How to Make 2020 a Trampoline Year – Episode 383

This transcript was auto-generated and may contain errors.

[00:02] Welcome listeners to another episode. We’re coming up towards the end of the year. Now, don’t wait until December 31st to write down your goals for next year or plan. We’re going to be talking about long-term thinking right now. So Kim, let’s take this away. I love viewing 2020, like 2020 vision, the year 2020 as your trampoline year. Like what as the year ends up, can you do in 2020 to make it a year that you leapt off from rather than some type of cement boots year that caused you to feel like you’re sinking? My dad always used to say, ah, that, you know, the cats in the green bin again, I’d like to throw that thing in the river with cement boots. So trampoline, not cement boots. I love it. You know, in fact,

[01:02] I’ve never heard of the phrase trampoline year. And 2021 was one of those years where I think some people got on a trampoline with cement boots, right? Yes. You mean 2020 was a year. 2020. Yes, correct. Thank you for the question. I picked up on it only because I know how forward thinking you are. So of course you’re already in the 2021, but right. So yes, 2020 can seem to be a cement year, a cement boots year, and it is up to you as an individual, whether you choose to allow it to be a trampoline year or a cement boots year. And so we choose trampoline. And what does that look like? Well, it looks like taking the last, whenever we’re recording this and it goes live month or whatever timeframe you’ve got

[01:52] and picking like one or two things that you can just nail and handle and cross off your list and really work with. And then it also looks like getting set up for not only 2021, but the rest of the decade, right? That’s the cool thing about 2020 is it’s the beginning of a decade. And so we can look forward with that and do some work on setting goals. And yet I’m always really conscious when I work on setting goals that I also have to be super clear about the progress that I’ve made. And so I think one of the ways to not have 2020 be a cement boots year is to pull out of it the good that has happened. And even if you’ve had challenges and even if there’ve been some rough patches, there is good. So while you’re setting

[02:48] your goals and you’re looking at 2021, maybe even before you do that, it’s a really good idea to look backwards and identify the progress that you’ve made. You know, the cool thing about all of our listeners, Spencer, is we’re all kind of hard on ourselves. Like, we’re entrepreneurial thinkers pursuing opportunities. We may be employees, but we’re big thinkers. We’re capacity oriented people. And people like that are hard on themselves. I’m hard on myself. But every now and then pause, look back and dig the good out of what you’ve been through so that you can then, that’s really the trampoline. Then you can jump off of it. Whereas if you let all of the things that have occurred in 2020 be cement

[03:36] boots, it’s really hard to do any goal setting for 2021. Yeah, absolutely. You think in that term, because most of us, you know, in this podcast, we gravitate here for a reason. It’s tough for us to actually take account and see what progress we’ve made in the software world, which I’ve been involved in for years. They call that KPIs, Key Performance Indicators. So how do you keep track so that you can maintain that gratitude and see the progression that you’ve made? Well, I do a couple things. Every quarter when I attend strategic coach, every 90 days, I used to fly to Chicago. Now I happily jump on a Zoom meeting. And I go through something that Dan Sullivan has called a pocket coach. And I have literally done this

[04:22] for 25 years. Every 90 days, I look back on the last 90 days and then the last rolling calendar year to identify the good that has gone on. That’s the first and most important thing that we do at the beginning of every strategic coach session. Every 90 days, I look back and I literally look at my calendar and write down like 10 things. And I’m always amazed. Like, oh my gosh, I got that done. Oh my gosh, I made forward progress there. And oh my gosh, that failed. And here’s what I learned. And that’s a positive thing. That’s the way to pull positive out of negative. So that’s the first thing. And then I prefer to not be super goal set oriented. I know a lot of people do goal setting. I used to do it. It works a little better for me. And this is just me

[05:16] to do what I call visioneering. And that’s to get a general sense of what I want in the future, but to be clear that it’s a vision, not a goal. And so for me, the definition of the difference is a vision. And I always like to make my words have action in them. So I love verbs like visioneer is, I don’t even know if that’s a word, but it’s my word. I like to use it. And I know I stole it from somebody. So thank you to whoever that was. It’s long, long ago. I don’t even remember. So visioneering is just having what is sometimes a fuzzy, but still very long-term. So a year could be 10 years indication of what I want a particular aspect of my life to be. Whereas a goal, we all know the acronym SMART. A goal is very specific. It’s measurable. It’s achievable

