From Retirement to Purpose with John Anderson

Brent Peterson (00:01.198)
All right, so go ahead and do your little intro, Uncharted Entrepreneurship.

John Anderson (00:05.857)
Brent, I'm excited to be part of the Uncharted entrepreneur.

John Anderson (00:12.417)
Brent, I'm excited to be part of the Uncharted Entrepreneur podcast. And today we're going to talk about living your legacy by design daily. And I'm looking forward to getting that going.

Brent Peterson (00:24.654)
That's awesome, thank you. All right, here we go. Now we'll do the real start. Welcome to Uncharted Entrepreneurship. I'm here today with John Anderson, who has replaced retirement now. He wrote a book called Replace Retirement. I'm gonna show it here. And it is a fantastic book. I'm very in much aligned with John's thoughts and ideas, but before we start, I'm gonna let John do a much better introduction.

than I just did. John, go ahead and introduce yourself. Tell us your day-to-day role and one of your passions.

John Anderson (01:00.951)
I'm a serial entrepreneur who's done a bunch of stuff and along the way I had an office furniture dealership. I got into business coaching over 25 years ago when it was kind of in its infancy. And then about 10 years ago I got in this idea of I'm a baby boomer. I think I'm not the only one who doesn't want to have a formal retirement. And perhaps that's another place to create some discord.

And so Replace Retirement was essentially that idea of don't retire, do something else. And then the book is really my living that. So I take a couple months off, almost three months off a year. So it's not that I don't enjoy life and so on, but the book is really kind of a lifestyle book of if you had the perfect place in life where you have the resources, the relationships, the time on your hands, what would you do with it? And that's what the book.

Brent Peterson (01:55.15)
That's perfect. John, before we get into talking about the book and some of the other aspects of your life, you did volunteer, or should I say, volunteer to be part of the Free Joke Project. I'm just going to tell you a joke. You have to give me a rating one through five. So here we go. After playing guitar for years, I thought I would learn to play the piano. But it's not as easy to pick up.

John Anderson (02:21.687)
I'll that a four.

Brent Peterson (02:25.708)
Alright, thank you. I was hoping it wouldn't ruin the episode. Yes, absolutely.

John Anderson (02:29.355)
No. You want one back?

Vern Harnas shared this with me, hopefully I won't butcher it. He's better at it than I am. how do you know who loves you more, your spouse or your dog?

John Anderson (02:46.039)
You lock them both in the trunk for 30 minutes and you find out who's happy to see you when you open the trunk

Brent Peterson (02:52.206)
I'm not going to try that, but that's a very good one. like that. Well, so yeah, let's, let's start with Fernharnish that you, you know, that you're an early adopter of EO and, Vern is has some fantastic writings. Tell us about your, your kind of beginnings as an entrepreneur that you've rubbed shoulders with the, what we, what we in the entrepreneur community would call greats.

John Anderson (02:58.561)
Yeah

Brent Peterson (03:22.272)
and you being one of them, but tell us your beginnings.

John Anderson (03:26.039)
So out of college, I worked for IBM. At the time, IBM was the most profitable company in the world when I left them. They didn't do so well after I left. And it was a great career job, but I married into an entrepreneurial family that was successful in Southeast Michigan. And so I played at a private country club every weekend with some guys who all owned businesses. And I mentioned to my father-in-law, I said, you know, these guys don't seem any smarter than I do, and they run companies. And he said, they're not. Let me help you.

get a business. And initially I looked at the car business because I love vehicles, anything. Snowmobiles, cars, motorcycles. And I was kind of disillusioned with that compared to the culture at IBM. And so I was approached by an office furniture retailer by the name of Bernie Murray. And Bernie said, John, I've got a dealership for sales, just not a car dealership. And at first I'm like, furniture? I have no interest in furniture. But it was business to business. And I did have a mentor, if you will. And then finally it took about $100,000 investment.

And my final loss said, that'll be like your MBA. So you don't owe me the money, you don't go for it. So now that I'm becoming an entrepreneur, I had to figure out how to be one, how to lead, because I've been a salesman at IBM. And so I started reading all kinds of magazines and I saw a caption in Fast Company, or no, Magazine, and it had Henry Ford and Thomas Edison. I don't think Firestone was in that picture. And it said, the birthing of giants. Every year we invite.

