In this episode, Shannon chats with Justin Buonomo, the CEO and Founder of Journey to Financial Freedom. Justin shares his personal journey from experiencing financial instability in his youth, due to his parents' bankruptcy, to becoming a passionate financial empowerment coach.
Listeners will hear about Justin's unexpected career path in the financial sector at Johns Hopkins, the importance of addressing one's money story, and actionable strategies for achieving financial success. This episode provides valuable insights for entrepreneurs looking to reshape their financial future.
CEO & Founder of Journey to Financial Freedom, which provides financial coaching and consulting for business owners. Justin and his company help business owners take control of their finances and unlock new levels in their lives and businesses. Justin & JFF are extremely passionate about helping business owners live their dream life that is fueled and funded by their dream business.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/justin_buonomo/
Freebie (How to make AND keep more money): https://www.group.journeytofinancialfreedom.co/free-masterclass
What you'll hear in this episode:
04:56 Promised to never worry about money again.
08:46 Sudden revelation led to life-changing realization.
10:40 Balancing strategies and internal beliefs for success.
16:32 Conversations about money impact business success.
19:13 Address money habits before seeking more income.
If you like this episode, check out:
Mastering Abundance Mindset
Silence These Voices In Order to Succeed
My 3 Most Expensive Mistakes
Want to learn more so you can earn more?
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Visit keepwhatyouearn.com to dive deeper on our episodes
Visit keepwhatyouearncfo.com to work with Shannon and her team
Watch this episode and more here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMlIuZsrllp1Uc_MlhriLvQ
Connect with Shannon on IG: https://www.instagram.com/shannonkweinstein/
The information contained in this podcast is intended for educational purposes only and is not individual tax advice. Please consult a qualified professional before implementing anything you learn.
(upbeat music) - Welcome to Keep What You Earned, your judgment and jargon-free zone for entrepreneurs of all levels. Get ready to learn how to scale your business, save money in taxes, and create a business that grows your wealth. If it feels like the financial side of business is like eating your vegetables, well, then think of this podcast as the ranch dressing to make the process a little more enjoyable. My name is Shannon Weinstein. I'm a CPA and business owner on a mission to simplify money and empower others through knowledge. I hope this episode inspires you to take action, but remember that the information we share is for educational purposes only, and is not individual tax advice. Now that we got that out of the way, let's start the show. (upbeat music) I think a lot of folks know that with a money story, with the topic of money, the subject of money, a lot of emotions come with that, and we acknowledge it. And what I love hearing are the stories of folks who maybe didn't start in the area of finance or never developed a passion for it younger or earlier in life, and they then discovered their own passion for it, and even better when those types of people then make it their mission to help others do the same. And our guest today is no exception to that. So today I wanna welcome onto the show, Justin Bonamo. He is the CEO and founder of Journey to Financial Freedom, which provides financial coaching and consulting for business owners. He and his company help business owners take control of their finances and unlock new levels in their lives and businesses. They're extremely passionate about helping business owners just like you live their dream life that's fueled by their dream business. That is the key. So today on the episode we're gonna unpack a little bit of Justin's story, but also digging into your money story, unpacking that, and how to navigate those little feelings of shame that may come up. This episode, I'll tell you, is kind of like that permission you didn't need to dig back into your own money story and to address those little things that do creep up and inhibit your business. So without further ado, let's dive into the episode. Hey, Justin, welcome to Keep What You Earned. - Thank you so much for having me. We basically shot a podcast episode before we hit record, but it's a great conversation going. - That always happens. I really should just keep everything rolling as soon as guests show up. I just don't wanna intimidate them and have them be self-conscious. But I love getting to know our guests before we hit record. So we chat, we go like, "Hey, what do you want our audience to take away? "What should we be doing?" And the conversations that carry on are really great. In that regard, Justin, would you mind just introducing yourself to people listening, let them know what you do? - Yeah, for sure. My name is Justin Buanimo. That was also a part of the conversation beforehand and we have to spell that one out for everybody. I'm the owner and the CEO of a company called Journey to Financial Freedom. And we do financial coaching and strategy for business owners. We've got a four-step approach that we take people through that if followed and implemented by any business owner, it can really lead to great results, not even just in their finances, not