Chris Hogan: 00:00 In my mind, I thought, man, you gotta be lucky to become a millionaire. No, you don’t. You got to inherit the money. I already told you that’s not true, or you got to win the lottery. Right? That’s what people think and that’s just not true. What you need to do is to be consistent and focused enough on being able to do these things that millionaires were doing.
Doug Smith: 00:18 This is the L3 Leadership podcast, episode number 214.
Doug Smith: 00:35 What’s up everyone? Welcome to another episode of the L3 Leadership podcast. My name is Doug Smith and I am your host. I hope you’re doing well. Happy New Year to you. I’m really excited about today’s episode. You’ll have the opportunity to hear my interview with Chris Hogan. If you’re unfamiliar with Chris, he is the number one national best selling author of the book, Retire Inspired. He’s also host of the Chris Hogan show and he’s one of Dave Ramsey’s personalities and this was actually a Chris’s second time on the L3 Leadership podcast. Our original interview was in episode number 183, and if you haven’t listened to that, I had to encourage you to go back and do that. In that episode we talked about leadership, working for Dave Ramsey, and so much more so a go back and listen to that after this if you haven’t already, but in today’s episode you’re going to get to hear Chris talk about his new book, which I’m super excited about.
Doug Smith: 01:20 It’s called Everyday Millionaires, how ordinary people built extraordinary wealth and how you can too. And what I love about this book is Chris and his team at Ramsey Solutions actually conducted a survey of over 10,000 millionaires. It condensed everything that they learned in this book and the big takeaway is that you can become a millionaire, that it’s within your reach. And I just love this message. I love what Ramsey Solutions are doing through all of their products to empower people here in America. And you’re going to get to hear Chris talk about that and how people can, how you can become an everyday millionaire. And so this book is literally just being released this week, so I can’t encourage you enough to go out and get a copy for yourself and you’ll hear Chris share where you can get it, but pretty much anywhere you buy books you can get a copy of this book.
Doug Smith: 02:05 So get ready for this interview. It’s absolutely awesome. I love, love, love learning from Chris. But before we dive into the interview, just a few announcements. I am super excited to let you know that we’re hosting our first annual L3 one-day Leadership Conference on Friday, March 15th, 2019 at the Marriott here in Cranberry township. Just 20 minutes outside of the city of Pittsburgh are keynote speakers include Matt Keller, the pastor of Next Level Church in Fort Myers, Florida. Dr Chris Howard, the President of Robert Morris University. Saleem Ghubril, the executive director of the Pittsburgh Promise and so much more. It’s just going to be an incredible day. And so I want to encourage you to, to just save the date and plan on coming and bringing your team. And you can actually register right now and still get the early bird rate at L3one-day.com. I hope to see you there. I also want to thank our sponsor, Alex, Tulandin, Alex as a full time realtor with Keller Williams Realty, and if you’re looking to buy or sell a house in the Pittsburgh market, Alex is your guy. He’s a member
Doug Smith: 03:00 and a sponsor of L3 Leadership and he would love the opportunity to connect with you. You can learn more about Alex@Pittsburghpropertyshowcase.com. With that being said, let’s dive right into the interview with Chris and I’ll be back at the end with a few announcements. Hey Chris, thank you so much and welcome back to the podcast for our second interview. I’m so excited about your new project, but before we dive into that, can you just, for those who haven’t met you before, can you just give us a brief overview of who you are and what you do?
Chris Hogan: 03:27 Sure, absolutely. Well, it’s a pleasure to be back with you. My name is Chris Hogan. I am an author, speaker, financial expert here at Ramsey Solutions, which is Dave Ramsey’s Team. I’ve been a part of Ramsey’s team for 13 years. I’ve been dealing with money for goodness gracious, over 20 years as a former banker, mortgage company owner and working in the wealth management realm. So I travel all over the country speaking and teaching on money, business, and leadership.
Doug Smith: 03:54 I love it. And you have a brand new book that’s coming out this January. In fact, when this episode releases, it will be out. It’s called Everyday Millionaires. And so tell us about the book, why you’re excited about it and why you wrote it.
