Right Time to Retire + Don't Ignore First Steps

Business brain episode 597 for casual Friday, November 8th international talk about money day and also happy birthday dad 2024. Greetings folks and welcome to Business Brain, the show where we take some ideas. Some of them are yours, some of them are ours. We analyze them, we dissect them, we use them to tune our business brains each and every time we get together. Our sponsor for this episode is vanta.com brain Vanta automates your compliance for your ISO 27001, your SoC2, your GDPR, all that stuff and you can save 1000 bucks@vanta.com brain we'll talk more about how that works in a little bit. For now, here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton and I'm still out.

Here in Northern California. I'm Shannon Jean.

Amazing.

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Yep.

That'd be awesome.

Yep.

Yes. Question from a listener.

We do have a question from Ed He Ed says I've only recently started listening to Business Brain. I've been a listener to Matt Geek Gab since its inception. Well, that's great. I'm retired now, he says. I'm 68 and doing well. I spent my entire career working for others as a software engineer, but I've done well. I'm comfortable with my retirement. I'm using my new time, volunteering my efforts for a couple of nonprofits. Basically nothing to do with my previous life. They know that myself and family come first, but they are a close second. My questions are when to retire? I'm enjoying listening to your show and thinking of doing things, new things. I understand the allure, but I also want to enjoy my retirement. Should I consider starting new again and being an entrepreneur or should I use my skills to help simply others moving forward? I feel like a dad, a grandpa to one of those nonprofits. Or should I simply accept and enjoy retirement, whatever that means? What are your long term plans? Well, that's a hard question and great question.

I know, I know, I, you know, I think the, you have to preface this conversation with another question is what is your definition of retirement? Right. Because I like when we sold tech restore in 2017, kind of technically I retired, but when I really think about it, I just retired from having employees, which was a big.

For now.

Yeah, for now.

But I realized, I realize you may never go back. I, I definitely understand.

I have contractors, contractors that work for me.

Right.

You know, but having a big team and you know, managing all that. But I, I, I kind of consider myself retired in the sense that I have a ton of flexibility.

Okay.

But I still work all the time. You know, I still put time in on the weekends, I still come up after dinner back to my office and spend time recording videos and building this or doing this. And do I really enjoy that. And I don't know that I will ever stop that. Yeah. Because even though I, I do have some other things I want to do this part using my brain and connecting with people online and in person, it makes me a much better person and I think I will always do that. And I have some non profit stuff I'm involved in. I know you've done some stuff too, just like Ed's saying. So that, that's part of it. So I, I, I don't, yeah. How you define retirement, the thing I would just say is you can never just stop whatever it is you're doing. I don't think you should ever stop completely.

That's, I think, yeah, I mean, I feel that way. I know there are some people that retire and like actually enjoy their time, they travel, but, but yeah, they replace work with something else.

Generally speaking, that's very important. Yeah, yeah, that's right.

And so like retirement, it sounds like for Ed, retirement has bought him flexibility and perhaps even freedom. Right. We're going to talk next week about those, those two things. But he, he, it sounds like he has structured his finances and his life in such a way that he doesn't need to earn an income potentially ever again. Right. He doesn't need to like set up whatever he's got. Obviously he didn't articulate that. Although it is international talk about money day, there you go, and. Which was created to encourage us all to not be so closed about talking about money, but. Which is a great thing. I think I do, too.

Yeah.

So I think, yes. I think, yeah. The definition for me to, you know, to answer Ed's question, I don't, I don't know that I'll ever retire. I'll share a story. I was talking about retirement. This was 15 years ago or something. And Lisa looked at me, and she's like, you would retire? And I'm like, why me? Yeah, I mean, like, I don't know, someday we, like, you know, sell the business and whatever. And, like, I don't. Who knows?

Yeah.

