Success Doesn’t Look Like You Think (Ep. 248)

“We see what’s on the surface and we don’t look at what it took to get there, which is a lot of people’s problems. Like the 97% of people think that it was just easy and it was no big deal and we just got there. And so when you’re an employee, if you think that way, oh, it just got handed to them. Oh, it just comes so easy. You don’t see what’s happening on the backside. You don’t see the nights of no sleep, everything that had to go into the accounting, everything that they didn’t get to do. No, I wasn’t taking payroll for five years. There was no income to take. You’re not going on vacation. You’re not putting braces on the kids. You’re not buying new vehicles. There’s a lot of things you’re not doing because frankly, you just can’t afford to. We can say, oh, we don’t have the money to do this. We don’t, or you don’t want to find the money to do it because you don’t want to beat Parkinson’s law.”

Hello, hello, and welcome back to the podcast. Thank you very much for being here. All right. We are in day two of batch recording and it’s a lot, you guys. This was, you know, we started this and said that it is a 10-hour course, and it is a 10-hour course. It, like, it just took a lot. Nelson knew that it was going to take a lot to understand everything. And it does. It does. It does.

Okay. We are going to talk about, we’re in part two, the human problems, understanding Parkinson’s law. Parkinson’s law is fun. It is. I use it a lot. I talk about it a lot. He starts this chapter by saying we have covered only the technical aspects of creating your own banking system. So really the last however many podcasts, we’ve really just talked about the thought process, right? Like kind of the things that we’re doing wrong. Now we’re going to get into human problems, human nature. What’s actually stopping us from making the change going forward, all that kind of stuff.

So Parkinson’s law, this is funny. Somebody, I said something, we had a clip on social media about Parkinson’s law and people were commenting, “You mean Parkinson’s disease?” I’m like, “No, I mean Parkinson’s law.” And then just recently, Codie Sanchez, she started talking about Parkinson’s law. I’m like, “You watching my stuff, Codie?” That’ll be a fun podcast. Because it’s funny, you, I literally have never heard anybody else talk about it except Nelson and people within this industry. But I never heard about it until I read this book.

So Northcote Parkinson, that is why we get it. We named it Parkinson’s law. He said that this isolates some of the limitations from all of us. And there’s really three pieces to Parkinson’s law. I don’t know if you have them broke out or not. But the first one is work expands to meet the time involved, or the time allowed, I should say. And so you can really determine somebody’s personality by how they get things done. And so it’s funny because some people be like, “Yeah, I read your book three years ago,” or three months ago, “and I’m just, we’re just meeting now. So I don’t really remember all of it,” but they didn’t reread it. Right. Some people make their appointment and then they read it the night before we meet. It’s fresh. But I was like, were you the kid in school that never did your homework until the very last minute? Right.

And that’s the kind of person I was. Me too. Admittedly. Yeah, I’m not going to do my homework until I absolutely have to do it.

And some of that, like a lot of times we like to call that procrastination. But I have my thoughts on procrastination as well. That procrastination is not bad. Procrastination is just you doing something that you don’t thoroughly enjoy. Because if we enjoyed it, we would have done it earlier. In a timely manner. Right.

What was fun, though, is John and I, when we went over this chapter on Farming Without the Bank, John actually brought up the fact that people wait to start policies. Right. And that somewhat relates here in this piece. Because if we’re going to, Parkinson’s law is, oh, you’re going to take the time allowed. Well, as long as you think you’re healthy, as long as you think you’re young, as long as you think you have money, you’re going to take the time allowed to get started. Because there’s no, like, impending deadline that they can see, right? Or can see.

But I just had a client. She has a policy on herself, but she only has term on her husband. And he got diagnosed with prostate cancer. And I remember telling her, I’m like, “I would, like, rather you have whole life on him now because you just have term. And if something happens where he becomes uninsurable, then you’re just kind of screwed.” And that’s essentially exactly what happened, unfortunately. And it’s like one of those things. It’s like everything’s perfect until it isn’t.

And having convertible term is great. Yeah, absolutely. And necessary. And I do a lot of convertible term. But yeah, we think that we have all this time. Do we? Right. We don’t know that. But it’s funny because it kind of fits into what we’re talking about here. Yeah.

