160: John Anderson — Replace Retirement with Intentional Living

Are you thinking about how to grow your business with near and offshore staffing? But you're also wanting to make sure that it's reliable, cost effective and really well done? I think docsa talent is the way to go. Here's why. They don't just fill your jobs. They bring integrity, top talent, and a people first approach that's hard to find. I've known the people at Doxa talent for over 20 years now and I say that you can count on them. I have. Talk to Docs of Talent and you won't be disappointed. Go to docsatant.com Bill G Again, that's doxatallent.com Bill G One more time. Doxatalent.com Bill G Check it out today. Well, what is the point of it all? Why do we get out of bed? What is it? Once you've achieved some success, what's next? What are you going to do with the rest of your life? How does your role need to change in the business? What does it look like at 90 for you? At 100? What do you plan to do? So today's show is all about that, the future. What's next? What comes beyond? And how does this scaling your business integrate with everything else in your life? Listen in for an interesting topic with one of our, well, the first coach in our world. If you've been listening to our podcast or you've read the book Scaling up, you might be interested in our workshop on the Scaling Up Growth framework for your own business. We have a workshop coming soon to San Francisco and we have a few hundred dollars discounts for our loyal podcast listeners while supplies last. Just go to scalingcoach.com workshops and then enter the code sup that's S U p for Scaling Up Podcast when you register. We'll see you there. Hello and welcome again to the Scaling Up Business Podcast. I'm your host and scaling coach Bill Gallagher. On the show with me today is coach in our world, John Anderson. So John became a coach way back in 99, just back when I was joining Yeo, then Yeo today known as EO 20 years ago and he went through the old birthing of Giants program like so many of the coaches did and worked with Vern and went on and he's the founder of the Detour chapter of of EO and he wrote this book Replace Retirement. So he's a longtime coach in our world and he wrote a book replace Living youg Legacy in the Exponential Age. And I thought we'd talk about this notion because whether you're a coach, whether you're a client in our world or whether you're thinking about an exit, a lot of times as you hit this kind of point in life, you start to think about, well, what's the rest of my life all about? After we've achieved some basic success, do I want to golf with the rest of my life or sail or, or carve or do whatever it is that you do or. So welcome to show John.

Thank you very much.

Bill, where are you today?

I am in Grand Rapids, Michigan at my home and I'm actually moving in one week to a new home.

Oh, where are you moving to?

Not far. It's about 12 miles away. But really cool house.

My wife found same basic, you know, I've been in the same house for 23 years now. 23, 24 years. And my kids moved out recently. And we looked around the house. We're like, wow, our house is really embarrassing. We really neglected it. But like, we don't want anyone over. So for the last year and a half we've started to finally fix things up and all the contractors come by and they're like, well, people don't usually do this till they're ready to sell. We're like, yeah, we wanted to actually live in a nice home. So we debated moving or fixing and we've been fixing.

So it feels good.

Yeah. So talk to before we get into or maybe how we get to the core idea, tell us a little bit about this background in YEO and EO and how you became a coach and take us up to the book.

All right. So out of college I worked for IBM Corporation, which at the time was the most profitable company company in the world. It was kind of like a Google. And I spoke to my father in law who was a very successful entrepreneur and I said, you know, the guys I'm playing golf with don't seem any brighter than me and they all own companies. And he said, well, you can do that too. And so he helped me in getting my first business which was an office furniture dealership. And as a good leader, I started reading all the magazines at the time and this is in the 90s. And so I was reading INC magazine and I saw that caption with Henry Ford and Thomas Edison. And I just finished Napoleon Hill's book Think and Grow Rich. And so that picture kind of grabbed me and it said the birthing of giants. And we invite 60 entrepreneurs from around the world to attend this program at MIT sponsored by YEO or the Young Entrepreneurs Organization, MIT Enterprise Forum. And Inc. Magazine. I applied and I went and I met Vern Harnish. This is in 1994. And I thought I'd met Obi Wan Kenobi. I mean, this guy was cool. I needed to get to be a friend of his and follow his ways. So he coached our company. We actually did a company cruise, and my company was featured in his first book, the Rockefeller Habits. And so Vern and I get along, and then I decide that this was not the business I wanted to be in long term. And so I sold it. And Vern said, well, what are you going to do now? And I said, well, you know, because we were a part of the Master of Business Dynamics program, which was Vern's earliest conception of what evolved into Gazelles. And we would actually go off and see thought leaders, which included Jack Stack and Jim Collins and others. And so I said to Vernon, well, I think I'm going to do something with Jack Stack in the great game of business. And he said, well, hold up. I've got an opportunity where you can be a coach for me. And we're going to take all this knowledge that we learned at Birth of the Giants on the road, and it's going to be awesome. And you're going to drive a BMW and it's going to be fun.

