251: Balancing Business and Family with REBL Dad Derek Notman

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Welcome to wealth on Main street, where conversations about growing your wealth are fun and entertaining. Wealth isn't just about money. It's the skills and the knowledge that we develop to pass on to future generations. Tune in each week to to grow your mindset and your net worth at the same time.

We're pretty excited to be joined by a really special guest today, a gentleman who's got more passport stamps than any other human being on the planet. And outside of thoroughly enjoying jumping out of airplanes, being a financial advisor, a podcast co host, the founder of the Rebel Dads Mastermind, which I'm privileged to and very grateful to be a part of. So join me, rich in welcoming Derek. Derek, welcome to the show. We're super pleased to have you. Take a moment and maybe just share with our audience what gave rise to all these stamps in your passports.

Well, thank you both very much, Jason and Richard. Really great to be with you guys.

I don't know if my story is unique, but it's mine and I'm sticking to it. So I was born.

I guess you could say I'm a mutt. So I was born to a South African mother, a German American father in Ireland. All right, so figure that one out. And so basically from birth I've had a global perspective and as I got older it's like, wow, I love this thing we call travel and just explored, you know, started exploring the world and you know, I met my wife in college and she had just spent a year living abroad and like, so I just started adding up to more and more passport stamps and like when we had our son who's 13 now, which is crazy, we had him on a plane within six weeks of give of my wife giving birth. Oh, wow. We just, we just never looked back. So it's, I'm a million miler on Delta and yeah, I just, I, I love being able to experience different perspectives, food, cultures, geographies, you name it. It's, it's all a lot of fun and it's exciting. That's great.

And I, I'm curious, I'm just genuinely curious, you know, because of the discussions that we had. We spent a lot of time together on Necker island with, with Richard Branson and what a wonderful, gracious host him and his team know were. And we'll be back there again in early 2025, which is really exciting. But I, I'm really curious to have you share with listeners, you know, what gave rise to like, what inspired you to develop the Rebel Dad's Mastermind? What is It. And how can people, you know, learn more about it? Because we're happy to share. We're. We're going to make sure our listeners know how to connect with you and follow you, because you are very, very prominent on LinkedIn. But share with us what inspired you to give birth to the rebel Dad's Mastermind?

Yeah, it started off as a passion project.

A little bit of context. So my father essentially left my life right as my son was born. So I'm now in the situation where I'm trying to balance being an entrepreneur while also being a dad. I'm doing this dad thing for the first time, and I don't have a father figure to actually help me do it. And so I, like a lot of us, you hack through it, you try to figure it out, you read books, you talk to others, but there was always this disconnect. Like, I felt most people didn't understand my struggle. And that struggle is, how do you balance being an entrepreneur? A lot of us consider our business like a child. Essentially. We pour our heart and soul into it and a lot of money.

How do I balance being awesome at that, but also be balance being awesome at being a dad, at being present, at teaching my son different values and being there for the things that are important to him? And I started looking around, I'm like, well, there's a lot of great resources for just dads. There's a lot of great resources for just entrepreneurs. But there wasn't something that I found that was bridging the gap between the two, and that really had fatherhood at the core of all of that. That it is. And so I'm like, okay, I think I've got an idea here. What would be the best way to kick this thing off? You know, it's a great. Of course, it's another entrepreneurial, you know, venture. Now, right now I've got my entrepreneur hat on, and I started asking the question, who and where? Who. Right. Who not. How would this would an event like this. That's it right there. I love that book, by the way. Um, as a quick side, Starbo actually sent that to me after.

That's amazing.

Yeah, he said. He said he was gonna do that. Yep. Love it.

Awesome.

And so I was like, okay, where's, like, what's, like, the best representation of an awesome dad and entrepreneur? And there's a lot of them out there by. By all measures, but Richard Branson has always been someone I followed and admired. He's been a great dad through and through, but also pretty successful. Guy business wise. And so I was like, okay. He would be awesome. Doing this event on Necker would be awesome. What a great experience for other dads to come together and learn from each other, but also someone who's done a couple things right. And it took me a year and a half to hunt down him. I finally got to his direct team, pitched the idea, put it all together, find all the dads to go. I said yes. I didn't have any money to do it when I first did it, I was like, all right, I'll commit to this full nut for Richard. But I got to figure it out now.

