Your Student Loans Do Not Stop Your Success: Interview with Travis Hornsby – PPP: 075

Today we are going to be getting down and dirty with that yucky word: money. We’re talking about student loans today. This can really be a tremendous detriment, mentally, when it comes to approaching your business the way that you should. It is my pleasure to bring Travis Hornsby on to the show today to talk all about student loans, proper planning, and financial budgeting. We will also be discussing the emotional side of having student loans when it comes to partnerships and wanting the kind of lifestyle you hope to live now that you’ve graduated from your healthcare school or college.

This is something that I definitely have been reading a lot about: my relationship with money. For a lot of us, it comes with a very negative, scary, mindset. There are times we don’t even want to look at our bank account or know how much is on our credit card statement. It can get to the point where you just want to put your head in the sand and not even acknowledge the issues that are coming because of your finances.

One of the things I promised myself is when it comes to money and making investments on me and my business, I always knew I had the drive to win big. I took out a $25,000 business loan when I graduated and I had $30,000 in OSAP (the Ontario Student loan plan), but I knew I was going to be able to pay it back at some point. It took me a good 3 years before I got that line of credit to go to 0. Then I found a new investment that I would use my line of credit to help subsidize and then I said I’ll bring it back to zero.

I can say that it hasn’t been until the past 2 years that I’ve been consistently in the black in my bank account. That was just because I had massive dreams and goals in my business that I knew I needed to make an upfront investment on. So it was buying a clinic, getting a car, buying expensive equipment, investing in my self-published book, in my online presence, business coaching, and even this podcast. But every single time, I knew I had the tenacity to pay it off so it was always a worthwhile investment.

Now I know that there are a lot of you that don’t feel that way. Many graduates feel strangled by the debt that they’ve accumulated. And then, of course, there are people that are in your life that are expecting you contribute in some way, shape or form, in regards to bills and expenses. It can be really stressful.

 

Resources Mentioned:

Check out Jim Fortin’s podcast here.

Dollars Flow Easy to Me (book).

 

SPONSOR

This week the sponsor is my 7 Day Detox Program. It’s a complete done for you program that walks you through everything you need to do to create either an in-office or an online program, depending on where you are and what you do. This program comes with all of the emails, scripts, protocols, and everything I do. I actually do this program with almost every single new patient and out of everything I do in my office, I get the most repeat business with my 7 Day Detox.

Find it here: www.Maximizedbusiness.ca/7DayDetoxProgram

 

Questions I Asked Travis:

1. When you start working with your clients, how do you help them take a real look at their cash flow and get over that emotional burden?
2. How do you approach working with people who need to take another loan out to get their business started when they already have student loans?
3. How does someone start to plan for starting a clinic or brick and mortar practice?
4. What are some of the cool techniques that are available now that people can use to save money while they’re working to pay off student loans?
5. How do you coach your clients to have those difficult conversations with significant others and family members?

What You’ll Learn From This Episode:

• Why Travis says you shouldn’t look back on what’s happened, financially.
• What Travis’ steps are when working with a client to pay off their student debt.
• Why he believes you need a good relationship with money in general before you start to figure out your student loan plan.
• How to start navigating the realism of starting a business.
• The importance of keeping monthly fixed costs extremely low for your first few years of business.

 

Connect with Travis

Website | travis@studentloanplanner.com |

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Hello Everyone! Welcome to another episode of the Profitable Practice Podcast, I am of course your host Andrea Maxim, Naturopathic Doctor, and today we are going to be getting down and dirty with that yucky word: money. We’re going to be talking about student loans today. I know a lot of you have got them, this can really be a tremendous detriment, mentally, when it comes to approaching your business the way that you should. It is my pleasure to bring Travis Hornsby on to the show today to talk all about student loaning, proper planning, and financial budgeting. And also to talk about the emotional side of having student loans when it comes to partnerships and wanting the type of lifestyle you think you deserve to live now that you’ve graduated from your healthcare school or college. This is something that I definitely have been learning and reading a lot about: my relationship with money. For a lot of us, it comes with a very negative, scary, you know; I don’t even want to look at my bank account, I don’t even want to know how much is on my credit card statement. It can get to the point where you just want to put your head in the sand and not even acknowledge the issues that are coming with your finances.

