Episode 54: The Conversation is Shifting

The Sovereign Guide —  Rebranded and rebooted. In this episode, I explain this most recent shift with the podcast, from the prior The Full Cycle Entrepreneur and the original The Third Rail Entrepreneur, why, how and what to expect going forward. I unpack the concept of sovereignty: what it means to govern ourselves across all domains of life. From relational and intellectual sovereignty to business, financial, and spiritual progress. I explore how building a personally curated philosophy for your life, business, and beliefs leads to a richer, more adventurous existence. It's certainly done so for me. Equal parts philosophy and practical wisdom, I attempt to set the stage for broader, bolder conversations ahead.

Transcript

Speaker 5 0:01

Welcome to The Sovereign Guide. I'm your host, Alistair McDonald. Let's get started.

Speaker 0:27

I'm gonna do something that I've done before. You might have noticed it could be a little annoying, but I'm gonna do it anyway. I'm changing the name of this podcast. Yes. Again, I think this is my third iteration and I've gotta explain why. But first of all, I want to tell you the what. What am I doing? I have, oddly enough, and this beautiful irony made a mistake, and I've made a mistake that I actually spend a good part of my professional life protecting others from. What is that? Building something that works for you at the time, but structurally impairs and impedes your future. I'm talking about model design

Speaker 2 1:15

You ever noticed when you can see others making a mistake but can't see yourself doing the same thing? That's exactly what I've been doing. If you've stuck around for any period of time, you will notice that something has changed. And this is, I think, the third change, certainly, certainly the third, if not more of the name of this podcast, and essentially its core essence. I'm changing the name by now. You might have noticed the thumbnails changed. No longer will this be the Full Cycle entrepreneur. This will be the sovereign guide. Hey, if you can even hear me, and you've stuck around, you've been patient enough to roll with me through these various iterations, so I'm counting on you to stick to stick with me. Here's my point. It's so easy to observe the mistakes of others, but very rare that we're able to catch ourselves and kind of see ourselves in the mirror when we are doing exactly the same. It is no small irony to me that a huge part of the mission that I set out on when I'm working with private clients or even those in my, in my private community, is to make sure that their, our business models are ones that will allow for the full experience of both their capabilities, services skills. Products meeting the marketplace as the marketplace changes itself and so to, they do their skill sets, their offerings, their products, et cetera. It could be adjusting the business to be a full cycle one instead of a half cycle one, which by the way, very few people have done. And those that have not are discovering exactly what that feels like, particularly in the real estate space and private equity and private credit. That's a longer conversation. But I've done the same thing. I, by initiating this podcast as the third rail entrepreneur, hemmed myself in to that particular very narrow channel. The truth is I'm a huge fan of a third rail. That aspect outside of your personal and professional lives. The channel which you go to, to learn and discover and explore and be new at something, be terrible at it. The value of a third rail, it, it can't be overstated. It brings in a cross poll type of value. Catalyzes new ways of seeing old problems and deeply, deeply sparks creativity for us in both of the other channels of our personal and professional lives, I. But it's a concept and it's something that once you get it, all that remains is for it to be supported intermittently by evidence of others making progress because of it, or different versions of what it might look like for you. I then did the same thing by calling. This time we spent together the full cycle entrepreneur. Why did I do that? I did this a year ago because I was and remain convinced, and the data is supporting me, that we are moving into a different flurry of cycles, which is to say the other side of multiple cycles at a speed that is catching even the titans of industry with their pants down. Developing a full cycle business Is perhaps the most important work you can do in and for your business and simultaneously the work that nobody actually is. So the whole concept of developing a full cycle perspective, a full cycle skillset, and a commensurately, a full cycle business remains to me. One of the most important things we can do, some of the most important work we can do, but it is not enough to justify the name of an entire series or ongoing podcast. What I'm getting at is this. I have hemmed myself in and felt bound to the names of these podcasts trying to do what I can to bend space and time to fit into it when the truth is, I have never done that to anything in my life. I started my first business at 18 and I've set out for a life of sovereignty. Sovereignty in all of its domains. And these are the individuals that I have the privilege of working with. So we have it in common by retitling, reframing and re-releasing the podcast. Here I am now dropping the fences I want to be able to talk about with you and spark conversations inside of a broader community. Around and into things that nobody else is talking about, or maybe the stuff that everybody is talking about, but through a completely different lens. The individuals that I surround myself with. Both as business partners, friends, family, my own children, loved ones. Clients are themselves, both sovereign in as many ways as they are able or certainly developing and expanding their sovereignty and guides themselves. They are leading and supporting and guiding their community, their church, their family. Their relationship, their business, their own mind into new areas of inquiry and reflection. And on and on. As am and as will I, I have been guiding others alongside me on new adventures since I was 18, 19 years of age, and I don't plan to stop. When we think about sovereignty, what is it? What could I possibly be referring to? It is, no, it is not. I want you to go out and buy silver bullets and flack jackets. It's not more canned food in the basement and you don't have to burn your passport or figure out how to live in Uruguay. It's something else entirely. The whole issue of of sovereignty is essentially somebody who has the right. And power or the capabilities to govern themselves. They don't require some external framework that they have to live within. They're not managed by the interfered by external needs and desires and rules. And rigidities is, there's many versions of sovereignty, relational sovereignty. In a relationship, I think of sovereignty as the, as the antidote to any form of codependency. Now, we can speak about codependency. I don't have it. They do what have you. There are multiple different versions of codependency. Some that are healthy and some that are not. But sovereignty is to see yourself