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Show Summary
In this episode of the Investor Fuel Podcast, host Leo Wehdeking speaks with Austin Cheviron, a financial expert who emphasizes the importance of financial stewardship and the steps to achieve financial success. Austin outlines a three-step process: making money, saving money, and investing money, while also discussing the significance of having a vision for one’s financial future. The conversation delves into personal finance, consumer culture, and the need for awareness in spending habits. Austin shares insights from his own journey, including the challenges of managing personal finances and the impact of upbringing on financial behaviors. He concludes by introducing his upcoming book, ‘The Money Puzzle’, which aims to provide a blueprint for financial success.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Austin Cheviron (00:00)
Listen, I’ll say this again. If today you have to work to earn money to pay your bills, it should be a warning sign that you might always have to work to earn money to pay your bills. If that statement is true, then it should put a little Spidey sense in your head to say, I need a plan to earn money.So I can pay my bills, because we’re always going to have bills. I need to figure out a way to have money come in without me doing the work.
Leo Wehdeking (00:22)
Hey everyone, welcome to the Investor Fuel Podcast. I’m your host, Leo Wehdeking, and today I am joined by someone I’ve been looking forward to chatting with, who’s been making serious moves in the financial real estate industry. Austin, glad to have you here,
Austin Cheviron (02:16)
Thank you, Leo.Leo Wehdeking (02:18)
Hey, awesome, awesome, Listen, I think our listeners are really going to take something away from how you’ve been handled your financial ⁓ starship business. All right. Now, for for for the people that actually are not familiar with your world, can you give us the short version on what’s your main focus these days?Austin Cheviron (02:39)
Yeah, it’s funny, just had my dentist ask me this two days ago. She said, what do you do? And I said, I sell wisdom and common sense.Leo Wehdeking (02:50)
All right, that’s great. That’s great. That’s great. And Austin, just one quick question. You know, like, okay, so you’re a financial advisor, am I right? And also a coach.Austin Cheviron (03:06)
No, I am not a legal financial advisor. I have to make sure I disclose that that is notI do. But I give financial advice for a living.
Leo Wehdeking (03:13)
Okay, okay, perfect. Now, ⁓ can you tell us a little bit more about your journey and how you’ve been able to get where you’re at right now?Austin Cheviron (03:25)
So I would say this is no matter where you’re at, if you want financial success, it’s a three-step.Process you have to make money you have to save money and then you have to invest the money And so everybody’s gonna be in one of those three places here there most most of the world can’t figure out how to even make the money To start with and that’s that’s where most people get stuck and then once you figure out that you know how to make it then the problem becomes is I can’t figure out how to save it and No matter how much I make I never have enough
And I thought once I made $100,000, I would have money. I thought once I made $300,000, I’d have money. I have clients that make millions, and they still don’t have any money. So phase two is to save the money. And then phase three would be to invest. And if you get past phase three, very few people ever will get to play with their vision.
Leo Wehdeking (04:14)
Okay.Austin Cheviron (04:29)
So their vision is that thing they desire and dream of that very few people ever, ever get to play with, get to become, get to live in.And so I say there’s three steps, there’s actually four. But I tell people there’s three. The fourth is just your reality of life then. And being around entrepreneurs 85 % of my life, I can highly speak into this because it’s all I’ve ever seen. My whole life is dealing with entrepreneurs.
Leo Wehdeking (04:59)
Okay, cool, cool. Now, Austin, can you tell us in what markets are you operating in?Austin Cheviron (05:53)
I primarily operate in the United States, but I have clients in Africa and Europe.Leo Wehdeking (06:01)
Okay, cool, cool, man. Now, Austin, something that actually caught my attention about you, it’s ⁓ how you’ve been able to put all together when it comes about being, well, you told me that you’re not a legal financial advisor, but you mentioned something about ⁓ financial stewardship, all right? Can you tell us or dive in a little bit more into what that means?Austin Cheviron (06:17)
Yes.Yes.
Well, let me ask you, Leo, what does financial stewardship mean to you?