Chris Hogan: 04:04 Absolutely. Well, we did the largest study that’s ever been done on network millionaires. We studied over 10,000 of them and we wanted to find out the truth can wealth be built in America. Is it possible? And we found that we found really serious major inconsistencies about who we think millionaires are versus who they really are. And so the reality is in these findings, we are able to bust down some myths, find out the truth, and let people know.
Doug Smith: 04:33 Yeah. So I guess to start off, could we just start off with the basics of what is a network millionaire? I think a lot of people have the wrong definition to them.
Chris Hogan: 04:40 Yes, yes. So yeah, a lot of people think when you say millionaires that you’re talking about somebody that makes a million dollars a year, that’s not true. A millionaire is defined this way of looking at net worth. So take what you own, minus what you owe. So what you own, meaning your home, your cars, your bank account, your investments, your 401k, all of that stuff, minus any debt you might have equals a million dollars. If it does, then that makes you a net worth millionaire.
Doug Smith: 05:11 Yeah, and I’m just curious, and I didn’t put this in the questions, but why should someone aspire to be a millionaire other than to say, Hey, I’m a millionaire, you spend a lot of time in the retirement space. I’m just curious, why should people aim for that?
Chris Hogan: 05:22 Yeah. Well, I mean for me it equals financial independence. Being able to get there. This is where, you know, you’re able to take care of yourself and your family, plus it gives you an incredible opportunity to do some giving, to be able to help other people, to be able to hear about charities or mission trips that you care about. It gives you an opportunity to be able to help those and still be able to take care of yourself and your family. You know, for me it’s about establishing a legacy. I want to be able to make sure that my great, great grandkids one day look back and they say, you know, big pop, that’s my grandparent name, have already picked it out, must have really cared about us. And I think that’s how things get started. To be honest with you. Doug. If you look at the Hiltons, the Vanderbilt’s, the Rockefeller’s, the Marriott’s, any of these families that, you know, their name is, connected to wealth. It was because one person decided to make a decision. One person decided to follow a path that’s worth traveling to be able to pass something on outside of debt and regret.
Doug Smith: 06:23 I love that. And you talked about how in the book you bust several myths that people believe about being millionaires, and I’m sure people listening to this and even seeing the title of this episode is saying I can be a millionaire? Is that really true? What did you find that people buy into that you were able to bust them?
Chris Hogan: 06:38 Yeah, I tell you what. Listen, we busted down about six of these myths, but I will tell you about a couple of them. So one of them is wealthy people inherited all their money, right? People automatically think that if I think back to a younger, smaller version of Hogan, I probably thought some of that as well. But here’s the truth. Only 21 percent of millionaires received any inheritance at all. Only 21 percent. Now, remember we talked to over 10,000 all across the nation. So these weren’t people that just knew of me or knew of Dave. These are people that are out there that hadn’t heard of either one of us. And so we use the research firm to really help us get a broad variety of what’s out there. So if only 21 percent received an inheritance at all, but get this only 16 percent of the millionaires that we talked to inherited more than $100,000 for what that means is, is a vast majority of millionaires didn’t get any inheritance at all and they certainly didn’t inherit enough to cause them to be wealthy. So these were people that were first generation wealth builders. So it’s possible, and I’m going to tell you some of the stories and the things of the people that we talked to, they come from all walks of life and all background and I know we’ll get to that here in a minute. So it just goes to show if your parents didn’t leave you a bunch of money or they’re not going to leave you any money, it doesn’t mean you still can’t build wealth yourself.
Doug Smith: 07:57 And so, I mean, do you need to be making, you know, $400,000 a year to become a millionaire? Is, is we talk about job salary, salary plays a part in getting there.
