How would you describe your current relationship with money? In today’s episode, I’m sharing a pre-recorded masterclass on money mindset that I gave alongside fellow photographer and business coach Joy Michelle. I’m detailing my own journey to paying off over $70,000 in personal debt, as well as what steps to take in overcoming a negative money mindset.
The Focused Photographers Podcast was created based on the idea that the most incredible tool for learning is a deep dive into any given topic from multiple perspectives. Join us every other week as we explore important topics, with host Daniel Moyer and a variety of guests offering different perspectives! Make sure you’ve hit that follow or subscribe button on your favorite podcast player to get notified each week as we air new episodes!
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REVIEW THE SHOW NOTES
Get to know Daniel Moyer (2:32)
Your current relationship with money (7:30)
The four types of money mindsets (10:35)
Where your money mindset comes from (20:40)
Lies that you tell yourself (28:59)
Working on your money mindset (32:40)
Three lessons about money from photography (51:09)
Four steps to a positive money mindset (52:10)
MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
CONNECT WITH DANIEL MOYER
Website: WWW.DANIELMOYERPHOTOGRAPHY.COM
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Business Instagram: @GETFOCUSEDPHOTOGRAPHERS
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Dan Moyer
Hey photographer friends and fellow creative friends. I’m Dan Moyer and welcome to the show the focus photographers podcast. A couple of months ago my good friend Joy Aleman or known online as joy, Michelle invited me to do a masterclass to the students in her Facebook group that’s called Photo boss. And if you know my story about money if you’ve listened to the show for a while you you definitely know my story about money. But I came from a place of being in over $100,000 worth of personal debt, terrible scarcity mindset and money avoidant to almost paying off over $70,000 In the last four years, and thriving. So if you’re not enjoying Michelle’s Facebook group, photo boss, I highly suggest you get in there. But also, you’d have never heard this information, put in this sort of interview format to me. So I asked joy, if she would let me share it, and she graciously is allowing me to share it here on this podcast. So I’m very excited to bring it to you. There’s so much goodness in here. But if you’re more like a visual learner, then I want you to go to focus photographers.com slash f f is in finance focused. I have a downloadable finance focus roadmap, which is how I went from that 100k in debt and totally avoiding it to paying off over 70,000 of it might be 75,000 at this point in the last four years and still crushing it on student loans. And my wife’s car is pretty much all we have left. So go check that out. That’s focused photographers.com slash F F and that’s the finance focus roadmap. Okay, let’s get to the show
Joy Michelle
Hello, photo boss. Welcome to our masterclass of the month. I think we’re here and we’re rolling. If you’re here live, definitely come jump into the comment section. I’m gonna give people a couple of seconds to get in. And if you’re watching in the replay Welcome. Today we are going to be talking and diving into the topic of money and your money mindset and how to overcome a toxic money mindset. So this training is brought to you by Hobby pro Toolkit by photo boss, hobby to pro toolkit is a one all in one digital bundle of tools, templates and guides that you need to confidently take your business from side hustle. Don’t know exactly what this is too confident professional. So it has everything from your client email templates to a step by step guide with checkboxes making sure your business is totally legit. So you can check that out and grab the toolkit at hobby to pro toolkit.com. Okay, so a little bit about Dan. So here I’m going to read a little bio here and give you guys an introduction. So our guest today is Daniel Moyer. Daniel is a photographer podcaster, founder of focused photographers, father to three and educator. I first met Daniel when I was on his podcast, the focus photographers podcast, and today he’s gonna be sharing about how he has transformed his relationship with money and how you can too. So welcome, Dan.
Dan Moyer
Oh, thank you for having me. Before we start, let me do this. Let me share a quick story from a couple years ago, it was a few years ago, I was driving across a bridge, this very well known bridge outside of Philly, called the Ben Franklin Bridge, and driving along and I should be having this like really amazing day, I should be like crushing it because earlier that day, I had a phone call with my accountant who’s like, Dude, you are crushing it, like you’re gonna have the best year this year like everything’s going awesome. You’re not gonna have that many taxes. But I’m driving, panicked, upset and freaking out. Because I’m looking at I’m thinking like, alright, if somebody’s telling me, I’m having like this amazing year, it’s not in my bank account. So where’s this money out that he’s telling me I’m having this like, amazing year, right? And so I’m freaking out. I’m driving along. I’m upset. I’m like, Where the hell is this money at? And I looked down. And there’s this like, pristine, beautiful Starbucks cup sitting right in my cup holder? And no, no, I’m not crapping on Starbucks. But like, two things happened to me in that moment. One is that the shame that washed over me was tangible, because while I had a Starbucks cup sitting there, I also had over $100,000 of personal debt sitting over here that I was doing nothing about. And the second thing that happened was that like, I noticed I dumped 1000s and 1000s into that cup because I had a Pay Pal account that was attached to my Starbucks gold card to get my status. And I was like, Oh my God, how much did I spend this year in coffee, like just buying coffee? So I opened up my Starbucks app, and I’m looking through the reloads 150 50 125 50 100 100 And I’m just scrolling over and over again about all these Starbucks things that I’m freaking paying money in. And that was just Starbucks. I was regularly working at cafes, I was regularly like going out for a quick drink. They would end up spending the whole day, their breakfast, lunch and all that stuff. And it was just not a good situation I wanted to have, like, I was looking at my wife and I started tracking this I’m tracking our money in like 2008, we had over $100,000 of debt from personal loans and credit cards and a debt consolidation loan business stuff. But looking at that cup was the catalyst for change, right. And I think what I really wanted and I think what many of the people who are here one is like, I wanted more time with my two year old who was like, who was once time with me, we were trying to have more kids now have three year olds on the other side of this wall. So that could come bursting in here at any moment. I wanted to not have like this overwhelming, overwhelming feeling anytime I thought about money or any of that stuff. And I know that I’m not alone in this. And I know that’s why we’re talking about money mindsets today, because it is a very sticky place to be filming.