even just in their business, but in their life and totality. And so you and I are talking beforehand, what do we want people to take away from this? And the biggest thing is our company slogan is money is a tool, freedom is the goal, and it's impossible to leave your dream life if you don't have your finances under control. But the good news is it's not as hard as the financial industry has made it sound. And so I'm really excited to dive in here today. - Yeah, and you're in the right place for that because that's truly what we believe. Our mission to keep what you are in Co is financial information should be a source of inspiration and intimidation. So it should trigger ideas and growth and thought and not stress and shame and embarrassment. So that's a big part of our why and I know that we're gonna align on that. So you told me a little bit about before we hit record and I really wanna share this story with our listeners. I was saying, it fascinates me whenever someone doesn't come from a financial background like from let's say college or high school up, I love that when they fall in love with it later in life. - Yeah, yeah. - Later than that. But could you just tell us how you became financially passionate and what that looked like for you? - Yeah, absolutely. I definitely didn't come from financial literacy or good financial management. I gained my passion from watching in my childhood things that I didn't want to embody as I got older. And so at age 10, my parents filed for bankruptcy for the second time, right? And because of that, it was a few more things that added up to this, but because of that, they got a divorce, we lost our house and I watched both of my cars get repoked, right? And the two rental properties that they were going to didn't allow pets. So I literally had to give my best friend away, who was my dog for three years Jake as a result of this. And so the crazy part is this was like the early 2000s and they were making around 125 to $150,000 combined, right? And so at the time it looked like I lost everything because of money. As I got older and I realized what really happened, there's more to the story, which I'm sure we'll dive into, but just 10 year old Justin sitting on the couch when all of that news was broken to me, made a promise to himself that said, one day when I can control it, I'm never gonna have to worry about money ever again. I'm never gonna allow my family to go through what I went through at a young age and thankfully I kept that promise to myself. But also as I got older, God was nudging me and he was kind of like, why just stop it yourself? And so at the time, I'm 23 years old, just finished my master's degree in healthcare administration and management and got an incredible job at Johns Hopkins working on the business side at the hospital. They were definitely very desperate to basically accept the 23 year old no experience into this position. But thankfully interviewed very well, had a mentor who kind of got me in for the interview where he emailed the hiring manager and was like, hey listen, we know he's massively interqualified on paper, but the position's been open for a year. We can see that at least give him 30 minutes and see what you think. And so they took two senior leadership positions and they combined them into one and only were paying for one. And so no one was crazy enough to take the position except for me. And so took my opportunity and ran with it and inside of this opportunity was a lot of financial responsibility. At the time I was reporting to Dr. Kerry Herzki who is now the vice president of all Johns Hopkins Hospital. And she was a financial genius. And she had this theory of baptism by fire. Like, I'm gonna give you something and you're gonna figure it out. You're gonna learn, right? And so I was just telling this story the other day and like she used to wear like these one inch heels and she would come down the hole and see her but I could hear her coming. And it'd be like four o'clock on a Friday and I'd be like, fuck, I'm gonna be here till tomorrow. And I know she's coming to my office. - Sounds like office space. - Hey, right? And it's all been lops this financial analysis or economic report or whatever that was financially related on to my desk, gave me a little bit of an instruction and said I'd like for you to figure this out before you leave tonight. Like Dr. Herzki is four o'clock on a Friday but it saved me, you know, blowing a lot of money at the bars and it taught me a ton. And so I really started just to gain this, I really deep financial knowledge and I decided to implement it on the personal side of things, started seeing really good results, started implementing it, you know, with guinea pigs of my friends and my family and I'm like, they're getting really good results. I might have something here. And so that's kind of how it all started. - Yeah, it kind of permeates 'cause you start to see the results and you wanna share it with other people. And I think that's a mark of a good teacher and a good, you know, somebody who's in like the coaching or consulting space is like, I have new information, I can't wait to share it. I love that mentality. 