3 Lessons for Happiness and Money

There's plenty of advice about how to make more money, and there is plenty of content out there about how to be happier, how to live a better life. But it's rare that a lesson does both. For most, it's first I will make the money, then I will live a better life. And to some extent, there's truth to that. When you aren't sure where your next meal is going to come from, pursuing money is a good idea. But for the most part, we tend to put happiness or money as a later thing while we work on just one of those two things. If you can be happier and richer at the same time, wouldn't you make that the centerpiece of your focus? Wealth is an inside out game. That's the first lesson. Now, I wish that this wasn't true. I wish that there was an outside set of circumstances that led me to wealth that would make wealth a lot simpler. But that's not true, at least in my opinion. Wealth is a direct reflection of your mindset and how you show up. Now, what does that mean? Let's take a practical example of this. If you look at the stock market. The stock market is one of the ways that some people have generated a lot of wealth. The number one indicator of generating wealth in the stock market is time in the market. For example, if you had bought stocks at the peak before the big crash in 2008 and you had held your money for all of this time, meaning if you bought on the absolute top of the market in 2008 and experienced that big crash where the stock market fell by 50% but you held until today, you'd be up more than 200%. Time in the market is the greatest indicator of of whether or not you're going to build wealth. But most people don't show up to the stock market with that mindset. They don't think about it as a long term play. They think about it as how can I make short term money? How can I get a profit as fast as possible?

This is also true in business.

When you show up with the intent of serving the customer, the intent of giving everything you have to the person who is buying from you or watching your content. When you show up with that intent, more people want that, more people want to be served in that way. So they end up recommending you and your stuff starts to spread and you start to get organic sales and profit starts to show up on its own. But that's not how most people are approaching business. Most people are approaching business with the mindset of how Do I run the right ad that's going to get me the right sales, it's going to convert and make me money. So your wealth is a direct reflection of how you are showing up. Do you feel abundant enough to be able to show up to serve somebody else? Because if not, then you are trying to extract from the marketplace, which means may look good in the short term, but it always loses in the long term. And you know what else it does? It erodes your happiness. That's why this is both about building wealth and creating happiness. Because the happier you are, the more likely you are to create products that benefit to other people rather than what you think will sell in the short term. That's the real unlock. The more content and the more happy you can be. Now, the better decisions that you make and that creates wealth. Most people will ask me what's a good product to sell or what business should I start? And that's the wrong question to ask. The right question is who are you serving? Who is your customer? That's why the second lesson that makes me both happier and wealthier is it's always about who. When you look at organizations or you look at teams, or you look at families, it's very rare what they are doing that makes them successful or happy. It's who they are and how they work together as two people that makes them happy or successful. Now human beings love to look at what they're doing and create processes out of it. It's why you see so many people talking about how hard they work and what their morning routine looks like and what their daily routine looks like. Because they're so focused on the process rather than who they are. But I believe that who you are is what drives results rather than the things that you do or at the very least, who who you are determines what you do, not the other way around. There's a great book by this, by Benjamin Hardy and Dan Sullivan called who, not how. And it's simply arguing that when you are making a decision in business to grow something or to start a new project, the first question that you ask is who helps us with this? Not how do we do this? Now the weird thing about this is that the who you are usually looking for has some reflection of yourself. And the more aware you are of yourself, the more you tend to work well with people who match your values, who match your vision. So the more that you unlock that piece, that self awareness piece, knowing who you are, not who you want to be, but who you really are, that's the unlock to building something and partnering at the right who's that matches, what makes you happy? I can tell you that there is a completely different level of ease and success and momentum and joy when you are building something that matches what you really desire. Now, most of the entrepreneurs that I know have some sort of a.

