Episode #032: What Your Customer Thinks About Money with David Rosell

Jeff: You know, Will Rogers once said that, “Too many people spend money they earn to buy things they don’t want to impress people they don’t like.” We’ll talk about what your customer thinks about money on today’s episode of “The Buyer’s Mind.”

Man: Welcome to “The Buyer’s Mind,” where we take a closer look deep inside your customer’s decision making mechanism, to reverse engineer the perfect sales presentation. Now, please welcome your host, Jeff Shore.

Jeff: Well, welcome everyone to “The Buyer’s Mind,” where we investigate exactly what’s going on in the minds of prospects who are considering a purchase decision, that’s what this podcast is all about, it’s about taking a little stroll through the buyer’s brain and knowing your customers so well that that sale begins to roll out right in front of you. I’m your host Jeff Shore, you can read the full bio on the show notes, or visit jeffshore.com. While you’re there make sure you sign up for our free, free weekly video newsletter, it comes out every Saturday morning, a little inspiration to help you on your sales journey.

I’m joined as always on “The Buyer’s Mind” with our show producer, Mr. Paul Murphy. Hey Murph, let me ask you, what do you think? How much do you think people think about money?

Murphy: It depends, if you’ve got it you don’t think about it a lot, if you don’t have it you’re thinking about it all the time.

Jeff: Yeah, I don’t know. I’m not sure that I agree with you. I have met a number of people in my life, I’ve just had the opportunity to meet people who have a lot of money, and they still seem consumed with wanting more. I’m not sure who wants it more, those who have it or those who don’t? I don’t know. But there’s no doubt it’s an all-consuming subject. But when it comes to a purchase decision, then there’s a deeper question to me, and that question is, what does money represent?

And more than anything else, I think money represents choices. And the biggest choice has to do with the principle of fungibility. I’m not sure exactly if that’s a word, fungible is, I’m not sure about fungibility. But it speaks to how easy it is to replace something, because basically, every dollar that I spend on something I cannot spend on anything else. So the choices that I make reflect my values, and they reflect my priorities. How important is a purchase decision really? How much does this really mean to me? Well, the answer will determine how much money we are going to spend. So we wanna unpack that a little bit today, and look at how our customers think about money: how they earned it, how they try and keep it, and how they invest it.

Let me give you our quote of the day, this is from the great philosopher, Steve Martin who once said, “I love money. I love everything about it, and I bought some pretty cool stuff along the way. We got me a $300 pair of socks, I got a fur lined sink, an electric dog polisher, a gasoline powered turtleneck sweater, and of course I bought some dumb stuff too.”

All right, that was Steve Martin, but let’s go instead to Albert Einstein who says, “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” So it’s a little deep philosophy there as it applies to money, it’s not the only thing that matters, and yet we think about it and an awful lot, so we’ll get into that today. But we wanna let you know that the podcast is brought to you in part by our good friends at HomeStreet Bank, speaking of money. Not just our show sponsor, that is my lender of choice. When I last purchased a home I used HomeStreet Bank, and I have to tell you, it was the smoothest transaction I’ve ever had, and I’ve purchased a number of homes. But great rates, a great service, professional, dependable. If you’re a real estate professional and you’re looking for somebody to take really good care of your customers, you’re just not gonna find anybody better than HomeStreet Bank. So you can go to homestreetbank.com to learn more, that’s homestreetbank.com.

Let me give you our sales tip of the day here, and the tip is this, as we’re talking about money, and it’s an important conversation, and I get this, but I wanna suggest that you do this, close on desirability before you talk about terms. Now, your customers generally gotta know the general terms, they’ll have a general sense of the price range, but I mean, the specifics. So suppose you’re selling a brand new home, this principle will apply to anything you sell, but suppose you’re selling a brand new home, having a financial conversation before settling in on one particular home that meets the customer’s needs is both confusing and mentally straining to the customer, and why? Because they’re trying to place a dollar value or a worth on a concept. It doesn’t make sense when you have a financial conversation before there is an appeal to the product itself, it doesn’t make sense, you’re asking them to place a dollar value on a concept.

