4 Steps To Financial Wellness

So what's the number one thing that holds most people back? Well, as you probably guessed, one of the biggest questions we get from the tribe and from the audience and from the JP Nation is how do I make my financial life better? Well, in this video we're going to jump into four ways to make that a reality for you.

So it's important to realize that my financial way of viewing financials in general, in general, excuse me, are a little bit different than a lot of people's. In that mine comes from my personal experience and I made it a point very early on to only teach people things that actually work for me in early days. Back in roughly 20 years ago when I was trying to get my life together, you know, I found myself, you guys know about the homeless story, but you also don't know that I had to rent a room in my own mobile home from my little brother. Talk about humbling. My credit score was completely jacked up. I think my beacon score was like in the 500s, which is crazy, right? I had like 70, $80,000 in debt. I had no job or no real job that helped me actually dig out of that. So what did I do right? How did I actually go from there to getting to a place where I am able to steward a certain level of wealth and help a lot of people? Well, that's what I want to help you understand today. Because I personally believe that anyone who follows these four steps and is consistent with it will actually be able to jump in and transform their own financial life and finally start getting some traction so you can actually build the future you want and maybe not the reality that you have. All right, so let's jump in. Number one is customize a plan. You've got to create a plan, right? It's no secret that I came up in the home building business as a whole. I grew up carrying studs as 11 year old kid and started framing and doing some other things in the construction industry. Okay. What that taught me was the importance of a plan. And what I mean by that is, is you cannot build a home without a set of blueprints. Well, you can't build a financial life without a set of blueprints. You have to know key things, key measurables and key key areas that you have to kind of think through in order to actually shape a financial plan before you can do anything with it. Alright, so if I don't have the blueprints to begin with, I'm never going to be able to construct something that's going to matter. So when I'm talking about a plan, I really have three areas I want to focus on and I want to pull a paper and a pen out, okay. And I want to spend time really going through these areas, really taking the time to dream, really taking the time to think what I want life to actually be like. Okay. Because this is very important. First thing I did was I took the time to create a one year plan. A one year plan. I wanted to basically take where I was in that moment, decide where I wanted to be a year from that moment. Now, when you're in such a financial turmoil like I was early on, with the high debt and the no job and all that kind of stuff, you're not going to be able to really plan to go make $100 million. Not saying it's not a reality down the road, but you're not going to get there right away, okay? So the important thing is to make sure you're taking the time to do that. So my one year plan in that moment, for example, was to just find stable employment. Okay. I knew that that stable employment wasn't necessarily going to get me out of debt, but what it was going to do was it'll give me a little win to create some momentum. Okay. I then wanted to make sure that I had took the time to actually have a little bit of a side project, side job, if you will, to earn a little extra capital or, well, capital in the business terms, but cash in more everyday terms. I wanted to make sure I had that in order to start chunking away and throwing it at the debt. Now, unlike most people, one of the ways in which I look at that was I sign my name on the dotted line to get that debt, right? These credit cards and these things that most of us get and we're foolish with when we're 18, 19, 20, 21 years old. I mean, almost all of us get that wrong, right? But not all of us take personal responsibility for that. It was important for me specifically to make sure that I took personal responsibility and I began to chip away at that debt. Right. So I wanted to make sure in year one, I wanted to at least begin the process of chipping away at the debt. I knew I wasn't going to be able to pay back $70,000 a year because in that particular time, right. My income at best was going to be 20, 20, 24,000, right? So when you look at that, that's going to take me at least three years. But I at least wanted to get started. Okay? So that's Kind of like year one, kind of what I did there. The next one is going to be the five year more. The five year plan, okay? Five year plan might be more along the lines of, hey, look, I'm going to get a job to get me going to create some momentum, I'm going to start chipping away at the debt. But in year, as I'm going from year one to year five, I might be looking for a passion driven marketplace that I can serve in. Like I might be looking for a job, an opportunity or something along those lines that I can actually begin to build an actual career from. A lot of times when you go to build a career, a lot of times the salary and the resources that you need to do that with or I'm sorry, that you need to change your financial picture come with that. Okay, so it's important you understand the kind of, the difference there, all right. Once I actually had the career, my other goal that I wanted to have in that particular moment was to get completely out of debt. All right? Why? Because with no debt, I was able to take the money that I was making and reinvest it in areas that actually made me money rather than take my money, right? It's a spirit of compound interest, if you will. There's a reason a bank's building is bigger than what you're living in today, right? They figured out the power, the power of compound interest. What most people don't tell you is, is the power of compound interest can also work for you by taking the same cash that you would normally give to a monthly payment with the interest with it and setting it aside and putting it in places where it can work for you. You know, mutual funds, some, some people like real estate, right? There are different passive streams of income that you can create from this, right? Now, again, I couldn't do that in year one. I had to focus on year five. Now I was able to get myself out of debt with solid commitment in four years, which was made, which means I was a little ahead of schedule. Okay. My next 20 year goal, which is the next area, right. Requires a ton of dreaming.

