Hey guys. Welcome back to another Friday. Solo episode of time. Freedom for lawyers. I'm back from a weekend in Austin, Texas. Running a 10 K Spartan race with a group of friends of mine and i'm reflecting on the power of staying in proximity with people who are doing bigger and better things than you are and so that's what this week's episode is going to be about stay tuned Hey guys. Thanks for sticking with us through the intro music or skipping through the intro music. If you're like me.
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If I don't earn some listenership after one episode, that's on me. Thanks guys. All right. So here's the story of this weekend. So I was down in Austin, Texas running a sport in 10 K. With a group of entrepreneurial men. And this is something you've probably heard me talk about before I started racing on this GoBundance Spartan race team. About a year ago. This weekend was my fourth race and every time I come back from one of these races, I'm like fired up to go and work on my business.
And work on my family and it is in a hundred percent due to the group of men that hang out at these races. It really has very little to do with the race and much more to do with the crowd of guys that you get to hang out with for 48 hour period in an Airbnb. If you're not familiar with the Spartan race Spartan runs a number of events, but the most common are these five, 10 and 20 K. Obstacle courses and they're all mud runs.
And really they all have the same set of obstacles, but what I love about Spartan is it, every weekend is a little bit different because of the way that they set up the course. For an example, when I was out in Los Angeles, there's a ton of Hills and it was super dry. And every time you came down a hill, you were getting sand in your shoe. Contrast that with this 20 K that we ran in Jersey last year on the side of a ski slope, super wet rocks everywhere. Really hard to run downhill.
Fairly easy to hike the uphills though, contrast that with Florida last December, like pancake flat, actually one of the hardest races that I've done to date, because it was pancake flat. And because There's no big Hills to take a walk break on. And so even though it is really the same set of obstacles, the same set of 25 to 30 obstacles, they're just set up in a slightly different configuration, depending on the course.
And this race in Texas was a proper hard 10 K they had back-loaded all of the heavy carries. So the a hundred pound Atlas stone carry. The 60 pound sandbag carry, which felt like it was more like 80 pounds. Cause it had rained overnight and the bags were all wet. All of that stuff was at the end of these slogs of sometimes need deep, sometimes waist, deep water. It looked like they had created some of them, but just naturally they'd run the course through these Creek beds.
So that was pretty cool. Legs are tired. And then you hit all this heavy stuff at the end of the race. So that makes it just a different kind of a challenge. The other thing they do, that's really challenging is they put you through the water almost immediately proceeding. All of the stuff where you actually need grip.
This is where it's important that your shoes be dry they put you through water immediately before that software's important where your hands are dry and you can climb a rope or do a pull up or something like that they put you through water where you've probably gotten your hands a little bit wet so this is just a really well constructed course and it made it really hard So hard, apparently that I've just left the script entirely of what this show is actually supposed to be about, which is the
tribe. So Saturday after the race we're sitting around and trying to arrange. Drives back to the airport. And I had a noon flight. A bunch of guys had later flights and said, Hey, can you drop us off at this guy's house? We want to use his cryo chamber. And I'm like, Let me see if I can move my flight. I would actually love to go and hang out with somebody who's got a cryo chamber. Not necessarily because I'm interested in like the medicine or what that can do for you.
But anybody who's got one of those in his house is somebody who I'm going to spend a couple of hours. Learning from and interacting with. And so we did that, went over to a local member's house, hopped in his cryo chamber, cranked that bad boy down to negative 230 degrees. I ended up with a little bit of freezer burn on my elbows, but I got. Some interesting stories. And I want to share with you some of the takeaways from the weekend and from our mastermind sessions.
Both Friday night and then Saturday after the race. So some of the things that I picked up with over the weekend, And then I've left with. Or this it really matters who you hang out with and who you spend time with. This is an old Jim Roan principle that you're the average of the five people that you spend the most time with. And if you just think through your like Rolodex of your friends, who you hang out with a lot.
You're probably right in the middle of that group of friends, like weight and fitness-wise how much you earned last year? What your net worth is? Happiness in your marriage happiness with your kids. If you're hanging out with a bunch of single people, you're probably single. If you have kids, you probably stopped hanging out with all your single friends. It's not good. It's not bad. It just happens. But it's really important that you be intentional about setting up your group of peers.
To emulate who you want to become. So one of the things that we were talking about as we were sitting around the campfire Friday night is the importance, especially as you hit Rocky patches. In your marriage or in your relationship of making sure that the group of friends that you're hanging out with includes other couples who are doing well and having a great relationship and have a great relationship with their kids. And are involved in their kids' stuff.
It's a total left turn from entrepreneurship and from really the things that I talk about for the most part on this podcast. But I think it's just critically important because that concept that you're the average of the five people. It's much more than money, right? It's happiness. It's relationship with your spouse. It's relationship with your kids. It's really important to be intentional on not spending time with people whose life you don't emulate.
