Fulfillment

A Fulfilling Life Will Never Come From Achieving Goals With Tim Reynolds

October 14, 2021 Patrick Donohoe Podcast 00:24:48 Comments Off on A Fulfilling Life Will Never Come From Achieving Goals With Tim Reynolds

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TWS 25 | Fulfilling Life

What are the things you need to do to live a fulfilling life? Does it come from achieving goals? Dr. Tim Reynolds, author and creator of Living Every Minute, doesn’t think that’s always the case, and in this interview with host Patrick Donohoe, we learn where fulfillment comes from. We listen to Tim’s recollections about family and a story about a medical emergency he had worked on that showed him why the goal isn’t all there is, and that sometimes, the journey is just as important. Be inspired by Tim’s words and be ready to live a greater life.

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Watch the episode here:

Listen to the podcast here:

A Fulfilling Life Will Never Come From Achieving Goals With Tim Reynolds

The following five episodes are with businessman, investor, doctor, and now author, Tim Reynolds. The interview was in-person in my office. If you’re reading the episodes and want to watch the videos, just go head over to TheWealthStandard.com, and it’ll have a link there. When the five segments are complete, we’re going to post the entire interview on our YouTube channel. Make sure you check that out.

A little bit about Tim. He is a former Green Beret in the Special Forces. He was a medic and also a battalion surgeon. He graduated from Texas A&M with his Medical degree and his specialization was Emergency Medicine. He was an emergency room doctor for several years, and then co-started a company called HealthCARE Express.

He has 15 or 16 locations throughout Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana. He has his book. You can check it out on Amazon. It’s called Living Every Minute. It’s also on Audible. He reads the Audible audio book. Tim is an amazing guy. He is one of the first original platinum partners with Tony Robbins. He has love and zest for life. It’s throughout his book. It’s going to be throughout this interview.

You can imagine that in the roles that he’s played, he has experienced firsthand the fragility of life. He’s going to share some of those experiences throughout these five segments. I want to forewarn you. This is a PG thirteen-ish interview. There’s some colorful language. There are also some relatively graphic stories that Tim tells, but you are going to experience him, his heart, and his passion for life. You can check his website out. It’s LivingEveryMinute.com. He has some personal development programs, courses, and a lot of other resources that you want to check out. Go head over there. Without further delay, let’s start episode one with my dear friend, Tim Reynolds.

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If you took the pillar of relationships in the book, we talked about the 30-second make-out session. I’ll give this as an example. I invented this thing called the 30-second make-out session. It’s a crazy, simple idea. If you’re the guy, you walk into your wife, she’s in the kitchen, or she’s at work, even better. Wherever you find her, you throw her up against the wall, make out, hair grab, and whatever it is that she likes like two rowdy kids. If you’ve been married for a long time, that doesn’t happen very often. What if you did that for 30 seconds and then you walk away? Don’t say a damn word, especially if you don’t tell her that you’ve read the book. You walk away.

What if she slaps you?

She would be like, “Wait.” I’ll grab her harder. She’d be like, “Wow.” It would make her all day. It would be like, she’d want more maybe, but you don’t give it to her and make her beg for it. You would walk away. What if you did that? It’s 30 seconds. For reasons we don’t, we create all these rules about why I wouldn’t do, she shouldn’t do. Fuck all that. Go do it.

If you did that once a day, it would change your entire marriage. That one thing. What I tried to do in the book is not just good philosophy. You go do this. I have five kids. They’ve very successful, great and wonderful. They’re not kids anymore. They’re all adults. Three doctors, one got a business degree, the other one got a brand-new degree. They’ll all come back to work in our companies.

We want the world better for our offspring than it was for us. We want to leave a better place. Click To Tweet

People say, “How are your kids so successful?” I said, “We were blessed.” Obviously, we don’t take credit for all of it. Second thing is, every week, I interview them. They remember this. I would sit in my office and they would have to come in and they’d have to have an interview with Dad. I might’ve sat on the other side of the desk.

It was like a formal interview. “How’s school? How are your friends? What are you doing with so-and-so? What are you thinking about football next year?” We have this interview. I don’t know why I started doing it. I don’t remember. They still say, “I wish we still did those interviews. I love that time.” That’s in the book. Why wouldn’t you do that? Do that. That’s not hard. It’s very simple. They treasure that time. That’s what I’ll do.

Drive up the presence.

Knowing that dad was there. Now that they’re adults, they still want me to do it. I’ll give you one more example. You’ve read this, about the family mission statement. We do what we call the Reynolds family retreats. Once a year, we go somewhere. We went to South Africa. It’s been as simple as going to up to lake camping and it doesn’t have to be expensive. In fact, it was. We were reading a book called The Traveler’s Gift. The book has an adult version and the kids’ version. The kids read the kid’s version, the adults read the adult version.

We’d sit around the table and I’d talk about the book. “What did you learn about it? What did you think about this?” I said, “What do you think our families should be about? What’s our family going to be about? What are our rules?” All the kids would comment. We’d write all these notes about what would make us feel special in our house. We wrote all of these things down. My daughter, Natalie, who’s now an emergency physician, took that. She was twelve at the time. She created a paragraph and we labeled it, The Reynolds Family Mission Statement. We blew it up, framed it, painted in our kitchen.

Every week when we’d have a family night and a game night, we’d stand up and we’d do like this pledge of allegiance, put our hands over our hearts. We would read the family mission statement. The kids are all 12 to 5, 9 to 14 at that time. They are now adults. Every one of my kids carries a laminated card of our family mission statement. That’s the power. Easy to do, easy not to do. That’s the difference between intentionally creating a life that’s worth creating spectacular for, or just letting the kids go to school and don’t do anything.

I want to put a stake in the ground here because there’s a couple of points in the book where it tugs on the heartstrings. What is about that guy that came into the emergency room who poured gasoline on himself to commit suicide? Wasn’t it because he was clinically depressed? Why don’t you tell that story? An unintentional life leads to this point.

They called in and said that they were bringing this guy into the hospital. I was the doctor that was on that day. He had sat in his car in a parking lot at a mall, poured a gallon of gasoline on himself and lit a match. He comes in and they had a hard time getting him out of the car. They called in and said he had 90% third-degree burns. Third-degree burns are full thickness.

The worst kind, looks like charcoal. He comes in. Weirdly, people with third-degree burns aren’t in pain. They burned through the pain receptors. They’re weirdly not look like they should be, but they’re not in much pain. That’s what his situation. The very unique situation of being an emergency physician with this guy is, after I examined him, I knew he was dead, but he didn’t know he was dead.

TWS 25 | Fulfilling Life

Fulfilling Life: The problem is that there are no rules. Somebody made that up for you. Somebody created all of that for you and then told you, that’s what it should be.

He was still awake and talking, but this is an unsurvivable injury. There’s no way you survive 90% surgery burns. I’d get to have a twenty-minute conversation with a guy who I knew was not going to survive. I asked him, “What caused this?” He said, “It’s just every day’s the same.” He had no history of depression. He wasn’t on antidepressants.

