Separate Money & Time

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Welcome, or welcome back to Success with Srini. It’s a Monday morning, today on the podcast, I want to share a principle with you. Now I call it a principle because I talk about it all the time. I wish I would have known this, in my college, I wish somebody would have taught me this growing up early, early in life, made a calling in my life to teach this. I have been, and through many of my seminars, workshops, and radio shows have been driving this over and over again. It’s interesting, I find it surprising personally, that I have not spoken about this extensively on this podcast. So I’m just making it a point to talk about this today. It’s a Monday, and you’re trying to escape. So here we are.

Okay, so this principle has to do with your time and with your money, if I have to set a goal for myself, and I have set many goals for myself in the past. But if I somehow go back in time, and I set a goal for myself, then the only goal that I will set is that I will separate my time from my money, as soon as possible. Maybe a year or two, at the most, maybe here, I’ll work one year very hard. In separating my time from my money, or my money from my time, I’ll explain this concept, we’ll go a little deeper into this. This was 1997, I believe, and I was very new in America at the time. And I was looking for ways to increase my income. And I was very unhappy with the kind of money I was making. And I was struggling, I was getting some job offers, I was getting some opportunities, but nothing was really coming together. And it was a stressful process, it was very hard on me. And because I had limited, it was a small brain with not much awareness, little bits and pieces of information. It was hard. And there was no internet, no social media, no cell phones at a level that we have today and all that. So I was going through a very tough time trying to figure out how I can solve my money problem and, and the money problem I need to solve because if I can solve money, then I solve all my other problems. Whatever, I have a look back, none of them makes sense anymore but you get the idea. At that point in time, it was a lot. So I said I’m going to work hard, I’m going to put a lot of time. And again, getting a job working hard getting a higher paycheck, all these things were programmed by the society as I was growing up, and parents and all that. So your only job is to get a job so that he could get paid, and you have to make a lot of money so that all the problems that exist in the family in the house, will go away.

Now, this thinking continues even today, even today, I meet people who tell me I need to work hard, a little bit harder, so that and a little longer so that I can make all the money. And once I make the money, my problems will go away. And then then I’m free to do whatever I want to do. But these people don’t understand that they can never be free. It’s very hard to create freedom. Freedom in itself is a pursuit. And it demands a lot. So just because you have money, you will become free, or you will have freedom, is not true. And just because you will make a lot of money, you’ll be able to solve your problems is not true either. So if you can’t solve your problems with money, or take it back, if you can’t solve your problems without money, you cannot solve them with money. So you need a different kind of thinking. That’s the point. Okay, so the programming, the traditional programming is that you’ve worked for a long time for many, many years so that you make money. And once you make the money, you will have the freedom to do whatever you want to do. But the truth is this, we spent 20, 30, 40 years working, and then eventually our investments are inflation, whatever the reasons are, eventually our net worth goes up. And yes, we do reach the goal of whatever that number is. But then the only drawback or the only problem with that equation is that we will not have enough time to enjoy the freedom that we are trying to create. That’s the point so Just because you work for many, many years, doesn’t mean that you will have many, many years of freedom.

How do we break the cycle? How you come out of this has been my pursuit ever since I was I became aware. And I met a gentleman, somewhere around the time told me said, Listen, if you start thinking of trying to increase your income, or your job, you make $32,000 a year, you want to double your income $64,000. It’s a huge jump, it’s a huge life gap for you to fill. And who knows, you’re able to fill some people cannot, most people cannot, some do most cannot. So it’s hard. So instead of you thinking and getting stressed out that how to double your income every year, or in the next job, why not? You think of making the same amount of money, which you make today, in six months instead of one full year. And I was like, wow, this is a different kind of thinking. And then he further went and said, you should try to make your yearly income into a turn your yearly income into a quarterly income, and then monthly income and weekly income and then the daily income, then the hourly income, then the minute income, second income, whatever. I like the principle and it caught my eye, at least the first part caught my eye. And I talked about this whole story several times on this podcast. So the question is this, the question is how can you wherever you are, right? In your career today, with whatever money you’re making, how can you break the cycle of you spending a lot of time trying to make money, which is not going to create the freedom that you think it will. So few strategies. And again, none of the strategies that I’ll be sharing with you here are mine, they heard they’re something that I have learned from others, not my creation, not my discovery. So traditionally, what people have done is they have in order to cut the time, without cutting income, they have tried outsourcing enough tasking.

