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What's Done in the Dark
233 Plays2 years ago
Do you act the same way when you're by yourself as you do when others are watching? The root word of integrity is integer, meaning "whole" or not divided. To have integrity is to be whole, not divided between two different versions of yourself no matter who is watching or, often, when no one is.
The temptations around acting differently when no one is watching touch many aspects of life, including your finances. We talk about how Arron uses the filters of education, family and success to help guide himself and his family in making consistent decisions. Plus, the importance of accountability and honoring your important relationships by acting being consistent and trustworthy.
For more on this topic check out our episode called Financial Infidelity. Any additional tips on how to drive consistency in behavior? Let us know at podcast@uncommonwealth.com.
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Transcript
Introduction to The Uncommon Wealth Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Everyone dreams of living an uncommon life and the best asset you have to achieve your dreams is you. Welcome to the Uncommon Wealth Podcast. We're going to introduce you to people who are living uncommonly. We're also going to give you some tools and strategies for building wealth and for pursuing an uncommon path that is uniquely right for you.
00:00:27
Speaker
Hello and welcome everybody to another episode of the Un-Comi-Wealth Podcast, where I'm your host, Philip Ramsey. And I'm Aaron Kramer. Thanks for tuning in to another show. We have a really fun one today, Karen and I. Goosebumps. Oh, man. Why does it give you goosebumps?
The Importance of Integrity in Work and Life
00:00:41
Speaker
What's our topic? Give it to us. What you do in the dark. OK. Yeah. It gets dirty, doesn't it? Tell us a lot of times. That's where your mind goes. No.
00:00:54
Speaker
It's really easy to work hard when everybody's watching. If you're an athlete or if you're an artist of some sort, whatever you are, when you're doing your work, you're at the office, and everybody else is there, it's easy to just get after it. But once everybody goes home, no one's watching, no one's there. What are you doing? I feel like this is the topic that everybody tends to forget about.
00:01:23
Speaker
You hear about the Kobe Bryant's, the Michael Jordan's and stuff like that. They didn't get as good as they did during their normal practices. They were doing things when nobody else was. Yeah, right. It's like the definition of integrity, right? When nobody's watching, what are you doing? Are you cutting corners or are you not? And like this is something
00:01:43
Speaker
I can get pretty heightened up on because it's just like I've never seen it happen where I'm going to cut corners and I'm going to get to where I actually want to go. Like eventually those corners that you've cut come back to bite you. Yeah. And I'm speaking for myself. I'm not speaking for anybody else. I'm saying for me specifically.
00:02:02
Speaker
Am I doing the right thing when no one's watching? It's important, right? It's funny, we just watched this movie with my kids actually.
Moral Integrity: Lessons from 'The Tower Heist'
00:02:10
Speaker
It was called The Tower Heist. It's an older show, Eddie Murphy. It's kind of funny. Anyway, one of the points that he's talking about is these people who are like really good people are gonna go do a heist.
00:02:22
Speaker
And they hire somebody to like help them. And this guy looks at him, he's like, you can't do this. Like you've never stole anything. He's like, I need you to go in this mall and steal something for $50 and bring it back. And I was like, I couldn't do it. Like there's no way. Like yeah, physically and mentally, like I just physically, I could do it. I just couldn't do it. Like I would just feel too bad. Like I'm not doing it. Like, so there is something about this that,
00:02:49
Speaker
What do you do and what is your core DNA when no one's watching? Are you the person that usually goes the extra mile or are you like, well, I'm just going to slough off. And I'm telling people right now on this podcast, I'm glad we're talking about this, that it is those times when no one's watching is like your true character. Do you like it or not? Put a mirror up to yourself and like,
00:03:11
Speaker
look through that. If you don't, like it's a time to change. I want you to care more about what it looks like because you have integrity for yourself. And no one's going to know if I cut this, but I will. And I don't want that just for my own demeanor, my own personality, and my own like character. I want to be a person that's going to do the hard things when no one's
Financial Integrity and Purpose
00:03:33
Speaker
watching. Okay.
00:03:33
Speaker
keep going. I know. I think it's great. I love this cause you know, and it has to be multiple topics too, you know? So I'll just be super straight forward. There's a, there's a, I'll tell you what it is, but, but first there is an area in my life that like when in the dark, no one's watching. I am extremely weak. It's super easy for me to be strong when everyone's watching this area and it's food.
00:04:01
Speaker
Yeah, that's me too. Yeah, like, dude, I can be on a strict diet in front of everybody, like, no, I'm doing this. And everyone's watching, yeah, Aaron's doing this. Yep, yep, I am. Hit about nine o'clock at night, and everybody's in bed. My family's in bed, my wife's in bed. Hammer. And there's a cinnamon roll or two upstairs, like, no one's gonna know. I eat them. I don't eat one, I eat two. Yeah, that's right. It's better than three that I eat, so. Yeah, so, but like, it's those areas that, you know, where, and granted,
00:04:31
Speaker
Not that it's an excuse, but this one just affects me. But what are the areas that when that you're going to take a corner on that affect other people?
