Bautista Planning and Analytics, LLC – Registered Investment Advisor

Tag: Personal Growth

  • How To Accept The New Order Of Life

    I just finished my second to last semester of my MBA, and now I just have 12 more weeks until I’m done and can get 16 hours a week back to apply to other parts of my life. I’m also trying to see people one last time here in Oregon before I head off to Latin America in November for the next two years. My goal is to to become 95% fluent in Spanish so that I can work on the next part of my business plan.

    My life has not been a straight line based on what I thought would happen, but it has been like an explorer trying to make a map. I’m just trying different things and seeing what I can do to help me make the best map possible and help me live my best life.

    One of the new things I’m getting into is finding ways to combine data analytics and data visualization with financial planning and personal development. Here is how I’m apply data visualization with a sample budget. I feel this tells someone a better story to ignite positive behavior change than looking at a spreadsheet.

    I’ve been an entrepreneur for the past 7 years, and if I wanted complete order in my life, I would have quitted on day 1. Entrepreneurship is absolute chaos, but I love it. No day is alike, and I get to decide which direction I want to go in. Even if I wanted a life with complete order, it would be a fool’s errand trying to accomplish because it would require more than 24 hours a day. Complete order also requires me to control other people. And if I could control other people, that would mean that other people could control me, and I don’t want this.

    Some paths can be taken to give more stability, but they require more work to create the order since it’s like a garden. You have to spend every day watering the garden, weeding it, adding fertilizer, and protecting the crop from the animals to get your reward.

    Or you can take the path of a wolf. A wolf needs to average seven pounds of meat a day, and it requires a wolf at least nine attempts before it can secure a meal. But this path allows the wolf to rest, play, and explore, but it’s always keeping an eye out for the next opportunity.

    A wolf can roam around and be where they need to be to succeed. A farmer has to stick it out. They already put so much energy into their piece of land that starting over can cause a considerable amount of stress. Especially if a natural disaster happens and wipes out everything. Hopefully, if this happens, the farmer has a backup plan to handle the setback, but it goes back to trying to establish more order in life, which takes up more time and resources to make happen.

    In life, it is not as easy as do this thing, and you’ll be successful. There might be times when you have to be the farmer before becoming the wolf and vice versa, but there is the price for whatever decision you make.

    Though, we shouldn’t want things to completely be known to us about the future. Instead of advancing in life, we would simply be standing in place and having the world rotate around us. This will never happen, but what’s beautiful about advancing through life is that conditions of the new order of life can only be created through our own labor. We learn about the unknown and adapt our actions to the new knowledge we gain, which creates many of the delightful things we enjoy.

    This is why I learn so much so that I can help shape the future that I want for myself and society. And if you’re going to change the world, start by changing yourself. But realize that it’s going to be chaotic, and if you can train yourself to be strong enough to handle the heat, that heat can burn away the impurities that prevent you and your future from shining.

    PS.

    Take my personal development quiz if you want to get a baseline to see if you’re physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually strong enough to handle the chaos and accept the upcoming order of life.

    PSS

    If you want to get emotionally stronger, I recommend reading Amy Morin’s book, “13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do.”

    Also, this blog post was inspired by Leo Tolstoy’s book, “The Kingdom of God Is Within You.”

  • How The Best Investment Is In Yourself

    How The Best Investment Is In Yourself

    When it comes to creating wealth, it’s pretty simple. We can either save or create our way to wealth.

    To save our way to wealth, it’s simple math. To retire in 40-50 years, typically just requires someone to save around 10% of their income and get around a 7-8% return. If someone wants to retire earlier than this, then this typically means that they need to save more money and not spend that much money outside of basic needs.

    Someone who wants to get to $1,000,000 (which could conservatively generate $3,300 in monthly income for the rest of someone’s life), would need to invest $5,000/mo at a 10% annual return for 119 months or basically 10 years.

    This path requires discipline with saving and not spending that much money that causes them to go into debt and to have an income where they can save $5,000/mo. To generate this income in order to save, people typically just trade their time for money and have the skills required to generate that income. This is the passive approach.

    The other way is to create our way to wealth by learning to create a product or service that could be sold and generate earnings that can be saved or sold.

    When it comes to selling a product or service, it’s going to require a lot more work, where a business owner is going to need to know the following skills or learn how to delegate them.

    Skills Required To Create Wealth
    • Innovation
    • Operation
    • Marketing
    • Branding
    • Sales
    • Financial Management
    • Legal
    • Taxes
    • Technical Skills
    • Communication and Negotiation
    • Leadership
    • Project Management and Planning
    • Delegation and Time Management
    • Problem Solving
    • Networking

    No one is born with all these skills, but someone can spend the time to learn these skills by investing in themselves. If we want to focus on Peter Drucker’s definition on the role of a entrepreneur, they are responsible for two tasks. Innovation and Marketing. Everything else should be delegated.

    What’s Required For A Successful Business To Bring In Customers

    To create a successful business that brings in customers, it requires three things, technical skills, marketing, and branding. And the ratio of creating a strong business is not evenly spread across these three areas, it’s this:

    • 40% is marketing
    • 40% is branding
    • 20% is technical skills

    This was founded by the Coleman Research Group, and shows that just focusing on the technical skills is not going to make someone successful with creating wealth. The “build it and they will come” approach only really works when something is ten times better than all it’s competitors.

    So marketing is the thing that someone has the most control over in doing but the least amount of control in the outcome.

    It’s also important to increase one’s technical skills because this can help with delegation and innovation.

    The branding piece is basically what people say about the business when the business is not around. Having the right brand will come from having a focused message about what is offered and not letting people down with the experience that is promised.

    The Math Behind Saving Using the Passive Approach

    The median income for a household in the United States in 2020 is $61,937. If someone wanted to save their way to keep this level of income for the rest of their life, they would need the equivalent of $1,548,425 in assets (not adjusted for inflation). For most people this will come from social security and an investment vehicle like their 401k or IRA.