So my suggestion is, that you use some sort of conditional agreement question. If I said to the customer, “I know we still need to determine if the price and the terms work for you, that’s obviously a critical consideration, but before we get to that discussion, did we find a home that will work for you and your family?” Now, I’m letting him know, “I’m not asking you to buy it, I’m just asking you if this home works for you? Because if the home doesn’t work for you, why do we wanna have a conversation about terms?” So you can apply this with any product that you’re selling, whenever we get the price discussion out in front of the product itself and the emotional aspect of that, and the emotional attachment of our customer, whenever we get the price the conversation first, we’re just gonna confuse the customer’s brain.

Just think about it from this perspective, have you ever walked into an apartment store and there’s a discount rack, and it says 50% off, and then there’s a little extra little writer on top, “Today only, take another 25%,” and then if you’ve got a preferred customer coupon, it’s another 15%? And after a while, it’s like, “Take the shirt and we’ll give you $8 dollars,” right, that’s what it feels like. But if you look, if you look at the discount rack, you’re looking at it with almost sort of like a skeptical snarl on your face, and you’re trying…even if you did see something you know like, you’re holding it up and you’re looking for it, you notice there’s a mustard stain on this is, there’s one sleeve longer than the other, but you’re highly skeptical about whatever that is going to be. Because the principle here is that, when we get to the terms before we talk about the product, then we tend to esteem the product at a lower level. When we appreciate the product and what it does for our life, then the pricing and terms conversation makes much more sense.

And I just think about it even from my own perspective, I mean, I recently bought a pair of shoes. I went in to buy a pair of Cordovan dress shoes, now, that’s what I thought I wanted. As it turns out, I didn’t want that at all, what I wanted was a color that I thought was called Cordovan, as it turns out Cordovan is a very specific material, and it makes those shoes extremely expensive. Well, I didn’t need that expensive shoe, I don’t care about the material, so what did I want? I wanted a color, and the color as it was displayed to me by the salesperson is called oxblood. And by the way, this is a great shoe, because you can wear it with just about any suit you want as long as it’s not black, and even with a black suit you could probably get away with it, but it dresses it up, and it is, some of that.

And by the time I’m done, I’m wearing this very, very comfortable shoe, and it’s gonna go with everything, and it’s gonna be a stated piece, and it’s all good, and we have not talked about the price. So by the time the salesperson tells me the price, because I asked, I was stunned. It was much higher than I thought I was going to spend. But I had such an attachment to the shoe that the price suddenly made sense. In fact, for me to look at and say, “That’s too much money, show me a different shoe,” I could have spent less money, but I would not have esteemed the product as highly. So I want to suggest to you here, I don’t care what you are selling, when the price terms conversation gets in front of the desirability, you’re gonna have a problem.

And this leads us into our interview here, and David Rosell here in just a moment, because he’s gonna talk about how consumers think about money, and how they save it, how they plan for it. And the fact of the matter is, that your customer is coming into this sales conversation with a huge background, they’ve done their financial planning, or presumably they have. They’ve thought about money, they have a strategy about money, they have perceptions, they have paradigms about money, and they bring all of those things into the conversation. So it’s important for us as sales professionals to know, what are you bringing in? What is your paradigm? What is your perspective as you enter into this conversation? Because it’s such an important and personal thing, we wanna make sure we know our customer very well. That’s why I wanted to have David Rosell on the show.

Before we get to our interview, I want to tell you about an opportunity here, and that’s to be involved in our 4:2 Academy. Our 4:2 Formula Academy, this is an intensive training program, specifically for real estate sales professionals, where we’re using modern selling strategies and skills just for today’s buyers, just for today’s market. The 4:2 Formula is the core real estate principle that we talk about at Shore Consulting, but it’s gonna give you several days, and actually spread out over the course of an entire quarter, a program that allow you to just transform your presentation. We’ve put so many people through the 4:2 Formula Academy, always with tremendous results. You can go to jeffshore.com/events to learn more about the 4:2 Formula Academy.

All right, well, hey listen, let’s talk money. Let’s talk about the psychology of money with my special guest, David Rosell. David is an interesting cat, because he’s a financial nerd, he knows all of the financial stuff, he works with some very, very prominent individuals. I can’t mention their names here for obvious reasons, but he works with some prominent individuals, helps to manage their money. But he’s also a total thrill seeker, and he’s got a couple of great books out that you’re gonna wanna read, we’ll talk about that as well. Coming to us from Bend, Oregon, and welcome David Rosell.

