RPF0406-My_Plans_for_RPF_in_2017
00:00:00.000 | The LA Kings Holiday Pack is back!
00:00:02.000 | The perfect gift for the hockey fan in your life.
00:00:04.500 | A three-game pack starts at just $159 and includes a holiday blanket.
00:00:09.000 | Buy today and you'll receive an additional game for free.
00:00:12.000 | Don't miss out. Visit lakings.com/holiday today.
00:00:15.500 | Happy New Year, Radicals.
00:00:18.000 | It's 2017, and this year is going to be fantastic.
00:00:24.500 | Let's get it started.
00:00:26.500 | [Music]
00:00:42.000 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, the show dedicated to providing you
00:00:46.000 | with the knowledge, skills, insight, and encouragement you need
00:00:49.500 | to live a rich and meaningful life now, in 2017.
00:00:54.500 | While also building and working on your plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.
00:00:59.000 | My name is Joshua Sheets, and I'm your host. Thank you for being with me.
00:01:02.000 | Man, it's good to be back.
00:01:03.500 | It's been a difficult start to the year already, and it's only January 3.
00:01:07.500 | More on that coming up.
00:01:09.000 | [Music]
00:01:15.000 | Nothing like getting off to a difficult start on January 3.
00:01:18.500 | You know, with the holidays this year, January 1, Sunday, and then January 2
00:01:23.000 | off for most people, and I had some things I needed to attend to,
00:01:25.500 | so I went ahead and took it off as well.
00:01:27.000 | I considered canceling January 2 and going ahead and starting the show early,
00:01:31.000 | but I needed to finish up some things before getting started.
00:01:34.500 | Well, then this morning on January 3, I woke up, and I had planned to wake up
00:01:39.000 | very early and get to work early, and just like I had planned,
00:01:43.000 | I had some kind of bad stomach bug.
00:01:45.000 | And so that dogged my heels all day long, and here it is at 8.30 at night.
00:01:51.000 | [Laughs]
00:01:52.000 | On Tuesday, January 3, that I'm finally getting to the recording of the show.
00:01:56.000 | It's just been a tough day.
00:01:58.500 | But, hey, that's life.
00:02:00.000 | Tough day, but I'm getting you the show out, because that is one of the big things
00:02:04.000 | that is a major focus for me, which is largely going to be
00:02:07.000 | what I'm going to share with you today.
00:02:08.000 | Just a very personal show.
00:02:09.000 | Littled up my plans for 2017, a few changes that I just want to share with you.
00:02:15.500 | I try when I make changes on the show to let you know about them,
00:02:18.500 | so those of you who are long-time and regular listeners, you'll know about them.
00:02:21.500 | If you're not a long-time listener, feel free to skip this one and come back tomorrow
00:02:24.500 | for more focused, personal content about you.
00:02:27.500 | But today is just a little bit about me, some of the lessons that I'm learning,
00:02:30.000 | and some of the lessons that I've learned in the year that's just behind us, 2016.
00:02:35.500 | So today's show will be pretty brief and to the point.
00:02:38.500 | I've got to get to bed.
00:02:39.500 | I've got to get up before a.m. for a flight to Chicago tomorrow.
00:02:43.000 | I've got a quick two-day trip up to Chicago tomorrow.
00:02:46.000 | So, yeah, so let's go.
00:02:48.500 | 2017 is going to be a really great year.
00:02:52.000 | I'm very excited about it for me.
00:02:55.000 | And I also hope that it will be a great year for you.
00:03:00.000 | And I hope that I can contribute to that through the content here on Radical Personal Finance.
00:03:05.500 | In many ways, 2016 was a difficult year for me.
00:03:09.000 | It was a year of disappointment in many ways,
00:03:12.000 | and I'm going to share some of those disappointments with you,
00:03:15.000 | again, with the hope of encouraging you.
00:03:17.000 | I don't like it when people only share the good,
00:03:21.000 | the positive, the exciting, the enthusiastic,
00:03:24.500 | and don't share the difficult.
00:03:26.500 | I don't like it when people present an image of themselves that only includes the positive.
00:03:32.000 | I don't like it when people are fake.
00:03:35.500 | So, in light of that, I'm going to share with you
00:03:38.000 | some of the reasons why this past year has been difficult for me.
00:03:41.500 | Because I don't think it's fair if you only get one side of the story.
00:03:45.000 | For example, I know that many of you have followed the journey that I've been on
00:03:50.000 | with entrepreneurialism and Radical Personal Finance here,
00:03:54.000 | and kind of this lifestyle business that I've sought to create,
00:03:57.000 | and you've been building similar ones of yourselves.
00:03:59.500 | And it's very easy for someone like me to only talk about how great that is
00:04:03.000 | and how fantastic it is.
00:04:05.000 | But here's the reality.
00:04:06.000 | It's a new year, and I'm sitting here at 8.37 p.m. on Monday night, recording a show,
00:04:13.000 | and I've got to get up at 4 a.m. tomorrow to catch an airplane flight
00:04:16.000 | for a busy, busy few days.
00:04:18.000 | That's the reality of business.
00:04:20.500 | So, in order to be fair, I want to share with you
00:04:24.000 | kind of what's happened and what's happening,
00:04:28.000 | so that as we walk through 2017 together,
00:04:32.000 | that you can get the full picture.
00:04:34.000 | I hope you had a great holiday season, my family.
00:04:37.000 | We had a great time.
00:04:38.000 | Just returned back into town from a two-week road trip.
00:04:42.000 | The last couple of weeks.
00:04:44.000 | Back this past year in 2016, I bought a small RV,
00:04:48.000 | which was a long-time thing that I had wanted to buy,
00:04:52.000 | and went ahead and did it this past year.
00:04:54.000 | And so, we had a great time.
00:04:56.000 | I spent two weeks, took off about December, what was it, 15th?
00:04:59.000 | Meandered up out of Florida, and cruised up to--
00:05:03.000 | We cruised up the East Coast of the United States.
00:05:06.000 | We did-- We're calling it-- In our family, we called it
00:05:08.000 | the Great Lighthouse Tour of 2016.
00:05:10.000 | My son, my three-year-old son, is very, very into lighthouses.
00:05:15.000 | He just loves lighthouses.
00:05:16.000 | We live near the Jupiter Lighthouse here in Jupiter, Florida,
00:05:19.000 | and we often go down to the beach and swim and paddleboard
00:05:22.000 | underneath the Jupiter Lighthouse.
