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Start to prioritize your health right now, 'cause you can go through this entire process, escape, transition, build your ultimate life, but if you're not healthy, it's not gonna be worth as much.
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You wanna be able to enjoy and live the life that you have outside of corporate, but if you don't have your health, you can't do it.
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[upbeat music] Welcome back to Brett Trainer Unplugged, and for those of you new to the podcast, my name is Brett, and I've been on a six-year journey, uh, post-corporate.
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Corporate quit on me just over six years ago, maybe a little bit longer than that. And I didn't realize it at first, but it's really been on a quest to live my ideal life, right?
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I think we've all earned that right with the dues that we've paid.
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Uh, initially I thought this journey was just about making money, replacing my income, but it's become a whole lot more, and if you've been following me for a bit, you know that that's my quest. And so I thought...
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What I thought I would do with this podcast with some more intention is share the things that I've learned along the way, and that's what this episode's gonna be about, is the nine things that I've learned in the first six years and how you can use that to, to your advantage.
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Like I said, I don't have it all figured out. I know I'm a lot closer to where I wanna be than I was six years ago, but I'm bringing you along this journey with me.
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I'm gonna bring in experts that have ideas on everything from money to life to wellness, realizing at the core of all this, most nine of us, 90% of us are gonna need, you know, to still be able to fund that life that we wanna live.
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So we will talk about how to make money outside of corporate, 'cause I think that is the, the one big skill.
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But what I wanted to do with this episode is talk about the nine things, I could have forced 10, but I didn't really wanna cut one of these out, that I've learned over the last six years that you can use as part of this process.
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Just to give you something to think about. So if you're still in corporate or if you've been laid off or even if you've gone, uh, post-corporate but haven't figured things out, you know, I think you can, you can take...
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Hopefully you get some insights from, from what I'm gonna share today. So first off, and again, these are in no particular order. The first one, I wasn't running from corporate. I was running towards control.
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I didn't realize that. Again, if you followed me early, you know I was the, the corporate escape, and it was all about getting out of corporate, and it really was more about the corporate lifestyle.
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And what I've realized, again, self-reflection along the way, is that I was really running towards control. And in corporate, you don't have any control. You think you do, right?
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Maybe day to day in some of the projects you work on, but for the most part, somebody else's time, somebody else's schedule, and they're paying you. You're trading your time for that money.
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And what I really realized was it was about taking control of my time. 'Cause if you have that, then you can apply it to, to wherever you want.
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So if you, if you're in corporate right now, and I wouldn't think of it necessarily as escaping corporate. It may be that bad that that's absolutely what you want to do.
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But think of it more towards what you're running at, which is control. 'Cause if you control that, you control your time, you absolutely control everything.
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Like I said, it took me, took me a couple years to figure that out, but it made my life easier going forward knowing that that's what I was prioritizing and really optimizing for. So that's number one.
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Number two, time is the currency, and along those lines, I think grinding is absolute BS, especially over the age of 40. And if you're doing it for somebody else, there's no value to do this.
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You're doing tasks that aren't adding value in order to get somewhere, and if you're still in corporate doing it, you're not going anywhere. And I realized that time, back to that control, is the ultimate currency.
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Me, I'm closing in on 60, so I don't know how much, how many more years. I'm gonna try to maximize my years. But, you know, you can't get time back. Once those hours are gone...
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One of my tipping points was the commute, uh, into the city, where it was 90 minutes for me each way.
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And I just realized that I was dedicating and donating my time to the company for this three-hour commute, and I became very resentful of the fact.
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And it just became a better understanding for me that that's exactly what I wanted. 'Cause if you control your time, you control everything, as I mentioned in number one.
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But start thinking about right now in corporate, even if you're in corporate, be more intentional.
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Don't be everything reactionary, 'cause what I found myself, when I was still in corporate, was going through the motions and just accepting the fact that this is what it is, this is the time that I need to spend, and wasn't really even intentional with what the time I was using outside of corporate, that these are just little things that you could do right now, that if you can find those five to 10 hours and apply them into areas that truly will make you happier or more satisfied, the quality of your life is gonna improve.
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It just, again, we don't necessarily always see it on ourselves. We can see it in other people, we can see it in other business owners, businesses, et cetera.
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But, you know, starting to prioritize and becoming intentional with time is, and should be, one of your top priorities. Number three is health.
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Start to prioritize your health right now, 'cause you can go through this entire process, escape, transition, build your ultimate life, but if you're not healthy, it's not gonna be worth as much.
