283. Money School with Mark Butler

I’m Jody Moore and this is Better Than Happy, episode 283: Money School with Mark Butler.

Did you know that you can live a life that’s even better than happy? My name is Jody Moore. I’m a master certified life coach and a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. And if you’re willing to go with me I can show you how. Let’s go.

Hello everybody, welcome to the podcast. First of all I wanted to make sure and let everybody know because I get questions all the time, “Do you have a podcast that you recommend for teenagers?” And I don’t really because just because I don’t know of any, but not to say there aren’t some great ones out there. I just don’t know of them.

But my daughter who is 13 and her friend who is also 13, or is she 14? Anyway, young girls, Macy and Kate, they started a podcast for teens called It’s a Teen Thing. And they are doing such a phenomenal job, I’m so proud of them. And they do amazing work, I listen myself every week. I guess I’m biased because I love these girls. But they’re getting a lot of positive feedback. So it covers all things teen, body image, health, emotions, parents, school, friendships, peer pressure, church, kind of all topics teen related.

So make sure and tell your teens or even your preteens, it’s appropriate for them as well to check out It’s a Teen Thing with Kate and Macy.

It’s also almost Christmas. Merry Christmas, I hope you’re having a wonderful, beautiful December. I’m really loving Christmas this year. I love that it’s a little bit slower paced, kind of helps me really feel a little more in tune with Christ and the meaning of Christmas.

Don’t forget to your annual pass. I know a lot of people right now are thinking I can’t wait to get to 2021, it’s going to be so much better than 2020. And part of me thinks is it though? Because who knows what’s going to happen in the world? Who knows whether a vaccine is going to really change things the way we hope or not? And who knows what’s in store?

But I’ll tell you what, I know for sure that 2021 can be better than 2020 was if you come and work with me, because I know for sure that the work we’re doing in Be Bold improves people’s lives. And I know that because I went to look the other day at some of the testimonials that we’ve received and there were hundreds of them. And they were saying the most beautiful amazing things about how their lives have changed, that is so heartwarming to me to hear.

So go to jodymoore.com/gift to sign up to work with me for all of 2021. Or purchase it for someone that you love because it’s the best gift. And they’re going to get the Take Tuesday book as a free bonus when they sign up, jodymoore.com/gift.

Who knows Mark Butler? Who doesn’t know Mark Butler? I talk about Mark quite a bit on here any time I talk about money because of how influential he’s been for me both in my business and in my personal relationship with money. And I’m a huge fan of Mark and his wife Kate, they are lovely people. I love hanging out with them. I miss seeing them because we don’t live near each other so I haven’t seen them for a while due to Covid but I can’t wait to see them again.

Mark has been my CFO for several years now. And I also have been fortunate enough to talk him into coming and speaking at a couple of the live events I’ve done, VIP events. He sometimes coaches in Be Bold Masters for me, which is our intensive five day live program, because along with being really good with money he’s also a certified coach and a member of the church. So I don’t know why we haven’t had him on the podcast earlier, but I’m excited that he’s here today. You’re going to love what he has to share.

I just find that his brain is so fascinating and he has a really great way of articulating things in a way that is simple enough that I can understand it. And I have a lot of those sort of aha moments when I listen to Mark speak. And I know you’re going to find that true in this conversation today. So we’re going to talk a little bit about money mindset for business owners and entrepreneurs, but also a lot about it for all of us as consumers. So no matter who you are, if you deal with money in your life you are going to get so much out of this episode.

Now, I do want to mention to make sure you listen to the end because he has an amazing offer, amazing free offer. I don’t know that his offer was going to be free. I thought this was something he was going to charge money for because it sounds so amazing. But he’s giving it away for free and it’s a great offer, I’m going to take advantage of it myself. So make sure you do listen to the very end, if you get interrupted, come back and check that out so you don’t miss out on what Mark is offering. And without further ado here is my conversation with Mark Butler.

                                                                                                                   

Jody Moore: Alright, we’re talking about money today, yeah?

Mark Butler: Yeah.

Jody Moore: We must start with an introduction because I was thinking today I can’t believe you haven’t been on my podcast before.

Mark Butler: I was thinking the same thing, I never have.

Jody Moore: That’s weird but anyway I talk about you all the time. So a lot of people know you, but just in case some of them haven’t been paying attention, tell us who you are.

Mark Butler: I’m Mark Butler.

Jody Moore: Do you still have the Budget Nerd website?

