The Power of Resilience: Trey Griggs' Inspiring Evolution from Struggle to Success

Speaker 1: 0:05

Hey friends, welcome to the Uncommon Freedom Show. I'm Kevin.

Speaker 2: 0:08

And I'm Becca, and we're your hosts here to help you reach your potential and maximize your impact in every area that matters.

Speaker 1: 0:15

Let's get started, all right. Well, hey, friends, today I'm talking with Trey Griggs, a great friend of mine, and if there is a job out there, trey has probably tried it on his journey to figure out what he wants to be when he grows up. Trey, have you grown up yet? No, we're getting it, kevin. You're getting close. Well, from being a professional golfer to a janitor, to a teacher and a coach, from being a youth pastor to sales and to an emcee, trey's journey not spans not only jobs and geographies, but a process of self discovery, opportunity and a pursuit of freedom that led him to starting his own business in 22. His business helps transportation and logistics companies improve their sales and marketing outcomes. He focuses on crafting messaging for his clients and creating customer testimonials to build memorable brands.

Speaker 1: 1:08

Trey is a husband and father to two teenage girls and he enjoys singing, traveling and playing golf, and I can't attest he is a solid golfer. Trey, what's your handicap up to or down to these days? 2.5 right now, dang. I'm going to refrain from saying I would love to have that handicap because I'm not willing to do the work it takes to get there. But congratulations, man. That's awesome, trey. Welcome to the show, buddy.

Speaker 2: 1:35

Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be on your show Excellent.

Speaker 1: 1:38

Well, I'm excited to have you. We go back. Our friendship spans well over 10 years. We've played a handful of rounds of golf together and I will tell you that you are the best putter I've ever played with. That was one thing. There was numerous things about your game that really stood out to me, but I still do something to this day that I learned from you when we were playing on the reserve, and that is you use the line on the golf ball to line up your putt. And do you still do that today? Oh, 100%.

Speaker 2: 2:10

Yeah, that hasn't changed at all.

Speaker 1: 2:11

I'm amazed, and actually I'll share, that my handicap is waivers between it's been as low as 19,. Currently about a 25. I haven't played since father's day. I've got some other priorities this year, but probably the strongest part of my putting, or my game, is putting and I'm I probably average about 30 putts per 18 holes. Now that tells you how dismal the rest of my game is that I've got a 25 handicap. But that little trick of lining up that line that is on most golf balls to take your aim Gosh, there's a lot of life lessons in there, aren't there?

Speaker 2: 2:49

Yeah, there are, and golf is one of those games where it's all about your misses. The smaller your misses, the better. And so finding little tricks like that, finding just listening to how even players like Tiger Woods and Jack Nick let's do similar types of things on their full shots the little tricks that they've learned that just make it easier to bring those bad shots down, bring the discrepancy down, that makes a huge difference. And once you get in that process and you stick with the process I mean I've had the same putting routine, kevin, for probably well over a decade. I still put the exact same way every time. Every putt's the exact same way. The routine walking up to the putt, the time it takes for me to set the putter down to when I actually hit the ball is probably within half a second every time I put the ball. So having that rhythm, that routine, makes it a lot easier to not think and to just do, and that's pretty helpful in golf.

Speaker 1: 3:40

Yeah, that's awesome and I like the life lessons that you talked about, that golf is about the misses, really, and how, when you do have a miss, how minimal can it be right? How close can you still be to the goal? When you have a miss, versus, are you way off track? It's the reason I put my driver in the bag, it off with the three wood, because it's almost always in the fairway. It almost never goes foul.

Speaker 2: 4:05

So yeah, golf is one of those games where you're striving for perfection, knowing you'll never get there. Yeah, you'll never do it. And the person who wins, the person who has the best misses? Yeah, because unless you make every shot, it's technically a miss, but how close is your miss to the target? That's what matters. And the person that wins or shoots the lowest score is usually the one that has the best misses. And there's a lot that you can take with life.

Speaker 1: 4:29

I love that. Well, today we're going to dive into the concept of freedom and finances very loosely, but you're one of the friends that I asked to review my book that will be coming out in November, and I mean you have a lot of experience in life and you're someone who shares a lot of the same work, ethic and other values that I share. So we're going to loosely talk about finances, but talk about leadership and self-awareness and some things like that. My book is called the Seven Disciplines of Uncommon Freedom. This financial discipline, I think, is it's hard for me to say that there's one is more important than the other, but this is one that I'm really passionate about. And I'm passionate about it because, like you, I think we both come from similar roots at best middle class, probably lower middle class for me, and I believe you were raised single parent. Am I correct in that?

