Author Hour with Charlie Hoehn

It’s time to take charge of your life and do the thing that you’ve always wanted to do but you need help with your transition and that’s what this episode is about. Allison Task, author of Personal Revolution,is a bestselling author and coach who will help you take control of your life and move you from where you are now to where you want to be. In this episode, she gives a real live coaching session to show you how to create the vision for what you want out of life, so you know where you’re going and why you’re going there. If you’re searching for a step by step guide to help you clarify your vision and to actually pursue it, this episode is for you.   Get Allison’s new book Personal Revolution on Amazon. Find out more at AllisonTask.com.   Going After What You Want Charlie Hoehn: What kind of results are you particularly proud of getting with your clients and also, if you’re comfortable with saying it, what is the value of your services so that they know the value that they’re getting in the book? Allison Task: Wow, great question. Okay, two questions, number one, results and number two value. I think we’re going to answer number two, what’s the value and then hit what some of the results are. People have things that they want to do. I have a client that came to my office last year about this time and she’s a very successful business person, he’s married, has two young kids ages one and tree and she came to me – very successful business woman – and said, “I don’t know that we can be as successful in this country as we could be, if we returned to my country of origin, the Philippines.” “I’ve been here for five or 10 years, my husband’s also Filipino but he’s been here since he was five, he doesn’t speak the language, it’s not his country. I don’t know if this is the best choice for my family. I know it’s a good choice for me, help me figure this out.” That’s big, that’s massive, this is like moving countries, moving culture, shifting so much, changing her children’s future. So many changes on so many levels. I had a session with the husband and she’s literally said, “I don’t care what the end result is as long as it’s the best choice for my family. But help us evaluate this choice.” She called me because couples can drag on for 10 years about where they want to live. She wanted to make this decision efficiently and I got an email from her this morning. Big, happy face, big all caps, “THE CHILDREN LOVE THE PHILIPPINES.” Their whole family moved last month, her husband found a new job, she found a new job, they have a condo that’s being built out, her children are in Mandarin class, it is on. That is a significant life change that impacted the four members of their family plus all of her relatives, plus their futures. That’s a change I was honored to be a part of that decision-making process and more importantly, by the time they left and by the six months prior to that, they had to put their house up for sale and everything like that. They were aligned, the husband and wife were aligned. The other one was – they talk about the trailing spouse, there was no trailing spouse, they set the goal together, they evaluated their values and set the goal together, that was terrific. Both of these, I’m realizing,

How do you thrive in the aftermath of trauma? Your struggle may come in different forms and be given one of many different names such as anxiety, depression, addiction or PTSD. But no matter how much you or a loved one is struggling or what it’s called, the one thing that’s clear is that you aren’t living the life you desire. Ken Falke and Josh Goldberg, the coauthors of Struggle Well, believe there is hope by embracing the struggle rather than fighting it. You can stop surviving and start thriving. Ken and Josh know this because they trained combat veterans battling PTSD to understand and achieve post traumatic growth. They’ve helped thousands of people discover opportunities from times of struggle. In this episode, they provide actionable strategies for making peace with your past experiences. For living in the present and planning for a great future. This episode is full of invaluable wisdom on an incredibly important topic and it could very well save your life. Now, it’s time to learn how to struggle well. Get Ken and Josh’s new book Struggle Well on Amazon. Find out more at StruggleWell.com. Ken Falke: When I was seven years old, my mom died. She had cancer at 29 years old and it took her life. I think I kind of went on this journey from there with my dad who is a policeman who has got two sons. Being a policeman and a single dad is hard, so I spent some time in Pittsburg with my grandparents trying to grow up and figure out how to become a man. I became rebellious and had all the things that happened there. I ended up becoming a very good athlete and a great hockey player and left high school to go play professional hockey. I kind of got kicked in the nuts again when that career didn’t work out for me. So I enlisted in the Navy, really looking for something to be a part of. A team, a mission, a purpose, all those types of things. After a very successful Navy career as a bomb disposal guy, I ended up back here at my home state of Virginia just outside of Washington DC. All of a sudden, we started getting bomb disposal guys on the battlefield losing limbs and getting killed in action. My wife and I started this small charity, we had made some money by then, we had a company that was making good money. I was in the counter terrorism business, and we started this nonprofit to take care of these severely injured men and women and take care of their families while they were here in the major hospitals in DC. Walter Reed and Bethesda Naval Hospitals at the time. One thing led to another, and we started bringing these families away from the hospital and out to our home about an hour west of DC into the Blue Ridge mountains. Families stayed here for days and then weeks and then overnight stays and hunting trips and all sorts of stuff. We ended up donating 37 acres of our property to build this beautiful retreat and create the nation’s first dedicated facility to really try to heal these invisible wounds of war. That’s kind of what started this journey for us. I’m Here to Help Charlie Hoehn: That’s incredible. Josh, did you have a similar story? Josh Goldberg: I did and similar and yet very different. I like to think about, if you’ve seen me about six or seven years ago, and someone had looked at my life from the outside, they would have felt as though,

