Inputs vs Outputs for Success – Episode 581

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[00:01] Welcome to the Prosperity Podcast. Prosperity thinkers, welcome to the podcast. Today, we’re going to be talking about outputs and inputs, or should say outputs versus inputs. This is coming from a tweet. You ready to hear the tweet and then riff off of that with me? Absolutely. Okay. So this tweet’s coming, or X, I don’t know if they call it anymore. Everything changes. This comes from Sihil Bloom and he’s been a very successful business influencer, thought leader, et cetera. And it’s an interesting paradox of life. And it says, the most exciting outputs come from the most boring inputs. Extraordinary results come from executing ordinary actions over and over again. Never going to be sexy. It will be boring.

[00:56] It will take longer than you ever imagined. But if you accept that, you will win. So, Kim, what’s your feedback on this? Oh, so fun. So my husband Todd Langford of Truth Concepts and I were just talking about that this morning because we are in careers that we have been in for 30 years-ish, and we both believe that we will be in those careers for another 30 years. And this is because 87 is the new 65, which had lots of conversations on this podcast about, and it is really interesting watching other people come into our profession. So I help people buy whole life insurance. I help people in the personal finance space. We talked about our prosperity pledge. We have our prosperity parents. These are all things in the personal finance space.

[01:48] My husband helps people that helps people in the personal finance space. So he has software called Truth Concepts and sees advisors and agents literally all across the country and in Canada that are helping people in the personal finance space and typically not in the stock market arena, it’s more overall personal finance. And this is a combination of science and art. And obviously it’s science because it’s numerical, right? It’s finance. Dollars are numbers. Now they don’t always act like numbers, which is very important. And we’ve had some conversation around that as well, but as a general rule, there’s math involved, science, if you will. And then there’s the art, which is human behavior and human

[02:41] beings either getting results or not getting results, which is exactly what this gentleman is talking about with his inputs and outputs. And so you can even think of something like whole life insurance. It is the most boring financial product out there. Absolutely not sexy at all. And in fact, when people try to make it sexy, they usually get it wrong. And we’ve seen that on YouTube with these short timers that are just looking for the quickest way to sell a policy and you know, who knows whether they’ll be in the business 10 years or 20 years from now. And when we add in the Malcolm Gladwell 10,000 hours to become a genius space, that is the nature of the work in this personal finance space that’s

[03:31] necessary to really become skilled. And it’s also the nature of how whole life functions. You have to input, input. It’s the nature of how business functions, input, input, boring, consistent, develop systems, make it happen over and over and over and over and over again, and then you can start to see the results. And this is extremely challenging in our world right now, because we are a fast food society. We want our food fast. We want our physical selves to be beautiful without spending hours at the gym. We want results in our relationships without making extra deposit. I mean, I mean, the whole space is just incredibly challenging right now because things are moving so fast. And believe me, I am one of those people that likes to move quickly.

[04:26] I initiate and quickstart on the Colby profile. I have strengths about being very, very forward focused, which means I’m always wanting to move to the next. And yet I’ve learned over time. And yes, this sometimes does take a little bit of time on this earth, that there are critically important elements where a system must be developed and followed and time must pass for results to be gained. And so I know when I need to back off my natural tendency to be going fast, fast, fast. You were sharing with me an example in your situation where somebody had said to you, yeah, maybe you should tap that back a notch. So it’s just part of the value of being on this earth for a while. It is. So let’s unpack a few things, because if we’re looking at these

[05:25] results that we’re trying to get, and we can see that a lot of it’s going to be boring and we’ve talked about savings with finance and we talk about in a previous episode, we’re going over expectations as a family and very simple things like that. I want to kind of gather in your decades as a financial master, meaning being able to talk through relationships with people because they, again, we can develop a software, we can use the latest hacks and things like that. But you’ve spent time on the phone and across the table and on the stage, listening to people’s challenges and connecting the dots. So help us connect a few of those like aha moments. What are the things that just pop up that are like, Oh, this is

[06:20] boring, this is foundational, but it has to happen that people don’t realize has to happen. Absolutely. And critical issue number one is saving or paying yourself first. And it is an age old space and most financial people do not like to talk about it because nobody wants to get involved in a budgeting discussion. It’s the most frustrating, impossible to actually get long-term good out of space in our lives. And money absolutely has an impact on every single thing in our lives. And so people can say, well, money doesn’t matter. Well, money affects everything that matters. So it’s got to get dealt with and that structure of saving first, no matter how you do it, we have a way that is super high tech.

[07:17] And with an app, other people have a very low tech way with jars or envelopes or whatever, it doesn’t matter how you do it. It has got to happen saving first. And what’s interesting to me is this is equally valuable for wealthy families that have plenty of cashflow and might feel like they’re past that step and yet it’s not accurate because of what inflation does to money. When you look at a 30 or 60 year, which really is what it should be, right, if you kind of feel like your adult life is actually finally getting its act together around age 30. So you’ve got 30 to 60, and then you’ve got 60 to 90, two solid 30 year periods, so 60 years, it is mind-boggling what inflation does to money. And then we’ve got longevity added in.

