Thank you so much to all of you who’ve applied so far.

I’ve been getting some amazing applications, and I’ll be personally reviewing each one.

In case you missed the last email, I’m going to take on a handful of students to help you set and achieve life changing 2023 goals.

If we work together, it will be for the entire year, so that we’re able to adjust when needed, to help fulfill the vision we map out together at the beginning of the year.

You will:

Do a 1 on 1 deep dive with me not just at the beginning of the year, but every quarter to review the quarter, and map out your next quarter together.

Speak with me on a video call every month to adjust your tactics and tweak strategy based on any temporary hurdles or roadblocks that come up.

Get access to the same spreadsheets I use to set and achieve goals, making execution of them much easier.

Get direct access to my own personal spreadsheets live, so you can see exactly what I’m doing on a weekly basis to achieve my own goals.

Here’s a few things I’ve done in the past:

• Poker Training Company: Created a 7 figure business with no previously existing platform(no email list, etc…) that in under 2 years already had 3,000+ paid monthly recurring subscribers
• Poker Media Company
• eCommerce store owner: Owned 21 separate eCommerce stores less than 2 years after starting my 1st
• ForeverJobless: Millions of website visits/podcast downloads as a part-time hobby
• Business Incubator: Helped take people from no idea, to a profitable business. Most people entered the Incubator without an idea of the business they would start. Six, seven and even eight figure businesses were created from this.
• Won a bodybuilding show in the physique division, within 18 months of being a scrawny dude that ‘had no idea how people get ripped’.
• Bought 300 properties in less than 18 months while writing a book and recovering from a health issue.
• Made $4 million profit on one stock investment using the basic principles of EV(expected value).

Most importantly I’ve learned to achieve aggressive goals without stress, and I personally still take 6+ weeks of vacation a year.

Not only do I have a habit of setting ‘unreasonable’ or ’unrealistic’ goals, and achieving them, I have a track record of helping others do the same.

When I created the Incubator that I used to do 5+ years ago, I limited the amount of students I took, yet despite the small student pool, students without a previous business have since exited for 6, 7, and even 8 figures.

With my personal coaching clients, I often help them identify and rip out limiting beliefs before we set what they previously would have considered an ‘unrealistic’ goal. Once their limits of reality change, we set a goal that would actually change their life and that they very much desire, that they previously hadn’t even considered as a real possibility. 

We then formulate a plan for accomplishing this goal, showing them it’s completely possible, and they often wake up each day more excited and energized than they have in years because what they really desire has become ‘realistic’ to them, some for the first time in their lives. They’d seen others accomplishing things like it, but had never really believed that possibility for themselves, and even if they had, finally came to the realization that they didn’t need to ‘wait’ anymore.

One perfect example of this is my coaching student Paul.

In 2020 I was dealing with some pretty bad health issues. So I wasn’t working on much, and wasn’t coaching anyone at the time.

Paul had sent me a couple emails asking if I would coach him, and finally after I asked more about what he was looking to accomplish, and on a day where I had a little energy for a change, I told him I’d take him on.

Paul was in his young 20s, and had a business that was making him around $10k per month.

In our first call together, Paul, like most people, gave me very realistic improvements he’d like to make from where he was at. I can’t remember the exact number he was shooting for, but it might have been something along the lines of growing his $10k/month, to $15k/month.

I asked him why.

As I drilled him on the real reason behind these new, very realistic goals, we discovered the same thing I often do when working with new students.

He didn’t truly believe what he actually wanted was possible.

I told him to forget what being realistic looks like, and to tell me what he actually wanted.

It took some time, but he opened up to things, experiences and numbers that really lit him up.

Once we had the real stuff, we worked from there.

Most people are working from ‘false’ dreams, attempting to set and achieve goals from that place and wonder why they’re not excited to jump out of bed and work on them.

With Paul, as with any of my students, unless this is unlocked, our success together will be limited because you wouldn’t be working towards what you truly want deep down. 

Once we determined the net worth he’d need to achieve his goals, it was obvious his current decisions didn’t align to create that reality.

Expected value(EV) MUST be considered.

So we adjusted the decisions so that the end result not only became a possibility, but a likely reality.

I’ve been working together with Paul for almost 2 years now, for much of that time as my exclusive client, due to focusing on my health, my real estate bet, and my book.

In our time working together, Paul went from making $10k per month, to scaling and exiting that business for a large amount of money(keeping the amount private for Paul) while starting other profitable companies.

Now, in his mid 20s, he’s in a completely different financial situation than less than 2 years ago, and more importantly he keeps raising his level of what’s ‘realistic’ by very quickly realizing through his own success that his previous definitions of reality were an illusion.

He didn’t need to take huge risks, he simply adjusted his decisions to match the desired end result, and we formed a plan that allowed for that.

Now he spends time deciding how he wants to allocate all the capital he’s built up, while analyzing his next bet, one that will be significantly larger than any he’s attempted before, not just because he’s changed his reality of what’s possible, but because he now has significant time and money available which enable him take much bigger chances and go after much bigger rewards because of his very different financial situation.

Not only has Paul achieved insane results using the same exact goal setting/accomplishment strategies I use, but he watched in real time as I made my real estate bet and shared with him what would happen at each stage of the bet and why. He watched adjustments I made based on changes my competitors were making, or other new data that would change the bet.

So he was able to deepen his own understanding of the decision making behind the strategy and the accomplishment of a very aggressive goal in a very short time period not just by knowing what I was up to in real time as I executed my own goals, but by being able to ask me questions as to why I was making the decisions I was at each step.

Some common things I hear/see

“What if I’m already good at goal setting but I just can’t seem to get the results I want?”

Your decisions either limit, or create the possibility of a certain end result.

If you are missing or miscalculating even just one simple ingredient, you may not end up with what you want.

Let’s pretend you tried to bake a cake.

If you forgot just 1 ingredient it might taste like crap, or not even look like a cake at all. 

Your desired financial situation, or a specific goal you have works the same. 

You can’t forget a key ingredient. 

On the surface things may seem like they’ll turn out amazing, but if something is off and you don’t catch it, you’re not going to have the end result you envision.

“I’m good at executing but bad at strategy”

That’s why we’re going to map out your entire 2023 together, so if something you’re planning does not match up with where you want to be, we can catch it NOW. 

You don’t want to wait to realize after 2023 is over that the strategy was no good.

You tell me where you want to go, and we’ll map it out TOGETHER.

What if something changes which affects the strategy we come up with

Something almost definitely will change. In the game of money or business, things change all the time.

That’s why we talk on a regular basis throughout the year, to adjust to changes.

“So, we’ll be able to see not only your personal goals, but what you’re doing each month to hit them?”

Yes.

Each quarter I map out new quarterly goals, what I think will need to happen to achieve each new quarterly goal, and the actions I need to be taking each week to hit them.

I’m going to open up my tracking document to students I work with. 

You’ll know what I’m working on each week.

You’ll see in real time through the entire year what strategy I come up with and execute, and not only that, the adjustments I make as the strategies and tactics work or don’t work.

In January for example you’d know what I’m going to be doing the 2nd week of March, and you can ask in real time why I’m doing X instead of Y. This way you will more deeply understand the strategy and decision making behind it, which will help you quickly adapt a similar mindset and approach while accomplishing your own goals.

You get no points for hours worked. All the ‘points’ come from ending up at your desired destination.

You only get there if you map out a plan ahead of time where that is your expected result.

If someone is blindly ‘hustling their face off’ as has become so popular, and doesn’t stay focused on optimal decision making, they’ll be very unlikely to accomplish anything significant in any relatively small time period.

“I have so many things on my plate it’s hard to know what to prioritize”

It’s easier when you know what you really want and that it’s possible for you to have it. That’s why I’m going to work with you to edit your life so you get it.

‘What if I’m not sure if X is possible for me’

Then it’s important we fix that perspective and find that part of you that you can’t even access due to limiting beliefs. 

Many people doubt their own ability to accomplish certain things, despite knowing that other people are out there accomplishing things of that level or greater.

There is no magic or secrets for those out there accomplishing things you’d like to achieve. If someone has a belief that there is, THAT is what is holding that person back.

This idea must be eliminated before the possibility opens up for you.

If the silliness that you can’t have what you want is eliminated, THEN you can apply specifics to your life that help you achieve what it is that you want without the giant roadblock of whatever limiting belief boulder was sitting in your way.

If you fail to eliminate that false belief before starting, the maximum you can achieve is only up until that boulder.

And you’ll continue operating a relatively uninspired life, hearing whispers from somewhere inside yourself knowing you’re capable of more.

Starting to achieve more in life is not complicated. Don’t get it confused, there is plenty of hard work.

But it is not complicated. 

It feels complicated because you’re attempting to use the same playbook you’ve been using for the life you want.

And that playbook is the same one that’s given you the life you have, which you already know isn’t what you want, or at least that you want a significantly improved version of.

Think about it.

Want a completely new life with the same exact playbook you’ve been using?

That makes no sense. That’s not just complicated, that’s impossible. You already know the outputs your current playbook is generating.

You need a new playbook specifically tailored to you and the life you’re trying to achieve, not just some generic ‘you can do it’ nonsense, because you can’t with a crap playbook.

With a better one, things become easier.

Hard work.

But easy game.

“I often get stuck and can’t figure out what the best decision is”

Most people do.

This is super common. 

How do you think that’d change with me in your corner? 

Analyzing and figuring out what the optimal decision is, is a game I enjoy better than just about anything.

Sending Soon

If you’re interested in working together, I’d love for you to hear from someone working with me in the same capacity right now, so you can get a better sense of what it’s like. In a couple days I’ll shoot you a video so you’re able to listen to their personal experience.

Applications Won’t Be Open Long

I’ll be selecting people to work with from the applications and sending out invites this week.

If you’ve completed an application and been accepted, you’ll be notified soon.

If you want to apply but haven’t applied yet, now’s the time. I’d love to see your application to hear how I can help.

-Billy

I haven’t publicly coached in more than half a decade.

Even privately I’ve said no to almost every inquiry, due to working on my own stuff the last 5-6 years.

2017 was the last time I publicly did any coaching.

And now for the first time in 5 ½ years, I’m going to open up some spots for coaching.

Why?

Because I miss it.

And now after successfully placing the real estate bet I wanted to place, along with the draft of my book being done, I find myself with the time to help a few of you.

I love helping people solve how to achieve their desired goals.

Getting to help committed people change their lives feels like play to me.

I solve money, life and business puzzles for fun.

And I want some new puzzles!

Some people play video games. Some people golf. Some people collect stuff.

Me? I love figuring out how to achieve a desired result, and doing it in a desirable timeframe. And as or more importantly, helping people to get clarity on how to make it a possibility. Exposing them to paradigm shifts when needed to finally get the ‘aha’ moment they’ve been seeking.

–

Want to achieve extremely aspirational goals for yourself and have an incredibly transformational year in 2023?

Then it’s important to realize aiming to make small improvements over where you are would be a hindrance to that.

Incremental improvements would be uninspiring for both of us, and likely a waste of a year, despite that being how most people do their goals.

Small improvements = much of the same

Transformational results = life changing, and a way more exciting way to get up every morning

I want to work with you if you know you have the potential to be in a completely different place than where you currently sit, and could use my help in finding blind spots that are keeping you from doing just that.

There’s plenty of people out there who can help if you want to make some small improvements in your life.

People work with me if they want a different life.

I have a track record of not just getting desirable results for myself, but a track record in helping others achieve very desirable results, due in part to my love of simplifying things that are considered complex. 

It’s common for people who work with me to have incredible life transformations.

The ability to create extreme success and/or your desired life is not some esoteric idea. It’s completely available for you.

Life change is often too small of a goal. 

Many want a new life entirely.

They just don’t believe it’s possible.

But it is.

And getting there doesn’t have to involve some deep level of complexity.

It is a simple removal of what’s getting in the way, and adding those things that would completely change what becomes possible.

If blind spots are keeping you from seeing either, you remain in the dark to what needs to be added or subtracted. One of our first goals working together is to remove the blind spots by shining a light on what needs to be added or subtracted, and why.

Simplicity over complexity.

Complexity is a story the mind gives us for why we can’t have something and why others can. It gives us a reason not to figure out what the missing pieces to the puzzle are.

When the reality is you are as close as you could ever imagine, but walking through the door requires knowing where that door is, and removing any obstacles blocking the path, versus walking through the wrong door and spending many more years of your life on a path that doesn’t serve you or offer you the life you want.

Remove the thought altogether that it has to be complex. That false belief is keeping you from even seeking the simpleness of the solutions.

Part of the false assumption that it has to be difficult comes from assuming others have access to something you don’t have. Some ‘secret’.

Or the myth that you need years or decades of personal experience at something before you can start having massive results. 

That’s silly, and not the case for myself and many others who are achieving very desirable results in relatively short time periods.

Experience and knowledge are transferable. 

Extract experience from someone else who can save you a massive amount of valuable time.

I remember when I wanted to get in great shape. I could have googled articles and watched videos on how to do it and come up with a plan that may or may not have worked, and I wouldn’t have really known for a while if it was going to work if I attempted to do it on my own. It would have been a ‘free’ way to do it, but I don’t know how great the results would have been and I don’t know how long it would have taken.

Instead, I hired a world champion bodybuilder, mapped out what I wanted, and got shredded in 6 months. The year after, I entered a bodybuilding show in the physique division and won the thing! A completely ‘unrealistic’; result, in a very short time period.

Those results wouldn’t have been possible if I tried to slowly learn it all on my own. I would have been scratching my head years later wondering why I didn’t look like the guys I wanted to look like. 

So I worked with someone who had results I wanted so I could tap into their experience and knowledge and shortcut my timeframe for results by YEARS.

Pretend I decided to take on the goals you want. Let’s say I had no experience in the specific area you were wanting to achieve, and all the sudden I take on your goals.

I can confidently tell you I would achieve ‘unrealistic’ results, even if I had little to no experience in that specific area.

Why?

Because my ability to accomplish comes from understanding how to make decisions that lead to the desired results I want to achieve.

Not from the significantly less valuable variable of industry specific experience. That can quickly be acquired by understanding what is most and least relevant. That’s nothing but data. Easy to acquire data.

Data is what enables decision making.

Show me someone with a bunch of data and a lack of great decision making, and I’ll show you someone a high level decision maker will smoke all day long(no matter how much ‘experience’ that person has). Because all the decision maker has to acquire is the data. The ‘experienced’ person would have to figure out how to start being an optimal decision maker. It’s not complicated who’s going to win that battle.

Becoming an expert at decision making makes it feel like you’re competing against children since so few do it well, and that skill would enable you to continue setting and achieving ‘unrealistic’ goals the rest of your life.

Who Is This For?

This is for you if you not only want to make a big leap in your goal setting and goal achievements for 2023, but want to maximize the growth rate of your net worth in a much smaller time period than is possible for you right now, so that the goals we line up and knock down for you in 2023 are a domino for your desired life. It is important to connect them so that your net worth progresses at a rate that would be likely to produce your desired results in a desirable timeframe.

Many people don’t properly account for the timeline and set yearly goals in isolation from their ultimate life goals. This is a ginormous blunder in goal setting and creating the life you desire.

I want to simplify how to have what you want in life, and eliminate the fallacy of the need for complexity.

You should be able to predict much of your success. But you can’t if you lack a plan that gets you there. In our first session together one of the things we’ll make sure is that the plan we map out for you includes your desired results as an expected result.

At the beginning of 2023, I could tell you what the end of 2023 will look for me already. If I wrote my year end review at the beginning of the year, it would look eerily similar to what the actual results end up being, give or take. I already know what’s going to happen because of the way I’m structuring my strategy, along with the specific structure of my days/weeks/months to ensure the new reality I wish to create.

This new reality matches up with my desired longer term reality for the life that I desire to create.

This clarity brings a peace that’s not possible if you’re always running around in circles wondering if the path you’re on will even produce what you’re wanting to produce. That sounds stressful!

It has been common for me to have a session with someone who shares their short and long term goals, and I quickly show them that it is not even mathematically possible to achieve their longer term goals in their current path. Much of my effort is not just helping you strategize and pick optimal paths, but in making sure you avoid suboptimal ones that seem good on the surface.

Starting each year with a clear strategy on not only where I’m going but that the planned actions I’m about to execute will likely get me there, creates incredible mental freedom, and clarity.

I want the same for you.

So much so, that if we work together I’m going to show you exactly what will happen with my own 2023 goals, show you why I know it will happen by openly sharing my strategy and tactics, and let you literally see my weekly/monthly progress the entire year so you can more deeply understand how and why it’s happening, to make it even easier for your own goal achievement implementation.

So, if you’ve seen me post quarterly or yearly goals, the few of you who will be working with me will know not only exactly how I intend to accomplish them, but see in real time my progress/tracking towards that specific result on a weekly basis. You’ll be peeking at my paper during the entire ‘test’.

And, you’ll have direct access to me so if you have a question on why or how I’m doing something, or have a question on a specific tactic or strategy you see me implementing, you’ll have an answer. And you’ll get to see in real time what’s working, what’s not, and how I’m adjusting to each.

We’ll be working together throughout the entire 2023 year.

