Sacrifice, Family, and Perseverance

Watch the episode here:

• Learn how to turn financial struggles into life lessons that fuel your success.
• Hear how Rick’s parents made sacrifices to provide a rich childhood despite limited resources.
• Discover how a “figure it out” mentality can create endless opportunities.
• Gain insight into how childhood experiences shape your approach to life and business.
• Get inspired to make the most out of what you have, no matter how little it may seem.

Rick, what’s shakin Hey, I’m Rick Jordan. Today we’re going all in I’m excited to have you with me today, because today we’re going to talk about growing up poor and having poor parents, the impact that can make on your lives, and what it can do for you, what it cannot do for you and some people might share the same story that I have around my life before we dive into this, please share this out with at least three people today, especially those that maybe have had an unprivileged upbringing. I hate using that word, too, but that’s what everybody used. You know? What? Forget about that. You know, stop everything. Richard, for real. Stupid word, stupid word, start over, or I can just start right now. Okay, does that work? Okay? What shaken? Welcome back to all in thanks for being with me today, because today we’re going to talk about upbringings as children. And maybe you grew up in a home that wasn’t very affluent, that didn’t have a lot of money flowing around. And we’re going to talk about parents and kids of poor parents today a little bit. And you might even relate to some of my story, you know. And hopefully, there will be some things you can grab onto. 

I know there will be, which is why I’m going to ask you to share this with three people. Today, we don’t take promotions, but this is how we grow and continue to impact more, and you’re a part of that by sharing it. All right, if you’re like me, you may be. I grew up in a very poor household. Now, when I say poor. Here’s what took place in my home. You know, my dad was, as far as I could remember, he was an insurance salesman, a life insurance salesman, a term life insurance salesman, in the ghetto, in Chicago, to the point where we would go around and collect premiums. They were always cash. Premiums go door to door, people that he would sign on to policies, you know, little policies like $5,000 policies, $10,000 life insurance policies, really just so they would have money to pay for the funerals if something would happen to them, so their family wasn’t burdened, you know. And he would go around and collect the cash payments for these. He’d always carry around wads of cash. I mean, he got robbed many times, a couple of times at gunpoint, too. And this is what would happen. And my mom, you know, they both had, you know, I guess kind of some corporate jobs. 

She was a bookkeeper prior to having kids for a large grocery chain, Dominic’s, which doesn’t exist anymore in Chicago, made good money, especially while I was the only child, because for the first five years of my life, at least, from what I was told anyways, both my parents worked. Things were going pretty well, but then things shifted when my brother was born five years later, my sister was born six years at six years after I was born, so five and six years after I was born, is when my brother and sister were born. They’re a year apart, and that’s when my mom quit her job to stay home, because at that point, I mean, you’ve got a one-year-old, it was like a 12-month-old or a 13 month old at the time, and another baby that was just born, a newborn, and you got me, because at that point I was in kindergarten, of course, I was going to start to go to go to school full time during the day, so a little better, but still, it just didn’t make financial sense, and I can attest to that personally at having twins as the first kids that that came into my life, because it didn’t make sense to have both parents working when daycare cost was so high, it just didn’t make any sense. Because of the salaries that could be made at the time, and I wasn’t making very much money at the time, it just didn’t make sense to offset the cost of daycare. 

So I understand my mom’s choice. I completely understand my mom’s choice to stay home, and I’m sure it was a collaborative choice with my dad. But from that point on, for as long as I can remember, there was not a lot of money floating around. I mean, I would try to earn some stuff when I was 12 years old and older, and cutting the lawn. And my parents would pay me $5 to mow the lawn. That was cool. And sometimes it would be some money for me to go do some things like go to Six Flags park with my friends, or some things with church. I was heavily involved in a youth group that was there. You know, we really never went out and it guys. It was a special day. It was a special day when we would go to McDonald’s for dinner, and I was allowed to order chicken nuggets. Okay, because chicken nuggets were more expensive than a hamburger, a cheeseburger Happy Meal. Actually, we wouldn’t even get Happy Meals, right, because the toys would jack up the price so much. We would just order burgers and fries, and we would even share two drinks amongst the family of five. I love my dad. I hated sharing with him because that dude would just like freaking slobber all over the straw. It’s. So that was, like, the big thing when I’m like, can I just get my own drink? You know, because we would share two drinks amongst five people, just to keep the price down, and even to the point where I wish I was making this up. I’m not, though, because my parents did everything they possibly could for us. 

