Find Your One of a Kind: From Knowing the Problem to Fixing Your Retirement | Ideas by Mike™ EP41

So, the 6 moves that I think you can make to jump out of the psychological do what everybody else wants you to do in life way of living is to create a plan, right? To be able to identify who you are. Name the stage that you can't— because you can't step off a stage you don't know you're on. Name the stage you're on and the one you want to get off of. Welcome to the Ideas by Mike podcast. I am Mike Milligan, your host. Today I'm alone because I've got a message that I need you to hear that ties around an up-and-coming singer, the message sociology, and how you are one of a kind. Let's get going.

Headlines screaming, markets on the run.

There's a Canadian singer-songwriter named Nicholas du Rocher. You probably know him by his stage name, Talk. If you don't know him, you will. He reminds me of Meat Loaf, a little bit of Elton John, and in his stage presence, a whole lot like Freddie Mercury. A few years ago, in his parents' basement in Ottawa, Canada, He wrote a song called Runaway Tomorrows. He wrote it in 15 minutes from his parents' basement where he had no plan, no backup. He was just living through the pandemic. The song eventually went on to number 1 on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart, and it won him a Juno for Breakthrough Artist of the Year and put him on stages in front of over 80,000 people. He said something once about the whole Talk project that stopped me. He said, quote, Talk is me saying, I don't care what anyone thinks. I'm going to be bright, beautiful, and most importantly, myself, end quote. Now fast forward to his newest song. It's called GTFU. Grow the F Up. And it's not a party anthem. It's a man in his 30s looking at himself in the mirror and calling out every borrowed dream, every drink, every performance he was hiding behind. He said about that one, I wrote it for myself, and then I realized how many other people needed to hear it. That right there, that sentence is going to be this entire episode. Because today alone, you and I are going to talk about the stage you didn't know you were on, the dream that you never— that was never really yours, and the sound of someone finally getting real in public. This is the Ideas by Mike Podcast. I am Mike Milligan. Let's go.

This is the Ideas by Mike Podcast. Where your future starts.

So you just got a taste of that song firsthand. When was the last time you did something because you wanted to, not because of who other people thought you should be? Sociologist Erving Goffman in 1959 created an article called The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. He said, life is theater. You're on the front stage, you're in the backstage, you're wearing costumes, and you may even feel scripted. But we as individuals manage impressions constantly, right? From the car we drive to the title we have on our business cards, right? To the vacation post, the LinkedIn headline. See, the performance isn't the problem. Losing track of who's underneath that performance really is. So listen to how Tuck opens GTFU. He's not singing at the young man in the crowd. He's singing at the young man in the mirror. He says, young man, will you ever act your age? Will you ever turn the page? Was the odyssey all you wanted? That is a man auditing his own performance in real time. That is a front stage artist walking backstage on a microphone. And letting us watch. I often feel like I'm performing. I was an early advisor, right? In my—I remember my first presentation at the Greenbrier Country Club in Chesapeake, Virginia, back in 2002, and I was 26 years old working at Wachovia Wealth Management. I stood up in front of a room of over 80 people who were over. 65 years old, and I talked about estate planning. I talked about what a will and a trust was. I talked about how their ending to their life had to be properly documented with the right people in the right seats— executor, trustee, beneficiaries— clearly defined. And I spoke in a language that was not mine. I spoke in a language that was textbook. It was what, what Covia wanted me to say. It was scripted presentation PowerPoint. I was wearing a green suit that day, white shirt, and a bright orange tie. I remember the day. But here's the deeper problem. I was performing. I was performing someone else's part. I was not talking like how I really felt. I wasn't talking about my Granny Elizabeth's struggle with being in an assisted living facility, the loss of my grandfather. When I was, when I was barely a teenager and what that did to our family. I wasn't talking about the scars that I had from losing a hero in my life. I wasn't dealing with what was important. We have these scars. I was just, I was just someone that was on stage saying what my boss Stephanie wanted me to say, saying what Wachovia. Doing what Wakovia wanted me to do. And we all find ourselves doing that. We all find ourselves putting on a stage, and that is not a one-of-a-kind life.

Do you know the sound of yours or just the echo of a crowd?

