Success Is A Series Of Good Decisions

Hey, it's Mark Podolski, the land geek with your favorite niche real estate website, www.thelandgeek.com. and I'm really excited for today's guest, a lifelong and successful entrepreneur. But before we talk to our guest, I'd be remiss if I didn't properly introduce my co host, Six Sigma. You know him, you love him. Scott Todd from scotttodd.net landmodo.com and most importantly, we're not automating your Craigslist postings and your Facebook postings. Postingdomination.com thelandgeek I would like to just remind everybody that today's podcast is sponsored by postingdomination.com landgeek. You can always get more money, you can't get more time. Automate your postings. Scott Todd. How are you? Mark?

I am fantastic. How are you?

I'm really excited about today's guest and I can't even tell why. It's just he's got, he's got that good vibe going.

Well, you know what's kind of cool is I like his concept to make, make good decisions and get great results, right?

Yeah, that doesn't seem hard at all. Make good decisions, get great results. I can't wait to dig a little bit deeper. Peel the onion if you will about what makes a good decision and how do you even know what great results are. So let's talk our guest, Mike Whitaker. A lifelong and successful entrepreneur, Mike Whitaker is an expert on personal and professional decision making, turnarounds and strategic planning. He is a no nonsense business coach as well as a speaker on topics that involve critical thinking about the future. Offering unique perspectives and world class solutions to help people achieve their goals. Mike Whitaker. Welcome to the art of passive Income. How are you?

I'm great. Glad to be here. I think I'm outnumbered. You two sound very good.

Mike, don't, don't be intimidated by our geeky radio voices. Let's just, let's just get into it. Okay? Tell us your story and how you became the Mike Whitaker, the guy for strategic planning and good decisions as opposed to Mike Whitaker, just the entrepreneur.

Very fine. I've been a lifelong entrepreneur. I think I had one job out of college and since last 30 years I've got up every day having to figure out how I was going to make it financially. And I found I was very good at creating. In some cases I created and have created good businesses. In other cases I've created messes and learning along the way and watching intently at other people, especially the people that you see in the media that are successful. You know, I've had this book in mind for 20 years as I went to my high school reunion every five years and looked at how everybody was making progress in life. You know, are they getting what they want? Were they making. Making tracks, if you will? And some people were and some people were not. And I realized there's a common denominator to all of this, which was the reason successful people are successful outside of just pure luck. And. And those are the ones you sometimes read about. We're going to ditch that for a second because luck we don't control. But for everyone else, it's about the decisions we make along the way in life, especially when we make them in a series. We can make a series of good decisions or bad, and that leads to extreme differences in what we get out of life. So I linked our happiness and fulfillment and attaining our goals. I was able to do that just looking at the data and looking, talking to people and realizing that it's a fork in the road. And every time you choose wisely, you get dividends out of your decisions. And when you don't choose so wisely, and sometimes it takes a couple years to figure that out, then you have to pay the consequences. And the folks that actually own and take control over their decisions really do have more power about how their life turns out.

So, Mike, what do you think of when you hear the word successful?

So success. As I talk to people about it, they. They come at it with so many different influences. I'm careful to tell. To tell my children, for example, who are all young adults now, success is a very personal definition. Success is not money. It is a, in my view now, after talking to a lot of people and working through this book, success is for you and me, our own personal definition. And it's probably a balance of all the things we feel are important. It's a balance of the things we want to feel, experience, enjoy, challenge ourselves with. It's a balance of regard and essentially feeling of accomplishment in life. Well, success is a mix of all those and it's a very personal decision. I know a lot of people that are very wealthy who are successful but are very unhappy. So I know it's not about money, but I do know it's about a balance and it's a personal definition. So when I hear the word success, I ask you, what is your definition? And then based upon your definition, I break down the goals. What is the goal that gets you to that definition of success? You can pick one let's say your career goal is to be retired at the age of, say, 60 or 55 from where you are now, we got to talk about some decisions to get us to. To that goal being achieved, and that's how we do it when we talk about success.

Scott. Todd.

