We live these realities where life goes on day after day, week after week, month after month, and we just think that's the way it is because it's always been that way. And guess what? It's all good until it's not. This is Boosting your Financial IQ, where I help business professionals with financial responsibility to elevate their careers and run profitable companies. My hope is that you'll apply these lessons to achieve your greatest ambitions. Cheers and enjoy. Lessons to achieve your greatest ambitions, cheers and enjoy.

The one truth I'll never stop sharing is this Financial literacy will have a major impact on your personal and professional life. Yet so many people know this, they just struggle to do anything about it. So I mentioned at the beginning of the year that I made my financial pro program that's a mouthful, a little tongue twister there at byfiqcom absolutely free. So you could go to byfiqcom, sign up for the financial pro program, and I assume a lot of you who are listening have already done that. Here's the deal, though Guess what we get to see the stats of the number of people who start the program in, those that finish right or even those that make it past level one. Remember there are six levels to go through. After level six, you become a financial pro. Now here's my observation and I can be entirely wrong. This is just my observation, though, is that people start the program, they're excited, they want to increase their financial literacy, they want to change their financial position, they want a better financial life, and then they get into the brass tacks of things, which is work right, you have to work, you have to learn, you have to grow, you have to build skills, and then, oftentimes, people get distracted or they look for another shortcut to get there. But guess what I can tell you there's no shortcut. There's no shortcut to success.

In fact, I used to listen to the podcast by Guy Raz on NPR. It's called how I Built this Great podcast, if you haven't listened to it and I used to listen to it while I would go on these runs, and so I was running multiple times a week, and I would listen to a new episode every single day, and that was like my treat, right, and what I realized during this timeframe? I listened to stories of over a hundred entrepreneurs, from the founder of Instagram to Nike, et cetera. All the way down the line, all different types of companies. And here's the common theme all the way down the line all different types of companies and here's the common theme. All these entrepreneurs went through hell and back to launch their business and to make it successful.

I can't tell you of one story. Maybe you know of a story out there, but I haven't heard this story where an entrepreneur is like, hmm, I want to create an app. So they create an app. Next thing, you know, they have a million downloads, they have all this cash flow coming in and they strike it rich. It just doesn't happen.

In fact, if you haven't read the book shoe dog about Phil Knight and Nike, it's incredible. Definitely check it out. It's one of my favorites. And in that book, phil Knight's talking about how he was constantly running out of cash. I mean, they were leveraging everything. They even went to vendors and they're like, hey look, I need help covering payroll, so we need to change our terms. And he did all of this in order to make his business work right. So when you hear stories from these successful people, they talk about cashflow, knowing the numbers, having KPIs and guess what. This doesn't come naturally to most people, but it requires work.

I've told you this before, but when I started my first company at the age of 16 out of my sister's garage. I didn't know I was going to build it into a multimillion dollar company. The sad part is is, when I was running the business, I had no clue how to read financial statements. That's why I'm so passionate about this, because I left so much money on the table and I made a ton of mistakes. And look, I'm okay with that because I learned in the process. But what I'm not okay with is that my mistakes impacted the lives of people that I truly love and care about, and I'm not okay with that. That's unacceptable.

As leaders, we have a fiduciary responsibility Not to become nerds right, doing debits and credits and understanding the IRS tax code but we have a fiduciary responsibility to understand the story behind the numbers, so then we could take action, focused action, so we're not wasting people's time doing activities that aren't going to have a big impact. That's our responsibility and it takes work. So when I say this is the one truth, like I'll never stop sharing, it's that financial literacy will have a major impact on the quality of your financial life. That's why I give away so much of my content for free Over a hundred video lessons. You know how much time and money that took to produce this program. I made it all for free because my mission is simple Empower the lives of 10 million people or more with financial literacy.

So, getting into the financial probe program, going back to that, and I look at the stats, like, you start this program, which is great, right, a lot of you start this program. A lot of you make good progress. My concern is for those who start the program and then they go off to the next thing. It's like the shiny object syndrome. Right, you start something and you see something over here that seems more appealing and then you switch gears. Well, guess what? It'll be very difficult to be successful if you keep doing that.

I think I've shared this analogy before. But imagine if I start playing the violin, I have, like no musical talent. Okay, I got a guitar years ago and didn't really work out that well, I just haven't put the time in. I guess I should say, let's say I'm like all right, I want to learn how to play the violin and I take lessons for a month and then a friend tells me about the piano and then I switch over to the piano for a couple months and then I see another friend playing the drums and I'm like, ooh, that's kind of cool, and I start playing the drums.

Well, guess what? I'm going to suck at all of them, and that's what we tend to do. Sometimes I'm guilty of the same thing. That's why I'm so fanatical about this. But you're never, ever going to get good at something If you're constantly switching. And there's so many distractions out there. There's so many people talking about how to get rich and all this other garbage. Well, guess what? Get rich quick, get poor quick. And especially the younger generation people reach out to me and they're like Steve, give me advice. Like I want to make a bunch of money. How do I do that? I'm like go work hard, go build skills, go get a ton of experience. That's how you do it. Trading, crypto, getting into real estate Sure, there's going to be a few of you who may get lucky with that, but you could go to Vegas and get lucky too.

I was at a basketball game the other day with my kids. We love basketball as a family and the same kind of thing is true here. It's like you shoot a basket, like somebody shoots a basket and they make it. They shoot another basket, they make it. They shoot another basket and they make it and you just assume that's just the reality, like they're going to make every shot and then they miss a three pointer and it's like, oh my gosh, what the heck. And the same thing is true with life. We, and the same thing is true with life. We live these realities where life goes on day after day, week after week, month after month, and we just think that's the way it is, because it's always been that way. And guess what? It's all good until it's not.

And I found myself in similar situations, like you're going, and you're going, and you're going, you lose a job, you miss out on opportunity or life smacks you in the head. That's the worst time to go out there and to build skills. You have to build skills now. So I'm so fanatical about financial literacy because I've worked with so many CEOs and a lot of these CEOs are in their forties or fifties and they're like, wow, steve, I wish I would have learned this stuff back in school. I wish I would have met you five years ago. I wish I would have done this 10 years ago, whatever it is, but it's this regret that they didn't build skills early on and they didn't start earlier. So guess what? Yeah, going through a hundred video lessons is tough, and Netflix is probably so much more appealing than a bald guy like me talking about finance with a marker in front of a whiteboard.

But here's my promise to you If you build better skills, your life will improve. Now, what's in it for me? Like nothing's in it for you. If you build better skills, your life will improve. Now what's in it for me? Like nothing's in it for me. You go and take the financial pro program. Like sure, I care about your wellbeing, but like what does it benefit me? Why am I so fanatical about this? The reason why I'm fanatical about this is because I actually care about you. I care about you and I care about people. I love people and I want people to be successful. So that's my clarion call today is just do the hard things, do the hard things. Netflix will always be there. Your social media Facebook, instagram, tiktok, whatever you indulge in will always be there. But it's all about building skills. It's all about building skills, and these skills will take you to incredible places. That's my promise to you. All right, I hope you have a fantastic week and until next time, take care of yourself. Cheers.