When David Mauro, author of The Altitude Journals, was in his 40s, his life hit rock bottom. With nothing to lose, he left everything behind and set out on an epic adventure. For the next seven years. Dave trudged across glaciers, frozen wastelands and through dense, dangerous forest. Though he’d never been a climber, he ended up standing at the summit of Mount Everest. In this episode, you’ll hear the exciting true stories of one man’s remarkable mid-life crisis. What happens when you go to the extreme to repair a shattered life? Note: Throughout this interview, David will use explicit language to tell his raw story. Get David’s new book The Altitude Journals on Amazon. Find out more at DavidJMauro.com.  David Mauro: My marriage was over, I wasn’t being allowed to see my children. My brother died, my career was in trouble, and in an honest moment, I’d have to admit I was flirting with alcoholism. This is one of those moments that’s a lot like being at the bottom of the barrel and looking up. Day by day, I would just sort of move around en route and come home and look at my clothing sort of stacked in orderly towers on the floor of my sister’s guest room, which is where I was living, and just have no idea what to do with myself or my life. There was actually a moment where I was sitting on the edge of the bed in her guest room, and the guest room was used as overflow space for her daughter Brooke who had every American Doll in the collection. And they’re all arranged on these orderly shelves and they’re all staring at me. They just had what I perceived to be sad, judging expressions. At one point, I just shouted at them: “I don’t need your fucking pity.” I heard my sister drop something downstairs, and she told me later that they were washing dishes and her daughter’s eyes got about as big as a plate. My sister just said, “Uncle Dave’s going through a tough time.” I’m Not a Climber David Mauro: I was completely out of ideas, and it just kind of paralyzed emotionally trying to figure out what would happen next. As the case may be, my 44thbirthday came three, four weeks into living with my sister, and a package arrived at the door. It was a tubular shaped package and it was from Anchorage, Alaska, where my other sister Noelle lives with her husband Tai. Tai at that time was a well accomplished mountain climber, and he had invited me several months earlier to join in a climb of Mount McKinley, now officially known as Denali. It’s the high point for North America, 20,320 feet, and it is a big, cold, moody son of a gun. I said, “Well, thanks for the invitation but I’m not a mountain climber so that just doesn’t sound like a good fit for me.” I did think about it. I never seriously considered doing it, but I felt really good about myself that he thought enough of me to make the invitation. It was a one good thing I felt like I could hold on to in a moment where so much was being taken away from me. Back to that tube that arrived, that package. I opened up one end of it and turned it upside down and out falls two climbing poles and a note that says, “Happy birthday, super climber.” In other words, your wife holding you back is not a problem anymore, so how about it? The thing is,

Taking your business into a foreign market can be risky. If your company wants to hit it big internationally, Craig Maginness, author of Go Glocal, believes you need to think globally and act locally. Craig is the managing member of Exin Global Strategies, which advices businesses looking to grow in foreign markets. He’s also an adjunct professor at Johnson and Wales and in 2013, he was named International Trade Educator of the year by Nasbite International. In this episode, Craig lays out the framework that your business needs to follow in order to succeed abroad. By the end, you’ll know the factors you need to consider for an entry into a foreign market to payoff for your business.   Get Craig’s new book Go Global on Amazon. Find out more at Exin Global Strategies.   Craig Maginness: I myself an example personally in my career that got ahead of this, sort of accidentally and then I was working for a Fortune 1,000 company and I knew the COO quite well. I was focused entirely on domestic sorts of things. We were flying back from a business trip and the company had just bought a company for its operation in the United States, but it had a business in Mexico that was dysfunctional in many respects. At the same time we were trying to buy a second company, again for its united states operations principally. It also had a Mexican operation, and the Mexican partner was making closing the deal very difficult. Anyway, we were talking about this and he was ruminating about some of the issues and problems and checking this out. I’m a curious guy and interested in things. I’m kind of a problem solver by nature. I was just asking questions about, “I don’t understand, why are we doing this, why don’t we do that?” After a bit, he looked at me and said, “Craig, you ought to run this business in Mexico.” I laughed because frankly the idea was completely ludicrous. He took a little more serious tone, he said “No, I’m serious.” He said, and I quote fairly precisely, “You can’t screw it up worse than we’re screwing it up now.” Learning on the Job Craig Maginness:  After some more discussions and things, I moved into my next part of my career and became the director of Mexican Operations and ultimately the Director of Latin American operations. I was the president of our Mexican subsidiary and frankly, that operation turned out going very well. We consolidated some things in Mexico, we expanded it into an export venture into other places in South American and Central America, and then they asked me to take on a business in Italy and that got me into Europe and then they asked me to figure out how to get a footprint in China, so that produced my first trips to China back in the mid-1990s. The whole thing was a learning experience, starting literally from a blank slate. It’s funny, actually, when I got home, after we’d sort of agreed that this was going to be my new job running this operation in Mexico, I came home and I tell my wife I said, “I got a new job at the company,” she said “Really? What’s that?” I said, “Well, I’m going to be the director of Mexican operations,” and she said, “Isn’t there someone at the company that knows more about this than you do?” You know, it’s nice to have that kind of confidence building.