So, for example, let’s say you want to save some time, but you are doing something that you don’t want to do or you don’t like doing, you can find somebody else to do the job. And you can use the time that they free up for you for something else that you love. Outsourcing our tasking. Sometimes you have some deficiencies in you and all of us, we have deficiencies in us the things that we want to do, but we don’t know how to do and we don’t have the skill to know how to experience. And we need to find people who can do that who can or not a problem. So we looking for people who have that, that mindset, that skill. And also we find them we pay them whatever they want, and they will do the job for us. This has been tried out and people do this. But what I want to share with you today is something that I want you to try which is which I call out owning you have your skills, you have your talents, you have your experiences, why not take all of that, and package that together in such a way that the package itself produces the outcome for people, while directly not taxing time from your side. So you create it once. And you position it in a way that produces results for people. This is not unique either. This has been done before. For example, hundreds and 1000s. For sure, hundreds of years ago, people wrote books. So and sold books had been going on for hundreds of years. And even today, people write books, people sell books, and people who buy books, they read books, they get the knowledge, know-how, but then the creator of the book only did it once the author wrote the book once, but the readers are reading it, and they’re buying it. So there is residual money coming out of that. And the author has free time to do whatever they want to do. And simple concept. Now you start to scale that idea a little bit higher. Instead of just writing a book, or writing one book a year, or writing 2030 books. Again, writing involves time and effort and all that. Why not become a publisher. So, you have authors who are writing books, you get the authors to write the books, but then you publish the books and you keep a small amount of royalty for your effort. Every time a book is sold, you get a small amount of money. So you kind of become a clearinghouse. I don’t think the clearinghouse is the right word. Publishing House is the right word. Let’s say you’re a web designer. You design a website. It’s only a one-time deal. You get paid once but then again you’re extending Time for dollars. Instead of doing that, why not create a template that you can keep on selling over and over again.

Let’s say you’re a software programmer, and you work eight hours a day, creating software, but then you don’t own it. Why not create software yourself so that you can license it. So it’s great the income. Now, principles like passive investing, passive income, residual income, capital, income, all these crypto income, all these things come in. And I talked about this also, all these are ways that your money will work for you while you take off and you do whatever you want to do. Right. So these people have figured this out over the years. The point of this podcast and where I’m going with this is that whatever experience you have, the knowledge you have, you could package that as a product. And the product can do multiple things. One is to share information, kind of give information out, which has happened in the past when people don’t have books. So a book gives you information or knowledge. So your package can give knowledge or information to people, then your package will also show them what they can do. And your practice can also do things for them, kind of helping them. So not only do you tell them what to do, you show them what to do, and in a way, you do it for them. We are in amazing times where we are today. And the technology enables us to do that. I’ll give you one example here, I was doing a lot of one on one coaching, and hard right. At any point in time, I was not having more than six clients, six coaching clients. And I was spending one on one time with them. And in most cases daily was hard. And I had to free up my time. So instead of doing one on one, I went to one too many. And as a result of that, I started trading courses and group coaching programs, and that way I freed myself from the dynamic. And then the programs teach them what they need to do. In the programs, I showed them what they need to do. And now I have teams that work helping them to implement, it’s kind of handhold them if they want us or my team to do it for them. So there are different ways that you separate your time, from the money and your money from time.

