Latest / Only Fee-Only / #98 - Transforming Financial Planning: George D. Kinder on Aligning Money with Life Goals

Transcript

#98 - Transforming Financial Planning: George D. Kinder on Aligning Money with Life Goals · Only Fee-Only

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: How's it going everyone?
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Only Fee Only podcast and, as always, thanks for being here.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: I'm so excited that you guys are here today because we had an absolute legend on the podcast that we got to talk to.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: His name is George Kinder and, in case you don't know who he is, he is a pioneer in the life planning and the financial planning space and has been for more than 30 years.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: George literally does workshops, seminars, speaking engagements.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: He is the author of many, many books and he's trained thousands of advisors and his team has trained thousands of advisors and it was so cool to get to talk to him.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: Here's perspective.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: He's also huge on mindfulness, meditation, mindset, living in the present.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: So there were just so many cool parts of this conversation that really resonated with me, and I know that Peter feels the same way.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: So, without further ado, let's let George tell his story.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: Here is George Kinder on the Only Fee Only podcast.
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: How's it going, everyone?
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: Welcome to another episode of the Only Fee Only podcast.
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: How's it going, everyone?
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: Welcome to another episode of the Only Fee Only podcast.
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: I'm Peter Travolo.
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: I'm here with my co-host, brock Buckles.
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: How's it going today?
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: Brock.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: It's great man.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: I'm excited for this one.
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: Yes, we are very excited and today we have George Kinder on Basically needs no introduction for those who listen to this show, but definitely a huge thought leader in the financial planning space, specifically life planning.
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: He's an author, keynote speaker and very excited to have him on this afternoon.
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: So, George, welcome to the show.
• 1:36
  Speaker 3: I'm thrilled guys, I mean, and to call yourselves Only, Fee Only.
• 1:40
  Speaker 3: I didn't know whether it was the Only, fee Only or I didn't know how to interpret it, but I love, I love the title.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: Uh, thanks for asking me on yeah, you bet brock, you want to give a little back sight actually on how we got the name of the podcast uh, I think we took a vote, didn't we, on linkedin from the feeling planners and we just threw a few different names out there and and finally people were like I don't know how I feel about the two words in the title being the same and then eventually people were like we took a vote and it was the overwhelming amount of people were like only fee, only, it is so it's cool, all right you love it great.
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: So, um, george, for those who don't know who you are, um, and for those who do you, you want to give a quick, concise background of what you're doing and how your work is affecting the space.
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah well, I used to be just a fee-only financial planner, just a.
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: I mean.
• 2:36
  Speaker 3: I think that's a pretty special thing to be.
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: But for the last 20 years or so I've been primarily a trainer of financial planners, and really all over the world, starting with the fee-only movement in America, but really all over the world, and fee-only doesn't mean the same thing.
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: In fact they hardly know it globally.
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: I wish they did.
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: And here we've expanded so we'll train anybody, because we think it's one of the three essential qualities of a fiduciary to do life planning.
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: But I've trained thousands of advisors in two to five day trainings and then six month mentorships over the last 30 years and from 30 countries, which is pretty cool.
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: Personally, I've got married and I have a wife and two twin daughters who have just been launched into college, which is kind of crazy and fun, and they great deal of time in a tiny little town, an indigenous community in Hawaii known as Hana Maui I think it gives you a flavor.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely, that's so cool.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: So I mean, you know you were a fielding planner, obviously you were seeing some things in the industry, but what really kind of made you think about or come up with this concept of life planning?
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: Because it's really fascinating when you look at it.
• 4:09
  Speaker 3: Well, I think in some ways I had it all along and I remember, you know, I was at the very first conference that NAPFA gave in 1983, february of 1983.
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: I remember it very well and one of the programs there was looking at goals and I thought, wow, this is really cool.
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: And I just really took off from it.
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: I mean, one of my famous three questions was kind of morphed from one of the things that they were looking at, and I think even more came from my own life.