So that’s rule number one of Parkinson’s law. Rule number two, a luxury once enjoyed becomes a necessity. This is the one we talk about a lot. This is the one I was stuck on for a long, long time. But Nelson always said heated seats, heated leather seats, is “I’m getting them every single time.” And we don’t give up those luxuries. But why is it important? Like, why is a luxury once enjoyed becomes a necessity? Like, why do you think that’s important?

I think it’s important because it means that your expenses are always going to go up. Because once you experience something that you enjoy, you’re typically not going to not enjoy that thing anymore. You know, you’re going to figure out a way to make it work. You’re going to figure out how to pay for the heated seats and the cool seats.

You have AC seats. Very nice.

That is actually one luxury I could do without.

Oh, really?

Yeah. I don’t like cooled seats, but Scott likes cooled seats.

Okay.

I don’t like them because they’re noisy. And I frankly just don’t need them. I’m never that hot that I need to have cooled seats. But Scott overheats very easily. So the cooled seats are something that he likes.

But we were just, Scott and I were actually just talking about this the other day. Because, of course, my vehicle has got all the bells and whistles. And Scott’s does not. And he went from, like, a simple vehicle to a nicer with cloth to a little bit nicer. We got some leather finally. And now he’s like, “Yeah, I think I’m going to have to do top of the line next time.” And I said, “Oh. Oh, you’ve become quite needy.” He’s like, “No, my taste is just refined.” But driving my vehicle, right, a luxury once enjoyed becomes a necessity. And it’s funny because he stepped gradually up into that position.

I think what Nelson is trying to say here is, yeah, you can have all these luxuries. But if you want to capitalize your system, do we need all the luxuries? Or can we give these luxuries up? And then we can capitalize our system, create our banking system. And then we can have the luxuries again. Right. So Parkinson’s is very much a “can we beat Parkinson’s law?” Can we beat these three things to advance ourself in the future instead of giving into them now?

Because number three is expenses rise to equal income. And this is if we get a pay raise or if we make more money, we’re immediately going to spend it. And then we’re going to say, “Oh, where did it go?” You might talk to a very small percentage of people that say, “Well, I save all my pay raise.” Right. Great. That’s awesome. That is very few and far between. But that’s ideally what we should be doing.

Well, I remember when I was working as a production manager in DC, I got, like, a significant, it was like a $15,000 a year bump. And I remember reading this book and I was like, I’m going to open up a policy that is the exact amount of my overage so that I don’t spend it all.

And here’s what most people would do. Say, “Oh, I want a little.” So instead of doing a policy that’s $15,000 a year, I’m going to do one that’s $10,000. “But what if I quit that job and I don’t have that $15,000 a year? So now maybe I should just do five of it.” And, like, whittle it down. Oh, absolutely.

If I, because Nelson says, if you were making a car payment or you were making a payment on your business or you were making an equipment payment or you were making some kind of payment to the bank, and that is done, you no longer have that payment, that should now be moved into a life insurance policy. Right. So you can start capitalizing that system. You can start creating your own bank. But that’s not what people do. As soon as that payment’s done, I’ve had people tell me, like, they’ll be done with 100, they’ll free up 100 grand a year. And I’m like, “Okay, that 100 grand should go into a policy.” They’re like, “Mary Jo, I just finally got it. This is the first time I’ve actually had this $100,000 in my account.” Parkinson’s law says, if you don’t put it somewhere, you’re going to blow it. And then it’s never going to go into that policy. Right.

And even if you did put it in the policy, you have access to 75% of it in 10 days. It’s not like you took it all.

Well, that’s if your policy is in. Like, if your policy is seasoned, you have no…

Yeah.

There’s nothing. You put the 100. You put the 100 in and you have access to 100 or more.

And more. Yeah.

Yeah. So it’s this thought process that we have to get over Parkinson’s law.

Yes.

Like, there’s a lot of things, but that’s the human nature piece that he’s talking about. Because it’s so easy. So easy for us to free up some money, spend it, and it’s gone. And then we’re like, “We can’t do infinite banking. We’re never going to get out of this system. It’s impossible.” No, it’s not. Your thought process is making it impossible. But it’s not impossible. It’s Parkinson’s law. We just have to beat Parkinson’s law. It’s really kind of simple.

