Transcription
Well, hello there! Hello! All right, so for those tuning in, we do not have my normal brother from another mother, my usual partner in crime, Mr. Tal. He is unable to make it today, unfortunately, so our profuse apologies to you, Mr. First, our audience, and Al as well, Mr. Monty.
But we're super happy that you were able to come on board! So, how was your weekend?
It was great! Very busy, but great.
Yeah? Whereabouts are you located?
I live in St. George, Utah, Southern Utah, just north of Las Vegas, about 100 miles.
Oh, okay! All right, close enough to get in trouble, but far enough to hopefully keep that trouble at bay.
Well, I try to stay out of trouble. I lived in Vegas for 20-plus years, and I didn't get in trouble then, so...
Wow, there's not much chance of that, I don't think. Your intestinal fortitude to keep your weight is awesome.
That's good! Whenever I go there, I always walk away wounded, so I try to stay away, even though it's a great time.
It's a great time, I understand. A lot of people do. Well, St. George, Utah sounds beautiful, so I'm glad you had a great weekend.
I'm very excited to have you on. Like I said, unfortunately, T cannot be on today, but we've been looking forward to having you on for a while, and we didn't want to delay this any further.
So, thank you for allowing just good old, you know, silly old me to talk to you about everything, and hopefully, we'll get some great tidbits for people to learn from.
Happy to do it! Excited to do it!
That sounds wonderful! So, let's dive into who you are.
So, folks, today we have Mr. Monty Holm on the podcast. He's come to join our little corner of the interwebs. Monty Holm is an accomplished entrepreneur, a financial adviser, and author with a remarkable journey from humble beginnings to becoming a global leader.
He co-founded World Finance Group (WFG), a financial marketing services company that helps families across the U.S. and Canada achieve financial independence. Holm is also the author of "Expect to Win," a book that emphasizes the importance of preparing for success by reverse engineering life goals.
Digging to that for sure! Raised in challenging circumstances, Holm discovered the financial services industry during his college years, which transformed both his career and personal life.
Over the last few decades, he has become a very sought-after motivational speaker, business coach, and mentor to aspiring entrepreneurs. He and his wife, Lisa, have also hosted numerous leadership retreats to guide others in finding balance between faith, family, and professional success.
In addition to his many business achievements, Holm has served as a trustee for several charitable organizations and is recognized for his dedication to giving back to his community.
His teachings emphasize the importance of strategic planning, strong self-development, and maintaining focus to achieve success in both life and business.
Mr. Monty Holm, thank you for joining me on the Braving Business podcast!
Happy to be here! I've been looking forward to this since we scheduled it some time back, and I hope to be helpful in any way I can to these aspiring entrepreneurs out there that may be listening.
Well, you know what? We have plenty of those who listen to this podcast, and I'm sure they're going to glean a lot from you, so this is going to be great.
So, let's dig into who Monty Holm is. We know where you are today, but let's go back on the way-back machine. You didn't have the easiest start to life. What can you share with our guests about your past, and what major life lessons did you experience that shaped who you are today?
Well, I mean, as I look back on my life, I wouldn't change much. Even through the struggles, I've always believed that strength comes from struggle. The greatest wisdom actually comes from the greatest challenges. Often, that's where we learn the most, and it's where we develop our will and our desires.
My dad died when I was 14—actually on my 14th birthday. My father passed away of a heart attack; he was 53. So, I struggled through that and became a runaway boy. I ran away a bunch of times and finally settled in St. George.
I actually had a friend there, and that friend invited me to stay with him for a few days, which I did. Then I had to go get my own little place. I was 16 and 2 years old, and I got a place and began a life. I had to find a job and started working at a skating rink, then begged for a job on a construction crew.
I became the grunt laborer on a construction crew and promised the guy who wasn't going to hire me that I'd be the hardest worker he's ever hired if he'd just give me a shot. After telling me no, I told him that, and he said, "All right, you're hired."
He assigned me to one of his guys, and I went to work. I was a hod tender, which means carrying the brick and mixing the cement for bricklayers and then helping bring wood to the carpenters and those kinds of people early on. Eventually, I grew to do other things, but that's how I began my life.
I struggled through a lot of ups and downs, tried to save money, had many financial challenges along the way, and I grew out long hair. I actually had hair then, but my hair grew over my shoulders and was ridiculed a little bit by past friends for that. I just went through some ups and downs and bumps, but through those, I learned a lot and made some life-changing commitments that have blessed me and helped me through my life.
Sure! So, you know, first of all, not to dig too personally, but losing your dad at 14 obviously would have been terrible, especially since it sounds like you were close to him, or at least that's the sense I got. Was he fairly healthy, or did this just come out of the blue?
It came out of the blue. I wasn't as close to him; that's probably what hurt so much. He was always gone; he traveled so much. He was certainly kind and loved me, and I knew that, but I wanted to be close to him. Of course, that ability to do that ended when he passed away, and that hurt, of course.
But I was kind of a troubled youth prior to that anyway, and that's one of the reasons I ran away in those early days.
