0 (1s):
Boom, shake the room, Fire Nation JLD here and welcome to entrepreneurs on fire brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network with great shows like being boss said, they were having an amazing conversation where I will be interviewing the incredible author of time, money and freedom. Who is this incredible author? Well it's Ray Higdon and Ray and Jessica Higdon are former number one, earners, bestselling authors who have helped social sellers enroll over 300,000 customers and recruit 71,000 new reps. And just the past three years is today foundation. We will be talking about that book, time, money, and freedom.

0 (42s):
We'll be talking about Ray's top three takeaways as well as 10 rules to transform your life and so much more Fire Nation. When we get back from thanking our sponsors, are you ready to launch your biz Fire Nation? Well, today's sponsor LaunchMyBiz.com wants to help you get there. LaunchMyBiz provides end to end e-commerce training and support. And if you're accepted into their partner program, your success is guaranteed apply today at LaunchMyBiz.com that's LaunchMyBiz.com re say, what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with

1 (1m 24s):
Was a Fire Nation. I would say, you know, something that, that, that I believe is that the more successful you become, the more important it becomes, the more important it is for you to identify with what is driving you when you don't have much, it's actually fairly easy for most people to get motivated, to do something about it. It's when you have much that it's so important for you to keep working on what is driving you, what drives you impact? What drives me is, is impact. That's what gives me significance. That's what makes me feel good. It gives me a voice when I grew up in a world where I wasn't allowed to have a voice.

1 (2m 8s):
And so me knowing that I'm making a positive impact is, is the thing that drives me.

0 (2m 14s):
I myself have hung out a number of times over the years and every time it's very enjoyable. We've also both recently launched books, mine, the common path, uncommon success, his time, money, freedom, three things that I know a lot of people put a lot of value on. So talk to us about this book, Ray, and, you know, just from a fellow author, I'm curious, like how did the title come into being, and then of course, expound into more details about the book.

1 (2m 49s):
Yeah, for sure. And, you know, we wrote this with hay house, hay house has been an amazing business partner and amazing publisher. And, you know, we, we really went back and forth. We had a lot of different working titles, but it came down to time, money, freedom of what, if people were indoctrinated to possibility, that's really what we all want. We want time, money, freedom. We want the ability to do what we want when we want with who we want. We want to feel like we're producing and we want to have control of our time. And all of those reasons are what led me to start a business, to leave the corporate world, you know?

1 (3m 36s):
And so, yeah, that's kind of the, or origination of the, of a title as far as the book, it's our, you know, my wife and I, cause we both wrote it together. It's 10 simple rules to redefine what's possible and radically reshape it.

0 (3m 50s):
So Fire Nation, we're gonna actually get to go through some of these 10 rules to transform your life. I also want to start Ray with your top three takeaways from this book. I know that there's a lot of value and every one of these 10 rules, let's talk about the top three takeaways. Like when Fire Nation goes through and reads this book about time, money, and freedom, what do you want them to be taken away? For sure,

1 (4m 16s):
The, the three would be number one, that you can create a great life despite a bad past. And I'm an example of that. You know, I was in a very abusive home as a kid. My parents had split. My step-mom was very physically abusive up until the age of 12. I was beaten in some way, shape or form every day. And, and, and I also share a lot of different stories in the book of people. Who've overcome hardship, trauma, everything from, you know, physical abuse, sexual abuse, even trafficking. And so there's some pretty amazing stories that really backs that concept up.

1 (4m 57s):
Number two is if you've had a, if you have a tough pass, if you've gone through some tough times, you can really create inspiration. You can create hope. And, and I think that that's so important for us to feel significant as humans for us to feel like we're making a difference. You know, I mentioned that impact is what drives me. And so I look for what are, what are the, you know, the small hinges that move the big doors of, of impact. And for me, you know, our main target audience and who we mainly coach and train as network marketers.

1 (5m 37s):
And the reason that resonates with me so much is that, you know, it is kind of a gateway drug, right? For entrepreneurs. A lot of people get started in network marketing that would never launch a restaurant that would never, you know, buy a franchise that would never do a business, but it got them in. So I believe that, you know, us focusing on people who are just starting a home business, or, you know, just dipping their toe in the entrepreneurial water, we can really move a lot of leavers. Cause I think business owners and entrepreneurs are the backbone of, of society. They raised the most money for charity. They do the most good, they, you know, invent things and do cool stuff.

1 (6m 20s):
The third thing is that with more money you can do more good. And this may sound obvious to some, but for a lot of people, that's not the case. So you can only donate so much of your time. You can only serve at the soup kitchen. So many days a week at the end of the day, we got bills to pay, right? We have to make, make ends meet. And so, but with more money you can do more good. Now in society, it is very popular to demonize the millionaires of the billionaires or whoever's making money and you can lose sight of, Hey, the person that generates money, the person that makes money is able to give more, they're able to provide jobs.

