Rabbi Daniel Lapin: Money Is Spiritual, Not Just Materialistic

good afternoon vintage podcast this is familiar faces to any of you who have been with us for a while this is Rachel Marshall my co-host Bruce wayneer and our I forgot to count before the show I'm pretty sure this is your seventh time return Rabbi Daniel Lapin so huge round of applause virtually if we can for Rabbi Lapin thanks for having me back Rachel and Bruce it's uh it's it's really a great great pleasure I do a lot of interviews obviously and many of them are a little arduous and they are chores but um speaking with you always feels more like a conversation among friends on substantive and important topics rather than an interview so thanks for having me back awesome awesome well we love just the conversation we love the way that you unpack so many ideas that are extremely useful too not just Christians but to entrepreneurs to people who want to get their finances in order who really want to understand money and have a good relationship with money and every conversation we have just comes at it from a different angle and I love that all of our conversations are um we're never repeating information we're not going back over the same thing we're we're continuing to break new ground and you're always doing wonderful work Rabbi in your courses and your podcast and your shows and you just have so much to share that we love thank you and I really appreciate it because not everybody appreciates my Approach which as you know was based on on extensive research over many years on a question which causes considerable unease and not least among my own co-religionists which is the observation that Jews happen to be disproportionately good with money and this is not just in the United States in the 21st century but it's been true in in hospitable and wonderful countries and it's also been true in in oppressive and problematic regimes and it's been true in every century and every time so so it isn't that Jews just happen to be disproportionately good with money uh there really is something to it and that formed the basis of of all my work which is basically making it possible for people of every background to increase their revenue I mean it's it's terribly terribly important and I always get uneasy uh when people and and very often it's religious people both Christian and Jewish who feel so awkward about money that they they aren't even really sure whether they want to increase their revenue and one thing they do know is they certainly don't want anybody to know that they'd like to is there Revenue because they're embarrassed about it sure sure and that's a problem that definitely is pervasive and prevalent in American culture in the church in Christian culture and I can't speak to Jewish culture but I'm sure that you can um that you probably see that as well but you're right it's it's not just religious in American culture today um there's without question a a move on the part of the intellectual Elite and also government uh to demonize money in the making of money it's almost as if um it's almost if they view money as something that only the government should have and and you can understand that because what money does is gives people Independence [Music] when somebody says you know I don't care what people think you can be quite sure he's got a few dollars in the bank because nobody who lives hand to mouth doesn't care about what people think yeah you're only you're only a slave to money when you don't have the money [Laughter] well Rabbi uh I know we're going to talk a little bit about the physical and spiritual today and how money it's spiritual um but but let's get in a little bit about this um this idea and maybe we can tie it all together because you know it does seem like the government or or even I think it's even moving more into corporations now I don't know if you have the same where they're trying to spread out the money equally and all I think that's all it's going to do is actually um it's going to thwart an innovation that's actually going to help people at the lower economic uh rung even more if they if we can innovate they're the ones who benefit if we thwart Innovation they're actually going to to uh be even more um held back because the two things that are going to be affected in my mind are um the price of food and the price of energy which are basically the two things that everybody needs no matter what your social economic class and if we don't do things that innovate in those two areas then obviously it's going to be like a a poor tax on people because that's actually just going to to cause the price of those two industries to go up and thus hurt them even more oh there's there's no question at all that uh the official inflation figures at the present time in the United States of America that the numbers the government issues are hopelessly underestimated they're underestimated for very good political reasons because uh the the more aware voters become about the seriousness of inflation and the genuine figures the less happy they will be with politicians and so those numbers are massaged before they are released and massage very significantly because it's possible that uh actual inflation and I'm not telling you anything you don't know as you said anybody who goes to the grocery store on a regular basis and anybody who fills their car or pays for oil in any way or for that matter buys electricity um knows full well that inflation figures are probably at least double uh the numbers issued by the government and and the more regulatory the states um the more uh if you like Pro government the states are like California the bigger the jump in the cost of energy whether it's electricity or oil so you're absolutely right and um uh it yeah it's it's a very very big problem and the price and the and the two challenges to this redistributive policy which which young people are being taught at universities and colleges and it's being promoted almost everywhere that it's got to be more equal there's got to be more equal the one problem is that we don't have a successful model anywhere in history to to go on you know when has this approach to economics actually worked when and where oh nowhere at no time well then I recommend you be extremely cautious about applying something to the lives of 300 million people that hasn't been successfully done anywhere that's one huge problem the other huge problem is that uh redistribution is just or equality is just a really nice word for a really ugly idea which is taking money away from people who own it and uh and that's really a fundamental value of all morality we really have to decide do you or do you not agree with the statement that nobody else has a right to any money that you have made now I have an obligation to pay taxes and I have an obligation to give charity that's nothing to do with you it's my obligation but nobody has a right to my money and redistribution can only be accomplished in that way people sometimes say well it'll come from the government and and something that's really worthwhile people understanding is that the government can only get money by taking it from the people who've made it the government has no way to create wealth Governors the government can print money but that's just another way of taking it away from productive people it's called inflation and um and so no there is no way for the government to give you money other