My advice to someone who wants financial freedom, I have a conversation regularly with people who ask me, how do you get rich? How do you get financial freedom? How do you get there? Well, let’s talk about that today.
Who am I? I’m Gregg from Stop the Grind. I want you to stop grinding away from meaningless things and start your life.
Now, if you’d like to pick up a Stop the Grind shirt, here is a link https://stopthegrind.co/store so you can pick up your cool Stop the Grind shirt reminding you to stop the grind and start your life.
Let’s get into today’s topic of how do you become financially free? What is my advice to somebody who wants financial freedom? All right, so first I ask all the time, why do you want financial freedom? What is your reason behind it? Some people just have vague ideas of they think it’d be cool to be rich and they think financial freedom is being rich. Some people have more noble reasons and sometimes I doubt that their noble reasons are really their answer, but it makes them feel better.
They may say they want to donate more to charity or have more time available to volunteer. So there’s a host of those reasons. And then other people tend to have the real reasons.
I’m tired of being stressed about money. I’m tired of working nonstop, grinding away and seemingly getting nowhere. I have a family or kids that I want to make sure are safe and secure.
There’s so many reasons to why somebody may want to be financially secure, why they may want financial freedom. But what is your reason? You need to answer this question because without this answer, you essentially have no goal to get there, no reason to get there. And on your journey, you’re going to burn out and quit without having a good reason.
Once you have your reason of why you want financial freedom, write it down. Think about this for a few days. Look at it over and over and really dig into is this really why you want financial financial freedom? All right, now that you have your goal or your reason written down, we need to ask the next question.
What is the amount of money you need to have financial freedom? Now, this is a two part question. Is it that you want passive income coming in? Or is it that you want a certain amount of money in the bank or investments, which will then generate a certain amount of money coming in? You can answer this question both ways. Ultimately, you need money coming in or you need money available.
So let’s reverse engineer this part a little bit. How much money do you want to spend on a regular basis? What is your budget? Now, that begs another question. If you don’t have a budget, you need one.
You need to know what these numbers look like. So what is the money you need available? If you’re planning to just have a big savings account and spend it down, well, you need to have enough money to last you essentially the rest of your life at this current spending rate. The other side of that is how much money do you need to have coming in? Well, if you put your money in investments or have other forms of passive income, how much money do you need coming on a regular basis to have that financial freedom that you’re looking for? And again, this number can’t be arbitrary.
With an arbitrary number, it’s hard to really hit that goal because you feel like you’re kind of aimlessly moving towards something that you don’t know why. So what is that number? Now we need to reverse engineer this. How are you going to get there? This is where we need to get real because this is where most people stop and quit the whole thing of they say they want financial freedom.
They say they want the most arbitrary number that’s used is one million dollars in the bank, but then they put no plan in action to get there. So all it is is wanting it, but you’re not willing to take any of the action, any of the steps to get there. Now, my number one answer on how to get there is going to be do a side hustle and start your own business.
Starting your own business is generally the fastest way to make money, but you have to start it well and run it well. And we have a lot of videos on this channel about that. So go look those up if this is the path you’re planning to take to get there.
But if you want one million dollars in 10 years, that means you need to be putting away $100,000 a year. How do you find an extra $100,000 a year to do this in 10 years? Maybe you want to do it in five. Well, now that’s $200,000 a year that we need to find to put away.
So if you’re going to start a business, what steps have you taken to start that business? That’s the answer I get most of the time. None. Well, you’re clearly not going to reach that goal if you don’t take the steps necessary to get there.
So what business are you going to start? I often get that blank stare again on this one. Well, we need to think through this. What are your skills? What are your talents? What are you passionate about? What do you want to do? That’s a good first step.
First, we need to figure out what it is that you love doing, that you’re passionate about, and that you’re willing to put in the work to get the reward. So you may need to take some time to circle around this a lot. Again, I have videos on this on this channel that’ll help you figure some of this out.
But you need to figure out what you’re passionate about, what you love doing, and how you’re going to go ahead and start this business. The next thing is, what have you done to do any learning towards starting this business? Again, many people have no answer here. Many people just waste away their time watching TV or doing meaningless things that have no future benefit.