[06:09] within the timeframe that you’re working with. It’s realistic. And as indicated, it has a timeframe. And so goals are important. And I think a lot of people really thrive on goal setting and goal setting really works with them. And that’s awesome. But for me, goals can be limiting. And so I’ve over the years gotten away from goal setting and instead do more visioneering because of the more expansive approach, the less limiting approach, the more longer-term, bigger picture orientation that visioneering has. And for whatever reason, that just works for me and doesn’t limit me to something that I might’ve set that was specific and measurable and achievable. Do you find by going the visioneering approach, you’re able to do more than you thought,

[07:00] or do you find that maybe as you take that accounting quarterly, you feel like you have come up short or it’s a little too ambiguous? I definitely feel like I can do more than I thought. And so I think that’s why I’ve adopted that. And also at the same time, it keeps me out of, to bring Dan Sullivan up again, what he calls the gap. And the gap is the space between where you are and where you want to be. And it’s permanent. And I really struggled with that when I first heard that. Like, what do you mean is permanent? I can get past this. Don’t tell me this is permanent. I can fix this. The 25-year-old Kim Butler is like total willpower through this thing called the gap. And as I got older, I realized, you know what? I want a gap. I want there to be a difference between where I am and

[07:51] where I want to be. Because if not, I might as well just go six feet under and be horizontal forever. What you’re saying right here is living in that gap, it feels like it’s something too big that you almost can’t see. And so you have to completely change the way that you currently operate, meaning you’re becoming future Kim versus current Kim. Yes. And to me, working on that future Kim is first of all, a lifelong thing, which I always, always want to be working on. And second of all, if I’m not conscious of the fact that I’m working on it, in other words, if I’m in the gap, but I’m not aware that I’m in the gap, that I’m in complete fear, depression, overwhelmed mode. Because since I have learned that it is a permanent thing and that the fact that it’s a permanent

[08:40] thing is a good thing, I’ve also learned that I’ve got to pay attention to when I’m in it. Because when I’m in it, it’s easy to get that judgment thing going on. Oh my gosh, you’re not doing enough. You’re not big enough. You haven’t done enough. You haven’t helped enough people. You haven’t helped in the right way. All the garbage that the little voice says on our shoulder sometimes. So that’s when you say, no, go away. Thank you for your feedback, but I’m not interested in it. And you look back on the progress that you’ve made and the people that you have helped and how you’ve helped them and the good that is there. And then from that trampoline, you can look forward. So the gap’s there. We just need to

[09:23] be aware of it. And when we’re in it, look backwards and then we can look forward again. And even though the gap is still going to be there, we don’t have to let it be all encompassing. How do we tie this back into finances? Because a lot of listeners are listening to this podcast, not only for the inspiration, the juice that this may give them and for their thinking, but they’re also listening to this on ways that they can be more prosperous with their finances. So how do we tie this back? It’s a wonderful link to finances because finances are so long-term. You’ll want to be working on your finances the rest of your life. I’m going to say the exact same thing. If you don’t be working on your

[10:02] finances all the time, then just go six feet under horizontal and stay there. That is the fact around our finances. It’s very, very rare. Okay, maybe, maybe the last couple years of your life, can you so automate everything and so mentally turn off from it that it will just do its job. But until then, you want to be working on your finances. Like starting around, oh, what, seven, eight years old, your kids are that old and you’re helping them work on their finances, right? Absolutely. So starting about seven, eight until you’re 70, 80, 90, 100 plus years old, you want to be working on your finances. So how do you do that? Well, since we realize that finances are a long-term deal, we want to make decisions that can help us

[10:51] in the long-term. And we know just like everything in life, our health is this way, our wealth is this way. We sometimes have to sacrifice short-term in order to work on long-term. And sometimes we have to acknowledge, okay, I can’t deal with long-term right now. I’m forced to work on short-term and that’s okay too. So to go even a deeper level, what does that look like? Well, it works first with the foundation of all finances, which is our cash and liquidity and the act of saving money. We’ve talked about saving as a verb versus saving as a noun. You want to be in the act of saving money. Like that’s the first most important thing. You’ve got to do it. It’s always, always, always got to be worked on because no matter how big your net worth is, no matter how much cash flow you have,

