Welcome to Financial Freedom on autopilot. This is the first episode where we talk about, what is your dance? I know it sounds like a weird episode title, but let’s jump into my childhood a little bit.
I used to be a whole lot more rambunctious than I am today, and I would literally dance everywhere I would go. And unfortunately, at some point, it got diminished because I realized, oh, some of these people kind of just laughing at my silliness. They’re laughing at me instead of laughing with me at this joy and my expression of joy.
What does this have to do with financial freedom, Ivan? Well, once you define your dance, what you’re good at in life, everything else becomes easier. Time, talent, treasure just comes to you. You’re like a magnet. If you’re looking for a spouse, you’ll become a magnet for them too, because who doesn’t want to be around somebody that’s using their life as a dance, as an expression.
You know, so let’s jump in. Let’s, let’s draw this into mindset, action and planning, right?
Mindset. What is your dance? You have to define that in your mind first before you get into any sort of action or planning because you could define a dance as running a business because everybody else is saying run a business, but that dance is actually not bringing you any joy whatsoever. You’re just following the mold. You’re following somebody else’s American dream when you should be making your own, or if you’re outside of America watching this, you know, your own country’s dream.
So defining your dance could be done or started by just going to something like kolbe.com, K-O-L-B-E. And they have a career assessment, I think it’s called the A index, which helps with your career assessment. It gives you a list of like 5 to 10 careers that your personality attributes to. For me, I’m more into business leadership, I could become a politician. I have a couple of different things to choose from that I really related to after getting that list. So, that could help you define your dance.
There was something else that helped me to really figure out my dance well, which was Wendell Matthews, a good friend of mine, and a real estate guru also. He said, you know, when I went to go do this improv class, it was the best emotional return on investment I ever did. And he just said it in passing. We were at the closing table for a deal. And it just really rocked me, like to my soul, because I never really thought about anything emotionally return, returning on investment. I thought of like everything in life has to give me some sort of financial or other benefit. There’s not this space for emotional, immeasurable stuff, right? Because emotions are not really something you can measure, at least in the short term.
So that really hit me because it helped me to identify further into what I really need to do, which is really triple down on helping people while investing in real estate. And I’ve always done it even throughout my twenties, but, you know, towards that conversation really helped me to drill down into it further. So really take an assessment, take multiple assessments, even drill down into other emotional states that help you identify who you are, like attachment styles, which helps you, helps you to identify insecurities that may hinder you from having your full-fledged mindset.
So, that’s defining the mindset, right? What about action? Action is really about taking what you just assessed and starting putting, putting some work into it. And by the way, action and planning is always going to be jumping in the midst of each other. It’s not a sequential chronological order of things, to make your life just perfect, just rose and dandelion that you could skip along.
You have to do some work. So once you figure out that mindset, that dance, do the work, spend time on it. Like I mentioned to you, being a business leader, being a politician are two of the career options that were thrown at me. So jump into one or both of those things to some degree. That way you really get to feel. Like the, is this really fulfilling me? Is this one other, other thing fulfilling me? Doing the action as opposed to twiddling your thumbs and sitting and planning all the time and being like, well, you know, I just don’t know what to do.
You know, one of my good friends recently told me—and this is a natural transition to planning—was that he’s just been kind of living day-to-day life and just kind of going to church Bible groups. And although it’s good work, he feels like he’s not really moving the needle in life towards something he really wants to do, something perhaps scary. Which, by the way, business ownership can be scary, but it can also be greatly rewarding and draw you closer to that financial freedom a lot faster if executed correctly. However, it’s not made for everybody, right? You can’t. You can’t just say everybody belongs in business ownership because we just don’t all have those talents.
But yeah, naturally into transitioning into planning. Planning is really about counting all the ducks in a row. I have just about a spreadsheet for everything in my life now. I have a spreadsheet for short-term budgeting, long-term budgeting, tracking credit cards, tracking mortgages, tracking equity, tracking debt in those mortgages. A POS—everything has a position. And so, as best as you can, even outside of finance, try to track everything, right?
Like, you might be in a bad relationship. You might have to take inventory of how bad it is. Like, I had a therapy session a few months ago and she advised me, hey, take an inventory of like, the physical, the emotional, the spiritual, the affection—all these things make each major aspect a leg in a table of life for your relationship. And go ahead and just measure each aspect of those. And that was a great exercise because it really helped me to appreciate the relationship. And, you know, there were so many other relationships where I was lucky to get one leg. We were just both one-legged creatures moving in life, in life, and makes me think of yet another analogy.
A movie critic said: all these characters are just walking limbs, walking organs in this movie. There’s not a complete person. So planning is really about figuring out those missing pieces and the pieces you currently have that you’re comfortable with.
So that’s really the map. I’m not gonna stick around, especially cause mosquitoes are starting to bite me up. And I don’t like to be fluffy. I like to get straight to the point, and that wraps up this episode.
All right. Catch you later and comment below what your dance is, by the way. Are you into, like me, wanting to maybe explore becoming a politician? Do you maybe want to start a nonprofit? Are you OK with raising capital and donors from people to start a nonprofit? Do you wanna get into a for-profit or do you want to get into real estate? What is that dance? And tell me about that excitement that, that you have for it.
And by the way, when people try to come and make fun of you, like they did with my childhood, about your dance, just kind of look at them and blankly stare at them with a smile. Because really, they can’t take anything away from you unless you decide to let them take away from you. You know, we’re adults now, so we have that power. Maybe as a child, we didn’t. But you have the power now.
All right. Catch you in the next video. Thanks for watching.