How To Re-Energize Your Life, Become More Focused and Productive - I Love Marketing Episode #216

I'm dean jackson, he's joe polish. And this is the I love marketing podcast.

Everybody.

It's Dean Jackson and Joe Polish.

And I'm excited about this episode of I Love Marketing because although we're going to interview a person. Wait, say this again. You're talking over me now.

That's okay. That's what we do. This may be a record for us, actually. Why is that what we're about to say? Well, the person that we're going to talk with here has more New York Times best sellers than I believe anybody we've talked to on I Love Marketing so far in 200 and whatever number of episodes we're at right now.

Yeah, yeah. Well, so first off, this individual is a very good friend of ours. I've known him for, oh, God, 15 something years. His name is David Bach. I'm going to read his actual bio. This will be the only part of the episode that I do any reading. But, David, you're in New York right now. I'm in Arizona. Dean's in Orlando. How are you doing?

I'm fantastic. You guys, it's so good to be with you today. So fun.

Yeah. This is going to be a great episode because we're going to talk about not what people are probably thinking. But let me first, for people that do not know who David is, let me read his bio and then they'll have a gist and then we're going to get into some really, really valuable content and advice for people. So David Bach has helped millions of people around the world take action to live and finish rich. He's one of the most prolific financial authors of all time, with 11 consecutive national bestsellers, nine consecutive New York Times bestsellers, with more than 7 million books in print translated into over 18 languages. His most popular books are the Automatic Millionaire. That book was number one on New York Times, Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek in USA Today. He's one of the only authors of all time to have four books at once on all four bestseller lists. His Finish Rich seminars, including Smart Women, Finish Rich and SM Smart Couples Finish Rich, have been attended by over a million people throughout the United States and Canada. He's a media regular. He's done thousands of appearances on television, radio and print over the past 20 years. He's appeared on the Today show over 100 times as a regular contributor, and he's been on Oprah six times. He's also quite the entrepreneur. He's the founder of Finish Rich Media. His programs have done over 100 million in sales and he comes to the table of financial education with a lifetime of investment experience. Most recently, David was the Vice chairman of an RIA which managed $15 billion for its clients. And early in his career, he was a senior Vice president of Morgan Stanley and a partner of the Bott Group, which during his tenure managed more than half a billion dollars for individual investors. In consideration of all of David Bock's past and present success, what he's most proud of is his 12 year old son Jack and his 5 year old son James. And so David is married and lives with his family in New York City. And you can learn all kinds of stuff about him by going to his website, which is finishrich, and on facebook.com davidbock for more information. So, David, like I mentioned in the bio, you're a nine times New York Times best selling author. You've helped millions of people change your financial lives. But you know, beyond the bio and everything that I just read, how do you describe yourself and what you actually do? So people listening kind of get who this dude is.

You know, I just tell people I'm Joe Polish's friend and then I'm in. Of course, of course.

That works for a lot of people.

I mean, so first of all, well, Joe Dean, it's great to be with you guys and it's so fun doing this. I mean, you and I have known each other now since 1997, which is a little frightening because it means we're getting older. But I guess that's a good thing too. How do I tell people what I do? I'm not one of those guys that believes you need an elevator speech. It really depends on who I'm talking to and where I am in life. I basically look at myself as a teacher. I love teaching people how to be smarter with their money. And depending on who I'm talking to, like, you know what, I'm an entrepreneur. I run a company that teaches people how to be smarter with their money. And I've done that through books and I do that through television and radio and I have seminars that are done all over the country. And at my core, I'm just a kid that grew up, you know, kind of a geek, really interested in money because that's what my family did. I started going to my dad's investment classes at a really young age. My dad was teaching investment classes, he was a financial advisor and I started doing going to his classes at 9. So I was teaching my friend's parents how to buy Muni bonds by the age of 12, which is not normal. And I've been doing it really ever since. And actually it's funny because I just got back from California and we just had a retirement party for my dad. And my dad is 75. He just retired after 50 years of being a financial advisor. And I almost can get choked up saying this, but as I was. As I was toasting my dad last week, I said to my dad, he gets all the credit because I learned everything from him and incredibly basic lessons, but they all are timeless. And I've just been teaching them for now almost 25 years. I'm a teacher. I love to teach people how to be smarter with their money so they can live a great life. Yeah.

Well, you're also a fantastic marketer. And since we're obviously on. I love marketing right now. Why do you love marketing? I mean, what's your perspective on it? Because you don't sell $100 million worth of stuff and do all the things that you've done without knowing how to tell a story and get a message out and embrace the fact that people need to be taught and need to learn, which is all part of marketing.

Well, it's true. It is all marketing. And I think at the end of the day, from an education standpoint, I'm always marketing to people that this is easy, you can do it, go take action, it changes your life. But it's all marketing, right? I mean, from growing my financial planning business at Morgan Stanley to creating what became the original platform, Smart women finish rich. At my core, I am a marketer. And when I started teaching seminars for women and money, I learned very quickly that it was about. You had to be. You had a passionate story, which I did. I had learned about money from my grandmother. And that was a big part of my story, was how my grandmother had taught me how to invest at a young age, how she helped me buy my first stock. My story of my grandmother, how she became a self made millionaire starting with nothing. Her lessons that she taught me, that I then went out and shared. And I wrapped all that into a. I always. It's a crusade, right? To me, marketing is about a crusade. And my first crusade is in the 90s when you and I met. My first crusade, my first passion was I wanted to go out and I wanted to teach 1 million women how to take charge of their financial life so that they could protect themselves and their families. And that was my crusade. And that started with a little class that I created in Lafayette, California, originally taught to 100 of my clients. And I went to the local newspaper, the Moraga sun, and got the Moraga sun because I was a local boy in this little tiny suburb to write a story about that. And that was my first media appearance and that was my first live event. And from there I just kept running with it until I took that dream and made it real. And I've basically been doing that with crusade after crusade after crusade. And to me, every marketing campaign we've created is about what's the crusade, what's the purpose, what's the point? What are you trying to get out into the world?

Now that is such a great, that's such a great point too, to even think about it as a crusade because that's a much different mindset and you come from a far deeper place of motivation and drive to do something. When you are on a crusade versus if you just need to sell something. It's a big mental perspective shift.

Well, it takes you overall, at least for me in the beginning especially. People see you, by the time they see your success, they think you're an overnight success. They don't see the 10 years that went in before that. They don't see the times that I taught classes and seven people showed up. They don't see the book signing where one person came and they didn't buy a book. They don't see every little local cable show I did at 5:30 in the morning. They don't see all the Motel Sixes that you stay in and the college radio shows that you did before anybody knew who I was. But I loved every part of that because I was so passionate about what my purpose was that I wasn't focused on. Well, you know, I was focused on the number of helping a million people. I wasn't focused on selling a million books. I knew if I helped a million people, the book sales, the money, all that would take care of itself. And it ultimately did. I mean, I am actually one of those people where I truly went with my passion and my purpose and you know, love what you do and the money will follow. That actually happened for me. I know it's not always the case, but that did happen for me. It didn't happen for me overnight, but it happened for me over a decade.