I mean, I think it. I agree. I think that success is a definition of what you think it is, because, you know, like, if I judge success by money, and that's the only currency that I go by, and then I look at, you know, I look at a doctor who is driving the fancy car and living in the big house, and, you know, whether maybe they have a lot of money in the bank account, I don't. I don't know. But let's just say that they do, well, then I can look at that and go, oh, man, they're successful. Right. But if I judge success not on the money side, but on the freedom side, like the ability to work when I want, where I want, and with whom I want, well, then I'm gonna look at that doctor. I'm gonna say, that guy's got the. That guy's not successful. That guy's got the worst job ever.

He's.

He's terrible. He's in the office 60 hours a week. He can't even go outside and watch the eclipse if he wanted to. Success doesn't necessarily always mean money, like you're saying. It really depends on how you're going to define it.

Yeah.

You know, what I liked about what Mike said is that sort of like, that locus of control, if you will. What are the things that you can control? Typically, when you feel like you have control of your life, you really feel a lot happier. And there's, like, psychological studies on this. But what is also interesting to him was like, that metric is so personal, it's so internal, and we get to choose whatever we want as our definition of success. And so, you know, I'm sure, Mike, when you're at your high school reunion, you were seeing all types of, you know, stories that might have been, like, on Scott saying, on the outside they looked really successful, but on the inside, they didn't have a good marriage. Their kids barely saw them, didn't know them, and they were stressed out all the time, poor health, and all these other metrics that we consider successful, they might have been failing in. But if you just took that one metric of making a lot of money, they weren't, you know, they might have had that, but. But nothing else. What do you. What are your thoughts on that?

Well, I can relate to. I'm in my mid-40s and all the decisions really start to come home to roost. You know, as you look at the decisions you made early, one of the things I noticed is that, you know, people who married early, married, married at the wrong time, married too soon, had children too soon, didn't advance their education, never moved away from home, there were a whole lot of decisions that made or make or break your people's destiny. In a way, some of them are unavoidable, but most of them people have control over. So I just, with whether it's my high school classmates or my college classmates, just the comparative was interesting because we had some similar backgrounds, similar type of parents, but what was different was our decisions and how we approach decisions and people. One of the common questions I get is how do successful people make decisions? And I would tell you that they do it. There's just three things they do. First thing that successful people keep their goals in mind and I write in the book in great detail how to use that tool I prescribe. You keep five prime goals at the top of the list and as you knock them down, you can replace them. But when we have too many goals, we never succeed. There's too much to do, it's too fragmented. So I have you take five prime goals and I make you choose one number one. With one number one goal, everything else is subservient. You know, that goal is king for the day, for the week, for the month. And the reason that will work to get you number one goal achieved is that all of the decisions have to point to that number one goal and what makes it advance. You often find people set a goal, but then their behavior doesn't act like it. They say I want to lose 20 pounds and then they go, you know, they eat nachos and, and drink sweet sodas during the day, or they don't hit the gym or whatever it is. Behavior on a daily, weekly, monthly basis has to support your number one goal and in your prime goals. It's kind of like the roster of what you're there for. If I hit my prime goals, am I going to be a happy person? You bet I am. And they're cross section of my life. So that's the first thing is how they use their goals. Successful people also are much quicker to judge a bad decision. They recognize it instead of waiting and procrastinating and hoping something gets better. What they do is they do two things that I labeled this. These are my phrases. They either fail fast or they fix fast. Failing fast is calling it a day, saying, I've got all the data I need. This is a bad deal and I need to move on because I'm wasting time. I've got opportunity, cost. So failing fast means you know what you need to do, get it over with and move on and find something better, whether it's the career, the relationship, the investment. Just because the stock has fallen doesn't mean you shouldn't sell it. You know, those kind of things. The other alternative is to fix fast. Fix fast is not trying harder. That's a common misconception. People say, well, I'll just need to double down and try harder. When you hire employee and it doesn't work out, you trying hard to make them a better employee doesn't change the employee. That's what I learned in business. You need to call it either fail fast or you fix fast. You change the deal. Fixing fast means change the contract, the structure, the terms, the work assignment to fit better what you're trying to accomplish. So failure fix fast, much more quickly done by successful people. And the linkage to the goals so long way around. Success is attained by those who decide what they want and then are very aware of it as they make each daily decision to go get it.

