Are you growing in your career, wealth and mindset? Have you given yourself grace in times where you didn’t live up to your own principles? In this episode, Lori and Jimmy share their thoughts and ideas on how you can achieve desired growth in all aspects of life – including your wealth!
Episode Keys:
- Why you must learn to extend grace to yourself to truly grow as a person.
- How to use intentional energy to grow any area of your life!
- When to work on your growth objectives and how to capitalize on the outcomes in an exponential way.
- Who you should listen to when you are being beaten by the world and why it is critical for your long-term success.
- Jimmy’s method of lifetime income and how to establish the process where it is automatic in your life.
Podcast Transcript
LF:
So if you’re me, you have to remember that I, as everyone well knows on this podcast, am not good at math. It’s the four letter word that’s been ugly my entire life, beginning all the way back to elementary school. I digress. But today we’re gonna talk about something that involves both my favorite things, grace, grind, and growth. Only, we’re going to do them in a math equation, and I’m not going to tell you because I’m going to bring in my co-host. Yes, that’s right. I’m gonna call him the co-host because I’m actually starting off this morning. Good morning, Jimmy!
JW:
Good morning! I gotta tell you, Lori, it is an honor to even appear on the same audio with you. I have folks been asking for this for years, finally got her cornered up and, uh, at a weak moment. Hey, no, good morning on Live a Life by Design. Today we’re gonna tackle something that Lori has already broached with you that I think is, uh, to be honest with you, Lori, a very interesting topic. Growth equals grace plus grind. Now, you know, I’m a numbers guy, so I have to put it in equation method so I can understand it.
LF:
And you know, when I put letters and numbers together, my mind just completely goes. I mean, it’s just like you’ve seen that little, um, gif of the exploding brain. That’s what happens to me when I think about that, like letters and numbers altogether. But we’re gonna do it in a way that we’re gonna be able to understand. You’re gonna get great takeaways from this concept in this conversation.
JW:
Hey, I gotta tell you one thing though. I, I’ll never laugh harder than I did the first physics, physics class I took in high school. Well, I had a guy, Mr. Talley was his name. Oh, physics man. Mr. Talley was his name. He was a mathematics genius in my mind. When I was only a junior and senior in high school, if Mr. Talley wanted to, I thought he could solve world hunger with mathematics. I mean, he was that good in my opinion. And so he wrote this equation on the board, and I swear to you not, there was no numbers. It was all alpha letters.
LF:
Oh, that’s incredible.
JW:
So stay with me. He said, solve the equation. So I took the letters and I tried to spell a word with it, and it looked like a Serbian word, you know, where you have no vows in it, you just have, you just have letters, consonants. And it was so funny, he said, okay, so now we’re gonna get started on physics, not English, Mr. Williams of which, yours is very poor, if this is a word. Anyway, it was so funny.
LF:
Well, you tried!
JW:
You know, Hey, there’s one thing in life, I will tell you. I’m like that old mule that’s just pulling that wagon all day long. I just keep trying, you know, just grind it out. So that, that’s right. One of our words today. So, no, hey, you know, I, real quickly, I wanna say a couple of things about this. So if you want to grow in any manner whatsoever, now today, Lori’s gonna take a stance of how to grow as a person. And I’m gonna add to that how you can grow your wealth as that person. So let’s take this, uh, a little step further. Lori, what do you think is the first issue or item we should work on if we’re gonna have growth?
LF:
You’re gonna have to get out of your, get out of your own head. We’re all our own worst enemy when it comes to growth. Sometimes when you accept a challenge and you think, oh, this is gonna be easy, this is gonna be great. You’re gonna change a habit, or you’re gonna change jobs, or you’re gonna change, you know, geographical location, you think in terms of some of, some of that’s gonna be easy. Growth comes naturally. We just go and we do, and we find ourselves in the thick of it. And there’s no struggle. There’s no strife. And then there are times where you’re forced into growth, whether it be, uh, an unexpected job change, an unexpected move, an unexpected, um, financial situation.
