2023-01-06_Friday

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00:00:30.620 | Today on Radical Personal Finance, it's a live Q&A.

00:00:32.760 | ♪

00:00:48.740 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance,

00:00:50.080 | a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge,

00:00:51.680 | skills, insight, and encouragement you need

00:00:53.740 | to live a rich and meaningful life now

00:00:55.780 | while building a plan for financial freedom

00:00:57.280 | in 10 years or less.

00:00:58.880 | My name is Joshua Sheets.

00:01:00.060 | Today is Friday, January 6, 2023,

00:01:03.760 | the first live Q&A show of a brand new year.

00:01:08.260 | I'm excited that you're here with me.

00:01:09.960 | It's gonna be a fun and meaningful

00:01:12.000 | and productive year for both of us.

00:01:14.100 | ♪

00:01:21.140 | I'd like to welcome lots of new listeners recently.

00:01:23.480 | The show's really been growing

00:01:24.720 | and I'm really happy that you are here.

00:01:25.920 | So welcome to all of the new listeners,

00:01:27.520 | especially those of you joining us

00:01:29.120 | with a fresh new focus on your finances for the new year.

00:01:34.120 | I love to set financial goals for the new year.

00:01:37.720 | I love to set lots of goals for the new year.

00:01:39.860 | And the new year is such a convenient time

00:01:42.560 | to look at your finances,

00:01:43.840 | to understand the progress that you made in the last year,

00:01:46.600 | and to start with a fresh slate.

00:01:49.640 | I'll share in a separate episode,

00:01:51.400 | I'll share with you some of the new year's

00:01:53.340 | financial goals that you can set

00:01:55.380 | that are really meaningful and useful,

00:01:57.120 | and also some of the new year's practices

00:01:58.920 | that you can put in place.

00:02:00.140 | But we'll save that for a separate show.

00:02:01.540 | If you're new, on Friday,

00:02:02.780 | any Friday when I can arrange the technology,

00:02:04.520 | I record a live Q&A show.

00:02:06.120 | Works just like Call & Talk Radio.

00:02:07.860 | I publish a phone number and a call in time,

00:02:10.260 | and then listeners of the show call in and we chat.

00:02:12.960 | I don't screen the phone calls.

00:02:14.400 | Right now we've got one, two, three, four people on the line.

00:02:16.940 | Usually we get somewhere between six and 12 callers call in,

00:02:20.400 | and we talk about anything that you want.

00:02:22.700 | Think of this as open line Friday.

00:02:24.080 | You can ask me questions, you can share your own thoughts.

00:02:27.080 | I've had people advertise things,

00:02:29.380 | share various kinds of questions.

00:02:31.840 | You can talk about anything that you like.

00:02:33.580 | Ask questions, share your opinions,

00:02:35.520 | share what you agree on, et cetera.

00:02:37.360 | One of the best ways to talk to me personally,

00:02:39.180 | and a great way 'cause it helps me,

00:02:40.660 | I enjoy the conversations,

00:02:42.200 | and it allows us to create useful

00:02:43.860 | and interesting content for the podcast.

00:02:46.460 | If you would like to gain access

00:02:47.660 | to one of these Friday Q&A shows,

00:02:49.040 | the way that you do that is by becoming a patron.

00:02:51.300 | Go to patreon.com/radicalpersonalfinance,

00:02:53.640 | patreon.com/radicalpersonalfinance.

00:02:55.900 | If you go and become a patron of the show,

00:02:57.880 | then that will give you access to one of these call-in shows

00:03:00.800 | and you'll be able to speak with me live.

00:03:03.240 | With that said, we go to Caleb in Illinois.

00:03:05.880 | Caleb, welcome to the show.

00:03:06.760 | How can I serve you today?

00:03:08.080 | - Hi there, Joshua.

00:03:11.160 | So I recently transitioned from an office job

00:03:14.160 | and I got back into blue collar work.

00:03:16.680 | And my main purpose is I want to use this

00:03:18.940 | to build my own business,

00:03:20.240 | and I'm just building some skills right now.

00:03:22.640 | So I was wondering if you had any thoughts

00:03:24.840 | on how to start a business part-time

00:03:28.800 | so that I can try to replace this main income

00:03:32.080 | that I'm learning from right now.

00:03:33.880 | - What kind of blue collar work are you doing?

00:03:36.180 | - Right now I'm in a kind of a maintenance role

00:03:40.800 | over a park, it's actually a zoo.

00:03:43.680 | So I get exposure to a lot of things,

00:03:46.080 | but I'm trying to use it to get a lot of skills

00:03:49.640 | in construction and landscape.

00:03:52.320 | - Describe to me the business

00:03:54.200 | that you are interested in starting.

00:03:56.100 | - The business that I'm interested in starting

00:03:59.960 | would be a niche section of landscaping

00:04:04.640 | and maybe lawn care.

00:04:05.700 | Getting into natives, edible landscaping,

00:04:10.540 | water features, and basically a green living style approach

00:04:16.960 | to landscape design.

00:04:21.440 | - Okay, and how long have you been doing

00:04:25.400 | the maintenance work at the zoo?

00:04:27.000 | - At the zoo, only a couple months.

00:04:30.720 | I've got a background in construction and landscaping.

00:04:33.120 | - Okay, well I guess what I would start with

00:04:36.520 | as far as kind of good general advice is quite simply this.

00:04:40.560 | The day you find your first customer,

00:04:43.040 | that's the day you're in business.

00:04:45.520 | And in general, with what you're describing

00:04:48.520 | of niche landscaping, lawn care,

00:04:50.480 | or kind of property development,

00:04:52.640 | this is not something that requires you

00:04:55.800 | to have 30 years of experience.

00:04:58.120 | Now, you will want to have some specialized knowledge

00:05:01.240 | about what local plants will work best,

00:05:03.560 | what would be kind of the most,

00:05:05.920 | again, the best kinds of plants for the environment.

00:05:08.160 | But this is several weeks of study.

00:05:10.260 | This is not years of study.

00:05:13.300 | This is weeks or perhaps months of study and design.

00:05:16.680 | And most of your energy and focus

00:05:18.560 | should simply be in acquiring your first customer.

00:05:22.640 | In this type of business, your only limitation

00:05:26.160 | is the number of customers that you can find and attract.

00:05:29.700 | You can work a job during the week

00:05:31.220 | or whatever hours you're there,

00:05:32.440 | and then you can do this kind of job on the weekends

00:05:34.320 | and at night or early in the morning

00:05:36.400 | or whatever works with your other hours.

00:05:38.560 | The limiting factor is simply your finding customers.

00:05:42.680 | And your customers really care only about

00:05:46.160 | what you sell them as far as the vision.

00:05:48.400 | They're gonna have input into that,

00:05:50.200 | and then your ability to follow through on the vision.

00:05:52.640 | So my overall advice would be,

00:05:56.340 | make your transition plan as short as possible,

00:06:00.440 | and focus heavily on finding high-quality customers.

00:06:04.440 | Because the day you find your first customer,

00:06:06.400 | that's the day that you're in business.

00:06:07.800 | You don't need anything more than that.

00:06:09.720 | - Okay, thank you.

00:06:13.360 | Awesome advice.

00:06:14.280 | Do you mind if I ask you another thing

00:06:15.720 | specific to the job I have now?

00:06:16.920 | - Sure.

00:06:17.760 | - I started recently being at the zoo.

00:06:21.200 | It's actually a city position.

00:06:22.920 | And they do offer a pension plan that's after five years.

00:06:26.560 | Do you have any advice on calculating

00:06:28.160 | how much that would be worth

00:06:29.600 | to jump into my own business full-time?

00:06:33.480 | If it's worth it to stay the five years

00:06:36.000 | or to branch out on my own once I start getting customers?

00:06:39.320 | - What is your current salary at the zoo?

00:06:41.360 | - The current salary is about $42,000 a year.

00:06:44.920 | - Yeah, so it's almost certainly

00:06:46.520 | that this should be maximum a six-month deal for you.

00:06:50.740 | Much quicker than six months,

00:06:54.480 | you should be out on your own.

00:06:55.880 | And so there's no point in participating in the pension.

00:06:58.000 | There's no point in kind of working towards that.

00:07:00.400 | Now, let me explain, just so you understand very clearly

00:07:03.180 | why I'm saying what I'm saying.

00:07:04.720 | You said to me, "I took a job as a bridge

00:07:08.800 | "so that I can start my own business."

00:07:10.560 | And then you described the business

00:07:11.960 | that you are planning to start.

00:07:14.040 | If you said to me, "I took the job

00:07:15.780 | "and I'm planning to do this job for a long time,"

00:07:17.560 | well, of course, participate in the pension plan.

00:07:19.600 | But you're taking this job to learn some skills

00:07:22.480 | and to give yourself some income

00:07:24.800 | while you're starting a business.

00:07:26.520 | And my point is, there's never gonna be a better time

00:07:29.080 | to start a business.

00:07:30.320 | And maybe you'll vest five years from now, but so what?

00:07:33.480 | Just because you vest,

00:07:34.520 | still is not gonna make a meaningful difference

00:07:36.320 | in your income.

00:07:38.600 | So you should be able in 12 months or less,

00:07:41.480 | you should certainly be able to replace

00:07:45.320 | a 40-something thousand dollar salary.

00:07:47.680 | And you should certainly be able to double that next year.

00:07:50.920 | And you should certainly be able to double it again

00:07:52.720 | in year three.

00:07:54.040 | And so this is just not that,

00:07:56.120 | I don't think this is in any way out of reach.

00:07:58.480 | What kind of price range are you imagining?

00:08:02.040 | Describe to me a job that you might do for a potential client

00:08:04.800 | and how much you're gonna bill that client

00:08:06.220 | for that kind of job.

00:08:10.720 | - So it would be totally dependent.

00:08:13.560 | I think I would start just to start building a portfolio.

00:08:17.240 | It would be kind of a front yard installs,

00:08:20.280 | lawn replacements, raised bed gardens,

00:08:25.160 | so small carpentry.

00:08:26.640 | So a lot of those jobs on the material side

00:08:30.480 | it would probably be between one to $5,000 in costs.

00:08:35.480 | And then it depends on the size for my labor

00:08:39.520 | and if I end up getting anyone else onto the business.

00:08:42.840 | And then a 20% markup seems to be

00:08:46.560 | about what I'm looking at there.

00:08:48.280 | So it's just filling up with enough market demand.

00:08:53.280 | I haven't done enough research on that area,

00:08:55.920 | specifically being in the area that I am.

00:08:58.080 | I'm not sure how many compared to big cities,

00:09:02.080 | how necessary all the green living style

00:09:07.080 | landscape design is.

00:09:09.720 | - Okay, so I don't wanna get too deep

00:09:12.160 | into the specifics here,

00:09:13.240 | but I think you're dramatically underestimating

00:09:15.000 | the kinds of jobs that you could do fairly quickly.

00:09:18.720 | I mean, I can't imagine somebody hiring you

00:09:20.880 | for a $1,000 job.

00:09:22.440 | And you gotta understand that the kinds of people

00:09:24.160 | who are gonna hire you for your services

00:09:26.440 | are the kinds of people who don't wanna do their own work.

00:09:29.040 | Any kind of Joe homeowner that wants to put in

00:09:32.120 | some raised beds and spend $1,000,

00:09:34.680 | he's very likely to go do it himself

00:09:37.680 | or hire a couple of buddies to help him

00:09:39.520 | or just 12 pack of beer and do it on the weekends.

00:09:43.840 | $1,000 expenditure on a front yard is nothing.

00:09:47.280 | And so I think you're dramatically underestimating

00:09:52.280 | the size of the jobs that you should be looking for.

00:09:55.240 | I'm guessing, and again, to be clear,

00:09:57.240 | I have no personal experience in this kind of business.

00:09:59.840 | This is just a generalized perspective

00:10:01.520 | from a little bit of life experience

00:10:02.920 | and thinking about some of this stuff.

00:10:04.840 | But your minimum job that you would bid should be $5,000.

00:10:08.160 | And you should very much not be working from a,

00:10:14.120 | okay, what, the percentage of markup basis.

00:10:16.080 | You should go in and do your best to present plans,

00:10:21.080 | present ideas, present clear proposals,

00:10:24.640 | and then bid them on a job cost basis.

00:10:27.840 | Now, clearly you're not yet a landscape designer

00:10:31.200 | who's going to have the fullness of that.

00:10:34.280 | But I think that you're basically,

00:10:35.640 | your minimum job size, what I'm saying, should be $5,000.

00:10:38.560 | I don't think building a business on $1,000 jobs,

00:10:41.960 | unless you somehow have a lot of them

00:10:44.280 | and you have a clear markup for that,

00:10:47.200 | is in any way sustainable.

00:10:49.160 | So think about what is a $5,000 job look like?

00:10:52.800 | What does a $5,000 job entail?

00:10:55.440 | What's the material cost, et cetera?

00:10:57.760 | And then focus on getting yourself into a situation

00:11:00.560 | where you can do one of those every weekend.

00:11:04.240 | Because if you're building out a $5,000 job,

00:11:08.440 | let's say that you have, say, $2,000 of profit in that,

00:11:12.160 | then if you could do those one every other weekend

00:11:15.000 | or two weekends per job,

00:11:16.880 | then pretty quickly you can replace your income.

00:11:20.120 | But you need to get to the point

00:11:21.840 | where you understand what it's like to sell those jobs,

00:11:24.440 | and then you need to deliver some

00:11:27.240 | so that you can build that portfolio.

00:11:30.080 | You might, I'm generally pretty skeptical

00:11:32.800 | of the idea of doing work to build a portfolio

00:11:36.440 | that doesn't pay well.

00:11:38.320 | You might have to sell a little harder.

00:11:39.680 | You might lose a few clients

00:11:40.800 | while you're getting to that first job,

00:11:42.680 | but I don't see why you shouldn't be paid well

00:11:44.640 | for your first job, or at least paid adequately.

00:11:46.720 | Maybe not paid handsomely,

00:11:48.080 | but paid adequately for the first job,

00:11:50.040 | and then boom, take lots of pictures and get going.

00:11:54.000 | But it sounds to me like you're a little short

00:11:57.480 | in terms of the kinds of things

00:11:59.120 | that you're imagining doing.

00:12:00.760 | Otherwise, maybe I'm wrong.

00:12:02.280 | And so you need to go and talk to people in that business,

00:12:05.240 | develop some relationships with people.

00:12:07.400 | At the very least, I would hire myself on as a day laborer,

00:12:11.200 | at least on the weekend around my other job

00:12:12.880 | for someone else.

00:12:14.440 | Guys who do what you do are always looking

00:12:16.400 | for somebody who's willing to do side work for them.

00:12:21.400 | Working for them on the weekend

00:12:23.160 | might work really beautifully for their needs,

00:12:25.680 | 'cause maybe they have crews that work during the week,

00:12:27.640 | but they could use a little bit more weekend help.

00:12:30.480 | So building some contacts and getting around it.

00:12:32.640 | But I think your numbers are too small.

00:12:36.600 | Think about what a $5,000 job would look like.

00:12:38.880 | How would you deliver on that?

00:12:40.160 | How would you build $1,500 to $2,000 a profit

00:12:42.960 | into a $5,000 job, and then develop a few of those?

00:12:46.120 | And if you're gonna do portfolio work,

00:12:47.960 | go to your mom's house and do it for her.

00:12:50.000 | And then really make sure you max,

00:12:52.320 | or do it in your own yard, maximize your pictures.

00:12:55.400 | But you don't need to give your services away

00:12:57.400 | to paying customers.

00:12:58.400 | That's the whole point of having a day job

00:13:01.280 | that provides you with income,

00:13:02.740 | is it allows you to just to be patient

00:13:04.940 | and go for actual good and real customers.

00:13:07.300 | So on the weekend, you're not doing work for free.

00:13:09.640 | Either you're going out looking for customers

00:13:11.440 | and showing them the portfolio that you've created

00:13:13.360 | in your yard, in your mom's yard, et cetera,

00:13:15.780 | or you're at the library studying the books,

00:13:18.480 | or you're volunteering and/or working for

00:13:22.260 | a landscape designer, someone else.

00:13:25.040 | You're becoming, you're going to the local,

00:13:27.640 | every, you're giving tours at a local botanical garden

00:13:30.920 | for local native species.

00:13:33.480 | You're setting up a wildscaping tour of town

00:13:37.440 | so that you really know your stuff,

00:13:38.760 | and you can make those contacts

00:13:40.720 | in kind of the native species world.

00:13:44.280 | But I guess my point is, don't,

00:13:46.360 | you're not gonna make a living on $1,000 jobs.

00:13:49.220 | I mean, so raise your sights,

00:13:53.000 | and then build your skills in accordance with it.

00:13:55.240 | Fair enough?

00:13:56.080 | - That sounds good, thank you.

00:13:59.080 | Yeah, I think that my problem is,

00:14:00.680 | I'm approaching it from like a handyman style,

00:14:03.320 | you know, ones and two, odd-in jobs.

00:14:06.020 | I should be really looking at

00:14:08.160 | more of a contracting company style

00:14:10.760 | of getting large jobs to get the profits in.

00:14:13.680 | And I'm hoping, I've learned a lot.

00:14:15.160 | There's a summit coming up,

00:14:16.520 | where they're having a big gathering

00:14:19.340 | for a lot of already in-progress businesses.

00:14:23.260 | So hopefully I can learn a lot from that

00:14:24.540 | in the next couple of weeks.

00:14:25.420 | - Yeah, that sounds wonderful.

00:14:26.660 | I guess the key thing is just,

00:14:28.900 | narrow down on who your customer is.

00:14:30.860 | And your customer is not you, right?

00:14:33.160 | The guy who hires a handyman is not the guy,

00:14:36.220 | the guy who does work on his house on the weekends

00:14:38.460 | doesn't hire a handyman.

00:14:39.940 | The guy who hires a handyman

00:14:41.300 | is who has more money than time,

00:14:42.980 | and wants a good quality result,

00:14:44.460 | and is willing to pay for it.

00:14:45.980 | So you may not have a lot of experience personally

00:14:49.780 | being the kind of guy who hires the handyman.

00:14:52.640 | But recognize that when people hire a handyman,

00:14:56.140 | or when people hire someone,

00:14:57.380 | what they want is quality work.

00:14:59.420 | And they want a fair price,

00:15:00.780 | but they're not looking for a cheap price.

00:15:03.100 | All right, and this has been a transition

00:15:04.660 | that I've made in my own life.

00:15:05.620 | I grew up, my parents didn't,

00:15:08.300 | we didn't have a lot of money growing up.

00:15:09.860 | I was normal middle class,

00:15:11.800 | but we didn't have a lot of money.

00:15:13.620 | And my dad did a lot of his own work,

00:15:15.460 | and I grew up working with him on stuff.

00:15:17.460 | And so I was very much in the DIY mentality.

00:15:21.100 | And as I got older,

00:15:22.380 | and as I started to have more money,

00:15:24.500 | I realized I don't wanna DIY this stuff anymore.

00:15:26.940 | I don't enjoy it, I don't wanna do it, I don't like it.

00:15:29.140 | And so I want to hire it done.

00:15:31.380 | And so I, over the years,

00:15:33.140 | have hired more people to do stuff.

00:15:35.180 | Now, and I do have a budget.

00:15:37.100 | So there are times in which I don't do things

00:15:40.140 | because I just don't feel like that's worth it.

00:15:42.460 | But when it's worth it for me to hire somebody,

00:15:45.380 | I'm not looking for the cheapest price.

00:15:47.580 | I'm looking for the guy who's the most reliable.

00:15:50.180 | I'm looking for the guy who's gonna follow through

00:15:52.020 | and do what he says he's gonna do.

00:15:53.560 | I'm looking for the guy that can provide the insight

00:15:55.660 | and the expertise that I don't have.

00:15:57.780 | I'm looking for a guy that's gonna make sure

00:15:59.280 | the job site is totally clean at the end of the day.

00:16:01.400 | I'm looking for a guy who's gonna be trustworthy.

00:16:03.880 | Those are skills that you already have,

00:16:06.500 | or I hope you have, or if not, fix them, right?

00:16:09.280 | Show up on time, do what you say you're gonna do,

00:16:11.260 | and clean up before you leave.

00:16:13.020 | In the United States, you can make multiple

00:16:16.220 | six figures a year if you just show up on time,

00:16:18.980 | do what you agree to do, and clean up before you leave

00:16:21.180 | at the end of the day.

00:16:22.280 | Because the other skills are relatively quickly earned.

00:16:26.300 | So don't think that you're selling to the people who,

00:16:29.300 | you know, again, are gonna do a $1,000 job.

00:16:31.260 | You're not.

00:16:32.080 | You're selling to people who are willing to spend more money

00:16:34.780 | and what they're looking for is good advice

00:16:36.700 | and good service.

00:16:38.080 | We go to Ben in Tennessee.

00:16:40.240 | Ben, welcome to the show.

00:16:41.080 | How can I serve you today?

00:16:41.920 | - Hey, good afternoon.

00:16:44.580 | First time calling, so I appreciate the opportunity.

00:16:48.840 | I guess I have a question.

00:16:51.540 | Maybe it's a prioritization question.

00:16:56.620 | So I've got a few things on my plate

00:17:00.060 | that I know you've discussed in the past.

00:17:02.780 | So my wife and I are both working.

00:17:06.500 | She works part-time.

00:17:08.760 | And we total make about $250,000 a year.

00:17:11.720 | And we have two little girls.

00:17:15.640 | One of them is three, coming up on school age,

00:17:17.920 | and we're thinking about homeschooling.

00:17:19.880 | We also recently purchased a vacation property

00:17:24.460 | that we really like, but now we're wondering

00:17:28.120 | if maybe it's too much of an anchor financially.

00:17:31.520 | What I'm considering doing is somehow,

00:17:37.960 | you know, reducing our income

00:17:39.480 | to try to make homeschooling more doable

00:17:45.440 | for us from a time standpoint,

00:17:48.920 | whether that means me going down to part-time

00:17:51.520 | and her continuing part-time,

00:17:52.820 | or she really enjoys her part-time work,

00:17:55.100 | so I would like for her to be able to continue doing that.

00:17:58.060 | I guess my question is,

00:17:59.280 | I can tell you what I'm thinking is that

00:18:05.840 | potentially we just exit the vacation property

00:18:08.160 | and allow ourselves a little bit more room

00:18:10.600 | to reduce income.

00:18:12.280 | But the other option would be,

00:18:16.120 | of course, we maybe skip homeschooling

00:18:18.680 | and continue to both work the current amount

00:18:20.480 | that we're working.

00:18:21.440 | Sort of general, I guess I just don't know

00:18:25.240 | if there's maybe some ways you would advise me

00:18:29.480 | to think about this,

00:18:30.600 | thinking about sort of these multiple priorities.

00:18:33.640 | - Let me clarify, your eldest is three

00:18:36.200 | and you also have a younger child?

00:18:38.480 | - That's correct, and we hope to have another one,

00:18:41.080 | maybe by the end of 23 or early 24.

00:18:46.360 | - And of the $250,000 household income,

00:18:50.180 | how much of that do you generate

00:18:51.840 | and how much of that does your wife generate?

00:18:54.340 | - Yeah, so she's doing about 80

00:18:57.160 | and I'm doing the other 170.

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00:19:28.900 | - Okay.

00:19:31.480 | (sighs)

00:19:32.560 | If your wife wants to stop working

00:19:37.560 | or if she wants to make income generation

00:19:42.040 | a more modest priority, what I mean is,

00:19:45.120 | you said, okay, she really likes her work,

00:19:46.480 | she wants to stay involved in it,

00:19:48.440 | you can work around that, but the key is

00:19:50.600 | just to separate yourself from it financially,

00:19:52.560 | that you're not dependent on it.

00:19:54.160 | But you should certainly be able

00:19:56.320 | to comfortably provide that.

00:19:59.080 | The hardest situations are when you have

00:20:01.340 | a household income of 250 and you earn 125

00:20:05.440 | or she earns 125.

00:20:07.360 | When there's a, then it's like, well, what do we do?

