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Welcome to The Legacy Investor Podcast, where we talk money, investing, business, and what it means to leave a legacy for generations to come. Hosted by Cameron Philgreen, this show dives deep into the intersection of entrepreneurship, investing, and legacy-building, all while keeping God at the center. Whether you're a seasoned investor or just starting out, you'll discover how to align your financial journey with your faith, grow wealth with integrity, and create a lasting impact for generations to come. Join in, as we explore practical strategies, real-world stories, and timeless biblical principles to help you honor God in every step of your journey.
Hey, everybody. Welcome back. Just had a great conversation with Ray Sanders on the pod today. Gosh, this is one of the better conversations I think we've had on this podcast because we talked about things that really matter. You know, I got coffee with a guy a few days ago who has come into millions and millions of dollars and makes a lot of money and, you know, is super successful. And he said, put all the money aside, all the vehicles, all the assets, all the house, you know, my house and my pool and whatever. Put all that aside. Who are you really? Who are you? Like deep down. And who does the Lord say you are? Who does God say you are? And what are you actually called to? And that's a little bit of what we talk about today. We talk about mentoring others and reaching out to others. And yes, we love entrepreneurship. We love business. We love real estate. We love making money. But in the margins of life, who are you really? And who are you pouring into? And how are you loving other people? Are you just in a hurry all the time? Because if you are, you know, and you're just going place to place to place and never slowing down, never really noticing the person in front of you, people are not going to talk about your balance sheet or your P&L when you die. And especially God is probably proud of us for doing business with integrity and with drive and success. And he wants us to be successful. But ultimately, those are not the questions that are probably going to be asked of us when we die. So deep stuff today and really good podcast today with Ray Sanders. Let's hop into it. All right. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Legacy Investor Podcast with Cameron Filgrin. I'm here with Ray Sanders. Ray, how are we doing today? You know, it's kind of cold here in central USA, but looks like we're going to have a little bit of a heat up in the middle of winter. So we're always grateful for that here in the prairie. That's for sure. Yes. Where are you recording from? And let's just hop right into your story. Kind of where are you from? How did you end up consulting with Fortune 500 leaders and then ended up writing this amazing book? Let's just hop right in. Well, you know, I grew up in the heartland, and I'm coming to you live from the national champion Oklahoma City Thunder's Oklahoma City. So, yeah, we definitely are proud of the Oklahoma City Thunder. But, you know, Cameron, like a lot of folks that listen to your program, I grew up in a – a suburb outside of a major city. And I really kind of have been a serial entrepreneur since I was a young kid. And my parents, my mom was pregnant with me when she was 15 and ended up having me when she was 16. I came from really a farming community, if you can believe that, just outside of Oklahoma City. That won't surprise too many people. Makes sense. And but, you know, our people are have a lot of grit and are hardworking people. But my dad was kind of embarrassed. He was about eight years older than my mother. And they decided to get married and he moved to the big city, as we say, Oklahoma City at the time and became a dock worker. But like a lot of folks who kind of go through trauma and tragedy. he was kind of embarrassed about where his life was going and began to self-medicate is what we would call it these days. And he became more and more involved with alcohol and liquor and drugs. And the long story short is that he and my mom eventually divorced, but that was after a lot of hard times. When they divorced, my dad kind of went off the rails. And it really became a time in his life when he was looking and searching. And ultimately, he tried to take my life twice, and he tried to take my brother's life twice. Under one instance, he had taken us down into a a creek bed and was kind of in a schizophrenic mindset and was really looking to try to get to my mother. We hear a lot about this in terms of suicide in order to get to somebody else and a murder suicide type of deal. And that's kind of what happened in our case. Another time we were outside and he tried to run us over. He came barreling down the street and tried to run us all over. And that was the instance where, you know, every night I would go to bed with a 12-gauge shotgun underneath my bed for fear of my own father. And on this particular occasion, we ran into the house and he had driven the car into the back of the house. And I ran and I got a shotgun from out from underneath my bed. And I had it on my shoulder ready to do whatever I needed to do. And when he knocked down the third door to get to us, I thought to myself, if he has a gun or has a knife or is trying to kill us, then I'm going to kill my own father. And as it turned out, he didn't. But by the time this was all going on and he had gotten to the third door, the police had arrived and took him off. And that was kind of a turning point in my life. We hadn't really had any kind of a real faith upbringing. And to be honest, I tell people a lot of time that the boy in the yellow house, that's the house that I grew up in, the boy in the yellow house could