Mark Butler: No, I don’t go by Budget Nerd, I finally…

Jody Moore: That was such a good name.

Mark Butler: I forwarded, Budget Nerd now redirects to letsdothebooks.com, my new bookkeeping business.

Jody Moore: Well, that does sound a little more like the kind of person you might want managing your books I guess. But I did like Budget Nerd. Okay, Let’s Do the Books.

Mark Butler: Budget Nerd was useful in its time. Yeah, Let’s Do the Books. So I am your CFO and I’m the CFO for six or seven other people whose businesses are a lot like yours. And I have a bookkeeping service, so Let’s Do the Books where mostly kind of up and coming life coaches pay us to just keep track of their money for them and give them reports. Yeah, I do some business coaching, but I’ve been doing online business stuff since 2004. And that’s looked like a few different things. But for the last seven years it’s been I’m the money guy for life coaches.

Jody Moore: There is a podcast, I’m trying to remember who it was, but it was called Unemployable and he used to say, “For people who could get a job, they’re just not inclined to take one.” Do you feel like you’re one of those people that you have enough experience and knowhow to run your own business that it would be hard to work for someone else? Or why do you think you chose to be an entrepreneur?

Mark Butler: Yeah. You take a lot of personality tests over the years. And they tell you what your values are and sort of what your default settings are as a human being. And autonomy is probably my number one. So I do consider myself unemployable. And I think part of me wants to brag about that but part of me knows a lot of suffering has happened in my life. Because I oftentimes feel like I really envy people who can just have their job and go to work and do their job and go home and have a great life. I think that’s amazing.

When I get in that sort of situation I kind of self-destruct. I sabotage. I pout, I complain, I’m not good in that kind of setting. And so I have to make it work as a self-employed person because the alternative is a disaster.

Jody Moore: Interesting okay. Well, and I think you’re being a little modest here too. I want to say that Mark, I remember when I first started working with you, how many years ago was it, five years ago?

Mark Butler: I was just thinking about this.

Jody Moore: Been that long?

Mark Butler: I think we started working together in early 2017, I think it’s been just four years.

Jody Moore: Okay, four years. But you were kind of trying to describe to me what you did, the service you provide. And you said, “I keep track of your books, I’m a bookkeeper but it’s more than that, it’s consulting, it’s sort of helping you strategize.” I extremely value how much you help me keep my finances in order. But I value just as much your advice and just the help and support, and your insight.

I feel like you’re really good at stepping back and looking at things logically. I can trust you to tell me the truth, not just what I kind of want to hear. I just feel like you have a good sense for navigating online business.

Mark Butler: Yeah thanks, that’s who I want to be. That’s for sure who I want to be. And I think that having done different sorts of online things since 2004, I have seen so many things. So I think one of my best skills, or one of the best things I bring to my clients like you is they’ll say, “Well, I’m going to do this. Do you think this is going to work?” And I’ll say, “Honestly every time I say something that will work or won’t work I’m almost always wrong.” So instead what I say is, “Here’s what I’ve seen and here’s what I have observed about it.”

So I can say, “Here’s something I saw in a different client’s business and kind of how it seemed to go for her, so you could try it.” But that isn’t being very powerful. So I do end up playing the role of kind of a calm sounding board that has a lot of experience and…

Jody Moore: Yeah. And I feel like you have the right amount of vested interest but not emotional about it. I feel like you care about the success of my business but you’re not overly emotionally, you know, you are able to say, “You can try that, it might work, this is the experience I’ve seen.” So anyway I just really value that. But you also have, and what we’re here to talk about today just a really amazing way of thinking about money.

And so this is not just for entrepreneurs today, we’re talking to anybody. I guess if you live off the grid and you don’t use money at all, then you’re probably not listening to this podcast.

Mark Butler: I’ve got nothing for you.

Jody Moore: So anybody else, I’m excited to share Mark’s brain with you today.

Mark Butler: Well, it’s funny that you just mentioned sort of how I bring, and I appreciated how you said it. You said, “You know that I’m invested in your business and I care about your success but I’m not hyper emotional about it.” And I think what’s behind that is sort of the essence of my – it comes from my money philosophy. So the reason I can be invested in your business but not overly emotional about it is that I’m not caught up in the amount of money that you earn or don’t earn. Because I don’t think that either one is necessarily going to move the needle of your happiness very much.

Jody Moore: And I sense that you feel that way even about your own money, is that true?

Mark Butler: A 100%, yeah.

