Cash isn’t King—Collaboration Is

Vision is the key for living your best life, attracting the best people, and doing something magical.

In the mundane corporate world, there is limited vision. Without vision, people compete on salary, benefits, and golden handcuffs (vesting schedules, 401(k) matches, health benefits, vacation days, etc.). Getting people to stay even if they aren’t engaged.

A problem.
Perhaps the problem.
An uninspired and underappreciated workforce.
Employees trading time for money, wasting potential and wasting away…dreaming of a future date, retirement.

Retirement is a way for people to escape the mundane, the boring, the commonplace.

Building a business to retire is not a game of inspiration.
It is a destination.
An expiration.
It was born in a different time, yet still remains due to indoctrination.

What employee is inspired to help their boss retire? Maybe if the boss is an a-hole. Maybe if they aren’t happy doing what they are doing.

Does working to retire move the needle?
Retirement means to take something out of service. Something they do to an old cow behind the barn. When they retire a player’s jersey, that’s not good news—it means they aren’t playing anymore.

Staying in service is the key to fulfillment—at least, if you aren’t doing too much on your own. By doing what you hate in the name of saving money but spending your time, you’ll lose energy, and end up exhausting yourself.

The mindset of and process for saving money to retire is at odds with building your best life, your most impactful business, or your vision. What if reducing expenses and obsessing about budgeting prevents you from hiring A-teamers or investing in your employees? It destroys collaboration.

Again, save money, spend time, and lose energy.

What if vision is the ultimate retirement? A life you don’t want to retire from. To love what you do and who you do it with. Living with intention life, enjoying the process, enjoying your life along the way. Taking trips and time off, and allowing your team to grow while you are gone.

What if you created the business and life you didn’t want to retire from?

This requires collaboration, but collaboration can be hard. When done wrong, when we relegate instead of delegate, if we don’t invest in the team, if we don’t go slow before we go fast, we run out of energy.

Collaboration can be tricky. It can be one of the most painful, expensive experiences.

Who you collaborate with matters.
Do they share your work ethic?
Do they have expertise that compliments your ability?
Are they accountable to results?

Before you collaborate, build the skills of building your team. Hiring your team. Knowing who is going to contribute versus create chaos.

Hiring and training takes time.
It requires work.
But it is required for something world-class, something that you can dedicate decades to without feeling worn out.

Often entrepreneurs that are stuck, tired, and wanting a better life have an inevitable philosophy leading to lost energy.
One of doing too much (alone).
Working too hard (to reduce expenses).
And focusing on reduction instead of production or at the expense of profit and life design.

The more an entrepreneur takes on, the less they properly delegate, the less capacity they will have.

Doing as much on their own will initially great a great margin but will marginalize all other areas of life. Time will be constrained.

The longer they wait, the harder they work, the more their time will be robbed.
It is an easy trap. Sometimes it is much quicker to immediately handle things here and there, but then it becomes a habit. Developing skills that could be delegated while the most important skills atrophy.

The grind, the hustle and isolation are a linear game, that eventually plateaus. The “do all I can by myself” mindset becomes a thief—stealing peace of mind, family time, profit, and the dream life.

For far too long we have celebrated the rugged individualist. Impressed by how much one person can do on their own. But how long can it last? How effective is it in the long run?

Scarcity continues to convince people to hold on to the money they have. Save at all expense. Do more on their own.

This is at odds with exponential growth and personal development. To increase your net worth, sure, you can cut back. You can budget, I guess. You can do more on your own and reduce expenses.

But underneath all paper assets, is the ability required to grow and manage those assets.  Without your growth, you invite risk and reduce longevity and sustainability.

Underneath all your assets is your human life value. Human life value is compiled of your mental capital, ideas, thoughts, skills, and more. Human life value is the source and creator of all property value. If you want to have exponential growth, you find what you do best and continue to invest. You develop what is most unique. And you find others that will free your time to do what you can continue for decades to come.

Scrimping to build your balance sheet, to grow your paper assets, can work to a degree. But it will cost you energy. It will limit your impact. Scarcity will whisper limitation. That inside voice in your head telling you it is too expensive, to reduce expenses at all costs, and that other people can’t be trusted.

Budgeting is a villain celebrated as a hero. If you don’t budget (allocate money) to build your human life value balance sheet through coaches, masterminds, courses, mentors, systems/tools, and even accountability, you may grow your money, but not your life. And it won’t last and you won’t be able to enjoy the money. You may have it, but how does it translate to your quality of life.

By budgeting, you grow your paper assets, but not your lifestyle.

The way we are indoctrinated to save, save, save comes at the expense of investing in ourselves. Billionaires are NOT billionaires because they shrink their way there. The add more value, impact more people, solve problems, and leverage their skills by utilizing the ability of others.

The process of developing skills, building a platform to create value, and growing yourself to be the leader that can grow your business takes time…and money. If you limit the money that flows to the development of your skills, if you aren’t willing to hire people due to fear and scarcity will constrain wealth.

When you invest in yourself, it initially lowers your net worth…on paper. You utilize cash or liquidate cash in an asset to grow the most important asset: YOU.

And the world tells you it will cost you. You will lose time value of money. You will limit your ability to compound interest.

Fuck compound interest. Yes, I said it. Compound interest is killing you. Compound your growth and you will compound your wealth. You can make more money, exponentially more money than a mutual fund will ever provide.