00:05:24.000 | And so, he loves that lighthouse, and so we toured him
00:05:27.000 | and took him all around, showed him the St. Augustine Lighthouse.
00:05:30.000 | We wound up going up the Tybee Island Lighthouse in Georgia,
00:05:35.000 | and we saw a couple of others as well,
00:05:37.000 | which we really enjoyed that.
00:05:38.000 | So, we had a great time and just took off work.
00:05:42.000 | I was behind, and I thought I was getting things done,
00:05:46.000 | and then life was just busy, but we had a great time,
00:05:48.000 | and I hope you had a great time as well.
00:05:50.000 | But one of the key things that I've done a lot
00:05:52.000 | over the last couple of months with 2016
00:05:55.000 | was really reflected on what worked and what didn't work for me.
00:05:59.000 | And probably the key insight that's the most important for me
00:06:06.000 | was to recognize that 2016 was a year of unfocused wandering.
00:06:13.000 | And this is not something that you want to emulate.
00:06:20.000 | Now, it's probably better, my wandering is probably better
00:06:23.000 | than some wandering I've had in the past.
00:06:26.000 | I certainly have had clear goals of what I wanted to do,
00:06:29.000 | but I haven't known how to get there.
00:06:31.000 | It's been one of the biggest challenges for me in my business
00:06:34.000 | and in my personal life, just trying to figure out
00:06:36.000 | how do I actually get from here to there.
00:06:39.000 | In short, the lack of a business plan for me,
00:06:43.000 | especially with radical personal finance,
00:06:45.000 | caught up to me this past year.
00:06:46.000 | Long-time listeners will remember that, as I've told the story,
00:06:50.000 | when I started this show, I did not have a business plan.
00:06:55.000 | Now, that's not a good plan starting a business.
00:06:58.000 | Generally, you want to have a business plan.
00:07:00.000 | Business planning is very important,
00:07:02.000 | and it's very important to be able to sit down
00:07:05.000 | with a business, with a spreadsheet,
00:07:07.000 | and if you're starting a new business,
00:07:09.000 | figure out what you're going to sell,
00:07:11.000 | where you think your customers are going to come from,
00:07:13.000 | how you're going to do that.
00:07:14.000 | That's very, very important.
00:07:15.000 | But I could not figure out any possible way for me to do that
00:07:19.000 | with starting this podcast.
00:07:21.000 | The reason was, the metaphor that I've used is,
00:07:25.000 | I felt like trying to figure out how to build a business
00:07:28.000 | that's based off of a podcast is kind of like figuring out
00:07:33.000 | how to become a multimillionaire
00:07:35.000 | by transforming yourself into a best-selling author.
00:07:39.000 | It's possible that you could become a multimillionaire
00:07:45.000 | by becoming a best-selling author.
00:07:48.000 | But the path to get there is not clear.
00:07:52.000 | It's not simple.
00:07:53.000 | It's not easy.
00:07:57.000 | And so, if you're going to become an author,
00:08:01.000 | all you can really do is just sit down and start writing.
00:08:03.000 | Now, you can study along the way
00:08:05.000 | what type of things you want to write about.
00:08:07.000 | You can practice your writing style.
00:08:09.000 | You can figure out who you're going to try to sell to,
00:08:12.000 | and you can start to create a plan.
00:08:14.000 | But to crack that nut on best-selling
00:08:18.000 | is really hard to design,
00:08:20.000 | especially if you don't have any previous experience
00:08:23.000 | as an author.
00:08:25.000 | Now, perhaps there are authors who can do it,
00:08:27.000 | but usually they're going to need to bring
00:08:29.000 | some significant experience
00:08:31.000 | or some deep, deep background in marketing
00:08:34.000 | or some really solid plan to the table.
00:08:36.000 | It's just not an easy thing to do.
00:08:38.000 | Well, when I started Radical Personal Finance,
00:08:39.000 | it was a similar thing for me,
00:08:41.000 | where I said, "Well, if I can build a show
00:08:44.000 | that people find useful and valuable
00:08:46.000 | and want to listen to,
00:08:47.000 | and if I can build an audience,
00:08:49.000 | then I know, because I've done my homework,
00:08:51.000 | I know there are a bunch of different ways
00:08:52.000 | that I can make a living from that."
00:08:54.000 | But I didn't know how.
00:08:57.000 | So I set that aside, pretty much,
00:08:59.000 | and just kind of worked on just learning how to do it,
00:09:03.000 | publishing lots of shows,
00:09:05.000 | trying to build an audience,
00:09:07.000 | figuring things out.
00:09:09.000 | And it was very helpful.
00:09:10.000 | Many of you found me during that time
00:09:12.000 | and started to listen.
00:09:13.000 | Well, the challenge was that back at the end of about 2015,
00:09:17.000 | I started to need to figure out how to transform
00:09:20.000 | and earn more from the podcast
00:09:23.000 | and earn more from my work.
00:09:25.000 | And so I didn't know exactly how to do that.
00:09:29.000 | Now, if you've ever considered podcasting,
00:09:30.000 | I want to make something very clear to you.
00:09:33.000 | From experience and a piece of advice,
00:09:36.000 | podcasting is a bad, bad business.
00:09:44.000 | I strongly discourage you
00:09:45.000 | from trying to get into podcasting as a business.
00:09:49.000 | The very best way for you to utilize something like a podcast
00:09:52.000 | will be as a component to your existing business
00:09:57.000 | or as a supplement in the marketing plan
00:09:59.000 | to your existing business.
00:10:01.000 | That's a much wiser approach to use podcasting.
00:10:06.000 | I would strongly discourage you
00:10:08.000 | from trying to build podcasting as a business.
00:10:13.000 | But I've been building podcasting as a business.
00:10:17.000 | And there's been kind of this constant struggle
00:10:19.000 | and a constant tug of war in wanting to do
00:10:22.000 | and knowing what I want to do.
00:10:23.000 | Let me give you some practical examples.
00:10:25.000 | The very best way for me as a financial planner
00:10:28.000 | to use a podcast would be as a form of marketing
00:10:31.000 | and outreach to my clients that I work with
00:10:35.000 | as a financial planner.
00:10:37.000 | That would be the very best thing.
