Prosperity Playbook: Unleashing Prosperity with Mackey McNeill

Seth Waters (Co-Host): Well, welcome to the Purposeful Prosperity podcast. My name is Seth, and I'm herewith Jack Smith, a founder, entrepreneur, investor and world changer. Jack, excited to be with you today.

‍

Jack Smith (Host): I'm excited too. Thanks, Seth.

‍

Seth Waters (Co-Host): We have a great interview today with Mackie McNeil. Super excited about this.

‍

Jack Smith (Host): Absolutely. A friend of mine, a mentor, really a prosperity guru, and so really an honor to have her on the Prosperity Playbook. She's taught me so much about what prosperity means for myself, for my team, for the communities that we're a part of, and in no small part, an inspiration for this journey that we're on here, Seth. So it's my pleasure to really introduce my friend and financial guru, Mackie McNeill.

Jack Smith (Host): Welcome to Purposeful Prosperity.  My name is Jack Smith, and it is my honor and pleasure today to introduce you guys to an amazing entrepreneur. Her name is Mackie McNeill. She is the founder of The Prosperity People, author of a number of books, an Inc 5000 CEO, and my personal financial guru. Thanks for coming on the show today.

Mackey McNeill (Guest): It's great to be here, Jack. It's a delight.

Jack Smith (Host): So, Mackie, you wrote a book called The Prosperity Playbook. And in there you talk a lot about what it means to be prosperous. Can you tell our listeners what prosperity means to you?

Mackey McNeill (Guest): Prosperity to me is achieving the three freedoms of prosperity. And the first one is Money freedom. We always think about when we think about prosperity, we think about money. And of course, in our society, you have to have money. You can't go to the grocery store with your honor, you have to go with money. And so that's super important.

Mackey McNeill (Guest): The second one is time freedom. If we achieve money freedom, but we don't have time freedom, what have we really accomplished? I mean, money is unlimited. Our ability to generate and accumulate wealth is unlimited. But our ability to have time, we get 365 days, 24/7 all the time. We all get the same amount. So creating time freedom is super important to having the life that you want.

Mackey McNeill (Guest): And the third piece is mind freedom. If you're worried and stressed out and not on purpose and really living your life, not in accordance with what I call being inside out, what's really important to you, that's not really prosperity either.

Mackey McNeill (Guest): So we really have to have all three of these things to live our most full potential. And I think that's what we're all here to do, to live our most valuable personal lives. And that's what is true for us. What do we want to bring? What do I want to bring into the world?

Jack Smith (Host): I love it. And you're always asked the best questions, which I very much appreciate, Mackie thank you, Jack.

Jack Smith (Host): So tell us about two levers that you shifted to move your firm from a traditional CPA firm to the CFO coaching firm. Because I think your concepts are very different. That's why we're personally customers of yours and grateful for it.

Mackey McNeill (Guest): Well, thanks, Jack. That's a great question. So this was a passion that came from my family. My dad went bankrupt living his dream as an entrepreneur. And what I saw is he really didn't lack the skills in his industry. He lacked the skills in finance. So it became my passion to say, how do I come with a businessowner? How do I join with a business owner to help them achieve their goals so they don't have to lose their business and go bankrupt when they've got a very good business to start with. And that's why I became a CPA. But then I found out CPAs really just kind of mostly help people save taxes, which is a great goal, but was way below what I was after. Again, I was after this vision of the three freedoms. And how do you put together a system?

Mackey McNeill (Guest): So what I thought is there's really two fundamental shifts that need to take place. One is we need to move from a transactional relationship with our financial advisor to a relational one. And in this relational environment, you can think about, I have a system, we have a system. We bring it forth to the owner. We drive that financial conversation. We bring them to see their numbers in a different way. We put together things graphically and trending wise so they don't have to go get their MBAs to understand what's happening in their business. So they're making better decisions, and we're helping them on a continuous path. They can see what's wrong, make changes for course correction, and move on.

Mackey McNeill (Guest): Yeah. And the second piece was really to build out the system with this five fundamental types of data. Typically, people always say the account is just bringing me what happened last month or last year. But we talk about five types of data. We integrate your strategic planning data, your annual planning data, your historical data, your forecasting data, and your analysis data. And we put all that together so that you can get that big picture.

Jack Smith (Host): I love it. And it's that big picture that really has been so great for our company. So I've really appreciated the dashboards and everything that you guys put together, make it simple and easy, and even the training programs to teach my team and those who don't have MBAs how to read these financial statements so we all understand how we prosper together.

Mackey McNeill (Guest): Very smart of you, Jack, to bring your team along. So many people are scared of that. But it is such a wise decision. We measure those results, and people who bring their team along generally make 66% more than those who don't.

Jack Smith (Host): Wonderful. I'm glad I stumbled on a good idea there. I love it. Well, talking about that, tell me a little bit about more of the prosperity ladder and why it's non-negotiable for owners on the path to prosperity.