'Cause instead of keeping it to yourself and saying, oh, I'm gonna get ahead, I wanna lift everyone up with me. I wanna, you know, create the rising tide that lifts all ships. Let's share this information with everyone because maybe were you inspired by the fact that I didn't know this growing up? Like, I need to spread the word about this. Like, I wish I knew this sooner, right? - A thousand percent. I was like, why doesn't everybody know this information? And if they do, life would be so much easier. I just figured out, through my own experience, childhood and adulthood, that the majority of people's stresses and anxieties in life are strongly correlated to finances where they realize it or not. And the majority of those financial stress and anxieties are unnecessary, they're avoidable, right? And so I wanted to make it my mission to help people avoid unnecessary stress and anxiety around money and also not miss out on the mass amounts of opportunity that not knowing these things, you know, ends up causing. - Yeah, and you mentioned about your parents that had declared bankruptcy. Can we unpack that a little bit in terms of, did they ever really address it with you or tell you what was going on? Like, you know now, you just told me that they were going through bankruptcy, but what did that look like for, say, the 10-year-old Justin who maybe didn't understand what that meant or couldn't piece the pieces together? - Yeah, it actually felt like it all happened at once. Like, there was just this sit down on the couch and we're gonna tell you everything in one sitting. And so it felt, that's when everything was at its worst. Like, that's when everything was finalized, you know? And so it just felt like at one moment the carpet was ripped out from underneath me and my life had never been the same ever since. But I was starting to get a little bit of an idea because I'll never forget this. My mom is the sweetest woman in the world, but one day I picked up the phone and it was a debt collector calling. And they had basically provided a little bit of information about what they were looking for. So I was like, that's interesting. And my mom saw me pick up the phone call and she freaked out on me. She's like, don't answer that thing phone. You cannot answer. There's these people that are calling and that was a couple of weeks before they sat me down on the couch. And so I always say it, like really does impact my money story, right? You know, I walk around though being very successful and God blessing my family and I and my business so much and we're very financially stable. I still have this underlying wound that like any day now the other shoe is gonna drop, right? And so that's kind of how it happened and still kind of impacts me and lingers to this day. - That's so interesting. And then have you also dealt with people in your client base and your roster and like folks that you've worked with that are going through something similar to what your parents went through? Is that bringing up other emotions too? - Yeah, for sure. I'll definitely, I don't think anybody has gotten to the point where it was as bad as my parents ended up being, but you do see signs of it. And the signs more so is, you know, we'll implement the systems and strategies for the client and by the numbers, just for a fake example. It's like, okay, Shannon, over the next six months you should have $10,000 in savings, right? By the numbers. And we get down to the six months and we're like, you don't have 10,000. If anything, you might be a little worse than when we started, right? And so we're like, what is going on here? This was years ago when we first started. And so we started to realize that you need to have the healthy balance of what we call the woo and the do. Like the do is the systems and strategies, right? And the black and white, but we end up getting a lack of results at the end of that six months or whatever the timeline is because people never really addressed the internal beliefs that are causing the behaviors which then form the reality. And so not the exact same thing I saw with my parents, but I do see a lot of very talented people, a lot of high earners, a lot of good people come to us with some serious financial struggle or lack of progress. And I think they also get relieved when we're like, I promise you that your lack of progress is not your fault, but it is your responsibility to take care of your future, right? And so we hopefully get to people point being before they follow the bankruptcy and we can correct the problems and then have them have prosperity from there. - And what are your thoughts on like the division? I call it the division between information and implementation where the problem resides, where they're not financially informed or they're not implementing what they know is true. Much like, you know, nutrition growing up, if you seem like you're about my age, like the food pyramid, what a frickin lie that was. (laughing) Right? And I was like, that broke my heart. Where I was like, we were not supposed to eat a ton of bread and never touch butter, what's happening? - Right. Right. Right. - Right. And it's kind of like financially, I feel like was the same type of thing with education was, it was caution, we talked about this before, like I think it was on purpose, but there's a lack of information that's reliable, but then there's also the lack of implementation where we all know broccoli is good for us, but we don't eat it. - Yeah. - You know, we all know what we're supposed to do, but you know, it's a lot easier to do the cheat codes. So like, where would you say you typically find people, what from that information does implementation divide and where they're really lacking? - That's such a great question. So