Accountability creates is integrity. – AUDIO NSFW
Do you have trusted advisors? Do you have trusted advisors in life? Do you? I want to talk about this. I want to talk about this idea of trusted advisors and accountability. Life accountability—a great example of where we should all be absolutely accountable.
This question, this idea came up because someone merely asked me a question and I get lots of them, I get a lot of inbound. A lot of them are nonsense, but some of them are worth thinking about. This particular individual asked me a simple question. He asked, how do you achieve financial freedom? How do you achieve financial freedom? It was easy for me to respond in this DM. It was so easy it was not hard at all. I just wrote one word “accountability”. Account ability.
We ended up chatting a little bit in DM and that’s kind of what I love about these secure chat mechanisms that we have is that we can talk about anything frequently especially in this platform YEN.io. But what’s so great is that we ended up chatting and digging a little bit deeper. I just said accountability, that’s how you get it. That’s how you get financial freedom. I wanted to hone in on this word freedom.
I said that’s the goal. Guys, don’t miss anything here. We’re gonna be talking about accountability. We’re gonna be talking about financial accountability, life accountability. The goal here should be very clear. Accountability is freedom. Accountability is freedom.
This individual had a moment in our chat together and he said something to the effect of hey, you look like you act like you’re free, like you’re financially free, or something to this effect of some of sorts. I said yeah, I am free. I wrote the words, I said, “I have zero chains.”
I’ve talked about this in podcast before about being financially free, but I will tell you guys. It will be a day that you will never forget. It will be a day that will be etched in your memory for all eternity. The day in which you become financially free, zero bondage, no chains. You wake up and you owe nobody nothing.
Now, I’ve talked about this before and there’s a certain type of individual that enjoys leveraging debt, but that’s not me. I like having zero chains. So my answer to him was simply, to be financially free, you need accountability. You need accountability. You see, we do better. Do we not? It’s just the nature of the beast. We do better when people are watching. We do better when other people are watching. It’s just part of the human psyche. It’s part of the human experience. It’s part of the human dynamic. It’s just what happens.
When other people are watching, we do better. We can take this example from sports. It is very, very true. It’s actually been studied that athletes do get good juju from the home team. There’s a lot of good energy. It’s true! We do better when people are watching, when the pressure is on, when we have something at stake. I’ll tell you guys, being free in life, being free in life is worth fighting for.
You see, most of us, when it comes to our lives, our lives are blurry to most people out there. Is it not? And even for me, even for an individual like me who’s online, who talks, who gives out of my heart and my soul and my gut, even for me, most of your life to the outside world, are blurry. We have different faces. We have different behaviors. We have different ways of acting in different contexts. These are all part of our humaneness. These are all part of our personality, the broad spectrum of our personality.
I’ll take a side note here for a second. One thing that I really dislike about personality tests is that personality, from my understanding, my limited scientific brain here, my limited understanding, the human spectrum of personality is so much broader than a ISTJ-INTP or whatever personality test you want to choose. I don’t like those things because they box you in. They box you into a pre-set framework, a preset way of behaving with that individual or way that you feel like other people should behave with you. Bunch of BS guys.
We are many people and one person at the same time. We behave differently right but the details of our lives are blurry to most people. Do you have trusted advisors in life? Do you have people that can see through the haze and the blur? Do you have people in your life who know your heart and soul, who understand your real motives? The good and the bad of why you do what you do?
Do you have trusted advisors that support you in the days of trial when you are going through your hardest moments in life? They’re also there to celebrate your wins and affirm the progress that you’ve been making because they know you. They can read between the lines. They know your tendencies to smoke a little bit too much or to drink a little bit too much or to get angry from time to time or to lose your patience. They know. They can call the bullshit too.
At the end of the day, the most important aspect of a trusted advisor in life is do they keep you accountable? Don’t miss this, guys. Do they keep you accountable to your values? Now, obviously, we have spent time and you can go back and look another podcast for the value of having a mentor and a lot of these aspects and these particular traits should certainly be in line with a great mentor, but mentors often aren’t maybe not trusted advisors or people that are gonna be with you or can meet with you often.
Mentors generally have a goal in mind with, you have a particular strategy. You have a particular future goal that you want to achieve and these individuals have 20 years out from you. They have experience. They know the game. They can help accelerate your growth. The purpose of mentors in my mind is that mentors should align with a goal in that you have in life.
