263: Your Financial Personality Impacts Your Decisions 

Michele Williams: Hello, my name is Michele, and you're listening to Profit is a Choice.

Joining me today is Gary Arblaster of Arblaster Consulting. Gary is a finance expert, and he is on a journey to help us recognize our mindset around money and communications. He has created an assessment called the 41 Financial Personality Assessment a tool that links personality traits to financial choices. So today we're going to talk about money and our individual wiring and how that affects our decision-making and communication around money.

Every day, empowered entrepreneurs are taking ownership of their company financial health and enjoying the rewards of reduced stress and more creativity. With my background as a financial software developer, owner of multiple businesses in the interior design industry, educator, and speaker, I coach women in the interior design industry to increase their profits, regain ownership of their bottom line, and to have fun again in their business. Welcome to Profit is a Choice.

Hi, Gary. Welcome to the podcast.

Gary Arblaster: Well, good morning, Michele. How are you?

Michele Williams: Oh, I'm doing great. We just found out we're both in the same state and you don't even live in Georgia.

Gary Arblaster: No, I don't. It's so funny. I think you probably passed me this morning and we didn't even wave at each other.

Michele Williams: I know. How funny. We hadn't really, I guess, officially met yet. How interesting.

Gary Arblaster: Oh, this is great. I appreciate you having me on. I really am.

Michele Williams: Yeah, my pleasure. So, I am really excited to hear some of your story. I know you have a lot of information to share. I was reading through your website and all the information that was sent over, but tell us a little bit, Gary, about your story. Particularly, I'm curious because you have a book called Making Millions.

Gary Arblaster: Making Millions and Going Broke. Yeah.

Michele Williams: And going broke. Right. I mean, we hear that all the time. You know, my listeners know that I do Profit First. And one of the things that Mike talks about was making millions and going broke. Like the exact same thing. I think it's almost like an entrepreneurial trap if you will. So, share a little bit about your journey. I'd love to hear it.

Gary Arblaster: Well, I appreciate that. And just to kind, of kick off Making Millions and Going Broke, it's based on the fact that we, over a lifetime, make millions of dollars, and we don't think that way. You know, I make millions of dollars throughout my lifetime. We focus in so short. And my point in the book is to say, look, it's not about the zeros that you make in your paycheck. It's about the zeros you keep. That's the goal, to get toward the end of the great financial future. But my story, I mean, it's, it's a fun journey. You know, I sit back and look at just how my life has just been really an interesting ride if you will. I grew up in a very rural community in northeast Pennsylvania. My dad didn't make a lot of money. He was out of work more than he was in work. So, we didn't grow up with anything, if you will, we, but we never went without, so that's all we knew. I remember, one Christmas, my aunt and uncle had to buy us Christmas gifts because we just were. We were in that phase with my dad. My mom didn't work. She was a stay-at-home mom. But the goal, though, for everybody where I live, such a blue-collar community, was what job are you going to get when you get out of college or high school? And, well, I thought, you know, I was going to go do carpentry. So, I went and got a degree in carpentry. I got it, and I started to work.

By the time I was 23, though, I had 17 different jobs. I was just in and out. I would get tired of one job, and I go to another, get tired of another job, go to another, and it was just nuts. And finally one day I woke up and I said, you know what? I'm sick of this. I'm done with this. I made a decision to be an entrepreneur, and that's what I wanted to do. That's how I'm put together. I struggled just with the organized employee role, and I don't mean that's bad for everybody. It's just how I was put together. Just wasn't working out. I also had this interest in finance. I'll never forget. I mean, I woke up one day and I said, that's it. So, I started jumping in everything financial, started going to seminars, and started to read different books. I started to read Brian Tracy, Zig Ziglar, and Jim Rome. You know, I mean, I just, I dove in, all in. When I was 23, I joined my first financial services organization. And at age 24, and by age 27, 28, I was making six figures, and I was leading sales meetings, and it was just crazy, the adventure I was on. So, what led to this specific product? I've been doing this for 30 years, and I've truly, my heart's desire is to add value to people and help people reach their true potential no matter what they're doing, and I do a lot of speaking on this subject.