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You wanna be able to enjoy and live the life that you have outside of corporate, but if you don't have your health, you can't do it. And again, I sacrificed my health for years, probably decades, in corporate.
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When I was younger, I'd get up early, go before work, work out, watch what I ate. But over time, y- that just sorta gets away from you, and that's one of the things I did when I left corporate, was prioritize.
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And to this day, I mean, I have an hour and a half to two hours built in every morning for workouts. It could be as simple as a walk in the gym, but it became a, a priority. It can always be better.
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I don't wanna go, necessarily go through the motions some days, but I do. But again, my recommendation to you is prioritize your health, 'cause you wanna be able to enjoy the time once you have access to it.
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Number four is we overcomplicate everything, and that's especially a- about making money, because it's... That's kind of what corporate's taught us, right? You have to go through the process.
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You have to overanalyze everything. Don't make a mistake And you think you have to have the perfect business plan, the perfect website, the per-the pitch, none of that.
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It, it really is as simple as solving a problem for somebody that has it and figuring out what the value of solving that problem is. Now, it's gonna take some iterations.
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You're gonna make some mistakes, but you know, the one thing that I did adopt fairly early when I was out at corporate was the Pareto principle. 80% of the value comes from 20% of the effort.
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So you get really good at the 20% of things, it's gonna drive you quite a bit further. And one of them is you don't have to do, you know, six-month tests on anything.
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You can do a four-hour test, a two, two-day experiment, that you just gotta get comfortable with simplifying everything. 'Cause business owners, if you're gonna sell something to other people, you gotta keep it simple.
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Where corporate loves complexity, it's job security, and you're the only one that knows how that works, or the company's the only one that knows how that works. It's the complete opposite when you get out.
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So start to think about, "How do I simplify my life, simplify my work?" And don't overcomplicate things. There's no need to do that.
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Number five is stop building your life around work and fund the life that you want instead. And again, I didn't realize I had done this for, for decades, but think about it.
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When you're in corporate, you schedule vacations around work, you schedule doctor's and dentist appointments around work, you schedule workouts around it.
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You miss family events because that corporate job gave you, right, was paying the benefits, and you basically accepted that, and you're gonna run your life around it.
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When you're outside at corporate, it's the other way around.
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You get to design and define your life, and you get to work, integrate, if you will, use a corporate term, work back into your life to fund what you want to do. And that's the biggest difference.
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You become much more aware of cash flow, hourly rates, and finding projects or small experiments that will pay to fund what you need.
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So one of the things I tell folks all the time is when you're, you're thinking about funding your life, figure out how much exactly you need now and in the future.
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Uh, it's probably gonna be less than you think, and as you get older and you transition through some of life's big expenses, it, it, it's not as, it's not as much as it was, right?
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So for me, I've got one daughter left who's engaged to be married next fall. That's my last really big expense, planned expense that I have, right?
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So I'm setting up and starting to think about, how do I fund that now with some of the projects and the work that I do? And it's just really a mindset change around that.
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But if you think about how much time you've dedicated around your job instead of your family or your passions or whatever you wanna do, start to flip that. Is it gonna happen overnight? Absolutely not.
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But if you're aware of it, it goes back to that intentionality of time. It's gonna help you rethink and reprioritize where you are spending that time. All right, number six is stop asking for permission. Nobody's coming.
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Nobody's gonna answer it, and you don't have to. Again, corporate trained us to ask permission, right? Right? Wait for acceptance of, "This is the project that we're gonna do." We get the sign-off on those things.
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It just, there is nobody, one, judging you, and nobody you have to ask permission for. Are you gonna be perfect? Absolutely not. But you're not gonna pay any consequences for it, right?
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You may not get that deal with that one client, but you'll find the next one. Where in corporate, if you make that mistake, it put, could put your job on the line.
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And so you stop doing that, but you don't have to ask permission. You've earned the right. You've paid your dues to do what you wanna do, when you wanna do it, who you wanna do it with, and where, right?
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That's the fourth of this is, is those things. So it's uncomfortable because we've done it for our corporate career where we needed that permission. Now you don't. You have the permission. I'm giving you the permission.
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Give yourself the permission to go do what you wanna do and start testing it right now. So, all right, so number seven, action beats planning every single time.
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Again, back to corporate where you overanalyze and make sure it's the perfect plan, and most of those times they just get put on shelves. And it-- now it's just go do it. Think about Nike, right?
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Just do it and learn from it, right? Again, uh, one of the things I had to learn for myself was I ch- I like to chase a lot of shiny objects. Then I would overanalyze those shiny objects.
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Now I've learned to kind of put it through a little framework of, you know, how much friction in there, how much time is this actually gonna take me? What's the potential value to do this for me, right?
