The Balance Sheet - 11.28.23

The Assets, Liabilities, Debts and Investments toward a more Mindful Marketplace

So first in the assets column I want to talk a little bit about an organization called Project Equity who is helping businesses transition to models of employee ownership. So they recently announced that US cities are starting to recognize more and more that employee ownership is a good model to help promote because more than half of local business owners are actually nearing retirement and most of them lack options to sell their business in a way they want to. Several of these cities see the benefits of employee ownership as the solution. They retain local businesses, jobs, and tax bases. They provide pathways to quality jobs, financial stability, and wealth building for frontline workers and workers of color, not to mention help businesses better recruit, retain, and engage their workforce and create a more resilient and equitable local economy in this post-pandemic world. So a few cities are doing that in a variety of ways, including Tucson, Arizona, which has launched an awareness raising campaign to educate business owners. and advisors about employee ownership. Berkeley, California has invested in employee ownership to retain all their beloved legacy businesses and have added employee ownership to its beneficiaries of several programs, including their buy local bid preference program, their business permit application, and the revolving loan fund in and our funding technical assistance for local businesses to transition to employee ownership. And lastly, city of Chicago recently made a historic $15 million commitment to catalyze a sustainable economic recovery and advance economic and racial equity by investing in a variety of communal wealth building strategies, including support to build awareness and local capacity to support employee ownership transitions.

All right, next in the liabilities column, we got the big banks. US banks, according to a recent Wall Street Journal article, have found new ways to unload risk as they scramble to adapt to tighter regulations and rising interest rates. So JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, U.S. Bank and others are selling these complex debt instruments to provide fund managers as a way to reduce regulatory capital charges on the loans they make. These are so-called "synthetic risk transfers". They are very lucrative for the investors who can typically get returns of around 15 percent or more. And banks are using these synthetic risk transfers for they've been in use for about 20 years, but they haven't been used a lot, especially after the 2008, 2009 financial crisis, when, you know, a lot of us, uh, there was a lot of push back against these complex debt instruments like credit default swaps. But these transactions, um, became in the wake of that became harder to get past us bank regulators in part, because those similar interests, uh, instruments were used. back when Lehman Brothers failed.

In the debts column, there was an article recently in Time magazine about the national debt that I want to highlight. It said that the difficulty US Congress had in agreeing on spending for the rest of the year and avoiding a government shutdown is really an indication of how hard it will be to deal with our longer term debt crisis. Our rising debt burden is a problem we have to confront in order to preserve our nation's ability to the many challenges on the horizon and to invest in our nation's productive capacity. The nonpartisan CBO Congressional Budget Office estimated that there was 1.7, there was a 1.7 trillion dollar gap between what the government spends and the revenue it takes in this year in 2023, nearly double the annual budget deficit from last year. So unless there are significant policy changes under even the most optimistic scenarios, the accumulated federal debt held by the public will rise above 100% of GDP, a level well above historical experience. And just as a reminder, in order to help combat the debt crisis, the Mindful Marketplace has partnered with local financial tech company Quility to provide all of our listeners with a free customized report on how you can best eliminate personal and business debt. So protect your retirement accounts and other assets against type of market loss and get free from debt by going to mindfulmarketplaceshow.com and click on the eliminate debt tab to get your free report.

Lastly, in the investments column, I want to share some good news about a group called Shared Capital Cooperative. They have been making loans to local investments. They've been connecting local investors to local businesses. And they have said that the demand for financing for cooperative projects has never been higher than in their four in their 45 years of doing business. Last year, shared capital cooperative lent more than ever before. And in just the first seven months of this year, they've already placed seven and a half million dollars, exceeding their yearly budget for new lending. And there's still over 3 million in additional projects seeking financing this year that they have not been able to meet. You can actually invest with them and with your values, make a difference and receive a financial return. Investing is easy and open to all. Whether you are wealthy and an accredited investor or whether you're just an average person and a non accredited investor, you can start as low as five hundred dollars and you can choose from either preferred shares or three different fixed term note options with returns up to five percent. More information on that is available at their website, sharedcapital.coop/invest

We are Each Other

With everything that is going on in our world today, I know it can be easy for us to become overwhelmed by the problems we face. As you've probably heard another election has passed and inflation is at an all-time high. At the same time corporate profits, inequality, consumer debt, and the monopolization of pretty much every industry are also at an all-time high.

The reality is we live in a Me-First-Economy, and subsequently a Me-First Culture. In America today, and over the last 50 years or so the dominant philosophy has been "It's a dog-eat-dog world out there. You gotta look out for number one. Kill or be killed." This neo-liberal emphasis on individualism is so pervasive that we often don't even notice it, or have any sense that things ever have been or could ever be different. The proponents of this ideology claim that it's just in our DNA. It's how God and evolution made us, so why fight it?

One of the main purposes of this show is to recognize the fact that while this way of thinking may be the most dominant one in our politics, our culture, and the business community, there is, in fact, another way. We draw from the thousands of years of human history where groups of people lived and worked as communities rather than individuals. And even today there are countless examples of businesses, investors, community organizations, entrepreneurs, and industry leaders who recognize the interconnectedness of our lives and who understand that a rising tide raises all ships.

I genuinely believe that the problems we face today are in part caused by the way that we think. When we see ourselves only as isolated and independent, we tend to objectify others, thinking of our fellow human beings as objects who exist solely to help us get what we want, or who stand in our way. But when we actually take the time to look one another in the eye and pay attention to our common ground and shared humanity, we recognize each other for who we really are, each other.

We all share this planet, and it's the only one we've been given. We are all brothers and sisters and no single individual can change the world on their own. We cannot wait for a superhero to step in and save the day. If we are to survive and thrive in the face of our biggest challenges, it must be done together, but it must also be done within each of our own hearts and our own minds.

