June 9, 2025 • 43 mins
In today’s #podcast interview, I interview Dr. Travis Parry. I ask Travis about his books and approach to finances from a family perspective. I also ask Travis about business and leadership. Travis also shares with you what it means to have balance in your life.
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(00:00):
Thanks for joining us on episode 1547 of the Inspired Stewardship
Podcast. I'm Dr.
Travis Perry.
I challenge you to invest in yourself,
invest in others,
develop your influence and impact the world by using your time,
your talent and your treasures to live out your calling.
Having the ability to grow your business without sacrificing your health
(00:22):
and relationships is key.
And one way to be inspired to do that is to
listen to this the Inspired Stewardship Podcast with my friend Scott
Mater. My dissertation,
I Won't Bore Everybody is essentially looking at couples who were
(00:45):
on the same page values wise.
If they had shared values,
then I found that they were happier psychologically,
they had better marital satisfaction and they had stronger financial status
stability. Welcome and thank you for joining us on the Inspired
Stewardship Podcast.
If you truly desire to become the person who God wants
(01:07):
you to be,
then you must learn to use your time,
your talent and your treasures for your true calling.
In the Inspired Stewardship Podcast,
you will learn to invest in yourself,
invest in others,
and develop your influence so that you can impact the world.
(01:33):
In today's podcast interview,
I interview Dr.
Travis Perry.
I asked Travis about his books and his approach to finances
from a family perspective.
I also asked Travis about business and leadership and Travis also
shares with you what it means to have balance in your
life. I have a great book that's been out for a
while now called Inspired Assemble the Puzzle of youf Calling by
(01:56):
Mastering youg Time,
your Talent and you'd Treasures.
You can find out more about that book over@inspiredlivingbook.com
it'll take you to a page where there's information and you
can sign up to get some mailings about it as well
as purchase a copy there.
I'd love to see you get a copy and share with
me how it is impacted your world.
(02:18):
Dr. Travis Perry is the number one best selling author of
Achieving Balance and Marry and Grow Rich.
He's earned a Master's in psychology and a PhD in family
relations to better understand finances from a psychological and family perspective.
Travis is the founder of the Make Time Institute and has
helped thousands of business owners and couples in all 50 states
(02:40):
achieve their financial goals.
He is an international speaker and the podcast host of the
Balanced Growth Show.
However, his greatest accomplishment in life is becoming the husband to
his beautiful and talented wife of 22 years and a father
to their eight amazing children.
Welcome to the show,
Travis. Hey,
thanks for having me,
Scott. Absolutely.
(03:00):
So it's great to have you and I shared a little
bit in the intro about some of the work You've done
the books,
you've got out your newest one,
marry and grow rich.
Some of the work you do around productivity.
And we've talked a couple of times before,
we've got a lot in common on how we see things.
So I'm really excited to have you in here and hear
some of how you present and achieve the things that you
(03:25):
like to achieve with your folks and your clients.
But before we go there,
intros are like the highlight reel of our life,
and they never really tell the whole story.
So back up a little bit and unpack for us a
little bit of your journey and what brought you to the
point of focusing on the work that you do around.
Around time,
around marriage,
(03:45):
around productivity,
around balance,
and all of these things.
Of course,
yeah, back up a little bit.
I wanted to become a financial advisor because I saw the
unlimited potential to help people and also earn a great living
as I was working as a financial advisor.
My father,
who I was very close to,
was age 49.
(04:06):
We were planning his surprise 50th birthday party two weeks before
that. I got a.
Like, just a ton of phone calls from everyone in my
family. And I had it on silent.
Cause I was in a meeting and all these things.
And then my wife got ahold of me and said,
trav, your dad is having cardiac arrest.
And in my mind,
like, cardiac arrest?
What is it?
Oh, heart attack.
(04:27):
Ah. My dad,
he rides hundreds of miles a week on his road bike.
He's on his mountain bike.
He's fine.
I'm sure it was just one of these things that they're
gonna go check him out.
But what I didn't know is he'd already passed away.
He was already was basically dead on arrival at the hospital
after the helicopter flight and after his friend had worked on
him for 30 minutes plus doing CPR.
(04:49):
And it just rocked my world.
I was not prepared.
Nobody in our family was prepared for this.
My dad was healthy.
There was no signs of anything.
And sure enough,
after the autopsy found out that the.
My father died of the widowmaker,
or essentially buildup in the plaque,
a plaque in the arteries that doctors didn't know even existed.
And it normally doesn't show up.
(05:10):
The first sign is typically heart attack or death.
And in this case,
it was both.
And so after my father's passing,
yes, there was the mourning,
there's the grieving.
And quite honestly,
we still grieve his passing every year,
Christmas time,
holidays, birthdays,
et cetera,
and miss him.
My faith has kept me strong,
knowing I'll see My dad again.
And I believe that families will be reunited.
(05:32):
But at the same time,
it's still hard when you're going through those situations.
And what it did for me is after about four years
of being a financial planner and financial advisor,
my very first death claim was my own father.
So I had to go and call the life insurance company,
get the deposit,
help my mom pay off her home,
pay off debts,
(05:54):
get things situated with the attorneys,
with the CPAs,
with taxes.
I spent a good two years helping my mom clean up
and really move to the next phase of her life.
And it gave me a whole different perspective.
And some people say,
well, Travis,
you're going to be a financial planner.
That's going to be awesome.
All this experience is going to help you.
And yes,
(06:15):
but it so rocked my world that I really asked God,
what am I supposed to be doing this?
Am I supposed to be on this path?
Is there something that I need to do to change?
And I did a lot of soul searching.
And I remember it's out in the garden because that's where
everything happens when you're like trimming the bushes or mowing the
lawn. And if you got some time to think,
(06:36):
I was ripping out all these bushes.
And the thought really came,
you need to go back to school.
You need to change and go sideways on your career.
And I was like,
why? You never get all the dots.
The dots never connect until the end.
You just don't.
You get one step closer to something like,
oh, okay,
maybe that's why.
Oh, maybe not.
And you keep moving.
And I found that through this process of exploration,
(06:59):
after I thought I knew where I was going,
I went back to school,
did a psychology,
a master's degree in psychology and Then eventually a PhD in
family relations to really understand stress.
So my dad died of a stress related heart attack,
but also understand motivation and goals and what it is that
we're all motivated by.
(07:19):
And I found that this coincided with so many business owners
who are dealing with a boatload of stress.
And while I was helping them with their money and money
stress is a real thing,
it's one of the major causes and of problems in families
and couples and things.
I didn't understand the psychological components and now I had those
(07:42):
tools. So I started to coach and I started to go
back to similar clients and say,
hey, I've helped with financial stuff.
Let me help you with the psychological related things related and
family related things to money.
And I really started to feel like this was the calling.
And I got on stages,
I wrote several Books now about it.
(08:04):
Did a dissertation all around these topics and ideas.
And I have a podcast really,
to help business owners who are so burnt out,
who are dealing with a ton of stress,
to really save their life.
And the reason why,
the real reason,
Scott, is I couldn't save my dad.
I didn't know that he was ailing,
(08:25):
but I can save other dads from having this ending to
be to die prematurely.
Now, one thing as a caveat,
My dad did live his life intentionally,
with purpose.
He was phenomenal.
He was a great father and the best father I could
have ever dreamed of.
We had a phenomenal relationship.
I know not everybody has that gift.
(08:46):
I did and I was given that.
And so that makes me want to be an amazing dad
and be such a good husband and share that and be
an example of what he was to me.
But what I felt my calling is to really help dads
and families around all these topics of staying balanced,
being healthy,
and reaching your financial goals.
(09:08):
And when you talk about balance and healthy and financial goals
for you,
what does that look like?
So not necessarily for your clients.
I literally mean for you personally.
What do you look at as success and balance and that
in your life?
Yeah. So in my book Marry and Grow Rich,
I talk about this,
(09:29):
which you can get at mariangrowrichbook.com,
but at the very beginning,
I actually say that I've researched with about 1500 business owners.
Now it's close to 1600.
I do podcasts,
I do book interviews.
My team actually scours the Internet for those who fit these
molds. And we interview them and we get this research,
(09:49):
and we found that there are really three types of business
owners. They're all trying to have what I define as balance,
as a psychological sense of balance.
It's not an equilibrium of time.
It's not 50 here and 50 there or even thirds here.
No, it is a more of understanding what your priorities are.
(10:10):
So what I define as balance and what I've seen with
in the research and with so many individuals now,
is it's a psychological feeling of balance.
And how that's accomplished is by putting your priorities in order.
We always hear this,
oh, you got his priorities in order.
What does that actually mean?
So in my first book,
Achieving Balance,
I actually break that down and say,
(10:31):
this is how you do it.
This is the logical step.
Because I did it when I was struggling to know what
I should be doing in life.