Speaker 2: 5:25

Yeah yeah, my parents divorced when I was seven and so from that age on, floated with my dad, which is kind of surprising. A lot of situations that doesn't happen. My dad had full custody of me from seven on and that was my childhood experience. So it's what I remember. I don't remember much before that. That's the memory that I have.

Speaker 1: 5:43

So, as you get started, we're going to talk about a couple of pretty crazy statistics as regards to finances. The first is that the as of 2021 experience reported that the average American holds a debt balance of $96,371. Personally, I'm surprised it's that low. I don't know if that includes mortgages. I would suspect that it doesn't include mortgages. And then, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, american households in total hold $11.67 trillion in debt. Now, that pales in comparison to the amount of debt that our national government holds, but still, when you think about that, that's really a staggering number.

Speaker 1: 6:22

Financial freedom, in my opinion, is all about stewardship. Stewardship means resisting debt. That means resisting those impulse purchases that are so easy to make, especially in today's world of such immediate marketing on our phones and every website you're at and the ability to click on the link and have it delivered later today. But another important component of stewardship is having discipline. I love this quote by Francis Bacon. He says money is a great servant but a bad master. So, trey, as we talk about these concepts, can you just share a little bit about your personal journey as far as maybe struggling with finances and then starting to have some success and also develop some freedom in those areas.

Speaker 2: 7:09

Yeah, absolutely, and I'll go all the way back. You know, when my parents were married, we had, I would say, just based upon just looking back at the facts, we probably had a pretty good life. We had a five bedroom house, two car garage on an acre land and just on the outside looked like, you know, pretty, a pretty good setup overall and in a great city in Kansas City and a great school district, and even though there was a lot of underlying problems that existed, obviously, that led to their divorce, for, at least from a financial standpoint, we were in a decent spot. And then when my parents got divorced you know that's one of the fastest ways to move into poverty is to get divorced, and that's essentially what happened with us. You know, my dad always had trouble holding a job, which, again, I'm going to say some things and you're probably going to say how did he get custody of you? Because he cleans up really well, he talks really well, he's very friendly, but he struggled holding a job and because of that, finances we're really challenging.

Speaker 2: 8:05

Growing up we moved a lot. We moved around from apartment to apartment. I think, looking back, without having a lot of evidence, I think a lot of it is because we were getting evicted and moving into a new place. Some of it was strategic because he tried to keep me close to my school so that I could ride my bike or walk if I had to. So that was a strategic decision on his part. But I also think some of the intermediate moves were because we were, you know, getting evicted.

Speaker 2: 8:29

There was a financial problem Never really had a lot. Growing up my dad, you know, would budget on a yellow notepad every month, pretty much lived on cash, didn't have much credit. The cars we drove were all used, probably bought with cash. In fact my first car was a 1975 Datsun 280Z, which you would probably love, because I know you have a fascination for Corvettes and this is kind of a poor man's Corvette back in the day and he bought it for $300. It didn't run, it was rusted and basically he said, hey, if we can get this run, this can be your first car. So we spent three years rebuilding the engine together, just slowly, slowly at a time, whenever we had extra money, and got it running. And it was my first car when I was 16, which was pretty cool as a fun ride for about a year and then it crapped out on us. The engine mounts rusted to the ground and it was done.

Speaker 1: 9:14

But it was a great car. Modern version of a Datsun would be like the Nissan 350, right, yeah, that would be. That's the modern version, that's correct.

Speaker 2: 9:20

Yeah, well, if it makes you feel any better.

Speaker 1: 9:22

That is my 16-year-old son's dream car.

Speaker 2: 9:24

So that's what we want right now. So it's a fun car, those Datsuns were sexy looking back in the 80s.

Speaker 2: 9:30

They were great, had the long hood, the two-seater man. It was a beautiful car. So everything that we had, though, was pretty much bought with cash, if we bought anything, and God bless my dad. He did a lot of things right. He made sure that I had the opportunities, the experiences, the athletics, the different things that I wanted to do. He made that happen. He sacrificed a lot to do that, but, man, we were poor. We lived in apartments. In fact, my freshman and sophomore year of high school, we lived in a one bedroom apartment, and I slept on the couch, and that was pretty humbling, because I'm hanging out with friends at their houses and they've got their own rooms, and their room is bigger than my apartment in some cases, and here I am sleeping on the couch. It was pretty humbling, but it also instilled this poor mentality.