So, did that kind of shape or color how you look at taking advantage of opportunities in the future? Did it propel you towards taking advantage of opportunities when they present themselves?
I think it helped me with a resolve to win, to resolve to go do some things with my life. I was raised, while he was alive, we had a lot of financial challenges. I was shuttled between a farm in Idaho and a place in Arizona back and forth in my youth, so I was kind of a grunt laborer for our family too.
Financially, we struggled a great deal, and when he died, it only got worse. We lived in an unfinished home with just kind of the 2x4 walls, and the exterior was half-finished. The interior was never finished until after he died.
The incredible neighborhood came, and a bunch of people came and finished the home we lived in after he died. But I think his passing helped me because he hadn't done much financially in his life and struggled so much.
I think that helped me make the decision that I want to go win. I want to be successful in life. I want to live a good life. I want to be a good citizen, a good person, and love and take care of others. But I want to succeed in my financial life. That did help me do that, and it helped me make better decisions.
Longer term, I probably didn't make the best decisions, but longer term, I think I did well.
I mean, you know, clearly with the state of your hair back then, it sounds...
That's right! Hey, if you could do it, do it right!
So, you have obviously faced a lot of challenges—very significant ones in your journey—and that you've shared in your writings and that you've talked about in your speaking engagements and mentorship. Specifically, you've spoken of, and I quote, "having no leadership, no money, and no vision."
So, what does that phrase actually mean, and what mindset or habits have helped push you through these obstacles early on?
Well, no leadership means I had nobody to look to. I mean, I had no dad. Nobody in my life had succeeded. Running away meant I had no leadership; I had no help to guide me and help structure my life and help me learn how to set goals and even make decisions as to who and what I want to be.
I just didn't have that, and I certainly had no money. I mean, my first—when I met my sweetheart and got married, our entire wedding and honeymoon was $340. We stayed in Motel 6s. I mean, it was a pretty sad state of affairs to bring this sweet woman of mine into.
But I had no money. We were struggling even from the day I ran away from home. We had nothing up through the time we got married and through the first few years of our married life.
And no vision—I mean, I had no vision, no clear understanding of really how to pull it off and how to win. Those struggles caused me to study; they caused me to think hard; they caused me to work hard at my job.
But a job generally stands for "Journey of the Broke." That's what most jobs are. I realized that my jobs—construction and those kinds of things—at least for me, they weren't going to take me where I wanted to go.
That is very mindful. You being very mindful of the circumstances you're in—"Journey of the Broke." I need to write that down; that's a good one!
I enjoy that!
So, you took these lessons, and you've also learned that in the past, you said strength comes from struggle. So, is there a specific story from early on in your career where you think that this lesson was crucial—the strength coming from struggle?
Well, I have a lot of them. I mean, certainly on farms, I realized as a little boy that with an egg, I watched eggs get hatched—chicken eggs—and you watch that process happen. As a little boy, it seemed like it takes forever for that little, you know, the egg starts to move a little bit, then it moves a little more, and then finally, you see a little hole from that chick inside pecking.
You'll see a little pop on the outside of the shell, and that chick inside there is struggling. An impatient little boy that decides to help it and breaks the shell for that—well, that chick dies. I mean, it's the struggle that it has to work its way out of that shell that breathes life into it.
I've always known that struggle makes you strong if you don't quit. It makes you stronger. I had struggles in my early days. I got into the financial industry, got licensed, and moved to Las Vegas.
I was now married, moved into Las Vegas, and I didn't have any money. I approached this big businessman who owned an office building and asked him, "Would you let me rent some space?" I said, "I don't have any money," and I want to be honest with you, but I want to ask you to mentor me and help me.
I mean, I didn't have anybody to mentor me and help me. I'd gotten my licenses in both insurance and securities, and I was now what they call a registered investment adviser too. I decided that was going to be my career, and I chose that career carefully.
I decided in my youth, you know, so many people are told to find something you know you'll like. Well, I didn't care about liking it. I wanted to look at the economics of it and make the decision of something that's going to take care of my family financially.
Then I wanted to look at the service component of it: Is it going to serve others? Is it going to help others in whatever I do? The third component is whether or not I like it.
I mean, liking it doesn't matter as much. I'll learn to love the things I'm successful at.
Sure! I met this man and asked him, "Will you mentor me and help me, and will you lease me office space?" He said no, and he chuckled. It was almost silly to think that he would give me office space.
I told him, "I'll take one as is, and I promise you I'll pay for it, but I just need you to give me 30 days to cover a check." I wrote a post-dated check to him. He said, "I don't know why I'm doing this, but I think I need to believe in you, young man."
He let me write him an $1,100 check. I'd never made $1,100 in my life; I was brand newly licensed. But I promised him, I said, "I promise you I'll cover this if you'll let me write you a check. Let me have the office space; I'll cover it in 30 days, and then I'll make that up."
He said, "All right, I'm going to believe in you." Then he slapped his hand down on his desk and said, "Now, let me tell you something. Let me teach you something. If you can't do this or if tough times come, you increase communication. Most people decrease communication and begin to hide from the people rather than work things out."