00:20:10.520 | Where do we go, how do we make the money work?

00:20:12.080 | We lose half our income.

00:20:13.600 | In your situation, because you earn two thirds

00:20:16.480 | and she earns a third, then you can handle that

00:20:20.000 | and you can deal with that.

00:20:21.400 | So here are a couple of framework questions.

00:20:23.120 | Number one, your child is three.

00:20:25.680 | None of this is particularly pressing.

00:20:28.500 | You're in greater need of childcare

00:20:32.440 | than you are of quote unquote homeschooling.

00:20:35.060 | Homeschooling in the early years

00:20:38.140 | is much more about character development,

00:20:41.680 | it's much more about personality shaping,

00:20:43.980 | it's much more about relationship development

00:20:46.440 | than it is about anything academic.

00:20:48.800 | And academics, you don't need to think about

00:20:52.760 | at all about academics for three or four years.

00:20:56.700 | Now, this is actually one of the reasons

00:20:58.760 | why it's so important that you make

00:21:00.140 | whatever decisions you're gonna make now.

00:21:02.340 | I'm convinced that the most important years

00:21:06.300 | are the first few years for, in terms of

00:21:09.100 | shaping a child's personality,

00:21:10.580 | shaping a child's character, et cetera.

00:21:13.440 | And that's why it's so hard to hire those things out

00:21:17.440 | or institutionalize those things.

00:21:19.540 | As huge of an advocate as I personally am

00:21:22.120 | for homeschooling, there's no denying the fact

00:21:26.000 | that you can hire excellent teachers

00:21:28.940 | to teach your child academic subjects.

00:21:31.460 | There are many very high quality schools,

00:21:34.000 | private schools, Christian schools, government schools.

00:21:38.180 | There are lots of wonderful schools out there

00:21:40.540 | with dedicated teachers who do a great job

00:21:42.740 | at teaching academics.

00:21:44.860 | The problem is, how do you hire somebody

00:21:48.300 | to shape your child's character?

00:21:50.860 | How do you hire someone to teach your child virtue?

00:21:54.880 | How do you hire someone to instill these things

00:21:57.540 | into your child?

00:21:59.200 | You can't do it.

00:22:00.660 | The only person that can do it is a mom.

00:22:02.660 | That's it.

00:22:05.100 | A mom who has the patience to be with a two year old,

00:22:08.180 | a three year old, has the patience to work with,

00:22:11.180 | to encourage kindness, to encourage stick-to-itiveness,

00:22:13.840 | to build relationship connection.

00:22:15.900 | And so, when you institutionalize your three year old,

00:22:19.340 | you're taking the most valuable years of life

00:22:23.220 | and you're putting those years of life

00:22:25.040 | into the hands of a minimum wage

00:22:27.640 | or close to minimum wage clerk kind of thing.

00:22:32.320 | And that person, that daycare worker,

00:22:35.860 | even if he or she is beautifully dedicated,

00:22:40.640 | is never gonna have the patience

00:22:42.640 | that you and your wife are gonna have with your own child.

00:22:45.640 | And so, it's not a homeschooling question,

00:22:49.360 | it's a child raising question.

00:22:52.600 | That's the most important thing.

00:22:54.700 | And you're already there.

00:22:56.080 | You're not there from a schooling perspective,

00:22:57.860 | you're there now from a child raising perspective.

00:23:00.500 | Now, one of the great things to look at

00:23:03.260 | is if both you and your wife

00:23:04.520 | have significant demands on your time,

00:23:06.340 | you have a few basic strategies.

00:23:08.580 | Strategy number one is one of you can become

00:23:11.600 | a full-time parent or close to a full-time parent.

00:23:15.400 | In some situations, that can be the father.

00:23:19.380 | In your situation, it would obviously be your wife.

00:23:22.620 | If she can minimize her work to just enough

00:23:25.220 | for her to stay current and connected to her interests

00:23:28.060 | and her love of whatever she does, et cetera,

00:23:30.860 | and if you hope to have more children,

00:23:32.780 | then it is obviously a solution

00:23:35.600 | for her to be a stay-at-home mom.

00:23:37.440 | And you just do whatever is necessary

00:23:39.940 | to make the finances work.

00:23:41.560 | Notice you don't necessarily have to trim expenses,

00:23:43.980 | you can increase income.

00:23:45.620 | And sometimes, what's necessary

00:23:47.360 | is just for you to decide to do it.

00:23:49.640 | And so, not everyone can increase income,

00:23:52.840 | but in your situation, you can figure out a way

00:23:54.760 | to live on $170,000 very comfortably,

00:23:58.020 | and/or you can increase your income.

00:23:59.820 | You can increase your income

00:24:00.980 | that's associated with your employment or your business.

00:24:04.340 | You can also increase your income

00:24:05.840 | that's associated with the thing, right, the vacation home.

00:24:09.640 | And so, obviously, you've considered things

00:24:12.520 | like short-term rentals or even longer-term rentals,

00:24:14.820 | but if your wife gives up her income from her job,

00:24:19.140 | or let's say half of it,

00:24:20.260 | and she's making 30 or $40,000 doing it part-time,

00:24:23.280 | and she's also making $20,000 a year

00:24:25.700 | from your vacation home,

00:24:26.980 | well, now the bite is not so big,

00:24:29.520 | especially when you factor in the costs of,

00:24:32.340 | the saved costs of childcare, et cetera.

00:24:34.820 | So, choice number one is you can have one parent

00:24:39.660 | become a stay-at-home parent.

00:24:41.180 | That's a great choice,

00:24:42.060 | and I think in many cases, it's an ideal choice.

00:24:44.660 | Unless a mom or a dad is just not suited

00:24:47.220 | to being with children all the time for some reason,

00:24:51.260 | a handicap or a physical ability

00:24:53.180 | or emotional instability or something like that,

00:24:55.760 | I think in many cases, that's the best solution.

00:24:58.020 | You also look and say, is there another family member?

00:25:01.060 | So, this is where grandparents can be hugely helpful.

00:25:04.180 | And for many people, they say,

00:25:06.020 | hey, we still have an income,

00:25:11.020 | or we need to work,

00:25:12.060 | but is there another family member

00:25:14.060 | who doesn't have an income

00:25:15.540 | or who could provide some form of childcare?

00:25:18.180 | So, grandparent, sister, close family friend,

00:25:21.860 | doing something with another couple

00:25:23.400 | that we like from church or something like that.

00:25:25.620 | Then you also look and say,

00:25:27.380 | is there a way that we can adjust schedules?

00:25:29.540 | So, some parents can handle this very well

00:25:31.580 | because he works four days a week

00:25:33.380 | and she works three days a week.

00:25:34.520 | We don't have a lot of days off together,

00:25:36.300 | but at least one of us was with the children all the time.

00:25:38.500 | And then you can go to institutions,

00:25:40.780 | but you can try to choose your institutions

00:25:42.640 | really strategically.

00:25:44.060 | So, you try to choose an institution

00:25:45.560 | that provides you with more of what you're looking for.

00:25:48.760 | And in some cases, maybe that's,

00:25:50.460 | we found a wonderful daycare, four hours a day,

00:25:53.460 | and that's just enough to where then,

00:25:56.420 | one of us can pick our daughter up

00:25:57.660 | and be with her from noon to eight.

00:25:59.760 | The point is that I think at the ideal perspective,

00:26:04.380 | you probably have two full-time parents.

00:26:07.640 | And then at the least ideal perspective,

00:26:10.060 | you get your child up at sunup,

00:26:13.360 | you rush him out of the house and rush him to a daycare

00:26:16.920 | and you pick him up right before he goes to bed.

00:26:19.000 | And so, finding a practical solution

00:26:22.040 | between those is the key.

00:26:24.880 | Now, what's going to make the difference for you

00:26:27.120 | is just simply the level of conviction

00:26:28.600 | that you have about it.

00:26:29.760 | It's not gonna be a financial question.

00:26:32.040 | You could figure out the finances

00:26:33.960 | if you had the level of conviction.

00:26:35.940 | So, I have a high level of conviction,

00:26:38.240 | which is why I speak clearly and try to convey that to you,

00:26:41.400 | while of course being respectful

00:26:42.760 | of each person's own individual choices.

00:26:45.160 | But because I have a high level of conviction,

00:26:47.920 | I know that I would do whatever it takes

00:26:50.080 | to make this happen.

00:26:51.560 | And that drives my decisions.

00:26:53.680 | It's not a matter of whether or not

00:26:57.020 | to take this course of action.

00:26:58.880 | It's a matter of how does it make the most sense

00:27:02.120 | for our family to take this course of action.

00:27:04.600 | If you have that level of conviction,

00:27:06.880 | then you will be able to chart out the path to get there.

00:27:11.880 | And if that means sell the vacation home, done.

00:27:14.480 | You can always buy another vacation home

00:27:16.040 | five years from now, no big deal.

00:27:17.800 | If you're lacking that conviction though,

00:27:20.080 | then recognize that that is what you're missing.

00:27:22.520 | It's not a pathway through the finances,

00:27:25.040 | it's the conviction.

00:27:26.160 | And so, you just wanna think about it, talk about it,

00:27:28.200 | and between you and your wife, make whatever decisions

00:27:31.520 | and consider what your level of conviction is.

00:27:34.400 | And if your conviction is low

00:27:35.480 | because you have a great, you know,

00:27:36.960 | just a daycare at the house across the street

00:27:39.280 | by this wonderful family that has beautiful children,

00:27:41.720 | wonderful, done.

00:27:42.880 | If your conviction is high

00:27:44.400 | because you have to just take your child

00:27:46.240 | and enroll him in a subpar environment,

00:27:51.040 | well then the answer is obvious.

00:27:52.440 | So, what I'm focusing on is don't mistake

00:27:56.000 | financial constraints with need for conviction.

00:27:59.200 | If you have the conviction,

00:28:00.520 | then the financial path will be fairly evident.

00:28:02.720 | You've already laid it out.

00:28:03.680 | It's either increase income or decrease expenses,

00:28:05.680 | fix whichever one of those ones makes more sense to you.

00:28:08.360 | Or if you need more conviction,

00:28:10.800 | then spend your time thinking about that

00:28:12.960 | and don't worry about the money

00:28:14.240 | until you develop the conviction.

00:28:15.880 | - Yep, that makes sense.

00:28:18.360 | I think you could probably sense that the conviction is low.

00:28:20.880 | We are just sort of starting to talk through this.

00:28:24.280 | Like I said, she's only three, right?

00:28:25.520 | So, we've got a couple years before academics start.

00:28:27.720 | So, we're just trying to make sure, you know,

00:28:31.720 | that we're being intentional about materials

00:28:34.880 | that we're looking at and just, you know,

00:28:36.800 | making sure that we're putting everything on the table

00:28:39.520 | so we can make the right call when it comes time.

00:28:42.620 | I guess one quick question.

00:28:45.760 | I'm not gonna ask you for homeschooling resources.

00:28:48.080 | Do you have any, have you ever read anything

00:28:51.960 | that you would recommend about someone

00:28:53.880 | who has an anti-homeschooling view?

00:28:55.980 | We wanna make sure that we read both sides of this thing.

00:29:00.200 | - Yeah, no, it's a very perceptive question and excellent.

00:29:05.200 | So, from the anti-homeschooling view,

00:29:07.920 | there are a couple of major schools of thought.

00:29:11.040 | No pun intended.

00:29:13.200 | Usually I intend my puns,

00:29:14.600 | but I should acknowledge when they're not intended.

00:29:17.440 | The first school of thought has to do,

00:29:22.960 | or the first major objection.

00:29:24.760 | So, actually, let me start in reverse order.

00:29:27.480 | The first major objection is generally practical, right?

00:29:29.840 | It's the situation that you're facing right now.

00:29:33.480 | Our modern world is set up for mom and dad to have jobs

00:29:38.480 | and make an income and to be professionals

00:29:41.040 | and then to go hire professionals to teach the children.

00:29:43.360 | That's the norm.

00:29:46.600 | And I don't know any homeschooling families

00:29:50.880 | that have not sacrificed tremendously to do that.

00:29:54.680 | That's why I say it does come down to a level of conviction.

00:29:58.000 | Virtually all of the homeschooling families that I know,

00:30:01.160 | and I'm racking my brain,

00:30:02.360 | I'm sure there's a couple of exceptions,

00:30:03.920 | which I'm trying to say virtually, right?

00:30:06.000 | But most homeschooling families that I know

00:30:08.880 | could make a whole lot more money,

00:30:10.880 | could live in a nicer house,

00:30:12.720 | could have lots more spendable money

00:30:15.760 | if they weren't committed to homeschooling.

00:30:17.960 | And the homeschooling costs a lot.

00:30:20.760 | It costs a lot in terms of foregone income

00:30:23.080 | for the homeschooling parent.

00:30:25.640 | It costs a lot in terms of family lifestyle.

00:30:28.520 | It costs a lot, especially most of the time,

00:30:32.240 | it's a homeschooling mom,

00:30:33.240 | it costs her a lot in terms of her career potential,

00:30:35.600 | et cetera.

00:30:36.440 | And so you have to have a conviction

00:30:39.240 | where it's worth that cost.

00:30:41.080 | I think it is.

00:30:42.200 | Homeschooling families that do it

00:30:43.640 | generally come to the conviction that it is.

00:30:45.720 | If they don't come to that conviction,

00:30:48.440 | then they just switch back and they move on with their lives.

00:30:51.440 | But those who you see do it

00:30:53.000 | have come to the conclusion that it's there.

00:30:54.880 | But it's not cost-free.

00:30:56.040 | We're all pretty aware of the costs,

00:30:59.040 | but we do it because we want the benefits.

00:31:01.480 | Now, so the first reason is practical, right?

00:31:05.280 | If I'm coaching a single mom

00:31:09.480 | who has limited career potential and she's making,

00:31:12.640 | I actually knew a friend of mine,

00:31:16.360 | a lady in our church growing up was like this.

00:31:18.360 | She was a single mother,

00:31:19.520 | she had four daughters

00:31:20.760 | and she had very limited career potential.

00:31:24.040 | I would not encourage her to homeschool.

00:31:28.240 | No one did encourage her to homeschool.

00:31:29.800 | And today, if I were doing it,

00:31:31.040 | I would not encourage her to homeschool.

00:31:32.720 | What she did in her situation was she had a,

00:31:37.600 | and she was a single mother with a very low income.

00:31:39.600 | Her ex-husband was very unreliable

00:31:42.920 | with regard to child support, et cetera, and she struggled.

00:31:46.680 | So what she did was she rented a little house

00:31:50.360 | that was close to a local Christian school.

00:31:52.920 | She worked at that Christian school driving a bus

00:31:55.880 | as well as working in the lunchroom.

00:31:59.400 | And that allowed her to have significantly

00:32:01.920 | discounted tuition for all of her daughters

00:32:05.160 | to enroll them in the school

00:32:06.480 | and that allowed them to make it through.

00:32:08.560 | And so she was able to give her children

00:32:11.600 | the highest quality education that she could,

00:32:15.000 | but without going and doing homeschooling.

00:32:16.560 | There's no way that I can see

00:32:18.240 | where she would ever be able to homeschool.

00:32:20.080 | But she didn't just settle for enrolling her children

00:32:22.040 | in the government school.

00:32:22.880 | She worked really hard to give them the education

00:32:24.920 | that she wanted for them.

00:32:26.040 | And I've known quite a lot of single mothers

00:32:28.560 | who have done similar things.

00:32:29.760 | They work night and day to try to enroll their children

00:32:32.200 | in a high quality private school of some kind

00:32:34.280 | that's gonna give their children more educational advantages

00:32:37.400 | than they can get in the government school system.

00:32:39.800 | The other flip side is I've also known many parents

00:32:43.480 | who enrolled their children in the government school system

00:32:46.160 | and just simply supplemented it significantly

00:32:49.560 | so that their children had a higher quality education.

00:32:52.440 | That supplementation can come to family environment

00:32:55.880 | and background.

00:32:56.780 | Asian cultures are famous for this, right?

00:33:01.440 | They'll come to the, many Asians around the world

00:33:04.440 | have immigrated to the United States.

00:33:05.960 | They enroll their children into government schools,

00:33:08.200 | but they have such a culture of studiousness

00:33:11.080 | and academic performance,

00:33:12.480 | and the parents hold very high standards for their children

00:33:15.400 | so the children succeed in school

00:33:18.080 | and they get moved on to the gifted track.

00:33:20.080 | And once they're on the gifted track

00:33:21.660 | in a government school, then they can write their ticket

00:33:24.000 | and so they can achieve a very high level

00:33:26.560 | of academic education.

00:33:28.640 | And a lot of times when you can move your child

00:33:31.240 | out of the median group into the gifted group,

00:33:36.240 | then you can improve the social environment

00:33:38.400 | where you get into better families, better students,

00:33:40.960 | fewer problems, less bullying, less harassment, et cetera,

00:33:43.880 | and you can get better problems.

00:33:45.000 | And so the first reason people don't homeschool,

00:33:48.680 | the biggest reason is simply the practicality

00:33:50.800 | of needing to have a full-time teacher.

00:33:53.440 | Now, I don't know anybody who doesn't homeschool

00:33:57.280 | because they believe that the government

00:33:59.880 | is gonna do a better job.

00:34:02.040 | If you look at the people who are the loudest advocates

00:34:05.500 | of government schooling and the loudest opponents

00:34:08.580 | of homeschooling, very frequently they themselves

00:34:12.460 | do not participate in the industrial

00:34:14.380 | government school system.

00:34:15.980 | So President Obama and First Lady Obama

00:34:20.980 | did not enroll their children

00:34:23.180 | into the local government school,

00:34:25.620 | even though they would be the first to step up and say,

00:34:28.020 | well, we should limit homeschooling,

00:34:30.180 | we should maximize government schools.

00:34:32.060 | Most politicians enroll their children

00:34:35.540 | into the elite private schools that are available to them.

00:34:39.220 | But this is a significant area of opposition

00:34:42.060 | from in the political sphere.

00:34:43.420 | What I'm trying to point out is it's not

00:34:44.860 | in the practical sphere, but it is in the political sphere.

00:34:48.620 | In the political sphere, a major objection

00:34:50.620 | to homeschooling involves the lack of ability

00:34:55.060 | by government officials to coordinate curricula,

00:34:58.660 | to coordinate one consistent curricula

00:35:02.900 | that all people are, curriculum, excuse me,

00:35:07.460 | that all people are passed through,

00:35:10.780 | and the ability to use the schools to shape the culture,

00:35:14.060 | shape the civic culture, shape the perspectives

00:35:16.220 | and opinions of the people.

00:35:18.340 | And so this is usually the hot political debate.

00:35:21.460 | And people say, well, parents shouldn't have the right

00:35:24.620 | to pull their children out of schools.

00:35:26.540 | If you look at the countries in the world

00:35:29.060 | where homeschooling is strictly illegal, right,

00:35:30.980 | Germany, Sweden, et cetera, the reason has largely

00:35:34.820 | to do with this idea of government indoctrination.

00:35:38.940 | And so like the Germany's anti-homeschooling laws

00:35:41.640 | are an artifact of the Nazi regime under Adolf Hitler.

00:35:46.060 | So Adolf Hitler instituted mandatory schooling

00:35:49.340 | and forbade individual privatized schooling

00:35:53.300 | as a way of shaping the minds

00:35:55.180 | and the ideology of the people.

00:35:56.960 | So after World War II, Germany threw off virtually

00:36:00.020 | all of the Nazi era kind of social programs,

00:36:05.020 | et cetera, except this one.

00:36:06.460 | And so it's a remaining artifact from that mind control era

00:36:11.300 | that the government has chosen to continue to pass forward.

00:36:14.940 | And so that is a big objection that many people have

00:36:18.820 | is that how are we gonna survive if everyone,

00:36:21.300 | if parents have the right to educate their children

00:36:23.740 | the way that they should be?

00:36:25.740 | And so the point is this is an objection,

00:36:28.300 | but it's not a practical objection,

00:36:30.020 | it's a philosophical objection.

00:36:32.060 | The next objection that you will hear has a lot to do

00:36:35.240 | with the professionalization of teaching.

00:36:37.700 | And so teachers say, listen,

00:36:41.220 | I was a trained professional teacher.

00:36:43.940 | I went to a teaching college, I have a four-year degree,

00:36:47.540 | undergraduate degree in elementary education.

00:36:50.080 | I can do a much better job teaching your child

00:36:52.540 | than some uneducated mother.

00:36:54.700 | How is that possible?

00:36:57.740 | And so it is important to recognize this.

00:36:59.580 | And I think that unfortunately,

00:37:01.060 | there's a severe lack of confidence

00:37:03.220 | on behalf of many homeschooling mothers,

00:37:05.540 | that homeschooling mothers have this

00:37:07.740 | major inferiority complex where they go through life

00:37:10.300 | wondering is what I'm doing okay?

00:37:11.740 | Like, am I doing good enough?

00:37:13.140 | Should I do better?

00:37:14.460 | And they think that somehow the professionalization

00:37:16.800 | of teaching is necessary.

00:37:19.280 | I myself think that this is largely nonsense

00:37:23.100 | from a couple of perspectives.

00:37:25.060 | Number one, it's nonsense because generally the stuff

00:37:29.180 | that we're talking about teaching is pretty basic stuff.

00:37:32.860 | If you can read and if you have a book

00:37:35.160 | that gives you an outline of how to teach someone to read,

00:37:37.900 | then you can probably teach someone to read.

00:37:39.780 | You don't need to go to college for four years

00:37:41.460 | to teach someone to read.

00:37:43.540 | If professional help is needed, so for example,

00:37:47.740 | let's say that your child has a speech impediment,

00:37:51.360 | or let's say that your child has a learning disability,

00:37:54.380 | dyslexia or some other various learning disabilities,

00:37:57.720 | then that's where I think professional training

00:38:00.340 | is very, very helpful.

00:38:02.460 | But even in that situation, I would still bet

00:38:06.160 | on the mother rather than the professional

00:38:08.280 | every single time.

00:38:09.760 | Because the mother in schooling her child with disabilities

00:38:13.880 | is the one who has the motivation

00:38:16.600 | to seek out the world's best therapies.

00:38:19.320 | The mother is the one who has the motivation

00:38:21.280 | and the time to make sure that those therapies

00:38:23.900 | are accomplished.

00:38:25.160 | And she's gonna be able to do a lot more

00:38:27.920 | than a teacher who has to work with 10 children

00:38:31.600 | who are in need of therapies.

00:38:33.040 | And so I think you definitely want to seek out

00:38:35.800 | the advice of experts if you have a unique child

00:38:39.720 | with a disability, et cetera,

00:38:41.600 | but that expert is your consultant

00:38:44.000 | and you're doing the work at home,

00:38:45.280 | just like with physical therapy, right?

00:38:46.500 | If your child has some other physical disability,

00:38:48.880 | well, your physical therapist is gonna do

00:38:51.040 | his professional work, but you're gonna supplement it

00:38:53.480 | with all of the work that you're gonna do at home.

00:38:55.480 | So I don't think that there's the professionalization

00:38:57.720 | of teaching is something that is necessary,

00:39:00.500 | and it's certainly not necessary in the elementary school,

00:39:03.400 | middle school, and high school.

00:39:05.800 | If and when professionalization of teaching is necessary,

00:39:09.900 | you can and should access those professionals.

00:39:13.140 | So let's say your child wants to learn violin.

00:39:15.720 | Well, violin seems to me like one of those things

00:39:17.760 | that is generally not acquired well through reading books.

00:39:20.960 | You don't read books about violin

00:39:22.600 | to learn to play the violin.

00:39:24.020 | And you're gonna have a hard time teaching a child

00:39:27.440 | to play the violin if you yourself don't play the violin.

00:39:30.900 | And so what you're gonna do is you're gonna go

00:39:32.460 | and find a violin teacher.

00:39:33.980 | And this is the same thing that homeschooling parents do,

00:39:36.420 | is they bring in professionals

00:39:38.780 | when those professionals are warranted.

00:39:41.520 | You hire a violin teacher, you hire a calculus tutor,

00:39:45.100 | you hire a chemistry tutor, or something.