Joy Michelle
Oh my gosh, yeah. No, I’m so glad you shared that. And I think there’s just like, there’s so much emotion that is attached to all of this. And just hearing your vulnerability of just saying how you got great news. And in the same day just felt like, crap, like, you’re just where is it then looking down at the company? Oh, my gosh, it was like a dagger in my heart. I was like, Yeah, I’ve been there when you’re just scrolling. Like, where did it all go? And how could you possibly spend this much on food? Well, I can tell you, you, you absolutely can spend that much on food. And just especially when you’re on the road a lot and doing shoots and meetings and consultations, like it really adds up. So I’m glad you shared that, because I’m sure people can relate who are listening.
Dan Moyer
Yeah, it’s, um, it’s real talk. And this, what we’re going to talk about today is very real, and there’s gonna be plenty of times for everybody to, you know, share some of their thoughts and things because money is sticky money and, and our mind is very much attached to each other like this. So, you know, Joy did this really lovely intro to me. But one thing she didn’t say is that I’m that I’m a CPA or something like that, because I’m not a CPA, I’m not an accountant, I cannot tell you how to do your tax. But what I’m more interested in is how we handle money, how our mind processes money in the psychology around money. So that’s more of what we’re going to talk about today. And I want to recognize first, before we get into this, that there’s a lot of sticky feelings around money. It’s not an easy, like, what’s good for me, it’s gonna be perfect for you. We’re going to unpack some of that stuff. And I’m gonna give some good principles and stuff like that. So to open it up today, I put a question in the photo boss group a little while ago, and I want Joe to maybe open the comments box or something and just read off whatever comes through, and everybody’s out there. Just answer this one question in in one word, or just a few words. Describe your current relationship with money.
Joy Michelle
Yeah, well, when you first asked this, so guys listening if you’re watching right now, answer that one word, one gift one feeling like how do you feel? Just like whatever because sometimes it’s easier right? To just use against like someone crying
Dan Moyer
than you please describe the gifts. That would be even more fun.
Joy Michelle
It’s Michael Scott on a really bad day that says, I don’t want to work. You know what I’m saying? So a couple people answered. So Meredith Morrison said stressful. Jose said dysfunctional Sara unsure. second guessing. Deb is love hate. I like that one. I feel like that encompasses it’s like a mixed feeling the definition of mixed feelings, right?
Dan Moyer
Yeah. Has anybody else writing anything in the current moment? Any gifts? I’m picturing the dog one with like the fire around him. Oh, my gosh, sitting in a room and there’s just fire everywhere.
Joy Michelle
Yeah. Everything’s on fire. And you’re like, everything is fine. It’s fine. Yeah. So Valerie is watching right now? And she said terrible. Jacqueline said complicated, Jessica hesitant to spend and Nikki said a roller coaster.
Dan Moyer
Okay, all right. All the things that every time I ask this question, I’ve asked it to my group. I’ve asked it to, you know, groups of Facebook photographers just all around. It’s always a bunch of negative words. It’s, it’s confusing. It’s frustrating. It’s unsure, right? And that’s why I think that managing money has more to do with our mind and our mindset than it does with decimal points and rules, right? Case in point is like, everybody can can throw a stone or read a news article about NBA athletes or NFL athletes or famous athletes or Olympians, whatever, who make a ton of money and go bankrupt in a short couple of years. Right? But does anybody know the story of Ronald Do you know the story of Ronald read or heard of this guy? Ronald Reagan is one of my favorite Wikipedia openings. It’s Ronald Reagan was a janitor, gas station attendant and philanthropist. He this guy like died in I think 2014 When he died, all the people around him are like really bad and all this stuff. But when he died, he left $6 million to the local library and a million to each of his stepchildren. This dude was a gas station attendant, a janitor for a really long time and all the people who knew him hold his neighbors and stuff like how did he get that money? Because he just lived in this, you know, single two bedroom one bathroom house was widowed a couple years earlier. And like, everyone’s just like, Oh, he’s just like the guy who’s like around town How the hell did you get all that money? No windfall, nothing. And it was just a live simply spend on your values kind of moment and have like a very positive mindset around money, which, you know, it’s all about how people handle it and how they deal with it. So if we’re, if we’re ready, let’s let’s dive into some of these. Like, let’s get some actual definitions of of some of the mindsets that are out there. How’s that sound?
Joy Michelle
Yeah, I love it, go for it. Okay,
Dan Moyer
so there are four money mindsets, and they come from this. There’s a financial psychologist, his name’s Brad Clontz. And he came up with this really riveting list of four, money mindsets, and he calls them the clients money script inventory, which is great. And there’s four money mindsets underneath that there’s money avoidance, money, status, money worship, and money vigilance, we’re gonna go over each of them individually. But again, they’re avoidance status warship and vigilance. Money avoidance is typically thought of as the most detrimental of the mindsets. These people typically believe that money is evil, and it corrupts people, that wealthy people are inherently very greedy. They believe that there’s virtue and living with less that that anybody who lives with more is a loser or wasteful or extravagant. And there’s just there’s no need for that. A lot of these people, and I can speak because I was money, money avoidance for a very long time, we’ll get into my story a little bit. But a lot of these people, the money avoidant are stuck in this negative feedback loop that’s like, alright, they have shame about their finances, because they’re not good at it or whatever. So then, because they have shame, they neglect looking at their bills, because looking at their bills is going to bring more financial stress, there’s going to be credit cards, and they don’t want to have to deal with that, then in an attempt to make themselves feel better about it, they’ll overspend hoping to find some joy in like a new thing or shiny thing or whatever, which then leads them back to oh my gosh, my debt is accumulating, what the heck do I do, which leads them back to shame. And it’s just this constant cycle and actually posted something a little bit about a little bit ago on Instagram about this, maybe like a month or so ago, the amount of people who wrote out wrote to me about that, that cycle of just like, shame, debt piling up avoiding bills is is I think rings true for a lot of people. So that’s the money avoidant. The next is money status. And this one’s pretty straightforward. It’s that the money status, people believe that their net worth is tied directly to their self worth. And people as I’m going through these, you know, some people might have different traits and different parts of all of them, but one of them will will actually will stick out more than others. And you could take a test that’ll actually give you these perfectly, but the money status is net worth is equal to self worth. And these individuals are more about displaying their wealth, rather than doing the necessary things it takes to actually accumulate it right. So they’re more likely to get caught up in things that will increase their the look that they’re more feet. So like buying the newest phone every time new clothes, you know, new shoes for every day of the month. Have you ever driven past a house? That’s like, the car in the driveway looks like it cost more than the house? That kind of thing? Because when people are driving a fancy car, what does that say about you can’t see their house, right?