You and I will start by mapping out your entire 2023 strategy together. A custom plan to create your desired results.

I want to make sure you’re going in the right direction to make your goals a reality, so not only will you have a blueprint for which to own your year, but to more deeply understand the ‘method behind the madness’ I’ll share my own goals and strategies with you so you can see the exact actions I plan to take to achieve my own goals.

What used to seem complex or ‘impossible’, will start making complete sense as to why some can achieve ‘unbelievable’ goals, and why the rest of people continue on with false beliefs that it’s ‘not possible.’

We’ll bridge that gap so you start off 2023 with clarity.

So besides mapping out the best year you’ve ever had, we’ll spend time getting to know each other, so that I can more deeply understand how to be of help to you through the year.

We’ll set you up to author the life you actually want.

Then we’ll get to filling in the pages of that book.

I’ll be giving you access to the exact same spreadsheets I use to track every goal, and every action related to those goals to simplify the process of staying on pace, and to be able to quickly correct course if off pace.

Every quarter you and I will be doing a 1 on 1 deep dive on zoom to review your quarter, and to map out your next quarter together, so that we continue progress towards accomplishing your 2023 goal as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Every month in between those deep dives, you’ll have the opportunity to hop on zoom calls with me as well, so if temporary hurdles or roadblocks come up that give you pause or that you could use feedback on, you’ll be able to connect with me so we can adjust tactics or tweak strategy based on the new information, so that you don’t waste time in non-action and can stay on pace for your goals.

We’ll work/play together to create this whole new reality you seek.

You will find yourself quickly learning a new way to make decisions, and uncover what will likely be life changing ways of seeing the world.

Why people hire me

Most of you reading this likely have known me for a while from reading the blog or listening to old podcast episodes, but here’s a sample of some things I’ve done:

• Poker Training Company: Created a 7 figure business with no previously existing platform(no email list, etc…) that in under 2 years already had 3,000+ paid monthly recurring subscribers
• Poker Media Company
• eCommerce store owner: Owned 21 separate eCommerce stores less than 2 years after starting my 1st
• ForeverJobless: Millions of website visits/podcast downloads as a part-time hobby
• Business Incubator: Helped take people from no idea, to a profitable business. Most people entered the Incubator without an idea of the business they would start. Six, seven and even eight figure businesses were created from this.
• Won a bodybuilding show in the physique division, within 18 months of being a scrawny dude that ‘had no idea how people get ripped’.
• Bought 300 properties in less than 18 months while writing a book and recovering from a health issue.
• Made $4 million profit on one stock investment using the basic principles of EV(expected value).

The point of setting a goal is not just for what you wish to achieve, but to do so in desirable timeframes. Doing so in desirable timeframes increases the years you are able to live your desired life.

I set a goal last year to buy 100 properties. I bought 200.

This year my goal was 50 properties and to finish writing my book. I bought 100 and have written almost two already.

I’m doing this while taking 6+ weeks of vacation a year.

As or more importantly, I’m doing this without running around with my head cut off, stressed out like many entrepreneurs. There’s no point in getting there if you’re arriving or living in a state like that.

These things are not happening by accident.

And they’re not happening in a way that couldn’t happen for you.

This matters a lot to have you understand this.

Anything I am able to do, is fully available for you, as I’m not using some complex method to achieve anything I’m doing. Quite the opposite, I’m breaking down anything I desire into its simplest components, which simplifies and brings clarity to everything.

The same way it would for you.

One of the biggest blunders that keep so many from achieving the life they want

“Our plans miscarry because they have no aim. When a man does not know what harbor he is heading for, no wind is the right wind.” – Seneca

We can figure out which way to go if we know exactly where you want to end up. 

It’s nothing but an equation that can be solved. 

We don’t have to guess, we can find answers to determine which routes get us there, and which ones don’t.

But to be able to customize a specific path for your own specific financial goals, we need to know what we’re solving for. We need to know your desired end result.

Your desired end result is the life you want to live.

It will cost a certain amount of money to fund this future life. That is the number we’ll solve for to formulate a plan to ensure you get there.

Several routes could theoretically work and get you to your goal, so if you’ve picked a route that could work it’s not ‘wrong’… but it might not be optimal

The path that most people choose to reach their goal, or desired life, is usually not optimal.

When people are looking for a route that might get them where they want, they’ll usually come to an answer… but it’s often to the wrong question. 

So many mistakenly go down that rabbit hole only to look up years later wondering why they are not much closer to living the life they desired- it’s because they solved for the wrong thing.

There is rarely a ‘wrong’ answer.

But there’s often a wrong question.

To come to an answer that’s an optimal route for you, you must think about the question you’re solving for.

If you have the right answer to the wrong question, it can be much more dangerous than getting the wrong answer to the right question, because in a short time you’d realize and fix it, where the other route you’d have no reason to fix if succeeding at a route that’ll never get you where you actually desire to end up.

Have you stopped for directions to make sure you’re going to end up where you want?

Some people think: 

‘I don’t have time to stop for directions. My favorite guru says I need to hustle my face off!’

They fail to realize that they’re actually delaying their path to their end goal because they’re often ‘hustling their face off’ in the wrong direction.

“It’s like eating soup with a fork. You keep busy but you stay hungry.”

It’s like you’re on a road trip and say “”we’re making great time!” but you’ve been driving the wrong way the whole trip. 

You’d be making great time for NEVER achieving your desired life.

“Velocity and speed are different things. Speed is the distance traveled over time. I can run around in circles with a lot of speed and cover several miles that way, but I’m not getting anywhere. Velocity measures displacement. It’s direction-aware.

A lot of people think in terms of one dimension (speed). Almost all of those people are passed by people who think in multiple dimensions (velocity).

Think of it this way: I want to get from New York to L.A. Speed is flying circles around Manhattan, and velocity is hopping on a direct flight from JFK to LAX.”

… “Then you need to distinguish between tasks that offer a lot of speed and those that offer velocity.” – Shane Parrish

Getting advice to ‘hustle your face off’ might inspire you, but if you’re working lots of hours in the wrong direction, you have speed, not velocity.

Someone who takes time to think logically about the optimal path to take, once they start making movement they’ll achieve velocity, very quickly bypassing the person who’s focused on speed.

Why I left a 6 figure job at 25

When I was 25 I decided to leave my six figure ‘job’ as a professional poker player.

Even though I was earning substantial income relative to peers my age, it was still a ‘job’ with limited upside and leverage.

My goal wasn’t to have more money or success relative to others my age. That’s a foolish game to play. 

I wanted to set up my desired life, and I wanted to do it relatively quickly so I could actually live it and enjoy it versus just dreaming about it and waiting for it to magically come some day.

So despite others thinking I was crazy to give up that income, I knew I had to make a change if I actually wanted to achieve the life I wanted. So I knew I’d need to either disattach my time from my income and/or make a substantial enough amount of money to where the investment returns exceeded the costs of my desired life.

I needed to avoid climbing the wrong hill.

Climbing the wrong hill

There’s a concept called hill climbing that Chris Dixon described well:

“Imagine you are dropped on a random spot on a hilly terrain, where you can only see a few feet in each direction(assume it’s foggy or something). The goal is to get to the highest hill.

… At any given moment, take a step in the direction that takes you higher. The risk with this method is if you happen to start near the lower hill, you’ll end up at the top of that lower hill, not the top of the tallest hill.

…But the lure of the current hill is strong. There is a natural human tendency to make the next step an upward one.” – Chris Dixon

Part of the actual definition of hill climbing is: 

‘starts with an arbitrary solution to a problem, then attempts to find a better solution by making an incremental change to the solution…’

And when we look at the definition of arbitrary: ‘based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system.’

Hill climbing makes it ‘easy to find an initial solution, but will likely be very poor compared to the optimal solution’.

Usually people quickly find a solution to a problem, and stop the search and go down the suboptimal road versus taking more time to find a solution to THE problem, which would lead them down an optimal road.

They mistakenly have the thought process of:

“Well this is clearly better than where I was before… so this must be a good route- I’ll do that!”

Better does not mean optimal, or wise. 

Improving one variable in an equation that doesn’t produce the result you want means do NOT go with that plan.

If you want to achieve financial independence or a large financial goal in a relatively short time frame, you need to avoid climbing the wrong hill, because eventually you’ll have to start over on the right hill anyways, so you’re just delaying what you have to do.

If you already realize that you’re on the wrong hill- why spend more time trying to get to the top? 

It’s backwards.

You use up your finite resource of time to reach a place you know you don’t want to be.

The more time you spend on the wrong hill, means less time on the right hill which means less chance of achieving what you actually want, especially in any sort of desirable timeframe.

As silly as it is, that’s how almost everyone does it. 

Look:

You have a dream life.

You have a number that gets you there.

If you know these two things you’re already farther than most people.

But the mind works in a funny way. It has to be well managed- by YOU. 

So let’s say you tell me:

“I need $3m to live the life I want”.

Your brain incorrectly tries to solve this problem by saying:

“I need to make more money”.

Back to what we discussed in solving a similar problem…

Let’s say an opportunity comes up where you can make more money, and you think to yourself:

“Well I know I need to make more money, and doing this will increase my income… YES, I’m going to do this!”.

Instead of stepping back and asking: “does this route get me to my desired goals, in my desired timeframe?”, which your brain doesn’t ask. 

Your brain sees the answer to a similar problem and tries to solve for that. “It’s offering more money… and I need more money to hit my goal.”

It’s operating using the wrong inputs. 

You’re solving for the wrong thing. 

And so you blindly follow the wrong path instead of doing a quick mathematical analysis that would prove it’s not a good path for your goal.

You’d feel like you were winning short term, but long term you’d take a giant loss.

You’d blindly climb the wrong hill when it’s very easy to realize that hill does not get you to the mountaintop you desire. 

uNINTENDED RESULTS OF A MISPROGRAMMED SYSTEM

‘In seeking the wrong goal, the system obediently follows the rule and produces its specified result- which is not necessarily what anyone actually wants.”

“The trap: seeking the wrong goal

System behavior is particularly sensitive to the goals of feedback loops. If the goals- the indicators of satisfaction of the rules- are defined inaccurately or incompletely, the system may obediently work to produce a result that is not really intended or wanted.” -Thinking in Systems

What is your number? The number that will provide the life you want. 

All you need to do is make sure your plan is matched up with that so we can ensure accomplishment of that life.

Again, you shouldn’t have a money goal in mind, until you know the life you’d like to live.  Once you know that, figure out what that life will cost you. 

‘One of the most powerful ways to influence the behavior of a system is through its purpose or goal. That’s because the goal is the direction-setter of the system… if the goal is defined badly, if it doesn’t measure what it’s supposed to measure; if it doesn’t reflect the real welfare of the system, then the system can’t possibly produce a desirable result. Systems, like the three wishes in the traditional fairy tale, have a terrible tendency to produce exactly and only what you ask them to produce. Be careful what you ask them to produce.’ – Thinking in Systems

You must set a goal where the end result of producing that gets you exactly where you want to be.

Most people falsely assume their goal is money when money is just currency that’s exchanged for whatever your goal really is.

What do we want? X. 

Does the route you’re currently on get you there?  

If no, you must choose a new path that gets you there.

Or

You must change what you want. 

Either the route you’re on, or the thing you want must change. 

And to top it off, you must not forget about arguably the most overlooked variable:

What is your timeline?

Because even if you were theoretically on a route that would successfully bring you the result you desired(which most people are definitely not), you might produce a positive result, but not in the timeline you’d desire.

If that result comes in 20 years and you had visions of living this desired life in 3, again you must change one of the variables.

You must either change your path, change what you want, or change the timeline you’re okay with accomplishing this in.

But again, at least one variable MUST change.

If you’re not on a path that gets you where you want in the timeline you want, and you don’t change one of the variables, you will produce unintended results with your misprogrammed system.

At any major decisions and on a regular basis, you should be asking yourself:

Does this help me accomplish my desired life?

If you find yourself thinking, ‘no but it’s more money than before!’… all that means is it’s taking you away from your desired result.

As Peter Drucker said, “What gets measured, gets managed”, but the trap with that is if you’re measuring the wrong things, you won’t end up anywhere close to where you desire.

Most people measure for short term income, and then feel bamboozled when they realize that optimizing for that suboptimal variable will never get them to their desired end result in any sort of reasonable timeline.

Does this surprise you… that your bets, uncalculated, lead you to a place you don’t want to be? 

It shouldn’t.

You are exactly where you should be based on all of your past decisions. 

It is your expected destination, even if YOU didn’t expect it.

Most people don’t know what’s important on a daily basis so they do what gives them the most short term reward, inadvertently going against the optimal strategy for their long term goals and what’s actually important to them. 

The price of the highest short term rewards are often at the sacrifice of the most +EV paths.

If you keep ‘winning’ like that, you’ll surely lose.

Most people mathematically can’t achieve their desired result in their current route, yet instead of changing one of the necessary variables that would get them there, they solve for a much less important variable as if that fixed the problem.

You want to avoid chasing the wrong number only because the right number was difficult to quantify for you.

MISGUIDED POSITIVE FEEDBACK LOOPS

Small progress on irrelevant variables confuse you into thinking it’s real progress towards your goal, when most people have forgotten the real goal altogether, drunk on the dopamine of improving at an unrelated goal.

“The art of being wise is knowing what to overlook” – William Blake

I’ve had several students in the past who were about to accept a big promotion, or enter into a business opportunity because they’d make more short term money, but when showed the math behind what they were about to do, quickly rejected these opportunities as they would have hindered, or completely obliterated their ability to hit their longer term goals.

They were significantly lower EV than was necessary for them to achieve their dream life. 

A lot of times the harder part isn’t picking a route that will help you reach your goal, but avoiding ones that seem good on the surface but are nothing but misguided positive feedback loops that do nothing but take you off course. 

No one will ever write home about the opportunities they passed up, but oftentimes that’s what actually made sure you stayed on course to ensure you achieved what you wanted. 

There’s something called “boiled frog syndrome,” from the old story that a frog put suddenly in hot water will jump right out, but if it is put into cold water that is gradually heated up, the frog will stay there happily until it boils.

When people are getting misguided positive feedback such as increasing income that won’t lead to a desired end result, it doesn’t seem like anything bad is happening, but your dream life is burning up. It’s just happening in a way that you don’t notice this is happening. It’s out of sight out of mind, so it never even gets your attention until it’s too late.

“In truth, outright failure is often preferable to mediocre success” – Positioning

Outright failure would make you realize you need corrective action immediately.

Mediocre success often disguises the fact that you NEED CORRECTIVE ACTION IMMEDIATELY.

EXPECTANCY THEORY

Don’t fall into the trap of setting low goals so you can hit them. Then you’re just going to be “successful” at hitting goals, but unsuccessful at life.

You’re robbing yourself.

There’s something called expectancy theory.

“According to the theory, three things must be in place for a person to have extreme and uncommon levels of motivation:

• You must believe the reward (the ‘WHY’) of a particular goal is important, meaningful, and compelling.
• You must believe that you know how (clear strategies/plans/people) to achieve your goal.
• You must believe that you can execute the plans, strategies, and pivoting involved in achieving the goal.” – Benjamin Hardy

Many people wonder why they spend life unmotivated and unfulfilled when the thing they’re working on won’t even get them the result they desire. The ‘reward’ as pointed out in point one, must be compelling. 

We’ll map out a gameplan to make sure your strategy lines up to hit it, but you need to set a goal you very much desire. Don’t set a lower goal because you think it’s more attainable or you won’t find yourself motivated enough to even pursue the lower goal, a goal which wouldn’t get you where you want anyways.

“Expectancy theory proposes that an individual will behave or act in a certain way because they are motivated to select a specific behavior over others due to what they expect the result of that selected behavior will be.” – Wikipedia

If we work together the expectations you have for yourself may quickly change because you will see what’s possible for you. Once this expectation of yourself has changed, that domino helps us to start knocking down the other ones, as they continue to fall to the ultimate domino of your ‘dream life’ comes into view.

Remember your goal and set your bets accordingly in a way where you’re mathematically expected to not only achieve that goal, but to do so in your desired timeframe.

If you can achieve the goal in 10 years, cool.

But if you can achieve it in 1, you get to live a much more desirable life for the next 9 years vs. just waiting to do it in a ‘realistic’ timeline.

A couple questions I received recently

Do we actually work directly with you or do we talk to a coach or customer service who works for you? Most people who teach online have people learn through videos or their staff?

You will be working directly with me.

Most people teaching online are attempting to enrich themselves, instead of others.

They are optimizing for their own success.

I am optimizing for your success.

Can we really predict where we’ll be a year from now?

Yes. I’ve done this for years.

I’ve done it with business.

I’ve done it with real estate.

I’ve done it with bodybuilding.

I’ll do it with books.

And as mentioned, when you work with me you’ll not only know my goals but my specific tactics I’ll use to achieve them, and watch me execute them on a weekly basis. So there will be no question as to how I’m achieving the ‘unrealistic’ goals I’ll be achieving, as you’ll be looking over my shoulder seeing exactly how I’m doing it in real time.