than taking it away from other people so they then transfer it and give it to you and you'd be amazed how much sticks to their fingers on the route from my pockets to yours I think this whole idea of money and government redistribution of wealth capitalism should we be entitled to earn and keep the fruit of our labors I mean it all comes down to fundamentals of what we believe about the world why the world exists who we are in the world our relationship with each other are humans valuable or not I mean Rabbi you're always unpacking these different ideas of do we believe in God or do we not I mean that's really kind of the fundamental core of all of this but um before we get too far I'm not able to access the chat so I'm going to try to log into at least YouTube where we know probably most of our listeners are yeah I'm actually on on YouTube and we do have some quick comments um okay I can't see them in the normal um section so I'm going to pull that up just so Bruce you can bring any questions up here I do want to say if you have questions for Rabbi or any comments that you'd like to share but specifically if you have questions about the nature of money or or anything that we're discussing today whether money is physical or spiritual or just your your familiarity with Rabbi Daniel Lapin and his work up to this point we'd love to hear from you so go ahead and pop your comments into the live stream chat and if you are listening after the fact we'd love to hear your comments and questions as well so this topic today specifically that we're talking about is money is spiritual now there's so much Discord about this idea because money is often confused and misunderstood and classified as part of our carnal basic you could even call it sinful our natural our um our human nature that's the ugly part of ourselves and yet money is actually spiritual that that's we're going to unpack today understanding money earning money managing it using it growing money it's a very important part of our lives and it's deeply spiritual and understanding that simple shift that money is not physical I mean there's a physical component to money but money is not only physical it's also very spiritual can cause you to be able to improve your finances with just this simple mindset shift and so that's what we're unpacking today if you have questions about that or you want to know specifically why is money spiritual please go ahead and drop that in the comments uh you know the only thing I would like to uh to to to to add to to that intro Rachel is that um what we're going to be talking about is as applicable to people who have no faith or God component in their lives people whose lives are completely secular um because a lot of people make the mistake of thinking that when we speak about spiritual that is synonymous with religion or God or piety or virtue we're not um I'm I'm not wearing my Rabbi hat when I speak about spiritual I'm wearing my hat as somebody who who made his living in engineering um spiritual simply means something which cannot be measured in a laboratory and I think it's really important to note that things like Integrity I mean that's really important if you're applying for a job somewhere if you can figure out a way of persuading them of your integrity that's a major step forward to being made an offer for their job and if as a HR as a human resources person if you're in a way of testing for integrity um every every company in the world would be to pass to your doorstep because one of the biggest challenges in hiring somebody particularly in the Financial Services Industries is how do you know you're hiring hiring somebody of integrity and you know let's make no mistake about it that there are many personality tests that are routinely administered by companies the famous Myers-Briggs and many many many others let's just make clear these are not in any way capable of measuring these spiritual attributes they measure psychological types and personality types but there's no Myers-Briggs number that tells you if somebody is going to be um routinely resilient somebody who can be knocked down and will will pick themselves up again no there is no test for that Integrity you know no test for that at all um loyalty no test for that at all and yet these are all vitally important spiritual attributes and and and let me just say this that every single time somebody buys an item of clothing for not strictly utilitarian purposes in other words if instead of buying a pair of overalls with a zip that runs from the left leg to the right shoulder you basically these are great I mean I use them whenever I'm working on my boat you step into them you pull them up you zip I am dressed in about 18 seconds flat it's wonderful and if I need to change to another one I unzip it step out and do enough now that's a utilitarian garment and to tell you the truth I have no idea who the manufacturer is of those of those garments but this this Blazer I'm I'm wearing now I'll tell you exactly who made it for me because that's important to me now we're talking spiritual because I want to appear a certain way to you I'm wearing certain clothing but from a utilitarian point of view I could just as well appear in a a pair of swimming trunks you know as long as the temperature in in this room is up and so every time somebody buys clothing because of the label that's spiritual not physical um I've noticed something that on women's clothing catalogs I very often see a word that has never yet ever appeared on a man's clothing catalog and that's the word modesty it's hilarious you know you'll see things I mean I I'm always intrigued by this so I I read it and then it says available with opaque lining for modesty on some you know as a relatively sheer woman's garment there's no such thing in men's clothing hey for modesty uh oh yeah right we care I mean you know so that again um that any time a woman pays attention to that that is a spiritual decision and um and and so I I just want to make this clear that we're not talking church or synagogue here we're talking daily economic activity don't think that uh spiritualism important if one of my employees comes to me to ask for a raise and he's very unhappy with what he's being paid and it's perhaps a little bit of a tight time for me I don't really want to give him a raise but I also don't want to lose him and then I I discuss with I talked to him and try and probe a little bit and then I discover that it's not really he's covering all his bills but money is also a symbol of appreciation and recognition and that if I gave him expanded responsibilities in a new title and a corner office with Windows on two sides he'd be very happy and there we go by just remembering that money is spiritual non-physical and that what the spiritual needs that money satisfies may not necessarily be another pound of carrots I can make that a win-win I don't have to pay out any more money but he gets what he needs so each and every one of us can benefit financially by understanding the spiritual implications of what money really is what's very interesting is that money we think about as a tangible thing I mean it started with gold coins or you know bartering first and and trading physical commodities for something else so it's it's this exchange but when we really get down to it I mean now we have Bitcoin and cryptocurrency and everything's digital you use your card and you don't even