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Looking Rich VS Living Free: The Hidden Truth About Success and Money [THA 472]
Looking Rich VS Living Free: The Hidden Truth About Success and Money [THA 472]
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About this episode
Exploring the balance between success and personal fulfillment, this episode features Jerry and Laura Casaya, who share their journey from separate careers to co-managing an auto repair shop. They discuss the importance of relationships in business, the dynamics of working as a couple, and how personal experiences shape their leadership styles. Jerry's poignant story about life expectancy serves as a catalyst for their philosophy on seizing opportunities. The conversation highlights the significance of support, respect, and understanding in both personal and professional realms.
Topics:
beater
Cars:
Chevrolet Trax
Thanks to our Partners, NAPA TRACS, Today's Class, KUKUI, and Pit Crew Loyalty
Watch Full Video Episode
"Rich is loud. Wealthy is quiet."
In this episode, host Carm Capriotto sits down with Jerry Kezhaya and Dr. Laura Shwaluk, owners of The Auto Shop and business coaches with Business Builder Mentor and Mastermind.
They share their unconventional journey from healthcare to auto repair, including how Laura stepped in to run the shop while Jerry was hospitalized. With no technical background, she succeeded by focusing on leadership, culture, and relationships—proving that auto repair is ultimately a people business.
The couple also discusses the realities of working together as spouses. By clearly defining roles—Jerry managing systems and strategy, Laura leading team and customer relations—they’ve built a respectful, healthy workplace culture.
A major focus of the episode is financial freedom. Jerry contrasts “visible wealth” with “quiet freedom,” emphasizing passive income, low debt, and disciplined spending. They warn against lifestyle inflation and investing in depreciating assets, encouraging shop owners to prioritize long-term security over short-term status. They dive into the psychology of money, explaining how emotional wounds and unmet needs often drive overspending. Laura stresses that financial healing often starts with personal healing.
Our panel reinforces that real success comes from clarity, discipline, and emotional awareness. Rather than chasing status or appearances, they encourage shop owners to focus on...
Filter:
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Technical
Too Afraid to Ask
Car
Chevrolet Trax
"So it's your choice. Let us prove to you that Trax is the single best shop management system in the..."
The Chevrolet Trax is a small SUV that is easy to drive and park, making it great for city living. It has a decent amount of space inside for passengers and cargo, and it's usually less expensive than larger SUVs. People talk about it because it's a good option for those who want a vehicle that's both practical and budget-friendly.
The Chevrolet Trax is a subcompact SUV that was first introduced in 2013. It is known for its affordability, compact size, and versatility, making it a popular choice for urban drivers and small families. The Trax often comes up in discussions about practical vehicles that offer good fuel economy and a comfortable ride.
Term
beater
"Get rid of the fancy cars, get a beater for two years. You'll start saving that $24,000 a year, and after a couple of years, you got money to invest."
A 'beater' is a cheap car that you can drive without worrying about it getting damaged. It's not fancy, but it gets you from place to place.
A 'beater' refers to an inexpensive, often older car that is used primarily for basic transportation without concern for aesthetics or performance. It's typically a car that the owner doesn't mind getting scratched or worn out.
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This is the Automotive Repair Podcast Network.
Hey everybody,
Karm Capriotto, remarkable results radio.
Good to have you here and hunting toward our 11th year
of doing this podcast for the Automotive Repair industry.
Glad to have you here.
You know, we rebranded to the Automotive Repair Podcast Network.
We've got this cool, neat new app for your smartphone.
It's what we call the ultimate professional
Automotive Repair playlist.
Save your favorites, watch videos, listen to the audio,
the Automotive Repair Podcast Network.com forward slash app.
Please download it for us.
I think you will have a blast with it.
And we'll see you at the annual TST event
down in Tarleton, New York, March 28th, 2026.
Here from educators, Andrew Fisher,
Ken Zanders and Adam Roberts.
Go to tst7rs.org and sign up for this
one day technician training event.
And even here from the keynoter, I happen to know her.
Her name is Tracy Capriotto.
It's going to be a blast.
Hey, thank you so much to our great partners
that have been with us for years.
We appreciate them.
Hey, did you know that NapaTrax has on-site training
plus six days a week support?
It all starts when a local representative meets with you
to learn about your business and how you run it.
After all, it's your shop.
So it's your choice.
Let us prove to you that Trax is the single best
shop management system in the business.
Find NapaTrax on the web at NAPATRACS.com.
Hey, how well does your team know their stuff?
Test their automotive skills with the today's class
basic advanced or service advisor quizzes.
It's a quick, effective way to spot gaps
and grow stronger teams.
Take the quizzes now at today's class.com
forward slash TC quiz.
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Hey, let me introduce my group here.
Oh, I looked it up about a dozen episodes, Jerry,
and between you and Laura have been on the podcast.
Well, we love you.
Well, we love you too.
Jerry Casaya, the auto shop in Plano, Texas,
who's also a business coach at BBMMUSA.com.
What's that all stand for, Jerry?
This Builders Mentor and Mastermind USA.