Hopefully, I conveyed the message. Hopefully, you got it. Here is what I want you to do today, I want you to take some time, it’s a Monday. So take some time and start looking into things that you can outsource our task and our package. In such a way that your direct involvement is out. You have separated your time. Maybe you can do everything in a lesser time now. So you’re cutting your time you’re cutting your involvement. At the same time, your money is still intact. In fact, the money is growing. Because you have people in place now you have teams in place that are working towards extending your message and expanding your business.

Hopefully, this is helpful. And by the way, this applies to you even if you are in a job. And even if you’re working for someone this applies to you. You need to find ways where you can figure out how you can put less time, make more money and try to create that freedom so that you have the autonomy to do anything that you want to do. Okay, I’ll stop here. Hopefully, this is helpful. And if it is, let me know. And I’ll be back here again tomorrow. But the podcast of the day. Stay tuned.

There Are No Shortcuts To Investing Success

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Welcome or welcome back to Success with Srini. Happy Sunday morning to you today on the podcast, I’m answering a question that has come in from a longtime listener of this podcast, also, my radio shows. And I believe attended one of my seminars also sent me two questions. And I’m picking up the second question here because this is related to real estate. And I talked about real estate investing, specifically buying a house in Silicon Valley, where I am. And this was a few days ago, I talked about real estate, and it’s very ripe, it’s very dominant on my mind. So I took up the second question, which is about real estate. And the question is this, “Hello, Srini. I really liked your podcasts, I have a few suggestions on topics that you could have a podcast on.” Thank you, and the second one here is, “Suppose I plan to have a house or another big dream, I say for it, sacrificing certain priorities but when I start exploring market goes out of budget. It becomes frustrating at times, what approach should one take when earlier plans go for a toss due to unexpected situations?”

Beautiful, wonderful question. And thank you for asking this question. And appreciate you being a listener. Now, I can’t answer this question by telling or explaining what you should do. The way I would prefer and I usually answer the question is, what would I do if I were you? And here’s what I will do. And I think I already answered this question in the earlier podcast also, no, knowing what I know, here’s what I will do. I will ensure that whatever I buy, I buy a single-family home, a castle, a townhome, or a condo, whatever I buy, or a mobile home doesn’t matter, whatever I buy, I’ll ensure that the mortgage payment I make on that house is going to be somewhere around 20 to 30% of my net, take-home pay per month. This is the first rule. I would like to violate that rule. And the only way I will violate that rule is when I make a significant downpayment. Because the prices are escalated are very high, the market doesn’t seem to go down, I don’t think it’s going to crash. The two times the market crashed were in 2007, November, and December timeframe. And then prior to that was the 1930s. I don’t think the real estate market going to crash, it will slow down. And all hype is going to go away to a larger extent. So my mindset, I wouldn’t be waiting for the market to crash. And investing in general means that there is a certain kind of return that’s going to happen over a period of time. So if you look at all the investors who really made it very big, even in real estate, they bought the properties at a time without really questioning or without looking for great deals. They had money, they invested the board first, second, third, fourth property and like that, and they kept on buying, and over 1015 20 years, they just enjoyed the markets as markets kept on going up, they saw their assets going up in value. And that’s also true with stock markets too. And foreign markets and in any other investment for that matter where you need to have the discipline to keep on investing and waiting. And using the power of time and the principle of compounding over a long period of time to really benefit and get returns.

So my point is, when you say you’re sacrificing certain priorities, the truth is, if any investment demands a certain amount of sacrifice, anytime somebody invests in something, it’s just not about money, it’s about your feelings, your emotions, a lot of things that play and interplay. So just talking about money, yes, it does become frustrating. Specifically, people tell me that they see other people who are identical to them, buy bigger houses, and all that it just hurts them. And my suggestion to them is you don’t live that life, you will not know what they are going through to get to that level.
So there’s no way that two people are, you know, under no circumstances two people are identical. So there is no point in comparing contrasting and competing with anybody else. So this is your game, you play the game whatever way you want to, and whatever way you’d like to. So, yeah, if you start comparing yourself with somebody else, yes, it will hurt but there’s no point in doing that. And knowing what you know, and what approach should one take my approach is very simple and I said it very loud and clear, which is if you can afford it, if I can afford it, I buy it outright with money. If not, then I will make sure that I make enough downpayment where I will ensure that 20 to 30% of my take-home pay can pay it the more To get on a monthly basis, and my goals, my subsequent goal would be to pay off the house as soon as possible. This is a principle that I have started living by. And this is the principle I started living by since I started losing houses my own investment into foreclosure and short sales. And I’m very vocal and open about it, nothing to hide. So less than a taken lesson learned the hard way. And this is what I now stand by. And this is what I promote.

