12: Cash Flow 101 for Entrepreneurs with Brandon Neely
Behind Their Success Ep 12
Brandon Neely: [00:00:00]The reason most businesses fail, most entrepreneurs fail is because they're in a world of chaos.
Paden Squires:, I'm Paden Squires, and I'm the host of the podcast. This podcast is for those who are dissatisfied with where they are at in their life and career currently. I used to be one. When I got out of college with my master's degree, I started working in banking. I eventually moved to a Fortune 500 company.
I quickly found out being an employee was not for me. I was bored out of my mind and did not like it whatsoever. Something eventually lit a fire under me. I started studying for the CPA exam, listening to podcasts, and reading books every day. By doing that, I had passed all four parts of the CPA exam in eight months and quit my job.
I opened up my own tax firm, having never been paid to do someone's taxes. That was in 2014. Since then, I've consistently grown my business. Had a lot of success in other business ventures, including real estate, property management, [00:01:00] among other things. And now, I'm looking for a new venture. I want to help inspire you and other entrepreneurs to achieve their potentials and dreams, as well as learn from the stories of these entrepreneurs, as to see what has gone well, and what hasn't gone well for them.
Let's go create a bunch of healthy, wealthy, and wise entrepreneurs.
Paden Squires: Guys, welcome back to Behind Their Success. I'm the host, Paden Squires. Today we have on the podcast, Brandon Neely. He and his wife, Amanda, host a podcast called Wealth Wisdom Financial. There, they discuss topics like how a banker's mindset can help you be profitable in any economy, how to defeat financial confusion, anxiety, overwhelm, and stress, and how to start a profit habit that ends entrepreneurial poverty.
Paden Squires: You can also find them on YouTube where they share all these episodes as well. Personally, I'm excited to see other people [00:02:00] that are on the internet trying to spread financial knowledge, just around money and personal finance. That's obviously a passion of mine and I'm happy to see other people like Brandon doing the same.
Paden Squires: So on the podcast.
Brandon Neely: Hey, Peyton. Thanks for having me and I'm excited to be here. And I know you and I are connected to the same mastermind group. So I know we're like minded and thinking about our families, fitness, faith, all of those kinds of areas. but we're both in the money world. So it's kind of weird to be in the money world and also in that kind of group.
Paden Squires: give us a little bit of your background, kind of where you came from and kind of. Where you're at now, and a little bit of the detail in between how you got there.
Brandon Neely: Yeah. So I was raised by a single mom, right as a kid. My mom was married multiple times. That probably affected me in all kinds of ways.
Brandon Neely: and then I joined the Marine Corps. I was in the Marine Corps right afterwards because I was again, single mom. I'm like, Hey, let's figure out how to be a dad or find out where a [00:03:00] man is. they're all Marines. Apparently. That makes sense. Also, Backwards, I was a sick child, so I was told I would never be able to run, never do all this stuff.
Brandon Neely: So I, of course, joined the hardest service out there, and I got out of the Marine Corps on misconduct for marijuana, which is, don't do marijuana, drugs are bad, kids. but I, got out and was like, all right, what do I do now? I ended up in the music industry of all things. because I was like, Oh, music changes people's lives.
Brandon Neely: I want to do that. And so I was in the music industry, worked with some big time celebrities, said, man, this blackens my soul. I needed out of this thing, and ended up planting a church of all things after that, which is crazy. and starting a coffee shop, it was called overflow, was really great experience.
Brandon Neely: Overflow was awesome. but I learned I can't overflow if I don't take care of me. and we were doing everything. This is where we were on [00:04:00] the edge of burnout. I'm saying we, because along that road, I met my wife and we started this together, right? And we are in business together now.
Brandon Neely: but we've been married for almost 18 years, in business together for almost 12 of those. which is amazing, but we. I went to this coffee shop. awesome. I loved it. It was a great experience and I will never ever do it again. taught me a lot of what to do and what not to do.
