Every human being has this primal instinct that awakens whenever we need to protect our loved ones. But on the other side of this survival nature is the far opposite: the expression of gratitude. In this Thanksgiving message, Patrick Donohoe looks back on how he protected his wife and kids from a possible assault by tapping into his primal instinct in just a split second. He explains how this opened his eyes that there is more to life than simply fighting to live, but also mindfulness and vulnerability.
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Primal Instinct & Gratitude
This episode is sponsored by the new and improved Financial Independence Calculator found at TheWealthStandard.com/calculator. One of the driving forces of human beings is freedom, which infers financial freedom too. Several years ago, I set out to discover how any individual, regardless of their financial situation, could evaluate their finances in five minutes or less, and have a firm date when they could achieve financial independence. The latest version of this calculator is free for the audience. The calculator is going to take you a few minutes to complete. It’s going to provide you with a specific financial independence date, so go check it out.
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My wife and I went out to breakfast at a place that’s a mile from our house. The food was awesome. It was later in the morning, so there weren’t many people there for breakfast. I had this incredible plate. It had this thick piece of homemade bread with breakfast potatoes and scrambled eggs, and this gravy that they make which is incredible, and then this man walks in. He’s bigger. He’s was probably pushing 300 pounds. His pants and shirt were noticeably dirty and he had this facial expression. When I saw it, I knew instantly that something wasn’t right. Let me pause for a second.
When Violence Is the Answer: Learning How to Do What It Takes When Your Life Is at Stake
I’m going to take you back to 2019. I attended this personal development event in Maui. The focus of the event was relationships, and my wife went with me. Part of the event had this self-defense component and it was conducted by a former Navy Seal and author of many books. He’s been in this space of hand-to-hand combat and self-defense. His name’s Tim Larkin. He wrote a couple of books. One is called When Violence Is the Answer. This part of the conference appealed to me as it would with most guys but specific to me, I realized that I didn’t have any formal fighting experience outside of my ice hockey days and the occasional brawl, which I wouldn’t consider self-defense.
I have three kids. Two of which are teenage girls. Outside of the guns that I own, I realized that I did not have the hand-to-hand combat skills to adequately protect my family. Now, the training wasn’t self-defense. It was ways to incapacitate someone, rupture their groin, pop out an eyeball, break an ankle or a knee, the trachea, and ways to hit a neck. In most cases, to make a person’s violent act completely halted or to also potentially kill someone. It was training so that if a violent situation was your fate or your family’s fate, that you at a minimum had a fighting chance. Most don’t.
These sessions are part of this conference. There are multi-hour sessions that strategically began with these disturbing video clips of violent crimes. It was intended to shock our nervous system to get us to realize that these things really happen. We got into partnerships and we sparred up for hours, but we sparred in slow motion. This slow-motion, the idea was to program our subconscious so that our bodies and our nervous system did not forget what we were learning. If we ever had to use it, it was one strike, then another, then another, then another.
Each partner took their turns and we went back and forth multiple times. A couple of months ago, I went to another event. Part of the event included similar training. This was an event that was put on by one of the show’s guests, Tim Reynolds. It was incredible to go through that because it had been a couple of years since I went through the initial training. It was like my mind knew what the stakes were, and my body almost innately knew what to do.
Now, let’s get back to the story. This guy sat down and my wife was closer to him than I was. I slowly moved her to the other side of the table. It happened to be right by an exit door. We inconspicuously shifted around so we wouldn’t notice it, then it happened. It was like those fighting movies, I think Sherlock Holmes is one of them, when they see what happens in advance of it happening. In my mind, this guy stood up. He began assaulting one of the servers. I told my wife, “Get out to the exit.” I rushed her out. I then took a glass ketchup bottle that was next to me and I hurled it, hitting him square in the face. I took another ketchup bottle, went around the corner, and hit him again. I blindsided him, took him to the ground, hit his groin, hit his neck, and broke his ankle. This played out in my mind in a matter of seconds. It was crazy. This is in my mind. This is not what happened but I sat there and I stared at him.
There was a level of intensity that I hadn’t experienced often, but that intensity existed when we made eye contact. He stared back at me. It’s like he knew what I was thinking. I didn’t break eye contact. I leaned in and he checked his surroundings. He looked back at me, then he slowly got up and left. Why do I share this with you? I’ve talked a lot about all of us human beings are part animals, especially men. We’re part primal. Our limbic system is pure survival for ourselves and it’s protecting those that we love.
Primal Instinct: All human beings are part animal. The limbic system is about pure survival. It’s to protect those that you love.
I believe that this vital part of us or one of the oldest parts of us is essential. It has a role. However, in the spirit of Thanksgiving, this primal part of us is the enemy. I say that because the expression of gratitude is the diametric opposite. Gratitude requires mindfulness, centeredness, vulnerability, and presence. Gratitude leads us to what I believe are the experiences that we are ultimately striving for, which is connection.
