Uncomfortable On Purpose | Luke Lloyd | The Sean Trace Show

I sat down with Luke Lloyd, founder of Lloyd Financial Group, and this conversation hit way deeper than money. 

We got into why so many people feel lost even with more access and connection than ever, and Luke broke down how studying money is really just studying people.

We talked about the Roman Empire's economic collapse, Napoleon Hill's philosophy on belief and procrastination, and why comfort might be the most dangerous trap of all. 

We also got into anxiety being a natural human trait instead of something to diagnose away, why increasing your income matters as much as saving, and how showing up consistently beats chasing instant results every time. 

If you had to name the one thing that gives your life meaning right now, what would it be?

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

I think purpose. Lack of purpose. We are going through the biggest uh lack of purpose, I'd say, ever in history uh of the world. And the reason for that, I think, is the dopamine and just the access to information, the access to dopamine with social media, doom scrolling, um, just this whole mindset shift that's happened over the past uh few decades. So and the other kind of part of this is you know, younger people aren't getting married, younger people aren't having kids. And I'm not saying you have to have kids and you have to get married to have purpose. I'm not saying that, but it for sure helps. Definitely getting up in the morning to take care of somebody else, that's inherently a purpose to get you up in the morning because you have to work your butt off to do something.

SPEAKER_00 0:52

All right, welcome everybody back to the Sean Trey Show. I am all over the place today, but uh, there's a reason why that I'm making this mistake, and I'm gonna keep that in the video. But I've got a really interesting guest with me that's got a very diverse background. Talk to me about who you are and a little bit about what you do, man.

SPEAKER_01 1:11

Sean, well, first of all, thanks for having me. I appreciate it. I know we're a little far away from each other with you in Vietnam and me here in Kentucky. I guess my story starts back in um where I grew up, uh small town, Southeast Ohio called Martins Ferry, Ohio. You know, I grew up in an area where everything was very blue-collar, coal mines, steel mills, you know, everyone works their butt off for their money. But what I started realizing was everyone's working their butt off, but not many people really can go out to eat very often. They can't go on that vacation because they don't have much money. So it sparked something in me that the blue-collar grit, and combining that with trying to figure out how does the world work? What does the study of money mean? What really is this is the study of money? And what I've realized over the years, the study of money is really the study of people, but that sparks some you know entrepreneurial drive in me. So I started like selling things on eBay, trying to start stacking away some cash, and I got to college, I started day trading the stock markets. That's where I kind of woke up, wow, you know, this there's a whole entire industry out there uh being able to um, you know, try to get ahead and try to maybe make some extra cash while I'm, you know, paying, I wasn't paying attention in class. I was just, you know, trading stocks. Um, but I played college baseball. I was always a nerd, and I was on the student body president, or I was student body president of a university. And uh one of the guys was a board trustee, said, Look, if you ever need an internship, let me know. Be glad to help you out. I ended up getting an internship at CNBC in New York City, uh, up in Wall Street. Um, I always kind of went into college that, you know, wasn't necessarily what you learned, it was who you met. And that kind of sparked my whole entire path. That CNBC internship sparked, you know, the whole path I'm on now. I met my mentor there. I joined him for six years in Cleveland, and then about a year ago, I started my own firm, Lloyd Financial Group. Um, so career-wise, that's what I did. But, you know, really it's about the study of money and people, and obviously I get to build a business and help people out while doing that study of people.

SPEAKER_00 3:12

I love that. And then I like try to bring in before we started, you you kind of asked a little bit about me, and I've got a weird background. I'd say weird, it's just non-traditional. But when I was in university, I um had a great professor, and his name was Andrew Wheat, and he started teaching us about all things that were different and interesting. And he taught uh comparative religion, he taught literature, he made me read amazing books from every corner of the world. And one of the cool books that I read was the Tao Ta Jing, which is like the the classic of Taoism. And there was one great, I love there's so many of those little like poems that are amazing, but there's one great one that talks about a ladder. And it says, whether you go up a ladder or down a ladder, your position is still unstable. And it it made me sit there and think about like, we in life, and like what you were talking about with money is actually a study of people. And you know, whether you're up a ladder, you know, and I was like talking the other day, and I use this analogy for lifestyle creep, you know, it's like you're high on the ladder and you're you're spending more. But it also like backs up like with my question of studying people and asking the question is like what do you think most people misunderstand about what makes a meaningful life?