have easily become a man in an orange jumpsuit. I could have followed after my own father's ways. And for whatever reason, I decided that I wasn't going to follow his ways. And certain people came into my life. Certain people began to invest in my life. And I like to tell people that while the story is about the boy in the yellow house, it's also about the men that came into my life that loved on and cared for the boy in the yellow house. Part of the way I got through all that is I did. I became a serial entrepreneur. One of the first things that's kind of typical is I began mowing yards and gave me an idea of I could make my own money. Bought my first bicycle, bought my first car. I sold produce at a produce stand. I sold livestock in order to make ends meet. My mom was a single parent and what have you. But some of the people that came into my life was a guy across the street from me, a guy by the name of Mr. Brown. And Mr. Brown took interest in this young kid across the street from him. And there were times when we were growing up, my dad would be beating on my mother, that we would run to Mr. Brown's house in the middle of the night. And he and his wife, despite how crazy we were, our family was, welcomed us in. And I'll never, I never will forget. I talk about this in the book. I talk about how Mr. Brown and Mrs. Brown welcomed us into their home. And I'll never forget the smell of the candles that were in her house. She was, she was kind of a small business owner and she would welcome us in and she would make us a pallet and we would, we would stay there with her. And one of the things that was interesting about Mr. Brown is that he had a prosthetic leg and there would be nights that we would, it would be in the middle of the night. And I'd hear this sound kind of like a kind of a grown man. And I'd look over and Mr. Brown had crawled down the hall on his elbows and he'd look around the corner of the hallway and he'd look at my brother and I said, hey boys, it's going to be okay. You're safe here. It's no problem. And tomorrow morning we'll wake up and we'll have breakfast. Well, that seems like no big deal unless you're 10 and 12 years old and even younger times and you have somebody who gives you a safe haven. While I didn't know it at the time, I learned that Mr. Brown and Mrs. Brown were people of faith. And I think that's what motivated them. And it's so easy as people of faith to just get busy and go about our lives and go about our, literally about our business and look past people that we can invest in. And here I was in a situation where Mr. and Mrs. Brown truly loved their neighbor. And it wasn't just that they would give us a pallet or give us food the next morning. Mr. Brown took an interest in me. And to this day, he was a geologist. And he took interest in me and started teaching me about geology and started teaching me about rock collections and things like that. But he took interest in me. And he's one of the characters. This book is really my memoir turned novel. 95% of this book is about growing up in central Oklahoma. And about the people that I encountered along the way. Another person that took interest in me was a high school basketball coach. Now, like a lot of your listeners, I don't know, you probably have a lot of listeners that were on the A team, but I find most people are kind of like me and they were B teamers. You know, they were just B teamers. I was a B teamer. You were a B teamer, Cameron? Oh, yeah. I couldn't tell by looking. But if you've ever been on the B team, you know what that's like. And especially if you come from a single parent family, your self-esteem is about as tall as a thimble. And I would be the 16th guy on the traveling team. And I did okay on the B team. And I'll never forget one of the games growing up. I was about 15. And growing up, we were playing our arch rival. And it was one of those great years when we're really doing good. And we were winning. We're up by like 30,000 points in the basketball game. Everybody had played except for one player. Care to guess who that was, Cameron? I'm guessing Ray Sanders. Ray was sitting there on the end of the bench. And if you've ever been on the bench as a B teamer, you know what you do is you kind of lean back in your chair. And at that point in the game, there's about 30 seconds left. You hope you don't get called on because it's like, it's so embarrassing. You know, I'm the only guy with my warmups on. Well, coach calls out my name. 30 seconds left. I'm kind of a big, little bit heavyset kid. The guard throws it into me, and I'm dribbling down the court. And I kid you not, I'm like, wow, look at all these lights. You know, this is amazing. And I get kind of caught up in the moment and the clock's ticking down. And I get to half court, Cameron, and I'm not really paying attention. And I kick the ball off the end of my foot. And it goes sailing. And by the time it's all said and done, the buzzer goes off. The crowd roars and they're all laughing. And man, I feel terrible. It gets worse. I run down into the bottom of the locker room. And when I run into the bottom of the locker room, I hit my head on a sewer pipe. And I just want to I want to crawl in a band box or ride home with the cheerleaders. But here's the thing. Here's the thing. And this story is in the book. Oh, it was probably about a week later. I'm at the gym and it's late at night and Coach Wilson and I are wrapping up. And you remember these people, right? We all have these people in our lives. We all know that we don't get to where we are without someone using their personal influence to make a difference. And if anything, that's what this book is about. It's about finding those people and recognizing those people that stand out in our lives and that we owe who we