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How much money can I make from it? And what is the value either to another person or to a business that I'm doing that? And with that process, go have a conversation, right?
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You, you can talk to people today and understand what their challenge is, what their problems are, and without having to plan everything, right? You don't... To go solo, you don't need the perfect website.
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You don't need, right, your LinkedIn completely refreshed. There's things you can do over time, but it's really about taking action, and your, your advantage if you do that is most people won't. They just don't.
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And so if you're willing to take that first step, have that first conversation, record a podcast, you're, you're, you're ahead of 80% of the folks because they will not take action.
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So action beats planning every single time. Number eight goes back to the time, but doing less is the, is the whole skill. I joke about being a high-functioning lazy person, and some people take offense to the term lazy.
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I still work hard, but what I'm trying to figure out is what don't I need to do, right? Again, we had to take meetings. We had to do these projects. We had to do all these things.
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In, in, outside of corporate, you have control, and one of the biggest things we can do is say no. Figure out what are your priorities. You know, think about, like, the old Eisenhower Matrix, right? Important and urgent.
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Everything goes into that bucket. If it's not urgent, not important, don't do it. Except in corporate, we do a lot of that stuff.
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So it's really starting to put some discipline about what you say yes to, and is it getting you closer to a goal?
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I mean, there's probably a whole series on, you know, picking one thing or two things to focus on and putting your attention there because, again, focus is everything. And I, and I say that with two, two different ways.
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One is, are you working on the right thing, right? So what are your goals? What are you trying to get to? If it's money, uh, is that focused? Then two is Not being distracted while you do that.
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Multitasking absolutely does not work, and this isn't necessarily a personal productivity lesson, but, but it's important, right? If you're doing something completely focused.
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I turned my notifications on my phones off, or my phone years ago. It used to drive my wife nuts that, that I didn't have it on. But guess what?
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The world doesn't stop, and ninety-nine out of a hundred times, right, it's-- there's nothing that's that urgent while you're working on something that you can-- you don't need to be distracted.
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So I don't wear a watch anymore. I don't wear the Apple Watch. Whoop, I switched to this to track all my activities back to the health, but I'm not getting dings, I'm not getting notifications.
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I really have to go look to check, right, those different areas.
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So putting a little process around what you do, what you don't do, and I think there is gonna be a, another episode where I break down what-- how do you take control and manage your calendar.
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Sounds simple, but if you've been in corporate for two decades, you haven't had to do that yourself. It is a change, and it's surprising how many people struggle with that transition.
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So anyway, that's doing less is a skill. And then number nine, it comes down to four buckets. Why are you doing all this?
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And again, longtime listeners will know my personal happiness scorecard or satisfaction or whatever you wanna call it for yourself varies. And I had eight variables at one point, then I had it six.
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But I think it really comes to four.
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And when I talk about the four buckets o-of happiness, think of it where if I gave you ten hours back per week and you could put-- spend those ten hours wherever you want, I guarantee, or I almost guarantee that it would fit into one of these four buckets.
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And would the quality of your life improve with ten hours per week? Probably. But if you could put thirty hours per week back into that bucket, I guarantee you the quality of your life is gonna pr-improve exponentially.
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Um, so what are those four buckets? The first one is, is relationships and connections. Are you spending enough time right now with the people you wanna spend time with, right?
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If you're spending more times with coworkers you can't stand or a boss that you, you tolerate and not enough time with family, friends, spiritual relationships, however you wanna define that.
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So number one I think is really important, and a lot of the time we're spending time with the folks we don't wanna spend time with. Number two, the second bucket is health. I talked about that, but this is mind and body.
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So you're taking care of your body, you're taking care of your mind. I was in a really bad place at the end of corporate mentally.
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Didn't realize it, but I was burned out, I was completely unhappy, and that was impacting all the folks around me. So again, as I mentioned earlier, make health a priority. Health is one of those buckets, right?
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If you take care of yourself, you're gonna be able to enjoy these other buckets, you know, a lot longer. Number three is purpose.
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Again, another one I didn't-- I underestimated when I left corporate because I didn't really have... I think my purpose before then was chasing job titles and promotions and trying to climb the corporate ladder.
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And about three or four years before I got kicked out, I kinda lost that passion, purpose, so I was kinda purposeless, if you will, for a few years, and I think that was a big part of what was driving my, my unhappiness.
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And the way I like to think about it, right, you can go super deep or meta with, you know, purpose and fulfillment, but I look at it as what's giving you energy? What's getting you up in the morning to go do your day?
