Savvy
SAVVY
How To Walk With Your Eyes Open!
The Simple Secrets To Build Wealth And Live Your Best Life
By Michael Munsterman
This book is dedicated to anyone that has ever had that voice in their mind or in their heart saying
“I AM MEANT FOR MORE THAN THIS!”
My hope is that this book gives you the courage to jump, keep jumping, or jump higher and harder than you currently are!
Content
Introduction
The Beginning
Grandpa’s Nuggets
I Wanna Be Rich
An Outsider
Against All Odds
Becoming Greater
Turning A Corner
An Unexpected Video
Becoming a Warrior
Why?
Climbing Your Mountain
Remembering Your Why
Business in a Box
Eagles or Turkeys
Good Mentors
In a Box!
Watch and Learn
I’m An Adult
Pay to Play
Readers Are Leaders
I Might Be Your Sensei
Prime the Machine
Sleep.
I Hate Running
Crossfit
Routine is King
Your Gifting
Jump
It’s Your Movie
The Power of Paper
If You Prepare The Soil A Tree Will Grow
Let Them Work For You
$100,000
I’m Not Your Voice
Savvy?
Note from the Author
Introduction
In the Beginning
The Beginning
I was seven years old when my mom and my stepdad sat me down on the bed and said, “Your father died this morning. He was in a bad accident and he’s in heaven now.” I shrieked in horror, in horror of the moment, in horror of the pain in my chest, and in horror of not being able to breathe. Mostly I just cried out because I needed my best friend to bust through the door and sweep me up from this nightmare.
My dad, Joe, worked for the Missouri State Highway Department. He was the perfect mix of both my grandmother and my grandfather. He was hard working, compassionate, and entrepreneurial. Not only did he work for the state, but he also had his own little side hustles to earn extra money. Joe Munsterman was just a good ole boy who wore plain blue jeans and cowboy boots. He had a great big smile, and everyone liked him. He articulated his thoughts clearly and had a bright future that came to a crashing halt on April 20th, 1987, at the age of only 25. A semi driver with diabetes went into a diabetic coma while driving his eighteen wheeler. That semi, the 80,000 pound bullet, barreled towards the bridge and stole my father’s precious life.
The weird thing is that I remember every single detail of the day he died. My memory is perfect up until my shattered mother delivered the news to me. My next memory sets the foundation for this book.
The day my father was laid to rest, both of my mothers, my step father, and all of my grandparents sat on the front row of the little church on the outskirts of our population 4,444 town. My memory begins when I was sitting on my mother’s lap. I remember seeing the flag, the one that veterans earn, draped across his casket. I could clearly see the abundance of flowers that stretched from wall to wall across the front of the church. Due to the horrific end to my father’s life, it had to be a closed casket ceremony. His picture had been framed and placed perfectly in the middle of it all.
I can only describe the feeling as well as my broken, young mind could describe or even interpret it. I was destroyed and crying uncontrollably, barely able to see the blurry casket holding the man that used to hold me. My mom later told me that I cried for months. I couldn’t stop, and I didn’t care if I did. On that day, I was sitting on my mother’s lap. She needed to stand up, so I was passed to the lap of the next family member, then the next, and the next. I remember each person hugging me and telling me that it was going to be okay. There was one person who said something different, and when he spoke, I believed him: “I’ve got you lad. I will take care of you. You’re my boy.” I still remember the pain in his words; they seared my soul in that moment. My grandpa spoke with such strength that I knew he meant what he said. Even today, it is the single longest-held promise anyone has ever made to me.
Grandpa’s Nuggets
Beyond the day of the funeral, everything else is pretty much a blur. For a large section of my childhood, several months, I don’t remember anything at all, not a single memory. Somewhere in that three or four months, my grandpa got in the habit of spending time with me. He would come and pick me up on Friday afternoons when school let out. I would go stay with grandpa just about every Friday to Sunday night when he would take me home and leave me in the care of my mom. During the summers, I would spend large chunks of my summer with grandpa. Life with grandpa was so refreshing.
I lived in a weird time where my mom and my stepfather were at the top of their game. They had reached what they felt was the epitome of success. Together they made $40,000 or $50,000 a year. Our families combined and we had five kids living in the house. All of the kids had some kind of food in their belly. There was food in the fridge. My parents could afford television, cigarettes, beer, and whatever else that they felt created a good life.
The problem that I noticed in our home was detrimental. The same thing happened daily. With five kids at home, my mom and stepfather had to work. They went to work just to get off work. They would come home, fix something to eat together, and then sit in the living room in front of the TV the rest of the night. At bedtime they took their meager existence to bed to sleep. They got up at 4:00 AM and headed to work. Every day it was the same thing. They were back by 4:00 PM, right in front of the TV, with food on a TV tray by 5:30. That is where they spent the next five hours of every single night. My mom and stepfather thought they had a great life.
