The year 2020 was certainly difficult, but the lessons it left must be reflected upon and put to good use. Patrick Donohoe shares his New Year thoughts focused on the toughest moments of last year that challenged the competency of leaders, the changes in the environment, the worth of success, and our ability to deal with the most depressing times. Patrick also underlines the importance of starting new and positive habits this 2021 to gain a fresh outlook in life, especially in morning routines.
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New Year Thoughts, Realizations, And Reflections
Thank you for tuning in the first episode for the year 2021. I took a bit of time off and I’m excited to share some thoughts I’ve had as this interesting year kicks off, especially in light of what’s occurred. I look at 2020 and I look at what’s to come in 2021. I realized that the world never changes, but everything about the environment within the world is always ever-changing. The reason why I say the world isn’t changing because there’s rules and principles associated with the world and with life, whether it’s physical principles like gravity, math, psychology, business, health, relationships, even money, but the environment is always changing.
Sometimes there are extremes, hence 2020 and some of the chaos that we’ve experienced in the early part of 2021, but it’s always changing regardless of the degree. We can’t change much about the environment. The only thing we can do is educate ourselves on what the principles are, what the rules of life or of the world are so that when we show up to life, when we experience the environment, we can align with that age old saying that life and our meaning is 10% what happens and 90% how we respond to it. I believe in that simple process is where true wealth is.
New Year Thoughts: People can’t change much about the environment. The only thing everyone can do is educate themselves on what the principles are and what the rules of life or the world are.
We have some challenges in the environment in which we are showing up every single day. Many of you, I include myself in this, had some good experiences in 2020, but also some negative experiences. As I looked at the statistics, I had to stop. It’s frightening, the number of suicides that have gone up, the domestic violence cases, weight gain, pornography consumption, derailed education, depression, substance abuse and the list goes on. 2020 was a year that’s challenged much of the world and it’s still challenging. It’s clear based on these statistics that most people were in reactionary mode and weren’t prepared. They didn’t understand principles, rules and laws. I include myself in some of the experiences I had, but I believe that if we look back at 2020 and we say, “I’m glad that’s done.” In a negative perspective, I think we missed a huge opportunity. I look at 2020 and it was one of the most pivotal years for me.
It was one of those times when you do a hard workout, you reflect back on sports that you participated in. It was one of those challenging times where you were pushed to your limits. In those experiences lies some incredible realizations about yourself, what you’re made of and the degree of fortitude that’s within you. 2020 was an amazing year. Now, we have 2021. I don’t think much of what happened in 2020 is done. It’s going to continue in 2021. What options do we have? What options do you have?
You can sit back and hope that the environment conforms to what you want or you can sit back and let things happen or you can take the bull by the horns. You can understand the principles of relationship, the rules of money, the principles of business and the fundamentals of leadership. Those aren’t going to change, the environment is in order to capitalize on the tremendous opportunity that exists, because most people are not responding, they are reacting.
Tao Te Ching
The world needs leaders and those that understand the principles of life, business, charity, gratitude and leadership. I hope that for those, especially who have read the blog are in a position to step up. 2020 was challenging for me in many ways. I’m assuming most of you can empathize with this, my family’s social, educational, religious and the normalcy was completely disrupted. I include myself in that. I count these moments when I had to dig deep, coming to an empty office where my entire team went home.
I was used to coming to a vibrant, positive energy that motivated me. I came to essentially nothingness. I had moments of breakdown. I checked out there were days that I didn’t want to work, to leave my family and to lead a company but then I was able to have those moments where I was tested. I faced that adversity and I used it as fuel to get to different heights. I don’t think life is about figuring out how to show up 100% of the time. I don’t know if that’s possible. That’s not the point of what I’m saying. The point is, it’s to think about life as a challenge, a test happening for you, not to you, being aware of that, then taking responsibility, getting back up and then moving your feet.
I want you to consider something. I want you to consider that wealth, success and achievement isn’t about making some wildly successful investment. It’s not about praying the gold goes to $10,000 an ounce or Bitcoin goes to $100,000 a coin or getting into the next Tesla or Amazon. I don’t know if you’re like me, but in my experience, realizing successful opportunities in investment, business and life on a consistent basis has to do with you. It’s developed by the more insignificant things that you do.
In 2020, I spoke a lot about asymmetry. I talked about asymmetric investments, asymmetric risk reward, meaning little risks, but massive upside. There’s also asymmetric allocation of time and energy. This 2021, we were gifted more time, more energy, but the majority of us and I include myself in this, we had moments where we didn’t use that time and energy for productive purposes. The reason why? It’s our habits. I talked about habits, but the quote that continues to repeat through my mind is by Lao Tzu. He’s the Chinese Philosopher. He was the author of the Tao Te Ching. He said, “Watch your thoughts, they become your words. Watch your words, they become your actions. Watch your actions, they become your habits. Watch your habits, they become your character. Watch your character, it becomes your destiny.” We are what we repeatedly do.
If we look at the nature of the unconscious world and how we operate as human beings, we’re doing 95% of the same things we’ve been doing. When those things are no longer available, for example, 2020, we don’t know what to do because we’re used habitually used to doing things a certain way. As you create your goals for 2021, you set your targets, your aim and you define what you want, consider adopting the habits. The simple things that you consistently do, adopting some new ones.
New Year Thoughts: As you create your goals for 2021, set your targets, and you define what you want, consider adopting consistent and even new habits.
One of the things I failed to do because of the disruption of 2020, was my morning routine. Consistently working out, meditating, gratitude statements and my priming exercise, I stopped. When I stopped that, my days were derailed. As you set your sales for 2021, be prepared for some storms, wind and curve balls, but let’s figure out how to welcome those. Let’s establish our habits so that as we face those during the day, we use them as fuel to live an amazing life.
I’m excited to interview some guests this 2021 that inspire me. Talk about some things financially that will be huge opportunities for entrepreneurs, for business owners and for professionals. Things are going to change. There is always opportunity. Thank you for the support in 2020. I’m excited for this new year, for you and for those leaders who have the opportunity to step up and to dig within themselves what creates a meaningful life. It’s in all of us. Sometimes we get to dig deeper to find it. I know it’s in you. I hope you step up this 2021. We got a good guest coming, Mr. Jim Rickards. He is an amazing man. He has a new book that is out. You’re going to enjoy it. It has to do with a lot of the things I’m talking about because of the pandemic of COVID-19 in 2020. There’s a lot coming down the line. If you’re prepared, there are tremendous opportunities. If not, it’s going to be painful. Are you ready to do this? Let’s go.
December 24, 2020Patrick DonohoePodcast00:31:08Comments Off on The Rich Doctor: Creating Financial Freedom To Design The Life That You Want With Tom Burns, MD
Why don’t doctors get rich? It’s a baffling question considering how much hard work and service these individuals are putting in every day. And it’s not all about the money, even. Doctors do have a comfortable salary, but most fail to develop and design the life that they want simply because they have no time. Tired of being trapped by his own profession, sports doctor and orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Tom Burns started to look somewhere else to find a way to create that financial freedom he was looking for. After reading Robert Kiyosaki’s iconic, “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” (the very first copy, no less), he knew that the answer to his question is in real estate. Through a combination of hard work, luck and the right people to support him, Tom developed his own real estate portfolio that now provides him the financial means to do what he wants with his life. In his book, “Why Doctors Don’t Get Rich,” Tom shares his story and message with other doctors, creating the beginnings of a community of physicians who are passionate about creating wealth and freedom for themselves. Listen in as he joins Patrick Donohoe in this eye-opening discussion.
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The Rich Doctor: Creating Financial Freedom To Design The Life That You Want With Tom Burns, MD
I have a guest that I’ve been looking forward to interviewing for quite some time. He wrote a book, which is called Why Doctors Don’t Get Rich: How YOU Can Create Freedom with Passive Income Investing. His name is Tom Burns. The first time I met Tom Burns, he was telling the story of how he purchased the very first copy of Rich Dad Poor Dad from a carwash owned by Keith Cunningham in Austin, Texas. He looked at the number on the back of the book when he was finished reading it. He called the number and lo and behold, Robert Kiyosaki himself picked up the phone. From there, they developed a relationship and it was awesome hearing that experience.
The next story I heard from Tom was when he was down in Southern Chile on a cruise. It was an icebreaker ship going toward Antarctica. This guy is an amazing guy and has incredible stories. You are going to love him. Tom is a physician. He started his adult life as a doctor. He’s trained in sports medicine as an orthopedic surgeon. He began his career in Austin, Texas and he continues to practice to this day. Along the way, Tom decided that he wanted an exceptional life and didn’t believe that a career as a doctor would check all of the boxes.
He wanted choice, freedom and time with his family. Through a series of events that included hard work, luck, loyal friends, great partners, patient educators and giving mentors, he developed a real estate portfolio that gave him the financial means to determine his ultimate future. Tom gets to live a pretty extraordinary life and he wanted to give back. He wrote this book. He is specifically focusing his attention on doctors, those in the medical career, which in 2020, they have had some challenging times.
It speaks to his experiences and what he did in order to achieve even more freedom. I hope you guys love the interview. Go pick up his book. You can go to RichDoctor.com in order to learn more about Tom. He has a newsletter and a blog. You can also go to Amazon and purchase his book. The audiobook will be coming out soon. It’s a great interview. I love talking to Tom. He’s such a good guy. I hope you enjoy it. We’ll see you in the next episode, until then.
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It’s great to have an honored guest, a revered guest. His name is Tom Burns. As I mentioned, Tom, correct me if I’m wrong, but you purchased the first Rich Dad Poor Dad book ever.
