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Giving Back: Time, Talent & Treasure

Episode 18 · 7 April 2025 · 39 min

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Giving Back: Time, Talent and Treasure

Giving back can mean your time, your talent or your treasure. Dr. John Oberg and Randy Lorensen talk about why giving starts with an abundance mindset, and how to give in ways that actually help.

They start with mindset: abundance versus scarcity, money stress, and a Christian view of stewardship. Should you give now, or wait until after your peak earning years? They talk about giving with a bigger purpose, supporting a local nonprofit that serves the homeless, and what Tribe says about communities that depend on each other.

Then they get practical. Support groups that are already doing it well, and remember that what you think the problem is may not be the problem. Show up with a beginner's mind, and look at ways to give your time, like coaching or volunteering. They also talk about social enterprises and whether giving can double as marketing.

Their simplest advice: put it in your checkbook and your calendar, choose causes that matter to you, and never walk past a piece of trash.

The Benefits of Giving Back, and How to Give Back to Your Community

What you'll discover:

  • Giving from abundance, not scarcity
  • Give now or later? Giving in your peak earning years
  • Why to support groups that are already doing it well
  • Show up with a beginner's mind
  • Ways to give time and talent, not just money
  • Put it in your checkbook and your calendar

Timestamps

  • [00:00] Welcome: giving back
  • [01:15] An abundance mindset versus a scarcity mindset
  • [03:22] Core values, safety and money stress
  • [05:33] The psychology of giving
  • [06:36] A Christian view of stewardship
  • [08:42] Peak earning years: give now or later?
  • [09:45] Giving with a bigger purpose
  • [10:48] Supporting a nonprofit that serves the homeless
  • [12:53] Communities that depend on each other, and Tribe
  • [17:10] Coming up: the friendship series
  • [18:12] People who gave a lot away
  • [19:15] Generosity in everyday life
  • [20:19] Support groups already doing it well
  • [21:21] Volunteering at a middle school
  • [22:27] What you think the problem is may not be the problem
  • [25:38] When people don't want help
  • [27:49] Show up with a beginner's mind
  • [28:51] Ways to give your time: coaching and volunteering
  • [29:54] Social enterprises and companies that give back
  • [33:05] Giving as marketing
  • [34:07] Put it in your checkbook and your calendar
  • [35:10] Small acts of kindness
  • [37:16] Choosing a charity
  • [38:18] Never walk past a piece of trash
  • [39:22] Wrap-up

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About the hosts

This is a hosts-only episode with Randy Lorensen and Dr. John Oberg (Anthony Marino isn't on this one). Host bios are on the host pages linked below.

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Related episodes

Meet the hosts: Randy Lorensen · Dr. John Oberg · Anthony Marino

Transcript

A full transcript is below. It was generated automatically from the episode audio, so expect some spelling errors in names and terms.