Chris Hogan: 08:07 Yeah. Doug, thank you for that. That’s a beautiful segue because that was the second myth that we chopped down because people believe wealthy people have to have high paying jobs, but get this one-third of millionaires that we talked to a never had a six-figure household income in a single working year. They never made six figures. The average millionaire, to be honest, is a regular man or woman that’s working a regular job. And when we asked millionaires what they did, you’re not gonna believe me, these were the top three occupations. The first was engineer. No number two was accountant, but number three blew me away. Teachers really? Teachers. This is a profession that we know is undervalued. This is a profession that we know doesn’t get paid what they’re worth, but teachers, and how is that? And I want to paint this pictures for your listeners.
Chris Hogan: 08:56 You get teachers. It’s a matter of certain attributes, right? It’s not about your job, it’s not about your income, it’s more about the plan that you have with money. So here’s how the teachers were doing it. They were attacking debt because debt is a thief. It steals from your income attacking debt and they paid off their home. Well, if you’ve got a four or $500,000 home and you own it outright, now you’ve got an asset that goes into your net worth, but if you’ve also got a 403D or 401k that you’ve got five to $550,000, then you put those two together and you’re right there as a net worth millionaire. So it is possible for people. That’s my thing. That’s the message I’m trying to get across to people that the American dream is not only alive and well, but it’s available and it just needs people that want it and desire it enough to be able to grab it.
Doug Smith: 09:46 Out of curiosity, you talked about the house and then the retirement. What was the typical breakdown of a millionaire and where they actually had their finances right? Was it, did they have a million dollars just sitting in the bank house retirement? Can you talk about that?
Chris Hogan: 10:01 Great question. The number one wealth building tool of the network millionaires that we talked to, number one was the 401K, that means they had consistently put money aside and therefore they had taken advantage of the employer match, but had invested over time and so looking at that, so that came in at number one. The number two spot was obviously their residents, their home, but that’s how they were doing it and so to see this when in my mind I thought, man, you gotta be lucky to become a millionaire. No, you don’t. You’ve got to inherit the money, already told you that’s not true, or you got to win the lottery. Right? That’s what people think and that’s just not true. What you need to do is to be consistent and focused enough on being able to do these things that millionaires were doing.
Doug Smith: 10:47 And so you alluded to a few things, but talk to the person listening. How can they get started? What are some actual steps that they’re not implementing these already? They need to be.
Chris Hogan: 10:56 Well, I think the first step is obviously grabbing a copy of this book Everyday Millionaires. Howard, how ordinary people built extraordinary wealth and how you can too, because we’ve got to understand how we think and why we think what we think. For example, a lot of people think that you can’t do it because no one in your family’s ever done it before, right? You think you can’t do it because of your current financial situation. I’m going to tell you right now, if you get serious on number one, understanding what net worth is, and I’ve got a free tool at my website, ChrisHogan360.com. There’s a network calculator on there. It’s free. All you need to do is plug in some few basic numbers and it’s going to tell you right now where you stand. See, I think we have to understand where we are now and make a decision about where we want to go.
Chris Hogan: 11:40 So get yourself out of debt. Build up an emergency fund of three to six months of expenses. Start investing in your 401k, 15 percent. Start doing that. Get on that immediately. Start working with an investment that can guide you and teach you, and then I need you to stay focused, attack and pay off that house and you can get there. It’s a matter of time and I’m telling people this also, it doesn’t matter where you star. This journey, getting financial independence is about how you walked this walk, how you run this race and how you finish strong.
Doug Smith: 12:12 Yeah. Can you talk to the person who’s listening to this? Who, who feels like this is typically who you reached through Ramsey Solutions. The person that is so overwhelmed by debt that they don’t even think they could put a dollar towards retirement. I know you offer other resources, but I just want people listening to this to see the full scope of the picture of where they can go. What do, what isn’t resource they can ake advantage of that. You guys offered to help them even just get over that hump.