And this is exactly what I’ll be helping you do, but the added benefit of opening my entire playbook for you will show you there is nothing special I am doing to achieve ‘impossible’ goals. You will see the method behind the madness, and realize the only madness is not approaching your goals or life in this way.

Coming Soon

In the next few days I’ll share a story from Paul, who’s been doing this kind of work with me for almost 2 years. He’s the only student I agreed to work with in 2021. Not only did he watch in real time as I made my real estate bet and explained what would happen and why at each stage of the bet, but he’s achieved insane results following the same exact goal setting strategy that I use.

Applications Are Live Now

Applications will be competitive, so please keep this in mind as you fill it out because only a certain % of people will receive an invite.

This is due not only to the limited number of spots available, but because I only want to work with you if I think we can create significant results.

I am not optimizing for # of students. I am optimizing for the level of life change for the limited number of you I do work with.

If I think it’s a good fit, you’ll receive an invitation to work together soon.

The last time I offered coaching publicly the spots filled up very quickly, so if you’re going to apply, I’d recommend doing it now versus waiting:

I look forward to reading your application and learning about your journey of where you’ve been,  and your goals about where you’d like to go. And if it’s a match, looking forward to helping you get there.

-Billy

It’s amazing what you can get done if you eliminate all else except what you’re wanting to do.

Kobe Bryant had a concept he called editing your life.

Decide what you want and edit your life so it happens.

Take out the things that don’t get you there, and put in only the things that do.

Most people are not willing to edit their life, so their life stays relatively the same or at least nowhere near the life they desire because they aren’t willing to edit and cut out the unnecessary to guarantee their desired life.

Just about anytime in my life that I’ve done this, I’ve gotten unfathomable results.

Completely ‘unrealistic’ results, because I was willing to sacrifice what was ‘realistic’, and edit my life for a different result.

Once you realize what’s possible with a ‘life edit’, it makes it easier and easier to do it again the next time.

It’s like clicking ‘buy it now’ in your mind on what you want, knowing you’re absolutely acquiring it, and just waiting for it to be delivered.

You know because you’re willing to edit your life to receive exactly what you ordered, and you know when you edit your life for that, that’s exactly what happens.

Most people if they want a change make a little 5% change and don’t see results so they quit. 

“It didn’t work.”

Of course it didn’t work. You put in 5% more effort.

Technically it might have ‘worked.’ You may have improved by 5%, the results were just too tiny to even recognize because you made small changes instead of editing your life for what you wanted.

A small improvement is unlikely to produce anything that is life changing for you.

An edit of your life, would.

Many people are taking their current life, one that is not their desired life, and making small improvements. And somehow they’re surprised that the life they desire is not magically showing up. They’re operating off of a playbook that has proven NOT to produce desirable results. So working off the same playbook and implementing slight improvements, unsurprisingly, will not drastically change your life.

You know I love some math so let’s think about it like this:

Let’s pretend I’m up against a competitor in real estate, or a business, or a book, or whatever it is at the time.

Let’s pretend I have the same desire as them.

So we’re both going after the same type of goal.

We want X results.

Let’s pretend they take the average actions someone aiming for those results would take.

They’ll get whatever results you’d normally expect to get.

I will edit my life so I have at least 10x the thinking time available compared to my competition to solve the puzzle I’m trying to solve.

I don’t mean go work 10x more.

I push where my edge is(strategy/decision making), and eliminate things where I don’t have an edge.

So I’m not only getting a multiple return from having an edge in that area, but then I’m at least 10x’ing that variable.

So for an oversimplified example, if we say I have a 2x edge on strategy/decision making vs. my average competitor, I’m going to go edit my life and spend at least 10x as much time there as they are.

And to be clear I’m not even necessarily working more hours. I’m allocating hours to where my edge and/or where the leverage is, and eliminating hours where I have no edge and/or no leverage.

If we factor in that strategy is also where you get the leverage, you can easily add another 2x right there. Because if you’ve got a broken strategy and are ‘hustling your face off’, you’re very limited in what you can achieve and if up against a competitor who’s mapped out a great strategy, they will smoke you.

Now, it’d be overly simplified and not exactly how the math works to just take the 20x, and 2x it again because of the leverage, and get to 40x. Despite 2x leverage on strategy being conservative in my opinion, as it’s the domino for all of your actions.

Limited strategy, limited results from those actions.

You gain a ton of leverage by mapping out a strategy that solves for the puzzle you’re trying to solve for.

Most people don’t actually solve for the result they’re wanting to create.

They take an undesirable result, and attempt to make improvements to it, as insane as that is. 

So they end up with improved, undesirable results. Not their dream life.

Anyways, back to the math…

While we do open up the possibility to achieve 40x the results, it’d be more conservative to consider that time spent on strategy isn’t necessarily linear with results, and in a conservative estimate if we consider there will be a point where diminishing returns on strategic time come into play, let’s just use 2x instead of 10x, and we’d end up at 8x.

So, again with way oversimplified and conservative math I would enter into this bet expecting 8x the results as the average competitor. (I’d run an EV calculation if I wanted to calculate my actual expected results, I’m just using oversimplified math to explain the point)

You can expect the same for what you’re trying to achieve if you input more hours where you have an edge and/or leverage.

You’re just taking where your edge is and where the leverage is, and putting your time there.

You’re able to put your time there, because you eliminate all other distractions and places you don’t have an edge.

You map out a strategy that ensures your success, so that not only are you maximizing your time where you get the greatest returns, but you’re solving the puzzle ahead of time so you already know what to expect if you just do what is required.

Where is your edge? Where is your leverage? Where is your time?

If your competitor is spending their hours where they don’t have a big edge(most people), where they don’t have big leverage(most people), the equation is unlikely to produce a result that is extremely desirable.

Kobe wasn’t in the gym once a day, splitting his time with box out drills and watching film on rebounding.

He was often in the gym 2-3x a day, and obsessively focused on how to score on people.

Over 100 days dedicated towards improving, let’s say his average competitor is in the gym once a day, they’re getting 100 reps in.

Kobe would get roughly 250 reps in over the same time period.

And his reps were not like his competitors’ reps.

He was known for going at an insane pace during his workouts. Plus he’d go in with a plan mapped out knowing what he was trying to achieve over the 100 days.

So him improving at a large multiple of others who wanted to improve would not be unrealistic. 

Not to mention the fact that he obsessed about the game away from the court too, thinking about it nonstop to solve the puzzle. Further multiplying the rate of his improvement and edge over competition.

Maximization of hours in areas with edge or leverage.

If he did those things for a day or two, no one would notice a difference.

But over years, the expectation is obvious – he will demolish his competition.

It’s not strange that he became one of the best basketball players to ever walk the planet.

He edited his life for that result.

The same is possible for you, with whatever it is you want in your life.

People won’t expect you to spend X amount of hours on strategy, or X amount of hours where you have the edge. They won’t account for that possibility. They will expect you to operate like most people operate, so your results will seem completely unreasonable to them.

“Sometimes magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect.” ― Teller.

You can COMPLETELY change your life in a VERY SMALL TIME PERIOD 

It’s easy to have a false idea in our heads that it’s going to take forever to achieve the things that we want to achieve.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

If you fully commit and focus on what it is you’re wanting to achieve, you can have that in a shorter period than you could imagine.

It’s the lack of belief that keeps people from fully committing, so you end up spending time on all sorts of distractions vs. the few actions that would create a massive life change for you. 

The one you already know you want, but don’t take necessary action towards due to the false assumption that it might not be possible for you. So you lie to yourself and say ‘next year’ or ‘sometime in the future’ for when you’re finally going to create the life you want.

The lack of belief comes from a lack of experience.

The lack of experience comes from the lack of taking action in the past.

The lack of action in the past comes from assuming it was too hard.

Assuming it was too hard comes from not taking the time to formulate a plan that when executed on, would produce your desired results.

If all you did was eliminate 90% of the unimportant things you’re doing, and moved that 90% to the actions that could completely change your life, you could change your life in 1-2 years instead of 10-20.

The editing of your life which produces a significantly multiplicative result, results in the compression of your timeline needed to reach your desired results.

If you are formulating a strategy where you can expect to produce 5x, 10x, 20x the normal results, it will clearly not take you the same amount of time to achieve the results as someone else.

It’s simple math.

You will have caused a compression of the necessary timeframe to achieve the desired result.

Compression of this timeline not only maximizes your results within this timeline, but multiplies the years in which you get to live your desired life.

Consider this as 2023 approaches, and don’t cheat yourself out of the life you actually want, and the years you could spend living it.

Judging others has become the new ‘hot’ thing.

People so desperately want to feel important, that judgment of/hating on others is where they get their current dopamine fix.

Once people see others who are judging celebrated, they realize they’d enjoy that celebration too, and attempt to create enough judgment to be the recipient of similar rewards.

They want to feel part of the group, and unfortunately they see there is a new team to join, where if they just join the judgment, they’ll be praised/accepted.

Everybody is getting in on it.

The more people who participate, the more the disease spreads. 

No one wants to get left behind.

It’s like it’s some perverted accomplishment if you can get a lot of likes for putting others down.

Like many things in life(the market, the economy, etc…) trends tend to work on a pendulum.

Right now judging others is at the extreme end of the pendulum.

Many who are participating today will likely want to hide their participation trophy in the future.

Some people get off wanting to cancel others.

It’s today’s version of the Roman Colosseum. People want to see blood. 

“Are you not entertained? Is this not why you are here?”

They can sit on the sidelines of life, extending their arm, and like a Roman emperor, expose their thumb in the direction of whether the person lives or dies. 

Then they’re hooked.

It felt too good wielding that kind of power to not play again, even if the imaginary role of importance of pales in comparison to their reality. The one they’ve failed to create for themselves, so the judgment of others will have to do as a consolation prize.

Most cancellers are unintentionally canceling themselves; they just don’t understand it yet.

When the pendulum eventually swings back to the other side and everyone casting stones realizes the crowd has dispersed, and here they sit alone, without thoughts/decisions of their own, the people they’ve judged won’t be the most negatively affected. It will be them and anyone else attempting to prop themselves up by putting others down.

Since they aren’t first order consequences, they don’t realize the damage the 2nd and 3rd order consequences are quietly inflicting on them.

They fail to realize they’re only being celebrated by others judging. And once that crowd follows the next crowd, as they always do, the ones that remain will have the choice to follow the crowd again, or to begin to think for themselves.

They may leave, but the damage they’ve done from the judgment they’ve been so excited to cast may not.

99%+ don’t stop to consider why they are judging as they do it. 

Everytime you judge you spotlight for where you currently are, and attract others who are playing at that same place. 

They think in their judgment of another they’re showing where that person is at. But really, they’re just showing where they themselves are even though they don’t know that’s what they’re doing. They’re just unintentionally broadcasting to you exactly where they’re at.

Me, you, and everyone else has participated at some point.

And everytime we do, we’re playing a flawed game.

Missing the whole point of it all.

We don’t need to judge ourselves for the flawed game we slip into, we just need to catch our own reflection in our judgment, and adjust accordingly. 

See everyone as a mirror

When you see someone else, you are looking into a mirror.

They reflect back what you need to see about yourself.

Instead of judging them for something you thought about them, you should be thanking them for that lesson that they taught you about yourself.

Instead of analyzing what about them you are judging, as to how they are or they should be different or act different, you should analyze what it is within you that is feeling the need to judge.

Because if you felt 100% perfect with everything, you wouldn’t be judging them.

So again, it has nothing to do with them, and everything to do with you.

The next time you judge someone, inquire what it is within you that felt the need to judge?

And the same is true if you feel judged. Understand it has nothing to do with you and everything to do with the one judging.

Something you said or did stirred something up within them.

But it was not you.

You just happened to be their mirror this time.

Showing them what they need to see about themselves, if they’re willing to look.

So few people are in the present though that they don’t take the time to observe their thoughts to realize this is what’s happening.

Just understand we are nothing but a mirror for each other.

This allows you to continue on in your game in a more optimal way – making changes within yourself instead of constantly pointing out the things you view as flaws in others. As these perceived flaws exist not in them, but in your perception of them.

Observe the thoughts that come up.

And be thankful for the lesson.

____

It’s easy to just tell ourselves to stop judging, but it’s more likely to stick if we learn why it’s happening.

So where does judgment come from?

Judgment comes from the desire to feel a certain way about oneself.

It feeds the ego what it feels it needs in the moment. That’s the payoff.

Those that don’t feel the need to judge have just unhooked the egoic rewards from judgment. 

They’ve removed the payoff.

No payoff, no need to judge.

The easiest way to remove this payoff is to observe what’s actually happening in the exchange.

It lies in the perspective shift to understand that if they place judgment they are reflecting back something about themselves, NOT someone else to put down for whatever reason you’re stirred up about.

Instead of using whatever has been stirred up in them as their justification for judgment, they start understanding that’s where their work is. They peeked at the opportunity to judge and instead merely notice the reflection in the mirror. And they let judgment drop.

The dopamine supply has run dry on judgment when understood from that perspective.

So they become unattached from the payoff that comes from judgment of another.

The desire to judge ceases. 

It ceases due to the realization that they’ve been unintentionally outing themselves, and worse, putting it on public display.

And if we look deeper into how ego gets involved in judgment, it comes from comparison.

It’s often why people feel the need to either put someone down or boost themselves up.

It’s from the perspective of where they see themselves vs. what they are seeing someone else say or do.

Ego won’t be triggered to pull out the gun of judgment if there is no comparison to spark it.

If someone says, “I made a sandwich”, there is no reason for anyone’s ego to get involved. It’s unlikely that even the gluten free’ist of us will take offense and welcome our ego to the party.

But now let’s say they said, “I made $10 million.”

Some egos will wake up from their slumber. 

That statement, despite being the exact same statement as the sandwich, has triggered the ego of some. This ego may or may not publicly reveal they’ve been triggered.

The person who merely stated their version of making a sandwich, is judged not because of what they said, but very clearly because the variable they used as their ‘sandwich’, is something the judge’r is insecure about.

Not many people are insecure about sandwiches.

Many people are insecure about money.

So they may throw judgment to make themselves feel better about the comparison their ego is calculating.

And it is comparison based. This is where the ego gets involved.

No comparison, no trigger.

No triggered ego, no judgment.

For example, if they said “I made an extra dollar”, no one is going to judge. There is nothing for their ego to be concerned about. They don’t see an extra dollar as any sort of threat to their ego, so despite any insecurities about money they may have, there is no judgment.

It’s only when ego brings in the comparative measuring stick.

Once the ego and the comparative measuring stick join forces, like the mixing of two colors, it bleeds into its own new color.

That color is judgment.

The desire comes from wanting people to view them in a certain way, or even view themselves in a certain way. 

So once someone does or says something that risks the possibility of their desired image, they need an egoic fix, fast! And they call on the quickest one they can think of: judgment.

Someone making a sandwich stirs up nothing because it affects no image that they wish to portray about themselves.

Someone making $10 million may stir up a LOT for someone with money insecurities.

“Pshh, must be luck.”

“Must have been super risky then.”

“People with that much money are greedy.”

“Look at that guy bragging.”

Etc…

No one thought the guy making a sandwich was bragging, or greedy, or got lucky.

The judge’r portrays where they themselves are, NOT where the ‘sandwich maker’ of whatever variable they are stirred up about, is.

They are merely displaying the perspective they see the world through.

Putting someone down and/or putting themselves up, makes them feel they are portraying the image that they desire people or themselves to have about them. 

They felt comparatively inadequate, and judgment makes them temporarily feel better because they come under the belief they have put themselves back above the person they were judging who made them feel so insecure.

They don’t recognize all they did was display to everyone else what they’re insecure about.

Think about why you don’t see people running around judging a leaf, or the grass.

Why don’t we see this kind of ludicrous exchange, but the ludicrous human interactions are so popular they aren’t even seen as ludicrous?

It’s because your ego doesn’t feel threatened by the action of the leaf.

No perceived threat, no silly attempt to use judgment as a protective mechanism for your desired image you wish to portray of yourself.

You might prefer one thing or another, but there is no emotion behind it because you don’t view yourself in a comparative sense, so ego is unaffected.

Once ego gets involved, emotions get involved. Then you ‘know’ exactly what someone else should be doing or saying.

Judgment comes from wanting to look/feel good, or from attempting not to look/feel bad.

The same person who felt the need to judge someone talking openly about money might not feel the need to judge someone talking about fitness. Because they happen to feel secure about their fitness but not about money. And vice versa, someone who wasn’t triggered about money now becomes randomly enraged about someone openly sharing their fitness journey. When you really break down the variables and the reactions it’s easy to see what’s happening. 

An unrealized side effect of staying in a perception where they believe judgment is protecting them, they’re actually keeping themselves trapped.

They don’t realize the same thing they fear(judgment) about their area of (lack of confidence) is what keeps it there. 

They are practicing what they are attempting to avoid, thus unintentionally training themselves that judgment is the norm and should be expected. They are being the type of person they most fear. This further traps themselves in their insecurities. So they stay in that perspective, and remaining there keeps their ego continually triggered by the risk of being exposed for what ‘they are’ vs what they desire others to see them as.

Their jugement continues, and their cycle goes on.

And their cycle goes on, because judgment continues.