He said, "I want you to stop in every day or two. Stick your head in my office." His office was down on the first floor, and he gave me a little tiny space—$1,100 a month, up a couple floors from him.
I promised him I'd stop in, and I did. I was able to cover that check by the skin of my teeth, actually. I covered that, and then a year later, I was making big money, and things were rocking.
That guy continued to help me. I will forever be grateful for a man that believed in me in a time that I was struggling most. I had to make between the office rent and the phones and the furniture and the other things that I financed for that first office I ever opened in Las Vegas.
It cost me about three grand a month to do all that before I could ever bring even a penny home to my family. I learned what entrepreneurship is. I learned what trying to be a leader is—that you've got to accept that responsibility.
There were a lot of expenses associated with my business. Those challenges caused me to dig in deep; they caused me to get up early in the morning and go to work and do things that I knew I needed to do.
Sure! Wow! So, you know, you've already, in a couple of the stories that you have so kindly shared, there is already a theme that is kind of showing through, and that I can see.
That theme is: don't be afraid to ask people for what you need and what you want, and also don't be afraid to ask people for help.
The second thing is you've got to believe in yourself, and you've got to put yourself out there. One of the quotes that I tell my kids all the time is, "You don't get what you don't ask for."
That's been said a billion different ways, but you asking for a job at a construction site, you asking for this workspace from a building owner—it's all about putting yourself out there and having that sense of pride and belief in yourself that, you know what? I am going to make things happen.
I'm going to do well; I just need the space and the time because a lot of times, time equals space. I need that space to prove myself, and clearly, you've done that.
I think that's amazing! I think it's also a great lesson for budding entrepreneurs to really kind of understand. We all don't have all of the answers right away, but if you believe in yourself and you put yourself out there, you can achieve some really great things.
You're right, and I will tell you that confidence in what you do is critical. You have to believe in yourself, and you have to believe in what you're doing. You need to be on purpose.
I think the thing that helped me, though, when I was talking to this sweet Mr. Jenny—was his name—when I was talking with him, I had been almost a year prior to that in preparation, getting all my licenses and doing all that.
I had written down my goals. I had been to a couple seminars. I had some other entrepreneurs teach me that told me I ought to go get the book "Think and Grow Rich," and I did.
I decided then that I'm going to quantify my goals, clarify and quantify my dreams. Actually, I heard a quote at a seminar that I still don't know where it came from, but those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that all was vanity.
But the dreamers of the day are dangerous men and women—dangerous in a good way, by the way—for they may act out their dreams with open eyes and make them possible.
I had clarified and quantified my dreams. I had turned those dreams into goals, and I had turned those goals into specific plans. Those plans were so clear to me, and I knew I needed an office.
There were certain things I was going to do in that office. I just—and so I did believe in what I was doing, and I believed in myself and my business model and a few people that I'd connected with that were kind of encouraging me to be in the industry, and it changed my life.
I mean, that first year was a great struggle, but boy, I look back on it, and I would not have succeeded if I hadn't had the struggles and then, yes, the perseverance to drive through the struggles.
Sure! No, absolutely! And also, you know, even in the example that you gave of asking for the room to work out of, you set a goal for yourself.
You put out there a shared goal—not only is this my goal for Monty Holm, but it's also a goal for the gentleman who gave you that office space that within a month, this check is going to clear.
I just applaud you for that. I think that's great!
I know! Thank you! I never missed a payment to that guy, and by the end of that first year, I'd made back—in those days, the most I'd ever made in a year was $8,000 while I was going to school and getting my licenses and all.
But I made almost $50,000 that first year, and the next year, I flew by $100,000 like it was standing still, and it continued on because of that commitment and the things that I learned through that period.
Sure! No, that's awesome! So, one of the themes that you talked about that's in business as well as your life is preparation and the expectation to win.
So, what does that theme mean, and could you elaborate on how this mentality that you have of being prepared and expecting to win has shaped your approach to entrepreneurship and how our listeners can put it to work for themselves?
Well, I wrote a book about that called "Expect to Win." I don't make any money from that book; the proceeds go to charity. I didn't write it to be famous or to make money. I wrote it out of deep frustration.
In fact, in your lifetime, you'll probably never meet anybody who wrote a book out of more frustration than I did. It was just frustration because I'd been dealing with wannabe entrepreneurs.
I was working with a bunch of people I was trying to bring into the financial service space, and I began to fully believe that most people—if you could do a deep dive psychoanalysis on most people, I don't know how to do that, but if you could do it, I'm convinced that most of them deep down in their psyche don't expect to win.
Most people deep in their psyche expect to fail, but they hope to surprise themselves and win. If they did win, it really would be a surprise to them because they—and I don't blame them.
I don't blame us as a whole for that because we're raised in families. I mean, if you look up your family tree, often your family tree, there are not many people who have succeeded at high levels in most of our families.
So, we're out there wanting to be entrepreneurs and win. The expectation to win doesn't exist in their heads to win, but it would be a surprise to them if they did.
