In this episode, we discuss how if something isn’t making you dollars, then it is something that you should probably stop doing.
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 if it don’t make dollars it don’t make cents and how this lesson applies to almost all of your life. This lesson closely relates to the saying, know the deal before you accept the deal. If you look at your relationships, your health, and your career, some are worth the money and some are not are worth the money. You just need to know what makes sense for you.
Sometime you will waste money and it will just serve as a learning lesson on how to do better in the future. Recently I tested out Yelp Ads for my marketing business and it doesn’t just make sense. What you can spend on Facebook ads is so much lower than Yelp and you can narrow down your audience with Facebook versus using Yelp. It was the worst $500 I ever spent on Yelp Ads. It didn’t make dollars for me so it didn’t make sense for me to continue using that service.
If you look at your career and it is not giving you the standard of living you want, then you have to look at your life and see if it makes enough sense to continue with it. Right now, I’m taking a significantly reduce the standard of living to run my business but I know down the road, it will give me the lifestyle and freedom that I desire. I know this business works because I’m getting clients but I just need to build up my client bases. I’m predicting by the end of year three, I should be where I want to be and then the rest of my life should be good to go. So I have two and a half more years.
If you don’t envision your future getting better from your job and it’s not bringing in the dollars, then it probably makes more sense to find something else. Sometimes you do have to take a step back so you can gain valuable experience and then in a year or two you can take four steps forward.
There are other times where the money is enough to have a good living, but it is taking a toll on your health. What is good having all this money if you don’t have your body and your body is the only vehicle that you will have that will carry you through life. You don’t need all the money in the world, but you should have enough to take care of the basic necessities. There is not enough money in this world that will convince me to destroy my body to trade it for a paycheck. I have a bad back, right shoulder, and right foot from my time in the Marines, and at 33 it still gives me problems. I guess things could be worse, but I wish I would have not to push through certain things when I was in because once you’re out, the Marines are not going to get you out of your bed.
I did gain some other valuable lessons from the Corps and maybe that is the price I had to pay to get here but thinking back, I could have done something other things.
When it comes to relationships, the if it don’t make dollars, it don’t make cents lesson can also apply. If you’re spending all your paycheck on trying to date, that can be very expensive. The average date can cost about $50-$200 if you do it wrong and that can be taken from other areas of your life. We are very social creatures and want to meet other people, so we are willing to spend money to hang out with other people, but you don’t want the money spent to be the only reason people are hanging around you. If your spending a lot of money to go out then that can be a scenario where it might not make sense. It really depends if it means sacrificing other areas of your life like with your retirement.
If you spend the money on relationships, you just have to make sure you’re okay with spending the money. Some people use the money to facilitate relationships and if used wrong, it can cause a lot of problems You ever see parents who spent a lot of money on their kids and now the kids don’t know how to take care of themselves and make their own dollars? You definitely see this on some afternoon talk shows where kids feel entitled. Good intentions can create monsters so you might not realize the monster you created until 25 years later and it doesn’t make sense for you to continue spending all these dollars.
Overall, the way that I see this lesson of “if it don’t make dollars, it don’t make cents” is that it’s about your doing is more valuable than any other thing you can spend your time and money on. You might value that first hour of videos at $500/hr but the tenth hour for the day might only be worth 25 cents. I believe doing something like playing video games can be really beneficial to you. It can relieve stress, it can put your mind in a problem-solving mindset, and it can allow you to interact with other people. You might also get some ideas that you can apply to your life in some way. You don’t need to spend every waking minute trying to chase a dollar because not every dollar is created equally. You can learn how to make $100 in one hour instead of trying to spend ten hours making the same amount of money. Some businesses you should just not go into because it doesn’t make sense financially. You don’t want to spend the next ten years working 80 hour weeks to make $50k and to be your own boss. I guess if you absolutely love it but what are you giving up doing by dedicating another 40 hours a week to work? Instead of working at $12.50/hr can you learn to work at $25/hr?
Things are not just going to be given to you so this is why you have to be a life long learner and learn to upgrade your skills and know where to spend your time. If you can do this, then you can live a rich life.
That’s it for today’s episode, to summarize it if it don’t make dollars, it don’t make cents. It is important to know what activities in your life are going to give you the most value. You don’t want to throw your money down the drain and get any benefit from your hard work. You also don’t want to waste valuable time on activities that are not going to give you that value to live a rich life. Your definition of a great is going to be up to you and it would be a big shame if you lived your entire life without actually living a rich 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.
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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.
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