    For social security, this household would need to pay 6.2% of their salary to generate a monthly social security payment of $1,941/mo at age 65. This benefit is the equivalent of having $582,300. And generated a 6.26% return.

    So the remaining $966,125 would need to come from savings. If someone was to average $461.90/mo for 43 years, at a 7.5% rate of return (5.5% real rate of return after 2% inflation), this would take them to $966,125. This is about 8.95% savings rate.

    If someone loves their job, then this is a fine life, but according to a Gallup poll, 31% of folks are engaged in their job. So 43 years can be a long time to save if someone is unengaged in their job.

    The Math Behind Creating

    Now it takes the average millionaire 11-15 years to make it in business, but if some is looking to create a lifestyle that is $5,000/mo, then it requires them to either sell a product or service until they reach $1,548,425 or they can sell a business that is generating a certain amount of revenue a year.

    If someone is selling their book of clients, they typically can have 2 to 3 times their revenue. This is because the clients have a relationship with the person and not everyone is going to stick around. It is also a lot of work to onboard everyone.

    If a business is generating $774,212.50 in revenues in a heavily relationship based business, they can probably sell at two times revenue, and can making the $1,548,425. And their revenues would look like this:

    • Have $6,451.77/mo in recurring revenue from 10 clients
    • Have $3,225.89/mo in recurring revenue from 20 clients
    • Have $1,612.94/mo in recurring revenue from 40 clients
    • Have $806.47/mo in recurring revenue from 80 clients

    If a business had a service that was less relationship focused like laundry service to businesses in the local area, they are more likely to get a bigger valuation because the contracts are more likely to be renewed for a while as long as management and the company can ensure service doesn’t dip. This would be on the new team coming in.

    So if a business was just earning $387,106.25 at four times revenue, they would generate the $1,548,425 and would look like this:

    • Have $3,225.89/mo in recurring revenue from 10 clients
    • Have $1,612.94/mo in recurring revenue from 20 clients
    • Have $806.47/mo in recurring revenue from 40 clients
    • Have $403.24/mo in recurring revenue from 80 clients

    Less money is required in this scenario but there could be more competition.

    There is money to be made in any industry, but the key just look at what strategies are needed to become successful and then following through on those strategies. And success is not guaranteed either. People can do everything right, but then something like a global pandemic can happen and wipe out all the gains.

    But if someone takes right steps, they can minimize a lot of these risks and create their way to wealth faster.

    Another way to create your way to wealth is by selling a product in the following way:

    • Sell a $1000 product, 1,549 times
    • Sell a $500 product, 3,097 times
    • Sell a $250 product, 6,194 times
    • Sell a $125 product, 12,388 times
    • Sell a $62.50 product, 24,774 times

    This path has it’s own obstacles with logistics and placement of the products. Info products also seems to have great margins, but requires a lot of marketing and branding.

    If someone was to start from scratch at $1 and wanted to get to $1,548,425 in ten years, they would need an annualized return of 315.90% a year, which is 26.325% a month, or 6.075% a week.

    Now this amount of a return is not an absolute truth but gives the idea that if we work six days a week on our craft and ourselves and just improve 1% better every day, in ten years we can create the wealth we desired and didn’t have to save.

    Now there are risks associated with this path, but it also gives someone the most control over their future.

    This will require someone to get one percent better every day, and be prepared for the upcoming challenges of being a business owner and managing that risk.

    If someone is not properly managing their business cash flow, over leveraged, or taking on too much risk, then the first downturn is probably going to put that business out of business.

    Breaking Down The Required Business Framework To Be Successful

    James Altucher has a really good episode about the three things required to become successful in a business, which are understanding the domain, the field, and having the right skills for the job.

    If you were to look at online delivery, Amazon has done a really good job at mastering this industry and it’s because they’re understood the field, the domain, and had the skills to make it happen.

    When it came to the field, Amazon saw that a lot of other companies tried to offer free shipping on products sold, but they typically went out of business like pets.com, which did pet food and supplies and Webvan who did grocery delivery. Basically every product was sold at a loss. So Amazon had to figure out a way to become very economical, or be able to handle losses until things grew into a more stable spot.

    So they created Amazon Prime. People who got Amazon Prime spent more money than someone who didn’t do Amazon Prime. The membership fee also gave Amazon the injection of cash to offer free two day shipping. Amazon could also see what it’s competitors were doing and see what the best technique were to adopt or improve on. They even bought the company Zappos so that they could gain their skills of online delivery and helped sped up the learning curve.

    For the domain, this is the equipment and personal required to make things successful. There are a lot of different steps that need to be required to offer shipping and Amazon needed to make sure the warehouses and drivers were available to handle two day shipping. This is the reason why Amazon started building big warehouses in different parts of the United States and invested a lot into logistics, so that two-day shipping could be done at a lower price. There are other things that need to be done, but here is the general idea of how domain works.

    The last piece is skills. The management team of Amazon needed to look what was the best way to lead and manage a project like two-day shipping and they had the human capital to get it done.

    If a business can lock down the domain, field, and skill set, they just increase their chances of creating wealth. Luckily for us we can do great in three areas if we choose to get one percent better every day.

    The Investments Into Yourself

    When it comes to personal investments, I would say there are two areas that people should invest their time and money into. Their human and social capital.

    The human capital comes in four different areas.

    • Physical Self – This will give you the energy you need to handle your day
    • Mental Self – This will help your decision making and being innovative
    • Emotional Self – Helps over come imposter syndrome, holding onto grudges, moving on with life, and not let yourself get in your own way
    • Spiritual Self – Help you understand who you need to be in life and where you should be focusing your energy

    Working on these areas every single day will allow someone to grow one percent better every day and allow them to grow their business. The key thing is to be patient with the growth and not try to do too much too soon.

    The other area is working on your social network. It’s better to have friends than to have money. If you can find a friend with yacht, it’s better than owning a yacht. Friends can help you when you’re at your lowest as well. Focus on creating a great network and becoming successful in business will be a lot easier.

