To Change Your Life, Start By being A Good Student

To Change Your Life, Start By Being A Good Student.

My name is Ray Higdon and I teach Network Marketers faith-based mindset and leadership principles that work.

Did you know you could be owed some money back?

I just posted this because I just feel called to share it and I think it’s going to help a lot of people out. A few weeks ago I got connected to some guys that helped a lot of companies with ERC. If you don’t know what that is don’t worry about it, but they’re also helping a lot of individuals with the self-employment tax credit. If you’re a 1099 person and you were a 1099 in 2020 or 2021 it is very likely that your due money back from the government. I posted this on my page and there’s all kinds of interesting comments over there….. some saying “hey that’s not real” well it’s right on the IRS website so you can just go to their website and look at. Some are saying, “it’s hard to qualify for…” that is not the case. The only thing that it’s harder to qualify for is if you want to get a big credit for your daycare, because you can get a check for up to $32,000 for this program. That would involve you providing receipts and some different things around daycare but without providing a whole lot you can actually get a check back. To me it just makes sense to check it out. The way that this company works, because they’re not your CPA, they’re not someone that you know is going to work with you for an extended period of time or anything, the way that they work is they you put in your information they tell you this is the check you’ll get back and if you want us to file it this is the fee. It’s your choice you pay the fee… just understand that every CPA I’ve ever worked with and every person that prepares taxes they charge you a fee to do their taxes. Maybe you don’t have money to pay the fee, right? That may be a consideration, but you know to me it’s math. If you’re paying $500 to get $4,000 bucks back, then you pay it. Anyways if you want to learn more about that go to Higdongroup.com/check. Okay, let’s dive in.

To change your life, start by being a good student.

I could have reversed that and said, “to NOT change your life, be a bad student” and that’s true. I have reached the different results that I’ve achieved in my life by being a pretty good student. So what does that look like? I’m going to also cover where people mess this up or blow it. First of all if you’re reading this I’m going to assume that you’re some kind of entrepreneur. Maybe you’re a Network Marketer and you’re someone that is actively wanting to make more money and impact more people.

First topic I will talk about is just the concept of investing in your self-development, investing in yourself. Right? Now Elon Musk said this not too long ago, he said “there’s no reason for college because you can YouTube and figure out about anything” and essentially he’s right to a degree, but that also requires a certain relentless personality that is a major action taker….that is like “you can learn a lot through YouTube,” you can learn a lot through free. Often what I found is people that aren’t used to implementing “free” is their most expensive option. Why? Because it gobbles up all the time. So “free”…as odd as this sounds can actually be very expensive, because if you are going around in circles and you know learning things that contradict another thing and you’re not getting the clear steps or you’re going off in a direction and you just don’t have the full picture that can actually be very costly. But it’s a cost that most people don’t consider. It’s a lost opportunity right? It’s an ignorant tax. It’s “I’m not sure what to do with what I have right now” so instead of making 50,000 100,000 200,000…instead of making that you make either nothing or very little. That’s costly! What I found is the more that I invested in myself the more clear the directions were. The more “go do this, don’t do that” right? You have to look at if you’re in business and you’re trying to grow a business. You have to look at self-development coaching, mentoring, masterminds or whatever, you can’t see those as expenses…you have to see those as investments. If someone is upgrading a pizza restaurant and you’re at capacity and get 200 orders of pizza a day and that’s all your little oven can manufacture and the thing’s just going to overheat and if you upgraded that oven to be able to pump out a thousand pizzas that would not be an expense that would be an investment. That would be an investment for you to increase the capacity of your business…that’s what you’re doing when you invest in coaching.

To be a good student you have to look at it like that, because if you don’t…here’s what will happen. I’ve seen it happen to smart people that just don’t get this….They will say “okay I’ll buy that thing it’s $5,000” or whatever it is, right? Then the minute they pay that over they’re regretting that decision. They’re like “well I haven’t made it back yet” and because they actually saw it as an investment…they saw it as a lotto ticket, they saw it as an expense. If that Lotto ticket doesn’t scratch immediately then it’s an expense.

Be willing to invest.

Understand that free is sometimes your most expensive option.