Flaw that gives them drive. They give some sort a hunger, you might call it a drive to accomplish something, to prove someone else wrong or to fill a void. And so they become very focused on success in order to kind of fill that void. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, but I've seen that to be a trend. But among most entrepreneurs, I talk about my story, about how I use success to fill voids in my book 12 months to 1 million. I talk about them openly here on the YouTube channel as well. But what I've discovered is that most entrepreneurs are actually afraid to lose that flaw because that's where they get their drive from. Well, I was holding an event here once with my buddy Aubrey Marcus. He runs the company on it, which is a very, very successful human performance company. And he said something that really landed with some of the entrepreneurs in our little group. He said that when you fill that void or you stop operating from that place, you don't lose your drive, your drive stays the same. But instead of it being a drive that is about getting something to fill a void, it becomes about sharing love and service to those around you. It becomes about giving rather than consuming. And I can tell you, business grows so much faster when you're operating from a place of service and giving and love rather than trying to extract as much as possible. It's a completely different energy tank. In order to really serve somebody, you have to know who you are serving. And when you know who you are serving and you're operating from that place, you tend to attract employees and customers and investors and partners who also share in that mentality. And do you know what happens when you get a group of people who are focused on creating value and serving other people? That's when big success happens. That's when things really start to. To pop for you. It's when you get everything else that you wanted. But it has to come from that place of giving to someone giving to a who focus on someone else first. So the question is never what product should I sell? It's who do I sell to? The question is never what business do I start? It's who am I starting a business for? The question is never what's the best decision? The question is always what place Am I operating from? Am I operating from a place of giving to someone or trying to get from someone? And you will be happier and wealthier when you focused on who and how you can give to them rather than thinking about yourself. The third lesson was the hardest for me to get. I may still be getting it to some extent, but I at least have experienced it enough to report to you that it's true. Excitement and happiness is the unlock. I used to think that I had to do certain things in order to get happiness or excitement or joy or the emotions that I really wanted. I had criteria for what needed to exist in order for those things to show up. I used to try and make decisions.

From a heady place, a logical place.

A data driven place to show what the best decision was and why it was going to bring about the results that I wanted. And once I got the results that I wanted, then I would feel X, Y and Z however I wanted to feel. I find now that that process is opposite. If I focus on getting into a happy place, focusing on what it is that is joyful now, not what I want to exist in order to be joyful, not what I want to exist in order to be happy. But where is there happiness or joy now? When I answer that question, then I tend to follow a process that brings me more of that. And when I'm in a process that's giving me more of that, I tend to make decisions that lead my businesses and my investments towards more of that. And when that is done and we have progress, other people come up with logical ways to analyze how we got there. But the process is finding the excitement and the joy first. I spent so many years putting criteria on top of how I wanted to feel and how I wanted to go through life, and now I realize that the more that I feel, how I want to feel, the paths to everything I want just show up. And it's a way more fun process. That is the hardest lesson, the biggest lesson, and the most profitable lesson that has brought me both wealth and happiness. The beauty about entrepreneurship is that it highlights all your cracks, exposes exactly who you are, and your results are a.

Direct reflection of all of that.

It's a beautiful unlock for personal development. It's one of the reasons why I love working with entrepreneurs so much. My tagline is that I help entrepreneurs build seven figure businesses that they can sell, but the context behind that is that I help entrepreneurs create a vision that aligns with what they want to bring to this world. And when you do that, the seven figure business that you can sell is easy.

It's a true stat that 99% of business owners never clear a million dollars. And that is why I started a mentoring group called the 1%. I have helped hundreds of entrepreneurs cross seven figures. There's a reason why that's the case, and it's because we have a formula that works really well. And this year, in 2021, we've introduced mastermind groups at each level in the process. That's the grind, the growth, and the gold.

So when you come join us inside.

The 1%, you'll be partnered with other entrepreneurs who are at your level to help you get through that level and accelerate onto the next step in your journey. You'll be following the same roadmap that I teach in my book, 12 months to 1 million. That's why we have such a high success rate getting people to where they want to be. So go to capitalism.com 1. Scroll to the bottom, hit the join button. And for less than you spent on eating out this past month, you'll be in a room of entrepreneurs who are pushing you to go from where you are right now to the next step in the process. It'll be the best investment that you make all year. Come join us. We're ready for you. Go to capitalism.com1.