ERIC GADDY INTERVIEW – Retire Early. What Are You Waiting For?

Welcome to the Next Level Income show where we help high income earners, as well as young up and comers achieve financial independence and interview guests where they can learn more about how to do both of those things.

Today our guest is Eric Gaddy, who built a successful financial advisory business, but never truly felt free despite his success. Then one day he had an epiphany almost immediately, sold his company and wrote a book to help other people do what he started doing them, which was living life on his own terms, how and where he wanted. So, Eric, thanks for being on the show today.

Thanks for having me, guys. I appreciate it.

Absolutely. Eric. Eric, you and I met, we actually linked up on LinkedIn.

Yes.

And I noticed you were coming out with a book. It's called Retire early. What are you waiting for? Met you at your book signing about three months ago, I think it was back then. And at that point we talked, we had lunch and I learned a little bit more about how you were building your business and, and invited you to be on, be on our show. And thank you for being here today.

Thank you.

Absolutely. So, Eric, tell us a little bit about your story, your background as a financial advisor and how you moved into doing what you're doing now.

First of all, to go way back, I'm the son of a mortician. Yeah. And growing up, the first 18 years of my life, I was surrounded by death. And so that sort of planted the seed of where I am now. I graduated college, went on to get an economics degree, went into the financial services area, was a financial advisor for 24 years, focusing on helping people get retired. And so back about three years ago, I lost to my sister at age 51 and I lost a business partner at age 47. And at that point, it was like an awakening. It was soon after I went to a business conference and I was watching all these 65, 70 and 75 year old advisors still doing the same thing every day. What I call the rinse and repeat lifestyle. You're doing the same thing every day, every week, every month and every year. And I just woke up, I'm like, I'm not going to do this anymore. And that kind of sparked the idea behind the book. Now when I started writing the book, I told my girlfriend that, hey, I've got a five year retirement plan, I'm going to retire in five years. So I get halfway through the book and I go to her and I say, listen, I think it's three years now. By the time I was done with the book, I'm like, I'm done. I'm selling my practice. I'm out. But what I enjoyed doing during my financial advising days was educating people. So that's what I've continued to do with writing the book and having a workbook and having an online course is to try to educate people that this can be done. I mean, I think society pushes people to think you can't retire until you're 65, and that's what everybody kind of gets ingrained in their brain. But what I've done is try to open people's eyes and say, well, if you have certain things in order, you can retire at any age.

I love it. Eric, thanks for sharing that. I think one of the things that resonated with me in reading your book and the first time we sat down and talked was that I lost my father at age 5. I lost my best friend when he was 18. I was 19 years old, and it really made an impact on me. And since. Since read studies. And I think you're right. Like when you're around death or you experience death early on in life, it makes you realize that. That there's a time limit and we have to make the most of our. Of our lives. Is that what you felt?

Yeah. I mean, I knew. I mean, I think it's very easy for people to say, hey, man, life is short. But I saw that life is short. I mean, there were kids that were. I was 8 years old helping my mom move dead bodies, and there were kids younger than me. There were kids older than me, teenagers. And so by the time I went off to college, I knew, a, life is short, and B, I know my time is running out. I meant tomorrow is not guaranteed. So, you know, as I've continued to live my life, that was always in the back of my brain. But it wasn't until losing two people close to me that that got triggered and kind of pulled out of me and said, hey, you know, I've got to start living life and not just doing this same thing every single day over and over again.

Wow.

Yeah.

And having your financial advisor background in addition to that, it's a really interesting combination. What made you disenchanted with being a financial advisor? You shared a little bit about that because at one time I have an MBA in portfolio management, and I consider it the same career. I think we've experienced some similarities there as well.

I think the industry had changed from when I first got in 24 years ago or at this point 25 years ago. And there was. Even though I had my Own firm. There was a level of being trapped. I couldn't take a vacation. I was the rainmaker. I couldn't. I think it had been five years since I had gone on any sort of week long vacation.