00:10:39.000 | And if you're a financial advisor
00:10:41.000 | or if you're an accountant
00:10:42.000 | or if you are a salesperson or anything like that,
00:10:45.000 | I would encourage you to consistently create
00:10:48.000 | some sort of useful, valuable content
00:10:50.000 | for your client base.
00:10:52.000 | That's one way that podcasting can be really, really excellent.
00:10:56.000 | I still have a domain, Financial Advisor Podcast,
00:10:59.000 | where I want to teach financial advisors
00:11:00.000 | how to do a podcast.
00:11:02.000 | I haven't been able to get that done,
00:11:03.000 | but that's something that I think all financial advisors
00:11:05.000 | really should have a podcast, but not one like mine.
00:11:09.000 | Something different.
00:11:11.000 | That would be the best way to do it.
00:11:13.000 | But when I look at what I want to do
00:11:14.000 | and kind of what I enjoy doing,
00:11:16.000 | I don't want to go back to the world
00:11:17.000 | of individual financial planning.
00:11:18.000 | I like doing this.
00:11:19.000 | I like teaching.
00:11:20.000 | I like teaching in public.
00:11:21.000 | I feel like it's where I feel like my personal skills
00:11:24.000 | are the most useful.
00:11:27.000 | So all this past year, I've tried a little bit of this,
00:11:30.000 | tried a little bit of that.
00:11:32.000 | And you've heard all kinds of changes
00:11:34.000 | and just frankly a lot of confusion
00:11:36.000 | of me trying to figure out, "What am I doing?
00:11:39.000 | How do I do this?"
00:11:40.000 | And one of the biggest difficulties
00:11:42.000 | with my personality is,
00:11:44.000 | well, there's strengths and weaknesses.
00:11:46.000 | Most of our character traits can have a strength
00:11:50.000 | and also a weakness associated with them.
00:11:52.000 | And unfortunately, they often go together.
00:11:54.000 | You can't just pick all the strengths
00:11:56.000 | and not have the weaknesses.
00:11:58.000 | You usually have to be at least aware of your weaknesses
00:12:00.000 | and higher to your weaknesses is usually the best plan.
00:12:04.000 | Don't try to walk away from who you are,
00:12:06.000 | but try to higher to your weaknesses.
00:12:08.000 | So one of my major strengths is I'm a good starter,
00:12:11.000 | very good at starting things.
00:12:12.000 | And I'm also a good visionary.
00:12:14.000 | I am really, really good at creative thinking.
00:12:17.000 | I'm really good at seeing the big picture
00:12:19.000 | and seeing all of the different ways
00:12:21.000 | that I can get somewhere.
00:12:23.000 | And so I'm very, very good at seeing great ideas
00:12:26.000 | and I'm very good at thinking about,
00:12:28.000 | "Oh, I could do that. I could do this.
00:12:29.000 | I could do the other thing."
00:12:33.000 | I'm really good at charting the plan to get there.
00:12:38.000 | But then about a week later or a month later
00:12:41.000 | or six months later,
00:12:43.000 | I'm very good at seeing the next thing,
00:12:46.000 | getting distracted by the next thing.
00:12:49.000 | And it's a little bit humbling
00:12:50.000 | because when I reflect back on my life thus far,
00:12:54.000 | I can see how damaging that has been to me
00:12:58.000 | to not just stick with something,
00:13:00.000 | to not stick with something consistently.
00:13:06.000 | And when you bring that into the world of entrepreneurship,
00:13:08.000 | that character trait, it's a very difficult character trait
00:13:11.000 | because in my experience,
00:13:13.000 | the most difficult thing about being an entrepreneur
00:13:16.000 | is that you have to both decide what to do
00:13:20.000 | and then do it.
00:13:23.000 | There are many days as an entrepreneur
00:13:25.000 | where I just long for a boss to tell me what to do,
00:13:29.000 | someone to say, "Do this."
00:13:31.000 | I really do.
00:13:33.000 | But that's not the path that we're on.
00:13:36.000 | So I've got to figure out what to do and then do it.
00:13:39.000 | So here are just some focuses for me
00:13:41.000 | and some important changes that you should be aware about
00:13:44.000 | for the format of the show.
00:13:46.000 | Long-time listeners, you'll know that I have in the past,
00:13:49.000 | I've gone back and forth
00:13:50.000 | with different frequency of publishing of the show.
00:13:53.000 | This will be one of the biggest changes for 2017.
00:13:56.000 | In the past, in the first year and a half of the show,
00:13:58.000 | I did a show just about every weekday.
00:14:02.000 | I would guess on average, I would do,
00:14:04.000 | let's say out of three weeks, I would publish 13 shows,
00:14:07.000 | something like that.
00:14:08.000 | I was pretty consistent with every weekday having a show.
00:14:11.000 | Now, they weren't all great,
00:14:12.000 | and I had my reasons why that was important at that time.
00:14:16.000 | But one of the challenges that I faced
00:14:18.000 | with trying to figure out what to do
00:14:20.000 | was the thought that, "Well, maybe I'm doing too many shows.
00:14:23.000 | Maybe I should pull back."
00:14:25.000 | And I had a lot of people, and I needed to pull back
00:14:27.000 | because I didn't have a model
00:14:29.000 | where I was earning income from the show.
00:14:33.000 | I didn't have a model where I had the membership site,
00:14:36.000 | and then that pulled that back,
00:14:37.000 | and then I moved to Patreon,
00:14:39.000 | and then I brought on advertisers,
00:14:41.000 | and then I did fewer advertisers, et cetera.
00:14:44.000 | I just got back and forth.
00:14:46.000 | And, well, I got back and forth.
00:14:49.000 | And I had a lot of people that said,
00:14:50.000 | "Well, you just publish too much content.
00:14:52.000 | I can't listen to it all."
00:14:54.000 | And so there was that constant nagging in the back of my head
00:14:56.000 | saying, "Well, maybe I'm publishing too much,
00:14:59.000 | and maybe I should pull back."
00:15:02.000 | Well, for 2017, I've decided to go back
00:15:05.000 | to the five-day-a-week format.
00:15:07.000 | And there are a few important reasons,
00:15:09.000 | and I want to share them with you.
00:15:10.000 | I know that some of you will like that.
00:15:12.000 | Some of you won't.
00:15:13.000 | I apologize to those of you who don't,
00:15:14.000 | but it's the right thing for me to do
00:15:17.000 | at this point in time.