And God helped me realize that once you uncover what your
values are,
what you truly are going to become someday,
What God wants you to become.
Then you systematically say,
what's the most important one?
For me,
it's relationship with God.
(10:53):
Second is my physical health.
Third is my relationship with my spouse.
Fourth is relationship with family.
Fifth is my business.
Business is not number one.
And I've done this from stage God.
I've asked people,
I've done quizzes and assessments,
and most people have their spiritual or physical health at the
top and their relationship with spouse and family somewhere the top
(11:16):
two or three.
So knowing that most people's top priorities are not their business,
it's not even the money that comes in from that business,
but it is all these relationships,
the health and relationship aspect,
of course,
that's related.
But when they make time for those priorities,
they feel balanced.
(11:36):
So back to these 1500 we've researched.
A lot of business owners don't think they can have balance
and grow their business.
And I would help them get to a sense of balance
and then they would tell me,
this is really nice,
but how do I sustain this long term in.
I found that there are really three types of business owners.
The first one,
type one,
they're actually afraid to grow their business because they think they'll
(12:00):
lose that balance that they have.
Maybe they're pretty healthy,
maybe they have great relationships and they're able to spend some
time doing some quality things with their loved ones.
But they lack the growth of the business,
which, interestingly enough,
if you grow the business,
you can actually step away more and you have more freedom
and balance.
Right? So there's a fear factor there.
(12:20):
The second is they're afraid that this type 2 entrepreneur,
they're actually afraid that if they focus on balance,
they won't grow their business.
Okay? And so they say,
forget balance.
They throw balance out the window.
And then while I do believe their work life balance is
the wrong term.
And it's not a 50 50.
(12:40):
They say,
no, there's no such thing as balance at all.
Which is incorrect.
It's not true.
They rewrite it as well.
It's work life harmony or integration or it doesn't matter.
The term they call it,
it's still not the appropriate understanding of what psychological balance.
They're not going to have major stress because they're making time
for the things that are most important.
So these guys,
what the unfortunate problem here,
(13:02):
Scott, is that the.
A lot of these type 2,
they get caught up in addiction,
they get caught up in workaholism,
and then they work more when they're stressed,
and then they work more when they're Successful because it's addictive,
highly addictive.
And I talk about all.
My first book,
Achieving Balance,
I won't go into that,
but essentially they're stuck,
and they're never able really to get out of this workaholic
(13:25):
trap alone.
And so I do a lot of help there.
The type 3,
this is where everybody actually wants to be.
This is why we got into business.
We want time,
freedom. We want financial freedom.
We want freedom just in general.
Okay. We don't want to pay a ton of taxes.
We want to leverage all these assets that we have,
and we want to be there with our family.
And so what's interesting is those that actually I found that
(13:46):
were in these type 3 categories,
they all tell me this.
My wife was the key.
These are mostly men,
so my spouse is the key.
I'm like,
how do you mean?
It's because of the support of my spouse that I was
able to have balance while I grew my business.
And that is the whole crux of the balanced growth framework.
That is the whole piece that if couples can work together
(14:08):
and be on the same team financially,
they can grow a business and they can have the time,
freedom long term,
have that balance long term,
stay healthy,
have great relationships throughout the rest of their life.
And what's interesting is when they have great balance,
it actually helps the business grow.
And when the business grows,
they have more balance and freedom.
(14:28):
It's a cycle.
So there's definitely some things there I want to unpack as
well. But before I go there,
one of the things I like to highlight on the show,
and you've mentioned it already a little bit as you talked
about discovering your calling is the intersection between our faith and
our spiritual walk and our life journey.
And I think it's related,
at least for those of us of faith,
(14:49):
it should be related to our sense of balance and harmony,
belonging and all of those things.
For you,
how has your faith journey affected your life journey?
Vice versa?
Yeah. So,
Scott, for me,
spiritual health,
relationship with God isn't part of my journey.
It is the journey.
It is the most important aspect of my life.
(15:09):
And I don't say this because I'm trying to appeal to
people of faith or turn people who aren't of faith away.
I'm saying this because this is my number one priority.
And the way that I like to roll this out is,
what is your number one priority?
What is it that,
you know,
motivates you the most?
And for me,
having my dad die,
knowing that assuming Grandpa always tells me what assume stands for,
(15:33):
but assuming that he was in perfect health absolutely blew me
away. There is no describing this.
I was distraught for a very long time.
Unconsolable. My wife couldn't even give me a hug for two
weeks. I was just devastated.
When I awoke from this coma and I started to come
back to myself.
(15:55):
I went and got tests done.
I wanted them to test my heart.
I wanted them to test my brain.
I wanted to test everything that we could figure out,
like, what is related to this,
how's stress and stroke.
And that's why I started going on that health journey.
But also,
once I realized,
okay, I'm actually doing pretty good,
but I can make some changes,
we started making some of those health changes.
I realized,
(16:15):
what is this all for?
What is the real purpose?
Yes, I believe in God,
but do I believe God?
I have faith in God,
but do I have faith that he has faith in me?
That I have something to contribute to this world?
What is that?
Is it being a good dad?
(16:35):
Yeah, it is.
Is it being a great husband?
Yeah. And I had some things I needed to make changes
on, big changes.
And I started to.
My wife and I,
we could talk about that whole journey as a separate episode
or something.
But that's when the changes started to take place.
That's when the deep work really began.
So I'll tell you all that because my spiritual outlook,
knowing that one day it could be tomorrow,
(16:57):
it could be today,
if I step out of this realm into the next,
and I meet God face to face,
which I believe I will,
I want him to say,
well done now,
good and faithful servant.
I want him to be pleased in me.
And I think we have this idea sometimes that we have
to be perfect,
or perfect means whole.
(17:19):
It means complete,
the Hebrew word of this.
So for me,
if I've completed my mission on Earth,
that is Christ like,
it is what God wants us to do.
I believe.
And so I wanted to figure out what is my actual
mission? What is it that I'm supposed to accomplish here?
How do I do that?
(17:39):
Then those are all the things I'll figure out.
Simon talks about find your why.
It's the same thing.
What's your mission?
And now I'm on a mission to help other business owners
figure out what is their actual mission in life,
not just business,
but it is part of it.
And now I feel like when those two are connected,
now that I've figured out what mine is,
how I help others to do the same.
(18:00):
So you mentioned the Balanced Growth framework earlier.
Go ahead and unpack that a little bit for the listener.
What is the focus of that?
What is the approach that you take when you talk about
that? Yeah,
thank you for bringing that up.
So what I've discovered is in my first book,
Achieving Balance,
it was all about what are your values?
How do you use your time wisely and really work toward
(18:22):
kind of achieving the goals to become better?
That was the whole spiritual awakening and which works amazing.
But what I found is it's.
It was a short term approach when I could start involving
the spouse with my clients and the spouse was on board
on working together to develop together.
(18:43):
Then I saw long term success with these clients.
And my dissertation,
I Won't Bore Everybody,
is essentially looking at couples who were on the same page,
values wise.
If they had shared values,
then I found that they were happier psychologically,
they had better marital satisfaction and they had stronger financial stability.
(19:06):
It was all related,
money, happiness and relationships because they were on the same team.
Now that doesn't mean that you can't have your individualistic ideals
and goals.
No, it means you support each other,
but it also means you have shared goals and you have
a shared vision.
If you can follow that,
you can accomplish anything.
In my opinion,
you can accomplish anything.
You're on the same page.
(19:26):
It's when you're not.
So the growth part of this is how does that work
to grow the business?
Then being on the same page financially with your spouse is
key to then being able to grow that business.
Those type ones we talked about earlier who are afraid once
we get the couple on the same page,
they can rest easy knowing that,
hey, no matter what happens as we grow,
(19:47):
we're going to stay solid,
we're going to keep working,
we're going to not stress out,
we're going to support each other.
And there's ups and downs.
As a business owner,
we just know this.
So the growth part happens really.
They're together as a couple.
You grow together.
Something that I call coupled development.
Personal development is great that it's a $54 billion industry and
(20:07):
maybe some people consider me part of that,
but really it's based on 1940s research of Maslow,
who said at the very top of the most important in
life is self actualization.
It's actually not true.
1940s research was disproven finally in 2010 by a bunch of
psychologists. They said no at the top,
it's not self actualization,
it's parenting and marriage.
(20:29):
What? These are psychologists,
These weren't family people.
And they basically are saying that they're not seeing self actualization.
So the whole personal development field,
Tony Robbins,
Jim Rohn,
all these guys I've worked with for years and years have
been following that self actualization,
this personal development track,
which is good but better and even best is being on
(20:52):
the same page with your spouse and working together towards couple
development. So that's how you grow together.
The last piece of that was then how do you grow
the business?
As a lot of people that I work with that are
business owners,
they think they actually are business owners,
but really they own a business.
And that is a distinction that I need to make and
(21:13):
I make it in my book,
Marry and Grow Rich.
