Today on Investing for Freedom, Mike Ayala is joined by his wife Kara Ayala to break down what they call Eight to Great.
With all the changes and chaos going on in the world, Mike and Kara felt it necessary to bring their take on how they set their goals and manage the different aspects that play into their success. Mike and Kara dive into the eight areas step by step and explain how each role plays part in their life. They also share some great resources to get you started in the areas that spark interest, a book giveaway opportunity, and a free tool to start measuring your own eight to great!
“Purpose for us is your mission, it comes from your values. What do you really want? Why do you want it? What are you going to do to get it? Measure results.”
HIGHLIGHTS:
- [0:01] Intro
- [1:40] Start of the Podcast
- [4:17] Book Giveaway Opportunity!
- [4:48] Eight to Great
- [6:35] Spiritual
- [14:54] Health and Fitness
- [26:42] Purpose
- [32:20] Personal Wealth
- [38:57] Business and Investments
- [44:27] Environment
- [51:40] Relationships
- [52:05] Learning
- [55:56] Closing Thoughts
- [57:40] Outro
RESOURCES:
Four Peaks Partners | Website
https://www.fourpeakspartners.com/
Free Tool to Measure Your Eight to Great + Free Video Guide
www.wheelofgreatness.com
One Thing BOOK GIVEAWAY
Contact us! [team@investngforfreedom.co]
Put “One Thing” in the header of your email. Three lucky listeners will when a free copy of the book!
FULL TRANSCRIPTION:
Mike Ayala: Thank you for joining me on the investing for freedom podcast, with all the change and chaos that’s going on in the world right now, I wanted to bring Kara back on and just take an episode and share what we call eight to Great. And by the way, stay tuned to the end and we’ll tell you how to get a free tool that we use in a video outlining how to use it that kind of pulls eight to great together. Gives you kind of like a little measuring tool, a little benchmark. So Kara, thanks for joining
us.
Kara Ayala: You’re welcome. Glad to be here.
Mike Ayala: We got so many of you just saying, Hey, bring Kara back. So we’re bringing Kara back.
Kara Ayala: Here I am.
Mike Ayala: One of the things that Kara has always talked about for a successful marriage is that as long as one of you is always honor engaged, you can push through anything. I’ve always loved how you talk about that and say that. You both won’t be strong at the same time. There’s different areas, there’s different seasons in life. And that’s kind of the same thing in the eight areas that we’re going to be talking about today. I don’t expect, and nobody could, I think possibly be a 10 in all eight of these areas, but they’re just eight areas that we’ve kind of focused on. And the tool is going to show you the areas that you’re weakened, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to focus on that area either. Sometimes you might just say, Hey, I’m a three in this area and I’m going to leave it alone because I’m focused on getting a certain area from 7 to 10. So we’re going to talk through a lot of that. Also your score will change in different areas throughout different seasons. So don’t beat yourself up. Don’t beat yourself up as we get through this and you’re going to have low areas in certain times just like what I was saying, Kara talks about marriage. Sometimes one of these going to be stronger than the other. And also sometimes you just accept that certain areas are going to be a three or four and that’s okay, Cause it’s not your priority. So let’s get into what we call eight to great.
Kara Ayala: Yeah. And I like how you were talking about like, don’t expect to be like a 10 in all areas because I mean, you hear it all the time, like how do you find the balance? Like, that’s really what it’s about is finding the balance, but you’re not going to be like equal in all of them, like you’re going to have strong areas. And I love the one thing because they always talk about like focus on one thing because we can get so scattered, but this is just a tool to like, what we think are the most important things in your life. And I feel like it really encompasses most of the important things in your life. So you can always rein in things. Cause sometimes we get going on a path and then we forget about one area that maybe is important to us, but we’ve just been neglecting it. So it just kind of reigns things back in and it’s a good tool to use it to revisit.
Mike Ayala: Yeah. And you brought up the one thing and I want to just point this out before we dive into this. The one thing is such an amazing book and we’ll put a link to the book in the show notes. And in fact, the first three people that send me an email to team@investingforfreedom.com and just put one thing in the subject line, I’ll send you the first three people, a free one thing book. But I love that book and it really just kind of changes your thinking. We had Jeff Woods, the vice president of the one thing come in and do some training with our team. And it was pretty amazing. So thank you for pointing that out. I think it’s a great resource. So let’s just, why don’t you just share what the eight areas of eight to great are.
Kara Ayala: Awesome. Okay. So are we going to go through every one of the first?
Mike Ayala: Let’s just share them all and then come back.
Kara Ayala: Okay. So number one is spiritual. Number two is health and fitness. Number three is purpose. Number four is personal wealth. Number five is business and investments or slash investments. And six is environment seven relationships and eight is learning.
Mike Ayala: One of the reasons why I really, I mean, obviously she’s backed by popular demand because you guys wanted to hear more from her, but one of the reasons why I wanted to bring her on and talk through this, we’re in a challenging time right now, we’re in a challenging environment and there’s never been a more important time, I think to number one, focus on your individual health. And I don’t just mean physical health. I mean all the way around mental, physical, financial, all of these areas, but also your relational health, which we’ll get into. And I think as, whether you’re married, whether you’re single, whether you have a business partner, any of that, it’s so important to just get focused on this stuff and work on you.
Kara Ayala: I agree. And I think, just encompassing all of these areas, like you said, during this time, like there is so much pressure on people and we’re in a time that nobody’s ever experienced before. So it’s a great time to actually visit this and reevaluate what you want in life.
Mike Ayala: And that’s such a great point too. They say history repeats itself, but I was recording a podcast earlier and the reality is, I don’t know that anybody in the world has ever been here. So, there is a lot of people that are dealing with unchartered territory, a lot of new things in life. So it’s extremely important that we keep ourselves pulled together. So let’s dive into the spiritual side. It’s at the top probably cause it might be one of the most important.
Kara Ayala: Yeah. I think finding like a connection to, I think God is like super important. He’s always been major in my life and this can be just a higher power for you too, If you’re not like a, Bible-believing like I am. You can find a higher power too. And I think it’s extremely important to practice a spiritual practice and have something bigger than you to rely on because especially in during times like this, there’s a lot we can’t control and you need somebody to give that to and who better than God to give your cares to and know that he’s directing you in a path.
