Young Scrappy Money Podcast Ep. 033: Money Mindsets, Entrepreneurship, and #vanlife with Garrett Philbin, Financial Coach

Join us as we dig deep into Garrett Philbin’s journey as a financial coach, including how he had to reframe his scarcity mindset and build a better relationship with money to truly grow as a person and entrepreneur. He also dishes on his many months spent touring the United States as a digital nomad, along with his journey to stop traveling and lay the groundwork for an intentional community. This one is chock-full of life lessons, y’all, so enjoy!

Resources from this episode:

• Young & Scrappy, home to Michelle’s work as a financial advisor and financial coach.
• Be Awesome Not Broke, home to Garrett’s work as a financial coach. His mission is to help people become financially free so they can put more of their mind, time, and money toward building an equitable world, so hit him up if that resonates with you.
• He also mentors other financial coaches, and is the founder the Financial Coaches Community, a Facebook Group with over 2000+ members, where coaches can learn from and support each other.
• Garrett is also the former the co-host of the Beyond The Dollar Podcast, where he and Sarah Li-Cain dove into deep and honest conversations about how money affects our well-being.
• XY Planning Network, which has incredible resources for those who want to be financial planners. Garrett didn’t go this route, but I (Michelle) did, so I think it’s worth linking out to!
• Deborah Price’s Money Coaching Institute, which trains financial coaches on a program where they work with clients specifically around their relationship to money.
• Brooke Castillo’s work on knowing and unpacking your thoughts and feelings to create better outcomes. Her podcast is a great place to start if you’re at all interested in self-improvement.
• White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard to Talk To White People About Racism. While this book focuses on racism, there are a lot of generally-applicable nuggets about how we get defensive or angry when confronted with our conditioning.
• The Dark Side of the Light Chasers, which is all about helping us look at the parts of ourselves that we don’t wanna own and that we think are ugly— and loving those parts.
• Jesse G, my editor. If you ever need audio/video editing work, give him all your love and money

Full transcript:

INTRO: [00:00:00] Hello. And welcome to the Young Scrappy Money podcast. I’m your host, Michelle Waymire. And each week, I’ll be bringing you tips and tricks to help you take control of your finances as well as interviews with people who made big financial changes in their own lives. So join us. And we’ll help you get your financial s**t together. 

MICHELLE: Hello, everybody. And welcome, welcome to another episode of the Young Scrappy Money podcast. Boy, is it gonna be a good one. Y’all— y’all, this is gonna be a good one. And I feel like normally I try and do a little bit of update about my life or try and loop you guys in on some of the sweet stuff that’s been happening on my end. 

But today is a day where I wanna just get right to it. I wanna get in and introduce our speaker immediately so that we can start to pick his brain and listen to his thoughts about the world. Because as I said, it’s gonna be a good one. 

With me today is Garrett Philbin, who is a dear friend of mine and also a financial coach. So we get nerdy. We talk shop a lot together. Um, he’s the founder of this rad company called Be Awesome Not Broke, which is a great name. And his life’s purpose is to help people become financially free so they can put more of their time, mind, and money towards building an equitable world. Garrett, thank you for stopping by.

GARRETT: Michelle, thank you for allowing me to stop on by. 

MICHELLE: (LAUGHING) I want us to kick off and like— tell us more about your story. I gave the most bare bones introduction in the history of introductions. But tell us your story. How did you decide you wanted to be a financial coach? 

GARRETT: And I love that you kept it brief. Because now, you know, bare bones, we just gotta add a lot of meat onto it. So this is gonna be fun. And feel free to jump in to keep me on track in case I go on any kind of tangential journeys, of which this mind has been known to do. 

Uh, to try and keep it pretty short, I didn’t really know that I wanted to be a financial coach. It’s something I stumbled into. I studied music business in college. I then worked in the music industry for about five to six years. 

The last about three of it, uh, it was at a company that me and two friends from college had started. And I just realized over that time it wasn’t what I wanted to do. I didn’t love it. And there was a bit of a crisis of, well, what the f**k do I do now that what I got my degree in and what I spent the last five to six years doing isn’t what I want to be doing moving forward? 

And so I had a lot of conversations with one of the other co-founders in figuring out, what would the next steps be? And at one point, I remember laying on the couch. It was like this total therapist scene, where he was sitting at the chair, and I was lying on the couch. And we were just talking back and forth. 

And he thought for a little bit. And he was like, you know, you really love to teach. You love to mentor. And for some reason, you nerd out around money. Is there anything there? And it was the first time that I’d ever thought of that. It never even crossed my mind. 

