20 - Stop Wasting Time | The Secret to Mastering Success & Wealth

Welcome to the Impact Podcast. I'm Eddie Wilson, here to help you visualize what others cannot see, create opportunities where others have failed, and push you to build empires where once there was empty space. Let's embark on this journey together and make a difference in this world. Today on the podcast, we are going to talk about good old-fashioned work. And if that feels like a dirty word to you, to me, what it feels like is progress. It feels like something worth giving my time and my life too. Let me give you just some thoughts to start this off about work. Because I think it's one of those things that this generation, and maybe even my generation, looks at as almost a negative concept. And work, by definition, is just the exchange of energy, the exchange of energy for something. So what's interesting to me is that I think society today, and I think that even oftentimes business today, rewards the idea. It's like when they reward the idea, it's like a short-term validation of something that potentially could exist. And so people get the short-term validation, but they never will actually put in the time, the effort, the energy to actually understand what true validation is, which is the completion of something that you had an idea on, but brought it to life. I love the Henry Ford quote that says, you can't build a reputation on what you are going to do. How many people in your life have you come in contact with that are always going to do something? I'm about to do something. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do that. And I love the Henry Ford quote because he says, you can't build a reputation on that. As a matter of fact, if you are building a reputation on somebody who is always going to do something, it's a reputation that's going to prevent people that actually have substance from actually doing business or wanting to work with you. The hard thing isn't about setting our big, hairy, audacious goals. The hard thing isn't about finding the next good idea. The hard thing is, is when you actually have to lay people off because you miss the big, hairy, audacious goal, or you didn't actually accomplish what it is that it takes, because that is the essence of work, energy exchange. Work is not a sexy idea, but it should be the most encouraging one because if you understand the basic concepts of work, work is exchanging energy towards an end result. So every moment, every ounce of energy that's actually given into work is actually just a step towards the desire that you have in the end. So it's not about setting a BHA goal. It's not about talking about what you're going to do. And it's not about this sexy idea that you have. It's about taking one more step every single day towards the end result. Stop chasing the short-term validation of your ideas. Work is an accomplishment and work as an accomplishment is a far greater reward. It's energy expended. Work is simply the exchange of energy. However, I think that oftentimes it's misunderstood as to what work is. Sometimes work is being in the gym alone. It's being there by yourself. Sometimes it's being in the office alone when no one else is there to see it or capture it. Sometimes it's the rough draft that you threw away. Also work, right? Energy expended. Sometimes it's the discarded drawing. It's every rendition that sits on a shelf that's actually never seen the light of day but is one more baby step towards a true accomplishment. Work is important and work is not an idea. So if work is energy expended, then what should I be giving my energy to? Right? Because we have a finite amount of energy. We have a finite amount of time and we have a finite amount of energy. Now, seemingly some people have unlimited amounts of it. Some people have a greater resource of it. But in the end, we have a finite amount of time that actually has enough energy to exert to have some sort of accomplishment. If you've been a podcast listener for any amount of time, you know that I always reference Malcolm Gladwell's concept of 10,000 hours, 10,000 hours in order to reach mastery or reach some sort of an accomplished status at whatever you do. If you want to be an expert at anything, he says you have to put 10,000 hours into it based on research. And some people have come back and said, no, in order for true mastery, it's 20,000 hours. Some say you can actually shortcut it and it's 7,000 hours. But in the end, can we all agree that it's the expenditure of those hours that actually creates mastery? What is mastery? Mastery is the ability to actually master or to take a project or take an end result and get there faster, quicker, with less liability than others, right? It's actually understanding success, taking the steps to success with limited resistance, mastery. And so, we have to have an exchange for mastery. It's time, it's energy, it's energy expended. So, where do I put my energy at? Because I think that oftentimes, we elevate the idea, we validate people, ah, it's a brilliant idea. Well, can I tell you in my lifetime, how many brilliant ideas I've heard? Can I also tell you how many brilliant ideas I've heard that actually didn't turn out to be a brilliant idea? But I will tell you that far greater is the count. It's a body count, right? Of ideas that actually never had had one ounce of energy expended on whatever it is. And in the end, it lays dormant and kind of the wasteland of all ideas. And so, we have this wasteland of ideas out there that no one has ever given energy to. And