One of the things I promised myself is when it comes to money and making investments on me and my business, I always knew I had the drive to win big. I took out immediately a $25,000 business loan when I graduated and I had $30,000 in OSAP (the Ontario Student loan plan), but I knew I was going to be able to pay it back. And I can be completely honest with you that it took me a good 3 years before I got that line of credit to go to 0. Then I found a new investment that I would use my line of credit to help subsidize and then I said I’ll bring it back to zero. And it really hasn’t been until the past 2 years that I’ve been consistently in the black in my bank account. That was just because I had massive dreams and goals for my business that I knew I had to make an upfront investment on. So it was buying a clinic, getting a car, buying expensive equipment for my clinic, investing in my self-published book, it was investing in my online presence, and the podcast that I am doing was still an investment, and the business coaching that I have done was a major investment. But every single time I knew I had the tenacity to pay it off so it was always a worthwhile investment. This is the number one reason why I never gamble, I never go to the Casino with my husband, I refuse to put money even to a Lotto Ticket or Scratch Card because I can’t control the outcome but when it comes to me and my potential, I have full control over that. And so I have over time developed a very positive relationship with money where I always knew and based on my actions, that I would be able to make that investment back and my return on investment was always in the plus. But I know that there’s a lot of you that don’t feel that way, and there’s a lot of you that are still feeling very strangled and weighted down by the debt that you’ve accumulated and maybe what your Credit Card statement is saying and of course the people in your life that are expecting you to contribute in somewhat shape performed with regards to the bills. So there are a few resources that I think you should look into around with, the number 1 person that I have been listening too and I will put a link to the Podcast that he did with James Wedmore is Jim Fortin, I’ve listened to this Podcast 2 or 3 times now and every single time it really does help you; Number 1, take radical responsibility to where you are now and understand what you really need to be responsible for in order to become and live that lifestyle that you want to. And he dies to talk a lot about the financial side of things, how can we easily let debt dictate our success because we constantly make stories and tell ourselves “Well, I’m poor I have no money” while the reality may be true, what you decide to do in order to overcome that obstacle is completely up to you and your responsibility. So it is Jim Fortin who I have been following for a number of months now and has really helped me change my perspective on how I perceive my life, how I act with my life, and who am I being in my life, whether it finances as a wife, a mother, and a business owner. The other book that I have been reading lately is; ‘Dollars Flow Easy to Me’ and that is something again I will post in the show notes, but that is really a great book for you to understand your mental blocks around finances and the more you block money from coming to you, the less money you’re going to have. So it is all about being comfortable with accepting what your worth and accepting money from your patients for supplements, and running a business you need to be profitable to continue to run your business and just about the mindset around that. So those are the two resources that I would strongly encourage you to check out, again those will be on the show notes but before we jump into the Podcast, of course, the sponsor for the Podcast show is the 7-day Detox Program, this is a program that I have used basically since year one in my practice until to this date so six years later it still continued to be the most profitable program that I have in my business. If you want to check it out you can go to https://maximizedbusiness.ca/7daydetoxprogram/ . It is completely done for you, you can implement it for 24 hours, and with my clients, I say implement with the very next patient, you don’t have to have all the Emails just start running it in your practice. It is again the biggest reason why I got word of mouth referrals and my patients continuously come back and repeat the 7-day Detox completely in their own volition, so it is a really easy program to run and it is a great way to have some passive revenue as well and some more revenue in your business. Let’s jump to the interview with Travis

[8:10] Andrea: Hello Travis! Thank you so much for being on the Profitable Practice Podcast, just give everybody kind of a background on who you are and how you got into this particular topic that we are going to be talking out today.

[8:27] Travis: Sure! I started dating this woman who is my wife now and we had this money conversation and she told me “By the way, I have six figures in student loans”. I had to deal with that with my wife until then and I decided ‘Well I can help figure this out’ so I’m going to make a model and I’m going to figure out a plane for us to have paid us back. And then I did it then it was more complicated, so for Americans, they’ve got all these different companies and manager loans and they receive change every few years or even in a few months in some cases. And so I decided I want to help people figure out how to make a plan to pay back their giant skittle ones because it is the number one financial challenge. I started initially doing it for friends and I decided to make it a full-time business and now we’ve consulted about 240 Million student debt since I started this officially back in October 2016. 