And I remember that night going back home, opening up Evernote, and just writing pages after page after page of, what would it look like if I could help people remove money as the roadblock between them and the life that they wanted? And it was just like all the ideas, all the things, all the time. And I got so excited. 

And it was just at that point that I realized, OK, like there is something here. And I had no idea what it would look like. I didn’t know— I’d never started my own business, you know, just me. I’d never heard of like financial coaching. I thought I might do advising or planning. 

But that was where the initial idea came from. And so I just started interviewing investment advisors, realized that was not what I wanted to do. It was— the term male, pale, and stale came to mind. Uh—

MICHELLE: Oh my god. I love that. I have never heard that before. 

GARRETT: You haven’t? I— I got that from someone at XYPN. And it is just so true. So I was like, this is not necessarily my environment. And then I, uh, met a lot of people from XY Planning Network who are financial planners. 

But I was more interested in just kind of helping people who weren’t even ready to do comprehensive planning. And so didn’t really know any other coaches at the time, so just was like, I’ll start this. And I’ll do this. 

And it was a combination of hubris, ignorance, um, stupidity. And I just said, all right, I’m hanging up a shingle. Let’s do this. And that’s how it got started. 

MICHELLE: That’s amazing. And I feel like that’s very brave. Because a lot of people go into a place where they’re starting their own business. But it’s something they’ve been doing for a while. Or, they switch industries, and they decide to work for somebody else. 

But to go off on your own in a new industry is really, really brave. And maybe it is hubris. I don’t know. However you wanna call it, I think it’s bravery. But that’s just me.

[00:04:56] GARRETT: I mean, I would probably say a bit of— as I said, a bit of bravery, a bit of stupidity. When you are born in the position that I’m born in life, of like white, straight man, we’re kind of used to just like, oh, cool, I can totally do this— whether or not that’s actually true. And I think that there’s part of that honestly that was at play, looking back, where I’m like, of course, sure, I can do this. I can figure it out. 

And realizing, looking back, um, it— to a certain degree, all is well that ends well. But I think I would’ve been much better served from a like mental health standpoint of not just trying to jump off— I also tried to do it full-time to start. So that was an important piece, um, to say like, look, I’m starting this from scratch with little experience and believing that like I could do it. 

You have to have a little bit of crazy in you to be an entrepreneur. But I also think there was a little bit of over self-confidence for sure that played a part that was important in getting the business off the ground. But it probably would’ve been good in the first year or so to have done it part-time to get my legs under me while I was like starting to work with people— so just looking back, something I would’ve done differently. 

MICHELLE: Yeah. When I used to work as a marketing consultant for financial advisors, we were sort of buildering— buildering, wow. We were— 

GARRETT: Nailed it.

MICHELLE: We were building out how we were working with advisors while we were simultaneously working with advisors. And we used to use this phrase quite frequently, which was, “We’re building the plane in the air while we are flying it.” 

GARRETT: Yep.

MICHELLE: And I feel like there— there’s a little skosh of that going on— of, you know, hey, I’m up in the air. Time to start making a plane, huh? 

GARRETT: Yeah. That’s a polite way of putting it, just a little bit of that. Yeah, just a little. But you— I mean, you know. And it’s kind of scary when you’re in it. Um, but honestly, I’m— I’m not sure with how quickly and how excited I was that I like would have had the patience to go part-time and do it a different way. So hindsight’s 20/20, right? 

MICHELLE: Yeah, totally. So I love that your friend mentioned, and was very aware of this, that you just liked to nerd out about money. Even before you got into financial coaching, this was a thing that was known about you. So I’m kind of curious. Did you always have a good relationship with money, or did that take work over time? 

GARRETT: Mmm. So I would say that my relationship to money was not necessarily great. But I was good in the way that society usually tells us that we’re good at money. So I was good at managing it. I was good at not spending it. Um, I had a budget that I put together.

So kind of the day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month was pretty good in terms of that overall management of it. But my mindset was definitely one of scarcity. It was one of, you have to work hard to make money. You have to work many, many hours in order to make enough money to survive.

And so I know I’m kind of parsing it out here. But the relationship to money wasn’t great, but kind of the practical management side of money is great. Does that make sense, splitting those out?

MICHELLE: Yeah. So from a logistical standpoint, by all means it was fine. But from some of the mindset work, maybe that needed a little bit of extra love. 

GARRETT: Yeah. And as part of my story, you know, when I was in New York City, um, I was working at Sony Music for a couple years but making sh— it was entry level, so it was just under 35 grand a year for those two years, two and a half years. And then started that music production company, but we didn’t pay ourselves any more than like 30 grand or so as we were getting that off the ground for two to three years. So was not making much money. 