Five years.

Five years, yeah. The industry had changed. I think people had changed. It wasn't uncommon for people to miss appointments with some regularity without even letting you know. And it was just a whole thing, a combination of things that I got disenchanted with. So combined with a kind of a new outlook on life and not being truly happy where I was, that that combination created change. And you know, everybody kind of looked at it and said, you're taking a huge risk. And I'm like, I am, but you're not going to really get anywhere in life if you don't take a few risks along the way.

Yeah, you can never drive a car.

Right.

And avoid that risk, but might as.

Well not even get out of bed in the morning. Every day is a risk.

And I mean, at that point, the biggest risk you're taking is never really getting what you want. Like when I started my business, especially with the encouragement of Chris and Pete, I probably did it three or four years earlier than I would have because they laid out how I could make it work. And I was like, wow, this can actually happen. And then I went, quit my job and started going with it. And yeah, living life on your terms is the way to go. And when you say retire, it seems like a little bit of a different definition than what a lot of society would think of retirement as, you know, sitting on the beach doing nothing. Can you tell us a little bit about your philosophy of retirement?

Yeah, retirement's about freedom. And I do totally agree that society has put this word retirement in our brain and we start thinking kind of retire to the recliner, which if you're going to retire to the recliner, we all know what that's going to get you. And that's going to get you kind of a quick death because people tend to kind of just rot away.

That's what the studies show.

Yeah. So my definition of retiring early is to leave your corporate job, leave your career, and put yourself in a position where you can do what you want, when you want, how you want, and from where you want.

Love it.

And you still have to create income. You still have to have income coming in. You still have to, you know, have a plan for what kind of lifestyle you're going to be living in retirement. But it's about seizing your freedom and taking control of Your life. And I think too many people are on automatic pilot. They're just going through the motions every day and doing the same exact thing. And so when we talk about retiring early, we're not talking about just going home and doing nothing. We're talking about maybe going home and following that passion, maybe learning a new skill. Maybe, like, I'm almost 50 years old and I'm learning all these things about social media that I never knew anything about, about blogging and online course. And, you know, writing a book was the first time I've ever done that. So, you know, a lot of people are just. They're taking off and changing their lifestyle, changing, you know, whether they're moving to a foreign country or taking off in their rv.

Yeah.

I just read last week, study came out, over a million Americans are living in RVs now for the first time.

Wow. Yeah. That's surprising.

Wild. You talk about still needing an income, Eric, and I'm going to ask you about your dialogue system that you have in the book. But I got to read my favorite quote, and it's D for Debt, which I'll kind of steal a little bit of your thunder there, but your quote here is from Tyler Durden in Fight Club, which Pete and I love that movie Caleb and I were talking about earlier. So your quote is, advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need.

Yep, yep. I think every day we wake up to some sort of marketing message. I mean, how many times are we marketed to every day?

A lot.

A lot.

Yeah. Good answer.

Driving down the road, the billboards, the radio, I mean, but we are getting bombarded with it, and I think a lot of it has shifted the way people live. And I fell into that same trap early on in my. My career of just buying the big house and driving a nice car. And, you know, I look back on it and I'm like, that, that's just a waste. Keeping up with the Joneses. If this wasn't PG13, I would tell you what the Joneses can do with themselves. So. But we'll keep it.

We'll keep it to the quote.

Yeah. Gary Vaynerchuk has a good saying about the Joneses where he uses what you wanted to say there.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, okay, so D in the dial system is for debt.

Yeah.

Can you share with us the other. The rest of the system? Kind of a peek into how you can systematize the process for people to look towards retirement or financial independence.

Yeah. My how to Process of how to retire early is what I created is dial into retirement or dial into early retirement. You know, as a financial advisor, I think we got sucked in even as the advisor talking to clients to get people to age 65. And I think it became an age based number. And so with the book, what I tried to communicate was if you can get your dial in order. And dial stands for Debt, income, assets and Lifestyle.

