Derrick Kinney: Episode Description

On this episode of The Inspiration Project, Brendan Corr talks to best-selling author Derrick Kinney about the importance of money, how to manage money well, how Christians should view money, how to help young people manage their money well, how Derrick has been able to make money easy to understand, how Derrick became a Christian, why he’s interested in finance and why he wants to help people get more money, why money isn’t bad but in fact good, why some Christians believe money is evil, and Simple Teen Success.

Episode Summary

• How Christians should view money
• How to manage money well
• How Derrick became a Christian
• The importance of money
• How to help young people manage their money well
• How Derrick has been able to make money easy to understand
• Why Derrick became interested in finance and why he wants to help people get more money
• Why money isn’t bad but good and why you need more of it
• Why some Christians believe money is evil
• Simple Teen Success - Setting up your child for a bright financial future

Derrick Kinney: Episode Transcript

Sponsor Announcement
This podcast is sponsored by Australian Christian College, a network of schools committed to student wellbeing, character development, and academic improvement.

Introduction
Welcome to The Inspiration Project where well-known Christians share their stories to inspire young people in their faith and life. Here’s your host, Brendan Corr.

Brendan Corr
Well, hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of The Inspiration Project podcast, where we get a chance to talk with Christians who are making a success, both in their faith and in their lives, particularly in their chosen careers. And this morning, we’re talking with Derrick Kinney. Derrick is a Christian who is living in America. He has a commitment to helping people better understand the value and usefulness of finance and of money. He believes that money is not a bad thing and that good people should have more of it so they can do more good things. His intent on helping people apply those principles, and has done so with thousands of clients, he developed a multimillion-dollar business that he has sold to make an opportunity for this area of service. He’s currently CEO of the Good Money Framework and he hosts the Good Money podcast. He’s written the book called The Good Money Revolution and is influential in business by interviewing people and thought leaders, and inspiring them to make more money and to make better use of it. He’s a regular personality in the media in America, and we are delighted to have some time with Derrick this morning. Good morning, Derrick.

Derrick Kinney
Hey, good morning, Brendan. It’s great to be with you today. Thank you for having me.

Brendan Corr
I think it’s actually afternoon for you, right? In Midwest America?

Derrick Kinney
It is. It’s about 3:30 here, but whatever time it is, I’m glad to be with you today.

Brendan Corr
Well, part of what our conversation is likely to describe or the territory we’re likely to cover a little bit is the notion of, really, we’ve become, very much, a global world. All right? We’re the citizens of the global economy. And so, time is a little bit more relative than it was 10, 15, 20 years ago, and we do connect in ways that aren’t governed by that hand on the clock. America’s always been your place of influence, your residence? That’s where you’re born and bred?

Derrick Kinney
As we’re talking right now, Brendan, I live here in Arlington, Texas, which is right between Dallas and Fort Worth. Actually, for those sports fans, it is the home of the World Series champion, the Texas Rangers baseball team, which is kind of our claim to fame. But a little backstory. So, Brendan, I was actually born in Washington State in the northwest corner of the U.S., and then I went on to move six times before the sixth grade. We moved to Oregon, then Oklahoma, Kansas, Pennsylvania, New York, and eventually Arlington, Texas right before I entered the sixth grade. And so, I’ve been here a long time. My dad was an engineer. He would either get transferred or change jobs. And the problem, because of all that moving around was, it was hard to develop really good, deep friendships, but to be vulnerable with you and your audience. I had a really big nose, and so I was teased mercilessly growing up, from the sixth grade on, junior high school. And so, it led to a lot of dark places for me, not a lot of deep friendships. I always felt like I was on the outside, looking in, and I would eventually really shape a major decision and a big change I made in my life for the better.

Brendan Corr
Wow. Well, I know that friends, and especially preteen, teen friends can make life really hard if you’re not one of the kids, one of the cool kids. So, I know that there’d be many people who would understand exactly what that must have meant for you, which means, I guess, that the life that you’re living now with the degree of approval, and dare I say, semi-celebrity success, certainly, is it all the more sweet because of some of those challenges?

