#9 – Foundational Conversations About Investing and How to Make Your Money Grow – Part 1

March 30, 2021

Welcome to the Wealth Series with Joe Reardon and Marcus Green.

Joe Reardon Owner of The Joe Reardon Team is a successful residential real estate team within Keller Williams that has served Utah since 2007. Since 2012, we have used our expert knowledge to help nearly 600 families find home. Whether you are buying or selling, we’d love to be your real estate team! https://www.joereardon.com/

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

This pyramid basically has five levels to it.

  • So starting from the bottom is physiological needs, you know your food, water, shelter, then you have safety needs right, health, employment, property
  • Then above that is where you get into more psychological needs where love belongs.  With family, friends, relationships.
  • Next level up is esteem, self esteem, respect and recognition,
  • The top one is self actualization, which is reaching your full potential.

Key Takeaways:

  1. The Secret to building wealth is that there’s no secret, it’s a process.
  2. Delayed gratification is not putting yourself in a worse financial situation by buying that depreciating asset, it’s the work you’ve done over the last several years that set you up to be in a position to make this purchase.  This is a reward that doesn’t inhibit your continued financial and wealth building journey.
  3. If we don’t understand our personal relationship with money, then we can’t lean on the strong parts of that relationship or fix the difficult or wrong thinking around that relationship right.

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#8 – Confirmation Bias

March 2, 2021

Is the 3 an example of Confirmation Bias?

Is the number 3 special?
Where did this idea come from that we think these bad or good things happen in three?  

As humans have this innate ability to create patterns within things.  This is actually a good thing.  It’s one of the things that sets us apart as human beings as opposed to every other species on the planet. The ability for mentally healthy people to identify and exploit patterns in nature has given us a tremendous evolutionary advantage. Think about it from an engineering and a science standpoint, people finding patterns within themes and finding solutions.  

There are threes everywhere:

  • The Holy Trinity 
  • Three the three little pigs 
  • Goldilocks and the Three Bears
  • 3 Outs
  • A Hat Trick is 3 Goals 

For some reason, we tend to find this number of three really easy to find patterns with but there’s really no historical basis behind why three. 

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#7 – Work Life Balance with Russie Edwards

February 22, 2021

Russie Edwards Team Leader at KW Success has been a realtor for about 14 years. She got really involved with different organizations. She has always been involved with the association.    She is currently on the board of directors for Northern Wasatch Association and is very involved with the Women’s Council, which is where a lot of her leadership journey began.  Otherwise, she’s married and a mom to three amazing kids and two little fur babies. 

So, the topic this episode is around this idea of a balanced life.   We did a quick Google search just out of curiosity about work life balance, and there were 1.5 million or more search options that instantly came up so this obviously is something that people are talking about, and frankly a lot of people are not achieving a work life balance. 

To learn more about Russie Edwards check her out at russieresults.kw.com

www.facebook.com/russieresults

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#6 – How Can You Predict Success?

January 13, 2021

The number 1 predictor of success is your ability to master your calendar.

Many of us have heard about time blocking and many of us try to control our calendar.  It is many times the leading driver for people who go down the path of entrepreneurship.  It is the quest for freedom.  

Many entrepreneurs who find success go through a period of time where they are a slave to their calendar. To realize your quest for freedom you MUST get your calendar in control. 

The number one thing we tend to push to the back of our calendar as we get busy are our personal time such as gym time, and time off.    

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#5 – How to Increase Gratitude? Give it Away!

December 14, 2020

Today, Marcus will take us through an evaluation of gratitude.  In life whenever you want to give more of something, you have to create more of that commodity.  How can we create more gratitude so that we can share it with those around us? #givethanks

2 strategies for giving more gratitude.

  • Slow down and recognize what is already at our fingertips.
  • Give gratitude away freely

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#4 – What are You Trading Your Time for?

December 10, 2020

The art of using time appropriately.  In this episode Marcus discusses how we trade time for money generating activities, relationships and self.  Affirmation: I am a master of my schedule!

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to The Whole Enchilada today. Really excited about the topic of conversation today which is time, not necessarily just time as it shows up on a calendar, specifically the art of using time appropriately. Now I think this is something that’s an ongoing conversation of how to time block, which what boards in your calendar, am I wasting time, can I multitask what was on your calendar first.

There’s thousands of books put together on how to properly use your time, and be more productive. And it’s interesting. This last week, around a week and a half ago, my wife and I were on a walk, discussing several things and one of the things that came up in topic was specifically how we want to use our time differently this coming year. And if you were able to listen to the last episode of the whole enchilada we talked about inspecting the reality is one of the things that we want to trade, our time or use our time differently in 2021, it starts with the inspection of how we use our time in the given year, in what ways did we use our time appropriately the yielded of the results we were looking for, as opposed to where did we not spend our time appropriately purposely or unpurposely, be what were those times sucks that sucked as in and by the time we pulled our face on the screen we realized it was four hours later when we intended to be there for four minutes, which I know you’re laughing right now because that’s happened to me, it’s happened to you. We’ve all fall victim to that dreaded screen time.