[09:46] Andrea: Wow! And just thinking about it, thinking about the finances, as soon as we start talking about money there’s this whole stigma around talking about our finances and looking at our numbers and if anybody like my husband doesn’t open his bills, he just like gives the money and hopes that this could pay things off. So let us first start there because the biggest mental obstacle that happens is; we have these students that are brilliant, they’re health and heart-centered and all want to do is help people whether it’s nutrition or health coach naturopath and especially on the Naturopathic realm, they’re graduating with six figures in debt, and then the next thins is ‘Well I have to invest in a business, I need to start making money back’. So when you start working with your clients, how do you get over the mental obstacle of facing the reality that is the cash flow and then gets them to move forward beyond that so it’s not such a burden.

[10:52] Travis:  I think that the first thing you gotta do is to stop looking at the past, anything that’s already happened has already happened you can’t change it. So definitely think about it briefly but then you want to figure out what wasn’t that you can use from that and just move forward with your wife. So that’s a big problem that I find, people a lot of times put their head on the sand, just pretending that it isn’t a problem and maybe it will go away. You made a great point about people that are very focused on helping people, they’re really passionate about what they’re learning and putting it into practice, but a lot of the time you got these schools kind of take advantage of people and charge people way more. The first off is not blaming yourself like just giving yourself permission to not feel guilty for all the decisions that you made in your life, that’s like the first step. Step 2 would be a lot more practical. It’s very hard to make a good long-term plan for your student loans if your short-term cash position is really messed up. So a lot of times I would say “How much you have in the bank?” “What does your budget look like?” ‘What does your budget look like?” so we’ll have a discussion just about making sure that your short-term picture is okay, you have a good relationship with money just as generally. And then the next step is figuring out the big student debt and figuring out what to do with that because once we’ve gotten to like those first few steps, it is okay. Like we’ve already destroyed and slayed the ‘Blame yourself’ mentality and second step we fixed that cycle of living paycheck to paycheck and once those two things are slain we can focus on the third step which is figuring out the students-one plan.

[12:43] Andrea: Right so before we break that down because I’m sure everybody wants to hear that part, my initial thought is “I’ve forgiven myself” which I’m sure takes a lot more than just saying it, I know what money I have to play within my bank. The next question is so I want to start a business, I need at least maybe 10,000 Dollars to really get my business up and running, how do you then approach people that need to take out another loan to get things going while they still have the student loan and again the mental part of this as well as planning it all out. 

[13:23] Travis: Well, luckily for most Naturopaths at least in the US you’re going to have loans that are in the federal system so you can pay based on your income. So at a higher level, you’re paying a fixed percentage of whatever you make, if you’re making 0, you’re paying 0. If you’re making 300,000 maybe your payment is about 300-500 a month and so you know it’s a limited portion of what you’re earning. So that’s the first step; realizing like you don’t actually have 300,000 in your student loans, you don’t have what’s effectively taxed on your income for 20-25 years but then you have a big tax bomb payment at the end for you know when you’re done paying back on these different income-based programs. So it’s not a giant amount of debt, it’s really like a tax, now that you’ve realized that it is kind of like a tax, pretend like you’re in Sweden and taxes are like 70%. If you had the opportunity to earn more money, would you do that? And the answer is of course. Then you’re going to make more money as a business owner long term with a very high probability, like there would be some people who would earn more money as an Associate because they don’t have that Business Owner mentality but most people once they get over the confidence issue, will make more money as a business owner. So the question is will they have to go to the bank to get that financing? Or you have to use your savings or whatever it is; you’ve got to take that next step. The student loans are very important pieces but you don’t want to lose like the forest and the trees, being financially successful with your degree means owning your future and having your own practice. So we’ll talk about different ways that they can do that from a practical standpoint and focus on the student loan piece.