And so, preparation and building our expectation—I think what happened with me, quantifying and clarifying my goals and my dreams and goals, and turning those into plans and then reading them out loud every day—morning and night, morning and night, morning and night—no matter what, no matter what else was happening in my life, that helped me build a belief.
Napoleon Hill says that which we persist in placing in our mind will eventually seek reality in our lives. It's all a mindset.
So, I had decided I'm going to place in my mind the things that are going to help me be successful, and the way to do it is by pre-planning it out, writing it down, and then again reading it out loud.
There's something about doing it out loud; that's what I decided to do, and I'm so grateful I did because it helped me with my confidence.
That confidence in what you're doing just matters; it's everything.
Absolutely! And I was going to say, when you're doing something so often and you are going over it, you're preparing and you're memorizing, and you're creating your own mantra, that really does help solidify a base of confidence because now you know it.
Even as for an entrepreneur, as you're saying, they don't really expect to win; they're hoping to win. That focus on your future goals and you laying each brick—it's actually very ironic you were a bricklayer early on—as you're laying these bricks on your path to your own dreams and to your own success, building that confidence, building that muscle to be able to focus on this every day and to lay out your small victories every day and to do the tweaks that you need to do to pivot if something happens or to get over a hurdle that comes up out of the blue—all of that builds for you to attain the success that you wish for later on.
But then, as you say, you're going to expect it because you've put so much effort towards it. I think that's great!
Yeah, and that's what you're doing. You're building expectations; you're building confidence—not arrogance. There's a big difference between arrogance and cockiness and just confidence.
There's such a thing as a humble confidence where you quietly and humbly know that you're going to win, and you get to where you believe you're supposed to win. If you're doing the right things consistently, you will.
You can't consistently do the wrong things and expect to win, but I'm convinced that you can't consistently do the right things and fail.
Learning to do the right things and doing them consistently and developing patterns and habits—developing habits of doing what most people won't do makes you a rare person.
Anything that's rare is worth more—rare coins, rare cars, rare people. Rare people are those who develop habits of doing what most simply will not do.
Yeah, you're really making me now think of all kinds of sports metaphors! I mean, like, I think that a lot of times you see athletes who are blessed with physical gifts that I could never truly appreciate myself because I just don't have those gifts.
But many athletes out there have phenomenal gifts, and there are also many athletes out there that just work their tails off. You always hear of these really elite athletes who don't practice or don't want to practice. They think, "You know what? I got this in the bag; I've done this 100 times; I don't need to do this again."
Then you have really elite people like a Michael Jordan or someone of that ilk who practice just as hard or even harder than everyone else on the team, and they bring that mentality, that confidence—maybe a little arrogance with Michael Jordan—but you know that confidence to the court when it counts.
I think that everything you're saying makes absolute perfect sense, and it's, again, building those blocks towards your path of the future.
You've also talked in the past about near-perfect execution, and that seems like something, of course, a lot of people aspire to but struggle with, right? Executing can be difficult.
So, is there a clearer path to improve execution that entrepreneurs are looking to improve? Is there, do you have like a, you know, execution by numbers kind of thing or any kind of suggestion for that?
Well, a lot of people don't really have—I mean, if it's like if you have a business model and a strategy and a plan, that is exactly how—like, for example, I started my business knowing that by the end of my first 12 months, I wanted to make $110,000 in one month by the end of that first year.
I did some reverse engineering, and I love reverse engineering. I just love that concept—that you start with the end in mind. You figure out what you want to come out—that's like a pipeline.
In fact, in my book, I speak about a pipeline. You figure out what you want out of the end of the pipeline, out of the outflow end, and then you reverse engineer and figure out what you've got to do on the front end to put the pressure in the flow to get that amount out of the back end.
I think you do that with your life and your business processes. I mean, that's reverse engineering.
If somebody has a reverse-engineered plan like I did, even for that $10,000 in a month, I figured out how many people I need to contact, how many sales I need, how many presentations I need to make, how many sales, and exactly to the penny based on the average of what I was going to make per sale.
I knew exactly what I needed to do. That was just mathematics, but I had reverse engineered it. I wanted $10,000 out of that pipeline—my business pipeline.
I've got seven pipelines I use for myself—different pipelines. I have a spiritual pipeline; I have a family deal; I have a business deal. I just have these examples I use.
We get to determine what comes out of our lives. I mean, we absolutely can determine what our lives look like. My favorite pipeline that I use is my life pipeline.
In the life pipeline, I reverse engineered that where I decided years ago that what I believe is most people out of their life pipeline want happiness, peace, and prosperity gushing out of that pipeline. That's what they'd love to have.
But you can't go focus on the pipeline and say, "Okay, give me happiness, peace, and prosperity." You reverse engineer that and say, "Where does that come from?" Because those are byproducts of something.
What's happiness and peace and prosperity a byproduct of? For me, I backed those up—that's what my book's about. You back it up, and I decided it comes from self-respect.
I mean, I'm not going to be happy, and I'm not going to have peace if I don't like me. If I don't really honestly like myself, and if I don't have what I like to call self-respect, which is coupled with self-confidence and self-worth and self-esteem and those things.