So, Mike, let's talk about the book, because you've alluded to this book. What the hell is the book?

All right, the Decision Makeover. I want the title.

Oh, the Decision Makeover. Okay.

Yeah, the title is very meaningful to me because the word makeover can happen anytime in our life. It's about a renewal, if you will, because while I wrote the book and I gave it to my children because I said, look, you're young adults. This is how not to screw up. This is how to look at decisions differently and be prepared for what's going to come at you. Because the book highlights that there's a succession from your teens to your 20s to your 30s. You're setting up your life. I have what's called decision zones. There are three decision zones and the critical one is from 16 to 35. You basically set up your entire life in the critical. That's called the critical zone. All the big decisions you're going to make happen there. And then after that is the consequences zone, which is 35 until you die. That's where you have the dividends or the consequences. The fruits of all that decision making labor come home to you. And if you want to be happy as you get older, you have to make some really good decisions early. So for my children and any parents that want their kids to have more insight on how to get the life you want and not have it be turned around on you. The book's very important. It's also in the book about for people in middle age, mid career, it talks them through how to do what's called the big reset, which is everyone makes a mistake. I've made a couple large ones where you just kind of need to start over, give yourself a break, start fresh. And it talks about achieving a brand new streak of good decisions regardless of the age you do. The big Reset where then you take the next 10 years and that now becomes your new critical zone to make a series of great decisions to get you down to the track of the life you want. So the book is about getting you to understand the power of decisions, the size of decisions, the decision zones in your life and then how to avoid making bad decisions. Which I have a character called the Decisionator, which I want to make sure I tell you guys about.

Scott, I want to hear about the Decisionator.

Can you guess what that is?

I think it's a superhero that helps you make good decisions.

Yeah, it's actually. It's the villain. It's a villain in your story and mine and Marx. The Decisionator is why we make bad decisions. I put a character to that just picture like the Hulk with a bad attitude. But our brains don't always help us. A lot of times our brains are in need of something that's short term, that feels good, but it's not in our best long term interest. It's like asking me if I'd like ice cream at midnight. That's a bad time to ask me if I want ice cream because I'm probably going to take you up on that. When the problem is is the Decisionator happens when we are not in a good position to make a decision. It happens when we're hurried, when we're frustrated, when we're tired, when we've been rejected, when we've been like. Like for example, the first things you do after being rejected, whether it be someone broke up with you or you just got fired or a client said we're done with you. Sometimes we make some immediate knee jerk decisions that aren't in our best interests. That's the decision maker at work. Because our mind is still reeling from the trauma that we don't have a clear head. Being fearful or grief stricken. There's all kinds of things that happen to us that put our mind off center and then we're in A bad way of making decisions at that point. So what I explained to you is it's kind of like recognizing when you've had too much to drink and you shouldn't drive. That's what this being the decision area is. You've got to recognize when am I not in a good decision making mode? And what you do is you give yourself a pause. That's the most common reason people make bad decisions is that they making decisions when they're not in the right mindset to do so. Happens to me a lot of times around food. It happens to me. I love cars and guns. So when I want to buy something, I probably shouldn't. But decisionator is very much a part of why people get or don't get what they want in life. And I think that successful people are aware when they should go. Be a little take a quiet pause if you will and make that decision a little later.

You know, it's interesting how the self awareness of it can or can't help you sometimes if decisionators in the room. So I have a self awareness that if I have, let's say two glasses of wine, I will overeat at some point that night, right. Like, decisionator will come into my head and say, mark, you deserve that dessert. Right, Right. And like, and then all of a sudden, like, I'm off to the races and my wife's like, okay, you are becoming Jabba the Hut. Put the ice cream away. I'm like, I already did. It's done, it's gone. You know, don't get another pineapple. So Scott, like, do you have a, like what happens for you? Like, what's the environment where the decisionator comes in and like, you know, you're making a bad decision but like, you can't, you can't help it.

