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Episode #507 - Wisdom For Our Children: Energy and Mindset
Roger: "Youth is the most beautiful thing in the world and what a pity that it has to be wasted on children."
-George Bernard Shaw
INTRODUCTION
Hey there, welcome to the Retirement Answer Man show, Roger Whitney here.
This is the show dedicated to helping you not just survive retirement but have the confidence to do the work so you can lean in and really rock retirement. Man, having that confidence is in, well, it's a daily thing, right? Got a really big show today because it's the beginning of the month.
So we're going to start a new theme for the entire month on wisdom for our children around energy and mindset, career and retirement, family and friends, spending, saving and investing. Now it's really what we wish our younger self would have known in these areas. This is a chance for us to reflect and help the youth know things that we wish we would have known.
It made me think of something I was exposed to a couple years ago, the six Hebrew stages of life. Now, I'm not Jewish, and I'm probably going to mispronounce some of these words, but my understanding is that from zero to 12, that's Adam. You have creation, son and daughter, created in God's image, identity by design.
And then at 13 to 29 is Zakhar, which is the sexual man and woman, find a bride or a groom, find a family, healthy and unhealthy sexuality. And then Gibor becomes the stage in the 30s, which is the warrior and the nurturer. Battles won and lost, experience gained, that's where you get a lot of scars and wounds.
And then in your forties-ish, you're that wounded warrior, nurturing years, you're facing battles, won and lost, healing and strength, comes out of brokenness, I definitely experienced that in my forties, and then in your fifties, which is where I'm at right now, Anosh, which is you as the spiritual father or mother, settled identity, growing strength, desire to give back, and then if you're past your 60s or in your 60s or beyond, you're Zaken, I guess hopefully I pronounced that correct. You're the spiritual patriarch or matriarch, wisdom of white haired one, the sage ears.
Those stages, when I read them, I can see them in my life for sure and we are at the stage of a spiritual father or mother or patriarch or matriarch. So, we're going to spend some organized time playing those roles well. As an exercise, that's going to help us reflect on where we're at. So, I'm excited about this theme. We're going to create a resource out of all the crowdsourced ideas from club members and listeners that have emailed in that we can perhaps give to the youth, our children, our grandchildren, people we know in our life, to hopefully help them know what we wish we would have known. So, I'm excited about that.
In addition to that today We're going to talk about the books. I read a couple books. Not a lot of books finished last month and then we're going to answer some of your questions. I am excited to get started, so why don't we do that?
BOOKS I READ LAST MONTH
Let's start off with the books finished in September. There are only two books that I completed. The first book was Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose, which chronicles the journey of Lewis and Clark and the exploration of the Louisiana Purchase. Everything west of the Mississippi. I chose this book because I was getting ready to go to the Boundary Waters and I was going to be canoeing and wanted something that was related to exploring nature in a canoe. I knew of Lewis and Clark, but I'd never read any of the history.
Some of my observations of the book, the majority of the journey, especially on the way out before they got to the Missouri, was upriver. They canoed upriver. These aren't tiny little rivers. These are upriver. I never really appreciated that. They built their own canoes, so they had a couple instances, oh, we have to go find some trees and build new canoes. So, they would chop down a tree, hollow it out, or however they did it. Holy cow! They walked and walked and walked. Especially Lewis, because he was a protege of Thomas Jefferson, which I didn't realize, who taught him botany, and he was doing a scientific exploration as best he could, so he would walk to catalog plants and birds and specimens, etc.
The other thing that stuck with me, and it's related to the second book I read last month, is the pace of life and time. Things were so much slower back then, in terms of information, how you did things every day. They had to go and forage and hunt just to eat their breakfast or their lunch. That was amazing.
Definitely, I saw culturally how they were stuck in their times, in terms of views related to Native Americans and back then the slaves, and you could see that cultural stuck-ness. I think Stephen Ambrose tried to acknowledge it, but not vilify it as much as some. I don't know where it should fall, but he did at least address that. But you could definitely see just that difference.
Then at the end, and this is something I didn't realize, at the end, when they came back, and Lewis especially, Clark was just sort of an afterthought in the times, he wasn't even really part of the lead. Lewis saw him that way, and he definitely was essential, but in terms of America, they didn't. Clark was sort of the behind-the-scenes operator, and he had a long life that seemed very fruitful. Now, Lewis, who had all the fame, when he came back, he really seemed to lose his way and eventually committed suicide.
But that pace of life and the amount that they walked and the work that they did daily reflect back on things like The Comfort Crisis, which is one of my favorite books this year. So that was the first book.
The second book is 4, 000 Weeks: Time Management for Mere Mortals by Oliver Berkman. Great book.
I listened to this one via audio. I find that experience very different. So, I actually have the physical copy 'because I'm like, this is such a great book. There are so many things I want to catalog and journal on that I have to get the physical book because the audio is just like thoughts passing as I'm doing other things.
But a couple of the concepts that stuck out just from listening to the audiobook were the concept of time and how we acknowledge our mortality intellectually, but we actually don't know any different than always being. So, we almost feel immortal because we've always been alive, even though intellectually we know that it will end.
The second concept that stood out, which I think is a really good one, life is not a linear path. So, if you think of life, if you were to like make a chart, draw your life, from age zero to whatever age you are right now, it's going to be a line, right, and you might go up or down based on how you felt that period of those Hebrew stages of life went for you. I know I could see that going up and down.
We think of life as linear, where we're on this path and it just continues and maybe it can, the angle of the slope can skew one way or the other. In the book, they say, well, life isn't really a linear line of any sort. It's a series of dots. Of moments. If you zoom in on that line, it's really just a series of individual dots or moments. You could say, that's a year, that's a month, that's a week, that's a day. That's this moment. Right now, it's a series of little dots all tied together, and that's I think, a healthier way to think about it because our job is to focus on each individual dot. How do I make this moment a full life? I like that concept.
Then the last concept, at least from the audiobook, was you have to accept that you can't do it all, and you don't have to. That is very freeing. So, as I process the actual physical book, I'm sure I'll have more concepts. So those are the two books I read this last year. I didn't complete more books because I'm reading a couple really long books.
The one I'm going to finish, which is the classic Count of Monte Cristo. That's longer than I expected, and man, the language is a little bit more challenging for me. So those are the books that I read.
Last housekeeping issue is that I want to invite you to join me on October 26th, that's a Thursday at 7 central, or October 28th, that's a Saturday at about 11 a. m. central where we're going to go over the four pillars that you should focus on to create a great retirement plan, one that you can have confidence in, and we're also going to invite you to learn more about the Rock Retirement Club, because we're opening up enrollment on the 26th, where we give you the course and the tools and the guidance to complete your retirement plan of record and put those pillars into place.
We'd love to have you join us just to hang out or learn more about the club. You can go to livewithroger.com to register for that, and it's obviously free, so we'd love to see you there.
With that, let's move on to talk about what we wish our younger self would have known.
WHAT WE WISH OUR YOUNGER SELF WOULD HAVE KNOWN- ENERGY AND MINDSET
All right, I'm excited to kick off this month-long series on what we wish our younger self would have known. What do we want to tell younger people that we're mentoring or our children or our grandchildren? The way we're going to do this is we're going to divide this up into domains. Today we're going to talk about sharing wisdom on how to have energy and mindset. How do you cultivate that?