necessarily have to be present physically you can purchase something online so money feels more intangible now than it used to for that reason however when you really look at money being spiritual let's unpack that a little bit thank you for giving the definition between what is the difference between physical and spiritual physical something that can be measured in a lab spiritual something that cannot be measured in a lab so as we continue on that path how would you say money is spiritual uh well you you touched on one aspect of the course and and just to clarify gold is Also spiritually in other words you know who decreed that the metal of magnetization should be this yellow uh substance called gold why not the white substance called Platinum uh or for that matter you know why not something else entirely and um and there are reasons for it but they're usually spiritual reasons more than they are physical reasons uh and and secondly this the spirituality of money has certain problems with it let me give you an example um we we always went to Great Lengths whenever we gave money to our children you know child had to pay for something we never gave them a credit card or a credit card number we never did that I always reached into my pocket and took out cash no matter how much you know unless it was something ridiculous but but even up to hundreds of dollars uh always with cash because I didn't want to sever the connection in the child's spiritual makeup between me going to work every day and the child having the money you give a child a credit card and it's all virtualized and there is no uh profound and visceral Connection in the child's mind between dad goes to work and that's why this money is here no it's all it's all behind the scenes it's just you know waving a credit card or nowadays you know you you have a pay on your on your cell phone gosh so the 16 year old has a smartphone now when he needs to to buy some something it's you know gosh you know they can order instant food showing up at the door with a driver and not for one moment does it occur to them that that's out of my sweat and and and blood and so um in in many ways diminishing the the the spiritual natured making of this concrete as possible is very very helpful when it comes to raising children because you only have a few years to get these ideas locked in and and so during that time I always recommend to people always always cash as inconvenient as it can be to you sometimes because you know you don't use cash so much and but I always made a point of walking around with with more cash than I I ordinarily would simply because I wanted to make sure that if I needed to to give money to a child for any legitimate purpose it was always in cash and when we we we we didn't just do allowance says no money for nothing it was always specifically pay for certain chores and certain activities and again always in cash and always um a uh almost a government-like taxation policy where we'd give them the money and then take back some for savings purposes and put it over here take back some for charitable purposes put it over there you can decide where you want to where you want to give the charity but that's the process anyway just by way of clarifying the spiritual nature of money sometimes for educational purposes it can be a bit of a disadvantage in their ways of compensating for that well I think what's interesting is you're talking about two different components so one the way we spend money is spiritual because we have reasons for spending money that's more than utilitarian but then you're talking about how do we teach that money is also valuable and it's connected to our work so I see you spiritually that's what the nature of money being very connected to this spiritual side of I am providing value to another human they're receiving value that's how I'm getting paid in the first place so now I have this money the creation of money is very spiritual as well isn't it it is and um uh and and and to just add in as well that uh when the government introduced withholding texts and Bruce I don't remember exactly when there was it was before long before I came to the United States but at up until that time you got paid gross amounts of salary and then you had to write a check and I also know that at the time it was introduced a certain manifest a certain Factory owner and I wish I could remember his name so I can give him credit I'll try and look it up he used to give when withholding was introduced he used to pay his employees at one window and then they had to move to the next window and pay it back for him and he was by he was legally restrained from doing that precisely because government did not want people to be viscerally and consciously aware of their money being taken away from them so um uh so it's just as you say it's it's on the receiving side and on the paying side but uh but understanding that essentially uh money is brought into being when one human being serves another there is no other way of money being created and people must really understand that if the government prints money that's really not the creation of money at all absolutely so that actually happened I looked it up real quickly in 1943 Congress passed the current tax payment act which required employers to withhold taxes from employees wages and re and remit them quarterly what I find interesting about this there's now I don't know if you've if you've seen this Rabbi but there's now services uh we have we have detached ourselves so much from physical money there are now people that are have come up with services that help you get rid of subscriptions that you've signed up for and that you're not even using and so that's that's an exact that's an example I've Seen Those ads I've been very tempted to sign up because I'm sure I have some of those floating around yeah uh I experience this a lot with my mother one day um and I won't go into it but for the same you know same reason she was just signing up for things and not knowing she was signing up and it was actually going on her at T phone bill uh and and had no idea why her phone bill was going up every month but but it's the same kind of uh thing that the government discovered that there's no Vis there's not as I shouldn't say no there's not as much visceral reaction is if you just take it out of the paycheck and stream it back to him a little bit every month just like that gym membership of 10.99 every month that's coming out of your bank account you don't really think about it you don't miss it or some kind of streaming service now that's a big one you know a streaming service how you get media but yes that was that was a brilliant move on them to remove the visceral reaction of actually having to and I think many of us check out many of us have latched on to that idea with the subscription model uh Microsoft was obviously one of the first when they started introducing the idea that they don't want to sell you the package of software which is going to be good for the next five years until there's the next compulsory upgrade but instead they want to sell you an annual subscription to the software and and that's obviously spread extensively particularly in the music area as well so yeah that's um that is an I that is uh all part of what you're describing which is to try and make it as painless as possible for people to buy it's the same way for our phones I I I've talked to a T and