Financial Measures and Levers

There are two primary levers that you have in your life for financial measures.
1) Income
2) Expense

In choosing the assets you own, you need to consider these levers.
Expenses usually come from the assets you own. If you’re most Americans, your house and cars are the largest expense buckets and most of your wealth is tied up in your home. Anything else is probably in stocks somewhere. That’s fine, and those are also not cash generating assets in the truest sense.

Increasing your income can happen through raises and job changes, but the fastest way to do this is by owning more cash generating assets. Have you thought about this?

Two questions to ask yourself:
1) What is your wealth target?
2) What is your wealth generation strategy?

Vehicles for Growth

Everyone has a wall they hit with growth. The question is what to do once you get there? I’ve found these tools help me a ton as I look for ways to grow.

  • Books —> Reading is helpful beyond the information. Training your brain to intake deeper and longer form information is an activity that our society has lost much of, but it’s incredibly necessary.
  • Print —> If there are a lot a charts
  • Audio —> If it’s a story form
  • Podcasts—> Honestly on this, just do it. Too much entertaining content with a low effort bar on the consumption. Even if it’s outside of your normal scope of thought, I’ve never found it harmful to know a little bit about a lot of things. That said, here are the three areas I tend to live in:
    • Business —> Generally, but not always, finance. It’s always helpful to understand how finances impact organizational decisions so the more understanding you can get here the better.
    • Leadership —> Things like EntreLeadership or WorkLife are very helpful in thinking through how to lead teams.
    • Edutainment —> Basically, tons in this area so it’s hard to recommend one in particular. Lately, because of a cyber security interest I’ve been listening to DarkNet Diarires.
  • Videos —> YouTube has so much on there. Beyond that, find 3 good movies about something you’re interested in from history. Don’t watch just for entertainment though. See what the diverse perspectives of others can do with the same story.
  • Relationships —> The most growth I’ve experienced is from sticking in long term friendships where the other person had enough context to call me when I was lying to myself.
    Who is in your orbit that you can trust to challenge you in a safe way?
    Can you challenge each other?
    Do it!

What are some other vehicles of growth that I’m missing?

High Performers and Self-Feeding

I had a conversation about growth with one of my staff the other day about the fact that he is incredibly smart, talented, and hardworking. That sounds like a good thing and in a vacuum it is. Here’s the thing though, he has currently refused to read books, listen to podcasts, or find other ways to grow outside of picking up things from those in his immediate orbit. I had also struggled with how to communicate the reality of what damage not growing through other mechanisms that aren’t direct experience would cause. Finally, I had the thought. The challenge I presented to him is that at some point he hits his ceiling and then he’ll need to find a way to push past the barrier of his immediate vicinity.

When you get to your capacity there are very few choices of how to grow and at some point you become the ceiling for your team. What do you do in those moments to continue growth? How do you find other people and places that will challenge you with where you’re at? I can say after years of self-feeding I’ve learned to do this for myself. My current challenge is helping others learn this for themselves. How about you? Do you actively or passively pursue growth?

Leveling Up is Your Decision

If you don’t know who Chris Lighty is, that’s ok. Chris was the business manager for most of the large names you would have heard of coming out of the HipHop scene from the late 90’s early 00’s. He was known for his incredible work ethic. The thing is, no one would have known about it if it weren’t for this one moment. There was a point he was in a club with some folks and got into a fight because of some random beef he’d had with folks. From there, someone took him aside and explained to him that they liked him, but also made it clear that he can’t do that anymore. So Chris was faced with a choice to stay the same or up his level.

I constantly have this thought. “Is this my Chris Lighty moment?” Existing in a rapid growth environment will cause you to run into enough people who work extremely hard but, for a myriad of reasons, are in a place where the company might have outgrown them. In those moments, I try to be as clear as possible with those staff members about their ability and my concerns. I’m also certain that everyone has a ceiling. That will come from either ability, or choice. If mine is ability then I hope someone will be gracious enough communicate that to me. If it’s choice, then that’s only something I can know. All roles have a cost. They require too much of the personal end of the life balance. Some roles are simply not worth the transaction cost to achieve the position. The only way to know that is to be clear on your own personal boundaries.

It helps to be clear on those so that you know when to say “I need to change to level up.” or “I’m ok and that’s not worth it.” I’ve found the clearer you are about this, the more comfortable everyone else is with where you’re at. What are your limits before you’ve given too much for a role and where are the areas you need to commit to change and growth?

Directionality of AI

I had a discussion with a friend over the weekend about AI. There are some assumptions about the value it adds and I wanted to address one of these in particular. The reality is that it’s not going to remove jobs so much as it will make very boring jobs obsolete. The issue is that some believe this reduction of overhead will lead to greater profit and that’s simply not true. It could be if all other things were static and the world simply does not work that way. Growth and Death are a fact of life and this equally true for organizations. If you’re not growing you’re dying. Markets expect that also.

That explained, I believe there are three potential options for AI results in an organization. Any and all of these are simultaneously possible in the same market and all have their own unique strategy tradeoffs.
AI’s three future business fundamental options:
1) AI makes service costs a deflationary race towards $0.
-Many services are commoditized. If your vertical isn’t yet, then just wait about 10 years. Because of the cost red ocean effect of commoditization, this allows you to keep competitive pricing while also allowing the margins to stay the same.
2) AI will allow for maintaining revenue levels and increasing the user experience.
-With the easy problems solved for you’re able to reallocate costs to staff for and service higher level business functions. This provides the end user with a better, more consultative experience.
3) AI will allow you to increase your capacity and reach without cost increases.
-If you can take on 2x, 4x, 10x more clients without increasing costs then you have a greater chance of survival in a disruptive situation. The capacity gained will potentially allow companies to continue growth and gain market share without reducing services.