Achieving Financial Freedom and Defining ‘Enough’ with Grant Sabatier
58:25 Share

What does real financial freedom actually look like? Is it unlimited choices or is it something else entirely? Today I'm sitting down with my friend Grant Sabatier, bestselling author of Financial Freedom and the Inner Entrepreneur, to explore how our definition of freedom evolves as we build our wealth.

But there's a catch, and as Grant says, So the older that I've gotten, I've realized that freedom really actually only exists within limits. We are going to get really tactical about achieving that freedom, including how to set limits, balance financial independence with personal happiness, and we'll even debate whether entrepreneurship might be a key part of this equation. And if you've ever wondered how to define enough and how to create a life you truly love, I really think you'll like this one.

I'm Chris Hutchins, and if you enjoy this episode, please consider sharing it with a friend or leave a comment or review. And if you want to keep upgrading your life, money, and travel, click follow or subscribe. Now let's get into it right after this.

This episode is brought to you by Copilot. And if you're looking to get your finances organized this year, you have to check out Copilot. It's one of my all-time favorite apps, and I check it almost every day because it makes it so seamless and easy to manage your money and track your spending, which for us has resulted in a huge boost to our savings.

And I've tried dozens of these apps and even made a whole episode about it. But Copilot is the only one that I've kept using. And after getting so much value from my 2024 recap, that definitely won't be stopping anytime soon. You can link accounts at over 10,000 institutions and their AI powered expense categorization is the best I've used with custom Amazon and Venmo integrations to make it even better.

You can completely design your spending categories and subcategories and easily set up rules to assign transactions to them in the future. Thanks to Copilot, I have never had a better grasp on our spending and cash flow, which I'm pretty sure has resulted in thousands of dollars of savings each year.

So for the best app to track your spending, subscriptions, investments, and more, go to allthehacks.com slash copilot to download Copilot and enter code HACKS2 during onboarding for a free two-month trial. Again, that's allthehacks.com slash copilot and the code HACKS2 for a free two-month trial of my favorite personal finance app. Grit, you have talked a lot about money in your life.

But what does freedom actually look like to you? Yeah, that's a great question. My definition of freedom has definitely changed as I've gotten older. When I was younger and I was broke, I didn't have any money. Freedom just simply meant having enough time to do whatever I wanted with my life, not being limited by money, being able to live the fullest life that I could without being restricted. So it was this limitless idea. And that really was my thinking when I started my financial independence journey. I just need the money to get out. I just need some space.

I just don't ever want to be constricted. I don't want to limit what my family can do. I don't want to limit what I can do. I want to make the most of this one life. But interestingly, as I acquired more money, I started to change my definition of freedom. And I realized that freedom really wasn't about unlimited choices. It was just about having the ability to do what you love when you want to do it. And those are two different things. So for me, I really...

struggled with this idea of how am I going to spend my time when I reach financial independence? What am I going to do? And I realized that I needed to create some limits in my life. So the older that I've gotten, I've realized that freedom really actually only exists within limits. I mean, we obviously have the natural limit of death in our lives and we don't know how long we're going to be here. And so how we spend our time is really important and it really matters, but we're just

constantly under siege for our attention. There's just so many things distracting us, especially when you have a little bit of money, when you're successful, when you have a big community, there's so many people that want to do things with you. So many opportunities that it becomes really, really important to construct your own filters for your life. And this was a hard lesson for me to learn because

I just tried to do everything all the time and ended up not only getting burnt out, but just really kind of distancing myself from a lot of the people that I love. But once I realized that, hey, I can control and create my own space of freedom that

ultimately allowed me to create more freedom in my life and has led me to a life that I really love with a byproduct being I have a fair amount of peace in my life just because all the things that I don't care about, those opportunities, those distractions no longer show up. But what about you? How's your thinking of freedom changed? I think when I started freedom, I just, like you said, I want to be able to do anything, go anywhere. And then

thinking about that pursuit can lead you to feel like you just need unlimited money. It's just like, how do you make more and make more? And then you realize, I don't need everything. I'm very happy with the life we have. And so I think you mentioned limits and you talked about them in the constraint of demands on your time. I think this year, my wife Amy and I had talked about, let's make sure that

we're in charge of what we want to do, right? Just because someone invites us to do something doesn't mean we have to say yes. Just because someone sends you an email doesn't mean you have to reply. And so there's limits on your time. But are there other kind of limits you put in place? Yeah, so think about your life as a space of freedom. It's a container. And around that container are all the ways in which you spend your time from what you eat

to where you travel, to how you spend your money, to the content that you ultimately consume. We're naturally a balance between our inputs and our outputs. And there's times in life when you want to create, there's times in life when you want to consume. And I think it's really important to take some time to think through

Not only what does an ideal day look like, what do you want your life to look like, and then build a space around that. This goes beyond just saying no to things and really helps you ultimately construct limits around that.

everything in your life. So a good example is I only use my phone for six hours a day. That's a limit that I've constructed that really isn't about my time. That's just about keeping myself sane and not getting distracted and being able to be present with my family. Another limit is that I don't travel for work at all. And that's really less about the time and more about kind of the wear and tear that I take on, you know, when I'm traveling.

I get invited to speak fairly often and I've refused large amounts of money to do that because one of the least happy places that I am in my life is when I'm sitting in some random town on some random evening just missing my family. And so that's just a limit no matter how much someone offers me to come and pay and speak.