[15:30] Andrea: If you don’t mind I would actually love to go to that right now, so we’re at that place where I would say I want to open up a clinic space. I want to have my own space, maybe not a massive center but I just want to have my own little space as you said to start investing in my success as a Healthpreneur as Business Owner. So how do I start navigating that and planning things appropriately, again another big falter that I see is; we have this perception when we want to open space and it has to be massive, like throw as much money into it, make the walls beautiful as they are, get the most expensive furniture, like have a perfect right out the gate and yet we still haven’t seen one patient. So how do you start to navigate in the realism of starting a business?

[16:19] Travis: Well, I have a friend who spent about 40,000 Dollars on starting a business, and during that period where he was spending all that money maybe he had like 2 or 3 thousand dollars of revenue. What he was doing was trying to get to the point where he was already investing things at scale but he didn’t have that basic foundation. What I would tell anybody who’s starting Naturopath businesses; you want to keep your fixed cost as very low as possible. It doesn’t just include your business but your personal life too. So many people graduate after all these jobs and high education. Like I am a Doctor so I’m going to buy a car because we deserve it, or a house, or a trip to the Caribbean or whatever it is. The first step is, at least for this period where you’re going to experiment with having your own business; that stuff has to not exist and be very limited. You’re kind of living a life like you’re in a desperation poverty mode for those first 2 or 3 years of business and having that expectation with you and your family that it is going to be very lean, you’re not going out to eat all that much, you’re not going to have a big Car Payment, if you’re going to buy a house you’re going to delay that goal and really making yourself as living as much stress is possible for having low fixed cost. For the business side of the equation to get creative, you don’t have to necessarily take out this giant space. Start small undercharge for your services perhaps at first, because if you charge one of your experienced Doctors, maybe people aren’t going to come to see you right away because you’re not offering a compelling reason. If you’re going to give your services at a lower price point, you take less generous plans from people then you’ll get that revenue in the door, and then what’s coming in the door and you have some level of profitability but it is really small then you can optimize that, you could say ‘Maybe we don’t take this plan because the reimbursement is really low’ or ‘Maybe we get a bigger space because we are overflowing on patients and we’re working on 7 am to 7 pm and that’s sustainable. 

[18:40] Andrea: I actually want to elaborate on that last one because I love it. Because the other thing is; all new graduates regardless of the health field, just want to make money as quickly as possible but they don’t necessarily negotiate on their calendar. So coming back at what you’re saying, since you have no books anyway, do whatever you can whether opening your services for free, offering a discount like just get people unto the door because that also elaborates on the confidence piece and the faster you can get you confidence level up, the faster you’re going to see those changes in your patients, the faster you can raise your rates. But again it’s sort of like ‘Well, I don’t want to charge low rates because I think I’m worth more’ and yet your calendar is like bare-bones empty. So just get people at your door to at least manifest that low and then start to elaborate on things. I really appreciate that now what are some of them; when we’re talking about fixed cost, what are some of the cool avenues that are available now with technology now that people can start to use their advantage, whereas before like 10 years ago you had to pay, for instance, a lot of my colleagues now are using wireless faxing on their phone like they did not buy a fax machine. A lot of people are using their cellphones as their clinic phones, as opposed to buying a landline. So what are other kinds of cool techniques you’ve seen your clients use to pinch a few pennies?

[20:21] Travis: I would say, great question! So there’s a lot of expensive healthcare-focused software right there that you’re supposed to buy because it is the latest and the greatest and it’s a complaint to everything. I think that you want to go as simple as possible. So I had this amazing calendar feature where people can book and reschedule, it’s so easy and you don’t have to pay 500 dollars a month, you can pay whatever it is like 10 or 20 bucks a month. There’s this chatbot thing that I have on my site, it’s called Olark, so when people have questions they can just click that button and it’s really obvious that you can contact me and chat. And so if you have somebody sitting at the front desk, absolutely they should be logged in to that all day if somebody has a question and they’ll be on your site they can just click on that button, ask and get a live answer. If you’re in an area that is not super competitive with a lot of other Doctors around I would say; stuff like Facebook Ads like you can target people in a limited small geographic area and you can do a lot of things like sending people to booking, there’s all kind of stuff you can do there. So I think I’m going to spend 50,000 Dollars and I’m going to have a successful practice, totally not true like you can get away at least somewhere to practice and 500 bucks or something like that for a software, you’d be off to the races.