Derrick Kinney
I think it is. And what I go back to is, there was a simple but powerful lesson I learned when I was a junior in high school. And even going back, having really relied on God and asking for wisdom and favour. And even though I felt like I was alone, I knew I was never alone because He was with me. And I had this epiphany, my junior year in high school, and that was, I was going to bet big on myself and run for student body president. So, this was way out of my comfort zone. About a month earlier, my mom, sensing my desperation and my dilemma, gave me a book by a woman named Judy Zerafa, and the book was called, Go For It! It was a book about surviving the teenage years and thriving. And one of the chapters of all things was, how to be popular. Well, I had nothing to lose. And so, I basically read that chapter over and over and over again and began to implement what it talked about. I began to say hi to people, use their names, use eye contact, and make them feel important. And what happened was, within a reasonably short amount of time, I began to develop a base of friends that I was comfortable with. And so, I decided to run for student body president, but I knew I needed to do it differently. I did not come from the gene pool of the popular kids. I was on the outside, looking in. And so, as I looked around the school, I saw all these sorts of cliques, these different groups of students that hung out in their group, but nobody really hung out together. So, back in the ’80s, I graduated high school in 1987, back when dinosaurs roamed the entire United States territory, and there was the band crowd, the rock and roll crowd, the athletic crowd, and the real studious crowd. And what I did, the idea came to me of, I’m going to approach the leader of each of these groups, and I want to get a picture of me and the leader, shaking hands, and I would take that picture, and put it on a poster board, and put it above where they hung out in the school, with a quote from them. For example, Steve Mosley with the rock and roll crowd said, “Rock the vote with Derrick”, as an example. And so, I put that on a poster board, and suddenly, what happened was, something I could have never predicted was, everybody got excited. Suddenly, people who were nobodies began to feel like somebodies because they were seen, heard, and valued. And I remember, and I get emotional thinking about it now, five other students who are far more popular than Derrick Kinney, but at the end of the day, the crackle of the microphone came on, and the principal came on and said, “And the winner of student body president is Derrick Kinney.” And the whole school clapped because it wasn’t me who won that day, it was all of us who won. It was a victory for the small person, the person who’d been overlooked, not listened to and not appreciated. And what it taught me was that, when people feel valued, when they feel like they’re part of something bigger, when they feel like they matter, they will do anything to help you be successful. So, that one lesson gave me the confidence, after college, to go launch a business that became one of the top businesses in my industry in the country, all because I never forgot that principle of making people feel seen, heard, and valued.

Brendan Corr
That’s very powerful. And what an incredible way to have learned that through direct experience and not have… I mean, there is value in learning from others and having people tell us principles, but to live that out in such a powerful way, was extraordinary. I don’t know the business that you started, but surely, it was marketing. Surely, it was in the field of selling yourself, selling ideas or influencing people’s opinions.

Derrick Kinney
Well, it was, to a degree. I went into finance. I went into managing money for people. And what I realised was, and early on, that I had a problem. So, here I am, I’m now 26 years old, launching into this business, and now there are people more experienced than me, people that appear smarter, people that have more relationships, they’ve got the country club memberships. I barely had a penny to my name. And what I realised was, I had a passion for investing in the lives of young people. So, I decided to go back to my alma mater high school, Sam Houston High School in Arlington, because when I was a senior, I never had any successful adults come back to school and give me a glimpse of what my future could look like. Why am I taking history? Why am I taking math? Well, all of those are certainly important classes. They didn’t give me an impression of what my future could look like, or what my potential could be. And I said, “I don’t want that to happen to any more students.” And so, I went back and began to… I took a $50 Amazon gift card and a $25 Amazon gift card once a month to recognise a teacher of the month and a student of the month at the local high school. And you would’ve thought that the teacher and the student won the lottery. Here it was, $50 and $25, but it was because they felt seen and valued and appreciated. And so, I would get a picture with the principal of the school, the teacher and the student, and myself. And back in the ’80s, we had these things called newspapers, these little kinds of paper things that they printed stuff on. Those have long gone by the wayside now. But I began to get phone calls from people a couple of weeks later, and a few people said, “Hey, Derrick, we see you in the paper, recognising teachers and students. We’d like to have you be our financial advisor.” And I was shocked by this. And so, about the third call, and this was so unprofessional, I asked this woman, I said, “Ma’am, if you don’t mind me asking, I’m 26 years old, I have barely any experience. I’m a brand new financial advisor. Why are you asking if I can become your advisor?” And what she said changed my entire paradigm of how I ran my business after. She said, “Derrick, we want to work with you because you care about what we care about. You care about what we care about.” And at that moment, I realised, it wasn’t about being the smartest advisor or getting the best returns. They assumed I was competent in caring, which I was, and I did a great job for clients, but people wanted to be part of something bigger. They wanted to know that when they worked with Derrick Kinney or any other professional, they were partnering with someone who was opening a door for them, to make an impact, to make a difference in people’s lives. And it was that realisation that led me then to weave generosity into every part of my business, going forward.

Brendan Corr
Derrick, I can’t help but think… One of the lines of our conversation that I was hoping would unfold is this… I’ve just recently read a book called, The Psychology of Money.

Derrick Kinney
Yes, Morgan Housel.