That was playing into the money story I had, that like I will never be financially independent. That was a story going on for me. That was also reinforced by the fact that I knew if s**t ever hit the fan, I’d be able to go— like I could— I’d never be homeless. Like I could go back. I could live with my parents. 

I’d had some family friends who had given me money over the years. Um, when I volunteered for two years— which I don’t know if you heard, but volunteering doesn’t pay— after college, they gave— gifted me money up to the total amount— I think it was up to $13,000 each year— and said like, oh, you know, if you’d had a real job, you would’ve been able to save this much money. And so I always knew that like people were there to be able to catch me.

But it didn’t necessarily build that muscle that was like, you have to figure out how to make the kind of money that you make on your own. I kind of shrunk from that and instead said, I can survive on whatever little amount of money that I’m gonna be making. And so then the story was always, you know, I don’t need to make more money.

[00:09:56] I can just survive within the amount I’ve made, versus, how can I actually make the money that I want to make and be able to live the life that I actually want? So that’s where the relationship to money was really challenging for honestly almost 30 years of my life. And I’m 33 now.

MICHELLE: Did you find that making money was something that you shied away from?

GARRETT: Yeah. I would say it was a combination of things. I think, um, there was a mixture of not feeling worthy of the money. I think I was in more of a business development role with the music production company that we’d started. And so there was a like fear of rejection, which is pretty strong in me from growing up. And so I wasn’t doing as much as I could to just put ourselves out there and get business.

And so there— there were kind of a couple different things at play. But they really all ended with the same result. I think in my head it’s like, oh, that sounds great to make more money. But I was, um, kind of self-sabotaging, if you will. 

You know, when we, um— there’s a phrase in coaching that’s like, “Whatever we’re doing, we’re always getting something out of it, whether it’s conscious or unconscious.” And so I think what I was getting out of it was keeping myself in that story of just like, I’ll never be financially independent. And so I took actions subconsciously that kept me in that story, in that pattern, and then was like, OK, well, that’s just my life. And now let me figure out how to survive within that. 

MICHELLE: Yeah. I think there’s a certain comfort in feeling like you understand your situation and making peace with it, which on one hand, I would never begrudge anybody the right to live their life that way. On the other hand, I think once you get comfortable in your story, and you sort of accept, well, this is just the way things are, that’s when— I mean, at least for me personally, that’s when I start to stagnate. Because I’m not really working towards the next thing. And I’m not giving myself the time and space to dream about what I really want. 

GARRETT: Yeah.

MICHELLE: I’m just sort of making it work with whatever it is that I’ve been given.

GARRETT: That’s a really good point. And I think sometimes we can tell ourselves, or it’s easy to say, you know, this is— I’m OK with this, or, this works for me, versus saying, is this actually what I want? And is this truly making me happy? 

And having to come up against the boundary or that edge of comfort and really looking at yourself and being like, does this work or not? Is this actually what I want? Or, am I really keeping myself small in order to stay safe?

MICHELLE: Yeah. So I’m curious then. You— so you started your coaching business. And you were good at money logistically but maybe not quite there with the mindset work.

So how did you start to rewrite some of these limiting beliefs about your finances? Did this happen organically over time? Or, was this like a process that you underwent?

GARRETT: Yes.

MICHELLE: Yes. 

GARRETT: (LAUGHING) Uh— 

MICHELLE: ¿Por qué no los dos?

GARRETT: Sí, uh, is perhaps the response to that. I don’t know. There— it was a combination. Because making more money helped. I’m not gonna lie that making more money allowed me to then say, OK, now that I have more than just the bare minimum I need to survive, what does that mean? What do I wanna put my money toward? What do I really enjoy? 

What— and so those questions naturally came up and, for the first time, were possible to be asked. Because I had the resources to be able to put my money towards something more than just like $50 in fun a month, which was like what my fun budget was in New York for four or so years. And so there— just questions came up that hadn’t been posed before. 

And then there was also a more structured process. I went through a training with Deborah Price, who founded the Money Coaching Institute and trains financial coaches on a program where they work with clients specifically around their relationship to money. And so I took that training. And as part of the training, you go through the process. 

And so that helped me to see, OK, what are these unconscious patterns that are running in the background? How did they get created? You know, we went through and did a money biography, which is a money memory from every year of my life. And it just helped to see, how did this relationship to money get built, get put together? Uh, and so it really was a combination of both. 

And kind of over the past year, um, as my partner Amelia, who is fantastic at pushing me and helping me, not just pushing me to push me, but seeing what I actually want and then helping to hold me accountable to do the work to make that real, uh, is— yeah, they’ve been really helpful on just saying, you know, if this is what you want, then what I’m perceiving is you not doing what you want to do to get there, need to do to get there. And so there— as part of this work, we’re never done. Even as money coaches, we’re never done. 

