Category Archives: Business

Day 3340 – A Book That Changed My Mindset On Business (And Travel) Completely – The 4-Hour Workweek – Read A New Book Month Day 2

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I first read The 4-Hour Workweek* back in the summer of 2014. I wrote a post about how it was the catalyst to me eventually closing my photography business, funny enough, three years ago today.

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As I was reading through The Third Door, The 4-Hour Workweek came up a few times. I have heard from countless other folks, whether through an in-person conversation, a social media post, an article, or a book, that this book has had a profound effect on them. If so many people are saying this, honestly, why haven’t you read this yet?

It completely changed how I viewed work, income, and truly, what it costs for my dream life to be a reality. I recommend this book* to anyone who is looking to change in their business or life. I talk about how it changed my view on travel in another post on my travel blog, so you can view my thoughts there.

The links to the book on Amazon are affiliate links. As a reminder, an affiliate link is one that if you click and purchase the book (or something else) I’ll receive a small percentage at no additional cost to you. I ruthlessly only share products, services, books, etc, that I have personally used and only recommend what I think is useful and valuable. I’ve marked all affiliate links in this post with this little guy –> *

Have you read this? What was your experience?

Check out all of my 2018 Read A New Book Month recommendations.

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Did you like what you read? Here’s some ways you can support us and this blog!
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Day 3339 – The Third Door – One Of The Best Books I’ve Ever Read – Read A New Book Month Day 1

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I’m going to do something a little different for the month of September and share my top book recommendations every day in honor of Read A New Book Month. You don’t have to follow along for long to know that I read a lot, that I adore reading, and I think reading is an essential part of life.

If you’re having trouble getting into reading, I hope that my recommendations will open your eyes to books you didn’t know existed. I’ll share non-fiction books ranging from business, to mindset, to inspiration to living a full life. I’ll share fiction books that have stuck with me for years. I’ll share kid’s books that moved me to tears and inspired me in ways I didn’t expect.

Thanks to reading challenges, my reading has expanded to many different genres, so I hope you find something you’ll love in my recommendations. There will be links to the books on Amazon, which will be affiliate links. As a reminder, an affiliate link is one that if you click and purchase the book (or something else) I’ll receive a small percentage at no additional cost to you. I ruthlessly only share products, services, books, etc, that I have personally used and only recommend what I think is useful and valuable. I’ve marked all affiliate links in this post with this little guy –> *

So here we go! For day one, I want to share a book I just finished last night – The Third Door: The Wild Quest to Uncover How the World’s Most Successful People Launched Their Careers* by Alex Banayan.

*

Here’s how it’s described:

“The larger-than-life journey of an 18-year-old college freshman who set out from his dorm room to track down Bill Gates, Lady Gaga, and dozens more of the world’s most successful people to uncover how they broke through and launched their careers.”

I found this book because of a post made by Tim Ferris about the book. It was on my to be read list for a while and one that I put a hold request on at the library. I’m not sure what exactly I was expecting out of this book, but it ended up being one of the greatest books I’ve ever read. While I didn’t really learn anything new, a lot of the advice is what I’ve heard before, learned before, applied before, and I did learn a few new things about the folks he interviewed.

But the biggest thing that drew me to the book was the journey of the author. In a lot of ways, I felt like it mirrors the journey of being a business owner, or really anything in life. It can be easy to just share the highlights, the good stuff, all the times we win, but not Alex. He shared every fall, every fail, every embarassment.

His words reminded me that no matter how crazy your dream is, you can take a shot at it. I finished the book with many tears, many smiles, and more empowered to chase my own dreams. Definitely worth the read*.

Check out all of my 2018 Read A New Book Month recommendations.

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Did you like what you read? Here’s some ways you can support us and this blog!
Join our Facebook group, Planning an Epic Road Trip on Any Budget
Join the Journey With The G’s email list (bonus – you get my Epic Road Trip Budget spreadsheet)
Buy my book, Planning an Epic Road Trip on any Budget
Buy my book, Trusting God With 2 Cents: 22 Days To Becoming A Successful Christian Business Owner.
Shop on Amazon (no additional cost to you, this gives us a percentage of what you order).
Check out our resources page.
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Day 3334 – Why On Earth Do I Get Up At Five A.M. And Why Am I Excited To Do So?