1 (7m 3s):
They're able to invest in research and development. And so, you know, with more money you can do more good. And that's a message I think most people need to hear because it's quite contrary to Hollywood, it's quite contrary to the media and you know, nowadays social media. And so those would be the three biggest takeaways from the book,

0 (7m 22s):
Fire nation. Number one, a bad past does not mean a troubled future just because you've had a tough past. It doesn't mean you're going to have a tough future. And in fact, I love how he flowed this into the next one, which is turn those tough times into impact. Turn those tough times into inspiration, into motivation for others, because guess what, if you've had a really challenging, struggling pass, but you've got over it. Other people can as well. And with more money you can do more good. And I do love the phrase that money can't buy happiness, but the lack of money does cause struggle to create a happy scenario because you're always having to focus Fire Nation on what am I doing right now to put food in my mouth, to put shelter over my head, to protect my loved ones.

0 (8m 7s):
And when you're always in that stress fight or flight, is that really a scenario that you can be truly happy in and you know, whatever they say also that, you know, Hey, money can buy happiness. I always say, well, listen, people who say that have probably never been able to hand a blank check to a cause that they believe so deeply in, because I can tell you that's brought me a lot of happiness to build, you know, now six schools in developing countries and to be able to support the causes that I love. And I know that you support the cause of the, you believe in to REA and that's such a huge thing, Fire Nation that you can, you know, in some ways like to say, feel obligated, to find success, feel obligated, to make a lot of money because when you do that, then you can keep doing what you're doing because you're causing impact.

0 (8m 52s):
And you can afford the lifestyle that you're creating as a result that you can keep spreading that inspiration and joy. And then Hey, philanthropy can be that next game for you. And I'm seeing a lot of people really double down into that kind of stuff. So before we move on Ray, like what exactly was the thought process of time, money, freedom for the title? I mean, I know that we've kind of discussed those three words, but how'd you settle on that for the title?

1 (9m 19s):
I mean, again, it's just thinking of what, what, what is it that people really want? And, and I'll tell you why I tuned in to that. It's probably a title that, you know, I wouldn't have come up with a few years ago, but for example, I went to, I do some work with foster care and actually here in as of this recording, couple of weeks, I'm emceeing a big gala where we were building a crisis house to help, you know, kids in that situation. And when I went to one of the foster homes, one of the group foster homes and me and my friend, doctor, who is a counselor for foster care, we asked the kids, Hey, what would make your life better?

1 (10m 7s):
Like what, what would be cool to have here at the foster home? You know, what is it that you want? No one could answer that like the kids could not. They literally, you know, like if I asked my daughter any minute of the day, she wants ice cream, she wants Pokemon, she wants speaker. She went and she will rattle off. In fact, the minute I see her, when she wakes up, she's issuing orders of what she wants to. She comes home from school. She's telling me what she wants. She literally tells me what she wants, 24 hours a day. And, but these kids that, you know, have been in tough situations, many of them, most of them, I would say, have been in horrifying situations. Many of them, unfortunately, you know, if they have food and they're not getting beaten and they're not seeing mommy all bruised up and cut up then to them, Hey, we're doing good.

1 (10m 57s):
And they don't have time to think about once. And so I think a lot of society is like that. I think a lot of society is, you know, punch the clock, not think about possibility, not think about, you know, what could my life be, but you know, I'm just going to keep doing my routine. I'm going to keep showing up, even if I'm not happy with it. And so for me, I wanted to spread the possibility of, of time, money, freedom of being able to do what you want when you want. And, and so that's, that's how we came to it.

0 (11m 26s):
Fire your nation. I mean, what an impactful story. I mean, I love the reality of how Ray came to those three words. And when we get back from the break, when we talking about 10 rules that will transform your life, we may not get to all 10. That's what the books for obviously, but we're going to be getting to a couple of those. When we get back from thanking our sponsors, are you ready to take control of your business's branding, but don't have a design background. Great news fire BrandCrowd can help. BrandCrowd is a logo maker tool that helps you create an amazing logo design online. How do they do it using high-quality hand-crafted designs, BrandCrowd, take your business name and industry and generates thousands of custom logos just for you and seconds.

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0 (13m 32s):
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1 (14m 10s):
One of the biggest rules that we've gotten feedback from since we, since we launched this book is a rule number two, which is called pluck your weeds. Now I think some people in the self-development space, they hear that and think, oh, get rid of the negative people in my life, which you know, Hey, that could be part of it, but it's bigger than that. Pluck your weeds means that you identify who is it that you want to be. And how do you want to show up in life in your family, in your relationships, in your business or whatever. And you decide what areas are not with who I want to be.