I like to look at a soccer field as the analogy
here, Scott.
With soccer,
you've got an offense and you have a defense.
I played soccer.
A lot of people understand the concept.
Even if you play football,
you have an offensive defense.
You're just not on the field at the same time.
But looking at this,
in business,
you have marketing and sales,
basic offense,
(21:34):
okay? In on defense,
you have fulfillment and operations,
all right?
You can't really win the game without a defense.
You're going to get scored on and you can't win a
game without a offense because you'll never score.
You just tie,
right? As good as you can get.
So you need both.
But in business the same way,
unfortunately, with a lot of business owners,
they're actually running around playing every position.
(21:55):
They're doing marketing,
they're doing sales,
they're doing fulfillment,
they're doing operations.
Even if they have people that help them,
they're still so involved.
If you want to grow the business,
if you really want to 10x your business,
you have to get off the field completely.
So step one is you get really good at something,
get really great at sales and delegate everything else,
get really good at the fulfillment,
(22:16):
delegate everything else,
and then you get off the field through thought leadership.
If you want to become a thought leader in the industry,
you write a book,
you do podcasting,
you speak,
you get on podcasts,
you get on media.
Like, you have to be the face and the voice of
the company that really drives the revenue this way.
(22:37):
It is what has brought me off the field writing my
very first book.
I wish I would have done it 10 years prior to
that. It would have made all the world of difference.
Getting on podcasts.
Second one.
And then on keynote stages,
third. And quite honestly,
this will grow your business more than anything else because you,
you now have the time to put energy into growing the
(23:00):
systems on place so you can spend 10% of your time
managing Training those teams that are now your sales team,
your marketing team,
your fulfillment team,
your operations team,
you can invest in them because you're CEO.
Growing the business from the other way.
Eventually if you want to really just become the business owner,
(23:22):
you can hire a CEO,
you can step away and you can own the business on
paper, which will allow you to leverage it,
it'll allow you to sell it.
And a lot of business owners I work with,
they want to leverage or sell the business so they can
invest in other businesses and business stack and really take it
to the next level.
But most of the business owners I'm talking to,
(23:43):
they're still on the field in some respect.
They still can't let go.
It's a control thing,
it's a fear thing and it can be solved with systems
and great thought leadership.
And one of the things I've seen because of that,
using especially family owned businesses,
it's one of the reasons that all the studies will show
you that most family owned businesses don't last three generations.
(24:05):
You know,
by the third generation they're closed.
It's because the founder stayed in the game too long on
the field and never really developed the systems,
the processes,
the people,
the, even the other family members in a way that allowed
them to run it.
And so it just falls apart.
Exactly right.
Only 13% make it to 30.
(24:26):
Yeah. Yep.
And I was,
I'm living proof.
I was supposed to take over the family business and I
went off to college and I'm gonna do my own thing
because there wasn't a path,
there wasn't any of this set up.
So they're not to their detriment,
they were great construction minded individuals that they didn't really understand
this family business concept and how it can go to the
(24:47):
next generation.
So it died after second gen.
But it's like you're talking about,
it's, it is the difference in mindset between,
you know,
owning a business and being a business owner.
There, there is a difference in those two things and it's
a mental difference,
it's a framework difference,
it's a thinking difference much more than any sort of quote,
literal difference.
But you have to change your thinking or else you can't
(25:09):
change what you're doing.
Exactly. It's it change your thoughts to change your actions is
usually it.
So earlier you mentioned talking about priority order and people putting
their priorities in order.
I think a lot of times people are in those times
where especially as business owners,
we're just dealing with the urgent,
(25:30):
everything that is flying at them.
Their daily purity of the urgent.
Yep, it's on fire right now.
I've got to put it out.
You know that that's it.
That's as far as they can think about priority.
So you help them step back from that because they're not
wrong. It is on fire.
A lot of times it's because they're still on the field.
That's it.
(25:51):
Because they're trying to control everything,
and therefore there's no real priority.
So one of the very first things that I do with
my clients is,
and I talk about this in my book Achieving Balance,
that was more of the time management book,
is we figure out what's your most important priorities at work,
find the four or five most important activities,
and that doesn't mean they're the most valued for the company
(26:13):
or dollar per hour.
Value it.
I have a system that is a game play this prioritization
game, and it's a combination of all those things.
What's the value?
What do you like doing?
Because you could be doing stuff that is really high value,
but if you hate it,
you actually will avoid it and you'll never get done.
And this is why a lot of people stress themselves.
(26:34):
I'm not supposed to do this.
I'm supposed to.
But if you don't like doing it,
then delegate it.
Get someone else that loves that.
I don't like doing bookkeeping.
I don't do the bookkeeping.
It's not because I can hire that out for $20,
because I probably could.
I pay for that because I don't enjoy spending my time
(26:54):
looking at debits and credits.
I did that in accounting 200,
and that was not my exciting journey.
But some people love that.
That is what they're made for.
Don't spend your time doing that when you should be public
speaking. Public speaking is my number one most important activity.
So I consider being on podcasts is that that's what I
do. I'm the thought leader for the company.
(27:16):
So if that's my number one,
then I'm going to be spending most of my time there.
What most business owners I find are struggling with this is
they feel like everything's on fire.
They don't have a prioritization.
They don't have a game plan.
They have a marketing plan.
They call that their business plan.
It's a marketing plan.
It's how to grow it.
But what do you do when you actually have clients?
How do you manage employees?
(27:37):
Ugh. So it's because they don't have what I call their
work. Sweet spot identified.
When you have your top five most important activities and you
spend 80 to 90%,
think of Pareto Principal.
Spend 80 to 90% of your time there,
then everything else will work itself out.
And then everything else you either automate.
Because we can automate a lot of things these days.
(27:59):
Automate, delegate to a human,
to another team member to outsource or delete.
Automate, delegate,
delete. And if you follow that process and you can step
away off the field very quickly,
because now that process has allowed you to figure out,
what am I really good at?
(28:19):
Oh, I'm marketer,
I'm the fulfillment,
or I'm sales,
or I'm the operations person.
Fine. If that's where you're at,
knock yourself out.
But eventually,
with the saved time we save.
Easy, easy.
75% of most of what I see in business owners are
spent are wasting their time in things that are less than
(28:40):
that five priorities,
that sweet spot.
So they're wasting a good three quarters of their day on
things that have lesser priority.
I'm not saying they're wasting it completely,
but they're just down below.
And when we can flip that script,
it's incredible how much time they don't need to be working.
And if they can just be spending 25% of time working
on the top priorities now they have all this saved time
(29:02):
to invest into their life or take a bit of that
and say,
let's work on thought leadership now.
Let's start to change this direction so that we can 10x
the business.
So what are some of the.
Somebody's hearing all of this and they're thinking to themselves,
this all sounds wonderful,
but where do I start?
You know,
I. This seems insurmountable.
(29:24):
This seems like a too big of an idea.
Yeah. What are some of the either quick tips or first
steps that,
that you want them to start thinking about or working on
to just even make the smallest step towards beginning that journey.
Yeah. So when I mentioned earlier about couple development,
that really is the number one most important principle.
(29:46):
But that's not usually where I start.
What I help people understand,
especially business owners,
is they need to work on their own limiting blocks.
What are their fears?
What's keeping them from being a type three?
Okay. Because most who are struggling right now and they're feeling
that stress,
they're either type two or type one right now.
Okay. And that's not a personality.
(30:06):
That's not a lifetime permanent diagnosis.
No, this is tendencies.
This is where you're at right now.
This is business cycle.
Whatever you want to call it,
but the reason why you're stuck there is you.
And once you own that and realize I'm the reason why
this business is stuck here,
then you can start moving forward.
But you've got to understand what the subconscious mind is doing.
(30:28):
It's trying to protect you from harm.
It's trying to protect you from taking undue risk and killing
yourself because you know you're valuable to yourself,
your family,
the world around you.
And that's understandable,
but it also doesn't serve you if you were meant for
something greater and you're stuck at something lower.
(30:49):
God wants you to be successful.
God wants you to be who he designed you to be.
He wants you to achieve your mission in life,
whatever that is.
And I'm not saying everybody needs to be a public speaker.
I'm not.
But it is one way to grow the business as a
business owner,
to be able to speak and understand and bring those thoughts.
And. But.
But what I really am focusing on is that if you
(31:11):
can get past those limiting beliefs,
those fears,
there's psychological blocks that are stuck.
The great thing is we're born with just a couple of
fears that are ingrained,
which means everything else has been learned.
So what I have is I have a process of going
back and unlearning those things and relearning new ways to program
the brain to get past these blocks and create new thoughts
(31:35):
and habits that will eventually allow you to move forward.
Because once you start taking action,
then you can get rid of the fear and the subconscious
mind gets reprogrammed.
Oh, this is new normal.
