An Innovative – and Life-Changing – Way to Look at Retirement, with Dean Jackson - Replay

My name is Brian Scribonia, and on this episode of the Common Sense Financial podcast, you know, you're giving up so many hours, 40, 50, 60 hours a week, you're getting a paycheck. And that becomes this routine, this hamster wheel, as you're putting it. And so when people think about retirement, it's because they want to escape that and get. And get their time back, right? It's not that they don't want to do something, they just don't want to continue to do that.

Foreign.

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Opportunities are still there.

The attempt at passing down wealth from generation to generation. Consider the outcome, not just popular opinion.

And the whole teaching there is about preparedness and being ready. There's a difference between what's real and what's true.

You're listening to the Common Sense Financial Podcast. I'm your host, Brian Scribonia. Thanks for tuning in and let's get into today's topic. Hello everyone, and thank you for joining the show today. And if you've been following me for any length of time, you know that I talk a lot about money and how to think in terms of accumulating it, using it for big ticket items, you know, converting assets to income and ultimately transferring it to the next generation. But really my motivation with all this is to just get people to think and to have aha. Moments throughout this. We're bombarded with information all the time. We're not quite sure how to think through things. And so this show is really about trying to bring some clarity around that and how it applies to you. And for any of you that have been listening to me for quite some time, know that I get into all of those different ideas about thinking, but today's going to be a little bit different. I had a moment to talk with my friend Dean Jackson, and him and I were talking a little bit about some lifestyle decisions with business and marketing and things of that nature. And I thought, you know, this would be a great opportunity to bring Dean on and just share a little bit with the audience, you know, how this could apply to retirement and how they can be thinking about, you know, bringing this into their overall strategy. Right. So welcome to the show, Dean. I appreciate you joining us today.

I'm excited. This is great. I love podcasting and I love talking about life and business and all of that.

Yeah, perfect. You know, as with most things with the show, you know, I kind of pay attention to what I'm talking to clients about and in my meetings with them and. And so this conversation really is. Was a genesis inside of some conversations I was having the clients. Because a lot of times clients think about retirement. And as I've said before, retirement is not an age. It can be at any point in life. Right. It's just this point of time where you're kind looking for something different, maybe something more. You can define it however a person would want to define that. But where could you do something different to create a lifestyle that is really what you're wanting to get? It's not about checking out a society. You know, people spend a lot. Yeah, people spend a lifetime, you know, accumulating wisdom, accumulated wealth. And so how did they take that and not just sail off into the sunset, but actually create a business and create tremendous value for somebody else? Right. Another thing that kind of sparked this conversation that I'm wanting to have here is the idea of longevity. I've been thinking a lot about this. When you think about lifetime, if people are living to 100, which is the fastest growing demographic based on some studies that I've seen, if somebody's retiring at 60, that means they probably have been working since they were 20 and that's 40 years. You're at the halfway mark. Right. And so that's a little bit concerning in some ways because a lot of the old models that are with how to position assets for retirement really has a timeframe of about 30 years. And so the way of doing things before isn't necessarily how things are going to work into the future. So again, this is just kind of where this conversation started in my mind. And then also, Dean, as I was talking with you, a little bit about coming on, but before we jump on here and get into the. To the nitty gritty here, if you don't mind just sharing with the audience a little bit about you, you know, your journey, how you got here, and you know, what you exactly do, and then we can Jump into it.