JW:
Oh, oh, sorry, sorry. You do grow through those challenges, though, I promise you, you do
LF:
But you know, both positive and negative forms of growth. But in order to grow, you have to be willing to get out of your own head and put yourself front and center. And one, you know, we talk about it a lot. One step, one foot in front of the other, the ne just do the next thing. And sometimes growth happens naturally, and sometimes it’s forced. But we have to continue to try and we have to continue to give ourselves the opportunity to step back and reevaluate and pivot and all of those other fun things that we, when we talk about having to make a change, that we don’t like the word change , but we have to embrace it because that’s how you grow.
JW:
You know, that is a wonderful perspective, I would say to you as well. Let’s, let’s take this over to this side of, if I’m in my thirties and I look back and I go, you know, my grandparents retired, had this wonderful life, my parents are almost retired, they’re getting ready to have a wonderful life. What do I need to do? I’m in my thirties, uh, you know, I got my first house. Uh, I still owe for it. I got a car I probably owe for that. How do I get off of this? You know, if you will. This just running back and forth on this Ferris wheel, and I need to get to where I can move forward. And I tell people, it’s all the mindset growth through, right? So if you got your mind in the right spot, then your money will follow us. What I’m saying, and the point I’m making with this is, is it’s easy to grow. If you think about growing, as you said just a moment ago, one step at a time, or as I say one day at a time, Lori.
LF:
Sometimes it’s an hour at a time, honestly, depending on what type of growth you’re trying to tackle. Uh, and sometimes just after several hours, you’re like, Nope. Gonna go back to bed. I give up, I’m gonna go back. I’m gonna start over.
JW:
It’s a, it’s a redo. You get a redo. Yes. Hey, well, let’s, let’s talk a little bit about that though. So, you know, one thing that I love about Albert Einstein, and there are many things I love about Albert Einstein. He was a unique individual. And if you read his biography, the issue was boiling down to in his life that he didn’t fill his mind with those things that weren’t valued by him. So, for example, he literally didn’t know phone numbers such as his own, he had to look them up. He said, why put this, in my mind, it doesn’t help me grow as a physicist. It doesn’t help me become a better professor to know my own phone number. Right? And one of the things we need to learn as people is that we are going to grow only if we have intentional desire to do so. How you like that? That’s a pretty good phrase.
LF:
Intentional desire. Yeah, that’s, well, I was still stuck back on the number thing. I mean, I’m not sure that I could tell you anyone’s phone number.
JW:
That’s why in your Apple iPhone or whatever, it has a directory. You put ’em in there, right? Yes. . You know, the, the thing about it is though, if you think about how do you amass millions of dollars? So I’m gonna tell you a secret that I told my daughter, she’s only 26. Well, on her way to being a millionaire, and you’re gonna laugh when you go 26. Come on. She just got her first, or actually her second big time job. And I, I will tell you, it’s so simple. She doesn’t understand that it’s working until she sees her statements every quarter in her retirement account or her savings account. And she looks at it and she goes, well, wow, I’ve got money. And what I’m trying to say to her is, is it’s that boiling that frog slowly, right? Lori? So if you, if you put the frog in boiling water, he jumps right out.
JW:
Or if it’s terribly cold water, he’ll jump right out. But if it’s just warm water and you slowly raise the temperature a degree or two at a time, guess what? You got boiled frog legs before it’s over with, right? And so my point here to her is, as I said, you’re really taking this the right way. You start young when you were 24, which she did right out of, uh, graduate school. And she basically has been saving every pay period. And she’s seeing that progress made because I said there’s that powerful eight wonder of the world that Albert Einstein spoke of. Do you know what it is?
LF:
The eighth wonder?
JW:
The eighth wonder compound interest. So she is getting paid interest on top of interest on top of interest on, yeah, this is what Albert Einstein said, Hey, the eighth wonder of the world. And he was a physicist. He understood this was compound interest. And so by doing that and giving yourself plenty of time, you’re going to amass a larger amount of support for your family later in life by simply making a few adjustments now in life while you’re younger.