So today we’re gonna talk about a couple things, I want to share with you kind of what we determined in that conversation, as we were walking along the beautiful beaches of Maui, which is a great backdrop for these types of conversations of reflection and thought. We thought a lot about specifically how we spend time. And I think that spending time may be the wrong terminology, terminology is actually trading time. Spending time was just that we have a certain amount that we’re able to spend on something where I would suggest that instead of spending time, we’re trading time for something in return. Think about the, it’s probably been happening much longer, thinking about the early 1800s of all the trading posts that were going on in the US, as people were migrating from east to west, particularly these fur traders learned that they can go out, you know these beaver pelts come back and trade those beaver pelts for other things that either would help them build additional wealth or things they needed.

Other things were traded in those training posts as well, either on a small scale scale or big scale. But one of the things is that these people learned using the fur traders as an example is it probably started with the idea of just getting first for myself anyway. If I get a few extra of beaver pelts, I’ll be able to trade those for someone that has something that I need, because I have in excess of what I need.  In over time  they learned that that, well, if, if I’m able to trade for other things that I need, what am I just got really really good at this, and got a surplus of beaver pelts well beyond what I would need to be able to trade in excess of what what my current needs are and start building additional wealth.

Well, the idea of trading time. If we don’t have the ability to increase the amount of time that any of us have. We’ve only got 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. But that doesn’t really limit us to increase, how to trade, time for the things that are most important to us because we thought about as we thought about this and really fleshed it out a little bit we identified that generally speaking, there are three categories which we trade, time for we trade, time for money generating activities, we trade, time for relationships. And we trade time for self. Now, these were the three categories money, relationships, and self, but within those categories there might be some additional sub categories so let’s break them down and talk about them for a minute. It was interesting as I went through this exercise to verify the validity of what we determined on that walk. I pulled up my own calendar and went through and started identifying every thing I had challenged or over the last 12 months and I categorized it was this a money generating activity. With this relationship, generating activity, or relationship nurturing activity or was this for me wasn’t something for for my personal self growth, or as we’re gonna see here for a minute was that self promotion or self sabotage which are the sub categories of self. It earache true as I went through every single thing on my calendar fit one of those categories, and I assumed that any, any time on my calendar that was not filled was actually serving one of those categories as well. Let’s break them down a little bit. Money generating activities. So any of those appointments lead generation business meetings leadership, business planning any of those conversations will all fall under money generating. If I was to break this down with a step further I’ve wanted to identify if I’ve got specific goals around an income goal and I’ve also got specific goals around the network, and passive income, it merits me to take the time to break that category down a little bit more to say okay if it’s a money generating activity. Is it purely to push active income or am I spending time building long term passive income and increasing my net worth. If I have goals around passive income and net income, it’s important that our trading time not only for active income, but I’m also treating time to think through how we generate future passive income, increasing net worth. The next one is relationships, this goes, the reason we just call it relationships, there’s a lot of key relationships in your world. So the question becomes, who are those relationships that you’re trying to nurture.

And do you have specific time on your calendar to nurture those relationships. One thing I’ve done well in the past is making sure that I’ve got time scheduled for with my family. Also individually with my kids and also making sure that they know my calendars, something that’s been a focus of mine This last couple of months…

I feel like I’ve done fairly well on. But as I’ve reflected through other important relationships in my world. I’ve missed the mark an example of this is my parents are getting older. And I’m hoping to have a lot of time left for them but I don’t know that for certain, if I don’t have one calendar event. Specifically, and purposefully spending time or checking on my parents now I do it periodically. And I feel like I’ve got a great relationship with them, but it’s been reactively not purposely. The last one is self I think this one probably gets abused to the most, is what on your calendar. And if we’re going to break this self down into two categories the two categories that we came up with our self promotion, what are the things that are helping you grow that you enjoy that reduce your stress that build, build you as an individual versus self sabotage. What are the things that suck you away from progressing and moving forward, such as getting caught up in social media or Netflix knows how to get to where now we don’t have to tell Netflix to start the next episode. It just ultimately starts the next episode but assuming that you want to watch it in the next episode is playing before you can have time to get up and turn the TV off by not trying you’re stuck back in my trap to that, as I’m sure you have as well. So identifying how much time have I spent spent on self promotion versus self sabotage. When we’re calling around self promotion, I think it’s really interesting how many of us spend a significant amount of money and time getting coaches for our kids in different activities, piano lessons, like this is my house piano lessons, harp lessons violin lessons crawly dance. These are all things that I love that my kids are involved in. And I want to help that. But how many of us his parents are so willing to do that, to get our kids coach, and get them on a team and help them develop these habits, with us as adults we’ve given up on learning specific skills and hobbies and pay for coaching in those skills properties I really think it’s silly how many people I know, think it’s important for their kids to be taking lessons, if they’re not willing to take lessons to grow their own hobbies the desires. So for example, on, on my, my calendar. I’ve got all my Jiu Jitsu Muay Thai kickboxing kickboxing the things that I love doing that in, in my world, it kills two birds with one stone, because it reduces my stress, and also is a great physical exercise which I really enjoyed. So making sure you have those self promotion pieces on on your calendar as I went through and identify the things that I need to improve in trading time this coming year so if I identify the lead measures the most important things that I’m going to accomplish in 2021. My question now because I’ve got the game plan of what I want to accomplish. Now I gotta go make sure that I’m trading my time appropriately to get the lead measures done in such a way that it’s going to produce the results that I want. Here’s a couple thoughts as you build out your calendar for the following year, make sure that it matches your calendar matches your goals. One of my favorite things to do when someone comes to me and says, Hey, will you coach me on reaching my goals this year, and the very first thing I’m going to say to them is, show me what your goals are to pull out your calendar and not prep their calendar to show me what they think their calendar should look like, because I actually want to inspect What does the calendar look like in that bullet in their calendar does not reflect what what the goals they’ve identified for themselves. Then I will not bet on that person. However, even if the results are showing up that someone can pull up their calendar show me that they strategically trade a time or plan to trade time for the activities that they identified on their business plan or their personal plan, I will bet on that person. It’s more important to me to be working with someone that commits to the activities, and will grow their skill set around the activities than someone that’s really naturally good at the activities, but will not take the time to plan the activities that need to be done.