And it was a lot of money.

It was a lot of money. And long story short, we made it happen. We had an amazing experience earlier this year, and as you said, we're going back now in a couple months.

Yep. Couldn't be any more excited. And we'll see if we can dig up a couple of picks.

Oh, yeah.

From the adventure and we can share that, you know, as part of the edited, you know, video that goes. Because our podcasts all live on our wealth on Main Street YouTube channel as well. So, yeah. What an incredible experience. And I just wanted to share something in addition to what you described. First and foremost, it was an incredible experience, like, credit to you. Credit to everyone who helped you, you know, put together such an amazing event. The dads that were there, they just added so much value to one another in sharing their experiences, not only in their family lives, but in their business lives and a lot of great connections that we still stay in contact with a whole lot of people who were there. And so for anybody feeling, you know, maybe drawn to that and. And a desire to that, you've got to just take a closer look at the rebel dad mastermind and. And see if you can establish a good fit, if it makes sense.

But make sure you bring your passport, though, right, Jay? So that. Yeah, make sure don't have any.

You don't have to jump out of planes. But what Richard Branson, what he might do if he's there, he might challenge you to a race, which he. He had injured himself in a cycling accident. And literally the morning after, I believe we. We had arrived there and. But yet all bandaged up, the guys, he still wanted to compete with everybody who was there. And he's like, hey, I tell you what, meet me on the beach, two o'. Clock. And he's like, I'm challenging all of you to a race. Let's go. And so we had the catamarans and he's kite skiing and it was amazing. Unbelievable.

Unbelievable, right? Yep. Just, just what a great for everybody. I just, it's hard to put into words really. It really is.

Well, it's amazing that you've had such an amazing experience and you know, an avid traveler. I'm sure being the necker was a new thing to add to your list. And if we were to look at that passport, how many stamps, roughly how many countries would you say you've been to in your global travels so far?

Derek, you know, I really should. It's funny you can't see it, but I've got a world map over here with a whole bunch of pins and all the different places and I mean there's probably close to 50 on there, so there's a lot, you know, some places we've backed multiple times, others just like whether like visiting Russia with my father in law just on a whim to Japan, you know, like we, you know, Hong Kong, Africa, like all over the place, just you know, checking stuff out, just kind of my, like my son's just getting to the age now where we want to start doing these sky miles trips. So Delta's got me wrapped up pretty good at this point. So I have to maintain my status with them. And what tends to happen is towards the end of the year you start calculating, all right, how many more miles do I have to fly to hit my bogeys with them this year and then literally just come up with like we, we call them a team papa Skymiles trip. Or we'll just pick somewhere on the map that we can go to get our miles and have a good father son experience at the same time.

That's a great idea.

That's really a great idea. And we all know shifting gears for a second. So we all know people with artificial intelligence, but if you could share with.

Us, some of them tend to lead nations.

So if you could share this because I'm really very fascinated with obviously the integration of AI, the utilization of AI more so as I refer to it as a co pilot, you know, just helping to definitely, you know, sit alongside, you know, team members in our companies and be a really valuable resource to do things faster, better, you know, more efficiently, cheaper, etc. But share with our viewers and our listeners what you're doing with AI because I think it's really fascinating, especially in the space that we're in.

Yeah, just so your, your listeners know, like my background is in financial services. I was a top producer at New York Life here in the States for A number of. And so I kind of joke. I'm a recovering financial advisor now. I'm a fintech founder, right. So I jumped from one hot frying pan to another. And AI, I think you said it really well. We want to use it as a solution to enhance human connection instead of replace it. I don't think we're going to ever have to worry about skynet t2 judgment day type of stuff happen. I hope not. You know, but we see it as a way to actually enhance the human, the human condition, the human relationships. There's a lot of stuff that we have to do in the background but. And we can use that for different data entry and tasks. But we're taking a different tact with AI at Coupler, my company.