Chris Hogan: 12:36 Yeah. No, you’re absolutely right. Debt is a big deal. We’ve got almost 80 percent of people that are living paycheck to paycheck right now. That means that one check doesn’t show up. They have what’s called a financial situation, and so we need to understand debt is a thief, steals from you, it steals from you now, and it also steals from your future because you can invest it. So let’s do this. Let’s get serious. In 2019, right? This new year has kicked off. Let’s make a decision to get your money back. What I mean is let’s attack debt, so I want you to do use the debt snowball. That’s the approach that I teach. List your debts from smallest to biggest, and I want you to make minimum payments on everything except with the first one. That little one. I want you to throw everything but the kitchen sink at that bad boy.
Chris Hogan: 13:16 I want you to have a yard sale. I want you to sell some stuff and watch what happens as you start to pay off debt. You move down to the next one until the next one. We can do this right? We can do this. We just have to make decisions. So there are some great resources on attacking debt. I have some blogs on my website, Chris Hogan360.com, but also Financial Peace University, this is a nine-week course that will guide people through to help them understand how money works and how they can make it work for them. And we do a fantastic job of teaching people to step easy approach of how to do it. So the Total Money Makeover is a great book. Financial Peace University is a great book and there are blogs on my site as well as Daveramsey.com.
Doug Smith: 13:57 And one of my favorite things did you guys do on, on Dave’s show is the Millionaire Theme Hour right. And so I don’t know how consistently you do them, but I love when you guys do these segments and I just love that you asked what’s the most you’ve spent on a pair of jeans to the average millionaire. And you just talk about how millionaires spend their money because I think there’s the same age that everyone wants. You’re a millionaire, you buy $300 Buckle Jeans,
Chris Hogan: 14:19 Well Doug I didn’t even Buckle had those kinds of jeans, so you are hipper than me my friend.
Doug SmithL: I’ve heard that they have them.
Chris Hogan: Listen, most people, whatever you say, millionaire, someone gets this image of a guy or a gal and a slick suit, right? Leaning up against a fancy car in front of this big house and in reality that’s not the portrait of the everyday millionaires. Not of the 10,000 that we talked to. These are hard working every day, people that are working regular jobs make it regular incomes, but here’s what they did. They didn’t have regularly sized dreams. They dreamed big and they were willing to work hard and sacrifice. So the spending habits of everyday millionaires, it’s intentional. You know, they don’t go in and buy something on accident and it doesn’t mean you can’t have nice things. I just want you to pay cash for it, right? I don’t want you to say about pay cash. I don’t want you to let nice things have you and if it’s attached to debt and you’ve got to make a payment month in and month out, that’s exactly what’s happening. So millionaires are intentional. They’re budgeting, they’re also working with investment professionals. A high percentage of them are working with an investment professional, someone they can talk to, to look at to make tweaks or necessary changes because they want to deal with someone that has knowledge.
Doug Smith: 15:41 Yeah, and if someone is listening to this and they don’t have that person, where is somewhere that they could go to find a financial advisor that can help them?
Chris Hogan: 15:47 Well, there are a few places. I mean you can ask family and friends, right? You know, especially if it’s somebody they’re working with that they trust a day. And I have a network of individuals that we trust, that we’ve vetted. They’re called smart buster pros, that you can go to my website, Chrishogan360.com and click on the dream team button up there and you can put in your zip code and you can find a smart vest of pro near you. I tell people, interview them, you know, talk with them, ask them questions you want to find somebody you can trust, this is just as important as your medical doctor or your dentist or even your mechanic for goodness sake. We always want to deal with quality people on things that matter to us where your financial future should matter.
Chris Hogan: 16:27 So I want you to interview them, find somebody that has the heart of a teacher and Doug, what I mean by that is you want, you want to find somebody that’s not trying to sell you some stuff, but they’re trying to help you dreams. And there’s a different spirit because we’ve all been around salespeople. You know, the people that, that you feel like you kind of need to shower after you’ve been around, you know, those kinds. We want somebody that wants to talk with you, not at you, that somebody wants to understand where you want to go and why it matters to you so much. That’s the quality person you want to get on your team.
Doug Smith: 16:58 Yeah, I love that. And so can you tell me the average person that starts on this path, they started getting out of debt. They have their emergency fund, they start doing 15 percent of retirement. They start paying off their house early. How long have you seen the average person? How long does it take the average person to become a millionaire? Once they follow those steps.
