Audit Your Life

Oct 29

Your most precious resources when you’re just getting started are your time and money.

I wanted to write about something that is near and dear to my heart. If I could pinpoint one of the very first “ah-ha” moments in my personal development journey, it would be when I started facing some extremely harsh realities of my lifestyle. When you desire a monumental shift in your income, in your experiences, in your goals, in your faith, whatever it may be - it’s not going to happen overnight. It’s not going to happen through meditation or manifestation (although these are powerful tools).

It’s going to happen through tough love, owning your shit, and making massive changes.

You are going to SHOCK people when you decide to take control of your life. People are going to think you have changed, that you aren’t the same person you used to be (or the person they thought you were) - and they are exactly right. I can’t stress this enough, if you want something more than what you currently have, you need to be something more than you currently are.

“Audit your life” is something that has stuck with me over the last few years and anytime I start to engage in a conversation with folks around their goals or hopes for the future - those words always come to the tip of my tongue. Now, not everyone is ready for tough love, or a pep talk around how they deserve better, or that laziness or lack of self-worth is keeping them down, so I often keep my mouth shut. Nobody wants to hear that one hour of Netflix and one hour of video games every day equals to over 700 precious hours of time per year. If you can’t do something powerful with 700 hours - I don’t know what to tell you. But if you want insight into the first step of a powerful evolution -

Audit your fucking life!

If you want to intimately know more about someone - or yourself - look at their bank account and their free time. There is nothing more telling, or more powerful, than where you spend your dollars and your “extra” time. I don’t care which way you cut it - if you want to exceed in your financial goals, save for an investment, buy a coaching course, update your branding, launch a product, purchase new equipment, etc. etc. - you need cash and you need time to put in work.

Furthermore, they ain’t lying when they say, “you need to spend money to make money”. I could not shoot my first wedding without a camera, lens, memory cards, batteries, and editing laptop. We are talking thousands of dollars to just shoot our very first wedding. Does a couple thousand dollars seem accessible to you right now? If so, what are you waiting for? If not, what did you do last weekend? What did you do for dinner yesterday? Did you go to the bar? Did you go out to eat? Did you spend the day playing video games? Smoking weed? All of the above? If you don’t have the extra cash right now…

I’ll tell you what you do have - time.

Let’s get real - 4 years ago, I would be doing all of the above every single weekend (and probably after work too). I whined, I complained, I bitched and moaned about how I wasn’t meant to be living the life I was living. That I was supposed to be doing something greater. But deep down I knew -

I was receiving exactly what I was putting out there - a subpar, mediocre life.

This can be an overwhelming concept. Leave some space to get down on yourself a bit, you’re going to expose some things about yourself that you may not love. But that’s the first step. I often see life coaches skip out on this very important first step. They go straight to goal setting and action steps to building a business - you need to audit your life. You need to audit your bank account. You need to audit where you spend your time.

Okay, I looked at my cash flow - now what?

This part can be tough because it takes a while to start training your mind to “find” money. But trust me, it’s there! Even worse, when you aren’t making much money, it is realllllly hard to find money. This is definitely an area where some 1-on-1 coaching can help. To really dive into your finances takes time, lots of searching, and some creative thinking. This is where a “profit first” mentality can take you to the next level (this is a bit more complex and shouldn’t be the focus right now, so more on that later).

Here are a few of the top things that I can say contributed to saving for a cash reserve (side note: if you are single, this is a lot easier!). We stopped going out to eat, we literally didn’t go to a restaurant for 4 months - wrap your head around that concept for a second. We stopped drinking alcohol. If you knew me, you would know that I love a craft beer or cocktail. I actively, and purposely did not go out with friends - I’m not super proud of that, but I need to be very clear here… this is not a sustainable lifestyle. It can feel quite isolating and you will probably question what the fuck you are doing - but let me be VERY, VERY clear here -

If you put your head down for 6-12 months, you can build a foundation for success that you never dreamed possible.

Read that again. And then read it one more time. I can’t stress it enough. It took 6 months to save for our first apartment together (we were living in Sharlene’s Mom’s attic). It took 6 months for us to save for our first “round” of gear. It took 6 months to gain any sort of traction in our brand. I like to put visuals to concepts, so every time I think about those first 6 months - I think about us pushing a huge rock up a massive hill. The amount of effort was overwhelming, the trial and error were constant, and we heard a lot more “no”s than “yes”s. It wasn’t until we pushed that thing to the top that we started to find some traction and the ball started rollin’.

If you ask Sharlene, I can be one of the most annoying people in the world when it comes to my stubbornness towards achieving my goals. I will do drastic, ridiculous things to make shit happen. I’m forever grateful to have a partner who listened to me when I asked for unconditional support. Who listened to me when I decided to audit our life and audit our bank accounts. Who supported me when I cut out date night, traveling, and material things. Who supported me when I got up early to work on Young Plant at 5 a.m. and came home from my corporate job at 6 p.m. just to go back to work on Young Plant until 9 p.m.