35. My Members Only/Generation One Jacket

Have you ever wanted something just so badly? You just had to have it. Everybody else had it. Why can't you have it? And you thought about it and maybe even prayed about it. And you asked, maybe it was your parents or you asked the universe or you ask God, I just have to have this. Can I have this? And you asked with all your heart and your mind and your soul and you didn't get it. For me, that was my members only generation one jacket. So many of you all, if you were remotely, grew up in the 80s or near that time, know what a members only jacket was. That was a very cool, it's a wind breaker. Nothing really unbelievably fancy about the jacket, but it had this little tag here. It's members only. And it was a nice jacket, comfortable. But all the cool kids have them. All the cool kids had them. Even all the dorky kids had them. I didn't have one. Ask my mom, mom, can I please get a members only jacket? My mom was like, wait, these things cost, I don't know, 50, 60, 70 bucks. I can get you something so much less expensive.

I think it was called Xer. It wasn't Target back then. I get it at Xer for way less expensive. Mom, please, I just want a members only jacket. I don't care what color. And this was one of the only things, I think, in life that I ever really wanted in this way. And so my mom comes home one day, open up the bag, feels like a jacket, looks like a jacket. It was actually this color. It says generation one, mom. Yeah, wait, it says generation one. Mom, this is not a member's only jacket. Wait, it's the same thing. No, it's not, mom. Okay, wait, let's have this talk. Here's what's going to happen. You're going to go to school and some of your friends are going to look at your jacket and they're going to see you look good in your jacket. You're going to go to they're going to look closer. As they get closer to you, they're going to notice that the tag is different and you're still going to look the same. In parentheses here, my mom could not help the fact that I had a set of braces, a really dorky butt cut, and walked to the trombone back and forth through school every day.

Trombones are awesome, but I didn't wear a trombone very well. But anyway, she said, Look, your friend's going to look at you. They're going to look at your jacket. Maybe they'll make fun of you for a day or whatever. It was a week. And that's it. And life's going to go on. And so just like anything else you've done that might be foolish, people poke fun at you for a little bit, and then life will go on. I think she paid maybe it was 20 bucks for the jacket instead of 60 or 80, let's say it was 80. Let's say it was 80, make math simple. She's like, Wait, look, I just paid a quarter of the amount for this. Now I was actually able to buy some groceries with the other money over this one little thing here. Now, there might have been a quality difference in the products. Possible, maybe not. I was concerned with that. The label, so important. Wanted to fit in. And yet my mom taught me one of the greatest lessons I've ever learned about this, which is, look, everybody gets over it very quickly. And you just basically say, Hey, mom didn't give me a new members only jacket.

Mom got me a generation one jacket. You got a generation one jacket? No, you don't. They're exclusive. I don't know. I tried that. It still didn't really work. But anyway, just this concept of saying, Look, people are going to get over this. Nobody really cares. A nytime I look at people that are in a situation where either they're house poor or they're driving a car that I just know they can't afford, and again, this is not an attack on large houses. Large houses can be awesome. This is not an attack on fancy cars. Fancy cars can be awesome. Question is, how much is it costing the person? Very often it's costing the person either money they can't afford and they're building up credit card debt or debt that they're going to pay way more than they actually paid for it because of the debt, or it's costing the person because you know what? Maybe that person, if they did a job they love, maybe they could make, I don't know, 50 to 60,000 dollars a year and they could afford a decent house or decent clothes or whatever it might be. But they have to have that big one so they'll get a job they don't like, working for a boss they don't like, working in an industry they hate, and they're making $90,000 or $ 120,000, and yet all of it is really just over either an appearance or especially when it comes to clothes.

Again, a big house, maybe you can entertain more people. Most cars pretty much can do the speed limit. If you live in the United States or most industrialized countries these days, so speed limits not an issue. Maybe it's a little more comfy or cushy or whatnot. But that concept of what are you giving up for that? And is it really something you want to do? So if you're looking to go into a four day work week mindset, this is one of the questions that you're going to ask yourself. And the trade off might be that you're working extra hours. It might be you're missing out on time with your family or kids. It might be that actually that side hustle or that business that you want to start, that second business, maybe you don't have the money to pay for ads for it because you might say, Wait, you know what? I got my fancy jacket but I have no money to pay for advertising. Advertising is so expensive. Well, hold on. If you want to build a business and if you want to be a freelancer or an entrepreneur, you're going to most likely at some point have to invest some of your own money.

Well, what if you just simply without really impacting your lifestyle, just impacting the label, change how you do things and create that freedom for yourself? Again, this is not a knock. This is simply looking at is this getting you where you want and really considering what are your members only jackets? What are the things that you're spending so much more money on and really, you're not getting a lot of value for it? Just think about that. More importantly, if you want to take this a step further and start creating your own four day work week lifestyle, whether you want to do that over a five year period, a 10 year period, which all of a sudden seems a lot more doable when you make it a little longer, go to four day game plan. Com, and you can start creating your roadmap to a four day work week. There's 12 simple steps that you can follow. There's software with it that you can do in Excel if you like Excel. If you're an Excel junk and you want to do the math for you, or you can just do it in a PDF, you can just write it out.

There's a few training videos, three training videos to walk you through. Here's how you map out what it would look like. Now, this isn't going to get you there magically, but it's going to help you create the plan. It took me 22 years to get where I needed to get and if I had had this plan before, I know I'd have gotten there in at least half the time simply because I would have had an idea, Okay, how do you do this? How do I think about what projects I want to do? What projects am I going to drop? What expenses are good? How can I afford to live the lifestyle I want without overspending? All these things, it's in the 4 day Work Week game plan. Again, if you want to get that, go to 4day gameplan. Com, my gift to you. As always, if you have any questions on this, put them in the comments section below, send me an email. Look forward to helping you make more money in less time, do what you do best so you can spend time with your friends, your family, your loved ones, and just enjoy life more.

Thank you.