60 entrepreneurs from around the world to attend the MIT Enterprise Forum, and it's sponsored by Inc. Magazine, the Young Entrepreneurs Organization, and MIT. And so I signed up and I was accepted at that. Well, Harnish ran that program. This is in 1994, so it's 30 years ago. And Vern's running the program, and I think, my god, this is Obi-Wan Kenobi. I've got to study this guy. I want to make this a friendship. And that friendship endures to this day.

Along the way, I decided, you know, this office furniture business, it's okay, but it's not doing what I want it to do. And so Vern approached me and I was the first coach ever. And Gazelles didn't exist and Scaling Up didn't really exist. He was still figuring out, it was called the Master of Business Dynamics. He hadn't written a Mastering in Rockfeller Habits yet. This was all pre all that. And so I got involved as a business coach for Vern and we literally had to take notes on pieces of paper and then go to Kinko's and

John Anderson (05:49.089)
press stuff up, we had no kind of delivery tools. And so that's how I got launched into business coaching. By the way, everybody who was part of our original partnership and group has gone on to be successful. The third person who joined us was Geno Wickman, he was on my forum table. And so that's why EOS looks so much like scaling up or mastering the Rockefeller habits, because it all was birthed at the same time. And everybody did great after that.

So a lot of impact that Vern has had large on business. And so now I've got this relationship with Vern. I'm growing business relationships and I kind of skipped a step in that relative to EO. After going to my first Birth and the Giants in 1994, you got a discount if you joined Why EO is a member at large.

And there was only about 300 or 400 members in YEO worldwide. It was still in its infancy. And so I joined, but there was no chapter in Detroit. And so in January 1996, I decided I would launch the Detroit chapter in Detroit. And Vern flew into town. He was one of the speakers. And I had a YPO member there as kind of a guest. And then I had another speaker, somebody who did work with me. And so the first 12 members who joined YEO

that include Gino, all became part of our first forum table. As an interesting fact, we just finished our 28th forum retreat last week. Four of us are the original members from 28 years ago, and the other guys have at least 20 years experience. So there's seven of us who've been meeting for 28 years as a forum table. so anyway, that's kind of put that piece in there. The book part,

As I went to, Vern had all these fortune summits he'd put on and I'd go to that every year and I was in Dan Sullivan's strategic coach program for 20 years with Dan as my coach. So I've always been in this learning growth mode. so Vern, and that's how I met Patrick Lynchione. I met Patrick after he'd written his first book. He would come into town and present for us for free. I mean, all these relationships go back. I met Jim Collins before it released Good the Great.

John Anderson (08:11.447)
And so just all these sort of these inputs. So about, I don't know, 14 years ago, approximately, I was at a Fortune Summit before COVID and Peter Diamandis was speaking. And I hear Peter and he talks about abundance, why the future is better than you think. And I'm like, this guy, if Vern was like Obi-Wan Kenobi and has been this guide for me for 20 plus years, Peter's going to be the guide for the next like 25.

And so I somehow end up at this little group, about 40 people at Singularity University. Dan Sullivan was there, Joe Polish was there, and Peter Diamandis and Ray Kurzweil were leading this thing. He didn't have a name for it. It was just kind of a gathering. I think we paid four grand to be there. And that was the launch of Abundance 360, a program that's now a 25-year program. I think we're into our 13th year. And so I kind of made this connection with Peter, and he just sent me a Thanksgiving

peace last year saying, John, you're the longest standing in-person member in my abundance 360 program. So again, much like Vern, wanted to cultivate this relationship with Peter and that's happened. So along the way, Peter's always telling us you're either going to be disrupted or you can be the disrupter. And so that's why I wrote the book Replace Retirement. I'm really careful about never blowing up a relationship. I put a relationship beyond money.

And so I couldn't really step into other people's areas. And I thought, you know, nobody's really working in this retirement space. And so what if I write a book about not retiring, kind of geared to boomers or say 45 to 65 year olds and sort of re chart what what they do? And and so that's what the book is about. And a little bit of that experience came from the fact because I told you early on, I married into a wealthy family. So I had so much wealth at

say age 30, that I could basically retire. I had unlimited resources, private jets in my access, everything. So I was living this really charmed life. But after doing it for a while, i.e. kind of feeling, now I always work, thank God, but being on this extended vacation, if you will, with no limits, I decided this is not what they had told us it's all about. Like I thought I had reached the top of the pinnacle kind of thing and found that it'd be wanting.