This show covers all aspects of wealth. It’s important to define wealth. To me, wealth is experiencing life fully. We don’t have any idea what’s going to happen to us from one day to the next. We never have. This experience led me to re-evaluate who I am for my wife and my children. Although experiencing how primal I got, it was awesome at the moment but it caused me to reflect on the subtle ways I was going primal when the situation didn’t warrant that part of me. I’d like to share that with you and I’m going to share it on the next episode because what happened was humbling, to say the least. Until then, experience wealth with those that you love. Be present, be mindful and be grateful.
Life is calling, and it calls for us to grow in the form of obstacles, problems, and challenges. In this episode, Patrick Donohoe shares an entry in his journal coming from his own personal experiences, friends, and work associates. It says the lessons life teaches us about marriage, parenthood, friendship, leadership, business, and investing are not meant to teach us a skill, fact, tactic, or strategy. They are to help us discover the multiple facets of who we are and use them strategically to show up to life. Life is calling. Answer the call.
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Life is Calling
This episode is sponsored by the new and improved Financial Independence Calculator found at TheWealthStandard.com/calculator. One of the driving forces of human beings is freedom, which infers financial freedom too. Several years ago, I set out to discover how any individual regardless of their financial situation could evaluate their finances in five minutes or less and have a firm date when they could achieve financial independence. The latest version of this calculator, which is free for readers can be found at TheWealthStandard.com/calculator. The calculator is going to take you a few minutes to complete and it’s going to provide you with a specific financial independence date. Check it out.
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In this week’s show, I’m going to share something I wrote in my journal. I associate what I’m about to share with you like something that’s come from my personal experiences, present and in the past as well as some individuals who are going through some rough patches in their lives some childhood friends and work associates. A flood of information came to me.
I feel that it was in part influenced by those who have inspired me in the past. I can name them but I won’t do that. I’m going to quote a few of them. I feel that this is right for the readers, especially given the current time that we find ourselves in whether it’s society or the time and place or the world as a whole but I felt it would be appropriate to share.
I’ve come to realize that the lessons of life, marriage, parenthood, friendship, leadership, business and investing were not meant to teach me a skill, a fact, tactic or strategy. The lessons were to help me discover the multiple facets of who I am and then use them strategically to show up to life. Science shows that stagnation does not exist in the universe. In everything, there is constant motion. A motion toward growth or death.
The nature of being alive presupposes that life calls to you. It calls for you to grow. Silencing the call is a death sentence. The call is in the form of obstacles, problems and challenges. Answer the call is met with a corresponding degree of pain amplifying with each failure. Life rarely calls to the whole of who you are but to specific parts of your personality, not the typical defaults that always show up but those parts that have been underutilized, sidelined, suppressed and even forgotten.
The breadth of our personality distinguishes the human being from the animal and plant kingdom. We can nurture a child one day and fight tooth and nail to defend our home the next. We can laugh until we cry and feel deep love and compassion. We can follow. We can lead and inspire. We can follow a trodden path. We can create a new one. We can breakthrough. We can back down and let go. We can direct. We can listen. We can smile. We can intensely stand.
Life Is Calling: It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, “Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?” Actually, who are you not to be?
We can graciously take credit. We can experience greatness as a team or together. We can be present. I’m saying this to myself. Until you reclaim those other parts of you, you will live in fear because deep inside, you know that the default of your personality has limits and will not successfully conquer the myriad of problems life throws at you. Tony Robbins says, “Fear is nothing but the uncertainty that comes from living in a place where you are not using all of your resources, what’s inside you because you think you’re something you’re not or it’s wrong.”
What you’re equally afraid of is not that you have what it takes but the fear of what it will mean to the image of who you think you are. Marianne Williamson said, “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.” We ask ourselves, “Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?” This goes to the parts that don’t typically arise or show up to life. Who are you not to be? You’re a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us, it’s in everyone. As we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” These are quotes that you may have heard before. The quotes that I’ve read before. Understanding them from the perspective I set, in the beginning, made them so much clearer to me.
Finally, another quote, “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.” As you learn about these different parts of you and how incredible they are in certain circumstances and then show up that way, life becomes an adventure because you know that any obstacle, challenge, anything that’s put in your way is conquerable. You have the power within to do that. What part of you is life-calling? The compassionate and forgiving? The witty, creative thinker and problem solver? The let loose, the life of the party? The stoic, temperate or poise of your internal king or queen? The fearless, breakdown walls, stop at nothing but victory part of you? Life is calling. Answer the call.
Welcome back to the third part of the three-part series on physically mastering wealth. Today, Patrick Donohoe is going to talk to you about two very different stories. One is about a family that saved too much money, the other is about a family that spent it all. Join in and learn from these stories so that you can apply the three financial habits for a happier life. Force these habits into your life today!
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Watch the episode here:
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Physically Mastering Wealth Series: Part 2
One of the driving forces of human beings is freedom, which infers financial freedom, too. Several years ago, I set out to discover how any individual, regardless of their financial situation, could evaluate their finances in five minutes or less, and have a firm date when they could achieve financial independence. The latest version of this calculator, which is free for readers, can be found at TheWealthStandard.com/calculator. The calculator is going to take you a few minutes to complete and it’s going to provide you with a specific financial independence date. Go check it out.