Whenever I’m looking at going through this process right now as I have to I start by deconstructing my calendar. The reason I call it deconstructing my calendar is over time, when I was younger in my business years, as I took on more responsibility, it was easy for me to say, if I’m going to create x more activities, than I didn’t need to just take those activities and find the blank spots on my calendar to add them well over time as you gain more responsibilities, more businesses more kids whatever that looks like it becomes harder and harder to find blank spots in your calendar to add those things to before I add anything to my calendar I go through a process of deconstructing my calendar all the way down to its bare bones and reprioritize, what is important to my long game now. And then I build my calendar back up in this order. The very first thing that goes on my calendar or my personal non negotiable now what is a personal non negotiable. It generally was revolves around family time and relationships and personal promotion myself promotion. So I’ll go through and make sure that date nights get date nights family nights family vacations, all of that plan to the best of my ability for the entire year. In some essence I’ll go as far as like actually booked the family vacations because you’ve probably followed trapped me on this as well as where you’re finally going on a trip in the fall, but as it comes into the fall you get really busy with working to push it out and in essence it never happens.

However, generally speaking, if you go to take the time to actually plan. The trip, find the tickets booked the hotel. It’s really hard to back out of it at that point, in some ways it’s the motivator helps you get more things done in anticipation about vacation so the first thing that goes on your calendar are where all your personal non negotiables for the year, specifically around what relationships need need your time and energy and.

What do you need to be balanced and this is particularly important for you as part of the whole enchilada network is a portrait to create balance across all aspects of life you’ve got to become a master of your schedule. The next thing that goes on my calendar is all my planning time when is the client going to hold myself accountable to these results. For me this is the key to five work to create for myself around my calendar. At the end of every year I Taiwan, two days where I do nothing, but really get clarity on what

It is important to me. Inspect reality, build a business plan, build a personal plan, deconstruct my calendar, put my calendar back together,

It’s generally a two day process for me to do that. Then on my calendar I take half a day, each month to come back in. Check my progress that gives me that yearly gameplan every Sunday afternoon I have a one hour meeting with myself to reflect back on that week, every day, at the end of the day I have a 15 minute bullet after the meeting with myself to check on the progress of. It’s a really simple cadence that’s the second thing that goes on my calendar. The third thing now that goes on my calendar is generally the thing that most people put on our calendar first is their business activities, particularly those lead measures those most important things that you must commit to for a lot of us that are the sales business that is your lead generation or relationship, nurturing process that belongs on your calendar, along with those specific appointments that you must go on to ensure success with your business plan. So generally speaking, a lot of us take the time to put those things on our calendar and try to fit family personal time around it with someone that’s controlling their destiny and living life on their terms, it’s actually the opposite of that where we’re going to put our personal non negotiables first. Then we’re going to move in to that planning time of accountability. And then we’re going to move into both business activities. I hope this conversation helped you look at your calendar differently. The question I would have you asked yourself today is, how are you trading time is the way you are trading time creating the results you want. If you don’t have clarity on that, I encourage you to pull up the last three months of your personal calendar and print it up and go through and identify everything on your calendar as. With this money generating time, active income passive income was this relationship. Time spent, or was this self Time, time spent with the time spent in self promotion or self sabotage in any of those blanks in your calendar that tend to be between appointments. The question I would ask you is that time was spent doing something, regardless of whether looking back in your calendar shows you that you spent time doing something. The question is how did you use that time, and I see. For most of us, that is where self sabotage actually creeps in the most. I’ve got a few minutes My phone is dying, I’m gonna pull up Facebook, and then also you’re rushing to your next appointment. So this is part of the process. One of the things I love right now one of the top people my organization is so focused on this skill set that almost every text message he sends me almost every conversation we have on every voicemail, he leaves free right now starts with. I am a master by schedule, and he’s going to say that it actually becomes a reality for him and for us to live the creed of the whole enchilada of living life to its fullest nominal terms, we have to become a master by the owner thanks for joining me today. Go to your calendar, the master calendar. And don’t forget, they’ll make it on your charts. See you next time.

 

 

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#3 – Inspect Your Current Reality

December 3, 2020

As we approach the process of planning for 2021, in both on a business level and a personal level, let us properly reflect on our 2020 and inspect reality.

This episode talks about the reality of our business and personal goals of this year?  Did the pandemic or other circumstances stop you from pursuing your goal?  Did it freeze you? Or does the activities you did this year created a path in achieving your end goal or result?

TRANSCRIPT

Hello Enchilada Nation, excited to spend some time with you today. It is the time of year where a lot of us are spending significant amount of time putting our business plans together for the year we’re wrapping up 2020 which is an interesting year to say the least, not only with the global pandemic going on but with the president presidential race, and several other things that we made a list of all the crazy things that happen in 2020 would take the entirety of this podcast, but I think it’s safe to say we all agree this year was a little crazy, and things came up that weren’t necessarily on our radar when we were putting together our business plan for 2020.

