Giving back makes you more trustworthy and likable, which means people want to do business with you. It also differentiates your business, making customers willing to pay more to be part of a bigger story.
Setting specific financial goals turns them into a math problem, making it easier to solve and achieve. It helps you stay focused and motivated to find solutions to reach your desired income.
Sharing your failures teaches your children valuable lessons and makes them more attentive. It helps them avoid making the same mistakes and understand that it's okay to fail.
Being the creator of money gives you control over your financial future, especially in uncertain times. It allows you to own your own revenue streams and be less dependent on external factors.
A purpose-driven business creates more fulfillment and can lead to increased profits. It also makes your business stand out, making customers more loyal and willing to pay more.
If you're working in a job right now, where your feet are today is where you can have the most impact. And if you can find a way to increase business, reduce costs, and grow the bottom line where you're at right now in a job, you can make more money, which means you can then give more money to the causes you care about. When someone is known as a giver, they're known as more trustworthy. They're more likable, which means people want to do business with them.
Come on this journey with me. Each week when you join me, we are going to chase down our goals, overcome adversity, and set you up for a better tomorrow. I'm ready for my close-up. Tell me, have you been enjoying these new bonus confidence classics episodes we've been dropping on you every week? We've literally hundreds of episodes for you to listen to, so these bonuses are a great way to help you find the ones you may have already missed. I hope you love this one as much as I do.
I'm so excited for you to meet my friend, Derek Kinney. He's changing how you feel about money. He believes money is not bad and good people should have more of it. That means you. After applying these proven principles with thousands of clients, Kinney sold his multi-million dollar business to teach these steps to you.
As CEO of Good Money Framework and host of the popular Good Money podcast, Kenny visits with influential business and thought leaders to inspire you to make more money and use it for good. Known for making complex financial topics easy to understand, thank goodness, Kenny is a sought-after guest on local and national media, where he has been interviewed on CNBC, Fox, and
CNN, Fox Business, PBS, Cheddar News, Wall Street Journal. Oh my gosh, so many. For more good money tips, connect with him on Instagram at Derek T. Kinney or today, you've got him here on the show. Derek, thanks so much for being here. My pleasure, Heather. I know that you've got a large audience and so it's a real honor to have me on as your guest. I'm looking forward to our conversation.
Okay. So I love giving behind the scenes to my peeps. So I met you through a DM on Instagram that you sent to me, you not knowing me. And this was super smart guys. Cause I get a lot of DMS. People want to be on the show or want me to promote something for them. And
You know, I always look at things from a sales perspective. You look at things a little differently than I do, but to break through the noise, you need to be willing to serve and do for others. However, I very rarely see it. And Derek sent me a DM saying something like, hey, Heather,
I've got this new book out. I'm starting this movement. I want to help people. If there's any way I can be of value to you, I would be happy to make a donation to a charity for you. I'd be happy to buy books from you and give them away to people to support you. Tell me how I can add value to you. I'd love to have a conversation. And that approach is so brilliant because, of course, you get a yes. How long have you been taking this approach in business? Well, it's an approach I learned when I was quite a bit younger because I realized that
Sometimes you have to sort of pay to play. And what I mean by that is you can wait for just the happenstance relationship to form, or I can identify the people who I respect and I admire, and I can reach out to say, look, I know you're busy and
And I'm one little call in all of your calls you'll make today. But if I can do something for you, it's sort of the way radio station WIIFM, what's in it for me. And Heather, here's what happened is I bought some of your books, which is a great book. And I am on the board of directors for the local junior league here in town. And I gave each member one of your books.
And so the benefit was, is you helped me, I helped them. And several ladies have come back and said, Heather's book is great. And so it just goes on and on and on. And so it was a way for us to contact and we've done an Instagram live and now I'm on your podcast. I mean, so it's all about putting things in the benefit of the other person and how can we collaborate to make something even bigger?
It's so true, right? I wouldn't have known you to know to invite you on to my show. And because you sent me that DM and gave me that generous offer, which I took you up on, and thank you for telling me that the ladies like the book, that makes me so happy. I received a copy of your book from you and I read your book and I...