I just say no. And that's less about the time and more about just not wanting to have the wear and tear and just put myself ultimately in that space. And then around money,

Money is one of those interesting things where our relationship with money is just like time is always evolving, is always changing. And I think for myself, there's a lot of limits that I've set around money. And one of those things is how much money I spend on food. And I don't really budget, but naturally try to look for those opportunities where I know that spending is going to be able to create a memory as opposed to just some throwaway spending. At

At first, this is quite logical and you can simply sit down and write down, here are the 20 things that I don't like to do. And this can be in your full-time job. This can be with your friends. This can be with your diet. This can be with anything. Look at those things and use those things that you don't want to do as the place to start setting your limits.

and pushing your limits over time. As you do this more and more, naturally your intuition just gets better at assessing opportunities. It's just you have more data inputs. And so if someone asks you to do something and you immediately just know, ah, that's not going to make me happy. That doesn't fit within my limits. That doesn't really give me freedom. And then you're able to say no. And the last thing I'll add is

For me, the most important thing of all of this is time freedom. And so I never schedule more than two meetings a day. I try to work out every day. I want to leave space in my life. And that's always been the most important thing because it's the space in your life that you open to when new things ultimately show up. And that has really rewarded me because I'm able to follow my curiosity and it generates a lot of happiness in my life.

What are some limits that you have, Chris? Okay, so I have some limits. I'll come back to them. But I want to follow up because a lot of the things you mentioned, you're in a fortunate position to do. And so I'm curious how you think these limits might apply to someone who's working in a job and can't afford to just be free for hours a day or not be on their computer or not travel for work as they might need to. How do some of these things translate

for people that aren't in your situation in life? Yeah, I think the first step is you have to do a bit of an assessment. So if you have a job that you feel stuck in and maybe you don't like or that is really stressful or back to that point about traveling, if you have to travel a lot for work and it's impacting your health and you're spending more time away from your family and you don't really want to, it's important to be honest with yourself about that.

And some simple things that you can do are for your full-time job, write down a list of 20 things that you just really don't like doing in your full-time job and you'd rather limit them and then prioritize those. And if possible, think about how you can reach out to your manager, reach out to your HR department. Maybe if you're really tired of traveling, there's another role that you can take on in your company, or maybe you can limit

travel to a certain period or time of the year or work and be proactive about trying to adjust your full-time job and your role to fit more of what your ideal life looks like and protect your space of freedom. This is about being proactive instead of being reactive.

if we don't choose our own choices and set our own limits, the world naturally sets them for you. And this happens in any company. You know, the reality, you know, and I talk about this a little bit in my first book is that

Most companies are just legal Ponzi schemes, right? It's like, that's how entrepreneurship works. There's the boss at the top and there's the shareholders and there's all the employees. And the way that you build a profitable business or have a successful company is that you need to get some level of return on your investment on your employees.

Naturally, entrepreneurs default to trying to get as much out of their employees as they can. It's like the revenue multiple or profit multiple that you get peer employees. And so your company is always going to set limits and they're going to try to push those limits. And they know more about those limits than you know about those limits. And they're thinking about you, the person, and they're like, how do I give this person enough to keep them happy and to keep them here and to stay? It costs the average contractor.

company 40 to 60 percent of an annual salary to replace an employee. So they're thinking about how to keep you just happy enough.

And so this is important. If you just accept what they're offering you, if you don't go in and push a little bit where you can, naturally you're going to get pigeonholed with a lot of limits around your life that you didn't set, and it's going to be difficult to escape from them. And so make that list within your full-time job, make that list in how you spend your time outside of your job. This is important too. You talk about your friends and your family and even me for

the holidays typically we travel for you know thanksgiving and christmas and other holidays and that ends up creating a lot of stress for our family and so we've put these limits around where we'll travel and how we'll travel and we're very honest with our family we have a daughter and so we can say hey this is better for our daughter that we don't go on this trip and so setting those limits if you have

10 days off of vacation a year and you have to spend seven of those traveling for the holidays and then you come back and you're burnt out and you don't get rejuvenated and it's not really how you want to spend your time. You know, you have to be honest with your family and friends and set those limits as well. And I often find if you're very upfront, it can be a little jarring to people when you say, hey, I can't do this. But when you express why you're doing it and that, you know, it's important

hey, I need to prioritize self-care. I need to prioritize my own family. People will understand. Your friends will still be your friends and your family hopefully won't be too upset. It's really about doing an assessment and all of this is just about being mindful about what you're letting into your life and the impact that it's having on you.

And this whole thing's a journey, right? This isn't something that you just woke up one day and said, "Oh, I have limits. I have money. We're done." This is something that you can decide what you don't like about your current job. You can make some of those changes at your current position. Maybe you try to explore whether you could make more of them, move positions, move companies. We'll talk a little bit later about entrepreneurship. You could start something on the side. But

Just to be clear, I'm pretty sure, and correct me if I'm wrong, you're not suggesting that you necessarily put up all these limits and change everything all in one go after thinking about the conversation we're having right now.

No, it's really about paying attention to how you feel. And I think this is the biggest disconnect for me is that I spent my whole career with kind of this Western mind trying to think my way and outsmart my way through everything. But you have to really listen to how you feel and how your body's responding to something. And this is one of those process

those perennial timeless debates within philosophy and spirituality where it's like, do I try to think my way through this or do I trust my intuition? The longer that I've been an entrepreneur, the longer I've been financially independent, the more I recognize that your intuition is actually the strongest gift that you have. And most of us just silence it. We just keep doing the thing that we've always done because

we feel like that's what we were supposed to do and it's often the easiest thing to do and so you end up in a place in your life where all these limits have been set by someone else and you're like geez how did i get here how can i change this up a little bit and you're right it takes time you don't have to be dramatic you don't have to quit your job you just have to pay attention and listen and recognize that how you

feel really matters here. If you feel stuck, you probably are. It doesn't mean you have to make massive shifts. It's just you can make smaller choices that move you towards the life you love. And then the other piece, Chris, I'll tell you, I've talked with so many people and it's so fun in the work that I do because I could just get to hear people's life stories and all about their jobs.