Next week, we're going to talk about what we wish our younger selves would have known around career and retirement. Then the week after that's going to be with friends and family. How do we choose that? How do we navigate that? And then lastly, probably the one that you guys think about when we think about what we wish our younger self would have known, at least in a show like this is going to be spending, saving and investing.
You and I as the gray-haired ones now, have the opportunity to share our perspective. Now, Robert Louis Stevenson's quote comes to mind when I think about doing this, "If youth only knew, and age only could." Well, through this series, we're hoping to create resources, so youth does know, and we're going to be the vehicles of wisdom and perspective.
In fact, we've collected a lot of suggestions from listeners and from members in the Rock Retirement Club around these domains, and we're going to share a PDF version of all of that collective wisdom at the end of this series. So, if you want to get a copy of that, that you could perhaps use as talking points to someone that you're mentoring or perhaps give to someone to share, we'll have a nice-looking PDF available, a resource for you to do that.
If you want to get that, you'll have to be on our 6-Shot Saturday email list, and you can sign up for that at rogerwhitney.com. That's our weekly email where we share resources and ideas. So just FYI there.
But back to that quote So we're going to work on helping youth know but there's that other part if age only could that Stevenson was talking about. This can sit a little hard sometimes, right?
Oh, if I only knew that I would be in a much better position, some of that regret can start to sit in. So, I want to compel you, implore you to say, hey, you can do all this stuff now. Almost all of the stuff you can start doing today, like today on energy and mindset. There's nothing that says you can't jump out of the groove or the habits that you've had if they're a little uncomfortable to look at and start doing something today.
Yes, it would have been better maybe in your 20s. Yes, you don't have as much time frame, and you may not make as much progress because of that time frame. Yes, it's harder because we're set in our ways. Those are all true, but they don't mean that you can't start doing some things today around family, around energy, around mindset, around career, around retirement, around spending around saving and around investing. Agency, agency, agency. You can do this stuff.
So today we're going to talk about energy and mindset. So why are we starting here? We're starting here because energy, your ability to show up each day, is the foundation of everything. If you don't have enough energy because you're tired or you're ill, you're not going to be able to show up and be fully who you need to be for yourself, for your family, for your coworkers, for life. So, you have to really have some intentional action on your energy. We do as we get older, but the youth, you feel like they have all the energy in the world. The more they can build habits around their energy, the more they're going to be able to show up for themselves. I think we need to share that.
So that's why we had to start with energy. You have to have that eating, moving, sleeping, breathing.
Then secondly, mindset. Once you have the energy to show up, you have to have a good growth mindset. So, you can show up in a positive way to grab that agency and be proactive in working on your own problems.
Because just like us, when you're young, you have lots of problems. You got lots of unknowns. I just had my first session with Francisco, a gentleman that I'm mentoring through the FinServ Foundation. He is in college, sharp young man. Immigrant from Mexico. He thinks he wants to get into financial planning, but he doesn't know.
He doesn't even know what financial planning really is. So, this is a five-month program for me to help him understand the landscape. When you're young, you have a lot of opportunity, but you have so much unknown that sometimes it's hard to have a Good, healthy mindset, and so this is going to be important as well.
Now, some recommendations. In this resource that we're going to share in 6-Shot Saturday, we're also going to have resources that we say, hey, read this, listen to this. I'm going to share a couple of resources now, and then we're going to bring on Brian Johnson, the founder of the Heroic Training Platform.
But there are very few things in my life that I'm all in on. I'm all in on this podcast, I'm in on you rocking retirement. I'm in the club. I'm in on serving clients. Obviously, I'm in on my family and improving myself. There are very few things I’m all in on I mean really all in on Heroic and Brian are one of them. So, Brian is going to come on and we're going to talk about energy and mindset but before we do that, I want to share some resources.
So, with energy, I would suggest Outlive by Peter Attia. You've heard me talk about that.
I would suggest Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker, talking about the importance of sleeping.
The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter, why we should do hard things.
Then Bright Line Eating by Susan Pierce Thompson, of how we need to have bright lines about the things that we eat.
So those are my resources on energy.
From a mindset standpoint. Man, this is a hard one because there are so many things to have resources on. Obviously, I think the Heroic Training Platform is a game changer if you're willing to do the work and build those habits. I really do. I use it every day in my life. I don't have any financial interest in whether somebody is using it or not, other than being an investor because I believe in it.
Other resources when it comes to mindset. would be a book called The Tools by Phil Stutz and Barry Michaels.
The Power of Agency by Paul Knapper and Anthony Rue.
Tiny Habits by B. J. Fogg.
Deep Work by Cal Newport.
You'll probably hear us talking about Areté: Activate Your Heroic Potential, Brian's new book, which is coming out here in a month or so. All of these would be great Christmas gifts, Thanksgiving gifts, Hanukkah gifts, etc. So those are some of the resources.
With that, I want to move to our conversation with Brian who is a modern-day philosopher and is probably the exemplar of somebody that is dialed in on mindset and energy.
BRIAN: ENERGY AND MINDSET
Brian, you are probably my best friend that I've never actually met in person because every time we've been in the same room together, there's so many hands going at you. I'm like, okay, I'm not going to add another obligation to the bunch. But you are.
Brian: Oh man, I appreciate you brother. I love you and it's funny because I got goosebumps for what will be, I'm sure, the first of 101 times in our chat together.
That's hard to believe for me that we haven't connected. I know that we've connected kind of same room connection, but not one on one. I feel so close to you. I feel so connected to you. That was surprising for me to hear. I'm like, really? Oh, my goodness. So, bless you and just who you are, how you show up, how you've supported me, our movement, everything we're up to with Heroic, with the book, et cetera.
I deeply appreciate you. I love you, and I'm thrilled to be here connected with you right now.
Roger: Yeah. Pretty soon. I'm going to have the book right behind me. On my shelf probably.
Brian: This week by the way.
Roger: This week? All right!
Brian: You're getting the VIP box, yeah, you're on the top of the list.
Roger: So, a lot of people don't know who you are.
You're CEO of Heroic. You are a modern-day philosopher. I can go through all the praises but why don't you describe who you are and what Heroic is so people can have some context?
Brian: Yeah, I appreciate it. I'm a guy really passionate about figuring out how I can show up as my best, most heroic self in service to my wife, my two kids, just turned 11, son, six-year-old daughter, you, our community, and the broader community that our community serves.
So, you know, at the risk of being pretentious, I love the word philosopher. Etymologically, a lover of wisdom, and wisdom is knowledge of life. So, when I first discovered that, I just fell in love with the idea and I said, yeah, yeah, that's like me. I want to be a human being that strives to understand how to live and demonstrate my own idiosyncratic expression of these truths I'm studying, ancient wisdom, modern science, so I can help others do the same.
Then I've spent half of the last 25 years as a founder, CEO principally, built and sold to social platforms before Facebook. Then when I wasn't doing that, I had enough money to kind of figure out what I wanted to do when I grew up, which was to read and write and teach.
So those two parts of me are now integrated in Heroic Public Benefit Corporation, proud of what we've done with Heroic and what I've done entrepreneurially, and even more proud about what we're doing together, integrating those two things, creating a social training platform that helps people move from theory to practice to mastery together. It's been scientifically proven to help people change their lives, et cetera.