For me, this means taking a good hard look at my own attitudes, behaviors, and practices. It means recognizing that sometimes, I'm part of the problem. It means interrogating reality to understand my own selfish tendencies, and remembering to forgive others and myself for not being perfect. If we are going to have a better world and a more mindful marketplace we have to not only relieve the suffering that is caused by oppression, but we must also relieve the suffering that causes oppression within ourselves.

As I mentioned earlier, it's easy to be overwhelmed by all the things we cannot control, but I believe that when we cannot change our circumstances we are challenged to change ourselves. Our path of growth as individuals and as a society is to let go of our illusion of separateness and recognize that the best opportunity any of us have is the chance we get to serve each other. Because, when all is said and done, we are each other. And we are all we have.

Change is a Process, not an Event

I want to first say how grateful I am to bizradio.us for giving me the opportunity to share with you and I also want to say just how grateful I am for you the listener. Your time may be your most valuable resource and I thank you for spending it with me and with the fantastic guests, we have here on The Mindful Marketplace.

There are a lot of the ideas that we discuss on this show, from entrepreneurship to community creation, to personal finances and getting out of debt, to spending and investing with your values, to shifting capital away from multi-national corporations and towards local & independent businesses. There's a lot out there we can cover, but one thing that all of these topics have in common is that they require change.

It's often said that change is hard, and I see a fair amount of evidence both in my personal life, in my business, and in the broader economy and culture that backs up this claim. It's said that you can't teach an old dog new tricks, but I want to ask a simple question, why? Why is change so hard for us as individuals? Why does it seem even harder in large groups? If we know there is a better way to do something, why do we persist to act against our own interest, why do we hold on to things that no longer serve us?

I know in my own life, there was a time when I was in desperate need of change. My bank account was broke for sure, but even more so my relationships were inauthentic, my habits were self-destructive, my physical and mental health were completely ignored, and the most important relationship in my life, the one I had with myself was on the whole, negative and self-defeating. I wanted to change, but the challenge of changing felt overwhelming. I stayed in that unhealthy and negative space for far too long, but at some point, maybe it was my own personal rock bottom, the difficulty I had associated with change seemed to be dwarfed by the anguish and dissatisfaction I was already experiencing. It got to a point where the pain of staying the same was even worse than the pain of change.

Now I'd love to tell you that I had a lightbulb moment and was able to change overnight. It would have been great if I had been able to just say a prayer and some affirmations or go to a life-altering conference or visited a hypnotherapist who cured all that ailed me.

But the reality is that change takes a lot more than that. It takes not only effort and a shift in perspective, it also takes time. And in my experience, it never takes less time than you hope. It took me years to change the major problems I was facing in my personal life, and on a larger scale, changing the way we spend, invest, and do business takes decades at least.

I'm reminded of a piece of wisdom from the ancient Chinese philosopher Mencius. Mencius was a Confucian philosopher in the fourth century BCE. He is often referred to as the “Second Sage” of Confucianism meaning second in importance only to Confucius himself. Mencius holds that all humans have innate but incipient tendencies toward benevolence, righteousness, wisdom, and propriety. He often used agricultural metaphors to explain his philosophy.

Mencius tells the story of a farmer who, concerned that his grain was not growing fast enough, pulled on it. When he returned home, he said to his family, 'Today I am worn out. I helped the grain to grow.' His son rushed out and looked at it, but the grain was withered.

"Those in the world who do not help the grain to grow are few. Those who abandon it, thinking it will not help, are those who do not weed their grain. Those who help it grow are those who pull on the grain. Not only does this not help, but it even harms it."

So for me, the moral of the story is that if you want to change, whether it's in your personal life, in your business, your finances, or in a larger societal cause that you care about cannot be forced, change must instead, be cultivated. We must let go of thinking in terms of instant transformation, and rather see change as a garden that must be tended to each day, and allowed to grow over time.

If we want the fruits of a better future for ourselves and our communities we must be committed to the process of tending to our change each and every day. And it also means letting the grain sprouts of our own benevolence and wisdom grow on without interference. This means watering the good and weeding the bad. So today, instead of trying to force change, let's take a step back and ask the question ourselves "what is it that I want to water, and what is it that I want to weed?"

On Competition

Competition can be a tricky thing. On the one hand, we have what could be called the ‘winner takes all’ paradigm, which tells us that competition is THE thing that drives us towards innovation, progress, and a better world. Business, our economy, and our society require us to ‘duke it out, for our very survival. The paradigm is so pervasive that we may not even think twice about it. Without competition, the preachers of this paradigm tell us, we will descend into a chasm of slovenly hedonism. We will become the dreaded “losers.”

And hey, they may be right! You can call me a meathead if you like, but I find it inherently exhilarating anytime human beings try their hardest, not against some abstract measurement of greatness, or a specific measurement of distance or speed, but rather against other human beings trying their hardest. The proof is in the pudding. Nothing enraptures quite like watching the drama unfold in front of your eyes, let alone participating in it. Competitive sports speak to us on a deep level. With every shot, every throw, every kick, a major dramatic question gets asked that no one on the planet knows the answer to. Ask any fan who has watched their team fight for victory in the final moments of an important game, it’s thrilling.

The alternative paradigm is one of cooperation rather than competition. The line of thinking is more or less that if we can all just work together in perfect harmony, we will, as one, actualize our collective greatness and solve all the world's problems through high-minded rhetoric and empty gesture. Let’s Peace Jam, man. The 90s are back, which is great for me. I got my mom to sew me HammerPants when I was in 2nd grade and I bet I can get her to do it again.

It’s not all drum circles and ayahuasca trips though. This cooperative paradigm has a biological argument that I find compelling. While the popular notion of “Survival of the Fittest” has come to mean “survival of the strongest”, it refers to a species adaptability, and how well an organism can “fit” into a larger ecosystem. It turns out that while it looks like trees are competing for sunlight, they are also sharing nutrients with each other via their root system and their fungi friends. Aspen groves, made up of thousands of trees, are now considered the largest organism on the planet.

