Show Notes

• Early success in the office furniture business
• The CEO Advantage
• Launching Detroit chapter of Young Entrepreneurs (now EO)
• Surrounding yourself with success
• Abundance 360 with Peter Diamondis
• Replacing retirement with intentional living

Connect With John Anderson

Website – https://replaceretirement.com/  
Website – https://theceoadvantage.com/ 
LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnanderson12/

Additional Resources

The Great Game of Business (Bo Burlington & Jack Stack)
Scaling Up (Verne Harnish)
Built to Last (Jim Collins)
The Future is Faster Than You Think (Peter Diamondis)
Who Not How (Dan Sullivan)
Traction (Gino Wickman)

Summary

A lifelong business strategist and entrepreneur, John Anderson understands the structures and insights needed to achieve success. John is very passionate about living the second half of life better than the first half, and shares how you can live more intentionally, too.

Full Transcript

Brian:

Welcome to another episode of Life Excellence with Brian Bartes. Join me as I talk with amazing athletes, entrepreneurs, authors, entertainers, and others who have achieved excellence in their chosen field so you can learn their tools, techniques, and strategies for improving performance and achieving greater success.

Hi everyone. Thanks for tuning into Life Excellence. Please support the show by subscribing, sharing it with others, posting about it on social media, and leaving a rating and review. You can also learn more about me at BrianBartes.com. Our guest today, John Anderson, is a lifelong business strategist and entrepreneur. Through his recently published book, Replace Retirement:  Living Your Legacy In The Exponential Age, and in his coaching business, John shares his passion for living the second half of his life better than the first half. For the past 20 years, John has coached CEOs and executive teams in developing clear measurable goals, underpinned with structures and insights to achieve both professional and personal success. John’s entrepreneurial spirit has guided much of his professional life starting in the office furniture industry, where he built and then sold a leading office furniture dealership. John is active in corporate speaking, in coaching, and has equity in a variety of entrepreneurial companies, including The CEO Advantage, Dogtopia, Vizbi, and the Exponential Advisor. John is the founder of the Detroit chapter of Entrepreneurs Organization, also known as EO, and is a recipient of both the Michigan’s Future 50 Award and the Today’s Workplace of Tomorrow Award. He was also recognized by Crain’s Detroit Business in its list of 40 Under 40, and has served on the Leadership Oakland Board, as well as the Oakland County Business Round Table. John is considered one of the most networked entrepreneurs in the region, and I’m very, very grateful to have him on the show today. Welcome John.

John:

Thank you, Brian. That was a nice introduction. I’m excited about this.

Brian:

Well, I am too, so let’s jump right in. As I mentioned in your introduction, you’re a lifelong entrepreneur. Tell us about your early business background and share some highlights of your early journey.

John:

Thank you. I worked for IBM out of college. Back in the 1980s, IBM had never laid off anybody in their history. I was still coming from the school where you go work for one great company for the rest of your life, like my father did. At the time IBM was the most profitable company in the world. So it was really like working for a Google or Amazon of its day. I got married into a successful entrepreneurial family and I played golf on weekends with guys who own businesses. And one day I said to my father-in-law, these guys, they don’t seem like they are any smarter than I am and they own these interesting companies. And he said, would you like to be an entrepreneur? And I said, absolutely. So he said, what would you like to do, I’ll help you out. And I said, I want to own a car dealership because I always loved cars. To his advice, I actually left IBM. They actually gave me a leave of absence and I worked about five months in a car dealership. I decided that is not the place I want to own. It was such a departure from the IBM culture to the car dealership culture in the 1980s. I think today the car business is different, but back then it was pretty rough. That led to my first venture of getting in the office furniture business. Essentially, the gentleman Bernie Moray, who owned Gorman’s Furniture, approached me. He said, I have a dealership for sale. It’s just not a car dealership and it’s in trouble, but if we recapitalize it, I think this office furniture business could be successful. I liked the opportunity and I really liked Bernie, so I’d have a mentor. I liked that I was in business to business sales and not retail. And I felt like it wasn’t something that was over my head. So my first venture was Gorman’s Business Interiors.

