Meet John Anderson, C-founder of the CEO Advantage and Author of Replace Retirement

[Transcript]

00:03

Welcome to the Finding Gravitas podcast brought to you by Gravitas Detroit. Looking to become a more authentic leader. Finding Gravitas is the podcast for you. Gravitas is the ultimate leadership quality that draws people in. It's an irresistible force encompassing all the traits of authentic leadership. Join your podcast host Jan Griffiths that passionate rebellious farmer's daughter from Wales, entrepreneur, leadership coach, keynote speaker, one of the top 100 leading women in the automotive industry as she interviews some of the finest leadership minds in the quest for gravitas.

Jan Griffiths: 00:49

We remain in the midst of the pandemic. Yes, we're all living the realities of the Coronavirus crisis. And we are working from home. We're in isolation. We're in quarantine life, as we once knew it has completely changed. But this also offers a great opportunity. Not only is this a tremendous opportunity for us to step up and lead and make this the most exhilarating leadership experience of our lifetime. It's an opportunity to challenge the norm. The day to day rulebook of routines and corporate playbook gets out the window right now. So let's use this time as an opportunity to think about where we're going. What do we want for the rest of our lives? Two different perspectives, whether it's a vision for a company, for our business, for our team, for our industry, or whether it's for ourselves, our own personal vision for our life? What does that look like? What's our legacy look like? Where do we want to be in 1020 30, maybe 40 years time, this is a great opportunity to step back away from normal life. Let's face it, we have no choice. And really spend some time mapping that out. I can't think of anybody better to help us with this than that disrupter himself, John Anderson. John, is the author of the book replace retirement where he challenges the retirement model. And in his words, he says, don't retire, retire. And right now, we're questioning what retirement could look like the stock market is down, maybe that pot of money that we want to have, at a certain point of time, is not going to be there. But that's okay. There's an opportunity to rethink that model. And John is the perfect guy to help us through that. John is a lifelong business strategist and entrepreneur. His entrepreneurial spirit has guided much of his professional life, starting in the office furniture business. He was the first gazelles business coach to work with Vern Harnish. And now this organization is considered to be one of the leading executive coaching organizations. John is an active corporate speaker and coach and he has had equity in a variety of entrepreneurial companies, including the CEO advantage dogtopia. This be an exponential advisor. In the late 90s, John founded the Detroit chapter of the entrepreneurs organization recognized by Michigan's future 50 award, today's workplace of tomorrow award, and in cranes List of 40 under 40. He served on the leadership Oakland board the Oakland County Business Roundtable, and is considered one of the most networked entrepreneurs in the region. Please welcome John Anderson.

John Anderson: 04:07

Thank you so much for inviting me. I'm really excited about this.

Jan Griffiths: 04:10

John Anderson, what is your story? Tell us please?

John Anderson: 04:15

I'll start post college. So I went to work for IBM, which was recommendation by my father because he had worked 37 years for the same company. And that was kind of the path we took back then. And I ultimately left IBM at the time I left the company, they were the most profitable company in the world. So it was really working at the best company in the world at that time. And I left because I had married into a successful entrepreneurial family. And in conversations with my father in law, I said, I think I could run a business myself, and he was open to helping me with that. And after a couple of different false starts, I ended up purchasing 50% of Gorman's business interiors, which was a Hayworth office furniture dealership in Southeast Michigan. And we also had a location in Midland, Michigan, and took that company from two and a half million in sales to about 15 million in sales. And the real growth in that business was my own leadership in the sense that now that I had gone from being a salesman at IBM to running a business, I really knew nothing about that. And my business partner, Bernie Moray, who's still working there today in his mid 90s was my mentor. And the other thing I did was read lots of magazines and publications and Fast Company was out in Ink Magazine. I was flipping through Ink Magazine, I see a picture of Thomas Edison and Henry Ford. And I knew that Edison Ford and Firestone from Napoleon Hill's book, Think and Grow Rich had done mastermind groups. And the caption under their picture was the birthing of giants, and said, every year, we invite 60 entrepreneurs from around the world to attend this program at the MIT enterprise forum. And I applied for that and was accepted. At that program, I was introduced to a gentleman by the name of Vern Harnish, who later went on to write the Rockefeller habits and are sort of mastering the Rockefeller habits, and then more recently scale up and burn to me was like Obi Wan Kenobi. I'm like, this is the guy I need to study and understand if I'm going to be successful in business. And so this relationship launched this is almost 25 years ago, it would be about 25 years ago. And so from Vern, I, who was my business coach, I started to learn about all these different practices and tools and ways to make you more effective as a leader and a leadership team. So I decided that this office furniture, dealership business is not my long term path. And Vern asked me, What do you think you're going to do? And I said, Well, I was actually thinking of getting into business coaching. Now. This is over 20 years ago. So unlike today, we're everybody's a business coach. That was a rare thing 20 years ago. And I was going to work with Jack stack, who wrote the great game of business and has teaches people open book management. And Vern said, Well, wait a minute, why don't you become my first coach? I'm going to take the program, we have an MIP on the road. And I'm going to call it them. Master of Business dynamics, and you can be the first coach. And I said, Great. So Vern flew in the town. And we went on meetings each and every day, and Vern would preside. And I would take notes. And then at the end, they'd say, Yeah, we want to do this, who's going to be our coach, you know, like, oh, John's gonna be your coach. And so that was kind of like, coaching training, if you will. And it was like day three, I guess. And he said, You're gonna do the presentation tomorrow? And I'm like, Nah, no, I can't do what I was too nervous. So he gave me one more day on day four. I said, No, you're gonna do it today. I'll do great. And so I started presenting. And by like, 11 o'clock at the break, Fern said, I'm going to catch a flight and go home, you got this handled. And that was my sort of inception into business coaching. Now. From that point on, I continued to read study with Vern, he and I ended up creating some tools we could use. And my business partner and I out of that created a company called the CEO advantage. And it was really founded on Vern Harnish is mastering the Rockefeller habits. Jim Collins, who had just released Good to Great, we saw him present good, the great before the book went on the public market. And then Patrick Lencioni, he was a third part of our triangle. And at that time, Patrick had only released one book, and I used to get Patrick to come into town and present for us for free. He gets $120,000 to keep keynote now. And he actually facilitated two of our annual planning sessions in San Francisco. So we're very lucky and fortunate to have Vern Harnish, Jim Collins and Patrick Lencioni is kind of our triangle. Jim, by the way, was the only one who said we didn't we would pay a fee to Vern every month and we pay a fee to Patrick every month. We did. Jim said you didn't have to pay me anything. Just make sure my content is called my content, don't repackage it. And so that was the foundation of our business coaching practice that evolved out of my office furniture dealership. And I've been doing that for 20 plus years. And then more recently, you know, got into publishing.

Jan Griffiths: 09:34

That's great. So you have a tremendous depth of knowledge and experience when it comes to business leadership of your own and then coaching others. leaders today are trying to figure out how to lead during the pandemic. We're in the middle of a crisis. One of the things that we often talk about in authentic leadership is the need to have a vision. And it's very hard to have a positive vision when you're in the middle of a crisis. What advice would you give to the leaders out there regarding developing a vision to get out of this crisis and to motivate the business and the team?

