Embracing Your Creative Confidence with Kenny Nguyen and Superannuation In Australia with Sam Henderson

Welcome to Take the Lead Radio with Dr. Diane Hamilton, where she interviews some of the most successful leaders, entrepreneurs, authors, speakers, and other individuals who will inspire you to take the lead in your career and personal life. And now, here is Dr. Diane Hamilton.

Welcome to Take the Lead Radio. This is Dr. Diane Hamilton, and we've got a great show today because we've got Kenny Nguyen and Sam Henderson, Sam the Money Man, here. In the house. Kenny Nguyen is a really interesting guy. He's the CEO and co-founder of 368, and he can really give you some great advice about how to give great presentations from his big fish presentations that he, he's written a book about it. He had a company that dealt with it and he's on his third, I think, company now. So we're going to talk to him about what he's working on. And Sam, the money man Henderson, is very well known in Australia. He is the CEO and senior financial advisor at Henderson Maxwell. He's also known for his Fox Sky News business show. So we're going to talk to both of them, and we're going to talk to them right after this.

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I am here with Kenny Nguyen, who is the CEO, co-founder of 368, a strategic marketing agency that challenges brands to embrace their creative competence. Prior to this, he founded Big Fish Presentations, a company whose mantra is turning presentations into experiences. His client work has included brands like GE, Verizon, CenturyLink, Quantacast, NASA. I mean, the list goes on and on. It would take me a while to read it. He's been featured as speaking platforms on like TEDx, Google Talks, HubSpot Inbound Conference, and General Assembly. He has contributed on Forbes, Entrepreneur Magazine, Yahoo, Business Insider, Mashable, Huffington Post, and the Washington Post. And he co-authored the McGraw-Hill published book, The Big Fish Experience: Create Memorable Presentations That Reel in Your Audience. And since that's released in 2016, it's been translated in 2 additional languages. So that's exciting. It's nice to have you here, Kenny Nguyen Nguyen Nguyen.

Thank you so much, Diane. I'm super excited to be here. And like, thanks for reading that super long bio. You've convinced me to shorten it now, like every good presentation.

Oh, it's probably my fault because I like to read so much of what people do because I like to give the background. And I appreciate the instruction on how to say your last name properly. I won't call you Kenny Nguyen like you said they did, but I was going to tell you my kids got the last name of Rothpletz, which is R-O-T-H-P-L-E-T-Z. And they have to spell that all day long. So I think they feel your pain.

I feel them. And like, you know, that last name is a very common Vietnamese last name. I was telling you a story earlier that during my 8th grade graduation, like, I thought I was super clear, but they still pronounced it wrong. And that's the thing. It's a conversation piece. It's always like, how do you really present— like, how do you really speak about what that last name— how do you pronounce it? And you always tell them, like, let me give you a little cultural lesson actually behind that. So it's always a good fun conversation piece.

You know, when I was in lending, I had the Northern California as my territory. And that was really a common last name when I was doing loans. So you'd think I'd learn to pronounce it correctly by now.

Yeah. No worries. You got it perfect, Diane.

You're good. Yay. Well, it's very exciting to have you on the show because I'm really interested in some of the things that you have done. The big fish thing, can we start there? Because I liked your TED Talk, by the way.

Oh, thank you. That big fish thing happened while I was a college student, actually. Long story short, I attended LSU during my college years, and around 2011, I say, was when I attended a really boring presentation. And so Big Fish, just for everyone out there, is a company that helps people tell amazing stories through great presentation design, presentation training, and also conference production and video production. Really what it aimed to do is we wanted to rid the world of boring experiences. We still do it today as a service line of 368, but it all stems back from this college this college club that I attended where we had a super boring speaker come and present. So what happened was we had a guy from a Fortune 200 company come in. I remember I was the guy that was in charge of making sure he had all his AV setup. And so when he came in, he gave me his USB drive. I remember when the guy said, "Hey man, make sure my presentation's not too much," I was thinking, What do you mean? You have like 30 minutes, man. And I remember when he, when I put in the USB drive, oh man, Diane, I saw 200 slides. I saw 200 slides. I just looked at him. I was like, don't do this. Don't do this, man. And he went and gave the presentation. I remember it was about 2 hours instead of 30 minutes. And he read off every single slide, started laughing at his own jokes. And further, that made it even worse. We started answering his own questions. So he started asking questions and answering them. And during that moment, I started thinking, to myself, you know, what if there was a company that can really help people tell amazing stories, but also help presenters like these become better? And I started thinking, like, you know, if companies that's large, like, have weak presenters like this, chances are I could probably create a business to help them, because I always felt like I was a great public speaker. And so it dawned on me that, why don't we help these companies better present and better tell stories? And so we formed the company Big Fish Presentations. And I actually dropped out of college to pursue it full-time after, crazy enough, one of my advisors, when I was coming in to talk about my future college career, she told me, "You know what? You should intern at this new startup in town called Big Fish Presentations. I think you really like it. It seems like it would be your vibe." I told her, "Actually, I own that company," and she was like, "What?" And I told her, "Yeah, that's literally my company. I'm a student too, though." And she flat out just took off her LSU student administrator cap and said, I'm gonna give you a real dose of reality right now. What are you gonna do after college? I told her this. She's like, then do it. You can always go after— you, you can always go back to college, but this, this doesn't come every day, right? Make the most out of it. And that's when I pursued it full-time, and that's where like my story really began, I felt.

That's interesting. Did you ever go to college, or did you just continue?

I did.

You did?