[00:15:08] So it’s interesting. As Sarah Li Cain, my old podcast co-host, gave— had a great line, which was, you know, “new level, new devil.” So each— 

MICHELLE: Oh, that’s very good. 

GARRETT: Each new step that you get to, you’re confronted by a new set of challenges, problems, whether it’s from a practical standpoint or an emotional and behavioral standpoint. And honestly that’s why I think financial planners, people who you’re gonna work with for a while, are really, really valuable. Because it’s not just like— we don’t just help you put together a budget. We just don’t help you get out of debt. We don’t just help you build a savings fund. 

It’s like we are here— for me, I’m committed to helping people reach financial freedom and live the life that they want along the way. And that’s something we can get to in my journey of like how I’ve kind of had this challenge of having this goal of wanting to reach financial freedom in just over 10 years, but then also what that goal puts me into mindset-wise, which is sometimes a scarcity mindset of like having to put my head down, and just make the money to do it, and sometimes not being happy along the way. And so having to reconcile, how can I with where I’m currently at in my journey have this as a goal but also show up on my way toward this goal that is representative of who I wanna be when I actually accomplish it? 

MICHELLE: Mmm. That’s good. 

GARRETT: Yeah. And that honestly just came up like last week. So that’s why it’s real raw and fresh. But it— it’s true. Like what is that idea? You know, oh, I’ll get to retirement, and then I’ll be happy. Then I’ll have the time to do what I want. Then, you know— that’s not real. That’s not true. 

MICHELLE: Yeah.

GARRETT: If you can’t be who you wanna be along the way, then you likely aren’t gonna be that person when you arrive. So that’s been really confronting for me recently, which is just like, OK, I still have some stuff to work through. And, um, I actually find that that’s really helpful when working with clients too. 

Because it’s like, we’re both working through our stuff. And, you know, I’m further along than my clients are on that journey. But I can still kind of speak to what it’s like at that new level and with that new devil. 

MICHELLE: I love that. I used to have a life coach who said something pretty similar where, um, you know, her big thing was like, you have to do your self-work. You can, you know, change your environment. You can travel. You can get a new job. You can get a new partner or spouse. All of those options are available to you. But the issue is, as you’re going through those life changes, you have to take you with you. And it’s— and so you can— you can change your environment if that’s what makes you happy. But ultimately, you have to do the self-work, or you’re just not even really going to be able to enjoy the new stuff that you’re creating along the way. 

GARRETT: Totally. It’s like wherever you go, there you are. 

MICHELLE: Yep.

GARRETT: Is another way of saying it. That— smart life coach you had. 

MICHELLE: Yeah. She was pretty darn good. Um, Brooke Castillo is her name. I’ll, uh, link out to her stuff too in case folks wanna— wanna check that out. 

And just as a reminder to any listeners, anything that we talk about in this episode, any resources, any websites, all of Garrett’s work, those are gonna make their way into the show notes. I always put a full list of resources and a full transcript. So make sure that if you’re listening, and you wanna double back and check some of this stuff out in more detail, go to youngandscrappy.com/blog. And you’ll be able to find all of our episode notes there. 

MID-ROLL ADVERTISEMENT: Hey, friends. Michelle here. And I’ve got a little present for you. It’s called Unf**k Your Finances. And it’s a PDF guide filled with some of my favorite tips for paying down debt, controlling your spending, planning for goals, and more. Go to youngandscrappy.com/tips to download your free copy today. 

MICHELLE: So, OK, you— you said that like in the last year, you and your partner have kind of been, uh— like they’ve been helping you do this work. You’ve been doing the work. There’s been some introspection and some life changes. So where are you now? Where did that— where did that introspective process get you, so to speak? 

GARRETT: So part of that introspective process was going on a— we thought it would be around six to seven months. It ended up being about five months— a road trip around the Western US. You know, we’d only been in a relationship for about two and a half months before they came up with that idea. 

And it was like, all right, we want to be able to spend a lot of time together in a small space so that we can work through all of our stuff and our conditioning and really get on the same page. And so that was done very intentionally pretty early on in our relationship. So there were some very fun times. There were some times that were super confronting and challenging. 

And Amelia can read my mind. They’re a total empath. They are intu— like their intuition is insane. And so sometimes they would bring things up before I was even aware of them, which was incredibly frustrating. But about four and a half months through that, we just got on the same page. And we really had this wonderful foundation established. 

