The Future of You

0:04 The following is paid programming. Welcome to Something More with Chris Boyd. Chris Boyd is a Certified Financial Planner Practitioner and Senior Vice President and Financial Advisor at Wealth Enhancement Group, one of the nation's largest registered investment advisors. We call it Something More because we'd like to talk not only about those important dollar and cents issues, but also the quality of life issues that make the money matters matter. Here he is, your fulfillment facilitator, your partner in prosperity, advising clients on Cape Cod and across the country. Here's your host, Jay Christopher Boyd. Hello, and welcome to another edition of Something More with Chris Boyd.

0:45 I am Jeff Perry, and I have the privilege of sitting in for Chris this week, who is off at a financial planning conference in Florida. And for this episode we're happy to have back some returning guests with the co-founders of the future of you lisa and nan welcome back to another episode thanks for being here Nan, I'd love you to start out by telling our listeners today what's the inspiration of your company and a little bit about how it works. Sure. I worked in financial services all my life. I spent twenty seven years at America's retirement company, Fidelity Investments. And I like to say that every day I went to work, I talked about retirement.

1:25 So my perspective of retirement was that about having a sound financial plan so that you could never work again and live the rest of your life. in comfort so that made sense to me until I actually retired I took an early retirement package from fidelity and went off I was ready for a change and I went off and played a lot of golf and I traveled and I and I had an epiphany one day after probably hitting a round ball around a golf course that this is how I'm going to spend the rest of my life and I had people in my life that were living into the nineties and I was in my early sixties. And I thought, wait a second, what's my purpose?

2:08 What's my identity? I started to feel lost. I started to feel like there was something in my life that just wasn't, wasn't fulfilling. I didn't have meaning. Yes. I wanted to have fun. I loved having lifestyle balance, but I really questioned like, what was my purpose? What was my future identity? And how do I contribute in this next phase of my life? And so those sort of thoughts led to conversations with Lisa, who has been a colleague of mine for a long time. She's also a career coach. So I started to call her and say, how do people transition into retirement outside of traditional views of leisure time and recreation?

2:50 And so she was a great inspiration to me and she actually had her own story. So I'll let her tell that. Lisa, please share. Sure. Around the same time or actually a little bit before then, I started thinking about this in addition. So our oldest was getting ready, our youngest, pardon me, was getting ready to go off to college. And I worked in Fidelity for over twenty one years, did executive coaching and leadership development, but really focused on career transition. So when people became vice presidents, you know, designed programs to onboard them to that new role. So it was only natural when my daughter was starting to go to college and think about her career that I gave her some career coaching.

3:35 At the same time, many of my friends like me and were taking this early retirement package from Fidelity. And I started thinking, I'm gonna be on that for the next round. what am I going to do when the when the question comes when the gift comes am I going to take it how am I going to spend my life and I got really excited seeing how my daughter had all these tools at her disposal to help her figure out her career and so I went out and said geez there's got to be more out there than just the financial planning piece what about the life planning piece I'm the tail end of the baby boomers I had read an article that by twenty thirty all baby boomers are hitting sixty five So I thought lots of people came this way before me.

4:16 There must be tons of stuff out there. And I was sadly disappointed to find that really there was only primarily financial planning and some life coaching, but nothing specifically targeted, no tools, no framework, no resources to helping people manage this major life transition. so I started talking with my friend nan and the two of us started to say you know what we should fall in love with this problem a little bit and find out what others are doing in it and that's kind of how everything started we started by trying to figure out the problem for ourselves and how to solve it and then we learned from a lot of people that this wasn't just an anomaly that many people are facing this it's not an anomaly at all it's um I think most people, when they're about ready to retire, don't even know that they have a problem.

5:08 Nan, you worked with clients for decades, and so you have this experience that I have. They're interested in the number. What's my number? Can I retire? How am I going to have my cash flow? Am I going to be able to buy a second home? What's my plan for how much I can spend on travel? know gifting it's all financial it's almost it's almost just entirely financial for a lot of people Exactly. And, and, you know, we never spoke about life. What are you going to do? It was like, where are you going to live and how much money do you need? And where's your budget? And where are your kids in this, in this stage of life?