SPEAKER_01 4:39

I think purpose. Lack of purpose. We are going through the biggest uh lack of purpose, I'd say, ever in history uh of the world. And the reason for that, I think, is the dopamine and just the access to information, the access to dopamine with social media, doom scrolling, um, just this whole mindset shift that's happened over the past uh few decades. So and the other kind of part of this is you know, younger people aren't getting married, younger people aren't having kids. And I'm not saying you have to have kids and you have to get married to have purpose. I'm not saying that, but it for sure helps. I'm uh definitely getting up in the morning to take care of somebody else, that's inherently a purpose to get you up in the morning because you have to work your butt off to do something. So my point is is there's this is there's been this shift. And again, I don't think this has really happened too much in history. I mean, the Roman Empire, I study Roman history a lot. You know, it's not just American history. It's one of the mistakes I think people make in my industry of managing people's money, is they only study American history. They don't study cycles that happen, Roman Empire, Dutch Empire, British Empire. Once you get past 250 years of a nation, usually you have inflationary pressure, the currency collapses, the rich get richer, the middle class separates essentially, and then the whole entire kind of system collapses, and the country that was number one does becomes not number one anymore. So we're kind of thinking we're going through some of that stuff in America. Um, but my point is the Roman stuff. I think there was definitely evidence of similar kind of mindsets of what's happening in America, the lack of purpose and kind of abundance mindset of too much excess and froth in the system in the Roman Empire. But I'm just they didn't have the technology, they didn't have your smartphones. They didn't, you know, constantly have, you know, you being connected around the world to everyone you ever knew, shooting text, you know, 20 texts a day to 20 different people. Like my point is I think everyone's not focused on the present. They're not focused on, you know, the time is going by so quickly for everyone. And, you know, I don't I don't necessarily have any evidence of this, but if I had to guess, I feel like people's time is flying by quicker now than it did 50 or 60 years ago or 100 years ago. I think that uh life felt like it was longer years ago. But because we're so involved, it's going quicker. I think that's making people make some interesting decisions with their money, with their lifestyle, with their finances, you know, going out there, racking up credit card debt, you know, doom spending, whatever you want to call it. I think if you think that time is flying by and you're never gonna get ahead, and you're constantly feeling uh like life's against you and the lack of purpose of not trying to plan for the future, it definitely makes you decisions. And all that does usually is, you know, we're studying uh corporations and earnings. That's why corporations are making so much money right now. Everyone's spending money, it doesn't matter where it's coming from, but they're not saving it, they're spending it, right?

SPEAKER_00 7:28

Right? It's so true, man. And I think people are just going and going and going, and they don't have their compasses are all off, you know? Um and one of the things that I've been noticing is that as we get people that are again so into the the the devices and the doom scrolling, like it's really hard to figure out what's important. It's hard to think about what is the thing that you need to be doing right now. You know, and that's like the one of the things that's most interesting to me is that as a father, um I try to figure out the one thing every day that's gonna make me a better dad. What's the one thing every day that's gonna help, you know, get my business ahead? What's the one thing that's gonna get there, get me moving toward fitness? Today I went to Muay Thai class, I worked out and did some cardio. And my daughter, I we trained Muay Thai together three days a week, you know? And it's hard. I didn't feel like doing it today, but we did it anyway. And that was the one thing that I needed to do to get my cardio, you know, two steps ahead. And I think that if you can figure out what are those things that you need to be doing, you know, you'll start moving in the right direction. But it doesn't mean that it's easy. And it doesn't mean that it's easy to understand and know what that is, because we have so much noise around us, you know. Hey, you should do this, try this. And and I've noticed that like one of the biggest dangers is that people, because they listen to all that noise, they constantly chase more. More this, more that. And they often struggle to enjoy what they already have.