What do I do? What exactly do I do? I'm still trying to figure that out. We. I grew up in Toronto in Canada. And you know, I'm 56 now. I live in Florida now. And one of the things, as far as this whole life arc of business and money approach here, one of the things that I earned or learned early on is the difference between what our good friend Dan Sullivan would call the results economy versus the time and effort economy. And I've only ever in my life had one job. When I was 14 years old, I worked at the bowling alley. My friend Neil and I got jobs on the same day, right? We turned 14, we applied, we got jobs at the bowling alley and we were making $2.50 per hour. And I did that for two weeks and I would work all day Saturday and then I would work two evenings during the week. And at the end of the two weeks, I got my paycheck. And you realized, wow, that's very little. Because then you get introduced to who is all this FICA and who's taking all this money out of back here. Wait a minute, I did 250 or $2.50 times this many hours. You're thinking you're going to get that whole thing, but that's not how it works. And I realized very quickly that, you know, I had a paper route at the, at the time. And one of the things that we had the opportunity to do was they had these coupon books that we could sell door to door and you would make yourself for, for $3. And we got to keep, I think we got $1.50 of the, the, the sale. And I realized that I could make $20 an hour selling these books door to door. And so I immediately, I quit the, the bowling alley because what I realized about the thing that is more fun than working at the bowling alley is hanging out at the bowling alley and playing video games. Your friends are working at the bowling alley. So I would go out and I would do a couple of hours, you know, 10 o' clock kind of thing, and I'd, you know, make 40 or $50. And then I'd come and hang out at the bowling alley for the rest of the, the day. And so I never ever looked back from that was, and I didn't know those words then, of course, but that was a move into the results economy where it's not, you know, whereas at the bowling alley or any job, they're paying you for your time and effort in something, a fixed amount, whereas in the results economy. You're paid by the results that you create. And so it's been this stair stepping of being able to figure out great ways to produce a result that's valuable to other people. And I've built my whole, my whole career on stair stepping that and getting better and better at it. So that's been. When I got into my business career, I started out as a real estate agent. So that was all results economy. I started out young for sure, 21 years old. And I think I mentioned I'm 56 now. So it's been. I started my business career in 1988, and it was really. I've just had such a great. You know, the thing that I've loved about it is being able to shape my life into whatever lifestyle or life pattern that I want. For a lot of years, up till, you know, pre Covid there, I would split time, spend five months in Canada, seven months in Florida. I started doing that in 1999. And yeah, so being able to kind of, I would call it pre tire, you know, design what would be my ideal lifestyle. And I think a good discussion would be defining what success means to you or defining what your. Your lifestyle is. I did a program with Tony Robbins years ago that he did a program called the New Money Masters. And I was one of the. The featured people. But we were talking about this concept that in 1999, I was working with Thomas Leonard, and we did a program called A Perfect Life. And the idea, we make the distinction of a perfect life, meaning there are 7 billion versions of a perfect life. Not the perfect life. Not dictating.

Right.

But everybody's in possession of what could potentially be a perfect life in their definition. And what I found, you know, I was. If this was in 1999, as I said, and so I was young, early 30s, and thinking through this idea of what does success mean to me and how will I know I'm being successful? And that's a key distinction. So often we look at things where we're aspirationally thinking about some point in the future where we'll reach this magical destination, right? And I think that people, if you go through a life where you're working at a job with an eye on retirement. I mean, the whole society is set up that way. Put in your time, do your job, and then you have your goals, golden years after that, then you can have your. Your life, right? And that model. Now everybody's got the opportunity to kind of define what it is that you want for your life. And so the Exercise that we did was to create a list of ways to finish the statement, I know I'm being successful when. And what being successful does is it brings it into the present moment. It's not, I know I will be successful when I save a million dollars and I can retire or when I get to. That's all aspirational thinking, but how will you be experiencing that? And so we described that as like pushing the accelerator pedal, going forward in time and just taking a look around and recognize. How will I recognize when I get there? So for me, I'll share my. My top three that I did. And it's been kind of the guidepost for everything that I've done. And so I started out saying, I know I'm being successful when I can wake up every day and say, what would I like to do today? So for me, that shows one of my highest values is time freedom, right? That I want to be in total control of my time. And so what that means is that I would not do well being a dentist, let's say, or being something where I have to get up and then I have to go to the office and drill teeth all day long. I don't ever get to say, what would I like to do today? Not. It's defined, right? If people have a job, you know what you've got to do for the day. And it's very rare that you get the opportunity to say, what would I like to do today? So that was a high thing. Then my second one was that I know I'm being successful when my passive revenue exceeds my lifestyle needs. So I made the decision early on in. In 1999 to set up situations where I started understanding the value of recurring revenue or to having assets that are yielding money and living, leading with revenue and lagging with lifestyle. So I always wanted to stay in that band where I've already. I've already got more than what I need to live my life. Because, you know, if you start with that baseline of I want to have all my time free, then I'm not getting into situation where if I go out and buy all this stuff and get in debt that now I need to make high income in order to continue to keep that hamster wheel going. That's a different. That's a different thing. And then my third was that I know I'm being successful when I'm working and on projects I'm excited about and doing my very best work. And so all three of those statements are, that was 1999, 23 years ago. 24 years ago, and it's still equally motivating and exciting. Those are the things that I still want for my life. And I went through and had a whole list of 10 of them. But that kind of thinking is a great platform to start. My. The, the life metaphor that we came up with in 1999 was that I want to live my life like an artist with a $50,000 a month trust fund. That would be the greatest life to me. Right. Do what you want, create your art, and don't. You don't have to make it commercially viable or do you have that pressure of it, you know, and that's awesome, Dean.