Leo Wehdeking (06:34)
⁓ Well, actually for me, it’s a person who gives me advice on my finance. That’s what I understand about that. But again, you’re the expert. You’re the one who should give us your own insight. Talking from experience, you’re a guy that actually knows how to playbook in the financial business world.Austin Cheviron (06:45)
Okay. ⁓Yeah, so I look at financial stewardship as how you take care of the talents and gifts and opportunities that you’ve been given. That’s what I look at financial stewardship as. So if I go to the parable of the talents from the Bible, if you’ve been given $100, how well do you take care of that and use that in the proper places in life? And most of us aren’t great stewards of what we’ve been given.
Leo Wehdeking (07:29)
Okay YeahAustin Cheviron (07:29)
Most of us are consumers. We consume,we consume, we consume, and a lot of us consume more than what we even have.
Leo Wehdeking (07:39)
⁓ Yeah, pretty much, I guess. Yeah.Austin Cheviron (07:42)
Yeah, yeah,well that’s that’s what I look at as financial stewardship so ⁓ For whoever’s listening is the question would be is how well do you take care of what’s been given to you? Because most of us want more we have a bigger dream and desire than our current reality Right, like if you think of your life Leo, you have a bigger dream of Your life than where you currently are at more likely. Is that correct? Or you are you there?
Leo Wehdeking (08:02)
Mm-hmm.Well, I think that once you reach a phase in your life, you definitely set up another one, you know, so it’s for me, I call it growing. All right. We’re never going to be happy with what we have. And once we actually accomplish something, automatically we set up in motion another goal. I don’t know if that’s what you’re trying to say.
Austin Cheviron (08:18)
Yes.Yeah,
my therapist calls that moving the goalpost. You’re constantly moving the goalpost. Yeah, which he says don’t do. He says that’s not fair. Don’t do that. Because then you’re never happy because you’re never making, let’s say, the field golden. So the question goes back to, OK, financial stewardship. How do we take better care of what we have?
Leo Wehdeking (08:40)
Exactly, Moving the Go post, exactly. Once…Austin Cheviron (09:06)
And that’s understanding that I have a vision and my vision needs funded. Okay, so then it goes, then I ask question, well, what is your vision? What is the vision of your life? What is the vision of your money? How does money play into your life?Leo Wehdeking (09:18)
What?Well, I think that probably, you know, that’s something that you need to respond. OK, because again, you are the one who who is actually in that world, you know, so you should tell us from your own experience. What do you think about that?
Austin Cheviron (09:45)
So what if I’m actually showing you by asking questions that make people think about their own lives? Instead of giving you the answer, what if I’m asking you questions? Hence, this is what I do for a living, Leo. Help people understand. Because I can tell you the answers, but until you understand why you would want the answers and why they’re important to you, the answers don’t matter.Leo Wehdeking (09:57)
Yeah, I know. understand.Austin Cheviron (10:42)
And so helping people understand what are their answers. What does vision mean to me? What is financial stewardship? Why would I go through the process of trying to make more money than I currently make, hence give you a headache? Or as some people might think, create more opportunity that could be a liability. So why would I go through all that for what? Why am I learning? Why would I listen to this?Leo Wehdeking (11:04)
Okay.Austin Cheviron (11:12)
And so these are the questions in coaching in the world that I live in, which is coaching and training. And I’ve lived in other worlds in my life. I’ve ran one of the top real estate teams in the country. I was one of the top agents in the state of Indiana and real estate. have a portfolio of about 50 single family properties. I’ve done, I’ve done the games. I’ve played the games. Now the question becomes is how do I help other people understand their game and the rules of the game and how it actually works and then how to win the game.Leo Wehdeking (11:43)
Okay, and how would you do that? How would you help people to set real expectations about what they want in the future?Austin Cheviron (11:46)
Well, I…Yeah, well, so I’ll break down. ⁓ Last year I created, ⁓ let me, I’ll back up here. 13 years ago I was on welfare and today I am far from that. I actually live a life that I designed and financials are great, lifestyle’s great, works great. And the question that I had is, will my kids understand the life when we’re on welfare or are they gonna understand the life where we’re at today? And the answer is they only know today.
And so I went through, I took about six months out of my year last year. Imagine you taking six months off of work to write and document everything you knew about money. Okay. Okay. Six months off of work to write and document everything you know about money.
