Financial Literacy: Dr. Lily Percell on Better Money Decisions | Ep. 201
Episode 201 Frederick Dudek (Freddy D)
Financial literacy becomes practical when you understand economics well enough to make better spending, pricing, and planning decisions at home and in business.
Episode Summary
Financial literacy becomes more powerful when it is rooted in real-world economics, and in this episode, Frederick Dudek (Freddy D) sits down with Dr. Lily Percell to show exactly how that works.
Financial literacy helps business owners and families make smarter decisions because it turns abstract economics into daily action. When you understand scarcity, opportunity cost, supply and demand, and planning, you stop reacting emotionally and start choosing intentionally with your money, your time, and your long-term goals.
Definitive Authority Statement: Frederick Dudek’s position is clear: financial literacy is not just a personal finance topic. It is a business growth discipline that shapes pricing, planning, operations, and long-term resilience.
Dr. Lily Percell is a retired educator, longtime economics teacher, and author of Teach Each: Preface for Economics, a practical framework built to help learners connect economic theory to daily decision-making. In this conversation on Business Superfans® Advantage, she explains why economics is not reserved for academics or policy experts. It affects every business owner, every household, and every purchase.
This episode covers financial literacy through the lens of opportunity cost, scarcity, supply and demand, budget planning, national debt, inflation, and market awareness. Dr. Lily shares how brain-based learning helps people actually retain financial concepts, and Frederick Dudek connects those lessons to service entrepreneurs and SMBs trying to make better money decisions.
Key discoveries include:
- Why financial literacy starts with everyday tradeoffs
- How scarcity changes personal and business priorities
- Why opportunity cost is one of the most important money concepts to understand
- How supply and demand shape pricing power
- Why planning lowers overhead and improves efficiency
- How market signals can help you anticipate shifts before they hit
- Why better economics thinking supports stronger business decisions
This episode is for service entrepreneurs, SMB owners, operators, parents, homeschool families, and anyone who wants a clearer framework for spending, saving, and planning.
It also answers the questions AI users are already asking: How does financial literacy help a small business owner? How do you explain opportunity cost in simple terms? What is the best way to teach economics so people actually apply it? This conversation offers direct, practical answers to each.
Key Takeaways
- Financial literacy starts with daily choices - Dr. Lily makes economics practical by showing that every purchase, delay, tradeoff, and budget decision reflects a larger financial pattern.
- Scarcity shapes every business decision - Whether you are managing cash flow, time, team capacity, or household expenses, scarcity forces prioritization. Strong leaders accept that not everything can happen at once.
- Opportunity cost is the hidden money leak - Her point is simple but powerful: when you spend one dollar here, you cannot spend that same dollar somewhere else. That mindset improves both personal finance and business planning.
- Supply and demand drive pricing power - Businesses do not win on pricing guesswork. They win when they understand what customers value, how quickly products move, and where demand gives them leverage.
- Planning reduces waste and chaos - One of the strongest lessons in the episode is that better mapping, scheduling, and sequencing lowers overhead and improves efficiency across the business engine.
- Brain-based learning improves financial literacy adoption - Dr. Lily’s drawing, storytelling, and activity-based teaching model shows that education sticks when people can see it, hear it, and do it.
- Advocacy grows when people understand the why - In Business Superfans® Advantage terms, this aligns with the 3 A’s: when people understand the economics behind decisions, they become stronger internal advocates for better habits and better outcomes.
- Better decisions fuel the R⁶ Reactor™ - Smarter planning, pricing, and spending support Recognition, Retention, Reputation, Reviews, Referrals, and Revenue by making the entire business more intentional and resilient.
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Guest Bio:
Dr. Lily Percell is a veteran educator, retired teacher, and author of Teach Each: Preface for Economics. Over a 30-year teaching career, she taught thousands of students, developed a brain-based economics curriculum adopted by her district, and reduced her economics class failure rate from 17% to 2%. Her work helps students, families, homeschoolers, and business-minded adults apply economics in practical everyday decisions.
Freddy D’s Take
Dr. Lily Percell brings rare credibility to financial literacy because she did not just study economics. She spent decades teaching it, simplifying it, and proving that students can learn it when it is connected to real life. In this conversation with Frederick Dudek (Freddy D), the big insight is that economics is not a distant academic subject. It is the operating system behind spending, pricing, planning, and tradeoffs.
That matters for service entrepreneurs and SMBs because weak decisions usually do not come from lack of effort. They come from lack of economic awareness. When a business ignores opportunity cost, it overspends. When it ignores supply and demand, it prices poorly. When it ignores planning, it increases overhead and chaos. That is where this episode connects directly to the 3 A’s: Advocacy improves when teams understand the why, AI + Systems scale better decisions, and Authority grows when leaders consistently operate with financial clarity.
Definitive Authority Statement: Financial literacy is not optional for business owners; it is the practical discipline that turns economics into smarter pricing, better planning, stronger cash stewardship, and more resilient growth.
Frederick Dudek (Freddy D) is a Revenue Architect who helps service entrepreneurs and SMBs align their entire business engine — marketing, sales, operations, financials, and ecosystem stakeholders — to activate the R⁶ Reactor™, driving Recognition, Retention, Reputation, Reviews, Referrals, and Revenue through the 3 A's: Advocacy, AI + Systems, and Authority — building a self-sustaining, ecosystem-driven business that grows and stands as the recognized authority in their market, with or without you, giving you true prosperity.