[00:20:14] And so, you know, kind of where I am now with that is I think being able to be much more aware in the moment, or close to in the moment, when my patterning and conditioning is coming up— and related to money, like when my money stories are at play. So, you know, we had set a goal where we wanted to be able to pay for and build a tiny house within the next year. So, OK, we wanted to save like 35 to 40 grand over the next year. 

And that meant I would need to earn a certain amount of income in my business and have a certain amount of clients. So I was like, all right, I’ll go ahead and do this— totally feasible. And yet who I then became— I went back into, you have to work hard to make money. You have to put your head down and pretty much like work all the time. 

Almost like stopped listening to my body. And that— it kind of had this message that I couldn’t have fun in the process. So who I became in making progress towards this goal, which was in service of financial freedom which is what we both want, I became an ass. And I was not fun to be around. And I wasn’t taking care of myself. 

And so it’s been really interesting to have— just more quickly get to that point where I can see what’s going on, still definitely with Amelia’s help, but to— the result of this work has been, um, kind of if you think about it, rather than staying in a pattern for a long time and not being aware of it, just being able to identify it faster, which is cool. I certainly have a long way to go. But it’s been really— um, not nice, that’s such a soft word. But it’s been pretty incredible to see the difference between a year ago and today of like how quickly that observation can be made and noticed.

MICHELLE: I love that because I think a lot of us have this feeling of once we figure out, or crack the code to, our thought processes or our problems or however you wanna phrase it, then we’ll figure out how our brains work. And we won’t have to do that stuff anymore, which is like very— it’s a nice thought. But it’s a little naive. 

I mean, the work is never done. It’s not like you get rid of your patterns. It’s just that you’re really— you get a lot better at sort of stopping them and like catching them early before they can play out into something that, you know, maybe leads you to take action that wouldn’t necessarily serve you in the future. 

GARRETT: Yeah. And a really helpful reframe, I actually read this in a book called White Fragility. And this idea that when we’re confronted with our conditioning, that we— it’s funny. We oftentimes get really defensive or angry. This was within the context of white people being confronted with their racism. 

And the author said, why don’t— why aren’t we grateful? Why don’t we say, oh, this is an opportunity to learn? And if I actually want to be anti-racist, why am I not grateful that I now know how I was perpetuating something I didn’t want to be doing and then actually, um, see it as a positive? 

And so same thing with this conditioning is even though it can be hard to see that it’s still a pattern, when it’s noticed, to say, oh, I’m actually grateful that I noticed this. Because I don’t just want financial freedom. I want to be a good partner. I wanna be kind to myself. I wanna be loving to myself, my partner, family, and out there into the world. 

And so if I’m showing up in a way that isn’t that, then I want to know about it. And, yeah, it’s confronting to not be where I wanna be. And that can be hard. But if we’re more looking at and kind of turn it on its head, that whenever we get confronted, it’s actually helping us be who we wanna be and get closer to where we wanna be, then that’s also started to help too. So that’s something that I’ve been, um, more aware of over the past month and has made it a bit easier to accept and actually enjoy this process. 

MICHELLE: Yeah. You want financial freedom, but not at the expense of your health, not at the expense of your partner and loved ones. Because if you get to financial freedom, and you look around, and you don’t have your health or your loved ones, it’s like, welp, that wasn’t worth it. Why am I even here? 

GARRETT: Yeah. Yeah. What was that for? You know? It, um— that’s a really good point. Because then you have to ask yourself what— why do you want financial freedom in the first place? And sometimes then it might be just because you’re scared of not having enough money. Or you could kind of get at the root of some other beliefs if who you’re being along the way isn’t who you wanna be at the end.

[00:25:00] MICHELLE: Yeah. And I think you’re exactly right that why we want something is oftentimes just as illuminating— it says just as much about our values— as what it is that we want.

GARRETT: Yes. That’s a great way of putting it. 

MICHELLE: So— so you spent like five and a half months together, uh, making the shift to location independence. So you were basically like coaching clients remotely? Like how did that work?

GARRETT: Yeah. So we had a travel trailer, um, that we towed with Lucy, our 2003 Nissan Xterra that we bought for about 2,500 bucks beforehand. And we would just go and travel to— we did nine states or so in the Western US. And we would pick not even campgrounds that we had to pay for. We would stay on National Forest Service land or BLM land, Bureau of Land Management, where you can stay for free up to usually two weeks. 

And we had some apps to help us with that. There’s an app Campendium, which is super awesome. It shows you all the different campsites available, from free up to pretty expensive. Um, they’ll say if there’s cell service there. 

So we would just use that app to look in advance of where we would be, you know, next week. Where do we wanna be in two weeks? Look at potential campsites. What has good cell service? And then when we got there, we would just tether our cell phones to our computers, be able to work that way. 