David: Hey Jeff, great to be on the line here with you today. You’re the only person I know that could make the term “nerd” sound appealing.

Jeff: But you are, you’re like, you understand all this stuff backwards and forwards, you and I have had long conversations about how the financial world works, and I think most of those conversations are me asking really sophomore questions, and you rolling your eyes saying, “How does he not know this?” But you figure it out, and you explain it, but you’re also a thrill seeker. Give our audience just a little tease right now, one quick anecdote from your thrill seeking life, just one.

David: Oh, you know, if I have to pick one I’m gonna go back to 1989, November 13th, The Berlin Wall came down, and I was one of those fortunate people to be there at the time, and probably the biggest celebration the planet earth has ever experienced. And so what I’d like to do is kind of take these fun adventure stories and link them into some financial lessons. Because let’s face it, financial planning is a dull topic, and so, you know, in this case I get in-depth talking what it was like to be tearing down the wall. “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” No one thought that wall would ever come down, and then, you know, who would think that just 20 short years later, the financial walls would come tumbling down?

Jeff: Yeah. And once again the rules…

David: The largest financial firms in every sector, they went under or declared bankruptcy.

Jeff: Yeah, and the rules get rewritten once again. We’ll talk about money, but tell us about your thrill not just to travel, but you have sort of a special little asterisk when you’re picking the locations that you wanna travel to.

David: Yeah. I really get a lot out of traveling third world countries. So for the most part I’m not that hired resort type person. So for me, buying a one way plane ticket and landing in Kenya, and then figuring out a way to get all the way down to Cape Town, South Africa, to fly home really gets my juices flowing. And it’s really the people that you meet along the way.

Jeff: And you told me once that you are not interested in going to a country if it has what?

David: McDonald’s.

Jeff: McDonald’s, that’s right. If a McDonald’s is there, you’re out. So yeah.

David: I gotta tell you a funny story, now granted I do come from Oregon and all, but my children and have never set foot in a McDonald’s.

Jeff: Oh, good for you.

David: The reason I mentioned a McDonald’s here once before in passing is I’m a big fan of Thomas Friedman, and from “The New York Times” in one of his books, “The World is Flat,” he talks about how there’s never been two countries that have gone to war with each other that have had McDonald’s.

Jeff: Yeah, that’s a fascinating way to look at it, how about that? How about that? Well, there you go, there you go. Give us that profound top-level theory about money. We’ll get into the details, we’ll talk about the book and all that, but tell me what money represents to you?

David: Good question. Money means different things to different people for sure, but for me, I relate money just to freedom. Freedom to make decisions and do these things that I would like to do in life, that I wouldn’t have the freedom to do if I didn’t have that money. So you know, I’d love to go to New Zealand tomorrow, and it’s not gonna work out with my scheduling, but I have the financial freedom to do so as I wish. And if I didn’t have the money for that plane ticket, I wouldn’t have such freedom.

Jeff: Yeah, yeah. You find that you can do that, you would have the financial luxury of being able to do that, but you didn’t just stumble into that overnight, there was a lot of planning. And of course that’s what you do in your work, right, you help people to come up with the plan so they can accomplish their goals. And yet I know you’ve also seen the other side, that so many people just sort of put their head in the sand when it comes to money. Do you think it’s a general fear of the subject, what is it that causes people to be; frankly, fairly ignorant when it comes to managing their own money?

David: Yeah. Well, I think you said two things right there, fear and ignorance when it comes to money. And a lot of it is not really everyone’s fault out there. You know, first of all, you’ve heard that acronym ‘FEAR,’ F-E-A-R, False, Evidence, Appearing, Real. And I think a lot of people have fear about money because they don’t know how it works, they don’t know how to grow it and how to compound it. And when they hear terms like IRA and 401(k), it just teases them up. And you know, for people that don’t like their job or they despised school, sometimes Sunday is worse than Monday, just the idea of thinking about going tomorrow to your job or your school that you dislike is worse than actually waking up on Monday and doing it. And I think once people start empowering themselves and learning a little bit about money, that fear dissipates.

