00:00:00 Thanks for joining us on episode 756 of the inspired stewardship podcast. I'm Dan Miller from 48 days.com. I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence and impact the world by using your time, your talent and your treasures, Deliv out your calling. Having the ability to find the work you love is key. And one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this inspired stewardship podcast with my friend,
00:00:31 Scott Mader, you really touch on something here. That's getting a lot of chatter out there these days. I certainly am one to talk about integrating your passion. And I want to unpack that a little bit. Scott. There's also a lot of people out there that say that's ridiculous. You can find your passion. You find yourself sitting on a curb,
00:01:00 you know, with the cardboard sign because you can't make any money is good. Welcome. And thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship podcast. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent and your treasures for your true calling and the inspired stewardship podcast. We'll learn to invest in yourself,
00:01:23 invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact the world in today's interview with Dan Miller, Dan Miller, and I talk about how the 20 year anniversary edition of the 48 days of the work you love. Book has a message that is different than the normal find a job message. Plus what's changed in the book and what stayed the same over the last 20 years.
00:01:52 Dan and I also talk with you about how his own core messaging has stayed the same, and what's changed about it over that same 20 year history. Then the normal find a job messages, Dan and I also share the upper limit problem and what you can do about it. And Dan and I also talk with you about how this message that he shares has stayed the same and changed over the last 20 years.
00:02:19 One reason I like to bring you great interviews. Like the one you're going to hear today is because of the power in learning from others. Another great way to learn from others is through reading books. But if you're like most people today, you find it hard to find the time to sit down and read. And that's why today's podcast is brought to you by audible,
00:02:40 go to inspired stewardship.com/audible to sign up and you can get a 30 day free trial. There's over 180,000 titles to choose from. And instead of reading, you can listen your way to learn from some of the greatest minds out there. That's inspired stewardship.com/audible To get your free trial and listen to great books the same way you're listening to this podcast. Dan Miller,
00:03:08 president of 48 days, LLC specializes in creative thinking for increased personal and business success. He believes that meaningful work blends our natural skills and abilities, our unique personality traits and our dreams and passions. He believes that a clear sense of direction can help us become all that God designed us to be. Dan is the author of the widely acclaimed 48 days for the work you love and no more Mondays books.
00:03:37 48 days was recently released in a 20 year anniversary edition. He hosts his podcast and is the founder of the online community that I belong to called the 48 days Eagles. And there's many active entrepreneurs there. I've learned a lot about how I view my vocation from Dan, his books and listening to him over the years. And I consider him one of my virtual mentors.
00:04:01 Oh, and by the way, Dan and his wife, Joanne have three wonderful children and 17 grandchildren to celebrate as well. Welcome to the show, Dan. Well, thank you. Been looking forward to our conversation. It is great to have you here. And so Dan, you know, I know I've been a follower of yours for a long time,
00:04:23 and I know a lot of my listeners have heard of your books. I've referenced them before on the podcast, but can you talk a little bit about how, you know, when you hear 48 days to the work you love, you hear no more Mondays you're, you're talking about jobs and career and all of these sorts of things. Can you talk a little bit about the difference in the message between that we hear out in culture and other places about find a job and why your books aren't about just finding a job?
00:04:50 Well, it's interesting takeoff because originally my content was 30 days to the job you love. And then I discovered 30 days didn't really grab people. It's too generic. It's like 10, 20, 30, 60, 9,000. There's nothing really significant about it. And so this was back when 48 hours was becoming popular as a TV show. And so I thought,
00:05:16 I'll bet we could get some brand recognition. 48 is an unusual number. We'll change it to 48 days. And also we were hearing from a whole lot of people that said, I'm not sure I want another job, right. Be more in the driver's seat. So that was a real significant change to change it from job to work, work, then opening the door for being a consultant,
00:05:41 independent contractor, digital nomad, entrepreneur. I mean, all those other forms of work that are not a job. And of course in the time now that what are your days to the work you love has been out there? My goodness, the alternate options have exploded, especially right now. Oh yeah. Well, and that, yeah, that's one of the things I think that's interesting to me about the concept of,
00:06:08 of work and especially we're recording this, the, the COVID 19 pandemic is still going on. And I think it's opened some people's eyes to the idea that work may not have to look like going to the office and sitting in a cubicle. You know, even if you have a corporate job, it may not look like that in, in the next year,
00:06:28 in the next five years. It certainly doesn't look like that a lot of ways today for a lot of people back when I read 48 days to the work, you'll have the very first time I was in a job that was very frustrating to me. And, and it resonated with me this idea of, wait a minute, I don't have to quote do the,
00:06:50 you know, just show up and do the drudgery work, you know, because everyone has to have a job everyone has to do at work that, you know, that success. What's the difference though, between work and just finding a job. I mean, what, what w what do you say the difference is for folks that are kind of trying to distinguish between those two things?
