MBA1049 How to Start Thinking About Retirement

Hey oh. Welcome to the Hundred Dollar MBA show. Because your business is not built in a day, it's built every day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the $100 MBA, a complete business training and community online. And in today's lesson, you'll learn how to how to Start Thinking About Retirement this is something I've been thinking about for some time and I've been wanting to do an episode about this topic for about six months or so. So I want to be clear, we're not going to be talking about 401ks or saving plans or investments or how to plan for retirement, but rather thinking about what retirement looks for you, asking yourself important questions like do you want to retire? What are you building all of this for? And how long can you go on hustle mode 24 7? There may be some things you want to do in life you want to explore, you may want to travel, you may want to pick up some new hobbies. But hey, you got a business to run and there's no time to waste. Well, will there be time for that later on? You're going to have to plan for it and that's what we're going to be thinking about and discussing today. What does retirement look like for you? Even if you keep going with your business, even if you're still working, how does it differ from the way you work today? My goal is that by the end of the episode, you'll have some great questions to ask yourself so you have a clear vision of what retirement look for you. Let's get into it. Let's get down to business. How much sleep did you get last night? Be honest. Getting enough sleep and waking up on time aren't easy. But it can be thanks to today's sponsor, Mattress Firm. They can help. They are the sleep experts. They have the widest selection of America's best selling brands and they have beds for every budget, every body and Everybody. Go to mattressfirm.com podcast and save 10% with code podcast10. That's podcast10. And if online shopping isn't your thing, Mattress Firm stores are in your neighborhood. So better sleep is right around the corner. Literally. That link again is mattressfirm.com podcast and use coupon code podcast10 for 10% off. I want to start today's lesson, today's episode with the statement that retirement can be whatever you want it to be. It doesn't have to be what the typ of retirement is where you cash in all your chips. You basically retire from your job, retire from your career and do zero work and basically be on holiday for the rest of your life. I say it doesn't have to be that way, but if that's something that appeals to you, that could be your retirement. The point I'm making that you don't need to conform to anybody else's understanding or image or vision of what retirement is. The other thing I want to say is that retirement doesn't have to be when you become at a certain age. You can retire at 30, at 40, it's up to you and it's up to what kind of financial position you can be in so you can retire. And I also want to say retirement doesn't have to be a once and done thing. Tim Ferriss, in his book the Four Hour Workweek talks about mini retirements. Instead of retiring for 20 years plus 30 years plus at the end of your life, why not sprinkle in six months every two years so you work for 18 months and take off for six months. He calls these mini retirements. So I want to start off with those statements just to open up your mind as you start thinking about retirement. It's a good idea to have a good vision of what you're working towards or what you want out of life. You may like this model of many retirements. Hey, I want to do that right now. I want to work for 18 months and then take off for six months. Or you might like the model where it's like, hey, I want to maybe work part time instead of putting in, you know, 80 hours, I want to put in 20 hours a week and do the things I only love in my business and leave the rest to the experts or the people I hire. So the first question is, what do you want? What do you want? This is a very hard question for a lot of us to answer. So let's get a little bit more specific and ask yourself, what does the perfect day look like? We're talking about a regular day in your life. If you can have the perfect day, what would that look like and what would it entail? How much of your business would it be involved? Would it be, you know, an hour of working on your business, 5 hours, 0 hours? What else would you do during that day? This is a great exercise, just asking yourself what a perfect day looks like, writing down, I wake up at this time, I have breakfast, I do this, I do that. The more details, the better. Do you read the paper? How long do you read the paper for? Where do you live? What's the weather like? Who do you enjoy this day with? All these things. Get as many details as possible in this description of the perfect day. This is going to help you understand how you want to live your life. A lot of people think of retirement as like a break, but really it's what they're working towards. So why don't you craft your perfect day? That's your first question you need to answer. What does your perfect day look like now? Once you have that down, you have to ask yourself the next question. What kind of business do I need to have to get that perfect day? So if you want to work on your business for one hour a day, what does that business look like? How many employees do you have? What kind of employees do you have? What type of business is this a software