Are you willing to invest in yourself?
Will you take the leap of faith on yourself?
Are you willing to be patient enough to grow your unique ability?
Can you stay consistent and continue to learn until it pays off financially?

Chasing salary and benefits doing something that is mundane is one of the worst ways to build net worth. When your mutual fund or ETF goes up in value, do you know why? Do you how long it will last? Do you know how to create cash flow with that asset? Do you know how to benefit from that investment now and in the future? Do you have any control over the performance?

If you learn to market, to sell, to write, to communicate, to connect and build and maintain relationships…
If you learn to increase your financial and emotional intelligence and your business acumen….
If you invest in people, if you discover and document processes, if you learn to be a leader…
You can create exponential rather than linear wealth. Plus, you remain in control of more variables. You learn how to create more value instead of speculating with your money.

Money follows value.
What will allow you to be more valuable, create more value, and be of the most value?

Impact is an exponential game.
Our impact comes from living lives from prosperity and prosperity is a game of collaboration.
Collaboration is the key for reach and value.
Vision is the key to impact and the rarest of commodities.
Vision requires collaboration.

BUT, again, vision takes time to pay dividends.
There are no early awards or accolades, often no immediate profit.
Vision is a skill that must developed, a muscle that must be exercised.
This is the very foundation of all that will be built, why it will be built, and how it will be built.
And as you gain clarity on your vision, on your model, and as you let go to grow (empowering your team), it requires a different skill as well.

Hiring.
Trusting.
Collaborating.

Hiring takes time.
Training the team requires time.
And having amazing people requires money.

The longer you wait, the harder it will be to find the time. You can get caught up in all those things that have to be done, but didn’t need to be done by you…if you would have had support.

How do you find the time to hire?
Start early and when you have the cash flow to hire, hire.
How do you get better at hiring?

I’m here to help. DM @garrettbgunderson on IG and I’ll share my hiring guide. The rules, the process, and the best questions to be able to hire the best people.

So, how do you create the cash flow and find the money?
Be resourceful, carve out time to do the things that create cash flow.

You don’t have to wait until you have the resources. You can be more resourceful.
Resourcefulness is required if you don’t have the financial resources.
For example, people might work on upside, or you take time to learn from free courses until you have the money to hire and save time. Instead of saying I don’t have the time or money, ask, what would it take to find the money or create the time.

No defeatist statements, but more resourceful questions. Look for solutions over excuses.

To really find the best way to develop yourself, consider where you have an obsession or can develop a healthy obsession. Obsession that creates skills and leads to value.

I am obsessed with comedy, so I found a way.
I am obsessed with writing, so I found a way.
I am obsessed with my wife, so I found a way.
I found the ways to be extraordinary, where at first I sucked.

In my marriage, I was mediocre from 2008-2010.
Overworked, tired, and numb.
Not there for my wife and my kids. Something had to change. So, one sleepless night, I ordered nine or ten books on Amazon. Books on building a better marriage. I called my friends with the best marriages and asked them for advice. I took notes.

In comedy, I called my comedian friend and asked for his help. I watched comedy specials every night, or comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, and read books comedians wrote. I did comedy sets at my events, on walks with my family, and even on Zoom meetings—any chance I could get. I turned my basement into a comedy club. I got obsessed. Obsessed and resourceful.

With writing, I did much of the same. I bought books, took courses, interviewed my friends who were authors. I got resourceful.

Where can you be more resourceful?
Where can you collaborate to be great?
What would it take to get started?
How could you find the time, make the time?
What would it take to speak a new vision into existence and change your calendar to represent the best version of you?

To be resourceful, you have to master your mindset, train your mind, and overcome any story that might hold you back. Ask questions. Take action. And inspire others to join your journey along the way.

Mastering the mind by creating the structure to feed your soul, deliberately create your calendar, do the things that matter most, and continue to offload anything that doesn’t represent the most critical skills that bring forth your vision.

You don’t have to know it all.
People will show up, people will share…
You can and will learn.

To collaborate, abundance is required.

But you have to trust yourself, trust in God, and allow for universal principles to come to your aid. We speak our vision into existence and then walk the path we pave with those words.

It begins with…I am a writer. I am an author. What would an author do?
And then it becomes I am a New York Times bestselling author, but it started by declaring it. Speaking it into existence.

I tell jokes. I am a speaker. I use humor to teach. Then it becomes I am a comedian with a special on Amazon Prime…and it began by saying I was a comedian.

I am an extraordinary husband and premiere romantic because I chose a better future and identity than mediocre. I said it, then lived it.

Why? Because I said so. I spoke it.

Our words are powerful, language is powerful.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

People can support you if you speak it.
The words lead to collaboration.
There is power in our words.

Creation.
Words create possibility.
They create the container in which to act.
Words are the key to be resourceful and to receive.

What makes collaboration complicated is not everyone treats their words with the reverence and respect they deserve.

If your words are born of scarcity, you destroy possibility.
Sometimes as an excuse.
Often out of fear.
Mostly subconscious sabotage.

Scarcity words and phrases sound like:
If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. I can’t afford it. I’ll try. Maybe.  Later. I don’t’ have the time. I’m not good enough. Blah blah blah.

Cliches and memes have convoluted our thinking.
They have captured our attention.
Excused away our dreams.
Subtle. Destructive. Deceptive. Misleading.

To start my comedy special, The American Ream (dropped the D because most live in the ream and it diminishes their dream), with all the memes, cliches, statements and spells cast over us around money.