Love it.
You have so much fun doing that
that you would probably do it for free if you could.
I would, and we did.
We've actually done it for free.
And what we've learned over that experiment,
Carm, is if they don't pay, they don't pay attention.
Yeah, isn't that true?
Honest to God.
Yeah, if they don't have skin in the game,
they just don't play the game.
And there's an interesting experience that I've learned,
and someone showed me this many years ago,
and it's really stuck with me,
and it's one of the foundations, if you will, of our coaching.
Long story short, I'll make it as quick as I can.
I was about 43 or 44 years old,
and I was looking out the window,
and I saw this vehicle,
and it just changed your body style,
and it's one particular vehicle that I was really,
I had the hots for, let's say.
And now,
I enamored with it.
I was vastly enamored with this truck.
One drove by the window of my shop and was like,
oh man, look at that, isn't that a great vehicle?
And there was a contractor standing right next to me,
one of my customers,
and he had, he called it a yo-yo,
but it was a tape measure,
and he pulled it out to 70 inches.
And he said, how old are you?
And I remember saying that I'm 43.
He said, do you know what this is?
I said, no, he goes,
this is the lifespan of a man in the United States today.
And he put his number on 43.
He said, you're here, if not now, when?
Go buy the damn truck.
And so, I'm looking at that tape measure today,
and if you Google the life expectancy
of a man in the United States of America today,
it's 73.5 years.
And I'm bounding towards 68 years old really quickly,
which leaves me about 5.5 years left.
And so, my question is, if not now, when?
You look at your life differently,
went through the lens of,
I got a five-year span here to get serious.
I promise you, it will change the things
that you think are important.
Thank you for that story again.
I know you've told it on our podcast before.
You came on, I think you talked about
all your great struggles in your early days,
and the tape measure story,
and how you actually overcame so many things
by realizing that if you were gonna get anywhere,
you needed to start now, right?
Thank you so much for that.
You're with your wife.
My amazing wife, yeah.
Almost 30 years she put up with me.
What the heck was she thinking, Carm?
I don't know.
Dr. Laura Swalock, a Bachelor of Science
in the field of cellular molecular and micro,
by microbial biology.
I'll get this right.
Dude, it took me four years to learn how to say it.
Wow, every night, Jerry, wake up, wake up,
you keep saying microbiology wrong.
A doctorate in chiropractic with certificates
in neurology applied,
kinesiology, nutrition, functional endocrinology, Jerry.
How did you do this, Jerry?
I'm sorry, I just can't say all these things.
I could say spark plug, I could say engine.
How about if you just say she's really smart?
And I sold my practice in December of 2017,
which was amazing timing because that was the same time
that Jerry ended up in the ICU
with double multifocal pneumonia and almost died.
They told Laura I was 20 minutes from dying.
And so I had the unique pleasure
of no longer running my business that I had for 20 years
to running an auto repair shop.
You were recruited.
Yeah.
You got recruited.
The choice was either close it or you run it.
Yeah, wow.
And he said, just shut the lights off.
We'll just fire sale everything.
We have enough money, we don't need to do this.
And I said, well, let me run it.
He's like, we don't know anything about cars.
I say, but I know a thing or two about people.
I said, what have you got to lose, you know?
I'm gonna close it anyway, what the heck?
But it's brilliant what she just said.
I know a lot about people.
I am so curious and I'll bet you
that there are very healthy listeners out there
that have a wife or a spouse,
significant other that's not in the business.
And they would love them to come in,
but they have no interest.
You had a situation where it was either one or the other
because you were so ill, Jerry.
And Laura said, hey, I have a practice, I can do this thing.
I'm not sure if you encouraged her or not.
But what was it like getting thrown
in the deep end of the pool, Laura?
Thank you for asking that.
It was very difficult in some ways
because the guys at the shop just knew me as Jerry's wife
and I didn't really know them very well.
So I really had to earn their respect.
That I think was the hardest part
because they knew that I was a doctor
and they're like, yeah, what's she gonna tell me
about fixing cars?
And I didn't tell them anything about fixing cars
because they didn't know anything about fixing cars,
but I did expect results from them
and that was the hardest part.
The transition of working with people though
was honestly quite delightful
because I found that around the guys,
I could just totally be myself.
I didn't have to be perfect.
They weren't expecting you to be perfect.
In a doctor's office, there's like you put on a pedestal
and you have to know the answers to everything.
And to me, that was a total breath of fresh air.
I was like, man, I love these men
because it was all men at the time.
And I was also the bookkeeper
because our bookkeeper had died.
And so it was a lot, it was hard, it was so worth it.
I love these guys and we've grown ever since.
It's been wonderful.
What a great story.
It's a great story.
I would almost have to say,
to a degree from a leadership perspective
or a CEO perspective, when you came back in, Jerry,
you maybe had some equality going between you and Laura.
What she was learning and doing
and what you had known and done,
it was almost like, wow, she has such a great handle on this.
We could co-do this together and you probably have.
Yes, and that's exactly what we've done.
