Hey parents, join the LA Kings on Saturday, November 25th for an unforgettable kids day presented by Pear Deck. Family fun, giveaways, and exciting Kings hockey awaits. Get your tickets now at lakings.com/promotions and create lasting memories with your little ones. Today I'd like to give you a lens for your mental glasses and we're going to call this lens scale.

I'd like you to view the world, especially the world of financial advice, through the lens of scale. Welcome to the Radical Personal Finance Podcast. My name is Joshua Sheets and today is Wednesday, January 7, 2015. Thank you for being here. This is the show where each and every day I come to you and try to give you the information that you need to successfully pass through the maze that is the field of financial advice.

Hopefully going to help you avoid the landmines and find the real targets, the real good stuff that can help you. One of the things that I want to talk about today is basically applying a concept that I think of as a concept of scale to your mental filters as you are looking at the world of financial advice and consuming financial media.

I haven't really ever heard anyone talk about this, so this may be one of the ideas that's unique to me. Just something that's come to me is as I've thought about trying to answer the question that I get asked often of how do I find a good financial advisor, and I realize that I kind of do this myself as I apply a filter of scale to everything that I consume.

Let me explain. When people ask me how to find a good financial advisor, I immediately ask back, "Well, what do you want a financial advisor to do for you? What do you need?" Because the term financial advisor is an extremely ambiguous term. That can include a lot. That could include, on one end, I was thinking of this morning I was very briefly having some internet problems with my internet, and so I was using the opportunity just to real quick do some quick shopping around and see if I could get a better deal on my internet service.

I was thinking, "Why am I doing this? Why am I sitting down and just taking 15, 20 minutes to make a couple of quick phone calls and see if I can get a better deal on my internet service?" Well, because if I can knock off, it's part of my January working on utilities and how can I decrease my utility consumption, but if I can knock off 20, 30, 40 bucks a month from my internet bill just by making some phone calls and asking for some better deals, then that's a dramatic benefit to my financial life.

That's a huge benefit. On the one hand, if I can find a financial advisor, somebody who can guide me through that process of just simply how can I get a better deal on my internet plans, that can save me a substantial amount of money over time. Now, on the flip side, I've also been thinking about some articles.

I was talking with a friend, I think it was last night, about some articles that I was reading in the context of some of my tax planning shows before the holidays about the band U2. I was reading some articles when I was preparing the show about some of the moves that they made moving their world headquarters for their – or excuse me, moving their royalties from Ireland to Amsterdam.

Essentially, what had happened is for a long time, Ireland was offering something called an artist's exemption where artists could avoid paying taxes on their songwriting royalties but not other aspects of their business, not their tours or their performances. They could avoid paying tax on their songwriting royalties, which was a huge savings.

According to a couple of articles, this was old news. This is years ago that the articles came out. I was just reading some very old articles about it. This was a plan that many artists had taken advantage of. Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, other artists had really done just a really phenomenal job with their planning.

U2, however, needed to move and they moved their benefits from – they moved their royalties out of Ireland into the Netherlands. I was thinking to myself, "What an interesting tax problem to work on and what an awesome specialized field of financial advice." But to find that type of financial consultant who is able to help with how do we transition this property ownership from one tax jurisdiction to another tax jurisdiction, that's an incredibly, incredibly specialized field of knowledge but it also falls under the frame of financial advice.

I've realized that I see this constantly throughout the financial media. I'll have somebody sitting in my office who's relatively low income just getting started on their savings plans and they don't have much money saved in a savings account even as just a basic buffer or to take advantage of things like bulk buying to save money or taking advantage of a deal on new equipment that they need for their life.

They're talking to me about how do I hold gold and silver coins offshore. I'm thinking, "Why would you even bother with spending any time on that concept?" Yes, it's certainly interesting and it's certainly a useful planning mechanism but come on. There's no reason in the world that you should be buying gold and silver coins offshore unless you're doing it as pure speculation.