About seven years ago, though, I got into a funk. I just didn't feel significant, and it was crazy. What I do for a living is so significant to people and they value what I do for them as extremely significant. But I was losing my kind of luster and my significance and what I was bringing to them, and it was hard for me, very hard for me. I actually hired a life coach, and none of us professionals are exempt from falling into these traps. So, I hired a life coach and the first thing he did for me was to have me take a personality assessment. I'm sitting there going, oh my gosh. Never took one in my life. I said, what kind of voodoo science is this? Kind of rolling my eyes behind the scenes and Michele, goodness gracious, it changed my life when I looked at this.

Michele Williams: Which one did you take? DISC?.

Gary Arblaster: I took DISC. It was spot on. And I've always been considered weird and different just because of how I am, and, man, it just, it gave me a perspective on me that was just who I'm supposed to be. So I made my whole family take it. You know, I had teenagers and a 20-21 year old at that time. Made them take it, made my wife take it, and it changed the dynamic of our family. I talked to my kids differently and talked to my wife differently, but I went back to work. I started to just kind of think through this stuff. I'm sitting there saying to myself, you know, I've got clients side by side, making the same amount of money and their demographics of their finances are relatively the same, but yet their incomes and their results are completely different. And I'm going, why is this? Why can we have the same people side by side and have different outcomes? And it hit me. It hit me. And it's all based on how we're put together.

We make decisions based on two things, to fulfill an inner need or to protect us from what we fear most. And when you apply that to your money, the outcomes are just, they're all over the place. So I went back to the organization where I got certified to actually teach DISC, and I said, this is my idea. And they jumped right on board. They said we love it. So, I dove in it took me two years. I wrote 41 different responses and styles, if you will because there are 41 different personalities in discord. We wrote, I wrote all  41 results from this personality assessment and, it's been crazy. It's been really crazy, and people are really starting to appreciate what it is. There are aspects of it, and we can talk about this if you want. There are aspects of it that actually allow husbands, wives, and business partners to learn to communicate about money differently. So, we have an interactive guide. I mean, there's just so much here. There's so much here.

Michele Williams: Yeah. Thank you for that, Gary. You know, it's been interesting. My journey's been different than yours. So just a quick recapitulation of it. I went to college and got a degree in doing financials, actually, I was in management information systems. So, I started working at Dun & Bradstreet Software, building financial software and I did that for ten years. Then I came home and realized I really wanted to be an entrepreneur. Started my own window treatment business. But then I realized nobody was making money, and they didn't know how to talk about money, and nobody could talk about finances. So because I had built financial software for Dun & Bradstreet, I knew how to do it. I also had a business degree, so I started putting together education for people. And I've been teaching since 2010. I've got three courses, Pricing Without Emotion, Understanding Your Financials, and Master Your Profit. So how do you handle the money in the business? It is so what you said. Because, in my journey of, what, 14-15 years now of heavily teaching financials, having a podcast on it, coaching on it, within the business organization, so many people don't understand that it is a mindset that they're bringing to it. I had somebody the other day that had a ginormous net profit, like multiple six figures, and they said they couldn't afford coaching. But I will have somebody come in barely making a net profit, saying I can't afford not to be coached. And you're looking at it and you're like, what are you making your decisions on? Or you show me somebody that has messy business financials, their home is probably messy financially. Like there's a carrier because they're the same person in the business that they are at home. And so really understanding, kind of that, how they see money. I mean, if I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times, money is amoral. It's what we do with money. I love the discussion because it's, it's almost like when you do your why, right? Simon Sinek's Find Your Why goes back and he has you look at it was normally created as a high-high or a low-low before the age of 18, meaning there is something in your upbringing where you saw it. We see these generational patterns. A lot of people ask me, how do I get out of a generational pattern of poverty or of not understanding money? And so to hear your story and then to see this, like, we can start to see it come together. Tell me what you found in your research if you have any, like, entrepreneurs, like you said, that are making money, but they're almost living like they're in poverty because that's where they grew up. Like that, that tie between how we've grown up and those mindsets that we bring into business.