So, you know, I kind of have adopted a, you know, I went through an education process, if you will, that really educated me on like what they called the mood elevator.

Right.

Like, so if you're like in a bad mood, right, like think about this elevator that goes up and down. You're in a bad mood, you're at the lower level, you're at the ground level. And if you ever been in a building or, you know, like, if you imagine like a glass elevator that looks out when you're on the ground floor, you don't see much. In fact, it's probably a little dingy. It's not, it's dark. It's not the very best place to make a decision. And then as you move up on that mood elevator all the way to the top where you're optimistic and you're, you're feeling good, you feel good about yourself, you tend to make better decisions higher up in that mood elevator. Because to think about an elevator, glass elevator, again, you're, you're looking out on the glass, you're looking at the beautiful scenery, the landscape, it's beautiful. You're coming at decisions with a better approach. So if you find yourself in a bad decision or, I'm sorry, in a bad mood, or you know, lower in that mood elevator, whether it's self doubt or self confidence issues, pause, as Mike said, put a pause on it and come back to where maybe you're halfway up. And that level is what they call the curious level. You know, like in the mood elevator, when you get to that curious level, well, now you're, now you're able to think a little bit more, you're able to ask some questions. You know, maybe, maybe instead of saying, you know, like, no, we're not going to do this deal, I could come back to you, Mark, and say, hey, help me understand why is this a good deal to do? Like, you know, because if I, if I was answering the question when I was lower on the mood elevator, lacking self confidence or just, just feeling bad, I might say, no, we're not going to do that deal, Mark. But if I can come back to you and say, hey, why, why, why do you think it's a good deal, now I can start to kind of start to make a good decision or if I'm really feeling good and I'm, you know, like, I'm going to look at and go, yeah, this is a good deal. I think we should go do that and I can make better decisions or we're not going to do it. I feel very good and very confident that this is not a good deal. So that's the way I kind of make my decisions.

Yeah, it's interesting. I think kids are really skillful at this. Like, my kids are like, dad, you're the best. I love you so much. And then like pause for like two minutes and they'll come back to me. So can we go do this? And it's like, well, of course you can. I'm like, mike, high element mood elevator. Like, there's no way I'm saying no. So, so, Mike Whitaker, my question to you would be, besides the pause, what else can we do to set up the environment so we're making good decisions? I mean, Scott talked about the mood elevator. Given your cognitive psychology Background. Do you agree with that? Would you add to that? Sure. What kinds of things can we set ourselves up with for success in making good decisions?

Sure. The first thing is we recognize that life's going to hand us ups and downs. So what Scott said is exactly right. Our mood goes up based upon how we perceive our situation and how we're doing. You know, I think we just know that with the ups and downs, we need to preserve decision making, especially for the big decisions. I call those the biggies in the book. We need to preserve those for when we are know we're in a good situation, good mindset, a good, you know, clear head. Sometimes you say, I got to sleep on it. Can I get back to you tomorrow? And so I believe that you have to just know that life's going to hand you ups and downs, and I'm going to make decisions when I feel it's the right process for me. Second thing is the goals we carry in our lives. Those. Those are going to evolve all the time. We got to recognize momentum when we make good decisions. We need to recognize that, hey, that worked out. That's pretty cool. You know, it's kind of like noticing when your stocks go up as well as when they go down, you know, or. Because we got to give ourselves credit, we've all made some really good decisions, you know. Anybody listening? There's some things that you've done that are fantastic, that are great decisions. Now, are you as far along as you want it to be? I don't know. You've probably made some bad decisions, too. But the thing is that if you keep recognizing momentum, you know what that feels like. You know how to get your mind right to be making good decisions. People often ask me, what do you do when you don't know? Like, you know the answer. You could go left. You could go right at a fork in the road. In the book, I describe something called decision triangulation. Is there basically three lifelines that you can use when you want to make a decision? You know, I review the goals. If I can't figure out which goal something hits, I review the consequences of each option. If I go left, here are the benefits and here are the detractions. And if I go right, here are the pros and the cons. If you can't figure out from consequence review, then this is a decision triangulation, which I tell you, use your instincts. What do you think? Ask someone who loves you unconditionally what they think. And then ask somebody who's professional. That is not Related to you, what they think, those three influences, you and two others. You add those up and divide by three, you will get a pinpoint GPS answer to your quandary about what you should do. And so just these little tools, the book's full of these exercises and tools to help people realize that, oh, my gosh, I was just this far from understanding or knowing or being able to manage my life a lot better. And so that's my advice on that.