Could human beings and dare I say, business, do the same? Can we reach for the sky while also staying rooted in each other? Can we compete and cooperate at the same time? I choose to believe we can. I don’t think it’s competition that’s the problem at all, just the way in which we compete, and what we chose to compete about.

Good competition is fair, the rules are clear, and the results are never equal, but the opportunity to win is. A good competitor plays their hardest against you, but not so they can dominate you and puff themselves up, not so they can eliminate their competitors or rig the game in their favor.

No, good competitors play their hardest against you because they know it will force you to play your best and become a better version of yourself, which will in turn make them have to play even better. They may come at your with everything they’ve got, but they do it for the betterment of everyone playing. This type of competition actually creates a Virtuous Cycle, rather than a vicious one.

So go ahead and compete, but compete toward something that actually makes the world a better place, not just towards the traps that are money, status, and image. Instead, let’s compete to see who can treat their employees the best. Compete to see who can make the biggest positive impact in your local community, and compete to add the most value in whatever you bring to the marketplace.

In the video below, I talked to some of my new agents about why it’s important to me to give it all I have. I encourage you to do the same and to give this game we call “The Marketplace” your very best, because it IS possible for us to compete FOR each other, rather than against each other, but it won’t happen without each of us changing this norm in our individual lives and business.

The question is whether we, as individuals and as leaders change the way we compete, or whether we continue to tear each other down to get ahead. It's a major dramatic question that no one on the planet knows the answer to, and it is up to each of us.

The Value You Make

I was recently visiting my hometown for the first time in 16 years. I grew up in an extremely rural part of Western New York. The village I lived in had about 600 people in it. The only industry that you could see for miles and miles was agriculture. The majority were dairy farms, with a few potato and alfalfa fields to keep things interesting. I spent a good deal of time on my Aunt and Uncle's potato farm, and I saw how rewarding and just how difficult owning and operating an American farm was. And I remember my uncle, no matter how difficult times may have been, held strong to his beliefs that hard work and being of value to others would ultimately pay off.

I remember him once saying "My idea of capitalism is that if you do something valuable for someone else, you'll be paid based on the amount of value to give" So his philosophy meant that kept his focus on the amount of value he added day in and day out and kept faith that the market would take care of him.

My uncle was of course tapping into a deeper truth that goes back even further than the rise of capitalism in the 1400s. In fact, his observation that you get paid based on the value you add is a principle that has been true since markets and trade emerged among humans thousands of years ago.

I learned a similar bit of wisdom when I was first getting into sales. I was brand new, very green, and didn't know the first thing about how to "close" someone. One of the best ideas introduced to me at that time was a quote by famous sales trainer Zig Ziglar, who said “You will get all you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want.”

This was a huge mindset shift for me, and it ultimately lead to a huge shift in profitability for my business. Once I stopped trying to sell to everyone, and instead put a focus on how to help everyone, regardless of if I made a sale or not, my sales numbers went up. Once I stopped trying to recruit and hire people to my company for what they could give me, and instead focused only on mutually beneficial partnerships where I could put my focus on helping my people get what they want, I not only found better people, but they wanted to stay with my agency long term, reducing turnover.

But here's the thing about a philosophy like that, it's really easy to say, and it's something completely else to actually live by. It's sometimes hard to put the needs of others over your own. It took me probably a year or two of being my own boss and building my own business before I really started to understand at a deeper level.

Many of us get into business or investing for what we can get out of it. We love the idea of a great income or the freedom that entrepreneurship and capital can bring. But in my experience, if those external comforts are the driving force behind why we do what we do every day, at some point, it will be easy to become sidetracked and discouraged, cut corners on our mission, treat our customers and business partners unethically, and even have to close up shop.

This is a trap that many fall into. Especially in the early stages of a new venture when cash flow is usually low, and experience in business may be even lower, is that desperation tends to be at an all-time high. And I know for myself, the times when I've been desperate to hit my numbers and pay my bills, it becomes more tempting to put my own needs above the customers, and above my people's.

I believe this is a contributing factor to why 90% of businesses fail in their first few years, they allow desperation to derail them from the guiding principles that make their business work in the first place. Chief among them, as a business owner, you only get paid based on how much value you've added to other people. Add a lot of value? Get paid a lot. Add no value? Go out of business.

It may sound too simplistic, but the undeniable truth in business and in life is that helping others is good, and helping only yourself is bad. Recent psychology studies have backed this up. Recent studies have shown that people who practice Random Acts of Kindness defined as "giving something of yourself without expecting anything in return" actually increase reported happiness in the giver more than the receiver. We now have data to back up what we all know, that it's better to give than to receive.

So the question for all of us today, regardless of what we do for a living, is How can I add more value to others today? How can I add more value to my clients and customers? How can I spend and invest my money in alignment with my own values? How can I improve the day of my employees or co-workers? How can I make time with my family a truly valuable experience?

Let's all remember today that the value we take is equal to the value we make.

Ten Strategies for Local Investing

More and more, seems like the world, the economy, and the business community is changing and changing fast. In fact, I would argue changing faster than it ever has. If you put someone from 100 years ago in 1922 into a proverbial DeLorean equipped with a flux capacitor and pumped it full of 1.21 Jiggawatts of electricity to bring them into the year 2022, it's possible that the amount of sudden change they would experience would drive them completely and incoherently mad. I genuinely don't think the human brain could not process it all at once. And not only are things changing, but the rate of change is growing exponentially.

How far back from 1922 would you have to go to equal the same amount of change we have experienced in the last century? You would probably have to go back 600-800 years. You'd have to stick a middle ages surf into your time machine and bring them to the early 20th century to have a similar effect.

And before that? Well, next you would have to go back thousands of years to see the same amount of change in human society that would equal what we've experienced in just 100 years.