so, while the idea itself may be grandiose, may be amazing, without an ounce of energy, it truly is worthless. So, when you, when you grasp that concept, for me, what happens is, is it goes back to then where am I actually spending my energy? Is my energy actually being expended on the things that actually count and matter? So, I want to go back to the four things that I'm willing to give my energy to. The four things that I'm willing to give my energy to. Because if I have a great idea, what I first have to do is determine what type of energy is it going to take in order to bring it to life. In a private equity firm like we have here, Collective Influence, I get good ideas every day. I have a visionary partner, Andrew, he gives me amazing ideas, literally by the minute sometimes. But the fact of the matter is, is it's not about how many ideas can we have, how many ideas are great, how many ideas can change the course of what we're doing. It's do we actually have enough energy to expend into the idea to actually make it have value? And are all the other ideas that are sitting there that we are expending our energy into worth the energy that we're putting in and should energy be removed from them? Here is the true, I believe, management dilemma inside of a business. I believe this separates a good manager from a poor manager. I think it separates the greatest manager from the most average manager. And that is the ability that on task and within a finite amount of time to determine where can I put this finite resource I have in order to make the greatest impact. Now, leadership should ultimately qualify where our energy should be spent. Managers should then manage how much energy is then expended on the end goal that's given by leadership. Like leadership inspires the action to happen. Managers then look at the resources and they manage those resources towards that desired end state. The followers then essentially make it happen. So leader manager, follower. But I will say it all is based on energy. And so the leader has to determine, am I willing to give up other ideas in order for the energy to take place? The manager has to determine how much energy is going to take and the follower, the person doing the work, has to actually expend the energy. So here are the four areas that I'm willing to give energy towards. This could be in business, this could be a brand new idea, and essentially it also can become life. So number one, I'm willing to give energy towards market research. Market research should ultimately be the biggest deterrent of whether or not we should or should not do something. Is this viable? Is it needed? Is there validity to this? I can't tell you how many ideas I've come across and how many ideas I've invested in to only find out that it was actually a poor idea. Somebody else had already beat us to the punch. It was going to take so much more energy to actually make it happen than it was worth as far as what you were going to receive in conjunction to it. So number one, market research. And market research is very, very important because market research isn't just standard concept. Market research is about the validation of is this needed? Is there opportunity? Is there actual space for this to take place? Number two, the second place I'll spend my energy is developing a plan. And by the way, these first two should have energy. If the idea is good enough, if the idea is great, if the idea is amazing, you should have enough energy to put on market research. You should have enough energy to develop a plan. Now, there are two types of business out there. And Lea Iacocca was one of the ones that developed kind of the second concept. And there's kind of the first one that is called plan and execute. So you build a plan, you build the milestones, and you actually execute along that pathway. That's how most analytical people desire for business or ideas to come to life. Build a plan, and then let's execute on that pathway. That's plan and execute. Plan and execute. That's a traditional business model. Lea Iacocca actually came out and he said, the speed at which we plan and execute often times is too slow. In an environment that's moving fast or quickly, we have to take the second approach, which is act and adjust. Act and adjust. So it's actually taking action, expending energy, and adjusting to whatever the result is. Now, it's the least efficient out of the two. Plan and execute more efficient. The speed often times of act and adjust is really the reason why most, if you think about it, think about most entrepreneurs. Do they actually sit down and build a true business plan, execute on the business plan, and 80-90% of all of their actions are already predetermined? The answer is no. Most entrepreneurs jump out and they jump out of the airplane and they're trying to figure out how to put the parachute on the way down, right? And they're trying to survive. That's the act and adjust model. And that's what Lea Iacocca said at Chrysler. We don't have enough money. We don't have enough runway to plan and execute. We have to keep up with GM. We have to keep up with Buick. We have to keep up with Olsmobile, all the leaders of the car manufacturers at that time. So what did Chrysler do? They came out with a new product and then they watched their sales and they said, okay, this is a good one. Let's keep going. We came out with a product. Oh, not a good one. Take it back off the shelf, right? And they began to get very, very nimble in their processes. That's how most entrepreneurs act. They have