Hell of a trap.

So if you are being judged, just realize you are not what they are judging. They are sharing their own insecurities – and going after something they believe will temporarily make them feel better by attempting to weaken a position they view as against or exposing their insecurity.

___

With the click of a button you can get your dopamine fix. 

But you can only get so much dopamine from watching. But in participating, you can increase your dopamine intake. Judging what others are saying or doing is the quickest route for a higher dopamine hit.

Most aren’t saying anything that they don’t think other people will agree with. They think they’ll receive likes, praise or even belief that their statement may confuse others into thinking they are an authority of some sort, despite saying or doing nothing original. They’re just being today’s version of a loud sheep.

Almost everyone is pandering to the crowd.

They’re not saying anything that they think could risk them being outcast from the group. It’s all about getting more power from the group. 

They don’t realize the most powerful players aren’t giving them any of their power. 

They are generating power from the weakest players in the group. 

It’s become a popularity contest to show how much better we are than everyone. But to do so in a way where we don’t actually work to get better at anything, we just attempt to make others look worse. Way easier!

It is of the same thread as cancel culture. ‘If I see you getting too high, I will take you down. I don’t want you to be too high. I will put you down. I will find something I think other people will view as a flaw in you, and I will bank on other them joining me in your demise.’

Groupthink is in full effect.

People that never had a chance to be recognized for something…

THIS is their shot. 

They can become popular now by being the loudest of those living in judgment.

What a RUSH!

Why spend years or decades creating value in the world, when you perceive the possibility of reaping the same level of dopamine by putting those people down.

Just takes a few keystrokes of judgment, and the click of a button. 

Much easier! 

And all the people trying to confirm their own bias look for the most vial/aggressive forms for their confirmation bias, and spread the judgment/hate.

“Look how much better I am than you” comes in many different forms. Social media is still relatively new, and people are unintentionally conditioning themselves to become someone they definitely do not want to be. But as they say, you can’t escape a trap you don’t know you’re in.

It has become much more popular to judge than to create.

To hate, than to help.

You win more points in this day in age. 

These points breed a certain kind of behavior.

People hesitate to share original thoughts, or create new things, knowing the mass judgment that awaits them. It is easier to join team judgment. It feels safer there.

And the pendulum keeps swinging, further than it ever should have.

___

Few are thinking for themselves. So because most lack their own thoughts, telling others that their thoughts are wrong is the path of least resistance.

This creates the vicious cycle we’ve been in where no one even shows interest in the others viewpoint or what data they used to come to that conclusion, and instantly go into “my way of thinking is better than yours, so you can’t be right.”

And they don’t stop to realize: 

They don’t even think their own thoughts!

Rinse repeat, and we’ve just got a bunch of people judging everyone else, and the disease spreads. 

In judging, you are missing the entire point of the game.

You stay in the perception of the judge, until you take time to step back and realize you are almost never qualified to be the judge in the spots you choose to participate. Your twitter finger of a gavel confuses you into thinking you’ve earned the right to judge.

You get the dopamine rush of judgment AND you get people agreeing with you. 

That feels GOOD. Double dopamine!

Most stay blind to the fact they are often in a confirmation bias loop. Seek out those that share the same exact opinions, and agree with what each other says. Helping each other get high off this continual dopamine exchange blinds them to the fact that they are only seeking opinions of those that agree with them.

___

Let’s consider what judgment is.

It is associated with decision making. But ironically someone in a mode of casting judgment is not in the proper frame of mind and likely lacks necessary data for optimal decision making.

Here are multiple, literal descriptions of judgment: 

the evaluation of evidence to make a decision

the ability to make considered decisions or come to sensible conclusions

The funny thing is almost no one has any training on being an optimal decision maker.

Watching all the judgment these days is like seeing a 5 year old tee-baller roll up to a major leaguer and telling him how he should have played. 

The only person who doesn’t realize the absurdity of it is the judge’r. 

The 5 year old, t-ballin judge’r. 

We are all that judge’r at some point, and when in that state we are the only one who doesn’t realize it. We’re merely part of the show for everyone else, showing them all what we need to work on as we proudly proclaim what someone else needs to work on.

Not only do most never learn how to come to an optimal conclusion, maybe more dangerously they skip the chance to learn empathy and instead become a full-time, unpaid judge. One with no decision making background, but a judge nonetheless. 

And they feel personally attacked if anyone disagrees with any judgment they’ve come to. You know, the one they came to with no data and no background in decision making. But if your ideas are different, ‘you’re wrong’, and they can quickly google an article to confirm their bias to show you how ‘right’ they are, not realizing they’re just finding another ‘them’ to confirm their bias. One whose source for their article was another article to confirm their bias.

If someone took a real look at their decision making process, or lack thereof, they would immediately see the hilarity in attempting to judge others. But it depends on people learning to think for themselves.

Until then, as they say…

The emotional tail wags the rational dog

___

The ability to make great decisions stems from the collection of data, and the ability to know what to do with the data once you’ve collected it.

Not only do most people spend no time learning decision making, they usually don’t even spend a second to collect data to better understand an idea another side is saying.

Their conditioning moves them straight to judgment. 

“Who needs data when I can just skip to telling them they’re wrong/I’m right!?

When someone lets emotion instead of logic run the show on their path to judgment, you’re choosing to work with limited data.

And placing a judgment based on the very limited data that you understand. 

You’re using a limited, and sometimes non existent data set to state the reality that should exist.

You think you understand.

Which is why you judge.

But because your emotions are running the show, you fail to realize your judgment comes from a place of you wanting to feel superior. And you need others to know it.

But what you don’t want them to know is you’ve done nothing that would lead you to an optimal conclusion. 

You’ve skipped that step. The entire logical decision making process that would allow you to get there.

You are hurting and hindering yourself as much or more than the person you’re throwing your unearned judgment on, because you not only condition yourself to come to conclusions with no data or optimal decision making process, but you fail to even improve yourself and your viewpoints by failing to learn new information about what you are ‘so sure’ is wrong, based on your 0 minutes of thinking your own thoughts about it.

So ironically in attempting to make another inferior by painting yourself ‘superior’, you remain inferior. At least to any improved version of yourself. And that’s the only comparison that’ll end up mattering anyways. 

You pass on the chance to grow into a better version of yourself, for the dopamine you get in an attempt to point out the inferiority of another.

If you introduce logic, judgment can kind of naturally fall away because you’re just making observations with the data. The opportunity to judge will still be presented to you, but this way you can do so on the actual decisions and facts, versus attempting to tear down a person. 

___

Virtue signaling is an interesting judgment topic.

Because ironically, most people recognizing virtue signaling are just stating where they themselves are, NOT where the person they’re accusing of virtue signaling to be. Everything is shown to us through our perspective. So the idea that you see what someone shares in a certain way shows not an interpretation of the person you judge, but YOUR interpretation. It shows your view of the world.

And as discussed, you have limited data so you being in judgment is a statement that you understand so deeply about not only what they know and/or were trying to say with what they know, but that you are a person who decides whether it’s beneficial or not for others.

The person attempting to call out a virtue signaling, is themselves signaling their own virtue.

Their view of the world only lets them see the other saying, “look where I’m at”. That is their personal translation of the others limited communication tool of language.

That person, judgment finger on the trigger, says, “ya but I’m so woke that I don’t need to even say that.”

And they fail to realize they just DID. But worse, because their signal of virtue was based on the judgment of another, in which their judgment comes with an interpretation through language, one of which they hold limited data for.

So in layman’s terms, they say, “I don’t like virtue signaling, so I’m going to judge you in an attempt to virtue signal and show how much better than doing that I am.” 

Virtue signaling squared.

It’s become popular to virtue signal those you assume are virtual signaling, under the guise that’s not what you’re doing. Again, participating in judgment with no risks. Attempting to take others down a notch is easier than taking others up. So people find new ways to do this.

And again, they’re just showing you where they’re at.They’re definitely not showing you where the person they’re judging is at.

___

If we decide to go a level deeper, we’d need to consider the game we are playing. 

Life.

And if we assume the game has a point, a large % of people with enough time to reflect, will often come to a conclusion that the whole game is “love”. Or if they’re uncomfortable with that word, they may say “service”.

We’d realize judgment stops us from getting to a point where we could participate there.

I’m not talking about some one-off action where you felt you were acting from a place of love for a moment, but in maximizing your time spent living from that perspective.

Judgment stops you from getting to the point where you could get there.

Not only that, it stops you from even understanding another person’s point of view where you could even have the possibility to operate from a place of love.

You can’t operate from a place of love and judgment simultaneously. 

It doesn’t work.

Most judgment comes from a lack of understanding. And judgment blocks your ability to understand.

And if you can’t understand, how can you love? 

Not taking time to understand leads to more judgment, because you’re still only making decisions from your point of view. 

And again, if you’re making decisions only from your point of view you don’t have the ability to judge… By the literal definitions of judgment. 

If given a choice to empathize or judge…

Most fall into their conditioning of judgment.

A choice to judge would block or at least heavily limit empathy.

The second order consequence would be the blockage of love due to the missing ingredient of empathy to fully understand another.

If you can’t fully understand them, you can’t truly see from their perspective.

If you can’t see from their actual perspective, you limit the level of empathy.

A mere theoretical understanding of empathy would severely limit the capacity to love.

If instead, you changed the lens you view life through, playing for the short term dopamine boosts at the expense of others starts feeling like a silly, suboptimal game. 

But it can only ever be seen in stepping out of judgment. If you only ever swim in the waters of judgment, your next stroke will see you surrounded by the same water. You must step out for at least a moment, and view the water from the outside.

This gives you a shot to jump into new waters, which swim a bit differently.

But you can’t while still splashing around in the one you’re in.

You can’t analyze what it’d be like to not judge, while living in judgment.

___

Since judgment tends to just be a defense mechanism, people who are judged then react by judging the judge’r.

It’s just a giant judgment game that everybody’s losing. 

If you win, you lose. 

‘I feel weak because I’m being judged, so I’m going to judge to feel more powerful.’

We’re in the judgment olympics and everyones unfortunate enough to get a gold medal.

The prize: our life is worse.

Success of any idea depends on that idea spreading. The judgment epidemic has already infected just about everyone. It takes knowing you are infected, to have any chance to get better. And you getting better, is the best thing you can do to help others get better.

And know this: 

You would be EXACTLY the person you are judging, had you had their exact history, surrounding, upbringing, etc… YOU WOULD BE THEM. You and every other judge on the planet. Would be EXACTLY them, making the same decisions and taking the same actions. So if you find yourself so knowledgeable that you know exactly what everyone else should be doing, take one second to look through an empathetic lens to realize YOU WOULD BE THEM if you went through every step they’ve walked. And in that second you’ll see a perspective in which you’re reminded of an opportunity to help rather than to judge.

Empathy over judgment

Don’t always desire to be the 8 year old on the playground, pointing at someone who you view as less than your mighty view, hoping others join in to feed your untamed ego.

___

If we’re going to judge, judging an action vs. the person is ideal, but it’s a slippery slope that can easily fall right back into the same judgment.

Or, we could aim for a net positive result. Though, a net positive result depends on someone having enough data to know what an optimal decision would be and that’s not limited to an immediate effect, but 2nd and 3rd order consequences must be considered. And let’s be real, close to 0% people think in a way that is going to have them becoming that type of decision maker any time soon. And even the few that do can use that as a trap to judge.

So we could simplify and say, “are you saying something to help, or to hurt? 

If it could be argued as a judgment, evaluate the goal of your judgment. Are you making any sort of possible change with your judgment? Is there a net positive?

If not, outside of egoic purposes what is your goal? Consider that there isn’t one.

Does that mean don’t share opinions? Quite the opposite. Sharing opinions is what helps everyone learn perspectives. It’s when judgment enters the arena that things change.

Less judging = more opinions. More opinions = more data. More data while continued lack of judgment = the search for more data. More data = better decisions. Better decisions = optimal solutions are found. Everyone benefits from these solutions rather than the alternative, where everyone pretends to know things they don’t know, which incentivizes no one to seek out new data or listen to opposing opinions.

Is there an optimal time to know when it’s okay to judge vs when not to? If there is, I sure haven’t figured it out yet.

Comedians judge people all the time and it’s hilarious and I hope they never stop.

But this judgment epidemic has us all in a funny spot where it’s hard to keep up with everything that everyone’s offended about. 

I feel like I need a weekly report of all the new things people are offended by.

People take just enough time off from judging others to let everyone else know all the new ways they decided they feel judged.

Amazing! You can’t make this stuff up.

___

Am I some perfect, non-judging person?

Hell no.

A couple times in writing this piece I felt a little judgment try and creep up for anyone who might read this and judge me for writing it.

LOL, humans.

We’re a funny bunch.

This wasn’t meant to be some definitive post on judgment, just some thoughts I was thinking as I notice more patterns and destructive participation in the epidemic, and it turned out a bit longer than planned.

What I do know is the pendulum has swung very close to the end. 

And I can tell you if judgment was a stock, now is the time I’d be shorting the sh*t out of it. 

If you desire suffering, for you and others, increase judgment.

Once egoic desires are diminished, the desire to judge is diminished.

Once judgment is heavily diminished you’ll experience a different kind of life.

If you just play with the perspective shift(as a game) that everyone you meet has come to teach you something, the desire to judge will weaken. 

Let your selfish desire to grow overpower your selfish desire to judge.

If judgment was magically eliminated today, the world would radically change very quickly in ways people could not fathom.

As you know I started openly documenting my life and goals at the beginning of this year.

This is my Q3 quarterly review, and Q4 goals.

Q3 was unsuccessful in some ways, and very successful in others.

Here were my Q3 goals:

“1. Finish round 1 of book revisions (this is a little tough to set as a goal because I don’t know exactly when the editor will get me back revisions. I expect them about halfway through the quarter, which would give me about 6 weeks of focus to revise based on their suggestions. Being the author of 0 books, it’s a bit tough to know how much work to expect. I don’t usually set goals lacking so much control on variables, but that’s how I’m rolling on this one)
2. Publish the most comprehensive post I’ve ever published on ForeverJobless
3. Write 5 chapters for book #2”

Book

Welp, this is why you don’t set goals where you don’t fully control the variables.

Unfortunately I still haven’t received edit suggestions back from the editor, so I haven’t been able to start the revisions.

Comprehensive post

I completed this article back in August, but I made the decision not to publish it yet.

It turned into an article that was almost 20,000 words long. 

After getting some feedback on it, I decided to turn it into a video series and release it closer to the book launch, since so few people would consume/implement it in its current form.

I don’t count this goal as complete, since my goal was specifically to publish.

I don’t like pulling back on a quarterly priority goal out of choice, as that can often be a trap that gives you wiggle room to back out of difficult to hit goals.

So while I justified it to be able to give it a better release/exposure when I’m doing a bit of marketing near the book launch, I still failed at the goal, which I don’t love at all.

The reason I’m pointing out this seemingly simple fail is because it’s not optimal to pull back on priority goals, even if it’s just quarterly instead of yearly. I don’t recommend it at all. 

It’s worth mentioning because us humans are always looking for an easy excuse not to do x. It’s a slippery slope.

If quarterly goals have been set with clarity, then it just comes down to executing. So, in changing the path with a quarterly goal I’m basically saying setting this quarterly goal was not optimal with my overall gameplan. So, I need to recognize that to be more careful in future quarterly goal planning.

Anytime you fail with a goal, you want to understand what caused the failure. Was it an execution fail or a strategy fail?

The beauty with failures is they show you where to improve or change your approach.

If you often find yourself failing at the execution of goals, it is often a commitment and/or efficiency issue. This shows you where your work is.

If you often find yourself failing with the planning/strategy aspect of goal setting, it is often a lack of clarity/optimal strategy issue. This shows you where your work is.

If you are never failing, you may be setting goals that are lower than what you are capable of, thus limiting your potential. This shows you where your work might be.

Most people struggle with 2-3 of these at a time and do so without any guidance, attempting to figure it all out on their own, which creates a self-inflicted, insurmountable challenge. The reality is if you constantly evaluate and re-evaluate your approach based on the results generated, or failed to generate, while getting guidance on a more optimal approach, before you know it you will accomplish things beyond possibilities that your current imagination can fathom.

5 chapters for book #2

My 3rd goal for Q3 was to get my 2nd book started and write 5 chapters.

This quarterly goal ended up being the beneficiary of me not having received my edit suggestions on book #1 back yet.

I wasn’t just going to sit around…

So I wrote 93 chapters for book #2.

This book empire ain’t going to write itself!

So, book #1 will be out later than I wanted, but book #2 will likely be out sooner than I planned.

Hope you’re ready to read a lot in 2023!

Other Q3 stuff

A quarter after making my decision to switch from real estate to writing, I feel good about it. It was the right choice for me.

Definitely feels like play. Not that real estate wasn’t. It was. But this just feels like the right time for this type of play. 

I’m really excited to focus on helping a lot of others. 

In something like real estate, it’s not a zero sum game at all, but in a simplistic view, there’s basically one main winner- me. People doing a deal with me won more than if they’d done a deal with someone else, which is why my play worked so well, but all the asymmetry is on my side of the bet. With books, it’s the type of play where there can be hundreds of thousands, or even millions of winners. And the readers are arguably on the more asymmetric side of the bet.