Yet, it got to the point where it was the zombie life. We talked about everything. He had a wife. They didn’t have a passionate relationship. He had some kids who didn’t have much to do with him. It wasn’t worth living anymore. It wasn’t worth doing it. People who commit suicide are always in a horrible situation. They can’t see the way to a great situation.

If you listen to the Audible part of that book. Billy and I talk about it. The thing that’s crazy about that is in order for him to get out of that situation, what do you have to do? You had to take tons of courage, more courage than I would have, because I couldn’t do that. I’d take massive action to do that. What if you use that same courage of massive action to fix his life?

That was the point. I didn’t even think about when I wrote the book and when Billy brought it up, he’s like, “What happened is this guy had a tremendous amount of courage and took massive action in order to kill himself.” If he had taken that same amount of courage, massive action, and done something different, how would things have turned out?

I often thought about society, in a sense, creates this unwritten checklist that we have to follow. You go to school, get good grades, get married, have kids, get a job, have a 401(k), and have health benefits. It’s like we’ve been programmed that if we check boxes, we’re going to have a fulfilling life. The same thing happens in religion where it’s like, “You got to do these things. Check these boxes.” Is there anything wrong with that philosophy?

The problem is that there are no rules. Somebody made that up for you. Somebody created all of that for you and then told you that’s what it should be, but they don’t know. They’re miserable. They’re beating their wife. They’re telling you what you should do. Meanwhile, they’re sitting at home addicted to porn or whatever the situation is. You have to be careful who you’re listening to. We all have faults. Be careful when you listen to me, everybody. If you think I’m perfect, you don’t know.

My wife’s right here, she can tell you. I’m open to that. I agree. This version two is going to be much better because I got a lot more mistakes to make. You don’t have to dig very deep to find some dirt on me, as the country song says. It’s true. This book says that. This isn’t coming from a guy who knows everything. This is coming from a guy who have been in a lot of weird situations. Sixty-five countries. The treatment to this whole thing that you talked about, about everybody sees the world like this, to fix that is travel. See what the rest of the world’s doing. Mark Twain said that, not Tim Reynolds, but he was right.

The more places you go, the more kinds of people you meet, the more people you live with, because when we go somewhere, we don’t like to stay in the American place. We like to be in the environment. Eat the food, do the things. We’ve been so blessed. We’ve been at the Achuar Indians in the rainforest in Ecuador, ten days from civilization. They’ve never seen civilization.

We’ve done things with them. Funny story in the book about that. We’ve been at the Achuar Indians in Africa. We’ve delved in the mosques in Egypt and Istanbul. We’ve been in almost every Buddhist temple in Thailand, funny story. In every place you go, people are the same. I feel like there’s this core base that our spirits are very similar.

It's not the goal. It's the living every minute. It's a journey to get to the goal. Click To Tweet

Our energies are very similar. We want the world better for our offsprings than it was for us. We want to leave a better place. We want to have a spectacular life. For some reason, we started to put on all these layers of society, religion, whatever it is that take us away from this core base of who we are. If you can get rid of all that and get down to who we all are, it’s amazing how much more we’re alike than we’re different. We all have these kinds of conversations and sit around and have fulfilled lives. That’s the basis of the whole philosophy.

One of those checklists is you have these end points, where you accomplish this thing and that should be, “I graduated college. I’m good. I don’t have to read again and study. I got married. I don’t feel like dating again or take care of myself.” You need to manipulate your body.

Free sex thing. It can happen if you’re not married.

For long.

You’re going to have to work harder.

That’s the point in this life. Life isn’t these end points. Life is to continue a set of milestones. Once you achieve a certain level, the next level of weights, and there’s no end to those levels.

I was talking to John about this. He knows somebody who’s super successful, who he got within Hawaii. He didn’t tell me the guy’s name, but he said the guy on the boat was still with him. He says he’s somebody he’s always to looked up to. He said, “I feel like I’ve achieved everything. I don’t have anything else to look for.”

The problem with thinking that the goal is the thing, that’s the problem. It’s not the goal. It’s the living every minute to get to the goal. In fact, the goal sometimes is a disappointment, like, “This is it? I worked so hard to get here.” It’s because you fell in love with the goal instead of falling in love with the process that gets you there.

I’m in love with going to the gym. I have some goals. I want to bench press 400 pounds. Whatever my goals are for that year, but that’s not it. I’m in love with the gym. I like the smell of the iron, putting on the gloves, making my drink, and lifting those weights. I don’t need any goals. I’ll accomplish the goals because I fell in love with the process.

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Living Every Minute: Dr. Tim’s Pillars for Creating a Spectacular Life

In my business, I’m in love with waking up every morning and going, “What problems have we got to solve today? What issues are they? What trainings are we going to do? Do we have some business goals?” Yes, but that’s not the important part. You can’t fall in love with that because it may or may not happen. What will happen is every day, we get to do this thing that we get to do. If you fall in love with that, fall in love with the right thing, you still set goals, but they have a different reason. They’d have a different thing.

You did an amazing job of setting the theory, setting some frameworks, but you also have some tools for execution. Obviously, you have the book, workbooks, some material online, then you have Gladiator, and you have some other things that you’re doing. Maybe speak to those as we conclude.

We’re putting this all together. We have the Living Every Minute book. We have Living Every Minute – Workbook. Those are available LivingEveryMinute.com or on Amazon. It’s also on Audible. I finished it. It’s weird listening to yourself read a book.

It’s awesome. You make these little side comments and interviews.

We did the Audible. There’s that, the workbook. We have the journal planner. I talked about that. It’s on LivingEveryMinute.com, all this. Our blog is there as well. We started a course. These didn’t have anything to do with each other. This was happening. I started this course called Gladiator. It’s called Reclaim Your Gladiator. The reason it’s called Reclaim Your Gladiator is because it’s a men’s course and men are already gladiators, they just forgot. For three days, I remind them of who they are, what they were born to do, and what they’re here for. It came with this whole idea of toxic masculinity, this whole idea, this bullshit concept, that masculinity is toxic.

Masculinity is protective and helpful and all of the good things. What you see negative that men do is not masculinity. That’s called being an asshole. The sideways hat and the big truck are not masculinity. Don’t mistake the two things. That’s what I literally said in the back room and designed the course. Everything from Special Forces days to Tony, to Keith, everybody I’ve learned from and said, “How can we create this into a course?” We started running this gladiator course and it’s been amazing.

We’ve put 100 men through it. We only do 12 at a time. We only do it twice a year. It’s on my ranch in Texas. Three days. There’s a physical component to it, but it’s not about physical. It’s about mental spiritual. What happens in the classroom and in the conversations is way more important than the physical part. I knew for my Special Forces days, and you did a thing, so you appreciate this, men don’t open up without a physical component. You get them to be physical, get them tired. Now I can get them to open up and I can teach them. That’s why there’s a physical component, it’s part of it. It’s become awesome. That’s at the same website, there are videos and stuff. I did that for a few years.

Everybody said, “You need a woman’s course.” I said, “I don’t know how to do a women’s course. I was in Special Forces. There were no women.” No offense to women, but all my companies are run by women, but I don’t know how to train women. It’s not my thing. I have my wife do it. She’s like, “I’m not doing it. You’re the trainer guy.” We kept going back and forth. Finally, I said, “I’ll do it.” I sat for an entire summer and I planned out what would a woman’s course be. I want them to be just as bad-ass as Gladiators, but not turn them into men.