5:49 But no one said like, when you wake up Monday morning at eight AM without a job, how are you going to spend your time? And I would argue that that's easy. I'm going to go play golf and do all these fun things, but there's a honeymoon period. And then you start to say, is this it? Yeah. Is this all I'm going to do? And so that was sort of the catalyst for us to go study the problem and find out like, were other people stuck or did people transform? And that really was, we did a lot of research in twenty, twenty and twenty one to figure out like. did people transform and what was the formula and or are other people stuck and did they get sort of taken off guard like I did um you know and and felt like I need to do more but I don't know how you must have found that a lot of people were stuck or unhappy We did.

6:43 We had a few people who said, you should talk to my mother. And there were some really heartbreaking stories. We also had people who were still working, but kept telling us, I got the financial means to retire, but I'm not ready. And that was like, we called them the kicking it down the can sort of folks. Like every year they were like, okay, I'm going to retire next year. You guys probably hear this with clients. It's the year after. It's the year after. And yeah, you know, they don't pull the plug because they don't know what they're going to do next. Lisa, when you were helping your colleagues advance through their career, these are the changes as well, right?

7:23 And they're, so I see the relevant experience, but don't you think people, even the people who maybe dig deep into what am I going to do next? They come up with things like, I'm going to travel. I'm going to take care of my grandchildren. I'm going to you know fill in the blank and that might take you know four weeks a year right they have a broad outline even the ones who think about it they have like I'm gonna do these things but you know they don't really get into the nuts and bolts of the everyday life is that is that what you find Definitely, Jeff. What we find, too, is even those questions about where am I going to live and how much am I going to travel and what am I going to do, it's in a part of a bigger context.

8:07 You have a bigger life than that, right? Those are just activities. So what we've really found as we delved in and researched this, especially in the group of people that were living their best lives in retirement, we met some really cool people there and we started to say, what do they do that's different? And they look at their life more holistically. And they think of it in terms of different parts of their lives. But more importantly, the traditional view of retirement is very passive. Like you've arrived, right? And we call it the three Gs, gardening, grandkids, and golf, right? Or the blue plate special, right?

8:48 If you think about that traditional view, it just doesn't fit. for today's society. People are living longer, more productive lives. Many of these baby boomers like myself and Nan have really leveraged compounding interest in our investments throughout the years. So we have kind of some freedom. But yet, there's a lot of people that can get very overwhelmed and stuck and depressed by having that much freedom because even though they had a very clear career path and many of them were corporate executives who manage their careers eloquently, there is no kind of roadmap, if you will, when you take that off ramp to retirement.

9:34 And so what we started to do is really to define and help people by saying, creating a roadmap and a toolkit from the lives and the experiences of real people who are living their best lives in retirement. And what we did with that is we're helping people create their own personalized vision for retirement. So this is a financial, I mean, a retirement plan, but not a financial plan. Exactly. Exactly. Lisa, can you talk about something that I'm sure you saw during your career, but also in retirement? Identity.

10:15 I find this to be more of a challenge with men than women, but you can certainly tell me I'm wrong. Because, you know, you meet somebody at a cocktail party or at the pickleball court or the golf course. And, you know, after it's where do you live and all that, what do you do? Yeah. And we start with historically, you know, we start with I am a financial planner. I am a lawyer. I am a teacher. And for people who retire, it almost looks like they don't know what to say. Yeah. Yeah. So true, Chris. I think the, pardon me, Jeff, I think the number one thing that we found is this loss of identity.

10:58 And so what we try to help people do, the people that have scaled it, reconnect to their purpose. And we help people think about What's their overall purpose? What gets them out of bed in the morning? And you can see how that fits into the context of a person's role in an organization. And now they have to kind of leverage those skills and leverage who they were there to realize it takes place in a bigger context of their overall life. And so we help them kind of rediscover that identity. through the vantage point of, so what's your purpose?

11:38 What has your purpose always been? And to get really crystal clear on that. I would add that we like to have people sort of shed their old skin. Like, I know you were a financial planner, but what are your gifts and your passion? What do you want to do now? I'm making cheese. I'm composting. I'm mentoring young kids. I'm volunteering. Like, there's a whole world of things that you can do that light you up. But it gets out of that title. So, you know, it takes time to shed your own skin, but that that should go away. And you've got a whole new chapter in your life. And how do you make it fun and exciting and something, as Lisa said, gets you out of bed in the morning?

12:21 Am I correct with my assumption that this is harder for men? So the reason why we both pause is I'll speak for myself in our workshop. It surprises me how open men are to it. Okay. You know, and there's a vulnerability when people start to share things. And so I found that the men have been even more open about talking about it and their struggles with it. That's good. I find also the men are holding on to their past more. That's, I guess, what I'm saying. Yeah, totally.