Jeff: You know, it’s funny, when I think back to my days in high school, consumer math, right, was like the idiot class, is like that was the remedial classes. The lowest level of math was consumer math. I look back now and I go, “Maybe that should have been absolutely required subject for just about anybody back in their school days,” right?

David: You know, good point Jeff. You know, one of the things that I like to speak a lot out to audiences about is how sad it is that our schools are not teaching us about money. I mean, if you’re not even graduating from law school or from med school, where these are doctors and lawyers who’re going to make tens of millions of dollars in their career, and they’re leaving knowing nothing about how to run a business or how money works. And for, you know, an average middle class person, even if they’re making 50,000 a year, they’re gonna make millions of dollars over the course of their career. And it’s really a shame that our schools are not teaching our students how money really works.

Jeff: Yeah, yeah. When my son was a senior in high school, I took him at about, well, I don’t know, seven or eight of his buddies through like a six, eight week course I don’t remember what it was, but we met at my house on Saturday mornings, we said, “Hey, here’s what life’s gonna be like when you get out of high school.” And we took two of those weeks and we talked about money, and I was quite frankly stunned at how much they didn’t know about the very basics. I mean, we put budgets together, and they were…they had no concept whatsoever of what it was going to cost for them to live even just a very, very basic life. And then when they finally did the budget and said, “I’m gonna have to make $35,000 in a year, who can do that? I mean, what do I look like, you know, Rockefeller?” It was funny and a little sad how lost we are at sort of not giving them the basic ideas.

Now, you deal with people who are much further along in that process, and I read a couple years back a phenomenal book called “Failure Is Not an Option.” You wrote that book about your financial life, about a person’s financial life, but you wrote it from a mountain climbing perspective. And at first it didn’t make sense, and then I read the first chapter and I went, “This makes total sense.” Give us the short version.

David: Yeah, so in my past life I did a lot of climbing, mountaineering, and I had an opportunity to spend an extended period of time in Nepal. And the question I ask the reader is…and I’m gonna ask you right now Jeff and Murph, if the three of us were sitting at Mount Everest base camp and we’re seeing all these mountaineers getting ready to leave base camp to climb the mountain, and we asked them what might seem like a crazy question, and we said, “Hey, what is your goal?” What do you think their answer would be?

Murphy: I mean, I’m probably getting this wrong, but I’m going to oversimplify it and say, get to the top of the mountain.

David: Exactly. And that’s the answer that everyone gives. And it’s exactly the wrong answer that any mountaineer would give, and I’m gonna tell you why. Because 80% of the accidents and the deaths occur on the descent, because they’re facing lack of sunlight and fatigue, and they’re hungry. And just climbing down a mountain, if you’ve done any climbing, it’s just harder on the body than climbing up. So they know it’s the second half of their journey that takes the most amount of risk and also needs the most amount of planning. And what I share with people is, it’s the second half of your financial journey when you’ve reached the pinnacle of success, and you’re retiring, and you’re no longer adding another penny to your 401(k) or your 403(b) and IRAs, it’s the wealthiest day of your life. And most people think, “You’ve made it, congratulations.” And I’m here to say, just like the mountaineers, your goal is not only to get to the top but get back down alive. And Jeff, it’s the second half of one’s financial journey that truly takes on the most amount of risk, and in my opinion needs the most amount of planning.

Jeff: Yeah, absolutely. And you tell the story so well, because it’s…like it’s a financial book. And David, you and I have known each other for a few years here, and you know that the chances I’m gonna sit down to read a long, boring financial book are probably pretty slim, which is, you know, why I like guys like you in my life, but the book is written from the perspective of your own stories, give us the inspiration, how did that come together?

David: Well, I was fortunate enough to learn some key financial lessons from my grandmother of all people, who’s no longer with us. And she was just one of these people who lived through the Great Depression, but started investing in the stock market and taught me some key financial lesson. Some of those we may have time for to share with you today. And I got passionate about learning about money at a young age, and having started a seasonal business also at a young age, through high school and college, where mother nature forced us to shut down operations when the snows came, I also became passionate about international adventure travel.

