When we start out in life, when we're getting out of school and starting our career and starting to earn our own income, then it is all about money. We have to reach that point of stability and security, and we have to give up a lot of other freedoms to get there.

It is a sacrifice period early in our life. We need money to provide stability for our families. We have to sacrifice, and typically we have to be at a location. For most of us, that’s in a brick and mortar type of business or a career path requires us to show up on a regular basis to create that income.

And there's a time element. We have to put our time in as well, right? We're trading time for dollars. That's exactly the way we all start out in life. The key point is not to stay stuck there, and that's where most people get it all wrong.

They get into a career path, a business, or perhaps a professional practice, and it's all fine and good, earning good income and in fact elevating that income over time. Typically lifestyle also elevates, so it's a linear progression. Sometimes that lifestyle elevates beyond the income, with the use of consumption debt, just because credit's easy. That keeps people on that treadmill way too long – in fact, for most of their lives.

Then people try to use the traditional financial models and retirement planning – 401(k)s, tax deferred models, saving, putting money in annuities, mutual funds, or index funds. While they have worked to some extent, particularly in the last decade when we had this bull run market, those models will not hold their course very well moving forward.

So back to my point: Your wealth is not what you do (what you trade your time for dollars for). What you do is great. Hopefully it's satisfying and you enjoy it, but I'll bet most of you are still sacrificing both time and location to produce that income. And you're waiting for that someday, that mystical someday, when you can take a breath and start living life and doing the things you want to do.

Oh, I know you take vacations with your family and kids… But look, if you can't leave your job or self-employed business for more than a couple of weeks without things falling apart – the income not being there, the overhead overtaking you – and you've got to be back, providing services that are dependent upon you… then you don't have a real business. Again, there’s nothing wrong with starting out that way in life, but you've got to transfer your earned income into assets.

Now, if you can create a real business where you don't have to be there all the time, that can be an asset. Most people and small business owners don't do that – they've been trained to just do the work. If that's the case though, then you need to build assets outside of that business or self-employed job.

I do that in real estate. My real estate assets carried me forward and gave me the freedom and options when I needed them most. Real estate gave me money freedom: I had money that was created by my real estate assets which I had acquired over 15 years, not money that I had to go out and earn. Because I had paid down debt and had free-and-clear assets producing income, I had enough money to leave my practice when I needed to be there for my daughter during her health crisis. I had money freedom at that point.

I wasn't the wealthiest man in the world by any means, but I had enough to leave, what I call, the ball and chains of practice. Now, I have no regrets about the practice – it was great, but it became a stepping stone because I needed the other freedoms.

I needed time freedom because I needed to be with my daughter. That was the key thing in my life.

I couldn't wait for that someday because her health crisis was such that she might not have made it. I might've lost all the opportunity in the world. That would have been a travesty.

Then freeing myself up from the dental practice gave me location freedom. There are a lot of jobs and services that can be done today remotely. I mean, COVID this last year has created a lot of opportunities there.

Think about how you could iterate in time – maybe not today, not tomorrow, not next week but eventually – to provide some kind of services outside of what you do in your current business that requires you to be on location.

That's what I do today. See, I still have earned income, if you will. I have a business that provides me equity and distributions, but I can do it from wherever I want to do it. I've been here in Breckenridge, Colorado these last four weeks, and still I'm doing work when I want to. I've got the time freedom and the location freedom. And I don't have to do what I do. I actually love what I do because I have the money freedom.

Focusing on getting to a point where you have money, time, and location freedom in your life is the ultimate goal. You do not have to wait until your retirement age, at age 60-70, to have that freedom, but you've got to go contrarian and can't keep following the traditional models that have been set before you. Those models do not work anymore, and you're going to be on a treadmill way longer than you hoped you ever would.

So don't put your future at risk. Don't put your future on the wing and a prayer of hope or some failed models. You've got to be intentional about your plan, your blueprint, for creating your freedom.

If you’re ready to do that, schedule a call with my team, and if there’s a mutual fit we will help you take the next step.