Speakers:
SPEAKERS
Lauren Keen Aumond, Clint Murphy
Clint Murphy 00:00
Lauren, welcome to the growth guide podcast. Thank you for joining me today is an interesting one we are recording Episode 100. And part of my idea was that every 50 episodes or so we’ll flip the table, and I’ll have a friend interview me. Having been on your podcasts, I thought of no one better than you to be the one to do it. And given we’ve had conversations together in spaces every week for a year, I thought you may know some good questions to throw at me. So I’m going to pass it over to you. And I will be in the hot seat. And I’m very nervous to be there.
Lauren Keen Aumond 00:40
Thank you for having me, my friend. We’ve been friends for a couple of years now. So I’m very honored. And I feel a little pressure. I’m actually a little nervous, too. But we’ll see how this goes.
Clint Murphy 00:50
All right, let’s do it.
Lauren Keen Aumond 00:52
So we hear that you are a father, a husband, a CFO, a writer, an influencer. I’m just going to use that word, amongst many other things. How do you do it? Are you are you doing the morning affirmations? Are you meditating, cold showers, waking up at five? I mean, what’s the recipe there?
Clint Murphy 01:15
That is something that gets asked a lot. So it makes a lot of sense to start there. The I have never traditionally been a morning person. And I would say that since I started this program, I have gotten up with a number that starts with a five more times in my life than I ever had before that. So I’ve definitely started waking up earlier. I haven’t necessarily started going to bed earlier. In fact, I’ve likely been going to bed later. So it’s a combo that can’t be sustainable in the long run, which is I sacrificed a lot of sleep over the last, I’d say 12 months in order to get things going. And then the big thing that you were aware of that we talked about while we’re on Spaces was the ability to be in a privilege to be in a financial position where my wife was able to retire in November. And so now she’s on Team Growth Guide as an operating partner, and manages a lot of the podcast, a lot of the social media, and a lot of the day to day life. So her taking that on in November has been an absolute game changer. And sleeping again, I have energy, the weights coming off, the health is going up. So I’d say it’s been pushing the sleep. And then the other thing, which I know we’re going to talk about, because habits and mindset, somewhere we always tackle is I’d heard something a number of years ago from someone I admired who is Matt Fraser who was I believe, a five time CrossFit Games champion. In the early years, he was making it on the podium, not in first place, second or third. And he was doing a double major in engineering and business. And when someone asked him, How are you doing that double major, and getting on the podium and CrossFit Games. He said, it’s simple. It isn’t easy, but it’s really, really simple. You take everything in your life that doesn’t contribute to those goals, and you cut it the fuck out. And no more powerful words resonated with me than that. When people say how do you do these things? Well, my priorities are my job as a CFO, my family, my mental health, and growing the growth guide, whether it’s the podcast, this week, we launched the newsletter and the social media. So those were the priorities, everything else got cut. So a year ago, just under a year ago, I quit drinking alcohol. I really didn’t do much socialization it was zone in, Get it done, make it a primary focus. The other thing that helped and you and I know that because we’re on Spaces every week together was COVID. I mean a lot of people, COVID was horrible, and had a really negative effect on them and coming out of it, they’re they’re in a worse spot than they were. So absolutely have to recognize that and and I feel for people who are in that situation. We were blessed to keep our jobs. We were blessed to be in an industry that continued to perform and did well through COVID with real estate. Most of my investments were in real estate, those did well through COVID and living in a city that had quarantines. It meant Lauren that I had nowhere to go. I had no kids activities. I couldn’t go see people. And so after a while, I just said, Well, what am I going to do with my time, and that’s when I joined Twitter. That’s when I launched a podcast. And so were it not for COVID, you and I were would not be having this conversation today.
Lauren Keen Aumond 05:23
It’s interesting, we’re going to see the impacts of COVID, the positive ones and the negative ones for a very long time, I was thinking back to COVID, for me and my husband as well. And we traveled a lot for work before that. And when we stopped traveling for work, we bought a house hack, renovated it. And we were able to be there through that. And that really changed the course of our lives. So made some positive things happen there. So this idea of cutting everything out that isn’t directly related to your priorities, it makes a lot of sense. However, you mentioned that it’s basically not sustainable the way you did it in terms of the not sleeping enough thing, right? How do you know when to pivot towards, you know, in that direction, and then kind of back to a little more balance?
Clint Murphy 06:09
It will be different for every person, I would say one of the strengths or weaknesses that I’ve had in my life, and my wife was laughing about this one last night, because you’ll see I write a lot of content that I think I put a post out the other day that said, it’s a it’s a marathon, not a sprint, and she was laughing, because she said you’re always sprinting. And I said, Well, that’s my MO I sprint marathons. And the problem is, it’s like, you can maintain that pace for a period of time. And if you’re not cognizant of what’s happening, you just run headlong into a wall and you’re wiped out. And then it’s how do i replenish my chemicals? Had I replenish my biology? How do I fix my physical symptoms? And so I think you have to start to monitor where am I at, what are my vitals, whether it’s your Oura ring, whether it’s your weight, whether it’s how you feel and look in the mirror, and just be cognizant of what’s happening with my body, mentally, physically, spiritually, emotionally. Am I being short with my kids? Am I being short with my wife? Am I falling asleep in a meeting at work, which may have happened last week. In fairness, 6am kids hockey practice, I’m the coach, we were up at five to go to it. So I was a little tired by the time I got to that meeting. Now, so you’re watching all of that and saying, Am I performing at my best. And when you’re not you start to put in practices to correct yourself. And as much as possible, I try to make those practices, ones that’s like habit stacking, if you will.
Lauren Keen Aumond 07:48
So how do you know what is a priority, then? Because you can’t prioritize everything, right? In order to know what to cut out, you have to know what’s important. How do you decide what those things are?
Clint Murphy 07:58
And so for me, what that looks like is I always boil it down to three key things that allow you to achieve anything you want in life within reason, you and I at this stage of our lives will probably not be NASA astronauts. That said for almost anything else. Number one, what do you want? Number two, have a plan. Number three, do the work on a daily basis. And for that number one, take a step back and say how do I know what I want? What’s my mission? What’s my purpose? What are my values? And so that’s an exercise I started doing, I’d say five years ago ish, looking at what my values were, what hills am I willing to die on? What do I care about. And then saying, I want my purpose and my mission to align with my values. So from values to purpose, from purpose to five year plan, and then five year plan, break it backwards, all the way to get to what are the things I need to do on a daily basis to be where I want to be in five years. And so the other benefit of doing that is when you built it from that perspective. Now you’ve really done as Simon Sinek says, You’ve started with your y, that’s my Y. And if I start with my Y, and I have my long term goal, and I break it all the way back to daily habits, you’ll find that what you thought will take 10 years or what you thought will take five years. After a year you’re looking at the plan and you’re saying well wait a second. We’re only a year into this five year plan. And we’re actually 60% of the way or 40% we’re way ahead of schedule. And then you start to teach yourself that the North Star that that five year plan is can get bigger, it can get bolder it can get more audacious.
Lauren Keen Aumond 09:57
So that’s most of what I was going to ask does how attainable is that goal and how attainable are these weekly habits? How consistent do you need to be? Are these attainable things that you’re creating, and then you just sort of make the star bigger if you can?