French philosopher René Girard came up with something called the mimetic desire. He said, we don't know what we want. We learn what to want by watching others want it. Man, is that true today in the social media era? Envy isn't a flaw, guys. It's a compass. It points to a desire you borrowed. And social media, like I said, is that mimic engine running 24 hours a day. Every scroll is a small instruction that says, want this. Want that, do that. I wish I was that person. And guys, you may be in your retirement years, you may be in your 40s and 50s, you may be in your 20s, and that may not be you. But if you're using social media as an outlet to want something, then you, you are part of the mimetic desire. You are living through somebody else's desires or early life. I want to do a little bit of that song callback for a second. Go back to the chorus. He says, maybe the brick was never yellow and the road was never fun. He's calling out the Wizard of Oz dream. So if you're in your 60s and your 70s, you remember watching The Wizard of Oz. We're off to see the wizard, the wonderful Wizard of Oz, by just following the yellow brick road. The yellow brick road is every kid's ambition. Who was part of the baby boomer generation, the millennial, Gen X? We were handed something and told to follow it: fame, money, freedom—the whole story. And what talk is saying in the song is: Wait a minute, was any of that actually mine, or did I just inherit that from the movie I watched, from the magazine that I read, or every scroll that I did? This is literally in his song, René Girard set to a piano coming out of the words of a 30-year-old singer. The if you are, if you are, I want to put this into a financial planning concept for a second. We see this in the context of people wanting the portfolio that their neighbor has, the advisor. Even who wants the practice that maybe I have, or the retiree who wants the retirement that their brother-in-law posted about. You cannot build a one-of-a-kind life on borrowed desires. You can't build a career on envy, and you can't build a marriage based off replication, and you can't build a retirement based off somebody else's advice that doesn't live the life you live. And you can't leave a legacy that is somebody else's. The borrowed desire in René Girard's mimetic desire theory is something that once you hear it, it allows you the freedom to be one of a kind.

It's the Ideas by Mike podcast.