Mike Ayala: On the spiritual front, I was kind of in a funk. I don’t know, a week or so ago I woke up one day and I was just really tired, and I just wasn’t feeling it. And I spent, I went outside, got out in the sun and spent probably 12 minutes meditating. And as soon as I was done with that, like I just had, like I had a new, like creative desire. I was like energized and just felt so great. So it’s not just like your core beliefs. It’s also just getting inside of your subconscious. There’s that saying that, we only use 12% of our brain or whatever that number is. And I think tapping into your spiritual being helps you expand that creative zone, your subconscious.
Kara Ayala: Yeah, I totally agree. And, speaking of like meditating, I think that that is a practice that everybody should do. We’re in such a busy culture of do, do, do go, go, go that we don’t ever just be. And it’s a perfect place for you to just be, just to be yourself. And that’s where you’re going to receive any answers that you’re needing or if you’re lacking in direction for your life or like energy, like you just said, and being in nature, I think nature is super spiritual. And I think that is actually kind of, some of these like kind of tie into each other. But I think nature actually is very spiritual and being, grounding yourself and being in the sun, those are super important things.
Mike Ayala: I’m just thinking through this about, you’re talking about getting grounded and getting within yourself and into nature, all of that. The spiritual realm and meditation and all that is where we find tapping into that subconscious is where we really find inspiration. And I get asked this so many times, like literally I was communicating with a person on Facebook yesterday and, I was watching this thread and it was talking about homeschooling and a bunch of people was like, I’m not sending my kids back to school. And this particular girl had homeschooled for a while. And she said, does anybody need help? And everybody was just like raising their hand, asking her for help. And I reached out to her, I private messaged her and I said, cause she’s been kind of asking us questions and stuff. And I reached out to her and I said, you should start a course around this. So the reason why I brought that up, a lot of times people are, well, what should I get started? What business should I go into? What should I invest in? We’re asking questions through our conscious thinking, which isn’t a lot of times where creative wisdom comes from. It’s not where our true calling and purpose, we’re going to get into purpose and all of that stuff business. But a lot of times our conscious mind is not where that inspiration comes from. Even these eight to great. I literally got this while meditating. I don’t know if any of you guys have ever gone to a float tank, if you haven’t, it’s a great way to get in a quiet place. It’s dark, you float, you’re in the water. You feel like suspended like you’re in space.
Kara Ayala: No distractions.
Mike Ayala: Yeah. And so, for those of you that are like, I don’t know how to meditate or whatever, there’s apps out there. There’s calm. There’s what, what are some of the apps?
Kara Ayala: Insight. I think it’s insight timer’s a really good one. I’m drawing a blank right now, but there’s tons of apps to just like, get you started and help you to learn the basics. And then once you get in that zone, you’re like hooked because you realize the benefits of being still and letting those downloads come.
Mike Ayala: We’ll put some links in the show notes. I’ll have Kara grab some more of the apps that she’s used, and we’ll put the links down there. So you’ve got some direction. But anyway, back to the float tank, that’s where I came up with eight to great. I was literally meditating, floating in a tank and this download just starts coming to me like, I literally heard eight to great, like these are the eight things to greatness and it started coming to me and it started out in a different format than what we’ve moved it to here. It got downloaded to me and M, so I could remember it cause I’m not very good at remembering anything. So it came to me like in the form of M but then Kara, I kind of revamped it. And so I guess my point is getting into those zones of meditation in that spiritual environment is where you’re going to get the inspiration for amazing things. Our conscious mind can come up with a new business plan, but that’s just the thinking aspect of it. It’s not really supernatural. In fact, the first business we were literally ready to open, had everything ready to go. The only thing we didn’t have was a name and Kara got a download in a dream of what the name was going to be.
Kara Ayala: Yeah. I was actually just going to say, like, if you really think about when you’re like striving for something or you find yourself like grinding at something, like, usually you’re trying to like do what other people are doing or you’re trying to find something. And if you just sit back and wait, like God always like, provides something for you and gives you that download, if you’re willing to like, take that space and hold space, in your daily life to meditate. Because I feel like most of the things that we’ve done that have been really amazing have come from a download like that or something random happened or their serendipities that happen, or, like your float, things like that.
Mike Ayala: Probably the parallel to that, that I think most people have seen just in the natural world is when somebody is looking for love, I’ve watched that so many times where somebody is like, oh, I just, I can’t find love. I’m looking for it. They’re just looking, looking, looking, they’re searching for it. And they’re just not waiting. They’re just not being. Just be who you are, do what you do. And that love will come find you, that right person will find you. But I think so many times we go looking for something like you’re saying, and I’ve done this in the business arena. Like when we sold our business in 2014, I was kind of in a weird spot. I’ve shared this so many times, but it was the best and worst day of my life because I had kind of, I had wrapped my whole purpose up in that. I didn’t realize at that point in time, that business wasn’t my purpose. It may be part of your purpose, but it isn’t your purpose. And so when we sold, I was kind of like in this weird funk and place. And so I had an opportunity to buy back a custom kitchen and bath division that we had had. And I was like, should we do this? And Kara was like, well, I don’t know, whatever you want to do. I don’t think it’s a good idea, but if you want to, I don’t have strong opinions about it. And I’m like, I’m doing this. It was a big mistake. It was just a big mistake and it didn’t turn out horrible. I mean, we took what was a bad scenario and made it right and made it good and got out of it. But it was my conscious mind that was wanting to do that. It was me; it was my desires. I was striving for it. As you said, it wasn’t waiting. I wasn’t in that waiting place. I wasn’t being patient. And there’s a, we’ve got a friend Seth Mosley, you can share it.
Kara Ayala: No, go ahead.
Mike Ayala: We were at a conference and he was speaking, and he said, he made a comment. And he said he was talking about the children of Israel and they wandered literally in the desert for 40 years. In this little area that wasn’t, it’s not really that big of an area, but they were looking, they were searching. They weren’t just finding their place in God and just being, but his statement was we grow weary in the waiting season. We’re not very good at just being and waiting for the right timing. And, whether you believe in God or just the earth or, kismet, whatever, we’re not very good at waiting.
Kara Ayala: Yeah. And, that’s probably the most powerful thing that we can do is really get into that like spiritual side of us. And wait, even though it seems like you’re not doing anything, that’s the absolute best place for you to be, because that’s where the magic happens. Like that’s where, that’s where you get catapulted into huge things because you’ve been preparing and waiting and like actively preparing, not chasing.