Brian:

So you ended up growing the furniture business and eventually selling it. Today you’re, among other things—and we’ll get into your book and other ventures that you’re involved with—but you’re the co-founder of the CEO Advantage, a company that helps executive teams achieve their maximum potential. How did you get started in that business? That’s a long way from the furniture business. Help us to understand how you serve executives in that business.

John:

I guess it’s a continuation of this first story as now that I was running a business, which I had no background for—I was in sales for IBM—I started reading magazines. At the time I think Fast Company was around and Inc. Inc. was a very popular magazine for its day. I’m flipping through, and I just finished reading Napoleon Hill’s book Think and Grow Rich, and I saw a caption, it had a picture of Thomas Edison and Henry Ford. It said there’s this program called the Birthing of Giants. It’s sponsored by the MIT Enterprise Forum, the Young Entrepreneurs Organization, and Inc. Magazine, 60 entrepreneurs are invited from around the world. So I signed up and I was accepted as one of the 60. I went off to the MIT Enterprise Forum. That’s when I found out about the Young Entrepreneurs Organization. At it’s time we were maybe, I don’t know, 380-400 members worldwide. It wasn’t a big organization yet and so for a year I was a member at large. And then in January, 1996, I launched the Detroit chapter of the Young Entrepreneurs, which later we dropped the Y because we were all aging, and now it’s just the Entrepreneurs Organization or EO. So now I’m an entrepreneur, I’m learning new things.

The guy who put this program together and the founder of EO worldwide is a gentleman by the name of Verne Harnish. Verne actually coached my company, the office furniture dealership. He reached out to me, he said, so what are you doing? I said, I think I’m going to sell this business. And he’s like, oh great. What are you going to do now? And I said, I want to do what you do. And I had been talking to Jack Stack the author of The Great Game of Business about delivering The Great Game of Business. So my partner, Troy Schrock and I—the founding partners of the CEO Advantage—started working together and working with Jack. And that’s when Verne came along and said, I’m thinking of taking the program from MIT on the road. We’re going to call it The Master of Business Dynamics, which later became Gazelles, which later became Scaling Up, the organization exists today. So I said, you can be my first coach. And so that started a lifelong relationship with Verne. Actually I’ll be spending the week with him in August up at my cottage, we’re close friends.

I was the first coach but Verne had not packaged anything yet that came in the Rockefeller Habits and later Scaling Up. So we had to package our own content and that’s how the CEO Advantage evolved. We basically framed it on Verne Harnish, Patrick Lencioni, and Jim Collins. So we had this relationship with Verne, the second one was Patrick Lencioni. Patrick is a very devout Christian and he and my partner, Troy, connected on their Christian foundation. And so Patrick allowed us to be the only people who could deliver his material for eight years. This is back when Patrick—he used to come to town for free—gets about $120,000 now to do a speech. Patrick comes to town for free. He actually facilitated two of our annual planning sessions. We just happened to be the right people at the right place. Then Jim Collins had the most notoriety at that time. And we approached him and he said, you don’t have to compensate me or do anything, just give my books away and call my content, my content. The original partners were myself, Troy, and then the third one was Gino Wickman, who later went on to create Traction. As a matter of fact, we were talking about this just last week—Troy and I got together, we get together twice a year. Everybody who was on our team went off to launch another organization, no one to the level that Gino did, but it really spun off a lot of creativity. And so that’s how I got into business coaching.

Brian:

I want to stay on that topic for a minute because you have mentioned some real rock stars in personal development, professional development, business growth:  Verne Harnish, Pat Lencioni, Traction and Rockefeller Habits by Verne Harnish. What are…let’s stick with Verne for a minute, but we could spend our entire time talking about Traction or talking about any number of Pat Lencioni’s books. For those of you who are listening or watching the show, those are all phenomenal, phenomenal resources that I highly recommend and I know John does too. Going back to Verne. John, what are some of the—if you had to just talk about two or three take-aways from your relationship with Verne—things that you’ve learned through the years and relating with him, what stands out for you?