Brendan Corr
Yes. And one of the things that struck me from that author was the way he personalises the whole notion of finance, debunks the idea that it is spreadsheets and its calculations and its formulas and it’s completely cognitive and intellectualised, and makes the point that, actually, it’s about people. It is about how people feel and what people love, what they care about, which seems to be similar to the notions that you are able to discover early in your career, that there is that side of finance, but actually we are all people that come to this enterprise and it is our full personhood that gets engaged or invited into that sort of space, and we can’t help that. Am I sort of right in drawing those parallels?

Derrick Kinney
Well, I think you’re spot on. And it’s interesting because I had Morgan Housel on the Good Money podcast, and your takeaway from his reading was similar to my takeaway from being personally with him via interview, and that he was talking about how we make money simply. How do we make money easy to understand? And one of the takeaways he talked about was that, just because you have an education, just because you have parents who have money or you have access to a special degree, doesn’t give you any advantage over someone else who just takes the time to study. He talked about how money is the great democratizer in terms of laying out an equal playing field. And what I would share with your listeners also is, when I worked as a financial advisor… I sold my business about three years ago to have a bigger cause and a bigger mission. What I learned was that I wasn’t so much a financial advisor, I was simply a tour guide for their process and journey of transformation in their lives. My job was to help them walk alongside and help them reach what was important to them. If they wanted to have a vision for me, how do I have the freedom to be able to crawl on the floor with my grandkids to travel or do mission work or go see my kids when I’m older? What would the dollar amount be? Well, suddenly, it became personal for them. It wasn’t just enough to say, how much return did I make? They wanted to know, as part of their dream fulfillment process, if they could achieve those dreams. And once I connected, these are real people who have real concerns, real fears, real dreams. Then, we had a flood of new business because people felt like they were seen and heard when they came to our office and not sort of taught to or talked down to, based on them, not having the same level of financial acumen that we might have.

Brendan Corr
Yeah. Again, that’s profound. I really want to use the phrase that money is the great democratizer, which… When you first used that phrase, it just seemed like such a paradox to me because I think there’s a view in our world that money is the thing that discriminates, that it is the inherent haves and haves-not. And so, to flip that notion to say, actually, it is not the thing that makes the divisions of people, it is something that empowers equality of opportunity or it becomes a utility, a tool to be used, not a thing in itself. If we can park that for a moment and come back to it because you mentioned earlier about the role of faith and of God in your life, can you share a little bit more of that story with us? You had this epiphany experience, as a junior in high school, of learning how to make connections. And again, this idea of, to have a friend, you have to be a friend, the sense of agency that you have in that sort of space. Was God already part of your story at that time?

Derrick Kinney
He was, and I was fortunate to grow up in a Christian home. We went to church on a regular basis. I was raised in that environment. But what I realised was, there came a time when I had to take my faith on as my own, that I wasn’t going to be under the umbrella of my parents’ faith for the rest of my life. I needed to have my own umbrella, if you will. And so, it was my freshman, sophomore year of high school where I really had the heart-to-heart conversation with God of, “Okay. God, I want to follow You as Derrick. I give my life to You. I trust You. And let’s go.” And I remember having that discussion where my faith became my own, but it was with a full recognition that it isn’t going to be daisies and daffodils every day. I’m signing up for the harder path sometimes, trusting God, because I realised early on, I was an achiever. I was an A personality. I like to get things done. But there was part of me that was interesting, was that I had a bend for generosity at a young age. And I’ll tell you a quick story. Our church, at one of their ministries, which I really loved, had a food pantry. So, every Saturday, they opened the church doors for the community to come in and get whatever food items they needed, whether it was green beans, macaroni, cheese, or whatever they needed, and they always needed people to fund that. And in my heart, I just had this passion for it, but it was a small church and… Kind of funny, I didn’t want anybody to recognise my handwriting as I would write on there the purpose of the money, so I would write with my left hand as if, in my mind, to sort of disguise my handwriting because I wanted to give it anonymously. At the time, it was probably five bucks, 10 bucks, but it was almost all that I had. But what I found was, it motivated me that I felt like I was in a position where I could go make money. I was working at a grocery store, bagging groceries and stocking shelves, but I was tithing my 10%, religiously. I just always wanted to do that. But this was above that. And I thought, God has given me some skills here, but I want to make sure that I’m using part of my skills to make money, to use it for good. And that was the first recollection of helping fund that food pantry because I recognise those people… There’s always this thing in marketing and so forth of, “Hey, if you sell people this or that, but ultimately, you want to give them the lowest base they need, to make it the next day.” Like, if I’m talking to someone about Jesus and I detect that they’re hungry, well, I could say to them, “Hey, you need to listen to what I’m going to tell you about Jesus, then I’ll feed you.” Or I can say, “Hey, let’s meet your basic needs now. Let’s feed you”, and then you’re preparing them to better receive the message. And I just draw a lot of comparisons with those two things.