Your financial future requires more than just good luck. It takes the specialized expertise of a competent, ethical advisor who can help you achieve your financial goals and your first step on this road to retirement is selecting the right financial advisor. Jack Waymire and Jonathan Dash of Dash Investments are here to help, as the coauthors of 5 Steps for Selecting the Best Financial Advisor. Now, this may sound like an easy task, but it’s actually fraught with risk. That’s because there are great advisors you should select and bad advisors you need to avoid. You have to know the difference in order to make the right selection. That difference could mean retiring comfortably or potentially being broke. After decades in the financial service industry. Jack and Jonathan have seen countless investors make the wrong advisor choices that were based on slick sales pitches instead of characteristics that actually matter. That’s what this episode is about. It’s how to level the playing field between Wall Street and main street. Get Jonathan and Jack’s new book 5 Steps for Selecting the Best Financial Advisor on Amazon. Find out more at Paladin Registry. Jack Waymire: It basically started in the late 1990s when everybody was making a ton of money in the stock market, as long as they were invested in technology and communications stocks. I happen to be the president of a money management firm in northern California, and then you have the stock market crash that basically ran from 2000 to 2002. Lots of friends lost 50 to 65% of their assets starting this crash, because the financial advisors that they were utilizing gave them really bad advice. They were way over weighted in technology stocks rather than a more diversified portfolio. It absolutely wrecked any thoughts they had of retiring in the next few years. Based on that experience, I decided to write a book titled Who’s Watching Your Money. This book happened to come out in 2003. At that point, I was the president of Sun Guard Company, a subsidiary of Sun Guard ,and I decided to leave to really promote the book. We created a website that really was based on the principles and this book titled Who’s Watching Your Money. Almost immediately, because we got a lot of promotion tied to the book, we started getting a lot of traffic on the website. A lot of the investors that were hitting the website were saying, “FD you know any vetted advisors in my community?” So we basically built a registry of about 360 vetted advisors that we rolled out about six months after the initial launch of the first website. And so we ended up kind of a website that educated investors about advisors and then we helped investors select advisors based on credentials, ethics and business practices. Jack Waymire: Then, over the last few years, what we began to see was a huge impact, the internet, everybody’s read the stories about how Amazon has impacted bookstores. What we started to see was a lot of the internet was having a big impact. What the internet was doing was giving investors access to public data about financial advisors that they never had access to before. And actually, some of that data was already out there but the investor did not know that.

People are more distracted than ever which is affecting our psychological and physical wellbeing. If you want to be a high performer and cut through the disruption, you need to construct new practices to encourage focus, creativity and effectiveness. That’s where Dr. Greg Wells and Bruce Bowser, coauthors of The Focus Effect, come in. They believe they’ve perfected the art of unplugging from technology and plugging in to reality. In this episode, they present techniques for sustainable balanced and successful routines in all areas of life. With strategies ranging from practicing mindfulness, reserving tech free time and performing power work, they provide everything you need to activate ‘the focus effect’ in your life. Get Greg and Bruce’s new book The Focus Effect on Amazon. Find out more at DrGregWells.com. Dr. Greg Wells: There is a moment a few years ago that really goes put my life on a different trajectory and that’s when I was hanging with my daughter Ingrid. She’s probably three or four at the time, she was really into this movie Shrek with the ogre and the princess. Mike Myers is the ogre and Eddie Murphy was the Donkey and Cameron Diaz was the princess. We were at the park, we’re playing and I am on my phone checking my email, and Ingrid looks at me at one point after about 10 minutes and she quotes the movie to me. She goes, “Daddy, your job is not my problem.” That was like, the knife into the heart. I’d probably say I put my phone away, I’ve never touched it again in a park with my kids ever. She was basically like slapping me up, saying, “You get your phone away and pay attention to me.” Like, we’re in a park, let’s do this. I’ve never forgotten that. It was probably the first moment when I started to really contemplate deeply, this issue of distraction, not being present. Where’s my attention? I focused on that a lot when I was a swimmer growing up but haven’t really deliberately tried to apply it in the entire rest of my life. So that was the moment that sparked it, and it’s pretty powerful just the way she said it. It definitely put my life in a different direction. Learning to Focus Charlie Hoehn: Bruce, do you have a similar story? Bruce Bowser: Yeah, I think, you know, for me Charlie, a couple of years ago, I decided that I’d go back to university to finish a degree that I started 30 years ago and hadn’t completed. I started studying online evening courses at the university and realized that to get it finished within a year or so which my target was, I needed to go back. So I was able to shut things down and actually go back to the university in different province from where I live now. Attended two full semesters of university and a full class load. When I got there, I realized, we’ve been talking about this issue of distraction and the impact it’s having on your ability to think. But I quickly realized a couple of things. One, it was hard for me to focus because I was constantly checking in and checking texts and checking emails. The second part was that I have two grown daughters. We’ve grown into this space where we think that we can connect with each other. And we do with a text. If I don’t respond within 10 or 15 minutes, there’s this anxiety around something’s wrong with the world because my dad hasn’t got back to me. So when I get down there, I realized that I was really having a hard time focusing, reading, sitting down for long periods of time, like 60, 80,