The downside to living this way is that your children don’t form a connection with the adults. There was no family unit. Children miss out on the conversational aspect of relationship building between the family, as parents and children and as siblings. It deflates and defeats so many objectives as parents that we have for our children. The ability for them to communicate, the ability for them to rationalize, as well as the ability to hear the decision-making process out loud. It defeats their ability to form close and lasting bonds with people. It makes them very shallow and often children will only learn how to live right in the immediate now.
Why am I so confident about family interaction? It’s simple. By grandpa grabbing me every Friday night and dropping me off every Sunday night, I saw a whole new world. For two days out of every week, I got to stay in a home without TV or without any technology. At grandpa’s house we worked together as a family and we ate together as a family. Best of all, I was communicated with as a person and not just a kid. At grandpa’s house no one said, “Hey. Go to your room.” or “Get out from under my feet.” I was more likely to hear, “I’m going to go work. Get your boots. Come with me.”
You see, grandpa had a hog farm, worked a full-time job, and mowed. Professionally mowed. He would mow cemeteries and commercial properties. A business that my father and my uncle Jim had started when they were just boys. To this day, and I’m almost 40, so over 30 years later, my uncle still mows those different properties. My uncle still works at the same place that my grandfather worked. My uncle still runs another business that my grandfather had started, that upon my grandfather passing away, my uncle stepped in and restarted. You see in that aspect of myself, my uncles, and even some of my cousins my grandfather left an incredible legacy.
I will be forever gratef
ul for the times that I spent with my grandpa. He taught me so many lessons. Grandpa would drop an abundance of wisdom on me every time I was with him in the day to day activities. I was completely starved all week long for those conversations. When he said something to me, I took it to heart. I believed him. He had never let me down. He had given me advice and pointed me in the right direction countless times. Every time he gave me a little nugget, he would look me dead in the eyes and ask me the exact same question, “You savvy lad?”. Are you savvy lad? Do you understand me? Did that sink in? My entire childhood, I couldn’t get through a conversation without grandpa hitting me with the, “Savvy lad?” The best part about him asking me is that it has made me at the end of every conversation think, “Wait. Do I truly understand?”
Now when I was younger grandpa definitely thought I was a little bit of a nitwit. He certainly didn’t imagine that I was absorbing as much knowledge as what I was. However, I was so starved for intelligent conversation, I was soaking up all of his advise. I couldn’t get an adult in my life to talk to me like an adult. That was, until I was around my grandmother and grandfather. Therefore, I wanted every nugget he had.
There are a million of grandpa’s nuggets that I have learned. I’ll sprinkle them throughout this book. I am just hoping that somewhere in this, you will get something that is truly inspirational to you. More importantly, at the end of every one of these lessons, just ask yourself, “Savvy? Do I understand what was just said? Can I uptake the lesson that was just dropped on me?”. If not, spend some time, go back, listen to it again, read it again, do whatever you’re doing until you fully understand the concepts.
My grandpa didn’t realize the impact he was making at the time. From the time I was seven years old until I was 25 years old, grandpa dropped nuggets on me every time I was around him. He thought he was just trying to keep me out of trouble and pointing me towards getting a good job. What he was actually doing was building a mindset of a millionaire. He gave me the exact nuggets that I needed to go out into the world, and as long as I applied them, I could crush it. He was savvy enough to understand the principles and he was bold enough to do most of them. With the exception of just a couple of areas in his life, you see, he was taught to play it safe. He was taught to get the retirement, build the nest egg, stay on that safe side of the line.
Early on in my life, from seven years old, I realized you can lose absolutely everything that matters in a moment. Therefore in my lifetime, that shift, those two little clicks on the dial that I needed were given to me when I was just seven years old. I accumulated all that savvy wisdom from grandpa and was built into a shrewd entrepreneur. I am somebody that recognizes these lessons that I’m going to show you and share with you. You can duplicate these nuggets as it’s an extremely practical and easily followed path. I don’t believe that many of these guys that are running around currently promoting themselves as marketing geniuses truly understand what it means. Why do I say that? Because I listen to their words and frankly, I watch their actions. I watch how they live and they just don’t seem very darn savvy.
I Wanna Be Rich
For as long as I can remember when somebody would ask me what am I going to do for a living, I knew the exact answer. When someone wanted to know what did I want to be when I grow up, I knew that too. I want to be rich. I have always wanted to be rich. My response was, “I’m going to be a millionaire. I’m going to be able to buy whatever I want and travel wherever I want to go. I’m going to be able to experience anything I want because I’m going to be rich. I want to be rich like those guys on TV.” Those were my thoughts about adulthood for as long as I can remember.
My family would often watch television shows, in my very modest home where I was raised, for entertainment. My five brothers and sisters would gather around the television for our daily dose of fun. Many times an actor or actress would fly across the television screen in a sports car like a Ferrari, a Maserati, or a Lamborghini. I would always point and say, “I’m going to have one of those. I’m going to be rich.” I didn’t know the path to create wealth at the time. I just knew in my core that I was going to someday stand among the elite on the podium, in the winner’s circle, waving the checkered flag because I had won the game. Winning the game to me meant to own the best car, fly to the coolest places, and have everything that made me happy.
