00:00:00 Thanks for joining me on episode 720 of the inspired stewardship podcast. Hey guys, this is Matt ham from you print. I wanna encourage you to find your own journey to living your life's calling. And one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to the inspired stewardship podcast with my friend, Scott Mader, The purpose behind each is good. The purpose of the steps is to give you a clear ordered path.
00:00:33 And the purpose of behind the phases is to make you understand that this is a constant ongoing process. This isn't an a one and done thing that you check off on a checklist and you never have to worry about it again. Instead it's a growth process. It's about continuing to grow and your mindset and your behavior with money. Welcome, and thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship podcasts.
00:00:56 If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent and your treasures for your true calling in the inspired stewardship podcast. We'll learn to invest in yourself, invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact the world. And today's episode about investing in yourself through stewarding your treasures.
00:01:26 I talk with you about why there are steps to wealth and phases. You go through why looking at phrases versus steps can give you some benefit and why looking at steps versus phrases can help you as well. But I also want you to recognize the purpose between each way of framing it as we talk about stewarding your treasures. Wouldn't it be great if you could support this podcast and do it without costing yourself an extra dime,
00:01:55 it turns out you can. All you have to do is use inspired stewardship.com/amazon. When you're ready to make a purchase via Amazon and a small commission, we'll come back to support the show. If you enjoy the show, when you're ready to buy from Amazon, just use inspired stewardship.com/amazon. You know, if you listen to whether it's financial gurus or you tune into a podcast,
00:02:21 you'll hear tons of different examples of steps to wealth or phases that you go through on the journey to wealth. And let me explain, I don't think those are bad or there's anything wrong with them. You know, Monday Jared shared his five steps that he uses as a framework with clients. People talk about the Dave Ramsey, baby steps, the seven baby steps that he has,
00:02:48 you know, Susie Orman has her version of this. You go back to Ron blue and others. They have other versions. You, you listen to just about any of financial coach financial guru, and oftentimes they'll have an acronym that is the phases that we use with my clients. I often talk to them about going through the phases of refocus gain control and set up plan.
00:03:11 And the truth is none of these are right or wrong or good or bad, but there are some pros and cons to each. And so I think a lot of times when we come in and we identify whether we're looking at somebody's steps or we're looking at their phases, or we're thinking about what those are, I want to talk about the difference between the two and why I think it's important to understand that difference,
00:03:36 see steps for most people imply a hierarchy. They imply that you do something first, then second, then third, that you can't get to step three without first having done step one and step two. And oftentimes for some people that stalls them out, because if they're stuck on step one for a long time, they lose hope. They lose flexibility. They,
00:03:59 they don't understand what to do next, where phases are often looking at it more as a cycle where you, you start in a, at a certain area, you unpack a certain amount of information, and then you can move to the next phase. But oftentimes you may cycle back to the earlier phase. As, as you move up the steps, you move up the ladder,
00:04:22 you gain more information, you gain more control and you can pretty much take phases and turn them into steps. Or you can take steps and turn them into phases. There's there's not really a right or wrong here. Looking at things as a phase helps you recognize the temporary nature of it. It also gives you some flexibility to maybe do some things out of order because in your specific situation,
00:04:52 that makes sense. See, that's one of the problems with steps in general, they have to be generic enough that they apply to everybody. And there are cases where they don't really apply to people yet. At the same time, they are usually pointing out fundamentals that if you do, you often well undo. If you skip ahead to a later step,
00:05:15 that's what we were talking about Monday with like the football players that make huge amounts of money and then managed to lose it in a very short amount of time, because they never really laid in the fundamentals. The earlier steps, the earlier phases of growth that were needed. And because they didn't have those fundamentals, it was all too easy for them to slip backwards.
00:05:38 Say the truth is both of these frames are trying to point out the same fundamental idea that there's things that we need to do. There are basics that always exist. And if you get those basics down and you learn the mindsets, the behaviors and the habits and the systems and the processes, you can apply it over and over again. And you will continually improve.
00:06:03 It's about making things into a process, not an event. That's one of the things that, that, that can happen with steps that makes them, you know, a little, there's a disadvantage there. The disadvantages, oftentimes we look at steps as a checklist, we check it off. We're done. So we stopped paying attention to it. And by stopping to pay attention to it,
00:06:23 sometimes we slip back. This is why people, I know people that have followed the Dave Ramsey baby steps and have gotten out of debt four or five or six times because they keep going back to the behaviors that they had. They haven't really mastered that step. They've just moved past it. Where phases shows you that it's this constant process of improvement. The problem with phases though is often,
00:06:49 it's a little indefinite. If I, if I give you a phase like refocus, what does that mean? Well, the reason it's indefinite, because it may mean different things, depending on where you are. So there's value in looking at the phases against the steps or the steps against the phase. Jesus, and recognizing that within the steps, there's different phases.
00:07:12 This is why coaching is so useful because having an expert who's seen, not just one budget, but hundreds of budgets, walk beside you and help identify what is different about your unique situation. What is different about what's going on with you? How do we apply these phases and these steps to your specific stuff? The purpose behind each is good. The purpose of the steps is to give you a clear ordered path.
00:07:43 And the purpose of behind the phases is to make you understand that this is a constant ongoing process. This isn't an, a one and done thing that you check off on a checklist and you never have to worry about it again. Instead it's a growth process. It's about continuing to grow and your mindset and your behavior with money. So that no matter what comes at you later in life,
00:08:05 you are already prepared because you've gone through those fundamentals and you have a frame of reference. You have a way of thinking about the world that allows you to roll with the punches. So is it valuable to have steps? Absolutely. Is it valuable to us understand phases that you go through say phases? For instance, we use the acronym, lamp, launch acquisition,
00:08:28 maturity, and pre retirement retirement. That's a, a way of outlining the process that you go through generally as you move later in life, but you can go through that, those steps very quickly. You can go through them much slower. It just depends on your unique situation. So that's how this frame and understanding the difference between something like Dave Ramsey's,
00:08:54 baby steps or the, the steps that Jared outlined and the phases that you go through gives you the value of both. You can, you can recognize the incredible strength in the steps like Jared outlined on Monday. And you can also bring in the, the beauty of the phases of growth and benefit from both. Thanks for listening. Thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship podcast,
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