Transcript of a Russ Lowry YouTube video (commentary/reflection) advising viewers to evaluate requests and commitments by asking “Where’s the profit in this?”—weighing monetary, time, family, and personal-value costs. Uses examples (paying for lawn care, board/committee commitments, volunteerism, travel-heavy jobs) and stresses saying no when activities drain value or conflict with family and mental health.
Today's reading inspired me for this video, where's the profit in that? We'll call this I was reading my friend Michael McLean's newsletter. He's a former insurance agency owner, coach, entrepreneur. Now he has a coaching program for men. He puts out a monthly newsletter and he just talks about stuff in his life, kind of talking to you guys. And this is a mantra he said, for many years. We've been friends for probably 20 plus years and it kind of goes along with Just say no, one of the other videos we did, and just ways to improve your life and ways to live your life. So when you're looking at anything, whether it's business and you say, where's the profit in that? Why am I doing five dollar an hour work when I could pay for that to be done? Because I'm worth $400 an hour, they could be at home. People used to joke with me about paying to have my lawn mowed. But I said, my sales skills, I can earn hundreds of dollars an hour. I can pay a local kid 15, 20, 25, $30 an hour to mow my yard. So looking at the profit in that, that's just one example. But that can go with anything too. Someone asks you to be on a board or a committee and you're like, what does this mean? We just meet weekly for a couple hours and we have quarterly meetings that we go off site. Then once a year we go to a city and meet with. And you think that's going to be about 100 hour, your commitment and 10 to 15 days away from my family. There's no personal profit in that for you per se, just for these random boards. Now if it furthers your career, if it's something you're really interested in, yeah, do that. But always look at where's the profit in that? Anything you do to make sure that it's congruent with what your values you and your spouse do, your family values, how it's going to affect your family. Because you can get dragged so many different ways these days. People looking for volunteers, people asking you to do stuff, joining groups, all sorts of random things. And it takes away from valuable time that you can't get back. As we said in another video, the days are long and the years are short. You just don't get back that time. So approach everything business personal with that thought. Where's the profit in that? Now sometimes you might say, hey, I want to do this for my church. This is part of my tithe that you're giving your time for Charity, that could be different. Or maybe it's just something that you say. I like to mow my yard because that's an hour I ride around in my lawnmower just thinking to myself. Or I like being in this book club because I enjoy reading and discussing that. I mean that's. Those will be certain times, but it's when you're being bombarded with stuff at work, hey, will you do this? Can you join this group? Volunteerism just asks from people and things like that that you want to look and see. Where's the profit? What is this going to take away from my values, my family time, my personal time, my life, my mental health in relation to what we're getting from this? Because like I said, you can just be just dragged away. And the next thing you know, you're in all these different groups, you're doing all these different things and you look up and you're like, well, where the hell? What's going on? What did I even say yes to this? So besides saying no to most things in your life, another way to analyze it is also looking at the profit. You might be joining a group that's going to help your business or your career. You might be joining a group that's going to waste your time, make you angry and make you wonder why your very existence. I've been in groups like that where I'm like, why did I volunteer for this project, for this group? It is just beating me down. I go into this and come home worse for the wear, not better. There was no profit in that. I had to get out. So again, always ask yourself, where's the profit in this? When you look at things, I think that'll make your life easier and better and it gives you a reason to say no to people as well. You can say, I'm sorry, I can't. When I look at this opportunity, it's too much time away from my family. This could be even a job too. You know, I hated traveling, being a traveling salesman. Towards the end I wanted to be home with mom or you know, and I got tired of driving all the time, 60,000 miles a year. There was no profit left in that for me, no matter what they paid me. So that's when I left to be self employed. So hopefully another little tip you can look at and see. Just ask yourself, what did dad say about this? Or what would dad say about this? He'd say, where's the profit in this? There is no profit. Or there is. And that's how I make my decision on things and blame the old man if someone gets upset with you.
