My Recovery From Workaholism Week #5: Too Much To Do & Too Much HGTV

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Hey,

This week, my wife and I celebrated one year of “home buyership.” On HGTV, the moment someone signs the mortgage and gets the keys, the real estate agent says “Congrats on becoming a new home owner.” We say home buyership instead of home ownership because we don’t consider ourselves home owners until we pay off the mortgage. So many “home owners” lost their homes when the market crashed…becasue they didn’t own them.

I’ve seen 30-year mortgages turn some of my friends into workaholics and kill some of their dreams. Though the outstanding balance on our mortgage still looks scary, buying an income property first has created so much freedom for us. But to get here, I’ll admit that we lived like college students between the ages of 25 and 30.

That was the sacrifice. We didn’t ball out on apartments, cars, food, clothes, or travel, but now we can…if and when we want. We actually own a 13-year old Honda that we use as a point A-to-B car. These are intentional choices to keep things as simple as possible, otherwise there is a pull to keep up with The Jones…and The Cosbys. I like to think I’m a simple man. Success doesn’t equal celebrity for me. If I can transform your life via email, ecourses, and events without being on national TV, I’m fine with that. I believe that there is a better way to design our lives that allows us to make meaning and money at the same time.

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Early retirement is not my goal. I don’t want to race to retirement to finally start living. That’s why one of the best financial decisions we made was to skip buying a single family home, rent and save a little longer, and get an income property first instead. The American Dream says buy your own home first. You can read why I think you should wait to buy a single family home here.

Thanks to our side hustle, AirBnB, our home actually pays us. It’s not only growing an asset on our balance sheet, but it’s also an income generator. Our home takes care of most of our joint expenses, which is awesome. We rent out our 2nd floor apartment to NYU students and we AirBnB the entire 3 bedroom 3rd floor. The with the exception of Winter, we’ve mastered AirBnB to yield 1.5 times what we would get for regular rent. AirBnB is going through some legal battles in New York, so that source of income isn’t promised forever, but for now, we love hosting people from all over the world and giving them a safe and affordable place to stay in New York while they are here.

We are both artists, but we aren’t starving. We are grateful because we have both taken the road less traveled. She is a writer, performer, and teacher. I’m a speaker, coach, author, and teacher as well. We love who we are and what we do. We let who we are define what we do, and then designed our lived accordingly from there.

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Secondly, I think every workaholic should outsource or automate at least 2 things. You can outsource laundry, cleaning, planning travel, grocery shopping, cooking, etc. Hiring my brother has also been liberating for me. Imagine someone else taking half of your to do list right now. That’s what it feels like. He has freed me up to focus only on what I’m great at and what I love doing. Before, sometimes owning my own company just felt like another job. Instead of having a boss, I had clients. Now I see that “doing your own thing” shouldn’t be taken literally. Having a team is important.

My mental block was believing nobody would enjoy doing some of the boring, menial tasks that I needed to delegate. The reason was that when I see people, I see them in their full potential. I see them living purposefully and thus I feel like the work I have to give is below them. But then I’m reminded of Matt. At UCLA, I was running a conference and Matt was a committee member. He was a freshman at the time. And one day I told him that I needed him to get food donated for 300 people. That would require lots of mailings and phone calls. It wasn’t until 5 years later when we both happened to end up in Brooklyn that he told me that “Even as unromantic as that task was, you pushed me to do something I didn’t know I could do.” After leading that committee, Matt went on to lead all types of organizations at UCLA.

This shows me that no task is too small to help someone grow. We are all at different stages. Nobody starts at the top. It’s up to the leader to articulate that every rung on the ladder has meaning and significance and coach the team member through times of self-doubt.

Email me or comment here and let me know your thoughts on home ownership or outsourcing.

Sincerely,

Jullien