Billy Keels  0:00  

Replace $120,000 a year without waiting 20 years to do it. Today's episode is sponsored by Billy Keels advisory services. If you want to learn more about how to make your 99 optional, just go to make it optional.com. Once again, that's make it optional.com.

Speaker 2  0:19  

Helping you build freedom without losing your edge. This is the going long podcast with Billy Keels, how

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to

Billy Keels  0:31  

replace $120,000 a year without waiting 20 years to do it. Is the absolute perfect episode. Brief episode for you, if you have ever struggled with paralysis analysis, you've tried to run to a finish line that doesn't have an end. And if you just give me a couple of minutes, I want to share something with you. I'm actually going to share a client story that is going to help you realize that you making your role optional, like your high paid corporate job, optional. It's much easier. It's much simpler than you think, right? It's much simpler than you then you absolutely think. And so I've always thought, and I believe that sharing client stories is one of the best ways that you can actually recognize, okay, well, like, is this something that's happening to me or not? And I want to share a story with you now. This is a story of one of my clients. I'm gonna call him Jay, and it's something that I happen to see more and more frequently, and even when I'm speaking to people on strategy calls that I meet with LinkedIn like eventually, this is a recurring pattern, whether it's someone I've speak to who isn't going to become a client, or someone who is a client, I don't know. Maybe I just tend to attract people that are very similar to me. But Jay's story is one where he had been analyzing and analyzing and analyzing and analyzing so much to the fact that he actually missed many opportunities, right? I mean, analyzing, studying, looking at evaluating, but very specifically, by the time he and I were speaking, he'd come to me over some some things I'll tell you a little bit about here frequently, but he had actually been studying one particular real estate syndication. It's around real estate, but so much to the fact that the syndication closed before he could actually make a decision. And that hadn't, wasn't like the first time. And when I started asking him right, eventually, as he came on board, and this is one of the stories, as he's a client, he start, we were reflecting on things right and on this particular opportunity is one that he when he looked at the numbers, he was going to make $47,000 projected like he was projected to make $47,000 over five years on this particular deal that he, that he shared with me, and as I asked him more about the the making the $47,000 well, he just told me he wanted to make more money. Pretty typical thing, at least initially, when I start working with people, but what I realized was also like, what he really was wanting to do, he wanted to feel much more confident in the decision that he was making, so that he would truly be able to understand the risks when he was making the decision. But the thing that over the period of time. So of course, I'm curious, and I want to understand a little bit more about what his process was. About what his process was, and so he can help me to understand, like, some of this frustration because he was missing many, many opportunities. So I asked him about his due diligence process. He talked to me about it. It seemed extremely robust. And when I asked him about the process, I was also curious, because he shared this one, like the $47,000 opportunity that he missed to make an investment on. And I say he missed it because he just didn't make a decision. And it just happened. I asked him, like, hey, you know, how many times has this type of thing happened to you? And what he said to me afterwards, I guess it really, it didn't shake me up, but it was something that really caught my attention, because he said to me, he said this has happened like nine or 10 times. And I was like, wow. Okay. I didn't say it like that, right? I was just like, Okay, interesting. And as he looked back on it, I said, How many of those deals were bad deals, meaning that they just didn't work at all. And he said none. And so I thought, well, he went from this, like 910, to actually none. And so that's a pretty important gap. And I thought to myself, Okay, well, there's a couple of things that are actually happening here, happening here. There's a there are a number of of items that are coming into play. One, and you know, Jay is working for, and he Well, he's still working for a large enterprise software company, a market leading enterprise software company. His salary is upwards of $275,000 and the thing is, is he was being as defensive with his time

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and.

