Anchor: Prioritize Profit | Season 2, Ep. 5

Dane 00:00
This is the insidious nature of comfort.

Dane 00:02
Comfort is so tempting all the time and comfort isn't just like lazy boy chair. Comfort is. Low executive functioning, not wanting to think about that thing, and I find that I often make the very unprofitable decision, the unprofitable bet, because I'd rather have it conveniently than to go through the hard choice. And  

Dane 00:25
we can become just like those business owners who wonder why they go to business quickly. It's because they lose The plot, they take their eye off of the main thing. And the main thing is to prioritize a profitable return on your life.

Dane 00:40
Let's call it what it is. It's actually just uncomfortable.  

Dane 00:44
And if you actually embrace the process, you hug the cactus, the discomforting path is where you find the most life.

Dane 00:51
Unbelievably proven.

Dane 00:52
Ironclad, uncommonly practiced just because it's a little uncomfortable. I get it. I'm never going back.

Dane 01:03
As humans we prefer the path of least resistance. We crave convenience, the payoff without the price. But when our lives revolve around comfort, it doesn't deliver. Living in perpetual comfort leaves us weak and asleep. This podcast is an invitation to flip that script, to choose the unlikely path, to get the life you really want through voluntary discomfort.

Dane 01:27
This is Strong & Awake. I'm Dane Sanders.

Dane 01:32
Mitch, I'm curious, do you know any business on the planet who is concerned about anything besides profit, at least as a successful business?  

Mitch 01:41
Yeah, I was gonna say a success. That's an important qualifier because yeah, I do know some that have been in the past that are no more, but, uh, no.  

Dane 01:50
What were they, they were focused on what?

Mitch 01:51
What were they focused on?  

Dane 01:52
Focused on the ones that were failing.  

Mitch 01:55
Oh, other, other metrics?  

Dane 01:57
Yeah, like, like revenue or like, yeah, let's just make a bunch of money, but who cares how much we spend? Or let's just. You know, whatever their thing is. Acquisition. Yeah, yeah, right. Like, or looking. Yeah. That's funny. I know what you're talking about,

Dane 02:11
I think, uh, but I, I, I can relate to that too. I, I've been around organizations that have great intentions, but they lose the plot on the single metric that matters most, which is profit. Mm-Hmm. , and of course, profit in business terms. For those of you who are listening and aren't business people, it's pretty straightforward.

Dane 02:28
Talk to any accountant. Profit is simply revenue minus expenses. equals profit. It's not the money you make. It's the money you keep. It's the stuff that sticks around. And we today are going to talk about profit as a metaphor, profit as an anchor, actually, that we would have a bias and over indexing in the direction of prioritizing profit.

Dane 02:57
And I know right away, right out of the gate, I've already alienated ourselves because there's people who are like, you know, Down with consumption and capital cap capitalism, capitalism. And I have my, my kids are all, you know, progressive and they know, and they tell me, but hang with me just for a second.

Dane 03:16
It's just a metaphor. The point is simply, you want to focus on the right metric and the metric and the MWOD world that we have found to be incredibly resourceful is what sticks with you. What keeps not the, the, the excitement on the front end, uh, not the dark valley burdens that were, it's difficult to think of that as like revenue minus expenses, but it's at the end of that exercise, you're really fixated on the profit you seek and not just in a narrow band, like.

Dane 03:48
Business, but we want to invite people to prioritize profit for their life. What's the return on investment? And again, that's the return on investment is the nature of what profit is, right? You spend money, you, you, you, you hopefully make money. And the net result is you have a profit. We want the same kind of ROI metric or vision in people's minds of, Every choice I make needs to have a bias towards prioritizing profit, where the result we're getting at the end of it, the stuff we keep is the point.

Dane 04:18
And friends, I can't overstate how crazy we can become just like those business owners who go in mad directions and wonder why they go to business quickly. It's because they lose The plot, they take their eye off of the main thing. And the main thing is to prioritize a profitable return on your life.

Mitch 04:39
You start with kind of that end in mind, which is so important because a lot of times not only can we be focused on the wrong metrics, but our kind of time horizons can also be too short, too short sighted. You know, you can see this all the time in business, obviously that we're talking about, but other, other folks too, and other avenues of life.