Wow, that's really interesting too, you know, just what you're saying about. I think having a mission based purpose really helps you drive through all of that. Because a lot of times you see people who look at you, they look at people who are 10 years in when people start, you start showing up on people's radar. And they aspire to being you and they want to jump in and start there. And they're not willing to put in the time because it's not a mission based thing. It's just like just a money thing. And if you're doing it completely money motivated, you don't have that passion that gets you amped about getting up at 5:30 to do a local TV show. I think you're right. That's brilliant, actually.

Well, and sometimes my passions have always sort of at its core, been around some form of financial education. But the things that I've talked about have changed. I mean, I went from smart women finish rich to teaching couples Smart couples finish rich. And part of that was just I evolved. Right. I was single when I read Smart Women Finish Rich. Then I got married. Then I went through the challenges of what that's like financially when you have to start putting everything together. And I started working with a lot of couples. And then I became super passionate about how do you help couples have a great life together and align their values and work on their money together? And that became my new passion. And after Smart Couples finished rich, I started having people come to me and they were still confused. And they kept unfortunately pointing out to me that as much as I had taught them, it was still too complicated and they wanted it simpler and they only wanted to know one thing that they needed to do and what was the one thing. And I was so frustrated by the fact that even though I thought I had done a good job of teaching, people still were confused. That in that frustration, the book the Automatic Millionaire was born. And that became my overriding passion for over a decade, which was how do I just make financial planning so simple that I can teach it with just a couple steps? And the Automatic Millionaire, my dream was to touch 10 million people's lives and, and empower 10 million people to pay themselves first. And with that mission and that purpose, you know, that came true too. And so I think it comes back to really, how many people are you trying to help? How are you trying to serve? Why are you trying to serve? And then the marketing gets built around that. Yeah.

You know, plus the fact that you niched it is just such an important thing about picking a target market. Is that what you're trying to say, Dean?

I was just going to say, I don't want to let that slide. That here you are. So you had a choice. You come out, you wanted to help a million people, yet you narrowed your focus to women. And a lot of people might say, well, you just cut your potential audience in half. But the reality is by narrowing it to women, you get 10 times the attention of women than if it was just for everybody. By narrowing your focus, you get a different level of, oh, well, this is for me because it's specific. It's such a great example of it, of really narrowing yourself to a target market, even when it seems counterintuitive.

What if he was like, smart Italians finish rich or something like that? What do you think?

Let's talk about. Let's point something out here for a second because it's really important. You know every single thing about smart women finish rich. That worked with me as the person teaching. It should not have worked because I'm a man. I'm a man for women and money. When I went out to create that class, everybody told me not to do it. I was told that there was first of all be no interest, that no women would come. I was told that there would be no money in women and money. And I taught the first class and I went to the newspaper that ultimately wrote the first story about me. They weren't even convinced it was real. I had to convince them, no, this is a real class. I'm really doing this to be a service. Here's what I'm doing. Because nobody was teaching classes for women and money. They thought it was a scam. I had to prove to them, no, come to the class. Watch me teach it. When I took the book idea to publishers in 1997, publishers were like, first of all, there were no books for women and money. Suze Orman had just come out with her book. I mean, literally had just come out. The book before was from the 70s. And the publisher said to me, women aren't going to buy a book on women and money. We'll buy it, but we don't think it will sell. You'll be lucky if you sell 15,000 copies. If you sell 30,000 copies, it'll be a miracle. And I found one publisher that was like, you know what? This could be evergreen. We see the potential here. And smartwin Fisher, which has over a million copies in print. And after I did it and it worked, and then people wanted to teach my seminar, and that became a whole multimillion dollar business itself. After it worked, everybody's like, oh my God, he's a genius. But most people did not believe that, that it would work. When I went out to try to make it work, it took a lot of, you know, I just was so, so stubborn and so passionate and basically unstoppable. That I forced it to work. And I think that's an important thing for people to hear because a lot of times, you know, your idea, which you think is brilliant, if not everybody's going to go, oh my God, that's the greatest idea in the world. You just, if you believe in it, you have to keep pushing it. And I think that has to come from a place of personal, true, deep hearted passion. Because if you're waiting for the money to show up right away, a lot of times it doesn't. You know, it can take a few years, but man, when it works and it aligns with your passion, your purpose, there's nothing better.

No, that is, that is awesome. And there's some great lessons there about perseverance, about believing in yourself, about having people tell you something will not work. And in spite of that, that having wherever that came from, you, be it the gut feeling, be it the fact that you didn't have any other option and you had to make it work. I mean, I don't know what all the different motivations were. It was probably a combination of all those and many other things that I'm not aware of. What would you say to the entrepreneur that has not yet cracked the code and they're kind of, you know, they're being told something can't work. I mean, because there's a lot of truth to, you know, persistence in a direction that's not going to yield anything is a waste of time. Also, you know, it's kind of like the best way to get out of a hole is to quit digging it. So how do you know the difference between, you know, you're working on something that has some fruit if you harvest it versus there ain't no juice in that squeeze? You know, you can squeeze all day long, you're never going to get something out of it. I mean, a lot of times you just simply don't know. But you, you said I forced it to work, I had to make it work. And you know, the reason you're successful is because you have, you were determined. The question becomes, you know, how do you parlay what you know and that wisdom to people that, you know, they're kind of like they're unsure or they're in, you know, similar situations. People are telling them they're crazy, you know, their ideas aren't going to work. I mean, what do you say to those people?

Well, I think first of all, the journey of entrepreneurism is a tough journey, right?

Yep.

You know, I read something our friend Darren Hardy recently Put out a book. And there was a. And I gave him a testimonial for his new book. And there was a quote in his book. I think he says something like 99% of entrepreneurism is just maybe 97% of it's miserable. Something like that. And I thought, well, that's really extreme, right? But entrepreneurism is tough. I mean, I think the big question that all entrepreneurs have, including myself, right, is that you're working on something, and if it's not working right away, when do you pivot, right? You know, do you throw in the towel? Do you pivot? Most great businesses are a result of major pivots, right? I mean, you can go through so many, whether it's Uber or Pinterest or, you know, Airbnb. I mean, every major super successful business at some point, you know, was a pivot. Very few, meaning that, you know, they went in one direction, it didn't work, and they changed directions. You know, our friend Dan Sullivan, we've been, you know, you and I met through Dan Sullivan. We've been in that strategic coach program for forever. Dan calls it, you know, strategic byproducts. You're working on something and you go towards a goal, and then the next thing you know, something else has come out as a result. I think that that happens all the time in business. I mean, I can go through my career over 25 years, and nothing was a straight line. If I go back to the beginning and I take smart women finish rich. My original plan was to teach, was to have the Bach Group, which was in the Bay Area, to grow that into an organization that would be in 50 cities and inside the Morgan Stanley system, where we have. We teach classes in 50 cities. And I took that idea to the firm, and the firm turned it down. And not only did the firm turn it down at the time, but at the last minute, the firm. Because everything had to go through. It's called compliance approval. The firm decided to not let me say that I worked at Morgan Stanley. And so I wrote this book, you know, and I thought, well, God, I'll get a lot of clients out of this. And the next thing I know, the firm wouldn't let me say where I worked. So it was like it said, David Box, senior vice president of a major investment firm. So at the time, I was devastated by this. Right? Well, you fast forward that to about 120 days later. And because the book. The book comes out and it doesn't say what firm I work at, every single firm on Wall street starts using my book. And every advisor starts buying my book. And the next thing I know, we're licensing a seminar program and every firm on Wall street is now using it because it didn't say what firm I worked at. And I give that example because a lot of times when you're working on something and you think you just failed, that failure ironically turns out to be the recipe for the next big success. So I guess I tell somebody right now, if you're in dark days and you think you know what, what you're doing, you're failing, the reality is you're on your journey and around the corner may be the next major success. Yeah.