If you're doing it as pure speculation, why would you be speculating with a physical instrument like that? It's just way too much hassle, way too much cost and way too much of a problem. Now on the flip side, you also scratch your head a little bit if you're working with somebody who's incredibly wealthy to whom somebody for whom a latte every day or two or three times a day is completely irrelevant or they can go and buy anything that they want to buy and you're thinking, "Why are you wasting your time on this minutiae of these tiny little deals when you could be doing much bigger deals?" I realized that as a general population of interested individuals, we're not taught to apply the lens of scale to our lives to say, "What do I actually need now?

What's important to me now?" If I'm living in the United States and I'm married and have a family and have a business or just basically a median wage earner, I don't have any dramatic income tax liability for which the sole purpose is going to be a reason for me to expatriate to another country.

I can easily wipe it out with a few simple techniques. For me to spend time thinking about how do I move my business to Puerto Rico or how do I move to the Cayman Islands, I mean, hey, if you want to go to Puerto Rico or the Cayman Islands or Asia in some capacity, that's fine.

But there's no point in spending a lot of time thinking about it at that stage when you could be spending your time thinking about and learning about ways to increase your income. That's a better investment of your time. One of the things that I think we need to be very careful of and very conscious of is the fact that we all have a limited amount of time.

And we should spend that time in ways that are going to enhance our goals, in ways that are going to get us closer to what we want. When you invest your time into learning about something or into studying something, make sure that it actually matters. Make sure that it's actually important.

Now, the good thing is you can build habits at an early age. So let's say you build a habit of thrift and frugality at an early stage when you're not earning a lot of money. Well, that habit will follow with you. And even when it's irrelevant, you probably still fall into the habit of making wise choices that are going to enhance your wealth.

But make sure that if you're just at the beginning stage, don't spend a lot of time focusing on things that aren't going to help you. Focus your education and your learning and your reading and your study on things that are immediately going to help you. When you're starting off in life, you probably need to focus primarily on your income and on your expenses, not on your investment plan.

You need to focus on becoming hugely valuable to your employer and to your customers. You need to focus on your expenses. So at an initial stage, figuring out how to save money on groceries with excellent couponing strategies can be an incredibly valuable use of your time. Maybe playing some kind of credit card points game so that you can stay at a fancy hotel on vacation and fly there for free.

This might be an incredibly valuable use of your time. But at some stage, it might not be. When you're just getting started, don't spend a lot of time focusing on how to buy large commercial properties such as shopping malls. Spend your time focusing on how, within your means, within your bracket, so to speak, how can you get a good deal on fixing and flipping starter homes?

Or how can you get into the mobile home business and figure out an arbitrage opportunity on that? Don't spend a lot of time thinking about how do I move gold bullion coins to Switzerland. That's unnecessary for you. Focus on something that you can actually apply to your specific scenario.

Now on the flip side, if you're trying to run a $10 million investment portfolio or a $50 million investment portfolio, it's kind of hard to figure out how to do that on $40,000 or $50,000 pieces of real estate. Now, in order to maximize your time, unless you've been able to build a business structure that can handle it with those small properties, you're going to need to necessarily increase the size of your deal and move to a different market.

Now, obviously, there are caveats to that. For example, invest in what you know, invest in what you're focused on. But focus, invest in what you actually have an ability and a capacity to move intelligently with. But don't spend time where it doesn't matter. For somebody with a low income, perhaps tax qualified accounts are not necessarily as important.

For somebody with a medium income, tax qualified accounts can be incredibly important. For somebody with a massive income and massive net wealth, the tax qualified accounts that are easily available are not really that important. So you've got to figure out where am I in or where are you in your plan?

Where are you? How big are you? How big of a fish are you? And where should you be spending your time? And that's going to affect how you find the type of advice that you need. I would love it. One of the changes that I would love to see in our culture is that we've stopped thinking about investing purely within the context of stocks and bonds and insurance contracts and real estate and because those are the probably some of the major ones.

I would love it if we would start looking at investing comprehensively and recognize that we're going to be investing in different things at different points in our life. Think of the concept of investing in something like the tools of your business. On yesterday's show, I shared how one of the things that I'm doing is I need to improve some of my skills with just some of the simple software tools that I use every day.