Jody Moore: Yeah, I can tell just because I know you and your wife Kate a little bit outside of our working relationship. And just the little bit I’ve heard you say, I’m like I think he really genuinely is not emotional about money, not just my money but your money too.

Mark Butler: Yeah, I’m not. And for a long, long time I was really frustrated with myself and really discouraged about that because…

Jody Moore: What, you were discouraged about not being more emotionally invested in it?

Mark Butler: I was because I thought…

Jody Moore: That’s interesting.

Mark Butler: There was still part of my brain and I still had sort of this running loop in my head that said money equals success and status. And for whatever reason, I don’t know exactly why this is but for some reason I have lots of friends who are very financially successful, like very financially successful. And we kind of came up together so our businesses maybe started at similar times. And I kind of watched them develop and start to earn more and more and some of them are younger than me. And some of them we served our missions together.

And for a long, long time I just, I watched them really exceed me financially. And I would beat myself up about that. And I felt like a loser because this guy’s making way more money than I am, that guy has this many employees. And I was like I feel like a loser. But it was a weird sort of paradox because I knew deep down that I didn’t really care that much about the money.

And so I was feeling this conflict constantly of like in order to like myself I have to make more money, but actually I don’t care about money that much. And there was a lot of conflict there and I feel like that’s only really been mostly resolved very, pretty recently within the last couple of years, and especially within the last – this year.

Jody Moore: Yeah, because I’ve watched you a little bit go through that times of feeling a little bit more driven to make more money and other times of I am not really up for doing right now what I would need to do to make that happen. And I always respect that about you that it’s not just, at least what I have observed is it hasn’t just been a race to get to some arbitrary goal of making more money. It’s been a real consideration about what that would do to the balance in your life, and in your family, and for you personally what it would require of you.

And like you said, you like autonomy. I know you like to have free time. You don’t like to be overly stressed. And I feel like you make conscious decisions because – and this is my opinion is that you’re brilliant and you’re probably capable of 10 times more than what you do. But you consciously choose, it’s not just out of laziness, at least some of the time. It’s a conscious choice of I choose to be able to spend this time with my family and to live my life in this way rather than grinded out making the amount of money that you would be capable of making, don’t you think?

Mark Butler: I appreciate you saying that. Sometimes I think you think I don’t give myself enough credit. Sometimes I think you give me too much.

Jody Moore: Oh well.

Mark Butler: I think a lot of what you just said resonates as true with me. I think sometimes like all people I’ve probably been guilty of just taking the easier path. And I don’t want to be a person that always takes the easier path. But when it comes to money stuff in particular I tend to be a little bit suspicious of financial success. Not that I think it’s a bad thing, but I observe because for some reason I have these friends who earn so much.

And of course now I also have clients whose businesses are amazingly successful. I kind of observe them, and I say, “Okay, if I’m looking for people to model, and if I’m looking for behaviors to model I kind of want to have a reason to model them.” So I’ve been able to observe, like this friend is making millions of dollars, and that friend is making millions of dollars, and this client is making millions of dollars. And then I’m able to just observe them and say, “How do I see that money impacting their life?”

And I think that societally we kind of get caught up in wanting to be very polarized about money like for a lot of other things. But we want to be polarized about money and you kind of have the abundance crowd versus the frugality crowd. And I kind of reduce the two crowds to like abundant people like spending money and frugal people don’t like spending money. And abundant people sort of associate and by the way this is Mark’s definition of abundant and people can say whatever they want about this and I think that’s fine.

I’ve just sort of sorted these things in my own head. The abundant crowd is like I’m going to earn more and I’m going to have a bigger impact, and these are lots of good things. And then the frugal crowd is like frugality is next to godliness sort of we’re not going to spend. We don’t care about material things. And I’m sort of equally suspicious of both crowds because as I observe them the crowd that makes millions of dollars and spends more and more I don’t necessarily see that changing them or their mood day-to-day very much.

So I don’t demonize the money, which I think a lot of people want to do. Sometimes we’re like well if you make more money then your priorities are going to get out of whack. And you’re going to care about material things and status and that’s all you’re going to care about. That has not been my observation in my friends and my clients who make what we would all consider tons of money. They’re the same people that I’ve loved for a long, long time and they are still amazing people. So I don’t demonize the money but I also don’t see the money really changing their mood on any given day.