Speaker 2: 10:08

I grew up always looking for the free handouts, always looking for just what I could get out of life, what I could receive. How could I scam the system? In a way, I mean that sounds bad, but when you're broke, that's what you think about is how can I get something for nothing here? How can I make this happen? If somebody handed out something free, I took it. It was just a very poor mentality and I've carried that into adulthood.

Speaker 2: 10:32

One thing that I like to talk about and we'll get to it a little bit is just self-awareness and looking back at how you grew up and how it impacted you. It really impacts how you think as an adult. Your worldview, and that was one of them that I struggled with for years, is this poor mentality I've always thinking of. How can I get something for nothing, how can I get a handout? And it took a long time for me to start to change that mindset. And still it's still not cured. I'd say it's a work in progress, but it's significantly better than it was back in the day. But that's where it started and grew up with nothing, worked hard, played hard but just had nothing and really didn't have a vision for my life and where it was going to go.

Speaker 2: 11:08

I did go to college. My parents told me when I was 14, they said hey, you're going to college and, by the way, we can't help you, and I'm glad they told me at 14, because that gave me years to try to figure out how to pay for it. So I did go to college, played basketball, played golf, I wrote for the newspaper. I had a lot of jobs and scholarship opportunities and I got about 75% of my college paid for and I borrowed for the other 25%, which we've since paid back, which is great, but it was not really a vision of my future. It was just more of a destination. You're going to go to college and try to figure it out, and from that point on it's just been a struggle to grow up and to figure things out. I often say that my 20s were spent just recovering from my childhood in many ways, and my 30s I started to learn and to grow as a leader, and my 40s is trying to build, and so I feel like I'm late to the game in many ways, but I'm here.

Speaker 1: 11:57

I'll tell you. I tell it because I've had a number of friends turning 40 in the last few years. On I'm 46. And I can say that the 40s have been by far my favorite decade. I think we're further along financially. Fortunately, we're healthy and I think, had we not made a turn on our physical health in our mid 30s, that I probably wouldn't be saying the same thing. But I can say that, being healthy in my 40s, I'm not the least bit afraid of 50. And it's been amazing.

Speaker 1: 12:26

You said a couple of things I wanted to go back to. The first is you talked about how challenging it was for you growing up and then also in college, and I'm curious because I would say, if I err on one side or the other with my kids, as far as being too tough, not mean, but just kind of like it's okay. You know you're gonna learn from hard lessons and it's okay to learn from natural consequences and things like that to being too soft. I'm definitely on the too hard side and I'm not saying that I am too hard, but I know that if you were to ask my kids they would say that. But let me ask you this Do you have regrets or long term, constant negative consequences from the challenges that you faced having to pay your way through college and you know, driving a $300 car, that you had to rebuild Any any things that you would do differently from those now that you're 20, 30 years down the road.

Speaker 2: 13:19

Well, I don't know that I had much of a choice at the time. I mean, we just didn't have a lot of resources and it certainly was less than ideal. It was. It was borderline embarrassing. But also there's part of it didn't care. So it's kind of a mix of like this is a little embarrassing that I don't have what everyone else has. There's also part of it just didn't care, because I just I was glad to be at the party, I was glad to be there, I was glad to be in college, I was glad to play college athletics. So maybe not having the nicest car on the team or whatever might be didn't bother me too much. But there were some things that were embarrassing for sure. I mean I didn't invite friends over in high school because we lived in one bedroom apartment, yeah. So when they came in they walked into my bedroom pretty much, which had to be clean. So I guess it's that's a positive. I didn't get to leave things later on the house. But I mean I don't know that I'd say regret. I would just say that it was. It definitely was embarrassing.

Speaker 2: 14:09

Probably the worst part, kevin, I'll say this, was when I realized that I was. I smelled like smoke every day going to school and I didn't know it. So when you live in a household where somebody smokes which is which is less common now that it was in the 70s and 80s but when you live in a house with somebody that smokes, you just live in it, you don't even actually smell it. At least I couldn't I've never had a great sniff for anyways, but you could, you couldn't smell the smoke. And so when I went to school, I didn't know that I, you know, smell like smoke until I moved out of my dad's house and I moved and I came back to see him and I smelled the smoke for the first time.