John Anderson (10:38.397)
And so I walked away from all that and took the road less traveled, if you will, Scott Peck's book. And today, a couple of things, my relationships, my spiritual walk, my calling, my financial freedom, my rejuvenation time, everything is better than it was then. And it was pretty damn good back there. The other piece, because I never burn a relationship, I still have a very close relationship with my

ex and her family and I still get to use the private jets and only not the paint one. anyhow it wasn't like all designed that way you know as easy as it is to say now but that's how this sort of story went along.

Brent Peterson (11:13.091)
Ha

Brent Peterson (11:25.218)
Yeah, so it sounds like a lot of adventures and a lot of things that happened in between. If you go back to some of the beginnings, what, and let's just talk about coaching a little bit. You, what led you into wanting to be a coach? And, and do you think there's something in innate in a person who makes a good coach?

John Anderson (11:47.863)
That's a question. think from my perspective, again, I was so enamored with Byrne and he was our coach for our company. I thought that would be really cool. And perhaps there's a book by, it's called, there's the Road Less, no, no. geez.

Wild at Heart and The Way of the Wild Heart. The author's name is escaping me. And I actually, The Way of the Wild Heart is the sort of the sequence to Wild at Heart. And he talks about the masculine journey and he says it's like six parts. And this isn't new, he's reframed it, but it's step one is beloved son, step two is cowboy, step three is warrior, step four is lover, step five is king, step six is sage. So.

A sage is helping other kings to be successful in their kingdom. And your ability to be a good king is you have to understand the lover piece, the warrior's piece, the cowboy piece, and the beloved son piece. by the way, I did really well at the cowboy, know, riding into town and drinking too much and all that stuff. And that was really kind of, again, this goal-setting commitment that I'm going to live well. I'm going to figure out how to get there really early in life. And so I was actually a strategic dater, if you will.

So the idea I had kind of in a way reached the king stage again early in my life where I have all these resources, I have a business, I have an organization. So maybe that was the idea, maybe the sage thing, which a coach does provide some ability to do, that might have been some influence. The other part is after being CEO of a business, I'm like, I never want to be CEO again. Like that was just not my role.

And I would, I've shared this in my business coaching over the years and personal coaching. I'm really a salesman at heart. I was a salesman for IBM. I'm a salesperson today. I'm just selling people intangible ideas. So I think it was like coaching was kind of a vehicle, one vehicle, writing the books, another that could facilitate this idea that I'm quite adept at getting anybody to kind of get on the dance floor. However, sometimes there are people who are better at the dance than I am.

John Anderson (14:04.961)
but I can almost get anybody on the dance floor. That's why launching the EO chapter was so easy. then another business venture I had was with Peter Thomas, who's the chairman emeritus of EO. And we brought a franchise to Michigan called Dogtopia. And I sold the Dogtopia franchise across the state of Michigan in like 24 months to EO members and YPO members. It was quite easy to do because I'm like Mr. Relationship. I'm like one degree from everybody.

Even the EO chapter, the Detroit chapter hosted their first regional event and they said, can you bring in Bill Ford Jr? I was able to get him through one connection and he came in, he hosted the whole thing at Ford Field, he let us throw footballs around, he did this great talk, just kind of answered any question. It was right after the 2008 downturn. So I've got a gift for

relationship development. So perhaps coaching was a vehicle to do that. And then in terms of what makes a good coach, I think some entrepreneurial experience is really important. I'm not sure. I do know there are effective executive leaders who are in coaching, but I think the entrepreneurial experience probably is most impactful. For myself personally, a lot of the guys who hire me,

I didn't plan it this way, but they're all family-owned businesses and often multi-generational. And I've had one guy who, he said, I wanted you because your children have large trust funds like mine and no one else, other coaches can't speak to that. They don't have kids with the issues, trusts and all the issues that go along with that. So my exposure to wealth, I think kind of helped also. Like I'm not intimidated by a billion dollar company.

Brent Peterson (15:56.918)
A lot of people, let's just, if I go to look at EO and I was membership chair for a while, the first excuse that people say is that I don't have enough time for this. The second excuse is always I can't afford it or I don't want to pay for it. A lot of those things go to coaching too, right? And like, why do I need a coach? I don't have time for a coach. I'm sure you've heard every excuse. Tell us a little bit about...

some of the reasons why a business owner, leader, entrepreneur needs a business coach.