Part of our problem in our society is we’ve mistaken equality of pay and how we’re treated for sameness. We’re not the same. There are men and women. There’s feminine energy, masculine energy. They’re not the same. That has nothing to do with equality. Sometimes we confuse the two things. Inequality means sameness. I didn’t want to make them the same. I debated how to do it. I took the whole summer. The whole name Valkyrie, if you know what Valkyrie is, they come from the Viking days of Nordic people. I originally named the course, Ninja Princess Warrior.

I was told by the other women, “That would not be the name of the course. The name of the course would be Valkyrie.” We’ve done two. We got two coming up. It blew me away. It ended up being cooler than Gladiator. Women have this unique problem that men don’t have, that we don’t think about. Women have to do everything a man has to do. I’m thinking of a single mom. Go to work, provide, be all of the things that she has to be and then go in and take a shower, put on high heels and a dress and become super feminine. We don’t have to make that choice.

Part of our problem in our society is we've mistaken equality of pay and equality of how we're treated for sameness. Click To Tweet

We just stay in that one state all the time. They have to do all the thing we have to do and then also be super feminine. The whole course is going back and forth to a masculine, feminine energy. Tony says, “How do you make your dog, your dog? You give it a name and you teach it to come on your call.” I said, “Which part of your personality do you need to teach?” You don’t talk to your child the same way you talk to your colleague, the same way you talk to your buddy at the bar.

You have to know which dog to bring to which bite. It’s about that. We ended up with Gladiator and Valkyrie and then that led into a couple’s courses. We have a couple of courses that we do. We talked about these, because it’s not Gladiator. It’s not a physical course, but it’s about strengthening people’s marriages. The 30-second make-out session, a bunch of other things we go into.

A few years into it, the Gladiators came to me and said, “What about advance? What’s the next thing? We want to advance Gladiators.” We’ve been 60 men or so at that time. I said, “You be careful what you ask for.” They’re like, “No, we want it.” I created advanced, which we call Ragtag Bastards. I created the Ragtag Bastards course, but that’s for people who’ve already done the first course. We hold that once a year. Now they’re talking to me about that Valkyrie.

We’ll see how that goes. One thing’s leading to another. Rather than me pushing what’s happening, I’m feeling the pull of what’s happening now. It’s fun. I like it. We have those tools that are available. We’re also going to do our first ever Living Every Minute Summit. We’re going to take probably three days and teach everything in the book over a three-day process and have a summit where people can come and learn.

Talk about the website.

LivingEveryMinute.com is where all this is housed. It’s where the events are. It’s where the book is. You can get books, workbooks, the planner. Everything’s on that site. That’s where we’ll announce when we go inside to do the summit where, and when that’s going to be. We’re talking about doing a podcast, we love the idea of doing it. We just haven’t got to that point yet, but eventually, we’ll do that. We’ll put all that on there as well.

Tim, it’s been awesome.

Let me put a plugin for you. I’ve been watching you over the last few years. As I’ve known you and watch you move from one office to the other, watch what you’re doing and your personal growth and path. I’ve been watching from a distance and through John and see what’s going on. I’m proud of where you are headed. This is awesome. Good job.

That means a lot. We’ve discovered similar principles. We don’t have to reinvent the wheel. That’s what we have in common. The wheel has been invented. We just couldn’t figure it out and execute.

TWS 25 | Fulfilling Life

Fulfilling Life: Masculinity is protective and helpful and all of the good things. What you see negative that men do is not masculinity. That’s just called being an asshole.

Take what other people have taught and just execute it.

It’s a game where it’s not all success. You hit the nail on the head, 80% failure, 20% success. That 20%, it makes it like that. It’s totally worth all the 80% and maybe even a little bit more, honestly. I don’t think we value the success if we don’t get punched in the face every now and then.

If you are always successful, you wouldn’t know any different.

Tim, you’re awesome. Thank you. Everyone, thank you for reading. See you next time.

Important Links:

About Dr. Tim Reynolds

Dr. Timothy Reynolds is the founder of Dr. Tim international Inc., a company he established in 2009 to allow him to share his passion for Living Every Minute™ with others. He dedicates countless hours each week to helping others transform their lives through mentoring, life building, inspirational talks, and writing his motivational blogs.

Dr. Tim was the first member of his family to graduate high school. He joined the military shortly after graduation and graduated from the Special Forces Q-course in July of 1982. He served as a Green Beret on an A-Team as the Battalion medic and eventually as a Special Forces Battalion Surgeon for the 19th Special Forces Group (Airborne). He served both enlisted and as an officer for 17 years.

After getting out of the military, Dr. Tim graduated college with honors. His passion for helping people inspired him to become a medical doctor, and in 1993 he graduated Summa Cum Laude with an MD degree from the University of Utah. He completed his Emergency Medicine residency at Texas A&M Scott and White in 1996 and is board certified in emergency medicine.

Dr. Tim is the managing partner for HealthCARE Express, a group of urgent care clinics rapidly expanding across the United States. Prior to starting HealthCARE Express in 2006, Dr. Tim held numerous positions in the medical field, including: medical director of the Wadley Regional Medical Center Emergency Department and level II trauma center; president of E-Med Services, LLP and of E-Med Billing Solutions, LLP; associate clinical professor for the Area Health Education Center at the University of Arkansas; and founding member of the Greater People’s Clinic of Texarkana Board of Directors.

Dr. Tim is also an entrepreneur and successful businessman. He is currently the chief executive officer of TL Reynolds Properties, LLP, a real estate investment company; and he is a managing partner of JJET Developments Ltd., a real estate development company.

Dr. Tim enjoys spending time on his Ranch in Atlanta, Texas, where he lives with his wife, Pam, and their five amazing children. He holds a black belt in Tae Kwon Do, is a SCUBA rescue diver, and a pilot. He also enjoys body building, golf, and hiking.

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A Framework To LIVE In Every Minute With Tim Reynolds

October 7, 2021 Patrick Donohoe Podcast 00:21:23 Comments Off on A Framework To LIVE In Every Minute With Tim Reynolds

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TWS 24 | Living Every Minute

 

Everyone’s lives, be it their personal or professional ones, follow a guide, a framework to live by. In Part 4 of Patrick Donohoe’s interview with businessman, investor, doctor, and author Tim Reynolds, we hear more about how your mission, your framework, affects everything around you. Tim discusses the Living Every Minute concept and how it can change your life. Tim shares the value of writing down the magical moments in your life and chronicling what you do in a journal. Tune in to this thought-provoking conversation and learn how to make the most out of your life.

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Watch the episode here:

Listen to the podcast here:

A Framework To LIVE In Every Minute With Tim Reynolds

The following five episodes are with Businessman, Investor, Doctor, and Author Tim Reynolds. The interview was in person in my office. If you’re reading the stories and want to watch the videos, just head over to TheWealthStandard.com, and it’ll have a link there when the five segments are complete. We’re going to post the entire interview on our YouTube channel.