John:

I think when I met Verne Harnish, I really thought I’d met like Obi-Wan Kenobi. I was enamored with him from the first moments out at MIT. I decided I was going to become friends with this guy. I was going to cultivate this relationship and I was going to learn what he was doing and how he was doing it. Again, there wasn’t a book or anything to deliver yet. That was kind of this concept that then played well all my life, which is I cultivate relationships and then I’m very loyal to those relationships. Verne, really, I would not be the person I am today and I would not know the people I know today, if it hadn’t been for the influence of Verne. It was through Verne that we met Collins and Lencioni. And then later, Peter Diamandis is now a friend of mine. And so all of these relationships either directly or indirectly came from Verne and the Entrepreneurs Organization, which was a great expanse—that to be somebody in Detroit and then meet entrepreneurs around the country, and then to meet entrepreneurs globally. That led to the relationships within the Young Presidents Organization (YPO), which has bigger companies. In our early days, thanks to YPO and local people like Jim Nicholson and Cecil Stallard, YEO, we only had like 12 members—I couldn’t afford to put on any events, yet people are paying their membership. It was Cecil Stallard at YPO who invited us to their holiday parties and some of their outings. The Detroit chapter of EO would not have been successful without the Detroit chapter YPO helping us. Today all my clients are YPO members, and not by design, it just happened. They’re all family owned businesses too. So everything comes back to Verne, And Verne, really, probably [planted] a seed of that idea of becoming a lifelong learner. He seeded that idea of developing and cultivating relationships. He seeded the idea that there were people out there that would enhance the value of my relationships, as well as the value of the content I was providing, by spending time and investing in myself. Even Dan Sullivan—I went to Dan Sullivan’s program for almost 20 years—that was through EO that I got exposed to that. Verne led the EO, that led to all these relationships…yeah. 

Brian:

And that program is Strategic Coach, of course, with Dan Sullivan. Was that in Chicago or did you go to Toronto for that program?

John:

I went to Toronto for that. I was actually born in Toronto.

Brian:

You were born in Toronto, I didn’t realize that. Let’s move into retirement. And there is a lot packed into this book, Replace Retirement:  Living Your Legacy In The Exponential Age. John, I might be off a little bit on the actual number, but I read that something like 10,000 Americans a day are turning 65. Now, historically the retirement age is this plateau in life where people stop working and kind of kick back, frankly, for the last season of their life or last couple chapters of their life. You’re advocating though, for a very different approach to that time in life. What caused you to first start thinking about retirement and how did you make the shift from traditional retirement to this concept of replacing retirement with intentional living?

John:

Just like Verne had such an impact on business coaching and the path I took for 25 years, the next big influence—or I would call him Yoda, if you want to keep using these Star Wars analogies—was Peter Diamandis. So I met Peter about ten years ago when he introduced his book, Abundance:  Why The Future Is Better Than You Think. I had the same reaction I did with Verne. I was like, I have got to get to know this guy. I have got to hang around him. I’ve got to become friends with him over the next 25 years. So out of the power of intention, I ended up being with him and about 40 other people out at Singularity University, and another gentleman by the name of Ray Kurzweil. I get immersed to Peter for a couple of days. And then out of that was birthed the program called Abundance 360, which is limited to 360 people from around the world. We show up in Beverly Hills once a year and we get immersed into human longevity, and AI (Artificial Intelligence), and AR (Augmented Reality), and VR (Virtual Reality), and 3-d printing, and autonomous vehicles, solar, all the emerging technologies.

Peter is always telling us either you’re going to be a disruptor or you’re going to be disrupted. And when you first get exposed to all of it, it’s a bit overwhelming. Even when you read Abundance or his more current book is Why The Future Is Faster Than You Think—first immersion, it kind of blows your hair back. It’s almost like how…COVID actually is a great example. COVID hits and you don’t really know what to do with it. You’re not really sure how to respond to it. You’re like, I just hope this goes away and we can go back to normal. That’s what the first immersion of Peter is like. Then stage two is, alright I can see how this technology…these autonomous vehicles, they could really disrupt Ford motor company. They better get their act together or electric vehicles and autonomous vehicles are going to disrupt their company and they’ll be out of business before the decade is over. So that’s stage two—I can see how they’re going to get disrupted.