00:39:47.460 | When there's a subject where you need

00:39:49.460 | a specific professional input,

00:39:52.180 | then you go and you hire that professional input.

00:39:54.540 | But most subjects are not this way.

00:39:56.300 | High school chemistry does not need an expert to teach it.

00:39:59.920 | All you need is a chemistry book, a few chemistry books.

00:40:03.360 | And in some cases, a little bit of apparatus.

00:40:05.640 | But even the apparatus is not necessary, right?

00:40:08.040 | You're not actually doing experiments,

00:40:09.700 | generally, in high school.

00:40:10.880 | You're just following directions

00:40:13.000 | and doing chemical recipes

00:40:14.720 | that are supposed to tell you something

00:40:15.980 | about how the process works.

00:40:19.060 | So most knowledge that can and should be acquired

00:40:23.800 | is acquired much more simply than people think.

00:40:27.640 | And this is where I go back to kind of teaching modality.

00:40:31.280 | When you have a child who is older,

00:40:33.300 | the most important tool to use for the curriculum

00:40:37.660 | that a child is following is simply accessing

00:40:41.040 | and absorbing knowledge from high-quality books.

00:40:43.640 | Because there you get a professional teacher,

00:40:45.800 | an author who is an expert at a subject,

00:40:48.320 | who has created a book that's going to open the eyes

00:40:51.660 | of the student and teach the student what he needs to know

00:40:55.620 | and is gonna do it in a vastly superior way

00:40:58.880 | than a classroom teacher can do.

00:41:00.920 | And this is what drove me crazy myself

00:41:02.820 | throughout high school.

00:41:04.300 | Not everybody learns well through books.

00:41:06.260 | Maybe that's the case.

00:41:07.100 | I should give my caveats, right?

00:41:08.200 | Maybe some people like to sit in class

00:41:09.760 | and listen to lectures.

00:41:10.980 | But it drove me crazy that my high school experience

00:41:13.820 | was we would have a textbook, right?

00:41:16.040 | McGraw-Hill went out and hired five PhD chemistry people

00:41:20.420 | or five PhD biology people to write a biology textbook.

00:41:23.660 | And they sat down and they wrote a book

00:41:25.320 | with 400 pages in it and 30 chapters,

00:41:28.080 | teaching systematically, carefully, and clearly

00:41:31.580 | everything that was needed in the textbook.

00:41:34.380 | And they laid it out, and not only did they put in

00:41:38.720 | the useful text, but they put in diagrams,

00:41:41.460 | pictures, charts.

00:41:43.280 | They highlight the key points.

00:41:45.340 | They put in titles and bullet points.

00:41:47.860 | At the end of every section, they put comprehension

00:41:51.460 | questions and review questions, and then they give you

00:41:54.020 | all the answers to those things so you can go through them.

00:41:56.580 | And so then you walk into ninth grade marine biology.

00:41:59.740 | You're issued this textbook, and then you proceed

00:42:02.180 | to listen to a teacher who has a few years

00:42:04.780 | of teaching experience go through and deliver her lectures

00:42:08.380 | of what she thinks you need to know to pass her test

00:42:10.420 | on marine biology.

00:42:11.580 | And you wind up reading cumulatively 75 to 100 pages

00:42:15.420 | of this 400-page textbook.

00:42:17.420 | It wasn't until I was doing my graduate work

00:42:20.140 | after my undergrad degree that I actually read a textbook.

00:42:24.220 | Prior to that time, I hated textbooks

00:42:26.800 | because I just thought they were boring, et cetera.

00:42:29.580 | But when I did my graduate degree, for the first time,

00:42:32.700 | all of my study was all self-directed.

00:42:34.860 | The way it worked was they sent me a textbook,

00:42:37.020 | I read the textbook, and then I had an exam.

00:42:38.940 | And so I started reading textbooks, and I came to learn

00:42:41.780 | how wonderful textbooks actually are.

00:42:44.380 | And I thought, back to my high school and college experience,

00:42:47.740 | and I thought, why did I sit for hours and hours

00:42:50.620 | listening to somebody give subpar presentations

00:42:54.400 | when I could have simply read the textbook?

00:42:56.380 | And that's a personal thing.

00:42:58.580 | Again, maybe some people like those kinds of presentations.

00:43:01.900 | I think there's a place for lectures,

00:43:03.740 | but there's not a need for lectures

00:43:05.580 | for high school-level subjects.

00:43:07.180 | There's a need for lectures when you're dealing

00:43:08.940 | with very kind of new, cutting-edge science

00:43:11.980 | or graduate-level stuff, or a seminar where the lecturer

00:43:15.460 | is going to be able to enhance what you've already read

00:43:19.540 | in the textbook, or something like that.

00:43:21.740 | We're not, when we deal with K through 12 stuff,

00:43:26.360 | nothing here is cutting-edge.

00:43:27.900 | You don't need a professional teacher.

00:43:29.980 | What you need is a coach and a guide.

00:43:32.000 | You need a teacher to help with some of the basics

00:43:35.300 | of reading, of learning to read,

00:43:39.180 | the basics of learning mathematics,

00:43:40.980 | the first kind of few lessons.

00:43:42.700 | And then you need somebody who's capable of seeking out

00:43:45.820 | the best books and guiding the child

00:43:48.220 | into reading those best books, et cetera.

00:43:50.300 | Let me go more, give one more example.

00:43:53.260 | What about something like writing?

00:43:54.900 | Do you need somebody who is gonna grade

00:43:59.140 | and address, improve somebody's writing?

00:44:02.700 | What if you have a mother who is illiterate

00:44:09.260 | and who is teaching her children to write?

00:44:12.100 | First, we have, do you need a professional teacher then?

00:44:15.440 | My answer is still no, probably not.

00:44:18.020 | It would be helpful, probably in some cases, but not.

00:44:20.860 | The best example here would go to Dr. Ben Carlson,

00:44:23.740 | the famed neurosurgeon, who, he and his brother

00:44:27.660 | only found out after they were extremely accomplished

00:44:32.700 | and very well-educated that their mother

00:44:36.540 | was completely illiterate, but she required them

00:44:39.340 | to spend their time reading books.

00:44:41.020 | And then they, of course, went through government schools

00:44:42.660 | and they had help from the teachers and whatnot

00:44:45.260 | who were there, and they became very, very skilled.

00:44:47.820 | But what was the thing that their mother did for them?

00:44:51.280 | She required them to read a lot.

00:44:53.100 | And the key to being something like a good writer

00:44:55.940 | is not to have a teacher go through your writing

00:44:59.620 | with a red pen and mark everything.

00:45:02.380 | The key to being a good writer is to spend lots of time

00:45:05.000 | doing good reading, and then to have something

00:45:07.060 | that you care about enough to write about.

00:45:09.380 | So I believe that writing is important,

00:45:11.700 | but I don't think that the grading of writing

00:45:14.880 | is particularly important.

00:45:16.560 | There are perhaps a few things that can help, right?

00:45:18.780 | Pointing out a misspelling or something,

00:45:20.340 | but most of that is not necessary.

00:45:22.900 | What is necessary is to create an environment

00:45:26.460 | where a student spends time reading quality literature

00:45:29.540 | and then has an opportunity to write about things

00:45:32.500 | that he cares about rather than to have

00:45:34.260 | a professional teacher.

00:45:35.740 | So I went into that one because I think this is the big,

00:45:38.420 | probably the biggest reason people don't homeschool,

00:45:40.940 | other than practicality.

00:45:42.500 | The practical features are a big deal,

00:45:45.540 | and then also, well, I'm not a professional, right?

00:45:47.780 | I need a professional.

00:45:49.060 | My answer is no, you don't.

00:45:50.820 | You need a loving coach.

00:45:52.180 | You need someone who's knowledgeable.

00:45:53.620 | You do need to know what the best books are,

00:45:55.840 | but the great thing, especially in the English

00:45:57.560 | homeschooling world, is you could pretty much

00:46:00.140 | pick any curriculum or any book list and go through it,

00:46:04.500 | and you're gonna be in a really great scenario.

00:46:08.380 | Finally, I think the biggest downside of homeschooling

00:46:13.340 | has to do with the social aspect.

00:46:16.400 | Let me describe, though, specifically what I mean

00:46:18.580 | by the social aspect.

00:46:21.000 | I don't know any homeschoolers who are hermits.

00:46:24.500 | The socialization objection is the most commonly

00:46:27.980 | heard objection to homeschooling.

00:46:29.740 | People say, well, how will my children learn social skills?

00:46:32.540 | That, to me, that objection is presented by people

00:46:35.900 | who have never spent any time thinking about it,

00:46:39.380 | and let me answer that objection,

00:46:40.840 | and I'll give you what I think is the real objection.

00:46:43.540 | The first objection is, well, if children are at home

00:46:48.540 | all the time, they're not gonna learn how to socialize

00:46:51.580 | with other people their age.

00:46:53.180 | My first answer to this is there is positive socialization

00:46:56.580 | and there is negative socialization.

00:46:58.780 | There are many children in the world

00:47:00.620 | with whom I do not want my children to interact

00:47:03.500 | in any way whatsoever, because I do not want my children

00:47:07.180 | to be affected by those children,

00:47:09.580 | and so an uncontrolled social environment

00:47:12.980 | that takes all children, for example,

00:47:15.660 | in one 10-block area and sticks them into a room

00:47:20.340 | in an age-banded environment where it's all the 12-year-olds

00:47:25.500 | within this 10-block area, and then creates an adult

00:47:30.340 | to child ratio that is 20 to one or 30 to one,

00:47:34.740 | that is a recipe for disaster.

00:47:36.780 | It's one of the most artificial, destructive,

00:47:39.300 | social environments you can possibly imagine.

00:47:41.980 | It takes away the normal social structure of socialization

00:47:46.980 | where you have adults that you look up to,

00:47:49.340 | where you have peers that you enjoy being with

00:47:52.620 | and that you work with, and that you have younger people

00:47:54.940 | that you coach and that you lead,

00:47:56.900 | and it just strips all that out and sticks people

00:47:59.220 | in an age-banded classroom.

00:48:00.900 | And then, without the ability to discriminate

00:48:03.780 | against well-behaved students and poorly-behaved students,

00:48:07.500 | against students with good character, good virtue,

00:48:10.380 | good morals, and students with poor character

00:48:13.780 | and no virtue and low morals,

00:48:16.620 | it creates an environment for destruction,

00:48:18.940 | and the leaders never win.

00:48:22.280 | You always go down to the least common denominator.

00:48:25.340 | You can have 15 children who show up

00:48:27.740 | and who want to learn every day,

00:48:31.620 | and you have five children that show up

00:48:33.520 | who just wanna goof off and play games.

00:48:35.940 | The 15 children are not gonna bring the five children up.

00:48:40.380 | The five children are gonna ruin the experience

00:48:42.600 | for the other 15, and the only way to deal with that

00:48:46.580 | is either to have a system of very high discipline

00:48:49.700 | where you can discipline and force the behavior

00:48:52.460 | of the five children to change

00:48:54.480 | or to remove the five children from the classroom.

00:48:57.040 | That's it, because your entire classroom environment

00:49:00.100 | will be destroyed by those who are there

00:49:02.620 | in a destructive capacity.

00:49:04.040 | And so, this is the basic problem with government schools.

00:49:07.040 | Government schools cannot discriminate against students.

00:49:10.200 | They can only have all of the students

00:49:12.120 | that are in that area.

00:49:13.080 | Now, there is, of course, the positive side to that

00:49:14.960 | that we all appreciate,

00:49:15.800 | the anti-discrimination fights that have gone through,

00:49:19.280 | but today, what that means is you have to accept everybody,

00:49:22.800 | and the government school teachers

00:49:24.280 | have very few tools of discipline,

00:49:27.280 | especially at the more modest levels.

00:49:30.280 | And so, what this means is when you enroll your child

00:49:32.820 | into a government school,

00:49:33.840 | you're putting them into one

00:49:34.680 | of the most dangerous environments

00:49:36.360 | where the thugs and the bullies and the predators

00:49:38.480 | on all sides are not controlled

00:49:40.440 | by the discipline of the system.

00:49:42.120 | And so, at the very least,

00:49:43.380 | you can move into a private school environment

00:49:45.440 | where they can have stronger tools of discipline

00:49:48.480 | and they can expel more freely troublemakers.

00:49:51.160 | And this is one of the biggest reasons

00:49:52.520 | why most wealthy people don't frequent government schools.

00:49:56.940 | You cannot thrive in a system

00:49:59.260 | where you have even a small percentage

00:50:01.000 | of undealt-with troublemakers

00:50:03.400 | because they will destroy the atmosphere

00:50:05.280 | for the entire group.

00:50:06.720 | So, the socialization that happens in schools

00:50:10.560 | is often negative socialization.

00:50:13.840 | It's not positive socialization.

00:50:16.080 | And here, I have some interesting insight

00:50:18.880 | because of my own experience.

00:50:20.200 | I was homeschooled, with the exception of third grade,

00:50:22.160 | when I went to a government school.

00:50:23.120 | I was homeschooled through seventh grade.

00:50:24.760 | In seventh grade, I went to a traditional

00:50:27.160 | local private Christian school.

00:50:28.840 | And in that context, for the first time in my life,

00:50:32.240 | I understood what class systems were.

00:50:35.740 | I understood what bullying was.

00:50:37.800 | I understood what all those things were.

00:50:40.440 | Prior to seventh grade, I had always been

00:50:43.280 | in a completely loving environment,

00:50:45.520 | a kind environment.

00:50:46.400 | Everyone had always treated me well.

00:50:47.840 | I had never had any kind of question about self-esteem.

00:50:51.000 | I was involved in a family where I was loved

00:50:53.060 | and I was appreciated and I was cared for.

00:50:55.400 | And then I went into a school where all of a sudden,

00:50:57.860 | even though it was a better environment

00:51:00.080 | than it would have faced in a government school

00:51:01.640 | because of the ability of the school

00:51:03.400 | to restrict the specific students that are enrolled in it,

00:51:07.360 | i.e. discrimination, I was in a better environment,

00:51:10.980 | but it still had kind of all of those things.

00:51:15.000 | And I vividly remember, number one,

00:51:16.960 | how quickly I started to be aware of how I fit

00:51:20.720 | into the pecking order.

00:51:22.320 | But what was worse is I look back with shame

00:51:25.520 | and I can think of a couple instances

00:51:27.480 | where I myself partook in starting to bully other students.

00:51:32.240 | Now, thankfully, I never was physically aggressive.

00:51:34.480 | I never punched anybody.

00:51:35.500 | I never threw anybody in a locker, et cetera.

00:51:37.680 | My bullying was limited in scope to saying unkind things

00:51:41.920 | or basically taunting and teasing.

00:51:43.960 | But I was taught by the environment

00:51:47.120 | that there were some kids that you looked up to

00:51:49.880 | and there were some kids that you taunted, that you teased.

00:51:53.560 | And it was years later, several years after high school,

00:51:57.040 | I went to a high school reunion and I went

00:51:58.640 | and I sought out two of the boys that I remembered

00:52:01.040 | and I apologized to them because it took me years

00:52:03.880 | to realize how I had mistreated them.

00:52:07.520 | And again, I didn't ever physically assault anybody.

00:52:09.680 | I just teased people, but still I was ashamed of it.

00:52:13.520 | And so I was taught, even in the most

00:52:16.200 | quote unquote positive environment,

00:52:19.760 | a private, selective Christian school,

00:52:22.080 | I was taught those social dynamics,

00:52:23.920 | those negative social dynamics by my classmates,

00:52:27.240 | things that I never would have done previously.

00:52:28.960 | I never would have been unkind to somebody.

00:52:30.720 | I never would have chosen to pick on somebody

00:52:32.680 | because the group was.

00:52:33.940 | But once I got in that environment,

00:52:35.280 | within a year I realized that this was the thing

00:52:38.240 | that was to be done.

00:52:39.800 | So negative socialization is a big problem

00:52:43.040 | of the school environment.

00:52:44.120 | And it's a problem, especially in government schools,

00:52:46.740 | but it's still a problem in private schools.

00:52:49.360 | The way I talk about this is quite simply

00:52:51.040 | that most people are not prepared,

00:52:53.280 | until they're in their 20s, are probably not prepared

00:52:55.320 | to face the hell that is middle school.

00:52:57.360 | I don't understand why we do this to our children.

00:52:59.600 | Elementary school for most people

00:53:01.160 | is a pretty happy-go-lucky environment

00:53:03.160 | and people like them and everyone's kind.

00:53:05.520 | And they go through elementary school,

00:53:07.040 | they get to middle school, and then it just turns

00:53:09.400 | into a hell for a lot of people.

00:53:11.240 | And they start to build up calluses and whatnot.

00:53:13.520 | Many people go to high school and it's a little bit better.

00:53:15.640 | And I remember this feeling when I got to college.

00:53:18.400 | And I looked at all of the weird-looking theater kids

00:53:20.960 | hanging out together and I thought to myself one day,

00:53:23.520 | they're having fun.

00:53:25.240 | And I had always kind of had to hide a little bit

00:53:27.120 | that I enjoyed theater and I enjoyed singing.

00:53:29.360 | I was never a theater kid.

00:53:31.140 | But I remember when I got to college

00:53:33.240 | and I saw the theater kids like, they're having fun.

00:53:35.240 | They have friends who think like them.

00:53:36.840 | And then I got out of college and I realized

00:53:39.360 | that once you're an adult, you can associate

00:53:41.720 | with whomever you want to associate with.

00:53:43.880 | You can associate with people who are kind to you,

00:53:46.040 | people who make you feel good.

00:53:47.560 | And I realized that this forced association

00:53:50.080 | of the school system is so destructive.

00:53:52.440 | You know, when I reached 25 years old,

00:53:54.080 | I felt like, you know what, I could probably go back

00:53:55.840 | to high school now and deal with it.

00:53:57.560 | But the average high schooler can't deal with it.

00:54:00.040 | And my evidence for that is look at everything

00:54:02.500 | from at the hardcore rate, the suicide rate

00:54:04.580 | in the United States, all the way up to just

00:54:06.680 | the weird social vices that people have.

00:54:09.800 | So it's a huge problem.

00:54:11.000 | Now, let me continue to the other aspects of socialization.

00:54:15.320 | I think that once we step away from the negative

00:54:18.360 | socialization of schooling, which is primarily caused

00:54:23.000 | by the structure, the artificial structure

00:54:25.720 | of forced association of students

00:54:27.860 | in age-banded environments, the socialization

00:54:32.200 | that does happen generally doesn't happen very well.

00:54:35.880 | So you say, well, I'm gonna go to school to see my friends,

00:54:38.200 | but I'm gonna see my friends for the four minutes

00:54:40.040 | between classes, and then we're gonna whisper

00:54:43.640 | in the back of the room.

00:54:44.760 | Or I'm gonna go to school and enjoy my lunch break

00:54:47.920 | with my friends and enjoy the 25 minutes

00:54:49.680 | that we have to eat lunch and visit.

00:54:51.760 | Well, that stuff's really great,

00:54:52.860 | but it's not quality socialization.

00:54:55.500 | It's not a time where you actually have significant time

00:54:58.440 | to interact with your friends.

00:54:59.840 | And so one of my huge objections to schooling

00:55:03.840 | is that it's a colossal waste of time.

00:55:06.680 | If you look at the amount of time

00:55:08.920 | that the average teacher can spend teaching

00:55:11.160 | in a classroom environment, I think that,

00:55:13.760 | let's say you have a 50-minute period.

00:55:15.240 | Of course, some schools have different scheduling,

00:55:16.920 | block scheduling, et cetera.

00:55:17.800 | But let's say you have a 50-minute period.

00:55:19.600 | I think the maximum that a teacher could expect to teach

00:55:22.600 | from a 50-minute period is probably 25 minutes,

00:55:25.440 | right, 20 to 30 minutes.

00:55:26.880 | And so if you look at the actual percentage of time used

00:55:30.920 | by the 15 to 18,000 hours that we enroll a child in school,

00:55:35.920 | the actual learning time of that 15 to 18,000 hours

00:55:40.680 | is probably something on the range of

00:55:42.680 | three to 5,000 hours total.

00:55:45.760 | And yet we suck up all of this time

00:55:48.220 | and we have subpar learning opportunities

00:55:51.080 | and we have subpar socialization opportunities

00:55:54.420 | because there's not free association.

00:55:56.600 | There's not actually a lot of time spent together.

00:55:59.380 | From the learning opportunities,

00:56:00.660 | if you go to homeschooling

00:56:01.960 | or more interest-directed individualized learning,

00:56:06.960 | you could have a significantly higher level of learning

00:56:11.920 | happen in a dramatically lower, less amount of time.

00:56:15.480 | So let's go back to that ninth grade

00:56:16.880 | marine biology classroom.

00:56:18.260 | Teacher's standing up in front of the room.

00:56:20.680 | She's got a 50-minute period

00:56:22.640 | and she's probably gonna have 25 minutes of teaching.

00:56:26.800 | Well, she's gonna teach her 25 minutes

00:56:28.920 | using verbal expression.

00:56:30.240 | I'm using verbal expression right now.

00:56:31.840 | I'm talking fast, I think fast, and I talk fast, pretty fast.

00:56:35.320 | And some of you are listening to me at 2X speed.

00:56:37.360 | In fact, many of you are.

00:56:38.600 | In a classroom, you can't listen at a 2X speed.

00:56:42.020 | The maximum verbal rate of delivery

00:56:44.800 | for a prepared presentation

00:56:47.440 | is probably about 8,000 words per hour.

00:56:50.320 | I measure because of my language interests.

00:56:54.120 | I've measured the average audio books that I listen to.

00:56:56.840 | And so a professional audio book narrator

00:56:59.040 | reading an audio book from a prepared book

00:57:01.760 | reads usually at a rate of about 8,000 words per hour.

00:57:05.160 | So if a teacher has 25 minutes,

00:57:08.100 | she's probably going to be able to deliver

00:57:09.760 | about 3,000 to 4,000 words of instructional content

00:57:13.980 | in that period of time, of actual 25 minutes of teaching.

00:57:17.000 | That's assuming that every sentence is carefully chosen,

00:57:20.200 | that every piece of knowledge

00:57:22.200 | that she wants to impart in the presentation is prepared,

00:57:25.360 | it's outlined in advance, et cetera.

00:57:27.280 | And so she stands up in front of the room

00:57:29.200 | and she conveys 3,000 to 5,000 words of information

00:57:33.960 | in a 50-minute class period.

00:57:36.720 | But when you read and you use books

00:57:39.000 | as the primary method of acquiring that information,

00:57:41.400 | just give me a good quality marine biology textbook

00:57:43.560 | and let me read it.

00:57:44.560 | A normal skilled reader

00:57:47.520 | probably reads at the rate of 15,000 to 20,000 words per hour.

00:57:51.080 | I read at about 25,000 to 30,000 words per hour in English.

00:57:54.800 | I watch my students are reading,

00:57:56.840 | my children, my eldest is reading at a rate

00:57:59.240 | of something like 15,000 words per hour, I would say.

00:58:02.840 | And so what the teacher might take all week to accomplish

00:58:07.840 | at that 3,000 to 5,000 words per hour times five hours

00:58:13.920 | turns out to be basically one hour of reading

00:58:16.640 | for a student who's acquiring information.

00:58:18.840 | And it's the same information, but actually a lot better.

00:58:21.880 | Remember, the textbook is prepared by somebody

00:58:23.800 | who took dozens of hours to plan it, to prepare it.

00:58:26.640 | They prepared the best visuals, the best illustrations.

00:58:30.480 | They edited the text multiple times

00:58:32.480 | to make it really, really pithy.

00:58:34.040 | So I think it's actually more extreme than that.

00:58:35.760 | But basically it's a ratio of one hour of reading

00:58:38.320 | versus five hours of classroom instruction

00:58:40.680 | from an actual education perspective.

00:58:42.800 | So what happens in homeschool is you swap out

00:58:45.260 | the five hours of class sitting

00:58:47.080 | and you substitute one hour of reading,

00:58:49.440 | which leaves four hours available for other stuff.