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Last week, I was in a discussion about wake up times. Upon hearing mine (five a.m.) my friends asked a valid question “why would you do that???” It’s a good question. As someone who loves sleep, sees the need for getting enough sleep and would sleep in every day if you let her, I never thought I would enjoy getting up at five.

But as I reflected on last week, with the busyness of the real estate business, my desire to build a new business, and you know, keep my sanity, I realized that a big part of why I can fit everything in is waking up early.

My morning routine has changed a little bit over the last six months. I’ve added things in and cut things out. Here’s a snapshot of my current morning.

5:00-5:10 – get up, entreat Bret to start the coffee, whether through verbally asking or by sending him a GIF of someone pressing a button. Once I started prepping the coffee the night before, it made getting up so much easier since all I have to do is press a button.

5:10-5:30/6:00 – have coffee with Bret while he stretches. He used to stretch at other times, but changing things up and combining our coffee date with his stretching has really helped us to maximize our time.

5:30/6-9:00ish – the timing of this section changes depending on what we have going on and how late the coffee date went.

Devotions – I’m systematically going through the Ask Pastor John podcasts. I’m also doing the Discipleship Journal Bible Reading Plan to read the bible in a year.

Journal – This is one of those things I keep telling myself I HAVE to do because I do look back on what I’ve written. I love being able to see what I was going through a year ago and how much I’ve changed…or still need to change. I’ve started to track this on my highlighted checklist and have had a streak of eight days.

Morning reads – I work through three different books at a time. These tend to be more about my work life. I’m currently reading a book about real estate investing, a book about profit, and a book about creativity. I love that even if I can’t read later in the day, I’ve got some reading in.

January Letter/Contract – I read my January Letter and my contract with myself about my new blog out loud, every day. Hearing myself say these things has been very important. I’ve also made some modifications as the year has progressed. Where once it read “I commit to not say ‘I can’t afford it,’ ‘I should just quit,’ or ‘I can’t make money’.” It now says “I say ‘I can afford it,’ ‘I won’t quit,’ and ‘I make money’.”

Courses – I’m working through Pinterest Traffic Avalanche and Make Money Blogging For Beginners by Create & Go (check out my post about my experiences with their first course if you have any interest in starting a blog). I also added a travel hacking course into this portion of the day.

Writing inspiration – While we were traveling to Boston, I had a realization about what my inspiration is for sharing about travel. I wrote that out and read it while listening to a song that really touches my soul about travel. Sometimes I’ll watch a video I put together of us traveling to really get into the mood.

Write for TJFZ – After I find myself in that mood, I start writing. As I’ve been adjusting my workday for all the new things I have to do, I realized I had too full of a schedule on my new blog. So I’m reverse engineering it a bit. I’m seeing how long it takes me to do everything I need to do for a post, from writing, to posting, to creating other social media content. Then I’ll have a better idea of what’s a good time frame/schedule for where I am now with other commitments.

Write a post for 365 – I have to say, showing up every day for this blog has made such a profound impact on my life in countless ways. I’m so thankful for EVERY one of you who read my posts, whether every day, every few weeks or just once. Knowing that I have an audience for what I say is just amazing.

Workout/shower – If I’m lucky, I can squeeze in a run before Bret leaves. Sometimes it’s a workout done in the apartment.

On a good day, I’m done all of this by 8:30 a.m. What’s great about that is I’m able to mentally turn off any thoughts of “Oh, I should work on my blogs, oh, I still need to work out, etc.” I’ve taken care of things that are important to me – my spiritual growth, my personal growth, my health, and my businesses. I’m able to jump into my work day knowing these important things are done. I’m thankful I’ve cultivated a strict morning routine for so long because now that I’m adding in so much, I can still fit it all in. It was a huge deal once the real estate workload increased.

I am now SO happy to get up at 5 a.m. and am so thankful for what I can do because of it. I never thought I’d say it, but I don’t snooze anymore and I actually get up pretty excited.

What time do you get up?

Editor’s note: This photo was taken when I forgot to post a few years ago. This is not an actual representation of us when we wake up. 😀

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Did you like what you read? Here’s some ways you can support us and this blog!
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Day 3333 – Reflections After Our Seventh Real Estate Investing Closing

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When Bret started with real estate investing, I saw it as “his business” we’d chat about things like a husband and wife chat about their “day” jobs. Fast forward a few months and I started doing some administrative tasks for “his business.”

