True personal growth ultimately will lead to fulfillment, and it's my intention with these podcasts to connect more deeply with you. Thank you for joining me and Corbin and my guests, and welcome to this episode. Well, hello, and welcome back. And this week, I'm very delighted to welcome Brian Cadena, who is a financial planning expert. He's the writer of a a a book which was very successful called Millennial Millionaire.
That was back in 2016, and there's a new book just in publication now, which we will discuss later. About Brian himself, he is, a national speaker at colleges, hospitals, corporations, very, polished at that, and he holds a master of science in financial services from the American College and a bachelor of science in financial service in financial let me start that again. A bachelor of science in finance and economics from the College of New Jersey.
So, Brian, I know that in your newest book, you talk particularly about MICE, m I c e. And this is what my audience, I'm sure, will be very interested in. So over to you. So talk about mice. And thank you for that introduction, Anne. And, yeah. So my new book is called, what should I do with my money?
And the concept that a lot of the ways I look at these monster economic or financial issues that impact all of us, whether it's on a macro level or on a micro scale is through something called MICE. And that is an acronym for money, ideology, compromise, and ego. And so when I was actually back in high school, I read this book on the CIA, the Central Intelligence Agency, about how they train their spies. And I thought this was really interesting.
And they said that once we recruit spies, we teach them about the mice, money, ideology, compromise, and ego, And that these are 4 triggers or 4 motives that are innate to all human beings that whenever we're in a situation or whenever we have to make a decision, we factor these 4 things in. And for different people or for at different stages of life, one could outweigh the other.
There could be instances where the money, the financial impact, is guiding my decision more than compromising, you know, my principles or following my ideology, kind of my North star. And that's what wins the day. That's what leads that decision.
And so whenever we're interacting with people, whether they're our business associates, whether they're our partners and our relationships, our friends, sometimes our enemies or, opponents or competition, perhaps in a negotiation When we can learn those triggers, when we can see what makes them tick, almost like in a poker game, and figure out the money, you know, how important is that to them? Are they willing to go higher or lower on a price?
Is that all that they care about is the math and the numbers or their ideology? You know, is it their north star something that they'll never compromise? Is this something that, you know, is almost based in religion or in faith that is just a guiding principle? Compromise, again, you know, are they willing to kind of give and take on this? Is it something that's not super important? Or it is and then the last one is, of course, ego, which is that thing that's so unique to us. That's our pride.
That's something where it's like all things seem to make sense in a deal, and then at the very last second, we get thrown a curveball. And we're like, where the heck did that come from? Or I could never seen this from this person. But that's where that bit of ego or that pride that can be so sensitive comes into play and then makes us sometimes do things that seem irrational. Very much so.
It's it's hard to get one's head around this concept of ego because it drives us, and it it holds us back from doing so many things that, consciously, we think we want to do. And yet the old ego is there in the background actually preventing us. Yep. Yep. Exactly. And I even see this all the time, you know, with clients and finance is that ego comes in of like, alright. I believe in this idea. I'm committing to this.
I'm picking this stock or I'm picking this fund or I'm saying I can't ever do this financial strategy. And then as life goes on and we find out like, okay, we've got to adjust. We've got to change the course of action here. It's almost like that saying where it's like, you can't handle the truth. It's like, we don't wanna let go and say like, okay. Maybe we made a mistake or maybe that was the wrong move.
Sometimes we'll cling to that idea to the very end, even if it might bleed us dry or be the wrong decision for our business or for our family. Because it's like we attach this, this win or loss mentality and we don't want to admit, you know, Oh man, I made a mistake or that was, I bought into the wrong idea. That takes a lot of humility to say, you know what? I was wrong then. I'm gonna change now. But that's when some of our greatest improvements or our biggest strides come about.
So ego is this thing we're just always trying to figure out, you know, how to kind of master it. Indeed. Puts me in mind of well, it's Mark Twain who's credited with saying this. I don't know if it's his originally, but it's so much easier to convince somebody in the first instance rather than to convince them later on that they've made a mistake. Exactly. Yep. Yeah. It's so true. And and I'm saying this all the time in finance is that, you know, belief is a very important thing.
It's a very strong thing, but it's also a very dangerous thing. And, you know, belief is great in faith. It's great in religion, obviously. But in the world of finance, belief can be very dangerous. And I say that because I have so many times where a client will come into the office. We go through their whole financial plan, what their goals are, what's important to them. And I say, you know, please just keep an open mind as we introduce some of these concepts or recommendations.