It is. It’s like Nelson says this in his book so many times, like, how much discipline is required. And I think of it like as a scale, right? It’s like you can either be disciplined and accomplish what you want to. Maybe it takes you a little bit longer than you expect, but that’s okay. Or you could choose to not be disciplined. And then you’re not satisfied with where you’re at. And to me, that difference of disappointment is enough to make me be like, I can be more disciplined because I want to accomplish that thing.

It’s discipline in anything. And we do talk about that at some point in here. He says Parkinson’s law must be overcome daily. If you cannot do this, then just go ahead and give up. You are destined to become a slave. That’s the bad news. Bad news first. The good news is if you can whip Parkinson’s law, you will win by default because your peers can’t do it. And everything you do in the financial world is compared to what they are doing or not doing. Right.

And so when we look at our peers, we’re like, “Oh, we want to be like them.” Okay. So let’s be realistic about peers for a minute. Okay. We look at our peers and we’re like, “Oh my gosh, they have a camper. They have a boat. They have a brand new house. They have all these new vehicles.” We know those people. And then that’s all finance. Every last bit of it’s finance. But we can also look at the people that don’t have it financed. And we can look at what they’re doing, not living on credit cards. And it’s hard. You don’t know who’s doing it and who’s not doing it. Because the people living on credit cards, highly financed, are not proud about that. They just so badly want to compete with the Joneses. And they so badly cannot get over Parkinson’s law. That is the reason they’re there. Right.

But then you have successful people in life. We never ask, how did they beat Parkinson’s law? Right. How did Walmart get to the point where they are? How did JCPenney get to the point? What did they have to give up and go backwards to go forwards? We aren’t seeing that. We think, “Oh, they’re so lucky.”

Well, it’s like you just see, like, the top of the mountain. But you don’t see all the sacrifice and discipline that it took for that person to get there.

Yep. There was Three Feet from Gold. Have you ever read that book?

I have not.

It’s such a good book. It’s about a guy that gave up when he was three feet from a gold vein. And he was like, “Oh, I’m just not going to find any gold. So I’m giving up. I quit digging.” And then somebody else came along and kept digging and hit the gold vein. Right. Like, we think that everybody’s an overnight success. People can look at me and be like, “Oh, Mary Jo, look at how amazing, how great your business is.” Like, other agents will look in from the outside and be like, “Oh, you’re doing so great. And I want to be like you.” It took me 16 years to get where I’m at today. It was not glorious. Took me five years of losing money. Right. But I kept going and kept going and kept going. And I didn’t focus on what other people were doing. I ended up going backwards to go forward.

And so people don’t want to beat Parkinson’s law. They just want the immediate success. And they’ve always wanted it. Like, I’m not even going to go, “Oh, it’s social media.” No, it’s not. It’s got, iPhones have nothing to do with it. It has been like this forever. It is the reason the top 3% will have the money in 10 short years.

Yeah. I think Robert Kiyosaki said this. It’s like the order in which successful people happen is be, do, have. They become the person first. They do the things that they need to in order for them to be successful, which allows them to have the things that everyone is envious of.

Right.

But everyone has it backwards. They want to, like, have, do, be. And it’s like, no, that’s not how that works. You have to make the sacrifices. You have to make different choices than everyone else if you want a life that’s not like what everyone typically has.

So we see what’s on the surface.

Yeah.

And we don’t look at what it took to get there, which is a lot of people’s problems. Like the 97% of people think that it was just easy and it was no big deal and we just got there. And so when you’re an employee, if you think that way, oh, it just got handed to them. Oh, it just comes so easy. You don’t see what’s happening on the backside. You don’t see the nights of no sleep. You don’t see everything that had to go into the accounting, everything that they didn’t get to do. Right. I wasn’t taking payroll for five years. There was no income to take. You’re not going on vacation. You’re not putting braces on the kids. You’re not, there’s a bunch of stuff. You’re not buying new vehicles. There’s a lot of things you’re not doing because frankly, you just can’t afford to. You’re going to stop these things so you can put it into your business and get better. But we can say, “Oh, we don’t have the money to do this.” We don’t. Or you don’t want to find the money to do it because you don’t want to beat Parkinson’s law.

