In This Week's Episode....PROTECTION Golden Nugget #1: Wake Up to the True Power of Knowing Your Numbers The behaviors and patterns I established when I was a kid as a 'blow it spender' where I was blowing my paper route earnings on ice cream each week, came back to haunt me later in life. How I played out that bowl of ice cream is how I operated within my businesses for years. For my first 10 years as an entrepreneur, I didn't track shit. My books consisted of a year's worth of bank statements thrown into a box that I handed over to my accountant at the end of the year and said: figure it out. I was in the game of producing and spending, while dreading that once a year "day of announcement" when I would find out how much I owed in taxes - money I had already spent. QUESTION: If I asked you today to show me your numbers, would you be able to? Do you have the numbers at your fingertips, or are they virtually non-existent?   Golden Nugget #2: Know Your Numbers and You Accelerate a Level of Protection Within Your Kingdom One of the most powerful and fundamental ways to protect yourself inside of the game of building wealth is to know your numbers. If you don't know your numbers, you are making predictions into the future driven on fiction. If you don't know your numbers, you are exposing your business, your future, and your family to famine, because famine is the outcome of building your empire in fantasy. By not having your finger on the pulse called your numbers, you are the single biggest risk factor to your businesses and to your wealth. For years I was caught up in the cycle of build and burn, build and lose. Only when I began giving a shit about protecting what I had built, did that cycle stop. QUESTION: Stepping back and taking a look at where you are today, are you building and protecting your wealth, or are you on the road to famine? Golden Nugget #3: You Must Reside in the Land of Facts, Not Fantasy Men who don't know their numbers live in a land of fantasy and fuckin' make shit up. Fantasy feels nice and inside of it, you can create all kinds of fiction that you want. The fantasy is the place you think you are. The fiction? Those are the lies and stories you tell yourself about where you are. I was managing my businesses driven by the idea of what's in my bank account is the money I actually have. I came to find out that was not actually true. I was making decisions about moves I was going to make based on the fictional version of my numbers, rather than the factual numbers, which I had no idea what they were.   QUESTION: What lies and stories are you telling yourself and others about where you are in your business?   Golden Nugget #4: I Protect the Kingdom By Having A Vision For the Future When you run out of vision for yourself and your business, shit begins to go sideways. Burned out businessmen do stupid shit. The most dangerous businessman is the one who is creating from a place of boredom where there is no future vision. Maybe you're the guy whose lack of inspiration around the future is literally suffocating the people on your team. As the Chief Visionary Officer, you are the man that protects the game of your business. Everyone is driven off the vision of the mission you say you stand for. If you do not get a grip for yourself of the truth of your numbers and build for yourself a clear vision for your future, you're fucked. If your numbers are weak, unclear, and foggy, you are literally committed to destroying your company.   QUESTION: What level of passion and fire do you have around the businesses you are currently in and the role that you are playing within those businesses? Golden Nugget #5: Knowing Your Numbers Allows You to Have a Vault The #1 strategy to maximize the growth phase of money is to stabilize the vault and mote in and around your castle. Stored deep inside the vault within your castle is the capital of your humanity and the capital of  your cash  -  cash that backs up the kin