You know, one of the things that I'm grabbing, I mean, there's a whole bunch there that could be a bunch of podcasts in and of self just to help people, but there's a lot of genius there. And it's. And you articulated it so well, because whenever I'm visiting with people, business owners and, or individuals working nine to five jobs, you know, nine to five job, you're trading time for money. You know, you're, you're giving up so many hours, 40, 50, 60 hours a week, you're getting a paycheck, and that becomes the routine, this hamster wheel, as you're putting it. And so when people think about retirement, it's because they want to escape that and get their time back, right? It's not that they don't want to do something, they just don't want to continue to do that. Right. There's so many things that they would want to do. And so when I'm speaking with people and we're talking, a lot of times, it's about that retirement date, it's about being able to retire on Friday and not having to wake up and go to work on Monday. And so that's almost as far as they get. And they're thinking, they're so desperately want their time back, they're not thinking through what that means in retirement. So hitting on some of that. And then as far as a business owner, a lot of times as business owners, people will just create their own job, right? So they create a job, but then they become, I guess what you could call a slave to that job. And so they have to be there and work, and still they're trading their time for money. And so the idea of this lifestyle transition, and that can happen at any time, not just waiting till retirement. So one of the things that I've been talking a lot with people about over the past couple of years really is about practicing retirement, starting to really prepare for retirement. So retirement from what they're doing, a transition is really the better term for transitioning from what they're doing to what they want to be doing. And sometimes there's a ramp up period, right? I mean you don't just one day flip a switch and all of a sudden businesses lights are turned on and figuratively speaking, and then you have all this revenue coming in. There's a ramp up period that's involved. And so helping people get to a point where they can transition. It's no different to me than people that have accumulated, you know, a lot of money inside of like a 401k. And you hit the nail on the head and again, just, just again your wisdom and all that is, is why I wanted to have you on is because people do have a number in their mind. You know, there's arbitrary numbers. For some people it's a million dollars, some people it's 5 million, it's 10 million. Really is just a target. It really doesn't have a definition, it doesn't have a true meaning other than this is a target I'm going for. You know, when I hit that, I will have arrived. But once you hit that, you really haven't arrived anywhere because that didn't have any meaning behind it. Right. So the idea of creating that passive income, the clients that, that I've been working with for a long time understand that everything that we're working on is about accumulating assets to be able to then create. Basically you're purchasing passive income options, right? So I always use the idea of real estate because most people understand that, right? You create, you buy an apartment building and then that apartment building has value going into the future, but it also has that consistent rental income that's coming in and so that becomes part of the cash flow. It's not just about investing money in the stock market and then the stock market goes up and down. That doesn't translate to income. That doesn't create anything for you presently. Right. So this idea of lifestyle is really key. So if somebody was going to think about what we're talking about here, right, Transitioning, having a transitional phase out of either a business that they're working on that they're a slave to, or you know, somebody that's working a 9 to 5 job, like what are some of the key things to think about as you would start to develop something that you could potentially transition to? And there's a lot to unpack there. But yeah, no, I Think that a.