Mitch 04:58
They might be focused on maybe the right thing, but not giving it enough time. So they're always pivoting, changing for the novelty or trying something new. Um, or they're just focused on the wrong thing altogether. Yeah. So, so like, what are, what are some of those signs that we might be focused either on the wrong thing or thinking kind of on that wrong timeline?

Dane 05:18
Yeah. Let's be methodical with this because there are so many pitfalls. That you can get into and we'll try to give as many examples as we can for folks, but sticking with the metaphor, you know, you think of a business and they have some early success, right? They're making money and what do they do? They get overextended on spending money.

Dane 05:38
They, they, they kind of get drunk on revenue and they're so excited. They go out beyond their skis. The classic kind of example of this is when people, um, Expand too quickly. Uh, and they end up going like they, you know, they won successful store. Let's open up seven more and they underestimate, they think every store is going to be this breakout hit.

Dane 05:57
That's what they planned for. And then they have some little trouble, some, they get, you know, something goes in the remodel or construction goes wrong, or they get something from the city or, uh, they get flooded or, you know, some, and all of a sudden they get way behind in the expenses and they're, they're like, Oh my gosh, we're the, the profitable store is now paying for the, uh, Unprofitable store.

Dane 06:19
And we're really in trouble.  

Dane 06:20
And  

Dane 06:21
I think that as one good place to start as a pitfall, because what I have seen happen, especially when people, let's say they're coming into men and women have discomfort and they're, uh, they've been an athlete. Or they've had success from discipline in the past. They know what it's like and they show up today when they're so enthusiastic, they've cleaned out their pantry, they've, they've gotten ready, they got their water bottle and they're all excited and they're going to get after it.

Dane 06:47
And they try to get in shape in one workout and they get hurt. Or like they think that they've equated intensity with success and we don't, or perfection. They need to like lift like they used to. And we don't think in those terms at all. Uh, because we don't have to, because we have a long enough time horizon.

Dane 07:06
We're actually thinking about the rest of your life, not just a sprint. Uh, we have an opportunity to actually set a foundation with great form where we actually, your intensity in the front end of a MWOD is actually We, we hope you choose a low intensity, uh, cause your endurance will improve over time endurance.

Dane 07:26
Of course, by definition is patient suffering. Your patient suffering will improve over time and you will very naturally ratchet up. If you don't miss a day, what's way more important is that you don't miss a day, but what normally happens, and we see this all the time. People who, maybe not in MWOD, but I see it in kind of the public culture where people go and they, they work out, they had this great workout.

Dane 07:48
It was really incredible. And they reward themselves by going and getting some ridiculous drink at Starbucks or like an extra, you know, pastry or whatever, or cocktail that night, celebrating their good, you know. And they just spent all their gains, but they have nothing left in at the, in a profit category.

Dane 08:10
All they have, they had revenue, they'd had too many expenses and they're left at the exact same place or worse than they did at the beginning. One of the reasons why I am wide, we spend so much energy in the kitchen as much as we do in the workout room. It's because if you do that, you're setting yourself up to lose weight.

Dane 08:27
If that's your interest, lose weight in the kitchen. And then, Buffet your body in the workout room But what often happens is they people think they're going to get in shape in the workout room And then they get more hungry because they burnt all those calories and then they show up in the kitchen and they overeat And then when they overeat, uh, they set themselves further back They get discouraged to get in a spiral and they quit and this is you know, every new year's resolution by January 21st.

Dane 08:53
This is what happened. So predictable. Um, but when you look at it from a profit lens, you'll go, Oh, well, wait, before I even get started, I'm actually going to show up in the workout room with a minimal viable practice that I can set a foundation with and grow with over time. Week in, week out, just a little bit of improvement.

Dane 09:12
Just a little bit. Don't miss a day. Be that person. And in the kitchen, I'm going to narrow. Before we talk about what you're going to eat, we're going to talk about when you're going to eat. Let's just narrow the band of when. And within that band, let's make really good choices. And that is part of the discipline.