At the end of the day money's really personal and it's also pretty pre private. And so as a consumer looking to get help with my life insurance, my investments, my retirement planning, whatever it is, I have to have rapport and trust with the person I'm going to open up with with that advisor in order to make it a great relationship on my side, but also their side. And the last time I checked my postal code and how much money I make or am worth really does not dictate the type of relationship a good successful relationship with an advisor. And so what we're doing is we're using a variety of data to train models on what does a successful client advisor relationship look like, what determines success, what personality traits, what geography traits. There's a million and one things that we can look at. What we're doing is we're training a large model and then using AI to help us get more predictive on setting up tongue in cheek. The best first date experience between a consumer looking for help with their money and the right advisor for them. I love that that's how we're doing. It's only like you know here in the States we have eharmony and other, you know, Bumble and Match.com and Tinder. I'm sure you know, your folks, you know, north of the border have similar. We're basically doing the same thing for insurance and wealth management, you know, or you could think Spotify or Netflix or Amazon. We're doing the same thing using AI for our industry.

That's remarkable. And when you think of so machine learning, right. So these are terms and platforms that many people still really don't understand or really know what the capabilities and the opportunities that utilizing this kind of technology represents. And so could you maybe just expand a Little bit on machine learning and the advantages of integrating that. Like, regardless of your business, all of our entrepreneurs and successful business owners that are watching and listening, regardless of what your business is, it's not a matter of if, it's when. You'll spot an opportunity to integrate AI and machine learning.

Definitely. And I'm not a technologist, I'll fair warn you here. So a lot of my terms are layman and I don't, you know, I've got a whole technology team that lives, you know, data scientists, they live and breathe this stuff. But essentially we can do is there's a lot of data that exists out there, whether it's relationships or amortization, tables for life expectancy and everything in between. What can we do with that data? And we can put it into what's called a large language model. And then machine learning can start actually analyzing that and learning what are, you know, it can start predicting almost like learning what are we have to put in, like, what does success look like? Or what is the output that we're looking for from this data? And the machine learning can help us find that and then go say, hey, you should do this or change this or did you know this about your customers? It's really applicable to so many different aspects of business, quote, unquote. And it does it a heck of a lot faster than a human could ever do it. Right, right. With, with the way that, you know, computer chips are today, the speed and the amount of data that can be crunched is astronomical. And so you can apply that even to like just. It could be logistics. There's so many examples of people using AI to do different things. Or it's recommendation engines, like for marketplaces like Amazon, for example, they've been doing forever. And it's funny, recommendation engines has been around for thousands of years. Astrology was a recommendation engine, believe it or not. I mean, it's been around that long. But how it's being applied to today is we have all this massive digital data. What can we do with it? What can we learn from it? And then we can apply that back, those improvements back in. So like at Coupler, we're learning, when do people meet? Why did they meet? What determines success? How long did it take? What personality traits, all of these different things. And then we can use that to enhance our matching algorithm and then get better at matching people in the future. So it's almost like this, the snowball effect, if you will. You guys have a little bit of snow in Canada, don't you?

Not yet. Every now and again.

Not yet. It's coming.

That is very true.

It's fascinating. Again, I, I am not an expert on it. I know that it's extremely important and valuable and there's some great books out there that I would recommend you read. And then who not how go find the right people to go run your AI machine learning data science programs at your company.

Very important. That last piece of advice, extremely important. And you know, we integrate that way of thinking into every aspect of our business. And it's app it's been to say it's been transformational or game changing. It wouldn't describe it accurately. It just, it just creates an environment where you get freed up to do, to do more of what you do so naturally. Well, that's the best way that I can describe it and I think for entrepreneurs, I guess what I really want to get across too is that if you want to accelerate moving your business from whatever stage you're in, like if you're moving from startup to sustainable, or you want to move from sustainable to durable, or you want to go from durable to scalable, you can do it a lot faster. If you integrate the use of AI in such a way that radically improves and amplifies everything that your team members are doing. If you approach it from the vantage point of I'm going to use AI to replace my people, no, I think you're doing your service, your business and your marketplace, your customers a huge disservice by approaching it with that mindset.

No question about it. I mean at the end of the day, like we're still human beings and we have this, we're naturally wired to connect with other human beings. But if we can enhance those experiences using technology like AI, why would we not do that? AI just becomes another who, right? A really powerful who to do some certain things for you that you just can't do on yourself. You can't yourself. It's not possible for sure.

Now you mentioned a ton of really incredible data points that you would be getting and collecting to be able to have coupler help facilitate these really, you know, this matchmaking effect that you're talking about.