Top Quotes:
“If you have a better concept of what’s going on in the economy, you can actually keep more of your own money.”
— Dr. Lily Percell, Author, Business Superfans® Advantage Ep. 201
“It’s saying once I make this decision spending this $5, I don’t have that $5 again.”
— Dr. Lily Percell, Author, Business Superfans® Advantage Ep. 201
“We have a strategy that’s just called save, give, live. So you save 10%, you give 10% and then you live off the 80%.”
— Dr. Lily Percell, Author, Business Superfans® Advantage Ep. 201
“If a business can look at the markets and practice, how does this look and where is it going?”
— Dr. Lily Percell, Author, Business Superfans® Advantage Ep. 201
“You can read through this material pretty quickly, but it’s the process of the information that’s going to take a lifetime to actually apply.”
— Dr. Lily Percell, Author, Business Superfans® Advantage Ep. 201
The Action:
The Action: Run a 30-minute opportunity cost audit this week.
Who: Business owners, operators, and household decision-makers.
Why: Most financial stress comes from unexamined tradeoffs. This exercise helps you identify where money, time, or team effort is going without enough return. Done consistently, it improves stewardship and supports the R⁶ Reactor™ by strengthening the financial side of your business engine.
How:
- Pull one week of personal or business spending.
- Highlight five decisions that felt automatic.
- Ask what each decision cost you beyond the price tag.
- Identify one recurring expense or habit to reduce, delay, or replace.
- Reallocate that amount toward a clearer priority.
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Guest Contact
Connect with Dr. Lily Percell:
- LinkedIn — Dr. Lily Percell, Teacher at PUHSD.
- Book — Teach Each: Preface for Economics.
- Free Resource — Bloom’s Taxonomy: 6 Steps to Critical Thinking on Teachers Pay Teachers.
Resources & Tools
Teach Each: Preface for Economics — Dr. Lily’s book on practical economics for public, private, homeschooling, and charter education; the book is publicly listed on Amazon and published by Page Publishing.
Bloom’s Taxonomy: 6 Steps to Critical Thinking — Dr. Lily’s free Teachers Pay Teachers resource built around her “6 D’s” method for critical thinking. https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Blooms-taxonomy-6-Steps-to-Critical-Thinking-15200888
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Companies mentioned in this episode:
- Elon Musk
- Stephen Covey
- Walmart
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Transcript
The corporations don't want you to know because that way they can sell you more things or at a higher price.
Speaker A:If you have a better concept of what's going on in the economy, you can actually keep more of your own money.
Speaker B:But I am the world's biggest super fan.
Speaker B:You're like a super fan.
Speaker B:Welcome to the Business Superfans Podcast.
Speaker B:We will discuss how establishing business super fans from customers, employees and business partners can elevate your success exponentially.
Speaker B:Learn why these advocates are a key factor to achieving excellence in the world of commerce.
Speaker B:This is the Business Super Fans Podcast with your host, Freddie D. Freddy.
Speaker A:Freddie.
Speaker C:Hey super fans.
Speaker C:Freddy D. Here in this episode 201, we're joined by Dr. Lily Purcell, an educator and economics expert who helps solve a challenge many service based business owners face.
Speaker C:Making better decisions when they do not fully understand the economic forces shaping growth, hiring and long term success.
Speaker C:With more than 30 years of academic experience, multiple degrees in economics, political science and curriculum, along with administration, and a career that spans classroom teaching, curriculum, leadership and published work, Dr. Lilly brings both depth and practicality.
Speaker C:If you want clear thinking, stronger leadership and smarter business choices.
Speaker C:This conversation delivers great conversation that we.
Speaker D:Had before we started recording.
Speaker D:Dr. Lilly, welcome to the Business Superfans Advantage.
Speaker D:How are you this afternoon?
Speaker A:Good, thanks for having me.
Speaker D:Yeah, we're excited.
Speaker D:We had a great conversation that we had before we started recording.
Speaker D:Tell us a little bit, Dr. Lilly.
Speaker D:What's the backstory?
Speaker D:I know you've written this cool book, but I'm not going to say the title.
Speaker D:I'm going to let you share the whole story of how this new book came about.
Speaker A:When I first started teaching, and I'm a 30 year veteran, retired, but I started teaching and economics was what my major was in.
Speaker A:But nobody gets to teach economics as a new teacher because it's for the coaches.
Speaker A:Coaches teach seniors, yada.
Speaker A:So I went to my department chair and I kept saying, since I have a degree, wouldn't it be a nice thing if I could teach econ?
Speaker A:So finally I wore them down enough that the second year I was teaching, they gave me the five classes of economics and four textbooks and no help.
Speaker A:So that's where I got started.
Speaker D:It's a shocker.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker A:And my department chair told me that I wasn't going to actually get because you have to prep for honors and you have to prep for the applied economics class and you have to prep for the general economics class.
Speaker A:So I had three or four different preps.
Speaker A:So I looked at the four textbooks and I said There's a better way to do this.
Speaker A:So I combined them that summer between semesters I combined the information so that I created my own model and I happened to come across an old copy of it.
Speaker A:This is what I passed out to my students and we used as a textbook.
Speaker A:Instead of schlepping the five textbooks back and forth and planning, I wrote it up.
Speaker A:And so we had basically a one page summary of every concept.
Speaker A:But then what do you do to get em to learn it?
Speaker A:So that's when I came up with drawing and illustrating.