• 4:43
  Speaker 3: Frankly, brock, I didn't want to be a financial planner, I didn't want to be in business, I didn't want to have wanted to be an artist, I wanted a deeper life.
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: I was a meditator even way back then, and so my question for myself was how on earth am I going to be able to do it?
• 5:13
  Speaker 3: And then I read about this thing called financial planning and I thought, wow, those guys must know how to do it right, how to get me in the life that I want to live in.
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: And I went to the first financial planners I went to.
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: They were in kind of between Harvard and MIT and in Cambridge Massachusetts, and it was in a reframed, you know, kind of workshop or factory space.
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: It was lovely and clearly they had some resources and everything and I went in and I told them what I wanted and you know what they tried to do.
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: They tried to sell me product right.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: Oh perfect.
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: You know, back then it was limited partnership.
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: We had the perfect limited partnership for you, man, and it was like, oh my God, this isn't.
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: I thought I thought financial planning would actually plan who I wanted to be and put the money to work for it.
• 6:06
  Speaker 3: So when I really heard about financial planning and then when I heard about fee only, I thought, boy, this is it.
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: I'll learn how to do it for myself.
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: And I had a tax practice then and I thought I'll just bring it to all my clients and that's what I did, yeah.
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Go ahead Pete.
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: I can I?
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: actually got.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: I have one quick thing I have to touch on, because you said the three questions.
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: I've watched your video over the three questions and I think the three questions really will give people a good idea as to how life planning and thinking about kind of things in that light is different than just like what's the balance sheet.
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: What are we trying to do?
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: So would you mind touching on the three questions?
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: No, not at all.
• 6:47
  Speaker 3: In fact, while I'm doing it, I just want to give the frame for it because often I'll talk about it, people ask about it and immediately they'll try to do it, and some people are naturals at it but a lot of people aren't.
• 7:00
  Speaker 3: And these are personal questions.
• 7:02
  Speaker 3: And I want to say that I train a whole methodology in life planning within which and I know you know Scott Frank and Justin Costelli and a number of other people who've come through the program but within that framework, the three questions happen in the second meeting, not in the first meeting, and they're one of a number of different sets of questions or engagements that we do with the client to loosen them up, to get them to talk about what it is they really want to do or who is it they really want to be.
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: And so the first meeting that we do is and this has been underplayed we really listen.
• 7:47
  Speaker 3: I mean, we don't ask you know, what do you want to do in retirement, or what do you want your portfolio to look like, or what do you want me to do as a financial advisor?
• 7:57
  Speaker 3: No, we want to hear why they've come in.
• 8:01
  Speaker 3: It's like that question that I wish they'd paid attention to when I went into my first life planners financial planners and they didn't do.
• 8:08
  Speaker 3: We want to hear them talk about who they want to be, what they want to do, and so we.
• 8:16
  Speaker 3: You can ask it in a pointed way.
• 8:19
  Speaker 3: But anytime you ask a narrow question, people feel it's your meeting, you're driving the meeting, you're delivering the questions, and so I'm just going to lie back and just wait and follow whatever question you ask me.
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: We don't want that.
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: What we want is people to just talk like they talk to a really good friend or like they talk to a mentor or someone that they you know were really excited about getting to know and engage in and so frequently.
• 8:50
  Speaker 3: at the end of that first meeting and we haven't even asked the three questions people say you know, this was the best conversation I've ever had.
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 8:59
  Speaker 3: And it's because we just listened.
• 9:01
  Speaker 3: We didn't even talk, it wasn't even a conversation, we just listened.
• 9:03
  Speaker 3: But the three questions.
• 9:03
  Speaker 3: It wasn't even a conversation, we just listened, but the three questions.
• 9:06
  Speaker 3: So the three questions happened in the second meeting.
• 9:08
  Speaker 3: But you'll see the depth that we're capable of going to with the questions.