The truth is, Karm, the auto repair business
is a people business.
It's not just transactional, it's relationship building.
Not only with your employees, but with your customers
and not only with your customers, with your employees.
And frankly, when it all comes down,
Laura's a much better people person than I am.
And she excels at that.
I'm more of a systems guy, more of a process guy,
more of the logical, I don't do the touchy-feely real well
just because I'm kind of on the Asperger scale.
And so for me, I can jump down those rabbit holes
and come up with making things better, faster,
more efficient, come up with better systems,
better processes, but somebody calling in
because their dog has to go to the vet
just shorts out my circuits somehow.
And so I let Laura deal with that.
And she's, again, I cannot praise her enough.
She is so much better at that than I am.
I wanna pick apart something though in your question, Karn,
because you asked as a couple working together,
was there any like friction when Jerry came back
when he was healthy enough to come back?
I think that I never saw myself as the boss.
I saw myself as managing the business
while the boss was away.
There was so much I didn't know that like
when I got home at the end of the day,
or even during the middle of the day,
I'd call Jerry and say, okay, what do I do?
So he was my advisor and he has always been my advisor.
Now, when it was my practice,
it was, I'm the one that called the shots
because it was my business, my practice.
And Jerry would make suggestions
or he would see things that needed to be changed
and he would let me know, but he was never the boss.
And so I gave him that respect that I was never the boss.
It's his business.
He started it way before he even knew me.
Yeah, Thursday, this Thursday will be 45 years
that I've had the company.
And so, you look at the truth is when Laura had her practice,
in her practice, she was the alpha.
In my business, I'm still the alpha, right?
She's the best support person.
When I was in her business, I was the best support person.
Like we've gone to each other's seminar.
She come to the automotive things.
She take care of all the logistics
while I was doing what I needed to do.
And vice versa, when we were in her medical events,
I would take care of the logistics.
I coordinate whatnot and I'd be her best support person.
And we really believe that if you can't be a good follower,
you really cannot be a good leader.
It takes the ability to do both.
And let's take this one little step further
into the medical aspect of it.
Men have a huge amount of testosterone compared to women.
And I think honestly, men were made that way
because they can shoulder an enormous amount
of responsibility.
They are the protectors, the providers.
They are the ones that are, in many cases, the visionaries.
They are the ones that can be held accountable
for an enormous amount because they have so much testosterone.
Women, naturally, we are supporters and enhancers.
And when we are put in a role of being accountable
and having to account for a large group of people,
it's exhausting because we just don't have
the testosterone to do it.
And so knowing that, I really walked into it as a role
as my job was to support and enhance,
not just Jerry, but every single person that was there.
How could I support?
How could I enhance?
And that's how I built it.
I did come at it as, okay, I'm accountable.
You're accountable.
We're gonna do this thing.
It's like, okay, you guys,
what do we need to make this even better?
We're gonna work together
and we're gonna make this happen.
And otherwise, I just would have been way too exhausted.
Hey, look it.
We were gonna talk about financial freedom here
in this episode.
Oh, let's talk about that.
I wanna go a little further on this topic
because I didn't expect this.
I love it because there's a ton of people
that have heard these first 14 minutes of this episode
that have said, ooh, ooh.
I think I heard you need to learn to keep in your lane,
especially if a significant other, a partner, a spouse,
a husband and wife are in the business together
and there could be friction.
Someone has to understand their area of responsibility
and according to what you both said, your strengths.
Yes. Yes.
Our strength, there has to be mutual respect.
And if I don't respect him, especially publicly,
or he doesn't respect me in front of the crew,
how are they gonna respect each other?
Horrible.
I've been in shops, Carm,
where the husband and wife work in the shop
and they're screaming profanities each other
at the top of their voice
and their employees are like cat on a hot tin roof.
They don't even know which direction to go.
It's like, what an amazing, horrific work environment.
Who respects who here?
It's a toxic culture.
That's exactly what it is.
And that's why a lot of this stuff, by having,
you know, I go back to always having a coach
and accountability partner that can actually
almost handle some of this personal stuff
if there's conflicts inside,
because the business will never find the northbound train
if the cars are off the rails.
Yeah, always, agreed.
We've been successfully doing this since February of 2018.
Good for you.
Damn.
And you've been coaching.
We're into our 12th year of business coaching
as professional business coaches.
I love that.
It's just so amazing when you're working with these men
and you see the light come on in their eyes
and they see a glimmer of hope.
They're like, we can do this.
Yeah, we just need to tweak this, this and this.
We have clients that have been with us since day one.
I mean, we can't chase them out.
We even stopped coaching for a few months
and said, go on vacation, go do something.
Please go find another coach.
You're like, no, we're good.
You help me go from half of 6.5.
I'm not going anywhere, right?
You help me go from 100,000 to 2 million.
I'm good, I'm staying right where I'm at.
Let's face it, your shop management system
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So, Jer, I know shop owners doing seven figures
and they can't take a week off.
Oh, good Lord, Carm, we travel three to four months a year.
Yeah, is wealth the goal or is freedom the goal?
