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From FIRE to Time Freedom: Building a Life You Love with Brian Herriot · Beyond Fulfillment Podcast

• 0:05
  Actually believe that this whole experience of taking a few months a year and pulling out of your business is great for rest and reflection, but it's also really great for figuring out how you can kind of make that
• 0:17
  next big strategic move that might actually grow your business more than it would if you were just in the details all day long.
• 0:24
  Today's guest is Brian Harriet, founder of Harriet Financial.
• 0:29
  A financial advisor for entrepreneurs with a unique background that started at engineering and management consulting.
• 0:36
  Brian made a major career pivot to focus on his lifelong passion for personal finance and helping others achieve time freedom.
• 0:44
  In this episode, Brian shares his journey from chasing early retirement to building a business and lifestyle that lets him spend summers lakeside in Wisconsin with his family, all while helping entrepreneurs design their work around their lives, not the
• 1:00
  other way around.
• 1:01
  We dive deep into how Brian helps his clients find the right balance between work, money and personal time, his personal experiences with reinvention, and the aha moments that led him to develop fresh approaches to financial freedom.
• 1:16
  If you're an entrepreneur searching for more than just financial success and you crave the kind of freedom to actually enjoy your life, this is one episode you.
• 1:25
  Won'T want to miss.
• 1:26
  As always, if you found value from this content, please like and subscribe.
• 1:32
  All right, Brian Harriot, welcome to Beyond Fulfillment.
• 1:36
  Thank you, Dave.
• 1:38
  Yeah, appreciate you taking the time to be here.
• 1:41
  So, Brian, you've been a financial advisor to entrepreneurs specifically for the past three years with Harriet Financial, but you had a long journey getting to this point.
• 1:52
  Can you just walk us through your backstory and what, how you got here?
• 1:57
  Sure, yeah.
• 1:59
  So I've been at this for about three years and it kind of.
• 2:04
  So I'm a.
• 2:05
  I'm an engineer by training.
• 2:07
  Never practiced.
• 2:08
  I then entered into management consulting and did that for a long time in my career.
• 2:14
  The interesting piece is that I've always, ever since high school, have been interested in money, money management, financial advising.
• 2:21
  Just never did it and eventually it kind of worked out that this is the right thing for me and it actually happened.
• 2:32
  I had the seed of this idea in 2020 and it kind of came to be in about 2023.
• 2:39
  I early on, because of my interest in finances, financial advising, things like that, I've always been a big personal finance investments kind of person and was on the retire early financial independence, the fire movement train for many years
• 2:58
  and to try to retire early and in 2020 and I was getting close and in 2020 when I was, you know, the.
• 3:07
  The end was in sight.
• 3:08
  The COVID stock market crash happened and threw a wrench and everything.
• 3:14
  And it was so interesting to me because, you know, I'd been studying this thing for 20 years, and I know that you're not supposed to freak out when stock markets go down, but this was the first time it
• 3:22
  happened when I was so close to needing to use my money.
• 3:26
  And I.
• 3:26
  I mentioned to my wife, you know, that whole early financial freedom thing may not be happening as soon as we had hoped for.
• 3:33
  And she looked at me and she actually wasn't upset or anything.
• 3:35
  She just said, what would you do anyway if you retired early?
• 3:39
  And I told her that I really hadn't thought about it, but I did like working, so I'd probably do the same, but maybe less of it.
• 3:46
  And so she kind of just called me out on it and said, so you're really not retiring early?
• 3:50
  And that was almost like a.
• 3:52
  Like a light bulb went off in my head.
• 3:54
  I'm like, okay, wait a second.
• 3:55
  If I, you know, sacrifice and save up and try to get this pure, absolute financial freedom, it would take me another 20 years.
• 4:03
  So, like, 65, which is standard retirement age.
• 4:05
  But if I was able to figure out a way where I could design my work perfectly and in such a way where that could work when I wanted to, I could actually do that in three years.