I got lucky and picked up a good book. It happened to be the first one.
That fact alone says a lot about you. First off, how long ago that was, but also what you’ve done with your career and outside of your career. You have these dual careers in a sense as an entrepreneur investor and medical professional. It’s going to be awesome to interview you. When we first met, I don’t know but there’s something special about you. It’s something that I believe others could have benefited from. You took the plunge into the writing a book world. What was the experience like writing that book?
It was something. A friend of mine, the author of that book you mentioned, suggested that I write a book. I never wanted to shy away from a challenge. I said, “Okay.” I didn’t know what was going to happen. I started the process. People would ask me, “Who’s going to be your ghostwriter?” I didn’t have one. I’m a physician and sometimes a doctor’s disease is to do it yourself, but I had a specific reason I wanted to write every word in the book. I was writing to everybody, but directing the book at physicians, using them as an avatar for anybody that makes any kind of a paycheck.
I knew that my words would get through in one of the processes. What happened was I ended up growing because I wrote every word. I found out how to do it. I got editors to help. I learned a lot of terms and things that I hope to never have to remember now. It was a real blessing. It was because I learned a lot about myself and I was at first started writing a book. Somebody suggested to write a book. I’d never done it before. It sounded like a cool challenge.
What happened was I grew, changed and found out that the problem. I discovered a mission because in my world, in the physician world, there are a lot of unhappy, sad and trapped feeling physicians. Although the books written for anybody to learn about freedom, it was written to the doctors to try to help them because over 50% of them are unhappy. You and I, Patrick, when we get older, we would prefer to have a happy doctor taking care of us. It was a selfish reason I wrote the book.
As I did the research, I developed a website and developed some tools to help them. It has been a process. I’m still a tadpole in the evolutionary world trying to learn how to do this, but it was, it was great. I learned a lot about myself. I learned a lot about the world and learned a little bit about book writing. It was fun. It was a growth process and it was a blast.
I know that it has been months and months in the making, but what an iconic or serendipitous year to release a book like that. The medical world has been stretched in 2020, more so than probably any other year in memorable history. In 2020, I would say this statistic most likely has worsened as far as the medical world asking that internal question, is this worth all the decades of school and hundreds, millions of dollars in opportunity costs, but also tuition, school fees? You coming out with a book, Why Doctors Don’t Get Rich, it is somewhat of a wake-up call to them. You started down this path, but how would you characterize the theme of the book? What you want the medical world specifically to walk away from reading it? What do you want them to understand based on reading it?
I’ve had quotes from people. I felt trapped being a doctor. I didn’t know anything else was possible. I want it to be an instrument of guidance and hope to people that bring them a paycheck and feel like they’re trapped, particularly doctors. We know life’s not all money, but it’s a great tool to use to get what we want. There are certain ways to buy back your time, which is our most precious resource. A lot of physicians, a lot of people in the world don’t have time.
With some extra time, you can start to develop and design your own life. I want people to know that there is an option. It’s not for a special group of people. It’s not that difficult. Once you know the steps to buy back your time, create a little bit of even partial freedom. You take a little pressure off, life gets good and you start to smile a little bit more. The book is designed to give people guidance, hope and a bigger smile.
I know you speak to this in the book. The idea of freedom is it’s in your mind. It’s feeling, a sense of freedom because I know a lot out of people that have a financial amount of money that I would say anybody could consider being free if they had that sum of money, but they don’t feel like they’re free. When you felt that sense of freedom knowing that you didn’t have to perform surgeries, you didn’t have to work in the field that you were trained in, what was that like and how did it impact your work?
On the one hand, it was exhilarating and happened slowly. I wasn’t looking for it. I was doing my thing. All of a sudden, I realized one day, the money coming in from my passive vehicles has eclipsed my doctor’s income so that was exciting at first then it got confusing because what do you do? I wanted to make sure that I had a purpose. Freedom, money, it’s not everything you do. You do somewhat need to have a purpose. We all want to have some worth and a mission in life. It gave me the chance to sit back and see what I wanted to do with it. Selfishly, I traveled some, but then I started realizing that a little contribution to the world might be nice as well. I started looking for a mission and a purpose. It came like that. You can have the money to be free, but if you’ve got a bad home life or you’re unhealthy or your spirituality is compromised, it’s not freedom. It’s somebody with a lot of money.
Robert is the one that inspired this several years ago. He did a private education for a bunch of investors and talked about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. There are these levels of Hierarchy of Needs, and most people get stuck in the self-esteem level where they achieve a lot. They go travel, they buy nice cars, they wear nice clothes. They eat at nice restaurants. It’s a Law of Diminishing Returns. The more that you pursue that, the less fulfilled you are. That’s where Maslow has his self-actualization level where it switches from satisfaction based on pleasing oneself to satisfaction coming from serving a purpose or a mission. Looking at this book, I imagine that was part of being able to offer and create value for those that you have empathy with. What has been your experience along the way, being able to give this gift to those that are in a similar situation as yourself?
It’s been a blast and that was part of that growth. I wanted to write the book to get the information out, then the mission developed. What you give, you get back ten folds. Now, I’m getting the opportunity to talk to people from all over the world and it’s been a blast. That mission has gotten deeper, broader and more focused in my life. It’s given me a great purpose. I’ve got a twenty-year plan to keep going. I hope to be doing something until I fall over and go to the next level. It’s been a pleasant surprise and it gives me a lot of fulfillment. I get to do things like this. I get to talk to good friends like this on Zoom. I’d rather do it live though.
Let me ask you a question around, I would say the information that medical professionals are exposed to with regards to finances because it’s a profession where there’s very little time. There are strenuous hours, plus there’s a lifestyle on top of that. The medical world in my experience at least has been the target of a lot of financial advertising. They’re pulled in all these different directions. When you look at the message you’re wanting to send, knowing that, how did you want to separate what you were trying to get across to this world that’s different than the typical advice that the medical world has given financially?
Why Doctors Don’t Get Rich: How YOU Can Create Freedom with Passive Income Investing
One, you mentioned the education. We rarely get any financial education although a lot of younger physicians now are taking some business courses. They’re doing combined MBA and medical programs. People are becoming more aware or medical professionals are becoming more aware. In my instance, I was a biology major and I took zero financial classes. That’s the one thing. They will get targeted for lack of a better word. Nobody feels sorry for physicians and you shouldn’t. We make a great income and it’s a great profession. It’s a fulfilling, wonderful profession. Everything’s perspective, but they get targeted by people. I’ve been in the meetings when nobody knew I was a physician and I’ve heard the person in the front of the room say, “If you don’t have a client list yet, go for the doctors. They’ve got money and they don’t understand what you’re talking about.” That’s a true story.
There’s a section in the book that talks about all the traditional ways to create investments or create money or passive income outside your profession. They’re not bad. There’s nothing wrong with them. Sometimes they are proposed or advertised as the only way. I want them to know there’s a lot of ways for them to create a lifestyle, to create the money and the funds to create their lifestyle. It’s not so much about money, but it’s about buying back that time. If you’re a physician, you have to go provide a service in order to get paid. That’s the way it works. When you have some funds come in that you slept to make or that you were on vacation, or you didn’t do anything to do, and that check shows up, it becomes a little bit addicting.
I want them to experience that feeling and have the time to do what they want to do in life. It can be research to cure cancer or it can be to quit medicine. It can be either end of the spectrum or spend a little extra time with your kids or get off a couple of hours early so that maybe you can pick your kids up from the bus when they come home from school. It’s things like that and the list is endless. That’s what I want them to know is that there are other options and that there is a life out there that is not the one that has been prescribed and advertised to you. We’re only here once and I want the journey to be magnificent.
I had seen this study where this year 2020 specifically has inspired a number of youths that are in school right now to want to pursue a medical career as a physician. I look at where most of that drive and motivation is coming from. It seems to be coming from wanting to make a difference, having a purpose wanting. In the medical world, a physician is so revered because they work on one of the most precious things that exist, which is that human life. They are remunerated highly because of that. There’s a lot of dedication, work and investment of time, energy, money that goes into developing that skillset. What have you seen as time goes on in the medical career where in the beginning, there’s that passion and drive? Does it stay the same? Does it diminish over the course of time? What is your experience collectively? Following up on that question, when you sensed that feeling of independence, how did that change the way in which you serve your clients or patients?
The answer to part one is like everything, it depends. I have partners. I’m still practicing medicine. I have seven partners and they all love what they do. They’re great at it. They’ve been in it a long time. It’s not that everybody’s unhappy. There are people that enjoy the service. If somebody gets in to serve, that may be mission and purpose enough, and they may or may not need anything extra. On the other hand, a Medscape survey shows that roughly 50% of the physicians in the United States have at one time or another been burned out. Burnout means at one time or another, they didn’t want to be a doctor. We don’t want that. That means to you and I, that at one point, every other doctor you see, wanted to not be in medicine at one point. It’s a balance like anything in life. Everybody has different opinions, different things that motivate them. What is exciting to me is there are still a lot of physicians out that are happy with what they do.
Question number two, I continue to enjoy it because it’s been a decade since I haven’t required the income for medicine. Your question is that I was able to enjoy it more on a base level. I could eliminate the things I didn’t like. We, doctors, sometimes we take call calls when you stay up all night and the operator answered the phone. I decided that was infringing on my family time. I stopped doing that. If the hospital has too many rules or whatever, I won’t go into details, but you can stop going there. You’re not there for the money.
