CJ and Ben Cott define time freedom as control over your schedule plus freedom from worry. Ben spends five to six weeks a year caring for elderly parents in another state and travels for seminars. CJ contrasts his old consultant schedule with the flexibility he found in real estate.
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Hey, you guys, my name is CJ With Freedom Real Estate Freedom Family of Companies. And today we are here with vlog number one one one and we have a guest, Ben. So, Ben, I don't know if you want to introduce yourself to those that don't know you.
Well, my name is Ben Cott. I serve on the investor relations team along with CJ and it's great to share some thoughts with you today about a very interesting topic.
Yeah. So today the focus is going to be on freedom, specifically time freedom. So we can just get right into it. So when someone speaks about time freedom, what kind of comes to mind for yourself?
Well, there's two thoughts that come to mind. One is the quantity of time where you have the time available, enough time to be able to set your own schedule. You can live where you want. You can spend your time during the workday as well as nights and weekends doing the type of activities that you value most. But there's also what comes to mind is the quality of time, and that is that you have time that's free from worry, from work and thinking about things. So a lot of people have flexibility in their schedule, which is a form of freedom, but they don't necessarily have this quality of free time where they can truly unwind, get away, truly focus on the people around them that they care about the most. So Those are the two thoughts I have. How about you, C.J.
Yeah, I think for me you really hit on the word that I think of is flexibility. Right. Like you do not have to be a set schedule all every day, the same routine and you have the ability to change that routine should you wish. Maybe you can speak to a little bit of like some examples where you've had that time freedom. I know you've been able to travel for family related reasons, right? Like having flexibility from that perspective just as you kind of set yourself up or however you want to take that question.
Yeah, well, that's exactly an example I had in mind was caring for my elderly parents last five or six years. I live down here in Florida there, up in Ohio, and probably last five years, I've averaged five or six weeks a year up there, just helping them look after their fares and yard and finances, et cetera. So that freedom of time allowed me to be able to travel up there as needed. And that's been a great blessing and very rewarding to be able to help them in that season of life.
So I guess maybe you can you speak a little bit greater to like how you got to this place of. And maybe we can hit on it more in our podcast. But how you got to this place of being able to have, like, those freedoms of time, like, what led or what made you want to seek that out in the past?
Well, I think there's two different questions here. You know, one is what. What kind of allowed me to discover that concept? And my parents, when I was growing up, became involved in direct sales. And direct sales was very much about, hey, beyond your profession, work here and create another form of income that allows you to go from a good life to an extraordinary life. And so from that, as I came of age and entered my young adult years, my 20s, I was became involved in the publishing business, started my own business, and that involved me being able to travel around the country, working with clients on site, usually following the good weather down south during the fall and winter months and back up north during the summer months. And as a young man, single in his 20s, that was a very compelling lifestyle for me. I had a chance to enjoy this great country we live in just for weeks and months at a time, rather than just business travel. During the week that led into eventually the years that followed, I became involved in the seminar business, and instead of driving everywhere, I started flying everywhere and eventually spoke in over 100 cities in the US and Canada and three different continents. So that was freedom, where I would leave on Thursday and come back Saturday night. Had four days a week off in between trips. And then recently with working at home, which has become quite the norm after the pandemic, but I've been working at home and my wife's CPA works at home as well since late 2000. So we've had that freedom of being able to deliver where we want and generate our work schedule. So it's been quite a history.
Yeah, that's a long, longer history than most have experience with that remote life. So that's awesome. I'm jealous. That was a big thing for me personally is I didn't have that time freedom originally with my work schedule. I was a financial consultant and I would travel to wherever the client site was every week. And kind of like you had said, but I basically was required to be in a specific place place for over half my work week every week. And so, you know, since transitioning from the pandemic and coming here to freedom, I have a lot more flexibility of how and when I spend my time and working in, you know, an environment that is most conducive for me, you know, having all these monitors set up versus being in some stuffy conference room. So definitely love, love the flexibility that kind of comes and it was something that I saw sought out, right. I wanted to have increased, you know, time freedom, but also just flexibility is the way that I see it, so. Well, thanks, Ben. I think we can probably jump over to more in depth, you know, questions here in the podcast if you guys want to join us over there. But we end every vlog with Invest Smart, Live Happy. Awesome. Thank you guys. Talk to you soon.
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