But that's kind of the two parts of me, philosopher, CEO, but all in on Heroic, as you know.
Roger: Yeah. Yeah. I've been motivated. We're showing our tattoos, folks. For those of you that are listening to the podcast. Then you have your book. Areté: Activate Your Heroic Potential comes out here. When is actually the release date?
Brian: Dude, it drops November 14th. So, you're getting an advanced reader copy literally this week in your VIP box. So, it's going out November 14th is when it comes out and couldn't be more excited.
Roger: My wife thinks I'm actually crazy, Brian, because she just found out, I forget, I ordered, I think I ordered 500 to a thousand of them for rock retirement club members, but also to give away to you, who's listening. I'm excited to get it. I'm really excited.
Brian: Well, you are crazy. I'm surprised that it took this long for your wife to officially declare you as crazy, but this particular context, you're in good company. Literally this morning, a friend of mine who happened to win the second apprentice after working for me, who runs a big venture firm here in Austin, Texas, just bought 400 plus copies for all of his limited partners, CEOs, et cetera.
So, we've been really blessed to have support, yours is right there at the top of the list. I do appreciate here's to the crazy ones. You went over the line when you got the soul force tattooed to your body.
Roger: Maybe that'll come up in our discussion.
So, what we're going to talk about today, this whole month is what do we wish our younger self would have known, and we've divided that into a number of domains. Today is energy and mindset. So, I have a couple questions for you about talking to your younger self.
Before I ask those questions, I think we should start with the word on your shirt and on your arm, which is Areté, because that sort of embodies a little bit of what we're talking about here.
What does, and that's the name of your book, what does Areté mean?
Brian: Yeah, it's an ancient Greek word that we translate weakly as excellence or virtue. In the book, I tried to answer this question in the simplest way. So, it just so happened that my son was going through something in his journey to try to become a chess grandmaster. He's only 11, but he's super passionate about chess. And I use the context of me and him hanging out to describe what I'm going to describe to you right now. Explain it like I'm 10 kinds of thing.
The word Areté directly translates as excellence or virtue. But the way I like to describe it is that in any given moment, you're capable of being the best version of yourself. For those who can see when this comes out on video, I draw a line about eye length, eye height. You can be this, right, and then below it I draw another line with my hand that's about a foot below it and I say but if you could be this and you are being that, the line below, and there's a gap between who you could have been and who you are actually being, it's in that gap in which regret, anxiety, depression, disillusionment exists.
But if you can close the gap in any given moment and express the best version of yourself, there's no room for regret, anxiety, disillusionment, depression, with all the asterisks, it's more complex than that. But when you in the moment live with Areté, excellence, virtue, you express the best version of yourself, you feel what the ancient Greeks would call eudaimonia, which we translate as flourishing, but it means good soul.
You feel like you are connected to the best within you, and that feels amazing. So Areté is the means through which we can and do express the best version of ourselves. It's the one-word summation of everything I've studied, ancient wisdom, modern science, the name of the book, the essence of our coach program and everything that we do together in a single word, Areté.
Roger: That word means a moment in time, right? Because I remember when you and I had a discussion, a little coaching session about a week ago on this, where I was suffering about perfectionism and beating myself up for being feeling like I'm so far away from that line of perfect self and shaming myself.
That's the danger when you set it up of this line versus this line and you're like, well, why am I not that line yet?
Brian: Totally. Then you come back to some authors frame it up as the gap in the game. So, when I'm talking about the gap, I'm talking about it at this moment. So clearly you and I, where we are in our lives, I'm 49 and I would have liked to have closed the gap a lot more than I have, and we'll talk about me talking to my younger self and what I wish I had known and done that would have allowed me to have more completely fulfilled my potential so far.
If you're looking at the gap between where you think you should already be and where you are, you're going to suffer. Full stop. When you look back and you look at your current reality, you have to radically accept it.
That just is a must. With joy, with celebration. Then you need to look forward, and get excited about the app and say, yeah, yeah, yeah. Matthew McConaughey describes a hero as the version of himself he's chasing. You do it with joy. You don't do it with joylessness, I hate myself and I didn't do what I wanted to do with my life, I should give up.
You do it with a, all right, it's unfortunate I didn't do what I could have done up until now. But it's unforgivable, as Seth Godin says, to wait any longer. So, in that moment in which we are shaming ourselves, that's the moment to live with Areté. In that moment, you say, am I currently being my best self by shaming myself and being abusive, literally, to myself?
Or in this moment, could I remember that this is the time to recommit, shine a flashlight on what's working and what's not working? Bring a hammer to change my life and get excited about it. So that's how I've continued to frankly struggle to communicate it effectively, because it's so easy for all of us to fall into that perfectionistic trap.
Me, you, everybody else. But that's some of the way that I'm trying to get better at explaining the multiple gaps we could face.
Roger: Well, let's talk to younger Brian.
It's going to be 23-year-old Brian, and I'm not going to ask you to put up a photo of that gentleman. Although I would accept it privately just to see it. And we're going to talk about energy. I think you have to start, right? You got to be able to show up.
So, what was Brian's energy? Describe Brian from an energy standpoint at say 23.
Brian: I can see him in my mind's eye right now because I literally just went rummaging through. I didn't keep many pictures, but I've got a box of pictures. So, I can see him. He was an incoming first year student at law school, University of California, Berkeley.
I literally can see my ID card from that. That Brian was puffy. He was a little bit tired looking and just, it wasn't quite eating the way that he could. It was a lot of fast food, a lot of pizza. I remember in college, went to UCLA. I'd get to buy one get one free, medium pizza. I'd eat one for dinner, maybe a little bit more, and then I'd have the next one for breakfast.
I knew none of these things that we're going to talk about, none of them. First generation college student, blue collar family. My father worked in a grocery store for 39 years. He struggled with alcohol, which is an important part of my story. His father struggled with alcohol and ended his own life, and I'm giving a keynote on Mental Health Day to talk about the invisible disability that is anxiety and depression.
You can't see it in people, and the picture I found, goosebumps, that I will share with you is a picture of me at about 24 years old with my family at one of my sister's weddings. Three sisters, a brother, my mom and dad, and it looks like a really happy, normal family in a place of worship celebrating a special day, which was a special day.
But what you can't see in that picture is my own depression from a year before, and the impending depression I was going to face a year later. My father's alcoholism, my brother's alcoholism, and their depression. The fact that one of my sisters needed to go to a facility to deal with her emotional issues.
But anyway, all of it was driven in large part by your question of my energy. I knew none of these things, eating, moving, sleeping, breathing. I'd stay up until 2am doing whatever, getting terrible sleep, eating poorly, rarely exercising. I'd play basketball on Saturday and that was my exercise. None of these conversations were present for me and I suffered as a result of it.
It's a long answer to your short question, Roger, but there you go. That's the younger version of me at 23. I did have great hair though at 23, let's go.
Roger: Did you know that you didn't have good energy? Did you know that these things were bad for you?
Brian: I had no idea. None. None. I mean, there's a short and direct answer. These were not ideas that were present for me. I had read Stephen Covey's Seven Habits. Yeah, yeah, Seventh Habit, Renewal, Sharpen the Saw, but that didn't mean anything for me practically, in terms of what I was choosing to do and not doing.