John Anderson: 10:19

It's a great question. And I have a number of suggestions around this. The first and foremost part, and you're using the word right vision is for myself could be different for others. Some may be using pictures or thoughts. But I actually find words to be very powerful. So I would encourage leaders to sit down and write what is the vision for the company. And I think 10 years is a good timeframe. Although I don't have a problem going longer than that, I do have a little bit of a reservation going shorter. The reason why I think a 10 year vision is so powerful is it's far enough out there that you don't know exactly how you're going to get there. And yet, it's not so far out that it seems like kind of crazy, like we all know, we're going to be 10 years into the future. And so sitting down and saying what would the ideal vision look like for your company, and the team of people you work with 10 years ends look like and describe it not in a linear fashion, but in an exponential fashion. And if the word exponential kind of tongue ties a little bit, then think of it in an ideal, ideally, where would we want our company to be 10 years hence, where we want our customer relationships to be where we want our employees to be? What does that look like? Not the steps of how we get there, but simply what does it look like? One of my mentors and I have a number of them is Ari Weinzweige from Zingerman's Deli. And Zingerman's has done a great job and are he's really a leader in this particular area and writing visions. So you can go and either read his books, which by the way, are tremendous, but there's about 650 pages, and it's small print. So are his books take up, take a bit of work to get through, and they're so content rich, that you want to like underline everything he writes. But he's fortunate in the sense that since he's from the food business, he treats his books like a cookbook. And then you can buy these little recipes, which are little sections of the book. And he does, I think, maybe four or five on visioning, some are on personal vision, and some are in business visioning. So I learned a lot about BI visioning from Ari, he's not the only source. But he did a great job most masterful, I'd seen of writing a 10 year vision for that company that has tremendous detail and depth. And so that's the same process I've gone through for my own company. And even today, I continue to do that, and right into vision just for the under 2020. Now, the end of 2020, of course, is more linear, but I but it comes from this bigger, expanded 10 year vision that I have, in terms of where we're going and what we're going to look like, despite the upheaval and changes that are happening right now real time.

Jan Griffiths: 13:23

This, I know that there are leaders out there right now, they're probably listening to this, and maybe there's two thoughts running through their head, one would be, Oh, I already have a vision. It's to be the world class manufacturer of X widget and satisfy, I'll be the choice the best choice to our customer. You know, every certainly, every automotive company I've ever dealt with, has got a vision statement like that, which honestly, to me is meaningless. It's not you cannot attach to that you cannot emotionally attached to that. It's not a feeling state of somewhere, or something that you will be in the future. So help us understand, you know, what, what is great content for a vision? How do you get your mind in the right place to develop a vision that is going to be so powerful, that you will just feel the pull toward it?

John Anderson: 14:18

Well, it's again, you're you're right on this topic. It's so powerful. And it's not easy. That's the challenge in this. So the reason why, one of the things one of the reasons that business coaching took off, is that because of the work of Lynch Yoni and Collins and Harnish and others, they're not the only ones. But Collins did such a great job right? He said, You got to have a B hag. And this was back in his built the last book. And he said that great companies have a big hairy audacious goal. And he said the be hag has to be 10 to 30 years thinking beyond just tactics and strategy but it really is visionary, you don't really know how you're going to get there a 70 to 50% probability of success. Companies really latched on to that and burn, put it in this one page plan, and we put it in our one page plan. But it became more of an exercise to your point, let's just fill that sentence out, let's describe some point in the future or kind of an idealistic way want to be as a business in a one sentence, one liner. And I do think that's valuable, so people can remember it. And remember, he used his example was, we're gonna get a man to the, you know, the, the John F. Kennedy, we're gonna get a man on the Moon at the end of the by the end of the decades. And so that was simple to understand and so on. That became kind of like, a checkbox on this page. We got to get that done. We got to get that done. What you're talking about, and what we you and I understand is that no, no, you got to go deeper into that. And Collins did bring that up. But I think everybody kind of ignored it. He called it envision future. So what he was suggesting is, if you wrote this detailed envision future that I was discussing earlier, like Ari did, then you could come up with that one line statement for people to remember. So it's really, and I'll talk about this again later. But it's really, Stephen Covey had the four quadrants of time management. And he said, quadrant one is important and urgent. Quadrant Two is important, but not urgent. And in quadrant three and four, we can sort of ignore they're just busy stop, it doesn't get anywhere. When I work with leadership teams, I tell everybody, I'm sitting at the table, because they're all executives, what got you into this room. And same with our listeners, what got you into the room was your ability to execute and quadrant one, the ability to handle both urgent and important items, and really get through that fast and not be messed up in quadrant three and four, they weren't doing nonsense stuff. They weren't, you know, checking Facebook posts and so on, they're really good at, there's an issue, we're going to attack the issue.

John Anderson: 17:07

However, Covey said in his book, The Seven Habits, that all progress, and I want to be clear on, it's not some progress, all progress happens in quadrant two, which are the things that are important, but not urgent. The vision you and I and you and I are talking about, that's quadrant two, you have to sit down and it takes iteration after iteration of the finding what this future vision looks like. And it's hard. It's a lot of thinking. So I have found by practice, I've gotten better at it, and I enjoy it more. And maybe because I've written a book, it's also easier to write. But with a client recently, the way we went about it. So this little prescription is we started by having everybody read Ari's little recipe on visioning. So they read Ari's vision. And then they read how sort of visions are developed in his, the process he recommends. Then I said, Why don't you guys on the whiteboard, I'll write it down. Just tell me. Why do you think his vision so impactful? You know, why is it powerful? How did it touch you, and they use words like emotion, and it was real. And they felt like they're part of the team and all these different descriptors. So now we had those descriptors, as we would want our vision look the same, then I had do another exercise, Oh, get it all the detail out now. But basically, describe for me what the employee experience would be, like, describe for me what the customer experience would be, like, describe for me what our financials would look like, and so on. So that we had sort of painted this broad brush framework, if you will. And then we stopped for the day. That was we're probably three and a half hours, four hours, and we stopped, we let that incubate, and then we came back a couple weeks later, and I actually took responsibility for it, because I enjoy it. And I got on the keyboard, and we did on the big screen. And I took all those notes and ideas. And I started building out the sections, you know, paragraphs into each of these sections. So they had the beginning of a written vision. And then their job was to take that and go through it again and enhance it and enrich it, then share it with their expanded leadership team, get their input, then share it with their board of directors and get their input. And then finally, when they felt really like they owned it, and they're excited to share it, then go forward with their entire employees, you know, the whole company and share that vision. So those were the steps that we took. If you can't write it yourself, and I understand that's hard for some people, then get someone to help you write it, but again, go through this process. Because otherwise, you're going to always get sucked back into that quadrant one thing the urgent important, which feels comfortable and familiar. And of course, in a time of crisis. We're going to go to what's comfortable and familiar except nothing Right now is comfortable and familiar. So it's really the quadrant to the vision, if you will, the things that are important but not urgent, that keep you focused on going forward and not falling back.