Okay, this is now.
I want it to be normal now.
And you start to train the subconscious.
So that's step one.
Step two is then get on the same page financially with
your spouse.
So once you're out of the way,
(31:55):
once you're stopped worrying about your own fears,
then now the two of you can say,
where are our values about money?
And what do I fear about money?
What do you fear about money?
What are you excited about?
Let's talk about these relationships that we have with money.
If you can get past your limiting blocks and fears first,
then getting on the same page is a lot easier.
(32:19):
And then third is to make an effort to become a
thought leader so that you can get off that field.
So teamwork at home with your spouse and teamwork at work
to really get you off the field.
And quite honestly,
sometimes the issues at work are who you have on the
field with you.
Maybe they don't want you to get off the field because
(32:41):
they're afraid.
Ooh, I don't want to take that over.
Or, ooh,
no, I need to text you every day about every single
question I have.
Maybe they're not the right ones to have on the field
or they need more education or training,
then you can address that.
But this needs to be a team effort on.
In the business as well as at home.
So I go that way.
Individual, first couple,
(33:01):
and then start to work on growing the business with your
team as a thought leader.
Absolutely. So I've got a few questions that I like to
ask all of my guests.
But before I ask you those,
Travis, is there anything else that you'd like to share with
the listener?
I'd say trust.
Trust your gut.
I know that's so general,
(33:22):
and people say this,
but what I really mean is,
follow what God's telling you to do.
Okay? It never goes wrong.
I'm giving you frameworks,
I'm giving you experience.
I'm giving you philosophy and statistics and research.
That's fine.
That's great.
But above all,
if you pray to God and he tells you to do
something very specific and you know you need to do it,
(33:45):
have the courage to do it.
Faith is action.
And that's honestly,
if you take nothing away,
then just that principle from today,
take action.
It's okay to do it scared.
Everybody does that.
Scared. But they realize that is fear.
And then they can conquer it.
And once you conquer one thing,
God will use you for the next thing,
(34:06):
and the next thing,
and the next thing.
Some of us,
we really want,
oh, I want to win the lottery.
I want.
Well, maybe if you're not prepared to have $200 million all
at once.
Have you ever thought about that?
Maybe you're not ready for this huge opportunity yet because you
need to be molded so that when that opportunity comes along,
you're ready and it doesn't destroy you.
(34:28):
And so I say follow that.
Follow your gut and be.
Be fearless.
Learn to use courage to.
To tackle the fears that you have.
So my brand is inspired stewardship,
and I run things through that lens of stewardship.
Yet I've discovered over the years that's one of those words
that can mean a lot of different things to a lot
of different people.
(34:49):
So for you,
what does the word stewardship mean to you?
Again, back to our responsibilities and really back to God.
I believe that we're stewards of this earth.
We're stewards of our bodies,
we're stewards of our time,
and we're stewards of our money.
Anything that truly doesn't belong to us,
(35:10):
which is everything really that we're given in life,
is a stewardship.
And we will be responsible to report on that stewardship someday.
So for me,
if I look at money,
I do think the best way to look at money is
as a stewardship.
We're going to come into this world,
we'll use it,
we'll earn it,
we'll get taxed on it.
(35:31):
A lot of things will happen as we grow our businesses
and things.
But to me,
it really matters what type of person I've become through the
use of it.
How have I used this to further the mission that I
am supposed to carry out?
How am I helping other people and not saying that stewardship
means you give all of your money away,
(35:53):
because quite honestly,
if you're giving all your money away,
you're giving it to non profits or other,
let's say political organizations or whatever.
Now they have that stewardship.
So a lot of times that's unfortunately some of that misunderstanding
is that.
And a great book that I've read about,
this is the Family bank by John Nebuchadnezzar Kerr.
He talks all about this financial stewardship.
(36:14):
In my first book,
Achieving Balance,
I talk all about your time as a stewardship.
It truly is.
Our greatest asset is our time.
And we don't know when that hourglass is gonna be up.
And like my dad,
it could be very sudden or it could be like,
hey, we have a diagnosis and you've got X amount of
time to live and then know what you're doing.
(36:35):
But. But for most of us,
we won't know until we get there.
So how are you using that time?
How are you using that dash in between the years of
your birth and death?
And then secondly is the time the stewardship of our family
and our own health.
I could go on.
All areas of life truly are a stewardship.
But it's our responsibility to use,
to make better and to really leave this world a better
(36:58):
place. So this is my favorite question that I like to
ask everybody.
Imagine for a moment that I invented this magic machine.
And with this machine I could take you from where you
are today and transport you into the future,
maybe 150,
maybe 200.
And through the power of this machine,
you were able to look back and see your entire life,
(37:18):
see all of the connections,
see all of the ripples,
see all of the impacts you've left.
What impact do you hope you've left in the world?
Positive one.
Just in general,
as I went through figuring out what My calling and mission
in life is.
And I identify this in achieving balance.
I was very logical about this.
I identified 10 areas of life that I thought everybody has
(37:40):
their wheel of life kind of areas of life,
you know what they are.
And I identified them for me and I use them with
my clients.
But I looked back on each one and I cared more
about what is it that I became in each of these
areas. Because what happened is I wrote my dad's obituary.
I've never written an obituary before.
(38:01):
I was 25,
I knew a little bit about the world and I was
thrust into this because nobody wanted to do it.
And I was like,
fine, I'll do it.
It. As I sat down and I was trying to tell
the story of my dad's life,
I just.
Man, that took hours.
It just took hours and hours.
And I cried and I grieved and it was a very
(38:23):
life changing experience because what I realized is someday somebody's going
to read something like this for me.
And what did I want to be told about me?
And. Oh,
that's where I started,
Scott. When I went back home,
I was in California,
went back home to Utah.
We were living in northern Utah,
(38:45):
in Provo,
and I was just finishing up school and I sat down
and I pulled out my journal and I wrote two pages
of what I thought God wanted me to be in all
these areas.
And I call these values.
These are the characteristics that principles that guide my life.
They're more important than goals,
they're more important in achieving.
(39:05):
But it is like who I've become.
And so I've kept that in the back of my mind.
And that's what's driven change in me,
is to be there.
But I really hope that over everything else that I do,
that people see me as a man of faith,
a man of courage,
a family man,
someone who is energetic and lively and very healthy and fit.
(39:30):
Someone who cared about his family,
his children and his wife,
and loved them and was loyal to them.
And then with my business,
that people can look to me as a wise but also
honest person and help them to achieve their mission in life.
Now I could go on in all the other areas.
I've got it all defined,
but those are the most important ones in my life as
(39:53):
I look back.
And I honestly think those are all stewardships,
as we've mentioned,
and God will ask me to report on them.
And I hope to have become that person that I have
envisioned for now almost 20 years.
So what's on the roadmap?
What's coming Next for you as you to continue on this
journey. Yeah.
So the release of Marry and Grow Rich is happening right
(40:13):
now. You can get it@mariangrowrichbook.com
and you can follow my podcast at Balance Growth Show.
You can look that up.
You can go to my website,
maketimeinstitute. Com.
You can find details on achieving balance being grow Rich.
But I've got another book in me,
Scott, and I will be.
I'm working on that with a business partner yet to,
yet to really announce that yet.
(40:35):
But it really.
Book one is really all about the individual,
your individual values.
Book two is shared values as a couple.
Book three will be more about how do you then get
these values help your family,
these family values,
family mission,
family goals,
even family money methodologies so that what you've created in your
(40:56):
own life can live on as a legacy to the second,
third, fourth generation.
So I'm excited.
That's the next project.
Getting out on the in the podcast tour for the book
and then getting on stages to talk about this is really
the short term.
But the long term,
I'm always looking ahead.
What's the next book?
Oh, what's the next thing it's part of?
(41:17):
You gotta have a trilogy,
right? You gotta have a trilogy if you want to be
effective. And that's what I'm looking at down the road.
So you can find out more about Dr.
Travis Perry over at his website,
travisperry.com I'll have a link to that along with the Make
Time Institute,
his podcast,
the Balanced Growth show,
and the Marian Grow Rich book over in the show notes
(41:38):
as well.
Travis, anything else you'd like to share with the listener?
You know,
I think I've said enough today on fear and courage,
but I can't re emphasize that enough that but one last
thing. That God loves you and he wants you to be
successful. And honestly,
if I could say anything other than that,
it would just be that God does love you and he
(42:00):
wants you to achieve your mission in life and to have
faith that he has faith in you.
Thanks so much for listening to the Inspired Stewardship podcast.
As a spirit subscriber and listener,
we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen,
(42:21):
but act on what you've heard and find a way to
live your calling.
If you enjoyed this episode,
please, please do us a favor.
Go over to inspired stewardship.com
iTunes Rate all one word iTunes Rate.
(42:42):
It'll take you through how to leave a rating and review
and how to make sure you're subscribed.