You know, I was into Tony Robbins as a young man, right around that time, 23. I hadn't gotten into him yet. I found him at 2 a. m. I'm in a state trying to figure out my life and oh, there we go. Okay, I'll get that.
No, I didn't, which is part of why I work so hard right now to try to explain these ideas to people that your physiology drives more of your psychology then you almost certainly are aware of, and you can solve it through simple behavioral changes, eating, moving, sleeping. We're going to talk about what I would tell that person.
Roger: That's the next question, obviously, is if you were talking to your younger self and that's a lot of what this is, right? because we're talking to either women or men that were mentoring or to our children or to our grandchildren, what should they know?
What would you tell him?
Brian: Yeah, I'd sit down with him, and what a great question to truly feel into that, to truly feel that version of myself. I'd start by saying I love you, dude. Good work. We've all faced our challenges. At 23, I'd been through some stuff and had experienced what I'd experienced.
I mean, it's funny too, at the risk of being a modest, I'm in better physical shape now than I've ever been. I don't care now about physical aesthetics, you know, and I'm not that guy, but that version of me would have loved to look like I look like right now. It's like, all right, well, there you go, dude.
So, there's something fun too about that, of this version of me actually being there with that version of me, whereas, you know, I say all the time, you got to be credible, you got to be a radiant exemplar, so I'm literally in better shape now than I was then 25 years ago.
But there's something about that that would be part of the dynamic there. I would tell this younger guy that all of his potential is wrapped up in getting his energy dialed in. And then I would systematically help him architect a new approach to life. Eating, moving, sleeping, breathing, and focusing would be the five fundamentals that I would focus on with him physiologically.
I'd help him create masterpiece days. Get a good night of sleep. PM bookend drives AM bookend. All the things that we talk about all the time with Heroic. I'd also get him excited. I teach him the science of hope. I teach him the science of seeing his future as brighter and better than ever before.
Agency, the idea that he can achieve that. Create a plan and I'd show him that. His energy is going to drive everything. It's going to drive how he shows up in his work and his love. Let's get it right.
I'd also, kind of unasked, but related to the broader context, I'd shake him a bit. I'd wake him up.
I'd let him know, dude, this isn't a dress rehearsal. You've got so much potential. You can do so much great stuff. You've already done great stuff. You know it, let's go, and I'd help formulate the purpose and the underlying mission orientation that I now get so clearly at that age.
But yeah, those are some of the things, and we can talk details of what that means, eating, moving, sleeping, breathing, focusing, and what I'd have him specifically do. But on a high level, that's how I'd approach it. On a hike, dude. We'd be out, if we're still in LA, which is where I used to live, we'd be out on Temascula, beautiful hike, talking about these things while we're moving our bodies, sweating, banging out burpees, and all the other things.
Roger: Yeah, and that's a whole other thing of, if you're talking to your younger self, how do you even set yourself up so they would hear it?
Brian: But I'd show up like this. I'd show up, like I said, you know what I mean? As the guy that like, dang, look at him, I want some of that. Like, literally, that's the playful thing you always hear me talking about. You have to be that radiant exemplar.
Roger: So, eating, moving, sleeping, breathing. What's the first thing that Brian should do if he wanted to take a baby step?
Brian: 100%. Quit drinking sugar. So, nutrition is going to drive 80 percent of it. So, your gut produces more serotonin than your brain. Your gut health is influencing so much of your psychological health. So, I would systematically, I'd start there. That's by far the biggest lever. So, I pull that lever, no more drinking sugar. In fact, no more sugar. Let's get rid of all processed foods, refined foods. If we want to go all in, and I'm going to encourage you to go all in.
Then we'd architect an idiosyncratic nutritional strategy there. And then in parallel, I'd have him start getting a good night of sleep. So, we'd create a PM shutdown, complete routine.
We'd make sure we're in bed for eight to nine plus hours a day, such that we're getting the sleep that would allow us to flourish. I'd be moving my body. I'd tell them the days that you don't exercise are the days you're popping a depressant; you need to get out and move your body. We do the simple 10, 000 steps a day, but I'd get them out moving vigorously, oscillating, training his recovery. But we're sweating. We're training. Like a world class athlete. That's how I show up now. But it doesn't need to be hours a day. Those would be the fundamental things. I'd have him train his breath. I used to have an incredible amount of anxiety as a little kid.
I was scared of everything. As a young man, and at that point, I was scared of everything. Everything. So, my anxiety went down when I removed sugar and grains in particular. Another conversation. I had meditated for like a decade and then I removed grains, and my sense of social anxiety went down overnight. It was crazy. Longer chat.
But I'd have him train his breath as well, which has been my key to developing a more stable sense of calm confidence. Then of course, there'd be the focus through meditation and other things.
Roger: Let's go on the sugar one. Because you said stop drinking sugar, stop eating sugar, full stop.
So, you're talking to somebody, you're talking to a Brian that doesn't understand any of this stuff, right? At that stage, and he's puffy as you said, telling Brian to do something full stop is scary, and we had this conversation about being all in. Why is full stop more important than cutting back?
Brian: Yeah. So, there's two things. That Brian was still intense. That Brian still wanted to do things at a very, very high level. That Brian knew that there was something more to life than what I've been conditioned to believe. If I showed up like this, with the skills that I now have in communication and modeling, Brian would pay attention to me.
That's a different conversation if you're asking me, the normal person that just kind of does whatever. That's a different answer.
Roger: So, let's switch to that less intense person.
Brian: Then my ability to communicate well goes down radically. But look, the thing I would do with that person is I'd activate them.
I would need to figure out how I can get them to an activation energy point, and again, part of it would be to give them simple little behavioral changes that they can make, so that they can get some small wins under their belt, which is really important. I say it with a tone that's somewhat disparaging, but that's important.
But the thing that I would really want to do is to activate them. I'd want people to understand the fact, everyone who's listening to this, understand the fact that you are capable of more than you think, and you know that you don't need me to say that. And more importantly, you're capable of more than how you're showing up right now.
No one's going to debate that. Everybody. Again, we've been blessed to work with the most elite of the most elite highest level military officers, business executives, et cetera, sports athletes, coaches, and those who have a hard time getting out of bed. It's the same truth for everybody. Everybody's capable of more, you know it.
Then what's exciting is, how do we systematically architect the little things to your question that will help you tap into more of that? And there are a few higher leverage things than the mundane sugar and sleep, etc. But I got to get you excited about your life again, got to get you excited about the fact that you can create a better future, and this is how.
Then I'd systematically walk them through the seven objectives of the book of our coach program, et cetera.
Roger: It goes back to mindset then.
Brian: All of it, all of it, because I'm not going to do anything behaviorally unless my mind's right. If I don't believe that I can create a better future, I won't do anything.
Then I'm going to find me annoying, full stop, no question about it. If I believe I can create a better future, and I believe that there are means through which I can do so that are doable and exciting. I can make the connection between me doing those things and me having a better life, then my job coaching that person gets a heck of a lot easier. So, mindset, it starts, and ends with mindset. Your behavior.
Roger: I probably should have started there first, rather than energy.
Brian: I think this is perfect because we're hitting over the dominoes of what's required to affect change, and of course it's both, right?
And it's the thoughts and the behaviors that lead to the higher levels of energy that lead to productivity, the connection, the financial rewards, and all the other things we want.
