Your Freedom Framework: Building Your Business and Life Around What Matters Most Feat. Eelco de Boer

So the concept of the Freedom framework is very simple. You decide what's most important to you and who is most most important to you and how often and what would be a dream come true level for you. You decide what's your perfect frequency. You grab your calendar and then you decide like how often you want to see who you put it on the calendar and then you commit.

A successful business owner was asked what matters most to you. Without a second hesitation he said, my family, my wife, my three kids, they are number one priority in my life. He felt good about his answer until his assistant the following week gave him the results of a time log study done privately. So the time on his bus, as you know, there are 168 hours in every week. During that seven day time, he told his boss that he had spent. So the boss spent 76 hours working, 66 hours sleeping, 14 and a half hours exercising, 24 hours of miscellaneous time like eating, bathroom chores, et cetera, and almost no time on what matters most to him, his family. This was a wake up call for his priorities were all screwed up. If he did a time log for 168 hours for the next week, what would that show about your real priorities? This is a subject that Ilko Debo has been studying and thinking about for many years. For just as many years, Ilko has flown over 5,400 miles from his home in Amsterdam to be at genius network meetings and 100k group meetings. Ilko is an entrepreneur and investor. He owns seven different companies in Europe, from a payment processing business to an email marketing company to an E learning company. And besides running his company, he spends multiple months traveling around the world. He's a big man. I don't know if you've met him in person with big dreams, big ideas and big goals. Yet he found something was missing. He was disconnecting from what was really important to him. He needed to make a mind shift. He needed to have a business and a life built around what really mattered most to him. That's exactly what he's going to talk to you about today. His title is your Freedom Framework. Building your business and your life around what really matters most to you. Please help me welcome Mr. Ilko DeBoer.

Thank you so much, Timothy. So just a quick check. Do you see my screen? Do you see my PowerPoint presentation, Timothy? We all see it online. Oh, perfect. So that's, that helps. So thank you. And so I got a question for everybody in the audience in Phoenix. I wish I was there. Hopefully next year. And everybody online It's a simple question, but it's a big question. And the question is, what is most important for you? And an even bigger question is, does this actually align with your actions and your behavior? So what usually most important for us is, for example, our family or our relationship or our parents or our business or our health or friends, and obviously ourselves as well. However, if I look, for example, at my own case, my natural tendencies, they're different compared to what's most important for me. So for example, for me, I like to wake up and listen or watch anything business or personal development. I like to think about my business, I like to, I like to work, I like to walk, I like to spend my days in hotel lounges, I love to travel, I really love to be by myself, I like to read books, I love to grow, etc. Etc. So in all honesty, if you noticed, my natural tendency is not to spend most of my time on what's most important for me, and more importantly, who is most important to me. It does not come natural to me to wake up and spend a lot of time with my children, to spend a lot of time with my parents, to go and have a lot of fun with my friends, or have a lot of quality time with my wife. There's a discrepancy, discrepancy between what's most important for me and my natural tendencies. So what's most important to me is not easy for me. And chances are, as an entrepreneur, it's not easy for you either. So what's most important? We actually, we're supposed to have to give it our quality time, but we don't. A lot, a lot of times we give it our leftover time and because of this discrepancy, there's a disconnect. Life can feel a little bit off. You can have this nagging feeling of guilt, of shame, and it feeds the feeling of not being or doing enough. And this is not easy and is actually a big problem for a lot of entrepreneurs. Thankfully, there's a simple solution and I call this the Freedom Framework. And this is a big fancy title for deciding for you what's most important for you and also who is most important for you. And then schedule it and make it non negotiable so you don't need to think about it and it becomes automatic. If you prioritize what's most important for you, you make it non negotiable, then you can lose yourself in whatever comes natural to you. For example, my mom obviously is definitely most important to me. We live 100 miles apart. And family is everything for my mom as well. When my mom was 10 years old, her mother died and her father wasn't in the picture anymore. She. She was raised by her 11 brothers and sisters. Fast forward 50 years later, she had 11 brothers and sisters, and there's only one sister left. So family is everything for her. And my family, me, my children, my wife is everything for her as well. So five years ago, in all honesty, if you would ask me who's most important to you, obviously I would say my parents are most important for me. But if you would look at my actions, I would actually rate myself maybe a 5 out of 10. I always felt that I wanted to spend more time with my parents. I always had thoughts like, I got to call my mom or how long haven't we seen them? Or it hasn't been that long. Right? But this was the reality. I gave them my leftover time instead of my quality time. It just didn't happen that often. And the worst part, for no real reason, I have plenty of time and I have plenty of freedom. It's just not my natural tendency. I'm in my own world. I'm an entrepreneur. I'm in this world.