00:15:19.000 | And I think it'll really help me,
00:15:21.000 | and I think it'll really help a lot more people.
00:15:25.000 | Creating the podcast, creating a broadcast,
00:15:29.000 | is the thing that I feel the most skillful at,
00:15:32.000 | the thing that I most enjoy doing.
00:15:35.000 | It's very important to me.
00:15:36.000 | And I love that I can distribute the content freely,
00:15:39.000 | and I love that I can be a source of encouragement
00:15:43.000 | for many of you as you battle your way through
00:15:47.000 | the war field of your journey to financial freedom.
00:15:54.000 | That's probably my favorite thing.
00:15:57.000 | And I really love just doing what I'm doing right now,
00:16:00.000 | sitting down and creating the show.
00:16:03.000 | And I know because I've gotten hundreds of,
00:16:05.000 | and even thousands, hundreds of emails
00:16:09.000 | from people saying how helpful it has been.
00:16:14.000 | I love creating the show.
00:16:17.000 | And so I want to have my primary focus always be there,
00:16:21.000 | not on everything else, not on,
00:16:24.000 | let me rephrase that, excuse me.
00:16:26.000 | I want to have my primary focus to be there,
00:16:28.000 | at least at this point in time.
00:16:30.000 | Not on trying to create other things,
00:16:31.000 | not on trying to do all kinds of other things,
00:16:34.000 | just on creating the show.
00:16:37.000 | I'm not saying there's not more work,
00:16:39.000 | more additional areas of focus,
00:16:40.000 | but I want the show to be primary.
00:16:43.000 | Another thing I've learned is that I just have no way
00:16:45.000 | to predict what's popular or successful.
00:16:49.000 | When I go back through and I look at the analytics,
00:16:51.000 | and I look at the shows that are the most popular,
00:16:53.000 | I look at the comments and the feedback that I get,
00:16:56.000 | many of the shows that have been the most popular
00:16:59.000 | over the last couple of years,
00:17:01.000 | I never would have guessed that they were popular.
00:17:04.000 | Never would have guessed them.
00:17:06.000 | Some of them were the ones that I spent
00:17:07.000 | the least time working on.
00:17:10.000 | Some shows I labored on for hours and hours and hours,
00:17:15.000 | and they didn't move the needle.
00:17:19.000 | Some shows I sat down with a quick idea,
00:17:21.000 | and they'd been extremely popular.
00:17:24.000 | So I've learned I just can't predict
00:17:26.000 | what's popular or successful,
00:17:27.000 | but I do know that some percentage of my work
00:17:30.000 | will be extremely helpful.
00:17:33.000 | And in creating, in some ways, more consistent content,
00:17:39.000 | as long as it's not wandering all over the place,
00:17:42.000 | I feel I have a better chance of producing more work.
00:17:46.000 | I also have learned that it's very important for me
00:17:49.000 | to have a systematic, consistent schedule.
00:17:52.000 | And probably the biggest disappointment for me
00:17:53.000 | in the last year has been that I've finally recognized,
00:17:58.000 | yet again, that I don't get any more work done
00:18:01.000 | when I have less to do.
00:18:03.000 | Many of the comments that many of you shared with me
00:18:08.000 | would go something like this.
00:18:09.000 | "Joshua, hey, listen, we love having the show,
00:18:12.000 | "but pull back on the show a little bit
00:18:14.000 | "so you have time to do other things."
00:18:16.000 | And so I've done that in the past year.
00:18:17.000 | I've published fewer episodes
00:18:18.000 | and changed a number of things
00:18:20.000 | and pulled back on the format,
00:18:23.000 | pulled back on the number of shows.
00:18:25.000 | But I haven't been able to get other things done.
00:18:28.000 | And it's a little bit funny,
00:18:30.000 | 'cause I'll tell you one story.
00:18:32.000 | When I was in college, my freshman year of college,
00:18:35.000 | I was in the honors program
00:18:36.000 | at Palm Beach Atlantic University,
00:18:38.000 | here in West Palm Beach, where I went to school.
00:18:40.000 | And I took 18 hours of class,
00:18:42.000 | and it was rigorous, it was pretty difficult.
00:18:44.000 | It was challenging classes for me.
00:18:46.000 | I was in the honors program,
00:18:47.000 | so a lot of the literature was challenging.
00:18:50.000 | Also, I was doing calculus and never enjoyed calculus.
00:18:53.000 | And so it was a challenging semester for me.
00:18:55.000 | At that point in time also,
00:18:57.000 | I was working my way through school.
00:18:58.000 | So I had scholarships and grants
00:19:00.000 | that covered a significant portion of my tuition,
00:19:02.000 | but I had some shortfall.
00:19:03.000 | And so I wound up,
00:19:05.000 | for most of my freshman year of college,
00:19:07.000 | I worked three different jobs.
00:19:09.000 | I had one job that was kind of an on-campus work-study job,
00:19:13.000 | which was some bird-brain thing.
00:19:14.000 | I sat behind a desk, and as I remember,
00:19:16.000 | I sold candy bags for a dollar
00:19:18.000 | and checked people in and out of the residence hall
00:19:21.000 | where I lived in exchange for some random low-paying job.
00:19:26.000 | I did that a couple days a week,
00:19:27.000 | here and there in the afternoons.
00:19:29.000 | And then on Thursday nights and Friday nights
00:19:32.000 | and Saturday afternoon and Saturday night,
00:19:35.000 | I would ride a bicycle taxi
00:19:38.000 | around the downtown in West Palm Beach here.
00:19:42.000 | It's called City Place.
00:19:43.000 | And so I would ride this bicycle taxi around,
00:19:46.000 | and that was one of my jobs.
00:19:48.000 | And then on Saturdays,
00:19:49.000 | I would do construction for a friend of mine
00:19:52.000 | who was building an addition on his house.
00:19:54.000 | And so Saturdays were tough days.
00:19:56.000 | I'd go and we'd start work at 7 or 8 in the morning
00:19:59.000 | after I'd been up till 2 on Friday morning
00:20:01.000 | riding around for the bicycle taxi.
00:20:03.000 | And then 7 or 8 a.m., we'd start,
00:20:05.000 | and I'd do construction all day.
00:20:06.000 | And about 4.30, I'd quit, go take a shower,
00:20:08.000 | and then ride the bicycle taxi from about 5.30 till 2 a.m.