LF:
But, so, okay, here’s an interesting point. When I was younger, in my twenties, no one talked to me about financial planning. I didn’t understand taxation, I didn’t understand retirement, I didn’t understand, really, I didn’t understand savings at all because as a poor college student working, you know, trying to get through school and then my first professional, uh, you know, adult job or real job, as they say, you get your paycheck and you think, I’ve got to take care of all the things I have to take care of. What’s the one thing or where should someone go when they are in their twenties or maybe early thirties and they don’t come from a financial background of, you know, a lot of people don’t have, you know, they’re first generation, they’re the first people in their family to go to college or to get a higher paying job, and they may or may not have grown up with the opportunity to learn those things about savings. And what, what, what do you say to someone, what’s the first place or where they should go to find that information to take that first step to financial progress?
JW:
Oh, man, that is a great question. So one of the places I would go is I would go to the certified financial planner board websites, those cfp.net. I’d go to their website because there you can search for certified financial planner professionals just like me, that volunteer to help younger families with a complimentary consultation. So for example, you don’t have to come in and say, I’m gonna have to spend hundreds of dollars just to get an idea of what to do. You come in and we give you some really good information for that full free hour doesn’t cost you anything. And then you have a, what I call a yellow page plan. It’s not a full plan, but you have an idea of where to start. And that, I think’s the key to a lot of people in their twenties, right? So they get this first job.
JW:
If they just had some direction, had a relationship with someone, and a little creativity, these people would have security in life way before anyone else. Uh, now the real, real thing to understand here though is, is when I had my first job while in college, uh, so I went to school full-time, but I did work three part-time jobs that equated to a full-time, 40 hours. And when they said we got paid weekly on my first day on the job, I misunderstood them. I thought they meant W-E-E K-L-Y. But when I got my first paycheck, it was W-E-A-K-L-Y. So , you gotta listen to the terminology there, right? That
LF:
Varies. Yes, so true.
JW:
So, but on a serious note, you know, I think at the end of the day, I, if I were someone in my twenties, I would go to the websites or just get on compasscapitalmgt.com, we will do a virtual meeting, or we will do an in-person meeting or just on the phone, whatever’s easier for you. And we help provide a complimentary consultation for those individuals that really want to improve their life and have the desire to do so.
LF:
Well, it’s a good thing that we’ve come this far because I can tell you that I think the only type or the only conversation that I ever heard about saving when I was a kid was we had a swear jar. And my grandparents always had to put change in the swear jar. And sometimes my grandmother would put dollar bills because it, depending on what –
JW:
Depending on what the word was?
LF:
On the word. So I think that was probably my earliest memory of saving. And I don’t even know what they, I assume they saved the money or I don’t know what they did with it, but that jar was always full. So, my grandparents had very colorful language and probably saved quite a bit or purchased something rather important or fun. I don’t know.
JW:
But you’re gonna laugh, we actually fed 18 families with our swear jar money from the last couple years with Covid in our office. I’m not sure who was doing all the swearing, but the company matched all those dollars. And I’m like, how many families we gonna feed this Christmas? I think there was about 18 with that much money in there, but, uh, whew. Oh my goodness. It was a gallon jar. That was time though. It was how bad it was. It was a gallon jar, it wasn’t a small jar.
LF:
Covid did a lot on a lot of people. So I that I’m glad you all turned that into a positive for sure.
JW:
Yeah, no, we didn’t. Uh, we did feed some families. I’m exaggerating. Obviously we have a great team, but, you know, one of the things I, I’m glad you said that too, about giving yourself grace. What, what do you think about that? It’s kind of a wild word, you know, to give yourself grace.