Jan Griffiths: 20:12

Yeah. Well, that's great. Great advice, John. And I think that there's some leaders out there right now they're going, what are they talking about a vision and 10 years, I got to deal with this crisis. You know, we're in crisis mode right now. But this is where I see what we're going through right now is a tremendous opportunity to think differently, because everything has changed, our lives have changed, our routines have change, there is no real corporate playbook for a pandemic. So this is a great opportunity to perhaps sit back with your team, and really start to generate a vision statement of where you're going to be in 10 years that will pull you toward it. I love this some vision statements that that really resonate with me. And I use them as examples to help people think through this, because it's not this one statement that you throw on a PowerPoint, and you know, there's a few posters up in the office and you're done. I like Starbucks, to nurture the human spirit, one cup of coffee at a time. You know, they didn't, they didn't just wake up one day and say, oh, yeah, we're gonna sell X number of cups of coffee and open X number of stores, you know that it's much more it's deeper, much more meaningful, and it guides who they are as a company. And the other one I love is a fairly new company. It's called canoe, it's the old Travelocity, it's an electric vehicle company out of California. And they want to, and I quote, free people of the tyranny of ownership of a vehicle, you know, how powerful is that? So I see this as a tremendous opportunity for people to, to really sit back and develop that vision. But let's, let's come in more near term. So we are in a crisis mode. What advice would you give to leaders on how they lead in terms of the leadership style that they employ right now, because we've heard that there is a tendency to move into command and control. But we know that we need to connect with people emotionally at a much deeper level. Now we have to create psychological safety for people. So faced with this crisis right now, what advice would you give leaders today?

John Anderson: 22:29

I guess three different thoughts on this. The first and obvious one, which is exactly what we're doing right now. I'm Patrick Lencioni, is put on a weekly podcast. It's actually designed for coaches and advisors. But I'm seeking that out and then did one with Chip Conley. And so this idea that I need to go out and learn from others what they're doing and how they're navigating through it. So that's the first and obvious one, kind of ramp up the education. To. And again, this is from what I've been listening to and learning from, is there's a lot of recommendation to communicate more frequently, to give employees an update each and every week. That is transparent in the sense that and Vern was using us a week ago saying don't do the sandwich, which is like good news and bad news, a good day, shifts a shift sandwiches. What I liked, it was a good, it was a good metaphor, and I liked it. He was suggesting that first you start off with what isn't great, and then move into what is great. So I like that that was a good suggestion that resonated with me. Maybe it'll resonate with others, then I think of Lynch Yoni, who is so transparent, that I really have always been drawn to him for last 20 years of all the presenters I've seen, he seems the most genuine and transparent. And then, you know, later, I don't know, maybe it was 10 years ago or so I got introduced to Brene. Brown. And that's her whole thing, right? You have to be vulnerable and transparent. So that would be my next recommendation is what can I do as a leader to be a little more vulnerable and transparent of these are my concerns not in a in a griping, bitching kind of way, but in a true humility way, and then these are some things that I'm optimistic about. So if we want to kind of share that the bad and the good. I would, on a, sort of a third wave of this thing. So those so I got what's coming out of you know, various recommendations and reading and listening, then what are tools that other effective leaders are using? And then my third so again, coming Education that transparent, open, vulnerable communication. The third one that I'm most at home with and comfortable with, is that I am, I had been on a process of developing my own personal leadership skills for the last really 10 years or so, which led to writing the book. I believe that it's, that is what's helping me so much today is that I have a process and a routine, I follow. And I just keep following that. And it gives me confidence. So not only do I have a 10 year vision, which we were talking about earlier, a written vision, which is dated for July 1 2026. So you know, mine's already in motion. So I know what that time looks like, I spent time writing what this year looks like, and how I'm going to use the pandemic as a catalytic mechanism. And then finally, I have activities and behaviors I do every day to keep my confidence. So in my case, pre pandemic, I felt like if I was going to go in and meet with my customers, because I don't have employees, right, I have clients. If I'm going to go in and do a workshop with a client, I have to go through this two hour routine that kind of gets me ready for the day. It includes mental, physical and spiritual exercises. So that I'm game on, I'm suited up for the day, I created that for me as a as an advisor, because I can't show up in front of Congress, excuse me, in front of clients, with my confidence shaken, with frustration, with untied issues, with lots of noise in the background, otherwise, I can't be fully focused on them. So I created that as a client delivery mechanism before this. Now, I'm realizing it fits really well today. Because I have this whole process and philosophy that I need to sort of game up every day or suit up, I guess is the better description. And now I'm getting to apply it in a bigger game. Does that make sense? Yeah, it

Jan Griffiths: 27:12

makes perfect sense. Would you share some of that routine with us, John,

John Anderson: 27:15

I will. And just before I do that, one of the so every one of the, in this two hour process, one of the practices I do is writing, and I journal and then I write so the journaling has kind of just kind of gratitude and things I'm thankful for and just kind of get my mind in the right place, it can really be any thought the writing part is I'm either writing a blog, or I'm writing the vision, I'm always writing something every day on the computer. And in my writing, last week, I came to this insight. And so this is real new, and I'm going to do a video series on this. So you're the first person I'm sharing this with other my business partners, and my wife, and in the in the first public domain. Because solid backup and my story earlier I did that really accelerated one. I talked about Vern Harnish and going to MIT and and he was kind of like Obi Wan Kenobi. For me. When I met him. I'm like, Oh, I gotta study this guy. Like, I want to learn the ways of his force, if you will. About and so that's been a 25 year journey about, oh, it's almost 10 years ago now. somewhere between eight and 10 years ago, I met Peter Diamandis and Peter had just written his book abundance, why the future is better than you think. And I sat in that audience, and I'm like, this is the next this is Yoda. Like, I need to know this guy, I need to become friends with him, I need to study his ways. And I need to hang out with him. I gotta figure out how I'm going to become friends with this guy who was listed by Forbes as one of the 50 most influential people in the world. So this was no easy feat, but I accomplished it. So he's, he considers me a friend today. And I certainly consider him when Peter says that you're either going to be disrupted by technology, or you're going to be a disrupter, which led to the idea of writing this book, The replace retirement. So I didn't want to be disrupted. I wanted to be a disrupter. So all this is out of this concept, what he calls the exponent, you know, exponential trends, right? Ray Kurzweil is kind of behind that. And so there's all these information. And data is on this. This technology, uptrend accelerating almost like a hockey stick. Fair enough. That's what an exponential curve looks like. Last week I was sitting in the pandemic is essentially if you look at all the curves on it, right? It's a hockey stick, and they're trying to get it back into a bubble and then flatten it back down, right flatten the bubble. So this thing starts It's off really almost like innocuous, it's like it's not even showing up, we can ignore it. It's not a big deal. Yeah, it's happening over in China, but it's not gonna affect us. And then it starts this exponential doubling rate. And it starts doubling, doubling and doubling till now it looks like a hockey stick. So in my book title, I wrote replace retirement living your legacy in the exponential age. So I through this label called the exponential age, I would suggest to our audience that we have officially entered the exponential age, with the pandemic as the catalytic mechanism that launched it. So it's been around, some of us have been aware of aware of it, a lot of us haven't. So this idea of thinking linearly versus exponentially, is really going to become the Achilles heel, not for 95% of the population, but the 5% of us who are leaders and entrepreneurs, we have got to learn how to think exponentially. Steven Covey gave us a little insight into that quadrant one and quadrant two, essentially, what he was saying, quadrant two, is how you create time to think exponentially when you're when you're not dealing with the urgent, but you're dealing with the important. So it's like, that's the new era we're in we're we officially locked into that. And if you don't know how to think exponentially, or put time in quadrant two, now's the time to build the muscle. Does that make