Introduction
This is the third part of a three-part series on Wealthy Habits. The end result of why I’m doing this series is so that an individual like yourself can show up to life even better, have a more abundant experience of each moment. I look at finance as being one of those topics that weigh on the mind of people constantly and influence the way they show up to life, which is, as you can imagine, not positive.
The First Story
I’m going to tell two stories. One of, someone who saved almost all of his family’s money and someone who was living paycheck to paycheck and how the 3 habits of 3 things I’m going to talk about that are applicable to both being able to get that same end result, which is a more enjoyable experience of life because of the specific mindset that it produces. Let’s start with the first story.
First off, if you have not read to the first two episodes of this three-part series, please go back and do that because you will understand the idea of physical mastery, which is the establishing of specific habits and how those habits will influence the lion share of your behavior. These habits are strategically designed, not the result of happenstance, which is usually the case with people but to get specific outcomes that people generally desire.
Let’s talk about this first family. This client of mine came to me and was making a ton of money through a series of unfortunate events and very painful lessons. He became the CEO of this specific company. At the time, he was making a lot of money, almost seven figures but he was saving the majority of it and came to find out the upbringing that he had drastically influenced what he did with the money. There was a very scarce mindset. They saved everything, scrimped, and did not go on many vacations or travel, even though the family had the means to do that in spades. He was carrying that same behavior into his family.
The Second Story
Saving the majority of money investing, he was very meticulous in the way that he balanced his portfolio and asset allocation very astute and well off. At the time of meaning, he didn’t necessarily have to work another day in his life but he kept working 50-60 hour weeks, saving the majority of his money but it came down to not necessarily experiencing out of life what he wanted. There are solutions to this. I’m going to go to the next story, which did not end very well.
The next story is about a couple who had a pretty nasty divorce but their entire marriage revolved around arguing about money. They were living beyond paycheck to paycheck, didn’t understand lifestyle expenses, and equated what they spent on what they thought they were making, which wasn’t what they were making. What this led to is a lot of fighting and to the point where there was a divorce and kids involved. It was bad.
At the same time, looking at where their behaviors came from, it was associated with the environments that they grew up in. One was an environment where they never had any money and that which they had to spend on food, clothes and transportation. Oftentimes, they didn’t have any money to spend. The other came from a lower-middle-class family and was making more than his parents but it was always this never saving, investing or having any plan associated with money.
Physically Mastering Wealth: When it comes to the actual implementation of these strategies, there are two ways to approach establishing habits. You can force it or you can consistently do it.
The Three Financial Habits
Here are the financial habits that ultimately impacted. The first family was a little too late with the second family that I was working with. Moving beyond that, they had made some changes once the divorce was final but I’m going to focus on this first family but in the end, these principles equally apply. I want to make sure that you understand that we all have financial habits. We didn’t necessarily strategically design them for this specific end result that we wanted. You can unpack these three financial habits in multiple layers. I’m going to speak to them generally and I’m going to give you some resources that you can learn more about them if you want.
It’s the establishing of three habits. The 1st habit is a spending strategy, 2nd habit is a savings strategy and the 3rd habit is an investment strategy. It’s not very complicated but when it comes to the actual implementation of these strategies, there are two ways to approach establishing habits. You can force it or consistently do it as I talked about in the last episode. Sixty days is the average. Forcing it, though, sometimes allows you to not have an out. Even though you do have an out, you can put yourself in an environment where the out is very difficult.
Let’s first talk about spending. There’s a principle of pay yourself first that’s talked about in a lot of different books but I agree with that and essentially have money carved out of the top of what you take home as your income as savings. It’s a 10/10/10 Rule. Ten percent off the top goes to savings, 10% goes to investment, 10% goes to charity, and ultimately, you live on 70% of your net take home.
These can vary. I’m only talking about general rules. Some might not be possible right away for some people and it may require some weaning in over some time but for this first-person, that first story I told you about, it took a lot to go from trying to save 70% to 75% of your take-home to only savings and investment about 20%. You are going to have to change some of your behaviors regardless but behind forcing it, what that does is allows you to look very closely at your spending, which is going to be 70% of your take-home.
This may require a lifestyle change. Maybe it’s living in a small house, a smaller car, going on fewer vacations but 70% we put that into what I recommend most often, which is a spending account. There’s a set amount of money that each month, that’s all that you can spend. When it’s gone, then you can’t spend any more. Go figure but you forced this upon yourself.
You set it up, which means that you can easily retract it at the same time, forcing it to happen allows your behavior to be modified very quickly. In the beginning, it’s going to be painful. It’s like someone who hasn’t worked out a long time but commits themselves and almost forces themselves into a new workout routine. You are going to feel some pain and soreness until your body gets used to it. In this case, until your financial life gets used to it.
There are instances where there are big expenses, whether it’s a college, car or vacation. What I typically recommend, what I do in my own family, is when expenses exceed a certain level that’s not within our monthly cashflow, then you essentially treat your savings as a family bank, lend it to the specific spending account so that you can go on vacation, buy a new car and XYZ your house, then you repay on a schedule that a bank would force you to repay back at. For more information on that, you can check out the new courses that we have up and running, the Wealth Map. It’s only $497. Go to the website and you can pick that up. There’s a commercial too that you have probably noticed that teaches that concept.