Doesn't mean you have to cut these people who may be longtime friends. They may be family members of yours out of your life. But it means you have to dial back the amount of time that you spend with them. If you want to end up on a different trajectory then the one that you're on right now. And actually I had a mom say this to me the other night at soccer practice. So I coached my 10 year olds team. And we're talking about plans for the fall.
And she says, oh, we took our son and tried him out for travel and he's going to do travel next year. Not really, because I think he's an incredible player or because I think he's going to. Play in high school or college. In fact, she has no illusions that he's going to do that he may, he's a good athlete.
But what she said is I. It frustrates me and it frustrates him that we come to these practices and a third of the kids to a half of the kids on the team, depending on the night aren't paying any attention. And they're just screwing around. And as the coach, I think I have to take some responsibility for that. But there's only so many times that I can explain a drill to a player. Who's not listening before. I've got to focus my intention on the kids who are.
And so that got me into thinking as I'm at my eight year old's baseball game the other night, and some of his teammates were throwing their hats around. In the infield, throwing their gloves around in the infield while a battery is at the plate of he's above average on the team who would be below average on a travel team. But maybe that investment is worth it just to get them around kids who are taking the ship more seriously.
And if we're being intentional about our own lives and saying, I need to get around people who are taking their shit more seriously, why aren't we doing it for our kids also? So that's just the thought that I had as, as I was sitting down to sketch out what I thought this podcast. Who is going to be about. It's like, how can we create a level up environment, both for ourselves and for our kids. Another thing that I took away from this weekend.
Is. As you get into these groups, like people speak the same language and they read the same. Books and listen to the same podcast. And one of the things that came up again and again, is we were talking about how to level up your business and how to level up your financial life. Is Dan Sullivan and Ben Hardy's books, they're just quoted over and over in this group.
So at different points, we discussed the book who not how, and the lesson in that book is that you can't do everything in your business. And at some point you've got to learn how to hire people. Not so that you can teach them how to do what you do, but like, how can you go out and find the person who can solve the problem and you don't ever have to learn the solution you're not ever going to have to work on the solution. How can you free yourself up to focus on your.
I think Dan Sullivan calls it like your unique ability. Without having to think about all the little things, the book, the gap, and the gain came up again and again, And I've just recently re-read that. And I, the first time that I read it, what I took away was. You will be happier if you measure backwards. And look at where, how far you've come. Instead of looking forwards and looking to where you want to go.
And the second time I read it, I came with just a slightly different twist on that, which is. Unhappiness comes not from measuring where we're going to, but measuring against some perfect ideal that we've set up in our head that we've never reached that we don't know if it's going to make us happy or not. Happiness comes from measuring against where we used to be again, not necessarily financially, not like year over year revenue. Net worth.
But when you look back and you say, okay, at one point I didn't have this skill set or I couldn't talk to people like, or couldn't sell or whatever it is. And then you recognize how far you've come. Like just the reflection back on that. Is where our happiness comes from. And so Dan Sullivan and Ben Hardy recommend the end of the day. I write down three wins. So that when you were having a bad day, a bad week, a bad month, You've got now this journal where you can go and look at, okay.
Over the last 30 days here where my 90 wins. It's easy to forget that stuff when you're in the trenches, but. If you make a good practice of recording those things. Then you will have something to reflect back on. And that's really where happiness and satisfaction comes from. And then the most recent book that everybody's talking about and that I just finished today is 10 X is easier than two X. Which is a really interesting book about the 80 20 principle. And how, if your target from today is.
Simply two X. That's going to be really hard because at two X you were still thinking about how can I do twice as much work? How can I make twice as much money? How can I take twice as much time off? But at 10 X you can't like, you can't work. 10 X is hard, right? And so we've got to be thinking about how can I focus on the 20% of things that I'm doing that make me the 80% of the money. And hire out. Or associate out all of the rest of the tasks in the portfolio of things that need to be done.
And the analogy that he uses over and over in the book is a statue of David. I think everybody's heard. The Michelangelo carving the statute, David, they say, oh, how did you do that? He says, oh, it was always there. I just chiseled away. The unnecessary stuff. And so Ben Hardy is saying really like your 10 X ability is within you. You need to stop doing the 80% of the things that are slowing you down and preventing you from getting there.
Another thing that I took away from this weekend is this concept of like always be testing. So we had this interesting discussion about how long do you want to live? And some of the numbers that people were throwing out were like 150, 120 years old. Which I think is crazy. I don't necessarily want to live to be 200. But these guys are always testing. Okay. If I was going to be able to live to 150 or 200 what would I have to do?