Brendan Corr
Yeah. So, you came to this experience, it must have been mid-teens, I guess? Freshman, sophomore?

Derrick Kinney
Mid-teens, that’s right.

Brendan Corr
Our Australian system is a little different in the way we label progress through education, but I think we’ve seen enough movies to figure out what is a freshman, a sophomore, a junior, a senior, how that works, and the heritage that you had from your family of Christianity becoming your personal experience. You described it earlier, the sense of maybe not connecting as easily with the cliques or the social groups in your life, and knowing that God was that ever-present reassurance that would be with you regardless of any of the change or any of the relocation or any of the apparent social isolation, did you have a sense that God was leading you into this area of financial service management understanding?

Derrick Kinney
I did, and kind of a funny story. So, when I was younger, I always had a business idea I was working on. And I remember, one of them was, I opened up a little bicycle inspection business, and so my only clients were my family. So, I went to my mom and my dad, and I said, “Hey, for a dollar, I’ll inspect your bike”, and I’ll put this little paper label on there with tape and everything. And I inspected my sister’s bike for a dollar. And I remember, as I got older, I sort of just had this affinity for making money. I just enjoyed it. And so, I actually drew an amortisation chart on the back of my closet where I would loan… Let’s say, I would loan my parents $5 for fun, I would calculate the interest they would have to pay me, and so forth, even keeping some cash books. I remember finding the first penny ever on the ground, I wrote in my cash book, 0.01, tracking my first paycheck. It was something about money that while it gave me empowerment, it gave me a tool to do something with it. And I remember, there was nothing more joyful in my life, especially anonymous giving, than helping people in need. And so, it gave me a purpose that, suddenly, I was in conversations, and listening to people, and listening for clues of, hey, I could anonymously send the person some money. And it was funny then, oftentimes, whether it was a friend or a family member, in conversation, they would tell me, not having any clue it was me, “Derrick, you’re not going to believe what happened.” And so, I would have to practice this poker face and just say, “God is so good.” That is so awesome.” And one of the things I’ve realised is, so many people think that, “Well, God will take care of it.” Well, what I find in my belief is that God uses people to take care of other people. And so, oftentimes, we might hear that voice or that feeling of, “Hey, do this”, and you may feel really strange or awkward. I’ve just found it’s best to do it because that’s typically the voice of the Holy Spirit saying, “Hey, go do this. You are my hands and feet in this project. And if you don’t do it, I’ll call on the next person, but you’ll miss out on the joy that they’ll likely receive.”

Brendan Corr
Yeah. I think you’re right, isn’t it? There are instances when the manna from heaven miraculously appears, but more often than not, God uses people and sends people to meet needs and to undertake tasks and to be His hands, His feet, His voice in the world. I think that’s good. I hope you don’t mind me saying, and this is not meant to be provocative at all, but it’s an interesting thing for somebody with such a clear sense of God and His provision and His personal connection individually to be able to make sense of money. My own observation is that, as Christians, we don’t do money all that well, and we tend to be very polarised about our view of it, and having a rational, informed balanced perspective is a rare thing. Would you share that view that either the church thinks money is the sign of worldliness and of evil and it’s to be avoided, or it’s the only sign of God’s blessing and it’s the only thing that is the mark of provision? How do you counter those two extreme views that are part of the Christian perspective of money?