You're going to drive a BMW? Yeah.

And, you know, Vern's a good pitch man. And so Vern flew into town and we went on the road together and we traveled together for four days and we visited a whole bunch of companies and. And he did his Vern thing and he was again pitching this Master of Business Dynamics program. So when he was all done, he'd say, and John's going to be your coach. And that was the extent of my training. I'm like, taking notes like Matt. And of course, I'd been around Vernon and I understood it, but there was no Rockefeller Habits at that time. We really were building this off of notepads and just experience. And so that's how the coaching thing started. And then, you know, it evolved into. Into gazelles and so on. So I give Vern a lot of credit. And so I have been going to the programs like Scale up in all their inceptions, when it used to be the Fortune Conference, and again, back to the original days, we literally would fly out to Boulder and spend time with Jim Collins. It was a. He's been doing the same rough gig for, you know, 20 plus years. So from there, the probably the next big aha moment for me was meeting Peter Diamandis at the summit about eight years ago when he was introducing his book Abundance why the Future Is Better Than youn Think. And I sat in that front row and I'm like, okay, this is. This is. This is Yoda, and I gotta study this guy for the next 25 years, and I need to become friends with him just like I did Vern and, you know, build this relationship. And so I was fortunate enough, just through a turn of events, to be at the kickoff of Abundance360 at Singularity University. Seven years ago, there was only 45 of us and was just Peter Diamantis and Ray Kurzweil for two days. And he was still figuring out exactly how to create Abundance 360. And then it evolved into the program it is today. And so I've been on this journey with him for seven years, and Peter's become a friend. I brought him into Michigan last year and we spent a couple days together, and he endorsed the back of my book. And anyway, it's just a great influence, and Peter challenges us with all kinds of ideas. But one that really fits this conversation is he said, you're either going to be disrupted or you're going to be a disruptor. And because I had years to sort of absorb this, I thought, okay, I can see how the auto industry is going to be disrupted. I can see how autonomous vehicles is going to really, you know, create havoc for Ford and GM and so on, but I'm not going to be disrupted. And as I absorbed that a little bit more, I thought, well, you know what? Potentially I could be disrupted by artificial intelligence and virtual reality. And maybe the way we coach today will sort of change. And so how could I be a disruptor? And then it dawned on me. Well, you know, I'm 61. I'm a baby boomer. I'm moving closer to this retirement idea, and I'm not sure it really works for me. And I think it doesn't work for a whole lot of other people. And so that became the nucleus of this idea. Well, how about if we shift the current paradigm we have for retirement and make our clients and ourselves look at the world differently and so replace retirement. Living your legacy in the exponential age was really a culmination of this idea of shifting the paradigm on retirement, because it's 10,000 people retiring every day and utilizing the learnings from Peter Diamandis and the sort of exponential technology curve, and this idea of being intentional and purposeful about the legacy I'm creating each and every day because we are all creating our legacy. I just realized I could be proactive about it instead of it sort of just showing up after I pass quick story of this timeline of, you know, beginning with Vern and then getting to the book on that though, I just to give Vern credit, I mean, I've, I met Collins through this, I met Lynchioni, I've become friends with Paul Akers. There's just a number of people that Vern's put in front of us over the years. And without him, I wouldn't do what I do today and I wouldn't know the people I know today. And so I give Vern a lot of credit. He's hugely impact all our lives.

Yeah, for sure. So talk to us a little actually. Well, maybe give us the, the quick intro to the book topic then. What are we talking about?

