Latest / FINE is a 4-Letter Word / 75. (S3E1) Stop Living for Work with Dave Houser

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75. (S3E1) Stop Living for Work with Dave Houser · FINE is a 4-Letter Word

• 0:02
  Hey, my friend. Welcome to Fine is a four letter word.
• 0:06
  My name is Lori Sites.
• 0:08
  I'm an entrepreneur, mentor, founder of Zen Rabbit, and your instigator in saying fuck
• 0:13
  being fine. This show is for those of you who are done living with the dumpster fire
• 0:19
  and are ready to find the tools and courage to transform to step into more success and
• 0:25
  fulfillment in both your personal and business life.
• 0:28
  You're in the right place for stories of self discovery, gratitude and connection, and
• 0:34
  to help you strengthen that connection to your own inner guidance, you'll find each
• 0:38
  episode has an accompanying meditation.
• 0:41
  Now let's get into it.
• 0:45
  Dave Hauser is an inspiration in embodying what it means to leave a fine life behind.
• 0:52
  After a long career as a strength and conditioning coach, Dave was done living a
• 0:57
  fine life and followed his beliefs to build something new.
• 1:01
  He quit his coaching job and transitioned out of some relationships that weren't
• 1:06
  growing along with him.
• 1:07
  The process wasn't easy, but it led to some important breakthroughs.
• 1:12
  Now Dave is in the financial services industry where he helps people build a life
• 1:17
  of self reliance and financial freedom on their terms.
• 1:21
  One of the topics we'll be navigating in season three of the podcast is the idea of
• 1:26
  sabbaticals, and Dave couldn't be in a better position to speak on this topic as
• 1:32
  he's in the middle of one at this very moment.
• 1:36
  We discuss how stepping away from work and focusing less on business can actually
• 1:41
  attract more business opportunities.
• 1:44
  Finding purpose in the things you do every day and finding the clarity you need to
• 1:49
  figure out what it is you want to do.
• 1:53
  He also shares how even the most skeptical workaholics can find the time, money and
• 1:58
  motivation to take a sabbatical for themselves.
• 2:01
  So don't count yourself out.
• 2:03
  This is one episode everyone needs to hear.
• 2:07
  Today's episode is sponsored by Zen Rabbit.
• 2:10
  If you'd like to find peace of mind amidst the chaos, and no matter what's going on
• 2:15
  around you, or if you're curious about how you might stop working so hard and achieve
• 2:21
  more success at the same time, get a copy of the five Easy ways to Start Living a
• 2:27
  Sabbatical life.
• 2:28
  It's a short guide to working less and living better.
• 2:31
  Find it at Zen Rabbit dot com.
• 2:35
  You'll also find a whole bunch of other free resources there as well, like meditations and
• 2:40
  articles. Hello and welcome to Fine is a four letter word.
• 2:45
  Wow, It's been a long time since I've recorded a new episode and I am super excited
• 2:50
  to be starting season three.
• 2:52
  My guest today is Dave Hauser.
• 2:54
  Welcome to the show.
• 2:55
  Oh, thanks for having me, Laurie.
• 2:57
  My pleasure. I am super excited to get into your story because one of the themes that we
• 3:04
  are going to be talking about in season three is sabbaticals and taking sabbaticals.
• 3:09
  And how do you do that?
• 3:10
  And I know part of your story involves a sabbatical story rolling out still as we're
• 3:17
  speaking, so.
• 3:18
  That's right. I'm eager to hear it.
• 3:19
  But first, let me ask you, what were the the beliefs and values that you were raised with
• 3:26
  that contributed to making you who you are today?
• 3:29
  Oh, that's a that's a great question.
• 3:31
  The one thing my parents instilled in me first and foremost probably was you got to
• 3:36
  work for it for everything you you get in life, nothing's given to you.
• 3:41
  You know, when you're a kid, you don't really think about that.
• 3:44
  As I've gotten older, that's like 100% true.
• 3:47
  And what I talked to when I was coaching, I was a college coach for 20 years.
• 3:50
  I would always talk to kids.
• 3:52
  You have to put forth the effort and get it.
• 3:55
  What you get out of it, you're going to get out or what you put into it, you're going to
• 3:58
  get out of it. And same thing I do with now.
• 4:00
  I work in personal finances and I talk to clients the same way I was like, You're going
• 4:04
  to get out of this. Whatever you put into it, right?
• 4:06
  There's there's work you have to do.
• 4:08
  It's not just me telling you what to do.
• 4:10
  So it's that's, that's really become really important to me.
• 4:14
  To me be honest with people, too.
• 4:17
  That's, that's the second one.
• 4:18
  Be honest. Right.
• 4:20
  Because if you're not honest with people, you're just creating a whole nother problem
• 4:23
  down the road. Right?