Leo Wehdeking (12:37)
Okay, that’s…Austin Cheviron (12:43)
And where it all started it all starts with a vision that says without a vision people perish Leo So that’s why I started with vision with you because without a vision people perish So you got to have a vision and then after that it comes into awareness And what I’ve what I’ve learned is that we’re either always learning about money or we were taught about money from our childhood Positive and negative probably more negative than positiveLeo Wehdeking (13:12)
Yeah, that’s correct. Actually, well, that’s that’s what the system tell us to do. OK, like you go to school and you, know, they teach us whatever they want to teach us over there. OK, but yeah, we’ve been taught about money, you know, in many ways, negative, positive. ⁓ But I think that eventually you end up. Like building your your own road.Austin Cheviron (13:13)
Okay.Leo Wehdeking (13:39)
Okay, depending on whether if you have a vision or not, right? Yeah, everything starts with a vision, all right? But along the road, you’re gonna find some bumps, all right? So maybe your vision starts to deviate a little bit, okay? But that doesn’t mean that you’re not going in the right direction, okay? You just need to go around those little bumps on the road, all right? In order to reach to your vision, all right?Austin Cheviron (13:40)
course.Yes, that’s exactly right. Good job. Yeah.
Leo Wehdeking (14:09)
That’s why I want to ask you how you’ve been able to keep your business running smoothly without losing sight of your vision.Austin Cheviron (14:22)
Well, it’s funny, when I wrote everything I’ve learned and was taught about financials, what I’ve realized is that it all starts with your personal finances. It doesn’t actually have anything to do with your business. Your personal finances are like the foundation of your wealth. And if you don’t get your personal finances right, it doesn’t matter how much money you make in your business, your personal life will consume it all.Leo Wehdeking (14:49)
That’s correct. ⁓Austin Cheviron (14:50)
at leastit has with 99 % of the people that I’ve worked with in my life. And so if you don’t get your, and I work with some heavy, heavy hitters on the business side.
If you don’t get your personal financials right, Leo, it’s not gonna matter how much you make.
Leo Wehdeking (15:47)
Yeah, because at the end, at the end, you’re going to spend it all. You know, it doesn’t matter if you make if you if you make five hundred thousand today, you know, versus one million tomorrow. If you don’t have your personal finances together, like, yeah, you’re going to spend all your money because you don’t know how you don’t you don’t know. You don’t you don’t know how to react or how to. Yeah, you don’t know how to.Austin Cheviron (15:51)
You’re gonna spend it all.and again, spend it all.
Leo Wehdeking (16:17)
behave when you haveAustin Cheviron (16:18)
Yeah.So then, so then let me ask you this, where do we learn our behaviors from?
Leo Wehdeking (16:24)
I think everything starts at home.Austin Cheviron (16:27)
goes back to your childhood and then go into your parents and your grandparents and the area in which you live. And how did you watch other people spend their money? Because all of us get money somewhere somehow. If it’s from the government, if it’s from your work, if it’s from your family members, we all get money. The problem is is none of us have money.Leo Wehdeking (16:29)
Exactly.But
Austin Cheviron (16:52)
And so what we’re taught normally in our childhood, everybody’s gonna be a little bit different, but we’re normally taught most families, I would say in the United States, don’t have any money because they spend it all. And so you as a child, you as an early teen, and you as an adult, what you’ve watched happen your entire life is your family spend all the money. And you think that’s normal. You don’t know any different.Leo Wehdeking (17:17)
Because that’s what we’ve been shown. That’s what we’ve been shown exactly from the very beginning.Austin Cheviron (17:20)
That’s what you’ve been shown. Yes. That’s what you learned.weren’t taught it, Leo. You learned it by watching and observing. And so the second thing after creating a vision is awareness I work on people with. Are you aware how you handle money, how you think about money, how money shows up to you in your life? Most people have a bad relationship with money, Leo, is what I found.
Leo Wehdeking (17:26)
by watching exactly.Austin Cheviron (17:44)
I equate it to most people’s relationship with money is the same as it is their ex When I say X that’s their ex boyfriend ex husband ex whatever you’re laughing right now, but that’s the truth they have a negative emotion to money and One first off they don’t realize itAnd second of all, when I’m working with them, if I don’t realize that, then I’m getting all this negativity coming back to me when I’m dealing with someone and their money. Then how do you think I respond to it? Not well.
