060 – Lifestyle Building with Tom & Ariana Sylvester

Welcome, everybody, to the 4-Day Work Week Entrepreneur Podcast. My name is Wade Galt and this is season two, and season two are going a lot more into depth of me connecting with other people in addition to myself who can really help you create that 4-Day Work Week lifestyle and create the type of situation where you want, where you're enjoying the ride, making the money, having fun outside of work. While you're doing this, I'm going to read it here.

So if I look down, this is it really. Tomine Area are co-founders of Lifestyle Builders Coaching and Training Cumbie that helps entrepreneurs build their businesses to create more impact with their customers and more freedom in their lives. When they graduated college, Tom set a goal to retire by thirty five and the last couple of years they've spent figuring out how to do that, and now they're helping others to create time and financial freedom in their lives. I've met Tom over the years through different contacts and different mastermind groups and stuff and got around to recently Podfest.

He's an awesome dude. I've not yet had the pleasure to spend as much time talking Ariana, but at least from listening to their podcast and talk with them, they are the real deal. He's the real deal. And for you, the audience, you know, I try to really plug in the areas where I'm not as strong as they really seem to have this, or at least between the two of them, because they because they have their both styles seem to have a plug in some of the areas of some of the nitty gritty things.

And sometimes when you hear people talk to you about say, well, it only took me this long to do this or just want to do that, they don't know what was missing. So if you were to look at my history to a Wade, I didn't know you came from a background. You had a dad who's not. That already puts you ahead. I didn't have that Wade a lot of what they're doing is even coming straight from scratch with people who haven't maybe had as much support.

And so I think they're going to bring so much to this. I'm so excited to have them. And today we're talking about primarily how to align with your spouse and build a business that creates freedom in your life. So welcome, Ariana. Welcome, Tom. Thanks so much for coming.

Hi. Yeah, thanks for having us and thanks for the great intro.

Yeah. And so what I can read, so that's good. But actually from seeing your stuff you all are up to it. So really doing what, what it says. And one of the it's been very cool and listening to your podcast is I really feel like I've found gaps in just areas I haven't covered yet, which somebody just like to work. A lot of awesomer that I just listen to that episode. I'm going to be doing that more often once I listen up, because when you first start I was an entrepreneur, you feel like you need to create everything.

And if you don't create everything, gosh, you're going to lose all this money and it's all going to go away. And then you realize, like, wow, no, a partner who can cover that or address something and you don't have to create it all. You can just tell somebody go to this resource. So tell me a little about one of the first things I asked you is what motivates you? What are you passionate about? And then, of course, at all times change topics.

Do as you like. What is it that really got you all started and what are you most passionate about?

Absolutely. So so I'll get started. And as you'll hear, usually the way it goes is I say something and then Ariana is God a completely different perspective on it, or I fill in the gaps of all the things he missed or she's right.

And absolutely she is. She's always right. So what it came down to was we actually met the very first day at college and as we were graduating, I had a degree in computer science, she had a degree in psychology. And when we shifted from like college mode into like looking ahead life mode, life mode one, neither of us had jobs coming out of college. But as I started looking ahead, I was like, you know what? This path that we're laid out on isn't really what I want for myself or for us as we go forward.

And so I just on a whim, basically said I want to retire by thirty five. I had no idea how I was going to make it happen, but I figured it's long enough to let me figure it out, but not too long that I'm going to miss out on life and everything there is to enjoy while doing that. So I set that goal and then really the last handful of years have been us navigating and figuring out one. What does that mean to us and then to how do we make it happen together?

Awesome.

Yeah, he didn't miss too much in there. I mean, he gave you the short version.

I like that she's like the Russian judge every time to give you a rating on how you did it as a nine point two.

Yeah, she really is. Every time I said, son, I got to look at me like I get it.

I like the way you said that because I sometimes tell people it took me 22 years to create the 4-Day Work Week. And that's just it doesn't have to be 4-Day Work Week. That's just what I call it. So people have to understand what I'm talking about. If I said 3-Day Weekend people always think about, you know, extreme sports and Mountain Dew ads and all that stuff. And if I say 4-Day Work Week, they get it. And I didn't have a specific as clear go the way you had it.

And actually that's part of the reason it took me as long to get there, because I kind of knew I wanted to have fun. I very clearly knew I wanted to do what I want. So my dad is from the islands. He's from Trinidad Tobago. And this is weird. You only want to do what you want to do. Yeah, see, that's that's the idea that works. But what he was trying to say is you're not you know, you're not focusing on what that looks like.

And it's just kind of vaguely, just literally whatever you want to do. And it was only about maybe to be clear, I became an entrepreneur seven years after working in the workforce. So in that sense, again, I knew I knew what I didn't want. But it was only when I started getting clear what I wanted. It wasn't a matter of about 12 months after that, that it happened again. It wasn't 12 months total because I had been I'd been doing the journey.

But it was something that was so clear and gosh, when I tell people when you set a goal, it's five years, seven years, 10 years, all of a sudden confidence level just becomes. So, gosh, it's almost actually inevitable. I mean, if I start learning to play drums today and put in 15 to 30 minutes a day, all of a sudden it's not this mystical thing about learning the drums with the guitar. And so many people don't do it that way.

And so my message is I've shared with you all those really three groups of people that most resonate with. I'm doing people that are not yet doing it. And I just use the word apprentices and apprentices. They're almost just by default pushing it back. It seems like too big of a goal. It's like now let's at least let's start now. And even if it's going to take you twenty two years. Look, it took me twenty two years.

It's still worth it to be Soul Work or 4-Day Work Week and do what you want with your time. But if you're wise about it, if you're willing to take coaching, learn from people who've done that, you'll get there a lot earlier.

Yeah, well, and that's a great point because one of the things so when I set that goal, there was then a lot in between to figure out, well, OK, great, we set the goal, but how do you make it happen? And especially when there's two of us and we had very different perspectives on things like I remember our first time coming together to try to talk about goals like it didn't go over well. And so through a lot of just communication and trial and error, what we found was that the important thing is to first set the vision, get a line on what you want your life to look like.

And then what we do now is we work backwards and we build a roadmap. And what that allows you to do it like I was compared to, you know, when you're going to go somewhere, you start with entering a destination. Here's where I want to go. Then you say, here's my starting point. And what your GPS does is build you a route or plan or a road map. And what makes a GPS so much superior to a map or anything else is that it's not just setting that plan once you're going to follow it, it's setting that plan, but constantly checking in.

And that's what we all need to be doing. We need to be setting a vision for what we want things to look like. We need to set a road map and then take that first step and then constantly be checking in to say, am I on the right path? Am I going in the right direction? And when I get off, because of course we will, then let's realize that I'm off and make some adjustments to get back on track.

And we've had to make so many adjustments over the years. But it all came through starting to put a process like this in place so we could tell when we weren't on the right path and when we weren't making the progress we wanted and then could shift that way.