• 4:25
  And most importantly, most importantly, be honest with yourself.
• 4:28
  Right? That's what I've come to learn over time, is be honest with yourself.
• 4:32
  And if you say if you say you're going to do something, do it.
• 4:35
  And if you don't, if you don't think you're going to do it, don't don't commit to
• 4:39
  something.
• 4:39
  Right? Yeah. Yeah, That's a hard one to to keep being honest with yourself.
• 4:45
  Like, that's harder a lot of times than being honest with other people.
• 4:50
  Yeah, And I'll never forget.
• 4:52
  Go ahead.
• 4:53
  It's kind of backwards, though, right?
• 4:55
  Right. If you can't be honest and keep commitments to yourself, how on earth can you
• 5:00
  be committed to somebody else?
• 5:02
  Right?
• 5:03
  Because.
• 5:04
  Yeah, exactly.
• 5:05
  And I always think about the the phrase I heard somewhere about that.
• 5:10
  If you can't keep commitments to yourself, then you're training yourself not to trust
• 5:16
  yourself.
• 5:16
  That's right. Yeah, exactly.
• 5:19
  Because there's a funny there's kind of a funny joke between my friends and I.
• 5:23
  It's like if I say I'm going to.
• 5:25
  This is years ago.
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  If I said I was going to do something, everybody knew that I wasn't going to show
• 5:30
  up. And it wasn't until like three or four years ago that I was like, wait a second,
• 5:37
  that's not actually funny.
• 5:39
  It's not funny. That's not funny at all.
• 5:41
  Right.
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  Because it made me think about how good of a friend I was to those people.
• 5:47
  And. I just wasn't committed to it to anything.
• 5:51
  Really? Yeah. So caused me costumes.
• 5:54
  Some serious reflection, to say the least.
• 5:56
  How did you get to that point where you said, Wait a minute, this isn't this isn't funny
• 6:01
  anymore? And I and then stepping into that reflection like it did something specific
• 6:06
  happen?
• 6:08
  Well, I left coaching and it changed my careers.
• 6:12
  And part of that was due to I was I wasn't really doing something that I really enjoyed
• 6:18
  doing anymore.
• 6:20
  I was just collecting a paycheck.
• 6:21
  Right. And I felt like I was stealing.
• 6:25
  From my employer.
• 6:26
  So I was like, I just started having all these internal conversations and that was one
• 6:32
  of them. It's like, Oh.
• 6:35
  If I like my buddy Ryan, he is he would be one of those people that we always laugh
• 6:40
  about. It's like it's not really that funny to me anymore because it made me think about.
• 6:47
  My what my values were like.
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  I could say I'm being honest.
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  I'm going to show up and do. But I wasn't doing it.
• 6:53
  Yeah, right. So, so there was a lot of incongruence in my life and it's like, okay,
• 6:59
  well, we got to get we got to get aligned with what my principles are or my beliefs,
• 7:05
  and we're going to really put those at work and get the most out of my life instead of
• 7:11
  just kind of like I was never getting anywhere, you know?
• 7:15
  It was always like. Up and down or stuck in the mud.
• 7:20
  And it just became like, why is this happening?
• 7:23
  And I came to the conclusion it was because I wasn't being committed to myself.
• 7:29
  So it was the frustration of not getting where you wanted to be that made you stop and
• 7:35
  go. All right, wait, this isn't working.
• 7:37
  What do I need to do to make things work?
• 7:40
  Or I don't even like that phrase anymore.
• 7:42
  Make things work. We're always talking about.
• 7:44
  I'm going to make things happen as if we.
• 7:47
  Have.
• 7:48
  Total control over the universe.
• 7:52
  Well, it was.
• 7:53
  It's like I had to rethink how I was thinking and.
• 7:59
  And just I started reading a lot of stoicism, too, so that that had a big input
• 8:04
  or impact on the way I started thinking, Yeah.
• 8:07
  And it's like I really it just I resonated with it.
• 8:13
  Because a lot of the messages, it's like, you don't have to be perfect.
• 8:16
  Right. But we want to work towards an ideal life, Right?
• 8:21
  How how we want to represent ourselves is how we should be acting and how we should be
• 8:26
  talking about ourselves, too, to other people and representing ourselves.
• 8:29
  Maybe that's a better way to say it.
• 8:31
  Yeah. I just wrote a LinkedIn post earlier this week about finding clarity and that you
• 8:36
  have to start anything from a place of clarity.
• 8:41
  People are always talking about that, but how do you find clarity if you don't have it
• 8:47
  and how One of the the first step when you're looking to figure out to get clarity
• 8:53
  around something is to figure out not what you need to do, but who you need to be or who
• 9:01
  you would like to be.
• 9:02
  Right.