Brandon Neely: And now I'm, I fast forward, I moved into how to use. What I learned in that industry to help others and I came across two concepts, in the coffee world, which is crazy. The infinite banking, banking yourself concept that really helped me sell the business and not close the business, because of some things that happen and, the profit first model, which led me to say, Oh, I need to make sure I'm [00:05:00] paying myself.
Brandon Neely: That's important. and then. Afterwards, as we were deciding to sell and some unfortunate events that happened, we also were caretakers of my mother in law, still caretakers of her, and we were expecting a child,and we're like, Oh, things need to shift. And so we shifted into wealth, wisdom, financial of all things.
Paden Squires: So tell me a little bit about Wealth Wisdom Financial. I know you guys create, you know, create a podcast, you got YouTube going on. Just tell me what's the passion, what's the drive behind that. And maybe just a little bit, like what you guys talk about on there.
Brandon Neely: What I've learned is a lot of businesses, I know Mike Michalowicz, he knows the stats, right? From Profit First. A lot of businesses fail. I don't remember the exact numbers, but a whole lot of businesses, ideas of people who want to go into business, most of them don't make it. And then if they do make it past five years, they don't make it toAnd often the biggest reason was cash flow. That was us, saying, okay, I needed to make sure that I had access to capital, not [00:06:00] when I'm 60, but when I was younger, I needed to have money available in case I needed it. And so merging this infinite banking concept of my biggest risk was me. My biggest investment was me, and putting into this policy, life insurance policy of all things, which people will turn off and say, Oh, that's stupid.
Brandon Neely: That's a scam, whatever. People will say that this saved our business because I was able to access the capital to overcome high interest debt. Because let's be honest, when you're a business owner, banks love to give you money when you, Don't need it. But when you need it, they won't and it's going to cost a lot of money, right?
Brandon Neely: And banks are the most profitable business in the world for a reason. So how do you understand that and you know You're in the tax world? I swear to God. This annoyed me. I would be paying Uncle Sam, this tax guy who never showed up to work all the [00:07:00] time at this coffee shop and credit card companies on processing fees.
Brandon Neely: And I'm like, what the heck? And I'm making nothing. This is stupid.and these guys never showed up to work. And so I learned about that, moved into the finance world. I remember applying. My mentor and I said, “Hey, I'm going to sell this business. What about if I work with you? And he said, no, you're too entrepreneurial.”
Brandon Neely: I was like, but the heck I believe in the system. I keep sending you leads. And then later he comes to me while my wife is seven months pregnant and he's like, well, I have an idea. How about you and your wife start your own agency and I'll train you. And I was like, Oh, that sounds even better. It says, then I don't have to be under you.
Brandon Neely: I think he knew that I'm not good with your compliance thing, but my wife is. so we became subagents and then started our own practice. That was almost six years ago. Has it been easy? man, I learned that Dave Ramsey loves to hate on me.
Brandon Neely: I learned all [00:08:00] kinds of stuff, but my goal. is to help my clients build foundational wealth. And it starts with the mindset of saving, right? Most people don't know how to save. Where you save is important and how you build emergency funds. I just happened to put my emergency capital into a policy instead of most people's financial pyramids upside down, their investments versus savings. They think it's savings, but it's not, it's investing and they can't access it when COVID happens or something, right?
Paden Squires: and we had this kind of discussion a little bit for, we jumped on here off air, but cash flow, like cash flow for every business, for every person.
Paden Squires: it's the king, right? Like you can have all these assets in the world and famous stories like MC hammer, I'm going way back in the reference year, you know,he had 30 million in assets and had to declare bankruptcy because like you can't, you know, you can't pay your bills with your mansion, right?
Paden Squires: Like you gotta have cash. So being able to structure [00:09:00] and when you get really. Deep into the weeds, helping somebody plan these kinds of things like the access to cash is very important, especially times of stress, right? Because in times of stress, you may be under times of stress, but also if you're in a good position and you have access to capital in times of stress, there's lots of opportunities out there for you.