are to them. I call it the power of personal influence. Every one of your listeners have this power of personal influence. And what we do, what we have to do is we have to begin looking for just finding one person. If we just found one person a day that we could love on, we can invest in and care for in our day, It's amazing how that begins to build up. And if we did it every day, that's 365 people in just one year. And we talk about all these grandiose things that we want to do. We want to change the world and impact the world. I ran an organization that got water to more than a million people. And I used to sit around with my team and we would talk about how cool it was that we got water to remote villages of Africa and other parts of the world. And that was heady stuff. But you know what? It's just as important when you wake up in the morning and you probably have your favorite gas station, your favorite convenience store. And you walk in and you go get your cup of coffee or maybe it's at Starbucks or whatever. And that person's behind the corner. But you have to ask yourself, who knows that person by name? Maybe you go to a little convenience store and it's ran by a guy. His name's Achmed, but you never knew that. And you start to take interest in him. Like Mr. Brown and Mr. Wilson took interest in me. And you know his name and he's like, wow, that guy actually knew my name. He kept going in for several weeks and you go in one day and Ahmed looks sad and you say, Ahmed, hey, how's it going today? It seems like maybe something's going on. He says, oh, my daughter's in the hospital. She has pneumonia, but I still have to work and run my business. And my wife and my other children are at the hospital, but I got to be here. And you say, oh man, that's awful. And lo and behold, you find out which hospital. And later that evening, you take him and his family some food up to the hospital. And this guy never forgets who you are. And you begin to have an opportunity to do what? You're not trying to manipulate. You're just trying to love, be a good neighbor. You're trying to use the platform that you have. And that's one of the things that, working with Fortune 500 companies and Fortune 500 leaders, it's so easy to look at the masses And forget that each and every one of us, you know, we might own a laundromat. We might own a landscape business. We might be somebody who has a hair salon. We might be the CEO of a company. But we forget that we're surrounded by people, that God's given us a platform, that we're to be the salt and the light right where we are. So back to my story. Here I am in my age, and I still talk about Coach Wilson. And what did Coach Wilson do? One night we're locking up, like I said, and it's just the two of us. And he puts his arm around my shoulder. Here I am about 15 years old with this guy. And he says, Sanders, he says, and he kind of laughs, and he says, you know, you and I both know you're never going to be a starter on the A team. He said, but, you know, that's not what really matters. What really matters is because you've got grit. You've got drive. And he says, if you continue with that grit and that drive, he said, you're going to be something someday. You're going to make a difference in the world someday. And I, you know, Kevin, I remember that now are 50 years later, 50 years later, I'm remembering this coach who made a difference and we forget. And whether you're a coach or a teacher or a business person who has a small team, all of us have that power to find boys who, and girls from yellow houses, because boys and girls in yellow houses grow up. That's good. Yeah. And it's those people along the way. We have a kind of a saying here, a question we ask here in the prairie, if you're ever out driving in the country, and you see a turtle on a post. Now, some of your listeners are probably thinking, this guy is nuts. What is he talking about? Why would a turtle be on a post? Well, there's only one reason. How did that turtle get on that post, Cameron? I don't know. Yeah, you do. Someone put it there? Someone put it there. And guess what? That's exactly what happened in the life of Cameron, and that's exactly what happened in the lives of all your listeners, and that's what happened to me. There are people along the way that recognize little boys and little girls and other people from yellow houses, and they said, I'm going to help you get – to where you need to be yeah man this is so good so i have so many questions um you know you talk about loving people as you go uh you know the gas station clerk the barista what about what about like who how do you decide who to really pour into who to who to meet up with once a month or once a week, kind of mentor. I was just with my friend Zach Garza. He runs an organization here called You Can Mentor. Amazing guy, author, coach, and he's just become a friend of mine this past year. And his whole thing is showing people, no matter how old you are, you can mentor people. And he's talking about one-on-one mentorship, kind of like what Mr. Brown and your basketball coach did for you. You interact with people. We all interact with people every day, hundreds of people a year. How do you decide who to really pour into? Is it just a matter of discernment or, yeah, what's your methodology? Well, that's a great question. And I think a big part of that is what you said. We've kind of become friends. And I have this philosophy. See, you know, the most popular book to ever be written, the nonfiction book to ever be written, you can check this out, is The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren. It's one of the most popular books ever. And more recently, Simon Sinek wrote a book called Starts With Why. And Frankl wrote a book about man's search for meaning. And