the act and adjust model. So developing a plan can be sitting down, whiteboarding it out, creating milestones, executing on the milestones. Developing a plan can also be more rudimentary where you're going to develop a strategy that you execute on. But the plan is then to adjust to create a new plan every single time you get data and resources back, right? But that brings me to my next point and that is where will I spend energy? Number three, feedback. Feedback is crucial. If you do market research, develop a plan, whether it's plan and execute or act and adjust, you have to have some level of feedback coming to you. The consumer, whether the consumer is a B2B business to business product or a B2C product or a B2B product, whatever your strategy is, there has to be some level of feedback. One of the greatest things that we do at the Aspire Tour, we have the world's largest business tour that still travels the nation right now, is that at the end of the event, immediately, we send out a survey, right? Because for us, it's vitally important to understand, did we actually, we planned, we began the process oftentimes because we're young, we're new, it's more of an act and adjust model for sure. We then are adjusting based on the feedback that's coming in. Did you like this speaker? Did you not like this speaker? Did you like this venue? Not like this venue? Did you like the food? Not like the food, parking, whatever it is. And so that feedback loop is so vital, but it's vital for success in life and for business. I think that no follower does well in a totalitarian environment. No follower does well in that they don't do well in developing. They can do well in executing, but they don't do well in developing. No follower does well in developing in a dictatorial type society where they're just told what to do, right? So what we have to do in order for people to act and also develop is give them the chance to give feedback. Does your employees have a chance to give feedback? Do your children have a chance to give feedback? All of their experiences are very, very important to the developing of your plan, right? It's synonymous. Okay. And then lastly, which is the most important place you give energy to is what I call iterate and refine, iterate and refine. If someone were to ask my business philosophy, why am I successful? Why have I built hundreds of successful companies, scaled hundreds of companies? How have I done that? Have I constantly found the next greatest thing, the new idea? Have I found these blue ocean spaces where no one else has found? Well, if you look at it and you would say, okay, well, Eddie has built one company and it's scaled to a billion and then he was done, then maybe you would say, yeah, yeah, he somehow found a place where no one else existed and he hit kind of this blue ocean strategy and found success. That's not who I am. And the success that I've had, which is easily replicable, you can actually do what I've done is that I believe in the model, the business model of iterate and refine, iterate and refine, iterate and refine. Let me give you a secret. The reason why my coffee shops, my coffee company, my coffee shops specifically beat Starbucks that typically are right up the street is because if you take the behemoth Starbucks, right? And I'm a fan of, not a fan of their coffee, but I'm a fan of their model, the business model. I think that Schultz was a brilliant businessman. I've studied him. I not even before I owned a coffee company, I studied his model, how he brought the experience to life, how he manufactured an experience and sold an experience, not a product, how he elevated the cost of what we would say as a product. Go to Duncan and you're paying half of what you pay at Starbucks because you're buying a product. He wasn't selling a product, he was selling experience. Brilliant businessman. But the reason I beat Starbucks at our shops is because of this. The behemoth Starbucks reports on their shops typically every week, but in the end, they're looking at the model based on a publicly traded company model. And that is every single month, they look at their model and they think, we have to change. We have to make whatever change it is. We're going to add new products. We're going to add whatever it is. We're going to have to create more efficiency. And they make choices every month. So that's 12 choices a year. If you've ever worked for me, if you've ever talked to anybody that's worked for me, if you've ever come in contact with people that currently work for me, you know that my model is we measure every single week. Every single week on Tuesday across all of my organizations, we have to reconcile all financial transactions, income, out go, income, out go. We also have to look at all of our KPIs on a weekly basis because I want to make 52 great decisions. If you think about it this way, what if Starbucks makes 12 decisions a year? And by the way, a company that big is not hard to beat because in the end, they essentially, now they're hard to beat on a macro scale, but not at the store level because at the store level, they get 12 decisions a year, right? They look at their data every single month, they get 12 decisions a year. Then they make their decision, but how slow is it from corporate all the way back down to the store to actually make a decision and implement something? Well, I could take another 30 days to implement something. So let's just say that every 30 days, they're making choices. So they're going to make 11 to 12 decisions a year. For me and all of