Would you go? Yeah, I did. So I would— I, I— so I did go back a semester. So like by the time I left, I was a sophomore, and After leaving, I just felt the societal pressure to go back. I had to finish. Also a cultural pressure being Vietnamese. Education is something very prized within the Vietnamese culture. And I remember just thinking to myself, this is stupid. I'm not giving my 100% to either one of these. And for me, you never half-ass something, you whole-ass something. That's all I always say. And my dad always tells me. And so I'm like, might as well just whole-ass this company right here and see where we can really take it. And that's when things started changing. So, you know, I don't tell everyone to drop out of college, but I do say, like, you know, don't mistake things as a default priority. Just because college is, like, what society says doesn't mean it's always the right choice. There's always alternatives out there. Don't just think you have to do this because society tells you you have to do it, because everyone has a different definition of success. Everyone's journey is different.

Well, yeah, and definitely, I mean, Bill Gates and Others might agree with you.

I know Bill Gates, but I'll tell you, they do— they did have the idea that there are alternative ways of learning, and sometimes the best college is, you know, the hard knock life out there, or like just the elbow grease that you get when you go out, you know. And without— you know, it hurts way more when you lose a $50,000 deal than getting an F in a class. And that's something that like I had to go with, where I had to go— where I had to go pitch against someone, and I remember just not getting there on time and not doing the right proposal because I had to study for an exam. I failed exam. I didn't get the proposal. I remember just looking at it, I'm like, this one hurts way more. What am I doing?

Yeah, well, that's it. You know, I was looking— I loved your little video where you called yourself the Cajun Asian. Now you're from— oh yeah, Louisiana.

So that's—

yeah, okay. So you have a background as a musician and you went for to be a chef. You, you have a very eclectic background, but you're creative, right? That's your overall theme, I see.

Yeah, it's weird. It's like, so I met my business partner Gus through music, and so, you know, I'm nowhere as great a musician as he is, but we vibed over that. But when I was a kid, you know, I— in order to get out of trouble, the way that I got out of trouble was going in the kitchens and learning and really just applying like all that boundless energy and that ADHD I had into like, let's make some really good things for people that can bring people together. Unfortunately, I missed a chance for a culinary scholarship, and so I left the country and kind of reevaluated my like, you know, my around— this is like all when I was like 17, when I left the country too, went to Vietnam to go really reflect and see like, what do I really want to do? And during this time, uh, it came down on me is that what I really want to do is I really want to open a business. I want to learn how to run a business, and maybe one day I'll, you know, I'll open a restaurant. Who knows?

Well, how'd you learn to run a business?

Well, funny enough, I started an entrepreneur organization at LSU after seeing there was no entrepreneur organizations at LSU. I never had a business, but I surrounded myself with people that built businesses. And what I did was I wrote a petition before, uh, I started the company, where essentially I went up to all the local CEOs in town. We're talking about like, you know, one was like a $6 billion company, other is a $1.5 billion company. These CEOs were like, yeah, they don't have an entrepreneurial organization at LSU, I'll sign your petition. And then from that, I got into their network, right? And so they would come in as speakers, and I would learn from them, and then they would eventually mentor me, and then start giving me the confidence saying that, you know what, while I might still be in college, you can be an entrepreneur anytime that you want. It just depends on how much value do you really bring to the world. I started— that's when I started thinking like, what's something that can be brought to the world? And to me, like, in the beginning, I failed my first business. I don't talk about this one too often, actually. I failed my first business, um, doing Wii whiteboards, which is basically I could turn any Wii remote controller into an infrared pen if I hooked it up to like a Nintendo Wii remote. So I can basically turn any whiteboard that you have into a smart board where basically the infrared pen can draw. Yeah, it was cool, but I didn't know the technology as well as I should, and it was a commodity. I really had to think about what do people really need? And I find that if you can alleviate a lot of fears in people's lives, like public speaking is commonly— like glossophobia is one of the most common fears. Yeah, you know, if you can eliminate that, there's a business for that where you can eliminate fears.

I mean, right, well, you're obviously a really good speaker, and I'd like to talk about helping people speak because I have a lot of people who listen to this. Some of them are Hall of Fame speakers and they know how to do it, but a lot of them have to speak and don't know how to do it. A lot of them want to have TED Talks, or TEDx Talks I should say, a lot of them. And you know, with the TED, they have the formula, they have, you know, they want you to tell stories, they want you to do certain things, you know, uh, don't use PowerPoints unless it's pictures, or, you know, there's all these different messages of how to give a great presentation. I know you have the 3 parts, the content, design, deliver type of thing. Can you just— what is— what do you do if you're just not the greatest speaker but you want to be a better speaker and you have a terrible memory? And if you don't have your bulleted PowerPoint 200-slide presentation like that guy, or whatever he said he had, what would you tell that guy if he says, oh, I just can't remember it if I don't look at my slides?

Yeah, I mean, like, the default answer a lot of people say is presentation notes, but what I do tell people that, like, if you have a problem remembering a whole entire, like, 15-minute presentation, you gotta chunk your time. So essentially, I do the same thing where, you know, if I have to present just for 10 minutes or, like, 15 minutes, I don't rehearse all the way through the first session. We have an outline in the Big Fish book where we separate things that we discuss. So the first is you rehearse your intro, then you rehearse, like, your first major point, your second major point, then your third major point, and you rehearse your closer individually. I find that when you are able to rehearse different parts of your presentation, you can really perfect that certain part. Then you can bring it together to see how well it melds. You're more able to remember it even if you don't have like the greatest memory. It's just really daunting. Like think about this, Diane, if I told you to remember 30 minutes of material, you could think like, okay, I have to be like an actor or an actress, right? I have to like perform the right body movements, the right facial gestures. I have to say the right tone and voice for each, going through 30 minutes of rehearsal on that, and let's say you screw up, you're going to like throw your phone at the wall or something thinking, "Oh." That's why if you break it down, it's like how do you eat an elephant? You take a bite at a time. It's the same thing with great presentations, is a little bit at a time. Rehearse a little bit at a time and you'll get there.