You want to be a better husband? Find a great mentor who’s a great husband. You want to you know succeed in X, Y, & Z industry? Find a great mentor in X, Y, & Z industry. Trusted advisors, trusted friends, people who are close to you that can affirm your progress and success who are willing to celebrate your wins, I can’t tell you guys, it’s crazy for me to conceive of this idea that I have had colleague friends, what I considered friends in my past who literally did not celebrate the wins that I had. I find it crazy that someone like me, a pretty nice guy, I like to have fun, I’m a pretty positive dude, maybe that’s it. I don’t know. I don’t know the real reason, but even I have had people that I thought were friends that were not willing to celebrate with me.
These aren’t trusted advisers. You need someone who is supporting you on the good and the bad, who can celebrate your wins, who understands, who can read the bullshit and call you out. A trusted advisor at the end of the day holds you accountable to the values that you said that you value or the values you portray in your life. Are you having moments that are going outside those guys? Are you bumping up against decisions that challenge your principles, challenge your values? Trusted advisors can help you stay the course.
I remember an analogy, I know why it’s coming to me right now, but I remember analogy that someone asked me, I think it was in like a coaching session at a conference or something like that. The individual said something to the effect of do you know why rivers are so crooked? Do you know why the rivers are so crooked? I vaguely remember kind of thinking to myself why the hell the rivers crooked? Then he gave me the answer. It was real easy. He said the reason why rivers and streams and these types of things are crooked is because they take the path of least resistance. They take the path of least resistance.
I remember he went on to say that you have to create water going straight. You have to force it to your will. You have to create frameworks, guardrails in place, so that you can stay on the straight and narrow. When he explained that to me, guys, I had a deeper, deeper appreciation and deeper understanding of the saying “thin and narrow”, the straight and narrow.
I have a deeper appreciation because to stay on the straight and narrow, you have to force your will upon your emotions. You have to force your will upon reaction. You have to force your body to be disciplined when it doesn’t want to be disciplined. I’ll tell you, it’s so much easier to take the path of least resistance and have no accountability in life.
Now, I am no fool. I have no assumptions here guys to those you guys listening out on Google podcasts or iTunes, I have no idea and I have no assumption that any of you guys have deep mentors or deep trusted advisors because these are not commonplace things. If I’m intellectually honest and I’m just honest with you guys here, part of my success clearly is because I had mentors who are in my corner and I have trusted advisors who are willing to invest in me and help me stay on the straight and narrow.
No shit guys. No shit. True story all the way. So maybe that in and of itself is just enough evidence that maybe some of you guys out there listening should find a trusted advisor, find mentors who could help you grow and fucking crush it.
This idea of life accountability, I have no illusions, guys, that many of the listeners out there may be yourself included; you don’t have an accountability individual, someone that can keep you on the straight and narrow. But I tell you where you do need accountability. We all need ***financial accountability. All of us, none of us are immune to that to the world of money.
What I always found so fascinating about school and edumacation is that edumacation in school doesn’t teach you jack shit about financial accountability, which frankly is one of the most important things to learn about so that you can survive. It’s fascinating how many people I meet who are literally 40 and older who still don’t have a handle on their finances. It’s like how the hell have you been able to survive thrashing in life literally, thrashing in life through finances year after year after year. That to me is crazy that you would want to live a life thrashing through finances for that long. Get yourself a course, bro!
Let’s talk about this. Financial accountability is more than just checks and balances. It’s someone who is willing excuse me someone who knows your financial spending habits, who knows the true dollars and cents of your money in the way that you manage your money. What did I say in the beginning? We all do better when people are watching. We all do better when people are watching. Who audits you?
I’ll tell you who audits me. My wife audits me. My financial accountant audits me. Our legal team in my company audits me. Our investors audit me. I have so many eyes on the monies, guys. We actually, as an organization in our company, pride ourselves in our fiscal responsibility. We have top-shelf fiscal responsibility because we know we have enough collective experience between all of our founders and all of our leadership team, we have enough experience to know how financial mismanagement can ruin a company like that so fast. Do you have someone who audits you? Do you manage your money honestly?
These are questions for you and I to consider to ourselves but here’s an asterisk I wrote down and I paused on this particular idea for a moment here and the reason is because it might sound a little bit more “opinionated” than usual. But I’m really, really passionate about this in my view on this particular subject. It’s gonna fly in the face of many other people’s experiences and people will disagree with me on this and that’s okay. You can leave your comments below and let me know or you can leave comments in our behind-the-scenes chat and let me know if you disagree with this but I’m gonna jump into it. I did spend some time thinking about it because I know that my opinion it might not be mainstream here.