It seems to me that the faster things change the easier it is to get lost, and the more difficult it is to adapt and keep up. We as human beings aren't used to it. We get so caught up in just trying to orient ourselves that we get lost in the trees and miss the forest.

So in order to navigate that kind of change, I believe that we need to be more diligent than ever in understanding the principles that guide human life, and our own personal philosophy that helps us navigate these uncharted waters.

A mentor of mine once told me that if you are going to have a good business you have to know your philosophy. You have to find solid ground in shifting environments, a ruler or sorts to measure yourself and your business against to know if you're making a measurable amount of progress in a reasonable amount of time towards your goals. I think that's good advice.

And I want to talk with you all today about one Philosophy that keeps coming up with guests on my show. And that I believe to be one of the most important guiding forces in creating a more mindful marketplace for all of us. That philosophy can be stated most simply as "Your dollar IS your vote"

Now, this isn't a show about voting. Not to say that I and the business owners, organizational leaders, and entrepreneurs who come on the show don't have their own political views, but I for one have become so disillusioned by our country's two-party system that it just doesn't even seem worth talking that much about, or for that matter, paying much attention to. Throughout my life, I have identified as a conservative and as a liberal, but the older I get, (and I do hope to keep getting older) the less that debate interests me and it seems somewhat like arguing over which brand of cola you drink.

20 years ago, it was common to hear the two parties referred to as Pepsi and Coke because they were so similar. And I actually think that is one of the few things that hasn't changed very much since then. What has changed is an onslaught of messaging from 24hr news networks, manipulation of the truth for emotional responses from media sources who only care about more clicks, and a siloing of human beings by internet echo chambers that lead intelligent and reasonable people into believing that Coke can do no wrong and that Pepsi will destroy everything you hold dear.

But I think deep down we know that this is all a game being played by a small number of powerful people that keeps the rest of us distracted while they, like clockwork, siphon what little we have for themselves.

I guess what my rant is getting at, is that while I still vote, it sure doesn't feel like it ever does anything. Every year, that vote at the ballot box seems less and less useful in making the lives of my family, my friends, and my community better.

It's easy to lose hope, but I haven't. And that's because of the philosophy I mentioned earlier echoed by nearly every guest who has come on The Mindful Marketplace: that your dollar is more powerful than your vote. I couldn't agree more.

We all know that it's good to spend your money locally. But today I want to dive deeper into a topic that is an emerging and exciting field of finance that takes that idea to the next level. Local Investing.

Local investing is actually an old idea. In the earlier parts of the American economy, it was more common to invest your money into a local business, farm, or even family member's real estate than it was to send it to wall street. Local investors seek to maximize both their social rate of return as well as their financial one. Local business after all is the to key economic development, and investing your money where you live creates rootedness and contributes to the quality of life for everyone involved.

But as we said, things have changed a lot over the last 100 years. And in the past 50 years, there has been a huge consolidation of banks. Investment money has been confined mostly to retirement accounts often provided and controlled by your employer. The options for how those funds get invested are, to put it mildly, limited. You usually pick from one of a handful of mutual funds that serve as a giant subsidy for wall street.

And while some options known as ESG funds do exist, they don't actually shift capital towards your community, they simply cut out a few of the companies that cause the biggest amount of damage to the environment. It's a small gesture toward value-based investing, and even that is being met with fierce resistance by Wall street and its political allies. The result? While small independent businesses make up Half of our country's GDP, and 2/3's of the new jobs created, less than 1% of retirement savings get invested locally.

I'm going to quote Michael Suman, economist and author of Local Dollars, Local Sense and Put Your Money Where Your Life Is, he says

"What would be the impact if Americans shifted 60% of their investment into local businesses? A shift of this magnitude would mean that every community in the United States would have at least $100,000 more capital to invest in local businesses for every resident living in it. If you lived in a small town with 10,000 people, that could mean a billion dollars more of capital to regenerate your economy. If you lived in a small city with 100,000 people you would have $10 Billion more. It's hard to imagine any policy or governmental program that could deliver even a tiny fraction of the potential impacts of residents changing their investment choices."

Shuman offers 10 strategies that anyone can get started on to begin their journey of investing locally. And if you want to learn more, I cannot recommend his most recent book Put Your Money Where Your Life Is enough. It will expand your idea of what an investment is and what it can be. I'm going to briefly go over his 10 strategies to give you an idea of how you can vote with your dollar for the kind of future you want to see.

Strategy Number 1 - Invest in Yourself by Paying Off Credit Cards

Shuman says that from a community economy perspective, credit cards are Public Enemy Number one. Their alluring and addictive quality of buy now pay later, and the fact that more and more, people are having to turn to credit cards and other high-interest lenders just to meet their basic needs has created a personal financial crisis. Interest on credit cards is currently averaging 17%, which means that millions of Americans are paying ridiculous interest rates of 25%-30%. If you're currently paying 20% interest on a credit card, that's money you can't invest, let alone invest locally. It makes no sense for someone to try and make 5%-8% on the stock market with your right hand while you're paying 20% out with your left. The message is clear, if you have credit card debt, paying it off should be your first investment priority.

Strategy Number 2 - Invest in Your Family's Future

Shuman gives this example... "If your child has racked up an unsustainable credit card debt of $20,000, make her a deal: I’ll buy out your credit card and pay it off, and you can pay me the $20,000 at an interest rate of 5% per year. You get a great new income source, and your child gets a new lease on life...

"Why stop at credit cards? If a family member has a student loan for 7%, pay it off immediately and have her pay the amount back to you at 5%. An estimated 44 million young Americans, including two-thirds of all recent college graduates, have $1.5 trillion of student debt. They are typically paying interest rates between 5 and 7.6%, though millions are in default and paying more. This is a huge opportunity to make money and keep thousands of your kids’ dollars out of Wall Street.”