But I need to become lightning fast and completely comfortable with some of the software tools. I've recognized that I'm not quite as quick with Evernote. I'm not quite as quick with Nozbe, my to-do list as I need to be. I'm not fully comfortable with all the keyboard shortcuts. I'm not fully, it's not fully intuitive for me at this point.

So I need to upgrade my skills. And I'm often shocked at how few people think about something like this. If you're working every day with a program, you should be investing in training for that program and a knowledge for that program. Whatever it is, and you should learn how to become ruthlessly efficient.

Consider for example, if you were a photographer perhaps on the side or a commercial photographer and you're looking to do better and use that photography as part of your economic engine, isn't it worth a little bit of time learning to become expert with Photoshop or whatever the applications are that you use to edit your pictures?

And if you can be faster and more proficient, take the time to understand how the presets work and setting those things up, that is incredibly valuable to you. And that might very well be the best investment of your money and in your time. But on the flip side, at some point in time, that's probably not going to be the best investment of your time.

And only you are going to know where that change is going to happen. One of the challenges of, I think I talk about this probably a little too much on the show, but I think I'll overemphasize it because it's under-emphasized in our culture. Because of the things that we in the professional financial services business have done, we've focused all in financial stuff and we've essentially broken the term financial advice to simply mean stocks, bonds, and maybe real estate and banking products and insurance products.

And that's to our detriment. We've hurt ourselves by doing that. So because it's become overemphasized and when people think about investing, they immediately think about stocks and bonds, then that's probably why I tend to overemphasize skills and tools. But back to the concept of scale now. Let's say that you've got $10,000 extra in your annual budget that you're trying to figure out how to invest.

Do you really need to invest $10,000 in Photoshop training? I'd be surprised. Maybe you do, but I'd be surprised. But do you need to invest $1,000 in Photoshop training and $9,000 in studying with a world master? I don't know. Only you can know that. I can't know whether studying with a world master, whether you're the type of person who's going to implement those techniques, implement those skills, implement that networking opportunity, and that's going to make a bigger difference than the growth of the McDonald's stock that you hold in your portfolio will.

Only you can know. But you need to apply that concept and look at it holistically. At one stage, investing the $10,000 into studying with a master and your Photoshop skills might be good, but then the next year, you've got $20,000 extra. It might be the time to start buying some McDonald's stock or buying the rental house next door or investing in opening the storefront location for your business.

Whatever's applicable to your life. Make sure that you're thinking about the advice that you're getting within the context of scale and you're looking for advice that's going to help you at this stage of your life. If you're just getting started and focusing on your budget planning, and I do a show on Radical Personal Finance about estate planning, complex estate planning, it might be interesting for you to listen to if you're just going to look at it as entertainment.

But if you have two shows sitting there in your feed and one is about budget planning and the other is about estate planning, skip the estate planning one. Now, on the flip side, if you're a multimillionaire and there are two shows sitting on your feed and one is about budget planning and one is about estate planning, skip the budget planning.

It's probably not something that you need to spend time thinking about. Probably not. Could be. Only you are going to know that. My concern is that in our society, we spend a little bit too much time making one-size-fits-all suggestions. We spend a little bit too much time talking about retirement accounts and not enough time talking about how to please your boss or how to please your customers.

Both are important, but in terms of what's going to make the biggest difference, having a happy boss or happy customers is going to make a much bigger difference now than the right retirement account. Now, fast forward, we got to get the right retirement account because otherwise, there may be some problems.

Let me give you a couple of scenarios just that I was thinking about. I've been thinking about doing an update to my how I would become a multimillionaire at Walmart show. That's one of the more popular shows that I've gotten more positive feedback on, but I've also gotten a number of people saying, "Josh, you just don't understand what it's like." I've wanted to provide a bit of a rebuttal for that thought process.

Someday, maybe I will. I try to be very realistic and in touch with reality. I'm not a big fan of just platitudes without substance, just simply saying, "We've all got to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps without saying, 'How do we actually do it?'" I'm also not a fan of stupidity and of people making stupid choices.