They used to have these 10-cent hamburger days at McDonald’s, right, or 25-cent cheeseburger days, right? And notice the difference in price there from 10 cents to 25 cents. There are 15 cents in between. My mom would bring Kraft Singles to McDonald’s so we could order the 10-cent burgers because the Kraft Singles cost less per slice than the 15 cents that McDonald’s would charge for these special days, these hamburger and cheeseburger deal days, I think they were like Tuesday nights or something like that. You know, the slowest night. And that’s how they would bring people in. But my mom would bring her own cheese for us. That’s the life I grew up with. You know? That was the low amount of dollars that flowed through the Jordan household as I grew up. It was just insane. Now, when I look back at it, and it’s like, Geez, how do we survive? And even though there were all those things, there’s this craziness that existed, where still almost everything that, at least at the time, that I felt like I wanted to do, I was able to do, you know, there was, of course, times that they would say no, there were times to where we didn’t even have Christmas gifts. And the church that we were a part of actually would deliver Christmas gifts because my parents couldn’t afford Christmas gifts that year, right? And the only thing I’ve mentioned this before, the only thing that my parents ever fought about, really, was money, because it was just so tight. And then as I started getting into my double-digit years, I remember asking the question, it’s crazy, the stuff you can actually remember from your childhood that sticks out. I remember asking the question, you know, why can’t I have an allowance?

You know, there are things that I want to do, and all my friends have an allowance, they get a certain amount of money from their parents. And my dad came back. He’s like, Well, I’ve got a choice for you. Would you rather have an allowance or would you rather be able to do things as they come up and we just make them happen? Like, what do you mean? Dad? He’s like, Well, you know, this was especially when I was getting, like, 13 and 14 years old, and I would and I would go to great America. I obviously didn’t have a job. Great America is a Six Flags park, and I wanted an annual pass to Six Flags to go with my best friend, Dan, growing up. And we would go there a lot, you know, a lot of times his parents would drive us there. And we would actually pack lunches that way. We could save money and tailgate it in the Six Flags parking lot, you know, sandwiches, chips, all that kind of thing to really lower down. I mean, we were 13 and 14 years old right there. And his older sister was, you know, like, five years old enough she could drive. She would drive a lot. We would just go in there and hang out. It was, it was an awesome couple of summers with that. This came back to my parents buying that season pass for me, and that was the point my dad was making. He’s like, would you rather have an allowance, or would you rather have us do everything we possibly can to try to work things out when they come up? 

And my dad, being an insurance salesman is he had to go out and make his own income. He was completely commissioned on these life insurance policies. And this is probably where, you know, some of the things that I grew up in that gave me the sense that, well, we can always make it happen. You know, the money’s not there right now. Whatever. I need to go buy a $5 million company and acquire an MSP, the CFO is like, do we have the money? I’m like, nope, but we’re gonna find it. We’re gonna go get it. We’re gonna keep proceeding down this route. Because I know that we can do this. We can create these things. Because all the way back, I watched my dad create stuff out of thin air all the time to where he would go and be like, Okay, if I need to buy my son, he wants an annual pass, and that’s something maybe I can get him for his birthday, for Christmas, whatever it’s 50 bucks. And $50 doesn’t sound like a lot of money, but when you’re bringing your own cheese to a McDonald’s 10-cent hamburger night to save money, $50 is a lot of money. Okay, in the Jordan household, he would work backward and be like, how many new policies do I have to sell this month, what do I need to do in order to make ends meet? What do I have to do to create the income to provide these things to my family, provide food for my kids, provide a nice life that I want to be able to hang out with my kids, and keep them in baseball because I played baseball for nine years? He always had this mentality. 

You know what? I can make anything happen, I can create these things

hands down, even though there were a couple of times when he would have to say no to things. His question is, would you rather have an allowance, or would you rather us figure things out as they come up? I am so glad that I chose to figure. Things out. And there were times I’m sure that he would sacrifice some stuff too, other things that were going on in order to make sure that I could have an annual pass to Six Flags, or whatever else that there was going on. Or maybe, you know, I remember, he liked to eat out for lunch once a week. It was just something he liked to do, rather than bringing a sandwich with there could have been some weeks in order to provide to me that he would make a sacrifice to where, like, you know, I don’t need to eat out this week because my dude wants to do something. There’s something he wants to do, and that’s no problem. I can take a sandwich one extra day this week in order to provide that to him. My parents were never rich, yet they still provided to give me an amazing childhood, because they always thought, especially my dad always would think, that I could create whatever I needed to. So if you’re looking back and be like, Man, my childhood sucked. We never had any money or anything as you know, mine did too. You heard it today. 

You heard exactly what my childhood looked like. And I’ve come to realize because there were times where I looked back, I’m like, Man, I wish my dad would have pushed himself more, because I think he only made max, maximum, like 40k a year, or something like that, throughout the whole breadth of my childhood, until he died when I was 16. But I look back and he always made some of the things that were important to me because of the sacrifices that he made in order to provide such an amazing childhood for me. Even though it was a poor childhood, there was still so much that I was able to do and even learn from him and take it to the next level because of the choices that he was able to make. He didn’t fail by not making much money, he won by showing me exactly how you can create the life that you want to create, and then, no matter what comes at you,, even if you have to sacrifice today to provide something for tomorrow, it’s okay. So take a look back at your child, and if you had a struggling financial childhood like I did, there might have been some sacrifices that your parents could have made during those time periods to get you certain things, to allow you to do certain things in your life that brought a smile to your face, and now you find yourselves doing the same thing or wanting to do the same things for your kids, going forward because of the awesomeness that your parents were able to provide by their sacrifices, even though they were not rich.