Gary Arblaster: Well, and, you know, we as kids emulate what we see. I actually believe laziness is something it's taught. I don't think we're born with laziness to the degree that some people function from. So, we emulate what we see. There's a lot of studies out there on that whole subject. But you're right. I do CFO consulting for small businesses, and I see that translated right directly to the business each and every time. And this is one of the tools I use and when we actually start to connect the dots,  the light bulb just goes off and like, oh, my gosh, there it is. So, one of the very first things I teach when I work with people's finances is the very first floor, and I talk about constructing a house. You don't start with the roof. You don't start with the second, 3rd, or third floor. You start in the basement. So, the very first thing is the basement of a financial house is this because you and I can bring them the best tools and the best things if you want the best investments, insurance, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, if they're not on board, it doesn't matter.

Michele Williams: Yeah, no doubt.

Gary Arblaster: I go back. So, I'm working on a keynote right now. I do a lot of keynotes on this topic, so if anybody needs a keynote, you know, reach out. But I'm sitting and doing the research, and I'm looking at the debt this country has. I'm looking at the debt people have. We're still at the 60% to 70%.of people who live paycheck to paycheck in the richest country in the world. People who make $250,000 a year, a third of those live paycheck to paycheck, 57%, I think it is, don't have $1,000 in their savings account. It's not the products. It's not the products. The average person has two to three financial apps on their phone. There's 530 some million downloads of financial apps and things every year. Why are we struggling? It's not the products. We changed the conversation of this country. It's here. Our answers are right here. I am so bent on changing the conversation of this country on this topic because the accountability piece has to be brought forth. The accountability of piece has to be taken into consideration when talking about money. And our kids are struggling for it, are struggling with this work. Kids are learning to make decisions on emotions. On emotions. You throw emotions in money, you're done. You're done. So, I'm sorry, I get all excited about this.

Michele Williams: Absolutely. I agree with you, though. And what's so interesting, that's why my course is Pricing Without Emotion. I tell them, take the passion out of it. Let the passion go towards the client and towards work. We got to work this out, you know, mathematically, this is what it is. The other thing that is so interesting to hear you say as well, and I understand the feeling behind it, because even when I'm doing a discovery call to determine if I will work with somebody to help them with their financials or their building and scaling their business or whatever it is, we're going to be working on hiring, firing, whatever. I am looking for a couple of things before I even care about how much money they've got or don't have or any of that, I want to know that they've got a mindset for change, all right? They've got that growth mindset, and they're willing to hear hard things. I also want to hear that they're taking ownership, that accountability piece, because if they don't, there is nothing that I can say or do and that they're going to get the same results. I always say, you know, one of my taglines in my email is, what you own, you can change. And then I always say, I own my house. If I don't like the color of it, I can paint it. But if my neighbor has an ugly colored house, I can't do anything about it except plant trees or not look at it or put a blind up like I can't do anything about the actual color of their home because I don't own it. And I think there's so many people, you know, if we were to look at the story, they don't own their stuff. They don't own the decisions. They don't own the outcomes. They're so willing to hand it off to somebody else. I don't get that because that's certainly not how I was raised. And so, for me, I'm looking at every single thing. There's some weight that comes with it, Gary. I think some people don't want to carry the weight, but the weight of carrying it early and dealing with it is so much better than the weight of not having money at the end and being stuck.

Gary Arblaster: I think people are waiting for somebody to give them the permission to be who they are.

Michele Williams: Okay, that's an interesting concept.

Gary Arblaster: I think that so many people are so caught up in portraying this false image of themselves. You think about social media. I looked at a stat, I can't remember when it was, it might have been last year, and it said, I think it was like 23, 24, or 25% of people actually tell the truth on Facebook. So, they portray their lives as being something it's completely not. We get in this mode of pretend, we get in this mode of fantasy, and it moves us to live life and make decisions based on that. I talk a lot about financial EQ. Financial awareness, financial social awareness, financial relationship awareness, and financial self-management. And when you get into those topics and you start to pare them down, you know, one of the biggest questions I ask people is, are relationships costing you money? You're darn right they are. You're darn right they are. And we need to teach them, to change the topic, change the subject, move the conversation in a different way so you don't lose the relationships. But if you need to, you do. But move the relationship to say, I can't afford to go out tonight. Come on over we'll have pizza. We'll make pizza. You know what I mean? It's just, it's just, it's crazy.