And so what these books have…what I’ve done with them is it’s a culmination of meshing these…every chapter starts with a real life, fun adventure story that leads into a financial lesson. And right when there’s one too many graphs, it goes bam into the next chapter, into another country and another fun story.

Jeff: Right, right. So if you wanted something where you just simply looked at it and said, you know, “All I want is a whole bunch of financial theory,” this may not be the book. If you want something that really gives you life lessons that help you apply your financial, this is probably more up your alley.

David: Absolutely. And in this, this first book, “Failure Is Not an Option: Creating Certainty In the Uncertainty of Retirement,” is for helping people who are at or near retirement, they’re near the financial pinnacle, and it makes them aware of the challenges that they might not be aware of in today’s new world economy.

Jeff: Yeah, yeah. You mentioned your grandmother, how do you think our upbringing affects the way we feel about money and the way we spend money?

David: Oh, I think it’s probably the most important aspect to our relationship with money today, you know, how our parents treated money, what their knowledge of it was. A lot of our parents were hush hush, they never talked about it, the money was taboo. You always hear that old adage that money is evil. Well, money has no feelings, money is not evil. A matter of fact, you know, one of the things I share with people is, you know, if one was overserved at a bar and that money is almost like alcohol, I truly believe that the real you comes out and people who are overserved…so if someone’s inside and loving, and this warm gregarious person, more of that comes out if they’ve been overconsuming. And if someone has inside some, you know, they have some hatred or some characteristics that might not be appealing, more of that comes out.

And the same as with money, I think when people start accumulating money, good people, people that have worked hard and accomplished much, and have the right association to money, I think they do wonderful, wonderful things with money. And I see people that don’t have good relationships, that their life isn’t really going the way they want, and sometimes they do some poor things with the money that comes…

Jeff: We’re talking with David Rosell, it’s davidrosell.com, David R-O-S-E-L-L.com. Let’s switch gears. You were talking about how we are safe in our retirement years and making sure that we make it to the end of the journey without running out of money. But now you’ve switched your focus and you’re also looking and saying, okay, well, what about all the millennials, or if you will, those who are gonna one day inherit the money that’s left over? What financial advice do you have for millennials out there?

David: Yeah, a good thing. You know the focus of our practice is working with people at or near retirement, but so many of our clients and people are saying, “We need a fun book for our children and grandchildren.” So my answer was, “Keep Climbing: A Millennial’s Guide to Financial Planning,” which does the same thing, it measures these fun travel stories with lessons for younger people who are climbing the mountain.

You know, four things come to mind Jeff. One is the concept of paying yourself first. I truly believe you don’t need to do anything extraordinary to accumulate wealth if that someone’s goal, you just need to do some ordinary things extraordinarily well. And what paying yourself first means, we always are doing bill pay for our utilities, and for our mortgages or rent. Set aside whatever it is, even if it’s $100 a month, and have that systematically come out of your bank and go into some type of an investment, in a ROTH or a traditional IRA for your future. So that’s one.

The other, I see so many young people are not delaying gratification. A friend, David Bach, who wrote “The Latte Factor” and, “Smart Women Finish Rich” talked about how much that cup of coffee actually costs you that when you go out to the coffee shop, you know, what that could do if it was compounded over time. And it’s really the tougher you are in yourself today, the easier life’s gonna be on you later. And a couple others is… Go ahead Jeff.

Jeff: Sure. Okay, here’s the thing though, I get that, and I completely agree, I mean, like 100%. I’m also trying to look at it from the side that says, okay, but could you overcorrect on that, “Could you be so miserly today that you’re not allowed to enjoy your life today?”

David: My answer is absolutely yes. You know, you take anything to the extreme, you take too many vitamins, they’re not good for you if you take too many. I’ve seen people at the other end of the spectrum that are so focused on living the life they’ve imagined in their retirement years that they’re not having any fun today. And life as you know better than anyone I know is all about balance.

Jeff: Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, so we had pay yourself first, we had delay gratification, what else you got?

David: You know Jim Rohn who used to say, “If it is to be it’s up to me.” It’s getting the right tools, learning the different financial tools out there, overcome that fear and learn what an IRA is, and how much you can put in. And then learn the furniture that you can put in those investment homes, which are the ETFs, and mutual funds, and bonds. It really isn’t rocket science. And if it’s something that you don’t even wanna delve into, get yourself the right financial advisor.

