One day you'll be my age and you'll look back and you'll either be so grateful for the sacrifices you made or you'll regret the decisions you made early on, because it's really hard to fix. This podcast, boosting your Financial IQ, is about business, financial literacy, strategies for profitability and the principles taught at byfiq. com. My hope is that you'll apply the lessons learned and that we can work together soon in my mastery program. Enjoy the show and don't forget to subscribe. If you're between 15 and 25 years old, this episode is for you. Think about it. Over the next 10 years, so many life changes are going to be coming your way, which is really exciting, right? I mean you may be graduating from high school, starting college or vocational training, graduating from college, getting your first job, moving out of your parents' house, starting a serious relationship, getting married for some, buying a car, renting or buying a first home, traveling and exploring the world and maybe having some children, just to name a few. I mean these are crazy milestones that will be coming your way Now. Look, the decisions you make early on in life will have a radical impact on your future.

When I was 16 years old, I left home right. I moved out of my mom's house. I love my mom to death has nothing to do with my mom. She's just married to this total punk and he was like it's either my way or the highway, steve. So I chose the highway. So I left home $0, no safety net whatsoever, right, none. My mom had zero money. She's basically a single mom for most of my upbringing and the guy that she married trust me, he was not contributing, okay, so there's no safety net whatsoever. So I go and live with my sister, I move into her house, I move into her basement she was so sweet just to let me live with her. But here's the deal there are no windows. In fact it's the laundry room converted into a bedroom. It's a little ghetto, but hey, it worked and I love my sister and is very comfortable and I got to live with her and her husband and her kids, which was a huge blessing.

Anyways, I was working at Dairy Queen making $4.25 an hour that was minimum wage at the time, which is crazy to think. You know, you work like 40 hours a week and you make like 160 bucks and then you pay taxes and then you walk away with practically nothing. And I remember my boss. One day he came up to me. He's like, steve, you know you're doing such a great job that I'm going to give you a raise. I'm going to bump you up by 10 cents an hour to 435. And I was like, oh, thanks a lot, buddy. That's like so generous of you, thanks for giving me $4 a week. So, all right, so that was my situation.

I was like I got to do something different here. And that's when one of my friends came to me and he said, steve, I work for a sprinkler company. And I was like, what the heck is a sprinkler company? He's like we dig holes in the ground, we lay piping and we put in automatic sprinklers so people could water their grass. And I was like, oh, okay, that's interesting because where I came from in California, we were poor and we didn't have a sprinkler system. We just had a hose and a little sprinkler attached to it.

So I decided to go work with him and I was making 10 bucks an hour and I was able to take my shirt off which was cool for somebody in high school and get, you know, really a sunburn, because I don't really tan. Believe it or not, you see me now. I'm a bald headed guy, but I used to have red hair and my skin is very fair, right. Oftentimes I get so pale. People probably think I look like a polar bear that just escaped from Antarctica. But nonetheless, here I was, working this job, making $10 an hour, and I did that for a couple summers.

And then I went back my junior year and guess what? They were gone out of business and I was like what the heck am I going to do? And I started handing out business cards for my own sprinkler company and I started getting some calls and I charged $50 an hour and then I marked up the parts like double. So I was making pretty good money, you know, especially for that age and especially compared to four 25 an hour. All right, I don't mean to bore you with my life. You know, everybody has their own challenges in their lives. Trust me, I share all this because at the time I was just doubling down on my business. So all my friends, they were going out, they're partying, they're sleeping in, they're doing all these things which, hey, no harm, no foul, no shame to you if this is what you do, but for me I was out there busting my butt, handing out flyers, making myself vulnerable like knocking on doors and being rejected all the time and it wasn't easy. But I learned tremendous skills and I was able to grow my business. And little did I know that I was going to grow it into a multimillion dollar company and that was my first business.

My point is is that all those sacrifices that I made in the early days, I had no clue that they would have a major impact right on my life today. So when I was 16 years old running my company, I grew into a multimillion dollar business. Like I told you, I had no clue how to read financial statements right. I had no clue. So I'd get the financial statements from my accountant and I would look at them, ensure I could understand revenue, the top line and profit, but anything in between. Yeah, I had no clue what they said. Think about a balance sheet I had no idea what that was all about and a statement of cash flows yeah, forget about it. So here I was, running this multimillion dollar company, making tons of mistakes and leaving a lot of money on the table just because I didn't understand the story behind the numbers and the levers to pull to impact profit. Why do you think I'm so passionate about boosting your financial IQ. So all those experiences, like all those sacrifices that I made early on, paid huge dividends.

Now, after all this right, I dropped out of college, in fact, when I was a junior right. It's nothing to be proud of, but that was me. My business was exploding and I decided to grow my business, so that's why I left school. Later on, I went back to school and I finished. I got my undergrad in accounting and finance, got my master's in accounting and then got my MBA from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University. So I went back and I finished my school.

I spent eight years of my life studying numbers, which I'm grateful for, but I made a ton of sacrifices along the way. So, like in my twenties here, I was growing this business. Right. Even in my mid twenties, I was making a ton of sacrifices, because then I was running my business and then I was going back to school. And then in my thirties I went back to school some more and at this time I had a kid and I had this business that I was growing and I was just killing myself Oftentimes. I remember there were nights when I would leave grad school after studying in the library until 11 o'clock and I'd be one of the last students on campus. I'd walk to my car in the dark and then I'd drive home and then I'd go to bed for like five hours and I'd wake up, do my business, go to school, study and repeat all over again, over and over, for like two years, and these sacrifices that I made during this timeframe allowed me to be where I am today, right?