John Anderson (16:34.667)
made me an easier way to accept it as a mentor. That as a young man, prior to my getting married into this wealthy family, I was a mailroom clerk at a mortgage company. And back then, mortgages, there were no computers. So mortgages were all typed up. And then I had to carry all the mortgages down to the various banks for the resale and so on. And I asked, you're supposed to drive a company car. And I look around the parking lot and the only

car is the chairman of the board. And so I walk into his office, Mr. Cooper, can I use your car for my run today? And I was kind of cocky and he throws me the keys. He's like, yeah. And so I get back and he said, sit down and talk to me. And Mr. Cooper, he became my mentor. He was one of the first. And one of the things he said to me that profoundly changed my life is he said, John, I wish I were you. And I'm like, what are you talking about? I'm freaking mailroom clerk like Joe Loser here.

And he said, no, you're going to do great things one day. And that just changed the chart, right? Everything changed in that moment. And so it wasn't that maybe my parents had said that to me or a teacher had, but Mr. Cooper said it. And I really admired Mr. Cooper and he had no reason to blow smoke up my bum. So a coach can be viewed as a mentor. And I've always had mentors. I talked about, you know, using Dan Sullivan for a period of time and then Peter Thomas.

Is a mentor to me today. So it doesn't even have to be a coach, but it is someone who's sort of mentoring you so, you know, you could kind of Blur that in the sense that I spend a lot of time most my coaching today is 101 It's with the owner and the executive team, which I find really enjoyable after 20 plus years of business coaching. It's it doesn't give me the same rise it used to But in that case I spend a lot of time talking them up

not talking them down. And again, that's maybe how I attract these people is that I was raised in a home where if I cut the grass but I didn't trim well, they pointed out how I didn't trim well. If I washed the car and I didn't do the white walls, that's what was pointed out. It was never a good job. It was always, where did you fall short? And those are important lessons too, but I realized over time that I really function well when people are counting on me. I need a little peer pressure.

John Anderson (19:00.329)
And then two, when I'm acknowledged for the things I'm doing well, it just amps me up. So I've used a lot of that stylistically in my own coaching. I want people to feel good about their journey, not look at all the shortfalls in their journey. And that's really kind of Dan Sullivan's gap and gain, right? You don't want to be in the gap. You want to be in the game. The game is looking at your progress. So even as a scorer, whether it was doing rocks for a corporation or at an individual level,

I'm an easy scorer. First of all, don't have to, I'm a big on 80%. This is Six Sigma stuff, right? If I do 80%, call it the month, the quarter, the year, doesn't matter, and I compound that, I'm 66 now, you compound from 20 to 30 to 40 to 50 to 60, you can get a lot of stuff done. And we touched on this a little bit, one of the other.

pieces is I spend two hours every morning preparing for the day and I've got a whole thing called the intentional day and you know prayer meditation deep breathing reading journaling writing personal notes of gratitude Just a whole list of things I go through and it takes two hours before I'm ready to have this call with you today Brent and And I and I'm not you know, I'm not like the super disciplined guy

I just started a process and then I kept adding on a little bit of James Clear atomic habits, right? Habit stacking. And I wouldn't do it if it didn't give me tremendous comfort, joy and so on. But I think we're in a period right now where you really need to slow down, not speed up. The technology, I don't let this start my day. I let the day, I'm into the whole...

nature sort of thing. You know, it's not run around using that as a clock. Matter of fact, I would share with you that one of my insights in journaling, journaling is so much fun. You can get all these sort of insights, is that everything's a sine wave in the universe. The universe is a sine wave, nature is a sine wave, humans work from a sine wave. This, except this piece, it's digital. It's either on or off. It's one or zero. How does a wave that's one or zero align with this one? It doesn't.

John Anderson (21:19.019)
So if you're not feeling harmonized in your life, it's because you're not looking for places to harmonize. And this thing does not harmonize you. It is a tool, but it's not how you start and end your day. So again, through all this, call it coaching and reading and growth, this is all out of books, right? I'm just, following the, it goes back to Covey's seven habits, right? Begin with the end in mind, first things first. I mean, I adopted all that stuff.

