Everything Is An Investment: The ROI On Your Decisions

Hey, boys and girls, greetings from The Tesla Model S P100D in my dark garage. I'm gonna talk about investing in this video. And the reason I'm doing it here from the Tesla is because this car is an investment. This $200,000 car, the Tesla P100E to me, is an investment. And people ask, how in the world is a car which goes down in value over time? How is that investment? And I'm gonna tell you exactly how in this video. Not only that, but I'm also, I got my gym bag here. I'm on my way to the gym wearing my gym clothes.

Actually wearing the T shirt of a client. And I am going to the gym because I consider going to the gym on investment with a financial roi. And that's what I'm going to talk about in this video. And so the first thing I want to answer is what constitutes an investment? What is considered an investment? And here's the answer. Everything.

Everything is an investment. Everything you do, everything you talk about, every person you hang out with, every breakfast you have is an investment with a financial roi, a measurable financial return on investment. This is gonna free up a lot of you because this is going to help justify a lot of your decisions. This is going to help you evaluate how to make decisions moving forward. I had an economics professor in college. His name was Dr. Tom Lehman. He changed my life. And Dr. Tom Layman said something once which I thought was interesting. I went to a very conservative Christian school. I actually thought I was going to be a pastor for most of my life. And Dr. Tom Layman said, all of you are wondering, what is God's plan for your life? Well, guess what? He gave you the marketplace. And the marketplace is a great way to evaluate where there is value. And the reason I tell you that is because after you get this braingasm, you're going to see how justifying things that have a high ROI is a good indication that you should make that decision. For example, this car. This car. I really wanted this car. I really wanted to buy an expensive Tesla. But I couldn't justify paying so much money for this type of a car. I just could not justify doing it until I got behind the wheel and I drove it. Now, before I had a Tesla, I drove a car that was a beautiful, tricked out, double sunroof, leather interior, brand new turbocharged Kia Sportage. It was my first car that I ever bought new. It was the first new car anyone in my family had ever had. I was very proud of the fact that I was able to pay cash for a $30,000 car. But when I was driving a Kia Sportage, I had different thoughts, and other people had different thoughts about me when I was driving a Kia Sportage versus when I was driving a Tesla. So I bought the Tesla, because when I got behind the wheel of this car, my expectations for life went up enough that it actually gave me permission to raise my consulting rate. Which sounds weird. Like, it shouldn't be that way, right? It shouldn't be the way that when you change your surroundings, it changes the rate of your consulting. It shouldn't be that way. But our brains are funny things, because our brains normalize what's around us. So if you start normalizing hundreds of thousands of dollars or millions of dollars, does that change your own perception of yourself and your value and your worth? It did for me. And because of that, this car was an investment in my thoughts, which gave me a financial roi. I'm going to the gym right now. It's my second workout of the day. I work out usually once or twice a day, and I do that to keep my energy high. I do it to keep a certain fitness level. I do it to feel a certain way about myself. And I change my routines in order to optimize my total health, happiness, energy level, fitness level. And I just want you to think of a time that you woke up and you were just jazzed with all kinds of energy, and you felt great about yourself, you were moving forward, and the type of work that you got done when you were in that zone. And compare that to when you had a whole bunch of pizza the night before, you woke up super sluggish, you were out of shape. How you felt about yourself, what was your representation in the marketplace when you did that? What was your work output when you did that? So based on that, assuming that you're answering the question by saying when you have a lot of energy and you're really fit, you produce better work and you can charge higher prices than when you're out of shape and have low energy. Is there a financial return to the food you eat? Is there a financial return to how you move your body? To spending time in the gym? What about the people you hang out with? Or let's talk about this. Have you ever gotten to a fight with your significant other? What's work like the next day? Now, contrast that to when you have a partner who looks you in the eye and says, no matter what happens or how big you fail, I got your back and I believe in you.