[08:05] So that ability to drive cashflow control is where the saving first input must occur and it must occur for your entire life. Okay. You said something, it was like a little discreet, a couple of words that you used together that I’m going to pull out and this really comes around the relationship with money. We’ve actually never really spoken about this, but the relationship of money, meaning, I have a friend that’s very, we’re going to call it spiritual, very new age. Yeah. And the way he looks at it is he’s every single time he sees a penny on the ground, he grabs it and he says, thank you for blessing me. Like he is absolutely grateful for it. That’s the energy he wants. So start with the wealthy.

[09:07] What is the relationship with money that they have? Because if they don’t have a good relationship with money, they’re not even going to save. Yep. It’s so important. And this is why you hear about people that have earned and lost millions because they’re either in a irresponsibility mode of, Oh, I can earn more. I’m not going to worry about it. You know, I’ll just do this, that and the other, and it won’t matter. Or they’re in a fear based mode. And so we also know people that are very wealthy, but will not spend money on themselves or others because they’re fearful of running out of it or fearful possibly of the power that goes with it. And I, gosh, stories coming to mind. I, I remember a time when I had a bit of financial capability and I was

[10:01] working with some people that didn’t. And so I kept offering to pay for everything and it was so destructive because it took away their agency in their lives and in our relationship. And so must get looked at this relationship with money. And I believe, and this is why our company’s called prosperity thinkers, that you must first learn how to think about it from a prosperous standpoint, which is not easy and it is something that takes constant work and revisiting and overhauling and, you know, like all good mental spaces practice. And so it is a thing to identify your own relationship with money, other people’s relationships with money and work to improve. Yeah. You know, a moment of clarity that I have, as you’re saying those things is,

[10:52] as I was thinking about typical relationship that people have with money, which is put it into the 401k, the stock market, the IRA, whatever you want to call it. And what they do is they, as you mentioned, when you had more resources, you robbed a person of that opportunity. Yeah. Well, when we don’t address the core, the way that we have a relationship with money and we just go the typical route, what we’re doing is we’re postponing our real relationship with that money. And so for any of you listeners that are going the typical route and you’re just abdicating your responsibilities, what you’re doing is you’re putting off that real relationship. And so if you have a fallacy that is well now, then in 20, 30 years

[11:51] or at 59 and a half or 67 or whatever you pick the age, then you’re going to have these issues. And have you seen that happen time and time again, that maybe they just were on autopilot and then all of a sudden they get them well. And now they suffer. Yeah. Because of the fear-based mode that comes in that is so prevalent in our society of not enough. And when we look at the typical retirement space, it’s all about not enough. It’s about taking a limited amount of money and then trying to guess how long you’re going to live and then making that happen. And there are definitely some families that can. Yet it just is such a fear-based limited space. First of all, you’re being taken out of service and that is

[12:43] not good for a human being. We were put on this earth to serve. We have talents that we should be using. And I just see such a difference with people that continue to serve. Some continue to earn money because of that service. Others don’t because whatever they’re doing is volunteering, which is fine. Yet what it does in their life and the relationship that they have to money and the relationship they have to themselves and their communities is wildly different. And that’s why we’ve been on this bandwagon for so long about really shifting that. If you want to do something different than do that, but don’t retire. It’s just a unfortunate word and unfortunate social construct that was brought into our world only around the 1930s and frankly

[13:28] has been detrimental ever since. Yeah, it’s horrible. It’s a horrible bill that’s been sold to people. And I think of inputs and outputs and the unfortunate thing is it can be somewhat trendy for some of the new billionaires. I’m going to use Warren Buffett as an example or Gates of, Hey, we have all this wealth and we’re just giving it away. There’s, there’s alternative motives here and it’s so easy to be distracted. Just like it’s easy to be distracted on quick financial gains or shortcuts. Like just doesn’t happen. Never seen it. And I should say this, I’ve never seen it long term. Right. I’ve seen it work short term, but if it comes in fast, it probably goes fast. Yep. So inputs, outputs, great episode.

[14:20] Interesting to hear about for any of you listeners that are perhaps in a space where you’ve experienced some good short term gains, be grateful for those and then change the habit or behavior or piece for the longterm. If you’re having questions about that, send an email to hello at prosperity thinkers.com. And if you’re trying to establish the longterm and you just can’t get traction, send an email to hello at prosperity thinkers.com. And there’s an education piece and a financial tool piece that can help you there. Does that work for you, Kim? Yes. Well said, Spencer. Thank you. Thank you for listening to the Prosperity Podcast. To take control of your money and have it work for you, visit prosperity thinkers.com.