00:20:12.000 | So those were long days.
00:20:14.000 | But I did pretty well.
00:20:15.000 | I didn't, if I recall correctly,
00:20:17.000 | I didn't get straight A's,
00:20:18.000 | but I did A's and a couple B's here and there.
00:20:21.000 | And I did well, and I got through that first year,
00:20:24.000 | and I didn't have any loans.
00:20:26.000 | I paid my way through.
00:20:28.000 | Well, I worked a lot,
00:20:30.000 | and so I decided my second year of school
00:20:32.000 | that I needed to have a little bit easier.
00:20:36.000 | And I realized that I could just easily
00:20:37.000 | borrow money on student loans,
00:20:39.000 | and after all, I was going to graduate
00:20:40.000 | with a big business degree.
00:20:41.000 | I was going to make a lot of money.
00:20:43.000 | And so when I was making a lot of money,
00:20:45.000 | it would be easy for me to pay those loans back.
00:20:47.000 | It would be no big deal.
00:20:48.000 | So I decided to take fewer hours of classes,
00:20:51.000 | and I decided to work, not at all,
00:20:55.000 | just to live on student loans.
00:20:57.000 | So I dropped my course load, I think,
00:20:58.000 | to 15 hours per semester,
00:21:00.000 | and it didn't work at all.
00:21:04.000 | The problem was that my grades went down.
00:21:09.000 | Yeah, I think I hung out a lot.
00:21:10.000 | I have no idea where that year went.
00:21:13.000 | My grades went down.
00:21:14.000 | Actually, my second year of school,
00:21:15.000 | I dropped out of the honors program,
00:21:17.000 | and so my classes were even easier,
00:21:20.000 | and I took easier classes.
00:21:21.000 | My grades went down.
00:21:25.000 | And again, I don't know what happened to that year.
00:21:27.000 | I have almost no memories from that year.
00:21:29.000 | I think I had a lot of fun,
00:21:31.000 | but I don't remember it.
00:21:34.000 | My junior year, I studied abroad
00:21:36.000 | the fall semester,
00:21:37.000 | and in the spring I came back
00:21:38.000 | and got in a fight with the dean of the business school
00:21:41.000 | and dropped out of school.
00:21:43.000 | And then my senior year is when I went back to school,
00:21:45.000 | and at that time I wanted to finish
00:21:47.000 | and graduate on time in the four years,
00:21:49.000 | and so I took summer classes,
00:21:50.000 | and I took 18 hours of class,
00:21:53.000 | and I was working 40 hours a week.
00:21:56.000 | And my grades were the best they'd ever been.
00:22:00.000 | I got straight A's my senior year,
00:22:02.000 | all of my senior capstone business courses.
00:22:04.000 | I got straight A's,
00:22:05.000 | and I learned more that year
00:22:08.000 | than I had learned ever in the two previous years combined
00:22:12.000 | where I had been on campus.
00:22:14.000 | I learned so much.
00:22:17.000 | Now, I was busy, but I was structured,
00:22:19.000 | and I learned a lot.
00:22:21.000 | And I've never forgotten that lesson,
00:22:24.000 | that when I was the busiest,
00:22:26.000 | I learned the most,
00:22:27.000 | and I actually valued it the most.
00:22:28.000 | I got the most out of it.
00:22:33.000 | I had a similar experience
00:22:35.000 | when I was working as a financial advisor,
00:22:37.000 | similar type of thing.
00:22:38.000 | I was working a lot,
00:22:39.000 | had a very disciplined schedule,
00:22:41.000 | things were going good.
00:22:42.000 | Then I started to pull back on the time that I was working,
00:22:44.000 | and all of a sudden it was like everything pulled back.
00:22:47.000 | And now, again, in the last year,
00:22:49.000 | for me and my own personal productivity
00:22:51.000 | and my own personal work life,
00:22:53.000 | the same things happened.
00:22:55.000 | So I pulled back on the number of shows.
00:22:57.000 | I haven't been able to build up the other output.
00:23:01.000 | Now, don't get me wrong.
00:23:02.000 | I'm busy with other things that are important.
00:23:04.000 | After all, I've got young kids
00:23:06.000 | and involved in a lot of things
00:23:07.000 | that aren't related to radical personal finance.
00:23:09.000 | But it's been frustrating to me
00:23:11.000 | because I don't feel good
00:23:14.000 | when I'm not producing something useful.
00:23:19.000 | So I'm trying to learn the lesson from that
00:23:21.000 | and recognize that the old aphorism,
00:23:24.000 | "If you want something done, give it to a busy person,"
00:23:29.000 | is a common aphorism for a reason.
00:23:33.000 | It's true.
00:23:34.000 | If you want something done, give it to a busy person.
00:23:38.000 | I've recognized that the times in life
00:23:40.000 | that I actually feel the best
00:23:42.000 | and I feel the most fulfilled
00:23:43.000 | is when I'm working the most,
00:23:45.000 | not in the workaholic sense,
00:23:47.000 | but in the sense that I have a clear outline
00:23:49.000 | that keeps me focused.
00:23:51.000 | And so for my own benefit,
00:23:53.000 | I want to go back to the consistency
00:23:58.000 | that I had in the past.
00:24:00.000 | And I'll be doing that here in 2017.
00:24:02.000 | Now I want to do that in a couple of changes.
00:24:04.000 | There's been some other things
00:24:05.000 | that I've wanted to do on the show
00:24:06.000 | that I didn't feel fit into the statements
00:24:09.000 | that I've made in the past.
00:24:10.000 | For example, 2017, I'm going to cover more current events.
00:24:13.000 | There have been a lot of interesting events,
00:24:15.000 | and I think 2017 is going to be a very interesting year.
00:24:20.000 | Very interesting year.
00:24:22.000 | I don't know what it'll hold, but none of us do,
00:24:25.000 | but it'll be interesting.
00:24:26.000 | And I want to cover some of those current events.
00:24:28.000 | And I've made the choice not to cover them in the past
00:24:31.000 | because I viewed, and I've stated,
00:24:34.000 | that what I was doing was building a body of work
00:24:37.000 | that I wanted to stand as a kind of a standalone thing.
00:24:39.000 | I've had this dream, a thousand episodes,
00:24:41.000 | let me just create this thing that can stand there,
00:24:43.000 | and I've wanted much of the content to be timeless.