• 4:13
  So in 2023, in the summer is the first time I took an extended period of time off, because at that point, I was able to earn enough in nine months that I could live comfortably for the.
• 4:24
  And structure my work in such a way that allowed me to work and always have my summers off.
• 4:30
  So the lifestyle that I have been able to create for myself is this one where I live for most of the year in the San Francisco Bay area, doing financial advising and things like that for individuals, specifically entrepreneurs.
• 4:43
  And then in the summertime, my family, we pack up our minivan and we drive across the country to a cabin that we have in northern Wisconsin, which is where I am right now, on a lake.
• 4:53
  And we ski and fish and do all that sort of fun stuff.
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  And when this happened three years ago, people were intrigued because they knew I wasn't retired, and they knew I wasn't independently wealthy.
• 5:08
  But, you know, trying to figure out how I was able to make this lifestyle work.
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  And more and more people started asking.
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  So I went ahead and got my, you know, license as a financial planner and started to make a go of this because people were just interested in it.
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  And that.
• 5:26
  That is ultimately how I got into this.
• 5:28
  But the.
• 5:29
  The secret really is, I mean, I'M writing an entire book on this concept of time freedom.
• 5:34
  But the entrepreneur, especially the lifestyle entrepreneur, has a real advantage in being able to create this life for themselves.
• 5:44
  And so I work with people on their money, and their business is kind of like a holistic sort of view of things to, to figure out how to structure things and put the puzzle pieces together in such a
• 5:54
  way where they can design their work around their life.
• 5:59
  Yeah, and that's the, that's, that's my whole mission in life now is to have more people live this way, because it's a really great way to live.
• 6:05
  Okay, so you were in management consulting and you had this dream of retiring early and got close, but then realized that even if you were to retire, you really didn't want to retire.
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  You just more so wanted to have that time freedom.
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  And you love to work, but you wanted it on your terms.
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  You could work when you want.
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  So then having achieved that, you basically became an example for a lot of the people that you knew where they wanted to learn how to do it.
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  And through that, that evolved into your company, Harriet Financial, where now that's part of your work in terms of.
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  That's what you do, is show other people how to do exactly what you do.
• 6:44
  That's exactly right.
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  And the, the differentiator I think that I bring is because I've been, I had been looking for help with this for a long time, which is, you know, you've got your, you know, your financial advisors that look at
• 6:59
  your money and you've got your entrepreneurial coaches that look at how you run your business and, you know, how you manage your expenses.
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  That's kind of on your own.
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  But like, those three pieces are highly integrated in my mind, you know, like, what you do in one impacts the other.
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  And I could never find anyone that did something like that, that looked across all, all of those.
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  And so I finally started doing it myself and figuring it out.
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  And then that, that is the, I think the, the big difference in how you're able to craft something like this, because especially as entrepreneurs, like entrepreneurs, they're, you know, we're go getters.
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  We like to do stuff, we like to create things.
• 7:40
  And I don't think that switch just turns off, like if you can make enough money.
• 7:44
  But, you know, I, I actually believe experience of taking a few months a year and pulling out of your business is great for rest and reflection, but it's also really great for figuring out how you can kind of
• 7:58
  make that next big strategic move that might actually grow your business.
• 8:01
  More than it would if you were just in the details all day long and how you know, and figuring out how you do that while still protecting your time is kind of a cool thing to be able, it's
• 8:11
  a luxury to be able to have the time to figure out, figure those things, types of things out.
• 8:18
  Okay.
• 8:19
  All right.
• 8:20
  So once you had this, it almost wasn't an epiphany, right?
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  Because it sounds like the demand from everyone around you wanting to know how you did it and hey, show me how to do it kind of created the, the need to get a license and form the company and
• 8:37
  make that your full time thing.
• 8:39
  So once you did all that and started practicing, what happened next?
• 8:46
  Well, I, you know, so I, I, I'm doing this.