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And do you have enough time to go do that, right? It may or may not be work-related.
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You know, I, as I, I talk quite a bit, separate the money from the mission, and if you have to go make money, spend the least amount of time making the money you need to fund your life, and then go spend the time on the mission, the energy, the thing you've...
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If you can find one that does both, that's fantastic. But again, I think spending time on something that gives you energy is, is absolutely critical. And you should wanna do it. If you don't, again, it's okay.
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Everybody's gonna have different, you know, values in each of these buckets.
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But, uh, purpose I think is gonna be surprising once you have access and the ability or the time to go follow what's, what's giving you that purpose. And the last one is fun, right?
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And again, I don't think this is any in the, the science books or psychology around it, but if you're doing all this stuff and you're still not having any fun, then, then what's the point?
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So I think those to me, and again, I would love to hear from others if you think we've got something that we're, we're missing, but I think if you hit those four and you put thirty hours more per week into those four buckets, I guarantee the quality of your life is gonna go up, you know, a hundred percent, if not more.
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And it's just really about being intentional. So if you wanna scroll on TikTok five hours a day, it's your choice. Maybe that's what you, you consider fun.
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So I'm not telling you all this that it has to be so regiment-regimented and structured that you can't do it.
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I'm just telling you to bring some intentionality to what you're doing, because I think that is the biggest piece.
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That was one of the biggest things that I was missing at the end of my, my corporate career was intentional. Everything was going through the motions or being reactive. Here you've got a chance to put it through.
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So just as a quick recap, the first one was, you know, are you running from corporate or are you running towards control? I would argue you're running towards control. Two, time is the ultimate currency.
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Money is a tool, but if you get back your time, again, time rich, and I've talked about that, it's, it's critical. Without your health, none of this matters. That's number three.
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Number four, stop overcomplicating everything. Five, stop building your life around work and start integrating or figuring out how to integrate work into your life so you can fund the life that you want.
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Six, stop asking for permission. You don't need it. You really, really, really don't. And if you have to ask permission, you're probably not in a good situation. Seven, action beats planning every single time.
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Eight, doing less is, is, is the whole skill, right? You-- The more you can focus on what you're doing and the more you can eliminate, the better off you're gonna be.
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And then nine, the four buckets, relationships, health, purpose, and fun. All right, so I'm still learning.
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I'm we're-- nowhere near the end of my journey, but these are things, I don't wanna call them universals, but pretty damn close at this point that I would share with others, and these are the ones I'd make recommendations.
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The other thing to keep in mind as you're starting to go or think through this process for yourself, there is no one path. Everybody's gonna have their own unique path. Think about those four buckets.
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Everybody's gonna be a little bit different. How much money you need is gonna be different, how much money you have.
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And so don't try to follow somebody else's plan, but just think about it as a framework of how to get to where you wanna go.
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And again, it's not as complicated, and you're gonna have to unlearn a lot of things from corporate, but once you get there, it is really freeing, and the, again, the quality of your life is gonna improve exponentially.
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So the one plug that I will share with folks, and this, if you're a current Collective member, you'll know that we, we've changed the focus, 'cause the one thing that I have found, I love to talk about the entire picture Right?
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Live your best life. You've earned it 100%, which is everything that we talked about. But I do realize that if you can't pay your bills, none of this other stuff matters.
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And learning how to make money outside of corporate, again, isn't complicated, but there's ways you can absolutely reduce the learning curve, right? Some people love to sell into their network.
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Others don't want to talk to their network about it. Some people don't like to sell. They want to do... There's, there's a host and a variety. There's probably hundreds of different ways to make money.
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So I've dedicated this community, and I'll put the link here in the, the show notes, to helping people, um, crack that code, get comfortable making money outside of corporate, because once you do that, again, this, this just opens up everything else.
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So like I said, that's one of our recent changes as well is to focus on the income generating piece of it. And by the way, you'll meet some other really good people in there. So that's my shameless plug.
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And I think that's it for this episode. I appreciate everyone listening.
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If you do enjoy the podcast, please, please do subscribe on whatever podcast platform you're on, uh, that the algorithms still reward subscriptions even though you know what you're looking for.
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So I would appreciate the, the like and the follow. And, uh, as usual, if you do have any questions, you can, you can email me at bt@brettraynor.com.
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And if you have ideas for show, if you know any Gen Xers that are doing some super cool things that we should be aware about, or aware of, making money in some unique ways, health related, whatever it is.