Brandon Neely: Yeah, I think that's what most people don't know and why I love combining profit first And the infinite banking concept. on one of our videos. I think it was profit first. How's it going five years later and it's part two of it and I did a money matrix of how our money flows. And to be able to know with a degree of certainty, I can tell you where all my dollars are in my business and personal.
Brandon Neely: I run a pretty big business. That's it. Pretty crazy to be able to say that. And most business owners, I swear, don't even know how to read it. I would say 90 percent of business owners. As a guy
Paden Squires: that's a CPA for over a decade, the [00:10:00] financial knowledge is not there. Even with business owners, you think that, that might be there.
Brandon Neely: Here's the thing. We need to know how to make money. That's really important. Make money, that's, if you don't have any income coming in, you don't have a business, it's a hobby, right? a lot of people, I tell people, are you running a business or a hobby? Second, the most important thing is to make and keep money.
Brandon Neely: That's why you have a good, tax professional that knows how to keep it, how to change things. That's why the whole industry was created in the first place. but it's also annoying in the tax world because the tax code is bigger than the libel. And you're like, wait a second. So we need people to figure that out, a whole industry that didn't exist a hundred years ago.
Brandon Neely: that's
Paden Squires: anytime you get, massive bureaucracy and special interest and all those things. And yeah, believe me,I know enough about the tax code to know that it is infinitely complex. I could probably almost get anybody's tax return anywhere.
Paden Squires: now some very basic [00:11:00] returns are aside, but find something probably technically incorrect on it. and to me that was like, that's almost like a scary thing. It's wow, if somebody wanted to do something to me, they could, Just because, and it may be not even their own fault of their own, but, where you're just not checking some box or you're doing something technically incorrect.
Paden Squires: Yeah. It's a mess.
Brandon Neely: I think that's where it leads to our book, like when we wrote our book, the reason most people fail, most businesses fail, most entrepreneurs fail is because they're in a world of chaos. and it's confusing, haphazard, anxious, overwhelming, and stressful, right?
Brandon Neely: You might have lots of money. MC Hammer had a lot of money, but he was living in chaos, right? something was happening. people were taking money, left and right. He didn't have any idea what was going on. It was very haphazard. And later provided anxiety, overwhelming stress, right for him, What we need is a [00:12:00] inverse of that. And that's why we created our method. And the reality is our method isn't that, out of the box, right? It's really not. It is going from chaos to still, which is. we're, huge proponents of faith and in the Bible always is be still and no, and all of this.
Brandon Neely: And it sets your sights. I talk to clients all the time, business owners all the time. They have no idea where the heck they want to go, right? It’s going to Disney world is their plan. Set your sights, track, what's going in now. If you want a good marriage, you need to.track. Are you having date night?
Brandon Neely: inspect your progress, look for 1 percent adjustments and live deliberately. Combining that with profit first and infinite banking, it just makes sense, right? But it's living deliberately. I joined a mastermind deliberately,
Paden Squires: Everything comes down to just intentionality and taking the time and the space, right? You say, be still to even [00:13:00] begin to figure out like, what is my ultimate goal here? What am I trying to accomplish in my business and my marriage and faith?
Paden Squires: All these different areas. If you don't take that time. it's amazing. You can just blow past five years and really never move any closer to these ultimate goals that are wishes that you have in your head, but they stay wishes. They don't actually become goals or some action plan because you never took the time to actually do that.
Brandon Neely: and then I think it's one foot in front of the other. It's taking the little steps that the base hits, right? We don't just become, I think you're, I was listening to the interview with Chaz the other day and you don't just become the Rockefellers. It probably just, they started that, right?
Brandon Neely: They were building one step in front of the other. And then you think about these family foundations, like the Guinnesses and all of that, they built it up and then they passed it off, right? There, some things that happen, but they built that foundation. And I think that our financial [00:14:00] world is chaotic on purpose.
Brandon Neely: And there's a guy named Donald Miller. he wrote a book blue, like jazz. Yeah, he did story brand and some other things. And he says, if you confuse you lose, and I tell you, there's a lot of confused people out there who are losing.
