I didn’t start freaking out until I couldn’t remember the alphabet…
I knew something was wrong, but I was dropping my kids off at school and didn’t want to scare them.
As soon as they got out, and the coast was clear, I tried to sing my ABCs.
But the order and the letters wouldn’t come to me…
I didn’t know it then, but I had just had an ischemic stroke.
That’s when the brain’s blood supply gets interrupted, depriving it of oxygen. It’s something that can happen when someone suffers from high blood pressure and cholesterol.
I had both. So maybe it was inevitable…
But 15 years ago, it took me completely by surprise.
I woke up that morning feeling a bit sluggish and lost all my powers of communication a few hours later.
I knew what I wanted to say, but the words came out jumbled making me panic and sound even crazier as I tried to communicate.
My wife rushed me to the hospital, which is why I’m alive today.
It was a huge wake up call.
I was living such a fast-paced life at that time. My body could no longer keep up. It could not repeat another day at the pace I was going.
And repeatability is key to physical and financial health more than you may realize.
Today I’ll share why that is, how you can avoid my same trip to the hospital, and how to set your portfolio up for repeated gains over the long term.
Physical and Financial Health
Prior to the stroke, my life was a fast-paced ball of stress.
This was all right after the Great Recession hit. And I had just found out that my business partner had taken out mortgages on all of our properties. On top of that, he wasn’t even paying the mortgages – he was pocketing all the rent checks for himself.
It was essentially a nasty business partner divorce.
And banks were breathing down my neck for loans I’d guaranteed… not knowing the economy and my business partner’s shady side dealings would make it impossible to pay them back.
I watched my $25 million retirement nest egg crater. And had to move my family of five kids in with my in-laws.
I was sleeping horribly and eating even worse until my trip to the hospital forced me to take a good hard look at my life.
A stress-free life is impossible.
But I realized that there are two things in life that if you get right – will make your life a whole heck of a lot easier to navigate and dare I say, quite enjoyable – even when trouble comes along.
Those two things are physical and financial health.
And so, I got to work on the first one. I listened to all the doctors in the hospital and worked hard on my recovery in physical therapy.
When I got my cognitive ability and communication skills back, I set to work cutting out junk food, working out regularly, and going to bed at a reasonable hour.
I realized I had to live each day in a way that my body could handle repeatedly for the rest of my life. Life is a marathon not a sprint… but I had been living it as a sprint.
The same thing applied to my finances.
I was no longer a real estate developer with big lines of credit. I couldn’t take out million-dollar loans anymore to buy properties and jump back into business.
But I realized, I didn’t have to.
Instead, I opted to get a job to feed my family and start buying shares in successful million-dollar companies that repeatedly grew their wealth (and my investments) over the long-term.
I no longer had millions of dollars to gamble on high-risk hot stocks and/or speculative real estate.
My finances couldn’t take another hit like they had. I needed to invest in such a way that my portfolio could repeatedly increase my wealth overtime.
The Key to Financial Health: Repeatable Earnings Growth
So I started investing in companies that stood out from their competitors. These businesses provided superior service and/or pricing to their core customers, allowing them to grow faster and sustain that consistent growth over time.
In other words, they had a wide moat.
And how did I pick these companies?
It may seem boring – but one of the most important ways to determine which companies will succeed years down the road is by analyzing a company’s earnings.
A company’s earnings is the amount of money a company makes over a specific time period after all the expenses and costs have been taken out to make that money in the first place.
And a company’s earnings determine their market price over the long-term.
If you want to make large amounts of money over time as an investor, you need to choose companies that repeatedly deliver the most consistent earnings growth.
Again, it’s all about the concept of repeatability. A company is not a safe investment if it can’t repeatedly grow and perfect its business over time.
The market shows that investors base their approval or disapproval on how much they think a business can bring in from its products or services. In other words, a company’s earnings.
Investors don’t always recognize this fact, but they gravitate toward it anyway.
The problem is that most investors don’t know how to profit from this reality over the long-term.
The key is to master the art of repeatability.
Going back to my behavior after the stroke… I didn’t just exercise once or turn down a bag of chips here and a box of cookies there. I lost weight and gained strength by consistently making wise choices.
And so, little by little, I saw the benefits of healthy physical living.
(For those wondering – I’m in fighting shape now at 6’3”’ and 180 lbs.)
In the same way, I began investing in solid companies and then reinvesting the dividends those solid companies gave me. Slowly, my share of those stocks rose, providing more dividends that allowed me to buy up even more stocks…
Which allowed me to get even more dividends…
That’s not always an easy process. It’s easy to get distracted by “snacks” that offer instant gratification – the high-flying businesses “everyone” likes to talk about.
But in the end, slow but steady repeated progress wins the race. I’m positive proof of that today.
I built my wealth back this way.
Now, once again, I am a multimillionaire.
And I want to provide that repeatability to as many others as possible.
That’s why I created Wide Moat Research. And why my team and I offer free recommendations to grow your wealth, just as my colleague Adam Galas did in yesterday’s Intelligent Income Daily.
So whether you are in retirement and want to compound your wealth or you’re in over your eyeballs in debt – like I was – you can get back up again.
Remember repeatability is the key to your physical and financial health. And for your finances, it comes through investing in companies with repeated earnings growth.
Happy SWAN investing,
Brad Thomas
Editor, Intelligent Income Daily