Well, the money is there. It’s like Nelson said, you have to redirect your spending pattern. So, like, for me, when I got my raise, I’m like, yeah, I know I’m going to be using some of that money for something. And ultimately, I use it to start my business and for a down payment on my house. But I had planned for those things. I knew that I had wanted to do them. But I wanted to have that money in my policy first before I used it so that I could, you know, have that money grow for me.

Yeah. And you were willing to probably stick that job out a little bit longer so you could keep funding that policy to build up that pool of money to buy the house, to start your business.

Yeah. So I had, like, an expense, like, monthly expenses goal that I was trying to get to, to make sure I felt comfortable quitting my job, because I had no idea what it was going to be like once I started this business. I didn’t know how difficult it was going to be.

You didn’t talk to me right away.

I didn’t.

I might have been scared off, the bearer of bad news. “This sucks. It’s hard.” Okay. So that’s what he’s talking about in Parkinson’s law is you need to get over one of those three things, if not all three of those things. Right. To capitalize your system, start building it, and then move on. But you will always beat your peers if you can beat Parkinson’s law.

Well, you know what’s really interesting about this is, like, I joined this, I know we talk about all the time how much we hate running, but I actually do enjoy Pilates. Don’t like the instructors. Just kidding. They’re great. But there’s this challenge and it’s like if you do 12 classes in a month or something like that, then you get, like, Pilates socks or a sweater or something like that. And at this point, I’ve only accomplished, like, five classes so far and there’s not that much of the month left. And they gamify it. So I’m still in the top 1% of people in that challenge. And there’s over 3,000 people that are participating, like, nationwide. And I’ve only done five classes. So it goes…

Yes.

It goes to show how little it actually takes to move in the right direction for you to be so much further ahead at scale than most people.

And it shows how many people are wasting money paying for Pilates and not going. Yeah. And so where’s my money to get started? It’s going to Pilates. And it’s going to the gym. It’s going to these things that we have. Like, if you’ve seen those commercials of “I’ll give you $100 if you can tell me how many subscriptions you have.” And nobody can do it correctly.

I couldn’t do it.

Because we don’t. Most people do not know where their money’s going. I don’t budget. I never have budget. Well, I did budget a long, long time ago. But I don’t budget anymore.

I track. Like, I’m nerdy. I’ll look at, like, our monthly spending at scale and, like, put it in an Excel sheet. And I’m like, “This is how much we brought in. This is how much we spent. Here’s what we need to…” Like…

This is telling. Is it? I watch my numbers. Everybody be like Tarisa.

Yeah, it definitely is.

Parkinson’s law is a big one. And we talk about it a lot. And there’s a reason.

Yeah. I love where he says rule number six. The story of rule number six.

Oh, yeah. Don’t take yourself too seriously.

I’m pretty good at that. I think most things are fine.

Yeah. There he’s saying it doesn’t need to be stressful. Right. We want to make this so stressful. I had a client the other day that they were going to do a really large policy. And I could see that there was some tension in the meeting. And I’m like, “Just talk about it. Let me know. Whatever.” Like, this is not, you know, I’m supposed to lose sleep over this. You know.

Yeah.

And it was about a week before they got back to me. And I said, “You know, what do you want to do?” And he’s like, “Yeah, there’s been some emotions around it.” And I said, “Then go smaller.” Right. Like, this is not meant to be stressful. You should not be stressed about your premium. Now, I know agents that have said you should be a little uncomfortable with your premium. And I don’t agree with that at all. I think that we should not have to be uncomfortable with our premium. We can always add more policies as long as we’re healthy. Is he wrong?

No.

You, I mean, ideally, you should have a policy that’s built big enough to put all the money. But if you’re hesitant, get started where you can, where it’s comfortable, where we’re not causing divorce. Like, I’m not here to cause divorce. That’s not the gig.

Because then how are you going to pay for premium?

Yes. It’s a mess. It’s a mess.

No, but I think the first one…

We’ve had clients that have gone through divorce. And I don’t know. Thank you. I don’t want to get involved. Okay.

All right. Well, that was Parkinson’s law. I hope you had your book, came along with us for the ride. If you have questions, comments, concerns, maryjo@withoutthebank.com, tarisa@withoutthebank.com. And as usual, let us know how we can help. Grab your book. And we’ll see you in the next podcast. Have a great rest of your day.