I think it's our responsibility to teach and to help other people to not make stupid choices and also to encourage them to help themselves and to come alongside and help as we're able to. There's a lot in that. I won't go any deeper into it right now, but I think constantly about how can I help somebody who's just starting off.

Let me give a couple of case studies that occurred to me. I was thinking about this from the context of entry-level jobs. Again, I've shared with you that one of my dreams with this show is that someday, somebody will reach out to me and say, "Joshua, I was broke.

I was poor. I didn't have any money. I didn't have anybody who was teaching me anything. I stumbled across your show on my phone and I started listening and now I've been able to do it. My goal is to provide information that can be implemented by somebody along the way." Here was just an idea that I thought of as I was thinking about how would I focus on developing a financial plan.

I was thinking about somebody starting as an entry-level fast food worker. We often make the joke in our society about burger flippers, that you're just going to flip burgers. This joke really annoys me personally. If you want to get me going face-to-face, just make some snide remark that's critical of people flipping burgers.

I think that it's an incredibly valuable starting point. I think that just for people who are willing to go and work at gainful employment and provide valuable, important services in exchange for a fair wage that's set by the market, to me that's what things are built upon. What annoys me is I've done a bit of financial planning for people associated with, for example, with McDonald's franchises.

McDonald's has one of the most amazing development programs of many of the companies. McDonald's has a really amazing development program. There have been many, many people who have started flipping burgers as teenagers and built massive empires of wealth. I like to hold that perspective. Yes, I hold it realistically with an appreciation of the challenges that certain people can face, but it is important to me to hold that as a perspective.

I was just thinking. I was kind of reprising my Walmart example. I was thinking, "What if I started off in fast food?" Knowing what I now know, if I were coaching myself or coaching someone else who was from a disadvantaged background, didn't have the opportunity for prestigious schooling, didn't have a wide social network, and basically just was able to start off on an entry level as a fast food worker, what would I encourage them?

First of all, I would affirm them for their choice. I would say, "Awesome. What a tremendous place to start. You're gainfully employed. You're willing to work. You're willing to spend some of your human capital in exchange for financial capital in a fair open market trade." That is what the entire modern economic system is based upon.

Now, let's do it with a little bit of vision and think about where you're going. Why not set your goals and aspirations high, as high as you can see them being? Now, your goals and aspirations might be simply to become a manager or they might be to become an owner, but everything starts with a dream.

Everything starts with a goal and with an aspiration. Let's think about that plan in the beginning and let's think about where we should focus our time. What's the best investment at this point in time for you to be focusing on? Where should you be spending your time and energy?

Should you be spending your time and energy thinking about how to beat the stock market or should you be spending your time and energy at becoming really excellent at your job? I would commend to you that the first thing that you need to do is become really, really excellent at your job.

And the great thing is this doesn't really require that much money. It does require focus and effort. First step to success in an employment situation is find out who your boss is and make them happy. Figure out who is my boss and make your boss happy. It's better to be second in line and to encourage somebody than it is to, well, just start with that.

Find out who your boss is and make them happy. That's the golden secret to employment. This is the same in every business, by the way. If you are a business owner, then your boss is your employees, excuse me, is your customers and you need to keep your customers and your clients happy.

So figure out who is, who sends you money, who pays you money and make them happy. Start with effort. What you've got if you're starting off is you don't have a lot of financial capital but you have a lot of human capital. So start with effort, focus, hustle, be there on time, move quickly all the time.

This one bugs me so much. I'm about to, my wife and I, we kind of have a little joke and I hope it doesn't sound snobby but recently, finally, we joined one of the warehouse clubs and in our area it was Sam's Club. I cannot stand shopping there. It's not that they don't have decent inventory and decent prices but the staff is horrific, at least the one at the place where I go.

When I watch the person check my stuff out, it's just like moving slow as molasses. It's horrible. It's so annoying to me. Maybe that's again, I don't know, maybe I shouldn't. It bothers me. And so that plus just the annoying customer service experience, it's not worth the savings to me to get the bad experience.