In September I wanted to test the limits of my output, and wrote 75,000+ words for the month. That’s not necessarily where the limits are, but it was a good test with other things I had on my plate.

As with any new game you play, you’ve got to explore a bit. So right now I’m just trying to test things and learn.

The same week I shared my decision to commit to becoming an author, I obsessively mapped out my entire strategy; 10 months or whatever before I expected my first book to come out. I think I ‘solved’ for what I intend to do, but who knows. That’s the fun part right? Putting the ideas and theories to the test.

It’s more uncertain to know if the theory works since in this case we’re not dealing with a specific product or service someone’s seeking out.

There’s a relatively unlimited number of people looking to buy real estate, so having desirable results just equates to having a better strategy and better decision making than your competitors. So it’s very straightforward to win.

But there’s not many people out there looking for unknown books by guys named Billy.

So for a product like that you’ve got to solve not only the strategy/decision making part, but it also has to be paired with a product people actually want, and the success is somewhat determined by the degree in which they want it relative to other options. And a book(especially a subject like the one I’m writing on) isn’t something anyone is even seeking out. I’m creating a product people don’t know they need. So as much as I like my theory/strategy, it still needs to be paired with a product that’s a hit, or the strategy becomes somewhat irrelevant.

Definitely harder to do, but more upside when you do it.

With more variables that are ‘uncertain’, the best you can do is push the odds in your favor as much as you can.

So, it’d be false confidence to think I’ve fully ‘solved’ anything, since the most important variable is the actual product I’m creating, which is based on the degree to which others benefit which can’t be fully known until they use it.

I’m still dealing with at least one variable that is ‘uncertain’ despite whatever % I allocate to that variable. No matter how high I expect that variable to be, it does not mean 100%. Even many good decision makers misunderstand the concept, applying absolutes to variables with at least some degree of uncertainty. This is a giant decision making flaw, and in a room full of intelligent people, helps to easily decipher the intelligent, from the intelligent fools.

It makes me think of the Warren Buffett quote about the danger of overconfidence:

“If you think your IQ is 160 but it’s 150, you’re a disaster. It’s much better to have a 130 IQ and think it’s 120.”

That said, if I was a betting man, which I am…

I’d bet the house…

Which I will.

More fun this way. 

For the player, and the spectator.

And the degree to which you can bet the house can be done safely only with the understanding of the uncertainty of specific variables. Longer post for another day, but this is where people get into trouble and/or play too small/safe. They accidentally over or under bet. 

It lies in the misunderstanding of the optimal allocations under conditions of uncertainty.

Personal development programs

I’m always reading to improve/find new things to implement or new ways of thinking, but I spent a lot of time participating in personal development programs in Q3.

My purpose was attempting to find any blind spots I might have and not be aware of. 

When I coach people, it’s often very easy to quickly find blind spots that are limiting their potential where one or two simple changes have the ability to massively alter everything for them.

Since I hadn’t done it for myself in a while, I figured it’d be good to find outside eyes to look for any blind spots I haven’t discovered yet. 

As with any ‘methods’, there’s pros and cons, but I feel like I definitely benefited.

Sometimes when someone is advising you on how to escape a trap, they’re just welcoming you to a new trap. And many times their methods depend on you agreeing that you’re in the trap their program is designed around in the first place. 

I think even if you disagree with some of someone’s teachings, you can still learn a lot.

I’d do my best to switch back and forth from the perspective that ‘I know nothing’, to more openly understand what the instructors were trying to teach, to ‘they know nothing’, to not blindly accept answers and fall into a non-optimal solution by someone who’s solved their method for how they look at the game, but not the complete game.

I think this back and forth perspective switching is a very helpful learning method, as you get the benefits of approaching with a beginner’s mind, while limiting the blind acceptance from a perceived authority, which generates answers from questions that wouldn’t have been possible with blind acceptance. So with proper balance between the two extremes of the pendulum, you actually get significantly deeper learning of their methods. Rebuttals lead to amazing answers, or discovery to where the methods flaws are.

I’m probably a very difficult student to have for these poor instructors.

With anything you are trying to learn, or achieve, there are many, many paths that have the potential to get you where you’d like to go.

However, some paths would negate the need to pursue other paths.

Meaning, one method that gets you there, becomes unnecessary and a hindrance if you have a path that gets you there more quickly and/or more optimally.

Whether it’s business, spirituality, money, health, fitness, life, etc… one path that gets you to your desired result doesn’t mean it is THE path.

Sometimes believing it’s the path is what’s keeping you from discovering a much more optimal path.

Someone with a 10 year plan to get to X, may have a great 10 year plan to achieve X.

However, if they tunnel vision into the belief that they have the plan, unintentionally dismissing other paths under the illusion that they’ve already discovered what they’re looking for, they miss the opportunity to see a 2 year path to the same result.

The 2 year path would deem the 10 year path unnecessary, but it will never be found if someone is operating under the assumption they’ve already found ‘the plan’.

So to the person who understands a 2 year path to the same desired result, the 10 year path would be a trap.

It’s important to understand that even if you avoid falling into a trap, your optimal path may be considered a trap to someone else, so the more wisdom you can acquire/openness to this you can approach life with, the more likely you’ll play an optimal game. 

For a simplistic, easy to understand example, the majority of people go to the doctor with the belief that their doctor has the answers regarding their health. But with the amount of variables with health/body, it is mathematically impossible with the approach of most in the medical field to have more than a very, very tiny piece of the whole puzzle. And often the puzzle pieces they have are combined with a belief that those are the answers. This blocks them from discovering the other pieces, and the realization that there’s a whole different puzzle that would help their patients way more than the very limited puzzle pieces they hold, that go to a completely different puzzle than they’re even considering.

So if you went in with the approach that your doctor knows the answers, that’s a very dangerous approach to your health, especially when you are operating in a sample size of one life, where you really can’t afford to have too many blind spots, in a world full of people wearing blinders.

At the same time, if you go in with a full cup, assuming they do not have any answers, you’ll limit the amount of benefit you receive from understanding the parts of the puzzle that they deeply understand, and applying it to a more whole/complete puzzle that you piece together from more than one different ‘authority’.

Learning plans or strategies to paths that may prove not to be optimal, can still be very beneficial from the perspective of challenging your own beliefs, either strengthening them to understand your path is correct which infuses confidence, which accelerates action, or acquiring new data which sets you down a new path in which to find answers, or finding holes in your plan which you can plug. And sometimes, realizing you need to throw out your whole plan. 

If you seek to destroy your plan 100 times and only succeed once, the other 99 times were a success even if it may not seem like it in the moment.

I plan to continue doing a lot of personal development in 2023 but I think I’ll be less likely to do programs, and more likely to do very small groups or individualized coaching, as it takes a very long time to get to the same conclusions/benefits in large groups.

Example, I did close to 100 hours of personal development programs in Q3. At the end of the quarter I did a 1-on-1 call with someone who was an expert at these types of trainings and we probably got to 30% of the root lessons in under an hour.

Saving money often means losing time. A lot of it.

As Eliyahu Goldratt so eloquently pointed out, you can only move as fast as the weakest link, so large attendee programs tend to go verrrrrrry slow. 

So they charge less money, but they charge you MASSIVE amounts of time in exchange.

Not often a great trade.

More individualized instruction tends to eliminate all bottlenecks outside of the ones in your own mind, so you can get more straight to the point of things, and make more beneficial, personalized improvements much quicker.

Dating

One of the blind spots I’ve looked into is my dating life.

Each time this year that I’ve looked at adding anything related to dating on my calendar, it wasn’t very inspiring.

One of my new years goals was to throw 4 singles dinners.

They’d be a good time and wouldn’t be that much effort to do, but I felt like there were better ways.

And in general, dating hasn’t been top of mind as I’ve been having so much fun with all the other stuff I’m doing.

When I considered removing something I’ve been doing to put dating on my calendar, it felt like work and would be taking away fun stuff.

So, I haven’t added anything.

I wondered if this was a blind spot.

In general, I tend to lock in and focus on things. So it’s not surprising that I was locked in on my real estate play, made the switch to ‘future author’ and immediately locked in to try and ‘solve’ this new game.

I enjoy all-in focus for certain periods of time.

To lose that focus for dating seemed like an annoying distraction.

Not the ‘dating’ part, but the ‘looking for people I’d want to date’.

It seems like a lot of very inefficient work.

Obviously if approaching from that perspective, it’s not going to seem thrilling to participate.

I’m very selective which means way more work/time on stuff that I don’t love doing.

Most people’s response is that’s just how it is/you have to do it to date, and that the payoff is worth it, etc…

The payoff might be worth it, but I don’t agree you have to do things the way other people do them if the results and/or efficiency is horrendous.

If you want to create the life you desire and likely results are not aspirational, it is often better to change your approach/strategy. Not your expectations.

Why choose to enter a game where playing is likely to produce less than desired results, just because mediocrity is viewed as the normal cost of entry.

Three options: 

1. Don’t enter the arena.
2. Accept the prizes under the current layout of the game.
3. Change the game/create a new arena for yourself.

It’s a mistake to just wait for someone else to figure out a good solution, or to have my life line up where I have nothing going on for a period of time so that I don’t mind a re-entrance into such an inefficient world.

I was putting it off due to there not being a more efficient solution yet.

As with anything, YOU are usually the person who can solve it.

I’m sure there’s some people reading saying, “just hire a matchmaker.”

I interviewed several matchmakers last year, and to say I was unimpressed would be an understatement.

It seems like a very profitable business for them, but the value they offer is relatively poor.

It’s an obvious example of a business model ripe for disruption. Value provided is low, but demand is high.

But I just want to disrupt MY dating life, not the industry.

And while my idea to organize singles dinners was fine, it didn’t move the needle enough for me to be excited about it.

So I decided, what if I started a matchmaking company… where I’m the only client.

It sounds ridiculous, but it makes complete logical sense to me.

Many matchmakers spend the bulk of their time trying to get clients for themselves, and a minority of their time looking for matches for their clients, and within that minority of time they’re spending a minority of THAT time looking for you.

So I figured, what if I had a matchmaker who only looked for very targeted matches exclusively AND wasn’t dealing with all the other aspects of a matchmaking business?

You should end up with a significantly more valuable solution.

That’s the theory anyways.

As with anything new that I try, I have no idea if it’ll actually work until I do it.

Whether it be real estate, books, dating, etc…

What I try is often more difficult because I’m attempting solutions that don’t exist, but the payoffs are absurdly more rewarding when successful.

The expected results are small failures or enormous wins.

So, if you know anyone in the Austin area(preferably female) who’s great at chatting with strangers and would love doing some matchmaking even if they have no experience, send them my way.

This should be a fun experiment.

Vacations

I’m hoping to take about a month off in Q4.

We had a family trip planned to CO the 1st week of October, but my Dad’s been having some health issues so we canceled our CO trip to hit the east coast and help get him on the mend.

So I’ll spend a couple weeks back east with the family early Q4, and take a couple weeks off at the end of Q4 to reset and think about how I want 2023 to go.

New clients/students

Another thing I’m planning on doing is finally taking on some new students in Q4.

I mentioned in the beginning of the year I would take on at least four, and I haven’t put any focus there yet. So, I’m going to set some time aside to review applications to work with some new folks before 2023 starts. 

If you’re looking to accomplish some epic goals in 2023, leave me a comment and I can get you an application before I open them up on ForeverJobless.

Q4 Goals

1. Book revisions complete

I expect to block off half of October and all of November to complete this. This obviously depends on getting the revisions back. No way we’d have a Q3 repeat right? First time, shame on them, second time… oh boy. Fingers crossed.

2. Commit to coaching at least 4 people
3. 16 half day sessions on my pre, pre-launch book tasks

There’s so many little things needed to be done around the book, so despite it likely not being out until late Q2 at this point, if I don’t knock some of these dominoes down now, it would likely further delay the book.

Finding a marketer for book/FJ

I’m likely going to be hiring a marketer to work on both my book and ForeverJobless.

Do you know an absolutely amazing marketer who might want to work on a very unique project?

The goals will be very aggressive, and the person I’m looking for should already have significant results as a marketer.

If you know someone who would be obsessed with a project like this, who wants to head up marketing on what will hopefully become one of the most successful non-fiction, self published books in history, and work on ForeverJobless, please have them get in touch with me.

As you know I started openly documenting my life and goals at the beginning of this year. (the initial yearly review/2022 goals were posted here, and my 1st quarterly review/goal progress was posted here).

This is my Q2 quarterly review, and Q3 goals.

My review weeks that I take are like ‘clarity crack’ for me.

I spend at least several days just sitting around thinking about the quarter, reviewing journals, what I want more of from the previous quarter, and what I want less of. Makes setting up the following quarter easy and I find my life continues going more in the direction it’s supposed to.

Let’s dive in:

Welp, I didn’t have to sue anyone this quarter, so that was good! Big improvement over Q1.

Here were the Q2 goals I had set for myself:

1. Complete the rough draft of my book and hand it off to my editor

2. Buy 50 properties

3. Be working less than 2 hours per day on any non unique ability activity

I always set 1-3 goals where the majority of my focus goes and I structure my quarter around accomplishing those things.

Book:

This was the biggie.

And I’m happy to say:

I officially completed my rough draft.

I’ve been working on this book for a long time – literally more than half a decade by I’m not sure how many years.

I’d get distracted by a new business or starting a real estate investment company, or dealing with health challenges, so it wasn’t straight-through, I’d constantly get pulled off course for a while, but always found myself coming back.

The book is dope and I can’t wait for you to read it.

It will completely shift the way most people think about money and decision making.

Still plenty of work to be done before it’s published- I hear I should expect roughly 9’ish months for all the back and forth revisions with my editor, and everything else involved in the process.

It’s an elephant of a draft, so hopefully my editor helps me turn it into something more digestible.

It’s around 140,000 words right now, which is bonkers for a non-fiction book and I’ll likely need to cut that WAY down.

A ‘normal’ non-fiction book is around 40,000 words.

I’d be very curious to hear about the length of book you’d consider reading. How many pages is ‘too long’ in your opinion for your own personal reading habits?

And while we’re on the subject of writing a book…

I made a big decision recently.

I’d been considering this for a little while but I like to sit on big decisions and let them marinate to make sure I’m feeling called to something for the right reasons, and that it’s not just a shiny object.

I was telling my friend Natalia about my decision a few days ago and she paired my decision with the perfect quote:

“Why do two things half ass when you can do one thing full ass?”

Makes sense!

What was the decision I made?

Well…

I decided to go ‘all-in’ on being an author.

That sounds kind of ridiculous when you consider I’ve written zero books and besides these quarterly updates published 0 articles in the last 2+ years.

Interesting career choice for a writer that never publishes!

I’m not planning on publishing a book or two and hoping it goes okay.

I’m all-in.

I’ll approach it much like I did the RE bet.

I decide how I want it to go, then formulate a plan to ensure that happens.

Though I write that understanding that the variables involved with books are more difficult to predict.

With something like real estate you’re essentially taking an extremely similar product that everyone on the planet needs, and just devising a strategy that beats the competition.

It’s relatively straightforward.

With a book, you attempt to create something that doesn’t exist that no one is necessarily asking for, with the idea that people will want/need that more than what currently exists on the market.

So it’s a much tougher prediction to be made over a short time period, though as the time period lengthens it becomes more predictable.

I don’t necessarily have specific numbers and goals set up yet as I’m still letting that kind of stuff marinate.

Though, when I think of becoming an author…

Selling millions of books seems interesting to me.

Not from the perspective of ‘me selling x amount of books’, but to give a significant amount of people a paradigm shift that will positively affect their life.

Want to know how I’d sell millions of books?

Me too!

I have no idea.

I’ve never sold 1 book.

For reference, the average book sells 2-300 copies.

I feel like these lyrics from one of my favorite artists(NF) fit how I feel around this whole decision:

I get that this would be considered a ‘silly’ decision. I have a real estate bet that has the ability to print money, and I see potential avenues where it could be scaled significantly. So, as an entrepreneur it’s kind of ‘ridiculous’ to say, ‘welp, I think I’ll go write some books now’.

But doing what you’re ‘supposed to’ do is a recipe for a life that’s not your own, no matter how free you believe yourself to be. Our conditioning has a stronger hold on us than we all think.

If I consider myself with the label as ‘entrepreneur’ or ‘investor’, clearly I’m ‘supposed’ to scale up something that’s already working/making a lot of money. It would be ridiculous not to.

But it’s more important to understand when you might be optimizing for the wrong metric.

If I want to write books, how much more am I going to wait to make before I do that?

At some point it gets ridiculous from the other perspective, NOT to do it.

I was on a walk with my buddy Chris last month, and we were chatting about this subject and he shared a great story with me.

He heard it from his mentor’s teacher about a guy who went to sit on a mountain in search of enlightenment. He sat there day after day, year after year. Then one day 25-30 years later, it was like a light came on. He did it! He saw the light/was enlightened.

Then he said,

“Now what?”.

