RPF0229-Think_Slow_Move_Fast
00:00:00.000 | Today's show is part personal story and part coaching.
00:00:05.000 | Well, they're actually going to be intertwined.
00:00:07.000 | Essentially, I'm going to coach you through my personal story and I'm going to share with
00:00:11.160 | you why I believe that you should think slow, move fast, and prioritize your life because
00:00:20.600 | that's what I'm doing.
00:00:22.100 | I'm thinking slow, moving fast, and I'm prioritizing my life and that has led me to the fact that
00:00:29.220 | tomorrow Radical Personal Finance Global Headquarters moves.
00:00:51.500 | Welcome to the Radical Personal Finance Podcast.
00:00:53.260 | My name is Joshua Sheets and I'm your host.
00:00:55.100 | Thank you for being here.
00:00:56.100 | I hope you enjoy today's show.
00:00:57.700 | On Wednesdays I often do technical content but no technical content today.
00:01:01.260 | Today I'm just going to tell you what I'm doing and why I think it's a good move.
00:01:07.180 | You've got to judge it for yourself and figure out if what I'm doing is intelligent and then
00:01:11.700 | consider what you're doing and see if you should implement some of what I am.
00:01:23.660 | Definitely a big announcement as I sit here today.
00:01:26.380 | My bookshelves are packed up.
00:01:27.700 | I've got boxes on the floor.
00:01:29.180 | My desk is piled high with things and in a few minutes here I'm going to be unplugging
00:01:32.520 | all of my computers and podcasting in gear and getting those ready in the boxes.
00:01:37.180 | Tomorrow morning I'm going to go get a U-Haul truck.
00:01:39.020 | We're moving Radical Personal Finance Global Headquarters from the house that we own into
00:01:44.620 | a rental apartment.
00:01:45.620 | It's actually a duplex.
00:01:46.620 | We'll be renting half of the duplex.
00:01:49.020 | I'll tell you the story behind it.
00:01:51.380 | I'm not going to go into the details of all of the financial details simply because I'm
00:01:57.020 | going to wait until the house is actually sold and then we'll do an autopsy of the finances
00:02:00.500 | and I'll share with you how my home ownership adventure has been.
00:02:08.540 | I'll share the big picture today and I'm pretty excited about the move.
00:02:13.420 | The major reason I'm excited about it is because it will work out well financially but more
00:02:17.940 | importantly it will work out well and better from a lifestyle perspective because it will
00:02:23.420 | free up a lot of my time which is time that I can devote to things that are higher priorities
00:02:29.580 | for me than owning a fancy house at the moment.
00:02:33.660 | I'm going to use that outline that I created.
00:02:39.700 | I'm just not an exhaustive outline for a decision-making process.
00:02:42.460 | Just basically what came to me as I sat down and said, "What can I share with you today?"
00:02:47.700 | Instead of think slow, move fast and prioritize your life.
00:02:50.820 | I'm going to walk through those.
00:02:53.060 | First thinking slow.
00:02:55.980 | The best decisions in life are generally going to be those that are the most carefully considered.
00:03:04.340 | Deliberate, careful, thoughtful analysis is going to lead to a better decision.
00:03:13.120 | If you want to develop a success characteristic, one success characteristic that I'd encourage
00:03:17.620 | you to develop is the habit of thinking slowly.
00:03:22.660 | If you can get through about 500 pages of it, go and read Daniel Kahneman's book called
00:03:27.700 | Thinking Fast and Slow.
00:03:29.860 | He's a Nobel Prize winner in economics and essentially the book outlines different types
00:03:34.100 | of thinking.
00:03:35.100 | One system of thinking which is fast and instinctive and emotional and the other system of thinking
00:03:39.260 | which is slow thinking which is more deliberate, more logical and more careful.
00:03:46.140 | Then he walks through the different biases that we have surrounding each type of thinking.
00:03:51.340 | You skip the book and just simply do this.
00:03:53.580 | Spend more time thinking carefully about all your decisions and you're going to make better
00:03:56.980 | decisions.
00:03:57.980 | So anytime you can put off a decision, do it.
00:04:01.460 | Anytime you can take more time to think about it, do it.
00:04:04.780 | Anytime you can consider a decision more carefully, do it.
00:04:08.620 | You're going to make better decisions.
00:04:10.780 | So always try to protect yourself from fast thinking because emotional decisions, they
00:04:19.900 | have their place but for the big things in life, they probably aren't a great place to
00:04:24.700 | start.
00:04:25.700 | Now, for me though, I see different ways to practice this type of thinking because thinking
00:04:32.780 | slowly does not necessarily mean that you can or should move slowly.
00:04:38.940 | Sometimes if you take a moment to think about it or take a night to think about it, you
00:04:41.580 | miss the deal.
00:04:43.740 | Somebody else buys the piece of property that you wanted to buy.
00:04:48.020 | Sometimes you need to pull out some money and make it happen.
00:04:51.300 | But those types of quick moving, quick acting, fast acting should occur after a thoughtful
00:04:58.860 | deliberate process of thinking, slow thinking.
00:05:02.500 | The way that I like to do that is number one, carefully considering what the goals are.
00:05:09.260 | Number two, constantly outlining and wargaming different scenarios and different options
00:05:14.420 | and doing that completely disconnected from reality in the sense of with no commitment
00:05:20.020 | to follow through.
00:05:21.020 | That's what I do in my journaling.
00:05:23.060 | That's what I do in my thinking.
00:05:24.060 | You hear me do that for you here on the show.
00:05:26.340 | The best example I would illustrate to you is the recent series that I did a couple of
00:05:30.260 | months ago on how to prepare to get laid off.