00:04:40
Speaker
We're all weak at times, but you have to notify it, you have to see it, and you have to change it and get strong. Oh yeah, right, right. And that's not easy. And sometimes you need help, so we'll talk about that. But I want to talk about this because we are financial advisors. So why in the heavens would we be talking about this, Aaron Kramer? Oh yeah. Why? Why does this pertain to finances?
00:05:01
Speaker
Oh, well because money, kind of important, then it's really easy to do things with your money that you're not supposed to when no one's watching.
00:05:12
Speaker
Yeah. Right. And have like a purpose statement of your finances or not only just your finances, but life that you can like overlay and finances is a good thing. Like, uh, we've talked about financial infidelity before. Oh yeah. You like that one. That was a good one. I got screwed up on that one, but I liked that one. That was a good one. And, uh, I think it,
00:05:32
Speaker
it's definitely appropriate to talk about that now because how what you want in your future a lot of times like you can use money as a tool to get you there. Yeah. And so using that tool in order to further
00:05:48
Speaker
where you want to go. It's a powerful thing. And so if there's ways that you're sabotaging yourself, like for you and I, it's food, but they're for other people, it's financial. Like I can't stop ordering things off of Amazon. Let's talk through that then. I shouldn't say we get help to figure out what that is. We should probably get help to figure out what the food situation is. But anyway, so I am getting help on that. I got a dietician helping me. That's good.
00:06:13
Speaker
I think that's really good. I probably need to do that. Uh, I love crumble cookies just so you know. Um, but that's why I think it pertains this topic and what you do and how you do it in an integrity driven way. Yeah. Nobody's watching. How are you spending your money? Yeah. And if you're the guy or person or woman who wants to pursue something they're passionate about and they want to do everything they want to put your
00:06:40
Speaker
Throwing your money away on silly things that don't really help you add up to that like What are you doing? You know, what are you doing? I was just having a conversation with a friend last night over a beer about how everybody
00:06:57
Speaker
a lot of people start tying their priorities to what society wants you to. And one of the big ones that I came to realization when I was looking through my priorities and what I cared about, that the society has done a really good job of telling us it's important that we have to care about.
Aligning Finances with Core Values
00:07:13
Speaker
is a car. Yeah. What car do you drive? I look at commercials like this car fits your personality. Oh yeah. You're going to get the ladies with this one. Yeah. Right. It's like, Oh, it's a truck. It's masculine. Yeah. So all these things. And so, but I, you know, it really comes down to it. I don't care about cars.
00:07:33
Speaker
And I want a good car. I want a nice car that like is dependable, dependable. You know, it's dependable and my family's safe in it and things like that. But other than that, I don't care. I just want to fit in it. I do want to fit in it. That's valid for you. Yeah. A lot of cars.
00:07:48
Speaker
But so then what is your like core values in your life? Not only worry about, don't worry about finances right now, but what are your core values? Right? Yeah. And like, this would be kind of a fun exercise for you and your wife to do is like, what's her core values and what are your core values? And then look at your bank account and see if the things that you're spending money on.
00:08:07
Speaker
like correlate with your core values. It'd be very interesting. Oh my gosh, so we've done this. You have? Yeah. I'm sure you have. So we have a worksheet for this. Oh, we do. Let's go. And so it's super fun. And this is how I help people with budgeting. If they have budgeting problems, I won't actually get into your budget anymore. I tried that. It doesn't work. It's not ideal.
00:08:28
Speaker
I have this list and there's, I don't know, 100 words on there. There's education, success, love, all sorts of things. And you have to circle 10. And then after that. Your spouse has to circle 10. Well, they have to do their own. They have their own sheet. Yeah, and you can't look at their sheets because they don't line up. From that 10 then I ask you, okay, narrow it down to three.
00:08:57
Speaker
So then they never done three, and then I ask you, tell me why, on each one of those. Now, a lot of people don't think this has anything to do with money, but now you ask yourself, okay, you bought a truck. Does that truck get you closer to your, those three core values? And if it's yes or no, dude, I did this with me and my wife. Cause my wife would always tell me, no, you can't have it. No, you can't. I'm like, darn, it made me so mad. And then we changed it.
00:09:27
Speaker
And at the time mine was education, success, and family. Okay. It was my top three parties at the time that we did this. They've changed, but like I said, I wanted to, I don't know what it was. We were at the mall. I was like, I want to get this. She's like, okay, Aaron, that's fine. It's like, does it, does it bring you closer to your top three core values?