And I reference various books in my book. Probably the biggest impact on me was Earl Nightingale. And he compiled his group of writings into something called Lead the Field. And I listened to that 100 times, 100 times. And at the time, I'm like, there's no way. He's like, start your day, you know, and spend, I can't remember if it was an hour or 20 minutes, whatever, and then write down your thing. And, you know, the first time you do that, you're like, I don't know what to write down. don't know what the, you know, like.

because your brain's not designed for that yet. And now I can spend hours doing this. So those tools were very practical and we've seen them in various authors. He's not alone, but I really went to how do I implement that? And so whether it was Vern Harnish or Peter Diamandis, I'm still there learning how to implement that. Of course, Peter's stuff's all about evolving technologies and changes in the world and so on.

And if I'm not sitting in room, I don't get to hear it. I don't understand what's coming. And I have a whole presentation I'm doing next week to a group. And I have this giant wave with a surfer on it. And I say, I understand why you want to get off. Like, how do you surf those giant waves? Because that's what's coming at us. You can't sit on the beach and watch other surfers because your investment advisor doesn't know how to surf those waves. So you got to be in the game, i.e.

replace retirement. can't, you can't bow out. You gotta, you gotta stay in the game, but it should be enjoyable and energizing. I'm totally all about that.

Brent Peterson (23:25.132)
I want to come back to the being encouraging. And I think that's super important. I do want to just take a note right now that I need to get a list of books that we should, that you think we could read. I don't want to say should, but maybe your book list that I'd like to append to the bottom of our show notes so we can have a book list that, and maybe you have a published book list that you recommend. I know that I saw Jack Dahlia, one of the, he's a sales motivational speaker.

He has a 50 books that he reads and he's a voracious reader. I'm more of a listener. mean, I do a lot of audio books, but I have some books next to my bed that I try to get through at night now. Although I'm getting old as well, so I fall asleep as soon as I open the book sometimes. So just back to the coaching, being encouraging. One of the things was yes and.

and listening as a visionary or as an integrator, listening to your visionary and letting them kind of talk things through and helping them and encouraging them to give you ideas rather than shutting somebody down immediately. a coach or even as a leader of an organization, how do you coach those people to help their subordinates tell them

their ideas without immediately shutting that idea down.

John Anderson (24:57.899)
The best practice I've found, so it's not a specific like this is what you do answer kind of, is having used the fundamentals of the Rockefeller habits for decades, I realized that the bottleneck always became the owner or the CEO. That once the organization got these foundational tools in place and were running their weekly meetings and their quarters and rocks and all that, that the bottleneck then became the owner.

for some of the reasons you alluded to there. So what I did is I created a plan for the owner and the executive team called the Legacy Map. Again, I introduce it in the book. But basically, it's using a lot of the same principles and practices with those people one-on-one. It started as a rule that if you wanted me to be your business coach, you had to do Legacy Map as the CEO or owner. And then it was one of my CEO owners who said, why don't you do this with my president?

And then he said, why don't you do my vice president and so on. So now it's evolved to, if you want me to coach you, I have to do this with your executive team. So it circles back to the question you asked is that it appears, and this has been an ongoing evolving process, that it definitely increases your self-trust. Like when you're working your plan, you know your plan and you're working your plan. It's the same thing as the tools for the business, right? You know your purpose, you know your principles, you know your family core values.

You know what you're working on for the lifetime, for the 10 year, for the one year, for the quarter, all the same ideas, your BHAC, you those types of models. So you're real clear on where you're going and why you're going and even how to get it done. As that congruency increases in you, then it's easier to lead others because you're now leading yourself. Because up until that point, what I saw is that

an owner would say, we need to do this, right? They bring in the business coach. Hey, I just read Mastering Rockefeller Habits. I just read Scaling Up. I just saw EOS presentation. We've got to do this. Or I learned at my forum table. We've got to do this, right? But they're not actually doing something like that themselves. And so that's where that incongruency starts to begin, is like, I'm kind of telling you this is what you need to do, but I'm not doing it myself.

