Dr James, 0s:

I'm looking back on 2024, now that we're coming to its conclusion, and I guess I'm feeling a bit reflective. If you've been on this podcast for a while or listen to my content, you've probably realized that I'm a little bit of a stickler for philosophy and a little bit of a student of that stuff as well, definitely. I mean, there's been things before that I've read and books or seen somewhere or heard people say that have just made me see something in a completely different way. And, yeah, I guess that that stuff really excites me. I find it incredibly useful and I certainly look back on my life and think, man, what if I hadn't have heard that one thing that made me see that particular area in one particular way? Where would it be? What would I be doing? What would what would I even be up to right now, because I can remember all the times it saved my bacon, basically, and yeah, on that note, here are every year is full of learnings, of course, but here are five big learnings, or not even necessarily things that I learned for the first time this year, but maybe just had reiterated to me, or maybe I appreciated them on a whole new level, which gave me a newfound understanding of the value that these words contain, or these sayings contain, and therefore I wanted to share them today, because I like this stuff, you know, and if it helped me, hopefully it can help somebody else out there as well. They're related to the concept of investing, of course. However, we're coming at this more from a philosophical angle today and, like I've said before in previous podcasts, I really feel like to get the most out of the investing side of things, you've got to understand things from a wider perspective, not just a narrow field of finance, but being able to understand, see things with blinkers off a little bit, just know what else is out there. That way, you get the most from everything on the finance and wealth and money creation side of things. Let's jump straight in saying number one that I had rated, rated to me many times this year. There are many levels of yes, but there's only one level of no. So what do I mean by that? The second you say no to something is the second that you cut an opportunity off like it's dead. It's never going anywhere, it's not going to get off the ground at all. Whereas if you say yes to something, that doesn't mean that you have to go all in. It's not a binary thing. I said no, so I'm not going to have to do. I don't have to do it or I'm out or I said yes. Therefore I have to go all in with literally every week an hour. No, it doesn't work like that. You can say yes to something, but you don't have to throw absolutely everything you've got at it. You can say yes and open a door and create an opportunity that you might not otherwise have had, but it's so easy for us to just default to say, nah, I don't have the time, I can't do that for xyz reason, this, that and the other and who knows what other further opportunities we're saying no to just off the back of that one little no. It's like the butterfly effect, like for one example of that. One thing that's really served me over the years is if anybody reaches out to me over Facebook or over LinkedIn or something along those lines and I can see that we have mutual friends and we know each other or seen them around or something like that, or even if I haven't well, I guess sometimes lots of times and they ask to meet and talk, I will always say yes. I will literally always say yes, whereas the default answer is no, and what I found is that through saying that yes, even sometimes we can't collab or there isn't something to do in the near term between me and that person we're just meeting and greeting each other and getting to know each other. Getting to know each other, there's an opportunity that comes further down the line or oftentimes just by talking, we realize that actually there's a synergy on a completely different front that we never expected. That doesn't happen unless we say yes, and I feel like a big reason why people could say yes more or don't say yes as much as they should, is because they feel like they have to commit to something massive by doing that, whereas in reality you're just opening a door, you're just exploring. You're just saying yes to exploring rather than anything specific a lot of the time, and you know what? If you just make it about what you're going to learn, who you're going to meet what, through saying that yes rather than seeking to achieve any specific outcome, I swear more good stuff comes into your life and a lot more opportunities come your way. Two think twice about spending, but once before investing, whereas most people do it the other way around they think once before spending and twice before investing. And that doesn't mean that we go absolutely wacky and just throw every single penny into any old investment. Spending your money and investing your money is when you spend your money, yes, you get something in return, but the money is gone, like it's literally gone. That is the definition of spent it spending. That is the definition of spending your money, whereas if you invest your money, your money might also be gone, depending on the investment, but also at least there's a chance that the money might come back to you. That's literally the definition of investing, and the more skill you have investing, the more able you are to identify opportunities on that front, which again comes through experience, which again comes through doing a little bit of investing in the first place, means that the better and better you get at it, it's like you're building the muscle that you're going to the gym, you're working out, and here's the key thing. I'm not talking about betting the family house on these sorts of investments. There is such a thing as position management, you know, and it's about measured risk. What can I afford to allocate to this that will not sink me, but at least will mean that I have some skin in the game and I really, really, really feel that if everybody flips that mindset around and just thinks to themselves okay, cool, is it an investment or is it truly me spending money? And actually, for some reason in our heads, we're so much more reserved about potentially investing a thousand pounds than we are spending a thousand pounds on a holiday, whereas