[11:43] you always, always can do more if you save more. Save as a verb and how you save and what you save into may shift. But as I’ve said numerous times, cash flow issues do not go away. They just get bigger zeros on them and savings solves cash flow issues. I’m going to hit a pause button because I want to share something with listeners I think is super valuable. In preparation for every single one of these conversations, I do a lot of research. I think you guys know that by now. And I pull up related topics and information and resources. So here’s one that Kim has not seen, but it is like perfectly aligned with this. Are you ready Kim? Yeah. Okay. So this comes from Robert Kiyosaki and he says, people don’t like the idea of thinking long-term. Many are desperately seeking short-term answers

[12:34] because they have money problems to be solved today. End quote. Look what you just shared and this alignment here. And I think that if we take that and think, okay, that’s a trampoline statement and you’re visioneering here, which is a way that you think is and the prosperity that we’re sharing is really bouncing people into more prosperous thinking. And that savings takes care of that short-term thinking. Wonderful. Seriously. It does. And what you said right there in the last two sentences is it starts with our thinking. So just like all of our work, our business work, our financial work, our health work, our who we’re working on, who we’re working with. Everything starts in thought and then

[13:25] displays itself either in our physicality or with our financials or whatever it is. And so I also want to just share a little bit for those that feel like they have the savings game down. What else might we be doing? Like what’s step two, if you will. And so I’m going to sort of leapfrog over the beginning of the investing game and touch on the ideas that our accredited investors can handle on the second and third and fourth steps of investing. And it is all about protecting principle. And it’s so interesting to me how really right back to our short-term, long-term thing, so many people are going after investments that are short-term deals and they want a little bit of something for nothing. And nothing for an

[14:22] accredited investor might look like a hundred grand or a million or whatever the number is. Like let’s put this in and speculate, right? Not invest and hope that it does something. And that’s just really driving back to the short-term thinking again. Whereas if you will make good decisions, good long-term decisions, then you won’t have to make them again. And you won’t have to be fighting from underneath the truck, so to speak, that hit you and knocked you over, i.e. lost money due to speculation because you did the work up front. You did the due diligence. You used our clue acronym or our seven principles of prosperity or whatever it is that you use to make sure that you don’t lose principle.

[15:09] And it’s just so peaceful. Now I want to absolutely be upfront. I’ve lost principle. I have lost my own principle. I’ve lost clients principles. It’s not fun. I don’t like it. I am just always saddened, saddened, saddened when it happens. And I learn from it. I work to know and learn to do better next time. So for our listeners that are ready for the investment game, we’re already in the investment game and wondering what steps two, three, and four are, that protection of principle I think is really critical. Absolutely. What is long-term thinking to Kim Butler? A hundred years. Okay. And that’s partially because of the life insurance industry that I’m in. It used to just be a hundred year timeframes. Now it’s stretched to even 120. But I’ve also done a lot of work

[16:06] in the space of longevity research. And it’s funny, I had a conversation on a comment on our Facebook posts recently with somebody where I spouted out one, 10 or something. They really questioned it. And so I shared with them the Time Magazine. And I think we’ve put this in the show notes of a previous podcast, but if we want to show it again, Time Magazine, this is like 10 years ago, showed the picture of a baby and said, they’re going to live to 140. And so when you see those kinds of things over and over and over again, and you attend Dan Sullivan’s events where he says, I’m going to live to age 156, you start to think about long-term and longevity very differently. Absolutely. It kind of makes you think that as we started this episode, talked about a

[16:59] trampoline year versus a cement boots year. If you’re living 140 years, does a year when we’re locked in our houses, a cement boots year really seem to be a blip in it? Maybe. It’s just a second, right? It’s not much. Absolutely. That’s a really good point. So listeners, this episode is to prepare you, to get you ready for that trampoline year, to get you ready in that prosperous thinking. Kim, I want to thank you for your visioneering as you use it. There’s something that Kim does. She’s created what they call these bullhorn messages. And if you can think of a bullhorn, it’s… One, I think of a bull is strong. It’s something that’s bold, something that’s leading. And that message is out there, what is primarily driving her.

[17:52] So thanks for sharing that bullhorn message with us today and helping us understand what we can do if we are feeling like we’ve got those cement boots. And then next, as you mentioned, if we have the momentum and we’re creating that trampoline year, we can step into some investments and step into things, doing it with a long-term thinking, not looking to become a day trader. We’re not a day trader in our lives, right? So why not think long-term in our entire lives? Really well said. Great summary, Spencer. Thank you. Thanks, Kim. Thank you for listening to the Prosperity Podcast. To take control of your money and have it work for you, visit us at partnersforprosperity.com. If you liked this episode,

[18:41] make sure you subscribe and leave a review.