00:05:33.380 | I'm concerned that in the next recession, many of you who are listening will be laid
00:05:37.180 | off from your jobs.
00:05:38.820 | So what I was doing in that series of three shows, the first show was how to prepare so
00:05:43.420 | you don't ever get laid off, how to prepare in case you do get laid off and then, okay,
00:05:46.580 | you got laid off.
00:05:47.580 | Now, here's what to do.
00:05:48.580 | What I was doing was practicing a process of wargaming with you, trying to expose you
00:05:53.260 | to a way of thinking that you possibly weren't thinking about previously and trying to bring
00:05:59.540 | scenarios that are not real yet to you so that you'll think through them so that if
00:06:07.180 | that real scenario happens, then you know what to do.
00:06:11.140 | The best word I know for this is the word I used, wargaming, and that's where if you
00:06:14.980 | look at how military personnel are trained or emergency response personnel, they're trained
00:06:20.900 | constantly again and again and again and again in the practice of if this, then that.
00:06:27.580 | Here's an emergency situation.
00:06:28.900 | What do you do?
00:06:29.900 | Here's the drill and they drill and they drill and they drill and they drill and they drill
00:06:34.140 | and they drill.
00:06:35.220 | My dad would tell me stories.
00:06:36.380 | He was an officer in the Navy on a diesel submarine and he would tell me stories of
00:06:42.620 | his years of service in the Navy where he talked about, he would just talk about the
00:06:48.860 | drills that they would go through and so they would practice, "What do you do if a steam
00:06:52.020 | pipe bursts or what do you do in the case of this?"
00:06:54.980 | And so you drill those things over and over and over again so that when all of a sudden
00:06:58.820 | you open the hatch and you go in and the room is filled with steam and there's boiling steam
00:07:02.860 | pouring out of a pipe and you know that, "Wait a second, this is a bad thing," then you don't
00:07:07.580 | necessarily just jump to adrenaline and make a – you don't jump to the adrenaline response
00:07:13.100 | and just make a snap decision.
00:07:14.700 | Rather, what you do is you immediately revert to the trained drill to the – okay, step
00:07:19.740 | one, step two, step three, step four, step five, and you automatically revert because
00:07:23.260 | you've drilled that again and again and again.
00:07:26.380 | So whether you practice this in a military situation, whether you practice it when you're
00:07:30.180 | out shooting, you're on the range, "Okay, what do I do?
00:07:33.260 | Breathe, move, breathe, move, look," constantly practicing how to suppress those emotional
00:07:39.940 | responses in favor of the careful consideration.
00:07:42.820 | So if you practice it in that or just when you drive down the street, "Okay, if this
00:07:46.380 | car in front of me turns over or this guy – this truck, what if this truck comes across
00:07:49.820 | the median?
00:07:50.820 | Where would I go?
00:07:51.820 | Where would I move?
00:07:52.820 | Would I go left?
00:07:53.820 | Would I go right?
00:07:54.820 | What would be the situation?"
00:07:55.820 | You're just thinking over time, at least this experience I've had, number one, you
00:08:01.140 | probably do it and number two, when you face a situation, you're not overwhelmed by adrenaline.
00:08:05.700 | You know, "Okay, this is a situation.
00:08:07.740 | If my car is upside down, I proved this one time when I flipped a car over, okay?
00:08:11.700 | Yes, the adrenaline response can come but it needs to be controlled.
00:08:15.620 | Is everyone okay?
00:08:16.620 | Let's get everyone out.
00:08:17.620 | Let's just react calmly."
00:08:19.420 | Now, I don't believe that we can all ever get to a point where we say, "Yeah, I have
00:08:24.860 | no ability to – I'm just a machine and this is the way it is."
00:08:29.420 | No.
00:08:30.420 | We're always going to have a natural human response but we can learn to control and moderate
00:08:33.700 | those human responses.
00:08:35.220 | But the best way to do it is by thinking carefully and slowly in advance and running those scenarios.
00:08:42.340 | So that's – for me, you hear me do it on the show is constantly run scenarios, run
00:08:46.980 | scenarios, run scenarios and I do the same in my life.
00:08:49.800 | Here are my goals.
00:08:50.800 | How can I do this?
00:08:51.800 | Here are my goals.
00:08:52.800 | How can I do this?
00:08:53.800 | What would help me?
00:08:54.800 | What would be causing me problems right now?
00:08:56.220 | What would be different ways of dealing with these problems?
00:08:59.960 | So as I've considered this through in my own life, one of the problems is simply my
00:09:04.900 | time and looking at where my time is going and where my time is committed.
00:09:10.900 | My business right now, Radical Personal Finance, the business that you listen to every day
00:09:14.020 | or this is the basis of it is I'm stuck in that classic adolescent phase.
00:09:21.420 | If we were – if Michael Gerber were giving me advice, he would say, "Joshua, you are
00:09:27.500 | stuck in the adolescent phase of a business that is being run by an overworked technician
00:09:33.800 | where basically I'm from day to day utterly, completely, absolutely overwhelmed every single
00:09:40.560 | day with Radical Personal Finance and I'm dropping balls all over the place and doing
00:09:44.860 | just a very few things well."
00:09:46.580 | Now, I have my priorities clear so I'm OK with the things that I'm doing well and
00:09:50.340 | I know that I'm going to continue to drop balls but it can't continue because if it
00:09:54.740 | continues, I'll either revert back as following what Gerber teaches.
00:09:59.580 | I'll either revert back to just the small – smaller than it could be or I have to
00:10:04.820 | develop.