That's great, and I think that's so important for people to realize that you don't have to get it right. There's so much pressure. That's one of the reasons I always would just crumble. When I do a business plan, I'd spend hours. I have to get this right instead of realizing I just need to get from point A to point B and maybe I'm going to get to Z someday. I might never get to Z, but I'm at least going to get to LRM or by a certain time I'm going to get somewhere and all that pressure off that.

I think, you know, when you look back at how things were done, at least when I was raised, that everybody was a business expert, positioned themselves as the finished product. And you just look at this finished product and the idea was to inspire on you that buy my stuff because I'm so awesome. And I just find what I love is that there's so many more people that are sharing their steps in the process, not just sharing the finished product.

And then also when you look at different coaching programs or coaches, there are some that have progressed so far that they admittedly do forget what it was like at the beginning. I know it is it when I train on a subject that I've taught for 20 years, sometimes I forget and I have to kind of bring it back. And I think it's great having people who have gone through different steps. And certainly there are not a lot of people that are working at this from a couple standpoint or a family standpoint.

It's been the one person or the Soul Work the hero. And it's like, well, she's in the background helping. And it's like, OK, we can do better than that. And usually it's way more than that. I've watched my mother help my dad grow, grows business and at the very least she was like, don't do that, don't do that, don't do that. And it might sound like she did nothing, but she saved him.

Fifty thousand there. One hundred thousand there. You know, huge headaches, their hours there and being able to share that with people. So how do you connect with people that are couples and how do you help them? Because you all seem to have a very good rapport. But I think it goes back perhaps to part of what you're talking about. You'll have a common vision. So if we all said we're going to a certain area and it's not so much about who's right, but we're all we're looking to get here and if we're open to how we get there, that that's a little easier.

How have you guys been able to manage that, the balance or what could what could potentially become a power struggle with two talented, intelligent people?

Yeah, well, I think I'm going to jump in and take this one. The biggest issue that we had early on was that Tom had already had that big epiphany, that that realization that this pathway was a different opportunity to get to the end goal that we both had in mind. But what it took us years to figure out was that he was trying to drag me along with him, and I hadn't yet had the same realization I was coming at this from a supportive spouse.

Hey, you're trying to do this thing. I get why you're trying to do it, sort of. And I'm I'm supportive of that. But I'm not really sure yet that this is the path for me and that this is the path that we ultimately want to be on. And I hadn't had that realization for a long time. So, I mean, if you go back to some of our early stuff, I call myself the accidental entrepreneur. I call myself the reality checker.

I call myself the what was it before? There's something else in there, too. Like, I just have this evolution of these names because I wasn't really I didn't consider myself a true entrepreneur until probably last year at some point. And what I think a lot of entrepreneurs forget is their spouse is not they are not having the same journey. So you can't jump in and expect them to do a cannonball in next to you because there's a lot of fears that come up.

There's a lot of uncertainty. And in our case and in many others that we've talked to, there is a big personality difference. So we attack things differently. We solve problems differently. We process emotions and thoughts differently. So you've got to kind of come to this together like we talked about with that vision. And you've got to open up conversation and you have to drop your expectations of what you have for your spouse, because most likely they aren't going to be able to meet those expectations yet.

So you've got to give them the time and space well into that point. Here's what usually happens, especially when you've got couples involved. You're both kind of going along on your path and things are good. And then something happens to one of, you know, some event like maybe it's a death in the family. Maybe it's just a really bad day at work. And you're like, I'm sick of this. Whatever it is, something happens to one of you and it puts you on this path where you then have this epiphany, this realization, and you're ready to go all in and usually for the entrepreneur or something like that happens and we come back and we're ready to go.

What we completely forget is that our spouse hasn't traveled along that same path and hasn't had that epiphany. So we try to, like, force it on them where I would come back and be like, hey, we can start a business. She's like, what are you talking about? Why are we doing this? And it was that, why are we doing this? That was the biggest thing, because once we align on. Why we're doing something and really where we want to go, then we can talk about how to do it.

But for years when things weren't working with us, it was because I kept telling Ariana I want to start a business. And she kept, like, not understanding why and resisting. And it wasn't until we aligned on ultimately what we want to achieve and then work backwards and say, well, how do we get there? And what makes sense that we finally made it work, you know?

And while it's so huge because I think of the conversations I've watched with my wife and on that in my father's case might have been simpler because he worked sort of a franchise model. So the franchise had been established. So when he said, I want to do this, he's an insurance agency owner, the model was there. So you could point to and say, I want to do that, OK, yay or nay. And in my case, you know the joke.

My wife met me and a while after I made her, I moved to Hollywood Beach overlooking the ocean. I've got this place, got my my computer and I have a software business of my Excel spreadsheets. And tell me, what do you do? Just pointed to a spreadsheet with a graph and I do that and off of that. Sure, why not? Let's go and, you know, talk about a leap of faith. And as she says, you know, maybe that's what a twenty four year old does.

That might not be what somebody who's older and wiser does. And as we've talked to over the years that we were talking about getting excited about something and actually not realizing that and getting very hurt, like, why don't you don't you believe me? Don't you understand? I thought we were on the same team. And I mean, if you all have in my gosh, there's at least a book or an audio or something in there, because especially even just for the entrepreneur whose spouse never becomes an entrepreneur because, wow, that's such a because then it's Wade.

How can we how can we can afford money for this doohickey. You think that's going to make us money, but we can't afford money for this thing over here that's emotional and important to me or family related. Are you saying money is more important than family? No, I'm saying I think this doohickey is going to save me the hospital God you're going to shine down upon me and all of a sudden money is going to flow. And then all of a sudden we can.

And and of course, it does not happen that way, which is a whole other story. But then you're like, Jack with the beans. You're like, OK, yeah, honey, I didn't buy the thing you wanted the roses or the chocolate or the massage. I got this, you know, this cost per click adds the discount. OK, yeah.

Well, you know, you bring up a really good point there because it's first getting a line and where you want to go and then it's figuring out, OK, well, what is the path we're going to take to get there and what role do we each play? And so, like, one of the activities that has really been beneficial to us and we have all that everyone goes through is each person kind of fills out what goals they want to achieve in order to get to that vision, that ideal life, and then lays it out on a time frame.

And then you bring it together and you you start putting it up. So we literally put it on the wall. We give each person Post-it notes. And like one thing that Ariana always brings up is like she wanted to buy a house. And when she put it up, it was like two years out on our roadmap and I want to buy a house. And I had it on like five years. And so instantly what we found when we did this activity was we both wanted the same thing, but the time frame was different.

And by identifying that difference, we were able to talk about and be like, well, why do you want in two years? Well, why do you want in five years? OK, if we do it in two years, what else has to shift? Because we can't make all of this work. And so what we were then able to do is to figure out, here's the gap we have. We done a line on what made sense and we were able to then move forward together where what happens with a lot of people is they're like, oh, yeah, we both want to buy a new house.

Everything's good. They don't realize there's still a difference in expectation. And unless you're checking in and understand what those are, you're going to be upsetting each other and not even realize.