in reality, if we look at things from a financial perspective and a wealth creation perspective, shouldn't it be completely the other way around? And, like I say, we just got to pour a little bit of cold water in that we don't go all in, do we? But if we look at things through those frames, then I feel like we're way more likely to say yes to opportunities, but of course, d-y-o-r. Not financial advice, everything along those lines. But it's a really interesting little quirk of our psychology that we do do that a lot. Number three compounding is the eighth wonder of the world and, as people out there may or may not know, this is actually a quote from Einstein, I believe originally. I'm going to have to fact check that one, but certainly everybody attributes the quote to Einstein. And you know what? If you've heard this quote before, yeah, maybe it's slightly trite. If you haven't heard this quote before. It's a freaking killer quote. It's nuts. It's really really, really hard for our human brains to just wrap our heads around how powerful compounding is. But whenever you appreciate the fact that something grows exponentially with time, versus linearly, and most of the results come towards the end, well it's just a really cool thing to be able to understand and it gives you the willpower to keep going as well. So, yeah, attributed to Einstein. I'm going to have to look up whether or not that is a true quote from him or not. I mean, I'm sure if you delve the internet into uh enough, you dive into it enough on the internet and get really into that, maybe you'll be able to find out that it's from someone else. I don't know. Anyway, we're completely digressing now. We're talking about the wisdom of the sand more than anything else. So, yeah, the reason why I wanted to highlight this one again is because I keep having it highlighted to me throughout the course of my life and you know, when it comes to compounding, the whole premise is that things grow nearly at the start, maybe even for a flipping long time, like a real long time, and it feels like you're not making that much progress. It feels slow and you're not really getting anywhere. But in reality you are actually getting somewhere, you're making progress. You just don't get compounding results until a little later. So you are actually making progress at all times. It's just you don't see the results of you doing to well, you don't see a great deal off those until a little later in the process. And that's actually what compounding describes. It describes the results rather than the effort. The effort can be the same throughout. In fact, the effort might even drop off towards the end. So it's important to remember that, and it's important to remember that most of the good stuff in life does compound. So really, whenever it comes to the compounding process, we actually know that we're in the right place, if we know that we feel like we're on that linear path at the very start, because that's how a compounding graph looks like. That's exactly what we are aiming for. And you know again not to get too philosophical and deep in all this stuff, but whenever it comes to your business journey or your finance journey or just life in general, it's important to remember that you are still learning. Throughout that whole process, every single learning is pushing you further and further away from the person who didn't start, from the person who never made the effort, from the person who never put themselves in that position in the first place. And you know, if you just stack the learnings enough. It is my affirmation, is my belief that really most things in life can just be boiled down to learnings and knowledge and skills, and if you stack those learnings enough, eventually you get the skill and then you're able to be able to identify opportunities or perform, perform tasks, or perform tasks at such an unbelievable level of aptitude, because you have the skill that you're able to generate a great level of value, and that's fundamentally how all wealth is created. So really, the reframe for me was to understand that actually, if something feels slow, that can mean that I'm on the right path and that it can mean that I'm gaining the skill and, at least for me, I know that actually I might well be in the right place, even though it doesn't necessarily feel like I'm making that much progress in the meantime. The compounding effect really only kicks in after that has occurred. Number four play games you want to win. What do I mean by that? So, if you think about it, we're all going through life and we're all participating in our job, or we're all engaging with people that we meet on a day-to-day basis, or we're participating in in games, so to speak, aren't we? And those can be interactions, those can be the game of life, the game of business, everything along those lines. Now, I think it's quite easy for us to just fall into the trap of potentially engaging in activities that we don't necessarily want the outcome of or we don't necessarily want the outcome from. So, for example, you know that can be the, that can be the, that can be the career that you're. You know that can be the, that can be the, that can be the career that you're in. That can be the business that you're participating in. That can be a relationship that we're in where we just think to, and that romantic or otherwise, where we think to ourselves. Right, even if I do make this work, and even if I do actually make this happen, does the end result actually justify all the effort that I'm putting in right now? Like, regardless of whether I succeed or not in the here and now, do I actually want the end result? And is that what I want? Because whenever you start looking at things through that lens, you begin to be a lot more ruthless with what regards to what you participate in and what you give your energy to and bandwidth to, because, remember, you only really have so much bandwidth, there's only so many hours in a day and you probably spend like eight hours of them sleeping and then, once you deduct those eight hours from the 24 hours, you've got 16 left right, okay. And then how many of those hours are you not doing daily activities that you need to do to sustain yourself, like eating, drinking, going to the gym, everything along those lines and you know, how many actual