I was able to lower the volumes I was seeing. I can spend five minutes with somebody or 45 minutes with somebody. It doesn’t affect my income. It doesn’t affect my life. I’ve developed friends by walking and saying, “I’m Tom Burns. I hear you have a sore knee.” Years later, we’re going on trips together or we’re friends. That’s a blessing. I get to meet twenty new people several times a week. It’s been a blast. It’s been fun. That’s what I wanted every physician to have that, to wake up and realize I get to go in and see patients, not I have to go in and see patients. It doesn’t happen for everybody, but it was life-changing. If it hadn’t been like that, I would have been out of medicine several years ago.
It’s the professional world that has a very similar challenge. At the same time the medical world, the amount of time, effort, energy and money that it takes to develop those skills and be in practice is extensive. It magnifies that principle of being able to educate yourself financially and then develop a strategy to get to the point where you are free. You are independent and you don’t have to do these things. You have a choice now. You didn’t have the choice before, but now the choice is, do I practice because I want to or do I practice because I have to? It’s a very interesting question that most people don’t get to ask themselves. At the same time, those in the medical field, because of the amount of money they’re able to make have that option more so than other professions.
When you have a choice in life, you’ve got freedom. It gives you the choice to decide what’s most important to you. What’s most important might be serving your clients or your patients or whatever your profession or your job is. Your most important thing in life might be to travel and see the world or to be the best parent in the world or the best spouse or the best sibling. Choice does give you the potential to have and design the life that fits you best and that gives you the most meaning and self-actualization, as Maslow would say.
Let’s do this as we conclude. You have an extension to your book, which is a website and some tools that you’ve mentioned. Would you take a moment to speak about the website that you’ve developed and the tools that are there and how those that are listening could take advantage of those?
For everybody out there, I’m transparent. I’m still learning how to do this stuff. I put a knee together but running a website’s been interesting. I wanted something to be useful. I wanted the book to be combined with a website that was a living, breathing organism. I have a blog that I put out and I find myself better on video. As time goes on, I’ll be having videos that have little lessons. They might be mindset lessons. They might be real estate lessons or money lessons. If you look at the book, the first half of the book is all about mindset.
Some of the how to do things is in the second half of the book. The website’s going to be the same type of thing. I’ll put out a blog that either deals with mindset or something concrete with action steps. I’ll put out some videos. I have a little section that will grow, that has some tools, things that I’ve used over time, that I developed to underwrite projects or to do some things like that. There are some spreadsheets and some resources. I encourage people to sign up and get the newsletter. It’s non-spammy. It comes about once or twice a month now. It’s usually got some helpful information. You can look at it or hit the delete button and it’s all there for help. It’s all there for you to grow and develop your own freedom.
Yes. I’m the world’s worst marketer. You can go there and there’s a little sign-up sheet. It’s for everybody. I come from the doctor world and have maybe some credibility with them. You replace the word doctor in the book with your job, whatever it is, the principles are all the same. They’re all wealth and freedom-building principles.
Tom, thank you for sharing your wisdom. Thank you for writing the book. I saw how much it took and the number of revisions that you had to do. Did you end up doing the audiobook?
I haven’t yet. I’ve had a lot of requests for that so that’s step number next once I get the other mechanics of the website going and that’s about done. That’s probably the next project.
You had eyes on this book of some of the most reputable authors that are out there. It reads well. The information is compelling. It’s clear. I’d encourage anyone, regardless of whether you’re in the medical field to pick it up. Tom, any final words of wisdom or anything you’d like to leave the readers with?
I tell everybody, if you’re not growing, you’re stagnating and you’re going to wither away and die. I tell people that the $15 book is not going to change my life. I didn’t write this book to make money, but it might change your life. Whether it’s my book or your book, which is fabulous, anything. There’s always a little bit of information. You could learn something and then try to combine your education with a little bit of action. You’ll be surprised where it takes you. Life’s got a whole lot to offer and there’s a big world out there that is a lot of fun. I encourage everybody to use a little perspective and realize how much fun you can have and try not to be trapped. I don’t want people to be trapped and unhappy.
That’s one of the secrets of life is constant growth and improvement. I can’t remember what you called it. I call it the infinite horizon. What did you call it again?
It’s the second mountain.
Rich Doctor: Doctors need to educate themselves financially and develop a strategy to get to the point where they are free and they don’t have to do the things they don’t want to do.
It’s the infinite second mountain because the second mountain will lead to the third mountain, the fourth mountain. Once you have something that you’ve achieved, in order to have that fulfillment and that enjoyment of life, you have to continue to achieve these milestones.
That first mountain might be about acquisition. There’s a book called The Second Mountain by David Brooks. The first mountain is about acquisition, which we all get into when we start, but the second mountain is more about contribution. The third mountain, the fourth mountain, we always find more mountains to climb, more to contribute and more growth to achieve. That’s what keeps you young. It gives you purpose and makes life fun. It gives you a chance to do things like this.
I’m going to ask one more question. There’s a quote that I think about quite often. It’s, “The quality of life is in proportion to the quality of relationships.” I know that you have valued relationships more than anything else. You mentioned it with regards to some of your patients. You in the book, it’s very evident of all the different seminars, all the different meetup groups and associations that you’ve attended over the years. Speak maybe to the importance and value of relationships and how they’ve helped you develop over the course of time.
We’re pack animals. We love people. I love doing this with you right now. I’d rather be face-to-face. I’d rather we be in a group of 300 people as well. You and I go on a cruise together frequently. That’s fun for me. Often, I’ll go to seminars where maybe I could be teaching some of what’s going on, but I’m going there to see the people. Relationships, when you meet other people, everybody’s so diverse. Everybody has a talent and you can learn from other people or you can live through their experiences. That’s what life all about. It’s a giant world. It is a giant passion for mine. I have my core values and they are adventure, growth and connection. We talked about all that.
The connection is so important to me that I put it as my top three of my core values. I want to be with people. This is fun what we’re doing now. It’s fun to go connect with people. You will learn and grow, and your life will be better for it. Your life will be enriched by the experiences of others. I can’t encourage people more to keep up with connections and start with your family. Family connection is most important. Those are the people that count. Broaden your circle, it will make your life a beautiful thing.
I’ll end with this comment where our society is evolving to this place where relationships are the true value of life. We have been blessed with technology such as this video conference software whether it’s energy or transportation. This is a year of disruption, but it’s going to pass. The way in which society is evolving, it’s going to, in my opinion, decrease the efforts and what we’re going to have to do in order to maintain our lifestyle expenses. That’s where, again, going to the value that people seek sometimes is right in front of us, which is our relationships starting with our intimate relationships, going to kids and going to friends. It’s no longer going to be a choice where we’re going to have a lot more time on our hands as a society. The principle of satisfaction and fulfillment is right in front of us. It’s meeting new people. It’s enjoying time with the ones we love. You don’t have to wait until someday. That day could be now.
The best time to start is always yesterday and now is the next best time. Don’t let technology run your life. It’s great that we have this, but there are 7.5 billion of us. Let’s go out and meet some of them.
I can’t wait until we meet up face-to-face again. It’s been a few years. It was in Austin. It was summer of 2018. This is a year that has made us value those personal interactions even more so. I’m sure the next time will even be sweeter. Tom, thanks again.
What is the greatest obstacle that is preventing you from living a life at the next level? For many people, it’s creating and passing on generational wealth. There are many ways to be financially free, but how do you enable your children and their children after them to have the same freedom? What does wealth mean for you in the first place anyway? Patrick Donohoe unpacks this for us in this special episode of The Wealth Standard.
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A Daily Legacy: Creating And Passing On Generational Wealth To Your Descendants
I hope you are in a festive mood despite the shutdown circumstances. I hope you have an amazing holiday and enjoy yourselves and enjoy the season. Welcome to this episode. I’m going to be speaking about generational wealth. Many of I sent out a survey in order to get feedback, insights and ideas about how to create a digital course that would be meaningful to you. I have completed that. If you go to Go.TheWealthStandard.com/freedom, you can purchase that. It is version one, I’m going to be doing some live Q and A sessions and getting direct feedback about some of the things I came up with in order to refine and improve, iterate and so forth. It’s exciting.
In the responses that I got, there are some common themes. That’s what I have been addressing in the episodes. I’m going to be doing that. The question I’m mostly getting into, which was in the survey, is what’s standing in the way? What’s the greatest obstacle that is preventing you from living a life at the next level? It’s obviously very broad but it’s been cool to read through the responses. This is one that I felt was important to address given the season but also given some things that I know that are on my client’s mind, my mind specifically. I hope they’re on your mind as well, especially if you have children even if you don’t, it doesn’t matter. It could be grandchildren, it could be nieces and nephews. It could be people in general, frankly. Let’s unpack the idea of generational wealth. Thanks for joining me.
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The specific response was as follows. This is to what is the biggest obstacle that is standing in the way. It’s creating and passing on generational wealth. I’m looking to be financially free, but once I have achieved that, how do I enable my kids to have similar responsibility and freedom for their children? I’m assuming for them and for their children. There are a couple of parts here. Creating and passing on generational wealth, I’m looking to be financially free, but once I have achieved that, how do I enable my kids to have similar responsibility and freedom for themselves and their children? As I thought through this there are a few things that come to mind.
The first is, again, parts to this obstacle. It’s creating then passing it on. It’s the idea of financial freedom. It’s enabling kids to have similar responsibilities and freedom. Let’s address the first one, creating then passing it on. We should first talk about wealth in general. What I’ve come to understand as wealth isn’t merely financial wealth, even though that’s a part of it. There’s a cool book that I’m listening to. I have five days left on my 75 Hard challenge, which is an intense challenge. I listen to lots of audiobooks. I’ve been listening to Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey. It’s a fascinating book. I definitely recommended it. One of the things he said is, I’m paraphrasing, “Happiness is not contingent on certain things.”