And I'm like. She's like, well, what would you do? And I said, well, you know, it'd be really cool to run an ice cream truck, like, to just drive around and. And, like, you're giving people selling, like, if we do really well with the businesses, maybe I'm the free ice cream truck. I don't know. But even if we're not, you know, I got to cover my costs or whatever. I'm selling ice cream. And, like, people are always like, you look, you hear the sound of the ice cream truck. Come into your neighborhood. Everybody gets happy. It's an awesome thing. And she's like, okay. And I said, yeah. I said, now, the only problem with the ice cream truck is I would want to learn all the different neighborhoods and the right places to go. And I have a feeling that during that first year, I would find the places to go, but I would realize that I wanted to be in more than one place at a time. So for the second summer, I'd probably buy two more trucks.

That's. Yeah, that's your. That's it. It's your brain.

Right. And she's like, okay, so this isn't retirement. And I'm like, well, I don't know. I like, is it like, I worked summers, I work the days.

Yeah. And separating it from income, I think that's important. And.

Right. What I would need those other trucks to pay for themselves, obviously.

Of course. You know. Yeah.

Yeah.

I, I, I always say this, and I, I, how I say this, because I don't want to sound. Excuse me. I don't want to sound too bougie, but, you know, once you solve for money.

Yes.

It, everything is different.

Right, Right.

Because it does allow you to have that flexibility, which we're going to talk more about next week. And I, I sincerely hope you get to that point, and I hope that by listening to us we can help you get to that point. And it's just starting to get going. Doesn't matter how old you are. You know, I, I didn't have a lot. I mean I had a great life and some good success and everything. But you know, I was in my 40s, that decade that things really, my net was strong enough like we talked about in the last episode to take advantage of all these opportunities that came along and I knew I was much more, much more mature and steady and you know, so I, I just don't know that there is a right time and I certainly don't think you can generalize about it. I think that's so unique to each of us when we get to that point. Hopefully we're healthy and you know, I, Ed, I would say you're not retired if you're, you know, helping and nurturing.

I mean non profit like you are retired from Tech Restore. Yeah. From that job.

From that. But you've taken on another job. You're not an ice cream man like Dave wants to do. But you know, like I have some things I want to build as well.

Yeah.

But I don't consider them, you know, related to, you know, my business career. So yeah, it's, it's, it's a great question though. It's just different for all of us.

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Yeah, yeah. I think that I was, you know, making the mistake of assumption, I guess, is what it is.

Sure.

Just because I have done something so many times and, you know, know which buttons to push and click and this and that. And I found myself describing what can be a very complex thing for people just starting out and me just describing it, like, in one sentence. Sure. And the example I have is a lot of stuff about buying. I talk about buying liquidation products on auctions, Costco returns, Home Depot returns. All this kind of stuff I talk about all the time. And step one is get a resale permit. And I always put that, number one, get a resale permit. And I go on to two and three and four. And it's been months before somebody finally said, how do you do that?

How does that work?

Yeah, how do you get that? And so then, then I even did it again. I said, oh, just. Just search online for your state plus resale permit. But it's not that easy. It's not that simple. And every state is different. And so I backed up and I did a whole lesson on here's how to find, you know, the location for your state.

Yeah.

And here's the steps to go through. Here's how you answer these, like, what sort of entity and how are you going to, you know, record this? What address should you use? All this kind of stuff. And it just got me thinking about reminding me that because I've done something so many times, and I may be, like you said, on step five, you have to really break down steps one through four.

Yeah.

So people can follow along. And I would encourage all of us to look at the things we're trying to teach, whether it's in our customer service departments, our employees, everything. And are the steps really or are the steps clear enough that someone with no knowledge that wants to learn can just start and follow along?

Not everything can be shown. It can be taught with a look over my shoulder kind of thing, like a, you know, a loom video or whatever. Right. But I often find with all kinds of things that the look over my shoulder while I do it thing is often the key to unlocking what step you're on. Right. Like you said, you'll start with this. It's like, well, okay, wait, how did you get there? And someone watching over your shoulder, either virtually or in real time, in real space, will Say, wait, wait, wait, wait. You just did six things.

Exactly.

Can we go through those? And you're like, oh, right. Like, you don't. You've never done this before. So of course you don't know those six things. But they become so automatic. We have a segment on macgeekab which is, you know, just tips and tricks and answering people's questions for their computers and their technology. And we have a segment for things that we call quick tips. These quick tips, the, the general gist of it is something that you do all the time but is so automatic you don't even think about recommending it as a tip. And it. But someone watches you do a thing on your phone and they think you have like, conjured up magic.