Now, we'll see. I got to sit down and actually run the numbers and see whether it's been worth it. But it's just, we laugh to ourselves. I hope it's not rude but we kind of say, "Well, let's see if we could find somebody and pick somebody who's actually going to move quickly and efficiently." And there's one person, there's one young man there who does and I try to work with him and encourage him for his effort for actually working quickly.

But these things matter. Just simply the speed that you move matters. I remember when I first joined Northwestern Mutual, one of my former managing directors, he would say to me, his office was up on an upper floor of the building and his office window overlooked the parking lot. And he would talk about when he was hiring new representatives to work for him, one of the factors in his consideration was he would just always look to see how quickly somebody moved across the parking lot.

Did they amble and saunter or did they move with purpose? And he said, "Certainly this wasn't my – this wasn't the deciding factor for whether I was willing to give somebody an opportunity or not, but it was a contributing factor." And because it was a contributing factor, he said, "Over the years, I noticed that it was pretty true.

The people who really did well, they rarely ambled, they rarely sauntered, they worked, they were focused, they hustled." And so one of the things that – I mean, this is a free investment. Invest in hustling, invest in moving, move quickly. Don't have to run, but move with purpose. There's a dramatic difference where I noticed this with fast food franchises.

One of the places I've always wanted to work, I've always been intrigued by, is I've always wanted to work at Chick-fil-A. And I know they're primarily a Southern thing, but here in Florida, Chick-fil-A restaurants are extremely popular. And one of the observations that I have is I actually enjoy going there because the employees seem like they actually care.

And I'm so interested. I would love to figure out if any of you have read case studies or actual market research on this, something, I would love it if you'd send me a link. But I'm interested to know why. What is it? The employees, if you walk into Chick-fil-A, at least the ones here, and I hope and I assume it's nationwide, but if you walk into a Chick-fil-A, if they're busy, they've got people that immediately they see you, they jump to a register.

And some other fast food franchises nearby, they simply don't. And I'm just trying to figure out, is it the recruiting? Is it a recruiting process? Is it higher wages? Is it being closed on Sunday that allows you to attract a different caliber of person? Is it training? I don't know what it is.

If any of you are knowledgeable, come by today's blog post and comment and let me know. And if you've read any studies, I'm fascinated to know. But it makes a difference in my purchase habits is even though the price is higher, they command a higher price for their food, slightly higher than many other restaurants, just because the experience is actually pleasant.

Then often, if my family and I are eating, we'll go and frequent their store over another store. Now, does that translate into higher wages for the employees? I think it probably does. And they can command the higher price. So it seems like a virtuous cycle. They seem to be doing well.

But I don't know. I'm interested if any of you have information on that. I'd love to know about that. But just something simple like that, training somebody. And as a young person, practicing these habits doesn't cost money, but this is a valuable investment of your time. Making sure that when you're at work, you're working.

Don't goof off. You need good relationships with coworkers. So I think it's important not to be standoffish, but there's a proper balance there between good relationships and not goofing off. One of the big ones is learn how to be fast and efficient with the systems of the restaurant or whatever this is in your industry.

So practice, read the training manual, follow, practice, practice, smile, look great, move quickly, make your boss happy. Make them not only happy, make your boss ecstatic about your work. And then go and ask for more responsibility. Make certain that you are fully satisfying the responsibility that you currently have, and then ask for more.

Make full use of the company's training programs. As I was considering this show, I was thinking about doing this with a specific focus on McDonald's and doing what I did with the Walmart and go through all the McDonald's programs. I just was reading some of the information on their Hamburger University.

And again, since I'd worked with a couple of clients that had come from there, they have an amazing training program, a specific management training program called Hamburger University. And it's a really valuable tool. So take advantage of those things. Ask to be able to go. Ask to participate. Ask for the extra training.

Now, what about your personal financial life? Well, you got to think about what's your wealth plan. And you need to save as much money as possible. It's challenging to save when you're just getting started, which is why the first place to focus would probably be on your income. Getting those increases in wages, it's tremendously important at an early start.

But then also making sure that you're able to save the difference so that you have investment money. And it's probably going to be very much in your best interest to focus on investing in what you know. So if you know and are becoming expert in working within a fast food industry, becoming a manager, learning how to train, learning how to be trained, probably is a good idea if you like the industry to focus on that.