Michele Williams: Yeah.

Gary Arblaster: Kind of common, I think. People are looking for somebody to say it's okay.

Michele Williams: From that perspective. I absolutely agree. It's so interesting because now we're seeing the rise of the influencers. I was sitting the other day watching, and I thought to myself, they turn around and they buy all these clothes and these hauls, and these try-ons, or these products. There's no way they can use all the products. There's no way they can use all the stuff. So, then they're selling it on the side. But what they're doing is they're. They're hitting. We're getting like a dopamine hit watching this, thinking, we need to go buy that. oh, I need that. Outfit. Oh, that would look good with this outfit. Like, I turn it all off. My husband and I have been in, we've lived in our home 26 years, and the kids are grown. Everybody's married, everybody's gone. So, we've been working for the last year, year and a half now to remodel our home and to kind of set it up outside of kids and dogs and all the things that got destroyed with, you know, for all the years. But as part of that, Gary, we're also paring down. I don't want stuff anymore. I want relationships. The other day, I was thinking about having a couple of my girlfriends come over and just have dinner together. Like, we've lost the art of just having community in our home. I don't want to always go out. I don't even like the food sometimes when we go out. And so, you know, I do, I think we have. We are being pushed into buying, buying, buying, buying, buying, or spending, spending, or thinking that the answer is a quick, fast spend a dollar when it actually is something different. And I think people are wanting relationships so much more now. They're craving them.

Gary Arblaster: I'm with you. And, you know, the sad part about this, and I've done it with my own kids, we've taught them that being on the go is better than being at home sometimes. So, the next generation really concerns me. I do some speaking in colleges on this. I go to Liberty University. I’ve been going there for the last five years. I teach one week out of the semester to classes on this topic. The next generation needs to hear this stuff. The reason why I know this works, this product, and the assessment works. Before I released it, I was doing a keynote for about 200-250 people, and I gave a very brief description of the highlights of DISC, I went through each style because there are four major styles. I asked, who could relate to the D, and we had people raise their hand. I brought one person up. So, I went through each style. There's four of them, brought them up. I had four people on the stage. I went down the stage and told each one of them how they managed money without asking them one financial question. And they're all going, how in the world does he know this? It was to me at that point, it was one of those moments I went, this is needed. Because people just don't understand that a lot of what happens in our checkbooks and our wallets starts right here.

Michele Williams: It’s pre-wired. Right?

Gary Arblaster: It is. I mean, you're born with it, and, you know. You can try to change it all you want. There are aspects of that we'll adjust with life experiences. You know, when my kids were born. There was a difference there. You know, my attitude changed. My, you know, my heart changed on some things, but, deep down, there's a God wiring there that, is just who you are.

Michele Williams: You know, I've done some work around some of these topics as well, and my husband and I sat down and really had a discussion when we've been talking about our money and we're talking about our future, and, you know, we have all of the discussions over here, and then we talk with our financial planner over here with our accountant over here, we just had a call with her yesterday. But we come from different. It's funny, we grew up in the same town. We grew up probably at the same socioeconomic level, very similar. But the way money was handled was very different in our homes. And I was given a glimpse into how money was used. I was taught how to manage a checkbook. I was taught how to do by my dad, all things financial because I had such an affinity for numbers and for math. He was like, oh, you're going to love this. So, he's teaching me how they do things. Well, I grew up. You and I are probably somewhat in the same age range when you mentioned the age of your children, so there wasn't a lot of credit. You could have a tab at the local store that you stopped by and paid, you know when you got paid. Or you could do layaway. I don't know if you remember layaway, but outside of that.

Gary Arblaster: Oh, yeah, yeah. Blue light special Kmart.