SPEAKER_01 9:11

I didn't create Lloyd Financial Group because I wanted to make more money. I created it because of freedom, purpose, and legacy. What else would I do? Is kind of what I kind of went through in my head. You know, when when you're working for somebody in a lot of ways, you're really trading your time. You're you're almost the American way is capitalism is essentially slavery, but controlled slavery. Like you're literally building an empire for somebody else. They're paying you in all that kind of way. But, you know, my point is it's not your empire you're building. So for me, it was not about the money side of things. It was the purpose, it was the legacy, it was feeling like I'm getting up in the morning and everything I do, whether it's good or bad, I get to live and die by. I think that's that's a pretty powerful, you know, thing. And I call it my midlife crisis at 27. I'm 29 years old now. At 27, I um, you know, got married, started thinking about having kids. Uh, started, really made the decision that I was gonna start uh the business. And it's gonna be a grind. I mean, it's it's gonna be one of those things where I have I'm gonna get grayer by the day. Um, I fully expect health. I mean, I need to make sure I go to the gym, like you said, in the morning and stay on top of stuff because it's gonna be very easy to fall in the trap of on the road eating bad and gaining weight and all that kind of side of things. So I got to stay healthy in that way. But my point is, is I kind of purposefully put myself in a tougher situation. And I think that's there's some sort of drive innate nature that came out in me that I did not feel for years. So back in high school, college, I was hungry. I I grind, you know, I was a grinder. I really wanted just to continue to push forward, push forward. And then I felt myself falling into what I call like comfortability or being content, which I think a lot of people fall into. It's natural and it's easy to fall into because you start making a little bit of money, you have the guaranteed salary coming in. You might have a family you need to support, so it's a big risk to take the risk to maybe start your own thing. Um, but my point is, is I feel different than I've felt in a very long time, in a good way. I felt, I feel like that the world is currently my oyster. And, you know, with all the stress, anxiety, and headaches that's gonna come up over the next decade or two of me building this, it's all gonna be worth it because I can look back and say, you know what? I did this, I built this, but at the same time, you know, I signed myself up for this because it's very rewarding. I think a lot of people need more rewarding things in their life. It doesn't have to be business, it doesn't have to be career, but you have to have a reason to get up in the morning. If not, what are you doing? Just living a, you know, almost this uh, you know, dream, unpurposeful life that you aren't gonna, you know. I always look back and in my my kind of thinking, when you're 80 years old, what would you want to say about yourself? Or what would you what kind of regrets don't you want to have when you're 80 years old? Oh, I should have started that business. Oh, I should have had kids. You know, a lot of people my my you know age, I've talked to them, they're like, I don't want kids. I'm like, okay, that's fine. But when you're 80 years old, like and you look back on your life, don't do you, don't you think you might want like your a kid around or two kids to be able to have a family around you, people you love, because you're only going to be the last one, maybe at that point living at that point if you don't have kids. Like, don't you want family around? And it kind of gets them thinking a little bit, like, you know, well, I never really thought about that when I'm 70 or 80 years old. So maybe I'm different. Maybe I'm just, I don't know, maybe I'm just an old soul, but I try to think so far in the head and try to put myself like I'm already there and look back on my life to say, to make the decision, the important decisions about life.