I loved your book and I got great feedback on the Instagram live that we did. And so that led me to saying, Hey, Derek, I'd love to have you on the show. I know my listeners can benefit from you. So I totally agree with you in that domino effect. You don't know until you show up and start serving and giving others how that's going to play out and how many people that can affect. Well, it's so true. And there's a book I read probably about 10 years ago by Jack Canfield and
Chicken Soup for the Soul. Most people know who he is. And in the book, Heather, he talks about this rule of five. And he gives this visual that if you go to the Redwood Forest in California, and I'm not suggesting you do this, but just follow along for the analogy.
And you were to take an ax and you took five swings a day at a Redwood, eventually we know what's going to happen. That Redwood's going to fall over. But it just takes five swings a day. And so what I took from his point was I needed to do five things a day to direct myself to what my goal was. And my goal when I launched the book was how can I get this book on the USA Today bestseller list and on the Wall Street Journal bestseller list?
And it was going to take about 10,000 copies to do that. And so through a lot of campaigns, because there's never one silver bullet, there's just, I call it spokes on the wheel. You try all kinds of stuff. Then in retrospect in the rear view mirror, you can look back and say, clearly that was the best way to do it, but we hit our goal of 10,000 and that really helped propel the book. And the reason why that's important is not so much for the list itself, but it's because the number of people's lives impacted by the book is
can grow exponentially. Just like you're talking about on this well-regarded large podcast, you know, people that hear this message may want to buy the book and it can really help improve their lives and change their family direction for generations to come. You know that I love your book because I shared this with you offline before we did the Instagram live. And when we jumped on to do the podcast today, I said, Derek,
is there anything I need to know other than what I already know about the book? And he said, oh yeah, by the way, I just decided to give away the first few chapters for free at my new website because I need this message to get out there and help people. Nobody in the book business does this. How did this idea come to be? Well, ultimately the book took about 16 months to write. And I realized if I wait for everyone just to buy the book, which ultimately I want them to do,
That can take a long time because many people don't know me or don't know the message, but
But if I give them something of value, it's all that what's in it for me approach. How can we add value to people? If I can give people the first five chapters of this book for free, number one, the first five chapters can help change their life. If they just drop off there, I've helped their lives get better. But a large majority will realize, hey, this is a really good book. It's impacting me financially. And personally, I'm going to buy the book. Ultimately, it's about launching a movement.
When I think about money, so many people think about money books as I read it. There's the principles. They're all the same. It goes on the bookshelf and gathers dust. I hope that this one, people tear the pages out. They earmark it. They just begin to implement it. One of the games I like to play, Heather, just real quick. So this book retails for like 25 bucks. So if I was going to buy a business book for 25 bucks, what I would do is how can I then turn that around and make $5,000 to $10,000 worth
off of a $25 book purchase. And that's what I feel like people watching this now implement the principles in the book. And you're going to by far pay yourself back, not just in savings, but how you think about money and have a more confident money mindset. And that's priceless. Okay. So I have a real life example to give you of how your book made me money since I've read it. And this is true story. I'm proud of it too, because at a
affected somebody's life in such a positive way. And that is, first of all, this is not your normal business, your money type book, right? This is definitely, you're not reading about spreadsheets, guys. There's no graphs in there. It's a lot more personal story and example, real life testimonial stories of people that you have had in your life and how these different principles have affected to drive revenue, solve problems.
et cetera. So it's super interesting. It's a fast read, but you get so much value. You opened my eyes to this idea of giving back and making money purpose-driven, which I had known about when I was younger, but I forgot about it. I kind of got away from it for whatever reason. It wasn't top of mind for me. You made it very top of mind. I have a client that I do consulting for, and he's kind of lost his spark.
very wealthy man. He does good. He gives back a lot in charity, but he kind of lost his spark. And he went on a mission the same time I was reading your book, he went on a mission to Africa and he comes back and he says, Heather, I don't know, you know, should I even keep my business anymore? I don't even know. I'm so obsessed with helping these people with this water. There's a huge water problem.