Joy Michelle
Yes, well, growing up my parents always call that big hat, no cattle, and no cattle, big hat. No cattle, like it’s all show. And I remember one time driving past a house and I said, Mom, why don’t we have a pool? And my mom said, Well, we you never actually know what someone makes someone can have a pool and have no money. And I was
Dan Moyer
like, Yep, yeah, that’s like, when we see somebody with like a $90,000 car. We know two things. It’s one data point, and we know two things, that they now have $90,000 less, or that they’re $90,000 in debt. Right? Yeah, those are the two those are the two only things that we know about them. And that’s a little bit of my money avoidance sticking out where like, I feel like there’s a little bit of virtue and like living with less but you know, anyway, we’ll get into that.
Joy Michelle
Yes. Oh my gosh, I love this keep going. I love this. It’s gonna
Dan Moyer
get it’s gonna get sticky. So the next one is the money worship and this one’s This one’s sticky because a lot of people who are in this money worship phase, don’t think of their negative thought patterns as worship, but money worship is is similar to money status, in that they believe that their lives will significantly improve if they just have more money. And this is one of the things that I feel sometimes when I look around the photography space As some of the messaging that that people are putting out there that like if we just, if I just make it to six figures, if I just get to here, everything’s going to be solved, which six figures is a really great goal to get to. But it’s not the goal, it’s not going to automatically solve all of our problems. But this money worship thing is that, like, the core belief is that more money is going to mean that I’m happy, when I get to this amount, I’m going to be happy. And these individuals are also more willing to earn or tend to put tend to put work in front of family, because they’re also stuck in this another negative feedback loop of, you know, I need to work more to get more money. And then I never quite feel like I have enough money. And then I also I’m trying to buy my freedom because I want to spend more time with my family. But I’m not able to do that. So I need to go back and work more. And it’s just like this constant thing of, I need to work more, I want to spend more time with my family, I need to buy my own freedom, I need to work more. And it’s just this constant cycle of how do I break that pattern of feeling like you need to work more in order to get more money? Yeah, how’s that sound?
Joy Michelle
I love that like each of these is you’re still in a loop. It’s just all different loops that aren’t taking you towards where you actually want to be. And what I wrote down under worship was giving it way too much power, like you’re giving money, too much power, and then the power is in the like elusive money that you can’t get enough of instead of in what you can do. And in you. So yeah, this is, this is great. Okay, that was number three, what’s number one,
Dan Moyer
number three. So after this one, I’m gonna open the comments box. And just just if anybody wants to write in along sort of what Joyce said that like something that stuck out so far, maybe there’s like a little aha moment that that jumped out over the first three. But this last one is money vigilance. And it’s often thought of as the the most positive of the mindsets, the healthiest of the mindsets. And it’s that money vigilant are aware that money is very helpful in life, but it’s only what you make of it. They recognize that money is a very powerful part of life, but it’s not the, they recognize that money in and of itself doesn’t just bring happiness, right? Money’s kind of neutral. They are focused on wealth building there, they encourage saving and frugality, they rarely use credit, they look for bargains, and spend within their means. But like all these other ones, it’s typically money vigilant is thought of as a protective and positive mindset. But it can also lead to an over fixation on money, and the fine and they’re like their healthy habits that they have, they can actually the over fixation on those can hinder people from truly enjoying, like the good habits that they have, because they’re overly thought thinking about it. I think somebody in the comments earlier said like, you know, they’re afraid to spend, right, which I don’t know, obviously this person, but I’m willing to bet and maybe they actually have some good habits, but then they’re just like very concerned or overly concerned, like, oh, my gosh, I spend anything I’m not gonna be able to do, I’m not able to do this or that or whatever. So we’re gonna get into that a little bit. So did anybody write anything in the comments box about, you know, anything that resonated with them, or hit them or any of that kind of stuff.
Joy Michelle
So there is a bit of a delay, so I’m giving it a second for people to catch up. So if you’re watching this right now, and any of these four kind of stand out to you either avoidance status, worship, or maybe that vigilance category, go ahead and drop it in the comment box, I would be really interested to see and I’m sure you guys are going to see commonalities, even in each other’s answers. But this is really fascinating. And, and either way, it sounded like vigilant at first was like the one that you want to be, I was like, oh, that sounds good. Right? Like you’re aware of the money and you’re watching it and use you know, you see this this tool, but then it almost becomes this like over vigilance where you can’t relax, you can’t know when to indulge maybe or like where to like leverage it in your areas of freedom and purpose and direction for your life. Right?
Dan Moyer
Yeah, it’s like this is a random analogy, but it’s like do you have a sleep tracker or a Fitbit or like I need like an Apple Watch to track your sleep or any of that
Joy Michelle
kind of stuff? My husband does I don’t use any of that stuff. I’m like, I don’t want you recording my information but
Dan Moyer
okay, all right. Yeah, so I have one I have like I had a trip a Fitbit I had an Apple watch that I did not really like so I sold that and I have a Garmin because I’m I run a lot and all that stuff, but it tracks my sleep and I like tracking my sleep. I like to know when I get good sleep. But turns out there’s this whole new SLEEP DISORDER about people who are overly obsessed about their sleep. So this like one thing that’s like really good about okay, I can use it as an indicator of like, what kind of workout am I going to do today? All that stuff becomes this thing that you get overly concerned about this good thing become something that’s not so good because we give it more power than it deserves like you were saying before.