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  So the, the, the way that I teach this way of life is you have to kind of get a handle on your living expenses and you kind of supplement those living expenses with any money that you have saved
• 9:02
  already.
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  So fortunately, you know, I was able to save a good amount of money.
• 9:06
  Not enough to just stop, but it was enough to allow me to kind of figure this next phase out.
• 9:14
  And so that's what I've been doing.
• 9:15
  So I've been working with people on, you know, their financial plans and their, their financial plans and then how to kind of restructure their businesses to make them less reliant on them and more flexible and when they work.
• 9:29
  But the, I was looking, like I had mentioned, I was looking for that like next thing like, so I could, I could have continued doing that for a long time and just made a go of it.
• 9:38
  But I still have dreams of doing bigger things like many of us.
• 9:43
  And so I tried to figure out, instead of doing like, I think conventional wisdom will say, you know, if you want to make a 10 improvement, you need to, you know, work 10 harder or 10 faster, do 10%
• 9:56
  more, but then you're only 10% better.
• 9:59
  And I want to, I want to see if I can make a big go of it.
• 10:02
  And so I'm looking for like the one or two things that I can do to, to kind of take and have exponential growth.
• 10:10
  So that's what I'm working on right now.
• 10:12
  So I'm continuing to assist individuals, but I'm also have entered, you know, into this book and I'll, you know, keynote speaking and trying to, you know, really own the concept of time freedom, which when it's described, people get
• 10:29
  it, but they're really, nobody really owns that idea right now.
• 10:34
  And so that is my intention and my goal is to kind of, with this, you know, with this, with this journey that I'm now on, like on this 18 month writing.
• 10:45
  I mean, my intention is to write an incredible book, like a real book, like a book that people read and tell people about and speak off of that.
• 10:55
  And really kind of do look like if I focus on those two things, I think I can grow my business exponentially.
• 11:02
  And what does that mean?
• 11:03
  It's gonna, it's gonna be interesting because I don't want that to mean now I have thousand times the amount of stress and people that I'm responsible for.
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  So I'm figuring out like if I do those two things, how can I structure my business in it?
• 11:16
  Maybe some more of a unique entrepreneurial model with, you know, IP or partners or things like that that will allow me to continue to grow and be big, but also protect what I call seasonal schedules.
• 11:27
  My seasonal schedule, which is, you know, not as intensive work in the, in the, in the summertime.
• 11:33
  So that's such a great point too.
• 11:36
  Right.
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  Because all every entrepreneur wants to grow their business, they want more customers, more revenue, all that.
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  But so often maybe in hindsight, right, you hear those stories of people didn't realize that it invites more work, more stress, more problems.
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  Right.
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  So really getting the growth and still protecting your seasonal schedule, I mean it sounds like.
• 11:59
  Is that the current challenge that you're working on?
• 12:03
  Yeah, I mean, I think it's so interesting that these things happen to us and it's no fault of our own.
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  You know, like, let me give you an example.
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  For, for the longest time I've wanted to be free, right?
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  And so, you know, earlier in my career, you know, I've wanted to do have freedom so that I could work on purposeful and meaningful things.
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  And so I tried to jump start that early in my career.
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  And I kind of quit my consulting job.
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  I went back to school, came out not in a great market.
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  So I decided to do this program called Teach for America where you teach, you know, even though you're not a teacher.
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  And it's, you know, it's in a tough school.
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  They've made movies about this kind of stuff.
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  And I felt great doing it, but I made no money and I had to like, I got swept back up into the conventional way of living, right.
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  And before you know it, like you just get sucked back into it because it's how this world works, I guess.
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  I don't know where I was.
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  I actually distinctly remember this.
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  I was in the Bay Area, they have this thing called casual carpool.
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  Where to kind of escape the, you know, the.
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  The heavy traffic, you know, you kind of.
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  It's like this regulated hitchhiking kind of thing where you ride into the city.
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  So I was.