what I have found is that our reality is a direct correlation from our behaviors come from our beliefs and our beliefs were formed from our traumas and our experiences in life, right? And so when you start to address things at a belief level is when you start to get real sustainable results from an implementation standpoint. And so, you know, you mentioned fitness in your nutrition, excuse me. So think about the fitness and nutrition industry, right? You know, who listening to this, raise your hand, be careful if you're driving, has been on a diet before or a workout plan where you crushed it for the first 60 to 90 days, but for the past three years, you've been getting back on track on Monday, right? I'll raise both of my hands, you know? And so it's nothing particularly wrong with those industries or those programs, but all they do is address things from a behavioral level. Like we're just trying to change the behaviors, right? And then over time, after the honeymoon stage goes away or they don't work with the trainer or the nutritionist after 90 days, right? The results start to fall off and it's because things are never addressed at a belief level, right? So there's something internal going on that is usually holding people back from implementing, let alone implementing and sustaining to get long-term results. And so all of our coaches are actual legit coaches and they're certified for the International Federation of Coaching, where they're the smartest people on the planet when it comes to financial strategy, but at the same time, they can hold space for people and have the emotions come up and actually get to the root cause of the behaviors that are causing a sub-optimal reality, right? So we can actually focus on implementation. And it took me a while to come around to that. I was a very black and white individual, like we were talking about before, I grew up in an old-school Italian family in New York where I was like, suck it up, buttercup. I was a very established athlete my whole life through college as well, very tough, always labeled as the toughest person on the field, mentally and physically. And then in my own money journey, like I was just very disciplined, when I followed the systems for long enough where it finally changed the behaviors, right? A lot of people don't have that discipline where the beliefs are gonna set in and take you off after 60 to 90 days, right? And so when I started working with it, literally at this point now, I've spent over thousands of business owners around the world, I just realized like the whole suck it up, buttercup, be disciplined, figure it out, follow the systems, just didn't work for everybody, if not only a small portion of people. And I was like, if I really wanna change this world and help people not just get information, but implementation, there's something missing here and it really pointed me to just helping people work through that internal world that leads to their reality. - Yeah, and I love that you brought up that it was at a belief level, not a behavioral level, that you had to make the change in order for it to be sustainable because otherwise it's superficial and based on mood and based on things that are fleeting because it's based on motivation. You know, like am I motivated to make a change? Which is typically, motivation typically is extracted from some type of symptom to the contrary, right? It's like I'm motivated to lose weight because my genes don't fit. So like I'm at a point, you know what I mean? Where like I'm jumping up and down to my skinny jeans and I go, okay, I have to lose weight now versus the fundamental belief that, you know, whatever it is you're doing is healthy or unhealthy for you versus what you wanna be doing and similar with money. It's the idea that it's not just about disciplining yourself and budgeting and restricting and doing these other things, it's about really attacking the belief system that you have around your money and addressing it, but I think the number one thing that I find with people is especially business owners too, is they're getting into business and kind of forced to address the money situation because that is a big part of business, is that they realize they've never actually revisited their own money story. They've never actually articulated it and they've never really unpacked and put it into words. I feel like their behaviors are exhibited but they've never really dug deep to actually map those behaviors back to a belief system. Do you find that to be the case too? And that's a big revelation, right? - A thousand percent. Like people, especially if they didn't grow up with a great money story or they weren't taught the importance of it, they'll kill you anything they can to avoid the hard conversations that are needed to make improvements with their finances. And so I always like to say that your business, your finances and your life will expand into direct proportion to the hard conversations you're willing to have with yourself, other people and God and what you resist persist, right? And so, you know, taking the time to figure out this money story, right? And where the gaps are in the areas of improvement are like one of the biggest needle movers businesses can do, right? Because money is a massive tool for your business. I was reading this stat a couple of months ago and it was saying like the SBA was saying that the majority of businesses that go out of business or never even get off the