Ep. 319 – Passion for the Underdog

“And then there are people that are out there in this industry saying, oh, I know it’s really, really hard, but let me help you get your finances in order. All these farmers are failing and committing suicide and have depression and anxiety. Let me help you. And when I help you, I’m going to gouge the crap out of you. I’m going to charge you a ton of money only to send you back to the bank. I’m like, what do you mean they didn’t go over cash flow ideas with you? What do you mean you don’t have enterprises broke out? What? Why? We need to create cash flow.”

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome back to the podcast. Thank you very much for being here. I appreciate it. Okay, today, let’s talk about Mary Jo fighting for the underdog. This is something that I was just born with. I’ve been like this forever. It just is who I am. So here’s a little introduction to my life. If you’re like, why is she yelling and screaming all the time? Because God said, dear child, I am going to bless you with passion. I’m going to make you a fighter of the world. And so here I am.

I was listening to… we listened to a lot of Sean Ryan. We were listening to his podcast with John Rich from Big and Rich. He also had a podcast with Tebow on quite a while ago. And it was funny because John Rich and Tebow and Sean Ryan kind of all have said the same thing in their own little way of if somebody doesn’t do something, everybody else is just going to sit beside and watch. And so we have to step up and we have to do something. And not everybody is made to be that way. But I got to be one of the lucky ones. And I am very passionate about, obviously, a lot of things. And when I have a thing that I’m passionate about, then it comes out like this.

So I have always, like if I look back at just myself in middle school, even elementary school, really, I was always the friends with the underdogs. I was always the friends with the popular kids. I was friends with everybody. But don’t be picking on people because that’s not nice, right? You don’t need to make fun of somebody because you don’t know what situation they grew up in, where they came from. If they don’t have a lot of money, what does it matter? That’s just always kind of been my MO.

But it’s interesting when you look when I like put myself into the world of today and into some of these situations because I get very protective of people, especially in the ag industry, where there are there. It’s a hard industry already. It’s a hard way to make a living. And then there are people that are out there in this industry saying, Oh, I know it’s really, really hard. But let me help you get your finances in order. All these farmers are failing and committing suicide and have depression and anxiety. Let me help you. And when I help you, I’m going to gouge the crap out of you. I’m going to charge you a ton of money only to send you back to the bank.

And so I came across a guy last week that he was, he had, he was in a bad financial position. He had had to file bankruptcy. And now he’s going to this person in the ag industry, who’s going to have him pay tens of thousands of dollars to say, Hey, let me get all your financials, all your books back in order so that we can get you back to the bank and you can look good to the bank so they can lend you some more money. All while this guy has a consolidation loan to pay for from bankruptcy. He has borrowed a line of credit personally, and he is only paying back the interest. He can’t make the full payment. He’s doing a ton of different things of which he has no idea which enterprise is making money. Is it the custom work? Is it the cattle? Is it the farming? Is it the trucking? What’s making money? No idea.

The dude he’s paid to get all his finances in order. Where is that? Where? How come he doesn’t know that stuff? Did you do it? And he’s just telling me he didn’t know it. Or did we not do it? And we just took advantage of somebody. Why are they not able to talk to you? Because we’re paying tens of thousands of dollars. There’s no one-on-one monthly communication for that. We’re just going to send them back to the bank. The guy had never even thought about how to create cash flow. I’m like, what do you mean they didn’t go over cash flow ideas with you? What do you mean you don’t have enterprises broke out? What? Why? We need to create cash flow.

We don’t need to put you back into the system because you already have a private loan that we can’t pay for. So if you’re going to do anything, it is maybe adding some cattle to do some sell-buy marketing so that you can create some cash flow to go buy those things, make those payments, do those things. It’s going to start slow no matter where you’re at. But we can’t put you back into the same system without you being more educated financially. It’s just mind-blowing to me that people are spending money on other people consulting. That’s not really even consulting. We’re spending money to belong to groups that are short-sighted. Everybody within the group is short-sighted. What? Why are we doing that?