Clint Murphy 10:13
The important thing, this is super important on this one is my goals are attainable for me. Someone else’s goals have to be attainable for them. And what is attainable for me may not be attainable for them. So you have to start where you are. And this is a concept that we can dive in together if you want, which I call building your get shit done muscle. And I’ve been doing that now I’d say for about 15 years. A lot of times Lauren, it’s been through sports. ie. I am going to do an ironman. And at the time I made that decision, I was an out of shape couch potato, broke it right down to Hey, I gotta go get my bike tuned up, I have to sign up for swim lessons to not be afraid of the water. And I need to buy a new pair of running shoes. And then you just start small, start with the smallest step you possibly can be consistent with it, you’ll see the growth. And as you see the growth, you work your way to a bigger and bigger goal. When you do that with one goal, and you’re successful, then you’re able to say well wait, now I’m going to take that to something bigger. So I taught myself, I can go from zero to Ironman. Now I’m going to teach myself I can go from zero to CFO, or I’m going to go from I don’t read books to reading 40 books a year, because, but in every situation, start with the smallest steps you can. And if you’ve never achieved something big, the first goal shouldn’t be an Ironman. The first goal should be something that stretches you and is attainable. For some people, there’s an exercise we do, where it’s as simple as there’s a hole on your wall, in your living room in a certain spot. And every day, some of the key things are every day, same time you do the same thing. So just go stare at that hole in the wall for 30 seconds, at the same time, every day for 30 days. Because at the end of 30 days, what you’ve done is you’ve taught yourself, I am the type of person who can do something every day for 30 days, even if it’s only 30 seconds. And then the next thing will be harder. And then we’ll go harder until you do your ironman, whatever that is for you. And then you work your way out. So I think they’re attainable. And the Northstar ones are they’re pretty aspirational.
Lauren Keen Aumond 12:51
Right? Okay. So your ironman, right. So what would that be? Maybe for somebody who’s just starting out, like you said, they’re staring at a hole in the wall for 30 days. So you’re changing your identity? A little bit. You’re becoming someone who gets shit done.
Clint Murphy 13:08
Yeah, if you rewind before that Ironman. I wasn’t someone who got shit done. And that was when I was about 30 ish. 32. I think that year. 31, when I made the decision, so up until then, I was a person who completed Iron Man’s in their head. I was a person you know, you’re sitting on the couch eating Doritos. You’re reading your Triathlete Magazine, because you used to do sprint triathlons that take an hour and you you’re like, Oh, well, I could do an Ironman. No, I couldn’t. I was so out of shape. I was overweight. And it took a friend making fun of me at a friend’s birthday party. For me to say, oh, like that stung that hurt. A, you know, I realize in hindsight, a real friend wouldn’t do that. B, they were right? Like, wow, I am out of shape. I can’t do that. I can’t go run 5k like my friend did who I was congratulating when this other friend made fun of me and made a joke about it. So you look at it and say, Well, wait, I’m not the person in reality that I am in my head. And so that was a harsh realization. And so I looked at my wife while I was in bed. I had Triathlete Magazine, right? I’m out of shape in bed reading triathlete, and there was a half Ironman in Calgary, which is the province right beside us. And I looked at her and I said, I’m going to sign up for this. It was a year away. And she just said sure, because she’d seen me you know, so many things I’m going to do tomorrow and never do them. So she just said sure. And then I started training. I signed up for the swim courses. I started jogging around the block. I went to the running room, you know the running rooms have you run for 10 minutes you walk for a minute you run for 10 I started that, like I started every single one of those categories at at the barest bones necessary to get moving. So what does that look like for someone who’s listening who wants to start? Six years after that, five years after that, I started a run streak. Where I ran every day for one and a half years. Where that started was I, I ran for 10 minutes, I ran two kilometers, just a little over a mile. And that was it like a jog like at a shape jog one mile, okay, I feel good. Go home. That was it. For someone it might be I put my running shoes on. And I write about this actually, in one of my first newsletters that comes out next week. So what this could look like, for that person who’s never done it is for a week or two, just wake up at a certain time, wake up at six o’clock, put your running shoes on. Do that for a week. In the second week, put your running shoes on and walk around the block. A week later, walk for a minute, jog for a minute, walk for a minute, jog for a minute, a week later, walk for a minute, jog for two, walk four minute, jog for two. And over the course of six months, you get to the point where you go from that to you’re running six miles. And if you’re only even increasing that 10% a week, it adds up very quickly, it becomes exponential. And it goes slow. Until it goes fast, which is something that we can definitely dive into. And the second part of that is you have to be willing to embrace the suck long enough to become good. And then you have to be good long enough to become great.
Lauren Keen Aumond 16:48
Theoretically, what would happen if you missed a day?
Clint Murphy 16:51
Yeah, good question.. This is going to depend on the person as well. For me, missing days is a very bad thing. And that’s the way I’m wired. I’m not much of a dimmer switch type of human. I’m an on or off. And you’re probably not surprised by that answer. And I think part of that is the ADHD is because once I’m off, it’s hard to get back on. Right. So for me, I try to do streaks like Twitter, I wrote every day for a year. And then at that point where I was exhausted, I just sent out a message to and said, Hey, guys, I’m taking tomorrow off. You know, it’s been been a good ride, and I need a break. And but what that opens the door to is now on a Tuesday when I’m tired, I might not tweet. And it went from I’ll write every day to well, how am I feeling today? And so I never liked to introduce that element of how am I feeling? Or do I want to? It’s no, I do it. And so that’s my way. That doesn’t have to be everybody’s way. And for me, that’s the power of streaks. I’m a huge proponent of streaks, and especially for people who may have that similar wiring to me, where moderation isn’t their answer, right? And that’s the same reason I quit alcohol 100% was I can’t moderate to the point where it’s like, I’ll only have a glass of wine when I’m out for dinner with friends. Like I don’t have that. It’s like oh, I had a glass of wine games on. Let’s go.
Lauren Keen Aumond 18:27
Now it’s time for a bottle.
Clint Murphy 18:29
Now it’s time for bottle like why like we crapped it, why wouldn’t we finish it? And it’s Wednesday night? Why wouldn’t I have a glass of wine? Or? Oh, wait, opened it? Why wouldn’t I finish the bottle before I go back into work on Thursday. So it becomes problematic not to say I had a drinking problem to the audience. So you look at that, and what does that look like for other people? They may be streak people, they may be like me, if they’re not, there’s a concept that I really appreciate that I heard on a podcast, Tim Ferriss, that where guests use the term daily ish. Right? And it’s like you do it daily ish. And one of the key components of daily ish is is a rule that Seinfeld is purported to have used as well, which is the two day rule. So you do it daily ish. And you’re gonna miss some days. And you never miss two in a row.
Lauren Keen Aumond 19:24
I like that. That works better for me.
Clint Murphy 19:27
You’re okay when you miss two, the habits gone. Alright, so keep the habit.
Lauren Keen Aumond 19:33
I always felt the way that you’re talking about skipping class in college. Yeah, you know, sometimes it’s like well, I know we’re not doing much in this next lecture right? But once I missed that one what what keeps me going from then on so I just like didn’t skip class. I just like want to do it no matter how much of a throwaway class it was or anything because I just felt like once you start and I’ve seen it I’ve seen a lot of people they crash and burn in college because they miss one, they miss two, and they’re not going anymore.
Clint Murphy 20:01
You know, as you say that I realize a lot of people have dreams about school and I thought I didn’t. But I realized periodically I do have dreams about school. And almost always what’s happening is like, I haven’t gone to class for like a month, and I’m like, Oh, I wonder if I have homework for that class? I probably do. I’m behind in everything. And then it’s like, oh, like, I need to start going. And I like, I don’t know what that dream is telling me. But it’s that literal fear of oh my gosh, I thought I could skip math because I was focused on this. But I must owe so much homework for that. It’s a really weird one. Now that you say yeah,
Lauren Keen Aumond 20:44
Yeah, school dreams are vague. I think I’ve had some before where I thought I was like, late, right. I’m always I’m late for that thing that I was working really hard for. And they say that’s cause you’re stressed, which I can’t imagine why that would be. but. You mentioned that you told your wife that you signed up for this Iron Man. Is that like an accountability partner thing? Is that something that you work into your life?