So I kind of sit back and say, “Well, if I’m going to chase money what’s going to be at the end of that chase?” And my observation seems to be well, sort of nothing. Nothing. Maybe I vacation differently. Maybe the square footage of my home changes, maybe. But I don’t know that I’m happier. So if I’m going to pursue something I think money’s probably not the reason for the pursuit. I’ve got to feel mission driven or I’ve got to just love my work so much that I’m doing the work for its own sake and then the money becomes a byproduct of that work.

Jody Moore: That’s right, yeah, I can see in my experience when I think back to when I worked in corporate and they were always trying to, especially when I worked in sales and they were trying to figure out how to incentivize people. I remember feeling similar to what you’re describing, a little bit of what’s the matter with me when I realized I wasn’t motivated by the money. I liked the money, I appreciated the money. It wasn’t like I didn’t want to make more money. But it didn’t drive me to work harder and push myself outside of my comfort zone and do all those things I didn’t want to do.

I realized I was more motivated by the validation that came either through my customers saying how much I helped them, or my boss telling me I’d done a great job. And then I felt sort of ashamed of that. I thought what’s the matter with me that I’m so insecure I need people to tell me I’ve done a great job. And if I were more confident or whatever I’d be like that guy on stage who’s so motivated by making money. And to your point, I don’t think it’s wrong to be motivated by money or to not be motivated by money. It’s just interesting to observe.

And all of it does say something about what do we have opportunities to develop within ourselves. But I make a lot of money and it’s fun, you’re right, it doesn’t change. I love how you say your day-to-day mood, because I really do believe that’s where your life happens in between the huge tragedy trial, or the huge success, or joyful moment is most of your life. Most of your life is just a normal average day. How you respond to a trial or how you respond to a huge joy isn’t really as relevant as all of that.

Mark Butler: I totally agree. So you made an interesting point too when you said you were in the corporate world and you were – what you were essentially trying to do was you were trying to purchase status. You wanted to be in that club. And by the way I don’t know that I think there’s anything wrong with that. Something that I’m observing, especially as I’m working in our kind of life coaching community, I’m observing people chasing and achieving big financial goals. And I’m asking myself why are they doing that? What really is going on there?

And the conclusion I’ve come to is that there are sort of segments of our community in the life coaching world, and this is just as true in my neighborhood, and in any other sort of tribe. I think money is very much used to maintain our status within our circle. And that can be a bad thing but I don’t think it has to be a bad thing.

So it’s sort of like – in fact I had one person tell me once very honestly and I appreciated her telling me this. She’s like, “You know what? Just like I don’t care about money at all, but if my friends that I like are earning a certain amount of money I want to earn a similar amount of money just because I want to hang out with them. I want us to have that in common.”

I think it’s very interesting and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it unless the price she pays to earn the money that sort of keeps her connected to that community, unless it’s costing her something, a price she doesn’t want to pay.

Jody Moore: Yes, I would agree with that.

Mark Butler: It’s requiring her to make a sacrifice that she will look back on and say, “I’m not happy about the tradeoff I made there.” Because people do this at both ends of the financial spectrum, and you can see this if you go on Twitter, you can see this if you go read blogs or Instagram. Again you have sort of the abundant crowd who are like, “We’re conquering the world. We’re making a lot of money. We’re spending a lot of money. Here’s my new house. Here’s my vacation to a tropical place.” Awesome.

We have the frugal tribe who’s like, “Look, I’ve found out how to save another $12 per month and I’m going to be totally financially independent in 62 more months and I’ll never have to work again.” And the thing is in order to really fit in that community you do kind of have to buy in by adopting their behaviors otherwise you just kind of – if you go to that community and say, “I just leased a new Mercedes.” They’re going to be like, “What? We don’t do that.”

Jody Moore: It’s different value systems, it’s valuing like you said, their frugality. And I notice with people in that bucket it tends to be also how creative can we get and how scrappy sometimes can we get. Which I guess I would have to say I’m in the abundance bucket for sure because I look at frugality in the way you’re describing it. And of course either of these things like you said can be virtuous or create problems for us.

But I notice for myself that the amount of consciousness, and effort, and time, and attention that it takes to live that way is not as valuable a use of my time as me creating more value in the world and therefore making more money. So for example, every time you checkout at the store and they say, “Would you like to save 20% by signing up for this thing? And then we’re going to email you and text you.” Or, “You sign up for our credit card today and if you get approved then you’re going to get half off your purchase and you’re going to save $20.”