He identified people that he had met in Central America and South America in the Middle Eastern regions. They essentially live like paupers but they’re the happiest, friendly and abundant people he’s ever met. Sometimes actual financial wealth makes it more difficult to understand the true nature of wealth because there are a lot of things that can mask it. When you don’t have as many distractions, it tends to be a little bit easier. Financial wealth allows more distraction that prevents the true essence of wealth. I would say wealth, again, I’ve defined in the past as being able to extract happiness, joy and fulfillment out of any moment, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Financial wealth, in the end, will only magnify who a person already is.
Generational Wealth: There isn’t an end to passing generational wealth. It’s a journey and the journey is every day.
Creating the generational wealth and then passing it on first has to do with us, the individuals that do have this desire. I include myself in that. It’s understanding that there isn’t an end to passing generational wealth. I believe it’s a journey and the journey is every day. Our legacy is literally a daily achievement that we make because we don’t know how many days we have. We do know that they are numbered. It matters when and how. We look at life from that perspective. If we took a life, I would say, as more fragile, which in 2020 is a great opportunity to do that, regardless of how you feel about COVID-19, there’s been a scare. There’s been a health scare and it’s allowed us to evaluate our lives.
As we’ve been able to adjust, adapt and find happiness, joy and fulfillment within what has happened and how it’s disrupted our lives, that is a true test of wealth, regardless of how much money you have. I’m going, to be honest, and frank with you as I always am. In 2020, I had a great year financially so far. However, it was a very challenging year. I had nobody in my office. I came here by myself day in and day out with 1 or 2 people in here but little interaction where I’m used to interacting with lots of people physically. I didn’t know how dependent on that I was. I also have two teenage girls who’ve been prevented from visiting with their friends and going out and doing fun things.
We haven’t traveled anywhere. I haven’t seen my parents in over a year. It’s been a trying time and it’s been a great test. It’s been a great challenge because it’s allowed me to find the joy and figure out ways to be appreciative, to be grateful because when everything’s going great, it’s easy to be happy. The true test is when things don’t go the way in which you anticipate. This is a whole idea behind have, do, be versus be, do, have. One of the things I picked up in this response to the survey question was the idea of once. “Once I do this, once I do that,” and I try to eliminate that from my vocabulary. I believe we’re all habitually conditioned to think that once we have this car, job, title, girl, boy, spouse, children, that we’re going to be happy. It’s like when we achieve this, then we will be this.
I believe it’s the other way around. At least, I believe that we can experience the other way around. When we experience that, what we want in the end will come quicker. That is the be first, then do and then have. That idea of being, which is experiencing, embodying the idea of extracting joy, fulfillment, and happiness out of any given moment or experience, life is happening to me versus life is happening for me. A lot of this, I picked up from my exposure and experience with the Tony Robbins organization, where it’s our perspective of life that determines our happiness and that is a daily occurrence. Developing generational wealth starts with how you show up for your family, for your kids, for your loved ones.
Daily Legacy
That right there isn’t a one-time event. It’s a consistent event because when you’re speaking about children, the first 10, 15 years of their life is where a lot of their perspective of who they are, what life is about, what school is about, what money is about, what friends are about. Who they are, how they understand themselves, what they believe in themselves. That’s developed in the first 10 to 15 years of life. It’s not like someday you pass on a bunch of money and suddenly your kids are going to figure their life out. I believe that a lot of what we’re doing to influence our children is often looked over and it’s not seen as making that much of a difference. I have something that I love to say to myself as like an empowering statement which is what my legacy is today.
It’s challenging because children are getting used to life. They are pushing on you. They are pushing on one another, they are testing boundaries and they’re always going to do that. I look at sometimes how we, as parents and adults, show up to children’s lives. It allows us to influence in one way or another. I believe that that is the greatest set of gifts that you can bring to a child. It’s being able to influence their experience of life so that they can discover who they are. They can discover what life is about. They can understand virtues and principles and how to live by them because, in essence, they’re laws. Those are some of the greatest lessons because here’s the thing. Technology is following Maslow’s hierarchy of needs where technology is making the physiological needs of life almost zero cost eventually. Whether it’s transportation, energy, food, housing, communication, entertainment, the costs there are being driven down significantly.
When we cross this barrier, to a large extent, of having to work in order to live where we have to work. We have to earn money. We have to do those things that are becoming less and less of a truth. I believe that in the very near future, technology is pushing towards this working less and less but being able to live a decent lifestyle. Up until 2020, poverty rates around the world were coming down at a staggering rate because of the spread of technology, the spread of efficiencies that are being developed.
I believe our children and grandchildren will live a very different lifestyle from physiological and safety needs, which is the next step in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, then we have. A lot of what makes us afraid of those that are currently in the X generation, the Baby Boomer generation, is that we still have on our mind this idea that if we don’t have a job, if we don’t earn money, then we’re not going to be able to survive. If we can’t pay our bills, we’re going to be homeless and we’re going to be on the streets. We go to these worst-case scenarios, those fears are going to be non-existent because of technology. That’s an opinion.
I have some evidence to back that up but hopefully, you know where I’m going with this, which is from a financial standpoint, is going to be different for our generation than it has been in the past, especially with regards to our kids and their generation. Wealth is very qualitative. It’s not quantitative as far as measuring in terms of money or cash flow or income. It is qualitative based on the quality of our experience in life, not yesterday, not tomorrow, not a month or a year or twenty years from now but now.
The first two hierarchies of wealth are the first two levels in the hierarchy of needs. The two levels above physiological and safety needs in the hierarchy of needs, these two levels. Technology, I believe, is rapidly solving. Now you get to relationships. Right now this is being expressed. Social media is incredible as far as how we develop relationships. You may not define them as relationships, connections, friends, whatever you want to call them. It’s this need of seeking community. This need for seeking relationships. This need of seeking partners, intimate partners, wanting that desire that happens to want to have children. These innate needs that Maslow talks about, are now being met with technology. You get into self-esteem. These are very important. This is where we, as influencers of our children, of other people, can focus attention on what a healthy relationship is. It is not necessarily by us directly teaching, but I would say indirectly showing through our actions, as well as self-esteem.
Oftentimes, I look at how completely different my kids are from one another. A big part of me has always wanted and tried to show them through the example of how to appreciate their uniqueness, how to understand that they are different than one another. I believe sometimes they want to be like one another in order to get love from their parents. Celebrating the uniqueness and difference of our children is a powerful way in which we create in themselves the seeds to enjoy life at a high level, not one time but consistently over time. I’ll end with maybe a few points around doing this and doing it strategically.
Daily Challenge
The reason I’m getting into this is I believe wealth is going to amplify who your kids, who your grandkids already are when they get money. It’s going to amplify whatever results they’re already getting. You hand them a bunch of money, it’s not going to improve their life from a qualitative standpoint. Long-term, there may be a house, a car, some cool things that they can do to entertain themselves. I do believe that that is also something that is drastically coming down at price. More people are going to be able to experience it. It goes to this idea of being, does, have versus have, do, be. If kids believe that they have to have a job in order to feel successful, if they believe that they have to get straight A’s in subjects that they may not be that great at, they have to do that in order to be successful and feel good about themselves.
Generational Wealth: The bottom line with passing on generational wealth is you have to define what wealth is for you first. You also have to realize that what you are doing on a daily basis is your legacy.
I believe that instilling in children this idea that everybody is different and also demonstrating that through how we treat them and then carrying out, I would say, experiences that allow them to have challenges associated with who they are in order to develop self-esteem relative to what they’re capable of by overcoming challenges. It could be as simple as in the summer of 2020, we had some travel plans to visit my parents back East and some other things. All of those were disrupted. We were restricted to where we could drive, so we did a trip up to Northern Montana and it was cold during the summer. We hiked in the snow. We hiked in rain. We hiked some challenging things. For my six-year-old, it was definitely a challenge. He was on my shoulders half the time.
These challenges we may not believe or they may not seem like they are that impactful but they truly are where kids face challenges and they overcome them. They face difficult things and they overcome them. I wouldn’t say this is more physical than anything else but it’s also the lesson around it that you can demonstrate whether it’s directly or how you face your own challenges. Do you show up and battle and push through or do you tuck tail and run? Do you analyze it, celebrate it, realize how beneficial it is to your circumstances because it’s an opportunity to grow, or do we complain? Do we blame somebody else? Do we blame circumstances, COVID, the president, a boss, or the economy? Those are the things that our kids pick up on and it’s developed into how they view the world.
We have a place an hour up in the mountains and it’s right on this river. The river is cold all year round. One of the things that I do is jump in the river. I jumped in it and it was freezing. It was incredibly cold. My kids did it a lot up until it got a little too cold but it was this idea of facing something that you are afraid of, facing something that it’s like, “That’s going to be painful,” but you do it anyway and experience it. It’s not life-threatening. At the same time, it’s that experience that wires us to understand fear at a different level. Understand the anxiety of looking over at that water. I know that that is cold but you push through that and do it anyway.
I’ve always said that one of the decisions I made many years ago that made a drastic difference in my life, especially in my business life but also personal life, you can carry it into all aspects of life, was picking up CrossFit, which is a workout philosophy routine. I still do it almost every day. It’s not necessarily for the workout but it’s because you face physical failure daily and you figure out a way to push through what your brain is telling you one another, shouldn’t be doing. “This is too much. You can’t do it. Stop,” but there’s all the environment of CrossFit allows you to face that over and over again. That builds in a lot of physical mastery, as far as how we show up to the other challenges in our life. The other things where it’s like, “That’s impossible, I’m going to run. I’m not going to do that. That’s somebody else’s fault,” it allows you the fortitude. It allows you the strength to push through and overcome whatever that challenge is.