Billy Keels  5:00  

As he was with his money, right? And what I mean by that was the time that he was putting in like that was his defense mechanism. It was just to be able to continue to feel like he was managing the risk. But when we started to peel back the onion a little bit, the proverbial onion, started to realize that, yes, he had a due diligence process, but he didn't have a system in place to help him move towards what I like to call optionality. We also recognize that he didn't have a specific target, like he wanted to make more money, but the target wasn't clear in terms of, like, how much money? And one of the things I like to say a lot, and I say it here all the time, is like, yeah, if you're looking to make more money, money will help you. Money will help to solve certain problems. Money only helps to to solve money problems. It doesn't help to solve all problems. So he doesn't have a system, he doesn't have a target, which ultimately means he doesn't really have the clarity that he was looking for to be able to make decisions that minimize the risk and get in the game, so that he could actually get to that point where he understood the risk and he was making progress. And so what we realized is that his whole thing was around analysis paralysis. And so how do we break that? This was the thing is, and I'm a recovering perfectionist, so I understand it very well. It's so easy to get caught up in just studying spreadsheets and going over it again and asking more questions and asking more questions, but not with a real purpose, not within a system, not with the clarity of thought to say, Okay, this is actually moving me more towards the target. It should be moving you towards the target, right? And so what we did is we, yeah, we did. We slowed things down. We slowed things down, and we got to a certain point. Because within the first phase of the executive edge advisory program, we focus on getting clarity, like, I like to say you're getting quantifiably clear. And we worked out the fact that for his role and for the life and the lifestyle that he had, that he only needed to come up with $120,000 a year. Now some people may be saying, Okay, well, you may be listening going, well, that's nothing. And other people may be going like, 120,000 really? Wow. Okay, well, you know, here's the thing. The important part of that is, Jay got clarity. He then began to put a system around how he could move towards making $120,000 a year, because that was the point that his role, his corporate job, was going to become optional in his life, meaning he could go into the job because he wanted to, not because he had to. He's making and getting to a point where the the progress, the learnings that he that he wanted to make, that those things were beginning to become a part of reality. Now here's what happened, and I will tell you like it wasn't simple. It's not something that has happened overnight, and this is taken consistent. It consistently working together and revisiting the model and understanding the system. But we got to a point, because it's when you've been doing things by yourself in your own corner, like there are old habits that need to be revisited or be addressed by someone that's looking at it from an outside in perspective. And so as we went through this like there was that, like I said, there was that moment that was things were not always easy, but within a few weeks of us working together, we got to a point where Jay actually wired $150,000 and he did get to his first syndication right where he placed his money with a number of other people. And that money that he put was towards an asset that was allowing him to, in essence, move towards the optionality number, which helped him to realize that he could make a decision, understanding the risks, and still move forward, not getting stuck. Why? Because he was clear on the number that he is working towards and why he's wanting to work towards that number. He had a system that was a proven system that he's operating within, and also it helped him to get started. Now, did he in the first thing, in his first investment? Because that's the route that he chose. Did he did he get to his optionality number? Well, no, he's making progress towards the optionality number. And more importantly, for Jay, Jay now has a system and to follow, a process to follow, so that he's not stuck in this paralysis analysis. And he also has someone that is there, who's already been there, that he can pick up the phone and contact and ask the question. So the reason I said this is I struggled a lot with paralysis analysis, and I talked to a lot of people on LinkedIn, and I have clients that I work with, especially in the beginning, where there's this feeling of, I've got to learn more. I've got to learn more. I've got to learn more. Well, yeah, you definitely need to learn as much as possible. And at the same time, it's about, how can you start to make progress? How can you start to build momentum towards your goals, towards that freedom that you're looking for? So if this is you, and you're feeling stuck still, well, I'm very easy to find. You can find out more about I even have a little a guide. It's if. Go to make it optional.com. That make it optional, outcome will actually walk you through the proven three step process that I've been working with clients on and helping lots of, well, hundreds of of executives in or senior leaders in in the corporate world. And listen, if it's not you, then you know someone who's struggling with this, share the episode, you know what? And then after you share, then show them that you care, as I like to say, pick up the phone. Talk to them about today's conversation, ask them how you can help them, move them in the right direction and and heck, send them my way as well, or have them look at the make it optional.com. Find me on LinkedIn, and with that stated, while you're doing that, I'm going to be right here, right here, preparing for the next episode. So I'd like to say thank you very much, and make it a great day.

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