A Note from Joe -

We’re celebrating the 10-year milestone with I Was Broke. Now I’m Not. I’ve spent some time reflecting on some key lessons I’ve learned along the way, and I thought I would share them with you.

Lessons Learned:

Ten years is a long time: Ten years ago, Jenn and I had one child and were told we couldn’t have any more. Now we have three kiddos. Back when we went full-time, we had a daughter in third grade. Now, she’s a junior in college and we have another in fourth grade and our youngest is in Kindergarten. We had one book in print back then. Now, I have been blessed to write and publish three more. I wonder what the next ten years will bring?
Great team members make the work so much easier: Without Matt, Megan, David, Caroline, Craig, Chad, Brian, and Ken along with all of the people who’ve helped along the way – like Paul, Mark, Greg, Rachel, Keri, Casey, Ashley, and Jessica, we wouldn’t be able to help so many people. I’m grateful for everything each and every team member has brought to the table – those who journeyed with me all along the way as well as those who served for a season.
Innovation is not an option: Some things that worked ten years ago do not work anymore. Back then, social media was in its infancy. Now it is a central part of the way we communicate with people, share successes, and tackle challenges. Back then, receiving an email was still a special thing. Now, we have special email addresses for all the junk and spam email. Video lessons used to be available only via DVD. Now, they have to be on-demand and on-line, or they’re almost irrelevant! Our tools were in Excel format only. Now they are on our app and on Google Drive.
Passion alone isn’t enough: When you begin with a dream, passion is excellent fuel to initiative movement toward the goal. However, passion alone isn’t enough to help you continue to move forward. It will take relationships, a great team, lots of money, and a ton of exhausting work. For me, it has involved hundreds of flights, hotel stays, and car rentals. Any of you who are road warriors know just how draining this can be! I’ve written dozens of newspaper articles, hundreds of blog posts, penned several ebooks, and managed to author four books. I have found it very important to continue to meet one-on-one with people and help them with their specific financial issues because it always reminds me of the “why” behind everything we do.
This work becomes more and more rewarding: One of the great blessings of being able to last ten years full-time is being able to see the long term impact of our work. It takes some time for some financial principles to pay off. A person can choose to pursue debt freedom, but it can take many months or even years to achieve Rung #4 of the ladder. For a person who begins to aggressively pay off their house, it can take seven to ten years. Compound interest doesn’t seem very powerful in the first decade of investing, but then all of that seed money will begin to escalate very quickly. We’re seeing that just beginning to happen in so many people’s lives right now. There’s nothing greater than seeing a person climb the IWBNIN Ladder and begin living their fully funded life!