[00:00:00] Speaker A: The single biggest challenge that entrepreneurs have, which is that every day can be a work day.
Well, when you're retired, the single biggest challenge that retirees have is that every day can be a free day.
[00:00:22] Speaker B: Welcome back to innovate and overcome. My guest today has a mission to activate lifelong service for her clients. What does that mean? It means inspiring them to live lives of purpose for their whole lives rather than retiring or taking themselves out of service. She's a Colby certified coach and president of prosperity thinkers. Welcome to the show Today, Kim Butler, my amazing guest.
[00:00:46] Speaker A: So happy to be here, Richard. It's always a joy to talk about both the challenges and the innovations.
[00:00:54] Speaker B: Yeah, I think we're going to have a ton of fun today, Kim and I was really looking forward to this for many reasons. You know, you've been in the financial industry for a long time. You've got awards, you. You're well known in the space, and you've seen a breadth of change over, you know, 30 some odd years of being around the financial industry, economic challenges, a whole host of things. You know, when you think back and reflect back through your incredible past and as you're looking forward to a brighter future, what are some of those interesting, unique challenges that have, I guess, roadblocked you along the way that you've had to overcome? What's one that really resonates that you think would be a valuable experience to walk through for our viewers today?
[00:01:39] Speaker A: Well, I'll start actually with a recent one that will surprise you. And so this will be fun. And that is after 30 plus years of my main business, helping people buy life insurance, I no longer have a life insurance license.
So why do I bring this up as a challenge? And it's because when that is so a part of your life, the main source of your income, the creation of all the good that is in the client's lives. Because a lot of the other things that we do in our clients lives can either be bad or good, kind of depending on the whim of the stock market, the real estate market, the fill in the blank. Right.
Yet, as you and many of your listeners know, whole life is an absolute certain asset. And so when a small administrative mistake occurs that the regulators then choose to make a really big deal of, and one no longer has that license, which could have been their identifier in providing lifelong service. Right.
That can be a real challenge. It's literally like I could have let the regulators take my identity away.
[00:03:12] Speaker B: Wow. Yeah, absolutely. I can see how that could have. I mean, there's so much connected to that, as you say, your, your, your really, your identity being connected to this thing that you've done for so long. Um, so many people, I find in this day and age, they go through multiple periods of careers, career paths. There's a shift and a change that happens that they seem to be more frequent in nature than perhaps 30, 40 years ago, where people would really stick to one primary career and that would be their, their whole thing. And so now going through that change and being something more recent of nature, I would imagine that's brought up a lot of very interesting emotional feelings and stuff for you as you're thinking about, what does that look like as I progress forward this thing that I've been accustomed to and now I'm in this phase of change. So walk us through how that journey has occurred for you.
[00:04:04] Speaker A: Well, and I want to give a little context for any entrepreneur out there that is clearly not in the financial services or a licensed space, because I think, I think the story really shares a lot for all entrepreneurs. And it's one of.
Right back to the regulators. Right? And so whether you're in the US or Canada or maybe you're even in another country that may or may not have regulation, because as we know, there's a lot of good that comes with regulation.
It's an interesting environment entrepreneurially because there are so many businesses built off the back of something. For example, the life insurance space, or maybe you're a medical device representative, or maybe you're a wholesaler for a particular type of product. There's a lot of businesses built off that arena. And Dan Sullivan, our strategic coach buddy that we both know so well, has for a long time, really encouraged entrepreneurs to make sure that they are as close to the check writers in providing the service or product that they provide as they can possibly get. In other words, are you being paid directly by your client, your prospect? Or are you being paid through some third party service, through some third party environment or product provider or what have you? And so I have resisted that for a long time. Yes, Dan, I'll do 99.9% of what you recommend.
