Latest / Found-HER with Kimberley Hiebert / Shouldn't You Be Retired?

Transcript

Shouldn't You Be Retired? · Found-HER with Kimberley Hiebert

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: Hey besties.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Today I want to talk about being a Grammy and a founder at the same time.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: I hang out with a lot of young female founders who are managing children.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: So they're mothers and they're building a career.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: They're building a business and they're trying to figure out the flow for themselves and all of those things.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes I think, what about Grammys?
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: Because I'm a Grammy to eight.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: I have eight grandchildren.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: And while I am not responsible for their day-to-day well-being, I am responsible for providing the unconditional love and support for my grandkids hands down, but also be that extra support to my children as they are doing all those things, as they are managing the day-to-day care of their children and trying to provide for them and all that kind of stuff.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we're we're the village, if you will.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: And we are, you know, for myself, I'm a very involved, uh, well, I'm I was a very involved parent and grandparent for many, many years.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: But as my grandkids start to get older, they require less of me.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: But so there's lots of conversation about what it's like to be a mother in business, to be a mother, uh, a mother entrepreneur or an entrepreneur and a mother.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I want to talk about starting over when you're a Grammy, because the expectations of society around your age and what you should be doing, especially if you have grandchildren, is really uh wild to me.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, when I was 50, I got diagnosed with breast cancer.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so we stopped everything, sold everything, liquidated.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: We're like, okay, we're gonna be retired, we're just gonna hang out, be chill.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: But um, and because I didn't know, I didn't know, was I gonna live?
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: How long was it gonna live for?
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: What was my cancer journey gonna be like?
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: As the as the time went by, you start to feel a little more confident that there's more than just the present.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: There's a hope for the future, not just being present.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: And as that hope, as you start to spend more time in that hope, it gets, well, got me energized and excited.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: And it started to bring me back to my North Star, which is helping people build better lives, including my children and my grandchildren.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I my husband and I both really wanted to leave, build, and leave a legacy more than what we were already doing.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I always say now, tongue in cheek, that my my goal is to make my grandchildren trust fund babies.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I skip over my children because we're using their inheritance to build the trust fund for the grandchildren.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so hopefully the grandchildren will end up taking care of their parents with it.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, just the perception, like I said, of society about what you should be doing at a certain age.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: And my husband and I have gone all in on building this franchise system.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so we have taken a fair chunk of cash to invest over the last number of years in supporting ourselves and building this business.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: And when people really lean into that, they like our friends.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes our friends are like, why are you doing this?
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: Why did you start this?
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: You guys were like already, you had already ended, you had already exited three businesses and a career.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: Like, isn't that enough?
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: And or you've already exited all those things.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: Why do you want to be burdened with day-to-day work, working full-time, sense you know, responsibility for others, all those things that come along with building your own business?
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: What is your motivation and why do you want to do that?
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: And we get a lot of negative pushback now, not from my kids directly.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: My kids and my grandkids are quite supportive.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: My some of my younger grandkids, I think, would like me to be a little more available.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, so there is that balance of making sure that that becomes a priority.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: So when they ask me, when my teenage grandkids ask me uh to go out for dinner or go shopping with them, I move mountains to try to make that a yes.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and then when the younger ones ask to sleep over or hang out for a few days, again, try to move mountains to make that a yes.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because I know with them the time is very limited.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the one thing, you know, as a Grammy that I would say to a mother who is raising children and building a business, and I'm a Grammy and building a business.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: What I would say to the mother is that in the moment that you are in right now, it is the most laborous or laborious, however you say that, time, the most demand on all of your time and attention and desires.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: And it feels like you're in that stage of life forever.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: But one day, what's gonna happen is that's gonna shift, and those children are gonna become 17, 18, 19, 20.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna have longer gaps without having to care or provide for them.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: And the amount of, I always talk about the quantum leap that happens when you go from splitting your time and energy and resources amongst, you know, child rearing, uh business building, you know, your own wellness, relationships, all that, when some of those demands start going away, the quantum leap that happens is incredible.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: Because as you get more time and freedom, you then can commit yourself to the development of skills, excellence, and collapse time, things like that.