How did you do that?

Yeah, how did. Oh, you didn't, you didn't know that? Those things that are so automatic to us that we don't even think about it anymore and yet super valuable to other people. And of course, one of my favorite examples of this, and it comes up every year and a half or so, if you have an iPhone and you're, you know, typing somewhere like in messages or mail or whatever, hold down on the spacebar on the keyboard.

It's just a great one.

And. And then, wait a second. And it will turn the keyboard into a trackpad and you can move the mouse cursor around that didn't previously exist to wherever you want in the text. And it's one of those things that, you know, it will make the rounds. And I know there's some of you hearing it that are like, wait, what is he talking about? Try it. Yeah, text field, hold down the spacebar. But it's things like that, right? Once you learn that, it becomes so fundamental to the way you use your iPhone that you forget about it until somebody sees it over your shoulder. Like, those kinds of things. But it's hard to identify those. A lot of quick tips come in from listeners for that. And it's like, oh, my gosh, I do that. I never thought to mention it on the show.

Yeah, for sure.

Oh, it's.

Sure. And yeah, it is hard. And I use, I use Loom a lot for this and now I'm using it for answer. Like, somebody sends me a 10 question email, I often just fire up loom and do it. Speaking of loom, did you know that they sold for $975 million? What?

Yeah.

To Atlassian, or at least Atlassian. Yeah, Atlassian. Yeah. Yeah, I didn't know that. But it's such a Great.

A lot of money.

It's a lot of dough. A lot of dough. I don't know what their investor cap table looked like. Right.

Yeah, of course.

Founder Scott. But I hope they made a ton of money because I use it. I literally use it every day.

Yeah.

And it's just a great, great piece of software. And that is that, hey, I'm looking over your shoulder. I'm giving you some tips, and they can ask questions right there. It works. Good. So, yeah, I would. I would just encourage you to back up a little bit, especially if you find people are not grasping it. And I've been working with team that's overseas, different cultural things, and lately. And sometimes they will say, yes. Yep, yep. And then I go back and go, wait, what happened? And so I've been taking. I've been backing up and, you know, recording more loomsake. This is what I mean, we talked about it on our call, but let me show you what has to happen, because if it. If it doesn't. And I've had this happen a couple times where I go, we talked about this. That was one of our. Our, you know, items on our list here. But showing them is just. Is very powerful.

A whole different thing. Yep.

Yeah. Yeah. So.

Yeah.

Yeah. So if you know it, it. It's good to back up, good to slow down, good not to assume, as they say, because we know what happens.

There it is.

And start at step one and teach people what to do. So.

Yep. Yeah. It's hard, though. It. Like, it is hard.

It's really just moving fast.

Yeah.

Speed is something that's a it. It's a huge benefit to getting things done.

But you gotta understand our minds are. Are engineered like, you know, it's the way our brains work to find shortcuts so that we're not. So things become habit, they become automatic. We don't have to think about them. Think about what you like the next time you get into your car. If you own a car, just think about all the little steps that you do when you get into your car. 100% of them are automatic, right?

Yeah.

But from the time you, like, grab the door handle to when you've started the vehicle, think about each individual step. What are you doing? Like, where do you put the key? What do you do with your phone? How, you know, watch what you do with your foot when you push the thing. And there's a whole choreographed thing that happens, and you could do it in your sleep. And, you know, unfortunately, some people kind of do. And that's bad, but don't.

Don't do it.

That's right. Like, think about those things and. And then it's. Yeah. I don't know. It's just hard. Feedback At BusinessBrain show, we love when we get emails like we did from. From Ed and I forgot who it.

Was the other day.

Jeff, thank you. Yeah, and we've got more coming, so keep them coming. Feedback BusinessBrain Show. We'd love to hear from you. Stay, subscribe. If I have one. Ask. Leave us a review. BusinessBrain show reviews. We would love that. Keep living that charmed life. We'll see you next week. Have a great weekend.