Clint Murphy 21:06
I think part of it was that it was, you know, back then, we were younger. So financially, it wasn’t cheap. And two, it was out of province. So it was sort of like, Hey, I’m signing up for this. Just if we’re going so for example, for you, it’d be like going from Florida to North Carolina. And you’re gonna say you’re gonna say, hey, like, let’s tack a vacation on to this. We’ve got family in Calgary. Let’s go see them. And let’s make it a thing. And so she was like, okay, yeah, sure. Think for at least six months, it was like, Yeah, sure, whatever. And then, as I got in shape, it was oh, like, this is really I should book some accommodations. And we’ll actually go.
Lauren Keen Aumond 21:54
So did your wife book the accommodations? Or did you?
Clint Murphy 21:57
I have probably never booked any accommodations for anything. She doesn’t trust me with anything that has to do with comparison shopping or rates, you know, because I just find something I like and go with it. She’s more like, what’s the best price? What’s the best value for dollar? And did I check 32 websites and like, I value my time, a lot more than she does and so when something takes research, she doesn’t let me get involved.
Lauren Keen Aumond 22:31
My reason for asking that question was you said yourself on but no dimmer switch? I’m wondering, does your wife have a dimmer switch? And what do you do? How do you surround yourself with the people that are maybe better at some things that you’re not so good at?
Clint Murphy 22:45
That 100% Like if you know, if you look at my wife and me, and probably some very key ways were exact opposites. And where I have holes in my game, she plugs the heck out of those, like when it comes to work. I’m a very organized human. When it comes to outside of work. I fly heavily by the seat of my pants. And if I’m going like you were just asking me questions while we were chatting before the call, I’ve mentioned that I’m going Florida tomorrow, which, you know, I probably ought to have mentioned to you weeks ago and said, Hey, like are you available for dinner? It but it just didn’t even think about it. And then you said, Oh, well, where are you going? Where are you staying? And I was like, I have no idea. And I’m leaving tomorrow morning at seven o’clock on the plane. And I still don’t even know where I’m going. A friend was like I said, oh, I think I’m flying through Texas to get there. And he said, Are you going to this airport, and I was like, I don’t know. I legit just don’t put any time into that. And she’ll create. If we’re going to Disneyland. She has legit a binder with the itinerary for the week as the front page and she don’t worry, she builds in scheduled rest time. And then each page is like that day, like the all the printouts of the hotels and the car and it’s like, I would never do that. But the complement of that between each other has made things very seamless.
Lauren Keen Aumond 24:23
And do you look for like in your CFO job, do you have people around you that complete you as well?
Clint Murphy 24:31
Yeah. 100% when it comes to work, you have to as a leader, you have to find people that plug your holes. And so I’ve always done a few things. One is I tend to target people that I think are very bright. That’s huge for me is you’re smart. You’re a critical thinker, and you’re a hard worker, if you have those three skill sets. We can teach you anything, and we’re gonna get along super well. And you’re going to be here for the long term, as long as I can do three things, I can help you grow, personally, professionally financially. So if I can provide that you’ll stay. And so I look for people who have those three attributes. And then I also, let’s make sure that if I’m wild and flighty and ideas, and then I’ve got some people who are based and who are organized and who are on top of things. And if they’re more like me, that they have people like that, and let’s fill the teams so that between all of us, we tick all the boxes
Lauren Keen Aumond 25:44
when I was a kid, and maybe this is the same for you, we’re not really that far apart in age, but like, there was this idea of, okay, here’s your strengths, here’s your weaknesses, work on your weaknesses to get better. Right. And I’m not saying you shouldn’t do any of that. But are there any things maybe that you’re weak on, that you’re trying to work on, and that should that be something that people strive for, to?
Clint Murphy 26:08
Most people that are successful, focus predominantly on their strengths. So what I would say they do is they focus on their weaknesses, to the point that they remove them as a what we call a CLM career limiting move. So now you’ve got the weakness out of the way, it’s no longer a roadblock to your future. But if you try to make your weaknesses as good as your strengths, and you forego the strengths while you’re focusing on those weaknesses, at best, you’ll be average. If you focus heavily on your strengths, and bring them to superstar level, while addressing some of the weaknesses, you will be a star and you will be successful. So I think people ought to a they need to know what are my strengths and weaknesses. And I have spent a lot of time on my weaknesses. For me what that looks like, and I’m still doing it. I think too quickly. I respond too fast. I talk too fast. When you combine all of that a mantra that I received about a decade ago was slow down. Listen, be more patient and reflective. And so I’d say since then I’ve therapy, men’s groups, meditation, meditation training, meditation teacher training, starting a podcast, focusing on breath work. And all of it, ven the way you and I are talking right now the pace, all of it is slowing down being present, you and me right here this conversation. So I’d say that’s the biggest thing I’ve focused on the last 10 years as my roadblock and what I need to improve in for people who interact with me today. They may be surprised to hear that answer from 10 years ago. Because you can become a completely different human being in a very short window of time. Like every two years, if people who haven’t seen you for those two years, meet you and think you’re the exact same as you were. Sometimes I think you probably haven’t been doing enough work on yourself.
Lauren Keen Aumond 28:37
Yeah, that’s, that’s interesting. That’s an interesting point. So we talked about prioritizing, and setting goals, and creating habits and being consistent. And we talked about having, you know, knowing what your strengths are, I love your point about minimizing weaknesses, you’re probably not going to get rid of all of them. And actually, it’s probably better for you, and your trajectory of your life to get much better your strengths and lean into those. What else should we be combining with our strengths to fulfill our purpose, and maybe enter flow and all of those kinds of things?
Clint Murphy 29:14
Oh, interesting. So if we want to enter flow, then we want to set ourselves up to be in a position to enter it. So one of the things we want to do is say when I’m in a flow state, I fill in the blank. I’m working on this. I’m listening to this music, I’m in this room. I’ve set the lights this way, whatever that environment that gets you into the flow state, start to recognize how do you recreate that environment that you’re in so that you can get back into flow. Some of the things that I have read that help are when you’re working on something that you love and it’s challenging. It’s not so challenging that you can’t do it. But it’s not easy. And so that effort of trying to whether it’s solve the problem or get to where you want to get, that striving element helps get you into that flow zone, in part of what I like to do is say, because that ties a bit to your purpose. The more you’re working on your purpose, the more you’re in flow, right?
Lauren Keen Aumond 30:32
You’re probably good at whatever you’re doing. Also, to some extent, maybe you’re not, maybe you’re not that 10,000 hours expert at that thing. And maybe that’s what actually helps you enter flow, like you said, because you’re challenged, but I think there’s a success and a purpose that are aligned to get you into that state.
Clint Murphy 30:50
100% and like, think about when we’re in spaces together. I love doing spaces. I could do them with you for eight hours. Any time running sucked, right, the time zone, things suck. But like if we’re in the same time zone, and we started at 530. And we had enough people in the room and it was jiving, I’d be like, Hey, you, okay, going to 10, you okay? Going 11? Because this is a blast. So what are those things for you? When you find to your point, when you find what you love? It’s the Japanese concept of Ikigai. What do I love? What am I good at? What does the world need? What will people pay me for? The intersection of those things, you can work on that all day, like it’s very easy to get in flow when you’re at that center point. And that for me is and that’s what I’m doing. This is the mission. This is the Twitter, this is the newsletter, this is the podcast cause I know what my Ikigai is. And I’ve got a certain amount of time and I want to get there, fYou’re planning on retiring in a few months, or pivoting depending on how you and I look at it and talk about it. And my goal is to do the same. And my ikigai is the path there. And it’s I know when I’m working on the things that are in it, like flow becomes easy.