in Africa. And he said, no one here knows about it. And I feel like maybe I should just walk away from business and just go delve into this charity work full time. And I thought about your book. And I said, no, I said, in fact, you can do more good if you were actually to stay here. Let's give yourself a much, let's say he's doing 20 million a year and let's give the stretch full of 75 million a year revenue. And now you have a huge percentage of your profits backslidden.
you will have such a bigger impact than you just going to move to Africa and help build a water irrigation system. If you give them $20 million, you will change millions of people's lives. And in that moment, I saw the light bulb go on for him. The next thing he did was he said, let's set up a webinar for my entire company. Let's teach them what we're going to do, how they're all going to become a part of this purpose, a part of helping. And then once we did that, Derek, then his team said, let's set up a webinar for all of our customers.
and let them know. And now we're just seeing this huge movement around his company and his community that's doing so much good. And it all came from one of the chapters in your book. Man, I got to tell you that I'm trying to get too emotional on podcasts like this, but that when you say that, I mean, that's what it's about, Heather. I mean, real life is,
People seeing, look, I like to make money and there's nothing wrong with that. But if you can tie meaning to your money, now you have a reason to go make more. And it becomes so personal that it's just not right that if you have the tools and the ability to help solve this water cleanliness crisis and you're not doing it,
you're really doing the world a disservice and your customers a disservice because, look, they could probably work with any of this person's competitors. And it might even be a reasonably similar product or service, but it's this generosity purpose, as I call it, that will separate your client and people want to pay more
do more business with him and he's more fulfilled. I mean, and when you lay your head on the pillow at night, isn't that what we all want to have added value to ourselves, the world and helping make the world better. I mean, it's such a powerful combination.
Back to the business side of it, I'm on the board of a medical company, and we were in our last board meeting at the end of last quarter, and they were talking about doing a deep dive on our competitors and the number one competitor in the space. And they're going through some of the attributes of this company. And one of the attributes there was, to your point, this competitor of ours that was light years ahead of us has a give back.
program and is marketing it. And when you look at the differentiators from their results versus ours versus anybody else, this company was light years ahead. And I raised my hand and said, hang on, we're looking beyond this. No one was noticing that this was actually
an element that was driving ROI for the company. And because your book brought such a spotlight to it, can you share a little bit around how you understood or the data behind why that is that people want to do business with companies that are giving back? Well, I'll give you an example. In my book, I feature a woman, her name is Bea Bocalandro, and she wrote a book called Doing Good at Work. And one of the interviews I did with her, she talked about how when we watch advertisements on television,
If you see, for example, an advertisement that saves the whales or it's about cleaning the ocean or about helping with poverty, the emotional response our brain has is similar, get this Heather, to looking into the eyes of someone we love. I mean, that's a powerful emotion when you think about our brain recognizes that giving back is such a powerful tool. Plus, we know the research tells us that
When someone is known as a giver, they're known as more trustworthy. They're more likable, which means people want to do business with them. And I want to share a story with you that really brought this home to me in my own office.
About 10 years ago, a gentleman named Dave came into my office, longtime client, but I could tell he was wearing the weight of the world on his shoulders. We exchanged some small talk and I said, Dave, you've got to spill it. I know something's wrong. He began to tell me that he just wasn't into going to work anymore. You know, he liked making money, but he was questioning, is there more to this business than just making money?
And for some reason, Heather, the word just shot out of my mouth. I said, Dave, is there a cause that you care deeply about? And I could tell the question stunned him. He sat back in his chair and he began to tell me a story that he had gone overseas with his family a couple of years earlier.
In a village they had gone to, the guide talked about how they needed a schoolhouse built because the lack of education was holding back this entire village. And he remembered exchanging that glance with his wife to say, wouldn't it be cool to fund that school? Well, they get back to the States, life gets busy, business, family, et cetera. So my question brought it all right in front of him.
him. And I said, Dave, what if you did this? What if you set a sales goal to increase your sales over the next 12 months and you took half of that increase and used it to fund that school? And how would you feel about that? And he said, Derek, I think that's a great idea. So he leaves the office. He comes back in the office three months later. He looks younger. He looks more invigorated. He looks like he's back in the game again. I said, Dave, it's clear something happened. Tell me the story. He
He said, Derek, at first, I was a bit skeptical of what you said, but I said there was nothing to lose. He called all of his clients when he got back to the business and said, look, we decided to have a generosity purpose. And our purpose is we're going to take a portion of all of our proceeds and use it to build this school.