It's an interesting point that you were making, though, Joe, too, about how do you know? Like, you know, David, you stuck with it for all of that time. And you know what I always think about with that is how appropriately thinking about financial things, all the big gains in a compound curve happen at the end of the curve where the reward that you're getting is disproportionate to the effort that you're putting in. And in the beginning, you're putting in a lot more effort than the reward would seem to be. But if you've got that crystal clear vision that you know that you're on your way to helping a million people and you just helped 20 people at the Barnes and Noble, and then you're going to help, you know, a thousand people at this, at a bigger event, every one of them is reaching and getting bigger and bigger, and your reach is growing over time. But you were committed and stuck on that, on that track.

That's exactly right. And I'll give you a great. Give an example. Take that, like to Oprah for a second. So I, when I showed up on Oprah, it was 2004, and I went on Oprah with the Automatic Millionaire and we launched that book on Oprah. And that was an unbelievable experience. We went from having it had taken five years to have a million books in print. And within six months of being on Oprah, I had done another million books. And the Automatic Millionaire became the number one book of the year. It was on the bestseller list for 31 weeks. And that message is to this day is still out there all over the world. But where I'm going with this Oprah story is it took 10 years to get on Oprah. I had pitch letters going back to Oprah from 1994. I was turned down to be on that show three separate times where I had been in pre, no, been what they call pre interviewed didn't get on the show, and somebody else basically got on the show with what I thought was my show. So. But I just never gave up. And, you know, by the time I was on, by the time I was on Oprah, sitting on those little yellow chairs with her, the truth was that they, they were right. I wasn't ready in 94. By the time I was on in 2004, I had 10 years of experience, of media experience. I had been on every single TV show but hers, and I was ready. So sometimes I give that example because sometimes the success that you're hoping for right now, you're actually not even ready for it. You need the time to build for your moment. So we're living in a world today where, because of the unicorn phenomenon, you know, where people start businesses and a year later, the business is a billion dollars worth. I mean, I don't know, I feel like we're not hearing about a lot of times this, this idea that things can take a long time and we're living in this new world where things are supposed to happen overnight. If they don't happen overnight, it's totally depressing. Sometimes if they happen overnight, it was just luck and timing. Most things don't happen overnight.

Yeah, I mean, I often use Oprah as an example. Before Oprah was Oprah, she was a local talk show in Chicago, you know, and that before that was just a in on a newscaster, you know, I mean, it starts. It starts, and you're committed to this whole thing. It's like the Beatles going to Hamburg for four years, you know, playing eight hours a day, every day before they were the Beatles. Just committed to that. You know, it's funny because, you know, the way that, you know, I talk to a lot of people who have things that could appeal to huge audiences and they want to start, just come out of the gate and be at that million person level of impact. But the reality is, if you're going to help all the women in the world, you're going to help a million women in America become financially independent. If you're going to help them with their money, you might as well start by helping all the women in Poughkeepsie. You know.

I think there's total truth to that.

And then.

And then with that being said, here's the other thing. I'll flip this on its head for a second, because this is a podcast that, you know, we're creating right now, basically, like, for nothing. And this podcast is going to go online and hopefully, like lots of people Will listen to it and it gets exposed all over the world. Well, the amazing thing about how the world has changed, that was not possible 20 years ago. And today you can literally sit in front of your computer and shoot a video and tomorrow some crazy thing happens and it does. The whole world could find out about you. There's a video going on right now about these two women that are talking about Donald Trump. I don't know if you guys saw this video yet, but this video was.

Yeah, the two black women.

Yes. So this video, I see this video because I don't know where the news feed was, it came through. But I literally, I go to the video last night and it's about these two ladies riffing on Megyn Kelly and Donald Trump. And I click on the video. I watch the whole thing. I'm cracking up. I go, I said, my wife, oh my God, you watch. This thing is going to go viral. The next thing I know, I'm on Drudge Report. It's on the front of the Drudge Report. I mean, I haven't even looked today, but I bet you 10 million people will have seen this video in 48 hours. Now that could never have happened five years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago. So the amazing thing about right now is that it's easier in many ways if you can break through to get your message out to so many people in such a short period of time.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. But there is something that you said about you needing to be ready for your moment. And then people do have sort of a, I think a flawed perception because they see like you call them the unicorns, where these billion dollar companies crop up very quickly. But really building a foundation and being prepared for this sort of success, not as a cop out that you should wait forever in order for something to happen. But the point is there are times, I mean, I was watching just recently they did a segment on Ted, Ted.com on 60 Minutes, and they were interviewing Chris Anderson. And I had a real brief lunch with Chris Anderson at Google Zeitgeist last year before he was getting ready to take off to catch his plane. And last year I actually met with, spent six hours with Richard Saul Wurman, who was the original founder of ted. And basically he sold it to Chris. Chris bought it in, I think 1999. But there was like an eight year period, I believe, from the very first TED conference to when they did the second one. And then Richard was doing these conferences. And Chris Anderson, who now owns ted, you know, saw it and loved it and offered him like $13 million and he bought it and now he's turned it into ted. But it, you know, if people, people would think that, oh, this thing just happened because of videos online, which they did happen, but it was years. I mean we're going, I don't even know how long, but a couple decades, I think.

84, I think. I think that's when it started.

Yeah, yeah.

So it's like a lot of people see these things and they don't see the level of work and persistence and everything. And so I think the biggest takeaway from just listening to you, David and I know a lot about you. I mean, we've done numerous interviews, you've spoken at my conferences, we've hung out a lot. You're in Genius Network. I mean there's all kinds of things that we've spent. Just hearing this though just reinforces that if you want something to happen, you have got to be prepared to make it happen. And you, if you're getting rejected, at first it may sound like, oh, you know, I'm missing an opportunity, but in reality it was actually just preparing you for when the big opportunity came. So you have learned how to take a lot of things that people would perceive as mishaps or unfortunate or why didn't it happen? You know, that sort of thing and you just parlayed it. Do you still have that level of drive and persistence as you've gotten older or I mean, how do you perceive things now? Because we're going to switch gears in a little bit and talk about this one year sabbatical that you took. Where's your drive and persistence right now compared to where it was when you were early on in your career?