• 9:11
  Speaker 3: So the first one is kind of an easy one.
• 9:14
  Speaker 3: It's like you win the lottery, you know you, suddenly you realize that you have all the money you need for the rest of your life.
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: You know what are you going to do?
• 9:20
  Speaker 3: What are you going to do with your life?
• 9:22
  Speaker 3: And I think we've all kind of fantasized on that right, have you guys?
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 9:27
  Speaker 3: I know I have?
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: Oh, for sure, I've talked to my friends about it.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: It's a fun kind of scenario to do.
• 9:35
  Speaker 3: What would we do?
• 9:35
  Speaker 3: Right, you know, yeah, where would we go, where would we live?
• 9:38
  Speaker 3: You know how much time would.
• 9:39
  Speaker 3: And so we start off with that, because the second two questions are much more serious and reflective.
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: And with a client who walks in to see you, they may think of you as an advisor, but there's also a good chance they think you're like a broker, because the financial people they've been to in the past have been brokers or salespeople of one sort or another, so they aren't necessarily going to trust you with a really personal question, and we've had people respond like that.
• 10:17
  Speaker 3: And so the first question is you know, if you add all the money you need to what you do, that loosens them up.
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: And then the second question is if you had, you went to the doctor and you learned you only had five to 10 years left to live, how would that change things?
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: What would you do?
• 10:30
  Speaker 3: So it's more about time shortening, less about having all the money you need.
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: You know what would you do.
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: And it gets more serious.
• 10:39
  Speaker 3: Often relationships are more important, but not necessarily.
• 10:42
  Speaker 3: And the third question goes even deeper.
• 10:46
  Speaker 3: It's the deepest one, and sometimes people actually get it confused and they think it means something else, but it's 24 hours.
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: You go to the doctor and they say, hey, I blew it.
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: You know, tests have come back.
• 10:58
  Speaker 3: I didn't realize this was even a remote possibility.
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: You have only 24 hours left to live.
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: There's nothing we can do about it.
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: And the question is not what you would do.
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: It's not going to the bar or gathering your family, it's not what you do, but it's reflecting on what you'd anticipated doing for the rest of your life and with your life.
• 11:24
  Speaker 3: What did you miss?
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: Who did you not get to be and that's really a key and what did you not get to do?
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: So now we're down at.
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: This is bedrock.
• 11:37
  Speaker 3: It's legacy, it's life and death.
• 11:40
  Speaker 3: So this is where the life plan really takes off from.
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: Sometimes it's the second question.
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: Often we sprinkle in things from the first.
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: But the third question is the most serious one.
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: So you want your clients to nail every single one of those things, even if they look like it's a psychological regret and you can't figure out how to do it.
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: Or you can't figure out where the money piece is.
• 12:06
  Speaker 3: To it Like, sometimes, I wish I'd lived, I wish I'd been able to tell the truth more.
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: You know, they'd been in a kind of career where they were selling and they weren't able to really really tell the truth.
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: Or, you know, I wish I'd been able, I wish I'd had the time to be kinder.
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: You know, as simple as that.
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: And you think I mean the traditional financial advisor.
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: You go say my field, you know I'll send them to a spiritual advisor or some sort um.
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: But in fact what?
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: What we do is we the um, um, we train our life planners to have the kind of conversation where they can listen to what that really might mean to the person and then figure out you know, hey, if you had an extra three or four hours a week, would you be able to do that?
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: And if they say, yes, you know, well, boy, now it's back in the world of finance, isn't it?
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: Because that's really about time and money.
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: Finance, isn't it?
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: Because that's really about time and money.
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: So we train the advisors to take those questions that seem psychological or impossible or whatever, and find a way to bring them toward the realm of money.
• 13:23
  Speaker 3: And even then we don't train the advisor to solve the problem.
• 13:27
  Speaker 3: We're not therapists.
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: We train advisor to uh, listen and engage well enough in a kind of partnering kind of relationship.