Chris Hogan: 17:14 Looking at this, and I’m going back into drill down into all of that to find it on average, but I would tell you on average it’s between 20 and 24 years. And again, here’s what happens. If you get yourself out of debt and now you start to save and invest 15 percent. Now what happens is they throw every extra dime toward the house, right? To pay that thing off. Well, now think about your mortgage payment, not leaving you, right? Like if those are out there that have a mortgage payment, imagine that payment not leaving you. And now you’re able to invest it as well. Or maybe you invest 80 percent of that and you increase lifestyle about 20 percent. Now what happens is you start fast forwarding your investing, you start really moving forward and that’s what happens with intentional people. They see it’s not an accident.
Chris Hogan: 18:01 You know, I worked with a lot of NFL players, right? And I had an opportunity to work with several guys that were part of SuperBowl championships and what’s hilarious is, is none of them ever tell me that they won the Superbowl by accident. Like none of them said, you know what Hogan, we rolled up to the Superbowl, got out of the bus, and next thing you know they were handing us a ring. No, it doesn’t happen that way. They had to play six. They had to go to practice. They have to train. They had to play 16 games. Right? To qualify to get there, they had to go through the playoffs to get to the championship. What I’m saying is as people that win, it’s not an accident, they know the past, they understand the challenges and they make decisions daily to help them overcome.
Doug Smith: 18:44 I love that. I’m curious, you’ve interviewed thousands of millionaires. Do you have a favorite story or two that stick out to you that really shocked you and that can encourage or inspire someone today?
Chris Hogan: 18:54 Well, thank you. I did. And there are a lot in there. And here’s the thing. I want your listeners to understand. This book has incredible stats on over the 10,000 millionaires that we talked to. We’re going to tell you about the truth, the attributes. We’re going to break down the lies and tell people the truth, but the stories, I mean, the stories are the thing that just gets me going. For example, Thomas is a gentleman we talked to. He grew up in the midwest with literally nothing. He had a dysfunctional family. His dad was an alcoholic. His mother struggled with mental health issues. I mean, this was, this was his childhood was tough, he was in three to four foster homes growing up and his parents ended up passing away when he was young. But despite that, despite that kind of childhood, he had a clear vision of what he wanted to do on his life.
Chris Hogan: 19:41 He ended up going to college. He graduated, served in the military, even after the military came back and they went to school to get his Ph.D. He spent 37 years in the educational world, but by the time he retired, get this, his net worth was two point seven million dollars. Now he always invested in saved. He stayed away from debt and he always paid with cash. Now here is somebody that started off tough, right? The odds would say that Thomas wouldn’t have done well having those challenges as a young man being in four foster homes and all those challenges, the world would say that he didn’t have a chance. But what I love is this, despite what the world thinks, despite somebody’s opinion, Thomas had a vote. Thomas had an opportunity to make decisions about himself and his future and the giving that he’s giving back to other kids that are in need is amazing.
Chris Hogan: 20:35 So I mean that kind of story. I’ve talked to a gentleman that was homeless, okay. Homeless now and everyday millionaire. So I want your listeners out there, regardless of where you started out, you know, not all of us were born with a silver spoon. You know, I’m from Kentucky. So my spoon was made of grass baby. Okay. I didn’t have a silver spoon. I didn’t get an inheritance. You know, I didn’t, go to a fancy school. I went to college and I worked hard. Right? I learned how money works so I could make it work for me. So what I want your listeners to understand is you can do this. Maybe you’ve never had anybody tell you that directly to your face, and to your ears, but you can do this too. And the journey is not impossible. It’s just gonna take some focus that’s going to take some effort and you’re going to have some obstacles because we all have to overcome some challenges. But when we decide there’s nothing we can’t do.
Doug Smith: 21:28 Yeah, so good. The book is Everyday Millionaires. So can you talk to people about how they can get it in any other resources that you’re making available?