Derrick Kinney
Well, one of the things that I find in Christian culture today, is that there is a growing voice that says, “Money is bad”, and that the best way to serve God and really practice what God is calling us to do is to almost take a vow of poverty to live that out. And what I believe is the opposite of that. I mean, if you look to God, for example, I think God is perhaps the greatest entrepreneur ever. Think about this. Brendan, if you and I were to do a business deal together, and you and I went and we were going to buy a company, and let’s say that the person said, “Okay, we’re going to split this 50/50.” Okay. Well, what God is telling us is, “Of all the provisions I give you, you keep 90, I want you to give me 10.” It’s a 90/10 split when we talk about tithing. That’s like the greatest business transaction in the history of the world, and it just makes me want to do more and give more back. And so, what I find is that, sometimes, people misinterpret scripture to say, “Money is the root of all evil”, that any type of money corrupts, and by golly, it’s going to corrupt absolutely. But the Bible actually says, “The love of money.” Proverbs is very, very clear to talk about the wise business person and the wise and shrewd person, and I think it’s important that we take those lessons. And what I interpret from that is that God has given several of us different gifts. For example, some of us have the gift of administration, that they’re great organisers. Other people might take the money that is given to the church, and they are skilled at talking to other people about Jesus. Other people are in the business owner camp and they’re gifted at just making money by adding value to people’s lives. And as a church, I think the wise church says, “Hey, business owners, let’s give you a pathway, an on-ramp, to work hard and be motivated to do more good, so give money to the church and support this cause, knowing that your hard work has a purpose and that it’s growing God’s kingdom.” And I think when people take that approach, that mentality that… And this is why I wrote my book, Good Money Revolution, that money is not bad, and that good people should have more of it. And I take kind of a moral clause here that if you give a lot of money to Vladimir Putin or you give a lot of money to the North Korean dictator, do you think they’re more likely to do more bad with that money or good with that money? And a reasonable person would say, “They’re probably going to do more bad with that money.” And so, what I believe is, the good people in the world, the good people that care about other people, that want to make the world better, I want to empower them to go make more money for the good that they can do with it. That might be at their local church, it might be for the homeless shelter, for clean water, to help hunger in the area. Whatever it is, more people who are good, who have more money, will likely want to do more good with it. And so, the whole concept here is, not only does it make you feel better, “I’m giving money to solving this cause.” But in business, what I found is that, and it’s what grew my business for 25 years, people wanted to work with me because I opened a doorway for them to know, when you work with Derrick and we supported all types of organisations to benefit young people and benefit the church and grow our community, people felt better because they could work with any other financial advisor, but they wanted to work with someone who made them feel better. I’ll tell you another just a super quick story. In my book, one of the researchers I quote, her name is Bea Boccalandro, and she talked about this experiment they did, measuring how the brain responds to generosity. And they had a couple of people in a room and they’re watching car commercials of all things, and the car commercial starts off with talking about how big the engine is and the features and the benefits and how fast it goes. And so, they measured how the brain responded to that, then they showed car commercials where it was a cool car, but they said, “And a portion of all proceeds go to support the US Olympic team or go to help clean water or go to help curb hunger.” Well, when they said those words, there was a part of the person’s brain that registered, get this, in the same way as though they were looking into the eyes of someone they loved. So, it was that whole generosity component that made people feel almost a romantic connection with that product or service. It simply tells us that wise business owners today will weave some level of generosity into their offering, assuming the product is good, they’ve got to have good service, a reliable product. No generosity will overcome a terrible product or service. It’s got to be in addition to, but it just shows you how people… And it’s how God made us. God made us, I believe, to want to give back and feel like we’re part of something bigger.

Brendan Corr
Yeah, yeah. I take your point, Derrick, that… You made that reference about the root of evil, the love of money. And the truth that, I think, you’re unpacking is that the circumstance, whether you are wealthy, whether you are poor, whether you have a lot, whether you have a little, that’s not what defines the situation, it’s your heart. And you can have a heart that is free and generous with the little, you can have a heart that is free and generous with a lot, you can have a heart that is greedy and ambitious with little, or a heart that is greedy and ambitious with a lot. It all comes back to who we are in that space.

Derrick Kinney
So true. It’s so true. And I think it’s important, especially right now, for people to ask themselves, what is my motivation? If your motivation is simply to pad your bank account and to fill up your investment portfolio, while it may lead to a temporary high, much like a drug, that feeling wears off. And what we find is… There was an experiment done by a gentleman named Mike Norton, who is a Harvard professor, many years ago. And what he did was, he took groups of envelopes, and he gave it out to students, and he wanted to measure what would happen when one group… They were each given a $20 bill, and they said, “It was 8:00 o’clock in the morning, by 5:00 o’clock today, I want you to give out this $20 bill to someone else. Take them to coffee, buy them lunch, whatever it may be, and then we’re going to report back your findings.” And the other group, they said, “Take this $20 bill and spend it on yourself. By 5:00 o’clock, come back, and we’re going to talk about the findings.” And what happened was, that the people who spent the $20 on themselves, might’ve bought lunch or a new CD or a new clothing item, it gave them no noticeable increase in satisfaction. But the people who bought something else, whether they donated it to the food bank or bought something for someone else, had a noticeable increase in their satisfaction that lasted not just that day, but up to 72 hours later. And so, the experiment was all about, even with small amounts of money, even if it’s someone else’s money, not even your own, the noticeable impact you feel that’s long-lasting when you do something for someone else.

Brendan Corr
What’s stirring in my head as I hear you talk about is, some of the scriptural stories of people that are wealthy, the rich young ruler, “Sell all that you have”, but his love for his stuff was so that he couldn’t do that. Versus Zacchaeus, “I’ll give away four times what I owe.” And then, the money wasn’t the thing, it was what was going on in the person’s heart, what their sense of commitment to the betterment of others is.