You know, it's such a good question and I ask myself that too because what happens in life? So I have a 5 year old whose name is James and my 12 year old's name is Jack. I'm still really driven and I'll talk about how what I did to in many ways completely, I say not recharge my battery, but replace my batteries. I'm probably as motivated and as inspired as I've ever been. But there's a reason for that. The reason is I took a full year sabbatical and I'll talk about that in a second. But before I took the sabbatical, if I look at my life the last five, six, seven years, I've really spent a lot of time being a dad. So I've slowed down the amount of work I've done. Specifically the last five Years. Like, I actually. I put a book out a year for a decade. I actually put 12 books out in a decade. And in the last. I haven't put a book out now since 2011. And I'm kind of re. Gearing up right now. In the last five years, I've just been really engaged being a dad. And I will say, becoming a father, it candidly reprioritized me. I mean, I was walking my son James to camp, and I'm going to pick him up as soon as we're done today from camp. And I thought, you know, I only have, like, he's five and a half. I'm going to get to hold his hand. I take my kids to school and I pick him up. I'm going to get to hold his hand to camp and to school for about six more months. And I know that because it was right around the third or fourth month of kindergarten now, my older son stopped holding my hand. And, you know, this time that I've had with my kids, like, I wouldn't trade that for anything. So I think my priorities have definitely shifted. I'm very family focused, and yet I'm still super passionate and motivated and. And one of the things that taking the sabbatical did was really give me a lot of family time. And also completely kind of re. Energized me because I think I took my sabbatical, I took a year off in 2013. I'm going to be 49 in November. And I basically got, I think 46 was the age where I would say I hit burnout. We can talk about that here in a second. But at 46, I felt 46. I'd say I felt 50. I started thinking, wow, I guess when you get older, you just feel tired all the time. You just start to feel shittier. And what I found, that's not actually true. I was just tired because today I'm not tired. And today I feel like I'm 30. And part of that because I took a long break. And then the other thing is I took a meditation. And we could talk about meditation, too. I mean, I just. I meditated right before this call. And meditation has totally changed my life. So long answer to a short question.

No, no, I mean, it's good. And I.

So, yeah, let's. Let's shit. You know what?

I want to do this real quick because I think the remainder of this episode, I would love to talk about taking care of yourself because you just made a really important point. You said you were burnt out at 46. You hit 50 and you felt, you know, you felt that, and then you just commented. Now you feel like you're 30. And I think a lot of people, they don't. And I certainly have gone through these stages. I mean, I've had a really intense year, and I feel physically like, you know, I work out every day. I do meditate. We both do tm, which is great. And, you know, there's just been a lot on my plate with, you know, remodeling a house that took two years and all kinds of things that I typically wouldn't get sympathy from a lot of people for unless they're an entrepreneur doing stuff, saying, oh, I kind of get it. You know, it's not like you're sitting around just. Just spending your money and you got all kinds of free time. I mean, I've put a lot into it. And there's a lot of people that I know because of just modern life that are completely burned out and they don't even know it. So coming from a guy like you, who had all of this incredible success that could keep going, decided to kind of shut it down and to really focus on your family and focus on you. What a great line. You should not recharge my batteries, but replace them. So I want to spend a good chunk of time talking about that. Before we hop there, though, just if you had to sum up a few, maybe four or five of your best tips, techniques, strategies for building and keeping wealth. Since we talk so much about your financial stuff, I think we'd be doing a disservice if we didn't at least mention some things related to money. Since you've written so many books or anything that you would recommend directing people to, then I want to talk about the sabbatical stuff.

Okay, sure. So I'll just say the book I would recommend everybody read if you haven't read it is the Automatic Millionaire. Because when I wrote that book, my goal was to create a basically be able to teach you in 90 minutes how to change your entire financial life in less than an hour. And about 95% of what you need to know to become a millionaire or more is in the automatic millionaire. And I say 95%, because really, everything you need to know to reach your first million is in the automatic millionaire. Between a million to 10 million, the strategies start to change a little bit. But really, the primary things that you need to do are in that book. And I'll just go through a handful of them. So these are so timeless. I didn't invent These concepts, it's just what fundamentally works. And the first, most important thing is that as soon as you earn income, you need to pay yourself first. The first thing you have to do when money comes in is you have to pay yourself first. And that means that the first dollar that you earn every day, whether you're an entrepreneur or you work hourly, you need to take part of that dollar and I recommend at least 10 cents. And you take 10 cents of every dollar and you pay yourself first. Now that's a middle class number. So if you basically want to be struggling, 10 cents of every dollar, 10% would be your starting number. But really to start to build real wealth, you need to be taking 15 to 20% of your gross income off the top, paying yourself first automatically. And that's going automatically from wherever the income is coming directly into a savings account. And that for most people it's a retirement account. And you know, for those who are entrepreneurs, that means because you got a lot of self employed people listening, a lot of freelance people, that means that you're opening up something as simple as a SEP IRA, a Self Employed IRA account or Solo 401k plan. And as that checks getting deposited, you're immediately pulling money from where it got deposited and you're fully funding your retirement account. And that's for entrepreneurs, that's really step one. And it's basically about profits first coming to you first. The fundamental mistake that entrepreneurs make, and this is because their accountants teach them to do this, is they run all their expenses through their business, so they pay less in taxes. And what entrepreneurs do. And these are good people making 50, 100, 200. I've seen people do this with a million dollars of income. They run all their expenses through their business and at the end of the year they're like, hey, I didn't pay any taxes. And then you're like, congratulations, you're still broke. And what's so sad is that the entrepreneur dream is I'm going to have a business and I'm going to have financial freedom and that someday maybe you'll sell the business. And that's a huge myth because most entrepreneur businesses are not saleable. Very few are. If they are saleable, they're salable for low multiples. They're not saleable like unicorns. They're salable for maybe one or two times revenue. And so you know what, you have a lot of people who basically have jobs working for themselves and they're not a great boss for themselves and they don't keep any income so paying yourself first is number one, and then number two is making everything automated. All the money, all the financial flow of your money should be automated. The bills should be paid automatically through a system. The savings account should be saved automatically. I teach people to save money into four categories. Pay yourself first, which is retirement. Your security money, which is to protect you in case of emergency. Your, what I call your dream account, which is where you're putting money for things between now and retirement. And then the fourth thing is philanthropy, charity. And so I teach how to automate those buckets, if you will. I call them baskets. Because those baskets, the money can be automatically pulled from your accounts into these different categories. And the more you automate your financial life, you get that financial life running on autopilot. Then it doesn't take discipline, and it doesn't take time. And then the last thing I'll just say is that it's all about is real estate. You know, you and I have talked about real estate a lot over the years. The you have to own a home. You can't build wealth renting. And the secret for entrepreneurs is to buy a piece of real estate and have your business rent that real estate. So to buy a piece of real estate, which you've done, and so many of my friends, because I've hammered them with on this, you buy a building or you buy a house, or you buy a condo, you put that property in an LLC and you have your business rent back that real estate. And then over the next 10, 15 years, your business will buy that real estate free and clear, and you'll own that asset. And in many cases I've seen this year in and year out, the real estate will ultimately be worth more than the businesses. So.

No, that's great. That's great. So I'm glad I asked you that. And that's some really good advice. So awesome. Thank you. So let's go. Let's go to this. Basically replacing your batteries. I mean, I think a lot of people would love to figure out, how do you mentally prepare yourself, and how do you actually do that without, you know, did you have to uproot your life? You know, all that sort of stuff. So I'll let you just kind of tell the story.