Mike Ayala: So good. Well, we could probably sit all day on number one, but yeah, let’s move on. So number two, I’ll let you take this one.
Kara Ayala: Health and fitness. Okay. I think health and fitness is huge. Our bodies, this is like our vessel here. I feel like we’re a spiritual beings, but this is what carries us around. So if you don’t have your health, you don’t have anything. So I think that that’s a very important thing that we need to focus on because I mean, you can have all the money in the world, you can have the best relationships, but if your
health fails you, you don’t have any of that. So that’s why I think that health and fitness is super important for us to focus on.
Mike Ayala: Yeah. We started out by; we’re going to be stronger in certain areas at different points in our life. And I’ve always been, probably I’ve been thinking a lot lately about like what we value. And then also Kara and I were just having this conversation the other day about discipline. So nobody, all these areas require discipline. But some of them are going to be easier for us than others
Kara Ayala: And depending on the person as well.
Mike Ayala: And so when you look at the tool that we’re going to give you the wheel of greatness and you can kind of rank yourself in these different areas, it’ll show you where you’re weak and it’ll show you where you’re strong. But again, that’s not something to get you frustrated. It’s just to show you, I would almost, I would argue that probably 95% of the time when you see your eights or nines or tens, that’s probably something that you don’t have to work that hard on, unless it’s something that you’ve been really focused on in like in your case. I mean, it’s not, Kara is very disciplined when it comes to health and fitness, but it’s not like it just comes easy to you. I think sometimes people think, Oh, well this is easy for her.
Kara Ayala: No. I mean, half the time, I don’t want to go work out or I don’t want to eat good food, but you just have to, I know that I always feel good afterward. And actually, I’m doing a challenge group right now and we’re focusing a lot on what we’re eating and how we’re moving our bodies. But the one thing that we’ve been talking about is we do this because we love ourselves. Like, if you look at it in that point of view, like it’s not, you don’t eat a certain way because you hate your body, or you hate yourself. And I think that that’s where our culture has really gotten it wrong is it comes from like a hateful place of like wanting to change something that you hate about yourself. So I think like if we can shift our perspective of what foods like start paying attention to how your body feels when you eat certain foods, like imagine what it feels like. And then when you eat something good, see how that feels like just really tuning into our bodies is huge as well.
Mike Ayala: I was listening to a podcast the other day, and I can’t remember who it was on there. Very well-known person. I can’t remember. And he was talking about how he had struggled with weight for a long time. And just by shifting, he stopped saying, I’m going to lose weight because he came from lack. And so he had a mindset in his mind about losing things like, that was some deeply ingrained beliefs in him. And so he had to live, once he stopped saying, I’m going to lose this weight it changed the way that he thought about it. And I know that sounds kind of woo, woo. But he started saying, I’m going to gain muscle. I’m going to gain more energy by eating properly. It was just shifting the mentality around it.
Kara Ayala: Yeah. I love that. Because food is so powerful and not only does it affect your energy, like in your physical body, but it affects your energy like around you. Like, I can tell if I’ve ate food that is not the best for me by my mood that I’m in. And sometimes it’ll last like four days, it just lingers on. So, I mean, I think my biggest piece of advice for that is just really pay attention to the foods. And I like how you’re saying, like, not taking the focus off of like, not losing weight, but like what can you add to your body? And we always hear the same, like, you wouldn’t take a really nice car and put crappy fuel in it, but yet in our bodies, we do that all the time. And it’s a huge industry, like health and fitness is like a huge moneymaking industry because everybody wants a quick fix. So that’s also a thing that we need to recognize is that people are making money off of this. So really you just got to get in there and start doing what works for you.
Mike Ayala: Yeah. When you were talking about the car and fuel it just triggered something in my mind in a positive way. I’m a pilot and we used to fly around in our plane. The thing that I struggle with a little bit is health. So I can, my phone is ringing, 19 minutes, Dylan. So I can relate. One of the things that’s easier for me is focusing on business and wealth and that stuff, but I don’t really, I don’t have a sense of urgency. This is what I’ve been really thinking about. I don’t have a sense of urgency when it comes to health. That’s my mindset that I’m working through. And that’s what’s so important about the wheel. It shows you where you’re not focusing, but when you talked about the car and the fuel, like, I wouldn’t worry too much about putting crappy fuel in my car. I mean, I’m not saying you shouldn’t or should, but when I think about flying, that creates a sense of urgency for me. Like, you definitely don’t want to put crappy fuel or the wrong type of fuel in your airplane, cause it’s life or death and is what we eat today, is it life and death? No, not necessarily, but I’ve had to really try to shift my way of thinking around health and wellness to longevity. Because we work and we spend all this time with family and everything we’ve done, even at an investing for freedom is for the long run. I say this all the time, I don’t want to be 65 years old, 75 years old and still having to work, 10 or 15 or 20 hours a day. But I also don’t want to be 65, 75, 85 years old and not be able to enjoy my life and not be able to move.
Kara Ayala: And not be able to come with me on trips.
Mike Ayala: Yeah, totally. Little side note, we were in Italy on a cruise and there was this little, 101-year-old lady I think, and her husband had died like 35 years before that. And this was like her 75th cruise or something. And Kara was like, that’s going to be me.
Kara Ayala: Not that you are going to die, but yeah. Let’s talk about what else is there with health and fitness? Like, it’s not just about what we put in our body, but like maybe even seeking medical, like, being proactive about it, not just going to the doctor when you’re sick, but actually finding out like what’s going on in your blood, what’s going on with your hormones so that you can take the proper vitamins and find out like, what is lacking in your diet as well.
Mike Ayala: That’s such a good point because I think a lot of, our medical system is designed, and Robert Kiyosaki talks about this all the time. It’s not healthcare, no it’s wealth care and it’s sick care really. We wait until there’s major issues. You’ve got heart disease, or you’ve got to have, you got diabetes or something like that. And that’s why healthcare is so expensive. But the reality is, and this is a mindset shift and I know it’s hard, but Kara brought this up. We’ve been seeing naturopaths for a few years now. And it’s been very helpful and it’s not cheap. And a lot of times insurance won’t pay for it. But if you just went and got a blood panel at minimum, probably once a year, but ideally, probably quarterly get your blood tests done and just do a checkup that tells you a lot, just back to your point, and this is where I want to kind of narrow this down, even supplements. So you listen to, by the way, I’m a huge fan of Dave Asprey of Bulletproof. But I remember listening to that like two years ago, two and a half years ago. And I went and just started listening and buying all the supplements that he recommends. And the reality is you don’t need all those supplement.