Strategy 3 - Invest in a Home

Personally, most of the clients I see for help with financial services are mortgage holders, and for most Americans, the largest expense they have on a month-to-month basis is their housing cost. And while the housing market can at times seem inflated, and mortgage rates often cost more in interest than meets the eye, buying a home will almost always be a better long-term investment than renting because it is inherently about investing, not just spending.

If you compare a family that rents and invests in the stock market, versus a family that uses the same money to invest in a home, the homebuyer's monthly payment is doing two things at once. It's covering a primary living cost and investing in the future. The renter/investor's money is being split and therefore being used inefficiently. The equity built in owning a home becomes an asset that exceeds many families' investment accounts. In addition, tax deductions on mortgage interest further amplify this effect.

Lastly, Shuman adds: "If you decide to become a homeowner, you can increase your social rate of return further by getting your mortgage at a community bank or credit union" As we've mentioned before credit unions and local banks keep money in your community in ways the big banks don't.

Strategy 4 - Invest in Paying down your mortgage faster

If you already have a mortgage and you're out of credit card debt, congratulations! If you now have extra money it probably makes sense to start investing in wall street, right? Well, Shuman says that under most reasonable assumptions you will actually get a higher rate of return simply by using extra money to pay down your mortgage more quickly. This may go against what you've heard, but according to Shuman, once you take a deeper dive into the numbers and factor in the market losses, fees, and taxes on your investment gains you would face investing in wall street and contrast that to the tax advantage, interest savings, and equity growth of your property, paying down your mortgage gives you similar if not a better rate of return than funding big companies on wall street.

[I want to take a quick break from the strategies for a second and point out that so far in the book on local investing, the first 4 strategies are about eliminating debt. And it makes sense. Investing is about using today's money for the future, debt, however, chains today's money to your past. And it's nearly impossible to walk forward towards a future if your feet are stuck in the mud of the past. A dollar cannot serve two masters at the same time.

One of the most common things I hear from people is that they would LOVE to make a bigger positive social impact with their spending and investment money, but they can’t afford to. Why? In large part because the average American household spends 34% of their gross income on interest on their debt. Everyone wants to be Free From debt, but few know how to maximize their payoffs most efficiently for their unique situation.

The Skene Agency is dedicated to educating American families on the various strategies for debt elimination that have been proven effective for decades.

Then, using exclusive Debt Free Life software, developed in Asheville NC, we can create a personalized debt elimination report, and provide clear information on how to eliminate debt faster and save interest without spending any additional money.

I want you to think about these three questions. How would freedom from debt change our community? How would it change your family’s future?
What would freedom from debt allow you to do? If you want to find out, go visit www.mindfulmarketplace.com and click the link that says "Eliminate Debt" ]

Strategy 5 - Invest in Cutting Your Daily Bills

Remember when I said that we are going to expand your idea of what investments can be? This is a great example. According to the annual Consumer Expenditure Survey, the typical family spends $3,884 per year on utilities. Shuman asks the following question "Can you get a higher rate of return through the purchase of efficiency measures and renewable energy devices than you would by conventionally investing on wall street? Absolutely."

Investing in energy-efficient measures such as better lighting, insulation, windows, and solar panels do two things. First, they increase the value of your home, growing your asset and your borrowing power, and they save you money monthly, which over the course of a decade can give you a similar if not a better return on your dollars than Wall street would.

Strategy 6 - Invest in Your Co-op

Member-owned co-ops are sort of the OG of local, grassroots investing because membership in a co-op has not been considered a Security. Common co-ops include credit unions, electric utility co-ops, and grocery co-ops, but there are many more, about 30,000 across the country crossing industries like burial services to outdoor recreational equipment. Ever heard of REI? They are a co-op that gives members an ownership stake and a rate of return.

You won't get rich of a co-op membership, but if you're already spending money on these basic needs, why not have your dollar do two things at once? You get a financial ROI through dividends as well as the social return of having these community-based companies in your hometown. I would also add community-supported agriculture or CSA's into this category as well. To learn more, listen to my episode with Jamie Ager of Hickory Nut Gap farms to learn more.

Strategy 7 - Invest in your favorite local business

Investing locally has, for decades, only been accessible to what is called "Accredited Investors" All this means is that an individual makes over $200,000 a year in income. If you don't make over $200k you have had to go through an advisor, who almost certainly is focused solely on wall street. But that is changing throughout the country. Small Independent businesses are able to use tools like crowd-funding, or direct public offerings, or DPO's where the company can sell shares directly to the public. Thanks to the JOBS Act, any company can now raise up to $1,070,000 from any investor, not just accredited ones.

Just like with any investment it is important to do your due diligence and understand the risks, regulations, and possible returns. It's outside of the scope of this episode to get into all those details here so if you want to begin investing locally in this way you should grab a copy of Put Your Money Where Your Life Is and read for yourself.

Strategy 8 - Invest in your Favorite Nonprofit or Place of Worship

Don't forget that non-profits need capital, take out loans and pay interest as well. Why not have that ROI go to you and your community rather than a big bank? Shuman highlights this example.

"Bellwether Housing, a nonprofit based in Seattle, recently made a crowdfunding offering to help its campaign build 750 new affordable apartments in a region known for skyrocketing property values and growing legions of homeless people. These 750 homes will support an estimated 2,400 residents: preschool teachers, students, retirees, bartenders, small business owners, musicians, orderlies, and young children. Every home will be near public transit, with access to jobs, schools and community resources. It’s better for families, our community, and the environment when people can afford to live near where they work.” Investors receive a promissory note paying 2 percent per year, with quarterly payments.”

Local investors received a small financial ROI in addition to a big social one.