Michele Williams: Yeah. There were no ATMs. There were no credit cards. Like that just wasn't a thing. And so, pretty much it was a cash-based society, and people lived on what they had, or they had accounts set up somewhere. Anyway, you fast forward, and now we've got our kids that. Well, I'll tell you this. My husband's mom worked at the bank, so she watched his bank account, and every time his bank account got low, she'd slide some money in there.

Gary Arblaster: Oh, wow. There's enabling, right?

Michele Williams: Yeah, super generous. Right? She's helping.

Gary Arblaster: Right, helping.

Michele Williams: But at the same time. That's right. In air quotes, helping him. But he never learned how to manage money because he didn't have to. He wasn't taught how to. He wasn't given the skills to it wasn't ability. It was just no introduction. And there was like, if he knew that he didn't know how much money he had in college, he would wait three or four days, and then he would go to the ATM just to check how much money he had or call in the ATM to see how much. And so, when we got married, we had to have a discussion, because I'm a to-the-penny kind of gal, and he's a mama's going to slip some money in the account kind of guy, and mama wasn't going to be doing that anymore. So, we had to, like, have a really frank conversation. And we've seen over the years how some of that wiring or learning still plays out in certain things. And his approach is very different than mine. So, we are constantly going, okay, what is your approach? What is my approach? Where somewhere in the middle, where can we both be comfortable? And then we move forward. But if we don't have those conversations or even recognize it, it's really limiting I think.

Gary Arblaster: Well, and you look at, you know, how many divorces are because of money. it's crazy, like 82%.

Michele Williams: Higher than infidelity.

Gary Arblaster: Oh, I know. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Michele Williams: That blows my mind. When I found out that more people divorce over money than infidelity, I was like, oh, my gosh.

Gary Arblaster: I think it's 82% of small businesses that fail because of money. I mean, it's just, it's the money thing. If we can get this fixed, the Government’s not going to fix it. The debt is at 34 trillion. There's 40 trillion money, $40 trillion in circulation in the world. So, we're at 34. Do the math. It just doesn't work. But it's funny, you talk about husbands and wives. So, I was doing a seminar, and I'd say there were probably 200 people there. There was no rhyme or reason to be there. It was a financial seminar 101. So, people signed up independently. It wasn't like I was there for a group. And I'm doing the seminar, and I'm in the back and I'm seeing this husband and wife, and they're starting. I could tell it was a tense conversation, and then I saw the other people around the table, and I could tell it was uncomfortable for folks. I was like “Uh Oh”. So, 20 minutes later, I ended the presentation, and I looked back, binders closed. And here they come. Boom, boom, boom, boom. Right? For Gary. I'm going, oh, no. What did I do? And they started right in, you know, there were no nicety niceties or anything. They started right in. Husband, we're starting a business. This thing's going to take off. I guarantee it's going to do well. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But she won't get along, and work alongside me. She's always criticizing me, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So, I asked a few more questions. And my goal, in all honesty, was to pull out their personalities a little bit more so to make sure I was right. And I said, I don't think you have a money problem or a financial problem I said, you got a communication problem. They said, well, what do you mean? I said you need to start hearing what people are saying versus what you think they're saying. I said, sir, you've given her no reason. To be secure with you. You've not given her a plan. You've not given, you know, her personality type is the one that needs security. If she starts to lose a sense of security, she's going to fall apart and it's going to be misery. I said, so your plan that you have guaranteed in your mind's going to work. You haven't shown her how. All she needs for you to do is lay out the plan and show her how it's going to work and that you're not going to lose all your money. And he looks at her and he goes, is that it? And she goes, it's what I've been saying. And I went, hold on a second. I said, have you really been saying that? I said what I was hearing and I said, do I have permission to share? And she goes, please do. I said, well, I'm hearing it's all criticism. You haven't asked him one question and you're trying to give him the, get him to give you the answer through criticism. You just need to be honest. He's a results-oriented guy. He wants you to cut to the chase. He doesn't want to get there through a long, drawn-out process. What do you need to know? Well, I need to know how I'm going to be safe. Ask him the question. It's funny. He goes, man, that's exactly what we’re trying to accomplish. And it's funny because it changed the dynamic of that conversation, and their approach to the business. I checked on them and they're actually doing fine. I mean, it was a light bulb moment for these people, and it wasn't anything about money.