00:24:45.000 | Well, I'm changing that.
00:24:47.000 | Some of the content that I'm going to be going forward
00:24:49.000 | in the topics are not going to be timeless.
00:24:52.000 | I'm not anticipating doing a five-day-a-week talk show
00:24:55.000 | that's all about current events,
00:24:57.000 | but probably one out of five or one out of 10 shows,
00:25:01.000 | I'm going to deal with some current events.
00:25:03.000 | And I think that'll be important.
00:25:06.000 | I want to do it.
00:25:07.000 | I think it'll be helpful to you, the audience.
00:25:08.000 | I haven't talked about, "Dow at 20,000, what does it mean?"
00:25:11.000 | I don't interview people on those subjects,
00:25:13.000 | but I'm going to do that,
00:25:16.000 | and I think it'll be helpful.
00:25:17.000 | So that means that some of the past archives,
00:25:20.000 | some of these shows will not be as timeless
00:25:24.000 | as I've tried to keep most of the content in the past.
00:25:28.000 | It'll also mean that I'm going to be doing
00:25:30.000 | some repetition of topics.
00:25:32.000 | It's another thing that I've tried not to do.
00:25:34.000 | I've tried, if I've done a show on a certain topic in the past,
00:25:37.000 | I've tried not to do that, but the challenge is
00:25:39.000 | that I've recognized that's not serving you, my listener,
00:25:42.000 | in the best way.
00:25:43.000 | Because first, we need repetition.
00:25:47.000 | Repetition is the mother of skill,
00:25:48.000 | and we need to build that repetition
00:25:50.000 | in things that matter.
00:25:52.000 | But also because the archives are so large,
00:25:54.000 | many of you listeners now come in and just join,
00:25:57.000 | but you don't go back and listen to the archives,
00:25:59.000 | which is fine.
00:26:00.000 | That's your prerogative.
00:26:02.000 | But that means you're missing out on important concepts,
00:26:04.000 | and I know that in show 136, I covered blah, blah, blah,
00:26:08.000 | but you're never going to get that.
00:26:12.000 | So there'll be some repetition of topics.
00:26:15.000 | I'm not--that doesn't mean that I'm going through
00:26:17.000 | and going to be recycling and saying,
00:26:19.000 | "What was the most popular show from episode 200 to 300?"
00:26:21.000 | and redoing that, just simply saying that
00:26:23.000 | I'm loosening the guidelines that I've given myself in the past.
00:26:27.000 | Also, I'm going to do more interviews.
00:26:30.000 | Based upon time constraints and whatnot,
00:26:32.000 | I pulled back on the number of interviews,
00:26:34.000 | but I like doing them.
00:26:35.000 | I know you guys like them,
00:26:36.000 | and I've got a long list of people I'd like to interview,
00:26:39.000 | so I'm going to be doing more of those as well.
00:26:41.000 | And here's probably the biggest thing that you'll see
00:26:44.000 | starting on tomorrow's show,
00:26:46.000 | is I'm going to be bringing in, incorporating,
00:26:50.000 | many more ads here on Radical Personal Finance,
00:26:53.000 | and a couple of changes with that.
00:26:54.000 | I've had a love-hate relationship with ads in the past.
00:26:57.000 | I've done them, and sometimes I like them,
00:27:02.000 | sometimes I didn't like them.
00:27:03.000 | I've been very conflicted over it for various reasons.
00:27:08.000 | But at this point in time,
00:27:13.000 | in the last year,
00:27:14.000 | because I pretty much did very few ads,
00:27:18.000 | I walked past about six figures in revenue
00:27:22.000 | for Radical Personal Finance for my business.
00:27:25.000 | And I did it because I thought
00:27:27.000 | that I could make it up in other areas,
00:27:29.000 | but I haven't made it up in other areas.
00:27:31.000 | And I've just come to the conviction,
00:27:34.000 | especially with a third child on the way,
00:27:36.000 | it's not fair to my family.
00:27:37.000 | It's not fair to me, and it's not fair to my family,
00:27:40.000 | for me to walk away from six figures of revenue
00:27:43.000 | because of bringing on ads.
00:27:46.000 | Now, the deep concern that I have had in the past
00:27:49.000 | was how to do it in an ethical way,
00:27:50.000 | especially since I'm doing ads that are reads of my voice.
00:27:55.000 | And what I realized is that a lot of it
00:27:57.000 | was just simply due to years of being hounded on
00:28:00.000 | as a financial advisor.
00:28:02.000 | One of the things that's very difficult,
00:28:03.000 | those of you who are in the business will recognize,
00:28:05.000 | or if you're not, you can recognize,
00:28:07.000 | financial advisors are not, well,
00:28:12.000 | the public perception of people
00:28:15.000 | who go by the name of financial advisors is pretty low.
00:28:18.000 | That can be difficult.
00:28:20.000 | It can be difficult psychologically
00:28:22.000 | when you're constantly kind of stomped on a little bit,
00:28:30.000 | especially if you came from the type of business
00:28:32.000 | that I came from where I started off my career
00:28:36.000 | selling life insurance.
00:28:37.000 | And it takes a lot.
00:28:39.000 | Life insurance salespeople probably don't often
00:28:41.000 | have the best self-image.
00:28:43.000 | Now, today, I see the value of life insurance,
00:28:47.000 | and I could very happily say I sell life insurance.
00:28:50.000 | But when I was starting, I couldn't do that.
00:28:53.000 | And then there are so many conflicts,
00:28:54.000 | and people are so consistent about,
00:28:56.000 | well, you make all your money on commissions,
00:28:58.000 | so therefore you do the wrong thing.
00:29:00.000 | And then when you do finance,
00:29:02.000 | and well, you make all your money on commissions and fees,
00:29:04.000 | and financial advisor and broker,
00:29:06.000 | and it's expensive and blah, blah, blah.
00:29:08.000 | And I think that there was a lot of that.
00:29:10.000 | Because I started in the business so young,
00:29:11.000 | I didn't have the perspective of maturity
00:29:14.000 | where I was really confident in the value that I brought.
00:29:17.000 | And when I left in July of 2014
00:29:22.000 | to start Radical Personal Finance,
00:29:24.000 | it was kind of like a big relief for me
00:29:26.000 | to finally be away from the perceived
00:29:29.000 | conflicts of interest.
00:29:32.000 | It was psychologically a big deal.