what you're getting at here is that all of us have what we would call a lot of times a God-shaped void in our heart. And we really want to fill that. And that starts by filling that void with the God of the universe who has a real interest in relationship with us. He really does have an interest in relationship with us. That's a huge awakening. But if that's the case, if he wants to have a relationship with us, then we're designed for relationship. We're made for relationship. So I have this idea. I call it the pesky pillow problem. The American Bankers Association had me give this speech. Some other organizations had me give this speech. And tell me if this doesn't apply to you. And I'm going to answer your question in this way. When you go about your day, and you reflect on your day, let's just say that the Lord stopped and knocked on your door. And you go, wow, that's pretty wild. Is the second coming happen? What's going on? Jay, he's back. But in all reality, at the end of the day, that's kind of a great way to reflect on your day. And if the Lord walked in and maybe sat down and unwound with you, maybe you had dinner together on that day. He says, hey, Cameron, tell me about your day. And a lot of business people, what they're going to do is they're going to focus on their profit and loss. They're going to focus on their cash flow. They're going to focus on their P&L. They're going to focus on, did they get a new client? Are they going to focus on a personnel problem? They're going to talk a lot about the business aspects of what they did. And the Lord's going to say, tell me more, tell me more. He's going to keep talking and you're going to kind of go through all of your, the things you did throughout the day in business. He's going to tell me more, tell me more. And then eventually he's going to say, Cameron, Tell me about the people. Oh, he says, I want to know about the people. I'm proud of you for being a great business person, operating with integrity, providing a great service and all that. But I've given you that platform. I've given you that opportunity to do what? To be my hands and feet. And so you go, oh, that's right. And so then you start to tell him about the interactions that you've had throughout the day. Then he leaves and you lay your head on this pesky pillow. You lay your head on your pillow and you're starting to reflect on your day. And when you really start to feel good on your day, you're going to be proud of how you've grown your business. Hey, that's good. But what you really begin to think about that really means most to you in your life starts to have meaning and purpose are the people that you touched. And I call that finding the one. I talk about that in the book, finding the one. And as you lay there on your pillow and you start thinking about the relationship interactions that you had throughout the day, You're going to sleep like a baby. But here's the key. And this is where your friend gets it right. When you wake up the next morning, you go about your day. You say your prayers. You do your devotion. You do all the things to get yourself in the right place. But as you walk out the door, you ask yourself this question. Who is it? Who's the one? I'm going to find the one person. that I'm gonna interact with today. And you know what it means? It probably means, Cameron, that you're gonna listen twice as much as you talk. So there's the first clue. The Lord gave us two ears and one mouth. And so you're gonna go about your day listening. And what I try to practice is I say to myself, Lord, give me the wisdom and give me the words, but remind me that a wise man once said nothing. And so here's what happens. You go about your day and the magic is in the margin. The magic is in the margin. You're like, what do you mean? You see what happens with a lot of business people is we get so busy. We get our schedules out. We pack in every minute of every day. But what do we know? The best conversations, the most impact happens in the margin. It's those little bitty downtimes. Yes. Oh, my gosh. So true. It's that time around the water cooler. It's the time when you're heating up your microwave dish in the break room. It's the time at the end of the day, everybody else is gone and you're leaning up in the doorway of somebody's office and a different type of conversation starts to take place. And it's in those moments. then you begin to build those friendships and you earn the right to speak into someone's life. And guess what happens? They start saying, hey, can we hang out? And you do things outside of work. And maybe you find an affinity, a similar interest. You start doing more together. And the next thing you know, the next thing you know, you're pouring into their life. It's life on life. Now, Jesus modeled this. That's what he did. I mean, he was with him. He walked among them. But watch this. Very interesting. I'm going to condense the day in the life of Jesus into a small little story, all right? And that is Jesus was a two-mile-an-hour God. You're like, what does that mean? Two-mile-an-hour God. He went about it slow pace, man. He walked. And everywhere he went, he walked and he interacted with people. So let's just take a little condensed day in the life of Jesus. Jesus was walking down a dirt path and he's on his way to Jerusalem and he has a meeting. He's going to speak at the temple. Big deal, right? He's this new rabbi. He's got a date at the temple and all the disciples are excited because, hey, our guy gets to speak at the temple. They're thinking, man, we're big time. Look at us. We're hanging out with our rabbi and he's going to be putting on a show. And they're on their way to the temple. And what happens? All these little kids come up, and I'm just going to add to the story. They're kicking