I’ve gone all over the place with this. The bottom line with passing on generational wealth is you have to define what wealth is for you first. You also have to realize that what you are doing on a daily basis is your legacy. If you currently have kids, you are influencing them. It’s stepping back and it’s analyzing, what am I doing now? What lessons am I teaching my kids indirectly? You want to do some direct stuff obviously but indirectly through my behavior, through my response, how I behave. By no means am I perfect at this. This is a very sobering episode for me because there are many things that I could do better for my kids. I try my best and I continue to try. I realize that I fail. Even when I’m doing something and I know that I’m failing, sometimes I keep doing it. It’s being able to step back when you’re in a neutral mindset and analyze the situation and go to your kids and talk to them about your shortcomings.
Talk to them about what you’re trying to do. Talk to them about their uniqueness, you wanted them to live a meaningful, beneficial life. Having those direct conversations, especially after you fail. I think that’s the worst thing when parents try to hide their faults. I’ve hidden mine in the past and it does not jive with my principles. I’ve had to go back and be penitent to my kids on more than one occasion. In the end, this demonstrates that making mistakes is okay as long as you learn and grow from them.
The last thing I would say is there are ways in which you can structure your finances so that your children benefit from that when you pass on. This is not what I usually start with. What I explained and went through was what I believe the true generational wealth is, which is basically the strategic design of having your kids experience the principles and virtues of life and come to understand their uniqueness. How they, based on the current circumstances that they experience as well as future ones, how to extract the lesson, how to extract the joy and the beauty. How to understand that life is happening for you as opposed to, to you, which is the case with most people, unfortunately, and your kids see that. My kids see that.
If we want to turn the tide, that is the greatest way to pass on generational wealth. Not from a financial standpoint. There are estate planning techniques. There are ways in which you can position your assets so that you don’t have a check written to your kids upon your passing, whether that’s later in life or prematurely. There are ways in which you can structure that so that it’s not a blank check so that it goes for specific purposes.
I would caution you here to find someone who is very astute at this in the digital course that I created, I have a financial directory in there. My personal attorney is in there. His firm does a wonderful job at helping to structure an estate plan strategy so that you can pass on your values, your virtues, what you want to pass onto your kids but you do it in a responsible and intelligent way. Andrew is great at this. Thank you for reading. I hope you have an amazing and eventful holiday season. Even though they’re not going to be the typical events, you can still create some cool things. I know you have some creativity inside of you to create those lasting memories for you and your family. Best wishes and we’ll see you in the next episode. Take care.
Experiencing failures in family relationships and business is what everyone wants to steer clear of. Although ultimately inevitable, minimizing them is still possible through proper optimization of energy and time. Patrick Donohoe shares some useful tips on how inner energy can be repurposed according to our goals, helping us gain a better mindset and a healthier body. He also presents the three levels of time optimization, underlining how this powerful aspect in life can be maximized and utilized to its full potential despite its limited and seemingly scarce nature.
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How To Properly Optimize Your Energy And Time
Thank you for tuning in to this episode. I’m grateful for your time, energy, and focus to invest in yourself and take your life to a new level. That’s what it’s all about. I want to express my gratitude for the support that I’ve received on this new course that has been launched. You guys can go check that out if you haven’t had a chance. It’s Go.TheWealthStandard.com/freedom. This is version one of the course. It’s five modules long. It’s quite an investment of time and focus. There are several exercises in there but it’s something I’m excited about and I can’t wait for you guys to check out, so go head over to that webpage.
In preparation for that, I had an overwhelming amount of feedback with the surveys that were sent out to specific segments of the audience to find out what were the most meaningful educational pieces, lessons, points, or exercises that would allow you guys to essentially benefit the most from the course. There were hundreds of responses and the responses had to do with certain questions and mainly those questions were the anxieties, obstacles, and what you believe is holding you back. In the last episode, I talked about one of them.
Obstacles In
In this episode, I’m going to talk about another. The topic is in response to the question around obstacles. What are the obstacles that stand in the way of you living your life at the next level? This one says, “Mindset and confidence to commit the time and money to build my business, as well as taking the time away from my wife and three children.” What I believe is being said in this response is there’s this quandary where there’s an opportunity in business and to make an investment in that business. However, there seems to be a trade-off where if I do that, then I’m going to be taking time away from my wife and three young children.
I can empathize with this. I’ve been in this situation. I had this belief a lot and I’m going to get into that. I’ve had lots of other clients and experiences with something similar. At the same time, if you don’t have kids or if you don’t have a family yet, this is still relevant because these are simply obstacles that we place in our path psychologically based on the things that are most important to us, as well as how they correspond with the roles we are currently playing in our life. Throughout our life, we play multiple roles. We’re a leader, son, mentee or mentor, husband or wife, parents, friends, colleagues, peers, or even strangers. Nonetheless, our roles have certain things that are important to us that we believe that if we do not fulfill those specific roles, that somehow that’s bad.
Optimizing Energy And Time: A state is a function of physiology, focus, language, and how you show up.
If we fall short of those responsibilities, then there must be something wrong with us. If that happens, then we’re going to have the consequence. In this case, our family not loving us. We’re not a worthy husband or wife because we haven’t been able to provide for those that we have stewardship over. There’s lots of stuff that goes through our heads psychologically and subconsciously. That’s what we’re going to address. Psychologically, I understand and empathize because I’ve been in that situation. At the same time, I don’t believe there’s a choice. I believe you can have both and more of both. That’s what we’re going to get into.
First off, I’ll go through maybe some of the deductive reasoning associated with this specific obstacle. I talked about general obstacles that we have but the deductive logic is when you commit time and money to build the business, it takes away time and money from family. In this case, it seems to be that family is more important than business. The role of father or husband seems to be more important than being a business owner and investing and growing that business. What that segues into is I’m a bad husband and father if I do that, because I’m essentially making the business more important than my family. If I do that, then they’re going to notice and they’re going to spite me for it. They’re going to hold me accountable or make me feel guilty. If I dedicate time and money to my business and not to them, then my life is going to have less meaning because my kids are important to me.
If they don’t love me or if my wife doesn’t love me, what good am I? What good is the business? Why has it in the first place? That’s maybe not specifically articulated like that, but that’s what goes through our minds sometimes subconsciously. It could be right or wrong. I’m not here to place any type of judgment. I feel that when there is an obstacle, there’s oftentimes this brick wall that you can’t jump over or get beyond. Let’s try to figure out how to break down that brick wall. I’m going to do something I did last time because there are many options and solutions out there. I don’t think it’s a lack of those that keep us back from living the life that is our destiny.
It’s psychological to begin with and that’s what I’ll start with. If this person and if I were speaking to them, maybe even speaking to myself because this was a big concern for mine and still is to a degree. Let me get into an interview and I’ll address it as if it was somebody that was right in front of me. I would ask them the question, “When you believe that if you dedicate more time and money to your business, it’s going to take away from what your family and de-value your role as a father, how does that make you feel inside? What are the emotions that you experience?”
I would imagine they would say, “I feel like I’m falling short. I feel that I’m a failure to my kids and my wife. I’m afraid that I’m not going to be as influential as I could be if I dedicated more time and money to them.” Those are probably some of the feelings. I would then ask, “If you feel that way, how do you think about your business when you’re feeling that way?” “It’s such stress. It’s time-consuming. It’s hard to get things done. I have ideas and it’s frustrating because if I execute on those ideas and put money and time into them, then I’m taking away from my family.” This is the quandary. It’s challenging to work through but this is where you open up some possibility and you would make the statement or start asking questions, consider something for a moment.
When you think about that belief, are you 100% positive, absolutely certain that you have all of the information, knowledge, wisdom, and business acumen to know that there is no possible way to build and grow your business while at the same time growing in your role and being more influential in your role as a father and husband? Do you have all of the information, knowledge, and wisdom to know that it’s not possible? The answer is going to be no. I would follow up with, “If it were true that you could grow your business, invest time, your personal life, and be even more influential in both areas, how would that make you feel?” “I would feel relieved, grateful, optimistic, and excited.”
A follow up to that final part of it, “If you felt that way, how does that change the way in how you look at your business?” “I’m excited to figure out how to do it.” This is the idea is that you want to open up the psychological possibility first. I did an episode on the two fears we all have, including myself. We don’t want to be wrong and to change. As you look at it this way in which you open up possibilities, psychologically now it’s, “That’s possible. I can do that.” That’s at least what’s going on psychologically. As you bring in solutions, it has a whole different level of meaning to the person in question.
Let’s go through some of the possibilities with regards to this obstacle. The most valuable finite resources to me or where you can optimize and then get into a lot of the other details depending on the type of business but I would first start with what I believe are two universal finite resources. They’re applicable to everyone reading right now. It’s energy and time. Let’s talk conceptually about the easy one, energy. All of us are looking for emotion as the end result. We achieved that and then we make the process to feel it again more complicated.
When a person commits to being successful, they want to be successful because of how it will make them feel. Once they’re successful, they want to achieve a level in their career because of how it will make them feel. It all boils down to that. I’m not going to get into how to experience that but that’s the emotion. In the end, it’s energy. Motion is energy in motion. That’s what we’re all looking for. As we’re looking for those positive emotions, we’re also trying to steer clear of negative emotions.