And I always think to myself for me to fill that out, go through the approval process. Find in my email the bill to remember to go pay it. They’re like, “Just pay it right away and there’s no interest.” And the time, and effort, and attention for me that that requires is not worth $20. I could much more easily make $20 by helping someone. And that’s not to say that it’s right or wrong, I just know myself well enough to know that abundance. And we like to take a vacation and things but I don’t feel like we’ve kept our spending up with the proportion that our income has increased.

But I just know for me being frugal is a kind of a waste of my time, in the way you’re describing it.

Mark Butler: And mathematically in your case it is as well. The story I’m about to share isn’t you but it’s another one of my clients where we were having a budget meeting the other day. And she was talking about buying a new, I think a new laptop. And she was like, “Well, I’m going to talk to somebody who really knows about laptops because if I get this one, this one is 4,000 but that one is 6,000.”

And I had to point out to her, I said, “Look, in your situation right now you are going to spend more money deciding whether to spend the extra 2,000 than if you just spent the extra 2,000. So don’t think about that anymore.” You’ve graduated from those kinds of decisions, it’s the equivalent of a much more typically earning person being like, “Well, should I get the $10 thing or the $9 thing?” It’s a non-decision; don’t spend any energy when you don’t need to.

Jody Moore: Don’t waste your brain juice on it, yeah.

Mark Butler: Right. Whereas that’s a totally great place to be, I’m thrilled for her, for you. That’s fine. It’s really about what game you’re playing. You are playing a different game than the person who is like, I’m actually a master of saving on groceries, and on re-using, and recycling, and thrifting. They’re playing a different game and both people can have the same amount of satisfaction in a different game by figuring out what winning means to them and winning.

Jody Moore: I completely agree with that. And what is the most fun? My mom really likes to find a good deal. She likes to go to the thrift shop and bargain and hunt around. And it’s not that she couldn’t afford to just walk in to Nordstrom and buy the thing. It’s just fun for her, it’s part of the enjoyment she gets. And whereas I don’t find that to be fun, I find that to be a waste of my time. And so sometimes no matter – and by the way, I have gone through times in my life where things were super tight and I had to figure out, alright, how are we going to live off of this amount of money?

And I know I’m capable of doing that but to your point just where we are right now and with the way I spend my time, and the work I’m able to do, I’m really grateful that I’m able to put value into the world and earn money that way. I’m just beyond grateful for that. So let’s talk a little bit about just kind of a couple of topics that I felt like I have heard you speak on before that I love the way you think about them. One of them is debt, which sort of also goes along with shame. I know for myself when I had a more toxic relationship with money there was a lot of shame involved.

And that’s one of the things I loved about when I started working with you in my business was I remember thinking what’s Mark going to think if I tell him I kind of need some money to spend in this way, is he going to think it’s frivolous? And I was like I don’t think he does think that based on your response. You were just like, “Alright, let’s move some money here and we’ll move this over here.” Can you speak a little bit to that topic? And especially around debt, I feel like there’s a lot of shame for people around debt.

Mark Butler: I think there is a lot of shame around with people having debt. And I think I had it for a long, long time. I remember this is probably eight years ago when I was sort of trying to figure myself out financially. I found out there is something called Debtors Anonymous, like the same way there is with Alcoholics Anonymous or something and they had a quiz, an online thing. And I tested very high on you’re probably addicted to debt. And I really bought into that. Look, I’m addicted to debt. I can’t be trusted with a credit card.

And I kind of got weird for about a year there. Kate was very patient. Well, let’s be real, I’m weird every year, that was the flavor of weirdness that year. But there is a ton of shame and as time passed and I thought wait a minute. A debt is a number on a computer screen. And because that number is on that computer screen, some of my monthly income goes to that debt.

You’ve probably, I think you’ve heard me say this before but when I’m taking on debt all I’m doing is purchasing negative income. And I don’t mean negative as in bad. I mean as in less than zero. Negative, mathematically negative income, that’s all that’s happening. And I get to decide how to feel about the amount of negative income that I’m purchasing. The simple fact is if I purchase too much negative income it will exceed my positive income and I won’t be able to keep up and that’s called bankruptcy.

But even in bankruptcy I get, you know, I don’t know that I would shame someone for experiencing a bankruptcy. I would just say, “Look, you purchased more negative income than your positive income could handle. And then that led to you not being able to make payments which led to you having a bad credit score, not being able to borrow money for a while.” But that’s all that’s happening, you’re purchasing some negative income and you have to decide whether or not you want to keep doing that.