Speaker 2: 14:41

I was like what does that smell? And it was smoke, and so that was actually pretty embarrassing, knowing that from the age of basically kindergarten to 16, I would just glue every day smelling like smoke and didn't know it. So there were a couple of things that were kind of, you know, like not enjoyable and probably had a just a negative, maybe self Confidence or self-esteem issue associated with that. But I don't know that I could change it. I mean, it kind of makes you who you are. So yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 15:04

You know, one of the other things that you mentioned and Beck and I have had this conversation a number of times is I Think most of us, when we're growing up, we think that our life is actually normal. We might not love it, but it's just what we think is normal. And then when we get out into the world, if you get married and you start seeing how your spouse does things, you start to think what's your problem? Why are you doing it that way? And then eventually you realize wait a minute, I can't believe. Like my family wasn't that normal. And I know I feel like the way I do things is how everyone should do things. And Some day my kids, you know right now, they think this is just normal and I know that someday they're probably gonna leave and get married and they're gonna be like holy smokes.

Speaker 1: 15:46

Mom and dad were crazy. Dad was really crazy. I thought it was normal. I can't believe I did, but it's. I think it's a good awareness to have is Just that you know that imprint has a big impact on us and how we look at things. But just because that's what we grew up, it doesn't mean it's right or the best or necessarily normal.

Speaker 2: 16:07

Yeah, no, I think there's a lot of truth to that, because you don't have a lot of context for anything else, especially if you live in the same area for your whole life. I fortunately somehow, through all the chaos, I did go to the same school district for my entire childhood, from K through 12, and so my friends were the same, the sports leagues I played in were all the same. There was a lot of consistency to it. And you just don't see outside of that bubble until you get a car, really, and you get a chance to travel a little bit and see Other places and you realize, wow, that that neighborhood is different, that town's different, that state is different. But until you have those experiences, you just think it's normal.

Speaker 1: 16:36

Yeah, so tree. How did you start to move towards freedom, especially in the financial area?

Speaker 2: 16:42

That's a good question. You know, I started as a school teacher and a youth pastor and you don't make a lot of money in that and we scraped we just scraped by to do that. You know, my wife, tammy, was a teacher for a while and then she retired when we had kids and so we did one income and he was just. It was just really hard and unsustainable. It just seemed like not a lot of fun. There was a lot of stress involved and and not and not enjoyable. But here's the situation, kevin, I didn't know how to fix it. When I was a school teacher, when I was a youth pastor, I just felt stuck and I don't mean like in a negative way. I loved what I did. I love teaching. In fact, to this day, teaching high school physics was my favorite job. I'd go back to it if it paid anything at all. But when I was doing those jobs I didn't know how to change my stars. I didn't know how to fix it. I was just frustrated about it and finally, when we made the decision that this is really not sustainable, I have to figure out a way to, you know, make more money. I had a friend say I think you should get into sales. I think you could do that. You know, jump into sales. And so I Did that. I did door-to-door office supply sales for 15 months.

Speaker 2: 17:40

It was during that time that I started to realize that I had more control over my outcomes than I thought, that I had more, more of a say in where my life was gonna go. Because people started talking to me a lot about opportunity Don't look for a job, look for opportunity. And I didn't really understand what that meant at the time, but I kept hearing it over and over and started thinking about opportunity. Well, what, what's my opportunity? What can I do? And that changed because I used to just think about jobs. Your parents would often say go get a job, get a job, get a good job, go to school so you can get this job, and that's all they talked about. Very rarely, unless parents themselves are entrepreneurial, do they talk about opportunity or entrepreneur, you know shit. And so I just never heard that until I got into sales and started thinking about what does this Opportunity? What does this mean? How, like, how can I maximize this opportunity? What does it look like? And so it started with just a sales career and I started doing well in sales and started making more money, and that was pretty cool. I started to recognize that my work and my skill could impact my income instead of just going just work every day and getting the same paycheck like I did as a teacher. That extra work or getting better at my work could actually turn into a better income and a better life and and and. Then you know, I think I've always had this bent towards entrepreneurship, kevin. I just didn't know how to you know to exercise it and I also don't think I had the courage To do it.