Lauren Keen Aumond 32:10
Mm hmm. Yep. So speaking of all of those, the ikigai, going back again, to my childhood, this is like therapy. But we there was this whole, do what you love and the money will follow. Right? You and I have what we love. And it’s sort of our side thing for me, it started with real estate, and then it was talking about real estate. Now it’s kind of become adulting is easy, right? And for you, it’s everything that we’ve already talked about that you are working on. But we still as of right now have our jobs and have our careers and have spent a lot of time and effort becoming good at those jobs in those careers. How do you kind of reconcile, I know where my passion is, I know what my ikigai is, but I’m not there yet.
Clint Murphy 32:52
I think a lot of the information we give young people is fucked up, follow your passion, you’re usually hearing that from someone who is already wealthy. They, you know, I get called this and I’m not a boomer but you know, they bought their house in the 70s for 500 bucks, and you should follow your purpose. It’s like dude, do you know how much rent is in the city I live in? Like, do you know how much it costs to get groceries and live life? Like I can’t follow my purpose. I can’t follow my passion. And so I think for a lot of young people, what I what I’d say is a few fold, one, use your skills to help you make money at a job that you can be successful that while still moderately enjoying it. And recognizing that like not 100% of its going to be great, but but 100% of nothing’s going to be great. Focus on the elements that you love. Do I like accounting? No. Am I a CFO? Yes. And I love helping people grow personally, professionally and financially. So I can build a team, I can support them, I can help them grow and I’m moderate. I’m good at accounting. I’m good at finance, I’m good at the aspects of the CFO job. And I can focus on the element of the job that I love, while still adding value to the people that own the company because I’m good at the other things, even if they may not be the piece of the job I love. So you do that. That’s one. Number two, the passion, you can still pursue. It doesn’t have to be a monetary aspect. And you can use the job to fulfill it. You want to build homes in Haiti. Great get your job, make money, volunteer for an organization that goes and does that and do that on your vacation. Or you want to be an artist, okay, well do your job, make money, and then paint at night, write at night. And what you’ll find happens when people are saying well, it’s this or this. Why? Why can’t it be this and this, and part of what I look at that is, well, I’m working full time and I’m doing this. And I recognize it’s a bit of a privileged place. Because part of the way I was able to do it, when you asked it, I left out a super important thing, which was my wife was doing a lot of heavy lifting that I didn’t have to do. And my sister and I talked about it because we we write books together. And you know, her feedback is, hey, at my house, I have to do all this stuff that your wife does in your house, and that the invisible tax, I think we call it, I recognize my wife is paying that tax. And for the listeners, that was something that she and I have talked about, since we were 18-19. And in the reverse order, not how you would think it was her saying, look for most of my childhood. Going back, as you said to childhood, my parents, her family immigrated from Hong Kong, my parents worked in the restaurant, I never saw them. When you and I have kids, I’m going to have a job that allows me to be the primary parent, you make us money. That’s the partnership we’re going to have. And that was her when we were 19 years old. I wasn’t even in accounting, then. I didn’t do it until she told me to switch from psych and English, to accounting. So when you look at where I’m going today, Lauren, I’m going back to psych, I’m going back to English, because that’s what I always wanted to do. But I put it aside for 25 years, because she wanted me to focus on making money for our family. So full circle to your question. I put aside the passion for 25 years. And now I’ve gotten myself to a place financially, where I’m going to focus on the passion for the second half of my life.
Lauren Keen Aumond 37:07
And your job. They know about the passion stuff.
Clint Murphy 37:12
Yeah, in 2018, January 2018, we had a conversation about my next opportunity there or step and what we were talking about wasn’t available. And I said, Okay, well, I’ll give you a certain amount of time. And I gave a date. And we aligned on that. And I created a plan. I said, interestingly, all the stuff that I tell you, I want to do. I knew I said, here’s the things I’m going to do with my life. And it’s going to be Clint 2.0. And it’s going to be by this date. And the timeline may have shifted slightly, but yeah, they were aware in the conversations were had that, okay, well, if that’s not an opportunity, I’m not working for people the rest of my life. And I’m not going to do this job for the rest of my life. So so there will be a Clint 2.0 This is what it’s gonna look like, here’s a date. And that date is shifted slightly, but there have been conversations on it for five years. Yeah.
Lauren Keen Aumond 38:09
I like to be open. You know, I’ve liked for my bosses to at least know I have the real estate if something comes up. You know, I didn’t want it to be a surprise to them. Like, oh, I have this emergency I have to take care of. So we were talking earlier a surprise. Right. Yeah. The timeline? Yeah, that was a surprise. Yeah. Yeah. So we were talking earlier about the kind of attributes you want people that work for you to have, what attributes do you try to have as a leader for them, you know, for others, but in other areas of your life as well?
Clint Murphy 38:45
One of the things that struck me a bit emotionally actually was a young woman on my team. One of the leaders, one of the other leaders, was they were chatting and they were talking about, potentially my not being there in the future. And she said, one of the things that would be important for whoever was coming in was that I lead from my heart. And it would be important for the person that comes in to do that. And I think what that looks like for me, is I’ve worked very hard over the last 10 years to become a more empathetic person, to be more mindful of others. And you and I talked on your podcast about some of the mental health challenges I’ve had. And so through COVID, I knew people were struggling. I knew that isolation equaled amplification. And if I wasn’t willing to talk about my mental health challenges, other people wouldn’t be willing to be open about theirs. So I shared some of my challenges with my team and was there for some people who had challenges. So for me, what I’ve tried to do as a leader is, be empathetic, Be understanding. And as much as possible to put myself in the shoes of others, in think from their point of view. At this stage in my life, I’m becoming a middle aged to older, middle aged, white CIS, heterosexual wealthy guy, like I pretty much tick, every privileged box I can tick. And the people that work with me don’t tick those boxes. Some might. Some might take some of them, but the majority don’t. And so what is it like to be a person of color? What is it like to not have to be a student still, and some of that stuff, I will never know. And I’m willing to seek to understand it as much as I can. And try to make sure that whatever policies, we’re putting in, whatever systems that we’re thinking of everybody at the table, and we’re setting the table so that everybody has a seat, everybody has a voice. And they feel included. And that’s super important to me, is that we’re diverse, we’re inclusive, we’re smart, we’re like, we’re smart people who love hanging out together, getting shit done, and having fun. So that’s the environment I try to set up.
Lauren Keen Aumond 41:48
I asked on Twitter recently whether empathy could be learned, and it is my opinion that it can I know that I’m more empathetic now than I was when I entered sales in 2014. Because sales actually involves a lot of empathy through these discovery conversations, putting yourself in that person’s shoes, right even to ask questions, even to be curious, you have to have a lot of empathy. But it’s so it sounds like you think empathy can definitely be learned and grown.
