Hey guys, welcome back to the homework assignment podcast where it is our assignment to find
the balance between home life and work life.
I'm your host RJ Patino.
I've been thinking a lot about this first topic of discussion.
Our first video is the introduction.
If you haven't seen that, please go back, review it.
It definitely gives you a good insight onto who I am, what we've built here, at Elder
Contracting and a little background on me and my wife's story and how we came to really
build this company and how we built our home life and are currently building both those
things because it's an ongoing process.
And interestingly enough, I got a phone call today from a friend of mine out in Utah who's
also working on building a business out there.
And he had a couple questions for me.
He was talking about how to find new work and trying to figure out what his next move
was going to be in his company.
And we talked about a lot of different topics and there are so many topics to cover when
it comes to building a business.
And what we have everything we talked about what I really wanted to focus on today was
the fact of personal development.
I feel like that is one of the first steps that you need to take in building a company.
This is a crucial, crucial thing that you need to be constantly developing, constantly
working on.
And by doing that, you're also going to better your business.
So what is personal development?
There's a lot of books, there's a lot of teachers.
If you listen to any podcast on any business building or even home life, society as a whole,
a lot of times these people talk about this personal development topic and it comes down
to your spiritual, your emotional, your mentality, your attitude, the way you feel on a daily
basis.
So I just want to go over a few things that have really helped me in my journey to build
a successful company and to be a good husband and a good father and a good friend, brother,
etc. to all those around me.
I've read quite a few books and there are a lot of great people who teach a lot of things.
And one of the things I want to focus on is personal fitness or health and fitness.
I feel like this is a really important thing, not just if you are running a business, but
just to feel good about yourself in general and to have a good attitude.
What are some things that we know about working out?
Well, when you go to the gym in the morning, obviously, or at all, and you go consistently,
you're going to have more energy, you're going to feel better about yourself.
You're going to be able to have a clearer thinking throughout the day, a more mental
clarity throughout the day.
There's so many benefits and we could pull up statistics all day long on this.
But what it really comes down to is that once you start actually exercising and eating healthy
and taking care of your body, there's a few important things that begin to transpire.
Number one is your energy level.
So when it comes to being a parent or if you work within a company or trying to build a
company, all these things we do on a daily basis takes energy.
And that is why we need to sleep at nighttime.
And what we all probably want, or at least I want more of constantly is more energy,
more time to complete more tasks, do more, be more.
And so going to the gym definitely provides a huge edge on giving you more energy.
OK, so the first two weeks, three weeks, four weeks, whatever, everybody's a little bit
different in my opinion.
For me, it was about four weeks.
The first four weeks was absolute hell.
It's very hard to for me.
I was going at five thirty in the morning with my wife, so it's super hard for us to
get up.
We have two young little girls under three that live with us and well, obviously live
with us, our daughters, but they also sleep with us in our bed.
And so we got to try and get up, not wake them up.
And at the same time, when you wake up, you just kind of want to cuddle with them.
And so that made it even harder in my opinion.
I'm sure my wife can contest, but or atest.
But after going for about four weeks, that habit began to kick in.
And then also you start to see a little bit of a difference or I did in my energy in the
morning and my mental clarity.
We have team mornings, every team meetings every morning.
And so for me, I have to, you know, usually I have a lesson prepared and we're talking
about certain topics.
And beforehand, I always felt a little clouded, you know, not sure.
You know, I usually thought it was due to lack of preparedness.
But even on the time that did prepare things didn't come to my mind as quick.
I was struggling to keep a topic on topic because I would go on a million tangents and
because there's obviously so much information that people cover in team meetings.
And as I was going to the gym and actually getting accustomed to that, my mental clarity
was sharper.
I was able to focus a lot better.
I can already tell you, I mean, logically being able to focus better in team meetings,
being able to focus better during the day and your task at hand.
How can that not benefit you?
Right.
And then on top of that, more energy, I was able to stay later at work and be able to
have that mental energy, which if you're an entrepreneur or trying to build the business,
that is so important.