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If you got something interesting, don't, don't hesitate to drop me an email. Thanks for listening, and we'll catch you in the next episode. [upbeat music]
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Start to prioritize your health right now, 'cause you can go through this entire process, escape, transition, build your ultimate life, but if you're not healthy, it's not gonna be worth as much.
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You wanna be able to enjoy and live the life that you have outside of corporate, but if you don't have your health, you can't do it.
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[upbeat music] Welcome back to Brett Trainer Unplugged, and for those of you new to the podcast, my name is Brett, and I've been on a six-year journey, uh, post-corporate.
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Corporate quit on me just over six years ago, maybe a little bit longer than that. And I didn't realize it at first, but it's really been on a quest to live my ideal life, right?
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I think we've all earned that right with the dues that we've paid.
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Uh, initially I thought this journey was just about making money, replacing my income, but it's become a whole lot more, and if you've been following me for a bit, you know that that's my quest. And so I thought...
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What I thought I would do with this podcast with some more intention is share the things that I've learned along the way, and that's what this episode's gonna be about, is the nine things that I've learned in the first six years and how you can use that to, to your advantage.
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Like I said, I don't have it all figured out. I know I'm a lot closer to where I wanna be than I was six years ago, but I'm bringing you along this journey with me.
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I'm gonna bring in experts that have ideas on everything from money to life to wellness, realizing at the core of all this, most nine of us, 90% of us are gonna need, you know, to still be able to fund that life that we wanna live.
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So we will talk about how to make money outside of corporate, 'cause I think that is the, the one big skill.
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But what I wanted to do with this episode is talk about the nine things, I could have forced 10, but I didn't really wanna cut one of these out, that I've learned over the last six years that you can use as part of this process.
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Just to give you something to think about. So if you're still in corporate or if you've been laid off or even if you've gone, uh, post-corporate but haven't figured things out, you know, I think you can, you can take...
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Hopefully you get some insights from, from what I'm gonna share today. So first off, and again, these are in no particular order. The first one, I wasn't running from corporate. I was running towards control.
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I didn't realize that. Again, if you followed me early, you know I was the, the corporate escape, and it was all about getting out of corporate, and it really was more about the corporate lifestyle.
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And what I've realized, again, self-reflection along the way, is that I was really running towards control. And in corporate, you don't have any control. You think you do, right?
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Maybe day to day in some of the projects you work on, but for the most part, somebody else's time, somebody else's schedule, and they're paying you. You're trading your time for that money.
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And what I really realized was it was about taking control of my time. 'Cause if you have that, then you can apply it to, to wherever you want.
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So if you, if you're in corporate right now, and I wouldn't think of it necessarily as escaping corporate. It may be that bad that that's absolutely what you want to do.
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But think of it more towards what you're running at, which is control. 'Cause if you control that, you control your time, you absolutely control everything.
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Like I said, it took me, took me a couple years to figure that out, but it made my life easier going forward knowing that that's what I was prioritizing and really optimizing for. So that's number one.
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Number two, time is the currency, and along those lines, I think grinding is absolute BS, especially over the age of 40. And if you're doing it for somebody else, there's no value to do this.
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You're doing tasks that aren't adding value in order to get somewhere, and if you're still in corporate doing it, you're not going anywhere. And I realized that time, back to that control, is the ultimate currency.
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Me, I'm closing in on 60, so I don't know how much, how many more years. I'm gonna try to maximize my years. But, you know, you can't get time back. Once those hours are gone...
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One of my tipping points was the commute, uh, into the city, where it was 90 minutes for me each way.
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And I just realized that I was dedicating and donating my time to the company for this three-hour commute, and I became very resentful of the fact.
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And it just became a better understanding for me that that's exactly what I wanted. 'Cause if you control your time, you control everything, as I mentioned in number one.
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But start thinking about right now in corporate, even if you're in corporate, be more intentional.
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Don't be everything reactionary, 'cause what I found myself, when I was still in corporate, was going through the motions and just accepting the fact that this is what it is, this is the time that I need to spend, and wasn't really even intentional with what the time I was using outside of corporate, that these are just little things that you could do right now, that if you can find those five to 10 hours and apply them into areas that truly will make you happier or more satisfied, the quality of your life is gonna improve.
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It just, again, we don't necessarily always see it on ourselves. We can see it in other people, we can see it in other business owners, businesses, et cetera.
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But, you know, starting to prioritize and becoming intentional with time is, and should be, one of your top priorities. Number three is health.
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Start to prioritize your health right now, 'cause you can go through this entire process, escape, transition, build your ultimate life, but if you're not healthy, it's not gonna be worth as much.