a cloth soccer ball. They're kicking it around. And what's Jesus do? He starts playing with them. And what do the disciples do? They're like, hey, hey, hey, hey, you guys, you kids get back. We're busy. We're important. We've got to get someplace. And Jesus turns to the disciples and smiles and says, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. This is what it's all about. Suffer not the little children from me. Give me some time here. And they're like okay okay Jesus you're always looking out you're always finding somebody finding the one and so they go a little bit further down the road they go a little bit further down the road and there's a he's getting closer to town and there's a crowd around him and they know who he was it's like oh this is that dude that heals people And he's surrounded by people. People are touching him, pushing on him. And he can feel everybody around him. And then what's he do? He stops. He says, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Everybody, everybody freeze. Somebody touched me. And they go, what? Somebody touched you. Everybody's touching you. He says, no, no, no. Somebody, somebody really touched me. And the crowd pushes back a little bit and there's who? There's this really sheepish woman who just touched the hem of his garment. And Jesus said, the power went out of him. And what power is that? That was the power to make a difference. Did you hear that? The power of personal influence, the power to make a difference in the life of somebody. And Jesus said, now go on and go on with your life, be healed. And the disciples were like, wow, out of all that, he recognized, he found the power of the moment. the power of the moment, and he embraced it. So they're walking down the path. They're within, I mean, I can almost see the temple. They're about to make a corner, come around the curve, and as they're coming around the curve, Jesus slows down his pace, and he looks up into this tree, and who does he see? Zacchaeus. Zacchaeus. This wee little man was he, right? We sing a song about him. And what does Jesus do? He says, Zacchaeus, what are you doing up in that tree? Finding the one. Finding the one. And what are the disciples doing? They're putting their heads down. Oh, my gosh. This guy. This guy. Yeah. We're almost to the temple, and he finds the one up in a tree. It's like, okay, well, I guess that's. And so what does he do? Zacchaeus comes down and he says, hey, Zacchaeus, I'm coming to your house tonight for dinner. And they all look at each other like, wait a minute, we got a date with Martha and Mary. How are we supposed to go see Zacchaeus? And he says, no, we're going to go to their house for lunch. So he goes down around the temple, does his thing. Everybody's impressed. And he heads over to Mary and Martha's. And what happens? He walks into Mary Martha's. Where's Martha? She's cooking. She's working. She's working, man. She's that entrepreneur. She's burning that midnight oil. That's right. No margin. No margin, baby. She's burning it from both ends of the candle. Martha's in there. She's got her sweat bands on. She's stirring the pot. She's making it happen. She's looking around. Where's my sister? We got a house full of people. Get in here and at least set the table and cut the bread. Come on, do something. So she stays in the kitchen, but Mary's where? Mary's at the feet of Jesus. Yeah. And she's adoring him. And you can just see Martha's standing in the door of the kitchen, wringing her hands, holding the towel in her hand, turns around and walks back in and puts her head back in the soup. Now, Mary gets all the praise, but I really think that Jesus knew Martha's heart. And I think that we give Mary a hard time, but what's Jesus do? He walks into the kitchen. Can't you just see him walking in? He's like, oh, Martha, that soup smells really good. And she's like, he says, do you think I could talk you out of a taste? And what does she do? She gives him a taste and she smiles. And he says to her, Martha, I love you so much. I love how hard you work. I love how much you want to serve. And, you know, Mary really probably did the right thing at the moment. She found the margin and it's okay to break away from the hustle and the bustle and put a little margin in your life to be with people, to make a difference in people's lives. But Martha, hey, one thing we know, If Mary stayed in there and just sat in there and we didn't do anything else, we're never going to have dinner. And so I'm really proud of you for staying with the business, staying to your business. But let's never forget that we need to find the one and find margin in our life. And so that's how it happens. Finding the one turns into one-on-one time. And like one of my greatest mentors, He gave me five things. He gave me five things, but he never told them to me. He never said, write these five things down. And you know what those five things were? These are the five things he did. And I talk about it to this day. Number one, he taught me how to read my Bible. He taught me how to read my Bible. We don't know how to read our Bible today. It's the greatest inspirational book of wisdom there is. It's relevant to this day. Number two, he taught me how to pray. We don't know how to pray. So many times we pray and we think it's a monologue. It's a dialogue. It's a two-way interaction. He taught me how to pray. He taught me how to share my faith. That's kind of what's happening here today. But it doesn't have to be churchy or religious. It just comes out of everyday conversation. Where does your strength come from? And I'm happy to tell people where my strength comes from. I don't beat them over the head with that same Bible. I don't get overly religious. They recognize it. They see it. And most of the time they see