So about, it was about eight years ago, kind of after I came out of the weirdness and really shaming myself I did get to the point where I thought okay, but do I want to borrow money? Do I want to purchase negative income? And I thought well, I kind of don’t like purchasing negative income because number one, it’s too easy to lose track of what I’m purchasing with my negative income. If I run a bunch of stuff on a credit card I end up with a balance.

I can say, “I’m happy with the things I purchased.” But the water gets muddy as I try to figure out which money went to which experience. And now I’m paying off on a bunch of different things and I don’t know quite how I feel about any one of them. And then it’s just sort of this weight around my neck that I have to deal with. And that’s not, in my experience it hasn’t been super fun. So I’m not pro debt.

I describe myself as debt skeptical where I’m like, well, you can borrow money and I’m not going to think you’re a bad person but maybe pause before you do it and make sure that you’re okay with the amount of negative income you’re purchasing because you might want to spend that money elsewhere. And you might end up being like I’m not really that happy to be making payments on this. It’s not that fun to be making payments on this.

But on the other hand I have asked people before, “Think of the most exciting, most powerful experiences you’ve had in your life. Would you pay double what you paid for those experiences?” And almost always they’re like, “I would have paid double, triple, whatever.” I go, “Okay, what if I tell you if half the amount you paid is something called interest, now what?” “Oh, that’s bad.” I’m like I’m neutral about that.

You can tell me if that if that was a life changing experience for me and my family and the base amount was $5,000 and then the other half of the price was something called interest, does it change the experience? It doesn’t for me. The reason I call myself debt skeptical is because if you pile up too many of those you might end up somewhere where you’re not very happy to be. But in the meantime I don’t believe in any shame associated with debt. There’s a big difference between having debt and borrowing new money? Having debt is just a balance that I’m reducing over time.

Borrowing new money is me making the decision to purchase new negative income and that’s where I want to pause. So if somebody comes to me and they’re very embarrassed, like, “I have $40,000 in credit card debt.” I’m like, “Oh, okay, I know how to fix that. You take cash and you pay it down. And if you don’t have the cash, you earn more cash and you pay it down.”

But if someone says, “My credit card balances are growing by $3,000 every month.” I’ll say, “Do you want to have a conversation about how that’s happening because you might want to decide whether to keep going down that path. You’re using it to pay for cancer treatments, okay, cool. You’re using it to buy clothes, how many clothes? Do you love those clothes? Okay, but let’s have a conversation about the borrowing, as a totally distinct conversation from the debt that you already have.” Am I rambling too much or does that make sense?

Jody Moore: No, I love that. And it sort of, going back to the coaching model that I use and that you also are a certified coach by the way, we should mention. So if we put borrowing money or…

Mark Butler: It sounded like you were reminding me, by the way, Mark, you are a certified coach.

Jody Moore: No, I was telling everyone listening but I like to remind you sometimes too. If we put borrowing money or going into debt in the action line, the thought and feeling driving it matters. So there can be, like you said, strategic, conscious decision making in the thought line. And it might even still require courage in the feeling line. But that’s different than an unconscious sort of what we call buffering or just a habit of trying to escape ourselves or our lives which is to me we’re overspending in that situation is.

And so that’s going to create a different result in the end, even though the result is still debt, you’re going to have a different relationship with that debt. And therefore probably address that debt differently. And I think that’s what you’re talking about is once we already have the debt there’s no point now in beating ourselves up over it. The debt now goes into the circumstance line. And now we have to choose how do we want to think about this debt? And if we shame ourselves, which I did that for years as well. I was so ashamed of it.

And I say this all the time but I will never forget the first time I ever heard you speak, you were talking about money, and you were talking about budgets. And as soon as I hear that word I’m just like, I kind of tune out and I hide. You said, “A lot of people hide from their money.” And I was like what did he just say? I think that’s me. I don’t want to look at the bank account ever because I don’t want to feel all the emotions I would create with it thinking I’m so irresponsible, what’s the matter with me? Why can’t I get this together?

And you kind of described that we don’t have to think about money or budgets as they don’t have to be restrictive. This doesn’t have to be a shame. This is just math, okay; we have $40,000 in that let’s figure out a strategy now to move forward. And so that was really powerful for me.

Mark Butler: And one of the strategies available is to just think nothing about that. For me one of my sort of main missions in life is to try to remove as much dogma from money conversations as possible. And one of the main bullet points of most financial dogmas like debt is bad and it needs to be attacked. And I’m like, yeah, or not, because it just continues to be a number on a computer screen. You can think what you want to think about it and you can do what you want to do about it.