And they're like, of course, of course, that's why we're here. And then we might bring about something, a new idea, something that they haven't done yet, whether it's an investment strategy, a tax strategy, in a state planning concept. And somewhere along the line, they heard maybe from their parent, maybe from a talk show that they follow or from a book that they read, don't ever do X. And I've heard this several times where I'll say something and they go, Oh, I don't believe in that.
I don't believe in the stock market. I don't believe in real estate. I don't believe in life insurance. And once they say, I don't believe in something, it's almost like they wrote this off. And they've they've blocked off this opportunity for them in perpetuity until they can reset their mind and say, okay. Maybe belief wasn't the right word. Maybe just I didn't have the right feeling about it at a certain point in time.
People also have a tendency to ask their friends for advice or their relatives for advice rather than asking an expert in that subject for advice. Yep. Yep. Yeah. And it's, and I'm sure you see this in any any walk of life, but, especially with what I'm in as a financial adviser. I, you know, I I've been doing this over 15 years. I have every license and designation you could think of to to kind of back up some of the pedigree I have in the career.
And, you know, I'll I'll make a recommendation to someone that is is a novice in finance. Maybe they're very successful as a surgeon or as a business person or what have you. But they come in as a novice and investing or insurance. And then we show them some things, you know, that, you know, years years years have proven successful. And then they'll say, okay, you know, I really like the idea, but let me do some of my own research first.
And as soon as we hear that, that's when it's like, all right, now all the recommendation, all the strategy that we've developed is just at the mercy of perhaps what they Google. And they may Google something and find something that supports our our our, recommendation, and then we're moving forward. Or they might find just an article or a blog post that is against what we've just suggested.
And now all of a sudden, the the planning strategy is kinda going out the window, because some kid in, you know, Oklahoma just wrote something on a blog that they happen to follow or find. And so, yeah, it's it's very unique how we can kind of, you know, buy into these different things. Oh, yeah. I was discussing recently with, some friends. It's so difficult to know with all this information that's available to us what's true and what's a load of rubbish. Exactly.
Yep. Yeah. And I I I tell people that all the time. There's a lot of information out there, but that doesn't mean that there's a lot of wisdom. And it's, it's something that we've we've all known and been privy to for well over a decade with the Internet of of how much with blogs, podcasts, etcetera, is available to us. But now it's just being compounded with AI and with artificial intelligence that we can go right to chat GPT and ask it that exact question that we might be pondering.
And then we get spoken back to us in actual response as if there's a human on the other side. But that human is just an algorithm combining tons of information that's out there. And sometimes it's right, sometimes it's wrong. And how we receive that is always different. And I think these are just all things that we've got to kind of condition ourselves as humans to that. There are so many voices coming at us. It's now not trying to go find answers.
It's now trying to kind of narrow them down, so that we allow only the right answers in, or else we just get absolutely, overwhelmed. So true. So true. And I well, certainly, our generation wasn't taught how to do that at school. Mhmm. A a load of what we're told at school is completely worthless. I know that, and I I could probably talk with you for hours on that subject. But, seriously, just separating the wood from the chaff, it is not easy.
And it's amazing how take lockdown, for example, how many very intelligent people actually believed that all the rubbish that was being fed to us by the powers that shouldn't be. Sure. Sure. And there's so many instances like that where it's almost like we fall into 2 camps. And we everybody occupies, like, both these mentalities depending on the time of day is we're either very gullible. You know, we hear something and it sounds nice or it looks nice, and we're just so quick to adopt it.
And then we're also very skeptical where we can get perhaps the right information, on whatever subject matter it may be. And then we just want to kind of shoot holes through it forever and say, well, let me just play devil's advocate here and let me do all my research and go, you know, everywhere I can to kind of find just something against this ideology. And then I'll grasp on to that.
And so it's weird because it's kind of like these 2, you know, polar ends of the spectrum of, you know, gullible and skeptical, that, you know, we kind of feel like we either have to say yay or nay. And we do that by kind of going to these 2 different sides. And, yeah, it is it is tough with the Internet. And so what I think people need to do is, find their trusted resources.
Try and kind of narrow that down, whether it's in in health, you know, your doctor, your personal trainer, you know, your your favorite, whatever fitness show that you like to follow and say, I'm gonna try this for a while or your diet or what have you.