they they want to get you to just to pay it every month and I'm like no I'll just pay it right away what kind of discount do I get and they're like there is no discount if you pay it right away um I'm like dumbfounded I mean it makes no sense but they want they want that to be as pain they don't want you to pay twelve hundred dollars they want you to pay a little bit so the Pain's not there for you so she just continue to to re-up over and over and over it's a very interesting then you look at credit card companies too I mean just the whole idea that well you can pay monthly a small amount can get people into a lot of trouble if they're in a position where they think oh I can afford the payment oh I'm going to rack up all these payments and if they instead had to to secure the cash first and then pay they probably have made the purchase in the first place yeah no that's exactly right and uh yeah the the ideas for people to uh uh to to feel less pain in order to to ease the transaction and and I mean I totally understand that of course but um all of that is easier on the part of people who recognize that that the money is a spiritual thing really and um and and the tension between seeing it as linked to your time and energy and Blood Sweat and Tears uh on the one hand and on the other that it's it it's something that comes into being because of human interaction uh yeah look it's important and uh and it's what I think you know we we focus on helping everybody get a stronger handle on well no Rachel go ahead and finish the uh there's a lot of comments on YouTube a couple of these I was going to bridge over to some of them so I think there's this idea that comes to mind for me that money being spiritual is if you are looking at the earning of money there's not just you mentioned trading your time and energy Your Blood Sweat and Tears for something but not every person who puts in one hour gets paid the same a person who has a certain job may get paid 20 an hour and somebody else might get paid a thousand dollars an hour and that's not unfair that's due to the intellectual Capital that they provided maybe the connections the social capital the spiritual Capital the uh the way that they contributed to that other person to provide the value is a spiritual nature I mean it's not just the physical time that they spent on the job no very much so um I was once talking to the founder of of a national chain of of what is now hundreds and hundreds and hundreds maybe thousands of hardware stores around the world and we stood on his on the top floor of his building and um and at one point I said to him um why should you make so much more money and I'll point it down at the window to the streets below and I pointed at uh at a bus going by and I said why should you make so much more money than that bus driver and he said it's simple it's because I work my and then he used a noun for the rearmost portion of his anatomy and followed by the word off I work my blank off that's why and I said well I'm sure you do work your blank off but I'll tell you one thing you don't work it off nearly as hard as that guy driving the bus he's got a harder job than you so I still don't see why you should get paid such huge multiples of his earnings and he sat on at his desk and he put his head in his hand and he said is there an answer to that yes of course there's an answer to that let's figure out how many employees you have right I said I don't have to figure it out I can tell you and he named the number of thousands and I said all those people have jobs because of you and I said now do you have any idea of how many customers on average your stores are serving at this very moment and he said I can't tell you off the top of my head but I can tell you very quickly and he pressed a button on his intercom and he spoke to his uh CFO I guess and he came back to tell me that at any given time at two o'clock at any two o'clock in the afternoon on any weekday their stories serving X thousands of customers and I said look how many people's lives you're impacting that's why you're making more money the bus driver if his bus was full he's impacting the lives of 50 people that's all we get paid on the basis of how much we do for how many people that's how it works because this entire system in my view is a Godly design system in your view it might be an evolutionary design system but it doesn't matter this entire system is based on institutionalized kindness It's an institutionalized system of being obsessed with other people's needs and desires and from extremely spiritual and which is extraordinarily spiritual but that is how money is made and that's why it is that the government has no capacity to make money it can't the uh and and I know what people say well I know this person did not do that and they made a lot of money but they're eventually exposed that's what people don't understand I once had the Supreme Joy of meeting an actor called George Burns if that if the name rings the bell oh yeah yeah and um I I met him a few days after his 100th birthday and I met him at the hillside Country Club in Los Angeles and we had the opportunity to chat and during our conversation which lasted I don't know maybe an hour or hour and a half um he smoked two cigars and I at one point I said Mr Burns how many cigars do you smoke a day he said oh I said seven or eights a day um and I went away thinking to myself you know there are always George Burns exceptions but for anyone else to say to themselves well you know what obviously spung a lot of cigars is the avenue to longevity and a good health um well as it turned out George Burns passed away two or three months after that meeting uh and I but through no it was just I mean I had nothing to do with that obviously just to clarify uh it's not meeting me is not a jinx on longevity you know so it doesn't work like that but um but uh it's it's similar to this yes we all know exceptions uh we know exceptions of horrible people who end up with a lot of money it's the exception not the rule uh we know a lot of young single guys who haven't yet learned um upbeat human interaction who through the tech revolution of the last um 30 or 40 years made a lot of money but ordinarily the people who've made a lot of money in America for instance can easily be identified shall we say the the c-suite of Fortune 500 companies and other entrepreneurial demographic groupings by and large one of the things we know about them is they are all they all have very domestic married lives most of them still married to the same person they started off with that is a very valuable function of making money well I know somebody who's you know had four divorces and and you know and he's making a lot yeah I I there is always a George Burns but it's not a good idea to base your life plan on those Black Swan events yes that's absolutely true and again coming all the way back to the beginning where you were looking for principles that show why something is overwhelmingly true in most cases is really valuable and so we're again looking at why is wealth created in an overwhelming majority of cases by somebody who serves the most people yeah the most profound and Powerful way that is a principle of wealth creation so yeah right let's come over to we've got a lot of comments here and Bruce I want to pick out a few uh I think the first one is uh a person who's whose uh ideas just economics and it says in my language