• 9:03
  And that's really where the starting point for any kind of change.
• 9:07
  So if you are not being the person that you would like to be and being who you are right
• 9:13
  now isn't getting you the results that you'd like to get, who would you need to be?
• 9:19
  What characteristics, What traits?
• 9:22
  What skills do you need to incorporate?
• 9:25
  To become that person who would have what you would like to have.
• 9:29
  Yeah, no question about that.
• 9:31
  And so when when I start looking back at that, it throws you into a funk, right?
• 9:37
  Because you're like, Oh my God, man.
• 9:38
  That's why so many people don't want to do it or aren't willing to do it.
• 9:41
  Yeah, and the negative self-talk became really strong and.
• 9:47
  There's like a two, two month period, maybe a little bit more rude, just like, really
• 9:51
  down on me.
• 9:54
  Um. I went for it.
• 9:56
  This was during COVID too, so it was like that didn't help the situation.
• 10:00
  But one day I just ended up I was like, I'm going out.
• 10:03
  I need to go for a drive. And I went for a drive and.
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  All of a sudden things were like just kind of falling in the place.
• 10:10
  Like because I'm in a new situation, there's different things going on around me and I'm
• 10:15
  just like. I don't want to live this way anymore.
• 10:19
  I mean, that's literally what I said.
• 10:20
  It's like, I don't want to live this way anymore. There's more to life that I want to
• 10:24
  experience. And how do I do that?
• 10:27
  How do I get out there and do the things that I want to do?
• 10:31
  I'm just kind of started working towards that.
• 10:33
  You know, slowly. One thing at a time.
• 10:35
  Why did you have to untangle yourself from.
• 10:38
  Yes. So one was a relationship.
• 10:43
  The relationship I was in at the time.
• 10:46
  Yeah. I'm in a new field.
• 10:48
  I'm in a completely different career.
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  And I was alone, and I didn't.
• 10:54
  I didn't have the support from the person I wanted.
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  I craved support from the most.
• 10:59
  And, you know, your parents are always going to love you and they're always going to
• 11:02
  support you. But nobody really knew what I was going through.
• 11:06
  As far as being becoming a business owner for the first time in my whole life.
• 11:10
  It's like. I don't know how to fucking be in business.
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  I don't know anything about running.
• 11:15
  Did your parents run businesses or employees?
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  No. I grew up in a in a blue collar.
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  What is it? Suburbia, family.
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  And had the greatest parents in the world.
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  Gave me everything I could ever ask for.
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  But we never really understood money.
• 11:34
  Right. But we never had those conversations.
• 11:36
  And so I never really understood my own financial situation until I was undergoing
• 11:42
  this whole this all this all this stuff started at roughly the same time because I'm
• 11:46
  just looking at every aspect of my life, and finances was just one of them.
• 11:50
  So I decided to make the change to a different career.
• 11:56
  Away for the time was just she couldn't understand it.
• 12:00
  Right, because I didn't have this cool job anymore.
• 12:03
  Right. I wasn't working in athletics, and that's exciting.
• 12:07
  But I wasn't excited about it.
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  And I hated sports.
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  But she kept telling everybody that's what I did.
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  Even though I wasn't in the field.
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  As if that's who you were.
• 12:16
  Like, That was your identity.
• 12:19
  Yeah. And it was to her.
• 12:21
  And. You know, when things we finally finally formalized everything at the end.
• 12:28
  And I was like, you know what?
• 12:30
  I did change.
• 12:32
  Like, she would say that all the time.
• 12:33
  You changed after you left coaching.
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  I was like, I did a 100% did.
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  Because I'm a better person.
• 12:40
  Yeah, I have more, more interests.
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  Right? I want to take up photography.
• 12:46
  I'd like to take some type of painting class, you know, all sorts of things.
• 12:52
  Like to take more cooking classes.
• 12:54
  And, you know, we talked before when I saw you earlier this year that I'm planning on
• 13:01
  driving around the country.
• 13:02
  Yeah, I love this.
• 13:03
  This is what I want to get into talking about, too, because this is because I took my
• 13:07
  sabbatical. And, you know, it's interesting, as I was talking to somebody at a networking
• 13:11
  event earlier this week to about sabbatical, and he was saying that he attributes that
• 13:15
  word to academia, whereas I don't I know that that is a thing in academia, in people.
• 13:23
  Professors take sabbaticals, but I also see it as a much bigger and I like using the word
• 13:30
  to describe any like taking a break from whatever it is you're doing to go do
• 13:35
  something, to travel, to experience some new things.
• 13:40
  And I love that you're doing this.
• 13:41
  So tell me more. Tell us, tell, tell my audience more about what you're doing.
• 13:45
  Yeah, well, when I think of sabbatical, I think of pilgrimage.
• 13:49
  For whatever reason.