And then lastly, you know, someone that you and I admire greatly as most of the listeners out there, Zig Ziglar, and it’s all about getting started sooner than later. And Zig is one of my favorite quotes that I repeat again and again, and he says, “If you can’t take a huge step to begin with…” I’m trying in my best Arkansas accent, “…take as big a step as you can, but take it now.”

Jeff: So get started somewhere, do something, do something. We’re almost out of time, but let me ask you, I know that you are very well read, you and I have talked about this, we share book recommendations most time of the time, tell me three books that at any point in your journey just changed your life.

David: You really want me to narrow it down to three Jeff?

Jeff: Just three.

David: Okay. You know, a book that almost everyone out there has read, but I read it at the right age and I’ve re-read it many times, “Think and Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill.

Jeff: Sure, absolutely.

David: And the title of course you’d think it’s all about money, but it’s about your mind, what we think we become. Another book that’s not really so related to money but it changed my life, was when I was introduced to Dr. Wayne Dyer. He passed away two years ago last week. I was introduced to his book, “Your Erroneous Zones,” that led to me reading all of his books. And that’s all about, “Remembering yesterday, Dream about tomorrow, But living today, Living in the moment,” had a huge impact in my life. And you know, last several years I’ve been rereading…have you read “Untethered Soul” by Michael Singer?

Jeff: I have not. I’m writing it down.

David: I’m gonna get that book for you. I get this book for a lot of people, and again, it’s all about putting life in a perspective. Yes, focusing on retirement is important, and doing the fun trips that you wanna do, but it really is about living the moment, putting it in perspective, and really not taking life so seriously, and everything kind of happens for a reason. I know it sounds like a cliché, but Mr. Singer worded it in a way that just truly resonated with me.

Jeff: Our audience is largely made up of sales professionals. So what advice do you have for them as they’re guiding people who are making purchase decisions, and oftentimes very large purchase decisions? You know, obviously we wanna make the sale, but we wanna make the sale in the customer’s best interest. So any advice for sales professionals out there?

David: The first thing that comes to mind for me Jeff, would be, people really don’t remember what we say, they remember how we make them feel. And I think it’s building that rapport, looking them in the eyes. You know, this is all old stuff, but just truly caring. People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. And as old fashioned as that sounds, in today’s world I think it’s more important than ever before.

Jeff: Yeah, yeah. Last question, what’s the most important advice that you give to your kids?

David: Wow. Do the right thing. Ethics today, doing the right thing. You know, since you brought up my kids, my daughter Sophie who you’ve met before, she’s now 16, she just had her 16th birthday going on 21 of course, and I write about how I purchased my own book in “Failure Is Not an Option.” And she on her 16th birthday, she’s been working at our local grocery store since she was 14, and she bought herself her own car, 100% of her own money, a Subaru Outback on her birthday. And she was really upset, because all of her friends’ parents were buying their kids all these nice cars, and her dad was making her earn her own car. And the feedback, you know, of course I post the picture on Facebook and Instagram, the feedback and response that she’s had from all the parents, and even her peers has been so overwhelming that her tail was wagging, and I think it’s probably the greatest gift I could ever give her.

Jeff: That’s great, that’s awesome. David Rosell, davidrosell.com, R-O-S-E-L-L.com. You can go to his website to learn more about him, also to order the books, either “Failure Is Not an Option,” or “Keep Climbing.” Both are fantastic books. You can follow David, you can figure out what makes this guy tick, and I can tell you, that’s a worthwhile journey. David, thank you so much for being on “The Buyer’s Mind.”

David: Jeff, Murph, great to chat with you, I look forward to seeing you again.

Jeff: Cool. Well Murph, you could see, you know, David is just a really, really interesting guy. And again, I look at it and go, “Oh, financial guys, you know, they can’t hang with us sales guys.” You get the sense that David Rosell can hang with the sales guys, don’t you think?

Murphy: I’d say it’s classic advice from him on top of it all, right? Not only can he hang with you guys, but he’s got some great wisdom.