Joy Michelle
It’s like anxiety inducing. When you’re like that obsessed with your sleep, then you’re like, if I don’t go to sleep in the next 30 minutes, I’m not gonna get my optimal REM cycles and like, that’s the stuff that I don’t need to know. But okay. Jacqueline said Money avoidance was the one that came up for her. And then Karina just said, I’m hilarious which she’s on my team. She has to say that but hey, Karina, yeah,
Dan Moyer
who was it that said Money avoidance. Jacqueline, Jacqueline, you have my heart, we’re gonna dive into that in a little bit. Because I think a lot of people have some, some of the money of wedding stuff and and we’re gonna dive into it. So all of these money mindsets, positive, negative, whatever, come from the stories retold in our childhood, the things that we see growing up what our families do, or do not do. And like what what is downloaded onto our pristine little hard drives when we’re, you know, young children and impressionable, right. I was money avoidance hard, and that I didn’t, I didn’t know what it was, I didn’t know what to understand that I was, I wouldn’t say that I went out and was like, I don’t like money. I’m not going to touch it. I’m gonna put like, I don’t want anything to do with it. But my eye acted on it. Right. And looking back now that I’ve done some of the deep work that we’re going to talk about steps to do this deep work and sort of overcome this in a little bit. I can pinpoint a few places that it came from in my own journey. Because my parents worked hard, right? My mom sold Mary Kay when I was younger, my dad was a produce manager, right? But find jobs. They didn’t make a ton of money, but they stretched money, but it never felt like they were getting ahead. Never. I remember asking my parents one time, because it was a term that I had looked at, you know, we sort of had like, just not like, we always bought sort of beater cars. And I remember, I remember literally going to the mall by my parents house, and buying a car from a guy who like took his amplifier and subwoofer out of the trunk for like 1000 bucks. And then we’d like we drove home and I was like maybe 10 or something normal, normal day. And I just remember, like, like saying, okay, my parents are working really hard. But money’s not available to them. Because we obviously don’t have the nice things. So if I work really hard, money’s not going to be available to me. My parents work hard and money’s not available to them. I’m going to I can work hard, but my is not going available to me. So why try right now. Then, in my middle school years, there was like the perfect family and our Catholic school. That was so wonderful. I knew that the daughters I went to school with them, they won $30 million in the lottery, and a scratch off and they Yeah, they took 15 million. And in by the time their girls were out of high school had ripped their family apart. Divorce, all that stuff the dad was was self employed. And it just I don’t know, the there’s actually news articles about it in the morning call and all this stuff, but now that I know them it was like okay, so they got all this money, you would think that that’s that’s awesome. That’s amazing. You get all this money, but yet it rips her family apart. Okay, so So I see that and I say okay, money changes people I don’t have anything to do with that I don’t want a lot of money. And then the final one was Was that real estate?
Joy Michelle
No, that’s a real thing that like you on one level in your mind it’s like you can be more than one thing you can say I want to get to this level I want to make this money but also subconsciously believe that it’s going to change you or it’s going to change your family dynamic for the worse and that will in and of itself influence every decision that you make and keep you from money because you of course don’t want to lose your family and you of course don’t want to change for the worse and yeah that that was like a that was a profound moment in middle school to watch that happen.
Dan Moyer
Yeah, I mean think about what you just said that like the you’ve got these two things that are so powerful your family and the things you value your friendships all that kind of stuff. And then money which also has this power to you think change it for the worse so it’s like okay, well I don’t want any I don’t want to deal with that if because my family and all that stuff really means a lot to me, but yet I want money because I know I want to buy my freedom I want more time with my family money is this powerful tool right? And the sort of final one that I’m thinking about as I was growing up was like getting like being in high school getting my learner’s permit starting to drive it’s like who are the people I always saw driving aggressively right fancy cars at that time it was like Fast and the Furious was the big thing so like you saw like the fancy yeah hooked up cars with like the neon and how much money that must have dropped in that well, those guys are are driving like jerks like again money changes people I don’t want anything to do with that cuz there’s like it’s just like my my naive you know, younger self like just telling me these stories that are so ingrained. Now, as an adult that it’s like, you don’t notice it until you dive down and figure it out. You know, I’m saying are really like, bring it up to the light. Right?
Joy Michelle
Well, yeah. And another great example of this is the media and just movies that the extremely wealthy people are the character that’s often not the good guy. Like, it happens all the time. Like, It’s a Wonderful Life, there was Potter and Potter was extremely wealthy and like Potter, and it’s funny how he you know, and the whole point was that like, even with all his money, he was, you know, like a bitter old shrew, and like, would just die alone. And it now watching it, it’s just, it’s so interesting how you internalize little bits and pieces from so much growing up. It’s like, we’re a little sponges. And now as a parent, I’m constantly thinking like, oh, my gosh, what am I passing on? Like, what am I saying? And like, How can I take what I’ve learned about money and like, make sure that it doesn’t pass along in a negative way to my kids? Because if you know, when you pick, you pick things up, and so are they, it’s so it’s a heavy thing. And I think that like, the good thing, and I think the encouraging thing for anybody watching right now is that, like, the work that you do, can amplify in the next generation as well. So like, what you do to improve your toxic money mindset can actually grow in your friend circles, and it can actually be a really positive thing. Just like generational generational wealth. Of course, we all hear that. But I think there’s just like a generational mindset that you can pass on as well. Yeah, and
Dan Moyer
that’s actually a very powerful transformation that I had that we’re gonna get to in like, a little bit when we start
Joy Michelle
I’m already just, you know, that’s
Dan Moyer
perfect. That’s, that was a great setup. Joyce. Yeah, we’ve planned. Yeah, that was perfect. That actually was one of the things you said before was like, you know, in movies, you see all this stuff about like, the stereotypical, like wealthy man who buys everybody and buys their power and buys off, you know, all you know, the politicians and police and whatever. What’s interesting about real life is wealth is hidden. A lot of times, right? We have, we have these like, like, there are so many characters of people who play out that same way in real life on Instagram, like, I’m doing all these flying to this fancy place, follow my adventures, like, you’ve got that. And I really want to know how many most people have like a zero balance, and they’re just like sky high credit cards, or extremely wealthy parents. But exactly, yeah, well, there’s this really great book called The Psychology of money by Morgan Housel. And it’s like, just all the ideas around money. And he said, wealth is hidden. It’s hard to study because, you know, the people who are actually wealthy tend to have habits that are very simple, like, like, they don’t drive fancy cars. Like I think the number one, this was like, early 2000s, like the number one car among millionaires was like a Jeep Wrangler, or something like a
Joy Michelle
Jeep Grand Cherokee. There’s a lot of those stats in the everyday millionaire book where yes, it was saying Chris Hogan. Yeah, yep. And they’re just like, just they’re they’re just not what you would expect. They’re not like the movies or the music video. They’re literally millionaires next door, or like, isn’t there a book called The Millionaire Next Door?