But the licensing thing, I just could never really get my arms around until I had to. And so now to answer your question, what has occurred is because this process took about a year, I had a chance to really prepare for phase, call it two, three, 4510. I mean, right? It's in life so many times we are going through different phases. We could call them different seasons. Frankly, I'm one of those people that feels like if you're not having a mid life, mid life crisis about every ten years or so, then you're not awake and alive and learning. And as I look back over my career, it wasn't magical every ten years, but every decade or so, there was some fairly major shift in who I was representing, how I was representing out in the marketplace. The main products that I worked with, which some were investment oriented, some were just the life insurance. Sometimes there were different aspects of my career where I charged a fee for a process and then I didn't. There has just been a shift and a shift as we progressed oldering time. So I really see this as just another shift. And in a way, it was a little bit of a clearing of the decks, because when your day to day work, we're talking eight to ten meetings a day, jam packed days, loved every minute of it. But when your day to day work is helping individuals one on one on one on one on one, there is not a lot of time to do some larger creative projects that may help a broader swath of people, that may help the very clientele that we already have in deeper ways.
There just wasn't space for it. I did it. You know, sometimes you look back on your life and you think, how did I pull that off? And sometimes I don't have an answer for that. You know, I look at a time when Todd Langford, my husband and I, were first married, and we lived in two different states and had family in both states, like kids under the age of 18. It was for five years. We did this, a very intense period of time. I was on a plane every Friday, going one direction or another, and we lived a long way from the airport.
And I look back at that time in my life and think, I have no idea how I pulled that off. And yet we did. And so, just as in this more recent change, just as in another example is the 2008 2009 crisis, right? When I look at how our businesses survive that, sometimes I wonder, Goshen, how did we get through that? And I'll tell you exactly how we got through it.
It's not a silver bullet. It wasn't one thing. It's a daily, hourly, sometimes over a very sustained period of time. Like literally all of 0809 felt like this, right? Literally all of 2023 felt like this. For me, a daily, hourly sustained period of time of choice making and very purposeful mental activity whereby each moment, sometimes I could say, the regulators are going to run my life, or I'm going to run my life. The piece of paper that just showed up in the mail is going to dictate how I'm doing today, or my own mindset is going to dictate how I'm doing today. And this is not an easy choice, especially when you feel like you're literally making it every hour based on the literal showing up of something in the mail or the email system or what have you. And yet now, when I look back on that timeframe, I know that's exactly not only how I got through it, but how we, because it's always a team, right? Even if that team is me and God, how we are going to be in an even better position to serve even more fully and thoroughly those that we are put on this earth to serve for the next 30 years.
[00:10:11] Speaker B: Choices, amazing. The power of choices. And you obviously, as you say, you had support. You had your internal framework of support, and you had an external framework of support as well. The people around you, Todd, your husband and so forth. And a year's worth of that challenge. And being someone who's not a particular fan of a lot of paperwork, seeing that it might show up in the mail on a regular basis wouldn't make me feel very good either. So I can only imagine, you know, there's certain letters that you get that are handwritten that you kind of want to open, and then there's all the ones that you know for sure that you don't. So it sounds like you received quite a number of those. And just being able to overcome that in the moment is great. And so really, really excited to dig more into that. Kim, what I'd love to do before we cut to our break is maybe just give us a real quick insight into what exactly would you say helps you the most in that period of time. If you could summarize the thing that really got you through that last year, as you are going through that process.
[00:11:08] Speaker A: With the regulators, it is proactive gratitude. So, to be specific, we live in a state regulated industry. And so that means if the state of fill in the blank, New York wants to do something, well, California wants to jump on the bandwagon, and Wyoming is right behind them just to pick three states off the top of my head. And so that proactive gratitude was necessary all the time. In addition to being very clear that father, mother, God gave me my abilities and nobody could take them away.
[00:11:47] Speaker B: Amazing. I absolutely love it. And so with that in mind, we're going to go to a quick commercial break. And when we come back, more with Kim Butler.