LF:
It’s hard because we, as, as human beings, we’re always looking to help other people and to give people grace and opportunity to, you know, you know, we talk a lot about young people and I myself am in the, in the throes of having a, a mini version of myself as um, as bad as I want to, don’t wanna say that or admitted he is a lot like his mother, but, um, a teenager. And so we talk a lot about failure and experiences and growth and grace and opportunity. And we want to protect our young people that it’s okay to make mistakes and not have them go with you for the rest of your life. We have to give people the opportunity to learn from their mistakes. We have to give people the opportunity to understand consequences for those. Um, you know, we talk a lot on this podcast about how we’re so glad that we grew up before the internet because there’s no evidence of all the shenanigans that we got into as young people.
LF:
Um, but I think that we forget about that as adults. You know, we talk a lot about, you know, we want our young people to be able to make mistakes in a safe environment or a, a space where they can learn and grow. And as we become adults, we just are not as forgiving and we are not as graceful to ourselves. And it’s a lot of self-talk in your head. We do it to ourselves. Um, the same person that I spent about three hours with last week, trying to convince them that they were worthy and they were a good person and the work that they were doing was valuable and that it didn’t matter if they were having a bad week. I did all of that and then turned around not one day later and made a mistake myself and just beat myself up for days over it. Yeah.
JW:
And I don’t know if I ever thanked you for that three hours. I appreciate you talking to talk me off the, the cliff. You’re welcome. Talk me off the cliff. Yeah. . No, on a serious note though, the grace thing for me is very difficult, Lori, I’ll just be very, very honest. I was raised a very competitive family. I’ll tell you how competitive since I was a child. I’ll never forget this. At the dinner table, we prayed over every meal. And that’s not too unusual being in a Protestant family of, you know, six kids, two adults around the table. But the unique thing was we prayed with one eye open. There was not always enough food . And so that was kind of unique for our family. , I’ve got the fork scars on my left hand to show you where I reach for like the potatoes and maybe a little bit too soon after the prayer.
JW:
But, uh, on, on a serious note though, we do have a lot of competitiveness in our family. And so I was just raised up, you know, with my parents always supportive. I don’t recall any time they say, Hey, you know, just cuz you got second place, that doesn’t mean anything. They’ve never said that. I always kind of wanted to be that first place kind of person no matter what sport I was in or in Boy Scouts, I always, uh, uh, ascended to the leadership roles cuz you know, I just felt like you gotta be involved. You’re gonna have to be a leader and you need to be someone that you can, uh, have your, your people look up to and espouse to. Right? So I, uh, I really have a difficult time giving myself, quote grace. I really have a hard time with that. And I do journal a lot about that.
JW:
And I’m talking like, you know, you gotta give yourself some space, uh, to make mistakes. And if you’re not making mistakes, you’re not trying hard enough, right? The old saying. And so, you know, I understand exactly what you’re saying. If you talked to this person and gave ’em the, uh, understanding of their value as perceived by the world because in between their own two ears, they didn’t perceive that value there. They didn’t think they were contributing to their world in a positive way. And uh, man, I just think that’s fantastic that you reached out to help someone there from the lofty perch of your highness that you are, because in my life that’s a long stretch downward. But, uh, I will tell, you know, you are too kind, , at the end of the day, we all robed in white. She stepped down off the pedestal and helped out. But no, on a serious note, that is, uh, grace is a big, big component of growth. And because if you don’t get past the mistake you made yesterday, you’re never gonna grow into your tomorrow.
LF:
Oh. And, and that is so, so true. And I think that there, you know, there’s so much to be said for all areas of life that need grace. You need grace. Professionally, personally, uh, it, it just, and it makes you feel good to give it to someone. And, and it’s good to receive that grace. We just have to remember to keep telling ourselves it’s okay to give and it’s okay to receive.
JW:
You know? And, and let’s take this back to the, to savings for the future. You know, there’s some people that go, well, I started saving but this emergency thing blew up and I didn’t have my emergency fund set up yet. Which we all like for you to have six to nine months worth of living expenses, you know, just sitting there in case life happens. Cuz guess what, Lori? It always does. Yeah. Yes, . So, you know, and so they said, well, I couldn’t save my money for this pay period or whatever, and they just get totally thrown off. But have you ever watched a line of ants when they’re taking, uh, you know, goods back to their, their anthi? Have you ever watched the line, if you take, uh, an a line of ants, they’re, they’re head to tail all the way back, right? His head to tail.