Clint Murphy 42:14
100% I would be accused 10 years ago of not being empathetic. And I think not many people on my team would say that about me now. They would say oh, he’s high empathy. And that shift takes effort. It also in fairness comes with age. It also comes with being a parent. Like my god, I never cried in my life, because boys don’t cry. And I’m saying that in quotation marks. It’s you know, growing up, my dad, the vintage, they were like, that’s what they told us. And we didn’t learn how. Then you have a kid and I’m watching a Netflix show and a kid gets hurt in a movie and I’m crying like a baby. And apparently my brother’s watching K dramas now. And he’s bawling every time, I found this out this weekend, sorry, brother. And he’s bawling every time he watches these k dramas and I agree they have an element of drama and emotion that’s higher than a lot of our Netflix or television. So you look at it and say, okay, well, that’s from aging, like you just age into emotion, your testosterone as a man, your testosterone drops. And part of what comes with that is you’re more in touch with emotion, you’re less aggressive. And the best example I have ever seen is any grandparent, with their child, or a grandchild, relative to them as a parent with their kids. It’s an entirely different human.
Lauren Keen Aumond 43:42
Oh, my dad, I’m like, Where was this guy? Even like, you know, my sister’s 20 wow, right? And my niece is twe, the difference in those, you know, the last, my sister was a little kid like, yeah, 10 years ago. The difference is insane. It’s crazy.
Clint Murphy 44:00
Yeah, it’s like, Wait, like, my dad would be like, I think you’re I think you’re yelling at your boys a little too much. Do you? You’re saying that to me? Like, where do you think I learned this? Like, you were insane. Like, you’re the only person in my life that’s ever scared me. And you’re telling me I need to be a calmer human being, like that element just takes time. And then I think the other thing that it is, is to your point. Almost anything is learnable if you want to do the work to learn it. So if you want to be, you and I talk about this all the time, if you want to be wealthy, you surround yourself with wealthy people. If you want to become a real estate investor, start talking to real estate investors. If you want to be empathetic, surround yourself with with people who are empathetic, watch them role model them be like, oh, Stephanie is more empathetic than me, most empathetic person I’ve ever seen, I’m going to spend time with her. I’m going to watch how she behaves with people. And I’m going to learn, here’s one of the things I recommend for all the listeners. Take all the people at work, take all the people in your life, that there’s something about them, that you admire, take that trait you admire, and copy it until it’s yours. You know, you’re not pretending to be them. You’re just copying that trait. You’re copying that one behavior until it’s yours. And then go find another trait from another person, copy that trait until it’s yours, what you’re looking to do is everyone you admire around the table, you’re taking something from them, and you’re making it yours, so that in the course of a few years, again, you’re a completely different person. And it’s all those traits and skills and attributes that you admired and other people. And now you embody them.
Lauren Keen Aumond 46:09
Always learning, always growing. I love that idea. I also, something that I’ve noticed lately, right? We we’ve sort of met in the world of money Twitter, right? So we always talk about compounding in terms of our real estate or savings or investments, right? Well, you can compound as a person with your growth, which I think is fascinating. That’s really the process, you’re talking about.
Clint Murphy 46:32
100%. And that’s, you just nailed the first two articles of the newsletter. Consistency and compounding. Those are the two of the most important things in our lives. So there are two things in the growth guide newsletter that I’ll talk about regularly. How do you be consistent? How do you compound? What do you compound? Yeah, absolutely.
Lauren Keen Aumond 46:52
Now you can tell we’ve been talking for like, a year and a half, two years.
Clint Murphy 46:56
Like, yeah, I like alliteration consistency and compounding.
Lauren Keen Aumond 47:00
Well that’s yeah, that’s natural. So you mentioned how you and I met, I had you on my adulting is easy podcast. And we actually talked about some failures that you had had, that you were very open about. And we see this on social all the time, obviously, it’s a lot of a lot of the highlight reel, I do notice money Twitter, getting a little better about sharing failures, which I will congratulate that side of things for, but some of those failures were related to some real estate investments that you made. Can you talk a little bit about those and how you invest in real estate and, and things like that?
Clint Murphy 47:37
Yeah, I would say, for me, the way we invest in real estate is we’ve tended, because we live in a high cost of living city, it’s a lot harder to invest for cash flow. And so what we’ve tended to focus on is identifying areas where we think there’s upcoming improvements growth, it’s going to be better five years from now than it is today, it’s going to be better two years from now than it is today. So gentrification may be how some people call it the path of progress is how I refer to it. And so we tend to focus on on that areas in the path of progress. And we’ve been reasonably successful at that we tend to focus on presale units. So if someone’s starting out, cash flow is great. If you live in a city or a state where you can cash flow focus on it. If you can add value to the property yourself. Focus on that. Those are two things I would focus on if if I was starting over again, learn and if I lived in the US and had that opportunity. So we’ve focused mostly on presale and for those who are listening who don’t know what presale is, it means the developer hasn’t started building or they may have started building, they haven’t finished construction yet. So you’re buying in advance of completion, the developer is then able to go to the bank and say, look, I’ve sold 65% of the project, give me the money to build it, and the banks will and then the project gets underway. So we’ve done that. And we’ve been reasonably successful, a lot of luck along the way. The benefit that we’ve had, and the challenges that have led to some of the hit have largely been government related. So the first one on the wins is going back to the supply and demand argument. There’s not enough supply. And the regulations, the red tape, the number of houses that can get built aren’t sufficient to bring the price of homes down, where the rents and the Government of Canada’s trying to set records with new immigration. So you have 500,000 people moving here a year, and you’re not even building enough homes to home the people that are already here affordably. So it’s just a recipe for disaster. And this keeps replaying, and then every few years, they slap on a number of rules that are meant to attack the demand side, taxes, empty home tax,acancy tax, we now have a foreign homebuyer ban, we had a tax. Now we’ve banned foreigners from buying homes, that’s just in the last month that came out. And it’s very problematic the way it was drafted. So it’s like, we’re going to attack the demand. But what they’re not doing is building any more homes. So every three to five years, you can only plug the valve for so long before it explodes. And then we have a two year period where real estate prices are up 40, 50, 60% Because you artificially tried to stop demand, but you didn’t build enough homes, and the demand just builds up and then explodes. So that’s how we’ve had the wins. It’s also what’s led to some of the losses, the biggest loss we had was, and I have a lot less regret than the first time you and I talk. Good because we’ve lived in the house through COVID. So the biggest loss we had was building our single family home. So we we bought dirt designed and built. And the two weeks after we bought was the first time they implemented foreign buyers tax they called it and it was a 15% tax in X jurisdiction, which just happened to be where we bought the land to build a home. So part of you knew instinctually if that demographic that just got banned, was buying a lot of homes in those areas. The price of those homes probably just went down 15% to account for the tax, which roughly half roughly happened. So it’s like, Okay, we just spent and we live in a high cost of living city. So a couple million dollars for dirt in that just dropped in value. 15% like, oh, at that stone. It stung a lot. And then the project was it was so it was.
Lauren Keen Aumond 52:13
No it was on budget, and it was on time, right? Yeah. Yeah, it was very, it was just the dirt that became a problem. Everything else was fine. Yeah, that’s
Clint Murphy 52:20
Well that’s yeah, that’s natural. So you mentioned fair. That’s fair. So So net, net net, it was 50% over budget and 50% over on time, how what that was, like you nailed it, Lauren, it turned out that geologically. There’s a creek running through our lot and so like the water comes up in so we needed to do what’s called piling and like the amount of piles we needed. It was in the neighborhood of half a million dollars that we hadn’t budgeted for. And so you know, like, by the time all of that was done, it wiped out half our net worth almost overnight. And it was just that was it was a staggering, right? Because we were almost 40 And you spend 40 years, of course, 20 of those 40 years, like, can’t really count. Like, it’s like you’re literally having fun being a kid and learning. But the 20 where you’re working hard and you’re saving and you’re sacrificing and you’re like putting your money away so that you can build a net worth and you’re doing everything right. And then it just gets wiped out overnight. It was probably the second of two big hits that we took, and you think I won’t recover. But over the last three years with what’s happened in real estate. And while we had the house we purchased, I mean, we got our number of homes up to nine. So the when that happened over the last three years, more than made up for that loss.