So, as we approach the process of finding out right here for 2020. I think that a lot of us, myself included, we are such drivers and goers that we are in the middle of trying to tidy up and finish up 2020 at a high level and hit our goals in 2020 at the same time of going through the process of putting together a business plan for 2021. Well, there, there is a process or a gap that should be happening from the hustle of trainer wrap up the current year that actually physically putting together our business plan for the following year that I think we missed the mark a lot.

This goes both on a business level and a personal level and reflection of our year. It’s hard to slow down enough to properly reflect on the results of the year when you’re still actively pursuing the results of that year.

At the same time, if, particularly if we’re in the process. We’re in the business of sales, the activities that we’re doing today are all ready gonna be measured and results to show up the year that comes. So it’s this weird balance of I’m going to slow down enough to actively put together a game plan for the following year, and at the same time, put enough energy in, in focusing to finish the year strong that I’m currently in.

Well, the this process that we’re talking about, but I feel like a lot of us don’t take the time to do is actually an inspection of reality, inspecting reality.

A lot of us measure our success for the current year based on how the income showed up, or what the result would have been. We’ve already talked a little bit about the lag measures but it’s it’s those lag measures that that are the results of the activities we’ve been doing, and we want to measure success on those lag measures. Instead of really saying, was I successful on the lead measures?

I’ve already had the opportunity so far this year to run a couple business planning clinics where I’ve coached hundreds of people already putting together their business plans for the year to come I’ve got several more to do in the next coming weeks. In addition to that actually sitting down with the business plan for my personal businesses, and I go through the same process.

So today we’re going to talk about a couple things that you should be considering from inspecting the reality of your current situation before you go in the process of putting together that business plan. The reason I think this is important is to many of us. This is how we we approach this process is. Oh, I’m a business person I’ve got to put together my business plan for this coming year so we go to our filing cabinet or on our computer pull up our business plan from the year before. And for a lot of you. This will be the first time that you look at your business plans in 2020, since you wrote it in 2019.

Now, I want to congratulate you for actually going through the activity of putting together a business plan because I think a lot of people don’t even take the time to put together an accurate business plan, but at the same time I want to point out the fact that, why did we put together a business plan if we were going to file it away and not look at it, or measure against it. Throughout the year or we were able to make clear course corrections along the way.

That is the power of a strong business plan is the ability to measure instantly in an ongoing basis create a cadence of accountability and make the small course corrections along the way where a lot of us as we dust off that business plan from the previous year, we might make a couple minor adjustments and just say now work for me last year. Let’s do it again. When we’re really saying it worked for us in the lag measures I think this year, particularly is interesting because I know a lot of our. A lot of my associates have had the best financial year they’ve ever had regardless of everything going on the world.

But I would dare say is the inspect reality the activities they did, or the approach to the activities that they committed to do felt different this year based on everything going on in this current year of 2020.

So here’s, here’s a couple suggestions or ideas around inspecting your current reality. And as you expect your current reality you’ll identify the things that are working well for you and producing the results. And you’ll also identify some things that in your business planning from the year before you committed to because you believed they would draw the result. But you still don’t know the answer if that’s accurate or not because you didn’t measure the activity throughout the year.

Here’s a couple thoughts to carry our conversation today.

Number one, inspect reality, this process isn’t an emotional inspection of your business. This is for a lot of us we consider our businesses our babies we have all this emotional time and energy tied up into them with every conversation we have around our business tends to have some element of emotion and protection against the think of coming across the bear in the woods, the only works to come across the a bear in the woods is coming across the bear with his baby cub there, because all sudden you’re much more risks and I think a lot of us are like mama bears are businesses where we will do anything to protect that that baby cub. In this instance of this conversation of the quiet of your home office what you’re expecting reality, you need to take emotion out of it and not try to protect that baby cub, but really look at it from a third party perspective. In this scenario, you’ve got to give yourself permission to step back and look at your business differently than you look at it from within. The data is not concerned with with effort from intentions, it simply focuses on outcomes. This is another area I feel like a lot of us get sidetracked a little bit is we think man we worked really hard this year. We stayed way busy. In, we’re confusing effort with results so the data. If we look purely at the data, it’s not concerned with how much effort you put into it. It’s actually more concerned with what effort or what results did that effort return. And that’s the most important thing for this conversation is understanding that did we put forth effort into the right areas or activities that yielded the results that we expected. Measurement drives the execution process, it is the, anchor of reality. So, execution is the anchor of reality, in essence, what we’re saying here is your current reality.

Whether you’re looking at your current reality from a business perspective. Relationship perspective, physical fitness perspective whenever that is your current reality. All that is, is a summation of all of the activities, you did. Minus all the activities that you did not do that you should have done is your end result. It’s your current situation is always a summation of the activities you chose. And in essence, sometimes you chose the right activities and other times you may have chose the wrong activities, you take those two things together a path is what creates that end result.

So here’s another thought that I jumped in for a conversation today, ultimately, you have greater control over your actions than over your results. Your results are created by your actions.  An execution measure indicates whether you did the things you said you were most important to achieving your goals. So as we went through this process last year in creating our business plans for 2020, we said we, we want to create this result. And then we work backwards to say what are the specific activities and how much of those activities must happen, that we believe will yield the results. Well, a lot of us have measured the results of our year, and gets that result, let’s say, in, in gross income or net income, we’re measuring against that but do we actually take the time to go look at the activities to say, How did I. How did I stack up against the activities I committed to do? And did those activities yield the results in proportion to conversion rates that I had anticipated?