That’s a good way of how I feel it would be to optimize for the metric of more(money), when any ‘more’ number I get to is just going to produce the ‘now what?’ question once I hit any new number I set.

If I already know what the ‘now what’ would be, and I’m already well past where it’s optimal to be optimizing for a different metric in life, I’m playing a flawed game if I’m continuing to optimize for maximizing green paper.

Maybe I should have made this decision a while ago, but as they say:

The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The 2nd best time is now.

If you’ve read my stuff for a while, you know how analytical I approach things, which simplifies the ability to make decisions under conditions of uncertainty, but…

When we consider life…

Not knowing the exact date of our death doesn’t allow us the same level of simplicity in knowing when to optimize for what, due to the unknown variable with such a vast time frame range.

And don’t get me wrong, I’m having FUN with the real estate bet. It’s like real life monopoly I get to play. So it’s not the all too common situation of being unsatisfied doing something for money.

Quite the opposite.

It’s choosing to leave something extremely fun and extremely profitable, to enter a game I’ve never played just for the chance to experience something that may be more fulfilling and be able to change lives for fun.

I kind of have a habit of doing this. I’ll figure out how to succeed in a specific area, and then go hop into something else.

Exactly the OPPOSITE of what you ‘should’ do. It’s like an anti-growth strategy, at least around the metric of business/money.

Once I figure out how to make something easy, instead of just enjoying the ‘print money’ phase, I say, “welp, let’s go try something else I have completely no idea how to do”.

I find the ‘solving’ fun.

I’ve always taken these kinds of ‘risks’.

I was considering leaving my only job at 23 to attempt to become a professional poker player.

“That’s crazy you shouldn’t take a risk like that!”

I did.

It was worth it.

At some point in my poker career I decided I should leave the ‘dream job’ of professional poker player to start businesses.

“Dude, you have the dream life, why would you risk giving that up?”.

Well, to see if there’s a different dream life I might enjoy.

I did.

It was worth it.

When business got to the point of feeling very ‘easy’, I enjoyed sharing with others how they could use it to change their lives.

“You can make way more by just starting new businesses, why spend your time helping others?”.

Similar reasons as each of the decisions before.

Because I felt like I might enjoy it more.

I did.

Some of my students started having ridiculous results.

My groups kept growing.

I was getting more and more demand to start new Incubators.

I got the urge to write.

“You need to scale this, it could become huge. Why risk giving that up!?”.

It could.

But I did.

I was curious what it’d be like to write the book I’d been putting off for years.

That was a few years ago, and insert some health challenges that took me away for a while, followed by deciding to build a quick real estate empire upon starting to recover, I find myself in the similar situation I’ve found myself in time and time again.

“It would be insane for you to not scale this real estate business up and keep making way more money!”

But as you know I have a track record of being a bit ‘insane’ when it comes to making what would be considered ‘normal’ decisions.

I understand what I risk giving up, but…

The incalculable answer of what I have to gain cannot be understood without jumping into and experiencing the unknown.

“Pitiful is the person who is afraid of taking risks. Perhaps this person will never be disappointed or disillusioned; perhaps she won’t suffer the way people do when they have a dream to follow. But when the person looks back-she will hear her heart “
– Paulo Coelho

If I produced certain results that didn’t excite me as a ‘dabbling’ author, I would always wonder what would have happened if I fully committed to it.

If I don’t try, I’ll never know.

It’d be a lot easier to just print money in real estate, especially as this market shake up gets ready to provide incredible opportunities over the next few years.

It just feels right to me to go become a novice author instead.

“The hardest thing to do is to be true to yourself, especially when everyone else is watching”
– Dave Chappelle

Playing small/limiting beliefs:

I noticed recently I was falling victim to setting some of my goals smaller than I should in order to achieve them.

This can be poison.

I’m still getting over the sluggishness from the accidental consumption.

Back in January I set a yearly goal to acquire only 50 properties despite being capable of more.

I realized early on in Q1 that was extremely uninspiring, and adjusted accordingly, to where I’ve now acquired almost 2x the yearly goal just halfway through the year.

But if we don’t monitor ourselves it’s easy to put on blinders and just follow the path you’ve set, when you might be capable of much more.

I realize I’ve still been playing too small.

I had some limiting beliefs blocking the way I was playing the game.

I realized I hadn’t attempted to go all-in on becoming an author yet unintentionally due to being unsure about the results I’d produce.

And I don’t mean being afraid of failure. (who knows, maybe that too)

There’s all sorts of traps hiding in different crevices of this game.

As I thought through my decision from many different angles, I realized I was only not pursuing it because I wasn’t inspired by the expected results.

But with more contemplation, I realized that was coming from a flawed perspective, generated from a place where I was operating under the assumptions of ‘reasonable expectations’.

And these reasonable expectations were extremely unmotivating for me.

The thought of writing books and getting even what would be considered ‘great’ results, was not inspiring at all to me.

They say ‘comparison is the thief of all joy’’, but I realized it might also be the thief of all potential.

Robbing the possibility of what could have been by not allowing you to see what the world looks like if everything was limitless.

And it is.

The average author sells 2-300 books. Even if I sold 50-100x that amount, I found that to be very demotivating to consider the pursuit.

When I envisioned producing results that would be viewed as ‘way too optimistic’, it wasn’t inspiring for me to want to dedicate my limited resource of time to have such a limited impact.

Being kept in this prison of comparison, even if you have the best cell, you’re still an inmate trapped under the assumption you’re doing well because it’s more than what’s expected.

When you ask the question, ‘what is possible?’ you must also consider that you are asking ‘what is impossible?’. And if the definition of impossible is dictated by what others feel is an unrealistic result, in reality you are just taking the answers of those in the same ‘realistic’ box and viewing your limits within that box. That is not limitless.

By definition in search of what is possible, you are seeking where the limits are.

But they’re perceived limits, not reality.

And you have the greatest computer in the world right inside your head. So if you’re programming it to max out at achieving X, you won’t accidentally find yourself outside of the limits.

You will find yourself playing a ‘realistic’ game.

For a recently lived example that you’re familiar with, in a previous post I mentioned the only reason I was getting ‘unrealistic’ results in RE was I wasn’t attempting to pursue it in the same way everyone else was.

In operating in that way, I risk not having results that would be easy to replicate by just doing ‘what’s optimal’, but I also risk achieving ‘unrealistic’ results by giving up the ‘this is how you do it’ box.

If I was playing within the realistic box of real estate, shooting for 5-10 properties in year 1 may have been a ‘good’ goal relative to what’s thought to be ‘achievable’.

But as you know I approached it as if I knew ‘nothing’, and therefore created a strategy that was significantly more optimal than just attempting to be on the high end of the ‘here’s what’s realistic’ box.

If I could buy 1 property, why not 2?

If 2, why not 20?

If 20, why not hundreds?

No one could explain to me why that wasn’t realistic other than their equation didn’t allow for it.

I remember a conversation with a coach I was inquiring about hiring, and he said the results I wanted weren’t possible until many years later.

I said, “why wouldn’t I just do whatever it is I’d do years later, now?”

Needless to say, I didn’t hire him.

Eliminate whatever bottleneck(s) causing everyone else to stop at 1, 5, 12 or whatever number and the equation is more likely to spit out what you want it to spit out.

If instead you are aiming for X, X being a realistic result, the equation can rarely spit out MORE than X, and if it does it won’t be by much.

Because you’re structuring your game according to what others say you should be able to do.

Not what YOU are able to do.

This doesn’t mean that can’t be a phenomenal starting place to evaluate opportunity and reverse engineer how others are doing X.

Just something to consider when you are unintentionally placing limits on yourself.

Anyways…

I was doing this to myself with becoming an author.

It’s why I hadn’t gone all-in yet and I had no idea.

If you asked me what my favorite parts of writing are, it’s two things:

1. If I find out something I wrote gave someone a shift in their life. Or even just getting a message from someone telling me they loved something I wrote.

2. Finding the way to say something during a writing session that I know is about to find a home in the mind of someone that needed the shift.

Those are why I play the writing game.

So when I viewed the game through the lens of realistic results, it was an uninspiring game to consider playing (full-time) due to the limits of the people I could expect to affect.

I had to change the angle I was approaching the question with.

What would I do if I knew I couldn’t fail?

It’s an extremely clarifying question. You’ve probably heard it before.

It was overdue for me to consider it again.

Let’s say I knew I was going to sell hundreds of thousands, or millions of books, which would allow me to help a lot of people…

I would already be doing it.

So in essence, I was only not doing it because I wasn’t sure I would produce a result that appealed to me.

I obviously didn’t realize that’s what I was doing.

But I was.

So despite how unrealistic what I’ll attempt will be, it’s only chance of becoming a reality is to attempt the unrealistic.

If it’s ‘unrealistic’ to sell 10,000 books, it’s clearly unrealistic to attempt to sell 100,000, or a million, or multi-millions or whatever number I decide is the desired number I’ll edit my life to attempt to produce.

The very power you use to convince yourself of your limitations is the same power you could use to achieve everything you ever wanted.

People would be AMAZED at what they would accomplish if they just believed it was possible for them.

If you dedicate just a few years to something you can COMPLETELY change your life.

Realistic pursuits might be sucking the soul out of you.

Do you feel bored, unfulfilled, and like your life is uninteresting? It might be because you’re only pursuing things others have labeled as ‘realistic’, instead of what you actually want.

I’m not just talking about the box of career or money.

What is it you might be putting off due to it being considered ‘unrealistic’ or ‘impossible’?

You might find yourself a lot more excited and fulfilled to wake up and go after that.

There’s little to no downside in beginning to attempt this previously ‘unrealistic’ pursuit in your own life.

We can all find ‘reasons’ as to why we ‘can’t’, but any one of us could edit our lives to get what we really wanted if we fully decided to.

The thought that you have to be realistic is a poisonous lie. It wants to reinforce your limitations.

Real Estate:

On to real estate…

As you know the quarterly RE goal was to acquire 50 properties…

I acquired 50 on the dot.

It was on track to be a lot higher, but with the changing market I wanted a higher margin of safety on deals, so my offers changed significantly as the quarter progressed.

Vacations:

Q2 wasn’t all work.

One of my yearly goals was to make sure I got 6 weeks of vacation in.

I took a trip out to Boulder for a week in April with my niece.

 

 

 

I found an AMAZING mountain home while I was there and put an offer in to buy it.

Unfortunately the sellers had just accepted an offer the night before, and I put in a backup offer.

They didn’t fall through, so no mountain home for me.

I took vacation #2 the last week of June, and just did a staycation and spent a bunch of time catching up with friends, reading, reviewing the 1st half of the year, and spending a lot of time with my animal friends out here in the forest.

 

 

 

Q2 results:

So for the Q2 results:

1. Complete the rough draft of my book and hand it off to my editor: SUCCESS

2. Buy 50 properties: SUCCESS

3. Be working less than 2 hours per day on any non unique ability activity: FAIL

I failed on #3 to get under 2 hours.

In a sense that may have helped me because I realized why am I aiming to do sub 2 hours of stuff I don’t want to do vs. sub 2 minutes 🙂

So I’ll expect to easily accomplish this in Q3 despite no direct focus on it, just an edit of life.

Q3 goals:

1. Finish round 1 of book revisions (this is a little tough to set as a goal because I don’t know exactly when the editor will get me back revisions. I expect them about halfway through the quarter, which would give me about 6 weeks of focus to revise based on their suggestions. Being the author of 0 books, it’s a bit tough to know how much work to expect. I don’t usually set goals lacking so much control on variables, but that’s how I’m rolling on this one)

2. Publish the most comprehensive post I’ve ever published on ForeverJobless

3. Write 5 chapters for book #2

In the beginning of the year I mentioned I’d be openly sharing my normally private life this year, and documenting my goals, the results, and more. (you can find that post here: My 2021 Yearly Review, and 2022 Goals)

Q1 was, well…busy would be an understatement.

My goals for Q1 were:

• Buy 15 properties
• 142 hours on the book
• Hire epic executive assistant or chief of staff

As the saying goes, everyone’s got a plan until they get punched in the mouth.

Well, I’m still rocking ice packs from the insanity that was Q1.

I cracked open a bottle of chaos, and before I could even get a sip the whole quarter drowned in it.

I think sometimes people assume being an entrepreneur/investor is all good times and printing money… my Q1 is a good example of some of the not so fun stuff we get to deal with.

It started off hiring an assistant the second week of the quarter. She seemed wildly qualified and would be a great domino to help me knock down the other goals.

I’m sure the person on the resume would have been…

Except that’s not the person who showed up for the job.

Ya.

Really.

Fake resume, fake references, all that fun stuff.

That’s the first time I’ve dealt with anything like that before.

Should have caught it in due diligence but I think I was so excited to finally have someone to help me get some stuff off my plate, that after she crushed the interview combined with such an epic resume, didn’t sniff it out.

After she was failing to accomplish even the smallest of things, figured it out with some post-hiring due diligence.

Her ‘boss’ who gave her an absolutely amazing recommendation turned out not to be her boss…

but her husband.

Not sure what the point of something like that is – the only hunch anyone could come up with was that she tries to get multiple jobs at once and hope people don’t realize how little she’s getting done.

Blah.

Fast forward a couple weeks later, and I’m kind of stumped why my RE business isn’t doing as well as it should.

My spidey sense is going off like wild.

Something isn’t right.

It’s been going off for a while, but it’s only gotten stronger.

And it’s dialed in heavy on one person.

One of the few people(and someone working for me) I’d really shown most of my cards to on my real estate bet and all the in depth strategy behind it.

Unfortunately for him I enjoy due diligence, and once I realized everything he’d been up to, it was worse than expected.

I called my lawyers up and asked for a meeting.

We sat down and I showed them everything he’d been doing and asked for their opinion.

They mentioned fraud, and all sorts of other fancy legal terms that could have him in some serious trouble.

Man, talk about losing faith in humans!

First a fake assistant, and now uncovering this just weeks later.

This one felt much worse both not just because of how much money it cost me, but also because despite knowing him less than a year, I thought we had become friends.

I’d gone out of my way to mentor him since he was wanting help learning wealth building and openly shared much of my playbook with him.

I guess he thought he might get ahead in life faster by trying some extremely unethical things to try and make some short term money instead.

Humans are silly.

Some people have such short term thinking.

You can’t cheat the game.

So many try and skip all the necessary steps and think they’ll magically reach immediate success.

Too many ‘get rich quick’ videos out there these days I guess!

I’ve been in business for a long time now, and this might have been the most unethical thing I’ve had attempted on me.

And you see some stuff in this game!

I can’t wait to talk about this more in depth. I’m going to let my lawyers take him apart first before I openly write too much about it.

The silly thing is since he hadn’t fully grasped some of the fundamentals yet, he didn’t even profit nearly as much as he should have from his unethical activities, he just cost me a bunch.

Oh well.

Q1 really welcoming me to the new year!

After my meeting with my lawyers I didn’t know what I was going to do at first.

I hate spending time dealing with things that aren’t positive and that don’t move things forward.

I didn’t enjoy waking up and my first thought of the day is how to make sure an unethical dude goes down.

That’s not healthy!

At first I wondered if despite getting ripped off badly, I should just let the guy walk.

I had several discussions with friends about it.

It was pretty unanimous across the board that I shouldn’t let him get away with it.

I’m big on just trying to observe and not get attached to things that happen to me, and to still have ‘love’ for others despite whatever their actions are.

My buddy Russo gave some great advice that I can still have ‘love’ for someone from a distance while making sure that a crooked person gets taken off the board.

I definitely didn’t want a guy like this to be able to do unethical things to others in the future.

My friend Kenric reminded me how when we were both starting out in the game of business/investing, people would sometimes try to take advantage of us because we were green, and/or didn’t have much money to do anything about it if they tried stuff.

Now that we do, we almost have a duty to protect the other players in the game from people like this.

I green lit my lawyers, and let’s just say his foreseeable future is not one he’s likely looking forward to.

I think he thought I might just let him walk after what he did, assuming I was too nice to hold him accountable.

I thought he might crap his pants when my lawyers let him know they were coming for him. I really wanted to mail him a box of diapers but was told that might not be a good idea.

Once I discovered the ‘bug’ in my real estate operation, things started turning around quickly.

I had to sacrifice hours on my book to catch up with the damage that’d been done, but despite all the insanity I blew past my Q1 acquisition goal and bought 35 properties.

Besides trying to finish my book, run the real estate business and catching sketchy people doing sketchy stuff, I had a lot of other stuff going on in Q1:

My parents came to visit for a week, shortly after my oldest niece moved in, I’m coaching several students, I hired and started training a non-fake employee, continuing to work on my health stuff, trying to get in my meditations, journaling, nature walks, reading, etc…

So I’m looking forward to my first vacation of the year in Colorado next week(was the 1st week of April).

Real estate business:

I started the quarter off deciding to track down a pilot who could take aerial photos of certain neighborhoods where I could overlay growth patterns and combine them with my calculations on actual values vs. perceived values and find/bet on where I believed to be major discrepancies based on everyone using what I feel is a suboptimal method to determine value.

Luckily just before I went through the aerial photos/overlay headache I was able to get the data I wanted another way.