Kara Ayala: Yeah. And it wasn’t even good for your particular body. Like we’re all so different. So that’s why it’s important to get our own blood work done and not just take whatever, whoever you’re following their vitamins.
Mike Ayala: And on the hormone front too, like Kara said, I mean, a lot of people, I know people that are overweight, and they don’t even eat very much. And they exercise. So there’s probably some kind of hormonal issue or something, some underlying issue going on there. So I don’t want to just like wax over that. Cause I think it’s extremely important what you just brought up that, spend the money to get the tests.
Kara Ayala: Yeah. I think it’s a great investment and a huge part of health. And then also movement. Like we live in a culture today where we are not moving as much too. So back in the day they, labored like their bodies labored. And now we, most of us sit in desks. So it’s really important that we’re moving our bodies, not just working out, but like doing things that are actually good for our bodies. Like walking, walking is such a benefit for our bodies as well.
Mike Ayala: You’re doing a habit course right now.
Kara Ayala: Yeah, just a free challenge.
Mike Ayala: Yeah. I think that’s important. And I watched you a while back do a thing with, I think it was with Amy Laden, just doing your commitments. And this is one thing I really learned from you too. Like, I don’t do anything for a while. And then I’m like, okay, I’m going to go 110%. That’s pretty important to just set, like you said, a lot of times we’re sitting and all that and people wake up one day, three years they haven’t exercised and they’re like, okay, I’m going to go to the gym five days a week. That doesn’t really work.
Kara Ayala: No it doesn’t. And on top of that, like there’s people that probably work their bodies out too much. They’re addicted to working out and it’s not good for their body. So back to like listening to our bodies, like you have to listen to your body. Even I was for a while, just hammering my body working out way too much and not doing enough of like recovery. And you have to pay attention to that too. So more exercise is not always better, but like moving your body is huge.
Mike Ayala: I think this is really important. We’ve got eight areas to get through, but I think this is really important. So I don’t want to rush past it too much. So there’s, I think there’s a lot of people that really want to work on this area. But when we talk about discipline and commitment, I think some of this is knowledge.
Kara Ayala: It is knowledge. And then I think too, with health and fitness, accountability is huge. Finding a workout partner or somebody that you’re going to hold it accountable, or even just telling the world what you’re doing is depending on your personality, if you tell the world you’re going to do this, then you usually do. That’s a good one.
Mike Ayala: There’s a lot of fad diets out there. Book diets, back in the day, we did a bunch of different things. There’s different ways of eating, etc. Just count your calories, whatever. The problem with calories is like you could get 1700 calories and by just eating blizzards.
Kara Ayala: Yeah. In one serving.
Mike Ayala: So just so, for people, there’s a thing called like counting your macros. Like if it fits your macros, that’s probably like a fair place for most people to just kind of look at maybe.
Kara Ayala: Yeah, definitely. I can give you some resources. That would be a good starting place.
Mike Ayala: Yeah. We’ll drop those in the show notes. Yeah, for sure. Cause I think obviously everything comes down to discipline, but as we’ve been doing this, whether it’s investing, whether it’s business back to that girl, she’s been asking me for a while. Like how do I get started? The Bible actually says this, my people perish for a lack of knowledge. And one thing I watched with you, you went out, you became a personal trainer, you went on this like health journey. You research this, you went all-in on this for a lot of years. Not everybody’s going to be willing to put in that level of knowledge and research. So the thing that I want to point out is just like, people are always asking us, how do I get started in the business, how do I get started in real estate. There are people out there and sometimes not for a lot of money, there’s programs out there that you could literally get started. You get an app. And then there’s like a program that’s like $9.99 cents a month. It’ll set your macros for you. I’m not saying that’s the best way to do it. But there are shortcuts out there. It’s not got skinny quick, but shortcuts. Purpose.
Kara Ayala: Purpose.
Mike Ayala: So this is probably one of the things were, we’re probably going to spend our entire life just digging into this and really just searching through it. The purpose for us is your mission. I think it comes from your values. I say this all the time at investing for freedom, but what do you really want? Why do you want it? Then we get into the logistics. What are you going to do to get it, measure results, but what do you really want and why do you want it? What drives you every day? And there are some exercises I think that can really help you hone in your purpose. But like, one of them being, find the five people that know you the closest and just send them an email or a letter and just say, Hey, what are my top 10 strengths? Like you can really start narrowing this down by asking certain questions. But the purpose is probably one of those things that we’re going to spend the rest of our lives, trying to figure out.
Kara Ayala: Yeah. It’s a life journey for sure.
Mike Ayala: What do you have to say about that?
Kara Ayala: Purpose is definitely one that we’re going to have to, you’re going to have to keep digging into your purpose. And I think a lot of times we’re, we have to like go back to remember, remember who you are because sometimes we’re trying to look to other places instead of going to that inward of you have a purpose and you know deep down inside what it is, but most of the time we’re scared to step out into that purpose. We are scared because we’re not ready. Or, but sometimes you just have to start taking those steps into the direction that you know, and I think most people have an idea of what their purpose is,
but I think a lot of people are scared of it. And they’re scared of almost like scared of success if that makes sense. Or scared of being seen. And I think when you start stepping out into your purpose, it can be scary.
Mike Ayala: Yeah. Well, and there’s so many insecurities that we deal with too. Cause a lot of times our purpose is probably bigger than, not a lot of times always our purpose is bigger than what we’re currently doing. And no matter how far you are into your purpose, there’s more for you to do. And so I think a lot of it is insecurity. We have these ideas and you said this earlier, most people have a glimpse or an idea of what their true purpose is. I think they’re just us as people in general, we’re scared to start stepping out into it. We don’t know what it looks like. We don’t even know how to get started half the time. And I think there are some questions that just to kind of throw this out there. I mean, you could start just asking yourself, just sit down with a pen and paper and ask yourself the question like, when am I most happy? What am I doing when I’m most happy? Who am I with? Who am I helping, these kinds of questions? I think when it really comes down to it, I think we think the purpose is like this big business plan, a 25-year thing that we’re going to do. We’re going to build some kind of big Tony Robbins organization. I think purpose a lot of times is really just around helping people.
