Gym owner, I want you to have a long and glorious Golden Age.
This period is the peak of life, when you have both the freedom of wealth and the health to enjoy it.
At the recent Two-Brain Summit in Chicago, I laid out the path to the Golden Age for gym owners.
Here’s the good part:
As entrepreneurs, we have the unique opportunity to get into the Golden Age very early in life. Most of your friends will be working at 60. You won’t have to.
Your wealth can produce your income instead.
You Deserve to Thrive
Our parents usually lived in the Golden Age for about eight to 15 years, on average. That’s not a large portion of their lives, but it’s more than their parents had. Did your grandparents retire wealthy and fit, with a lust for life? Probably not.
And if they did, they were probably on some kind of pension that had them counting pennies. If they had a Golden Age at all, it was very short. They made that sacrifice so you have a greater opportunity now.
Sadly, most in our generation won’t capitalize. The average Golden Age is shrinking. Most members of our generation will reach financial security earlier than ever before, but our average health span is shortening, so we won’t be able to enjoy it.
But as a fitness entrepreneur, you have a chance to spend more time in the Golden Age of health and wealth than anyone in history.
You know how to use fitness to preserve or improve health, and your business is a wealth-generating vehicle that can fund your retirement or give you a launch pad you can use to create wealth through other entrepreneurial endeavors.
As a mentorship practice, we’re producing new millionaires every month—and we celebrated a bunch of them at the summit. You can see many of them in the photo at the top of this page—that’s our Tinker group for upper-level gym owners. Many of these entrepreneurs are already in the Golden Age—and they’re far from old.
Take that picture as proof that we can teach you how to escape the grind and earn the money you require to live the life you want.
When you have freedom of money and time, you can do great things to improve the world. Or you can just pursue the things that interest and fulfill you—learn to play guitar, speak another language, spend time with your family.
For me, the Golden Age is the Thief Phase I wrote about in “Founder, Farmer, Tinker, Thief.” This is where I get to play Robin Hood, make lots of money and give it away. I do that through donations and mentorship.
For you, it might be Queen Phase, Pirate Phase, Zen Master Phase or Writer Phase.
Whatever it is, you can’t waste the opportunity to achieve it.
Great Wealth and Great Waste
Your parents worked for years to pay for college, they worked through college, and then they stuck with a job they often hated for decades. They saved every extra dollar and hoped to retire at age 65 with a few years of mediocre health left to them. They did that for you.
Now the poorest person in the Western Hemisphere has access to resources and information beyond a king’s wildest dream only five generations ago. We can build wealth fast, and we can actually stop working and still survive. We can build up a nest egg and have enough to relax for a decade or two at the end of life.
And, for the first time, we can use money to buy time: We can accumulate an abundance of wealth so fast that we can stop working while we still have our health. We can accumulate resources that build more resources for us. We can stop working at a younger age and survive longer than ever before.
But this ease has led to new problems. The killers of our generation are the problems of abundance: For the first time in history, we have too much. While our lifespan continues to extend, our healthspan is shortening.
More and more, the last few years of life are beset by chronic health problems such as disease and immobility. We can survive to age 90—triple the life expectancy of our great-great-grandparents—but the last 20 years are often bad. Some regret reaching an advanced age. Without health and freedom, they can become depressed. Instead of enjoying the freedom they’ve created, retirement becomes the worst years of their lives.
Here’s what should happen:
You accumulate enough wealth to stop working at a young age (while you still have good health). You keep good health for as long as possible and die in your sleep after a full day of skiing with your spouse and friends.
Between those two points, your life in your Golden Age is full of laughter, experience and a sense of purpose that you’re making things better for your kids.
We know how to extend lifespan. We know how to stay healthy almost right up till the end. And we know how to build wealth.
But most don’t do it because it’s complicated. Or it was.
Now it’s not.
And there’s no excuse for failure.
To hear more about how a mentor can help you live the life you want, click here.