To the podcast so that you can get every episode as
it comes out in your feed.
Until next time,
invest your time,
your talent,
and your treasures.
Develop your influence and impact the world.
Thanks for joining us on episode 1547 of the Inspired Stewardship
Podcast. I'm Dr.
Travis Perry.
I challenge you to invest in yourself,
invest in others,
develop your influence and impact the world by using your time,
your talent and your treasures to live out your calling.
Having the ability to grow your business without sacrificing your health
(00:22):
and relationships is key.
And one way to be inspired to do that is to
listen to this the Inspired Stewardship Podcast with my friend Scott
Mater. My dissertation,
I Won't Bore Everybody is essentially looking at couples who were
(00:45):
on the same page values wise.
If they had shared values,
then I found that they were happier psychologically,
they had better marital satisfaction and they had stronger financial status
stability. Welcome and thank you for joining us on the Inspired
Stewardship Podcast.
If you truly desire to become the person who God wants
(01:07):
you to be,
then you must learn to use your time,
your talent and your treasures for your true calling.
In the Inspired Stewardship Podcast,
you will learn to invest in yourself,
invest in others,
and develop your influence so that you can impact the world.
(01:33):
In today's podcast interview,
I interview Dr.
Travis Perry.
I asked Travis about his books and his approach to finances
from a family perspective.
I also asked Travis about business and leadership and Travis also
shares with you what it means to have balance in your
life. I have a great book that's been out for a
while now called Inspired Assemble the Puzzle of youf Calling by
(01:56):
Mastering youg Time,
your Talent and you'd Treasures.
You can find out more about that book over@inspiredlivingbook.com
it'll take you to a page where there's information and you
can sign up to get some mailings about it as well
as purchase a copy there.
I'd love to see you get a copy and share with
me how it is impacted your world.
(02:18):
Dr. Travis Perry is the number one best selling author of
Achieving Balance and Marry and Grow Rich.
He's earned a Master's in psychology and a PhD in family
relations to better understand finances from a psychological and family perspective.
Travis is the founder of the Make Time Institute and has
helped thousands of business owners and couples in all 50 states
(02:40):
achieve their financial goals.
He is an international speaker and the podcast host of the
Balanced Growth Show.
However, his greatest accomplishment in life is becoming the husband to
his beautiful and talented wife of 22 years and a father
to their eight amazing children.
Welcome to the show,
Travis. Hey,
thanks for having me,
Scott. Absolutely.
(03:00):
So it's great to have you and I shared a little
bit in the intro about some of the work You've done
the books,
you've got out your newest one,
marry and grow rich.
Some of the work you do around productivity.
And we've talked a couple of times before,
we've got a lot in common on how we see things.
So I'm really excited to have you in here and hear
some of how you present and achieve the things that you
(03:25):
like to achieve with your folks and your clients.
But before we go there,
intros are like the highlight reel of our life,
and they never really tell the whole story.
So back up a little bit and unpack for us a
little bit of your journey and what brought you to the
point of focusing on the work that you do around.
Around time,
around marriage,
(03:45):
around productivity,
around balance,
and all of these things.
Of course,
yeah, back up a little bit.
I wanted to become a financial advisor because I saw the
unlimited potential to help people and also earn a great living
as I was working as a financial advisor.
My father,
who I was very close to,
was age 49.
(04:06):
We were planning his surprise 50th birthday party two weeks before
that. I got a.
Like, just a ton of phone calls from everyone in my
family. And I had it on silent.
Cause I was in a meeting and all these things.
And then my wife got ahold of me and said,
trav, your dad is having cardiac arrest.
And in my mind,
like, cardiac arrest?
What is it?
Oh, heart attack.
(04:27):
Ah. My dad,
he rides hundreds of miles a week on his road bike.
He's on his mountain bike.
He's fine.
I'm sure it was just one of these things that they're
gonna go check him out.
But what I didn't know is he'd already passed away.
He was already was basically dead on arrival at the hospital
after the helicopter flight and after his friend had worked on
him for 30 minutes plus doing CPR.
(04:49):
And it just rocked my world.
I was not prepared.
Nobody in our family was prepared for this.
My dad was healthy.
There was no signs of anything.
And sure enough,
after the autopsy found out that the.
My father died of the widowmaker,
or essentially buildup in the plaque,
a plaque in the arteries that doctors didn't know even existed.
And it normally doesn't show up.
(05:10):
The first sign is typically heart attack or death.
And in this case,
it was both.
And so after my father's passing,
yes, there was the mourning,
there's the grieving.
And quite honestly,
we still grieve his passing every year,
Christmas time,
holidays, birthdays,
et cetera,
and miss him.
My faith has kept me strong,
knowing I'll see My dad again.
And I believe that families will be reunited.
(05:32):
But at the same time,
it's still hard when you're going through those situations.
And what it did for me is after about four years
of being a financial planner and financial advisor,
my very first death claim was my own father.
So I had to go and call the life insurance company,
get the deposit,
help my mom pay off her home,
pay off debts,
(05:54):
get things situated with the attorneys,
with the CPAs,
with taxes.
I spent a good two years helping my mom clean up
and really move to the next phase of her life.
And it gave me a whole different perspective.
And some people say,
well, Travis,
you're going to be a financial planner.
That's going to be awesome.
All this experience is going to help you.
And yes,
(06:15):
but it so rocked my world that I really asked God,
what am I supposed to be doing this?
Am I supposed to be on this path?
Is there something that I need to do to change?
And I did a lot of soul searching.
And I remember it's out in the garden because that's where
everything happens when you're like trimming the bushes or mowing the
lawn. And if you got some time to think,
(06:36):
I was ripping out all these bushes.
And the thought really came,
you need to go back to school.
You need to change and go sideways on your career.
And I was like,
why? You never get all the dots.
The dots never connect until the end.
You just don't.
You get one step closer to something like,
oh, okay,
maybe that's why.
Oh, maybe not.
And you keep moving.
And I found that through this process of exploration,
(06:59):
after I thought I knew where I was going,
I went back to school,
did a psychology,
a master's degree in psychology and Then eventually a PhD in
family relations to really understand stress.
So my dad died of a stress related heart attack,
but also understand motivation and goals and what it is that
we're all motivated by.
(07:19):
And I found that this coincided with so many business owners
who are dealing with a boatload of stress.
And while I was helping them with their money and money
stress is a real thing,
it's one of the major causes and of problems in families
and couples and things.
I didn't understand the psychological components and now I had those
(07:42):
tools. So I started to coach and I started to go
back to similar clients and say,
hey, I've helped with financial stuff.
Let me help you with the psychological related things related and
family related things to money.
And I really started to feel like this was the calling.
And I got on stages,
I wrote several Books now about it.
(08:04):
Did a dissertation all around these topics and ideas.
And I have a podcast really,
to help business owners who are so burnt out,
who are dealing with a ton of stress,
to really save their life.
And the reason why,
the real reason,
Scott, is I couldn't save my dad.
I didn't know that he was ailing,
(08:25):
but I can save other dads from having this ending to
be to die prematurely.
Now, one thing as a caveat,
My dad did live his life intentionally,
with purpose.
He was phenomenal.
He was a great father and the best father I could
have ever dreamed of.
We had a phenomenal relationship.
I know not everybody has that gift.
(08:46):
I did and I was given that.
And so that makes me want to be an amazing dad
and be such a good husband and share that and be
an example of what he was to me.
But what I felt my calling is to really help dads
and families around all these topics of staying balanced,
being healthy,
and reaching your financial goals.
(09:08):
And when you talk about balance and healthy and financial goals
for you,
what does that look like?
So not necessarily for your clients.
I literally mean for you personally.
What do you look at as success and balance and that
in your life?
Yeah. So in my book Marry and Grow Rich,
I talk about this,
(09:29):
which you can get at mariangrowrichbook.com,
but at the very beginning,
I actually say that I've researched with about 1500 business owners.
Now it's close to 1600.
I do podcasts,
I do book interviews.
My team actually scours the Internet for those who fit these
molds. And we interview them and we get this research,
(09:49):
and we found that there are really three types of business
owners. They're all trying to have what I define as balance,
as a psychological sense of balance.
It's not an equilibrium of time.
It's not 50 here and 50 there or even thirds here.
No, it is a more of understanding what your priorities are.
(10:10):
So what I define as balance and what I've seen with
in the research and with so many individuals now,
is it's a psychological feeling of balance.
And how that's accomplished is by putting your priorities in order.
We always hear this,
oh, you got his priorities in order.
What does that actually mean?
So in my first book,
Achieving Balance,
I actually break that down and say,
(10:31):
this is how you do it.
This is the logical step.
Because I did it when I was struggling to know what
I should be doing in life.
And God helped me realize that once you uncover what your
values are,
what you truly are going to become someday,
What God wants you to become.
Then you systematically say,
what's the most important one?
