In this episode of Tactical Empire, Jeff Smith and Shawn Rider discuss the results of a recent 4F audit focusing on finances, revealing that many participants scored low in this area. They explore the reasons behind these scores, emphasizing the importance of mindset and financial literacy. The conversation highlights the need for better tracking of personal finances and the development of new resources to help individuals understand and improve their financial situations. The hosts stress the significance of knowing one's numbers and running personal finances like a business to achieve true financial freedom.
In this episode of Tactical Empire, Jeff Smith and Shawn Rider discuss the results of a recent 4F audit focusing on finances, revealing that many participants scored low in this area. They explore the reasons behind these scores, emphasizing the importance of mindset and financial literacy. The conversation highlights the need for better tracking of personal finances and the development of new resources to help individuals understand and improve their financial situations. The hosts stress the significance of knowing one's numbers and running personal finances like a business to achieve true financial freedom.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Viral RV Park Experience
01:30 Financial Reset and 4F Audit Insights
06:10 Understanding Financial Mindset and Expectations
11:17 The Importance of Financial Literacy
14:39 Conclusion and Call to Action
@realjeffsmith (00:01)
Welcome to another episode of the Tactical Empire. I am joined again by Sean Ryder. How are you, sir?
@shawn_rider_ (00:08)
what's happening. feel like we haven't gotten together for a podcast since you've been in town. So this is going to be a good little episode here.
@realjeffsmith (00:18)
Heck yeah, heck yeah. Did you see? ⁓
@shawn_rider_ (00:21)
Are you guys still ripping
it in West Virginia though? I haven't kept up with where you guys are.
@realjeffsmith (00:29)
No, you're fine. Did you see ⁓ Kirsten made a post about ⁓ RV park near you guys and it went viral and got a million plus views on TikTok? There's so many comments.
@shawn_rider_ (00:42)
did not see it. I did not see it. What
was it? What was the general gist of it?
@realjeffsmith (00:51)
⁓ Basically that we got catfished regarding the park because ⁓ the pictures were all like 20 years old and the park was all beautiful and nice and had all these amenities and we got there and it was like not that. So everybody was like Chevy Chase mentioning Chevy Chase's vacation where they go to the amusement park and the amusement park was closed like 10 years ago.
@shawn_rider_ (01:18)
Yeah, next time don't stay down near Front Royal. You need to be closer to Winchester.
@realjeffsmith (01:26)
Absolutely, absolutely lesson learned there.
@shawn_rider_ (01:30)
Alright. Well, my man, feel like my connection is a little wonky, so hopefully I stay connected here, but let me throw the ball in your corner here. I did an episode maybe last week, two weeks ago, talking about people to reset their finances, catch up on their finances if they've been lackluster of it.
And I recorded that just out of the blue when I was thinking about the topic. then simultaneously, you were on a call with the Inner Circle guys a few days after that, and you had them run through a 4F audit. And surprisingly to us, a lot of the men gave themselves and ended up having a low score on the finances. And I wanted to get your general thoughts.
on why that was ⁓ and we, know, not to bury the lead, but we know that not all of that is actual literal low scores for finances. It could be just a mental and where they expect to be and living in the gap instead of the game. But what were your general takeaways when you did the audit and you saw that the guys had low scores of Fs and what are we gonna do about it?
@realjeffsmith (02:44)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That was one thing that stood out to me. ⁓ The finances were the lowest scores for the guys, ⁓ which is surprising because like, if I guess if you're looking from the outside, you probably think this is a group about building wealth, which it is. ⁓ But ⁓ I think most of it was really just ⁓ mental money mindset perception of how the guys are doing. I think ⁓ they're very
Type A, hard chargers, ⁓ high performance individuals, and they have high expectations of themselves when it comes to production. ⁓ All of us share those values within the group. And so to me, it was a little concerning, but ⁓ after I processed it a little bit, ⁓ the reality of it is that I think it's just heightened expectation of how fast
they're wanting the results that they're trying to get. ⁓ Well, kind of it goes back to that old adage. You overestimate what you can do in three months and you underestimate what you can do in five years. ⁓ And so we ⁓ at the tactical empire are on a three to five year journey, right? ⁓ We don't even advertise it as a short journey by any means.