00:10:05.900 | But when I look and do the analysis of what's keeping me from developing, what's keeping
00:10:10.100 | me as a businessman from being able to take up – take the next steps and build the business
00:10:15.440 | around it, there are two constraints.
00:10:17.420 | Number one is time.
00:10:19.420 | Number two is money.
00:10:21.540 | Now obviously, that's quite shocking because lacks of time and money are – I'm the
00:10:26.220 | only one who faces that, right?
00:10:29.660 | But it's fairly obvious but then I can run different scenarios.
00:10:32.460 | How can I overcome these constraints in my situation?
00:10:35.900 | There's been different options.
00:10:36.900 | Well, one of the options that I've considered for a very long time is getting rid of my
00:10:39.900 | house and moving.
00:10:41.740 | And the primary benefit of that would be number one, freeing up my time from having to maintain
00:10:47.380 | the care and maintenance of a large property and simply going to a simpler lifestyle with
00:10:53.300 | fewer things to maintain and especially going from an owner perspective to a simple tenant
00:10:59.100 | perspective where I'm automatically removing some of my responsibilities.
00:11:05.180 | That can also help possibly with financially.
00:11:08.420 | But the challenge has been that in my local rental market and based upon when I bought
00:11:12.860 | the house and how I bought the house and all of that, when looking at the needs of my family,
00:11:17.620 | looking at the fact that I've got two small kids, I've got – my wife and I are both
00:11:22.300 | at home full time.
00:11:23.940 | So we need a little bit more space.
00:11:26.420 | Looking at the constraints of having a couple of dogs and having a couple of kids, that
00:11:30.700 | adds a lot of extra energy to the household.
00:11:36.340 | So the practical impact of those things is I don't – it would not be love from my
00:11:42.020 | family for me to move us all into a studio apartment or move us into the back of a van
00:11:45.860 | right now.
00:11:46.860 | I've considered it.
00:11:47.860 | Don't worry.
00:11:48.860 | I am radical.
00:11:49.860 | But that would not be an expression of love toward my family.
00:11:52.020 | If we had to do it, we could do it.
00:11:53.700 | But right now, we don't have to do it and so there's a basic level of comfort that
00:12:01.060 | is nice to maintain if possible for my family.
00:12:04.100 | So when I do a survey of the local rental market, rents are high and they're high
00:12:08.980 | especially when compared to the current housing situation that I have and my current costs
00:12:15.180 | which are not extremely high.
00:12:17.680 | But there's never been a good opportunity to present itself.
00:12:21.100 | But I've looked and I've thought and I've looked and I've thought and I've thought
00:12:24.660 | slowly about it.
00:12:26.540 | But at this point, I've actually moved very quickly the instant I found something that
00:12:32.380 | could work.
00:12:33.380 | And the timeline was a few weeks ago, I was having a Friday afternoon call with a friend
00:12:38.980 | of mine, a listener of the show reached out to me and said, "Sounds like you need somebody
00:12:42.100 | to talk to," and offered to do some masterminding, some coaching with me.
00:12:47.060 | And so we talk every week and it's really been helpful just to have somebody to talk
00:12:50.740 | to.
00:12:51.740 | Coaching is so valuable but it's often hard to find a good coach.
00:12:55.860 | And I just talk with him and I tell him what I'm working on.
00:12:58.060 | He tells me what he's working on.
00:12:59.220 | And as we were considering it through, I was just talking again about the fact I'd really
00:13:02.740 | love to sell my house to free up more time to execute on some of the balls that are being
00:13:07.900 | dropped right now with radical personal finance.
00:13:11.420 | And in consideration of it, after the call, I was just continuing to think about it.
00:13:14.900 | We talked about it but I just shared it as an aside.
00:13:17.660 | And then I decided to make some more phone calls and just check out the market again.
00:13:20.780 | And I called my brother who owns a duplex and I was asking him what he was renting,
00:13:27.100 | doing a survey of what he's renting it out for.
00:13:29.420 | And then all of a sudden I realized that his tenant had just moved from the other side
00:13:32.700 | of his duplex.
00:13:33.700 | So this was Friday at the end of July.
00:13:35.980 | It was actually July 24.
00:13:39.140 | Well he told me that his tenant had just moved out.
00:13:41.540 | He told me what the rents were and I was purely using it as market research.
00:13:45.540 | He said, "Go look at it."
00:13:47.140 | The reason I was using it as market research was I'd never been in the unit before because
00:13:51.380 | he'd always had it rented and there was no reason for me to go into the rental side of
00:13:55.900 | the unit.
00:13:56.900 | So I'd never been inside.
00:13:57.900 | Well, I went to the rental side of the unit.
00:13:59.180 | I had been in his side of the unit which was quite small and would simply not accommodate
00:14:05.900 | my family with our needs.
00:14:09.060 | But then I went and walked and he said, "Go look at it."
00:14:10.840 | So the next day, this was July 25, Saturday, I went and just popped in to look at the rental
00:14:16.620 | unit and I instantly knew that it was going to be a good plan and that we should move.
00:14:21.820 | And the reason is because when I went through the list of the priorities, the things that
00:14:26.100 | I needed in my family, I need enough space for my family to spread out, I need enough
00:14:31.140 | bedrooms for the kids, I need a washing machine.
00:14:34.780 | We do cloth diapers so that requires you to have a good washing machine and dryer and
00:14:38.020 | a nice clothesline to hang the diapers on.
00:14:41.380 | Things like that.