Strategy 9 - Invest in Local Real Estate

A growing number of investors are shifting their investments from businesses to land, buildings, and housing. Investing in local real estate means investing in something tangible like a house, apartment building or commercial space in your own community rather than the more illusory "market" It also is seen by many investors as a more stable investment. While many businesses, particularly start-ups, can crash and go completely out of business and lose not only their money but their investors as well, very few real estate ventures would ever completely lose everything.

You may be thinking that you need to be well on your way to becoming a tycoon before you can invest in real estate, but there are lots of ways that you can start small, or even pool your investment money with other local real estate investors. One group local to my region that provides lots of education and resources is the Carolina Real Estate Investors Association. I recommend looking them up.

Strategy 10 - Invest in Local Government Projects

Like the idea of investing in your town's local infrastructure? Roads, bike lanes, bridges, ports, convention centers, parks, and museums? Take a look at municipal bonds. Local governments borrow money all the time, especially for expensive capital projects. A huge advantage to municipal bonds is that federal law makes the gains on many of them tax-free, which can help offset a possible lower rate of return. Shuman cites this example:

“In 2015, a company called Neighborly introduced the concept of “civic microbonds” to lower the minimum denomination for investors. For the next four years, it worked with cities, especially smaller ones, to help them issue bonds that could be marketed directly to residents. If your city wanted to upgrade the zoo, for example, it could issue zoo bonds for resident purchase. .. Increasingly, cities are funding intriguing solar energy or stormwater management projects through grassroots investing. And for cities that have limited cash and have many residents who are reluctant to pay more taxes, this opens up a whole new potential revenue stream."

I hope this rundown of local investment strategies has helped expand your perspective not just on how you can invest locally, but also on what an investment can be in your world, your community, your family, and even investing in and growing yourself. I started this episode by saying that it's important to stick to your philosophy. As we work together to better vote with our dollars, I hold to the counterintuitive yet simple philosophy that helping others is good for me, and growing myself is good for others.

Thank you for your time. Take care of yourself and take care of someone else.

What does “Mindful Marketplace” Mean?

Now that I've gotten a half dozen or so episodes under my belt I thought this would be a good time to talk a little bit about the real purpose of this show and what I'm learning as I go along this process.

Most of you don't know very much about me, so I'll start by letting you know how I got here. When I started college I was originally a music major. And while I still to this day find music to be one of the greatest gifts we have as humans, when I thought about a career I found myself drawn to work that made a difference in people's lives. I also started to understand just how out of balance our world and society were and I wanted to do something that made an impact, something that moved the needle towards a more loving, peaceful, tolerant, and just society. I guess I was a dreamer, and I suppose some things never change.

So I changed my major from Music to Sociology and I created a specialization in community development. I learned about some of the problems we face as a society. I learned how much power was concentrated among such a small group of corporate board members. I learned how quickly the rich were getting richer and the poor getting poorer. I also saw the effects of that power being wielded throughout my home state. My father was from Flint Michigan, and in Michigan, the auto industry reigned supreme The people there gave their time, their labor, and sometimes their lives to the big companies they worked for. But as soon as it became cheaper to make cars in other countries, the bit auto companies abandoned the people who helped them build their empire as quickly as they could.

I also saw how with proper planning and attention to the well-being of all people, certain neighborhoods in Chicago, Detroit, and other midwest cities I studied were able to be transformed when human beings got together and decided that their community would be based on something greater than just corporate profits. I saw that there was hope when ordinary people got together, got intentional, got organized, and worked together for a better future.

Next, I joined the PeaceCorps on a mission to save the world. I went to eastern Europe where I was stationed in Bulgaria teaching English in the public school system. Living in another country was a great teacher. I learned so much, not only about the Bulgarians, but the experience held up a mirror to the society and culture where I was raised. In many ways, I became very grateful for what we have here in the US, and at the same time, I became somewhat disillusioned with the direction our culture and our monopolized economic system were headed.

After the Peace Corps, I spent the next 5 years working in direct service non-profits. I started out as a social worker, handling a caseload of about 20 individuals who were considered Chronically Homeless, meaning that they had been homeless for at least a full year. Most people don't realize it, but the majority of people experiencing homeless are in groups: families who have fallen on hard times and end up couch-surfing for a few months while they get their lives back together. The people in my caseload were passed that phase. 100% of my clients had serious mental health issues, 100% of them had been abused as children, and all but one of them had developed a substance abuse addiction as a way to cope with their mental illness. It was possibly the hardest job I've ever had, but it taught me a level of understanding and empathy that I don't know if I would have learned doing anything else.

I then went on to run the largest food bank in my Metro-Detroit county, and serve on the board of a non-profit dedicated to helping impoverished families with healthy food access. At that time the City of Detroit, with a population of about a half million didn't have a single grocery store. Poor families were stuck getting their nutritional needs met from gas stations and liquor stores. We would give out bags of food once a week, we would give low-income families garden beds and teach them to grow their own food, we would organize and establish farmers' markets in these neighborhoods, and I took on a role with the Title "Social Enterprise Manager"

You may know what social enterprise means, but if you aren't familiar with the term it essentially means "business for a cause". Sometimes this means a business donates a certain amount of its profits to a local cause, sometimes the business donates its products or services to people in need every time they sell something. In my case, we were selling garden products and services to families that could afford them and used any profits we made to support our efforts in helping low-income families secure healthy foods. It was my first foray into the business world. I wasn't very good at it honestly, but we did our best. If you want to hear more from local social entrepreneurs, go back and check out the episodes I did with Bruce Waller from Grind Coffee and Sara Stender Delaney of Sarilla Tea.

During this time of my life, as I was transitioning from non-profit work to the business world, I also learned a lot about how if business was done with intention and care for people first, it could have a very positive impact on their communities. I saw neighborhoods in Detroit turn around because of the investment made by local businesses. There's a neighborhood in Detroit called "Corktown" it's the oldest neighborhood in the city and when I first visited to see the old abandoned train station (which is what you do for fun in Detroit), the whole area was desolate. Boarded-up windows, and empty storefronts, it was not the kind of place many people want to spend their time. But then a really great barbecue place called Slows moved in. Pretty soon there was a boutique coffee shop next door, then a real estate group moved in, and after 10 years, Corktown had become one of the most vibrant places to live in the city, the houses and business district were full and revitalized.