But then I decide what I figured—those are byproducts of something. How do I get myself to like me? That—and so I had to back it up again and figure out, "Well, the key to that is discipline."
It's self-discipline. If I get myself to do the things I know I should, I like myself better than when I do things I know I shouldn't.
So, it's all based on how—so if I'm able to simply discipline myself to do what I know I should and not do what I know I shouldn't, my self-respect and my self-confidence, my self-worth, my self-esteem—those things are going to all skyrocket, and I'm going to have self-respect, which is going to flow into happiness and peace and prosperity can flow too.
But self-discipline is a byproduct of something. It was just a realization I was going through in my life to figure that out, and that's why I wrote a book about it.
Because self-discipline comes from desire. Most of us grit our teeth and say, "I'm going to discipline myself." Man, I'm going to—and discipline.
Discipline, though, if we could take the focus off the discipline and put it on desire, because if you want something bad enough, you'll do whatever you've got to do to do it.
I mean, discipline becomes an automatic byproduct of properly fueled desire, and desire is a byproduct of something.
So, I backed all that up and figured out what I've got to do on the front end. On the very front end, if I'm doing those things, that stuff just gushes through my life pipeline, and it builds me a better life that has peace and prosperity and happiness just gushing out.
I don't just want a little drip system where it's dripping out of the end or a periodic squirt system where it's just periodically squirting out. I want a gusher with my life.
That includes not just business; that's faith, that's family—that's things that are more important than money.
So, I didn't mean to get on a rant there, but that's...
Oh gosh, no! First of all, I love the intentionality of all this. I love the focus. I love the stepping back and taking a holistic view of everything.
I also love the self-criticism and kind of stripping everything down and saying, "Where do I want to be? What's going to make me happy? Why does it make me happy? Why do I want this?"
Then building everything back up to there. I think that's very philosophical, and I just think it's super smart!
Right! I think that it really easily attends to why you've been successful and where you're at because you're attacking everything with real intentionality.
It's not so much about you having come up with the best widget that's out there; it's not about you building a better mousetrap.
It's about sitting back and taking a moment to really realize what your goals are and where you want to be and what you want to do and what's important to you.
Then, like you say, reverse engineering all that back to say, "Where can I get to that's going to allow me to—okay, I'm set in this spot, and now I'm ready to move forward to that goal, and I'm going to do it through these steps."
Oh, I'm going to lay some bricks and move forward that way. I think that's great!
Well, thank you! A predetermined outcome—I mean, planning what kind of life you want to have. I mean, you're right; it's not a better widget.
It's you figuring out who and what you want to be, and having a predetermined outcome—most of us don't. That's more proof that we don't expect to win.
I mean, everything we do, we should have a predetermined outcome. When you say, "When you say win, what does that mean to you?"
To win means we get what we predetermined gushing out of that pipeline, whichever pipeline it is. That means we're winning.
In my book "Expect to Win," I mean, most of us don't really—again, we don't expect to win, but we don't prepare ourselves.
Those who truly expect to win, they plan to win, and they prepare themselves to win in everything they do—winning in business, winning in their family, winning in their spiritual life, winning, yes, even in sports.
I mean, those things—I think Michael Jordan, those guys, I would say those guys, their drive, their determination, their desire is what fueled their discipline, and that discipline fueled their confidence, etc.
It's the same thing. Those who expect to win somehow—it boils down to the first part of that, the entry part of that pipeline.
They were able to see the vision of it, and they were able to develop the plan for it, and then absolutely, they were able to get it so crystallized in their mind as to who and what they want to be that the discipline piece of it becomes an automatic form.
Sure! I think this is really fascinating, and the reason why I say that is because a lot of times, I think entrepreneurs, they come up with the better mousetrap—God bless them!
They figured out the right thing that society needs that's going to solve ills and whatever that product or that service is—that's great!
But I don't think they do enough—or not that I don't think they do enough, but I think a lot of trip-ups for entrepreneurs is all of the self-actualization and the self-determination and that work that they need to do on themselves to understand that that product, that widget, that better mousetrap is merely the vehicle to get them to what their dreams actually are.
I think your process, your thought of taking a step back to really look at everything holistically, reverse engineering everything back, makes a ton of sense.
Because if you don't know where you're going, you can't build how to get there. I think that's just—it's not groundbreaking; this isn't rocket science.
But it is something that people don't pay enough attention to, and I'm really glad that you're bringing that to light.
Thank you! I think most entrepreneurs are well-meaning, and gosh, they're just smart. I mean, they come up with these incredible widgets and ideas, but self-development is the key to that.
Those three things, at least two of the three that I want gushing out of my life pipeline, which is happiness and peace—I mean, I want to like myself. I want to have confidence in myself.
I don't want to be arrogant or cocky in any way, but I want to have peace and joy in my life, and yes, I want prosperity too because prosperity means the money—that's the money piece of it that allows you to go do those things.
But self-development means that we're developing ourselves in many ways more so than just the widget.