• 13:51
  I always, always tie it to like, it always sounds like a religious connotation to me.
• 13:56
  But for in this scenario that just kind of hit me as you were talking, it's like it's
• 14:03
  more of a pilgrimage for me or an adventure I like.
• 14:07
  I like to tell everybody I'm on this great adventure.
• 14:10
  And so I packed up all my stuff into five crates, two dogs into a forerunner, and I
• 14:18
  came down to Georgia to just there's a community down here of people that are ultra
• 14:23
  supportive of me, helping me build, helping me build what I want to build, which is the
• 14:29
  lifestyle that I really want to work wherever I, wherever I'm at.
• 14:33
  Yeah, right. It doesn't have to be doesn't have to be in a particular area.
• 14:37
  But I'm on the road.
• 14:38
  I still want to be able to work.
• 14:40
  So I got this crazy idea.
• 14:43
  That I have an American bulldog and he loves swimming and he's getting older.
• 14:50
  Um, so I came up this idea that I want to drive Hank around the country and take
• 14:56
  pictures of him or videos of him swimming all over the all over the place.
• 15:01
  And that morphed into.
• 15:05
  Well, it's not just for Hank.
• 15:06
  It's. No, I've said I've said for at least five or six years that I wanted to explore
• 15:13
  more of this country.
• 15:15
  And there's a whole section of the country that I've never been to.
• 15:19
  So I don't.
• 15:21
  I'm not. Not that I have to really answer anybody, but I don't.
• 15:26
  I'm not. I'm not answering anybody.
• 15:28
  Yeah, I'm just going out and living the life that I want to live and I want to meet more
• 15:33
  people. Eat interesting foods across the country, like I'm a little bit of a foodie
• 15:39
  and just find more like remote spots to camp or to eat or.
• 15:45
  Meet people with and learn their stories, because the more the more I'm out, the more.
• 15:53
  People are really interested.
• 15:54
  They absolutely are like.
• 15:56
  Really interesting.
• 15:57
  And there are so many amazing people out here.
• 16:01
  I was at a veterans event last week.
• 16:04
  Some of the stories that I was hearing were just.
• 16:07
  I mean, there were. Put me a sense of awe.
• 16:12
  I was like, Man, these people are these people are doing it, man.
• 16:16
  They're doing what they want to do and they love it.
• 16:19
  And I'd like to just meet more people like that.
• 16:22
  Yeah. And to your point of people are have these amazing stories.
• 16:26
  People are amazing.
• 16:28
  It it's right into that thing of you will always find exactly what you're looking for.
• 16:34
  You're looking for awesome people and incredible stories and you're finding them.
• 16:38
  If you were instead looking for people to be angry and resentful and mean, you'd probably
• 16:45
  find that too. But that's not what you're looking for.
• 16:48
  They are everywhere.
• 16:49
  But when you're not, when you're looking for the good you, that's what you come across.
• 16:54
  That's why you get invited to these events and.
• 16:57
  Come across these these amazing, you know, like interesting things to eat and all of
• 17:03
  that good stuff. Yeah. That's what you're that's what you're attracting to you.
• 17:07
  One of the one of the things that really stood out for the last time we talked was.
• 17:12
  The more I'm away from trying to focus just on business.
• 17:17
  The more business will come my way.
• 17:20
  That really it sounds backwards.
• 17:25
  But like I spend, I'll say half of my week out in the woods with my dogs.
• 17:33
  Um. And the other half working on towards a business or working on like getting to know
• 17:39
  people in the area. And.
• 17:42
  But I'm going to close out this year in a really strong bang just because I'm not
• 17:49
  focusing just on one thing.
• 17:50
  It's like I'm focusing on enjoying the hell out in my life.
• 17:53
  Yeah. And that's when these things start coming to you.
• 17:55
  That's what I found when I was on my sabbatical of not doing I wasn't doing any
• 18:00
  work that month really, that the biggest opportunities came to me when I was just
• 18:06
  enjoying. Enjoying being and doing and doing fun things instead of chasing business.
• 18:14
  Right.
• 18:15
  Yeah.
• 18:16
  Yeah, Because chasing business sucks.
• 18:18
  It totally sucks. But back to the thing you said at the very beginning of our
• 18:22
  conversation today, which was that your parents taught you about hard work.
• 18:27
  And that hard work was the key to success.
• 18:31
  Yeah, we're not saying don't don't do anything.
• 18:34
  Sit. And money comes to you.
• 18:36
  That's not. But we most of us have been taught that hard work is the way that you
• 18:44
  make money and and achieve success and be productive.
• 18:48
  And that's the key.
• 18:50
  And now you and I and hopefully some of my listeners are getting this idea that's that's
• 18:57
  a lie. It's a big, fat fucking lie.