Roger: So, let's pivot a little bit to mindset and we're weaving these in together. I think that's how all of this stuff is going to be, and you hit on the science of hope, which is you have to have a vision for a better future for yourself. Otherwise, you won't get out of bed, right? That's a lot of it.
I see that in boomers and my generation and others, but we generally see it a lot in teens and 20 somethings and 30 somethings in terms of not seeing a better future in the world or for themselves for a variety of reasons, and we don't need to go into the reasons. How do we mentor these people, these younger versions of Roger or Brian or Sally or Betty? How do we mentor them from a mindset standpoint? What do they need to know?
Brian: Yep. So, I would, again, I'd make sure I left a copy of the book with them that he wrote, you know, X decades ahead.
But the first thing we got to do is we got to know the ultimate game. So, with that version of me, and in almost every version of all of us, we've been seduced to play the wrong game. 2, 500 year old challenge.
So, as you know, the way I frame it up is, look, ancient wisdom, modern science. Let's ask Aristotle and Martin Seligman, the founder of positive psychology. What's the ultimate game?
The ultimate game isn't collecting Instagram followers. It isn't making a lot of money and impressing people with your fame and wealth and hotness. It's becoming a better person, deepening your personal relationships and contributing, and living with Areté moment to moment to moment so you can flourish.
I would take the proper amount of time to make sure that he understood that's the ultimate game, and you'll win the other games. by playing that game well.
Then I would teach him how to forge anti fragile confidence. The number one thing, goosebumps, that I wish I knew at 23 years old, rather than 43, or however long it took me to learn this, is what it means to have anti fragile confidence, which of course is my extension, as you know, my extension of Phil Stutz's Idea from the tools and Stutz the Netflix documentary, my beloved coach. I've worked with him over 400 times one on one.
In one of our very first sessions, he says, you have a lot of emotional stamina, perhaps more than I've ever seen. I said, I have no idea what emotional stamina is, but thanks. That sounds awesome. End of our chat.
Next coaching session. This is one of the first five coaching sessions. I said, Hey, what's emotional stamina? And he said, well, emotional stamina is what you can endure. A lot of challenges. You're able to push through challenges at a very high level. He said, “What you need to know is this, and I've architected my entire philosophy in part around this. The worse you feel, the more committed you need to be to your protocol.
So, the worse you feel, the more committed you are to your protocol. Now that's a really interesting thing. There are two aspects to that.
First of all, what's your protocol? Who are you at your best? What do you do when you feel most alive, productive and most connected? Because we all felt great. The question is, what did you do? And then you got to know what that protocol is.
Then when you feel like poop emoji, what do you do? Most people, including my 23-year-old self would do stupid things, right when I needed to do the most important and best things I would go, what would I do at that point?
I don't even know. I never was into alcohol because my dad, his thing, but I'd eat all the junk food. We all numb ourselves and we tend to avoid our problems when life gets hard.
But what if instead, when life kicks us around, which it always will, we have the mindset to double down on our protocol. If we do that and when we do that, we become anti fragile not fragile not resilient the opposite of fragile. We get stronger the more life kicks us around.
That would be the thing that I would not stop talking about until I knew that that version of me got it because then you connect the mindset to the behaviors, which drives the energy, which drives the productivity and the connection, and then you're unstoppable.
It's as close to invincibility as you can get. When life hits you hard, you use it to get stronger by doing the simple things you do when you're at your best, everything changes. Even if you're only one, two, five, 10 percent successful on that.
Roger: That pre assumes, and I think this is part of the self-examination that, what is my protocol?
What do I do when I'm at my best? We all have those little instances of, oh, wow, that was me. And not just acknowledging that, but why was I that way? What did I do beforehand? So, it causes say your younger self or. Someone listening who's talking to someone they're mentoring or their children of helping them put a connection, so when they are at their lowest self, they have something to grasp onto.
Okay, I just need to go for a walk. I just need to back away from this conversation and reset.
Brian: I need to turn off Netflix and get a good night of sleep. I mean we can demystify it because if we were able to think about a time in which we showed up and we felt really energized and it's one of the exercises in the book. Of course, the Heroic app and coaching program is all about this, but just get out a piece of paper, blank piece of paper. Imagine yourself at your best energy wise, and then draw a line down the middle and say, do on the left. Don't on the right. What do you do when you're at your best energy wise?
Just write down whatever comes to mind. One, two, three. I exercise. I eat pretty well. I get more sleep. All right, cool. What do you not do? When you're at your best. Oh, I don't drink a lot of alcohol. I'm not getting ripped. Oh, that's helpful to know. Okay, cool. When you're training for the marathon or the sprint triathlon, you tend to show up a little bit more powerful.
You do this, you don't do that. Just give me one, two, three things. You can architect your entire life around those one, two, three things. Then I'd say, all right, when you're productive, when you're killing it at work and you're just showing up powerfully, same thing, new piece of paper, do don't give me one, two, three things you do.
What things do you not do? I always want all day looking on social media. All right, cool. Let's keep that in mind. The next time we want to be productive, and then what do you do in your relationships when you're spot on? Oh, I tell my wife I love her more often, you know, I spend time with my kids without my phone.
All right, cool. How about we do those things more often and don't do those things as often? Life changing. It's exciting to simplify it all, to figure out you've already won. We just need to bring more clarity to it and then more consistency to your engagement in those simple behaviors and then everything changes.
I'm not overstating it because everything changes when you can run that.
Roger: I'm experiencing it. I've seen numerous other people experience it. Then you have, when you start to create these bright lines of what do I do at my best in mindset or an energy in this instance, and we'll get into when I'm with family or at work or in my seat, my money, those will be conversations for another day.
What will end up happening is you'll have the things that you do. You'll have the things that you don't do, and you'll screw it up. You're going to have a day, you're going to have days, you're going to have moments where you screw it up. The key here, and this is, I learned this from you and from Phil Stutz, is to obviously not shame yourself, but then correct the glitch and make it a game rather than a shame.
Can you talk about the glitches? And how this becomes a game, if you think about it in a healthy way.
Brian: A hundred percent. So, we create a checklist or a scorecard in which we're clear on, all right, well, this is me at my best, right? You're not going to hit the target every day. If you're an archer going out, trying to hit a target, you're going to miss. But you want to use those misses as opportunities to get better.
So rather than shaming yourself, you go, all right, cool. Well, I did that. I know that that's not quite my ideal. What could I have done a little bit differently? And let me recommit to doing it differently. Then if you used to spiral out, I used to be out for months. Not even aware I was out for years, actually, more accurately, and then months, and then weeks, and then days. Now I have fun seeing how quickly I can turn it around.
This is Phil Stutz's, another big contribution to my life and to the world is, he says you want to collect turnarounds. So, you want to expect glitches, first of all, most people are still naive to the idea that they're never going to be perfect and they're never going to be exonerated, he says, so you got to know it's supposed to be hard and it's always going to be hard and you're going to fall short.
Then when you inevitably fall short, don't shame yourself, use it as an opportunity to turn it around, and to get a little bit better, you're like an experimenter with a lab coat on. I share a bunch of stories about me falling short.
I'm yelling at the kids, right? My son gets upset with me and calls me a jerky face in the car, and then 10 minutes later, he wants to drive the car home.
Roger: A jerky face?
