In this episode, we discuss how you need to have a game plan for life so you can take advantage of all the good things that life provides.
Full Transcript
Hi Everyone, welcome to the You’re Daily Cup of Joe Podcast, with your host Joe Bautista. In this podcast, my goal is to give you quick lessons on how to grow yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually so you can have better careers, better relationships, and better personal finances.
I’m also the author of the book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to Get Better Every Day”. In this book, I wrote down over 30 tips to help you grow in those four cornerstones. I’m also the founder of Grow With Joe, where I combine self-development coaching and financial planning for Latino Professionals.
In today’s episode, we’re are going to talk about how to take advantage of life so life doesn’t take advantage of you. And the biggest way you can take advantage of life is that you just know the rules of the system that you’re playing in. As a kid, I loved playing Madden and one of the easiest ways to immediately improve 50 percent in the game was to read the manual. It would tell you how to do an audible, how to use the hit stick, and any other special moves to use in a game and if you were playing against someone that didn’t read the manual, then you would usually dominate against the person.
In the summer, I went to Chicago to house sit for my sister and she had a PS4 with God of War on it. I put some serious hours into beating that game before my sister came back in 10 days. At first, I was just playing the game and I didn’t really understand how to take advantage of all the moves that Kratos and Atreus could use against enemies. Once I looked at a Wikipedia for God of War and told me how to beat one of the Valkyries, you realize that you just can smash buttons to defeat them. You have to use patience and skill to beat one. Once I figured out how to use the parry, rune attacks, and special atreus attacks, I got tremendously better at the game and I was taken beating taken advantaged by the Valkyries anymore and it helped me in other areas of the game.
So the first step to take being taken advantage of life is learn about the thing you’re going into before saying yes. I recently just wasted a lot of money on Yelp Ads because I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. Compared to Facebook ads, Yelp ads are a lot more expensive. You get better stats with Facebook and you can target people with Facebook instead of Yelp. The sales rep that convinced me of Yelp Ads told me to open four different pages on Yelp and he really didn’t take time to get to know my business and just urged me to spend more money. I felt taken advantage of and I probably will never go back to Yelp.
But now I know what to look for and I will do better in the future. You will be taken advantage of at some point in the future because as people, we are very trusting which overall, is the best for society. There will be that 5% that will try to take advantage of you but you just need to build up your knowledge bank so you can recognize when someone is trying to take advantage of you.
Also, seek someone that you trust that has gone through the same experience and see what they have to say. They might say that it’s solid or they might say don’t waste your time.
I’m in a mastermind with some other financial planners and we share our tips and tricks on what is working with other people. So after my experience with Yelp, I shared my experience to let them know what to expect if a salesperson calls you.
Now you don’t always want to be skeptical of trying new things, you just have to accept some loses. If you do take an L, learn from it and just move on. The longer you’re out of the game, the longer it will take you to reach that next level in life. Plus don’t say that you will never do something again because maybe it was just a bad experience. I might go back to Yelp, but it would have to be way better than my last experience.
When it comes to marketing, you just have to try different things until something clicks. The key thing is that you want to keep the loses small and not huge. Losing a day or a couple of hundred dollars is fine, but losing hundreds of thousands of dollars and years is not okay.
I met some folks whose retirement could have been hundreds of thousands more if they had the right investment strategy but they didn’t know how to take advantage of their retirement plan when they were younger. It sucks to see this with folks and I’m just trying to help folks take advantage of the resources they have to know.
My mom recently told me how before I was born, my dad tax owed all these back taxes because he was the leader of a group of workers and he would get one payment from the customer and then he would then split that money among 8 other workers. He didn’t realize that he had to withhold taxes and it caused him not to get a tax return for a couple of years. This is very common for business owners and 1099 employees and it ends up causing problems for a while until the tax bill is paid off.
There are things you can do with your taxes if you’re a contractor or business owner that can lower your tax bill and if you work with a tax professional, they can tell you things that can save you a lot of money. This will then allow you to take advantage of the tax code.
Knowledge is power and once you understand the rules and know what is important to focus on and what isn’t, it can really propel your life forward. I feel like I’m taking advantage of life right now because I’m living life on my terms and I have no one really telling me what to do. It’s because I understand the rules for things like health care, taxes, how to start a business and control myself. Since I’m able to take advantage of all my resources, I’m able to take advantage of my life and limit my exposure to being taken advantage of. It’s a great feeling and I hope you can take advantage of life as well.
That’s it for today’s episode, to summarize it, take advantage of life and don’t let life take advantage of you. To be taken advantage of, don’t spend any time learning new things, always say yes to do things without consulting a trusted expert, and forget the lessons learned from past mistakes. These a guaranteed ways to be taken advantage of and if you keep being taken advantage of, you won’t reach your full potential and you’ll probably be miserable. Not a way to live life. So go out there and take advantage of life.
To get a free copy of my book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to get better every day” just go to my website growwithjoe.me/book and just pay for shipping and handling.
I have a quiz on my website that grades your inner circle, so if you want to find out if your inner circle is an A, B, C, D, or F, you can take that quiz at growwithjoe.me/quiz
I’m also trying to do a feedback Friday episode, so if you have a question that you would like to have my answer on the air, just e-mail me at [email protected]
I’m also on Instagram at Grow With Joe and Facebook just look up Grow With Joe
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Thanks for joining me today and remember if you go with Joe, you can grow with Joe, cause Joe knows Dough.
*Music outro
