What’s good, y’all?!

According to the news headlines, not much.

Inflation is still running hot. High-interest rates are straining consumers and lenders alike. Stock markets are down. Retirement savings are lower than ever. Consumer debt is at an all-time high. And, as a cherry on top of this bad-news sundae, Covid is making a resurgence.

Excellent. (Said with sarcasm — but you caught that, right?)

And still, here we are with The Abundant Journey Newsletter. Emphasis on ‘abundance.’

In tough economic times like these, it’s all too easy to let the smog of negativity choke out an abundance mindset, causing you to see the world as a scarce and desolate place. But, an abundance mindset is needed most when the times are hard.

The needs of the hour are economic recovery, growth, and expansion. These are all abundance terms.

Nobody builds wealth through fear.

Now is the time to take calculated risks and practice cautious optimism.

Now is the time to take hold of the opportunities that will blossom fully in the economic good times that are to come.

Now, more than ever is the time to take steps forward in your journey towards abundance.

And that’s precisely why we’re sending you this newsletter — to help you persist and prepare for all the good ahead.

On Tap Today:

• Three Lessons from the Week

• A Banker’s Perspective

• Featured Episode from the Pod

• Someone You Ought to Know

Top Three Lessons from the Week

1. The secret to success in business ownership: Fire yourself as soon as possible.

   We spoke with a highly successful business broker this week. By ‘highly successful,’ we mean a guy who has helped sell well over a hundred businesses over the course of his career. Having seen so many businesses and interacted with hundreds of business owners, we had to ask him about the traits that separate exceptional businesses from average ones.

   
   He told us that the best business owners quickly work themselves out of a job within their company. These owners are constantly seeking to delegate essential tasks to competent individuals, entrusting them to keep the business's day-to-day operations running smoothly. As a result, such owners have substantially more time and energy to dedicate to actively growing their business, maximizing operational efficiencies, casting vision, and creating strategic plans for the company's future.
   
   In short, the best business owners employ others to work in their business, which frees them to focus the best of their efforts working on it.

   
   Average business owners do the opposite. They remain highly involved in the day-to-day operations and take great pride in their ability to ‘do it all.’ While there’s a commendable aspect to their grit, the owner’s failure to delegate and remove themself from routine tasks results in stunted growth for the business.

   
   Using a practical example, let’s say you plan to fix-and-flip homes. You’re good at finding deals and negotiating terms, and you’re so good at home renovations that you could have your own show on HGTV. While these are great skills to possess and may give you an initial competitive advantage in the fix-and-flip space, the number of homes you can take on will be severely limited by your capacity if you insist on doing everything yourself.

   
   Now, maybe only doing a few homes a year floats your boat. But if you want to grow and build a self-sustaining business that doesn’t require you to source every deal and whack every nail, you must replace yourself with others to do the work.

   
   Success in business depends on your ability to scale. Your ability to scale requires replicating and replacing yourself.

2. Why aren’t you building wealth? You’re too busy earning a living.

   As a commercial banker, I meet with as many business owners as possible. It’s the best part of my job. I’ve had several formative conversations through these meetings, but one will always stick with me.

   
   When introducing myself to this established and well-known Founder and CEO, he was hilariously direct. He said, “Why would you ever spend your time counting other people’s money?” He continued, “Do you want to know why you’re not building wealth? It’s because you’re too busy earning a living!”

   He wasn’t wrong, and his words led to a fundamental shift in my perspective. There are inherent limits to being an employee.
   
   Through the many conversations we’ve had on The Abundant Journey Podcast, a recurring theme is that generational wealth is built by owning assets that both appreciate in value and consistently pay you to own them.
   
   As an employee, even if you have a salary of $250,000/year, that money pales in comparison to the income potential and optionality that owning a business or investing in real estate provides.

   
   Taking business ownership, for example, let’s say you buy a landscaping business doing $200,000/year in profit for $500,000 (a 2.5x annual profit multiple, which is typical for a business acquisition). Then, over three years, you aggressively grow the business to achieve $600,000/year in profit. At this point, something incredible has happened. You now have options for your wealth. You could continue reinvesting profits to grow the business further. You could hire a general manager, remove yourself entirely from the day-to-day operations, and enjoy regular, passive distributions from the business’s profits. Or you could sell the business, now worth $1,500,000 — a 300% return in three years.

   
   While this is just a hypothetical scenario, the principle stands. Real, enduring wealth is not achieved merely through a large salary; it’s built by owning and growing assets that appreciate and pay you to own them.
   

3. The ever elusive ‘Enough.’
   One of our favorite podcasts is My First Million. It’s not a great show to listen to if you’ve got kids in the car, but hosts Sam Parr & Shaan Puri are hilarious and masterful at extracting insights from their guests.
   

   
   Earlier this week, they had Andrew Wilkinson on. Andrew is the founder of the mega-successful Metalab Agency and Tiny, which, contra its name, is hugely profitable. As a result of his success, he now rolls with the big-time billionaire boys and girls.
   

   
   During the conversation, Andrew shared a recent experience in which one of his billionaire buddies invited him onto a $100,000,000+ super yacht.
   

   
   Andrew’s reflections on the time were refreshingly honest, and the segment alone is worth listening to the whole show. In summary, though, he shared that the yacht was ‘nice’ but certainly wasn’t life-changing. More than anything, the yacht served as a symbol of status and gross excess that, in the end, seemed ridiculous in the proper, negative sense.
   