SPEAKER_00 12:58

I love that, man. And it's one of the things, too, that's really important to me is that um I think that people have to figure out what's important to them. They have to figure out their why. They have to figure out what is really the thing that's driving them forward, whether that be family, whether it be your mission, whether it be educating people, whether it be a hundred different million different things. It might be, I met one lady, I know one lady who her thing is making the best noodle soup on the planet. That is her whole thing. And she every morning makes the absolute best noodle soup. And it makes the so she makes people happy and she makes people just so like blessed feeling because she makes great noodle soup. And, you know, that's it. But you have to figure out what it is for you. You have to figure out what is the thing that you're doing that matters the most, you know? But and I think that's a journey that people uh can be afraid of undertaking, afraid of doing, afraid of going down that path, because it means that you have to be vulnerable. It means that you have to uh take a chance to figure things out and take a chance to be wrong. Because maybe you go down a path that doesn't, you know, pan out. You know, you try to open a business and it doesn't go the way you want. But you know what? Maybe you learn about yourself and some in the process. And that learning about yourself is what you're you're you're getting to. You know, I remember this one story about this guy who was in a nursing home and he met the love of his life at like 90. And they said, Are you sad that you met her when you were 90? And he's like, No, it took me 90 years to be ready to for this relationship. And I mean, that to me was the most powerful thing ever. Because if you feel like you're continuously evolving and continuously moving toward this beautiful goal, you're doing it right, man.

SPEAKER_01 15:01

You're doing it right. Well, P. Okay, so I have three things. I'm gonna try to make sure I hit on all three things here because it as you were talking, all amazing points and spark three different ideas. The first one being that when it comes to the way of thinking for me, Napoleon Hill is something I live and die by. Napoleon Hill was like a business philosopher in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. And he, you know, Think and Grow Rich, a very popular book. But essentially, if you think and truly believe something, it's gonna come true. Um, you have to think about what you want, you have to truly believe you can do it, and it's gonna happen. But the problem is most people never think about what they want. They never think that far ahead. This is actually the end goal. And then on top of that, even if they think about it, most people aren't insane enough, like some of us out here, that actually believe they can do it. And every time I've imagined and truly believed, truly believed there was no, there was no lose. There is no way of not achieving that and just truly waking up every single day thinking about it. Um, it's happened. And my best example of that was when I interned at CNBC in New York City, I saw everyone coming on set to TV, and I said, one day I want to be that Wall Street analyst going on TV. So I don't know if it was every day I woke up thinking about it. I'm like, I want to be on TV as a Wall Street guy. And I don't know if it was the pathway that you know was created because of me thinking about it, but that's again, we're about the ex-boss moved up to Cleveland four months into working for him. He gave me my first opportunity on Nightly Business Report on PBS. COVID happened, and then once COVID happened, a lot of the shows went virtual, and I was able to kind of start stacking some of the shows, minor league appearances, and I started again on Fox Business. My point is I thought about it, and it was every single day, and it ended up working out. Now I thought, you know, going on TV maybe mattered more than it does in some ways. I don't want to get maybe too much into that, but I thought, you know, once I started going on TV, I'm like, it's gonna be great for business, it's gonna be great uh notoriety, credibility. It takes a lot of time, repetitions, and years to build that brand. So I maybe had this misconception of what would come maybe uh quickly from that, which is nothing comes quickly, I've learned real life. Um, that was my one one point. And then there was a second point, and this is where I'm gonna lose my train of thought because again, I it had three, uh, and that was one of them. The second one being that um, you know, happiness, um, there's something around the happiness kind of realm. But I'll think about that as you go next because I had two other big points I wanted to make there.

SPEAKER_00 17:40

I love that, man. Uh and I understand the train of thought thing. I'm my brain's all over the place. But you know, one of the things that I think about is that we have become uh much more connected, connected through social media, but yet you see people so much more lonely and disconnected from purpose, you know. And one of the things that I think is so important is like a purpose, a life with purpose, you know, and where where are you going? What are you doing? Like are you waking up every morning with the drive and fire to do something? And you know, if you're not, you gotta think about what you're doing because you know, you're otherwise, are you living or are you just existing? You know? So many people are just exist. So many people are just existing, but life is too beautiful for that. Last year, man, I was I I'm scared of travel. I I hate flying, I had this bad experience when I was younger. But my wife is the person who pushes me out of my comfort zone. And last year she was like, we're traveling for work. I've got she's a singer, she had shows all around the world, and I flew with her places. I got to see the sun setting over Mount Fuji. I got to see the sunrise uh in Qatar over the the Arabian Sea. I got to uh fly over uh the volcanoes of Iceland and look down and see like lava flows. I got to do all these things, try food around the world, meet people from around the world, all because I was willing to step into life and embrace life and see all that life had for me instead of living in that box. Because, you know, and maybe you're happy. And that's okay. And like, but I do think that you gotta figure out what it is that's your thing, what's your calling, what's your calling?