Dan Moyer
Yeah, that was the original one. And then okay. Yeah, they did. That was the like the Ramsey group. Chris Hogan did that one recently. That’s the most recent study of like, 10,000 millionaires and their habits and all this
Joy Michelle
stuff. Yes. And it’s very ordinary cars, ordinary watches. And it what was really cool is the average income of a millionaire was like, way less than six figures. And so that was really cool. And to your point, the original story at the beginning of the the janitor, so it’s absolutely possible. And it happens more often than I think we think just like you said, the hidden millionaire. All right,
Dan Moyer
so we sort of have like this, we have a couple of definitions of you know, what are some of the money mindsets, I shared about like some of the things that I went through as I was coming up and where these come from, which is the stories were told and all this stuff, but then it’s like, okay, what do you do from here, right? Because if you some of these things are resonating with some people, and they’re like, Okay, I can definitely see myself in that, or I definitely do this or whatever. The next thing is, like realizing that there are lies that you tell yourself. And there are lies that like you believe about your circumstances, and you live as if they’re true. This is a lie that you’re believing and living out as if it were true. And these are lies like things like you’re not good with money. So why try? Maybe it’s your parents who were, who were not good with money, so you won’t be a to, you’ll never make enough money. You’re not worthy of good money, or one of my favorites because we photographers are our artists, and a lot of us will say, Well, I’m not a numbers person, so I’ll never understand it. And I hear that all the time. When I coach photographers all the time. I’m not a numbers person. It doesn’t make sense to me. And I get that because I was not a numbers person either. My wife is a super nerd and loves numbers and I am the complete opposite. Yeah, and I’m the one who had to do the budget because I needed to see it. I needed to figure those things out. And it’s, yeah, it’s a strength that you have to build up, but
Joy Michelle
oh, so good. I was gonna say and just with artists, it’s like that starving artist pride or like the belief that like to be a real artist, like most of the real painters weren’t discovered until after they died. And like all of the like, very like old fashioned fine art. It’s really, really hard to make money if you’re being a true artist. And maybe if you’re making money, you’re a sellout.
Dan Moyer
I just had another realization that of what you said, if something that like I didn’t even think about as impacting me through college, which was, I went for my bachelor’s in Fine Arts. I was there for all my undergrad. And when my fine arts teachers found out that I was one going into wedding photography, after like, coming back, and I was gonna be an art teacher for a little bit. I finished my art teaching degree. And then it was like, Oh, I’m going to be a wedding photographer. I was failing. Because I was selling out to like, because you’re supposed to be like an artist, you’re supposed to tell stories, you’re supposed to like, grind through it and began G and like all that stuff. He
Joy Michelle
in some, like, somewhere with no power because you can’t afford to pay for it. But you’re doing the art, like doing the art. There’s like some sort of honor and it being like horrible. Like
Dan Moyer
yeah, no, I just saw Damn, you, like gotten me on this. Now I’m going to be stuck on that. What are we talking about, again, negative
Joy Michelle
journal for that one later. But there is there is like a, like a true artist or definition of like, if you’re really doing the art, like you said, like the storytelling and the like, it’s there is this I went to art school, I went to Savannah College of Art and Design, but then transferred into Maryland and ended up graduating from there. But like, there’s so much like subliminal information about what it is to like, be a true artists, the real ones like you can’t like if you’re a real artist, you might do like documentary work for like National Geographic, not you open up your own studio and you photograph babies like, um, like, there’s just, it’s a little pretentious, which now is like wild to me, like now that I say that I’m like, Oh my gosh, like telling the everyday person story and documenting families legacies? Like, that’s art, too. I mean, I would get into a fight over this. But anyway, no one’s fighting with me. I’m like getting all mad for no reason.
Dan Moyer
Yeah, so So now here’s, here’s the plan that I’m going to implement. And, and picking apart what you just told me about, or what I just discovered about, you know, going through college and realizing that so many people thought that I was less than because I was going into wedding photography, there are there are what I believe are four steps to overcoming or starting to work through these money mindsets. The first is that we have behaviors and problems that we all do. Right? So let me actually let me just list out the four and then I’ll go through each of them with some of my examples. So the four steps are identifying the problem that you have, the acting out whatever you’re doing, and identifying that and actually labeling it. The second is asking yourself questions to understand it better understand it deeply. And like what is that behavior doing for you that that is sort of like a protective mechanism, or whatever that looks like. The third is to pinpoint the lie that is being told to you through that that questioning process you go through. And then the final part, and you actually have to write this down, you actually have to do this and write it out. Because it’s great to like do something in your mind and you like sort of work through it. But you really got to write like gratitude, like, studies been studies about like writing one or two pieces of gratitude every morning, every night or whatever, show that over long term and helps you better. So this last one is reframing the lie, rewriting it in a way that makes you that makes you emote about it. So all right, everybody, so everybody’s different. And that’s why these are a framework of ideas. Every single one of the of you out there have a different story, different circumstances that have brought you to today. And there are going to be some hard truths that we’re all going to stumble into and and we’re all going to have to wrestle with the asking yourself questions to understand the behaviors and pinpointing the lie take a while they take some time because like we were saying before, all this stuff is wrapped up and nestled in with each other. So incestuous. Ly that it’s like oh, like it’s just a little sticky. There’s a book. It’s called. You’re a badass how to your badges and chairs. Yeah, Jensen cero. How to stop doubting yourself and live an awesome life or something like that. And in the book, there’s like the first chapter, she starts talking about, like the subconscious baggage that we’re all carrying around with us. The stuff that we we didn’t even know is there because it was put there before we even realized what it was right? All the stuff we’ve been talking about the law As you tell yourself and what your family members or aunts, uncles or whatever you saw in your childhood, all that stuff is stuffed down deep in there. And she likens these like subconscious thoughts to you trying to enjoy this, like, beautiful sunny day on your porch, right? You’re, you’re sitting there, you’re in your rocking chair, but there’s just a smell that’s just like out there and you like cannot get enough like, you just can’t enjoy it, you’re like, What the hell. And so you do like a couple of things to try to like, get rid of the smell, you saw a ceiling fan smell is still there, like what the hell you scraped down all of the paint, like strip the paint down, repaint the porch, still there, the smell is still there. But until you realize that there’s a rotting dead animal carcass that has crawled its way under the foundation of your porch, and you need to get in there, get your hands dirty, kind of gross. And it’s hard work to pull that out. It takes courage to get in there, get your hands dirty, and pull that stuff out into the daylight, throw it away. That’s what we need to do.
