Invest Time
I’ve been on a quest for the past few years with the “highest and best use of time on Earth”. Applying “the one thing” question below to different categories leads to humble love and service.
Hal Elrod – The Miracle Morning– Categories for daily goal setting and personal development; Hal convinces you to budget an hour in the morning (or whenever works for you, but the start of you day is supercharged if you can wake up an hour earlier) where you sequence your morning through his acronym S.A.V.E.R.S=Silence (for meditation and prayer), Affirmations, Visualization, Exercise, Reading, and Scribing (he had to pull out the thesaurus, writing and journaling goals). The categories for goals are family and friends, personal growth and development, health and fitness, finances, career and business, physical environment, fun and recreation, significant other and romance, contribution and giving, and spirituality. Once you start goal setting in each of these daily you can really see immediate improvements.
Gary Keller – The One Thing– What is the one thing you can do such that by doing it that everything else will be easier or unnecessary? Gary Keller, Keller Williams founder and multiple best selling books author, boils down time in a way that laser focuses effort. Categorical goal setting helps balance effort, check out the figures and graphs #16, I have it printed and on my wall in the office. Think through spiritual, health, personal, relationships, job, business, and finance goals.
Mindset
“Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.”
-Henry Ford
The power of choice is a mighty responsibility.
The Bible
The Bible- www.youversion.com
I read it when my daughter was on the way with the youversion app and the chronological plan.
The historical perspective of human desire, effort, organization, values, error and success and the cyclical nature of human history, that it’s all been done before; storing up and chasing the wind is humbling.
Researching confusing, esoteric and challenging verses, and reading commentaries and historical research has brought great insight, change and commitment in my life.
Jesus is known by most. If you haven’t read the Bible and you have the inclination or curiosity- read, research and clarify what you know.
Proverbs 4:7 The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom, and whatever you get, get insight.
“Wisdom is not knowledge. Wisdom emerges out of a collection of intellectual virtues. It is knowing how to behave when perfect knowledge is lacking.” -David Brooks
Write it down, watch it happen.
The cure for repetitive thinking is writing it down. Thoughts turn into words on the page, “things” that can be sorted, researched, acted on and crossed off. “What is the next right action?” brings clarity and focused energy and effort. A combination of scribbled lists on paper and Google Drive files works best for me. I love technology and searchable text, but also need the tactile and ever present notebook to sort it all out.
Show up
“Eighty percent of success is showing up.” – Woody Allen
I’ve been lazy and seen others go through bouts of laziness, sometimes celebrating it and other crassness. Sitting on the fence should be a WARNING ALARM. I’ve set up a habit of “doing the thing” anytime I feel the hesitancy, it triggers immediate action to do whatever it is.
Colin Powell talks about the 40-70 rule, where you make the decision after you have 40-70% of the intel, if you have too little you may make a mistake, but if you wait til you have 100% certainty you may be too late. This works well for tougher and bigger decisions.
For anything simple, like you know you should be doing something productive, going to the gym, writing, painting, or producing something, making the next sales call or calling grandma, as soon as the thought arises, do the thing.
Curate
I call it cool curation in my classes- find what’s best and who’s doing it best, study it and share it. Research websites, books, and videos dedicated to the thing. Reach out directly to the expert through whatever channel you can find, preferably the one they prefer or use to communicate with fans. If there is a course or coaching from someone with experience, invest, show up, be in the same room and share a dialog.
Mentor
Tai Lopez says you should split your time in 3 parts: 33.3% with someone 10x ahead of you, 33.3% with peers that sharpen you and 33.3% mentoring those that show up.
Tai Lopez is the guy in the garage with the Lamborgini (he spent millions on youtube preroll ads) that people were meming a few years back. I respect his message and he’s worth checking out for an introduction to successful entrepreneurial thinking. Tai discusses some of the best thinkers, doers and entrepreneurs through 67 steps (66 days to develop a habit + 1 day for good luck). Not sure what the cost is nowadays, but it was 67 dollars when I enrolled in 2015. Check out his book list: read a book a day, skim the index, the intro, any chapters of interest and reap the benefits of making connections and insight from all the new ideas. www.tailopez.com
Learn Investment
When my daughter was on the way, my search for financial investment and independence led me to the FIRE communities (financial independence, retire early) with blogs like Mr. Money Mustache and Reddit message boards. It was clear that multiple streams of income and limiting expenses would be the path and there were many great websites and books that helped put the pieces together.