[00:09] abundance I am Dr. John Oberg joined always by my co-host Randy Lorensen Randy how are you doing great doing fantastic John how about you you know I am excited about today's topic I think uh talking about giving back is something that is going to be a very interesting conversation and I think there's probably a big part of where we're going I think you know we're going there might be a couple places that shock you yeah so I I think great I mean this what could tie into abundance more than giving back right I mean a big part of at least when I think about abundance and each person can have their own definition but a big part of it is just having enough and if you have enough it means you have enough to give other people and you know the cup overflowing however you want to look at that but being able to give back is certainly a big big part of that y agreed where do you want to dive in I think you know giving back can mean so many different things um and so we you know I hear it talked about often as time or Talent OR treasure maybe it's time and talent or treasure so I I think for me a lot of it's about having an abundance mindset right versus a scarcity mindset and we've talked about before I don't know how to belabor the point but you know I definitely grew up with a scarcity mindset and a lot of that was the community and the surroundings and and things where that's just the way you know maybe I'm projecting that but at least that was what I took from that Community was a lot of a scarcity mindset and I think you know I've become much more spiritual in the last few years between you know different things and um you know I I have in recent weeks here been doing an exercise that is kind of a combination of prayer and meditation and a big part of that to me is working on that scarcity versus abundance mindset and just thinking about how I you know I believe that whether you call it God the universe love energy I whatever you call it right but God has a plan for each of us and I think part of that is contributing giving whether it's you know our time or treasure whatever and you know I just I think of like this light flowing in from the universe and it flowing out into all these different directions and so that's a big part of it right it's like if it doesn't originate from you and you don't feel like you own it it's real easy to let it go yeah hold it Loosely right yeah and I think that it but but for me you know I've always had thoughts around this but the more I think about abundance and that there is just so much it it's flowing through me and you know we had a guest uh Preston smiles when he was on and listening to some of his stuff preparing talking about abundance blockers right and so good so good it made me think about how I was an abundance blocker the universe was trying to send all this this through me and I was like so you know my scarcity mindset was definitely like block you know almost like a dam that wasn't fully open and wasn't letting all the water through you I was going through a period of my life where I was looking at my own core values and um I was you know for me it was about safety security and so part of why I was holding on so tight was that I thought money was the thing that gave me the security and when I re realize that that actually wasn't true for me like I think I think that money there's a reality to money and when when people you know are in poverty then it's very different than when you're not in poverty certainly but I was not in poverty at the time but I still had a a scarcity mindset in these words right and yeah and and so when I really figured out that the money wasn't the thing that gave me the security I was looking for it may have given me Financial Security but not the other security I was looking for like it was so much easier to let go and so now when I feel that pressure about um about money being held too tightly I give it away I I I give away more than what's comfortable and um and that works for me to kind of it's funny it always flows back faster than I give it let's talk about that go tell listeners more about that right yeah I mean I just there's times where I get stressed out about money not as often as I used to you know early 20s or whatever but um and and so um but when I realized that money is not the goal it's just a tool right and um and it's not mine like I didn't show up on the earth with money I can't take the money with me when I leave and so then you just recognize it's just a it's just a thing right that thing is something to be used like a hammer or a calculator or you know and yeah I don't want to like I don't want to like um belittle the fact that there are people that really truly are in poverty and making it hard but you know my experience is that people with far less means in many cases are far more generous than me and that's a real sobering thought yeah well I liked what you said earlier about it money isn't really ours it's just something we what do you say we hold at this time but it flows through us and you know so I you said it better earlier but I I like that concept yeah yeah um yeah I really do think that there is there is something psychologically that when you you know I even think of some of my friends that I think of as being really bad with money but they have this attitude and it's just they always send tend to find more right and I think oh that was kind of wasteful or whatever but they just have an attitude that hey I'm just I'll get more money it'll just come and there's something really super powerful about that there's a huge I don't know there's much science behind it but there's a lot of kind of movement behind this idea of the Law of Attraction um and uh I think you know there's probably some theological problems with some of it but but I do think that belief systems are a powerful powerful uh I don't if tools the right word they're powerful force yeah sure and and that's what we're hoping for The Listener right that the listener can choose you know a mindset of abundance that ol olves with their you know other beliefs well and Karma right I mean the whole Karma thing is as a Christian we that's probably a bigger conversation than that I think there there's some things that I think theologically we'd be at odds with there but but if the idea is that it's not yours and you don't have to hold on to it I can get behind that however you look at it right I mean I don't want to get into that Deb well I do kind of want to get into that debate but I'm going to restrain myself for the purpose of this podcast um you know I do think though there is something about when you just when you do good for others you put it out in the universe things come back to you