And here's where we go into application mode here. When you've heard the last episodes of the Ideas by Mike podcast, when you heard Eric Rungy talking about Bitcoin as part of your allocation, when you talked, when you heard, um, Dr., Dr. Matches talking about living in Ecuador after really working 4 careers and finding his passion and teaching financial planning to the next generation and living in Ecuador to help raise his grandkids. In an environment on his terms. When you heard, um, when you heard Erica Zimmerman talking about her strategies and the games that she uses to help married couples have the conversation that they need to have, man, and you've heard and you go back deeper, you hear people giving one-of-a-kind advice to be able to overcome sociology, sociology pressure. And we even talked about sociology with Dr. Gary David. And when we come over that psychological pressure to be able to be uniquely who you are, and so I want to give you 6 moves, right, that you can implement in your life that go beyond the financial plan, that even go beyond how you build a house, a financial house that is exclusively yours. And once you understand how to build this, how to set a vision, and how to identify why money is important for you, oh my gosh, the freedom that comes with being uniquely you, the time freedom you have with trying to replicate somebody else's life becomes extraordinarily magical. And so, the first move that you have to do is you have to name the stage. You can't step off a stage you don't know you're on. And so the first part here is what stage are you on that you're trying to mimic somebody else's life with? Who are you trying to follow? Who are you trying— what stage have you gone on that you really don't want to be there. Number 2, you have to audit the envy. Audit, right, is not just a CPA term, a tax term, a financial term. It's something we can use in our life because every jealousy is a receipt and we have to read it. I once— I was telling you about my early career where I stood in front of Those folks at the Greenbrier Country Club, and I was talking about estate planning. Today, when I talk about estate planning, I talk about estate planning as the ultimate I love you letter, because what I've realized is that having helped hundreds of families navigate probate, estate planning, and putting things in motion is that the end of your life And when you die, how you leave it organized is an I love you letter. I didn't say that in 2002 standing on that stage at the Greenbrier Country Club. I talked about the technicalities of a will and trust. But now what I know is that stuff is all important, but it's small in the grand scheme of what a true legacy is. Telling your kids how much you love them, telling your beneficiaries how much they mean to you. Living, right, your life and leaving as little money to the next generation is important, but what is most important are the expectations, the things that are unique about your family that are so there. You guys have heard me talk about my Granny Elizabeth so much, right? I've audited the envy of my life. I don't want to be a Wall Street banker in in a conference room where account numbers are more important than somebody's name, where the system is bigger than the stories of the clients, and where it's profit over people. That's not who I want to be anymore. I want to be able to work with the right set of clients in Middle America who have saved first-generation, second-generation money, who want to go out and experience the world and what it has, that want to hike in our national parks, want to go around the world and hike, people that want to have experience with their grandchildren or experiences with their partner. I want people who at the end of their life, one of my clients who just recently died, his life partner said, my life was better because of him. I want those types of memories and those types of moments. I want people to see that The stage and the envy that you have is borrowed, and you have to create your own. So then, right, that's my purpose. So step 1 and 2, name the stage, audit the envy. Step 3 is bring backstage forward. This microphone is the most powerful tool. Not my microphone, just in general. A microphone is the most powerful tool in financial services today. Uh, and it is the fastest way also to collapse a performance. You don't— Talk didn't hide GTFU, that song, in a journal. He put it on a record for all to hear and for him to be judged. You may not like the song, you may not like the music, you may not even like the message because it hits too much home, but amplify your life to those who matter. It's the conversations like Erica Wasserman talked about that you need to have with your family before you can't have them any longer. It's the legacy moments that are talked about while you're alive versus after you pass away. I was just with a couple that is a client of ours where I saw extreme love, like extreme love. She is caring for him. He was diagnosed with ALS. And just sitting in with them and talking, seeing the raw emotion after their 41 years of marriage together. I want that relationship in my life. I've been married for 4 years. I've been with Leanna for 5. The thing that I don't have that that couple has who's going through this end-of-life scenario together is I don't have 41 years yet. I have the love. that they have, but I don't