Hold on a second, the question is which one comes first?
Yes.
So, the first question is what do they want?
Most people don't get what they want
because they don't know what they want.
They spend more time planning their vacation
than they do working on their life.
If someone's going to work with us,
the first thing we have them do is we have an exercise
that we've created, takes about 45 minutes
with a six minute video prior,
and the question is what do I want?
And then they spend 45 minutes doing this
and then we'll have our next meeting.
Once we know what they want, what they think they want,
then we help massage that into a workable plan.
The question, what comes first, freedom or wealth?
A lot of people believe that you have to be wealthy
before you can have your freedom.
Well, first of all, what does freedom even mean?
In the terms of financial freedom,
we define it as having enough passive income
to support your desired lifestyle without you working for it.
This is financial freedom.
And like passive income, what in the world is that?
Well, I affectionately call it mailbox money
when it can be rent from a home
that you have leased out, commercial properties.
Dividends from stocks.
Dividends from stocks,
savings account, et cetera, et cetera.
When you have passive income that covers your lifestyle,
man, it just makes life so much easier.
And the way you do this,
there's a simple formula that we boil it down.
And first is this is difficult for most people.
Live below your means.
Most people, when they start earning more money,
they buy a new house, they go out and buy a new car,
they get big screen TVs, they go on huge vacations,
et cetera, et cetera.
They take their money and they purchase,
what we refer to as depreciating assets.
TVs lose value, cars lose value,
motor homes lose value, boats lose value.
You start investing in all this stuff.
Or thinking you're investing.
Yeah, you think you're investing your hard earned money
into things that, oh my God, we have a client
before he started working $300,000 buying a motor home
and RV.
And within six months, the value of it was like $150,000.
He just literally, he said,
I feel like I just struck a match
and burned $150,000 of my money
that I haven't even paid yet, right?
And so this is the other thing.
Number one, live below your means.
Number two, get out of debt.
Too many people buy too much crap they don't need
with money they don't have to impress people
they don't even know or like.
Who gives a rip up to Joneses or anybody?
The truth is my wife and I live in the same house
that I purchased in 1992.
I can tell you the house has been paid off
for more than 20 years.
I could afford to buy any home in Dallas, Fort Worth
that I choose to purchase and I love our house.
It's paid for.
And by the way, I still write a monthly rent check,
a mortgage check, instead of making it out to the bank,
I write it to the bank of Jerry.
And that goes to a savings account.
And so that helps me to do what?
To build my wealth.
And number three is after you get out of debt,
imagine this, let's just run some numbers
for a moment, Carm.
And I think we talked about this once.
Let's say you make 100 grand a year.
Let's make it even better.
You make $10,000 a month.
You got a $3,000 a month house payment
that brings you down to seven.
You have $2,500 or let's make it $1,000 car payments.
That brings you down to five.
Okay, you haven't paid taxes yet.
You haven't put food on your table.
You haven't paid your credit cards.
We have clients that have $100,000 in credit card debt,
which means they're spending $30,000 a year on interest only.
They're getting nothing for that 30 grand, okay?
So you're spending all your money.
I mean, $10,000 a month is pretty good funds today.
At the end of the day, you have nothing left over.
How can you invest?
Get rid of the fancy cars, get a beater for two years.
You'll start saving that $24,000 a year,
and after a couple of years, you got money to invest.
Laura, tell the story about how you started your car account.
Okay, so I had learned about how much it costs
to actually purchase something if you borrow money
and the amount that you would have to pay in interest.
And so I thought, well, okay, I'm going to start a bank account
and I'm going to call it my car account,
my savings account for my car.
And I went to the bank and I opened the account
and she said, okay, how much do you want
to put into your car account?
I said $25 and she burst out laughing.
She's like, you're not going to buy a car with $25.
And I said, well, I know that,
but I have to start somewhere.
Initially it was $25 a month
because I was paying off my student loans.
And I had borrowed money to start my, to build my practice,
to build it out, do the tenant improvement.
So it started off with $25 a month.
And then by the end, it was $2,500 per month
that I was able to put into it.
And I tell you, I did not buy a brand new car
because that's a waste of money.
As soon as you drive it off the lot,
I bought a used car, a used Cadillac and when I went
to the place, they said, okay,
how are you going to finance this?
And I said, well, I'm just going to write a check.
And the guy looked at me because I was young still.
And he's like, are you sure about that?
And I said, well, how much is it?
And he told me, and I said, yeah, okay, no problem.
And I wrote a check at the time.
Now this was several years ago.
It was $26,000 or $28,000.
$28,000.
And I wrote the check for my car.
And he was still just kind of like scratching his head.
Like, how did you do that?
And I said, well, it took me 11 years
because I had to pay off my student loans first,
but I was able to do that.
And what that allowed me was my freedom
because when a person has debt, who are you a slave to?
You're a slave to your credit card.
You're a slave to the bank.
This is modern day slavery.
You're a slave to the mortgage company.
You're a slave to the credit cards.
It used to be a slave.
How did you phrase it the other day?