Speaker 2: 18:59

Another part of my story which is for another show, maybe down the road is this lack of self-confidence that I had coming out of childhood. That was the result of my, my dad's, parenting, and not malicious in any way, but just some of the things that he did really stole that Confidence and self-esteem, where I felt like everything I did good was kind of an accident and everything that I did bad was my fault. And that message that kind of dual, due to dual tone message of Everything you do good is outside of you and everything you do bad is internal you lose confidence. And so, even though I had this, this desire to create things, this desire to build something. I had zero confidence, zero, you know, courage to do that, and it was this process over the last ten years of being in. I wasn't an established company doing sales, I didn't like corporate America, and then I went to some startups and I started just to experience that and, even though those experiences weren't great, the startup mentality and the mindset that I could build something Started to take root.

Speaker 2: 19:52

I heard this quote by Steve Jobs that I still think about a lot, and he says your life will change the day that you realize that everything around you is built by people and no smarter than you. And I remember hearing that going. That's not true. And then you start thinking about even going. Wait a minute, that is true. The people that have built our cities, our towns, these massive skyscrapers, the planes that we fly in, they're smart people, but they're they're no smarter than than I am, at least in like capability or capacity, like I can learn, I can grow, I can get better and I can build something that could potentially change the world or at least change somebody's life.

Speaker 2: 20:23

If I Focused on it hard enough, that mentality started to take root and I started thinking about starting my own company. You Kind of had a couple of things along the way that got me thinking about opportunity and being an entrepreneur, and so it was just this journey. It's just like about a 10-year journey of going from, you know, feeling stuck to then feeling like I have a little more control, and then to feeling that, well, maybe I could build something someday, maybe I could do my own thing and build something. And that's where we are today. We're at the early stages, we're 21 months into this thing of building my own company, and it's been a blast. I can't imagine doing anything else. We're certainly not the place where we built a ton of wealth, but from a freedom standpoint, from a time standpoint which we talked about and a creativity standpoint, I can't imagine doing anything else.

Speaker 1: 21:06

Yeah, that's beautiful and you know, the reality is, I think there's I've shared this with people is that I think some people are Uniquely gifted to like spend time and Invest in others. You know there's. You know the people who do a lot of the ministry. Their gift is the service piece and then there's a lot of other people who will fund the ministry and their gift is, you know, the wealth building. But it's also important to understand that you know we're talking about like it's not just about Finances. You know, if you have all the finances in the world but you're working a hundred hours a week and you can't spend time with your amazing family, it does, you know good.

Speaker 1: 21:49

And so the the key is kind of finding that sweep spot, and it's different for everyone. It's a different amount of income. You know, for some people it's might be fifty thousand dollars a year and other people that sweep spot might be five million dollars a year. And, and the key is figuring out, can you really center your life around what matters most? You know, what does it take to be able to do that? Tray, tell us a little bit about your company, how many employees you have right now we have a team of four. Okay, and how has it been for you going from you know an employee or a salesman for many years to actually being the boss responsible for hiring, you know, responsible for that paycheck for some employees, like how has that been?

Speaker 2: 22:31

for you. Yeah, it's incredibly challenging but exciting. At the same time. I've learned a lot about myself. I think the biggest thing on this whole journey is how much I've learned about myself, and that process of self-awareness has only become heightened now that you know everything. In some ways kind of rides on me, and I thought about this. It was kind of funny the other day I used to work to build somebody else's dream and they give me a paycheck for it. Now I work really hard to actually pay somebody else to help me build something, which is kind of it's like a reversal in many ways. I'm selling things so that I can give that money away to somebody else who will help me build something bigger. It's really it's kind of a fascinating shift.

Speaker 2: 23:06

I've learned that I'm not a good manager of people. That's something I've never done before and I'm not good at it and I have to learn about that and or bring somebody in who is really good about that. I've definitely learned what my strengths are Speaking, sales, networking, staying in that area, creativity. Those are all my strengths, my weaknesses around finance and some of the decision-making, some of the execution operation side of the business. That's a bit of a weakness and so, as a business owner, as an entrepreneur, as a leader in general, it's important to build a team where you're putting people in the right spot, including yourself.

Speaker 2: 23:40

So I've got to figure out a way to get myself into my sweet spot as much as possible and get others who have sweet spots in the areas that are not my sweet spot, get them in position to succeed and then, as a team, we can all do well. I mean, it's not much different than putting together a really good basketball team, which I played in college. We had guys that were really big and strong and powerful and could do a lot of damage inside. That wasn't me, so we had to find my role, which was bring the ball down, get us into our offense, keep things under control, set up the defense all those different things that a point guard would do. But we all had to play our role and it was just getting the right pieces in place. And that's what it feels like, as we're putting together a team and just getting the right people in the right places to really succeed. That's awesome, tri.