have the 41 years. And so what we're building is a unique life for ourselves. What they have is unique life. And I got to share with this couple because they're not the most sports-forward people in the world. They are lovers of the art, lovers of fine wine, lovers of food. I've been able to go with them to dinner at night and have amazing wine and amazing conversations, share jokes. Leanna, my wife, got to meet this couple. She's met the wife multiple times. We got to meet the husband one time. He doesn't speak English very well, but he understood her. There was a connection between my wife and this client that was undeniable, where they fell in love with each other over one dinner setting because they were— they found that they were both unique. The life he had lived, the life she was trying to live, the encouragement that he tried to speak in broken language was there. Almost as if it was— it was not as a father talking to a daughter. It was wisdom spewed out. It was magical. But in that moment where I met with them, right, and I had to— I got to bring the backstage forward, is I got to share— I got to share the story of Lou Gehrig. Now, I'm a baseballaholic, guys. I know Lou Gehrig's story. I know that He, uh, at— before Cal Ripken, he had the all-time consecutive games played streak. He was called the Iron Man. Well, Cal Ripken was called the Iron Man. Uh, Lou Gehrig was that before him. But Lou Gehrig, when people started noticing he was deteriorating, he didn't have the same physical skills he did right before he died at the age of 37. He stood up in Yankee Stadium. And, um, I knew this, like a lot of people know the Constitution of the United States. He stood up and he said, I am the luckiest man on the face of the earth. And with this couple who are not sports-forward people, I found it on YouTube and we got in front of their TV. The male client standing on his walker as he was walking because he can't walk on his own anymore because the ALS has taken over a lot of his muscle memory. But I watched it to him and I saw him In his unique way, look at his wife and say, I am the luckiest man on the face of the earth. He repeated a quote from Lou Gehrig, who he didn't even know existed. He just knew it as a disease. He knew it as a German. He thought it was a German who had come up with the diagnosis of it. But it was a baseball player named after a baseball player, a popular man in the 1930s who said, I am the luckiest man in the world. And I just saw him look at his wife and say, I'm a lucky man. And tears were flowing. He brought the stage forward in a moment that was unique and totally one of a kind. So the 6 moves, right, for you to unpack what it means to be a one of a kind, one of a kind person is to name the stage. Number 2, audit the envy and then bring it back forward. And then here's my favorite. This is by far and away how you become one of a kind, unique, and live the life you're meant to be, is you write it down. A vague identity is a borrowed identity, but a written plan is a signed one. It's a contract between you and the person, the future that you're meant to have, and the future person you're meant to be. It's what makes us one of a kind. I, I write the one of a kind financial plan, Retirement Déjà Vu, Retirement Chi. I'm writing a book now, co-authoring a book called Graceful Transitions, and I'm going to write the book Amplified, how the microphone became the most powerful tool in financial services. I'm writing a book called The 12-Week Breakthrough so other advisors can actually audit their business, act like a company, and become the advisor that the 100 to 200 clients that they will acquire needs of them. Everybody deserves to be somebody's A client. And what I want to do is inspire not only with One Oak Financial but outside the industry, inspire the advisors to go find their A clients. And then I'm going to write the book, Walter and Elizabeth Calder. That's my grandparents. That's Granny Elizabeth. It's my Pa Walter. I'm going to write their book. I'm going to write their legacy book. In part of me writing, part of me getting out of me, I become more one of a kind. I become more unique. I become the man that I am supposed to be when I speak on the microphone. When I get to speak words out to the audience of the Ideas by Mike podcast, the One of a Kind Financial Show Daily, the One of a Kind Financial Radio Show with Gary, when I get to— when I get to speak on stages around the country, when I get to one-on-one with you, hopefully as a client, or the clients who are listening here, when I'm one-on-one with you, man, I want to never miss a moment. Never miss a moment is my motto, and it's also the 5th step to living one of a kind. When you have a rule that's written down in a motto, you stop asking the crowd. Never miss a moment for me is about being present where I am. I have literally, guys, I'm recording this podcast today for you to go out on the Ideas by Mike podcast. I have 172 things on my to-do list. And the inspiration for this podcast came to me, and I said, I've got to get this message out because I never want to miss a moment. And then the 6th move you can make is to act one of a kind on purpose. I normally wear like my blue button-down shirt when I'm working, right? But I've had these custom shirts made. If you're watching on YouTube today, you'll see this white shirt. It says, be one of a kind.