Slovak the word adjective is called uh bohati and if you break it into those three uh words bow uh T it literally means god in you and so very interesting yeah so the word Rich means god in you in Slovak very nice very interesting yeah and then this other one Rachel I wanted I wanted to get uh in front of the rabbi uh a dedicated life here she's asking I've been I've been fearing to want to be wealthy because of what I've been taught she fears that she she shouldn't be wealthy okay so how how can I break that off my mental state she's asking um so um an entire um more than 10 of my book thou shall prosper is devoted to shattering that incredibly destructive spiritual schematic that making money either labels me as a less than good person or that making money is going to end up being a huge problem for me because my family's not going to like me and my friends aren't gonna like me or people are going to come and ask me for money and so people build in a a negative spiritual schematic about it and um uh it's not a simple matter to overcome but it's absolutely essential to overcome because nobody can ever Excel no decent person can ever excel at any activity which deep in their hearts they consider to be morally reprehensible and so um I I I I I I can't answer this in a sound by time afraid as I say I devoted more than 10 of my book to the exercises and the programs and the things you absolutely have to do to Free Yourself of that destructive spiritual schematic um so all I can say is you need to research that up you know happy to help you can you can go to my website or anywhere else you want to go but um it's it's too big a topic I can't give it to you in three sentences I can only tell you you have to overcome it it is a huge handicap to making money and number two it is possible to overcome it that's the best I can do right now and I'll just add on to that thou shalt Prosper was how my husband Lucas and I first found out about you Rabbi oh wow I don't know how many years ago we heard about the book we heard it mentioned somewhere we got the book he read it Lucas read first I read it next it was just powerful completely powerful and it was principles I think it was um principles for making money or biblical Commandments for making money or something like that the Ten Commandments for making yeah yeah yes the Ten Commandments for making money and the it's powerful to really understand money not just to think that you understand it and I think for anything that we are apprehensive of or afraid of if you set aside the emotion and just dig into understanding and look for wisdom look for knowledge seek out what it actually means and find valuable information and this is a really wonderful starting point thank you very much Rachel I I think it is I think it's a fantastic book and I say that dumpo's I wrote it and I liked it although um I did write it and I do like it it was very very hard to write um but because of the huge number of letters I get from people who tell me it has transformed their entire Financial lives I know it's something we've spoken about on this program before uh but with respect to that last question you know as long as people remember that that horrible saying that you'll often hear uh people saying about somebody who may made a charitable gift oh it's so beautiful to see them giving back to society and and that is an ugly ugly expression because what it suggests is that if I'm giving back to society when I give charity obviously while I was making my money in the first place I must have been ripping Society off and so you know the first step in in that progress of getting rid of the destructive spiritual schematic that money is is synonymous with bad behavior is realizing that when you're making money you're not ripping anybody off you don't have to give charity to expiate your sin of making money because you've been doing people good just by making the money in the first place and you know the proof of that is is you know our babysitter uh you know she she made money after looking after our kids and um I paid her more than she asked not as much as she asked um and she didn't rip me off now she thought she was which is why she was embarrassed to tell me how much to pay her and she said would 25 be okay thinking I'm taking away his 25 I'm a terrible person and my response was no wouldn't be okay her immediate reaction to that was to lower her figure and I said no I'm paying you 40 not 25 because that's what you were worth to me and next time we call you we want you to be able to drop out the things and come and take care of our needs so once you realize that making money is making money not taking money yes that's already a first step on their journey of understanding The Virtue and morality and dignity of making money wonderful and I would actually um just I want to share and Sue yeah good luck I'm not sure I'm saying your last name correctly um said what are a or the spiritual and biblical principles to increasing wealth so that comes right in line you can share more if you'd like that's just um very similar to the previous question but just wanted to share that one with you as well Rabbi yeah right again you know um it's important not to trivialize important principles by turning them into slogans um it it takes a long time to learn truly valuable things you know nobody becomes a top-rate sales professional overnight nobody becomes a plumber overnight nobody becomes a neurosurgeon overnight so uh to to learn to to make money that's why I wrote a 90 000 word book it's not something I can't tell just in an instant but but in order to at least set you on the road and put you on the right path I would say that instead of focusing on what you need focus on what other people need that you can fulfill get away from the idea that this is about your needs it isn't about what you need and I always say that our people the Jewish people we don't pray to God saying oh please God send me another 800 so I can pay my monthly payments at the end of this we don't say that we say God please open my eyes so I can see more of your children that need my help that means I need more clients I need more customers hey inflation's a problem it's eating up my money at the rate of well over one percent a month well that just means that I have to increase my earnings this year by 12 minimum how do I do that oh what am I going to do it's tell no how do I find more people to serve and how do I find a way of serving my existing customers or clients more valuable than I'm do this is just a real basic simple problem of how to be a better person absolutely and again I think it's easy to look at outliers and say how do I become rich overnight or wealthy overnight and that's not the answer the answer is focus on the principles continue to serve more people and do it more efficiently do it more successfully yeah in a way that they appreciate even more yeah and continue growing and you know people should not even Bill Gates who for a period was The Man Who had most money maybe in the world I don't recall but um he didn't do it he didn't he wasn't sitting around and all of a sudden money dropped in his lap he became obsessive about computers and programming and even so nothing would have happened had he not partnered up with um uh Paul Allen and nothing would have happened had his mother not been on the board of directors of IBM people don't realize that and nothing would have