Dane 09:27
It's part of your practice. You combine just those two things among several other things, several other voluntary discomforts, and you Our maximizing profit, the return on your life is significant. And, and that's, that's really, I mean, in many ways, the impetus for how we, how we make the decisions that we make in terms of how we keep modifying and creating and wad in new ways, but you don't even need anyone to do this.

Dane 09:52
Anyone at home right now. Could take this exact model and go, if I'm going to prioritize profit, I can avoid some of these pitfalls of, of thinking that revenue is the only part of the equation or another pitfall is, um, expenses. The only part of the equation, how can I pull way, way back and not invest in myself and invest in my gym membership or be involved in a community where it costs money to get in the door or, um, uh, I, you know, we have people do.

Dane 10:22
Dexa scans at the front end of every round and a Dexa scan if you don't know measures really way beyond a brute metric like weight, we get to measure body fat, lean muscle mass, how your fat is distributed, visceral fat, bone density. It's kind of like an internal, uh, X ray of. Reality, and if that's your benchmark, when you, as you make progress, you get to see more accurately, really helpful data of the profit you're making the, there's always resistance to like, oh, I don't know if I want to spend the money to go get a DEXA scan, to find out where I'm at.

Dane 10:57
And it's ridiculous. It's like, if you break your leg, you don't overthink getting an x ray. Uh, if, if you, if you have a, if you're nervous about. getting cancer. You don't avoid paying to get blood work done. Uh, like this is just fundamental things of taking care of the one body that we have access to, but to do it in a profitable way, not over indexing on revenue, not over indexing on expense, fixating on return on your life.

Mitch 11:24
Yeah. And I think honestly, for most people, I don't know I was in this camp even to get started. I could use that like, well, I don't have time to get a Texas can. I don't have the money. Like chances are. There's a number of things that you can do that will move yourself towards this category that are very obvious, like low hanging fruit.

Mitch 11:43
Yes. You know, that, that you don't even need those kind of metrics to even, uh, dig into, you know, you look at  

Dane 11:49
what were those for you, like in the front end, when you think about that, how did you prioritize profit with the low hanging fruit?  

Mitch 11:54
Yeah, sure. I mean, well, it was apparent to me, uh, I mean, you could see it physically looking at photos of myself or how I felt like I could just tell that I was lethargic.

Mitch 12:03
I was not in very good shape and not even just like. You know, in biting shape, like I was just like, not just in good living shape.  

Dane 12:11
Yeah.  

Mitch 12:12
Like, you know, I was kind of dragging, kind of tired all the time. And I could tell like my, my output for work, my presence for my family was, was suffering. And even just like my clarity of thought, uh, was, wasn't there.

Mitch 12:25
And that became more and more apparent. As I changed and corrected, uh, but that was, that was one of the things that I, I first looked at. So like going kind of one of the things that we like to do is like go kind of upstream or higher order. Like, well, what's behind that or what's something that you can do in the theme of kind of fueling first, like we had talked about.

Mitch 12:43
Uh, so just kind of starting by, okay, I'm just going to get better sleep. That'll help me wake up earlier, have more energy, uh, you know, be more present, uh, bring myself more to my, my exercise or have greater discipline in the kitchen. So, you know, those are some of the things for me. Um, but I often, I use that for so many years, that excuse of, I don't have the And you were, you were saying, you know, one of the things that We, we get to do is invest in ourselves and we're often kind of resistant to that.

Mitch 13:14
And I think one of the ways, uh, one of the subversive ways that we often kind of don't invest in ourself is by not kind of giving up on or, or acknowledging opportunity costs. You know, we, we've overloaded our schedules maybe for distraction, maybe because we feel it's out of necessity, um, out of scarcity that we, we don't even have this margin created.

Mitch 13:37
Or don't feel like we have this margin to take the extra half an hour to start moving to, you know, spend 15 minutes to just make something fresh in the kitchen versus, you know, going through that drive through again. So I think there's a number of ways that we can kind of prioritize profit. Looking at both the expenses, uh, and, and also the return, uh, in, in some pretty obvious ways, uh, to get started.

