Congruency Creates Success with Isla Brook

I'm Alex Charfen and this is the Momentum podcast. Made for empire builders, game changers, trail blazers, shot takers, record breakers, world makers and creators of all kinds. Those among us who can't turn it off and don't know why anyone would want to. We challenge complacency, destroy apathy and we are obsessed with creating momentum so we can rollover bureaucracy and make our greatest contribution. Sure we pay attention to the their rules, but only so that we can bend them, break them, then rewrite them around our own will. We don't accept our destiny, we defied it. We don't understand defeat because you only lose if you stop and we don't know how.

While the rest of the world strives for average and clings desperately to the status quo, we are the minority. The few who are willing to hallucinate there could be a better future and instead of just daydreaming of what could be, we endure the vulnerability and exposure it takes to make it real. We are the evolutionary hunters, clearly, the most important people in the world because entrepreneurs are the only source of consistent, positive, human evolution and we always will be.

The hidden cost of debt. As entrepreneurs anything that distracts us from momentum, that distracts us from the direction we want to go, from creating our outcomes from creating our future, from being on the hunt holds us back. I call it operational drag. It's the things in our life that hold us in place. That make it so we don't feel like we can advance or move forward. Operational drag is a productivity killer for people like us, but it's also just a awareness and presence killer. It makes us feel tired and frustrated and like we can't really create the momentum we want. And I talked to entrepreneurs all the time who are working really hard. You know what entrepreneurs don't really have a hard time working. Evolutionary hunters work whether they want to or not. I mean you can sit still when you're somebody like us and there's more work going on between your ears than most people have when they're at full production.

So it's not that we have a hard time working it's that often times we have a hard time creating true momentum. And whenever I talk to somebody who's in that condition I always look for the hidden operational drag. Where is the ambiguity? The weight that they're carrying? The pain that they're experiencing that we can't see on the surface and often times I believed it's the hidden cost of being in debt. Albert Einstein's one of my heroes and I think his quote on compound interest is one of the best. He says, "Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it. He who doesn't, pays it." Compound interest is the most powerful force in the universe. Einstein didn't joke around. He said things that he was pretty serious about.

He calls compound interest the most powerful force in the universe because when we agree with ourselves that we are going to get out of debt that force is no longer working against us. I have mortgages that are paid to me. Not that I pay on and since [Cadey 00:03:15] and I got completely out of debt in 2007 we have not returned. We live in a very nice home. We have rental properties. We have more cars then we need to drive on any given day. And everything has been paid for in cash. And I believe that part of the reason we're experiencing the success that we have today, the opportunities that we have today, the clientele that we have today is because we are not carrying around the operational drag of being in debt. Now I wasn't always like this.

I'll share with you that back in the early 2000's when Cadey and I got into real estate I thought debt was this tool you could use to go out and make tons of money and at one point Cadey and I had dozens of mortgages. I mean stacks of mortgages. Every month we had a P.O. box where just tons of mortgage bills would come and we'd get 'em all paid in a system and everybody would get their checks and here I thought I was making money on all of this debt. Because we had rental properties and there was some that were cash flowing and we were doing pretty well and then the real estate crisis hit and we lost everything. We ended up going from multi-millionaires to having nothing all because we had debt. Now my case is extreme. Since then we've never gotten into debt again and I didn't understand how much it was costing us until I didn't have it.

I just had this conversation with a client of mine today in fact we were going through her numbers and her net worth with she and her husband and she said to me, "You know we do have a lot of debt, but I've done a lot of work around making the debt okay so that I'm not so upset with myself about it and I just want to make sure that you understand that." And I said, "Yeah I just want you to understand where I come from on debt. Debt isn't okay. I don't want you to have it. I want you to get rid of it. I want you to be out of debt." Because an entrepreneur doesn't know what they're capable of until they drop the operational drag in their lives. Until they get rid of the people, the places and things that are holding them back and there has never been a single entrepreneur I have ever met that can take on the operational drag of compound interest. Of going into debt, of owing somebody money without it having a physiological and psychological effect on them.