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So five years ago, I got a phone call from my mom, and this was actually a real conversation. She opened up and I opened up. And this conversation was very, very painful. Because deep down inside, I knew. I knew that she wanted to spend more time with my family, and I wanted to spend more time with them. I rated myself 5 out of 10. And this is not the level that I want to play at. This is average. I want to play with my most important relationship at a dream come true level for the people that we love the most, because why would we settle? So I listened and I felt her pain. And this pain was also my pain. Because this can hurt when you know that you're wrong. And I was 100% responsible for this. My mom, she is everything for me. And after this conversation, I had one thought. And the thought was the following. She had 11 brothers and sisters. She has one sister left. All the other brothers and sisters, they all passed. If something would happen to my mom. That would be my number one fear. And it is my number one fear. And if something would happen, I would have a hard time forgiving myself. And worst of all, it would have been completely unnecessary. So, so average. We don't go for average. We want to go for a dream come true level. And then I got a big personal breakthrough. And this is the birth of the Freedom framework. What's most important to me and who is most important to me. I want to make it non negotiable. So what I did, I make, I made a plan and scheduled it for a full year and made it a dream come true. So for example, with my parents, I don't want to visit my parents for a couple of hours. I, I want to sleep at my parents place. This is my home. This is where the place where my parents raised me. So I made the decision every month for years to come, I will put on my calendar every month, one Saturday where I will stay at my parents place and sleep at my parents place with one or two or three of my children. And this changed everything for us. So here's the magic trick. If you want to make this work, if you really want to make big steps in this, this is the magic trick. And this is super, super complex. This is genius level. And I hope that you can understand this because this is super, super deep. Because once you figured out how and how often you want to see the people that you love the most. So you think for yourself, who are the people that I love the most? Then you go to your calendar and you figure out like how often do I want to see them? You put it on the calendar and again like what I'm going to share with you right now, your mind will be blown. This is the magic trick. If you do this, everything can change for you. This is what you do. You send a text. So in this case I decided that this was most important for me. Regardless of what my wife wants or regardless of what my kids wants, I want to spend the time with my parents. So I go to the calendar, put 12 Saturdays on my calendar and I made the commitment to my mom that I will come every month for a full night. I stay over with one or two or three of my children or all of us if my wife wants to join and if you know, my mom, after I send that text, it's a hundred percent non negotiable. And here's the great part, I don't need to think about it anymore. This is guaranteed guilt free peace of mind and this resulted in instead of going to see my parents or visiting my parents, I am home. I sleep at my parents place. Instead of going there and sitting in a chair, I just lay on the couch because it's my home, I'm relaxed, I am home. Instead of catching up with my parents, I just relax and I have fun. And this completely transformed the relationship with my mother, both of my parents, me, both of my parents, my kids and my parents, and my wife and my parents. And this has been a total blessing. And you can do this with anything or anybody that's most important to you. So not just anybody, also anything. So for example, health is important for a lot of us. For me it's most important. My health is most important. But going to the gym doesn't come natural to me. AKA I just won't go. So what I do, I put it on the calendar. I have no discipline, so I need a trainer. And my trainer, he just left like 15 minutes ago or 30 minutes ago. This is a great rep. Check it out, check it out. Yeah. Okay, good, good. It's easy. I don't need to do anything because he's there. Four times a week he shows up here in my man cave and we just train him. Most of the time I don't feel like it, but I'm getting stronger and stronger and stronger. It's non negotiable. It's a commitment to somebody else. So what else? One more example. My children. Obviously my children are most important to me. So what's a dream come true level here? A dream come true here is make their dreams come true. So every two months I go on a one night trip with one of my three children. So I go six times per year. A one night trip, a dream come true. For example, for my daughter, she wanted to build a bear. She wanted to go to London with me and build a bear. So we built a bear, we went to London and we built a bear. And these are memories for life. What else? For example, my wife. We've been together for 25 years, last month. And we have an amazing relationship. And how come? It's very simple. Every two weeks we book a hotel and we leave our kids. I mean, I love our kids, but I love to be, I love to be with my wife without my kids. And again for this as well. Last week we went to Germany, in a month we go to Miami and Jamaica. These are memories for life and we make it non negotiable. So the concept of the Freedom framework is very simple. You decide what's most important to you and who is most important to you and how often and what would be a dream come true level for you. You decide what's your perfect frequency. You