56. SPECIAL GUEST SERIES 1 OF 3 – A JOURNEY TO INFLUENCE WITH  SARAH VANHOOSE

Guest Sarah VanHoose 1 of 3

Adrian  00:02

Hello future millionaires, welcome back to the get rich slow podcast. We are your hosts Adrian Shermer, Rob Delavan and Lance Johnson. Good morning, gentlemen.

Rob Delavan  00:12

Good morning.

Lance Johnson  00:14

Good morning everybody. Excited to have Sarah with us today.

Sarah  00:18

Glad to be here.

Adrian  00:19

Hey Sarah today our guest Sarah VanHoose. On our screen now you can catch us on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Audible, Amazon, music, YouTube, and probably a dozen more platforms by the time our producer Avery gets done spreading us over the web. Today we’re talking to Sarah VanHoose and Sara journey to influence what can you tell me about that?

Sarah  00:41

Yeah, journey to influence I feel like life’s journey and mine is influencing others through coaching. So, I’m a financial coach and small business coach. So, this journey, this is a long story, but we’ll keep it short today.

Adrian  00:54

Nice, excellent. Sara is focused on helping individuals, couples and small business owners stress less about their money by making a plan and walking through it, encouraging accountability through her online coaching business journey to influence as a trained Ramsey preferred finance master coach. She makes money stuff simple and easy to understand. Going back to basics. Sara’s background is as a leader in a large healthcare organization. She and her husband James have two daughters and live in Portland, Oregon.

Rob Delavan  01:27

Love it. I’m looking forward to this one.

Adrian  01:29

Yeah, absolutely. As usual, just a quick aside, you can find out about more about us and more about our events at ROI dash f a.com/events. Today is all about getting to know Sarah, learning about starting with the history. What made you into the person that you are today?

Rob Delavan  01:57

Okay, so, question one for you, Sarah, let’s kick us off with tell us your story. Where did you grow up? What was your family, like? Give us all things.

Sarah  02:13

I grew up a couple of hours from here in the Columbia River Gorge.

Rob Delavan  02:22

What city?

Sarah  02:22

I don’t think you’ll know. It’s a little town called Lyle Washington, and even further remote. So, my parents own a ranch up there and are so grew up on a farm oldest daughter of four siblings in total. So, I’m a farm girl, our closest neighbors were three and a half miles away. So, it was pretty remote and my parents own and operate a cattle ranch now. So, growing up, my dad had a number of different jobs sort of leading into that, but that was his passion was pursuing ranching and now he does that full time today. But I grew up doing chores in the morning, doing chores in the evening, and really helped to solidify my work ethic overall, through farm life.

Rob Delavan  03:16

Did you hike throughout those three and a half miles to school uphill both ways in the snow.

Sarah  03:22

I did hike it a few times. But it was not full time. It’s where I learned how to drive. My first vehicle was driving a tractor when I was probably 12, or 13. My parents didn’t want to run us out to the bus stop. I drove it, you know, like an AMC out to the bus stop, that’s the way that I learned. That’s just the way that you do things when you’re living a little bit more remote.

Rob Delavan  03:50

So, you would drive to the bus stop to catch the bus?

Sarah  03:56

Yes, and then ride the bus probably an hour, right each way to school. It was quite an adventure.

Rob Delavan  04:02

If you would have just driven straight to school, it would have been less time.

Sarah  04:06

Right.

Rob Delavan  04:09

Okay, that makes sense and then so your family just got again?

Sarah  04:15

Yeah, a little bit there. My parents are still married. So, they’ve been married for 43 years. I’ve got three other siblings, two younger sisters and one younger brother.

Lance Johnson  04:40

Sarah, what is a significant story that made an impact in your life and what life lessons have you learned to make you into the person you are today?

Sarah  04:50

So many good farm stories for sure. But one of the stories that sticks with me so vividly is a story from college. So, I went to college, I started out at Eastern Washington University in Spokane, Washington. it’s warm in the summers, and a girlfriend and I moved off campus, our second year in college and rented this really ill-equipped home for the winters in Spokane. I swear that our heating bill was more than our rent, because it was just so cold. I was on my own at that time, I moved out of my parents’ home when I was 17 and went to college when I was 18 and I was really on my own and had separated as a full grown adult with my parents and I took minimal student loans, in order to try to make sure that I was keeping within my means I worked a couple of different jobs while I was in college. I remember having sat down, paid the bills with my roommate, divvied up our electric bill divvied up our rent, and I had 20 bucks leftover for groceries and I remember having to figure out how I was going to make that stretch like until the next paycheck, which was at least a few weeks away. So, taking my 20 bucks to the grocery store and buying very soy sauce to go with the box of rice that we had in the cupboard peanut butter, right to go with my sandwiches, and milk to go with the mac and cheese again, that was in the cupboard. So, making all of these decisions based on what’s going to last and also knowing that I never wanted to do this full term like, I felt I was poor. I was a broke college student to probably call my parents and ask for a little bit of support, but gritty and figuring out a way through it. So, super vivid memory of that grocery store trip and making that $20 last long-term.