So in 2012, I was in a program that you and I are both in, and I've gone through the process of 10xing my income and 25xing my income and 50xing my income. And I was working again on what a 10x would look like, how I would 10x my income, meaning growing my income by 10 times and growing my business by 10 times. And I had this realization in the middle of doing that that what I really wanted was to 10x my life. I wanted to. I didn't need more income. What I needed was more life. And, you know, and I'm going to say that as somebody who's always been pretty decent about balance, I mean, I've taken a lot of free days, if you will, and a lot of vacation time, But I just felt like what I wanted was to have more lifetime. And so the thing I started really asking myself is a, do I want to retire? And I was 46. This was in 2012, which seems like a really young age to retire, quite frankly. And I started going, you know, I don't really know. That's what I want to do is retire. I thought, you know, what I want to do is just, I want to take a year off. And what happened was my wife asked me a fateful question in 2012. She asked me, what do I want for my birthday? And it was on a night that I was having a hard time sleeping. And my wife's a big planner. She took out this pad of paper and she said, what do you want for your birthday if you can't sleep? Let's talk about it. I looked at her and I said, you know, what I want is a year off. And she started going, what are you talking about? And I said, I want a year off. I want to not work. I want to not. She said, what do you mean? I'm like, I don't want to do anything. I don't want to write. I don't want to do television shows. I don't want to speak. I don't want to travel. I just want to be a dad. I want to do what other people get to do. I want to take my kids to school. I want to go to the events. I want to pick them up. I want to be in the neighborhood. I want to be home. And she looked at me and she said, well, why don't you do that then? And I remember looking here and I said, how am I going to do that? And I start going through the list of all the things I have on my plate, right? Because a lot of us, we start to have our years booked out a year in advance or two years in advance. There are probably some people who are listening to this that have their calendar booked out three years. But I'll make a point here. Most people don't have their calendars booked out more than a year. And so when I was bitching about this, it was early in 2012. What I realized in the middle of my bitching was, you know what? I am pretty booked up for 2012, but come 2013, there's really nothing on my calendar I couldn't cancel. And then I started bitching about how much money we spent and how expensive it would be for me to take a year off. She looked at me and she said, don't we do all the stuff that you talk about in your books? I said, yeah. And she said, so couldn't you afford to take a year off? And I said, yeah. And she said, let me ask, how many years could you afford to not work? And so again, I started bitching about how expensive our lifestyle was and how much money we spend living in New York. And she said, yeah, but she didn't answer the question. How long could we afford for you to not work in New York? And I said, okay, fine, we could afford for me to not work for at least 20 years in New York. And she looked at me and she goes, well, then stop bitching and take a year off. Literally, she looked, she's like, I'm going to sleep now, and you can just stay at the seal, stare at the ceiling and stress out for another, you know, a couple more hours. But I think she just took a year off. And so I started really, you know, thinking about it. And basically I spent 2012 planning how to do that. And by 2013, come January, I did. And it's. I know there's so much I could do a whole hour on this because it's such a strange process to go from I've been working hard since I was 15 and to constantly, you know, going and going and going and going and charging. It's actually not that easy to just stop emotionally. It was kind of confusing. Like, my body almost didn't know what to do with itself. But what I didn't know in 2012 with Joe is I didn't realize how tired I was until I wasn't tired. Because, you know, I was still, in 2012, getting up at 5:30 in the morning, going to the gym, doing all the stuff I do, going to the Today show, running my business, getting on planes, doing all the stuff they did, feeling charged up and pumped up, up, but also feeling, like I said, older. Like, I was feeling like at 46, like I was in my late 40s or my 50s and starting to think, God, you know, I mean, I wake up and I'm not energized And I just started thinking that, you know, maybe this is what happens. I went to the doctor. I'm like, you know, is there something wrong with my blood? Is my nutrition bad? Like, what is. What do I need to do to not feel tired? And I think if you. A lot of people listening don't realize how tired they are. I mean, our friend Arianna Huffington talks about sleep. And, you know, just going and getting a good night's sleep doesn't help you recover. You need more sleep, but you need a lot more sleep. And what I found out when I took the year off, because I slept a lot after. I traveled a ton, I skied a ton, and I traveled a ton. And I spent a lot of time with my family traveling. There was like a month where I swear I must have slept 12 to 15 hours a day. And all of a sudden, after that rest, I was like, wow, I can't believe how good I feel. And not having the pressure of so much work on me, I gotta tell you, it was like a miracle. I mean, it's still, to this day, it's like a miracle because I got to feel. I got to feel what it's like to just. I still feel it. I still feel so good. And what I realized going through this sabbatical process is I look at so many of our friends, I now realize how exhausted people are, because I can see in their eyes how I used to feel, and I don't feel like that anymore. And so, you know, part of what I want to do is inspire more people to take breaks. And I don't think it necessarily needs to be a year off. I think the more of a. I think that we should take more time off. I think we're the only country that doesn't. You know, abroad, people take time off. They take way more breaks than we do. The people unplug way more in foreign countries. They live their life. And I think that we really, in this country, especially all of us entrepreneurs, we just work too much. We're just way too plugged in. And by the way, unplugging is not a bad thing. And I can talk about that, too. But I gotta let you guys speak. I'm just going and going and going here.

No, no. I mean, I actually hear the tale.

To hear everything leading up to it and. And what's on the tail end of it. I think everybody could fantasize about taking a year off. I mean, it's amazing. What was your kind of daily routine while you were. Once you got done with the traveling and the skiing and whatever you were into now, kind of the normalcy of a sabbatical. What kind of things?

What did you do?

Well, so it's interesting what it felt like to go through this sabbatical because, you know, I spent nine years helping people as an advisor, retire. And the fascinating thing about helping people retire is people would come into my office, mostly men, a lot of men especially, that they retire in their 60s and they've had high power careers. I have a lot of women like this too. So let me say women and men. And six months after they retired, they would come into my office and they would look so much younger and so rested that they look like they had a facelift. Like, you physically see almost in every case, the difference. And that's what happened to me. Because six months into my sabbatical, people would stop me and they're like, what have you done to yourself? Which kind of is, in a way, you're a little bit offended, right? Because you're like, God, I didn't think I looked like shit. But, you know, people would notice physically how much better I looked. So what did I really, you know, I look at the highlights of my year and my day, if you will. I did three things. I spent more time with my family. That's a big thing. I spent more time with my friends. I got to, you know, I had time to finally go and do a lot of friends I hadn't seen, like high school friends and college friends. I traveled and connected with a lot of friends. And I spent time with my family, my specifically my parents.

Are you still there, David?

Yeah. Can you hear me?

Oh, yeah. Disappeared for just a minute. You said more time with your parents and then you kind of drifted off.