Right? That Just makes you want to kill it, right? Or women, if your man comes to you and is just completely dialed into you for 30 minutes, depending on, does it make it easier for you to feel supported and to support him? So with that, is there a financial ROI to your romantic relationships? We all know that there's a financial return to our business relationships, but could we actually measure romantic relationships and how we felt the next day at work? So I believe that we can. I think we can do the same thing with food. I mean, if we just look at this, your financial return is really bad when you're dead. So if you die 10 years younger, your highest producing years, if you die during those, we really settled in terms of financial return that we could have gotten from our lives. So the food that we eat, the way we move our body, our romantic relationships, our friendships, the things that we do that energize us. There is a financial return to fun. Because if you don't have fun, whether it's at work or it's having a balance outside of work, your output goes down. That's the case for me. And I've had to work really hard to be able to find balance and to find energizing activities that keep me interested and keep me excited. And when I'm in that spot and I'm doing those things, guess what happens? Life and work gets really fun and easy. My output goes up. It's easy for me to make sales. People want to do business with me when I'm in that spot. There's an ROI to happiness, and there's an ROI to the grind. And the ROI to the grind is sometimes lower than you might expect. There is a return on investment to everything. Everything is an investment. And sometimes we try to justify our life on our behavior based on the immediate roi. Well, if I give up these hours of sleep, I'm going to have a better ROI in the short term. We have to weigh that against what is the financial ROI on getting the extra sleep so that we are completely dialed in and we are focused and we're energized and we're happy to do the thing that produces that high roi. And we have to weigh that constantly. And sometimes we have to make adjustments. Sometimes it's worth giving up that extra hour or two of sleep in order to work on that project. Sometimes it's worth the return on investment to have the drink of wine with the client. Sometimes it's worth the ROI of happiness to eat those pancakes with your family because it makes you happy. And that's the ultimate thing that drives roi. If we're happy, we're gonna produce the most.

So that's how I evaluate balance, is what gives me the roi. For example, just this week, I decided, you know what? I think maybe the constant pursuit of a six pack is not giving me the ROI that I want because it's costing me certain experiences with friends that make me really happy. It's making me feel bad about myself, it's requiring me to spend two hours in the gym, it's requiring a whole lot more energy that isn't allowing me to be the person that I want to be. And that has a cost to it. So maybe I need to give up that roi. And before I was thinking about it in terms of investment of, well, if I'm doing healthy things and eating healthy foods, that is going to make me more energized. But I was finding the opposite. So I had to cut my losses and maybe make some different direct some different decisions. I evaluate all things that I do based on what I call the tribe. 5t r I b E time, relationships, income, body expansion. How you spend your time has a financial roi, meaning some things you do have a better return on investment than other things that you do. The people you spend time with, that's R, that's relationships, your interpersonal and your business relationships, some of them have a better ROI than others. Your income, meaning the things you do to produce income. There are some things you do that produce a high ROI and some things that are a waste of your time. Your body is probably your highest form of ROI because of the time you spend on this earth, because of how you feel, your energy, your happiness level and E expansion, which is your thoughts, the things in your brain. Why I bought this Tesla, because it gave me different thoughts. Why you read books. Cause we all can point to a book that we read that completely changed one thing in our brain and gave us a really high return on investment. Or the podcast you listen to. There's a ROI to listening to certain podcasts versus listening to music or even the type of music you listen to uplifting music. Or I saw this clip today of.

A heavy metal singer who was singing the most depressed things, and I just listened to it. My whole body dropped. I felt bad for this guy. He must have been so sad. Listen to that was a negative roi. So there's an ROI to everything. Your return on investment is a way to make decisions about everything in your life. Not just money, not just what you do, but all the things surrounding you on a daily basis. So that food that you eat, how it makes you feel, is going to change how you show up at work, that relationship that you're holding on to that affects how productive you are and the things you think about, the books that you read. Everything has an roi. So if you feel stuck in a certain area or you're struggling with a decision, you can simply ask, what gives me the greatest roi? And oftentimes, that's the best way to evaluate the decision, because everything is an investment.