Well, the clients got on board. They began to buy more from him, referred people to buy more from him. Dave got more excited about going to the business because he had a purpose. There was meaning to his money. He said, Derek, we've already funded half of that school in just three months. Well, that was an aha moment for me because here are two grown men. It was pretty emotional to
to see this belief that he had get shattered and how he could use his business as a platform to do more good. And what it based on was when I was an advisor about 20 years earlier, when I started my practice,
I always loved education and I had a passion for giving back. And so I would give back and recognize a student of the month and a teacher of the month in my local high school because I realized I would have wanted to have an adult, a successful business person come back and sort of give me the bigger picture, not algebra is important, economics is important. Those are okay then, but they don't really help you in real life.
And so I would give a $25 gift card to the student of the month and a $50 gift card to the teacher of the month. They would have thought they won the lottery. I mean, that money was so important to them. I took a picture back in the day. There was a thing called a newspaper for all of our listeners that are young, especially. And I put a picture of myself and the student and the principal in the paper and a picture of myself and the teacher and the principal in the paper. Well, I began to get phone calls saying,
And clients would say, Derek, we want to work with you. And finally, after the third call, I said, why are you calling me out of all the advisors in town? Why did you pick me? They said, Derek, we know you're good with money, but we picked you because you believe and care about the same things that we care about. We like education as well. And Heather, that was the epiphany for me.
of how I grew my business was giving back. And the more I gave, I didn't do this intentionally, but the more it came back to me in terms of clients who loved not just the work we did, but the cause they could be a part of. Wow. So that was one of the shocking parts of your book, which I've seen play out and create real monetization in my business and-
like you're saying, purpose in other people's lives and success for them. And it's really had this rapid domino effect in my life. So guys, for everyone listening right now, if you work for a company, raise your hand and bring this idea up at your company. If you have your own company and you're passionate about giving back to a certain charity, start talking about it with your team. Set a goal, come up with this give back number and realize when you read Good Money Revolution, you're going to see how it's not only is it going to deliver dollars,
for you and your initiatives, but it's going to create this momentum of doing good in the world, which is so sadly missed right now and so needed. Well, so true. And I'll give you an example. When I launched my own podcast about two years ago, the World Series was coming to Arlington. It was the first time that they'd had a neutral side because of COVID.
So my daughter is a huge baseball fan, Heather. So I bought a ticket for my daughter, myself and her boyfriend. But then I said, you know what? I'm going to back myself against the wall here and say, I'm not going to allow myself to go to the World Series until I get a certain number of downloads on the podcast.
And I wanted to go all in. And so I came up with a variety of ways to do that. And it was amazing how when I put myself in a situation of I'm going to lose something valuable, my brain went into overdrive. It was like ideas began to fire back and forth because there was a purpose. There was a cause. I had to do it. So the day before the World Series, we hit the goal.
But I say all that because for people who are thinking about their money as if I go to a job, I come back home, I press repeat and do it again the next day. And then Sunday about four o'clock, that icky feeling settles in that says, oh, I got to start this all over again on Monday. This message is for you. And I want to tell you.
If you're working in a job right now, where your feet are today is where you can have the most impact. And if you can find a way to increase business, reduce costs, and grow the bottom line where you're at right now in a job, you can make more money, which means you can then give more money to the causes you care about. And I want to dispel something real quick, Heather.
This was a problem I had to work through myself many years ago. And that was when I would give to an organization I believed in, I was giving money. So therefore I was losing money for them to gain the money. Okay. So get this, it was lose win, which is never a good scenario. And what I realized when I came upon this generosity purpose was,
this is a way for you to make more money, do more good. And because you're doing more good, more people typically want to work with you and you are driven to make the business successful, which means you keep making even more money to do more good. And the cycle just keeps repeating itself.