How are they, how would it, how is it getting that information? As an example consumer goes, they, they, they, they have an opportunity, they're looking for an advisor, they get connected with the tool again using that like eharmony related experience and they're going to fill in a profile and that's going to provide the information, the data set that you need to have it start going to work Is that effectively how it, how it begins the process?

Correct. So that, that is our main driver of data where we have a consumer experience where they go through a quiz and we gather a whole bunch of different data points and then we also have advisors do that. And now we're able to do that at scale, like think like millions of times a month at scale. And we're learning constantly about why people are connecting now, what's important to them and so forth. And in addition to that data, we're actually in talks right now with a third party data provider where we might get exclusive access to decades of their data as well, which would put us years ahead of any other competitor. Right, we'll just, we just will know that much more about why people connect. But that's the experience a consumer could go to. What's a large life insurance financial services company in Canada?

Equitable Life of Canada.

Equitable Life of Canada. Okay, great. Yeah. Someone goes to their website, is looking for an advisor to help with life insurance needs. Instead of putting in their postal code and getting the top 400 agents for them in their province, what if they had a matching experience where they answered a short quiz that made them feel good about going through the process? Wasn't too invasive. Ask about their personality, their preferences, their style, and then match them with the top three advisors at Equitable. That would connect with them on more of a human level, but also have the business acumen that's necessary. You're going to establish rapport and trust much more quickly. Once you have that consumer is going to open up and tell the advisor everything. And you guys know this better than anyone. If the advisor doesn't have good input information from the consumer, your advice, your solutions are only going to be as good as the bad information they gave you.

Garbage in, garbage out.

Exactly. So let's create the best first aid experience when they're connecting. So trust and rapport are built much more quickly and then the rest takes care of itself.

That is really good, really good. And tell us a little more about your. Because you're really prominent on LinkedIn. So you know LinkedIn is a, it's just a really interesting platform. But share with us. So what, what inspires you to be and, and to maintain that level of prominence on LinkedIn? Is it the connections that you establish? Is it the value that you create because you post a lot and so walk us through that. I'm just genuinely curious.

It ticks a couple boxes for me. It helps build my community and networking connections. It opens up opportunities, rebel Dads Happen. Because of LinkedIn, I was able to find the right who through LinkedIn sent them a DM. And that took me down this rabbit hole to find, you know, finally get connected with Richard Branson. So it leads to opportunities. It leads to opportunities for my AI business where I'm bringing in potential customers now, but also just it's an outlet for me to be creative. It's an outlet for me to meet other people. So it does a couple nice things. And I also like it because there's really almost no politics on it. Not that politics are bad, but a lot of the other platforms are really politic heavy and this is really all about positivity, helping other people, real life support and stuff. And the other ones tend to not do that as well, you know, but I love it, you know, but it's also been a grind. You have to keep doing it. And for me it was always like, okay, I could spend hours a day cold calling or door knocking, especially in my advisor days, or I can go online. And one of the secrets to growing a business, any business for any of your listeners, is if you want to market your business, go where people already are and be present. Yeah, there's a billion people on LinkedIn.

Easier for me to go there and be present and get a name out there than for me to try to call even a percentage of a billion people. Right. So that's where I found a lot of value in it.

Very good point.

In relation to the podcast that you have, you know, rethink Financial Advice. That's a great name for a podcast. I love that. Tell us a little bit about your journey of that. And I would imagine, obviously you're posting your episodes on LinkedIn, you're doing all that as well. What, what was it that really inspired you to get that podcast going and what is it that you were hoping people get out of listening to that show?

So that podcast is the brainchild of my friend, good friend, Adam Holt, also another rebel dad.

And myself. And it's funny, we started that during COVID and we did a year's worth of episodes before we ever met in person. And you know, go figure, right? You know, but it worked really well and we started it because we saw this, this gap. There's a lot of podcasts around financial advice or, you know, how to grow your business as an advisor and things of that nature. But we wanted to create something that was more mentorship based, to talk about the things that no one else was talking about as far as being an advisor and Succeeding and the struggles that you experience. And we wanted to do that, but also layer in by bringing in expert guests that could provide insight on, hey, how did you get through these struggles? But also, where's the industry headed? So it's like, we don't take any advertisements on the podcast or anything like that. It's really just a passion project where we're trying to mentor as many advisors as possible. It's a lot of work, as you guys know, but it's a lot of fun. It's a good outlet, and it's. It's helping a lot of our industry just advance forward in the process.