• 19:00
  That's not how it works.
• 19:03
  The thing that I've kind of adopted as like a mantra is I want to live.
• 19:09
  Or I want to work so I can live.
• 19:12
  I don't want to live to work.
• 19:15
  And when I work, I work really hard.
• 19:17
  And I focus on I have to because I'm.
• 19:21
  I'm working with other people and and their lives, their financial lives and their
• 19:26
  futures and generations beyond that.
• 19:28
  So I take that I take that shit really seriously.
• 19:32
  And I want to do his best of a job for them to make sure they have the most information
• 19:37
  possible so that they can make the decisions that are best for them.
• 19:42
  And then I just help them make that make all that shit happen.
• 19:46
  Did you feel like before you set out on this adventure that you you couldn't not do it?
• 19:55
  Like you had to do this thing.
• 19:59
  There was no way you could say no to it, even if you didn't know.
• 20:02
  I mean, you're in financial services.
• 20:04
  So one of the things that I hear people say a lot of times is, Oh my God, Well, I could
• 20:08
  never do that because I couldn't I couldn't afford it.
• 20:11
  That's always the first thing.
• 20:12
  I couldn't afford it. And then.
• 20:15
  Well, but I have a family.
• 20:17
  But I have, like, all of these other reasons why they can't do it.
• 20:21
  Are you talking are you talking about the travel part?
• 20:23
  Yeah. Or just.
• 20:24
  Or or switching careers?
• 20:27
  What's your response to that?
• 20:30
  Yeah. So the switching careers, nobody ever understood that because they asked me like I
• 20:37
  had this conversation with my dad because don't you ever miss it.
• 20:39
  Don't you? I was like, Nope.
• 20:41
  Do you do you ever want to go back?
• 20:44
  I was like, Fuck no.
• 20:45
  Why would I ever want to go back?
• 20:47
  I was I was always, always at somebody else's beck and call.
• 20:52
  At the SAC and sacrificing my life.
• 20:56
  And the second half of my life.
• 20:58
  I don't. I want the exact opposite of that.
• 21:01
  I only want to be around people that I really enjoy being around.
• 21:04
  And some of that will be business.
• 21:08
  But a lot of it is going to be just having a shitload of fun for me, you know, and enjoy
• 21:13
  the people I'm around.
• 21:14
  So and then it kind of ties in to both things, though, right?
• 21:19
  So nobody still understands what I do.
• 21:22
  And that's a common thing with financial industry.
• 21:25
  And my whole take on the financial financial world is very different from everybody else.
• 21:29
  So it's it's even weirder to some people.
• 21:33
  And it's just how much control over you want over your time and your money.
• 21:38
  I want I want as much control as possible over both of those things.
• 21:42
  And that's how I talk to my clients.
• 21:47
  I talked to anybody that wants to talk business.
• 21:50
  I want to be up. Like I said, I want to go.
• 21:52
  I can't wait to go to Glacier Park.
• 21:55
  I can't wait to go to Moab.
• 21:57
  Can't go like Tahoe.
• 21:58
  Like these are all places I'm going in the spring.
• 22:00
  Yeah. And I'm going to take a month to drive around and do.
• 22:04
  Do whatever the hell I want.
• 22:05
  Right?
• 22:06
  And, like, tonight, sort of.
• 22:09
  While I've been in Georgia, I've just taken every weekend, gone off and done something.
• 22:13
  Tonight, I'm going up to a place called Blue Ridge.
• 22:16
  Just all these cool little places up in the mountains.
• 22:19
  They can either camp out or rent a cabin or do whatever.
• 22:23
  It's like, I would never have done this stuff.
• 22:26
  20 years ago. Right.
• 22:28
  Because you were a different person like that.
• 22:31
  Yeah, people. So when going back to talking about what your former wife was saying about
• 22:36
  you've changed, we have all changed, hopefully in the past 20 years, it's you're
• 22:43
  either growing or dying, so change is inevitable.
• 22:46
  Yeah.
• 22:47
  And I never wanted to be the same person.
• 22:49
  Right. Even even as a coach or even 20 years ago when I first got into coaching.
• 22:56
  It's way different the first year after coaching.
• 22:59
  Then ten years and 20 years I'm different person.
• 23:03
  Completely because I'm way more confident one in my in myself and my abilities in that
• 23:08
  part of my life.
• 23:10
  But then you start getting into other things that interest you.
• 23:14
  Yeah.
• 23:14
  Or things that once interests you like.
• 23:17
  Sports don't really interest me that much anymore.
• 23:20
  I'd rather be doing some other things.
• 23:21
  Not that I can watch sports now.
• 23:25
  But there was a time where I couldn't couldn't stand watching because.
• 23:28
  You were just so burned out of it.