So then I’m coming in and saying, where’s the help? I just spent an hour and a half with you for free because I want to help you. My clients do not pay me an ongoing amount of money to help them. I get paid commission when I write a policy. I will help you the same regardless of how big your policy is, right? Everybody gets the same amount of attention, the same amount of time with me. I’m not going to short suit somebody because their premium was a little lower than somebody else’s premium and I made different amounts of commission on that. No, everybody is equal over here.

I’m not going to do what marketing people tell me to do, which is Mary Jo. Only John should have the people that don’t have a lot of money and you should have the people that have money. You should be, because this is what people, marketing people, people in my industry, people as a whole have told me for years. Mary Jo, you’re the expert. You should work with high-end individuals. You should not be working with people that are like this gentleman. We should have filtered him out of the system. A what? Excuse me? That is not how I work. Absolutely not. That gentleman needed me just as much as, if not more, than the high-end individual. I can go wherever, right? Because I can go with the high-end individual. I can go with the guy that’s struggling, that needs ideas, that needs encouragement, that needs incentives, that needs to understand how it works. Why would I filter out those people?

Why, if somebody is spending, is paying me money, would I not be meeting with them one-on-one? One-on-one. Tens of thousands of dollars. And we don’t get one-on-one conversations on a monthly basis, much less any time I want basis? Okay, I don’t make that kind of money on people. And they can call me whenever they want. If they’re a client, they can have access to me an hour a day every day if they wanted. Does not matter. I talk to my clients about things that are not infinite banking related. We’re talking about business. Some of them have businesses. They want to talk about how to grow their business, how to look at their profit margins, how to look at marketing. All of those things I talk to them about. And I love it. It’s what drives me is to be able to help them. But it’s always driven me because it’s how God made me.

There are things that I’m very passionate about that I’m not going to just sit back and be like, oh, okay, well, you know, it just lets somebody else take care of it. No, no. When the CO2 pipeline thing was going through, guess who is screaming about it? Me. Guess who’s paying for an attorney to stop the pipeline? And it’s not even on my land anymore? Me. Guess who got in the face of Summit Carbon Solutions? Me. Well, everybody else, all my other neighbors that were there at the time were literally backing away from me yelling at the Summit Carbon guy. And the Summit Carbon guy had no guts to answer my questions. All he could say is, ma’am, I see that you’re very passionate about this. Yes, sir. At least you got that right. I am very passionate. And I am very passionate about the fact that you don’t give two iotas about one single landowner and what’s going to happen to that land. I’m not even against pipelines. I’m against you guys screwing people. That’s what I’m against.

Do I care? And this is what the neighbors told me. Mary Jo, you got to be careful because they could take that eminent domain. Yes, they can. And they’re not going to without a fight. I will not, will not stand for it and be like, well, I guess they’re big money. I can’t say anything. I have never. Here’s another thing I’ve never done. I’ve never been a person that’s like, oh, that’s an elected official. Oh, let me bow down. Our president, and I don’t give a crap if he’s right or left, he could walk in a room and I’d be like, you know what? You are an elected position. You are not anybody special to me. I’m not going to get all jittery and be nervous to talk to you.

Uh, no. As you guys should not be all nervous to talk to me. It’s funny how many of you come in, I’m just going to get a little sidetracked, come into meetings and you’re like, oh my gosh, you’re famous. No, I’m not famous. I’m just Mary Jo. Okay. So don’t be scared to talk to me. I’m not anybody special. I just am on the internet a lot. But I don’t care who you are. I don’t care if you are somebody on your high horse thinking that you can control other people because you have power to do so. No. I don’t care that you think that you can charge people tens of thousands of dollars and not provide value to teach them accounting and teach them a system. And this isn’t the only guy I’ve heard of going through this system and coming out the other side in a poor manner. Okay. Or going through any system and coming out the other side in a poor manner.