It requires a ton of optimism, right? It requires a ton of removing your limiting beliefs, removing the things that you think might be standing in your way, right? That's the moment when I wrote myself a hundred thousand dollar check and hung it on my refrigerator. Why? Because I felt like if I could reach the point where I was making $100,000 a year, which was my goal, then that I would have the resources I need to change My life.

Okay, you can do the same thing now. It took me eight years to cash that check, but I was able to cash that check. Sometimes you need a little incentive that you keep in front of you to make that dream a reality. But if you don't take the time today to dream about what the 20 year vision might be, then 20 years from now you'll have never achieved the vision that could have been in the first place. So this is where the power of a notepad and a pen can really come down there. Okay? My 20 year vision was more like this. I wanted to start, own and operate multiple companies. Check. I wanted to build great teams along the way and take the same principles that I used to get myself out of debt, get myself in a better financial picture and be able to teach that to my kids and teach that to my team. Things of that nature. Okay? I wanted to make sure that I have enough passive streams of income coming in from a variety of different locations. So in the event that we have a problem or a challenge come through, like Covid or like an economy crash or anything of that nature, that I was actually able to utilize that because I had more streams of income coming in. I wasn't anchored in, in one place. Because if you only have one source of income, when calamity strikes, you're likely set up to have some pretty significant struggles. Okay? And that's what I mean by the 20 year vision. Okay? So again, one year vision is nothing more than where I want to be a year from now. And it could include getting out of debt, getting a great, getting at least a decent job to build up some momentum and things of that nature. Your five year vision could be a whole lot more about developing a career you love, serving in the place you love, and making a reasonable salary to help you expedite the process of getting out of debt, buying a new home, things of that nature. Your 20 year commitment should be focused more on your legacy. Right? What in that 20 year window, what is that picture going to look like for you? Where are you going to be able to travel to? Right. What does your family look like? Right. What are some of the things that you would like to own from a property perspective to at least have some incentive to chase your dream a little. Okay, so that's step one. Step two.

Once you have the blueprints, like I mentioned earlier, with the whole building side, once you actually have the blueprint, what good is a blueprint unless someone actually begins to build? Okay. I call that executing the plan. Right. Once you have the plan. You're going to execute the plan. Now here's what I mean by that. You have the different visions, you have the three different visions. And it's important that each of these three talk to each other, right? Year one should build up to make your five possible. Year five should build up to make the 20 year goal possible. Okay? But we're going to put all of our emphasis based on where we're at today. So when I say execute a plan, you're going to execute the plan in action first on year one, first. And you're going to go at it like gangbusters for the first year, right? Most people aren't willing to sacrifice three to five years to set up a 40 year legacy. I'm currently getting income in now for work I did 20 years ago. And you can too. Okay? So these are some key points, all right? We're talking about things in the plan like savings. How much money can you save on a regular basis? Right? And you want to begin to do that even if you don't have a lot of money. If you can learn to save five bucks, $10, $15, whatever that is, it builds the muscle memory that allows you to begin to have the practice, right? Because practice makes improvement. It allows you to do that in such a way that allows you to build up over time the that muscle memory to make saving an easy thing for you to do when you actually have the character to steward wealth. Okay? Now spending, spending gets most of us in trouble. The biggest problem I see with most of us, and I made this mistake too, so I'm not out to throw stones at all, is we start having wins, we start making money, and we immediately assume that our life has changed and we're ready to go and we start spending the vast majority of it, the bulk of it. Don't do that. Don't make that same mistake I made. It'll set you back three or four years. Instead, as part of your plan, okay, decide how much of your income on a percentage basis, whether it be weekly check, monthly check, however you get paid, you are going to spend on yourself. And then don't go over it, right? And with a plan you're going to have, this is how much money I'm putting away, this is how much money I'm going to spend, right? Because there is, there is a little bit of something called reward, right? If you're not able to, like for example, for the first year that I was trying to figure this out, where I came from, I couldn't afford to go out to the movies, right? So I began to reward myself over time with being able to take myself to the movies. Simple reward, but it has to do with spending. Okay, Investing, okay? A lot of times your investing bucket is probably going to come in the five year range before you can start investing in other things. The other thing you want to do when you start looking at that, when you start executing that plan, is you want to take the time to make sure that in that plan you are investing a appropriate amount and you are doing your diligence to the best you can to make sure that that investment is going to return an roi. Okay? A lot of us get excited about the new hot thing, the new wild thing, and we want to invest in it in some capacity. I like to give a year before I'll jump into things, right? It's precisely the reason why I never jumped into bitcoin, right? Because I never could see where that was actually going to be a real roi rather than my real estate ventures, okay? My business ventures, all of those produce a much better ROI for me. Okay? But that's an example of investing. And again, when you're executing your plan, you want to remove the debt. You know, some people will teach you principles like use other people's money, money's cheap, interest rates are low, all this kind of garbage. Let me put it to you this way. At the time of this recording, Covid is still a thing. Now we're coming out of the backside of it, but it's still a thing. It may, you may find it interesting to know that there's some influencers in the marketplace that said, hey, debt, go get some debt. It's cool, don't worry about it, we'll make payments, okay? I myself, because of my experience, are on the other side of the field, right?