And so no longer is it lose-win, it's almost win-win and the charity gets one win. You're almost winning more than the charity is because it changes your mindset to have a fulfillment mentality. And you're helping your customers and I think you're helping your business, Heather, because you're decommoditizing the process.
product or service you've got. There's so many things right now. People can work with any CPA, realtor, attorney, salesperson. It all looks the same, sorry to say to the audience, to the outside person. But when you raise your flag up and say, you know what?
We provide great service, but what helps us stand out is we help make our community better. People want to work with that person. And research tells us, surprisingly, they're willing to pay more money to do it because they're part of a thicker story. So when the competitors come knocking, they may be teased with a price reduction from the competitor, but they won't change because the bigger story of how you're helping make the world better and helping their community really is what hooked them in the first place.
Oh, it's so powerful. And I'm telling you, it works. I'm living proof. Please raise your hand at work. Make this change in your business. You will be thankful for it. Okay. People listening right now are thinking, oh, well, this guy grew up with a silver spoon in his mouth. His dad handed him his financial advisor business. I know that's not true, but I'm hoping you could share with them a little bit about the truth behind how you came to be the person you are today. Right.
Well, I wasn't that kid where I had to walk up hill in the snow both ways to school and I carried a warm baked potato to keep my hands warm and ate that potato at lunch. It's not a story like that, but I grew up lower middle class. And what I didn't have going for me was I didn't see my parents take any risk. My dad was a metallurgical engineer, so he was very math oriented by nature. And
And he would always get to the precipice, Heather, of wanting to take a risk, of wanting to launch a business and do something more. But he couldn't quite get there. So I grew up liking money. And I began to connect at an early age. The more money I made...
the more I could give away. I remember writing even like in my left hand to make it look anonymous, to give a cash donation to our church and the food bank so it wouldn't get traced back to me. There was something about that that just drove me. You know, even as a kid, I kept track of every dime I found on the ground every quarter of my first paycheck.
So I didn't grow up in utter poverty, but I would say I had sort of a poverty mindset mentally when it came to my money because I didn't see my parents have a plan or an ability to work themselves out of the bubble that they were in. It wasn't until my first job out of college that I reached a very important fork in the road. And what it looked like was I got passed over for a raise, which really bothered me.
The boss would routinely say on Fridays, hey, by the way, Saturday is a workday. I need you to come in eight o'clock tomorrow. I have to call my wife and cancel our plans. And then get this. Back when people wrote checks,
He actually bounced two of our paychecks. So imagine this. I give a tithing check to my church and my pastor calls and says, hey, Derek, don't know how to tell you this, but your tithing check bounced, which meant the business didn't have money to pay us. So I quickly saw the writing on the wall and I reached this moment and I thought I can either stay at this job or a salaried job like this, but someone would always be telling me what I'm worth.
based on the salary that they're giving me right then. That's what they're saying. Here's how much I'm worth to the company. Or I can take a risk. I can put the chips on Derek. I can bet on myself and go into a financial planning business, which I've always wanted to do. And that's the path I chose. So I continued working full-time for three more months, got licensed in the evenings,
and the studying on the weekends and so forth, and eventually made that break. And people told me, Derek, you're going to fail. You don't have enough money in cash reserves. You're not smart enough. You don't have a financial background. But what I had in my heart, Heather, was I recognized I was sort of a nobody, but it was with the heart and a desire of a somebody. And I recognized even in high school when I ran for office and won because I brought people together and
is if you can help people feel important and heard and appreciated, regardless of their age, regardless of their net worth, they will have an affinity toward you because you're endearing yourself toward them and making them feel an important part of your life.
Oh, that's so powerful. You brought up this poverty mindset. What are some of the strategies that you can share with people listening right now, how to switch that mindset? Well, let me ask our listeners this. Did any of you grow up with this scenario?
where you might have seen mom or dad or grandma and grandpa hit their fist on the kitchen table while you were a kid. And they'd say, if only we had more money, then we could fill in the blank. Okay. So Heather, I mean, when you see that as a kid, you can't help but begin to believe that, well, I guess that's just how money works. The lack of it causes pain. And because we can't get more of it,
We live with the pain. Or you might have heard someone say to you, you know, in life there's the haves and the have-nots.