[22:15] Andrea: So, let’s say we’ve got everything in place, we’re running things in a fair shoestring budget, the other thing that comes with finances that I find is; the family members, the partners. I’ve had personal coaching clients and people that I’ve reached out and they’re like ‘My husband or My Wife is relying on me to contribute to these bills that we have’ ‘My Parents were expecting me to be able to pay for such and such things by now and I’m not just able to.’ So I wanted to talk to you about the real conversation that perhaps you’ve witnessed with your clients where they have to break things down and be realistic with their family and friends, you’ve kind of touched on this earlier, but I’d like to go unto more detailed about that, and how do you then coach your clients to have that conversation. 

[23:09] Travis: Well, the first thing to think about the student loan burden is to think of it as a percentage of your income, it’s a tax, an absolute debt payment. If you look at 350,000 on student loans, to pay that back in 10 years you might have to pay 3,500 to 4,000 a month and that’s just not possible. Even if you’re crushing it as a practice owner like 150,000 a year that’s still probably not doable. So you’ve got this federal debt issue, the reason the debt is so high is because of the federal rules, so you have to use the federal payment options to pay back the debt that wouldn’t be so high if it wasn’t for federal rules in the first place, so that is the first thing, it’s challenging significant others and parents’ line of thinking that there’s alternative ways to pay back debt and just brute force it. For people who double their incomes, that’s kind of like an unofficial guideline I use, that’s when you need to have the conversation with partners like “Hey I don’t have to pay a giant amount towards my student debt because we’re going to use a different strategy for that.” In terms of income which maybe I’m hearing a little bit in that question; maybe you expected to make more money than you’re making right now. And you thought that the admissions people told you that this is going to be an easy ticket to making a great income and you get out of school and start working and suddenly find out that it’s not or it’s not at least what you thought it’s going to be. So the thing that I would say there is ‘Do you earn more than if you worked as a teacher of the school?’ most people say yes to that. I mean there are some extreme examples where people will still be struggling to find a job or make an income. If you’re making more money than a teacher to a school or janitor or something like that, do that as a win like you’re earning a decent living more than the majority of people out there in the country at large. It’s all that savings like how much you spent, so if you make 50,000 a year but you save 50% of your income, you’re going to be a lot healthier than the physician that makes 150,000 or 200,000 a year but has a 10% savings rate. I’ve worked with people that are on track to multi-millionaires that barely make 50,000 Dollars a year and it’s because they have rock bottom expenses and are very modest with their budget. I think for that spending like the expectation that you’re contributing, I think that is the conversation that happens to a lot of couples, I guess I would just say if you’re concerned that you’re not contributing enough maybe first have that money conversation in general with your spells like what are our goals like how much you wanted for savings and for spend and all that. Then if I mean you hopefully have somebody that understands; that will work with you and make sure that your savings rate is high and that you’re living as if you are a couple of noxious down the socioeconomic prestige letters that make sense.

[26:22] Andrea: So let’s get into the planning part, so you’ve touched on it quite a bit about how to create that great financial plan, obviously keeping your expenses as low as possible, I completely agree like you should not be having a frivolous lifestyle for the first couple of years. I’m not too ashamed to say I lived with my parents for the first three years of my business and I refuse to move out to my parents’ house unless I was living with somebody else. Like I wasn’t going to try to be some big fancy adult and have my own space because I’m an adult. I’m not throwing money away just for rent just so I can live in my own apartment. I was so fine living at my parent’s place until I met my husband and we bought a house together and split all the costs. What are some easy techniques that people could start to really implement today? And I try to have as much tangible action stuff in this shows that they can start to put their money onto the proper boxes and make sure that they are following a realistic plan and perhaps you have, as you mentioned, you’re saving 50% or even 20% that’s putting you at a much better advantage if you’re blowing all your money except for like, 5% every year. I know it’s a really long question but could you start breaking down a great payment plan.