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We are back here with Kim Butler, and we are discussing the power that you have individually by working on your own mindset when challenges which we know are going to show up do arise. Now, speaking about challenges being in the financial industry for as many years as you have, you touched briefly on the financial crisis of 2008 and just how crazy that period of time was. And I have this feeling, the sense that in the time of this recording in 2024, we are entering some uncertainty. Theres a feeling of uncertainty in the economic landscape thats kind of around us. We have an upcoming election in the United States. Theres a similar one going to be happening in Canada in the near future. And so that sparks a bit of change. And it kind of puts people to a degree of unease. Theyre not sure how things are going to go one direction or another. There's a lot of things we can be positive about, but we can also enhance our awareness. So walk us through the experience that you had in the financial crisis and the things that you saw happening, and then we can maybe extract some lessons from that for our listeners.
[00:13:40] Speaker A: I remember like it was yesterday all during, particularly zero nine, getting on the phone every day. Scared myself because we owned real estate. We had stocks that were down, you know, fill in the blank. We were dealing with. You know, it's too entrepreneurial household. We're dealing with a lot of the financial challenges that a lot of our families were.
And I remember getting on the phone starting. So I run my week like Dan Sullivan suggests for focus days. I have Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. So Monday is the buffer day. Get a whole bunch of stuff done. You can kind of just power through. But then Tuesday, it's game day, and you're there to help people get the results that they need to get financially. So I remember getting the phone. Like, I start nine central, I have my first call. I'm scared, and my client or prospect is scared. And so at each stage of the conversation, a choice has to be made, like I was speaking earlier. And the choice is I can stay in fearful mode and potentially make some bad decisions, because when we're in fear, we are not seeing things clearly.
Or I can choose gratitude and those two cannot exist together.
So as we head into 2024, and who knows how long changes may be occurring? 2025, frankly, we know that for the rest of our lives, there are going to be good seasons and bad seasons in our family. We always talked about lean years and green years.
And so knowing how to handle it mentally is paramount. And so the choices that get made at the moment are one of, can I dig one thing good out of what is occurring? So let's say something bad has occurred. Some thing showed up. It could have been on an investment, or it could have been on some other unrelated thing. Maybe it's financial, maybe it's nothing. And that quickest reaction is one of fear. And the uncertainty then just drives that. And so it's necessary to take a step back. And sometimes that means physically, like, walk away from the computer, go outside, go do jumping jacks. You know, I think about a duck when they're swimming in water. The top of the duck looks as smooth as can be. But if you've ever seen a ducks feet under that water, they are battling like crazy. And this is how our demeanor has to be sometimes. Because whether we're leading ourselves or whether we're leading a client or a prospect or we're leading our family, that ability to remain calm and be in a space of gratitude is what is going to enable us to sustain whatever it is that we're being confronted with, even if we do sometimes feel like our feet are paddling or our mind is going a million miles an hour in order to try to come up with ideas or something. You know, it's interesting. In our artificial intelligent world today, one of the unique things about it is the absolute proof that ideas are unlimited.
And so if there's nothing else that you can find to be grateful for, find an idea, a tiny little idea. And maybe that idea is literally get up from the computer and go outside for a few minutes or some other thing that shifts your perspective, that shifts the point of view, the lens through which you're looking at things, because that will enable you to come up with an idea that can help you get to the next step. It may not solve the whole problem. All youre looking for is one idea to enable you to move forward.