00:09:46
Speaker
Oh my gosh. Light bulb. I was like, no. I was like, oh, I mean, is that a good place to be spending our money? I was like, no. I was so angry, but not at her. It was angry in a good way. It was like, oh my gosh, no. I was like, okay, no. And then once you start realizing it, and I had to spend a lot of money on food, because we talked about food.
00:10:09
Speaker
And food stopped. I stopped eating out. It didn't bring me any closer to my family. It wasn't helping my family financially because we were building a business. So it was hurting us. It wasn't bringing me closer to getting an education and getting smarter for our job. That's great. So all these things, it was so easy just to drop that stuff out. You can't have these things, Aaron. I didn't want those things anymore. Wow, that's powerful. Yeah.
00:10:36
Speaker
That's powerful. Okay. So let's talk about this because I do feel like there's a lot of people that will somehow justify in their head when they want to change the trajectory of where they want to go or they want
Justifying Decisions and Core Values
00:10:48
Speaker
to justify the reason what they want. They just, you know, like, so how do you know when you're doing that in your opinion, when you're like, I'm trying to justify this, like, and you like, and how do you combat that? So,
00:11:00
Speaker
So my thing, I love this. So yeah, I think that you can twist it really well to hit one or two. Oh, you better believe it. Yeah. Now I felt like you're real good at words and you're like, you, you smooth, like smooth, you know? Um, but I've never seen someone
00:11:19
Speaker
twist something to fit all three. That's good. Never. Okay. So the three is kind of triangulating through the triangular to be like, don't be that guy. You can't be that guy. Like if you can't hit all three and you're like, for instance, like, all right, so what was your three education, education, uh, family and success. Okay. So let's, let's, uh,
00:11:43
Speaker
Let's put through the filter here. Yeah. Give me something. All right, you want a new truck? Yep, new truck's about eating out. Okay. Eating out with a client. Let's do the truck first.
00:11:57
Speaker
It's going to be too hard. So give me the first one to truck truck. So I broke it down for a truck cause I needed to do a car. Okay. Education education. So like education for us costs money, right? Yeah. Yeah. Well, but like we're talking about the truck decision. Yeah. I know. Does that truck cost a lot of money? Yeah, I know. But like, how does it cover your education goal? Doesn't. Okay. Family goal.
00:12:21
Speaker
Does it help my family be more successful? And like, do I get more family time in my truck? Yeah. What would you say to that? No, it doesn't. Okay. I'm just going to say, I didn't feel like it is. I was just checking. Yeah. And then success, kind of.
00:12:34
Speaker
I mean... At least the status of success. Yeah, status, but what's success? So it's like, it's a no. Define your success. Okay, that's a no. Right. All right, that's easy. Or not easy, but that's kind of fun. All right, let's go to the next one. What was it? Eating out? Eating out. Okay. So like, I eat out a lot. Right? So there's another one that ends up being negatives on all ones. But like, if I want to sit here and try to like, combat it. Justify it. Justify like, well, like eating out. Like, well, if I only eat out when I take clients out,
00:13:00
Speaker
Yeah. You know, or new prospect clients. Success. Success. Okay. Um, and what can I eat out with my family? I guess that's just my family. I'm good quality time, right? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I could, I could probably justify success if my family's bought in, that I can have more success. Okay. Yeah. Education. I can't really. So, um, now let's, now let's look at a positive, like, right? Okay. So how about, uh,
00:13:30
Speaker
Cause I did this like, and I even went down with our shoe, like, okay, so I have two destinations now. Now I just spent money, you know, a little bit ago, a little while, like last year to go down the path of trying to get my CFP. Six grand. That's going to come out. All right. So education. It totally is. Totally is. Yep. So family, um,
00:13:56
Speaker
Helps me with my job. Yes. Makes me a better person. Okay. So, and my family supports it. Okay. So, and I'm showing my daughter that I'm working hard towards education. Okay. There we go, right? All right. Success. Totally agree with that. It helps me with success and the fact it's like the best, like the most well-known designation we can get. Yeah. You know, and then I get, I'm like studying more. I feel like family is kind of hard. That's a far fetch, but I like it. I'm okay with that.
00:14:25
Speaker
So no, I think that's good I think a lot of times you're gonna find yourself at this point where you have to teeter on it, right? Like that's education totally think that's valid success totally think it is family I Think that you could you can make the assumption that yeah, this is helping my family by getting in the trenches showing my daughter education is yeah, but also since the world ages my daughter now and
00:14:49
Speaker
And if I'm going to do this, this is on my list. Should I do it now? Cause it's going to take time. So maybe it's a filter of that. So that's good. Yeah. Okay. So, you know, and that's the thing, like if it hits all three, just perfectly. Yes. That's a no brainer. Yeah. Throw your wallet at it. Yeah.