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  I was in somebody else's car riding into the city, and I saw.
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  This is when I was 37 years old.
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  I got this news alert that Marissa Mayer had become the CEO of Yahoo.
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  Now, if you're not familiar, she's.
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  She was like a super young CEO.
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  But the weird thing was, is that when I looked her up, she was from a small town in Wisconsin right near where I lived and graduated in the same year.
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  And I had this experience like, oh, my God, she's a CEO already.
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  And I'm just riding some stranger's car across the Bay Bridge, you know, I need to be a CEO.
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  And then in that same moment, I thought, wait a second, I don't want to be a CEO.
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  What am I doing here?
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  And that like, kind of flipped me back into being like, okay, I need to get back into freedom.
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  And that's when I left that job and I kind of got back into independent consulting, which got me initially into this kind of free lifestyle before I'm have such, you know, since transitioned in financial advising and entrepreneurial coaching.
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  But yeah, like, people know they want this, but it's.
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  It's hard to imagine it because they're not a lot of role models.
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  And until someone, like, comes and interacts with me randomly when I'm at our cabin in Northern Wisconsin and are interested and then want to be coached on it, like, it's so small.
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  And I feel like if I can just have more exposure, more people can see this and kind of figure out that they want this for themselves.
• 14:40
  And then they can, you know, I can help them figure out how to do it, you know, through the book.
• 14:44
  Mike, you don't have to work with me.
• 14:45
  I just want you to read the book and say, hey, maybe this is possible for me because it's a much, much better way of living.
• 14:53
  Okay.
• 14:54
  Yeah.
• 14:55
  So interesting.
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  And appreciate you sharing that too.
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  And I'm sure many people can relate to, to.
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  Right.
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  Having that desire, right.
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  That.
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  That comes from your heart and then your mind getting in the way with all this conditioning and whatnot that.
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  You know what I mean, that you've picked up along the way.
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  And it's great awareness to.
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  For you to even realize, wait a minute, right?
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  That's not what I want.
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  And really following your.
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  Taken that path.
• 15:20
  Yeah.
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  And so, like, usually what I'll do when I work so I.
• 15:23
  Everyone that I work with, I do this thing called a Time Freedom forecast.
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  And so I have this tool and it's available online.
• 15:28
  I use it for my clients, but it's also free.
• 15:31
  If anyone is Interested, it's@timefreedomcalculator.com so anybody can go use that thing.
• 15:37
  But what I do is it allows you to kind of take your financial numbers, take some projections about your future and how much you want to make and how much you want to work, and you can put it
• 15:47
  all in there and see if you run out of money by the time you die.
• 15:50
  Right.
• 15:50
  So the idea is, if I put these kind of, how do I model out what my life could look like?
• 15:55
  It's pretty easy to use.
• 15:58
  And what that basically does is say, hey, it gives you the confidence such that given the money I have, the money I think I'm going to make and how much I want to work, this plan could work.
• 16:10
  That's step one.
• 16:11
  So we do that and we say, okay, this is how you would make it work.
• 16:14
  For some people, they've saved a lot, and so they can rely a lot on the money that they're making and the money that their investments will earn.
• 16:21
  For some people, you know, they save and they don't save a lot, they spend a lot.
• 16:25
  And they're going to have to look at that flexible work, and that's going to be the most important element.
• 16:29
  For some people, they don't have a lot of savings and they don't have a lot of desire to work and make a ton of money, but then they have to, like, make sure that they reduce their spending.
• 16:36
  So there's different ways to do it.
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  But that's the first step.
• 16:39
  And then the next step, once you have that confidence, is like, okay, how do I actually organize my business to work this way?
• 16:46
  And it's different for every industry, of course, and the seasonal schedule is never exactly the same.
• 16:51
  But the idea, there's really, really two basic ideas.
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  If people are interested in pursuing something like this, and it's really how you.
• 16:58
  The first thing is you have to say, I want to protect my time first.
