My name is Mark Rubin, and I'm a dream weaver. I hope these widgets help you weave your dreams into reality. In 1985, my dad taught me about money. I started teaching me about money when I was 14. It's kind of a tradition in my family. The lesson starts with three questions. The first question is, how old are you today? And the next question is, how old will you be when you plan to die? And the next question is, how old will you be when you plan to feel safe with money? We talked about those concepts an hour or two. The first one was easy, I was 14, the second one was plants die. And I've told people this story. And then people find this shocking, but like, to me, this was just like a, like this important thing to think about. And we talked about behaviors that either increase or decrease longevity. And it could be diet, exercise, risky behaviors, other behaviors. And my dad was cool, and not a judgmental person at all about anything that anybody did. But we just talked about it in terms of longevity, is that some things people do increase the lifespan? And some things people do decrease their lifespan? And and so like, we know, how do you want to play the game of life, it was a good conversation. And in over the years since then, I mean, I've observed the same kinds of things we talked about, and other people, and myself two different times. So I decided that based on this back and forth conversation about the longevity of my family, people generally live a long time and my family, back then, the oldest person I knew was live, it was 88, in my family, my great grandfather, and then also my grandfather later have to be 102. My mom's side. So people kind of live long time. And so I was thinking about these ideas, your behaviors that you know, increase the time. And then the third question is planning to feel safe with money. And if you know those three numbers, how old you are now how old you be, when you plan to die, how old you'll be, when you plan this feel safe and money, can do some super quick math, and realize that between age 10, and let's just say 70. It's only 10 bucks a day, $10 a day, to have a couple million dollars by the time or 70. And the idea of this that my dad was teaching me is that small decisions, over long periods of time have big impacts on the amount of time you can buy to not work. In the end. That was the lesson. The idea is like how many $10 A day decisions does a person make from age 14 to 70. Like whatever decisions that a person is making, about how they allocate their money. That was like an important lesson for me that later became time as honey, and honey as money. But what I got me doing is I was oh, I always enjoyed doing businesses. In my neighborhood. Small businesses like I would rake leaves or shovel snow off driveways or clean gutters or wash cars, or anything for fun. And I thought it was fun. But I decided in 1985 that I would get a lawn mower and I would start mowing lawns in my neighborhood to like learn about business. My dad taught me something else about about money that was super important is that he told me that in his experience in life, that everyone that he knew, at every age that he knew that spent all the money they ever made plus a little extra. That was his experience. Maybe not everyone is the most people, most people that he knew, no matter how much they can make a million bucks a year, they can make 10,000 hours a year, he said didn't matter. He's like his observation. Most people spend all their money plus a little extra at every age. And don't plan for the period of life when they can't work anymore or don't want to work anymore. They just keep keep going. And that was a good lesson in a lot of ways. One way was about planning but the second way, is it my dad when he told me about money would tell me how much money he made every month, how much money he spent on whatever living, how much money he invested in different things. Which investments that worked or didn't work, how much money he lost in different ways. And how much things cost when they broke or how much things cost when he bought stuff like like a refrigerator would break or like washing machine. Right? So I had a good sense of like the ins and outs of my dad's like finances and the reasons that he believed he he lost money and that taught me about you know going easy on myself when I make mistakes because that's part of the game of taking risks. But I got a lot more I had to do I do if my dad was I was like I'm gonna mow lawn so I could learn about about business and mom or I wanna was a 1980 Five snapper Hi vac, I want to live llamar for a couple of reasons. One, I liked the way it sounded compared to every other lawn mower. And also it had a transmission that you could see with their eyes and external transmission with a friction wheel. And you could you could change these gear ratios with a lever, but you could see, you could see the gears moving. And I like that because I knew it was energy transfer the five horsepower and this engine four horsepower back then was being transmitted to the wheels, and that that would change the speed. I thought that was cool. And then number of steps I took per minute, which was fun for me to play these kinds of games. What I would do, I got I got this lawn mower and I was super reliable. In my neighborhood. I had 16 customers quickly. And I had a partner doing it with me so I could take vacations and stuff. His name was Jeff Weinstock, we would mow lawns together, and it was fun. But what I would do when I was mowing lawns, a couple things is I would visualize the business system, how it worked, the mechanics of the potential money in my habitat, and the rate that I could collect it. That story I left out about what my dad told me about money, my dad made a quarter million dollars a year in 1985, which was a lot of money back then. But I lived in a neighborhood where pretty much all the houses look the same. So I realized that if my dad made that kind of money in 1985, probably everyone else made that kind of money around me, because they'd have to live there. And I assumed, like the cars were about the same and the houses were about the same. So like, I mean, on average, I'm guessing it was in the ballpark. So I did a little reconnaissance and walked around my neighborhood, and figured I could walk to 2000 houses within a two mile radius. And then I figured based on that, that I could walk to $500 million a year being spent, because my dad told me that pretty much everyone he knew spent all their money. So if if I could walk to $500 million of money in my habitat in the circle that I could walk to, and everyone spend all their money, I could watch a $500 million sounds like how much can I intercept? And how fast can I intercept it. And that's what led me to getting a lot more than I do I do if my dad was I mow his lawn for free if he bought the Walmart, but I could use it for everyone else. And he said okay, and so that's where I learned to visualize businesses in this way is how much money is in my in the potential money is around me. And how many people in that circle know that I provide a service a much smaller circle. And the circle has a Value $1 Value. So $500 million, and maybe 3 million now I've heard the people have heard of me, and how many of those people need someone to mow their lawns? Now many and smaller and smaller and smaller until you get to a tiny little circle that that's my revenue. That's how much money I can collect at a certain rate in my habitat. And that is how I began visualizing businesses.