I mean, we came up with a business plan and an idea; we called it a business hybrid, and we felt like we had a better way of building a business, and we built a monster business across these United States and Canada.
But it wasn't the widget; the focus has always been on developing ourselves. Even all across our company, we want to build leaders.
If you're building leaders, then those leaders are loving people, caring for people, taking the approach that we're going to do what's right all the time.
I don't know that we always have and always do, but certainly, the goal is to do what's right. I had a friend tell me once that his dad, when he was a little boy, used to tell him, "As you grow up, if you love people and use money, you're going to have a more happy life. But if you love money and use people, you're going to have a miserable life."
Today, I don't know what his business makes, but it's probably over a half a billion a year. I mean, he's just a big, big player in the world today because everybody around him—and I know him well—knows that he loves people and uses money.
He doesn't love money and use people. If you're working on you, if it's about self-development, then you're trying to grow to where your people component—where you're human.
I've always believed all success boils down to human relations. Absolutely!
That's just the way you interact with other people and your personal disciplines and your time management and how you develop your skill sets and all that.
That's all working on you, and the best entrepreneurs, the best CEOs are those who have worked on themselves and constantly continue to work on themselves—from their mindset to their skills to all those other things we just mentioned.
They get good at those things, or at least okay at them. Some areas we excel here and struggle here, and I mean, there's some of that.
But it's working on ourselves. One other quick point: I had a guy in my earliest days—this guy that became a mentor later after that Las Vegas office owner.
The next mentor in my life was a guy that used to say to me—and he always seemed frustrated with me early on—but he used to say, "Monty Holm, you better do something about you."
Then there'd be a pregnant pause, and he'd say, "For no one else can." I would go say, "Man, what have I got to do about me?"
It helped me drive further into these things I must do about me, and I ended up today—I appreciate it more than I can tell you.
Because all of us—and I would say that to all of you entrepreneurs that may be listening today—hey, you better do something about you, for no one else can.
The people around us need to—they need to feel how they feel around us. It's the vision that's expanded in the things they hear and the things they see when they're in your presence that will make you the best leader, the most impactful leader.
You almost have me to a point where I'm ready to take off the headphones and just start working on me immediately! That's great stuff!
But you know what? I also know that I have limitations. I have my own limitations. A lot of times, they come from managing expectations—not only for myself but for those around me and for clients and all that other kind of stuff.
I know that you had mentioned how important managing expectations are. You've also mentioned that you've got to have a laser focus, and that's really 98% of what you term as winning.
A lot of entrepreneurs, you know, I think may not have really defined this focus very well or as well as they could. So, how can they develop this focus, especially when there are distractions literally everywhere?
Well, I'm so glad you asked that, and I think it's all part of one great whole. I think when we decide who and what we want to be—when we figured out, for example, the pipeline, to go back to that—when we figure out what we want gushing out of our pipeline, and we do that reverse engineering, and we now get down to where we've got our goals, our dreams, and our goals turned into plans.
Those plans, if we're reading our plans out loud every day, and those plans include those goals and plans include whatever we want to be good at.
I mean, for me, I've always had four words that mean everything. I want my entire life to be centered around four words, and so it's easy for me to be focused on those four things because they're written in my goals.
They have been for 40 years. For 40 years, I've had my plans every year. I've pre-planned the year before the year comes. I won't let January 1 come without having that next year pre-planned out in these four areas: faith, family, finance, and fitness.
I have those things planned out, and I'm not perfect in them. I just—I’ve mastered the ability to not let a new year come in without knowing what I want to do that year in those four areas.
To that laser beam focus comes from—it takes discipline in this crazy world. I mean, there's so much going on in the political landscape and in the world affairs and the news and social media and our families and our business.
But to spend three to five minutes—most of us can't get ourselves for three to five minutes a day. This just shocks me, and it frustrates me that we can't pre-plan it out and then read it out loud for three to five minutes in the morning.
I mean, it changes your life! It changes what you think about. That which we persist in placing in our minds really does seek reality in our lives, especially when some emotion went into pre-planning it.
Most of us don't pre-plan. We just don't. We mamby-pamby through life hoping things will work out, and generally, they'll work out, but I don't think we are doing as much as we could do in terms of impacting those around us and even ourselves.
I mean, I don't think we ought to do it for me. I don't want to do it for personal glory or aggrandizement or for wealth or display or any of that.
I want to do it for those things that I mentioned. I want the peace and the happiness, and yes, I want the prosperity connected with that. That'll flow, but I don't care what people think of me much.
I mean, I don't think life's a popularity contest. It doesn't matter what others say or think or do. What matters is what I do—that I need to be the best I can be.
But I've got to work on me, and I've got to be clear. I've got to be laser beam focused on those things that I want to do and be in order to get the best results.
All right! Well, you've been putting me to shame! I think that's—no, I'm just kidding! But you're absolutely right!
You're absolutely right, and I am soaking all this in because I easily can see areas where I need to fine-tune some things to make my future better.
I'm very thankful for this entire conversation, and I'm sure that many others are as well. One of the things that you've also mentioned that you're very passionate about is helping people win the money game.