John Anderson (27:26.453)
And by the way, I went through the same experience. I'm coaching companies, you know, get your shit together, use a technical term, but I didn't have mine. So I had to come up with this tool and say, how can I practice this stuff through my life? And so I could see that my confidence, my credibility, my character was growing as a result of that. Why wouldn't that work at the, in the company level? What's evolved from that is, and again, credit to my client, when the whole team started to do it,

The trust level and the communication, everything started to lift. Maybe it's that whole idea when you, know, like a sports team, right? You can't just have one superstar. You got to have all the players kind of growing. And there's this sort of lift and then the trust goes up and then the execution goes up and then the profits go up and then the rev, you know, it all starts to go in the right direction. Nothing that I intended or planned or had as some original strategy.

But I think that's what makes it easier. It's a lack of trust in ourselves that shows up in all these weird ways in relationships to others, in relation to others. And so the best place to work is on me.

Brent Peterson (28:46.316)
Yeah, that's good. Yeah, the best place to work is on yourself. If you look at the way EO is structured and we're not selling to each other, we're helping and supporting each other, what do you think is the number one way that somebody within EO can help themselves and learn? What is your go-to formula within EO itself?

John Anderson (29:14.071)
I know that along my journey, I really enjoy taking on more roles within the chapter. So I think that's powerful, right? It's in order to, in serving, you learn more. So I think that opened up connections, that opened up more ownership. Again, it's almost behavioralized, the same thing you're asking your employees to do in the company. So.

If you really want to create value in an organization, right, be it an EO or a business, then you have to engage in playing a role of service within it. So again, maybe comes back to this, the benefit of EO is twofold. One, obviously the forum thing, and I want to touch on that, I was on it earlier. There's two things that happen in a forum meeting, right? You've created a context or a container. The container is assumed to be safe,

open for dialogue, the ability to challenge, speaking from experience, right? All these tools. So we create this sort of container with some rules within it, and we play by those rules. And it works really well. Everybody loves their forum for that reason. So you're trying to do the same thing in the business. And I think the other part is that those who serve within EO in various roles, whatever they are, tend to get more value out of the experience. And then the other thing is international.

I really enjoyed, and the International could be outside, you're in Minnesota, so going to other regional events or going to events just within North America was powerful. I did a couple overseas. I found anything that involved in the larger international part of EO, that was a real page-turner. If joining EO is a big leap and then getting into a forum is a big leap,

That going to some larger event where you have all this energy, maybe that's the other piece we're talking about here is that if, it makes sense, right? If I'm not energized about what I'm doing in my life and so on, others are not going to pick up on it and then it's going to have this downplay. And so what, are the ways I can be a source of energy and then how can I create more energy within my leadership team? That's what happens at Forum, right? We just finished our 28th retreat. It's very energizing.

John Anderson (31:38.159)
And there's also this, there's a high degree of trust and everybody, know, we flow so easy. have 28 years. If someone's, you know, you've done everything so much, just, have a lot of, you have a high degree. You walk in already feeling like we're going to be successful before we walk out. Maybe like a championship team. Like we got our shit together. We're not perfect, but we really support one another well. And that's why we keep sticking with it. And that's the assumption walking in.

So maybe that's another piece of this is that if EO can help you in starting to build that assumption, this intention that I am going to be successful in the things I pursue, then that is again modeling that and expecting it within the company. So maybe that's another piece. I wouldn't ask anybody, yeah, that's why I was successful in sales. I don't ask anybody to believe in anything I don't believe in myself. I'm not selling.

you know, ice cubes, Eskimos kind of stuff, right? I'm only promoting things that I believe in, which is probably how I, you know, that Bill Ford example. All I had to do is, Bill, you know, your great grandfather was an entrepreneur. I don't know if you know this going on in the city, but it's really cool stuff. And we're all, you know, doing our thing. And he's like, this is great. Yes, I'd love the help. What can I do? you know, but I wasn't promoting myself. I was promoting something bigger than myself, EO. And so that's...

That would be how we'd want our employees to engage in our companies, right? They're promoting something bigger than themselves that they believe in. And if not, what is the training you can give them so they see that? I'll share one other model. This is really from Chip Connolly. took Maslow's hierarchy from five levels down to three levels. The base level is a job, the middle level is a career, the top level is a calling. The job is all about taking care of me. I get a paycheck. It gives me safety and security.

but it's really me focused, okay? What's in it for me? We sometimes have employees like that, right? What's in it for me? That's the base level. The next level, career, which is the bulk of the people who work in our organizations and so on, that's where they're seeking self-esteem through recognition and acknowledgement. And they've learned this little secret, this twist of the game that when I serve the organization, excuse me, when I serve the customer, it could be the internal customer, people I work with, or the external customer, it wins for me.