Understand it’s not an expense.

Those are the first preliminary things you want to seek. The steps, not just the knowledge. Some people do become professional students where they’re just gobbling up knowledge. You see this in self-development, but you also see it in colleges too.

I know people that just keep getting new degrees. They are perpetual students. Many of the past degrees they’ve already gotten they’re not using. They’re dropping a lot of money and so some people do the same thing with some self development. They go from mastermind to mastermind to mastermind, networking and learning things but not actively seeking “what do I do with this.”

Notice where it comes from? It needs to come from you. “What am I going to do with this? What steps am I going to take based on this, so I don’t require a mentor or a coach to tell me what steps to take because I’m running everything they tell me through a filter that says, what am I going to do with this.” not “oh this is interesting.” I’m not doing that….what I’ve noticed is that if you think about knowledge in action as like a filter, a water filter or something. For some people, for me for example, the way God wired me and I’m sure some of this I’ve learned and some of it is from God but the way that I handle stuff is I get information and I have a paper thin filter of…. can I take that information, convert it into action? I’ll talk a little bit about that for some they take information and it’s almost like there’s a brick in between knowledge and action. They get a lot in their minds, but it never translates. Not even that they think they’re supposed to do something with it because they have stepped into being a perpetual student or a consumer. Consuming is fun if it’s for entertainment but consuming is not what entrepreneurs should be focused on. Let me tell you, y’all listen to 18 podcasts a day. I don’t understand how you get anything done. I’ve listened to…I don’t know two podcasts in the last month maybe and they were definitely good but I don’t have time for that, I don’t have time. Some of you are all caught up just like some people are all caught up on their Netflix binging, some people are all caught up on their podcasting but they’re not caught up in massive action. They’re just not taking massive action.

You want to learn to be what I call more “elastic.” So when you are watching an infomercial you’re learning something that you can actually implement into your company, into your team, into your business. Right? You attend a webinar and it causes you to kind of reflect and think and say, “you know what? maybe I should go back to that thing and get the three steps I need to take from it.” Right? But it needs to come from you. When you seek to consume you’ll get it every time because there is plenty to consume. Some of us that have struggled with distractions over the years… like right now they’re showing the crazy Biden Christmas video and people are arguing… Well that’s terrible…it’s all a distraction. You can’t do anything about the Biden Christmas video, you can’t. If you hate Trump, you can’t do anything about that either. What you can do is you can do something about your business, you can do something by going live, by doing videos, by prospecting, by writing articles, by doing stuff instead of “how do I feel about this thing.” Getting out there and impacting and helping more people which you are not helping by focusing on the things that trigger you without any kind of solutions. Right now there’s just a bunch of weapons of mass distraction and they’ve just been coming in different shapes and sizes over the years but right now you’re dealing with so much. I’m not saying not to do this stuff, what I’m saying is very clearly here is don’t do that stuff if you haven’t done your work.

What is your work?

What is that daily routine that would make your goals inevitable? When I wanted to become the number one earner of a network marketing company my daily routine was 20 no’s a day, a video a day and self-development every day. No one is surprised that that worked. It worked, and made millions of dollars with that company. Was I up to date on all my Netflix? Definitely not. Was I up to date on all the different podcasts that I love? Definitely not. I was way behind on all that stuff. Some are way too obsessed with being up-to-date on the information and consumption than they are obsessed with taking action, then they are obsessed with helping others, then they are obsessed with making a difference and actually going and offering solutions to people. If you are reading this you have something that more people need to know about! You have a juice or a pill or a travel deal or whatever coaching you have…something that people could really benefit from if only you stopped focusing so much on consuming. We have different mentorship programs and things and we try to make them the best we can. We add things, we do lots of different training that consumers even in higher-end programs will get caught up in consuming everything. Right? They’ll be like “I missed that one last week, what do I do?” It’s like well first of all are you taking action each and every day? Because if you’re not, don’t worry about it just yet. Have you taken action on the things that you heard today or yesterday?