it because I try to be loving. So I share my faith by loving others. Love God, love others as you love yourself. Yeah. And the fourth way is that I serve. I find ways to serve. Your podcast, you're giving back. You're finding a way to serve people with the gifts that you have. Too many times we look at everybody else's gifts and we forget the gifts that we have. And those gifts have been given to us. So why? So we can give those gifts to others to serve. And the last thing he taught me, the last thing that he taught me was that not only am I going to read my Bible, share my faith, pray, and serve. But he told me to walk, and this is your point, to walk in community. And I would call it biblical community. Find you some people that you can hang out with. Show me your friends, and I'll show you your future. Show me your five closest friends. Average those five closest friends, and you're the average of them. Birds of a feather. 100%. Birds of a feather flock together. Bad company corrupts good morals. So find people that you can hang out with and who will- That are going to sharpen you. Yeah. Absolutely. Like, yeah, if you're just hanging out and if you're not intentional with that time, if you're just playing Xbox or- Playing board games or whatever you do, that's not going to sharpen you or get you any better or get you from A to B or A to Z. You got to be intentional and hold each other accountable and confess sin. How are you doing with this and that? How are you doing with marriage? How are you doing with parenting? How are you doing with your tone of voice with your wife? All these hard questions. I call that being hot. You want to be in a hot relationship. So if you and I live close together, I'd say we need to be in a hot relationship. And what does that mean? We need to be honest, open and transparent, honest with each other. You know, we go to our services and we're in the big room together. Yeah, I got to be hot, honest, open and transparent. We go to the big room together. And how are you doing, brother? Oh, everything's great. Everything's great. No, it's not open. What's open? I got to be teachable. so many times we want to look like we're the sharpest knife we want to be the sharpest knife in the drawer yeah and if we're if we're always the sharpest knife in the drawer i promise you we're going to be cutting butter we're not going to be cutting steak yeah and then and then we got to be transparent we got to we got to be just real. And that's why a lot of people that I hang out with are in their 20s, 30s, and 40s. They're like, you're older than me, but man, you're an open book. And I'm at the point in my life, I realize, what do I got to lose? I'm just going to pour myself into you. I'm going to... I have nothing to lose, and you don't either. So be hot. Be honest, open, and transparent. But what happens? What happens? It's three Ts. If we're not careful, and this is the problem, not the three Ts, I'm sorry, three Is. I don't mean three Ts, three Is. We get isolated. You said sin. We do things we shouldn't. So what do we do? We isolate. We don't want anybody to know. And we also, it's the same way we do with the Lord. It's what happened in the garden. We run and we grab our fig leaves. We hide. We get isolated. And that's exactly what the enemy wants. The enemy doesn't want you to run to a friend and say, man, I've blown it. Will you pray for me? I'm messed up. And help strengthen me. Help hold me accountable. No, the enemy doesn't want you to do that. He wants you to run and hide. And so we get isolated. And when we get isolated, we get idle. And this happens a lot of times with business people that are traveling. They're traveling. They're by themselves. A business guy walks into a hotel late. He's tired, hadn't had much to drink. So he just goes to the bar, starts to drink, maybe has a little snack or some peanuts or something. He looks over there and there's a lady with nice legs and she's looking at him and he's looking at her. And he's like, nobody's going to know the difference. I'm miles from home. And the next thing he's done something stupid. Or if it's not that, what does he do? He goes up into the hotel room. I never turn the television on in my hotel room. I put a towel over it. And if I've done that and I'm not careful, I've got a tablet. And then what am I doing? I'm lonely, been away from my wife, been fussing with my wife. I've been sleeping on the couch. I'm making headlines. You know what it means to make headlines, Cameron? If you're a guy and you've been sleeping on the couch, you're making headlines because you've been sleeping on the couch. You've got corduroy pillow lines in your head. And so you've got headlines. You're making headlines. And so you're on the road, you're lonely, and then you get out the flat screen, and now what are you doing? You find your favorite girl online, and you're really committing adultery, but she's just not right there with you. So the first I is you get isolated, then you get idle, and then what you do, then you go to the third I, and that is idolatry. And what is idolatry? Well, in the word idolatry is the word idle. And what is an idol? An idol is a substitute for what's real. And we begin to substitute the best with something that's good or okay. And we spiral out and we get away from what keeps us strong. And that's fellowship. That's being in community with the Lord and with our brothers. That's so good, man. This has been amazing. Like I love, and I want to encourage, you know, the listeners, if, if you're listening to this and you're like, man, can we, you know, talk about business? Can we talk about money? I want to grow. Like, this is what really matters. You know, if you take away the money, I was just talking with a guy a couple of days ago who came