00:07:10 Well, if we were to put the kind of work possibilities, there are on a continuum, I would put having a job as 10% of the possibilities on one end of the spectrum. So if we were going from left to right, as an example on that continuum, you'd have get in a job where you show up at eight, o'clock leave at five,
00:07:33 you get two weeks vacation for one key contribution. I mean, we understand that really well. At the other end, we would have, you know, the 22 year old, who has a site on the internet, or he updates about sports information spends two hours a day doing that makes a couple of hundred thousand dollars a year because of some unique kind of leverage he's got,
00:07:53 that's very, very different, very unstructured, very, very, I hate to use the term unpredictable, but it certainly doesn't have the kind of structure that a job does. So if we have those as the opposing ends, now, we've got a whole lot of things in between where you can take an area of expertise that you had in corporate America and become a consultant,
00:08:15 or you perhaps were an accounting major and working in a firm. And so now you become an independent accountant. So instead of having one customer, which is implied, if you have a job, you now have 10 customers where you're using your area of expertise, but it's not just for one customer it's for 10. And people found that they can focus in on what it is they really enjoy doing with that model.
00:08:40 More so than in a job where they may not use their best skills all the time. And the company is looking for things that they can do. It may be sorting the mail or sweeping the floors to justify having them 40 hours. So it benefits everybody to move in their area of expertise. And then we've got the independent contractors. We hear a lot about that.
00:09:01 And people who get a 10 99 at the end of the year, rather than a W2, or you may say, you know what, I want to do something where I'm kind of in the driver's seat and I'm not an entrepreneur. I don't want to just be out on my own what we just defined a franchise. So say, Oh, here's subway.
00:09:20 They tell me what to do, how much inventory to have when to be open, how many people to hire, but it's still my business. And the adage there is you're in business or yourself, but not by yourself. So we keep coming on over with all those things mean you can swing by home Depot this afternoon, buy a lawn mower and start a little landscaping business.
00:09:39 Boom. We've seen people do that. And then we hear about people having an online business where they're selling things fulfilled by Amazon or doing other things using Etsy or eBay or whatever, but they're selling things online. So they have a lot of freedom and flexibility. They may be totally behind the scenes. The, these days to be an independent doesn't mean that you have to go out and knock on 10 doors tomorrow that you can be very introverted and shy and be doing something totally on your own.
00:10:09 But it's just that broad continuum of possibilities, as opposed to just, you know, job. That's why, when people are in transition, Scott, I say, Hey, absolutely explore the opportunities. Companies are begging for good people right now, but don't short sight yourself in terms of hooking it only at that look at the whole spectrum, then decide what's the best fit for you.
00:10:34 If it is to go get another job, fantastic. Hold your head high, do a good job, give somebody great service there, but recognize we have a whole lot of new and growing number of opportunities that don't fit in that job spectrum anymore. So let's talk a little bit more about that. This is the 20th anniversary of, of 48 days to the work you love.
00:10:58 How has the message in the book both stayed the same and changed over those 20 years when you talk about new opportunities that folks have today? Yeah. Great question. And it has changed. I think the thing that gave me almost an unexpected edge in that the book did become a New York times bestseller. And there's a lot of books out there about finding job,
00:11:23 finding your passion, starting a business, really most of the topics that I talk about, but mine was instead of methods and tactics to go out and find those opportunities, make it work. It was no most of the process of having the confidence of proper direction comes from looking inward, take a deep breath before you go out and see who's hiring or what the best franchise is.