Stage three is like, wait a minute, I’m going to get disrupted. My case, I thought, if you had Watson Computer— and for anybody who’s listening is familiar with star Trek, there was a character called Data, who was on the second variation of star Trek, and he was AI. He was a robot who had human skin and had artificial intelligence. So think about the consultant who is actually artificial intelligence. He can look like Abraham Lincoln, if you want him to, or whatever, make him look like Jim Collins, and if that isn’t enough, that he knows everything about your industry and so on. I remember it was Gino who gave me push-back—but he couldn’t handle the human part. What if it’s like the Terminator and he’s reading all your body emotions—Brian, you seem a little uncomfortable now, what is that? So I’m assuming all this technology could displace me. And finally it’s like 99 bucks. That’s where I started thinking, okay, what could I do that I’m familiar with and comfortable with that might be a displacement opportunity—and that’s the retirement idea.

I’m a baby boomer. I think there’s a lot of other, not all, let’s say there’s 80 million—not all 80 million want to continue working and creating value. Let’s assume 20% do, or 16 million. That means there’s a big audience out there who have the desire, the experience, the wisdom, and the money in their pocket. They’d like to do something other than a traditional retirement. That’s what sort of created this idea, that’s what I’ll work on disrupting. It’s a trend anyway.

You’re right about the 10,000 turning 65 every day, so why not get on that wave, just like I did on the business coaching wave some 25 years ago, and see where that goes. That led to that target audience and the book. Then essentially it was the life I wanted to live. I want to be continuing to contribute all the days of my life. Dan Sullivan had a huge influence on this, I have got to give him credit. Now, what are the vehicles, the tools, the audience, the content, et cetera, that would allow people to replace retirement with intentional living?

In the book, and you’ve read it, it’s not that I say we don’t enjoy ourselves. Every year I take the month of August off and the month of February off. So I do have this, what I call, rejuvenation time. And when I’m off, I mean, I’m off. August 4th, I’m off the grid until after Labor day, I won’t be responding to emails. I won’t be reading business books. It is time with family and friends and outdoors and activities and so on. Because I do need to recharge and rejuvenate so that I can be back full time. And I want to spend time with my family and friends. It’s not all work and it’s not all play. The book really was kind of living out a lifestyle that I’ve chosen to pursue. What I found is others also mirror that. You’re similar in the sense that I think you can continue to create value in the world. It’s my job to try new things, get out of my comfort zone and see where that leads.

And then my final thought on that is, I thought for my children that that would be a great legacy to leave them. They could say, my father was always trying new things. He wasn’t afraid of taking on risks and he was working it all the way to the end. He was living a life that he designed and chose versus following someone else’s definition of what that stage of life should be.

Brian:

You referred, John, to the exponential age. What does that mean exactly? It’s in the title of the book. How should our approach to living change because of this important time in history that you call the exponential age?

John:

Well, it’s been interesting. I’ve been putting some presentations together, and again, I mentioned YPO was a big audience for me. In YPO they have the Young Presidents Organization for large business owners, usually $10 to $50 million revenue sized companies. But they have to get in before age 50. So they created something called YPO Gold. So after you turn 50, you graduate to YPO Gold. They liked to tease that the G is silent. That is an audience I speak to a lot. So I’ve been putting presentations together and I’ve been packaging this, and the recent one, I called it Leading in the Exponential Age. Where that went is, I started off saying, I believe this decade will be a disruption after disruption after disruption. COVID was the disruption for 2020. The disruption for 2021 looks like it’s a return to work, or some people who don’t want to return to work, which I think will leave like a cultural hangover. Cultures will be either grown during this period or damaged into ‘22, ‘23. It’ll take a while for that to play out. And then in 2022, there will be another disruption, in ‘23 another disruption. Now I made that case because I thought with this exponential growth that Peter Diamandis introduced us to—rapid growth of technology:  the VR, the AR, the autonomous vehicles, and so on, and drones and whatnot—that it would disrupt certain industries and businesses in certain ways of life in ways that we can’t fully comprehend right now. But I do believe it will be disruptive. And so I just labeled that the exponential age to give it a name.