So what you want to be thinking about is you want to be thinking about what are the savings targets to move into ownership? What are the best investments? You should be close enough to figure out, do I actually want to be an owner? And you may or may not.

But then you got to figure out, what do I need to do? So therefore, you spend time researching the franchise costs of your restaurants. Research other franchise agreements for other restaurants. Research who the owners are in your town of your franchise or other franchises. Meet them. Let them know that you'd like to be an owner someday and that you're saving your money.

At least with the franchise owners that I've connected with and the people in that type of industry that I've connected with. If somebody were to simply say, "I'm interested in being where you are someday," and then prove it, with the associated work ethic and hustle and excellence and commitment, all of the business owners and franchisees that I know in those types of businesses, every single one would at some point, after you've proven your commitment, would take you under their wing and help you.

They'd probably hire you away if it were for a competitor franchisee, they would hire you away and they would help you. But you've got to do both things. You've got to demonstrate by your actions, your intent, and then make your intent known in a proper way. But if you have a focus on that, well, now you have a clear investment goal.

So you research, "How much money do I need to purchase this franchise?" You should know everything there is to know about your franchise agreement. So if it's McDonald's and your franchise fee is a million bucks, how much of that is financeable? How much of that is not financeable? What are the terms?

How much do you need? It may be that you decide, "You know what? Saving for this McDonald's franchise is very much a good use of my time and focus." Or maybe that buying a Subway franchise for 50,000 bucks is a better deal. So you've got to concurrently manage these things.

You've got to make sure that your investment capital doesn't get fritted away on lifestyle expenses, and you've got to make sure that your income is increasing constantly so that you can set aside more investment capital. So the best investments are going to be focusing on getting promotions, and you're probably going to want to just be saving, studying the operations of the business, looking for ways to improve it.

As you get promotions, you're able to earn more. You get to keep your expenses low so you could set that franchise fee aside. And your experience is incredibly valuable. Your experience is probably transferable. If I were thinking about starting a franchise, I would certainly want to—or starting that type of business—I would desire to work in a few different franchises.

I would want to look around and see, "How does McDonald's do it? How does Burger King do it? How does Chick-fil-A do it? How does Subway do it?" And I'd want to have experience within their different systems, and to me, that would be a valuable investment of my time to learn.

Then as part of your looking around, then you back out and you take a macro view and you say, "What's growing? What's declining? Is there a segment of the market that's growing? Is there a new franchise that's growing in value? What are the prices? What are the benefits? What are the disadvantages?

Is it better for you to start by investing in, I don't know, a Jamba Juice franchise or one of these frozen yogurt places? What are the fees there? What are the returns?" Focusing on learning the business skills associated with that. Should you buy McDonald's or Subway, or should you start your own idea?

As you apply this over time, smart investment, growth in skill, growth in ability, applied to a useful occupation, over time you become wealthy. And I don't think it takes that long. And then you increase your lifestyle after you're on track for your wealth. There's got to be a payoff in wealth building.

There's got to be a time at which you stop saving and start enjoying. But if you delay it just a little bit more than the average person, then on the backside, you get that compound interest going for you, and you can experience much higher lifestyle benefits than the average person.

And don't discount the value of that. That can be a tremendously, tremendously valuable growth over time. It really can. Now, I certainly recognize that this is highly idealized. There are many realities of life that are not at least accounted for in the scenario that I've just laid out. There can be many things that can happen.

And those things have to be dealt with. They have to be protected from. They have to be dealt with. But the general framework is the same. And it's the same no matter what industry. It might be, you know, another entry level. I was thinking of doing a case study on a laborer.

And I was thinking how important it is for a laborer to simply set aside the money for their tools. I have a friend of mine who runs an electrical company. And I was just, I'm just shocked when I hear of how few workers or potential workers have the simple realities of what they need, such as reliable transportation and purchasing the basic tools of their job.