Derrick Kinney
And I agree with that. And what guides me now, as a business owner… I call my net worth a report card for adults. When people think about, “Well, Derrick, I don’t have much money to give.” They may be where there are more months left than there is money, there’s simply not much money. What I find is, even if they say, “I’m going to give $5.” Well, in that physical act of giving $5, no longer do they owe that to the car company or the house mortgage lender, they get to control that $5 in any way they choose. And what I find is that the empowerment that people have, the joy they have when they suddenly get to choose where a small part of their money goes, is enough of an endorphin-building action that they want to keep doing it. And oftentimes, I’ll talk about this concept of present value versus future value. So, I think you’ll appreciate this. In my business, as a financial advisor, there’s always this concept of, well, if you take a thousand dollars today and it grows by a certain percentage over the next 20 years, you’ll have, let’s say, $50,000. And so, the logic goes, “Well, Derrick, I don’t want to give a thousand dollars today because if I wait for 20 years, then I can give a bigger amount and I’ll have more impact.” Well, the problem with that is, that there is a cost of missing impact that occurs, and that is, your thousand dollars missed out on impacting people for 20 years, even though it was a bigger dollar amount. And so, what I tell people is, give now, even with a smaller amount, because that impact can begin today, and the personal impact can far surpass the financial impact over those 20 years. And so, that’s why we see crowdfunding, we see people that donate a dollar, $5, and they may not up until now, feel like that’s made much of a difference. But I would just tell them, “If that’s all you have, then give that to develop the habit that, eventually, when you have more money, the habits are already formed.” Because one fallacy is that, well, when I have more money, then I’ll start to give. And it almost rarely ever happens.

Brendan Corr
Because the same argument applies. I could give $50,000 now, but if I wait a bit longer, I could give $80,000. I might as well wait a bit longer. And I get that. What I really appreciate, Derrick, about the views that you’re expressing is just how aware of personhood your philosophy of money actually is, that it is rooted in the notion of who we are, how we think, how we feel, and the ideas that… Even those stories of scripture about the widow’s might, and that it is not simply the fact of obedience to God, although that’s important in itself. There is intrinsic humanity that is being shaped and released in those acts of generosity that are good for us. It’s not just compliance. God knows that that will be better for us, to be able to do that.

Derrick Kinney
Well, it’s so true. And one of the things I find is that it’s often what holds parents back from teaching their kids. When I talk to parents all over the country, they say, “Derrick, I want my teenager to have a better life than I did. I want to open up every door of opportunity.” And what I find is, when you pull back the curtain, they feel inadequate to teach their teens about money. And here’s why. They feel like they’re failing in terms of how well they’ve done with money. Therefore, they don’t feel like they have a platform of authenticity to teach their teens. And what I tell them is, “I have great news for you. You actually have the best audience and the best platform ever for authenticity, by sharing the mistakes that you have made financially.” And once we talk through that and get them comfortable, because so many parents feel like, “I need to put on a perfect front for my kids, so they feel like we’re doing great, financially.” And what I found during COVID, when we were all back home again, there were lockdown orders, and we’d go around the dinner table, it was like a redo on our family. And what I would share with my kids, a mistake I made or some big faux pas that I made, bad investment, it was like, you could have heard a pin drop. They were like, “Oh my gosh, this is so good. Dad really screwed up today. This is going to be a great story.” And the best lessons came from sharing my mistakes. And what that did was, it lays the foundation that when our kids are older and when they face a struggle, they don’t feel like, “Oh my gosh, my mom and dad had never dealt with this.” They feel like, “Oh, this is what they went through. This is normal.” And once I think teens feel normal, that strife and problems and challenges are normal, they can better navigate, and it really doesn’t knock them off track. And so, what I would tell a parent, listening right now, if they don’t feel like they’ve been the model for financial success, is just simply use this phrase and say, “Son or daughter, my heart is that I want you to be successful, financially, but I’ve not been the best model of that. Let’s be curious together. Let’s be curious together and learn something new. Let’s go to YouTube. Let’s watch some videos. Let’s read a book together because I see talent in you, son or daughter, and I don’t want that to be wasted. Let’s walk alongside together, and we’ll both learn something.” Well, what that does is, your son or daughter now feels invested in, and affirmed, and they also know, “Hey, mom or dad isn’t faking like they know something as an expert”, and it just reduces the anxiety. And now, like adults working together, we can learn something new together, as a team.

