Clay Finck (02:31):

The big challenge with my job now is figuring out the best way to really allocate my time. Allocating my time one way is going to produce some sort of result in allocating my time another way was going to produce some sort of different result. And it’s really hard to tell how those outcomes might play out. I’m not saying this to teach you about podcasting in any way. I just believe that everyone is dealing with this issue in that we all have 24 hours in a day, and you can’t spend a specific hour doing multiple things at once. So that’s the real struggle we’re all fighting every single day.

Clay Finck (03:02):

Now, in regards to building wealth, if you want to build wealth faster, then you need to spend your time in a way that will maximize the amount of money you could earn from a specific task. Another struggle I think many people run into is the shiny object syndrome or chasing the next shiny object. Do they see stocks going through the roof? So they go and throw a ton of money into stocks, and that’s all they focus on for a month. Then the next month they see an advertisement about drop shipping and buy a course and only go through half of it before they give up after a month. And then they go post a few reels on TikTok because they see some accounts going viral. They just chase one thing after another.

Clay Finck (03:43):

In learning and studying successful people and what sets them apart, I’ve realized that a lot of them aren’t necessarily smarter than anyone else. They’re really just more consistent. They focus on their one most important thing and they don’t let that focus go towards anything else. They aren’t falling for the shiny object syndrome of constantly changing what their one thing is. There is this almost corny saying that if you put your head down and focus on one thing for six months, it’s going to completely change your life. And despite it being corny and almost oversimplified, I believe it to actually be true.

Clay Finck (04:20):

If you want to change your body and you went to the gym, dialed in your diet and stayed very consistent for six months every single day, I can almost guarantee your body will completely change. If you wanted to be a computer programmer and learn how to code, if you took six months of every single day spending time learning as much as you could from free stuff on the internet, from YouTube, Google, whatever it is, putting in the time every single day, it’s likely that you would make a ton of progress.

Clay Finck (04:50):

I recently interviewed Danny Miranda and he has his own podcast actually. He had Sam Parr, the host of My First Million, on his podcast recently. That was just a really good episode. Danny asked Sam what set him apart from the others and allowed him to be so wealthy so quickly. Sam said that he was just really focused on one thing. His number one goal at the time was to grow his newsletter called The Hustle. He spent eight years focused on that one thing, how can he grow the newsletter. And now he’s actually sold The Hustle for millions and millions of dollars. Very successful newsletter. I believe it has a million subscribers right now that open it every single day.

Clay Finck (05:32):

Now, back to Jay Papasan’s book who Robert interviewed on the Real Estate 101 show, there’s this quote I love at the start of the book. “If you chase two rabbits, you won’t end up with either one.” And that’s the quote he has to start off the book that I really like. In this society that often thinks very short term, the way to stand out is to select the most important thing in your life and putting focus and effort into that one thing every single day. It doesn’t mean you have to wake up and spend 10 or 12 hours on something. Oftentimes, it only takes something like an hour a day, give or take for much of the things you want to achieve over the long run.

Clay Finck (06:09):

Say, if you wanted to build a side hustle outside of your 9:00 to 5:00 and you want to make an extra $1,000 per month, well, first you’d say, “Okay, how do I want to make a thousand dollars per month? What am I good at? What do I enjoy doing that other people find value in? How fast do I need to get to that level? How passive do I want to make it?” Once you answer all of those, then you can backtrack from there and say, “Okay, what are the steps I need to take to get there?” Maybe you create a list of things you could do to get to a thousand dollars a month. You could buy a couple of rental properties. You could do coaching on something you’re really good at. You could go out and drive for Uber. You could start a small blog.

Clay Finck (06:46):

There are millions of things you could do. You just have to find that one that you’re really going to focus on for an extended period of time and you’re committed to not changing from that one thing, unless you have a really, really good reason to. This really doesn’t have to be geared towards the wealth side of things. It could apply to really anything in your life. I’m just focusing on that since this is an investing podcast and that is what I’m, for the most part, interested in. Maybe some of you are as well.

Clay Finck (07:14):

I recently got to chat with Robert and he’s gotten into writing for his website that he created for his new book, The Everything Guide to House Hacking. So let’s use an example of starting a blog. Well, in the blogging world, one of the big keys to getting views on your website or on your blog is optimizing your SEO so you rank high on Google Search. Let’s say on average each article you write produces a certain amount of page views that leads to roughly $10 per month in ad revenue. So each good article you write gives you $10 per month in ad revenue. Well, if your goal or your one thing you wanted was to produce a thousand dollars a month in income from a side hustle over the next year, then you can take that big goal, that big achievement you want to reach, and really just break it down into pieces.

Clay Finck (08:04):

Let’s say you want to do that over the next year. To produce a thousand dollars a month over the next year, you’d need to write a hundred articles over the next year because each article is going to produce roughly $10 per month in ad revenue. So to get to a thousand dollars, you would need a hundred articles, each producing $10, giving you the total of $1,000 per month. Since there are 12 months in a year, you need to produce eight to nine articles per month, which equates to roughly two articles per week. So you take that big, hairy, audacious goal of producing a thousand dollars per month in income and you break it down into something that’s much more manageable, writing two really good SEO optimized blog articles every single week.