Key theme of it would be. I like, I like these. The term a money hobby that if you're thinking about if there. How can you turn the things that you would normally do that you're passionate about. How, how are there opportunities to kind of just look at it through a different lens and see if you could turn that into a money hobby that maybe, you know, you like to golf or you like, you know, a certain thing that. Is there a way to kind of really, you know, go passionately into that and turn that into some kind of a, a business? You know, whether it's selling. I mean there's so many things of, you know, so many flavors now being able to tap into online businesses that are so easy to set up. I mean, having a Shopify store and having, you know, doing drop shipping projects where you're just kind of, you know, play testing different equipment. You know, there, there's, I think about, I mean you look at the, you look at YouTube as an example that there's a kid on their Ryan who, who's got a channel called Ryan's Toys. And this was way back. I always, I say this with a little bit of sadness because, you know, 10 years ago my friend Lane, they adopted a, a boy from, from China came over, cutest kid. And I said to Lane at the time, I said, this kid is like, great, we should do a toy Review channel on YouTube. And we came up with the whole thing. You buy toy now and it was a picture of, of Zane and have him, you know, we go. The idea would be go to the toy store, let him pick any toy, come back, let him play with it and do a review and give his thumbs up or not on the toy, right? And for whatever reason, it never got off the ground. His mom didn't really want him, you know, doing that kind of thing. And then years later, now there's this Ryan's Toys, this kid who. That's what he does. But it's a $25 million a year, right? Just reviewing toys online and you start thinking anything that you're, you're passionate about, like that you could, you know, document and start, you know, tapping into, through affiliate programs or through drop shipping programs where you're turning now something that you're passionate about that you would do otherwise for free as a, you know, as spending your time on something and seeing how you can, you know, supplement that or turn that into, into money. And I mean, you know, the advantages of having a business entity as in terms of, you know, tax structuring things and writing off a lot of the things your passions or things that you're doing, offsetting it with income. So I think really kind of taking an inventory of. I think most people when you. I don't know that in retirement, when I look at it, my. I know I'm being successful in the first two things. Wake up every day. What I like to do today, passive revenue exceeds my lifestyle needs. Well, that's basically retire. That's what people are aspiring to at some time in the future. But if I, I started thinking about that in 1999, how can I orchestrate that now at. At 34 instead of 64, you know, and that was really the, the whole thing. The next thing of it was working on projects I'm excited about and doing my very best work. What could you do?

Yeah, a few years ago I did a, a podcast on retirement is not an age. And the whole, the whole idea of that is just, hey look, you can retire at 35 or for you 21, just as easily as at 60 or 65, if you have the right mindset and the right path to run down to create that passive income.

Yeah.

You know, speaking of business owners, you know, we, you know, share in the strategic coach program with Dan Sullivan and one of the big things, the big ideas that he talks about, of course there's a lot of them. Right. But one of the big ideas is that to have a self managing company. Right?

Yeah.

And so, and it kind of piggybacks on what you're talking about here is having a business that maybe you have been a slave to, but figuring out how to move that business or rearrange that business to where you are not. So the business isn't so dependent on you showing up Monday through Friday and having those people in place to run that business to where you're more just overseeing it as you are necessarily happen to be in the day to day. Maybe speak on that a little bit with the whole idea of the who, not how.

Yeah. So Dan Sullivan's an amazing model of this. I mean he's 78 years old. He'll be 79 in a couple of weeks here, but going strong. You know, he's in his, on his. He's been writing a book every quarter for the last 34 quarters. You know, he's got a. We're both part of his strategic coach of the coaching program. He's got thousands of entrepreneurs all over the world that are part of this community and he's got, you know, he's now three years into a 25 year plan that is, you know, he just keeps rolling into these things. But one of the first exercises that they do at Strategic Coach when you come in is something called the lifetime extender. And this concept of he's learned that if you ask somebody how old do you think you're going to be when you die, how old do you plan on living to? And everybody has a number, everybody in their mind, they have this sense of, well, my grandparents live to the, they probably ballpark where they think that they're going to live. And so he goes through the thing of, well, if you got to that, let's say the year before that, how would you want to be at that age? You know, in terms of your mental sharpness and. Oh yeah, yeah, I want to be mentally sharp and, and how about your physical body? I want to be vital and vibrant. And also, what about relationships? How you feel about. Yeah, I want to have a lot of loving relationships and friends and activities and things. Look, and all those things. And if you, if you had all of that at that age, how much longer do you think you could live? And you know, people always, you know, they add 20 years on top of that or 10 years or whatever it is. And it's an interesting thing that he jokes how in the first hour of the program, we just gave you 20 more years in your life. What's that right worth, you know, how would that change? And I think, you know, Dan's whole idea is he wants to live to 156, to live through an entire century. You know, so that, but he, that what it really changes more than the reality or expectation that you're going to live to 156, is it mentally changes the trajectory that you're on in your life if you're constantly moving forward and up and improving and heading in a directory where your future is bigger than your past, it changes the whole model that our society is built on where we kind of go through this arc where you get up here to retirement and then you're on the decline where you're, you know, your past is bigger than your future. And this, this whole thing of the scarcity mindset of thinking you've got to pick your pile big enough so that you're, you're not going to run out of money. Right. But the whole thing is keeping, if you're vibrant and you're keeping idea on making your future bigger than your past, that's more engaging and more of a exciting platform for your life. And I like what you said about your retirement could be at any age. You know, that's really, that's really what it comes down to.