A little bit about Tim. He is a former Green Beret in the Special Forces. He was a medic and also Battalion Surgeon. He graduated from Texas A&M with his Medical Degree and his specialization was emergency medicine. He was an emergency room doctor for several years and then co-started a company called HealthCARE Express. He has 15 or 16 locations throughout Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana. He has his book. You can check it out on Amazon called Living Every Minute.

It’s also on Audible. He reads the Audible audiobook. Tim is an amazing guy. He is one of the first original platinum partners with Tony Robbins. His love and zest for life are throughout his book. It’s going to be throughout this interview. In the roles that he’s played, he has experienced firsthand the fragility of life. He’s going to share some of those experiences throughout these five segments. I want to forewarn you.

This is a PG 13-ish interview. There’s some colorful language and there are also some relatively graphic stories that Tim tells. You guys are going to experience him, his heart, and his passion for life. You can check his website out. It’s LivingEveryMinute.com. He has some personal development programs, courses and a lot of other resources that you want to check out. Go head over there. Without further delay, let start this episode with my dear friend, Tim Reynolds.

I can’t remember who said this, but picture yourself with them in 30 years and if you can’t. I used to have a funny saying. I don’t even remember where I got it but I heard it one time and I caught it. When I learned something, if I can remember how I learned it, that means I made it up. It’s one of those things. If I wake up three days in a row thinking about you and we’re not having sex, you’re fired.

If you have a mission in life and if you know your major definite purpose is, that has an effect on everything about you. Click To Tweet

I shouldn’t have to wake up thinking about you for three days in a row unless we’re having sex. I don’t remember where I learned, but I thought it was hilarious. It’s true. I’m sure it’s happened to you. You have a team member, a partner or something, it’s just weighing heavy on your heart. You retrain, rethink and have the hard conversations, then you part ways.

You think, “Why did I wait? Have you ever fired anybody?” I should have waited longer. Every time you’re like, “Why it took me so long?” That’s a sign that you’re a good person. If it weighs heavy on your head, firing so many and you enjoy that, you’re not the right person. If it weighs heavy on your heart and it’s hard, that’s right.

It goes the other direction too, whether it’s an employee or even in an intimate relationship, it becomes non-intimate. You hold on for too long. You know I’m here for a paycheck or I’ll just deal with this. You don’t realize the weight that has on the other aspects of your life.

In the pillars that we talk about, all of them affect the others. Your health affects your wealth. Your wealth affects your relationships. Your revelations affect your mission. If you have a mission in life and if you know what your major definite purpose is, that has an effect on everything about you. My favorite analogy is food poisoning. Everybody had food poisoning. When you have food poisoning, you have the bucket here and the toilet here. Nothing in life matters. Not your marriage, not your money, nothing. Just that bucket, not a toilet.

That’s what people are headed. They’re saying a healthy person has 10,000 problems. A healthy person has one.

It’s the same as the Living Every Minute concept. You don’t appreciate it until you don’t have it. You don’t appreciate your eyesight every day. You get up in the morning and it’s like, “I’m glad I can see you now.” We don’t. We take it for granted. Part of the Living Every Minute philosophy is that, “How do I live every minute? How do I create and appreciate this moment for everything I have?” My hands and my fingers can do this, then you and I consider to have a conversation.

That changes everything and then you start to look for what we call magic moments. We haven’t talked about it. We created a journal planner. It’s called Living Every Minute Journal Planner. We talked about working on your life, so I created a tool. I said, “How can I create a tool that will help people to do this on a daily, weekly, monthly basis?” I created this planner. It has this daily ritual and essentials that you go through.

TWS 24 | Living Every Minute

Living Every Minute: When you have food poisoning, you have the bucket here and the toilet here. Nothing in life matters. Not your marriage, not your money, nothing. Just that bucket, that toilet.

 

The first thing is three things that you’re grateful for, then the next thing is rewrite your top ten goals. Most people are already have written goals. Most people do write them, then later look at them, but if you rewrite your top ten goals every day, there’s something that happens in your brain, especially if you do it by hand. There’s a place you rewrite them every day. I hate it sometimes because I’m like, “I didn’t do anything on that.”

That’s why you do it. It takes you through this process. It’s not a calendar. There’s a calendar in it but it’s not a calendar. It’s a planning-your-life thing then there’s a journal section on the other side. I teach people who’s like, “I don’t know what to write in a journal.” I said, “It’s pretty easy. We give them a little outline. It’s called Go Pam.” My wife’s name is Pam. It’s gratitude, obstacles and opportunities, people who’ve influenced my life, accomplishments, and magic moments.

Imagine if you just wrote those down every day. The magic moment is you think on the day and you think, “What was cool and magical that happened? Patrick and I were having this conversation and this thing happened or whatever.” You write that as the magic moment, “I spent some time with my daughter, one-on-one laid in the bed and we just talked.” Whatever that’s going to be. This cool thing happens. We’ve taught this over and over. If you write down a magic moment every day, guess what you start looking for?

Magic moments.

You start seeing it, “I got to write that.” You start looking for them and then something magical happens. You start creating them. That’s what I’m about. I’m about creating magic moments. That’s what the train is about. When that happened, I was like, “That’s going to be a magic moment. Let’s create that. We’ll never forget that.”

It’s because of that philosophy. We started thinking, “What if I was the creator of magic moments? Instead of just having a barbecue, we had a barbecue and we invited two of the neighbor families over. We did an anti-roast.” A roast is where you say bad things about people in general so we say great things about. Nobody would ever forget that. It’s just easy to do, but it’s just a matter of twisting it and saying, “I’m wasn’t going to create magic moment. I’m going to create spectacular.”

Two things were going through my head. First, the power of frameworks. An individual’s mind without frameworks is scattered. Naturally, we create our own frameworks, but typically they’re not done strategically. They’re done just by happenstance based on survival instincts. To conserve energy and process everything that’s going on, we create our own framework. This is a strategic framework.

We all have same 24 hours. What you do at these 24 hours makes all the difference. Those who end up successful and those who ended up in the homeless shelter started with the same 24 hours. Click To Tweet

The second thing is those frameworks design the way we view the world if we do them on an ongoing basis. If you go to an event and you see Tony Robbins, “I went to that event.” You don’t remember anything about it is because you did nothing with it. Our body were designed where you can’t fit much more information in there. If you don’t repeat, the old stuff is going to dominate anything new. There are instances where you have this like, “Punch in the gut, kick in the balls” moment where if you don’t do something, it’s just going to be super painful. If you’re trying to design things strategically, you need that dynamic of repetition. There’s science behind this.

Atomic habits, the power of habit, and all of these different things. That habit is just a little piece of string, putting our piece string and another piece of string. Pretty soon, you’ve got a rope.

It strengthens.

That’s great if that’s a good one.

It’s terrible if it’s cigarettes or any other bad habit. It’s just so hard to break once it’s a rope. What you just said is perfect. What we did with the journal plan was create a framework. It’s an intentional framework because otherwise, we create an unintentional framework and then we live through those. I’ve realized that’s what we’re doing. That’s where the rules come from. It’s a perfect analogy. I’ve been a big planner guy for a long time. I’m originally from Salt Lake.

