How To Make Financial Wellness Your Reality: Brent Hines (Transcript)

Here is the full transcript of Brent Hines’ talk titled “How To Make Financial Wellness Your Reality” at TEDxPleasantGrove conference.

In his TEDx talk, educator Brent Hines discusses the complexity of financial well-being, emphasizing that it extends beyond mere accumulation of wealth or financial knowledge. He shares his personal journey, including a pivotal moment of financial collapse on July 18, 2008, which reshaped his understanding of financial success. Hines critiques the societal tendency to prioritize material possessions (‘Have’), urging a focus instead on actionable behaviors (‘Do’) and core beliefs (‘Be’) for true financial health.

He highlights the importance of understanding our financial behaviors and the underlying beliefs that drive them, pointing out the often negative and self-limiting financial scripts we hold. Hines challenges the audience to redefine their own financial well-being, encouraging proactive steps towards achieving personal financial goals and altering detrimental financial beliefs.

He criticizes the marketing and advertising industries for oversimplifying financial wellness into a product-driven concept. Finally, Hines advocates for open conversations about money, breaking the taboo around this topic to foster better financial understanding and practices.

Listen to the audio version here:

TRANSCRIPT:

Introduction to Financial Well-being

Talking about money can be weird. We acknowledge that. But if you’ve been on this planet long enough, I’m guessing you’ve got a story or two to tell. Hopefully, it’s a story of maybe when you got the money thing right, but more likely than not, if you’re like the rest of us, there’s probably a story or two that you could tell where maybe you got the money thing wrong.

We’ve all got stories, and I’m here today to actually share mine with you. It was July 18, 2008. Grayson was five, Lily was three, Amy was scared, and so was I. Life had been going good up until that point.

I mean, having grown up a poor kid, I was charging that trail to go prove the world wrong.

That I did matter, that I did have good ideas, that I would turn into something, that they would pay attention to me someday. That fire in the belly that drives ambition.

The Turning Point

I mean, I’d gotten to, I’d worked my way through college, I’d gotten to a great business school, earned a degree in finance, I was well on my way to proving them wrong. Interned and then eventually got hired by a really high-end financial services firm. Even was handpicked and was being groomed and mentored by the founder and CEO of that financial company.

By all outward measurements, I was winning. I seemed to be on the winner’s path. I had it all. I had the income, I had the titles, I had the perception. Outward-facing only, in hindsight. And it all came crashing down.

Having that front-row seat though, inside of that firm, being groomed by the CEO, I knew what I believed success to be. Having grown up without, that looked like success. And I wanted it. So I was doing my best imitation of a million-dollar lifestyle early, early on.

The Crash

Like the flip of a switch, or like the igniting of a bomb, on July 18th, it literally all went away. It blew up in my face. It was over. It was gone. The income, the career, my future, my dreams. Unfortunately, my identity, unfortunately, was tied to that. My ability to provide for my family, it was literally gone. I wasn’t sure where to turn.

And to make it worse, since we’re sharing, my ears are still ringing from this financial bomb having just gone off, and yet I was under attack. And unfortunately, under attack by the person who had been my mentor for the prior 15 years. And my mentor for the prior, we were under attack financially, legally, reputationally, any way that we could be shot at, we were being shot at. And it was daily, like a drumbeat.

Facing the Consequences

The fear of not knowing where the next phone call, the next email, the next knock on the door would come from. Like what monster is going to be on the other side of the door today? I still to this day, I can’t come up with the words to describe like that, that guttural fear that we had. And then to make it even worse one more time, it was all my fault.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s easy to want to blame the people that were attacking you, but the blame was really on me. I’m the one that had left myself and my family, Amy and the kids, vulnerable to attack by mistakes that I had made, shortcuts I had taken, and then out of fear, my attempt to try to hide them. I owned it. It was all on me.

ALSO READ: How Great Leaders Serve Others: David Marquet (Transcript)

With this being said, why would I stand in front of an audience this size and tell you such a personal and humbling story? Because that fire in my belly as the poor kid growing up that wanted to prove the world wrong, I had a new fire in my belly as we began to recover and learn and grow from those scariest of days.

And that new fire in my belly was, if somebody that had the financial education that I did, a degree in finance from a top business school, and with the experience and the expertise in the world, in the field of finance, if I could burn my life to the ground, then what can I do to help others that maybe don’t have the background in the history that I do, to prevent them from making even the smallest percentage of mistakes that I had made? What could I do to help people pursue a life of what today we call financial well-being, financial contentment?