Brandon Neely: You look at all the baby boomers and that's why it used to be called grandma's wealth, wisdom, our business. Because,look at that and say, how's that working out for most people? Maybe we need to change things and live within our means. I don't know. We don't need to buy a Tesla because everyone else has one.
Paden Squires: the average person spends like 102 percent of their income. And wonders why they broke all the time. It's almost never an income problem.
Paden Squires: it's more of the habit side of the thing. Or it's something people could make. 10 million dollars a year and they'll spend 11 and in it and until you do that examination of yourself and Decide to make some changes You're [00:15:00] gonna keep getting the same results.
Brandon Neely: think about this, people are like, I can never get out of my student loan debts.
Brandon Neely: What's the interest rate on a student?
Paden Squires: Maybe three,
Brandon Neely: four, maybe six, depending on the school, If they went to undergrad or whatever, Six at the highest rate, usually car loan. 10 at the lowest almost nowadays. And I'm like, where's all our money going? I just said it. when I do analysis for people, I'm like, you want to talk about buying cars, even using understanding cash flow.
Brandon Neely: And if I put it through a policy and buy my cars or buy my assets that are producing more assets, I prefer not to buy assets that are liabilities, rather, it's cause it's not an asset, it's a liability. But using my policies to buy other assets is really powerful. But the problem is most people don't think that way.
Brandon Neely: They think reversely and you want to know where the rich are. The rich aren't doing the things that.
Paden Squires: and, I've called it for [00:16:00] years, like the number one, like a sucker of wealth out of the middle class or vehicles. the people that continue to upgrade or have, having new vehicles all the time and then they borrow the money for it.
Paden Squires: And then, you're just setting, they're paying these debt payments with it. like I said, in current environments, high rates of interest rates on this asset that it's just, Eventually falling apart and will be worthless consumer debt like that. it just absolutely crushes people financially
Paden Squires: what would you say is your superpower? What is the number one skill that has led you? To the amount of success you've had today.
Brandon Neely: I would say I'm an eight on the Enneagram So I will keep going through if somebody says No, if I know it's best for them, I will keep going after them, which is sometimes annoying. And I'm like, dude, I know this is going to help you better than you. and it's sometimes hard for me to see train wrecks.
Brandon Neely: And so I'll keep persistent. on people, which is a good thing, but also my wife is yeah, that, just let it go. I feel like [00:17:00] I'm singing Elsa or something. Yeah, I don't have a girl.
Brandon Neely: I have a boy. so I don't do that very much. but that's one. And then I think one of my other ones is empathy, right? knowing and being in those positions, I've been raised by a single mom. I know what it means to have nothing and to have something. And I know what it means to be a business owner.
Brandon Neely: So empathy. and all of that is really important and, I have on my arm, it's a Bible verse and it's, in humility, consider others better than yourself. and really serve our clients.
Brandon Neely: That's why I'm in this, as much as people want to hate on infinite banking or profit first, or this or that, I feel like it's being disciplined. Keep going. perseverance. Those are my superpowers. combine them with a genius wife. Yeah, that's,
Paden Squires: That's good stuff. I mean,we talk about a podcast here of just perseverance, grit. It's been said a million times, like the people that are successful are the ones [00:18:00] that just kept stepping in the same direction or stepping towards whatever ultimate destination that they're heading towards. So if you could go back six years ago, what piece of advice would you give yourself, If you could tell yourself kind of one sentence, what would it be?
Brandon Neely: Be confident in you. So the reason I started when I got out of the coffee shop, and moved into the finance world, and I called it Grandma's Wealth Wisdom, is because we thought, Oh, that's a cool niche thing. That sounds awesome and fun.
Brandon Neely: Whatever. We weren't confident in ourselves. I'm like, who am I to talk about finances?I just owned a coffee shop and sold it. That was it. Nothing major. It was not even a very big thing and I sold it, but I was pretty much in poverty, right? If you're a business owner, you know what I'm talking about.