It’s been interesting coming out of retirement the last year or so to take advantage of an opportunity I saw in a field I didn’t have too much experience in.

When you can approach something knowing you know nothing, it is unbelievable how big of an edge that can give you.

Not knowing how you’re ‘supposed’ to do something doesn’t keep you trapped to what everyone else is doing.

You can search for what is optimal instead.

See, most people operate the same way everyone else does. They do things how you’re ‘supposed to’ do it.

“Oh, you’re doing real estate, this is how you have to do it.”

Like I’ve written about in the past, once everyone knows what the optimal strategy is, that strategy is no longer optimal.

Almost no one has been trained to think logically, so they all do things the same exact way and assume it’s ‘correct’ because ‘that’s how everyone does it’.

The more popular the ‘correct’ strategy gets, the worse it is.

Yet, if every book, podcast, etc… outlines the same ‘best ways to invest in real estate’’, it’s most definitely not the best.

Just the most marketed.

Same as many business niches and strategies.

Just copying others ‘expert’ strategies isn’t usually an optimal path to any sort of wealth.

Try to approach everything with an empty cup. A complete beginner’s mind, no matter what you think you know.

I know right now I’m just referencing an investing/business example, but approaching everything from this perspective can completely change your life in just about every area.

This famous parable explains the concept well:

‘Once upon a time, there was a very wise Zen master. People traveled miles to seek his help and wisdom.

He would teach them and show them the way to true enlightenment and wisdom in life.

One day, a scholar visited the master seeking advice.

“I have come to ask you to teach me about Zen”.

A few minutes later in their conversation, it was very clear that the scholar was completely full and convinced of his own views and ideas.

He interrupted the master continuously with his own stories and failed to listen and be attentive to what the master had to say.

The master suggested that they have a cup of tea together.

Then, began to pour his guest a cup.

The cup soon filled but to the guest’s surprise, the master kept pouring tea even as the cup overflowed onto the table.

The scholar was bewildered and yelled, “Stop! The cup is full already. Can’t you see?”.

With a smile, the master replied that the scholar was just like that cup – already so full of opinions and convictions that nothing more can fit.

“How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?”

–

We do not know as much as we think we know.

Knowing THIS, allows you to access knowledge that is impossible to access if you are trapped under the belief that you already know.

In EVERY area of your life.

In terms of investing/business, what do you think is a better strategy:

Operate like the competition, or create a strategy that specifically defeats the strategy your competitors are using.

One of these will have ‘standard’ results, one of them will obliterate your competition, which will reward you with results that will be unrecognizable to anything your competitors will produce.

Again, with the approach that ‘we know nothing’, you don’t end up with the same strategy as everyone else, so you don’t end up with the same results as everyone else.

Obvious, but rarely practiced.

If there’s no book/blueprint on what you’re trying to do, it’s obviously going to be more difficult to get going, as there’s nothing to copy.

But if you’re creating a blueprint, although it may take more time to figure out, the rewards have the potential to be monumentally larger, and it’s a whole hell of a lot more fun.

It was one of the things that pulled me to this opportunity.

How would I invest if I knew NOTHING at all? What would the OPTIMAL strategy be?

That led me to a route that’s been a lot more profitable, and a whole hell of a lot more exciting than just copying what others are doing.

I’m planning on eventually showing every detail of every aspect of my bet.

Everything from the math I used, to some very strange stories including someone hiring a guy to find out who I was and showing up at my door in March asking if I could help them find/acquire property.

Been a weird ride so far, and I have a feeling it’s only going to get weirder.

Definitely keeps life interesting!

–

Debating raising money:

I’ve been approached a few times from people wanting to help raise a fund for what I’m doing.

I know almost ZERO about that kind of stuff.

I’m just not from that part of the entrepreneur/investing world.

I’m considering raising some funds from folks, but I’m someone who very much prefers simplicity so am curious if I can raise money to increase the size of my bet while continuing to enjoy the same simplicity of life I have right now.

Would love to learn as I’m a complete newbie in that area.

If you’ve got in depth experience raising money, and/or know someone who invests in alternative styles of investing, I’d love to hear from you.

–

Book stuff:

My 2nd Q1 priority goal was the book.

I failed on this goal(which was to put in a minimum of 142 hours on the book).

I was ahead of pace until the RE mole was discovered, and then moved my energy to prioritize that business to make up for the damage caused, since time was of the essence.

The good news:

I reached an agreement with an editor and will be turning in my rough draft to them in Q2.

–

Hiring:

My third Q1 priority goal was to hire an employee.

After hiring/firing the fake employee, I hired a real one. Real references and everything!

Hopefully helps take some of the chaos off my plate.

I may hire for a new position soon’ish.

If you know someone who is extremely organized and detail oriented, loves to learn, can work at an insanely fast pace, and is a self starter, please let me know.

This person would be someone that needs no management and can go run with a project with little to no direction once they understand the objective, and have already had success in roles with limited oversight and complete ownership of the results.

While I don’t have a position available this moment, I likely will in the relatively near future, and/or for the perfect person would consider creating an additional position.

–

So, despite getting hit in the face all quarter, I still managed to scrape out some decent results, and hit 2 of my 3 quarterly goals.

Q1 Results:

1. Bought 35 properties (goal was 15)
2. 68.27 hours on the book (goal was 142)
3. Made my first full-time hire in a very long time

Q2 Goals:

1. Complete the rough draft of my book and hand it off to my editor
2. Buy 50 properties
3. Be working less than 2 hours per day on any non unique ability activity

Crossing my fingers that I get punched in the face less in Q2.

I’m trying to be better this year about sharing my usually relatively private, strange and interesting life, to stay better in touch, connect with others up to similar things in the world and hopefully share some things that may be helpful to you.

I live in a forest now.

I saw more animals than people last year.

The person I see more than anyone is a monk who lived in the Himalayas for 25 years and used to be friends with people like Ram Dass. We go for nightly walks a few times a week. He lives near me in the forest.

You might be wondering, how did I end up living in a forest and what have I been up to…

My 2021 Review:

I started 2021 off on the east coast in a medical clinic. That’s about as fun as it sounds.

I’d had some ongoing health challenges for a while but they got especially bad so I spent months on the East Coast paying some mad scientist doctor an obscene amount of money to try some very outside the box methods.

I left in January and was told to go rest for a couple months.

So, I went out to Sedona to stay with a friend.

If I wasn’t napping or chatting w/my friend, I often spent 12+ hours a day reading, thinking, journaling and meditating.

I didn’t really have the energy to do anything else.

He lived right next to the National Forest so when I wasn’t doing the above and had a little energy, I’d take a short walk out there and go chill on a giant rock.

After a while I started looking at heading back to the Austin area.

I’d let the lease of my downtown place expire when I was back east in the clinic so I needed a new spot.

I wanted to be around nature more both for the peace to read, write and think, but also being around a bunch of cell towers and Wi-Fi signals in a downtown highrise when trying to heal is a pretty horrific strategy. My new doctor wouldn’t even start my new protocol if I wasn’t in a spot without wifi as he said it’d be very unlikely to work.

I couldn’t find anything I liked on the market to rent or buy. I called my realtor and asked if he knew of any off-market nature properties.

He called me back a few days later and FaceTimed me from a new construction build that was set to be finished in a couple months.

He showed me the surrounding nature and I bought it over FaceTime.

Shortly after, I headed back to Texas where I planned on crashing in airbnb’s for a month or two until my house was finished being built.

While I was waiting for it to be finished I found a house I liked even better that had just come on the market. Exactly the type of nature seclusion I was looking for.

So I bought that one, and flipped the other once the build was finished.

The rest of the year was honestly a blur.

I started off the year just hoping to improve my health, work on my book and maybe buy another investment property or two.

I bought an investment property.

I had a decent amount of energy again.

I bought another.

I thought the market was completely mispricing things.

So I bought some more.

I ran all sorts of calculations to try and figure out why prices were much lower than I thought they should have been. “Am I wrong, or is everyone else?, I wondered to myself.

I bought more.

“Why isn’t anyone else scooping these up?”, I questioned myself, debating whether my thought process or analysis was flawed in some way.

I bought some more.

I couldn’t get any math I ran to show that the areas I was looking at weren’t significantly underpriced. 

So I kept buying.

One of my favorite quotes is from Charlie Munger, and it’s something I’ve always tried to follow:

“A few major opportunities, clearly recognizable as such, will usually come to one who continuously searches and waits, with a curious mind, loving diagnosis involving multiple variables. And then all that is required is a willingness to bet heavily when the odds are extremely favorable, using resources available as a result of prudence and patience in the past…You should remember that good ideas are rare— when the odds are greatly in your favor, bet heavily.”

So I did.

I ended up buying hundreds of properties before year end.

Probably not the recommended prescription for taking it easy/letting my body rest, but it was a good distraction from my health stuff, and I didn’t know how long the market would stay mispriced, so I wanted to strike while the opportunity was there.

It’s amazing what you can get done if you eliminate all else except what you’re wanting to do.

Living in the forest with no TV, limited use of social media and no phone. Oh yeah…in 2021 I kept my phone turned off 99% of the time.

Kobe Bryant had a concept he called editing your life.

Decide what you want and edit your life so it happens.

Most people are not willing to edit their life, so their life stays relatively the same or at least nowhere near the life they desire because they aren’t willing to edit and cut out the unnecessary to guarantee their desired results/life.

I knew I had to edit hard. So I did.

In 2021 while working nonstop on my health/trying to manage my often limited energy, I bought hundreds of properties, am finally close to completing the rough draft of a giant book I’ve been working on for years, read 84 books, took 500 + nature walks, and helped several coaching students massively grow and/or exit their businesses for a lot of money.

I also spent pretty significant time diving down the spiritual/mystical rabbit hole. Tons of reading, meditation, contemplation, and just practicing stillness/observation.

It’s extremely fascinating to me and several times throughout the year I reached certain states of consciousness that I’m not sure I would have believed could be reached without the use of high doses of psychedelics had I not experienced them myself.

I tried to get as much insight as I could from others who’d been deep down the road already. 

While in Arizona I realized one of my recently read paradigm shifting books that I loved had a foundation that was headquartered an hour from Sedona, and they supposedly would get together and discuss ideas, a study group of sorts. 

I called up the foundation and asked if I could come. 

I tend to read a lot of old, under the radar books and it was a super old website so I didn’t know if they still met. 

Do you still have meetups?

“How did you find out about us?”

I found a website but I didn’t know if it was up to date.

“Oh. Yes, we do still meet.”

Awesome, can I come?

“Well, sure, we’d be happy to have you!”

So the next time they met, I went. And it was me, my buddy and like 8 super old ‘enlightenment seeking’ people in some small cabin in the woods. I guess they’d been meeting for decades.

Anyways…

It was an extremely tough year at times, dealing with the unpredictable ups and downs of energy that comes with the health stuff that can still occasionally wipe me out for days or weeks.

But the business/investing stuff was fun and felt good to be playing that game again.

It kinda felt like real life monopoly.

Overall it was a weird and interesting year. 

I remember being such a combination of focused and tired one day that I went out to grab a morning coffee, paid for the coffee, and drove home. But I never actually waited for them to make my coffee. I just left. Haha.

It was definitely hellish at times trying to deal with health stuff and still try to accomplish some things that I wanted to accomplish, but I got better at just surrendering to taking days off whenever I needed them as much as it bugged the ‘achiever’ in me. I took the first couple months of the year off and most of the last couple, so was able to work about 8 months on the year, when at the beginning of the year I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to work 8 days. Still a long ways to go but shit… life!

My 2022 Goals:

I normally don’t share goals publicly, usually with just a few close friends/family, partly because I haven’t wanted to risk some false sense of accomplishment in talking about them vs. doing, but also with my health stuff I sometimes don’t know if/when I’ll have energy so attempting to achieve goals by itself can be frustrating with that variable, but to publicly say I’m going to do X knowing that variable is alive, adds to the fear of it popping it’s head up. Just going to do my best.

I’m trying to do better about sharing more/being open this year so I’m going to share all of my 2022 goals:

1. Buy at least 50 properties

With prices getting much higher, margins getting smaller and me wanting to spend more time completing my book it seems like a good target despite it being lower than the amount I bought this year.

2. Have my book publish ready

I brain dumped 400,000 words into a document several years ago. Unfortunately that’s not a typo. Most business/investing books are in the 40K range, I put everything I know about money/decision making down and have been slowly figuring out what to keep for my book.

3. Accept 4 new coaching clients to help them achieve life-changing goals

I love sharing what I know to help people accomplish life changing goals. This is definitely one of the most fulfilling things I get to do. It’s my version of play.

4. Break ground on at least 4 new construction builds

I see a gap in the market for a certain kind of build so I’m going to test my theory out and start a small construction business. I’ll either be wrong and learn a lot while having fun or I’ll be right and scale.

5. Hire an amazing right hand person

I very much need someone awesome to free up my time so I’m only spending it on my unique abilities. This goal is a huge domino to help me achieve other goals this year. 

If you know someone amazing who’s worked in a role such as chief of staff or executive assistant who loves working in a fast paced environment and is the most detail oriented and organized person you know, let me know!

6. A least 4 singles dinners/parties

Dating is an area I have spent 0 time on the last couple years. And living in the forest isn’t exactly the ideal setting for meeting people. And if you’re looking for a legit match, dating apps are about as inefficient as you can get. Since there isn’t a terrific solution in the dating space yet, I’m going to throw some singles dinners/parties, have my chef come cook for us, bring a bunch of eligible bachelor friends and just help good people meet. So, if you know of some amazing bachelorettes in the Austin area let me know and I’ll try and include them.

7. Publish quarterly updates on ForeverJobless

I’m going to post short goal tracking updates to keep anyone who wants to follow along up to date and for public accountability.

8. Vacation for at least 6 weeks

Trying to maintain a balance to help reset/stay fresh.

9. Publish at least 3 articles

These might be short since my writing time will be focused on my book but I miss writing articles so I’ll publish at least a few.

10. At least 600 light cardio section sessions

11. At least 250 days of journaling

Journaling has been a huge cheat code for me, not only helping to talk through ideas with myself, but looking back over it helps you to uncover things about yourself you’d forgotten or discounted. We often forget what we want/what’s important. Journaling can remind us. I did a 3 day silent retreat before the new year and read through all my 2021 journals, which helped me map out what I wanted and set the right goals for myself for this year.

12. At least 250 days of meditation

13. 1 unique good deed per month

14. 3 separate, abnormally kind deeds

15. At least 50 friend/family hangs

16. Lock myself in a cabin for at least 2 weeks to write nonstop

17. Throw a retreat or party of some sort w/some friends

18. 125 days of caffeine or less

19. Cheat meals: 6 meals or less

20. At least 48 weeks of specific goal tracking/weekly planning by Sunday night each week, including uploading to show accountability partners my weekly review and upcoming week commitments.

Here are my three Q1 priority goals:

1. Buy 15 properties

2. 142 hours on the book

3. Hire epic executive assistant or chief of staff

2022, here we go.

“One day you will wake up and there won’t be any more time to do the things you wanted to do. Do it now. “

—Paulo Coelho

People have a very deep misunderstanding of logical decision making, and it’s been interesting watching this on full display over the last week or two.

There are a lot of very intelligent people talking about coronavirus and the market. The problem is many of them have very gaping holes in their ability to think/decision making.

So, due to the urging of my friend Corey, I’m making this post to protect those who may blindly follow the advice of their Facebook feed which even if their intentions are good, their ability to think logically does not match their intentions.

There are a lot of smart people saying dumb things.

It reminded me of a conversation I had recently with a friend about intelligence vs. wisdom. My friend is an almost 80 year old vietnamese/buddhist man named Chan. He was talking about how most people in the states are very intelligent, but there are very few that are wise. They read lots of books, know a lot of things and have an incredible amount of intelligence but very little wisdom.

It relates a lot to the current situation where people are reading lots of articles, regurgitating things that they think sound smart, and not doing much actual thinking. Once they decide which side they’re on, they look for more articles that confirm their bias to share, and people on the other side of the argument are doing the same for their side of the argument, so neither ends up doing much thinking or learning, just arguing over who’s smarter/right by sharing ideas of people that aren’t them, and many of those articles are ideas written by people that aren’t from that person.

It’s a professional regurgitation war, and no one’s winning.

“Don’t worry guys since we’re young we’re only going to die .2% of the time instead of 5%”.

As I’m reading things like this, I’m thinking:

‘It’s not just about you being infected, you mathless, selfish goofballs.’

Let’s pretend the death rate was only 1%

It’s not actually a 1% death rate in the way your mind frames it.

The math compounds even more ridiculously than usual in this case if it is true that symptoms sometimes do not show for days, or that some people are asymptomatic.

So, let’s say someone only has a 1% chance of dying, and they’re one of the many that aren’t showing symptoms yet or are asymptomatic. And then they interact and infect 10 people. So now 10 other people have now acquired a 1% chance of dying.

But it’s not just that. Those 10 people who go infect 10 other people with a 1% chance of dying.

So YOU being infected may or may not = 1% chance of dying.