In some sabbatical cloud. I spent a month with my parents in August almost, and I had not spent that much time with my parents since high school. And that was a realization too. Like, you know, I'm so lucky. My parents are alive, they're healthy. They were so thrilled to have me out visiting for an extended period of time because usually I'm flying in for a day or two and leaving. So I just got to live. And then parts of it wasn't fancy. I mean, one of the weird things for me as the, you know, I did do all things. Like at first I traveled for three months, a ton. Then I came home and had a checklist of things I wanted to get through. And I kind of rushed through all my checklists in the month of April. And by May, I was starting to slow down. And then I spent a lot of time with myself. You know, I had time to, like, I would take the kids to school and go to the gym and meet a friend for lunch and read a book. And I even had time to be bored, which when you. When you're so busy and you haven't really had time to be bored, it's. It's a very uncomfortable feeling at first. And ironically, around that time, Joe, which you're going to really appreciate this, around that time, you started pestering the shit out of me that I needed to meet Bob Roth and take up meditation. And at that period where I finally had space in my body, in my mind, and I was like, okay, bored. And I need. What am I missing here? That's around the time that I went and met with Bob and took up meditation. And I don't think I would have ever taken up meditation, quite frankly, if I hadn't taken the sabbatical. And meditation. I've meditated every day since. I think it was October 2013. And that's life changing, by the way. You don't have to take a sabbatical to take a meditation and talk about the chance to have a sabbatical every day. That's what meditation does. It gives you a mini sabbatical every day if you do it right twice a day. And that's the ultimate gift. So that was a huge gift of my sabbatical.

Yeah.

Which is the next. The thing I was going to ask you next is coming back into now you're kind of back into working as. What have you brought with you from the sabbatical into the new now you're geared up and excited and moving forward. What have you brought with you from that? How is it different this time?

Well, you know, so it's still a journey, right? I'm trying to figure that all out. It happens to be. I came out of my sabbatical and I immediately took on a very big role and became the vice chairman of one of the largest financial planning companies in the country. And so 2014, I kind of hit the ground really hard and in a way, really jumped back into a whole new role with a ton of new energy. And then I relaunched Smart Women Finish Rich. We relaunched the seminars. I relaunched Smart Couples Finish Rich. I toured the country doing Smart Couples Finish Rich seminars. I relaunched media. I did 135 media appearances. I think the difference as I did all that, that is that I did it in a way in which I have more balance. I'm calmer I feel more centered. And as I go into, you know, this year, I actually just recently stepped down from that role. And I think part of it was because I realized I was. I didn't like being away from my family. And I think as I. As I spend time right now asking myself, what do I want to do going forward, I'm really looking at how do I design my life specifically around these next five years so that I can do all the things I love to do. But I don't want to be away from my family unnecessarily. You know, I want to be very selective around what it is that makes me leave and miss a family event. And then with that being said, what I learned in my sabbatical was how to say no, because I spent 2013 saying no to everything. And, you know, when you're used to saying yes to everything and you start to say no, you have a lot of. At least I did. A lot of guilt. And I'm trying to continue to keep that no muscle going so that I've got the balance to do all, you know, spend time with myself, spend time with my family, spend time with my friends, and yet continue with my purpose and my passion. So I'm a work in progress still. Only the beauty is right now, I have a lot of energy for that work in progress.

No, that is, you know, keeping the no muscle going, I think, is a huge thing. We don't. One of the things I learned about myself is in the process of trying to be generous and trying to be useful and caring and just being, you know, being a giver, not being a taker. And what I've learned, though, is I've really sacrificed a lot of what's important to me in my attempts to be helpful and useful to other people. And I always want to be that way. I mean, I'm not going to change in that department. What I am really striving to do, though, is being able to be more discerning with the individuals that I'm helpful with, because a lot of people reach out to me that really all they care about is themselves. I mean, they're just not that helpful. And they, you know, and I have this reputation of being a connector. And I was having this conversation with my friend JR the other day about. I have this, you know, and even Dan Sullivan. I mean, I had a call with Dan this morning with Dan and Babs. Just catching up, you know, just talking. And I have this reputation where, oh, you know, Joe knows how to connect people, and I cannot tell you how much of a filter I am for other people where they're like, oh, can you introduce me to this person? And I have to decipher. Oh, can you send this email to Richard Branson? Can you send this email to Arianna Huffiton? Can you contact Daymond John? Because they know I know all these people, and I have this tendency to just want to say, oh, let me see what I can do. But now I'm just pausing a lot. There's a book called essentialism by Greg McKeown, who's you're going to be speaking at this year's Genius Network annual event. David and Greg McEwen is going to be speaking at this year's annual event on Essentialism. And you're going to be talking about probably this. And then we got Shawn Achor, who's going to be talking about happiness. Because I'm really wanting to bring people to these entrepreneurs and even for myself, because I'm thinking, what do I want actually here? What it is I want to learn? What I've learned is that I don't stop long enough sometimes to realize, like, do I really need to be taking my time to help this person? Would they do the same thing for me? Not like a tit for tat sort of thing, because I do plenty of stuff that, you know, I'm not doing it because I need the person to do something for me. It just is my. It's kind of like who I am. My MO is to try to be a helpful person. What I found, though, is that generosity, which at least I think it's generosity, is actually quite detrimental to me if I don't really evaluate what's the trade off. Like, if I'm going to do this and take this time, like, what am I really, you know, what is the trade off? And, you know, I think you're very similar to me. I don't like saying no to people. I want to be helpful. And I get so many requests for interviews. You know, one of the things that Dean does also, you know, whenever you put out a podcast like this, all kinds of people want to interview you for their shows. The challenge is there's an endless amount of people that are doing podcasts. There's an endless amount of people that are doing stuff, and I have to really sit and, like, I don't want to reject the people. But at the same time, I'm getting to the point where I'm thinking, you know, I have to restrict what it is I do to my Genius Network members. I'M trying to come up with criteria with at least, you know, they're paying me or it has to be something in the field of, like, addiction or helping addicts or putting, you know, destigmatizing, you know, because those are my areas. My areas are, you know, entrepreneurship and helping people with addictions. And unless it really is aligned, I just have to say no to it. And, you know, one of the reasons I love talking with you about this is I'm sitting here taking notes of how I can apply what you learned into my own life, because I think most. I think most of us struggle with this. And when I say most, I mean, most people that actually. Actually give a shit about other people, because there's a lot of people, they really don't. And it's easy for them to say no because all they care about is themselves. But when you actually do care about other people's requests and you want to respond to them, it's psychologically difficult. So what criteria have you developed of what you say yes to and what you say no to? I mean, how do you think about what you take on and what you don't right now?