You guys can get into groups and make sure that group is valuable. I recently was going to do some business training and I was going to go to some kind of business training program. And I talked to the people that were putting on the program and he thought that he was selling me on the fact that other people that made the same amount of money as I did and were as successful as I am, we’re going to be in that group. And I said, oh, well, that’s disappointing. And he’s like, why? I said, because I want to be in a group of people that have more money and are more successful than I am. I want to learn something. I want to grow. I don’t want to be teaching and stay the same. I want to grow so I can add value to my clients. And he was kind of taken back and then he changed his tune. And I’m like, well, now you changed your tune. So, you know, you’re just selling me at this point. And I don’t need to be sold. I’m in the world of sales. I know how that goes. So, no thank you. Approach is broken. Okay. I’m not that easy to sway.

And I’ve been in other coaching programs as well that I’ve paid tens of thousands of dollars for, flown across the country every quarter, to sit in a room with somebody for a day and go, well, I already had that figured out. Everybody’s problem, I’ve already created the solution to. I’ve already got that solution. Now, I’m sitting in the wrong room. Because I really need to be sitting in a room of people that are making more than me, not the same or less than me. That think that taking a day off is a crisis. And they can’t do that because they’re micromanagers. And so, I have learned along the way that I’m not going to surround myself with those kind of people.

And so, we have to, like, and I don’t care. This is why I get so passionate about life insurance and people that are being sold universal life, indexed life. This is why I get so passionate about people that say, oh, I know infinite banking. No, you don’t know infinite banking. Have you studied it all day, every day for 16 years, for five years, for 10 years, for 20 years, whatever that is? Is that all you do? If it’s not all you do, then don’t tell me that you understand infinite banking. Because it’s all I do, day in, day out, and I am always learning. And so, don’t go sell somebody a life insurance policy that’s incorrect because you want to make some commission. I will protect the client. I will be outspoken about that.

And then I end up being passionate about it, and I get loud. I’m not like the Sean Ryans and the Tim Tebows and the John Riches of the world who stay called. I’m not like those people. My voice goes up a few octaves, right? And then everybody thinks, oh, all you’re doing is yelling. Because then we put these little clips online of me being passionate, and they’re like, oh, she just, you know what? And all she does is scream about stuff. And all you do is watch a little clip, and you don’t bother to go watch the whole podcast to get the full context of what it is. Or you don’t bother to go see the rest of it. That is how I was made. Would I love to change it? Oh, 100%. Do I try to not get this passionate? Oh, 100%. But I’m always going to defend the underdog, and I’m always going to be looking at and saying, why can’t you do better for people instead of your pocketbook? Because I’m really, really tired of people being taken advantage of.

And some of it is on the person being taken advantage of. If you are the person that continually finds yourself in a spot where somebody’s taking advantage of you, that being the bank, that being some program you signed up for, whatever, why are you not doing your due diligence on that? It’s up to you to make sure that you’re educating yourself so that you don’t get taken advantage of, that you’re talking to other people. Like, I have been on the other end of it where I’ve been taken advantage of. And guess what? I then do my due diligence. But I won’t sit back and just take it any longer. Not that I ever really did. But like, I’m going to be more careful. I’m going to talk to people. I’m going to learn something.

But if the bank is taking advantage of you, it’s because you are allowing it to happen. Why are you allowing it to happen? Why aren’t you going to a different bank? If you’re paying 9% and 10% operating notes, you are being taken advantage of right now because nobody’s paying over 8.5%. So rarely are people paying over 8.5%. So when I see 9%, 9.5%, I’m like, whoa, red alarms, you go back to the bank because they’re taking advantage of you. 100%. Good people will not do those things. Banks are in the business of making money. There’s good people working in the bank. But those good people are not allowed to keep their job if they say, hey, John, why don’t you come in so we can restructure your line of credit? Or you didn’t ask for that line of credit to be reduced for percent. So we’re just going to keep it where it’s at.