[00:17:46] Speaker B: Trey, the importance of moving forward. I like how you did a throwback to your dairy farm days with the lean and green years. I picked up on that. And the farmer that never leaves us. If everyone here watching has grown up on a farm before, thinking about your connection, point on just how difficult and that fear that existed, getting on the phone and talking to clients and just being aware and recognizing that they, too, are probably in a fearful state. It's important to recognize that the climate of the economic world isn't really within our control. We don't control the geopolitical environment. There's a lot of things that we don't have control of. What we do have control of is this squishy mass in between our ears. And if we can get clear on that mindset component like you identified, it doesn't mean it's easy. We're not. I certainly don't take away, Kim, that you're trying to make it sound like any of this is easy. In fact, it's quite the opposite. It is a challenge to get clear on what is something that you can do in the moment, in an action step, to get yourself out of that stuck state, move beyond the fear. As humans, we're conditioned to have this fight or flight type of energy that's built in from the prehistoric times. And we are always battling with it because we want to survive naturally. So when it comes to your money maybe being in some turmoil because of an economic change, you want that to survive because it directly connects to aspects of your freedom and your choices. And so being able to make a choice in the moment, I do think, is so critically valuable and important. So when you consider that and you think about individuals who might be having and feeling some of those, those thoughts today, or they're stepping into uncertainty, you were talking earlier about the year of 2023. There was a lot of uncertainty for you. What things could you specifically suggest that people might be able to do to help them get that next item, get moving forward out of that stuck state so that they can move into some kind of certainty to take a progressive step forward.
[00:19:54] Speaker A: There's two specific ones I will share, and one comes from Joel Weldon, who is a very well known speaker.
And he says, so the economy's in a recession.
You don't have to participate in that.
Choose not to participate. Let's try that again. Choose not to participate in fill in the blank. And so whether it's a recession or the stock market has crashed or there's political turmoil or whatever it is, choose not to participate. And I think one of the easiest ways to make that choice is to be very, very conscious of what we are taking in mentally and with our eyes every single day. So what this might look like is to go on a news fast. In other words, consider stopping reading, listening and watching the news. Now, maybe that doesn't work for everybody. Some people feel like their profession or whatever it is, necessitates some of that. But really be careful. Really consider the sources of which you are feeding your mind. We've all learned that we need to be very careful what we feed our bodies well. What we feed our minds is equally, if not more, important. And so if you can't do a news fast, you can at least do a fairly restricted diet of intake. And to me, this also means that every morning we're being very conscious of what we start our day with. So I get it if you need the news for your profession, but please choose to start the day with something spiritual or inspirational to feed your mind so that when you get involved in your daily life, whether it's news related or somebody else is bringing business challenges to you or what have you, you have a foundation of spiritual inspiration from which to feed from, to help you make decisions, stay in a space of gratitude, et cetera.
[00:22:10] Speaker B: Yeah, I love that. You know, the big theme of gratitude, and, you know, one of the things that we do around our organization is we do positive power ups on a regular basis. Another thought provided by the Dan Sullivan Strategic Coach organization. And it is important to recognize that you can't be upset and grateful at the same time if you're really, truly being grateful. So finding one simple thing that you're grateful for, it could be the fact that you have a toaster that works, your microwave works, and you can heat up your coffee, that you can have coffee in the morning, and the coffee is really tasty. The fact that you can drive down the street to get fuel out of the gas station, that's plentiful and available, those are small, little incremental things that may not have anything to do with your day or your life or what's going on, but it could be something you can hold onto that can give you a piece to build upon. It's like. Like Lego blocks. You just want to be able to stack them to build a structure that's going to support your life.
[00:23:02] Speaker A: Well said. And that beginning is so important, and so sometimes we need to begin our day every hour.
[00:23:09] Speaker B: Yes, you talked about that in relation to your recent experience by moving from the licensed to the unlicensed world. And I really appreciate what you're saying there. I think it's so important for people to recognize that these things happen in the moment. And it's usually that we're pushed up against something, or something is pushed up against us, and we get into a reactionary mode. That reaction you may still have the reaction, but if quickly, you can recognize, hey, maybe I could have done that differently. Why don't I have a good conversation with this individual and find a way through that and move beyond so we can recognize things quicker by understanding how to develop that mindset. So I love that you talked about feeding your brain the right kind of information. And if you give your brain the right mindset, it's going to do the best work for you, and it'll, you know, brings a funny thing. It works 24/7 it shuts off during sleep. But does it really? I don't know. Some people dream. There's usually something on the other side. So with that in mind, we're gonna have more with Kim Butler after these messages.