I’m assuming…not all aspects of life, but we are in this sort of accelerating curve and then we were all raised on the idea of a linear growth line. We assume:  I grow up, I go to school, I get a job, I grow it into a career, and then one day I retire; and it’s this very predictable, more or less steady line almost like the stock market has behaved since 1900. Yet what do you do with the Amazons and the Googles and so on, where you see this sort of exponential growth? Amazon being the most obvious one for all of us. It has disrupted other competitors and blown them right out of business. So again, this exponential idea, things that are moving rapidly, that potentially impact me. And to not be frightened of that, but to embrace it and say, okay, where’s the opportunity.

Back to why I wrote the book and why this whole cause. Well, this is how I see things coming based on studying others. If I don’t want to be washed by this giant wave, then I got to figure out how to surf it. Then in surfing it, I might find some opportunities for myself, but if nothing else, I can share with clients and others—this is how I got hit by the wave and this is what I learned in trying to be out there surfing that big wave. In this presentation I did for the YPO, I actually use a giant wave in the picture, not a little one, but one of those mega waves, people surfing.

So the philosophy could go like, John, this is all kind of scary and I’m not disagreeing that there are changes coming in, they seem to be coming faster. What I think we’re going to do, we’ll sell our business—or again, this is about retirement—I will retire. We’ll get out of the way and we’ll sit on the beach and we’ll watch the other guys surf. Okay, well that’s a strategy and certainly in business right now, there are some good multiples. Maybe it’s a good time to get out. I wouldn’t disagree. I’ve got a friend who’s got a great offer on his business. So what are you going to do with your money? You’re going to have to invest it in the other surfers. You’ve got to bet on one of those surfers. So on one side of the wave, we’ve got the Blockbuster surfer, on the other side of the wave we’ve got the Netflix surfer. Now let’s all agree that I would go with the Blockbuster surfer. It’s a great strategy, it’s a roll up, it’s dominates the industry, makes so much sense. Netflix? What the hell is Netflix? That can’t possibly work. Again, even that idea, I’ll just kind of sit it out and ride it out. At least for myself, I don’t feel comfortable with that, and so therefore I want to engage in understanding that, even if I do get hit by the wave.

Again, back to children—children and grandchildren—is I want them to see that their father’s not afraid, the same with their mother. They’re not afraid, because that’s not a very good environment. If my parents can’t handle this and they seem to have it together, and they seem to have some wealth acquired as well, if they’re freaking out then there is not chance for us. I know what it was like when I was 20 and 30—I didn’t know what to do in life. I was kind of just trying to drive my boat into any harbor. I didn’t know the things I know today. So again, I see it not only for ourselves and this potential opportunity or disruption, but again, back to our children, I feel like it’s a healthy move.

Brian:

It seems like there are really a couple of dynamics to this, and in one you’re talking about the exponential age and technology advancing faster than ever before and at an ever-increasing rate, and figuring out in retirement what to do with our assets. Which surfer are we going to bet on, to pick up your term, but the other aspect of that is this lifestyle and the reality…I mean you know that when retirement was created, it was a concept that originated in Germany with Otto Von Bismarck. It was really related to wanting to have a fresh army and not wanting to have all these old guys protecting their territory. Of course, in the US when social security started, I think the average life expectancy a man was about 58 years old and the retirement age was 30 at the time. Now there’s an early retirement age.

So there’s the investment part of it, but then there’s also the lifestyle part of it at a time and in an age where we’re living longer than ever before. Now I know—and I’m going to play devil’s advocate a little bit—there are countless examples of greatness achieved later in life. So I think about Nelson Mandela, for example, who, I think he was 76 when he became president of South Africa; astronaut John Glenn was the oldest person to go in space and I think he was right around the same age, mid seventies. I also know, John, you’re closer to that age than I am. Probably some of your friends or people that you’ve run into say, John, I hear this, I know we’re in the exponential age, I know things are being disrupted, I know I’m going to live longer than ever before, but on the other hand, I’m 65 and I’ve worked for 45 years and I don’t want to work anymore. I feel like I’ve paid my dues. I’ve earned this time of just being able to sort of kick back and rest and relax. So how do you respond to people like that? And again, there are 10,000 people a day, I’m sure there aren’t 9,950 of them who are jumping on the exponential age bandwagon, or the replacing retirement with intentional living bandwagon. So how do you respond to that and how do we get more people to do the kinds of things that you’re talking about?