13:01 We had a gentleman who was a pharmaceutical salesperson, and that's all he knew. And he kept talking about getting a job, and he was in his late sixties. And people in the workshop started to say, well, what are you excited about? He goes, oh, I love antique cars. I love cars. Yeah. And all of a sudden he's like going to car shows and he's like, well, maybe he'll sell cars and maybe he'll do this. And so all of a sudden, just something that he did that he felt like was on the side of his desk became such a passion. And you could see how he was like kind of dreading, like I'm out looking for a job. And people were like, why? And then all of a sudden he was like, oh, my God. this could be a whole new life for me. And sort of the light bulb went off, but the sort of handcuffs of who he was also got let go.

13:49 So tell us about how these individuals that you work with come to you. How do they find you? And what's the process look like? Is there some type of assessment that you do? If someone reaches out to you and says, I think my husband's stuck. I think my neighbor could use some help. unhappy he's retired what does it look like as they are introduced to you so we have two sides of our business individuals and corporate I'll talk about the individual side um we typically have people who are in that sort of pre-retirement age who are sort of contemplating what's next and they have had that realization that like oh this is going to be hard Or they've just they retired two years ago and nothing has happened.

14:33 So we find them through referrals. We find them through social media. And then we we have a simple digital course that we usually start with. It's a couple hundred bucks and people can go through it on their own. It's sick. It's all the same modules that we would have in a workshop for corporations. But they go through that and then they graduate. they work through it. And then we also augment it with coaching. And so if you have a coach to sort of help you with, how do you connect? What is my purpose? We'll help you through that. Or like, how do I activate retirement, which is the third step in our process, which is about generating lots of ideas and then turning them into experiments.

15:13 So a coach will help you at very specific times. So it's a kind of a wonderful blend of like online learning, doing it on your own. And then if you need it, augmenting it with a coach to help you maybe get up unstuck or to generate more ideas or just to help finalize that plan or to even get you comfortable with, okay, I can do this because people do get, you know, you have grandiose ideas when you're going to be, I'm going to do all these things and half the time people don't do them. Do sometimes these individuals who could use some help feel like maybe they're too old to change or, you know, maybe they're just, They may have a physical challenge or they just may not have the energy they had.

15:55 Are they resistant to it? Yeah, I think so. Some people are. But we do some work around growth versus fixed mindset. And, you know, they teach this in kindergarten. I'm not good at this yet, right? I'm not too old. I'm not too old to try anything. I can try anything new, right? So we try to get people out of that fixed mindset of age, right? or physical disability or whatever it might be, that you can do anything at this stage of point. What is it? What's going to get you excited? And we also try to get people to really have the mindset that it's a time to learn and be curious. We think we know everything at this stage in your life.

16:36 There's so much to learn. And with the internet, you can learn anything, and there's lots of online courses. you know you don't have to physically be out gardening or doing you know something that requires a lot of physical ability but what is it that you want to learn and get curious about so I think that's the piece that you know we try to get people to think very differently about this stage in their lives because it's going to be thirty years and you might as well live thirty years with purpose versus thirty years with I'm too old I'm I'm slowing down you know I can't move as fast Those might be all realities we face. But how do you how do you turn around and feel like, wow, I'm doing this and it gets me excited because then you're you're not thinking about any of those sort of mindset.

17:24 I'll call them disabilities. They're not really disabilities. But, you know, that mindset of I can't do this because. Yeah. I would add one other thing. I think all of what Nan said is so true of what we're seeing. But we also have a tool that we use called a life portfolio. And I find that that's very motivating and inspiring for folks. So we start off. You talked about an assessment, if you will, where we have people go in and we've created this proprietary tool where there's five segments of your life. So divide your life up into these five segments and talk about current state. What does it look like? Is it too much, too little?

18:04 Just right. And then say, OK, start to dream, start to imagine, start to think. think about like the key right to really be open to this right and and then we say what do you want it to look like in this next chapter and so I find then there's a gap and what we do is help them build a plan to get from today to their future And I find that that sparks curiosity in people, motivation. And you start to see that shifting a little bit. And then we call out the whole, is it a fixed mindset or is it a growth mindset? And we share lots of stories of people who've successfully made this transition and even people who've got hung up and not made the transition.