If we can answer that question and say I committed to this many conversations are committed to this time lead generation I committed to this, this, these many appointments. We can measure how many we did actually get that, in essence, we don’t know whether that plan work or not. Regardless of whether the results showed up, or not. We can’t say with confidence if that was the plan that created the results or something else the critical results.

So here’s the thought if you were not hitting your goals, you need to know whether it was due to a flaw in the plan content, or the execution of the plan. Too often if we’re not hitting our goals we didn’t hit our income goal we instantly want to, we want to wipe the whole board clean and start from scratch. When we may have had the perfect plan in place, but we didn’t measure the plan. So, we jumped to the conclusion that the whole plan is flawed. A breakdown in plan content occurs when strategies and tactics are not effective, A breakdown in execution occurs when you fail to fully implement the plan tactics. So that becomes the question for putting the business plan you put together 2019 for 2020 is. If you missed the mark with your results. Was it due to a failure in execution of the plan or was the plan flawed in and of itself.

Now one quick comment here is I want to encourage you not to jump to the conclusion, and blame your entire results on COVID-19, or the global pandemic or any of these other things, because there was a lot of additional motion, emotion created around our activities today. If some of those things were outside of our control I’ll agree with that. However, how you reacted to that lives in the global pandemic was what created the results or lack of results that you currently had not necessarily the pandemic in itself.

I can give a list of people within my world that shifted and moved and approach things differently. They still put forth a lot of effort in their business they just shifted tactics a little bit on our game plan still treat the same and execute on the same lead measures and have the best year ever. While at the same time, the people that are that are within my world, who historically have had very successful years froze with the changes in 2020, and did not take action. It wasn’t because they didn’t have the energy or the drive to take the action, they chose the freeze that take no action, other than some action and moving forward.

So here are a couple of thoughts as you analyze and inspect reality I’ve encouraged you to take some time. Time block some time this week to sit down and write out in your journal. Inspect reality. And then break down all of your businesses, your physical health, your relationships, anything specific that you’re going to build a game plan around for 2021. And let’s get clear on that reality, take the emotion out of it, and ask yourself, some questions like this. What does the data actually say about my business, not the results? But what does the data say, of how I showed up in relation to lead measures when I said were important. And again, this can go on a personal level, or a business level is a great example of this on my calendar every Tuesday night, after my workout I’ve got a kid’s date night, I have four daughters I try to rotate through and give them all a one on one time once a week, or, or one of them each once a week. What they realized as the for the amount of my calendar I feel like I’ve done pretty well against it this year keeping that appointment. I know there were times that I was unable to keep that appointment, but I can’t tell you exactly how many I was able to keep versus how many I wasn’t able to keep because I did not track that data better. I can’t In reality, take the time to say, what was it that stood in my way of completing that work, do I have that on the right, the right spot on my calendar, where if I had tracked it better, it would have given me better insight on how to shift that that goal for this coming year.

The next question is one of my favorite questions that I keep coming down suggests in this book travel the world was stupid, is if your business could talk. What would it say? Give me permission to have its own voice. If it was to say something, it was to share the secret to that is feeling and the emotions it’s feeling, what would it say and I think as you go through that process. Some of the things that it would share and say about how the drama being cared for, are probably different than how you express your emotional feelings about your business.

In the next couple of conversations we’re gonna be diving into more how to utilize some specific tools in supporting your execution of the plan. How to finalize your business plan for this coming year. And one thing I want to make sure that you’re, you’re thinking through in your, in your personal plans for 2021 goes beyond your business plan, it’s really critical particularly for this group. The enchilada nation the enchilada network that we are focused on becoming balanced, individuals, achieving high standards across all aspects of life, business, personal relationships physical fitness adventure all of those things. We don’t want to be mediocre at any of them. We want to be excelling in all of them so we need to be thinking and inspecting the reality, across the board in all these areas.

So, as you’re analyzing and inspecting the reality across your businesses, your personal life your personal relationships I would encourage you to also expect the current reality around what is your current networth. How did you affect your networth in 2020. How do you want to affect your networth in 2021, in addition to the networth. there’s also talking about passive income. And then also the third one that I put on my short list here that we’ll talk more about is what life experiences did you commit to in 2020. How did you measure against those, and what life experiences do you want to create in 2021? An example of this as one of my personal goals is to visit two foreign countries that I have not visited before each year, at a minimum, as you know, travel restrictions in 2020 are significant. So here is the mistake I made is, I took that as I guess I’m not able to fulfill that goal this year, and kind of put it to the side, but were there other experiences life experiences that could have carried as an equal amount of value to me that I would have been better to say, hey, the goal is still the same to create these life experiences. The lead measures of how I’m going to create those life experiences have changed due to changing circumstances around me, but can I still trade that result.

So, this is the mental process I went through over the last several days thinking through inspecting reality. I encourage you to go to the same,  inspect the reality of your world, your life. Let’s get clarity on that reality as we approach putting together our business plans for 2021 so we can all together, lean on each other create the energy and make 2021, the best year yet now.

Enjoy the network. Don’t forget, go live life on your terms.