Chris Hogan: 21:35 Sure, sure. Well, I mean you can get this book. I mean, it’s going to be all over the place. All the bookstores. You can go to Amazon. If you get it at Amazon, please leave a nice review for me. You know, I’ve got two children I’m trying to feed here. No, I’m not, but no, you can go to my website, Chrishogan360.com and buy it. You can go to Daveramsey.com and buy it. You can pick it up. I think people are absolutely going to enjoy this book. It was a blast. The team did an amazing job in putting this together. The layout of it, the way it flows, the stats, the callouts, it’s just a lot of fun. And I’ve got some other free tools at my website because I believe in equipping people to when I’ve got the RIQ, the retire inspired quotient that lets you know how much you’ll need to live your retirement dream. I help people talk about, you think about working with their spouse on their dream or if they’re single or newly single, how they can do it for themselves. And then also the network calculator. This one excites me because in order to start the millionaire journey, you need to know where you are right now. And so I’m excited to hear people track their progress and let me know when they hit that magic number.
Doug Smith: 22:38 Yeah, I was going to say what’s the dream behind the book? So obviously you want to empower people to become millionaires, but I mean, do you have a dream and a hope that you will impact this many people were. What is your
Doug Smith: 22:46 why behind the what?
Chris Hogan: You know what my why is that I want people to understand that America is a fantastic place to live. This is the greatest country on the planet and despite challenges and setbacks that we all can walk through and go through, we still have the power to decide. We get to control our effort and our attitude and our responses and I want people to see and understand because I think the world and our country is better. The world can be better when you have people doing the things that they care about and able to help other people financially. And so if I could get enough people financially independent, that means there are more charities being supported, there are more single parents being supported, there are more wounded veterans being supported and we can start to do things that are heart tells us to do. And that’s what I’d love to see.
Doug Smith: 23:35 I love that. Anything else you want to leave our listeners with today?
Chris Hogan: 23:37 I just want people to know you can do it. I know you’ve had challenges. I know you’ve had some setbacks and maybe you’ve even done some stupid things with money. I know I have, but I can tell you this. Those things don’t have to be your final destination. What you can do is make a decision and if you decide each day to chase something that’s worthy and you put the effort behind it, I promise you this, nothing and no one can stand in your way if it really matters to you.
Doug Smith: Chris, thank you so much for writing the book. I can’t wait to read it myself and thank you for transforming my financial future and millions of others across the country, appreciate it.
My friend, it’s always good to be with you. And I can’t wait to be back.
Doug Smith: 24:14 Hey everyone. Thank you so much for listening to our interview with Chris Hogan. I hope that you enjoyed it as much as I did and even more importantly, I hope you actually do something with what he shared and I hope that you are well on your way to becoming an everyday millionaire. You can find ways to connect with Chris and links to everything we discussed in the show notes at L3leadership.org/episode 214. As I mentioned, if you enjoyed this interview, I also interviewed Chris in episode number 183 of the podcast about money leadership and working for Dave Ramsey. And so if you have not listened to that, I encourage you to go back and listen to it again. That’s episode one 80 30. I want to thank our sponsor, Henne Jewelers. They’re a jeweler and by my friend and mentor, John Henne, my wife Laura and I got our engagement and wedding rings through Henne Jewelers and we just think they’re an incredible organization.
Doug Smith: 24:57 Not only do they have great jewelry, but they also invest in people. In fact, they give every engaged couple of book to help them prepare for their marriage and we just love that, so if you’re in need of a good jeweler check out Hennejewelers.com, you can also stay up to date with everything we’re doing here at L3 Leadership by signing up for our email list at L3leadership.org, and when you sign up you’ll get a free copy of my ebook Making the Most of Mentoring, which is my step by step process for getting and cultivating mentoring relationships with leaders and I think it’ll add a ton of value to your life, so make sure you go ahead and download that. As always, I like to end with a quote and I’ll quote James Clear. He said this, he said, “Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.” That’s powerful. “Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.” Thank you so much for listening and being a part of L3 Leadership law and I appreciate you so much. We’ll talk to you next episode.