00:14:42.380 | I need a little bit of yard for the dogs so my wife can just throw them out of the house
00:14:45.780 | when they're boisterous instead of having to figure out how to take the whole family
00:14:49.740 | out with a stroller and go and walk them.
00:14:53.500 | Just looking at that, I instantly knew it would work.
00:14:55.580 | I instantly knew it was a good plan.
00:14:57.140 | Took a night, thought about it.
00:14:58.860 | Next day, talked to my wife about it and then I left town for Podcast Movement.
00:15:02.900 | I said, "Think about it."
00:15:04.420 | We talked about it for quite a while.
00:15:05.940 | We talked through some different scenarios and I said, "Let's just leave it alone until
00:15:09.100 | I get back from the Podcast Movement conference."
00:15:11.060 | Well, life has been tough since my baby girl was born.
00:15:18.420 | She's had some kind of issues with her stomach and nothing medically serious, just simply
00:15:24.740 | normal new baby problems.
00:15:26.900 | But it's been a real challenge working with her until we get past this, hopefully, about
00:15:31.940 | six-week phase when she's able to settle down a little bit more.
00:15:36.500 | But the reason for my mentioning was that while I was gone, it was just tough on my
00:15:39.780 | wife as far as working with an energetic two-year-old, almost two-year-old, and a very needy little
00:15:47.500 | baby.
00:15:49.900 | She had some time to think about it.
00:15:51.380 | Didn't make a final decision until I got back in town.
00:15:53.060 | I got back in town last week, last Tuesday, and we decided, "Yes, we'll go ahead and
00:15:57.220 | move."
00:15:58.220 | And one of the contingents of moving was I agreed to do some of the work for my brother
00:16:02.180 | who's the landlord.
00:16:03.820 | I agreed to go ahead and do some of the work for him on the unit.
00:16:07.420 | Fast forward, that was last Tuesday, and tomorrow, Thursday, we move.
00:16:11.340 | And so it's a very quick decision.
00:16:15.500 | But it's a very quick decision because I believe that one of the most important things to do
00:16:20.060 | is when you know what you want to do and you've thought through carefully all the different
00:16:24.740 | options, when you see what you should do, move.
00:16:29.820 | Act.
00:16:31.220 | If you're confident and you've considered it, once you've considered the decision fully,
00:16:35.900 | don't waffle about it.
00:16:38.180 | Act.
00:16:39.540 | Act decisively.
00:16:40.700 | Act quickly.
00:16:41.740 | But act.
00:16:42.740 | I've seen this happen with clients that I've worked with who faced financial distress.
00:16:47.660 | They faced that job loss.
00:16:49.740 | And instead of looking, "Take a week.
00:16:52.660 | Fine.
00:16:53.660 | Consider things through.
00:16:54.700 | But take a look at the budget and figure out how much money do I have and how long is it
00:16:57.620 | going to last?
00:16:58.620 | And if I do these certain things, how much money do I have?"
00:17:01.500 | Go out and test the job market.
00:17:02.780 | But if you can't—simple thing, let's talk about a house.
00:17:06.460 | If you can't get a job in a week and you've got two months of runway, don't wait to list
00:17:11.140 | the house until you're behind.
00:17:13.660 | List the house now knowing you can always cancel the sale.
00:17:16.860 | You can always reject a contract.
00:17:18.260 | Put a high price on it.
00:17:19.500 | But get an idea of what things—where things are.
00:17:23.140 | Now listing the house may not be the best decision.
00:17:25.260 | Maybe it's—maybe you can't find a better living situation.
00:17:28.260 | But the point is act quickly.
00:17:31.420 | But you can only act quickly if you've thought slowly, if you've war-gamed the scenarios,
00:17:37.800 | if you've considered what your needs are, if you've been clear of what your minimum
00:17:41.620 | acceptable standards are.
00:17:44.180 | For me, I wouldn't act quickly and move us into a one-bedroom studio apartment without
00:17:49.300 | a washing machine and without a yard.
00:17:51.400 | Those are below my minimum standards at the moment.
00:17:54.020 | But if you know what they are and if you can think about why you're doing what you're doing,
00:17:58.260 | then when you see the opportunity, you can move quickly.
00:18:00.820 | So that's what I'm doing, moving quickly.
00:18:04.940 | The final phase though is you've got to have priorities.
00:18:08.060 | You've got to prioritize your life.
00:18:11.460 | You simply can't have everything all at the same time.
00:18:16.820 | Right now, if you haven't put in the time and the work to build the foundation, I think
00:18:23.620 | that kind of pie in the sky thinking of, "I'm just going to have it all right now without
00:18:26.620 | putting in any work," is a bunch of baloney.
00:18:28.740 | It's nonsense.
00:18:29.740 | Now, I think you can't have everything or most things over time, but you've got to put in
00:18:35.060 | the work to build the foundation to where you can accomplish your goals.
00:18:40.020 | But you can't have it all at the same time.
00:18:42.740 | Right now, everything that you want, everything perfect and ideal today, unless you've already
00:18:49.900 | today is, again, after putting in the time and the work.
00:18:53.980 | But I think you can have what's most important to you if you know what's most important to
00:19:00.180 | you.
00:19:01.180 | It's been interesting to watch people's reactions because of the quick move when I say, "Yeah,
00:19:06.340 | I'm selling my house and I'm moving Thursday," for many people came out of nowhere and it's
00:19:10.580 | like, "What's going on?
00:19:11.580 | Are you in foreclosure?
00:19:12.580 | Are you falling behind on your bills?"
00:19:13.580 | They're like, "Joshua, what are you doing?"
00:19:14.580 | "No, it's okay.