00:29:37.000 | And with ads, my fear was,
00:29:41.000 | well, I don't want to go back into that thing
00:29:43.000 | where people say, well, Josh was on the take
00:29:44.000 | for such and such.
00:29:46.000 | And Josh was, I don't want to go back to the place
00:29:48.000 | where Josh was filtering his opinions
00:29:50.000 | because of, you know, advertiser XYZ.
00:29:54.000 | So I've dealt with that over the past year
00:29:56.000 | and kind of worked through all that
00:29:57.000 | and thought it through.
00:29:59.000 | And I guess in short,
00:30:04.000 | I don't believe I can not do ads at this point in time.
00:30:07.000 | Because ads can be very valuable and useful things.
00:30:11.000 | They can present us with information that's helpful
00:30:15.000 | and that's useful.
00:30:17.000 | And the other, you know,
00:30:20.000 | and I'm a little bit tongue-tied
00:30:24.000 | just simply because a lot of it is just personally
00:30:27.000 | kind of, it's humbling just to realize, well,
00:30:30.000 | all those things that I said,
00:30:31.000 | that it was my pride that was involved.
00:30:34.000 | My pride of wanting to say,
00:30:35.000 | well, I'm not on the take for anybody.
00:30:36.000 | I'm beholden to no man.
00:30:38.000 | Here I am.
00:30:40.000 | And it's humbling just to recognize
00:30:44.000 | when you have that much pride about something,
00:30:46.000 | but also to recognize the source.
00:30:47.000 | So bringing that all together is that
00:30:49.000 | I'm going to be doing ads on radical personal finance.
00:30:51.000 | There's going to be a great variety.
00:30:53.000 | Some of them will be financial.
00:30:54.000 | Some of them won't.
00:30:55.000 | I'm working with a rep,
00:30:59.000 | an ad rep who will be helping me bring advertising in.
00:31:03.000 | I'm going to be going ahead and getting back
00:31:05.000 | to some of you who've contacted me
00:31:06.000 | about potentially advertising on the show.
00:31:08.000 | And I basically kind of said, well,
00:31:10.000 | and hemmed and hawed and didn't give you rates
00:31:11.000 | and didn't do any of those things.
00:31:13.000 | And you'll be hearing a lot of ads going forward
00:31:15.000 | on radical personal finance.
00:31:17.000 | Because I really think, you know,
00:31:19.000 | in thinking about it,
00:31:20.000 | I think that'll be the very best way
00:31:22.000 | for me to focus on and bring you
00:31:24.000 | what I'm really good at bringing you.
00:31:26.000 | And to really focus on that,
00:31:27.000 | doing it better, doing it more professionally,
00:31:30.000 | and also building up the revenue that I need
00:31:32.000 | to be able to hire to my weaknesses,
00:31:34.000 | to be able to expand the team
00:31:36.000 | here at radical personal finance,
00:31:37.000 | to be able to hire to my weaknesses
00:31:39.000 | so I can do a better job serving more people.
00:31:42.000 | And also to help my family,
00:31:44.000 | because it's not fair to my family,
00:31:47.000 | to my children and to my wife,
00:31:49.000 | for me to maintain my pride
00:31:51.000 | in some kind of arrogant way of,
00:31:54.000 | I'm beholden to no one.
00:31:57.000 | It just doesn't work.
00:31:58.000 | So I'll be bringing more ads on in the future.
00:32:01.000 | Those are the basic things for the show
00:32:04.000 | for you to be aware of.
00:32:05.000 | Personally, I just shared,
00:32:06.000 | those of you who are interested,
00:32:07.000 | just a few things that I've recognized
00:32:09.000 | that have been real problems
00:32:10.000 | in my own personal habits over the last year.
00:32:15.000 | One of the major focuses for me going forward in 2017
00:32:18.000 | is I'm gonna be doing much more reading of books
00:32:23.000 | and less time on the internet.
00:32:26.000 | My reading habits have significantly
00:32:29.000 | deteriorated this past year.
00:32:31.000 | And it's really frustrating to me
00:32:33.000 | because what I've realized is
00:32:35.000 | when I stop reading, I stop growing.
00:32:40.000 | And then I don't feel like I have anything to give.
00:32:42.000 | I don't have fresh information.
00:32:44.000 | And that happened a lot with me this past year.
00:32:49.000 | Because I stopped reading as much,
00:32:50.000 | I stopped being as inspired,
00:32:51.000 | and I felt like I was draining my reserves
00:32:54.000 | of ideas and of energy and of excitement.
00:32:58.000 | And just, I kind of felt like it was same old, same old.
00:33:02.000 | So for me, a big focus for this next year
00:33:05.000 | is doing more reading
00:33:07.000 | and just spending less time on the internet.
00:33:09.000 | The internet is an incredible blessing,
00:33:14.000 | but to me it's also been an incredible source of stress.
00:33:18.000 | And so walking away from a lot of it,
00:33:21.000 | just gonna be spending more time me,
00:33:23.000 | me and authors, reading books,
00:33:26.000 | talking with authors through their books.
00:33:28.000 | And I'm excited about that.
00:33:30.000 | I'm gonna be spending a lot more time thinking and creating,
00:33:34.000 | and I'm just gonna allow less noise in.
00:33:37.000 | The election of this past year,
00:33:39.000 | as much as I worked so hard to stay away from it,
00:33:43.000 | but still it just kind of sucks you in, right?
00:33:46.000 | I think we're probably, many of us are guilty of that.
00:33:49.000 | My wife is so good at staying under,
00:33:51.000 | she says, "I live under a rock.
00:33:53.000 | I don't want to know about that stuff."
00:33:54.000 | And I'm so jealous of her sometimes
00:33:56.000 | because my character is too weak and I get sucked in
00:33:59.000 | and I want to read this and I want to get involved.
00:34:01.000 | But man, is all that noise stressful.
00:34:03.000 | I want to spend more time thinking
00:34:05.000 | and more time creating this year.
00:34:07.000 | And then back to the area of focus,
00:34:09.000 | recognizing that lack of focus has been,
00:34:12.000 | has really hurt me in this past year.
00:34:15.000 | I am forcing simplicity onto myself.
00:34:18.000 | And I just give like a very simple example.
00:34:21.000 | I have a love-hate relationship with task lists
00:34:25.000 | and to-do lists and productivity systems, et cetera.