   
   These super-yacht revelations led Andrew and the guys to discuss what is ‘enough.’ Their conclusion: It is human nature always to crave more.
   

   
   In other words, ‘enough’ is an unobtainable myth.
   

   
   This fundamental drive is both a blessing and a curse. Continual striving often results in continuous growth. But the insatiable desire for ‘more’ and inability to be content just as often leads to misery and self-destruction.

   
   So, how do you harness the benefits of the burning desire for more while avoiding its pitfalls?

   
   Radical generosity is the answer. Make as much as possible to do as much good in the world as possible.
   
   Mysteriously, it truly is more of a blessing to give than to receive. Material possessions — even $100,000,000 super-yachts — are nice, but they do not satisfy. However, giving and doing good is profoundly gratifying and infuses your life with a purpose greater than yourself.

   
   ‘Enough’ may always be elusive, but at least you can control what you use for a measuring stick. Choose to measure ‘enough’ by the amount of good you do rather than the number of goods you possess.

A Banker’s Perspective: Tips to Grow Your Business

There’s a classic saying that most business owners seem to know. Well, at least the ones I’ve spent time with. “When you don’t need money, get it because when you do need the money, no one will lend it to you.”

As a banker, I’m here to tell you this belief is spot on. Often in life, we love to complicate things, but the more simplified we can make it, the better off we’ll be. Banking is no different.

Banks are in the business of lending money, and the two questions that banks always want answered are this:

1. How are you going to pay us back?

2. What do we get if you don’t pay us back?

When you understand banking from this framework, it lets you understand the bank’s perspective. Needless to say, when companies are humming along, increasing sales, retaining earnings in the company, and showing all the signs of health, every bank will want to lend to them. However, when those numbers take a turn, banks start to get scared. Their confidence in your ability to repay them dwindles, and it’s really hard to borrow. I’ve seen loads of companies wait until there are signs of duress, and they go requesting financing from the bank only to find out that they can’t get a loan or that it’s going to be extremely expensive because they can’t get lending from traditional sources.

My tip this week is to give yourself as many options as possible when it comes to financing. If you’re a business and have never gotten a line of credit, look into that and see if you can open that line of credit. Many business banks even have smaller unsecured lines that don’t pledge the business as collateral. If you own a home, then look into getting a Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC) that sits there as a “rainy day” fund. Both lending products are structured so that if you don’t borrow against them, you don’t owe anything. But it’s better to have those sorts of options if troubles do come and you find yourself unable to borrow!

Featured Pod

This week, The Abundant Journey Podcast featured Christy Keeton.

Christy is a ton of fun! She’s got great energy, an incredible story, and lots of immediately applicable advice for growing wealth and establishing financial independence.

Be sure to give the episode a listen!

Also, Nick James’s new daily show, The Entrepreneur’s Journey, is live! In this new podcast, Nick focuses on giving digestible and practical tips to ensure you remain bankable and are primed for growth. Check it out here, and be sure to subscribe!

Someone You Ought to Know

At Abundant Journey, we have an affinity for Nicks. It’s weird. We know. But what can we say? Nicks are the best!

This is why you really ought to know Nick Stageberg, who we featured on Ep. 19 of The Abundant Journey Podcast.

If someone could find a way to bottle Nick’s energy and enthusiasm, they could put Red Bull out of business. He has a tremendous perspective on life and is the epitome of the abundance mindset!

Nick leads Black Swan Real Estate, where they’ve grown their portfolio to over 1,000 doors and $300,000,000+ in assets under management. Nick’s heart and track record is to provide unbelievable value wherever he goes.

Check out Nick’s investor-focused opportunities to passively invest in Black Swan’s real estate fund here. They have a unique model that maximizes returns for passive investors.

If you’re just getting started, you can also check out Nick’s course on how to build wealth by investing in single-family homes!

What’s Next?

Thanks for coming on this journey with us! We hope you found at least one thing that made this email worth opening.

If that is the case, we ask that you consider:

1. Forwarding this email to a friend and encouraging them to subscribe.

2. Subscribing and leaving an honest review of The Abundant Journey Podcast on your podcast player of choice.

3. Replying here with any feedback you have for us.

More content is cooking! Stay hungry.

In the meantime, you can keep up with all the latest by visiting AbundantJourney.net.

Onward & Upward, Friends,

Nick & Nick

PS:

Are you wondering who we are and what we’re up to? Maybe this will help:

Founded by Nick ‘James’ Zalk and Nick Aufenkamp earlier this year, Abundant Journey is a rapidly expanding online community that helps you obtain financial freedom while making the world a better place through entrepreneurship and investing.

Currently, the most active part of our community is The Abundant Journey Podcast, a weekly show featuring incredible stories of successful business owners and entrepreneurs from diverse backgrounds and industries. By sharing their stories, we aim to inspire our audience to take massive action and live with purpose, meaning, and abundance.

In short, if you think the world is made better by people starting businesses and investing in projects they're passionate about, you’re going to fit in great here!

Better yet, if you’re in the dreaming phase and feel you have untapped potential for what you can offer the world, Abundant Journey is here to help you take the next steps in realizing the life of your dreams.

Okay. Admittedly, that last line felt a bit over the top. But it is true. We exist to help you dream bigger dreams, battle limiting beliefs, and live an abundance-filled life. The process is a journey, though.

You could even call it an Abundant Journey.