Category: Personal Development

I had my first job back when I was 12 years old. And ever since I started making money from that first job, my parents used to always tell me “make sure you save your money!” We’re all told that growing up, but it wasn’t until later in my early 30s did I really figure out how to manage and save my money. Do you have a system for managing and saving money? Here’s mine…

When we’re growing our careers, it’s normal to keep count based on how much money we’re making. I learned in my 20s that just increasing your income isn’t enough… it’s also important to have a system for saving and investing. But it wasn’t until my 30s, did I really figure out the system that completely changed how I manage my money.

Before I discovered this system, I thought saving money was just about discipline and spending less.

Before I discovered this system, I thought saving money meant just doing a 401k and having a savings account.

Before I discovered this system, I thought the way to building wealth was to simply work on earning MORE.

Turns out none of those things were it. I kept making more and more, but still didn’t feel like I was scoring more.

To me, I want to live a PROACTIVE life and I want to live a life where I can do whatever I want. And so financial freedom has always been important to me.

And so when just pure discipline wasn’t working for me, I constantly looked for ways to crack this code to building wealth.

It FINALLY clicked for ME when a friend introduced me to the idea of having MULTIPLE bank accounts (instead of just a checking and savings)

You see… all through my 20s, I would have just ONE bank account. All the money would go in there, I’d move some to savings, and then I’d spend out of my checking.

But the moment when my friend introduced me to the idea of having MULTIPLE accounts, was when everything changed for me.

Instead of just earning money, and spending, I set up multiple accounts so that my money flowed systematically.

Money would come into this main account. Right after money came in, I’d automatically move a portion (based on my budget) to:

• Savings
• …to Investments
• …to Travel (because it was important to me)
• …and then to my monthly spending account
• …and then finally, I’d pay my bills AFTER I paid myself

This meant that instead of just spending and hoping for the best, I limited myself to these specific accounts where my money got allocated and locked in, I paid myself first in the buckets that mattered to me, and most importantly, I made strides toward wealth building goals that were important to me such as investing, travel and saving for emergencies.

If you want to live a proactive life where you have control over your time… Building financial independence is extremely important… How many bank accounts do you have? How are you managing your money? What’re you doing to be more proactive in your life?

 

 

 

 

With robots, machine learning, AI, and changing economic conditions — the way you should think about your career should be drastically different than you did back when you were picking a major for college… In this episode, I talk about my TWO key principles on how to think about building your career in your 20s and 30s.

I’ve worked at a company as large as GE, I’ve worked in a 40 person startup, I’ve started, grown and sold my own company and I’ve even been an executive of a 1,500 person company at the age of 35.

Having gone through the corporate ladder, having managed large teams, and coached countless people through their career choices, here are my principles on how to think about building your career in your 20s and 30s.

Principle #1, Don’t get that “good job” in your 20s.

Don’t get that “great” job. You know what great jobs are? Great jobs are cushy jobs, jobs that pay you more than they should be paying you, and jobs that are going to get automated in the next 5 years. Great jobs are dead end jobs wrapped in shiny gift paper to make it look like you’re spending your 20s wisely. You’re not.

Instead, get a job that has a ton of grunt work. Get the job that doesn’t pay as well, doesn’t have that fancy title, but by doing that job you’re getting the experience and learning a core skill that no one can ever automate away and no one can ever take away from you.

Principle #2, Only pick jobs where you’re either CREATING or you’re SELLING

While there are SO many types of jobs out there, I think the most lucrative jobs, the future proof jobs, the jobs that will give you unlimited growth and wealth fall into two broad categories.

They’re jobs where you’re either CREATING something to add new value to the world

…or they’re jobs where you’re taking new creations and figuring out ways to SELL THEM into society

Whether it is jobs in computer engineering that create new products, or artists who create new music, or doctors who find ground breaking cures — creators are the people at the forefront of innovation and the ones that can reap the biggest rewards

And for any new creation, you’ll need an army of sellers, of marketers, or storytellers who help spread the word about new inventions. These category of jobs too are completely future proof and will always be needed

And if you just so happen to be in the intersection of these two, where you can create AND tell stories, where you can code AND do a sales pitch, then you’re just unstoppable.

