I went out to Saginaw Valley State University and got a degree in finance. Straight out of college I started working at Merrill Lynch in Saginaw. That is where my formal training is from. Then I joined a small independent firm out of Bad Axe called Lake Huron Financial and I was there for a little over 10 years. Most of my clientele ended up being in the Tri-Cities, especially the Midland area, so I ended up starting my own business headquartered here in Midland, Snowfield Wealth Management.
Entrepreneurship is not for everyone. It is not easy or necessarily fun. Cash flow is the priority and most entrepreneurs starting out are out there killing to eat, but not necessarily getting fed. I am incubated in my industry a bit because I am not normally going to be interacting with people until they are at a point of being past that stage and into comfortable succeeding. So someone starting out is not necessarily someone I am going to be working directly with until they can invest, but I love to grab coffee, or chat, or help give pointers that can lead to that success. At least they will be equipped with the knowledge right now.
If someone goes to my website, you will see that I work with Dave Ramsey. I have for around seven years, a pretty long time. And one service that he provides can be useful to entrepreneurs. It is called Financial Coaching, which is not what I do, but it is a program that can help through them. It can help entrepreneurs get to a point in financial planning where they are able to budget and get to a point that they are paying themselves a salary. Because in order to get to the point that you are putting money away for the future, paying a salary is needed.
Their app is called the Every Dollar app. Everything you spend through your debit or credit card will run through that app and show you where your money is going. It is not about not spending money, it is about spending where you want to be spending. It is okay to have fun. You just want to do it on purpose. You do not want it to be out of control. You want to be able to say, “I have $500 to spend this month on fun, and then when the $500 is out, I need to stop.
You have to start small. You cannot bite off more than you can chew, and you need to have patience otherwise you will blow yourself up. If the work is not steady enough to pay the bills for your expenses, do not overextend yourself. You have to do the math and project and have at least an estimate of how much you are going to be bringing in to justify the costs that you have going out.
I am guilty myself of not raising my prices and probably overextending at times. Even being blessed to be successful, I have not raised them because it is hard and can be scary as an entrepreneur. I understand that.
There are a lot of people I work with who also forget about their expenses. It is not just what you are making, but it is what you are spending. If you made $100,000 but you spend $110,000, you lost 10 grand. Not good.
So if you are making a lot of money, you have a lot of profit, which means you have a greater margin between your expenses and your income, your revenue. Then you would probably want to do a solo 401k, because you can put more money away in those. The limit for what you can put in it is higher. But for a lot of people, they are not making that much more. They are a small business. They are just getting started, not making what we call the big bucks. They are just trying to make a fair living, to make a profit. Their first step is just opening a Roth IRA or a Traditional IRA, where the most you can contribute is $7,000 a year if you are under 50, and $8,000 if you are over 50.
$7,000 a year is your first major milestone. The number one goal is putting anything away. I do not think anyone is going to do $7,000 a year right away, unless you are someone who hits a huge goal. We incrementally increase that or set aside amounts based on the income brought in that specific month. And what you want in an account depends on your lifestyle. The amount you need in your IRA is dependent on how much money it takes you to live a year in retirement. Obviously that number is going to be different for everyone.
401k, Roth IRA, Traditional IRA. There are all of these names and numbers, but they are really just accounts. They are just buckets that you put money in, and then what happens inside of that bucket is the investment. You put the cash into these buckets, and then you, or your advisor like me, buys from inside of them. Typically that is a mutual fund, or an ETF, or a stock, or a bond. When we buy those it is in hopes that you will make a return on your investment. The historical rate of return has been seven to twelve percent per year.
There are two sides to entrepreneurship. There is the front end starting point where you are usually going to be abnormally underpaid, so that one day, you can hopefully be abnormally overpaid. And there is a misconception that retirement means you just stop working. But it is not necessarily stopping working, it is having the chance to spend your time how you want to be spending it.
Having the ability to retire in whatever capacity someone wants someday requires having not only these building blocks and investments in place, but it also requires having an exit strategy. You need to evaluate your business, what it is worth, and what the value of your business is that someday you could sell it for somebody else to do what you do.
Three things I have learned about entrepreneurship…
Number one, it is lonely. I am a silo business. I am not part of a corporation, and only I know and understand my business and my successes and my failures. Even when I am winning, it can feel like I am winning alone. When I am losing, it can feel like I am losing alone, which can be brutal. Most people in my life do not understand my wins and losses from an entrepreneur perspective, and then one in my industry.
Number two, going off of that, having a community is important. There is an energy to not working in your own standalone office. Even before I was working at CMURC, I would work in a Starbucks or some place like that, a third space, because there was an alive energy that helped me work and helped my mindset. It let me drive to an environment that was designed to do a job. When I worked from home, I would go downstairs to get a break or coffee, and then would make the mistake of sitting down at my desk. Two or three hours later, I would realize I was sitting there in my robe with a cup of coffee, and that was not setting me up to do my best work.
Number three, prioritize the separation between work and home. It is very easy for it to become blurred. I have three young kids. They are only going to be young for so long, so I have a hard stop at 4:30 to make sure I am prioritizing my time with my family too and not missing out.
I love what I do. It is very hard to succeed in entrepreneurship if you do not love it. If I won the lottery, I would still be here tomorrow. I am not here at this point to make more money. I am here because I like it. I get to sit down and learn about people and help people, and that feeds my spirit, not just my body. If I can help more people do better in life, that is really exciting.
Do things that make you excited. Do things that make you proud. And do not forget the starting points and how you got here. Everyone has a starting point. We are always looking forward, but sometimes we forget to enjoy the moment or look back and appreciate the growth.
We are in the Midland and Bay City CMURC offices. If someone is starting a business and they need help, just reach out for help. You can get in touch through our website, snowfieldwealth.com, or by emailing adam@snowfieldwealth.com.
– Adam Chambers, Snowfield Wealth Management