Well, so in 2013, I'll talk about 2013. And now. Now, now, because it's different times, right? But in 2013, I was like, I'm going to say no to everything. It's interesting because I only said yes to. I said basically no to everything. But it happens to be. I said no to about two or three things. One of them was you, because you asked me to do a speech for a friend of ours, Neil Strauss, and he was in New York. And. But that was a classic example. Like, you're such a good buddy, and you like. Like you were reaching out to me. I'm like, God, I've always wanted to meet Neil. And Neil's. Literally his event was five minutes from my house. And so I'm like, okay, and Neil, I'm bringing my son. So it was like. But if you look at now, I think the thing I've realized is that every time you say yes to something, you're saying no to something else. So what I mean by that is that there's only so many hours in the day. There's only so many days in the week and 24. And. Right. And so if I say yes to get on a plan and go do a speech, that's. That's two days away from my family. Right? I mean, any way you look at it, it's two days away from my family. There would be A really big reason for me to go be away from my family for two days. And if I'm going to go do media, like, you know, I mean, I live in New York to do media, but, you know, anytime you go and do media, it's a half. It's. It's an hour there. It's an hour before the show goes on, then you do the show and then you go home. It's three or four hours. That's a half a day. So I just. I'm. I'm. I'm becoming really. I mean, I've always been good about focus. And I think what I'm working on right now is my focus for the next three to five years. I'm kind of working on my game plan right now. And, you know, like you, I can add. I don't categorize myself. They have an add, but I love shiny lights. And I'm like, here's your focus list, David. You know, here's the five things that you're focusing on. Are they on that list? Because if they're not, they don't get to go on the list. They get to go on the not now list or the no list, but they don't get to go on the week to do list. And I will tell you one thing I've also been working on, and this is kind of a mental shift for me, but it's this idea that I don't. I don't got to do anything. I get to do something. And, you know, so I don't. I'm almost trying to change my thought process. Like, I got to go do this and I gotta go that. No, no, I don't actually. It's a choice, and I am choosing to do it. And one of the things I always try to remind myself is that that great quote from Dan Sullivan, which is that a. Oh, my God, now I can say I'm gonna remember it. It's an obligation. A mess is a. What is it?

Obligation without a commitment.

A mess is an obligation without a commitment. And, you know, when people come to me for stuff, I'm like, you know, am I really committed to this? Because if I'm not, I know myself. If I'm not committed to it, then it's a mess. So I'm sorry, buddy, I'm not. I've been talking a lot this hour.

No, no, no, no. This is all fantastic. Here's the thing, and we'll go a little few minutes over because it's is really, really good and really valuable. I then created A tool for genius network called the not now list. Because you told me that story. I can't remember the original person or company, but it was a big financial company. And you were talking about the guy with the whiteboard and you went in his office and he had the not now. So can you. I love. And this, this is a game. This would be worth like so much to everybody listening if they just grasp this concept. And you taught it to me and I love it. It's just such a great way to unload like this feeling like, oh, I got to do all these things. Well, yeah, you could, but maybe not now.

So let me. This may not be an exact quote, but I want to give the credit for where this story came from. And it came from a guy named Matt Coffin and who had sold a company called lowermybills.com and they were. Lowermybills.com is a lead generation website and they got a huge price for it. He was in my office and I had a big whiteboard and I was asking him, because so many of the companies at the time that he was growing, there were a lot of companies that looked like his and most of them didn't make it. And he made it to a huge exit. And I said to him, you guys were so focused on the way you did your business. What did you do differently than everybody else? And he shared the story with me about how, you know, like everybody else, they were trying to do everything. And finally they're like, we're only going to do this one thing and everything else. When you come into my office, you can bring it in my office. It's going on the not now list. And I'm like, what do you mean? He's like, literally, you can bring it in the office, but it's going on the not now list. You can stick it up on the wall and it's not now because the only thing we're doing right now is this. And you know, I'm like, that makes so much sense. And it's funn because I just clicked on a web a video from Carrie Vanderchuck. You know, and on the video he was talking about focus and he was talking about his buddy from Uber and how the CEO from Uber was, you know, he brought this. He was paraphrases too. But he was telling the story about how he was bringing his buddy another deal to invest in. And his buddy at Uber was like, gary, I'm not doing speeches. I'm not doing angel investments. I am focused on this business for the rest of my life. Like, like, he's just, you know, this relentless focus. And I think, you know, it comes down to having a not now list. And I think most of it's. I think about 99% of things that come to us need to go on that not now list.

Yeah, it's so true. And so, yeah, I mean, I, I don't even know if you've seen the tool that I created for Genius network members on that one yet. But it's just a sheet where people are like, okay, what is your main focus and what are all the things that are great ideas that you really are? They're consuming your thought process and they're great ideas. They're not bullshit things. And they're not only possible, but they're probable. However, if you focus on that, you're going to be taking that attention away from this. And so it gives people permission to put it on there. And like Ariana says, one of the best ways to complete a project is to drop it. And you can get to a point where you're like, you know, it sounded really good. But giving yourself time to think about it, you really reevaluate your life. So after having had all this success, after having replaced your batteries and now you're still working on big things, and I'm still a believer of, if I had all the money in the world, I would want to work on things that really jazz me up. I get a huge reward in life out of producing more than I consume. At least that's how I try to operate. And I think anything if people are just given money and you know better than anyone, the whole born on third base and think they hit a triple. Or people that were born into money but really didn't earn money, most of them are not very, very happy and many are miserable and many even commit suicide because they are just.

They don't.

There's this complexity that comes. So I think a lot of people think that money will solve all their problems, but you can have millions of dollars and still have created a prison with golden bars. And you are smart enough to see all of that and rearrange your life in order to make this big shift. And so final pieces of advice that you would give. The vast majority of people that are listening live in the results economy. They're entrepreneurs, they're small business owners, or they're people that work in a company but they want to have their own business or they want to. They're in careers that how much money they make is totally contingent upon their Ability to produce a result and making money is one thing. Saving money and investing money are two different things. So out of all the stuff that David Bok has done, any other words of wisdom or anything that we didn't ask you that we should have asked you, that you would like to speak to. And then I want to give the listeners your web websites and anything that you recommend of yours that they should look at, read, invest in, attend, whatever. So that's kind of how I want to wrap this up. And I spent way too much time talking like don't you love my Questions are like 10 minute long statements and.

Pontifications and I'd like to interview again. I love listening to you and I barely got to hear Dean talk today. I mean you guys are such. You both, you are so amazing. And you are a giver by the way. Joe, you're the biggest giver I know and I think you're such a classic example. You have made a success of your life by doing what you love and you love people and you've built an entire huge business and brand around. The reality is you are a connector and you are a giver. And so I don't know, I just feel really grateful that you and I got to meet all the way back in 97 and we've built a friendship over all these years. And you are a classic example somebody really. I can list a handful of people like this that you always have given to me and never asked for anything in return, which makes me always want to give to you. You know, that's the way it works. And you know, I just. This is going to go off in a tangent way but everything I've tried to teach people is really about how to live their best life. Like to me the whole part about money is, is just the reason to get your money fixed is that when you fix your finances, you free yourself. And so my belief is that we've got this, you know, we're all given these God, these God given talents and that we've all got these special things inside of us that need to come out. And so often what holds us back is our finances. And when you fix your finances, you free yourself. So you know, that's bigger is not want to teach people about their money. It's not the money, it's to free yourself to live your best life. And most parts of living your best life, it actually doesn't take money. And I guess gonna take us a little bit into the spiritual part here. But I think a really important thing is to have your I love you's in check and what I mean by that. And I haven't really ever talked about this, it's just this is kind of where I'm evolving to. I think when I look at my sabbatical, the best part of my sabbatical is I got to spend time with the people I love the most most. And you know, my realization from that sabbatical was, you know, everybody who really loves me, like the people I really spend time with, none of them give a shit what I do work wise. They were just excited to be with, to spend time with me. All my friends from high school and college, like, they don't care that they were like, great, you're on a sabbatical, you're not working. So I can see you, like it.

Got in the way more than anything, probably, right?