00:15:06
Speaker
But if it doesn't, like, yeah, I mean, it's one of those things. Sometimes they don't all just fit. But that's my thing. Like, if money's tight, it's like, hit those. Ask yourself. And it's been powerful for people like that. Like, spend money a lot crazier. So you put it where you have to do it. So one of mine was eating out. So I put these three.
00:15:26
Speaker
in my car by my odometer. Oh, okay. So you'd have this filter. I had to see it. Yeah. It's really easy to put it outside of mine. In your wallet. Yeah. Back pocket. Yeah. So you're at the cash register like, okay, I'm going to either not pay for this or I'm going to just pay for it. I know. So that's not the cause. And I think I started doing this was seven years ago. I think it was seven, six years ago. Um, I can't tell you how many times I can. It's seven, but I drove through a drive through.
00:15:56
Speaker
And you didn't order anything? Yes. Oh my goodness. That is willpower. And like, no, I came home so angry, like hangry, I'm mad. And my wife said, what is wrong? I was like, we're going to make food. And I'm like, we'll do the drive through. And she's like, did you get anything? No, I tuck myself out of it because those three things are just sitting there staring at me.
00:16:15
Speaker
Wow. That doesn't say anything about Aaron's character. I don't know what would that. Yeah. Okay. So, but no one was watching. So then how do you have other people hold you accountable to these things? I think that's the biggest thing is the honesty to like one surround yourself with people that know I can love you also know these things. And then also ask, Hey, I'm struggling with this decision point. Here are my core values.
00:16:40
Speaker
help me not try to justify this in my head, or help me totally feel good and purchase this without any guilt. It's good. I think the number one person, if you're married, the number one person is your spouse.
00:16:57
Speaker
because you guys share bank accounts or you're sharing expenses, however you guys have designed to be a partner in that asset or that area. But then having an accountability partner or financial advisor or something. I know for us, we have a software that we use and we have people put their financial purpose in there. And we usually can pull out their priorities out of that purpose. And when they set goals for themselves,
00:17:23
Speaker
Like, well, we do that for them. When we look back, like, does this goal match up to your financial purpose?
Balancing Financial Decisions in Marriage
00:17:28
Speaker
Yeah, that's good. What if your spouse has three different like core values? So much fun. Cause that's my, you know, that's what I asked it. Okay. So what happens then? What's your three for the fun for the record? Here's what we're here through. Here's this gambling, traveling,
00:17:46
Speaker
Oh, this is a long time ago. She's so good with money naturally, so it's hard. No family. All right, I don't want to put you on the spot. Yeah, I can't remember. I'm sorry, guys. Sorry, Ashley. It shows me like a bad husband. I thought it was totally going to be Aliope. It was not. That's OK. All right, so what if your spouse has three different core values?
00:18:05
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, that just means like things get more fun, right? Like for you, I guess to me, granted I'm married to a woman that's exact opposite of me, but I really, it's just. It's an opportunity for you to serve your wife in that way. Your spouse, your spouse and making sure that when money's getting spent, you're not being selfish. Right. That's a good point. So when you're, if you're spending money, let's just say like,
00:18:29
Speaker
I'm spending money on, I'm spending all of our excess money on education, you know, but my wife's is traveling and experiences, you know, and I'm taking that away from her. Like that's one of those things you guys started looking at in the sense of like being fair and making sure that there's portions of money going towards her priorities.
00:18:50
Speaker
Yeah, that's good. That's a good marriage advice, uh, sacrificially like thinking of your spouse. Yeah. And then like it can be powerful too. And he started buying presents.
00:19:02
Speaker
Well, that's good. Like, Oh, like it's like, Hey, bing, bing, bing. Yeah. The same thing though you do like for her, like I have never really had my wife. I have to get her to spend money. Like I'm the one like do it. Yeah. But yeah, like it's easy to ask like, Hey, does this bring you closer to three priorities? And that gets her helps her spend the money. Now for me, it helps me stop spending the money. Yeah. And then for her gets her to spend the money. Yeah.
Personal Integrity and Financial Accountability
00:19:28
Speaker
okay so what are you doing behind closed doors when no one's watching what what are you what kind of person are you it's really what this whole podcast was all yeah and i think it's good just take a stop uh and then reflect and then also like apply and we are strictly applying this for financial but
00:19:46
Speaker
I think this could be done in any aspect of your life. Yeah. So I think it's a good topic. Uh, thanks for bringing it up. And, uh, yeah, if you ever have any questions or want any help accountability or anything like that, we're right here for you at uncommon wealth partners. So thank you for listening. You've been listening to the uncommon wealth podcast. I've been your host Philip Ramsey and I'm Aaron Kramer. Until next time, go be in common.
00:20:10
Speaker
That's all for this episode, brought to you by Uncommon Wealth Partners. Be sure to visit uncommonwealth.com to learn more about our services. Don't miss an episode as we introduce you to inspiring people who are actively pursuing an uncommon life.