SPEAKER_01 19:57

Is life is suffering. And I think accepting that life is suffering almost inherently makes you happy. But what I mean by that is life's gonna be a struggle. Like it's not gonna be easy. Um you're gonna have a lot of bad things happen, probably in your life, because it's life, and you're gonna see loved ones pass away eventually because no one's gonna live forever. So people you love and spend time with, you know, you won't have one day. The one day you're not gonna be here. So one of the Buddhist noble truths is life is suffering a lot of ways. And you know, I have these conversations a lot. I'm not gonna bring up the specific name recently, but you know, recently the past few weeks, I was talking to someone in my family basically, and you know, he's just like so stressed out and anxious, and almost can't function anymore because of just what's going on. And, you know, maybe it's uh, you know, too much the dopamine, whatever it be. But I'm like, dude, like chill out, man. Like, yeah, you might not feel good and might be anxious or stress, but just accept it. Like, just kind of man up. I hate to say that, like, man up and just be like, look, yeah, you're not gonna feel good every day. Yeah, life's not gonna be easy every day. Like, just go into it knowing that and expecting that it's gonna be better. And that kind of this sparked one other thought that I thought that came back that I wanted to talk about earlier. Being uncomfortable is okay. And actually, it does allow you to grow. It's not necessarily I don't even like saying failing. I like saying put yourself in uncomfortable situations, you know, things you never thought you could do, or things that give you anxiety or stress, whatever. And anxiety, by the way, is a natural. I hate this whole anxiety thing, like in this world. Like I'm anxious every single day of my life trying to build a business and trying to do uh 10 different hats in my you know world. But anxiety was uh inherently a biological trait uh ingrained in us for surviving. It's not a bad thing. Anxiety is natural to the human nature. So the fact we're trying to diagnose anxiety, like we all have anxiety, maybe some of us more than others, but in my opinion, uh deal with it a little bit. Um, but but Yourself in uncomfortable situations, I think allows you to grow and it allows your perception to change. And my point with the business side is I don't think I would have started my business if I was, if I had made every right decision in a life and I was comfortable at all times, I don't think I would have had the capacity, or if you want to call it balls to start the business. Because if you lose every once in a while, or if you take a big risk and it doesn't pay off, you almost get okay and acceptable with that risk tolerance. You're like, you know, what's the worst that could happen? I would have been slapped in the face once and got knocked down and broke my neck, but now I cracked it back over, you know, over and now I'm gonna get back up, stand back up, and try to fight the fight again. Like it allows you to perceive things differently and you become comfortable with your nervous system or your brain with that level of risk again. So, you know, I think failing is a good thing. Obviously, you don't want to fail all the time, but Napoleon Hill again talks about uh procrastination being the number one hindrance to wealth and number one hindrance to mislife. Yeah. Um, paralysis by analysis. And I was always a nerd. Again, I wasn't kidding. I was supposed to be validatorian in high school, so I became validatorian in high school. I triple majored in college. But what I found was the schooling, you know, yeah, sure, it mattered a little bit, but the schooling really never meant, you know, really added the you know, the, I don't think, long-term value in my life from a career standpoint in a lot of ways. It was definitely the um meeting people, but it's almost being, I hate to say it, being becoming dumber throughout the years is almost beneficial because paralysis by analysis, analysis, if you're if you're smart, you don't take the risk because you're always constantly analyzing every scenario. What if this fails? What if this happens? All the hypotheticals. Well, it's proven the people that, you know, if you fail 99 times out of 100, but that one time works, it's proven the people that make decisions and are decisive, they always come out ahead. So I've almost programmed myself, not necessarily in, you know, all aspects of my life, but from a building's business mindset to become dumber and not overthink everything and be quick with my decision making. And if it fails, I rerouse. But I I'm quick to make that decision. I don't try to contemplate too much over every single thing I do.