When we're in debt it bothers us whether we admit it or not. When we're in debt it hangs over our heads whether we want to notice it or not. And when we're in debt it's one of these ambiguous things in our lives that robs us of our momentum. So if you find yourself in this situation right now, if you're paying compound interest to somebody else, maybe you have student loans or credit card debt or car debt or home debt or any kind of debt at all you owe it to yourself and to your future to see what you are like when you don't have debt. You owe it to yourself to put together a debt reduction plan and start aggressively paying down the money that you owe and make it go away. And here's a note I just want to share. It doesn't matter how low your interest rate is. Pay off your debt as fast as you possibly can. I've had people tell me, "But Alex I only have a 3% interest or a 4% interest rate. It's almost like free money." Yeah almost, but it's not.

It's still compound debt and it's still working against you. And the faster you get rid of it the faster you release the operational drag, that psychic drag, of having debt. I really impressed this upon my client today when we were talking. We had her strategic direction call and I told her, "I'm sorry to be so harsh, because I know you've done work to get over the debt, but here's a switch that I have seen throughout my career." I've helped 100's of entrepreneurs create the debt reduction plan, change their mentality around debt and become debt free. They don't owe anyone in the world anything. I know that feeling. Sure I have to pay property taxes and we have a phone bill, but other then that there's very few people that I owe money to on a monthly basis. Actually, other than that there is nobody I owe money to on a monthly basis other then a few of the bills that we have. And not having to pay anyone to exist is a feeling that changes everything.

See I don't get up to a minimum debt payment every month like most Americans do. The vast majority of Americans every morning there's a minimum payment they have to make just to get through the day and it's buying them nothing. If you're in debt it's buying you nothing. All you're doing is making a payment on what you already spent. And let's be honest most of us go into debt for because we can't delay the gratification of getting what we want because we want it now instead of later. Because we want to live a great or vibrant life or get the things we want or buy the things we think we need. But the fact is is that if you buy it with debt you're just paying for it over a longer period of time and it's costing you more. Whenever you go out and buy something on a credit card you should multiply whatever the total cost is by times 1.4 because if it takes you two years to pay off that debt that's about what it's going to cost you.

A 140% of the price. So if you go out and buy something on sale you are saving nothing if you do it on the 90 day no interest financing and then let it lapse. Like most people do. That's why they give it to you that way. Debt is a trap that makes other people money and keeps you beholden to getting up and making a payment daily. So I want you to meet an entirely new version of yourself. I want you to meet the version of yourself that doesn't have debt. I want you to meet the version of yourself that doesn't have a daily payment that you get up and make everyday just to exist for things that you've already bought, already used, already have in your life that are already there. There's nothing new that comes from a debt payment. It's just a payment for something you've already done.

And when you meet the person you can be, when you don't have that pressure, when you don't have those payments, when you are completely debt free and when what you earn is what you keep it will change everything in the world for you like I told my client today. I've been through this with 100's of entrepreneurs. I've had tons of them tell me how debt makes them money and debt is good and their business plan revolves around debt and they couldn't do it without debt, but here's what we found over and over again. We can either eliminate or minimize the debt in almost all cases and when we do it's like a light switch. Everything in that entrepreneur's life gets better. The day that they pay off their debt there's a different level of confidence, different level of optimism, different level of awareness, different level of vision and as evolutionary hunters that's what means something. We have to envision the hunt out in the future, see what it's going to look like, come back to the present and make it real.

And anything we can do to improve our ability to do that creates greater outcomes in our lives and moves us in the direction of our goals. So I want you to consider making a choice that the vast majority of Americans will never make. To sit down and tabulate your debt. Look at how much you have, come up with a debt reduction plan and then delay gratification now so that you can pay off all of that debt as fast as you possibly can and meet your new self. Because if you've been in debt a few years or maybe decades like so many of us you don't know what you are like when you don't have that pressure. You don't know what you are like when you don't have those payments and you don't know what you are like when you don't have, what Einstein calls the most powerful force in the universe working against you.

Thanks for listening. I appreciate you being here today and if you're looking to get out of debt, understand the metrics that move entrepreneurs forward, know exactly what you should be looking at on a monthly basis to create momentum and improve all areas of your life. Join me in our momentum master class. Let me show you how you can end the pain of having the most powerful force in the universe work against you and more importantly create momentum across the board in everything you do. Go to momentumwebclass.com, momentumwebclass.com and join me. I look forward to seeing you in the class.