Well, there's kind of three parts I could take and let's start with the replace retirement. So every day another 10,000 people turn age 65 and this pace is going to continue for about 20 years. So we're going to end up in our lifetime where half the population is going to be over 50 and the other half is going to be under 50. And this concept of retirement as we understand it today probably is not sustainable and perhaps I would argue is not even healthy. So that was the first thing is that there is this demographic shift happening which I'm part of, and maybe our current paradigm for retirement doesn't fit. And the part that we look at today kind of out of the box. It's, well, you need to do retirement planning. And of course there's a whole industry that helps us with that and that is important. I'm not diminishing that. And then the second part is, well, I worked really hard in the first half of my career, so now I want to spend some time in leisure. And you kind of joked about, you know, golfing all the time and that's really it is it will that leisure activity full time enhance the value of life and give me energy? Or in fact, could it end up being an energy drainer? And so with that idea that there's this shift in the demographics that were part of all that and that maybe it's not sustainable or healthy. That was the first idea, the sort of replacing retirement. The next part of this is a concept I call the legacy map, which I introduce in the book. And it's a tool that evolved out of my coaching. So back I've never had since I started coaching and to this day, a contract with Any client. Every agreement I have is a handshake agreement. And I also have this rare opportunity where I have clients. I have one client I've had for 16 years. My average client is about eight years. So I don't have a lot of client turnover. And one of the things that happened as the downturn in 2008 is because I had no agreements, it's like, oh, my God, this is going to be a real easy line item on the budget. Why don't we just jettison John Anderson here as another way to cut our costs back? And so to preempt that, I went in and said, I'm going to create more value. And I said, how about if I cut my coaching fees in almost half my daily rate, but I'll come in 12 times a year instead of 5 times a year and I'll be meeting with you every month. And so there was some interest. So actually, I actually increased my income in the downturn, not decreased it, because about half the clients jumped right on this. And then after doing some monthly work and following our process, it still became kind of dry. So I created a tool called the Success Map, which is essentially taking all the content and ideas from the Rockefeller habits that we use in business and, and creating what Vern would essentially call a one page personal plan. It's just more. There's more to it than that. And as I was working with my clients and I'm aging and they're aging, they're saying, you know, John, I'm not really interested in success anymore. I'm interested in my legacy. And that was the big light bulb on that and saying, oh, well, let's call it a legacy map. And so I shifted that sort of focus from one of the accumulation to more of, you know, what are you leaving behind? And what's the, what are you doing for your children and what's that legacy you're leaving? So Legacy Map is a tool, and we can get into more detail on that. And then the third sort of part is I was intrigued with this idea of maybe creating a movement. So not just a tool for my clients, which, you know, works for me, it works for them. So, and I break that into kind of three parts, is that if I simply use this tool to enhance and increase the value of my life so that the second half of my life is better than the first, then I'm a winner. And then the next step is that my children would, because they'd say, hey, I watched my father and he was actually very actively engaged in challenging himself and growing himself and living a plan that he created for his life all the way to the end of his life, whenever that ends. And then if you take it one step further back to our demographic shift, that perhaps this could be a tool or a movement for a whole part of our, you know, 80 to 100 million of a way to look at the second half of their life as the better half of their life and be proactive and intentional about that. And our mtp, which you're familiar with the term our massively transformative purpose, is to replace retirement with intentional living. So it's all about living intentionally and purposely every day of our lives.

Yeah. So let's talk about some examples of it. You shared a few as we were getting ready for the show. You talked about Bernie, about Michael, about Dave, but Carol, I don't know. Talk about some of these guys.

Yeah. I'll start right off the bat with an example that everybody knows. And then we'll get into these personal ones. Is Paul McCartney. I mean, this. This really brings it home. Paul McCartney had a pretty good career his first half. He was a beetle. I mean, you don't do much better than that. That's. That's a. Not just a home run. That's a grand slam. And he's worth about $1.3 billion. So if anybody has earned the right to retire in the traditional sense, he has the financial wherewithal. He could be on a yacht, on his own island, for that matter, in the Caribbean and enjoying life and drinking margaritas. And yet he doesn't. He continues to perform. And my sister saw him last fall in Montreal, and she said, john, he. He played for three hours nonstop. He didn't take a break. She said, I didn't even see him sip his water. And it was the best concert I ever saw. And clearly this guy is not doing it for the money. And so Paul represents, what I would say is an ideal for all of us, is that he's found a way to continue contributing to the world because the world's interested in what he's doing in his own unique way, on his terms, in the locations he wants. And he's just, you know, it's better than ever. And so that. That's kind of the visual I put. Is that what is my unique contribution? How can I have an experience like Paul where my life didn't start to degrade? It actually went up 10 times, and he really is living that kind of 10x life.

So that.