00:58:53.160 | And so what you can do is you can say,

00:58:54.760 | let's do two hours of reading instead of one hour of reading

00:58:57.680 | so we double the academic accomplishment of learning,

00:59:02.480 | double the amount of information consumed,

00:59:04.240 | double the amount of learning.

00:59:05.880 | And then we still have two hours,

00:59:08.080 | we have an hour or two for socialization

00:59:10.160 | and an hour or two for, say, a part-time job

00:59:12.840 | or for, say, going and swimming at the reef

00:59:15.000 | and actually doing marine biology up close

00:59:16.960 | 'cause we can do a field trip every week.

00:59:19.220 | So in our homeschool, we do school four days a week

00:59:24.220 | and then we always have one to three days a week

00:59:27.460 | that's available for other stuff.

00:59:29.060 | And then that actual learning time

00:59:31.100 | is constrained to something like,

00:59:33.300 | depending on the age, four to five hours.

00:59:35.780 | And yet we can accomplish, if not twice,

00:59:39.100 | at least probably three times as much

00:59:41.380 | as a teacher can accomplish

00:59:43.420 | in kind of a normal structured environment.

00:59:46.540 | So that opens up so many opportunities for socialization

00:59:49.860 | that are better and more positive.

00:59:51.980 | So now the socialization that the children can do

00:59:54.560 | is lots and lots of time of playing together,

00:59:57.340 | the afternoons together, or working on projects

00:59:59.620 | or other events where you don't have

01:00:02.100 | that artificial forced socialization

01:00:04.340 | that happens in school classrooms,

01:00:06.360 | but you have more free association.

01:00:08.180 | And so now if somebody is not treating you kindly,

01:00:10.700 | well, we're not going to play with that child anymore

01:00:13.220 | or we're just gonna walk away

01:00:14.740 | or whatever the appropriate response is

01:00:17.020 | and you get a much more reasonable approach.

01:00:19.620 | Then the socialization that can happen

01:00:21.140 | can also happen across age barriers.

01:00:23.340 | So you get older children teaching younger children,

01:00:25.580 | younger children looking up to older children,

01:00:27.380 | adults being involved, all of that kind of inter-age stuff

01:00:30.980 | that's really, really important and really, really healthy.

01:00:33.420 | So socialization is in many cases

01:00:36.540 | the biggest objection that people have.

01:00:39.480 | And they say, well, my homeschool student

01:00:41.020 | is gonna be weird.

01:00:42.160 | There are lots of weird homeschool students,

01:00:44.760 | just like there are lots of weird students

01:00:46.420 | in government schools.

01:00:47.820 | The weirdness that you have is largely gonna be driven

01:00:50.540 | by your parents or your own personal,

01:00:52.940 | unique peculiarities and personalities.

01:00:55.860 | But my stance on weirdness is your weirdness

01:00:59.040 | is not gonna get better if you get enrolled into a school

01:01:01.780 | where you're bullied for being weird.

01:01:03.580 | If I've got a child who is weird,

01:01:05.440 | I'm gonna protect that child

01:01:07.020 | and allow his weirdness to work its way through

01:01:09.380 | and then we're gonna work on getting non-weird

01:01:11.340 | and then when he's non-weird,

01:01:14.260 | we'll kind of introduce more of those social pressures.

01:01:17.100 | The other thing is just that weirdness

01:01:18.680 | is often a sign, something that you love.

01:01:21.960 | Many of the greatest people in our history

01:01:24.760 | have often been those who were considered to be weird.

01:01:27.400 | As adults, we call it eccentricity and we appreciate it

01:01:31.280 | or we just call it genius.

01:01:32.880 | And yet when you put everyone into an environment

01:01:35.700 | where there's no adult perception

01:01:39.360 | on kind of what can happen,

01:01:42.000 | you wind up creating these weird things

01:01:45.000 | where people wanna insult them.

01:01:48.760 | Now, socialization where homeschooling is subpar.

01:01:52.040 | The biggest thing where homeschooling is subpar

01:01:54.000 | has to do with ability to access

01:01:57.800 | a highly ranked group academic focus

01:02:02.800 | or something where you need a lot of people to do it.

01:02:06.240 | And so let me give real examples.

01:02:09.400 | Let's say that you're like hardcore into the classics

01:02:13.260 | and you wanna do all of your schooling in ancient Greek

01:02:16.960 | and you're gonna study the Greek philosophers hardcore.

01:02:19.920 | I think in some cases, especially in the high school years,

01:02:22.800 | you're probably better off with a really high level

01:02:26.560 | kind of classical school for that kind of work

01:02:29.000 | than you are in a homeschool environment

01:02:30.880 | because while you can hire tutors

01:02:32.600 | in a homeschool environment and you can hire virtual,

01:02:34.880 | you can put people in virtual classes, et cetera,

01:02:37.340 | if you could get a group of say 10 or 15 students

01:02:42.200 | who were all in a hardcore classics program

01:02:45.480 | and you're speaking ancient Greek in class

01:02:47.280 | and you're doing all this through,

01:02:49.040 | that group dynamic of a very carefully chosen

01:02:51.920 | academic discipline is really, really positive.

01:02:54.760 | This is the kind of thing that happens in college

01:02:56.400 | where you have a group of people

01:02:58.000 | who are high level students

01:03:00.000 | and they get around other high level students

01:03:02.080 | and the creative juices that can grow

01:03:04.280 | and the positive peer pressure

01:03:05.880 | of a small group of people like that,

01:03:08.440 | that's really hard to create in a high school.

01:03:12.280 | There are other things, so things like theater

01:03:15.680 | and things like sports.

01:03:17.200 | Let's say that you have a child

01:03:18.360 | who seems very naturally gifted

01:03:21.240 | with vocal performance or acting.

01:03:24.400 | Well, you're not gonna be able to maximize that talent

01:03:27.720 | in a homeschool environment.

01:03:28.960 | There's just no practical way to do it.

01:03:31.880 | Even if you went to the professional level,

01:03:34.520 | that still has its own problems

01:03:36.760 | because in the same way that having your 16 year old

01:03:40.040 | who's good at basketball,

01:03:40.960 | you don't put your 16 year old

01:03:42.000 | who's good at basketball in the NBA.

01:03:43.040 | There's something to be said for coming up

01:03:45.040 | through the ranks and learning with peers

01:03:47.560 | and people who are at your level

01:03:48.800 | and having time to make mistakes

01:03:50.360 | rather than experiencing professional pressures.

01:03:53.080 | So if you have a child who's a talented vocal performer

01:03:56.240 | or a talented musician or something like that,

01:03:59.160 | in a homeschool environment,

01:04:00.320 | it's very hard to really fully actualize those things,

01:04:03.360 | especially if they relate to something where you need

01:04:06.400 | a big cast like musical theater.

01:04:08.480 | Sports is the other example.

01:04:10.680 | If your child is really skilled in football

01:04:14.560 | or in basketball, having a school environment

01:04:17.320 | is generally gonna be the best place for that.

01:04:20.320 | There are sports where homeschooling is much better.

01:04:23.080 | So if you have individualized sports like swimming

01:04:26.280 | or archery or something like that,

01:04:28.780 | then having your child in a homeschool environment

01:04:31.280 | allows you to engage in much more training.

01:04:34.440 | But in a team sports environment,

01:04:36.360 | you can't recreate that effectively

01:04:38.000 | in a homeschool environment.

01:04:39.760 | The good thing is many of those things

01:04:43.440 | are accessible to homeschoolers.

01:04:45.960 | They're accessible at the high school level.

01:04:47.740 | So for example, many homeschoolers play sports

01:04:51.400 | at their local government school.

01:04:52.720 | They go and they, because the government school

01:04:54.760 | can't discriminate, that means the government school

01:04:56.520 | can't discriminate against high schoolers

01:04:57.880 | if the state law allows for it, excuse me, homeschoolers.

01:05:00.860 | And so they might do their homeschool,

01:05:03.020 | but then after every afternoon at 3.30,

01:05:04.580 | they're down on the basketball court

01:05:05.880 | playing basketball with a local basketball team

01:05:08.060 | or joining a musical theater or going to a computer class.

01:05:11.740 | Many parents will use college classes for this.

01:05:14.300 | And they enroll their teenagers

01:05:16.060 | into dual enrollment classes.

01:05:17.500 | And they use that to get an experience

01:05:19.700 | of the classroom environment,

01:05:21.620 | but doing it in a more upper level

01:05:24.240 | and more controlled environment.

01:05:25.800 | And they're doing it intentionally

01:05:27.400 | where it's something we're gonna invest

01:05:29.440 | five to 10 hours a week instead of five to 10 hours a day

01:05:33.000 | into that kind of inefficient environment.

01:05:35.860 | Or this is just a good area where you say,

01:05:38.260 | my child's gifts are really well met

01:05:41.240 | by this particular school.

01:05:42.880 | So I'm gonna enroll my children into this art school

01:05:45.120 | or into this school that has tremendous access, et cetera.

01:05:48.560 | So I think I've covered most of the important objections.

01:05:52.440 | I've also done my best to dismantle them,

01:05:54.560 | but to point out where they could be valid for most people.

01:05:58.320 | But the practical stuff you have to solve yourself,

01:06:01.640 | the philosophical stuff,

01:06:03.560 | I think most of those objections are empty.

01:06:06.360 | To me, actually, let me add one more.

01:06:08.960 | And this actually is, I think, important.

01:06:11.820 | I shared a few minutes ago why I was not,

01:06:16.760 | that I was homeschooled through seventh grade.

01:06:19.820 | And you might be wondering why.

01:06:22.600 | My parents enrolled us,

01:06:24.760 | enrolled their children into a school

01:06:26.920 | because they had seen homeschooling families

01:06:29.920 | that were excessively sheltered.

01:06:31.520 | Because we're from kind of a Christian minority,

01:06:35.880 | there are many people who homeschool

01:06:39.560 | not for the purposes of academic excellence,

01:06:42.200 | but primarily for the purposes of protecting their children

01:06:45.800 | from undesirable, immoral influences.

01:06:48.720 | I think this is a powerful and appropriate reason

01:06:51.560 | to homeschool.

01:06:53.060 | But the application of this at different ages can vary.

01:06:57.520 | And so I think that what you do at the age of five,

01:07:02.480 | in many cases, can and should be different

01:07:04.720 | than what you do at the age of 15.

01:07:07.560 | And so my parents' concern was that they had known

01:07:10.760 | homeschooled children who were raised and were schooled

01:07:15.520 | and educated in a very protected environment.

01:07:19.140 | But then they turned 18 and they went out

01:07:22.780 | and faced the world and there was no point of transition.

01:07:25.960 | And in some cases, the children who were in that scenario

01:07:30.420 | were so shocked by what they encountered in the wider world

01:07:33.100 | and how different it was from their protected bubble

01:07:36.120 | that they very quickly renounced the ideology

01:07:41.120 | with which they were raised and they embraced the ideology

01:07:47.580 | that was in the prevailing culture around them.

01:07:50.540 | My parents didn't want that to happen.

01:07:52.180 | So they wanted us to be non-sheltered

01:07:54.940 | at an early enough age where we would be able to work

01:07:59.940 | through the questions and the issues in a collaborative,

01:08:05.860 | consultative relationship with our parents as teens,

01:08:09.680 | rather than as late teens and early 20-somethings

01:08:13.620 | when it's less likely that a child would seek out

01:08:18.380 | his parents' advice on a continual basis.

01:08:21.220 | For a time, they enrolled various of my older siblings

01:08:24.040 | into government schools, but this was at a period

01:08:26.660 | in the 1990s when the material that was being discussed

01:08:31.660 | in government schools was making a significant change.

01:08:35.980 | And there was a point where one of my sisters

01:08:38.920 | who was in a kind of a highly rated magnet school,

01:08:41.700 | they were reviewing some of the books

01:08:43.140 | that she was going to be exposed to,

01:08:45.380 | and the books were quite simply pornographic.

01:08:48.060 | And my parents said, "No, we're not going to require

01:08:51.140 | "our teenage daughter to read pornography in school."

01:08:54.180 | So they withdrew her from the government school

01:08:56.740 | and enrolled us into a local private Christian school,

01:08:59.020 | and that was the path that the rest of us went on.

01:09:01.060 | It was a major strain financially.

01:09:02.720 | It was the one time that my mom had a job

01:09:04.340 | outside of the house because my parents

01:09:05.880 | couldn't pay the tuition, except that she was able

01:09:08.540 | to get a job at the school, which gave her enough

01:09:10.780 | of a tuition discount that they were able to afford it.

01:09:15.220 | But all of us as students contributed a nominal amount

01:09:19.220 | from our summer jobs to be able to make it work as a family.

01:09:23.140 | And I would say that this is the reason not to homeschool

01:09:26.980 | that bothers me the most.

01:09:28.220 | And the reason it bothers me the most is this.

01:09:30.520 | My parents had seven children.

01:09:33.520 | One of my sisters is dead.

01:09:35.580 | Seven children.

01:09:36.780 | Of the six adult children, all of the six adult children

01:09:41.780 | continue to be faithful Christians.

01:09:47.020 | I know quite a significant number of Christian families,

01:09:50.500 | and to have all of the children of Christian parents

01:09:54.740 | continue to be Christians as adults is very unusual.

01:09:59.020 | Now, I think there are a couple of aspects of that.

01:10:01.520 | Number one, the faith of my parents and the environment

01:10:04.780 | that we were raised in built a tremendous level of respect

01:10:08.340 | from us children to our parents.

01:10:11.700 | And so that respect was a consistent thing.

01:10:16.700 | And so I wouldn't say that school was a causal factor,

01:10:21.340 | but it does remain the case that this was a big concern

01:10:25.900 | for my parents, that they didn't want us

01:10:27.380 | to be excessively sheltered.

01:10:29.660 | And so they intentionally exposed us to,

01:10:33.100 | in a still somewhat sheltered way,

01:10:35.860 | but they intentionally exposed us

01:10:37.220 | to these challenges of the world.

01:10:39.780 | And that does seem to have had a good influence,

01:10:42.220 | at least by that testimony.

01:10:43.740 | So this is the thing that actually bothers me the most

01:10:45.620 | as a homeschooling parent,

01:10:46.940 | is that because of that experience that I had,

01:10:50.040 | I often wonder, will I do the same thing?

01:10:56.260 | Will I enroll my children into a school when they're older?

01:10:59.100 | I believe that five-year-olds

01:11:00.460 | should be exceedingly well-sheltered

01:11:03.080 | 10-year-olds should be pretty very much well-sheltered.

01:11:06.580 | 15-year-olds need to be significantly unsheltered

01:11:10.540 | in order to progress healthily into adulthood.

01:11:16.100 | I have often gotten frustrated at what could have been.

01:11:22.140 | And when I think about the massive waste of time

01:11:25.460 | that was my high school experience

01:11:27.640 | compared to what I could have done

01:11:29.700 | in terms of academic accomplishment,

01:11:31.500 | in terms of business building,

01:11:32.860 | in terms of career building, et cetera,

01:11:34.920 | sometimes I get frustrated with that.

01:11:36.940 | But in hindsight, I have to look back and say,

01:11:39.060 | I'm sure I learned more lessons from that environment

01:11:41.520 | than I give credit to.

01:11:42.660 | And the reason I wanted to raise that objection,

01:11:44.820 | number one, it's real, but it's also an important thing

01:11:47.020 | that in schooling as a parent,

01:11:49.320 | I don't believe the right way to approach things

01:11:51.540 | is from an ideological perspective first and foremost.

01:11:54.940 | As parents, our responsibility is to raise and parent

01:12:02.300 | this specific child at this specific point in time.

01:12:06.060 | And that may look different as the years go by.

01:12:09.300 | And so we should inform ourselves

01:12:11.340 | about various ideologies and approaches, et cetera.

01:12:15.620 | We should listen to strong and robust defenders

01:12:18.520 | of those ideologies.

01:12:19.500 | That's why I try my best to defend as robustly

01:12:21.840 | as I'm able to my perspective.

01:12:23.860 | But at the end of the day, we have a responsibility

01:12:25.820 | to filter those things down and look at this child,

01:12:30.380 | this boy, this girl, this young man, this young woman,

01:12:33.780 | and then say, what is best for this young man

01:12:37.040 | and this young woman at this point in time?

01:12:39.660 | And that may be one thing at the age of three.

01:12:42.420 | It will be a different thing at the age of eight,

01:12:44.520 | and it will be a different thing at the age of 13.

01:12:47.340 | And I think that it's perfectly acceptable

01:12:49.820 | to go in and out and among these systems

01:12:52.980 | as you, the parent, decide is best.

01:12:55.200 | For example, I mentioned that I was,

01:13:00.220 | I went to a government school in third grade.

01:13:02.380 | Well, the reason I went to a government school

01:13:04.220 | in third grade was because my 14-year-old sister died

01:13:06.940 | from an epileptic seizure.

01:13:08.780 | And working their way through that in our family,

01:13:12.940 | I don't think my parents, my parents decided that,

01:13:15.820 | you know what, homeschooling this year is not for us.

01:13:18.860 | And so they enrolled us, or they enrolled me,

01:13:21.500 | I don't really remember everyone else,

01:13:22.700 | but I think no one was homeschooling during that year.

01:13:25.620 | But then after one year of homeschooling,

01:13:27.740 | then our family was in a stronger place,

01:13:30.780 | able to press forward.

01:13:32.100 | And so they started homeschooling again.

01:13:37.100 | And along the way, sometimes my mom homeschooled me,

01:13:40.760 | sometimes my grandmother homeschooled me,

01:13:42.920 | sometimes the work was good, sometimes the work was bad.

01:13:46.340 | Sometimes the academic achievement was high,

01:13:48.460 | sometimes the academic achievement was low.

01:13:50.740 | Sometimes motivation and the good,

01:13:52.500 | it was a good environment,

01:13:53.340 | sometimes there was less of a good environment.

01:13:55.340 | And when I use that term, I just mean in terms of,

01:13:58.780 | you know, academic structure and friends and such.

01:14:01.500 | So as a parent, what I want to emphasize

01:14:06.500 | is that it's our responsibility not to be slaves

01:14:09.500 | to an ideology, but to be good parents

01:14:12.780 | and to study what is right for this child

01:14:17.140 | at this point in time.

01:14:18.700 | I defend homeschooling quite robustly

01:14:20.980 | because I believe it's a wonderful solution

01:14:24.700 | and really brings many opportunities and possibilities

01:14:29.700 | that are not available otherwise.

01:14:34.280 | The modern industrial factory school system

01:14:38.620 | is failing our students on every single metric.

01:14:43.620 | There is a very small minority that escape intact

01:14:47.820 | and that succeed in that system

01:14:50.300 | because of academic skills, academic prowess,

01:14:53.600 | internal self-motivation, et cetera.

01:14:55.780 | There is a very small minority

01:14:58.020 | that is saved by that system, right?

01:15:00.540 | This is where you get into another objection

01:15:03.380 | to homeschooling that some people raise is,

01:15:05.460 | well, how do we control for abusive environments, right?

01:15:08.420 | You find parental neglect, childhood neglect,

01:15:11.180 | child abuse happening, and sometimes homeschooling

01:15:13.700 | can conceal that because my child doesn't have to go

01:15:15.980 | to a school where the teacher's a mandated reporter

01:15:18.820 | about the bruises that my child has and things like that.

01:15:21.580 | And those things are true,

01:15:22.880 | but they're statistically unimportant, right?

01:15:25.680 | And that's more, I don't think we should invent

01:15:28.620 | this giant system to account for those horrific crimes.

01:15:33.620 | But that is a concern that some people have

01:15:36.080 | about homeschooling broadly.

01:15:37.960 | The key thing is that just simply

01:15:39.380 | the modern industrial school system

01:15:41.840 | was never developed and built with the primary intention

01:15:45.880 | of educating a child effectively and well.

01:15:49.680 | The modern industrial school system was designed and built

01:15:53.200 | with the goal of creating a uniform population

01:15:56.660 | that would be easily governed and easily controlled

01:15:59.980 | and by giving that population a certain way of thinking,

01:16:04.980 | a certain mindset, a certain worldview.

01:16:08.740 | And you feel free to go down as deep

01:16:11.140 | as that rabbit hole as you want, right?

01:16:12.660 | John Taylor Gatto's "Underground History

01:16:14.100 | of American Education" is good.

01:16:15.940 | "Crimes of the Educators" is good.

01:16:18.380 | You can kind of go down that rabbit

01:16:20.040 | or you can just go to the philosophical perspective.

01:16:23.520 | Go read John Dewey's writings

01:16:25.020 | and the progressive school system era

01:16:27.720 | in the mid 20th century.

01:16:29.860 | The point is that the school system was never developed

01:16:33.480 | to help your child succeed to his or her maximal ability.

01:16:38.400 | That's why the elites have always had a secondary system.

01:16:42.220 | There are great schools out there that are accessed

01:16:45.260 | by the elites of our country and every country in the world.

01:16:48.040 | It's not your local government school.

01:16:50.000 | And so if you are actually looking

01:16:53.760 | for a personalized solution to your child's success,

01:16:58.240 | which is what we as parents want,

01:17:00.360 | then we need to be aware of the opportunities

01:17:02.400 | that are available to us and then go and seek out the thing

01:17:07.400 | that is gonna be the best for this child's success.

01:17:11.960 | And we should want more and desire more from our schools

01:17:15.480 | than them to serve as babysitters

01:17:19.200 | so that we can put more people in the workforce

01:17:21.240 | so we can have the income

01:17:22.240 | so we can boost corporate profits.

01:17:24.720 | I want my children to be well-educated

01:17:28.120 | and I wanna use whatever tools are at my capacity to do it.

01:17:31.240 | And as a parent, just like almost all parents,

01:17:34.200 | this is our primary goal.

01:17:35.280 | We want our children to go beyond us.

01:17:37.500 | And in our current day,

01:17:39.040 | especially in a post-information age society,

01:17:42.900 | we know that education is core

01:17:46.420 | and the industrial factory school system

01:17:48.960 | that can be defeated with our children using chat GPT

01:17:52.600 | to write their essays is not a school system

01:17:56.440 | that's going to prepare them to function in a world

01:17:59.640 | in which chat GPT is taking their jobs.

01:18:02.300 | And so I'm more concerned about building the skills

01:18:07.200 | so that chat GPT is a tool and not a threat

01:18:10.480 | 'cause it's not going away.

01:18:11.960 | And the entire industrial factory school system

01:18:15.180 | is antiquated and out of touch.

01:18:18.540 | About the only thing it does well is give children

01:18:20.940 | a, I can't say safe environment,

01:18:25.140 | some gives them a supervised environment on a daily basis

01:18:29.340 | so mom and dad can go to work.

01:18:30.700 | And that just sucks in my opinion and we ought to do better.

01:18:33.340 | So one hour podcast on that for you, Ben.

01:18:38.340 | But hopefully that gives you a little bit to think about.

01:18:40.220 | - I got a little bit more than I bargained for there.

01:18:42.840 | I appreciate it, yeah, it definitely does.

01:18:45.520 | Yeah, no, I appreciate the time, thank you.

01:18:48.520 | - That's a good place to move on from there.

01:18:51.380 | Let's go to Bradley in California.

01:18:54.560 | Bradley, welcome to the show, how can I serve you today?

01:18:56.720 | You muted yourself again, let me unmute you, Bradley.

01:18:59.480 | Bradley, are you ready to go?

01:19:00.440 | Go ahead.

01:19:01.680 | - I'm here.

01:19:02.520 | - Go ahead.

01:19:03.340 | - So I got a sleeping newborn in my arms

01:19:04.960 | so we'll see how many questions I get through.

01:19:06.640 | - Absolutely.

01:19:08.240 | - But my first question was, a couple of years back,

01:19:10.860 | I had subscribed to an email newsletter of yours

01:19:13.380 | and you had 12, both recommendations for 12 months

01:19:16.220 | and I'm trying to put together

01:19:17.940 | kind of my reading list for this year.