Jan Griffiths: 31:31

sense? Yes, makes perfect sense. Okay, so

John Anderson: 31:35

how do I get into the sort of exponential mindset each and every day? That was a question? Yes. So I wake up in the morning, and the first thing I do, as soon as my eyes open is I say a prayer. And I go through a whole sort of prayer sequence that I learned years ago. And I'm just laying there with my eyes closed. And it follows more or less the same framework every time and I pray for myself and my wife. And then I pray for all kinds of friends and extended family. And it's kind of like almost remembering, it's so long that if I get out of order, I got to kind of started over again. But I do that every day, then the next thing we started doing is meditating. So right after the prayer, that my wife now that we're home every day, we're doing it together. So we spend 10, to 15 minutes in meditation, and it's a guided meditation on an app, I use calm. So there's lots of guides on that. So good. So I'm growing my meditation, then I head downstairs, and I begin doing my first setup. And I don't like I've never been I know lots of people love working out. I don't love working out, I've always struggled with it. I know it's important to have the quality of life I want, but I don't get joy from it. So I hit the floor, and I do push ups and I, I do three sets of 20 Push ups, three sets of 33 crunches, and three sets of 20 squats. And that's kind of my thing right now. So I always do some sort of physical workout. Now, I don't do all of those. In order, I do the first set. And then I go into my office and I've always got, I've got spiritual kind of guide books. And then I've got business books and so on. And I get the journal out and I put the date on and I have a couple of different things I track. So I do the count on that, like meditation. Now I'm up to like 176 days, or whatever it is. So I track things like that. And then I start writing. And again, I mentioned earlier, my default mechanism is just gratitude. Thank you so much for this day, thank you for my health, thank you for our lifestyle, etc. Thank you for this beautiful home, on and on. So sometimes it's real insight. Other times, it's always gratitude. And then I read I have a kind of like a little spiritual book. And then I read something from another book from it's called the grapevine it's it's a sobriety kind of tool that A has. And then I do another workout set. And then I come back because I don't like the workouts, I got to get the workout out of the way. And then I do something fun. Now for someone else that might be the opposite. They might do the journaling or something and then the workout. So I'm always I'm playing off of these habit forming tools. And then I I read the Bible, because I've read 1000s of books, I figured I wasn't read that one. So I read a little bit of the Bible each day and then journal from that. And then I have a business book. And I mentioned Ari's books, sometimes those I'm into, but I'm very selective on what's the book I'm reading and writing from. So I want to sort of draw content from that. I do sort of my final set. Now my exercise, like thank God for that, and then maybe brew some coffee, and then finish the journaling.

John Anderson: 34:50

Then I go and I start to do the writing, you know, I mentioned earlier so I get on and I work on either a blog, or writing a vision or whatever I'm writing going on in the book when I was doing that, so there's some writing. And then I write a personal note of gratitude to somebody handwritten note. And I do that, because years and years ago, I was working with the CEO of Domino's Pizza, David Brandon. And he taught me the value of writing personal, handwritten, thank you notes. Here, he is running Domino's, for God's sake. And he would write me a personal note thanking me for meeting with him. Like he's the guy, right, the important guy, and he's writing me a note. So I'm like, well, he has a personal note, I certainly have time right now. So because of that influence, I have picked up this habit of writing notes every day. So just little handwritten note. And then then I jump in the shower after all that, so that whole cycle takes me about two hours, fair enough. And then I can head off to my meeting, or whatever. So in this case, the meeting is sitting down with you. So that's the, that's the process I take every day, that's designed out of this greater tool. So those are those are my daily alignment habits. That comes from my legacy map, which is the tool I developed. So I have a whole plan for my life. And in order to become the person I've defined in my life plan, I have to do these things on a daily basis. One other piece of information, I do that five days a week, not seven days a week. However, as I develop habits like meditation, because that's the newest one, that when I am doing seven days a week, I find if you're trying to cement a habit, this my personal experience, is it's not 21 days, you basically got to go 90 days, if it's something you enjoy journaling was the very first one I ever took on. Journaling was relatively, I found. And there's a London study in my book I mentioned it says 66 days, but somewhere in that 90 days, approximately around the 66 day, it went from being something I gotta remember to do to something I enjoy doing. Fair enough. Now, the only habit when I touched on earlier, exercising is not something to this day I enjoy doing, I only enjoy it because I enjoy the benefits from it. But journaling, writing the personal notes, blogging, all these other habits, the meditation, the prayer, these are things that I do not because I have to do, but because I enjoy them almost like brushing your teeth. And so I went from seven days a week, then I backed it off to six days a week, because my wife was kind of teasing me, can we like, you know, spend time in bed before you go off and do all this stuff? And I'm like, Yeah, I guess I could take a day off. And then I realized all I could take the weekend off. So it's so cemented. And again, some of these are more than 10 year habits. So that that's kind of the routine of the morning.

Jan Griffiths: 37:51

That's quite a routine. That's a that's a time commitment. But it puts you you're in the right place, your your head, your your mind, your heart, everything is in the right place right at that after two hours.

John Anderson: 38:03

And that's you know, so many of the books we read, lots of people talk about this. And this is the fundamental in the Rockefeller habits. Vern has just three habits. One is your top five and one to five. The second one is rhythm. And the third is metrics, you know, measurable outcomes, and the top five quantify which is Habit number one, I resonated with Vern because I had experiences in my 20s when I was listening to Earl Nightingale and he did a whole bunch of series about the strangest secret and so on. And he brought this up and it basically was Rockefeller and Carnegie had studied under Ivy Lee, in the short version on this, and I'm sure a lot of your listeners are familiar with Ivy League story. But he basically had these guys say you can't have 25 things on your list, you got to have five or less they need to be prioritize, prioritize from one to five. And you need to start on number one before you go to number two and so on. I even heard Warren Buffett share the same story, right? He it was with his pilot or something this pilot was bemoaning all the things he needs to do. And he said, All right, I'll make up the name Bob. Bob, the pilot, write down for me all the things you need to accomplish in order of how they have to be accomplished. And, and not just in terms of its easiest thing to knock off. But the most important, what's number 123? So he got his list down. He said, Okay, get rid of everything below number five, throw it away. Just focus on those fives even Warren Buffett. So this is not a new tool. It's not a new rule. And I was enamored with that I started practicing it in my late 20s When I ran the office furniture company, and I practice it today. So that made sense. And it's like well, if mornings my best time then I have to start out with the first most important thing. So I thought prayer was the first most important thing. Then then the second most important why that maybe meditation is the second most important thing. So even the order of that Morning as it grew from 10 minutes to two hours, was basically aligned with that idea what's going to be first most important, second most important, so on, before I go engage with a client, or whatever the next activity is, before my day starts to get all crazy and frantic and urgent, and so on, I need to make sure that I know what's most important in my life. And then I made it a priority in that day, before I go on to anything else. I think that's what leaders do. I think that's, that goes back to my, my insight of last week is that we're in this new age, if you don't know how to do it, you need to figure it out and do it soon. Otherwise, you're gonna get overwhelmed by fear and change and all this stuff, because the world's moving at this hockey stick rate. And it can be quite overwhelming.