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We are back with Kim Butler, and we're going to change directions here, and we're going to get into building a future much bigger than our past.
What are some of the ways, Kim, that you see innovation taking place in your environment, around you? I know that you're really, really actively focused on learning about new emerging technologies in many areas, things around longevity and AI and just a whole gamut of things. What's an area of innovation that you see taking place right now that people should be really aware of?
[00:25:30] Speaker A: Well, let's hit the longevity one, because that is so apropos to every single human on this planet. And it's been something that I've been in thought around probably for 20 years, which is, I think, longer than it's been sort of common in societal conversations.
And I'm not really even sure where I got going on this, except that I knew in my heart that people were going to be living a lot longer health spans. So, yes, lifespans, of course, but it's health spans that are so amazing, and I've got as an example, my dad is in his mid eighties. He still lives on the farm that I grew up on. He does have help on the farm because he still has cattle and hay and equipment that he's dealing with that are some of it beyond his physical abilities. But more importantly, Richard, he still works three days a week at the university helping student teachers in his mid eighties.
And so I've got another example real quick. My mother in law, also in her mid eighties, still works, sometimes remotely, sometimes by going into the lab where she has had her entire career.
Langford did some math around this. So in the 1930s, when age 65 was put forth as something that mattered, life expectancy at the time was literally 66 or 67 just for the generic person. And that age 65, as we know, never got moved forward. Well, if you do the math based on how long human beings are living today, Todd Langford has done the math.
Age 87 should be the new age 65, in other words, where people are now absolutely working full time until 65, people in 2024 should be working full time until they're 87. And that's with no real extremes for longevity brought into play, because that's just normal human life expectancy, which is everybody, not just, like the healthy, as an example.
And so when you think about that and when we know that people are living longer and we see people in their late nineties and even early hundreds still doing amazing jump rope gymnastics, I'm thinking of specific examples that I've recently spent time, five minutes a day is my allowable time on Instagram. In five minutes, I've seen a 90 plus year old woman jumping rope. I've seen another one doing gymnastics. I've seen a man in the Orient doing some amazing kind of kung fu, something. I don't know what he was doing, unbelievable physical feats. And of course, as we know, there are people that are still getting up and going to the office every day in their late nineties and hundreds as well. We're going to see more and more of this. And so adopting a mindset of longevity is critical. And to go back and use Dan Sullivan as an example, he decided a long time ago that he wanted to live to 156. Whether or not he makes it is not the point.
It's what he has done in his life, in his fifties, sixties, seventies, and now eighties, because he has 156 as a goal. And so all of the changes that he's done in his life have contributed to a longer health span, a more productive last decades, whatever they are, his eighties, his nineties, those hundreds, it doesn't even really matter. It's because he had that mindset of that longer lifespan that has made all the difference in the world and his other decades. So this is something that's very, very important to us, first of all, financially. Because if we understand that we really should be working until we're in our mid eighties, that's essentially another 20 years beyond what most people have in their heads. And so that begs the question that we darn well better find work that we love. And Kolbe, as an example, Kolbe.com is something that we can use to help us find work that we love. Now, many people are already in that space and very blessed for that. But if by chance, you're in your forties or fifties and not feeling like you love your work, it's time to make a change and to find work that you love, that suits your God given talents, that enables you to get up and be excited about serving every single day, about creating value out in the marketplace every single day. Now, sometimes that's paid, and sometimes it's not paid. But the point is, if we understand that we really need to be working and serving until we're in our mid eighties, that will help us out financially so much. Because if we don't do that, not only do we have 20 more decades of spending our assets, we have 20 less decades of growing our assets. And I'll tell you, especially if you're in your fifties or sixties or maybe even seventies, and you're feeling like, oh, my gosh, I haven't saved enough.