Adrian  07:09

So, he did it right, he bought milk, she bought peanut butter. I think the three of us are like, well, we wouldn’t have it beer and then what would have been leftover. I don’t know. Ramen, very adult of you, you were very early on.

Lance Johnson  07:22

Talk a little bit more about I’ve known a lot of farmers people growing up in farming, Rob and Adrian, I talk a lot about you can work hard, and you can have a success story, you can work smart and you can have a success story and when you can work hard and smart, you can move mountains. So, you can’t learn hard work, either you’re born with it, or in farming, you can’t be a lazy farmer. So, talk a little bit about that, and work ethics and how that applied.

Sarah  08:00

Yeah, so much. So, when my parents started their farm, or when we moved to the property that my parents live on now, it was bare ground. So, my parents built and when I say my parents, I also very much mean, my siblings and I as well, we’re all a part of this building up of our experience, communal experience, for sure. So, we started with building a shop and it also housed farm equipment. My dad had a four-seater aeroplane, that was a hobby that also like had a front seat in the shop and then my family lived on in an apartment, essentially, on the side of the shop was probably 1000 square feet or something. So, I was probably between 14 and 17, I was living there. During the summers and on the weekends, we built log home that they live in now. So, when we’re talking about talk about work ethic work was part of our daily activity like this is what we needed to do in order to make the family continue to thrive and it was an expectation, or I didn’t have the option of tapping out and doing something different or having more screen time or whatever it is that kids do these days. But that was just part of who we are. There was days on the farm that again, regardless of rain or shine, we had some quite critical tasks that needed to be done. There was some serious flooding that happened one winter and our pond broke, broke a dam. So, we were out there with flashlights and tarps, nine o’clock 10 o’clock at night trying to dam up a pond from it and it wasn’t successful, by the way, but it was necessary from my dad’s perspective. So, lots of those little memories that were like it’s just what you have to do right in order to make things spark.

Adrian  10:01

Yeah, I lived on a working cattle ranch for a period of time myself actually funny enough, and you’re totally right. It’s not like, oh, wait, do you want to do this? It just has a time that it has to be done and that’s it. It’s a brilliant way to build that work ethic because there’s no choice. There’s no, let’s do it tomorrow.

Rob Delavan  10:18

Yeah. So, those life lessons obviously, they’ve made you into the person you are today and obviously led to the macaroni cheese and peanut butter conversation, that’s forever, you never really can pull that out of you.

Sarah  10:46

I think there’s some grit and determination that was certainly weaved into my life early on. It was my dad’s pursuit of his dream of ranching. He was an auto mechanic, and then a service manager for a number of years, but wanted to pursue his passion through ranching, so watching him pursue his passion, I think was an important memory for me to hold on to later in life and then my mom really encouraged, is it a problem or is it an inconvenience? She really helped us make those determinations between like, let’s focus on things that are really problems, but inconveniences we need to figure out how to let those roll off our back.

Rob Delavan  11:33

Yeah, that’s a life lesson. I think we could all tell ourselves 25 times a day. So, I love that.

Adrian  11:49

All right, Sarah, you get access to the time machine? I’m picturing a phone booth. Maybe it’s Bill and Ted, depends on how you grew up. But what advice would you give your younger self if you could get that five-minute blink into the past?

Sarah  12:02

Yeah, I think that I would go talk to my 20-year-old self, the self that is was in her early 20s and remind her to stay in her lane, mind her own business a little bit. Not that I was up in everybody else’s business. But I think so often, I was watching what everybody else was doing, what everybody else had, and went to go turn and acquire it myself, not always in the most responsible fashion. So, instead of doing things in pursuit of others, visibility or recognition, but really just staying in my own lane, and doing what was right for me in the moment, would have served me better.

Adrian  12:46

It’s a great message, maybe increasingly important in this day and age as people often compare them.

Lance Johnson  12:51

That sounds like an hour.

Adrian  12:55

Many more than five minutes.

Rob Delavan  12:57

Well, there’s an evolution there. You’re a different person today than you were 10 years ago, and 20 years ago, and it wouldn’t just be the 20-year-old, you could do a couple of more blinks and it’s not to buy bitcoin, by the way.

Sarah  13:17

Right, different stock options. Minding my own business, one is certainly huge. Pausing more, a week into my later 20s and early 30s, when my kids were young, I think taking more time to remember those moments, capture those, not necessarily capturing them on my phone, or with any recording device. But just being super present in those moments, I think, is something that is so big, so fast. My girls are now 12 and nine, and I won’t be able to get those moments back. So, pausing and reflecting and being present, I think is an important one.