In this case, we are trying to steer clear of being a failure, “I don’t want to fail my kids. If I’m not there for them, they’re going to be influenced by the iPad, phone, social media, or their peers. I want to be there and be the influence.” All these fears, we want to steer clear of those negative emotions, but also steer toward those positive emotions. If you think about, “I want more money because I don’t want to worry,” that’s against steering clear of negative emotions. “I want to achieve in my profession because it’ll make me feel successful and make me feel alive and energized.” That’s a positive one. Those are all end results of emotions.
Let’s talk about what has the biggest impact on your energy. This energy that’s important because the energy in motion is emotion and it is what you want to feel. A lot of this stuff is cool because I talk about this in detail in the course and there are some exercises as well that are enlightening. They’ve at least enlightened me in my life on many occasions and that’s why I’m trying to pass those experiences along to you, so you can leverage me and that experience.
The first is understanding how to influence your state. A state is a function of physiology, focus, language, and the way in which you show up. Oftentimes, it’s not strategic. It’s more happenstance and random. We wake up in the morning, go through our routine, and show up the way we always show up. There are ways in which you can influence your state. First, your physiology, your focus, and your language. Physiology is highly influenced by the food you eat and how much water you consume, especially here in the Mountain West. The High Desert is what it’s referred to.
We’re 5,000 feet above sea level. You go higher into the mountains, 6,000, 7,000, 8,000 and it’s dry. Dehydration, where your organs, body, and your limb system isn’t able to operate at the level that it’s capable of. It’s draining. You become lethargic. It’s just water, what you put in your body, and exercise. It’s interesting where we as a human race up until many years ago, our bodies were used. They were strained daily to survive. Now, we have to work for it. Many years ago, you didn’t see people running around in the street, riding their bikes, or this huge health and wellness industry to keep people active because we don’t have to work and toil the way our ancestors did. If you’re not doing that, not getting exercise, and not pushing your body, it’s meant to be pushed. It’s meant to have strain.
Optimizing Energy And Time: Discover what you are good at and figure out ways to dedicate and focus your time on those.
Doing that gets your body or physiology to a point where you have more energy. You show up differently. You have the endurance to last 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 hours so you can optimally perform in your business and your profession. You can take that energy and state home and have the endurance to have meaningful time and experiences with your kids. Motion during the day, keeping active or standing up. I’m at my standup desk sitting on a stool. It’s a stool where it moves around and stuff. There’s a ball at the bottom and balances your core. I stand up a lot of times. My desk goes up and down. Having motion during the day, taking a walk, and having a rebounder trampoline. There are trampolines you can get for $50, $75 on Amazon where you jump up and down, shaking up your limb system and getting your body in motion. That creates energy. That’s the first thing is energy.
There are ways when you can control that energy. These are a few of the hacks. Going back to the original point, it’s dedicating time and money to a business and having the fear that you’re somehow taking away from your family. If you can improve your energy, that improves everything. It improves your business. It improves how you show up as a leader, the ideas that you have, and your efficiency. When you go home, you have that energy to take to your family, friends, extracurricular activities, and the fun that you have in life. Energy is a big thing. You want to optimize the way in which you show up for the different roles in your life and you’re going to get even better results. Your business is going to grow. You’ll have better ideas. You’re going to attract more clients. You’re going to have ways in which you can figure things out. That magician inside of you and that archetype will be more in tune because of the energy that you have.
Let’s get into time and then we can wrap up. There are many solutions to all the different ways in which you can get your body in shape and how you can get more energy and eat better. Try stuff. There are a million different eating plans, ways in which you can hack your sleep and get better sleep, and ways in which you can hydrate and stay hydrated. These are all solutions that we have in abundance and I’m not going to get into those. Let’s talk about time. Time is the great arbiter of all of us. We all have the same amount. We’re all, in a sense, either empowered and free or constrained and enslaved because of it.
It has to do with time, the leverage of what’s done inside of that time. Energy is a huge piece of that. I’m going to use a buddy of mine. He’s a little bit younger than I am. He owns a successful construction company. He had even harder times than I did during 2008 and 2009. He lost hundreds of units of apartments and millions of dollars. We weren’t in touch during those years but got back in touch because we were friends before that. I’m proud of the way he rebounded and how he figured things out. He has an incredible magician in him, but also a big warrior that pushed him through and got him through those difficult times.
3 Levels Of Time Optimization
We had a conversation in 2012, 2013 when I was strained by time and I was trying to figure it out. I described to him and showed him what I was doing and he took it to a different level. How I would explain it is there are three levels of time optimization. First is single-dimensional, where it’s you do everything. You do the marketing, sales, leadership, pay the bills, balance the books, and submit everything for taxes. It’s self-employed. Self-employed is inefficient because you are doing everything. There’s no leverage there and then you get it multidimensional. Multidimensional and the gap between is when you start to identify the best things you could be doing. What you’re good at, your talents are, your unique abilities are and figure out ways in which you can dedicate and focus your time on that and have others that have talents, abilities, etc. to do the things that you don’t like to do and aren’t necessarily good at either but others are.
I’ll use my buddy as an example. In the beginning, he was doing everything. The first thing I taught him, which I have been doing for many years is using tutorials. I would teach once, record a screen, record a video and it could be watched an infinite number of times. He found himself using them to train workers and employees. The onboarding process went down by 100% in time, which allowed him more time to do other stuff. He used simple tutorials. This was awesome and he’s such a go-getter. Another thing is he was trying to figure out a lot of stuff in his business. It was a new business in the construction world and I said, “Who else is doing it that you can learn from?”
He essentially learned about this business through someone he was working for and he made them successful. They did some things in an unprincipled way, so he left and started his own thing. They were the only competitor he had. He was like, “They’re my competitor. I can’t learn what they’re doing.” What he did is he started calling up other groups around the country and he would fly and spend 1 or 2 weeks shadowing, asking questions, and figuring out from them how they were doing things. He came back and started to incorporate those into what was doing, where he shortened the learning curve. He circumvented a lot of the obstacles they went through in order for him to benefit and leverage from their experience. Learning from others is the lesson.
Another aspect of multidimensional is to find systems and processes. I use a lot of the systems and processes of Strategic Coach and Tony Robbins from a business operations standpoint, as well as a coach. I learned some of the ways in which the tech world does its operations and project management, and so forth. I turned my buddy onto a book called Traction by Gino Wickman. He consumed it multiple times. Within a short period of time, he also consumed some sales information from The Sandler Sales System, which is magnificent. He started to use tutorials, leverage training, and optimization but then he hired some operators. He hired some individuals to integrate and utilize the methodology, Traction by Gino Wickman. What he started doing is having a lot of his operations and this is over the course of a couple of years. His operations became more leveraged where he was doing less and less of those daily tasks and operational duties.
He started to put others in that place doing what he would have done because of his way in which he started training. He did his tutorial training and so forth. He integrated a communication system using Voxer. He uses something else now. It’s integrating a CRM. The multidimensional is when you take yourself and you get more focused. Getting to this function of leadership where you’re inspiring, motivating, coaching, making people will feel important, working on comp plans and incentives so that they are doing good work and are rewarded for it. You start to build a culture that way and it’s profound. This is a way in which you leverage time from a multidimensional standpoint.
Finally, exponential. I’m not going to get a ton into exponential but I’ll use my buddy as an example. He went from working 70, 80 hours a week to not having to work much at all in the business. He started to license some of the processes he figured out and then create intellectual property. In the space he was in from a construction standpoint, there were many outdated pieces, parts, and ways of doing things. He started to create intellectual property around certain parts and figure out how to get them manufactured in China. It was fascinating. Another piece of the exponential is a technology where you can take certain tasks and leverage technology. You build it once and it works infinitely. It’s a one-time investment and then from there on out, it has a massive impact going forward because it does all of the work 24/7.
Also, exponential is figuring out better ways to improve processes and then licensing the intellectual property as a new revenue stream. He’s selling leads as well. He’s using the marketing acumen that he gained here in Utah, Idaho, and Nevada. He is generating leads for others around the country and selling essentially the same type of services, but they are being fulfilled by other groups. That’s exponential. Those are two ways in which you can leverage yourself and live an incredibly meaningful life because my buddy has two homes. He has one in Salt Lake and one in Southern Utah. He gets to go on some cool vacations all the time. It wasn’t that way in the beginning, but what this does is it allows you to grow.
Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business – https://www.amazon.com/Traction-Get-Grip-Your-Business/dp/1936661837
Anyone that’s in business or isn’t a profession where they can influence and control their income, we’re driven to grow and that is a natural instinct inside of us. It’s not something that we’re going to get rid of one day or it’s going to suddenly like, “We’ve grown enough and we don’t have to grow anymore.” There’s going to be this insatiable desire inside of us to continue growing. If we’re not growing, then we don’t feel as alive and driven. That impacts. Even if we have more time with our kids and our family, it impacts how we show up. It’s this balance between trying to manage the success of family but manage the success of the business. You can have both. It’s not a trade-off. We’re driven to grow. We’re driven to maximize our talents and abilities. This is something that I believe will ever stop. Trying to figure out a balance is a futile effort. It’s figuring out the optimal mix, optimizing that mix, and then maximizing that mix.
Optimizing is figuring out from an energy standpoint, how can you tweak it so you show up with more energy? You have the endurance to last more than 8, 10 hour-day and show up as a man, an influential high spirited father, leader, husband, son, daughter, friend, and stranger. Talk about a way to instantly improve the quality of your life and how you feel is to go out find and help a stranger. What a cool experience that is. The idea is that when we have these different important roles in our life, it’s not a trade-off. That’s what I’m trying to communicate to you guys and these are two ways in which you can optimize what’s going on. Once you’ve optimized it, that’s single-dimensional and multidimensional, and then you can start getting into the exponential, which is maximizing. Guys, you’re amazing. Thanks for reading and learning. I hope to see you back on the next episode. Until then.