Absolutely, and then there's that sense that I know at least some people get sold on that. Well, if you're married and if you love each other, you'll just understand each other. I mean, my wife's from a Latin culture. So, you know, that's so unromantic that you should have to plan that. I mean, you love each other. I mean, if you loved each other, it would just and that's not just a Latin culture.

It's it's you know, it's it's the the drama. And it's like, no, that's and we've learned that another thing since, like how we raise our children. We both love our children very much, have different approaches as to how we do that. And both also the other part that for me was just mind blowing as a somewhat egotistical at times guy. Holy cow. There's another way other than mine that might also have some value in work.

And in fact, the situation is better.

So, yeah, well, here's the thing. Like everything that's worth going after takes work and like your marriage takes work, building a business takes work, being a great parent takes work, being created a hobby you have takes work. And so one of the big realizations we had was that we were looking at what was important to us and where we were investing our time or money or our resources. And oftentimes that didn't line up. So like last year, one of the best things we did was we put a theme and we said, you know, we've been building businesses, we've been having kids.

We want to put us first. We want to take care of ourselves physically, mentally, our relationship. And so one of the best things we did was started to go see a marriage counselor. And instantly, when you say that, I was like, oh, my gosh, what's wrong? Like, are you guys OK? And the first session we had, our therapist actually said she's like, you know, you guys are doing this right?

You have a great relationship. Some things could be better, but you're not letting it go on for years and years until it gets to a really bad point. And then it's so much further to come back from. And that was spot on because once we took like once we're intentional about a lot of the stuff and we got the support we needed, like everything else became a lot easier. Now, it was difficult along the way because part of growing is looking at what's not working or where there's disconnects and learning from it.

But I mean, that's one of the things I think a lot of people think, oh, people say the business is easy. It'll just happen if I invest in this course or, oh, we're in love. So we'll just have this great relationship. It's like, no, anything is important takes work. And a lot of people just don't realize that. They just look at you, like you said, the after version. And they're like, oh yeah.

Like, look at that person did it. So, you know, it was easy.

Yeah. And then to that, I think you almost have this extreme that either you have to be a billionaire or you have to work for somebody. Like I saw a post a while back and I forget who said there were saying that one, I think I don't know her name is Randi Zuckerberg or somebody that said, you know, well, to be a billionaire, there's these five things. It's family, this that you have to choose. You can only have three of them.

And I just and I'm sure they part of it is to get people to comics. It's a controversial statement. The way to look, I'm not a billionaire, so maybe to be a billionaire, I can't comment on whether or not that's true. But I know to be an entrepreneur, you don't have to have all those things because, you know, I mean, you can you don't have to choose. You can do all those things. And, you know, when you look at, let's say, sports and you say, I look at my son, who's twelve years old, if you say you want to be in the NBA and be an all star in the NBA, OK, that's a low percentage chance, even if you've got all the gifts, all the talents and work hard.

But if you say I want to play high school basketball, I want to play college basketball, and I'm willing to put in the hours and the time, it's almost inevitable. And one of the things that I try to do, and it sounds like you are doing the same as helps the people I work with realize we can take so many things and take them from almost impossible, turn them to inevitable. So and when you look at a marriage, one of the things I don't know if this just dawned on me or somebody told me that, but I've had many positive influences in my life about marriage and relationships.

So I think it just sort of came to me was, you know, the way you have a marriage is every day you wake up and you choose to have marriage, and that means all the other stuff that comes up. You put second in. The marriage is here where the idea of supporting each other, whatever that looks, not just staying together at all costs, but, OK, we're going to have a healthy, happy as best as possible relationship.

We're going to have fights, arguments, disagreements, this, that and the other. But if I keep that up here and even when I'm fighting and ticked off of the back of my head, it's like, OK, you know, you to be making up at some times, maybe ease off on some of the stupid stuff you're saying or whatever it might be, because this is that important to you. We're raising kids. And so, you know, I don't know if one of the things that you just cracked me up was my sister is a very hard working parent.

And when her kids were so well behaved at five and six year old, did the mom say, oh, Natalie's so lucky? Like you say you have? Of course, you want to say that because you're out partying and drinking and your kids have been delegated to somebody. So if that hurts anybody's feelings, but they didn't they didn't put the time there. And it was more painful to say, well, actually, we chose our personal life.

And certainly there's a balance there because we've done it at times in different ways. But again, getting to that point of inevitability, I mean. From what you're telling me, if you're going to map out your progress and your goals and where you're going in your vision, all of a sudden it goes more into that inevitable category rather than the impossible or unattainable.

Yeah, well, so the tagline of our coaching business is your life, your business, your way. And the reason we really came up with that and how that came about was we just kept looking at people that were like making all those statements right. Like, Oh, to be a billionaire, you God do these five things. And what we realized from not only our own experience, but also talking to a lot of entrepreneurs was that everyone's definition of success is different.

And a lot of people think that you've got to build like a ten million dollar business to be successful in what we've often found when people do that visioning and then lay out what they want their life to look like, you can then figure out how much money is required to make that happen and then build a business that does that. And for a lot of people, if you build like a half a million dollar a year business and you do it right, that's going to cover everything you want.

Soul Work, there's not a need to become a billionaire. What you've got to ask is, well, why do you want that thing? What is going to be different in your life when nothing happens compared to something else? And for most people, you need a lot less than you think to truly be happy. But we've got this mindset that, like all when I'm a millionaire, then I can do these things where the way you want to think about it is what are the things I want to do and then what has to be true or what do we have to start structuring our life to make that a reality now or much sooner in the future?

Well, I think there's an assumption that money equals easy, you know. So if I'm if I make a billion dollars in my business, my life will be easy. I can do whatever I want. I can buy whatever I want. And a lot of people don't understand that. The correlation there is the more money you make in your business, typically, the more you have to work in your business, because a lot of people don't set the foundations up and they don't set up the processes and they don't build the team to be able to make that billion dollar business, give them more freedom in their lives rather than less, you know.

So I think we see all of these people out there that are killing it in the entrepreneurship world. And, you know, all of their videos and all of their Instagram photos and all of their Facebook posts is all about their success and how they did these these couple of things. And they made all this money and it was just amazing. And their life is amazing. You don't see their progress to that point. And they're also not showing you what their life looks like.

There's a lot of people that are willing to sacrifice their life, their freedom, their time with family, their time with friends to be up there at that level of success that they think everyone else sees as successful, like I want to be in Forbes magazine, all this stuff, when in reality there's a lot of people that are extremely successful, that are making a lot of money, that have freedom in their lives to go on big vacations or buy big houses.

They're not making that much money compared to the billionaires out there. So it's really it's it's changing your perspective even sometimes of what that means and what it means to you. Because for me, I would much rather have a fulfilling life and freedom and time with our kids and our friends and to be able to do the things that we enjoy. Then I would like to drive a Lamborghini or some other super expensive car and live in a mansion.

Yeah, and, you know, it's interesting because one of the perspectives I've been blessed to have is my parents are from Trinidad Tobago, which third world country economy is a mess? My wife's from Peru. We've lived down there about four years on and off over the last 10 to 12 years and. One of the things that people if you're happy to live in America, if you're if you're anywhere in a first world country and you're if you do look up somewhere, what your income level is in the worldwide perspective.

