The Retirement Advice No One is Talking About (But Should Be)

Having a leadership coach or joining a leadership program, they're completely different. I've always been obsessed with personal and professional development opportunities. And the difference between a coach and a difference between an entrepreneurial program is going to be a coach is going to focus on you one on one, and they're going to come in and they're going to talk to you. And a lot of times it bleeds into some personal stuff too, because you don't really separate between something I've got going on in my personal life versus something I got going on in my professional life. You sort of integrate that when you're talking to a coach. So a lot of people who are naysayers will say, oh, it's therapy. And, you know, they can say what they want. There's no question that therapy is a road less traveled. But it's people who are trying to get better, they're trying to get more healthy. So having a coach come in one on one, that's going to be real specific to whatever it is that you're working on. It's going to be specific to all the challenges that you have. And the more that you open yourself up and the more vulnerable you are, the more you're going to get out of that situation if you have a good coach. Whereas an entrepreneurship program is going to be something where you're going to be peer to peer. You're going to be working in a group. I worked in several of these, and there are some incredible programs out there, and there's some bad ones. You surround yourself with networks of people that you feel are at a higher level so that you can raise up to their level. And I'll never forget how many things I learned sitting at tables with other people at an entrepreneurship program. My favorite one of all time is I had someone who was extremely successful that I used to talk, talked to every quarter. And I sat at the table and we had a little bit of a breakout group. And I heard the person say that they are retiring. I remember laughing because I knew the person wasn't going to retire. You know, I knew this person would never retire their entire life. And they looked me in the eye when I asked them, you know, tell me more. And they said, I'm retiring from working with people that I don't want to work with. I'm retiring from doing things I don't want to do anymore. And boy, I just remember looking back and going, wow, I want to retire. I want to retire so bad. I was working with people I didn't want to work with. I was doing things I didn't want to be doing, and it was sort of like a goal of mine. What's incredible is that following that session that I was at that workshop, that mindset changed the way I was going about how I would delegate things out, because I burned it in my head that I'm going to retire. And, you know, I was very blessed to get to a point where I was able to stop working with people I didn't want to work with and be able to delegate all the things off that either I wasn't good at or that I didn't like doing. The good news is if you go into one of these leadership programs and it's no good, you just get out of it. If you have a coach that's not helping you grow, then you just fire them. But you have to be honest with yourself, and you have to have to really know whether or not you're giving your all. And you have to know if your coach is a really solid coach or if he's fake. Because if you have a coach that's fake and they're just doing it to, you know, make their paycheck, and they're just putting you through a process that's kind of a boilerplate template that their company has. I say caution. Caution doesn't mean it can't work. It just means it's not tailor made for you. And I think leadership coaching should be really focused on someone who's made investments and pouring yourself into that person and giving them an experience that allows them to grow and become their own biggest influence. Sam.