For me,
it's relationship with God.
(10:53):
Second is my physical health.
Third is my relationship with my spouse.
Fourth is relationship with family.
Fifth is my business.
Business is not number one.
And I've done this from stage God.
I've asked people,
I've done quizzes and assessments,
and most people have their spiritual or physical health at the
top and their relationship with spouse and family somewhere the top
(11:16):
two or three.
So knowing that most people's top priorities are not their business,
it's not even the money that comes in from that business,
but it is all these relationships,
the health and relationship aspect,
of course,
that's related.
But when they make time for those priorities,
they feel balanced.
(11:36):
So back to these 1500 we've researched.
A lot of business owners don't think they can have balance
and grow their business.
And I would help them get to a sense of balance
and then they would tell me,
this is really nice,
but how do I sustain this long term in.
I found that there are really three types of business owners.
The first one,
type one,
they're actually afraid to grow their business because they think they'll
(12:00):
lose that balance that they have.
Maybe they're pretty healthy,
maybe they have great relationships and they're able to spend some
time doing some quality things with their loved ones.
But they lack the growth of the business,
which, interestingly enough,
if you grow the business,
you can actually step away more and you have more freedom
and balance.
Right? So there's a fear factor there.
(12:20):
The second is they're afraid that this type 2 entrepreneur,
they're actually afraid that if they focus on balance,
they won't grow their business.
Okay? And so they say,
forget balance.
They throw balance out the window.
And then while I do believe their work life balance is
the wrong term.
And it's not a 50 50.
(12:40):
They say,
no, there's no such thing as balance at all.
Which is incorrect.
It's not true.
They rewrite it as well.
It's work life harmony or integration or it doesn't matter.
The term they call it,
it's still not the appropriate understanding of what psychological balance.
They're not going to have major stress because they're making time
for the things that are most important.
So these guys,
what the unfortunate problem here,
(13:02):
Scott, is that the.
A lot of these type 2,
they get caught up in addiction,
they get caught up in workaholism,
and then they work more when they're stressed,
and then they work more when they're Successful because it's addictive,
highly addictive.
And I talk about all.
My first book,
Achieving Balance,
I won't go into that,
but essentially they're stuck,
and they're never able really to get out of this workaholic
(13:25):
trap alone.
And so I do a lot of help there.
The type 3,
this is where everybody actually wants to be.
This is why we got into business.
We want time,
freedom. We want financial freedom.
We want freedom just in general.
Okay. We don't want to pay a ton of taxes.
We want to leverage all these assets that we have,
and we want to be there with our family.
And so what's interesting is those that actually I found that
(13:46):
were in these type 3 categories,
they all tell me this.
My wife was the key.
These are mostly men,
so my spouse is the key.
I'm like,
how do you mean?
It's because of the support of my spouse that I was
able to have balance while I grew my business.
And that is the whole crux of the balanced growth framework.
That is the whole piece that if couples can work together
(14:08):
and be on the same team financially,
they can grow a business and they can have the time,
freedom long term,
have that balance long term,
stay healthy,
have great relationships throughout the rest of their life.
And what's interesting is when they have great balance,
it actually helps the business grow.
And when the business grows,
they have more balance and freedom.
(14:28):
It's a cycle.
So there's definitely some things there I want to unpack as
well. But before I go there,
one of the things I like to highlight on the show,
and you've mentioned it already a little bit as you talked
about discovering your calling is the intersection between our faith and
our spiritual walk and our life journey.
And I think it's related,
at least for those of us of faith,
(14:49):
it should be related to our sense of balance and harmony,
belonging and all of those things.
For you,
how has your faith journey affected your life journey?
Vice versa?
Yeah. So,
Scott, for me,
spiritual health,
relationship with God isn't part of my journey.
It is the journey.
It is the most important aspect of my life.
(15:09):
And I don't say this because I'm trying to appeal to
people of faith or turn people who aren't of faith away.
I'm saying this because this is my number one priority.
And the way that I like to roll this out is,
what is your number one priority?
What is it that,
you know,
motivates you the most?
And for me,
having my dad die,
knowing that assuming Grandpa always tells me what assume stands for,
(15:33):
but assuming that he was in perfect health absolutely blew me
away. There is no describing this.
I was distraught for a very long time.
Unconsolable. My wife couldn't even give me a hug for two
weeks. I was just devastated.
When I awoke from this coma and I started to come
back to myself.
(15:55):
I went and got tests done.
I wanted them to test my heart.
I wanted them to test my brain.
I wanted to test everything that we could figure out,
like, what is related to this,
how's stress and stroke.
And that's why I started going on that health journey.
But also,
once I realized,
okay, I'm actually doing pretty good,
but I can make some changes,
we started making some of those health changes.
I realized,
(16:15):
what is this all for?
What is the real purpose?
Yes, I believe in God,
but do I believe God?
I have faith in God,
but do I have faith that he has faith in me?
That I have something to contribute to this world?
What is that?
Is it being a good dad?
(16:35):
Yeah, it is.
Is it being a great husband?
Yeah. And I had some things I needed to make changes
on, big changes.
And I started to.
My wife and I,
we could talk about that whole journey as a separate episode
or something.
But that's when the changes started to take place.
That's when the deep work really began.
So I'll tell you all that because my spiritual outlook,
knowing that one day it could be tomorrow,
(16:57):
it could be today,
if I step out of this realm into the next,
and I meet God face to face,
which I believe I will,
I want him to say,
well done now,
good and faithful servant.
I want him to be pleased in me.
And I think we have this idea sometimes that we have
to be perfect,
or perfect means whole.
(17:19):
It means complete,
the Hebrew word of this.
So for me,
if I've completed my mission on Earth,
that is Christ like,
it is what God wants us to do.
I believe.
And so I wanted to figure out what is my actual
mission? What is it that I'm supposed to accomplish here?
How do I do that?
(17:39):
Then those are all the things I'll figure out.
Simon talks about find your why.
It's the same thing.
What's your mission?
And now I'm on a mission to help other business owners
figure out what is their actual mission in life,
not just business,
but it is part of it.
And now I feel like when those two are connected,
now that I've figured out what mine is,
how I help others to do the same.
(18:00):
So you mentioned the Balanced Growth framework earlier.
Go ahead and unpack that a little bit for the listener.
What is the focus of that?
What is the approach that you take when you talk about
that? Yeah,
thank you for bringing that up.
So what I've discovered is in my first book,
Achieving Balance,
it was all about what are your values?
How do you use your time wisely and really work toward
(18:22):
kind of achieving the goals to become better?
That was the whole spiritual awakening and which works amazing.
But what I found is it's.
It was a short term approach when I could start involving
the spouse with my clients and the spouse was on board
on working together to develop together.
(18:43):
Then I saw long term success with these clients.
And my dissertation,
I Won't Bore Everybody,
is essentially looking at couples who were on the same page,
values wise.
If they had shared values,
then I found that they were happier psychologically,
they had better marital satisfaction and they had stronger financial stability.
(19:06):
It was all related,
money, happiness and relationships because they were on the same team.
Now that doesn't mean that you can't have your individualistic ideals
and goals.
No, it means you support each other,
but it also means you have shared goals and you have
a shared vision.
If you can follow that,
you can accomplish anything.
In my opinion,
you can accomplish anything.
You're on the same page.
(19:26):
It's when you're not.
So the growth part of this is how does that work
to grow the business?
Then being on the same page financially with your spouse is
key to then being able to grow that business.
Those type ones we talked about earlier who are afraid once
we get the couple on the same page,
they can rest easy knowing that,
hey, no matter what happens as we grow,
(19:47):
we're going to stay solid,
we're going to keep working,
we're going to not stress out,
we're going to support each other.
And there's ups and downs.
As a business owner,
we just know this.
So the growth part happens really.
They're together as a couple.
You grow together.
Something that I call coupled development.
Personal development is great that it's a $54 billion industry and
(20:07):
maybe some people consider me part of that,
but really it's based on 1940s research of Maslow,
who said at the very top of the most important in
life is self actualization.
It's actually not true.
1940s research was disproven finally in 2010 by a bunch of
psychologists. They said no at the top,
it's not self actualization,
it's parenting and marriage.
(20:29):
What? These are psychologists,
These weren't family people.
And they basically are saying that they're not seeing self actualization.
So the whole personal development field,
Tony Robbins,
Jim Rohn,
all these guys I've worked with for years and years have
been following that self actualization,
this personal development track,
which is good but better and even best is being on
(20:52):
the same page with your spouse and working together towards couple
development. So that's how you grow together.
The last piece of that was then how do you grow
the business?
As a lot of people that I work with that are
business owners,
they think they actually are business owners,
but really they own a business.
And that is a distinction that I need to make and
(21:13):
I make it in my book,
Marry and Grow Rich.
I like to look at a soccer field as the analogy
here, Scott.