John Anderson (34:03.681)
So now I understand how the game is played. If I want to do better of taking care of me, I take care of the customer and I get rewarded at an increasing rate. So now I kind of figured out how the game is going, but it's still extrinsically based. Everything is some external validation of who I am. The last step in Maslow thing is what we call calling and that's self-actualization where I'm living by purpose and meaning. It's intrinsically driven and now I kind of know what I'm doing. So the tool I really help people with is how to go from a career

to a calling. And that's what my book's about. I went from a career to a calling. I'm doing things that extrinsically motivate me versus the younger John, who's like, all I need to do is marry into money and have a private jet at my disposal, and man, I'm the guy. And initially, that's the feeling I got. But then I realized, this still isn't serving my soul. My soul's saying, I need something more fulfilling than just this nice suit. And so I think we're all wired that way. But it is a

There is a transition that has to go from that sort of job to career to calling. And EO should be delivering that value. should help you from a career to calling, i.e. so we can help our employees and our customers do the same thing, whether you're a coach or a CEO.

Brent Peterson (35:22.83)
First, I want to just acknowledge that we could continue talking like this for the next three hours. And this is fascinating. And I really appreciate the insights you're giving us. But we are up against the clock now. And I had questions about your books and about even life balance. But let's kind of close out with, in your book, you talk a lot about your passion for snowmobiling and how

to let's just kind of round things out with the importance of, maybe not spending a hundred percent of your time just doing the work of your business. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs that I meet say, I spend a hundred hours a week working. And maybe that's healthy. Cause if that's your calling and that's all encompassing, right? Maybe that's what it is, but I'm, I'm a believer in rounding out that thing and having

other things outside of whatever you're doing in your business. talk a little bit about how that balance is important in your life.

John Anderson (36:28.215)
I'm really glad you brought that up Brent and it's a huge it's the best way to sort of bring this to a close I call that rejuvenation time So in the legacy map there's six sections and I alluded to a little bit earlier These are not in any order that you know depends on what you want to set the order but spiritual relationships Career or calling as we talked about it financial freedom rejuvenation and health so

I'm a huge advocate of rejuvenation. I would not say, and I don't believe it's about work-life balance. I think more of energy centers. I don't think you can ever get in balance. think it's a little bit of a, it's kind of like happiness, right? It's something you're always pursuing, you don't arrive. So I like looking at it from energy. So rejuvenating time is definitely an energy gain. And Dan Sullivan talks about this in the program. First you design your free day, then your focus day, then your buffer day.

So I've been following that model for 30 years. And so I think rejuvenation time is incredibly important. And on a larger term basis, for me, it is, and this is typical, it's outdoors. That's me in nature. It's physically demanding. It doesn't have to be over demanding, but it's physically demanding. It can be done. It's fun to do with groups, but it can be done solo. And it totally...

takes you out of your head. So snowmobiling is an example of it for me. It's outdoors, it's in the cold and so on. I ride machines. I mentioned I like to ride motor machines. And so when I'm riding a snowmobile, I'm not thinking about work. I'm not thinking about life. I'm not thinking about politics. I'm all into that, OK? And so everybody should have their rejuvenation break. And it should be extensive enough to let your brain rest because that's where it opens up the synapsis to get the insights that

from this side of the brain to the other side of the brain. All these different thoughts floating around. Doesn't happen when we're having a strategy meeting. The other part of the kind of the starting the day I talked about and ending the day and having this kind of time is also to facilitate maybe more of the growth of those synapses. So if my brain is wired correctly, then these thoughts and ideas from a book or whatever can flow from one part to another. And so I would use the daily piece as a way of making an investment.

John Anderson (38:52.651)
to make sure my mind and brain and my heart and soul and all this are aligned on a, you know, like a daily checkup, if you will. And then I need this extended rejuvenation break to just sort of step away. And that's why it's called replace retirement is that's what it looks like. Is that I have, I take all of February off. I take all of August off. February is now kind of growing into March because I got ski trips. I got to take my wife down to somewhere warm, Mexico.