There was the Franklin Planner before Covey. There was a guy named Hyrum Smith at a little shop downtown and he invented the Franklin Planner. I bought the first Franklin. We went to the Franklin Planner. It was this little planner and it had all this different stuff. The shop became FranklinCovey because Stephen Covey had a different company. The two join together and become FranklinCovey. Day-Timer came out, so I went to the Day-Timer. I had all these planner ideas. I went to all the courses. Why? I don’t know.

I’ve always been obsessed with this time thing and the idea that no matter who you are, how rich, poor, healthy, or sick you are, we all have one thing the same, 24 hours. Every one of us every day, unless we die, is born with 24 hours. It might be the last 24 hours, but we have 24. I’m fascinated by the idea that what you do at these 24 hours makes all the difference. Those who end up successful in all areas of their life and those who ended up in the homeless shelter started with the same 24 hours.

What they did every 24 hours is what made all the difference. That’s the Living Every Minute. I’ve been obsessed with time. I’ve tried every time-system, planner, and journal, all those kinds of things. Finally, I took all those 30 years’ worth of try-them-once and, “What if I created one that envelops our philosophy?” What the world didn’t need was another calendar. In fact, your best calendar is here. It is recurring, remind you and all that stuff. This isn’t a calendar.

This is a creative stepping out of your life for 10 or 15 minutes a day and recreating it. That comes with the daily and then weekly. There’s a weekly retreat where you spend an hour or so planning the week or what that should look like. It is not planning your events. We call it the most important things. The big rocks, “What am I going to do this week for my health? What am I going to do for my relationship with my wife? If I could only do one thing this week to be a better husband, what would it be? I can only do one thing this week for my business. What would the most important thing I could be?”

It’s putting those in and stepping back. Monthly looks a lot like that and then it comes every quarter. It’s like a 90-day sprint because business is done in 90 days. It’s got a business section and a personal section for the next 90 days. This is the top goal in each of these areas. What you would end up with is about 10 goals and 10 areas of your life. Every day, you have to rewrite those top ten goals for the 90 days. It’s amazing how effective that is.

TWS 24 | Living Every Minute

Living Every Minute: If you’re happy with the results you have, keep doing what you’re doing. But if you’re not happy with the results you have, keeping doing what you’re doing is stupid.

 

This is more time. I imagine people that are reading this are like, “That’s a lot of time. I’ll don’t have enough time.” It’s amazing how we respond to it. Biologically, our bodies are like, “You have so much going on. Don’t put any more in there,” and it responds that way. In your experience in coaching people and seeing this successfully adopted, what’s the accountability structure in order to get to the point where you do that consistently?

If you and I are going to have a contest to chop down trees for the day, I would spend the first hour sharpening my saw. That’s what Stephen Covey said. I would accomplish a lot more. If we forget to sharpen the saw, we call it the sword. If we forget to sharpen the sword, then we will spend a lot of time doing a lot of things that we don’t have to do with a dull sword. This also the winning the inner battle before you go to the outer belt.

I call it the hour power or whatever you want to call it. If you don’t have an hour, it’s 30 minutes. If you don’t have 30 minutes, it’s 15 minutes, whatever you have. If you spend that time with yourself, planning, thinking, meditating, re-looking at your goals, praying, or whatever it is that you do during your time, the whole rest of the day seems different.

It’s like your, “It’s your day.” Don’t ever feel like you catch up. You feel like you have to it all day. “I ran around with my head on fire, but I didn’t get anything accomplished.” That’s the difference. Once a year, I do four-day hibernation. I’d disappear for four days before I show up. For four days, I plan the year. The first two days, I don’t allow any plans. First two days, all I do is review the previous year.

At the end of the day, what we all want is fulfillment. Click To Tweet

I do review my journals, my P&L’s for my businesses, and my interviews. What did I do right? What did I do wrong? How did I screw up as a husband? How to do good as a teacher? What could I have done better? It’s such an amazing gratitude exercise for two days, just to look at how the year went and then for the next two days, I have a little pad of paper. As I’m doing it, I’ll write down how next year is and then I spend the next two days thinking, “I going to start with this one question.” When I’m sitting here this time next year, what would have made it spectacular? Three hundred sixty-five days from now, what would have made this the best 365 days ever? That’s the premise I started for and I started outlining health, wealth, relationships, or dad. We have five kids. What could I do? That’s what I do. Once I’ve done that, I’ve outlined what the year looks like.

Some of those things are set in stone. They’re dates. “We’re going to Africa. We’re doing this.” There are so many things I want to accomplish. My mistake that I make often is I just have too many. I ended up with 200 things and because I want to do so many things. I make myself narrow it down and then narrow it down again and go with the top ten. I’ll usually have a top 2 or 3 in each area then the top ten for the year. If I only get these things done this year, these are the top ten.

Once a month, I’ll take for September and say, “This is the first of the month.” I’m going to look at the year, and I’m going to say, “This is September. How am I doing on the things I thought I said I would do? What does September need to look like in order to be in alignment with these?” It takes about an hour once a month. Once a week, I have the weekly laid out. Where do I go check? Every month, I need lots of the year.

Let’s go to September and say, “Where are we at in this month? How do I fit these things into this?” That takes an hour. Once a day, I take ten minutes. The ten minutes I take in the day isn’t really scheduling. That’s the weekly thing. It’s really going through the process that I’ve just told you about. It puts me in a place of harmony with myself and with the world to do that.

TWS 24 | Living Every Minute

Living Every Minute: Dr. Tim’s Pillars for Creating a Spectacular Life

I’m sure you know quadrants 1, 2, 3, and 4. I’m more in quadrant two, which are things that are important and not urgent. The more time I can spend in things that are important but not urgent, the more fulfillment you have. All your fulfillment comes from that quadrant. Important and urgent is also important, but important and non-urgent are equal to fulfillments. We don’t need to move from quadrant 1 to 2. We need to move from quadrants 3 and 4 to 2. That’s what it does. By the way, the people who thought, “I don’t have time to do that.” They spend two hours on things and procrastinating.

What are the contingencies? What has to happen in order for that to be successful? I’m going to revert back to hunger, which is the obvious one. That’s the fuel to execute this when you know what’s on the other end of it. Doing this for the sake of doing it, there’s maybe one in a billion people that like doing that. When you start to connect because of this, this is what’s going to happen to my life. This is the moments I’m going to get to live, the places I get to go, the people I get to be with, and the feelings I get to feel. That’s where I look at it again.

I sent you some feedback in a text about the book. It’s so comprehensive because it talks through not just the theory, which we’ve focused on the theory behind it, but it’s how it’s personalized and then what it means for a person’s life. You have the execution. It’s one of those, “You can have all the theory in the world, but do jack shit in your life.” You don’t have a strategy, a framework to execute. If you don’t have it, you’re going to try to use the one that you already have, which will work. That’s why he gave you results you got here. You already have the results from it.

I tell people that. If you’re happy with the results you have, keep doing what you’re doing but if you’re not happy with the results you have, keeping doing what you’re doing is stupid. Don’t keep banging your head into the wall. That doesn’t make any sense. You’ve got to completely change what you’re thinking and what you’re doing to try different strategies. If you don’t use mine, use somebody else’s but use a different strategy. That’s going to get you to where you want to go. At the end of the day, what we really want is fulfillment. We want to be fulfilled in life and feel like, “If you just spent 80% of our misery and our happiness as our relationships with others.”