01:19:20.180 | And I was wondering if you had any newer recommendations

01:19:23.900 | that you could put out for this year?

01:19:25.860 | - That's a great question.

01:19:28.300 | And I would love to answer it.

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01:20:05.120 | Let me give you, let me just give you a couple or three

01:20:07.840 | that I have really enjoyed and benefited from lately.

01:20:11.460 | The book that has probably really impacted me significantly

01:20:17.920 | this last year is called "Stolen Focus."

01:20:22.920 | And let me find the subtitle here.

01:20:27.680 | Okay, it's called "Stolen Focus,

01:20:29.560 | Why You Can't Pay Attention and How to Think Deeply Again"

01:20:33.040 | by Johan Hari, "Stolen Focus, Why You Can't Pay Attention

01:20:36.880 | and How to Think Deeply Again."

01:20:38.440 | This book is so good that I had planned,

01:20:40.680 | I didn't do it yet, but I was gonna do a standalone

01:20:43.520 | kind of summary podcast of it,

01:20:45.440 | but I just thought it was really, really wonderful.

01:20:48.760 | In that book, Hari talks about the problem

01:20:53.120 | of our modern inability to focus,

01:20:55.520 | and then talks about potential solutions to it.

01:20:58.800 | And I really appreciated his approach

01:21:01.200 | because he didn't limit himself

01:21:03.760 | to kind of stereotypical cheap answers, right?

01:21:07.880 | Well, turn off notifications on your phone.

01:21:09.380 | That's good, that's useful, but it's much more than that.

01:21:12.800 | And it has really, it really opened my eyes

01:21:17.800 | to kind of the immensity of the problem

01:21:21.920 | and the immensity of the problem,

01:21:24.920 | and I guess I can't go any farther.

01:21:26.280 | It was a really, really good book.

01:21:27.920 | A second book that's related to that is,

01:21:30.640 | I went and I reread, in light of that,

01:21:33.040 | Cal Newport's book, "Deep Work."

01:21:35.600 | And "Deep Work" is called, the subtitle is,

01:21:38.680 | "Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World."

01:21:43.680 | And this book is kind of the solution to it,

01:21:49.200 | but one of the things that I appreciated,

01:21:52.500 | let me look and find, I wanna find a quick quote from it,

01:21:55.840 | from the beginning of the book while I'm talking.

01:21:58.920 | This book basically talks about the usefulness

01:22:02.000 | of doing deep work, but here is the hypothesis,

01:22:07.000 | right from the introduction, and it says this.

01:22:11.280 | The deep work hypothesis.

01:22:14.160 | The ability to perform deep work

01:22:17.260 | is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time

01:22:22.000 | it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy.

01:22:27.600 | As a consequence, the few who cultivate this skill

01:22:31.680 | and then make it the core of their working life will thrive.

01:22:36.680 | I wanna reread that.

01:22:38.360 | Listen to this, the deep work hypothesis,

01:22:40.000 | and let me define deep work.

01:22:40.960 | Deep work means that you sit down

01:22:43.480 | and you focus single-mindedly on an important work task,

01:22:48.120 | an important project, et cetera,

01:22:50.120 | and you eliminate from yourself distractions

01:22:52.360 | and a distractible environment

01:22:53.560 | in order that you can spend significant amounts

01:22:56.720 | of intellectual capital on that project.

01:23:00.600 | So again, the deep work hypothesis.

01:23:03.120 | The ability to perform deep work

01:23:06.400 | is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time

01:23:10.920 | it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy.

01:23:15.840 | As a consequence, the few who cultivate this skill

01:23:20.760 | and then make it the core of their working life will thrive.

01:23:24.760 | And even related to education

01:23:28.560 | of my long monologue that I just finished,

01:23:31.560 | to me, this is actually one of the other big benefits

01:23:34.160 | and things that I'm working hard to focus on

01:23:36.920 | in our homeschool environment

01:23:38.760 | is the importance of staying very focused on a task

01:23:43.760 | with no distractions.

01:23:46.080 | And I look around and I don't like to be

01:23:49.160 | the kind of the old fogey who talks about kids these days.

01:23:52.500 | That's a natural generational thing

01:23:53.920 | that has approached.

01:23:55.960 | But I do mourn for most of our environment,

01:24:00.960 | most of our culture, and mourn for especially

01:24:05.000 | most of our youth, the ability that we need

01:24:09.800 | and that we have to do deep and important work.

01:24:13.680 | And I noticed this with myself,

01:24:15.960 | which is I'm my own guinea pig.

01:24:17.800 | I remember when I was younger,

01:24:19.440 | how good I was at staying focused

01:24:21.800 | for very long periods of time.

01:24:24.240 | And then I remembered how that changed.

01:24:27.640 | And when that changed, I understood that I saw the change.

01:24:32.080 | And so because of that, I was able to notice

01:24:37.080 | how my ability to focus was declining.

01:24:41.320 | Then when I noticed it, I worked really hard

01:24:44.720 | on getting it back.

01:24:47.240 | And I've made significant progress

01:24:49.120 | in getting back my ability to focus,

01:24:50.740 | which has been really, really useful to me.

01:24:53.040 | And then now, thankfully, a friend of mine

01:24:54.880 | just sent me this week, published January 3rd,

01:24:57.920 | we're getting some data on this.

01:24:59.360 | Let me read you this headline.

01:25:00.400 | This is from, I'm reading from

01:25:02.080 | the University of North Carolina, unc.edu.

01:25:04.840 | One of their research from their news

01:25:07.960 | and updates department says, quote,

01:25:09.880 | "Study shows habitual checking of social media

01:25:13.240 | "may impact young adolescents' brain development.

01:25:16.160 | "The study provides some of the first findings

01:25:18.060 | "on how social media usage could have longstanding

01:25:21.280 | "and important consequences on the development

01:25:23.280 | "of adolescent brains by the College of Arts and Sciences,

01:25:25.700 | "Tuesday, January 3, 2023."

01:25:28.880 | And I'll just read the first few paragraphs.

01:25:31.000 | In one of the first long-term studies

01:25:32.920 | on adolescent neural development and technology use,

01:25:36.320 | researchers at the University of North Carolina

01:25:38.200 | at Chapel Hill report adolescents'

01:25:40.280 | habitual checking of social media

01:25:42.280 | is linked with subsequent changes

01:25:44.040 | in how their brains respond to the world around them.

01:25:46.760 | The study, published today in JAMA Pediatrics,

01:25:50.380 | reveals that adolescents' brains may become more sensitive

01:25:53.300 | when anticipating social rewards and punishments over time

01:25:56.660 | with increased social media usage.

01:25:59.140 | Quote, "The findings suggest that children

01:26:00.720 | "who grow up checking social media more often

01:26:03.080 | "are becoming hypersensitive to feedback from their peers,"

01:26:05.820 | said Eva Telzer, a professor in UNC Chapel Hill's

01:26:08.900 | Psychology and Neuroscience Department

01:26:10.860 | and a corresponding author.

01:26:12.740 | And so, you know, they go through it.

01:26:15.980 | We're just starting, we're at the starting point

01:26:20.420 | of getting data and good, decent studies

01:26:22.860 | on some of the impact of this.

01:26:24.300 | But I am convinced that Cal Newport's hypothesis is correct.

01:26:29.300 | And I see this as kind of a huge danger.

01:26:32.820 | I mentioned just a few minutes ago, CHAT-GPT,

01:26:34.720 | which has, of course, taken over the world by storm

01:26:36.900 | over the last month.

01:26:38.260 | And I look at CHAT-GPT, and I think it's important

01:26:41.700 | not to have the perspective of a Luddite,

01:26:44.260 | just saying that all new technology is bad.

01:26:47.220 | At every stage in human history,

01:26:49.460 | when we invented new technologies to solve a problem

01:26:54.460 | and eliminate human labor, there was a major societal fear

01:27:00.700 | that, well, this just means people are gonna be out of work,

01:27:03.060 | going back to everything from an elevator,

01:27:06.180 | the Bellman operating the elevator,

01:27:08.380 | to people operating the elevator themselves,

01:27:10.220 | to the printing press, to almost anything.

01:27:13.460 | At every stage, we go through this perspective

01:27:16.380 | where we take away jobs, et cetera.

01:27:18.580 | But when we come back from it,

01:27:20.140 | we wind up using those technologies,

01:27:22.620 | generally, to improve things.

01:27:24.140 | And so I'm very optimistic about new technologies.

01:27:27.540 | And while it's probably not quite right to call it AI,

01:27:30.660 | the current use of AI technology

01:27:33.640 | is going to dramatically improve our world

01:27:36.140 | in many ways that we can't predict yet.

01:27:38.320 | But what it requires is that we upgrade our skills.

01:27:43.120 | So the teacher who can be replaced by AI,

01:27:47.460 | or the student whose work can be replaced by AI

01:27:50.740 | has a problem, he has to upgrade his skills.

01:27:53.220 | And the most important skill that we have as humans

01:27:56.460 | is our creativity and our focus

01:27:58.580 | and our ability to imagine new things.

01:28:01.220 | And so that's been a big deal for me,

01:28:05.320 | thinking a lot about that.

01:28:06.580 | And I want, even from an educational perspective,

01:28:10.340 | if I were elected emperor of the world,

01:28:13.660 | I would spend a lot of time creating environments of focus

01:28:18.660 | for children to be in.

01:28:22.260 | Now, those environments of focus for children, of course,

01:28:24.580 | will be different than for adults.

01:28:26.340 | When I want to encourage focused work,

01:28:30.860 | we want to focus on the work, 15 minutes,

01:28:33.100 | focus, then be done.

01:28:34.220 | And we want to have lots of unstructured playtime

01:28:36.300 | of no focus.

01:28:37.880 | The goal is not to take a 10-year-old

01:28:39.640 | and put him into an environment

01:28:40.540 | where 10 hours a day is doing deep work,

01:28:42.380 | but we need to build our muscles in that perspective.

01:28:45.940 | And that to me is really important.

01:28:48.300 | So those would be just two that I would suggest

01:28:50.620 | off the top of my head.

01:28:51.440 | Let me make one more, actually, which is interesting,

01:28:54.460 | 'cause you didn't give me any guidelines.

01:28:55.700 | I have really been enjoying the book, "Making Numbers Count,

01:29:00.700 | "The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers,"

01:29:03.440 | by Chip Heath and Carla Starr.

01:29:06.060 | Chip Heath wrote the book, "Switch" and "Made to Stick."

01:29:10.200 | And this is a book that a friend of mine told me about it,

01:29:13.760 | and I went and picked up a copy.

01:29:14.720 | And it affirms with good examples

01:29:17.360 | kind of what I have often noticed in financial planning

01:29:20.400 | is quite simply that the human brain is not well adapted

01:29:23.480 | to conceive of numbers.

01:29:25.440 | And so the entire book gives instructions and tools

01:29:30.200 | for basically translating everything

01:29:32.160 | into user-friendly numbers,

01:29:33.920 | translating things into context where they make more sense.

01:29:38.640 | And this happens in many areas.

01:29:41.980 | Let me give you a couple of interesting examples

01:29:43.520 | just from the beginning of it, right?

01:29:44.840 | So this is the numeric expression.

01:29:49.520 | 97.5% of the world's water is salinated.

01:29:52.480 | Of the 2.5% that's fresh,

01:29:54.240 | over 99% is trapped in glaciers and snowfields.

01:29:57.080 | In total, only 0.025% of the water on the globe

01:29:59.920 | is actually drinkable by humans and animals.

01:30:02.160 | So that's a compelling statistic,

01:30:04.920 | but it's hard to remember.

01:30:06.560 | So here is the rewrite of it.

01:30:08.840 | Imagine a gallon jug filled with water

01:30:11.080 | with three ice cubes next to it.

01:30:13.320 | All of the water in the jug is saltwater.

01:30:16.160 | The ice cubes are the only freshwater,

01:30:18.520 | and humans can only drink the drops

01:30:20.080 | that are melting off of each.

01:30:21.520 | And so it takes the same numbers

01:30:23.840 | but puts them into a human scale.

01:30:25.280 | And they give example after example

01:30:26.600 | after example out of it.

01:30:28.800 | So this is something that I'm studying

01:30:30.560 | 'cause I wanna do a better job of making numbers make sense.

01:30:33.680 | And so I'm trying to learn the lessons

01:30:36.560 | and then figure out how to apply them.

01:30:38.160 | So much of my work is extemporaneous,

01:30:40.160 | and so I struggle with that.

01:30:41.240 | But I wanna do a better job of making numbers count

01:30:45.060 | so that they make sense for people.

01:30:47.280 | So there are three books to consider.

01:30:49.240 | - Yeah, no, those would be great.

01:30:51.160 | I love Cal Newport.

01:30:52.640 | I'm familiar with Deep Work,

01:30:54.280 | but I haven't read Stolen Focus,

01:30:55.680 | so I'll definitely check that one out as well.

01:30:57.520 | And just since you have interest there,

01:30:59.200 | another one to put on your radar

01:31:00.560 | might be Indistractable by Nir Eyal,

01:31:03.600 | if you haven't checked that one out.

01:31:05.040 | And I definitely haven't heard of the Making Numbers Count.

01:31:07.880 | So much appreciated.

01:31:09.000 | I will challenge you 'cause I have a long year ahead of me.

01:31:11.440 | If you have interest in it,

01:31:13.840 | to put out a full reading list

01:31:15.440 | 'cause I got 12 months of reading to fill.

01:31:17.360 | You've done a good job of effectively persuading me

01:31:20.560 | the benefits of reading.

01:31:21.400 | And actually, I should thank you for that

01:31:22.760 | 'cause I spent more time reading

01:31:24.920 | in the last year or so than I ever have,

01:31:27.720 | and you're largely to thank for that.

01:31:30.360 | And actually, it's funny you mentioned Cal Newport

01:31:32.760 | because I always think of him

01:31:33.680 | when I think of you and your show

01:31:35.160 | because whenever someone's looking for career advice

01:31:37.680 | or looking to make a career change,

01:31:39.920 | his book on So Good They Can't Ignore You

01:31:43.840 | and Your Career and Income Course

01:31:45.800 | are my two most popular resources to refer people to

01:31:50.560 | in terms of thinking through those decisions.

01:31:54.400 | So I put you in the same league as him in that regard

01:31:58.480 | for advice there.

01:31:59.920 | My second question regarding

01:32:02.160 | kind of just a plan for spending.

01:32:04.400 | Every year, I create an annual budget

01:32:06.920 | and I'm trying to do the same for this year.

01:32:09.880 | I've been at a point where I've been saving

01:32:11.480 | and investing about 40 to 50% of my pre-tax income.

01:32:15.040 | And I really don't have much interest

01:32:16.680 | or see too much marginal benefit in going beyond that.

01:32:22.040 | So instead of focusing on being more frugal this year

01:32:25.920 | or investing more,

01:32:26.760 | I really wanna figure out areas where I can spend more

01:32:29.840 | for the most return on my personal happiness,

01:32:33.120 | my family's happiness and spending more.

01:32:36.360 | Not a big amount that I have to add here

01:32:39.560 | somewhere around 10 to 15,000 disposable income to do that.

01:32:43.960 | But I was wondering what broad categories

01:32:46.640 | should I be looking at?

01:32:49.120 | I had a few in my mind,

01:32:50.200 | but I'm sure there's things I'm not thinking of

01:32:52.120 | because I've kind of been in this really frugal mindset

01:32:55.680 | of just going at it full throttle

01:32:57.160 | for the last four or five years now.

01:32:58.920 | - Love it.

01:33:02.360 | I should probably devote an entire,

01:33:04.920 | see, probably a series of podcasts to that

01:33:09.080 | because it's such a powerful way to think.

01:33:11.480 | Years ago, I did a show on budgeting

01:33:13.200 | and one of the points that I made in that budgeting show

01:33:16.840 | was the importance of identifying

01:33:20.800 | whether certain categories in your budget should increase,

01:33:24.600 | stay the same or decrease.

01:33:26.400 | When you look at your budget,

01:33:27.440 | spending less money is not the goal,

01:33:30.560 | but rather there should be an additional texture

01:33:33.800 | to say which categories of spending

01:33:36.640 | would I like to spend more money on,

01:33:38.360 | which categories of spending

01:33:39.680 | would I like to spend about the same

01:33:41.880 | or in which categories would I like to spend less money on?

01:33:44.400 | And a lot of this comes down to personal values, et cetera.

01:33:48.320 | So what I would do is let me use my three question,

01:33:53.320 | let me riff off of my three question

01:33:55.120 | to give you a framework for this three question idea.

01:33:57.520 | So remember, I've done shows on the three questions

01:34:01.640 | that are prior to financial planning.

01:34:03.280 | Question number one is, who do you live with?

01:34:05.960 | Question number two is, where do you live?

01:34:07.960 | And question number three is, what do you do for work?

01:34:10.000 | The idea being that if you live with people that you love

01:34:13.120 | and you love who you live with,

01:34:14.320 | you can live a happy life

01:34:15.840 | regardless of your financial abundance or scarcity.

01:34:19.280 | Secondly, if you live in a place that you love

01:34:21.280 | and you just really enjoy that,

01:34:22.560 | that's gonna drive everything about your life experience.

01:34:24.840 | And so choosing a place that you love

01:34:26.320 | at the macro level, country level, climate level,

01:34:29.400 | down to even just the specific house is a big deal.

01:34:32.320 | And then number three is what you do for work.

01:34:35.760 | And so I think that those are three categories

01:34:38.360 | that then would give you the insight

01:34:40.040 | into what specific areas of expenses

01:34:45.040 | do you want to focus on.

01:34:46.880 | And so like a house, for example,

01:34:49.280 | we can go the other way.

01:34:50.240 | Well, actually, let me take it in this direction.

01:34:52.880 | I'll split the order

01:34:54.400 | because it'll make, I think, the explanation simpler.

01:34:57.000 | So on your house, spending money on your house,

01:34:59.560 | I think one of the best areas

01:35:00.920 | where you can increase your expenses

01:35:02.920 | is often on your living environment.

01:35:05.720 | Anything that you can do

01:35:06.720 | to make your living environment more pleasurable

01:35:09.360 | for you based upon your specific scenario

01:35:13.480 | is a good thing.

01:35:16.240 | Sometimes this means changing houses.

01:35:19.520 | And so if there's a big structural change

01:35:22.360 | that can be accomplished,

01:35:24.160 | when I lived, I think it was four tenths of a,

01:35:28.240 | two fifths of a mile,

01:35:29.080 | less than half a mile from my office,

01:35:31.080 | it was what a wonderful structural change.

01:35:33.180 | To eliminate commuting, I didn't work in the house,

01:35:35.440 | but to eliminate commuting

01:35:36.640 | was one of the best structural changes to my life.

01:35:39.560 | In that particular house,

01:35:40.600 | when I was so close to my office,

01:35:42.740 | that house, I had a grocery store

01:35:44.400 | that was a 10 minute walk away

01:35:46.880 | and about a five minute bike ride.

01:35:48.520 | We had a library that was a 10 minute walk

01:35:50.800 | and a five minute bike ride.

01:35:52.200 | We had a wonderful park that was a five minute walk

01:35:54.560 | and a five minute bike ride.

01:35:56.400 | And so like having all of those amenities

01:35:58.720 | and not having to get into a car to drive everywhere

01:36:01.680 | is just a major lifestyle improvement.

01:36:03.760 | So sometimes changing the location of your house

01:36:06.580 | can be a smart thing to do.

01:36:08.200 | And if it costs you an extra $10,000 a year

01:36:10.320 | in interest payments,

01:36:11.600 | that might be a great thing to do.

01:36:13.600 | Then in terms of the specifics of your house,

01:36:16.320 | a lot of times, you know, you said,

01:36:17.960 | I got this frugal house, but you know,

01:36:20.560 | here we are now, we need to home,

01:36:22.560 | we wanna homeschool, but we don't have a homeschool room.

01:36:24.720 | Well, spend $15,000 and add a homeschool room to your house

01:36:29.120 | or spend $50,000 and add a homeschool room to your house

01:36:32.000 | and just cover it out of your annual mortgage expenses.

01:36:36.040 | Things like that, that give you the ability

01:36:38.380 | to live the kind of lifestyle that you want

01:36:41.300 | will be good investments.

01:36:43.460 | And in addition, spending on your house

01:36:46.100 | in terms of amenities.

01:36:47.300 | So whether it's taking out an interior wall

01:36:49.940 | and expanding the dining room

01:36:51.200 | so you can have bigger dinner parties

01:36:53.040 | or putting an extra window in

01:36:54.780 | so that you can have more light

01:36:56.220 | and feel like you are in a better situation

01:36:59.420 | or upgrading the kitchen

01:37:00.580 | so it's a useful, functional place to be.

01:37:03.540 | These are, this is good money spent

01:37:05.940 | because your house provides one of the basic bones

01:37:09.060 | of your life and it's really, really useful.

01:37:11.980 | I personally think that as men,

01:37:13.660 | we often discount the importance of this.

01:37:16.080 | I did myself when I was younger.

01:37:18.320 | And my wife would talk about

01:37:19.480 | wanting to do something on the house

01:37:20.800 | and I'm like, "No, let's be frugal."

01:37:22.840 | And then one day I just realized,

01:37:25.300 | her situation is unique, but I woke up and I said,

01:37:27.420 | "You know what, Joshua, you're being dumb, right?

01:37:30.060 | "All of my wife's life is either in the house

01:37:34.160 | "that we live in or out of the house that we live in."

01:37:37.900 | So as a mother, and a full-time mother

01:37:41.540 | and a homeschooling mother, et cetera,

01:37:43.960 | she's always either in the house

01:37:46.780 | or working out from the house.

01:37:48.900 | And so her ministry to her children is in the house.

01:37:52.100 | She's in the house a lot.

01:37:53.900 | Her ministry to others is in the home, right?

01:37:56.500 | Opening up our home, bringing in guests, et cetera.

01:37:59.140 | And so money that I spend on our home

01:38:02.540 | is in a very, very important expenditure for her.

01:38:06.000 | That's different than me, right?

01:38:07.460 | Much of my life is outside of the house.

01:38:10.080 | I'm probably at home for more than most men,

01:38:13.600 | but still, when I go out for work,

01:38:16.680 | I work outside of the house.

01:38:18.320 | When I go out for play, I often play outside of the house.

01:38:21.620 | When I go out and do work in the community,

01:38:24.800 | it's generally outside of the house.

01:38:26.520 | And so as a man, it's easy to underestimate

01:38:29.040 | the importance of the house and the home for my wife,

01:38:32.120 | because we have different roles.

01:38:34.700 | We have different functions.

01:38:36.240 | And so I think that spending money on the house

01:38:39.720 | is a wonderful thing to do.

01:38:41.760 | And it has the side benefit that in some cases--

01:38:44.280 | not all cases, but in some cases--

01:38:45.840 | it can result in a financial increase when it

01:38:48.820 | comes time to sell the house.

01:38:50.440 | The second thing that can really be a great expenditure of money

01:38:55.280 | is on your career, on increasing the pleasure

01:38:58.300 | that you gain from your career.

01:39:00.080 | I talk a lot about increasing the amount of money

01:39:02.600 | that you gain from your career.

01:39:04.520 | But I think spending money on your career

01:39:06.480 | to increase the pleasure of the career

01:39:08.400 | is a really good thing to do.

01:39:10.680 | And there are many levels at which you can do that.

01:39:13.120 | So first, recognize that most of what we do in life is optional.

01:39:18.120 | And if we intentionally, consciously choose

01:39:21.520 | to do more of the things that we want to do,

01:39:24.280 | more of the things that give us energy, more of the things

01:39:26.780 | that invigorate us, and we intentionally

01:39:29.180 | choose to do fewer of the things that drain us,

01:39:31.560 | the things that we're not well-suited for,

01:39:33.240 | the things we don't like doing, the things that

01:39:35.200 | make us feel frustrated and angry, et cetera,

01:39:38.200 | we're increasing the quality of our life.

01:39:40.680 | And sometimes all that's needed is to spend $10,000 or $15,000

01:39:44.400 | and make that happen.