Something that John Maxwell said to our Maxwell Mentorship group a couple days ago, he said “if you think you have the right answer to all of your questions you’ll never be a 1%er.” It’s hard. You’re moving forward imperfectly realizing that there may be a better answer to this but I’m going to use what I have, I’m going to do the video as best I can. Think about this…I don’t know the number but I did 13 years of videos on a phone or a not great camera before I got a nice camera. I get comments now since I’ve been using this cleaner setup, but I did 13 years before getting a nice one. At first I had a little mino. Now there’s a fancy Mino I had the el cheapo mino had a USB like a switchblade and you’d hit the button. I did thousands of videos on that crappy little thing. It had a switchblade USB so you’d plug it into your computer, but there are people that will invest thousands of dollars into a camera setup, lighting, mic and everything and then not do anything with it or not do much with it. Take what you have and move forward. Go start putting out content, go start prospecting, start reaching out to people. You have to see that if you want to be a good student.

It takes being a good student to change your life. If you could change your life without being a good student it would have already been changed. To change your life, to change your income bracket, to change your relationships, to change everything, it’s going to take you being a good student. A good student is an implementer, someone who takes what they hear and they implement they’re not just consuming. This is the bare minimum of what you should do with the things you do consume…is the concept we teach called ILT. Invest, Learn, Teach. You invested your time (possibly money) to learn something and then teach it. I don’t go through a good book (well first of all I pray on every book that I read now so I don’t read bad books…I just don’t. My spirit will kind of nudge me “this isn’t for you.” okay no problem) without doing some videos from that book. Without sharing, without edifying the author, without giving a takeaway. We have John Maxwell coming into our mentorship program every other month, I don’t sit through his training and not go live with my notes. I do it every time. Already from Thursday John Maxwell I did a live with all my notes (it’s on my page if you want to check it out) and I did five short videos, so that’s the minimum. I mean sharing what I’m learning = bare minimum. But it shouldn’t end there, it should be “okay now that I’ve learned this, now that I’ve taught this, how does this alter my daily routine? How does this alter how I show up? How does this alter my existing relationships? how does it alter my current connections or help me get new connections?” There needs to be that desire, because if there’s not what I found is if you don’t internally have that desire for “I’m going to consume this and figure out what steps I can take from it” even if the person gives you steps, you won’t hear them.

I remember I was coaching this guy and he said, “Ray I just just need to know what to do.”

I was trying to help him because you should always be doing that but to upgrade you have to alter, you have to analyze, kick around and upgrade who you’re being right now. That doesn’t mean stop the “doing” to focus on the “being” it means you keep doing but you also work on the “being.” Who are you “being?”

So I said, “okay here are my suggestions, go do this, this and this and then work on this.”

Next week’s coaching call he says, “I just need a blueprint, I just need to know what you did…”

“What we talked about last week.”

“No you know.”

So I got to thinking about it, you have to come from that mode of “whatever I consume…what can I do with it?” and on the flip side just like with your podcast, just like with your Netflix. Some of you know and have been following me since I used to be a Marvel lunatic. I was a big fan of Marvel. I don’t care that it’s now 2 or 3 years since I watched a Marvel movie. I don’t need to catch up. So don’t be in that I must consume everything, because if you are you won’t have time to do anything. If you’re in some kind of program just like the buffet, I’m not upset if I don’t eat the kale. I’m never going to eat kale from a buffet. I’m just saying. I might eat the ribs, I might eat the chicken breast, if I’m cheating I might eat the mashed potatoes to be honest, but I’m not eating the kale. But I’m also not upset that I didn’t get to eat the kale. I’m not upset that that was an option for others to consume but that’s exactly how some people treat programs. They’ll join a program and they’ll say “omg there’s four different things a week…oh man I’m beside myself… oh what do I do here.” Well you consume whatever you consume and you try to implement from what you consumed. In 10 years this year I’ve been investing six figures into my personal development (every year not not total) and I have yet to be in a program (a mentorship, a mastermind, a Community, a Facebook group) that I consumed 100%. Never. Not one time, but in every case that I can think of besides maybe one that was actually a long time ago longer than 10 years in all of the ones even though I didn’t consume it all I got massive value. Many of them I paid for year after year because I would tune in and I would get whatever I was going to get which would cause me to create action. I’m part of two different $35,000 a year masterminds. The one I have barely logged into but I’ve had a couple calls with the guy that heads it up, totally worth it to me. The other one I’ve only done one group activity in eight or nine months, but there’s a particular part of the program I really like and I do that part. I probably do 10%. I probably show up for 10% of it but I get way more than what I invest so it’s totally worth it.