Speaker 1: 24:22

I'm kind of going shifting back towards the financial side of things. How can people move towards an abundance mindset and away from what we call a poverty mindset, especially since that's really kind of what you described? You're the perfect person to talk about that.

Speaker 2: 24:39

The number one thing for me is getting around people with an abundant mindset. I mean it kind of sounds cliche, so maybe too simple, but I think that's more powerful than anything. You can read books those are great things to have. You can listen to podcasts they're all great things to change your mind a little bit. But when you start to get around people who are living that out, that's when I think it becomes really powerful. And I would just say that you and Becca have shown a lot about that. You and others as well Doug and Tia have influenced that a lot as well this idea of the abundant mentality, of trading time for money.

Speaker 2: 25:13

I've always been somebody who's done the work myself because it saves money. I've done all my remodeling because it saves money. I've always mowed my yard because it saves money. I do it. And then you start to realize that man, how much time have I spent doing things that somebody else could have been doing, that I could have been blessing them with a job and saving my time, and the amount of money that I saved on that job is not worth the time that I spent doing it. And when you start to realize that trade-off, then it changes things. So now, when I think about man, I really want to have this done by somebody else. I just got to work a little bit harder to make a little more money.

Speaker 2: 25:49

Try to leverage something differently over here so I can have the time with my family instead of focusing on this or that, and so that's kind of a really complex way of saying being around you, and being around people who have the abundant mindset has made me think differently about these decisions that previously, by default, I just would have done it. My dad always changed the oil in his car because it saved money. He'd go buy the oil and the filter and he'd come home and we'd change the oil because he didn't want to go and pay for somebody else to do it, and even though it was a shared experience for us and that's good, but if it's not a shared experience, that's an hour, hour and a half of his time that I would have lost, which certainly he did it without me many times. That's an hour and a half time that was lost for an extra 10, 15 bucks at the time.

Speaker 1: 26:33

Maybe a story in my book. It's called the $2,000 oil change. That talks about someone who changed your own oil with their child and the oil filter didn't get put on tight enough and it fell out, destroyed the engine and, yes, the time with the kid great, precious. But was it worth whatever $2,000 plus dollars it cost to replace the engine? Yeah, that's the other side. It's a whole shift, and that's actually one of the things that I learned when Beck and I owned our first house was to transfer liability when you pay.

Speaker 1: 27:09

Granted, if you're not dealing with a reputable service provider, that might not work out, but I remember putting in our first sprinkler system, having all kinds of leaks and losing my salvation, just being so angry and frustrated that I had my three days off if I wasn't going to court or something like that. And here I am spending it doing something that I did not enjoy and I realized, wait a minute, if I pay someone else to do it, when it goes wrong I call them and they come back and fix it instead of it costing some more. So right.

Speaker 2: 27:39

Let me give you one example that goes along with this mindset. So just this last Saturday we had our cleaning lady, Julia, come to the house and she did a deep clean for about three hours in our house and my wife and my kids and I we went out and we did some shopping. We did a couple of their activities out there together, where previously we would be slaving away cleaning the house together, probably mad at each other, losing some quality time together in that way. Some people might say cleaning is quality time. That's totally fine. It wasn't. For us, I could say that it was pulling teeth. Now we have them come and clean. They do a great job because they're professionals. They know how to just clean really, really well. They have all the supplies, everything that they need to do it, and we got to go spend time together as a family. So already enjoying the benefits of things like that, as opposed to the poor mentality which is I'll try to save money and do it myself.

Speaker 1: 28:28

Yeah, understanding what is it costing you to save money? And if you put a price tag on your time with your kids, which we know is fleeting, that, there's a lot of things we do ourselves to save money that we, if we can't spend quality time with our kids, we probably would be better off hiring someone else, assuming you've got the margin. But we're not encouraging people to go into debt and hire the butler, the chauffeur and the cook and the housekeeper If you don't have the money for it, just so you can spend more quality time with your family. But that mindset is really good. So, trey, as we wind things down, I love giving guests an opportunity to talk about things that they're passionate about. Can you tell us a little bit about Suke Strong?

Speaker 2: 29:14

Yeah. So Sue Strong is an organization here in St Louis that raises money to support directly ALS patients. Some organizations like this will support ALS research and those are all fine and dandy. We need research for ALS because, as most people know, als has Lou Gehrig's disease. There's no treatment and no cure as of today for this.