business? Is this a consultancy business? Which type of business? What does this business look like? As descriptive as possible to be a good match for that life. If you can't think of a business that you want to do that would fit your lifestyle, whatever you chose, whatever that perfect day is, then maybe you do need to sell your business and just live off the gains. Or maybe you need to invest into other businesses or invest in the stock market or a portfolio or whatever that gets you return and need to work towards a huge chunk of money that you can pop in and live off the gains of those investments. But again, if your perfect day is, hey, I want to work on my business about three hours a day and then I want to enjoy the rest of the day, there are plenty of businesses where you can work three hours a day if you have the right people in place. What kind of revenue does this business need to make in order to fund that type of business? To employ the people that you need to employ? Get specific. If you want to have those mini retirements where you work for 18 months and then retire for six months, where you get to travel and enjoy your life or pick up a new hobby, what kind of business do you need to have to do that? Maybe you want to be a writer. If you have a daily podcast like mine, that's not a feasible match to that type of retirement. I can't just not work for six months because, hey, who's going to do these episodes? If I outsource it, it's a totally different show. So you gotta weigh out what exactly you want to, how you're going to get there. So there are going to be some sacrifices. Now, when you outline your perfect day, and then you look at the business that matches that perfect day, what kind of business you need to have. You might be the kind of person just like, you know what, I love what I do. I love working 10 hour days. It's what gets me excited in the morning. I don't want to change a thing. I want to keep doing this for the rest of my life. Then you're good to go. You don't need to retire. You're happy where you're at and you're the envy of everybody listening. Right? But the point here is, is that know what you want, know what makes you happy and make sure you have a business that matches that, that gets you there. But if you're like most of us, that perfect day that we outlined is not aligned with our business or what we are doing right now. Maybe it will be in the future. Maybe we need to change things in our business. Maybe we need to, you know, improve or increase sales or, or hire certain people. And that's the whole point of this exercise. What do you need to do? What do you need to change in your business so you get closer to that perfect day? This is your next challenge. These are the questions you have to answer. What do I need to do in my business? What do I have to change? What do I need to adjust so I can get closer to that perfect day? I can't tell you what that is because I don't know what your perfect day is. When I say perfect day again, this is, you know, another way to say what does retirement look for you? Now once you have that laundry list that to do list of everything you need to do in your business and they don't have to be super specific, it may be just be like I need to increase revenue by X amount of dollars a month. You may not know how to get there yet, but you need to at least know what you need to do. What are the milestones you need to hit so you can be able to do that? I need to work less. I need to hire people to do these jobs in my current day because it's taking up most of my day. Once you have that list, you're going to feel super empowered because like, okay, now I know where I need to go so I can have that perfect day, so I can basically be retired for the rest of my life, do what I want to do for the rest of my life. This list is so critical because it's basically your game plan. It's basically what you need to do to get to your finish line and it's totally okay. If it's going to take a while. It may take five years, 10 years, 15 years to get to that point, 20 years. But what's not okay is if those 20 years are so painful that you don't enjoy what you're doing. So you may need to make some adjustments to your business. So the journey is enjoyable. Yes, there'll be ups and downs and challenges and hey, business is tough. Overall, you should be proud and happy of what you do every day. Ask yourself the question, if somebody just gave you a hundred million dollar check right now, would you continue to grow the business you're growing? Would you continue to try to build what you're building? Would you take that money and invest in your business? Or would you be like, nope, I would just quit it in the drop of the hat because I was just doing it to make some money. That's a really good way to find out if you're in the right business, if you're doing the right thing. Because to get to your goal of whatever retirement is, it may be a journey and you need to make sure it's not super painful. You got to make sure that you enjoy the challenge and enjoy the journey. If you're not enjoying it, that's the perfect time to stop and ask yourself, what do I need to do to course correct? And maybe to fix that problem is going to take, you know, some time because maybe the things that you don't enjoy doing is making you money. Maybe you need to get somebody else to do it. Maybe you need to drop that side of the business or grow another part of the business that you do enjoy. So these are real