That's awesome.

It's unique. I mean, I guess anybody can go over to a t-shirt-making company and put Be One of a Kind on the front of the shirt, but I own 6 of these. I own 2 white ones, 2 blue ones, that light blue that I love, just the color of Carolina blue, and I have 2 navy ones, and I wear them everywhere I go, right? I wear them on airplanes. I don't wear them everywhere. I wear the blue shirt when I'm working and got a couple of different color blue shirts, and I've got a closet full of clothes, right? But when I'm out and about, and I don't want to wear somebody else's brand always, right? I'll wear a Nike shirt from now, time to time, an Under Armour shirt or something like that. But I like to be who I am, be one of a kind. And the people who stop me, right, they start telling me what they think one of a kind means. Because identity follows action, not the other way around. This is the identity I want to have. Some people find their identity in their religion, and I'm somewhat of a religious person. I don't talk about it often. Some people find their identity as a husband. I think I'm a great husband. Some people find their identity as a father. Shout out to Zach, Grace, Paige, Haley, and a grandfather, Daniel. I love my kids, my daughter-in-law, and my grandson. I love them. Some people find their identity that— some people find their identity in their job. Some people find their identity in like being a singer. Maybe Tulk finds his identity there. Maybe Derek Jeter found his identity in being a shortstop. I think he's moved on from that. Maybe you have an identity that you want to have. But my motto, never miss a moment, it's not because I always want to live up to it. It's because when I don't, I know exactly what I traded for it. So, the 6 moves that I think you can make to jump out of this psychological do what everybody else wants you to do in life way of living is to create a plan, right? To be able to identify who you are. Name the stage that you can't— because you can't step off a stage you don't know you're on. Name the stage you're on and the one you want to get off of. Number 2, Audit the envy. Every jealousy is a receipt, so read it out loud. Number 3, bring the backstage forward. For me, the mic is the fastest way to collapse a performance, right? I don't hide behind my writing. I put my writing out front and I use the microphone to get what I'm thinking out. Number 3 or number 4, write it down. A vague identity is a borrowed identity. A written plan is a signed contract between who you are now and who you want to be. And then you choose a motto. Mine, never miss a moment. Pick one for yourself. Create something that is uniquely you, because when you have a rule, you stop asking the crowd. And then the last is to act one of a kind on purpose. Identify, follow— identity follows actions, not the other way around. A lot of us, though, I want to freely admit something. A lot of us struggle with anxiety and fear. We struggle with if we come out on who we are, who we truly, truly want to be, what will we lose in the process? What friends will we lose? What family? What will family think of us? But I want to give you a counterpoint. If you continue to act Or borrow identity from somebody else? Who— what have you lost of yourself along the way? That's what I believe living one of a kind is. And this message will not resonate with everyone who hears this podcast because of that fear and anxiety. And I want to express that up front because being one of a kind isn't a project of addition. It's actually a project of subtraction. You have to strip the borrowed desires, strip the imagined judgment, strip the inherited scripts from others, and what's left is the person who was there the whole time. Talk said it in four letters: GTFU. And I love that he didn't mean that as an as an insult. Listen to the song, right? It's tender. He calls himself a young man like he's talking to a version of himself. He steals love. That's the tone I want you to hear this in. Grow up isn't harden up. It's not stop performing. It's not drop the borrowed dream and pick up— it is drop the borrowed dream and pick up the real one, yours. Grow up is say the backstage thing on the front stage mic. And trust that the right people will lean in. Here's your homework from this podcast. One thing this week, one visible, uncomfortable, one-of-a-kind decision. Say the opinion out loud. Send the message. Write the plan. Pick up the mic because the world doesn't need another good performance. It's littered All through YouTube. It's celebrated on TV, social media, and Instagram. It's the highlight reels that people have. What people need is the authentic you. Your family, your friends, your profession, your community, they need you. In a world that struggles in the sea of sameness, People who struggle with the paralysis penalty, people who get déjà vu because they feel like they're hearing the same thing over and over and over again, just at a different point in time. We don't need that anymore. We need you. I need you. I need you as my clients, as people who listen to the Ideas by Mike podcast to show up. The one thing that I experience from, or I have a problem with, is I am obscure to the people who need to hear this message. And so today, I don't want you to— you can borrow my motto until you have yours. Borrow my motto, never miss a moment. Don't own it. It's not yours. It's not yours. It's mine. Just borrow it. And I want you to take this moment. to share this podcast. Maybe that's with a spouse, a life partner. Maybe that's with a child or a parent. Maybe that's with a friend, a colleague at work that's going through it. Maybe you know somebody who just recently lost someone in life. Maybe you know somebody who's struggling with fear, depression, and anxiety. I'm not a therapist, and I'm not meant to be. I'm meant to be one of the best financial professionals in America. It's what I'm meant to be, but I'm meant to do it different because while the spreadsheet is important, while stock selection is important, retirement income that you can't outlive is important. Reducing taxes over your life is, is it'll magnify, right, your finances when done correctly while dealing with long-term care and that graceful transition from healthy to unhealthy to the end of life. And a legacy is powerful. What's most powerful is you are one of a kind. And we at One Oak Financial, we at Ideas by Mike podcast, we want to work with authentic, unique people that are one of a kind. And we want to build a one-of-a-kind financial plan for you that addresses taxes, retirement income, investments, long-term care, and legacy. We want to break free of retirement déjà vu. We want to ask you, why is money important to you? And write it down. We want to build a vision for what your life looks like around your community, your health, and the impact you're going to make. And then we want to get to those things that matter. Life for the living. That's what we want to get to. Guys, this has been the one of a kind. I mean, this has been the Ideas by Mike podcast. My personal mission is to educate, coach, and plan. And my motto is to never miss a moment. This has been the Ideas by Mike Podcast. I am Mike Milligan, the founder of One Oak Financial. A Certified Financial Planning Professional. I am an investment advisor representative with Advisory Alpha LLC. Ideas by Mike, doing business as One Oak Financial, is an unaffiliated entity of Advisory Alpha LLC. The opinions on this podcast are those explicitly of me. They do not reflect the opinions of Advisory Alpha LLC or The employees of Ideas by Mike doing business as One Oak Financial. You are one of a kind. It is my personal mission to help everybody see in who they are. This has been for educational purposes only. Do not take investment advice off anything we have said in this show. Consult a licensed financial professional. To reach out to us, go to www.oneoakfinancial.com. That's The number 1, oakfinancial.com. And if you want to reach out directly, text the word IDEAS, I-D-E-A-S, to the number 600-700. Until next time, this is Mike Milligan with the Ideas by Mike Podcast.

Yeah, turn it up. It's the Ideas by Mike Podcast.