Kara Ayala: Yeah. Well, it’s showing up as your fullest and best self every day for the people around you. Something that you always say is we don’t know who we are because we’re us. And I think a lot of times we’re not looking at ourselves the way that the other people see us. So if we can start, like you said, in the beginning, ask your closest five friends what they think your strengths are, because you’ll be surprised at some of the things that they tell you and then you’ll start recognizing them in yourself. And you’re like, they’re right. I do have this. So I think that’s a really good starting ground for that.
Mike Ayala: I don’t mean to digress here, but that’s also why going back to spiritual and meditation and health and all that, having yourself in those first two are just so important. Having yourself in a place where you can show up because of the reason, so you stated the comment that I always make, we don’t know how great we are because we’re us. We live in our web of lies and craziness and chaos every single day, the people that are around us that think we’re amazing, they’ve caught that glimpse of our purpose, of our supernatural self. When we live in that conscious place where we’re just thinking and looking at all of our failures and all the things that we’re not accomplishing that we want to be accomplished, that’s all conscious. But when somebody pulls on you and they tap into that subconscious like the power that you have, what is your superpower? That’s another thing to just kind of pencil and ask other people too. Like if you just, what is my superpower? One of the things that I’m really great at is making complex things simple. I talk about that with my team all the time. We were on a call yesterday and something that was very simple in my mind was like going on for like 25 minutes. And I’m like, what’s the real core issue here and just bringing it down to simple. So I think just start journaling and just start writing down those questions, even if you’re not a journal or just write the question, like what am I most happy? What can I do? But again, bringing it back to that spirit, I think it’s so important that we get back into that. Cause that’s when that supernatural being in purpose is going to come out.
Kara Ayala: Well. And I think journaling is really a big part of the spiritual aspect too. So it can just playback into like I was saying earlier, all these are pretty entwined with each other, but yeah, personal wealth.
Mike Ayala: Personal wealth. So, I want to kind of fast forward for a second. We’ve got personal wealth separated from business and investments and I think personal wealth kind of ties back into purpose
and legacy and what you’re really here for, what are you really doing? Because business and investments are like number three to me on the freedom formula. So what do you really want? Why do you want it, that kind of intertwines into your purpose, but what are you going to do to get it, that’s kind of like the personal wealth and then getting over into business and investment. So we separated personal wealth. I think that personal wealth for us just to kind of throw this out there. I heard Robert Kiyosaki say years ago that he measures wealth in the amount of days that you could take off.
Kara Ayala: I love that.
Mike Ayala: Yeah. So it’s not like I’m worth a hundred thousand, I’m worth a million, I’m worth 500 million. I’m not in any way saying that you shouldn’t keep track of your personal wealth and your balance sheet. And by the way, we’ve got what we call the freedom worksheet that we’re working on. That’s going to kind of help you guys with all this too, that you’ll be able to get here shortly. But the personal wealth side of this is like why we do what we do. And it’s so important that you keep track of that because just like Kiyosaki said, he measures wealth in the number of days that he can take off. That’s what really matters to us. I could have the most successful business in the world. It’s like what the Bible says, what does it profit a man to gain the whole world but lose his soul. I’ve thought about that for so many years in the context of business, what does it profit me to gain the whole world and have the biggest business in the world but lose my family or lose my life or not have enjoyed my life. So personal wealth to me is probably one of the most important areas around money.
Kara Ayala: Yeah. I agree. And also, money is a topic that people don’t really want to talk about, and they don’t want to look at their personal wealth. So I think this freedom worksheet is going to be really powerful for people. And if you can just look at it like even health and fitness, like you need money, you need money to stay healthy. If you want, like the best healthcare and preventative health care, like you’re going to need money. So that’s why it intertwines with everything else as well. And what’s going to provide for your why.
Mike Ayala: Yeah, totally. Sorry. I had a thought that…. Oh, well, anything else on personal wealth? Oh, I know what I was thinking.
Yeah. And so, just going back to, you said that a lot of times people don’t want to look at their personal wealth because it’s not always a pretty picture, but the thing that I’ve realized, and I would attribute a lot of our success in business and investing to this, if you’re not completely honest with your mentor or a coach that you hire, they can’t help you. And so I learned early on, if I’m going to spend all this money with coaches and mentors, and I’m not going to be honest with them, I’m only robbing myself. And so when it comes to personal wealth, I think a lot of the reason why people don’t balance their checkbook or you don’t want to look at their bank account or take it a step further, really look at their financial statement is because they know it’s ugly. We don’t want to deal with the negativity. But just like with a coach, if you don’t be honest with yourself and just confront it just by looking at the negative for a minute, it’s going to help you start moving to a better future, a more successful future. And then again, for measuring results, if you don’t know where you’re at today, how do you know that you’ve made headway?
Kara Ayala: Yeah. Or how do you know where you’re going? Like, you can’t even like really have a plan if you don’t know where you’re at today. And then also with that, with your personal finances, I lost it. With your personal finances, like we have to be the master of our finances. A lot of people are ruled by their money instead of us ruling our money. So I feel like when we really look at our personal wealth and we really look at our budget, it’s not a budget of like, I can’t do this. It’s what am I choosing to spend my money on? And what am I spending my money on that really isn’t bringing me anything to. Because I think a lot of times, we’re chasing what everybody else is chasing and really that’s not even bringing us true happiness. So really taking a look at your personal finances shows a lot about how you’re doing life.
Mike Ayala: Yeah. And it is such a, you said this at the beginning, like a lot of people don’t want to talk about money. It’s become such a negative thing, but I’ve realized that some of the people that I know that have the most money, like you wouldn’t even know, they have a lot of money and they’re probably some of the most generous people I’ve ever met. And there’s this idea out there that, wealthy people are greedy that they had to lie cheat and steal to get there. People that don’t have money are greedy. We’re so focused on money that a lot of times people that don’t have it, it’s such a poverty mentality that’s where the greed comes in. And so really focusing on this, we’ve got to break this I guess just resistance to looking at the personal wealth. And so if you’re not in a place where you want to be, that’s probably the first thing you should do is just get the freedom worksheet and really fill it out and just take a look at where you are at.