I would love that because basically, every time I try to play the money game, it becomes forfeit!
So, what are some of the common mistakes that you've seen that people make when it comes to financial success, and how can they avoid those?
Well, I mean, most people are losing the money game. You just look at how—I mean, you've got to first make some money to be able to win the game, but it's all connected again to a greater whole.
For me, I decided in my—when I got into the industry, I mean the financial services industry, I decided that I want to be financially independent. Just to think about that, and I would encourage everybody to at least have the desire to be financially independent—whether that means—and you define what that means to you.
All of us should do that, but to me, financial independence simply means that I have a substantial income that would continue regardless of what I personally do.
Because you're not financially independent unless you have an income at your desired level—unless you have an income that would continue regardless of what you personally do.
To me, I decided that there are two ways to do that: one is to build a business that throws off an income to me, but two is to grow a pile of money.
In other words, get good enough at saving money that I grow a pile of money because when you get money stashed and saved, money makes money, and the money money makes makes more money.
Money is not like people; it doesn't eat or sleep or go to the bathroom. It doesn't take breaks; it works 24/7.
If money is properly deployed in any setting—whether you're a businessman or just a personal family or whatever—to have money properly deployed in places that are safe and secure but yet give good returns, eventually, your money can out-earn you.
If you have a pile of money, a million dollars at 10% would give you $100,000 a year. So, having a goal of accumulating money is part of becoming financially secure.
For me, I've always wanted to help people encourage them strongly to live on a budget. I want to encourage them to set aside—for me, I decided the largest payment I will ever make—this was right my second year of marriage—when I told my sweetheart, "We're going to—our biggest payment we will ever make in our lives is to our future."
So, we set up mutual funds—equity-based mutual funds that we put a payment in. It was always—we decided it was always going to be bigger than even before we could afford to do this.
It was just the mindset; it was going to be bigger than our mortgage payment, bigger than any other payment in our lives, and we've consistently—you know, we'd go buy something, and we'd make a decision on what the payment's going to be.
We'd both gulp and say, "That means our payment into our mutual funds has got to be this," and we've lived by that.
It's amazing how those funds, as they grow—when you consistently throw those funds, whether it's 10% or 20% of your income or whatever it is, you force it out.
It's a struggle! I mean, making money in your family is a struggle. The people that want it out there—I mean, there's always going to be a big line of people or businesses that want your money—from your mortgage to your utilities to all that stuff.
But to peel off some of that, I've always envisioned my wife and my kids at the front of the line in front of all those other mortgages and all those other folks, and they're going to get the biggest percentage of my income.
It's going to be stashed, and as it grows, as it's back over here growing and you're adding to it, your biggest temptation is to pull it and go do something fun or to pull it and go relieve some pressure—meaning debt or other things.
But I don't care what's happening; I'm going to continue to stash some over there, and I'm going to continue to struggle with bringing it in.
Over time, though, eventually, this one gets so big that it's actually out-earning you, and it can get big enough that it makes your family financially dependent.
But having a plan with actual numbers that fit you and your family and what you're doing matters. I think everybody's going to be different.
I mean, I had little goals initially, but they got bigger and bigger over time, and that stuff grows. It should grow!
Absolutely! I love the fact that, you know, not only are you setting goals—like I mentioned before when you wrote the check to the post-dated check to Mr. Jenny—that is a goal that you have to attain because now you're forcing yourself to meet that goal.
Just like you're saying with how much you're going to squirrel away for your family because that's your most important goal.
You are forcing yourself to save for them, and I think that is a mindset switch.
A lot of people are like, "I need to make enough money to satisfy all of my debts and all of what's needed, and then after that, I'm going to try to save some."
You are starting out, "Nope! I'm going to save some first, and then everything else I'm going to just figure out through struggle."
I think that is why you've been successful because you've kind of forced yourself down this path.
As we know with pipelines, force helps things flow better!
Well, hopefully, I'm not a plumber, so don't quote me on that!
But hopefully, it helps you!
So, how do you personally stay motivated and focused as you start working on new goals? What advice would you give to entrepreneurs about burnout?
Have you been burnt out, and how do you think someone who's starting out can avoid feeling burnt out?
Well, great question! And again, thank you! I hope this is helping somebody out there in the world.
I guarantee you it is! I would just tell you that burnout comes from not having the next big vision of who and what you want to be.
For me, I've never really suffered from burnout because I don't let the new year come without having the next year pre-planned.
The next year is pre-planned with specific goals, so that I know what the big goals are. I mean, I know what trips I want to take that year.
It takes some time; it takes some serious thinking to pre-plan a year of what I want to take my family.
For example, we decided years ago that we're going to have every quarter—we're going to do something. Every week, I'm going to take my wife on a date, but every month, I'm going to take her on an overnight or somewhere and go do something fun.
But every quarter, we're going to go do something a little bigger, and same with our kids and now our grandkids.
We live on this farm with all of our kids building around us right now. I mean, there's construction going on outside right now, and we're in our new home.