00:11:46 You know, who's doing something unknown. Now look inward first. How has God uniquely gifted you in terms of your skills and your personality, tendencies, your values, dreams, and passions from that, you get a clear focus of what kind of environment you work best in. What would be the work that you do that really is fulfilling for you? What gives you that blend of talent,
00:12:11 passion, and money. That part has stayed the same. So in the version that came out 48 days came out in 2000, 20 years ago. There's that message. That message is the same, but in the new book, it comprises probably 30% of what's there because the applications of that have changed so dramatically. That's where the changes have taken place,
00:12:39 the core message, figure out how you're uniquely gifted. What should that look like? That is a continuing message that has inspired people and served me really well over the years. So it's kind of the, the, the, the wide of figuring it out is the same. But then how do you actually put that out in the world looks completely different 20 years later in a lot of ways.
00:13:02 Yeah. Yes. We have opportunities today. We couldn't have dreamed up even five years ago. Absolutely amazing. People are doing Oh, well. Yeah. I mean, I, so I, you know, I'm a coach and I live out in the middle of nowhere. I tell people I live 45 minutes from the closest Walmart Starbucks or McDonald's, you know,
00:13:23 so I live out in the country and I have clients in seven countries. Wow. I even in 2000, there's no way I could have done that reliably and well, it, it, it, it just would not have been technologically or feasible to do that today. I can do that. So it is, yeah. I I've seen that in my own.
00:13:45 And I started coaching in 2011. So just, you know, in those nine years, it's changed dramatically how I can reach people and where I can serve people. So it's amazing to do that. You and I have been been around a while doing this. I started what I'm doing before we had logs or podcast or Facebook or Instagram or Pinterest or Tik TOK,
00:14:07 you know, all the things that we've got today before we had any of that, you know, it's funny to talk to these millennials coming into the workplace today. They think those are requirements for doing anything. No, they are. They're just tools. We can be very successful without those, if those go away, we, and I have the confidence of knowing that because I started everything I'm doing before any of those tools were available.
00:14:30 Right? Yeah. You're, you know, again, I'll use my coaching business. My model would change if all of that went away, I'd be doing it in a different way. But you know, my, my Mo my mother's joke is I started coaching when I was eight, because, you know, she said, you've always been a coach.
00:14:47 You just didn't have a title. And people didn't pay you money. Now, people are paying, you might to do what you've always been good at doing, you know, getting back to that passion. And that, that core thing. I was a teacher for 16 years. I was in corporate leadership and senior leadership ran a team of 150, 180 people.
00:15:04 And guess what I did, I coached, you know, because that was as a leader, that's a lot of what you do. I at least I think, to be an effective leader. So, Well, your mother's perspective provides a really core insight into how you figure this out at 35 or 45 or 65. When you look back and see the recurring themes,
00:15:28 that is a really good tool and insight where decided what it ought to look like now. And a lot of people kind of get caught up as you know, Oh, you know, the things just because it seems to be a practical on necessity. And at some point when things happen unexpectedly, they often go back and revisit those early patterns and themes and get a sense of what they really should be doing and move into a season of higher achievement satisfaction than they've ever known before.
00:15:58 So I gotta ask, when you wrote this book back in 2000, did you believe them that you'd be celebrating this message and continuing to deliver on these ideas 20 years later? You know, how have you adapted? You talked about Facebook and all these things, and yet kind of stayed the same too. My answer is yes. Yeah, you're really dead.
00:16:21 I thought I'd be celebrating 20. Yes. And I anticipate celebrating 48 years of the same message. And the reason is because I didn't just sit down and develop something as an artificial concept to write a book. It grew out of living life together with people, you know, we started as a Sunday school class. And so the contact with real people in real life situations helped develop those initial concepts that are in the book.
00:16:50 And because they resonated so significantly with people, I knew that that was going to be a core message that I could continue to share for the rest of my life. I really did. And yet, you know, obviously the way you deliver it today is different than I believe it was three ring binders in the back of your, your trunk when you very first started.
00:17:13 Am I remembering that story right from the introduction? Those I'd never wait until it's perfect. I just get it out there. And there's a lot of reasons for that, but it started as a spiral bound Spiral. Okay. I was, I was Miguel. Well, we would get, you were in a second iteration. We would go to Kinko's and just get material run off just in a very rough form and started selling that with a non-attached little cassette that went with it.