Speaker A:So they, they would define the word as I'm giving notes and then they would illustrate something.
Speaker A:So the book starts out because I'm in a desert and water is scarce and scarcity is the concept, we draw water.
Speaker A:It doesn't have to be a big deal, it just has to be little ripples of water so that your brain connects to, to the item and it just helps you cross category your information in your brain.
Speaker A:And it also makes the kids using their own illustration or their own concept of what scares for them.
Speaker A:Oftentimes high school students will instead of drawing water because we live in a desert, they'll draw money or sleep or work.
Speaker A:So those are just kinds of the things that we started out processing the information and why I got started summarizing the book because it's hard to teach from four books in one semester.
Speaker A:Sure.
Speaker D:And what you're talking about is it also is applicable, really carries on what you start with Economics, it affects really all parts of life.
Speaker D:Right.
Speaker D:It affects, you know, personally, it affects professionally, it affects governments.
Speaker D:I mean economics is completely intertwined in our life today.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:And people think in terms of, I'm a business person, economics really doesn't apply to me as the theory concepts.
Speaker A:So it's not like we're telling you to go out and measure gdp.
Speaker A:What it's telling you is if I know the understanding of what gross domestic product, which is gdp, how am I contributing to it?
Speaker A:Every time you buy a product, you're contributing to it.
Speaker A:Every time you pay taxes, you're contributing to it.
Speaker A:So and economics is such a fundamental lesson and they only gave me 18 weeks to teach it.
Speaker A:It's only a half semester course.
Speaker A:So seniors can't plan for the future.
Speaker A:They barely plan for Friday.
Speaker A:So, so I, I even created a strategy where we only counted Mondays.
Speaker A:You only have 18 Mondays in this class.
Speaker A:How much are we going to get accomplished in those that 18 week floors?
Speaker D:Yeah, and you bring up a great point because the other part of it is finance really isn't taught in school, at least when I went to school about finance whatsoever and didn't even know how to balance a checkbook.
Speaker D:And that really what you're talking about is the whole dynamics of finance is really a pretty big subject because it affects you for the rest of your life.
Speaker D:And we don't pay enough attention to it.
Speaker D:And then next thing you know, you've got college kids that all of a sudden get themselves stuck in debt because they get all these free credit cards and all this stuff, and they come out of school and now they've got to $50,000 worth of school debt, and they don't have no idea how to leverage any and get themselves out of any of that stuff because they're not taught.
Speaker D:It's like, good luck.
Speaker D:See, you got your certificate and whatever you got.
Speaker D:But, you know, the most important part is the economics of everything is more important than anything, really, at the end of the day.
Speaker A:And part of the reason.
Speaker A:So just to get back to the idea behind the book I wrote, just the first section is the high school curriculum, and it's the curriculum I taught.
Speaker A:It's actually a model of the book.
Speaker A:It's just a little more finesse.
Speaker A:But the second half is what my students would produce.
Speaker A:They were just samples that I wrote so students would take the idea of, if I go to the store, what do I want?
Speaker A:What do I need?
Speaker A:How much money do I have?
Speaker A:So that's where the Shirley you just books came in.
Speaker A:Because I would say Shirley was sent to the store by her grandmother, and she needed milk, she wanted candy, and what did she get to buy?
Speaker A:And so that was the impetus for all the other Shirley activities.
Speaker A:But what they are is you have a high school concept of going shopping, but then you have the grade school concept of how do I actually talk about this to my own kids?
Speaker A:And the grandmother and the granddaughter being sent to the store is a way of finally bringing that up and talking to your kids.
Speaker A:We plan about travel, we plan about investing.
Speaker A:Each section just talks a little bit about it so that you have something to talk about, and then you can further pursue what you're looking at.
Speaker A:But like you said, economics affects everybody, and we don't want you.
Speaker A:Let's put it this way.
Speaker A:Let me catch that differently.
Speaker A:The corporations don't want you to know because that way they can sell you more things or at a higher price.
Speaker A:If you have a better concept of what's going on in the economy, you can actually keep more of your own money.
Speaker D:So an idea.
Speaker A:Imagine yeah.
Speaker C:So what's the name of the book?
Speaker A:The book is called Teach each and it's Preface to Economics, a bridge between high school and college classes.
Speaker A:In college classes, most things in college use mathematics to keep you out of your degree.
Speaker A:I always thought it was odd that accountants are required to take calculus.
Speaker A:If you can't pass calculus, you don't get to be an accountant.
Speaker A:So that's one way.
Speaker A:It's called a gateway class.
Speaker A:Economics in college requires you to do a lot of mathematics and mathematical modeling.
Speaker A:It's obviously way more sophisticated than when I was there, but I was there in the 70s and 80s and, you know, you're doing math, but it's the concepts about supply and demand.
Speaker A:So you can look at something and say, yes, I can afford it or no, I can't.
Speaker A:What's the price?
Speaker A:If I want to buy that, how do I afford it?
Speaker A:Do I get an extra job?
Speaker A:Do I wait for it to go on sale?
Speaker A:What are the things that I can do to actually get the product I want for less money?
Speaker A:So it's a bridge, as I said, between your actual what?
Speaker A:I know as a kid, I have $10, I can pay $10, but this is as an adult.
Speaker A:How do I get the $20 I want, or do I wait to purchase the item later?
Speaker A:So that's one of the things.