Mackey McNeill (Guest): Yeah, absolutely. Well, the prosperity ladder is a really simple idea and that we tend to think of. Again, we start with money, but we say the prosperity ladder starts with data. So we can only know where we are in relationship to where we want to go. So we work from the standpoint of what are your goals and relative to your goals, where are you today? And we need data to help us measure that. So that's the first step. So many business owners I'm talking about for our clients, 60 million and under don't really have good solid data systems. So we have to solve that first. If we don't have good data, all we talk about is why the data is bad.

Mackey McNeill (Guest): Once we know that we have good data, we have to focus on cash flow. Again, if you don't have cash flow, you're out of business. It doesn't matter how great your business model and doesn't matter if you're making money. You have to be able to pay the bills.

Mackey McNeill (Guest): Then we can focus on net income, profitability, really driving results and really improving results. So often I find the business owners making a little bit of profit, but their top line is growing faster than their bottom line. And that shouldn't be happening. It should be just the opposite.

Mackey McNeill (Guest): Once we've got profits, we can think about owner lifestyle, more time freedom, more mind freedom, more ability to be a little less engaged in our business from time to time, hopefully. And then our legacy. What is it as a business owner? That's my legacy that I want to be known for when I exit this business. So that's how we move up the ladder.

Mackey McNeill (Guest): And sometimes you might get to the top. Often find that somebody gets to the top and they look at their legacy and says, well, you know, I'm not really making enough to money that I can fulfill my legacy. So I'm going to go down and work on the profit piece again and kind of come back up. Those are okay too. But you got to have that bottom rung each. The rungs on the top are only as strong as the rungs on the bottom.

Jack Smith (Host): I love it. Thank you very much. One of the coolest things that I love about what you do has absolutely nothing to do with finance of any kind. Well, not necessarily nothing to do with finance because it's still a business, but you have a passion for sustainability and farming in general and you have Red Sunflower Farms. Tell us a little bit about how you came to lead that farm and how it's affected your life since then.

Mackey McNeill (Guest): Well, thanks, Jack. It's been such a blessing in my life and it was one of those cases. My husband was in sales and he was actually the first driver. I think I was always the one that was making the garden and whatever the place we lived in. But he was downsized out of a sales job. And after a couple of years of thinking about what he wanted to do, he came home one day and he said, I want to own ten acres and I want to grow food. And I'm like you what? You've never grown anything in your life, he said. So we went and searched and he firsts aid, sell your business, Mackie. And listen, this was 15 years ago. And I said, I am not done. I am not done. I'm not selling my business.

Mackey McNeill (Guest): So we look for property for eight months. We're 10 miles from downtown Cincinnati on a beautiful 35 acre property that is just an amazing little piece of the world. We're surrounded by the hills. I said, if you know anything about Kentucky, it's full of hollers. We live in a holler. Those nice little flat five acres surrounded by woods. So we grow most of our own food. My husband raises chickens. He hunts for deer. We have eggs, so we have order. Tonight, I will go out into the garden and I'll decide what I'm going to have for dinner. I'll pick it and it's like then I'll cook it. And that, for me, is just amazing. But what's even more amazing is I was not a healthy kid. I was not a healthy young adult, but I've become a very healthy older person. And I love that I have the vitality and health that comes from eating this kind of nutritious, wonderful food that I have access to all the time.

Jack Smith (Host): That's awesome. Was there anything else you'd like to share with our listeners you didn't get a chance to tell them about today?

Mackey McNeill (Guest): I would just say that if I were going to recap one more thing, I would say finding your inner voice. Finding for me, I believe that most of us are indoctrinated to live our world from the outside in. We look outside and we see, what do we want and we go after that. But finding a place, meditation, yoga, inner looking is a big part of my life. Finding out what's true for you.

Mackey McNeill (Guest): I'm a person who loves to take care of other people, but not everything is mine todo. So I have to really be quiet within myself and say what is mine to do and to focus on my passion so that I have the life energy and the purpose and the excitement to really give it my best anytime I'm living somebody else's dream, I don't really have that. So I would encourage everybody to go live their dream, the dream that's inside of you.

Jack Smith (Host): I love it. Well, thank you for sharing your dream with us and your purpose and your passion. I'm grateful for your friendship and your guidance and for sharing your wisdom today with our listeners. Thank you so much, Mackie. Thank you, Jack.

Seth Waters (Co-Host): Well, what a good conversation with Mackie.

Jack Smith (Host): Absolutely.

Seth Waters (Co-Host): A couple of things that stood out to me. One of them really specifically is this idea of moving from transactional to relational interaction with our financial planner.

Jack Smith (Host): Oh, absolutely. And really, I think, integral to who Mackie is, is community. Right? And that's really the difference between understanding your finances from a tactical, data driven perspective, very transactional. A plus B equals C equals victory, to really understanding that prosperity means something different for everybody and that you can't know what prosperity means for me or for you or for our listeners without asking questions and listening and understanding the relationship that you have with those individuals. And I think for me, that was really inspiring. And I think part of what makes Mackie so wonderful is she's a really great connector. She asks wonderful questions, very thought-provoking. So that's really great to have her on.

Jack Smith (Host): Thank you for joining the Purpose Prosperity Podcast. Please tune in next week where I bring you another world changing entrepreneur. Until then, please like, follow and share and keep doing good in the world. Thank you for listening.

‍