our companies, they have to reconcile their numbers every single week. Why? Because I want the chance to make 52 decisions. If they make, let's say, one wrong decision, right? Just do the math. They make one wrong decision. That's one 12th of all their entire year. It's based on a wrong decision. Mine is 152nd, right? Like you start looking at iterations. Like, and for me, the faster I can make decisions, the more frequently I can make decisions, then I don't have to make big, giant decisions. I can actually make small tweaks that end up, I don't have to be, I don't have to be 100% better than Starbucks. What I have to be is 5% better than Starbucks every single week. And all of a sudden, now at the store level, we're crushing Starbucks, right? And so that is a principle in life that we should learn. It's 10,000 hours, but the 10,000 hours, it matters where you put it, right? It matters where you're expending the energy. So the reason that I'm successful is go back to this concept is because I'm willing to put in the work, right? I'm not cutting short, I'm not taking shortcuts. I'm actually creating more work than most people are willing to do. So iterate and refine, iterate and refine. The five phases of business I often teach, I say that there's startup, there's perseverance, there's viability, there's scale, and then there's succession, five phases of business. You're in one of those phases of business right now, no matter what business model you're in. And I will tell you that once you move into perseverance, if you don't start iterating and refining, iterating and refining, it will be very difficult for you to get into viability. And if you'll iterate and refine all the way up through viability, it becomes so much easier to scale because now you'll know exactly what levers to pull in order to scale your business. Can I say that this also works in your personal finances? I think oftentimes people think I only talk about business. Let's talk about your personal finance. Right now, if you don't know where you're spending your money on and you say, hey, Eddie, I really want to invest my money. I get that question all the time. Where should I invest my money? And my standardized answer is I'm not an investment counselor. I'm not going to tell you where to invest your money. I can tell you where I'm investing my money, but I'm never going to give somebody financial advice. However, if you don't know where your money is being spent, then the first step is to go back to actually research, right? Like where is my money spent? Where do I want to spend my money? Number two, I'm going to develop a plan. Number three, there's people that are essentially going to be impacted by that choice. Maybe it's a spouse, maybe it's a significant other, maybe it's a child, maybe it's a parent, right? Feedback. Then you're going to start taking that path of iterating and refining. Most people throw a good percentage of their money away, right? We know that the greatest thing that you're going to spend money on in your lifetime is going to be taxes. The second thing is, is actually going to be, and this is the scary thing, is it's going to be tied to the cost of money, interest rates, something like that, right? Like, how much you're paying for your credit card debt? How much you're paying for your mortgage? How much you're paying for the car loan? How much you're going to pay, right? Those interest rates are going to be, they're going to eat into that. But beyond that, you wouldn't have to have those costs. Number one, if you upped your financial IQ, but oftentimes, if you were to reduce, if you'd iterate on where you're spending your money, most people don't know where they're spending their money. You have to go back and you have to iterate and refine. Well, if you knew that every day I shaved, you know, I, Kevin O'Leary often talks about the nasty coffee habit, right? Where he talks about like, you're just throwing your money at coffee and Starbucks and everything like that. And I agree to it, to a certain extent, I love coffee and I'd rather spend my money on coffee than just about anything else. And so I don't have a problem spending four or $5 on a coffee because it's the one thing I really, really enjoy, right? And, but there are other things I wouldn't spend money on, but all of us spend unnecessary money on any given day, right? And it's about the iterations of it. It's not about, it's not about how do I save 20% of my paycheck in order to invest in this thing or to pay cash for a car. So I don't have to pay interest or whatever it is. What it is, is it's about, could I actually shave a dollar every single day off of what I'm spending? Could I shave 20 cents off of my Starbucks order every day? Instead of depriving yourself from Starbucks, what if, what if you just reduce down the frequency of it? What if you just, it's iterations, right? Like the iterations matter. Iterations are work, iteration and refine, iterate and refine. But by the way, I want to say this, work is never, ever done. Work is never done. And to the degree that you spend your time avoiding it, you're actually avoiding the desired end state that you have, right? If you'll give yourself to it, you'll begin to start finding this pathway towards success. I want to be a champion for people who actually expend their energy towards an end state with a directed, with a directed purpose, right? And I want to be the voice. I think that I give probably the most unpopular advice to every 14, 15, 16 year old that ever comes in contact with me because they