And I realized that so many people are so much closer to a life that they love than they recognize. And so they tend to over focus on the stress and on the negative. And especially when we're pursuing financial independence, when we're working, it's like 80 or 90% of our brain is taken up by the energy and our thinking around our work and our money.

And then you add family into this. I had a daughter after reaching financial independence and just how much less time I have is ultimately staggering. And so if you're working for money and you're stressed about your job and you have a family, there's very little space and time in your life for you to pay attention to your intuition, for you to take care of yourself and for you to construct your own space of freedom. And so you have to work a little bit harder to carve out that time.

This episode is brought to you by Element. I love Element and I use it all the time because it helps anyone stay hydrated without the sugar and other dodgy ingredients in popular electrolyte and sports drinks. And that's important because electrolyte deficiency or imbalance can cause headaches, cramps, fatigue, brain fog, and weakness.

In fact, Element is a zero-sugar electrolyte drink mix and sparkling electrolyte water born from the growing body of research revealing that optimal health outcomes occur at sodium levels two to three times government recommendations. Element is formulated for anyone,

on a mission to restore health through hydration and is perfectly suited for everyone from athletes to regular people like me. And it works if you're fasting or on a keto, low carb or paleo diet. And if you're not sure if it's for you, don't worry because Element offers no questions asked refunds so you can try it totally risk-free.

Get your free sample pack with any Element purchase at allthehacks.com slash LMNT. This deal is only available through my link, so support the show and go to allthehacks.com slash Element LMNT and get hydrated.

This episode is brought to you by Gelt. When it comes to building wealth, taxes are such a big part of the strategy. And as tax time gets closer, getting prepared is so important. And now that I'm working with Gelt, I finally feel like I have a partner I can trust to handle everything for my personal and business taxes.

Think of Gelt as the ultimate modern CPA. Of course, they have an in-house team of expert CPAs to work with who help you determine the most effective tax strategies to minimize your risk and grow your wealth. But they also have an amazing tech platform that gives you personalized guidance to maximize deductions, tax credits, and savings.

There's also an amazing document vault where you can upload all your files, tag them with relevant years, and even see when your tax team has reviewed each file. Beyond that, the tax library you get access to has dozens of in-depth guides on things like choosing retirement plans, taxes for new parents, qualified business income or QBI, and so much more.

So if you're ready for a more premium, proactive tax strategy to optimize and file your taxes, you have to check out Gelt. And as an AllTheHacks listener, you can skip the wait list. Just head to AllTheHacks.com slash Gelt, G-E-L-T. Again, that's AllTheHacks.com slash G-E-L-T to stop overpaying on taxes.

One of the things that I recommend everyone do, if you don't meditate, you should start meditating and just try it. But I recommend everyone schedule at least a one to two day personal retreat, you know, every year or ideally every six months or once a quarter. And

Hopefully it can be even a silent retreat where you're alone, where you go to Buddhist center. There are all these kind of small retreats that you can do that you can create a space and an opening in your life that allows more of your intuition to come out and helps to give you more perspective because it's very, very difficult in life when you're so busy and you're so stressed to actually self-reflect. You just get stuck in the grind.

And that's one of the biggest takeaways for me. And the biggest thing that I recommend is that you have to create space in your life to figure out how you really feel about something. Anyone can carve out that space today just by being intentional about it and then paying attention and then not only listening to how you feel, but then taking small actions. And so if you don't like your job,

Can you move to another career over time? Are there some pivots that you can make in the day-to-day that make your life more meaningful and give you more happiness and make you less stressed? And a lot of people, like I said, are just very close to a life that they love. They're so constricted that they lose perspective. So for me, it's fun to be able to go in and say, hey,

Let's talk about your life. Wow. You love your friends. You love your family. You love the city that you live in. You love your softball team. You love your parents. You have great hobbies. Your job is really stressing you out. But all you've really talked about is your job. Let's look at the other 85% of the things that you have in your life you really love. It's just this one thing that's

dominating so much of your thinking and maybe you already have so much of what you seek. And so that's really what I try to do in my work is just help share a language that people can use and reflect on to get a little bit more perspective on these ideas of money, time and freedom, and then move closer to a life that really fulfills them. Three follow-ups. So first,

One of the places I've enjoyed finding that space personally is in a sauna. And there's plenty of health benefits to that. We're not even gonna mention that. The one really great benefit is that it is so hot that you don't wanna bring your phone in. It's dark.

Sometimes I bring in a pencil and a piece of paper, but I have this place to go where I can't do a lot, but think and be with myself or my wife will join and we could talk, but we're not distracted. We're not looking at phones. We're not listening to music. There's no TV on. And that's one space I've really enjoyed that I'm not going to go to the sauna for two days for a personal retreat, but get half an hour, 20 minutes, a few times a week is great. So that was one thought. The second one is, um,

When you said 85%, it really struck me. You were talking about 85% of your life might be the life you love and the work part of it might not be something you love. I wish I could remember which episode, I'll try to put in the show notes if I can find it, where I was talking with someone and they pointed out like people don't have to love their job. This idea of pursue your passion and your work has to define you and be the thing you love. I think...

There are a lot of people that I've met in my career that I know in my family and extended family that they might not love their job, but they've recognized that their job enables them to have a life they love. And I think one of the really important things that they've managed to separate and where I want to spend a little bit of time talking is that

they haven't made it their mission to level up their career and have more money and more responsibility and more title because they've recognized they love their job. And you've said people don't really feel free until they know what enough is. And so I think the people I know that have managed to find a lot of peace and happiness in a job they don't necessarily love have recognized that job is already putting them on the path to have enough and that allows them to be happy.