1 (14m 53s):
And so I'll share a personal example. My wife and I were on a couple of different boards for different charities, usually. Well, they're all around kids. So whether we're raising money for the Golisano children's hospital or the March of dimes and the NICU, or with our foster care endeavors, but we're, we're on this charity board and we're at a charity auction. And one of our neighbors, our ex neighbors, I should say, came up to us and said, Hey, did you see the Belize trip? And all of these trips are being auctioned for charity, right? So it's a good cause. And we're like, no, you know, what's, what's the Billy's trip.

1 (15m 34s):
And she says, oh man, it's amazing. It's, you know, it's five couples only. It's a private jet on a private island, private chef, you board, a private yacht, like everything's like, you know, private, private. And my wife is like, oh my God, whoa, like she's blown away. She's super excited. Me. I'm terrified. And I think this sounds like the worst idea ever. And I, I don't, I don't, I don't voice it cause I don't want to be that guy. But inside I like get anxiety. I like get stressed out and I'm like, what the hell is going on here? And so driving home, I figure, you know, part of my brain is, you know what, we, we probably won't win that auction.

1 (16m 19s):
So no big deal. But the bigger part is what's wrong with me? Why did I react that way? And that is not congruent with who I want to be. I want to be the most amazing husband ever. I want to be, you know, someone who recognizes something cool. Cause I know that I should be excited about it, but I, I was, I didn't like it. It just caused me stress. And so I decided to pluck that wheat. Now this is a little different, but I worked with one of my performance coaches, a gentleman named Elliot RO, who is amazing. I don't know if you've had him on your show, but he's amazing. And he's a hypnotist.

1 (16m 58s):
He coaches some of the top players in the MMA, some of the top players in the UFC and, and the world series of poker, believe it or not. And so I asked him, I'm like, Hey, I'd like to dive into this. Why did that stress me the heck out? And he put me in a hypnosis session and he brought me to a part of my life that I actually didn't even remember, which was when I was in third grade, when I was in the third grade, I had a teacher that knew something wasn't right. You know, I was, you know, coming, you know, coming to school with, you know, bruises and, you know, wearing a turtleneck. Cause I had scratches on my neck and you know, different things and she knew that something was wrong.

1 (17m 40s):
And one day she says, Hey, I'd like you to meet with the guidance counselor. And I'm like, okay, I don't know what's going on. I'm like, okay, fine. And so that guidance counselor started me questions and you know, we would meet every week and she would ask me different questions and you know, I really started to trust her and it felt good because I wasn't able to talk to anybody. You know, I didn't have many friends, I wasn't allowed to go over to people's houses. And so I shared with her, I shared with her some of the things that were going on at home and you know, most of them not very nice, you know, one time when I wasn't feeling good, I got sick in my oatmeal.

1 (18m 21s):
And when I refused to eat it after my step-mom was trying to make me, she stabbed me in the chest. And so, you know, not the greatest, not the greatest times. Right. And so I share these things with the guidance counselor. And one day I show up to our weekly meeting and you know, I always felt good after our meeting. So I'm looking forward to it. And I walk into the meeting and I opened the door and there sets my dad and my step-mom and the guidance counselor. And she proceeds to tell them every single thing I've ever told her because she simply thought they were too outrageous to be true and thought that I was just needing more attention looking back.

1 (19m 5s):
I know she meant, well, I know, you know, that, that had to be the reason I have to think that way, but that was a really, really bad day. And that was the day in third grade that Ray Higdon stopped trusting anybody. And I mean anybody, so, you know, John, like, you know, you and I, we might speak at an event, but you want to talk personally, I'm going to dip to my room and it's not because I'm better than you. It's not because I have some big ego it's actually, because I, I had in my subconscious that if I get close to someone and I start to trust them, they're going to betray me. They're going to hurt me. And so my trepidation about this amazing Belize trip was I'm going to have to spend five days with people and I won't be able to escape and I'll have to let them in and trust them.

1 (19m 56s):
And so that was the humongous weed that I plucked. And, and so I just don't, now that I understand the, the machine behind the habit, I no longer have that anxiety. I'm, I'm no longer the guy that goes to my wife, Hey, you ready to leave? When we're at a party, I'm no longer the guy that tries to talk her out of going to parties. I've actually completely changed that part of my personality because I took the time to study it and pluck that weed,

0 (20m 26s):
Pluck your weeds. What a story, Fire Nation. I know a lot of you are resonating with that in different ways. You know, we all have different stories in our past and you're resonating with that in a different way than I am and that somebody else may be listening as well. But at the same time, the message is coming through pluck your weeds. And that's just one Fire Nation of 10 rules that will transform your life. So instead of going into another one, Ray, let's just really end with a bang right here. Talk to us about what you really want Fire Nation to know about everything that we've talked about here today, about why time, money, freedom needs to be on their 2021 reading list.