This is like change your entire life in three to five years. And so ⁓ I think a lot of the guys were just sitting in that gap ⁓ with the scoring. ⁓ I think they give themselves a lot more grace when it comes to the other F's, how they're showing up as a father. We had really great scores on that. Take a lot of pride in that because it's something we talk about a lot. I mean, we talk about money more than we talk about, well, maybe, maybe side by side.
Being parents, being fathers ⁓ is probably the number two thing we talk about, if not number one, to money. I think we just have a negative connotation on how much we should be producing a lot of times. So it's very easy for us to say on a scale of one to 10, how are you doing? And everyone's like, fuck two, because I've got a lot more bandwidth here with regards to the money-making aspect of things. ⁓ Is that good? Is that bad?
I don't know. mean, some would argue that it's bad, but like, I don't think so. I think pressure makes ⁓ champions, essentially. And so like, I think pushing yourself in those areas is why we're part of this group. ⁓ so the other scores were solid as well. Fitness is, mean, one that we focus on, health, everything else. Some people had some lower scores than they would have liked. ⁓
And that's just a recognition of how they've spent their year. ⁓ With regards to the finances though, I think we're going to spend some time talking about that particular situation. So just for context for those listening, if you've not done a 4F audit, it's like on a scale of one to 10, how are you performing in each of the four areas, right? And ⁓ you're supposed to judge yourself with regards to understanding that we're looking for expansion in all areas at all times.
And so what you're looking to do is expand your perceived limitations and we're always trying to expand those edges. So if you had an amazing year and your fitness is on point, like how could you increase your overall health and wellness? You could probably do one degree of difference, right? And it's the same thing with regards to your finances. It's saving. ⁓ There are...
things you can do to expand your current financial situation at all times. There's always another level and ultimately that's where we want to be at. So the scores that you're going to see most of the time are five, sixes, sevens, eights. Eight is really high performing, right? ⁓ But you're never going to see a 10 because we don't ever think we've arrived. But just for the context in this, like everybody had regular scores that they would usually have in
the other areas and then finances was just incredibly low. It was somewhere around like three, fours and fives is what you were seeing on the finance side of things. And so three, four and five is low. ⁓ So for me, my initial reaction was, whoa, what, like, do we need to work more on finances? And then I kind of put it into perspective. And so what we're doing on our side is we're going to be more diligent about tracking that stuff. So Sean is building out a course.
⁓ on personal finance, an additional course on personal finance. We already have one, but we're gonna build another one that's like the basics of personal financing. And then also we're gonna build you guys a scoreboard or a tracker ⁓ that's gonna capture all your revenue streams, all your income and all your spending, ⁓ kind of like a budget, but a little bit different than a budget, because we're gonna make ⁓ sections for each of your income streams.
that's going to show you where you can set targets ⁓ towards your BAM, which is your Bayer S minimum, towards your lifestyle spending that you want to do. And you're to be able to set targets and it's going to give you feedback on how close you're getting to those particular targets within the calculator. So it should eliminate a lot of this gap thinking because if we, if we build these trackers, when we build these trackers and they've got the ability to
look back and say, these were my numbers in January, and we were at 10 % of the level of production we wanna be, and now we're at 21%, you're gonna be able to easily see the gain of 11%, right? So that should get us out of that negative thought process where we have to ourselves at threes or fours from a financial perspective. So. ⁓
That's how we're going to offset that. And then we're going to make sure we're getting to the root cause of it, right? That's also going to give us a clear picture on if we're getting lifestyle creep as we make more money. So our income is rising, but so are our expenses. Like you'll be able to see that plain as day. ⁓ One of the other features that we've rolled out along with ⁓ quarterly coaching calls for me is a,
personal finance audit from you periodically whenever they want to schedule one. And so you'll be able to say, send me your scoreboard and Sean will be able to go down the list and obviously pretty easily identify ⁓ the issues, the gaps, the maybe backwards steps you've taken with regards to ⁓ your finances at that point in time. it's, easily diagnosable.
