Come on. I graduated college in May of 2001, is 22 years old. And I was pretty unclear as to what it was that I was going to do with the rest of my life. confidence going to be successful, I wasn’t really worried about that. But it’s very had very, very, very little direction, if no direction at all, on what the method or delivery vehicle delivery mechanism was going to be to help me to get that success. I’d really thought that like the entire time that I was going to go to law school. And I think that the only reason that I really thought that I had no idea what an attorney did, just perceived the profession to be a, a revered one, which, depending on who you’re talking to, is, is still the case, or it’s not just kidding. But I saw people that certainly made a living doing it could wear a suit be respected, all that good stuff. And so I was a political science major in college, thinking that that’s what I wanted to do. And I took the L sat and got accepted to schools in the Chicago area, which is sort of where I went to college. I went to Valparaiso University outside Chicago to Indiana, and decided that I wanted to move down to Arizona, I was a little bit tired of the Midwest winters. And so I thought, well, I’m familiar with Arizona, my dad had been there at that point for a long time. So I figured, why not head down there and take a year off and then go to law school the next year. And so I did that. And on August 16, of 2001, I started my career in financial services and personal finance. And so subsequently, August 16, to 2021 was my 20 year anniversary. And I’m not well, I shouldn’t say that I’ve grown to be a fairly reflective person, as, as I’ve gotten older. And I thought I’d be remiss not to put pen to paper and sort of think about the last 20 years, think about my career to this point. And so that is what I did. And I wrote a fairly lengthy post about success. And I’ve been thinking a lot about that, as of late. So I wanted to share a little bit about that with you just my thoughts on a 20 year career and what I think that people can potentially be learning from it. And if there’s any value to be gained from my, from my experience, and my thoughts. I think that just in some putting down some thoughts today, I think that for a long time, even as I was a kid, I was a tennis player, and I was a pretty successful tennis player. And then really, for the first probably seven years of my career, I was also pretty successful, taking on clients and doing doing financial advisory work. And I think that it was a function of I was experiencing success and having success that entire time versus being successful. With tennis, it’s super clear, if you are experiencing success if you’re having success because you’re winning, or you’re losing and then when you’re in a a professional sales role, which is where I was for the first seven years of my career, also very, very clear if you’re experiencing success. And now 20 years in, and really frankly, having the experience of the podcast over the last four years. And doing over 1200 episodes at this point and having the opportunity to talk with literally 1000 people about hundreds of different topics. And a lot of that dealing with success and, and self accident actualization and, and mindset and all of these things and success in general. I think that just over the past four years, it’s it has changed my perspective and my outlook and so many different things in my life and all all for the better. It’s caused me to dig into biases I have and dig into limiting beliefs that I have and

self doubt and all the things that we experienced as human beings that and all the things that we certainly have. And it’s made me such a such a better person. And I can tell you today that I really do consider myself to be successful. So instead of just having success and experiencing success, I really do feel like I am a successful person, and that I am doing work that I think is valuable and important. And the more if I can help other people to get to that place where they are feeling satisfied and content and feeling like they’re successful and useful. Well, then then that would be, that would be a success for for me as well. So that was what I wanted to talk with you about today. I thought I wonder if if there are steps to success? Certainly, success leaves clues and you can look at behaviors that successful people do and what time do they get up in the morning? What do they think about? What do they read? How long do they sleep, they exercise? do they eat? All that kind of stuff. But I think I sort of boil it down to five different steps that if you’re interested in in becoming successful, how do you really do that. And a big part of that, what I’ve sort of settled on is how important it is how hard it is to move on to the level which is just beyond you just just above you. And the term that I don’t really like because I think it’s been sort of CO opted and lost a lot of it’s, it’s it’s now sort of a cliche is this idea of leveling up. But that’s that that’s really what we need we as human beings me I you need to figure out how to do to be advancing is we need to figure out how to level up. And it’s way more than simply getting to the next level, it’s how do I lock that next level in? How do I make that next level, my level, like this is just where I’m at now this, this is my new normal. And I think that’s