To get there and shout out to my friend, Len Speda for recommending Peter at T his book outlive, which kind of gives you the guideposts for where you need to get by age 50 to be. Physically independent at age 80 and a hundred and beyond. And so a lot of the guys in this group are wearing. All kinds of fitness trackers from aura rings. To a whoop. To a continuous glucose monitor and they're regularly testing their blood, not for abnormalities, not for diseases, but for optimization.
And so that's another concept that comes out of Peter Tia's outlive. Like modern medicine when he goes medicine, 2.0 is about identifying you when you've fallen below a baseline and then fixing you medicine 3.0 is he calls it? Is about optimizing you well in advance of that and not saying, okay, if your blood sugar is at 1 29 you're okay. But at 1 31, you have a problem. At 1 29, you also have a problem you're on your way to 1 31.
And so how can we figure out what your optimal blood sugar level is and bring you back down to that? And the interesting thing about. All of these bio trackers. Is there really for optimizing the last five or 10%, right? If you weren't getting the nutrition and the exercise and the sleep that comprises, the 90% of the things that make up, whether you're fat or thin in shape or out of shape. Healthy or unhealthy, then the last 10% doesn't matter. So you've got to get all that stuff. Correct.
First. The bio trackers, they help with that. There's some, really, some of the guys are talking about really high end stuff like blue methylene heat, shock, proteins, cold shock proteins, like activating all that stuff. That's really high level, but you've got to dial in. The 80, 90% first. And and I think that's really like a life hack, stop spending time thinking about, get rich quick schemes or six minute abs. Because they don't exist. The way to success is to slowly build momentum.
And then along the way, like you pick up the things that accelerate you down that path. But if you don't have a solid base, accelerant is just as likely to blow you up. As it is the speed you up. It's like investing in crypto with leverage right. Okay. You can dollar cost average, or you can over lever yourself. You can trade on margin. And if you're trading crypto on margin. It's already an accelerant. Now you're adding another accelerant in it.
Like it can mess you up really fast if you're not very careful. And so just understanding what the 90% is and getting the 90%. Correct. Before we move on to testing. The things on the margins. And I'll close with this. This is my favorite quote from the weekend. From the guy who owns the the cryo machine.
We're sitting around talking and he's going over his vision board with us and on his vision board, he's got this mansion in Hawaii and his comment was that he needed to add another zero to his net worth before he could afford that. Which that's interesting to think about. And then he's got a jet. And and he's very close to buying the jet And what he says is I figure if I can buy the jet, then I save a million dollars in income tax.
And if I just don't pay that million dollars in income tax and I deploy that money somewhere else, and I only earn 10% on that money. Then I've accumulated a hundred thousand dollars a year. The defrays the cost of the plane. And that. To me, it's just worth pausing on. cause have you ever been in a room where somebody talks like that and it isn't either a flex or a pipe dream? It's not a problem that I have. I don't have $3 million in income that I need to.
Be able to deduct somehow so that I reduce my tax liability by a million dollars. I'm not even sure it's a problem that I'd like, I like to have, I don't. Mind flying. I don't like. Necessarily flying economy. It would be a little bit more convenient to me to be able to skip the lounge all together and just hop on the plane. To have a private jet, but I don't really travel enough to need a jet. But this is just an entirely different way of thinking and approaching the problems than most.
People have most people think about how can I pull a lever and increase the amount of money that I earn? How can I pull the lever and decrease the amount of money that I spend? Many people, especially in a W2 mindset when there aren't that many lovers to pull don't think about the tax lever. And so Like just thinking about what if I didn't have to pay this over here.
And then I could turn what would otherwise be a liability, the plane into an asset by taking my savings and deploying it into an asset. Asset. It's just interesting to me to be around people on a consistent basis. Who think like that? If this resonates with you at. At all. And you're interested in spending more time with other lawyers who are big thinkers. Other lawyers who are working on being better. Lawyers. Better business owners, better husbands wives, family members, parents.
There's two ways to change this number one. You could find yourself a whole. All new circle. Circle of friends. You can go. Hang out at the courthouse. Courthouse. You can vet people. You can look at resumes. I guess you can look at balance sheets and you could try to cultivate your own platform and program of people who would be interesting for you to hang out with and learn from. The other way is to buy in and I'll tell you it's much faster. It's much easier.
If you buy into a group where this already exists. And so if you aren't regularly spending time having your limits pushed by people who think bigger than you, then I've got an invitation for you. If you like. We talk about on this podcast. Which is not just the marketing and the practice building and the wealth building, but the philosophy really of living your best life.
Then you should know that my dad and I have built a tribe of like-minded lawyers who are living lives of their own designs and creating tremendous value for the world within the structure of the legal practice. It's not something you hear about in law school. It's not something you're going to get from a CLE. It's certainly not something that traditional bar ever. Ever talks. Talks about. And so I want to invite you to join us at the only membership organization for entrepreneurial lawyers.
it's actually run by two practicing lawyers If that's interesting to you check us [email protected]. And have a great memorial day weekend guys