Lauren Keen Aumond 54:00
Then you got to be in a pretty large single family home, especially for that area where there’s not that many single family homes, a lot of townhomes, apartments, things. You got to be through that. I mean what you just talked about your quarantine, your quarantined in a pretty nice house with your kids. I mean, it was amazing, amazing.
Clint Murphy 54:17
Amazing and like I’m blessed enough to have where I record my studio, if you will, I have a separate little building in the backyard that’s about 300 square feet, has a gym, sauna, desk area, like I it’s a blessed life. And so it felt shitty at the time. And it hurt and it stung. And in the fullness of time it was fine. And that’s something to focus on. Like if there’s a takeaway there. Pain is usually short term and so even though it was a rough hit, it was a rough hit for a short period of time. And then the win will be a lifetime. I mean, if we can in the pivot that we do, if we don’t have to sell the house, then I, I’d be comfortable living here for the rest of my life.
Lauren Keen Aumond 55:14
So there’s a habit muscle. Is there like a failure muscle? Is there a comeback muscle?
Clint Murphy 55:20
Yeah. I think so, you know, it sounds trite to say, and I wrote this tweet last week, so I’m okay doing it. You know, failure is your stairway to success was a tweet that I put out this reality, like, if you aren’t failing, you’re not pushing enough. When you’re a kid, if you never lose a game, then you weren’t playing hard enough competition. If you never miss a benchpress, if you never miss a squat, then you weren’t lifting heavy enough. Like those misses are the sign that you’re pushing. Those failures are the sign that you’re learning. So you always want to be failing. You always want to be missing, you just want to be missing up. You want to be failing up. You want to be failing forward. And like, people will be like, Oh, that’s so cliche. Like you don’t actually do that. It’s of course you do. And the number one spot, you do it. And I had a conversation with Tiago forte of build your second brain. And he nailed it. When you look at social media. And you and I are on Twitter, the lifecycle of a tweet is under a day. And so if you miss, your downside is practically zero. Unless you say something egregiously stupid, that gets you cancelled, and you probably shouldn’t have said that in the first place. So it’s pretty much zero right? But if you hit, you go viral, you can add 30,000 followers in a day, two days. Like look at that asymmetric upside, nothing happens. You gain 30,000 followers, and those are the type of asymmetric bets that you have to be willing to take all day, every day. Imagine you could go to a casino. And they said to you, they gave you those odds. And you had unlimited chips, you would be placing as many bets as you possibly could, and the amount of time that casino was open. Because you can’t lose anything or you can make $30 million on the bet like it just you’re gonna be making those bets all day. And the interesting part about that is not many people are making those bets, whether it’s Twitter, whether it’s Instagram, whether it’s LinkedIn, whether it’s YouTube, whether it’s Tik Tok, the same thing applies to all of those. All you have to do, and this is this is somewhere we can spend some time together because we we both do this, all you have to do is move from being a consumer to being a creator.
Lauren Keen Aumond 58:22
And this goes back to what you were saying earlier, which I have noticed. Twitter, for example, was very overwhelming for me at first, I’ve not had the success you’ve had, but I’m definitely more consistent, right? It seemed very crazy. Like, you want me to tweet every day. And now it’s like I have I think at any given time I have between 40 and 50 tweets scheduled, right, yeah. And they just come they just come throughout the day. And I’ll even tell my husband up, hold on, I gotta put that in my drafts, right? I want to tweet that later. So it’s something it becomes so much easier. Now I’m trying with Instagram. And my goal is 200 posts in 2023. I’m not even going for every day, because it’s very intimidating to me for some reason, right? But that’s how it is you start with one thing. And then you add another thing, right at first man, at first to even doing the podcast was really difficult. And I started doing it every other week. And then over time I started doing every week, and that becomes a little bit easier. And then I realized I didn’t really like the editing, started outsourcing the editing, didn’t think it was one of my strengths, right? So you start and then I start stacking different things. Because as you go things that were really hard a year later are easy, then you can add another hard thing and then that becomes easy, then you add another hard thing and it becomes easy. And content creating is for sure like that. And there’s really nothing like it.
Clint Murphy 59:45
Everything becomes easy when you do it consistently for a long enough period of time. Right the whole concept of Smart Choices plus consistency plus time equals exponential results. And you and I have seen that with so many things over our lives with us, with people we know. So it’s absolutely a repeatable format. But I’m going to pivot a little away from content for a second, because you hit something that I really want to reinforce with the listeners. And we would talk a lot about this in spaces together whenever we got to mindset, or people would ask us, Hey, how can I get rich? How can I make money? The number one investment, I always said, was in ourselves. Because we are the ones who are going to make money. Like, it’s trading, it doesn’t, it’s not necessarily trading time, but it’s trading our value for money. So we have to increase our value. And you talked about you use the word stacking. So you start on one platform, and then you stack another. And that’s what we want people to be doing in their lives. So I’m an accountant. I went deep on accounting. I was at KPMG, Big Four accounting firm for a decade, deep on accounting, deep on the people side. But very audit accounting. That’s how I, you know, I don’t like, like, there’s, that’s the reason I’m good at accounting. Then when I went into industry, I learned finance, I learned it, I learned tax, I learned capital, I learned FP&A. But again, those are hard skills. And then you talked about it, I picked up EQ. Writing, public speaking. Now what we’re doing, these are what we call rare skills. So the intersection of multiple skills, because it’s very hard, if not impossible, for most of us to become the top 1% in any of those areas. And let’s look at you and I on Twitter, our ability to become the 1% on Twitter’s it’s super hard. But to get into the top 10% of anything, is not that hard. Right, time, effort, commitment, certain baseline intelligence, you can get to the top 10%. Now imagine if you get to the top 10% in all six or seven or eight of those things. Now, you’re not the 1% ,You’re .01%. So to the other some of the things young people are told, pursue your passions, we beat that one up together. The other thing is focus on in demand skills or in demand jobs. The problem with in demand is arbitrage and time. When you drive your car, you have two different routes you can go. And you think you’re a genius, because you always take Route be because it’s way faster than Route A. If route B is faster than route a, enough cars will divert to route B until the point that route a and route B are the same. It’s homeostasis, it’s going to happen. That’s what in demand skills are. That’s what in demand jobs are. Enough people go into them, until the cost of labor for those jobs is the same as other jobs. So don’t make pursuit of your passion, your main thing for your job, and don’t focus on in demand skills, focus on rare skills and the rare skills or combinations of things that you generally don’t see. So you went for a career in sales. So then you would say, well, what are salespeople usually not good at? What don’t I usually see paired with sales. Some of the things that I’ve seen in my history that generally don’t go with sales, accounting, focusing on the numbers, focusing on the operation side of the business, yeah, because you’re always selling, but you’re not going to ask the person who’s actually producing what you’re selling. what it cost to produce it, how easy it is to rejig the line to produce that. So learn operations, learn accounting, learn finance. Now, you’re going to be a salesperson that everybody wants to work with. learn public speaking, learn how to write learn copywriting, learn web design, like when you combine all of that you’ll be the best salesperson everybody wants to work with. So combine attributes that you normally don’t see in the role that you want to be in.