Dane 14:06
Yeah. It's so helpful to, to take pause and realize like it's kind of everywhere. So whenever I have a decision and we've talked about decisions in the past, like they're basically, you know, Annie Duke helps us think through that as bets that we're making and we want to make good bets. And that's, You know, whenever you're going to try to go for profit, you're making, you're making a bet.

Dane 14:28
You're saying this is going to give me a greater likelihood of success, success, meaning profit. Um, and I'm going to do that by deciding to do X instead of Y. So, um, uh, my wife and I made. A decision recently that was really expensive, a really expensive decision, and you know about it because we talked about it offline.

Dane 14:51
Do you think that would be an appropriate thing to bring up?  

Mitch 14:52
Yeah.  

Dane 14:53
Okay. Well, uh, we, we have four kids. We love our kids and we have two all the way through college and a third about to be done. Praise the Lord. And a fourth who's just getting started, but we've invested a lot of money in And they're in there, but that's not actually true.

Dane 15:10
What we've actually done is we've invested a lot of our credit and took out significant loans to have our kids be able to go through university and college. And we recently sold a home and we had a down payment that we were going to go and try and buy a new home and where we live now. And we came to the very uncomfortable decision of instead, Of being in a position where we could buy a home right now, we gutted our savings and spent all of it.

Dane 15:36
Not all of it, a big chunk of it, uh, removing that six figure debt from, from the, the, the, uh, the ledger. And, and it might sound like, well, what does that have to do with. That what we're talking about prioritizing profit. Well, let's think about that for a second. So we had a big chunk of change in an account making 4 percent interest.

Dane 15:58
And we also had a big chunk of debt and an account that we were getting charged between six and 8 percent interest. And you do the math on that. And we just, just by taking money out of one account, paying off a different account, we got a return, a profit that was 4%. And now it's between six and eight. No brainer, right?

Dane 16:23
Like who doesn't want to upgrade your return on investment, but then the reality you're staring at a six figure amount, that's going to become a five figure amount in, in the count. And it's painful. To go, I think this is what I have my revenue and I don't want to pay attention to the expense debt that is accumulating every single day.

Dane 16:47
It's not being paid and it's painful to go, Oh, I'm going to go do that hard thing and we did it, but we labored up right to the second, didn't want to hit the button, finally did it, but. Once we did it, it was like, like pride, instant profit, like guarantee. If you, if you guys don't believe me and even you don't like Dave Ramsey, go listen to the Dave Ramsey radio show for five minutes and hear the stories of people over and over again, having this deep sense of like, Oh, I made the profitable decision, even though it was the hard decision.

Dane 17:22
So it could be something grand like that, you know, but it also could be very, just, I love your example of, of food. I, just before we jumped on here, I was, I was downstairs opening the fridge going, what am I going to make? And I thought, Oh, what I really want to do is just, even though it's pretty clean food, I was going to order Chipotle and go pick it up.

Dane 17:42
But then I thought I just paid off all that debt and I have eggs right here and I have meat right here. And I, why don't I just make Chipotle? And I did. It took me seven minutes. Eight minutes, probably less time than it would have taken me to press the buttons and go pick it up and come back, even if it was door dash to probably definitely.

Dane 18:01
And about a fifth, the price, maybe eight, the price, something like that. Yeah, probably.  

Mitch 18:08
I mean, a hundred if you've got guac.  

Dane 18:12
Well, in your house, you have like nothing but guac, uh, with your orchards. Um, but I, but you, but the point is simply like prioritize profit. What's the better return. And this is where we get, this is the insidious nature of comfort.

Dane 18:28
Comfort is so tempting all the time and comfort isn't just like lazy boy chair. Comfort is convenience. Comfort is ease. Comfort is. Low executive functioning, uh, comfort is, um, not wanting to think about that thing, just wanting to get it out of your focal point. And I find that my desire to have that quick, easy fix, that is comfort.

Dane 18:57
I want that so badly. I often make the very unprofitable decision, the unprofitable bet, just because I'd rather have it conveniently than. To go through the hard choice. And I think those, those little things like, you know, the big bill question is one thing it's, it's real. And I know people are listening who are going like, Oh wait, I could go do something like that.