Yeah, that's a common thing I talk to my doctoral students about because they got to write hundreds of pages sometimes for their doctoral dissertation, and it's overwhelming. You have to take things a little bit at a time. But in speaking, you know, there's certain personality types that are just— they're natural to it. You know, they just have that— maybe they, you know, Southern preacher kind of outgoing, you know, magnetic, whatever it is, thing. Or then there's other people. How do you develop your personality without trying to imitate something that you're not, you know what I mean?

Yeah, 100%. Um, people always tell me, they always compare themselves like, I want to be Steve Jobs, you know, because he's really seen as like the— for real, he's always seen as like the archetype of like what a great presenter is. I mean, you probably heard before, it's like, I want to be the Steve Jobs of this. Yeah, you know, and while like he, in my opinion, is one of the best presenters in this modern era, I'll tell you this is that no one's going to be Steve Jobs because he became the best version of himself. I always tell people like, don't try to— you can learn from the best, but don't try to be like the best. Be your own version of what the best looks like. Essentially, you have a unique definition of success. It's the same thing with presentations. You want to be able to look at yourself and say, I'm the best version of Kenny Nguyen, I'm the best version of Diane Nguyen. And so once— that's like the first is acceptance, accepting that I'm going to be The best version of myself. That makes a huge stride in what you are. The second though is actually like when you do rehearse, it's really important to actually watch yourself, like actually record and watch yourself. And the reason why Diane is like, we're our biggest critics, and if you're able to watch yourself and play it and you can't stand this presentation, I mean like that's— there you go, you know, like you're not in the right. Yeah, and like that's the thing with my TED Talk. I was telling you about earlier is like I watched it about 4 or 5 times. After the 5th time, I went, "I can't sit through this anymore." And I just didn't love it. I just didn't feel the spark and the emotion. I think every great talk, you have to tug at the heartstrings. You have to tell data that like sounds human. You have to be able to engage with the audience and make them laugh, make them smile, make them feel something like in the first 30, 60 seconds because that's where you build bonding and rapport. So to me, My gut check, and it's not like I don't know any other presenters that do this, is like, if you can watch your talk more than 5 times, you're in a good place. Because you would never ever want to give a presentation that you wouldn't want to sit through yourself. And the thing is, you are able to improve yourself in ways that you never thought you could when you watch your own presentation. Because, you know, people can pick up my book, you know, The Big Fish Experience, and try to learn every theory, but that's a freaking lot. You have to go through content, you have to go design, you have to go through delivery, but if all you do is just watch yourself present, you can then figure out what exactly do you need to fix, because everyone knows what a bad presentation looks like. It's just like people don't know how to give it. And so if you're actually able to see it, you'll be able to say, okay, I need to fix my tone, I'm pacing too fast. Those are the most common things. The other ones is my facial features right now are like, I'm not smiling enough. Those are things that you can immediately tell within the first 30 seconds.

Right. Well, you know, I've noticed that men seem to have a more dynamic delivery in general, you know what I mean? When I see speakers, do you— what do you think women have the most challenging times with when they come to you and needed help?

I actually think it's the opposite.

Oh, you do?

Um, yeah, with my— at least with my clients. Um, I think the women that we work with, they— I mean Shoot, they're honestly like, these women that like we get to work with and the women I get to see, yeah, they're just better, more easily coached. But also, uh, at the same time, they're able to relate more emotionally, I guess. Like, you know, maybe, you know, it's an objective fact, or like, honestly, like, maybe women are able to relate more emotionally from the get-go than a man. But, you know, there's— it's different circumstances, but I'll tell you, like, the women that I do coach, they're able to, like, connect much more quickly with the audience, but the men also do just fine after, like, a little bit of mentioning. But I feel like it's second nature to some of the women clients that we have. They're able to, like, yeah, they're immediately able to, like, say, you know, I'm just gonna open up with a story. I'm just gonna tell a funny story about my life. I'm gonna tell a personal story about my life. They default to a story, and that's always great because stories are great ways to build bonding rapport with an audience. Either that, or they'll say, like, you know, how about I just tell, you know, a testimonial or, like, some, like, Well, how about I just talk to someone in the audience? I'm like, that's exactly what you need to do, is that when you go on stage and you become a lecturer, no one's listening because you're back in college. But if you're having a conversation with someone in the audience and the audience aren't observers but participants, that's when the real magic happens. And obviously, the venue makes a huge difference where, not to go on a tangent, but the other day, You know, one of my mentors who worked at Disney told me, you know, whenever you go into a conference room, you know, or on a stage, and you see that you're leveled above the audience's eyes, your audience is more likely to be an observer rather than a participant. So you try to find a stage where you can actually meet your audience's eyes. That's where they become more participatory than being an observer.

That's interesting.

And so, yeah, and so like being able to pick up on those cues more easily and be able to read on that and like finding ways to connect with audiences much quicker. That's super important. So the women clients that we do have tend to move pretty quickly on that. They're able to connect and bond because, you know, as a presenter, when you're on stage, I think you just want that security knowing that people in the room have your back.

Right, right. Well, I think sometimes you're on a big stage, you don't have a lot of choices in some of those, you know, depending on where you are. And I imagine on TED it's easier because you are kind of on the same level.

What did you— You're below, actually.

Oh yeah, you are, aren't you?

Yeah, you are below. So that is very intentional.

Yeah. And what would you have done differently? You said you didn't really like your TED Talk. I mean, what advice would you give somebody who wants to do a TED Talk? What have you learned?