I’m going to go at what level do you stop those savings. I believe there is an excess of savings. First off, 6 to 12 months of liquid savings are adequate to produce that abundance mindset. Maybe one month of cash. These months equate to all of your living expenses for that specific month so 6 to 12 months in cash. Saving until it gets to that level and you can do one month in gold and Bitcoin.
Physically Mastering Wealth: Live by the 10/10/10 rule. 10% percent off the top goes to savings, the other 10% goes to investment, and the other 10% goes to charity. Ultimately, you’ll live on 70% of your net take home.
Not necessarily the activity that’s important but it’s the mindset that it produces. I don’t necessarily think Bitcoin or cryptocurrency is wise for liquid savings because there is some volatility there, whether it’s gold, cash, savings account or insurance cash value. Those are locations that can not lose value. What it does is produce a mindset. If you lose your job or you have something unforeseen that happens in an accident, there’s enough liquidity there to take care of the family until you can figure things out. That’s the savings strategy idea.
The second is when you have filled up that bucket in a sense, then it’s spilling over into your opportunity fund. This opportunity fund is meant for investment. The 10/10/10 strategy is where 10% of your net income is going into this opportunity fund. When you have 10% of savings going into your opportunity fund, then it starts to build up even more.
From an investment standpoint, this is an investment strategy. That’s why I created the Hierarchy of Wealth. The Hierarchy of Wealth is all linked to the free calculator but it’s a way in which you can look at your asset allocation. It measures your asset allocation based on the amount of risk you are taking and the amount of control that you have.
Solution: The First Story
It doesn’t do your asset allocation based on the asset class. It does your asset allocation more based on what you understand about what you are investing in. That’s truly where the risk comes from. It’s a free calculator. You can download that and see where your hierarchy of wealth is based on the asset allocation that you have. That is a mouthful but what this does, I will use the first family. I will also speculate on what would have happened if the second family had established these habits.
The first family, what this does is it starts to put your perspective of life and why you are earning, spending, and investing money in the first place, which has to have a better experience of life. This individual didn’t realize how profoundly influenced his upbringing was to the way he managed his assets and money. What he was doing was hurting his family. They did not travel very often and did not do the things over the weekend that were enjoyable because of a very scarce way of thinking about spending money.
What this strategy did is it helped to put more money in a spending bucket of all places, a spending account where this is the money that’s going to be spent monthly. It was piling up there in the beginning but what it did is it engaged the mind to look for ways in which he could provide experiences with his family, whether it was vacation, things to do on the weekend and so forth. What it does is engage what’s truly important, allowing him to experience more of life.
Speculation: The Second Story
In this instance, he agreed with it. At the same time, the habits he had were so strong and pulling him backward that he needed to force himself into these new behaviors. Speculating on the family that ended up getting divorced and messy, what it does is it forces lifestyle changes. Specifically, this family had three cars. One of which they didn’t need. They were spending stuff all over the place and had no controls there.
What this would have done was put money into this spending account and when money was gone, it couldn’t be spent. It would allow them to look at ways in which they can engage the efficiency imprudence mindset, whether it’s cutting memberships, getting rid of one car, paying attention to where money was spent and being on the same page there. That would have allowed more savings, which they didn’t have any.
Physically Mastering Wealth: Six to 12 months of liquid savings are adequate to produce that abundance mindset. These months equate to all of your living expenses for that specific month.
There are some primary rocks if you are familiar with Stephen R. Covey. When you are going about any goal, initiative, outcome, there are rocks, pebbles and sand. Rocks are the biggest pieces of that if you were to fill up a jar. Pebbles are next and fill in the gaps. Rocks, those big things. Number one, it’s not having and going into credit card debt, which is the result of overspending but it’s also to have this emergency fund, 6 months, 12 months. When somebody has twelve months of liquid cash that they know is there, it’s not going to be touched, it’s there in a case of a rainy day and will never lose value outside of inflation, the peace of mind that it creates is incredible. Both no credit card debt and having that type of liquidity are vital.
Forcing Habits
For me, what I have answered and thought through, oftentimes, having liquidity is more important than paying off a credit card debt. I believe that 3 months, 6 months, ideally 12 months of liquidity produces a mindset where you can produce more money and ultimately pay down debt because that increases in producing money. The idea here is to establish some of these foundational elements to your finances and do it by forcing the situation.
What that means is upfront. You had to do a budget. I’m going to put a family spending plan spreadsheet, which you can download. It’s doing a budget, spending plan gate and seeing, whether it’s within that 70% or not. If it’s not, then it’s starting to make adjustments and having that spending account set up, which is, “Here’s the money that we can spend monthly and when it’s gone, it’s gone. We can’t spend anymore.”
That right there is ripping the Band-Aid off. At the same time, it is a behavior that will allow you to feel so much better about where money is going. It allows you to have a mindset that will engage ways in which you can save money and live the same lifestyle but fit it within that 70%. It carries over to the experience you have with your kids and spouse knowing that you have a plan and you are sticking to it. Subsequently, I believe it impacts how you show up for how you produce money.