• 13:36
  Speaker 3: So the client comes up with their own answer.
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: This is what I yeah and, and you support him, you go yeah, this is who you are, man.
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: I'm going to make sure this happens.
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: You know we'll put.
• 13:46
  Speaker 3: We'll put the money together, make sure this works.
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so that was a bit of a digression, but there you go, yeah no, I mean, there's so many, there's so many things to that, because it's like some people, very literally, when they're having that conversation even though it's their financial planner and they're doing life planning, and they when was the last time that maybe anybody even asked them those types of questions right, family or Family or friends and you have this person sitting across from you, really trying to get to know you and getting to that bedrock and all of that.
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: I think that's such a cool concept and a really cool exercise.
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: It's amazing and you think about the loves of your life and, if you're married, you think about those early conversations that you had and where you really shared.
• 14:32
  Speaker 3: But sometimes you know, the kids get in the way, and the mortgage gets in the way and the work gets in the way, and you haven't had that kind of conversation with your partner in you know 10, 20, 30 years, and so it's an amazing.
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: It's really pretty, pretty incredible.
• 14:49
  Speaker 3: It's a privilege, an amazing.
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: It's really pretty incredible.
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: It's a privilege.
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: I think financial planning is the greatest profession because we have that potential to have that kind of privileged connection with the person and then deliver them into the world they really want to live in.
• 15:05
  Speaker 3: Wow, what could be better than that?
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: It's important to match it.
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: I mean, that's beautiful within itself.
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: So I mean, with the Kinder Institute, let's talk about maybe just a few other services and kind of trips and things like that and how Hawaii loops into it, and then we'll eventually get into your latest book, of course, too Sure.
• 15:59
  Speaker 3: Okay, how would you like to do that?
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: How would you like to frame that?
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: Okay, how would you like to do that?
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: How would you like to frame that?
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, let's start with the famous trips.
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: I mean people.
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: They hear of you, they've heard of the Kinder Institute, they've heard of the trip, and then they eventually become a follower.
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: So, coming in through that ecosystem, what does that look like?
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: Well, it is an amazing ecosystem.
• 16:24
  Speaker 3: It's.
• 16:24
  Speaker 3: It is an amazing ecosystem and I'm glad you use the term because it really feels like that it's.
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: It's a community and people love it because everybody knows that experience, the fundamental experience you end up living for.
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: I mean, you know, often we're we're living for getting the assets under management in, or, if that's not how we work, it's one way or another, but getting the fees in there and landing the client and all of that.
• 16:51
  Speaker 3: And most of the people that I know in life planning don't think that way.
• 16:59
  Speaker 3: They think about the thing that jazzes them is how the person really took off and got alive around, what inspired them, and so, yeah, it makes it easier to land the client, to land the assets if you're a portfolio construction person.
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: But what really jazzes them is this excitement.
• 17:23
  Speaker 3: And so it's a community that kind of thrives on that and gathers together and we have.
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: So we have the signature program.
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: Now is what I call the five-day program, but it's a four-day if you go on Zoom and do it on Zoom, but it's a program where you would arrive and let's say you two guys came right and maybe you didn't know each other right, and you come in and there's a dozen people or so there and early in the first day, first 24 hours, you choose somebody to life plan and they're choosing you and you then life plan them for the next four days and they life plan you.
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: So it's like it's an experiential learning as opposed to you know the academic, getting the books out and studying and all that kind of the laws and all that.
• 18:25
  Speaker 3: It's experiential, which is incredible because you experience getting life planned and that there you get inspired in your own life, but you're experiencing doing it with somebody else.
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: That's always the challenge how do I do it?
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: And then you're watching a dozen other people do it and learning from you know the critiques that the three or four trainers that are there give all the time.
• 18:49
  Speaker 3: So it's a, it's dynamic, it's fun, it's and and I I don't do so many of them anymore, right, because I'm you know you can see my white hair and all that.
