Hey y’all!

With Thanksgiving just a week away, we’re freshly reminded how grateful we are for you!

Thanks for your support and engagement as we build the Abundant Journey community.

Let us know how we do with this week’s newsletter!

On Tap Today:

• Wisdom from the week:

  • Healthy Priorities

  • Retained Earnings

  • Two Paths

• Something you should try

Wisdom from the Week

1 // Healthy Priorities

Wealth, time, and health.

Humans universally prioritize these three elements of life. Indeed, there are other priorities — family, faith, friendships, etc. — but enjoying those things first requires some combination of wealth, time, and health.

Most people focus on building wealth to free up more time. This is the idea of retirement, right? Obtain enough wealth to sustain yourself without having to work for an income. The promise of retirement is limitless free time.

Many folks see having time as a prerequisite to caring for their health. After all, exercising consistently costs multiple hours every week. Meal planning requires more time than going out to eat or throwing in a microwave meal. Even planning and attending doctor’s appointments can be costly from a time standpoint.

But we all likely know someone who devoted all their time and sacrificed their health on the altar of building wealth and then, once wealthy enough, spent the last years of their life attempting to buy back all the time they lost and reverse the effects of decades of unhealthy decisions. And sadly, their efforts are largely futile.

You can’t buy back the moments you missed. You cannot purchase a pristine physical report.

Don’t overestimate the power of money, and don’t undervalue your health or the time you have here and now.

Stated positively, prioritize taking care of yourself now. Prioritize being present today for the moments that make life worth living.

2 // Retained Earnings

“I’d rather make $20 million and keep $6 million over making $100 million and keeping $8 million.”

The owner of a manufacturing business I met with this past week said this. In context, we were discussing the secret to his success compared to his competitors.

Many competitors have higher top lines, generating revenues 4-5x what my client brings in annually. Those companies are bigger.

But are they better?

From the standpoint of profitability and healthy margin, no. And it’s not even close. My client’s business blows them out of the water in terms of how much money he can keep versus his expenditures.

It’s easy to get caught up in vanity metrics like huge total revenue numbers — after all, who doesn’t want to say they are running a business doing over $100M a year in sales?

But, as they say, “It’s not what you make that matters. It’s what you keep.”

To that end, don’t lose control of your expenses. Don’t get lazy about maximizing efficiencies. And remember, bigger isn’t always better.

3 // Two Paths

As we approach the end of the year, I’ve been re-reading Atomic Habits by James Clear.

I realize that nearly everyone under the sun has at least heard of, if not read, Atomic Habits by this point. But its popularity doesn’t diminish its value. And over the past couple of years, this book has become a dear friend that I love to revisit.

I’ve spent much of the past week reflecting on Clear’s keen observation that our daily habits dictate the direction of our lives. At their core, ‘good habits’ are the daily practices that lead us toward realizing our goals and dreams in life. On the contrary, ‘bad habits’ are things we do without even thinking about them that lead us away from our envisioned ‘good life.’

Individual habits are so small it’s easy to dismiss them as insignificant. Or, worse, it’s easy to miss them altogether — to fail to recognize our habitual behaviors as such.

Clear’s point here has caused me to set aside time to consider my habits carefully. What are the things I do each day? Where are those activities leading me? What habits do I need to recalibrate to move forward in the right direction?

I encourage you to set aside time in the next few weeks for similar reflections. And, if you’re one of the last 11 people in America who hasn’t read Atomic Habits, I’d recommend grabbing a copy.

Something You Should Try

Cold calling! We discussed the value of cold calling in another edition of the newsletter a couple of months ago. But Nick has gone even deeper in some of the recent episodes of his new daily show, The Entrepreneur’s Journey.

Check out:

• Episode 20, which introduces cold calling

• Episode 25, which offers how to take control of the conversation

• Episode 30, which discusses overcoming objections

That’s all for now, folks.

Thanks for coming along!

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More content is on the way!

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

Onward & Upward, Friends,

Nick & Nick