Brendan Corr
Again, I really appreciate that intent. We started our conversation by… Well, earlier in our conversation, noting that finance has not been something that Christians have managed well. And I hear you saying that there’s not a good story, necessarily, for families to unpack. And the notions of what we’re talking about can be quite abstract for teenagers. They don’t have a lot of money themselves, and the money they have has probably come from somewhere else. The dependent, that’s why we call them dependents. The value that you see, you’ve got a hard commitment for young people, for teens. You demonstrated, in your own life, an entrepreneurial nature as a teenager. Is that something for every teen or is it those that have a particular bent or a particular interest? Or this is a bit of a fascination, particularly? So, is the universality of these things or the individual interest? What are your thoughts there?

Derrick Kinney
I mean, what I believe, at a deep level, is that inside every teenager are goals and dreams, and they’re struggling with how to release it. And if mom or dad doesn’t know what to do and their friends don’t know what to do, sometimes those dreams and goals just get squished, and later on in life, they live a life of regret. And I simply can’t allow that to happen. My goal is to breathe life and to help be, what I call, a potential extractor. I want to make sure that every teenager I’m around, whether it’s through my words, advice, or action, how can I help them move to a better place? Now, in Simple Teen Success that we’ve launched, this online platform is geared for every teen. And here’s why, we want to give them the tools to have confident conversations with adults. We want to empower them to possibly launch a business with an idea they’ve thought about and wrestled with, while they’re in high school. Or even how to successfully manage and make money, so that as they go through the future, they’re prepared. And what I tell them is, right now, there are high school students all over the world who are coming up with ideas. They’re inventing things, they’re betting on themselves, and I want to go really hard against this notion that says, “Nope, you’re too young. You won’t amount to anything. What do you know? You’re just a teenager.” And I want to empower them and say, “No, this is the time, right now, to learn those skills, to begin to separate you.” the whole adage of our program is that when you can be known, liked, and trusted, specifically by other adults, by your principal, your teachers, your friends, parents, when you know how to have small talk with them, when you know how to engage them in a way where they feel like they respect you, that’s when opportunities open up for teens. When you’re in a conversation with your friends, and they ask you for someone to babysit or for an intern for this summer or for a specific job, my goal is, I want those adults to think of the teens in our program, because they have the confidence to have those conversations. And one of the scenarios that I joke about a lot is when a teenager walks into a coffee shop, or let’s say they walk into a grocery store, and they happen to see their friend’s parents on another aisle, well, they’ve got this split-second decision to make. And I will often ask teens, “Okay, what would you do?” And I say, “Would you walk up to your friend’s parents and say, hi, about half the hands go up?” And I said, “The other half, what would you do?” And the answer is, “I would try to run to the next aisle and hope they didn’t see me.” And what I tell them is, “Either answer doesn’t make the team good or bad, they just don’t feel confident in what to do.” And so, I call this running the play, much like if they were in the band or on the football team or soccer, here’s the play to run. And I say, “When you see your friend’s parents, have a play to run.” In other words, here’s what to do. Simply walk up and say, “Well, hi, Mr. And Mrs. so-and-so. It’s so nice to see you today”, and just ask, “Hey, how’s your day going?” Or “What’s something you’re most excited about right now in your life?” A simple question to engage them. And what that does is, that promotes, I know you, I like you, I trust you. And the team feels confident.

Brendan Corr
Yeah. Derrick, that’s so good. Again, what I appreciate about Simple Teen Success, is the platform, and program that you’ve commenced, I know that it will have a component that will be a financial success. But what I’m hearing is that it’s much, much more than that. You want these young people to be successful people in the fullness of what that means, and to be able to show up in the world. And if that shows up with your ideas to start a business, let’s help that happen. But if it shows up just as a person in the shopping centre, let’s help you be a success at that, too. And in fact, those two things are connected to what you are arguing.