00:19:15.580 | It's relaxed."
00:19:16.580 | But what happens is people immediately are going to filter your actions through their
00:19:23.180 | goals.
00:19:27.180 | It's interesting to watch that happen because for many people, their most important goals
00:19:32.540 | are lifestyle goals, but they define lifestyle differently than the way that I do.
00:19:38.700 | So for many people, buying a house is a crowning achievement.
00:19:41.940 | It's a demonstration of, number one, it's a goal that they've reached after years of
00:19:46.620 | work.
00:19:47.620 | It's a demonstration of their self-worth, of their journey that they've been on, and
00:19:52.660 | it's a very important process for their family.
00:19:57.620 | And I don't fault those things.
00:19:59.020 | If those are important for you, awesome.
00:20:03.580 | But it's not necessarily that for me.
00:20:07.580 | I watch people often and I've worked with people in this.
00:20:11.260 | They buy the dream house and then they spend all their time and dad and mom go off to work
00:20:16.500 | every day and they don't see their kids and they farm out their raising of their kids
00:20:19.660 | to someone that they pay and to the state.
00:20:22.980 | And I look at the lifestyle and I think, "That is hell.
00:20:26.340 | That is absolute hell."
00:20:28.140 | And I think, "But you're working to support this half a million dollar house and these
00:20:33.540 | $50,000 cars."
00:20:34.540 | Now, your money, your life, live it how you want.
00:20:42.300 | But to me, that's hell.
00:20:43.940 | I'd rather live in a little apartment and have a better lifestyle, not have to go off
00:20:48.700 | every day to a job I hate.
00:20:50.940 | I'd rather do work that's meaningful and important to me.
00:20:53.380 | I'd rather be together with my family.
00:20:54.540 | It's the reason why I married my wife.
00:20:55.740 | It's the reason why I had kids.
00:20:56.900 | I want to be with them.
00:20:59.980 | I want to farm out the most important 15,000 hours of their instruction to the state.
00:21:05.580 | So that requires me to set priorities.
00:21:07.820 | Now, I can't have it all at the same time right now.
00:21:12.100 | So I can't live in a million dollar house right on the water with my 43-foot yellow
00:21:18.780 | fin tied up to the dock and my beautiful writing studio and recording studio out back overlooking
00:21:28.900 | the water and with a nice $100,000 car parked in the driveway and with tens of thousands
00:21:36.380 | of dollars a month of passive income rolling in and a team of people all around the world
00:21:41.140 | who runs my business for me and I just simply do the work that I like.
00:21:45.260 | I can't have all that right now.
00:21:50.100 | I haven't put in the work yet.
00:21:53.500 | But I can have some other things that I want and I can prioritize the things that I want.
00:21:59.580 | So for me, my most important goals are lifestyle goals.
00:22:05.420 | But I just define lifestyle differently than the way that other people do because what
00:22:10.740 | I can do is I can live in a rented apartment and drive a cheap car and load up my family
00:22:16.780 | on a random Friday morning and drive down to the beach and eat breakfast or take our
00:22:23.780 | breakfast with us or eat breakfast at a little cafe and that costs me 30 bucks, not $3,000
00:22:29.180 | a month.
00:22:32.100 | I can have that lifestyle goal.
00:22:35.860 | But I can't have it all right now.
00:22:37.460 | I just have to choose.
00:22:38.460 | And so for me, my most important goals are those lifestyle goals.
00:22:43.020 | And because I know those are my most important goals, I have to continue to build the financial
00:22:48.420 | foundation under my life to allow me in the fullness of time if I ever care to, to have
00:22:58.060 | the house on the water with a 43-foot yellowfin tied up.
00:23:01.140 | I don't think yellowfin makes a 30 – 43 foot is probably a 37.
00:23:06.900 | Let's make it a 37-foot Bahama instead.
00:23:09.180 | I'm just kidding.
00:23:11.820 | Point is I got to build that financial independence.
00:23:15.060 | So that means at this point in time, every dollar I put into consumption is a dollar
00:23:18.940 | I can't put into investment.
00:23:21.820 | Now there's a point of consumption at which I need to do.
00:23:25.540 | There's a minimum level of consumption.
00:23:26.940 | Again, back to my studio apartment, I'm not willing to move into a studio apartment because
00:23:31.780 | it's $400 a month just so that I can have extra money to invest.
00:23:37.380 | That's below the minimum level of consumption for me.
00:23:41.380 | But I don't need to buy all the consumption that I could theoretically afford right now
00:23:47.980 | and then not have any money to invest.
00:23:52.020 | So when I combine those lifestyle goals and my financial goals which lead to lifestyle
00:23:58.220 | goals, they require massive investment.
00:24:01.820 | And so in this move, I'll be freeing up – I'll go over numbers at a future date, sure, but
00:24:06.420 | I'll be freeing up a good bit of money in cash flow.
00:24:09.060 | That's money that I need right now to hire help for my business.
00:24:12.420 | $500 a month hires a full-time virtual assistant overseas.
00:24:18.260 | And again, given the constraints that I'm at in my business with what I described earlier,
00:24:23.340 | I need help.
00:24:24.340 | Well, I'm not the Federal Reserve.
00:24:27.820 | I can't print money.
00:24:29.860 | So I can free it up from consumption so that I can move it into investment.
00:24:36.860 | Why do I go into so many details on this for you?
00:24:40.060 | Well, I'm doing it for a reason.
00:24:43.100 | If I were a positioning consultant and I were consulting with me, I would probably tell
00:24:47.820 | myself that what I'm doing is a mistake.