Mike, do you think that, like. Because I know what you're saying, like, in terms of, like, really, really hard decisions. And I'm trying. I was trying to think, like, what was the last really, really hard decision I made, right? Like, that I felt like I needed to do that. And I mean, I really can't. I can't pinpoint that, that big of a decision that I would have made that would have had to do that. Right. But my question is, does that come from more of, like, just self confidence? Does better decisions come from self confidence? Because, like, I, with my own career and my own life, once I started, like, building my self confidence up, then, man, it just seemed like everything, like, all my decisions, not all of them, like, I just started making better decisions, like, faster, because I had more confidence in myself. I had more confidence in my voice. Is that a secret? Is that a key, you know, your own self confidence? Or do I really need to go back and think through and triangulate these things and, you know, am I messing up now because I'm not doing that, or am I okay with my self confidence?

Well, I think one. One causes the other. It is chicken and egg in that. But I think the first thing you did to create the first bit of confidence is that you made a good decision. The decision happened first. You created some confidence. You started getting to what the book calls the decision streak. You started putting a series of hits together like a batter in baseball, and you started creating confidence, hey, I can do this now. That's great. And it's good to feel confident. I feel that your confidence is always relative to how big your goals are. You know, I shoot competitively in shotgun sports, and my confidence is high when I shoot by myself. But when I shoot with the world champions, I get humbled really fast. And so my confidence goes down. But the point is, it's important to be setting higher goals all the time. That's what humbles us and makes us challenged to do better and, you know, and to keep pressing forward. I mean, I would say also, Scott, if you can't think of A big decision you've made. Well, I would tell you, you already made them, and you made them years ago. You made them with deciding what you were going to do for a career, where you were going to go to school, who you were going to marry or not, whether to have the children or not, where to live in this part of the country. The book goes through all these things about, you know, even where to live in the country and what it costs to live there. All these are big decisions. Well, you've already made those. In fact, the pain from all those decisions has already probably left your mind. And so a lot of people having to remake those decisions with second marriages or wonder if they're with the right person. A lot of folks middle career are like, am I in the right job? As they don't have a lot of negotiating power. I think decisions start out, we take our best shot at it, and then they come back if they weren't great and they hit us midlife, and we have to think about it again. And if you don't have to do that and you're in the mid career and, you know, in mid age, great. That's fantastic. You did some good work. But most people have work to do. And those decisions, decisions got to feel like they've accomplished something. And I use my goals to challenge myself so that I still have something I'm working on all the time. But that's just me.

Yeah. And I mean, I think that. I think that that's the other thing too is, you know, like, if you have gone through or gone through a period of time where you're just maybe on autopilot, you know, like you're. You're sitting there, you've got your career, you've got your life. And you know, like, maybe, maybe, you know, maybe you're not having to make these tough decisions because your. Your life is on autopilot. And like, I know people are like that, right? Like, they, they have the same routine every single day. They get up, they go to the same job. They've had that job for 20, 30 years. They may not be happy. They may be happy. Who knows? They have the same. Same family dynamics, good or bad, you know, whatever it is, but they. They just kind of just go through the motions and one day they wake up and they're like.

What happened?