Michele Williams: That's right. That's right. It's so true. So, tell me this, Gary. You mentioned that our personality traits influence our financials, just kind of like what you did there. What are some of the personality traits that you think most influence, or they show up or bubble to the top the most?

Gary Arblaster: Well, you know, the whole fear thing. When things are good, people are, they just sort of, hey, things are good, but it's the fear. When fear starts to set in, then we really move to the emotional decision-making process. There was a study done in an article in “Psychology Today” back in 2018 that stated that 90% of our decisions are made with emotions and habits, but we only think about 10% of the time. And then there was a Harvard professor who came out and said, 95% of the financial decisions we make are based on habits and emotions, not thought or logic. When fears come out and fears start to set in, that's when we shift. So that's when our mindset needs to be the strongest because those who maintain the strongest mindset make it through the hardest challenges. You know, each style is going to be different. In the D style, their biggest fear is being taken advantage of, so they'll try to control everything. So sometimes that personality, man, they'll make decisions completely out of the box because they're trying to get that control back. The I personality types that, you know, they're inspiring. They just want to be heard and acknowledged. That's it. You know, you need to let them know you like them. If you're in an organization and your profits are going down, you have a bunch of Is running around, having a good time, you need to say, time out. I like you, but we need to do things a little differently. S personality types want to be sure that they're secure, so they're going to do everything they can to be secure, and they'll do things that they normally don't if it makes them secure. Then the C personalities, you know, their biggest fear is criticism. So, they'll work not to be criticized. And it just all plays out. It's crazy, crazy, crazy how it all plays out in our money.

Michele Williams: If we think about it, the DISC personality test is really saying, here are some of your personality traits that show up in how you work and communicate and everything else. And money is no different in that regard.

Gary Arblaster: I'm sorry to interrupt. I always use me and my wife as an example. I'm a DI personality. I'm a results-oriented guy. And you know, before I understood this, I'd go out and buy vehicles, and I'd take the first deal that was offered to me because I couldn't stand the process. I didn't want to. I didn't want to go from dealer to dealer to dealer to dealer and have every dealer tell me that they're the only guy in town who's going to give me the right deal. I wouldn't do it, and I'd take the first deal I'd get and walk out and go, whew, that's over, you know, and I know it’s costing me money over the years. I know it has. Now I'm aware of it. I have a buddy who loves to do it. I say, hey, do some research for me and help me buy this car. I'm not afraid to ask for help in the area I need help with even though I manage money, there are things that I struggle with. I'm a human being, but I've incorporated things to kind of fill in the gaps where I struggle.

Michele Williams: That's so funny. I don't like the whole car-hopping shop. I'm a D and I'm pretty sure my husband's an S, but I don't enjoy all that. But my husband loves all that. Like, he loves the let me go look over here, and let me look over here. And so, what we usually do is he'll say to me, like, if I'm buying a car, tell me what you want. Tell me what you think you want. Like, what class of car do you want? What are you looking at? And then he'll come back, and he'll say, okay, here are three or four from different manufacturers in that class. This one has this, this one has this, this one has this and how are we going to use the car? He goes around and I'll go test drive them with him. So, we go ride in them. And then I narrow it down to the one that I like. Then he does all the work and says, here's the dealership we need to work with. I just let him do it. But what's also so nice is, I'm not as emotionally attached to a car. So even if it's the car that I wanted, if I don't get the deal that I want, I would walk away. He wouldn't walk away. By the time he's done all that work, he's like, I'm not walking away, I’m going with the car. And I'm like, no, no. So, he gets us to that point, and then I step in, and I do all the negotiations.

Gary Arblaster: Oh, fun.

Michele Williams: Yeah. Then, because I enjoy that piece. I know what I'm willing to pay. I know what the market says. I know what my checkbook says. I know how this is going to work out. I'm willing to go in and do it, and I am willing to walk. And so, he gets quiet at that point because he's done all the back-end work to get us to that moment.

Gary Arblaster: That's beautiful.