really the trick. If we don’t do that, then then then we’re on the yo yo, right, then I’m losing 10 pounds, and then I’m gaining back 10 or 12 or 15 pounds, it’s I’m gonna go run a marathon and then I just stopped running, it’s I get out of debt, and then I get right back in it. It’s reverting back to the main. And we have as human beings, a desire for consistency, we have a desire for comfort. I have that it’s a desire for familiarity. And what I intellectually want is oftentimes in direct conflict to, to what my body wants, which is familiarity, which is comfort, which is certainty, even if certainty is not serving me at all. Even if certainty is being you know, 30 pounds overweight and broke and it in a in a less in a crappy relationship, that’s still my level. That’s still where I’m comfortable. And so breaking out of that hard breaking out of it and making that lock in that and making that your next level, your new level. That is the opportunity that I that I believe is is the key and is the challenge. So I think that the first step in in doing this in really finding the success you want is making the decision that you are wanting to change and the you’re ready to change and setting the intention that this is what I’ve committed to doing and I am committed to doing whatever is necessary and uncomfortable. To make this change happen. I am expecting discomfort. I in fact welcome it I am leaning directly into that this comfort knowing that that that it’s it’s going to come so how do I how do I sort of figure that out? It’s a question of are you where you want to be?

Is Is Your Life what what you want it to be? If it is But that’s awesome. But are you satisfied with your career and your finances? The relationships you have your personal life? Your physical mental health? Are you happy with that? Do you have the peace of mind and contentment that you’re really looking for? Yes, now maybe so. So to answer that question, and then figure out, do you want to change Are there areas that you want to have different. And again, it’s possible to, to want to be leveling up without just being a discontented person. We’re not throwing the baby out with the bathwater, there’s just certain things that we’re going to be changing. So the second thing, then, is getting clear on what it is that you really want. Now I speak pretty openly that I, I did not have goals, I had them, but I never actually wrote them down. I never really thought about them too deeply before, it’s 35 years old. And like everybody that then has goals and writes down, they can attest to how just important and extremely valuable that that is. So I think it’s really clear, it’s really important that in order to figure out what it is that you want, you really need to get clear on what it is that you really want. And I like to think about it in six areas, like think about what you want for your family, what you want for your community, what you want for your finances and your work, I want to encourage you to get clear on what you’re interested in learning for just just for the sake of learning what you want your physical and mental health to be like, and then really what you want, what you want your peace of mind to really look like. So getting clear on that. And then figuring out what what it’s going to take to get there. What will be required for you to get to that place. Because losing a bunch of weight, hard, getting debt free, getting out of debt is hard. Three, a better relationship with your kids is hard spouse hard. But if you want to change, you figure out that you know that you’re ready if you want, if you know what you want it to look like, that’s when you could start actually taking the action required or getting the new learnings to figure it out. So let’s just you know, going through going through an example, if you did want to lose 50 pounds, do you know how to do that. So figuring out what new learnings are going to be required if it’s learned about nutrition, learned about exercise, learning about sleep, and water and all that stuff that you’re going to need to figure out. So figure out where you need to learn that how you’re going to get it, and what what support that you’re going to need to be able to make that happen. It’s all around us. There’s people who can help you. So figuring out what you need, and then where you can get it. And then putting it all into action. That we’ve all heard that, you know, an airplane, the space shuttle uses so much fuel just getting started right on the launch, getting the thing off the ground is the hardest time when you’re going to be expanding the most amount of energy once you are moving, and the shuttle or the plane is in flight requires a lot less fuel. So that’s the thing is making the initial changes breaking through your current level. And getting up to the next one is gonna be the hardest part and then locking it and maintaining it. You’ve broken bad habits, we’re establishing new ones, it will be easier to maintain. So figuring out how much weight you want to lose when you want to lose it by figuring out what your diet is going to be putting together a meal plan, putting together an exercise program when you’re going to do it. So whatever you’ll need in the nutrition area, or the exercise area, figure out where you’re gonna get it. And then hire a trainer, join a gym, find meal prep, whatever it is, figure out how to do it and find the little bite size for lack of a better term kind of wordplay. The small actions that you’re going to be taking everyday to make that happen. And then avoiding that yo yo right now that you lost the weight, how do we make sure we don’t just snap right back, put it back on. So locking it in. And I think that we just not just we need to essentially create our own standard operating procedure. You know, create your own SLP and having checklists for how you do things, and how you follow them and think about really important things in life. The most important things require that you do everything in a certain order. Think about a surgeon that everything that goes along with having a successful surgery from