John:

It’s a great question. In some ways we are in uncharted territory and in some ways we’re not. A couple of different reactions. One is that I look at everything in the bell curve, so it’s not the whole population. Let’s assume again, just for statistical reasons, 20% really can’t retire. I mean, they truly need that safety net of social security. That was the intention, it was going to be a stop gap to your…all the data you shared is correct. So it wasn’t for people to stop at 65 and then live close to a hundred. It was intended for just a few years as a safety net.

Brian:

Well, I think it was, excuse me, I think it was really intended for people just to pay into it and hardly anybody to pull out of it, because of the demographics at the time, the actuarials at the time.

John:

Absolutely, and it’s not sustainable as it exists today. The average person will pull more out—actually it’s already happening. Statistically speaking, it’s already…people pull more out than they put in. It’s a sort of insurance gap and there is a certain percentage of our peers of the population that need that. And quite honestly, I’d be happy to give up my share in order to have some benefit for working later in life and some tax advantages and so on. I think that’ll be for the politicians to work through in terms of how we navigate that. So that’s 20%. Then again, I think there’s 20% right out of the gate that would love this conversation. They’re raising their hand, I’m on board, I agree with you. That’s really why I created this tool called the Legacy Map. It’s like, you got me now, how do I do it? There’s going to be direction in that. Then it’s the middle group that I think, as with so many things in life, they’re going to kind of watch it. Some will lean a little bit more into this, maybe I’ll stay engaged longer, this appeals to me. And then some, I really do want to retire, in the traditional sense. So that’s that piece.

When I say uncharted territory, you only get one shot at aging—so far—in our lifetime. This is new to me. What I’m using as data points is my father who ran a very successful worldwide corporation—within five years was a shell of the former man. And this is not uncommon. I see this time and time again, where people who are at the top of their game have this fairly quick slide. That discourages me to this time off. I use this in presentation—the analogy of falling in love, when you first meet your partner or spouse there’s this kind of bubble, if you will, romantic bubble that lasts approximately three years, it varies on couples. And so Brian, let me tell you about my wife, oh my God, she’s the best woman ever. She’s beautiful and she’s smart, and she’s funny, and she’s the best lover and all—like you just can’t stop saying all these wonderful things. And then at some point that bubble bursts, and as Stephen Covey said so well, love shifts from being a noun to a verb, and you have to work at it. You have to be loving rather than in love. All those who have long-term relationships understand that, it’s a journey. You invest in it. And so I say, retirement’s exactly the same thing. When you talk to somebody who’s newly retired, they’re like, oh my God, I don’t even know how I worked. We’re so busy, we’re seeing the kids, we’re traveling, it’s all roses and wine. And then that bubble bursts. Then you see that decline start to happen. And the way it shows up, it’ll be a couple of things. One is, I can’t do that, we’re busy. What are you busy doing? There’s this sort of scaling back, discomfort doing new things, don’t want to go to new places. This whole person who was going this way is now sort of in this declining state. So those are the early warning signs. And I see this. I have a cottage in Northern Michigan where I’ll be spending the month of August, the guy across the street, same age as me, the way we live our lives and the things we do and what we talk about are completely different. He’s about slowing down, retaining, protecting. I’m about trying new things, challenging myself, taking risks and so on. So just on different trajectories.

The other thing I put in this presentation recently is I show three pictures. I show one of Marcus Aurelius, one of George Washington and one of Herb Kelleher, Herb being recently passed away as a CEO of Southwest Airlines. I’ll use just the George Washington one for now, and making this up. We’ve got 1776 that David Mccullough wrote, I love—he’s my favorite author of all authors, David Mccullough. So we get an idea of what was going on through George’s life and so on. I’ll play it out like this:

There’s the original one where the guys come to him and say, George, we think that a group of people could better lead than one king or queen or dictator or whatever, and we got this idea of democracy, of pushing power down. What do you think?

He’s like, yeah, but be warned, you’ll probably lose all your wealth. I know you’re a wealthy guy, you married well. You’ll probably lose your life in the process, but yeah, I’m in.

So we get to read history and he pulls it off. And so then he’s back at his estate and we know that he would write about making furniture, he was always working on his plantation, other the ideas. So the guys come to see him and he’s like, so how’s it going?