    Friends can also give insight and guidance on what to do since it’s best to learn from the mistakes of others than to make the mistakes yourself.

    A really great course on networking is Jordan Harbinger’s course, which can be found here.

    Life Is About Choices

    Whatever path someone chooses for wealth, is up to them and if someone doesn’t make a choice to save or create, they still made a choice for the future. Is that the future that they want, is something that needs to be explore.

    When it comes to wealth, we can either save our way towards it or we can create it. Or do a combination of both. To have wealth means that we have to make an investment into ourselves, which can generate the business or career that will allow us to save or create.

    For myself, I’m choosing to bet on myself and try the route of creating wealth, because I love what I do and if I fail, I can just live in Latin America on my social security. 

    Hopefully, now you have a clearer idea of your options for the path that you should take.

    Resources To Assist In Creating Wealth

    Please do your own research or consult a professional before you make any changes with your financial plan.

  • It’s Hard For An Empty Sack To Stand Up Straight

    In this episode, we discuss the need to work on ourselves if we want to stand up straight in life.

    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 that you can reflect on in your journal so you can grow yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually and have a better career, better relationships, and better personal finances while you enjoy your morning cup of coffee. 
    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 are going to discuss the need to work on ourselves if we want to stand up straight in life. About 250 years ago, Benjamin Franklin said that it’s hard for an empty sack to stand up straight. And he wrote down a bunch of otherwise sayings in his book Poor Richard’s Almanack. 
    This is a quick read, but it offers a lot of sayings that you should ponder and I get that chance on this podcast. I feel that I’m really good at remembering facts and stories is because I’m teaching everyone listening to this podcast these tips. I write the episode first and then I record it. So that lesson becomes even stickier in my mind. 
    And I feel like my sack can stand up straight because I’m constantly making sure it’s full. And when my sack is full, I have a lot of resources that I can rely on to help me live my best life and handle any obstacle that comes my way. 
    And the key thing is that we can’t take it easy with filling up our sack because it is constantly being depleted. One of the key things about life is pattern recognition. If you can recognize patterns faster and better than other people, this is going to set you apart from a lot of folks. If you look at chess masters, they have great memories when they see a board, they know what are the threats and opportunities when they glance at a board and it’s because they’ve been studying the game their entire life. 
    But if the board is set up in a way that is very uncommon, then the chess masters can memorize the board because that is not how the brain works. We look for patterns that we’re used to and then we know how to make decisions from there. This is why I love to listen to podcasts and read books so that I can understand patterns within human nature. If I see this is going on, then I know I should either do this or avoid doing that. 
    If I don’t put any knowledge into my sack, then I’m not going to be able to stand up straight when that event comes my way. I’m going to get run over. And in life, you’re going to get run over, because we can’t prepare for every event that comes our way, but there are many things we can do to minimize the effects of that event. And it is also important to fill up your sack with materials that can help you get back up when that happens. 
    If a sack just stays empty, it’s not going to accomplish anything and life is going to be harder to handle. And life is already hard enough, so don’t make tougher than it has to be. Do this, and life will be a lot better, plus you’re going to be able to enjoy more things since your sack is filled up.
    That’s it for today’s episode, to summarize it, it’s hard for an empty sack to stand up straight as Benjamin Franklin said. So take time to fill up your sack by working on yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. If you do this every day, then you’re going to have a pretty full sack with lots of goodies that you can enjoy. And when you go to a conference, do you want a swag bag with nothing in it or with mediocre stuff. The answer is no, you want a swag with amazing goodies that you can use in your life. So make sure you’re filling up your sack so you can stand up straight and handle whatever life throws your way. 
    If you would like to get the journal questions for today’s episode, you can sign-up for my monthly journaling subscription newsletter, where you get daily journal questions Monday through Friday, and as a bonus, you will also get my time management course and my personal development cheat sheet. You can get all this for $13/mo, which is less than the cost of an audible subscription and it’s less work to gain more wisdom. You can get this offer at growwithjoe.me/journal
    Thanks for listening today! To get a free copy of my Audiobook “More You Know, More You Grow: How to get better every day” just go to my website growwithjoe.me/book and you can download it right there.
    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 on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook just look up Grow With Joe
    If you’re on iTunes, don’t forget to give me a five-star rating if you liked this episode and hit the subscribe button as well.
    The greatest way to support this show is to share it with someone else.
    Thanks for joining me today and remember if you go with Joe, you can grow with Joe, cause Joe knows Dough.

  • Takes 20 Years To Build A Reputation And Five Minutes To Ruin It

    In this episode, we discuss the ways we can protect our reputation.