The True Nature of Financial Well-being

Here was my conclusion. Financial well-being does not equate to more financial information or more financial education, because if it was, I would have had that handled. It was clearly about something more than just more information. I mean, think about it, guys.

Today we are more educated, we have access to more information across the world than any time in human history, and literally in the palm of our hand. But yet, as a culture, especially here in the United States, we tend to be screwing up this money thing worse than any generation prior to us. Where’s the disconnect? The disconnect is that financial well-being does not lie in having more information.

The Be, Do, Have Model

As a young man, I was introduced to a model that is commonly referred to as, Be, Do, Have. And believe it or not, I was actually referred to that model by Zig Ziglar himself in the form of a briefcase full of cassette tapes with the Zig Ziglar training. Now, what a young guy was doing with a briefcase full of Zig Ziglar cassette tapes, I still can’t tell you. But in my mom’s basement, that poor kid growing up, I would play those Zig Ziglar tapes over and over.

Nerd alert. My friends are pretending to be rock stars in the basement, and I’m pretending to be Zig Ziglar. But Zig presented this concept, this model of Be, Do, Have, and to me, it made so much sense. And it was actually more than that. It actually represented a path out that I was going to take, and I was going to take mom and dad with me. Like, we were going to get out of this rut that I felt that we were in. I wanted more. So picture Be, Do, and Have.

The American Dream and Its Pitfalls

As Americans, pop culture says, go straight to the Have. Now, some of the Haves are good, like goal-setting. We tend to get very crystal clear about what it is that we want to have. But unfortunately, as Americans especially, we go straight to the Have. And what do we as Americans want to have? We want it all. And we want it now, like yesterday, now. I want it. The Have. I want it now, and I want to pay for it later.

The model suggests that we take a couple of steps back, that the power belongs in the Do, Be, Do, Have. Doing meaning the behaviors, the actions, the habits. These are the vehicle that will take us to the Haves. One more step back. If this is the vehicle that will take us to the Haves, this, the Be, the being, is the fuel to put in the machine, in the vehicle that will get us there. The most important number that we can remember in terms of succeeding at financial well-being is the number six.

It’s the six inches between our ears. This is where success with money starts. The things that we believe, the scripts, the tapes, the records that play in our mind, that takes us directly to the behaviors. There’s a one-to-one direct correlation. What we believe tends to be what we do. What we do is what’s going to drive us to our results.

If you got mediocre results, we can probably unpack the behaviors and see that your behaviors were leading direct to mediocrity. The model though, if we want to apply it to finance, in terms of Have, most Haves in people’s financial lives, or if we’re pursuing financial well-being, would be financial peace or financial outcomes, if you will, that lifestyle of finance.

ALSO READ: Ken Chenault, CEO of American Express at View From The Top Talk (Transcript)

But if we want to understand how to get there, we really need to pay attention to what are those financial behaviors that are going to take us to our most important financial goals, or the financial habits. These habits occur hourly, daily, weekly, and they compound. If we want to then fuel those healthiest of behaviors, then we need to pay close attention to what we believe to be true about money.

Again, the psychologists and the behavioral scientists will refer to these as scripts, tapes, records. They were given to us by our authoritative figures in life. The vast majority of those beliefs are negative, or they’re self-limiting, and to pile on, they’re oftentimes repetitive. They’re running in the background all the time, these beliefs. Maybe it’s beliefs about debt, or maybe it’s just the way things are, air quote moment.

“Well, the way things are is, well, normal people have car payments. Everyone has credit card debt. Besides, I earn reward miles,” and beliefs such as that. So, of course, we eat out. Everyone eats out, on and on and on. The beliefs are what fuel the vehicle. The vehicle is what takes us directly to our haves. Our beliefs drive our financial behaviors, which drive us to financial well-being.

The Illusion of Financial Wellness

Anything resembling financial education or financial wellness, even close, in the marketplace today seems to go straight to the have. It doesn’t pay attention to the behaviors, and it doesn’t pay attention to the beliefs. Any guesses as to why it goes straight to the have? Because the have is where they get to tap into the emotional parts of our brain, and they get to sell us the dream.

Can you imagine a marketer or an advertiser trying to sell behavior? I mean, behavior is not sexy. The new car is sexy. The new car smell is sexy.

Integrating Financial Wellness into Life

The National Wellness Institute does a really nice job from a wellness, not financial wellness specifically, but from an overall total well-being perspective of creating a model for us to understand what we mean by whole life, or our entire life on purpose. So, as we look at these six dimensions of their model in the wheel, as you look at those, can you think, are there any of those dimensions that are immune from our financial well-being, or lack thereof? I say no.