Or if you're a mom at home dealing with crazy kids, the mental energy is so much more necessary
than the physical energy.
Right.
And I know for a fact, like, you know, some experiences at work, it's kind of funny, actually.
So our electrician partner of ours, Khodie, his little brother came in one day and said,
you know, how can you not answer the phone and you're sitting down all day?
You do like, what do you even do?
You don't even do anything.
And you know, it's kind of funny.
Just to like think about it.
And I started to think about it.
I'm like, you know what, dude?
Like today, let alone that day was so intense mentally, like I was already beginning to
feel tired around 1 p.m. because I was constantly answering phone calls, emails, you know, meeting
people, talking to people, solving problems, which is a huge, huge thing when it comes
to being an entrepreneur.
Your problem solving skill has to be at an all time high every single day because so
many people need you to solve their problems or have answers to their issues that they
may not know.
Right.
So you trying to solve the problem in running a business and constantly adapting on a daily
basis to new things and new situations.
So it was really it was interesting to kind of take a second and go back and be like,
OK, you know what?
I didn't do very much laboring at all.
I don't think I picked up a screwdriver.
We're a construction company.
So you would think I would be able to.
So you would think I'd be picking up a screwdriver at least.
But I don't do very much manual labor.
What I do do is I am on the computer 24/7.
I am doing marketing and handling sales and contracts and relationships and all this kind
of stuff.
And that takes a lot out of you.
I won't say it's as draining as working out in 110 degree weather out here in Arizona,
but they're two different types of drainage.
They're two different types of tiredness.
So you need to build a threshold for both those types of energy draining tasks.
And how can you do that?
Well, you go to the gym.
So our team has been really focused on that health and fitness.
And we've seen a lot of improvements throughout months and months of actually progressing
ourselves physically, working out and eating better, eating healthier, drinking more water.
And again, the statistics, I mean, Google it.
There's pages and pages and pages on benefits of eating healthy, working out, drinking water.
And so you can only imagine by doing those things off work, you know, on your own, you're
going to be able to perform better at a higher capacity during the day at work and then also
have more patience, more energy to go home, be with your wife, your spouse, girlfriend,
your children and actually be able to hang out with them.
I used to come home when I was out of shape and actually laboring out in the heat.
I would come home from work around four or five o'clock and I just couldn't do anything.
I would just sit on the couch and want my girls to sit with me and watch a TV show or
a movie or something.
And they're trying to yank me up.
Dad, let's play.
And my excuse was, you know, I had a long day.
Today was a hard day.
That's a terrible excuse.
And so for me, gym is super important, working out super important.
You know what, you don't have to necessarily lift weights as long as you're staying active,
going to a 45 minute walk.
OK, but the most important thing is that you're constantly pushing your limits because that's
how you're going to better yourself.
If you're going to the gym and you're eating unhealthy, you're not going to see very good
results and the results you do see are not going to benefit you as much.
OK, it needs to be a matter of going and working out and a matter of eating healthy for your
body to be at optimal operating capacity.
So that's that's one thing on the personal development side that everybody should be
focused on, whether you own a business, work in a business, it does not matter to be the
best version of yourself is going to bless your life, bless other people's lives.
And you're going to see a lot more successful results out of that.
The other side of that is books and, you know, our self help books, self help podcasts, any
type of material that's about bettering yourself.
When we when we focus on business, there's a lot of that.
There are some great business coaches like Grant Cardone and Andy Fercella.
For example, these guys have a lot of material that they where they talk about self improvement,
both spiritually or physically or mentally.
And it's really interesting when you actually start studying these things, how much more
information you're actually going to apply.
Right.
I know that seems like, oh, my gosh, of course, duh.
No, you don't even need to say that.
But unfortunately, I do, because there's a lot of people that I'm associated with and
workers or whoever that they have this mentality that, oh, you know what, I can figure it out
on my own.