Michele Williams: It works out well. But the first time it all happened, I kept getting frustrated because of the sales process and the way that he was going through the sales process, and I was like, they're jerking you around. What are you doing? And he didn't see it because all he could think was I want that car.

Gary Arblaster: Yeah, that's so funny. But, you know, I see to my clients, I have clients that will say, just tell me where to sign. I'm like, no. I'm going to give you the details, how you need it. I get it. But it's not just signing on the bottom line to get you moving, you know what I mean? It's just, it's really interesting just how this really does play out and all that we do.

Michele Williams: So, what are some common financial challenges that you see, and how can people overcome them with some of this information?

Gary Arblaster: Well, here's an example. So, I got a phone call from a mom, and their son just graduated from college. He's making really good money. I know the parents. I know their style. They're very detail-oriented. Their finances are as clean as clean can be. They know where everything is going. Their son just is not. I mean, he's an I personality type, I didn't know that going in. So, she called, and she said, can you help us? And I said, “What’s the problem?” She said, we can't get Tommy, his name's not Tommy, but we can’t get him to do a budget. I said, okay. And she goes, but it's not working.  He's making good money. We're not seeing him save anywhere. And I said, all right. I said, tell me a little bit about him. So, she started talking, and I said, let me ask you something. I said, was he a class clown in high school? Yep, he's a class clown. I said, does he like to go out and have a good time? Yes, he likes to go out and have a good time. I said you're asking him to do something he's always going to struggle with. Always. He's not wired to do that. He doesn't like details. Details stress him out. When you start to put details down on paper for him, he tunes out, he's gone. I said, so you've got to learn to communicate to him a lot differently. I said, some of the tricks that I use, and it's not a trick, it's an honest approach, you need to tell him and talk through how can we budget fun into your money and get him to start looking at it through a different sphere. I said you need to tell him you want to take him on an adventure. If I told him, let's go on an adventure, we're going to go through some exciting stuff. There's going to be some ups and downs and really exciting things, and when you get to the end, you're going to have this pot of gold. In that world that's a budget if you really think about it. So that was one of the most recent ones that stuck out to me was we were able to talk through how to get him to react to the money management process based on his personality. And it worked. She said, “I’ve never heard anybody say anything like this. We've talked to other people. Nobody had any answers. I've never heard this this way before.” So that's just a quick one that was just so recent on how it really does help.

Michele Williams: How does it play out? If you're doing this work with the leader of an organization, and let's say it's the CEO and they need to make the right financial decisions are being made every day, and there's always a risk analysis that happens or doesn't happen, maybe let's hope it happens. But in some type of a risk model, there's always information gathering and then decision-making. How do you see it playing out? Because I can imagine some people could listen today and think, oh, so this is how I talk to my partner, or this is what I do in my family life, or this is what I do with my child or my husband or whatever. But how does it also play out in the workplace?

Gary Arblaster: Well, I am an encourager of teams. That doesn't necessarily mean that all the decisions have to be made based on a team, but discussions about finances, planning about finance, planning about projects, and planning about the direction of the company. If you have the ability to work with a team, and I'm talking an accountant, I'm talking a financial advisor, I'm talking about key employees, when you bring the conversations and you start to bring in these other personality styles, that will actually allow some other things to be heard. Because we will resort, we will make that decision purely based on this right here, if we don't have some other input from somebody else. So, it's recognizing that you need help and recognizing that it's okay to help, have people step in and build a team around that. I just don't think there are enough teams around business anymore.  I really don't.

Michele Williams: You know, and I think sometimes, especially if they're a D, that risk of being taken from. It's so easy, because I hear this quite often, that fear of sharing the financials with the team because they can't handle it. And I understand that, you know, I'm a big proponent of kind of that open book management. So being able to share, but you have to share the right information with the right people at the right time, and they need to be educated around what you're sharing. Because, to your point, just putting something in front of somebody, if they don't understand all the nuances the way you understand it, they don't even have a chance to come to a similar decision or to understand your hesitation because they don't have all the pieces and parts. And so one of the things that I really like to encourage them to do is, like you said, work, know with other people, and then know what it is you want to have done and then share at the proper level, it doesn't mean going out and telling all of your financial story to everybody on your team, but it's that collected team, right?