So I'm curious how you think about enough and defining it, because one of the lines you said in the book is if you don't take time to figure out what you really need, chasing more money is an aimless pursuit. And so how do you think about that question? Because I know it's a hard one. You mentioned an important word here, peace.

And I think everyone wants to feel more peace in their life. And we often don't think about what peace is. We think about peace as having no stress. But what it really means is that you have an elevated perspective on your life and you're able to

Very clearly look at the things coming into your life and the things going on in your life and not judge them. And so this is very important. There are some people that are more naturally wired for peace. And you're talking about some of them. And I have a friend like this. He works for the EPA, has a great job, lives in Seattle, Washington, spends time hiking in the mountains, camping with his son. And he's got this job that he has to go to. And it doesn't light him up. He doesn't love it.

It doesn't fulfill him, but it's secure when he's there and when he's not, he doesn't have to think about it. And it allows him to build an incredibly peaceful life. And like you mentioned, he's just at peace that this job is a means to an end. It gives him the money to do the things that he wants to do and do them with frequency. Goes to Hawaii multiple times a year. And this is important because he's able to do this because he knows what he loves.

He's been honest with himself. I like hiking. I like golfing. I like grilling in my backyard. I like playing basketball with my son. He's listed out those things that he loves and having his job gives him the time to do that. And then he's not stressed. He's not kept up. And so call

Cultivating peace in your life is really about being in alignment with what you love. And you can do this as an entrepreneur. You can do this as a full-time employee. And the more alignment that you have in your life, the greater peace that you're naturally going to feel. You don't find peace. Peace arises in your life. It's a byproduct of moving towards the things that you enjoy and that you love. But the thing is, it's often so easy in life just to chase more money.

It's just what so many people do. It's just, okay, I'm going to make more money. I'm going to go after this thing. Even when you reach financial independence, I'm going to work to get this raise. And all of a sudden you look back 20 years from now on your life and you're like, wait,

how did I spend my time or someone near you get sick or you get sick and you're forced to take a hard look in the mirror and be like, wow, is this really how I want to be living my life? And I think a lot of people out there think they know what they love, but they haven't really thought about it deeply. And they haven't thought about how they really want to spend their time and the role that money ultimately plays in it. It's about carving out maybe a couple of hours a week to think through,

What is my relationship with money? Did how I spend this money make me happy? Do I want to keep spending my money this way? Am I making enough money to live the life that I want to live? And will I be able to do that?

with some level of certainty for a long period of time. And this is that balance right between saving and spending where you want to figure out, okay, is it worth spending today to do the things that I love or worth saving this money and compounding the amount of freedom and opportunity that this money has over the long term. And then the other piece is that for me specifically, my definition of enough continues to change

as new things happen in my life. When I reached financial independence, I thought that I could live on 50 or $60,000. I have a child, kids are expensive. I want her to have the best life possible. So my definition of enough has to change. And in fact,

More of my definition is about her and about my family than about myself because between me and my wife, I'm one out of three in the equation. And so my definition of enough has actually extended beyond myself to be more about my family. So there's things that my wife and daughter naturally would want to spend money on that I wouldn't, but we spend that money because I know it makes them happy. This is something that you never truly figure out, right?

but it's something that gets easier over time when you're intentional about it and you take the time just to think through these things. And that's really what I want my books to be about, an opportunity.

an opportunity of reflection where you can look back and say, huh, maybe I have been spending too much time chasing money and maybe I should be spending my time doing something else or I don't need as much money as I think I'll need right now because so much of the news out there, the financial advice, it's just negative. It

It forces you to feel like you're never going to have enough in order to sell you a financial product. And so people get in that natural mindset, I'm not going to have enough for retirement. I'm not going to be able to live on my money forever. I need to hoard it. I need to make all these massive sacrifices.

And so my definition of enough is certainly in flux, but I feel very comfortable because I've taken the time to think through this in my own life. And then that gives me the ability just to live my life instead of always wondering, gosh, should I work harder? Should I grow my company bigger? Should I find another income stream? Should I do something different? I know there's a period of your life where you weren't thinking this way and you were grinding really hard.

And that enabled you to reach financial independence and now have this kind of elevated perspective. Totally, man. But do you think you could have done it

with this perspective from the start? Or do you think there is a season of life where what you need to do or what you might want to do or how you might want to use your time is to go and make more money and grind and hustle and spend all the time and energy so that your future life, which now you have a family and kid, is easier?

Dude, I wrote these books for my younger self. I wish that I could tell my 27-year-old self just to chill out, enjoy the journey. You're still going to get there. It might take you twice the amount of time. The things that I said no to in my life, I'm not going to say I have regrets, but I wish I would have gone to the music festivals with my friends. I wish I would have gone out to

to drinks with them instead of just building my businesses and websites in my room on my own. I wish I would have spent more time nurturing some friendships and relationships that I lost. I think you're right that there's times to grind and times to rest. Naturally, if you're younger, you have more time, you have more energy. Right now, I can't do nearly as much at the age of 40 that I could at 25 when I was invincible. And so I feel grateful that I was able between 25 and 30 to make all this money and save and

really hustle. I did make some sacrifices that I wish I didn't make, but yeah, I used my young energy and now having a kid being my age, I'm like, I can't imagine just starting now to save. It'll certainly be more challenging and more difficult. So yes, I think you should do this when you're younger and have more energy and have more time and have fewer responsibilities because there's just less constricting your life when you're younger and you have a lot less to lose.

