You Don't Actually Want More Money

I think I figured out a secret to life on June 15th, 1996. Uh one of the things that I love about going back in these journals is it's a it's snapshots of where and what I'm doing. So, at this point we're traveling, seeing places that I've never been. This is some uh June, Eben and I are in Los Angeles.

We get introduced to La Jolla for the first time. A funny story about that I'll tell you in a minute. Uh but one of the great things that Eben and I used to talk about, you know, we'd talk about marketing, of course, all the time cuz we're nerds and passionate about learning direct response and and experimenting and trying new things, but I was also starting to recognize, and so was Eben, that it's there's a really important element of life that comes down to the lifestyle that you choose. And I see now like the beginnings, the seed of what I've wanted in my life for 30 years and what I've kind of uh chosen to set up my life around.

And so I'm going to read a little bit from this this from page 128 of journal number one. We are in uh Los Angeles and talking to Eben today, I realized what I really want is not a sum of money, but more a feeling. And I think what everybody wants is to have peace and power. And you know, starting to evolve this idea, right?

That what we really want is peace of mind knowing that you're coming from a place where things are stable financially and that the bills are all paid and the peace that comes from knowing that you are in a stable um position. And then the peace of knowing that you're doing what you should be doing and that the skills that you're building are going to continue to build you into even more demand. And then the power to do and live your life however you choose to live it, which I've come to now understand as agency. I think that's really the thing that we we crave agency to know that we're in uh that we are able to uh do this, to travel, to play golf, to basically do whatever you want to do.

And I think there's a certain peace in living a simple life, a life that's very narrow in focus and not complicated by high maintenance burdens or things that you don't want to do. And it's a very I had this observation because I was starting to see in other people. I was starting to see in other entrepreneurs or business owners that were starting to get totally absorbed by their businesses. Like when I started uh Toronto and Beyond, I was kind of getting to see an inside look at what some of the top real estate agents, what their life was like and I realized I would not want to trade anything to to have that life because they wake up fully absorbed, like every minute of every day is putting out fires and chasing the uh you know, chasing the demands of this self-induced urgency that you're creating all around you.

And I realized that I really love this idea of taking time during the that you're living to be able to have these short interstitial like experiences and get aways. I find and still to this day, my favorite mode is kind of a hub and spoke mode. I love to be home. I love my life.

I love my routine and environment and doing the things that I love to do. But I also love like a nice four or five day, uh you know, get away to a really great environment. And these things like the first time you go to California, it you realize what a wonderland it is. I mean, I I'd never experienced it.

I mentioned, you know, I'm mostly on the East Coast. And so, in this trip, you know, going the whole triangle of Los Angeles and going up in the Hollywood Hills. This conversation that we were having was at a restaurant, uh on Sunset in in Los Angeles and Hollywood. And we went down to La Jolla in San Diego.

And that was the first introduction to La Jolla, which if you've never been, it's just this amazing beachfront town that's a little jewel little jewel. Well, there you go, La Jolla, a jewel in the uh right at the heart of uh just north of of San Diego. And Eben loved it so much that he literally was living in Portland at the time, that he literally went home, packed up everything, put it in a U-Haul, and by that fall was living in an oceanfront condo right on the like literally on the ground floor of a oceanfront condo where right outside the door the waves are crashing up against the wall. It was the most amazing place.

But the genesis of that started when we were first exposed. So we were joking that it was like they steam cleaned the streets. It was just this perfect thing. And San Diego weather of course is room temperature with a breeze every single day.

And so we started to really look at, you know, I I really started realizing that's the thing that I really want about about life here. And and when I I I see that that through line through my journals of being able to design what I really want for my life. And I wasn't too far off like on the things that I really want or the things that I like more than ever that I built around. And years later, you know, I talked about these things, but years later I sort of created this idea of the three lifestyle elements that we're looking for, which is daily joy, abundant time, and financial peace.

That that intersection is exactly what we're looking for. And often the temptation as you are young and growing in a business is to just keep building and advancing and stacking on things that are requiring more of your time. So you're taking away this time, which is creating stress and doing things that you don't necessarily enjoy. What are you know, so I look at it that everything that I really like about being an entrepreneur and specifically being a results-based entrepreneur where I know that the things that I'm doing are going to create results for other people and there's a certain security in that knowing that I know what to do to to create business out of nothing for people and that's always going to be um in demand, but using it as a foundation to build the life that I really want, the lifestyle.

And it's funny because you see now we've kind of been the pendulum kind of went into where people started rewarding hustle culture of you know, the grinding and uh you know, really sacrificing and doing things and became this choice of building an empire uh like going and building something, scaling your business and sacrificing to do that or people would often talk dismissively about a lifestyle oh, you're building a lifestyle business. Like that's a somehow lesser pursuit than creating than the hustle of scaling and 10x and and going that way. But when I really got down to it like is the 10x going to have any effect on the actual daily joy and the abundant time that you have in living your life? My friend Taki Moore in Australia and I talk about this a lot and Taki came up with the term because we had the same realization that it's not it's not a sure I don't want to build an empire.

I don't want to 10x and hustle and grind for something. But I'm also it's not just about a lifestyle business and Taki came up with the term of building a lifestyle empire. And I thought, you know, that's just perfect. And Taki's done an amazing job of doing only the things that are fit in the Taki bowl.

Taki's as ADHD as I am. But we work very well together and it's a wonderful balance. But it's been amazing to see how you can build a eight-figure business with only the things that you love to do at the lifestyle core. All in a you know four-day workweek, four hours a day and have the whole thing run itself.

Pretty amazing. And that's because of marketing. And Taki will tell you that that that's the lever that makes it all work. Lever marketing is the leverage to building and sustaining a life that you really love.

So the main job that we have is to figure out what is that life that we really want and then create the marketing systems that will create the money to support that lifestyle. Stay tuned. Lots coming. But that was a core understanding that I came to in June of 1996.