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#2 – Playing the Long Game

November 3, 2020

This episode talks about  getting clarity on.   What are we ultimately trying to accomplish in the long term?  What is your Why?  What do you want to become?  What is important to you?

TOPICS

Vision Statement, Clarity, Mission, Accomplish, Personal, Big, Executing, Game, Life, High Achievers, Empire Builder, Bridge Builder

TRANSCRIPT

0:01

Intro

 

0:13

Hey there, welcome to The Whole Enchilada today. Super excited about the opportunity to talk to you about the long game. Really getting clarity on, on what are we ultimately trying to accomplish in the long term.

 

0:27

I’m actually shooting this episode on the beautiful island of Maui, which I’m super excited about to be in here with my family spending some time outside.

 

0:35

And I’m thrilled to share a few moments and thoughts with you today.  I’m sitting, either in the mountains or on the beach and this is actually part of my personal mission, vision statement that I’ll share with you today, coz it gives me an opportunity to connect.

 

0:51

Connect with myself differently to think through, through things and get to get clarity on what ultimately Am I trying to accomplish. And that’s ultimately what I’m doing here in on the island of Maui right now is reconnecting with that bigger vision, and making sure that my executables my daily activities what I’m executing on now is in alignment with what I’m trying to accomplish.

 

1:15

So the topic today is the long game, finding and fulfilling your personal why. Really if any of you have read the books by Simon Sinek he kind of is the expert on finding your why. Starting with Why is the name of one of his books and he’s also talked a lot about the infinite game versus the finite game.

 

1:39

One of the things he says is finite players play to beat the people around them. Infinite players played to be better than themselves, which is really in alignment with the the mission and vision of the Whole Enchilada. Yes. We are a group of high achievers yes we crush all of our immediate goals and our companies were inspirational.  We’re running, either our own companies or companies from the people at a very high level, and the whole purpose of the Whole Enchilada is do those daily wins, participate in or pull us closer to winning the ultimate game which is the long term mission, vision of a well balanced life in the extremes.

 

2:27

One of the things Simon Sinek says is he says all organizations start with why, but only the great ones keep their why clear, year after year. And I think that’s interesting is, is how many companies right now we’re coming into,  we’re in the fourth quarter of 2020.  How many companies are coming together right now to put together their game plans their business plans for 2021. And they’re probably dusting off their mission, vision statement because they haven’t looked at it from a year before, and three saying like, oh yeah let’s get this back back out let’s talk about it again. When realistically, if we’re going to be progressing and building an immediate game plan and that’s progressing towards that bigger vision of what we’re trying to accomplish. It’s something that we’ve got to one, really, really believe in and have clarity on and be referring to  frequently.

 

3:22

One of the other things he says here is, unless you begin with the end in mind by starting with why you will get obsessed with the daily metrics. The Daily gets a sidetrack from the long game that that sentence really hit home to me because I, like you a lot of us are such high achievers that we, we have to win. Anytime we put our minds to something we are going to do win and we’re gonna win big we’re gonna accomplish big things on that, which I think is is has been particularly, particularly for me that’s been a huge trade, a huge advantage for me because I don’t know if it’s because I got a chip on my shoulder or whatever it is but if someone tells me I can’t do something or someone tells me that goals too big, Ultimately, I’m gonna be like, I’m going to show you, I’m going to make this happen.

 

And I get so obsessed and focused with winning on the short game, which has been beneficial for me. But as I look back over my life have I been sidetracked by some of those short term wins that actually didn’t get me closer to what I’m ultimately trying to accomplish that by the time I win that game and come up to celebrate. And I poke my head up and look around, am I actually farther away from where I would have been had I been fed focused on a different game. I mean, it goes back to the old saying that that you’ve got to win the strategic battles to win the overall war, you don’t necessarily have to win every battle or engage in every battle to win the war but choosing the right battles and winning those battles are ultimately what what affect the long term win, of, of the goal in the millionaire real estate agent, says too many of us define our lives by what we do for a living, rather than accepting what we do for living as just a part of an overall purpose that guides our lives, or assignments as Simon Sinek would call it a why.

 

5:11

So when someone says, what do you do, do you go into just telling them what your day job is or do we have so much clarity on who we’re becoming and what we’re trying to accomplish that we see that every, every activity we’re doing on a day to day basis, whether it’s within our business within a hobby within our families that it is ultimately a building block into what we’re ultimately trying to accomplish.

 

5:37

Then MREA goes on to say the big WHY is about having a purpose, a mission, or a need that in turn gives you focus, because a big why brings big focus and big energy. High achievers always have a big why.  One of the biggest things that I set that I think sets these high producers apart. In one of the biggest skill sets that that I think we should talk about a lot and continue to build on is the ability to get clarity on what are the most important activities and executing on them. This really for me, we have a lot of people that seem too big and want a lot of things but they’re, they don’t have the ability to execute on a local level. So, if I was to say that the one of the number one characteristics that sets a high achiever apart is their pure ability to execute on the right activities. And I would say, if you take a step further, the why, or that mission personal mission, vision statement is the fuel that they use that to do the execution.

 

6:48

Because here’s the truth of the matter and I got this, this comment again this week from someone that I’m hiring in one of my organizations as they, as they started digging into everything I’ve got going on on a bigger scale, her comment to me was like, how do you ever find time to sleep with all these things going on, which, which I thought was humorous that that was her question. But when she asked the question Do you ever sleep. It’s her perception is is that I’ve got a lot of things going on at once, where in internally I’m looking at that thing. I know that each one of these strategic pieces with the right people in place is actually getting me closer to where I want to go.