00:34:29.000 | I am an idea person.
00:34:31.000 | I can come up with ideas so quickly.
00:34:35.000 | And I also have a great deal of confidence
00:34:38.000 | in my ability to execute on ideas.
00:34:40.000 | So I am so good at giving myself things to do.
00:34:43.000 | And when I build out,
00:34:47.000 | if I go through a goal-setting exercise
00:34:49.000 | or I build out a productivity system
00:34:51.000 | or something like that,
00:34:52.000 | I can fill that thing up so quickly.
00:34:54.000 | And so what happens is I'll sit down
00:34:57.000 | and I'll start organizing myself
00:34:59.000 | and I'll create projects and goals
00:35:01.000 | and sub-projects and task lists
00:35:03.000 | and things like that.
00:35:04.000 | And before you know it,
00:35:05.000 | I got 400 things on my to-do list.
00:35:07.000 | And then I become so overwhelmed by it
00:35:09.000 | that I just delete the whole system,
00:35:11.000 | throw the whole thing away and start fresh.
00:35:13.000 | It's a common cycle over about every six months.
00:35:17.000 | Well, that's not helpful.
00:35:20.000 | That hasn't been helpful to me.
00:35:22.000 | So I'm forcing this year a lot of simplicity on myself.
00:35:25.000 | I am not permitting myself
00:35:27.000 | to use any kind of digital list-making system.
00:35:32.000 | Rather, I'm forcing myself to keep it entirely written.
00:35:36.000 | And so I've been doing this for a few months,
00:35:38.000 | but it's so helpful to me.
00:35:40.000 | But I'm forcing myself to write my to-do list manually
00:35:43.000 | on paper with pen and paper
00:35:45.000 | and then to rewrite it about every few days.
00:35:48.000 | That way, I have to face the things
00:35:50.000 | that I have on there and say,
00:35:52.000 | "Do I really want to do this
00:35:54.000 | or is this just one of your,
00:35:55.000 | you know, Joshua, this is just one of your great ideas?"
00:35:58.000 | If I really want to do it, then I can rewrite it.
00:36:02.000 | But if not, what happens, I get tired of writing it
00:36:04.000 | and I can just go ahead and scratch it off.
00:36:06.000 | That's been really, really helpful for me.
00:36:08.000 | So those are some simple areas for me
00:36:12.000 | that are big areas of focus for me.
00:36:16.000 | I have some significant goals in 2017.
00:36:19.000 | Very excited about this year that's coming up.
00:36:22.000 | And I'm looking forward to sharing it with you.
00:36:28.000 | I'm so excited.
00:36:30.000 | I could go into so many more things, different type.
00:36:33.000 | I'm going to do more book reviews.
00:36:34.000 | I'm going to do more author interviews.
00:36:36.000 | I've got a lot of exciting plans for this year.
00:36:38.000 | I'm trying to keep some of those ideas out
00:36:41.000 | and just let them come.
00:36:42.000 | I just wanted to basically share
00:36:44.000 | those important announcements with you
00:36:46.000 | so that you would be in the loop
00:36:47.000 | and not surprised with some of the changes
00:36:49.000 | over the coming days.
00:36:51.000 | 2017 is going to be a great year.
00:36:52.000 | I look forward to sharing it with you.
00:36:54.000 | I hope that many hundreds of you have been joining
00:36:56.000 | the Radical Personal Finance Facebook group.
00:36:58.000 | Thank you for that.
00:36:59.000 | Some awesome discussions going on.
00:37:01.000 | I hope you guys are appreciating that way
00:37:03.000 | of connecting with one another.
00:37:05.000 | And I'm going to continue growing here
00:37:08.000 | in a scalable way.
00:37:10.000 | Thank you for your patience with me as I'm learning.
00:37:13.000 | It's very humbling to have all your learning
00:37:16.000 | in front of thousands of people.
00:37:18.000 | It's very humbling.
00:37:20.000 | But the commitment that I made at the beginning
00:37:23.000 | is I'm trying to stick through it,
00:37:25.000 | which is why I'm sharing some of these things with you,
00:37:28.000 | is to share the good and the bad.
00:37:33.000 | Share the real.
00:37:35.000 | If we have the ability to communicate with people
00:37:38.000 | and they put up walls,
00:37:40.000 | then how is that helpful?
00:37:42.000 | What happens is you wind up thinking
00:37:44.000 | that you're the only person.
00:37:46.000 | Entrepreneurial endeavors are tough.
00:37:50.000 | Seth Godin wrote a book called "The Dip."
00:37:53.000 | And in many ways, my hope, I think,
00:37:56.000 | this last year for me has been the dip.
00:37:58.000 | I hope it was the dip.
00:38:00.000 | I hope that means we're on the upside there.
00:38:02.000 | But that's life.
00:38:06.000 | Life is not all straight.
00:38:08.000 | It's not all straight compound growth.
00:38:10.000 | It's not always fantastic.
00:38:12.000 | There's a lot of learning along the way.
00:38:14.000 | And I hope that you're going to be able to
00:38:16.000 | take some of my lessons.
00:38:18.000 | Be back with you tomorrow.
00:38:20.000 | If I miss tomorrow's show,
00:38:22.000 | it's just simply due to the fact that I was sick today.
00:38:24.000 | And my apologies.
00:38:26.000 | But I plan to do a show on RVs.
00:38:28.000 | And I'll share with you just some of the things
00:38:30.000 | that I've learned,
00:38:32.000 | especially the last two weeks traveling with my family.
00:38:34.000 | I love RVs.
00:38:36.000 | I think they're awesome.
00:38:38.000 | And I've got some radical ideas around them
00:38:40.000 | that I think will be helpful.
00:38:42.000 | Then I will do that with a couple of...
00:38:44.000 | I'll share with you a couple of interviews.
00:38:46.000 | And thank you for being with me.
00:38:48.000 | I'm excited about the coming year.
00:38:50.000 | And I thank you for listening
00:38:52.000 | and for walking on this journey with me.
00:38:54.000 | I will keep doing everything I can
00:38:56.000 | to improve and to get better,
00:38:58.000 | to serve you more effectively
00:39:00.000 | on your path to financial freedom,
00:39:02.000 | to walk with you each and every day.
00:39:04.000 | Thank you for your patience.
00:39:06.000 | [music fades out]
00:39:08.000 | [MUSIC PLAYING]