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You wanna be able to enjoy and live the life that you have outside of corporate, but if you don't have your health, you can't do it. And again, I sacrificed my health for years, probably decades, in corporate.
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When I was younger, I'd get up early, go before work, work out, watch what I ate. But over time, y- that just sorta gets away from you, and that's one of the things I did when I left corporate, was prioritize.
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And to this day, I mean, I have an hour and a half to two hours built in every morning for workouts. It could be as simple as a walk in the gym, but it became a, a priority. It can always be better.
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I don't wanna go, necessarily go through the motions some days, but I do. But again, my recommendation to you is prioritize your health, 'cause you wanna be able to enjoy the time once you have access to it.
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Number four is we overcomplicate everything, and that's especially a- about making money, because it's... That's kind of what corporate's taught us, right? You have to go through the process.
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You have to overanalyze everything. Don't make a mistake And you think you have to have the perfect business plan, the perfect website, the per-the pitch, none of that.
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It, it really is as simple as solving a problem for somebody that has it and figuring out what the value of solving that problem is. Now, it's gonna take some iterations.
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You're gonna make some mistakes, but you know, the one thing that I did adopt fairly early when I was out at corporate was the Pareto principle. 80% of the value comes from 20% of the effort.
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So you get really good at the 20% of things, it's gonna drive you quite a bit further. And one of them is you don't have to do, you know, six-month tests on anything.
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You can do a four-hour test, a two, two-day experiment, that you just gotta get comfortable with simplifying everything. 'Cause business owners, if you're gonna sell something to other people, you gotta keep it simple.
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Where corporate loves complexity, it's job security, and you're the only one that knows how that works, or the company's the only one that knows how that works. It's the complete opposite when you get out.
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So start to think about, "How do I simplify my life, simplify my work?" And don't overcomplicate things. There's no need to do that.
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Number five is stop building your life around work and fund the life that you want instead. And again, I didn't realize I had done this for, for decades, but think about it.
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When you're in corporate, you schedule vacations around work, you schedule doctor's and dentist appointments around work, you schedule workouts around it.
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You miss family events because that corporate job gave you, right, was paying the benefits, and you basically accepted that, and you're gonna run your life around it.
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When you're outside at corporate, it's the other way around.
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You get to design and define your life, and you get to work, integrate, if you will, use a corporate term, work back into your life to fund what you want to do. And that's the biggest difference.
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You become much more aware of cash flow, hourly rates, and finding projects or small experiments that will pay to fund what you need.
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So one of the things I tell folks all the time is when you're, you're thinking about funding your life, figure out how much exactly you need now and in the future.
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Uh, it's probably gonna be less than you think, and as you get older and you transition through some of life's big expenses, it, it, it's not as, it's not as much as it was, right?
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So for me, I've got one daughter left who's engaged to be married next fall. That's my last really big expense, planned expense that I have, right?
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So I'm setting up and starting to think about, how do I fund that now with some of the projects and the work that I do? And it's just really a mindset change around that.
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But if you think about how much time you've dedicated around your job instead of your family or your passions or whatever you wanna do, start to flip that. Is it gonna happen overnight? Absolutely not.
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But if you're aware of it, it goes back to that intentionality of time. It's gonna help you rethink and reprioritize where you are spending that time. All right, number six is stop asking for permission. Nobody's coming.
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Nobody's gonna answer it, and you don't have to. Again, corporate trained us to ask permission, right? Right? Wait for acceptance of, "This is the project that we're gonna do." We get the sign-off on those things.
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It just, there is nobody, one, judging you, and nobody you have to ask permission for. Are you gonna be perfect? Absolutely not. But you're not gonna pay any consequences for it, right?
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You may not get that deal with that one client, but you'll find the next one. Where in corporate, if you make that mistake, it put, could put your job on the line.
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And so you stop doing that, but you don't have to ask permission. You've earned the right. You've paid your dues to do what you wanna do, when you wanna do it, who you wanna do it with, and where, right?
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That's the fourth of this is, is those things. So it's uncomfortable because we've done it for our corporate career where we needed that permission. Now you don't. You have the permission. I'm giving you the permission.
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Give yourself the permission to go do what you wanna do and start testing it right now. So, all right, so number seven, action beats planning every single time.
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Again, back to corporate where you overanalyze and make sure it's the perfect plan, and most of those times they just get put on shelves. And it-- now it's just go do it. Think about Nike, right?
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Just do it and learn from it, right? Again, uh, one of the things I had to learn for myself was I ch- I like to chase a lot of shiny objects. Then I would overanalyze those shiny objects.
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Now I've learned to kind of put it through a little framework of, you know, how much friction in there, how much time is this actually gonna take me? What's the potential value to do this for me, right?