The decisions that you make about your retirement plan today have a huge impact on your life tomorrow. Your future isn’t going to pay for itself and in this episode, Harris Nydick and Greg Makowski, the coauthors of Common Financial Sense, will give you the knowledge you need to fund the retirement you deserve. By the end of this episode, you’ll know: * Which investments are best suited for you * Important choices that are appropriate to your stage of life * The optimum amount to save each year * And, you’ll be calm in the face of market fluctuations Most importantly, you’ll know how to get to retirement with a large enough nest egg that you’ll be able to live comfortably. When it comes to investing for your future, most people don’t even know where to begin or what questions to ask, instead, they stay in denial and avoid the reality. This episode is meant to be your starting point.   Get Harris and Greg’s new book Common Financial Sense on Amazon. Find out more at CFSIAS.com. Harris Nydick: We both grew up in very modest upbringings, and as we went through school and grew up and went to college and started working, we found ourselves in an industry where you generally dealt with a lot of wealth and aspiring wealth and we had no issues getting involved in that area. However, when we started getting involved with 401(k)s, it got especially interesting. You were dealing with owners, CEOs, professionals who were all the owners or the heads of companies or organizations. They were responsible for making decisions about how to invest and then they had all the employees who had to choose of the types of investments that they had. What we learned is that we had our own financial DNA and our own financial fingerprint. We had a lot more in common with the employees than the employers because of our upbringing. Where is the seed of financial education for the rank and file employee? This industry is completely built to serve the wealthy, and if you don’t have certain minimums, sometimes you don’t even get a live body to talk to. So the question is, where are the rank and file employees seated at the table of financial education? We could potentially move that needle and spend time educating the employees to give them the attention that they deserve, the respect that they deserve. Because everybody’s stack means the same to them no matter how big the stack is, and they don’t have opportunities to get the same kind of guidance potentially. A Better Financial Planning System Charlie Hoehn: Were you two at a position in your life where you felt you had high financial acumen that you were going to achieve financial success one day or were you still sort of figuring things out? Greg Makowski: We both are certified financial planners. Going through that program, you build financial acumen, and then we’re building our business at the same time. So we’re starting to understand what it takes to accumulate assets ourselves. How hard it is to save money and to invest money and not worry about the markets. You have to remember, it really wasn’t too long ago when the 401(k) and the 403(b) were actually rolled out in America. You have to think of the employees at that time,

If you work at a corporation, you’ve probably noticed that your company’s most talented innovators have a tough time quickly turning great ideas into great products. But Greg Larkin, author of This Might Get Me Fired, knows how to break the cycle of stale and destructive corporate habits. In this episode, Gregory (@gregory_larkin) shares what he’s learned by launching more than 30 new products with Fortune 500 companies and start-ups. He’s going to show you how to gather support within your organization and launch your product in just two months rather than two years. By the end of this episode, you’ll have the tools to develop your entrepreneurial mindset, and you’ll know when to prioritize your product over your job. Get Gregory’s new book This Might Get Me Fired on Amazon. Find out more at Bowery315. Greg Larkin: I began my entrepreneurial life as the head of products for a really gritty, tough, wasn’t afraid to speak truth to power, startup that was called Innovest. Our CEO was a guy called Matthew Kiernan, and he pushed me very hard to have the audacity to be the only person in the room. I was covering banks during the housing boom. We would get pressure from many of these huge institutions, many of which since failed, and to switch our analysis off to soften our language. Every time that happened, Matthew Kiernan was just, “That’s how you know you’re doing it right, when they’re threatening you with their legal teams, that’s a good sign. When they’re challenging your opinions but can’t discredit your facts, you’re on target. You know it’s working because people are mad at you.” That kind of rebellious audacity was critical. We were one of the earliest voices in finance to have predicted the 2008 financial crisis. Only because he was leaning on me to not be afraid to swim against the tide and not be afraid to be provocative. Not to be reckless, but if your facts are solid, then you can own a virtual monopoly on courage. That kind of disruption was literally the blood that coursed through our veins. It was not a marketing slogan at Innovest. We were acquired in 2009. I had to make the transition for being a startup entrepreneur to being a corporate intrapreneur. Corporate Culture Shock Charlie Hoehn:Who acquired you? Gregory Larkin: We were acquired by a large publicly traded financial services company called Risk Metrics, and then very soon after that, they were acquired by another company called MSCI. I shifted away and became a director in the innovation department of Bloomberg after that. Through those different transitions, the extent to which there were these barriers to launch that had nothing to do with possibility or efficiency but they were entirely this wall of fear, this “wall of can’t.” That was astounding for me. My first meeting with Matthew Kiernan, when a very powerful investment bank called Lehman Brothers had threatened to sue me, I said, “I’m happy to tend my resignation, this is really – I put you in a very rough spot, I’m sorry about this. You tell me what I’ve got to do, I’m happy to quit.” His response was, “No, this is how you know you’re doing it right. You’re supposed to be in this risk, this is how you know you’re growing. If we’re right, we’re going to own a monopoly on being the only ...