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: So I'm, uh, I I give, I give one a year now primarily, I give a few other workshops, smaller workshops and and I'm actually designing some right now that I'm intending to give Um, but the the big one I I tend to only give now in Hawaii.
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: So, and I do it once a year.
• 19:19
  Speaker 3: So, um, that's kind of fun and it's in.
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: So, um, that's kind of fun, and it's in in my home, which is, uh, has 180 degree view of the ocean and, uh, you know, that's amazing.
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: And sunrise, so it's, it's quite, it's quite wonderful.
• 19:32
  Speaker 3: Uh, we've got a two day program, we've got a six month mentorship and then you end up getting a designation, the registered life planner designation.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: So yeah, that's so cool.
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: I mean the thing and the thing that.
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: I love about that is uh, that's so cool.
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: I mean, the thing and the thing that I love about that is you actually get to experience it from the other side, because if you don't know what it feels like to be able to talk about the, there are a few sayings that you'll hear if you talk to life planners that you know, and one of them is you can't be a life planner until you've been life planned.
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: And that's exactly what you're.
• 20:14
  Speaker 3: What you're talking about, it's being life planned that you go and then then you know how to, how to listen and how to charge the person with how cool their idea of their life is.
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: Otherwise you weren't sure.
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: Well, it's so cool to see it in action too, because I'll never forget we were at a Braves game with Scott Frank and we were on the way home and we were in the Uber and part of it's probably his personality, but he talked about you know.
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: Uh, he talked about you and the life planning, designation and all of that, and I thought to myself, even in that situation he's asking such amazing questions and then he's just listening and by the end of it, this uber driver had told us like her whole life story.
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: By the time we got out of the car and I was like you're really good at this man.
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: Like for someone that feels outgoing and is pretty gregarious, I like I was like Scott, that was amazing.
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: What did you just do?
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: He's like, oh, I just like to listen.
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: I was like, okay, like so, no, that that's really awesome.
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: One thing before we get to the book, I do.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: I do have one more question.
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: What do you feel like has changed from the beginning when the concept of life planning and the Kinzinger Institute came about, and then what has it become today and what are the most important kind of things that you've learned along the way?
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah, great question.
• 21:33
  Speaker 3: And, by the way, I just want to give another plug for fee only.
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: Not everybody that we train these days is fee only, but fee only meant the world to me when I started and so I'm really glad you guys are doing this, and to be in that very first conference of NAPFA was just an incredible privilege and to see its growth and how much it influenced and it had tremendous influence.
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: I realize XY now has taken over a lot of the growth and the extraordinary nature of financial planning, but NAPFA really launched it.
• 22:08
  Speaker 3: So, in terms of life planning, I wrote a book that was published in 1999, seven Stages of Money Maturity, and that's the thing I'm most famous for.
• 22:19
  Speaker 3: But six years earlier I leapt onto the national stage with the CFP community and talked about I gave the three questions and some other things and people got very fascinated.
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: We started a think tank around it all and then I wrote the book and after a couple of years I was listening to how people were doing life planning and I was going, no, that's not it, that's all wrong, and what I realized was that people primarily thought that it was about psychology.
• 22:57
  Speaker 3: There's a psychological element that's incredibly valuable and the only people that I think are as great listeners as a psychologist might be are lifeliners.
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: And that's where the overlap is.
• 23:11
  Speaker 3: We not only listen well, but we empathize as well as a great counselor would.
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: But people were trying to do therapy.
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: They weren't trained to do therapy, and so they were finding a lot of problems.
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: And I went to do therapy and so they were finding a lot of problems and I went no, no, that's not it, that's not it.
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: So at that point all that I had, all that we were training people in, was the seven stages.
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: I had a two-day workshop.
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: Lots of people went through it.
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: I had a six-day training program.
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: A lot of people went through.
