Episode 911: Impact the World - Interview with Roger Whitney the Retirement Answer Man – Part 4
[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: [00:00:00] Thanks for joining us on episode 911 of the inspired stewardship podcast.
[00:00:08] Roger Whitney: [00:00:08] Hey, I'm Roger Whitney. 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 to live out your calling. Having the ability to work for your future is a key.
[00:00:24] Having the ability to work for one more sec, having the ability. Having the ability to work for your future is key. And one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this, the inspired stewardship podcast with my friend, Scott Mader.
[00:00:42]what are your values? Because your values represent how you want to live your life. Right how you express your value. So principle one is know what your values are, what you believe, and then from there create a strategy for how do you [00:01:00] express those values and how you live.
[00:01:02] Scott Maderer: [00:01:02] Welcome. And thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship podcast.
[00:01:07] 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 in the inspired stewardship podcast. We'll learn to invest in yourself, invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact the work.
[00:01:28]In today's interview with Roger Whitney, the retirement answer, man, I asked Roger about how you can really make a dent in the universe. I also ask Roger to share the impact that he hopes he's had on the world. And Roger also talks with you about how you can balance your future and your today while still making an impact on the world.
[00:01:49] One reason I like to bring you great interviews. Like the one you're going to hear today is because of the past. In learning from others. Another great way to learn from others is through [00:02:00] 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.
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[00:02:37] Anyone who thinks retirement planning is boring. Clearly hasn't had a conversation with the retirement answer, man, and is not so alter ego. Roger, Whitney fun, fresh perspective on money in life. Turns financial planning from something people need to do to something they can't wait to do. Roger breaks with traditional financial [00:03:00] planning in asserting that there is no quote magic number or accurate retirement calculator.
[00:03:06] There is just. And your financial planner, having the right conversations, finding confident answers to meaningful questions and setting your priorities according to how you want to live and keep living your life long after you stop.
[00:03:21]So over the last few weeks, Roger, we've been talking a lot about different ways of looking at the world. We've ended up, I think with a a pie cake and a multilevel teeter-totter that's got at least three levels of teeter-totter. So I dunno if we're going to end up with another teeter-totter this week, but.
[00:03:37]If people really do want to make an impact. So we ended last week with finding your platform and speaking and learning your values and being able to communicate those. If somebody really wants to make what I call a dent in the universe, an impact of some way. And again, that doesn't necessarily mean have to be a worldwide platform.
[00:03:55] You don't have to invent Facebook. What are the top two or three principles or [00:04:00] ideas that you think folks should focus on first to increase their impact?
[00:04:04]Roger Whitney: [00:04:04] And the idea of having impact. I'm glad that you qualified it. Cause I know in financial planning, people will go down these rabbit holes of, should I do a Roth conversion and they start that and one of my first questions is always what are we trying to solve for really sometimes knowing what we're trying to optimize or solve for gets forgotten in the.
[00:04:29] Tactical considerations of having an impact. What does that mean? I don't know. I feel like I've had an impact cause I have two amazing children, cool changes the world.
[00:04:38] Scott Maderer: [00:04:38] I would include that in the list.
[00:04:40]Roger Whitney: [00:04:40] So I don't know how to answer that question. Other than some of the things that we've talked about.
[00:04:43] I don't have any Teeter totters. I don't have any pie cakes I'm full really understanding. What you stand for. And I think that starts with one principle is knowing what your values are, because your values, if you think of this, like a project management [00:05:00] exercise, and in our course in the rock retirement club, we start here is what are your values?
[00:05:09] Because your values represent how you want to live your life, right? How you express your value. So principle one is know what your values are, what you believe. And then from there create a strategy for how do you express those values and how you live. And then once you have a strategy for how you express those values for how you live, then you get down to the tactical ways that you implement the strategy.
[00:05:39] And so I think that's a healthy 1, 2, 3 step process for. Building more impact in the world because if you know what your values are, one of mine is adventure. My strategy is I like to be a participant, not a spectator. So I try to live that out. [00:06:00] I try not to be on the couch, but to go do things. And tactically, I do that by going to Colorado for once a year.
[00:06:09] Having multiple bikes and creating the opportunities to express it. So I can explain it, be an adventure by doing that. It intersects me with people. One, it ABI hopefully is a model for others. As I live, what I believe in. And I think modeling is one of the best ways to have an impact.
[00:06:29] People don't look at, always look at which they always look at what you're doing, not what you're saying. So I think that's a good start.
[00:06:34]Scott Maderer: [00:06:34] As part of that, when we're going to go back to a teeter-totter cause one of the teeter-totter, as we've talked about before is setting yourself up for the future while still living for today. Having that balance of living like you're retired already is the way you've described it.
[00:06:52] How does that play out in terms of the impact that we have, and maybe even the legacies that we leave behind and legacy [00:07:00] there doesn't necessarily mean monetarily a legacy though. It could.
[00:07:03]Roger Whitney: [00:07:03] So there is a lady in our rock retirement club. So how does it play out? The last few weeks I've sat here and talked about these concepts when it comes to retirement planning, but I think this sort of brings it home. How do you have an impact? Because I have a particular point of view and I've explored it for a period of time, we have this lady in the rock retirement club and she emailed me privately about.