Jeff: Yeah, he really, really does. And I think that that’s right, he’s got intelligence so there’s no question about it, but he’s got wisdom, and he’s got a really, really good perspective on money and on what it means. And you know, I know it sounded a little bit like a financial planning discussion, but if we translate that over to what our consumers are going through, so much of their decision is financial. And I know Murph, when you have…you’ve purchased homes in your life, you’ve purchased cars in your life, and you’ve always got that question, is this the right thing to do? That one sort of plays on your emotion, doesn’t it?

Murphy: It does. I mean, think about the fact that so much of our emotions is tied to our money, in the fact that, you know, most of us aren’t infinitely wealthy that we can just do whatever we want, whenever we want, so those kinds of things weigh on us more. And knowing, “Am I gonna be secure in this house? Will I be able to afford it? Will I go bankrupt doing this?” So many emotions tied to purchasing a home.

Jeff: Yeah, there’s no question about it, or a car, or jewelry for that matter. But certainly, the more you spend the more the emotions go into it. I love the idea, the concept of looking at life as a journey. He’s got mountain climbing as it relates to your financial life, building wealth and then spending that, and not running out of money, and not completing that journey. But boy, it certainly makes sense for our lives in general. There are so many analogies to mountain climbing and what that looks like. We talk about that actually in sales and goal setting, on all kinds of things.

But as I look at the discussion with David, I’m really challenged to think, how do I not think about money? And for those of you… Let me put it this way, I wanna be wise about my money, I wanna be strategic about my money, but I don’t wanna be a slave to my money. I don’t wanna be looking at it and saying, “How much money do I have?” Counting it all up and constantly checking my accounts. I wanna know that I’ve got a good strategy, because at the end of the day you know what I really wanna do? I really wanna not think about money.

And for those of you who are sales professionals, I’m wondering if your customers aren’t in the same position, where at the end of the day they want to get to the point where they can say, kind of check the financial box, “Does it make sense for my life? Does it?” “Good. Now, let’s get that off the table so I can move on to what really matters, how good my life is going to be after I move forward.” And I think if you are a sales professional, you need to understand the consumer economics that your customer is going through. You need to understand not just, can they afford it or can they qualify for whatever it is that you’re selling? But the question is, how is it affecting them emotionally? How is that affecting the way that they see their life? How will it affect the other decisions that they make? Because when you can understand that this is not just about your product, that the money that they invest…it’s sort of the principle of limited supply, right, every dollar that I spend on something I cannot spend on something else.

So if we can really understand what our customers are going through and the struggles, and sometimes the mental trauma that they’re going through, we can relate to them, we can step in as counselors to help them make their dreams come true. Great conversation with David Rosell.

All right, well, listen, before we wrap it up, I just have one more thing to say about money, it’s something that I’ve always taught to my children, and I don’t know, maybe you’ll get benefit from it, maybe you won’t. But let me throw this your way. We all know that money doesn’t buy happiness, everybody knows that. And by the way, that’s statistically proven, the research has shown this, once you reach the level of sustenance where I’m not worried about whether I can put food on the table or whether I’ll have a roof on my head? Then having larger amounts of money does not increase your happiness, we know this through the research. Money doesn’t buy happiness, but it does buy choice.

And it is the value of those decisions, it is the choices that we make with our money, whether you have a little or whether you have a lot that’s gonna make all the difference in the world. But it doesn’t buy happiness, it buys choice. And if you look at it from that perspective, then it allows you to look at the way that you will spend money and the way that your customers will spend money, and it’ll be priority based. And that’s really what we want, we want our customer to make priority-based decisions. The amount of money that you spend should be a reflection of what matters to them. So if we’re doing our jobs right, and we’re helping to help our customer to be able to understand that first, and then to act on how they are feeling, it makes all the difference in the world. Money doesn’t buy happiness, it buys choice.

Well, we wanna thank you as always for being a part of “The Buyer’s Mind” family. If you’re liking the show, post it on Facebook, we really, really appreciate it, or LinkedIn, that would be really, really great. But that’s another podcast, “The Buyer’s Mind.” Hope you enjoyed it, you can find everything you need at jeffshore.com. But until next time, I’m gonna ask you to go out there and change someone’s world.

We’ll see you next time.