and the other person, your business partner, your friend, your lover, your spouse as being a whole independent individual person. A completely distinct self-identity that's protected by boundaries and a union made richer by the union. I heard an old Irishman officiating a wedding many years ago, and he said something that struck me. It seemed to fly over the heads or through the ears of everybody else because I found myself looking around and thinking, did you get that? Did you hear what he said? It was so powerful in its simplicity and so rich in its love. Here's what he said, blah, blah, blah. As you Jack and Jane, you know, go out as married couple, you go out to live your separate lives together. You live your separate lives together. Struck me as a wisdom, far more weighty than even his delivery of it. What about one of my favorite? Ponies to ride intellectual sovereignty. The ability to think critically, reach conclusions that are independent of the prevailing consensus. The media, what's popular, political narratives and messaging, ethical and moral narratives and messaging. Protecting ourselves from group think the herding instinct, propaganda, and on and on. Seeking outside sources of input, actually looking at a different industry entirely to see how we might be able to learn more and bring something back to our own business. To travel to different cultures and discover through the contrast how others live and the richness that we can extract and bring back to our own lives and businesses and families, our own rituals and routines. You can only do that as a sovereign individual professional business sovereignty For a business, I think of sovereignty as essentially having a moat. Something that protects it from the broader market, from the volatility, from predatory competitors, government regulations. This is what Charlie Munger would refer to when he described the companies. The only companies in the world that he is willing to invest in, and this is his phrase, they must have a durable competitive advantage. There's two words sound so obvious and so simple, but it must be durable and competitive. We're describing a sovereign business or a sovereign individual running and turning a business into one of sovereignty, something that is broadly diversified or vertically integrated, but either way, it stands on its own. We can even think about our own financial or income sovereignty. That's the shift that you have probably already made from being an employee, which is where we are selling units of our time to being a direct owner of the output at the source of value creation. We're talking about ownership of what old Uncle Carl Marx used to call. The means of production. You choose to own the means of production for all of its whipsaws and whimsy and volatility. All of the brain damage it gives you, but also all of the richness, not just in results, but in the experience itself. Personal finances, money management. This is what? Sovereignty of finances. Yes. And I'm not again saying you need to can food and buy gold. Though that might not be a bad idea. Right now we're talking about a way to, again, put a moat around yourself and your assets in a way that protects you and your loved ones. It's being strong with liquidity and light on obligation, heavy on opportunity, light on obligation. It's worth remembering that debt, for example, and I'm not against debt. But debt is a taxation on future income. It means that if you owe money, you owe your future labor to someone else. Again, debt. This is a whole other rabbit hole. I am not anti debt. I'm not Dave Ramsey 17.0. I'm talking about what debt intrinsically is, and yes, there's self-liquidating and non self-liquidating debt. There's good and bad debt, et cetera, et cetera. We won't go into that, but you get the point. Too many of us are bound up by commitments we made in the past that discounted the current expense of paying them off. 28 million Americans. According to Bloomberg, fully two thirds of American households today are living paycheck to paycheck, a term that we use in the west to make ourselves feel a little disconnected from it, paycheck to paycheck in the rest of the world. This is referred to as hand to mouth. There is such little sovereignty out there. To the extent that we allow this concept to really percolate in our mind, we see that this has no limit. We can even find ourself discovering spiritual sovereignty. This internal kind of realization that your consciousness, your beliefs, your connection to the divine are not mediated by an institution, your inner kingdom. Is how you connect to the outer kingdom of your predisposition. It's about owning your own moral compass, your spiritual path. It's not an accident that the diversity of individuals that I know specifically the diversity of those that I know that are of completely different faiths around the world. Those individuals have beautifully crafted their own deeply individualized, lived manifestation of their faith. They have developed their own personal rituals and mental frameworks and habits of being that are absolutely built for and in alignment with their faith, their religion, their beliefs, and I just find those people to be so inspiring to be around. So that's what we're gonna do. We're going to get there by talking about the kinds of things that I don't think anybody's really paying attention to, or I hope to be able to share some of the perspectives or tools or reflections that have been or are currently very profitable for me in my life. And when I use the word profit, hopefully you would know by now, I'm not talking about just money. I'm talking about the elements of my life that has been so phenomenally rich and varied and steeped in adventure. I wanna be able to talk about those things and from time to time, maybe skewer a few sacred cows of our own, those things that we're so convinced of that houses only ever go up and the US is the strongest power on earth. Everybody needs the dollar or whatever belief systems we carry in the zeitgeist that we all live. That's what I wanna do, and I'm gonna start with some pretty trippy things, and you'll see over the course of our period together, this is gonna be a very journey. I can't promise you that it is gonna always necessarily be directly relevant to your life, but I can promise that it will ultimately be. I've been through enough in my life to see the patterns and cycles and hopefully be able to identify emerging trends that could either profit us tremendously or bring us to a perilous demise. I'm glad you're here, and I'm stoked for what lies ahead, not just in my life, but in the life of my loved ones and those that have the privilege of supporting in their business and their lives. Hopefully what we get to dig into and pour over in our time together will turn out to be. As rich and rewarding for you as my life is and has been for me. My life has been one of unbelievable adventure, and I wish the same for you.

Speaker 3 17:00

That's it for this episode. Thanks for being here. Hey, there's only two things that you have in your life. Your time and your attention that you've given both to me for these few minutes of today means everything. Cheers.