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: People like that, you know, rick Kaler, elizabeth Jutton, dick Wagner, a whole bunch of the leaders really in the financial planning movement went through this six day training that I had, and then I realized nobody was doing it right.
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: So I came back and reconfigured and basically it was really on the back of an envelope.
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: I wrote down what the structure was and had a five-minute phone call and delivered what it was.
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: And that's the evoke process, the process that really starts with listening, moves into the questions and then has a way of encouraging the client to solve their own problems, but all in the context of knowing what the financial plan is going to look like of constantly thinking about.
• 24:22
  Speaker 3: You know where are the here and what's it likely to be, but without that skeptics hat that we were born with the green eye shades of the accountant, without that, just knowing that, I'm going to put the numbers together and really make this happen.
• 24:36
  Speaker 3: So I think it's changed in the way that, primarily from Evoke and then having one of the great privileges of my life is having 30 countries where people have taken on Evoke.
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: It's just, you know, I really am a world traveler.
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: I've gone on world tour for my civilization work and that's such a privilege, man, I feel so lucky.
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's amazing.
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we love it.
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: So let's dive into the book the latest book, of course, what really brought you to write another book and what's changed from the first.
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: Before COVID, I wrote a book.
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: I was really upset with the banking crisis 2008, 2009.
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: And I took it very personally because I thought that the financial industry had a lot to do with it.
• 25:30
  Speaker 3: I thought there was a lot of blame to be placed there, particularly the banks, but a lot of the industry and I thought, gosh, I've been training people for 20, 30 years.
• 25:39
  Speaker 3: How could all of my work come to this?
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: And I was ashamed, I was embarrassed, I was angry, I was annoyed.
• 25:49
  Speaker 3: And so I started a book that at one point was a thousand pages, and then I drank it back down and my point was to try to arrive at a better system than what we had delivered somehow.
• 26:04
  Speaker 3: So that book was called A Golden Civilization and the Map of Mindfulness, and I went on a world tour.
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: We went to maybe 15 countries, I think.
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: I went to five continents and went to rich countries, went to poor countries, went to dictatorships, went to democracies, asked people everywhere if we had a golden civilization, if we really had nailed it.
• 26:29
  Speaker 3: You know, imagine a couple hundred years from now.
• 26:31
  Speaker 3: If we'd really nailed it.
• 26:32
  Speaker 3: What would it look like?
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: I'd gather a group and it would be anywhere from 30 to, I don't know three or 400 people and what would it look like, and I'd invite them.
• 26:42
  Speaker 3: And everywhere I went and this was my intuition to begin with, but everywhere I went, people said the same thing Everywhere.
• 26:50
  Speaker 3: In Hong Kong, it was a little difficult for them because the you know the what's it?
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: Kuomintang I forget how you pronounce it, but the police that eventually took over the culture there while the kids were out with their umbrellas outside protesting to really make democracy happen.
• 27:09
  Speaker 3: So in that community I gathered there, they all said democracy and that happened everywhere.
• 27:15
  Speaker 3: Democracy, kindness, vitality, end to corruption, media you can trust institutions everywhere.
• 27:30
  Speaker 3: You can trust much less inequality, no bigotry, Um, uh, no bigotry.
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: So it was human values.
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: Basically, it was you know what, what most of us would, would come up with.
• 27:44
  Speaker 3: We'd, we'd identify with most of it, and that happened everywhere.
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: So that was phenomenal.
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: So COVID came along, 2020.
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: Um, and I don't know if you know this story, but I got, I was one of the first cases of COVID.
• 28:05
  Speaker 3: No, I didn't.
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 28:07
  Speaker 3: And they didn't even know how to diagnose it, so I can't prove it with a blood test, but all the signals were there and and I got it flying uh, flying from san francisco to maui and it was a terrible case of it, so I got long covet wow, I got long covet and the main thing I was hit with was tremendous fatigue and unbelievable fatigue.