The solution to that is to find work that you love and keep doing it. This is why my mission is to activate that lifelong service. And so what does that look like? Well, it possibly could mean working until you die. And yet, if you find work that you love, then that's easy to do, number one. And number two, it also then creates room for maybe you take a sabbatical year. Maybe you take every weekend as a three day weekend. Maybe you work three weeks out of every month. Maybe you shift your life to enjoy things now that you had been putting off to this concept that, frankly, should have never been introduced to society called retirement. Or maybe you create some other schedule that serves you so that you can serve others.
[00:32:10] Speaker B: I love all that, Kim. And I think about the value of purpose. And when you have a reason to get up in the morning to do stuff, it makes it a lot easier to get up and then do that stuff. And people find purpose in many different areas. They might find it through spiritual, through family, reasons, or they might really just truly enjoy what it is, what they do, and our ideas of what we may want to do shift and change throughout time. We take a new experience, we meet new people, we learn about new technologies, and our interests may shift and change. So what I would encourage people to do, as you're listening and you're thinking about this, is what would a world where you lived an extra 25 or 30 years look like? What would be possible for you if you had that extra time? And if you knew that that was possible, how would you change what you do today to create an environment that would allow you to really maximize that extra time that you have? And so that's the concept of thinking differently and thinking bigger, a future much brighter than your past. And not only that, not just brighter, but longer as well. And so I really appreciate what Dan Sullivan and the strategic coach organization has done for me in helping rethink that lifespan. Listening to better podcasts, Peter Diamandis, the abundance 360 model, very focused on the extension of the human life. And there's so many emerging technologies in today's amazing, wonderful day and age where they're actually doing things that are helping to extend human longevity in very intricate ways. And as an example, we were together here very recently for Dan Sullivan's 80th birthday. And at that same event, I got to see an x ray of Dan Sullivan's knee. And I saw a before and an after, and he had a lot of cartilage that was missing. It was almost bone on bone. And they have actually regrown that cartilage so he can move and operate his knee better at the age of approximately 80. What an incredible feat. And what a, what a way to think through what's possible in our bigger future. So when you consider some of those technologies, we have the financial side, which youve talked about understanding. Colby, to know more about yourself, whats something that you think about longevity from a vantage point of emerging technologies that youre really excited about today?
[00:34:25] Speaker A: Well, I want to start with a mental question first. And its, if you didnt know how old you were, how old would you be?
And so it's something to think about deeply, because to answer your question, on the technological side, I really view our mental capacity as the biggest aspect of technology that we can work with. And so, yeah, of course, there's a whole long list of what we would typically consider technological advances. Stem cells as an example, you know, incredible stuff that they're doing with that, but to just literally open it up to every single human being, because maybe people don't feel like they have access to some of the other typical technologies because of price or location or whatever, but every single one of us has aspect to this piece of technology right here in our heads and possibly in our hearts. That might be a better way to say it sometimes. And that is to ask that question, if you didn't know how old you were, how old would you be?
[00:35:45] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely love it. And with that in mind, we're going to give everyone a chance to ponder that question while we cut to some incredible messages. And we'll be back shortly after these.
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We're back again with Kim Butler, and we're discussing the power of the mind and using your mind as your best innovation and thinking through the idea of the concept of age. And can you reverse your age? Well, we can certainly change the way we think about it. And through the thinking method, we can start to change the behaviors and the things that happen that can lead to a much brighter and longer future out into the distance. Now, Kim, we talked a little bit about, you know, the 2008 financial meltdown. We talked about some of the uncertainty in the marketplace right now around the financial aspect of the world. The day to day financial picture for people were dealing with inflation and a number of things. When you think about the people that youve served over the years, as they get closer to approaching that quote, unquote, I hate to use the word again, but the worlds view of retirement, and you indicate to be put out of service, I always think about those, those shows where it's like a british tv show, oh, I'm going to retire for the evening. It's like you're going to go to sleep. So I always think retirement is like the big sleep. That's my model of the view. And so we want to really shift and change that. And so what have you noticed with people as they approach that phase of life? What have you seen happen to them on the other side of it? And what are kind of some of the statistics that are happening right now that we need to be aware of and our viewers should understand?