happened he's had his dad not been a nationally known lawyer with brilliant connections there was a lot of things that came together there and uh so nothing ever happens from sitting around thinking about your problems things happen from the seed of an action you have to be actually doing something and I've often had uh young people at the start of their working career saying well I don't want to start working here because I don't want to get end up in the wrong job compared to sitting around at your mom's basement watching television or playing games there is no such thing as a wrong job that's great absolutely it's a it's an amazing uh mentality When Rachel and I talk about this on other on some of our other podcasts about passive income we we hate that word or phrase passive income but yet people touted all the time there's no such thing as passive income you had to have done things to actually produce a cash flow now that that cash flow uh people are touting as passive income you're seeing it on social media right now where people are saying just give me this money and you know we'll produce passive income for you but remember you actually had to do something actively to actually gain that money with with a service towards somebody so we think there's no such thing as passive income it's very similar you're exactly right Bruce that term passive income was that not a term please correct me if I'm wrong on this was it not a term that came into being uh basically on account of the American IRS the the taxing system in order to designate a part of your income as more taxable on a certain level is that true you know what that I had not thought about that and I don't know for sure but that makes sense to me that that would have been it was like another term which which you and me both I think hate equally how do you like the term unearned income yes you didn't earn it you didn't deserve it is what you may as well say right yeah right as as one of our notorious presidents said a few years back you didn't make that yeah you didn't build that yeah yeah yeah yes I did actually okay I think there's another really um important question from Marshall blr and I can actually comment on this too from my educational background because what is the best age to start to educate our children on money and to explain that money is mainly a tool for everyday usage only for everyday usage only but not something that our personality and personal judgment depends upon uh that's that's a lot I'm not sure what that yeah portion means but I'm sure educating children on money and when is the right time to start but I think Bruce you had a thought there well to me and then Rabbi you um just chime in whenever you like but to me there's there would not be any specific time I I would say that children learn best by modeling you know um and so I I say this all the time authenticity comes from a place that people are very good at deciphering what a person really means and that is from from birth because a child cannot communicate but they can actually see the expressions and their feelings on their parents and so they're constantly learning because they can't say to themselves hey Mom what what do you mean by this when they're when they don't have any commutative skills so we learned that from a a newborn actually just taking in the world and learning so I would say there's no specific time that a child is not learning from the modeling of what you're doing so um don't hesitate to not only model but to communicate at a very very young age yes are they not going to understand that money comes from your your physical labor and what you're actually producing in society but you really need to start showing them at a very young age how money works and and your value system around money well and I'm just going to make one quick comment before you jump in Rabbi as young as I mean eight years old a friend of my daughters who I will proudly say was not my daughter making this comment but said something about I just need a boyfriend who can give me a thousand dollar phone better yet he can give me a two thousand dollar phone she had no concept of how money works that you earn it you don't just get somebody else to give you these things in life because money doesn't just it's not this uh you know vending machine situation and I I would say the concept of relationships was also completely I was just gonna say that there's a whole lot more wrong with that yeah I think so I had a whole conversation and teachable moment with my daughter afterwards but um what's just so interesting is they're interested in money much younger than we expect they're asking questions about money much younger than we expect and even my three-year-old probably for a year already has been playing with play money and transacting while I'm in the grocery store I'm shopping and I'm gonna pay you at the my pretend cash register so they're already thinking about money at a very young age no you're right about that and by the way they used to be toys much more available than they are today where you used to get for your child um a whole bag of plastic coins of various denominations and it used to come with a little a toy cash register um today it's very hard to get those toys for two reasons one they don't have batteries and flashy lights and number two uh people are worried that you know money is so evil and around this is so much a part of the culture that what sort of responsible socially conscious toy manufacturer would arrange for children to be able to play with money you know it's filthy that's that's a a huge part of it um and so fortunately on this question I I have something to respond to the question is what age should the child be before you start instructing the child on money I think an ancient Jewish wisdom has an answer an exact number answer and the answer is minus three quarters you know what that means in the womb I would imagine resource of a year ago it means the time to start educating a child on money is nine months before the child is born um and one of the reasons that we Jews believe that God gave us nine months instead of you know it could be a a far more it could be like certain forms of of seaweed um I forget the name of it grows about a foot a day mm-hmm you know so um why not have a child you know pop out you know two days after conception um because we need time to prepare and part of the preparation is for uh father and mother to be on the same page and that can take a few months to get right because you know maybe they only got married you know who knows I don't know maybe a year before whatever uh so they're still they're still they've spent much more of their lives as separate uh individuals than they have in this new unit called a marriage and so it wouldn't be good for a child to pop into the world before they got their act together and so when uh pregnancy begins a mother and a father look at each other and say hey you know what we're on the express uh track now we've only got nine months to get our act together and one of the things we have to get our act together on is money and so for instance uh up till now you know you've always spoken of my money and I've spoken of my money well we've got to realize that that's no good now and it's true my spouse might be home and building building a home and focusing on on Family Matters and I'm at work 10 hours a day but I would never speak about my money it's