SPEAKER_00 24:18

I love that because at the end of the day, like you just have to put one foot in front of the other. You know, I I now with my with my podcasts, let's see. I have four podcasts, by the way, because I'm a bit out there. I have uh the Sean Trey show, which I talk about like life and how to be more resilient, growing money, which I talk about personal finance, because I knew nothing about money. And I wanted to learn. So I said, what better way than to talk to like financial experts and learn? And then I have a podcast on um content creation because I have a content creation company. I like do content marketing. And then finally, I've got a wine podcast because I grew up in the Napa Valley and I love wine and love the winemakers. So I talk to all these winemakers about what they do. My smallest podcast, I have over 50 episodes. My largest podcast, it's 400 something, you know? And at the end of the day, it comes about by showing up every single day. I post two episodes a week per podcast. I have three reels per episode. I had two long form episodes per podcast, three reels per podcast, you know, then I'm doing short form and I'm doing long form. I do it by showing up every single day and hammering. It's that that's it. You show up and then today's done, and then you do the next one. One of the things that I've learned from creating content with my wife when we do a music video, we release it. I put months, sometimes a song will take a year or plus to evolve and come out, you know, and like become and release and everything awesome. And what we realized is is like when we're we're done with it, my workers will be like, hey, how many views do we have? And I'm like, I'm not paying attention anymore. Like, why not? I'm like, because I'm already looking at the next thing. That's done. It's up. We just got to show up tomorrow.

SPEAKER_01 26:06

Well, that that's my mindset. Um, too many people try something out and never stick with it long enough. So they'll try something out for a month and then give up because you're like, I didn't see the instant reward. Well, nothing, there's no get rich quick scheme out there. All right. You're gonna lose all your money or you're gonna, you know, put yourself even in a worse situation. If you're trying to, it's like it's not even have to be about money, it could be about cloud or success or nothing comes quickly. You know, a lot of this stuff in my the way I view things is almost on a yearly basis. I'll try almost anything out in my business. If I make a decision, I'm allocating capital to new marketing, um, maybe project, maybe it's a new software, maybe it's a new partnership or employee, whatever it be. It's gonna have to be at least a year. You know, there's a one-year time frame of then we can track how is this done month to month, three months, six months. But everything for me in my life for the most part's been about a year to see any kind of decent uh return, whether it was from the media, whether it was from um, you know, investments, you know, definitely longer-term horizons tend to work out better in the investment world. Um, but you know, my newsletter is a great example of that. You know, when I started Lloyd Financial, it's been exactly actually, it's funny, today. Today, I think this is my one-year anniversary uh launching Lloyd Financial Group.

SPEAKER_02 27:28

Congratulations, man.

SPEAKER_01 27:30

Thank you. But the first day of launching took me three months of government hell, by the way, to get open. Um, we don't live in America as much of a capitalistic system as we think we do. Uh, it's very controlled by regulators and the government. But um when I got open, I launched my newsletter. It had zero subscribers. And over the past year, it's grown to 3,200 subscribers. And it took us about probably nine months, probably until about three, four months ago, that we really were just kind of flat in the hundreds. And all of a sudden, some big events took it off. And we started gaining thousands of followers pretty quickly on that. But it took nine months of waking up every single day with 150 to 200 people basically reading our newsletter. Um, so my point is that things come quickly when they do happen, it becomes very exponential, but you gotta put in the time and you gotta wake up and realize that you'll probably put it, probably putting in work that won't you won't see the return for at least a few years down the road for.