[00:38:11] Speaker A: Excellent question. So picking up on the, the idea that the definition of retirement truly is to be taken out of service, I also feel like retirement is a selfish act and it's so ingrained in our, I should say, north american society. Right. It's truly a very american and canadian thing. I mean, even Mexico is not as focused on retirement as Americans and Canadians are. And there's some aspects of Europe that are very focused on it, and then others are not. And, you know, without getting into political commentary at all, it is an interesting environment because it's a real mental challenge for people if they don't have some clear direction as to how they are going to provide service, how they are going to continue to live purposeful lives after this thing called retirement. And it's why I feel so strongly that it's imperative that people try to put it off as long as possible.
And yet, clearly, there are people that are either selling businesses or maybe they work in a profession where there is a set retirement age and there's nothing that they can do about it, although I have heard that there's negotiations that can happen to extend that age. But nevertheless, it's going to continue to happen in our society until we realize truly how detrimental it is.
Nevertheless, what I've seen is that those that are, you know, let's just use the word forced into retirement either because of age or because it is just time to sell the business or what have you.
Those that are forced into it, if they will spend a little bit of time preparing on two specific fronts that I'll get into, they will have a much happier transition and be able to really feel that sense of purpose and fulfillment in their lives that all human beings desire. And so it's interesting, the first of the two is to see that those that identify ways to be of value, to create in their world have so much more successfully defined lives. Now, each person has their own definition of success, and I'm not talking monetary right now, but just this sense of accomplishment that human beings really strive for every single day. The sense of purpose.
And to back up on this a little bit, I really believe that we need to be working on our purpose as human beings about every ten years or so, like I was speaking earlier, if you're not having a little bit of a midlife crisis about every decade, you're kind of dead. And so if we are used to working in this space, then it's not this big thing that we have to figure out, because we went through some purpose clarifying. Maybe in our forties, maybe we did it again in our fifties, and maybe we did it again in our sixties, and now we're retired, so we're going through purpose clarifying again. And so the way that I think that is best is to do things like the Colby profile. And if you already have your Colby, then get it back out and reread it and spend a good week with it. That can really help you with purpose. Maybe there are other profiles that you find valuable, whether it's fill in the blank, there's a million of them out there. But I do think Colby has a special spot. Maybe you're getting some coaching. My sister, Tammy Brannon, she has a process called the blueprint process, and she helps people figure out what's next. And really, that's the question as you're identifying purpose. So that whole section is the first. The second is actually applying to Dan Sullivan's entrepreneurial time system of free days, focus days, and buffer days to a typical retirees life. And it would look like this. And let me just state, do we need to do a quick description of free day, focus day, and buffer day, you think first?
[00:42:37] Speaker B: Yeah, let's do a quick rundown so that everyone has a. Everyone's caught up to where you're at.
[00:42:42] Speaker A: So in the entrepreneurial world, a free day is 24 hours, midnight to midnight, completely disconnected from your business. And there's so much you in that, because then you come back refreshed. Then the focus day is where you do your money making activities. Again, midnight to midnight. 24 hours doesn't mean you're working 24 hours, but within that block of time you're serving, you're helping people do whatever it is that you do. And then the third category is a buffer day, which is literally a buffer between the free days and the focus days, whereby you're preparing, or maybe you're cleaning up from having had a full focus day or a free day, whichever it is. And those three very distinct timeframe days enable an entrepreneur to overcome the single biggest challenge that entrepreneurs have, which is that every day can be a workday.
Well, when you're retired, the single biggest challenge that retirees have is that every day can be a free day.