Oh, it’s going great, George. We got the Constitution set and Congress and all the parts are coming together.

He’s like, that’s great. Well, thanks for the update. Would you like some lemonade and stuff?

Well, we’ve got a request for you George.

What’s that?

We’d like you to be the first President of the United States.

Whoa, whoa, whoa! Guys, I served my country. I pulled off a miracle in 1776. I’m retired. I’m not going back there again. I’m sure Adams or Frank…Jefferson…I know Jefferson wants the job. Give him presidency.

No, George. We really need you to set the tone.

So I use that as a fun example, but that’s essentially what happened. They kind of arm twisted him, like you got to come and serve again. So again, this journey I’m talking about where…I don’t know…is…I think it’s something like a servant leader. It’s a new plateau that I have yet to climb to. I’m just looking for others who are like, let’s go see what that looks like. What does another level of going from extrinsic motivations…or as Covey talked about—dependent, independent, interdependent. What does it look like to be in an interdependent relationship or organization where I’m serving something bigger than myself? And what does that contribution look like? And then to your question, Brian, maybe in figuring that out, it will create the pathway for others to follow to say, hey, it’s really intriguing how you’re living your life. It’s really intriguing the sort of things you do. Why do you seem to have such a youthful, optimistic point of view and I don’t. I don’t know where it’s going to end up, but again, selfishly, I’m just doing it for myself because I like having fun.

Brian:

Well, you’re living it. And so you get to write about it and talk about it as you’re living it, as you’re going through the experiment. John, when I read the book, I’ve gone through it a couple of times actually now, and I get this thought over and over again that we’ve been talking about retirement and I can’t help but think that for the last half hour or so, if they’ve stuck with it this long, that some 20 year old or 30 year old has been listening to this and the whole time thinking that this is for 60 and 70 year old people, because we keep talking about retirement. But one of the things that I really realized in reading the book, is that this concept of replacing retirement with intentional living isn’t just something we do when we’re ready to punch out of our job that we’ve been working at for 40 years. But it’s really for anyone who’s looking to lead a purposeful, rewarding life. What advice do you have for people, maybe the 20 year old or the 30 year old who’s listening to this or watching this on YouTube? Folks who aren’t anywhere near retirement age, but have a strong desire to live life intentionally, to live an inspired life.

John:

Very good question. And this is what pops in my mind. I like using the Prato Principle, the 80/20, it’s kind of a nice rule of thumb. When I was in my twenties, actually at IBM…in high school…college I did better—in high school I was not an engaged student. I was a C-level student. In fact, most entrepreneurs are not great students, which is why they have to go work for themselves because nobody wants to hire them. [Laughter] So I was a disengaged student. I mean, I got by, but I was not scholarly. Once I got hired at IBM, I actually got in as a technician and then I was really bad as a tech, and they were a company that really invested in their employees. So somebody thought, why don’t we get you in another area? Maybe you’d do well in management or sales. And so I went back to school and then I was like [in audible] So I’m working at IBM and they had these cassette libraries and you could check out books on tape. I wasn’t a big book reader because I never had read. But I thought, well, this is kind of interesting, you can listen to a book on tape. I started really going into that. All of the sudden I became hooked on books on tape—of course that’s evolved today to Audible. I read books every day, but I also listen to, I’m probably a six to four, or seven to three ratio in terms of the books I listen to versus the books I read. Books I read, I read them every morning. [Inaudible] line journal, those are the ones I really want to digest. So as a 20 year old, I realized that through reading—from a guy by the name of Earl Nightingale, who was an early mentor of mine—his comment was, every worthy goal ever set in the history of mankind has been achieved. I was driving like a black Trans Am at the time, had to rewind the cassette—let me listen to that one again:  every worthy goal ever set in the history of mankind has been achieved. I’m like, okay, I’ll give this a try. And so I started writing my goals down and what I learned in my twenties was 80% of my goals came true by merely writing them down. And 20% required the hard work setting them. Again, disillusion, frustration, setbacks, yada,yada, but 80% started to come, that was a belief I accepted. That led to all the business I do today. So that would be my first thing as a young person, start learning as early as you can and get the bug for lifelong learning because everybody who has achieved anything in life is a big reader.