questions we need to answer. Guys, I got more on today's topic, but before that, let me give love to today's sponsor. One of the first things you got to do when you start a business is acquire a business address. You need it to register your business. You need it to open up a business bank account. You even need it to register for email marketing. Yes, you need an address on the bottom of your email marketing newsletters. But if you work from home, like a lot of us do, you don't want to put your home address and have your customers show up to your door. And you don't want to spend the extra money every single month on having a business office. This is where Earth ClassMail comes in. They hook you up with a swanky business address and all the mail that gets sent there gets scanned and uploaded to your account in the cloud. That means you never have to Check physical mail ever again. You could see it anywhere, anytime from your phone or your laptop. Pretty cool. So cool. We signed up. We absolutely love it. And we've been using Earth ClassMail for over a year now. And Earth ClassMail wants to hook you up with a free month so you can get started with your business address. Just go to earthclassmail.com mbamonth and use coupon code MBAMONTH. Again, that's earthclassmail.com MBAMONTH coupon code MBAMONTH Guys, we covered a lot in today's lesson. We talked about how to answer some really important questions about what's the perfect day for you? What type of business would match that perfect day? What adjustments you need to make, Having that laundry list that to do list the adjustments we need to make to hit that business, to have a business on our hands that is a perfect match of that perfect day we talked about. You have to enjoy the process because the process may take a while. One final piece of advice is if you're finding it super hard to describe your perfect day a step before that, that might help you get into the groove is describing your perfect year. What does a great year look like? Does that include a vacation or two? How long are those vacations? Where are you going those vacations? How are you enjoying those vacations? Are you flying business class? Are you going to five star hotels? Are you cool backpacking it and like to rough it a little bit and be amongst the locals and be in smaller towns? What about work? When are you working? What are your hours like? How many days a week do you work? Where do you work? Is it in a co working space? Is it in your own office? Is it at home? Is it anywhere in the world? Do you want to be a digital nomad? What does your year look like? How much time do you take off for holidays, for birthdays? Or are you an absolute machine and take minimal time off? What do you want? What does your perfect year look like? A piece of advice that I got from a friend of mine, Ronsley Voss, who's the founder of the We Are Podcast conference. You should check it out. It's a great conference in Australia all about podcasting called We Are Podcast. Just go to wearepodcast.com but what Ronsley said is he likes to plan his breaks for the year before he plans his work. And I love this idea where it's just like I'm prioritizing, enjoying my life because I'm working hard, I should enjoy the fruits of my labor. So he starts Planning his year. And he plugs into his calendar, what do I want to do for my breaks, where do I want to travel, how long do I want to travel for? And he block books those periods of travel and breaks and holidays, even if they're staycations, he, you know, he books those out on the calendar and, and then he fills in his calendar with work appointments, all that kind of stuff. Great advice by Ronsley. Thanks, man. Well, there you have it, guys. Thinking about what you want retirement to look like, what it means to you, how your life is going to be. It takes time to craft this, to ask yourself the hard questions, but it's so worth it because it's better to have some definite answer, to have some sort of clear vision rather than just shooting and working hard for this murky mirage. You don't know what, what you're working towards and you don't know if you're getting closer to it because it's not clear if it's clear. You know, hey, I'm getting closer and closer every day to that perfect day, to that perfect year. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. If you love this show, leave us an itunes rating and review. It's your way to show your love. It's also a way for me to understand what you love about the show. I read every single review. And don't forget, everybody who leaves this review enters a week random draw we call Free Ryan Friday. On Friday we announce a random winner who wins a lifetime membership to one of our programs simply by just leaving us a review. Alright, there you have it. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. You gotta make time to answer the questions I laid out in today's episode. You gotta book this in the calendar. Maybe on a Saturday morning with a fresh head, with a cup of coffee, spend an hour or two and with a notebook and write down these things. It will be time well spent, trust me. And once you do it, you have it and it's done. And you can refer to it always. And you can have it in front of you right on your desk. And you know what you're working towards, you know what you want. Alright, I'll check you in tomorrow's episode, Q and A Wednesdays, where I answer a question from one of our listeners. I'll see you then. Take care. Of sam.