And when that's true, the free days lose their luster. The free days become like every other day, with no distinction and no creativity and no joy because of it. And so if a retiree will apply the free day focused day buffer day concept to their weeks and their days, they'll get so much better results. So it might look like this, and the days aren't really going to matter. But just by way of example, if you are the kind of person that sets Sunday aside to praise the Lord or attend church or synagogue or whatever your space is, or maybe it's Saturday, it doesn't really matter, then keep that day free and keep it unencumbered by errands and the myriads of to dos that can occur, you know, lawn work or house cleaning or whatever it is, and make it your inspirational day or your spiritual day. Then maybe you pick Monday as your errand and your workday. So this we would call a focus day in the entrepreneurial world. But as a retiree, maybe it's cleaning the house or mowing the lawn or getting things done, running around town, including groceries or just whatever it is. Ideally, you would shove all of your appointments onto that type of day. And of course you can shift things around. Nothing's going to work out perfectly. But if you'll batch all of that kind of activity together, then that day will have its specificity around getting the work done.
And then, of course, you're going to have your buffer days. Now, for a retiree, maybe it's not as many of those, or maybe it's a lot of those, but it's very important that this whole environment not turn into the same problem that you started out with, which was day could be a free day. Because if you treat all the days the same, none of them are special. And so even if you're feeling monetarily challenged, if you can identify, there's this one day a week or maybe it's one day a month where it's truly free and we're going to get to do whatever we want because we've cleaned the house and we've done the yard and we've done the errands on other days, that day is going to be so much more special. Or maybe it's a day with grandchildren, but you're not also running to the grocery store. And that distinction will enable you to live your life way more purposefully and consequently get the benefits of that.
[00:46:21] Speaker B: Trey, I love it. Using a innovation, the Dan Sullivan Innovation entrepreneur time system, to help you in a post work life, maybe it's not post all work, but it's changing the way from the career that you've had in the past so that you can achieve a higher degree of fulfillment. Higher degree of fulfillment tends to lead back to the other thing that we're talking about, which is an extension of longevity and really appreciate all that. Kim, I think that's a great way to frame everything up, and I think that that's an incredible thing to share with our viewers as an actionable step. So whether you're in that phase of life now, or maybe you're thinking about that phase that's approaching, or you have family members who are currently running that scenario, and perhaps you resonate and recognize some of the things that Kim has identified. You might be able to, number one, share this with them, and number two, coach them a little bit, give them some insight and some inspiration so that they can make their free days so much more impactful. Now, Kim, I'd love to get some final thoughts from you here around the things that you've shared, the innovations that you've talked about, the mindset. What is it you really want to make sure our viewers understand about the power of their own potential?
[00:47:30] Speaker A: Well, it's such a great way to word it, because each person does have potential, and there is a renewed potential every single day. So no matter what the history is, we know that history is created. It is our lens on it that we can create and we can rewrite anytime we want. We can also choose to just let it go entirely. So no matter what your history is, knowing that every day, and technically every hour of every day, you can start anew, and it all starts in your thinking, and then that flows through to what comes out of your mouth. And also, if you choose to write or keyboard anything. And so, as we were speaking earlier, being so careful what we're taking in means, also to be very careful what we're putting out just today on our slack channel that our team uses, I had to pull somebody aside and say, let's be very careful what words we're typing in to the Slack channel about how we're currently feeling right now, because you're impacting a team there. And we want to impact our team with positivity because there's plenty of other challenges going on. We don't need to add to that because of a particular lens of something that we have going on in our heads right now. So being super careful on the intake and equally careful on the outtake, including our own self talk is the message I would like to end with.
[00:49:15] Speaker B: Love it. Appreciate that so much. Kim. Thank you for being on our show today and for adding so much tremendous value. And for those of you tuning in, make sure to tune in again next week where we uncover more of the incredible challenges being faced by entrepreneurs and how they are making the absolute most incredible impact in the world.
Here's to an amazing week.