00:24:51.340 | The reason is because if you look at money, if you look at the way that people sell financial
00:24:55.340 | advice, the way that people sell financial advice is always from a place of having arrived.
00:25:00.740 | People look back and they say, "Well, look, I've done this and I've gotten rich and here's
00:25:04.220 | my book.
00:25:05.580 | Well, I haven't arrived."
00:25:09.140 | So I could put up the facade and this is what a lot of people do is why – I don't know
00:25:14.740 | the numbers.
00:25:15.740 | I couldn't guess.
00:25:16.740 | But there are a bunch of financial advisors, mainstream financial advisors who are very
00:25:20.780 | rich and drive a Mercedes because it's a great car and they love to drive it.
00:25:25.620 | And there are a bunch of financial advisors who are very broke and drive a Mercedes because
00:25:32.380 | they want you to know that they know what they're talking about and they're very broke.
00:25:37.740 | You can't know.
00:25:38.780 | You have no way to know.
00:25:42.100 | So the point is that people – a positioning consultant would say, "Position yourself.
00:25:48.120 | Set up your image.
00:25:49.260 | Set things up."
00:25:50.260 | Well, whatever.
00:25:51.260 | I guess I'm too much of a nonconformist to take all the advice that everyone gives.
00:25:57.180 | But I say that I wish someone had just shared some ideas with me and then modeled those
00:26:04.300 | ideas.
00:26:06.260 | I will always have the problem for those who want to result to any kind of – for those
00:26:12.220 | who want to result to an ad hominem attack against any argument that I present on radical
00:26:15.980 | personal finance or any position that I express.
00:26:19.060 | I will always have the problem of my own experience and my own starting point.
00:26:25.140 | I'm an expert on the technical side of financial planning and so I can present credentials
00:26:30.780 | and proof, certification of how much of an expert I am there.
00:26:35.860 | And if I restricted my content on this show to that, I would never have the problem of
00:26:41.020 | being open to an ad hominem attack against what Josh Regis and I were talking about.
00:26:44.820 | But because I don't restrict the content of the show there, because I talk about wealth
00:26:47.860 | building and lifestyle design and because I talk about goal setting and success, I do
00:26:51.860 | have that problem because I'm not a millionaire yet.
00:26:56.300 | The fallacy is if people say, "Well, Joshua, you're not a millionaire yet.
00:27:00.060 | So therefore you have nothing to teach."
00:27:02.820 | Well, that's not necessarily true.
00:27:06.300 | Now if I'm not a millionaire in 30 years or 20 years, then maybe that would be a better
00:27:11.340 | – that would be a rational criticism.
00:27:16.940 | But I do see some things clearly and my desire is to simply give you what I always wish existed.
00:27:23.020 | I'm going to share with you some important and valuable ideas and then I'm going to
00:27:27.300 | show you what I'm doing with those ideas myself.
00:27:29.700 | I'm not going to ask you to just take my word for it because I'm rich, take my word
00:27:35.220 | for it because I'm successful and just do it this way.
00:27:37.740 | I'm going to try to persuade you of the rationale behind my approach and you can choose
00:27:45.280 | what you want to do with it in your own life.
00:27:47.500 | But I'll demonstrate that I put my money where my mouth is and I practice what I preach.
00:27:52.620 | That's what I wish existed and my hope is together we'll be looking back in 20, 30,
00:28:00.300 | 40 years and this show will be sitting here as an encouragement to somebody who says,
00:28:04.780 | "I wonder where Joshua Sheets started from."
00:28:07.140 | Wouldn't it be cool if you could go back and hear the thinking of – I don't know
00:28:11.500 | who's the most beloved, Richard Branson or Bill Gates or some of these.
00:28:17.220 | Wouldn't it be cool if you could go back and hear what Richard Branson was doing when
00:28:21.780 | he was 30 and actually hear it in his own words?
00:28:26.140 | You can piece a little together in some articles but wouldn't that be cool?
00:28:31.100 | Because see, today everyone always talks about Richard Branson through the context of Necker
00:28:35.000 | Island.
00:28:36.000 | "Oh, he's got Necker Island.
00:28:37.000 | He's got a private island.
00:28:38.000 | He's got Necker Island.
00:28:39.000 | He's got a private island."
00:28:40.000 | Wait a second.
00:28:41.300 | Where were all the fans, the adoring fans when he was sleeping on a couch in a living
00:28:47.740 | room of a studio apartment somewhere pouring everything into Virgin Records?
00:28:55.460 | So that's the stage I'm at with Radical Personal Finance.
00:28:57.540 | I just simply am trying to share my own journey and share some of the ideas and concepts that
00:29:07.180 | I'm learning along the way and I hope it's encouraging to you.
00:29:09.340 | I always find it encouraging when people don't speak down to me but rather that I'm able
00:29:15.020 | to relate with the phase that they're in.
00:29:18.260 | I'll tell you frankly, life has been tough the last few weeks, incredibly tough.
00:29:27.180 | I've never been more stretched than I have been the last few weeks.
00:29:30.660 | I've never felt more incompetent at some things than I have the last few weeks.
00:29:38.080 | Many of you – some of you know.
00:29:40.260 | Again, small kids, unhappy baby that basically needs to be held all the time to be happy.
00:29:47.860 | It's tough.
00:29:48.860 | It's challenging.
00:29:49.860 | So if you're in a tough space with your progress, if you're in that stage of – you're
00:29:55.740 | the immigrant who's sleeping over their donut shop every single day to save money
00:29:59.860 | while they're building it, recognize that I'm there with you.
00:30:03.900 | It's tough.