A slave?
So years ago, slaves would work all day, every day.
And no matter what country, not just America,
but any and no matter what country it is.
And there's slavery, by the way, today in different countries.
And so a slave would work all day, every day,
but he would get food, clothing, shelter.
Today, we don't have slavery,
but we work all day, almost every day,
and we take our money and we buy food, shelter, clothing,
mortgages, car payments, credit card debt, et cetera,
et cetera, et cetera.
We still have slavery.
In Proverbs 22.7, it says,
the rich fool over the poor
and the borrower is slave to the lender.
This is in the Bible.
So when you look at this,
this has been going on for millennia.
And the truth is, once you have your passive income,
once you become debt-free, like in my case...
Once you have your freedom from debt first,
then you can build your wealth.
As I shared with my wife in February of 2018,
turn the lights out.
We have enough money, we have enough income.
I don't need this.
I don't have the energy to do this.
And I had the freedom to be able to turn the lights off
on an almost 40-year-old business
with no ramifications, no repercussions.
To me, this is total freedom.
When you have freedom to choose
how you want to live your life
and where you want to be,
and you don't have to worry about paying a loan...
For many loans?
For many loans?
For many loans?
Why are we doing this?
Why is credit card debt so high?
Why is savings so little today?
Credit card debt right now is $1.3 trillion,
highest it's ever been.
The whole thing is so serious
that the government right now
is trying to put a cap on credit card interest
at 10% for the next 12 months.
I don't have a feeling on that one way or the other.
I haven't studied it.
What I do know is that can change a lot of people's lives
really quickly if they're smart about it.
To answer your question,
the reason why that's happening
is because credit is so easy to get these days.
Well...
It's easy to get.
There's a whole lot of advertising about,
oh, do this trip and do that and buy this.
And it's only four payments to buy this bouquet of flowers
for your girlfriend.
Oh my God, yeah.
Why would you do that on payments?
You're paying...
Whenever money transfers from one location to another,
there's a fee.
And so you lose your buying power over the fees, right?
Merchants pay 3.5 to 6% credit card,
merchant processing fees for every transaction.
It's like everybody gets their bite of your money.
I mean, just that in itself takes your $100 down to $95.
Go on Amazon, look at everything that you wanna buy,
and it says how many payments it will be
and how much the monthly pay.
We are being programmed and conditioned.
You get out of college.
Number one, you have student loans.
They give you credit cards.
They tell you you have to buy a new car
because you can get rid of your old car.
You can get a big man's car now
because you've graduated college, right?
You're still only making 25 or 30 grand a year,
most of the time.
And the truth is you are conditioned
because America is a consumer-driven society.
Literally what we teach, what we say
is complete opposite of what most people say.
And Karm, here's the thing.
We are genetically designed not to save.
Genetically, it's in our system.
If you think about it, back in the caveman
and cavewoman days, when we were walking
across the plains or the prairie or whatever,
and we came across an apple tree, what did we do?
We picked up some apples or we climbed the tree,
got some apples, we ate some apples
until our belly was full, and we might've put one
or two in our hand and we moseyed on down the road.
We didn't have a wagon, we didn't have Samsonite,
we didn't have a car or refrigerator.
We couldn't save that harvest of apples, could we?
So we just kept going until we found the next thing.
We gorged what we could eat and then we kept moving.
And so genetically, there's a methodology
that we employ to help our people to save money.
We have a client who goes, I don't have any debt.
Well, he sat down with him.
He had $1.8 million in debt
that we could pull up within 30 minutes.
1.8 million, okay?
Well, fast forward 15 months later,
he's got $180,000 in the bank.
He's doing the method that we teach.
His 1.8 million has been knocked down to 1.2.
So he is banking money, he's cutting out his debt,
he's done an amazing job.
And oh, by the way, he's lost 65 pounds.
I mean, it's just amazing.
When you start having a plan that works.
I love that you hit me so hard
when you said we're genetically wired not to save.
Yes.
My thought on that was that must mean
we're genetically wired to spend.
And when I said that to myself, I said,
oh my God, the feeling of buying something.
The feeling of, I've always wanted that.
Social media, TV ads, keeping up with the Joneses.
Oh my God, I'm bored, let's change that.
And boom, you're spending and you're spending
and you're swiping and you're swiping
and you're paying minimums.
The dopamine hits are off rails.
And it's also people are eating it.
I say it like that because it's like,
oh, I don't feel like cooking tonight.
Come on, let's go out.
Come on, let's just put it on the credit card.
Let's go out.
So when Jerry said live below your means,
I want to give you an example
of how we lived below our means
because Jerry had huge debt
when he bought this first shopping center.
Just for your listeners.
At one point I was 5 million upside down.
5 million upside down.
I was spending $45,000 each and every month
for principle and interest only.
On top of that, property taxes, utilities, insurance,
payroll, and all the stuff that goes with the business.
You've told some great stories on the podcast
in these dozen that you've been on
and we've heard some of the behind the scenes.
Oh my God, moments, yes.
Just to be clear, upside down
does not mean that he was in that much debt.