18:54 And so people are able to say, oh, that's like me. And so that's what I found to be helpful to get people to be more open-minded around this. I saw in your notes when I was preparing for our talk today, something called the concept of planning for the hundred year life. Can you tell me what that's about? Yes. So we share a video by the London School of Economics. The two professors from that school wrote a very famous book called The Hundred Year Life. They were economic professors and they talk about the shift in the economy and that people now are living to be a hundred.

19:35 And so the traditional view of, you know, you go to school, you work for a long time, you get married and have kids, and then you retire, that kind of very staged view, it really needs to be rethought of because if you're going to live to a hundred, you might need to have more money. When you're younger, you might want to take a sabbatical and travel, etc. So we really start to say to people, look at, you know, now's the time to continue to be active planners about this next stage of your life, because it could be some of the best time of your life. And so we try to help people shift that narrative of that traditional passive narrative to be much more active.

20:23 Then, in addition to the things we're talking about, are there other challenges that we haven't touched on that people, when they retire, not the money stuff, but when they retire and they're thinking about, is this it? Are there other challenges that people might have that you'd like to discuss? Yeah, I think, I think one of the challenges is just falling back to what I've always done. Like anybody who there's, I know a lot of people who like, I used to do this and now I'm going to do less of this. And I'm a contractor, you know, a consultant in some way and they don't like it, but they feel that's their identity. So I think, you know, it's that concept of, okay, shed your old skin and what can you do that's different.

21:05 But I think falling back to, You know, I did this, you know, in my life and I'm just doing a little bit less of it. It doesn't get me excited, but I'm doing it. And, you know, it goes back to what do you do, right? It gives you that identity thing. Oh, well, I'm still like, and they're not, and you can tell that it doesn't give a purpose and happiness, but it's the, I've always done this. So I'm going to do this in a little bit less capacity. Yeah. You know, on the social side of this, I see so I'm in Florida, so I'm not in a retirement community of fifty five community, but I'm in Florida. So I see a lot of individuals who are retired and I see.

21:46 that women are much more quickly to engage socially with other groups, activities, causes, charities, and men are much more resistant to that. I hate to focus on this gender stuff, but it's just, I see it so clearly down here and I see that, I don't know how you get men in the door for this type of conversation, but it sounds like you're having some success with it. Oh yeah. We have as many men as women in our workshops. And it's funny because when you asked Nan about challenges, the one that came to mind for me was this. It was community. Because you lose a big part of your community when you spend so much time day to day with certain people.

22:32 People don't get that, right? Because you think about being social at work and then after work and work-related things. Is that what you're talking about? yes exactly yeah you know I mean to some degree I had my I worked at fidelity for over twenty one years they were there when I had my when I got married when I had my kids but like through all my life events and they be you know they were my work family and I think a significant number of people when they retire everyone says oh we'll keep in touch let's keep in touch but it just typically doesn't happen does it No. And I also say, we do have a program that organizations do for their pre-retirees.

23:15 And that's where we're finding a lot of men signing up for that. Maybe they're not doing it afterwards as much because we have more women in our sort of individual and coaching programs. But in the workplace, there are a lot of men that we have sometimes... it's fifty-fifty, sometimes a little bit more men. But I think if you give them the opportunity while they're still working to raise their hand and get this conversation out in the open, it's much more beneficial. I think if they're waiting and they're in Florida and they think they're going to reconnect and get a new community, it doesn't happen as much. So we always say plan your retirement before you retire.

23:55 Get moving on what do you want to do and what do you want to do that's different and what could be the community that you build around that. I can see that being so critical to having a successful real plan for what's after your work life. How soon before the retirement date, if you will, is this process starting for someone in one of the corporations that you work with? It's usually one to three years out. One year is about right. And a lot of times corporations are thinking about like, hey, could this person contract or they could do different things and how do I use this person's talent to help?

24:39 you know, mentor the next generation. So organizations have some benefits by doing it. But I think one to three years out is really the right time. And we always say to people, go try things out before you even retire. Maybe you're thinking about volunteering. Well, go do it now and see what it's like. Is that what you want to do? Or, you know, whatever it might be. russ uh we've been doing all the talking here I know you're on the control panel did you it looks like you have something to say I do I I have a couple thoughts I mean I find this whole uh conversation so fascinating um and definitely you know my mom is uh semi-retired and she's uh always thought of retirement as a bit of a dirty word I think uh just from from her upbringing or whatever it was uh she didn't want to you know approach the word retirement and um she she kind of thinks of it as like a new a new period rather than at the beginning of the end or Something that, you know, some people might consider retirement.