Hopefully, I answered your question. If not, if you have a follow-up question to this, I would love to take it. At any point in time, you have a question on any topic that you think that I can be of some help or I can provide you a segue into your thinking, by all means. 888-818-0404 is the number where you can text me. And that’s all for now. And I’ll be back here again tomorrow. And hopefully, I’ll take up the first question, which is about immigration and all that. So about children, immigration parents, and all that some talk about that is the first question tomorrow. Okay. That’s all for now. And have a wonderful Sunday, and I’ll catch you early tomorrow. Bye now.

Use Laziness To Your Advantage

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This podcast episode is something that I have an absolute mastery in, absolute mastery. Nobody pays me for this but I’m very good at this. Something that I’ve gone through myself something that I take pride in talking about. Interestingly, I haven’t spoken about this as much on this podcast, ever since we started this podcast, the daily podcast, I don’t think I ever talked about this. And this is about laziness. I have a Ph.D. in this or at least that’s what my mom told me. Growing up, I was a lazy kid.

How to use laziness to your advantage is the topic of today’s podcast. I have gotten this question numerous times before, not that anybody asked me recently. But I’ve seen some people talk about this because I subscribed to a lot of RSS feeds. I read a lot of blogs, and somebody was talking about it. I thought I should make a podcast on this because I have my personal experience with this growing up. Growing up, I was a lazy kid and my mother used to struggle with this. My mother was a very active lady in the house. My father was relatively lazier than my mom, but my mother was very active in the house. Hardly would wake up early morning at 4:30 and would not sleep till about 12:30 at the night. And she did that relentlessly for years and years and years. In fact, I had my mother on my radio show in 2014, right after she was diagnosed with cancer. And that she said, I used to work all day, throughout the day, there were 18 members in the family, extended families to cook for them and clean the house. And all that was difficult back in the 1950s.

Back in India, it’s hard for her. So she brings that part of her agenda, and I’m born. And I’m growing up like, why are you Lazy, Lazy, Lazy. That impression she carried for a very long amount of time, I was not lazy. But the programming that I was lazy, is still there in my mind. So every time I’m not able to do something, or I’m not able to do something to a level of perfection, then I question myself, you know, “am I lazy?” Did laziness come in again? All that. So these days, every time I see somebody who is extremely successful, or they’re doing something that is incredible, amazing. I asked myself, am I lazy? Why am I not doing that? Maybe I am. And when I do that, my mind shifts from being a lazy fellow to a motivated individual. So the question is, Am I lazy? Every time I see anybody who’s successful, or anytime I see something that is big, something incredible that is happening, maybe with people maybe outside? And then I asked that question to myself. If they are doing this, they’re successful, then am I lazy? Because I also have the same access to the same stuff, I have access to the same knowledge, same information, and same insights as to why should I not be there where they are not in any negative way. I’m saying that in a positive way, I tell myself in a positive manner. So I asked the question, Am I lazy? Because that’s the programming from my childhood, right? Am I lazy? And I say, No, I’m not. So I need to do what they did. So I go back, I get that motivation, I go back into action. Hopefully, this is helpful, then I have a routine that I work with. And I talked about routines a lot on this podcast, I have a morning routine, I have an afternoon routine, and I don’t keep those routines as tight as possible. I should be, but I don’t. And I keep on losing my cadence. But then I try it as much as I can. When I give my best effort, one of the elements of having a tight routine is a to-do list. And I talked about to-do lists here also. The problem with to-do lists is sometimes you wake up in the morning and you don’t have energy, you know, things don’t fall in place. You’re not mechanical, it’s hard to go through the to-do list and get things done.