all want to be TikTok famous and they want to, we've kind of elevated this like, you just grind for a couple of years and then you'll make it. No, there is a balance in how much you should work or should not work, but you should give your life to work. Work is a respectable thing. Work is an exchange of energy. But if you can find the things that you love to do, right, then it doesn't feel like work. And that's, that's the big, the big exchange, right? Is that when I'm down in Honduras or I'm in Guadalajara and I'm carrying bricks to build a wall or a park, right? Like that looks like hard work, but I love it and it doesn't feel like work, but it's worth, to me, expending that energy to ultimately give towards, towards what I'm passionate about. So what should we give our energy to? Market research, developing a plan, feedback, and then iterate and refine. Spend your life not coming up with new ideas. Spend your life iterating and refining. The new ideas in the iterate, in the iteration, when you're on a path of execution, become a viable path to future success. It's super important that as a business owner, as an employee, as a human being that has a desire to reach some goal that we get into a place where we understand we just have to put in the time. One massive book recommendation that I love to recommend is the book, The Hard Thing About Hard Things Horowitz. It's one of my favorite books. He talks so much about just getting under the weight, getting under the pressure of what it takes to get to success. Malcolm Gladwell, 10,000 hours, you know, and his concept of outliers. It's like we, we've got so many good resources, but sometimes they push this four-letter word of work on us and we resist. But the fact of the matter is, is hard work isn't sexy, but it should be the most encouraging concept you ever come in contact with because when you expend energy, you're just moving one more step towards that desired end state. You start off by saying strong, you know, work isn't sexy, but it's, you know, it's critical. It's everything that we should be focused on. And I agree with that. I think that is very true, rings true. And then I immediately think, but I know a lot of people who are very busy, who get nothing done. And so then I was trying to like reverse engineer your points to see if I could figure out the answer to my own question. Yeah. Hey guys, I want to make sure that you're taking advantage of one of the things that we put on every single month around the nation. It's the Aspire Tour. The Aspire Tour is the brainchild of myself and my business partner, Andrew Cordell, where we bring celebrities together and we bring inspiration to business owners, business leaders around the nation. We want to create kind of an aspirational place and inspire you to do more by bringing concepts and theories and thoughts to you by some of the greatest business minds in America. We have David Goggins, we've got Damon John, we've got Kevin O'Leary, Mark Cuban, just some amazing people, Kendra Scott, some amazing people, business minds that come and share on a consistent basis. So come join me and actually I would love to meet you. If you're a podcast listener, I'd love to come see you in person. You come see me in person. Check out the Aspire Tour by going to theaspiretour.com. You can also use the promo code, impactpodcast, impactpodcast, and it'll get you a special promo ticket price. Love to see you. Make sure you come out and talk to me and we will see you in an upcoming Aspire Tour. There are a lot of people that you come in contact with every day that are really busy and will tell you how busy they are and then you look at the output of their life and there's very little, you know, example or output that proves that they actually, that their busyness was worthwhile. And so maybe a few areas to avoid putting energy into. Number one, dreaming endlessly. You know, we again emphasize so much this concept of ideation and ideas and dreaming and follow your dreams. At some point, you have to put your dream down. You have to decide that you are going to execute and dreaming endlessly is, I think, is the killer of all great dreams. It's like, if at some point you cannot establish and start moving into this place of, like I was talking about, market research, developing a plan. And if you don't put yourself through this kind of format, then what happens is you just get in this reoccurring state of dreaming. And people will, they'll validate you over it. You know, they'll tell you, that's a brilliant idea. I've never thought about that before. And you get this like kind of dopamine hit, but then there's nothing accomplished by it. And the one benefit of being in corporate America in my early days was I was a dreamer and I would dream and I would say it out loud. And then they would say, until you can prove this, stop talking about it. You know, like, go back to your cubicle, you know, like, they would just kind of like squash it. And which is good for me, because as a young person who's just dreaming over and over again, I have a middle son who is a dreamer. He wants to make everything better. He wants to fix everything and create everything. And it's like, you know, it's not a bad thing. You know, like that's, there's, there's good qualities in that. However, sometimes you need to be told, you know, go back and prove your method and go sit in your cubicle. You know, like it's there, there is a good thing to that because too many people don't get told that. And so they just spend their life spouting their dreams