You know, I actually just went at it, and I found like if there's actually like a creative process to making great presentations. So for me, I always thought to myself, like, I'm going to teach people how to say no, but I didn't flesh out a real big idea. And to me, a big idea is your central argument for the presentation that would challenge someone's way of thinking. And so for me, The Art of Saying No, the TEDx talk that I gave, it was all about how most people wield the sword of yes, but many don't wield the shield of no. If you wield the shield of no, you're more likely to protect yourself.. And I know there are people that out there are saying, you know, we love to say yes, you know, rather than no. Yes makes you feel more fulfilled, but I disagree. And it's a great thing because once you disagree, people are more likely to have an illicit response, are more likely to trigger a response, right? Because I find that like, especially in negotiations, if you hear the same thing over and over, Diane, let's say you're buying a car, over and over and over and over again, everyone giving you the same pitch, you're gonna think like they all sound the same. If someone says something that you might disagree with, You'll immediately go, no, that's not true. And then that's when you start talking, and that's when you realize, like, oh man, I can't coast on this. And that's the same thing, is that big ideas are meant to make the other person say, mm, I don't know about that, but let me show you. And like, my job as a presenter said, I know you don't really— you aren't really convinced, but let me work on you with that. And then finally, once I found the big idea of my presentation, the rest fell into place, like my call to action. Was motivating people to wield the shield of no. And then like my main points, I told through stories, and I worked on my opener last. The reason why I work on my opener last is I always tell people, you always have to begin with the end in mind. So work on your big idea, your call to action first, and then your opener last, because it will always make more sense when you know where you're going, when you plan the trip.

A little Stephen Covey, right? Okay, I like that.

Yeah, yeah, it's— I learned this though. I learned this all like— this is something I wish I learned before, but this is the process I follow in all my speeches now, is big idea first, call to action next. It can be a demand, an offer, or a question. Those are 3 different types of call to actions. What are my 3 main points? I think, you know, if you're able to distill into rule 3, people are more likely to remember. I usually say, like, if you have 3 main points, tell it in tweetable lines so people can, like, actually, like, tweet it, or they're more easily remember it. Then work on your opener last. Yeah, it's like, it's more social media. You think about, like, 140 characters should make a main point.

That's not much, but I'll tell you what, you're more likely to remember it now though.

Yeah, it is like, uh, maybe I gotta change it, but no, maybe I should.

Yeah, you know, well, at least you have a little bit more room to, to, uh, get your point out now. But that's, that's really fascinating because I, I think a lot of people, you know, it's pretty common people say, you know, look for the contrary viewpoint on what you're doing or what your point is, and that can be sometimes hard for some topics to find the thing that is not the way everybody thinks. Yeah. You know what I mean?

For sure. Don't be a lecturer. Best thing is like a lecture is just informing, like, right? Be a conversationalist. Uh, in a conversation you're trying to get something outta the other person. It's not just like, I'm gonna buy from you. It's their wants, it's their needs. It's an emotional response. And presenters need to be conversationalists, not lecturers.

Interesting. Well, in that situation they can't respond back. So how you have a conversation if they don't respond back?

Either you hear in the Q&A or you can tell in their body language. You can tell if someone disagrees with your body language. For one thing, people say like when you see the crossed arms, it's arguable because sometimes people cross their arms because it's comfort. There's other little telltale signs like they avoid eye contact, they look past you, they put their arms at the back of their head and they lean back. Usually when I see that, I can tell like that other person wants to reclaim the power in the room. If I see them kick back, and they put their arms in the back of their head, or they, you know, like another one is if they say something to me, I see is like a little crease in their forehead when they squint a little bit with their eyebrows. There's certain little telltale signs that you can tell if someone doesn't agree with you, and a good presenter will be able to address that.

Right. Well, you know, it's, it is, it's very challenging to get people engaged, and I've seen that a lot of people on my show have done these great TED Talks, and I think a lot of people would like to, to learn how to do other kinds of talks as well. But I'm curious, when all the work you did for this first— well, second technically, your second company— how did that lead to this 368?

Yeah, so 368, we always want to extend the conversation past the stage. So we work with people on the stage, we want to work with people off the stage, and that people includes like brands. So we want to help Big Fish always helps people become more influential because public speaking, if you nail it right, you become a thought reader. You really a thought leader in a real— a thought leader. And when you become a thought leader, people listen to you. Well, these brands want the same thing. You know, they want to be heard. They want to be influential. And we thought to ourselves, you know, we need to extend their influence on and off the stage. So, you know, we help people with their presentations. Like Unilever is one of our clients. So we help Unilever with their with their, some of their keynote presentations for their speakers. We also helped their HR department with marketing. So we merged actually with a company called Hatchet, 368 feet down the road, hence the name 368, to become a strategic marketing firm where, you know, we do, we specialize in digital, digital marketing. But that comes on where we also still do the presentation stuff. I find that great presenters need to be heard, not only in the audience, but also throughout the world. And that's why it came as a hand-in-hand service, is that we can make the people in your company and also your brand become more influential. That's what it's all about for us, is influence.

Well, you do some amazing work, and I'm glad you had a chance to talk about a couple of those things. I thought maybe you could also mention this Assembly Required. What is that?

Oh, it's our conference series that we do. So I'm kind of crazy, Diane, where that I really believe that if you're going to claim that you do a service, you better do it for yourself. And so Assembly Required is literally everything that we do as a company put into a conference series that we market and curate and deliver ourselves. So we just had the Assembly Required Creatives in Tech one last Friday, and it was a great success. We had speakers all over the country come in, from like Moët Chandon, GE, Facebook.

Wow, oh my God.