If we want extraordinary lives, we need to unplug from the constant barrage of disruptions. In an on demand 24/7 society, where distractions cost us millions in lost productivity, profitability, relationships and peace. Neen James, author of Attention Pays,believes that the best thing we can do is learn to pay attention to what matters most. The effects are profound. For instance, do you know the one-second action you can take to make people feel cared for in meetings? Hint: it’s not putting away your phone. Neen also gives some amazing advice at the end on how to transition as an author into a successful speaking career, as she speaks 50 times a year to companies like Cisco, Marriott, Via Com and Pfizer. Pay attention, because in this episode, attention pays. Get Neen’s new book Attention Pays on Amazon. Find out more at NeenJames.com. Neen James: You know, I’ve spent my life being obsessed with productivity. Meaning, how do we get things done, how do we get it done better, quicker, faster, easier, cheaper? I always did it in my corporate career, and when I went out on my own as a keynote speaker, this was what I was passionate about. What I realized was, it was so much more than time. I don’t believe in time management. I realized when I was talking to my clients and I personally was getting frustrated because we all get 1,440 minutes, then I was thinking, “Okay great. Once they’re spent, then what?” I had flown out to Denver, Colorado, to spend some time with Mark Sandborn. Mark and I were talking about the evolution of my business, we were talking about some of my frustrations with where I was at in my career and my brand. I said, “It’s more than productivity.” He said to me, “Neen, what do you really want?” “I just want the world to pay attention.” He was like, “Yeah, of course you do, because that is what you’re about. You’re always so good at paying attention to other people, and it makes you crazy when people are disrespectful to others.” It was like this light bulb went on for me. So we started to play with the whole idea of attention and payment. Our parents told us to pay attention, our teachers told us to pay attention, it’s really quite annoying. They only started to think about “Okay, does attention pay? What would that look like?” I had this lightbulb like, “My god, imagine what would happen if we could get the world to pay attention.” Companies might make more money, people might have better relationships, hey, we might even take care of the planet that we live on, right? That was the realization for me was this phenomenal conversation with Mark Sandborn really challenged me. Sometimes we need someone to do that for us because things are sometimes so close to us, we don’t see it ourselves. Listening Isn’t What You Think It Is Charlie Hoehn: Let’s define what paying attention means in this case because I’d imagine it means different things for different people. Neen James: My little friend Donovan, he’s five, and I remember having this huge argument with him one day. I mean, if you’ve ever debated with a five year old, you know exactly what I’m talking about. He kept like inserting himself into the conversation.