• 23:30
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 23:31
  It just wasn't a healthy situation to stay there anymore.
• 23:35
  And. I just one day up and quit and then jumped into a completely different field.
• 23:41
  And the mistake I made was I didn't take a break.
• 23:45
  I should have been taking the sabbatical at that time, not six years later.
• 23:53
  No. And. Because I thought that I had just had to jump in and start working as hard as
• 23:59
  possible.
• 23:59
  Right.
• 24:00
  Right. To the point you were making earlier.
• 24:03
  Put it in putting the time you do the grind, you do all this other bull crap and it's
• 24:09
  like, that's a way.
• 24:10
  That's the that's the way to be as unhealthy and unhappy as possible.
• 24:14
  Right. Right.
• 24:16
  But yes, and it's easy to say, just stop doing that.
• 24:23
  But our brains are wired to believe that that's the truth and our brains are wired to
• 24:28
  work that way. So what have been some of the things that you've done?
• 24:33
  Tools maybe that you've used or courses, books, whatever.
• 24:38
  How have you started rewiring your brain to allow you to do this?
• 24:44
  One of the biggest changes was I read a book called The Comfort Crisis, and it was like a
• 24:52
  smack to my face that, Hey, man, you haven't been physically challenging yourself.
• 24:58
  And that was what got me through a lot of the coaching.
• 25:01
  I love the challenge, but it made me think clearer.
• 25:05
  And so when I wasn't being as physically active and I certainly wasn't challenging
• 25:08
  myself, I put on a lot of extra weight that I was like, Oh my gosh.
• 25:14
  Like, who is this?
• 25:15
  Right. Right. Where did this guy come from?
• 25:17
  Yeah. So I just started training for 10 minutes a day.
• 25:22
  And that led to.
• 25:25
  Up to 2 hours at a time, for sometimes I would go off on hikes and first thing in the
• 25:30
  morning I would do it in the first thing in the morning and next thing you know, I'm down
• 25:34
  £20. I have all this energy I'm super excited to about my business.
• 25:41
  Yeah, again.
• 25:43
  And I feel really good about me right inside my own skin.
• 25:49
  He knows I wasn't wasn't sore all the time, even though I was training for longer periods
• 25:54
  of time. And then I ran a 25 K Trail race and never have done anything like that in my
• 26:00
  life. And I'm like, This is cool.
• 26:03
  I can do almost anything if I'm putting the time into taking care of myself first and not
• 26:10
  putting other people ahead of me.
• 26:11
  Cool. So what I hear you saying is that you you read this book that inspired you to start
• 26:16
  taking action and, like, just doing things.
• 26:21
  You didn't even start with that much time.
• 26:23
  10 minutes.
• 26:24
  It's like when I talk to people about meditation and they're like, Well, I don't
• 26:27
  have an hour. You don't need an hour.
• 26:29
  Start with 5 minutes, 10 minutes.
• 26:31
  To share a funny story with you, because at the same time, I was making a commitment to
• 26:36
  drink more water because that because I would put take water bottles and I'd put them
• 26:41
  strategically all around the house like, this is it, man.
• 26:45
  This is how I'm going to form this habit.
• 26:47
  And how many of those water bottles did I drink through the day?
• 26:49
  One zero.
• 26:51
  Okay.
• 26:53
  I wasn't drinking any of them.
• 26:54
  So what I started doing was first thing before I drank any coffee or did anything
• 26:59
  before I fed my dogs was I would drink 24 ounces of water.
• 27:03
  And then I'd feed my dogs and then I would go.
• 27:07
  Train for 10 minutes.
• 27:09
  And and I was like, I'm going to do this every day.
• 27:12
  And I've done it every day since May 21st.
• 27:17
  May 21. Every day I've done some type of physical training, not not really hard stuff,
• 27:23
  but just active, active.
• 27:26
  And all of a sudden it was like just things just started clicking.
• 27:30
  Like my business picked up my the way I felt about myself, picked up my relationships with
• 27:37
  friends, picked up my relationships with my parents and my sister.
• 27:42
  We're enhanced and it's like, this is really cool.
• 27:46
  We're going we're going to keep doing this.
• 27:48
  Small steps leading to.
• 27:51
  Enormous changes or enormous benefits.
• 27:54
  Yeah, it's, you know, those small things really made a huge difference.
• 27:58
  And I do them every day.
• 28:00
  Religious. That's really the key.
• 28:02
  I, I believe, is the consistency.
• 28:05
  Yeah.
• 28:05
  It's not how hard or how long you do them.
• 28:09
  It's the consistency in doing them.
• 28:11
  Because it comes back to what we were talking about earlier.
• 28:14
  That's the commitment I made to myself.
• 28:16
  And you kept.
• 28:16
  It, right? I told myself, I told myself I was going to do it and I will do it every day.