[ [27:45] ] Travis: Well, I’ll do it to the folks that have a lot of student debt on the American Federal System because that’s what I really deal with the most. Say you’ve got more than $100,000 of student loans. What do you do? And what is your first step? So the first thing is, I would want you to be either in the pay as you are in the program or the revised paying program. SO, it’s going to be one of those two. And if you are in something else, there is a solid chance that you’re costing yourself tens of thousands of dollars a year. So, it’s really should be one of those two plans. The other thing is you should be filing your taxes together as a married couple or separately. So, I see a big problem with these people, usually, people are making a mistake the way they do it. So, if you file your taxes separately as a couple, there needs to be a clear reason why do you that is to limit your student loan payment. You’re doing a page or vice pager, that’s just going to cost 10% of your income charges to student loans. That’s going to limit your payment, but the loans going to keep growing. And you’re going to see the debt balloon. That’s going to cause a psychological impact on you and you’re going to see that debt, like “Oh, my gosh! This debt keeps growing and growing. What do I do?” I modeled this for folks that I work with. We can know what that debt amount would be in 20 to 25 years, we can project it out and figure it out what that is and then you’re going to have this big debt amount. So, for most naturopaths, you’re working for yourself and you’re not working for a naturopath profit institution, you might have a hard time qualifying for the best American program which is the public service loan program. That is 10 years you pay in this program and you have no tax libel. That’s not most people. So most naturopaths pay for 20 to 25 years and then at the end of it you basically pay taxes on that balance. That’s going to be a big amount of money in the future, you have to put away a certain amount of money every month. The question is, “What is that amount of money? Where should it go?” And then also, the last final piece of it is when you’re doing so many savings, you got to figure out where or ways to reduce your income and grow your wealth. A lot of people don’t put anything into retirement savings, that is such a common problem with naturopaths and then other folks. The cool thing is you can actually take charge of your own and not have to rely on that. Some of that 50% savings or even a 20% savings rate, you’d want to make and goal to put as much as on your retirement as you possibly can. And for most people, the pre-tax, before tax retirement plans are better because if you have student loans that simultaneously save your money upfront and it saves you money with a low student loan payment. It’s kind of a freefall thing. You make sure you’re on the right plan and that’s going to save you a lot of money. And make sure you have the right account for that tax bomb so you don’t have to freak out about that anymore. It’s a doable defined thing that you are preparing for. And the third thing is saving for retirement to make sure you have a secured future and you are optimizing your loans with loan payments and then any extra, go blow it on having fun. 

[ [32:04] ] Andrea: The next question coming up to me is discipline. So, I’m sure people are listening and they’re yeah, I know I’m supposed to be doing this so it’s really hard for me to allocate my money or even know where to start. While you’re saying these are the logical things to do, what are my next steps, are there software or apps that you’ve given to your clients to say here’s how you can really manage what, you know, the money that came in this month to allocate. Or what would you recommend?

[ [32:32] ] Travis: We have a CFP on staff. People who have severe budget issues, they actually have a separate budget counsel thing. What he does is he uses https://www.mint.com/. It’s a financial tracking app. It’s free. You can upload all of your account information, your credit cards, your bank accounts, and you can see what you’re spending money on. That’s the first step to know where it’s all going. And one of the tools that we use is, if it’s a couple, for example, we’ll have people rank their top 5 spending areas in terms of importance to them. So, we’ll say, okay maybe you have a family; and it’s about housing, daycare, car/transportation, travel and eating out or food. We’ll have you rank those five big categories and we will have the people to agree with their list, so that might be a discussion. Once you got your list, then you go through everything. For the number one and number, the two most important categories are all your money is going, we suggest that you keep all those spendings. We might have some slight cuts and numbers three and four and five are most extreme cuts will happen. And that’s intentional because maybe your Zim class is the most important thing in your life. Maybe that’s the one thing that keeps you saying and maybe that cannot go. But then your spending and you’re like, “Wow! I don’t even remember as it went to that Brazilian steakhouse with people from work. And I don’t even remember that experience.” That’s the great signal that there’s something that needs to go or that something can get cut back. With https://www.mint.com/ you can have categories, that you can cap yourself at and alert you after you go over that category. We typically do is we make sure the cuts are coming out of areas in your life where you don’t find value where the money is going. 

