The G in IDEAL Wealth GROWER stands for goals
As we are still in the first two months of the year as of this writing, the idea of New Year’s resolutions and goal setting are still fresh on our minds.
In the context of the IDEAL Wealth GROWER method, the goals we are talking about here are goals that change your life forever. These are the goals that look a few years in the future, they are big goals, or as Brendon Bouchard calls them “BHAG” – Big Hairy Audacious Goals”.
I have found that these kinds of goals are not specific for work or business or life, they are all-encompassing.
For my mentoring clients in the IDEAL Wealth GROWER program, I am initially always asked to do two things:
- Go through a guided conversation that comes from a book I was involved in, written by my friend Don Maruska, titled “Take Charge of Your Talents”. The 10 questions in the exercise bring clarity to what you really want, what your heart desires and how that fits into your current reality.
- Write a letter to yourself. This letter is a detailed description of your life about 4 years into the future from now. It is important to be really specific in this letter. You start Monday morning just when the alarm wakes you up and describe the next 7 days including what you are doing each day, how you got to do these things, what you are thinking, how you feel about life, your work, the people you interact with, etc. It really important to be very detailed.
In some cases, we also develop a dream -or vision board so you can have visual representations of what you imagine your life to become.
Some people reading this article might think this is a gimmick or fluffy stuff, but I strongly invite you to try it.
Between your heart desire and your letter to yourself you now have calibrated your mind towards a glorious future. Now we can determine what your goal should be and make sure it’s a BHAG, it needs to be challenging and exciting at the same time.
For the work within the IDEAL Wealth GROWER method we take this BHAG and identify the items that directly impact the financial path. This subset will be some your goal set for the active work in IDEAL Wealth GROWER mentoring. Sometimes clients ask to add my coaching after we worked through these exercises because they realize that some of the changes that need to happen to actually reach all aspects of the BHAG are easier to accomplish with help on your side.
When we are setting up the Letter to yourself, I also include for you to think about two important financial terms: Economic independence
- Financial Independence
- Economic Independence
The focus within the G of IDEAL Wealth GROWER is typically to get to Economic independence. There are a few different definitions out in the ether and a number of people using the term in slightly different ways. In our mentoring we look and define it as follows:
“Economic independence is the state of your financial situation where you have sufficient passive income and income from activities you absolutely love to no longer be required to work.”
Some experts state that Economic independence is only reached when all your income is passive. I don’t mind that view but if you already do or decide to get involved with something that pays you some money and you totally love it, I believe that should count.
What Economic independence replaces is the need to exchange time for money and being forced to have a job. For those readers who aren’t aware, job is actually an abbreviation that stands for “just above broke”.
If you longer have a job and reached Economic independence, you will do what you are passionate about, not because you are being paid for it, but because you love it.
With all that in mind, you might ask what “Financial independence” is in comparison? When you made it form economic independence to Financial independence money is no longer a factor. That state is reached when you have so much passive income and access to funds in case you want to buy something that money is no longer a consideration.
It does not mean you have to be a billionaire or have practically unlimited funds or money. It means what you are making is exceeding what your principles would desire.
Here is an example:
You might be a person like me. I like a nice house all paid for but I don’t need 8 bedrooms and 9 bathrooms and would never want to live in an area/location just for the prestige or because some celebrities live there. I like a nice bottle of wine and great coffee, but I can’t see myself paying $100/bottle or $50/pound for coffee. (In case you are wondering, the highest prices for a pound of coffee currently paid for Geisha varieties is about $800/pound)
I like to drive a nice car, preferably convertible, but would not pay more than $50K for it and probably get it used. I could not see myself spend more than $100 for a meal just by myself.
Everybody has their own principles, limits, boundaries. That’s why Financial independence is not really a defined number.
When we are working to determine the G in IDEAL Wealth GROWER, I like to get to an economic independence number that is spelled out in income per month and maybe an idea of what a Financial Freedom number could look like.
As soon as the Economic Freedom number is determined, we start to check that the investment strategy I teach is a good match. Often it is.
With that in mind, we now take the BHAG, its little brother, the economic independence goal and break the latter into smaller pieces, especially focusing on what should get our focus in the first 6 months.