And so I think you're right about that, but I wish I would have had more balance. That's just not how I'm wired. I grew up in a home where money was always tight. Money was always stressful. Money was just everything that my parents talked about. And so for me, it was like, once I got out into the world, it was just, it had so much anxiety and stress for me. And I meet people in their twenties now, and some of them are just so relaxed and it's so easy for them to follow their passions and do the things they love. And I'm a little jealous of that, but you know, we're all wired a little bit differently. And we also change.

faster than we recognize that we're changing. I think a lot of us fight change in our life and we don't like to reflect on, hey, maybe I don't love the things that I used to love. And so it's just recognizing that

It's fine to sprint and fine to rest, but having a little bit of perspective on why you're pursuing this journey, ideally having some level of a definite goal. So for me, it was to try to save a million dollars as quickly as possible. And then once I got there, I was just able to stop

and reevaluate. It was like, okay, I don't really have to think about money as much. Where am I going next? And so, you know, there's levels to this, right? And this is one of the things where there's kind of these ladders that you climb up in your life and then you get a little more perspective and you're like, whoa, do I want to take this other ladder?

Even now, man, I meet so many successful entrepreneurs in New York who have way more money than me or far more successful. And some of them are happy and some of them aren't. And people are wired very differently. Often the people who are happiest are doing things that they really love and they're challenged and they're growing and

They're very outgoing, but I love meeting someone who's more financially successful than me and being able to be like, whoa, I feel very happy with where I'm at because I can't imagine living their life.

This episode is brought to you by Viore. Now, there are only a few brands I use almost every single day, and Viore is definitely one of them. They make performance apparel that's incredibly versatile, yet so comfortable. Everything is designed to work out in, but doesn't look or feel like it at all.

My personal favorites are the Sunday Performance Joggers and the Stratotech tees and polos, but you also have to check out their Dream Knit collection. It's so amazing, super soft, lightweight, and moisture-wicking. You can wear Viore for just about any activity, whether it's running, training, yoga, but it's also great for lounging, running around town, and seriously, I wear their MetaPants and Stratotech polos out for a nice dinner all the time.

But Viore isn't just for men. My wife is as obsessed with them as I am. And we both would agree that Viore is definitely an investment in your happiness. And for our listeners, they're offering 20% off your first purchase, plus free shipping on U.S. orders over $75 and free returns.

So get yourself some of the most comfortable and versatile clothing on the planet at allthehacks.com slash Viore. That's V-U-O-R-I. Again, that's allthehacks.com slash Viore, V-U-O-R-I, to discover the versatility of Viore clothing. Exclusions apply. Visit the website for full terms and conditions.

This episode is brought to you by Fabric by Gerber Life. Spring is just around the corner, and I've been thinking about fresh starts, new goals, new plans, and making sure my family's future is on solid ground. Life is full of surprises, but with Fabric, securing peace of mind doesn't have to be one of

them. Fabric by Gerber Life is term life insurance you can get done right here, right now. You could be covered right from your couch in under 10 minutes with no health exam required. And if you're young and healthy, the time to lock in low rates is now. They have flexible, high-quality policies that fit your family and your budget, like a million dollars in coverage for less than a dollar a day. It's

all online and on your schedule, so apply when it's convenient for you. There's absolutely no risk. There's a 30-day money-back guarantee, and you can cancel at any time. So join the thousands of parents who trust Fabric to protect their family. Apply today in just minutes at meetfabric.com slash allthehacks. That's meetfabric.com slash allthehacks, M-E-E-T fabric.com slash allthehacks.

Policies issued by Western Southern Life Assurance Company not available in certain states. Prices subject to underwriting and health questions. I just want to thank you, Quick, for listening to and supporting the show. Your support is what keeps this show going. To get all of the URLs, codes, deals, and discounts from our partners, you can go to allthehacks.com slash deals. So please consider supporting those who support us.

Yeah, when we talk about enough, I said I would come back and talk about limits. One of the things that really helped me, I think it was Rachel Cruz. You know, budget's actually very freeing because when you define how much you can spend to be within your means, you can spend it. When you don't know how much you have to spend, then it feels like everything could be stressful. But for us...

I think we kind of line item went through the categories of spending and we compared with some basic 4% rule or 3% rule, whatever you want to use math to figure out how we were trending and how much we're making. And we got to this point where we said, do we want to spend more money or do we want to spend more time to create more money? Because if we spend more money now, like we have to replace it or we're not going to save enough for the future. So that really made it easy to say, well, we don't need a bigger this.

or we don't need more elaborate vacations, or we can get more creative about how to use the points of the mile so we don't have to pay more for those vacations. But that was really helpful for us because we see people all around us spending more money on certain things than we're spending money on. And it can make you feel insecure. But I actually feel really secure because we

we could go spend that money. We just know that the trade-off of what will happen if we spend that money is actually not worth it because we thought about that impact. And so to your point, thinking about where you are, what you need, it might take some basic retirement calculations. You could go use a tool to run through that.

I think I'm working on an episode of all the different financial planning tools that you can use on your own to project your net worth and all that kind of stuff. But because we've done that work, it feels really easy to say no to spending more money because we know we don't want to spend it that way.

When it comes to a lot of people's advice on financial independence, I think that it often comes to save, save, save. Cut your expenses, limit what you have so that you can save as much as possible. How do you think about that trade-off on your path to financial independence of trying to save more versus trying to earn more? Always more valuable to earn more money while you can.