into millions of dollars a few years ago, had a big exit. And, um, you know, he's like, he's like, he had someone ask him, Hey, take away all the money, all the cashflow, where you live, the cars, the, the house, the assets. Like, who are you? Who are you really? And he's like, I didn't have an answer. And it led him on this long journey. But I just want to ask you guys listening, as you're listening to Ray talk about this accountability and discipleship and pouring into other people. And he's right. I just feel like, man. There's such power in the margins, you know, and just learning to slow down and love people and talk to people and pour into people. It's just so much more important than the next addition to the balance sheet. And man, I just want to encourage you if you're listening to this, learn to slow down and enjoy the margins and love people. And man, Ray, I'm just curious what, What advice would you have for people that just can't seem to slow down, that just can't seem to find margin? Especially for people like me, I've got three kids and a lot of my margin goes to them. But even just on the day-to-day, going to the hardware store, going to whatever. What advice do you have for people that just need to learn to stop the hurry from happening every day? Yeah, here's the thing. We need to not just see, we need to notice. We can, you know, you're driving down the road, you can see things, but we really need to notice. We're blowing past opportunities. And if we don't notice, we're just going to keep seeing things, but we won't notice things, we won't go deeper. So think about having the mindset of don't just see, but notice. But I'm going to back it up one step further. You know, The Lord was asked one time, what is the greatest commandment? And can you imagine being the new rabbi in town and the powers that be, the lawyers of the law, they ask you, what's the greatest commandment? And the greatest commandment that he gave us was what? He said, I want to summarize it. He says, love God, love others as you love yourself. Love God, love others as you love yourself. If we're not careful in this conversation, where do we put the emphasis on love? If we're finding the one, we put all the emphasis on loving others, right? We start, you say, well, how do I do that? I got to love others. Okay, that's true. And then we kind of know, well, my goodness, I'm supposed to love God, right? I mean, I got to love God. And what do we do? We focus on loving others and loving God. But what does that verse say? Love God, love others as you love yourself. And what we're not doing is that we're trying to give out of an empty cup. You've got to be filled to be poured out. Yeah. And if you're having trouble pouring into other people's lives, there's a good chance you're not slowing down enough yourself to get filled up by who? The Lord, the power of the universe. And so you've got to take care of yourself. You've got to take care of yourself to be filled so that you have the power and the energy from within to give out. You can't give what you don't. This is bad English. You can't give when you don't got you got to fill yourself up. And so I think there's three ways to do that. And it's body, mind, and spirit. And I have my own podcast, the Ray Sanders Leadership Podcast. And I just did a podcast last week where I spoke at an event, a men's retreat. And they captured that. And I put it up as a podcast. And we talked about being dangerous. And the key to finding the one is being dangerous. I'm like, what? That doesn't make sense. Yeah, it does. So you see, every morning, all of us wake up and there's an enemy sitting on our porch waiting to take us out. They don't want Cameron and his listeners to be dangerous. That enemy is out there saying, if I can get him busy, if I can get him mad, distracted, then he's impotent. He's impotent for the kingdom. I don't want him to be dangerous. But what's the key to being dangerous? You have to be dangerous physically, mentally, and spiritually. And when you're dangerous, you're full of love, and you're going to be able to do the Lord's work because you're dangerous, because you're physically strong, mentally strong, and spiritually strong. And so what does that mean? And it's called being dangerous, and that is physically. It comes down to two Fs, fitness and food. Just say what you want. Get on whatever diet you want. But physically, what are you doing to take care of yourself with fitness? What are you doing with food? What are you putting in your mouth? Mentally, what are you thinking about? It's two Ts. What are you thinking about and how are you training your mind? You see, most of the problem with a lot of your listeners is they suffer from stinking thinking. I just read the stinking thinking book this morning to my kids. That's so funny. Yeah. We suffer from stinking thinking. And we'd get down on ourselves. And so the enemy wants to get us down on it. And we forget whose child we are. We forget that we are a child of a king who wants to empower us. And he tries to put us down. And we have to do what I call code four. That's also another podcast I did. But code four is rooted in Philippians four. And that is to... to take our worries and our anxiety to the Lord, but Paul doesn't leave it there. He says, and then what? Think on these things. Think about what is, what's the first thing in that list? Think about what's true. think and so what's true about me the lord wants me to have a purpose and a meaningful life he's called me to make a difference in people's lives and i can't be focused on about how bad i am and how screwed up i am yeah he forgives me for that i gotta think about how i can make a difference in the world and then i gotta train myself i gotta listen to podcasts like this one I got to listen