Most of us and a lot of our audience already in the top 10, 15, 20 percent of wealthiest people on the planet. I've said to people, look, if you're already in the top 20 percent and you're not happy yet, the variable is not the money. Don't get me wrong, I'd rather have more money. I'm a fan of having the money. But to your point, just over the years, I've noticed when you to get to well, certainly to get to 60 to 70 thousand dollars a year as an entrepreneur, over three to five year period is not very difficult.

If you're actually if you're focused because you can do it as a freelancer, you can do an hourly basis and get hours and just do a job well. And people are so caught up in you, that's three hundred thousand three hundred thousand. You're in the top one percent of income earners in the US. And then from a pilot standpoint, that's you don't need that much. But like you said, time to get clear about what does that mean to you?

Because when you're short a little of what you'd like to have in your care, a little credit card debt, it seems like so much more. But when you make that less, OK, what else? Actually, what I get OK, this thing, that thing, there's only about two or three more things. You're like, OK, well, ok then. I save some money for retirement, OK? And all of a sudden you realize it's not that big.

I mean there's a discretionary number. Might be I'd love another thousand or two thousand or five thousand a month. But even still in the context of building a business that might not be that big of a deal. And to your point, it doesn't have to be ten million dollars. And that's the part that kills a lot of people say, oh, it has to be 10 million, therefore it's can be too far. Again, it's the difference between aiming for the NBA versus just said, I just want to play basketball and be happy and enjoy the process and maybe just play it at the YMCA each week.

But I want to play until I'm fifty five or two to whatever great totally different goals and perhaps different reasons.

Well, into your point, money is just an amplifier of what you already are and what you already have. So if you're not happy, not like this is why lottery winners often go broke. Right, because they don't have the foundations and they don't have that that fulfillment on their own, that when they suddenly get a whole bunch of money, it just amplifies all the bad habits and everything that they're not happy with. Whereas on the flip side, if you're happy and content with what's going on, usually money actually comes easier because you're now in a place where you can make money in a good way, where you feel good and confident about it and you can actually do more.

And that's why when people come to us and they always want to like they have this thing, like I put a post up on Facebook the other day where I either have to, like, quit my job and go all in or I'm not going to be an entrepreneur. And we call B.S. on that all the time because you want to have safety, especially if you're in a relationship. If you have a family, you want to have safety and know that, like, your bills are covered and things are going to be OK and you can build your business in the right way on the side until you start validating and start making money and then see a path forward to where you can leave.

But there's this myth out there that entrepreneurs are like big risk takers. And, you know, you need to burn the boats or jump off the cliff and build your airplane on the way down. Well, guess what? If you don't build it fast enough on the way down, you're like the Wile E. Coyote. You're crashing to the ground. That's not a good way to do it. What's a much better way is take care of yourself and make sure you're happy in said figure out what that needs to be and then figure out a way to increase the amount of money that you're making, which will help make that even better.

Yeah, I think one of the toughest things about entrepreneurism is when you have people that are coaching it in order to sell it, a lot of times they'll sell this dramatic vision and it's very often this very machismo, dramatic, you know, Herculean Odyssey, the Iliad type thing where, you know, there's scaling, there's bouncer's and there's dragons. There's no dude, you need to make more dollars than you spend. And initially somebody pays you that. And then over time, you find out a way to.

And by the way, you'll still have a you'll still have bosses. You just have more of them as little people. Oh, you don't have a bosses. Yeah. It's like software clients have three bosses. I just don't have one boss and I can fire any one client. So that's nice. But of course I still have bosses, I have people that pay my salary and or pay my income or have you on a word that and but being clear that if you're just it could just be this, like you said, and it's it's almost not even worth combatant's.

The whole millionaire next door concept, as you mentioned, one of the books you said you don't like of it's actually meant to be boyens coming from the insurance industry, which is one of the oldest residual income models there is. Let's just remind people, my clients say, look, if this is getting exciting after three to five years, you're doing it wrong. It's not supposed to be exciting. It's supposed to actually just do this in a recession, OK?

That, you know, and that's a solid business and it takes connections. As somebody who has online courses, as I know, sounds like you all due to what I love to have three million people come in tomorrow and drop a. And, of course, on my stuff, sure, it's going to happen. No, it's not going to happen and it's going to come from relationships and meeting people and yes, going to conferences and connecting with people and and doing all these things.

But that's also part of the process. And, you know, there's something I once heard about money and fibers based on drugs and said, you know, why do you do cocaine? The guy says, because it intensifies your vices. What if you're if you're a jackass, you know, that's not so good.

Yeah. Well, into your point about the amount of money, what we've what we've found is that, you know, there's different steps on that journey. And usually the first step for most people is what we call your freedom number. And that's ultimately what is the amount of money that you need to be bringing in to, let's say, replace your job. So at that point, you're able to pay all your bills, all your expenses and everything is good.

So when we start working with most people, the first thing we have to do or one of the early things is figure out what is that number? Because first point today is, however, your money is coming in, you want to make sure you're making more money than you're spending because that's upsidedown your personal life. That's the first thing we've got to correct. We got to reduce some expenses. We've got to work on making some extra income until that's shifted.

Then when you go to build a business, you want to build it in the same way. Right. Like you said, bring more money in. That's going out. And what you want to be doing is building it intentionally until that business income can then replace your income, because at that point you have options. And once you've hit that number now, we can then start building beyond that and what we call your dream number. This is now everything on your vision board, everything that you want to do.

But once you have that freedom number and you're able to then cover everything, a lot of things open up and things become a little bit easier because now you've gotten things taken care of and you show up differently. You show up confident because now you've been able to make this work. You know that your family in your life has taken care of and you can shift away from us and taking care of us and shift now into how do I help more people?

How do I make a bigger impact in the causes or the things that really matter to me. And that's a big shift that we've found entrepreneurs go through. And it's sometimes challenging because usually most of us are starting this out to like take care of our families and have more time, have more freedom. And then when we achieve that, we almost go through this like, weird thing where it's like, OK, well, that's what that was what I was trying to do.

And now that I've got that, what's next?

Well, and I think to one of the biggest issues that we've seen with talking to entrepreneurs about what's your goal? My goal is to leave my job, to have more freedom and have more time. My family awesome us, too. But they have this idea in their heads that they only need to make as much in their business as they need to bring home. And that is a huge, huge, huge cause for conflict later on when they realize that that's not going to work because you actually have things that you have to pay for in your business that you can't take home all your income that you're making in your business as your own personal income.

And I'm a freelancer. I just it goes on my bank account and we're like, no, no, no, you have to pay taxes on that. And the government is going to come back and find you. And if you haven't set that aside, come tax time, you are going to be in a very, very tough position, because if your business can't all of a sudden take on 50 new clients to cover that tax bill, now you're in a bad spot.

