It’s a personal habit of mine to spend some quality and regular time listening to podcasts and webinars, picking up new ideas and refreshing old thinking. I am a big fan of personal development and believe you can never stop learning.It’s a personal habit of mine to spend some quality and regular time listening to podcasts and webinars, picking up new ideas and refreshing old thinking. I am a big fan of personal development and believe you can never stop learning.
Every now and then, you hear little nuggets that just stick in the back of your mind and prevent you from sleeping – I often find myself in the middle of the night leaning over to the side of my bed, grabbing my notebook and pen, and jotting a nugget or two down (it is what I refer to as “positive parking”!) so I can a.) get back to sleep again and b.) remember the nugget in the morning.
I certainly suggest doing some positive parking of your thoughts whenever you can…Last night, I was googling some ideas around content marketing and stumbled across Gary Vaynerchuk (the Belarusian / American entrepreneur and digital marketing guru) whom I have listened to in the past but have never really pursued in earnest until now.
Before I knew it, I was on trundling along on Gary Vee’s bus into a never-ending world of videos covering every stop from building value in your marketing proposition, to building value in your personal wealth – he clearly has a lot to say about a lot of things and to be honest, a lot of it made a huge amount of sense.
The intrigue around the stop entitled to “Key To Financial Freedom” was just too strong, and so I just had to drop in to see what this was all about (I’m convinced that hard work, passion and dedication are the keys, but let’s see what I have been missing out on all these years)!I was soon parachuted into a lively, 10 minute conversation / interview / love-in between Vaynerchuck and another thought leader that to be very honest, until now, I have never really followed or paid huge attention to (again, I think this may now change), Tony Robbins the renowned American author and life coach.
They were midway discussing investments in bear markets and their thoughts and ideas around that. To be fair, whilst not what I was originally after, it was an interesting 10 minutes and with their candid and very unique styles, was entertaining enough to definitely make it a worthwhile use of my time and get the creative juices flowing.
However, Tony Robbins dropped in one of those nuggets which really got me thinking, not so much about investments, but about business and more importantly around how we free up time to focus on what really matters in business.
They were discussing the challenges low-income employees and business owners have around being able to afford and allocate cash into investments and in particular bear markets. When they are just earning the minimum amount to survive, how could they possibly give us some of their much-needed earnings and invest them, especially when markets are on the decline?Tony (is it appropriate to be on first name terms with him at such an early stage to our relationship?) used a phrase “tax yourself” which really struck a chord.
He suggested that if the Government suddenly stuck a brand new tax on you or your business, you would spend a while shouting and screaming about it, complain to a whole bunch of people, and then ultimately have to just get on and manage… and often we do just that. We manage and we manage fine.
With that in mind, Tony (new best friend) suggests that if you want to create financial freedom and invest, then you should basically tax yourself each month in the same way and reallocate that money into the markets.
I’m sure the Government would never do that to us, but if we move away from the financials and replace the monetary tax with “time”, then conceptually it is exactly the same.
If someone, in essence, taxed you 10% of your time (sounds like many a meeting I have sat through over my years) you may well shout, scream, complain but you would still keep moving forward and you would still get on with what needed to be done.
The habit would change and you would manage.
Now imagine that 10% time tax wasn’t taken away from you, but instead given back to you to now invest in the one thing that would have the biggest ROI in your business. What would you do with that time?
For some, this may be obvious and not even a nugget and I am sure they will let me know!). But I can’t help feeling that we all have 10% time/focus in our days that we could, from now on, tax ourselves on and reallocate to something more worthwhile. I have already worked on mine since and the taxation has started to kick in.
… and, hey, you never know, this must just be that key to financial freedom they were on about!
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