Important links

About Tim Reynolds

Dr. Tim Reynolds is the President and CEO of Dr. Tim, International, a company he founded in 2009 to allow him to share his passion for Living Every Minute with others.

Dr Tim was a graduate of the Special Forces Q-course in July of 1982. He served as a Green Beret medic on an A-Team, as the Battalion medic and eventually as a Special Forces Battalion Surgeon for the 19th Special Forces Group (Airborne). He served both enlisted and as an officer from 1980 until 2000.

Dr. Tim graduated Summa Cum Laude with an MD degree from the University of Utah in 1993. He completed his Emergency Medicine residency at Texas A&M Scott and White in 1996 and is board certified in emergency medicine. Dr. Tim is the managing partner for HealthCARE Express, a group of urgent care clinics rapidly expanding across the United States.

Prior to starting HealthCARE Express in 2006, Dr. Tim held numerous positions across the medical field, including: medical director of the Wadley Regional Medical Center Emergency Department and level II trauma center; director, Texas College of Emergency Physicians Board of Directors; president of E-Med Services, LLP and of E-Med Billing Solutions, LLP; associate clinical professor for the Area Health Education Center at the University of Arkansas; founding member of the Greater People’s Clinic of Texarkana Board of Directors.

Dr. Tim is also an entrepreneur and successful businessman. He is currently the chief executive officer of TL Reynolds Properties, LLP, a real estate investment company; and he is a managing partner of JJET Developments Ltd., a real estate development company.

Dr. Tim enjoys spending time on his Ranch in Atlanta, Texas, where he lives with his wife, Pam, and their five amazing children. He holds a black belt in Tae Kwon Do, is a SCUBA rescue diver, and a pilot. He also enjoys body building, golf, and hiking.

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TWS 58 | Wealth Mindset

The Wealth Mindset: The Difference Between Being Wealthy And Being Rich

September 3, 2020 Patrick Donohoe Podcast 00:28:48 Comments Off on The Wealth Mindset: The Difference Between Being Wealthy And Being Rich

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TWS 58 | Wealth Mindset

 

Mindset is what differentiates being wealthy from being rich and mindset is not a buzzword; it is something concrete, something you can take action upon. We are so used to thinking that success is dependent on strategy and tactics. We want the shortcuts. We want a step-by-step formula that we can follow to the letter. But all the brilliant strategies and tactics in the world will not give you what you want if you are not in the right state to experience a wealthy life. Ultimately, success is a function of you – of how you perceive, optimize and utilize what you have at this very moment. Listen to Patrick Donohoe as he explains why so many of our beliefs around wealth and success are turned on their heads and how we can put ourselves in the right state to build efficiency around what we have at this moment.

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The Wealth Mindset: The Difference Between Being Wealthy And Being Rich

It’s been fun for me to talk about what’s on my mind, what I’m experiencing, what I am perceiving in the lives of clients and the business, and my general observations about the environment that we’re in. I hope you have found value in it. I’m going to wrap up a lot of those thoughts in this episode. I had the opportunity to attend Tony Robbins’ Virtual 360 Business Mastery. It’s an event I’ve attended about half a dozen times. It’s the first time in a virtual format. It was good and I want to frame the last couple of episodes with what Tony incessantly talks about, which is state, story, and strategy.

First, I hope you are doing well. I hope you are seeing the environment that we’re in and you’re finding opportunities. You’re finding things to be grateful for. You’re essentially putting yourself in the right mindset and state to capitalize on opportunities because it’s easy to get distracted. It’s easy to be frustrated. It’s easy to look at the environment and use it as a scapegoat for falling short of what you are trying to achieve, your goals, what you wanted for 2020, your business, your profession, and etc. As much as I look at those frustrations out there and potentially, they are more extreme now than before, in the end, it’s those things that we achieve and accomplish that are most meaningful to us. Right now is an opportunity to dig deep, understand what you want, what you want to achieve, and then find within you the strength to pursue and overcome what those challenges are, which stand in the way of getting what you want and achieving the life that you want.

I know that’s why you’re here. I have titled this episode Being Wealthy Versus Being Rich because there is a difference. Being wealthy is finding the opportunity to live life at a high level whether things changed or not, and regardless of the environment. It’s understanding that deep down in our day and age, there’s so much to be grateful for. There’s so much that we are able to experience. Oftentimes, we succumb to this disease of abundance where we forget and have this short-term mentality of how we live versus those that live 50, 60, 100 years ago. I believe that being able to find that opportunities are an interesting paradox. The more you’re in that mindset, the more likely you are.

The mindset of being content, satisfied and happy with where you’re at, with what your life is about, whether things changed or not, that mindset is most likely to get you what you believe is the environment that will make you happy. I’ll talk more about that paradox here. You’re probably saying throughout all of these episodes, what does this have to do with wealth? Why don’t you just tell me what to invest in? Why don’t you tell me where to put my money and give me a shortcut? In the end, wealth is a mindset. The tools, tactics and products and these are what I find interesting. There’s so much debate out there regarding the difference between this product and that product. This has higher fees and this has lower fees. You should invest in this thing and that thing.

In the end, I would say successful investing and becoming wealthy is a function of strategy, but I believe strategy comes after you understand the mindset of what I talked about. It’s interesting, there are many people, whether it’s a real estate project that has been successful, whether it’s single-family homes, multifamily, industrial or storage. There are many different aspects of real estate and people advocate for one or the other, pros and cons, but there have been people that are successful in that area. You also had people go bankrupt in certain areas.

I had the opportunity to go to Southern Utah with my family and some neighbors. It was a huge lake. It’s the Grand Canyon that was dammed up. It’s called Lake Powell. It’s such a unique place. There are hundreds of feet of water and you have these big rock walls. The water is 85 degrees and it’s hot. It’s in the hundreds every single day. When we were there, there were these beautiful boats and it was a new brand. I know some of the executive team. I did not necessarily experience them with high favor in regards to their business practices years before. Typically, during 2008, 2009 when I knew some of them. Yet they had these beautiful boats and they are all over. They’re the most expensive boats on the water, only to come to find out that there were some practices that they had where there are lawsuits, embezzlement charges and several other things associated with it.

Mindset comes first before strategy. Click To Tweet

What I’m trying to say is on the surface, some things look like they are successful. Some strategies and products and investments look like they’re going to bring you success, but there’s so much below the surface that if you’re uneducated, you ultimately learn the hard way. Whether it’s business, stock market, real estate, commodities, gold, Bitcoin, and other cryptocurrencies, those products are important, but they’re not the most important. In fact, they’re the least important. We had several episodes in years past about the Rich Dad B-I Triangle. They talked about successful business as well as investment in the business. The least important thing in that triangle is the actual product itself. Yet that’s where all the focus is.