And if you're somebody who's responsible for other people and you've got kids like that is not somewhere you want to put yourself. So we always, always, always talk about that freedom. No. And then we make that little red flag warning sign. Reminder your freedom. No, you are going to actually have to make more than that in your business to actually bring home the amount that is your freedom number in your personal life.

Yeah, and you know something? You said a couple of things you said I really like is one, that you intentionally build a business because sometimes people will sell stuff or make something. Something hits. They don't know why it happened or how to replicate it. And that's not such a good thing. And then to something, probably one of the best bits of advice I got I started is not for twenty years ago. And there wasn't well, the Internet was there, but there wasn't YouTube videos and that sort of stuff.

And I read this one book, and one of the main pieces of advice that stuck up for me was if you're irresponsible as an employee and don't pay your bills outside of work and don't keep up with stuff, you're going to do the same thing when you have a business. And if you do pay your bills and chances are you're going to find a way to do that. And again, this concept of find that in between baby step, it doesn't have to be this dramatic jump.

In fact, that's one of the worst things you can do. It's kind of like the couple says, our relationships miserable. Let's have kids that'll make it better. Oh, OK.

Great analogy.

How you do that. And in a similar way to say, OK, you know, my job know so many people are moving away, moving away from something, even the 4-Day Work Week. The basic concept is, you know, this work less make more money. So why do you want work? I don't like my work, OK, and I've come to find that, you know, some people, you meet them there when someone said Wade, I love what I do on work forever, as many hours as I can.

And I remind them or just remind them that assumes I'm right. I said, well, what about the other things going on in the planet other than what's happened inside your laptop or whatever it might be. But also, I think a lot of us do start an issue with moving away from something. And then, as you said, once you that are hitting your at least your freedom number and you see that you hit that a few months, three months, six months, nine months, it hits a tax return to tax returns we like.

OK, I kind of have this now. You can start hopefully make that shift towards not just about what can I do for me? And I don't mean that in a in a way that it has to be altruistic. That makes it better. But because it's a more expansive vision, because even if you say, well, now I want a Lamborghini, not not a Toyota Camry, that's still in the overall scheme of things, it's pretty small vision compared to what if you just have to help the world and how does that change how you do things?

You still have to pay your bills. And as somebody who can be a bit of a dreamer, sometimes I have to remind myself we can no Wade you can't drop, you know, a thousand dollars or five thousand dollars on ads. Say how good your stuff is. If you can't also pay your bills, you have to create that additional. And maybe that is part of your dream number where you have the money to put to buy your way on to traffic or this or that.

And there's other strategies that get done. And maybe when you see people, if you're an entrepreneur, you see other people, you say their stuff's not as good as my stuff, but they're in front of more people. Maybe they are better at closing. Maybe they're better. I look at people. I'm not the greatest marketer. I'm a really good salesperson and a really good coach. I'm not a really good hey, buy my stuff now person.

But that's also OK. I've been doing this 20 years and I, I've learned the long game and how it works. But for a lot of people in the short run, it can seem like they have to make this jump that's so impossible, which then leads to the overpriced overpromised ten thousand dollar or twenty five thousand hour mastermind or even three thousand dollars coaching program that they can afford rather than get an book. If you like the person's e-book, implement five to seven things from that that are worth something and make up at least ten times the cost of the e-book.

And then that's sort of a process as opposed to having it be so magical. What have you found is a good way to help people accept that or get OK with that reality, that it's not this magical thing how we figured out. We can't tell people that because they don't want to hear that. You know, everyone is unfortunately looking for the easy button. And because online marketing and Internet entrepreneurship is such a low, low barrier to entry, I mean, you can do it for free.

Everyone thinks like, oh, my gosh, I'm going to jump in here. I'm going to do exactly what that person did and I'm going to make all this money. And my life is going to be amazing. And when you tell people like, no, no, you can't do it that way. If you do it this way, you try to pop that little bubble that they have, like that rose colored vision of, oh, this is going to be so great.

They don't want to listen to you. You don't want to hear that. It's not going to be easy. They don't want to hear that the way that they want to do it isn't the right way or maybe isn't going to work for them like they think it is. So what we found is you almost have to let people make their own mistakes. You know, you can you can still talk about these things. You can still talk about the truth and have that message.

And there are some people who are going to listen right away. They're like, oh, my gosh, those people, they're telling us the real deal and I don't want to waste my money. So I'm going to go over there and listen to them. And, you know, that's very few and far between and what we've seen, a lot of people are coming in and they want the easiest path to success. So we just continue to share our message and to talk about those things.

But we also go back and you kind of can nurture people along so you can talk to them at where they're at and say, hey, I know you really thought that course you thought was going to work. We understand. We feel you. We've done that. Here's how we found you after you've bought something and it didn't go the way you planned. You can still implement things from that and you can still get to where you want to go.

Well, and I mean, here's the thing. What you what you can do with people is lay out to pass. It's like here's one path. You go, you spend all this money, you try this stuff and here's what's going to happen. And guess how we know that one. We went through it, too. We've talked to so many other people that have done it. So that's one path and it looks like the fast path. But what it's actually going to do is cost you a lot of time, a lot of energy and likely a lot of frustration because you're going to be like, I spent all this money, I do these things, why didn't it work?

Or you take this other path where you truly understand you start small. It's not nearly as sexy, but you buy the twenty dollar ebook or you listen to the free content and you get some of the stuff figured out. And then the biggest thing is with your investments, your investments should match where you're at. Your business, right? So a story that we tell often or I tell and Ariana drags on me about is I spend seventy five hundred dollars to get started on our real estate investment company and there was no need to do that.

I mean, there's so much free information out there or just spending one hundred dollars on books would have got me more than I got out of that course. So what we always recommend to people is start where you're at, get the information, start making some sales, and then take that money and reinvest it back in. And guess what? The more money you make, the more you can reinvest back in. But early on, spending ten thousand dollars on something isn't going to secretly make you successful.

And more often than not, you're not at a point with your personal development in your growth that you can even take advantage of everything that's in there.

Yeah, I tell people so I coach basketball for my son's basketball team. And the analogy I use is your son's ten. I may not be the greatest basketball coach in the world, but I can teach him or her the fundamentals. You don't want to spend ten thousand dollars for an hour. Private lesson LeBron James yet because they can't digest. And this is the other part of the. Oh, you're saying LeBron James is a good note. You, Mr.

. I said is nothing to do with LeBron James. They're not ready to digest. There is a group of people that would gladly a lot of the NBA stars would gladly take a one hour lesson from him if he wanted to do that. Not sure he wants to, but he would do that and probably much more than ten thousand. And that sense of patience around that and understanding that there is sort of a natural process to it. And, you know, coming from the Insurance background, a lot of the companies are named after farm.

So they're State Farm, there's Farmers Bureau, there's farmers Insurance. Let's remind people that's natural. You plant a seed, you water, you nurture your sunlight, you Wade that. That's how most of this if you want to be in this for the long run, that's how most of this works, is you're planting something, you're growing something, you're building something. And of course, you're learning that other people need to benefit from this and you're learning these lessons.