It was if he sold everything that he owned,
he would still owe that much money.
That's what upside down means.
Okay, so I was just starting in my practice
and he had just purchased the shopping center.
I had just gotten divorced.
A big date night for us was that we would go to a
DACA Bueno, get a big ol' burrito each at the time.
$2.89 each, I was a big spender.
Yeah, yeah.
So we'd leave work, we'd have our burrito,
shower, get dressed up, and we would go to
one of the local steak houses where there was a piano player.
In the bar.
Sometimes he would sing or whatever.
So we had our entertainment, we would share a dessert.
And share a cup of coffee, like the whole night was 20 bucks.
Yes, and we did this like only every other week.
Yeah, like twice a month, that was our big night out,
it was our date night twice a month.
Our agreement was if anything went on the credit card,
that credit card got paid off every month,
that we were not paying any interest.
We were already paying interest to the banks.
Our agreement was whatever we put on the credit card
had to be paid off that month.
And so we really learned financial self-discipline.
And I've heard Jerry say many, many times
that if you owe money, you don't have the right
to go out to dinner.
And put it on a credit card.
And put it on a credit card.
I agree.
I have to tell you, it's not a story,
but my discipline, my whole life was that the credit card
was just a 30 day open charge account for me.
I've paid my credit card bill my whole life, entire life,
always, always.
And with that in mind as my discipline,
I had to know what I could or couldn't spend.
And that's the problem with a credit line.
It's great to have a credit line,
but you cannot spend beyond what you could afford
to pay back.
And I guess it bothers the hell out of me
that our society has not taught this, Jerry.
Being frugal, we have not taught savings.
We're spend thrifts.
Yes, when no one teaches money, we teach money.
And business builders, that's the first thing
we get into is we want you to know money.
If you wanna try something interesting,
regardless of your feelings of the Boy Scouts of America,
I was a scout master twice.
And my merit badge specialty was personal management.
And just go online, order a personal merit badge handbook
and do the exercise.
I mean, at the time it teaches the kids about money.
You have to build a budget.
You have to know what it costs,
put groceries in the house,
what the utility bills are, et cetera, et cetera.
And it teaches the very basics of having a budget.
You know, here's the thing.
We talk about credit cards.
And credit cards are not bad.
I mean, I have a few of them.
Those are my credit cards.
And they're each one is for a different company.
And a different purpose.
We've referred to it as my brick, right?
But the truth is my credit cards are used for business.
And everyone gets paid off every single month.
To me, it's the essence of freedom.
If you want to go to work, I mean, imagine for your viewers,
you're having a bad day at work,
your boss is chewing on your tail,
you have no mortgage, you have no debt, no car payments.
And you look at him and go, hey, you know what?
I'm going home today.
I'm having a bad day, I'm going home.
And it will not change your life a bit.
And if he says, hey, you know what?
If you go home, you're fired.
Okay, I have money in the bank.
I don't have debt.
I have this thing called freedom.
And I'm gonna go someplace
where I'm appreciated and respected and honored.
Okay, let's talk about an individual, Jerry.
Maybe let's get away from the shop owner mentality.
But for example, a specialist or a technician
who works in the shop who is saddled with debt.
And they don't have this ability to say,
hey, I'm not coming back, I have this.
How do we start climbing ourselves up
and out of getting ourselves to financial freedom?
I would imagine the first thing that you would say
is you need to stop spending on irrelevant items.
I mean, there's a core, and then paying off cards.
Can you give us two or three disciplines
that we can take away?
Yeah, thank you.
Again, the first part of the formula,
live below your means.
I have a client, he has a $1.4 million house.
And I said, it's just you and your wife.
I mean, help me to understand why, what's the purpose?
He said, well, I bought it and I like the house,
et cetera, et cetera.
I said, yeah, but what's your monthly house payment?
The monthly house payment is $6,500.
To me, that's crazy, but I don't know what the market is today,
but it's still, it's a $1.4 million house.
I said, how much equity do you have?
So he told me, and he's putting his house
on the market at the end of January,
so he can take that cash, get rid of the rest of his bills,
and live below his means.
Because right now, he's living on credit cards.
Every month, he's putting $3,000 a month
on credit cards to support his lifestyle
that he cannot afford.
So the point is, live below your means.
Downsized if you need to.
Give me two years to downsize,
and you can buy anything you want.
We have a technician who,
something happened with his wife, I don't know what,
but she was not able to work for a while.
What they did was, they got rid of one of their cars,
so they didn't have that car payment.
And they downsized their home.
And they started really cooking at home
instead of going out to eat,
because he was going to go bankrupt.
There was starting to be some repossession notices.
And so he's like, he came to Jerry and said,
what do I do?
And Jerry said, okay, well, let's put a plan together.
It's interesting because they both needed to lose weight.
Anyway, they were eating out almost every meal
and putting it on credit cards.
And then so they are both losing weight.
They're both feeling really good about themselves.
She's now working again.
He's one of our top producers now in the shop.