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How much money can I make from it? And what is the value either to another person or to a business that I'm doing that? And with that process, go have a conversation, right?
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You, you can talk to people today and understand what their challenge is, what their problems are, and without having to plan everything, right? You don't... To go solo, you don't need the perfect website.
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You don't need, right, your LinkedIn completely refreshed. There's things you can do over time, but it's really about taking action, and your, your advantage if you do that is most people won't. They just don't.
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And so if you're willing to take that first step, have that first conversation, record a podcast, you're, you're, you're ahead of 80% of the folks because they will not take action.
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So action beats planning every single time. Number eight goes back to the time, but doing less is the, is the whole skill. I joke about being a high-functioning lazy person, and some people take offense to the term lazy.
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I still work hard, but what I'm trying to figure out is what don't I need to do, right? Again, we had to take meetings. We had to do these projects. We had to do all these things.
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In, in, outside of corporate, you have control, and one of the biggest things we can do is say no. Figure out what are your priorities. You know, think about, like, the old Eisenhower Matrix, right? Important and urgent.
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Everything goes into that bucket. If it's not urgent, not important, don't do it. Except in corporate, we do a lot of that stuff.
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So it's really starting to put some discipline about what you say yes to, and is it getting you closer to a goal?
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I mean, there's probably a whole series on, you know, picking one thing or two things to focus on and putting your attention there because, again, focus is everything. And I, and I say that with two, two different ways.
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One is, are you working on the right thing, right? So what are your goals? What are you trying to get to? If it's money, uh, is that focused? Then two is Not being distracted while you do that.
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Multitasking absolutely does not work, and this isn't necessarily a personal productivity lesson, but, but it's important, right? If you're doing something completely focused.
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I turned my notifications on my phones off, or my phone years ago. It used to drive my wife nuts that, that I didn't have it on. But guess what?
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The world doesn't stop, and ninety-nine out of a hundred times, right, it's-- there's nothing that's that urgent while you're working on something that you can-- you don't need to be distracted.
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So I don't wear a watch anymore. I don't wear the Apple Watch. Whoop, I switched to this to track all my activities back to the health, but I'm not getting dings, I'm not getting notifications.
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I really have to go look to check, right, those different areas.
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So putting a little process around what you do, what you don't do, and I think there is gonna be a, another episode where I break down what-- how do you take control and manage your calendar.
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Sounds simple, but if you've been in corporate for two decades, you haven't had to do that yourself. It is a change, and it's surprising how many people struggle with that transition.
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So anyway, that's doing less is a skill. And then number nine, it comes down to four buckets. Why are you doing all this?
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And again, longtime listeners will know my personal happiness scorecard or satisfaction or whatever you wanna call it for yourself varies. And I had eight variables at one point, then I had it six.
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But I think it really comes to four.
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And when I talk about the four buckets o-of happiness, think of it where if I gave you ten hours back per week and you could put-- spend those ten hours wherever you want, I guarantee, or I almost guarantee that it would fit into one of these four buckets.
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And would the quality of your life improve with ten hours per week? Probably. But if you could put thirty hours per week back into that bucket, I guarantee you the quality of your life is gonna pr-improve exponentially.
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Um, so what are those four buckets? The first one is, is relationships and connections. Are you spending enough time right now with the people you wanna spend time with, right?
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If you're spending more times with coworkers you can't stand or a boss that you, you tolerate and not enough time with family, friends, spiritual relationships, however you wanna define that.
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So number one I think is really important, and a lot of the time we're spending time with the folks we don't wanna spend time with. Number two, the second bucket is health. I talked about that, but this is mind and body.
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So you're taking care of your body, you're taking care of your mind. I was in a really bad place at the end of corporate mentally.
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Didn't realize it, but I was burned out, I was completely unhappy, and that was impacting all the folks around me. So again, as I mentioned earlier, make health a priority. Health is one of those buckets, right?
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If you take care of yourself, you're gonna be able to enjoy these other buckets, you know, a lot longer. Number three is purpose.
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Again, another one I didn't-- I underestimated when I left corporate because I didn't really have... I think my purpose before then was chasing job titles and promotions and trying to climb the corporate ladder.
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And about three or four years before I got kicked out, I kinda lost that passion, purpose, so I was kinda purposeless, if you will, for a few years, and I think that was a big part of what was driving my, my unhappiness.
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And the way I like to think about it, right, you can go super deep or meta with, you know, purpose and fulfillment, but I look at it as what's giving you energy? What's getting you up in the morning to go do your day?