We will not succeed if we simply stay where we are and refuse change or improvement. But trudging the path to the next level of your life means facing your anxieties, financial challenges, and personal issues. To address this,Patrick Donohoe presents his course, The Wealth Standard, which focuses on helping people embrace a better version of themselves. He concentrates on getting rid of the thoughts that limit our beliefs, finding your true value as a worker, and looking at leadership from a brand new perspective. Self-fulfillment can only be achieved if you know where you are leading your life, and it starts by transforming yourself.
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Watch the episode here:
Listen to the podcast here:
How To Bring Your Life To The Next Level
I’m grateful to share some thoughts with you. It’s been a while since I made an episode, especially a solo one, but I’m back. I’ve spent time developing and creating content for the new digital course that has officially launched. You guys can get more information about that course by going to Go.TheWealthStandard.com/freedom. What I like to do is talk a bit about the course, how I came up with the content, but then also unpack and dive into some of the primary themes in the responses you gave me through your candid feedback, as well as thoughtful responses to questions. That’s where I’ll start because the course is something I could have assumed I knew what you needed, what you would have valued, what was holding you back in your particular situation.
I’ve done that in the past. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. This go-around, I decided to get responses from you to understand your world, what holds you back, and what are some of the obstacles that you’re facing. I’m humbled by the hundreds of responses I received. It made me dig down deep to understand the true root cause of those challenges, obstacles and limitations that are holding you back. What I discovered is that these are some things that have held me back in the past. These are parts of the human experience. We’re faced with similar obstacles, at the same time, the situations are all different.
I’m grateful to you. I’m grateful to have been able to think through the way in which the curriculum is created and the exercises were formulated. If you want to take your life to the next level, then this is a course that is for you. It has a 30-day money back guarantee. If you buy it and you hate it, don’t like it, too intense, too much information, I didn’t even give you all the information at one side to stagger it out week upon week because of how much is in there, but I’ll give you your money back, no questions asked. What I’d like to do is get into a couple of the primary themes that I saw in the responses that you gave me. I believe that this will give you insight into how I developed some of the information as well as exercises.
The Next Level: Today’s society wants things quick and fast, and with the snap of a finger or a click of a button.
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A Year of Disruption
Thank you for investing your time and your energy. It says a lot about you and it means a lot to me because I’m inspired by those who are driven, those that are seeking information to improve their lives. I’m grateful to you. 2020 was a year of disruption. This season has been disrupted, especially here in Utah, and we weren’t able to gather as we have in the past. It makes you think about how grateful you are for the things that you have, because when they’re taken away, that provides that polarity. 2020 has been full of those opportunities. I hope you have passed your weekend grateful and had a wonderful experience. I haven’t done an episode in a while. Many of you know that I have been working on a digital course since I’ve been neck deep in recording, re-recording, and it’s been a great experience. This go-around has been different because of your involvement. I had reached out to a number of segments of the audience and pulled them, and requested feedback and answers to questions. This go-around, I wanted to create content, create a course that served you at a higher level by addressing your primary concerns, your anxieties, the things that are holding you back the most from achieving that next level of life, that financial freedom or financial independence that you and everybody else is ultimately seeking.
Your responses were heartfelt and your candor was incredible. I’m appreciative and grateful for that. What I’d like to do is give you a snippet of what the course is going to entail by addressing one of the patterns that I’ve seen throughout the responses. These are patterns are everywhere and they’re in greater magnitude these days. I believe we live in a society that wants things quick and fast with the snap of a finger or a click of a button, and looking at freedom and achieving that level of life, and then continuing to achieve it because it is not a one-time event. It’s challenging for most because they see it as a possibility, whether it’s what they see on social media, whether it’s what they read in books.
That pursuit and desire is amplified. I have had the fortunate opportunity of working with a lot of people with their personal finances. I’ve come to these conclusions or these realizations that ultimately, money is a part of the equation, but it is not the primary variable to freedom and independence. Hopefully, that comes out in what I’ll talk about. There are practical strategies, things to do, things to do differently, things to stop doing, things to start doing, but there is a mindset shift that is necessary. The variables or the components of that mindset shift will be evident because not only do I want to go through a specific response to a question. The question being, what are the primary obstacles that are holding you back from living a life at the next level? It pertains to a person, but you can substitute any obstacle that you have, where you stand in a specific place in life.
The Next Level: If a business wants to grow, it has to innovate and find better ways to meet the needs of their customers.
There is a future that you desire and you yearn for. There’s a gap or an in-between. There is what needs to take place in order for you to be at that level. Our psyche often times puts these barriers in place and prevents us from taking risks because naturally we want to avoid fear, and that fear is embedded in our DNA. Mostly it’s irrational at the same time because it’s built into us. It’s challenging for us to rationalize being able to confront it and overcome it. Let’s get into this example. I hope you find some meaning and some value in it. The course is life. Version one is up. I plan on doing lots of iteration and that’s why I kept the price point on the course low so that I can get a bunch of users experiencing it, giving feedback with both the exercises that are there, as well as the content and continue to iterate and make it even more valuable.
You can go check out version one. If you buy this first version, even though the price is going to go up in the future, you can get all those different versions, those upgrades for free, but you can go to Go.TheWealthStandard.com/freedom. This is the obstacle that I’m going to be addressing. The question, what are the primary obstacles that are standing in the way between where you are now and where you want to be in the future, that life at the next level? This specific response was short but I saw this pattern in dozens, if not more of the responses, and there were hundreds of responses. This one was, “I don’t have a business. I am an employee.” These are obstacles you can replace whatever obstacle you have as you ask yourself that question, what is the primary thing that is in the way of me achieving that life at the next level? “I don’t have a business, I’m an employee.”
There could be a multitude of meaning within what they have responded. I’m going to get into a few of them, but it’s an obstacle. The first thing is having a business. If that is the barrier that’s in the way to achieving an amazing life, business is a masochistic and risky way of doing it because the majority of businesses do not succeed. The majority of business owners who get divorced lose their relationships with their kids. They put huge investments and lose those investments, and put people’s lives on the line.
It’s stressful. I’ve been in business for several years and almost going out of business a number of times. There’s a deep desire inside of me that pushed me through and had me persevere through some challenging times where I wanted to be done, but going to life at the next level as business owner, there are even more opportunities and possibilities to achieve financial independence and meaningful life by being an employee. That’s what I’m going to focus my attention because in the end, I believe that successful business and being a successful employee have same dynamic. The only difference is scale, because a business provides a service. An employee provides a service. If a business wants to grow, they have to innovate and find better ways to meet the needs of their customers.
If it’s an employee, it’s a great way to innovate where you can look at the service and the value you’re being paid for, and find ways to improve the value to reach and meet the needs of the person that’s paying you. It’s a different perspective. Sometimes employees look at this entitlement where they should receive a raise for doing nothing. You can flip that and ultimately get even more money through bonuses, raises and position increases. They allow you to make more money and with that additional money, it’s making investment. It’s saving and establishing what I define as financial independence. For those of you who have read the book, you are familiar with this. It’s when 50% of your income comes from the cashflow of investments. The other 50% comes from doing meaningful work on your terms.
Fifty percent can be established by making a lot of money as an employee, but along the way, the resume you build, the human life value balance sheet that you create by your experiences, by the relationships and the network you’ve built can position you to spend twenty hours a week doing meaningful work, and being paid a multiple of what you are paid now. That’s what I’m going to get into because the dynamic, the components, the variables of success of both a business and an employee are the exact same thing. The only difference is scale but I’m going to give you some ideas as far as scale is concerned and how to scale yourself as an employee. The first thing I’m going to do, and this is where I took a direction with a course based on the responses you gave me, because there are many different tactics, strategies, ideas, advice and insight I could give you, but unless there is a breakthrough with your psychology, then all you’re going to be doing is looking for what’s wrong.
The Next Level: 50% of income comes from the cashflow of investments. The other 50% comes from doing meaningful work on your terms.
Limiting Belief
You’re going to be trying to find this confirmation bias, it’s finding the evidence of why your obstacle and what you’ve stayed as your limiting belief is true. Until you can start to question the validity of your limiting belief, no solutions are going to resonate. That’s where I’m going to start. There are some exercises in the course that facilitate the breakthroughs that you can have in order to look at yourself, your beliefs, and your limiting beliefs differently, creating empowering beliefs, and positioning your psychology so that you can be open to the slew and myriad of opportunities that are all around you. I’m going to use a simple example, but there are much more deep and profound experiences within the course that you are going to find fascinating. These are the experiences that I’ve had over the last few years that have given me tremendous breakthrough in my own personal life and my own happiness in my business.
I replicated those for your benefit, but I’m going to go through one. If I was talking to a client, an employee, a friend, my wife or my kids, and we were having a conversation about something that is holding you back, what I would first do is to address the feelings and emotions associated with that limiting beliefs. In this case, the limiting belief is, “I have to have a business. I’m an employee. I have to have business in order for me to be free.” When you think about that, financial independence and life of the next level isn’t possible because in order to do that, you have to have a business. You have to do your own thing.
How does that make you feel? The response is, “I feel held back. I feel frustrated. I’m not motivated. I’m challenged.” I would follow up with, “When you feel this way, do you even want to pursue anything that could potentially get you there? The answer is, “No way, I don’t even want to take that first step.” When you tell yourself this story that you have to own a business in order to be financially independent, in order to achieve the next level of life, you have all the information and you’ve pulled everybody. Do you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that that statement is true? That in order for you to be financially independent and live a life of the next level, you have to own a business.