    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 that you can reflect on in your journal so you can grow yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually and have a better career, better relationships, and better personal finances while you enjoy your morning cup of coffee.
    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 are going to talk about the ways we can protect our reputation. Warren Buffett is accredited for saying it takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. And this is very true, once you do something to sabotage your reputation, it can take 20 years to build it back up.
    The easiest way to protect your reputation is to consistently show that you do good work, you do what you say you’re going to do, and you avoid doing unethical things. This is why it takes 20 years to build up a reputation because of the consistently good work. One time you do something, it can be a fluke, but doing consistently good work over 20 years tells a different story.
    When it comes to a business’s success, it requires three things, technical skills, branding, and marketing. And as a weighted average, only 20% of success is contributed to technical skills, 40% of success to contribute to branding and marketing.
    If you look at a company like Coca-Cola, they have been in business for over 100 years, and the coke you bought 20 years ago is going to be the same coke you can enjoy today. Now I don’t really drink pop, but coca-cola does a good job at marketing and branding. They’re on many different platforms for advertising and having a consistent experience.
    Now Coca-Cola has a reputation issue back in the 1980s when they try to switch to a new formula called New Coke and the customers hated this. Coca-cola was able to go back to its old formula but they had a reputation with its customers to bounce back from the poor product launch.
    No one or company is perfect, and mistakes will be made, and if they are made, it’s best to take ownership of the process and fix it the best way you can. America does a great job and forgiving people who do good afterward and show that they learned from their mistakes, but if we can avoid ruining or harming our reputation, we should take this path.
    Warren Buffett had his own mess that he had to fix mistakes and it was back in 1991 when a company that he invested in called Salomon was involved in a bond trading scandal that almost caused the firm to declare bankruptcy. And Warren Buffett spent a lot of time with that business to fix it and by fixing it, it allowed Buffett to maintain his oracle status. This event is probably what caused Buffett to say this quote.
    Make sure you protect your reputation because it will make up 40% of your success and keep sending out messages that promote your brand. It will be your greatest asset.
    And that’s it for today’s episode, to summarize it, it takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. And it doesn’t take many people to ruin your reputation. It can just take one disgruntled employee or customer to spread their negative message that damages your brand. So make sure the expectation are clear, don’t make promises that you can’t keep, and do consistently good work. This will help protect your brand and if something goes wrong, accept full responsibility, fix it, and then make changes to your procedures so the mistake doesn’t happen again. Otherwise, you might not recovery from the fall and all that hard work will just disappear. Don’t let this happen to you if you want to have a great life.
    If you would like to get the journal questions for today’s episode, you can sign-up for my monthly journaling subscription newsletter, where you get daily journal questions Monday through Friday, and as a bonus, you will also get my time management course and my personal development cheat sheet. You can get all this for $13/mo, which is less than the cost of an audible subscription and it’s less work to gain more wisdom. You can get this offer at growwithjoe.me/journal
    Thanks for listening today! To get a free copy of my Audiobook “More You Know, More You Grow: How to get better every day” just go to my website growwithjoe.me/book and you can download it right there.
    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 on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook just look up Grow With Joe
    If you’re on iTunes, don’t forget to give me a five-star rating if you liked this episode and hit the subscribe button as well.
    The greatest way to support this show is to share it with someone else.
    Thanks for joining me today and remember if you go with Joe, you can grow with Joe, cause Joe knows Dough.

    Additional Resources

    Get my personal development book for free

    Take my personal development quiz

    Schedule a discover call for one-on-one coaching

  • Be Ten Times Better

    In this episode, we discuss the need to be ten better than your competition and your old self if you want to be successful in this new economy. 

    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 that you can reflect on in your journal so you can grow yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually and have a better career, better relationships, and better personal finances while you enjoy your morning cup of coffee.
    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.
    At the end of today’s podcast episode, I’m going to give you a prompt question to reflect on in your journal. The idea is to take one to five minutes to reflect on today’s lesson and write a minimum of one paragraph on how you can apply the lesson in your life. You can use an actual journal, a word document like on Google Drive, or your note-taking app like Evernote. The idea is that you’re actually thinking about how to process the information to help you improve your life.
    In today’s episode, we are going to talk about the need to be ten times better. There is a good business book out there called zero to one, and it’s about innovation and competition. And one of the best ways to get what you want out of life is to be ten times better than your environment and your old self. In the book, they talk about how you don’t want to be in a competition, you want to have a monopoly and a way to have a monopoly over your niche is to be ten times better.
    If you look at cell phones before the iPhone, they were ten times worst than the iPhone. When the iPhone was introduced, I pretty quickly switched from my blackberry at T-mobile to AT&T so I could get my hands on the iPhone. This was great for me and I truly enjoyed the switch. I was able to do a lot more with my phone and it just felt good in my hand. Most people don’t make a switch to something else if it’s only marginally better. A lot of people buy a Tesla car because it’s ten times better than all the other electric cars.
    The same concept can be applied to us. I heard that an A player is worth 36 times more than a B player. An A player can do the work of 12 people or it could take them a day to do something while it takes another team two years to do the same work. To be an A player, you need to be ten times better than the other players. You also have to remember that we don’t play in a finite game where there only so many resources to go around, we can grow the pie to get larger, but we need to make sure that we’re developing ourselves so that we have more control over our lives.
    If you look at people and companies that are ten times better than their environment, they have a lot of control over their lives in the way they design their lives. I love the life I’m living right now and it’s because I’m way more than 10 times better than my old self. I love being a digital nomad that runs my own virtual financial planning business. I’m able to manage my life and all the things in it because I’m physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually strong enough to make it work for myself. If you get one percent better in each of these four cornerstones over a one year period, you will become over 3700% better as a person, which means that you’re 37 times better at the end of the year than how you started it.
    If I was to think about how I started off as an 18-year-old and compared myself to today, I’m glad I put so much work into my self-development. I’m basically a billion times better today than how I was an 18 year. I’m better able to communicate my ideas, I don’t sweat the small stuff, I get less distracted, I’m able to make better decisions, and I have a lot less anxiety. This takes time and persistence can solve a lot of problems and create a lot of opportunities. So if you want more out of life, then you simply just need to be better as a person but you don’t want to be marginally better, you want to be a least ten times better. The world is also constantly changing so this benchmark is going to change. What was ten times better 20 years ago, is probably ten times worst today. And if this is the case, then you probably don’t have the career you want, the relationships you desire, and the personal finances to make you feel secure.
    I see how the world is changing and I realize the skills that I have today won’t be enough tomorrow. I have to constantly put in the time to work on myself. If I just read, write in my journal, and make sure I work on things that are the most valuable to me, then I’m going to be fine. I know most people don’t do this, and this is one of the reasons I started Grow With Joe, so I can give people the tools to help themselves grow and be ten times better. If we all were ten times better physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, then I think the world would be a better place. I think it’s our duty to make the world a better place and a good way to do that is work on yourself and then make your slice of the world better.
    That’s it for today’s episode, to summarize it, strive to be ten times better as a person. I think a good benchmark is just to look at yourself a year ago. Are you stronger physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually than you were a year ago? If the answer is yes, then keep doing what you’re doing. If the answer is no, then change something in your life. Plus no one wants to really deal with B, C, and D players. People want to feel secure that they are being taken care of. An A player will do this. When I was in the Marines, if I had an A player, I could just give them a task and they would get the job done. B and C players needed nudges to get the stuff done. Then this takes away from my job, and I can’t finish what I need to finish. Yes, you want to be helpful, but if someone is not putting in the effort to develop themselves, then maybe they just need to find a different place to thrive. We can’t be the best in every single area, so find where you need to be and then strive to be ten better in that area.
    So in your journal, ask yourself, are in the right area to be ten times better? Are you the A Player in your group? Do you want to be the A player? Are you okay with what a B or C player gets? Are your ideas or plans, only marginally better? As always, this lesson requires wisdom to know where and when to be ten times better. So take in this lesson find the niche that you need to thrive in and then after a while, the riches will start coming in.
    Thanks for listening today! To get a free copy of my audiobook “More You Know, More You Grow: How to get better every day” just go to my website growwithjoe.me/book and you can download it right there.
    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 on Instagram at Grow With Joe and Facebook just look up Grow With Joe
    If you’re on iTunes, don’t forget to give me a five-star rating if you liked this episode and hit the subscribe button as well.
    The greatest compliment you can give me is to share this episode with someone else.
    Thanks for joining me today and remember if you go with Joe, you can grow with Joe, cause Joe knows Dough.
    *Music outro