Gary Arblaster: Yeah. Yeah.

Michele Williams: You got to know your people.

Gary Arblaster: Yeah, it is, and you got to know your people, because if you got somebody sulking in the corner of the room, and you start bringing them into a financial conversation, a lot of times, that makes them more angry.

Michele Williams: Right.

Gary Arblaster: Because, oh, you got all the money. I got nothing. You know what I mean? So you really got to know your right.

Michele Williams: Or they think that the money that I see this a lot. They think that the money that the business makes and sells is the money that the owner makes at the end of the day, yet I've worked with so many where they have people on their teams that make more than the owner makes just because of the way the business is set up and where it's maybe a sales position or maybe the business isn't doing as well and the owner takes the hit instead of, you know, their employees. They just don't know the bottom line, but they make their own supposition. So, you really have to know who you can trust with that data.

Gary Arblaster: I had this exact same conversation two weeks ago with a small business that kill it every year. But based on the fact that they have to buy inventory, such large quantities of inventory to build their product, it creates cash flow problems. So just because the P&L had a really nice number at the bottom doesn't mean that's sitting in the checking account. I see it all the time.

Michele Williams: Yep, that's right. Yeah, for sure. So, Gary, tell us about the 41 Financial Assessment. How can they find it? What will it do? How long does it take?

Gary Arblaster: Yeah, so you can go to my website. It's Arblasterconsulting.com. I also have a free ten-tip how-to get the financial aid guide they could sign up for and have, it's free of charge. But there's a place on my website to actually take an assessment. Now, we have two assessments, two different dumps of information, if you will. The one is very basic. It's a ten-page report that just gives you your financial personality style, a risk tolerance, and some verbiage on how to apply it. There’s also a 42-page report. That does a deeper dive. It gives you your personality style, then it gives you eight strengths that each style has associated with it. If you have a money mindset, we've got eight keys to success. No matter how good we think we are, we have bad days, we put our blinders on things step in, and we start to make decisions again on that emotional piece. So, there are eight keys to success for each style. There's a risk tolerance questionnaire that you get. You get your response. We go into describing what risk tolerance is and how it applies to you. We talk about communication in this document. We talk about just how to communicate with one another. There are real-life scenarios in there that they can read, and it actually goes through experiences that I've had, I put it on paper, and the goal with those is for them to actually try to recognize the styles of each character in the assessment. Then we try to get them to think through. Know, how would you think an S would respond or a D or an I would respond based on the information? So it's a pretty big, deep, deep dive. You can go to my website. I have my email, and everything's on there. They can reach out if they have questions. I'm here to help my goal with this thing based on my upbringing, based on where I've come from, I just don't think we need to stay where we are financially. If I can do this, I'm not special. I'm not special. And if I can become financially successful and have a thriving business, so can everybody listening to this, and it starts with us. My goal is to get people to understand that you can make a difference for your own family, and for your own future.

Michele Williams: That's awesome. Well, Gary, thank you so much. I'm excited. I may actually go take it just to see where all my blind spots are. I think it sounds fun.

Gary Arblaster: Beautiful.

Michele Williams: Thank you.

Gary Arblaster: Well, thank you so much. Thanks for having me on.

Michele Williams: Thank you.

Gary Arblaster: It was a pleasure.

Michele Williams: Gary, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast. I hope if you're listening that you're curious to find out what your financial personality is. I know I'm going to go check it out and see what mine says. Gary mentioned bringing others in to help us when we have a financial blind spot or a weakness. I would love to support you and your company as you look at your financials, either through our CFO2GO program or by joining our community of thriving business owners in the Designers Inner Circle. You can find out more by going to scarletthreadconsulting.com. And I can't not tell you about Metrique Solutions. You can watch a demo if you go to metriquesolution.com. It is a software platform created to help you keep up with all of the financials. Your mindset plays a huge role in profitability. It really does so let's use it to support your efforts. Because profit doesn't happen by accident. Profit is a Choice is proud to be part of the designnetwork.org where you can discover more design media reaching creative listeners. Thanks for listening and stay creative and business minded.