• 28:37
  Speaker 3: And when it hit me, I realized well, first of all, covid comes along and it says you can't go on a real tour anymore.
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: Right, that's over.
• 28:45
  Speaker 3: And then, in addition, I was like really weary.
• 28:48
  Speaker 3: So what am I going to do?
• 28:49
  Speaker 3: And I went back to my third question.
• 28:53
  Speaker 3: Brock, you asked the three questions.
• 28:54
  Speaker 3: I went back to my third question and I hadn't delivered on the most important element of my third question, which was I'd wanted to write a series.
• 29:04
  Speaker 3: I called it Illuminated Manuscripts and Living in the Weather.
• 29:07
  Speaker 3: I had wanted to deliver books that were an intermingling of image and text that had real depth to them.
• 29:15
  Speaker 3: So what I did was I pulled together 30 years worth of work that I'd been working on and delivered five books of poetry and photography that's called Reflections on Spectacle Pond, and they're beautiful.
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: You can get them, find them, you can get subscribe for free at georgekindercom, but anyway.
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: So I did that.
• 29:39
  Speaker 3: But I also I was constantly going back to the civilization question of what do we do?
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: What do we do?
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: And I thought you know what would solve the problem.
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: Everybody wants the same thing, and the world's in such turmoil, america's in such turmoil, what do we do?
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: What can we do?
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: And I thought and you guys have some training in economics, I'm sure, and thinking about capital markets and everything and I went back and I thought, like 2,500 years ago, I mean 250 years ago, we had Adam Smith and that incredible explosion of free market thinking and free thinking and democracy started there too.
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: Capitalism started there.
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: And I thought, you know, if it was the very best system after 250 years of entrepreneurial development, wouldn't we see the very best of humanity at the top of every hierarchy of power, our wisdom and our compassion?
• 30:35
  Speaker 3: And I thought, yeah, well, of course we would.
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: I mean, we're entrepreneurial and we know what's best in humanity.
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: Well, how come you don't find it there, at the top of any hierarchy of power?
• 30:45
  Speaker 3: I mean, we have trouble finding it at government and corporate life and nonprofits.
• 30:49
  Speaker 3: It's hard to find.
• 30:51
  Speaker 3: And I thought there's something wrong with the base.
• 30:53
  Speaker 3: Really simple.
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: There's a real simple solution.
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: It happens at the base.
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: We don't require our institutions primarily corporate, but all the institutions to put people first.
• 31:09
  Speaker 3: We never required them to put the planet first.
• 31:14
  Speaker 3: We never required them to put democracy first.
• 31:17
  Speaker 3: We never required them to put democracy first.
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: We never required them to put the truth my God, the truth first ahead of their own self-interest.
• 31:35
  Speaker 3: So I thought, well, that's really simple, I can, but in the process of it, it's an experiential book about living more in freedom, and the subtitle is Each Moment is Yours, and mindfulness is a practice of the mastery of the present moment.
• 31:48
  Speaker 3: And so that's what that's about your life is yours, and life planning is about delivering your life to you.
• 31:53
  Speaker 3: And then civilization is yours is something we all believe in, democracy, but we feel that it's under threat and I just thought let's make it happen.
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: So that's what the book is about.
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: That's unbelievable.
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: I had a two or three hour conversation with my friend about that exact concept last night.
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: Like democracy, great thought leaders in the past, marcus Aurelius, epictetus you know all these people and you think about all those people and the mindfulness and you're like then why do societies fall?
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: It's like because a bad apple gets in there.
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: They don't put the people first.
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: Like that's what happens Exactly.
• 32:30
  Speaker 3: It's so simple and it has to be at the base that it's happening, Otherwise you'd at least see a few examples of hierarchies filled with wisdom and filled with compassion, but you really don't.
• 32:40
  Speaker 3: It's pretty rare, and so just it's simple, a simple piece of legislation requiring that if you incorporate yourself, whether it's as a nonprofit or political government organization or as a private entrepreneurial organization, you commit to not putting your own interest ahead of democracy or the planet or people or the truth.