  • You Get What You Tolerate

    In this episode, we discuss how if you want to have a better life, start tolerating the things that will get you a better life.

    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 that you can reflect on in your journal so you can grow yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually and have a better career, better relationships, and better personal finances while you enjoy your morning cup of coffee.
    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.
    At the end of today’s podcast episode, I’m going to give you a prompt question to reflect on in your journal. The idea is to take one to five minutes to reflect on today’s lesson and write a minimum of one paragraph on how you can apply the lesson in your life. You can use an actual journal, a word document like on Google Drive, or your note-taking app like Evernote. The idea is that you’re actually thinking about how to process the information to help you improve your life.
    In today’s episode, we are going to talk about how we get what we tolerate. This applies to your health, your relationships, your career, pretty much everything. If you can tolerate going to the gym and striving to eat well and get a good night’s sleep, then you’re going to receive the benefits of those activities.
    For myself, I love to read, and I’m willing to tolerate this activity so I gain all the wisdom. If you’re not going to tolerate certain conversations, then you’re not going those conversations in your life. I think as people, we have to decide how much of something we’re going to take.
    If you tolerate going to a job that you hate going to, that is what you’re going to get. If you can tolerate a relationship that isn’t filling up your cup, then that is what you’re going to get. The world is not a mind reader and it’s going to try to give you what it’s offering but for the most part, that means following someone else’s dream.
    In life, you have to know who you want to be in life and be the person that you want to be in life. And to help you understand the type of person you need to be and then actually be that person, you have to tolerate doing growth activities and be comfortable with uncertainty and losses.
    I’m not going to tolerate going back to a regular 9-5 job. If I tolerate that job, then I’m going to a stable paycheck as long as the company does well and I’ll get benefits but what I’ll be missing out on is creating my own thing and being the person I want to be. I don’t want to work for someone else, so I have to tolerate being a business owner.
    I have to tolerate the uncertainty of not getting a client for the day, I have to deal with the uncertainty of figuring out stuff as they come up, and a bunch of other stuff, but the reward for tolerating this stuff for me is control and autonomy over my life. This is what I want so I’m going to tolerate the entrepreneur lifestyle.
    Same thing with your relationships with friends, co-workers, acquaintances, family, and significant other. What you tolerate from these people, is what you’re going to get. So either you can take them as they are or you can try to raise their standards by setting a good example for yourself.
    To set your own standard, you’re going to need courage. It can be hard to stand up for yourself but the more you do it, the easier it’s going to be. Just remember that a missed mistake lowers the standard. So every time you tolerate the lower standard, that is what you’re going to get and it’s going to take work to raise that standard.
    To help you understand what you should tolerate and how high your standards should be, you just have to know yourself and what you want and need out of life, the go out and create it. Then if things enter your life that is not up to your standard, you can either get that thing to be of a higher standard or you just remove it from your life so you can focus on the stuff that matters to you.
    So understanding what you should tolerate is going to be kept in your development, so you want to change something in your life, you probably need to raise your standards and find something else that you can tolerate. I couldn’t tolerate being in the military anymore so I got out. I wasn’t going to be able to change the military and I saw that I could create something larger outside of the military, so that was the path I followed. Now I am much happier because I’m doing the stuff that I tolerate in my life and it gives me a lot of purposes. I’m not sacrificing who I want to be and this is exactly how I want my life to be, and this gives me a joy that I’ve never experience before and don’t want to lose.
    That’s it for today’s episode, to summarize it, you get what you tolerate. So figure out the life that you want to have with your career, relationships, and lifestyle, then figure out what you need to tolerate in order to obtain those things. It’s probably going to uncomfortable and you’re going to face rejection as you move towards the life you desire, but it’s what’s required. If you can’t tolerate these uncomfortable things, then you’re life is going to stay the same and be filled with things that you don’t truly enjoy. Life is short and the goal of life is not to exist for 100 years but to live for those 100 years. So if you want to live life, raise your standards, and execute. Do this and I think you can have a pretty great life. And if you need help, then ask for help.
    So in your journal, ask yourself, what is something that you’re tolerating in life that you shouldn’t tolerate anymore? Do you need to raise your standards in an area of your life? How can you raise your standards? Are you satisfied with your standards? The goal is to see what you should and shouldn’t do with your life. If you can spend more time on the stuff you enjoy, then life will be good but this requires work. So put in the work and start growing.
    Thanks for listening today! To get a free copy of my audiobook “More You Know, More You Grow: How to get better every day” just go to my website growwithjoe.me/book and you can download it right there.
    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 friday@growwithjoe.me
    I’m also on Instagram at Grow With Joe and Facebook just look up Grow With Joe
    If you’re on iTunes, don’t forget to give me a five-star rating if you liked this episode and hit the subscribe button as well.
    The greatest compliment you can give me is to share this episode with someone else.
    Thanks for joining me today and remember if you go with Joe, you can grow with Joe, cause Joe knows Dough.
    *Music outro

  • To Convince A Man That He Does Wrong, Do Right

    In this episode, we discuss how it’s not much use to convince a person they are doing wrong. They need to see with their eyes what good is. 