It's like his whole mentality,
his whole sense of self-worth has increased
because he sees now that he has a way out.
And is there sacrifice?
Yeah, there is.
And we have a saying, it's, I'm willing to do today,
but other people won't.
So tomorrow I can do what other people can't.
Yeah.
That's the place to get started is like Jerry said,
live below your means.
We visited with him last night and he says,
so what's going on with you?
Cause I can't tell you how much I love coming to work now.
He goes, I look forward, I get here early, I stay late,
I'm like the first guy in, I'm the last guy out
and I wouldn't change it a bit.
I can't imagine the relief of stress knowing
you have a plan, knowing you're getting out of debt,
knowing that you're not spending $50 a day
going out to dinner or 60 or 70,
when you get to a weak moment and you buy the,
shut up Rion for two.
And I think stress is the biggest killer that we have
because you cannot figure out how to solve your problems.
So you stay in that stress ball.
Yes. And you know what?
That's so perfect that you bring that up
because when he came to work for us,
we couldn't get more than 30 hours a week out of him.
And we're like, what is going on with this guy?
He has the knowledge.
He has the ASC certifications.
He's physically able.
Why only 30 hours?
And then we helped him to get his debt under control
and knocking it out.
Last week he did 50 hours, 51 point something.
51.9.
Yeah.
So his production doubled, almost doubled.
That was such a burden on him
that it prevented him from producing.
Einstein said, you cannot cure a problem
with the same mind that created the problem.
Either you change your mind
or you get someone else in there that can help you
to see what you're not seeing.
You get so, we get so in the weeds on our own stuff
that sometimes just a quick conversation with somebody
is game changing.
As the leader of your business
or someone listening who may know somebody
who is a good leader, it takes some hotspot to ask for help.
It really does.
Yeah, you have to leave your ego at the door, unfortunately.
And there's some shame.
There's some embarrassment.
There's some emotions that we don't want to feel.
And yet at the same time, it makes such a difference.
One of my nephews called me just last night
and he said, anti-Laura.
And I was like, okay, you never call me.
So something bad must have happened.
I'm thinking, gosh, did my brother die?
Is there something?
Cause he had just had surgery recently.
I was like freaking out.
Oh my gosh.
He said, well, I do have some bad news
and I'm running out of money to finish college.
I'm like, oh, is that all it is?
Oh, that's funny.
That's really good.
From her perspective, it was nothing.
From his, yeah.
Karen, we have this saying is
if you have enough money to fix a problem,
you don't have a problem.
Oh my God, that's so good.
And so I asked him, okay, well, how much do you need?
And he told me and I said, okay.
So there's some hoops that you're gonna have to jump through.
And because you called me, us, Jerry and I,
you're also going to get a financial education.
Are you willing to do that?
And he's 21, so he knows it all.
I don't know if he's gonna jump through the hoops,
but I can imagine what it took him to call me.
And sometimes it takes, you know,
just you just gotta suck it up and ask for help.
You gotta suck it up and say, hey, you know what?
It takes some stones to do that, doesn't it?
And it does.
And you know what?
I respect him more for that.
Yeah.
Has he ever done this before?
Okay, then I'm good with that in my mind
because I need help.
And he did that to you.
And we are not saying that enough in our society
and our families and our work zones,
employees, employers, employers need to say I need help.
Employees need to say I need help,
but that employer has to be willing
to know how to help that person.
So they have to climb up and out themselves.
They've got to find some financial freedom.
And I guess the minute you do it as an entrepreneur,
you are willing to go out and share it with your people
and lift them.
Oh, absolutely.
So this is why we work with business owners
because we have the experience of once we train
the business owner, they take it back to their family.
They take it back to their employees.
They take it back to their company.
It's like the ripple effect.
When you throw a rock in the lake,
it's the ripple effect of how it just circles out.
And it's amazing because I hear some of the employees
of our coaching clients echoing our words.
And it's the coolest thing.
I came across a really interesting quote.
I just want to share with you about this whole wealth
versus financial freedom.
And part of the discussion was how society rewards
visible wealth and not invisible freedom.
I got a new car.
I got a beautiful house.
I got a boat up at the lake house, blah, blah, blah.
And you're in debt up to your nose.
Rich is loud.
I love that.
Wealthy is quiet.
Wealthy is quiet.
Poor is even louder than rich.
People that are trying to look rich.
Since we've been on this path,
since Laura and I have been on this path,
we have become very familiar with many of the gurus,
the so-called gurus out there.
Online coaches.
The online coaches say, hey, buy my course and you'll get rich.
Well, I was at one's house as he was filming his infomercial
and his fancy car got towed off.
It was repoed.
And then when we found out that the house,
he didn't own it, he was leasing it.
So he had all these followers paying him a smack gob of money.
And I said, well, what have you actually really built
in the real world?
Well, I mean, where's your house?
Show me your bank account.
Show me your savings.
Show me real wealth.
Yes, something.
And the guy kind of turned white and he goes like,
yeah, I don't have money.
We had a client, one of the original internet gurus,
one of the original internet,
he did multi-million dollar launches over the weekends.