Joy Michelle
For breathing kind of save you this time. Like you just gotta hold in there. You just gotta get in there with some you can wear gloves, but it’s like you got to get in there and address it. i This is a that’s such a good story that like I literally just listened to that book. So good. So powerful. Definitely like a must listen, if you’re into audiobooks, she like Jen actually, like, narrates the book herself. And she’s really funny and like a good storyteller. So it’s an easy listen. I love this. Okay, so you’re, you’re like unpacking the four steps to like actually working through identifying, reframing and like, basically rewriting the false thing that you’re believing is, is there a good spot to start with this? Like when you’re saying like, the step one was like, you have to name it, you have to like say, Okay, this is happening. Let’s figure out what it is. And why it’s happening is a good place to start in like those moments of like, self sabotage, where like, for like a photographer, it’s like, you get an inquiry, it looks really, really great. But for whatever reason, you’re like delaying sending the invoice or your delay, like you just are like, I get to a tomorrow, but it’s like, you’re literally sabotaging how you’re booking. Because of this, like feeling of like, what the brochure is not ready or like, I’m not pressing go on, like, the pressing publish on the blog post, because like, it needs to look this way. Is it like that kind of stuff? Yeah,
Dan Moyer
what I would say is that everybody here knows that there’s something that they do that they wish they would not do when it comes to money, right? Maybe it’s um, you know, there’s a consumer credit card debt, that sky high, and they keep adding to it, maybe it’s they, they really just want to save for the future. But they don’t know how there’s all these like little things that are wrapped up in there. And what I’d say is just start there, like, what’s the minimum thing, right? So we’ll come back to my story in a little bit. But like, the minimum thing for me was, was really wanting to be able to send my kids to college one day, right. And that meant, that meant putting money aside, just I need to just put some money aside. But what I realized is like, I started doing this thing where I would, where I realized that I was spending actually let me do this. I was spending so much money on coffee, coffee out, I would spend so much money on lunch out I spent so much money on gear. I spent money on upgrading to first class tickets when I had weddings, like outside the country, whatever, like no clue why, but that was the habit. I really needed to stop yourself. Treat yourself. Yeah. Oh, like you get that but not when you have $110,000 worth of debt sitting over here. And you have dreams of paying authoring like all dreams. Yeah. Dreams. Hashtag goals realized. Yeah,
Joy Michelle
yes. Like kids you want to see, like, get educated and do whatever they want to do with their lives. And like that matters, too. Yeah. Yeah. And
Dan Moyer
like, if there’s people who are listening who don’t have kids like that aside, Hey, you want to enjoy life? Before? You’re 65? Right? You want to retirement does not mean? Oh, I’m going to work to this day. And then I’m going to be done. There are many retirements right like last year, I pulled way back on on accepting weddings, I took like 13 weddings, because the two years prior to that 2020 and 2021 were very difficult and my family needed to see a better side of me. So I took last year’s like, my mini retirement, I had the money set aside to be able to say all right, I need to put some energy here. So it’s like it’s that kind of freedom that we want to have forget about kids and all that stuff. Like maybe I just want to blow off a year and like go I’ll go travel somewhere whatever it doesn’t have to be like the traditional retirement so but that was that was a lot of the stuff that that I was dealing with. I had these problems that I realized were sabotaging myself spending too much whatever. Everybody’s going to know what what they the issues that they have or the behaviors they Wanna stop? But yeah, what was really going on? When you say some?
Joy Michelle
No, I love the word sabotage. Like, how are you sabotaging what you what you want most for what you’re actually doing right now. And there’s like a disconnect between the thing you say you want most, and what you’re actually doing every day. And there’s a sabotage moment. And like, like you said, there’s one thing that’s going to come to mind, maybe even a list, you know, and if you can just get really honest, and like raw for a minute and write those down, then you can work towards these next steps, which is so powerful.