    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 that you can reflect on in your journal so you can grow yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually and have a better career, better relationships, and better personal finances while you enjoy your morning cup of coffee.
    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.
    At the end of today’s podcast episode, I’m going to give you a prompt question to reflect on in your journal. The idea is to take one to five minutes to reflect on today’s lesson and write a minimum of one paragraph on how you can apply the lesson in your life. You can use an actual journal, a word document like on Google Drive, or your note-taking app like Evernote. The idea is that you’re actually thinking about how to process the information to help you improve your life.
    In today’s episode, we are going to talk about the Henry David Thoreau quote, if you want to convince a man that he does wrong, do right. But do not care to convince him. Men will believe what they see. Let them see. This quote is about setting the example and letting the other person come to realize that they are doing wrong. When people are able to internalize their actions and see that it’s not up to standard, then they can change their ways.
    Now there are three types of incentives that can cause people to change their behavior and they are financial, social, and moral ones. This quote is about affecting social and moral incentives. If you want to be a good neighbor, then act like a good neighbor and set the example. There was a study done that wanted to see what was the best way to reduce energy consumption.
    The electricity company sent out different flyers like discounts on saving money, messages about saving the environment, and one the ranked their energy consumption against other people in their neighborhood. And the one that worked the best was the flyer that compared the other person to their peers.
    Now, this was social cue to do better. So if you want a better community, do things that will create a better community. If you want a better relationship, do things that create a better relationship. And if you want to end social injustices, do something that will remove those social injustices. This is going to be work and requires effort. It’s easy to wish somebody would do better, but you have to show them what excellence looks like. The other person has to see it with their eyes.
    To nag at someone is not going to be that effective. And by setting the example, you can affect the moral and social incentives that will get people to act the right way because the other person sees with their eyes on what the right thing to do is.
    One of the reasons why I hated being in the Marines, was the hypocrisy that I saw with my superiors. They would be late, not do their work, and just be a jerk sometimes, and as someone with lower rank, you can’t really fight that person or argue with them without the fear of getting in trouble. Then their behavior made me not work to work as hard. This takes a lot of work to set the example but it’s required to make the world a better place. The worst thing we can do is be a hypocrite in the situation and expect other people to do better when you’re not willing to put the work in yourself.
    That’s it for today’s episode, to summarize it, to convince a man that he does wrong, do right. But do not care to convince him. Men will believe what they see. Let them see. Not of things are changing with the protests because there are a lot of people out their who want to change the standard. I can’t believe the confederate flag is being removed from a lot of places like NASCAR and military bases. Those institutions are setting an example. So let’s hope more positive change happens and if you want that in your life, have high standards for yourself and do the work within your community to affect that change. Which reminds of me the Marcus Aurelius quote, don’t argue what a good man should be, be one. This is all it takes to make things better.
    So in your journal, ask yourself, What is an area of your life that needs to be improved? How can you raise your standards to get a better outcome? How can use one or three of the incentives, which are financial, social, or moral, to help you get what you want? Are you mentally strong enough to set the high standard? If not, what can you do to be stronger? There is no use trying to convince a person that they should change, they need to see it themselves, so set example and let the other people know that this is what the example should be. If we all did this, then we can make our lives, community, nation, and the world a better place.
    Thanks for listening today! To get a free copy of my audiobook “More You Know, More You Grow: How to get better every day” just go to my website growwithjoe.me/book and you can download it right there.
    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 friday@growwithjoe.me
    I’m also on Instagram at Grow With Joe and Facebook just look up Grow With Joe
    If you’re on iTunes, don’t forget to give me a five-star rating if you liked this episode and hit the subscribe button as well.
    The greatest compliment you can give me is to share this episode with someone else.
    Thanks for joining me today and remember if you go with Joe, you can grow with Joe, cause Joe knows Dough.
    *Music outro

  • The Three Types of People In This World

    In this episode, we discuss how we should focus on being this one type of person 80% of the time, another person 20% of the time, and how we should avoid being this one type of person. 