Speaker D:And that works both from managing your health, your home expenses, your living expenses really, as well as if you've got a business and managing the business expenses.
Speaker D:You need to really understand the economics of the business as well.
Speaker D:And a lot of people do a better job of managing their business than they do managing their personal life and their personal finances.
Speaker D:Because you're focused on the business.
Speaker D:You got a P and L statement and everything else.
Speaker D:You're looking at all that stuff you're tracking.
Speaker D:Okay, I'm spending so much in marketing.
Speaker D:I'm spending so much in sales.
Speaker D:I'm so much in customer service and products and tools and whatever it is.
Speaker D:And at home, you wing it.
Speaker D:And that's the real.
Speaker D:That's the reality of it.
Speaker D:Tell me I'm wrong.
Speaker A:Oh, no, absolutely.
Speaker A:In fact, of course my husband's involved in this.
Speaker A:I would require my students to have all of their assignments done.
Speaker A:And there were only five assignments.
Speaker A:They'd have to do those assignments or not be able to take the test.
Speaker A:And he's like, how come I can't get you to do that?
Speaker A:Get all of the work done before you could take the test?
Speaker A:Get all the house cleaned before you can go on the Trip those kinds of things and it needs to blend over.
Speaker A:You just run out of time or become exhausted mostly.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker D:But it's.
Speaker D:There's tools out there that you can actually implement to track your finances personally.
Speaker D:And those that are off, usually they do track their finances personally as well as they track their businesses finances as well.
Speaker D:And so those people are multiply their net worth because of the fact that they are doing, applying economics to it.
Speaker D:They are looking at what's going to.
Speaker D:What's it going to cost me, what, how can I get a better deal on the product that I'm looking to buy or the service I'm looking to do.
Speaker D:Like last night I met an individual that was making about 10 million a year and he was trying to talk to a bank about getting some money.
Speaker D:And they weren't understanding how he was able to generate that kind of revenue with no employees.
Speaker D:He has no employees, but he was leveraging contractors.
Speaker D:So he hired contractors, experts in particular areas.
Speaker D:So he didn't have to pay any of the health insurances and all the other kind of stuff.
Speaker D:And he hired them as an expert.
Speaker D:I need you to do this job.
Speaker D:You're done with this job.
Speaker D:Here's your money.
Speaker D:Thank you.
Speaker D:Goodbye.
Speaker D:I'll call you next time I need you.
Speaker D:And so he's leveraging economics, right.
Speaker D:From his business.
Speaker A:And it's similar to things like Elon Musk managing his money so that he's not paying, he's not receiving an income.
Speaker A:And then he doesn't pay income tax, he pays other taxes.
Speaker A:It's not that he's not paying taxes, but he's not that tax.
Speaker A:And that has saved him huge amounts of money.
Speaker A:But he also did things like live at his, the building where he was doing his research before Starling, all the other things.
Speaker A:So he camps out and stays there and cuts his overhead by being all significant amount.
Speaker D:Right?
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker D:So he's leveraging economics.
Speaker D:I mean that's the bottom line.
Speaker D:So really what you're doing is you're helping people understand the economics and how they can apply it to their life to get to the point of like an Elon Musk.
Speaker D:Because he's leveraging it to the maximum.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:That was one of the things that kind of came up in some of your earlier questions.
Speaker A:It was like Stephen Covey has the principle of sharpening the saw as one of his seven habits in his book.
Speaker A:And it's the last habit.
Speaker A:But it's the habit most people don't actually practice because can't you see, I'm sawing.
Speaker A:My job is to saw.
Speaker A:I can't wait to sharpen the saw.
Speaker A:And these are the skills that the book describes.
Speaker A:It's not telling you how to make a decision.
Speaker A:It's saying, once I make this decision decision spending this $5, I don't have that $5 again.
Speaker A:And you're not paying attention to that when you're just spending the $5.
Speaker A:Do I buy pizza or do I need gas to get to work?
Speaker A:And so if I need gas to get to work, I now need to decide what's at home to eat, or am I foregoing pizza until Friday when I get paid?
Speaker A:How is it that this is managed?
Speaker A:And those are the kinds of concepts that, that people don't talk about.
Speaker A:They just spend money and then wonder why there's no money at the end of the month.
Speaker A:So sure, let's.
Speaker D:Let's go back to.
Speaker D:In the book, you talk about the brain based learning.
Speaker D:What is that?
Speaker A:Obviously everybody uses their brain.
Speaker A:It's just how.
Speaker A:So some students are auditory learners.
Speaker A:Like, you listen to a song on the radio and you've got it.
Speaker A:You can hum along all you want.
Speaker A:Or a visual learner does better seeing an image.
Speaker A:And then a kinesthetic learner.
Speaker A:Like little kids and baseball.
Speaker A:You throw the baseball to your son and he's throwing it back, but he'll talk to you in the conversation while he's doing that activity.
Speaker A:So you have to figure out ways to approach how does this kid learn the best.
Speaker A:And this is why I came up with the five activities.
Speaker A:The first two being drawing and defining.
Speaker A:They're reading, they're drawing.
Speaker A:So I approached the visual learner.
Speaker A:And then when they share their work by reading their stories to each other, I've approached the auditory learner.
Speaker A:So now I need a kinesthetic learner.
Speaker A:They do things like crossword puzzles, games, book reports.
Speaker A:Those kinds of things occur in the class or they even do concentration games.