In a world where we have to think about artificial intelligence, where we have to think about robots taking over repetitive jobs — there are two kinds of jobs that will be future proof, two kinds of people that will be future proof….

1) creators who can think outside the box and use human ingenuity to continue to propel us forward

And 2) sellers, story tellers, marketers, who can help inspire, connect, and spread ideas to deliver value

How are you thinking about your career growth in your 20s and 30s?

 

 

 

If you were to take a step back and write down every single thing you did every day over the past 14 days…

How similar would every day be?

The same morning ritual of checking your phone?

The same coffee shop?

The same route to work?

The same meetings?

The same amount of time on the couch watching Netflix?

Welcome.. To the hamster wheel of life.

I was stuck like this nearly 8 years ago, and I made changes in my life that transformed everything for me.

It was 2010, and I decided to leave my 6-figure job at the largest hedge fund in the world.

I was 27, at the peak of my career, with a dream job, but I had one problem: I felt stuck. I felt stagnant. I wasn’t growing.

And most importantly, I knew that living my best life meant feeling absolutely SCARED SHITLESS once a week because that meant I WAS LIVING, I WAS GROWING…

And that wasn’t happening…
The thing is, I thought the solution to this problem was easy. It would be the NEXT project.
The NEXT promotion.
The NEXT bigger office.

That was the easy way, but the more of that I did, the more stuck I felt.

EVERY day looked the same. The same commute. The same challenges at work. The same things. Different day. And I’d come home, order sushi and watch Netflix to “recover” from the “tough” day.

I like to live a proactive life. I like to be growing. I WANT to feel fulfilled with what I’m doing and having an impact. And I knew that in order to do that, this path, this hamster wheel that I was on (even though by most people’s measure this was awesome) — wasn’t what would bring me fulfillment.

FAST FORWARD 4 years. I had quit my 6-figure job. I started my own company. I raised $20m of venture capital from the best VC firms in the world. I would walk into the office which was BUZZING with 70 people.

And it was like NARNIA every day.

EVERY DAY a different challenge. A different growth experience. A different learning. I FELT ALIVE EVERY DAY. AND EVERY DAY… WAS A DIFFERENT DAY.

Now I’m not saying you need to quit your job to get off the hamster wheel of life. In fact, quitting my job was just a small part of the process for me to figure out what was the thing that MADE ME FEEL ALIVE.

The trick was to acknowledge that I was INDEED on a hamster wheel. That 20 years from now, I’d look back and feel disappointed and ask myself — WHERE DID THE TIME GO?!

So, let me ask you… Are YOU on the hamster wheel of life?

And if so, you need to STOP, PAUSE, and REFLECT so you can figure out what it’ll take for YOU to snap out of it, and pursue a life where you FEEL ALIVE. The way that I FELT every time I entered ToutApp offices to take on a new day. Because everyone deserves that.

I’m so incredibly glad I made the changes in my life when I felt stuck now nearly 8 years ago. It has afforded me the experiences, the opportunities, the successes, and the job that I have today — which I feel excited about!

 

 

 

Do you have a 10 year plan? A 20 year plan? Have you sat down to think about what you want those decades of your life to look like?

I’ve been thinking A LOT about what I want to do with the next 35 years of my life – that’s kind of the type of thing you’re supposed to do with a sabbatical.And when you think deeply, the easy path doesn’t feel right, the unproven completely out of left field path feels reckless.

The one thing that you DO know is that when you hone in on your true life path, when you make decisions that optimize for what your heart truly desires, you unlock decades of success and fulfillment. So this process of figuring out what I want for the next 35 years, feels like an important thing to figure out.

Here at Unstoppable, we believe in leading a PROACTIVE life. When it comes to life plans, there are TWO plans that you actually need. You need your short term plan (this is about getting proactive about your upcoming week, the quarter, and the year) and then you need a long term “macro” plan for your life. This is the 35-year macro view.

We tend to overestimate what we can achieve in a year (which is why we tend to give up on our new year’s resolutions and short-term goals because we don’t see enough progress)  and we tend to UNDERestimate what we can do in five years.