Dan Moyer
Yeah, so that first one is like identifying this behavior or this problem. And whatever you have, you just want like, I just want to stop doing this thing, or I just need to move away from this. What was actually going on in my heart, in my mind, is that I cared too much about what people thought of me. So that was me acting out on like, I want people to look like I was 20 something or whatever I want my parents to like think like, wow, like, you have this business, you’re doing great. Like you’re crushing, you can fly first class, you can spend all this time you’re doing it for the gram, right? I’m spending however much money on Starbucks. And I would say working from my cafe office today, right? Like, the amount of times I did that, and don’t get me wrong, I love a good cup of coffee. I love working extrovert I love being around people. So I would do that. But the lie was I wanted to look successful. And the real vulnerability came when I had the moment where I said that I was scared of too much money. Because I didn’t know, I didn’t know about taxes, I didn’t know about investments, all that stuff was scary. Like, when you make a lot of money in your business, you got to pay a lot of taxes to. And if you make if you don’t make a lot of money, that means you’re not going to owe a lot of money. And as fast as it would come in, I would just get it back out there. That was the avoided side of me. And it was the feedback loop just a different way. And it was just me saying I’m scared of like being playing in my big boy pants, right? I’m scared of playing in the big people world. I don’t want to get there yet. I’m just going to hide. I’m just going to pretend like I don’t know what’s going on. But yet, you see how all messed up this stuff is like, I want people to take me seriously. I want it to be looked like an adult I wanted to look successful. But really I was terrified underneath, you know, and that’s the part of of dealing with a lot of this stuff that people have to be real with themselves and say, okay, that’s okay. The first step to to like a newer, better version of you is like figuring out the the first simple thing, the first thing, the first thing was I’m doing, I’m spending too much on coffee gear, whatever. Why am I doing that? I’m doing that because I care too much about people with Think of me. And
Joy Michelle
wow. Yeah, yeah, no, but I love that you said you wanted to look successful. But then in the car, you’re like, I want to feel successful, I want to actually be successful, I want to see the money and have the options to do whatever it is that I want to do. And yeah, it’d be nice if people thought I was successful, but like, at the end of the day, I don’t feel successful. So like, I mean, that’s where the rubber meets the road. And that can be a huge catalyst moment where it’s you, you’re reminded of like, what really matters, like, where’s the money? You’re saying? Where is it? My, my CPA is really impressed. But like, I’m not impressed. And so that, that I feel like that’s a huge motivator for me personally is, like, am I impressed? Am I satisfied? And then like, between even like, my husband, and I, like, are we feeling like, it’s where it should be? Or does everybody else think it’s impressive. And like, at the end of the day, when it’s all said and done, it’s just like, it doesn’t matter. Like, if someone thought it was really cool that you flew first class, which is really cool. By the way I school, like, sounds really nice, you know, those seats are tiny in, in, in the back. But at the same time, you know, you’re you’re sitting there feeling like alright, well, what’s what’s to show for all this money I made? And that’s not a good feeling.
Dan Moyer
I think, just through that, like part of, of like, what were the habits that I was doing, and all that stuff, and like, you have to like, look through the underlying themes, then and still, like, look at these lies that come out of this, the whole there are these things that we’re telling ourselves, like I said before, that are like the root of all this and, and mine were you’re gonna hear them and you’re gonna sort of make sense, but like the lies that were through all this stuff, all the action that I was taking, or the non action was that like beliefs that I had that are actually lives like, my parents didn’t make great money, so I wouldn’t make great money. Right? That was and then when I did make great money, I was totally unprepared for that. And then like I said before, you know, like because you’ve heard this when I went through the mindsets, it was money will make me a bad person and will change me. And the last one that I figured out only within the last couple of years is that I was impatient. That’s where the whole I want to look successful thing came from Because I’m I’m just starting my business, I want to look successful. And I didn’t want to actually do the things that it meant. So that when I was 35, which I’m now 37, or when I was 40, I could be in an actual better spot rather than just looking like it. And you sort of mentioned before, like how you have you want to, like, look a certain way or whatever. But when I first did my profit first, I don’t know if you’ve done profit first. And if you do, so, you know, you have to the incident assessment, and you have to like figure out, like, you know, your percentages, my percentages for expenses, because, again, my business travel, I would take my clients out to dinner all the time, was like, 70% of my income 70% I was spending on stupid BS that like, was not in line with my values. And that was a huge, that was another huge wake up call that maybe like 65%. So you know, I’m trying to make myself look better. Well,
Joy Michelle
no. And when you first Yeah, and it depending on like, where you are in your business, like, I mean, I’ve had years of like, very high expenses, because the revenue wasn’t that high, and I had to buy all the gear and then it’s like, it’s a wash.
Dan Moyer
But yeah, like, this was like eight years in, like, way in to my dad. No, it’s like,
Joy Michelle
that’s, that’s, uh, like, that’s putting on adult pants and saying, like, Alright, we’re gonna, we’re gonna look at these numbers. And it’s not going to be fun. But I, I don’t know about you. But like, the more that I have stopped saying that to myself, like, I’m not a numbers person, I don’t, I can’t understand this. Like, this isn’t my forte, whatever. And just tried to like, almost like, take the wool off of your eyes and just look like what’s going on. It’s, it’s really not as bad as I thought it would be. And it leads to feeling more confident and empowered to at least know generally, where you’re at with your money. Where’s all the money sitting? Like just just knowing like, Okay, well, right now my expenses are at about 70%. I don’t like that. But at least you know, at least you know, because I think sometimes we’re really off. Like we’re often. This is a great example of like how when we guess at something, the feeling could be wrong. Like it we go off feeling like saying like, how long did you spend on that assignment? How long did you spend blogging, we might say like, oh, it took me all evening. It’s like, well, if you really timed it, it might have been like 50 minutes, but you didn’t want to be doing it. So it felt like four hours. So it’s one of those where if you can just get really unemotional about it numbers are just numbers, like they’re not, they don’t care about your feelings. Like we’re we’re gonna cry after we look at the numbers, but like, they’re just there, they’re not there to hurt you. I found that that like, is a really freeing thing to just say like, alright, well, let’s just start looking and being more in tune and watching it and having a pulse on it. And, and I know in marketing, it’s like what you measure, you can improve what you look at what you’re aware of what you’re checking in on. And so whatever I track, I feel like I can improve. It’s really strange. So if you start attaching that to your numbers, just like, okay, every day for you know, a few weeks you post to Instagram, you notice, like an uptick in engagement. You notice, like more DMS more inquiries, like it’s the same way with money. It’s the same way with money.
Dan Moyer
Yeah, this last part is like, you know, we talked about a little bit the behaviors and like some of the lies you tell yourself, and how you like what you’re getting out of those behaviors. But the last part, which is most powerful part is reframing it, right. And these are things that I wrote down and printed out and was looking at all the time. So the reframing part comes in, and I’m just gonna continue with, you know, the things that I was working on my reframes were, that my life is not my parents, I have more opportunity, more education, and I can be the change that I want to see in my family. You mentioned this before, like the buck stops with me, you know, my mom was a marketer was a teller, and then she became a bank credit counselor, but we never really talked about how to budget, that kind of stuff stops with me, I’m, I’m becoming that person in my family that understands money and can help my kids through it right. So money. My parents have a different life. But everything has to change with me. The second one, it was the big one for me, and it’s that money is neutral, even in. So there’s an often misquoted Bible verse that says, money is the root of all evil. It’s First Timothy 610 says the love of money is the root of all evil. The obsession with money is what it was what causes people to go astray. Money is just a very powerful tool that I can use for good. That was my reframe. Money can change other people, the obsession that they have with it, but money can be something that I use, and I can acquire a bunch of money and then use it for good to be the sort of force for change that I want to see in this world that we’re in.