Speaker 2: 29:34

Once you're diagnosed with it, it is a one to five year battle of just declining health that you end up dying from. So it's really sad situation. We had that experience in our family and so we started a golf tournament to provide funds. Because the other thing people don't know about ALS is that when you're diagnosed with ALS, the needs that you have after that are not covered by insurance. So, for example, a wheelchair, a communication device, modifications to your home, modifications to your car it's just a very expensive way to end life, not to mention the fact that your family members want to spend as much quality time with you as you can. So there's time off of work, there's extra vacations, which a lot of times people get docked for that type of stuff at work. So there's just a lot of cost associated with this type of diagnosis and what happens at that point. So we started a golf tournament to raise money for that, because my brother-in-law's mother-in-law was diagnosed with ALS. She passed away five years ago, diagnosed 10 years ago, lived five years, which is a pretty long time for ALS. She didn't want us to have this tournament, she didn't want us to raise money, she didn't want anybody to feel sorry for her. She's like I'm choosing joy, I'm fine, we'll be good. And they're like no listen, I don't think you understand. This is going to cost a lot of money. We could use some help. And so she said well, we can do this as long as you continue this after I'm gone. And so for the past five years we've held the golf tournament. It gets sold out immediately, raise about $35,000. And we give that money directly to ALS patients who've been recently diagnosed, who are. We know what they're going to go through, we know what life is going to be like, and so we give that money away as people have needs and help them with their end of life expenses, which is unfortunate.

Speaker 2: 31:09

My company, beta Consulting Group, we've jumped in on this as well. Not only do we sponsor the event and participate in that event, but we host our own event in April. It's the Word on the Street Tough Mudder Charity Challenge. Word on the Street is one of my shows, my live shows that I do on LinkedIn. It's the Tough Mudder Charity Challenge.

Speaker 2: 31:24

We do a 9 mile 30 obstacle Tough Mudder here in St Louis and last year we raised $12,000 to contribute to Sook Strong as well, which we were just incredibly honored and excited about to do that. We're going to do it again this year. Our goal is to raise $30,000, which is a big jump, but we think we can do it and it's just been really fun to do that. And somebody asked me one time why do you do 9 miles? Why don't you just do the 5 mile or the you know or whatever? We do the 9 mile intentionally because when you get to mile eight and you're hurting, it's a great time to just say thank you that you can even do it, that you get the opportunity to do that. So it's just a reminder to us many blessings that we have and it's just fun. We have a good time together doing that. And so love, love, being able to support Sook Strong and being able to, you know, honor Joan Sooker and her memory by helping A-Less patients with direct donations.

Speaker 1: 32:13

That's awesome, troy. Appreciate your heart for people and you know what you're talking about is one of the reasons that I'm so passionate about helping people create financial freedom in their lives. You know, beck and I have been through a lot personally myself and with some of our children and I see people when they're limited to what healthcare does their insurance plan allow, they don't necessarily get the best care or the ideal care. And when you have some financial freedom, you have options. It creates options. When you have financial freedom and you can start to think outside the box, you're not necessarily worried about what does insurance cover. You can start making the choice that's best for you and your family versus just what you can afford. So that's awesome.

Speaker 1: 32:56

Well, hey, trey, thanks for joining me. I know we could probably go on for at least another hour, probably longer, but we'll save the rest of that content for another show. But just wanted to say thanks again. I've enjoyed just staying in contact with you over the past. You know, past 10 plus years learned a lot from you and just proud of you. You know seeing, you know we've had a lot of conversations and some of the things you talked about just dealing with you know that self-doubt and things like that. We've had conversations about that and I see you just working to, you know, to improve yourself and put yourself in a position where you're now, you know, a business owner responsible for four employees and you know, helping out with these charitable causes and things like that. Super proud of you and we need more people like you. So keep it up. Thanks, kevin.

Speaker 2: 33:43

Appreciate you being the opportunity to be here with you today. All right, we'll see you bud.

Speaker 1: 33:48

Hey friends, thanks so much for joining me for this enlightening interview. I'm still looking forward to interviewing more amazing guests on this show and diving into concepts you will find in my new book coming out in November the Seven Disciplines of Uncommon Freedom. If you want to stay connected with us as the book launch date gets closer, make sure to sign up for our email newsletter on beckandkevcom.