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And do you have enough time to go do that, right? It may or may not be work-related.
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You know, I, as I, I talk quite a bit, separate the money from the mission, and if you have to go make money, spend the least amount of time making the money you need to fund your life, and then go spend the time on the mission, the energy, the thing you've...
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If you can find one that does both, that's fantastic. But again, I think spending time on something that gives you energy is, is absolutely critical. And you should wanna do it. If you don't, again, it's okay.
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Everybody's gonna have different, you know, values in each of these buckets.
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But, uh, purpose I think is gonna be surprising once you have access and the ability or the time to go follow what's, what's giving you that purpose. And the last one is fun, right?
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And again, I don't think this is any in the, the science books or psychology around it, but if you're doing all this stuff and you're still not having any fun, then, then what's the point?
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So I think those to me, and again, I would love to hear from others if you think we've got something that we're, we're missing, but I think if you hit those four and you put thirty hours more per week into those four buckets, I guarantee the quality of your life is gonna go up, you know, a hundred percent, if not more.
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And it's just really about being intentional. So if you wanna scroll on TikTok five hours a day, it's your choice. Maybe that's what you, you consider fun.
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So I'm not telling you all this that it has to be so regiment-regimented and structured that you can't do it.
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I'm just telling you to bring some intentionality to what you're doing, because I think that is the biggest piece.
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That was one of the biggest things that I was missing at the end of my, my corporate career was intentional. Everything was going through the motions or being reactive. Here you've got a chance to put it through.
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So just as a quick recap, the first one was, you know, are you running from corporate or are you running towards control? I would argue you're running towards control. Two, time is the ultimate currency.
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Money is a tool, but if you get back your time, again, time rich, and I've talked about that, it's, it's critical. Without your health, none of this matters. That's number three.
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Number four, stop overcomplicating everything. Five, stop building your life around work and start integrating or figuring out how to integrate work into your life so you can fund the life that you want.
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Six, stop asking for permission. You don't need it. You really, really, really don't. And if you have to ask permission, you're probably not in a good situation. Seven, action beats planning every single time.
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Eight, doing less is, is, is the whole skill, right? You-- The more you can focus on what you're doing and the more you can eliminate, the better off you're gonna be.
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And then nine, the four buckets, relationships, health, purpose, and fun. All right, so I'm still learning.
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I'm we're-- nowhere near the end of my journey, but these are things, I don't wanna call them universals, but pretty damn close at this point that I would share with others, and these are the ones I'd make recommendations.
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The other thing to keep in mind as you're starting to go or think through this process for yourself, there is no one path. Everybody's gonna have their own unique path. Think about those four buckets.
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Everybody's gonna be a little bit different. How much money you need is gonna be different, how much money you have.
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And so don't try to follow somebody else's plan, but just think about it as a framework of how to get to where you wanna go.
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And again, it's not as complicated, and you're gonna have to unlearn a lot of things from corporate, but once you get there, it is really freeing, and the, again, the quality of your life is gonna improve exponentially.
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So the one plug that I will share with folks, and this, if you're a current Collective member, you'll know that we, we've changed the focus, 'cause the one thing that I have found, I love to talk about the entire picture Right?
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Live your best life. You've earned it 100%, which is everything that we talked about. But I do realize that if you can't pay your bills, none of this other stuff matters.
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And learning how to make money outside of corporate, again, isn't complicated, but there's ways you can absolutely reduce the learning curve, right? Some people love to sell into their network.
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Others don't want to talk to their network about it. Some people don't like to sell. They want to do... There's, there's a host and a variety. There's probably hundreds of different ways to make money.
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So I've dedicated this community, and I'll put the link here in the, the show notes, to helping people, um, crack that code, get comfortable making money outside of corporate, because once you do that, again, this, this just opens up everything else.
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So like I said, that's one of our recent changes as well is to focus on the income generating piece of it. And by the way, you'll meet some other really good people in there. So that's my shameless plug.
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And I think that's it for this episode. I appreciate everyone listening.
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If you do enjoy the podcast, please, please do subscribe on whatever podcast platform you're on, uh, that the algorithms still reward subscriptions even though you know what you're looking for.
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So I would appreciate the, the like and the follow. And, uh, as usual, if you do have any questions, you can, you can email me at bt@brettraynor.com.
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And if you have ideas for show, if you know any Gen Xers that are doing some super cool things that we should be aware about, or aware of, making money in some unique ways, health related, whatever it is.
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If you got something interesting, don't, don't hesitate to drop me an email. Thanks for listening, and we'll catch you in the next episode. [upbeat music]