Debt, income, Assets and lifestyle.

Okay. Yeah. If you can get those four things in order, you can retire at any age. It shouldn't be age based. So if you've got your dial in order at age 55, you can retire at 55 or 60 or 50. And so it's about getting these things in order and stepping away from that kind of old mindset that everybody's kind of been used to.

Yeah, no, it's amazing. I mean, 65 is kind of an arbitrary deadline. And you were talking earlier about retirement doesn't have to be an end. It can be a shift in lifestyle. When doing your passion or following your why. What is your why, Eric?

That's a good question.

I stole it from Simon Sinek.

I know, that's a good question. He talks about, you know, it's somehow, I mean, I could give you a real kind of professional answer, but it really revolves around my family is my why. And that's what drives me. You know, I would say if you would have asked the 25 year old me my why would it be make money? I think as I got to 40, that completely changed and went to the opposite direction and it became more, you know, humble, wholesome, family oriented.

That's sustainable. I think I feel the same way. You know, having a family changed me. And I mean like just as much as losing people in your life changes you, gaining people change you and changes the reason for why you do things and do that.

Yeah, and that's part of the lifestyle too. And what you were talking about earlier with the big house and all of that, it really is choosing your lifestyle that you want. And Chris talks about this in his book as well, which is with financial independence, it's being at a point where to live the lifestyle you want. Those expenses are covered through passive income. So that's a huge. Some people do love fast cars. They might be into driving it on tracks or, or they want the big house for a certain reason and to them that's important. But for other people who are just doing it for other people, they choose a different lifestyle that they actually want, not what they think other people want. For them, then it becomes a lot more possible. So what else can people look forward to when they read your book?

Well, I think with the book, the first part is the how to part, you know, how to get to this retiring early stage. The second part of the book is what are people doing when they retire? Because I think there's a disconnect a lot of times with, you know, somebody can be financially ready to retire early, but they have no idea and they haven't even thought through the process of what they're going to do when they actually do retire early. Yeah, you know, I've seen a lot of clients get to retirement. They retire on a Monday and they're like, what do I do now? They have no idea. And so the second part of the book is the lifestyle. So we've got people that are mobile lifestyles, they're out in their boat or their RV and they just taken off expats moving to foreign countries. I mean, there are estimated a million people living in Mexico right now. Americans. There are people moving to Costa Rica, moving to Ecuador. Then there's, you know, people just simplifying their lives. You know, you take a couple that their kids have gone off to college and they're sitting in that 3,500 square foot house and studies show that you're only going to use four rooms of that house. Your den, your kitchen, your bathroom and your bedroom. Most of the house is wasted. So we're seeing a lot of movement towards downsizing or relocating. And so it's really about figuring out not only the financial piece, but also the lifestyle piece. And you see the opposite. You have some people that are just driven towards a certain lifestyle, but they haven't got their financials in order. So they're not really. They may be jumping and taking a huge risk, but they may not be financially ready. So that's what we want to talk about. That's what we have talked about in the book is not only being financially ready and how to do that, but also being lifestyle ready.

Yeah. It's interesting, Eric, that in Asheville, where we're sitting today, you have a lot of people that move here for the lifestyle, but they struggle financially. And then other people, like I have a friend, he's 70 years old, he retired two years ago, as did his wife. And you know what they're doing today? They're working again because they sat around. He was volunteering at the YMCA and he said, what am I doing? So his life was working. He did it for 30 years. He's still working back in that industry. So I don't think he maybe spent some time on the lifestyle piece. And my stepfather's 65 this year. He signed up for Medicare, he signed up for Social Security. So what do you want to do? He said, I don't know. So I think it's a really important piece because if your life is working, if you've been working with kind of that, I call it that blue collar mentality work ethic that I was raised with, I know Caleb was raised with. I was having a drink with Caleb and his dad last week and it's a really important piece. What's your why? What do you want to do with the future of your life? What's your passion and those things? So, you know, it's, I'm glad you included that in there. That was, that really resonated with me.