When interest rates dropped years ago, it was amazing to me interest rates were 4% to see how many people had land notes at seven. I’m like, why didn’t you refinance? Oh, because the bank told us, the bank hasn’t told us interest rates have dropped. You’re not paying attention. So some of that’s on you. You need to do that because some people are not going to do it out of the goodness of their pocketbook. But I will be on here with passion, letting you know that that is wrong. You go back to the bank. We got a land note last December. You can guarantee your bottom dollar. I will be talking to our banker to see where interest rates are at. And if we can refinance at a lower rate, are they going to be happy? Nope. But I’m surely going to ask. 100% I’m going to ask.

Do not. You have to remember as well. If you’re a really nice individual, people will take advantage of you because they can. Not everybody is going to say, oh, this person’s really nice. So I have to look out for them. I look out for those people because I’m like, they could really be taken advantage of. Like if I’m meeting with somebody and I know, like you can just tell in their personality, they’re pretty meek. They don’t know. They don’t really have a lot of confidence. Oh, oh, Mother Mary Jo kicks in. And I say that because in high school, that’s what my nickname was. Mother Mary Jo kicks in. And I’m like, whoa, whoa, whoa, protection mode. We’re going to protect this person because they don’t have the confidence they need. So somebody else is going to have to come in and give them the confidence and the knowledge to stand up for themselves. So I suppose God made people like me to protect people like that.

Now, a lot of times and sometimes I don’t understand why you’re like that. I’m so far the other way that I try really hard to understand why wouldn’t you stick up for yourself? Do you really care about somebody’s feelings that much that you’re willing to get screwed because you’re worried that you’re going to hurt their feelings? No, I have also been told I don’t have any feelers. So it’s harder for me to understand why that would be.

Anyway, a little insight into Mary Jo’s world and why I might be screaming a lot and have a lot of passion because I just don’t think that it’s okay for people to take advantage of people and think that they’re helping when they’re not. This is why if you guys know me well, this is why there are some, I’m like reading people all the time and there are some people I am going to stay away from. Nope, no thank you, not going to refer anybody to that person, not going to interact with that person, not going to do business with that person in any way, shape or form because they are not to be trusted. And it’s not that they’ve done something to me, but I’m watching what’s happening with them and all their other encounters.

I’m talking to people, I’m listening to people and always open-minded because there’s always two sides to a story, no different than somebody saying the bank is taking advantage of me. Why? Why? Are you letting them? Do you not have your numbers? What’s happening? Not all banks are bad. So you can make them out to be bad, but they’re not all bad. And so I’m not going to come to that conclusion until I hear enough of it, until I meet both the other party. Like I’m open-minded about it. I’m not just throwing shame, but when I’m seeing multiple people come out of working with certain individuals and they’re not better, we have a problem.

So anyway, pay attention to who you’re working with and how much money you’re giving them. Because if we’re just giving them tens of thousands of dollars to get us back into the banking system with no sure way of how to create cash flow, how to get out of it, no one teaching us how to read a profit and loss, a balance sheet, how to look at our books, those sort of things, we have a problem. Because you are in the business of business. And you need to know how to look at those things.

So anywho, let me know if you have comments, which I’m sure people will. Let me know if you have comments, questions, concerns, whatever. maryjo@withoutthebank.com. Otherwise, grab the book and then let John and I know if we can help you. But guess what? We don’t take advantage of people. I had three people last week. All we did was help them create cash flow. They did not have any money. We did not start any policies. But I poured in as much information to them as I could because I want them to be successful so they can start their bank later on. It’s maybe not in the cards today, but it will be in the cards in the future. So that is the goal over here. The goal is not to be putting people in a worse situation than they already are. Because I don’t want to become one of those people that people talk about and go, oh, all Mary Jo did was write a policy on me that I couldn’t afford because she just wanted some commission. Nope, won’t do that. Okay, you guys have a fantastic rest of your day. Thanks for joining my TED Talk.

Thanks for listening to the Farming Without the Bank podcast. We hope today’s episode has inspired you to take control of your finances in new ways. Don’t forget to check out our website, farmingwithoutthebank.com, and engage with us on our Facebook page, Farming Without the Bank. Join us next week as we smash more financial myths and empower you to accomplish your financial goals.