[ [34:57] ] Andrea:  The other thing that’s coming to my mind is a lot of people, in order to keep their spending down, will lose like the old mason jar method where they keep cash in a jar and try to limit how much they spent on a credit card and things like that. Do you find those techniques at well can be helpful?

[ [35:17] ] Travis: Yeah, well it really does. That problem with the path like going out to eat, too much money on groceries, or those impulse purchases. Spending only in cash is a very powerful way to control your spending, but that won’t address things like rental payment, a car payment, and probably 75% of cases, people with budget problems, it’s usually one of those two. It’s usually housing and cars. There’s a joke that says, you can go to Starbucks until your liver fails, it’s not going to cause you problems with your credit card spending relative to living in a one-bedroom apartment. Like you could be spending with a bunch of roommates. The small like $10 or $5 purchases, yes they do add up like a month say they don’t, but I really find that most people can save the most money by compromising on your living situation and then their vehicles. 

[ [36:25] ] Andrea: Yeah, I can attest to that. My husband and I live in a 3-bedroom condo townhouse. My husband hates that we pay condo fees, but it was a really low mortgage. We could be out of the mortgage if we really want it for 7 years. And we’ve looked at other houses, sure we could easily move to a larger house and we’ll be paying our mortgage for 20 years from now. But we don’t have to. We’ve had a lot of conversations and a lot of tears about that, too. We don’t want us to be financially constrained. We just don’t need to have that right now. We’re not impressing anybody. We’re not doing that. And the same with cars, we are having very modest vehicles. We want to have a life. We want to be not stressed out with our finances and savings in the bank. And it’s amazing that our friends even and they’re in the four hundred to five hundred thousand homes and they have two kids. That just means that their property taxes are high, the cost to run the house is high. You have to pay for all of that. Fixing and the door stuff. Sometimes you just don’t have to do that. And my mom is a realtor. Other people are doing it. They don’t have to pay our bills. Like it’s so easy to get persuaded by the stereotypical, like a lifestyle that you should have. I would just as much live in a tiny home. I tell my husband that retirement plan is where we’re moving into, like one of those truck bed tiny homes. That is our plan.

[ [38:10] ] Travis: Yeah, I think it’s about efficiency. So if you’re going to have time like why do you want to have it. Well, I want a family to be able to stay at my house when I come to visit or I want to be able to have a good place for parties and have people. Why do you want to have a big truck? Well, I want to feel safe. When I drive in the winter, whenever there’s a bad day, I’m high up the ground and you know. I can go off the road or something like that unusually deeper psychological issue behind that. It’s mostly the things that make you happy like being with the family or going on those trips for you when we need to have a tracker something like that. Like, that’s the real thing. Motivates your spending. The desire and marketers are really smart about that. In this industry that makes tons of profit, off of that feeling really knowing this, you want those things. And so, instead of buying that big house, what if you bought a very small house and then you spent a percentage of the house on ten of your friends or renting an Airbnb, like for your family when they come to visit. My wife and I, we have this really nice Ikea couch and when people come to visit us like, we transform it into a kind of a better room or guest sleeping in. It’s all about don’t taking that easy way, like TV and marketing. All these typical things that tell you you are supposed to take. Like. take the efficient way out by doing some of the stuff that you were talking about. What’s the best school district that I can get into for the money? What’s the smallest place that I can be in and not feel like it’s a pain in my life. What’s the minimum amount of cards that I need to feel safe on the road? We just have that problem. We bought two cheap cars and we drove it for a while and my wife said it wasn’t super safe on the road. Did not have a fast-breaking, we compromise them. We bought a 2012 Nissan Altima cash and it’s great like there are no problems with it but it’s also kind of old. We got a scratch on it in the city and parking, we don’t have to worry about going and hitting up our insurance company. It’s like getting that minimum level, I’m not saying everyday go live in a tiny house, I think that’s great, I would like to do that too. But you know, you want to get the people to that minimum level where they feel like it’s okay. Capping those kinds of decisions, whatever that most efficient level is. 