Spoken like a true giver.

Spoken like a true giver. And what I mean by that is, if any of our viewers or listeners, if you're not familiar with Joe Polish of the Genius Network, we would wholeheartedly encourage you to familiarize yourself with him. He's one of the greatest givers that I've ever met, and he wrote a book titled what's in it for them.

I bought it today.

There you go.

Okay.

Strange coincidence, right?

It's funny.

I'll share with you that. Just an example of connection, but Joe always says that, you know, the world gives to the giver and takes from the taker. So an example. Joe and I are in strategic coach free zone together, and we're wanting to book Dan Martell to who authored an amazing book titled buy back your time. We want to get him booked to speak at one of our engagements. And Joe said, well, let's just record a video and we'll send it to Dan right now. And so he literally stood there with his phone. We recorded this quick little video, sent it to Dan, and he replied in, like, 10 minutes. And so that's how. And Joe, any connection he's ever made, you know, on my behalf, he's never asked for anything in return. And so I go out of my way to actively and in integrity promote Joe, promote the Genius Network, encourage entrepreneurs to be a part of that community. Because of what I'm describing to you, it's a community of givers, and Joe's just one of the best human beings I know, and so I can't speak highly enough of him. You're going to love that book, by the way.

Awesome. Yeah, I can't wait. Can't wait. It was actually recommended by another rebel dad. So there you go. There you go. Good resources.

One of the interesting things about that and about your. Your journey really is you've got this global experience, you've got this Incredible career as a financial advisor. You've got this podcast helping financial advisors. You're actively getting involved in the technology or you're, you're trying to change to a degree the way that communication happens at the consumer level and also at the advisor level. I think that's one of the really cool things about the coupler technology is it's, it's not just for the consumer but the advantage for the consumer is equally the advantage for the advisor and the amount of time I think. You know one thing we talked about, the advantage of having AI as your co pilot is really the time that you get back. Just what you're creating as an entity, as a, in this fintech space is really a time saving mechanism more than anything else. It's helping build relationships and creating a relationship connection that probably wouldn't have otherwise worked. But the result of that is the consumer doesn't have to go and research 17,000 other advisors. The advisor doesn't have to go and deal with a bunch of Mickey Mouse phone calls from 17,000 other wannabe consumers that aren't the right fit for them.

You're exactly right. It's getting back our time. And I'm sure you both know Michael Kitces. He did a study a couple years.

Where the average cost to acquire one new client for an advisor was $3,119. And of that about 500 or so. I don't remember the exact amount, but about 500 or so of that was hard dollars spent. The rest was in time, their time or hiring someone else to follow up on leads and so forth. So you're right. Think about if we can drop that cost down to $99. Right. Or whatever it is. All of a sudden now you've drastically improved the situation, the experience. The consumers feel better, advisors feel better. And now we have more time, we have more time to be advisors. I mean I didn't sign up to be an advisor to Cold call. I wanted to help people with their money. Right. That's where I, that's where I do my best work. And I argue most advisors are the same. So it's just one more way and one more who, if you will, or we can help improve the entire experience, meet the expectations of everyone and get our time back in the process.

Love it.

And what are you most looking forward to for our next Necker island adventure?

Oh man, it's going to be great. So we've got a few more people going this time around, so be a slightly bigger group. We've got, I think Six or seven, maybe eight kids going, cool. It'd be fantastic. So they're going to have their own thing and forming those relationships and then, you know, it's going to be amazing. We're changing up the format just a little bit. There's one little thing we're adding. So you guys will hear about that next week. Actually, we're doing a webinar on all of it, but then Adam and I are working on a really fun project which we're going to keep in stealth mode right now. But it could be something really amazing for everyone involved, actually. Okay, so stay tuned on that. But just being able to go back to Necker, spend time with Richard, you know, it was a laid back but really meaningful experience at the same time.