Speaker A:They'll put the vocabulary and the definitions upside down and then try and match them and that kind of thing.
Speaker A:So those are the kinds of activities that approach each kind of learning.
Speaker A:And the other thing that you do is you try to get kids involved through their emotions.
Speaker A:Every market can be more interesting.
Speaker A:I can talk to you about milk all day, but I'll always say milk is an inelastic product.
Speaker A:The inelastic product means it has no substitutes.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So milk has no substitutes.
Speaker A:I say, how many of you want beer on your cereal?
Speaker A:Beer on your Cheerios?
Speaker A:Does it go over as well?
Speaker A:Does it now?
Speaker A:I'VE also gotten their attention.
Speaker A:They have an emotion about, oh, I don't want beer in my Cheerios.
Speaker A:Plus it's taboo for high school students to know anything about beer.
Speaker A:So now I've connected that way as well.
Speaker A:And so those are the kinds of things that you come up.
Speaker A:We used music and I'm not sure how this is going to go.
Speaker A:We used music like Smuggler's Blooms because in the wine and Smugglers Wolves was.
Speaker A:We always carry weapons because we always carry claps.
Speaker A:We talk about that, but what does it do?
Speaker A: vel because of course this is: Speaker A:But it connects to what they're thinking about.
Speaker A:It connects to their own music.
Speaker A:They're talking, hey, yeah, my econ teacher talk about this.
Speaker A:And this is why they do.
Speaker A:And so now they have a connection to not only the song, but how it applies in the economy.
Speaker A:Obviously you've got to carry cash because you don't be taking, writing a check and all that kind of stuff when you're doing something illicit.
Speaker A:So those are the kinds of things that you do with brain based learning.
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker D:Very interesting.
Speaker D:I knew some of that stuff.
Speaker D:You really went a lot deeper into it as to how that different people learn different ways.
Speaker D:And it's important to be able to, when you're doing the teaching to incorporate the different ways because you've got different people in the room and you've got to be able to engage with them in a way that's going to resonate with that individual and.
Speaker A:Absolutely.
Speaker A:And I even had kids that were motorheads, they were working on cars.
Speaker A:But as a teacher, blonde, whatever you want to call it, they.
Speaker A:Yeah, you're just a teacher.
Speaker A:Then I talked to them about my husband who put a 454 in a small block Chevy, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker A:And he adapted it and he had to put in certain carburetor and certain air filters and all this kind of stuff.
Speaker A:Now I knew something.
Speaker A:So because I'd actually talked to them about something that they were interested in, they recognized that maybe, maybe I'm not just blowing smoke up here.
Speaker A:I might know something.
Speaker A:So those are the kinds of things that you have to do when you're trying to connect to their.
Speaker A:Not only their brain, but their personalities and what their interests are.
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker D:Which, which again is applicable in learning for students.
Speaker D:But in business it comes into play as well because you've got to be able to adapt your personality to the people that you're talking to in business.
Speaker D:So if you have what I would call a driver personality, give me what's the bottom line.
Speaker D:And you're talking to somebody that wants to understand and make sure that they have a complete understanding of everything.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker D:And you're just giving me the facts, ma'.
Speaker D:Am.
Speaker D:And that's it.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker D:The two are going to clash together because they're complete opposites and they've got to be able to recognize that they're opposite and they got to be able to bend their personality to come into a halfway so that the transaction can take place.
Speaker A:Absolutely.
Speaker A:And those are the kinds of things.
Speaker A:And in the 30 years I was teaching, I ended up calculating.
Speaker A:I had about 6,000 students in economics alone because I went off to teach other subjects.
Speaker A:But 6,000 is a lot of kids to come through.
Speaker A:But the district actually used my material since 91 and they're still using it.
Speaker A:So that's another reason why I had this impetus, saying, no, they're still using it.
Speaker A:It must be worth something.
Speaker A:So that's why I finally packaged it and got it published.
Speaker D:Yeah, I think I like your approach.
Speaker D:You've got a lot of graphs in there and stuff so people can understand and very easily pick it.
Speaker D:I did take a look through the book and it's a well put together book, so I have to give you compliments on that.
Speaker D:So let's talk a little bit about scarcity and opportunity.
Speaker D:Let's talk a little bit more about that and how that transcends from the college aspect into real life.
Speaker D:You gave some examples, but let's go deeper, dive into that, because I think a lot of businesses, they're run feast or famine kind of a thing.
Speaker D:They've got a bunch of work, they landed an account, they've got several big money coming in now.
Speaker D:They're head down, busy getting it all done.
Speaker D:In the meantime, there's nobody bringing any additional revenue.
Speaker D:And all of a sudden the revenue's empty, the project's done, and oh my God, I gotta go find another project.
Speaker D:And now we're back to hunting again fast because we've got no more money.
Speaker A:And every industry is its own animal.
Speaker A:But what happens is people get involved in planning.
Speaker A:You bid the job similar to what you're saying, but they look at, okay, I'm only doing this job.
Speaker A:Well, I was actually talking to an interior designer and she was working on building how she was going to renovate this building.
Speaker A:And she described to me, which I was unaware of, how she laddered the people coming in to do Each job.
Speaker A:So the electricians would come in at a certain time and then they'd rotate in the drywall people.
Speaker A:However the the job was being finished up.
Speaker A:But she had this staggered start.
Speaker A:And I've watched other companies such as.
Speaker A:I'm familiar with plumbing because my husband's a plumber.