Or as my wife has, she got more skilled at coaching me would say, honey, I understand you want to do all these new courses. Let's do this. And she is my own sort of voodoo on me. She's like, let's have you make time investments for you to learn all this stuff you want to learn. And let's have less financial investments if you drop in five to ten thousand on a course. And but the truth is, that's what I want to hear.

I wanted to hear the me too. Hey, if I put in ten thousand magically now I've got this magical template or this magical email and all of a sudden people say, oh, you you got the email. Oh I got it by now. It's just I must. And then we even get this sense, or at least I have of anger at the coaches, the mentors in this entitlement where you said, I do this and some of them out there, I do say that.

And let's just say they might not a thousand percent better, but they do the best. They work. It's a journey to find out you later you go back. And it was there, but you didn't hear it because all you heard was the quick, easy fix. But again, most of the things your best relationships are your friends, usually from a while, your family. These are things that didn't happen right away. And yes, obviously, you want new relationships and growing and developing.

But to think that the person you just met is going to be your best friend for life and you just met a half hour ago, it's kind of magical thinking any more than the person just that's going to be your soulmate. Maybe it happens, but it doesn't happen that way.

So, you know, like a big part of this to just building off of what you're saying, we always tell people like this takes time and it takes work and you have to commit to the process, not to the goals. And it's so easy for people to go and think that I can buy a course and I can have quick success. The faster you get something, the faster it can all go away. And like we actually had an experience.

So we have our first book coming out this year called Lifestyle Builders. And we actually have an experience we talk about in the book where we're showing it to someone and getting feedback. And they were like just not liking it. They're like, this isn't hitting the mark. No one's going to be reading this. And what we came to find out was that they wanted to just dove right into the business. And we don't actually don't talk about the business until the third section of the book.

The first section is getting clear on what you want out of your life. The second section is really getting your personal finances in order. And then the third section is where we start talking about the business. And usually what we can tell is if somebody wants to jump right to the business and wants to skip the first two parts, they're going to be that person. Then Ariana said, go and spend all the money and then maybe makes it back to us later on being like, you know what, you guys were right.

I should have listened. You want to save me all this time, all this money. But if that person is willing to go in and go through the process and trust the process that people have gone through before, they're going to be a lot more successful. So, so much of this is that how are you approaching this? Are you approaching this as like I want to make quick money and do whatever I need to do to make it? Or are you approaching it?

Is I'm committing to doing what needs to be done and growing myself so that I can build a business that lasts and not only helps take care of my family, but also creates a. Really good impact with the customers that I'm serving with the business.

Mean, I love that analogy because it's the way of your chapters line that I think of sometimes. Listen, sometimes what Gary says about not everybody should be an entrepreneur. Everybody thinks they should be an entrepreneur. And analogy to a marriage would be to say, I don't want to think about what I want out of life. No one, I don't want to do my own work to make sure I'm a healthy individual with my baggage. I just want to get married and, you know, as if that is the end all be all and again, as if that is if the marriage is the path to happiness as opposed to it can be a lot of things, depending on how you run with it, how you roll with it and what you're looking for from it.

Hmm. Absolutely. And that's that's the biggest thing. Like, you know, as people are going through this, it's not I hate my job. Therefore, I need to be an entrepreneur. Like for most people, the answer is figure out how to get a job you want and go and get that one, you know, and like, you know, we talk to most people and most people have some sort of a desire to build like a business.

And for the most part, it's to help create more options. Because here's the thing. Any time you have one source of something that's a single point of failure, so your job could be going great and suddenly it gets acquired or something changes and suddenly you lose that job and now you're you're stuck. So what we always tell people is you always want to set yourself up with multiple options, like part of why we built multiple businesses is so that we have multiple income streams and our first businesses and real estate.

Now, we actually bought in 2007, 2008 when the whole market went down. So our second or our second business is actually a retail store, wine and liquor, very like consistent year over year. And our third business is more of a service consulting online type business. So everything we've done, it hasn't been just building one business, but it's building multiple so that we have options and are really mitigating any of that risk that could come up. And for far too many people, they're not thinking that way.

They're like, if it's not this, then it's got to be that. And that's the only way I'm gonna look at what's funny.

You say that I joke with people. I my core business for the last 20 years has been a software business that I never plan to be in, but my clients basically almost screamed at me Wade we need this software piece. I created it. And it's been paying 80 percent of my bills for 20 years because I was willing to listen and then I have all the other romantic things that I want to build that might not be the exact same thing. And sometimes they pay off and sometimes they don't.

And meanwhile, there's old faithful just going along. And at different times, my wife will say, Wade, what about that that software thing you're doing? How about we grow that and there's some market forces or at least that I tell myself that why it's not meant to grow and part of it. I don't have a huge passion for it, but definitely I think there's a lot of sources that have said the average millionaire has six, seven, eight think the average number seven sources of income because things shifts, things change.

And again, to think that it's going to be otherwise is like having one friend and assuming that one friend is going to always be the source of your happiness or that sort of stuff.

Yeah, well, in the other challenge with that is people will often reference that quote you had and then think that they need to immediately go and create something. And that's one of the biggest ways to have failure is to not focus on one thing. So like for us, we both had jobs and we started our first business. We got that goal and got that built up. Ariana left her job. We started our second business. We got that goal and got that up.

We started our third business. And I didn't leave my job until after we had that third business going. And so we didn't do them all at once. The whole secret, quote unquote, is figure a business out, get people paying you money for it, figure out what it needs to look like to be able to run without you having to be involved in it day to day. Get those systems, get the team set up, free up your time and effort and energy and then start a second stream like that is the secret.

It's not doing all at once. It's doing one at a time. And then moving on to the next one.

That's one of the seven years time span.

There's so much you can do. That doesn't mean you should do it. No, take take the one approach. And and I know you know this, but your first business, of course, was your third source of income because you are, like you said, you had two of you all. So, again, it's not this magic. You just said one day we quit everything because we're bold and we're brave and we're Americans. And I know there's a lot of you know, there's a lot of pioneers that just got shot for doing stupid things.

But once we read about the history books are the ones that made it and some just know they did some really stupid, they got shot. They're dead. You never hear about them because that's just what happened. I want to shift just a little bit, because there's gosh, I know from talking with you already that's so deep we could go. What I want to do is. Go into a couple of questions, there's three segments I found, and again, sounds like you are very familiar with them of people.

We run into a lot in the work that I do. And even though I first chose to name this the 4-Day Work Week Entrepreneur Podcast and part of it's because I just I've worked with entrepreneurs and I know that group is resonating with us. There's two other groups that I find that are really working on this. One is the group they call Prentice's, which again, are the people that they're just thinking, wow, this would be so cool, but they don't believe it's possible.

And then there's the freelancers that are kind of in between. So I've got a couple quick questions and I'm going to do this. If it's OK to drive a little bit here, I'm going to just alternate and ask you a question and kind of as a quick answer. So first section, in the sense of work life balance, what do you almost enjoy doing when you're not working? And how can you tell when you've been working too much? Like what lets you know that?