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's what I love about being this age and building a business is for me now, I can kind of like if I want to work, if I want to take a slower morning and maybe, you know, go to the gym, uh, prep some food, take some time to have a slow morning, all that kind of thing, I can do that, but not at I don't have to sacrifice, I don't have to get up at four in the morning to do that.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: I get to do that now, get up at eight and do that for a few hours because if I want to work from five to seven or five to nine or whatever it is, I can do that now.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: When I was a young mom, I couldn't do that because I'm busy driving kids around in the evening, they need my support.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so I just want that's just one thing is just remembering, I just want to remind you that the season that you're in is just that.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's a season, it is a long one, don't get me wrong.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's a long one.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: I've been there, but also building or starting again or having a second or third version or phase when you're in your 50s and beyond is so magical and so invigorating.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: Don't feel like your 30s and 40s are the only time that you can make that impact and build something epic.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: Society will push back.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: They have.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: My husband gets it all the time from his friends who are in his age group that uh have retired and they are, you know, a little bit more lonely, let's say.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: So they will be asking him for coffee, going for bike rides, whatever it is, dog walks, all the things during the day.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, some days he can make it happen, but for him, for the most part, he does all of our field support.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: So he, you know, he has five partners uh on the ground that he is supporting, plus our own unit.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, he doesn't have that time, and people get frustrated.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: Even some, I can't give this away yet.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, even some high-profile people have pushed back on us in terms of us starting this thing, this franchise build at such a late stage in life.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so it still surprises me that people think you're too old to be doing that.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: And quite often people will say, Shouldn't you be retired?
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: I thought you were retired because people think once you've built one thing and you've exited it and you're a certain age, you should then be retired.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I just want to say retirement in that sense is really a government construct.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: And now I sound like a conspiracy theorist, but it's a government construct around what you know, expectations for working, retirement planning, getting money back, you know, having somebody else pay you to live for those uh years after you've dedicated X amount of years into some kind of service.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: But it really is not about there's nothing that says you can't be contributing to the world, to your own existence, to your own sense of purpose and passion and North Star at any age.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: And people think that we're nuts because we're investing the stuff that we built, we're we've now taken and instead of using it to supply us a very stable and predictable life from whatever 50, 60 on, we've decided to invest it into a legacy project.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: And is it scary?
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: Do I know how it's gonna end?
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: Do I worry about our health and stuff happening as we get older, critical events, health events as we get older and the impact that has on what we're building?
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: Does that mean that we don't do it?
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: Not us, not us, because we are trailblazers and age is but a number.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so do we make plans and have contingency plans for things like that?
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely, because it's a reality as you get older, your health starts to get compromised.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, you can have unexpected things happen, but you can have that as a young person too.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: So all I want to say is 50 is not the finish line or 60 doesn't have to be.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: And with that in mind, understanding that if you're in your 30s and 40s, feeling like this is the only opportunity you have to maximize all of it, you don't.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I know it's so funny hearing myself say these things because I picture me in my 30s, and uh, if somebody said all this to me, I would roll my eyes and be like, yeah, blah, blah, blah.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know, not really realizing that there is still a huge fucking life um and legacy to build in your 50s and 60s.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: So don't give up.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: Don't think that now is the time that you have to maximize everything in this moment.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: Just as a reminder of someone who's walked the walk and been through it, it is a season and you will have another season.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: And the season that comes after the heaviness and the uh what do you call that?
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's heaviness, labor from the middle 30s, 40s, raising children, building business, you know, your health, your relationships, like managing all that stuff, there will come a time when you will have so much space and you will be able to quantum leap and maximize in areas um that just weren't possible in your 30s and 40s.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what I think is most exciting is that when opportunities that you don't expect come out of nowhere, but because you've been laying the groundwork, because you've had your head down and you keep the vision, you are then ready.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's what happens when you're older.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: Because by now you know, you have experience, you understand cycles, you understand business cycles, you understand relationship and life cycles and maturity and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: So then when something magical happens in your 50s, you're like, fuck yeah.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: And before you know it, you're on a rocket ship.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm excited for you for that.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, that's what I'm experiencing now, and I love it.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: But it does, it does rattle and push back on people's values, on people's uh ideas of what somebody else at a certain age should and shouldn't be doing.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: So just remember 50 is not the finish line.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: You're allowed to start over whenever you feel like you bloody well want to.