And I would just take client calls from the middle of those campsites. And, um, you know, I had to use some tricks to make sure that like I had good enough bandwidth. There were some places, you know, in Montana or out in the middle of nowhere in Colorado, where it was spotty. 

But, you know, for how much we traveled and the places we went to, we rarely had a hard time with service. Uh, and it’s pretty amazing looking back and just how smoothly it all went. So it— it wasn’t that different than working here. It was just making sure we had good cell service. And in most places, we did— thanks to a little bit of research on the front end.

MICHELLE: How did this change the way you ran your business from like a time standpoint? I mean, my guess would be that if you’re moving around a lot, you may or may not have good cell service. There’s just a lot more activities that take time. How did that shift the way that you were structuring your time and meeting with clients? 

GARRETT: God, I love you and your very thoughtful questions. That— like that’s a natural place to go. But not many people would’ve asked that question. So I’m just giving (SNAPPING) snaps and claps over here, Michelle. 

Uh, it definitely was something I had in mind before we went on the trip was, how can we have this trip be something that is still fun, and aren’t working all the time, and build in buffers of time so that, knowing myself— I have a time scarcity mindset too, that— so I don’t trigger that? So I set the goal of working three days a week, um, client— between client calls and everything else, just keeping it to three days a week. And it was scary at first to do. 

But that allowed us, um, working Tuesday through Thursday, playing Friday through Sunday, and then driving Monday to the next place where we were. And it was really interesting. Because I said, OK, well, if I need to keep it in those three days, what things now need to happen?

Like, OK, I need to obviously make sure I limit my calendar to that time. I only do the most important things. Um, what else can I do? You know, set the expectation for clients that that’s when I’ll get back to them, in between those days. If I want to make x amount of money, x amount of dollars, then my rates are gonna need to go up too.

So it was really interesting to see if— and actually, I’d talked with my therapist, who also was a business coach— a fun like combination relationship. Um, before even the road trip was an idea, that I’d wanted to work three days a week. And so the road trip actually just turned into a really good way to have to make that happen. 

Um, because I’m not sure I ever would’ve made that happen if I had the ability just to work. You know, like when you’re at home, you can kind of work seven days a week. And I didn’t have that ability. So it was a really great confine. 

And then from that, I was able to make it work, three days a week, make more money than I’d made. And it was kind of like, holy crap, this is— how did that happen? It kind of, you know, busted a hole [00:29:30 once another hole?] in that you have to work all the hours of the day in order to make more money, which was one of my really persistent money stories. 

And so now that we’re back, I’ve stuck with that— client calls from Tuesday through Thursday. You know, I do fun stuff on Fridays, like doing this podcast. And, um, it’s just been really, really nice. But because of my stories, I’m not sure I would have put in the structure myself if we just would’ve stayed in kind of the normal, day-to-day environment and not taken that road trip.

[00:30:04] MICHELLE: Yeah. I love that you mentioned time scarcity. Because as a small business owner, that— for me personally at least, that really brought up some stuff. 

GARRETT: Yeah.

MICHELLE: That’s usually where my head is at is, oh my god, there’s just not enough hours in the day. And so I’m— 

GARRETT: Yep.

MICHELLE: I’m intrigued by your experiment of cutting back drastically and forcing that upon yourself. I mean, it helps if you’re traveling, right? Then you feel like you have a reason for sure. 

But, yeah, I get sucked into that, working seven days a week, all the time. Because I think, well, it’s— you know, it’s only an hour here and there. And like, does it even really count as a workday if I’m just checking my email for two hours? And then— 

GARRETT: Oh, yeah.

MICHELLE: It’s a slippery slope, man. It’s a slippery slope. 

GARRETT: Yeah. And it’s, to me— and I’m curious about your experience. But to me, it’s not so much the time. It’s like the headspace and the switching cost of just thinking on Saturday that there’s something I want to or need to do on Sunday. And then just it takes up so much brain space that I’m not then present in what I’m doing on Saturday and when I should be enjoying not working. 

MICHELLE: Yeah. I— I feel like my to-do list tends to be long. And so if I’m not working on my to-do list, I’m mentally processing my to-do list.

GARRETT: Yep. 

MICHELLE: Which means that even my free time is not necessarily emotionally free. It’s— it’s a problem. It takes so much work. I’m— it’s something that I’m really working on now. 

GARRETT: Yeah. And I— I think it’s one of those things. This is not like, or should I say gonna be, the most enlightening statement. But like this is gonna be one of those things where you’re always gonna be doing work. 

And I think as an entrepreneur I don’t know of anyone who’s ever really gotten over that. I don’t know. Have you kind of met someone who’s like, no, I’ve gotten this totally balanced? Like I’m able to compartmentalize and be good? Because, if so, I want to like touch them and just hopefully steal their powers that way.