Jan Griffiths: 40:52

Well, and we both know that you can't lead others until you know how to lead yourself. And you're talking about how you lead yourself. I think that many people, not just leaders, but many people out there today will have to rethink retirement, the stock market is down. It's crashing horribly left and right. And we can look at it and say oh my gosh, you know, maybe people are close to retirement, I you know, I have this, this number or this, this pot of money that I'm supposed to have or a time in my life, that I'm supposed to just stop working and do nothing, which you know, you and I have talked about this before. That's, that's something that I could not get my mind around, I was not going to move, live my life to get to a certain point or a pot of money, and then do nothing. You know, I had a vision for my life for what I wanted to do. I wanted to form this business. And I'm doing it. And I did it before I retired and walked away from my corporate role. But there are people out there right now, maybe thinking oh, no, because of this pot of money that I have or don't have, because of what's happening in the stock market, maybe I'll have to work longer in this corporate job. Because they're on this, this path of this is what I'm supposed to do. But what I absolutely loved about your book is that you're talking about being a disrupter, you challenged that whole mindset that so many people are on that path. So this could be a great opportunity for people to sit back and think about the vision that they have, not only for their business, but for their own life. So tell us a little bit about the book, John, and how you challenge that thinking?

John Anderson: 42:40

Well, thank you. And everything we've talked about so far has been leading up to this. And I was, I knew it'd be hard not to talk about this subject as we were sharing. And so I've been peppering all through our conversation, little tidbits. But I, I started with the story of Peter Diamandis. And, you know, his challenge was either you're going to be disrupted, or you're going to be a disrupter. When I first and this is so appropriate for today, right? Because we're all being disrupted. So when I first heard this, now, remember, I've had years I've had I've been in this program is a program called Abundance. 360. It's every January in Beverly Hills. And we just finished I think, year eight, and it's a 25 year journey. So I got exposed to this year after year after year. So a lot of time think about this. So when I first got exposed to this idea of disruption, I went into fear, everybody does, well, I'm not gonna get disrupted this, this can't happen to me. I wouldn't even know how to manage it. It's all the things you were just sharing, like, it's overwhelming, I don't really know what to do. I'm just going to ignore it. Then as time went on, and I thought about this disruption thing and technology, I said, Well, okay, I can see how Ford Motor Company is going to be disrupted with autonomous vehicles, and electric cars and so on. If they don't figure this out, they may or may not have a business anymore, that the the technology and the changes that are coming and they'll they'll get bypassed, right? They won't know how to adapt quick enough. So I can see how far it's gonna get to Trump that they better watch out. And then I let some more time go by and I said, how would I get disrupted? So as I thought about that, I use the example and I know it won't work for all listeners, but hopefully a lot of them. There's a character on the old Star Trek series called data. There was various versions of Star Trek, but data was artificial intelligence. He was basically a robot, a very sophisticated one, he was human like, and he was run by artificial intelligence. And data for those of us who are familiar with a character was like a trusted member of that team. He wasn't just a technology that they used. He was human like in his relationship with those members. They counted on data to be there for them, and they, they protected data if he was at risk. So he was, he was so human like he was treated like human. But the cool thing about data, and this is where I saw my disruption is, imagine there's an AI technology, it already exists, you know, like Watson, IBM's, Watson computer and others, that could be the coach, if you will, the business coach. So instead of having a real meeting, you show up at a virtual meeting. And then this tie this artificial intelligence is answering questions for your team, and it's appraising things. And it's telling you everything about the history of your nuts and bolts business and all the projections going forward and stock market trends, and it's doing all this real time analysis, I can give you all this stuff, right? I can't do that. So that's kind of disruptive to me. And then because it's we do the media and virtual reality, you could skin it as Jim Collins or Einstein, or Abraham Lincoln, you pick what he wants you to want them to look like. So now it's not you know, I'm not, I don't have the intelligence this thing does. It can look like somebody who's really good George Washington, you pick at somebody you know, you admire. So what do we need John Anderson the room for? And just the book, kind of like the icing on the cake, or the nail in the coffin, if you will. It's like, $95. Like, I don't charge $95. But it's so ubiquitous, that you get this technology and so on. So I said, I can see how I can be disrupted. So I don't just see how people are gonna disrupt it. And Ford's gonna get pushed off that John Anderson's John Anderson's way of life could be disruptive. And so I started to think about it say, okay, and I mentioned Earl Nightingale, before he was a, he was a mentor to me and my 20s, I've listened to his program 1000s of times. So Earl would always say there's a field of diamonds right in front of you don't go searching all over the world for it. They're right in your backyard. So I said, Okay, well, I'm a baby boomer. And I don't think this retirement thing doesn't really work for me. And I think there's others out there. So if there's approximately 80 million boomers, and let's assume using a statistical bell curve, that 20% of them will resonate with my message. That's how you and I got together, right, Jan's like, I totally got it. I'm on board with you. Show me this path. Then, if I were really the makeup penetration, it'd be 1.6 million. So I'll take 10 I'll take the 20% or 16 million baby boomers who would resonate with this message. If they simply heard it, they're like, I get it, I want to show you the way. And that 10% of that group, or 1.6 million would actually sign on and be a follower of this. I call it a movement, they would get on board with the movement. So that became my B hag, if you will, or moonshot is that we're going to by January 1 26, we'd reach 1.6 million boomers. It doesn't have to be all boomers, it's really people between 45 and 65. So some boomers are older. So now we've got this idea, we're going to replace retirement, we're going to change the existing paradigm retirement to one in which you are contributing and working all the way through, although on your terms. So in the book, I use myself as an example, essentially, one, and somebody recently just asked me this. So one of the things I'll kind of share my year, from a planning point of view, I take the month of February off, I take the month of August off, and I probably if you take holidays and so on, I extended another month. So I take about three months off a year. And so it still gives me plenty of time to work with clients and all my clients understand this. They know this, and our whole design of our program.