Well, just like most things in life, there's two ways to learn.
OK, you can read about it, learn about it.
You can experience it and learn from that experience.
OK, and you're going to be able to gain knowledge out of that.
But what the reading and studying don't do for you is they don't give you that experience.
And so a lot of times you're going to have to read and actually apply stuff that you
read that you're being taught to be able to see the results and gain the wisdom from it.
OK, so there's two different types of of learning or there's there's only one way to actually
gain the wisdom that we're all seeking.
And that is you have to learn about it.
You have to experience it in action.
And then you gain that wisdom and you can talk about it.
You can share your experience about it.
You know what to do, what not to do.
OK, if you just read about what somebody is doing and or not doing, that's all just words
until you actually put it into action.
OK, so self-help books are really important.
And whether you're reading on mental clarity or you're reading on completing goals or building
a business or how to be a better husband, wife, how to be a better parent.
Obviously, there's all kinds of self-help books.
But the most important thing is that you're constantly reading and surrounding yourself
by material to better you and further you along to the goals that you're trying to reach,
whether it's at work or at home.
OK, so we get one life.
Right.
So there is a a parable that Jesus teaches, which I love, and that's in the Bible.
And it's about his servants.
And there is a boss or leader who basically goes to his servants and gives them a a coin
or a piece of money.
And the goal that he's teaching in this is to go and multiply it.
And quite a few of these servants go and when he comes back, they are able to show him more
than what he had given them.
And that made him happy.
Then there is a servant who brought just that single piece of money back.
And you know, Jesus says, hey, what is this?
He's what I I went.
I dug a hole.
I put it in there to keep it safe.
And I wanted to keep it safe for you.
And that was not OK, because what the lesson is there is that we all have talent.
We all have gifts.
OK.
And the goal of this life is to obtain more talent, obtain more gifts and better the talents
that we already have or the gifts that we already have.
That is part of this life.
OK, so whatever talents and gifts or whatever you may be good at, there is always room for
improvement.
There's always new things to learn.
OK.
So that's part of life and development on a normal level, normal scale.
And what these books and these materials help you do is they help you do that, but they
also help you scale it.
OK, you're going to be so much further and more progressed for the good of your own family,
for the good of your spouse, for the good of your business.
You're going to be able to be better, constantly progress and be better on a daily basis.
And there's a saying, hey, one percent, all you need is to get better one percent each
day and look back 20 years of doing that.
20 years later, you look back, if you got better one percent each day, how far do you
think you're going to be?
How much better do you think you're going to be?
Right.
And another thing about the health and the wellness and the reading the self health health
books is you create an environment that you're going to start surrounding yourself in.
And this environment is going to be an environment where you're surrounded by like minded people.
When you go to the gym, who's around you?
You go to the gym and there's people trying to better themselves around you.
When you listen to all these books, you're mentally seen and starting to notice the people
that are on that same level or better than that level.
And you're going to be able to actually go and create relationships with people that
are on that level or better than that level or trying to get better.
And what is that going to do for you?
OK, you're going to surround yourself by all this and betterment and people constantly
trying to be better and build better.
And so you're going to be able to get even further because of the people you surround
yourself by, the relationships that you make rather than going maybe at the end of each
day and want to hang out with friends that are not making good choices or are lazy, that
don't accomplish anything.
What do you think that's going to do for you?
Well, you're going to be sitting there doing that thing instead of moving forward and progressing.
I think and this is just a personal opinion.
I think there's a lot of words in this day of age of, hey, you just need to enjoy your
life.
You just need to enjoy your life and you need to know don't work so hard.
You need to create time for yourself and do this.
And I want to be very clear.
This life can be enjoyed by moving at 100 and 120 percent capacity.
You're not going to miss out on anything.
Matter of fact, you're going to create opportunities that you would have never had that you are
absolutely going to love.
OK, for example, what is the benefit of making more money in business?
OK, for me, I'm a dad, right?
So my main drive is, yeah, I do want to build something.