It's a mindset. Right. Bob Buford, and I've mentioned him on, I don't know him personally, but I've mentioned his book Halftime many times in other podcasts where he talks about how the first part of his life was kind of working for money, working for, you know, the typical American dream. Right. But then once he reached some milestones, he was thinking more about purpose. You know, how can I bring more value into the world? How can I buy back some of my time? How can I just have more meaning behind it? And I think when a lot of people think through, like I've already said a little bit about retirement, they're thinking about not working. But one of the realities, and I've been doing this now for over 30 years, one of the realities for people when they retire is that once that, you know, three month mark kind of hits like up until that point, I.

Was thinking like 18 months. But you're saying three months in your.

I think it's more like three months.

Yeah.

Well, think about a typical vacation, right? Somebody takes a vacation, they have a week off here, a week off there. And so, you know, three months, they feel like they're on vacation. But yeah, but after that they've, they done all the honeydews, right? They've taken some trips, maybe they did some things that they, you know, was on their bucket list. But then after about three months and of course that, that time frame is different for everybody. But three months is what I see a lot of times they, they, they feel like that they've lost purpose. And that to me is not the quality of retirement. Right. You can have all the money in the world, but if there's a loss of purpose there, that can be an aging issue, right. You kind of deteriorate into retirement of if somebody's retiring later on in life. So this idea of the lifetime extender, one of the things that was a real takeaway for me when I did that years ago was that, you know, and he says this, this isn't me speaking, but talking about how your brain automatically starts thinking about, like if you tell your brain you're going to be dead in 10 years, you know, your brain kind of starts setting that up. Yeah, right. But if you're thinking, you know, 40 years or 50 years, that's a whole different. That's, that's like you're 20 again, right? Or, yeah, start starting life and looking forward to the future and having all these milestones and whatnot. So, you know, a lot of what, and I know you talk about this, but a lot of what I talk about on this podcast is mindset, right? It's my. Everything's about mindset. How we filter information that we're receiving, how we think about our future, how we think about our retirement. But when, but one of the things that, you know, I'll hear people say is that, okay, well, I'm going to get into retirement and I do want to be, you know, acquiring some of my time back. How is it, you know, maybe they have been in a business or maybe they know people in business and they, they've been that slave to the business. Right. So what's the real difference there besides the tax privileges? Well, it's about again, having that model of the idea of that self managing company, right? Having that company set up to where it can run pretty much on its own. Nothing runs 100% with hands off the wheel for long periods of time. But, but it can still buy back a lot of time. So what's been some of your experiences with the idea of that self managing company and then again that bringing the right people on the team to be able to delegate. I'll give an example for me is that on the marketing side for my business, it's always about making sure people understand why we're different. You know, we're not just the typical financial firm that's saying, hey, we have this great methodology for investing in ETFs and we're going to fly you to the moon. It's not how we position ourselves. And so part of that messaging is figuring out how to frame it and how to get it out in the world. And so this whole idea of, okay, I know I need to get that done, but instead of me trying to figure all the details out is coming to somebody like you to be the who, the person that specializes in this to help me with making that, making that happen. So I get to get some of the privileges of having that system going, but I'm not having to do all the heavy lifting. So again, so to me that's part of my path of self managing is how do I find people around me to pass the baton to, to get things done. So I am freeing up more of my time to spend with my family to really concentrate on bringing value to my, my audience like this or my, my consulting clients where I'm visiting with them one on one to be able to focus on those types of things as opposed to all the other tedious things that I don't necessarily want to be doing, but has to be done. So what are, what's been some of your experiences with that?