This is where the eyes roll sometimes, but that’s intentional because what it does is it gets a person to say that “No, I don’t have all of the information. It could be possible that life of the next level is there, and I don’t have to own a business in order to achieve it.” First, it interrupts the belief or that confirmation bias. We’re looking for information to validate what we already believe. What this does is it opens our mind to this new opportunity that it is possible. Simply saying the words that, “I don’t have all the information. It could be possible.” It’s associating the emotions with it. The emotions are those agents of confirmation.
The emotion is if it were true that you didn’t have to be a business owner. You could be an employee to achieve that level of financial independence. How does that make you feel? That’s when they say, “I’m optimistic. I feel that it’s possible. I believe that there may be somebody out there that can help me or give me some insight or give me some information for me to believe that even more.” That’s where it starts. That’s the first domino that needs to be knocked down in order to start positioning strategy. That’s where limitations are concerned and why I positioned the first part of this digital course as breaking through the limiting beliefs.
Following that up with the actual strategies, a person can pursue to make changes, to make adjustments, to get more information, and to execute on that information. I know that if I started with that like I have in the past, most individuals are not in the mindset. They don’t have the psychology of making changes. In one episode that I did, the biggest fears that people have are being wrong and having to change. This is one of the exercises that could potentially work. In this digital course, there are a few other exercises that help you navigate through some of those limiting beliefs and start to replace them with empowering beliefs. Let’s get into solutions because psychology is one thing, but if you’re open to new possibilities and to having additional information, change is likely not to occur.
Value As An Employee
The Wealth of Nations
A business and employee are similar. They both provide a service of value in which they’re paid for. The only difference is scale. In a business, multiple people are involved. A famous definition of scalability is by Adam Smith when he talks about the pen factory in his book, The Wealth of Nations, where he identified that one person making all the different parts of a pen and putting it together has a certain amount of output at the end of the day. If you divide that labor, the division of labor, where multiple people are involved, each of them is responsible for one piece of the assembly, then you’re able to have scalability. The output is a multiple. That’s the idea of scale. There’s scalability possible for an employee, but you first have to identify the value that you provide as an employee. We’re all wired to look at ourselves and to come to a determination of why we’re valuable, rarely do people step outside of them and define, “Why does an employer think I’m valuable? What do I do? What is it about what I do that I’m paid for?”
This comes down to doing an audit of the different tasks and responsibilities and where you spend your time during the day. There are tasks that are meaningless or tasks that have low value. There are the tasks and the value that you’re paid for. In the process of doing this, you’re starting to look at yourself as the customer or the client. The patron looks at you, in this case, it’s your employer. This is a key to business. Peter Drucker says that to grow a business, you have to have focus on two things, innovation and marketing. Innovation is constantly finding even better ways to serve and meet the needs of your customer or client. Marketing is getting people to do more business with you. Looking at employee and employer relationship, this is where you start to understand the needs of the employer. What are they trying to do? What’s their revision? Were they trying to achieve? What are they trying to accomplish? How can I do something potentially different to bring even more value to them? If you go through this process as an employee and bring that success to a business, you’re going to have a much higher likelihood of being a success in business.
You might as well figure out how to do it as an employee first. I look at being an employee as one of the most incredible ways to experiment and to do things that potentially could be incredibly risky as a business, but doing it as an employee, there’s more agility and resilience because you can try things. If it doesn’t work, try something else. The worst thing is you can get a slap on the hand or get fired, but then you can go find another position where as a business, there are people’s jobs that are on the line. There are expenses, leases and other commitments that you’ve made that are on the line. Whereas an employee, there’s more resilience associated with experimenting on the ways in which you can create even more value. Coming from an employee, it’s finding leverage in the tasks that you’re already doing and defining all the different things you do throughout the day and what you’re paid for. As you look for more ways to scale, that’s an easier way to scale.
Looking at it from a position standpoint, are there other positions that you would be better at, that you could be paid for? This is going to, what’s your skillset? What’s your experience? What do you love doing? That’s going to give you those nuggets where you can start to look for other positions, whether it’s inside the company that you’re with or within the employee base of another company. Nonetheless, it’s starting to identify yourself as the asset and find out why you’re paid and figuring out how to make that asset even more valuable. There’s an eBook that I wrote a number of years ago before my official book came out and it’s essentially how to invest in a $50 million asset, which is you.
A Look At Leadership
What it does is it shows the math behind instead of getting a 3% raise per year, which is customary, you get a 10% raise per year. That 10% doesn’t come about by entitlement. That 10% is going to come about by you being more valuable and demonstrate that in the digital course as well. Let’s segue into an essential variable or dynamic of a successful business. It’s also an essential component of a successful employee. This is leadership. We are conditioned in our society to look at leadership from a hierarchical perspective. There is tenure within the public-school systems. There is the vice principal, the principal, the superintendent, the same structure exists in government. In corporations, the same structure exists.
We get this idea that leadership is management, but I believe that management in and of itself is a horrible way to get leverage. Leadership-focused management is an empowering way. Management is getting people to do things whether it’s usually by a stick. Rarely it’s a carrot, but I believe that even stick and carrot are limiting. There is a way in which you can empower people to do good work. Leadership is a huge opportunity because the majority of employees are conditioned to look at leadership as a hierarchical management structure. I think that’s limiting. It’s figuring out how to hone in on your leadership abilities, your ability to involve others in projects and get scale. Use that division of labor dynamic. This could come from reading books and taking courses. It’s the experimentation side of things. It’s learning how to be a good leader, finding mentors whether it’s direct or indirect, and incorporating their style of handling meetings, their style of executing projects or being part of a project.
The Next Level: Focus on the areas that you’re best at and allow others to fill roles that they’re best at.
The leadership dynamic is huge because it’s empowering people, especially in our day and age, when you have a fleeting employee base, where employees are jumping from company to company for a 2%, 3%, 4% raise. Maybe a little bit more benefit here. What’s going to keep them is good leadership, which is caring, empathy, but also instilling in them a desire to do good work and even more good work after they’ve done the initial good work. Leadership is huge because that’s when you can work in teams and get way more done. You can focus on the areas that you’re best at, and allow others to fill roles that they’re best at.
A Meaningful Life
That right there brings about a greater output. That is essential for scaling as an employee. I know a lot of people that make high six figures and even seven figures in the employee world. This is where sometimes research into, what is the maximum income that you can earn in your position or a position that you desire? What does that look like? Start to define what is inside of the gap between where you’re at right now, what you’re paid for and what a person at that caliber is paid for. All along the way, you’re making more money. The point is it’s not to solely reliant on your profession to achieve that end result, that financial independence or a meaningful life.
It equips you to, number one, establish an asset base that is providing cashflow that covers your lifestyle. Second, it’s to be able to evaluate what you’re doing inside of your work as an employee and always, either find ways to have more enjoyment, success, achievement and fulfillment. If you don’t, you have a lot more latitude because of how you’ve established your assets to either move to a consultant position or to a part-time position. Move from company to company, if that environment is not suitable to the terms and conditions you set up for yourself as far as defining a meaningful life and a meaningful career.
In the end, retirement is a flawed idea, which is 100% living off your assets. We’re wired to create value. We’re wired to contribute and improve the lives of others and in the process, improve our own lives. That’s a natural occurring energy that keeps us alive, happy and fulfilled. Without it, it doesn’t matter how much money you have, fulfillment is unlikely. Looking at the continual pursuit of improving yourself as an asset, whether you own a business or not is going to be vital to achieving this financial independence, whatever that next level looks like for you. This is where it all end. Even if you get to that 6, 7 figures and you’re a highly valued or highly paid employee, it doesn’t mean that you have to stay in those positions. You can look at consultant positions and being on boards.
You could be part-time. You could be a contractor or a free freelancer, and do work from anywhere in the world on your terms. That’s where a big piece of the course comes is to help you define what are the terms. What is the criteria? What is life of the next level look like? You can define that first and have that end result always in your mind. More often than not, people don’t necessarily come up with a clear definition of what they’re after or the results that they want. They go through the motions on a daily basis without the milestones that are necessary to get to that end result. The clarity that one can get from establishing that ideal life and a life on their terms is powerful.
Unequivocally, I see individuals coming to the conclusion and realization that to live life at that level, it doesn’t require what they thought it was going to require. It’s a lot easier. At the same time, this is a process. There are many people that are struggling because of our environment. I empathize with that. I understand that there is disruption. At the same time, there are incredible opportunities for those that exercise the fortitude of a healthy and abundant mindset because opportunities are everywhere. Thanks again for reading. Thanks for investing your time into educating yourself. Hopefully, this message has resonated with you. Go check out this new course called A Path to Financial Independence. It’s at Go.TheWealthStandard.com/freedom. Next, I’m going to be tackling another insightful obstacle that many of you had expressed in relation to achieving that life at the next level, and that is taking time and money away from family. In this case, wife and children. It’s the confidence to commit more time and money into a business, but also keeping spouse and children in mind. That’s what I’m going to tackle next. We’ll see you next time. Bye.
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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Kenneth Burton
...a critical financial strategy
I simply couldn't put this book down, I read it cover to cover in 1.5 days! #VeryEngagingRead
Wes Atchison
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
after presenter and speaker at financial-based events around the country and is the host of The Wealth Standard podcast.
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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LEARN HOW TO MAKE YOUR MONEY GROW.
The 100+ year old investment strategy proven and used by the wealthiest of the wealthy.