Brian: A jerky face. I quote him. It's so good. Jerky face, and then we get to our, we live in the country, right? The last hundred yards is like, whatever. Country living. He gets in my front seat and he's steering it while I'm driving it or whatever. Hey daddy, can I drive home? Me in that moment. Of course, dude, let's go. We're good. You know what I mean? That would be the Areté thing to do. But what do I say? I think of, no, dude, you just called me jerky face ten minutes ago. I'm not a big fan of that. No, dude.
Boom. Gap. Oh, no. But at that moment, when we fall short, and I'll tell you what, the rest of that night was a circus. My daughter, my son, it was just one of those you have two kids you know what I'm talking about, could have gone better. So, the next morning I'm looking at it, I'm like, where did I go wrong yesterday?
I identified that it was that moment right there when he asked me if he could drive home. Had I said yes, literally the entire night would have been different. I have goosebumps right now. So rather than shaming myself, I go right back to that moment, and I say, all right, that needed work. What could I have done?
I could have said, all right, buddy, I'm a little bit frustrated, but for sure, let's go. Then we would have had a certain set of things that would have happened. It would have been a different night. That's what I try to do in practice when things go wrong. So, when you do go to the fast-food restaurant, or when you do yell at your kids, when you do binge watch Netflix or whatever, step back, look at that moment, bring a flashlight to it, and see, yeah, I did that. It wasn't what I wanted to do. I could have done this. Next time I'm going to try better, and then get back.
After a bad day, you want to make the next day as good of a day as you possibly can. Then you go from spiraling out for a long period of time to a little glitch. All right, cool. Let me bounce back stronger.
Again, long answer to your question.
Roger: If you make me mad, I'm calling you a jerky face. Just so you know.
Brian: That's a good one, isn't it? Where'd he come up with that?
Roger: That's an 11-year-old for you. From personal experience, what I have found with those glitches, is when I do shame myself and when I'm spiraling downward, then I get into the hole. I'm going to shame myself for shaming myself and I just going to compound it.
So that is normal, right?
Brian: Yep!
Roger: Two places I want to go here to end it. One is, and I experienced, I mentor a number of people, but I'm mentoring a gentleman who wants to become something that I'm doing, what I have become.
To him, he sees me way up here as, oh, Roger's got it all figured out. Little does he know I'm in the same place he is. I'm just trying to figure it out as well. So, it can be intimidating when we talk to our children or when we talk to younger selves or people that we're mentoring. They think we have it all figured out when they don't realize we're not exonerated just like they are. But it can be intimidating because Brian is so far ahead that there's no way I could get to that level of whether it's physicality or mindset or anti fragile discipline.
How do we help someone see that it's not a comparison game and that it's a journey?
Brian: You share your story. So, if I'm trying to come off right now, in everything I do is the perfectly polished guy who you want to be like, and I never had any challenges, I don't know, maybe I'll talk about him just because I have to talk about it. Have to be vulnerable because that's what Brene Brown says, but I've otherwise got it all figured out. Right?
Well, then you're going to look at me and go, God, I can't be that guy. But if I take the time to truly share with you how I have navigated my own challenging times, and by the way, the 23-year-old version of me was months away from wanting to end his own life.
So, in that snapshot, I can see that, goosebumps, and then I got through that and then I wanted to do it again through the next cycle that I went through, goosebumps again.
Roger: Can I stop you there for a second?
Brian: 100%.
Roger: What was the thought of why it wasn't worth when you were contemplating that, what was the thought as to why it wasn't worth going?
Brian: I had all of this energy that you feel right now and no concept of how I would ever integrate it into the world. The metaphor I created for myself and my own little journaling at the time, I went to law school, then I dropped out of law school, and I hit the bottom depths of despair. Bad, bad, bad, dark time, right?
I remember thinking it's like I'm a fire hydrant with all this energy and there's this like clear glass window that it's hitting and going right back against my face, and I have no idea how I'm going to show up in the world. I looked around, you know, and I'm like, I don't want that job or that job or that job, but I can't see how I'm going to live a life of meaning and purpose within the constraints of our reality.
Then to your point, and we need to highlight it. I thought it was just me. I thought that I was the only one that felt so much fear and felt so much anxiety and felt so much despair and felt so much lack of meaning. I literally thought it was just me. I was certain I was the only one. I couldn't talk to anyone else about it. Everybody else had it all figured out. It gives me tears in my eyes right now.
This is rule number one. You mentioned it, but to shine a light on it, common humanity, you're not alone. First of all, if I had a friend like me and a guide like me at that time, he would have told me all these things, and then he would have helped me move.
You got to know that you're not alone. Me making that distinction and then being taught by my great teachers what I could do to systematically architect it. But anyway, long answer again.
Roger: That's the exclamation point. You are not alone, right? There are helpers to think of Fred Rogers.
Brian: Fred Rogers included. He's one of my guides. I got him up on my wall. You can't see him, but Fred Rogers is there. But not only is he a beautiful man I aspire to be, and I am so not him with my parenting and as a father and all those things. That continues to be my biggest challenge. I'm proud of who I am and all that, but that continues to be my biggest challenge.
But he talks about the tortures of the damned that he experienced trying to write his shows. You think of Mr. Rogers. Oh, joyful guy. He was tortured by it. Eleanor Roosevelt talked about the same thing. These people, Winston Churchill is above me, you can't see him. Black dog. Abraham Lincoln on my other wall. Depression. Suicidal tendencies and thoughts. These great individuals, none of them were perfect. Not one of them. So, when we embrace that and we bring self-compassion, we can get that agency, that power, and that joy back to realize, wait, wait, I'm not alone. It can be solved. The combination of those two things I found to be beautiful, and it is a really important thing I'm glad we highlighted directly.
Roger: We framed this, Brian, as we're talking to our younger selves.
As we're talking about wisdom to our younger self or to our children, we have to be careful of, and I feel this I'm 56 years old and I feel like I have so much I have to make up for, for my mediocre twenties and thirties as a father, as a husband, as a business person, I feel like I look at that dude and I still haven't reconciled how much shame I have. Anyway, it's never too late, right?
It doesn't matter if you're 60 or 70. If you're going to talk to somebody about health or energy or about mindset, the best way to talk to them about it, if you're trying to mentor them, is to start doing it yourself now, right?
Brian: But to get excited, so I'm talking now to the 50, 60, 70-year-old who's listening to this.
Now I'm telling you directly, you can be in the best energetic, psychological, productive, connected state of your life. Full stop. No question about it. None. Now, of course, you've aged biologically, and there's a certain runway that we all have in our lives, and you may not ever get to the peak you were at in your 20s and 30s.
But relatively speaking, for sure, we can be in the absolute best energetic state, productive state, and connected state of our lives. It isn't that complicated, and the good news is the baseline was so low for me and you at 23. You know, in terms of what we had to exceed, it's like, oh, that wasn't that hard, but it's perfect.
You're carrying too much. I'll tell you what to 50, 60, 70-year-olds. Look at your waist to height ratio. You want to predict your morbidity. You want to know how many years you have left on the planet statistically. Look at your waist to height ratio. If you are carrying visceral fat around your midsection, I'm getting intense right now, you're welcome, right?
If your waist to height ratio is greater than 0. 5, then you have a higher degree of risk for death by any cause. Then if it's less than 0. 5, to give you the math, I'm six feet tall. I'm obviously lean. If you're seeing me now and I've always been lean or whatever, but six feet tall is what? 72 inches. My waist can be 36 inches.