And we curate, yeah, we curate these, Hey, if y'all want to see any of the talks, assemblyrequiredla.com/videos. You can see that, show what we do. But it's really great because we actually practice what we preach, and that's what we gut check, you know, how can we get better at our service lines? Because sometimes we might not have the work or a client that would trust with this insane idea. Like, you know, on Friday I came in on a DeLorean, you know, in the middle of the crowd, where I came in with the Back to the Future car with like smoke coming out. It looks like an insane person would think about it, but people loved it. Oh, wow. But now I can say we did it, and here's actually the video and how people loved it. And that's why, you know, whenever we go and pitch these big crazy ideas, people believe us because we do it for ourselves. We do it for our community down here in Louisiana because, you know, 368, we're all about challenging our clients and our community to embrace creative confidence. And we do the same thing through our conference series where we actually challenge our audience members embrace your creative confidence. So we do it ourselves as well. And hopefully through, by example, our clients saying like, well, you know, they actually try it too. So they're not just pitching to us, right? Right. Because they want to do the work. They actually believe it and they have the experience doing it for themselves.

Well, you've done a lot, and I'm wondering if it's only— do you focus all nationally, right? This is not just in Louisiana that your company—

yeah, we actually, um, have more national clients than local clients.

Okay, I just want to make sure people know that because we keep talking about Louisiana and I do want people to it was just a Louisiana-based thing.

No, we're just passionate about Louisiana. Uh, we want more work in Louisiana, but quite frankly, like, you know, we're working on like the more creative ideas, like clients like accepting these more creative ideas, but it's getting there. Um, we definitely invest a lot into the community. I mean, we're even moving our offices in the next 2 months into another space where like an up-and-coming district in Baton Rouge, because we're all about staying in Louisiana and making it better. I mean, the town here is great. Yeah, it's like 700— no, it's like a couple miles, but at the end of the day, you can be wherever you are in the world and do great work. You just have to know the right people. Luckily, we play in some good networks where we can meet the right opportunities.

Well, this was so much fun. Thank you so much, Kenny Nguyen, for being on the show. I really enjoyed talking to you. If there's any other website, is that the main one? Assemblyrequiredla.com. Any— what— anything else you'd like to share?

Yeah, if y'all want to see any, any of my talks, you can go to the, uh, my personal website, thekennynguyen.com. Uh, it's just my name, K-E-N-N-Y-N-G-U-Y-E-N with the T-H-E right in front of it. Um, you can see my former TED Talk, my Assembly, uh, or my HubSpot talk as well, How to Be the Coolest Person in Your Funeral, on there as well. Yeah, that was, that was an interesting one.

That's great. Okay, well, it's so nice of you to be on the show, and I really, really enjoyed this. This was fun, and we'll be back right after this message. Have you met with your financial planner recently to discuss avoiding negative consequences in your retirement? How to prolong taking Social Security benefits, create additional funding streams, and avoid taking funds out of your portfolio are questions that individuals 62 and older should consider. However, it's never too early to know your options. Once spent, retirement portfolio funds are gone. However, a reverse mortgage will utilize some of the equity you've built up over time and still allow you to enjoy the benefit of living in and enjoying your home, as well as the ability to leave remaining equity to your heirs. It's time to explore this powerful tool and see why many of the greatest retirement researchers have embraced reverse mortgages and elite NMLS-certified reverse mortgage professional can help you explore the benefits of reverse mortgages. There's only 143 of them in the country. Find out how Nina Penny Nguyen, who has this distinguished certification, can help you with your reverse mortgage and planning needs. You can reach her at Nina@SimpleReverseMortgage.net or call her at 480-635-2410, NMLS 168272, Arizona. Arizona Wholesale Mortgage Incorporated, 19254. I am here with Sam Henderson, who is the CEO and senior financial advisor at Henderson Maxwell. He's also known as Sam the Money Man. He hosts Fox 10 Sky News Business Your Money, Your Call Retirement and financial guru on 10's The Project. He's the author of The One Page Financial Plan. He's a regular columnist for Financial Review's Smart Money and Money Magazine. And when he isn't doing all of that, he's a public speaker and presenter on all things financial. So it's so nice to have you here, Sam.

Good morning, Diane. It's a great pleasure to be joining you here.

Uh, well, you're actually here in Arizona, right?

I'm here in Arizona. I'm doing a bit of a conference with a group of entrepreneurs, learning how to be a better entrepreneur, I suppose, and just sharpening my skills.

Well, you're here with Joe Polish's group, and I've gone to those events. They're amazing, right? You're at a— are you at the Genius Network event? Not this time.

I am. I'm at the GeniusX event, which is a group of probably about 25 of Joe's group, and they are the most inspirational group that I've met in quite some time. And it's absolutely worth the effort from flying from Sydney, Australia over to the beautiful Arizona that I'm learning so much about over the last few days.

It is nice here. I haven't been to Australia, but it's on my list. I don't know if I could handle that airplane ride.

It is a long way. I'm not going to lie to you. It's a long way from Australia. It's about 13.5 hours to LA and then obviously about an hour and a half from LA to here. So it's a fair hike.

Yeah.

But it's absolutely worth it.

Well, you have your own shows that you do and I've seen a lot of interviews and I think you have— I think it'd be interesting to hear your perspective of the financial issues in Australia versus what we see here because I I was watching all your shows and everything is superannuation.

I'm like, what?

What? You know, we don't have— what is this?

Superannuation is all about retirement. So it's very similar to 401. It has its own laws. It has its own legislation. And of course, there's case studies around all of those sorts of things. So really what I'm answering people's questions is I suppose it's just a matter of putting them at ease about their retirement and giving them a much greater insight into their retirement. Most people don't know how much they need to retire. They don't know how much they need to accumulate during their working life and how much to put aside as they're earning their income in their working life. And quite honestly, the situation in Australia is exactly the same as the situation in the US. The biggest difference between Australia and the US is the population. Everything else is pretty, pretty similar. So the average retirement in Australia, the average person's probably drawing down somewhere around about $40,000 to $45,000 a year. And to accumulate that sort of income, they need a lump sum of somewhere around about $600,000 to $800,000. Now, the market I move in is probably a little bit bigger. The average client is probably over $1 million, but you do typically find that with financial planners because they're the sorts of clients that are seeking advice. They probably have a little bit more insight, a bit more education, and a much greater buy-in to their retirement and a much greater understanding of the retirement system. So that's what I do on a, on a commercial level. But in my media, it's really about answering questions that everyone has. And the key to that is education. And I think that's what, what bridges the divide between those people that have money and those people that don't. It's all about educating yourself about how to lower your taxes and how to build your retirement lump sum.