 

7:29

So one of the things that we need to focus on here is, if high achievers have a big Why the question, you need to be asking yourself is, do you have clarity on what your big why is? What your vision or your personal mission? Vision statement is that you can draw on, here’s the truth of the matter is, there are days I wake up, where I don’t want to do the things I know I must do to achieve the things that I want to achieve. There are times that that voice inside my head is telling me like, do you really have to do this today. Do you really want to do this today or man the bed feels good this morning you should just sleep in.

 

8:07

No one is immune to that voice in their head telling them not to do things in fact the number one purpose of the brain is self preservation it’s always going to try to talk you out of doing the things that make you feel uncomfortable yet. It’s the things that make you feel uncomfortable and your willingness to do those things that are going to set you apart from the rest of the world.

 

8:28

If you don’t have a personal relationship and connection with your personal mission, vision statement you will find yourself giving in to that voice inside your head, more frequently than you find yourself telling that voice in your head to shut up, because you have a game plan, you’ve got a bigger mission, vision, you’ve got that focus to do those things. And if, if we don’t take the time to build that relationship and clarity on our personal mission, vision statement, we’ll find ourselves, falling back to that pattern of not executing. So, the process that you need to go through and creating that personal mission, vision statement.  Number one is getting clarity on what it is that fires you up. What excites you, you know one of the things that that I like to ask people when I’m interviewing them first, for, for a position is like what what really inspires you. The word inspire from a Latin word “to breathe life into”, you’re like man I had such an incredible day so much in the at the end of the day after doing all these things I feel so full of energy. What were those things that you were doing that actually inspired you to breathe life into you? So, number one again is clarifying getting clarity on finding out exactly what that personal mission, vision statement is number two is understanding why is that important to you and connecting it to your daily activities. Number three is, how are you communicating that personal mission, vision statement, it’s not enough for you to write it down and put it away in a filing cabinet.

 

The people around you need to know what you’re trying to accomplish and what you will find in communicating that message is there will be people that absolutely try to get your way. And don’t want you to to accomplish that, it because it makes them feel bad about themselves, when you’re excelling at a higher level, and on the other side of that your real true allies will rise to the top of saying, I want to be around you because you’ve got clarity of where you’re going and what you’re trying to accomplish that’s in alignment with what I want to accomplish. How do we do this together, they will in turn support you in fulfilling your personal mission, vision statement and in turn, you’ll become an ally is a resource that helping them fulfill their personal mission, vision statement and big why in their life.

 

10:55

And the last piece of this is in communicating it frequently and often is then going back to that skill set of execution. Getting clarity on what is the lead measure that must be executed on today that will create the result in either achieving something or becoming something that is in alignment with that personal mission, vision statement.

 

11:21

So here’s, here’s one of the activities that I would recommend in getting clarity on and creating your personal mission, vision statement.   I remember the first time I was introduced to the idea of your big why or, or your personal mission, vision statement, it made sense to me in. In the theory of it, you need a big why to fuel you that, that myth that resonated with me. Yeah, being the mature impatient person I was I’m still immature and impatient but I wasn’t even more so a decade ago or so when I was first introduced to this idea. I remember in that classroom setting as they were talking through that I remember someone I looked up to and liked raise their hand and said, My family is my big why. And for me, I was like, my family. I love my wife I love my children. I guess that’s my big why too because I adore them I go to work for them I try to fulfill these these things for them. So in my mind in that moment, I skipped the investigation step, like getting real clarity and emotional connection to my personal personal mission, vision statement, because I just accelerated to be like Oh, that makes sense to me I guess that is my personal mission, vision statement I guess that is my personal Why is my family. I do these things for them. Now, before I go any further to tell you how I expanded on that let me be clear that my family still is a big part of my big why, I have four beautiful daughters, that, that are my world I want everything for them I want them to grow to be good, contributing members of society, should be able to sustain themselves and make an impact on the world that still is a big part of my why, but that is what I came to a realization over time is that, that was only a part of my big why.

 

13:09

And the reason I had it later several years after that first time I was introduced to the idea of that big why I was feeling this clunkiness in, in, in hitting a glass ceiling that I needed to break through and what and I didn’t feel that energy to execute on the same level I had been doing, previous to that. And it’s purely because I didn’t take the time to flush out my personal mission, vision statement on a bigger level. And what ultimately I did is I had to put myself in a setting, get rid of everything around me. No, no phone, no, no emails no minutes showing up in my office and I got out a legal pad and I just started writing what is important to me. What is it that I want to accomplish?. Now I’d write til I  couldn’t think anymore. And then I asked myself the question, why, why is that important to me. And then I start writing again and then it’s asked myself a question again well why is that important to me. And I started finding myself I wrote pages and pages of notes and as I started this writing these pages and pages of notes I started to see things repeating, I started to see things come to the surface over and over and over again, and I was able to start to identify the things that were most important to me were showing up over and over again. On that personal mission, vision statement. Now, one thing I will share I won’t share my entire personal mission, vision statement as a matter of time here but for any of you that are interested in seeing my personal mission, vision statement in its entirety. I’d be happy to, to share that with you just go to the whole enchilada.biz. And click the contact us. And, or if you have my personal contact information please reach out to me that way but if you go to the whole enchilada.biz.