There’s a great book called Millionaire Fastlane (I listen to most books on Audible while driving or at the gym), and a great summary on Medium boils down opportunities that can lead to faster wealth accumulation:
“The Fastlane equation:
Wealth = Net Profit + Asset Value
Net Profit = (Units Sold) X (Unit Profit)
Asset Value = (Net Profit) X (Industry Multiplier)
To weaponize the Fastlane wealth equation, you must engage in a Fastlane business that has the potential for leverage or high speed limits.
Fastlaners buy and sell appreciating assets: businesses, brands, cash flows, notes, intellectual property, licenses, inventions, patents, and real estate. As it relates to the Fastlane wealth equation, the power of “Asset Value” lies in your ability to control the variable in a virtually limitless fashion.
Liquidation events transform appreciated assets (“paper” net worth) into money (“real” net worth) that can be transformed into another passive income stream: a money system.
The Fastlane Roadmap is engineered for two purposes. It’s engineered to create a passive income stream to the excess of your expenses and lifestyle desires, and to make financial freedom a reality, exclusive of age.
There are five business seedlings to money trees. Mind you, these aren’t absolute and they interbreed with each other. Each system inherently has a grade that rates its level of passivity. A higher grade means a greater potential of passivity, but not necessarily a greater income.
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Rental Systems (Passivity Grade: A). Real estate is one “rental system”. I consider real estate money trees as Fastlane 1.0 or Wealth 1.0. It is the old way and still very much a road to wealth. Rental systems are powerful money trees because they are high on the passivity scale and survive time.
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Computer/Software Systems (Passivity Grade: A-). Computers are miraculous inventions and fertile seeds to money trees. They work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Software, when tapped into potent distribution, can be replicated to millions. It scales without significant degradation to passivity.
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Content Systems (Passivity Grade: B+). Content systems are systems of information. That information can be fused to a variety of other systems, like the Internet and physical distribution systems. The content is an asset that is scalable, over and over again, and with each sale, the effective time cost declines while the hourly rate of return expands.
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Distribution Systems (Passivity Grade: B). A distribution system is any structure or organization designed to move products to the masses. Distribution systems can be hybrids with the other seedlings, such as content and computer systems.
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Human Resources Systems (Passivity Grade: C). Human resource systems can add passivity or erode it. Good employees nurture money trees. Bad employees pluck the fruit of money trees and require pruning. However don’t let that scare you. If you want to make millions of dollars, or billions, human resource systems are needed, because you can’t do everything yourself.”
Learn Real Estate
I started with buying a personal residence and was fortunate not to get hurt when the market crashed.
After listening to Tai Lopez, we were inspired to purchase a HUD property to renovate and rent; we turned to Biggerpockets forums from Google searches looking for answers to obstacles in our reno. That brought me to their podcast= binge listening for hours. Every visit to the site brings new ideas. Listening to people who are successful in their investments and business endeavors gives inspiration and strategies. They also have awesome member features and deal calculator database that you can use for analyzing and presenting deals. www.biggerpockets.com
We were living in a rental between houses and had enough capital to finance and renovate our first rental property, the numbers matched our projected numbers on the spreadsheet and we were off from there.
Here are a few of my favorite spreadsheets I’ve grabbed for free from biggerpockets users in the file download section:
SFH_Rental_Analysis (Log in with your Google account and click FIle>Make a copy if you want to save it)
Walk-Thru_Rehab_Analysis_With_SKU_s (This is an excel file with formulas to calculate cost of materials with Home Depot SKUs and roundabout costs)
REtipster- Sign up for awesome resources, he has a “subscribers toolbox” with phone scripts, letter templates, calculators, free books, and other instructional support. http://retipster.com/
Wholesaling Inc- Tom Krol has an amazing podcast, tons of free resources, and a mentor group. If you want motivation and energy to get moving on your wholesale business, look no further. http://wholesalinginc.com/
REI Sales Academy- If you are making offers on properties and directly connecting with sellers without an agent (hint- that’s where you find the 5-6 figure deals) you will benefit from a consultive and empathetic approach and John gives so much value for free that you will be better equipped to help in the right way to close more deals. https://midwestrev.com/
Clayton Morris, former Fox and Friends co-host, will literally call you on the phone (with appointment) to discuss investment. His free “Freedom Number” spreadsheet will show you how many properties it takes to be financially free with rental property income. http://www.claytonmorris.com/
Have a great cool curation reference or want to talk about highest and best use of time? Let’s schedule a 15 minute chat, or email!
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