01:39:45.760 | And so it might be you spending $10,000 or $15,000

01:39:49.880 | to hire a personal assistant.

01:39:51.620 | Sometimes it's spending $10,000 or $15,000

01:39:53.900 | to upgrade the tools of your life.

01:39:55.940 | Sometimes it's spending $10,000 or $15,000

01:39:58.360 | on decreasing your salary by going to your boss

01:40:00.620 | and saying, boss, I don't want to do these things anymore,

01:40:03.400 | and swapping it out.

01:40:04.280 | Sometimes it's spending $10,000 or $15,000

01:40:06.360 | on flying business class instead of economy class,

01:40:10.940 | or whatever the actual application is.

01:40:13.960 | The question I ask is, can I spend more money on my career

01:40:17.520 | in order to improve the emotional juice

01:40:20.960 | and the emotional satisfaction that I get from my career?

01:40:24.440 | Because this is easier for an entrepreneur.

01:40:27.040 | If I'm coaching an entrepreneur, I coach the entrepreneur,

01:40:29.420 | and I say, the goal is to spend all of your time on things

01:40:32.520 | that fascinate you and motivate you,

01:40:34.760 | to steal Dan Sullivan's nomenclature.

01:40:37.640 | Fascinate me and motivate me.

01:40:39.560 | I want to do those things that fascinate me and motivate me.

01:40:42.840 | And then I want to get rid of everything else.

01:40:44.720 | But you can do that to a significant degree

01:40:46.720 | as an employee as well.

01:40:48.120 | And a lot of times, if you say, how can I

01:40:50.760 | spend the money on that, then it's good.

01:40:52.760 | And that's a different spin than what I talk about

01:40:54.680 | with increasing income.

01:40:56.200 | If it's increasing income, certainly spending money

01:40:58.280 | on a coach, spending money on an advisor,

01:41:00.160 | spending money on those things is really productive.

01:41:03.720 | But could you spend money on increasing

01:41:05.760 | the quality of your career?

01:41:08.560 | And then finally, I think just broadly speaking,

01:41:11.960 | spending money on relationships.

01:41:14.160 | I am convinced that perhaps the best way

01:41:16.360 | to spend money where you get maximum bang for buck

01:41:19.320 | is on people and on relationships.

01:41:21.800 | And we know that.

01:41:22.520 | We talk about that commonly.

01:41:23.680 | We say, spend money on experiences, not stuff.

01:41:26.440 | But I focus specifically on relationships.

01:41:29.000 | And I take this from my Christian ideology.

01:41:32.320 | Jesus said, "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth

01:41:35.640 | where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in

01:41:38.000 | and steal.

01:41:38.920 | But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven

01:41:41.000 | where moth and rust do not destroy

01:41:43.080 | and where thieves do not break in and steal.

01:41:44.880 | For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."

01:41:47.840 | And that, as a financial planner,

01:41:49.400 | I spent years thinking about that.

01:41:51.120 | And I struggled with it, because there

01:41:54.720 | seems to be this intentional--

01:41:56.480 | there is this clear conundrum, at the very least,

01:42:00.960 | whether it's just conflict or conundrum.

01:42:03.800 | I don't like to go to--

01:42:05.080 | I prefer paradox or conundrum or seeming disconnect

01:42:09.400 | between working as a financial planner,

01:42:12.040 | teaching people how to pile up money on earth,

01:42:14.560 | versus what Jesus said.

01:42:16.360 | And some people, many good-hearted Christians,

01:42:19.760 | believe that what Jesus was teaching

01:42:22.080 | was to be taken in a literal fashion.

01:42:25.080 | There are many Christians who consciously and intentionally

01:42:28.800 | choose not to accumulate money because of Jesus' teachings

01:42:34.800 | there.

01:42:35.520 | The hard thing for me was always working in an American context,

01:42:39.400 | where money flows like water.

01:42:41.280 | There's just money around everywhere,

01:42:43.120 | just flying through the gutters.

01:42:44.500 | And all you got to do is just stoop down and pick some

01:42:46.760 | and do some work.

01:42:47.600 | And you got more money than you can spend

01:42:49.340 | if you just follow some basic principles.

01:42:51.880 | And so I thought, well, it seems irresponsible

01:42:55.000 | not to pile up money.

01:42:56.520 | But what brought me a lot of joy and clarity

01:43:00.280 | was when I thought about how I would actually

01:43:03.160 | lay up treasures in heaven.

01:43:05.320 | And sometimes Christians take this

01:43:07.600 | in the sense of winning souls.

01:43:10.560 | So they say, the way that you lay up treasures in heaven

01:43:14.120 | is to go and to preach the gospel

01:43:16.280 | and to go and encourage people to be born again

01:43:19.640 | and help to usher them into the kingdom by being born again.

01:43:22.560 | I think that's absolutely true.

01:43:24.800 | But I like to look at it just more broadly.

01:43:27.140 | If I think about what is in heaven, which is exclusively

01:43:30.160 | souls, that's what's in heaven, then to me,

01:43:33.680 | if I can spend money on people, then that

01:43:37.280 | seems really, really appropriate.

01:43:39.920 | And so the way that I lay up treasures on heaven

01:43:42.960 | is by spending money on people.

01:43:45.520 | And then the specific application of that

01:43:47.960 | will come differently in my life and in my lifestyle over time.

01:43:52.360 | So one application of it is my wife and I

01:43:54.880 | are expecting our fifth child.

01:43:56.240 | Well, they're not cheap.

01:43:58.520 | They're not as expensive as all the studies say,

01:44:00.700 | but they're still not cheap.

01:44:02.040 | But I'm laying up treasures in heaven

01:44:03.580 | because the one thing I can take with me into heaven

01:44:06.780 | is souls, the souls of those I impact

01:44:08.720 | and the souls of my children who I can

01:44:10.540 | impact more than anybody else.

01:44:12.440 | And so I want to have a large family.

01:44:14.240 | And if it costs you another $10,000 or $15,000 a year

01:44:16.640 | to have a large family or to homeschool or something

01:44:19.640 | like that, I think those are good categories

01:44:22.600 | to spend money on.

01:44:24.520 | But I think it goes much beyond that.

01:44:26.520 | And so some of it would involve charitable giving.

01:44:28.720 | If I notice that my neighbor is in need

01:44:30.400 | and I have the ability to give more money to my neighbor

01:44:33.280 | to help him in his time of need, then that's

01:44:35.120 | something that I should do.

01:44:36.280 | And I'll gain a great deal of joy out of that.

01:44:40.080 | And then it can go beyond that, though.

01:44:42.080 | I think a big thing that we can do is

01:44:44.160 | we can create special experiences with other people.

01:44:48.080 | And sometimes all that's needed is

01:44:50.080 | to have a sum of money that we're willing to spend on it.

01:44:52.960 | And so if it means setting up a dinner date with your friends

01:44:58.340 | and you're going out with you and your wife on a double date,

01:45:00.840 | and then all of a sudden, the last minute,

01:45:02.600 | you swap from the frugal spot that's

01:45:05.880 | kind of the normal boring spot--

01:45:07.880 | I don't know, Chili's or some boring place that

01:45:11.080 | would have just been a humdrum experience--

01:45:13.040 | and all of a sudden, you put on a black tie

01:45:14.840 | and you go to the fancy steakhouse and you go to a show.

01:45:17.600 | Well, those are the memories that

01:45:19.200 | are going to pervade in life.

01:45:20.720 | And a lot of times, this has double benefit.

01:45:23.840 | First, people say, well, spend money on memories

01:45:27.480 | rather than on possessions.

01:45:30.600 | But they don't tell you how to spend money on memories.

01:45:33.800 | And the way I think you do this, just from my thinking about it,

01:45:37.120 | is simply that you spend money on making situations that are

01:45:41.720 | out of the normal situations.

01:45:45.360 | So if I ask you what you had for dinner last week Thursday,

01:45:53.960 | you're not going to remember.

01:45:55.160 | But if I ask you what you ate at neighbor Ted's barbecue

01:45:58.800 | last Saturday, then you can immediately

01:46:01.000 | remember it because you have a hook to hang it

01:46:03.440 | onto in your thinking.

01:46:04.800 | You remember, oh, neighbor Ted's barbecue.

01:46:06.560 | I had barbecue ribs, and I ate ribs and baked beans and corn.

01:46:09.320 | And so you can come up with something

01:46:10.920 | because of the differentiation, the distinction from day to day.

01:46:14.520 | And this distinction is really, really important to creating

01:46:18.760 | a life that you can remember.

01:46:20.680 | Distinction doesn't always require money to be spent.

01:46:25.320 | But what distinction does require

01:46:27.400 | is thoughtfulness into creating something that is

01:46:30.320 | different than the normal life.

01:46:32.720 | I started thinking about this, I guess, a decade ago

01:46:35.280 | when I started thinking about holidays.

01:46:37.800 | There's this interesting-- so I've never

01:46:41.000 | been a big holiday guy.

01:46:42.320 | I didn't celebrate a lot of holidays when I was growing up.

01:46:45.160 | And then I started to have children.

01:46:47.040 | And as I started to think about children

01:46:49.680 | and what I was going to do, I started

01:46:51.200 | thinking about holidays.

01:46:52.680 | In the Old Testament, God establishes for the people,

01:46:56.600 | the children of Israel, He establishes certain holidays.

01:46:59.840 | And He says, keep these holidays.

01:47:01.840 | And if you look at why, He says, so that you will remember.

01:47:06.240 | Keep these holidays so that you will remember.

01:47:09.640 | The holidays were all instituted to memorialize

01:47:14.240 | a specific happening, a specific example, right?

01:47:17.080 | God's-- the Passover or other events in the Exodus.

01:47:22.480 | And so I came to the point that the point of holidays

01:47:25.960 | is so that you will remember something.

01:47:28.120 | So come to our modern secular holidays, right?

01:47:30.800 | Why do we have Memorial Day, right?

01:47:33.480 | Well, it's supposed to be so that you will remember.

01:47:35.640 | Why do we have Thanksgiving Day?

01:47:36.980 | So that you will remember.

01:47:38.720 | And so the distinction of a holiday,

01:47:41.920 | the thing that makes a holiday different than a non-holiday,

01:47:45.280 | is that our activities are different

01:47:47.920 | and our actions are different.

01:47:50.640 | So we can design a lifestyle where

01:47:54.280 | we can either go through life and live a very humdrum

01:47:57.800 | existence, where day to day, week to week, month to month,

01:48:01.200 | year to year, there's very little distinction.

01:48:03.760 | There's very little-- there are few things to remember.

01:48:09.040 | And then when we look back over the years,

01:48:10.800 | we can't see any texture to the past.

01:48:13.040 | And that's not very fulfilling.

01:48:14.840 | And if you compare that to building texture

01:48:17.840 | into your life, where you go through a day

01:48:20.920 | and you do something special on a certain day, right?

01:48:23.640 | It's a Thursday night.

01:48:25.320 | But today on Thursday night, we get out to find China

01:48:28.080 | and we light the candles and we all put on our best suits

01:48:32.400 | and ties and our fanciest dresses

01:48:34.240 | and we sit down for dinner at Thursday night.

01:48:36.120 | That's memorable.

01:48:37.080 | Or on Tuesday night, instead of coming home

01:48:40.320 | to a same old, same old dinner table experience,

01:48:42.960 | we light a fire in the backyard and we go

01:48:44.880 | and we cook our food on the fire.

01:48:46.880 | That's memorable.

01:48:47.760 | And all of a sudden, you go through life.

01:48:49.520 | And if you're intentional about it,

01:48:50.960 | we can build these experiences day by day by day,

01:48:53.440 | week by week, month by month.

01:48:55.120 | And those things are the things that we treasure.

01:48:57.400 | And then back to the money, I think that one of the things

01:49:00.280 | that we can and should do with money

01:49:01.880 | is work to bring people into that kind of lifestyle.

01:49:04.680 | That sometimes you can spend money on people

01:49:06.720 | and you can craft a beautiful experience.

01:49:09.920 | You can craft a memorable event.

01:49:12.960 | You can craft something that they're going to appreciate.

01:49:16.920 | And that's when they look back on the past year,

01:49:19.680 | they're going to, those events can be significant.

01:49:23.320 | They don't always need to cost money.

01:49:25.000 | And in fact, I think that some of the most interesting ones

01:49:27.880 | are actually the ones that don't cost money.

01:49:29.960 | They just cost time and thinking.

01:49:32.920 | In the American context where money is so abundant,

01:49:37.360 | a lot of times what we can do

01:49:39.880 | to make an experience memorable

01:49:43.360 | is consciously not spend money.

01:49:45.760 | Because we're so used to just spending money,

01:49:47.400 | spending money.

01:49:48.240 | And if you institute the constraint of not spending money,

01:49:52.880 | you have a much more interesting experience.

01:49:55.520 | A short story, years ago,

01:49:57.480 | one of the most memorable dates

01:50:01.160 | that I ever had with my wife

01:50:02.960 | was a date in which we spent almost no money.

01:50:06.280 | And I can't remember why,

01:50:07.320 | I was somewhat broke at the time

01:50:09.280 | and I just spent a bunch of money.

01:50:11.120 | I didn't have a lot of money.

01:50:11.960 | It was actually Valentine's Day.

01:50:13.680 | And we came home from a conference

01:50:15.680 | and it was before we were married,

01:50:16.600 | we were going to go on a date.

01:50:18.080 | And I didn't have any plans for Valentine's Day

01:50:21.120 | and I didn't have a lot of money.

01:50:22.280 | And so you had the same,

01:50:23.120 | the normal humdrum Valentine's Day thing

01:50:25.360 | is you go to a nice restaurant and you dress up

01:50:28.120 | and you spend hundreds of dollars and blah, blah, blah.

01:50:30.080 | But it's the worst night in the world to go out to eat

01:50:32.360 | 'cause restaurants are full and everything's overpriced

01:50:34.600 | and it's just crowded and it's no fun at all.

01:50:37.080 | So I was thinking, what can I do?

01:50:38.760 | What can I do?

01:50:39.960 | And so I picked her up

01:50:42.360 | and we tossed our bicycles into the car

01:50:45.440 | and we went to the grocery store

01:50:46.800 | and I said, listen, we got a budget.

01:50:48.800 | I can't remember, I think it was $20.

01:50:50.320 | And I said, oh, I've got $20.

01:50:52.160 | What we're gonna do is we're going to build a meal

01:50:54.800 | off of $20 and we cannot spend more than that.

01:50:57.720 | Here's our $20 bill, we will not spend more than that.

01:50:59.800 | And so we went around and we spent 30 minutes

01:51:01.400 | wandering around the grocery store together,

01:51:03.840 | figuring out how to put together this memorable,

01:51:08.840 | how to put together a meal with our $20 and we did it.

01:51:13.200 | We went out with a picnic lunch,

01:51:14.880 | we took our bicycles down to the beach,

01:51:16.480 | we sat on the beach, we had our picnic lunch.

01:51:18.360 | And to this day, it is literally the only Valentine's Day

01:51:21.400 | date that I can ever remember with my wife.

01:51:23.520 | Like I can't, the rest of them,

01:51:25.600 | and I'm preaching to myself,

01:51:26.600 | I haven't done a good enough job of differentiating them.

01:51:28.600 | I need to do that, we've been a baby mode.

01:51:31.240 | I have reasons, but anyway,

01:51:32.600 | like that's the one that I can remember.

01:51:34.280 | And it wasn't the constraints,

01:51:36.560 | the financial constraints didn't make it bad.

01:51:40.040 | It actually made it far more fun and far more interesting.

01:51:43.480 | And it's the one that I can remember.

01:51:45.520 | I can remember how I felt sitting on the beach

01:51:47.800 | with her that night.

01:51:48.640 | I can remember, oh, I can't remember what we ate.

01:51:50.800 | I can remember what we did.

01:51:51.720 | I can remember the dress that she was wearing.

01:51:53.360 | I can remember everything about that date

01:51:55.720 | because it was different and it was unique.

01:51:57.960 | And if I go through life,

01:51:59.320 | it's a lot of times those experiences that don't cost money

01:52:03.800 | that actually make a difference.

01:52:07.120 | Now, where does money come in?

01:52:08.240 | Well, a lot of times you can invest money into people

01:52:11.560 | and give them those experiences.

01:52:13.800 | And so if it's, hey, normally we'd go on vacation,

01:52:16.640 | but let's invite that family over there

01:52:18.820 | that wouldn't ordinarily be able to afford

01:52:20.520 | this kind of vacation to go with us

01:52:22.000 | and let's take them with us.

01:52:23.200 | And now you have days to spend visiting with them

01:52:26.160 | and engaging with them, et cetera, et cetera.

01:52:30.200 | So I just, I mean, there are more good categories

01:52:32.400 | to spend money on, but that's my just off the cuff

01:52:35.760 | answer to your question is that your house

01:52:37.520 | is a really good area to spend money on.

01:52:39.720 | And the good thing, not only for daily pleasure

01:52:42.480 | and kind of dollars spent versus time enjoyed,

01:52:46.320 | but also for, it can potentially pay off.

01:52:50.480 | Your career is a very good area to spend money on

01:52:53.400 | in terms of dollars spent versus pleasure engaged.

01:52:55.840 | You're gonna spend, other than being in your house,

01:52:58.000 | you're gonna spend most of your time at work doing work.

01:53:00.120 | And then the third thing is relationships.

01:53:02.640 | Anytime you can spend money on relationships

01:53:05.120 | or spend money on other people,

01:53:06.660 | I think those are good dollars spent.

01:53:08.760 | And those are the kinds of dollars you wanna increase

01:53:10.880 | every year in your budget, not decrease.

01:53:12.920 | - Oh, I love it.

01:53:15.840 | Especially, I mean, I have a growing family.

01:53:18.160 | Like I said, I have a newborn.

01:53:20.280 | You know, my significant other,

01:53:21.200 | she can be off work for six months.

01:53:22.560 | She's spending all of her time in the home.

01:53:24.640 | So just realizing that and just the enjoyment

01:53:28.760 | she gets out of having a nice home.

01:53:31.280 | She's very aesthetically minded.

01:53:32.760 | I'm not.

01:53:34.080 | So pouring more into that,

01:53:35.080 | I can definitely see the benefits there.

01:53:37.000 | I have family out of state who can't afford to travel here.

01:53:39.240 | Often, I've brought them out a few times and whatnot.

01:53:42.480 | You said including others who maybe couldn't otherwise

01:53:45.800 | afford to be included, who you get a lot of enjoyment

01:53:49.480 | out of them being included.

01:53:51.040 | I think that's another really good point.

01:53:53.520 | Last quick question for you,

01:53:54.720 | 'cause you've mentioned chat GPT a few times.

01:53:57.200 | And I have a brother who's actually become

01:54:00.120 | pretty infatuated with potential applications

01:54:02.400 | of just chat GPT and other AI technology

01:54:05.400 | and has become very interested

01:54:07.720 | in trying to invest in the space.

01:54:10.720 | I don't really have any advice for him

01:54:12.320 | 'cause that's not the way I invest

01:54:13.480 | and I don't really have any education there.

01:54:16.040 | Do you have any thoughts though

01:54:17.320 | on how one could best educate themselves

01:54:20.680 | if they were interested in doing

01:54:22.520 | exactly what he's looking to do?

01:54:24.120 | - I thought you were gonna ask me

01:54:26.880 | how someone could invest in the space.

01:54:28.280 | My answer was gonna be no, I don't have any thoughts.

01:54:31.040 | But then you asked me the useful question

01:54:32.800 | is how someone could do about it,

01:54:34.440 | how someone could go about it.

01:54:36.520 | I would, I think the primary thing there is Twitter.

01:54:40.000 | There is no better information flow, information source

01:54:43.800 | to connect with the most intelligent,

01:54:45.440 | most connected people in the world than Twitter.

01:54:47.240 | It is the world's greatest social network.

01:54:50.160 | And it's one of the greatest social networks

01:54:52.520 | because of its openness and because of the caliber

01:54:54.800 | of people that are there.

01:54:56.200 | And so what I would spend my time doing if I were him

01:54:59.680 | would be to just simply going on Twitter

01:55:02.640 | and following all of the discussion related to chat GPT.

01:55:06.880 | The tool that I use to do that is TweetDeck.

01:55:08.880 | TweetDeck is owned by Twitter now.

01:55:10.840 | But the powerful thing about TweetDeck

01:55:12.640 | is that you can set it to automatically search Twitter.

01:55:17.640 | And so what I would do is I would set up a use TweetDeck

01:55:22.760 | and I would set up a column related

01:55:25.440 | to every relevant search term, obvious one,

01:55:27.920 | chat GPT, AI, et cetera.

01:55:30.960 | Then I would study the tweet results

01:55:34.000 | and find people who are using the tool significantly

01:55:36.880 | and then follow them individually as well

01:55:41.720 | with their own TweetDeck column.

01:55:43.160 | And if you do that, you can pretty well keep yourself

01:55:47.240 | at the cutting edge of almost any industry

01:55:49.920 | or at least on the public information of any industry.

01:55:53.360 | It is the best way to do it.

01:55:55.280 | And so if you set up a properly cultivated TweetDeck system

01:55:59.880 | with about 20 or 30 columns with targeted keywords,

01:56:03.520 | keyword combinations,

01:56:05.280 | and then all of the relevant companies and people

01:56:08.600 | that are most involved in that,

01:56:10.800 | that's the best way I know of to keep current.

01:56:13.040 | And then of course, Twitter is just a referral service.

01:56:15.000 | So it's gonna refer him to the articles,

01:56:17.760 | the thinking, the threads, et cetera.

01:56:20.320 | And you just follow those things along

01:56:22.680 | and then put in the thinking time into it.

01:56:25.920 | And then of course, the other aspect to it

01:56:28.160 | is you need to be a thought leader.

01:56:29.600 | And so I don't know, 'cause I'm not super into it,

01:56:32.240 | but if a dedicated, if he's interested in it,

01:56:37.240 | then he should have a Twitter profile

01:56:39.300 | that is dedicated to AI investing or something like that,

01:56:42.980 | where he curates all of the content on that.

01:56:46.720 | Because what he, the goal is to not only go out

01:56:49.420 | and search for the content, but to have it referred to you

01:56:52.300 | because you are the curator of timely information

01:56:56.180 | and good discussion in that industry.

01:56:57.700 | So that's what I would do.

01:56:59.000 | - Okay, great.

01:57:01.340 | I love that answer.

01:57:02.220 | And yeah, I wasn't gonna ask you

01:57:04.340 | what your specific advice would be,

01:57:06.100 | 'cause I think I knew you wanna give it.

01:57:08.660 | And two, what the value I always get from talking to you

01:57:11.780 | and listening to you is thinking about how to think

01:57:13.900 | and just ways on how to learn.

01:57:16.180 | And I think nobody's gonna be able to predict

01:57:18.580 | what's gonna happen there perfectly.

01:57:20.500 | I mean, we can all make our prognostications,

01:57:22.140 | but rather I'd have him just have some useful ways

01:57:25.420 | to think about it.

01:57:26.240 | And I think that's what you gave me.

01:57:27.080 | So appreciate it, Josh.

01:57:28.300 | - My pleasure.

01:57:29.140 | It's an exciting time.

01:57:30.180 | It's an exciting technology.

01:57:31.860 | It's not new, there's been versions of it,

01:57:34.340 | but it seems to have captured the public imagination.

01:57:36.900 | And that's pretty cool to see kind of where things can go.

01:57:40.260 | Daniel in Texas, welcome to the show.

01:57:41.420 | How can I serve you today, sir?

01:57:42.940 | - Thank you, sir.

01:57:45.020 | I appreciate it.

01:57:46.900 | So two questions, depending on time,

01:57:48.740 | but I'll start first one,

01:57:50.220 | back to the whole job search thing.

01:57:52.780 | Do you have a recommendation on, as we are,

01:57:57.420 | of course, we're always looking at the next recession,

01:57:59.300 | right, but we may more likely be going into a recession,

01:58:03.060 | but generally, do you have a suggestion

01:58:05.940 | on where to start of how to look at,

01:58:08.380 | how do I look to find a job that is going to be

01:58:11.540 | more recession layoff resistant as opposed to others?