The State Paradox

For me, I look at what creates success and ultimately success is a function of you. That’s where I want to frame the context now with the equation that I’ve talked about in the past or the formula I’ve talked about in the past, which is state, story and strategy. State is a function of your language, your focus and your physiology. State is ultimately what everybody wants, but they think that some environment is what’s going to give it to them. “If this happens or if it weren’t for COVID-19, I would be this. If it weren’t for the stock market, I’d be this. If it weren’t for the job market, I would be this.” There are all these contingencies that stand in the way of getting what people want in their minds because they believe that strategy and environment have to align in a certain way in order to experience what people want, which is all internal for me.

That’s the irony and that’s why there’s a paradox. I believe that understanding yourself and your mindset, and being mindful of yourself, self-concept and there are other terms for it. The idea is the experience of achievement is a feeling. There’s a focus there and there are also words used to describe it. This is the paradox, being in that state is most likely going to get you closer to what you want or think you want, as opposed to thinking that what you want is ultimately going to give you this specific state. It’s a paradox in a sense because I believe that if you’re content, happy and fulfilled based on what you have without anything being added to you, it is most likely going to attract the things that you want. They will get you and grow you to the next level.

Emotionality Vs. Rationality

Hopefully, that makes sense. I’ve spoken to these principles in a couple of previous episodes. That’s where I look at whether it’s the parody of The Opposite George and Seinfeld or all the different paradoxes that are out there in relation to some of the most important aspects of life. It applies to money as well. That’s the difference between wealth or being rich. What I would say is when it comes to what you want, being in that state is going to help you to have the right focus, the right language in order to perceive the right strategy for you to get what you want. What I would say is, as I’ve mentioned in one of the episodes, a big part of wealth is winning those battles between your emotions, reality, logic and rationality.

There are such heightened levels of emotion regarding what’s going on. Elections are part of it. There are also states that are doing specific things. You have the debacle with the post office. What I’m going to do is I’ll use the example with the post office. What people place as meaning under the post office is that it should exist, be funded and get money so that there’s fairness in the elections. If you remove the post office, you don’t allow that to happen, then there’s somehow not going to be fairness and justice. There’s a couple of different ways to approach that argument. There’s an emotional side of things that typically aligns with a political party and how you think things should be run in our country, but then you also have a rational side of things. I would say that wealth is understanding both sides, then being happy whether it goes one direction or another direction.

If it goes one way or the other way, then your happiness is now contingent on something that’s outside of your control. With the post office and don’t confuse the former Postmaster General with me because his name is Patrick Donahoe. It’s spelled with an A instead of an O. How I look at what the post office as far as service is concerned is the amount of money that the taxpayer has given to them over the last ten years, which is upwards of $100 billion. That’s $100 billion that needs to be given to them because they’re not creating the revenue as far as expenses are concerned. There’s a $100 billion shortfall if you measure out all the different bailouts they’ve been getting over the last ten years and specifically the $25 billion.

TWS 58 | Wealth Mindset

Wealth Mindset: Being in a state of fulfillment gets you closer to what you want, not the other way around.

 

If you look at the service of the mail and what it specifically does. This is where there’s a proper role of government when you break down the fundamentals of it, but the government has taken this role in solving everybody’s problems. If you look at it going to the rational side of why the specific government was created and what its role is versus what it is now, that’s the rational side of things. There is so much emotion and I might even get you blowing up on me, unsubscribing, and giving me hate mail. That again proves my point where there’s so much emotion involved with these discussions that people do not peel back the layers of reality and rationality. Ultimately, the post office provides us with service in an incredibly unprofitable way. $100 billion of opportunity costs where that money could have either not been taxed printed by the Federal Reserve.

The private sector has solved a lot of those problems anyway. We can deliver things to people’s houses. There are some technical things involved in that, but look at what we’ve been able to do as a human race, especially in the last few years with technology. There’s so much complexity in the different innovations that have occurred. The iPhone 12 is about to come out. There’s so much computing power and so much below the surface of that screen that is brilliant. Sometimes you step back and think about what went into that and how was that created, all the different supply chains, materials, the innovation and the design. It’s incredible. The complexity of that shows that human beings can get together and provide a product and service that is way more efficient than typically a government can provide because that’s not necessarily their role

The rational side of things is what’s being displayed now, but emotions are attached to this argument because it’s associated with elections. Elections go into the different parties and then it goes into who’s right and who’s wrong. It goes into all of these deeper levels of emotion. I’m not saying from an emotional standpoint that this party is right or this party is wrong. Going into a rational conversation, you have to understand where your emotions are and specifically as they relate to potentially being wrong. Maybe there’s another opinion that might be important to understand. Having those stifled or muted for a moment to understand the logical side of things or even another perspective. If you can win that war, that’s true wealth. The last thing is having a lot of money and having a miserable life.

I’m going to use another example. There are more people that are planning on leaving California because of the proposed income tax hike, which taxes the wealthy, the higher echelon of society there because quarantine has impacted the lives of many people. At the same time, if you think about the rational side of things, the buzzword is justice, social justice, economic justice and wealth inequality. I’m not going to get into the details here because these are highly emotional topics and I’m bringing them up because I want you to discern between the emotional side of things and the actual logical side of things in order to come to a conclusion. Hopefully, in most cases, you realize that most of the stuff you get emotionally stirred by, affected by and influenced by has little meaning to the quality of your life which was fascinating to think about. I won’t go down that tangent. As far as taxes are concerned, the understanding that people are affected by COVID-19.

As individuals or human beings, we seek comfort. It’s natural for us. It’s part of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. We see seek safety. What’s interesting is when safety and comfort are given to somebody without any effort on their part, what it does is cancels out the experience of comfort. It also robs the individual of one of the primary things that separate us from the animal world or the animal kingdom, which is our ability to rationalize, problem solve, think through things and come up with solutions. When somebody achieves, especially an achievement that puts their economic wellbeing in jeopardy when somebody overcomes that. They find another job, they move to a different state, they get training and learn something new and are now more valuable and get a different job. The impact that has on the human soul and what a person is able to feel about themselves and the confidence that they have, that is what human beings are capable.

It’s essentially being robbed by providing stimulus, unemployment benefits and a Band-Aid to what’s going on. I know some people are down and out more so than others. At the same time, you stifle the experience of life that’s most meaningful when you rob people of being able to figure out their own problems and overcome their own challenges. This now goes into the proper role of the government. Is it the government’s job to tax more and then give to those that are impacted by this? I understand the arguments on both sides, but my point is to bring up this high emotional conversation. It helps you realize how much that impact the quality of your life, especially when it comes to the things that you can’t control and don’t have much relevance to your specific environment and your specific life.

There are ways to be more efficient with what you already have. That’s where all strategy should start. Click To Tweet

That being the case, this goes to the state. You look at what you want from your life, where you’re at right now, and the gap between where you are and where you want to be. Inside of that gap is a state. There’s a story that comes from the different states that you’re in. Usually, the state is it’s the stock market’s fault or it’s my employer’s fault, or my colleague got a raise and I didn’t, and it’s not fair, or this happened or that happened. We always have excuses. We always have a story about why we’re not in the place that we want to be. That’s unfortunate but looking at a state shift, being able to change your state and there are three variables to state: different physiology, different focus and different language. When you start to use a different language, you start focusing on what you have, not what you don’t have. You’re able to think back on the times where you have achieved, overcome and succeeded. That then is going to be a different story and the way in which you perceive strategy, tactics and things to do.