And then on the money side, again, your accountant, your certified financial planner, your attorney, just people that that you know and that know you and you can have those frank conversations with so that you can just get the right information to make a decision. Because without that, it's so easy to get lost in the weeds. And, and that's what can really be dangerous because we can waste a ton of time there. Very true. Very true. So let's perhaps talk a little bit more about your newest book.
Sure. Yeah. I'd be glad to. So my latest book, what should I do with my money? The subtitle is economic insights to build wealth amid chaos. And another thing, kind of like I had mentioned MICE, is that, you know, those 4 lenses that I view all these topics through. The other thing in the intro for anyone who's read the book, you'll remember that I define wealth in its original meaning. And so wealth comes from an old English word, wheel, w e a l, which just means well-being. Alright.
So wealth was essentially a state of well-being if we go to the etymology of the word. And that's the way that I will like to look at it. So that when I'm sitting down every day as a financial planner with clients or doing seminars and things, I'm not just talking about money. Because money in and of itself does nothing. Okay?
I could hoard tons of money and gold coins in my room, but if they just sit there forever, what value did that ever provide to me or anyone else other than just looking at it and saying, hey, look at that pile of gold coins. So wealth is well-being, and that's what we all get to define that individually. Okay. For some that might be, you know, being able to just walk the boardwalk in the morning with their spouse.
For others, it could be traveling the whole world every year and on the fanciest cruises and private jets. Everybody has this different definition of wealth and there's no right or wrong answer. That's everybody's own choice. And so when I see economic insights, okay, this is now starting to look at all the the the decisions around the world, large and small, which money has an impact on all of them. And that's kind of the economic element.
And then economic insights to build wealth, whatever our well-being is, amid chaos. And chaos is always present. Okay? So that's it was funny when I met with my editors at McGraw Hill, and they said, we all have, what should I do with my money? Everybody asks the question. And then as we came up with that subtitle, they said during when we started the whole concept mapping out the book, it was right around COVID. And they said, yeah. This is perfect. I mean, how chaotic of a time.
But what's it gonna be like when the book comes out? And I said, guys, don't worry about when it comes out. There will be chaos because there is never a time you can't turn on the news. Chaos? Yeah. You can't turn on the news and just look out like, oh my gosh. Is the world gonna end tomorrow? It's constant. So there's always this volatility out there. And, and that's what I tried to do with the book is take a lot of these these economic principles, look at the different factors of life.
So, like, our chapters are population, talking about the changing population dynamics, aging, the the migration, the the just huge expansion in the number of people on earth, Talking about our educational systems, talking about our entitlements, getting into the environment, talking about economic philosophies and politics, even getting into religion, how many governments and countries were founded and grounded in religious principles.
So talking about all these different things and kind of figuring out how the systems work that we live in. And then I think once you kinda get in the know in respect to that, now each day we can say, alright. Let me take a beat. I kinda get what's going on out there. I don't need to get bogged down in all the noise, and now I can just make my own decisions each day where I feel a bit more in control. Yes. Yes. Indeed.
So So It's that You're, you're you're well equipped to deal with the chaos that's going on at the moment. I don't think there are many of us who would, assess themselves as being well equipped. Yeah. And I think that's the thing everyone has to recognize is we all have the tools. We all have the same tools available to us. Yeah. Some of us have different balance sheets. Some of us, excuse me, grow up in different areas.
But we all, at the end of the day, we put our shoes on, you know, one at a time every morning. We, we, we get up, you know, the same way. We don't just land, you know, in our shoes, you know, so it's, we're all human beings on, on this planet that has not really changed all that much. We've gone from a small population to over 8,000,000,000 people, but the earth is the earth.
And the resources we have here at the end of the day are somewhat the same, and we can leverage them to our advantage or we can miss out on them. And so I think what we all have to realize is that we are in control of our our own kind of happiness, our own mentality each day of how we're going to approach the day. But we don't wanna fool ourselves that we're in control of the universe because none of us are. Once we have that kind of hubris of, oh, I figured this out. I know how to do this.
I have the final answer. That's when we're setting ourselves up for disaster. So I think it's this balance we all have to find of, okay, I'm in control of myself. You know, like a blank and once said, happiness is a choice. I can choose how I wanna approach this day and how I wanna react to the different things that occur. Those are all my things that I'm in control of, but I'm not in control of everything else that's going on out there.