Here we go. Let’s jump right in. When it comes to financial accountability which we all need, get over yourself, you need someone watching, you need someone helping you out. Seriously, get a budget and show it to somebody. Show it to somebody. They might be able to show you tips and tricks. I mean, we can go on and on that line, but let’s get into it guys.
If you are married, financial ignorance is not an option. Boom! That’s it. If you are married—this is Peter Saddington’s opinion here guys so take it with a grain of salt—financial ignorant is not an option. You guys all know that one of the biggest reasons why people get divorced is money issues. Those money issues comes with a hydra head of reasons—financial mismanagement, financial secrecy, separate bank accounts.
I do not understand I really don’t understand why married couples have their own little separate bank account slush funds. I just never understood this. I don’t know if you guys see it the same way I do, but I’m passionate about this. I believe that successful marriages are built on transparency. But when you have a secret slush fund and I know couples that have this. They’ve talked about it and somehow they’re able to deal with this tension. Maybe I’m a weak-minded individual, maybe I just can’t.
When you have secret unknown balance slush funds, you have just set a precedent in your marriage that it is okay to be not fully transparent. If you and your spouse are cool with one area of life where you’re not allowed to touch, you’re not allowed to see, you’re not allowed to go, don’t pass, don’t collect $200, if you’re okay with that, God bless you, I hope that you last a long time. I hope you guys have a wonderful manage and I hope it’s not a big deal. For me guys, that would slay me. That would slay me.
I don’t think it’s a controlling issue. It’s just hey we’re in this together, ride or fucking die! There are gonna be times in this family missus, there’s gonna be times in this family mister, when we have to bring everything that we got to bear. We have to bring everything that we have to bear to get through this, to do this, to accomplish this. We need all hands on deck. We want to survive this? We want to get this? We have a family goal that we want to achieve, girl, boy, we need to bring it all the bear. We need all hands on deck. We need to make sure that all energies are being focused towards getting through this or making it to the skull or getting this particular thing done whatever it is as a full family.
You see, in my opinion and I wrote this down, you can either complain about having too much financial accountability or you can deal with the pain of mismanagement. Let me say that again. That was good. Either complain about too much financial accountability or deal with the pain of mismanagement. You know what, I hate mismanagement. I’d rather there be too much complaining, that there’s too much oversight, you’re not allowed to spend here.
It’s not even like that at my family. We’ve grown to a point of understanding. We know there’s opportunities to spend. We know that there’s opportunities to pull back. We know that there’s a family goal that we’ve discussed as a family that we need to move towards. There needs to be allocation of funds to this particular idea, this particular project, this particular endeavor, this new season in life. We’re a family—ride or die.
I’m gonna tell you guys, if you’re in a marriage or let’s just broaden it out, if you have financial accountability and you implement financial processes and policies, you shall be free. You shall be free. I’ll go even farther, when you can be financially accountable in the small things—and we don’t miss this guys, this has been my experience 100%—then you will be given larger opportunities with money.
I know this to be true. It’s not hard to conjure up stories that I got. It would be easy for me. I’ll give you one right now. If I can manage a million dollars of investor’s money and I do a good job, the next time, they can give me more. We’re already yet the more stage guys in my investment experience in my investment world. It’s great to be able to manage more money. It’s great to be able to utilize other people’s funds to create awesome projects and awesome ideas and experiment on other people’s dime because they believe not in just the vision of the project, they believe in the man because the man is trustworthy with money, the man is trustworthy with his accountability. What that accountability creates is integrity. It creates integrity that can be shown and revealed so that more can be given. Trust me when I say it guys. Please don’t miss this. When you are financially accountable and have integrity in your finances, you will be blessed with more money. You will be.
Let me end it off with this. Having a trusted adviser someone who can keep you accountable in life is fantastic. I highly recommend it. Where you need it, where I need it is financial accountability. Last thing, have you ever met someone who’s exceedingly wealthy, who’s terrible with managing money?
This is Peter. I hope you guys appreciated this message, guys I want the best for you guys. I want you to be free and want you to be free and not chained by finances or life. Share this around, guys. Let some people know, subscribe, smash the like button and I’ll see you guys on the behind-the-scenes on the YEN.io, Things You Didn’t Learn In School podcast