John Anderson: 48:36

And so on the month off in February, I'm a big time snowmobilers, one of my passions. And so this season, I snowmobile about 9000 miles. But clearly I'm very passionate and other people have other passions as my passion. So snowmobiling, I'm up in Quebec. And this guy said, Are you retired? I get that question a lot. Because here I am snowmobiling for three weeks? And I'm like, No, yeah, sort of like, because I designed it myself. So what I found in, in, in my book, I talk about this, I used to use kind of the balance wheel idea. And then I realized, maybe it's not balanced. Maybe there is no balance, maybe it's really energy management. So everything in the universe is built off energy, right? And so we know we can tap into this energy. So I said, one of the things that seems to wane as we age is our energy. So what are the things I do? What are the people I spend time with one of the books I read? How do I get up in the morning, I want to do things that give me energy. And I want to slowly get rid of things that take energy away. And so I would say that my book and myself is on a self transformation, a 10 year self transformation, to slowly get all the energy drainers out of my life and attract more energy givers. And I share that because again, as we age, our energy does start to wane. And so I want to be more judicious where I can spend it. And in presentations I talked about that when I was 20 and worked at IBM, I remember and IBM was, it was a really tough company to get in sales, you needed a minimum of 90%, passing grade on all the internal sales training. So when I was an IBM salesperson, they trained us for 12 months. And in that 12 months, if you didn't achieve 90%, you were let go, you lost your job. So there was a lot of anxiety and all these people going through the training, yet some of us still did the all nighters. We got done for the day's training. Maybe it was like a Thursday night. And then we went out and did like an all nighter, we came in at 4am, all hungover and stuff. And then at eight o'clock, we're doing our sales calls and all this stuff with our trainers. And I could do that I could get away with that I had that kind of I had like, ridiculous amount of energy. I was foolish for that. Now, I don't have that kind of energy today. And so what are the practices in my life plan that attract and give me energy? And how do I get rid of energy. So that was essentially the nucleus of this book is that we're entering this period of disruption. There's a group of us who don't necessarily want to quote unquote, retire, we're not used parts that need to be cast to the side. And I'll even take a personal journey on that is that I watched my father and I use him in my presentation is that he, he was a firstness. If he served in World War Two, he was the first in his family to get a college education. He worked 37 years for the same company going from a draftsman all the way to president of the company. So had a great career path. He put all three of his kids through college, we didn't have to pay for college, he picked it up. So we were all launched successfully in life. And he inherited nothing from his family, but was able to save a little over $3 million at the time of his retirement, just from being very frugal is but Scott. And so he had done everything right. He had the career he had the kids launched, he could now enjoy his retirement. And yet, within just a few years, I would call him up and say, Dad, so how's it going? And what are you doing? I'm surviving. That was what he would say on the phone. I'm surviving. And it wasn't that he didn't visit his grandkids. He did. And it wasn't that he didn't travel he did. But this I'm surviving statement, which I really kind of said, You got to stop saying that did kind of set the tone for his his retirement, he was just a shell of that former leader that I had seen. And I would suggest, well, why don't you engage in this and that and so on. While I can't do that anymore, you know, he'd lost that sort of Spark.

John Anderson: 52:42

So I said, I do not want to follow that path. I have a client right now. He's in. He's on engross point. His home was on Lake St. Clair. So we all know what that area looks like, sold his company for good jillion dollars. He has a home in Florida home. Here. He's got boats. He's in great health, his wife in here happy, his kids are all successful. But he has anxiety from eight to five every day. And by the way, he doesn't have anxiety on vacations. Excited on the weekends. But in those hours that he used to work in xiety. So we created a legacy map for him. And that's one of the challenges he was going through 75 years, he would he often says I wish I never sold my company, I was so happy running that business. And I miss all those people and so on. So I'm not suggesting that we work like workaholics all our lives. And I'm not suggesting we don't sell our companies or whatever particular things we're working on. I'm just saying that you should you should be intentional about your life and have a design for what does that ideal look like? What does it look like 10 years ends? And how are you contributing the way that you choose to contribute with the people use choose to contribute. And by the way, I even have a push pull on that. Here I am I authored this book and we've got replaced retirement and we're, we're reaching out to the public and pursuing customers and all the things you do with a business. And yet I take the month of August off and I think the month of February off, my business partner, my CFO and CEO understands that and I'm like I wrote a book on this stuff. So I'm not going to not enjoy my life. But I want to have this balance. So even our business has to modify and adjust to this lifestyle, if you will. So that it's full and complete because I don't want to finish right we see that happen to where I work, work work. And then I realize oh, I didn't spend enough time with important relationships in my life. And that's what August is August at the cottage is all family coming up and spending time there. And again, there's no there's no rush. There's no agendas. It's just time time to be together. So those are all things that I designed into my plan but everybody has their own plan and and to my partner, by the way, he was great, he got involved in this. And he went from kind of working out some time to then become a start running, then he decided he wanted to run a race. So he ran the Free Press marathon or whatever, which was the longest marathon he ever did and qualified for the Boston Marathon. So now he's trying to get to do the Boston Marathon. So these are, these are things that give him energy. And these are goals that he never thought he could accomplish right there. Well, wouldn't it be nice if I had the time, so he's designed his life to have the time to do this thing that makes them healthy, and hang out with others that he wants to spend time with doing the things he wants to enjoy. So it is a retirement of sorts, but it's not the paradigm we were accustomed to.

Jan Griffiths: 55:47

And you said it, right. It's on your terms, it's on your own terms. And it's not an either or decision, I think that we you know, we often think that either I'm working full tilt full time, whether it's running a business, running a department, whatever it is, or I'm not, or I'm retired, it's not an either or decision, you can design your life and your retirement to be on your terms, the way that you want. It, of course, is a financial element to that. And this is a decision that as you know, I faced two years ago, when I made the decision, I'm a single mom with a house with a mortgage in Birmingham. And, again, we know what that is, right. And I made the decision to end my corporate career because it was not, it was draining me you talk about energy, the things that give you energy and the things that drain the energy out of you, it was draining the energy out of you. What gives me energy is standing on stage inspiring a group of people to feel good about themselves and the potential that they have. I'm in a complete state of flow. But back to the reality, how do you support yourself, you know, to do the things that you love. So I made the tough choice. And I said, Okay, I'm gonna take my income to zero, overnight, by design, because I believe I have this bone deep commitment in myself that I will make this work. And, and you have to have that if you're going to walk away from the model or from the money, you've got to know you've got to be very comfortable with the decision that you're making and make it but to the way we started this podcast, you have to have a vision, you have to have a vision that's pulling you, that's just and it pulls me I know, I'm going toward it every single day. And honestly, John, I think it gets stronger every day. And a lot of people don't have that vision for their lives. But this is the time to create one, this is a perfect time to sit back and look at where you're going in your life and recreate that retirement model. And in your book, some of the things I loved about your book you talk about, there's a need. There's a need for seasoned experienced people in the workplace, but engage with the workplace on your terms.

John Anderson: 58:14

I agree with that. And I would add on a couple of thoughts that you sparked. One is that in the book, I talk about this idea that there was sort of two drivers to this one is that I was with a friend actually at my cottage, you know, on an August break, and he was complaining, I don't know if he was complaining, but he was talking about his either his children or someone else's. And you know, that old line, you know, what's wrong with kids today is x. And I kind of laughed, and I said, Oh my God, we sound like our parents, right? I mean, like we've, we've rolled into this position. And so one of the things I made the decision is that I don't want to be that guy. I'm not going to be the one who complains about everything is wrong in the world. I'm gonna go out and do something to make the world a better place. And I do that for one. The obvious reason is I I'm kind of a glass half full versus glass half empty. But I wanted to do it. One of the things is kind of interest. I'm remarried, and my, my stepchildren, my daughter says you gotta go to dinner with my stepfather, because it's like going and having a TED Talk. Now, that's the way young people should describe you. Not that oh, he's that complaining old curmudgeon, right? And in so that was kind of a driver. And then the other one is that in my first marriage, I mentioned way back in the beginning of this, that my father in law helped me in sort of getting into business because they were successful entrepreneurs. And one of the things that was beneficial in that marriage, and there were a number of things I love. I still love my ex wife and we're very close. We talk weekly. We sometimes spend holidays together. She's still the executor of my will that gives you sort of the The closest we have, right because I was calling up and I'm like, you know, I don't think my kids need as much of this and I'd like to get more to my Somali, my current wife, I'm married for the second time. And, and this is what I'm talking with my ex wife about and she agreed, she's like, Yeah, our kids are set up. And you probably should, I mean, that's kind of relationship we have. Okay, so we're very close. One of the guys that I really appreciate is Chip Conley and chips writing a lot about modern elders and so on. But years ago, this is this was at the EO 20th anniversary in Las Vegas, he presented a book he had just written called Peak, how great companies get their mojo from Maslow. And I love that because he took Maslow's hierarchy, which is five levels down to three levels, and they call it kind of job, career and calling. And so I started using that in my business coaching, because there's the Jeffrey Smart talks about there's a player, so if I walk into a room of six leaders, let's use 10, because math works better. And I said, to all 10, how many of you in this room or eight players, every hand is going to go up? Well, from a statistical standpoint, that can't happen, you know, if you look at a statistics, you're going to have to that or you're gonna have two that are A's, you're gonna have six that are B's, and you're gonna have two that are C's statistically, in that room of leaders. Fair enough, because some are going to be really high performers. And now, in another organization, the C's might be an A's but in that group, so there's a statistical role that's happening all the time. So I changed it I walk in, I say, how many of this is your career? Everybody hands go up. How many of you in this room? Is this your calling? Well, no hands go up. Or maybe the owner's hands go up. And certainly my hand goes up. So recently, Chip was sharing on one of his podcasts, he was talking about this book, again, he wrote 15 years ago.