That's the first example that. The one that, you know, Part of what was seeding me for this as I was growing up was my first business partner where I, where I worked with Vern Harnish in our company, which is Gorman's business, interiors. And his name was Bernie Morais. And we talked about him and Bernie at the time was, it was very attractive. When he approached me, he said, because I was looking at businesses and I was actually looking at car dealerships because I'm in the Motor City number one and I'm just a big car nut. And so we met with representative from General orders my, my father in law and I, and of course he's got a great reputation. I go, oh great, here comes a well capitalized family. And they're kind of like, well, who's going to run this thing? And my father in law looked at me and he said, well my son is, or son in law is. And they're like, do you know anything about retail? And I'm like nope, but I love cars. And he said, well, before you get in the car business, why don't you just work at a dealership for six months and we'll put you in one that's really, really good and you just see what you think. And it was a great, great suggestion because after six months I'm like, oh my God, this is not like IBM, this is like a whole different world. These people don't seem to like each other. It's like a representative of all the things to do wrong that we train not to do in the, in Rockefeller habits and scaling up. So anyhow, after I walked away from that disillusioned, this Bernie Moray approached me and he said, John, I've got a dealership for sale. It's just not a car dealership, it's a office furniture dealership. And, and so at first I'm like, furniture, like I don't like cars. And I'm like, you know. But anyway, I, Bernie represented a leader that I admired. It was business to business sales and it was a small enough company I thought I could get my arms around. So Bernie and I grew this company from a money loser at two and a half million in sales to a money maker at 15 million in sales before we sold it. And Bernie is so cool because I remember so he would have been like in his 50s already at that time. And he's like, I don't hang around with other 50 year olds, I hang around with 25 year olds because they're doing a much more interesting thing. And so Bernie is now 96 and he's still working every day. And what's so cool about it is, you know, he started in business in 1949, and he's loved it ever since. He's always made his work, you know, his joy. And so he's still at it. And of course, he doesn't work, you know, 70 hours a week anymore, but he's still playing a role in leading that company. And his reason for that is he looked at some of his friends who were retiring, and his quote was, you know, I see my retired friends who are bored out of their skulls. And that's why he had me as a business partner. He just liked being around younger people. And a really cool story about Bernie, Molly and I, my wife and I had dinner with him in Muriel. Oh, I don't know, maybe it was about three. Three years ago, two years ago, and he just had his knee replaced. And, you know, this guy in his mid-90s. And so the doctor said, well, yeah, we could replace your knee, but that's not a very advisable thing at your age. And he's like, well, I'm not slowing down. I got stuff to do. I'm a busy guy. Like, I need a new knee. And so he went for the surgery and got back into the game. So a really strong influence on my life. And again, somebody who's clearly replacing retirement with intentional living.

Yeah, you know, as I started into coaching, I really thought about, well, I think this is like the last main gig that I'll. The last sort of main job that I'll have. And I'm not ready to retire now, even after I exited my last traditional CEO role. But I want to. I just. I, like, want to be busy, and I imagine that my tempo will change and the things. The amount I might. The number of clients, but I like what I do. Right. I'm only 55. I. I've got. I've got work to do. I've got things I'm interested in.

And. And Bill, the. That's kind of my. My point of view, and I. And I'm sure it's the same for a lot of the listeners, is that I'm really at the top of my game right now. I've never had the wealth that I do. You know, when I was a young man, I didn't have this kind of wealth. I had ideas and inspiration, but I didn't have the wealth. I didn't have the knowledge or the wisdom, I might dare say. And then finally, I didn't have the connections. And so if I'm at the top of my game, why would I get out? Why wouldn't I see what the next level of game looks like? And so in writing the book, which was something I'd never done and uncomfortable and, and speaking at the last scale up summit in front of what, 1500 people, I'd never done that before. These are all things that push me out of my comfort zone, take on appropriate levels of risk and are challenging. And so that's kind of the idea is that that's the stuff we did when we were young, when we didn't have the resources. Why wouldn't we do it now? And the worst that's going to happen is I'm going to ding my ego a little bit. Well, I've had lots of ego dinging over the years, so none of this is that frightening. And that's again what this idea of shifting the paradigm on retirement.

Yeah. Now you had another story about a cyclist and I've been after a couple of years of not biking, I've been biking almost every day for the last few weeks. Talk to me about that aspect and the physical and, and what, share that story.

