“Balance” comes up in almost every conversation I have with clients and friends who are barely figuring themselves out as entrepreneurs. How to get more of it. How to stop feeling stretched. How to juggle 39,480,248 things at once. I struggled with this for a LONG time, because I thought being a good adult/entrepreneur meant saying yes to everyone who needed my service and working harder than absolutely anybody else to get it all done. It wasn't until later that I realized balance has much less to do with effort and much more to do with deciding your priorities and being absolutely freaking ruthless about them, including telling people when their initiative doesn't fall within those priorities. Think about it: your time as a builder/founder is some of the most important time in your journey. It would be STRANGE to let anyone but you decide where it goes, right? Or to not consciously decide? Here's what I've come to believe: most of the discontent we see and experience in our jobs isn't from choosing wrong priorities. It’s from people never actually choosing at all. Time is finite. Every day, something gets your best hours and something else gets whatever's left. That's just math. The only question is whether you decided which is which, on purpose, or the decision got made for you (by whatever was loudest in your inbox or calendar). Most people drift instead of choosing. The urgent thing wins by default. Everyone else's priorities become your agenda, and then you feel like you failed at balance when the real problem is you never said, “Of everything on my plate, this matters MOST, RIGHT NOW.” Not deciding is still a decision. It just has the luxury of needing no owner, LOL. And if you have a team that you're building with, your team is watching how you handle priorities, not what you tell them. If you drift and say yes to everything, that's what they'll copy. If you're clear about what matters most and decisive about what's intentionally not getting done, they'll copy that instead.

You CANNOT quit your day job until you can track these numbers in your biz. These numbers tell you where you need to focus before scaling. Have these down, and the path to making crazy money will become simpler in any business. 1. Lifetime Gross Profit: How much money you make in profit from each customer who comes into a business over the time they stay. EQUATION: LTGP = How much a customer pays you - cost of goods sold (what it cost you to deliver the product) EXAMPLE: -   One employee costs $4,000/month -   One employee handles 10 customers -   Those 10 customers generate $10,000/month $10,000 - $4,000 = 6,000 Gross profit per customer per month $6,000 ÷ 10 = $600 Average lifetime (from churn example LGP = $600/month × 10 months = $6,000 2. Cost of Acquiring Customer (CAC): The total cost for a business to get one person in the door. That's marketing, sales, commissions, everything together, one number. EQUATION: CAC = Total costs to acquire customers ÷ Customers acquired EXAMPLE: -   Labor: $5,000/month -   Ads + software: $5,000/month -   Total: $10,000 -   Customers acquired: 83 $10,000 ÷ 83 = $120.48 CAC 3. LTGP to CAC Ratio: Lifetime Gross Profit to CAC. For every dollar you spend, how much do you make? It's arguably the most important metric in a business. EQUATION: Lifetime Gross Profit ÷ CAC EXAMPLE: - LGP: $6,000 - CAC: $1,224 6,000 ÷ 1,224 = 5:1 4. Churn: Of the people at the beginning of the month, how many of them are still there 30 days later? EQUATION: Churn% = (Customers at start who are gone by end) ÷ (Customers at start) EXAMPLE: Start: 100 Start of the Month, 10 of those 100 Next Month Churn (Leave) = 10/100 = 10% 5. Return on Invested Capital (ROIC): How much money does it cost us to expand the business and continue to make money? EQUATION: Annual Profit at Capacity ÷ Capital Invested EXAMPLE: - Cost to open location: $10,000 - Annual profit at capacity: $80,000 - - $80,000 ÷ $10,000 = 8:1 return

1. Denial of Fault/Responsibility Most people think they are stuck because they do not make enough money. That is only half true. The deeper problem is that they keep living the same day and expecting a different life to show up. They go to work. They complain about work. They scroll after work. Then they say they are tired, broke, and confused. But confusion is not the problem. The problem is that nothing in their day creates more skill, more proof, or more money. So the first step is not a side hustle. The first step is 3 words. IT’S MY FAULT. This does not mean everything that happened to you was fair. Some or most of it was not. Your parents may have failed you. Your job may underpay you. Your friends may not understand you. The economy may be harder than it used to be. Cool. None of that helps. Because the second you give blame to something else, you give power to something else. And now your boss, your past, your parents, your zip code, or the economy owns the steering wheel. “My fault” does not mean “I deserved this.” It means, “I am the one who has to get me out.” 2. YOU DELAY PAIN Poorer people do not usually ruin their life in one big moment. They do it in small delays. They delay the post. They delay the hard talk. They delay saving money. They delay learning sales. They delay sending the message. They delay starting until Monday, next month, after the holidays, after life slows down. But tomorrow becomes today. And now you are living inside the pain you pushed forward last week. That is why your bank account feels stagnant. It is not random. It is the bill for all the pain you refused to pay earlier. 3. YOU DON’T USE WHAT YOU HAVE Most stay behind because they keep waiting for the life they wish they had before they use the life they actually have. They want more time. More money. More support. More confidence. More direction. More perfect conditions. But broke does not give you perfect conditions. Broke gives you a phone, a few hours after work, a little anger, some shame, and enough pain to finally stop lying to yourself.

It can be anything. I just want to make sure everyone here is getting what they need out of the community! Can be: Community tabs suggestions (ex: Social Media Help Tab, Rate my Funnel, etc) Module Creation/Organization More/less business posts from me literally anything, lmk. Keep crushing it! -Diego

Words I like: If you are waiting for the perfect conditions to start, you'll never start. The perfect condition IS starting. Minute Read: Finding Routines Often Kill in the Early Stages I think it's fair to say that we've all gone on YouTube to find the "ultimate money making routine for xyz people" and tried the routines that these finance and crypto bros do. The thing is, when we look for a routine, we often overlook the core problem that needs to be solved and try to find and indirect way to solve it. Or even worse, we end up avoiding the problem entirely because we're mirroring a healthy lifestyle. And so, in my personal experience, I've only actually made progress and money when I stopped looking for routines and just did the work. I've found that most people who I speak to that have or are looking for a routine, are trying to delay the start of actual hard work and then ask "how can I be productive" or "how can I get more stuff done." I'll give a personal example. I remember finding a routine where I wake up at 5 AM and do 3-4 hours of tasks before getting to work and I told myself it was to "optimize my productivity." Looking at it, I was doing the complete opposite. Productivity is measured by how much you get done in a certain time frame and so, with that routine, I woke up at 5 AM just to do nothing meaningful towards my goals until 9 or 10 AM. Now that I have done the hardest parts and changed the behaviors and habits by directly confronting them, I can now have a routine but my routine are just lifestyle choices and have NOTHING to do with my productivity. If I miss the whole thing, it won't flip my day on its head. So in other words, if you want to start a business or make any big life changes, for your sake, don't find a routine and just do the work. At most, 30 minute prayer sesh, bathroom break, and anything else that you decide truly does have an impact. Everything else will just be noise and fluff you put for yourself between yourself and your goal.