You have to watch your consumption engine because the world wants you as a consumer. Politicians want to confuse you, they want to get your attention so that you’re looking over here while they’re doing this over here. Right? So don’t be distracted. Don’t be just a consumer. Ask yourself, “what can I do with this information?” If you find yourself consuming a lot of information that you can’t do anything with, stop consuming it. I have to remind myself of this often. I’ll be on Twitter and I’ll see some political things I’m like “huh?” and I’ll watch it for a little bit and I’m like what can I do from watching this? I can’t do anything from this, I’m not helping anybody by watching this, I have to be a better steward of my time. Psalm 39 talks about how our life is so fleeting. This is a temporary deal. Everyone thinks this is permanent, that this is the one shot they have right? This is temporary, being on this Earth. Do what you can, use every minute because what we have is from God. God gave us these minutes so how are we going to use them? Are we going to use them just consuming and not producing, not impacting, not helping, not solving? I hope not. So when you show up, as you’re seeking the steps, “what do I do with this information?” If you are in a coaching program don’t just say “okay I think I’m going to do this” or don’t just say “you know what I sat through that and I don’t know what to do when’s the next one?” No, ask your coach, reach out to them and say “hey here’s what I think…”

Best boss I ever had was Maggie. There were times in the beginning when I first started working with her I’d come to her and I’d say “hey we have this problem” and she’d say, “don’t bring a monkey without a banana.” I’m like “excuse me what are you saying?” She goes, “don’t bring me a problem until you’ve at least thought of a possible solution, now you may think of the wrong solution and I’m going to help you but don’t come to me with a problem without a suggestion.”

That’s a powerful kind of life lesson. She said “don’t bring a monkey without a banana.” So don’t go to your coach with a “I don’t know what to do” go with a “I think this is my best approach, what do you think? I think these are my next best steps. What do you think?” They’re going to say “hey you know what, I like that. Let’s tweak that…add this, you don’t need to do that…” They’re going to give you great feedback. They’re going to help you tweak if they’re worth salt. They’re going to help you out, but too many people focus on consumption. “I finished the webinar now I have to go chase the kids, I have to go do this” and they never even come up with action steps. Not only do they not come up with action steps, they also don’t go back to their coach and say “hey I think these might be the best action steps” they don’t do any of that, so pretty soon life happens they forget about what they consumed and there’s no chance of any action being taken.

You have to have it in you. It’s not in the coach, it’s in you. You have to have it in you “I’m consuming this for a purpose. I’m consuming this so that I can go and do great things, so I can go impact more people, so I can make more sales,” whatever your goal is…you want to sit, consume, do that thing and then come back to the coach and say, “hey here’s what I’m thinking based on “___” I think I need to do these three things and I need to stop doing this thing.” A good coach is going to say, “yes go do those things, report back in.”

Don’t be your own Island.

I see so many people consume then they’ll let life happen, they’ll forget what they consumed, they haven’t taken any new action and then they blame the program they are consuming. Well listen, I can consume weightlifting videos till I’m blue in the face, I can consume education from a personal trainer, not lift the weight and nothing changes. What does consumption have to do with it? You have to look at consumption as potential energy. I can do something with this. Will I do something with this? I can’t do your sit-ups for you. I can’t create your content for you. I can’t write your articles for you. I mean chat gbt I guess can help you write them, but you still have to get them out. You still have to go do things, go meet people and connect with people, but you have to have that in you. I’ve noticed over the years even if the coach says, “okay gang we are finished with the webinar go do this, this and this.” If that’s not coming from you looking and saying, “what steps will I take from this..” you won’t do them. You’ll think he didn’t give steps or she didn’t give steps and you won’t do it. You’ll stay a consumer.

Was this Helpful?

If you want to change your life you have to be a great student. got to be a great student. I hope this was helpful because this is what was on my heart.