I also attended a conference that was all about supporting and investing in local, and independently owned businesses, and I realized that there was a whole world of business owners who were using their capital and influence to improve their communities as well as get an ROI. These were people I wanted to be like.

I knew I wanted to become a business owner, and I knew I wanted to use that business for good, but I had no idea where to start. I stalled out in real estate, and after moving to Western North Carolina, I fell flat on my face trying to sell life insurance. I finally found success with a local financial services company that was owned by two gentlemen that had a much more holistic approach to their clients, agents, and leaders than is common. In addition, I began meeting and learning from an incredible network of people and businesses who were focused on developing their people and the broader community, just as much as they were on making a profit, if not more.

So when I was introduced to Matt Mittan at BizRadio.US and we began talking about the idea of a show here on BizRadio.US I knew that I wanted to use any platform I was fortunate enough to have to lift up the voices of people who are doing the work of creating, what I am calling The Mindful Marketplace.

So What do I mean by The Mindful Marketplace?

Well first I want to unpack that word "mindful" It's pretty vogue right now to call yourself mindful. It's honestly a little nuts to me that meditation, yoga, and other mindfulness practices are as popular as they are. When I was going to college there was an article in our school paper about how yoga should be avoided because it may cause you to, and I quote "be accidentally sinning". Things have definitely changed, and I'm a big fan of mindfulness practices, I think they are great. But what I mean when I use the word Mindful can be best understood by thinking about the alternative. If you're not MindFUL, what are you? Well, you're Mind-less. When we are mindless, we lack any intention and everything we do is simply by accident. If our systems, our economy, our cultural institutions, and our consumptions aren't mindful we end up with the mindless mess similar to what we see in our newsfeeds every day.

Whether it's in our personal lives, in our personal lives, or in our business community, there really are only two ways to go about things, we can either live and operate accidentally or intentionally. This dichotomy is really what I mean when I use the word Mindful. It simply means present and intentional.

If you take a look at our current political economy, it's obvious that there is more mindlessness than mindfulness out there. Corporate monopolies wield unprecedented power, big companies acquire and merge with other big companies, making the ideal of a competitive marketplace smaller and smaller every year. Our government, more often than not, serves to give that corporate power whatever it wants, whenever it wants without consideration for the long-term health and wealth of the people whom they are supposed to represent in our democracy.

When the government isn't being a lapdog of multi-national corporations it serves to give us the illusion of choice in a two-party system. Day to day, Americans are overwhelmed with psychologically manipulative marketing which feeds into our strongest and darkest emotional impulses. Advertisers use fear-mongering to distract us and keep us fighting with each other, they appeal to our base impulses of envy and greed in an attempt to compel us to consume as much as possible, usually to consume things we don't need, which are unhealthy for our bodies, our minds, and our spirits. And how should we pay for all this consumption? We are tempted and encouraged to go into as much debt as possible. Mortgages, student loans, car loans, and credit cards have become the default option. We become trapped and dependent on the very system that is creating this mess.

Debt in this country has reached crisis levels. In 1980, the federal debt to GDP ratio was 34%, in 2000 that number had risen to 57%, and today the federal debt to GDP ratio has exploded to an astonishing 130%. Interest on debt is now the 4th largest budget item of our national government behind only Medicare/Medicaid, Social Security, and Military Spending. The average personal debt per citizen is $70,000.

In the year 2000, the median new home cost $165,000, today the median home costs $435,000. In that same time frame of 22 years, the median income for an American has only risen from roughly $32,000 to $36,000. The cost of Housing has more than doubled, but the money people are making isn't keeping up with inflation.

Now, what happens to most of that money? You may be aware that between income tax, property tax, sales, tax, etc. the average American family spends 40% of their gross income on taxes alone. But what most people don't know is that the average American household sends an additional 34% of their gross income to interest on debt. I'll say that again, the average American family spends 34% of their gross income on INTEREST on debt. Not on principle, but on interest. This means that the average family in America sends a whopping 74% of their gross income to the government and the big banks, leaving them with just 26% of the money they make.

One poignant example is mortgage debt. In my business, I work with mortgage holders every week who tell me their mortgage interest rate is usually below 5%. They are often very proud of the low-interest rate they are getting. "It's below 2%!" They say. But when we actually look at their amortization tables over the course of their 20 or 30-year mortgage they are paying more like 50% of their loan amount in interest. And if they refinance to get a better rate? Guess what, they start back at the beginning of their loan where nearly 100% of their monthly payment is going directly to interest.

This isn't something your lender will tell you, and the reality is the banks don't want you to be out of debt. They like taking as much money from you as they can.

This is why at my business, The Skene Agency it is our mission to take that 34% that you are spending on interest out of the control of the big banks and back into your pocket and under your control. We are dedicated to educating families on the various strategies that have been around for decades on how to get out of debt fast without spending any additional money. Then using we use an exclusive software developed in Asheville NC to customize a plan based on your family's unique situation, including interest rates, amortization schedules, introductory periods, ballooning payments, and any other relevant information to get you out of debt in half the time or less, again without spending any additional money. We do not charge a dime for this consultation and information. If you'd like to learn about how you can get free from debt visit mindfulmarketplaceshow.com and click on the button that says Eliminate Debt.

Ok, so obviously there are plenty of problems with a MindLESS Marketplace. So then the question becomes, If that's what we get from a mindless marketplace, what could we get from a Mindful one? What would an economy that put's the well-being of people first, and profits second actually look like? Who are the people doing that work? What are the local businesses, economic investment groups, support systems, and educational resources that can help each of us do our part in creating a more mindful marketplace?