And then if you add in, I take the week of 4th of July, the week of Memorial Day, the week of Thanksgiving, and two weeks around Christmas, it comes in about three months off. Ideally, I think I'll get maybe to four months. But when I come back, I'm super excited to reengage with all my customers and all the work I do and so on. And it's not like, I got to go back. And most people have never done that.

It's the four week thing and you can pull off through if you just go away for one week You're just you're just exhausted. So you get away You're like, Jesus and you're just starting to kind of wind down a little bit and then you to go back to work And everybody would say that wasn't long enough at two weeks. You're kind of okay If it's skiing as an example now, i'm used to the altitude now I'm fine. I remember on a ski, but you still haven't done anything outside of the box You're still kind of race ramming everything in at three weeks. You're like, why don't we take that?

Horse ride up the mountain to have dinner with the blah, blah, blah, or go snowmobiling. The things that you never get to do. And then fourth week, you're like, OK, I think I've had enough of this. There's a long time to be away. I'm ready to get back. I'm ready to reengage. And by the way, I had some new ideas pop up. So I always have that on. There's some new thing, and I've got one recently. And if we had more time, I'd explain it. But new ideas pop up. So I'm a big believer in that extended rejuvenation break. But design it in that way.

away, I'm disconnected, I'm not letting this thing run my life, right? The whole thing, you can't reach me. It takes effort and it's back to your point. If I'm at my best, if I'm an athlete, then I need to have that rest time, both on a daily basis and on a longer term basis.

Brent Peterson (41:14.786)
Yeah, that's such good points. You know, I rejuvenate by running and sometimes I carry a little recorder and I learned from the race director for Boston Marathon that he also runs with the recorder and records his ideas during a run. And now I've gotten to the point of now I can script my, I can transcribe my thoughts and I don't have to listen to them and it makes it much easier to.

John Anderson (41:22.593)
Mm-hmm.

Brent Peterson (41:42.904)
capture some of those things is my memory, you know, I'm not, my memory sometimes doesn't last as long and I have these great ideas while I'm running and then like, what was I thinking about again? So capturing those moments in time is great. The other part that I'll just make a short comment on is if you are out there in the wilderness or you're on a trail and you're, and you don't have your electronic devices, it's a great time to have conversations with others that are also in the same position.

And I volunteered for an organization called Mile in My Shoes, where we help people coming out of recovery or out of incarceration. And you're spending an hour with them outside of electronics and it gives them a chance to also switch modes from phone mode to conversational mode, where even if you're sitting at a bar or restaurant, that phone could be in front of you and you're gonna...

It's going to buzz and you're going to take a quick look. That sort of escape piece is so important.

John Anderson (42:48.001)
Brent, I found that the best conversations I have with my adult children is on a walk. My daughter always is that way. I think it's because you're not looking at each other and you're just kind of taking it in scenery and I don't know, something again, maybe we get in the synchronicity or something. And yeah, with both my kids, if I really want to connect with them, let's go out for a walk.

Brent Peterson (43:10.798)
Yeah. All right. Well, John, I've taken a lot of your time and I really appreciate it. I do want to plug the EO Minnesota rally that's happening in May of 2025. So the entrepreneurs rally in Minneapolis at the Mall of America. Dame and John is our keynote this year and Matthew Pollard. But it's a great event. It's about five, six hundred people.

and I would encourage you and all of our listeners to join eorally.org or entrepreneursrally.org. You can also find it on EO Network and it's a great event to have and I'm helping with driving attendance. So this is my shameless plug. Before you give your shameless plug, so John, as we do close out, I give everybody a chance to do a shameless plug. What would you like to promote plug today?

John Anderson (44:01.303)
I would say anybody who's in North America because it's cheaper, US, continental US, let me clarify that. I'm happy to mail you a book at no cost. If you're interested, just reach out to John at replaceretirement.com and I'll do that. And on our website, it's not great, but the legacy map is there. But the best way, you really want to go deeper into this, is read the book. It is a how-to.

And then if you want to talk about it, you know, reach out. Certainly entrepreneur members are always welcome to speak with me.

Brent Peterson (44:37.336)
That's great and I'll just again, I'll show the book. I didn't quite get all the way through, I'm almost done. And it is a great, it's a great read. And I've been very much enjoying it. Thank you so much for writing the book and sharing your insights. It's been a pleasure speaking to you today. Yep, John Anderson, Replace Retirement. Thank you so much.

John Anderson (44:57.377)
Thank you, Brian.