• 28:24
  10 minutes is all I'm really looking for.
• 28:27
  Yeah, right. And to drink and get that first thing of water in my system every day because
• 28:32
  I'll end up drinking more water.
• 28:33
  But just to get yourself kicked off on the right foot.
• 28:36
  Yeah. Yep, yep.
• 28:38
  And if I do that every day.
• 28:41
  I'm going on the right path.
• 28:43
  Awesome. So back to the question of.
• 28:46
  But I can't afford this.
• 28:48
  That's something.
• 28:50
  When we met up earlier this year, we were talking about how this is part of your
• 28:56
  journey as. Your your desire to help people figure out.
• 29:02
  So if you say you can't afford it, talk to Dave.
• 29:05
  He'll help you figure out how you can afford it, right?
• 29:09
  Yeah, well, it comes down.
• 29:12
  It came down to I heard a great way to describe it the other day.
• 29:14
  You have to do an autopsy on your finances, right?
• 29:19
  Or you can do do an audit or whatever you want to call it, but it's like, look at your
• 29:22
  habits. Look at what you're doing right now.
• 29:25
  Figure out what's that, what that looks like.
• 29:29
  And like when we when I go through with clients, there's actually a picture that we
• 29:32
  create for them, a snapshot of what their finances look like when we first start.
• 29:38
  Then as we start making changes over time, it's you start seeing dramatic changes and
• 29:43
  it's all color coded with red, green and yellow.
• 29:46
  So. It's those are easy things for all of us to understand.
• 29:50
  Reds, danger, yellow.
• 29:52
  Hey, we should probably look at this green.
• 29:54
  Yeah, you're good to go.
• 29:56
  So it gives us markers to look at things.
• 29:59
  So if you have $50,000 in debt.
• 30:03
  This is probably what I'm doing is probably not be the best thing.
• 30:06
  For you at the moment.
• 30:07
  Right at the moment it's get these things under control, figure out how to do it right.
• 30:13
  So we set up a system.
• 30:15
  So each we set up different accounts and each account has a specific job and serves a
• 30:20
  purpose for you, right?
• 30:22
  One savings, one's wealth accumulation, one's pay down your debts.
• 30:27
  Right? And then if there's extra left over, you can just spend that because we've
• 30:32
  committed money to these other accounts and these are the accounts that are really going
• 30:35
  to help you out most, right?
• 30:37
  Because we don't want to live in poverty.
• 30:39
  We don't have to live on rice and beans all our lives.
• 30:42
  We want to enjoy ourselves, too.
• 30:44
  So we built we build in like a little bit of a cushion for that.
• 30:47
  And eventually a person's going to come to the point where like, okay, I have this
• 30:52
  amount of money saved up.
• 30:55
  I think I can take a week.
• 30:57
  Go. Go away for a week.
• 30:59
  So just like the water thing.
• 31:01
  Take. Take a small step.
• 31:03
  You don't have to go buy an RV or anything.
• 31:05
  Go rent an RV.
• 31:06
  Go camping.
• 31:07
  Yeah.
• 31:08
  You know, because you may not even like it, right?
• 31:11
  Right. Well, yeah.
• 31:12
  And so it's just.
• 31:14
  It's just one of those things where it's like, go try it.
• 31:16
  Go experience it first, and you may realize that's not what you want.
• 31:22
  So while we keep building your money in the habits for your money.
• 31:27
  You can go and experience all sorts of other things that you want to enjoy and you find
• 31:32
  something that you really get excited about.
• 31:35
  Dig into that more like if you if the person I talked to, a lot of people wanted to start
• 31:39
  a business. So if you want to start a business here, we're going to help you start
• 31:45
  we're going to help you set up this a business, this entity, and then help you be
• 31:51
  as efficient with it as possible.
• 31:54
  But. You know, it's just it's all part of that's just part of a tax strategy for
• 31:59
  people. But. Nobody ever told me about any of that stuff.
• 32:03
  So I feel like it's my obligation of just giving that that back to people.
• 32:10
  Because if somebody would've told me, told me about this ten years earlier.
• 32:15
  I may or may not have done something, but it.
• 32:18
  But eventually that something clicked in my head and I'm like, No, what?
• 32:23
  I want to go do more stuff for me.
• 32:25
  I want to go see. I want to go do I want to travel more?
• 32:28
  Right? So, yeah, well, everything happens in the time that it is supposed to.
• 32:34
  That's right. I feel like the I feel like the theme of this episode is that.
• 32:41
  Small things matter like doing taking even the small steps are going to create big
• 32:48
  waves. So that you don't have to go off on a year long sabbatical or six months.
• 32:56
  You were just take a week, whatever you can manage.
• 33:01
  I did a month. You're doing longer than that and.