I also, speaking of things like budgets, often people say, “Well, I don’t know, I waste a lot of money, I’m not good at money.” I don’t believe there’s actually such a thing as ‘wasting money’. I think if we use the coaching model, when someone says, “I wasted money.” And if I go hunting up in their F line what they mean is, I find out they think well, I don’t think my mom would have spent money like that. Or I don’t think my sister would spend money like that. And they’re taking the word ‘waste’ and assigning it to that.

I’m like, “No, just drop the word ‘waste.” And it’s almost like they’re, sneakily they’re getting rid of their responsibility for the decision and for the behaviors by calling it waste. And I say, “Okay, what if I don’t let you call it waste, now you have to actually deal with what happened.” And sometimes what they discover is, “I’m calling it waste because I think you would call it wasteful but the reality is I loved it. I loved the thing I did.”

Or, “I’m calling it waste because I think I’m supposed to call it waste. The truth is I was trying to escape reality when I made that purchase and I’m embarrassed that I did that. But I don’t really want to deal with the thing that created that behavior, so I’m just going to call it waste. Label myself ‘bad with money’ and go on with my life.”

Instead of pausing and being like, interesting, when I feel sad or stressed I go to Target but then I excuse myself from that by calling myself ‘bad with money’, instead of being like, well, I can go to Target and I can love going to Target or I cannot go to Target. But the one thing I’m not going to do is excuse myself from understanding why I go to Target.

Jody Moore: It’s like remaining in consciousness and owning your decisions. And it’s the same thing we do with food, over the past year I’ve been…

Mark Butler: I have no idea what you’re talking about.

Jody Moore: I know. Mark and I have shared a few desserts in our day.

Mark Butler: Thank you for saying we shared them instead of you.

Jody Moore: That sounds weird. We were with other coaches and your wife and things.

Mark Butler: I don’t think it’s weird. I just appreciate you calling it shared instead of me eating 98% and you nibbling a corner off it.

Jody Moore: No. When I say shared I mean Mark ate an entire piece of lemon cake and I ate an entire piece of butter cake. We just were sitting at the same table. We’re not going to share anything, no.

Mark Butler: Anyway yes, it’s like food, you’re exactly right.

Jody Moore: But anyway, so with food I’ve finally this last year was like, listen, if I’m going to eat butter cake, I’m going to enjoy it. I’m going to eat it slowly. I’m not going to hurry and eat it so that nobody can see me or so that I don’t notice how much of it I’m eating. I’m going to enjoy every bite. I’m going to slow it down. I’m going to appreciate it. I am not afterwards going to ruin the experience by telling myself that you shouldn’t have done that, no more of that.

And it’s the same with money. If I’m going to buy something at Target just because it’s cute and I kind of want it, we might as well enjoy it and don’t ruin that experience with the shame and the beating up. And the irony is as soon as you start doing that you actually don’t feel like spending or eating as much. I’ve got to share this.

So, Bev Aron who we both mutually love and has coached both of us. She’s an amazing coach. At the beginning of this year I was working with her and I said, “Bev, sometimes I buy clothes and I wear them twice and then I don’t like it anymore and I want to get rid of it. And I feel kind of that’s very wasteful and that’s very gluttonous and I shouldn’t be doing that. And even though I can afford it, I have the money to do that, I still don’t, like you said, my mom would never do that. I don’t think I should be doing that and coach me to a place of why not.”

This is where she honestly got me to, she said, “What if every time you buy something, an article of clothing you just know I’m going to wear that one time and I’m going to love wearing it one time and then I’m going to pass it off into the world to someone else.” And I remember at first being like are you allowed to think that? That just sounds so gluttonous. But when I really allowed myself to think that you know what happened? I stopped buying so much clothes.

I had been buying it before thinking if I buy that I’m going to love it. I’m going to love how I look. I’m going to feel so confident. I for sure need to buy that thing. But when I started going, I’m going to wear that one time and then I’m not really going to like it and I’m going to want to get rid of it. Then my head went so I might as well not buy it.

So the irony is when you really allow yourself to own, like you said, that you enjoyed that purchase. And even if your husband thinks it’s wasteful, or your mother, or whatever, you have to own what’s true for you. You do align with your value system. My values didn’t get torn apart by that, I still value relationships and a lot of things more than clothes. But I had to own the truth of it first to get there, so anyway.