An Outsider
I knew in my heart, in my core, that at some point I would be rich. For me there was no other choice. If I could take any one of you and put you in the circumstances that I was standing in when I was proclaiming this over my life, not a single person reading this would ever think that my richest dreams would become my reality. No one could have peered into my world as a child and thought great things would come from me. My world was chaos. It would have been tough to find someone that truly believed in me, other than my grandpa.
You see, my mother rode an emotional roller coaster nearly my entire childhood. She struggled immensely dealing with all sorts of different kinds of addictions and abuses. She was trying to survive in a house full of kids. Our house was full of my stepfather’s children, the ones that he had prior to marrying my mother, and then the two that he had with her. My mom had her own nightmares from her childhood and losing my dad sent her into a whirlwind of highs and lows.
Growing up with a blended family was an endless battle. I was the black sheep. I was the only kid in the house who wasn’t my stepfather’s biological child. As a young person, I often felt like I didn’t fit in anywhere. Even though it was painful, it was really a gift. This gift allowed me early on in life to get comfortable being an outsider. This is something that you will have to be content with if you are truly going to pursue this path of entrepreneurship. To pursue a path of life that is different from your surroundings is uncomfortable for most people. However, my entire life I have been pursuing exactly what everyone else has told me is impossible. That feeling of discomfort is not an obstacle that stops my progression.
Against All Odds
My grandfather never once objected to my conversations about being rich. He only said to me, “Lad”, grandpa often referred to me as lad despite not having any Irish ancestry at all, “if you always spend so much time looking at the top rung of the ladder, you will never see the one right in front of your face.” I have never been one to not speak to the things that I felt the most passionate about. Grinning I looked up into his eyes and said, “I am not just staring like everyone else. I’m jumping up and trying to grab the top rung. If I miss the top, I will still be several steps ahead of everyone else!” He simply smiled and lifted his brows as high as he could. In retrospect one of the greatest things he ever did for me was something that he actually didn’t do. Grandpa never spoke negativity over my life! He simply did his best to guide my trajectory.
Back in my home my mother and her husband had pinnacled in their own minds. Between them they were making $40,000 to $60,000 a year. They could come home and eat steak at night a couple of times a week. While the kids, most of the time, would get a version of dinner. It seems like we grew up eating hot dogs and macaroni and cheese. The kids in my family would be put at the table to eat. Meanwhile the parents would sit in the living room with their dinner served on TV trays. That way they could enjoy dinner and watch their favorite television program in peace. My parents had a children are to be seen and not really heard mentality. The kids in my family were left to our own vices, left to our own imaginations, left to our own voices, and left to each other to figure out how to do life. It felt like we were more of a burden to our parents than a blessing. We were given no faith, church, or mentors that I recognized at the time.
Due to my childhood environment, I would spend countless hours playing alone. Spending the days alone gave me plenty of time to use my imagination. About ten minutes walking distance from our house was an old abandoned railroad track spur. The city had long ago removed the railroad track and had created a perfect elevated path with trees on both sides. Th
is was an ideal place for any young man to explore. I would head down the tracks imagining and conversing with multitudes of characters that I had created in my own head. I felt a little crazy. I didn’t know if it was normal or not, but I was able to create the most elaborate tales. Most always ending in my successful triumph over villains and self created struggles. I would not only defeat the bad guys, I would also get the girl and somehow manage to parlay into millions of dollars! The perfect story book ending every single time. I would allow myself to be so engrossed that I would forget reality. My realness was that I was a poor little kid from Brookfield, Missouri. Even as reality sunk back in as I approached my home, sun setting or sometimes having already set, I would remember I wasn’t a hero. I rarely got a nod from the girls, and I didn’t have any money. Although I knew of those three things to be true right now. I also knew the one thing that would absolutely happen in my future was, I would be rich. I would not be poor my whole life. I could feel it!
When someone would ask what are you going to be when you grow up, I would look them dead in the eyes and as serious as I could be, give the same answer every single time. I would tell them, “I am going to be rich.” Most people would challenge me by saying things like, “Oh, yeah? Of course you will get rich!” Many of those sophisticated adults would walk away rolling their eyes as they blew me off as a dumb kid. A funny little side note, at least three of the people that I remember chastising me as a child have at some point either tried to borrow my money or asked me for large personal cash gifts.
I imagine that someone who’s reading this right now has that fiber, that tinge, that pull, that you’re supposed to be more than what you are today. My thought for you is that you have the ability to accomplish whatever you want. You need a couple of things to succeed. I’m going to map out the formula in this book to enrich your life, to help you succeed, to help you become greater than who you are today.
Savvy Page 1