The sooner you can allow your children to experience adversity, the better off they will be. Ideally, they should face small problems/hurdles to overcome, with the hurdles gradually increasing as they are able to mentally and physically overcome them.
If you shield them from every pain, if you protect them from ever receiving negative feedback, they won’t be able to withstand even the slightest pain when they grow up. Imagine how embarrassing it will be when they are eight years old and still don’t know how to share toys/games. Or when they cry for not getting their way when they are nine. Imagine them being a poor sport when they lose a game because you always let them win.
They need to understand rejection, defeat, and not always getting their way. If you always cave in to every request (candy, buying them games, etc), they will expect life to do the same. But that’s not how life works and they will be in for a rude awakening when they finally figure that out. That’s why so many people who are entitled. They think they deserve something just because they are them. They weren’t taught proper manners and expectations at a younger age and have brought a child’s mindset to adolescence (and beyond).
There are four sectors of the Cashflow Quadrant – E (employee), S (self-employed), B (business-owner), I (investor)
The Cashflow Quadrant describes four ways of making money – as an employee, a self-employed individual, a business-owner, or an investor. You are not limited to earning income in only one category at a time.
The most common way to make money (and what most people are trained for in school) is to be an employee. As an employee, you’re working for a company or organization and trading your time for money. You generally have the most “security” but the least amount of freedom as an employee (think W-2). You work the hours your employers set, follow their rules/handbook, and as a result, get paid a set wage (usually based on an hourly rate, but sometimes as a salary). Examples of this are everywhere – the cashier at the store you go to, the secretary at your office, a warehouse stocker, a janitor, teacher, office administrator, etc.
The second way to make money is as a self-employed individual (think 1099). Here, you don’t have a “boss,” but instead you are your own boss. It sounds great, but essentially you own your job here. You still trade time for money, but now you trade off some of the safety/stability of working for someone else and having a guaranteed paycheck for having to earn new business everyday. If you don’t sell something, you don’t get paid. Examples of this include lawyers, real estate agents, the owner of a landscaping company where the owner is doing a fair amount of revenue-generating/business-sustaining work, etc.
After that, you can move to the right side of the quadrant and start leveraging other people’s time or money to make you money.
In the business owner quadrant, you move yourself out of operations. You are no longer physically doing much of the work. Instead, you have employees doing the work on your behalf. You have scaled to the point where not everything hinges on you. If you decide to leave for a few weeks (or months), the business will still make money because of the people you have working for you, and the systems/processes you have in place. Think of Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, and Bill Gates as examples of this, but it can be on a much smaller scale too. Do you think any of them are out selling their products on an individual level, making the product, or packaging the product? Can they leave for vacation (or pass away) and have the company still survive (or thrive)? They leverage other people’s time so they can accomplish more.
Lastly, we have the investor quadrant. Anybody can be in the investor quadrant as long as they are investing in an asset that produces returns positive returns. The ultimate goal in the investor quadrant though should be to have your investments produce enough passive income to cover all of your expenses. once you get to that point, you won’t have to work another day in your life. You can choose to work, trillion time for money or being a business owner and working on your business, but you do not have to work. There are many ways to invest in assets, whether that is through index funds, mutual funds, cryptocurrency, and my personal favorite – real estate. Here, you leverage either your own money or, preferably, other people’s money to work and earn more money. The idea is that your money is working for you even when you’re sleeping.
Where I’ve been
As I write this, I’m now 31 years old. I’ve been working in some capacity for over half of my life now. I started working part-time jobs in high school on an alpaca farm, at a pizza shop, and landscaping. I took the first quarter off from work in college, but other than that I worked a minimum of 25 hours per week throughout the school year (and 40+ hours per week in the summer) at an office, as a personal trainer, and landscaping. After graduating, I began working 55-60 hour weeks at a food packaging plant, as a personal trainer and CrossFit coach, a gym manager, and a salesperson/project manager. I understand what it means to be an employee – trading time for money. I decided that this wasn’t the best path for me, even though I see how it makes sense to many people. The problem I had with it was two-fold. First, no matter how productive I was, my income was always capped. I could help the company make record profits, but it didn’t necessarily translate to an equal payday for me. But don’t hear what I’m not saying – I didn’t necessarily need to be paid in equal proportions to what I earned for the company. The business owners were the ones who took the risk to build the business and who spent the time, money, and energy in developing systems for me to succeed. It’s just that I knew my income and my family’s future would be capped if I stayed there. The second limiting factor for me as an employee is that I love learning and trying to implement new ideas. But as an employee, I had to stick to the rules and keep following what was working. I felt my innovative side was being stifled and I wanted to make my own rules. This led to my career change last year…
Where I am
As of June 2020, I became a licensed Realtor in the state of Ohio. The primary locations I focus on are Medina, Cuyahoga, Summit, Lorain, and Wayne counties. I generally work with people looking for a primary residence, and it ranges from first-time homebuyers, people looking to upsize, or people looking to downsize. That being said, my wife and I invest in rental properties and we work with other investors ranging from single family rentals/house flips, small multi-family, or commercial properties (such as apartments).
I’m now on a great team (The Casey Team) and working with an amazing brokerage (Russell Real Estate Services).