Right? And so then they have to start making these decisions again. But for me, and maybe for you, and I know for Mark, like, one of the things that I've always done is I continue to learn. Like, I Continue to go through training programs. I continue to push myself, like, outside my comfort zone. And I would just say, like, if you're finding yourself stuck where you want to get out, I mean, to me, the way to do that is just to pick something small, go do it. Maybe not a big project, but go get some success, right? Like, go do something. Like you said, like, if someone's goal is to lose 20 pounds, we'll go lose 2 pounds, right? Like, have the big goal. But then like, okay, within two weeks, this is what I do. Do the reverse engineer. Do the math. And Mark, you know, I know that with coaching and, you know, everything that we kind of go through, the strategy and the strategic initiative to, like, reverse engineer everything, that's really where the motivation comes in. Like, boom, I can have this little success. I can mail 20 a day, 20 offers a day. And then you start to build on that success. And if you don't stop, next thing you know, you've got a business that's allowing you to do whatever you want to do.

Well, can I stir the pot a little more on that topic? Sure, Scott, you bring up a good point. The American condition has made it possible for us to have goals, to become stagnant and just exist. I'm not being a critic of anybody, I think, but the point is that freedom, you said earlier, is a huge word. And when I sit down one on one to talk about the book with people, I'll ask someone that you said, you know, they just. They're just plodding along. I'll say, what do you want from this life? What do you. What do you want to experience? Where do you want to travel? What do you want to do? You know, what do you want to say you accomplished? Not that legacy is the greatest thing ever, but for you, you get one life. What do you want to do in that life? Suddenly, instead of life happening to them and they're just reacting and surviving, life's there. There's not enough time in a day. There's goals. Now there's like, oh, yeah, I want to do these things and I'm in control. Then you start engineering how you're going to be able to do those. The flexibility and freedom in your life. It lights a fire to me. Decisions, the whole. The whole point of this book, the subtitle is, you know, the intentional approach to living the life you want. I'm serious about that. It's intentional. I want to do better, and I want to live in a different way. I don't want to be told what to do all the time. And I don't want to be selling myself. You can't afford that, Mike. Or. So how do I make it so that I don't have to do anything but what I want to do in the boundaries of the life I've constructed? And it's totally possible, but it's about one decision at a time toward your top goals only. And if you. That's where the traction begins, the momentum. And I'm really glad you mentioned freedom, because that's what I do. That's why I do what I do.

Yeah, it's so true. And I talk about my terminal days a lot, my Monday and Friday, where I just. I think about business, but I spend those days, I take off and I think, well, this is the last day of my life, which maybe it would be, how do I want to spend it? And ultimately it's my family and friends and very basic, simple things of just deepening those relationships. And, you know, so far, so good. I haven't died those days, but always prepared. So, last question, Mike, before we go to the tip of the week.

Okay.

What's some of the worst advice? Some of the worst advice you see or hear given in your area of expertise, which I guess we could consider, you know, decision making, professional decision making, and strategic planning?

Well, one of the worst is, and the book highlights several types of fallacies. One is the sunk cost fallacy, which is, you know, people saying, well, you've gone too far to quit now. That is completely the wrong advice. Because what's, you know, a dead horse. A dead horse, you know, that. Back to that fail fast concept. One of the worst piece of advice you can give somebody is, says you've been going at it too long to change now. That's not true. You may have new information. For example, if you started a career 10 years ago and suddenly automation has removed the need for your job, there's new information, isn't there? And so it's too late to quit now or stop now or it's too late for me to change. Those are all. Those are bad fallacies that really hurt people if they take those to heart. Let's see, that's another one is throwing good money after bad. Money doesn't necessarily fix things that are bad by design. I think the hardest thing for people is realizing that they can make change if they want to make change. I think the worst advice is people who would make a list of what's the worst that can happen. If you think about the things we want to have change in our life for the better. That. What's that? It's okay to go, what's the worst that can happen? And it's okay to test it, because if you don't, you'll always wonder, if you did, what would have happened? How would my life be different? Like, what if I'd have married that, my high school sweetheart? You know, I have a big chapter on regret. I do a whole regret inventory. I make you go through that, and it's pretty amazing. People do the regret inventory and they come up with some doozies that have affected their entire life, and they still today carry the regret. And so point is, is that I kind of try to live a life of no regrets. And so I feel like to turn your question into my best advice is that you'll never regret pursuing your goals and you'll never regret making the best decision you could at the time, because it's just infallible. It's the best way to do things.