01:58:16.540 | - Absolutely.

01:58:17.380 | When I was younger, I loved the joke

01:58:20.580 | that economists have successfully predicted 17

01:58:24.180 | of the last three recessions.

01:58:26.020 | And I always thought, ah, what a funny joke, right?

01:58:28.620 | Economists have successfully predicted 17

01:58:31.500 | of the last three recessions.

01:58:33.060 | And I thought I would be immune from that.

01:58:35.420 | I look back on my life and I think, hmm, Joshua,

01:58:38.420 | you've successfully predicted 17

01:58:40.300 | of the last three recessions.

01:58:42.220 | And somehow it just seems so much easier

01:58:44.740 | to connect with the negative side of life,

01:58:46.540 | the negative psychology, the doom and gloom predictions,

01:58:49.420 | than the happy-go-lucky positive,

01:58:51.020 | everything's gonna be wonderful.

01:58:53.260 | So let's be prudent in all affairs,

01:58:56.460 | but not put excessive stock in our recession predictions.

01:58:59.500 | Yes, I would say there are two things

01:59:03.260 | that are really important.

01:59:05.900 | The first is, there are certainly more than two,

01:59:09.500 | but there are two that I want to give an answer to you.

01:59:12.300 | The first kind of job that is not affected by a recession,

01:59:18.340 | or if that's too strong of a statement,

01:59:23.180 | is we could say the first kind of job

01:59:25.900 | that is the least affected by a recession

01:59:29.900 | is a job that is where you can specifically connect

01:59:34.900 | your job work to the revenue created.

01:59:39.980 | Because if you can prove that you are creating revenue

01:59:43.600 | that is in excess of what you are costing,

01:59:46.820 | then your job security is pretty well assured.

01:59:51.220 | Now, the classic representation of this is sales.

01:59:55.060 | Salesmen do not risk job insecurity in a recession

02:00:00.060 | if they can demonstrate that their work

02:00:04.260 | is bringing in more money than they're costing.

02:00:07.900 | If I can show that I brought in $1 million of revenue,

02:00:11.240 | and thus I can justify my $150,000 commission rate,

02:00:17.900 | I'm gonna have a job,

02:00:19.480 | because that other $750,000 or $850,000 of revenue

02:00:24.620 | for the company is actually supporting a lot

02:00:28.020 | of other people based upon my efforts.

02:00:30.700 | So sales-related jobs are where you have one job

02:00:35.700 | supporting many other jobs.

02:00:39.340 | I think there are other expressions of work

02:00:41.500 | where you can prove it.

02:00:42.780 | So let's say the guy who is producing the widgets, right?

02:00:46.720 | If he can say, "Look, I produced a widget,

02:00:49.300 | "and I added $100 worth of value to this widget,

02:00:53.460 | "and my cost was $50 for the work that I did,

02:00:58.460 | "I'm worth it," right?

02:00:59.940 | Then that guy's got a good case as well.

02:01:02.420 | But you want to be able to tie your specific output

02:01:06.580 | to people, you wanna tie, be able to tie your expense

02:01:11.580 | to your employer to the specific output

02:01:15.540 | that you are creating.

02:01:17.260 | So let's use Twitter as an example, right?

02:01:19.220 | We're just talking about Twitter.

02:01:20.460 | When Elon Musk came in and took over Twitter,

02:01:23.080 | bought the company, et cetera,

02:01:24.260 | it laid off huge swaths of the workforce.

02:01:27.380 | And there were apocalyptic predictions

02:01:30.820 | about how quickly Twitter was gonna collapse

02:01:32.780 | without these huge swaths of the workforce.

02:01:35.060 | The engineers, the ESG consultants,

02:01:38.060 | the diversity consultants, the trust and safety team,

02:01:43.020 | blah, blah, blah, right?

02:01:43.860 | He laid off huge swaths of these people.

02:01:45.960 | None of those people could prove that their job

02:01:50.980 | and their work was making the company more money

02:01:54.580 | than they were costing.

02:01:56.260 | Otherwise, they would not have been gone

02:01:58.660 | unless there was a deep ideological problem

02:02:01.340 | or something like that.

02:02:03.140 | And the company seems to be running as well as ever.

02:02:06.660 | I'm enjoying Twitter more than I ever did.

02:02:08.700 | And everything about the experience

02:02:10.700 | is just as good if not better.

02:02:12.260 | So that's the problem that you face.

02:02:14.520 | If you're kind of a mid-level manager

02:02:16.500 | and you're responsible for a department,

02:02:18.120 | but your department is not bringing in money,

02:02:20.400 | it's just spending money, how do you predict that?

02:02:22.860 | So anything you can do to specifically show,

02:02:25.820 | hey, listen, boss, yes, I cost you $150,000 a year,

02:02:30.340 | but I can point to my million dollars of new contracts

02:02:33.420 | that I brought in, you're golden.

02:02:36.020 | I think also these positions are really good

02:02:38.500 | because unless your entire marketplace changes,

02:02:42.900 | these positions are good because you can,

02:02:49.620 | you get accustomed to defending your price

02:02:52.500 | and then you can do that in a recession

02:02:54.640 | or out of a recession.

02:02:55.980 | One of the things that I'm so grateful for learning

02:02:59.520 | in the financial services business

02:03:01.900 | was that a good salesman can make money in any market.

02:03:05.900 | I started selling life insurance in 2008

02:03:09.140 | at the depths of the financial crisis.

02:03:12.220 | I couldn't tell you how many mortgage brokers

02:03:15.080 | and real estate people and broke real estate investors

02:03:17.340 | I sat with and tried to sell insurance.

02:03:20.060 | They didn't buy it, generally speaking.

02:03:21.860 | But what I learned through that

02:03:23.700 | was there were lots of people who needed insurance

02:03:26.380 | and it didn't really matter what,

02:03:29.680 | it didn't really matter that there was a recession on,

02:03:34.680 | because there were still plenty of people

02:03:36.660 | who weren't being impacted significantly by that recession.

02:03:40.480 | My data point that I point to is this.

02:03:42.940 | Remember that during the Great Depression,

02:03:46.700 | 25% or one in four, let me apply that,

02:03:50.820 | making it stick or making numbers count methodology, right?

02:03:54.680 | One out of four people was out of work.

02:03:57.840 | But what that means is practically

02:04:01.300 | three out of four people still had jobs.

02:04:03.700 | Three out of four people still had work,

02:04:05.740 | which means that you had a huge population

02:04:07.860 | that you could sell to.

02:04:09.220 | And so sales is, it kind of puts that into perspective

02:04:12.340 | that even in the worst financial depression

02:04:15.460 | ever known in the United States,

02:04:16.940 | there was massive protection.

02:04:18.540 | Okay, so category number one is can you have a job

02:04:20.860 | where you can specifically demonstrate

02:04:23.420 | that you make your boss more money than you cost him

02:04:26.900 | and hopefully a lot more?

02:04:28.660 | The second thing that I believe is really important

02:04:32.860 | is can I work in a job where we cater to wealthy people?

02:04:37.860 | Can I work in a job where we cater to wealthy people

02:04:41.820 | and especially in luxury goods in some way?

02:04:46.020 | Now, not everything is perfect, but the point is this.

02:04:49.620 | If we go through a recession and your local,

02:04:54.080 | your accountant who earns $80,000 per year

02:04:58.580 | has 10% of his client base go to free online alternatives

02:05:04.420 | instead of using his tax preparation services.

02:05:08.380 | And so his income goes from 80,000 to $72,000, 10% decline.

02:05:13.380 | That's gonna hurt that accountant quite a lot.

02:05:16.380 | That's almost coming up on,

02:05:20.180 | I wish I knew the number off the top of my head.

02:05:22.180 | It's like $750 a month of spending, right?

02:05:24.220 | $600, $700, it's almost $1,000 a month.

02:05:27.620 | $8,000 a year of declined revenue out of over 12 months,

02:05:30.940 | it's significant decline in his ability to spend money.

02:05:35.020 | And so he's gotta go through his budget

02:05:36.820 | and he's gonna start trimming out,

02:05:39.260 | call it $600 a month of expenses.

02:05:41.780 | And that means that, okay, my maid who was coming

02:05:46.220 | once a week is just not gonna come anymore.

02:05:48.080 | We're gonna cut back our eating out budget by $200,

02:05:50.460 | we're gonna spend less on vacation, et cetera.

02:05:52.700 | But now flip it.

02:05:53.740 | Let's say that you're working for a local anesthesiologist

02:05:57.940 | who's making $800,000 a year.

02:06:00.420 | And that anesthesiologist has a decline

02:06:03.100 | in his business by 10%.

02:06:05.300 | And his decline now means

02:06:07.260 | that he's making $720,000 per year.

02:06:10.660 | That's probably gonna have very little impact

02:06:14.140 | on his lifestyle.

02:06:15.900 | He might choose to forego a new car purchase,

02:06:18.580 | but he's not gonna lay off his maid.

02:06:20.020 | He's not gonna fire,

02:06:21.460 | he's not gonna end his golf club membership.

02:06:23.340 | He's gonna continue.

02:06:24.700 | Now, let's say that you're working for a guy

02:06:26.820 | or there's a guy who has $20 million

02:06:29.900 | and he has a 10% decrease in his portfolio values.

02:06:35.180 | Well, it's just not gonna make any difference

02:06:37.060 | in his day-to-day life.

02:06:38.220 | And so the point is that wealthy people

02:06:40.620 | are much less affected by recessions than non-wealthy people

02:06:44.660 | because they don't have to pull back so much.

02:06:47.300 | They have so much more margin in their lifestyle.

02:06:49.900 | And so there might be fewer Gulfstream orders

02:06:53.220 | in a bad recession, certainly.

02:06:55.060 | There might be fewer Boeing sold

02:06:57.700 | or fewer kind of luxury goods.

02:07:00.040 | But if you are working with and serving the wealthy,

02:07:03.060 | in general, you're not going to be affected

02:07:07.300 | significantly in a recession.

02:07:08.420 | So if your job involves serving wealthy people,

02:07:10.820 | you're well-protected in a recession.

02:07:12.660 | - Okay, yeah, I think that totally makes sense.

02:07:19.100 | Jack Spierger likes to say,

02:07:22.020 | I don't know if he's heard him say this in particular,

02:07:23.580 | but like, you wanna be in the wants business,

02:07:25.820 | not the needs business.

02:07:26.900 | 'Cause people will argue for 12 years

02:07:28.900 | to negotiate down their cell phone bill by $5,

02:07:32.060 | but they won't give up their daily Starbucks.

02:07:34.460 | - Absolutely.

02:07:35.300 | - So how does that, maybe this is too hard to answer,

02:07:41.220 | but like, as I'm trying to get into the,

02:07:45.460 | basically at least within two to four years,

02:07:48.180 | get into the mid hundreds range.

02:07:50.820 | Sales is not something I really wanna pursue,

02:07:52.900 | so I'll say that.

02:07:53.740 | I think I'm just not great suited for it

02:07:57.700 | unless it's something I'm just super into.

02:08:00.940 | So it's like, I'm especially looking at larger corporations.

02:08:03.900 | Obviously for that dollar amount,

02:08:05.620 | you're topically looking at middle management

02:08:07.860 | kind of style stuff too,

02:08:08.940 | because that's where a lot of that money is, right?

02:08:11.700 | Do you have a suggestion on how like,

02:08:15.620 | and it feels like as you get more into middle management,

02:08:18.140 | it becomes harder and harder to track

02:08:20.340 | the dollars associated to your job, right?

02:08:24.500 | Do you have a suggestion on kind of how to sort that out,

02:08:28.180 | or it's just so situation dependent?

02:08:31.300 | - It is very situation specific,

02:08:34.020 | because you do have to be very careful to identify,

02:08:39.020 | I mean, there's so many different career paths,

02:08:41.600 | different kinds of companies, et cetera.

02:08:44.020 | Before you dismiss sales though,

02:08:45.820 | let me just defend sales for just one moment.

02:08:48.740 | Many people have a very limited view

02:08:51.540 | of what counts as sales.

02:08:54.780 | So many people, their view of sales

02:08:57.180 | is selling life insurance, right?

02:08:59.020 | Selling life insurance is a great business.

02:09:01.180 | I myself could happily sell life insurance

02:09:03.300 | for the rest of my life and nothing else today.

02:09:05.700 | Like I love life insurance,

02:09:07.380 | but that's not in any way the only kind of sales.

02:09:12.380 | There is sales in virtually every business

02:09:17.080 | and in virtually every industry.

02:09:18.780 | And the way that you approach sales

02:09:21.720 | can change dramatically based upon the industry.

02:09:25.420 | The guy who sells Airbus A330s for Airbus is in sales,

02:09:30.420 | but the day-to-day function that he has

02:09:35.960 | is very, very different

02:09:38.000 | than the guy who sells life insurance.

02:09:40.820 | There are sales jobs

02:09:44.280 | that are extremely engineering focused.

02:09:47.660 | Then there are sales jobs

02:09:49.300 | that don't in any way involve personal contact.

02:09:54.300 | So many times people who wouldn't ordinarily be

02:09:58.340 | quote unquote a salesman,

02:10:00.700 | really thrive in industries

02:10:03.340 | where they don't have to make contact, right?

02:10:05.600 | There are people who sell you stuff all day long online

02:10:09.420 | that never wanna see another human being,

02:10:11.460 | never wanna go out and shake hands

02:10:13.120 | and do your how are you's and who are you's,

02:10:15.420 | but they thrive on building complicated landing campaigns

02:10:19.360 | or designing beautifully performing

02:10:22.900 | email marketing campaigns or ads

02:10:25.600 | or constructing sales videos, et cetera.

02:10:28.720 | There is no quote unquote type for sales.

02:10:32.560 | There is this wrong and flawed impression

02:10:35.480 | that some people have that salesmen are extroverts

02:10:38.860 | that love to go out and do their how are you's

02:10:41.920 | and who are you's and glad hand all the people.

02:10:44.180 | That is a false impression.

02:10:46.220 | Sales is a very professional industry,

02:10:49.800 | excuse me, a very professional business

02:10:51.500 | with incredible diversity in the ways that it can be applied.

02:10:56.460 | The key thing that is the same

02:10:58.680 | across all sales activities is what I said,

02:11:01.540 | that I can prove to you that based upon what I have done

02:11:04.700 | and what I have performed, I make you more money.

02:11:07.660 | And you can apply that and that kind of thinking

02:11:09.780 | is the best answer to your question.

02:11:12.380 | So if I go into a local business,

02:11:14.860 | let's say that I develop a skill

02:11:16.340 | of improving online presence for local businesses

02:11:21.180 | and I become skilled with doing that.

02:11:23.060 | If I can go into a local business and I can say,

02:11:25.260 | listen, I'll improve your revenue

02:11:28.140 | or increase your number of bookings

02:11:30.720 | by this number of customers or something like that,

02:11:33.820 | I can prove that I've got those results.

02:11:37.460 | And when I go into the same, into a business offering that

02:11:40.940 | and I start going up to levels, I lose that ability.

02:11:42.940 | So I don't think, I guess I just wanted to defend sales

02:11:46.140 | for a moment because there is a false impression

02:11:48.280 | that people have that it's all kind of what we stereotype

02:11:51.880 | as the used car salesman.

02:11:53.220 | That stereotype by the way is also significantly broken,

02:11:55.960 | but there was like this 1980s,

02:11:58.100 | hey, you wanna buy a car today

02:11:59.540 | and do you want the purple one or the red one?

02:12:01.460 | And that the wet world is dead and gone.

02:12:03.460 | Sales can be any expression.

02:12:05.020 | And many times introverts, engineers,

02:12:07.560 | people who even don't even love being with people

02:12:09.940 | are often the best sales people

02:12:12.140 | because they're the best sales engineers

02:12:14.500 | and they understand people.

02:12:16.300 | Last example, I have always loved Dan,

02:12:20.660 | left me, the sales guy wrote,

02:12:27.100 | rewrote "Psycho-Cybernetics".

02:12:32.580 | Anyway, Dan, it'll come to me in a moment,

02:12:37.100 | but now this is gonna bother me.

02:12:39.220 | It's not gonna come to me in a moment.

02:12:40.620 | He republished "Psycho-Cybernetics"

02:12:44.100 | and anyway, the sales guru himself,

02:12:50.260 | Dan, whatever his last name is,

02:12:54.220 | I've listened to hundreds of hours of his audio.

02:12:57.020 | And he was very famous.

02:12:59.420 | He sold billions of dollars of stuff.

02:13:03.300 | But one of the things that's so interesting about him

02:13:05.420 | is he was a copywriter and a salesman,

02:13:08.580 | an incredible salesman.

02:13:10.180 | And he literally to the end of his career,

02:13:12.740 | he's at the end of his career,

02:13:13.580 | he sold his business to what's his name in Boise,

02:13:18.500 | to Russell Brunson.

02:13:21.460 | But he literally to the end of his career,

02:13:24.100 | he's only contactable by fax machine.

02:13:27.580 | That he sits in his home office

02:13:29.620 | surrounded by dozens and dozens of clocks

02:13:31.820 | reminding him of the shortness of time.

02:13:33.780 | And he has run his entire business

02:13:37.540 | exclusively through a fax machine.

02:13:40.940 | And he doesn't interact with individuals

02:13:43.340 | really almost ever.

02:13:44.420 | He spends his time thinking and mostly in isolation.

02:13:48.300 | Now on occasion he will go and he will give a presentation,

02:13:52.060 | he'll work with somebody, et cetera.

02:13:53.740 | But he's one of the world's all time greatest salesmen,

02:13:56.500 | sold billions of dollars of stuff

02:13:58.260 | and he never interacts with individuals.

02:14:00.420 | So he's my, if I could come up with his name,

02:14:03.460 | he's my go-to example of showing you

02:14:06.620 | how effective you can be as a salesman,

02:14:09.020 | even if you literally don't like people.

02:14:10.980 | But you understand people and you can sit back

02:14:13.220 | and you can coordinate and organize.

02:14:16.180 | Beyond that, I would say,

02:14:17.340 | don't worry too much about a recession.

02:14:19.900 | Recessions come and go, focus on the long-term plan,

02:14:22.860 | deal with the recession if it comes.

02:14:24.380 | But sometimes they come, two weeks later, they're gone.

02:14:27.140 | - One more question.

02:14:32.580 | - Sure, go ahead.

02:14:34.420 | I've done these hour long answers, so go ahead.

02:14:37.500 | - There you go.

02:14:38.340 | I wanted to say, I meant to say it at the beginning,

02:14:39.980 | but I forgot.

02:14:40.860 | For the first caller, I think his name is Cody,

02:14:42.740 | if he's still listening,

02:14:44.260 | and I already posted on the Facebook group.

02:14:45.780 | But I have actually a lot of experience

02:14:49.060 | in a lot of that world with water features

02:14:51.620 | and landscaping and edible stuff.

02:14:54.780 | So if he wants to chat,

02:14:56.660 | I think I've got some great resources to him.

02:14:58.780 | You should reach out to me through Facebook

02:15:00.460 | and we can connect.

02:15:01.620 | So I think I can help him somewhat in that.

02:15:04.060 | - Beautiful.

02:15:05.860 | So that second question being,

02:15:07.820 | and I guess the answer is probably relationships.

02:15:10.980 | But there's a lot of people who are largely successful.

02:15:15.700 | Most of my jobs I've gotten

02:15:16.940 | have been through relationships.

02:15:19.060 | At this point, I don't necessarily

02:15:20.620 | have any more relationships,

02:15:21.980 | or especially looking at large corporations.

02:15:24.340 | It's like, I know people at Boeing,

02:15:26.900 | I know some people at Halliburton,

02:15:28.180 | some of these big companies

02:15:29.340 | where there's lots of money, et cetera.

02:15:31.180 | But they're all like, well, apply for the job.

02:15:33.620 | I might be able to give you some thought of what it is.

02:15:36.860 | I feel like I'm kind of at the end

02:15:38.380 | of how to build relationships

02:15:40.820 | to potentially connect you to other jobs.

02:15:43.180 | Do you have a suggestion

02:15:45.340 | on how to build more of those relationships?

02:15:48.660 | Or where, for especially some of the higher paying jobs,

02:15:51.340 | those connections are?

02:15:52.180 | Do they just, do those not exist for larger companies?

02:15:55.900 | Or, yeah.

02:15:56.980 | - Do you know the industry and the company

02:16:00.260 | and the job description that you would like to have?

02:16:03.860 | - I know somewhat the job description.

02:16:07.460 | Beyond that, I'm really open to whatever works.

02:16:12.460 | - The problem is not that you've run out of people.

02:16:17.940 | The problem is you have not been able

02:16:21.180 | to clarify for yourself the specific industry,

02:16:25.540 | the specific company,

02:16:27.180 | and possibly the specific job that you want.

02:16:31.420 | You can build relationships.

02:16:33.540 | The world revolves around relationships.

02:16:37.020 | But you can't build them randomly.

02:16:38.900 | The random ones are the ones that are available to you now.

02:16:41.700 | The intentional ones are the ones that you go after.

02:16:45.240 | So if you wanna build a relationship,

02:16:46.820 | you have to know what am I trying

02:16:48.100 | to build a relationship around?

02:16:49.780 | If you wanna meet the top 10 people involved

02:16:53.820 | in programming chat GPT, like the previous caller,

02:16:57.220 | you can do that.

02:16:58.060 | And six months from now, you can know all 10 of them.

02:17:00.620 | But you have to have an organizing principle

02:17:02.660 | that these are the 10 people that I want to know.

02:17:07.380 | If you wanna know 10 people at Halliburton,

02:17:09.220 | you could do that.

02:17:10.500 | But knowing 10 random people at Halliburton

02:17:12.700 | isn't gonna help you very much.

02:17:14.300 | And so you have to have some basic idea

02:17:18.860 | of a job that you want in an industry

02:17:22.620 | and ideally at a company

02:17:24.720 | so that you can then target your relationship building.

02:17:28.060 | And so you can figure out who you're going to reach.

02:17:31.160 | Once you have that, then you can make your list

02:17:36.140 | of who are the 10 people that are most connected to this

02:17:39.740 | or who are the 10 people that are likely

02:17:41.500 | to have the resources that I need in this.

02:17:44.260 | You can't just do it randomly.

02:17:45.900 | You have to know what you're going after,

02:17:47.420 | at least have some basic idea.

02:17:48.960 | - Okay, yeah, that makes sense.

02:17:53.140 | I just have to figure out that.

02:17:54.820 | - Yeah.

02:17:55.980 | The man who says, "I want a job,"

02:17:57.980 | is gonna have a hard time finding it

02:17:59.640 | because he can't know where to start looking

02:18:01.980 | other than just a random help want a job.

02:18:04.180 | But the man who says, "I want a job

02:18:06.500 | working in a mortgage company

02:18:09.540 | as a mortgage loan officer but not selling,"

02:18:14.540 | that man now pulls out the phone book,

02:18:17.260 | finds certain number of mortgage companies,

02:18:19.360 | starts meeting people,

02:18:20.340 | and a month later he'll have the job.

02:18:22.580 | So you gotta have some idea of where to start your search

02:18:26.260 | based upon what you want.

02:18:28.220 | Then you can start making the contacts that you need.

02:18:30.920 | So that would be my recommendation.

02:18:33.140 | All right, move to Mark in Georgia.

02:18:35.020 | Mark, welcome to the show.

02:18:35.860 | How can I serve you today?

02:18:37.100 | Mark in Georgia, are you there?

02:18:41.900 | Going once for Mark.

02:18:47.460 | - Once for Mark.

02:18:48.340 | - Going twice.

02:18:49.700 | Mark, we'll come back to you in a minute.

02:18:51.300 | We go to Trey in Texas.

02:18:52.780 | Trey, welcome to the show.

02:18:53.620 | How can I serve you today?

02:18:55.620 | - Oh man, Joshua.

02:18:56.660 | (Joshua laughs)

02:18:57.660 | It's been a long one, hasn't it?

02:18:59.460 | - My bladder is telling me to answer your question quickly.