Then a few months ago, things shifted. We started to say “our business.” We talked about how we could ramp this up with our partners.

On Friday, we closed on our seventh property. To say that I never expected this would be our life is a bit of an understatement. My vision of what my life would be has changed so much over the past decade it almost makes my head spin to keep up. The biggest takeaway I’ve had is that it’s completely ok to change your work dreams…even every few months.

Because of us ramping up our business, we knew that our volume would increase across the board. From marketing output to appointments to calls to paperwork. As we were looking at things, the incoming calls were the biggest concern. Without ANY pressure, Bret asked if I thought I could help with calls. This was actually a pretty big ask because, to be honest, I’ve had some issues about being on the phone. We’re talking I would sweat and shake when I would call a place just to ask when they close (the reasons for this are long, drawn out, and not worth the story).

If he had asked this a year ago, I would have said, no way, nope nope nope! Keep me behind the computer, that’s my strength! But because of a number of experiences over the last few months, I knew it was a challenge that would stretch me and grow me and make a big impact on our business. The whole “if you want to be in a place you’ve never been before, you have to do things you’ve never done before” was ringing in my head.

This week, I did things I’ve never done before in our business. The first day I took calls was when Bret started back to school. We received about double the amount we’d received in the past, it was a crazy huge amount of calls. At the end of the day, I felt humbled that me taking a few hours out of my day could help us so much. The folks I spoke to were kind and it wasn’t a horrible experience. There are still a few kinks to work out, but I feel a lot more confident.

Friday, while Bret was busy at work, I did a bit of driving around (over 100 miles) for the business, which included doing a walkthrough of a property we were closing on later that day. As it turned out, this property was seen by all of our partners, so sitting around the closing table with everyone was a really neat experience.

After the closing, we went to eat with our partners. The place we chose was next to another restaurant we visited with them. What was a little surreal was how different things were compared to that previous meal. The previous meal took place about a month after Bret started working on building the business. At the time, it was still “his business” and not “our business.” I wasn’t listening to the conversation as much and didn’t feel like I had much to say.

But now, this has become OUR business so much more deeply and meaningfully. I can’t wait to see how this next stage of our business grows and changes us. I have to say, I really did miss working with my spouse. 🙂

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Did you like what you read? Here’s some ways you can support us and this blog!
Join our Facebook group, Planning an Epic Road Trip on Any Budget
Join the Journey With The G’s email list (bonus – you get my Epic Road Trip Budget spreadsheet)
Buy my book, Planning an Epic Road Trip on any Budget
Buy my book, Trusting God With 2 Cents: 22 Days To Becoming A Successful Christian Business Owner.
Shop on Amazon (no additional cost to you, this gives us a percentage of what you order).
Check out our resources page.
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Day 3330 – Lessons Learned From My First Changed Workday

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Yesterday was quite an experience, let me tell you. As I reflect on things, I realized the things I learned can apply to a lot of changes in our lives.

1 – No matter how much you prepare, there will always be an aspect you don’t know, didn’t think about, or will have questions about.

2 – Your first opportunity might come at the most inopportune time. (Read that as you’ll get your very first call while you’re in the bathroom and have to rush to finish).

3 – You will more fully understand what someone else has gone through. What I’m taking over is something Bret alone has done for nearly two years, I can much more deeply understand what he’s gone through the past few years.

4 – Most people are totally ok with you just starting out and will be very encouraging.

5 – Never say never. Ever. I still can’t believe I’m doing this particular job.

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Did you like what you read? Here’s some ways you can support us and this blog!
Join our Facebook group, Planning an Epic Road Trip on Any Budget
Join the Journey With The G’s email list (bonus – you get my Epic Road Trip Budget spreadsheet)
Buy my book, Planning an Epic Road Trip on any Budget.
Buy my book, Trusting God With 2 Cents: 22 Days To Becoming A Successful Christian Business Owner.
Shop on Amazon (no additional cost to you, this gives us a percentage of what you order).
Check out our resources page.
Subscribe to our YouTube Channel