087: Stop Stepping Over Dollars to Pick Up Pennies
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What is the BEST asset to invest in? 🤔🤔
Next time you’re at a dinner party or hanging out with friends, ask your five closest friends what you should invest in.
You’ll get five different answers with five different reasons, ranging from single family rentals, stocks, cryptos, mutual funds, flipping homes, and private money lending. The list goes on and on.
Even if one of the investments suggested to you produces an attractive return, it still might not be right for you. When we were first starting out and lost over 95% of our only income overnight, we felt alone and confused, and honestly, scared. 😨 😨 When we first started our investor journey, we thought jumping into all opportunities was the solution. Like many of you, we often get caught up in the shiny objects of today.
If you watch TV 📺, surf the internet, watch TikToks, tune into podcasts or watch YouTube, you know there are new investments aka shiny objects to invest in each and every day.
Our favorite is when the “hot right now” investment mentioned in Forbes directly conflicts with the New York Times article you read just 5 minutes ago. Everyone has an opinion, and not everyone is going to be right, or at least not right for YOU.
Shiny object syndrome didn’t help us build lasting wealth. Far from it – we had to get beyond this syndrome to actually stay focused, niche down, and actually build long term wealth. We’re going to share with you what we did to narrow our focus, get wealthy, and not just get wealthy, but also build lasting wealth. We did it, and we know you can do it too! 🙌
Journey back with us in time to 2017, when we thought we were at the top of our game. We were absolutely full of confidence, cash flow, and capital.
Money kept rolling in as we continued to trade our time for money in the fashion manufacturing world. We had no idea that 2017 was going to be the year that changed the trajectory of our lives. We had big goals to buy our dream home 🏘, but things were starting to stack up against us. Our biggest client announced they were going to shut down all their retail stores, and this meant all our dreams started vanishing rapidly. Can you even imagine the devastation?
With no back up plan, we realized our sense of security was an illusion. We were trading time for money 💵, and without any demand, our business became obsolete overnight.
As Heidi Klum used to say in the show Project Runway, either you’re in…or you’re out. And we were definitely OUT.
The lesson here is that if you learn how to disconnect income generation from your time, you have the ability to live your dream lifestyle no matter what outside economic conditions are. 😍😍
This is especially important to remember in times of economic uncertainty, which brings us back to the shiny object syndrome –like with many shiny objects, we were totally derailed from our goals and plans.
Not only did S.O.S end up costing us our hours and dollars 💰, but most importantly, it cost us our progress! We remember being lost and coming to the realization that these actually were really hurtful to us in the short term and the long term. While we made some money and lost some money in these early investments – single-family rental, stocks, cryptos, mutual funds, flipping homes, private money lending… none of them provided that long wealth that we needed.
So, how do you keep your focus when exciting new investment opportunities threaten to derail what you’ve already worked so hard on? How do you know which new investment opportunities to embrace, and which ones are just distractions along the way?
To us, every investment should be solving for something – more passive income, tax savings, funding a major purchase, building generational wealth…
If you don’t know what you’re solving for, you may be solving for the wrong thing. 😱Having a clear goal before investing is key to ensuring your investment in the right asset classes for the right reasons.
When a new investment idea comes your way, take some time to reflect on where it fits within your portfolio, what it is solving for, and “why.”
How can you deal with shiny object syndrome?
There are a number of ways to deal with shiny object syndrome as long as you are intentional.
Step 1️⃣: Decide what you are looking to solve – is it more passive income, tax savings, funding a major purchase, or maybe building generational wealth?
In other words. set your goals and put them in writing. And get specific!
Along with getting clear on what you’re looking to solve, be sure to establish your Freedom Metric, plus, think long and hard about asset classes that will yield you the result you’re looking to achieve.
You always want to look for a higher return but you also want to look for execution certainty that the investment will return what you expect consistently. 😎😎
For us, we love 😍 real estate because it has been here for hundreds of years and it’s going to be here for hundreds more years.
Here’s a ninja tip: once you have your goals in mind, you want to keep them somewhere where you will see them! Keep your money where your mouth is!
We personally put ours in two places: our offices, which brings us to our next tip for stopping shiny object syndrome!
Step 2️⃣: Evaluate and measure your investments against your goals
Not all shiny objects are bad for your investments. Sometimes there truly are great investment opportunities that come along that are worth disrupting. 🤓🤓
So how will you decide which new exciting investment opportunities to pursue, and where you should just put your head down and keep on grinding in your current direction?
WITH YOUR GOALS FROM STEP 1 IN MIND, ASK YOURSELF…
- Does this new investment opportunity help solve the problem I’m looking to solve?
- Is this an opportunity that serves my investment strategy in the stage it’s in now?
- How likely am I to follow through and invest with this new opportunity?
- Am I actually excited and believe in this investment vehicle?
- Does it fit with my internal investment criteria?
- Or is this new shiny object just something I have FOMO about because I see other people investing in it and seemingly having success?
- How long will it realistically take me to achieve my goals?
Time and time again ⏳, we’ve used these exact same questions to instantly cross even the most super attractive shiny objects off our list.
They just weren’t meant for us in that specific season of life as they would distract us from the goals we had already set and worked so hard on for. Acknowledging this has freed us up mentally and time-wise to focus on what really is going to solve my problems and life in that season! 😉😉
Think about what makes sense for you in whatever season of life you’re in, so that you can work smarter, not harder.
Step 3️⃣: Learn to admire rather than compare
This one even hits home personally. Do you see someone doing something in their investment strategy that causes you to doubt your own plans? Do you ever have major imposter syndrome?
Try this instead of comparing; take 10 minutes to write down all the things you admire about that person or their investment opportunities/lifestyle. ✍️
Yeah, if they have something you want, write it down. Then, compare that list of wants to your long-term goals from step #1.
Have your goals really changed?
Has your ‘WHY’ changed because of what you saw that person doing or succeeding at?
Remember, that person’s ‘WHAT’ and ‘HOW’ of getting there is going to look different than yours!
They are a completely different person, with a unique way that they like to invest, and more often than not in a completely different season of life than you are in.
By taking a moment to realize that their success has no effect on your long-term goals, you can give yourself permission to admire what others are doing without abandoning your own carefully laid plans! 🙏
The moral of the story is when investing ➡️ never walk over dollars 💵 to pick up pennies because you get distracted by the marketing hype or shiny new investment thing people are dangling in front of you on the daily.
Always invest in real tangible assets that have been here for hundreds of years and will not go away because it is part of the basic human basic need of shelter. 🙌
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