In this episode, we discuss how there will things that you will have to deal with that you don’t know that you have to deal with or opportunities that you don’t know about, and need to find out about.
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 in life there are unknown, unknowns. And it’s in the area of the unknown, unknowns that can either provide us a lot of benefits or cause us a lot of harm. When you’re starting off something new, there are going to be a lot of problems that you didn’t anticipate were going to happen.
Last year my mom installed a pool in her yard so she could exercise more but she didn’t anticipate that the water would stay so cold a majority of the year, so she bought a heater for the pool which helped, but then the heater wasn’t strong enough for the winter months, and so she installed a greenhouse over it. Then there were issues with the house and water ph balance. She fixed all the issues, but there were a lot of unknown, unknowns that she wasn’t prepared for, which caused here more money and headaches than what she was prepared for. I just kept telling her that things happen, and you just deal with them as they happen.
I guess my mom could have hired an expert to do everything but that would have cost a lot more money to implement and sometimes you just have to go through the actions. If you had the time and money, this would be the best path to take but as people, we are all dealing with some type of restriction with our money, time, and knowledge base.
As I’m running my business, I have to know things about taxes, state laws, how to do financial planning, how to deal with clients, and a bunch of other stuff that I don’t know that I don’t know yet. Sometimes I get a letter in the mail that states I need to do something or pay something. Other times I find out later that I wasted a lot of money and money cause I could have done something a lot faster.
When my current financial planning business I wasted $500 dollars on ads that didn’t work out and I spent money on financial planning software that I didn’t need to spend because there was a free option that was suitable for today. I know money can replenish, so I’m not that worried about it right now. I don’t have the money to high consultants to help me with my operations yet and I don’t want to do this because I could spend all that money on consultants and still not have the customers yet to pay for everything.
This is why you just have to deal with unknown, unknowns and just try to be as ethical as you can be as you’re going through life. I know that as long as I’m doing a great job for my clients and I’m not leading them down an unethical path, then I should be okay.
This is also why I spend some time every week exploring the forums on my membership site to learn about the things I don’t know about yet. I’m also in a mastermind group with four other financial advisors and we talk about stuff that is going on in our business. I usually find out about something that is going on that I should be doing. Then I can just add it to my list to do and store it away in my memory bank.
If you can learn about the unknown, unknowns, this can set you up for a lot of success. If you know things that everyone doesn’t know yet, then you can start developing strategies and a plan to help you take advantage of opportunities. While everyone else is trying to figure out what to do, you’re getting a head start.
This is a big reason why Warren Buffett is readying 500 pages a day, so he can learn about the unknown, unknowns that will give him an advantage in his work. The late Sam Walton of Wal-mart would spend time in competitor stores to see what they were doing right and what they were doing wrong. Sam Walton even got kicked out of a store in Brazil because he was measuring the aisle length, and this was after he became successful. Sal Walton was also one of the first ones to adopt computers to keep track of inventory. This made operations run more smoothly and lead to smaller waste in the company.
While everyone was afraid to touch computers back in the 70s, Sam Walton actually took classes to help him learn the ins and outs of how to use a computer in his company. He explored the unknown, unknowns within his industry. This is actually what I want to do with my life and my career in financial planning. I want to learn the unknown, unknowns so I can reap bigger benefits for myself.
Plus my clients will benefit my knowledge because they are learning things to help them out through me. If you hide from the unknown, unknowns, what most likely is going to happen is that you’re going to be left in the dust. Kmart was bigger than Wal-Mart for a long time but they didn’t spend time learning about the unknown, unknowns out there and now they don’t exist for the most part. There are 115 Kmarts left in America.
We live in an information economy now and data is worth more than oil now. So we need to spend more and more time learning about different things and I really enjoy this process, because it gives me more self-awareness about my life and prevents a living a comfortable lie that will eventually come crumbling down. Even though Warren Buffet reads 500 pages a day, he still has time for other hobbies in his life like bridge and Sam Walton liked to go hunting in Arkansas. You just have to have the right balance in your life.
Hopefully, this podcast is exposing yourself to more of the unknown, unknown in your life so that you can have more self-awareness to live a life that has the right purpose and meaning to it and that you don’t get left behind.
That’s it for today’s episode, and to summarize it, in life, there are the things you know, the things you don’t know, and the things that you don’t know that you don’t know. And it’s in the area of what you don’t know that you don’t know are where are valuable opportunities in life are. I spend a lot of time in my week learning about new things so I can take advantage of life and not have life to take advantage of me. When I don’t know about those unknown, unknowns, then what is going to happen is that I’m going to make mistakes that are going to cost me time and money. We are all going to make mistakes but the key thing is that we want to minimize those mistakes as much as possible. Why deal with stress when you don’t have to.
Thanks for listening today! 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.
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