I look at the previous episode too talking about leadership, producing more and the impact of earning 10% more per year and how much return on investment you would have to make to compensate, trying to achieve 10% more per year in income. Focusing there, which comes down to a few fundamentals and habits that you can develop around leadership. The idea here is to put these in place and force them. That’s what I have done with my family and what I encourage clients to do. You can go about trying to establish financial habits for 60 days. You take action on forcing it, not being forced upon you. It’s amazing what is created as a result.
I’m going to wrap up. Three parts series, I hope you enjoyed it. Habits are one of those things where they are discounted but they do produce amazing results when you establish them. Go into financial habits. What I talked about is not that new. It has been around for a long time but individuals are taking the information and doing with it. It’s one of those things that has never been done. If you are not getting the financial results that you want in life, then forcing these habits, especially from a spending strategy, investment strategy and saving strategy standpoint. Follow these words of wisdom. It will produce the results that you want.
If you don’t have the tools to create a spending strategy, go head over to TheWealthStandard.com. If you also have taken me up on the free offer for the Financial Independence Calculator, there’s also a spending plan or budget creator. Finally, the Hierarchy of Wealth, which is included in the Wealth Map course that gives additional context to it.
You can download the Hierarchy of Wealth Calculator as well for free. Thanks for reading this series. I hope it’s produced some value for you. If you are willing to go out and share what you have learned with others, reference the show. We would love to get some new audience and subscribers on here. Take care. We will talk to you soon.
Is it possible to physically master wealth? For the first part of the Physically Mastering Wealth Series, Patrick Donohoe discusses why understanding how habits are formed and how behavior is conditioned helps in creating more wealth. It’s all about figuring out what works best and leveraging your resources to produce optimal results. And then doing it again and again. Want to learn more? Tune in for more insight on how you can make creating wealth a habit!
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Watch the episode here:
Listen to the podcast here:
Physically Mastering Wealth Series
Part 1
One of the driving forces of human beings is freedom, which infers financial freedom too. Several years ago, I set out to discover how any individual, regardless of their financial situation, could evaluate their finances in five minutes or less and have a firm date when they could achieve financial independence. The latest version of this calculator, which is free for readers, can be found at TheWealthStandard.com/calculator. The calculator is going to take you just a few minutes to complete, and it’s going to provide you with a specific financial independence date. Go check it out.
This episode is picking up on something I discussed last time, which is the idea of physical mastery. We show up to life doing pretty much the same thing day in and day out. It’s how we’re biologically wired. There’s so much going on in society now. Information, ideas, opinions, stimuli from every different angle. Look at our phones and how distracting with all the things that we can do. If you want to make progress when it comes to your wealth, you have to understand how habits are formed and how behavior is conditioned.
Without that, it’s going to be a challenge. Ultimately, that leads to taking excessive risks and risks always end in failure usually, especially if you’re taking consistent risks like that, and ultimately will lead to new condition behavior. Hopefully, if you’re learning those lessons, but taking proactive actions will allow you to start to pick up on other people’s failures and discoveries so that you don’t have to necessarily take too much risk and put failure on the line and obviously unintended consequences of that failure.
We’re going to get into 1 of the 2 primary ways in which Wealth Building occurs. I want you to consider this as a possibility for yourself. This is based on my experience. I’ve had the fortunate opportunity to meet lots of different people, experience a busy business, and see not just my own myriad of failures but also those of others in different businesses and industries, etc. These are the conclusions that I’ve come to. They’re not necessarily these absolute conclusions that will not evolve. Of course, they’re going to evolve, but I wanted to talk about the first, which is leadership and operational leverage.
It all boils down to leverage. I want you to consider the possibility that making more money, being wealthier as far as producing income is in proportion to the leverage of your time, number one, and then also relationships with other people. In other words, the idea that sentence is making a bigger impact with the time that you have. The biggest challenge is that 99.9% of us have been conditioned to do the opposite.
Let me give you a story. This is a conversation I had with a younger guy, cool guy, good energy, lots of ambition, but he made a comment which points to what I’m trying to get across in this episode. He said first off, he managed a small supplement store of a bigger conglomerate. They were growing successful. He loved his job. He loved being healthy, working out and physical conditioning. He made a comment which he told me everything. We had a longer discussion and went into the details of it.
He said that he couldn’t leave his store for long to go to an event, be away for the weekend and take a day off. He can’t leave because the employees are or assistant managers will mess it up. They’ll screw it up. They won’t do it the way that he does it. In that, this is how most of us are conditioned because we’re raised in the US school system wishes, which is based in the Prussian system.
The Prussian system was designed to train factory workers as well as military soldiers. It’s for us to just follow orders or tasks. We’re not taught to necessarily be a leader. We’re taught to we’re a manager and tell people what to do. This is a huge example between the idea of management and leadership managers manage tasks and tell people what to do they usually use the tactic of fear to do it. That’s what society continues to condition in the political realm, in the school educational system, as well as in Corporate America.
That’s a big difference because that’s not leadership. Leadership initiated more training and conditioning then instead of disciplining somebody, it’s coaching them and continuing to train them until proven processes and principles gave become part of their makeup. It’s been conditioned into them where they would do what you would do. They would do what has been proven to be done. In this case, in this story, processes weren’t documented, training did not revolve around proven and successful processes or principles.