Everyone should have an unstoppable life plan. And by the way, unstoppable doesn’t mean you’re perfect and everything goes according to plan, it means that no matter what comes your way, you stay tethered to your long term goals and always find a way forward regardless of the adversity you face in your life.

Your short term plan, which we explain how to create in our Unstoppable Life planning guide is to get proactive about your year, it teaches you how to:

• Clearly define your goals for the year
• Set up a system to get proactive about your calendar and your schedule
• Set up a time so you can pause and reflect on how things are going and keep course correcting
• And, most importantly set up an Accountability Mastermind so that you are growing with others that want to grow just like you.

But to create your long term plan, you’ve got to take a step back, zoom WAY out, and take a 35-year view of what you want out of your life. You have to ask questions like:

• How do I want to spend my 20s?
• How do I leverage what I do in my 20s to live my best 30s?
• How do I manage for health, wealth, family, friends and career? And what do each of these things look like in each of the 35-years?
• What’re the things that will make me feel FULFILLED in the long run? Vs. just reacting and doing the things that are obvious and right in front of me

Needless to say, no plan is perfect, however having no plan is a surefire way to never get what you want. When I used to work for Ray Dalio at Bridgewater, he always said, “You can have anything you want, but you can’t have everything… so you better know what you want.”

If you’re looking to get started in building a life plan for yourself that you can tether yourself to, start with our Unstoppable Life Planning Guide. And then watch this episode to start thinking about how to create a macro view for your life. Both are important. Will it be perfect? no. Is it better than having NO PLAN? Hell yes.

 

 

 

You ever get super excited about a project or a goal? But then feel completely overwhelmed about how to start taking action?

Visualizing what you want and dreaming up a goal you’re passionate about is only half the battle. What really separates the dreamers from the successful ones are the people who figure out how to EXECUTE with massive action.

Today, I want to talk about how to get started on a project when you just don’t know where to start…

The mental trick I use when facing daunting challenges is this thing I call “Just shrink it…”

Shrink the problem to the smallest parts.

Find the lowest hanging fruit.

Find the one small thing you can do to just get some action going.

Figure out what’s the one thing you can do to get a quick win.

And then find the next small thing, then the next, and little by little you’ll start to be able to get your momentum.

In order to achieve big things, you need to build massive momentum and take massive action. But we’re all human, and even for my most exciting projects, it takes quite a bit of courage, motivation, inspiration, whatever you want to call it to GET GOING.

The reality is, when you’ve got an idea, one of two things will happen. You’ll either always wonder what if — what if you took the shot and went for it, or you’ll see someone else eventually bring it into reality and you’ll be kicking yourself or grumbling “I had that idea 10 years ago…”

Getting started is often the hardest, and my mental trick of JUST SHRINK IT, gets you to take any massive challenge, look down on it, and say, alright, what’s the smallest thing I can do to just get this thing moving.

What’s the brilliant idea you’re sitting on the sidelines on? What small action can you take TODAY to get your momentum going?

 

 

 

I like to think of myself as a very motivated and high energy individual… but that actually has nothing to do with the fact that I feel lazy sometimes. Today I talk about how I overcome those moments when I don’t feel like doing what I should be doing.

Recently, I came across the Five Second Rule by Mel Robbins and it has absolutely changed my life. In those split second moments where I’m trying to figure out how to make the right decision – I now use the five second rule.

Mel Robbins is the first to admin how simple and stupid this whole thing sounds. Count down 5 seconds and then go? And all my procrastination problems are over?

Look — I wouldn’t be posting about this if I didn’t try it myself. Give it a go the next time you’re hesitating to take action for something you know you should be doing.

Here at Unstoppable, we’re all about teaching you how to live a more proactive life. We talk about how becoming unstoppable requires you to do two things: have belief in yourself, and have discipline in your execution. Without discipline, and without actual execution, you will not get anywhere. Try this 5-second rule so that you can truly start moving forward.

The Five Second Rule by Mel Robbins (book): https://amzn.to/2N2jG2Z

Mel Robbins on Impact Theory: https://bit.ly/2BAzQvg

And remember… everyone needs a strategy for their life; YOURS NEEDS TO BE UNSTOPPABLE!