Kara Ayala: Yeah. And don’t let shame come on you too, because that’s another thing that can happen is you can have that shame on you if you should be here, but you’re not, but you’re not. So there’s no reason to dwell there, like look at what it is and see, make an action plan. That’s the only way you’re going to be able to see where you’re missing it and where you need to go by actually looking at it.
Mike Ayala: It’s such a, we could camp here forever too, but I’ve heard so many people say that they feel like it’s too late. I’m too old. It’s never, it’s never too late. So many successful people that we know didn’t get successful until they were 40, 50, 60. And here’s the other side of this and I’ll just kind of leave it at this. You don’t know what you don’t know. And so if this is the first time, you’re hearing this, or you’ve heard it several times and just didn’t do anything about it, I love that
you bring up the, don’t shame yourself component. Because we’re not ready at certain periods of time, or we’re not ready to make that commitment, be disciplined. Whether it’s health, wealth, fitness, spiritual, whatever it is. Sometimes we have to hear, the Bible says faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word. And so you’ve got to hear this stuff. It’s seasons and times maybe you’re just weren’t ready. So don’t, I agree with Kara, like, don’t shame yourself, but also don’t drag your heels. Like you’re hearing this, if you’re feeling like you need to make some changes, get off the couch or as Barry would say, get off you can, do what you can, can the rest. So business and investments. I mean, I don’t think we need to spend a lot of time on this right now. This is probably a big core part of our message usually anyway, but I heard this said years ago that most people that are wealthy made their money in business and they held it in real estate and investments. Now that doesn’t mean you can’t get wealthy off of real estate to begin with or investments, to begin with, but most people don’t go straight to real estate and investments. So this is an area where we talk about this a lot, but I put a post up a while back that your boss will never pay enough to be his neighbor. If that grinds on you and you don’t like that, then do something about it. And now is probably the best time ever to buy or start a business. And I know a lot of people would challenge that thinking, but we’re surrounded by a lot of people that are doing better during COVID then even before. And I know it’s a frustrating time, but there’s a lot of potential right now to buy the business and make a good investment.
Kara Ayala: Yeah. Or start something that maybe like that girl you were talking about. Like, we all have those gifts inside of us that people are asking for all the time. And sometimes we don’t recognize that could actually be an income source for us. So I think we are looking at like big business. And it’s overwhelming rather than just like maybe offering a class for somebody to take or a course or whatever it is. And then with investments, like maybe not, everybody’s going to be a business owner. Like not everybody is an entrepreneur, but everyone should make an investment.
Mike Ayala: Yup. Absolutely. That’s one thing that we’ve realized like we’re pretty good at running businesses. We’re pretty good at making real estate investments. So we’ve opened that up. That’s one of the reasons why we opened it up to investors is because not everybody, I’ve got some really great friends that come through abundance and other organizations that we’re involved in that are successful doctors, business owners, some of them even, there’s a lot of people that have real estate investments and they invest with us because they’re looking to diversify and they want to get into a different asset class. And they’re really good at managing single-family, but they want to get into the mobile home park space, or, even on the business front, I was talking to a guy the other day, we’re getting ready to launch a new fund and start buying service businesses in the HPAC arena. And I was talking to a guy the other day, he’s a very successful online marketing guy, Facebook ads. And he’s like, I would love to invest in that. He wants to put some money into brick and mortar type business. So, to Kara’s point, you don’t have to be a business owner to be an investor.
Kara Ayala: Yeah. In fact, I think everyone, I think everyone should be an investor. Not everyone should be a business owner, but everybody should be an investor because I believe you should be taking 10% of your money and putting it to something that’s going to keep bringing you those returns. Even if you make $10 an hour, like a dollar of that should go to something. And even if it sits in an account for a little bit, until you can get enough to make it.
Mike Ayala: So we’re in a period of time right now, actually, when we’re talking about, doing online courses and this kind of ties back into purpose, but I just saw yesterday, the Harvard, so we’re in July of 2020 and with the COVID thing and everything else, I just saw that Harvard is going to continue charging the same price, $59,000, I think is the number for tuition, for people to go online, same price. We’re at a period of time, when we have the thing we’ve talked about for a long time, it’s this idea, it’s this mindset that we’ve got in America and the world in general, where you go to school, you get good grades. You go to college, you get a job, you work for that employer for the next 60, 70 years, whatever that number is. And I’m not saying that’s bad if that’s what you want to do but bringing it back to like what Kara was saying with investing in purpose and all of that. When you look at what’s happening right now, and we’ve been talking about this, not so much on the podcast, but we’ve been talking about this for 10 years. Like the education system has to change. The way we train people has to change. The idea of spending coming out of school, $40,000, $50,000, $100,000 in debt and making less money than somebody potentially that didn’t go to school that all has to change. And it’s changing quickly right now. So when we talk about purpose and bringing it back to something that Kara said that I’d want to make sure we don’t just kind of wax over, YouTube university, just courses I’ve made more money in my life that had nothing to do with college from coaches, courses, researching on YouTube, learning from peers, I’ve made more money from that type of education than I’ve ever made from college. I didn’t go to college, but so right now, when it comes back to purpose, that’s the place to probably start. You’ve probably got a gift that you can use that people need. And it’s going to shift to that. I mean, it already has. So many people are learning how to do anything on YouTube, and you can make money creating a course on YouTube, on whatever you’re good at. So that’s a potential right there for business that I think we’ve got to, I don’t think there’s ever been a better time to share your knowledge and gift and experience, and it doesn’t cost anything hardly to get up and going. In fact, our video and content guy is launching a course on how to get your podcast and all that up and going. So stay tuned. Environment.
Kara Ayala: Oh, I love this one so much. Your environment is who you surround yourself with. I mean, this is kind of encompasses a lot, who you surround yourself with, where you live, like what city you live in, what house you live in, where you spend your time at.