Lauren Keen Aumond 1:04:49
I would add to that as well as all those things you said his leadership skills, even as an individual contributor salesperson, for example. I think generally the world has come to agree that everybody to some extent is selling, right? You got to sell yourself in one way or another, even if sales isn’t your job, you got to sell something at some point. Leadership is something that you can have, even if you’re not managing other people. And as a salesperson, for example, if I am a leader, if I am seen as a leader, then people are more likely to follow me. And I need support people to follow me I need other salespeople to follow me sometimes need my boss to follow me to get deals cross the finish line. And that was something that I was thinking about recently, where we kind of talked about everybody needs, you know, empathy, curiosity, public speaking skills, you know, sales, but I think everybody should have leadership skills, too.
Clint Murphy 1:05:49
Everybody should have leadership skills, everybody should have sales skills. You know, I’m not a salesperson. And you have to recognize, you are always selling. If you’re not selling something, you are selling yourself. If you’re not leading others, you’re leading yourself, and other people are leading you. So the more you know about leadership, the more you can interact with your own leader, and you can interact with the people below you, beside you, across from you, your kids. I mean, those are two fundamental skill sets, we should all focus on and we should all improve on, which is the course of going to this weekend is selling.
Lauren Keen Aumond 1:06:29
I’m excited to hear how that goes.
Clint Murphy 1:06:30
Yeah, me too, should be good.
Lauren Keen Aumond 1:06:34
Did you want to talk any more about real estate? I know, we talked about how your current thesis or for a while has been buying pre sales, path of progress, things like that. Is there anything that people should be aware of that aren’t in those high cost of living areas? I know you said cashflow. But is there anything else that if people are thinking about getting into real estate that that they should be thinking about?
Clint Murphy 1:06:59
Well, you know, and something that’s always been important to you and me, I think is being cognizant of where you are in the cycle, what’s happening in the broader economy and paying attention to the overall situation that’s evolving. And what that looks like, what I worry about is for the last year, two years, three years, you know, you and I would be in the spaces, and we would hear a lot of people jump in and they’re talking about no money down and it’s all debt. And it’s uh, okay, I wrote this one up, and I, I borrowed against it. And I bought three more. And then I wrote those up, and I borrowed against them and about five more, and I worry about where those people are today. And I part of it is I mean, you do have that benefit in America, that you can get those 20 year loans with interest locked up for 20 years. It’s like okay, 30 and probably 30, We can’t go past five. So so you’ve got a 30 year loan, you know, your interest rate at cash flows, you’re fine. Well, well, that’s good. But I think people need to be aware of what’s happening with interest rates, what’s potentially going to happen with you and I have talked on the spaces before that generally anywhere from 11 to 72 months later, or 84. You have a recession after the first interest rate hike, we’ve had the fastest interest rate hikes and the most, since the 80s. None of us have seen this. A lot of us haven’t seen this in our lifetime. And so there is going to be fallout, there is going to be an impact something is going to break. We just don’t know what it is. And so what I’d encourage younger people to make sure they’re not doing is overextending themselves. And that’s why I would suggest they focus on the cash flow aspect. Because if it cash flows, then you’re generally pretty good for the long term because the cash flow will cover the cost of the debt, and you’re happy and grow slower than you otherwise may think you should be patient real estate’s not about getting rich fast. You’ll get wealthy slowly, safely over a long period of time.
Lauren Keen Aumond 1:09:27
Yeah, I think that’s good advice. And that’s why they’re raising interest rates. I think that will slow people down. That makes less less deals cash flow, and hopefully people aren’t overextending themselves. I do worry about I mean, because in the United States, if you have over a four unit, or if you have a four unit or less that you bought with a commercial loan, they have balloons, and these balloons are coming due and I don’t know there’s another shoe that’s gonna drop in a couple of years here. If interest rates don’t go back down for sure. That’s a good point.
Clint Murphy 1:09:58
Little for example, there is a developer in our city, who’s declared, you know, the CCAA bankruptcy protection. And it’s in the papers. So nothing I’m saying it’s all it’s all over the newspapers all over the industry right now, they had $700 million in debt. And our interest rates here in Canada over the last year went up about 5%. So when you do the math, that debt was costing them an extra $35 million a year. And, you know, they probably thought they were geniuses when they started buying that dirt and 2015 and 16 and the market went up 40-50%, they kept piling more land in, hey, Vancouver, prices never go down. Let’s keep buying, buying, buying. And then interest rates go up 5% in a year. And it’s hard to get, we talked about the inability to build supplies. So it’s hard to get the permits, it’s hard to get approvals. It takes sometimes five years, they couldn’t maintain the maintain the debt loads. And so that’s a company that managed to buy enough dirt to get 700 million in debt. And if you’re assuming they had 65% loan to cost they that’s over a billion dollars of real estate, and they’re in bankruptcy protection. So if it can happen to them, your mom and pop who are buying onesies and twosies you can get in trouble fast. And so just being cognizant of that and watching for it in what’s that say they say you know, don’t get out over your skis. Like, kind of kind of stay back stay relaxed, stay moderate Stay, stay calm.
Lauren Keen Aumond 1:11:54
Yeah, I like the idea of you know, conservative underwriting, having cashflow, having reserves, because I do something is always around the corner, there’s always going to be a recession, that’s just kind of how the economy works. So being prepared for it when it does. And also, I’ve heard this before. Wise people learn from other people’s mistakes. So it’s great if you can learn from your own. That’s awesome. That’s huge. That’s why failing forward is important. If you can learn from other people’s mistakes, you’re in even better shape. So learn from some of the people that got caught with their pants down in 2008, especially.
Clint Murphy 1:12:33
Yeah that’s the downside of leverage the upside in bringing it back to your idea of content creation. The other thing I think, most young people should be doing nowadays is they should be on social media, they should be on Twitter, they should be on Instagram, LinkedIn, whichever one you want to go on. I tend to prefer Twitter. And we can dive into why after if you want. But what I’ll share is one important concept is you can get rich, doing the simple path, high paying nine to five, get your earnings up, reduce your spend, invest in index funds, you’ll get moderately rich doing that over a long period of time. You can’t get wealthy without leverage. Unless you win the lottery, we’re not going to count that. So to get wealthy, you need leverage, whether it’s real estate, leverage with debt network leverage with your with your network to grow your ability to earn digital leverage. So when you look at online creation, there’s no barriers to entry. You have asymmetric upside. You can share content with the world, from your mobile phone. You can build a following who believes and trust in you. Now there are certain things you have to do to make that a reality. It’s not easy. But you now have the ability to go from your brain to the world and to show people who you are, what you’re capable of and what you can do. So you build an audience of opportunities, opportunities for networking, opportunities for jobs, opportunities for sales, opportunity to sell products. So I think all young people should be pursuing that as part of their toolkit, because it will present them with oversized opportunities through the rest of their lives. The number of people that are reaching out to me for different things and who they are. I would have never expected to have these conversations in my life and so that you and I have always used the real estate leverage as our are a way to someday hopefully be wealthy. The digital leverage,if I did realize the potential of that, I would have been focusing on this 15 years ago. It’s astronomical, what you’re able to achieve with a mobile phone, or a laptop computer, on any of these platforms. And I’ve been blown away by learning what some young people are doing on a myriad of the platforms, whether it’s Instagram, or TikTok or what have you.
Lauren Keen Aumond 1:15:35
And it needs to be purposeful twtooo, I think when social media first came out, it was, you know, Facebook, whatever it was, like, share your feelings, right? Or share what you’re doing or just you know, there’s always like the share your meals, share the pictures of your kids. There’s that stuff, too. But it’s more than that. It’s building this personal brand and doing it young, right. And also being consistent with the kind of content you put out there and finding your niche too. I see a lot of Twitter accounts say things like, why am I not growing? And I’m like, Well, you get tweeted about your food. They tweeted about your budget, you tweeted about this trip, you tweeted about that car, you tweeted about these clothes, what is your brand? Who are you? What are you passionate about? And that’s something too that I just wanted to add to what you say it’s not enough to just be prolific, you do need to have a little bit of a plan behind it.