Brandon Neely: Like most People think that, Oh yeah, you're rolling in the dough. I'm like, usually asked to get paid. That's why profit first is helpful, to make sure you build the mindset. But I would tell myself, have [00:19:00] confidence in what you're doing, and step into that more and then put more in towards marketing.
Brandon Neely: I think that a lot of times We know a lot and I still, I wish I could grow my YouTube channel, but I'm talking about safe money and Yeah. It's not sexy stuff. Is it? Life insurance, so I'm like, of course it's not gonna grow. Yeah. I can't do Bitcoin and all of that and crypto, whatever, but it's.
Brandon Neely: what I'm not going to do in our content is clickbait, and the way our system is built is toxic. And I want to change lives, not create firestorms that create more chaos. I'd rather not do that. That's something I would tell myself is just.
Brandon Neely: Step into it, and I remember when we sold the business, I said, I'll never have staff again. And now we have a staff of five of us total, right? And I'm like, that was, never thought I'd do that again. And now I am.
Paden Squires: I'm right there with you on some of the social media stuff, I'm doing the podcast [00:20:00] and, I don't even necessarily even have definite plans of where this is all going.
Paden Squires: It's just a matter of, I want to share like you said, good knowledge and good stuff out there. I certainly don't want to be part of it. Like you said, the clickbait stuff is just such, it plays on everybody's emotions and just what they want to hear. It's a real problem and I don't really necessarily know what the solution is because it's like, whoever screams the loudest or says the most outrageous things.
Paden Squires: they're just going to get the most attention
Brandon Neely: I think it's scary, our stats, not just financial, but stats on depression on everything is blinking red. Like it's not, Good. and what I think it is we have a little attention span. I worry about our kids. And I'm like, all right, how do I help my son? That's again, why we wrote the book is if YouTube is gone, I want to have a playbook for him, right?
Brandon Neely: of setting the sites, tracking, being still, like seriously, okay, we don't need to watch, turn on the TV right away or a [00:21:00] game or whatever. And I think that's an epidemic in us and also realizing what you think, just may not be so when it comes to infinite banking.
Brandon Neely: When it comes to profit first, when it comes to any of this, be around people that have been there and then question everything. but I also know me and my son, I want to build a place where my kid is not going to have the same place. That I wasn't raised by a single mom who has multiple marriages and all of that.
Brandon Neely: I've been with my wife for 18 years. You're going to be like, so till we die and I know I have a son who is going to inherit a lot, right? How do I prepare him for that? That's on me as a parent, not on the school system, not on any of that. I'm like, how do I educate him? And he knows,I literally just the other day, I interviewed him for a job because it was part of our family adventure things.
Brandon Neely: and I [00:22:00] interviewed him as a content creator for wealth, wisdom, financial, just for fun. And teaching them some of those things. but what I love about what we're doing and what I think most people need to do is put in the big rocks, the big things that matter, whether it's your family, your business, whatever those things are, and then fill it in with social media at the very end, right?
Brandon Neely: But most of the time people are putting in
content. Yeah.
Brandon Neely: YouTube content or this content or that content, and they're not putting in the foundational rocks in place.
Paden Squires: especially around the kids, and I've had conversations in previous episodes about that and just social media and kids and, yeah, it concerns me, you know, as a father of seven year old and a six year old and a four year old that, I don't think we understand the long term consequences of, What that does to even small brains like that, because the, you know, the younger kids now are the first generations where that stuff is just really full blown in their face all the time.
Paden Squires: how just, the dopamine addictions and all the things that are [00:23:00] going on underneath the surface, be interesting to see the consequences of all that.
Brandon Neely: I was thinking about this on food, right? Just thinking about it from the consumption of milk, for example, I watched a documentary on Netflix, with two twins.
Brandon Neely: I forget what it's called, but it's about vegans and meat eaters. And I was like, Hmm, that's interesting. Maybe our drinking milk has caused certain things within us as a culture and society to change our insights, right?
Brandon Neely: I don't know about milk because I don't think Japanese people drink milk as much. It wasn't in their diet and they live to be a million years old. Does milk actually make you live longer? According to that data, no,but I could be wrong. I don't go off and use my health. We definitely don't know what we're talking about, but I'm just saying.