Well, this is the time of year everybody wants to know about lowering their taxes. So it's too late. Because the year's almost over.

Oh, you know what, it's never too late. It's never too late to educate yourself. And I've written 3 books. They're probably not relevant over here in the US, but a book only costs you $30. You don't have to go and pay a financial planner several thousand dollars a year. You don't have to even pay $30 for a book. Most, most what we found in Australia, and no doubt it's the same here, is that most people educate themselves from the media. Now that can be for the better or for the worse. If you're turning on CNBC every day and you're listening and trying to react to everything you're seeing on TV, there's a reason why they call it the Cartoon Business Network because there's just so much information and a lot of that's about entertainment as well. So I would encourage your listeners to educate themselves about the 401s and any other ways that they can reduce their tax and boost their retirement income.

You know, I interviewed Ken Fisher. He's the genius behind Fisher Investments here, and I was reading one of his books and he was saying that, you know, if you follow the news, that you're too late. Like, all the factors are built in already of what's going to be good for stocks or not for stocks, you know, already, you're too late. Do you agree with that?

I completely agree with that. That's why we call it the Cartoon Business Network, I suppose. And no offense to CNBC, but I work for a very similar organization in Sydney, Australia, and we call it Sky News Business. And you are literally reacting to the news that's already happening. So you're never going to keep up to pace with it. All you're going to do is get confused by more information. People need to set their retirement portfolios around having an asset allocation and making sure that that asset allocation is going to see them through the good times and the bad. And I'm not talking about financially, I'm talking about mentally. It's, it's a, you've got to have a certain amount.

Yeah.

Yeah. You're going to be an emotional mess. I mean, you only have to understand Warren Buffett's theory of Mr. Market, who is an emotional mess. And depending on whether he's optimistic or pessimistic, is going to depend on how he reacts in the day. Now, who wants to spend their retirement sitting in front of a computer monitoring what's happening on the share market? You should be out there playing golf or bowling or travelling. And that's, you know, having spent a lot of time on the American highways, that's what a lot of people are doing and good luck to them. I see them driving their RVs around. And they're towing their little cars behind their RVs. But they're the wealthy Americans. They're the ones that can afford a gigantic RV and the car to pull behind it. Your average American probably can't do that. The average balance in a 401 is about $19,000. That's quite low. Wow. That's just the average. That means they've probably got multiple accounts or the average person is not putting away for their retirement. Interestingly enough, I was just looking at the average salaries in America, which is about $75,000 a year, and that's exactly the same as what it is back home in Australia. The US dollar's worth a little bit more here, of course, but the range is probably— people always like to know what averages are. The average range for income is probably around about $47,000 to about $120,000 in the combined household. So most combined households on average have about $117,000 income in the US. Now that's a pretty good living, but the thing people don't realise is that if you're going to retire on that amount, you're going to have to be saving around about 15 to 20% of what you earn. That's the hard part when the cost of living has been rising for a long time.

Yeah, you know, and a lot of— I'm sure you have the same thing in Australia with the boom more boomers wanting to retire, can't retire. I think I saw one of your videos, people are, the men just got to over 80 and they're going to live over 80 now in Australia. And so everybody's living longer. And you know, it's just, I think it's just very challenging for people to know what to do with their money. And then, I mean, even if you set up your 401 to take out 15% and you're doing, you know, the maximum every year. You watch the stock market, you know, take huge lumps out, you know, you think you've got somewhere and then you're stockier. Is it best to be in the stock market? I mean, I've seen so many people, it seems like everybody that's so wealthy is in real estate. What do you think?

Yeah, it's a really interesting one, isn't it? Sometimes the issue, depending on where you buy real estate, of course, but to answer the ultimate question, it's about diversification. But the average person can't necessarily diversify because they probably don't have enough money to diversify. Whereas wealthy people, they've got high incomes to support a portfolio of assets, be it shares, be it Property, cash, bonds, fixed interest, etc. So what we try to encourage our clients to do is to have a portfolio that is diversified, and that also relates directly to your risk profile or your attitude towards risk and your partner's attitude towards risk, because your partner has often a different attitude towards risk than you might have. And we see that every day, day in, day out. They're always either arguing or discussing or debating how much access or how much exposure they should have to cash and fixed interest or defensive assets versus growth assets. On an entrepreneurial level, I certainly think property is one of the best wealth builders because you can borrow somebody else's money, you can leverage that, and then you can have somebody else repay that debt through the tenant. So the tenant repays the debt that you've got on your home loan. That's a fantastic idea, particularly when interest rates are so low or have been so low. They're moving now. The first time in 10 years over here, and we'll probably see 3 or 4 interest rate rises here. And this is one of the biggest challenges that the share market has is when we see a, a major paradigm shift like we're seeing at the moment, the first time in 10 years, we're seeing interest rates start to rise in the US and that's having an effect on the bond market. That's therefore having an effect on the Dow Jones and on the S&P 500, which has had— the Dow Jones was up 30% this year, and 2 weeks ago it dropped 10% in a week. Now that sends shockwaves through retirees if they have too much exposure to the share market. So I suppose our job as a good financial advisor is to try to encourage people to diversify their investments and make sure they can ride out the ups and downs of the share market and importantly, without too much stress.