That’s why it led to this very awkward manager-employee relationship, which usually never progresses. This is where I want to highlight how valuable it is to understand the idea of leadership because if this manager of one store, he understands why his store was one of the most successful ones in the territory. He knew what it took to run a successful business.
Those processes, he held them close to the trust because there was so much meaning there. It was him. He was validated. He felt important because he was successful. The idea of leadership is not keeping that to yourself. The idea of leadership is training others to do exactly what you would do to get that success.
Physically Mastering Wealth: Consider the possibility that making more money, being wealthier as far as producing income is in proportion to the leverage of your time relationships with other people.
What does that have to do with leverage? If you have one store that’s successful, that’s being run by somebody doing things the way that you would do them, then two stores are possible, then 3, 4, and 5. Let’s say that a district is comprised of five stores. If you’ve done five stores, now you can do a district. If you can do one district, you can do 2, 3, 4, 5, or 10. Now you’re upwards of dozens of different shops that you as a leader are able to have stewardship over it because you have conditioned into employees, proven processes and proven systems.
This obviously supplement stores, but this applies to all industries. The technology industry has mastered this just because of how complex that world in that industry is. The more you understand leadership and how much you can leverage time by employing proven tactics, proven strategies, now you can control a host of resources and subsequently make a lot more money.
I’m going to keep going with this idea of operational leverage because our world is evolving rapidly and people are looking for ways in which they can be more efficient all the time. You don’t have to go out and necessarily invent it. I looked at really two things in the business world that create an immense amount of leverage. The first is the media. The second is technology. It’s the same idea as you’re looking for ways in which you can do more with the time that you have.
Let’s use an example of a story. We’re doing a live event. Zoom-wise, there are a couple of people that are doing the event. It’s basically training that I do a couple of times a year for other financial advisors. I have done this with a partner of mine for years. First off, the business that I run is very different than the typical financial services, financial planning practice because we’ve done it for many years virtually through webinars. This was before webinars even popularized. Before video webinars, we used to go to a meeting.
Adobe Connect is another one that we used way back in the day. It’s super clunky software, but we didn’t have people come into our office, but the typical financial practice is that they went to people’s houses. They had people come into their office. It’s inefficient in my perspective. We were always told, “You can’t do that.”
People will never do that. They’ll never do business with you unless you build that face-to-face relationship. Even early on, we had compliance departments flying out to our office gate because they were like, “No way you can’t build a relationship with somebody. You can’t do business with people without seeing them face to face.” It was a very challenging time.
Obviously, it’s been adopted by a lot of different businesses these days, but my point is it’s very difficult to go from what you’ve been doing to something that’s new. This is why conditioning is so important. Physical mastery requires repetition, but even during COVID, because with this advisor group, I had been talking to them for years about virtual business and meeting with clients over webinars, the technology was easier. Conditioned behavior is like, “No. I can’t do that.”
COVID forced it. This is usually how behavior changes. Either it’s a conditioned change, very strategic we condition change or there’s a massive disruption that forces change. If you think you need to change something, it’s going to continue to compound, grow and fester until you’re forced to change. Might as well rip the Band-Aid off right now.
COVID comes on and people start to see, “I can do Zoom webinars. I can do this and that,” before they had to conduct a conditioned behavior to do things a certain way because that’s where they found success. Obviously, it makes sense, but at the same time, this is the idea behind Zoom being hugely beneficial because now you can have 5 meetings a day instead of 2. You can meet with dozens of more people who don’t necessarily have to come to your office in coordinating schedules, getting time off, getting a babysitter and the list goes on.
The idea of just having technology of being able to communicate with somebody face to face across the internet, massive leverage is possible because of that and lots of businesses experience it. That’s just an example because there are technologies everywhere. They are essentially finding ways to replace predictable things that you are currently doing manually. I’m not saying that you replace people as a whole. There are theories around AI and robotics doing that.
I don’t want to go that far. What I’m saying is that there are inefficiencies in how you manage your time. The most valuable time that anybody has is spent in front of other people, like engaging in meaningful conversation, but there’s lots of other stuff that takes away from that, whether it’s paperwork, documentation, appointment reminders, how you do the actual meetings or taking notes.
I can keep going on with examples, but there are technologies that are coming out that allow you to spend more time in the most meaningful things, begin to look for it, and incorporate it into your system and your rhythm. Technology is the first thing. Media is the second thing, whether it’s video or podcasts. When you do a video, you do it once you spend an hour doing it, “I’m going to do this podcast for 15 or 20 minutes.” It can be listened to by one million people, but I only spent 15 to 20 minutes on it. That is leverage.
I have another story. I have a good buddy who is successful in a specific construction niche because he was able to find a foundation raising. When a foundation settles and cracks, he found a very efficient process that was developed in the Midwest that he went out and learned and then brought to Utah. Now he has locations in Northern and Southern Utah where he has these systems that he’s used to raising the foundation and do it inexpensively as well as efficiently quick.