ground in the first place, the number one cause of that, you know, is a lack of cash flow into our money management, right? So the number one reason why businesses don't start or have the success or do they need to or deserve to have and or go out of business is because they just can't handle money, right? And there's no way around it. I tell people in this conversation that you're talking about here, like what we need to sit down and actually figure out, right? If you're truthfully serious about financial freedom, you're gonna be forced to come back to this conversation at some point, right? You know, and so you might as well have it sooner than later. - I totally agree. And it's actually not just on an individual level, but on a business level, we follow a similar philosophy that the first three priorities of any business is really around gross profit, operating profit and cash flow, because the question we have to answer is your money safe in your business? - Yeah, yeah. - Like if we put more money into your business, is it a safe place to put it? - Right. - Is it gonna disappear or is it gonna multiply? - Right. - And if it's gonna disappear, then I'm like, we gotta attack that first before any other like-- - It's exactly. - Fancy schmancy acquisition tactics and revenue and pricing tricks and all this other stuff. Like we gotta go into the fundamental strength and the health of the vital signs. - Right. - And go, is this okay? And what's the story behind this? Because if this isn't fixed, just like you said, with the money story, we'll also dictate behavior. And no matter what program you slap on somebody and say, follow this program or follow this schedule, you know, if you're not changing that belief system, then it's just a temporary fix. - Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, I 1000% agree. And we always say like, you're not gonna out earn your poor money habits, right? And so when people first come to us, like the key to receiving more, the key to optimizing your finances is taking control of your current situation, right? And so let's figure out what's currently going on right now before we start implementing anything that's going to increase your income, right? Because if you don't address your poor money habits, what's causing you the problems right now or you don't take control of your current situation, all more money is gonna do is it's going to just accentuate your poor money habits. You're gonna make more, you're gonna spend more, you're gonna make more, you're gonna see just as little, and you're gonna make more, you have the same exact problems you had in the past, if not more, right? When you had less money coming in, because we didn't address the root cause of all of the problems, right? We're just trying to cover up the serious, or the core of the problem with the temporary band aid, right? And so we have another, we've got a lot of slogans and quotes at JFF, but one of them is like, and more money's not the solution, not until it is, right? But at first it's not, like we have to lay the right systems and strategies in the place, right? Like what we call digging the trenches, right? And implement the right mindset around money, right? Because back in the day, we always use this example that like societies, when they had a hunch that rain was coming and they needed that rain to be able to upkeep their civilization, they would dig trenches, right? To receive the rain, right? And so taking control of your current situation is digging the trenches to receive the more money that you wanna welcome in the most optimal fashion possible. And so we see it all the time with business owners. I'm just gonna make a bunch of money and all my problems are gonna go away. It's like, yeah, probably not. - Yeah, no. Thanks for listening to today's episode. Stay tuned because tomorrow we're continuing the conversation with part two of this interview. See you then. (upbeat music) One of the hardest things about being an early stage business owner, making your first million, is that nobody seems to wanna serve you. You don't make enough money to get that fraction of help that you really need to grow. So then where are you supposed to get these resources from? You've got a bookkeeper, a tax pro that are keeping you out of trouble, but who's keeping you on the right path toward your growth? And that's where we come in with CFO on demand. This is a unique product that we've created so that we can serve early stage business owners without the massive CFO price tag. If you wanna learn more about working with us, this is a monthly recurring membership, but don't worry, we keep everything private. You can actually just DM me directly your questions and there's no sense of having to show up in front of a community or ask your question publicly. We give you the private benefit of asking questions, but the public benefit of learning with each other and getting tips from me and my team. If this sounds like fun to you, then jump in the link in the show notes and find out more about CFO on demand. (upbeat music) - Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a rating and review on your podcast platform. This small action goes a long way for podcasters to get our message heard by more business owners just like you. Be sure to check out the show notes for links to information about our guests and ways to get in touch with me. We'll see you on the next episode. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)