Young people around the world face challenges that prevent them from reaching their full potential. Over the past few decades, Lou Bergholz, author of Vital Connections, has worked for children and adolescents from Boston to Zimbabwe. He found that the caring adult relationship is the key to supporting children as they navigate their journey to adulthood. More than games and activities, young people everywhere need vital connections. In this episode, Lou offers his most powerful techniques and heartwarming stories to help you reach out and positively impact young people’s lives. These tools will help you whether you’re a parent or a youth worker to help young people truly believe that they can succeed. Whether you’re a counselor, a teacher, a coach or a parent, this episode is for you. Get Lou’s new book Vital Connections on Amazon. Find out more at LouBergholz.com. Lou Bergholz: It was the beginning of 2005, and the summer before that, I was working in Thailand, building and kind of constructing the program design for this unique camp for children infected and affected by HIV. It’s a very powerful experience. We were planning to go back and do more of that work the next year. The day after Christmas 2004 is when the tsunami happened that affected the huge parts of southeast Asia, including Thailand. Just after the new year, all of our work reshuffled and turned towards this crisis and kind of post emergency relief work. We were not equipped to do the physical relief work, but we’re invited to come back and work with a number of organizations that we’re working with children and adolescents who were now in this state of a lot of shock. A lot of visible and invisible trauma. I had to reorganize and kind of play with what could we do that was useful. I began some research before on the most impactful ways, the shape and influence the life of children and adolescence. It hadn’t really come together, and the urgency of this need, it really pushed me to go a little deeper. I felt that I couldn’t show up in the midst of this post disaster work and bring something that I had done before. It needed to be deeper and better. I already seen this research before, but that was where this concept of the impact of relationship on the lives of young people surfaced for me. The light was shown on it. It was very powerful. I didn’t know what to do with it at first, because I was a program guy, I was an activities guy. I thought games and activities and curriculum was the way to move everybody forward. I was tuned in a little bit to culture in the way that program and local culture will shape a behavior. But this relationship piece was not in my DNA. It’s not that I wasn’t relational, but I kind of lived and breathed activities. I was the games guy. Yet all the research was saying it has to be relationships. Relationships are protective, relationships influence behavior. I started this kind of quest to figure out, if that’s the what, then howdo you do it? The Beginnings of Vital Connections Lou Bergholz: As that happened and as we went back and started working workshops for these youth facing organizations, the beginning of Vital Connectionsstarted to make sense to me and started to kind of become something I could teach a...

How do you become a world class consultant? This is the question on the minds of thousands of young consultants as they graduate from the classrooms of the world’s top business school to the offices of top consulting firms. Yet few of them have been formally trained on the concepts that elevate consultants to the top of their field. That’s where Jeff Kavanaugh and his book, Consulting Essentials, come in. In this episode, Jeff (@jeffkav) distills the lessons into the key skills that separate the best from the best. Drawing on his experience as a senior partner at multi-billion dollar consulting firm and his experience as an adjunct professor at the University of Texas and Dallas MBA program, Jeff shares the tools of the trade for young professionals to quickly scale the consulting learning curve.   Get Jeff’s new book Consulting Essentials on Amazon. Find out more at JeffKavanaugh.net. Jeff Kavanaugh: Just a farm boy from Indiana, literally grew up on a farm, and there weren’t lots of role models for this kind of work. For sports, for work, for religion, for anything else, but not for this. I went through engineering school, thought that was the path to go if you wanted to solve problems and be a good problem solver. It wasn’t until at a school, an industry, we’re starting to understand, there’s this other path of consulting of solving business problems, of looking at things a little bit differently, solving these grand challenges. And by that point, it was kind of too late to go back and decide, you know, if I can’t go back the classic way, go to the right college or at least in a college that has a lot of a business curriculum. Maybe go to the right strategy firm or consulting firm, as a first job at a school. Maybe I can just pick this up along the way. I think when I was at a manufacturing services company, I was working with a former partner from Peat Marwick, that was the predecessor to KPMG and to listen to him and describe what he did and how he did it and the way he thought and the way he solved problems, he worked with clients, even that were clients was a new word. It was fascinating. I think that was the moment that I was hooked. This is what I want to do and to figure out what a consultant is and what a consulting partner is and work backward and figure that out. That was the moment for me. The Appeal of Consulting Charlie Hoehn: Why were you hooked at that particular moment? Jeff Kavanaugh: Because it’s a way of solving business problems, it’s a way of feeling like you’re giving of yourself to something in a professional setting. In other words, you’re serving someone else as a client. Doctors have patients, business peoples it’s more of a client. It was solving a hard problem. It’s a mental challenge. You know, growing up, playing sports, competition was a big deal. Well, this is like a competition. You’re solving a challenging problem, and you’re doing it for a person for human being, a client. The stakes were big. It’s like you’re playing in the playoffs, if you’re in sports. It matters, it’s not just the day to day operational matters. Operations are important, but still,