Yeah, I'll take this one. So when you're not in, like the flow state and when you're not enjoying it, usually that's a sign that, you know, you're working too much. And one of the biggest things we've started doing is really aligning our schedules and how we work to when we're in the flow state and there's days where maybe we're not feeling it and we give ourselves the grace to take time off. And so when we're not working, we're doing stuff usually with family or we're doing our own hobbies.

Awesome. And how do you find this is the part that especially I try to help people understand again, whether they're an employee or an entrepreneur or a freelancer is something sort of a way of saying in between when you're working too much, how can you tell it's impacting the people around you? And what do you how can you quickly address that?

I think for us, the biggest indicator is in our children, you know, they're very reactive to our state of mind and are the way that we're showing up. So a lot of times I will be dealing with kids with an attitude and I'm thinking in my head like, what is going on with them? And it's that thought like, wait a minute, OK? We've been working a lot. We've been having a lot of calls. We've been doing a lot of parents swapping where he's working.

And I'm watching them or I'm working and he's watching them and I've been irritable and tired. So now it's reflecting back because they're irritable and tired. So a lot of times the kids are my biggest and first indicator that one or both of us is not where we need to be from a mental state.

Yeah, because they don't come and say it sounds like you've been working a lot and let's analyze. They just do their dance. How do you and this actually might be good for you. How do you make sure you make time for your most important relationships? And with that, how do you guard and protect your time so that that happens?

We live and die by the calendar. We have shared calendars. We are crazy people and have color coding and everybody in the family has a different calendar. We also have different calendars for our businesses. And so for us, the biggest thing that we have done these past this past year, two years, three years, is putting the most important things on the calendar first, and those are non-negotiable. So if the kids have an activity at school or, you know, they're playing a sport, or if we want to put our date night on the calendar or family dinners, that's on there and it's automatically recurring event.

Those are the things that go first. And they are for the most part, I would say. Ninety nine percent of the time they do not get moved or deleted from the calendar. Obviously we have freedom so we can shift things sometimes if needed, but we try to keep that kind of sacred so that we're not letting those priorities fall off. I also typically have a lot of girls nights and things put on the calendar because I very much so need time with with people in time out of the house.

Yeah, well, there's a quote out there just to add onto that, and I'm totally going to butcher it, but it's basically says, you know, your priorities are schedule your priorities, don't prioritize your schedule. And that's the biggest thing. Whatever is the most important like schedule that first and then have everything else fit around it. Because what happens far too often is that people aren't intentional. And when you're not intentional about those things, it's very easy to have like a date night fall off.

But if we're intentional saying, hey, we want to have at least two date nights a month when we sit down and plan the month, guess what? The first thing we talk about is, all right, why don't we have an hour to date nights? Let's mark that out, because usually once it goes on the calendar, there's a lot higher chance that we're actually going to have a happen than if we, like, try to get our giant to do list and try to do everything and then figure out where we fit it in the absolute it's funny.

There's this belief that entrepreneurs have all it's freedom and freedom and everything you want to reach out to, they want. And if you it's funny, we won't even obey our own calendars like, no, dammit, I don't know if you if you go out, that's awesome. What's the best habit you all have around managing your money and or about having possessions without having them owning you.

That's a good question. You know, I think for me, the biggest thing, so I went from, you know, working in a corporate environment and then doing like consulting with a lot of these business executives. And so for a while, I had to look a certain way with how I dressed and what I drove. And the biggest thing that I found over time was really figuring out what makes me happy and cutting out the stuff that doesn't. And so, like, when I left my six figure consulting job, I had everyone around me, like, giving me so much crap about, like, oh, you're so stupid.

What are you doing? You're irresponsible. Like, why would you do that? And for me, what was more important to me was every morning now I get to wake up and see my kids when I was consulting and all these companies I was leaving at 4:00 a.m. and on Monday morning and I was getting back Thursday night, Friday, I was literally in another city more than I was in my home. And so a lot of people just look at the money and they're like, oh, you know, you make all this money, that's great.

When you truly understand what's important to you, suddenly everything else fades away. Like I, I wear a black t shirt every day. Like that is my wardrobe now really. And like we've really at least for me, I've started to cut away anything that that doesn't make me happy, that doesn't serve that purpose. And I found that with a much simpler life, I can truly spend more time focusing on the stuff that I truly care about. Makes me happy.

Yeah. And I think for me, a lot of it was about changing perspectives. You know, we grow up in this culture of having to have the nicest things and showing off. And, you know, everyone wants to post pictures of their awesome cars and houses and everything. So great. There's this there's this image that you have to portray. And it's very easy to fall into that trap of always having to one up or catch up to all the people that are around you and your circle.

And for me, I think it was changing that perspective and reframing that in my head to care less about what other people thought about what we have and really just being grateful and double, double checking when I wanted to buy something new, like, is it really for me that I'm buying that thing? Or is it because someone else thinks that I should have that thing that I'm going to buy? And in that, I mean, we we downgraded our car and again, we got the same height.

Why are you downgrading your car? You had an explorer. You live in upstate New York. Like, don't you want four wheel drive?

Should be upgrading your car, shouldn't be upgrading your car. It was like, well, yeah, someday we plan on upgrading back. But right now, the smartest thing and the thing that made the most sense for our family was to downgrade to what's still an awesome car. Hey, Toyota Camry. And it works for our family. But what it also worked for was the fact that we decided for Tom because I'm going to leave his six figure job and we cut back on some things we did some downgrading in our life so that we could make that dream a reality and start moving towards this goal and this vision that we had for our life.

So, you know, I think it's just it's reframing it's thinking outside the box and looking at it from a different perspective. A lot of times was saying, I just want to tell this quick story that I think really drives his point home. So there's a there's a book a lot of people have read Rich, that poor dad, and there's a game called Cash Flow on to one. And so this game basically teaches you how to, like, get out of the rat race.

And so the first time I played it, it's kind of like monopoly and life combined. And so the first time I played it, I got like the doctor card. So I was making the income of a doctor and everyone else at the table had their card. And the goal of the game was to be able to build your, quote unquote, passive income to exceed your expenses. And so we're playing, we're playing and we're like fifteen minutes in and this guy's like, oh, I'm out of the rat race.

My passive income exceeded my expenses and I'm looking down. I'm like, I got to make like another eight grand. How did this guy win? And I couldn't fathom. And I'm like, what job you have? And the guy's like, Oh, I'm a janitor. And I'm like, well, how the heck did you get out of the rat race? But for me, I'm a doctor. I'm like, what? How much would you have to make?

He's like, oh, a thousand dollars. I'm like, well, I going to make like ten grand. And it took me some time to figure it out. But basically there's this concept out there of these golden handcuffs. And what we all do is we raise our living status to our income level. And what happens is we actually in our book, we call it the false golden handcuffs because with a couple of changes to your lifestyle, you could probably have more of the freedom you want now.