You know, I agree with the diversification. I used to be a loan officer and I worked in subprime. I did all kinds of financial— I have a real estate license. I know a little bit about a lot of things, just enough to be dangerous. And so we did see a lot of people get really hurt from subprime loans because we expected the market to stay a certain way and it doesn't. How do you be proactive to know what's the next thing that's going— I mean, you know, like Ken Fisher says, it's already happened in the news. So how do you know what— how do you be proactive?

Well, you have to educate yourself. And if you want to manage your own money, and I suppose this is the big debate, do you manage your own money or do you get a professional to manage it for you? I think you're better off getting a professional to manage it for you in most cases, because unless you want to follow the share market and educate yourself on the property market and educate yourself on the bond market, there's no way you can possibly know and understand how things are going to progress in any of the markets. And then you get tempted, something straight out of left field might happen called Bitcoin and you think, hey, let's get on the Bitcoin thing. It hits $19,000 and then the next week it's sitting at $8,000. So, you know, you've got to be careful. You can't be impulsive and you've got to take a long-term view. So if you're not sure, if it's not your level of expertise, get a professional to do it. Find a good RIA or someone like that that's local, that's recommended by family. Someone that's already tried and true to your loved and trusted community is someone that you need to look—

Well, you mentioned Bitcoin, and I had Wolfgang Kester was on my show, and he's an expert in cryptocurrency and different types of currency, and it's such a hot topic with everybody, and like you said, it's very volatile, but he was saying that all these countries are going to start having their own currency. Do you think that Australia or the US will have their own cryptocurrency this year?

Yeah, listen, it's a great question. I don't think it'll happen this year simply because there needs to be so much regulation. There's a lot of issues with Bitcoin, uh, which are holding it back, I suppose, from becoming mainstream. For example, you can't use it everywhere. It's not like the US dollar. You can literally use the US dollar just about anywhere in the world. Anyone will accept it. It's the world's strongest currency and it's ubiquitous. Yet crypto has not gone to that level yet. Not only that, it's completely unregulated, it's significantly open to hacking, and we've seen that occur in a number of areas already. So it's not necessarily secure. It's not widely— it's obviously not widely recognized, but it's still too complex, and until it's regulated until it's more ubiquitous like the US dollar, it's a long way from being used. So I don't think it's going to happen this year, but I think it will happen at some time in the future. And whether it's Bitcoin or Ethereum or something else, I don't know what it's going to look like, but I can guarantee one thing: the government's going to have its hand in its pocket. And it's unlikely to be Bitcoin.

Yeah. So if the government does come up with their own currency, cryptocurrency like that, what happens to the Bitcoins of the world?

Well, effectively they'll disappear because they're not liquid. Immediately? Immediately as in now? Well, immediately as it's— if the government comes out and says, hey, we've developed our own crypto, I would say they'll be wiped off the planet immediately. I'd say Bitcoin, Ethereum, whatever, they'll be wiped off the planet immediately. I mean, it's like having the US dollar versus the Thai baht. No one's going to use Thai baht here in America. No one, or in Australia. So it just won't be used. So I think on a practical level, all of these things— I mean, we're in new territory here. All of these things need to be tested, but it comes down to liquidity. A currency needs to be liquid, it needs to be utilized, and then we need the systems to be able to facilitate that on an average day. This little thing in my hand here, the iPhone or the Galaxy, whatever it might be, that's probably going to be our wallet. Well, it already is our wallet of the future. So we've still got to move it onto that platform.

You know, it is so fascinating to see what's going to happen and just to look at some of these cryptocurrencies and I just, How do you advise somebody who's thinking of getting into cryptocurrency? First of all, how to get out of it? I mean, I hear so many people tell me they can't, they, oh, they made all this money. I go, well, where is it? They go, well, I have to get it out. And then you say, well, can you get it out? And most of them can't get it out. I mean, how do you get it out? Is it a hard thing to do?

Do you know what, Diane, during the, back in 2007, during the subprime crisis, most people couldn't explain what a subprime loan was. They couldn't understand how they were packaged up into a CDO. They couldn't understand how they were resold and they couldn't understand the entire process of how and why the financial system fell over. Now those people that are buying cryptocurrency, the majority of them probably can't understand what it actually is. They can't understand blockchain and how it operates and even explaining to your friends what it is. So if you can't understand it, if you can't explain it, don't buy it. It's not liquid. It's expensive to exchange. It's unregulated. It's open to being hacked on a regular basis. And we're seeing stories all the time. Some countries are either banning it or trying to regulate it— South Korea, Japan, etc. And that's had huge levels or created huge levels of fluctuations. If you're thinking about investing into this thing, unless you have millions and millions of dollars and you might put, say, 2 to 5% aside for playing with, then don't touch this thing. Seriously, because it's just, it's too unknown. It's too difficult to understand. So don't put your money in it. Put your money in things that you can understand.

The whole mystery behind the guy that started it and where is he and he started talking to the people about what he's done and then he disappeared and is that really an individual? I mean, have they proven this? I mean, is this guy ever gonna come to light? Is it really you?

I'm not sure but it would make the greatest Disney story of all time, wouldn't it? This guy's gonna be like the sleeping prince that gets kicked awake or something. I don't know but it's a fantastical story so I have no idea. I have as much of an idea as anybody else. It is fascinating. It's definitely entertaining and it's riveting. It's like a Hollywood story.

It's great. It is. It is. You know, there's another thing I think is interesting to talk about as we're talking about the things not to do. I have a lot of classes. I teach a lot of business courses still and we do a lot of case case studies. And of course Enron comes up a lot as an example of what I think is a great example, unfortunate example of don't invest your retirement account, all your money in the company for which you work, because if they crash, not only do you lose your job, but you lose your retirement.