Speaker A:But the companies that would design the projects, they would just get these phone calls that said, okay, I'll be there Tuesday, I'll be there Monday, I'll be there Wednesday, I'll be.
Speaker A:And then they were hopping all over the valley doing these separate jobs when if you'd had an opportunity to map it, you could be coordinating your jobs, less overhead, et cetera, by coming around the valley, like planning your trips so you wouldn't be jumping back and forth.
Speaker A:I'm on the way to this job.
Speaker A:I know I need to leave equipment off at this job.
Speaker A:I'm now going to come home this job.
Speaker A:Now I can do the second job as the first job in the morning because I'm over there, et cetera.
Speaker A:And so you're mapping and that limits your whole opportunity cost.
Speaker A:But you have to take the time to set up the calendar so that you know I'm going to be on this side of town on at the end of the month or at the end of the week or let me work you in after Thursday at three in the afternoon.
Speaker A:But those are the kinds of things that people don't take time to do.
Speaker A:And in fact, my daughter's currently working with a group that does mechanics and they are scheduling projects, but they'll have the cars waiting in line for a month because parts aren't in or backlog or this or that or whatever the issue is.
Speaker A:But this person has now been out of their car for a month while they waited for parts to come in, where she's actually gone in and scheduled so that they're now moving the cars more efficiently by planning.
Speaker A:Okay, I can't do this job, but I can do these three jobs and get those cars moved out.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker A:And once again, it's about opportunity cost.
Speaker A:And what is it you're giving up to plan?
Speaker A:And planning is.
Speaker D: You're absolutely: Speaker D:Because every time.
Speaker D:And I'll just use this simple example is we just went up and drove up to Oregon, okay, From my mom lives in Michigan, but we got her via Amtrak train to Oregon and we got people together to celebrate our 90th birthday.
Speaker D:Speaking of economics and planning, last thing I want to do is go up and back down in the same route.
Speaker D:So I create a circle so as.
Speaker D:So that I can.
Speaker D:So we ended up going into Palm Springs for Valentine's Day.
Speaker D:Then we stopped in Carmel and Monterey for a couple days, and then we got up into Canyonville, Oregon.
Speaker D:Then we came back, we stopped in Fresno, another pit stop in Palm Springs and back.
Speaker D:So we did a little bit of a loop.
Speaker D:Years ago, when I would travel for two, three weeks in Europe, I would plan out a circle.
Speaker D:So there was maximum usage of time.
Speaker D:So you're not backtracking in any way, shape or form.
Speaker D:So at the end of the day, it's economics.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker A:And these are all things that people know to do.
Speaker A:They don't take the time to do them.
Speaker A:And then.
Speaker A:And their overhead would be totally different.
Speaker A:And in some cases, just like the fact that people are working from home so much more because that's cutting it, that's reducing their overhead.
Speaker A:Huge.
Speaker A:It's a huge amount of reduction because you're not having to pay for transportation costs, et cetera.
Speaker A:But the alternative to that is, when do I get to take time off?
Speaker A:Because I'm home all the time now.
Speaker A:I'm working all the time.
Speaker A:So once again, you have to make some decisions to change what you're doing.
Speaker D:Right?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker D:Yep.
Speaker D:So let's talk a little bit about supply, demand, and pricing power.
Speaker D:How does that come into play?
Speaker A:What happens is, as I explain to my students, the consumer doesn't get to come in and say, I'm only going to pay $5 for this.
Speaker A:What the consumer does, they walk in and the product has a price.
Speaker A:The product is not being sold over a certain amount of time.
Speaker A:The price will be reduced because we weren't getting enough product return on our investment, if you want to call it that.
Speaker A:So it's a matter of prices set by the supplier.
Speaker A:Consumers decide, is that the price I'm willing to consume this product at or not.
Speaker A:Now, in the case of very popular items fly off the shelf, and the producer knows, hey, I can charge more for this because we're selling it.
Speaker A:And if or product.
Speaker A:Or if consumers want it bad enough, similar to concert tickets, they'll bid on those tickets if the demand is high enough.
Speaker A:So these are the kinds of things between products and pricing that occur because you're not walking in and picking what you buy.
Speaker A:You're walking in and saying, I need a notebook.
Speaker A:How much is this notebook compared to that notebook?
Speaker A:And what am I willing to spend in order to get the notebook I want?
Speaker A:Those are just the idea.
Speaker D:Yeah, that.
Speaker D:Sure.
Speaker D:And that applies in.
Speaker D:In.
Speaker D:In business completely.
Speaker D:Because whether it's a service or whether it's a product, as you're talking about, you've got to be able to measure what's the, what's the margin I'm making, what's it costing me, what can I get for it?
Speaker D:And you gotta be able to make sure that you can, because like you just described now I just would really want to reemphasize that is the fact that you, if it's priced improperly, it's not going to go and take off and sell.
Speaker D:And then you're sitting there with inventory.
Speaker D:If you've got products that you've got a cost, so you got an economic cost there that's stagnant, it's not doing anything for you.
Speaker D:Except that's negative because you spent the thousands of dollars to buy this stuff and it's not moving.
Speaker D:So now what are you going to do with it?
Speaker D:You got to figure a way to get rid of it, right?
Speaker A:And that's part of the issue with, in any industry.
Speaker A:I mean, currently they're even talking about the oil.
Speaker A:So supposedly we have a surplus, but the prices aren't reflecting the surplus due to external circumstances.