Nick Vertucci, author of Seven Figure Decisions, believes you don’t strike it rich by playing it safe. It’s the seven figure decisions that lift you out of the middle class and into the millionaire’s circle. Nick achieved this success by taking bold, calculated risks to reinvent himself after he lost everything. In this episode, he starts off with that story of how he lost everything. Stick through that story, because then he outlines the fundamental building blocks that form the foundation that changed his life. Nick is an inspirational guy, and he will help you push past your fears and alter your mindset so that you can actually pursue your goals with meaning and passion again. By the end of this episode, you won’t be focused on small changes in your life anymore, you’ll be focused on going big in both your business and your life. Get Nick’s new book Seven Figure Decisions on Amazon. Find out more at NV Real Estate Academy. Nick Vertucci: Back when I was on my real estate journey of investing, I had created a cash flow system. Which means I had a partner who I brought in to my business, and we put renters in foreclosures after we rehab these properties. We provided a turnkey system. At some point in my investing career, I met another gentleman who owned and ran a real estate training company. That relationship was made, and I and my partner were teaching a three-day cash flow class. We were providing properties for students, for new investors. A lot of people don’t know until you read my book or get to know me, I was a product of the real estate training company. I was a student, which had actually saved me in a really tough financial time. I worked really hard for about 10 years, pulling myself out of millions of dollars in debt and paying off everything, then creating some massive wealth. Integrity Matters In this process, I built two really close friendships. One, with my business partner and his wife and then the owner of this training company who I had kind of had a joint venture agreement with. I got to tell you man, these two guys were two of my closest friends. We were having a ball doing this, and we were providing a great product for these students. We were having wild success. A key to your business is this: integrity is longevity. I will tell you that possibly on the training side of that company, things wouldn’t be done how they should have been done. The company started to struggle, the company started to have some bad times. Charlie Hoehn: What do you mean by bad times? Nick Vertucci: Well, what I mean by that is, because their brand wasn’t protected and their name wasn’t protected, business started going down significantly. Less people were showing up to the training, less revenue was being brought into the company, and he was losing money. I’ve been there before too in different businesses, so I understand that. You know, there’s a tough road ahead of him. But to be honest with you, he created himself because of ego and pride and a lot of other things. But the one good thing about that movement was my partner and I’s cash flow training and the properties that we were selling to the students. It was very profitable. It was a win/win for the student and it was a win/win for us.

You might already be thinking, “Yeah, right, owning a plane is for the 1%, it’s for celebrities and world leaders. I can’t own a plane.” But Nik Tarascio, author of Own Your Own Planebelieves that if you’re an entrepreneur or a business person who flies regularly on commercial airlines, then private plane ownership may not only be possible, but actually profitable. Not only will you get more time back, you’ll also have access to commercial and networking possibilities, and you can get some major tax advantages. Nik Tarascio is the CEO of Ventura Air Services, and in this episode, he provides strategies for determining your ideal plane. Whether it’s a practical 4-seater or a luxury 12 seat global jet. By the end of this episode, Nik will debunk the myths of the commercial airline industry and he’ll tell you exactly what you need to do in order to enjoy the surprisingly cost effective freedom of unrestricted flight.   Get Nik’s new book Own Your Own Plane on Amazon. Find out more at OwnYourOwnPlane.com.   Nik Tarascio: It’s 2007, I’m a new CEO of the company, and I see this 80 something year old guy come in the front door. He just came off of his first flight on a private plane, and he’s not smiling. I’m like “Uh-oh.” As a new CEO, I know I’m supposed to interact with customers. So I run over and I go, “Hey man, how as your flight? Did you not enjoy it?” He goes, “No, quite the opposite, I realized I could have done this my whole life and I completely missed out.” It really affected me. It was about two weeks of thinking about this guy’s response to that, and I was like, it doesn’t make any sense. I grew up in aviation, I always had aviation available to me, I’m a pilot. I could do any of this stuff. Really, it touched on my greatest fear, which I had not realized was about living with regret, about knowing that I’ve squandered some opportunity in my life. This guy was kind of the canary in the mine. We as an industry have done a terrible job of telling people how possible this lifestyle is, how possible this opportunity of controlling your schedule, having this freedom in your life. It kind of gave me a mission to say, “Hey, let’s do something about this.” Most people don’t know what’s available to them. For most people, this is an elite club. Let’s open the doors up, let’s let people inside and let them know that this is a possibility in their life. Myths of Plane Ownership Charlie Hoehn: What are the most common assumptions you run into about owning a plane? What are the myths? And what are the realities? Nik Tarascio: The biggest one obviously is what the book speaks to is that it’s all or nothing. It’s either a G6 that Jay Z’s flying around on or it’s an airliner. But there’s all these other options out there. The reality is it’s everything from a little four seater plane. Some would say, “But it’s a prop plane, what can I do with that?” Well, you could fly your kids to college in the northeast and you can do your business meetings if you’re a regional sales person. You could go to your vacation home in Kentucky. You don’t necessarily need a jet. I think that’s the first myth. Everyone thinks it’s like, “I have to be able to fly to Paris otherwise, why would I even have a plane?” The second thing is,