The businesses that I have are able to survive and thrive because I have the cash to take care of the responsibilities that I have. Because I'm not giving that money away in a form of a payment to someone else. I would rather wait, sacrifice, put in the time and energy to pay for things in cash. And there are different ways to do that. We'll talk more about that in later videos. Alright? So that's execute a plan, get your blueprint together, start building. Okay? Now, like anything else, step three is going to be measure the plan. Why? Because even the best plans are going to require change and in some cases a little bit variable change. Okay? So you're going to, you're going to discover when you go to get the plan, you go to execute the plan. Some things are working, some things aren't working. Some things are confusing, some things are missing. You're going to see all of that. Okay? But at least with the plan, you can document which one of those things are and then measure it upon the success. Is it successful? What's come up that's actually unexpected? Okay. A lot of. So crazy point, I was actually taking the time to teach my kids how to do a budget. Okay. Which is part of a plan. Okay. You know the one thing that they forgot to budget, that was probably going to bite them in the butt? Food. Food and clothing. They forgot to set aside a little money in their budget for food and clothing. So they had built their budget on getting a car payment and getting a phone and all this kind of stuff. And they didn't realize that they were going to be way upside down if they decided to, well, you know, do something interesting like maybe eat three times a day. Okay. That's an important thing to know. Okay. So you want to be able to measure your success, look out for the unexpected. Look and see where the struggles came up. Right? Struggles meaning from the plan perspective and also from inside of you. And here's what I mean by that. When you start putting this into practice, the biggest thing that you're going to have to change is your behaviors.

You're going to go. You are going to move from a more of a poverty mindset to more of a wealth mindset. Okay. This process allows that to take place. But if you keep doing the same things that you've been doing all of this time and having financial struggles and financial problems, it's never going to change even with a plan. Right? So we want to get the plan, we want to execute the plan, and we want to move down the pipeline to wealth and stewardship. Okay? So that's the next piece. So beware of your behaviors. If you're a spender, I'm sorry, you're going to have to sacrifice for a minute, just as I did. I like to go to fun places and spend money, too. But I've also learned that if I was going to ever have anything of value, anything of meaning, anything that I wanted, right, then I was going to have to put a little sacrifice on the front end, change my behaviors to get what I want on the back end. Okay? Step four, adjust the plan.

Right? All of this has to do with learning all of this, creating the plan. You're gonna have to get some. Some help with actually creating that plan, which we're happy to do for you right? We're gonna help you in many cases, begin to walk out that plan, be here to coach you through. Right? We got a lot of folks that we connect with on Instagram, for example, that will send us different questions and answers and stuff like that, which even now I'm still personally answering. My team and myself are personally answering those comments. Okay. To help this process, right? Once you have the plan, you're executing the plan. We're happy to come alongside of you to help you measure the plan. Okay, the next piece is you got to adjust it, right? What did you learn in this bucket? What did you learn through the process? What do you need to change? What do you need to amplify? What do you need to clarify? Who needs to come alongside of you? These are powerful questions when it comes down to changing your financial well being. Okay, so we're going to adjust the plan to increase success, remove the unexpected, overcome the struggles, and most of all, the most important of all, change our behaviors.

Change the way you look at money, and the way you get money will also change.

Change the way you look at money, the way you get it will also change. Do you see money as a way to spend or do you see it as a tool to build? You can probably guess which one my favorite one is. If you'll do these four steps in succession on a regular basis, I'm telling you, it won't take you three to five years to really start to really get some serious distance from where you're at today to where you want to be. Like, serious distance. But you got to be committed and you got to follow the program. You eliminate any one of these steps and it's never going to work. Why? Because when you adjust the plan, it allows you to create a new plan.

I never thought in a thousand years that I would ever make six figures. And then I never thought after I made six figures that I would ever be able to make six figures, seven figures, and then eight figures. And on the verge of nine figures.

Character is built along the way that makes that a possibility.

If I had the same behaviors from over here in my poverty self, there is no way I would have ever gotten to those other places. It never would have happened. But hopefully this video will help you begin to change how you look at money. So you can change how you obtain the money and whether or not you use it to spend or build. Why? Because you're amazing. There's stuff hidden inside of you that you haven't discovered yet. And you need those resources in order to build that reality. So you can do, hopefully, what I'm trying to do today, which is come out and help some other people. All right. I hope you enjoyed that. Use those four principles, make it a reality, make it work, and we'll see in the next video.

Hey, it's Connor with the Journey principles. If you enjoyed that lesson about financial wellness, I highly recommend you grab our free ebook linked in the description of this video. Also, do us a favor and, like, comment and subscribe and we'll see you in the next video.