Yeah. And there's a lot of people that are very fortunate. I mean I've talked to a good number of people that say I love my job and I can't imagine doing anything else. And for those people, I find that they're very lucky. They have found their passion.

It's awesome.

And it's not like they're even working. But for the vast majority of the people it is. I'd love to be doing something different, you know, how do I get out of this rat race?

Yeah. And the freedom, that's really what, you know, our why with Peter Connell and I can Apple Partners is helping people achieve financial independence, which is our why on the show as well. So for those young up and comers that you know are looking at this and saying, well, I'm not ready to retire, I just want to make some more money. What are they going to get out of the book, Eric? So, you know, you got a 30 year old, he's working, he's really starting to hit the stride in his professional career. What would you point out to them?

I think some of the things that I've tried to plant in the book, plant the seeds with folks, especially younger folks, is kind of the basis of being able to retire early in your 40s or 50s, if you're 30 right now, is, you know, living within your means, being very frugal, you know, thinking through the process of investing, like buying Roth IRAs or investing in low cost index funds and things of that nature. I think there's ways to be smart about that. But you know, the problem is there's not a lot of education for that generation. Financially it's getting better. But you know, a lot of these kids, as we were talking before the show, are coming out of college with some information that is college based but not practical in the sense of financial based. Going to the bank or maneuvering credit cards or living within your means, having a budget. And so I think with the younger generation, if you want to retire early, if you want to be retired by 50, the earlier you can start and have a plan, the better off you're going to be.

I like that.

Now you have an online course that you released near the end of 2018, right?

Yes, yes, we worked on an online course and it is out. It is over four hours of videos where we walk people step by step through the process of how to retire early. We also have some bonus material where we do discuss that, and that's the workbook. And so where we, you know, with the course, we, we, we kind of bring people to a conclusion. You know, are you able to retire now? Or we point out if they can't, where they need to work on their dial and what parts that maybe they can retire two or three years later. Terrific.

Sounds great. I mean, because that's perfect for both the young up and comers as well as the people who've been at it for a while and are looking for an exit now.

Yeah, yeah. So how. So if they, if they go through your course, Eric, what can they expect to learn? You said it's kind of like an endpoint. It's going to help get them there. How long is that? What are they going to learn?

They're going to start off the course. Obviously they're going to have the desire to retire earlier. Once they get done with the course, they're going to know what, where they are currently. And that's a big thing because most people don't know where their numbers are, their current finances. I mean, people can give you a general idea of kind of, okay, you know, this is my mortgage payment and this is, you know, how much I have left on my mortgage, but I have no idea what my interest rate is. And so what we're going to do is walk them through the process of knowing their current numbers and then make some projections based on the lifestyle they want to live in retirement. And so at the end of that course, they're going to know, hey, I'm in pretty good shape. You know, I'm going to live a frugal lifestyle. I want to take off and I want to go live in Costa Rica and I can pull that off right now. Or, hey, I know I've still got too Much debt and I'm going to take the next two or three years and work on that. So at the end of the course, they're going to answer their questions of, you know, where do I need to work or can I do it, you know, now, can I retire early now?

Sounds great. It sounds like it's a roadmap. And yeah, like any map, if you don't know where you are, how can you follow the map to where you want?

Exactly.

So I really like that. One question we always ask our guests, Eric, is if you could go back and tell your earlier self, we say, maybe a 25 year old self, some advice, what advice would you give them? I think, I think I might know.

It, but I would go back and kick myself in the ass for living this kind of lifestyle. I was, I was trying to prove something to others and not really to myself. And it was the big house and the fancy cars and the in, you know, rolling up a lot of debt and it was just unnecessary. So if I could get a hold of myself by about age 22, I would have a serious sit down, talk with it. So that's, that would be the major change.

