Beyond Wishing Wells: Finding Financial Freedom

Read this if you feel lost or want to learn a new way to achieve your goals.

The other day I was browsing TikTok and a famous creator I follow, who loves to help people make their dreams come true, kept showing up in my feed. I love his mission.

In one video that caught my attention, he’s asking a young man, “What’s your dream?”

The young man replied, “I want to start a business!”

And when asked what kind of business, his only answer was, “I just want to have the means to take care of my family.”

While this is honorable, it’s never going to happen.

How can I judge this man? He’s smart, he appears to genuinely want it, and he probably works very hard.

How can I be so sure he won’t succeed?

Because he doesn’t have a specific, measurable goal with a deadline.

I’m not judging him, but I am judging his approach. It’s the same approach many take. We see it every day all around us. People want something, and chase after it, but never achieve it.

If your only goal is only “I want financial freedom” you will never achieve it. It’s too nebulous and unspecific. You might as well be tossing a coin into a wishing well and asking the universe for millions of dollars. You’re just as likely to get it by wishing as you are by chasing it without a measurable goal.

?? So how do you actually achieve the goal of financial freedom?

Simple, you need an executable plan that must have specific, measurable goals, and a deadline.

A life without a goal is a life without purpose. It’s chaos. It’s a delusion that will constantly disappoint you.

“Financial Freedom” is different for everyone, and thus must be defined by you specifically to be able to achieve it.

Here are the keys to make your executable plan:

First, you must identify the causes and drivers of the metric you chose. If it’s revenue for example, you need to know the levers that directly affect your revenue.

Next, you must identify the blockers. Blockers are the resources required to pull these levers as many times as you need to pull them to achieve your specific and measurable revenue goal.

Finally, you must know the leading activities that will define the work you need to do every single day to pull those levers.

?? What is the activity you can do X times that will lead to your measurable Y outcome by your deadline?

Sometimes we need to hire people to pull that lever with us more efficiently, because it requires more time or expertise than we have available ourselves. If you’re the most skilled person in all areas of your business, you aren’t scaling your business.

But don’t assume just because you make a plan, hire someone to pull the lever, and they do this thing X times a day and you will hit your goal. You have to create a scorecard with a means to track and measure whether the planned assumptions were right. Plans are made with assumptions, not guarantees.

Maybe you need to pull the lever more often than you thought. Maybe it wasn’t the right lever. Maybe you need to fix your conversion funnel or become more efficient with inner-office communications.

Measuring your progress allows you to know whether that lagging metric is realistic or missing the mark.

Whether you land short of your goal by the deadline, hit it, or ideally exceed it, at least you had a goal and went after it with executable purpose. You had a clear path and took action. You learned along the way and grew as a person and business. Next time you’ll do better as long as you stick to this method. Every day you’ll be better.

Stop wandering through life with a vague idea of wanting more money or financial stability.

Make a plan and execute on it.

Much love,

Brandon Young

P.S. If you're looking for an executable path to financial freedom, and you aren't familiar with what I do, you can learn about it here.