Mark Butler: Sometimes I think money, we give it special status, we treat it like it’s different but I don’t think it is different. The food thing resonates with me, pornography ends up being a similar thing where what we’re actually doing is we’re trying to escape reality. In fact I had a conversation with someone the other day who very sincerely told me that he was struggling with pornography. And I was like, “Look, I don’t think you’re weird and I don’t think you’re broken.” I don’t struggle with pornography but I do struggle with donuts and I happen to think it’s the same thing.

Jody Moore: I do too.

Mark Butler: There might be different consequences for those two things, but when I think of you using pornography I just think of myself sneaking off to the bakery. And some people sneak off to Nordstrom. To me it’s all very similar behavior, it’s escaping. And the tragedy is when we sneak off and then when we excuse ourselves for sneaking off instead of being like, interesting, why did I actually do that? We rob ourselves of the opportunity to discover our real values. And once we discover our real values and we’re clear on them then suddenly it becomes much easier to live them.

So in the same way that I love that there are coaches in the world who are doing such great work with removing so much of the shame and secrecy associated with something like pornography. I want to do everything I can to remove as much shame, and hiding, and sneaking that’s associated with money.

Jody Moore: Yes, I love that.

Mark Butler: Let’s just let it be numbers on a computer screen and use it as a tool to sort of discover and then evolve our values so that we don’t have to deal with a lot of beating ourselves up all the time, or worrying all the time. It’s just to me it’s wasted energy.

Jody Moore: Yes, I love it and I think you’re the perfect one to teach people that because you live it. And it just comes across as so authentic. So do you want to tell people a little bit about what you’re kind of creating right now to be able to help people shift their mindset and their relationship with money?

Mark Butler: Starting in mid January, I think it’s January 13^th, I’m going to start a six week class called Money School. And Money School will sort of jump off the topics that you and I have already talked about today with sort of removing the shame and the secrecy around money and start to make it a very normal topic to talk about. And then spend the next six weeks helping people who participate in the class just figure out who they are right now as it relates to their money. And who they want to be and start to move in that general direction.

So it’ll be six weeks, I’m not going to charge anything for it. It’s just something I want to do. It’s just something that sounds really fun to do. So people can learn about it by going to markbutler.com/moneyschool, and they can either do moneyschool all one word or money-school, it’ll all get them to the right place. The class starts January 13^th, I think January 13^th.

Jody Moore: It’s really going to be free?

Mark Butler: It’s going to be free.

Jody Moore: That’s awesome. So this is good for anybody, like we said anybody that’s not off the grid that uses money. This is going to be based on consumer mindset, entrepreneur mindset, any of that will be applicable, is that what you’re saying?

Mark Butler: Yeah. Now, I want everyone to feel welcome. I think that it’s because of who I am and what I do. It’s probably impossible for me to not have it kind of skewed toward people whose incomes are variable. Self-employed people or commission based people, or business owners. That’s just so much how my brain is wired that that’s kind of where I head. But most people have some sort of side hustle or some sort of business. So everyone is welcome and I hope everyone feels like it benefits them.

Jody Moore: I really want to encourage everyone whether you do have a side hustle or not to go learn from Mark. Because as you can tell from our conversation today, just I think the way you think about things is so powerful. And I know I have borrowed your thoughts a lot and still do.

And for anybody that wants their money result to look different but also just I think wants to improve your relationship with money. I know that sounds very coachy and trendy to say. But I really do think if you can relate to any of what we talked about with the shame, conflict in your marriage, because there can be different money mindsets within a marriage.

Mark Butler: Yeah, we’ll talk about it.

Jody Moore: I think I just would encourage everyone to take advantage of it. I think it’s so generous that you’re willing to give your time and do it for free. And I know I’ll be there so that’ll be fun.

Mark Butler: I’m happy to do it. My dream for this situation is for as a step one for all of us, it’s to have people actually just be able to think less about money. I want it to occupy less of your energy, less of your brain power, hopefully points you in a good direction.

Jody Moore: Awesome. Alright, thanks for your time Mark Butler.

Mark Butler: Thank you for using your platform to help people out so much.

                                                                                                                   

Who is your life coach? If you don’t have one I would be so honored to be your coach. I created a virtual coaching program called Be Bold that I want to invite you to join me in. We can address challenges, we can work on goals, and we can do it in so many different ways.

We have group coaching, individual private coaching, and online chats along with hundreds of hours of courses and content that I’ve created just for you. When you’re ready to really take what you’re learning on the podcast to the 10x level, then come check out Be Bold at JodyMoore.com/membership.