 

 

 

I think in life we’re told three HUGE lies… The three biggest lies we’re told in our lives are:

• That life is fair
• That we’ll eventually get to a point in our life where ALL our problems will be gone…
• …and that there’s such a thing as “perfect”

Life is not fair. There are ALWAYS road bumps small or large. And there’s just no thing as perfect. The ironic thing is that’s what makes life special!

It’s the imperfections that make things interesting. It’s the road bumps that teach us lessons to grow. And it’s the unfairness that highlights opportunities for us to win.

And as you embrace these truths… The one thing that you can count on in your life happening — is ADVERSITY.

I’ve had my fair share of adversities in my life. From businesses almost dying, to divorce, to family members getting sick.

In fact, it’s through getting through some of the craziest adversities in my life did I come up with the idea of “Unstoppable” — the idea that no matter what the road bumps – there’s always a way forward…

When you subscribe to the lies that life is perfect, and life is fair, and problems shouldn’t exist, we tend to get blindsided by adversity.

But when you start to stare adversity in the face and treat it as a familiar face — only then do you start to figure out how to deal with life’s adversities in a proactive way.

By now, I’ve gone through so much crazy adversity in my life, I’ve actually developed a framework for dealing with crisis and adversity.

The framework basically works in three parts. When you’re facing a tough situation, you want to map out three broad-based scenarios:

1. Figure out the absolute worst case scenario. The nightmare scenario. The OMG — this is horrible scenario. The crazy creative scenarios you dream up while you’re laying in bed because you’re stressed out and can’t sleep.
2. Figure out the most likely scenario.. This is what is likely going to happen if you go talk to a few experts who have gone through a similar situation before and you get them to play out where this situation is headed
3. Figure out your upside. This is the scenario where you actually come out stronger. Where things work out better. Where this adversity actually turns out to be one of the best things that happened to you. Where you basically make lemonade out of the lemons you were just dealt.

Your JOB now is to:

• Manage for the worst case scenario. Human beings are incredibly adaptable and so are you. So figure out what you’d do. The worst has just happened. How do you rebuild?
• Get comfortable with the likely scenario, because that is what is most likely to happen so get PROACTIVE about dealing with it
• And now that you’ve mapped out the worst case, prepared for the likely case, DO EVERYTHING YOU CAN to get to the UPSIDE scenario

I’ve learned that escapism is the greatest friend of adversity. Only when I learned to stare at adversity straight in the face… Recognize that I’m in a crappy situation… And then apply the tools at my disposal to solve the problem, was I able to get to a healthy relationship with adversity in my life.

My question to you is this: When things don’t go accordingly to plan… When you get that terrible phone call… When you stay up at night thinking about the things that can go wrong… You’re dealing with adversity…

The question is… are you using the right framework to deal with it? Use this three step framework to figure out how you can better deal with the road bumps we’re now facing in our life. Be sure to share your thoughts in the comments below.

And remember… everyone needs a strategy for their life; YOURS NEEDS TO BE UNSTOPPABLE!

 

 

 

We’ve all been there. At the blink of an eye January becomes August, and the years quickly passes us by. Where did the time go?

The thing is that unless we are PROACTIVE about setting an agenda for ourselves to go after what we want in life, others set the agenda for us.

They do it in subtle ways and in ways we don’t even realize. Our inboxes are others setting the agenda for us — and yet we check it first thing in the morning.

Our calendars filled with meeting invites on back to back days are curated mindlessly by others we work with. It’s not their fault. They’re setting the agenda for their own day and taking you along with them!

This is one of the BIG reasons I started Unstoppable Sundays. On Sundays, I sit down, reflect on my goals, and get proactive about my week. I look at how I’m spending my time over the coming 7 days and I ask myself: if I do all of these things that I’m planning to do — will I be closer to achieving my goals 7 days from now? Will I look back next Sunday and say — wow! what an amazing week! Will I look back a year from now and say, geez, I CRUSHED my goals!