Well, the gentleman we're referring to is Michael Brennan. And Michael's man, what an impressive guy. He, when I met him I was referred in by a board member and he was the CEO of the United Way for Southeastern Michigan. This is a really cool story about our tools. So at the time, this is post the Detroit bankruptcy and so they were, they had been donated a building which you know, nonprofits often are but it was this big clunky multi floor building. It wasn't a nice place to work. The utilities and the, the carry cost was really expensive. And because our local economy was in such a train wreck, he decided why don't I move into an open space, reduce our costs so much that I could actually cover the rent. And of course rents were very attractive. So he kind of picked the best place in the city of Detroit at that time. Now remember, Detroit wasn't doing well. So that was kind of a cool thing he did. He was just an innovative leader on a number of fronts and the space was really cool because it was an old bank building that they were starting to tear apart. And he said stop. And so there's this old facades and the really cool architecture. Add in the bank building half broken out and then all this new modern open environment stuff concurrently together. So it kind of represented the old United Way shifting in the new United Way in a physical environment. That's pretty cool. The second thing he Did. That's really impressive, is he came up with this bhag. Now listen to this. This is pre. This is when we were in the depths of our mess in Detroit. He said, we are going to. Their big, hairy, audacious goal was to make Greater Detroit one of the top five places to live and work in America by 2030. And that's just. We were at the bottom of the heap. And by the way, a lot of the executives on his team could not get their heads around it. They just couldn't see it happening. But Mike could. So after transitioning in this new space and then opening the environment, he put up scorecards and he had a graphic artist come in and make the bhag. And he had the core values on the wall, and he had everything done, but really cool graphics. So it was kind of visually stimulating. So a side story on that, on his board was Christine ford, Bill Ford Jr. S wife. And she says, bill, you gotta come in and see this. This is just amazing. And he's like, you know, I don't wanna. And she's like, no, come on, you gotta do this. And so, as a dutiful husband, he goes in and he goes on the tour, and he walks around and he sees their metrics on the wall. He sees their top three key initiatives for the year, their big goals. He sees the bhag, he sees all these measurements. And he sits down with Mike and he says, I gotta be honest with you, before I walked in here, I know that we are a big donor to United Way, but I was afraid it wasn't really making an impact. But now that I see your BHAG and what you're doing here, I'm all in. How can we help you more? So Mike was this amazing visionary leader. So take this story a little further. So he's working away United Way. And by the way, they probably would have let him run United Way worldwide. He was on a classic career path because he's really been there his whole life in various different United ways, kind of growing his career. But he went off his board, really respected him because of the work he'd done. He'd raised over $700 million and provided this transformation and launched this 211 service hotline. And just, you know, he was. He was a great CEO. He is a great CEO. So he asked his board if he could go off to. To Stanford for their. Their business design school and learn about applied design thinking. And so he goes there and he comes back and he was gone for quite a while. And he starts to implement that in the organization. But that was even harder if what we talked about in this first transformation was tough. The design thinking was really difficult for people to get their arms around. So he stepped away from, from his job, which was, I mean, it was really well paid. And he founded a group called civila nonprofit in Detroit. And they're doing some just amazing work. So, you know, this is the example of what a legacy map can do when you, when you map out your future and talk about your legacy. And so one of his goals, his personal goals is to, at age 100, to lead the parade up in Arbor, Michigan. It's this beautiful community we have in northern Michigan on the Great Lakes. At 100 years old, he riding his bike, leading that parade. So that's his, that's his big goal. And that's an example of what we do with this tool, the legacy map. So one of my goals is at age 90, to be skiing on a black diamond run in Aspen, Colorado with my children and grandchildren. So, you know, just like all golfers, that's yours and Michael's is biking at the front of the parade at age 100. And so that's one of the things that the legacy map does. It really looks at the end of your life and saying, okay, if you're going to finish, well, what does that look like and what would that feel like and what would you be doing? And so Michael, totally, he's just an example of how going through this process with me and then letting it work on his subconscious where he says, I got some big plans. I think I can take the second half of my life to a whole new level. And this is a guy who came out of the nonprofit sector and had a very well paid CEO role with United Way. And he probably could have been running the entire organization across the country. And now he's an entrepreneur like us. It's just super impressive.

Well, you know, I have a CEO right now. I have a couple with businesses well over 100 million, half a billion in revenue. And they're wondering like, well, what am I going to do with my life? What is the point of all of it? What's next if I don't do this? What am I all about? And then I have another CEO of a much smaller business. We were with the team yesterday and he's like, he's like, after working with you for a couple of years, I've got to where I'm not needed all the time. I'm like, great, that's awesome. He's like, yeah, But I feel guilty. I'm like, not sure what I'm supposed to be doing. I'm like, well, it's time to redesign your life and your role. Because your identity has been so caught up in holding this damn thing together and pushing it. And now things are finally working. You've got the right team in place. We're starting to tune up the practices. You still going to have work to do and there are going to be people come and go and that kind of thing. But for the most part, it's time for you to start to transition out of the role that you held for years. Right. What is it going to be? What does it look like? What do you care about?