You’ve worked hard, you’ve lived within your means and you’ve invested wisely. But, if your portfolio gets wiped out by a downturn in the market or whittled away by healthcare expenses, all your careful planning could fall apart. The good news is that you can protect yourself. Michael Reese, author of Retiring Well, is the president and founding principle of Centennial Wealth Advisory. In his 20-plus years in the financial industry, he’s trained more than a thousand financial advisers in retirement planning strategies. As the host of the TV show Retiring Well, he’s also become one of America’s most recognized retirement planning professionals. In this episode, you’ll learn how to achieve financial stability regardless of what the market does. The retirement you deserve is within your reach and with solid time tested advice, Michael will help you avoid common pitfalls so that you can claim a secure future. Get Michael’s new book Retiring Well on Amazon. Find out more from Centennial Advisor.   Michael Reese: Christmas of 2002, that’s when I had to tell my parents how I managed to lose roughly half of their life savings over the first three years of their retirement. You see, my dad had retired back in January of 2000. This was right after the 90s, when the markets are roaring. We were trained stocks for the long run. All you need is a diversified portfolio of market securities and gosh, if you’re helping retirees, just make sure you have a lot of dividend-paid stocks and everything will be fine. When my parents retired, following what I had been taught, I put them in a diversified portfolio, but it was mostly stocks. Shortly thereafter, as the market started to go south, you might remember a plane flew into a building in New York City, something no one expected. The economy was a mess, and by the time we were three years in the retirement, like a lot of people, half their money was gone. Never Again Michael Reese: Thirty years he saved money. It only took me three years to lose half of it. I don’t think my parents blamed me, in fact, I’m sure they didn’t because all their friends were experiencing the same thing. But I sure blamed myself. I remember talking to my parents about reviewing their portfolios, reviewing how half their money was gone. My mom was in a state of confusion, looked at me and she said, “I don’t understand, what does that mean?” They were living off the income from this portfolio and I told her, I said, “Mom, you know that income you’ve been getting from your portfolio there, that you’ve been using to spend to go travel and do the things you wanted to do in retirement? Well, turns out, you’ve got to cut that money in half.” She’s like, “Well, but for how long?” I had to look my mother in the eyes and tell her, “Mom, for the rest of your life.” I got to tell you, I felt about an inch tall at that point. They’re one of the very fortunate few because my dad had a large pension, social security, and when he retired, his company made a financial mistake at paying him his severance package.  Turned out that they owed him money. He actually recently collected a check and was able to pay off the house. The mortgage payment that they just erased happened to match up pretty closely with the amount of money that they lost,...

Shannon Miles, author of The Third Option, is the CEO of Belay, an Inc 500 FastestGrowing Company and the winner of Entrepreneur’s Number One Company Culture awards. But that’s not what this episode is about. You see, Shannon believes in living life more fully. For her, that also means being a great mom and a great wife. In this episode, Shannon tells us why a woman doesn’t have to choose between a career and her family but can actually have both and succeed. If you’re a woman who wants to have the best of work and life, this episode is for you. Get Shannon’s new book The Third Option on Amazon. Find out more at MyThirdOption.com. Shannon Miles: I was in my late 20s, climbing the corporate ladder, and I finally landed my dream job in the corporation that I had been with for the last four years. I was loving it. Brian and I had been married for a while and decided, “Okay, now’s a great time to have a baby.” I was selling healthcare software, which may sound super boring, but that was my world. I was selling systems to clients who already had our software, so it was theoretically an easier sell. I loved the energy of it and the opportunity for travel and the satisfaction of closing a deal. Charlie Hoehn: Awesome. You two were ready to have a baby? Shannon Miles: Yeah. You got everything in line, you’re like, “Okay, let’s just mix this all up.” Fortunately, we were able to have Rainey right away, and she totally wrecked me. Sticking to the Plan Shannon Miles: The plan was to go back to that perfect job and for Brian to continue on his path and his sales job as well. So we found a nanny while I was on my three month maternity leave, hired her, brought her on, and that was the plan. After I went back to work, it started to become obvious that this actually wasn’t a sustainable plan. I didn’t factor in the love of this little baby girl. On paper it all made sense. You know, we’re just going to keep doing what we do. We hadn’t planned financially for either of us to quit our jobs. We were going to make it work. I held her and I’m like, my gosh, this little tiny thing needs me so much and I love her, and I can’t imagine both of us maintaining these sales jobs, traveling around and essentially having a nanny care for her. That was the crisis for us. Charlie Hoehn: What month did that really hit you? Shannon Miles: She was about six months old when we realized, okay, this can’t continue on. It was a tough time in our house because we were stretched financially. We both had to keep working. We had, fortunately, worked to get out of massive amounts of debt that we accumulated when we were in college together and young and married and stupid. Still, you know, you spend the money you make, right? We were saving for retirement and stuff like that, but there was not a lot of margin. Not the luxury of just saying, “Okay, somebody just quit their job and we’ll just figure it out,” that just wasn’t an option at that point. An Either/Or Situation Shannon Miles:There was this tension between the reality of the situation, knowing we couldn’t continue on with the way things were going, but then also knowing we had to make a change. They’re only little for so long, and the sacrifice of the time away wasn’t going to be...