Yeah, this whole idea of you mentioned who, not how as a great way, a framework of thinking about this. And that's something that, you know, I, I started observing when I was avoiding something or when I was procrastinating something. I would usually find that it was because I didn't actually know how to do something or you run into a, a situation. So anytime you want to like, get something or get some outcome, the first thought that people usually have is, well, how do I do that? And so you're at this crossroad. And what I discovered was that, you know, you can go down the path of how, learning how to do something, which is going to take all these units of time to figure out. And then even when you learn how to do it now, you still have to do it slowly and poorly, probably because it's your first time doing it before you ever get to done. And I started realizing that if you, instead of asking how do I do something? You start acting, asking, who can do this for me? If you find a who who can do it, they're going to bring the how with them. So you immediately eliminate all that time that you have to figure out how to do it, and they're going to be able to do it faster. So you get to done immediately. So you try. The goal is to try and keep your eye on what you want to do, all guided by your big why of the whole thing, but to keep this looking for what and who and keep moving forward without ever getting into, you know, knowing how to do anything. And I think that realizing now we're in a situation where because we're so connected through the Internet, through networks, through everything, you can literally tap into any capability that you can imagine if it's been, you know, if it's if the answer is known how to do it, there's a who that can do it for you. And so there's two sides of that. You can either be an architect of something and find who's who can do stuff. So the game becomes how can I just take my ideas and turn them into a business that generates money without me having to actually do anything that's one part of the game, or how can I plug myself in as a who to somebody else's puzzle to only do the part of the who, the whoing that I really love if all I have to do is Just do this. That's something that would be a, a great thing, you know, so I've got, you know, different friends that have gone on to retirement. And some of them, you know, they, there's some, they just like very specific things. Like a guy who was an accountant for years, built up his practice, sold his practice, took, you know, he lasted about six months on the, you know, the doing nothing, golfing every day plan. And then he got, you know, interest. Somebody brought him on as a consultant for an audit project, like a corporate audit thing, which all he had to do was like, oversee and help with the, the strategy of stuff without having to do any of the actual paperwork and all that stuff, and paying him, you know, a good, nice consulting wage. So he's just tapping into his assets, which is his brain of 40 years of experience of doing accounting, that he was able to just kind of turn that on, tap into whatever they needed and still have a great life where he doesn't want to work more than 20 hours in a week, you know, of doing that. So you get to pick your own hours, pick your own when you want to tap into stuff. So there's that, you know, as a level that's just so incredible. And if you've got capital, if you've got money, then it becomes even another situation where. Now you mentioned real estate or looking at things where you can buy assets that are going to yield that, whether it's buying a, you know, even a car wash or a laundromat or something that's a really low tech, essential kind of business that you can have other people run and then maybe add value by doing marketing or improvement for it or, you know, just being the, the cheerleader for it or the value adder that gives you something now to, to do, you know, And I think that's where a lot of people, I think, like franchises in a lot of situations like that are a really good opportunity for people where you. Because most businesses you've got, especially if you've got a good solid business, the returns on business compared to like just putting money passively in, in ETFs or in whatever. I think it's more of a satisfying thing, especially if it's a business that you fundamentally enjoy or one that you would, you know, be a part of.

Yeah, for sure. So you're either, you know, there's two paths, I'm hearing you say. One is to, you know, spend time building some assets, however long that takes. Right. And that could be done in a lot of different ways, but building Assets and then buying businesses of some sort that then creates that revenue stream. So that's, you know, trading your time for money to then buy the assets that are creating the passive income. And then the other route, or it could be a combination of things, of course, but the other route is taking your intellectual property, your wisdom, your capabilities and finding, you know, how you can play that who position for somebody else and then being able to go to another business and saying, hey, I do this part of what you need really well and I can plug in and provide that. And so doing something you love, something you're really good at, and you know, a specialist is, is always in a position where they can, you know, charge a premium for their time. So it's, it's, it's just a way again, all these different methods, all these different ways of, of creating cash flow and some people don't even realize how much intellectual property they're sitting on. Right. And, and what they can actually do with that. You, you, I know you talk a lot about the eight profit activators. Yeah, tell us a little bit about that.