It’s what he’s done to train his staff. He started to use media. He’ll record how this machine is operated, how you do a phone call, how you go out and do a bid. He found all the different successful ways in which he did it, and then he’d created media that trained staff in order to do it. That’s another form of media being an ideal way to leverage the most predictable things because he found that time and energy were being spent in training. Leaves doing it manually every single time. There were certain things in training that were predictable that he had to do over and over again.
He started to use media as leverage so that he could spend his time doing more meaningful things. There are lots to unpack here. I’m not going to do it in this show because there are so many different examples, but building physical mastery around the idea of leadership is for you to constantly be finding ways in which you can be more valuable with the time that you have.
It creates massive wealth for people you look at, whether it’s district managers or executive-level positions. They understand operations and leadership of people, so that with the time that you have, you’re able to have stewardship over lots of different production because you understand the dynamics of leadership people, relationships as well as proven and successful processes.
Physically Mastering Wealth: Building physical mastery around the idea of leadership is for you to constantly be finding ways in which you can be more valuable with the time that you have.
I’m going to give you some books. You guys can go check out the show notes on TheWealthStandard.com for some of the best books that are out there. I mentioned a lot of this stuff in my book, which is Heads I Win Tails You Lose and get a free copy by just going to the website under the resources tab. There’s a couple of other Cameron Herold. I’ve known Cameron for several years. He has several books on this. One of the first ones was Double Double, but he has other ones called Meetings Suck. He has a Vivid Vision. He’s a great author. It’s very easy to read books and understand. They have actionable things that you can do.
Another one, a couple of books by Jocko Willink, Dichotomy of Leadership. It is an awesome book. He also has Leadership Strategy and Tactics, which is a field manual that gives you playbooks of how to find opportunities to better lead your team instead of just managing them. There’s Traction by Gino Wickman. This is a way in which you can incorporate processes into your business and find successful processes and have your team replicate those processes.
The CEO within another great book that I’ve come across, and then most of the stuff by John Maxwell is absolutely incredible. That’s part two, which is production leverage. You are producing wealth which I believe is the one you have the greatest return and there are infinite possibilities, but you have to understand the ideas of leverage.
Find ways in which you ingrain that in your mind because your body and mindset is pretty much influenced to do the exact opposite because that’s how we have been raised in this United States society, under this hierarchical management-driven, fear-driven, whiplash-driven society, and that’s not the way to lead. That’s not how you create leverage. Next episode, we’re going to talk about financial habits, some of the few things you can do to institute financial habits that will create wealth. Thanks for reading. We’ll see you back next episode. Bye.
In order to master wealth, you need to master your habits. You need to develop new habits so that you don’t just do the same thing over and over. Wealth is a direct result of habits. Join your host Patrick Donohoe as he talks about the different levels of masteries and why habits are crucial to life. Replace your existing habits with new ones today!
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Mastering Wealth By Developing New Habits
Can you learn how to be wealthy? In my experience, wealth is a direct result of habits. You don’t simply read a book, go to a conference, watch a YouTube video and end up being wealthy. At least, that’s my experience. There are some who roll the dice and hit seven. They play Blackjack, bet everything and hit 21. To me, that’s not wealth. That’s a risk. If that’s a strategy or a pattern you want to develop, that doesn’t usually end up producing good results. I believe that wealth is when principled ideas are baked into our nervous system. Our actions to the dynamic or the ever-changing experiences of life are more automatic or unconscious.
How do you get to that point when these principled ideas are baked into your nervous system? First, it’s understanding that ideas and information must travel through three levels particularly. The first level is Cognitive Mastery, which is understanding the ideas and information rationally, and how they apply to the circumstances of your life and what you want.
The second level is Emotional Mastery. This is where you understand that emotions are simply signaling something and they’re there to serve you. They’re there usually to protect you. It’s understanding the nature and the purpose of those emotions, and then figuring out a way to get them to serve you as opposed to how most people treat their emotions where they want to suppress, not embrace.
Master Wealth: Wealth is when principled ideas are baked into your nervous system. That your actions to the ever-changing experiences of life are more automatic.
The third is Physical Mastery. Physical mastery is when you don’t even think about your actions or reactions, or your decisions. They’re part of you. An easy example of physical mastery is sports. I played ice hockey growing up. I’m in my 40s but with the experience I had growing up playing over and over again street hockey, pond hockey, youth hockey in high school and then college, my body understands how to play hockey. I don’t have to think about it now. Now I’m older, slower, weigh a little bit more than I did when I was younger. At the same time, my body remembers how to skate, pass and shoot. When I played during the summers in a men’s league, I don’t have to think about it. That is physical mastery.
I’ll give you another example as it relates to the new circumstances of our life because that’s an existing circumstance of life. Playing a new game but it’s still the same game. A few months ago, my wife was somewhat critical of how I was acting and she’s usually right. I brought some challenges from work home and it was impacting how present I was for her as well as my kids. She said to me, “With everything you read, all these conferences that you go to, and all the money you’re spending to improve yourself as a human being, our family, the business, you think you’ve figured out a way to show up better when you come home.”