• 33:04
  But you can start living this sabbatical life.
• 33:09
  Even. You know, without taking long term sabbatical adventures.
• 33:15
  And. And what did you say?
• 33:17
  Pilgrimages.
• 33:18
  Without adding. Without adding.
• 33:19
  Yeah. Without adding a whole lot of risk either because they're like there's smaller,
• 33:24
  manageable things that anybody can do, Right?
• 33:26
  Start somewhere.
• 33:29
  Yeah. And then it's.
• 33:31
  I think it's really important to start with the purpose of why you want to do it.
• 33:36
  What's the purpose? What's the reason you're doing these things?
• 33:38
  Not just go out there and blindly throw throw ideas because that's what I used to do.
• 33:42
  Now it's like there's a purpose behind this.
• 33:44
  Like, I'm.
• 33:45
  I'm seeking knowledge of something, right?
• 33:49
  Purpose could be as simple, though, as I would like to enjoy my life more.
• 33:55
  Yeah. It doesn't have to be some grand purpose.
• 33:58
  Like, I want to save the world, right?
• 34:00
  Yeah, right. But.
• 34:02
  But you. You can save your own.
• 34:03
  Absolutely. That's really the only thing you can do.
• 34:06
  We only have control over ourselves.
• 34:09
  The. The steps that we take.
• 34:12
  Who we become.
• 34:13
  That's all we have control over.
• 34:14
  We have no control over anybody else, right?
• 34:18
  Right, Right.
• 34:19
  And it's once you once you really come to once you come to really understand that.
• 34:26
  It's like freeing.
• 34:28
  100%.
• 34:29
  Because. Because you're answering to yourself more than more than anybody else, right?
• 34:34
  Oh, my gosh. I love that we're answering to our self.
• 34:38
  Which is. What we tend to not do, but is the most important, that that's a great place to
• 34:46
  finish this conversation.
• 34:47
  However, we're not quite done yet because the last question always is What's your hype
• 34:54
  song, Dave? What do you listen to when you're needing an extra boost of energy?
• 35:01
  That's a really great question because I don't really listen to music that much
• 35:06
  anymore.
• 35:06
  Okay?
• 35:07
  But I used to wake up to Highway to Hell.
• 35:13
  By AC DC.
• 35:14
  That's still one. That's still one of my favorite AC DC songs, so I'll go with that
• 35:18
  one.
• 35:18
  So when that comes on, you're like.
• 35:21
  I'm like, Oh.
• 35:21
  Shit, you guys okay?
• 35:25
  Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining me today on Fine is a four letter word.
• 35:30
  Thanks, Lori. I appreciate it.
• 35:32
  A lot of fun.
• 35:34
  Here are the five key takeaways from today's conversation.
• 35:38
  Number one.
• 35:39
  Be honest with yourself and with others.
• 35:42
  If you're not being honest with others, you're going to create problems down the
• 35:47
  road. And when you can't keep commitments to yourself, you're training yourself not to be
• 35:52
  trusted. How we want to represent ourselves needs to be congruent with our actions.
• 36:00
  Number two.
• 36:01
  Hard work is not always the key to success.
• 36:04
  Sometimes taking a step away from working and giving yourself the space is the key to
• 36:11
  your biggest opportunities.
• 36:13
  Number three, you don't have to live to work.
• 36:17
  You can work to live.
• 36:19
  That means crafting your career to support the life you want to live, not devoting your
• 36:25
  whole life to the hustle and grind just to make a little extra cash.
• 36:29
  Number four, the small things you do every day add up to more than hard work and effort.
• 36:35
  We think of making changes as requiring monumental effort, but really it matters most
• 36:41
  that we stay consistent.
• 36:44
  Number five.
• 36:45
  Don't say something is impossible until you've run the numbers yourself.
• 36:50
  Sometimes everything we'd like to have is just a few small changes away.
• 36:56
  That's what Dave proves to his clients every day.
• 36:59
  So give your life a look.
• 37:01
  Think about what matters most to you and find a way to fit it in.
• 37:07
  Thanks for being here and subscribing to Fine is a four letter word.
• 37:11
  Please share this show with a friend or a colleague.
• 37:15
  If you're feeling especially generous, leave a review so other people like you can
• 37:20
  discover the show too.
• 37:22
  It's on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, Stitcher, and all the
• 37:29
  major podcast directories.
• 37:31
  You can join me on social too.
• 37:33
  On Instagram, its Zen underscore rabbit.
• 37:37
  You can find links to the other platforms at Zen Rabbit dot com.
• 37:42
  Before you go, remember to take a moment to think about what you're grateful for today.
• 37:47
  Lastly, you can find this week's meditation cued up right after this episode.
• 37:53
  And if no one's told you this week, I'm proud of you.
• 37:57
  Take good care.