Yeah. And I think my kids like just liked having me around. And I guess the realization of like, you know, this idea of having your love, I love you in check, you know, we always think we're going to get time to spend with people we love. Like, you know, I'll see you in a year, you know, we don't spend enough time with the people that we love. And I've been really trying to say to my friends, like, you know, call your parents, like call mom and dad and you know, call your brother and your sister and call that friend that you haven't talked to in a while that you miss. Like, do it now. You know, maybe make a. Maybe instead of making a list of like your business stuff today, why don't you make a list of 10 people that you love the most and call one a day for the next 10 days and just call them and tell them. You know what? I was listening to this podcast about who do I love the most in life and you're on my list, man. And I just want you to know I love you and I just tell a person all the reasons you love them. Tell them now instead of waiting. Because sometimes we don't get a chance to tell people we love and then they're to going. And so I would just, I guess end this by saying, pick up the phone today and call somebody you love you haven't connected with in a while and tell them how much you love them and how much you've missed them because they probably love you and miss you too.

That is really, really good advice. List of 10 people you love the most and call them and tell them now that you do. I mean, truly, that may sound simple to some People and like, oh well yeah, that sounds good. But to really do that. And I will tell you both my parents, my father died in 2003. I spent the last year of his life pretty much being his primary caretaker and I got to spend a good chunk of time with him and we didn't have the greatest relationship. My father was a very broken person in a lot of ways because my mother died when I was 4. And he literally spent most of his life heartbroken from that. Never really overcame it because he just didn't quite know how. But he tried the best he knew how to it do do. And people like some of my closest friends have died. I've had those situations and there's a lot to be said. Something can be gone immediately and if you don't take the time for it now, you will regret it later. It's just like your health, if you don't take time out for your health now, you're going to take time out with poor health later. So there are assets and you got to protect the asset and the asset is you. The asset is your relationship. The asset is your family. The asset is your loved one ones. And that's really profound advice that you just gave there. So thank you.

Yeah, you are so welcome.

Dean, since you've been like dominating this whole conversation, is there anything that you want to final words just to get the last word in or something? Although it'll probably be me that gets the last word in.

No, I think it was fantastic, David. I mean, I don't know how many people that are listening to this have thought or fantasized about taking a sabbatical. And I think that the kind of practical stuff that you shared about it is going to motivate some people, even if it's not. They take a year, but maybe take a summer or take the month of December or just something to get recharged. Your voice just sounds energized, which is. Is exciting.

Yeah.

And we do know at least several hundred thousand people will listen to this over the next few weeks, which is good. And what I would encourage people. There's wisdom here coming from David that if you know, a busy, overworked, burnt out business owner, male, female, whatever, please share this episode with him and tell them in the later part of it, you know, we talk about David's, you know, marketing success in the beginning, but we really get into taking care of yourself later into it. I mean it could really, really shift someone's whole life and perspective. I mean this is one of those episodes where someone could hear it. And it could really save them from heart attacks. It could save them from complete and utter burnout. And seeing a guy as busy as David who has more opportunities thrown at him every week than some people get in a lifetime. And to get to the point mentally where he could still say, no, I've got to take care of myself. I got to recharge or replace my batteries. I mean, that's, that's a big thing. I mean, anyone that's not running an empire can say, well, you don't need to show up to work and deal with all these obligations. But when you're running a big machine, it's a lot easier to talk about it than it is to actually do it and to set it up. But he pulled it off. And where you are on the other side is just a game changer. And I think this episode would be a real game changer for a lot of people. So please share this episode. Please comment on what you thought about it@ilovemarketing.com David, now what do you recommend for what you're doing right now? Books that, you know, obviously read. The Automatic Millionaire. You can read all of David's books. They're great. What can people do to get plugged into the current stuff that you're up to? And what are you most excited about right now?

First of all, guys, thank you so much. I loved doing this with you and I can't wait to see you at your conference. And Dean, I'm going to follow up with you later about what we talked about earlier about doing a sabbatical book together. So you know where I would send people come to my website, finishrich.com finishrich.com I'm excited to get involved in updating that website because the website needs a whole new refresh. So we're working that. But finishrich.com you can join our community where we've got hundreds of thousands of people and I'll keep you abreast of the new stuff we got going on. And facebook.com David Bach, you can join our community. I'd love to hear people enjoyed, enjoyed this podcast. Come on, come on Facebook and tell me what you thought because to me, this is like a new part of my journey. I haven't really talked about the sabbatical and I'd love to hear if this is resonating with people and hear what questions you have. And you know, ironically, what I'm excited the most. I don't know if ironically, what I'm the most excited about right now is that I AM actually, come September 1st, I am updating the Automatic Millionaire.

Oh, wow.

And I'm updating that book because first of all, it's been 10 years. And when I went out on the road this year, so many people share with me how that book had changed their life and asked me what's changed. And I realized if I only have a year left to live, that's the one book I want to make sure is updated and I can continue to get that message out to people. So I'm updating that book. I'm going to create a new program to continue to teach that next year. And so I'm super, super passionate about that. And then I think I'm going to do a book on sabbatical. I haven't figured out yet exactly what that book looks like, but I'm going to start writing that book as a gift to give to friends. And I want to start sharing this message about the sabbatical because I think that it really can help a lot of people. And I think it's not, you don't need a year off. But I think everyone could start thinking about this idea of taking a month or two months or three month break at some point in the next two or three years. And I think if. More I think we need to rethink the concept of retirement. I think working our whole life to retire in our 60s or our 70s is in some ways it's almost antiquated. And I think we should start thinking through how we can do breaks more often because. Because I think if we take more breaks, we're gonna go a lot longer in life and we're gonna be of service more in life. And so I wanna figure out how I can be an advocate for that. And it's funny cause I wanna end on talking about somebody else's book for one second. You know, you and I are friends with R.N. huffington and you promoted her book Thrive. I still talk about Thrive because I think that that right now is the best book out there on this whole idea of this changing the way we think about our lives. So until I write my book on the sabbatical, I think the book Thrived. If you haven't read that book yet, people need to go out and read that book because I think it is time for us to rethink our priorities in life. And you know, you can be an entrepreneur and be in touch with your soul and have your I love yous in check. It is actually all possible. So I want to give that gift to more people.

That's awesome. That's awesome. And by the way, people@ilovemarketing.com can watch the interview video with Arianna on Thrive right there, which is great. And if you do want to see David in person, meet him in person. Geniusnetworkevents.com David will be presenting this year and the event is almost sold out. So we will have it sold out in literally the next three weeks. It'll be completely sold out. So yeah. But if you're interested, geniusnetworkevents.com that's for obviously high level entrepreneurs. I'd love to hear the comments everyone. So please post them and again share this episode. We'd really appreciate it. I know it'd be helpful for so many people and you're a rock star, David. So thank you for taking the time and just love hearing always great talking with you and I do want to read that book so write that book on the subject Sabbatical. Because that, that is so. That, that's so right. What I what I love to just digest right now and it's good stuff. So thanks for taking the time.

Your sabbatical coach Joe.

Perfect. Yeah. You have no, you've just created an obligation on that one. It'll be worthwhile. And so thanks and thanks everyone and we'll talk to you on the next.

Episode of I love Knock Market. Awesome guys. Be well.