With soccer,
you've got an offense and you have a defense.
I played soccer.
A lot of people understand the concept.
Even if you play football,
you have an offensive defense.
You're just not on the field at the same time.
But looking at this,
in business,
you have marketing and sales,
basic offense,
(21:34):
okay? In on defense,
you have fulfillment and operations,
all right?
You can't really win the game without a defense.
You're going to get scored on and you can't win a
game without a offense because you'll never score.
You just tie,
right? As good as you can get.
So you need both.
But in business the same way,
unfortunately, with a lot of business owners,
they're actually running around playing every position.
(21:55):
They're doing marketing,
they're doing sales,
they're doing fulfillment,
they're doing operations.
Even if they have people that help them,
they're still so involved.
If you want to grow the business,
if you really want to 10x your business,
you have to get off the field completely.
So step one is you get really good at something,
get really great at sales and delegate everything else,
get really good at the fulfillment,
(22:16):
delegate everything else,
and then you get off the field through thought leadership.
If you want to become a thought leader in the industry,
you write a book,
you do podcasting,
you speak,
you get on podcasts,
you get on media.
Like, you have to be the face and the voice of
the company that really drives the revenue this way.
(22:37):
It is what has brought me off the field writing my
very first book.
I wish I would have done it 10 years prior to
that. It would have made all the world of difference.
Getting on podcasts.
Second one.
And then on keynote stages,
third. And quite honestly,
this will grow your business more than anything else because you,
you now have the time to put energy into growing the
(23:00):
systems on place so you can spend 10% of your time
managing Training those teams that are now your sales team,
your marketing team,
your fulfillment team,
your operations team,
you can invest in them because you're CEO.
Growing the business from the other way.
Eventually if you want to really just become the business owner,
(23:22):
you can hire a CEO,
you can step away and you can own the business on
paper, which will allow you to leverage it,
it'll allow you to sell it.
And a lot of business owners I work with,
they want to leverage or sell the business so they can
invest in other businesses and business stack and really take it
to the next level.
But most of the business owners I'm talking to,
(23:43):
they're still on the field in some respect.
They still can't let go.
It's a control thing,
it's a fear thing and it can be solved with systems
and great thought leadership.
And one of the things I've seen because of that,
using especially family owned businesses,
it's one of the reasons that all the studies will show
you that most family owned businesses don't last three generations.
(24:05):
You know,
by the third generation they're closed.
It's because the founder stayed in the game too long on
the field and never really developed the systems,
the processes,
the people,
the, even the other family members in a way that allowed
them to run it.
And so it just falls apart.
Exactly right.
Only 13% make it to 30.
(24:26):
Yeah. Yep.
And I was,
I'm living proof.
I was supposed to take over the family business and I
went off to college and I'm gonna do my own thing
because there wasn't a path,
there wasn't any of this set up.
So they're not to their detriment,
they were great construction minded individuals that they didn't really understand
this family business concept and how it can go to the
(24:47):
next generation.
So it died after second gen.
But it's like you're talking about,
it's, it is the difference in mindset between,
you know,
owning a business and being a business owner.
There, there is a difference in those two things and it's
a mental difference,
it's a framework difference,
it's a thinking difference much more than any sort of quote,
literal difference.
But you have to change your thinking or else you can't
(25:09):
change what you're doing.
Exactly. It's it change your thoughts to change your actions is
usually it.
So earlier you mentioned talking about priority order and people putting
their priorities in order.
I think a lot of times people are in those times
where especially as business owners,
we're just dealing with the urgent,
(25:30):
everything that is flying at them.
Their daily purity of the urgent.
Yep, it's on fire right now.
I've got to put it out.
You know that that's it.
That's as far as they can think about priority.
So you help them step back from that because they're not
wrong. It is on fire.
A lot of times it's because they're still on the field.
That's it.
(25:51):
Because they're trying to control everything,
and therefore there's no real priority.
So one of the very first things that I do with
my clients is,
and I talk about this in my book Achieving Balance,
that was more of the time management book,
is we figure out what's your most important priorities at work,
find the four or five most important activities,
and that doesn't mean they're the most valued for the company
(26:13):
or dollar per hour.
Value it.
I have a system that is a game play this prioritization
game, and it's a combination of all those things.
What's the value?
What do you like doing?
Because you could be doing stuff that is really high value,
but if you hate it,
you actually will avoid it and you'll never get done.
And this is why a lot of people stress themselves.
(26:34):
I'm not supposed to do this.
I'm supposed to.
But if you don't like doing it,
then delegate it.
Get someone else that loves that.
I don't like doing bookkeeping.
I don't do the bookkeeping.
It's not because I can hire that out for $20,
because I probably could.
I pay for that because I don't enjoy spending my time
(26:54):
looking at debits and credits.
I did that in accounting 200,
and that was not my exciting journey.
But some people love that.
That is what they're made for.
Don't spend your time doing that when you should be public
speaking. Public speaking is my number one most important activity.
So I consider being on podcasts is that that's what I
do. I'm the thought leader for the company.
(27:16):
So if that's my number one,
then I'm going to be spending most of my time there.
What most business owners I find are struggling with this is
they feel like everything's on fire.
They don't have a prioritization.
They don't have a game plan.
They have a marketing plan.
They call that their business plan.
It's a marketing plan.
It's how to grow it.
But what do you do when you actually have clients?
How do you manage employees?
(27:37):
Ugh. So it's because they don't have what I call their
work. Sweet spot identified.
When you have your top five most important activities and you
spend 80 to 90%,
think of Pareto Principal.
Spend 80 to 90% of your time there,
then everything else will work itself out.
And then everything else you either automate.
Because we can automate a lot of things these days.
(27:59):
Automate, delegate to a human,
to another team member to outsource or delete.
Automate, delegate,
delete. And if you follow that process and you can step
away off the field very quickly,
because now that process has allowed you to figure out,
what am I really good at?
(28:19):
Oh, I'm marketer,
I'm the fulfillment,
or I'm sales,
or I'm the operations person.
Fine. If that's where you're at,
knock yourself out.
But eventually,
with the saved time we save.
Easy, easy.
75% of most of what I see in business owners are
spent are wasting their time in things that are less than
(28:40):
that five priorities,
that sweet spot.
So they're wasting a good three quarters of their day on
things that have lesser priority.
I'm not saying they're wasting it completely,
but they're just down below.
And when we can flip that script,
it's incredible how much time they don't need to be working.
And if they can just be spending 25% of time working
on the top priorities now they have all this saved time
(29:02):
to invest into their life or take a bit of that
and say,
let's work on thought leadership now.
Let's start to change this direction so that we can 10x
the business.
So what are some of the.
Somebody's hearing all of this and they're thinking to themselves,
this all sounds wonderful,
but where do I start?
You know,
I. This seems insurmountable.
(29:24):
This seems like a too big of an idea.
Yeah. What are some of the either quick tips or first
steps that,
that you want them to start thinking about or working on
to just even make the smallest step towards beginning that journey.
Yeah. So when I mentioned earlier about couple development,
that really is the number one most important principle.
(29:46):
But that's not usually where I start.
What I help people understand,
especially business owners,
is they need to work on their own limiting blocks.
What are their fears?
What's keeping them from being a type three?
Okay. Because most who are struggling right now and they're feeling
that stress,
they're either type two or type one right now.
Okay. And that's not a personality.
(30:06):
That's not a lifetime permanent diagnosis.
No, this is tendencies.
This is where you're at right now.
This is business cycle.
Whatever you want to call it,
but the reason why you're stuck there is you.
And once you own that and realize I'm the reason why
this business is stuck here,
then you can start moving forward.
But you've got to understand what the subconscious mind is doing.
(30:28):
It's trying to protect you from harm.
It's trying to protect you from taking undue risk and killing
yourself because you know you're valuable to yourself,
your family,
the world around you.
And that's understandable,
but it also doesn't serve you if you were meant for
something greater and you're stuck at something lower.
(30:49):
God wants you to be successful.
God wants you to be who he designed you to be.
He wants you to achieve your mission in life,
whatever that is.
And I'm not saying everybody needs to be a public speaker.
I'm not.
But it is one way to grow the business as a
business owner,
to be able to speak and understand and bring those thoughts.
And. But.
But what I really am focusing on is that if you
(31:11):
can get past those limiting beliefs,
those fears,
there's psychological blocks that are stuck.
The great thing is we're born with just a couple of
fears that are ingrained,
which means everything else has been learned.
So what I have is I have a process of going
back and unlearning those things and relearning new ways to program
the brain to get past these blocks and create new thoughts
(31:35):
and habits that will eventually allow you to move forward.
Because once you start taking action,
then you can get rid of the fear and the subconscious
mind gets reprogrammed.
Oh, this is new normal.
Okay, this is now.
I want it to be normal now.
And you start to train the subconscious.
So that's step one.