to good things. I got to listen to the scripture on tape. I've got to put good things into my head. Garbage in, garbage out. Train your mind. And then spiritually, it comes down to two C's. And that is, and I talked about this earlier, the two C's are confidence and community. And you're like, confidence? Well, in Hebrews, it says what? Faith is the evidence of of things unseen. Faith is the evidence. Get out your translations. Evidence, assurance, confidence. Faith is confidence. If you know about math, the word is is an equal sign. Faith equals confidence. You want to be confident in going about your day? then lean on your faith. Where does your strength come from? That's the confidence. That's the spiritual side. The spiritual side, you know, if you're running down, you're weary, you don't feel like your life's making a difference, examine yourself and say, how dangerous am I? How dangerous am I? And there's a good chance that that confidence, your confidence level is low because your faith walk is low. And then the other thing is your community. If you're kind of running down, what do you need? You need to get to a situation to where iron sharpens iron. You need to spur one another on in the faith. If you get isolated, you're not going to be as strong. So it's a holistic mindset that puts you in a position to love yourself so you can be in a position to love others based upon drawing your strength from mental, physical, and spiritual health. That's good, man. Sorry, I just got a phone call and I got a little distracted there. That's all right. Yeah, I want to read Philippians 4. Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things. I want to encourage you listeners to do that today as you're listening to this, as you're going, as you're at home with your kids and your wife or your husband. Think about these things and just fill your thoughts with good things. And it says the peace of God will be with you. And man, it's so good. Stinking thinking. It ain't welcome here. That's good. That's what my kid's book says. It's awesome. Well, one of these things that I'm talking about, these principles are in the book, The Boy in the Yellow House, but I tell it in story form. A lot of these ideas, where do they come from, Cameron? It's people that invested in me. I'm the product of people that invested in me. The Boy in the Yellow House was invested in And I could have easily became the man in the orange jumpsuit, and I'm not. And I'm grateful for the people that took the time to invest in me. And that's what this is really all about. That's what we want to recognize is the power of personal influence. We all have it. We find it in the margin. We find it by loving people. And we find it by staying healthy in these basic principles on how to stay fit. Love it. This has been amazing. I feel like we need a part two with you, honestly. But if people want the part two, three and four, where can they go to find your book and where can they follow you and learn more from you? Well, probably the easiest thing, The Boy in the Yellow House is on Amazon. So that makes that easy. If you want to read the book, just go to Amazon. I'd love for everybody to get a review. That's really helpful. I'm really appreciative of you, Cameron, for giving me this opportunity. They can go to RaySanders.com. I have online assessments that are free. People will love. There's a resource page on there. I think they would really enjoy those. A lot of the things that we've talked about today are there in assessment form. They can download PDFs or they can actually take the online assessment. That's all free. And then the podcast link is there as well, Ray Sanders Leadership Podcast. You can hear some of the things that I talk about on my podcast. But the website's really full of just a lot of resources. What I have there are things that I've learned from serving leaders in Fortune 500 companies, small businesses. And if they ever think that they want to maybe have a deeper relationship with me, all they got to do is reach out. Love it. Amazing, Ray. Thanks for coming on today, sharing your wisdom. Really just like, man, what a rich time with you. This is the stuff that really matters. Sometimes on this podcast, we just talk business and tactical, and it's really fun. I love talking business and real estate, entrepreneurship, growing, growing the balance sheet. But man, the margins, guys, is where God can really move. And ultimately, y'all we're all gonna be held accountable at um at the throne room someday whenever you die you're gonna meet god face to face and he's gonna you know set fire to like everything that you did in your life and only some things are gonna remain and so hey let's let's be focused on the right things that's what this podcast is all about is building a legacy through finances and spiritual life And in every way, building a legacy for you and your family. So, hey, thanks for coming on, Ray. And have a great day, guys. You bet. Thank you. Guys, thank you so much for tuning into this episode of The Legacy Investor. Hey, if you want to help us grow and support us, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. That really helps a lot. Please subscribe to my YouTube channel, Cameron Filgreen. It's still new and growing, but I am going to start posting on there more regularly. Follow me on Instagram at Cameron underscore Filgreen. And if you know someone who should be on this podcast... Go fill out the form on my website. It's CameronPhilGreen.com slash podcast. Fill out the form there. I'd love to have more guests on this podcast. It's been a blast. And music is by Eric Lopez Villaverde. Reach out to him for all your music needs. On Instagram, he's Eric Lopez Villaverde. Hope you guys have a great day and thank you for tuning in. Bye-bye.