• 17:01
  Like, that's the core principle.
• 17:04
  And if you do that, then you want to align your work and how you structure your work and then your team and how you structure your team, if you have one or your own self.
• 17:13
  And you kind of fit those two things associated with how you're.
• 17:16
  How your time, you know, because time is of utmost importance.
• 17:21
  So what I mean by structuring your work is instead of just Working constantly, forever, everyone, all the time.
• 17:26
  You need to take your work and kind of chunk it into these little pieces.
• 17:30
  Like it could be two hours, like my two hour time freedom pod time freedom forecast and like stack them up on certain days of the week and certain months, but never in the summer, you know, or it could
• 17:41
  be something that's a little bit longer, like a two week project and you put two two week projects together and then you take off for a month.
• 17:47
  And so the idea is that you kind of chunk this work, it's technical term, chunk this work and shift it to anyone.
• 17:53
  And then once you have that figured out, then you look at your team and an advocate for everyone.
• 17:59
  Even if you're a solo entrepreneur and just you needs some form of assistance or assistance, right.
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  If it's a full time part time virtual assistant.
• 18:09
  Everybody, everybody, you know, everybody has email and calendars to run their business.
• 18:15
  And these are things that are very much something that you can dedicate to somebody to help manage for you so that you can work on the most valuable things.
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  That's like the step, that's the first step in.
• 18:26
  And then eventually, you know, you rely on this person for more and more help.
• 18:32
  So if you kind of combine how you work and get getting the leverage off of this team, all of a sudden you're able to pull out and either just work on the most important things or not work for
• 18:43
  an extended period of time and start thinking about those bigger ideas.
• 18:48
  Okay.
• 18:49
  All right.
• 18:50
  So Brian, since you've been on this mission with the book and obviously transitioning to the company, growing that and really figuring out how you get this message out to the masses, what's been the, the biggest obstacle that you
• 19:04
  faced through, through this process?
• 19:11
  Interesting question.
• 19:14
  I think for me, for me actually I, I've got an answer for you now.
• 19:21
  I, I was born and raised to think that you like are here and you know you're going and then you just go there, right.
• 19:29
  It's like this straight path.
• 19:31
  And what I have come to realize is that that way of living doesn't always work out, right.
• 19:38
  And then.
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  And you get frustrated.
• 19:40
  For what I realize now is no reason.
• 19:43
  And also it's kind of a boring way to live too.
• 19:46
  So the struggle for me has been the comfort with kind of this not knowing of stuff.
• 19:55
  So for example, writing a book, if you choose to write a really good book, it is a process that takes two years.
• 20:02
  And there's all these things that you figured you could learn quickly, but you really don't know that you have to learn.
• 20:10
  And not just that, but the creative process is so different from the kind of the, you know, business mindset, Check it off mindset.
• 20:21
  It's.
• 20:22
  It's circular.
• 20:23
  You do all this work to just come back to the beginning, like all.
• 20:27
  But all these things are part of the process that you have to get comfortable with.
• 20:30
  That has been a complete shift in my mind and how I see the world and how I look at life.
• 20:37
  It's been challenging, but it's been extremely transformative and rewarding at the same time.
• 20:41
  And it's a journey that I recommend for anybody, you know, at.
• 20:45
  At the point in their life when they feel they have some.
• 20:48
  Something interesting that they want to share the world.
• 20:51
  Share with the world that they do it, but just be ready.
• 20:55
  It is a lot of work, but it's really cool to see, you know, as.
• 21:00
  As the years go by, literally as the years go by, the progress that can be made and what's done.
• 21:05
  So it's.
• 21:05
  That's.
• 21:06
  That's been interesting to me.
• 21:08
  You know, I haven't had challenges around finding clients or anything like that.
• 21:13
  It's all been more internal, right.
• 21:15
  That the challenges have been around internal and mindset and figuring out like, what.
• 21:20
  What I want for my life in the next stage.