On this episode of Unstoppable Sunday, I walk you through three very actionable things you can do TODAY to start to get more proactive about your life.

#1 Have a morning ritual

Every single self help and personal development guru will tell you this. And yet such a small percentage of the population actually practices it. It drives me nuts! A recent study shows 61% of smartphone users check their phone within 5 minutes of waking up in the morning.

What happens when we check our smartphone? Why is this even bad? Well, almost immediately, within 5 minutes of starting your day, you’re immediately giving over control of what you think about, what you work on, what you REACT to right over to others.

It is the exact opposite of living a proactive life.

How do you offset this? Start a morning ritual. When I wake up in the morning, I like to meditate, I like to pray, I like to shower and get dressed. I then like to see what I have in the docket and what others are asking of me — whether it is in my email inbox, or my social media, or my calendar.

You don’t have to take huge leaps here, or take on crazy new habits. Just start with this one simple thing: Don’t check your phone until you’ve gotten dressed for work. Leave that time to yourself and your own thoughts, and your goals, and reign in positivity and gratitude into those moments.

#2 Ask for 25 minute and 50 minute meetings.

We’ve all been there. You have an entire day of back to back 30 and 60 minute meetings. As you get home completely and utterly exhausted, you wonder two things to yourself: 1) Where did the time go? 2) Crap, when do I actually do my actual work?!

Unfortunately this is the status quo for a lot of corporate culture. Even if you’re not in a large corporation, I’m sure you’ve constantly wondered about why you’re even in a certain meeting as you think about all the work you actually need to be doing.

My trick for this? I ask for 25 or 50 minute meetings. I then use that extra 5 to 10 minutes that I save to catch up on my work, take a break, scan my emails, and even jot down action items from the meeting. This simple exercise actually allows me a moment to breathe so I don’t get sucked into reactive mode and can actually think about where I am and what’s ahead in my day.

Pro Tip: I also use this time to look ahead of meetings in the day and see if there are useless meetings I can avoid or ask to cancel because it’s just not necessary.

#3 Schedule in ME time throughout your week where you’re meeting yourself

I tried an experiment early in my career. If I booked meetings spread out across the week with my imaginary friend, would it wreak havoc with my schedule and my co-workers?

It didn’t.

And so I make it a point to book 25-minute or 50-minute meetings across the week with my friend Charlie. It’s ME time. It’s a meeting, it’s a meeting with ME, and it’s a time when I get actual work done.

No one gets hurt, people work around it anyway, and in the end, everyones better for it.

Best of all, I get to regain my proactive posture as I use up these times to get caught up on my own work — instead of constantly reacting to things coming my way.

In Conclusion…

Remember, everyone needs a strategy. Yours needs to be unstoppable. If you want help switching to living a more proactive life, be sure to download our FREE Life Planning Guide.

 

 

 

SO… I’ve had this one TV in my living room that I’ve owned for nearly 10 years.

From living in Stamford, CT, to Greenwich, to the Upper West Side, to two apartments in San Francisco, this one TV has gone with me everywhere.

I never felt the urge to buy a newer TV. But I know over the past 10 years, I’ve clocked thousands of hours on it (estimating but I’m probably not wildly off). From my favorite shows that defined a lot of my mental model of life including Star Trek TNG, Madmen, Breaking Bad, Billions, and of course Game of Thrones was watched on this TV.

And yet, a couple of weeks ago, I dismantled the TV and stuck it in a closet. I was done. Why?

In my continued quest to get more proactive in my life, and while I was writing out my thoughts in my Unstoppable Sunday pause and reflect session — I realized that the TV was sticking out a sore thumb of time suck in my life and I needed to get rid of it.

In it’s place, I put in a dedicated iPad so I can listen to music, and in the giant white wall that was now exposed with the absence of my beloved TV — I put up an Inspiration Wall.

You get 24 Hours in the day

The greatest equalizer of all of mankind is time. We all get 24 hours in the day. You take out 8 hours for sleep, 8 hours for work, and 2 hours for family time, you’re still left with SIX hours in the day.

As high productivity as I am, even on my best weeks I was still loosing hours to my TV. And while there is something to be said about down time and entertainment — there wasn’t anything huge I was getting out of my time on TV.