in unexpected ways right that's the Law of Attraction right I think that is yeah I think that's the Law of Attraction um it summarize I'm not a I certainly not a law of attraction scholar um but uh I think that's the idea yeah yeah and I'm a little more I just I I think of everything God the universe as energy more and everything's going out and when you put this good energy out it flows and it flows you know flows to others and flows back to you and yeah I think you know to to who much is given much is expected and the people that can do well with little things or interest trusted into big things or something along those lines is kind of the way that and for me frankly what it comes back to is like I don't want to hold on to that which isn't mine like I want to I want to make sure things are used for good whether that's my time my talent my treasure you know one of my mentors said to me one time I was talking about donations and giving money and um how eventually I wanted to work in not for a profit or whatever and he's like why don't you just start now like when do you think they want your time at the peak of your career or some other time and I was like whoa yeah like that's that's really powerful and so how do you find ways to give more than Ju Just your your money yeah I mean that's a big question right and you know we had a I don't want to go too into it but we had a conversation with a friend not that long ago that was talking about you know doing that has enough right or has more than enough and it's like do we start a foundation and we do start doing all this work now or I'm in these Peak earning years and I can make all this money right and you know my thought that does this doesn't mean it's the right answer for anybody else my thought is that you can do more like with that money you can make in those PE earning years that the ongoing benefit of that is greater than not making that money now it but you know there's the value of the time and now you're starting later on the journey I've met people that have chosen to forgo all of their earning years for nonprofit work and things I think that's also Noble in a different way and so I don't know that there's an answer I think people have to kind of figure out their own path agree do that for sure but right I do think U um you know fi finding a way look giving back to other people is something that like in the medical clinic that that I run people who are not clinically depressed but who are struggling and they don't have clinical depression we oftentimes help them find volunteer opportunities so they can give back to other and have a bigger reason for for being I remember one woman in particular just really wanted to teach underprivileged kids how to read and didn't know how to engage with that so we helped her get connected with a local reading program that could do that it was such an amazing shift yeah in that patient and so amazing let's talk more about that I like I like that's a good topic right so I mean there I'm sure there's some science behind this but when people go help others whether it's energy whatever right whatever charitable work it is that you know you always hear people say this I think guess when I was younger I thought a lot of times they were full of when they would be like oh I I benefited you know I was helping these kids and I learned more from them than they learned from me or I benefited more than they did and I just I don't know I kind of thought they were just saying it and maybe some of them are but as I've grown older I've realized I don't think they're bullshitting right they just figured this out a lot sooner than I did yeah you Alan Graham runs um Community First Village and mobile lives and Fishes here in Austin Texas for uh helping you know the homeless populations and done a masterful job and he's really clear at least he was really clear with me that like it wasn't about them it was about them helping me and and when I went and like experienced it and you know read his book uh which is a great book uh welcome homeless um it's like it was such an amazing view one of the questions I asked was like I'm driving down the street I see a guy panhandling you know I don't give him a dollar $10 $20 whatever it is like I don't want him to like go buy drugs whatever he's like dude that's like it's not about you controlling his choices it's about you letting go of it and I was just like oh man and then the question was well do I give it to the guy on the corner or do I give it to an organization and we talked about the discernment of that process and how you discern through that process and I think there are some people called to give it to the person on the corner and there are some people called to give it to the organization so I don't have like a judgment about which one of those things is right or wrong what I really appreciate was Allan giving me a different point of view like you know that and just not hold on so tight to it was my takeaway and so um about any of it time down or treasure yeah um I mean I don't know you you seem to always have studies this isn't your fi this isn't your field I mean what what generally is the science going to tell us about this even though I realize this isn't your back your backyard I think anytime we can we can give to other people and we it's it's a recognition of there being something bigger than just ourselves and the human is a communal animal you know and so I think there's there's got to be science that points to that that just says it's health for us to be engaged and involved in a community and you know the sociology you know if you go back 20,000 years before there was money in the way we look at money today people just everyone played their role you know and there are some pretty horrific stories about like 20,000 years ago if you didn't play Your Role you might have been ejected from your village of 150 people and in some cases as I understand it maybe even murdered for not playing your role so so I think like um yeah I think that this this is not like a last 200 years type of issue this is a how humans act together in nature yeah I think you know what comes to me I'm so bad with author names but I believe the book is called tribes hunger maybe um Sebastian younger wrote the work yeah tribe yes and you know I think about I I've listened to him I haven't read the book but I've listened to him on a few interviews and you know he talks about soldiers that are in the Foxhole together and they're in these horrific situations and there's no suicide when they're you know over fighting this war CU they're taking care of their brothers right but then they come home and there's all of these they don't feel like they're contributing