25:34 But yeah, I guess I just wanted to find out what the difference was when you're working with those pre-retirees, maybe that are currently in the workforce. And maybe someone who's been retired for a couple of years or even, you know, five years and then realizes they don't really know what their passions are anymore. Or they've, you know, they've done the golfing, they've done the traveling, they visited the grandkids and decide, you know, what else now that I have twenty five years left of retirement ahead of me. I find them to be even more motivated because they're searching, right, in those years. They recognize the problem, right? Yeah. And does the approach change from the coaching standpoint when you're talking to pre-retirees or people who are in that later stage of retirement?

26:22 No, we take them through our, we call it our future in four-step process. And then from there, we have them create their personalized vision life plan. And then the thing that we really feel passionate about is this shouldn't be one and done, right? This could be twenty five, thirty years. So we give people lifetime access to the tools and the platform. Even the people who go to the virtual workshop, they have all of those tools that we use. We teach live, but we also have videos. It's a very interactive um learning platform digital learning platform so there's videos there's hbr articles there's ted talks there's our own teaching videos that we've produced of us so and there's all types of tools and templates to help people really um dig in if you will and have a concrete plan and you know we encourage people to revisit that at the strategic points in their time right And you said you guys work with businesses as well.

27:31 I was wondering, is it all sizes of businesses, small businesses, big corporations? Where do you see, you know, businesses signing up for this? And also? Oh, yeah, we'll start start with that. So go ahead. Go ahead, man. Sorry. Well, it tends to be people who have a demographic within their organization that is older. So, you know, if you think about manufacturing, you think about financial services, health care, academia, those organizations are ripe for this. And so really a lot of it is the makeup of their organization.

28:11 workforce, and also we're finding that if we have a HR leader that is actually thinking about retirement themselves, they have a realization that this is real for me, so it must be real for other people. So it's size, you know, most of what we're doing is midsize companies, but I think it's people who really have the demographic of the people and they're worried about the future because they see, you know, by twenty thirty, twenty million, twenty eight million people are going to be over the age of sixty five. And and that's seventy percent of the United States workforce. What am I going to do?

28:52 So there's some real business challenges that sort of drive drive companies to do this. Well, you guys are right on target with what I see from my neighbors and friends a little bit older than me that some of them are getting it right on target. They're living their best life in their retirement years. But sadly, some of them are not. And you can see that there's something missing in their life. If an individual is listening, they don't have the advantage of having a corporate structure that is going to sponsor this for them. If an individual is listening, and either is preparing to retire or is retired and saying, I got to do better than this.

29:36 How do they reach you? So they can go out to our website, thefutureofyou.com, and they can gain access to, there's a whole overview of our programs that they could sign up for, for individuals. They can also schedule a discovery call with one of us if they would like to do that as well. And what does that call look like, Lisa? Just like a first step? Yes, it's a little gathering. Yeah, exactly. So it's a little bit about us learning about them and them learning about us and what we offer and we answer any questions they have. And we share with them the experience of going through that digital platform and helping them craft their plan.

30:23 Great. Thank you for your time. It's very right on target to the things that I see in our financial planning preparation with people. It's not just about the financial number. That's only step one in this journey. You can have prepared your whole life, which many people do, to meet their cash flow needs and their legacy desires. Today, retiring at sixty, sixty five, you could very well have thirty years left to find your purpose and have a wonderful retirement for all those years that you built your effort and built your ability to retire. So take advantage of this program or other programs like it.

31:03 Thank you for joining us today. Well, thank you for having us. And thank you for listening to another episode of Something More with Chris Boyd. Until next time, keep striving for something more. Thank you for listening to Something More with Chris Boyd. Call us for help, whether it's for financial planning or portfolio management, insurance concerns, or those quality of life issues that make the money matters matter. Whatever's on your mind, visit us at somethingmorewithchrisboyd.com or call us toll free at eight, six, six, seven, seven, one, eight, nine, zero, one, or send us your questions to amr-info at wealthenhancement.com.

31:45 you're listening to something more with chris boyd financial talk show wealth enhancement advisory services and jay christopher boyd provide investment advice on an individual basis to clients only proper advice depends on a complete analysis of all facts and circumstances the information given on this program is general financial comments and cannot be relied upon as pertaining to your specific situation wealth enhancement group cannot guarantee that using the information from this show will generate profits or ensure freedom from loss listeners should consult their own financial advisors or conduct their own due diligence before making any financial decisions So, right.