What the number two thing that came along was—and this was probably in my forties or whatever—80% of what I know today is going to have no value in the future, that the world’s changing at an accelerating pace and like knowing how to program a fax machine probably isn’t going to be any value in the future. I’m going to have to be thoughtful, not only in this continuous learning mode, but also dumping stuff that just isn’t appropriate. So this idea of being a lifelong learner and starting to question everything in terms of, does this really have value in the future.

Which led to my third insight as I got closer to 60, which is 80% of what I believe are not my beliefs. They came from my parents, they came from my upbringing, my peer groups, my community, or environment. Those beliefs may not serve the person I choose to be today or who I choose to be in the future. It all comes together as you can achieve anything you want and be anybody you want, but you’ve got to get your mindset in the right place. The hardest part is I’ve got to work against is my own mindset because I may not have gotten that from my family of origin. And I’m blessed. I grew up in an upper middle class home and my father paid for my college education and I had a lot of breaks. So I don’t want to dismiss that I didn’t have a really great environment.

But I will add a story that I’ve been sharing lately, my wife and I, about a year ago, got a rescue dog, a beautiful golden retriever that was rejected by a family, for a backstory. And so Molly said, you’ve got to tell him he’s a good dog because he really needs to hear that a lot. So Molly was telling him 25 times a day he’s a good dog. And when I’m around, I’m telling him 25 times a day he’s a good dog. And after a year of hearing 25 to 50 times a day he was a good dog, he is a good dog. He’s an amazing dog, he’s the best dog we ever had, but we’re constantly telling him he’s a good dog. So I’m driving my car across the state. I’m like, you know what? My parents must’ve told me I was a bad dog a lot. [Laughter] I mean, the same as bad dog. They said you could have done better in school, and you have cut the grass a little straighter, and there was all this stuff. Their intentions were well founded, but they, instead of raising me up, they were kind of lowering me down and I started to truly believe it and embodied those beliefs. I realized that all these different things from the books I read, and the goal setting I did, and all the things that you and I believe in, I was able to reprogram the computer to say, I really can meet interesting people like Jim Collins and Patrick Lencioni and Peter Diamandis. And I really can go out there and write a book and create value in the world and so on. The only thing that limits me is me. Yet I understand how hard that is and I spent my whole life doing it. Every morning I wake up and do the same thing, prepare myself for the day. My father didn’t teach me that, my school didn’t teach me that, actually the companies I worked for didn’t teach me that, but it is out there. That’s my thing for a young person is that if I have any regrets, I wish I’d started sooner. Although I do think you have to fail and struggle and wrestle your way along and that’s by design.

Then the other thing that’s probably more realistic is that, although I read lots of books when I was younger—I did get that bug fairly early on, by 24—I didn’t apply as much until I got to later in life. It’s not just that I read lots of stuff today, which is very valuable. And I don’t mind that there’s overlap, there’s overlap in my book. But am I applying what I’m learning? I don’t mean to disparage anybody’s parents, or their culture, or their upbringing, or whatever, but it’s always that idea of:  is that serving who I want to be today and is that serving the person I want to become. That’s a big mountain to overcome.

That’s why I say I’m committed to the climb and I’m not sure where I’m going. But I’m all about climbing. I do believe that, again, that’s why Marcus Aurelius, George Washington, Herb Kelleher…there are examples throughout the world—use Nelson Mandela—people who have gone past challenge and hardship and left their little mark on the world and made it a better place for me there. And that’s worthy enough. I’ll ring the bell for that one. I’m happy with that. So that’s not limited age, it’s a mindset.

Brian:

Absolutely. John, thanks so much for your time today. You have definitely challenged traditional views on retirement, planted some seeds for intentional living, and given us all a lot to think about. And I really appreciate that.

John:

Well, Brian, thank you. I’m so grateful that you asked. I’m so grateful we met and I appreciate our relationship. I think the work you’re doing is fabulous. And so let’s go get it done.

Brian:

Thanks, I appreciate you saying that. And thanks for listening to Life Excellence. Until next time, and I’m going to add this—live intentionally—and also dream big dreams and make each day your masterpiece.