at people. The second thing that I would not put time towards is the negative self-talk that constantly creeps in to most people who have ideas. What happens is as you begin to start to iterate and refine, you get all the way there, that's when, when you're getting into the refining process is when all the negative self-talk happens. And I wouldn't give much credence to that negative self-talk. There's a, there's a, there's a concept and that is if you actually take somebody who has a level of confidence and you put them towards any task, no matter if they actually know what they're doing or not, they often outperform the person who lacks confidence, right? Take a kid that actually is shot 10,000 free throws, but lacks confidence to shoot the free throw versus the kid who's only shot a hundred of them that has the confidence he's going to make it. You put that kid on the line because his confidence is something that's going to propel him towards success. And so what happens is is we have to allow, that we have to get rid of the, the negative self-talk. I would not put energy towards that. It's one thing to be analytical. It's another thing to be self-critical. Analytical is good, right? Where could I be better? Where could I change? Where could I iterate, right? However, this, I'm not good. This is never going to work out. This is a horrible idea, right? We got, we have to get, we can't put energy towards that. We have to put energy towards moving into a confident place. And then the last thing that I would, you know, really kind of stay away from putting energy towards is adjustments until we can prove the model was successful or not successful. What happens is entrepreneurs by nature are impetuous and they don't have a lot of, they're just, they're just not willing to actually allow things to develop long enough to create success. And so I don't, you know, want to say that that's necessarily a horrible thing because I think there is a concept there tied to innovate or die or, you know, fire fast and all these types of things. But there has to be enough time. There has to be enough energy expended to actually see it come to life. So there has to be a framework to understand, did I reach success or did I not reach success? Most entrepreneurs out of fear, most entrepreneurs out of fear will actually change the model before they get to success because they fear they're not getting to success fast enough and they'll never get there. What you'll notice in a lot of visionary entrepreneurs is they're cyclical. Every three months, every six months, every year, they got to rebrand, they got to change, they got to do something different. They've got to, they got to change the model and what that is, that's a place of fear. And that fear is telling them, if I don't, you know, if it's not perfect, I'm not going to get there. And if I don't get there, then I'm not going to get success. And so oftentimes it's really fear based activity. And so I would not expend energy and changing until you've hit at least a milestone to judge its success or lack of lack thereof. Oftentimes, entrepreneurs just, they're not patient enough to wait long enough to see its success. I've taught in other podcast episodes, this what I call the perseverance continuum, and the difference between a successful entrepreneur and a one that has really struggled with success is oftentimes just their ability to carry weight for a longer period of time than the person who didn't get to success. They stayed under the weight long enough. How did that coffee shop do well when that one didn't? Well, they managed their finances long enough that they finally got to success. They had delayed gratification, whatever it is. How did this dry cleaner work when this one across the street didn't work, right? And it's like, well, they persevered longer and they ended up getting to success. They stayed under the weight. And it goes back to work. They put in the energy. So I wouldn't put energy into changing and adjusting quickly without actually having a true gauge for success. My next thought is feels like a lot of these areas you're talking about feel in the macro, big picture, big thing. But if we go to like Malcolm Gladwell's like 10,000 shots or steps, it's like, what is the micro? What's the daily things that like eat up that time? What's the dollar I can put away that will build up over time? Yeah, and I think that it comes down to whatever the activity is you're trying to gain success in and you'd have to determine what that is. For me, there's a few things I'm trying to intentionally get to true mastery of right now. I think that we all should be striving for new mastery throughout our life. We should never get to a place where we've arrived. And so there's a couple of areas that I have mastered, right? Like buying businesses. I've mastered that. I've put more than 10,000 hours selling businesses, more than 10,000 hours into selling businesses, operations of a business, 10,000 hours. You know, like I've put the 10,000 hours in areas of business where I haven't put the 10,000 hours in financial. I have not spent enough time right now. I spend more time understanding financial concepts than I've ever I have. If you go to my house right now, there's three books sitting on my side table that are all financial resource books, right? Like, and I'm trying to understand high level, not finance books, because I've spent 10,000 hours in finance, you know, from a banking standpoint, but not from a business standpoint. There's business concepts around finance that