SPEAKER_00 28:30

I I help people make content. We make a ton of videos, and uh, the people I work with make a ton of videos. And one of the things I tell them is they're like, I'm gonna start getting sales right away. And I said, No. No, you're not. But you are gonna be getting a ton of sales in a year, and you're gonna be crushing it in two. And they're like, What you know, that's a long time. And I said, Everything takes time. And if you can get out there and you can stay consistent and you can keep showing up, I it's wild that with my different podcasts, I'm talking to people that if I had to tried to message those people two or three years ago, nothing. They wouldn't message back. They would, and now I had people, I had someone that is a huge person I hugely respect that messaged me and said, Sean, I love what you're doing. And I was just like, oh, damn, that's wild, man. I didn't even know that you're I'm in this the same like arena as this person, knowing who I am. But they did. And that was just mind-blowing for me that it was just about just about hustle. And it was about showing up and about staying consistent. And it was interesting too. I'm uh I'm a basketball fan, and I grew up in Boston. You know, I was born in the Boston area. Dude, yeah, man, right? Uh and we we we were supposed to do good this year in the Celtics, and uh it didn't happen turn out so well in the playoffs. But I loved Larry Bird, and my dad took me to the garden, the old Boston garden when I was a kid, and we watched Larry Bird. And Larry Bird has this one quote that I love. I've got a theory that if you give a hundred percent all of the time, somehow things will work out in the end. And I've always loved that. I've always loved that because you can't control much. You know, that whole stoicism, control what you can, let go of the rest. But like the one thing you can control is how much you show up. That's in your power.

SPEAKER_01 30:29

In your attitude, in your behaviors, right? You know, it's a if I took sales, uh, I think my sales training, I took sales training for two and a half years of my previous firm. I think that was sometimes more impactful than my college education in some ways. Um, because all everything's sales. You're either selling a product or service or yourself. Even if you're an engineer at a company and you're working on planes and engines, you're technically still working in sales because you're adding value. You have to add value. That's how capitalism works, right? So, but then sales training basically taught about this triangle, and two of the parts of the triangle were behaviors and attitude. And if you have the right behaviors and the right attitude, inherently things are gonna work out. Most people don't block their calendars. Most people do things when they're told to do things, they don't go out there and hunt themselves, you know, or create their own calendar, knowing knowing what they need to do, you know, to have that one week, one month, one year growth, you know, whatever kind of life they're trying to live. And, you know, one of the things for me, talking about not just the behaviors and attitude, but the money side of the equation, most financial advisors talk about saving more money. It's also about increasing your income. Everyone tends to forget about that. They tend to say, you know, to think they tend to say or think for some reason that it's almost impossible to increase your income quickly. Well, you know, right now profit margins and corporations are the highest they've ever been in history in a lot of ways. AI, technology, productivity is gonna boost like crazy over the next 10 years. If you learn how to use AI, you're gonna increase your productivity. All it is is quantifying the value you bring to the capitalistic system. What problems do you solve? The bigger problems you solve, usually in life, the more you get paid. So, all my clients, we go through almost this conversation, philosophical conversation. How much value, revenue, savings, profitability, you can quantify any metric you want, whether you work in HR engineering or directly in sales? Obviously, sales are a little bit easier to quantify. But how much value do you bring to that firm? If it's a million dollars of value and you're paid $150,000 or $100,000, and it's only costing them $200,000 or $300,000 for the revenue, they're making half a million dollars off of you. So maybe you do deserve a $50,000 raise or a hundred thousand dollar raise. Like these are conversations you should think about and talk with your employer about. You know, every year for me, I quantified the exact dollars of revenue I thought I'd delivered to the firm. And one of the reasons I started made this pivot, again, it wasn't about money, but money's a scorecard, I think. It's a way to track score sometimes because there's not really other many ways to track score uh, you know, day to day. But when it comes to the money side, you know, I'm like, you know, I'm making my firm, you know, $300,000, $400,000 more than I'm being paid. And I felt like from that point, that was where they're gonna make a lot more money than I'm gonna start, you know, keep up with them. You know, if I'm making $2 million for the firm, I'm gonna be making a million dollars a year now. Probably making $300 or $400. Like my point is it was still gonna be good money, but I was gonna definitely be adding a lot more value to them than they were adding to me. So you have to think differently. Think like an entrepreneur, even if you're not an entrepreneur or a business owner, think like a business owner. Think of your family like a business, think of your life like a business.