Leo Wehdeking (18:23)
Obviously. ⁓Austin Cheviron (18:23)
⁓So the second piece is awareness. The third piece I get into then is personal spending. And one of the fun exercises I do is I have you go through the last 90 days of your personal expenses and list them all out. Just become aware of where all the money went.
Leo Wehdeking (18:42)
Exactly, that is a good exercise.Austin Cheviron (18:43)
Just write,⁓ it’s gonna open up everybody’s eyes if they were to do it. And normally they don’t wanna do that. Why don’t they wanna do it? Because they don’t like the way it looks.
Leo Wehdeking (18:49)
Yeah, that’s right.Because they’re gonna… Obviously,
well, when a person does that, immediately they’re putting themselves in the spot. Okay, so this person, if I tell them this, he’s gonna know way too much about me.
and how I handle my money or how I spend my money. And trust me, you learn a lot by knowing how people spend their money or in how, in what things they spend their money. And you’ll be surprised because most of the time you’ll see that people, and you said the word, ⁓ we consume too much. ⁓ Nowadays, everything,
Austin Cheviron (19:37)
Yes.Leo Wehdeking (19:41)
And again, I’m gonna travel back in time because you said that that’s what we’ve been shown to do. Am I right? Exactly.Austin Cheviron (19:50)
yeah, here’s another question.Why do people consume too much? They’ve been shown. What’s another reason?
Leo Wehdeking (19:58)
Another reason, ⁓ can’t think of one in my head right now, but I would say one. And I think it’s, know, people sometimes when, and I’m gonna put as an example, ⁓ social media, all right? ⁓ When you are looking at your Instagram, all right? Before, we used to look at pictures and what people were doing, all right? So I think that…when it comes about spending money, people like to do what other people are doing. All right? So because it makes them feel good, it makes them feel accept.
Austin Cheviron (20:35)
Why?makes them feel good. they’re covering,
they’re masking an emotion that they’re personally dealing with.
Leo Wehdeking (20:42)
Exactly.Yeah, sometimes you go to a mall and you see a pair of sneakers and maybe you have five, ten pairs of sneakers in your house. Why do you need to buy another one? That’s what I think, you know, that people need to be aware, okay, ⁓ nowadays that we are actually sometimes we’re just buying things or we’re consuming to please ourselves.
You know, we’re not consuming because it’s an urgent matter or because it is a necessity. No, we’re just doing it because we’ve been taught to do that. And believe it or not, that’s how actually the economy moves. All right? Like you said it yourself.
Austin Cheviron (21:33)
is. Our economyis how much in debt? Trillions. So watch, watch what you see because it doesn’t always work.
Leo Wehdeking (21:37)
Trillions. Trillion.Exactly, exactly. But again,
you know, we go to the same point where we are actually we were taught way, way, way back, you know, to spend money. All right. ⁓ And again, everything comes with with technology, with progress. ⁓ I believe that we spend more money, way much more money now than what.
than what we did in the past ⁓ because now we have everything available. right. You have Amazon. You have a lot of all these platforms, you know that they do work internationally and before like if you wanted, you know, to buy something. All right. ⁓ You needed to wait until you were going on on a vacation, you know, to a particular ⁓
area or country, you know, where they actually sell those products. But nowadays it’s like at the reach of your hand, you know, and it’s easy. It’s easy to spend money. All right. What it’s not easy, what it’s not easy is to save and build up a map or, you know, build up a financial map that can take you to where you are right now. All right. So.
Austin Cheviron (23:10)
jump. What do dowhat do need to do before you save it?
Leo Wehdeking (23:15)
You need to invest You need to have a vision You need to have a vision of what you’re going to do once you save that money because if you’re saving money just because at the end when you reach your goal you say like okay, you know took me like two years to save this amount Okay, so I think I can do it again. So what I’m gonna do right now is that I’m gonna go out and I’m gonna spend it I’m just gonna please myselfAustin Cheviron (23:17)
What do you need to do before you invest it? You need to have them, yeah.Leo Wehdeking (23:45)
And I think that’s an error that we as human beings make. All right?Austin Cheviron (23:46)
they are.I hope real estate agents do a three-step process. Make money.
So I help them make money and the way I do that is by giving them a vision and giving them a system and process to follow. Here’s your vision and then here’s what you need to do to achieve your vision. So I help them make money. Second piece is I help them save it. The way I help them save it is through my wealth machine that I created. And actually system in a process that takes the money when it comes into your life, it puts it into the right places to serve your vision.