00:30:05.420 | But here would be my encouragement to you and I encourage myself in it.
00:30:08.180 | I see this very clearly.
00:30:09.180 | It's not a made-up thing.
00:30:10.900 | I don't need to psych myself up.
00:30:12.740 | It's an adversity that we grow.
00:30:18.300 | We have this very strange and frankly flat-out wrong concept in modern US-American culture
00:30:24.860 | that we should be searching for the easy.
00:30:27.260 | I'm sick and tired of the easy, the overnight success.
00:30:31.140 | I'm sick and tired of the stories about how this person went from zero to a million
00:30:35.060 | in no time flat because what happens is when you have that as the perspective, you have
00:30:41.740 | that as the goal, then you look at – and then you don't hit it because the vast majority
00:30:47.020 | of people are never going to hit that overnight success.
00:30:51.420 | When you have that as the goal and have that as the perspective, then you look at your
00:30:54.820 | circumstances and you look at the reality and you think, "Oh, I'm doing something
00:30:57.860 | wrong.
00:30:58.860 | There must be something wrong with me."
00:30:59.860 | There's not.
00:31:02.460 | The things that are worth doing are not easy.
00:31:06.580 | Behind every overnight success story is a very long road that nobody knows about.
00:31:11.580 | I've even had to control this recently because people talked about radical personal finance.
00:31:17.420 | Next month, I'm giving a talk to a local podcasting group.
00:31:21.500 | As part of that, to establish my credentials, I'll talk about the fact that I had a million
00:31:25.160 | downloads in the first year thanks to you, the listening audience.
00:31:28.460 | A million downloads in the first year is an extremely unusual event in a podcast's history.
00:31:36.940 | Radical personal finance is at this point with our current listenership in the top 10%
00:31:41.060 | of all podcasts.
00:31:42.060 | We're heading as fast as we can to the top 5%.
00:31:48.260 | But there's a long history that people don't know.
00:31:52.940 | So what happens is someone meets you at a conference and they say, "Wow, you had all
00:31:57.460 | this downloads.
00:31:58.460 | You had all this listenership.
00:31:59.460 | How'd you do it?"
00:32:00.940 | Well, they don't know about the years and years and years and years of reading, reading,
00:32:07.780 | reading, reading, studying.
00:32:09.660 | They don't know about all of the week after week after week of Toastmasters meeting and
00:32:14.900 | creating speeches and sitting down and thinking about how to express ideas.
00:32:19.980 | They don't know about the hundreds and thousands of appointments with individual clients and
00:32:25.220 | talking about finance and understanding.
00:32:27.020 | They don't know about the thousand people that I've talked to that have listened to
00:32:30.500 | their situations and I understand.
00:32:32.100 | So when I come and talk about personal finance, it's not like I'm 21 years old and it's
00:32:37.380 | all a bunch of theory that I read in 300 finance books.
00:32:41.020 | It's actually having watched people.
00:32:45.940 | It's actually having listened to people.
00:32:48.100 | When I sit down to write a show most days, it's not from the very first place of never
00:32:54.940 | having written an outline of what I'm going to talk about.
00:33:00.140 | If you think at all that my pacing or tone of voice is at all engaging, it's not an accident.
00:33:07.700 | It's practice.
00:33:08.700 | If I can sit down and easily answer a financial planning question, if I can easily answer
00:33:15.180 | the technical or see the things put together, it's because I spent a whole lot of mornings
00:33:19.420 | pumping myself full of coffee at four in the morning trying to get through horrifyingly
00:33:23.940 | boring financial planning books.
00:33:29.340 | But somehow radical personal finance is overnight success.
00:33:31.740 | No, it's not.
00:33:34.340 | People don't see the 50, 60, 70 hours a week of putting together the shows.
00:33:39.020 | I get comments.
00:33:41.740 | It's funny.
00:33:42.740 | Funniest comment, I don't remember the name, but somebody commented on my site.
00:33:48.300 | If you look at radical, we've got the new website up in several months now.
00:33:52.340 | One of the things on the new website is what they call in the online business, they call
00:33:57.180 | a lead magnet.
00:33:58.180 | That's the little thing that I give away to you to get you to sign up and put your email
00:34:01.260 | address in there.
00:34:02.260 | It's supposed to be 10 top tips for your finances or Joshua's top 10 recommended personal finance
00:34:09.700 | books.
00:34:10.700 | I've got to write the thing.
00:34:11.700 | The problem is I can't figure out what to write and I haven't made the time to get it
00:34:14.260 | done.
00:34:15.260 | I'm not excusing myself for not getting it done.
00:34:18.020 | What's funny is that somebody commented on the show, on the show page, and they said,
00:34:22.420 | "Boo for the spam," meaning that the idea somehow that – I can't remember the full
00:34:28.500 | comment but it made me laugh because the idea was that I'm spamming somebody in exchange
00:34:36.280 | for their email address and I'm saying, "Here's a book that's not even written."
00:34:42.300 | If the person who was commenting actually knew the real story, the real story that for
00:34:46.500 | the last two and a half months I've been needing to write the thing but every single
00:34:49.580 | time I sit down and say, "Okay, I need to make it happen," then my baby starts crying
00:34:53.180 | or it's time to ship another show or it's time to prepare for something else that's
00:34:57.220 | more important or it's time to figure out how to do a mastermind call for the patrons
00:35:01.560 | who actually pay me money or it's time to go and encourage my wife who's utterly exhausted
00:35:06.580 | or it's time – you get the point.
00:35:09.100 | So I'm not excusing.