Because you just really don't know how long the opportunity that you have is going to last. We see this with all the layoffs at all the tech companies. We see this with the algorithm changes and online businesses and Etsy seller restrictions. There's just so many changes that are happening in our world that when you can make money and you have the opportunity to make money, you should try to make as much as possible and then save as much of that as possible

to give you more options in the future. And so de-risking your life is just about investing in the you that you've yet to become. So it's always going to be easier in life to have more money

and more options than not. When you go back at a very basic level, there's very, very little in our life that we can actually control. And I think that really scares people. I talk about that in the book, how we're kind of stuck between this sort of like level of uncertainty and this level of control. And the most important way to deal with this is to control the things that you can and then just forget about the rest. And so when it comes to

earning money, try to earn as much as you can try to save as much as you can. Don't save to the point where you're unhappy. I wouldn't say that I was unhappy when I was saving 82% of my income, but I could have lived a little bit better and done a few more things, but no opportunity lasts forever. Everything is changing. And I think a lot of people are

underestimate the level of kind of risk and uncertainty in their life. And they just think, oh, I'm going to have this job forever. Oh, I'm always going to be able to save 20% of my income, but we have no idea what the future holds. And so it's really about managing your money in a way that helps you de-risk your life and controlling those variables while you can. And I even think about this in my own life with

can naturally be risky to be an entrepreneur. I'm always thinking about, okay, what's the five-year plan for this business and this company? And how can I get out within the next five years? And so I try to build businesses to sell because I'm worried about really the economic risk of any sort of market opportunity or business. And so important to save

and earn money while you can because you don't know how long that's going to last. And you don't want to get stuck in a place where you have to make really, really drastic decisions in your life, like needing to sell your house. And so that goes back to this idea of the space of freedom. Money factors into that, of course. What is your safety net? What is your level of cash reserves? How much of your investment portfolio is liquid versus liquid?

locked up in something that if the real estate market crashes, you couldn't sell. I'm very much like you. I've used the spreadsheets. I've used the tools for years and I'm a very numbers person.

But when that's all that I thought about, I was so limited in my thinking. And so all of this is really about adding a level of heart to the head, thinking about how you feel before just looking at the spreadsheet or just looking at the numbers. And I think if we do more of that, it naturally improves.

helps us create more freedom and peace in our life because we've gone through the work very much like you have and i've talked with you now for a number of years and know some of the decisions that you've made with your wife around your business and the choices and i think you naturally are doing this work and that's why you're happier for it i think i'm definitely happier for it but there's a bit of a contradiction and i'm not sure what someone listening

might be able to do about it. I'm thinking of the common golden handcuffs situation. You've got this great job, you're getting paid, the harder you work, the more you get promoted, the more you earn, the more bonus. And so on one hand, I hear you saying like, take advantage of that while you have it. And then on the other hand, I hear you saying, well, set up some limits and don't put it all into one place so that you can be happy. How do you think people should process the fact that if they have a high paying job and it's not the life they live,

How long do you take advantage of that? And when do you stop and start to make changes so that you can be happy? I love that you brought this up because isn't this the paradox of life? I think that people, we're always stuck between this duality. We're always stuck between these two choices. Should we work harder? Should we rest? Should we spend more money? Should we save more money? And for everyone listening, I don't know what your life looks like. I don't know who you are, what your dreams are.

What's important is to recognize that there's a balance between these two things and being honest with yourself and intentional is the only way to do this and create peace in your life. There's no way that I can tell someone, hey, you're 25, you need to grind, you need to bear it out for the next five years, or hey, you're grinding it out, but you hate your job, you

you need to quit. This is a delicate balance here where you need to make the decisions for your own life. I just think it's important to set up these questions because within these questions, within this paradox is everything that it means to be alive. We have to balance all of these forces. And so the more intentional that we are, the more time that we give to thinking about this, naturally we learn to do what we know we should do.

And I think that's an important thing. Once again, you can't always think yourself through these answers. You have to trust your intuition. You have to listen and pay attention to how things make you feel. So let's say someone's golden handcuffs making $500,000 a year spending all their money, have nothing saved two kids, private school, feel like they have no choices, no options in a vast majority of cases.

you have options, but those options are going to change your life in some way. And I would argue that for someone like that, they probably need a change because there's massive amounts of risk in their life in that scenario, and they need to de-risk their life in some way. And so that's doing an inventory of where you spend your money. Hey, maybe we're not actually making enough money to send our kids to private school and the public schools where we live aren't that great. So maybe we actually have to move.

And maybe we have to change houses and maybe we have to de-risk our life a little bit, even though we're happy with everything that we're doing in our life. We're on a fast collision path to having nothing in the future. And we're just living on the edge.

And that's a tough conversation to have with someone. It's a tough conversation to have with yourself. And it's an important one to have because if you feel like you should be having that conversation with yourself, then you really should. And the longer that you put off anything, the more difficult that conversation then can become. And yes, there are people in life who are in very difficult circumstances who are stuck and have very few options.

single parents, stable job, two kids, can't imagine doing any of the things that we're talking about here. And that's where it's more difficult to create limits around your life. And you have to work even harder to do it because there's just less time and space and flexibility built into your life.

But there's so many pivots that we can make from going back to school, learning new skills, trying to make money on the side to get some of that entrepreneurial empowerment and save a little bit of extra money. The important thing is that you do what's within your capacity to grow.

Build the life that you want to have and just move towards it, no matter how small those steps are. And I've had people reach out to me. One woman was homeless. She reached out to me. She said, say, I read an article on UNC NBC. I was very inspired. I read your book. I started working at Wendy's. I started saving my money. I signed up to work at a real estate brokerage. I ended up getting a brokerage license. Now I'm a realtor. I just passed $100 million in sales.