John Anderson: 1:01:53

Peak, how great companies get their mojo from Maslow. And he took those three, and he said, the bottom is survival. The middle is success, and the top is self transformation. So this is an that spoke to what I was getting at all along is that I believe that what you went through or going through is self transformation. You said, I said, I got past the survival thing. I'm not worried that I'm not going to survive, right. And I did the success thing, but I found that there was still wanting, and now I'm going for the self transformation thing. So Maslow said that was a normal hierarchy of needs. Same thing for me, right? I went from survival, to then marrying into this great success, I had wealth beyond all measure. And now I'm ready to go for self transformation, I'm going to step away from the security of that world into one of self transformation, you and I through like errors or, or stupidity, some may say, have stepped into self transformation. But this goes back to our exponential age, I think we're all into self transformation, meaning that we are contemporaries, if they want to raise their hand, I understand that some are in survival mode. And I respect that. And I and I, and I empathize with that. But our audience that are listening to us are really kind of success, which is a little bit question right now. So now self transformation, what would it take to transform yourself so that you're comfortable that you don't worry that I can't put food on the table that I can't survive in whatever the world throws me, you feel that way. And I feel that way. And we understand you just got to go out create tremendous value. Now, it may take more work to do the value and then Boy, you better be getting energy from it because what's the point and working to death and not getting like then you've missed the whole point of the thing like okay, so I I'll do this I did this on another podcast. I'll try it here. So this is a story or a metaphor I share with people and so I'm gonna take a chance on this I'll be vulnerable. So so I'm, I've shared with you I'm certainly a spiritual person, and I believe in God. And so I'll use that as kind of a framework so you die and you go to heaven or wherever you go pick your place and you're sitting there with with this greater power or God wherever you want to call it. And he's like, John, we're gonna do a review of your life right now because that's kind of the story we hear right? And and it's like now I'd rather not look at my life I don't want to see the whole thing I get it that you got to watch this movie real but can we just like skip it because there's lots of parts that are embarrassing and I don't want to see again, it's like no, no, we're gonna watch the whole thing you're gonna really enjoy it like I really this is I don't want to do this and he's like, You got to trust me on this and and he said, but before we do that, we're going to do it. But before we do that, I want you to look over to the right here. And there's this huge tapestry, okay, like, like we see in Europe, right and some Castle this beautiful, huge tapestry on the wall. And he said look at that tapestry for are a minute and tell me what you think. And you look at it, and you start to weep. It's the most beautiful thing you've seen in your entire life. And you're you're really choked up. I mean, you're emotional. You're not even sure why you're crying. It's just like, oh my god, it's the most beautiful thing. And it's like, and it really is, isn't it? And I'm like, yeah, like, I'm just sorry. I'm like, speechless. It's so beautiful. I don't think I've ever seen anything. In all my years. That was that beautiful. And he said, that's your life. Now you really lose it. Yeah. Like, it's like a rack, right? That's not my life, though. That's your life. That's how beautiful your life is. And so you finally get your composure back. And he he gets up and he said, let me explain this to you. He said, You see all the different colors? Yeah, that's why I was. That's why I was weeping. It's so beautiful. He said, it really is and the beautiful. See, from your vantage point, you couldn't see the whole picture. But I could I could see the tapestry unfolding. I knew what it was going to look like. It is beautiful. So it now you get to sort of see it. And but he see he said, you see that that purple section over on the right there? And you're like, yeah, that's I was looking at that it really makes the whole thing like punch that color. And and he's like, it does done any, any you see the gold thread going through the purple, it really stands out. Yeah, that's like that's stunning. And it's like, it would look really good with just the purple. Do you agree? Oh, yeah. But the gold really kind of gives that that that final touch? And yeah. And he said, that gold part? That was that really scary, difficult, horrible time you're going through? And you're questioning? Why do I got to go through this? Why is this happening now? Don't you love me and care for me and you were all in a panic, I saw you going through that. But you persevered anyway, you, you just kept staying with it, and so on. And now from this perspective, you can see how it all comes together. So I use that example, because that's how I view life is that every day, we're like weaving that tapestry. And no matter how you weave it, it's going to be beautiful. So you don't need to worry about that. But now you're weaving the gold sections, you're getting into these little minut things that really make the whole thing punch out. And so that was my idea of replacing retirement is that, why not do that for your entire life, do it for yourself, do it for your children, and do it for your grandchildren. So that when the day comes that you leave this earth, they're like, You know what, my dad or my mother, they were they were like creating their whole life, they were always reinventing themselves, they were always trying new things are always taking on risks. My wife is upstairs working for me right now she's getting her doctorate in her 50s. Because she went through the legacy math process. She said, I always like to get my doctorate. Now, there are plenty days she wants to quit. And I and I always asked her well, think of what you're saying to your children. The fact that you went back to school, she like the coolest thing. It's so they're so impressed by it. I'm impressed by it. My ex wife is impressed by it. Everybody is I mean, it's really amazing that she's going back into your doctorate. And so you can choose not to do that. But boy, if you do it, just think of the legacy leave your kids. It's like my mother had the courage to do this. And I made me have that courage to and so that's how I'm living my life. That's how you're living your life. And we're looking for others who want to do the same thing. It's like we can we can either complain about the world and the challenges we're going through. Or we can do something to make the world a better place. And have fun doing it again, it's it's your tapestry. You can sell it, you can design it whatever way you want. I think we all have beautiful lives and we're all beautiful people. But what what's left in us what else can we do? And as I mentioned before with my snowmobiling, it's not that I don't do fun things too. I do. It's just that I don't want to snowmobile all the time, I don't want to golf all it I like I just that traditional idea of retirement of just stopping one day doesn't work. I'll add another experience that's happened in the last couple of weeks I was in the shower. And it was kind of related. I'm like, boy, this is what retirement could feel at all feel like that you've stopped going to the office. And now you got all this time at home. Now, if I didn't have all these practices and ways to start my days and things to contribute, and so on. I'd have a lot of time on my hand. And I'd be a little bit like well, what do I do with that I don't have that problem, because I got a full plan. This is this is not disrupting to me. And to your point, I actually see it as an opportunity. It's like a little window. People are getting the taste.