That's terrific. I think, you know, our young, as we say, our young up and comers, our younger generation, whether you call them the millennials or even younger than that, there's not a lot of financial education out there for them. You were sharing with me that you were talking to a local college as well about potentially doing a course for that. Why would you do that? What excites you about doing that?

Well, I have a daughter who's a freshman at University of Kentucky.

Congratulations.

Thanks. I have a son that's 17, will be going to college in a year and a half. And I think it's important, I mean, not only for my own kids, but for other children and other parents of that age that the, you know, kids coming out of college get on a solid foundation. You know, Even back in 1988, 1989, when I went to college, every two or three weeks I would get a credit card application and I'm like, oh, look at this free money. You know, I was not educated on how to do that, you know, how to, how to react to, you know, $2,000 credit line. So I think there needs to be a lot of education out there. So that's something that we're kind of focused on. Maybe down the road. We've got a few other projects to work on before we can get there. But, you know, I'd love to do A course or something like that on educating college seniors or freshmen even.

I think that's great. So Eric, touching on the dial system, on the A assets that you mentioned, how do you see real estate fitting into that? I know you were a financial advisor. A lot of financial advisors, they talk mutual funds, stocks, bonds, insurance. I read a piece on your blog not too long ago about having multiple streams of income. How do you see real estate or income producing real estate specifically fit into that?

Well, I think when you look at the dial, the one piece that you have to have is income. So if you had debt or if you had very little assets, or if you had a high lifestyle, these are things that you could potentially overcome and still retire early. But if you have no income whatsoever, there is no chance of you retiring early. So you've got to have an income stream. So when you start talking about somebody that's 55 years old and wants to retire early, you know, they're too young to maybe access their retirement accounts or Social Security or a pension. So you have to find other ways and that might be through their non retirement brokerage accounts. It could be owner financing a business. But probably my favorite is real estate just simply because you've got a lot of flexibility there. There are so many different types of real estate out there. Whether you're investing in a storage building or a mobile home park, or an apartment building or commercial buildings or you know, duplex. There's so way, so many different ways to generate cash flow, generate an income stream and that tends to be stable income. So you know, I love real estate from the standpoint of a retire early income stream.

That's a great point. And I think it's something that the high income earners that we talk to in our business, they don't know how am I going to replace this income? I've been putting money away into my retirement accounts and now I have to, I don't know, withdrawal 3% or 4% or 5%. But how do I replace my income? What's that going to look like? I think it's daunting for people. That's a great point. And I think it's important for people to realize, hey, how, how am I actually going to have an income?

Well, and the nice thing about real estate is, is that you can be an active participant. You can get out there and start moving some dirt and doing spec houses and doing these other projects, or you can sit back and let it be a passive income stream for you and be kind of hands off.

Yeah, I like to say there's a million ways to make a million dollars in real estate. Yeah, it's fantastic.

Absolutely.

And that's what we're passionate about. One thing that Grant Cardone says is if your money isn't right, it's because you don't have the right information. And so a big reason why we're doing this show is helping provide people with the information that they need to get to that point of financial independence. And it's inspiring to see what you're doing with your book and your online courses and everything, and also what you're looking to do with the colleges and universities to do the same thing. So it's kind of an awesome community that's being developed to help better people who want to better themselves and who are looking for that information. So if anyone wanted to get in contact with you, ask you any questions, order your book, take your course, how would they do that?

I can be reached@retireearly365.com retireearly.com was taken and I didn't want to pay $5,000 for it. So I can also be found on Facebook and retire early365, as well as LinkedIn.

Terrific. And we'll have a link on our website, Eric. And we can have a promotional site. So it'll be www.nextlevelincome.com retireearly. So people can go there and they can see offer that you have on there and find out how to get your book.

Perfect. Thank you so much.

Awesome. Thanks for being on the show.

I'm glad to be here, guys. I appreciate it.

Thanks, Eric.