our money because she's doing as much to earn it as you are because your Effectiveness is dramatically enhanced by the peace of mind that comes from knowing that when you come home you're not going to be greeted by somebody who's competing with you in competitiveness and economic energy and you're not going to be listening to her draining Saga of what a rough day she had but you are going to be greeted as a returning Warrior from Battle and there's enormous value in that you go through your day quite differently when you know that your wife is going to be greeting you on your arrival home in the way that she should be now I know I'm speaking in a way that sounds old-fashioned and I understand that many couples have no option but for both spouses to be working and I get that but if I am telling you how the world really works and I'm giving you guidance on how best to structure your family and financial lives then I can't possibly give you 27 different variations of the ways many of us have adjusted the complexities and exigencies of our life I you know it's like a bridge if I'm going to teach you practical engineering and and Applied Mathematics I'm not going to give you every single situation of uh different widths of rivers or canyons and different rocks formations and mud bottoms of rivers I'm going to give you the basic principles of all the rules that govern Bridge construction and you then will use them to make your best possible decision and so in the in the same way um yes the ideal model is for uh husband and wife man and woman to to build a partnership in which each delivers a different quality you know if uh Steve Jobs partnered with Wozniak for building the Apple computer they were not exactly the same you know one had more of an artistic temperament one had more of a business temperament you know classically if if you establish a partnership to to create an economic Enterprise you don't take two people who've got exactly the same talents you don't need to do that and so similarly in in a marriage the same thing is true and that's why it's so important to understand that the money is something we both bring into existence only through our partnership is it possible now fine my wife has to work as well so let's figure it out let's let's look towards the time she can move to part-time let's move towards the time she can leave a job she has to commute to to a job she can do it whatever you do the best you can but you're hopelessly lost if you don't have an ideal set of circumstances to build your Paradigm on so uh so yes uh nine months before the baby is born you start getting your act together on money and uh and as Rachel said quite correctly uh the child is learning very very early on um I think it's important early on for a child to have an understanding of what sort of work the parent does do how it works and how it's possible that when we need to go to the store and buy fifty dollars worth of groceries where did that fifty dollars come from and again they're there too I would recommend that while the child is relatively young if you possibly can you know pay cash if the child's with you at the store pay cash because they have to see something transferring hands even though the reality is that money is spiritual and it might just be a credit card which is in a sense uh the equivalent of a handshake you know you shake somebody's hand and say I'll pay you at the end of the week that's kind of what a credit card is exactly the same thing so uh educating a child having uh all three of us agree that in answer to your question uh is that it's much earlier than you suspect yeah so and it's so missing in so many places and it's about the principles of money that really are needed it's not just all the extraneous things how to balance a checkbook how to spend how to get a job it's not just that there's just so much about money that we need to be teaching because it doesn't just come naturally and it's extremely important for their long-term success in publishing absolutely well I'm just saying Rabbi just like always 60 Minutes had just flown by talking to you and uh but I do think we have one more question we have several questions but I have one more we have one more question I think sure sure I love I love hearing what's on people's minds this is such a great system that you can actually have people asking questions in real time so yeah absolutely let's try and take whatever we can yeah so turf turf painter says leave it on the all on the field he uh he or she mentioned leave it all thank you all for what a credible time of learning learning thank you but how the question is how are we to price our service what is the guide what is to guide our pricing strategy I have my opinion on that but I'm going to let you lead off on this because I think we probably are in the same in the same boat you know what would really be interesting I you know I would love to hear what the question I would say in answer to his own or her own question because um I've often had people ask me at uh at live events at lectures or or speeches that I've given at various churches or for companies people will sometimes say to me hey um how do I uh establish a fair price for my goods or my services and and that word fair is used very often and and the answer is is really very simple and um and not at all complicated uh you have to price your goods and services at the figure that gives you the highest revenue if you make your price low then you're going to get more customers but that amount of customers multiplied by the unit price of your services will come to a certain figure call it X then if you raise your price you'll have fewer people but they'll all be paying more uh and and that figure will be why and where the x or y is bigger will tell you which direction to go this is very very simple mathematics this is you do not need to to get a master's degree in math to be able to find out how to price your basically your price for maximum income simple as that is it it's an auction system is all it is of course so you're like all you're doing is saying here's my price who wants to accept the price and if you have a lot if you have a lot of people accepting the price then you can choose to keep the price at that time at that amount but then you're not going to be able to start you're going to be able to service more people but not maybe service them as well exactly so then you can say to yourself I will raise the price and see who wants to pay this price and I'll have fewer people but then I can have a more personal relationship and in their minds I'm servicing them better absolutely it's a simple auction situation where you're just deciding how the Invisible Hand of the economy works yeah and if you raise it too high then obviously nobody's going to buy you just bring it down until somebody starts buying it's it is really that simple but people are afraid to to use that auction system yeah because they want to know what that's right you know what's moral what's fair you're not understanding how this system works fairness and morality is built into the pricing structure because of what because of the auction as you rightly call it absolutely the only time pricing is immoral is if you're pointing a gun at somebody you know if you uh compulsion if you go into a convenience store and point a 357 Magnum at the clerk and you say give me a hundred dollars that's an immoral price yeah yeah so