John Anderson: 1:09:42

Maybe this retirement thing, maybe staying home all the time. And not having like necessarily to get up at the same time he used to get up and so on is necessarily going to be what I want. Like I don't know, I like parts of it. It's nice to be with my wife every day. It's nice to take the dog for a walk Like, each evening, those parts I'm enjoying, but what about all the stuff in the middle? And so in, in my case, because I already had this plan and structure and path to follow, I feel like I'm still on plan, nothing's changed. And till that's a piece the other thing on that, you know, I think that wisdom for our, our age group is that, you know, we went through the recession, we, we had the recessions in the 80s, and the, you know, the.com, bust in the early 90s. I mean, this isn't our first rodeo and, and, in the last downturn, the the 2007 2008, I actually had my greatest growth. So I was I, I realized that all the I've, I've never had a contract with a client. So all my agreements are verbal. So every client I have today is a verbal agreement, there's no reason they can't call me up this afternoon and say, John, you know, we got a cash crunch, and so on, we're, we're here, like a really easy line to drop off. So we're just going to discontinue to work. So I'm in that situation today. And it was in that situation in 2007 2008. So what I did in that particular case is I went back and I said, you know, I'm charging you X dollars today, I want to cut that number in half. But I'm going to come in 12 times a year, because at that time was coming in five times a year, I'd do a two day annual and then meet every quarter, Senator coming in on this quarterly basis, I'm going to come in every month, but I'm going to knock the number in half. So in reality, I was making more money in the year, but they were getting much more rate and seeing more or more of me. So they saw the value in saying okay, yeah, that's nice, John's taken a hit with the rest of us, he's reducing his rate, he's going to spend a lot more time with us. And yes, at the end of the year, they were actually spending more money, but they felt there was enough value in that that was worth keeping on rather than discontinued. I think like, seven clients immediately went for that, like a really big shift. So I had my biggest growth year, in the worst year in the economy. And, and that's when the legacy map I use now of all that was called a success map at the time. And I created it for the owners for the same reason, I wanted them to have a tool. So they could deal with the anxiety and the fear and all that, that they had their plan to launch their day, to know where they're going and why they're going to the vision and so on. And so the tool evolved out of that time. And then later, one of my clients said, Well, I'm not interested in success anymore. I'm interested in my legacy. And so we, we call it the legacy map. And then eventually, that led to the book, and where I am today,

Jan Griffiths: 1:12:43

I love the legacy map, because it's visual, and I'm a very visual person, and it forces clarity of thought, it forces you to put down your life plan on a piece of paper, and really think through all facets of that and all the people who are involved in your life. One thing it did for me, John, when I as I thought about health, personal health and where I wanted to be, when I'm 80. In 90, I wanted to be this I have this image in my head of this really fit trim 80 year old, right, who's got this the same haircut only it's silver gray, right? Yeah, the same body form. And what that did for me when I started to think about that, and then I was working out at the time I was working out at Equinox and I would see from the treadmills I could see a mirror, the other side of the gym. And I would look in that mirror. And I would visualize the ad, a 90 year old me on that treadmill. And what your book taught me was to say, Okay, if I can visualize what this picture looks like, that means that I better be hammering it out on that treadmill right now in order to get to that that physical condition that I see for myself in my 80s. And it was very, very powerful. So if people have not, you know, not familiar with this idea of a legacy map, I would highly recommend the book. And if you do nothing else, draw a legacy map for your life. Because now is the time now is the time where we say okay, you need to get off the treadmill and then take a step back and look at your life so you can project forward. We've all been forced to get off the normal treadmill living, it's been forced upon us whether you want it to or not. So you can look at this as an opportunity to develop a vision or legacy map for your business for your team and for your life. Or you can let this opportunity go by and my message would be please don't let this opportunity go by because it is an opportunity. And you know you have also supported that fact that you've been through a bad situation. Question. You turned it around, you made progress. And you know, you've gone nowhere but up since then. So with that, John, how would you like to close? What would be your message to our audience today?

John Anderson: 1:15:15

Well, you did such a nice job of it, I think I'll just piggyback on your comments is, is an opportunity. And maybe even more importantly, back on my sort of we're transitioning from a linear age to an exponential age is that there's no if you're going to be successful in the future as a leader, and an entrepreneur, again, not as a follower, but as a leader, then you have to lead with confidence and courage, and all the things that we've seen in leaders throughout the decades. And now's the time, to your point to step up and do it. The tools are there, the resources are there. We're here to help. There's so many resources, we've never been in a world that didn't offer so many resources. I'm not the only one of this game. But yeah, it's there's, it's it, this is the requirement? I don't know. I guess I wouldn't. I would be, I don't want to be in survival mode. I mean, it's just like, that's, I don't think in those terms. Imagine if I was leading others, and I was thinking that way, it would just wouldn't be healthy. And I'll share with I was coaching a client. Just last week, Yeah, cuz it's a Monday. And, and he's allowed to kind of wine with me on the phone, obviously, that's part of our role. But he was doing kind of as good news check in. And he was sharing the good things, right, because we always start off with good stuff. And then he was sharing, and I could, he was, he was a little pissed off a little bit. Like, he's like, I'm working on putting this big deal together. And I feel like I'm doing all the work, and everybody else is kind of riding my coattails. And that was justifiable. And I had empathy, because I remember being in that situation, too. He's in his, in his 30s. So he's really working hard. And he really is building something. And my comment to him is that I, I empathize with you, and I get it. But that that tone, doesn't serve the person I see in you that you're like this, amazingly, I wouldn't mess it, I wouldn't invest the time in you, if you weren't an amazing leader. So we need to kind of get that out of your, we're gonna get that tone out of your language. And I'll help you with that. I'll be your your feedback and sounding guide. So there was that one, and then I was skiing with some guys, just just before we had the whole kind of clamp down, we managed to get back in time, before the closes gear is. But I was with a friend. And he was saying, Boy, this is like being at a spa. Because we were skiing, we were eating healthy, and we're having these really compelling conversations. And that's why I was calling spas like that everything here is healthy. And so that's the other thing that I'm big on is that once you go on this journey, you're just all it's like you and I got connected right through somebody else, you start to change the whole world and circle you're in where I don't really hang around with people who are negative, I only hang around people who are out there creating value and making the world a better place. And I don't think that's by accident. I think that's back to the, to the the tapestry is that, you know, you're just one more element in this tapestry. And I'm one more element in yours. So there is the, what they call it the law of attraction, right? So we're attracting into our world, those things that are designed to our vision, our visions coming true, not exactly the way we want, you know, it's not a straight road. But it's but it's happening. And so please join us on this journey. If this if this reaches out and calls to you. And if not, then you know, God bless you and take care of your family and your and your friends and your employees and, and whoever's in your world and I empathize because I have been there I've been in that fearful spot. I've you know, I'm a former addict, so I know what it's like to be pulled down by all the dark forces. And and I choose today, not the that's not the path or the vision I have for myself, just like you so join us on this.

Jan Griffiths: 1:19:33

All right, beautifully said. John Anderson, thank you very much for your time and let's everybody, let's make this the most exciting and exhilarating leadership time of our lives. Thank you.

1:19:47

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