And we're in the have not category. Well, those beliefs, I just wish I could just punch my fist through some glass right now and say, look, stop that thinking. I mean, we get one shot on this earth. And whether you've made bad decisions in the past or people have told you you're not worth what you're making right now or you'll never get paid more than that or you've made some really bum decisions.
you can move ahead today and change that. And let me tell you a quick story to illustrate this. So there was a woman who I was in the office on a Saturday morning and my voicemail, I was blinking and I pressed it and a woman's voice came on and she was scared beyond belief. She said, Derek, you've got to call me back right away. I bounced a check and I'm going to go to jail. My gosh, what? I was like, who, who goes to jail because they bounce and bounce a check.
So I quickly called her back. I knew this message wouldn't wait until Monday. And I said, tell me what happened. She said, Derek, I feel so stupid. I didn't move money from my savings to check in. I wrote a check. I got this letter in the mail. It bounced. And now I'm going to go to jail. I said, okay, let me press pause.
We can call the bank on Monday. We'll take care of the bank and so forth and the cash, the check, the balance. But why do you think you're going to go to jail? So she began to tell me a story. And when she was seven years old, she's 55 right now, seven years old, she overheard her dad receive a call from a store owner that he had just bought some school supplies for and some clothing for her and her siblings.
And he accidentally bounced a check as well. And the store owner said, because you bounced a check, I'm going to send the police over there and we're going to send you to jail. So this seven-year-old girl thought that if you bounce a check or even more, if you make a bad financial mistake, you go to jail. So now fast forward, she's 55 years old.
And what that did for me, Heather, is it gave me this entire epiphany of, for the past 10 years as we worked together, she was always hesitant to take risk. She wouldn't take advantage of investment options I gave to her that would have made her quite a bit more money. And she was underpaid for the position that she had. Once we began to talk about this and she began to realize the false money belief was not just false, it was actually costing her money and opportunity to
She actually got another job, was making more money. Her life dramatically changed. And so what I want people to hear is don't just think when you say money beliefs, it's just this abstract thought.
Your money beliefs can actually change the course of your family and your family's generation for generations to come. And it all starts with you having the courage to bet on yourself.
If you have any type of limiting beliefs around money, you need to get good at money revolution. Now it is a game changer. One other thing that stuck out to me and I I'd love for your feedback on this. And this is my opinion as a reader.
And this is one of the reasons why I like the book so much. And I don't see it as a typical how to make more money book, but something so much bigger. When I was reading the book, I kept getting this theme or this hidden sense of the law of attraction somehow baked into the entire thing. Again, not hitting me over the head with it, but it was almost this message through and through the book that was reminding me that what I'm putting out there is what I'm going to get back.
What is your take on that perspective? Yeah, I love that. Let me tell you a quick story. So I had coffee with a high school student last week. I do about two or three coffees a week. Anybody that calls me, I try to have coffee in the morning because I realized that
as we're talking about ideas and I'm helping them, I often get ideas fed back into my mind as well. It's very profitable. So we're talking and he shares with me, he said, Derek, I want to go into commercial real estate. I'm going to skip college. And so I began to ask him some questions about what is your plan? How will you do this? How do you plan to be more disciplined? Because we know that if you don't go to college, you're creating your own path versus the well-worn path. So he began to tell
Tell me some ideas and thoughts. So we wrapped up coffee and Heather, get this, as we're walking out the door in walks, a good friend of mine, who's one of the most respected commercial real estate brokers in the local area. So I got to introduce Michael to Philip and Philip said, Michael, I'd be happy to have coffee with you. And the lesson it taught me was when you know exactly what you want,
and you share it with people who have the ability to help you get what you want, you will probably get what you want in a lot shorter amount of time. Because he was wise to reach out to me, and it just so happened because he had that initiative, each step leads to a bigger step. And when it comes to our money,
One of the things that I think holds people back is that they say, you know what, if I'm making $75,000 a year right now, I want to make more money. But when I ask people how much they want to make, they always just say more. Well, that doesn't get us closer to the goal. So if you're listening right now, write down on a sticky note, here's the dollar amount
of how much you want to make. And now all you have is a math problem to solve. If you're at 75 now and you wanna make 150, now all the resources that God has given you, your subconscious mind, your brain, and your own abilities, now you can solve, how can I get the other 75?