MICHELLE: Yeah. Or like go to their house and like secretly get a drinking glass and like have some of their tap water— like just in case, just in case. I don’t know that it’s not their water. So like you gotta try it. 

GARRETT: (LAUGHING) Oh, I appreciate that.

MICHELLE: But it’s irrelevant. Because I haven’t found that person yet, so. 

GARRETT: All right. Well, then we’ll keep on looking for that, you know, holy grail of business. 

MICHELLE: That unicorn.

GARRETT: Yep.

MICHELLE: That entrepreneurial unicorn. Um, so— so where are you now? Like your journey has ended. Have you settled kind of in one place? 

GARRETT: So we’re in San Luis Obispo, California, right now, which is actually where I grew up. And we have taken over the back half of my parents’ house, which is really fun to say because the societal understanding of that is like failure, which has been really interesting to reconcile with in my own head. But what’s cool about having goals, having an idea of what you want and why you want it, is now we got to say— we just— we got back from the trip, and we just didn’t know what we wanted to do next. 

We weren’t sure if we wanted to stay like right in San Luis Obispo. Did we wanna move somewhere else? And so we were able to have this space to take some time and figure out what we wanna do. And in the meantime, we also wanna be saving towards other goals. 

So we had that conversation with my parents. Here’s what we are saving towards. Here’s this larger vision that it’s a part of. And they’re like, yeah, totally cool, you can stay in the back. Save that money. Put it towards these goals. 

And so now it’s not framed as, oh my gosh, we’re doing this because we have no other options. It’s like, oh, we’re doing this because this is gonna continue to help us save for that money to be able to build the tiny house and eventually a down payment for land to put that tiny house on. So it becomes much more empowering when you are clear on what you want and why you want it. Because then the decisions that you made can be processed through that and become, you know, now this is much more of an empowering context than it could be on the surface. 

So we’re here probably for the next couple months at least. And then we’re gonna figure out— um, because I need— you know, we need to do some research, um, on land around here. What— you know, when you’re buying land, I know that it’s not like you usually get a 30-year mortgage. There are a lot stricter, um— pay— what should I say?— loan terms with land. 

And, you know, could we go in with different people on land? How many tiny houses could— because we totally wanna build a tiny house community, and have like farm animals there, and be able to have— create this community space where friends can come and perform or just hang out. So we have this grand vision. And it’s gonna take a little while to figure out not just who we wanna have join us, but like a lot of the logistical stuff of what actually needs to be done to make that happen. 

MICHELLE: Yes. As a tiny house enthusiast, I am 110% here for your now life vision. And I look forward to probably settling on your commune one day. 

[00:34:55] GARRETT: Let’s do it. Oh my god. We found the best spot. It’s like 160 acres on the top of a hill. It has— it has an infinity pool, which I don’t know why it has an infinity pool.

MICHELLE: What?

GARRETT: It doesn’t even have a real house. But I know. So I’ll send you the Zillow listing after this. And you can just like ogle at it. And then I’ll plant— you know, you can then just start dreaming and build a Pinterest board around this awesome tiny house and what— like and land and what, uh— what you’ll create once you’re on it. 

MICHELLE: I love it. Um, I’m not gonna put that in the show notes. Because I don’t want any listeners to buy it first. 

GARRETT: There we go. Keep it to ourselves. 

MICHELLE: Secrets. But you can come visit. Um, so after kind of going through this journey and learning a lot about yourself and about the work that you wanted to do and sort of building this really intentional life by design, what— what other suggestions or tips do you have for listeners who might find themselves in a similar situation and wanna start living more intentionally? 

GARRETT: Ah, man.

MICHELLE: Sorry. I totally threw you for— for a loop. I know this was not one of the questions we initially discussed. But I couldn’t not ask it after the stuff we’ve ended up talking about. 

GARRETT: And that’s what I love about you as someone who hosts a podcast, like you don’t stick only with the questions that you have on paper. You just go where the conversation goes. And that’s— that’s what you gotta do. That’s how you make for good, um, conversation. 

And so, honestly, this is gonna be pretty macro. This is taking it outside of just the context of money. Surprise— when we’re talking about money, it’s never just about the money. So money is the entry point into the conversation. Money— when you’re having issues with money, it’s oftentimes the symptom. But it’s not usually the underlying issue or challenge. 

So my recommendation, what’s been really helpful for me, is turning the lens inward. And just like your life coach said, you know, wherever you go, whatever you try and do, you take yourself with you. So really do the work. 

