the world.

And then people like you were reaching out and giving me feedback about how the podcast was impacting their lives and I was like, wow, this is really really cool. Never expected it. I know people struggle with business finance. I just didn't think that many people would be interested in listening to a podcast about finance on the go. But then I mean it's crazy. Like I'd have people reach out and they're like hey, steve, I was working out the other day listening to your podcast and I was like, oh my gosh, you like, I heart you, I love you, like that's what I do. I run and I listen to audio books like biographies, and I listen to podcasts and finance stuff. I'm a nerd on the beach on vacation with a highlighter, like reading a book about credit default swaps, and so like, okay, there's more people like me out there, that that's reassuring or it's scary, whatever. But I'm like, okay, this is really taking off.

So then I decided to launch a website called boosting your financial IQ, b, y, f, I, q. You hear me talk about it in my videos and in my episodes, podcast episodes. So I launched this website and on the website I started to create courses so people could go to the website and then take courses and educate themselves in the world of business finance. And at first it's like, okay, I'll do some business finance, I'll do some personal finance, and that's why, if you go back to my earlier episodes on this podcast, you'll notice I do some episodes about stocks and 401ks.

But then I realized you know what, the true upside, if you really want to achieve wealth, it comes through business Growing a business, having equity participation in a business, investing in equities of public companies, whatever it is. It comes through business growing a business, having equity participation in a business, investing in equities of public companies, whatever it is, but it's through business. That's just my opinion. So then I just narrowed in on business finance. So I work with companies all the time and their president or their CEO may say, hey, I want access to the program, and then they'll take the program and I'm like, okay, cool, it's adding value and I don't have to do it in person as much. So that's a little bit of a backstory about boosting your financial IQ.

Now, it doesn't mean I just got lucky, because sometimes people reach out and they're like, hey, I want to talk to you about creating a podcast, like, yeah, I just want to do a podcast. They do 10 episodes. They realize, oh my gosh, this is hard, it's expensive, it takes a lot of time to edit. There's just all this grind, like I give up. But for me I think I've done over 200 episodes at this point and it's taken a lot of work, a ton of money. I lose a lot of money with boosting your financial IQ because I don't care Like I care about educating people. This is mission driven and, trust me, the amount of time and the effort and the resources I put to boosting your financial IQ doesn't necessarily equal a sufficient return. Okay, I'll just say that. But it does impact the lives of people, so I appreciate when people reach out.

So if you're listening to this and you're like Steve, I'm going to just drop you a line on LinkedIn. It means the world to me, right? It's not like I need my ego stroked or anything. I just I like to hear your story. Some people will reach out. They're like Steve, I just got into business school, love the podcast, just got this new job just turned around my business, whatever it is. I just I love to hear these stories and to know that it's impacting people's lives. But here's the deal it's also impacting my life because I'm running Boost your Financial IQ and I'm running another podcast called Business Strategy. Now Business Strategy is an audience of entrepreneurs, founders, owners, ceos. These are people who are running businesses. They tune into Business Strategy.

So this is what I want to talk about here in this episode. That's my personal life. Like trying to run two podcasts, as you can imagine, is a lot of work. Right, it's a lot of work, and putting together these courses for you at BYFIQ takes a ton of time. But I'm happy to do it because, like, literally, I believe with my whole heart, okay, that taking financial courses if I would have done this earlier on in my career, it would have made all the difference in the world.

So I want you to fast track your way to business literacy and you do that by taking courses. Now you could go to school. Sure, that's what I did. I got my undergrad in accounting and finance, got my master's in accountancy, got my CPA, got my MBA from Duke. I did all this stuff. I spent probably an equivalent amount of time as a doctor does at school learning numbers, and I just distill it down, I make it very simple. That's what I do, but it takes so much time for me and my team, while on the other hand, I have this business Cultivar. Cultivar is all about providing a system to businesses to help them to grow and to turn around, and that's really where the upside is.

So that's what I wanted to share with you, because you may not know my whole backstory, like what I do, but like I've been terrible with my sleep. You know I was getting like five hours of sleep, sometimes four hours of sleep, and I'm like, oh my gosh, this is probably not safe to be driving a car on like four and a half hours of sleep and I was just killing myself. Now I've pared down the Boosting your Financial IQ podcast. I used to do like two episodes a week. Now that's pared down, but I'm going to really focus my efforts and my time on business strategy. So that podcast is called Business Strategy and Finance. It's for business owners, entrepreneurs or those who are aspiring to run their own businesses one day, and there I teach principles of strategy and finance together so you can get the same value, you can get the same information. But it's going to be more relevant to you if you're running a business. So I'm telling you, if you're listening to this, if you want to listen to both podcasts, that's fine, but I'm directing you to the business strategy and finance podcast, okay. So be sure to check that out and I think it's going to be so much more helpful for you Over time.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with boosting your financial IQ. You may convince me, otherwise I'm not sure if I'm not going to just kill it right now. Don't worry, I'm going to still produce episodes, but I want you to get inside my head so you know what I'm thinking. So if one day down the road I'm like, okay, I'm putting it on pause, you can be like I remember Steve saying that three months ago. So that's where I'm at boosting your financial IQ, the website will still exist and, like I said, it's not like it's a huge moneymaker, but it does exist out there for people to get financial education at a very low cost from a CFO right. So I still believe in that mission and I still believe in the product and service that it offers. I'm just telling you that I'm going to be focusing more of my time and effort on the business strategy and finance podcast, so I'd love to see you over there at some point.

All right, that's what I wanted to share with you today. Be on the lookout for the next Boosting your Financial IQ episode, because it's going to be great. I'm going to still provide content but, like I said, just wanted to give you a little bit of a heads up, and those tools and resources that you find either at cultivarcom or on that podcast will make all the difference in the world in your business. All right, that's all I have. Thank you so much for joining me, and it means the world to me that you're a part of this community. All right, until next episode. Cheers.