3 Things Your Future Self Will Thank You for Starting Today

Good morning. 40 days and 40 nights we've been doing these journals. And uh I thought since this is the perfect timing, this journal is in December of 1996. Now we're just about to transition into 1997 and I can't believe but we're on episode 40 of this from just 1996.

So, uh it's pretty exciting. I was thinking reflecting on this has been like time travel, you know, going back and there's been some reflections that I've had in looking at this that how things have maybe seeds that were planted here in 1996 that are still here today and things that were cuz I'm still amazed that there's no internet yet that I haven't met many of the key people in my life, but there's some core things that if I could just extract from what we've learned so far in reflection here. Number one is the decision to start journaling and recording things. April of 1996 starting with journal number one that has been I think of all of it the greatest gift the greatest thing that has sustained for me the biggest insight that I have looking back is that the the days are the days I'm I'm reading these pages and I kept pretty good notes and I can immediately in my mind I'm transported back to where I was and what things were happening here.

And I don't know just philosophically it really it feels like you know I in my mind I just turned 60 years old. I was 30 years old here. I just turned 30 and I'm realizing I feel exactly the same as I did back then. like there's no no difference in the way that I react to or my my core nature I think of the the things that I do.

So having this as a record, I think you will really um you'll you're you know what are we in 2026 right now? Your 206 self will thank you for starting journaling here in 2026. And looking back, a lot of the recurring things like the lot of the things that I use the journal for, number one is this ongoing dialogue with myself. And I think that you'll find that very useful.

I would send pages of having dialogues with myself or just thinking about my thinking. And u I think, you know, we're pretty smart. We we pretty much our intuition is right in many ways that if we just dig into that and explore it, we can come to pretty good conclusions on things. You know, we're we I have I can see a lot of hunches that were starting to uh joke here are starting to brew here.

And I noticed in like this next period coming up, I'll give you a little foreshadowing. There's a period on the thing is like a question at the top of my page was what am I going to do about the internet? And I was describing and feeling like I think the internet is really going to be something and it was so funny. So we'll get into that here in 1997.

Um but having these conversations with yourself and just asking those questions is going to be a big thing. get into the daily practice of writing things down in a journal that you're going to keep for the next 30 years. Okay. The days I find that a lot of the um a lot of the ongoing architecture of my life, lifestyle design, and the things that I'm doing in these journals, I still do.

I still use the pages as a a try out zone for lifestyle, you know, changes that I'm looking at making or just things architecturally in the days, the way that I want it, but it's amazingly similar that what I wanted and liked back then is the same things. I I remember this was right at the period when I first moved to Florida and I had a routine of I would wake up and I would go for a walk and then I would come home, I would fix some uh breakfast or either go for breakfast. But I was always then I would start my day watching Regis and Kathy Lee. And I always thought to myself, because there was one segment, I remember this so well, where they kind of followed Regis around for a day.

And you know, he lived right across the street from where the studio where they filmed it. And he would wake up in the morning. He'd have coffee or breakfast with Joy. He'd get dressed at home in his suits and whatever he was going to wear that day.

He would get dressed at home. m. the music would come on and they would start the show and he would just spend the first 10 minutes of the day just recounting everything that he was doing. m.

He was live on television and the rest of it was just being Regist. And I think that that to me had some kind of impact because as I come at it now that at 60 I'm really what I'm bought into is just being Dean Jackson. And I think that the faster that we can adopt, there's never been a better period in time in life to just be you. You know, a lot of the things the advantages that you have now, um, we didn't have in 1996, right?

You think about all the the reach that you can have, the community, the options, the things that that are there for the taking right now is I think what I was really doing here was figuring out who is Dean Jackson and what what do I really want? And now at 60, I'm completely leaning into that. If you look at my Facebook biography or my log line, it's I'm Dean Jackson. Period.

Professionally, period. That's it. That's what my biography is. And that opened myself, that allows me to do whatever it is that I want to do.

Um the other insight that I had in looking back with this is what's possible with compound effort on one thing. Like when I look at the things that I've had the biggest impact on have been marketing and real estate and I look at these journals were filled. I was spending so much time playing the same game, getting better and better at this the micro elements of going a mile deep in one area of real estate. I was always thinking about that.

It was uh you know it was so funny. And when I paired it with this idea of Michael Gerber's of creating things that could be duplicate duplicated 5,000 times and creating extraordinary results with ordinary people creating systems that allow somebody to just plug in and get that once I was bit by that bug that's been 30 years of of um continual practice on that thing. So that's some of my insights from the first year, not even a year, April of 1996 till December of 1996. We're about to move in to journal number 4, 1997.

And that was my transition to Florida. So tune in. Let's have a simultaneous sip to toast the first 40 days and 40 nights. and I'll see you back here tomorrow.

I got a funny email the other day from Rick. It says, "Dean, question. Are you saying you can teach me to make fat stacks by hanging out at a pub drinking coffee like you?" And I laughed to myself because I was thinking, you know, yes, I I can do that.

That's what I do. is the funny thing. What I really realized is that every idea that I've had, every dollar that I've made over the last 30 years has gone through my brain, through my pen onto a piece of paper in my journal before it went out into the real world. And if I can turn people on to that activity as a driver for what to do, what to think about, what to ask yourself to draw out, what the next most valuable action is for you, and how to find the most profitable things that you can install in your business.

I'm all for it. So this Friday at 100 pm I'm going to do for the first time a 50inute profitfinder workshop and you're going to join me live on Zoom and we're going to go through a 50inute exercise. Bring your pen. Bring a notebook or piece of paper.

And I'm going to guide you through a thinking process that will help you identify where the lowest hanging fruit is in your business and maybe some fruit that you didn't even know was there. But I'm going to show you where to look for it. So, it's free. It's for you.

m. this Friday. Just watch. Go to What did we call the website, Josh?

>> 50inut profitfinder. m.