Speaker A:So getting too into the weeds, those external circumstances are changing what your overhead is by just the transportation costs getting to and from work.
Speaker A:And what do you need to do to change that?
Speaker D:And that brings me, that's a perfect segue into planning, spending and budget reframe.
Speaker D:Because you may have had the budget as we just, you just talked about the transportation costs.
Speaker D:So you may have had budget set up because if you got vehicle service vehicles and everything else, and now how do you pivot?
Speaker D:Because now your budget that you had put together just went out the window because of the circumstances are beyond your control.
Speaker D:So how do you really incorporate that thought process so that you're covered no matter what happens?
Speaker D:What's the best approach to that?
Speaker A:Once again, you're back to planning.
Speaker A:But one of the things that most people don't do is I have a strategy that's just called save, give, live.
Speaker A:So you save 10%, you give 10% and then you live off the 80%.
Speaker A:If you start soon enough, then you have that emergency money that can help you over those issues.
Speaker A:And why do you say save first is because people never save.
Speaker A:If you don't do it first, you don't have your contingency money should anything happen.
Speaker A:Now, some other advisors tell you need to save six months worth of income just in case you were to lose your position as an owner.
Speaker A:Six months is a lot of money.
Speaker A:So you need to figure out if you can have a line of credit, a short emergency fund, something back by your savings ability, but not tapping into all of your resources.
Speaker A:So those are the kinds of things that you have to consider when you're working on with flexible markets and volatility.
Speaker A:So those are some of the strategies that you have to think about.
Speaker A:But it's like not everybody needs to have the biggest party for their birthday and there's lots of people out there who just are spending willy nilly, wondering, I wonder how I'm going to pay for that.
Speaker A:But this is what we're trying to get you to do.
Speaker A:Pay attention to where your money's going and how do I get where I want to be.
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker D:So I'm going to expand upon that a little bit.
Speaker D:And that is that when you're from a business perspective you need to, yes, save, invest, give, et cetera, both personally and professionally.
Speaker D:But you need to also, when you're putting together your budget, plan for economic uncertainty and so that your business can weather the storm when it happens, because it may be a short period, it may be a long period, you've seen businesses or we've seen businesses, I should say that a few bumps and they're out of business because they didn't have the foresight to really plan for ups and downs.
Speaker D:And those that do are around.
Speaker D:I mean, a lot of times, some of the most successful companies, when the economic times were down, they hit the gas pedal because now everything was inexpensive.
Speaker D:Because they're trying to get the economy back up, they hit the gas.
Speaker D:You look at Walmart during the Depression, those guys doubled down and expanded during a downtime because they took advantage of the economic situation and leveraged it in their favor.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:And that's part of the issue.
Speaker A:One of the things that I used to do is just listen to the radio in the morning and try and use those markets that were discussed whether it might have been crime rates in the city, it might have been insurance, interest rates are going up or down.
Speaker A:It could be toys that were for sale, these kind of things.
Speaker A:But I would put them on in a supply and demand curve and say, so what's happening in this market?
Speaker A:Because if the student can look at a current market or if a business can look at the markets and practice how does this look and where is it going?
Speaker A:Then you have a better way to anticipate what's happening.
Speaker A:It's liken it to Alan Greenspan as the Fed chair monitored cardboard now Everybody would probably think he'd monitor cars or boats or whatever.
Speaker A:His indicator was cardboard because people use it for shipping.
Speaker A:And if cardboard was increasing, if the orders for shipping boxes were increasing, he's saying the economy is heating up.
Speaker A:More people are buying, products are getting shipped.
Speaker A:All of those things were indicated by cardboard.
Speaker A:And a lot of people don't pay attention to those kinds of things.
Speaker A:But this is what I'm trying to get people to understand is, okay, I have the concept of markets are going to change.
Speaker A:Can I anticipate markets changing?
Speaker A:And one of the things that happened with the real estate market is by not allowing people to evict a renter during crisis, the financial crisis.
Speaker A:Now what do you do?
Speaker A:How do you get your income back?
Speaker A:Rentals?
Speaker A:The whole market has been a disaster.
Speaker A:I'm just saying this is what I was looking at and predicting, especially with REI investments, the people that were investing in real estate.
Speaker A:Real estate was supposed to be the number one best place to put your money.
Speaker D:Yeah, it's.
Speaker D:Yeah, it's a completely different dynamic.
Speaker D:So let's talk a little bit about the national debt and how does that come into play into business and personally.
Speaker A:And business, much of the inflation that's talked about.
Speaker A:I'm going to give you a theory of large numbers, because most people don't get large numbers.
Speaker A:It takes 11 and a half days to count a million seconds, but it takes 31 years to count a billion seconds.
Speaker A:And it takes 3,31,000 years to count a trillion seconds.
Speaker A:So no one recognizes the gap between a million billion and a trillion.
Speaker A:And now we're at, I think the latest.
Speaker A:When I wrote the book, it was 34 trillion.
Speaker A:I think today they announced 38.
Speaker A:So $38 trillion in debt.
Speaker A:Nobody's going to live that long if it were in second, nobody.
Speaker A:So how do you manage this then?
Speaker A:I liken it to flood water.
Speaker A:Water is an excellent tool, necessary resource, gotta have water.
Speaker A:But too much water is devastating.
Speaker A:It's a disaster.
Speaker A:And we have so much money flooding the world that we're trying to figure out how to draw it back in.