I want to be better, have a great business that's successful, want to help people.
And I want to make a ton of money.
There's nothing wrong with that, because what am I going to do with that money?
Well, that money allows me to help others, which me and my wife, we both want to do.
And it also allows for us as parents to create these memories with our children that you
wouldn't have been able to before.
And to clarify again on something really important is, yes, you can have great memories at home,
OK, movie night as a family or whatever you do or going to the park.
OK, if you don't have money, there's many ways to create great memories.
But there's so many other great memories that you can create and great opportunities you
can create, like, hey, going and traveling the country with your daughter or my daughter.
And again, I'm thinking of me, but traveling the states, visiting all the states, going
out of the country, visiting amazing museums, Rome, Italy.
I mean, there's so many things that I want to be able to experience with my family.
And life is not that long, guys.
OK, life is not that long.
So you need to act now.
And if you want, you know, if you're over there saying, hey, you know what?
Well, I can know I'm grateful for what I have and I can, you know, I can enjoy and have
and build great memories without money and without being successful in every aspect of
my life.
You know what?
Yes, you can.
But you're going to be enjoying the 2% level of happiness when you could have been enjoying
the 100% level of happiness.
OK, you get what you put in.
And I believe that in our faith.
I believe that in society is that, you know what?
There's greatness around us everywhere and there's levels to that greatness.
There's levels to that happiness.
Right.
I'm very grateful for where I am.
I'm very grateful for what I have.
And you know what?
No, I'm not going to go spend five months in Italy.
I personally don't have that money yet to do such a thing.
But it's nice to go to Mexico with my daughters.
It's nice to plan a Disneyland trip.
We just went to Disneyland.
OK, and that was fantastic.
I literally was hoping we went with our family or my wife's family.
And so I was super excited.
OK, cool.
You know, grandma and grandpa come in.
They can watch the girls while we go on some rides, which is what we did.
But that wasn't the best part of the trip.
The best part of the trip wasn't spending those little moments laughing on a roller
coaster, even though that's what I was expecting because I haven't been in Disneyland since
I was really young.
And so my memory is, oh, this is going to be so fun, right?
Rides, all this kind of stuff, the food.
The best part about Disneyland was seeing my daughter's faces the minute we walked in
Disneyland, was seeing them just completely jaw dropped.
Didn't couldn't even comprehend the amazingness they were looking at.
And that was another amazing lesson that I knew, but finally got to really experience
on a great level was that, you know, being a parent, all we want to do is see our children
happy.
OK, see them, you know, enjoy every single moment of life.
And so no matter what I did at Disneyland, if I would have went by myself with just me
and my wife, yes, we would have had a great time.
But imagine if we wouldn't have taken our little girls.
OK, it would have been I mean, I can't I couldn't even comprehend missing that opportunity
and that experience.
So yes, be grateful where you are, you know, and feel like what you have is enough.
But at the same time, it is OK.
Push for more.
Better yourself.
Go further than anybody you know has gone.
OK, take risks.
That's another thing I talked about my friend today was that, you know, life is scary and
being a parent is scary.
I talked about my wife's pregnancy of Nova in our first episode, and that was scary.
OK, covid no parents, pregnancy complications, 26 hour labor.
I was scared crapless.
I couldn't show that because my poor wife was scared crapless.
So of course, I'm going to sit there and try and be strong.
But the minute she went into the operating room and I was actually left alone on a bench,
I cried.
I bawled.
OK.
And.
Having a baby, it can be risky, right?
OK, my wife, we come to find out that we may have to have a C-section for every single
child.
OK, that's scary.
There's a lot of controversy on how many kids you can get birth to, how many C-sections
you can have.
And we want six to eight kids.
So there's always going to be things that are scary and things that are uncomfortable.
But you need to take risks.
If you don't take risk, you're never going to find out.
You're never going to know.
OK, I could sit here and be like, you know what?
You know, if we have to have C-sections, we can only have four kids.
But what if we could have six or seven?