I I actually have to follow up with this because uh the the person just asked about he did they he or she doesn't want to lose potential customers sometimes I think it's okay to lose potential customers because those people that are always focused only on price are going to continue to only focus on price and they are and they are so as soon as they see another price they're going to go running to that other price and so they're not going to actually look at the value that that you are bringing so so set your price and attract the people that you want to work with no obviously I mean if you're selling a product for ten dollars and uh shall we say uh 20 people are your customers so you're making two hundred dollars but if you raised your price from ten dollars to twenty dollars and uh the number of people who buy from you drops from 20 to 15. well now you're making three hundred dollars so that that tells you great I must raise my price that's all it's it's a simple calculation uh of course you'll lose customers if you raise your price but the number of customers you lose may not be as many as more than makes up for it in the price increase it's simple arithmetic anybody can do it I'm going to give a quick shout out here to Mike mccallowitz he has a book called I think it's the pumpkin plan Bruce correct me if I'm wrong yeah that's that's correct yes the Venn diagram in the book that's really powerful that helps you look at your unique advantages in business and you need to realize that your unique ability is not the lowest price that's not the ideal positioning to be in maybe you're the best quality or you deliver the fastest service or you serve as the broadest area or you only service exclusively one particular neighborhood I mean your name is Turf painter so I'm thinking that you mean um that's maybe your profession but um when you're in your Niche you have a unique advantage that makes you different your competitive Advantage makes you different than anyone else and use that to capitalize on not just the lowest price and it also Rachel times change in other words you might start a business uh making available a very new and novel thing and and you you can sell it at a very good price uh but maybe the the obstacles to entry in this business are very low and within a year there's 20 other people selling the same thing it's time to get out of that and get into something else is obviously not a good thing to stay in so as long as something is um is profitable then then it's good but that doesn't mean it's always going to be that way in fact one thing you can be sure of is it won't always be that way I remember a number of years ago Jeff Bezos from Amazon uh said you know one thing I know is that Amazon won't be around forever I don't know what's going to knock us off the pedestal but something will uh Amazon today looks as as as invulnerable as Sears Roebuck did you know in the 1960s yes there really was like that and somebody well I got to tell you Sears won't be here forever oh yeah right like the Grand Canyon won't be here forever well I don't know about the Grand Canyon but Sears Roebuck wasn't around forever and so think yeah things change it's uh jumper to the German economists called it creative destruction we could talk for it quite some time so I know we need to bring this to a conclusion just for the sake of time and respecting everyone's time here today uh but this has been a really powerful conversation I think somebody even um shared they just said um actually it's Turf painter as well thank you all what an incredible time of learning and I love the conversations that we have with you Rabbi because there's just so much to reveal through the topic I mean there's just so much more behind the topic than we can even address when we put up a put up a a topic or a concept that we're going to discuss and so I think one of the huge takeaways is that there's all of this subconscious messaging in our society that money is bad that we need to give to those who need the most that it's need-based we need to redistribute wealth Bruce as you were talking about in the beginning that it's all about fairness it's about equality it's about um somebody besides me should control the money just so that I'm not being immoral by having control of money at all and that's not a sustainable system when you can look at this concept of money being spiritual and recognize that we Are Spiritual Beings that can increase our of our ability to serve others when you then uh really begin take making a choice to advance your position in the world you will find that there's just so much value in wisdom that guides your decision making with finances so thank you so much for joining us today Rabbi I didn't even give you a proper introduction in the beginning we have talked with you on the show so many times I forgot your bio altogether you've done tremendous work though please tell our listeners in our audience how they can get in touch with you for your shows your books your courses and all the work that you provide and make available uh the best way is Rabbi Daniel lapin.com and um I'm I'm there and uh looking forward to seeing anybody there wonderful well thank you so much for listening today thank you for all the questions thank you for everyone who right now just on YouTube it shows 50 people watching live and we don't know if those are the same 50 that were a few minutes ago but it's just powerful to know that you have just the ability to reach a lot of people so YouTube is a powerful platform social media is a powerful platform to be able to share ideas um which is a very spiritual thing so thank you for being here today Bruce yeah the final thing is you know there's a lot of people that have come in really late and they're and they say oh I'm shoot I've just I came in late uh you can find this on uh YouTube hopefully forever uh at our channel the money advantage and you can actually see all the other uh times that we've talked to the rabbi and thank you thanks for participating today Rachel and I really appreciate it oh great to be with you it really is thank you all right so we're going to wrap up this show for today you can find this podcast on all social media platforms at the money Advantage as Bruce was sharing it's also live on it will be live later on the podcast and we have a Blog as well at the moneyadvantage.com so you can find any of Bruce and I's work that we do there helping people really just look at their finances from a healthy perspective maximize their money and do the most with it and be in financial control so with that we're going to leave you today and we appreciate you being on this journey with us so in closing please remember success leaves Clues so follow the successful few not the crowd and build a life in business you love we'll see you next time

Channel: The Money Advantage

Views: 16,330

Keywords: rabbi daniel lapin, ancient jewish wisdom, daniel lapin, thou shall prosper, biblical money principles, jewish wisdom, rabbi lapin, rabbi daniel lapin money, jewish financial wisdom, money is spiritual, business secrets from the bible rabbi daniel lapin, thou shall prosper by daniel lapin, why money is spiritual, lapin, rabbi daniel lapin thou shall prosper, bible and money, the bible and money, rabbi daniel lapin interview, rabbi daniel lapin podcast

Id: kdDMBgWHwkg

Length: 68min 27sec (4107 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 02 2023