I know all of you want shortcuts and want the things to do, want the strategies, want the tactics, but without state and story, those will rob you of the experience and most likely, it will not help you even if you did get them. I believe that most people with the wrong state and the wrong story will not be able to use strategy in an effective way to get them from point A to point B and overcome that gap. It’s natural for us to respond to the circumstances of life with excuses, “This happened, this person left me, this person cheated me, my employer this, my employer that, the government this, the government that, the president this, the president that.” When we started to take accountability for our life, that’s when our state can change and doors of opportunity open up to apply a strategy.

The Efficiency Formula

Now, I’m going to give you some strategy. I do tactics but I’m going to give you some simple ones as an example. Many of you had read the season I did on capitalism. If you remember Hernando de Soto, which I tried to get him on the show two dozen times. He’s old and was sick, but he wrote the book, The Mystery of Capital. It’s a fascinating read. I’d encourage all of you to read it. It’s written in a simple way where most people without an economic background can understand and benefit from. Capital comes from the word cattle. The reason why it comes from the word cattle, in and of itself a cow, he didn’t say it was where the value was. Capital is created as a byproduct of the cow. What that means is here’s the cow, now how do we optimize the different elements of a cow, the meat, the leather, the milk, it keeps going on and on, the different types of meat. My wife is from Mexico and they eat cow tongue there and intestines. There’s an optimal way to look at all of the different elements of a cow and essentially derive additional value more so than what’s experienced on the surface, which is just a cow.

It’s the same thing with petroleum. Petroleum was just oil. It was this nasty stuff in the ground that bubbled up and ruined crops for farmers. We’ve learned to make many different things as a derivative of that. That’s capital. What I’m trying to get to here is in your specific life, there are ways to be more efficient with what you have. That’s where I would start. That’s where all strategies should start. It’s not adding, but being more efficient with what you already have and deriving opportunities from what’s going on. Let me give you some examples. Interest rates have been extremely low and I was able to refinance all my rental properties. I have a small mortgage on my home but other than that, no personal debt. I carry mortgages on all my investment properties. I was able to increase cashflow by thousands of dollars by refinancing with very little money out of pocket. I was able to skip some payments as well.

It’s finding ways to be more efficient with what you already have. That’s a great example of doing that. If you have personal debt, refinancing personal debt and ultimately paying it off, student loan debt and car loan debt. It’s being more efficient with your cashflow. The second thing for me is being forced based on what has happened with shutdown and quarantine. You’re not spending as much because you’re forced to not spend in a sense. Many of you may have an Amazon addiction, but it’s looking at what comes in and what goes out. From a spending standpoint, I know that there are record levels of people paying off their personal debt because of this increase in discretionary income. That’s another thing, it is to pay attention to what’s coming in and what’s going out. I’ve referenced you need Budget, which is a software I use for my personal finances. Go over to the website, TheWealthStandard.com. There’s a link there. You’ll get a little discount for signing up, but you need Budget.com.

Now that you have maybe some handle on where your cashflow is and an efficient spending plan, you’re going to find equity. You’re going to find the difference between what you make and what you spend. That’s cashflow. One of the things, and this is a very simple way of doing it, it’s a psychological shift, which is setting up a separate account. I call mine the Donohoe Family Fund and it has rules associated with it. Out of that fund, no money is spent on consumption. It’s all investment or putting money into a financial product. This fund is completely separate from your checking account and operational account. Sometimes people have found it useful to have those accounts at different institutions. I have mine at the same institution but what it is, is to separates. It creates rules around it and stick to those rules.

TWS 58 | Wealth Mindset

Wealth Mindset: Focus on what you have, not on what you don’t have.

 

Looking at that, when money comes into this specific account, I usually advocate six months of liquidity, whether it’s in a specific liquid guaranteed safe environment product, not a bank account but more of a product. We use insurance with my company, Paradigm Life, but even inside of this fund, it’s having at least six months of liquidity. That’s even before paying off personal debts. I would say having that liquidity, those reserves, there’s something psychological that happens when you know that you have money in the bank that can last you six months. There’s something that happens that triggers something and creates a level of safety and certainty that allows you to operate a little bit differently. You then essentially go through what to invest in and what type of assets.

There are two things I’m going to bring up. I’ve been working on ways in which we can do some online technology applications that are more self-assessment in nature. I’d love your help. One of them is specific to what I’m talking about. It’s called the Financial Independence Calculator. It’s in an Excel spreadsheet. I would love for you to access that. I’m going to ask for your email address because I want to request some feedback. I’m developing some software and getting some feedback from you will help with the whole user experience that people have. If you would download that, check it out. What it does is it gives you a Financial Independence Day. It is a function of your saving, your investment cashflow, as well as your ideal scenario in which you produce and work. I hope you like that one.

That’s a great first investment but there’s a second part, a second calculator called The Hierarchy of Wealth. This is something I talked extensively about in my book, Heads I Win. Tails You Lose. If you don’t have a copy of that, that’s also available for free, both the PDF and the audiobook in TheWealthStandard.com. You can go to Amazon and buy the book or download an Audible book. There’s Kindle as well, hardcover, softcover, but this is a way in which you can get access to it for free. You can learn about The Hierarchy of Wealth there. There’s a calculator that they developed. It’s in an Excel spreadsheet. What it does is it helps you to identify all the different assets that you have and it ranks them in a specific hierarchy.

The hierarchy that I came up with is a function of risk and control and you will see that in there. That will help prioritize what I call your opportunity fund. Once you have money that goes above and beyond your liquidity, your six months or some of you may want 12 months or 18 months, depending on your comfort level and what gives you that feeling, that psychology of certainty. When there’s money above and beyond that, it becomes your opportunity fund. An opportunity fund is to make an investment. Making an investment, you want to know, “Where are the opportunities to invest?” What I would say is to understand where your other investments are first. That’s where The Hierarchy of Wealth comes from.

The Hierarchy of Wealth will help categorize all the assets that you have and then give you some insight into potentially where are some types of investments to think about first. For me, one thing I am adamant about regardless of where my investments are and how my assets are allocated. As I mentioned, Business Mastery by Tony Robbins. I’m huge about personal development and investing in myself to become a better leader and to understand business strategy, leadership strategy, operational strategy and financial strategy within the business. I believe that’s where the most control that you have and where you can ultimately find the best returns. I believe your business and your profession is what creates liquidity. That liquidity is then invested, which creates cashflow and subsequently degree of wealth, and more options when it comes to money.

This is a shorter episode but I’m glad that you are on. Please go to TheWealthStandard.com to access those two free self-assessment spreadsheets. I’d love to hear your feedback. That’s it for now. There are going to be some cool guests. One specifically is going to talk about education and what’s going on with our kids and options you may not have thought about before. We’re also going to probably get into some other libertarian type of topics. It’s going to get juicy. Thank you for your support. If you like what you read, head over to iTunes, Spotify and give the show a good rating. That always helps to get the word out. Share it with friends and feel free to share all these apps and other resources with your friends as well. I will talk to you next time.

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About the host

Patrick Donohoe

Patrick Donohoe

CEO Paradigm Life

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.