Yeah. And, you know, I'm so glad that everyone honored the experience in the sense that, you know, Richard's team had communicated to say, in situations where people are really respectful of just keeping things light and conversational and, you know, Richard will engage and he'll, he'll hang around the group, but in instances where he may have been, you know, bombarded or, you know, pitch pitched entrepreneurs, you know, he, his team was clear, like, he will not, he will just not be around. And I think we were really blessed that everybody honored that. And Richard spent, you know, according to his team, he spent perhaps even a disproportionate amount of time with us, I think.

So we got really lucky. Almost every meal with us and activities every day. I mean, I joked and you may remember it was on the website, but everyone had to check their ego and their sales pitch at the dock.

And it worked really well. And you know the WhatsApp where he was like, yes, he was messaging going, hey, listen, in an hour I'm going to be playing chess. If you want to join me, just come over to my house.

How amazing? How cool is that, right?

And so you got these entrepreneurs sprinting halfway across the island going, I can.

Get to play chess with Richard.

And.

But that he shared with us that that's one of the ways that he really gets to know somebody is over a game of chess.

Yeah. It was a really out of this world experience and it's still surreal to this day. So hopefully be a little bit more real this next time around. I mean, it was, it was a year and a half of really hard work to get it to go. And you know, it turned out like initially at least my idea was okay. It says a once in a lifetime experience, we're going to make it happen. But then all of you, towards the end of the event, like, hey, this thing was pretty awesome. We want to come back. I'm like, oh, this thing's growing past what I had thought it was going to be. And that was super cool just to see that happen.

Oh, 100%. And it's just so nice, the relationships. And so, again, for any of our viewers or listeners, if you're a dad, you're an entrepreneur, regardless of what stage you are in your entrepreneurial journey, but you just feel something tugging at you to say, yeah, you know what? I think I want to bridge some gaps in, you know, being a better father, being a better entrepreneur, so I can, you know, better support and resource, my team or better support and resource and be there for my family, my community. This is a great group of. Of dads that you can surround yourself with and everybody's so giving and so can't wait to be back there with you, man.

Anything, brother. It's gonna be great.

Rich.

Take us home, brother.

Well, one.

One thing I'll. I'll chime in on for our community that isn't maybe able to make it out to Necker, or perhaps they're not an entrepreneur, but they're still wanting to have some of the similar capacity. A great way for them to do some of that is to go to our new community, which is wealthonmainstreetcommunity.com that's wealthon mainstreetcommunity.com There's a number of amazing free courses there to learn about having family conversations in the home, dinner table, conversations about money, about creating value in the world. And so there's a ton of great resources there and a lot of opportunities to get engaged in a digital format, but without maybe having to hop on a plane and get your passport stamped as a bit of an alternative for those of you who aren't able to make it out to Necker. But, Derek, amazing being with you here today. Now, I'm assuming you know, in all the flights you've had in the, you know, the thousands and thousands of air miles, you've probably worn a lot of different outfits as you've gotten onto the various planes, but I'm guessing none of them have had a cape on before. So you may not know, but when you're out there creating value in the world, doing something brand new that hasn't been done for, such as this coupler app that you've built and created, you're showing up as a hero for people. So our question for you is, who would you most wish to be a hero to?

Oh, my gosh. That's a big question. Who would I most want to be a hero to?

It's. It's dads. It's got to be dads, right? Like, coupler is my business, and I have extremely passionate about that. But coupler will come and go and it'll have its positive impact, and someone else will take it, you know, another leg someday. But the. Being a dad will always be a dad. And we've got a massive father. You call it a fatherhood crisis, if you will. There's way too many families without a father present. And in everything I do, I try to people improve people's lives, but at the end of the day, like, I want to be a champion for dads, right? That's, you know, the rest takes care of itself. If we can do that, that's incredible.

Derek, thank you for being with us. And for all of our viewers on the YouTubes, take a look at the next video that's just shown up. And we do that because we want you to continue your journey of learning. There's no such thing as having arrived in knowledge, and that's why you're here on YouTube, is to learn. So continue your journey of learning. Watch that next video. We'll include some links in the show notes that not only will encourage you to get connected with Derek, to follow him, but also, as Richard mentioned, to get acquainted with our community and all the wonderful resources that have been curated especially for you so you can have more meaningful conversations with family about a topic that's typically taboo and that's money. So, gentlemen, this was a lot of fun.

Thank you both.

As always, have an outstanding rest of your week.

Likewise. Thank you both for having me. I appreciate it.

Cheers, guys.