Absolutely. And I hope after we stop recording, you don't look at us and be like, boy, I regretted coming on that podcast. That was just. That's going in the book. The Art of Passive Income podcast.

Mark, I just want to make sure that your wife doesn't listen to this podcast, you know, like, and she says, man, I regret marrying that guy after he eat all that ice cream.

Not funny. Too soon. Too soon. That was last night, Scott.

Oh, I didn't know it was last night. I mean, wow.

What's the hardest decision about passive income? I'll turn the tables.

You don't get to turn the tables on our podcast. Mike Whitaker.

Well, I don't know.

I think that the hardest part of it is allowing yourself to be successful, because, like, you, it's easy to go through the process of trying to build your passive income and hitting a roadblock and saying, oh, that's just my luck, you know, like, this isn't for me. This is what happens when I, you know, every time I've tried, this is what happens. And, you know, I'm just, I'm just not capable of doing this. And so that, that's where I was saying, like, it's the self confidence piece, as opposed to saying, what the heck, man? If these two goofs can do it, why can't I? And I mean, like, I remember listening to this podcast and, you know, I heard Mark and the other host, and I was like, man, if these two clowns can do this, so can I. And I didn't mean it in a negative way. I'M just thinking, like, I had to put myself on their level, and I had to have the confidence in myself to say, like, I'm confident that I can, I can do this. Then when you hit that roadblock and you hit that piece and you're like, well, okay, okay, maybe it's not for me. Why not? Why isn't it for me? So it's the challenge. It's the, what you call it the decisionator.

Decisionator, yeah, decisionator.

Right.

Like it's your.

That's. That.

That's the evil voice in your head that says, go back. It's not for you. And you have to say, shut up. It is for me. Now sit down. I'm gonna sit down for the best ride of our lives.

Perfect.

Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of times it's just exactly what Scott said, where, you know, people get knocked down and then they, they're afraid to get back up and they think, oh, well, this is just too hard. Right? I'll. I'll go do ATM investing or something else. And, and, and, and, you know, a lot of it, I think a lot of life is just daily grit and persistence and that laser focus on your goals and your effort. Those are things you can control, right? You can't control necessarily how many deals you're going to do in the next 90 days or 180 days, because it's a market. But you can't control how many offers you're going to make, how many ads you're going to create, your attitude with your customers. These things you can control and these things you can be proud of. And that ultimately you need to have that faith that eventually the results, which we'll call passive income, will come. So suspend the timeline, focus on what you can focus on in the effort, and all of a sudden, your passive income exceeds your fixed expenses and you become Mike Whitaker and you can go on these podcasts and really enjoy life.

So I was just going to say, I remember Robert Kiyosaki wrote Rich dad before dad years ago, and I read that about. He defined assets as things you buy that pay you, and if your income stopped, they would still pay you. And it just, it was very sobering. So every time I bought anything that wasn't going to pay me back, I feel guilty because of that book and him. And so I've just. That was the passive investing lesson I had early. So I value what you guys are talking about.

Yeah. Yeah. So, Mike, we're at that point of the podcast now. We get to put you on the Spot and ask you for your tip of the week. A website resource, a book, something actionable where the art of passive income listeners can go right now, Improve their businesses, improve their lives. Your mentorship has been phenomenal, but we're going to ask you for one more nugget of advice or wisdom. What do you got?

Okay, my tip of the week is that you, the listener, you've got a decision that you've been dancing around that you've not wanted to address. There's a decision that is mediocre at best that you know, you need to decide on, you need to make, take action on. It's been hanging around and the fact that you haven't dealt with it is baggage. It's, it's heavy. And once you take care of this, it's going to feel really good. So the decision makeover starts here with you identifying what your options are to fail fast or fix fast. Do that and then move forward confidently and know that you made the best second decision you could make. That's my tip of the week because I believe everyone's got at least one of those hanging around and life's too short for a whole bunch of baggage, you know, hanging around. So that's my tip and I'll give you a website. It's mikewhitaker.com My Mik, I already told.