So we want to start a business, we want to start a side hustle, we want to find more ways to make money, but we’ve done nothing to accomplish that. That needs to end today. You need to start working towards these goals.
So the first step that you need to take is you need to start educating yourself on what you need to do to get there. What you don’t know, you don’t know. So you need to fill in the gap and learn what you don’t know.
So start by reading. You can read physical books, you can read ebooks, and you can listen to audiobooks. They’re all great resources to start adding knowledge.
I’ve got some books that I strongly recommend on a regular basis. I will leave links in the description and I’ll leave links to the best deals you can find on those books so that you can get them at the best prices. Million Dollar Weekend is a great place to start.
This is going to help give you that mindset shift that you need. Go Giver, it’s another fantastic book. It’s going to help you understand how giving you get.
Work That Counts, again, this one will give you some more reasoning behind what you do. And Blue Ocean Strategy. These are four books that I really recommend you start with.
And if you’re not willing to put in the time to read books, you’re probably not willing to really push forward and actually reach any of your financial dreams of being financially free. So there’s a reality here, and this is where rubber meets the road, if you will. If you’re not willing to put in the work, you’re not willing to do what it takes to get financial freedom.
You may want financial freedom, but it generally won’t just fall in your lap. You’re going to need to put in effort to do so. So I really suggest you start by reading these four books, figuring out what it is that you’re going to do to get to that money, and make sure you figure out your plan to get there.
All right, stop wasting your time. Stop watching TV. Make sure you read.
The next thing is there’s podcasts. You can listen to podcasts while you’re driving. You can listen to podcasts in downtime.
There are some great podcasts around the topics that are similar to what you’re interested in doing. There are great podcasts on starting and running your business. Start listening to podcasts that are going to help fill your knowledge gap.
And then find other things to learn. You may need to learn something about basic accounting or how credit card processing works. Things that are going to be necessary for you for your business.
Figure out where to find that knowledge. The library can be a great resource. Again, books are a fantastic resource.
Podcasts are a fantastic resource. And community colleges often run some night classes on some basics where you don’t actually have to enroll in college, but they have like continuing education type things that you can just do as one-offs that will help fill in knowledge. The next thing that you need to do, the next advice that I give to somebody is you need to look at your friends.
Who are your friends? Because there is a lot of truth in you become like the five people you hang out with the most. Well, are those five people just wasting away their lives going nowhere? Well, you’re going to do the same thing. Or are you spending your time with people who have more knowledge than you, who are further ahead than you? That is going to push you to want to excel to the level they’re at.
Now, truthfully, I’m not saying you just eliminate all your friends and move on, but look at where you’re spending your time and investing your energy and who you hang out with matters. If you’re hanging out with people who want to go somewhere, who want to do something, who want that financial freedom and are pursuing it, you are going to do the same thing. It’s just natural.
It’s just the way it is. So be careful with who you hang out with, because who you hang out with is really going to affect how you get to your end bottom line here, whether or not you achieve financial freedom. And then the last thing on my list is you need to enjoy the journey.
Yes, we have a goal of achieving financial freedom. And yes, you can work hard to get there. But if you don’t enjoy what you’re doing to get there, you never will get there.
So make sure that what you’re doing, you’re enjoying it along the way. Make sure you find the fun in it. Make sure you take the reason behind it and make it fun, because if you’re just sweating away for a useless goal, that means nothing to you.
There’s no point anyway. So enjoy the journey. You can get there.
I know you can. Hey, if you need any help at all in this journey, go ahead and comment below. There’s also a link below where you can schedule some time with me where I will work all of this with you.
I am happy to help you in your journey to stop the grind and start your life.
Pick up some cool Stop The Grind. merch: https://stopthegrind.co/store
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Hey there,
Do you have questions? Do you want some extra help with starting your life, starting your business or side hustle? Let's talk about what's holding you back from starting your life. Click this link to schedule 30 minutes with me: https://calendar.app.google/BdZoJSLwp6NTDqDh7
I have a passion for helping you grow, start your own business, and find your side hustle.
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Gregg
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