grab your calendar and then you decide, like, how often you want to see who you put it on the calendar. And then you commit. This way you don't need to think about it anymore. And this is very peaceful, actually. So chances are, freedom is your core value. For me, it's my core value. And in a way, this might look like it's limiting our freedom because you put all these things on your calendar. And in a way it is. It is sort of limiting. But what you do is you invest your quality time in what and who's most important to you. And this is not always easy. Oftentimes when you do these things, when I do their trips or go to my parents or whatever, it feels like the time isn't right. I'm busy, I got deadlines, I'm stressed out. But most of the time it ends up being very joyful, rejuvenating and fun. And there's a guaranteed connection, guaranteed love and guaranteed happiness. And we need this as entrepreneurs. So knowing that you got what's most important to you covered, this frees up your mental bandwidth and actually increases the feeling of freedom. And because of your freedom framework, you. You can actually go all in on your natural tendencies. Could be your business, could be your mission, could be your purpose, whatever it is for you, guilt free. And you can actually enjoy your natural tendencies, and you can enjoy what's most important to you. And this is when life starts flowing again. And this is when life starts working for you. So January 1st of this year, I was on Curacao, which is a Dutch Caribbean island, and I was just enjoying my time. And then I got a text from my wife, and she was like, can you please come to the room? So I come to the room and she tells me, like, okay, you better sit down. And she never told me before that you better sit down. So I got another phone call from my mom and my biggest fear came true. She was diagnosed on the January 1, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. And this was a big shock for all of us and obviously we were very sad. My heart felt broken. But after we digested this information, strangely, in a way, I felt at peace simply because I have no regrets. When I used to rate my relationship with my parents at 5 out of 10, now it's an 8 out of 10 or maybe a 9 out of 10. And it's all simply because I made the decision five years ago to make it non negotiable to go see my parents and stay at my parents every month. I did not. When we got the news, I did not feel the need to catch up. I did not feel the need to spend more time with my parents. So in a way there was peace. And obviously I was worried and there were a lot of concerns. And then I remembered this great quote from Joe Polish. Any problem can be solved with the right Genius Network. I don't ask for help easily, but I go to the Facebook group of Genius Network and I just asked for support, whatever it is. And we got so many great videos, all videos of a lot of Genius Network member, all for my mom. And this was very, very amazing for my mom. And she was like, who are all these people? But she received all the blessings and all the prayers. And then we got this guy, we just saw him on stage, Andre. He didn't send one video or two videos or three videos. He just kept on sending videos. And he didn't just only send videos. He started sending flowers and more flowers and then he started sending more flowers. And then every day he started sending flowers and flowers and flowers and flowers and flowers and flowers and flowers and more flowers. And he just kept sending flowers. And my mom was like, wow, this is amazing. My mom met Andre. We spent time with my parents at their place when Andre was in Amsterdam. But my mom actually created a video for Andre, like, Andre, please stop sending flowers because it's too much. And Andre was like, okay, I'll stop sending flowers every day. I'll start sending flowers every week. And literally two days ago, my mom got flowers from Andre. All from January up until now. So that's amazing. So this is a 10 minute talk and I decided to sneak in some extra seconds to say thank you to all of you. I mean, I'll take some extra seconds. Joe is not here anyway, so it doesn't matter. Timothy is going to retire. And I'm not going to make any jokes about Joel, but a big, big thank you to everybody that helped us. My mom felt carried and I did too. So Fast forward to July 7th of this year. This is my mom celebrating her birthday and she is happy, she's healthy and she is cancer free. And yesterday I was on the phone with my mom and this was her response when I told her that we canceled the trip to the Caribbean with Christmas and we'll spend Christmas together as a family. So in closing, most of us are achievers. You know, we want more, we want to grow, we want to expand, we want to go 10x. And I think that's amazing. I mean, this is an amazing group. But what we truly desire oftentimes is what we already have. It's already there. What's most important for us, it's already available. And more important, who is most important to us is already available for us to enjoy. If you want to live a life in flow, then what we should do is prioritize what's most important for us and who is most important for us. And so we can enjoy our natural tendencies. We should do who we are. So this is my wish for you. And also this is a little bit of a challenge for you. And it's very, very simple. What I would suggest you to do after this event is take some time and decide for yourself who is most important for you. How often would you like to be with them? So think about the perfect frequency. Then make it non negotiable. Non negotiable. By scheduling it on your calendar and make it truly non negotiable. So whoever you made that commitment to write it out as a text and then send that text. Timothy.

Thank you, Ilko.

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