But this farm—somebody asked me the other day, "What's your crop? You are a farmer; what's your crop?" I said, "Grandkids!"
So, that's my new crop! But anyway, to pre-plan trips and fun things every quarter, something a little bigger—one of the four quarters is going to be a bigger trip or something really fun.
We just got back from Cabo last week! So, we go do some fun things regularly, and we build those into those plans.
If you're starting a year with a vision of that year of what you're going to do, and it's got the fun built into it, it's got the business component—for me, it's faith, family, finance, and fitness—and the fun.
Those are all F-words, by the way!
F-F-W-S are my favorite words! There's also some despicable F-words, but there are some great F-words, and I can—fun is another good word!
The fun is built into all of them with the trips and the fun things with our family. But you don't get burned out if you plan that stuff out.
You don't get burned out if you have some fun things planned with your family and with your, you know, even from a business standpoint.
And yeah, F-W-S, PJ, just real quick—speaking of F-words, let me finish a thought. I hadn't thought of this earlier, but I want to say it to you.
My favorite F-words are faith, which ought to be the foundation, at least for my life; family; fidelity; financial frugality; and fitness.
The key to fitness is the food we eat—how much, what it is, and how much of it—and that can turn into fun!
Then there's an overarching—some words that if we do those right, if we do faith, family, finance, and fitness right, then we have some other words like fortune.
We can build a fortune and have good fortune, and freedom—freedom is my favorite F-word because it builds financial freedom.
It builds freedom from debt, freedom from pain, freedom from issues because we're doing things the way we should.
All that's just—we ought to predetermine that stuff. Most of this is just a choice, and we get to plan it out.
Our lives can look like we would dream of them looking like, but it's not going to happen without some pre-planning, and it's not going to happen without us putting some effort in.
I mean, it's like plans for a house. This house I'm in right now, my wife and I made the plans for it. It's always amazed me how a house resembles the plans for that house.
There's—it's always pretty darn close, and our lives can look like the plans for our lives. But a lot of us don't ever—we don't really put our full plans together.
They're not detailed plans like we would for a house, like we would for other things. So, I would hope we would do that.
For everybody listening, please take the time to just reverse engineer, pre-plan stuff, read it out loud every day. It'll fix the burnout; it'll fix the drive and determination; it'll help you through adversity.
It'll help you expect to win!
That's awesome! That really is awesome!
So, we're getting on to the last question. When you're looking ahead and you see what's coming up on the horizon, what's the next big challenge or project that you're excited to tackle, and how do you plan to approach it with your "expect to win" mentality?
Well, for me, I've been financially—I'm so grateful, but I've been financially independent for decades—many decades. I'm grateful for the opportunities I've had and, yes, some of the luck and all that stuff too, and even the adversity.
For me personally, the best thing I can do as I look into the future is try to help the next generation.
So, I am, you know, I'm coaching some other business leaders that I love to do here locally and nationally. I'm doing some of that.
I love to help others that want to win. My grandkids—every other Monday night at 6:30, our grandkids, we gather, and I want to influence them.
I want to talk to them about making and keeping promises. We are teaching them these things—making good stewards of their lives and making good choices.
Essentially, I'm—there's my book "Expect to Win." I'm trying to teach them principles out of our book and out of just from life and even the struggles—how to thrive through struggle, how to thrive through it because they're all going to face adversity and struggle.
So, I think the best thing for me, the next big challenge, is to try to help shape the mentality and the outcome for the next generation, starting with my kids and grandkids and then extending to others who I can influence and help.
That is wonderful! Monty, if people want to get a hold of you, if they want to subscribe to any of your potential coaching lessons, if they want to subscribe to anything that you have coming out for regular content, they want to buy your book—where do people reach you?
Well, they can buy the book on Amazon, and again, I don't make money. I don't promote that book. I mean, we've sold tens of thousands of copies of that book, and it continues to—but they can get that from Amazon, or they can go to montyholm.com or aol.com, and they can contact us that way or through my staff.
But yeah, I'm not trying to promote any of those. I just want to help and want people to win!
Well, the next book you write, you already have the title: "F-Words."
So, I think that I can't wait to see whatever else you have coming out, and your work is so important.
I love the altruistic way that you approach everything, and if everyone was as giving, I think that—you're early on, you know, having a house that wasn't finished and people coming together and helping you finish that house and create that foundation for you inside of you.
Obviously, you're returning the favor now, and I think that's wonderful!
So, everyone can use a helping hand, and everyone can always help each other out, and I think it's important for society as well.
Well, thank you, PJ! Great to meet you and to get to know you. I've listened to you, and I can tell you guys are doing a great job. Thank you for your hard work and your effort. You're making a big difference in this world, so keep it up!
Well, not as big of a difference as you are!
Folks, today we've had Monty Holm—financial services guru, self-made man, motivational speaker, and a guy who really knows how to expect to win.
Plan out your future, get your blueprint for your future built, and you can enjoy that future house. Thank you so much, Monty! Thank you for being a part of the show!
Thank you, PJ! Enjoyed being with you!