Well, what, you know, it's designing that big future. You know, I touched on the legacy maps. Let me just take a minute. And because we talked about Mike Brennan using this tool and myself, it's basically, you know, again, it's right out of our textbooks. But it's six priorities and spirituality, health, relationships, career or vocation, whatever you want to call it. Or it could be community service and then financial freedom, rejuvenation. I think I got all six of them. And then it's defining in each one of those priorities, what does it look like at the end of your life in an exponential, abundant envisioned future, what would be the best version of that look like? And I gave the example of my skiing at 91 with my grandchildren and so on. So that gives me the motivation every day when I do my push ups and crunches and so on, that I'm not somebody who enjoys exercise, but I won't be able to ski at 90 on a black diamond run if I'm not healthy. Now let me take that a little bit further and peel it back. Think about what my peers are going to say, are you crazy? You're going to break your hip? What are you doing? So you got all that kind of pressure on you. And so that means I need to take risks right now, reasonable and moderate risk today. Otherwise I'll say I can't do that. So that shows up again in, in speaking and writing and trying new things from a vocation point of view, but also equally in my rejuvenation pursuits. One of the things I like doing is I just really, I enjoy driving anything but snowmobiling. So two seasons ago we snowmobiled from Ontario all the way to eastern corner, Quebec and back. So it was about 3,800 miles and.

It was 3,800 miles of snowmobiling.

And so there was you know, again.

Just can't wrap my head around.

It's my passion. I love it. But it was challenging, and there was a degree of risk involved, and. And so it was a passion I pursue of mine. But again, if only for my children, I want them to see that. That their father is purposeful, intentional, and he's always, you know, out there pursuing his passions with a zest, whatever those passions are. And that's kind of this movement ideas. And if we don't roll, you know, it's the. There's that quote. Who you are speaks so loudly about you, I can't hear what you're saying. Probably teenagers should have quoted that. But that's the thing, is that it's not what I. I say. It's really how I live my life. And again, Bernie Morais, that's kind of the example of Michael Brennan's doing the same thing. It's. It's how we're showing up in the world that's going to make the biggest impact on the. The generations that come after us. And just a little dovetail on that. You know, I'm a boomer, so my, My father served in World War II. And that whole generation, you know, the greatest generation, I mean, the fact of the matter is they preserve democracy and created the benefits that we all enjoy today. I mean, this is the least we can do to sort of pay that back, which is that we're going to continue to contribute and create value in our own unique way, however that shows up. But it's not just to your point, earlier hours and hours on the golf course. And by the way, that's, you know, snowmobiling is like golf. Right. It's something I enjoy, but I certainly wouldn't want to do that 12 months a year, you know, 30 days a month, that it would get old real quick.

Well, I. There's something there, though, about reconciling your passion and your purpose. Right. That gives you a life that's fully in the zone where you feel like you're just flowing. And I. So I used to do a lot of flying. I don't fly too much anymore. Every now and then I do, but I flew a fun airplane recently. But. But I used to do a lot of flying. It was my hobby, and it was a way to get out of the office and, like, get away from things and just have some me time. And I'd go up and I'd fly a variety of different airplanes. But it always occurred for me like a selfish, indulgent activity that I did from myself, but I didn't feel good about it, right? It's expensive, it takes time like that. But I'm like, I'm just going to do it for me anyway. And I didn't have really good explanation, but I. But I love it, right? And I like sailing in the same way and I like cycling. There's a lot of different things I like for similar reasons and they take various amounts of time and money and like that self indulgent things I like, right? And then there was my purpose, which roundabout 2002 that crystallized for me in a similar exercise where I was considering the end of my life and what did I want and what it looked like. And I realized through all of it what I want people to say that legacy is that he really was a contribution. He made a difference. And making it difference became the purpose of my life. And although I say it sometimes different ways, that is the core of it. And then I integrated the two things really on a challenge from another coach. He's like, well, why don't you try to bring your purpose to your passion and see what happens. And so I created a project to take kids flying and that was the first taste of this notion of legacy. So I actually just leveraged an existing thing, thing that the eaa, the Experimental Aircraft association does where they, it's called Young Eagles and they take us. But I brought that program, the Young Eagles program to the, to Oakland Airport specifically. And then I helped to amplify them and bring attention to the existing ones around the Bay Area. And as a result of that program during the thing, we took over a thousand kids flying. The impact of that was that my wife now though was waking me up like Saturday morning, Sunday morning, she's like, wake up, you got to go get dressed like you got kids there for you. You got to go flying. And the notion or the, the experience of having my wife wake me up to tell me I have to go flying was just like stunning. Especially in that time where we totally didn't, you know, we had our rough spots in some of those years and flying was not something that she was endured but, but flying given away, flying done, my passion done from and aligned with my purpose was a totally different experience. And when I think about that, when I hear you saying there is figure out what you love and figure out what matters to you and start to get those things aligned in the kind of the second half of your life. And so many of the people we deal with are in their second half or at least contemplating and I'm glad.