Lance Johnson  14:01

I spend a lot of time right now. My kids are 11 and nine, almost 12. I’m not going to be able to lay in the bed with my kid and scratch his back and just talk about the day, when they’re 14 and he’s turning 12 and 14 to be like, dude, this is awkward but we cherish that moment out to the point where they won’t go to bed until they come in and just close out the day and reflect on a day and I cherish those moments

Rob Delavan  14:36

It’s pretty cool. Also, the concept, that’s something obviously hearing from you, Sarah, I’ve admired about Lance, his kids are incredibly involved in hockey and it’s a commitment and it’s a lifestyle and I’ve been doing the same thing with my kids, with some other sports, swimming and so forth. But man, hockey is hardcore, and whenever I’ve asked him about it, it’s like, this is the time I’m never going to get back. So, he’s spending his time and money to travel and do the different things  for these kids and I’ve seen a whole bunch of their games, and they’re incredible. What’s really cool, though, is to see that that intent of that time now. So, this is a concept, the get rich low podcast. Well, what do we get rich for, what are we working for? That sort of thing is minor.

Lance Johnson  15:47

When I’m with clients, money doesn’t buy you happiness, it affords choices. So, affords me the choice to either go do something and take a vacation on my own, or it affords me a choice to make sure that I can go up and watch their practice, it’s really weird. I don’t like missing practices, because that’s my kid’s development. So, why do I want to miss a practice? I want to see him perform in a game. But the practice is where the Ahaus come and I want to be present for those. That’s what money does is it allows you to make choices, I think, and I choose to be with my kids as much as possible

Rob Delavan  16:31

I guess. Sara, I’ll ask you a follow up on that is the advice would you give your younger self? Well, is there any regret of what would you have done differently maybe with your kids, 12 or nine?

Lance Johnson  16:48

Regret or glass half full?

Rob Delavan  16:52

Either way, wherever that goes, but I’m sure you have insight into that because this is important concept.

Lance Johnson  16:58

We’re trying to we’re trying to represent Ashley on this podcast.

Sarah  17:04

The positive nature, I like that as well. I think one of the most intent is we’re really talking about intentionality with our time, with the people that are most important to us. I think one of my favorite things that we’ve done with our kids and it’s probably been four or five years that we’ve been doing this, this, we stopped giving our kids Christmas gifts and instead, we do a calendar of adventures instead. So, each month, it’s a DIY calendar, we printed on Shutterfly or whatever, and we do a picture of some, like family write adventure that we’re going to do each month and it’s different every year. We don’t tell the kids about it’s an elusive picture. It’s a picture of something but they can’t tell exactly what it is. We don’t pick a particular date. So, we do a calendar worth of adventures and that helps secure an intentional time that we’re going away as a family putting the distractions away and experiencing something together.

Lance Johnson  18:09

Okay, we are doing Easter egg hunt where we rip up a place we’re going to go and you rip it up and put in the eggs and they collect all the eggs and then they try to piece it together like a puzzle and then snap pictures where we’re going.

Rob Delavan  18:26

What were some of their favorites?

Sarah  18:28

Surprisingly, some of their favorites are what we call kid dates, where my husband and I each take a take a kid right out on a date and we get to plan it together and decide what we’re going to do, it’s the things that they enjoy, sometimes the things that really like light them up. Recently my youngest daughter, she wanted to do crafting. So, we went and got tie dye and we made tie dye shirts and we made slime and we ate Panda Express and it was her best day.

Rob Delavan  19:01

Love it. Oh, there you go Lance. What was what was your favorite Easter egg? What was the kid’s favorite one, I guess?

Lance Johnson  19:11

Well, we had to place down in Cabo, we went to we read the book. I can’t think of it now though. Oh, geez. The kids book Pete’s Dragon know, what’s the one by on kawaii? I can’t think of it. Snap pizza maggot magic dragon. But anyways, we went to fly. We took a helicopter ride and we just did this whole kawaii excursion with one of my clients actually and we rode in a helicopter which was that was a nervous thing for everybody. It was wonderful, just wonderful.

Rob Delavan  19:55

Yeah. So, again, the whole get rich slow podcast. Money creates choices and, and wealth and so forth is opportunity. But at the end of the day, it’s the relationships, and it’s that time spent together. So, that’s pretty incredible, I’m loving this. This is going to be a fun little series with you Sarah.

Rob Delavan  20:26

So, Sarah, where can we find you? I think I have everything up here on the PowerPoint for the episode.

Sarah  20:35

Yeah, so, my website is my journey to influence.com. You can email me at Sarah@my journey to influence.com You can also find me on Instagram at journey to influence and my phone number 503-961-4602.

Rob Delavan  20:50

Excellent. That is Sarah VanHoose with journey to influence. As always, we appreciate you guys all listening. We have all of the disclosures and all the things with websites and so forth into this presentation if you’re watching otherwise, it’s down in the show notes with disclosures and so forth, and there’ll be a link to this. Sarah, thank you so much. This is one in a three-part series with Sarah and I’m really looking forward to number two and number three. So, thank you guys all for listening, and we’ll catch you next time.