And this is within a three-year period. And this is like a really top performing realtor in the Dallas Fort Worth area. And so she's just made all these massive changes in her life just from being inspired by one story. And that's a really extenuating example, but it's important no matter what's going on in your life, just to ask yourself, what does freedom mean to me? How much is enough? How can I create more peace in my life?

Are there some changes that I can make with how I'm spending and making and saving money that can move me closer to a life that I love? And move towards that. And then over time, check in with yourself as you're living your life just to make sure you're moving closer rather than further away.

The latest book is Inner Entrepreneur. And at first I thought, oh, this is a book all about starting companies. And then I realized maybe this is a book all about being in charge of your own life. But that doesn't mean that entrepreneurship isn't a piece. So I'm curious how you think entrepreneurship as a source of income or a career path

fits into the average person's world for happiness and a fulfilling life. So we talked about how there's only so many things in your life that you can actually control and how you make money is one of those things. And so entrepreneurship is really about making money on your own terms and figuring out ways to make money

outside of your full-time job or in addition to your full-time job. So you're not solely reliant on someone else's profit dreams and someone else's life plan. Because whenever you're working for someone else, you're working for someone else. And that's fine. You can reach financial independence

working a regular full-time job. There are some incredible jobs out there, but I think that everyone should test being an entrepreneur. They should try it out. They should see how it makes them feel. They should think through it. They should say, hey, is there a way that I can make a little additional money outside of my job? Is there a way I can move towards entrepreneurship? It's at least worth thinking about. And so the book is really about how to do that. It's about how to think like an entrepreneur. It's about how to

test being an entrepreneur. It's also for entrepreneurs who might feel a little stuck and not understand where this could go. When I started businesses, I had no idea how to build a company to sell, no idea that I could sell a company, had no idea what a holding company was, no idea how to grow a company. And so there's so much in the book that if you're curious about entrepreneurship, if you're making a little money on the side, even if you have a business and you're like, where should I go with this? I wanted to

put everything that I think is important in building businesses into this one book, even so people can read it and say, hey, gosh, that sounds like so much work. I don't want to do that. But hopefully people read it and they're able to say, hey, I'm going to try this out. And I've been doing some freelance consulting on the side. Now I understand why building a consulting business is probably a terrible business. And here's how I can pivot and do something different instead. Or, hey, I've wanted to launch this project

product on Amazon and I've seen all these things about how amazing it is. What is it actually? Can you actually build a product on Amazon today? Or how does digital marketing work or how do you build a brand or tell stories or create a content driven business? Like what are all these things? I feel like I'm a hundred years old in internet years, Chris, because I got my first laptop when I was seven.

And so it's like one of these things too, for younger people or even people who are influencers, it's like, Hey, the opportunity that you have is changing so, so rapidly. So here's how you take advantage of it. And here's what you should be thinking about and what you should be doing. And.

all this other stuff really doesn't matter as much. I know you've talked a lot about AI. There's just so much massive change going on in our world that really is empowering for entrepreneurs. Not that great for full-time employees who are easier to be replaced now as we're starting to see, but incredible for entrepreneurs because you used to need all these teams and all these tools and these expensive SaaS products.

And now you can use just a couple of tools and get massive amounts of scale and leverage. So you can be a designer, a coder, a marketer, a product manager, all with a couple of inexpensive or free AI tools if you're willing to put in the work. So I really wish I was actually starting my entrepreneurial journey now. There's just so much more available.

I know. We wanted to set up a site for all the Hacks members to be able to share their referral links so that anytime I'm talking about a product, sometimes I have a referral link, sometimes I don't. And sometimes I have one and it caps out. US Mobile launched this amazing new unlimited cell phone plan. It's awesome. And I put in my referral link, but you can only refer like five people or something, 10 people. So I was like, I need more people's links. So I wanted to create a site where anyone in

in our membership could go in and choose the program and then share their link. And it would create a URL that would cycle between all the members links. And I'm not even kidding in hours, in a day, less than a day, I built a full site that allowed people to go set this up. I could see analytics. I could create these rotating links. I could put it with my custom domain. I was using Replit. There's a lot of other tools.

It is wild what you can build now. And I remember when I was working in venture capital, people would email me back, Oh, I have an app idea. Where do I find a developer? And you know, there was this window of everyone had ideas, but no one knew how to execute on them. Well, now is the time that you can go explore that. So I think what entrepreneurship looked like 10, 20, 30, 40 years ago felt a lot more like quit your job, go figure it out, maybe even raise some capital. And now I want to encourage people to not

think the way that it's always seemed because entrepreneurship could be spend a few hours building a thing and putting it out there. I did an episode about buying and selling gold, right? Entrepreneurship could be making runs to Costco to buy and resell gold. Go back and listen to an episode I did with Kai who runs this podcast called the daily churn.

He makes thousands of dollars a month finding deals and profiting from them. There are a lot of ways that you can do this entrepreneurial thing that aren't even companies. And I think that's something that's really cool. Because as you said, your job and your income is only as stable as the company that you work for. And without getting into politics, there are people who thought government jobs were the most secure thing in the world that are learning right now that maybe they're not and

And so the push to find some way, not necessarily to replace your entire career, replace your job, but to just start to test the waters and see how you can replace some income, not even replace, complement some income, but doing it while being fully aware of what you really care about and what you need so that you don't end up in a place where you're like, oh, now I have an extra $20,000 a year. Let's go buy this thing without first thinking,

Gosh, would I rather use that $20,000 a year to create a cushion so I can leave my job or to save for the future so that I can be more comfortable later? But honestly, sometimes the answer might be so I can spend more now. My interview with Bill Perkins really changed a lot of things talking about die with zero and made me realize maybe I should be spending some of this extra money now instead of saving it for the future. And so you just don't know that answer until you do the work.

