Lifestyle Inflation

Okay, so I want to film a quick video talking about lifestyle inflation, I guess it's called, but not just lifestyle inflation, but the entire concept and psychology behind what causes lifestyle inflation in the first place, how lifestyle inflation occurs personally, but also within a business and other systems. So to start, I should probably explain what lifestyle inflation actually is, and I should probably look at the camera whilst I'm doing that. Lifestyle inflation is essentially as you're a new business owner or any sort of business owner, and as the business starts making money, your personal life starts getting more expensive. And when I say it starts getting more expensive, you typically increase your expenses because the business has more resources. For example, you launch a business, it's making $1,000 a month. You work on it, work on it, work on it. It's now making $3,000 a month. And previously my expenses were $500 a month and now I've increased them to $1,000 a month. So I'm spending more on either more expensive rent. Maybe I've got a car that I'm financing or leasing or I've bought outright. Maybe I'm buying more expensive groceries, I've hired someone to help me around the house, things like that. That's essentially lifestyle inflation. And I think there are good elements of lifestyle inflation. There are positive things that you can use that are healthy, like buying a gym subscription is probably healthy lifestyle inflation, or spending a little bit more money on higher quality ingredients for foods that you're eating. But there's a lot of lifestyle inflation that happens that is frankly very unnecessary. And as a result, it can start to take away from the business itself. And I've seen this lots of times within my own life as, as my business has grown over the years, I've at various points spent a lot more money and now my lifestyle relative to what it used to be 3 or 4 years ago when I was starting out is much, much more expensive. I used to live off of around $1,000 to $1,500 a month maximum. And that I used to be like more than comfortable living off of that amount. And as my business has grown, that amount has, has grown significantly as well. And it's taken me a while to realize that The goal is not actually to increase and inflate the amount that you spend on yourself and on things in general. The goal is to actually spend as little money as possible relative to what you're making. And I know that this is typically very conventional wisdom and you've probably heard this many times in your life, but it's a difficult thing to constantly remind yourself of when you're making purchase decisions. And it comes down to every little purchase decision. Decision as well, because there are, there are a multitude of things that we buy that just frankly don't, don't, are completely unnecessary and you don't need in the first place. But once you have them, you become very emotionally attached to them. And I'll give you an example. I have a car that I love that I spend around, I think it costs me around $1,600 just to maintain. I'm talking insurance and gas and cleaning and all of the maintenance and all of the shit that has to happen and the actual payments for the car itself, just so that the car can exist, even if I'm not using it. I mean, with gas, it's a— I'm using it, but with most of the expenses, they exist whether or not I actually use the entity itself. So if I travel for a month, if I leave the country, if I'm not here in Vancouver, I lose that money and I can't do anything about it and I get no value from it. And I think it's really important to know for anyone that is starting out in business, it's something that I got told when I was first starting out. Be mindful of lifestyle inflation and your ego almost wants to spend more money. No matter, no matter what you do right now, you could be working a salary job and make the same amount every single year for the next 10 years. It still shouldn't— like, you should still be looking for ways to reduce your spending because it means that you are less dependent on whatever your source of income is. And if you are less dependent on whatever your source of income is, then you can actually think more freely as an individual. And what I found in business as I've as I've grown a business is I've fallen into the trap of thinking spending money grows my business more and the more that I spend, the more that I'll make. And in reality, most of the time that's not true. And by finding ways to spend less money and be more efficient in business, my business grows faster and the business becomes more profitable. And as a result, I now have more cash that I can actually use to find smarter investments. And instead of almost brute forcing growth and just trying to spend money for the sake of spending money, thinking that every— anything will get me a return, I spend more time determining where I should spend money in the first place and more. And not, not just, just where, but also on who. Because one of the main elements of business is the people that you're working with and this kind of applies to everything. And I think it comes down to almost like a brute force approach where your ego wants instant gratification and you need delayed gratification to make better decisions. But you don't really understand what delayed gratification is until you do shit that gives you instant gratification a bunch. And then you step back and you go, holy fuck, I shouldn't have done that. And the this is the same concept for anyone that might vape or do zins or anything like that. It's a very similar concept where once you start, you become very emotionally attached to the thing. Even coffee. Like, try— if you drink coffee a lot, try just not drinking coffee or anything caffeinated for a couple of months and you'll find it difficult at first, most likely. you'll find it difficult to stop. And if you've been drinking or doing the, the habit, the activity for a long time, it's because it's so emotionally attached to you. It's become part of your identity and your ego finds it very difficult to separate from. So the analogy that I was using with zins or nicotine or caffeine is that when you start doing it, You're doing it because you get the instant gratification. And what you'll find is by not doing it and not getting that instant gratification for a couple of months. And if you do this, just, just humor me and try this for a couple of months. The delayed gratification you get, the other benefits of not drinking caffeine become apparent, but they only become apparent after you've stopped it for an extended period of time. And once you've— once you've stopped it, you'll find small things like your mind working a little faster or you learning things slightly quicker than you were before. And the more things that you identify that are actions that you are taking to give yourself instant gratification, and the more that you stop them and instead focus on getting delayed gratification and delayed just delaying things in your life in general, the faster that you'll see yourself improve. And it's this really weird experience that I've been going through over the last 4 months or 5 months now as I've been cutting lots of the regular things out of my life and, and going, holy shit, what I am— I am so much smarter. I am so much clearer. I can think better and I'm learning way faster as well. And I'll use an example. I've been told my entire life to play golf. My friends play golf all the time. I discovered that there is a golf simulator nearby where I live, and I about 4 months ago hit the driving range for the, for the first time in maybe 4 or 5 years. Or maybe, maybe I've, maybe I've gone like once a year and I've probably gone like 5 or 6 times in my life and I've never really been able to hit the ball and I have gone since I went to that driving range the first time about 4 months ago. I have gone a total of 4 or 5 times to practice golf at either a driving range or a golf simulator, and I've done it for about an hour. And I was there today and I suddenly found that my stroke and my ability to hit the ball is not just semi-decent, but I can actually in a simulator get a ball quite close to a flag. And I can— I'm actually like decently good with, with playing it. And it's taken me— it's been 4 times. I haven't been like doing a ton of practice, but the rate of improvement that I've had with not just golf, but like several other, other things that I'm learning and practicing in my life has drastically improved. And it's come from removing stuff within my life that I just didn't need to be there in the first place. And the reason that I was doing them is because I was so emotionally attached to them. So weird, weird, weird topic and definitely went off on a tangent today, but I kind of like filming videos in this format. I kind of like going off the cuff when I have an idea. I know it's late, but I think I'm going to film more videos like this. So thank you for listening and goodbye.