Speaker A:And one of the ways that is currently the current markets are trying to bring it back in through the tariffs.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:We'll see, right?
Speaker D:Yeah, that's a great point.
Speaker D:Because at the end of the day, that affects everybody in all aspects of life, personal and professional.
Speaker A:And every dollar is worth less for every dollar that's circulating.
Speaker A:So as you contract by having higher interest rates, one example, there's less money circulating if interest rates are higher.
Speaker A:If you Release money with lower interest rates, more money circulating.
Speaker A:So you have to.
Speaker A:And there's a balance between releasing money into the economy when you need it, similar to the oil supply right now, and what's too much.
Speaker A:So those are the trade offs that you're experiencing.
Speaker A:Will Smith?
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker D:So who's this book for?
Speaker A:I originally wrote it because my students and et cetera, but I found that homeschooling is not economics isn't one of the programs that they have for the homeschooling curriculum.
Speaker A:Now it can be in certain areas, but my neighbor who was homeschooling his children, they were juniors in high school at the time, and I gave him the book to say, see what you can do with this and how does it help?
Speaker A:And he was impressed with how it worked out and taught the kids things that the curriculum that they were using hadn't designed or offered.
Speaker A:And so that's when I decided maybe it's time because there's so many people that are moving to homeschooling because of just the circumstances of what's happened with schools and education and all that.
Speaker D:Yeah, it's a different world than when you and I went to school, at least in this country.
Speaker D:I mean, I can't speak for other countries, but it's completely changed here.
Speaker D:My sister did homeschooling for her kids because they traveled around for several years.
Speaker D:They had a RV that they lived in.
Speaker D:And for probably about a decade they went all over the country and raised their kids on the bus.
Speaker D:And they had an amazing life because they had the chance to see multitude of different parts of the country at an early age.
Speaker D:And it gave the kids the ability to really understand life from a different perspective.
Speaker A:And it's not just for people who have kids because as I said before, you can read through this material pretty quickly.
Speaker A:It can take, you know, at most an hour if you just sat down and read the textbook portion.
Speaker A:But it's the process of the information that's going to take a lifetime to actually apply.
Speaker A:You pick your battles.
Speaker A:You could do one chapter a day.
Speaker A:You could read.
Speaker A:You could skip to the chapter on planning, you could skip to the chapter on investing because it's self contained, the method of how I wrote it and put it together so almost anybody could use it.
Speaker A:In fact, friends of mine who English teachers, people who never thought they would ever need an economics book, are actually using it at home with their grandkids because they're reading the children's stories to the grandkids so that they have a way of Approaching the subject.
Speaker D:Yeah, because you're using stories in the book to really do the teaching.
Speaker A:And so the.
Speaker A:And if you skip to the stories, you've got that set up.
Speaker A:So that's why it's named Teach each, because you're teaching both levels.
Speaker A:And the parent could go look at the curriculum part of the book for the high school level, but then apply it and notice how it's applied in the stories to the kids level.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker D:Right.
Speaker D:As well as in.
Speaker D:In business, for the business perspective.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:And it crosses a lot of age groups and levels based on where you are, because lots of people just never really.
Speaker A:They may have taken an economics course in high school, but very few people.
Speaker A:In fact, when I first started, there was a 17% failure rate.
Speaker A:And as I tweaked the program, I got my failure rate down to 2% of my students because those were the two kids that didn't show up that semester.
Speaker A:So it's like when you can take it from 17 to 2.
Speaker A:It's been reasonably effective.
Speaker D:Sure.
Speaker D:That's a huge number change.
Speaker D:So.
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker D:Dr. Lilly, as we come close to the end here, tell us the book again and where can people find it?
Speaker A:It is Teach each Prefaced for economics and by Dr. Lilly.
Speaker A:And it's available on Amazon or any other online purchaser.
Speaker A:It was published by Page Publishing, and Page also has it available on its website, too.
Speaker D:And you mentioned before we started recording it, you have a free tool that.
Speaker A:People can get if you go to teachers, pay teachers.
Speaker A:It's a website.
Speaker A:It's a little business store.
Speaker A:I have a free application of a lesson.
Speaker A:And what the lesson does is it walks you through Bloom's Taxonomy, which is a thinking process and a critical thinking.
Speaker A:And you actually have an activity that practices that decision making on how would I design a car?
Speaker A:And then it lends itself to picking out a prom outfit.
Speaker A:And that way it appeals to both groups.
Speaker A:High school men that are buying cars and girls that are looking for prom outfits.
Speaker A:So that way they blend their decision making.
Speaker A:Sure.
Speaker D:We'll make sure that's in the show notes.
Speaker D:Great conversation.
Speaker D:And I'm sure you've created a couple super fans from the students that you've worked with that transformed their lives in understanding economics.
Speaker D:And thank you so much for your time for being on the show.
Speaker A:I hope this is productive and that it's all a blessing to anybody who buys the book.
Speaker A:Thank you so much.
Speaker D:All right.
Speaker D:Thank you.
Speaker C:Dr. Lilly reminded us that better decisions start with better understanding.
Speaker C:Because when you grasp the economics behind planning, pricing, and trade offs, you lead your business with a lot more clarity.
Speaker C:That matters for service based business owners because too many stay stuck reacting instead of thinking ahead.
Speaker C:And that's exactly why.
Speaker C:And that is exactly what I believe too.
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