So some people will come to me and they ask for advice, right, career advice? Or they're like Steve, how did you do this, like, so quickly? I'm like I didn't do it quickly. If you would have saw me back in the day, you know I was broke as a joke and I was busting my butt and it just took so much time to get to where I am today. So what you see about me today, steve Cochran took years to get to this point, even as it relates to accounting and finance, like I'm, I'm so passionate about this topic, but, look, I've spent thousands and thousands of hours of my life in spreadsheets. So when I'm building a financial model and I could like bust it out super quick, trust me, I was nowhere close to where I am today when I first started. So I share all this because I want you to know that the decisions you make right now, fortunately or unfortunately, will have a major impact on the rest of your life, right when you go to school, how well you do in school, what job you take, what friends you hang around with, who you choose to start a serious relationship with, a romantic relationship, where you live, where you travel, et cetera. Like all these things are going to play out, and one day you'll be my age, I'm 45 years old, and you'll look back and you'll either be so grateful for the sacrifices you made or you'll regret the decisions you made early on, because it's really hard to fix Now.

In my ecclesiastical responsibilities at church, oftentimes I have the opportunity to work with individuals who are struggling, you know, with their personal lives, and sometimes that relates to their finances. So years ago I was in this volunteer position for my church and it was called the employment specialist. So I would work with individuals who were struggling to find employment and oftentimes, sadly, I was working with older individuals and when I looked at their experience and their resume more specifically, I realized that there was a massive skills gap or an education gap which was preventing them from earning the living that they needed to in order to sustain their family and to sustain their life. So it's really hard to go tell a 55 year old to go back to school or tell a 60 year old to make better decisions back in the day, to build different skills Right so early on. Like right now is the time to grind.

And in my family I'm remarried and between the two of us, my wife and I, have five children, and one of my stepchildren came to me and he was asking for some help with starting a business, and I'm like so bullish on this for the younger generation like starting your own business. Like back in the day I started my business, but in order to advertise my company, I had to like hand out flyers and print business cards and and do a lot of one-on-one sales. And nowadays we have the internet, we have YouTube, we have social media, we have paid ads. We have all these resources right in front of us. So it's so easy to start a business. And so I helped him last weekend to set up his business. We created articles of organization, we set up his employer identification number, we created a logo, a name for his company. We even set up a website and I integrated some widgets and technology so people could go to his website and schedule with him.

And it was really fun, like I had a lot of fun with him and I thought, wow, like I am so proud of you right now, like this is so cool that you are taking the time to build your own business, to sacrifice, like, your own money and your time to build this, while your other friends are out jacking around. Now, don't hear me wrong, because it's fine to have fun. I'm not saying you have to just work, work, work, but I'm telling you the decisions you make right now are going to have a major impact on your future life. So I've had a lot of people reach out through my LinkedIn. They'll send me private messages and one guy in particular. He is still in high school and he was telling me about this business that he started and how he's already made several thousand dollars, and I was like God, it's so cool, that's so neat. So keep up the good work.

If you're listening to this and you're thinking about starting a business, it could be a great thing for you, especially when you're young and there. But I would just encourage you to build skills, like double down on your skill sets and your education, because you'll tap into that over and over again into the future. And right now, like I'm so glad that I put in the sacrifice, even when my kids were young, like I had two kids, I was finishing up my MBA, I was running my business, I wrote a book and I was like, oh yeah, I should run a marathon in the meantime. So I'm like crazy, that's why I'm bald, cause I lost my hair, cause I'm just so stressed and I'm just kidding. But, being dead serious, this is where you should be investing so much of your time, energy and money into your education. And I'm not talking about just traditional education, I'm talking about any education that will allow you to build better skills.

So when I went back to school to learn accounting and finance and how numbers worked, I did it with the intention of applying that to business and I could tell you I've spent a lot of money on education but also I've gained the skills that have allowed me to be successful in business and turning around and growing companies. So I made an announcement the other week about this free program, the financial pro. So if you go to byfiqcom, I made all my courses free, and this isn't some gimmick or marketing ploy for you to like go and download a course and I'm just going to give you like my half best stuff. This is like my best stuff, right, you could take it for free. There's over a hundred video lessons and if you take all of it, I promise you you will learn finance in a way that you could apply to your career, to a business, just to life, and it will make you so much money into the future and in the present. So that's my invitation to you.

I just wanted to share my thoughts, what's on my heart, because I have young kids, I mentor young kids and I know a lot of people who tune into the platform, maybe including you, are younger and you're seeking advice in life. So I just say, like, grind it out, like make the sacrifices. Sometimes you have to say no to your friends and you may think, well, I'm not going to have friends. Well, guess what? A lot of the friends that I had like the quote air, quote friends, so-called friends I had they're not around. I have, like, one friend from high school that I still keep in contact with.

So, friends come and go, but the skills and the experiences and the education that you gain right now will stick with you for the rest of your life, and I just don't want you to have any regrets. So grind it out, work really hard and spend the time like learning, because it will make all the difference in the world, and I care about you. I care about you, I want you to be successful and I'm glad that you're part of this community and I'm so glad that you tune in to this podcast. All right, have a great week and be sure to check out that financial pro course that I was telling you about. It's totally free, it's all for you, it's all made for you, and reach out if you need anything. Cheers.