Dane 19:18
And you should, if you can. Um, but I, uh, far, far often, more often happens are these very little itsy bitsy things that I'm often asleep to. But if I would just wake myself up, get like, stay attuned to the moment I'm in. Stand now. Which we'll talk about in a future show. Uh, we have a chance to make a move.

Dane 19:40
And, um, and it's, it's what I'm always shocked by is when I make those harder choices early, uh, the, the seemingly inconvenient choices early, where I pay that pay up front rather than put it on payment plans, kind of idea metaphorically, it's, it's. Always an instant return and almost always cheaper, uh, does it cost me less, not just money, but like time, energy resources, if you actually measure it, like the energy output or the time it takes, it's a, it's a very short window of discomfort to get to this return and it's available to us every morning we wake up.

Dane 20:23
I don't know every night before you go to bed every morning, you wake up right in the middle of the morning at lunch when you're working with somebody, a customer or a colleague or a boss that's wigging you out and you want, you need, you need a better perspective. You can just hate instead of saying that thing that you want to say, you can hit pause.

Dane 20:43
I can use the restroom real quick, go to the restroom. Get ahold of yourself, come back to the conversation, say the thing like ask for forgiveness, take the humble road. These are, these are investments in our future that you can actually get a return on. And the few people who do that, they are rich, indeed rich at a level that most people underappreciate.

Dane 21:07
Um, and there's, and this is where it's so shocking is I know people who are incredibly rich in their profit category in business, yet they don't make the contextual leap to the other areas of their life because they're radically poor, um, with their health, the radically poor in their relationships, they're lonely in ways they're, um, they don't have grit.

Dane 21:31
They don't stand up when it gets difficult and. You can make the same prioritizing a profit choices in every one of those categories. If only you would have those categories to be thinking in that you want to be prioritizing profit everywhere all the time.  

Mitch 21:46
Yeah. And this ties directly into traveling light too, which we just talked about, you know, you look, you brought up Dave Ramsey, but you know, you watch any of these shows that are like, you know, these, they come in and rescue a failing restaurant or something like that.

Mitch 21:57
One of the first things that they do is like simplify the menu. Like let's reduce optionality here. Not only is that. Cognitive challenges for the people ordering, et cetera. But for you, you got to stock those items. You got to manage these things. You got to make sure that your cooks and know how to do all these things.

Mitch 22:16
And I think that's one of the, the things that we often get trapped in. And as we kind of transition and transition to kind of like auditing. are our time and our energy investments. Like that's one of the, the things that seems hard. It's hard to give it that optionality. It's hard to give up that liquidity like you did, uh, by paying off that debt, but oftentimes kind of reducing that optionality, simplifying the situation, kind of getting down to the essentials.

Mitch 22:42
It's often a great first step. It's not necessarily easy. It can come with some upfront costs or upfront challenge.  

Dane 22:51
Well, upfront discomfort, exactly. Like let's, let's call it what it is. It's actually just uncomfortable.  

Mitch 22:57
Hmm.  

Dane 22:58
That's all it is. Uh, if you have money and you spend money, it's what is that? Like, you're just handing a card over, you're pressing a button or like, there's actually no, no one's like taking my liver.

Dane 23:10
No one's like, uh, chopping off my left, my right arm. Uh, it's a transaction, but there's this, Attachment to the transaction to the thing that seems like hard. Well, what is hard? What is that? It's it's it's primarily between our ears primarily. Um, now if you're if you're in the middle of a CrossFit workout, you got a Metcon like this morning.

Dane 23:37
I did this 10 through 1. Deadlift where I had to run 200 meters in between each one and I was tired, man, like, that was hard, physically hard, um, but most of even that hard was hanging on to the bar just a little longer and not trying to break going on broken, like, it's not, I didn't get hurt. There was, it was just, it was just effortful.

Dane 24:01
Um, and I think that's this notion of it's hard. Well,

Dane 24:08
are we humans? Like every, everything is mentally hard. We're always pushing rocks up hills. And why not get, if it's going to be hard anyways, why not get comfortable being uncomfortable? Because it's always the profitable path. It's always the means by which we get what we're really looking for.  

