#74 Financial Fitness & Furthering Your Eloquence

Welcome back!

Summer is a time when fitness becomes a priority, but this usually focuses on only one type of fitness.

Not at OTF.

While we too want our best beach bods, we also want to be fit in other ways: mentally, emotionally, productively, and - a major theme of today’s edition - financially.

Which creates a conundrum: how can we encourage financial fitness while simultaneously promising to fatten your wallet?

I guess we’ll find out 😆

Let’s get to it…

Here’s Why You Should FIT Us Into Your Schedule🏃‍♀️

Elevating Your Brand 🤝 

• Train to Become a Better Speaker in Cool Communicator

• Getting Informed with Major Moves

Fattening The Wallet 💰️ 

• Making Sense Cents of “Financial Fitness”

• Available Grants & More in Hustle Hub

Boosting Your Productivity 📈 

• James Clear’s Expert Advice.

Expert Advice 💭 

Courtesy of the “3-2-1 Newsletter:”

Who is James Clear?

• He’s the author of #1 NYT best-seller Atomic Habits, which has sold more than 20 million copies in more than 60 languages.
  

• His “3-2-1 Newsletter” has 3 million subs. For more, click here.

Making Cents 💰️ 

Why You Should Become Financially Fit

Short and Sweet: Think of Financially Fit as a state of mind where your health and financial habits go hand in hand with one another.

It’s not just about building wealth; it's about creating a lifestyle where your physical well-being and financial stability reinforce each other, leading to a more fulfilled and less stressful life.

Why It Matters: Because fitness, whether financial or physical, impacts your mental health, stress levels, and overall life satisfaction. When you’re financially fit, you’re likely to make better health and lifestyle choices (and vice versa).

Break It Down: 2 Reasons You Should Get Financially Fit

1. A Personal Financial Marathon: Picture your finances like a marathon runner's training regimen. Just as a runner balances speed, endurance, and recovery, you should balance savings, investments, and spending. Being financially fit means managing your money with the same discipline and foresight as preparing for a long race, ensuring you're set for both financial stability and physical well-being.

2. Unlock Creative Freedom: Financial fitness isn't just about saving money; it's about earning the freedom to pursue your creative passions without financial pressure. Whether it's writing a novel, starting a side-hustle, or publishing content online, having a financially fit state of mind can give you a boost of confidence to explore these avenues.

Take Action: 2 Things You Can Do ASAP

1. Incorporate Financial Mindfulness into Daily Routines: Make being financially fit as habitual as brushing your teeth. This could involve daily check-ins with your budget (like we’ve talked about before), weekly reviews of expenses, or even mindfulness meditation focusing on your financial goals. Embed financial awareness into your everyday life to maintain a healthy balance between spending and saving.

2. Initiate Financial Date Nights: Regularly schedule evenings to review your financial progress and goals with your partner or a supportive friend. Make it engaging by including rewards for reaching milestones, turning financial planning into a motivating and enjoyable ritual.

Hustle Hub 📈 

• YOUR SUCCESS: Here’s a short 🚨VIDEO🚨 on how personal spending philosophies can lead to successful entrepreneurship.

• THEIR SUCCESS: We’re talking financial fitness - here’s the website for The Financial Gym, founded by a former Merrill Lynch employee who knew there was a better way to get “fit.”

• YOUR SUCCESS: If you’re ready to take the entrepreneurial plunge but need funds, check out the latest in available grants here. Up to $100K!

Cool Communicator 💯 

Exercises to Improve as a Speaker 🗣

For physical fitness, you need to train your muscles in order to strengthen them.

For financial fitness, you need to train yourself to develop the right habits.

And to be fit as a communicator, guess what? You. Need. To. Train. You need to practice. You need to put in the time and effort necessary to see positive results.

Often, the best communication training is to simply put yourself in new situations and interact. But if that seems daunting, or you simply want to go the extra mile, here are some exercises you can do on your own time, courtesy of the Skill Incubator.

TL;DR Takeaways:

1. Read Aloud to Yourself - sometimes, it’s not enough to see proper language in print; you need to hear it in action (and replicate it). Reading to yourself out loud can help you “improve the quality, tone, and fluidity of your speech.”
   

2. Practice in the Mirror - we all know how important nonverbal cues are to overall communication; practicing in the mirror will help with things like eye contact, facial expressions, hand movements, and more.
   

3. Speaking Drills! - the following short list, which is only a handful of examples, “can help improve your speech in certain ways that having a conversation cannot,” giving you the opportunity to make your speech “cleaner, quicker, and easier to understand.”
   
   - Read through a paragraph forwards and then do it again backwards.
   - Over-enunciate all the words in a given paragraph.
   - See how much you can read or speak in a single breath (without sacrificing articulation)
   
   For a little bit more, you can check out this page from The Debate Guru.
   

4. Read More - this probably goes without saying since Takeaways 1-3 all involved reading, but even quiet reading will help in all the obvious ways: incorporation of new vocabulary, improved understanding of grammar and sentence structure, exposure to different communication styles, etc.

O.T.F O.F.T

ONE FINAL THOUGHT

That last one is the big one for us - read, read, read! All language skills are interconnected, and the easiest way to develop all of them is to pick up something you enjoy (whether it’s a story or about a topic you’re desperate to learn) and read a little bit every day.

So think about how much time you spend on TikTok or Instagram and divert 15 of those minutes toward reading, and you’ll be shocked at the growth you’ll see.

Major Moves 🦾 

APPLE: Things are rotten at the moment…

Everyone’s favorite phone company is struggling in the wake of the EU’s Digital Markets Act: “On Friday, [Apple] announced it would delay the roll-out of its much anticipated AI suite due to regulatory issues. Yesterday (Monday), the European Commission warned the tech giant that its App Store is in violation of the bloc’s sweeping online competition rules.”

We typically try to focus on positive stories in Major Moves, so here’s how we’ll spin it: this is absolutely positive for free and fair competition, giving tech rivals more bites at the apple. (Sorry, couldn’t resist)

small businesses: Governments are investing in their states’ futures

Instead of an article about a current startup, how about two articles that will positively shape future startups and small businesses?

Here, the governor of Alabama announces $98 million to invest in small businesses, and here, Portsmouth (VA) is launching a “small business and youth entrepreneurship pilot program.”

More of this, please!

S&P 500: No index is more financially fit these days 🤣 

While we’ve been beaten over the head with all the stories about how bad the economy’s been this year, here’s a positive that’s been underreported: “The S&P 500 is on pace for its best first-half performance during an election year since 1976 [and] the second-best performance in an election year in its history.”

Both Nasdaq and Dow Jones finished last week up as well, and while there is concern for a market correction, there is still plenty of optimism among experts.  

Before You Go

We hope you enjoyed this edition of OTF. Next week we’ll be back with more wealth-building content, new Convo Starters, and a July 2-DO.

See you then!

You are now On The Fly and In The Know