Since I've never, you know, not spent a lot of time in that type of trade, I never realized how much, how big a deal it is for a tradesperson, a skilled tradesperson, to have the tools that they need to do their job. That's going to be a far more important investment for a young apprentice tradesperson than anything else.

But over time, these things will transition. So let's transition from an entry level now and let's flip it. Now let me stick with my fast food example. Pretend that now you're in a situation where you own one or a couple of fast food franchises. Now at this point in time, what's your best investment?

Well, I think you need to make a realistic assessment of the growth potential of your business and the safety of your business. And ask yourself at what scale you need your business to be in order for you to meet your goals. Do you need one franchise, two franchises? At what point in time do you start needing to transition out from everything being in one industry in one town to get a little bit more diversification?

Do you need to transition out and split some assets up into some other assets? So now we're going to get into owning shares of other companies. Maybe they're private investments, maybe they're publicly traded companies, maybe we need to get some alternative asset classes. Perhaps if somebody has 10 million bucks set aside, maybe this is the kind of person that does need to set aside a few hundred thousand bucks or a million bucks of gold in another country.

But the person who is the manager at the McDonald's, there's no reason in the world to be thinking on that scale unless you have a bunch of wealth. So my point is simply this, apply scale and apply the concept of scale to where you are. The owner of many McDonald's franchises needs to be spending a tremendous amount of time focusing on their tax efficiency.

The frontline manager much less so. And there's going to be two different financial advisors for those two people. Two very different financial advisors. Negotiating the terms of a contract to buy out a competitor's stores, that's going to be a tremendously important area of time for that person to focus on.

Not necessarily for the owner to focus on, not how quickly they walk across the parking lot. Figuring out what sector of the market is really going to be growing or paying attention to local real estate trends to make sure that your stores are in the right vicinity, that's going to be much more important than spending time at Hamburger University.

Figuring out how to improve your efficiency with the new machine software. So I encourage you as a way to use this information, just simply to establish a filter for yourself called scale. And look at the information, look at the advice that you get through the concept of scale. Take what is useful and reject what is not.

If you do this over time, then I think you can really build a strong, you can build an ability to pay attention to what matters. And I guess that's my, the thrust of what I wanted to share today is pay attention to what matters for you and just ignore what doesn't.

Stay away from the new shiny, sexy object of whatever the coolest new thing is and focus on what matters. And hopefully you're working from, as I described yesterday, you're working from a perspective of, you're working from a list of goals, a vision for what you're trying to accomplish. And now you're looking at saying, what do I need to apply at this stage of my life?

So me, Joshua Sheets, I need to be focusing on how do I improve my moment to moment productivity to handle all the different tasks that are associated with my business. I need to improve my ability to work with virtual help, virtual assistance. I possibly at some point need to consider about my business structure, but at the moment, due to the constraints of the small size at the moment of this business, my area where I need to be spending time is in the virtual outsourcing, how to get excellent at that.

Some of these very basic skills. Now flip it and let's, let me use kind of, I'll use Dave Ramsey. Does Dave need to be spending any time at all sitting and thinking about his moment to moment productivity? Does he need to be spending any time like I do on understanding the basics of WordPress?

No, he has the capital to where he can easily hire all that done. And he needs to be spending his time on big picture vision, focus of how to set up the marketing of a big picture vision of the company, excellent human resources development from a, from an executive perspective, not from a, from a line perspective, from a moment to moment perspective.

And he ought to spend a little bit of time brushing up on his financial planning knowledge. It's my little jab and actually spend a little time, you know, going through a CFP class. That would, that would make me feel better. But my point is you can use these examples and look at where you are.

And if you look at where you are and understand, then you can figure out where is the most effective point for me to be spending time. And this is one of many ways in which you can beat the market. This is one of many ways where you don't have to settle for the average return.

But you can invest in a way that's appropriate to you and beat the market. I hope this is helpful. Let me know, give me some feedback and let me know if this is helpful for you. Again, this is just an idea that I've thought of. And I categorize advice this way.

When I read an article on this tax saving strategy, I immediately, I immediately ask myself for whom is this helpful? Is this helpful for entry level? Is this helpful for advanced? What is the scenario that I'm dealing with? And almost all strategies are going to have somebody for whom they're helpful.