SPEAKER_00 33:48

Yes, I love that. I love it 100%, man. At this point in your life, what what do you personally believe gives life meaning?

SPEAKER_02 34:01

Good question. It's a deep question. The broad answer, like it goes back to the purpose answer.

SPEAKER_01 34:08

But if I had to answer it for myself, um for me, my family gives life meaning. Um, otherwise, to me, without people you love who are truly on this floating rock. And again, this is maybe the pessimistic side of me. Like, I'm I'm it's funny, I was on a Fox business yesterday in New York, and uh Charles Payne goes, Luke, you're an optimist. Hi. I'm like, okay. Like, maybe I came across that moment like an optimist, but I'm I'm usually a pessimist at heart. Life, again, I go back to the Buddhist noble truth. I think a lot of ways life is suffering. Life, in a lot of ways, um, it's hard to find purpose. It's hard to find that meaning. It's hard to find why we're here. You know, we're on this floating rock, stuck alone here. You know, we we create our own fun and things that we, you know, fill our time up because that's really all we work. Is that work's not bad, by the way. Everyone wants to retire. Work provides you something to do with your time. You know, if you enjoy what you do, you never work a day. It's because it fills your time up. You go out for your hobbies, you're filling your time up. We're just trying to find excuses to fill our time up in society, right? So for me, it's like without without my loved ones, without friends or people I love around, there'd be really no reason for me to be here. I just would be kind of existing, as you kind of said earlier. So to me, meaning of life is people I love and love to be around. And uh, you know, obviously throughout the years, I'm 29, I've already lost people I love, and that's gonna continue to happen probably over the next 10 years, and it'll happen more and more. And then next thing you know, I'll be 80, hopefully 80 years old. Well, let me get past 60, I'll be happy. But yeah, and then we'll be the ones to go eventually too. And then hopefully our kids or other people we impact the life that love us provides them meaning and purpose in life. But it comes down to love. And yeah, you can go spiritual and talk about religion. I think religion's a lot of fun to talk about. And I I am a practicing Catholic. Um, so I do um really get into that. But at the same time, you know, I always like using the human being purpose and love than you know, always trying to say life is meaningful because you know, we're gonna live in this fairy terrible uh life after I have no idea. I think I know, but I don't know for sure. So I'd like to kind of think about how it is actually here on earth, you know.

SPEAKER_02 36:31

Yeah. Where can people go to find out more about you and what you do?

SPEAKER_01 36:38

Great question. So, first of all, I've really enjoyed this conversation. So thanks for having me on today. My website is www.loydfg.com. That's twolsg.com. Um, I have my newsletter popped up right there when you log in. So uh I do a newsletter Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. every five days a week, um, talking about the investment world, also tax planning, financial planning, uh philosophical things like purpose and quantifying your value. These are all things I talk about in the newsletter and every social media Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Luke Lloyd. Um, you can find me there. And I'm just looking forward to continuing to grow with other people. And we're all in this together. So we're all trying to, we all, you know, it's funny how you know, we always I hate the term expert. Everyone will say, Luke, you're, you know, a financial expert. No, I I I'm a student. I study things. I'm a student of the market, student of life, and we're all students. I hate the term experts. That's one thing. Yeah, I brought my buddy outs in New York City with me doing a media tour in New York, and um he's kind of like, you know, Luke, what do you think about being around like all these billionaires or very successful people? I'm like, I don't care. There's nothing that separates them and me. How successful you are, how much money you have, there's nothing that separates any of us besides maybe the actual materialistic things. You know, I don't get uh intimidated by you know people I used to growing up. I'm like, I'll put these people on pedestals, celebrities on pedestals. We're all in this together. We're all playing the same game. Most people I've met in really high spots. Uh I there's no such thing as lucky, Craig. You're on luck, it's discipline and consistency, but they're no smarter than me and you. And they're no uh not much different than me and you is what I'm saying.