and there's that or I I believe there was something in there about like when Nazi Germany was bombing the crap out of London and these people are living underground with rats and no food and but all like again no suicide nobody would give up when they were in the worst of conditions because they all depended on each other and they all relied on each other and I think you know they were just they were literally happier some of them missed that when they went back to their so-called normal normal lives that they really did go into depression when and had suicide and things when people were no longer relying on it was a guy to your left and a guy to your right right they talk about that a lot and in the level of commitment and yeah absolutely and the community right it gets bread into you I was I was um I was speaking to some Military Officers years ago doing some training for them about leadership and we were talking about um in one part of the conversation the difference between uh you know when bullets are flying and you give an order it's different than when you're in the motor pool not on the front lines there's just there's a different set of motivations and being aware of the psychology behind that I think that's probably not a whole lot to do with giving um but uh it's it's interesting just the psyche of how we interact as a community and um the book by younger is called tribe by the way that might be the book that uh that also talks about um the 150 person uh tribes and how they ejected people yeah it might be um you know it makes me wonder you're going to hate this because it's pure speculation but um do Dr John's going to hate this but the you know it makes me it makes me wonder if like nurses for example and people that you know even teachers and people that are doing things to help I'm betting have lower levels of depression and Su I'm not saying there's not depression and suicide amongst nurses or whatever but I would I would be curious if there's a lower level than there is in a lot of other parts of society with people that don't feel they're contributing to others as much yeah I think I mean dentists of course are kind of known to have high suicide rates which I so I don't know how that plays into that theory and by the way I don't I don't think speculation is bad at all one of the first steps in science right you have to speculate before you can get to a hypothesis so ah okay yeah my takeaway from that is that dentists think that they're a drain on society and we don't need to teeth and I should just cancel all my future dentist appointments that's my take yeah it's not a very good take because you know science behind that is that that oral oral health leads to longevity and uh and there's a lot of lot of background that's like that's like saying that you know sanitation isn't important either uh I don't want to take the trash out stop fating me I'm just telling you my takeaway all right Co cool note to self carry breath Min into the studio next time there we go all right um that'll be one of my forms of yeah so anything else just the I don't know the science I mean again we didn't you know we're kind of shooting this this isn't your area but anything we want to add there before we move on General fulfillment I just think broadly speaking that giving is good for people and so um finding a way to give back you know it ties into some other episodes upcoming about you know um isolation and upcoming about friendship and so we're going to be talking about those things and so giving is a great way to actually meet people if you're giving your time if you're giving your talent you can give specific talents if you're good in an area and an organization needs that but you can also give just your time but just show up and play a role and allow yourself to be directed can be a really um wonderful way to give back if you don't have you know financial resources and then you know Financial Resources it's great to give to organizations as well so yeah yeah yeah it's uh you know I think it aligns with living on mission right and uh you know something you and I have had conversations about but but living on purpose living on Mission whatever you want to call it I think that almost o is I don't want to say always but almost always it's going to involve some type of giving so what are the different types of giving I think the first one people think about is financial right and it could be even going back to the robber barons you know Carnegie and Rockefeller and these people made all this money and then at the end of the career they gave it all you know not well they didn't give it all away but they gave a lot away and did and did a lot of things and we think about that but what are the different ways people give so it could be Financial it could be whatever what else yeah I in financial giving can be more than just giving dollars there's in kind giving where you can give services or you know um Investments or real estate there's all types of financial giving available and so I think that's one it's the easiest simplest thing to to in terms of understanding what giving is I think you time you can give time two ways you can give time in terms of your talent where you're giving an actual skill set someone needs if you're a CPA and an organization needs some help with something that would be one way to give a different way to give would be just to show up and let someone direct you that you know like um one of the things we used to do with our kids when they were young is take them down to the green belt and clean up trash and that's not a particular Talent it's just you know grab a trash bag and let's go clean up a place that we enjoy and let's be good stewards of that space and so that would be you know another way of giving I think there's other ways too I think that you know it it's good to be generous with people in general um and you can just you can show up and be giving in terms of uh your time and your talent and your treasure in a not for-profit situation but you can more broadly just be kind right just just an abundant like kindness generally doesn't anything I think if there were more kindness in the world we would all appreciate that you know and then I I think you know some people struggle with well how do I give to a good organization like one of my one of my things you know I I teach um you know uh managing large organizations inside a School of Social Work and so I teach classes on how do you run large government institutions and how do you run you know good institutions it benefits social good and nonprofits and all this stuff one one of the things that I would say is people are too too quick to start a brand new nonprofit where there's