    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 that you can reflect on in your journal so you can grow yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually and have a better career, better relationships, and better personal finances while you enjoy your morning cup of coffee.
    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.
    At the end of today’s podcast episode, I’m going to give you a prompt question to reflect on in your journal. The idea is to take one to five minutes to reflect on today’s lesson and write a minimum of one paragraph on how you can apply the lesson in your life. You can use an actual journal, a word document like on Google Drive, or your note-taking app like Evernote. The idea is that you’re actually thinking about how to process the information to help you improve your life.
    In today’s episode, we are going to talk about the three types of people in this world. The people who make things happen, the people who watch what happened, and the people who wondered what happen. And if you can be anyone, you want to be the person that makes things happen and the person you least want to be like is the one who wonders what happened.
    Right now, there is a lot of uncertainty with the world with covid creating a global pandemic and know you have protested over social injustices. There is a lot to focus on but I’m going to focus on what I think is going to create the greatest good. For myself, that is building up my business, with the future focus of hiring more minority financial advisors. Right now 2% of financial advisors are Latino and the other 2% are black.
    We have a long way to go, but the way I see it, if I can grow my business by focusing on the Latino Market, then I can eventually start hiring more Latino financial advisors, which will hopefully bump up that number. If I were to watch what happened, then I know this number of Latino and Black Financial Advisors will stay the same. And within these two communities, they need a lot of help with their personal finances. Financial planning and development coaching is my gift, so I’m going to do my best to spread my message.
    The worst thing I can do is wonder what happened. That just means I’m being ignorant and that’s not good. I’m too focused on my pleasure or fear, which are things that are not going to help me down the road. Now I can’t focus on everything, I can only focus my energy on a few things. I can give support, but I can do the heavy lifting in every area.
    I might not be able to do something right now because I’m still growing but I have a plan to save my slice of the world. The best way to predict the future is to create it and it might take a couple of decades to make your thing happen. You just got to follow the process and building the thing brick by brick.
    I’ve almost been in business for myself for a year now, and I know I have a while to go. I love what I do and I love who I get to help out. The world needs help in a lot of different areas and as a society, we just need to do our part to save a slice of it. And if everyone did this, then the world would be a better place. So don’t stay complacent and wondered what happened to the world.
    That’s it for today’s episode, to summarize it, there are three types of people in this world, the ones who make things happen, the ones who watch what happened, and the ones who wondered what happened. Try to be the one that makes things happen in the areas that you care about. There are other times you need to be the person who watches things happen because it’s outside your expertise or you’re waiting for more information to be gathered, but if you’re staying idle because of fear, that’s not good. The last person who wondered what happens is not a person you want to be because society is going to move on from that person because they are not keeping up. So have the wisdom to know who you should be as a person and then start acting like that person so you can save your slice of the world.
    So in your journal, ask yourself, what is an area that you need to start making things happen? What is an area of your life that you don’t need to be involved in and just watch things happen? What is the smallest step you can take to start making things happen? What is the smallest step you can take to remove yourself from something that you don’t need to be involved in? Is there an area where you need to do more research? The goal is just to figure out who you need to be in life and then to start acting like that person. Do this and you can have a pretty fulfilling life.
    Thanks for listening today! To get a free copy of my audiobook “More You Know, More You Grow: How to get better every day” just go to my website growwithjoe.me/book and you can download it right there.
    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 friday@growwithjoe.me
    I’m also on Instagram at Grow With Joe and Facebook just look up Grow With Joe
    If you’re on iTunes, don’t forget to give me a five-star rating if you liked this episode and hit the subscribe button as well.
    The greatest compliment you can give me is to share this episode with someone else.
    Thanks for joining me today and remember if you go with Joe, you can grow with Joe, cause Joe knows Dough.
    *Music outro

  • Don’t Be The Sucker In The Room

    In this episode, we discuss how we should know the deal before we accept the deal, so we don’t become the sucker in the room.

    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 that you can reflect on in your journal so you can grow yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually and have a better career, better relationships, and better personal finances while you enjoy your morning cup of coffee.
    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.
    At the end of today’s podcast episode, I’m going to give you a prompt question to reflect on in your journal. The idea is to take one to five minutes to reflect on today’s lesson and write a minimum of one paragraph on how you can apply the lesson in your life. You can use an actual journal, a word document like on Google Drive, or your note-taking app like Evernote. The idea is that you’re actually thinking about how to process the information to help you improve your life.
    In today’s episode, we are going to talk about how we shouldn’t be the sucker in the room. The world is a very complex place with a lot of different people in it, who have their own agenda and they are going to do things that will benefit themselves.
    I’m in the financial services industry and we get a lot of flack for screwing people over and I say it’s because of the industry was formed. It started off with stockbrokers, who made a commission, based on how many transactions they made. There was an incentive to sell a financial product and back in the 1950s the fees were a lot higher than today’s environment and it could cost up to $100 in brokerage fees just to execute a trade to buy or sell a stock.
    Thanks to the internet, you can find a trading fee as low as $0 on some brokerage platforms. Now there are trade-offs in terms of speed of the transaction and access to auxiliary information, but today more and more people have access to invest in the stock market.
    Now when it comes to the financial services industry this year, there are three types. Commission based, asset-based, and fee-for-service. Basically a commission-based financial planner gets paid on selling a financial product like a mutual fund, life insurance, disability insurance, or long-term care insurance.
    An asset-based financial advisor gets paid on what they manage. For example, if you give $500,000 or $100,000 to someone to manage that money, they will charge a fee of 1-2% most likely.
    A fee-for-service financial advisor charges on complexity. They charge a fee based on how much work it will take to build a plan that covers topics like estate planning, tax planning, retirement planning, cash flow planning, and investment planning.
    A financial advisor can be one of these, all of them, or any combination of the three. You just have to know the deal before you accept the deal. And I’ve seen people get inappropriate advice or bought an inappropriate product because they didn’t know what they were getting themselves into.
    So this is why if you enter into a room and you don’t know who the sucker is, then you’re the sucker. Now the sucker is the person that doesn’t know what’s going on. They don’t know the incentives behind the person in the room. Now, these incentives might not be entirely bad for both parties, but one party might not get their full benefit.
    Now a person can be taken advantage of in all three scenarios, but I feel the best model is the fee-for-service model because it allows the financial advisor to be in the best position to be a fiduciary. With the asset-based and commission model, there could be an incentive to move someone’s money to a product that this not the best for the client. If you don’t have a product to sell, then there is less conflict of interest.
    A lot of this depends on the situation, and what your goals are. But you don’t want to enter a situation where you can be taken advantage of because you didn’t do your research and making the wrong decision can have huge financial consequences, which can lead to other problems.
    This doesn’t just apply to your personal finances but in other parts of your life. This could be with a relationship, your career, and a hobby that you enjoy. If you really want to do this thing, then make sure it’s what you truly want and it’s the best for you. We’re humans and we get to decide what we put in our lives, for the most part, this is what I believe. Or we can design our lives in a way to create a perfect life. And what that perfect life entails, is up to us.
    But the key thing is, make sure you’re not being taken advantage of. I would recommend you ask questions and try to figure out what are the goals for this other person. If you believe it’s fair and just, then there shouldn’t be a problem. A lot of the things we enjoy today are based on the social norms that we believe to be true. So what is true for you might not be true for someone else, but we need to know what is the truth for ourselves.
    I’ve made mistakes where I followed this dream, and then I found out is wasn’t something that I wanted in my life. I thought I wanted to be a police officer in high school because that is the only job I thought I could get, but going into the Marines, reading books, and listening to podcasts has expanded my horizons in terms of what I could accomplish and what I want to do. Just raise your awareness and see what you need to add to your life and remove from it. This is going to take patience and action, so do what you can and start building that great life.
    That’s it for today’s episode, to summarize it, don’t be the sucker in the room. If you don’t know who the sucker is, then you’re the sucker. Try to understand the system, the motivations, the desires, of all the parties involved, and the tools that people are using to help them reach self-actualization. The tool might be the wrong one, or it might be the right one. We just need to increase our wisdom to know the difference. So before you enter something, just know the deal before you accept the deal. Know your upside, know your downside, know what you can control, what you can’t control, and where are the bottlenecks and inefficiencies are. Do this and you’ll decrease the likelihood of being the sucker in the room.
    So in your journal, ask yourself, are you the sucker in the room? Think about your work, with your family, your friends, a service that you’re using, a product you’re using? If you’re the sucker, how can you not be the sucker in the room? What skills or wisdom do you need to acquire to design your life with more control? What are the incentives of the other people or the system that you’re involved in? Just think about the situation and figure out a way on not to be the sucker in the room, and then start taking steps in that direction to help you live your great life.
    Thanks for listening today! To get a free copy of my audiobook “More You Know, More You Grow: How to get better every day” just go to my website growwithjoe.me/book and you can download it right there.
    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 friday@growwithjoe.me
    I’m also on Instagram at Grow With Joe and Facebook just look up Grow With Joe
    If you’re on iTunes, don’t forget to give me a five-star rating if you liked this episode and hit the subscribe button as well.
    The greatest compliment you can give me is to share this episode with someone else.
    Thanks for joining me today and remember if you go with Joe, you can grow with Joe, cause Joe knows Dough.
    *Music outro