But even though I’m on a team, it’s still a 1099 (self-employed) profession. If I don’t sell houses, I don’t make money. I can cold call, door knock, show houses, and write offers, but if I don’t perform and close deals, I don’t get paid. It’s a 100% commission career and it can be stressful at times. But here, the harder I work, the more money I should make. My income isn’t capped.
As I mentioned, my wife and I do invest in real estate, but we also invest in the stock market with our IRA plans and her 403b. We also have the kids set up with UTMAs (Uniform Transfers to Minors Act) so they will be off to a good start once they become of age. We do not touch any of the cashflow from the rentals, dividends, or increases in equity that we receive from these investments and rather re-invest them so they can grow larger for us. This is similar to the example used for “make thy gold multiply” told in The Richest Man in Babylon.
Where I’m going (my plans)
My goal is to be able to retire by age 50. I don’t ever see a time when I want to stop working – I enjoy work, learning, and improving myself everyday. But I don’t want to have to work. If my family and I want to go on a long vacation, I want to be able to pick up and go.
With that being the end goal, I need to change a couple of things. First, I need my investments to produce a greater return. My goal is to do that through buying one new rental property every other year for the next 5 years, then hopefully increase to one per year (or more) for the following 15 years. We would hire a property manager so we are not handling the day-to-day items and it becomes a much more passive system.
I also want to move from the S (self-employed) quadrant to the B (business-owner) quadrant. While I don’t have any plans to open a brokerage, mortgage company, or title company, I would like to eventually be a partner on the current team I’m on and to get more Realtors on our team. Then we can have them out making deals while we help provide the support for them (with leads, office administrators, inside sales agents, stagers, photographers, etc). This will take time to build, and we will have to write up processes (and tweak them as we go). But this would eventually free me from the trading time for money conundrum that so many of us face.
If you have any tips or suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or to message me directly.
“The reason his fights look so easy is because his training was so hard.” – Paraphrased from Joe Rogan when he was talking about Floyd Mayweather.
Train to make the uncomfortable not phase you. If that is your baseline and you’re used to facing obstacles, it will become your new normal. But to someone who hasn’t faced those same difficulties, when they suddenly are thrown into a tough situation, it will be harder for them mentally, physically, and emotionally.
How do you get comfortable with the uncomfortable?
A huge part of it is mental fitness. Mental fitness is more than just being mentally tough. Being tough (or being able to endure) is just one aspect of your mental fitness, but being able to understand concepts, to think outside of the box, to have a good memory. and to be flexible in a changing environment all contribute to being mentally fit.
The other part (the “easier” part) is physical fitness. Again, you want to be physically tough and able to hold up to pressure, but physics fitness also includes strength, endurance, flexibility, mobility, balance, coordination, having a healthy heart and joints, etc.
If you are mentally and physically fit, it will be easier to overcome challenging situations. So what are some things you can do to become fit?
Train your body consistently to lift heavy weights for low reps, to lift light weights for high reps, to sprint short distances at fast speeds, to walk/run/bike long distances at slow speeds, to occasionally work with very little sleep, to occasionally work with very little to eat, to think fast and make quick decisions, to analyze and think slowly, to deal with the heat, to deal with the cold, to read/write/draw, etc. These are just a few examples…
There are so many ways you can train your body and mind at the same time. Do a difficult task daily, one that pushes your existing comfort levels, because the more difficult you make your training, the easier your life will be. If your training is harder than the actual event, you’ll remain strong physically and, more importantly, you’ll remain strong mentally and emotionally. This will give you the edge you need over your competition.
Pain is subjective – it changes based on the perspective of who is going through the experience. Running a mile at a sub 6-minute clip is easy for those who do it consistently, but for the untrained person, this will probably be very painful. What will you do today to increase your fitness and increase your pain threshold?
There are no shortcuts worth taking in the long run. Of course, this is metaphorically speaking. I’m sure you could find actual examples of shortcuts that are beneficial to you. But in the way of thinking of trying to avoid putting in the hard work, it is almost always better that you go through that tough experience instead of trying to skirt around it. The hardships will help to develop you as a person.
So instead of cheating to get an A in a class or on a test, study hard and earn that A. That way you’ll actually learn the material and be able to use it in the future.
Or instead of taking steroids to get strong really quickly, build your body over time. It will be safer and better for your overall health.
Instead of lying or taking credit when you don’t deserve it at work, tell the truth and you’ll earn more respect. Share the credit with others when it is due to them. Be humble in your successes and gracious in your defeats.
Learn to enjoy the journey instead of only focusing on the destination. When you stop and pay attention, you’ll realize that the trials and tribulations you experience along the way are some of your best learning lessons.
Have the courage to face your weaknesses. Where are you lagging behind? What faults do you have? What mistakes do you repeatedly make? How can you improve in these areas?
Have the courage to admit you were wrong. It will be hard to look in the mirror instead of pointing out the faults of others. Or to admit your mistakes without caveats or giving excuses…just own them. Don’t say, “I only did this because…” or “I wouldn’t have done that if you didn’t do this.” That’s not admitting your mistake, not really.
Focus on your actions and how you can improve the situation, not on what you did right and what the other person did wrong. Don’t go in with the idea of having an “unwritten and unspoken agreement” (something in your head only) that when you apologize for X, the other will/should apologize for Y. That’s not how it works. Be sorry when you’re sorry. If you only use the words but don’t actually mean it, others will eventually see through it.