But where you get swindled is if you're trying to apply a rich man's strategy to a poor man's portfolio. And also where you waste your time is when you're trying to apply a poor man's strategy to a rich man's portfolio. Now, a lot of meaning of that, depending on your situation, but consider how to apply the lens of scale.

And as you're consuming information, consuming advice this coming year, make sure that you're focusing on the advice that's useful to you. And then make sure that over time, here's the last thing that I need to mention. Make sure that over time, you're not stuck in the rut of consuming advice that's not helpful to you.

Meaning if you focus all the time on becoming really, really excellent with software. So for right now, I need to become really expert with my software systems. But let's say that three years from now, I'm still going on and on and getting super great at software. I'm sitting here, I'm a WordPress wizard.

That would be a total waste, I hope, assuming I'm on track for my plan, that would be a total waste of time. Three years from now, I need to, if all goes well, and I hope it does, I can't control this and who knows where we'll be. But three years from now, I should be doing nothing on a website or almost nothing on a website other than just the most basic using things.

I shouldn't be spending time designing something or fixing things or making sure plugins work or making sure things are right. I should be spending time on the big picture stuff. And who knows, three years after that, maybe there's a whole team of people working on that. So there are multiple problems along the way that can happen if you don't apply this concept of scale to your situation.

You could be spending time thinking about things that don't help you very much. You could be spending time as the junior apprentice and you could be putting money in a skilled trade and you could be putting your money into a Roth IRA when what you need to be doing is beefing up your tool collection and buying the specialized tools that are going to increase your output and making sure that you're very efficient and skillful with those specialized little time-saving devices.

That's a problem if you're spending time on things that aren't helpful to you. Now on the flip side, if the business owner is the guy who is running a 40-person construction crew, if this person is spending their time trying to figure out how to use a new, I don't know, I won't display my ignorance by inserting the machine name, but that's probably not a good use of time.

So make sure that you're aware of where you are in the process and you're applying a good thought process and focusing on what matters to you at this stage. I hope this was helpful to you. I'd love some feedback. Let me know if you've read anything on this or heard anybody else.

I never have, so it's just a lens I use and I hope it serves you. As I've thought about it, it's been very useful for me as a planner, especially if you're a financial advisor or financial planner. I think you've got to have this because so many times you get questions on things that just don't matter and you can cut right through all of the nonsense a lot of times.

Not that things are wrong, but it's like somebody comes to you that doesn't have any assets and they're asking about asset protection. Well, what's your liability that you're worried about and what assets are you trying to protect? Ignore it and let's deal with that planning in a moment. Let's focus on the marketing plan that's going to build some assets.

Things like that. As a planner, you can cut through a lot of the nonsense advice and just simply show someone, "Here's what's applicable to you. Joshua, should I make this investment decision?" "Well, I don't know." Without two questions, you can show, "Well, someone else should make that investment decision, but this one is foolish for you.

Why are you spending any time and energy on this?" That was the primary concept that I was hoping to convey. Thank you so much for listening for today. I value each and every one of you that's listening. Thank you for being here. I'm excited about this new year. Today wasn't an in-depth financial planning show.

I have just been completely overwhelmed. What I should have done was I had released a bunch of interviews that I had ahead while I was gone because I wanted to make sure that through the holidays, I think that's the last time I'm ever going to do that. I'm going to take those two weeks off even from producing shows.

I guess here at the start of this business, I wanted to really be focused on making sure that I was still consistently providing content while I was away, but I should have probably taken those two weeks off and then scheduled interviews for this week so I could get caught up.

Man, I've just been overwhelmed, but it's a good overwhelm. Thank you all so much. Talk to you tomorrow. With Kroger Brand products from Ralphs, you can make all your favorite things this holiday season because Kroger Brand's proven quality products come at exceptionally low prices. And with a money-back quality guarantee, every dish is sure to be a favorite.

Whether you shop delivery, pickup, or in-store, Kroger Brand has all your favorite things. Ralphs. Fresh for everyone.