 

And let me know I will send you a copy of my personal mission, vision statement, but ultimately what I found in asking that question and if any of you have ever had a two year old at home. You know what it sounds like to ask the question why, why, why, why, why, over and over and over again and I can be annoying in that setting. However, in this scenario, it’s important for you to peel back the layers. Ultimately what I found for myself, is my, my personal mission, vision statement has three categories or three specific things that at any given time.

 

If I’m feeling those all three buckets. I feel inspired I feel full of life full of breath and excited about what’s coming next. I have that energy to tackle the problems and do the things that other people aren’t willing to do again as long as all three of these buckets are being filled in my world.

 

The first bucket bucket for me was like, and I call it, I am a bridge builder and if any of you have the opportunity to come to my home office. You can see that I have this four, four foot tall eight feet wide, up on my wall and I stand in front of this personal mission, vision statement, and our read it every day, but we got it right here in front of me now. The first category is, I am a bridge builder. Now, this doesn’t mean that I’m actually out building bridges but I found that one of the things that really inspires me and fires me up is helping people get clarity on what it is they want to accomplish, long term, and then having a reality conversation around where are you really right now and let’s discover what is the gap from your current reality to what it is you’re trying to accomplish. And now, the only thing standing in your way of becoming that person is a bridge, you need to build a bridge between where you currently are and where you want to go. So that is the first piece of my personal mission, vision statement is I am a bridge builder.

 

The second bucket bucket of my personal mission, vision statement is I am an Empire Builder. One of the things that I love doing at a high level is creating and building companies that serve the consumer and the people within my organization and create opportunities for them. And so I’ve got a short blip, under that helps me understand what it is I’m trying to accomplish as an Empire Builder.

 

And then the third bucket for me, which is equally important to the others, is I am an adventure., If I don’t have the next trip or adventure on the books, I go crazy. One of the, one of the sentences under that, that part of my personal mission, vision statement, it says when the mountains and sea beckoned to me, I will always answer their call because I find clarity, either in the mountains or at the ocean and that’s what I’m doing here and now we now is reconnecting with that part of my personal mission, vision statement, because the sea beckoned, and I did respond. So ultimately what what the point I’m making with this is before you can lean on your personal why, or that personal mission, vision statement to fuel you executing on the finite game to ultimately progress to the infinite game, which is the whole purpose of the whole enchilada is, how are you excelling in every area of your life on a bigger scale for you to lean on death fuel of your personal mission, vision statement you cannot do it unless you have clarity on what what that is.

 

18:09

So here is my challenge to wrap up our conversation today is, if you currently have a personal mission, vision statement or a big why statement. I would challenge you, number one, to, to challenge the actual statement, ask yourself, Is this true as true for me today as it was the day I created it.

 

18:34

Also ask yourself the question, did I go through a thorough enough process when I created this? Did I peel back the layers to really understand why this is important to me? And is it in alignment with who I want to become? Ask the question why peel it back refine it down clarify it, I will tell you that even though I’ve got that personal mission, vision statement plastered up on my wall in my home office. When the date columns and it may count that I stand in front of that. And as I read it if I don’t feel fired up and excited by the end, by the end of reading that out loud to myself. I will be the first person to rip it down and start over, start the process over. It’s got to fire you up and be able to lean on that. So that is my, my number one challenge for you today is, is if you have one challenge it. If you don’t have one, get your calendar out today, and pick a couple hour time block where you can find a spot of serenity, a place that you can be alone the place that you’re not going to be bothered. And start asking yourself the question, what is important to me? Who is it that I want to become? How do I want to become that person? Why is that important to me? Why is that important to the people around me and just start letting the pen fly. No one’s going to see it but you, and then go back through and start circling the words that stand out to you that show up over and over and over again, and start formulating that down into a personal mission, vision statement or a big why statement, and then get clarity on what is the impact that will you will have on the world as you fulfill and you live that personal mission, vision statement.

 

The reason I think this is important for us to have this conversation today is because the, what you will find in, in the whole enchilada and in this group is it’s there’s a sequence to what we’re trying to accomplish. And as we get more clarity into mastering our schedule. Getting clarity on on when to be on in a finite game as opposed to when to unplug and focus on some of the other personal important things in your world that may not be income producing is for us to master those things that’s always going to come back to this conversation of does this activity fulfill your future vision of yourself does it get you closer there. Are you progressing towards that ideal version of yourself. If the answer is ever No, we can readjust. If the answer is, I don’t know because I didn’t do the work of getting clarity on what’s important to me on a bigger scale, then that’s on you.

 

Then, then all you’re doing is picking random finite games that fulfill an immediate need that are not progressing towards that infinite game of really becoming that person you want to become, which again is the purpose of the whole enchilada.   I’m thrilled to have you part of this network thrilled to have you part of this journey with me. As you know, this is something I’m committed to on a personal level, it’s not something I’ve mastered it’s something on mastery. And the truth be told, I don’t think this is something that anyone could ever say, I have mastered that, because this is a lifelong journey of becoming so excited to have you here with me excited to get into our next conversation. Hope you found a couple of key take aways by this point you should have something calendered in your calendar to go defend your personal mission, vision statement or create it, let me know how it goes. And do not forget.

 

22:07

Go make life happen on your terms. Thanks so much, take care, we’ll talk soon.

 

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