Mitch 24:28
And I think that it's a great transition to kind of what does it look like to kind of cultivate this practice because, you know, a practice in essence is this kind of immovable object, this, this thing that you do in moment to moment, day to day, that anchors you, that kind of informs a lot of these other decisions that you're making, uh, and helps kind of anchor you and see that, that telos, that, that end of the path that might be on the other side of this process.

Mitch 24:54
immediate discomfort. Uh, so how do we begin to, to cultivate that practice, uh, and even kind of audit our time and energy in this moment, uh, to prioritize that practice?  

Dane 25:06
Yeah. Yeah. I think the word, the word audit is super resourceful here. Um, in fact, one thing that I've never thought of before this conversation, I took a note of earlier, uh, that I think could be a nice kind of one, two combo here is first of all, to start with, Consider the categories in your life.

Dane 25:24
And, um, one easy way to think about it is like, consider your, and you can do this with all the anchors, by the way, but prioritizing profit in particular, you can think of like, or maybe I think travel light or feel, I guess they all work, but let's say we're prioritized. Think of like, uh, your friends, who are the friends that are in your life that you walk away from those relationships, having more than you showed up with.

Dane 25:51
That's profit. Uh, and who are the ones that you walk away from and you're depleted? That's not profit. Uh, and it could be that it's the way you're contributing to that relationship. That could be a way to get a profit, right? Uh, or it could be that it's a toxic relationship. Like there's a lot up for grabs here to navigate what the hard choices are, the good choices.

Dane 26:13
Um, and I think there's gold here, but that's just one category. What about family? And a family is a kind of friend that you can't get rid of, they're going to be with you forever. Uh, even if you've set a boundary and they're not in your physical presence all the time, you're carrying them with you everywhere you go.

Dane 26:29
Um, and you know, I, I, we just know statistically, there's a lot of people listening who have an issue with, if I say the word your dad, you're going to have something to think or feel about it, right? Something pops for you. Uh, your mom. Uh, whatever it is, your brother, sister, you know, whatever your thing is and, and just know if they're going to be in your, in your head and heart anyways, how could you have a profitable relationship with them?

Dane 26:55
How could you increase the revenue and decrease the cost and reinvent that relationship? But let's go further. What about your money? You know, we talked about that extensively with specific examples of if indeed more money, more problems. Well, how could you get your rid of your money expense in a way that yields profit?

Dane 27:14
Which is more than, more than revenue. It's something profound. It's not just kept revenue. It's actually a means by which you can have a different kind of existence. What are you going to do with that kept revenue? How are you going to invest it in others? How are you going to invest it in things that are most important?

Dane 27:30
Uh, so we had friends, family finances. Again, this is an audit, right? Um, you could think about your habits, audit your habit, audit your habits, actually yielding what you want. Or you taking more as a giver or a taker. Um, I have a few more that I want to add, but what occurs to you, Mitch, as categories of an audit that you would think about?

Mitch 27:54
Well, first, I think it shouldn't go kind of unstated or acknowledge that audits a lot of times we hear that word. It's like something that's done to us or forced on us, right? But. We have the ability like to actually exercise that agency and do these things before we get to the point where we have to do this, you know, because auditing is really a get to and if we, if we're doing a good job prioritizing profit or starting to move in that direction, I think it makes sense that the first step would be auditing because Yeah.

Mitch 28:29
What's that's usually the thing that got us in this place is not having that margin, not actually looking at what I'm doing and spending time and holding space to do that, or having a community of folks that you can, you know, bounce that off of, or have people speak into your life, uh, in a way that is challenging maybe at, at times.

Mitch 28:49
So, so for me, you know, when I think about auditing, it sounds obvious, but To a lot of us in practice, that's not actually what we're doing, or we haven't actually prioritized that very first step to being awake to our current reality.  

Dane 29:05
So it's, it's funny you say that, like one of the, the aha that I had even in this conversation was, it could be really interesting to take an audit.