already a ton of nonprofits in the space and all you're doing is adding administrative overhead to that particular Mission so I wish that people would like try to align to an existing set of missions that was already doing well and administering it well rather than trying to start it up new and different without I I'm not trying to like dissuade Innovation I think Innovation is really important but I do wish there's a little bit more alignment toward those things yeah I've had I've had something I've been thinking I mean You' brought this up I wasn't planning to talking about this but something I've been thinking about for years and how to go about it and even did some work on it a few years ago after I'd visited El Salvador and found out what I really wanted my first instinct how to do it the US government it just financially unfeasible because of Permitting and bureaucracy and crap but I've since I think figured out better ways to do it and I was bringing this up with a friend a few days ago and he's like oh I'm creating this nonprofit and so you don't have to do it we could run it through there and I'm like oh that's brilliant because I don't want to do that crap anyway yeah right and so I think we have to also be careful that we don't like just jump into a situation and not I'll give you a great example of a bad way to do it I was a master student and I wanted to go down to a local Middle School that was in a really impoverished area and uh start a scholarship fund for college for these kids and so I scheduled a 30-minute meeting with a principal in a discovery call and um I basically walked in and said here's what we want to do and I was all high and mighty we're going the scholarship fund for these kids that have no money and for the next four four and a half hours he walked me around and like introduced me to all the students by name and explained to me the like the heritage of the problem was not just about the money but about some of the cultural things that were going on and he really educated me on a subcultural issue that I had had no exposure to was um you know he didn't make me feel like I was being arrogant walking into the school that day but if we're being really honest there's a level of like naivity arrogance that I could solve a problem that I didn't fully understand and it was my first kind of forray into like you need much more curiosity like you need to really understand um you know what you think the problem is is it may not even be a problem yeah it so you mentioned Allan and I think Allan has you know Alan Graham he has a fantastic understanding like a really really deep understanding of the homeless problem but you know my first I I I don't think I've ever told you this story I'm pretty sure I've never told on the podcast but when I was a freshman in college at the University of Minnesota I was in a writing class and we had to do a group project on a group of people and for whatever reason our little group of you know us four 18yar olds or I might even been 17 at the time decided we were going to do it on homeless people of Minneapolis we walked Downtown Minneapolis to a soup kitchen and our plan was we were going to volunteer we get to this church the doors are locked we can't get in we're too early I think or something like that and we just so happened to meet this guy and I've thought about this guy numerous times in my life this guy was so f fascinating he was like we're all you know little 17 18yar old white kids and he's a this this big kind of strong Gruff looking black guy that it was you know honestly it was a little bit intimidating but and he was super aggressive kind of the way he approached us but then he had a charm and he's like and we somehow told him what we were doing and he goes oh you want to learn about the homeless come with me so here are the four of us this guy is leading us around downtown Minneapolis I I asked this guy questions for hours like I I just I I could have stayed there all day and he just you know he was funny and he was almost like he was playing to the cameras even though there was no cameras but man it was an education and he was just talking about how like his background he was he was a Vietnam vet had had some problems the just of the story he got married everything was going great his wife worked for the USA Today he was some kind of engineer with multiple degrees if I remember right from Oklahoma State maybe Oklahoma and one day he walked into the USA Today headquarters with a gun and started threatening people and then he'd been homeless ever since and this guy would talk about well I wrote this article that was in Readers Digest and I'm thinking to myself well that's right I just you know how is this homeless guy but this guy was smart so I went back to the one of the few times I went to the library in my college career to be honest was to do was like to research and basically trying to find out I'm thinking I'm factchecking this guy right and I would find I found the article it was like an article on train hopping and then he talked about some other thing he wrote and there were three four articles and I'm like oh he's like and it was him and it was just he re he talked about how things really were and I won't go through the whole thing because I can talk about this could be a whole episode in itself but you know it was it was the crabs in the barrel mentality right that every he he would talk about how if somebody did go get a job and they would then get a car they'd go from living on the street to they'd buy a car and be sleeping in the car the other homeless people would like destroy their car right or they just they wouldn't let them out and they and there was and he talked about how people didn't really want to be helped most of them and so that goes back to what you are saying is you know figuring out what how you can help or where you can meet that was a part of Allen's story is that Allen really you know Allan Graham with Community First really he really became a part of the community and I think that I think that most communities they don't want someone to come in and like fix them like they're broken yeah know it's like they want someone to come in and understand them and and then if there's a way that that there can be um you know help help help just seems paternalistic I don't think it's the right word but if if there's opportunity at that point it can be discovered you know and I think that there's you know I don't know I I you just described so much of the learning that needs to happen I think and I found that there are so many opportunities it's only become more clear to me I get older how much less I know you know it's like there's homelessness is one of the you