You touched on the purpose. One of the my purpose that I came up with around age 40 was to inspire and challenge leaders to achieve their greatest personal potential. And so certainly the work we do as coaches has facilitated that. But if you think about this book, it's the same thing, right? I'm still going and inspiring and channeling challenging leaders to achieve their greatest personal potential. And I'll define that word leader because I was presenting a ypoers and they said, well, it just seems like it's a business thing and I didn't know what other word to put in there. We could call it growth minded people. But essentially I see leaders as people that are at point A and they want to go to point B and they're willing to do all the hard climbing in between. So it's not a title or a position, it's a behavioral attitude. So again, you can almost insert growth minded. So one of the things in this legacy map tool, once you get them mapped out, all the goals and where you're going, then there's something I call the character compass. And in that we define what are the core values for your family. Right? So you have core values for the business, the core values for family. What are your principles? And principles is really, you know, Patrick Lencioni said there's core values, there's aspirational values and there's permission to play values. And so I use Covey's term principles as kind of those aspirational. So I have about 10 of those because I keep core values to three. And in that case I have things like perseverance, which is something my father did pass on to me. But I also have patience, which is something he did not pass on to me. My father was berserk on things. And so I'm aspiring over the 10 years to keep the working on this patience piece because I know that I'm a better human being when I'm patient and perseverant and so on. So that's a part of that character compasses, purpose principles, core values, and finally what I call high payoff activities, which is when you don't get your to do list done at the end of the week where these things that drive you drive energy for you personally and professionally. So you and still say, you know what? I was tracking my ship isn't off course. I'm still headed in the right direction because I made time for those things. So that's what the tools intended to do. One other piece on it, I learned this from Sullivan, is It does have this lifetime goal, lifetime age. So in my case it's 103. So what's it look like to live healthy and fully alive all the way to 103? And so those are specific goals. And we talked about the scheme and so on. And then from Ari Weinswig, who's another endorser of the book, Ari taught me the idea of visioning. And so I have a 10 year vision. It's about four Word document pages, so a couple thousand words and It's a description 10 years out. And in that case I really paint this picture of what does my world look like ten years from now. And so that's where the book, book idea, all that stuff first went into a vision before it became reality. And then I even had a graphic artist paint all this for me. Like he drew it, but he drew this sort of picture again of sort of my journey. So I can look at the picture every day in my office. I can read the. And one for one 12 month period, I read the vision every morning when I got up or before my wife and I went to bed because she liked hearing it too. It talked about where I was going. And then everything else is just what we're used to. One year goals, quarterly targets, 30 day focus plan, weekly measure, and then daily. I call it daily alignment. But those are just the habits. And who's that guy? He's so good. Just James Clear. James Clear wrote the book Atomic Habits last year. And I think he really nails this habit thing better than I do. I talk about in my book. But James is like, he's got it nailed on. And so all that comes from my two sort of takeaways that I ask everybody. If you remember nothing else, it's. There's two commitments. Commitment number one is to wake up inspired each and every morning. That's what you were talking about with your purpose and aligning it to both professional and personal activities. We want to wake up inspired because that's when life's all about. And commitment number two is the manager energy. It used to be I used to do a wheel, like kind of the balance wheel idea. And then I realized it's not, it's not the wheel. I'll give Vern credit for this too. Was. It was Jay Harmon who wrote the Shark's Paintbrush. And he talked to us about biomimicry, which is the study of nature. And I, I contemplated that in my morning journaling and reading. I'm like, oh, it's not balance. There's not balance in Nature, it's energy. It's all about energy management. And so as we get older, our energy starts to wane. So are the people, are the relationships, the spiritual work, the health activities, the vocation, the financial freedom, the rejuvenation. Are these things giving me energy or taking energy away? And because I got. I'm 61, so I basically get four more decades every decade, I can work on another transformational portion of my life that is energy giving. So I'm moving up and not down.

I love that thought about what you're giving your energy to and waking up inspired each and every day. Definitely. There's days that we wake up with setbacks and things like that, things where we're not inspired, things that we dread. And yet I think there's always a way to invent your role, to create a story about how you dealt with the challenge that you faced. And as you tell this, we were talking a lot about our personal lives, touching on the business life. But I'm reminded of how we do some things are how we do most everything that the things that we see people do in the team setting, we know they do in other areas of life. I know that if somebody behaves one way with their team, that they're another way or. Or if they're not that way in another area of life, then it's suppressed or thwarted or they're being phony in one place, that we bring ourself the same self to all different places. And we act in a lot of the same ways. And if we're not acting with full power, that there's something else going on that we have to deal with, and that's where that power and inspiration comes from.