Dane 29:12
And let's say it's like budgeting, like budgeting is kind of like, well, what, what are we currently spending? Well, how much money do we get in? Is this the right allocation? Are we overspending? Are these the right things we want to invest in? A lot of people, myself included, resist budgeting. Budgeting is just like, I don't really understand it.

Dane 29:28
I'm not an accountant. This every time I've tried to fail, whatever story you've made up about that for yourself, there's a lot of. Tools and people out there that can help you with these, these things. But regardless, if you find yourself in that kind of a place where you're just kind of overwhelmed, um, what that's telling you is it's a chore.

Dane 29:47
It's like, you should do it, right? Uh, I need to have a budget, right? You, you don't need to, cause you don't have one right now and somehow you're, here you are. So, so what if you could take the anchors that we talk about, And apply them to the audit directly. So what if your budgeting wasn't a half to you?

Dane 30:06
It was a get to what if you were to choose your role relative to the budget? Are you going to be a victim to your budget? Are you going to be a hero with your budget? Or might you even ask for a guide to help you with your budget? What if you were to fuel first? What if you were to actually figure out the things that are most important, only draw the line.

Dane 30:26
And that what's, that's what gets paid first before anything else gets paid. What if you were to travel light, actually go through and say, do I need 75 monthly subscriptions? Maybe not.  

Mitch 30:39
That one cuts deep,  

Dane 30:40
but that's, you know, you're traveling lighter. Right. And when we do it, what do we do? It's just this feeling of like, it's like Bert, like what I had last night.

Dane 30:51
Where'd that weight go? Gone. Um, and all I'm doing is applying the anchor to the audit. That's all we're doing. Get to, choose your role, fuel first, travel light, prioritize profit. That's the exercise. And you can do the same with the other ones we'll be talking about in future days, but yeah. Friends. Don't miss on this opportunity.

Dane 31:10
And probably the last thing I'd say is like, don't arrogantly try to do it on your own. Be the courageous one who's willing to talk out loud about it. It's kind of embarrassing to me to tell people that I have a six figure student loan. Like I can, it can feel a little noble because I'm, you know, took out loans to invest in my kids.

Dane 31:30
But the truth is before that, I just, bought consumer products and own cars I couldn't afford. And before that, like, like I, I would just do the convenient thing. I just, I just head in the sand. It just felt better. La la la. Don't tell me what's going on. And, and I had a weird relationship with consumption and after a lot of slow and steady work to be on, like on this day, this is day one for me.

Dane 31:55
I just can't, I cannot believe how. Profitable and worth it. It is, but, uh, it means facing with vulnerability and a bit of courage, like. What's real what is actually happening right now? What's what is what is the current reality? Am I in can I at least have the courage to say this is this is happening?

Dane 32:15
This is today. Got it I might have used to be an athlete today Not so much and then I could look forward and go well if I if I could wave a magic wand, what would I be? What's my preferred future? How would I how would I rearrange it? I would be debt free. I would be 12 percent body fat I would be best shape of my life At 54, I would be, you know, fill in the blank, you know, have friends like Mitch in my life, uh, who put up with me and my journey, uh, and want to hang out all the time.

Dane 32:46
Like, it's just kind of amazing to me. And, you know, you, you, you set those two plot points of where you're at and where you want to go. And you just have a bias towards making the profitable, Decision, the inconvenient, uncomfortable decision. It's, it's just an inevitability at that point. You will become that person.

Dane 33:06
It's just a time horizon and whether it takes you 10 years or two years, who cares if you're on it, it's, it's as good as done. And if you want, if you actually embrace the process, you hug the cactus that we're describing friends, the profitable path. The, the discomforting path is where you find the most life.

Dane 33:28
The reason, one of the reasons why Mitch is one of my best friends is because we suffer together.  

Mitch 33:32
Mm hmm.  

Dane 33:33
And anyone I suffer with are my best friends. Always. Go to a CrossFit gym. Who do, who do you want to like hug at the end of a sweaty workout? Well, the one who's sweated next to you. Regardless of who they are, it's kind of amazing.

Dane 33:49
And, and I guess that's the, like, this is, I think this is life. This is like the good life. Um, and it's so unlikely that this would be the path. Uh, everyone likes, would like to say they're, they have a big profit in their life, that they're rich, but the, the becoming rich, this is the path. Unbelievably proven.