very quickly. those are the kind of initial thoughts I had on it. I don't think the guys are in a fine. They're certainly not hurting financially. That's that's not the the issues that I deduced from it. They don't have a clear picture on it. And I don't think some of them know their numbers, which is like ⁓ a cardinal sin of getting to where you want to be.
Because if you actually want to change your life, live off passive income, whatever you want to do ⁓ with these things, if you're stepping through the seven levels of financial freedom, ultimately you have to know where you're going and are you on track? Like the seven levels is the macro level vision caster and then how to build it on a big scale. But
At the end of the day, the micro is what matters. How much money are you putting back on a monthly basis? How are we getting this thing to compound? Are we adding revenue streams without adding hours to our day type thing? And so that's what we're going to start capturing more and more of so that we can have a clear understanding of their financial situation and be able to diagnose where they should be going quicker.
@shawn_rider_ (11:17)
Yeah, I mean, think you hit the nail on the head there. It's not that these guys are doing bad financially is that they're they're thinking more in the clouds and macro level and they're they're all down in the dirt doing work, so to speak, but they're thinking about the vision that he created and where they're trying to get to and some things slip. And one of the things that slips is just basic financial literacy, not that they forget what to do.
@realjeffsmith (11:48)
Absolutely. And then what they need to understand is it's paying attention to the micro while they continue to grow their thing. naturally we're wired just to be like, we'll just make more money. so let the budget be damned. And so we don't worry about that type of thing.
We're just trying to increase our overall profits at our business. And ultimately you have to know your numbers. Just like in business, you have to know your numbers. You need to run your household like a business because it's going to involve all your revenue streams and everything else. And so you have to understand all the financial tools that you use for your business. so, I mean, ultimately that was one of the things that led me to creating programs like this, because I saw so many people that were great at business and great at producing profits.
and they neglected their personal finances. their business ran like a top. And then at home, their personal finances were a mess. ⁓ so that's super typical in ⁓ the business world. So more typical than you think. so while they're, because they're solely focused, intently focused on their business, and then they neglect the other side of things, which is actually what's creating the legacy
which is giving you the options and the space to do something different, which gives you the option to sell your business when someone comes to buy it. If you don't do these things proactively, like there's never going to be a number high enough for you to be like, well we could step out of it. Cause a lot of times you grow your lifestyle to be supported by that business. then taking a single check from it, even if it's a multiple five, 10 X it.
It's daunting and scary because you don't know what you're spending. Your burn rates are real high at home and you just think the party's never going to run out. The ATM is going to keep on rolling. And what we're all about is options. so like, great, keep your business, keep your business forever if you want to. But like at the end of the day, if you don't have the option, you're not truly free. so it just getting a hold of your personal finances and wrapping your head around them and understanding.
that side of things and like, you truly improving? Are you just building a single singular asset? ⁓ Are you beholden to it because you built it as a singular asset with one single revenue stream? ⁓ Those types of things are what we're discussing and what we're evaluating constantly as we do 90 day sprints, as we do three year visions, all of that stuff, right? And ⁓ so that's just where we're at on it. I think that's probably it regarding the personal finance side of things.
⁓ Make sure you guys aren't living in the gap too much guys. ⁓ Go ahead and follow us, like us, subscribe to us on ⁓ all the social media channels. We've got a YouTube channel with over 500 videos. Go ahead and subscribe out there. That'd be awesome. We've got a private Facebook community, the Tactical Empire community. You can ask questions out there. You can hit Sean or I up on IG if you have any questions. We are happy to help.
Have a kick-ass week and don't be living in the gap. You are doing better than you think you are. So we'll see you next week.