[00:07:33] About travel. And so we had a conversation cause I have Friday office hours where anybody can talk with me and she expressed she was in her mid sixties and she, we were talking about what she wanted to experience in life. And she expressed how she always wanted to go to Europe. She had been, it's one of the things that she's just always wanting to do has never done it because she'd been so busy.
[00:08:00] [00:07:59] And then she talked about. Her plans to do it in four or five years. Right
[00:08:06] Scott Maderer: [00:08:06] after that,
[00:08:09] Roger Whitney: [00:08:09] she talked about her family, her mother's blind, and her sister just recently younger sister had a issue where is the it's a genetic thing. And there's some signs that her sister was going down. This path, her younger sister was going down this path and she didn't know whether she had the same potential issue.
[00:08:31] And we had already established that she had more than enough money for life. So it wasn't, she had ample resources. And so the sequence of the conversation was, we have enough money for life. I've always wanted to do this. I'm going to do it five, six years from now. Oh, by the way, I have my mother's blind, my sister, younger sister, maybe going down this path and I don't know if I am.
[00:08:52]And so I asked the obvious question. Why aren't you going this year? And to [00:09:00] her, it was like a light bulb. What? Really? And then, so what we did, because she'd never been to Europe, we have 500 or so people in the clubs, so I hadn't meet up. She wanted to stay anonymous. So I had a meetup where I explained the situation and relayed the story, protecting privacy.
[00:09:18] And the concern, if she doesn't know what to do. And so together we create, we had everybody chipping that had been to Europe and we created, we collected all the suggestions of places to go and services that you could potentially use and tips for packing and everything else. And we created a whole worksheet of a guide to going to Europe.
[00:09:44] And along with the group's encouragement for her to go express herself. And this is pre COVID by the way. And so she did it three months later [00:10:00] and I'm working and I'm checking my email and I get this email from her, with these pictures of her in London and then in Germany. And it brought tears to my eyes.
[00:10:13] And I shared those things with the club. That's how you, that's the kind of legacy I want. If you, and I want to walk with wise people, because that's how you become wise. And I want to pay attention and help give perspective. So people can lean in to the things that are important to them. So that's the kind of legacy I think.
[00:10:37] Scott Maderer: [00:10:37] So let's unpack that a little bit more. If let's say that I have a magic button and I can send you 150 years into the future and you get a chance to look back on your life, what impact do you hope you've actually had in the world? How would you describe it now? We're in the easy questions,
[00:10:57] Roger Whitney: [00:10:57] by the way.
[00:10:59] Yeah, that's an [00:11:00] easy question. I don't know if I fought deeply about that. It fear it. Honestly, Scott, I have some answers to these feel arrogant. Oh, that's right. The, I just want to have, I want to be a good, I just want to be a good man with my, I want to be a good husband. I want to be a good father.
[00:11:17] I want to be a good friend. I want to be a good steward with clients. And with those in the club, I think that's enough. No, the arrogant parts of it is a do. And it's actually have our company's value statements behind me. I want to change the perception of retirement. I think how retirement planning is done, forces people down past that make them sacrifice their life too much.
[00:11:42] And I think that is wrong. I think people can find much more balanced and live more fully. By doing financial planning and retirement planning differently. So if I had to be, I want to [00:12:00] contribute to changing that because it's wrong.
[00:12:03]Scott Maderer: [00:12:03] So Roger, what's coming next for you. As you continue on this journey to, to living out your call of changing the perception of retirement and changing the world, as well as what you just shared about being a good father, friends, husband, and so on.
[00:12:19]Roger Whitney: [00:12:19] So the next stage of our journey. And what is what I'm supposed to be doing with my life is from being a financial advisor and financial planner perspective. I work with a very small number of clients and I walk life with them and that's where it needs to be. The next journey is how do you fill the gap?
[00:12:44] Because right now, people that want to do financial planning and retirement planning. There are given a lot of easy choices. It's either do it all yourself and go read blogs and listen to podcasts and try to piece things together off of the open internet, [00:13:00] or go use a financial advisor, which can be very expensive.
[00:13:04]And most people there's nothing in between there. And the problem right now that I see is that the internet and content has become one big infomercial. Everything is a sales cycle. Trying even every blog you read for the most part is always trying to lead you to something. So there's very little education and resources without a sales pitch attached to it.
[00:13:26]And so my next journey is the rock retirement club, which I think fills the gap because it's a safe place for people to walk a little bit of life together with people like them in the same season of life. Get world-class education where nobody's trying to sell you anything and have a place where they can ask questions so they can do the education to take action and they can get assistance when they're confused and then they can get inspiration and perspective from the community [00:14:00] and the coaches we have.
[00:14:00] So that's my journey because I think that's a big gap that people don't get access to.
[00:14:05]Scott Maderer: [00:14:05] You can find out more about Roger and what he does over on his website@rogerwhitney.com. He's also active on Twitter as Roger underscore Whitney, or you can find his podcast anywhere. Great podcasts are found under the retirement answer. Man, I'll have links to all of this over in the show notes as well.
[00:14:25]Roger, is there anything else that you'd like to share with us?
[00:14:28] Roger Whitney: [00:14:28] You got one shot at it. Don't waste your life. You can do it.
[00:14:32]Scott Maderer: [00:14:32] 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. If you enjoy this episode. Please do us a favor. Go over to inspired stewardship.com/itunes rate.
[00:14:59] All [00:15:00] 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. Until next time, invest your time, your talent and your treasures. Develop your influence and impact the world.