I'm still trying to master. And I'm putting the hours in the amount of time I'm spending with my CFO right now. You know, our CFO of this company is a lot and I'm probably in the weeds way too much. What I'm trying to do is create mastery. You know, one thing that I set out this year was I have always played guitar a little. I know my chords. I know various things. I would like to actually create mastery and guitar. I think that that's a part of my brain I want to unlock. Like I need more creative time. I spent a lot of time in the analytical and I want to spend more time in the creative. And so I'm spending time in the evenings, you know, if I get up early, if I find myself awake at certain times, I'll grab the guitar and I'll begin to start playing. And so what I'm trying to do is master guitar. Well, I've, I maybe have put a thousand hours in. So I got, you know, 40 hours a week for the next six years in order to get to mastery of a guitar. That's a lot. So, but, you know, obviously I don't have that type of time. But if I put in the next 10, 15 years of my life and I start just playing a little bit here and there, playing it over and over again, can I get to mastery? Sure. And so I want to get to mastery. But I think that it's the little things. And so like if you go to, you're talking about, okay, but what is it? So like if I want to master guitar, what it is is a mastery of guitar is more than just playing. It's the music theory, right? It's, it's, you know, you know, you've got kind of like the various components of music. You know, it's, it's the functions of music. It's the instrument of that's playing the music. It's the different styles of music. It's, you know, all of those pieces. And so for me, you know, I'm trying to master kind of the one on one level. The way that I have to do that is now I'm breaking it down. And I'm like, I have my basic eight or nine chords. My goal is, is I want to learn three new chords a week. And so like right now, until I get to a full chord set where I understand my thirds and my sevens and my minors and my majors, like I want to, I want to understand all that. And so I have a mapped out and I feel like by June, I'll have all of my chords mastered. Then it's going to have to go into stylistic playing or whatever. And, and so, um, so that's my goal. But again, it goes down to iterations. So can I learn three new chords a week? Well, I can tell you, um, this week I've learned two so far and it's Tuesday. It's Monday. Yeah, Monday. So I've already learned two. And so I spent a lot of time last night playing. And, but again, it goes back to that. It's like, it's not about finding $10,000 to invest. It's about, can I save three bucks a day for the next however many days to get to my $10,000? Closing thought, I grew up in a very faith-based household and, uh, the anecdote that my dad would give me all the time is he would say, Eddie, God will help anybody, but he won't help a lazy man. And he would say that to me over and over again. And the interesting part about that is, is he would back it up, right? Like we'd be shoveling dirt or whatever. And he would say, you know, God in the Bible helped adulterers. He helped murderers. God would help all these people. He was like, but show me one time in the Bible, God, if God will help a lazy man. And, um, it's also, you know, if you kind of go to it from a scriptural standpoint, there's a lot said in scripture about work, um, you know, that God, uh, admires someone who puts his hand to the plow, that there's, um, that there is, um, integrity in work there. Uh, it's appointed on demand once to work, right? Like that there, if you go all the way back to the stories of Adam and Eve, you know, it's like, Adam was charged with actually caring for the Garden of Eden, right? It's like, if the whole construct of, of, of, uh, the Bible is, is tied to work, you even go to the seven days of creation. You know, it's like you had six days of creation where God work and then on the seventh he rested, right? Like all these concepts in the Bible that are tied to work. Well, my dad would constantly, uh, refresh those in my mind. Um, and for me, what I can look at is to the degree that I found success in my life. It has been, and I think here's, here's the, here's the, um, opposition. If work is nothing more than energy expended, laziness is nothing more than energy wasted. And so to me, if you look at it and it's like, if God is love and God is light, the essence of God is truly energy. And so what is God given you as a human on this planet? It's a finite amount of time and a finite amount of energy, but the only way that I actually can act, uh, in tandem with God, my creator is to actually expend the one gift I've been given to create something else and to act in tandem with him. So maybe my dad was right, right? Like there's nothing maybe more that violates the very concept of God than to actually waste time, to waste energy, to do away with the one substance that you've been given to actually act in tandem and create, to actually make something come to life. And so I want to encourage you today to think through what you're giving your energy to, to make sure that you're not just wasting energy on things that aren't bringing concepts to life, making people's lives better, taking yourself to your end goal and, uh, and get to work. Thanks so much for being a part of the podcast and for listening today. Love to connect with you further and you can connect with me on social media at Eddie Wilson official on any of the social media channels.