But I think it would be helpful to realize in the above situation if we pretend that the number of people infected would be capped right there(which it obviously wouldn’t), that in the sample size of the infected group caused by you, the expected value of a death in just the group you infected would be 100%.(note: that is expected value, not result of one sample size group)

I think presenting the math in an alternative way like this may help those on one extreme of the argument to at least open up to new considerations, and is worth repeating:

The expected value of a death in just the group you infected would be 100%+.

Or, the expected value of you causing a death(including your own) in just the group you infected would be 100%+.

“So Billy are you saying you are on this side of the argument?”

No.

“I don’t get it, so you’re on the other side?”

No.

What I’m saying is a complete misunderstanding of math has people fully confident in whichever side they picked.

The same math that we applied above would change COMPLETELY if the variables changed.

And the variables have changed, and will change further.

So watching people ‘pick a side’ and then share articles that confirm their bias to the side they picked is so funny, but not funny in a ‘haha’ way because it’s affecting so many people not only health wise but financially.

There is no ‘side’, there is what is expected to happen when the possibilities of each side are considered and the probability of them happening.

People are seeking the ‘answer’ and the only answers they are considering is to one very extreme, or the other.

The ‘answer’ will almost always be in between.

And the ‘answer’ will get closer to what it actually is as more information is gathered.

As more information is gathered, variables will change accordingly, both up and down.

Anyone saying they know the death rate or any other rate has a massive misunderstanding of how math works.

It depends on variables.

And in this specific case there is a very high amount of variables.

And in a case where there is a high amount of variables, to determine what will happen is much more difficult.

Especially when many variables are hidden.

And by hidden I mean people just don’t consider them as part of the equation, but whether or not they understand the variables doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

Hidden variables still exist it is just difficult to know what number to plug in.

Just a small amount of the variables would be death rates, infection rates, ability to avoid infection rates, ability to create a vaccine, ability to create a higher quality of care for the infected, etc…

As hidden variables become less hidden, the actual numbers will come into play. And then those numbers will even further change as the variables continue to change.

Again, anyone saying they know the death rate or any other rate has a massive misunderstanding of how math works.

The most important thing to know is those saying they know, don’t know.

For example if we pretend one area has an older average age, their death rate would be higher. If their ability to care for those infected was low, their death rate would be higher. If the area was reactive instead of proactive to containing the spread, the death rate would be higher. If the area decision makers were emotional instead of logical, the death rates would likely be higher. If health care limited support amounts for those with limited financials, the death rates would be higher. etc…

It is important to note that as one of these variables change…

IT WILL AFFECT THE OTHER VARIABLES IN THE EQUATION.

Anyone claiming they know certain rates are only unintentionally claiming they have no idea how math works.

INCLUDING PEOPLE YOU CURRENTLY VIEW AS AUTHORITY.

That includes government and gurus.

Be very careful, there are a lot of people who speak eloquently who think very poorly.

Preparing doesn’t mean you think it’s going to happen.

It means you understand the downside of preparing is not equivalent to the downside of not preparing.

By a very insane margin.

So let’s say you are of the opinion that you think everything will be fine in x amount of weeks or months and that everything is overhyped.

It is still +EV to prepare, because the effort to prepare is minimal and the consequence to not prepare is maximal.

Again, I’m not saying anything will or will not happen.

I’m saying anyone who believes they do know, is only showing on full display that they have no idea what they’re talking about.

–

Besides the ‘coronavirus experts’ who are flooding social media, we now have the always expected ‘financial experts’ that come out every time the market goes up or down, pretending they have the answers to that as well.

Much of the above applies in a similar way, but I thought I would get slightly more specific as several people have messaged asking what to do with the market going wild.

“Should I buy the dip?”

“Is it going to keep going down?”

“Should I take all my money out?”

First of all, no one can accurately predict whether something will go up and down on a very short term basis.

And for everyone ‘buying the dip’, or wondering whether they should, I’d ask them to consider this:

What it is dipping in relation to?

People investing relative to what something was yesterday or what they predict it will be tomorrow are essentially attempting to predict what other people think about the market, and what other people think that other people think about the market.

They forget, or never even realized they’re betting on actual businesses with actual profits and losses.

I’d invite you to reconsider what you relate the dip to.

By that I mean, if you are going to ‘buy a dip’ because you thought it was priced perfectly yesterday, but now that it’s down today it is now underpriced, that would be a fine purchase.

The problem is that’s not what’s happening.

People are buying assets unrelated to what they think the actual asset is worth.

It’s not even a consideration for them.

They’re buying on ‘whether the market is up or down today’.

For the same reasons a market goes down in the short run, it goes up- psychology.

Long term it is based on the actual value and the expected rate of return.

So, many people are thinking they are an investor by playing a trader. And they are a -EV trader, but they don’t know it because of the quantity of variables they aren’t considering much like we talked about way above in relation to the virus, and that they won’t have the sample size to learn they are a -EV trader for quite a while.

They will focus on temporary results vs. the actual thought process that is going into the decisions, that would give them a shot to be +EV on their investments.

Many of the same people that are shorting today because “it’s going down!” are the same people who were buying yesterday because “it’s going up!”.

The decision making doesn’t have anything to do with companies you’re investing in.

A more optimal time to make a bet is before everyone in the world has the same information as you do.

SOMETHING IS NOT ON SALE OR OVERPRICED BASED ON THE PRICE IT WAS YESTERDAY, BUT BASED ON THE ACTUAL VALUE.

THE VALUE IS DETERMINED BY THE EXPECTED LONG TERM PROFITS OF AN ASSET.

THE OVER OR UNDER PRICING OF THAT ASSET CAN AND SHOULD BE APPLIED TO YOUR SPECIFIC DESIRED LONG TERM RETURN.

SO SOMETHING THAT IS UNDERPRICED FOR ONE PERSON, MAY NOT BE UNDERPRICED FOR YOU.

(under or over pricing is not based on ‘Ted’ from Facebook saying it’s low or high today)

Many finally wake up one morning and think, “wait a minute… I don’t actually know anything about the assets I own!”.

And so they ask other people who know nothing about assets they own what they should do.

And social media’s investing experts always have ‘answers!’.

The herd follows the smartest sounding dumb person.

It is worth repeating that value should not be relative to what a price was yesterday or tomorrow, as that’s just attempting to predict what someone else will think it’s worth and/or whether they think it will go up or down.

Over or under priced merely means relative to the rate of return you would like to earn and the rate of return you can be expected to earn based on the price you purchase at.

If you’ve ‘lost a lot of money’ in the last week or so, realize that you didn’t lose the money unless you need it right now. You hold an equity position in companies where the market changed the price in what they view the equity to be worth.

Our equity position didn’t change- we own the same % of the company as we did yesterday.

The market decided it’s worth less today, but if you’re not selling it doesn’t matter much.

You either believe it’s still a good bet or not.

It’s important to realize if your asset was overpriced yesterday, and the price is down today, it doesn’t mean it’s on sale today, it might mean it’s still overpriced.

If you’re wanting to make logical decisions about buying, selling, or holding assets it is not just about the value of the asset and your desired return vs. what you believe the asset will produce over the long term, but in the changes to the economy in the way that they affect the assets that you own.

In other words, if there is a supply change with an asset you own, that is one variable that is affected. So if we pretended that an asset was perfectly priced, and that a very temporary supply change is all that was going to happen, and the market reacted as if the world was crashing, your asset would likely be underpriced.

However, in situations like this where there are an incredibly high amount of variables, it is extremely difficult to determine how profits and losses will be affected for certain assets.

There are absolutely good and bad investments to be made in situations like this, but I would urge you to make these decisions in the right way, by relating it to the right things. And also fully understand that there are too many variables to ‘know’ what will happen. Not knowing what will happen is okay, but make sure you are considering whether or not something is mispriced in a logical way.

I would urge you to be very careful in blindly taking advice from people you think have the answers.

I can promise you that as in most things in life:

NO ONE KNOWS WHAT THEY ARE DOING

It’s easy for a well spoken illogical thinker to convince an answer seeking illogical thinker that ‘they have the answers.’

Everyone’s looking for ‘the answer’ instead of thinking for themselves.

Option #1: Become a logical thinker

Option #2: Learn who the VERY FEW logical thinkers are (a valiant attempt at #1 will help you with #2, if nothing else by at least eliminating those that are very obviously not. hint: almost everyone)

Option #NEVER: Listening to everyone else, no matter how intelligent they may sound or how many books or articles they can regurgitate, if they are unable to think logically avoid them at all costs.

For they know not what they do, and THEY DON’T KNOW THAT THEY DON’T KNOW – THAT IS WHERE THE DANGER LIES.

This past weekend I realized there was a stock that was having a Cyber Monday sale. So, I decided to buy. But… before I did, I thought I’d see what Warren Buffett would do…

(Before we dive in: After I made my last post about stocks/investing, I’ve gotten a number of messages from people asking what they should do. I’ve been sitting on this for a few days debating if I should post it here since there’s no one size fits all answer for obvious reasons, and I don’t want people to go buy something just because I bought it(or because Warren Buffett bought it) “Apple stock has a Cyber Monday Sale!” was my original post title but I didn’t release it Sunday/Monday – note: it has gone up several % since I released this on fb which slightly affects the numbers/whether it’s a buy, but not much)

…I asked myself, what would Warren Buffett say to buy if he were your financial advisor right now?

So… I ran some simple numbers and here’s what they said:

He would tell you to buy Apple.

That’s obviously oversimplifying because again, everyone’s situation is different, but with the way Buffett invests that actually matters quite a bit less than if another investor was giving you advice on what to buy. He buys based on what he believes the intrinsic value of the company is, and whether or not the current market price is offering him a deal on that or not.

And ‘the answer’ to what he believes is the best investment in the world at the moment based on his investing criteria, is Apple(note: obviously there are companies w/more upside, or companies with great value that are too small for him to look at – but this is based on everything he sees/fits w/his investing model- margin of safety, etc…)

While everyone was shopping online for Cyber Monday deals, Apple stock was having a giant Cyber Monday sale(and still is) according to the intrinsic value Buffett would place on the company.

So, how do we know that’s the answer he would give? Or am I guessing?

Well, the obvious answer which would have some obvious rebuttals would be that Apple is the company he’s most heavily invested in. But that’d be a really poor answer since this doesn’t factor in when he bought, what price he paid, etc… A stock may have been a deal at a certain price, but may not be anymore.

So, how do we know that right now this is what Warren Buffett would tell us to do?

Well, as of Cyber Monday it opened at 174.24(today it opened at 176.69), so the Cyber Monday sale is still ongoing.

Now, how is this relevant to Buffett? Well, he bought shares in Q1 and Q3. The lowest price the stock reached in Q3 was 190.29(spent most of the quarter in the 200s though). So, he was buying at prices above what it’s currently priced at. Now, he didn’t buy many shares relative to the amount of money he’s investing, so if we looked at Q1 the stock price spent most of its time in the 170s. Let’s just pretend Buffett bought at the absolute bottom, which was 155.15 (which by the way Buffett doesn’t attempt to time the market so there’s a very miniscule chance he bought at the price, but for simplicity/margin of safety we’ll pretend that was the price he paid).

So, you might say- ya but what if in the rare chance he did buy at 155.15, with the price today being in the 170s how do we know this is still what he’d recommend?

Well, Buffett wants to earn around 15% on his money. That doesn’t mean he always gets it, and that number may have changed since the last time he mentioned it, but he’s someone that’s gotten around 20% gains over the last half century. He has an absolutely absurd track record.

So let’s use 15%.

Well, if pretend he bought at the absolute lowest point of the year, that was February 8th. Today is November 28th. We’ll call it 9.5 months ago.

So we could say even if we added 11.875% to the lowest price of the year(again he likely paid higher than that), the price could go up by 18.42 and still be a price Buffett would buy at assuming the fundamentals of the company hadn’t changed. That price would be 173.57. Keep in mind, this is pretending he bought at the absolute bottom, so it’s more likely the similar price would be 180+. And to further prove that again- he bought more shares in Q3 when the lowest price was 190.29.

And keep in mind Buffett is not a stock flipper- he’s a buy and hold investor who prefers to hold for 10+ years(he’ll often hold for many decades). And making the kind of bets he’s making on Apple, it’s unlikely(but not impossible) that something would have drastically changed in the fundamentals of the company to make him want to change his position so soon. There’s a high probability if he doesn’t believe the fundamentals have changed that you’ll see a report sometime in the next few months that he purchased more shares in Q4 – but obviously if someone waited until a public report that Buffett bought, the stock may jump on that news and the price to buy at won’t be the same anymore.

So, cool… Warren Buffett has whispered in your ear the company he thinks you should invest in. So, how much would he say to buy?

This again, is highly dependant on the person, so there’s not as definitive of an answer as the stock he would tell you to buy. However, I’ll give you some things to think about that may help you decide:

If you have an edge, you need wayyyyyyyy less stocks to be diversified than people think. If you have no edge it’s irrelevant and he’d tell you to just buy an index fund. It also depends on the size of your edge – that will change the number of companies for you to be properly diversified. Charlie Munger(Buffett’s partner) says 3 companies is the number that you need to have the diversification you need, but I’m not sure what % edge he’s calculating in to come to that number. So, assuming you have an edge, you could say 5-10 to be on the safe side. But again, if you have no edge it’s irrelevant.

For simplicity sake let’s pretend you do have an edge, either on your own or by understanding the type of bets people like Buffett are making. Well, without writing 10,000+ words on the subject since this is already long, you want to bet heavier on your best bets. You could use something like the Kelly Criterion to calculate your sizing, but you might have difficulty properly sizing your bets if you’re not sure the estimated edge. If you’re not sure, you could use a fractional Kelly bet size to lower risk(which wouldn’t cut the expected gains as much as you’d think). While Buffett has never said he uses this formula for his own investing, he basically uses something close to it because of the way he sizes his investments. He bets very big when he thinks he has the biggest edge, and smaller when his edge isn’t so big, the same way a card counter would properly bet in blackjack.

The fact that Buffett is making his biggest bet on Apple by a very, very large margin is saying that he believes his edge is biggest on this investment(at the prices he was paying). And again we’ve covered the pricing he was betting heavily on it. You could also say that if his desired rate of return is 15%(not sure that it still is), that he believes his expected rate of return to be larger than that since he’s putting such a large % of his capital on it. His desired rate of return would be semi irrelevant to your decision though, because whatever it is all he’s saying with his bets is that he believes it to be significantly more +EV than the avg market return.

So in short, he would tell you to bet heavier on Apple than your other bets, but still to make other bets. If you didn’t know if you had an edge on any other stocks, again, he would tell you to buy an index fund.

He’d also tell you to buy and absolutely forget about the price after that – it will go up and down a lot and will only stress most people out because they think too emotionally. “Omg it’s down today!”… “omg it’s up I’m rich!”… He would tell you to forget all the noise and plan on holding for an extended period of time. Attempting to time the top or bottom of the market is a fool’s game.

When Warren Buffett was leaving this imaginary meeting he tells you this is the only day he’ll be your financial advisor. “Omg what do I do next time I need investing advice Warren, should I ask a financial planner?”.

He would spit out his Coke laughing and say, “F*$k no” (he wouldn’t swear but he’d want to!). He would say, “if you’re not sure what to do, buy an index fund.”

Financial planners are NOT for picking the best investments. That’s one service that they offer, and it’s not one that 99%+ of them have an edge in(they have other services that I believe are valuable, but I’ve never personally used one). And it’s unlikely you stumbled across one of the 1%. If you DID happen to accidentally stumble across the 1%, you’d need to ask yourself if the edge that they have beats the fees you pay. The reality is if you knew the game so well that you were able to identify someone with an edge, you wouldn’t be hiring them to pick your investments for you. 99%+ of people are paying fees to have someone get them average returns, but because of the fees the return they get is obviously below average. Compounding over time this adds up to an enormous amount of money you’re paying to lose to the returns an index fund would get you. This is why Buffett and so many others recommend index funds if you want diversification and have no interest in doing the work to have an edge on the market.

In short:

• Apple is a very +EV bet
• Almost everyone should just buy an index fund(even though there’s no edge in doing so, you can still compound really well over time. But if you want to get an edge, it is there to be had).
• Almost no one should hire a financial advisor for the goal of investment returns
• The very small % of people that have a chance of beating the market should not diversify past the hedge of doing something like fractional kelly betting, partly because your edge/additional EV is a sort of hedge in its own way over the long term, and the more you diversify the more you cut your edge.

Someone with an edge, and who’s betting using Kelly formula will not only grow their capital at a much faster pace, but risk of ruin will be 0, even though it will seem to the average person to be extremely risky.

(Disclaimers: I’m NOT telling you to go buy Apple. +EV does not mean guaranteed, it just means it’s expected return is better than others. While I’m long on Apple and have been for a lonnnng time(well before Buffett started buying), there’s risk like there is with any investment. Apple could go down a lot, and I’m okay with that for myself personally. If you plan on making any sort of investment on anything you should be comfortable with the potential downside. We’d all be billionaires if there was only risk free investments that compounded quickly! So, don’t do anything just because I do it, or because it’s what Warren Buffett would do. Do you!)

(Note: if you like these types of posts let me know, as sometimes I just send this kind of stuff to family or post on my personal facebook)