And he was one of our coaching clients.
We were having our very first call with him.
We're on a Zoom call and he's telling us how great he is
and all the great things he's done, et cetera, et cetera.
And Karm, his wife, literally grabbed hold of the camera
for the Zoom call and she said, let's cut the bullshit.
If it wasn't for food banks, my family would be starving.
My jaw hit the floor.
Laura's jaw hit the floor.
I looked at Jerry and I'm like, well, wait a minute.
He just said that he was doing all this millions of dollars.
So stop the lying and stop the insanity
and stop hiding behind a facade that is weaker than everything.
It's his imagination, man.
I mean, he pissed away all the money.
So part of my wrap up here is the words
that I wrote down, financial freedom is being humble.
I wrote that down and I think it goes back
to the thing you said just a few minutes ago about ego, Jerry.
That's something that I think we fight with a lot
in the world of social media being an influencer
or an influencer in your, is a little bit of a realm,
even if it's in a tight little group of 20, 30, 40,
50,000 followers, you have to be top dog.
You have to show everything that you preach to that exists.
Financial freedom is just being humble.
Just go about your life.
Just get on with it.
There's a level of happiness and inner peace, I guess,
to know that everything's paid off, but you know,
I don't have a mortgage payment, Jerry.
It was the greatest day in the world when that happened.
It was like, oh, yes.
Right?
You got out of those chains.
I had a contractor come to my house, Carm.
He's looking at my house.
Now don't get me wrong.
We have a nice house.
It's 3,000 square feet.
It's on a third of an acre.
It's got a big 25,000 gallon gunlight swimming pool
in the backyard.
It's a very nice, comfortable house.
It's 52 years old.
And he walks in, he looked at me, looked around,
and he goes, why do you live in this house?
Well, where else would I live?
He says, why don't you get a nicer house?
I said, it's just my wife and I.
Who am I trying to impress?
I put my pants on the same place,
whether it's this house or a $5 million house.
I don't care.
Our friends come to our house
because they want to see us, not our house.
Oh, wow.
You guys are just nailing it.
I mean, if that's not the case,
you're hanging out with the wrong people.
Sometimes people spend money
because there's a void inside themselves.
And that is something that needs healing.
When people need that instant gratification,
there's something going on inside of them.
And it's, I'm not good enough.
I'm not worthy enough.
I'm not loved.
Nobody loves me or nobody cares about me
or I don't care about me.
There's a self-destructive behavior
that causes people to spend
because they get that instant gratification.
People feel good about spending.
Yeah, but the true confidence
comes from when we heal that
and we have a plan for freedom.
That is what we help people with.
That's what at our Money Freedom Legacy event coming up.
Oh, in March, yeah.
We help people, not just with money,
not just with freedom and investing and legacy.
It's who are you and what are you struggling with?
What's inside you that needs to be healed?
Whether it's abuse, physical, sexual,
mental, emotional abuse,
was it being unloved and neglected?
What happened?
And when that gets healed, self-confidence healed
and then money heals, freedom heals,
and you get to have the life of your dreams.
I'm sorry, that was such a perfect ending.
I want to be sorry.
This is just perfect.
I want to say a bunch of things, but I can't
because you just wrapped it up so perfectly.
And Carm, the truth is,
all of us are somewhat broken.
We were broken.
I got my healing, I'm still working,
but over the last six years, I've dropped 90 pounds.
I've increased my mobility.
I went from having the orthopedics
that you need to have your knees replaced.
Well, I'm walking several miles a day now,
never had surgery, never had any of that stuff.
I healed and this is something that we've heard,
hurt people, hurt people.
Well, we add to it that healed people, heal people.
And this is part of your healing.
Let's heal your money.
Let's heal what's hurting you inside.
Let's find that void and fill it with something beneficial.
I would love to say that I was an individual
sitting here in debt and you taught me a lot,
but what I heard from you is the confirmation
of how I've been living my life for all these years.
And thank you so much for that.
I can't tell you to always get someone to land it
and say, hey, you don't have to go out to dinner every night
and you don't have to go spend money to feel good.
So I think hopefully that gets down to our children
and the people around us
and especially the people who listen to this episode
and be it you're a worker inside of a business
and you're struggling with that
and or maybe you even see an owner who's struggling
because you can tell when a business isn't making money
and they need to live.
So probably share this episode with some people
that you know, I mean, if you're on our app,
it's so easy to share this and save this
and listen to it over and over again.
So Jerry, Kazia, Dr. Laura Ashwag,
thank you so much for being here, build better.
Amen.
We appreciate you.
We love the community.
We love the industry.
You know, we're just trying to help people heal.
Thanks, Jerry.
Thank you.
Thanks for being on board to listen and learn
from the Premier Automotive Repair Business Podcast,
Remarkable Results Radio.
Get your episodic education on the ARPN listening app
at AutomotiveRepairPodcastNetwork.com.
Also enjoy the podcast
on our Carm Capriato YouTube channel.
Carm is all for advancing
the professional automotive service industry.
Until next time.
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