The Truth About Success: Why Great Choices Often Look Like Mistakes


The brain doesn't segment between like, this is existential. This is not the brain. Just looks like that didn't work out. You suck. Never make this decision again. That's how the brain doesn't. And I had to, I had to relearn this lesson that the quality of a decision is based on the reason the decision was made.

Not the outcome of the decision. What if you could build a business in the modern world as big or as small as you want, without having to compromise the things that were the most important to you in the very beginning, this is the wealthy consultant talks podcast with Taylor Welch and Mike Walker, as they share with you today, they're learning lessons from stories in their experiences over the past 10 to 15 years and share with you right here, right now. 

Let's get into it. You have to let yourself follow,  especially when you get into the, into the habit of trusting your intuition and trusting your instincts.  You have to make sure and guard against this obligation. Make mark my words. It's, it's obligation. That's what it is. It's all obligation. I have to do this.

Why? Because I've done this.  What?  Well, I have to stay in this lane of work because, because look, this is what I've done for eight years. No, that's, that's called sunk cost bias and it's crippling. If you allow that obligation, see, we think about obligation in regards to other people and we think about obligation in terms of, I have to do this for them and for that.

But what about our, what about the obligation, the unhealthy obligation we hold with ourselves simply because we've been doing something and we don't want to, we don't want to invest the time to change. So long, long story short.  Napoleon obviously doesn't struggle with this because he's like this, this, this, like I'm going to start a zoo.

I'm going to open a bubble gum company. I'm going to do lumber. I'm going to be in coal. He's like just following, you know, we see the throughput at the very end of his life. So he gets the, uh, higher position at the coal company and he writes this.  This is interesting. This is the first time we've seen Napoleon  not being  bombarded by external things, but rather making a calculated decision internally before the circumstances actually force him to do it. 

He says,  I quit that position.  Because the work was too easy and I was performing it with too little effort.  I saw my myself drifting into the habit of inertia.  I felt myself becoming accustomed  to taking life easy and I knew that the next step would be the Regression. All right. What did we just talk about? 

Humans hate  regression. We hate it. We hate it. And most of the time we hate regression because it is thrust upon us, but you get to a point in your life where you realize and you notice and you pay attention to this. If I stay in this. Season position, whatever it is,  then I'm going to become accustomed to inertia and the next step is regression.

It is not healthy for an athlete  to win a championship  and then not find. A competitor that could potentially beat and threaten them and then go up against that one when you stay in that Championship mode for too long  then you honestly you end up getting beat.  You just don't have to go very far Look at this you look at conor mcgregor This gets a little too used to being the champ  and when you get too used to being the champ you lose the champ You lose it. 

And so this is something I've tried in business to not rehearse just the records or the wins or I'm rehearsing the things that I want to do that. I have not yet accomplished. That keeps me sharp and it keeps me dedicated. And so he's at this place. He has a great job  and he quits because it's too easy and he's bored and he writes, this proved to be the most important turning point in my life, although it was followed by 10 years of effort, which brought almost every conceivable grief that a human heart can experience. 

Okay, so  how many of you judge the quality of your choices only by the outcome? Let me just say like, you know, this is a great choice because look at what happened. It worked out.  Oh, that was a bad choice because look at what happened. It didn't work out. So I was, I'll tell you guys a story real fast. I, um,  I like taking, I like taking my, my, my primary residence and. 

What I do is I'll typically convert them into a 1st link. He like, you don't need to understand the financial  pieces of this, but I like converting them into 1st loans lanes and paying them off.  So I did this with my old house. I've had some employees who have done this and  we got the new house in.

January of 2022.  And in September of 2022, I converted into a HELOC  and I was going to just pay it off over time.  And the HELOC  had a rate when we converted it a 5 percent and then it went up to 8 and then 9 percent. Yeah. And my prior  loan on it was 3 percent  and this might seem inconsequential to you, like this might not seem like a big deal, but I pride myself on making good decisions. 

And I had the most terrible time with this ever. I was like, I have lost my touch.  I converted out of 1 of the lowest rates in history into a floating rate, and I can't go back to that. And why do I suck? At timing, and you may be like, dude, Taylor, you're talking about a mortgage. They're not talking about a serious issue.

It doesn't matter. The brain doesn't segment between like, this is existential. This is not the brain. Just looks like that didn't work out. You suck. Never make this decision again. That's how the brain doesn't and I had to, I had to relearn this lesson that the quality of a decision is based on the decision.

Thank you. Reason the decision was made not the outcome of the decision you have you have napoleon doing the exact same thing here Where he does the right thing and we respect him. We're like, oh, that's awesome He quit because he doesn't want to regress what a what how committed to his principles He must have been what a great leader somebody who is who is more worried about their future than they are their comfort What a great leader and then if you just skip forward like two months He he has 10 years of effort which brought him every conceivable grief that the Human heart can experience.

Don't judge the choice by the outcome. Judge the, judge the choice by the quality and the reasoning behind the choice. If you judge the choice just by the outcome, it means your time horizons are too short.