  • Pride Makes Us Artificial, Humility Makes Us Real

    In this episode, we discuss how being too prideful can hold us back from accomplishing great things, and it’s humility that will get us to new heights. 

    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 that you can reflect on in your journal so you can grow yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually and have a better career, better relationships, and better personal finances while you enjoy your morning cup of coffee.
    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.
    At the end of today’s podcast episode, I’m going to give you a prompt question to reflect on in your journal. The idea is to take one to five minutes to reflect on today’s lesson and write a minimum of one paragraph on how you can apply the lesson in your life. You can use an actual journal, a word document like on Google Drive, or your note-taking app like Evernote. The idea is that you’re actually thinking about how to process the information to help you improve your life.
    In today’s episode, we are going to talk about how pride makes us artificial and humility makes us real. I was in the Marines for seven years and we are a breed of folks that take a lot of pride in the fact that we joined the Marines. It has the toughest boot camp of all the branches, we’re the smallest branch, we tend to have to do more with less, but the Marines are typically the first to fight, the tip of the spear as we like to say.
    Even though I’m a Marine, I will give someone the benefit of the doubt and the ability to prove themselves before I dismiss them. An A player is 36 times more valuable than a B player. One person can really do the work of ten people and if that person was in the Air Force, I would gladly accept them on my team.
    When it comes to the Air Force and the Marines, and for the Army and Navy as well, we like to rag on the Air Force by calling them Chair Force because they tend to not go into the field and train. They’re in an office capacity. I was in an office capacity myself, being a Supply Administrator so I don’t have too much leeway. But if I came across someone from the Army, Navy, or Air Force, and they were an A player, I would gladly accept them.
    It would be foolish of me to dismiss their skill just because they wore a different uniform. So I need to have the humility to accept them into my circle, or otherwise, I might find them a formidable opponent. And instead of trying to destroy each other, we can work together to create something amazing.
    It’s good to be confident and take pride in your work because they typically mean that you’re going to create amazing things, but you can take it too far and then your pride can become a liability. That why we need to have the humility to know when we need help and who we should have as an ally.
    Plus if someone from the other branches wanted some help, I would help them out because they are not my enemy, and hopefully, if I needed help, they would offer the same thing instead of discriminate against me. That would just make me feel awful and I don’t want to do the same thing against someone else.
    I just finished a book about Air Force Colonel John Boyd and he helped revolutionized the Marines Land Fighting abilities by adopting the OODA Loop and allowing small units to make decisions based on the current information instead of waiting on orders from above. John Boyd’s theories about warfare allowed the Marines to take over Grenada with ease and helped the US win Desert Storm quickly as well. If the Marines never would have had the humility to allow John Boyd to speak with them, then the Marines would still be stuck in 1970 thinking and that’s not good. Too much pride makes you live in the past while humility gives you the ability to grow. And in life, you want to keep growing if you want to be successful.
    That’s it for today’s episode, to summarize it, pride makes us artificial and humility makes us really like as Thomas Merton said. Once again I don’t know who this is but I like the quote. And over the past couple of months, we have had a lot of protest over social injustices and inequalities with the black lives matter movement. I would chalk a lot of this tension to people being too prideful and not having enough humility. Just one of the many issues that we need to solve in order to make the world a better place. But I would say it’s good to be prideful but makes sure it’s rational. Pride can give you the motivation to keep going and to give your full effort, but if you only rely on pride, it’s won’t take you as far as you could go with humility. Like always, there is a balance, so know when to be prideful and when to show humility. The right balance can help you reach new heights in life and live a pretty good one as well.
    So in your journal, ask yourself, are you having too much pride where it’s clouding your judgment? What are some of the benefits that the other person or thing can provide? Are you sharing your real feelings about the situation? How can you show humility in the situation? Can you show gratitude or vulnerability to make yourself more real in the situation? Do you know have enough pride in certain parts of your life? Just take a look at your life and see where you need to show more pride and where you need to show more humility. And then just keep experimenting with your day so you find the right balance. Probably going to take a while and you will make a mistake but at least you’re growing in the right direction.
    Thanks for listening today! To get a free copy of my audiobook “More You Know, More You Grow: How to get better every day” just go to my website growwithjoe.me/book and you can download it right there.
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