But what most of us do is we fall into this traditional trap of every time we make more money, we spend more money. And then we never feel like we can make a change or do anything because we're always right at the limit.

That's awesome, and it's funny. I definitely am going to have to have you guys back another time because I have some other questions that I want to get to you with that I will take longer. So I'm going to go in a slightly different direction because I said we have some of you all heard the freelance stage entrepreneur stage. I hope to at some point have your back at another time to go deeper in that, because I just there's so much to what you have said and so much what I found.

It's it's the unsexy things that people need to be hearing now. I went to years. Where are I? Well, first of all, we keep our cars for ten years, at least usually. And one of my cars finally broke down and is my mobilizers convertible and. My I work from home. We didn't need to drive around much for two years where we just didn't have a second car and I even took the challenge is that, OK, I'm going to buy a bike so I can ride to the beach when I go play my volleyball on Fridays.

That's about eight, nine mile bike ride. And in 90 degree weather, that's not a very comfortable bike ride. But I took it on as a challenge and I lost a bunch of Wade. And it was just one of those things to say, OK. Every month that was five hundred bucks. I didn't have to make it. So many people are. Were you you know, you don't this you don't that like, look, you know nothing about my life.

And certainly the people that are happiest say the least because they're happy doing their own thing. It's the people who aren't certain about what they're doing that are questionable. Why don't why don't you do this? It's you know, whether it's I found this at times, the people, you know, I happen to eat vegetarian and that that just annoys some people that are mediavest them off. Like, look, I have no judgment about what you're doing. I've I've chosen this and it's OK.

And and I don't drink as much as I did when I was college. Great. But I still haven't drinks, which then throws me even more because. Oh, you're know, I'm just I'm happy. Is that is that OK? And and for the most part, you know, I just love what one of the later Range Rovers looks like a Twitter excuse me, a Ford Explorer. They almost look the same here. Just an extra mountain.

We have a what? A Honda CRV that looks almost exactly the same as the BMW. It cost three times the price. What really what more are you getting for that? But in my case, I'm able to, like you said, those false golden handcuffs. I don't have those handcuffs as much and. So I'm able to work less and it's that simple, especially as you're an entrepreneur, you don't have to do that thing eventually where you say, well, my job is horrible and since it's so bad, then I'm going to go out and spend a bunch of money because I deserve it, because I'm doing this work.

That's just horrible. Which then, of course, just keeps the whole process going because then you can never leave. Instead of just doing basic stuff, start cutting your expenses, start doing some basic things where you don't need them as much. So, yes. So first of all, thank you for everything you have shared so far. So much of it is on track with what I've seen. But you have told somebody in a way that so much better than I've been able to.

And that's not in a in a self-deprecating way. That's what I really love what you're up to. So thank you for that. So share a little bit with our audience, if you don't mind, lifestyle builders, how can they find out about that until maybe a little bit about that? Because that's something you are doing. It's the book and even the program that I think is really could help a lot of people that are in this audience.

Yes. So essentially, our goal or my goal originally was to leave my job and retire by thirty five. And as we made that happen, basically other people started asking us, you know, like, hey, how can we do what you guys have done? And so we ended up after a couple of debates and testing things out, creating lifestyle builders, which is really our coaching program and our whole philosophy for how to build a business to help you create that life that you're looking for.

So we have a podcast that Ariana and I hosted where we talk about different topics related to life in business and how to make it all work. As you mentioned, we have our first book coming out this year called Lifestyle Builders Build Your Business, Quit Your Job and Live Your Ideal Life, where we walk through our entire framework. And then we have coaching and training programs where we actually take people through, just like you said, the different stages of growing a business.

So what you do when you're just getting started, what you do once you start making some money and you want to scale it up, and then how to even, like, build a team, put systems in place so that as you build that business, you can actually step away from it and get the freedom and not have it so that the more time you spend are, the bigger your business gets, the more time you spend in it. So people can find everything that we have going on at Tomen Ariana Dotcom.

And if they want to learn more about some of our coaching programs, they can go to join lifestyle builders.

Dotcom, that's awesome. Thank you so much for sharing that. You have something to point out to people and this is something we all know this from from the coaching world. And it's something very different that I've experienced over the years. I've spent 20 plus years in a consulting industry where people kind of fear having what is perceived competition, where they help them get a message out. And a lot of the thought is the scarcity of vision that there's a there's not enough to go around beta my competition as opposed to a different vision, which we've seen.

And we're certainly not the only people to do this. But this idea of why. Here's a shocker. If somebody buys, I don't know, a Deepak Chopra book, maybe they'll buy Wayne Dyer book. Maybe maybe they actually just want to grow. And it's there's enough. And so somebody might say, well, wait, are you saying that your stuff I know this is about understanding people are different spots, but also there's different niches. There really are very specific things as we've talked about.

You know, for you all, there's stuff you all can do and help people with couples that maybe other people can't do as well. And I think there's so much to be said for. You're not going to find you're going to if you're listening, if you're in the audience, you might find five to ten people that speak on your topic. But there's going to be one or two maybe that really resonate with you and to where you hear their style, you hear where they're coming from.

And I encourage you to do that. And definitely don't buy ten programs, buy one at most two. And yeah, read the book. And if you read the book and you read the book all the way through, that means all the pages, maybe not the index, but all the pages. You actually get through it and you still think you'd like to do it. You've even done the exercises they suggested. And this is our model. And again, I know Tom in Ariana, you're with us.

This is that's how we want to meet people that say, look, I've read your book. Hey, if you probably had this I've had people said I didn't even read your book. It was in one of your episodes and I'm working for days. Awesome. Dude, that's that's in our model. That's not a problem. I just think that's something that people when they question, oh, well, why are people always picking each other? It's not even so much pitching.

I know I have a desire to help at least four million people get to 4-Day Work Week lifestyle. And recently it dawned on me that at least this this was so liberated I could maybe get at least three, a million of those people to go to my friends and then help my friends help them. I guess I get credit for that. And it's somewhat of a joke. But at the same time, it doesn't that's that whole thing of if you're if you're really committed to getting a result, you know, you're not concerned about who gets credit for it.

There's so much you can get done. So for those you who are listening, I've not done a lot of interviews in the past because I wanted to first establish that I knew the topic. You all definitely from what I've seen and interaction with you, Tom, and especially no interaction with both, you'll have a lot to offer. And I just encourage people in general look for those people that are telling you. Work is going to take some time.

It doesn't take that long. But on the flip side, the good part is it's it's almost inevitable, and if you're willing to put in the time especially how much easier it is than like 20 years ago or 10 years ago, it's almost never will be able to do it. So thank you all so much for joining me. I'm so glad to have you on here. And I'm looking forward to listening to more of your episodes and any last thoughts you have for everybody before we end this interview.

And I'm just going to go with our tagline. It's your life, your business, your way. If you remember that, you're on the right path.

Amen. Thank you so much for coming out. And if you have any questions on this, as always, you can let me know, connect with me by email or on the site. And as always, look forward to helping you make more money and less time doing what you do best. Thank you, guys, that was awesome. That was really.