This index card I used in a prior Unstoppable episode describes this dynamic perfect. We all know where those SIX hours are going. It’s TV. It’s idle time on our Facebook feeds. It’s time we could be spending for more proactive time with family or time spent improving ourselves from active learning or building our dreams.

Inspiration Wall

If you’re like most people, the TV serves as a central pivot point in your living area. Everything is oriented around it and even if you entire family is sitting in this space — its designed for them all to be oriented around the TV.

There’s something special about that, and with this giant gaping space now available with my TV being gone, I saw it as an opportunity to use that space in a more proactive way.

The first thing I did was to set up an old iPad I had as a permanent music device connected to my stereo system. This made it that there could be background noise or even active listening — whether I was alone or I had people over.

This also made it where I could be doing OTHER things even while my space was being filled with Youtube videos that are educational, music that I love or calming music for meditation.

But there was still the giant white space.

And so, I took the opportunity to turn the empty white wall into an Inspiration Wall. I bought one of the canvas art we have in our Unstoppable Store for inspiration walls. I put in a new plant. I put in some picture albums (yes I still have them) from an important part of my life.

Very quickly, the dynamics shifted. My living room went from being a place of active TV watching to a place of real conversation. To a place of self reflection, of relaxation, and most importantly to a place of conscious living – vs – passive watching of mindless entertainment.

In Conclusion

In my continued quest to lead a more proactive and unstoppable life, and in my continued quest to help others become more proactive in their lives — this small (yet huge) change to remove my TV turned into having a massive impact in my life that I felt almost immediately in the past couple of weeks.

How are you spending your SIX hours? What are the time sucks in your life? Take stock, remove them, and double down on the things that help you grow instead — whether it be an inspiration wall that constantly reminds you of your goals or a music area that helps you create a space of fun rather than idle watching.

Remember, everyone needs a strategy. Yours needs to be unstoppable. If you want help switching to living a more proactive life, be sure to download our FREE Life Planning Guide.

 

 

 

 

Happy Unstoppable Sunday! On Sundays, we ask our selves two questions: 1) Where am I? and 2) What do I do next?

This Sunday, I spent some time reflecting on my ToDo list.

I’m a HUGE fan of ToDo lists. I’ve used them since when I was like ONE year old (kind of joking).

The ONE thing I hate about ToDo lists though is that they quickly become a cluttered burden of things that you haven’t done… which leads to me feeling overwhelmed, which leads me to… well you get the picture.

That all changed when I discovered the Eisenhower Matrix.

This simple tool helped me figure out how to take a long flat ToDo list of things that I think I should be doing — to a list of things that are: Urgent + Important, Important but not Urgent, and then two other buckets of things that I think I should be doing but in reality isn’t Important nor Urgent!

Here’s how the Eisenhower Matrix works:

So the next time you’re staring at your ToDo list, ask yourself these three questions:

1. What are the most important and urgent things for me to do?
2. What are the most important things to do that I have some time to do (they’re not urgent)?
3. What are the things that I can delegate, because they’re not important but relatively urgent?
4. What are the things I really should just delete because they’re neither important nor urgent?

We all know that ruthless prioritization is the key to winning in life. It’s the key of living a PROACTIVE life. And yet it’s hard to prioritize when staring at a sea of competing priorities. This simple method consistently allows me to turn a complicated and long ToDo list that I feel uninspired by to a set of ToDos that will have the most impact and deliver those dopamine hits that I crave when crushing my ToDos.

The other thing to remember is that this doesn’t have to be a one-time exercise. I structure my ToDo list application to always have these as “sections” — for my personal ToDos, I use an application called Things, and for team projects, I use an Asana. For both of these, I set up sections for each of these buckets in the Eisenhower Matrix so I can easily group my ToDos and focus on the right things.

This simple way of prioritizing my ToDos has helped me reach unparalleled amounts of productivity in both my personal and professional life. It kills the clutter from my life and my mind, and it helps me articulate and evaluate what is important — ALL crucial steps in ensuring I am being PROACTIVE in my life.