In this episode, we discuss how, if you want a better future for yourself and the world, you need to design it and then follow the process to make that future reality.
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 the best way to predict the future is to create it. This has to be one of my favorite quotes of all time because as an individual, I put a lot of planning into my future. I don’t go into each day just to clock in and to clock out, my day is very calculated based on what my future goals are. I know that I can’t leave my future up to complete chance, I have to take some type of active role in it.
For the last four years and half years, I’ve been trying to make it as a financial advisor and my week is based on doing activities that will make me a successful financial advisor which basically means I have enough clients to generate the lifestyle I want. So I make the things I do today or tomorrow will help generate new clients in the future. I’ve been doing financial advising on my own for about three months and I’m where I want to be now in terms of acquiring new clients but it requires me to do a lot of marketing.
I release a new podcast every Monday through Friday even though there was a two-week hiatus when I was out of town for a month and then I got sick. I contact at least 10 people a day. I post on social media. I read 30 minutes a day, and I read one financial planning article a day. I’m training myself to have a better future.
I know that if I’m a better version of myself in the future, then I’ll a better future that is filled with a better career, better relationships, and better personal finances. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve always had a plan for my future. Things have changed tremendously since I was a teenager in terms of what I wanted to accomplish but the idea that I’ve been training every year of my life hasn’t changed. By training every year on how to get better, it just gave me more flexibility and control over my future.
To help me predict the future, I just ask myself how do I want to spend my day. What type of house do I want to live in, how do I want my family structure to be, how do I want my daily agenda to be and then I work backward. I have a pretty good sense of what I want for my future. I know when I want to wake up, when I want to work out, when I want my first meet to be, and how I want to spend my admin time, and how I want to spend my personal time. Since I value setting my schedule so much, this is why I love working for myself but there are responsibilities that you have and less certainty than if you work for someone else. It took some experimenting with my life to know what I prefer.
I read this book where one of the exercises was to write out your perfect day. I did the exercise and I time blocked how my perfect day would be. From there I calculated how many clients I would need to have and now I’m just working towards getting to that threshold.
Last year, I was talking to my sister over Thanksgiving and one of the things she mentioned was that she wished she learned Spanish when she was younger because it would open so many opportunities for her. I felt the same way and the idea popped in my head that I should move to Latin America to learn Spanish. Then I decided if I wanted to make that happen, I would have to leave my job, then I found out that I could become a financial advisor overseas by joining the XY Planning Network. So then I told my roommate that I was going to leave so they would have to find a new roommate, then I told my supervisor that I was leaving. Then I moved from Washington, DC to Oregon to move in with my parents while I established my own virtual planning business. I also have my GI bill which pays for all my tuition and gives me $1000/mo for living expenses and would take up 10 hours of the week. So by having a plan, I made Latin America a real possibility. I just submitted my paperwork to get my passport renewed and I’m just waiting for that.
As of Jan 2020 approaches, I’m getting more and more excited because the plan is coming together. I made this happen with my actions. Instead of talking about having a better future, I went out to go make it happen. I guess I’ve always been like this. If I see a path to get me a better future, I go out and do it. I try not to get in my head and tell myself that I shouldn’t do it. I tell myself hard choices, easy life, easy choices, hard life and then I usually make the right decision. I’ve had some moments of doubt over the past 12 months but I keep thinking about Latin America and how learning Spanish will open so many doors for me in the future.
In financial services, Latinos make up less than 2% of the population but we make up 19% of the population, so there is a huge opportunity to bring financial services to the Latino community especially since the traditional way of providing financial advising was not suitable for the Latino Community. Once I found about the XY Financial Planning Network and learned about their subscription model, I knew that joining them was perfect for what I want to accomplish in the future. Which is one day, start hiring financial advisors underneath me so we can help out more Latino Families with their financial planning needs.
So if I want to make that goal a reality, then I have to do stuff now to make it a reality. Also, by knowing what you want to accomplish in the world, it makes dealing with stuff a lot easier when they don’t go your way. Plus when it comes to planning out your future, don’t make it a goal that is so ridiculous and hard that you won’t be able to accomplish out. For me, I don’t want to help out every single Latino family because that would be too hard to accomplish. What I’m trying to do is help out 10,000 Latino Families, where I have 100 financial advisors underneath me and each financial advisor helps out a hundred families. These are way more reasonable and effective than trying to save everyone.
Whatever your goal is, I would say that you as an individual can only help so many people because you need to start adding people to your team. For me and financial advising, I can only help out 100 families before I start running out of time. So then if I want to start helping more people than that, then I need to start hiring people. It depends on what your goals are as an individual, so this lifestyle might be different from the one you want. The idea is to know what you want from your day and life.
So I guess the first thing you want to do is just figure out what type of future do you want. How much money do you want to have to spend, how much time do you want to have with friends and family, and how much free time do you want to have. You don’t need a million dollars a year to live a good life. You might not be willing to do the work to reach that mark. It can take a toll on your family and your relationships because you probably have to work a few years of your life like most people won’t. I know I work a lot and my revenue is not there yet to support a family so if you do take an entrepreneurship route. You might have to delay a relationship until things become more established unless you have a partner that can support you and is willing to go through it with you. Just something to think about.
That’s it for today’s episode, to summarize it, the best way to predict the future is to create it. So start with the end in mind and start working backward from there. This is something that I coach people through so they know their options and then can make a well thought out plan to help them reach the future they want. Life is better when you plan it out and start hitting your goals. I know I’m super excited about 2020 and it’s because my plan is coming together and I know you can have the same feeling too if you start creating your future as well.
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
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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