Absolutely. And you talked about it's this alignment piece. Two things is that because they've been coaching for 20 years and you got to stand in front of the audience and say the same, you know, stuff over and over. It was early on because, you know, Vern didn't have the Gazelles program, wasn't built out like it is today. It was really kind of on your own to some degree for a while. And so in the early days, I would tell these teams, you know, essentially, you need to get your act together. But I didn't really have my act together. So the first thing was I had to start using the one page plan and have the rhythms and do all the things asking clients to do. And then all I did was port that over into that success map, which became a legacy map, so that I was in congruence both Professionally and personally in using the tools that we know work so effectively and for companies, why wouldn't they work for our life? So that was a piece of it. And so now I feel much more confident and congruent with my clients. And then to your point is that the CEO was. The next thing is that once we give them those basic foundations and they understand the sort of blocking and tackling, and then it's like, okay, the bottleneck is you, Mr. CEO, just like the bottleneck for that company is me. And maybe that's why clients keep me around for 16 years, is that because I'm in a continuous state of growth, it keeps that vacuum kind of moving up. And so I asked my CEOs to do the same thing, because I said, you can't become the stall point for your company. You need to keep growing yourself however you choose to do it. It's your design, it's your map. But that was essentially it. And that's even, you know, the exponential piece is that if I. If we're going in this exponential age and Diamandis and others and Kotler, they're talking about this, then how do I apply that to myself? Because I'm a leader and I want to be up front and experimenting with this. And that was the. In writing the book, it basically came down to this. I said, well, if no one ever reads it, at least my grandchildren will read it, because my grandfather wrote a book, and I love reading this book because I see myself in it. So that was like the worst case scenario is that I read a book. No one reads it, but my grandchildren read it, and they're like, that's kind of cool. I never really knew my grandfather because he passed away or didn't get enough, spend enough time or whatever, but now I get to kind of read about it. But perhaps, you know, it might play on a bigger audience. And so that was sort of the nucleus for, again, for doing this, both from a business development piece and then from an individual development piece.

Well, the book is Replace Retirement, Living youg Legacy in the Exponential Age. You can find it on Amazon and on the website replaceretirement.com so, John Anderson, replace retirement. Replaceretirement.com is where to go find more of John's info. Of course, this, I believe, is our 160th episode episode. So we've got a whole back catalog. If you want to go read about the painted picture, the vivid vision, you can go look up. We've done a number of podcasts if you want to look at life planning and end of year planning and that kind of thing. We've got episodes. Whatever you want. You can go find those episodes and lots of tool downloads and notes and that kind of thing@scalingcoach.com we've even got a free copy of the Scaling up book. There you just pay the shipping and handling and I'll give you a book for free. Scalingcoach.com don't forget to register now for our next workshop on Scaling up. To get one of our limited $100 discounts for our podcast listeners while supplies last, just go to scalingcoach.com workshops and then enter the code sup that's S U p for Scaling Up Podcast when you register. We'll see you there. Well, special thanks to the original growth guru Verne Harnish, creator of the Rockefeller Habits Scaling up in all of our world around coaching companies and Scaling up. This show was produced by Lucy Summers. Audio production is done at Podfly Productions with audio editing by Albert Burge. Show notes compiled by Ayn Kudina and proofreading by Tim McGowan. If you got some value out of the show, pass it along to someone right now like and subscribe it. You know what to do so you get our shows every week in your inbox. So you can do that on itunes. Stitcher Wherever you get your podcast, you can also go to our website scalingcoach.com and get all the back catalog. Search through the podcast, find ones you love and all the shownotes and things that go with them, extra links and like that you'll find downloads of our tools, an offer of the book, drop us a line, a note, tell us what you like. Hear more of with an email to info scalingcoach.com thanks again for listening. Keep Scaling Up. Are you ready to turn your goals into daily wins? You should check out our Scoreboard software. Powered by Align, it's the official software for scaling up. With Scoreboard, you'll get an AI driven coach for priorities and KPIs and it'll help keep your team focused on what matters most. With Align, you can track your goals in real time and you'll even see results on the go. With their mobile app you can rest easy knowing that Align has world class onboarding and support to set your team up for success. This is really more than just software, it's what I actually use to manage growth in our Scaling up client teams. Unlock clarity and results with Scoreboard by Aligned. To try it now, go to aligntoday.com Bill G one more time aligntoday.com Bill G. That's aligntoday.com Bill G dot G. Check it out and try it now.