Brandon Neely: Maybe if that is eating meat, right? The correlation of eating meat, we didn't eat as much meat previously. [00:24:00] maybe that affects us, human health wise. And I wonder about technology, how that's altering our brains. And now we're all going to turn into those characters at some point,
Paden Squires: It's so interesting. my piece of advice would just be as intentional as possible and we've really got there at my, we were probably a little more lackadaisical around that even the last few years, but recently it's really, it's like, yeah, the TV doesn't need to go on the, go.
Paden Squires: go, do whatever. we limit screen time just to make, just to try to protect them from this as much as possible.
Brandon Neely: But it is hard. I will say it's easier to, again, not track your numbers. It's easier to just go say, make money. It's easier to go do the other things and say, Oh, don't worry about it.
Brandon Neely: I tell you. I've used the screen as a babysitter more times than I would like, I just don't have the bandwidth and here you go. and then you're like, wait a second, am I? And I know personally, I do it to myself, right? We self sabotage.
Brandon Neely: You have to make [00:25:00] sure you're starting to write what you want as a parent or as a family or financially, and then put those things in and things that are going to happen, right? That's reality. but, if you don't pre decision those things,
Paden Squires: if you don't make a plan, you're going to be part of someone else's plan. and I think the overarching theme that we've been talking about the whole time is really just intentionality and doing that thinking before so you already know. What you're going to do in the moment
Brandon Neely: That's where I am even in my policies. I have a cash flow I use YNAB you need a budget and I can tell you what I'm gonna use To deploy it and I'll use my cash value to do a private money loan or things like that I've already predetermined what I'm gonna do with it and I'm thinking in a year from now at two years from now as we grow but also being present
Paden Squires: That's something I struggle with.
Paden Squires: As entrepreneurs, you get so future focused, I'm constantly running scenarios in my [00:26:00] head. It was just future focus and I'm like, all of a sudden I'm sitting there on the couch or whatever, and I'm not really there. and once again,as soon as you can admit that and see That's when you can actually start to change that.
Brandon Neely: Yeah. I think calendaring, putting those, like I put the still method on our calendar. and we think about those things. What's it going to look like five years, ten years? And that's again, why the book is thinking about that, doing it with your wife or your business partners or whatever. But then.
Brandon Neely: That's the thinking time. but then you gotta actually move. And you can't just be thinking, Oh, one day that's going to happen. That's going to be awesome. Yeah. Yeah. You actually have to do something,
Paden Squires: I've been guilty throughout the years of doing that. I think even early in my life, I would, I don't know, about a decade ago, I used to read a ton and gather all this information. but at that point I had a whole lot less execution power, where I spent so much time reading so many [00:27:00] books and whatever, but the execution followed up. Well, Brandon, what's the best way people can connect with you?
Brandon Neely: Yeah, if you go and look up Wealth Wisdom Financial, you should be able to find me everywhere. if you look up Brandon Neely, you'll find, either Guantanamo Bay guy that, That wasn't you, right? Did some bad things, or a baseball player. That's not me. That's not me. but look at Wealth Wisdom Finance, find it on YouTube, social media.
Brandon Neely: If you go wealth, wisdom, fp. com slash report, we have a guide to help you break through to a smart, stable financial future, for not just two people. I'd say it's for business owners. wealth, wisdom, fp. com slash report. And there's the book there. There's a community, mainly from the website.
Brandon Neely: The website, hopefully has everything hit better.
Paden Squires: thank you for coming on for the great conversation guys. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time.
Thank you so much for listening to the [00:28:00] podcast. If you found it valuable, please rate, review, and share it. That is the best way to help us build this and reach more people, as we're trying to accomplish our goal of helping create more healthy, wealthy, and wise entrepreneurs. You can follow us on social media by searching for me @paydensquires, or going to www.padensquires.com On the website and social media, we're always sharing tips of personal growth, and there we can actually interact. I'm looking forward to it. Thanks guys.