[ [40:54] ] Andrea: I’d like to finish off this call by talking about the psychological and the deep-rooted thoughts around money and spending and where that comes from and I’m curious if you have any great resources that you’ve given to your clients to read or follow or listen to with regards to understanding where those financial perceptions are, understanding where your theory of poverty is, understanding your desire of appearing wealthy is. A lot of that comes in to play around money. 

[ [41:29] ] Travis: I guess I would like to go to is the book called, The Millionaire Next Door, that’s one of the books that I think is fantastic for understanding mindset and understanding what causes certain people to be wealthy and certain people to not have very much money. I think that’s a great book. Not to sound too self-serving but my bogs the https://www.studentloanplanner.com/ my talks about that. Mister money mustache encourages people to live an efficient living. And then, there’s also a website called www.millennialrevolution.com  it’s a couple from Canada that have a very financial independence mindset that will help you with financial issues. 

[ [42:31] ] Andrea: Share your website one more time.

[ [42:32] ] Travis: Sure, it’s  https://www.studentloanplanner.com/. People can just contact me with just my name Travis@studentloanplanner.com and they can just email me anything. I’m happy to teach. We just help a lot of naturopaths and a plan that I know they’re doing the right thing. They don’t have to feel stress about it anymore. That’s what we do.

[ [42:55] ] Andrea: Perfect! Well, Travis thank you so much for coming to the show. And talking about a scary issue for a lot of people and bringing to, you know, it doesn’t have to be every move that you make that you do need to and still invest in your business because that’s why you went to school. But don’t outlive your lifestyle. Be very realistic about your finances and what’s your financial spending. And thank you again so much. And we will put the links to connect with you and your website into our show notes. Anything else? Can you think of anything else that we’ve missed today? 

[ [43:38] ] Travis: No, I think that’s good. Focus on cutting back your spending. When you have that financial stability, reward yourself a little bit. 

[ [43:50] ] Andrea: Yeah, I always keep a mantra that I am living the life that other people couldn’t imagine having the life of other people live on. In the beginning, people like, “Oh, my God! I can’t believe you’re doing this. Working long hours, you’re still living at your parent’s house still, and then in 10 years, they’ll be like, I want to stay in your big fancy house. And go on your big fancy vacation. So I always keep those mantras at the back of my mind.

[ [44:20] ] Travis: Yeah, I mean like, the only thing in business can double your income, like literally. And so, think about doubling your income. In terms of student loans, the average person that we worked with said about long terms $70,000. From optimizing their situation, making sure they are not making mistakes like that. So, just get a plan that knows what you are doing. Be intentional. Go for that practice leadership goal and you can definitely be successful. And stop playing yourself, you can have a wonderful path ahead no matter what your situation is. 

[ [44:56] ] Andrea: Cool! Thank you so much, Travis. And there you have it, everyone! Another interview in the box and I really do hope that you think realistically about your financial situation. And even with my husband and I, we have a budget that has all our fixed costs so we know exactly what we’re bare minimum is every single month, so what we have to pay on top of that we can start to question what extra expenses are not. And I’ve done the same thing with my other business. So, for those of you, that really needs to make a big financial impact and you want to start making some serious dollars on your business. Which can contribute to your financial debt? I strongly encourage you to contact me infor@themaximmovement.com and we can set up a time to chat and discuss where in your business things are not going so well and what you could easily recommend. And I can tell you that even after one call, I have seen tremendous growth in people’s businesses because sometimes you just need permission to do something. Like raise our rates or start emailing our patient list every single week instead of once a month. Or create a new program and often once you’ve given permission to do it. You feel comfortable and start doing it freely and it’s just again those mental blocks that we create in our mind which also get in the way of our success. So, contact me mailto:infor@themaximmovement.com and we can set up a call that will work best for you and me. If you do have questions, comments or topic ideas also contact me. Check me out on Instagram @andreamaximnd and please leave a review on iTunes. The more reviews we get, the more this podcast gets shared and I would want all practitioners to know that it is a successful career option and you do not need to be struggling. Again, I’m Andrea Maxim and I’m out!