Clay Finck (08:47):

So what Jay recommends in his book is to block out time in your calendar to get this done. The morning is oftentimes the best time to squeeze this sort of thing in. The kids aren’t awake if you have any. No one is texting or calling you to get your attention. If you really want to achieve something in your life, then waking up early is probably the best way to ensure that you make the time to get it done. If you delayed it to after work, you have people wanting you to go out for a happy hour. Time to go to the gym if that’s when you go to the gym. You have people calling you. You might have to stay after work late. There’s so many things that could be calling for your attention in the evenings or at night so the morning is probably the best time to crank this stuff out. If it takes two hours to write an article, you could get up at 5:00 or 6:00 AM and crank it out on two specific days each week after blocking it out on your calendar.

Clay Finck (09:42):

Jay points out that most people have things on their schedule for other people, such as meetings or phone calls. But a lot of people don’t have things on their schedule for themselves. I thought this was like a huge realization for me. I have all my meetings scheduled on my calendar. I have all my podcast interviews on my calendar. But how much of my calendar is booked for myself? Generally, I just work when I have free time. But it’s interesting to think about that idea of blocking out time for yourself to ensure that what you want and need to get done actually gets done.

Clay Finck (10:16):

I think another area where people can get tripped up is they set this big goal for themselves and it almost becomes overwhelming. They might work on that goal for one or two weeks and simply give up because they really don’t see any progress during that time. But I think the secret that most people have is they just simply don’t give up. They continue to focus on pitting time into that particular goal every single day they can for a set amount of time. And they continually think about ways they can improve. The first few times they do something, you’re probably not going to be very good at it. But if you do something every single day for six months, there’s a pretty good chance that you’re going to get really good at that. You’ll continually make small incremental improvements. And from week to week, it might not seem like much, but if you extend that out to months and years, it makes really all the difference.

Clay Finck (11:07):

Successful people really aren’t particularly special. These are really just normal people. They really aren’t that particularly special. They’re just extremely consistent and they never give up on what they want to achieve. You can think of it like building wealth. In terms of building wealth, just think about what Warren Buffet’s done over his life. 99% of his wealth was accumulated after his 65th birthday. He showed up every single day and reinvested his company’s earnings day after day, month after month and year after year, from the time he was a kid to where he is today at 93 years old. Being this consistent does not give you linear results over time. It gives you exponential growth in whatever area of life you’re investing in.

Clay Finck (11:52):

Another key principle to keep in mind is the Pareto Principle, which states that in most systems, 80% of the results come from 20% of the inputs. So in general, 20% of the people do 80% of the work in a company. 20% of the population holds 80% of the wealth. 80% of the work done in a day comes from 20% of your time. There’s nothing special in particular about 80 and 20. The idea is that most of your results are going to come from a small number of inputs. You might create a list of 10 things you’d love to do in some particular area of your life, but only one or two are really going to move the needle in terms of achieving happiness, achieving fulfillment, and really giving you what you really truly want out of life. So focus in on these really important things that will move the needle the most for you.

Clay Finck (12:44):

This mini episode also reminds me of a video I had watched recently. Lex Fridman recently released a video called A day in the Life where he essentially walked through his typical day. And if you watch the video, you’ll realize how much of a machine this guy is. Trust me, if you want to up your productivity and want some ideas on how to do so, I really recommend you give it a watch if you have time. It’s only a 20 or 30 minute video. What I picked up from his video in particular was the bedtime routine. Getting up and going to bed at a certain time.

Clay Finck (13:17):

As well as the journaling practice, I find that really valuable. A lot of people, when they get up, they just check their phones, hop on Twitter or check emails. I really like the journaling practice of getting up and not checking your phone right away and having that journaling practice and that consistent morning routine. You might pick up some other things in the video that are helpful, but that’s kind of what I picked up from it. So if you’re interested, go out and check it out. I’ve linked the video of Lex put out in the show notes below so feel free to just click that link if you’re interested in checking it out. I’ve also linked Jay Papasan’s book, The ONE Thing, as well as Robert Leonard’s conversation with Jay Papasan in the show notes as well.

Clay Finck (13:56):

I hope you guys found this episode inspiring or maybe helped you take that next step in achieving the one thing you guys are really pushing for. If you guys enjoyed this episode, I love if you tweeted at me or sent me a DM with your thoughts or an update on the progress you’re making. It’s always fun hearing from you guys and connecting with the audience. So please feel free to reach out to me. I’ll definitely be sure to make the time to get back to you. Being a podcast host can almost feel like you’re in a bit of a silo, but I know many of you are out there finding value in these episodes. So thank you so much for your support for continuing to listen to the podcast. It’s really an honor to be in this position to create content for you all.

Clay Finck (14:40):

Also, I’ll mention that I was thinking if there’s enough interest, maybe we could put together some sort of accountability group to keep each other accountable with the goals we’re trying to achieve. I think that’d be fun. So feel free to shoot me a DM on Twitter if you’re interested. My username is @clay_finck, C-L-A-Y_F-I-N-C-K. I’ve also started to post more on Instagram so if you’re interested in getting more content, feel free to give me a follow there, clay.finck.

Clay Finck (15:08):

All right, that’s all I have for today’s episode. Enough listening to this podcast and it’s time to get to work. Thanks for tuning in.

Outro (15:15):

Thank you for listening to TIP. Make sure to subscribe to We Study Billionaires by The Investor’s Podcast Network. Every Wednesday, we teach you about Bitcoin. And every Saturday, we study billionaires and the financial markets. To access our show notes, transcripts, or courses, go to theinvestorspodcast.com. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any decision consult a professional. This show is copyrighted by The Investor’s Podcast Network. Written permission must be granted before syndication or rebroadcasting.