Leo Wehdeking (24:26)
All right.Austin Cheviron (24:26)
And then the third pieceis to help them invest it. Make, save, invest. Because see, once you invest it, Leo, here’s something that comes from my wealth program as assets. Today, and it’s a warning sign, today, if you have to work to earn money to pay your bills, which 99 % of the people do, right? I’ll say it again. If you have to work today to earn money to pay your bills.
Leo Wehdeking (24:30)
Okay, so make, save, invest.Austin Cheviron (24:54)
It should be a warning that you might always have to work to earn money to pay your bills.Leo Wehdeking (25:02)
Yeah, but 99 % of the people live like that.So again, I’m not saying I’m not okay with that. I’m not okay with that, okay? I cannot talk for the whole world, but I think it is what it is.
Austin Cheviron (25:08)
And you think they’re okay with that?It’s
it’s that’s funny. You say that it is what it is. I think the people realize that it’s too hard To go do what I actually need to do for all these different reasons So I’m okay living in what I am today, even though it’s not what I want It’s not what I draw up, but I’m just gonna sit here in this life Because if not
Leo Wehdeking (25:45)
Well…Austin Cheviron (25:47)
If they’d listen to what I’m saying, then what that would trigger.Listen, I’ll say this again. If today you have to work to earn money to pay your bills, it should be a warning sign that you might always have to work to earn money to pay your bills. If that statement is true, then it should put a little Spidey sense in your head to say, I need a plan to earn money.
So I can pay my bills, because we’re always going to have bills. I need to figure out a way to have money come in without me doing the work.
Leo Wehdeking (26:13)
Yeah, they’re not going to stop.Austin Cheviron (26:19)
And if I went out and I asked 100,000 people that, said, what’s your plan? They wouldn’t have a plan. They might have a vision. They might say what they want or what they don’t want. But they don’t actually have a plan. And that’s one of the reasons why I went and documented all this is so I could show them the blueprint. I could show them the plan.I put it all I told you I took six months to write it all out the exact pieces the exact steps of how I did this I am one of the few that escaped the reality of the world and I did it at a young age because I found my vision I went to work I made save and invested and because I invested I had enough money that I didn’t have to work to pay my bills it just came in every month it came in
Leo Wehdeking (26:40)
Okay.Austin Cheviron (27:07)
And then when the money came in, I got to ask myself, what do I really want to create? If I wasn’t thinking about having to make money, what would I really do? And you know what I told myself? I would document how the hell I did this for my kids and for other people. And so I went and filmed a program and I wrote a book. So that way people can digest it and they can figure out the exact pieces of how to put together their financial puzzle. And we happen to name theLeo Wehdeking (27:32)
all right and everything andand you have everything on your book right
Austin Cheviron (27:37)
It’s all in the book. just, it launches October 7th. It’s called the Money Puzzle.Leo Wehdeking (27:41)
or the moneyAustin Cheviron (27:44)
The Money Puzzle. Yeah, thank you.Leo Wehdeking (27:44)
all right? Congratulations, Congratulations. I think I’m gonnabuy one, you know? ⁓ So I’ll be, you know, I’ll be on the loop once it’s released so that I can buy it right away. All right, awesome. I really, really, really, really need to ask you something, all right? Now.
Let me ask you this, because I know that a lot of listeners, ⁓ they might, you know, feel right with what you’re saying. So if they wanted to reach out to you, connect with you, maybe collaborate or learn more about
you’re doing, what’s the best way for them to reach out to you?
Austin Cheviron (28:23)
They can go to my website and they can look at any of my programs and any of the services that I offer. The book will be on there. My coaching’s on there, my group coaching, my one-on-one coaching’s on there. My products, I have the Agent Success Program, which is how to run a big business and a big life together. I have a Teams program, which is how I documented my business, of my leadership, and we scaled to one of the top teams in the country within three years.⁓ And then we just put our wealth program on there, which is everything I know about money.
Leo Wehdeking (28:54)
Alright cool cool well Austin listen I really appreciate your time your story and your perspective we need more people like you out there doing it the right way and for those of you just tuning in if you got value from this just make sure you’re subscribed all right we got more conversations with operators just like Austin who are out there building real businesses until then see you in the next episode guys