know big Grand challenges in social work but there's 13 of them yeah there's 13 Grand challenges in social work and so it's like how do you um and every one of them has you know seemingly intractable problems well but it's so easy on the outside to think well just go do this right go get a job but you never consider that if they go get a job and they do something with it the other people tear them that it's counterproductive how about to get a job you need to have identification and getting paperwork for yourself is darn near impossible like there's so it's such a tangled web and and so I think when it comes to giving back we talked about ways you can give back but I think one of the things as we're talking through it that I would encourage for maybe me more than anybody and the listeners too uh but would be like we have to be curious right we have to be curious about what's necessary and not come with pre-prescribed Solutions based on you know what ever we think we know um I I just know that every time I dive into one of these Grand challenges I learn more and more and more and and I I will say I have the benefit of um having a network of people that are experts in some of these things and going and talking to them is so enlightening like it's it's such a you know and and it's it's for me it's easy for me to show up with a beginner's mind because I know how little I know yeah so right so we got I mean guess in summary I mean we just you know we've been talking about emotional generosity and understanding curiosity Grace Etc um you know Financial giving so if somebody is you know if somebody's got a lot of money you can do more good right it's hard to it's hard to help a billion people unless you have a lot of money where but if people don't have that they have time and we also need people to go down and just volunteer Mother Teresa didn't have a whole lot of money you know she's impacted the world I think there's a lot of people that don't I I think it's about just you know Finding whatever it is that is your calling and I I don't I mean look helping a billion people that's something that's been on my heart for a long time but I think there's a lot of people who they're calling is to have a great family and to you know create abundance in their family and so I don't think there's any I don't think there's any number that makes it like another no it look it could be coaching right somebody could go coach they could volunteer at the school they could I mean there's any number of things there's a lot of ways people could approach this right I I will tell you one of the things that I have put quite a bit of thought into over the last several years is making it sustainable and I see so much charity that people give and it's wonderful and and you know God bless them like they they're giving this but it gets spent and then it's just they have to they have to keep feeding it and and I love the model there was a guy that I heard that I don't remember his name I should have researched this better before the show but he's a kid from Sweden Norway Finland one of one of the Nordic countries who got really concerned about the the garbage patch of plastic in the Pacific right the one that I I think is the size of Texas probably have to fact check that if it's actually that damn big but he built a barge that was solar powered to go out there and clean up the plastic and he raised and I I think I think it was a few million dollars a bunch of it from Silicone Valley but what he did I think is genius he created this barge and then he took the plastic and he started recycling it and selling sunglasses and water bottles and I don't even know all the products but you can go buy all of these products well he has made the business he's made this charity sustainable so he doesn't have to raise money anymore and then he's able to take those proceeds as he sells them to create another barge and another barge so that this thing can keep working you know out there and just keep cleaning up this this garbage patch and I love that idea right I love the idea of being able to create something that can pay for itself and keep going for I think situations where that's possible it's great but kid's name is boy and slat I say kid he's 20 years old he's Dutch and looked up I used Google real but yeah um it's it's a great story and I think there are companies that you can do that that create great nonprofits or even great social good for-profits and there's also some places where you know profits just not g be part of the motive at all and that's okay too yeah right and like I you know you know again I mention Bitcoin all the time and I think in that but you know one of the ways there there's so much charity that's been done indirectly like you know millions of people now have have energy in Africa that there was never a financial incentive and nobody was going to build these expensive power plants to they would if if the the finances to just real simple oversimplification you build a power plant you spend millions of dollars on it and then you're trying to sell Power for 50 cents a kilowatt hour which the poor people in The Villages can't afford yeah it there's no way to financially make this work right and to bring power and so because they can build these power plants and use them to mine Bitcoin and dry some things and use them also with agricultural you know with some of the Heat and whatever um they then can also provide Power to these Villages that have never had power and that's that's a pretty amazing thing to me because now you have you know people that kids can study at night and all the different things that electricity opens up I mean yeah I think research and Innovation is one place where you you know you might have some like the government step in and do some basic research and we could have a whole conversation around basic versus applied research and how the government's rooll and all of that yeah but I think at the end of the day like go back to giving back right I think I think that you know some people are going to be called to give to organizations that are sustainable some people are going to be called to get like one of the things that's important to me is that I'm not giving back in a way that necessarily impacts my businesses I don't want that to be a thing you know like I I want to give and I want it to be a gift with no strings attached okay so you're saying you don't NE you don't want that is a a you don't want to use it as a marketing tool is that what you're saying look if if if there's a way that I should give back as a marketing tool then I want to look at that as a marketing tool and and just call it what it is I don't want I don't want that to check my