Do you agree with how much? Yeah, entirely, entirely. And, uh, uh, a lot of those companies in the past have had their pension schemes backed by the actual company themselves. And that's one of the difficulties that we have when a company falls over because it's only as good as the company behind it. But it also goes towards the theory of diversification, making sure that you've got a number of different assets in a number of different asset classes. So cash, bonds, shares, international shares. I mean, America is not the only market in the world.

Right.

And the beauty of things like ETFs, I mean, we use ETFs extensively in Australia now. And in America, ETFs are seeing huge inflows from what we call managed funds or what do you call managed funds here? Mutual funds. Mutual funds. So we're seeing a huge movement out of mutual funds that tend to be too expensive into ETFs that are easy to trade. They're generally quite liquid. And you can buy just about any market. And the beauty of that is that the average Ma and Pa can go and buy these things and gain diversity in their portfolios quite easily.

You know, you had mentioned a statistic earlier of how low the percentage is that people, or the amount of money people have in their 401. Now, did you happen to look at the group over 50 or over 60 to see how much they had, or was that from like 18 to, you know what I mean? It'd be different.

I didn't break it down, but I can tell you in Australia versus America, it's going to be pretty similar. So in Australia, the average in what we call a superannuation account or similar to a 401 is about $77,000. Let's call it $80,000. But by retirement, for a man, that's around about $320,000. But for a woman, it's about 45% lower. So women tend to have time out of the workforce. They tend to make up a large portion of the part-time workforce. So they don't have the capacity or the propensity to save as much for retirement. Now, those people that have probably divorced— I'm not sure exactly how it works in the US, but in Australia, the retirement pool makes up the asset pool for divorce. But those that divorced 10 or 15 years ago, the women have a lot less than the men because those divorce laws only came about in the 2000s. So we are seeing this massive disparity between men and women of around about 50% of retirement savings. So it's important to help your wife and help your partner to boost their retirement savings and spread the love. You know, that's what we're teaching people over in Australia and hopefully in the US the same thing's happening.

Yeah. I don't know if they're doing a lot of love spreading in that area here. I like the idea of it. And I think that you offer some really interesting advice and I, I want to look at more of your videos because you really have an interesting show and all the things you do are fascinating. Tell me a little about your book real quick. Quick before we have to go because I got to end the show a little earlier today.

But yeah, yeah, no, you're right. Well, it's called the One Page Financial Plan, and the idea is to try to make financial planning as easy as possible because if anyone goes and talks to a financial planner and you're not an expert in financial planning, of course, it can be a very confusing conversation. It's full of jargon. Acronyms and confusing discussions around money that most people don't even want to have. I mean, a lot of people in Australia and in the US are so confused by money that they prefer to stick their head in the sand and either ignore it or not deal with it head-on. So I would encourage you to go and find a financial advisor you can work with or go and educate yourself by buying a book. Go and buy anyone's book, whether it's mine or someone else's. I mean, someone else's is probably going to be more relevant to the US, but there's so many financial planners that have written books. So find out the best ones. I mean, Tony Robbins has got a book on wealth, go and read that. Robert Kiyosaki's books, Rich Dad Poor Dad, Cashflow Quadrant, if you're running a business. I mean, these books are 20 years old now, well, the Rich Dad Poor Dad books, but they are some of the best books ever written on money. And there's so many good books on business as well and I deal a lot with small business and entrepreneurs, and they need to educate themselves on how to manage their money as well because unlike a lot of companies, they don't have retirement plans that are set up for them. They have to do it themselves. So we've got to make sure that they're well equipped, and the best way to be well equipped is through education.

Well, I agree, and I'm glad you brought up the Rich Dad Poor Dad because I had Sharon Lecter on my show and she was great and she was part of that series and it has been a very successful series here and I know you're very successful in Australia and it's so nice of you to join us here in Arizona and across the United States with the show and I really enjoy that. How can people find out more about your show?

Well, I'm on Henderson hendersonmaxwell.com.au. The AU is Australia, so that's hendersonmaxwell.com.au if you want to find out a little bit about me. If anyone's ever in Australia, by all means drop me a line. I'm always over here. I was skiing over here a few weeks ago. I'm back here for another conference and I'm heading back over to San Diego. But Diane, thank you so much for having me on your wonderful show. It's a great honor and a great pleasure.

Oh, well, you're welcome. I'm heading to San Diego soon too. Maybe we'll run into each other there.

I'll see you over there. I'm over there for the Traffic and Conversion Summit and Social Media Marketing World, so it should be a bit of fun.

That might be where I'm going. I'll have to check, but it's so nice. It's so nice. Yeah, it's so nice to have met you, and we will be back right after this message. Robots, self-driving transportation, and a dynamically connected cross-cultural virtual world will define the workplace of tomorrow. Tomorrow. However, education today is mainly focused on technical learning and standardized testing. Is this preparing kids for future leadership? Unfortunately, not so much. That's why LeaderKid Academy offers programs based on the Persona Model and focuses on developing emotional intelligence, project management, change management, mindfulness, assertiveness, ethical leadership, resilience, creativity, creativity and innovation, and presentation skills. LeaderKid Academy offers educator mentoring and training workshops, after-school programs, and ongoing sessions. Unleash the leader in your kid. To learn more, visit leaderkid.org. That's L-E-A-D-E-R-K-I-D dot org. Well, we're out of time. Thank you so much to Kenny Nguyen and to Sam Curren. What a great show. And if you've missed any of our past shows, please go to dianehamilton.com/episodes. You can get there by drdianehamiltonradio.com. There's a lot of different ways to get there, but please sign up to get future episodes. And if you've missed any past episodes, they can all be found there. And we look forward to the next episode of Take the Lead Radio. You've been listening to Take the Lead with Dr. Diane Hamilton on C-Suite Radio.