Mike Ayala: It is so important. I read a book by Benjamin Hardy called willpower doesn’t work awhile back. And I didn’t realize how important environment is to me. I never really thought it was that important. You’ve always known, I think. Environment and, clean house and just the way, yeah, your space. But I don’t think I ever really paid attention, but since I read that book and I just look around at my office and different areas that I want to work in, our environment is so important. Well, that’s where you draw your inspiration from. So if where you’re working is cluttered and feels chaotic, you’re not going to feel very inspired. If you think about times that you’ve been inspired, I guarantee that it’s in a space that you’re just, you look around and it’s amazing. Like you don’t have to have a big house, but anybody can make their home like a nice space and keep it clean. I’m not saying you have to have a spotless house either, but just pay attention to that and notice how it affects your energy as well. Or like if you feel inspired and then also like even trips and stuff, like there’s been times like we actually, once a year, when we do our goals, we go somewhere else. Why do we do that? To get into a different environment and in a place that is inspiring to us, that makes us dream bigger, that makes us think bigger because when we’re stuck in our everyday lives more looking around, we just get used to it and it doesn’t look, it doesn’t inspire us as much. But if you get yourself out into other spaces, like it can inspire you and make you think a little bigger.
Mike Ayala: I remember we used to go to salt Lake a lot and we’d stay at grand America. I mean, there’s different places we would stay, but it doesn’t have to be super expensive hotel either. I mean, you can find a coffee shop that inspires you and if there’s a place that you need to go, your house isn’t quiet because you live with three roommates or you got young kids or whatever. You could literally go to a coffee shop and put headphones on and do an hour of work in that place. So I think environment is important.
Kara Ayala: Yeah, and I love that we can control our environment. Even in willpower doesn’t work like, he shows you how to like set up systems in your house and stuff too. Like even in your pantry, if there are foods going back to health that you don’t really want to have , like put them at a different shelf. Like there are so many things you can do that you can control with your environment that affect every aspect of your life. And then also let’s talk about the environment with the people that we hang out with or the rooms you put yourself in.
Mike Ayala: That’s so important. Jim Rhone’s quote, you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with. That’s important whether it’s from a business perspective, the people you hang out with on the weekend, whatever attitude they have, you’re going to fall into that same attitude. We can see it with our kids. You can really tell when kids are hanging out with different types of kids, like their attitude changes. And it’s the same with us. We just don’t know see it.
Kara Ayala: Yeah. I love when parents are, like, they tell their kids that like, you shouldn’t be hanging out with them cause you’re going to start acting like them. But yet when we become adults, we think that that just goes away. But it’s still true today. If most of your friends are spending their time doing things that are useless, you’re probably going to do that too. Spending all their time, drinking and partying. You’re probably going to do that too. If your friends are overweight, you’re probably going to be overweight. Like your friends and the people that you surround yourself with, your mentors, and your coaches that you surround yourself with, you’re going to be whatever you surround yourself with. So choose wisely.
Mike Ayala: Yeah, totally. We are not saying that if you’ve got a friend that you’ve had since college or whatever, and you get together once a year, that’s fine. But the environment, these people that you’re with on a regular consistent, it could be a business partner. It could be a toxic marriage. People grow apart. Like people grow different directions. I mean, just imagine if, I don’t know, you went super healthy and I’m an alcoholic. You quit drinking completely, or you need to quit drinking completely. And I’m an alcoholic. That’s not going to work for that long.
Kara Ayala: Yeah. It’s going to be tough.
Mike Ayala: Although 30 days we could get through this. Cause she’s not drinking for 30 days and I didn’t commit to that. Wait for the train. It’s okay. I don’t think we’re going to probably.
Kara Ayala: I guess relationships kind of, I kind of skipped through it. With the environment. Speaking of now we’re onto relationships.
Mike Ayala: Yeah. We can kind of come back in with that. It happened with me and everything that could go wrong with her, went wrong. I started to, because I couldn’t hear myself. And then after a while I realized, no, I couldn’t hear myself cause it was plugged into zoom because we were on a zoom call. And what I finally realized was it was because this was down. That’s the problem with, I mean, I just…
Kara Ayala: Just go right into relationships. Speaking of….
Mike Ayala: So we’re kind of already talking about this, but the seventh part of this is relationships and we kind of went from environment into relationships and who we surround ourselves with. But relationships are probably, as people, obviously we wouldn’t have anything if we didn’t have relationships. So whether it’s business, whether it’s personal, whether it’s family, any of that, it’s probably the most important, one of them. I mean, they’re all important, but it’s probably one of the most important areas to make sure that we’re cultivating that, and it does take work.
Kara Ayala: It does take work. And I think we sometimes put our relationships on the back burner and we’re focusing on building our wealth or we’re focusing on different aspects of our life. And then we kind of forget about the relationships. So I think that coming back to the relationships and re-examining it and making slots in your calendar for those relationships, sometimes it’s not, it seems like it’s silly to put like in your calendar call mom on Sunday, but if you don’t put it in there, it might not happen for like four weeks. So if it’s in your calendar, I like doing that because then I know that I’m going to talk to my mom at least once a week.
Mike Ayala: And that kind of goes back to the one thing that we were talking about earlier. I mean, if you truly want to cultivate a relationship, in the business world, we know this cause we have CRMs. Because we know we can’t keep track of a 1000 or 2000 or 5,000 clients. So we have to create a process and a timeline and Hey, I want to follow up with this person every three months. But when it comes to our personal relationships, we don’t really look at it that way. We’re just like, Oh, well I won’t forget them. But the reality is we get busy in life and everything. So tying back to purpose too, I would argue that none of our purposes exist without relationships and people.
Kara Ayala: Agreed.
Mike Ayala: Like if you didn’t have relationships, then what would your purpose be to, I don’t know, live on a mountain.
Kara Ayala: Yeah. You couldn’t have a business either.
Mike Ayala: Totally. Cultivating relationships, I’m part of abundance and one of the things in that authentic relationships is one of the pillars and then the genuine contribution is another. And when I think about purpose, just that genuine contribution pillar, you can’t really truly have a genuine contribution to anyone or without relationships. So important. Learning, so number eight is learning. This just comes back to education and we talk about this a lot. I think that if there’s one thing that I can go backward and benchmark any of my success to whether it’s in relationships, whether it’s in business, whether it’s investing, it all comes back to learning. Just even real estate, I tell this story a lot, but we were at [54:28 inaudible], I found the real estate investors college from Dolf De Roos on the sale table. Listening to that 16 series CD or 16 CD series, I probably listened to that thing 15, 20 times. People are like, Oh, they think you’re an overnight success. Well, that’s been 20 years of learning and education. Every business we’ve been successful in, we’ve hired a coach.