Step two is then get on the same page financially with
your spouse.
So once you're out of the way,
(31:55):
once you're stopped worrying about your own fears,
then now the two of you can say,
where are our values about money?
And what do I fear about money?
What do you fear about money?
What are you excited about?
Let's talk about these relationships that we have with money.
If you can get past your limiting blocks and fears first,
then getting on the same page is a lot easier.
(32:19):
And then third is to make an effort to become a
thought leader so that you can get off that field.
So teamwork at home with your spouse and teamwork at work
to really get you off the field.
And quite honestly,
sometimes the issues at work are who you have on the
field with you.
Maybe they don't want you to get off the field because
(32:41):
they're afraid.
Ooh, I don't want to take that over.
Or, ooh,
no, I need to text you every day about every single
question I have.
Maybe they're not the right ones to have on the field
or they need more education or training,
then you can address that.
But this needs to be a team effort on.
In the business as well as at home.
So I go that way.
Individual, first couple,
(33:01):
and then start to work on growing the business with your
team as a thought leader.
Absolutely. So I've got a few questions that I like to
ask all of my guests.
But before I ask you those,
Travis, is there anything else that you'd like to share with
the listener?
I'd say trust.
Trust your gut.
I know that's so general,
(33:22):
and people say this,
but what I really mean is,
follow what God's telling you to do.
Okay? It never goes wrong.
I'm giving you frameworks,
I'm giving you experience.
I'm giving you philosophy and statistics and research.
That's fine.
That's great.
But above all,
if you pray to God and he tells you to do
something very specific and you know you need to do it,
(33:45):
have the courage to do it.
Faith is action.
And that's honestly,
if you take nothing away,
then just that principle from today,
take action.
It's okay to do it scared.
Everybody does that.
Scared. But they realize that is fear.
And then they can conquer it.
And once you conquer one thing,
God will use you for the next thing,
(34:06):
and the next thing,
and the next thing.
Some of us,
we really want,
oh, I want to win the lottery.
I want.
Well, maybe if you're not prepared to have $200 million all
at once.
Have you ever thought about that?
Maybe you're not ready for this huge opportunity yet because you
need to be molded so that when that opportunity comes along,
you're ready and it doesn't destroy you.
(34:28):
And so I say follow that.
Follow your gut and be.
Be fearless.
Learn to use courage to.
To tackle the fears that you have.
So my brand is inspired stewardship,
and I run things through that lens of stewardship.
Yet I've discovered over the years that's one of those words
that can mean a lot of different things to a lot
of different people.
(34:49):
So for you,
what does the word stewardship mean to you?
Again, back to our responsibilities and really back to God.
I believe that we're stewards of this earth.
We're stewards of our bodies,
we're stewards of our time,
and we're stewards of our money.
Anything that truly doesn't belong to us,
(35:10):
which is everything really that we're given in life,
is a stewardship.
And we will be responsible to report on that stewardship someday.
So for me,
if I look at money,
I do think the best way to look at money is
as a stewardship.
We're going to come into this world,
we'll use it,
we'll earn it,
we'll get taxed on it.
(35:31):
A lot of things will happen as we grow our businesses
and things.
But to me,
it really matters what type of person I've become through the
use of it.
How have I used this to further the mission that I
am supposed to carry out?
How am I helping other people and not saying that stewardship
means you give all of your money away,
(35:53):
because quite honestly,
if you're giving all your money away,
you're giving it to non profits or other,
let's say political organizations or whatever.
Now they have that stewardship.
So a lot of times that's unfortunately some of that misunderstanding
is that.
And a great book that I've read about,
this is the Family bank by John Nebuchadnezzar Kerr.
He talks all about this financial stewardship.
(36:14):
In my first book,
Achieving Balance,
I talk all about your time as a stewardship.
It truly is.
Our greatest asset is our time.
And we don't know when that hourglass is gonna be up.
And like my dad,
it could be very sudden or it could be like,
hey, we have a diagnosis and you've got X amount of
time to live and then know what you're doing.
(36:35):
But. But for most of us,
we won't know until we get there.
So how are you using that time?
How are you using that dash in between the years of
your birth and death?
And then secondly is the time the stewardship of our family
and our own health.
I could go on.
All areas of life truly are a stewardship.
But it's our responsibility to use,
to make better and to really leave this world a better
(36:58):
place. So this is my favorite question that I like to
ask everybody.
Imagine for a moment that I invented this magic machine.
And with this machine I could take you from where you
are today and transport you into the future,
maybe 150,
maybe 200.
And through the power of this machine,
you were able to look back and see your entire life,
(37:18):
see all of the connections,
see all of the ripples,
see all of the impacts you've left.
What impact do you hope you've left in the world?
Positive one.
Just in general,
as I went through figuring out what My calling and mission
in life is.
And I identify this in achieving balance.
I was very logical about this.
I identified 10 areas of life that I thought everybody has
(37:40):
their wheel of life kind of areas of life,
you know what they are.
And I identified them for me and I use them with
my clients.
But I looked back on each one and I cared more
about what is it that I became in each of these
areas. Because what happened is I wrote my dad's obituary.
I've never written an obituary before.
(38:01):
I was 25,
I knew a little bit about the world and I was
thrust into this because nobody wanted to do it.
And I was like,
fine, I'll do it.
It. As I sat down and I was trying to tell
the story of my dad's life,
I just.
Man, that took hours.
It just took hours and hours.
And I cried and I grieved and it was a very
(38:23):
life changing experience because what I realized is someday somebody's going
to read something like this for me.
And what did I want to be told about me?
And. Oh,
that's where I started,
Scott. When I went back home,
I was in California,
went back home to Utah.
We were living in northern Utah,
(38:45):
in Provo,
and I was just finishing up school and I sat down
and I pulled out my journal and I wrote two pages
of what I thought God wanted me to be in all
these areas.
And I call these values.
These are the characteristics that principles that guide my life.
They're more important than goals,
they're more important in achieving.
(39:05):
But it is like who I've become.
And so I've kept that in the back of my mind.
And that's what's driven change in me,
is to be there.
But I really hope that over everything else that I do,
that people see me as a man of faith,
a man of courage,
a family man,
someone who is energetic and lively and very healthy and fit.
(39:30):
Someone who cared about his family,
his children and his wife,
and loved them and was loyal to them.
And then with my business,
that people can look to me as a wise but also
honest person and help them to achieve their mission in life.
Now I could go on in all the other areas.
I've got it all defined,
but those are the most important ones in my life as
(39:53):
I look back.
And I honestly think those are all stewardships,
as we've mentioned,
and God will ask me to report on them.
And I hope to have become that person that I have
envisioned for now almost 20 years.
So what's on the roadmap?
What's coming Next for you as you to continue on this
journey. Yeah.
So the release of Marry and Grow Rich is happening right
(40:13):
now. You can get it@mariangrowrichbook.com
and you can follow my podcast at Balance Growth Show.
You can look that up.
You can go to my website,
maketimeinstitute. Com.
You can find details on achieving balance being grow Rich.
But I've got another book in me,
Scott, and I will be.
I'm working on that with a business partner yet to,
yet to really announce that yet.
(40:35):
But it really.
Book one is really all about the individual,
your individual values.
Book two is shared values as a couple.
Book three will be more about how do you then get
these values help your family,
these family values,
family mission,
family goals,
even family money methodologies so that what you've created in your
(40:56):
own life can live on as a legacy to the second,
third, fourth generation.
So I'm excited.
That's the next project.
Getting out on the in the podcast tour for the book
and then getting on stages to talk about this is really
the short term.
But the long term,
I'm always looking ahead.
What's the next book?
Oh, what's the next thing it's part of?
(41:17):
You gotta have a trilogy,
right? You gotta have a trilogy if you want to be
effective. And that's what I'm looking at down the road.
So you can find out more about Dr.
Travis Perry over at his website,
travisperry.com I'll have a link to that along with the Make
Time Institute,
his podcast,
the Balanced Growth show,
and the Marian Grow Rich book over in the show notes
(41:38):
as well.
Travis, anything else you'd like to share with the listener?
You know,
I think I've said enough today on fear and courage,
but I can't re emphasize that enough that but one last
thing. That God loves you and he wants you to be
successful. And honestly,
if I could say anything other than that,
it would just be that God does love you and he
(42:00):
wants you to achieve your mission in life and to have
faith that he has faith in you.
Thanks so much for listening to the Inspired Stewardship podcast.
As a spirit subscriber and listener,
we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen,
(42:21):
but act on what you've heard and find a way to
live your calling.
If you enjoyed this episode,
please, please do us a favor.
Go over to inspired stewardship.com
iTunes Rate all one word iTunes Rate.
(42:42):
It'll take you through how to leave a rating and review
and how to make sure you're subscribed.
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it comes out in your feed.
Until next time,
invest your time,
your talent,
and your treasures.
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