box for giving okay love it I just again is that important to everyone no of course not but that's that's one way that I view it so that I really feel like I'm giving a gift with no strings ATT I think a gift with a string attached is not a gift let's move to excuses right because I know I've been guilty of having excuses in the past like well I'm still trying to build up my treasure and you know I don't have enough and you know or I'm so busy I don't have time right I mean there's a lot of these things so what would you tell what would you tell people that are experiencing that or thinking that or feeling that yeah I mean one a guy that mentored me one time I was talking about my values and um and he I said you know let me tell you about what I value he's like I don't need you to tell me I was like what he's like let me just see your checkbook and your calendar I was like I didn't like the answer at all yeah and so if it's a priority then you put it in your checkbook and you put it in your calendar a checkbook listeners that's something old people used to carry that had like pieces of paper we'd exchange for money and then we'd keep a register of how much money was on our account um bank statement show me your bank statement in your in your calendar for for you listeners that are not dinosaurs like me and Randy yeah that's great right so you know I I think the big thing is that if you don't have the money fine you have time right and I think early in life you have more time than money later in life hopefully you have more money than time yeah maybe and so may maybe we just think through like you know give a little yeah you know um but but again if you don't then give your time and that's okay well and it's look I even a smile probably you know you you talked about just being nice but you know sometimes just a smile or just making laugh one good D to day right one that that pays forward and they make the next person smile or you know whatever right so that's great love that that if people can start there a smile cost nothing well and you know the last we we have some notes way to the show about the topics um that you know uh about how does this help you to grow and and I think that giving back does lead to growth again for me it's not my so that right it's not not your what say that again it's not my so that I don't do it so that I grow it is true that I've made relationships personally and professionally in these nonprofit Arenas that's true it's true that I'm part of nonprofit groups for professional my professional career that is true um so no judgment about that it's also also true that you can learn leadership skills uh you know by going through and becoming a board member there are some nonprofits that have great like board development programs and you know officer development programs and uh really really wonderful um anyway so so I don't I don't think it's bad to link the two together but for me I want to be cautious that I'm not always just being selfish in that so I try to make sure that I'm I'm also giving and by the way that's my own set of problems I'm working through because there was that you know times in my life where I've been so transactional so that's how I myself yeah I it's is good for the soul right I mean I mean you're so I you know I hadn't even really thought about the leadership skills and the networking and all that that's you know that stuff's fantastic but I also just think it's good for the soul so what would you tell somebody that's starting out so we probably got people you know we got some people that are well on the way let's take a new person that's never donated what would you or or spent their whether it's time or money or whatever what would you how would you tell them to get started I'd say if there's a place that you know if you go to church and that's the place you want to support that's an easy one if you're not sure about an organization check out charity Navigator or guide star to see how they're rated as a charity um there are kind of big National Charities that are easy to give to if you believe in what they do like you know the national Red Cross would be I think one that's not super controversial for for most people it probably is somewhere I don't know about we're probably going to get all kinds of mail about that now but um and I'm not I don't I don't donate to the American Red Cross specifically but um I think you know so find the things that are maybe important to you where where you want to give and then give what you can in terms of your time Talent OR treasure you know um and and I think it starts at home for a lot of people and so you can start writing your own Community is a great place to do it it's great yeah do something right I mean like I said start with a smile maybe it's go coach a kids team or donate your time I mean start some doesn't have to be organized man remember I I used to just grab trash bags and my kids and you know maybe some gloves and just clean up the park that we play at yeah you know it doesn't have to be grand yeah just yeah and find something that mean that that I think that's meaningful to you that you're that you care about right yeah never walk past a piece of trash with you know the kids like just so I love it I think that's great and uh you know I mean I think we could talk about you know people later in life they starting foundations and doing that but I think you know I think I think starting with just where to start is a good thing and and just go from there and grow from there I'll say if you're in that place check out Donor advised funds is a really cool way to start a family Foundation if you're getting started with it if you you're don't have the money for a full-on family office a Donor advised fund you can talk to your financial adviser about that or shoot us a a text message or a phone call or an email and Randy and I can tell you who we talk to about these things but um yeah good stuff Randy cool um you know again my my just my call to action to people I think is just do something start small take the little step get into it I don't think you'll regret it if you do go to the website yell at me send me an email tell me I'm stupid and you hated it or whatever that's fine um you know again Fe feedback is great but uh check out the website tales abundance.com for tools and other things on there uh download please we you know look listeners you guys are a lifeblood so download uh give us feedback give us five stars tell your friends tell your family um whatever it is you like if there's topics you like topics you don't like topics you want to hear about let us know oh love that yes we should say that more often that's great all right thanks Randy thanks Sean