Clint Murphy 1:16:24
Well, not only did they do those random tweets, you said, but they took Tuesday, Wednesday off, true. They went on a ski trip for a week and didn’t tweet for a week, came back and said, Hey, guys, sorry, I was away, I’m back. Now I really want to get engaged, I want to grow. Well, no, you don’t. If you want it to, you would have scheduled tweets, Lauren just said she had 40 to 50 tweets in her queue, you would have scheduled them, you would have wrote ahead, you would have taken two minutes to engage with your team. So they would engage with your stuff. You don’t have to be on your phone for an hour, but you could ping two likes or comments on your friends stuff. So they hit yours when you go to the washroom. As soon as you make the decision that you’re going to be random, you’re not going to be consistent, you’re going to take weeks off, what you’re suggesting is, and this is fine, I’m nothing against this. But what you’re saying is, I don’t actually want that. Because whatever you want, there’s we can graph results on the y axis and effort on the x axis. If you have to look at what you want, and understand the effort it will take to get what you want. And this is job title, money, Twitter growth, LinkedIn growth, being a runner, having a six pack, throw anything on the results effort curve. Then ask yourself, you say you want something? Are you willing to put in the effort that’s required to get that result? If the answer’s no, we’ve got one or two things we can do. You can continue to say you want it and be upset, angry and depressed, that you’re not getting the results you want. Because you’re not reconciling that you’re not willing to do what it takes to get the results you want. So that’s one thing. And that is a very large percentage of the population who stay stuck on that one. Number two is that’s the default. Number two is you can say, Well wait, clearly, I don’t want that. So we can do one or two things, we can recalibrate. We can say, if I do want that, I’m going to put in the work to get there. And if I don’t want to put that work in what level of work Am I willing to put in? And where does that get me on the results graph? And am I okay with that? If you reconcile effort required to results desire, in a match, life’s happy, you’re happy. And you’ll get the results that you’re doing the work for it. At a high level, of course, obviously, there’s a certain amount of luck involved. Lots of minor things. But in general, because if we if we look at an example, getting six pack abs, like there are certain things most of us can do to get it. And if we say we want it, well then do those things. Else, you don’t want it. So really encouraging that Twitter person, the young person who’s listening, always reconcile, what do you want with what you’re willing to do? You in when they reconcile, you’ll succeed.
Lauren Keen Aumond 1:20:03
Absolutely. That is, by the way, a very freeing thing. So I grew up on the water. I didn’t know bless privilege, we’ve talked about that, right? I get but it’s like a one story ranch house on the water, we get my dad’s boat, we go out immediately, not one storey houses anywhere be big, beautiful, just gorgeous homes. When I was a kid, he’s like, I really want one of those. And as I’m an adult, I’m like, I could have that. If I did. If I worked harder. If I worked longer. If I wanted to have a long career, if I wanted to get promoted to VP of sales, if I want to do all of these things, my husband maybe gets a big exit from his firm and starts another one gets another exit rate. We can have that. But I was very free moment when I thought I don’t want to do those things. And now actually, I don’t want the one of those houses. I’m very happy house hacking in my regular house. And it’s actually the most freeing thing in the world when you realize, oh, I don’t want it because if I did, I’d be working towards it.
Clint Murphy 1:20:58
And so you went through the results effort. You said, if I want this, these are the things I have to do. Am I willing to do them? Do I want to do them? And the answer for you was No. And that allowed you to free yourself up to say, Well wait, then I don’t want that. How freeing was that to then let go of that and say instead, because fhere’s the fun part. Instead, I’m going to retire in four months. Because when you and I had that Twitter exchange was only about a month ago, right? Yeah. And you’re about three months away now.
Lauren Keen Aumond 1:21:34
Yeah, that’s it. That’s the difference. Like and said, I’m going to retire at 33. My husband is gonna go to work part time at 30. That’s way better than having a big house in the water. Do you know why? Because now I have time. You know what, also my boats in the Marina, 300 dollars a month. But I go over there, somebody’s charged the battery, they’ve gased it up, they vised it up, they put it in for me, I get it, I leave, I come back then they undo all of that. Right. That’s a pretty sweet life. But I could do it on a Tuesday, instead of having to go out on the water on Saturday and Fourth of July and all of those things. And that’s it. It was the most freeing thing in the world. When I realized that and you know what else happened? Clint, that was interesting. I stopped wondering what those people did to get the house. Right. Oh, their parents probably bla bla, or it was a really lucrative divorce or whatever, whatever it was, right? Yeah, I stopped wondering how they got the houses too, because I didn’t care because it didn’t it doesn’t matter. Once you stopped kind of even wanting it you you, you’re automatically stopped almost coveting what other people have and being jealous and all that kind of fell away for me too.
Clint Murphy 1:22:39
And that’s what it is. And we could probably end on this one. Also, I’ll share one thing that I talk about a lot with guests and I call it the Kardashian effect. And nothing against the Kardashians, love what they’ve done, super impressed by it incredible, write and edit the top seven earners in reality television, the Kardashian clan is about five or six of them. Like it’s absolutely incredible. Astounding. But what they were one of the first groups to do was this whole put your life front and center. And what you and I talked about, always front of stage. The good, the fun, the designer, the photoshopped. And what they never showed was that back of stage, the shitty morning with your kids, your kid yelling at you telling you they hate you. Like throwing something at you like you yelling at your kid like not having a good interaction with your family. The acne like, you don’t see the back of stage stuff. And what that created for a lot of the world was this sense that we’re not good enough that our life isn’t enough because we always see beauty on Instagram we always see the people talking on Twitter about the millions that they’re making in these deals. I don’t see anyone jumping on and talking about how they’ve lost half a million bucks in Bitcoin in the last two years. Like the amount of money I lost in my bitcoin was astounding. But I guarantee you that if you go on tonight, you’re gonna see a bunch of happy Bitcoin people because Bitcoin had an amazing day. Yeah, so they’re all out there all shout out. Laser eyes are everywhere again. But where were they last week? Where were they for the last year in two months? Nowhere because that’s when the fall started. So none of them came out. So if you’re a person, the Kardashian effect is always comparing ourselves to other people’s best said An area and as a society in almost every measurable way, we’re in a better position today than we ever have been throughout history. And yet, so many people think that we’re in the worst position or worst time, or worst stats that the world’s ever been in. That doesn’t mean there aren’t things that need addressing. That doesn’t mean we don’t need to improve mental health, affordability, racism, inclusion, diversity, so many things that need working on. And in so many measurable ways, we’re in a better position today than we ever have been. But when we compare ourselves to others, on social media, on reality television, we are always going to be left wanting. And that is what we have to stop. We cannot compare ourselves to others. We can only compare ourselves to who we were yesterday, and who we want to be tomorrow. And I think that might be the end of our conversation. Lauren.
Lauren Keen Aumond 1:26:14
I don’t think we could have scripted that any better. Clint?
Clint Murphy 1:26:17
Yeah. Thank you for joining me. It was awesome. It was fun to be on the other side. It we’ll see how it goes. We’ll talk when the episode airs and see what the fans of the growth guide have to say.
Lauren Keen Aumond 1:26:27
Yep, looking forward to it. Thanks for having me for episode 100.
Clint Murphy 1:26:30
Yeah, thank you.