Joy Michelle
Yeah, that’s such a good one. Oh, man. Well, we’ve
Dan Moyer
talked a lot about like sort of theory and and like probably asking some big, you know, psychological, philosophical like dig into Questions. But I do want to give like a couple of like, what are we trying to work towards? Like, what does a what a positive money mindset look like, I want to share three truths that I have learned over the past eight or so years of my working with money. And then what are four steps to actually implement right now, to be able to, once you sort of start working through your money mindset to actually move towards a place where you are creating wealth, building wealth for yourself. So this first one is the mindset that we’re all trying to work towards is that it’s a relationship that looks like and I’m going to read it for you. Because I wrote down I thought it was good. A positive relationship with money looks like understanding that the power of money and how it can be used for good, it takes it looks like taking steps to build wealth, such as investing in saving will also recognizing that money is not the source of fulfillment. It looks like being aware of stories, we tell ourselves about money and taking control of our own narratives. That looks like embracing financial freedom and having the confidence to make smart decisions. And finally, it looks like being mindful of spending and budgeting along with your values, budgeting and spending along with your values. As a photographer, there are three things that I learned on my financial journey that I want to be transparent and vulnerable about and share them really quick before I share these like couple of steps to implement. One is that it’s possible to increase your salary four times over, and not feel like it’s enough still. Second, is that if there’s very few of us who are listening, and very few of us anywhere, that they would, that they would not have to budget or consider money ever again, in their lives. Even if they made a whole bunch of money, that it’s almost never going to happen. For most of us, we’re always gonna have to consider budgeting we’re always gonna have to be vigilant about money, and the necessity of plays in our lives. And very few of us are going to make amount of money that’s going to erase that out of our lives. Then the last is that for most of us, it’s way easier to spend less than it is to make more Yeah, it doesn’t mean you stop making more, it just means that you have to spend less than saving more. All right, I’ve given you a lot of like heavy stuff to think about four steps to dive deep to like, really overcome this mindset thing to get yourself on a right path. Well, what does that actual right path look like? The right path looks like this four steps list, what are the values in your life, the things that if you don’t do them, if you don’t pay attention to them, it’s actually going to hurt you to be like, Oh, I didn’t do spend time with my kids today. Oh, I didn’t take that vacation that I wanted to. I didn’t do that thing. You value, your free time, your quality time, whatever it is make a list you value transparency, whatever those things are, make that list and that is your Northstar for every decision you’re going to make with budgeting with finance with everything. The second is pay off your high interest credit cards immediately. This happens first get laser focused on it. Because high interest credit cards and all that stuff are financial suicide, they are the thing that eats away all of your savings and all that stuff that $100,000 worth of debt. My wife and I had were just under 30, which is most of my most of my student loans and like $6,000 on my wife’s car. And that has been four years of laser focus on just paying it off anything extra selling gear, all that stuff went right towards credit cards. Oh, you sold some gear? So a lot of gear. Yeah. Okay, shoot.
Joy Michelle
Everyone’s like, no, not the camera bag, sold a bunch of gear
Dan Moyer
got it out of here we have a tiny house. The ways to to pay off debt are the Debt Snowball. The Debt Avalanche or my favorite is called every time I wanted to Starbucks after driving my daughter to daycare, I went past one. Every time I saw that I opened my Capital One credit card app and put $5 on my on my credit card. Just pay it. It was tricky. But some days, some days I still went in and got got Starbucks or whatever. But it’s like days where I was like, I really wouldn’t do this. But I’m going back home whatever. The third is, after the credit cards have mostly paid down or whatever, sign up for E trade or TD Ameritrade unless you because if you’re like most of us, you don’t have a business that’s going to give you a 401 K plan after that. So you are the person who asked to do it and open up TD Ameritrade or ETrade, or whatever it is, and just start making regular weekly deposits even if it’s $5 and spread them out over a few ETFs or index funds and just let it be the last one even before you do this one last one and then we can finish up. Damn, I really want to get one more thing.
Joy Michelle
You’re gonna have to come back. You’re back for a part two on investing because I have some questions about the TD Ameritrade and I’m like no, don’t don’t do it. Don’t do it.
Dan Moyer
Last one, last one and then we can all finish up and then we’ll be done. Do a real budget. Like a real budget. My favorite thing to do is literally look at the year before pick three random months. Don’t use an app don’t use To any tech analogy, open up your bank statement and literally create five to five categories across the top, which are utilities. Come on brain utilities, groceries, or utilities, food. All right up to you. We have an Amazon one and then splurging. It’s like, Where does everything go? And all those, all you have to do is total up every single expense, and see if your total expenses are less than 75% of your income. If it’s not work immediately on getting your expenses lower than 25% and creating and trying to get a 25% savings rate.
Joy Michelle
25% savings rate. Yeah. All right. All right. We’re gonna have to have a part two I have, I’ve got questions. But in closing, for all the photo bosses watching and that want to come listen to your podcast, follow you follow up with you even where can people get to know you better and follow you online?
Dan Moyer
DM me at apt get focused photographers on Instagram, you shared a story today.com That’s where I’m at. That’s where you can schedule power hours with me and all that kind of stuff. And my podcast is focused our first podcast,
Joy Michelle
oh my gosh, this was so good. I feel like I have to go back and re listen because it was jam packed. And I hope everyone listening will do that as well. This is like the podcast version of you know, yes, there’s a video stream. But you really you could just listen to this and get so so much out of this. So if you all want Dan to come back, leave us a comment. Let us know. Like, what questions do you have? Let’s do a part two. Let’s do like maybe an open q&a type thing. And then you can share the stuff that you had to skip over so but thank you so much for your time for your generosity for your wisdom. This was amazing, and I’m pretty sure we’re gonna have a part two.
Dan Moyer
You’re awesome. I appreciate you have a good good rest of your day and make it a good one.
Joy Michelle
Awesome. Okay, bye, guys.
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