To hit that 0. 5 target. It's significantly less than that, but you listening, if you want to do the math, do the math and then get excited because a few levers you can pull in your energy via the nutrition. We talked about sleep and movement can give you more energy than you've ever had in your life.
Now you know how to do it and you can show up in your own life doing your own productive and connected things and then be, as Roger just said, the exemplar to your staff, to your colleagues, to your kids and grandkids, and they're like, what the heck happened to grandpa or grandma? Oh my God, look at them, you know, or mom or dad or whatever it is, and you have a credibility and an energy that's joyful, that's radiant. That's compelling. And you also know what you did in order to go from here to there. But there you go. Uninvited intensity.
Roger: Gives me goosebumps because that escalates that compound over all different aspects of your life.
Brian: Yeah, and it's never too late. It just isn’t that the body adapts so quickly, so quickly. And the mind follows as we get our physiology dialed in, the psychology is dialed in again. So much more we can talk about there. Such a fun chat.
Roger: I am so excited to have your book in my hand and to share it with everybody in the club and with those that are listening.
So, we cannot just share our wisdom with those younger than us, but start living it.
Brian: Yep. Today, day one, bless you and love to your wife.
All right, man. Great job.
LISTENER QUESTIONS
Roger: Now it's time to answer your questions. If you have a question for the show, you can go to askroger.me and enter your question there and we'll do our best to answer it on the show and help you take a baby step towards rocking retirement.
CLARIFYING MY ANSWER TO A PREVIOUS QUESTION ON HSAs
Our first question comes from John related to health saving account contribution limits.
John heard me answer, I think it was Beth's question, back on episode 499, and he says,
"Hey, on your episode on 8/29, you told Beth to put 20, 000 in a health savings account rather than her 403b. The limit for a family is 7, 750. I am puzzled."
Well, John, I think we misinterpreted, or we interpreted the question differently.
I interpreted it as, what should I do with the last bit of money she has yet to save? and that between health savings account dollars she already had, plus the dollars she could yet contribute, she would get to a total balance of 20, 000. So you are correct. The annual contribution limits for a health savings account are much lower than a 403b, and she wouldn't have been able to put in 20, 000 for a specific year.
Just to clarify health savings account contribution limits.
For 2023, if you have a high deductible policy, which has an individual, go to individuals first, of a high deductible out of pocket expense of about 7, 500, you are eligible to make a health savings account contribution, which is a tax deductible contribution that can come out tax free, the contribution and any growth if it's for qualified health care expenses of up to 3, 850 for an individual plan. If you're over age 55, you can add another 1, 000 to that as a catch up.
Now, if you have a Family high deductible plan, the limit is 7, 750 for 2023. And again, if you're over age 55, you could add another 1, 000 per person over age 55, husband and wife in this example.
So, John, I think we just heard the question a little bit differently, and that's why we got to be very careful when we are listening for wisdom or advice on shows like this because there's so much to interpret and the facts that things we don't know about Beth could be so different that might change the situation.
So, thanks for pointing that out so I can make the clarification.
ELABORATING ON NOT RETIRING
Next question comes from Mitch, who likes his job.
"Hey Roger, I learned so much from your show. Thanks for the podcast. It's been a blessing. Several years ago, almost in passing, you said you were never going to retire in the traditional sense.
I now have similar notions. Can you elaborate on your position and give a meaningful rationale? I have a lifestyle friendly job and I feel my work is making a difference."
Hey Mitch, it's a great question. I did say it a number of years ago. I don't know if it was in passing or not. But I will say it very clearly right now.
I have no plans or desire to retire in the traditional sense. I just don't. It doesn't make sense to me. I want to be actively engaged in learning and using my abilities for the rest of my life, and expanding those abilities as best I can. Why would I not?
Now, the traditional sense of retirement is you work, you retire, and then you live the brochures, you travel, and you pursue hobbies.
Those are wonderful things to do.
For me, I don't ever want to stop doing those things, and I happen to do something that I'm extremely passionate about that is rocking retirement and all the aspects of what does it mean to actually do that? I believe I was put here to be an encourager, a teacher, and an empowerer. That's part of who I am. Now does that mean I'm going to run an advisory practice forever or have a traditional job where it's 100 percent? I can dial those things back.
I know a lot of people in my practice and in the club and just from talking to a number of you that they leave a very high-profile job to go work at Ace Hardware or to teach knitting or to teach kayaking. So, I think these traditional definitions can actually be very harmful as we plan our life because we use those definitions to make decisions.
I don't like that. I play by my own rules. Now, if you want to define work as being paid for something, I don't know why I would ever stop that. I have location independence. I work with people that are amazing. I get to chat with you and hang with you and club members that are all trying to create great lives.
Why wouldn't I want to continue to do that? Doesn't mean I have to go full bore at it, but I think slowing down to gain more time freedom and control, that's healthy. Happy people have projects. So, the idea of retiring and then just playing all the time, that just doesn't interest me. For me, I don't think that's going to allow me to be who I'm supposed to be and as much of who I am.
You, Mitch, you get to decide for yourself, and nobody really has a say in that, except for Mitch. That's the hard part with advice, is who cares what anybody else thinks? Do what Mitch wants, what fulfills and enriches Mitch. That's really what matters.
SUSAN'S COMMENT ON MY INTERVIEW WITH THE FRIENDS TALK MONEY PODCAST
Our next question is really a comment from Susan, and she wanted to share it for me, thank you very much, but also for those that are maybe newer to the podcast and are just discovering it.
This is one that she felt really caught the essence of what we're trying to do. So, I'm just going to read her comment just as an encouragement for you to maybe check it out.
Susan says,
"I've listened to your podcast for several years. I find it very helpful in all sorts of ways. But today I listened to you being interviewed on Friends Talk Money podcast and bells started going off in my head.
I have never listened to Friends Talk Money podcast before, and only did so because you were being interviewed. I can't say how much I enjoyed it, but even more than that, came to understand where the Retirement Answer Man podcast is really coming from. Oh, that's interesting. This is what I've missed even after two years.
It was like not reading the prologue in a book. You never quite get where it is that you're coming from. So that would be me. I want to tell Roger how illuminating it was to hear him take a step back and answer those very basic questions. The reason I am sending this message is that I imagine many listeners would benefit from the single podcast and would suggest you make it available to all your listeners.
Thank you so much for the good work you do for us lost retirement souls out there."
Well, Susan, thank you so much for the encouragement. It's interesting. Where is that person coming from? That's a really important question and it can be very difficult to ascertain.
I know, well, Brian, we just had him on here. Brian is a very intense guy. Did you feel that? Holy cow. He's so intense.
When I first was introduced to Brian, I'm this way with most people, especially gurus and people on the internet. I am very wary because I don't know where they're coming from, and it takes me a while to understand why they're doing what they're doing and what their perspective is. Are they a safe place?
It took me a while with Brian because he's so intense, but he has so many layers underneath that intensity that we felt that I've been exposed to, that I know why he's doing it, and I know it's good. So, I think it's interesting whether it's in our lives or people we hear on podcasts, et cetera.
I think that's a good perspective. So, we'll put a link to the episode that Suzanne is referencing so we can make sure that we do share it with everybody else. Thanks so much for the encouragement.