But my choice of going down the path is I invested in developing skills in marketing that I found that is the key, that if I can learn how to create business, if I can help people, if any investment that people make in me is a catalyst to a multiple of that investment in income for them, that's a win. And that's where you look at, if you've got some knowledge that you've developed in your whole career of things that could be valuable in helping other business owners create more money, that's a big, it's a big opportunity. Right? You've got so much opportunity to, you know, help businesses do something that maybe they otherwise wouldn't do. And that's what I love about marketing. And that's why I developed over these 30 plus years this idea of a framework that I call our eight profit activators. A breakthrough blueprint that is universally applicable to all businesses. And I can overlay it on any business and look for the opportunities to activate profits in any of these eight areas. And so being a, a practitioner of something like that, where you can come into a business and identify something that they're not doing that could be a boost for them. And people are always happy as business owners to bring more money into the business, you know, so you've got an infinite opportunity to, you know, craft something for yourself that is, fits ideally into your, into your lifestyle. So you're kind of using, you're walking around with this asset of intellectual property like you mentioned, that you can, you know, rent out or you can, you know, use as. Tap into to create revenue for yourself whenever you want. It's kind of a cool. Kind of a cool opportunity.

You know, I think all of this is, is. Is. Is very cool in the sense that there's just so much value with, with what we're talking about here. And for some people listening right now, it's. It could be like drinking from a fire hose, and others, it may be some aha moments. And that's really what I'm hopeful of, is that there's some. There's some aha moments to just help you think through this a little deeper and find a path. One of the things you just said made me think of, you know, my father, he's from Croatia, and when he came over to the United States, very hardest working man I've ever known. I mean, the guy just. He always worked to job. Worked a job, ran a business on the side. And he always had this idea that if. And he could do anything. It was. It was fascinating to watch him because it didn't matter what was broken, he could fix it. And so growing up, I would be his helper with everything. I mean, he wouldn't let me go, you know, play with the kids in the, in the subdivision because I had to sit there and watch him, you know, change the brakes on the vehicle or rebuild a motor or fix it, an air conditioner. It was, it's, you know, I look back on all that and think, you know, there's a lot of skills there that I appreciate. I understand how things work. But later on in life I realized, you know, I don't want to be a jack of all trades. I don't want to be, you know, I want to understand how things work, but I don't necessarily want to be doing everything. And it. And it took me a long time to figure all of this out and how to think it through, really, and how it applies to the business. But one of the things that I run across a lot with, with people because we get calls all the time. I get emails all the time. I talked with lots of people. But, you know, we, we are pretty selective with who we're going to talk with and who we're actually going to consult with and engage with. I'm sure just like with you, because you only have so much time to serve so many people. And, and sometimes what I find is that people are looking for that. That how exactly what you were talking about, they want to know how to invest or they want to know, you know, what's the next best investment. Or they're thinking that I'm going to be able to put them in an investment that they've never heard of before. Like there's some unicorn hanging out there. And of course, those aren't the type of clients that we engage with because what we're looking for is we're looking for those clients that are coming to us and saying, look, here is my big problem that I don't know how to solve on my own. Or maybe they do and they just, they know that that's not their specialty and so we can plug in and be that, that, that factor for them. But really the point I wanted to make here was that, you know, I've, I've spent a lot of time building my arsenal of who's myself because I know when I'm trying to serve a client, I can't do everything myself, right. I can't know everything, I can't specialize in everything, right. So I'm a collaborator. Like if I, if I see somebody that's a value to me or somebody that could be a value to a client, I want to talk more with them and engage them and then be able to offer that to two clients and say, look, you know, this is how we can build this out and let's bring in a dean, let's bring in, you know, let's bring in all these different people. And now you have a team, right? You have a team of who's all specialized.

Yeah, we're calling it a hula decks.

That's nice. Yeah, that's good.

Your Hulu decks of relationships that you could plug in as who's right.