everything that the actual surgeon has to do to be prepared for it. Getting a good night’s sleep, having clarity And, you know, skill and being ready and all the support people and the nurses and the anesthesiologist and having the room clean and the instruments. And the patient being prepped, there is a lot that goes into it. And a checklist is followed. So why wouldn’t you have a checklist for as many different things in your life as possible? scheduling things, what gets scheduled gets done. And now, if something is important, it needs to go on your calendar, otherwise, it’s going to get bumped. That’s just a reality. So I don’t care what it is, if it’s stuff with your kids, or your physical fitness, or whatever it needs to go on your calendar. And that automating things making sure that this stuff is recurring, and work and take our hands off the wheel as much as possible. And then delegation. So being able to find the help that we need, so checklists, calendaring, automation, and delegation. And then appreciating and and, and again, embracing that your body and your mind are going to be at conflict here, what you’re going to be feeling and what you’re going to be thinking are going to be at conflict, our physical bodies want us to go back to what we were doing, our physical body doesn’t want to get up in the morning, it doesn’t want to get on the treadmill, it whatever it wants crappy food, because that’s where it’s accustomed to, it likes it, which is great, because we we like all those things to your body’s going to keep trying to just like crabs in a bucket, pull you back down, we’re not going to let our brain says no. So it’s going to take, it’s going to be hard, it’s gonna be hard for our body to catch up and to realize, listen up body, this is our new level, we’ve leveled up, we’re not going back down, this is what we’re doing. And then this will become your new level. And this will become your new level of success, you will become more successful until you level up again. And that’s kind of the idea here. And you’ll figure that out. Right? Then you’ll reassess. And you’ll say, Okay, great. Do I want to change? What is it that I want? What action will I need to take, execute it and then lock it in. So super excited for the next 20 years of of my career. Wild experience looking back and sort of rehashing A lot of it, the good and the bad, and the ugly and plenty of things to be certainly grateful for an immense amount of learning things to be mildly regretful of but not, not really, I don’t know that I would change a whole lot about it, you got to take your lumps and other wonderful people that I’ve met along the way. But super excited for what the future holds. Because it does hold some really, really exciting things. So super excited to have been working on a build out of a website for the light blood podcast. And it’s been in the back of my mind for a long time, and finally made the commitment. I decided that I wanted to change and figure out what did I want it What, what I wanted, I figured out the actions I needed to take and now I’ve been executing. So coming soon is our lifeblood site. And obviously, you’ll be able to enjoy the podcast episodes there. But it’s really going to highlight and showcase all of our guests. So you’ll find the podcast episodes, you’re also going to find written content from our guests. So they’re they’re willing to share their expertise, and their time in providing blog posts on their areas of expertise, which is an incredible thing. I’m so grateful for that. And so many of them have learning opportunities, they have courses, and YouTube channels and their own podcasts. And so you get to be able to take advantage of all of those things as well. So you’ll be able to find all of their additional offerings on the site, you’ll be able to take their courses, and many of them are our coaches or coaches and consultants and and advisors. And and and they have so much to offer. So you’re going to have an opportunity to engage directly with them as well. on the site. We’re going to have monthly events that you’ll be able to take part in live not necessarily in person maybe. But we’ll have events, we’ll have masterminds that will be going on. So lots of super exciting stuff. So please do this episode is going to go live on

I guess October 2 and I am hoping to have the site live probably sometime in December. So I will certainly be dribbling out updates as I have them, but really excited about it and I think that you’re really gonna like it. appreciate all of your support, appreciate your turn tuning into the show. Thanks as always for listening and I will talk with you soon thanks