Do I need to change jobs? Do I need to build a side hustle? Do I need to go to my current employer and talk about how I can add more value? Do I need to do whatever it is? Now you're focused on what it takes to do that. And my goal, Heather, in writing this book is I just think of people who all the time go to jobs.
and they don't feel like they're in a job they like. They're simply there to provide for themselves and their family, and my heart goes out to them. But in my book, Good Money Revolution, I want to empower everyone to say, whether you're making a minimum wage or you're making a million dollars a year, where you're at right now, this is a roadmap to help you make more money. And by the way, take some of it
and do more good. And you'll feel even more motivated to keep making more money. Wow, that is so impactful and so true. And I love your advice to write down that goal, even if it seems grandiose or crazy right now, write it down. And like you said, now it's a math problem. Your mind will start working on those solutions. You have a chapter in the book,
around money lessons that we are not teaching our kids. I was hoping you could share a couple of those with everyone. Yeah, and the reason I wrote this chapter was is I would talk to people in my office, Heather. I vividly remember a couple coming in saying, Derek, we wanna teach our kids how to do better with money, but we have really screwed up our own financial lives. What can we possibly teach them?
And I took a deep breath and I said, you of all people have the most to teach your kids because you can teach them through your failures financially. Well, they look confused. I said, think about this. When we had, you know, when COVID was in full bloom, we got all our family back together again. We didn't run the table. We'd go around and talk about how was your day? And we talk about highs and lows, et cetera. And I remember when our kids would ask, well, dad, how was your day? Well, I met with this client or did this or that.
It really didn't register a whole lot, but on days where I said, you know what, guys, I need to be honest with you. I really screwed up today. I really made a bad decision. You could have heard a pin drop, Heather. They were all ears on dad, like, oh my gosh, dad failed. This is going to be great. You know? And so our kids love it when they see mom and dad be human. I think sometimes they think that we're better than they are. Everything goes right for us because we try to put off that air. Like, even if we're doing really poorly, things are great. Right.
I think right now is the best time to teach your kids and say, look, I just want you to know I want you to do better financially. Let me tell you a couple of things that we did that we regret that we did so that you can help avoid making those same problems. And one of the main things I would teach them is you want your kids to be the creator of money and not just the receiver of money.
So much of our society, Heather, is all based on get a stable job, get a steady paycheck, retire after 30 years, because that's what the generation above us lived through. What I'll tell you now is we've got to crumple that up and throw that piece of paper out the window. I want people right now to be the creator of money because we learned through the pandemic, almost everyone can be one global event away from losing their job.
But if you own your own business, if you own your own revenue streams, regardless of what the government does, regardless of what taxation looks like or social policy, you're in control. And so you can tell your kids or grandkids, look, I never did this, but why don't we be curious together and help you launch a business, even while you're working full time, so you can move from that business to something you completely own, which gives you total control. And that's what I think is more important than ever right now.
Well, and all my listeners know, having been fired unexpectedly and having to create my own business out of nowhere, heck yeah, be in charge of it, be strategic and get working on it ahead of the time instead of someone directing that for you. If you have not got Good Money Revolution yet by Derek Kinney, I'm pushing it on you. I love this book. It really impacted my life in a revenue standpoint and emotional give back standpoint. And I promise you it will too. Derek, where can they get the first few chapters for free?
Yeah, so you can go to goodmoneychapters.com. Goodmoneychapters.com, download the intro, the first part of the book and the first five chapters. This book is so important. I want to get it into as many people's hands as possible. You can also follow us on Instagram at Derek T. Kinney, but definitely go to goodmoneychapters.com, download the first five and let us know what you think. And you can find the book anywhere you buy your books. It's Good Money Revolution by Derek Kinney. Derek, thank you so much for writing this book, starting the revolution and being here with us today.
Heather, this has been a delight. I've enjoyed every minute of it. Thank you for having me. All right, guys, go get the book and we will talk next week. I decided to change that dynamic. I couldn't be more excited for what you're going to hear. Start learning and growing. Inevitably, something will happen. No one succeeds alone. You don't stop and look around once in a while. You could miss it. I'm on this journey with me.