• 33:03
  Speaker 3: So real simple.
• 33:05
  Speaker 3: Anyway, that's what the book is about.
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: No, that's amazing how much of your mind.
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: I started meditating probably about five years ago.
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: A buddy told me about it.
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: I downloaded it in an app and I tried some out.
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: It seems like a lot of the concepts and thoughts that you have come from your practice and mindfulness and you've talked about that a lot, even since we've been talking here.
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: How much has that influenced the kinder Institute in the way that you kind of think about things and being in the present and you know how much has that influenced everything?
• 33:33
  Speaker 3: Well, I mean, I should speak more for myself than for kinder Institute.
• 33:36
  Speaker 3: Because Institute?
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: Because I don't impose it on anyone, although it's an element of every training.
• 33:42
  Speaker 3: We do so every training we'll have anywhere from five minutes to 20 to a half hour a day.
• 33:48
  Speaker 3: That is a meditation.
• 33:50
  Speaker 3: And but for me, brock, it's everything.
• 33:55
  Speaker 3: I owe every success I have in life, everything I owe my great relationship with my wife and my kids.
• 34:03
  Speaker 3: I owe everything to the mindfulness practice.
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: Mindfulness a lot of people don't really understand it and you read about it because everybody's selling it right online and they really sell it in ways that we're concerned.
• 34:15
  Speaker 3: They sell it about longevity and they sell it around reducing your stress.
• 34:19
  Speaker 3: They sell it around health benefits.
• 34:21
  Speaker 3: Let me tell you, I'll tell you a secret the real truth about mindfulness is mindfulness is entirely about the mastery of the present moment.
• 34:31
  Speaker 3: That's what it's about and that's an incredible thing If you think about it.
• 34:37
  Speaker 3: One of my trick questions I ask audiences sometimes is have you ever experienced freedom in the past?
• 34:43
  Speaker 3: You know, walking the beach, making love, playing with your kids, and I get everybody to raise their hand.
• 34:48
  Speaker 3: I say no, you all got it wrong.
• 34:50
  Speaker 3: Nobody's ever experienced a moment of freedom in the past.
• 34:53
  Speaker 3: The only time you've ever experienced freedom is in that moment.
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: So let's measure it, and mindfulness does that freedom is in the moment.
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: So let's measure the mindfulness of that.
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I love that we could talk about this all day, but that was one of the true moments that, when I started kind of getting into the practice, that I realized I was.
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: Like my whole life I've had these thoughts about the future, which is a made up concept, the past, which is a made up concept, and the more time that we spend living in either one of those isn't the present.
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: Right now is our moments that we're losing all the time.
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: Um, george, you have so many incredible things to say.
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: You're an extremely impressive individual.
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: Um, thank you so much for coming on the show.
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: For, for people that want to follow along and should follow along with your journey and your new book, where, where can they follow along and find you?
• 35:35
  Speaker 3: Well, the um, if're, I mean you've got obviously you've got a fee-only audience and primarily probably advisory audience, and for the programs you want to go to kinderinstitutecom.
• 35:47
  Speaker 3: But if you want to see the wild and crazy stuff that I've done, including the book which you can get for free on a subscription basis or elements of it for free not that book, the Reflection of the Spectacle Pond for free Go to georgekindercom.
• 36:02
  Speaker 3: So kinderinstitutecom for the financial programs, georgekindercom for my creative work and meditative work.
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: Excellent, beautiful George, thank you so much for your time this afternoon.
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: Really appreciate everything.
• 36:16
  Speaker 3: Really nice to meet you both, and it's always wonderful to meet more family people who are really dedicated to it, and I'm thrilled.
• 36:24
  Speaker 3: Thank you for asking me on.
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: Thanks, George.
• 36:28
  Speaker 3: Thanks guys.