You know, how amazing would that be to actually have our dream come to pass and fruition of
eight kids?
OK, but if I don't, if we don't take that risk or if we don't keep pushing through it
and we just accept that, hey, it's a little too dangerous to have a kid, then.
Maybe we want to have to experience that.
Now, obviously, there's limits to things and we know we follow doctor's opinions.
But my point in this matter is the actual principle of you're never going to know if
you don't try.
OK, so one of the things in building a business is simply the fact of businesses start off
right.
You start a business.
And if you're like me, when I first started, it was me.
It was a brother or a stepfather, whatever, doing the work at hand.
And the hardest thing for me to do was actually to hire somebody with money that I didn't
think we were going to have to run a project or to perform a trade so that I would have
more time to be able to go out and land more jobs, which is a necessity.
You have to be able to bring in work.
And if you guys are the people doing the work yourselves, what are you giving up?
You are giving up the time to go and build relationships and find more jobs.
So one of the first things you have to do is you have to alleviate enough time for yourself
in your business to be able to actually go and find work and build relationships.
And you need to trust the person you are hiring.
OK, in our in our business coaching with with Jason Payne and Nikki T, they talked about
an 80 20 rule that you could always train somebody to be 80 percent as good as you.
OK, and that is good.
That is good enough.
They can do 80 percent of what you're doing, which means you have 80 percent more time
to get out there and go get jobs.
And what happens?
Let's go down the rabbit hole, the process.
OK, you hire somebody, they alleviate you the time to go find more work.
What happens?
You get more work.
Then you need more people.
Then you need more people to alleviate more time here to go get more jobs.
And the chain keeps going on.
And then you end up actually building something for yourself.
I have come to find out after going through all this, we got to a point where I was sitting
down at my desk one day and I had delegated all these tasks that were tasks that I should
have somebody else doing and jobs were running themselves.
And I'm like, dude, I don't know if I have anything to do right now.
It's 12 o'clock and I've already finished my tasks for the day.
Well, I can tell you right now, I definitely found stuff to do.
OK, there's plenty of room for growth.
There is more things, you know, coaching.
You know, we started this podcast, obviously share experience, get more more of our image
out there for more people to know us.
There's more time for me to go get more jobs, which was actually amazing because we're actually
pulling more work because I was a lot.
I now can allot myself that time to go get the work.
And before we weren't marketing, it was all a lot of referral basis, which is great.
But now we have our same referral basis on top of me having the time to actually build
the relationships, to actually focus on more marketing and working with other people and
going to lunch and building relationships with people that have, you know, other companies
and working together.
I mean, it's just it's a huge range of opportunities when you're able to alleviate yourself and
actually work and build a company and not work for your own company.
OK, because you can own a job as a business owner and still not really own a business
or run a business.
OK, your your goal here, if you are building a business or scaling business is to have
it be self-sufficient operating so that you can leave for a month if you wanted to.
And your company could still sit back here and it could still grow.
OK, but none of that, none of this, none of anything is going to happen if you don't take
that first step, if you do not take that first risk, whether you have a goal to be the most
the richest person or the most successful business in the world or whether you're just
trying to create a great life for yourself.
You still have to take that first risk in your business.
OK, you can't do everything.
You need to rely on people for you to grow or else you're only going to be able to handle
the capacity of you.
And if that works for you, great.
But if you're listening to this podcast, I highly doubt that's what you're looking to
do.
Right.
So and then we we talk about taking risks in your family.
OK, so I don't know about you guys, but for me, you know, any risk I take is my wife's
risk and vice versa.
And so, you know, we're in it together.
We're a team.
You know, there's risks in family that you have to take as well.
OK, so we talk, you know, I talked a little bit about, you know, the pregnancy thing or,
for example, if you're if you have to move across country or if you have to take your
family and you need to position your family in a different environment or a different
state or whatever the case is, because that's what's going to be best.
Right.
There's a lot of risks that you do have to take in family as you build your family.