I have a lot to learn and I don't pretend, by any means, to have all the answers, in fact, I view this show as an opportunity to teach as I'm learning. I bring on people that I want to learn from and then share the conversation with you. But as I move through reading about and interviewing experts about what this mindful marketplace looks like, there are a few common sense concepts and practices that seem to move us in that direction, and I want to briefly discuss them here.

The first can be called localism. Entire books have been written on the benefits of spending your money locally, and it's outside the scope of this episode for me to list them all, but if you take a moment to consider the differences between spending your money at a chain or spending it at a local business, I think it's pretty easy to understand why it's better to spend your money at local and independently owned business.

Locals re-spend that money locally, they also have roots in your community, they are often from here, and many of them will die here. They don't ship your dollar to a wall street bank or tax haven instead they tend to support the local supply chain making our community more robust to downturns and recessions in the national market. Locals also have a stake in what happens to your town. Many of them are involved in local government and community organizations, and locals are more likely to have a direct cause that they support in your community.

They also tend to take better care of their employees because they are close to them, and probably don't view them just as a number the way big companies do. In addition, they often take better care of the environment because their local reputation in the community matters so much more than it does to a multi-national corporate monopoly.

Oftentimes we see celebrations when a big business moves to town. "It will bring jobs!" is usually what we hear. But study after study confirms that those jobs are often at the expense of the jobs held at local businesses. And we must ask why do big companies usually choose where to locate. It's usually based on which town gives them the tax breaks and government subsidies. So when they do come to town, maybe it does help the community for a short while, but what happens as soon as that company is offered a sweeter tax deal in another state or country? You guessed it, Easy Come, easy go. If you'd like to learn more about the difference Localism makes, I encourage you to check out my interview with Sheree Lucas from Go Local Asheville and Clark Harris from Lolo.

But localism doesn't stop with where you buy things. There are also a growing number of ways that you can invest your money into Main street rather than Wall street. Did you know that local independent business makes up 50% of our GPD, 2/3 of the jobs created, and yet less than 1% of Americans' retirement savings are invested in local business? This is a growing movement, sometimes called "Slow Money" that we will be discussing more, but if you want to begin to dip your toe in that water, listen to my interviews with Matt Raker of Mountain Bizworks, and Jamie Ager of Hickory Nut Gap Farms.

Speaking of investing, there are a growing number of community funds and other investment opportunities where local investors pool their money together to get not just a financial return on their money, but a social return as well. Imagine if instead of getting a 5% return on your money in wall street, you were able to get that same 5% return on your money by lending it to a local bookstore, coffeehouse, tech start-up, or retailer.

This means getting a financial return but also the social return of being a stakeholder in a business you frequent and value and that needs funding to either start or expand. These groups are often called Impact Investors and there are more of them than you are probably aware of. I will be diving more into these topics as the show continues, and having more guests who can help us learn more about how we can make a local impact with our retirement savings and other investment dollars.

At the end of the day, I think that The Mindful Marketplace is less of a destination and more of a direction.

It's not so much a map as it is a compass. It points us towards less monopolization and more localization. It points us away from "winner take all" and towards "a rising tide raises all ships" It points us away from business tyranny and toward business democracy. On This show, I'll highlight the people that are pointing us in that direction. Because the reality is, the money that we spend, and the investments we make, I believe, truly have more power to change the world than our vote. And it is good for us to think of where we spend and invest our dollars as our vote. When you spend and invest, which marketplace are you voting for? A more mindful one? Or a more mindless one?

I hope you will join me on this journey of learning and I hope it will lead you to help us create a better future together. I'm Joel Skene, and I want to wish you all the best. Take care of yourself, and take care of each other.

Who is Joel Skene …and Why is he doing this?

I’d like to thank you for spending your time listening to my show and reading my blog. Your time is quite possibly the most valuable thing you own, and I don’t take that lightly. I want to give you a little background on where I’m coming from and why The Mindful Marketplace exists.

I was raised in an extremely small town where most people were dairy farmers. My father was a Protestant Minister and my mother worked part time while she went back to school to become a librarian. My parents raised me with a desire to serve others, and a commitment to care about people less fortunate than myself. This lead me to study Community Development in college and begin my career with the Peace Corps, then as a social worker and director of a food bank.

My last position in the Non-Profit sector was as the Social Enterprise Manager for a Healthy Food Access non-profit. That afforded me the opportunity to attend a Conference for an Organization called BALLE (Business Alliance for Local Living Economies). That week, I learned from entrepreneurs who were using their businesses to fund social change. I met investors who were pooling their money into local and independent businesses rather than Wall Street. All around me were people who were using business and capital as a means to a greater democratic good. My eyes were opened to an entirely new way of thinking about helping others and social change.

I decided to cross the Rubicon into the business world, but I had never taken a single business class, or even worked at a for-profit company aside from washing dishes. I stumbled for a while, and after a couple years of failing in commission sales, I surprised myself and found success in financial services by finding solutions for families to protect their assets, prevent foreclosures or market loss, and educate them on how to best get out of debt.

Looking back on my last eight years in financial services, I realize that one of the largest motivators for my success has been my desire to follow in the footsteps of the investors and community developers I met back at BALLE. I want to leverage any position and capital I am fortunate enough to have by investing it into local, independent, and mission driven businesses. I went looking for a podcast or radio show based on these ideals, but was unable to find one that giving me what I was looking for…

The Mindful Marketplace is my best attempt to create the show that I want to hear. The show where we share the stories of entrepreneurs, investors, economists and business leaders who are not only making a profit, but who are creating more equitable, sustainable, and democratic business practices and communities along the way. It's where we learn how to connect our money and our time to our values, our community, and ourselves.

I invite you to join my journey of discovering how we can at every level do our part to create a more Mindful Marketplace.