Talk to— you know, if friends are willing to do some emotional labor and— a really good book that kind of helped me get started on this, which was called The Dark Side of the Light Chasers, which is all about helping us look at the parts of ourselves that we don’t wanna own, the parts of ourselves that we think are ugly, the parts of ourselves that we don’t really— that we don’t wanna reconcile with and loving those parts. Because until we can love our— until we can love ourselves fully, we can’t actually be that to other people or show up authentically in the world. 

So do the work on yourself. Like when I had just— was working 50- to 60-hour weeks and wasn’t happy and was just doing it day after day after day, I needed to stop and say, this isn’t working. And that was— that’s hard to do.

And honestly, I didn’t do it on my own. I didn’t do it until I met Amelia, and they came in and were like, this isn’t working for you. And I was like, ahh, I know. Um, I— I didn’t do it on my own. So I’m not coming in here and saying like, you have to. That’s the only way to do it. And if you aren’t able to do that by yourself, like you’re a failure.

Because I didn’t. But I found that that’s the most— um, doing that internal work— uh, because humans are holistic. So if we do that inner work, it will impact all areas of our life, has been the most meaningful and impactful thing that I’ve done and has touched pretty much every area of my life, money included.

MICHELLE: Yes. That’s all I have to say. It’s just like yes. 

GARRETT: (LAUGHING) Yaaas. 

MICHELLE: If I were texting this sound bite to a friend, I would insert approximately seven to eight praise hands emojis into that text thread.

GARRETT: (LAUGHING) And then just like a microphone and then some kind of dropping thing. I don’t know if it’d just be like the down arrow. I’d have to figure that out, how that would work. 

MICHELLE: I don’t know about that mic drop emoji. We’ll have to— we’ll have to get Apple on that one. Because now we needs it. Um, because of what you just said.

GARRETT: We needs it. Well, again, thank you for asking that question. Because that was pulling it all together and saying that honestly, before anything else, I think is the most important work. Because also if you don’t do that, even if you work towards financial freedom, you’re not gonna be happy when you get there. Because you’re not gonna be happy with who you are and the way that you show up in the world. 

MICHELLE: Yeah. I’ll be honest. When I went into this episode, I thought we were gonna talk about location independence, and travel hacking, and, how has traveling, you know, influenced the way that you think about your money? And honestly, this turned into an episode on intentional living. And I’m here for it. 

So thank you. Um, before we close out, I wanna make sure that folks have a chance to learn a little bit more about what you do and how you help people also have that type of intention in their lives and really put their time and money towards building an equitable world. So tell us a little bit about your work and— and how people can find you online. 

[00:39:55] GARRETT: For sure. So the best place for people to find me is beawesomenotbroke.com. That is where it all lives. Um, I have the blog that just helps people get a sense of the way that my mind works in addition to obviously what we talked about on this podcast. And, um, I don’t have much else other than that. 

The way that I work with people is I help them really in two areas— one focusing on changing their relationship to money and then after that working on the practical side. So it’s funny. I now help clients in kind of the reverse order of which I got it down, which was I had the practical first and then had to work on my mindset— and partly because of that realized how important it is for people to change their relationship with money before they can handle, uh, or really make work, the practical side. So that’s what I do now one-on-one with clients. And, um, I enjoy it much more as a process. And I think it serves my clients a whole lot more. 

MICHELLE: Awesome. Well, dude, thank you again. I cannot tell you how much I appreciate you coming on and sharing your story and being really vulnerable with us about your own process. I think it’s, uh, really inspiring to know that even financial coaches have to do the work. Even— even we have to kind of confront our own money beliefs, and really be able to unpack our conditioning, and figure out what’s going on in our own lives in order to move forward in the best way. I— I appreciate that. I appreciate you, Garrett.

GARRETT: Thank you. And I just really am grateful for you, um, giving me the invitation and letting me be on. 

MICHELLE: Awesome. And, listeners, I’m grateful for you as well. Thank you so much for listening. Um, I will also thank you in advance. Please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Make sure you don’t miss an episode. 

And if you could give us a comment, leave us a little bit of love, give us a five-star rating, whatever that looks like for you, we would be so, so, so appreciative, um, so that we can keep doing more of this wonderful podcasting work that— that we love. And that’s the royal we. I mean myself. Thank you very much. (LAUGHING) Everyone, have a good day. And Garrett, thanks again.

GARRETT: Of course. Thank you.

END CREDITS: I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Young Scrappy Money podcast. If you want to read about my work as a financial advisor and financial coach, you can do so at www.youngandscrappy.com. That’s www.youngandscrappy.com. Thanks again for listening. 

Made with love by Jesse in Atlanta. [SMOOCHING SOUND]