OK, so being able to take those risks, being able to trust your gut, that is going to take
you a long way.
If you do not take risks, you will never know.
OK.
And I think a great example of risk taking on a personal level is when you're trying
to date, when you're trying to find a spouse.
OK.
Have you ever had people growing up or even now in your life, have you remembered, oh,
you know what?
I should go get that girl's number or that guy's number or I should introduce myself.
And then you chicken out.
OK.
Guess what?
Could have been great.
Who would have known?
Could have been bad.
You're right.
One hundred percent.
But as it stands now, you have no clue because you did not go and take that risk.
OK.
And one hundred percent, I can tell you that I am so grateful for my for my wife because
where I was in my life when I first met her, I wasn't going to take that risk.
OK.
I was just feeling like I needed to focus on something different.
I was scared.
I didn't want to get married quick.
And luckily for me, OK, very, very luckily for me, my wife sliod into my DMs, she took that
risk.
I responded six months later.
We're married.
Six months after that, we have we get pregnant with our first daughter.
And I mean, the cycle goes on till today.
And I can tell you that, yeah, sure, I wouldn't have known that.
But if there ever came a day where I would actually be able to look back and I would
have seen that I would have missed this life, I mean.
Speechless, right?
So take risks, guys.
Don't be scared.
Don't make dumb decisions.
OK.
Contemplate it.
Take time to think.
Don't let the contemplating and the research part of taking a risk interrupt the action
part.
Make moves.
Do something.
Take action.
OK, if you don't, you will never know.
So sum everything up.
We've talked about a few things today.
We've talked about health, right, nutrition, fitness, and we've talked about taking risks
and a little bit about building businesses and personal development.
And these three basic things.
OK, these are the basics, guys.
This isn't like, OK, we're on level 20 over here and we need to start reading personal
development books.
This is the three most basic things, in my opinion, that you need to do on a daily basis
for you to be successful, whether you're studying for a degree, whether you're building a business,
building a family, whatever you're trying to do.
These three things are going to progress you further towards your goal.
I want you guys to also know that these basic things, the things that we're going to be
teaching, the things that my team is going to be sharing, all the people that we're going
to be interviewing in the next couple of weeks.
These are all things that we are doing on a daily basis.
We're not going to teach you guys stuff that we haven't applied or do not do.
And if we do, we're going to make it very clear.
It's an idea and we're going to be trying and we're excited to see it and maybe invite
you to do it.
But we're going to make it well known.
We want to share exactly the things that we have applied in our personal and lives and
our business lives that have worked that show results.
And I can promise you that by following these things, by acting on it, OK, and not just
dabbling in it, actually putting yourself into a hundred percent capacity and to every
little thing that we are talking about.
You guys will see the results, the same results that we see, are seen, have seen, and it's
going to be an amazing experience for you guys to find out the things that actually
work.
And then guess what?
You get to go share with other people.
You get to teach people about it, what to do, what not to do.
And so again, we we're here to learn more about how to balance the work and home life and
the things on how to build a business, how to build a home, a safe home, a good home,
be better at everything in our lives.
This isn't just on one topic.
And we better ourselves, we better everybody around us, and we make an impact in the world.
And that is the goal.
OK, this world needs more people that are trying to better themselves on a daily basis.
This world needs more people that are going to reach a lending hand, more people that
think before they speak, think before they act, more people that can make a difference
with a humble heart.
OK, and personal development, health, fitness, these are the key ingredients to being able
to do that.
So again, I want to thank you guys for joining us on the Homework Assignment Podcast.
We're really excited to share the upcoming topics with you guys.
And again, we're going to have a couple of key speakers here.
We'll be announcing our first speaker here soon within the next week for on our Instagram.
If you haven't followed us yet, follow our Instagram @ HWA Podcast.
We also are on YouTube.
Make sure you follow us there @ the Homework Assignment.
And again, we're really grateful to share this information.
We appreciate each and every one of you guys.
Thanks.