0 (21m 8s):
And then we'll say goodbye,

1 (21m 10s):
You know, the final chapter. And I won't do an overview, but I'll just give the title here is make an impact. And I'll tell you real quick story. We, you know, we ran a reality show called play to win, and we did two seasons of it. CNBC looked at it, didn't pick it up. That's okay. Maybe in the future. And, but there was several amazing things that came out of it. And one of them was a, a lady named Renee Adams and Renee Adams. She was in our season. One of played a win and she had, let's see, never done a video, never spoken in public, never shared her story.

1 (21m 51s):
Renee opened up, you know, we created the environment for people to open up. She opened up and she shared that she had been a victim of physical abuse, sexual abuse, and even trafficking as a kid, she had been in and out of foster homes. She had had a foster parents abandoned her, which is just sounds crazy. And literally, if you can think of a bad thing to happen to a kid, she had that. And, but she'd never shared it. She was embarrassed. She was shameful. And you know, she'd never shared it. And here she was, you know, I don't know her exact age, but maybe early, you know, late forties, early fifties. And so I told her after love and honoring and giving her condolences and everything.

1 (22m 32s):
And we talk about her in the book. I said, listen, you know, you have the opportunity to inspire a lot of people. There's a lot of people out there that have, haven't gone through half the stuff you have that are depressed, your story would inspire them to keep going and inspired them to play bigger. And I say that a lot, some people take it. Some people don't, well, the next week she was speaking at a center for abused women, sharing her story had never shared her story publicly. And then just about eight months ago, she spoke at the 17th annual international conference against human trafficking for the university of Toledo and shared her story in front of 19 countries.

1 (23m 16s):
And so I say that because, you know, if you've been through trauma, if you've been through some tough stuff, I really see it as your responsibility to go out there and share that story and impact other people that aren't as strong as you, that are contemplating suicide that are depressed that have let it ruin their entire life. And so, you know, that's one of the reasons I share some of my tough stuff, you know, we didn't really get into business much, but there is a lot of in the actual book of making money and you know, what we did to generate over $30 million online from losing it all in the real estate crash and being in foreclosure. So we do share that stuff, but the, the big messages, Hey, you know, just because at one point, you know, you were broken doesn't mean you have to stay that way.

1 (24m 6s):
You can inspire a lot of people. And I hope that you

0 (24m 8s):
Do. I liked that way of putting it, that you have a responsibility that you have an obligation to share because you just don't know how it's going to positively impact other people. I mean, you know, thinking back in 2012, when this really, yes, clueless, immature naive podcast host named John Lee Dumas launched a podcast, stuttering around interviewing, you know, some unbelievably successful entrepreneurs. I then get emails literally later that year of people saying this podcast saved my life and it wasn't like, I was great. I was actually not great. I was bad, but it was because I was bringing people on there. We're telling stories.

0 (24m 48s):
And those stories were impacting the right people at the right time. I was just a conduit. I was just hosting the platform and to get those emails and being like, what if I hadn't launched this podcast? And it's like, literally was a question of mine. And so you never know Fire Nation, the impact you're going to have. And that was in year one now. I mean, you, 10, 3000 episodes, a hundred million listens. So you never, never know. So Ray, take us home. How can Fire Nation pick up this book? Where do you want them to go? Anything else before we say goodbye? Yeah.

1 (25m 17s):
And we, you know, we have it on Kindle and audible in our voices. And of course the physical copy on Amazon, the easiest is TMFbook.com stands obviously for time, money, freedom, book.com. So TMFbook.com. And you know, sometimes, you know, a group leader or a, you know, someone who has a close circle of people wants to buy multiple copies. We do have bonuses and cool stuff on there, if that's you. And, but it's at TMFbook.com. And John, thank you for inspiring me to start my podcast so many years ago and just appreciate all that you do.

1 (25m 60s):
I

0 (25m 60s):
Love it. And this, that ripple effect Fire Nation. It literally never ends when it starts TMFbook.com. That's TMFbook.com. Fire Nation are the average of the five people you spend the most time with in hello. You've been hanging out with RH and JLD today. So let's keep up that heat head over to eofire.com type array in the search bar. This is not the first episode of Entrepreneurs On Fire he's been on. So listen to the other ones. They were all immensely valuable. And Ray, thank you brother, for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value bombs with Fire Nation today, for that we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Thanks so much.

0 (26m 40s):
Hey, Fire Nation today's value bomb content was brought to by Ray. And if you're ready to rock your own podcast, check out my free podcasting course, where I teach you how to create and launch your podcast for free. FreePodcastCourse.com. I will catch you there, or I'll catch you on the flip side. Are you ready to launch your biz, Fire Nation? Well, today's sponsor LaunchMyBiz.com wants to help you get there. LaunchMyBiz provides end to end e-commerce training and support. And if you're accepted into their partner program, your success is guaranteed. Apply today at LaunchMyBiz.com that's launch my B I z.com.