Derrick Kinney
That’s right. Yeah. And the whole point here is that, as a parent, I think we all want, when we lay our head on the pillow at night, to know that we did everything we could to invest in our team. And what I find is that principals and teachers love their students, but they don’t have the time or often the resources to invest in these areas as much as they do because of time and money. And so, my role is to help provide… I jokingly call it the tools that they don’t teach in schools. And that is, how can they have a better relationship with their principal? How can they be better respected by their teachers? And all of those people are influencers in their lives, and if they know them, like them, trust them, doors can open. One of the things that we did when I first launched this at our kids’ school, is how this came about, is I would do what I called, a $5 challenge. So, we had about 50 students in the class, and I brought my own money, but it was an investment in them. I gave each of them a $5 bill, so $250. And I said now, “Here’s the deal. In the next 48 hours, the contest is, how much money can you take this $5 and grow it into? And whoever does the most, will win a $50 Amazon gift card, plus you get to keep whatever money you make.” Now, I would ask them, as a spot check, “How many of you plan to participate?” Half the hands go up. I said, “Okay. The rest of you, keep the $5, buy yourself an ice cream, whatever you want to do, or give it to somebody else. That’s fine. But the rest of you, you’re about to gain a life experience that will help dramatically change how you think. And so, a couple of the stories, for example, one young man took his $5, and he bought a box of garbage bags, because in his neighbourhood, there’d been a big storm and there was tree debris all over the yards. He went door-to-door and charged people to clean up their yards. He made $85. He turned $5 into 85. Another young man, his sister, played soccer, and on the hot soccer field, he bought 24 bottles of water for $5, turned that into about $90, and went back and did the same thing the next day. And the young man who bought the box of trash bags, when he graduated, and he went to UT Austin here in Texas and was going for his master’s degree, he asked me to write a letter of recommendation. And in the letter of recommendation, I said, “Clay is an outstanding student, but more personally, Clay took $5 and turned it into $85 in 24 hours, because he sensed a need and he met it. Imagine what more he can do with an MBA from your fine university. I would highly encourage you to give him all the scholarships available.” He was accepted and got a sweet offer. But the whole point was that he demonstrated to me, here’s somebody who took the risk, bet on themselves, and then did it.

Brendan Corr
Yeah, that is so good. Derrick, I love what you’re sharing. I love the commitment that you have to help young people make sense of who they are and how they engage with the world, particularly in this tricky area of understanding finance and money. Last question before we wrap things up. Is it ever too late to learn some of these things? Well, it’s great to be helping our teens get it sorted. You spoke earlier, not every family, not every grownup, not every parent has figured it all out. Is it ever too late to try and sort it?

Derrick Kinney
No. And let me go back to a question you asked earlier about, how do we sort of democratise money? And that is, information today is as equally available to someone who has access to the highest university standards versus someone who has an internet connection. What I would tell people is, you want to keep it simple. If you can write down on a sticky note, here are my financial goals for 2024: I want to save this amount, I want to pay this and much debt off, and I want to achieve this. And you begin to work on a game plan to do that, then it’s just a question of how, and not a question of what. And what I would tell people is, there are tools available that when people get focused… I mean, there are stories of 70-year-old, and 80-year-old people who turn their financial lives around. And what I would encourage people to think about it, what is at stake if you don’t do it? What’s the negative consequence that could happen if you don’t turn your financial life around? And that, in and of itself, for example, if I don’t pay down this debt, my son or daughter can’t go to the college I want them to go to, or I will not have the freedom to chase my grandkids on the floor because I’ll still have to be working. I want to be on the beach somewhere. All of those images and thinking about not having that, and being with the person you love the most, and being on the same page, financially, and seeking God for wisdom and favour, can be the key ingredients to your achieving financial success. And so, what I would just tell you is that the past has passed. Use the rearview mirror for guidance, but the windshield is where your future lies.

Brendan Corr
Amen. That’s great. I just jotted down some thoughts as you’re talking. It seems that we’ve been discussing this attitude to life, which embraces finances and monetary parts of life, but it is more than that. And it’s about intentionality, making specific directional choices, agency, that sense of taking action and responsibility. The idea of, there are implications and consequences for what we do and what we don’t do. Derrick, that’s a wonderful package for you to be presenting. I’m very thankful for your time this morning. I’m thankful you’re doing what you’re doing with your Simple Teen Success. Is there a way people could connect with that program, even over here in Aus?

Derrick Kinney
Yeah. Yeah. So, this is what’s really cool. We launched this about four months ago. We’ve been testing it locally with parents and teens, and a lot of parents were hesitant because they wanted to make sure their teens would like it. And the good news is, their teens love it. It’s interactive, with lots of gift card giveaways, fun music, and great guests. And what we’re doing now to kick it off nationally, even globally, is, the first 1,000 teens who register, we’re giving it to them free for the whole year. So, it’s a limited-time deal, the first thousand teens. So, whether you’re anywhere in the world, we’d love to have you be part. And basically, we go live in the States every other Tuesday night, at 8:00 PM, but if teens can’t catch the live version, they can watch the replay, 24/7. So, we want to get this in the hands of as many people as possible, so we’d love to have people check out Simple Teen Success.

Brendan Corr
Fantastic. Derrick, thank you so much. And for those that are listening, remember, The Good Money podcast, the Good Money Revolution book to look at, and Simple Teen Success as this online platform. Derrick, thank you for your time. God bless you. And may He strengthen you for all the work that He set before you, and bring you every success.

Derrick Kinney
Brendan, thank you so much. I appreciate that. It was a real pleasure to be with you today.