The Daily Habits Behind Endless Income - Garrett Gunderson

**Charles Schwartz** (0:00)
Welcome to the Proven Podcast, where we don't care what you think, only what you can prove.
If you ever want to sit around a bunch of entrepreneurs and listen to their proven tactics on what they do and how they do it and what their routines look like, this is the episode for you. Garrett and I sit down so much so that we're gonna have to do another episode just to talk about the finance stuff. This episode is about our routines, about the things that we've seen that create success, and really what it's like when we all sit down and talk to each other. The show starts now. All right, everybody, welcome back to the show. I'm really excited to have my guest on. Thanks, man. Thanks for coming on. I appreciate you.

**Garrett Gunderson** (0:33)
Yeah, it's been a fun chatting until we got to the show, like right away. You know, just hit it off. So look forward to this.

**Charles Schwartz** (0:42)
So for the four or five people on the planet who aren't lucky enough to know who you are, let's get everybody caught up. Who are you? What do you do? How did you get here?

**Garrett Gunderson** (0:50)
I grew up in a small coal mining town, so I didn't come for money, but I teach money. So when I was a teenager, I won $5,000 being the Young Entrepreneur of the Year for the state of Utah. I don't want to invest that money, but my mom was like, you're going to mess that up. I'm not signing off. So she wouldn't be a custodian. So as soon as I turned 18, I made a really dumb investment in this variable universal life insurance policy that they said was going to earn 18 percent a year for 40 years, which was nonsense. But that led me to getting an internship by the time I was 19
And that internship was basically teaching me how to peddle products, but it also was the foray into finance. And in the year 2000 and 2001, 2002, the market starts to tank. That's when I got my real education, because I didn't want to just tell people, oh, you're in it for the long haul or dollar cost average or any of that nonsense. And so I became really good at efficiency, helping people save tax, help them save on interest, help them find where there's non-performing fees or design their insurances more appropriately. And I just was fascinated with what the wealthy did versus everyone else. So a lot of my books are about where would that apply to everybody?

**Charles Schwartz** (1:56)
Yeah, I think you and I both grew up, huh? We couldn't afford the last few letters of poor. That's just how we were and that's how things kind of worked out. We just got a little obsessed with the freedom that money buys. I think it's one of the things that people understand. Money's not going to buy happiness, but good God will buy some comfort because those business class seats are really quite nice.

**Garrett Gunderson** (2:15)
It makes a big difference, man. Like lack of money creates a lot of uncomfortable moments that are unnecessary if you had money. So it's just like a life of inconvenience. And unfortunately, in the world of finance, they kind of teach inconvenience. Like, oh, just wait till you're old. Just keep setting money aside. It's never about enjoying life along the way, which I abhor. I want to make sure that people have a high quality of life. And the more you can have good energy and have a life that you love, the more you're going to create value in the world. The more you hate everything because you have to wait till you're too old to enjoy it, to finally enjoy the money you've been saving. I think that's just a bad path.

**Charles Schwartz** (2:53)
And I think we're taught that too much. We're taught, hey, do this and avoid it, and don't enjoy now, push it off to the end and all that. There's so many myths out there when it comes to money. Because again, what I was taught growing up was work hard. And I was like, what are you talking about?
That is absolutely ineffective. So what are some of the myths that you have towards money that you're like, yeah, absolutely, no, this isn't what you do. Completely wrong. I've learned this. What are some of the myths?

**Garrett Gunderson** (3:17)
One of the things you just mentioned is hard work with the wrong philosophies still leads to limitation or bankruptcy. So I learned this a little bit at an early age because as Ms. Oliveira, I would ride my bike to do her lawn, pull her weeds, and all this stuff. And she would pay me with quarters and dimes. So it was excruciatingly painful work, yet it didn't pay off. And then one week, I worked at the East Carbon Dump Site, where it was 105 degrees trying to pound stakes into a ground that was hard as coal. And so the next thing you know, I was like, all right, I've got to get an education. Now, at first, I thought that education was going to be school, but I got most of my education outside of the classroom. I did have professors that used to be fun managers that I learned a ton from, or just people that were really intelligent that I could have conversations with, and that knew a lot about business. And so that really did help. But the way I've kind of figured out these myths was making mistakes myself and just questioning everything.