I have to just kind of filter what that is and then choose how I wanna deal with it. So it's that balance. And I think as we just kind of, have that nice balance of almost being humble and confident, which I always say comes through reading and experience, you know, that's that's just what I try and share, you know, with with everybody that I meet. Yeah. That's really good advice.
I believe that the only thing that I really have control over is me and how I react because I was asked to fill in a form once with a list of things that I could control or that I couldn't control, and the list was endless. And the longer it went on, the more depressed I felt. Exactly. Because, really, we have control of so little that's out there. And then the robotics would say that out there isn't really out there, or there is no out there.
Yep. Yeah. And so and and that's kinda what, I guess, my goal was with the book. You know, one of the things I I mentioned again in the introduction or the author's note, I don't remember, was like, again, that why now a book about economics? I'm a financial advisor. I wrote that book, millennial millionaire, you know, now over, like, 10 years ago, pretty much about being a millennial and trying to get control of your finances.
But this one, why I loved economics, is no matter what the conversation is I have with people, whether it's in a professional manner or just kind of a friendly cocktail party type of conversation, You make a recommendation or you make a suggestion about anything in the the realm of money or in the markets. In inevitably, most people are gonna say, why? Alright. I recommend to you, hey. Invest in this.
Or hey, you should buy this, or hey, pay that debt off, or why don't we save a little more money over here? Whatever the recommendation is, someone, whether they say it or they just think it in their head, they're gonna say, well, why? Why should I do that over this? Or why should I do anything different than what I'm doing right now? And as we start to answer those whys, we quickly dive down this rabbit hole of what's affecting the whole world.
You know, what's affecting interest rates, what's affecting the markets, what's affecting the economy, What's affecting why, you know, the stock market's tanking today as we air this versus what it did 2 weeks ago. And as we that will just if someone opposing you can just say, why, why, why, why, why? And you could literally write a book on it. And that that's essentially what I did.
So that as I meet with all these people and I get asked kind of the same question so often, I tried to lay at least the foundation for it. So, yeah, the the characters on the stage are gonna change over time. That's inevitable. But it's kinda like the stage in the ultimate rules of the game of how humanity interacts. That's timeless.
And that's really what I tried to lay out in the book so that, you know, yeah, we may not be LeBron James, you know, but we can understand at least how to play basketball and, kinda be in the know. Yeah. Yeah. I agree with you. It's I think it really it comes back to balance, doesn't it? Assessing things, trying to see the truth, making sensible, informed decisions. Mhmm. Finding out what works for you isn't necessarily what works for the other person.
Sure. Sure. Yeah. And that's that's exactly, like you said, is balance. And, it it doesn't matter what the conversation is, whether it's health, wealth, you know, you name it. We're all dealing kinda with the same stuff each day, and it's it's really how we react to it, that that's so important. You know, I often say, you know, life is nothing more than a series of coincidences. You know, you you think about the biggest things in your life. You know, who you ended up marrying.
You know, how your your family turned out. Where you're living right now. The job that you took. So many of them are just when we really go all the way back to the genesis of it, It's this crazy, just, oh, you know, I bumped into this person. We started talking and they introduced me to this other person and then bam, I got a job and then I moved here and I got married and we went to that school and settled down and started a family.
And it's so crazy to go all the way back to the beginning of it, and it was just this kinda random coincidence. And you could say, alright. Yeah. Along the line, it was choice. Everything is choice upon choice upon choice. Even if you're not doing it consciously, even if you don't realize you're well, sort of it's another way of saying the same thing. You don't realize you're making a choice, but always when I was younger, I used to frequently say, well, I had to. I had no choice.
Oh, but there's always a choice. Correct. Yeah. And so I I think those are just things I always to remind ourselves of. And, you know, and that's why I talk a lot about with my clients and also in the business world, excuse me, is speed of transaction. I think that's so important. And transaction isn't just in the monetary sense of, hey. Cut the check, wire the money from here to there, and let's go. Speed of transaction is just simple decision making.
And that's where I often say another one of my sayings is yes is okay. No is okay, but do not give me maybe. And the reason that I say that is as we say yes and no, we kind of add in, you know, the pluses and minuses in life. That's how we get to, you know, make improvements or make a mistake and then learn and rebound and keep grinding and moving forward. When we stay in that maybe space, that gray area, that's where we can just get on the treadmill.