There’s no getting around it. None of these are immune. I think there’s a few fundamental truths to life. One of them is that life is multi-dimensional. It’s not simple. We are not simple creatures. We’re complex. We’re complicated. It’s deep.

Number two, our financial life does not live in a vacuum. It interacts with all the other dimensions, and none of the dimensions are mutually exclusive. Life, especially our financial life, looks a lot less like a spreadsheet, looks a lot more like a lava lamp. Sometimes like, I don’t know if I like the color of my lava lamp, but that’s how it is.

It’s not clean and simple. It’s not 90-degree edges and concentric circles. Sometimes it’s messy, but that’s where growth comes from. Some examples of financial distress, if we’re not doing a good job of taking care of ourselves financially, and how it shows up in our overall life.

The Impact of Financial Distress

As an example, physical, our physical dimension of life. And by the way, this model is not meant to say that this is fully inclusive of life, but these are six major categories of life, so physical health being one of them. 20% of Americans admit to not going to the doctor when they need health care because of financial concerns. That’s sad.

Emotional health, as an example. One in three Americans who have a partner in life say that finance is their top source of stress inside of their relationship. That’s maybe a little more predictable. Here’s a really sad one.

“Well Brent, what would finance have to do with the spiritual dimension of my life? That doesn’t, I don’t connect those two dots. My spiritual life and my financial well-being.” Of Americans earning $75,000 a year or more, any guesses as to what percentage of their gross income do Americans earning $75,000 or more give to church or charity? One percent. One percent of Americans earning $75,000 or more give to church or charity.

ALSO READ: Advanced Micro Devices Q3 2014 Results Earnings Call Transcript

To make it worse, there’s actually an inverse relationship of any income above $75,000 as an individual. As income goes up, giving percentage actually goes down as a nation. We’ve got this thing mixed up, guys. I’m here to tell you I’m pounding the drum of pop culture is not doing us any favors. Pop culture said what they’re telling us to do is actually almost the inverse of what we should be doing. It’s unhealthy.

Challenges for Financial Change

It’s time to break those rules. So my challenge for us today is twofold. Number one, is there something in this mindset of be, do, and have, is there something in your financial world today that you could take action on? I mean literally this very day.

Is there something you could do this afternoon or evening on your way home when you get home that could positively impact your financial well-being? I’ll give you one example. If in this day and age of reality TV, if you were leaving here today and a camera crew jumped out in front of you and said for $10,000 give us your definition of financial well-being in 10 seconds or less. Go.

Would you even have the first word to start? And by the way, there’s no wrong answer. You own it. This is your definition. What is financial well-being to you? It might be being debt-free. It might be saving more for retirement. It might be a retirement date. It might be saving for your kids or grandkids college fund. Maybe a lifestyle change. It may be giving. It may be building legacy. Everyone’s is different. There’s not two that are the same. So take action.

Number two, once you have that action defined, then can you clearly state what are the healthiest behaviors in the business world we call these key performance indicators. What are those healthiest behaviors that are going to drive you to your version of financial well-being?

And then number three, what can you do to change any unhealthy or self-limiting scripts or beliefs that would prevent you from taking that action that you know is the shortest path to getting what you need? Define what you want. Get clear on the behavior and then unpack what are some of the beliefs that are slowing you down or preventing you from getting going. That’s number one. You can do that tonight.

Rejecting Misguided Financial Narratives

Second challenge is can we agree to not buy in to the advertising and the marketing world of turning the word financial wellness or financial well-being into an empty buzzword? And can we agree not to allow the financial industries, deep pockets guys, can we agree not to allow them to misuse the term financial wellness to just promote more financial product?

Can we actually consider financial wellness actually be an operating system? If you like the model that I present today, Be-Do-Have, wonderful. If you like this idea of alignment, of having those aligned and getting crystal clear on what it is that you want, wonderful. But it all comes down to the operating system versus making individual financial decisions when you’re under attack from these really smart, really well-funded marketing and advertising organizations.

Embracing Open Conversations About Money

And who in your life might benefit from having this conversation with you? When and why this turned into a taboo topic, I have no idea. But I grew up with this belief that talking about money was personal and private, inappropriate, even taboo. So are you willing to maybe take this challenge and say, “Hey, who is it in my life that I can really share a powerful message with?”

And go and set the time to meet with that person and begin having a conversation. And it’s not giving them advice, it’s just a conversation. As Dr. Robert Schuller said years ago beautifully, “Any fool can count the number of seeds in an apple, only God can count the number of apples in one seed.”

Thank you for listening to my story today. God bless.