And some of the work we talked about was on the inside, figuring out what you care about, who you want to be. Some of it is how much you have and how much you spend and how much you've saved. But once you do it, you can kind of realize that you're free to make decisions where money isn't the only factor, which it so often is. So I love this. And I like that the message isn't quit your job and go be an entrepreneur and start a company. But

understand what you care about and see if entrepreneurship could be something that's interesting to you. And it could be on the side. It could be once a month. There are a lot of different versions of it.

Yeah, I mean, everyone's already an entrepreneur. You're advocating for your own life. You're creating your own life. And so it's really about just taking advantage of the opportunity, the moment, realizing where entrepreneurship can take you, the trade-offs that you can make, the limits that you can set so you can build a business or make money in a way that you want to, that doesn't stress you out.

and create all these sort of limits in your life. We just live in a remarkable time if you want to make money and have more freedom and the tools available, they're just changing so rapidly. For all the doomsdaying out there, man, it's just such an incredible time to be alive and to be a creator and to be a builder and to be an entrepreneur. It's never been easier in history to reach financial independence and reclaim your time and build a life you love. Rewind 50 years ago, none of this would have been possible, right? You just look at how fast the world is changing and it's like, pick the wave,

Figure out what you want to do. Learn how to ride it. Pay attention. Be intentional. Open yourself to the world. It's just an incredible time to be alive, man. I think so many people just do the thing they've always been doing. And hacking your life is about questioning that.

Right? It's about saying, huh, I thought that freedom was this one thing, but maybe it's something else. Or I thought that I really loved this job and making $500,000. I just had a kid and now I want to really spend more time with my daughter. So I don't want to do this thing. And so paying attention to that and then letting yourself change and moving towards that change and embracing that change.

instead of just sticking to how you've always been and continuing to do the thing that you've always done, just because it's served you well up to this point, it doesn't mean that's how you should continue to live your life. - And you mentioned that you spent a lot of time on your own building, that you say no to traveling to lots of events. How important do you think community is during this whole journey? - Community doesn't have to be big. And I think we often think that community means having a lot of friends, connecting with so many people,

Community is about surrounding yourself with people you love, who make you feel good, who challenge you, who you want to create with, who you want to participate with. Most of my best friends are people that I build things with. And that's how I like to spend my time with them. Whether it's building a company, whether it's creating a band. And so those are the people that I built around my life. There's just really amazing article in the Atlantic this month from Derek Thompson. I think it's called the antisocial century.

all about how everyone's so lonely and all these TikTok trends about people being excited when their friends cancel plans with them. And so we naturally default to being alone in this world. But I talk in the book about how collaboration is so much more powerful than competition. And in fact, I attribute most of my success online to reaching out to some of my competitors, asking them questions, and then just writing me back and inviting me to chat and

and me being able to learn from my competition. And so my creator community, a lot of them historically have been my competitors. And so don't be afraid to reach out to people who are building the thing that you want to be building, who are in careers similar to your careers and learn from them. And then just be very intentional about who you spend your time with. And this is important to spend your time with people who make you feel good, who give you energy. Don't spend time with people who suck all your energy. I know

I know you're a very, very extroverted person. I'm an introverted person, so I naturally hide behind my computer screen and myself. But I'm working much harder to surround myself with people that I love and that I want to be with. So community is essential. We're social beings. We're pack animals. As humans, we need to be around other people to survive and to be happy, right? All that data shows that you live longer when you're surrounded by people that you love.

And so it's important that we find those people and that we build those communities and those networks. And, you know, next time you're sitting at a coffee shop, take off your headphones and say hi to the person next to you. Or next time you're on the train, say hello to the person next to you. Strike up a conversation because, you know,

I think the value of random encounters is underestimated. It's important for us to get outside of our phones and to look up and talk to the people around us. In fact, in Columbus, Ohio, some of the best friends that I've made here are people that I've just literally one person I was standing in line at a record store and he and I have gone to three concerts together just because I was like, hey dude, what are you listening to? And just open yourself to those encounters. Don't shut yourself off to the world. Awesome. Where do you think we should send people who want to go deeper on all this?

If you want to learn more about this, check out my new book, Inner Entrepreneur, A Proven Path to Profit and Peace, where I go very deep on all these topics. And then

If you're interested in my journey to financial independence, you can check out my book, Financial Freedom, A Proven Path to All the Money You'll Ever Need, which is now available officially in 20 languages. So all around the world and in any bookstore or on audio. My books are my work and are my gift to the world. I don't create a whole lot of content otherwise and don't really participate much on social media just because that's a limit that I've set in my life. And if you happen to be in Columbus, Ohio,

check out my brick and mortar bookstore, Clintonville Books. Where you'll find me most mornings if I'm not just meditating in my office or taking my daughter to school is I'm hanging out in my bookstore, pricing rare books, talking to customers. And that's how I typically spend my days now. I love it. This has been great. Grant, thank you so much for coming. I really enjoyed it. I really appreciate it, man. It's great to go deep with you on these topics and love everything that you're doing. And I'm happy to be a friend and be on this journey with you.

Such a great episode. Thank you so much for listening. I really hope you enjoyed it. And if you did, please consider clicking that follow or subscribe button if you haven't already. It really helps us out. And there's no better way to support us than doing that or sharing the show with a friend, colleague or family member or even a random stranger is totally appreciated.

Also, links to everything in this and all other episodes are at allthehacks.com, where you can also find all the deals we find, as well as links to the top credit card bonuses. Finally, if you have any feedback, want to get in touch, or share a question you have for a future Mailbag episode, you can email me at podcast at allthehacks.com. That's it for this week. I'll see you next week.