Well, when that happens, it happens a lot. I go do the opposite. And I suggested you do the opposite, too. So every time you have something planned, and you some hot feeling, not motivated enough, maybe you’re bordering laziness, procrastination, something like that. Go to the opposite. The opposite for me is cleaning the kitchen, cleaning the garage, shredding papers, all that that’s the opposite. And those things are not there on the to-do list. So my to-do list is usually something where I’m creating something. So this podcast He’s on the to-do list. Going to the gym this morning later is on the to-do list. But what is not on the to-do list is cleaning the kitchen, cleaning the garage, and I wake up in the morning and I don’t want to deal with my gym or the podcast or lazy. And I somehow go do the opposite. And what I’ve done is I’ve gone from a creation mode to a simplification mode. So simplification being, I need to start the papers, I need to clean the garage, I need to clean the kitchen that has to happen. And even though they directly do not have any significant impact on my monetary life or on my other aspects of life, they do contribute towards simplification. So I go from creation to simplification, if I feel lazy, whenever I’m feeling lazy. The next one is I read this somewhere, and I’m not sure where somebody made a point, I think this is on economy.com I believe or maybe entrepreneur.com not sure somebody said that “laziness is a way of structuring life.” And, and I was like, wow, makes sense.

Some people do structure laziness. In fact, all of us do. And I’ll tell you something interesting. And I was thinking about this, and you let me know what you think about this, if my thinking is right or wrong, or correct me on this, which is we do structure laziness, we go once a year on vacation, that is structured laziness. So you say I’m going to go for a week or two weeks on vacation, and I will take my laptop, I’m not going to do anything, I’ll start everything down. That’s structured laziness. Structured laziness is proven to create amazing results, people come back charged, people come back aligned, and people come back with energy as a result of structural laziness. So whether you call it recharging yourself, or recouping yourself, whatever the word that you want to use, the activity is nothing but not doing anything, and you’re not doing anything, to come back to do something. And usually, you do things much more bigger. As a result of that a lot of the time and my mother did this to us from growing up in India, I’ve seen this to where people have used laziness as a synonym for not being productive. So that part is not true anymore. So you could be productive, and still, be lazy. That’s the point. So it’s okay for you to daydream. Do nothing, plan something big, and work on it? When you feel like working on it, I’ve done that. And there are incredible results that have come out of that kind of an approach. So it’s okay to be lazy. That’s the case in point here on today’s podcast, but as long as you are structuring your laziness, as long as you are not being unproductive, as a result of being lazy, laziness is okay. But laziness as a trait is not good. That has to be dealt with.

I was on a call recently, with an individual who said, you know, all my life I wanted somebody to push me to do something. You don’t want to be there. You don’t want anybody to push you. If you are you have to graduate. If not, then you don’t know invisible you’ll fall into some form of laziness, which is hard to get rid of from the system even today. See, back in the day. This is because some elders around me said that I’m lazy. It still continues to be there. Even though even though tonight. I can’t prove it to my mom, because she’s gone. You know, Mom, look, I went all the way to the lazy like, I can’t prove it to her. I can’t but she knew, as years went by days went by I started growing up, I started, I came to America. I started doing businesses, I did whatever I did. The progression she has seen she saw before she passed away. And she did tell me that you are not lazy anymore.

Okay. That’s all for now. Hopefully, today’s podcast episode inspires you and motivates you? Hopefully, it does. And tomorrow, I’ll come back. I have a question. In fact, that just came in today, but I couldn’t get it into the podcast today. But we’ll come back tomorrow. We’ll talk about a question which is very interesting. We’ll talk about that tomorrow. Okay, so that’s all for now. Wherever you are, be safe, and I’ll talk to you. Bye now.