Yeah. And if, and if, I think if just people can grasp that idea, it's not understanding how to do everything, it's understanding what is possible when you have the right. Who a decks, right. When you have the right people on your team to assemble them, you bring a big idea to the table and then everybody can work on that in a collaborative way and that accelerates success, Right. However that's defined and then that accelerates. It collapses. Time really collapses time in a big way. So somebody that's busy, somebody that's maybe working or running a business and they have a family and maybe they just have, you know, those hobbies, they don't want to give up and nor should they necessarily. But how do you take yourself to a different level when you're already time starved and, and you know, it's a. It's a mindset shift. It's. It's knowing what it is that you're really trying to pull off and then how to think through that. Right. And that's, that's the part, and we've heard Dan say this many times, you know, is, is that people don't spend a lot of time thinking about their thinking because especially with, you know, phones or research, we're googling stuff. And now with chat GPT, you know, we're, we're. Everything's instant and we're bombarded with information. How do you sort through it all? So anyway, I think this is probably a great stopping point here, Dean. We have. There's so much here that we could talk about.

Yeah.

But any, any other. I would love just you to download any thoughts that you have on your mind before we wrap up. Anything that you think would be a good takeaway.

I think that, that I think the biggest thing, like if you're looking at especially seems like the people that we're talking about are people who are just transitioning into retirement. And I think rethinking retirement as not the beginning of the downturn and just the winding it out. But what if you started thinking about that as now creating the biggest future going forward, but also in a way that doesn't compromise what your ideal successful life looks like. And that's something, you know, I look at people, I think that exercise of I know I'm being successful when. And you put in any word, I know I'm being happy when I know I'm, you know, being happy in retirement when. And whatever those parameters are, just list them out. So use them as the guide post for doing the things like I think there's such a, you know, if I put my number one thing as time value, that's the thing that I fold the most sacred that I don't want to get. I don't want to spend any time doing anything that I don't want to do do. So having that ticket to that is passive revenue that I don't have to do anything that I don't want to be doing. Right. That's all. That's all part of it. But what I do want to do is I want to work on projects, meaning the beginning, a middle and an end that I'm excited about and doing my very best work. Those are infinitely scalable. That was true in 1999. But my, my capabilities now, the work that I do is better now than it was in 1999. The opportunities that I have are better and bigger and more because of the track record of continually, you know, moving forward and building on all of those things. So I think. I think you can't. I look at retirement more as like. Like lifestyle design, you know, of really getting. Because that's the core of it, all right, Is what's the life that's really going to make you happy? What's the life that you really want? And then how can you, within that now also make it into a game? How much can I create from this? You know what? If you knew that you could dwarf what you've accomplished in your first career or your first half of life, getting there. And it's effortless, and it feels like you're getting away with it. You know, I feel like I've been getting away with this since 1999. You know, it's funny.

That's true. Yeah, that's a great. That's a great place to be. And it really defines what you're meaning by lifestyle. You know, these may be new terms for some people when they're hearing that, but really it's about freedom. Freedom. Right. It's about that. Financial freedom. And what is financial freedom? It's time. Freedom for you to be able to spend your time doing what you want to do. And retirement, to me, always had. You know, retirement's a fairly new phenomenon. Right. It's not something that's been around forever. You know, people would work and then they would die. And so this whole idea of retirement is almost like. Like cattle being put in the back field. And that's not what anybody wants. Exactly, exactly. And so that's not what anybody wants. You know, it's a term that's used a lot, but it's really about finding a different purpose. Maybe you're tired of what you're doing, transition to something that you enjoy, and that's where it can be at any age. Right.

I love that.

So, Dean, Dean, if somebody wants to hear more about what you have going on, where would you direct them to go? I know you have a podcast. You have a lot of things going on.

Yeah, sure, I've got a lot of stuff, but just probably the easiest place is deanjackson.com that's just a list of all of the things that I've. That I've got going on. There's a lot of variety. But my, you know, main passion is marketing and business. And so we do different podcasts and all kinds of courses and things on marketing, on growing your business.

Dean, I appreciate you coming on and sharing with the audience. You're way to do it.

It's great getting to know you. So this is a good Keep the conversation going.

Sure. Well, I appreciate it. All right, well that concludes today's show. I'm Brian Scribonia and thanks for listening to the Common Sense Financial Podcast. Thanks for listening to today's show. If you liked what you heard, be sure to subscribe on YouTube and Spotify so that you can receive notifications when we release new episodes. I'm Brian Scribonia and this is the Common Sense Financial Podcast.

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