HOW TO LOOK FOR A RETIREMENT PLANNER
Our next question comes from Jay on how to look for a retirement planner.
"Hey Roger, I recently discovered your podcast and I'm really enjoying it.
On an episode I listened to recently, you said that you should seek out a retirement planner, not just a generalized financial planner. I've tried. researching retirement planners, but they don't seem to be centralized locations to do that that there are for say certified financial planners. The firms or planners I have found so far want to manage your money, which is not what I'm looking for.
What's the best way to search for a retirement planner? Especially if I don't necessarily want somebody managing my accounts. I may join the Rock Retirement Club. When it opens up, which is going to be October 26th, but I'd like to find a few advisors that I could work with. Any suggestions?"
Jay? This is going to be a hard one.
Yes, there are ways to filter. I would say advisors that have an RMA or an RICP designation, Retirement Management Analyst, RMA, retirement income certified professional designation. I think those can be good filtering mechanisms. But Andy Pankow and I were discussing this literally last Friday.
Because he and I are giving a presentation at our conference for the club coming up here in a week and a half, oh I'm getting nervous, on how do you find a real retirement planner. So perhaps I can come back and share some of our insights from that presentation, but in our discussion and prepping for this presentation, both of us sort of shrugged our shoulders a little bit.
It's very difficult because there are very few that really do good retirement planning that we are aware of. I'm going to say that we are aware of. So, there isn't that clearinghouse. So, I do think having a CFP designation is a filter. Having an RMA or an RICP designation is a filter to start knowing whether they specialize in retirement planning.
What I mean by specializing in retirement planning, they took specific, robust education to learn about all of the ins and outs of retirement planning that aren't necessarily covered in the CFP. If you got your RMA or your RICP, in addition to your CFP, you're going through some graduate level education to specialize.
So, it shows that you're putting in and doing the work, and you've demonstrated that you can do the work.
In our 6-Shot Saturday email, we'll share my current resource on how to find a trusted advisor. Another idea when Andy and I were brainstorming our session is that they should be fee only and not hybrid, meaning not having their securities licenses where they can earn commissions, but they should be fee only.
Now that could be a retainer fee, that could be an asset under management fee, that could be an hourly fee. I would use these kinds of criteria. RMA. RICP, CFP, fee only, not hybrid, which means they still have their securities licenses. Those things are going to limit the playing field a lot.
Then the resource that we'll share in 6-Shot Saturday will have interview questions that you can ask the candidates that you cull down from the hundreds of thousands of people that call themselves advisors or retirement planners to help limit the playing field.
So, when you're dealing with a very unorganized industry and looking for a real retirement planner. The first thing you need to do is organize it for you and cull out the field so you can get rid of all the stuff that can confuse everything.
Interestingly, I think both Andy and I agreed referrals are not the best way to find them.
Any kind of advisor, because you don't know the person, whether they have any robust way, maybe they just like the person. Maybe there's a rapport with them. Most of us are not. able to evaluate the credibility or the competency of somebody. Now, maybe you can vouch for, hey, they're at least going to do what they say they're going to do, and I feel comfortable with them, but from a competency standpoint, not so much.
So, a lot of it is knowing what questions to ask. Andy and I have talked about what kind of ways we might be able to help. So, I'll let you know as we prepare and deliver this presentation and perhaps, we'll have some follow-up on this as well.
Interestingly, I had lunch the other day with a young advisor who, quasi mentoring, who is amazing, amazingly smart, really good guy. There's so much he doesn't know that he doesn't know, and he's interested in receiving referrals because we're usually at capacity or not accepting clients and I don't refer to anybody. My comment to him and Andy and I shared the sentiment, we don't refer because we don't know anybody that does it in a way that we think is robust enough and the ones that we do know, like I used to refer to Andy, they're full.
So, it's a difficult one, and I know that's not a great answer. Some organizations that you could look through in addition to interviewing are napfa.org and the Garrett Planning Network.
My last comment on this for now, Jay, is going to be, when you do build your own list of, say, three or four advisors that you're going to interview, and if you grab that worksheet that we're going to share on 6-Shot Saturday, When you have that interview, they are going to want to gather information from you and learn about you, which is very natural, right?
They're going to ask you questions about your finances. They're going to ask you questions about what you're looking for, et cetera. My suggestion would be that the first interview is about you asking the questions and them answering them, knowing as little about you as reasonably possible.
They're going to want to do the opposite. They're going to want to learn about you because they care, and they want to know who they're dealing with, but this is for you to interview the other person, and the less they know about you, the more they can just answer the questions authentically. How many clients do you work with? Tell me exactly how your process works. How exactly do you do tax planning with people that are in retirement? What's the average age of your client? How long have you had clients? What's the ideal client for you? What's not the ideal client for you?
You want to gather that information in an organized way before they know everything about you because they're going to have their own agenda from a business standpoint, which is understandable.
So, those are my thoughts on that, Jay. Hopefully, we'll have more to come to help you and others. I have to solve this for myself, to be honest with you, because I get asked this question all the time, and I have horrible answers. That is partly why, shameful plug, the Rock Retirement Club makes you an intelligent consumer and planner for yourself. The more you know of how retirement planning should be done because you're doing it and you're around people that are very intentional, the better client you're ultimately going to be for any advisor that you find.
We've definitely found that in the club of some people, hey, I feel confident enough I don't need an advisor, but we also have a huge contingent of. I have an advisor and they're like, where are you getting this information from? I'm much more of a sitting at the table with them helping them figure things out than just simply accepting what they say because I don't know the ins and outs of it.
So, I definitely would check out the Rock Retirement Club. That’s partly why we created it with that. Let's move on to your smart sprint.
TODAY'S SMART SPRINT SEGMENT
On your marks, get set,
and we're off to study baby step you can take in the next seven days to not just rock retirement but rock life.
All right. In the next seven days, here's my challenge for you. Under energy and mindset, what is one thing in each of those domains that you can stop doing this week? Not add, but what can you stop doing that can help you build energy and help you cultivate a growth mindset?
I'll give you my two, just this week. Been a really rough week this last week. I got hit with some things that just sort of threw me for a loop more than they normally do. So, what I'm going to stop doing in energy is I have stopped drinking. Woo! So, at least for a month, my brother and I are going to do it together.
I've stopped drinking alcohol for the next month because my sleep is not where it needs to be. I have a lot of stuff going on and if I want to show up with energy, that's going to be the number one thing I could stop doing to really improve my energy. Under mindset, I'll share another one. The thing that I've stopped doing is I've stopped thinking that I could be the first perfect person.
I'm not going to be the first perfect person in the world. Now, I went through a little bout of perfectionism and shame and taking out the hammer on my head this last week or so and had to have a SOS call with a trusted friend to sort of walk me back from that. But I'm going to stop being so hard on myself and remember, I can't do everything. So those are the two things I'm going to stop. This month. What are you going to stop?
CONCLUSION
Well, thanks for hanging out with me. I'm all in on you rocking retirement and dialing in. Yes, definitely the money aspect of it, but living with intention. And we're going to try to do that as authentically as we can. with a curious mind. We're not going to talk about products for money to try to sell you stuff.
We just want to walk this journey with you because I care about you, but also, I care about the members of the club. I care about my clients and ultimately, I care about myself and my wife and our family. We can do all this together. You don't need all that other BS. Let's go do it.
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