02:19:02.660 | - It's been good, man.

02:19:03.500 | I'll tell you what, man, I had three questions,

02:19:05.140 | but one of them's probably better for my attorney anyway,

02:19:06.980 | and I'm gonna be talking to him next week.

02:19:08.060 | So I'm gonna give you two,

02:19:09.500 | and feel free to do rapid fire if you want to.

02:19:11.800 | The first one, you mentioned loving motorcycles

02:19:18.340 | on your recent Goal Setting podcast.

02:19:20.860 | And I also love motorcycles.

02:19:22.980 | And I currently have an Indian and a Harley.

02:19:26.820 | And of course, it's a fairly risky lifestyle.

02:19:30.500 | I just wanted to ask,

02:19:31.580 | how do you balance your love of motorcycles

02:19:34.920 | with your fatherly responsibility to stay alive?

02:19:38.220 | - Good question.

02:19:40.620 | When I first started riding motorcycles,

02:19:44.060 | I thought it through very carefully.

02:19:48.140 | And I discovered a couple of statistics

02:19:51.100 | that made a big difference.

02:19:53.180 | So I can't cite the original factors today,

02:19:57.340 | so I'm just gonna use directional numbers,

02:19:59.240 | and you can look up the actual numbers.

02:20:01.740 | But I heard something like 50% of motorcycle accidents

02:20:09.700 | involve alcohol, something like that, a high percentage.

02:20:13.340 | And alcohol is extremely dangerous to a motorcycle rider,

02:20:17.980 | even in amounts that are not over the legal limit,

02:20:21.820 | because just a tiny bit of alcohol

02:20:24.060 | can cause slight variations in response times, et cetera,

02:20:29.060 | which can be the difference between life and death.

02:20:32.040 | So I made a promise to myself.

02:20:33.700 | Number one, I'm gonna cut out 50% of accidents

02:20:36.020 | by never consuming a drop of alcohol when I'm riding.

02:20:38.480 | And I never had a single drink,

02:20:40.700 | not a single drink ever when I'm riding a motorcycle.

02:20:43.560 | Number two, a huge percentage of motorcycle accidents

02:20:48.360 | are driven by riders who out-ride their ability.

02:20:53.360 | So one of the great problems of motorcycle statistics

02:20:59.760 | have to do with the sample set.

02:21:01.560 | The most recent death, was it Joe Blow

02:21:06.520 | out on a Saturday morning ride down

02:21:08.000 | to see his buddy's house on his Harley,

02:21:10.920 | or was it the guy in his Hayabusa

02:21:12.360 | going 190 miles an hour down the interstate, right?

02:21:15.120 | Which was it?

02:21:15.960 | Well, they're all included in motorcycle deaths.

02:21:18.200 | But a lot of motorcycle accidents

02:21:20.400 | involve the rider out-riding his ability, right?

02:21:22.720 | Takes the curve too hard, flips over the top side,

02:21:25.360 | and is dead down on the cliff below.

02:21:27.520 | So I promised myself I would never be an aggressive rider,

02:21:30.120 | and I would never out-ride my ability.

02:21:31.760 | Makes me not super fun, but that was the promise I made,

02:21:33.960 | is that I'm never gonna out-ride my ability.

02:21:36.320 | The third thing that I chose was focused on rider skill.

02:21:41.320 | Very many riders, especially kind of the weekend

02:21:48.520 | warrior riders, don't ever practice

02:21:52.160 | the skill of motorcycle riding.

02:21:54.240 | They don't actually practice the actual skills.

02:21:56.520 | Now here's where I think a lot of times

02:21:57.840 | the sport bike guys do better,

02:21:59.640 | but they're riding so fast

02:22:00.920 | that it's pretty dangerous a lot of times.

02:22:02.640 | But the weekend guy doesn't actually practice the skills.

02:22:05.760 | And so I would go out and practice all my slow speed stuff,

02:22:10.560 | slow speed maneuvering.

02:22:11.760 | I bought all of the Ride Like a Pro info products.

02:22:14.640 | Back then it was the DVDs, and I watched them all,

02:22:16.800 | and I would go out in the weekends,

02:22:18.120 | and I would practice in the parking lot,

02:22:20.000 | practice everything until I could come up

02:22:21.640 | and I could do a U-turn in a tiny space

02:22:23.520 | without putting my feet down.

02:22:25.440 | I practiced emergency stopping.

02:22:27.000 | I practiced all the skills.

02:22:29.240 | And then related to that,

02:22:31.120 | one of the big skills is proactive riding.

02:22:33.840 | So you can't, as a motorcyclist,

02:22:36.720 | you can't control other drivers,

02:22:39.200 | but you can be prepared for them.

02:22:41.280 | So little things like covering the brakes

02:22:43.320 | whenever you're coming,

02:22:44.340 | whenever there's an opportunity

02:22:45.420 | where someone could pull out in front of you

02:22:46.640 | that you've already got the brakes covered.

02:22:47.960 | That micro second to where you have the brakes covered

02:22:52.000 | 'cause you're watching for someone

02:22:53.600 | to pull out in front of you

02:22:55.320 | from the left-hand side or whatever it is,

02:22:57.500 | that micro second is a big deal.

02:22:59.680 | And so practicing those things

02:23:01.040 | and constantly thinking where is the danger.

02:23:04.400 | Then I tried to focus on riding in safer environments.

02:23:08.560 | And so the most risky places to ride

02:23:12.400 | are stroads in the United States, right?

02:23:14.920 | These mixed lane things

02:23:17.420 | where you got people crossing all over the time.

02:23:19.840 | I hate those.

02:23:20.680 | And so riding on the interstate for a motorcyclist,

02:23:23.080 | very low risk.

02:23:24.200 | Riding on a back two-lane road, relatively low risk.

02:23:28.020 | Riding on four, six-lane stroads through town,

02:23:31.520 | there's a death sentence in many cases.

02:23:33.520 | And then also I committed to wearing all the gear

02:23:37.480 | all the time.

02:23:38.320 | So all the gear all the time to try to be protected.

02:23:42.040 | So today, even including airbags, right?

02:23:45.440 | Having a, and doing it.

02:23:46.920 | And people don't do it

02:23:47.760 | 'cause they don't like the heat

02:23:49.640 | or they don't like the cool, et cetera,

02:23:51.280 | but that gear saves lives.

02:23:52.400 | So having a high quality helmet,

02:23:53.760 | having high quality riding jacket and stuff,

02:23:56.080 | that saves lives.

02:23:57.040 | And there are plenty of options available

02:23:59.020 | that give you kind of the riding environment.

02:24:01.560 | That said, I pretty much have given up

02:24:03.620 | motorcycle riding these days

02:24:05.460 | because whenever I'm out there,

02:24:07.540 | it's not that I'm worried about the safety,

02:24:09.800 | but primarily it's that I think about

02:24:12.780 | what I could be doing instead.

02:24:14.540 | And so being out on a motorcycle

02:24:19.540 | is gonna limit you to one or maximum two people.

02:24:22.900 | Whereas, you know, right?

02:24:24.460 | If you've got a bunch of children, what are you gonna do?

02:24:26.380 | And I just can't justify that stuff.

02:24:28.720 | I don't need to have a hobby

02:24:30.440 | that takes me away from home every Saturday for five hours.

02:24:33.440 | My hobby is my children.

02:24:35.280 | And so I wanna do something that's gonna be with them.

02:24:37.880 | And so it just doesn't fit into my life.

02:24:40.080 | Now, when I'm older, maybe, will it change?

02:24:42.400 | Sure.

02:24:43.240 | You know, I always loved,

02:24:44.080 | one of my favorite stories was the,

02:24:46.040 | I think it was the Underwoods, the Horizons Unlimited,

02:24:48.560 | who this Australian couple who took their Harley-Davidson

02:24:51.520 | to every country in the world.

02:24:52.520 | Like, that's awesome.

02:24:53.700 | But that's not at this stage of my life.

02:24:57.860 | So I just don't bother anymore.

02:24:59.220 | I don't ride much.

02:25:00.140 | - There you go.

02:25:02.140 | Yeah, okay.

02:25:02.960 | Well, it's funny 'cause I mean, you're very logical.

02:25:04.420 | That's exactly the thought process I did as well.

02:25:07.100 | I looked up the stats and was like,

02:25:08.300 | oh, okay, well, don't drink and ride.

02:25:10.180 | You know, wear the gear.

02:25:11.020 | I don't do so great wearing the gear all the time.

02:25:13.460 | I should probably get one of those airbag vests,

02:25:14.900 | but you know, I wear my helmet and that kind of thing.

02:25:16.980 | And I typically will just build it into travel

02:25:19.740 | that I have to do already anyway,

02:25:21.580 | rather than travel for leisure.

02:25:22.980 | So it doesn't really take much time.

02:25:24.880 | So cool, man.

02:25:25.860 | Thanks for clearing that up for me.

02:25:27.920 | Kind of confirms the way I was feeling about it.

02:25:30.160 | I don't wanna give up my life

02:25:32.960 | because also I wanna set an example for the kids.

02:25:36.400 | You know, that hey, you can still have fun

02:25:38.000 | when you're an adult.

02:25:39.160 | You should have hobbies.

02:25:40.960 | So the last one is gonna be really quick.

02:25:42.200 | I noticed some recent advertisements on your podcast

02:25:45.640 | and I wondered how can someone advertise on your podcast?

02:25:51.220 | - The recent ad, so over the years,

02:25:54.660 | over the years I've had a complicated relationship

02:26:00.800 | with podcast advertising.

02:26:02.920 | When I started the podcast,

02:26:05.040 | I had spent so many years in a deeply conflicted industry

02:26:10.040 | with lots of conflicts of interest

02:26:11.960 | and potential conflicts of interest

02:26:14.100 | that I just didn't want any of that.

02:26:15.920 | And I thought, you know what?

02:26:17.120 | I'm just gonna give everything away

02:26:18.960 | and I'll do like a listener support model.

02:26:21.460 | Well, the listener support model was okay

02:26:24.700 | but the income was a fraction of what it could be.

02:26:27.820 | Basically, tiny, I had to go back and look at the numbers

02:26:30.580 | but it was a tiny, tiny fraction of the audience

02:26:33.860 | engaged in a listener support model.

02:26:35.940 | But I stuck to my guns and I'm like,

02:26:37.940 | no, I want the purity of this.

02:26:39.340 | And so then I started selling courses

02:26:42.780 | and the courses have been my most profitable endeavor.

02:26:45.980 | I do some consulting here and there

02:26:50.880 | but the course sales are my highly profitable endeavor

02:26:54.280 | that I really like.

02:26:55.260 | And so I basically say, well, I'll do the podcast for free

02:26:59.360 | and then I'll sell the courses.

02:27:03.140 | But along the way, I'm coming up pretty soon

02:27:05.660 | on episode 1000 of the podcast.

02:27:08.520 | Should be here this next year.

02:27:11.600 | And when I started off to do the show,

02:27:13.280 | I said, I'll do 1000 episodes and then I'll decide.

02:27:16.400 | Well, doing the podcast, I enjoy doing the podcast

02:27:20.440 | but I don't enjoy doing the podcast for free.

02:27:23.000 | I enjoy doing the podcast as advertising for the courses

02:27:25.520 | but I don't enjoy doing the podcast for free.

02:27:27.980 | So I thought, well, how can I make it

02:27:30.240 | so that I want to do the podcast?

02:27:32.640 | That sounded really selfish.

02:27:33.680 | Like, I'm really grateful to do the podcast

02:27:36.600 | but it is also something that I don't, anyway.

02:27:41.120 | So I thought, how can I make myself

02:27:42.900 | want to do the podcast?

02:27:44.480 | Well, I can make myself want to do the podcast

02:27:47.560 | if I actually earn money directly from the podcast.

02:27:50.520 | So years ago, I used to take some kind of,

02:27:53.920 | I used to take some sponsorships

02:27:56.120 | and I would sell ad packages and do those ads.

02:27:58.980 | And I wanted, I started with like the very altruistic,

02:28:02.200 | noble, like I'm gonna be the guy who personally

02:28:05.000 | endorses these advertisers.

02:28:09.520 | And I would go through and I'd do all this research

02:28:11.600 | and all this thinking and I would give them my voice

02:28:13.600 | and I would play the ad.

02:28:15.760 | The problem with that is number one,

02:28:18.800 | it's hard to do enough due diligence over your advertisers.

02:28:22.400 | So that, let's say that FTX came to me a year ago

02:28:27.360 | and says, Joshua, we want to sponsor your podcast.

02:28:30.560 | Well, would I have said yes to them

02:28:31.820 | or would I have said no to them?

02:28:33.280 | I don't know, right?

02:28:34.160 | I probably would have said yes if I were selling ad spaces

02:28:38.040 | because I didn't have any unique insight

02:28:40.840 | into the fact that it was a giant Ponzi scheme.

02:28:43.720 | I just, I'm not that connected to the industry.

02:28:46.560 | And so like that whole concept of personal endorsement

02:28:49.800 | is a very excruciating thing for me.

02:28:52.600 | So the problem is that in podcast advertising,

02:28:56.560 | there's something called dynamic ad insertion.

02:28:58.640 | And there's been over the years that that's been available

02:29:02.080 | from several providers, but I never pursued it

02:29:05.500 | because I didn't really wanna do advertising

02:29:07.320 | for other people's stuff.

02:29:08.520 | I primarily like to just advertise my own stuff

02:29:11.120 | and I like to make my money from my own courses,

02:29:13.200 | my own products, 'cause those I can endorse.

02:29:15.680 | I know they're high quality and I'm happy with them

02:29:18.560 | and the money's really good.

02:29:20.680 | So anyway, but I said, well, let me try it.

02:29:24.000 | So then my podcast host, which is Libsyn, came out

02:29:27.640 | and they created their own

02:29:30.320 | what's called dynamic ad insertion

02:29:32.680 | where they automatically put ads on the show.

02:29:35.320 | And my audience size is quite large in the podcast space.

02:29:40.200 | And it means that the ads that can be bought

02:29:44.040 | get a pretty good rate.

02:29:47.620 | And so the actual cost of them makes it worth my showing up

02:29:51.360 | and doing a podcast, because if there's three or four ads

02:29:54.880 | that play on the show, then they do it.

02:29:57.160 | And by doing it that,

02:29:58.120 | and by using the dynamic ad insertion system,

02:30:01.040 | I actually have no control over the ads that are played.

02:30:05.000 | And I'm not choosing them and they're not in my voice.

02:30:08.440 | So that helps me to feel good.

02:30:09.640 | It's just like the radio, right?

02:30:10.520 | Where they play something in between what you say.

02:30:12.080 | I'm responsible for what I say.

02:30:13.680 | I'm not responsible for what other people say.

02:30:16.440 | And so I, anyway, that's what it is.

02:30:22.280 | It's a company that Libsyn interacts with

02:30:26.680 | and they buy ad spots.

02:30:28.520 | So how can you buy an ad on my show?

02:30:31.280 | Short answers, you can't.

02:30:32.920 | I can't guarantee you that anything will be on my show,

02:30:34.980 | 'cause I don't control the ad flow or the ad inventory.

02:30:38.880 | You could go and figure out who that company is

02:30:41.080 | and buy it by advertising from them,

02:30:42.960 | but that advertising would not appear just on my show.

02:30:45.880 | It would appear on other people's shows.

02:30:48.320 | Now that may change in the future.

02:30:50.800 | So that dynamic ad insertion is a little bit annoying

02:30:53.960 | because I don't have control over the ads.

02:30:55.800 | I have some control.

02:30:57.160 | I can control like to some degree what gets advertised,

02:31:01.560 | but some of that stuff is pretty,

02:31:03.880 | like even if I exercise the category selection,

02:31:07.080 | I don't get the finite category selection.

02:31:09.960 | So I may move to a different provider

02:31:12.360 | or I may just go ahead and go back to doing my own thing

02:31:15.380 | and setting up my own system

02:31:16.760 | where I did actually sell ad rates

02:31:18.280 | from people who were allied with my show.

02:31:20.840 | There was a show recently where somebody,

02:31:23.920 | they published an ad for HIV testing

02:31:27.060 | and they publish an ad for a transgender lifestyle podcast

02:31:31.120 | on my show.

02:31:32.340 | And one of my listeners wrote to me and said,

02:31:34.740 | "Josh, FYI, like these are the ads

02:31:36.240 | "that are playing on your show.

02:31:37.840 | "They're probably not a great fit for your brand."

02:31:39.720 | And I was like, "Yeah, they're not.

02:31:40.980 | "I don't wanna be served with ads for HIV testing.

02:31:45.800 | "That's just, I don't even wanna think about it.

02:31:47.460 | "It's not what I want showing up in my financial podcast

02:31:49.680 | "and I don't want a transgender lifestyle promotion

02:31:53.080 | "podcast advertised."

02:31:54.360 | So they're still working out some kinks and I'm patient

02:31:56.880 | and we're working on it and we'll see.

02:31:58.560 | I haven't decided that, but at the moment,

02:32:00.400 | I'm not accepting personalized advertising.

02:32:03.460 | Maybe that can happen in the future, maybe not.

02:32:06.380 | We'll see, but at the moment,

02:32:07.920 | the best thing you can do is plug your thing.

02:32:10.140 | So plug your thing, you got 30 seconds, go ahead.

02:32:12.580 | - Well, it's a, I appreciate that.

02:32:16.100 | It's actually HIV testing for LGBT.

02:32:18.940 | (laughing)

02:32:19.780 | - Wonderful, wonderful.

02:32:21.500 | Very much in favor of the Radical Personal Finance audience

02:32:24.300 | you're gonna be overwhelmed with business.

02:32:26.500 | - No, I'm just kidding.

02:32:28.460 | No, I'll do it real quick.

02:32:29.300 | So it's a budgeting and financial forecasting software

02:32:33.700 | for companies to use in their financial planning.

02:32:37.540 | So really just like forecasting income statements primarily.

02:32:40.540 | - Wonderful, do you have a website?

02:32:43.380 | - Well, actually no, we just bought a domain

02:32:46.940 | and we've been building it locally,

02:32:48.540 | but it's called Bridge First.

02:32:50.020 | - Bridge First.

02:32:51.060 | - Yes, sir, one word, Bridge First.

02:32:54.100 | - BridgeFirst.com.

02:32:54.940 | - Because it's based on a bridge, yeah, like,

02:32:55.780 | yep, yes, that's right.

02:32:56.860 | And you can get ahold of me in the meantime

02:32:58.240 | at Trey, T-R-E-Y @maloneconsultingfirm.com.

02:33:03.240 | - Wonderful, so if anybody's looking for budgeting

02:33:06.580 | and cashflow forecasting software for companies,

02:33:10.620 | you can contact my loyal listener Trey

02:33:13.660 | at maloneconsulting.com or potentially in the future

02:33:17.140 | go to bridgefirst.com.

02:33:19.220 | Fair enough?

02:33:20.060 | - Thank you very much, I appreciate it.

02:33:22.220 | - Best ad deal you're ever gonna get

02:33:24.020 | on Radical Personal Finance, I promise you that.

02:33:27.540 | All right, Mark in Georgia, are you there this time?

02:33:30.140 | - Yes, Joshua, I am.

02:33:33.720 | I just tuned in to listen.

02:33:35.940 | - You just tuned in to listen.

02:33:36.780 | - Sorry, I just tuned in to listen.

02:33:37.960 | - All right.

02:33:38.800 | - Yeah, so good news for you, right?

02:33:41.680 | Hey, great answer on the motorcycle perspective.

02:33:46.680 | I'm a motorcyclist too and that was a very good answer

02:33:51.720 | at every point.

02:33:53.200 | - I think you can reduce the risk enough

02:33:55.000 | to make it acceptable.

02:33:56.920 | And I don't think that living risk-free is life's goal.

02:34:00.200 | It's always just a matter of

02:34:01.560 | what's an acceptable level of risk.

02:34:03.480 | And so to me, when I look, like driving a car is risky,

02:34:07.500 | very risky, it's not as risky as riding a motorcycle,

02:34:09.820 | but it is very risky.

02:34:11.040 | And yet we still drive cars.

02:34:12.720 | There are many things that we do that are risky.

02:34:14.800 | And so for someone, I don't know

02:34:17.480 | that life is a computer program.

02:34:19.660 | I know for me, when I went through

02:34:21.480 | those risk reduction exercises,

02:34:24.160 | I felt like that adjusted the numerical risk

02:34:26.560 | significantly enough to where I would be content with it.

02:34:29.360 | And I would encourage when there is something

02:34:32.480 | you can do to reduce risk,

02:34:35.120 | it's silly, that doesn't harm anything.

02:34:36.680 | It's silly not to do it, right?

02:34:37.740 | It's fun to take your motorcycle out

02:34:39.760 | and practice slow speed maneuvering in a parking lot.

02:34:42.160 | It's fun to go out and do emergency braking.

02:34:44.800 | It's fun to swap in your old antiquated motorcycle

02:34:48.620 | for a modern motorcycle with ABS.

02:34:53.440 | I was borrowing a friend's motorcycle recently,

02:34:57.640 | it was some time back, and we'd gone to an event together

02:35:01.240 | and he had ridden there and I had driven.

02:35:03.200 | I was like, "Listen, swap me out."

02:35:04.640 | So I was riding his motorcycle back

02:35:05.880 | and I was riding through the mountains

02:35:07.520 | and blew out a tire going around a curve.

02:35:11.160 | And I wobbled off the road.

02:35:12.640 | And I was thankful at that moment

02:35:14.000 | for all of the training and all of the practice.

02:35:16.520 | But every time I ride an older motorcycle

02:35:20.680 | and I lock up the wheels and have to recover,

02:35:25.240 | I just think to myself,

02:35:26.360 | "Joshua, why are you riding a motorcycle without ABS?"

02:35:28.920 | There's just no reason for it.

02:35:30.400 | So all those risk reduction things, I think,

02:35:32.880 | bring it into an acceptable zone

02:35:34.720 | as long as you're not riding around

02:35:35.880 | on city streets all the time.

02:35:37.680 | And at the end of the day,

02:35:38.920 | living a risk-free life is not the goal.

02:35:42.160 | The goal is to do the things that you want,

02:35:44.280 | to live the way that you want, et cetera.

02:35:45.840 | And my biggest reason is just simply,

02:35:48.500 | I agree with the previous caller

02:35:49.520 | about that it's fine to have hobbies,

02:35:52.720 | but my biggest thing is just simply,

02:35:56.600 | it just seems like not something that I love to do.

02:36:00.040 | My wife is with the children all during the week,

02:36:01.680 | a lot of times when I'm working.

02:36:03.040 | And so the idea of my getting on a motorcycle

02:36:04.920 | and going out on a four or five hour ride

02:36:06.560 | is just distasteful to me.

02:36:07.800 | So 20 years, I'll probably be in a different situation,

02:36:10.160 | but I'll be riding an ABS motorcycle, that's for sure.

02:36:12.860 | All right, Mark.

02:36:16.200 | Well, thanks for calling in.

02:36:17.020 | Next time, just wait for the recording

02:36:18.640 | 'cause I promise you it is exactly,

02:36:21.120 | it's just published very soon after the show.

02:36:24.480 | Thank you all so much for listening.

02:36:27.080 | Any closing announcements?

02:36:28.480 | I've got a new course coming out.

02:36:30.560 | Gabriel Custodia and I are launching a new course

02:36:33.800 | that should be out with information on that this next week.

02:36:37.960 | We're excited about that.

02:36:38.960 | I've got a bunch of new things that I'm working on.

02:36:40.800 | It's gonna be a great new year

02:36:42.000 | and I'm very excited about sharing it with you.

02:36:45.000 | Thank you for being here.

02:36:46.040 | I don't say thank you enough,

02:36:47.840 | but I do wanna just say as I close today's show, thank you.

02:36:52.240 | For you to be here, listening to me is an honor

02:36:55.080 | and I will continue to do everything I can

02:36:56.960 | to make it a good and valuable use of your time.

02:36:59.800 | Happy new year and I'll be back with you very soon.

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2023-01-06_Friday_QA