Dane 34:11
Ironclad, uncommonly practiced just because it's a little uncomfortable. I get it. I'm never going back.  

Mitch 34:25
And it's a decision that you make daily.  

Dane 34:27
Every day.  

Mitch 34:28
Yeah. You didn't, you didn't decide this once upon a time and now you're just, okay. The decision's made. I get to enjoy all the profit.  

Dane 34:36
Set it and forget it.

Mitch 34:37
No, It's a daily discipline moment by moment.  

Dane 34:40
Yeah. I kind of want to go buy an air, like a Airstream or a, you know, a van, right? Like I want, I want to do that right. I can do it right now. It's like, no, no, no. Don't be drunk again. Don't, don't do those silly things. They're not. Not where you're needing. That's not, that's not profitable.

Dane 34:56
There could be a day where that is profitable, but not, that's not what today is. And that's, that's the gift. Prioritize profit, friends. Prioritize profit as best you can, and then look at it again and, and keep correcting course, keep tweaking in the direction of, um, of the promised land of what you're actually wanting.

Mitch 35:21
Well, I encourage everyone, you know, as your kind of anchor action, go start that audit. carve out that time, just put it in the calendar, go back and listen to the previous episodes. If you need a refresher on the last ones and stay tuned because, you know, you better believe that these all integrate together and, uh, will kind of help enrich a lot of the things that you've already heard in future episodes.

Mitch 35:42
So, so tune in and, uh, Dane, do you have an invitation for, uh, for this community where they can potentially get a guide or, uh, join alongside others.  

Dane 35:51
Well, I'm so glad that you said that. Go to MWOD.io/apply. Join us. It's an amazing community. But, um, I want to actually give a shout out to a guy in my life who I know is listening. He, he's, he listens to the podcast regularly.

Dane 36:05
We talked about on the side. Uh, he's my pastor. Uh, his name is Mark Page. Um, and he's, uh, I'm an alum and, uh, I can't overstate how his own modeling his own living into the things that we're describing led to this moment that happened for me last night. And I don't often do shout outs, but, uh, I really wanted to acknowledge that really cool reality in my life that I'm so grateful for.

Dane 36:32
And, and just a, um, I can't imagine doing this work alone. You know, whether it's Mark in my life or Mitch in my life or the MWOD community doing it, it's just too heavy of a lift. Life is just, I think a little too hard for a solo act. Um, give yourself the gift of community, find it somewhere, fight for it.

Dane 36:54
You're worth that fight. And if you're resisting it for whatever reason, even the money thing, like if, if anyone's too expensive, just send me a fricking text or email or something like, let us know, we'll work with you. But what matters is that you find the community, uh, and you get after it. Um, and, and that you're, you, you're.

Dane 37:16
You're to be true to the theme of today's conversation. You're willing to put some skin in the game to get the return you're looking for. And if you do that consistently and increasingly everywhere you can imagine, uh, you will find tremendous, tremendous satisfaction.  

Dane 37:34
Men & Women Of Discomfort is our membership community and we are open to everyone but keep in mind our tagline is it's probably not for you if we're wrong about that or if you want to find out for yourself you can find us at mwod.io. The information and material that we're sharing both of this podcast or anything connected to men or women of discomfort or flying s incorporated it's all for general information purposes only. You should not rely on this material or information on this podcast as a basis for making any kind of decision.

Dane 37:59
We do our best to keep everything up to date and correct, and we do a lot of due diligence, but the responsibility is on you to make sure that you're in sync with your own medical professionals that you wouldn't see what we're offering here as somehow a warranty or representation in any kind expressed or implied about this being complete, accurate, reliable, suitable, or comprehensive in any kind of way.

Dane 38:13
It's critical you own your agency, which is at the heart of everything we do at Men & Women Of Discomfort, we invite you to take the input that we're offering and consider it for yourself. And if it's helpful, please do take advantage of it. But if you do, it's you who is taking the opportunity and we're assuming that you've done your due diligence with it.

Dane 38:25
Thanks.

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