00:35:10.940 | It kind of demonstrates my incompetence with getting it done but at the end of the day,
00:35:14.660 | you got to prioritize.
00:35:17.340 | So why did I go off on that?
00:35:18.340 | My point in – here I am talking about experience and here I am rambling.
00:35:22.620 | I'll wrap up with just this.
00:35:24.580 | My point in sharing these ideas is that I'm sharing them with you for a reason.
00:35:27.920 | Number one, it's cathartic for me.
00:35:30.620 | Any podcaster knows it's cathartic to be able to speak into a microphone and share
00:35:34.400 | some things with your friends which is how I view you, my listening audience.
00:35:39.820 | Number two, I want to encourage you because I'm sick and tired of the mass popular culture
00:35:46.060 | around that's obsessed with overnight results, overnight riches.
00:35:51.660 | Nobody got rich overnight.
00:35:53.280 | Nobody gets rich quick and stays rich.
00:35:55.540 | It does not happen.
00:35:57.340 | And the cool thing about that is it's incredibly freeing because once you just simply toss
00:36:01.380 | that out as an idea and a mindset, then you can appreciate the journey and you can recognize
00:36:10.180 | and embrace the adversity and recognize the fact that you're going to tell stories about
00:36:14.340 | this someday and you're going to recognize the fact that success is the progressive realization
00:36:21.140 | of a worthy ideal, that the adversity is useful.
00:36:24.700 | It's shaping your character.
00:36:26.020 | It's molding you.
00:36:27.020 | It's transforming you.
00:36:28.020 | It's doing something in you.
00:36:29.940 | And yes, we do need a period of rest but rest is not the goal.
00:36:34.540 | Leisure is not the goal.
00:36:40.100 | I'll let you figure out what the goal is.
00:36:43.580 | My goals for me would come from worldview.
00:36:46.540 | I won't go into that today but I will just simply say leisure and rest are not the goal.
00:36:50.740 | Only in a few aspects of worldview are they.
00:36:54.600 | So I just want to encourage you.
00:36:56.380 | If you feel like you're in that process, just discard the concept of overnight excess and
00:37:00.980 | embrace the struggle, embrace the work and you'll look back and be thankful for it.
00:37:06.500 | And then here's the cool thing.
00:37:08.540 | If you are one of those rare people who is an overnight success due to a fortunate change
00:37:16.180 | in circumstance, a serendipitous timing of the world and your product or whatever it
00:37:22.580 | is that you're doing, you can enjoy that but you won't be destroyed by that because many
00:37:27.620 | people have been destroyed by that.
00:37:29.660 | When serendipity strikes and you're able to enjoy massive success, when that's placed
00:37:36.040 | onto a foundation and a structure and a framework of character, it won't destroy you.
00:37:44.260 | But if that was the goal and you don't reach it, it'll destroy you.
00:37:46.860 | And if that's the goal and you do reach it, you don't have the character, it'll destroy
00:37:49.180 | you as well.
00:37:52.340 | So I guess this is motivational hour with Joshua.
00:37:55.820 | Just a little bit of my story.
00:37:56.820 | Thank you all so much for listening.
00:37:58.220 | I was excited to announce to you that about the move and so I just wanted to share that
00:38:03.420 | with my friends.
00:38:04.420 | Looking forward to that, it gives us a good opportunity to simplify.
00:38:06.660 | It's always fun to get rid of stuff and simplify.
00:38:09.060 | The challenge we face in the United States of America is how to not accumulate stuff.
00:38:14.300 | So much more challenging than accumulating stuff in our world.
00:38:16.940 | I always feel so bad with some of the places that I've been and I always wonder who's listening
00:38:20.940 | to kind of understand that.
00:38:22.940 | But it's so tough to not accumulate stuff.
00:38:26.580 | So moving is a good opportunity to simplify.
00:38:28.500 | As my friend John McBride says, "Live the low drag lifestyle."
00:38:33.740 | Thanks for introducing me to that phrase, John.
00:38:35.380 | Low drag lifestyle.
00:38:37.500 | Tomorrow I will be releasing an interview with Cliff Ravenscraft.
00:38:40.860 | This is another interview that I did while I was at a podcast movement last week.
00:38:45.980 | It's an excellent interview.
00:38:46.980 | It's very long but it is excellent and it's a really, really cool story of his own personal
00:38:52.740 | journey.
00:38:53.740 | Cliff is a podcaster.
00:38:54.740 | He hosts a show called the Podcast Answer Man among other shows as well.
00:38:58.940 | But he's just got a great show and he has incredible candor about the process.
00:39:04.340 | I love highlighting his story because it's not an overnight success story but it is a
00:39:09.660 | success story.
00:39:10.660 | You'll hear that in the show.
00:39:13.260 | As you'll hear in tomorrow's interview also, he's been a big encouragement to me at some
00:39:16.620 | key points throughout my own personal journey.
00:39:19.780 | So check for that tomorrow.
00:39:20.780 | If I can get my gear set up in the new place by Friday, I will do my best to get a Friday
00:39:25.060 | Q&A show shipped but don't be surprised if it doesn't show up.
00:39:28.740 | And if I get the office set up, we'll try to be back at things again Friday if possible,
00:39:32.660 | if not, next week.
00:39:33.660 | Thank you all so much for listening.
00:39:35.260 | Have a beautiful day.
00:39:36.820 | I was supposed to say radicalpersonalfinance.com/patron.
00:39:41.100 | What are the skills I got to develop?
00:39:47.340 | If the show is helpful, go to radicalpersonalfinance.com/patron and tell me so.
00:39:51.300 | That's it.
00:39:52.300 | Cheers.
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