And that's what I I never wanna see people do is where, you know, we're just there too long as life is kind of passing us by. So that's where I I'm certainly a believer in, you know, fail fast. You know, when you're thinking about something, go for it. If it works, you know, thank goodness that you did it. If it doesn't work, okay, learn what went wrong there. And then let's rebound quickly, pivot, and then keep moving forward.
And now we have a little bit more experience and knowledge that we didn't on the last go round. So I I think that's kind of the big thing that that fear of failure, is is dangerous, and we just have to kinda get by that. And then there are people who fear success. They don't realize it, but they fear success, and that also holds them back. Yeah. It's a a great point.
You know, I I think we can get into a comfort zone and, yes, success, sometimes it can bring about a lot of different, other issues that that are ancillary to the thing we were trying to win or accomplish. And sometimes those can be the death of us. You you look at Tiger Woods or, you know, some of these other great icons as examples that they achieved all that you thought they could have set out to achieve.
And then at the end of the day, they can sometimes just self destruct in some instances because all these other things that came along with it, they weren't equipped for. They didn't handle maybe the best way they could have. So, yeah, that's it can be a blessing and a curse sometimes. And, again, I think that all goes back to balance. And, not to get too philosophical, but that idea of know thyself, know what you can handle and not handle. Mhmm. And, and then just enjoy the ride.
Yeah. Just before we close, and I'll talk about details, how to get in touch with you and so forth, remind us again what MICE stands for. Yeah. So MICE is money, ideology, compromise, and ego. And anyone who's listening or watching, I would, challenge them just to spend 5 minutes today and just write down on a piece of paper. What do those four things mean to you? How would you define them? And think about that for a little bit.
And if you have a partner, a business coach, a spouse, girlfriend, boyfriend, maybe ask them. And then you can trade ideas, trade that conversation. And I think you'll you'll learn a lot about yourself and you'll learn a lot about people, when you talk about how much your values are aligned as well. Could be a very interesting exercise. Oh, yeah. Hopefully, it ends up well for most people. Yeah. I'm interested in the connection with the CIA.
You know, where you go about it, that little bit of background detail, because, you know, they're not stupid when they're training people, are they? Yeah. Yeah. There's a I actually have it on the shelf here. It's, so it's called the art of intelligence. I have it back here on my my bookshelf. The art of intelligence, if ever anyone ever reads that. I believe that was the book where I had picked that up.
And, anyone who follows my podcast, we had a a great agent, that was very high up in the CIA that was on our show earlier this year. So if anyone follows, they they should definitely go back and listen to that. We share a lot of these concepts, but not from my financial standpoint, but actually from the real world of spying and how people leverage that in that sense. Wow. So that's the Caderna podcast. Right? That's right. The Caderna podcast.
Okay. So I will put in links in the show notes, everyone, so you can catch up with the podcast and the two books. And, what else have you given me? Websites? How do you like to be contacted? Sure. Yeah. So I think probably the the catchall is, if people go to my website, which is just my name, www dotbriancaderna.com, and that's Brian with a y. If they go there, they can find out kind of the latest things I have going on, my books, things I write on. They can email me, contact me there.
My handles are b kaderna on any social media. So that's where you can follow a lot of the stuff that I put out. A lot of the interviews I do, a lot of the content, you know, more than happy to connect that way as well. And also on any of these, you can find my newsletter, which is just called weekly wealthy wisdoms, www. Anyone can sign up for that. It's completely free. It comes out every Monday.
I just share a few of, the coolest things I've found in the week, as regards to wealth, you know, well-being. And, just share that, you know, articles I've read, things I've written about, videos I've seen, so on and so forth, tools and gadgets I'm using. And that has done really well. We have tens of thousands of subscribers to that. So hopefully, that's a testament to in just a 2, 3 minute Monday read, a lot of people are getting a lot out of that. Fabulous. Well, thank you so much.
I have really enjoyed speaking with you, and it it really has been a pleasure. Yeah. My pleasure, Anne. Thank you for having me. Okay. Bye bye. Bye bye. Okay. Let's turn that off. You can set yourself up to win the game of life, become familiar with the laws of the universe. You have infinite potential. You can influence reality. Quantum growth and connection explores success strategies, power principles, relationship rescue, and the quantum field.