• 21:22
  I just want a more interesting life.
• 21:24
  Something that'll, you know, if I do the speaking, I want to be able to speak in Europe and spend some time there.
• 21:30
  I realize these are all like luxuries, but this is the, this is the kind of lifestyle that I want to get people to because it's really fun.
• 21:39
  Okay, so it sounds like kind of unlearning maybe.
• 21:42
  Yeah, the.
• 21:43
  The conditioning and kind of how you thought life worked, so to speak, particularly around linear progress.
• 21:50
  Because so often.
• 21:52
  Right.
• 21:52
  We hear success isn't linear.
• 21:54
  And even though in our.
• 21:56
  In our mind we think it should be, we want it to be.
• 22:00
  And I'm sure there's some freak out right when it's.
• 22:03
  When maybe you got it, your mind is.
• 22:05
  Feels like you're going backwards, but ultimately that's you to.
• 22:10
  To your desired outcome.
• 22:11
  Is that good?
• 22:12
  Way to say it, Like, I think about it too, is like you can make a small gradual increase in a straight line, or you can kind of go up and then kind of dip down way below where you
• 22:21
  were, but then just to like, shoot back up and all, you end up way higher than you ever would.
• 22:26
  But it's just much, much more of a variable ride, which, you know, is.
• 22:31
  Some people are more comfortable with it, some people are not And I, you know, I'm, I'm a conservative type of person.
• 22:38
  You know, I'm, you know, I want to cap my downside, but sometimes you have to take some risks on yourself, you know, and that, that's been a definite journey in the last couple of years.
• 22:48
  You know, I've invested more in myself than I ever have in my career.
• 22:53
  And, you know, I, I have a belief that it'll pay off in the end, but it's, it's nice to be able to take those gambles on yourself, you know, when you reach a certain point in your career.
• 23:04
  Sure, sure.
• 23:05
  Okay.
• 23:05
  Do you have a date for when the, the book is going to come out?
• 23:09
  Is that.
• 23:09
  I do.
• 23:10
  I do.
• 23:10
  It is in.
• 23:11
  Actually, it's in April of 2026, so still, you know, nine some months from now.
• 23:17
  But that's okay because the book will be pretty much written in the next two months.
• 23:24
  And then that gives, you know, again, if you follow the process, a good six months to get the marketing engine going and get that out there.
• 23:33
  And.
• 23:34
  Yeah.
• 23:34
  And then before we know it, it'll be out in the world, which will be pretty.
• 23:37
  I'll be.
• 23:37
  That'll be a proud day for sure, considering the effort that has taken.
• 23:42
  Okay.
• 23:43
  All right.
• 23:43
  So, Brian, if people want to learn more about your company, your coaching, how they can, you know, get on this journey that you're on with the time freedom and whatnot, what's the best way that people can reach out
• 23:54
  to you?
• 23:54
  I definitely recommend you go to that timefreedomcalculator.com because it's something you can play around with.
• 24:00
  But also from there, you can click through to learn more about me.
• 24:04
  You can click through to get on my book wait list.
• 24:06
  It's kind of got some nice links right from there to access me in different ways, but it's a really good place to start.
• 24:15
  Pretty easy to use.
• 24:17
  And yeah, I urge you to try it out and see, you know, if you kind of map your numbers out, if you could live a life like this and if it's of interest, then you can, then we can
• 24:26
  kind of, you know, keep going from there.
• 24:28
  All right, and we'll link all that in the show notes for everyone.
• 24:32
  All right, well, Brian, thank you so much for taking the time to be here and sharing all this valuable wisdom with your journey from.
• 24:37
  For our listeners.
• 24:38
  We greatly appreciate it.
• 24:40
  Thank you.
• 24:41
  It's been a pleasure.
• 24:41
  I, I really appreciate you having me on.
• 24:44
  All right, that's all the time we have for now.
• 24:46
  We will see you next time.