JW:
And if you take a stick or anything and you put it in front of those ants behind someone’s tail, and it messes up that line, have you ever seen what they did? I did this in a boy cast and I just was amazed. They actually did something we humans need to do. They pivot left or right, they go till they see, they got some daylight beyond that twig or whatever you put in front of them and they go right back in the line where they were. It was amazing to me. It’s kinda like, uh, just, Hey, I’m de deterred. Turn around. Here we go, still have whatever I’m taking to the hill, you know?
LF:
And it’s instinctual. And that’s exactly, it is what we need to make it. We need to make it instinctual that no matter what, no matter what roadblock, no matter what life throws at us, or curve ball, we just pivot’s a great word.
JW:
You know? And, and the grace part of this, I think may be the harder of the two, because guess what? If you want growth, it’s an algebraic equation. So growth equals grace plus the grind about that a little bit.
LF:
The grind. Don’t you ever, you know, you know me, I’m a coffee drinker, so the word grind takes on a totally different word for me, , or a totally different meaning because I, I, one of my favorite things is to sit in the coffee shop and watch the grind, the beans, you know, grind through the machine. It smells amazing. Even if you don’t like coffee, it’s hard to argue the fact that coffee just smells good, like when it’s fresh in the coffee shop like that. But anyway, I digress. That’s not the kind of grind we’re talking about this morning, . But if you could smell that through the, through the, you know, the sound waves, I guess visualize that in your head. But when I think about grind it, I, you know, I love quotes and I love, you know, acronyms for things. And so I, I love that we’re talking about this this morning because it, it reminds me of grind. Get ready, it’s a new day. So every day is the grind, right? But every day we can make it a positive experience if we just put our mind to it and the mindset. But grind is repetitive. You’ve got to keep doing it. It doesn’t come easy, it doesn’t come naturally for some, some it, some it does, others it doesn’t. But if you’re willing to put in the work to keep at it and to keep trying and to keep going, eventually it becomes part of your routine.
JW:
That is pretty awesome. I love the acronym use of grind. One thing I think about too, so if I’m out doing some workout and they go, okay, today we’re gonna do a hundred burpees. Well, first of all, your mind says, okay, that’s not like even possible. The human body can’t take the strain.
LF:
I was gonna say, I’m on the floor, I’m laying down, I’m done.
JW:
But then what I found is, is the way through the grind is to get to the grind. So the more you sit and think about it, you’re gonna, brain’s gonna go, oh man, don’t go there. Don’t do that. Don’t do that. Instead, you know what I do? I just flop down on the floor and get that first one done. And guess what? It becomes so much easier to get the second and the third and the fourth. Now, by the time I get to 40 or 50, I’m doing, you know, 10 at a time perhaps. And then I’m doing another exercise. Come back, do 10 more. I will tell you, you get to about 60 or 70 of those, which we’ve done before, and you, you’re sitting there and you go, well, this isn’t so bad, but your form starts to fall. So here’s what I wanna bring to the grind. Our form must be maintained in no matter what we do, if we want proper growth, you’ve got to not skip a step or get sloppy in how you do it, right? So going back to your finances, always have a goal in mind that you’re trying to reach and be aiming to that goal. So have you ever done any bow and arrow shooting?
LF:
No, but I, well, does Nerf gun or Nerf bow and arrow count? I have done Nerf.
JW:
It it does, it does when you’re in the house. Now, I don’t prefer you in a real bow and arrow. So when we were in scouts, I always told people, I said, Hey, I’m gonna spin you around, have a bow and arrow ready to go, and I just want you to shoot wherever you’re stopping. So I spin ’em around. That is scary. It, it is dangerous. Uh, but we were 13. I mean, what are you gonna do, ? And you know, you’re, you’re basically immortal at 13, as you know in Boy Scouts.