My initial response, you can imagine, the emotional triggers were going off. Many years ago, I would have responded completely differently than I did, but I understood how those responses would serve me or not serve me. They would not serve me. It would have been a rocky road if I responded the way I did many years ago. At that moment, I swore to myself a few times in my head, and then snapped out of it and figured out a way to be present with my family. I fell into those old patterns. We all do. It’s how long we spend suffering in those old patterns if they’re patterns that do not serve us.
A famous quote that I love is, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence is not an act, it’s a habit.” This is usually accredited to Aristotle. It was a guy in the early 1900s named Will Durant who took two of Aristotle’s quotes and summarize them within that quote. This is the lesson from these experiences that I’ve been talking about. We have the illusion that we are consciously in control of our day-to-day experiences. I want you to consider just for a moment the possibility that you have zero control. Your responses to the daily circumstances of life are automatic. They are already baked in.
I don’t believe in absolutes but I want you to consider for a moment that how you are going to show up is already baked into your body or your nervous system. If you are happy with the results that you want in life, great. At the same time, we’re wired to grow. There is a paradox there because if you’re wired to grow, it means that you need to have different results than you have now. Trying to look at the same patterns and habits as before producing new results leads to the definition of insanity.
It’s not going to come from our patterns and habits of the past. We want new results. We first have to understand how patterns and habits are developed, and then strategically design some situations and strategies to get rid of or reprogram our old habits and patterns and replace them with new ones. I believe that there are a few primary variables in developing new habits. Number one that’s counterintuitive to how society operates, we’re used to information at our disposal immediately. We’re used to instant food, instant entertainment, everything’s instant.
Master Wealth: Replace your existing patterns and habits with new ones. You have to really understand some psychology, but also that it takes a bit of time to develop new habits.
I believe that patterns and habits are the opposite. It takes a while, especially as we get older. Replacing existing patterns and habits with new ones. We have to understand some psychology. We have to understand that it takes a bit of time to develop these habits but they’re worth it. Here are a couple of variables. The first variable is designing the pattern or the habit or actions. We want to design them after what’s proven to work. We have lots of examples of the different patterns as it relates to wealth and finance that work.
The second is designing a strategy that either forces us to do it or a strategy that allows repetition over and over again to build into our nervous system these habits. A great example that I love to use is CrossFit. It’s a different workout every single day. It’s hard. I don’t have to think about that. The pattern that I developed was getting up at a certain hour and showing up every single day. That’s a strategic design to get a good workout every single day.
The final variable is establishing stakes, where you recognize that if you don’t change or grow, what’s going to happen? That’s a negative state but you also start to identify the positives. What you’re going to gain? What your experience of life is going to be like if you develop these habits? Over the next two episodes of the show, I’m going to talk about the two primary areas of wealth building. I would say the best habits in those areas. The first area is going to be how you produce income. The second area is what you do with your money.
I’m going to talk about the habits that I have seen serve people. I’ve seen these habits produce millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions for people that I know. From a production standpoint, how you make money, and then also investing habits, saving habits, spending habits. Ways in which you can develop these habits and patterns that will ultimately serve you.
Next two episodes, make sure you check back. It’s going to be a fun little series here. Thanks for reading. You got the website for more information about the show and other resources. We’ve updated the resource page and lots of cool stuff are on there. Go check that out. We will talk to you next time, where we will get into the first area of wealth building, which is making money.
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Patrick is the President and CEO and started Paradigm Life in 2007 after learning from his mentor Kim Butler about financial strategies outside of Wall Street.
With a background in economics and marketing, Patrick immediately realized the opportunity to teach investors, business owners, professionals and families on a large scale using modern digital media and communication technology. Since 2007 Paradigm Life has worked with thousands of individuals in all 50 states.
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that person was Patrick Donohoe when he first explained what you're about to learn in this book.
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AMAZON REVIEWS
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Take back control of your money
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...a critical financial strategy
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Patrick Donohoe is the Founder and CEO of Paradigm Life and PL Wealth Advisors. Patrick and his team teach thousands how
to build wealth, create lifetime cash flow, and leave a meaningful legacy.
Patrick was recently honored by Investopedia as one of the Nation's Top 100 Most Financial Advisors. He is a highly sought
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Patrick grew up in West Hartford, Connecticut, and attended the University of Utah, where he received his bachelor's degree in economics.
He lives in Salt Lake city with his wife and three children.
WHAT'S INSIDE THE BOOK?
THE CHAPTER LIST:
1. ORIGINS OF THE AMERICAN DREAM
2. THE PERPETUAL WEALTH STRATEGY™
3. QUESTION EVERYTHING
4. BREAK AWAY FROM WALL STREET
5. AVOIDING THE INVESTING AND LENDING TRAP
6. THINK FOR YOURSELF
7. A SOLID FOUNDATION
8. B ELIKE THE WEALTHY
9. MYTHS AND TRUTHS OF INSURANCE
10. SAVE, BORROW, INVEST, AND BUILD WEALTH
11. START, BUILD, AND PROSPER YOUR BUSINESS
12. YOUR FINANCIAL FUTURE
13. MAKE THE SHIFT
14. TAKE BACK CONTROL
Heads I Win, Tails You Lose
by Patrick Donohoe
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