You, don't take my tip of the week.

Sorry. Go for it. Thank you. What do you think about my tip?

It almost got ugly in here.

What do you think about my tip? Does that relate to you? Do you guys have anything you want to?

I thought it was a great tip. I'm very excited for the decision makeover. And you know what's funny is I was going to talk to you about this after the podcast, but, you know, how can I Benjamin Button it, right? How can I take the decision makeover and have that wisdom at such a young age? You know, I'm thinking about my kids. Like I'm, I'm middle aged, but if I could actually, you know, fabricate and actually do a, you know, a mental simulation of, you know, these decisions I'm going to make in my 60s, my 70s and 80s, and Benjamin Button it in my 40s and make good decisions now, how much better, you know, could life be? The clarity of it, that would be amazing. So I'm really excited about reading the book to help me make better decisions.

It will make you a better parent, too. It already has for me. Because the focus with your children is not so personal. It's more about let's focus on what makes a good decision here versus just pointing the finger and saying, you know, that was, you know, stupid. So decisions early in the dialogue help you be a better parent, I believe.

Yeah. And since my teenager probably won't listen to me, I'll just be like, look, have a call with Uncle Mike and he's gonna help you make a better choice as far as college. And like, he brings home that girl. I'm like, I don't really like her. Call Uncle Mike because he can. You'll listen to him. Like, you sure you want to make this decision? Because this is the consequences.

Sounds good about.

Very, very severe, but yeah. So I'm excited about them contacting you, Scott. Todd, what's your tip of the week mark?

Check out this Chrome plugin here. It's called Gmail screenshot and basically it goes into your Gmail. When you have a screenshot, you can mark it up real fast, add it to your Gmail message that you send real fast. It's really, really geeky and really, really cool.

Really? You like this better than like sketch or preview.

It's lightweight and it's fast and I do it right, right from Gmail. I'm not having to leave somewhere else and go somewhere else.

Yeah, but what if I want to put it in like Facebook or email? Can I use it for that? Not a Gmail email, like, like an aweber email.

Yeah, email to yourself and then save it.

Okay, done and done. Great tip.

Try it out.

I just did. Now it's now. Okay, now I just added it. Now it's taking me to my email and Gmail screenshot create account. Okay, very cool. Pause recording. Showing me YouTube video. Okay, now I'm really off to the races. CloudHQ allow. All right, very cool. And then my tip of the week which Mike Whitaker tried to steal is mike whitaker.com. learn more. And then also I think we can go somewhere, Mike, and get in pre. Like I can pre purchase the book right now before it comes out at.

A deal comes out September. Where can I go there Pre orders on Amazon and barnesandnoble.com either one, you can just search for Mike Whitaker or the decision makeover, you'll come up big blue cover. The hardback is being sold at a really good discount. Either one of those right now for pre orders and it comes out just in three weeks, September 12th.

All right, fantastic. Fantastic.

Scott.

Oh, go ahead.

There's some free resources on my website. People can download the first chapters of the book. They also can download several key exercises that are in the book free. Just I keep those resources handy so people can learn and experience on their own. And it's again@mike whitaker.com awesome.

Awesome, Mike. Are we good?

This is great. I really enjoyed meeting you and talking about the decisions.

Yeah, yeah, same here. It's great. And I can't wait to get the book and Benjamin Button my children's lives, have them make better, wiser decisions and let them see the impact of them again. I remind all the listeners the only way we're going to get the quality of guests like a Mike Whitaker is if you do us three little favors. It takes literally 20 seconds to do. You got to subscribe, you got a rate, and you've got to review the podcast. Send us a screenshot and you can use Scott's plugin to do that and send it to supportthelangic.com and we'll send you for free the $97 Passive Income Launch Kit.

So please do that.

It really helps and you know, let freedom ring. Thanks everybody.