LF:
I was gonna say, there’s no fear there. It’s just go for it.
JW:
I got a merit badge. I don’t even think they do it now. When I was in scouts, I got a merit badge that had nothing but a halo on it. You know what I’m saying? So anyway… Yeah. Heavenly Scout, I think ISS what it was. There you go. Uh, but anyway, so I spun this boy around and so forth, and I made sure he was not pointing toward any of us that were standing behind him. And I had him pointed toward a target, but he wasn’t gonna get anywhere close. So he let it fire and boom, the arrow missed everything. And he was only 25 paces from the target. So roughly 75 feet. And I took the blindfold off and I said, okay, what do you see that you’ve done? And he said, well, I’ve accomplished nothing. He said, the arrow’s on the ground, the target’s over here way to the left. And I didn’t do any good. And I said, no, you did something though. You executed your effort, but you didn’t keep your eye on the goal. You could be expending all of this mental, physical, spiritual financial energy. If we don’t keep our eye on the goal and grind toward the goal, not just grind, but grind intentionally toward the goal. You still may come up short in life with your growth plan.
LF:
But your growth – listen, I almost said growth plate. That’s not even close to growth plan.
JW:
Actually growth plates are in the bones, by the way, I just wanna say, but go ahead. I digress.
LF:
But the growth plan can change and it can evolve and it can be something that you set out to do in the beginning, and by the time you’re done, it could be something completely different. But the, the great thing is, is that from start to finish, there’s something in there about the process that you’ve gone through, the process, you’ve completed something. So that’s important to remember also.
JW:
Yeah. So, so really if growth equals grace plus grind, there are within grace and grind, some real purposeful steps one must take. And there are some methods that one must invoke to make that experience for each of those two contributions to be something positive. So you can’t just get out there and say, well, I forgive myself going and make the same silly mistakes all the time, right? So we gotta grow and learn not to do the same mistakes, but then when we go to work on ourself as far as grinding it out and actually contributing to that success, we have to do it in a manner that’s most positive and useful of the energy level we have. Right?
LF:
Exactly. And we have to be willing to seek out other people that may have knowledge or expertise in areas that we don’t. Because those are the people that you bring to your table that help you continue to have growth. And those are the same people that are gonna help you have the grace when you don’t feel like you’ve had growth.
JW:
Oh, hey, that’s pretty good. You’re saying it’s, uh, hard to grow on your own.
LF:
Oh yeah, definitely not a one woman show.
JW:
Well, it would take three men, equal one woman’s contribution. I can assure you that.
LF:
Uh, I may not, I don’t know, may not argue with you on that one. Don’t tell my spouse.
JW:
I won’t say a word folks, listen, live a life by design. Our whole goal here today is to help you focus back to where you grow to become the person you wish to be. And isn’t that really what life’s about? You know, we start out on this planet with literally nothing other than our own bodies and hopefully a couple of parents that are taking us in the right direction of life. But we have to learn it all and we have to use it all to really become all that we can. And with that, I do believe grace and grind will help you grow more if you do it intentionally, as we’ve discussed here today. Final word, Lori.
LF:
Well, you thought this episode was gonna be about math, but somehow we managed to make it about other things too. But don’t give up on math. I’m still trying. I’m definitely, you know, constantly learning and maybe someday that I will be able to do letters and numbers together cohesively. But that’s a whole journey from now. So hopefully there’ll be more grace and more grind to get that growth eventually for me.
JW:
I think you’ll get there. Hey, join us next week here on Live A Life By Design. And do us one big favor. Go to our Live a Life by Design Facebook community and give us a hint of something you may have, have given yourself, grace that you didn’t perform as you should have, or perhaps give us a growth item that you’re working toward and what steps you’re taking to get there. And until next week, as we always end each episode, go ahead, and live a life by design!