Kara Ayala: Yeah, let’s talk about different ways we can learn like so that you can read books. It doesn’t cost very much money to get a book. YouTube, you talked about YouTube earlier, that’s free. There are so many resources that are just completely free. So there’s no excuse that you can’t learn something right now in this day and age like you used to have to go to college to learn a lot of things, but now you can literally go on YouTube and find out anything. We have every resource available to us with the internet, podcasts. What else?
Mike Ayala: Yeah, there’s a lot of things that people overlook, but I’m sure whether you’re a business owner or you work for a business owner, they’re probably a member of a local association or organization, a chamber of commerce. I sat on the board of a chamber of commerce for probably eight years. And we put a lot of time and energy into bringing in people to speak to our business owners and free lunch and learns like people would sponsor lunches. Like you could literally go to your boss and ask them, Hey, are we a member of the chamber of commerce? And then just ask the chamber what courses they have coming up? Who’s speaking, when, what can I go to? There are so many ways to learn. People just don’t get creative. They don’t want to put in the work and the time.
Kara Ayala: Yeah. And some people might just not even know that that’s available. Like the chamber of commerce thing. That might just be something that people don’t know. So I think to get on the internet and like Googling, like Google’s huge, you can Google anything and find a lot of resources. Another thing that we have utilized that I think has really helped us in our growth is masterminds and coaches.
Mike Ayala: And you don’t have to spend a ton of money. I mean, just start where you’re at, there are different levels of coaching. And so there’s, entry-level coaching that, you could get for probably a hundred dollars a month, maybe even less, and then it progresses. Some of the masterminds that we’ve been involved in are way more than that. There’s been years literally where we spent a hundred grand on coaches. It’s all relative though. It’s like, where do you want to go? Where do you want to get, how do you want to get to the next level? And you hire that level of coach.
Kara Ayala: Yeah. I don’t know who I think it was, we were at a conference of Kyle Wilson’s. Do you remember who was speaking, the main speaker? Brian Tracy. He talks about like always investing 10% of your income back into your learning and to your personal growth. And that has stuck with me. Like I feel like we had always kind of put back into our personal growth, but when I heard that, I was like yeah, that makes total sense. Why would you not continue to grow and continue to invest in yourself? And that, even in my group that I’m doing right now, there’s three areas that we are working on with money, but that’s one of them is take 10% of your money and work on yourself. Do something that’s going to better you. Take a course, join a mastermind. You can even get like advances in your career, like take a class on whatever your career is.
Mike Ayala: Well, and that kind of comes, I think this is important. It’s not only investing in your learning. So we put aside 10% for learning. There’s a couple of other areas that I think are important to say like, where should people buckets?
Kara Ayala: Oh, well there’s lots of buckets. But I like in my challenge right now, the three buckets are you can do 10% to giving to yourself, 10% for an investment that’s going to bring you cashflow or 10% to giving.
Mike Ayala: And I like that. I think if you just, and I know what people are going to say, well, I’m not even making ends meet right now. I couldn’t do this. But if you set aside 10% every month for charity and 10% for learning and education and 10% for investment, your life would be completely different in 12 months. And most people are going to say, and I’m going to circle back to, just focus and intention. And we talked about this earlier with money. It’s your money story. It’s how you talk about it. I talk about the reticular activator a lot. And like Dan Sullivan always says the eyes only see, and the ears only hear what the brain is looking for. So when you hear me make that statement, 10% to charity, 10% to learning and 10% to business and investment, I can’t do that. I’m not making enough money to do that right now. Well, you’ll never make enough money to do that if you don’t change the way of thinking. And so if we’re focused on the fact that we don’t have the money and we can’t set aside 30% of our income, and maybe you don’t want to even start there. Maybe you start with a charity or maybe you start with the learning aspect. If I’m not here to debate which one you should start with. But if you want to change your situation, you’ve got to start learning. You’ve got to change your way of thinking. So if nothing else, start investing 10% in your learning in your own
education, and you’ll start making more money, which you can give to charity and you could invest in investments in business. So at minimum change your way of thinking, change your mindset and start to change your way of thinking. That’s the most important part, because if you’re automatically saying I can’t invest 10% in myself, you will never be successful.
Kara Ayala: Yeah, you have to pay yourself first. We pay everybody else. You pay your electric bill; you pay your groceries. You pay for clothes; you pay for food. Like you pay for all these things, but what do you pay for yourself? And I know that those things they provide for you, but what are you giving back to yourself that can come back to you. Back to giving really quick, I think that giving 10% is a powerful way to change your mindset around money. Because when you see at the end of the month that you have say, you made $300 and you have $30 and you can go and bless somebody, or you have $300 and you can go and bless somebody with that. It shows you that the more money you have, the more you can do. So it takes away that negative aspect of how money can sometimes be portrayed as evil or greedy. It shows you that the more money you make, the more of a contribution you can make.
Mike Ayala: Such a good point. I’ve always looked at money as, money is an energy, right? You’ve talked about this, but I’ve always looked at money. Like I kind of equate it, It’s an analogy in my mind, it’s a pond. You look at a mountain like a mountain Lake, and it’s always crystal clear and fresh. You could almost drink it, but it’s because it has a lot of fresh water coming in and a lot of fresh water going out. But you look at these muddy, mucky, little ponds, like cow ponds, animal drinking ponds in the middle of nowhere, a little watering holes and they’re just nasty, because they’ve got no water going out. It’s stagnant and it’s the same with money and anything in life, really. But you have to make room for more to come in. And if you’re not, if you’re just holding onto all that money and you’ve got that mindset like you’re talking about, you’re going to stay in the same place.
Kara Ayala: Yeah. So if you’re going to start anywhere, they should probably start investing in themselves and learning, what we’re talking about right now.
Mike Ayala: I would completely agree. Well, that’s our eight to great. So those are the eight areas that we focus on. Obviously, we could talk about these for hours and hours and hours. We do have a free tool that we’ll give you guys. If you go to www.wheelofgreatness.com we’ll send you a free tool that we use to just kind of measure where we’re at in every area. And you’ll get a quick little video on how we use it. But in the meantime, anything else you want to say about eight to great?
Kara Ayala: No, but this is the tool that we use to set all of our goals for the year. So it’s a really powerful tool.
Mike Ayala: Yeah. Well hopefully you enjoyed it and use these eight areas to become great.