00:17:40 And then we went to a three ring binder that was a big move up in sophistication cassettes, stuck on the inside cover. And we, we, that was the version where things really took off. Okay. I remember in version two then that's, that's interesting. So what you mentioned it earlier, you know, one of the messages that's out there a lot,
00:18:04 you, you know, you can find a lot of books on how to get a job, and you can find a lot of books on, you know, how to find your passion, but your message is a little different than that in terms of, you know, it's not just about go find your passion. There's more to it. Can you unpack a little bit about,
00:18:20 what's different about your messaging than those two kind of ideas that are so common out there? You really touch on something here. That's getting a lot of chatter out there these days. I certainly am one to talk about integrating your passion. And I want to unpack that a little bit. Scott. There's also a lot of people out there that say, that's ridiculous.
00:18:44 You know, you can find your passion. You can find yourself sitting on a curb, you know what the cardboard sign, because you can't make any money Only unemployed. Just find something. It needs to be done, bite the bullet and do it well. That's that old model of work. That work is just a curse. It's a hardship. It's not something we enjoy.
00:19:02 It's just something practically that we have to do. We have to be responsible, provide for ourselves and our families. That's a, that's a tough way to live. So I want people to be in their passion, but here's where it gets a little bit tricky to open that up. We don't find our passion fully blown. Passionate is something that is more developed than it is discovered.
00:19:28 You know, I talked to people who want to go out and sit in the middle of a field out where you live in the middle of nowhere and wait for that bolt of lightning, you know, to discover their passion. It doesn't come like that. And I don't know that Michael Jordan was passionate about basketball, but he really wasn't very good. Even were told initially he kept doing it.
00:19:49 And as he got better and better and better because of years of practice. Yeah. I think then a passion developed. And I think that's pretty typical of how it shows up in our lives. So we can't just wait until we find our passion, no, find something where you have a seed of talent in doing that. Do it become really good at doing that?
00:20:14 And one of those days, you're going to find that not only are you really good at doing it, you really enjoy doing it. So passion and talent grow together. And incidentally in the growth of passion and talent, the growth of finances shows up as well. The world recognizes it and they give you certificates of appreciation with Benjamin Franklin's name on them.
00:20:37 Right? Roy de rabbi, Daniel Lapin uses the term certificate of appreciation for, for dollars. And I've, I've always loved that, that I stole that happily from Him, you know, with the technology going as it is, there'll be kids today that don't know the analogy, the Benjamin Franklin, PayPal deposits, no pictures, no paper that actually, I don't think I've been handed cash money in a long time myself.
00:21:06 So that, I mean, I handle it myself, but I don't, I don't usually get paid by my clients in cash money anymore. So that's, that's, that's true. I hadn't thought about that. You're right. I'm going to have to update my analogy. I always try to have a couple of Benjamin Franklin's in my pocket, but I don't touch them a month and I never touch them.
00:21:23 So even that an analogy is changing. You can follow Dan on twitter@fortyeightdaysteamrfindhimonhiswebsiteatfortyeightdays.com. And that's the number's 48. He's also active on LinkedIn at 48 days. And Dan has made a free gift available, including how you can get a free chapter of the book and some other great resources available over at 48 days.com/i S for inspired stewardship. I'll have links to all of these in the show notes as well.
00:21:57 Dan, is there anything else you'd like to share with the listener? You know, there's something, as you've talked, I've gotten a better feel for who your audience is and how you think. And you know, so often I hear people who think they've missed their window of opportunity. And I hear from 27 year olds who think they majored in the wrong thing in college,
00:22:14 you know, now they just have to kind of coast into the grave now, Oh my goodness, you aren't even old enough to ask the right questions yet, hang in there. But if there's one piece of encouragement, I'd love to leave with your listeners. It's that it's never too late to have a new beginning. So it doesn't matter if you're 27 or if you're a 57 or 77,
00:22:36 it may be a time where you have fresh insight into really what your core passions are. The things that you really have to offer that could make a dent in the universe. And now's the time to step into that. And you can walk into the most productive, fulfilling time of your life. So never too late to have a new beginning. Awesome.
00:22:55 Thank you so much for coming on. And it has been great to have you. Thank you so much. God, my honor. Thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship podcast as a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling.
00:23:23 If you enjoy this episode, please, please do us a favor. Go over to inspired stewardship.com/itunes rate. All one word iTunes rate. It'll take you through how to leave a rating and review and how to make sure you're subscribed to the podcast so that you can get every episode as it comes out in your feed until next time, invest your time, your talent and your treasures develop your influence and impact.