productive hours do you have where you can function and dedicate towards some sort of task and goal? You really don't have that many. Whenever you tally it up, you probably have like seven, eight, nine at the very most. And that's on a day off, maybe not a day we're in the clinic. So, really, energy, effort, bandwidth, everything is finite. Really, when you look at the wealthiest people in the whole wide world, they don't have any more hours in the week than we do. Elon Musk does not have any more hours in the week than we do. He has seven times 24. So that's what 168 hours. He has exactly the same amount of time as us. If he had eight days in a week or nine days in a week, that would explain everything, or at least partly explain everything, to me, but he doesn't, and that goes for anybody that you can think of. That is extremely rich and famous. What have they got to? What have they decided to do? They've decided to get, or they figured out how to get more out of each and every hour, and that starts with being completely ruthless with what you dedicate your time and mental space and mental energy to. It's easier said than done, of course, and you know a lot of this stuff. It's not stuff that we don't know, it's almost that we just need to be reminded a little bit more than we're told, and then that gives us the energy to be able to be like right, okay, cool, what's in my life? That is something that I'm participating in that I don't actually want the end result of, and I swear that if you sit down and just analyze all those things, do you actually want to win at some of the things that you're participating in? Do you want the end result? And if the answer is no, well, is it worth? It is what you've got to ask yourself, and you know, I think about stuff like this a lot and I think, hey, do you know whether, regardless of everything that I ever do on the face of this earth, regardless of whether it works out or not, I want the end game, I want the end result. I want the really cool thing that inspires people, I want the thing that educates people and helps people whenever it comes to their finance and whenever it comes to their money. And I'm like, right, well, no matter what happens, as long as I can say that that is an end game that I want, that nothing else will ever suffice, then I'll continue to participate. Right, because for me, nothing else will ever do, because the moment I sidestep into something else that, who knows, could well is is an alternative pursuit, then I have to think to myself, right, actually do I want this like? Do I actually want where this is going to end up, regardless of how it looks in the here and now or whether or not it's comfortable in the here and now? Do I want the end result and will it ultimately be fulfilled and happy? And, like I say, for me, that's what just gives me the fuel to keep going continuously. I feel extremely lucky that I started the Dentists Who Invest Facebook group back in 2020 and it was just like all followings there. It's an echo chamber at the start, right, you're just throwing some stuff out there some love, some content, some goodwill and hoping that something comes back and eventually, with a little bit of luck, you cross your fingers, people start to engage and use it, and I feel really lucky that that one panned out and you know now that we're moving more laterally with the Dentistry Invest website, www.dentistswhoinvest.com for anybody who's interested really expanded that into a news, more of a news format, a front page news format for dentists, uk dentists, specifically whenever it comes to finance, where we're gonna shift around the content on the page every single day so that people have a new thing to browse on the page whenever they like, so that people can be updated whenever it comes to finance, money and all the content that we're putting on Dentists Who invest. And I'm like, right, okay, part of me is like, okay, cool, we're doing this and traffic is steady, it's rising, it's rising. Will it ever get to the stage where it's like constantly constant engagement, like the facebook group has got to, which I feel incredibly blessed that anybody uses it for a start, never mind that there's some engagement on there. You know there's posts every single day and I think to myself right, okay, cool, that's all right. Well, I just need to remind myself of the last two lessons that compounding happens after the linear step, at the linear stage, at the beginning, and then the exponential growth occurs whenever word gets out and people start talking to each other. And is this a game I want to win? Hell, yeah, hell yeah. Nothing gets me more excited than that. Nothing gets me more excited than that for the reasons that we said just now. And that brings me on to the fifth saying quote philosophical reflection. I guess that I've been reminded of time and time throughout the course of this year, somewhat linked to the ones that we've just talked about a second ago, and it's a really powerful mantra. Do you know, whenever you've bitten off more than you can chew and you just need some fuel to keep going, mentally, I always say to myself. I always say hey, do you know what this is either going to be one of two things. There's only really two outcomes from what I'm doing right now, because I know that I'm not going to stop, I know that I'm going to keep going. I know that I'm never going to back down and if I know that that's a given, well, really, there's only really two outcomes and it's either going to be one hell of a huge success or it's going to be one hell of a story. When I'm sat around the campfire with the grandkids many years down the line, many decades, decades down the line, and I say, hey, do you know what? We did this and it was massively successful. We did some other stuff. Hey, it didn't really pan out how I would have liked and we had to recalibrate. And we still use those learnings to perpetuate ourselves even further. And ultimately, because I had that viewpoint and that perspective, I was always winning, no matter what, because I was either winning or I was learning. And that's a really really, really cool thing to just keep reminding yourself of wherever you're at, whatever you're up to, whatever your plans are for 2025, whether 2024 lived up to your expectations or not. Yeah, I really like that saying.